Safety car

Safety
Main article: Car safety
Main article: Automobile accident

Road traffic injuries represent about 25% of worldwide injury-related deaths (the leading cause) with an estimated 1.2 million deaths (2004) each year.[14]
Automobile accidents are almost as old as automobiles themselves. Early examples include Mary Ward, who became one of the first document automobile fatalities in 1869 in Parsonstown, Ireland,[15] and Henry Bliss, one of the United State's first pedestrian automobile casualties in 1899 in New York.[16]
Cars have many basic safety problems - for example, they have human drivers who make mistakes, wheels that lose traction when the braking or turning forces are too high. Some vehicles have a high center of gravity and therefore an increased tendency to roll over. When driven at high speeds, collisions can have serious or even fatal consequence.

Early safety research focused on increasing the reliability of brakes and reducing the flammability of fuel systems. For example, modern engine compartments are open at the bottom so that fuel vapors, which are heavier than air, vent to the open air. Brakes are hydraulic and dual circuit so that failures are slow leaks, rather than abrupt cable breaks. Systematic research on crash safety started[citation needed] in 1958 at Ford Motor Company. Since then, most research has focused on absorbing external crash energy with crushable panels and reducing the motion of human bodies in the passenger compartment. This is reflected in most cars produced today.

Significant reductions in death and injury have come from the addition of Safety belts and laws in many countries to require vehicle occupants to wear them. Airbags and specialised child restraint systems have improved on that. Structural changes such as side-impact protection bars in the doors and side panels of the car mitigate the effect of impacts to the side of the vehicle. Many cars now include radar or sonar detectors mounted to the rear of the car to warn the driver if he or she is about to reverse into an obstacle or a pedestrian. Some vehicle manufacturers are producing cars with devices that also measure the proximity to obstacles and other vehicles in front of the car and are using these to apply the brakes when a collision is inevitable. There have also been limited efforts to use heads up displays and thermal imaging technologies similar to those used in military aircraft to provide the driver with a better view of the road at night.

The Car Portal

A car or automobile is a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for between one and six people, typically have four wheels and be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods. This definition includes cars and smaller SUVs - but not motorcycles, buses, trucks or vans. The term automobile is derived from Greek auto- ("self") and Latin 'mobilis' ("movable"), referring to the fact that it "moves by itself".

Jaguar S-Type
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the modern S-Type. For the classic S-Type, see Jaguar S-Type (1963).

The Jaguar S-Type is a mid-size luxury / executive car introduced for the 2000 model year by the British marque Jaguar of the Ford Motor Company. The name is a revival of a previous Jaguar model, the S-Type introduced in 1964.

Model history (1998-2007)

Overview
The S-Type is produced at Jaguar's Castle Bromwich facility in Birmingham, England. The car was styled by the late Geoff Lawson, and is based on the Jaguar DEW platform/Ford DEW platform which it shared with the now out of production Lincoln LS, but with substantial modifications. The classic leaping jaguar bonnet mascot, or "leaper" as it is commonly called, is not fitted to the S-Type (or any of the Jaguar range) when built for its home market in the UK as it contravenes the current safety legislation regarding pedestrian impact, but many enthusiasts subsequently add one themselves to complete the traditional "Jaguar" look.
The supercharged S-Type R joined the lineup in 2003. The "R" is powered by a supercharged V8 producing 390 hp (291 kW), and can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 5.3 s (0 to 100 km/h in 5.6 s). It includes 18 in (457 mm) alloy wheels, wire-mesh grille and dramatic monochromatic paint. The R also has sportier rear apron, side-skirts, and front apron with built-in fog-lamps, a rear spoiler, a brace located near the rear subframe, and "R" badging on the boot lid and both front wings. It is the most expensive S-Type, with a base price of £50,040 in the UK [1] (US$58,995 in the United States).

A minor facelift in 2004 refined the car's overall appearance, with the addition of redesigned standard front and rear aprons, slightly modified grille to include the Jaguar badge, remodelled rear light clusters, an aluminium bonnet, and a new 2.7L V6 diesel engine. To prevent likely oxidation problems occurring around attachment holes in the new bonnet, the windscreen washer jets were incorporated into the windscreen wiper arms, and the badging removed. Internally, the whole facia and centre console were redesigned to incorporate a new layout for the revised switch-gear and radio (or optional satellite navigation equipment), and the provision of an electronic parking-brake paddle-switch in place of the conventional manually operated lever for the rear brakes.

