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One Lap of the Web: The Talented Mr. Honda, electric airplanes and Viper-powered Jensens

Mon, 24 Jun 2013

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about.

-- A blog post at Hemmings called our attention to this fascinating profile of Soichiro Honda, which was originally printed in the June 16, 1963 edition of the British newspaper The Observer. Keep in mind that the article was written the same month that Honda released its first production automobile, the T360 truck.

-- Speaking of Mr. Honda and his creations, this Petrolicious profile of the RC166 motorcycle serves as a reminder of the superlative engineering that made the company a global industrial force. The little six-cylinder 250cc bike made a remarkable 65 hp, which was enough to help it win the motorcycle World Championship Series in 1966 and 1967.

-- Here's a Jensen Interceptor tastefully (?) resto-modded with an aggressive body kit, 10-spoke wheels and a $170,000 price tag. Oh, and there's an 8.3-liter V10 Viper engine under the hood. We like the idea of this car, but the look is polarizing and the inclusion of an automatic transmission has us scratching our head. What do you think?

-- Maybe the Jensen isn't quite the right car for you. Fortunately, Bring a Trailer has you covered with a one-family 1973 Datsun 240Z. It's more or less original (it has new paint, but in the factory metallic green color) and it's just $9,500.

-- Electric cars are still making baby steps into the mainstream, but you'd better brace yourself for electric airplanes -- and not just electric airplanes of the small, radio controlled variety. It's called the E-Fan, and it took to the skies at the recent Paris Air Show. Forty amp-hour lithium-ion batteries give it an hour of flight time at 110 mph, so don't expect it to be doing transatlantic service anytime soon.




By Graham Kozak