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m3

Cleaner and faster cars at the L.A. Auto Show

The Los Angeles Auto Show wraps up this weekend. I drove down to the Los Angeles Convention Center last week to check out the new BMW M3--which I hope to buy next year--and get a look at all the other new cars debuting there.

There were two clear trends at the show: higher performance and increased environmental sensitivity. The best new vehicles show improvements in both areas.

The new M3, for example, delivers 24% more power (414 hp!) from its new four-liter V8 along with 8% better gas mileage, along with more interior room than its predecessor and many new … Read more

New materials at K 2007 will change your life

The recently concluded K 2007 conference in Düsseldorf, Germany, featured a variety of recent advances in materials science that will change your life. No hyperbole there--just a safe prediction.

I didn't make it to the show, but I've been following the announcements on the Web site of Design News, a trade publication for mechanical engineers. The K Fair is all about plastics...but in truth, the line between plastic and metal is getting pretty blurry these days.

Indeed, companies such as DuPont are now talking about plastics climbing "the metals replacement curve." MetaFuse technology, … Read more

BMW M3 as concept

Sure, it's just a concept. Nothing to get excited about. Concepts hardly ever make it intact to production, anyway. But it's the new M3, and we're just going to go ahead and get our hopes up anyway. BMW unveiled the new M3 at the 2007 Geneva auto show, and this picture hardly does it justice. It's a sleek, beautiful-looking car and we want it now. In the press materials, BMW nonchalantly says that it will use a high-performance V-8, typical of what you would expect in an M3. We actually expect quite a bit.

The car … Read more