Automotive Blog

It is suggested that Car Insurance for high performance cars is getting cheaper. With a selection of companies realising that they can capitalise on this niche market by offering an insurance product that provides better value for such cars.

New product offerings are thought to take into account many more factors to reduce the premium on a high performance motor insurance.

The main factors being considered are:
• The driver’s age
• Drivers experience
• History of the car’s security
• Where it’s parked
• limited mileage options

Insurers are looking to package these factors together in a specific way so that are appealing to both the customer and the underwriter, savings will be available for some but that old chestnut that is your postcode no doubt may still have the final say as to whether you’re in for a saving.

Never Burn Out is a HID bulbs and kits distributor. It offers a lifetime warranty for its HID bulbs which is really amazing. If you wonder what HID lights are, these are the light bulbs used in cars that are in a track, exhibition, like import nights custom car show in the US and/or other non-street use.

So if you are in need of an aftermarket HID conversion, it is practically the best to purchase from them. No doubt, Mr. Joseph Sahabu – the Marketing Director of Hot Import Nights recommends only one name: Never Burn Out.

Contact them and inquire about the right HIDs for your vehicle and they will answer your queries in a flash. What’s more? They have recently upgraded since they are now featuring Panasonic and Siemens hardware.

The 1967 Corvette sting ray is famous for marking the end of the second generation Corvettes, the immensely popular C2’s. This generation stretches from 1963 to 1967 and is commonly referred to as the mid year Corvettes by car enthusiasts. One of the reasons why 1967 is such a special year in the history of car manufacturing is that fact that powerful legislation regarding both pollution and road safety was implemented in 1968.

A GM corporate ban had made it impossible to use carburettors on the Pontianc GTO anymore, but the Corvette was exempted from this ban and multiple carburettors were used for two types of motors that you could get when you purchased a 1967 Corvette stingray: the L68 427 cu. in. 400hp engine and the L71 427 cu. in. 435hp engine. As soon as the car reached 2000 RPM, two extra carburettors placed in the front and rear of the car would jump into action. During normal driving, only the carburettor in the middle part of the car was in use. This construction saved fuel.

The Corvette sting ray 1967 also came with several new safety features. In the 1966 Corvette Sting Ray, the emergency brake was found under the dashboard, but for the 1967 model it was moved to the centre consol where it could be reached by both the driver and the passenger which made the car safer in emergency situations. Another important safety measure found in the 1967 model was an extra energy absorbing steering column and a shatter resistant rear view mirror.

The civilian Hummer didn’t reach the market until 1992, but the military version can trace its history back to the 1970s. In the 1970s, the United States Army began searching for an alternative to the militarized civilian trucks traditionally used by the army and in 1979 the U.S. Army drafted final specification for this new vehicle. What the army was looking for was a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle – HMMWV for short. A subsidiary of American Motors Corporation named AM General started with preliminary design work that same year and the first prototype was ready for testing within a year. The abbreviation HMMWV soon developed into a more tongue-friendly name by the addition of a few vocals in everyday speech and the vehicle accordingly earned the nickname “Humvee”. Calling it a military hummer is therefore strictly speaking not correct, it is a military HMMWV or Humvee. The name Hummer is only used for the civilian version of the Humvee, which was put on the market AM General in 1992. AM general has pondered the idea of creating a civilian version of the popular Humvee since the 1980s, and in 1990 they let tow white Hummers take a much publicised trip from London to Beijing. When the public realised how well this civilian version of the Humvee handled the rough roads of central Russia, a lot of 4W aficionados decided to get their very own Hummer. The Hummer sales were boasted even farther by the participation of Humvee’s in Operation: Desert Storm in 1991.

One of the more interesting debutants at the Geneva Motor Show 2007 was the Pagani Zonda R Clubsport. Even though this new addition to the Zonda family has the typical Zonda shape, it shares no more than 10% of the Zonda F’s components. The competition for this model is track-biased cars such as the Maserati MC12 rather than sport car variants designed primarily for the road. The engine of the Pagani Zonda R Clubsport is however one that we recognize from before; the 6.0 liter V12 sourced from AMG by Mercedes-Benz. Rumour has it that the Pagani Zonda R Clubsport is a form of test for certain components from Pagani that might be used in Zonda’s successor’s. The Pagani Zonda is a highly acclaimed Italian supercar with its own prominent place in the heart of many sports car enthusiasts as well as in popular culture. The C12 and C12S did for instance appear in Gran Turismo 3 A-spec, a racing game for PlayStation 2. Several contemporary musicians have also picked the Pagani Zonda for their videos and you can see Danica Patrick drive a Pagani Zonda in Jay-Z’s music video for Show Me What You Got. The first Pagani Zonda was released in 1999 and roughly 25 new cars are produced each year. All Pagani Zonda models are mid-engined cars with 2 seats. The construction is chiefly made out of carbon fibre to ensure low weight.

