From the racooon-eyed door to the stealth-inspired rear exhaust, the Spada TS Codatronca might be the most menacing car I've ever seen. It's like what would be born if a Buick Riviera was impregnated by demon seed. I've added it to the growing list of cars I love but will never, ever own.Jalopnik has even more on the Italian monstrosity.

Aside from the obvious 'holy-crap-that's-crazy' bodywork, this car features details rarely — if ever — seen on cars of any era, much less new ones. First, and the one we love the most, is the Pitot-static tube mounted on the roof. It takes engineers to decide the best way to determine high speeds is to measure stagnation against ambient pressure. The car also has an internally regulated, kinetically charged lap watch for visual measurement, even though it can record up to 40 laps of telemetry data for analysis after a run.

Spada TS Codatronca Production Announced, Tie Fighters No Longer Cool [Jalopnik]

CNN/AP has video of the first flight of Yves "Fusion Man" Rossy and his winged, jet-powered backpack. Rossy tips out of a small airplane and ignites the four thrusters, hitting speeds of up to 186 MPH before deploying a parachute and landing gently back at the local airfield.

'Fusion Man' soars above Swiss Alps [CNN]

Each year the town of Lind, Washington, holds a demolition derby — with combines. I must attend this.

2007 Derby Gallery [Lindwa.com via Go Sleep Go via Oh Gizmo

A conceptual bike tree for cities with both a lot of bikes and a lot of bike crooks. Amsterdam, I'm looking at you: there is something seriously out of whack when a city's entire bicycle economy is based upon buying your bike back from the same brown-toothed junkie two to three times a month with the same nonchalance as a transaction with your local green grocer.

The concept's somewhat solid: the tree reduces bike rack clutter and lifts your bicycle above the bolt cutters of roaming thieves. It's certainly an attractive way to store bikes. Security is a finger print scanner, which may be a design flaw: after all, those bolt cutters can just as easily be used against your waggling digits as your bike lock.

Bicycle Tree [Coroflot via Gizmodo]

Jamie Zawinski sells beer, does battle with unix derivatives and rides bicycles. He has posted to the Internet his collected wisdom regarding the latter subject.

"City bikes" and "road bikes" are designed for some Jetsons-slick hypothetical future city that I've never seen. Or maybe for the bike paths in Los Altos or something. Here in real cities, roads are shit, and if you want your wheels and tires to survive curbs and potholes, you need a hybrid. They're a little heavier and a little slower. Are you racing? No? Then you don't care.

We moved to Pittsburgh a few months ago from rural New Mexico, so have been considering the bikes: the city has a similarly compact, hilly landscape to San Franciso, from whence jwz's tips come. Reading this might just have convinced me to give it a whirl.

the collected jwz bicycle wisdom [jwz]

A device called the "Hydro-4000" claims to inject hydrogen into your car's engine, synthesized from water using power from your car, to increase the efficiency of the combustion in the chamber. A local news crew in Florida tested the device on a news truck and claimed the Hydro-4000 increased their fuel efficiency from 9.4 MPG to 23.2 MPG after a one-month road test.

But something's screwy. Look at these numbers:

Once done, we found that even with an oil change, clean air filter and proper tire pressure, we were averaging roughly 9.4 miles to the gallon.

We then ran our truck on the street for close to a month with the Hydro-4000 running. The owners said this would give the device time to clean out the engine. We then put our vehicle back on the dynamometer, and did the same test all over again.

And guess what? With the device on, we were now averaging 23.2 miles to the gallon. That's 61% better than the gas mileage we were previously getting.

We also road tested the device. There we averaged 16-point-one miles to the gallon, which is 58% better than before.

So they were getting 9.4 MPG before, then got 23.2 MPG after, but that's only a 61% increase? (I'm not a mathlete, but even without a calculator I can see we should be looking at triple-digit percentage improvements.) And then they "road-tested" it but didn't get as much efficient as they did on the dyno, which makes sense, but also makes me question how they were measuring fuel efficiency in the first place.

Farhad Manjoo talked to the president of Green Machine Solutions who makes the device; he's trying to get one for review.

So what's going on here, huh? I'll throw out my usual disclaimer: If these things worked as well as they claimed, why aren't they installed in cars at the factory? I wonder if it's just somehow cleaning out the injectors and bringing the vehicle more closely in line with its original capability.

Device promises to save 60% at the pump [WPTV.com] (Thanks, Mark!)

