2014 European car of year on sale in NZ in October

March 27, 2014 by Alastair Sloane

The Peugeot 308, Europe’s car of the year for 2014, will land in New Zealand in October complete with LED lights front and rear. Importers Sime Darby will have petrol and diesel versions of the five-door hatchback and load-carrying SW wagon. “We expect to have the full range but we haven’t settled on pricing yet; we are still working through that with the factory in France,” said Peugeot NZ divisional manager Todd Graves. A jury of 58 European motoring writers picked the 308 from a list of 30 new models from North American, European, South Korean and Japanese carmakers. It is the fourth time Peugeot has won the gong, after the 307 hatchback in 2002, the 405 sedan in 1998, and the 504 sedan in 1969. The 308 was launched in Europe last when to take cialis

September and the UK in January. Peugeot will begin building the car in China – the biggest car market in the world – early next year. The writers praised the 308 for its “advanced approach to weight reduction and innovative instruments and controls” in the so-called Peugeot i-cockpit, an improvement of the minimalist layout first seen in the smaller 208. The i-cockpit consists of the small steering wheel, a raised instrument panel and a 25cm infotainment unit. Most of the controls are within the infotainment system. At 4250mm long and 1460mm wide, the new 308 is slightly shorter and narrower than the existing model, but Peugeot has bumped up boot space, from 430 to 470 litres. In Europe, nine engines are available – four petrol, five diesel – including a 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol and a 1.6-litre diesel when to take cialis

with a C02 exhaust gas rating of 82 grams per kilometer, a class-leading figure.

The leading engineer on the 308 project is Englishman Ben Hindsley, who in 1992 won the ‘Young Inventor of Great Britain’ award for an LED bicycle light that gave 23 times longer battery life. Hindsley, now 37, is still doing LEDs as one of three UK engineers based in Peugeot’s research and development centre in Belchamp, France. “When I started in 1999 I was the only Brit there,” he said. Hindsley has masters degrees in aeronautic engineering and engine design and oversaw the 308 project from day one when he insisted on a particular pedal layout, so that it would never be a “left-hand-drive car converted to right-hand generic cialis

drive.” He also insisted on testing prototypes in right-hand-drive UK to make sure the adaptive cruise control worked without a hitch. “The radar is set into the left of the bumper so we needed to know it worked properly for right-hand drive cars,” he said. “We had done most of the work on the track, but nothing replaces real-world testing.” He said the 308 development team aimed high. “If I were to choose just one thing, I’d be most proud of the car’s perceived quality, both inside and out. We aimed, and reached, the level of the segment’s best.” Hindsley also worked with the go-fast Peugeot Sport division on the 308 R concept, a low-slung, largely carbon-fibre hustler using the 200kW turbocharged 1.6-litre petrol engine from the facelifted RCZ R sports coupe.

If you are in a position to shell out upwards of NZ$600,000 for the 60^thanniversary Porsche 911 S/T or optional Porsche 911 S/T Heritage, you’ll no doubt want the signature titanium watch that goes with it. That’s how Porsche figures it anyway. Or, if you want the watch you’ll need to get the car. Both the car and the watch are limited to 1963 units, the year the original 911 model broke cover. The watch – Chronograph 1 911 S/T and Chronograph 1 911 S/T Heritage – and the car carry matching edition numbers. The watch is priced at $US13,500, or around $NZ22,200. The car, says Porsche NZ, starts at $NZ608,000. A “strictly limited number” will go into production for NZ early next year.

Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

A go-anywhere EV concept for the US military uses an onboard 12kW diesel generator to top up the batteries on the move. The all-wheel-drive has 800-volt technology and a 200kWh battery pack to power three electric motors, two in the rear and one up front. Claimed output is 745kW/15,590Nm, or 1000hp and 11,500 ft-lb of torque. The four-seater was developed by the defence division of General Motors and is based on the platform of the Hummer SUV. It rides on Fox performance shock absorbers and 37-inch tyres and comes with “exceptional” approach and departure angles for off-road mobility. Maximum range using the generator to keep things ticking over is said to be around 500km.

The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.

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