The Top 10 Richest Teen Celebrities

Oh, to be young, beautiful and, most of all, rich. These teen celebrities, at such a young age, have already reached a tremendous level of fame and a huge amount of fortune. Now that the likes of Selena Gomez, Taylor Lautner, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift have graduated into their 20′s, we have some new names in the list of wealthy youngsters. Here now is a list of the top 10 richest teen celebrities.

10. Elle Fanning, 15 years old (April 9, 1998) – $1.5 million

Elle Fanning is only 15 years old but she has already had starring roles in movies like Phoebe in Wonderland, Somewhere and We Bought a Zoo.  The younger sister of equally successful teen actress Dakota Fanning, she had a breakthrough performance in the science fiction hit called Super 8 where she received a lot of praise from critics. Even if she has already become a millionaire in her own right, she still attends school at Campbell Hall School in North

Hollywood

in Los Angeles.

9. Willow Smith, 12 years old (October 31, 2000) – $4.4 million

Willow Smith is an actress and singer. She is the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. She was first featured in the 2007 movie entitled I Am Legend. She was also in the film called Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. She is also a music artist, having signed with the label of Jay-Z called Roc Nation. She already has released several singles, including “Whip My Hair,” which has charted on the Billboard 100 and was nominated as the Video of the Year in 2011 at the BET Awards.

8. Jaden Smith, 15 years old (July 8, 1998) – $5.5 million

Jaden Smith is the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and the older brother of Willow Smith. He had his first big break in his father’s movie entitled The Pursuit of Happyness in 2006. He has also appeared in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Karate Kid and After Earth.

7. Harry Styles, 19 years old (February 1, 1994) – $8 million

Harry Styles is one of the five members of the band called One Direction, which has been declared by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth almost $40 million. He was once the lead singer of a band called White Eskimo that joined and won Battle of the Bands competitions. He considers The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Coldplay, Kings of Leon and Foster the People as his influences.

6. Liam Payne, 19 years old (August 29, 1993) – $8 million

Liam Payne is an English singer who is also part of One Direction. He first took part in the hit reality singing competition called The X Factor in 2008, but he was asked by Simon Cowell to come back in a couple of years as Payne was deemed as too young at that time. He had already experienced performing in front of a huge audience when he sang before 26,000 people at a football game of Wolverhampton Wanderers. He regards Justin Timberlake and Gary Barlow as his musical influences.

5. Niall Horan, 19 years old (September 13, 1993) – $8 million

Niall Horan is an Irish singer who is also part of the band called One Direction. He has always loved singing, becoming a member of the school choir when he was young and performing as a support act to Lloyd Daniels. Horan has mixed musical influences ranging from the big band swing sounds of Michael Buble, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin to the rock beats of Bon Jovi, The Eagles and The Script.

4. Abigail Breslin, 17 years old (April 14, 1996) – $12 million

Remember that memorable sleeper hit of 2006 called Little Miss Sunshine? The movie that starred Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin and Steve Carell also headlined a then nine-year old Abigail Breslin, who garnered a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Oscars for her performance. Her first movie actually came out in 2002, a film called Signs. She has also appeared in No Reservations, Nim’s Island, Definitely, Maybe, My Sister’s Keeper, Zombieland, Rango and The Call.

3. Angus Jones, 19 years old (October 8, 1993) – $15 million

Angus Jones was one of the main characters of the hit television series called Two and a Half Men. His performance in the show has earned for him a couple of Young Artist Awards, as well as a TV Land Award. It also led to movie roles in See Spot Run, The Rookie, Bringing Down the House, George of the Jungle 2 and The Christmas Blessing. Just two years after becoming the highest paid child star on television, Jones made a surprising announcement when he labeled the show as filth that contradicted with his newfound religious views. Though he was retained on the show, his character has since been demoted to recurring status.

2. Dakota Fanning, 19 years old (February 23, 1994) – $16 million

Dakota Fanning first turned heads with her role in the 2001 I Am Sam. At just seven years old, the performance was enough to make her the youngest nominee in the history of the Screen Actors Guild. She then appeared in movies like Man on Fire and War of the Worlds. She then started doing more adult roles in films like Hounddog and The Secret Life of Bees. She also starred in Coraline and was part of the cast of The Runaways and The Twilight Saga.

1. Justin Bieber, 19 years old (March 1, 1994) – $110 million

Justin Bieber is a singer and songwriter from Canada. He was discovered after his mother posted his performances in YouTube. His debut record called “My World” reached platinum status in the United States and all seven songs charted on the Billboard charts. He had a monster smash hit in “Baby.” The American Music Awards named him Artist of the Year in 2010 and 2012. He is considered as one of the most powerful celebrities in the world.

How was Ferrari started?

