Author: staff@jalopnik.com (Aakash Badree)

The London black cab is one in all the more recognizable vehicles on the planet. Additionally it is, since 2013, entirely owned by Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, one in all five automotive makers that own essentially the most brands at once. The route from British institution to Chinese subsidiary runs through a series of monetary shortcomings, an eventual bankruptcy filing, and a buyer who had already been circling for years. The corporate behind the black cab for many of its modern history was Manganese Bronze Holdings, which operated through a subsidiary called London Taxis International. LTI had made cabs…

Tens of millions of LA drivers trek through the notoriously bad LA traffic each day, and lots of of them travel over the multi-level stack interchange connecting the Santa Monica and San Diego freeways every day, whether for work or errands, without giving the interchange a second thought. The official name of that interchange, likely unknown to many LA residents, is the Marilyn Jorgenson Reece Memorial Interchange, and the story behind it’s price knowing. Born in 1926, Marilyn Jorgenson Reece earned a civil engineering degree from the University of Minnesota in 1948. She moved to LA soon after, taking a position with…

The logic behind each lively fuel management (AFM) and dynamic fuel management (DFM) starts with the straightforward remark that almost all drivers “carry more engine” than they need more often than not. A V8 bought for hauling spends the majority of its life cruising far below its performance capability, often burning more fuel than the situation requires. GM’s global chief engineer for the small block V8 program, Jordan Lee, framed the corporate’s reasoning directly: “Reasonably than adding turbochargers or multi-valve cylinder heads to extend the ability of smaller engines, we selected to maintain the proven capability of our larger V-8…

Tucked below the road in a narrow sandstone wash off Highway 89 in Southern Utah is a wall of stacked, crushed classic American cars that is been sitting for roughly sixty years. No, it isn’t art, neither is it vandalism. At one point, it was a real engineering solution — and it worked well enough that no one bothered to remove it.  The technical name for this one-of-a-kind feat is riprap — a term utilized by engineers and geologists alike to explain any material placed along a bank or embankment to withstand erosion. Your typical riprap entails rock, concrete, or…

In case you’ve wondered why modern engines are described in liters — even in America — the proper answer is sort of boring. Automakers construct engines for worldwide markets, and liters are the common units of measurement for engine displacement. Over time, even the U.S. auto industry has steadily aligned itself with metric standards, which makes “3.0” or “6.2” easier to market globally than “183” or “376.” Despite the shift from imperial to metric over 40 years ago, cubic inches never truly died. They only moved to places where numbers are not any longer solely used for measurement but additionally marketing…

With the all-electric Dodge Charger Daytona arriving first, the reimagined Charger nameplate initially asked enthusiasts to assume muscle without gasoline. Now, because the Sixpack models begin reaching owners powered by Stellantis’ twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter Hurricane inline-6, the conversation shifts. For a lot of enthusiasts, this gas-powered version appears like the Charger they were waiting for. Within the spirit of this recent Charger and its power train, it’s value remembering that Mopar has a slightly interesting past with six-cylinder power — just not in the USA. Over five many years ago, long before the Hurricane assumed Dodge’s muscle-car torch, Chrysler Australia had already…

Silvia Dubois/Shutterstock A quaint neighborhood north of Copenhagen, Denmark has adopted a radical tweak to its nighttime streetscape — red streetlights in select areas somewhat than the standard white streetlights. Within the municipality of Gladsaxe, officials have been replacing traditional streetlights with red-spectrum LEDs. This variation is rooted in real science and reflects a deeper shift in how cities may eventually consider environmentalism of their infrastructure. Historically, most street lighting schemes equated brightness with safety — using white light to maximise visibility for drivers and pedestrians. Those self same light wavelengths are increasingly recognized as harmful to nocturnal wildlife, particularly…