Fresh out of Germany comes this novel way to keep up with the next-door neighbors.

A firm called “Style Your Garage” have began marketing these high-res, photorealistic poster wraps for your garage door that have the uncanny ability to appear like they’re containing some serious pieces of kit. Prices range from £199-£399

For us, the relative merits of pretending you’ve got a three series behind the flip-top are questionable, but it would be fascinating to see how long it took for the Homeland Security department to pay an inquisitive tooled-up visit to your door on apparent possession of a Blackbird spy plane, or a tagged-up Sherman tank.

I wonder how much it’d cost to insure an F16?

War: what is it good for? Absolutely Nothing. Unless, of course, you happen to own a technology company, that is. Then, the war-like future could well be bright.

Sadly, it’s difficult to deny the fact that the military-industrial complex has benefited from having an enemy to defeat. The tricky moral question arises when you are forced to acknowledge that technological evolutions encouraged by billions of dollars being shoveled into military research and development, eventually trickles down to benefit the whole of mankind.

Witness the futuristic developments encapsulated in the Lockheed — Martin MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment) vehicle.

The US military apparently has some 1400 units of this unmanned assault vehicle on order, with the first units slated for use in 2014.

Operated by a PSP-like handset by a commander at squad level, the first manifestation of the MULE will be used to support boots-on-the-ground infantry operations: the type of ops that are costing so many lives in Afghanistan at the moment.

The infantry support variant will be armed with light weapons as well as the Javelin guided-missile system. Its armoured construction make it apparently much more survivable than any vehicle in use currently by the military.

The MULE’s running gear features 6x6 independent articulated suspension, coupled with in-hub motors powering each wheel. This provides an on demand hit of torque. According the Lockheed-Martin it can climb least a 1-metre step, can cross 1-metre gaps, traverse side inclines of more than 40 percent, ford water to depths over 0.5 metres and overpass obstacles as high as 0.5 metres while compensating for varying payload weights and center-of-gravity locations.

Crucially, a derivative is also in development that will be supposedly be operated by ‘drivers’ stationed at locations in way to the rear, guided by a network of Unmanned Flying Vehicles, which will in turn be coordinated by satellites.

The vision is to run human-free convoys through bandit country, thus lessening the impact of the Improvised Explosive Devices, mines and other roadside nasties that are causing so much of a problem at the moment.

Can it be long until this mechanical and guidance electronic tech finds its way into our  retail market of hybrid SUVs?

The sales video for from Lockheed Martin would be (almost) funny if it wasn’t so terrifying.

“I’d rather try crossing a river on a path of bobbing soap cakes than make predictions about the car of tomorrow. The footing would be far safer.” So said Harley Earl, head of General Motor’s famous ‘Art and Colour’ section and the man who created the first futuristic concept car, the sensational Buick Y-job of 1938. Earl had his ideas in an office called ‘the hatchery’ which had no windows or telephone and a fake name on the door so he wouldn’t be disturbed. He worked there for over twenty years and did more than anyone else to stimulate our obsession with the car of the future.

The Buick Y Job of 1938 not only had a silly name, but encapsulated an American vision of the future that was postponed only by the Nazis

But by the time he retired he plainly didn’t think much of his – or anyone else’s – ability to predict how cars would look or function in ten or twenty years’ time. He was right: the history of the future of the car is littered with hopeless or plain embarrassing predictions. We can have a chuckle at Ford’s mad fifties plans for a nuclear-powered runabout, but with the car currently undergoing its most radical transformation as we search for a replacement for the internal combustion engine, we’d be wise to be neither too sceptical nor too credulous about what we might be driving in a decade’s time.

The availability of Uranium refuelling proved to be a sticking point for the Ford Nucleon. Combined of course with the possibility of multiple roadside apocalypses

Predictions about the future of transport are usually wildly optimistic, but one early belief went the other way. In the 1820s the speed of steam locomotives such as Stephenson’s Rocket started to exceed that of a galloping horse, the fastest speed sustained by man by that time. Many believed that travelling any faster would cause us to turn to mush, and that trains would never be able exceed around 40mph. In Britain, of course, this prediction turned out to be largely accurate, but for very different reasons.

And what is it about flying cars? Half of the predictions about the future of transport seem to involve them. Over 30 patents for flying cars have been filed in the United States alone; the first was the Curtiss Autoplane of 1917. The most credible was probably the Convaircar of 1947, a lightweight, streamlined coupe with a detachable wing and propeller unit that could be left at the landing strip, allowing the car to be driven as normal. Built by an established aviation firm and the work of Henry Dreyfuss, one of America’s greatest industrial designers, the Convaircar completed several long test flights but later crashed. The bad publicity and high price — around $1500, plus wings — killed the project.