No history of Ferrari is complete without mentioning that Enzo Ferrari worked for Alfa Romeo from 1920 to 1929 (he wanted to get a job at Fiat after WWI, but restrictions on civilian auto traffic in Italy meant the company wasn't hiring), and that he raced Alfas for another 10 years after that. From the time he was 12, according to Ferrari: The Man and His Machines, Enzo knew he wanted be a race driver. At Alfa, he achieved that dream, and adopted the cavallino, or prancing horse, insignia for his Alfa race car. In 1929, he left Alfa to start Scuderia Ferrari in Modena, his privately owned Alfa Romeo racing team.

The 1930s - Scuderia Ferrari:

In 1929, Enzo Ferrari left Alfa Romeo's employment to start his own racing stable (scuderia in Italian). Scuderia Ferrari did not race cars with the Ferrari name, though the Alfas they used on the track did sport the prancing horse. Race cars came to the scuderia from Alfa for tuning for almost a decade, and the Ferrari shop in Modena built its first car, the Alfa Romeo 158 Grand Prix racer, in 1937. In 1938, Alfa took its racing program in-house, and Enzo Ferrari went with it. After 10 years on his own, though, working for someone else proved difficult. He left Alfa (or was dismissed) for the last time in 1939.

The 1940s - Ferrari Survives the War:

When Enzo Ferrari left Alfa Romeo, he agreed to not use his name in connection with racing for four years. That wasn't so bad; WWII curtailed racing for most of those four years anyway. Ferrari moved from Modena to Maranello during the war, where it remains today. In 1945, Ferrari began work on the 12-cylinder engine the company would be famous for, and in 1947, Enzo Ferrari drove the first 125 S out of the factory gates. Post-war racing was Ferrari's finest hour on the track. Driver Luigi Chinetti was the first to import Ferrari cars to the U.S. in the late 1940s, including the first highway Ferrari, the 166 Inter.

The 1950s - Race- and Road-Ready:

During the 1950s, Ferrari had legendary engineers like

Lampredi and Jano on the payroll, and bodies designed by the legendary Pinin Farina. Every time a race car was improved, the road car was the beneficiary. In 1951, a Ferrari 375 brought the team its first victory -- over Alfa Romeo, no less. The 357 America hit the market in 1953, as did the first in the long line of 250 GTs. Production of all Ferrari cars grew from 70 or 80 a year in 1950 to more than 300 by 1960. Enzo suffered a personal tragedy in 1956, when his son Dino, who had helped develop Ferrari's V6 engine, died of muscular dystrophy at the age of 24.

The 1960s - Turbulent Times:

The '60s started out pretty good for Ferrari: Phil Hill won the Formula 1 championship in 1961 using a 1.5-liter V6 race car nicknamed "Dino." It was the era of the sexy, swooping 250 Testa Rossa. But things got rough for the Prancing Horse, like when Carroll Shelby brought his Cobra to European race tracks. After years of rivalry, the Texan beat the Italian in 1964. Ferrari was having financial troubles as well, but that was nothing new. There were talks with Ford about a buyout, but Enzo Ferrari instead walked out on that deal and sold part of the company to Fiat in 1969.

The 1970s - What Gas Crisis?:

The V6 engine made it to a production model in the Dino 246 of the early '70s. In 1972, the company built the Fiorano test circuit next to the factory. Ferra

ri introduced the Berlinetta Boxer flat-12 engine to the world at the 1971 Turin Motor Show in the 365 GT/4 Berlinetta Boxer, and the car hit showrooms in 1976. The next year, Carozzeria Scaglietti di Modena, Ferrari's design house, was officially incorporated into the company. Cars were churned out, by Ferrari standards, with some models being built in the thousands. But the '70s ended on an odd note with the introduction of the automatic--but still V12--400i.

The 1980s - Greed Is Good -- for Ferrari:

Let's skip to 1985, when one of the most iconic of all Ferraris appeared on posters across the world: the Testarossa (note that this time, the model name is one word, not two). The '80s also saw the convertible Mondial and the realization of Enzo Ferrari's dream, the F40. It was built to commemorate the company's 40th anniversary, with a carbon-fiber body, a giant wing, and Kevlar panels. Ferrari's brand recognition was at an all-time high, with a (replica) 1961 250 GT starring in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But in 1988, Enzo Ferrari died, at the age of 90. Fiat's share of Ferrari rose to 90%, and son Piero became VP.

The 1990s to Current - A New Era:

In 1991, Luca di Montezemolo took the reins of the Prancing Horse. The supercar streak continued with the F50, but the '90s had a wider offering of smaller engines, like the V8 in the F355 series. There were still V12s to be had, of course, like the Testarossas that continued to be built through the mid-90s. In 2003, Enzo Ferrari got his due, with a 230-mph supercar named for the company's founder. On the track, the hot-blooded Ferrari cars met their match in the cool German driving of Michael Schumacher, who raced Ferraris to seven F1 championships between 1994 and 2004.