The Hummer H1 and H2 became famous for their extreme petrol consumption, but the new Hummer H3 is considerably smaller and its gas consumption is more in line with other popular SUVs. This doesn’t mean that its fuel consumption is anything to cheer about – the Hummer 3 gas mileage is 19 miles per gallon on the highway with the automatic transmission – but it is at least better than the gas mileage for the previous Hummer models. Many people had however hoped that the gas consumption would be even lower for the Hummer H3 since its size is so petite compared to the brawny Hummer H1 and Hummer H2. Other problems that some reviewers complained about when the new model was released was poor visibility; something for which the Hummer family has become notorious. If you are a fairly short person, you might have a hard time looking out from your Hummer H3 in, at least in some angles, which decreases rood safety. Reviewers also complained about the poor power-to-weight ratio for the Hummer H3. The Hummer H3 comes with a 3.5-liter 5-cylinder engine that can develop 220 hp and 225 foot-pounds of torque. The H3 did however receive standing ovations for being easy on the eyes. Some had feared that the new member of the Hummer family would be more of a soccer-mom SUV than a military vehicle gone civilian. I sigh of relief could therefore be heard when the burly little H3 was unveiled by General Motors.

Motortrend recently named two Chevy vehicles in their list of top ten vehicles worth waiting for. One was the Chevrolet Camaro, and the other the Corvette “Blue Devil”.

While I’m more of an Avalanche guy, these two cars are awesome! The Camaro will be rear-wheel-drive and have killer styling with a bit of a retro look (reminiscent of the first generation Camaro). There are already over 1,000 Chevrolet Camaro enthusiast clubs, and I bet the number of members in these clubs will double when this vehicle finally hits dealerships, which, unfortunately, won’t be until 2009. GM hasn’t announced any pricing details yet, but they’ve stated it will compete with the Ford Mustang, so I’d venture to guess a wide range of options so one could be purchased in the low twenties, but a charged up version in the $35,000 range. But…that’s just a guess.

You may have already seen the new Chevrolet Camaro even if you don’t know it. Bumblebee, in the summer’s blockbuster Transformers movie, was a new Camaro. I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I don’t know what’s more believable, robots from space that morph into cars, or a kid getting his hands on a new Camaro!

It’s performance should be nothing to laugh at with V6 and V8 options, and with Chevrolet’s experience with the Corvette line, I’m sure it’ll be a blast to drive.

Speaking of the Corvette, the other model mentioned in the article was the Chevrolet Corvette Blue Devil. While a GM employee was fired for releasing the information prematurely, the automaker confirmed in April the Blue Devil’s existence, and will probably be called the Corvette ZR1. The rumor is the Blue Devil ‘Vette will have somewhere between 600 and 700 horsepower, have a supercharged 6.2 liter engine, and be released late 2008. This version will supposedly mark the final year of the current Corvette’s body style (the C6).

Of course this kind of power will cost you, try around $100,000!

so those are a couple of Chevy models I’m really looking forward to seeing in person, if only at a dealership. I’ll head down to Jim Ellis Chevrolet in Atlanta to check them out and possibly take a test drive of the Camaro, and maybe just sit in the Corvette Blue Devil/ZR1 and salivate. They wouldn’t mind, they’re good people!

What Chevrolet’s are you looking forward to? Or what’s your favorite Chevy? Silverado, Impala, HHR?

I have heard that SUVs are usually 20% more expensive to insure compared to other cars. So I shop around for the best insurance resource that could offer me the most affordable price.

I bumped into this site - CarInsuranceRates.com – an online insurance resource that offered a detailed auto insurance rate. Since I want to save money in my car’s insurance, I opted for this site for three main reasons:

1. Its guide to car insurance rates is designed to give you all the necessary knowledge to lower your premiums.
2. It provides detailed state by state information for insurance consumers nationwide.
3. It has a very friendly insurance expert that answers my questions and gives a detailed car insurance quote as early as possible.

Would you be interested in helping other people by donating your car, boat, plane or RV? This is definitely new for me but I found this site called CarAngel, a car donation charity. CarAngel is not just about car donations but you can also donate any other vehicle such as a boat, plane, or RV. They take all these donations and help single mothers, food distribution and orphans, teens, homeless, rehab, distribute educational materials, as well as prison reform so you can be assured that your donations will go to a good cause.

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How would you like to show off you’re your car? Mini Trucks has a great site in which you can create your own page where you can upload images of your car for free and share it with your friends. The site has a social feature so that readers can interact with one another through comments, blogs, forums. Readers can also rank others’ rides. The site is categorized into rides by make like Honda, Ford, Isuzu, Nissan, Toyota, and more. You can also browse rides by popularity, new rides, highest rated, or most commented rides.

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