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It's an ultrafast killing machine with bleeding-edge aerodynamics. Not a pet. I built and for nine years flew an airplane called a Falco, which is Italian for hawk. But it [...]

Competitive karting is CART for the rest of us. And the kids can kick your butt. So I spend my life playing with fast cars, and the first time I'm [...]

You can buy a MiG if you have the jack, but a Czech trainer is the jet to love. thirty-six years ago, the talented Czech aeronautical engineer Jan Vlcek designed [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Tom Sines has spent 27 years on his three-wheeled, battery-powered car (which can hit 60 mph and turn in place) just to prove that electric cars can [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Thanks to an innovative turbocharger, the 911 Turbo flexes its muscle without any hesitation YOU FLOOR THE ACCELERATOR, and one potato, two potato . . . wham, [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson THE SHORT ANSWER: Why bother? The shorter answer: Why not? Toyota says the Prius is neat because you don't have to plug it in--it charges itself when [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson SMALL STREETS and pricey fuel have shaped the European car market to favor smaller cars. In fact, what we call a compact car is a midsize on [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Despite all the auto-tech brain-power in this world, fully electronic brakes--which would replace brake fluid with lighter, quicker wires and motors--have yet to arrive. The long-standing obstacle: [...]

Byline: Eric Adams; Joe Brown; Matthew Phenix; Stephan Wilkinson JEEP HURRICANE BADDEST OFF-ROADER EVER With twin 5.7-liter Hemi V8 engines and a super-stiff carbon-fiber body, the Jeep Hurricane concept truck [...]

Byline: Eric Adams; Joe Brown; Preston Lerner; Michael Moyer; Matthew Phenix; Stephan Wilkinson Should you get a turbocharged four or a high-tech hybrid? A slick seven-speed automatic or a sequential [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Claim: 'Your best protection against deadly animal related accidents...wave variance tuning combines reverberation...off the road surface, creating a virtual sonic echo effect.' Reality: New York's Hudson Highlands [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson People still call them 10-speeds, yet the serious skinny-tire, drop-bar, hard-seat road bike hasn't had a mere 10 speeds since John Kerry was in college. Now 20 [...]

Byline: Eric Adams; Stephan Wilkinson; Scott Mowbray; Michael Moyer Edited by Eric Hagerman; Suzanne Kantra Kirschner GRAND AWARD 2005: DODGE MAGNUM Big Daddy's talking to you. He's saying, 'Step aside' [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson If Washington ran procurement programs the way it did the Lockheed YO-3A project, the words 'billions' and 'dollars' would never again have to be used by the [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson It was a magnificent machine, a stunning glimpse of the future made manifest in Detroit steel. The Y-Job, an experimental Buick roadster that appeared in 1940, is [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson When the hot-rodders who rolled packs of Luckies in their sleeves wanted more power, they did stuff that took plain old wrenching: advancing the distributor's timing, installing [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson In 1998, the Volkswagen Group bought Rolls-Royce and its subsidiary marque Bentley for $750 million, after a fierce bidding war with BMW. Months later, it was revealed [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson They sit on a spur of test track outside General Electric's locomotive factory in Erie, Pennsylvania, panting and grumbling like two old lions half asleep. The ominous, [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson I need to find out, once and for all, how big it is. I need to see if I measure up to the other guys, if I [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Movie buffs looking to build a home theater typically have four choices: traditional CRT sets, LCD displays, plasma screens and hulking rear-projection units. Some are five-digit expensive, [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson When Chrysler stylists put a basket-handle 'sport bar' atop the new PT Cruiser four-seat convertible, they intended no more serious duty for the hydroformed steel hoop than [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Many modern powerboats, to my landlubberly eye, have all the style and grace of a Motel 6 plastic bath/shower unit, with which they have much in common [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson 1 SIT RIGHT. Never mind the straight-arm posture you see in action movies. With your shoulders against the seatback, you should be able to rest your wrists [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson When a yellow two-seater called Symmetry flew for the first time in California last April, a machine that is very likely the most finely crafted handmade artifact [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson My first truly modern car was an '85 Saab 900. I know it was modern because it had a shift-up indicator light, presumably designed to help me [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson My first flight, at the age of 12, took me from New York's LaGuardia airport to Nantucket island, a 45-minute ride in a Convair 240 that I [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Escape alive rather than die onboard: This is a relatively new idea. Historically, it was enough to build a fantastic new machine--a three-masted schooner, a Deperdussin monoplane--and [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Somewhere out there is a kid in a red BMW 325 with a ski rack who thinks he spanked my well-modified '83 Porsche 911 the other day. [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Troy Irving's 18-year-old Dodge Caravan has a hell of a sound system: 72 amplifiers--you got it, 72--and 36 big 16-volt batteries to put out the 130,000 watts [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson Among water people, there are planers and there are dis-placers. The planers are the ones whose boats are not of the water but on the water, bouncing [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson A couple of years ago, I flew a big ex-Vietnam Marine helicopter, a 1,525-horsepower, radial-engine UH-34D that in its day was the Escalade EXT of the air. [...]