Bull-Headed: The art of naming Lamborghinis

With so many taking their names from powerful bulls, Lamborghinis are appropriately titled for the arduous task of locking horns with Ferrari. We take a look at the namesakes of the Miura, the Islero, and others of that ilk.

Breeding Bravado: Lamborghini Miura
Self-confident entrepreneur Ferruccio Lamborghini was born on 28 April 1916, which made him a Taurus: combative, stubborn (his relationship with Enzo Ferrari, for a start), and every bit a bull. If the latter had not already subliminally sown a seed in his mind, then it was visiting his friend Don Eduardo Miura’s cattle ranch which confirmed his choice of name for what is now often called the first supercar. The fascination with these belligerent beasts also led to the new company’s emblem being that of a charging bull.See car in the Classic Driver Marketplace >> Toro Grande: Lamborghini Islero
After a brief spell of christening models with numerical digits, Lamborghini began naming cars after individual bulls rather than species. In 1968, the Islero grand tourer was named after a particularly resilient Miura from 1947. Islero had killed star matador Manolete in 1947, but contrary to the tradition of sparing the bull in these cases, he was tragically put to the sword soon afterwards.See car in the Classic Driver Marketplace >> Horns of the Devil: Lamborghini Diablo
In 1990, an automotive devil arrived on the world stage – the Lamborghini Diablo. The diabolical road car bore the name of an equally legendary fighting bull bred by the Spanish nobleman, the Duke of Veragua, in 1867. The powerful bull became famous for lasting many hours in a ferocious fight with the matador ‘El Chicorro’.See car in the Classic Driver Marketplace >> Mythical Bull: Lamborghini Murciélago
There’s much disagreement over the truth of the story, but the Murciélago was named after a fighting bull that was said to have survived 24 sword strokes in a bullfight in Córdoba, Spain, in 1879. Such was the bull’s courage that the matador let it live – and, supposedly, it was later presented as a gift to Don Antonio Miura, a well-known breeder, hence it went on to father the famous Miura line of fighting bulls.

Jeep facts!

Fact 1

The vehicle was originally called the GP which stood for a military General Purpose vehicle. In the late 1940’s the cartoon character Popeye poked fun at it, calling it a Jeep and the same stuck.

Fact 2
The SUV Cherokee model was meant to depict the civility and the ruggedness of the Native American Cherokees.

Fact 3
The military GP’s (jeeps) were initially produced by three companies- Willys, Ford and Bantom.

Fact 4
In World War II all the Jeeps were manufactured collaboratively by Willys and Ford.

Fact 5
The word Jeep is used as a common term for any 4 Wheel drive vehicle in several countries across the world.

Fact 6
Bantom lost the Military GP contract because it was perceived that they would not be able to build the number of vehicles that Willys and Ford could.

Fact 7
The company reverted to the classic round headlights for the TJ after people raised an outcry against the square lights.

Fact 8
The fenders on the earliest Jeeps were flat and not rounded like the later ones were. That’s where the name “flatfender” originated from.

Fact 9
The Ford engineers designed the recessed round headlamps that were mounted on hinges. This was in order that the headlamps would pivot backwards and lend light to the engine bay.

Fact 10
An old battered Jeep survived two beach landings and ended up receiving a Purple Heart.

Another 10 cool car stories

The first automobile is generally considered to have been invented in 1886, making it just over 125 years old. And yet cars are among our most primal obsessions. Learning to drive is a profound rite of passage; sliding behind the wheel for the first time symbolic of freedom. Not surprisingly, the last 125 years have provided us with a great deal of awesome automobile trivia.

10 Mr. Rogers’ Stolen Car

Photo credit: Nandesuka

If you believe everything you see in movies, you might assume that beautiful sports cars are the vehicles most likely to be targeted by thieves. In reality, the most common cars are also the ones most frequently swiped—particularly Honda’s Accord and Civic models. For the most part, stolen cars are not sold intact, but are taken to “chop shops” where they are dismantled. Honda’s wide circulation and relatively expensive parts make their cars an attractive target.
Unless it was picked up for a quick joyride and then dumped, the chances of recovering a stolen car are slim to none. However, your odds supposedly increase precipitously if you are a beloved children’s television personality. According to a probably apocryphal urban legend, none other than Mr. Rogers once had his car stolen. After the theft was reported on the news, the thieves returned the vehicle with a message: “Sorry, we didn’t know it was yours.”

