Good oil: Humbug for Hummer

General Motors is giving the Hummer H1, the lumbering great civilian version of the four-wheel-drive US military Humvee, an honorable discharge after 14 years of service. Sales of the US$129,000 ($388,000) vehicle in the US have plummeted over the past few months, despite GM giving the 2006 model a new name - H1 Alpha - and an updated 6.6-litre V8 diesel engine. Production is expected to end next month. The H1 Hummer became something of a status symbol through the 1990s after Arnold Schwarzenegger used it in Terminator movies. Now it serves as a perfect symbol of gas-guzzling excess, with a somewhat generous factory-backed fuel consumption of 28 litres/100km (10mpg). The smaller H2 and H3 Hummer models will continue to be built.


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The $1 million Porsche Carrera GT has finished its brief stint in production. The last two-seat supercar rolled off the line in Germany, the other day. Around 1200 were sold worldwide, including 600 or so in the United States. New Zealand car industry magnate Colin Giltrap had one on display here for a time. The Carrera GT sported a 5.7-litre V10 engine delivering 450kW (605bhp) to the rear wheels through a ceramic clutch. It sprinted from zero to 100km/h in under four seconds and on to a top speed of 332km/h (205mpg). Super-efficient ceramic brakes helped owners like Hollywood jokesters Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, and Tim Allen keep it out of the trees.

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Country singer Willie Nelson fuels his motor home with "BioWillie" when on tour in the US. It's a mix of 20 per cent vegetable oil and 80 per cent diesel that Nelson and his Texas business investors say reduces global-warming exhaust emissions by around 15 per cent. Using vegetable oil in diesels isn't exactly new. The engine's inventor, Germany's Rudolph Diesel, fuelled his first demo unit with peanut oil at the Paris world fair in 1900. The US Department of Energy says the cleanest-burning car on sale in the US is the Honda Civic GX, which uses compressed natural gas.

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Canadian Jesse Maggrah, 20, was walking on a railway track in Alberta listening to his favourite heavy metal music on an iPod when he was hit by a train. He told the Edmonton Sun from his hospital bed (broken ribs, punctured lung) that he was quickly aware of what had happened. "I thought, 'Holy crap, dude, you just got hit by a train'." Then he added: "Maybe the metal gods above were smiling on me and they didn't want one of their true warriors to die on them."