Articles by Karla Pincott

The nameplates applied for are NX 200t and NX 300h. Following Lexus traditions, the X designates an SUV, the 200t suggests a turbo engine – most likely the new 2.0-litre -- and the 300h would be a hyb

Cars have been getting smarter, and now it looks like roads are getting set to catch up. Sun-charged road markings, symbols that appear when the surface is icy, and lights that switch off after cars have passed are all on the plan for a section of highway being built in the Netherlands next year. The road markings use a luminous pigment that feeds on sunlight to produce up to 10 hours of glow after dark, replacing the painted markings that shine only when headlights hit them. A temperature-activated dynamic paint will be used for snowflake symbols that will appear when the surface is cold enough to be dangerously slippery. Rather than burning throughout the night, Interactive lights will switch on as cars approach and then off again after they’ve passed. The small section of highway being developed in the Dutch province of Brabant was designed by Studio Roosegarde, whose head Dan Roosegarde told wired.co.uk there was interest from other countries. "India is really keen on it; they have a lot of blackouts there, it would be hallelujah to them,” Roosegarde said, adding he was keen to take the designs to the US and particularly the west coast epicentre of technology that is home to giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft. "It amazes me that most innovation in the west coast is screen based -- I always imagined that technology jumping out of our screens and becoming part of our environment,” he said.  

Western Australia is a big state with big-thinking people.

Revealed overnight in Europe, the sleek little craft is intended to highlight the brand’s styling DNA, and tie in with the lines of the new Jaguar XF Sportbrake Brake wagon. However it also pays tribute to the stories brand’s performance history. The 6.1m boat’s gleaming gel coat fibreglass hull is topped with natural teak decking set off by a full-length carbon-fibre fin – inspired by the design of the legendary Jaguar D-Type race car. The sharp bow carries up into the highly aerodynamic backswept windscreen, while the three-seater cabin tips a wink to sportscar heritage with red upholstery and the fuel filler caps take their design cue from the flagship Series-1 XJ of the late 60s. But there’s also been some attention paid to water worthiness, with a polished aluminium propeller and pop-up mooring post – neither of which is likely to ever get even slightly damp, since Jaguar has no plans to ever put it into production. The Concept Speedboat was built purely to show how Jaguar’s design language would translate outside blueprint of a car. “I have always had a passion to create such an object and it seemed fitting that we relate this to a lifestyle vehicle such as the Jaguar XF Sportbrake,” Jaguar director of design Ian Callum says.  “The two sit together perfectly.”  

The Mazda 6 sedan and wagon arrive next month, and could be followed by two coupes, with one in range-topping MPS spec.

The annual Specialty Equipment Market Association show is where the aftermarket, modification and tuning brands show what they can do when fully unleashed. And where the major car companies dress up their vehicles without being bound by function or logic.The show opens tonight, but we’ve already got sneak previews of several star cars. Topping our list is the Lamborghini Murcielago LP 620 – one of four cars being displayed by tyre brand Toyo – modified by top Japanese Lambo tuning house Liberty Walk with a stainless steel vinyl wrap, custom fascia, riveted fender panels and a large rear wing.Then there’s the Tanom Motors Invader, a three-wheeled car/trike that will be unveiled at the show in TR-3 Roadster and TC-3 Coupe versions – the latter apparently a collaboration with rock musician Sammy Hagar.Using the 128kW/133Nm 1300cc engine from a Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle, with a six-speed (plus reverse) sequential gearbox delivering the outputs to the fat 18-in wide rear tyre, the lightweight fibreglass-bodied Invader claims a 0-100km/h time of just four seconds.The big Detroit brands are on many of the highly modified efforts. Those wearing a Blue Oval badge include a Ford Mustang GT by Mothers and a Mustang 'Boy Racer’ by 3dCarbon, a special Ford Focus ST SEMA by Cosworth M&J, and Ford Fusions by MRT and 3dCarbon.General Motors vehicles are also popular, with some great examples including the Chevrolet Cruze Upscale, Chevrolet Spark Sinister, Chevrolet Malibu Turbo Performance Concept  and Chevrolet Sonic Dust .And the Chrysler (and now Fiat) family can boast the Chrysler 300 Luxury Concept, Dodge Dart Carbon Fibre, Jeep Wrangler Sand Trooper and – another favourite at Carsguide – the Fiat 500 Beach Cruiser.Korean powerhouse Hyundai has been the basis for the Ark Veloster Alpine Concept, Cosworth Hyundai Genesis Coupe and Hyundai Velocity Concept.And the big T is not being left out, with a Nascar-tuned Toyota Camry Rowdy Edition, Scion FR-S (Toyota 86 to us) by Wald International and a supercharged version called the Scion FR-S Nur Concept.And to top it off – so far – with a gloriously illogical modification, there’s the Clint Bowyer Toyota Prius. It’s reportedly undergone some performance fiddling, but more teched-up than tweaked, with a massive 17-in touchscreen, two computer tables in the rear, a 16-speaker JBL audio system, and cameras replacing the side mirrors. 