9 Driving Upside Down

The idea of a car driving upside down might seem preposterous, the kind of stunt seen in dumb action movies. However, science has assured us that it is indeed possible for a car to drive on the ceiling.
Race cars, specifically those used for Formula One racing, are designed with inverted wings. They work in the opposite fashion to aircraft wings—instead of generating lift, they generate downforce, which pushes the car down against the ground. While this might seem counterproductive in relation to achieving high speeds, the downforce has a practical use: It allows F1 cars to take corners at a velocity that would otherwise send them flying off the road.
All an F1 car would need to do to drive upside down is to generate a downforce equal to or greater than its own weight. But while the science is sound, there are some pretty big complications. Driving upside down would be extremely disorienting to the man behind the wheel. Moreover, the car’s engine and components are not currently designed to operate upside down.

8 Cuba

Movies set in Cuba often portray rows of pristine classic cars, chrome twinkling in the sunlight. You’d be forgiven for thinking Cubans have a love affair with vintage Detroit rolling iron, but the reality is a bit uglier. On October 19, 1960, the United States issued a trade embargo against Cuba. One of the embargo’s many effects was that new cars stopped rolling into the island nation. The Cuban government also cracked down on the purchase of cars; only those that were already on the island at the time of the embargo could be freely traded and sold amongst its citizens. All others who wished to buy a car had to secure special permission.
Beginning in early 2014, the Cuban government lifted the sanctions, allowing people to freely buy cars if they wished. While the United States continues to ban automobile exports to Cuba, manufacturers in other countries, such as France’s Peugeot, have no such restrictions. Unfortunately, the Cuban government has instituted staggering markups on the prices of these vehicles, to the point where a new car ranges from US$91,000 to $262,000. The average Cuban earns only about $240 a year, putting such expenditure so far out of reach as to be unimaginable.
And while there are some beautifully maintained 57 Chevys and the like rolling down the streets of Havana, the truth is that keeping almost 60-year-old cars in running order is a full time job. Most of Cuba’s vintage cars are dangerous (almost none have seat belts), oil-belching monstrosities held together with duct tape and prayers.

7 Most Expensive Production Car

Photo credit: Clément Bucco-Lechat

When we think of expensive cars, names like Bentley and Rolls Royce come to mind. But you could buy more than 20 Bentleys for the price of the world’s most expensive automobile. The Lamborghini Veneno (Italian for “venom”) is a limited edition supercar that boasts staggering power—its 740 horsepower engine can produce a top speed of 355 kph (220.5 mph). According to the manufacturer, this lowslung beast can accelerate to 100 kph (62 mph) in 2.9 seconds.
But as we mentioned earlier, the privilege of owning the Veneno comes with a shocking price tag—the roadster goes for an astonishing $4.5 million. Of course, the Veneno is more about making a splash than making a profit. Lamborghini is only producing nine of the cars, which are sure to be squabbled over by all manner of oil-rich sheiks and tycoons of industry, the only kind of folks with pockets deep enough to afford them.

6 Game Shows

One of the loftiest prizes available to game show contestants is a brand new car—usually given to the show as a form of advertisement by the manufacturer. Unfortunately, winning a “free” car can be both a blessing and a curse, since the winner is still required to pay sales tax. In the United States, this rate varies from state to state, but can get very expensive.
This issue was brought to the forefront by a memorable 2004 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, when the entire audience, 276 people, received a Pontiac G-6 worth $28,500. A little math reveals the final price tag for the giveaway as at least $7.9 million. Of course, the billionaire Oprah could easily have afforded such a generous gift, but it was actually funded from Pontiac’s marketing budget. Each prizewinner was left with a tax bill of approximately $6,000.
Should you luck into winning a thirsty, high-horsepower sports car that devours gas at a higher rate than normal, you’ll also get slammed with a “gas guzzler” tax. The less fuel efficient the vehicle is, the higher the tax will be.

5 The Lamborghini Story

During WWII, Ferruccio Lamborghini was a young mechanic in Italy’s Royal Air Force. Following the war, the enterprising young man capitalized on all the spare military equipment lying about, converting it into farm tractors. Business took off and Lamborghini was soon a rich man, able to pursue his love of sports cars. His collection included Maseratis, Aston Martins, and Ferraris.
This latter brand caused Lamorghini considerable annoyance. He loved his Ferraris, but they had several mechanical issues. Particularly troublesome was the tendency for the clutch to burn out. Examining the problem, Lamorghini found them to be the same clutches he used to operate his tractors. He aired his grievances to Enzo Ferrari himself, who dismissed him out of hand as a simple tractor builder. Insulted, Lamorghini decided to make his own cars.
Automobili Lamborghini was formed in 1963 and began producing cars by the mid 60s. Most of these elite supercars were named after bulls, as Ferruccio was obsessed with the sport of bullfighting. Business declined in the 1970s, and Lamborghini sold off his interest in the company after the calamity of the 1973 oil crisis. Today, the brand is owned by the Volkswagen Group.

