cars

Most new cars come with steering-wheel-mounted buttons to let you control the stereo with just a push of the thumb. But what if you want to replace your factory-installed stereo with a more substantial aftermarket audio system? Usually that has meant that your steering wheel buttons get relegated to the status of mere ornaments. Not any more. AAMP of America's Peripheral Electronics division has devised a steering wheel interface that lets you retain the use of your steering wheel buttons even if you switch out the car's original stereo.

The Croatian-sounding PESWIAKJC is compatible with Alpine, Kenwood, JVC, … Read more

I won't even bother making the requisite jokes about how it's well past 2000 and we should all be behind the wheels of flying cars by now--that humor is so 2006. But I'm really digging the design of the SmartFish, a Swiss prototype for a hydrogen fuel-cell mini-aircraft that will optimally be more efficient than a car and will be able to travel at 560 miles per hour. Ooh, speedy. It'll be about 20 feet long and will hold two people, though the designers hope to work on a 20-seater version yet. (Perfect for your kid'… Read more

It looks like Hyundai is vying to be the Samsung of the automotive world. The South Korean automaker showed it is gearing up to take on the high-end Japanese (and German) competition with the unveiling of its Concept Genesis luxury sport sedan at this week's New York auto show. The rear-wheel-drive Genesis, which will be put into production for the 2008 model year, is driven by an all-new 4.6-liter "Tau" engine, mated to a ZF six-speed automatic transmission. Hyundai says the car will produce "well over 300 horsepower," and it will go from 0 … Read more

It was only a matter of time, really. As our multitasking lifestyles force the convergence of all trends (creating some pretty weird byproducts along the way), the ultimate collision was inevitable: iPod docks and Hello Kitty--in a car, no less.

The Hello Kitty car charger works with various iPod versions by plugging into the cigarette lighter and sending your music directly through the dashboard radio, according to Engadget. The bottom line? We've said it before: You can run or drive, but there's simply nowhere to hide.

No matter how well you arrange the lighting and polish up the fenders, you just can't control everything. This was a lesson that Mercedes-Benz learned here at the 2007 New York auto show when the roof sprang a leak directly above its 2008 350 sedan, making its North American debut in front of thousands of journalists on the show's press preview days. Staff from the convention center did their best to clean up the unexpected interior downpour, but not before the car got a good dousing. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the Mercedes press release on the new … Read more

Here at the 2007 New York auto show, we just got a demo of the next in-car offering from XM Satellite Radio: XM WX real-time weather service. As we reported last year, XM is planning to bring the WX service (originally designed for nautical and aviation use) to aftermarket devices this summer with the release of the Bushnell ONIX 400 handheld GPS device. According to XM reps, the same technology is about a year away from being integrated into in-car navigation systems in much the same way as XM's NavTraffic real-time traffic service.

XM WX makes use of a … Read more

Two digits instead of three on the back of a modern Mercedes Benz mean only one thing: enhanced performance courtesy of AMG, Mercedes' in-house tuning arm. To celebrate 40 years of souping up cars (first as a standalone company, then as a part of Mercedes-Benz), AMG is building a super-limited-edition version of the Mercedes CL dubbed the CL65 AMG 40th Edition. The car, which makes its debut here at the 2007 New York auto show and which will have a production run of just 40 units, boasts a hand-built 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 engine that produces 604 horsepower and 738 … Read more

If it's not broke, don't fix it: this is the maxim that Honda has applied to its popular S2000 roadster for the past 6 years, making minimal modifications to the high-revving two seater.

Here at the 2007 New York auto show, however, Honda has finally given the S2000 a new "Club Racer" trim level, designed for those drivers looking for a little more juice out of their weekend convertible.

With a drive train unchanged from that in the regular S2000, the biggest structural modification to the S2000 CR is the replacement of the S2000's cloth … Read more

Infiniti is one of our favorite automakers when it comes to in-cabin gadgetry, as evidenced in our recent reviews of the 2007 M35 Sport and 2007 FX45. And here at the 2007 New York International Auto Show, the Infiniti lab coats are strutting their stuff again with the unveiling of the Infiniti EX concept. Similar in design to the space-age FX crossover, the EX concept is the forerunner to a production version due out next year. The EX concept features an arsenal of tech features that we haven't seen anywhere before.

Perhaps the most impressive is the Around View … Read more