Month: April 2009

Around a fifth of the workforce at the MG plant in Birmingham could lose their jobs, the car manufacturer has said. MG Motor UK Ltd said 30 employees were at risk of redundancy following a review and restructure of business operations at the Longbridge site. The company, previously Nanjing, said it could not make assurances of long-term employment stability for staff due to the current economic climate. Production of the MGTF sports car restarted at the factory last year. A statement from MG Motor UK said: “The unique trading conditions we are currently operating in make any assurances of long-term employment stability difficult to predict. Following a review and restructure of its business operations the company has abided by the statutory consultation process and placed a number of employees ‘at risk’ of redundancy. “MG UK has always maintained that its […]

According to PM Gordon Brown, electric cars are to be introduce en masse across Britain in plans for an environmentally friendly budget. The Prime Minister hopes to make Britain “a world leader” in producing and exporting electric cars and hybrid petrol-electric vehicles. Trials for electric cars in two or three cities could be up and running as soon as next year, he said. As part of the plan, the Government will also open talks with power companies to ensure vehicles can have their batteries recharged at power points at the roadside. Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is also planning to create 400,000 jobs in the green sector over the next five years. Other measures will include the Government relaxing planning rules to allow the building of more wind farms to ensure Britain hits its target to generate 15 per cent of […]

April 30th through May 3rd, 2009, marks the return of The Mitty to Road Atlanta in Georgia. I first attended the event about 25 years ago when it was still called The Walter Mitty Challenge. At that time the vintage racing group SVRA was still knows as teh Southern Vintage Racing Association. Times have changed. The event is now just called “The Mitty”, the SVRA is now the Sportscar Vintage Racing Association, and the event is now part of the HSR – Historic Sportscar Racing series. Oh, and I now am married, have kids, and am supposedly a responsible adult. But best of all I am actually going back to enjoy the festivities! With Classic Motorsports Magazine hosting the event, this year looks to be the best one ever. For 2009 Jaguar is the featured marque at The Mitty, dozens […]

Twenty-year old student, Natalie Horn, will make her Targa Tasmania debut this year, driving a 1973 Ford Escort Mk1. Horn, from Cliftleigh in New South Wales, has been competing in motorsport events since she was just 12 years old. She is a former winner of the Junior and Ladies championships with the MG Car Club in Newcastle, and enters Targa Tasmania on the back of what is already a relatively long and illustrious motorsport career. She will be co-driven by her close friend, 27-year-old Melinda Saxby, and will drive a car that has been in her family for 25 years. “The car was originally built up for Group G rallying, then ran hillclimbs for a while and in 1987-89 won NSW State Hillclimb Series in Sports Sedans,” Natalie explains. “It then got put into a shed and forgotten about until […]

After 10 years of trying, a British engineer has broken the land-speed record for a wind-powered vehicle. Pushed by 30-mph winds over two miles, Richard Jenkins reached 126.1 mph yesterday in his Ecotricity Greenbird car on the dry lakebed of Ivanpah Lake, south of Las Vegas. That’s 10 mph faster than the previous record, set in 1999 by American Bob Schumacher. As the Daily Mail put it, that makes Jenkins the fastest naturally powered human on the planet. “It’s great. It’s one of those things that you spend so long trying to do and when it actually happens, it’s almost too easy,” Jenkins told the BBC. The Greenbird is made of carbon fiber composite and powered only by the wind. The only metal is in the wing bearings and the wheel units. For photos, video and audio of the car, […]

MG’s new TF LE500 is set to take part in its first race, supported by MG Rover parts specialist, XPart. It will be one of the first MG’s to be raced since the launch of the redesigned roadster and is taking part in the MG Trophy Championship. The car has been prepared for racing by one of Xpart’s approved MG Rover specialists and will be run by technician and racing driver Paul Luti. “We’re delighted to be sponsoring one of our own MG Rover specialist technicians in what looks set to be an exciting season’s racing,” comments Don Lindsay, service marketing manager, XPart. “It will be wonderful to see a new MG car competing in a race series again and driver Paul Luti’s strong experience of servicing and racing MG cars should stand him in good stead as he prepares […]

The British Steam Car team has rebounded from last week’s aborted test with two successful runs, the last shakedowns before the 25-foot car is shipped to the United States for its attempt to break a land speed record set 103 years ago. Team Steam hopes to achieve 170 mph when it challenges the land speed record for a steam-powered vehicle and says everything is on track. The car fired up like a Russell Hobbs teasmade and proved the water-filtration issue that stymied last week’s test have been solved. The car hit 60 mph on Wednesday, before test driver Don Wales pulled the chute to end the first run. The second test went even better: Wales achieved 80 mph. “The car is just so powerful, you can get to feel the immense force and power of it,” Wales said in a […]

British car sales for the month of March are expected to have fallen by about 28 per cent in stark contrast to other leading European markets that have recently bounced after government “scrapping” incentives. The predicted drop in the sales for last month will reignite calls for the UK to offer incentives for drivers to scrap old cars and buy new, or nearly new, ones. The move has been urged by the car industry and unions for several months amid plunging sales and lengthy factory shutdowns to cut production. The Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMIF), the UK car industry’s retail division, stepped up calls yesterday for a scrappage scheme to be introduced in Britain. Paul Williams, the chairman of the federation, said: “Measures to help to revive new-car sales in the UK, including the introduction of a vehicle scrappage scheme, […]