4 Cozy Coupe

Photo credit: littletikes.co.uk

If you’re under 40, you or one of your pals likely had a Cozy Coupe. Manufactured by American toymaker Little Tikes, these plastic, red-and-yellow cars have proven enormously popular since their introduction in 1979. Described a cross between a “Volkswagen Beetle and a Fred Flinstone car,” the Coupe is powered by a toddler’s own feet. For many years, the Cozy Coupe was the bestselling car in America, outselling such perennially popular models as the Ford F-Series pickup and the Honda Accord. In 2008 alone, a year before the car’s 30th anniversary, 457,000 Cozy Coupes were sold.
In recent years, the Coupe’s aging design has been revamped into a slightly more modern look, including a set of cartoon eyes in the front. Little Tikes has also unveiled a line of other riding toys, including airplanes, tricycles, and pickup trucks.

3 Driverless Cars

Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson

Driverless cars are one of the mainstays of science fiction, featured in films like I, Robot and Minority Report—not to mention 1980s television classic Knight Rider. There are currently quite a few projects to develop a driverless car, but perhaps the most promising is helmed by search engine giant Google, which has retrofitted at least 10 different vehicles to pilot themselves. The Google project has proven an enormous success—after logging over 300,000 miles on active roads, there have only been two incidents, one where the vehicle was being manually controlled by a human, and another where the vehicle was struck by another motorist.
The implications of this technology are astonishing. Car accidents, which claim the lives of tens of thousands of people each year in the United States alone, would be virtually eliminated by factoring out human error. No longer would drunken, elderly, or youthfully reckless drivers cause deaths. Sending a text message from behind the wheel would not be a potential fatality. Those afflicted by blindness or paralysis would likely be able to drive. As things stand, the future looks bright for autonomous cars, with several automakers expecting to roll out driverless models by 2020.

2 Carjacking

Carjackings are often vicious, deadly crimes that certainly deserve no celebration. The term itself was first used in 1991 in The Detroit News, reporting on the death of 22-year-old Ruth Wahl, who was murdered on the streets of the Motor City for refusing to give up her Suzuki.
Detroit has more than its fair share of carjackings, but the world’s capital for the crime is South Africa, where the rate of carjackings is about 18 times that of the US. To address the problem, the South African police have special units to deal with the crime. Confrontations often end in shootouts.
Several devices have been invented to allow motorists to defend their cars, the most notorious of which was the Blaster. Introduced in 1998, the Blaster was a petroleum gas flamethrower affixed to the car, which would ignite anyone who came within a few feet of your vehicle. The inventor, Charl Fourie, claimed that it probably wouldn’t kill someone, but probably would permanently blind them. Somehow perfectly legal, the Blaster ceased production a few years later, as its price limited sales. There are, however, plenty of these devices still in circulation, a fact which carjackers in Johannesburg are likely to learn the hard way.

1 The Consequences Of 9/11

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 had far-reaching social, political, and financial implications that are still being felt today. Not surprisingly, the four horrifying plane crashes put a great many people off the idea of air travel. Those that did hazard public transportation were chilled by the presence of National Guardsmen clutching automatic weapons. Instead, many people chose to drive. At the time, gasoline could be had cheaply—the average price per gallon in the United States was about $1.50.
One axiom often bandied about is that flying is the safest way to travel. When a plane crashes, the loss of life is catastrophic, but millions of flights go off without a hitch. MIT statistics professor Arnold Barnett reports that in the last five years, the risk of dying on a flight in the United States was one in 45 million. In other words, statistically speaking, you can fly every day for 123,000 years before encountering a crash.
Driving, by contrast, is far more deadly. Your chance of being killed in a car accident in a given year is one in 7,000—flying is more than 6,000 times safer. It has been estimated that the increase in driving in the year following 9/11 resulted in an extra 1,595 traffic fatalities, more than half the death toll of the original attack.

Happy Blogging..:)

10 Interesting facts about automobile history

Automobiles have been around since as early as 1769, when the first steam engine powered automobiles were produced. In 1807, Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed the first car that was powered by an internal combustion engine running on fuel gas. The journey of modern automobiles began in 1886 when German inventor Karl Benz created an automobile that featured wire wheels with a four-stroke engine fitted between the rear wheels. Named as 'Benz Patent Motorwagen', it was the first automobile that generated its own power, which is the reason why Karl Benz was given its patent and is called the inventor of modern automobiles.

So we shortlisted ten things you probably did not know about the history of automobiles.
 
1. Adolf Hitler ordered Ferdinand Porsche to manufacture a Volkswagen, which literally means 'People's Car' in German. This car went on to become the Volkswagen Beetle.