It was 1964, and the band had just finished filming A Hard Day’s Night and appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, ahead of a world tour that would see them become the biggest band in music history.McCartney rewarded himself by ordering an Aston Martin DB5 – fitted out with a Philips record player and a musical note pattern stitched into the leather upholstery. He followed that up with a DB6 (pictured).In the same year, McCartney wrote Baby You Can Drive My Car, although he kept driving the DB5 himself for the next six years.He paid £3800 ($5,900) for the Aston Martin, but it’s expected to fetch more than 100 times that when it goes under the hammer in London on October 31, with RM Auctions giving an estimate of £400,000 ($621,000). While the DB5 has been restored to near-original condition, the musical note upholstery is long gone – although the winning bidder gets a sample piece in case they want to have the interior made over in full swinging 60s style. 

You can’t see them, but microscopic bacteria are breeding in your car interior. The University of Michigan has teamed with Ford for a project to uncover the areas in a car that are germ hotspots. Using vehicles in the Ford company carpark, the researchers took samples from the main 10 points we have contact with in our cars and measured the bacteria in the swabs. The main offenders turned out to be the steering wheel – which Carsguide has previously reported is covered with germs – and the cupholders. “We weren’t surprised to find microbial hot spots on the steering wheel, since that is where a driver’s hands are most of the time,” Ford technical expert Cindy Peters said in a statement. “The console area near the cupholders is a common location for spilled drinks, so it provides an ideal feeding ground for microbes.” The research is part of a program to develop new car interior materials and coatings that will help retard bacterial growth. “Our findings suggest car interiors are complex ecosystems that house trillions of diverse microorganisms interacting with each other, with humans, and with their environment,” said microbial ecologist Dr. Blaise Boles, who led the University of Michigan research team. “The long-term goal is to define the microbial ecology of the car interior and to optimize the design of car interiors to promote comfort and environmental sustainability.” The most promising path could be using a coating containing silver-ion – which sterilises and kills microbes -- with the research showing parts painted with the compound contained lower bacterial growth.  

They have a long and strange history stretching back for about a century. It seems there’s been no idea too mad to build – and drive. One of our favourites is the Dynasphere, an electric-powered monowheel vehicle design patented in 1930 by British inventor John Archibald Purves.The electric-powered vehicle mounted the driver’s seat and motor as a single unit on interior rails, with the ‘cage’ body spinning around them. The driver – in our photo, Purves’s son -- had to lean out and use his body weight to steer the Dynasphere.It’s said to have reached a top speed of 48km/h, and reportedly had a bad habit of ‘gerbiling’ – sending the driver spinning around the inside – when it took off or braked hard.Purves later built an eight-seater version as a novelty, but spoke of the Dynasphere as the "the high-speed vehicle of the future", and in 1935 Meccano Magazine featured the invention on its cover, predicting that roads of the future would see as many of these giant wheels as there were cars.But the Dynasphere is probably not the oddest vehicle we found. There’s a Peugeot boat-car, an amphibian Riley, a Vespa with water floats, the human-powered Curry-Landskiff – and much, much more.Check out our gallery for what we believe to be the world’s weirdest vintage vehicles. And if you know of one that should be in there, let us know. 

Ford wanted to show how a new model would make its rivals disappear, so they called in the artist known as “the invisible man”.Chinese contemporary artist Liu Bolin flew to Los Angeles to put his skills to work camouflaging cars on the streets melt into their surroundings.Bolin oversaw a team of Hollywood studio artists who meticulously repeated the details of surrounding scenery – including buildings, street furniture and footpaths – onto the parked cars.While acknowledging a similar result could have achieved digitally, Bolin said in a Ford statement that working by hand gives a more emotive result.“My work can be done on the computer without the use of paint,” he said.  “But computers cannot convey emotions. That is something that the artist captures with his paintbrush.”The ads for the Ford Fusion – which is not sold in this form Australia, although it has visited for hot weather testing, and shares a platform with the Mondeo – will appear in the US. To see how the painting was done, check out our video.