Byline: Stephan Wilkinson The most insulting thing you can call a paramedic or EMT is 'ambulance driver.' He or she despises the term, for drivers are the bottommost link on [...]

Formula 1 cars are the most technologically advanced racecars on the planet. There's a reason why most American racing fans don't much care. damon Runyon wrote that sailboat racing was [...]

What's it take to pilot a floating city? Our man reports from the (simulated) bridge. Ship-handling isn't what it used to be. When I was a seaman aboard already ancient [...]

Presents several concept car designs. Description of the Concept 2096, a slug-like car designed by a team from Coventry University in England; Comparison of the concept car design between the 1950s and the 20th century; Features of the Autonomy prototype car from General Motors.

Presents an article about the restoration of a Porsche 911SC automobile. Details of the restoration of the engine of the classic sports car; Cost of the automobile restoration project.

Presents information on the Melmoth 2 homebuilt airplane created by Peter Garrison in the U.S. Background on the construction of the airplane; Information on Melmoth 1; Kinds of aircraft homebuilders.

The ejection seat, introduced in 1942, is Exhibit A in the case for the value of escape technology. It is from ejection statistics that people learn how dangerous it is to fly military fighters and bombers. Approximately 1 out of every 10 seats manufactured since the end of World War II has been used. The vast majority of those chairs saved lives, and the success rate for most sophisticated ejection seats hovers somewhere north of 99.6 percent. British ejection-seat maker Martin-Baker claims 7,001 lives saved by mid-July 2003, 31 in 2003 alone.

Describes the iDrive computer system in the BMW 745i automobile. Purpose of iDrive; Performance of the system during a test; Details on the driver accommodation of the automobile; Criticism on the system. INSETS: Jef Raskin's Rules for Interface Design;Heads Up: Civic at 3 O'Clock.

Presents information on several automobiles. 2005 Land Rover LR3; 2004 Bentley Continental GT; 2005 Honda Odyssey; 2005 Lotus Elise.

Describes an experience in target practice using a handgun. Type of pistol used; Description of the event; Views on U.S. culture.

Comments on the mystique of the pilots flying small airplanes. Effects of the September 11, 2002 terrorist attacks on the operation of flight schools in the United States; Advantages of general aviation pilots over commercial pilots; Characteristics of pilots in the general aviation.

Provides information on technological innovations in the automobile industry. H2R hydrogen-powered car from BMW; Honda Accord hybrid engine; Acura all-wheel-drive system in the 2005 Acura RL automobile; Gentex Smartbeam automatic headlight brightness system from Gentex.

Presents an article on the experience of a veteran airplane pilot in flying a helicopter. Performance of a student helicopter pilot; Comparisons on the controls of airplane and helicopter.

Describes the design of an ambulance. Brief history on modern ambulances; Cost of the vehicles; Interior design of an ambulance; Type of equipment used.