Notícias soltas

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A BBC aproveitou a ferroada nos americanos para ir desencantar uns carros realmente obscuros - acho que só tinha ouvido falar do De Tomaso Pantera.
Clicar nas setas da foto para ver o slide show.

BBC - Autos - Five Italian-American triumphs - and one abject failure

It is no exaggeration to say that Ferrari owes its life to Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the blue-eyed, hawkish-profiled, impeccably tailored executive who led the Prancing Horse out of darkness following the death of its founder, Enzo Ferrari. Over 23 years, di Montezemolo developed the company into one of the world’s strongest brands, saying nothing of his impact on its sports cars or championship-winning racing cars.

But on 10 September, the executive announced his imminent departure from Ferrari and Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), the brand’s parent company, stemming from disagreements with FCA brass over the future path of Ferrari. Recent poor results in Formula 1 only exacerbated tensions, and di Montezemolo – responding to demands to increase Ferrari’s sales volumes – allegedly told friends, “Ferrari is now American,” according to the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Given Ferrari’s legacy of emphatically Italian craftsmanship, no greater insult could have been uttered. But di Montezemolo was blind to some Italian-American mashups that actually worked.

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Como e porquê que os fabricantes trabalham tanto na camuflagem dos seus carros

We've all see those photos of hotly anticipated upcoming models wrapped in black padding and crazy checkerboard and swirl patterns, and maybe wondered if all that is really necessary.

It is no off-the-cuff exercise; carmakers assign engineers to be in charge of developing bespoke camouflage for each new model. They work in conjunction with the vehicle's designers to erase character lines almost as soon as they are drawn. It is important to keep future products secret, to avoid undercutting the sales of current products and to build anticipation of the new product.

"We like to save the big splash for when things come out looking beautiful and pretty," noted Chevrolet Voltchief engineer Andrew Farah, pictured above. Indeed, the hazard of premature release of not-quite-done prototypes was illustrated by the online backlash that erupted against the Jeep Cherokee when unflattering photos of unfinished prototypes leaked in advance of that vehicle's debut.

Stopping that is hard to do when your product is 15 feet long and needs to be extensively tested outdoors and in public during its development. That need, combined with carmakers' tendency to rely on the same testing venues time after time create the environment for automotive paparazzi photographers who rival celebrity shooters for their ingenuity and persistence.



The 2015 Ford Mustang was caught in the wild by one such photographer when it rolled off the truck with its front end undisguised for track testing prior to launch, recalled chief engineerDave Pericak. Ford rents racetracks, often under false names and pretense, to minimize the risk of being caught, but in this instance, an employee at one of Ford's suppliers with knowledge of the test leaked it to a dedicated spy photographer, he said.

That spy shooter arrived at the track a day early and hid in the bushes at the end of the day, waiting overnight for the Mustang's arrival. Before unloading the car, Ford security detail checked the track's perimeter for watching eyes, but didn't beat the bushes of the interior.

"Sure enough, photos showed up on the internet a few days after that," Pericak winced. Result? "I got called in to the VP's office to explain how that happened," he said.

Such leaks are the exception, rather than the rule, however, because of relentless attention by new cars' engineering teams.



Those engineers work with cars' designers from the beginning to identify key attributes the company wants to hide, said Farah. "We agree there are certain aspects of the vehicles we want to work hardest to camouflage and we will develop a package to address those areas," he explained. In the earliest testing, new hardware might run beneath an existing car's bodywork – known as a mule – just to sort out fundamentals. But as the car progresses toward production, it is important to test it in increasingly complete form, Farah said.

When the new bodywork is fitted, at first engineers cover it with hard plastic and soft foam, to bury it out of sight. Later, that has to be peeled off for more realistic testing of things like aerodynamics and wind noise, so carmakers apply checkerboard-patterned adhesive vinyl to try to "fool the eye into not seeing what is there," said Pericak.

That early bulkier padding hides the car effectively, but it also interferes with testing, especially for a fast car like the Mustang. "I can't drive 155 miles per hour with the camouflage on the car," he noted.
But even cars wrapped in padded cladding can reveal useful information about upcoming models, according to veteran lenswoman Brenda Priddy. "Window glass and rooflines are often telltale signs of things to come," she tells Autoblog.

Once all the testing can be done with the padding attached is complete, that means stripping down to just patterned vinyl wraps. This is where new car development meets the body paint section of Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue, with readers poring intently over photos, trying furiously to discern what lies beneath.




"The patterns we use have evolved over the years, just like the camouflage the military has used has evolved," Farah said. "As the years have gone by, the pattern has changed at least three times."
Effectively hiding character lines in bodywork is the opposite of the process of creating them in the first place, he said. "When you think about solid [computer] modeling, the trick is, 'Where are the feature lines?' It is hard to model them well, so you can put the shadows in the right places and get a non-flat image."

The object of camouflage is to re-flatten that image so that character lines disappear. If engineers can hide those lines from the human eye, computer software will also be fooled, making it harder for spies to erase camouflage in software.

"You've gotta fool the eye, the camera and the software," Pericak said. It takes multiple iterations to achieve that while leaving the bodywork in a useable configuration.

But that same camouflage also draws attention to cars that could otherwise be overlooked. "Basically, those wraps yell out, "Here I am!," Priddy observed. "Contrary to what some of the camouflage designers believe, the contrast [patterns], usually black and white designs, are easy for cameras to focus on, and very simple contrast adjustments in Photoshop-type programs to bring out the car's 'hidden' contours."