Product Page [Hydro4000.com]

The original page's been Duggerized, but here's the money shot: an electrical unicycle in bright orange, the Uno, created by 18-year old student Ben Gulak. It is exactly what it appears to be, though with the addition of Segway-like accelerometers and gyros to help the rider not kill himself within half a mile of the dealership.

And to think that my wife thinks letting me get a motorcycle is too risky...

The new Segway is a Motorcycle [Digg]

Straight from the show floor of the North American Model Engineering Expo held in Toledo last weekend, Ross in Detroit posted this incredible gallery of homunculus-sized steam, gas and hot-air model engines in our comments. There's some breath-taking ingenuity on display here. It's steam-powered retro-fetishism for Lilluputians! Thanks, Ross!

NAMES Expo [Pbase]

The Blaupunkt 'Brisbane SD48' is a in-dash car stereo that forgoes the CD entirely in favor of SD cards, external MP3 players, phones, USB flash and hard disk drives. Because it's all solid state, they're pitching it as a solution for those who partake in "high G-force motorsports and...off-road enthusiasts."

Unfortunately the actual file-handling capabilities seem a bit lackluster:

The Blaupunkt Brisbane SD48 has a front panel SD/MMC card-slot, headphone-jack input for portable MP3 player, and a USB input that allows the addition of storage devices such as a portable hard-drive or thumb-drive loaded with digital music. It supports both MP3 and WMA audio files at bit-rates of 8 to 320 kilobits. The Brisbane accommodates up to 127 music directories, and displays ID3 tag information up to 30 characters in length. The 3.5 mm front-panel auxiliary input is compatible with the headphone or aux outputs of nearly any portable device.

In-dash head units with USB or SD card slots are not uncommon; I don't see how useful leaving out the CD drive is considering the car is one of the last places people tend to use CDs. Additionally, lots of cars already have "MP3" minijacks, so if your iPod is your primary music device, there's little reason to install an additional $160 head unit just for that. There are additional iPod and Bluetooth modules that will give you direct access to your iPod or cellphone through the head unit, but still, it seems like you're mostly paying nearly two bills just to use bigger knobs.

Press Release [GSPR.com]

For me, the monocycle — in which a cyclist bestowed with a bitching sense of equilibrium (and, god willing, a waxed handlebar moustache) pedals his velocipede from inside the rim of its enormous solitary wheel — is the paragon of cycling technology, and so Ben Wilson's incredible monowheel, commissioned for Tokyo's 21st Century Man competition, has me feeling a bit like a antediluvian pleb for getting around on the pitiful conveyance of a two-wheel vehicle.

“We don’’t suggest for one moment that a functioning human powered monowheel could ever provide an improvement on the modern bicycle," claims Wilson. Says you. Man, some people just don't deserve cool things.

Monowheel by Ben Wilson [Dezeen]

The Paint Thickness Tester is a cheap keychain device that promises to help you avoid bringing home a lemon from the lot of your local sleazy used car Guido by telling you when a car has well-hidden touch-ups in its paint job:

Place the test probe on the car roof, for example. By pressing a button, the paint thickness tester will store this paint thickness as a reference value. Now, by placing the test probe on any part of the vehicle body, you can compare it with this value. You will immediately determine whether parts of the body have been replaces or repainted and if the purchase price is suitable.

I've never owned a car, so maybe someone can fill me in: if a paint job has been touched up skillfully and it's not visible to the naked eye, why does it matter if it isn't all the original coat? It seems pointless to me. Still, I guess $20 is a cheap enough price to give you some empirical proof of your used car not being worth the sticker price when you're brought into the negotiating room.

Update: Uh. Yeah. Duh. Peter S. Conrad explains why this is important in a way that makes sense even to a committed, non-license-carrying pedestrian like myself: "Well, for example, a car that has the same thickness paint all over has probably never been in a crash, probably doesn't have big rust holes filled in with Bondo, etc."

Paint Thickness Tester [Official Site via OhGizmo!]

With frightening velocipedal hunger, this Tokyo Bicycle Parking Tower gobbles up bicycles with speed and relish. It will store up to 9,400 bikes in its belly, and will only regurgitate your ten speed for a shiny 100 yen coin. The Bicycle Parking Tower's inner workings are less Rube Goldberg than I'd imagined, but there's still something remarkably disconcerting about the claustrophobic vastness of its bowels and the ruthless efficiency of its automation. One hundred years from now, we'll all pop a buck into a control panel at the end of the day and automatically be whisked away to our hibernation coffins by vast, skyscraper-sized machines exactly like this.

tokyo bicycle parking tower [YouTube via Engadget]

If good gadgets are those whose purpose and method of operation are obvious from a photo, then the truly great ones are those in which the grisly consequences of failure are equally clear. What then, is the Exhaust Air Jack? Pure awesome.

