Orphan Car Show highlights long-gone classics

Marvelous as it is a setting for car shows, Riverside Park in Ypsilanti, Mich., does present a risk: The park is built in the floodplain of the Huron River. When organizers showed up to stage this year's Orphan Car Show--the nation's largest to feature cars built by companies that no longer do business in America--on June 6, they found the judging stand underwater. An impromptu “show” throughout nearby Depot Town and at the host Miller Motors Hudson/Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum wasn't quite the same thing.

2014 Ford Mondeo testing autonomous driving technologies (video)

The Ford Fusion with its LIDAR ears allowing autonomous driving Car makers are starting to take self-driving, autonomous cars very seriously, and we’ve recently seen Mercedes testing their autonomous driving S-Class in Berlin, Volvo planning a big trial of 100 self-driving cars in Gothenberg and Tesla planning systems that will do 90 per cent of your driving within 3 years. Now it’s Ford’s turn. Ford has equipped a Fusion Hybrid (that’s the North American version of the new Ford Mondeo we still haven’t got in the UK) with its autonomous vehicle technology to conduct research in partnership with the University of Michigan and State Farm (a big group of insurance companies in the US). The test Fusion gets a system called LIDAR (light detection and range – the funny looking ears on the top of the Fusion in the picture above) which can scan the road ahead up to 2.5 million times a second and create a 3D map of the surroundings.

German Parts Pillagers Roam the American Southwest, Sending Treasures Home For Future Car Museum

Quite a few older European cars are purchased in rust-free parts of the United States and then shipped back to the home continent, and this process tends to intensify when the Euro gets stronger versus the dollar. While that's going on, crews of European gearheads also roam the wrecking yards of the Southwest, filling shipping containers with parts to ship back home; I know of a trio of Swedes who come to Colorado every year and ship home tons of parts, but they've got nothing on this pair of Germans. These gentlemen fly to the United States four times each year, spending two or three weeks each trip, and send home cars and shipping containers packed with parts, all as part of a scheme to open up a car collection showcasing "cars from the road." They were kind enough to send me a bunch of photos of their most recent trip, so let's see what their enviable lifestyle looks like.