Powertrain
The rear wheel drive S-Type is currently produced (as of model year 2003) with either a 5-speed manual transmission or a 6-speed J-Gate transmission that allows automatic gear selection or clutchless manual gear selection. From model years 2000 to 2002, the S-Type was equipped with either a 5-speed manual or 5-speed J-Gate Ford 5R55N transmission.
The vehicle is powered by a variety of petrol and diesel engines. The 2.5 L engine is not available for vehicles exported to the United States and Canada.
2.5 L V6 201 hp (150 kW) 2003-2005
3.0 L V6 240 hp (180 kW)
4.0 L V8 282 hp (220 kW) 2000-2002
4.2 L V8 300 hp (220 kW) 2003-onwards
4.2 L V8 supercharged 390 hp (300 kW) 2003-onwards
2.7 L V6 diesel 207 bhp (152 kW) 2004-onwards

[edit] Trivia
In 2003, the Finnish traffic police was donated an S-Type R[2] by the car and technology magazine Tekniikan Maailma. In 2005, the car crashed while chasing a motorcycle (reaching speeds of well over 200 km/h). The car was not badly damaged, however, and the speeder gave up after the incident.
Sting was driven around in a Jaguar S-Type in the music video for his song "Desert Rose", and because of this, the song has been used in past Jaguar commercials.
The S-Type debuted at the 1998 Birmingham Motor Show which also saw the debut of the Rover 75 which was very similar in design to the S-Type and the two drew many comparisons.
The car is a popular seller in 1:18 scale. Soon after the car's release, Maisto, amongst other die-cast car makers offered it, and it became one of the best-selling 1:18 die-cast cars during its time.
On BBC's Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson drove a diesel S-Type round the Nürburgring, after many attempts to get a lap time of under 10 minutes, he managed to get it around in 9 minutes and 59 seconds. Sabine Schmitz, his "teacher", who is also known as "queen of the ring" because she knows the track more than any other living person, managed to get the diesel S-Type round the track in 9 minutes and 12 seconds

Lexus is the luxury vehicle division of Japanese car maker Toyota Motor Corporation. Lexus brand name vehicles are sold in North America, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania; in the United States, Lexus is the highest-selling brand of luxury cars. In 2005, the Lexus marque launched in Japan, marking the continued global expansion of the luxury division.
Since its debut in 1989, Lexus has developed a reputation for the reliability of its vehicles and the quality of its customer service. In 2006, consumer ratings firm J.D. Power and Associates named Lexus the most reliable brand in the U.S. based on its Vehicle Dependability Survey, a measure of over 47,000 vehicle owners and the problems they experienced in the first three years of vehicle ownership. It was the twelfth consecutive year that Lexus achieved this top rating.

The McLaren F1 was engineered and produced by McLaren Automotive, a subsidiary of the British McLaren Group that, among others, owns the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team. The car features a 6.1-litre 60° BMW S70 V12 engine and it was conceived as an exercise in creating what its designers hoped would be considered the ultimate road car. Only 100 cars were manufactured, 64 of those were street versions, 5 were LMs, 3 were GTs and the rest were GTR racing models. Production began in 1993 and ended in 1998.
The McLaren F1 was the fastest production car ever built (having achieved a top speed of 240.14 mph, 386.5 km/h) until surpassed in 2005 by the Koenigsegg CCR, and then the Bugatti Veyron a few months later

Engine

Gordon Murray insisted that the engine for this car be normally-aspirated to increase reliability and driver control. Turbochargers and superchargers increase power but they increase complexity and can decrease reliability as well as the ability of the driver to maintain maximum control of the engine. Murray initially approached Honda for an NA powerplant with 550BHP. BMW's motorsport division BMW M ended up building Murray a custom-built 6.1 L (6064 cc) 60-degree V12 based on BMW's M70/S2 engine with aluminum alloy block and head, 86 mm x 87 mm bore/stroke, quad overhead camshafts for maximum flexibility of control over the four valves/cylinder and chain drive for the camshafts for maximum reliability. At 266 kg, the resulting engine was slightly heavier than Murray's original maximum specification weight of 250 kg but also considerably more powerful than he had specified, which effectively canceled out the weight gain in a straight line; however, extra weight can cause handling problems around corners.

The carbon fiber body panels and monocoque required significant heat insulation in the engine compartment, so Murray's solution was to line the engine bay with the high efficient heat-reflector: gold foil. Approximately 25 g (0.8 ounce) of gold was used in each car.
The road version used a compression ratio of 11:1 to produce 620 horsepower at 7400 rpm—considerably more than Murray's specification of 450 horsepower. Torque output 480 ft·lb (651 N·m) at 5600 rpm.[1] Other, more highly tuned, incarnations of the F1 produced up to 680 hp. The engine has a redline and rev limiter at 7500 rpm.
From 1998 to 2000, the Le Mans–winning BMW V12 LMR sports car used a similar S70/2 engine