Coming soon to a "PHENPHEN!!!"-style lawyer ad near you, just as as soon as some idiot does this in his garage after a few cans.

Product Page [Northern Tool via ProductDose via Book of Joe and Gizmodo]

<

This video of an extremely patient Japanese Chinese RC car enthusiast playing the Super Mario Brothers theme song on a long line of half-filled bottles snaking through an underground parking complex has been going around a lot lately, but that's no reason not to share it here... if only to commemorate the sort of hero who can drink one thousand beers then drive a remote-controlled vehicle between the empties in a perfectly straight line.

Mario Theme Played with RC Car and Bottles [YouTube]

The second sequel to Ghostbusters is going to be a videogame, written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd and voiced by the entire original cast, including Bill Murray. It looks far better as a game than it has any right to be; it may be that we'll play it both because of its writing and cast and because it's a good game.

Vivendi, the publisher, is slowing ramping up promotion for the title, and their first crackling electron beam is a doozy: a fully resorted Ecto-1 response vehicle. Ghostbusters Fans was on hand at a recent showing and have snapped a huge number of photos, some 217 in all, leaving little inside or out undocumented.

Restoration Project Finished [GBFans.com]

In an attempt to get young automotive designers to understand the physical trials of old age — stiff limbs, poor eyesight, diminished ability to catch a mouthful of Viagra mid-backflip before landing a limbs-akimbo bedpost cockstand held only by quivering urethra — Nissan has swaddled its youngsters in an "aging suit" and put them behind the wheel. Think metal knee braces, but rusty, with a set of sandpapered goggles for clouded vision and an extra 11-pound weight to simulate a neck-snapping goiter or enlarged prostate.

"It's very difficult to drive, says Nissan's Naoki Yamamoto after a turn at the wheel in a suit that runs from neck to feet.

"You lose the freedom you're accustomed to, and while you can move, there are limitations, such as turning the steering wheel or switching on the blinker."

So that's why old people leave on the blinkers. They haven't forgotten; they just can't be arsed to make such a Herculean effort twice in one trip.

Japan ageing suit puts car makers in senior circuit [Reuters.com via Gadget Lab]

My friend Wayne de Geere is in Vegas this week for NAB, cruising the halls for cool stuff. He shares this snapshot of one of the more interesting products on display -- the "Flying-Cam," a methanol-powered aerial vehicle with on-board camera, used in the production of such films as Harry Potter (3 of 'em), 007 (at least 3 of 'em), Van Helsing, and The Kite Runner. The company's website contains a bunch of groovy Quicktime movies that show the device in action.

There are several questions that need to be addressed by designed Iohanna Pani before the "Cycle" bicycle-seat-into-backpack concept could be put into production. What materials would be comfortable but still allow for a light, crush-proof bag? Would the fixture for the seat post rub into the wearer's back? Is my ass really that big?

But size it down a little and make it capable of holding a phone and a few trinkets and there might just be a winner here. Nothing is more annoying than hauling around a useless bike seat with you all day.

Project Page [Coroflot.com via Yanko]

Alone in art history, the Berwyn Spindle is the only work of sculpture specifically recognized as being of great historical value by the 1992 Paramount tour de force, Wayne's World. A fifty foot tall stiletto skewering 8 rusting hulks, the Spindle deftly sidesteps some irony points by eschewing a Chevy Impala from its line-up of perforated cars.

But now, maybe someone out there will get the chance to deliver that final masterstroke that turns a work of mere sublime beauty into a masterpiece perfectly encapsulating the human condition. Thanks to a campaign by Berwyn residents who have hated the Spindle ever since it was first erected to tickle their collective o-rings, the Spindle has been put up on eBay for auction. The opening bid is $50,000, but like all eBay auctions, they're reaming prospective buyers on shipping: the winner will have to pay $100,000 for delivery.

I'm looking forward to the news stories to come out of this after it's sold. "Impaled Skeleton Found In Red Spindle Volkswagen; Police Mystified By Smile, Box of Kleenex."