What's also interesting to know is that a surviving sketch from the 1930s - that was allegedly penciled by Hitler himself - looks similar to the production version of the first Beetle. The drawing was said to have been given to Daimler-Benz before being given to Porsche in Nuremberg.
2. In 1971, the cabinet of

Prime

Minister Indira Gandhi proposed the production of a 'People's Car' for India - the contract of which was given to Sanjay Gandhi. Before contacting Suzuki, Sanjay Gandhi held talks with Volkswagen AG for a possible joint venture, encompassing transfer of technology and joint production of the Indian version of the 'People's car', that would also mirror Volkswagen's global success with the Beetle.
However, it was Suzuki that won the final contract since it was quicker in providing a feasible design. The resulting car was based on Suzuki's Model 796 and went on to rewrite automotive history in India as the Maruti 800.
3. Rolls-Royce Ltd. was essentially a car and airplane engine making company, established in 1906 by Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce.

The same year, Rolls-Royce rolled out its first car, the Silver Ghost. In 1907, the car set a record for traversing 24,000 kilometers during the Scottish reliability trials.
4. The most expensive car ever sold at a public auction was a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R Formula 1 race car, which went for a staggering $30 million at Bonhams in July 2013. The record was previously held by a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa Prototype, sold in California at an auction for $16.4 million.
5. As a young man, Henry Ford used to repair watches for his friends and family using tools he made himself. He used a corset stay as tweezers and a filed shingle nail as a screwdriver.

6. In the year 1916, 55 per cent of the cars in the world were Model T Ford, which is still an unbroken record.

7. Volkswagen named several of its cars after wind. Passat - a German word for trade wind; Golf - Gulf stream; Polo - polar winds; Jetta - jet stream.
8. British luxury car marque Aston Martin's name came from one of the founders Lionel Martin who used to race at Aston Hill near Aston Clinton.

The company was owned by Ford Motor Company from 1994 till 2007. However, Ford still owns stakes in the company.
9. The first road-worthy cars used a lever instead of a steering wheel to steer. It had a design and functioning like that of a joy stick.
10. Jamaican reggae singer-songwriter and guitarist, Bob Marley owned a BMW, not for prestige but because of the coincidence of initials for Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Cars of the future

Fisker Surf

The station wagon isn’t dead—it just looks like a Ferrari. That look is intentional, says Fisker, the California builder of the Surf. The plug-in hybrid uses the existing framework of its Karma sedan to offer a vehicle with much more cargo space. The Surf is due in showrooms in 2013 and will likely be priced around $100,000. Specifications will be similar to the Karma, so drivers should expect a top speed of about 125 m.p.h. fiskerautomotive.com
 

Audi A2

Although Audi’s A2 electric concept car is compact—the four-seater is just 12.5 feet long and 5.5 feet wide—it’s not short on tech marvels. An exterior band of lights below the windows turns blue as the car’s owner approaches, and doors open with a gesture, thanks to embedded sensors. That same external band turns orange while driving and blinks red when the brakes are applied. And the fog lamps are actually lasers that paint a floating triangle of light onto water particles to point the way ahead. audiusa.com
 

 

 

BMW i3

The BMW i3 electric car is slated for a 2013 launch, and with backseat doors that open from left to right, it’s bound to be an eye-catcher on the city streets it’s designed to be driven on. BMW says the i3 will be as nimble as a sports car (but with 170 horsepower, it’s won’t be as fast). The vehicle is built using two modules—one for the framework and engine, and a second for passengers—in order to allow for more space. A bigger, faster hybrid i8 model is on tap post-2013. bmwusa.com

 

Cadillac Ciel

Cadillac’s four-seat Ciel convertible looks like a something that should be featured on the History Channel, but it’s a hybrid that combines an electric motor to a turbocharged V6 engine. The wheelbase is a lengthy 125 inches, and the car rides on 22-inch rims that might look good in an old

Hollywood

film. French-style doors open at the hinge, and the interior is trimmed with olive wood. There is even a pull-out blanket for each passenger that retracts automatically. gm.com

 

 

 

 

Jaguar C-X16

Hybrid cars that marry electric and gasoline engines have been around for some time, but Jaguar’s C-X16 concept car is exploring just how fast they can go. The C-X16 sports a designation more often associated with fighter planes and has a cockpit patterned after jets. Top speed for this two-seater is 186 m.p.h., and it ramps up to 62 m.p.h. in just 4.4 seconds. And lest you think that too slow, you can push a button for a ten-second burst of added electric power for passing. jaguarusa.com

Land Rover Defender

Nothing says “rugged” like the iconic Land Rover Defender, which is heavily used by everyone from explorers to United Nations aid workers. Land Rover plans to update this four-wheel-drive vehicle by 2015. The new Defender will have a three-across front seat and an eight-speed automatic transmission. New tech tricks include a driver-activated spike tire system that injects air into pods molded in the tread for better grip, and sonar that evaluates water depth for river crossings and assesses the optimum gear and speed required.

