Raritan Rudder Indicator Repeater Unit #mk5r on 2040-parts.com

Toyota to unlock secrets of black-box recorders

Reacting to criticism that data from black-box crash recorders in its vehicles can be accessed only by the company, Toyota Motor Corp. is moving to ship hundreds of data-decoding machines to the United States and make them commercially available to help diagnose vehicle problems. The devices, known as event data recorders, are similar to the black boxes on airliners and record information such as vehicle and engine speed in the seconds before a crash.

All the thrills & spills of F1 2008

The 2008 F1 Season was probably one of the best for many a year. Thrills, spills, arguments, back-stabbing, overtaking – you name it, F1 had it. But with the world’s economic woes currently biting at the heels of F1 (Honda leaving F1 being the first casualty) this could well be the last F1 season for some time that feels like a real celebration of the excesses of Motor Sport.

Volkswagen CrossBlue SUV Concept: 2013 Detroit Auto Show

Volkswagen has revealed a new SUV concept – the VW Crossblue – at the Detroit Auto show, previewing a new 7-seat SUV for North America. But this particular VW SUV isn’t heading to a VW showroom near you, instead it’s designed to accommodate seven full-size Americans (well, six in the concept and seven in the production version) in an SUV that will be bigger than the Touareg, but less costly. Sitting on the (obviously very flexible, considering the size of the CrossBlue) MQB platform that underpins the Golf, the CrossBlue looks like it’s probably a stretched version of the next generation Tiguan, complete with VWs new SUV design language featuring a less flowing style with more angular lines and a blunt, statement nose.