Spindle Art Work In Berwyn Illinois [eBay]

If I'm parsing this Spiegel article correctly, they're comparing this collection of 39 strange vehicles as things that look like they could have come out of Star Wars. Ironically, some of the featured retro vehicles are war machines, including some hard-edged German items, which undoubtedly affected the visual style of some of the original trilogy's design. Or maybe they're saying these things inspired Star Wars in the first place. I can suss out the meaning of words in German, but all the connective grammar is lost on me.

Die Ahnen von Star Wars [Spiegel.de] (Thanks, Monad!)

The "Speedy Pedalofit"—a name which rolls off the tongue in a satisfying way that makes me think of an exercise routine for pedophiles only slightly*—is clip-on wheel and handlebar that coverts most wheelchairs into pedal-powered chopper trikes. And it's not just for paraplegics who want to be sent careening down mountain trails, limp legs churning with sinew-snapping speed. It's also good for those who have some use of their legs and need help building up the muscles again.

It gives the disabled a chance to exercise and travel short distances. When they reach their destination, they've already got their chair. What's not to like?

Speedy is a UK company, so I'm unsure if any of their products are available outside of their home country. And they make more than just the clip-on Pedalofit, producing a full range of interesting hand-powered bikes and wheelchair additions as well.

Product Page [SpeedyBikes.co.uk via Gearfuse via Oh Gizmo]

* But really, what doesn't?

Keith writes: "This Kettering College student built a drivable compact Panzer tank that fires paint-balls." He sure did! Ladies love the Panzers.

The 1/2-scale model was originally built for a paintball game and uses a three-cylinder diesel engine for motivation.

Benjamin Nelson built his own electric motorcycle from parts he got on Craigslist and from a local farm store. It only has a 15 mile range, but it gets the equivalent of 300MPG (based on current prices of gas and electricity).

"Then I mounted the motor to the frame using the existing engine mounting holes and a piece of scrap aluminum plate. I found a sprocket and chain in the tractor repair isle of the farm store."

And Mr. Nelson even admits that he doesn't own any power tools other than a drill, doesn't know how to weld and only took one metal shop class in high school.

DIY Electric Kawasaki Motorcycle [Treehugger] (Thanks, Chris T.!)

Boeing has successfully flown the very first hydrogen fuel cell-powered airplane in Madrid, the company announced.

A two-seat Dimona motor-glider with a 16.3 meter (53.5 foot) wingspan was used as the airframe. Built by Diamond Aircraft Industries of Austria, it was modified by BR&TE to include a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell/lithium-ion battery hybrid system to power an electric motor coupled to a conventional propeller.

Is there a cooler industry R&D shop name than "Phantom Works"? I doubt it.

Press Release [Boeing via Treehugger]

Here's an odd one: Motorola is hawking one of its new mobiles as car phone. It doesn't have more than GPS and a navigation application, but it's almost so ridiculous that it whips all the way back to clever. What car phone wouldn't have GPS these days? (Also, why does my rental car's Garmin unit pronounce the abbreviation "St" as "Saint?" That seems like a basic one to get right.

Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced the debut of the Motorola Smart Rider™ phone, an innovative in-vehicle solution featuring GPS navigation, interactive voice activation, Bluetooth™ wireless technology and exceptional audio quality that's sure to make this phone an integral part of every driver's journey. A unique hands-free solution, the Smart Rider phone uses GSM technology to enhance user experience by ensuring that users can converse, navigate and tend to business while on-the-go.

Press Release [Jalopnik]

Happy Monday, everyone. Before I get started, I would just like to announce that there is a company in Denmark—Dansk Olie og NaturGas—that abbreviates their name as "DONG." As DONG is Denmark's state energy producer, this could be the most important development in sustainability in a long time.

Let me illustrate the gravity of this news, via quotes from Treehugger:

The Danish press questioned whether DONG can pull off its promises.

Lord, we've all been there.

DONG is in the news because they have teamed up with auto manufacturer Renault to build an electric vehicle system in Copenhagen, followed by expansion into the rest of Denmark. I wish them all the best, because electric car infrastructures are neat—and because I would like to continue to childishly titter when writing about their success.

Denmark's DONG Bets Big On EVs [Treehugger]

Image: Khalid Almasoud

Chrysler will start providing in-car internet access later this year, reports the Washington Post. It sounds like they'll be licensing some flavor of 3G cellular internet, then distributing the connection in the car via Wi-Fi. A monthly service fee would be required "initially," but it's not difficult to think that in the near future the cost of always-on internet could be baked in the price of the car itself. I'd pay another $1,000 or more to know that my car would always be a hotspot.

Chrysler Plans In-Car Web Access This Year [WashingtonPost.com]