Mercedes Benz F125

Think of the F125 concept car as the Mercedes Benz luxury S-class sedan for the year 2025. But instead of gasoline, the car runs on hydrogen for pollution-free operation. By then, company engineers reckon, the high-pressure cylindrical tanks required to store hydrogen today will be re-jiggered so that they can be integrated into the body of the car as structural components. One thing is for sure: Those gull-wing doors never get old. mbusa.com

GM RAK e

In 1928, a rocket-powered car called the Opel RAK2 hit a top speed of 142 m.p.h. Nearly a century later, the RAK e concept from General Motors’ Opel division only goes half as fast despite its rocket ship looks. The tandem two-seater’s electric motor provides a 61-mile range, a trip that will cost drivers only $1.36, says GM. The car will be affordably priced to appeal to younger buyers, the company adds, thanks to a body that uses low-cost synthetic material wrapped around a steel frame. gm.com

Volkswagen NILS

You can head to work in this Formula One–inspired electric car—as long as your commute is within a 40-mile range. Unlike an F1 racer, however, this one-seater with top-hinged doors and tiny, rear-mounted wings for stability reaches only 81 m.p.h., and it takes 11 seconds to get there from a standing start. But when was the last time you wanted to race to work, anyway? vw.com

 

Volvo Concept You

Volvo will be targeting luxury buyers in a few years with its Concept You model, its first prototype vehicle under its new Chinese ownership. While the front hood looks big enough to hide a power plant, Volvo says it will be focusing on four-cylinder engines. Volvo hopes to lure consumers with posh Scandinavian interiors and a touch-screen, tablet-style center console that activates when the driver looks at it, thanks to hidden infrared cameras that register eye movement. volvocars.com/usa

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Future tecs in automobiles

In the technology world, the latest advancement is only as good as the next thing coming down the line. The auto industry is constantly bringing us new technologies, whether it be for safety, entertainment , usefulness or simply for pure innovation. Many new car technologies are either specifically built for safety or at least have some sort of safety focus to them. Some of the latest car innovations we've found are some truly exciting technologies that could revolutionize not just the automotive industry but human transportation in general. So what's in store for future cars? Well, we don't know for sure, but based on what's currently being tested and what's on the road today, we have an idea of some new technology that will most likely make it into production. Some of it will help keep us safe, some will give us information like never before and some will let us kick back and just enjoy the ride.

Cars That Communicate with Each Other and the Road

Car manufacturers and the U.S. government are seriously looking into and researching two technologies that would enable future cars to communicate with each other and with objects around them.
Imagine approaching an intersection as another car runs a red light. You don't see them at first, but your car gets a signal from the other car that it's directly in your path and warns you of the potential collision, or even hits the brakes automatically to avoid an accident. A developing technology called Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication, or V2V, is being tested by automotive manufacturers like Ford as a way to help reduce the amount of accidents on the road.
V2V works by using wireless signals to send information back and forth between cars about their location, speed and direction. The information is then communicated to the cars around it in order to provide information on how to keep the vehicles safe distances from each other. At MIT, engineers are working on V2V algorithms that calculate information from cars to determine what the best evasive measure should be if another car started coming into its own projected path. A study put out by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2010 says that V2V has the potential to reduce 79 percent of target vehicle crashes on the road [source: Green Car Congress].
But researchers aren't only considering V2V communication, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, or V2I, is being tested as well. V2I would allow vehicles to communicate with things like road signs or traffic signals and provide information to the vehicle about safety issues. V2I could also request traffic information from a traffic management system and access the best possible routes. Reports by the NHTSA say that incorporating V2I into vehicles, along with V2V systems, would reduce all target vehicle crashes by 81 percent [source: Green Car Congress].
These technologies could transform the way we drive and increase automotive safety dramatically. Good thing car companies and the government are already working to try to make this a reality.

Self-Driving Cars

The idea of a self-driving car isn't a new idea. Many TV shows and movies have had the idea and there are already cars on the road that can park themselves. But a truly self-driving car means exactly that, one that can drive itself, and they're probably closer to being a reality than you might think.

