The average car tyre is made up of 85 per cent rubber, 12 per cent steel and 3 per cent fibre. Each year in New Zealand about 3.5 million tyres are discarded. Most end up as landfill, or in unsightly open dumps.
But now a Hamilton company has another use. Rubber Technologies is using an $800,000 shredder it bought in Australia to turn tyres into rubber crumbs. The company explains: "A passenger tyre is put through a series of rotors, which shreds the tyre into pieces no bigger than 24mm. These are graded into three sizes: 5-8mm, 8-16mm and 16-24mm.
There are two sets of magnets that collect the steel from the tyres. The steel is bagged and sent out for reprocessing, with the rubber ready for sale. Within two years we will be in a position to recycle every scrap tyre in New Zealand, which would make us the only country in the world able to achieve this."
And what can be done with the crumbs? It has a list as long as your arm, from road surfacing to bumper bars to wharf buffers to tennis courts to flower pots to ... tyres.
Power-fuelled
Local governments, faced with an increased cost of fuel for their vehicle fleets, are starting to show interest in petrol/electric hybrid models like the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight. The Christchurch City Council is about to test a Prius, and Honda has introduced its Insight to energy and conservation bigwigs in Wellington. It drove the Insight from Auckland using 23 litres of petrol, all the while on or near the speed limit. The trip took 7hr 45m at 3.4 litres/100km. Meantime, Honda is recalling its S2000 sportscar over a potentially faulty seatbelt mechanism. More than 18,000 S2000s have been sold worldwide, including 89 in New Zealand.
Resounding safety
The Toyota Echo is one of the safest cars on the road - and that's official. The Echo was named Europe's safest small car after the latest round of new car assessment programme crash tests. Not only that, but it was the third-safest car of any size, bettered in the programme's all-time top 10 only by the Saab 9-5 and Renault Megane.
Ticking over
It's no secret that Ford Australia rues the day it didn't set up its performance arm, Tickford, to tackle Holden Special Vehicles. Ford has basically toyed with Tickford over the years while Holden has gone from strength to strength with HSV, to the point where the HSV cars are being exported to Britain. The latest Tickford, or T-series, Falcons have some subtle advantages over the HSVs. But sales figures in Australia certainly don't reflect that. HSV has been averaging 215 sales a month to the T-series Falcon's 15. Ford says it needs more marketing muscle ...
Faking it
Mitsubishi is in trouble again. First it was head office in Japan telling porkies about vehicle recalls. Now its American division has been fiddling sales figures. Dealers have been selling cars to people who didn't exist, says Detroit's Automotive News. And they haven't been too clever about it either, using such fake names as Enzo Ferrari, Anna Kornacova, and Supa Mann.
Record utes
The New South Wales town of Deniliquin made the Guinness Book of Records last year when 2839 Holden and Ford utes turned up for its World Ute Muster, part of an annual festival. The record is already old hat - 2990 utes turned up last week for the 2000 get-together. One bloke drove thousands of kilometres from West Australia. Another turned up from Melbourne in his 1928 Model A Ford ute and was given a cheque for $1000 for having the oldest working vehicle. Deniliquin is now the ute capital of the world.
We are the world
Ford has dusted off its archives and confirmed that its famous two-seater Mustang was named not after a wild horse, but the P-51 Mustang fighter plane of the Second World War. The pony image came later, when it was decided a pony was better suited to the concept of the car.
Bouncing back
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