Say goodbye to this eyesore…

Self parking is nothing new, luxury leaders such as Lexus and Mercedes have been working on these “parallel parking” designs for sometime now. But what is new, thanks to a breakthrough from the Volkswagen Self Parking Vision system, is self parking has now taken on a perpendicular role.

This means that with several cameras placed around a vehicle, followed by a current GPS unit, a driver could conceivably pull up to a restaurant, get out, push a button and the car will go and search out a spot in a parking garage, park itself, lock the doors, turn on its own alarm, then await its master to summon it to come back and pick him or her up.

While we are many years away from this arrangement, we are only a couple away from cars that will flawlessly park themselves in any situation, parallel or perpendicular, without the necessity for any driver involvement in the process.

Several years ago it was exciting that we could actually push a button to lock and unlock our doors, then we were able to push a button and start our car while drinking warm cocoa from our kitchen counter in the middle of winter. Today, Volkswagen is close to a breakthrough design of another button on our remotes that will tell the car to park itself in a designated spot we have chosen.

Using a high tech computer guidance system and ultrasound sensors and cameras in the side mirrors, the vehicle will guide and “self-correct” into a parking space (meaning if it starts at too drastic an angle it will pull forward and realign), shut off the engine, lock the doors, and all this is happening while the passengers are already headed to where they were going.

This would greatly reduce the number of small parking lot fender benders, and of course ensure that nobody in the History of the world will ever be able to parallel park again. We could also expect parking lots to reduce the spaces necessary in between each car, since we will no longer need to actually exit the vehicle once it is parked.

There you have it, two birds with one stone… now if we can just keep computers from devising a plot to take over the world, we would have it made!

Back in 1971, Dodge introduced their Demon340, which was a pillared two-door fastback. The Demon came in two trims, but the one we are most interested in here was the 340, which featured, you guessed it… a Chrysler 340 small block worth 275 horsepower and 340 lb-ft of torque at 3200 rpm.

The Demon was set-up nicely with dual exhaust, heavy-duty suspension, stripes, dual scoop hood, rear spoiler, optional hood pins, and devil decals that had religious groups in a tizzy back in the day. You would get all this at the bargain basement price of around $3,000.

If you knock off about 100 horsepower, several hundred pounds (it weighs 2,600 lbs), the pillar roof, smooth out the lines, add about $15 grand to the price tag, and you’ve got yourself the next generation of demon. The new demon comes as one flavor this time, and that’s roadster.

Aiming at the lower-end of the market (obviously, with its remarked base price of $15,000), the new Dodge Demon is once again powered by a formidable Chrysler engine. Albeit not quite the runner that the 340 was, the 2.4 liter still puts out 172 horsepower and 165 lb-ft of torque, which actually if you consider the weight and mated six-speed manual gearbox, you might not actually fair too bad against the original.

The “Roadster with an Attitude”, as Dodge calls it, is also considering plans for a true-to-its-name 300 horsepower turbo version that will be capable of taking-on quite a few of todays performance oriented roadsters, such as the Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Sky Redline, and Audi TT.

What is very cool about this low-end roadster, is that it might actually be made of carbon fiber body panels, which will not only give it nice rigidity on the road, but reduce its weight considerably. To give it modern flare, the Demon features cat-like (black cat of course!) headlamps, a Viper-ish front grille, squared off wheel wells, and functional rear brake ducts.

Yes, and did we mention possibly just over $15,000 for a base model?

It all sounds so great, but as the saying goes, “Anything that sounds too good to be true…”

First of all, the Dodge Demon will probably be closer to the over $20,000 price range once all the dealer costs have been added in, and foremost there in no real “green light” from Dodge that any of this cool talk is going to ever come to fruition.

All we can do for now is sit back for the next year and see if Dodge is going to put-up or shut-up!

It looks like we can look forward to another edition of the John Cooper Works MINI Cooper for 2009. The JCW (John Cooper Works) has been around for several years now, but this year MINI has said that they are in full control of the name badge and intend to use it to its fullest capacity… and indeed it looks like they have done just that…

The new JCW MINI Cooper S and Clubman editions ask the question, what you get when you mix a cuddly koala bear with a feisty Badger? About 207 turbocharged horsepower, 192 lb-ft torque, and less than 3,000 lbs of unsuspecting fury.

While this little beast is rated at 192 lb-ft torque, there is actually about 207 lbs at your disposal thanks to a nifty “overboost” function that can give the driver a quick punch of power when the situation calls for it. Such as when a R32 Volkswagen pulls up next to you at a red light.

Full torque can be reached at just around 1850 rpm, which is quite impressive for a little 1.6 liter powerplant. It is of course widely known that the quickest way to huge horsepower gains with the smallest amount of drag and wear on an engine is turbo, so it is surprising that it took MINI so long to ditch the supercharger and throw on a turbo.

For a brief history of how the 1.6 liter has evolved since the millennium…

The “New” MINI Cooper began its life as a normally aspirated 1.6 liter with 115 horsepower. This was quickly boosted by the Cooper S, which was supercharged to 160 horsepower in 2003. In 2004 the Cooper S was rated at 163 horsepower, then 168 horsepower in 2006, and finally the turbo rolled out in 2007 and unloaded close to 175 ponies onto the pavement.

But for 2009, MINI is using the long known equation in the performance industry…

BIG Turbo = Big Boost = More Horsepower (Approximately 32 more horsepower to be exact)…

Sounds fun??? Don’t you think!