In California and Nevada, Google engineers have already tested self-driving cars on more than 200,000 miles (321,869 kilometers) of public highways and roads [source: Thrun]. Google's cars not only record images of the road, but their computerized maps view road signs, find alternative routes and see traffic lights before they're even visible to a person. By using lasers, radars and cameras, the cars can analyze and process information about their surroundings faster than a human can.
If self-driving cars do make it to mass production, we might have a little more time on our hands. Americans spend an average of 100 hours sitting in traffic every year [source: Cowen]. Cars that drive themselves would most likely have the option to engage in platooning, where multiple cars drive very close to each and act as one unit. Some people believe platooning would decrease highway accidents because the cars would be communicating and reacting to each other simultaneously, without the on-going distractions that drivers face.
In some of Google's tests, the cars learned the details of a road by driving on it several times, and when it was time to drive itself, it was able to identify when there were pedestrians crossing and stopped to let them pass by. Self-driving cars could make transportation safer for all of us by eliminating the cause of 95 percent of today's accidents: human error [source: Truong].
Although self-driving cars may seem far off, GM has already done its own testing and some people believe that you'll see some sort of self-driving car in showrooms in the next decade.

Augmented Reality Dashboards

GPS and other in-car displays are great for getting us from point A to point B, and some high-end vehicles even have displays on the windshield, but in the near future cars will be able to identify external objects in front of the driver and display information about them on the windshield.
Think of the Terminator, or many other science fiction stories, where a robot looks at a person or an object and automatically brings up information about them and can identify who or what they are. Augmented Reality dashboards, AR for short, will function in a similar way for drivers. BMW has already implemented a windshield display in some of their vehicles which displays basic information, but they're also developing augmented reality dashboards that will be able to identify objects in front a vehicle and tell the driver how far they are away from the object. The AR display will overlay information on top of what a driver is seeing in real life.
So if you're approaching a car too quickly, a red box may appear on the car you're approaching and arrows will appear showing you how to maneuver into the next lane before you collide with the other car. An augmented reality GPS system could highlight the actual lane you need to be in and show you where you need to turn down the road without you ever having to take your eyes off the road.
BMW is also researching the use of augmented reality for automotive technicians. They produced a video where a BMW technician uses AR glasses to look at an engine, identify what parts need to be replaced and then shows step-by-step instructions on how to fix it.
AR is also being researched for passengers as well. Toyota has produced working concepts of their AR system that would allow passengers to zoom in on objects outside of the car, select and identify objects, as well as view the distance of an object from the car using a touch-screen window.
Augmented reality may not be here yet, but if these car companies have their way, we'll be seeing it in our future cars a little ways down the road.

 Airbags That Help Stop Cars
 Ever since airbags were been added to vehicles, they've continued to make their way around the inside of our vehicles. We now have curtain airbags, side airbags, knee airbags, seat belts airbags and even ones that deploy under us. Maybe all of us don't have them in our cars, but they're on the road. And Mercedes is working on a new way to use airbags that moves them away from a passive safety measure and makes it part of an active safety system.
Mercedes is experimenting with airbags that deploy from underneath the car that will help stop a vehicle before a crash. The airbags are part of the overall active safety system and deploy when sensors determine that at impact is inevitable. The bags have a friction coating that helps slow the car down and can double the stopping power of the vehicle. The bags also lift the vehicle up to eight centimeters, which counters the car's dipping motion during hard braking, improves bumper-to-bumper contact and helps prevent passengers from sliding under seat belts during a collision.
What gives this kind of airbag potential as a future technology is that it uses existing vehicle safety systems. Although Mercedes has been working on this technology for several years, it isn't available on any production models yet and may not be seen on the road for another few years.
With the current evolution of airbags and their pervasiveness within the automotive world, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine future cars using airbags to not only protect passengers, but to actually stop cars as well.

Energy-storing Body Panels
 Exxon Mobil predicts that by 2040, half of all new cars coming off the production line will be hybrids [source: Kahn]. That's great news for the environment, but one of the problems with hybrids is that the batteries take up a lot of space and are very heavy. Even with advances in lithium-ion batteries, hybrids have a significant amount of weight from their batteries. That's where energy-storing body panels come in.
In Europe, a group of nine auto manufacturers are currently researching and testing body panels that can store energy and charge faster than conventional batteries of today. The body panels being tested are made of polymer fiber and carbon resin that are strong enough to be used in vehicles and pliable enough to be molded into panels. These panels could reduce a car's weight by up to 15 percent [source: Volvo].
The panels would capture energy produced by technologies like regenerative braking or when the car is plugged in overnight and then feed that energy back to the car when it's needed [source: Volvo]. Not only would this help reduce the size of hybrid batteries, but the extra savings in weight would eliminate wasted energy used to move the weight from the batteries.
Toyota is also looking into lightweight energy storing panels, but they're taking it one step further and researching body panels that would actually capture solar energy and store it in a lightweight panel [source: Bey].
Whether future body panels collect energy or just store it, automotive companies are looking into new ways to make our cars more energy efficient and lightweight.

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