That radioactive Ford was called the Nucleon: revealed in 1958 it had its own on-board nuclear reactor and was good for 5000 miles between uranium fill-ups. Quite what would happen in the event of a heavy shunt was never really examined. Other examples of future-gazing Ford silliness include the ’61 Gyron, a two-wheel car balanced by a gyroscope, and the Leva Car, which was effectively a 500mph hovercraft with no brakes. Needless to say, neither actually functioned. The best-known Ford concept of the period is the ’55 Lincoln Futura. Built by Italian coachbuilder Ghia and fully driveable, it was sold to Californian ‘kustom-kar’ builder George Barris and rotted in his yard for years before he painted it black and turned it into the Batmobile in ’66.

Harley Earl’s explorations at GM were hugely influential

But despite his self-deprecation, Harley Earl regularly almost got it right. His greatest concepts were the three Firebirds, shown between 1954 and ’58. Like other designers of the jet-age Earl was obsessed with aircraft. Unlike the Convaircar the Firebirds couldn’t actually fly, but they looked like they might; all had jet-style fuselages, gas turbine engines and Firebird III had seven fins and separate bubble canopies for driver and passenger. But in some respects these concepts really did predict the cars we drive today, with lightweight titanium bodies, keyless entry, rear reversing cameras and features that bear a remarkable similarity to modern sat-nav, I-drive and collision-avoidance systems.

Mr Barris may have known how to pen a cool car, but his jackets rocked too

The latest attempt to predict the future is the Government-commissioned Foresight report on transport in 2055. It sets out a series of different scenarios, which include everything from self-driving mobile offices to driverless buses we summon by PDA. Its gloomier predictions see a dystopian world in which journeys are rationed by carbon credits, and ‘tribal’ communities compete for energy resources after oil runs out, the banking system fails and society collapses. Maybe you ought to switch off your computer and go out for a drive, while you still can.

But we’d rather look to the future with a little of that fifties optimism. There’s no question that the car will be forced to change quickly and radically, whether through excess carbon dioxide or insufficient oil. The race to find a replacement for petrol and diesel engines is being run right now, but it’s a marathon rather than a sprint, and the new technologies that seem to be in front now might not even make the finishing line.

Is the Tesla Roadster an exciting glimpse of a potentially sustainable automotive future – or little more than a rich man’s trifle?

But we have been able to test all these competing new technologies, if only in prototype form in some cases, and they’re mostly exciting. Take the Tesla Roadster, the all-electric supercar you can actually go out and buy now, albeit at an eye-watering six-figure price tag. It will out-drag some Ferraris and Lamborghinis to 60mph, its absurd, instant, warp-drive acceleration made to feel all the more Star-Trek by the silence in which it’s produced.

Or there’s the Honda FCX Clarity, the world’s first ‘commercially-available’ hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. It’s a sexy, streamlined four-seat hatchback with a decent boot and a useful 270-mile range. 200 lucky customers will get to lease them, though at a very heavily subsidized rate: the tech is still too expensive to go on sale.

But the cost is steadily declining, and when it comes down far enough for Honda to sell them alongside – or maybe instead of – its regular line-up by around 2020, we’ll all get to experience the entirely new kind of driving pleasure it offers. It doesn’t rely on noise or speed or image: it simply marries the same unconstrained mobility we enjoy now with the utterly guilt-free conscience that comes from emitting nothing but water from the tailpipe. And it’s as silent as the Tesla; inner and outer peace combined.

The future of motoring – or an ultra expensive dead-end?

Will hydrogen be the fuel of the future? We’ll heed Harley’s words, and won’t make that prediction. But we’ve been to the future, and can report back that it might not be as bad as some think.

Star Trek’s colourful imaginary inspired many an American vision of the automotive future

US wires are buzzing (no pun intended) with an improbable angst over whether or not the next generation of Plug-In hybrids will put disastrous strain on the already over-stretched US national grid.

The 2010 Fisker Karma (pictured) and the 2011 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids, among other electric-drive vehicles, are scheduled to roll out next year. The Nissan Leaf electric car (that comes without a range-extending engine) is also due for release in 2012, and will be even more reliant on plug-in power, so it’s a question worth asking.

While the Fisker is undoubtedly the nicest looking hybrid we’ve ever seen and has a chance of being sold in numbers, we doubt that even the oil-guzzling Americans are being a little hysterical over these anti-heroes of all-american motoring. Some local utility companies have however, apprently worried about the impact of “clusters of EVs in specific neighborhoods where early adopters may live”.

Still, we suppose that the odd period of grid blackout may be a small price to pay for the atmosphere.

It’s not beyond the ken of reason to expect that many of you reading this are fully inflused with the digital revoluion. petrolheads as well as extreme sportsers of every hue have long sought a way to capture in moving image the addiction of speed.

Youtube is of course awash with onoard camera action, but the varying quality of the produce of these self-cast heros is testament to how difficult and expensive the tech has been that’s needed to produce top-line quality footage.

But things have just become a little bit easier. with the release of the HD version of the GoPro camera. It’s not a new concept, but apparently the Go pro takes technology shrunk in size to ridiculous levels, and is wearable, waterproof and shockproof.