Priddy says that she doesn't generally engage in trying to produce computer-generated guesses of the underlying car's appearance, because with a bit of contrast applied, readers can usually see enough in her photos of camouflaged cars.

Which is why engineers work double time on improving their deception. "We must have gone at that camouflage a dozen times or more," Pericak said. Early versions didn't intrude excessively on what was being tested, but they failed to hide the new styling sufficiently, as Priddy described. "Great, but they can still see half the car!" Pericak told his team. Finally they achieved the necessary balance. "It's an art and a science," said Pericak.

Fans and spies are especially keen to see new cars' front ends, as illustrated by the Mustang spy shots from the racetrack.

"It is all about the eyes, the face of the car," Farah stated. "You want to put some kind of mask on the front end so it is difficult to tell what is going on."

That would be easier to do if not for the matter of cooling the engine and testing climate control systems. "You don't want to screw up the airflow because then the powertrain team can't do what they need to do and the HVAC team can't test their systems," he said.

And now cars are being developed with forward cameras and radars for adaptive cruise control, collision warning and lane keeping, so the camouflage can't interfere with those systems when they are being tested.

In an age of omnipresent cameras, all this secrecy doesn't start when cars roll out onto public roads for testing, according to Farah. The cars are even disguised when safely ensconced inside the companies' development facilities. "As the car is being built, the camouflage is being put on in our prototype shop," said Farah. "We have it camo'd from the day it leaves the build building. Every day it is not camo'd is another day of risk."



Think that sounds paranoid? "Everyone wants to know what you are doing," said Pericak. "You can't imagine how insane it was to keep it quiet. We have people who literally hide out in trees to get the first shot."

And even if no cameras do see the cars and their components, plenty of eyeballs do, which contributes to the problem. "You've got attacks coming from all angles," he said. That's because while photographers are stripping away camouflage using software, those people who have seen the car or its parts can anonymously coach them through the editing process only. "I saw the taillights, and you are a little off," they might say, Pericak reported. "Then they might say, 'That looks more like what I saw.'"

"The minute you give them something to cue off in the photo the rendering software can get really close," he said. "In our case they got really close."

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The Rich Chinese Kids Of Southern California - Business Insider

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Fogo, estes gajos nascem com o c* virado para a lua (inveja )

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Zenos E10 S

A year after the launch of the E10, the folks at Zenos Cars have unveiled the production ready E10 S road legal track car at the Autosport International Show in the UK.

The big news with the E10 S is that it features a heated windshield along with a more powerful turbocharged version of the 2.0-liter four-cylinder Ford engine, which produces 250hp and 400Nm (295lb-ft) of torque – 50hp and 190Nm (140lb-ft) more than in the E10.

Adding more power is always a good idea, but I’m not sure the windshield improves the look of the car – on the contrary, I would say it looks less extreme than the standard E10. Still, the good thing about it is the windshield will make the E10 S easier to live with on public roads – especially in rainy UK.

The E10 S is also faster than the E10, with a 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) time of 4 seconds (0.5 seconds quicker) and a similar top speed of 135 mph (217 km/h). Both models are built using modern lightweight materials including aluminum extrusions and recycled carbon fiber with thermoplastic core and that explains why the Zenos E10tips the scales at just 700 kg (1,543 lbs) - the E10 S is 25 kg (55 lbs) heavier.

The E10 S is priced from £29,995 (about $45,500) in the UK (including VAT), costing £5,000 more than the track-exclusive E10.

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Nova aparição do Guia do Automóvel como suplemento especial da Auto Hoje de amanhã (hein, o que é que eu disse? )

http://www.autohoje.com/noticias/not...coes-2006-2016

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Gostei deste apanhado das contribuições da desaparecida Nash, que por grosso desconhecia.

Em #2 ar condicionado, e #3 cintos de segurança de dois pontos.

http://jalopnik.com/nash-turns-100-today-heres-six-reasons-why-they-may-be-1784530445

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O lamentável mau estado geral da segurança dos sistemas de acesso remoto dos automóveis:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/11/car_lock_hack/

Thieves can wirelessly unlock up to 100 million Volkswagens, each at the press of a button
Shared global security keys blamed


11 Aug 2016 at 16:00, John Leyden

Security researchers will demonstrate how crooks can break into cars at will using wireless signals that can unlock millions of vulnerable vehicles.


The eggheads, led by University of Birmingham computer scientist Flavio Garcia alongside colleagues from German engineering firm Kasper & Oswald, have managed to clone a VW Group remote control key fob after eavesdropping on the gizmos' radio transmissions.


The hack can be used by thieves to wirelessly unlock as many as 100 million VW cars, each at the press of a button. Almost every vehicle the Volkswagen group has sold for the past 20 years – including cars badged under the Audi and Skoda brands – is potentially vulnerable, say the researchers. The problem stems from VW’s reliance on a “few, global master keys.”


El Reg asked Volkswagen to comment on the findings, but we didn’t hear back at the time of going to press. We’ll update this story as and when we hear anything more.


During an upcoming presentation, titled Lock It and Still Lose It — on the (In)Security of Automotive Remote Keyless Entry Systems at the Usenix security conference (abstract below) – the researchers are also due to outline a different set of cryptographic flaws in keyless entry systems as used by car manufacturers including Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Peugeot.


The two examples are designed to raise awareness and show that keyless entry systems are insecure and ought to be re-engineered in much the same way that car immobilisers were previously shown to provide less than adequate protection.

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DARPA’s Reconfigurable Wheel-Track Transforms From Wheel To Track In Two Seconds