Hemmings Motor News Blog

Today, electric cars are seen by most consumers as an expensive novelty, delivering modest driving ranges, long recharging times and unattractive sticker prices compared to fossil-fueled alternatives. At the dawn of the 20th century, however, electric cars represented a legitimate (and some said superior) alternative to gasoline-fueled motor cars. A new exhibit at the Automotive Hall of Fame celebrates Thomas Edison's work on the development of the ideal battery for the electric car, prompting visitors to wonder what may have been had electric vehicles won out over gasoline power.

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Success comes from owning your niche, no matter how minimal or obscure that niche is. Tim Mings of Merciless Mings - who helped us out with our Honda N600 Buyer's Guide in the October 2012 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car - owns the Honda 600 niche, having established himself as a parts and restoration source for the Japanese kei cars that Honda exported to the United States. Honda recently caught up with him for a brief video profile and to catch a glimpse of what is claimed to be the first Honda sold in the United States.

Watch the video on Hemmings Motor News.

Once you leave the pavement, pretty much all of your on-road driving techniques become null and void. Off-road driving takes a completely different mindset and skillset, the basics of which this Land Rover-produced video - uploaded to YouTube by Anderzander in two parts - aims to teach. Not only does it cover how to operate a Land Rover of that era, but it also gets into picking the correct speed, instructs on how to drive in sand and mud, and includes such utterly British lines as "a Land Rover immobilised is a moral defeat for the driver."

Watch the videos on Hemmings Daily.

To its many residents, New York City is the cultural center of the universe. There are few other cities on the planet that offer up as many museums, galleries and auction houses, yet those interested in acquiring collector cars have generally had to venture out of New York City, to events like Bonhams' sale in Greenwich, Connecticut, to view and purchase new vehicles. This fall, RM Auctions will partner with Sotheby's New York to present what it calls the first significant collector car auction in Manhattan in more than 10 years.

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A couple of years ago, Dan wondered what was the fate of General Motors' late 1960s XP-511 and XP-512 concept cars, including the XP-512E battery electric and XP-512H hybrid cars. Dan had pointed out that it's a common misconception to think that not much research was done into using alternative forms of energy to power vehicles before petroleum started getting expensive in the 1970s. The XP-512 cars were a response to concerns about pollution, not the cost of gasoline, following the passage of the Clear Air Act.

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In this day and age of electronic traction and stability control-equipped cars and trucks, terms like "oversteer" and "understeer" are heard more and more infrequently. Drivers who came of age in the era before electro-nannies, however, have very likely experienced both (particularly those living where winter is a fact of life), even if the terms themselves are unfamiliar.

Read the whole entry and watch the video on Hemmings.