If the promotional footage on the Go Pro site is anything to go by, the quality of the footage that can be produced by these relatively cheap little cameras is Jaw-Dropping.

Let’s wait and see how long it will be until an Impreza pilot is are hauled up at the dock with beautiful HD footage of his clash with a rude boy in an eight year old Boxster as evidence.

is there no escape from surveillance? We say, bring it on…

Although Germany is not synonymous with passionate success in biking or motorsport, the fact is that motorcycle knowledge, know-how and technology introduced by German companies has been exported to every corner of the planet. We gathered together fifteen of the most interesting German two wheelers ever produced.

[Show as slideshow]

OK, we know that culture is awash with all things retro. It seems that anything vaguely ‘eighties’ is acceptable once again. But, from the wackier edges of car and game culture comes this proposal that takes the virtual out of the driving game experience and attempts to combine the real world and OutRun, an arcade driving game released by Sega in 1986 – and one that made an icon out of Ferrari’s Testarossa amongst arcade-hanging preteens of that decade.

The car-shaped sit-down arcade cabinet of OutRun becomes a ride in itself, and you drive it using the modded controls of the videogame. The screen meanwhile, which is in front of the driver, renders the real world as the 1986 video game OutRun. custom-built software and GPS sensors calculate the location of the vehicle and display a map rendered in the style of the video game. In other words the world is made anew, bit-mapped 1986-style.

The software for this project will be developed as an iPhone application, with an iPhone 3G inside of the cabinet-car system displaying video on the ” monitor. Development of the OutRun GPS rendering application on iPhone 3G hardware will also enable the application to be released to the general public to use the software on their iPhones while driving or walking.

Let’s just hope that Wham and A-HA don’t make the soundtrack.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is an completely human quality to the beauty possessed by engines. It’s obvious when you think about it. No matter how much Computer Aided Design and Digital Production techniques built into their realisation, they were conceived of in the imaginations of a man or a woman – they were penned by human hands and delivered according to industrial processes that represent the pinnacle of man’s resource-munching ingenuity.

The Honda McLaren V12: defined the art of Formula One during the early 1990s

Ferrari’s 4.3 litre V8: The pinnacle of the form?

Audi’s V10: took successful application in F1 racing and applied it to the street in the Gallardo and the R8

BMW Straight Six: Reliability and grunt from a Germanic classic

The Boxer: the Benz-patented push-pull configuration is a perennial, symmetrical beauty

Whilst scouring the web for images of Americana, I came across these amazing pictures of Graham hill-driven Turbine Indy car from around 1968 in the Life Photo Archive.

In the race to produce an alternative to the internally combusted, piston-and-crankshaft model of car propulsion, there have been many interesting experiments. The gas turbine was one of most audacious and surely the least fuel-efficient.

Gas turbines use combustion like normal car engines, but instead of crankshafts and pistons, gases forced over blades of the turbine rotate, creating the drive.

Among the most high profile early turbine experimenters were Colin Chapman of Lotus fame. Chapman introduced the Lotus 56B F1 car in 1971, powered by a Pratt & Whitney gas turbine.

Turbine powered cars, with no gearbox and incredible power, had achieved some success in American Indy oval racing, where the turbines could be opened up at a constant rate for long periods, but apparently problems with two-way turbo lag in the more dynamic F1 context, which required staccatto braking and acceleration for hours on end, forced Chapman to abandon the project before the car had raced in anger.

I imagine that gas turbine’s one-dimensional power arc might even have an application on the razor-straight, grid like road system of contemporary America. Every vehicle I have driven in America, from taxi cab to bus to Hhotrod seems great at going forward, loudly, with as little effort as possible, but the bump and grind of a twisty road is another proposition entirely.

There’s been a lot of feel-good commentary in the Motor Sport press ruminating on how racing just could be the saviours of the motor industry and the planet as we know it, by shaking down, then trickling down the expensive technology to the masses that, without the tough anvil of motorsport, would never get to see the light of day.

It could be wishful thinking, but endurance racing, where the increase in fuel efficiency can have obvious and tangible effects on the success of a team, might be one of the areas where the prophecy of green motor sport may come to pass. It’s obvious when you think about it. Hybrid technology is perfect for endurance racing.

Now Peugeot look set to trump rival BMW in the alternative propulsion stakes with introducing a hybrid electric vehicle for the Le Mans showdown of 2011. As in many Hybrids, kinetic energy from the movement of the wheels as well as the heat generated by braking is stored in the power system on the proposed vehicle.

Engineers working for the team reckon that not only can power be used in power boosting out of corners (as in the KERS system that will be introduced this year in F1), but electrically powering the vehicle pit lane speeds and other low-energy situations (behind a safety car for instance) will increase fuel efficiency significantly, thereby lessening the need for time-costly refuelling stops.

Whatever the technical advantages that Hybrid technology brings. We dig the electric-shock paintjob. If it’s clean, green and fast, the world is sure to take notice.

Click here to view the embedded video.