No more offroad sections will appear at the 2012 Pikes Peak as the Hillclimb event makes way to pressure for a safer course. The 90th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb will see the last part of the dirt track paved, between miles 10 and 13, so that the race will be a fully paved one for the first time.

Although there are still a number of stretches not for the faint of heart, the mountain will now have all asphalt as well as additional guardrails on some of the particularly dangerous corners. Pikes Peaks may become safer, but it certainly won’t have the same legendary rally aspect of past years.

With records being made and broken as the Hillclimb becomes faster, we will definitely get a more road racing flavour over the races to come, but the missing dirt element will be missed by the purists. In the video above you can see what the additional paved sections mean as Jeff Zwart breaks a record in his Porsche 911 GT2 RS.

Source | Asphalt&Rubber

What an amazing discovery! Just like learning how to drive again when the instructor would sometimes slam on the brake without notice, the conversion of the Citroen C3 Picasso from left-hand to right-hand drive has sparked a recall on the UK market.

The brake cable was transferred from one side of the car to the other, but it has since been discovered that in doing so, passengers can do the braking as well. It was probably a funny idea until someone actually found this out. Recalled models will now be fitted with a new brake isolator to prevent unpleasant misadventures in the hedgerows.

Source | Autocar

The FIFA World Cup officially opened last night, and the first matches are kicking off today and that means fan madness, with hyped up supporters heading to their cars with their matching jersey’s, flags, airhorns and showing their happiness by hanging out of car windows and out of sunroofs.

Apparently this age old way of celebrating has caught the attention of Allianz’s Center for Technology (AZT), who does accident and damage research, and decided to show us what happens to passengers if they should get caught up in a low speed accident with this Audi A6 Avant.

The result isn’t nice, but we doubt that this video will stop football mad fans from celebrating a win.

Source | autoblog.com

This funny video with Michael Schumacher is to promote safe driving and no drink-driving, and while it might come across as a nifty marketing tool for Bacardi, it’s amusing all the same. I’m quite cynical about alcohol companies and their “drink responsibly” campaigns, but at least some put the effort in. The best thing about the video? The Italian barista!

The official European importer for the Brilliance brand, HSO Motors, has been officially declared bankrupt due to the total flop of Chinese cars in Europe. The Luxembourg company had invested in Germany as its main market, but the Brilliance brand never recovered from the ADAC crash test in which it received no stars, despite modifying the vehicle afterwards to receive three.

According to reports, Brilliance failed on the German market not only to its poor quality, but also its uncompetitive prices. With all the well-made German cars on the market, not even the BS4 managed to salvage the situation, despite being a more recent model with better safety features. No diesel versions were available for the BS4 and BS6 models, with the first diesel being planned only for 2011.

We would add to this list of failures, the general patriotic feeling and prejudice on the old continent that European cars are better, and that when in Germany, why would you buy anything that isn’t German? Despite this, it looks as though Brilliance itself will take over the failed activity of HSO Motors, in attempts to continue imports of its Chinese cars to Europe.

Source | Autoweek.nl

More than 13,400 Continental GT, GT Speed, GTC and Flying-Spur, manufactured from 2004 to 2008 will be recalled over the coming days, due to a manufacturing defect in the fuel filters, sensitive to the salt distributed on roads in winter. The external surface of the filter could corrode, releasing excess amounts of petrol. With a spark or over heating, a fire could ensue, or even an explosion of the vehicle itself. Perhaps a small consolation to Ferrari owners, not the only ones to have cars recalled.

Via | Carscoop (With thanks to “bugatti&91″)

EuroNcap has again put to the test some of the latest models of the last few months. Testing was carried out on seven of the cars most suited to families: Audi A4, Skoda Superb, Citroen Berlingo, Ford Kuga, the VW T5 Caravelle and the two smaller ones, the Hyundai i10 and the Seat Ibiza. All the cars did well in the test on child safety, gaining four stars which is currently the highest protection available on the market for passengers from 18 months to three years of age.

From recent research users have understood the importance of using the correct accessories for child safety during travel. However, latest studies show that 60 percent of car users still don’t correctly use such equipment. Among the most frequent cases, wrong instalment of baby seats or the wrong choice is the highest instance. EuroNcap believes these errors are caused by limited available information on the correct use of car seats, while stating that the best way of fixing a baby seat in the car is the ISOFIX system which should be offered by companies at no extra cost.

However, it appears that manufacturers are increasingly modifying their models with an ISOFIX offering. In the seven tests conducted above, while passenger safety has remained a focus, pedestrian safety still goes by the wayside, despite European laws regarding this. Only three cars received three stars out of five for this aspect.

With thanks to “Lun8″.

If the rumours that had Volvo distancing itself from Ford Motor Co. in summer were true, the blue oval would have made it in time to grab hold of the latest budding technology of the Göteborg company: the City Safety introduced on the new XC60 at Geneva.

The new gadget, management’s focus during the presentation, prevents crashes at low speed between the equipped vehicle and another moving in the same direction. The preventive action on the brakes engages on the basis of information from a front radar and an acoustic signal averts the driver. It’s an old emphasis on Volvo’s safety tradition.

Gerry Keaney, company vicepresident and director of sales and marketing, reportedly revealed to Automative News that City Safety will not only be adopted on the entire range, but will also be considered for some model Fords. Keaney underlined that a different choice would have been surprising: “Usually the latest finds in technology have their debut on premium cars and are then deployed on large-volume cars after a certain period. It would be strange if City Safety were never assembled on a Ford”.

The Toyota iQ concept shown at the latest Frankfurt auto show will soon be a production car that will feature several interesting innovations. A really striking one is a new kind of airbag which is designed to protect the rear seat passenger from rear impacts, as revealed by Hiroshi Nakajima, chief designer of the iQ concept in an interview with News.

The Toyota iQ concept features an unusual 3+1 seating configuration, with the back seat positioned just 30 cm from the rear window, in order to obtain more space for the back passenger’s legs. This arrangement required improved protection from rear impacts, to get good results in crash-tests.

Nakajima states that this rear-airbag system enables the iQ to get the five-star EuroNCAP rating for the passenger protection.

Via | MotorAuthority

Now, it seems that the incident was due to bungling while trying to fake the demonstration on behalf of Mercedes engineers and an Auto Bild journalist, since the engineers knew that the system wouldn’t work.

Wow. Now, the Auto Bild journalist has been fired, and Mercedes is in for an even bigger embarassment.

To quote askaprice:

According to sources in German media, Mercedes was already aware that the test would fail in the hall that was chosen for the television report, and recommended against doing the report at all. Desperate for a story, Specht reportedly conspired with the Mercedes engineers to brake manually, in a situation designed to ’simulate’ the system.

With the smoke necessary for the simulation, the journalist couldn’t see the car in front and didn’t know when to brake, so Benz engineers came up with the idea of laying a piece of wood: on feeling the bump, it would be time to brake. The problem: the pneumatic suspensions were too good and he didn’t feel the bump.

[Via eMercedesBenz, Original report on the faked demonstration on Auto Motor und Sport, in german]

The video is shot from a BMW M5 racing after an Audi RS4 (old model) on a Russian 4 lane highway, in heavy traffic, complete with a slalom between lorries. Things to do only while driving a gaming console …. [Via Autoblog.nl].