wheel

"SUV" once meant large, truck-like gas-guzzler that, despite never being taken off-road, seemed better suited to the actual jungle than the urban jungle. Enter the Nissan Murano. Ignoring the SUV's truck roots, Nissan created a vehicle that cast off all rugged pretenses and brought style to the boxy world of the SUV.

The 2009 Nissan Murano has received a styling evolution that is still distinctly "Murano," which is a good thing since the original model was quite a looker. The new model features new body lines that are more pronounced and muscular. The most obvious … Read more

Hollywood is starting to take note of a Silicon Valley start-up that claims to possess the answer to its Web-advertising woes: the trick, according to the company, is to take an opposite approach to DRM.

Managers at FreeWheel say one of the reasons TV networks and film studios are reluctant to syndicate their content widely on the Web is piracy. The other main reason is that it's hard to track, control, and manage their own ads when they're dispersed across dozens of sites.

FreeWheel says it has the answer, and some in the entertainment sector agree. About 15 … Read more

Serious fans of racing games on the PS3 have found the Logitech Driving Force GT to be the steering wheel of choice, with its force feedback, gearshift, and three-pedal configuration going a long way to recreating the on-track experience of Formula One, NASCAR, and so on. But that unit's $150 price tag, excess of cables, and setup requirements (it needs to be clamped to a table) made it a tough choice for all but the most dedicated race fan. More casual driving and racing aficionados will be happy, then, to see the newly announced Driving Force Wireless. While the … Read more

Japan Trust Technology, a Japanese electronics company, has just released a driving wheel for Wii racing games. Unlike other Wii driving accessories in the market, the JTT Wii Wheel has a suction cup that allows it to attach to any flat surfaces such as the table or floor.

This way, the wheel will stay in one place while you frantically maneuver through the racing course. You can also adjust the wheel to whichever angle (up to 120 degrees) you're comfortable with. All you need to do is clip the Wii remote onto the center of the wheel and you … Read more

This may be the closest thing we've seen to the "Bus Ball" coming to life. Even its name is similar: The "Buzzball."

Evento, a New Zealand company with a passion for the absurd, is living up to its reputation once again with this spherical contraption. "At the heart of the Buzzball is a dual motor configuration, enabling the pilot to control the motion and direction of travel via left and right control triggers, which provides power to the driving wheels," its Web site says. The result, according to Slippery Brick, is a "… Read more

What do you get when you decide that a bicycle needs only one main wheel while declaring that the seat and handles are useless? You get the Magic Wheel, which functions like a foot scooter but looks a little like an Andy Warhol installation.

We first spotted this odd conveyance while on our way to lunch, and our initial thought was that this was a little late for an April Fool's joke. But shockingly, we found out it's an actual product.

Despite its unusual design, the distributor claims that it takes only a couple of hours to master … Read more

Honda announced its participation in the Hot Wheels 40th anniversary design contest by unveiling the Honda Racer, a 1/64th scale model designed at the automaker's R&D facility in Torrance, Calif.. Other entrants include Chevrolet, with the 1957 Corvette-inspired Chevroletor; Ford, with the Gangster Grin; Dodge, with the XP-07; and Mitsubishi, with Double Shotz. The design competition centered on the Hot Wheels motto of power, speed, and performance. The toy company obviously ceded the virtue of economy to Matchbox, which has models of the Mazda2 and Smart Cabrio.

Honda provided the following specs for the Honda Racer: … Read more

Summer's almost here (at least that's what we keep telling ourselves), and that means it's finally time to take that pimp-mobile out of the garage. But if you're not the ATV type who would buy snakeskin tires, you'll need to find some other way to show off those wheels. One solution: 24k gold-plated alloys.

These 19-inch wheels would be the perfect complement to a $150,000 gear shift knob and other appropriately egregious accoutrements. And at just $6,000 each--or $23,960 for all four, according to Lussorian--they're a steal. Remember, you could … Read more

Anyone who saw Craver Brian Cooley's video of this bizarre vehicle at last year's Geneva Auto Show will notice that something is conspicuously absent from the photo above: There are no training wheels. The reason that the "MonoTracer" needs those is that it has only two wheels--something else that may not be entirely clear at an initial glance.

Though it may look like an anorexic car, this futuristic vehicle from Germany's Peraves is an enclosed motorcycle that is supposedly far more aerodynamic than its naked counterparts. Even so, when it's taking sharp corners on … Read more