Category Car Chat

Today IIHS released its BMW 2-series crash testing results and the corresponding rating.

Generally speaking the 2-series got a Top Safety Pick Plus result, which is because it achieved “Good” results in all testing categories, including the small overlap front test, which is shown in the below image (released by IIHS). From the photo you can see the 2-seires has very good safety cage strength to handle the frontal impact energy: there is no excessive deformation around the A pillar area.

However, we also found some weak points in the BMW 2-series, from the crash test.

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In this section, let’s take a look at one factor that determines the location of your car’s brake calipers.

First, we look at the front wheels. You may find many front-wheel-drive cars have their front brake calipers in front of the axle, that is because for FWD layout, the engine is usually transversely placed in front of the axle. With such layout, the steering arm can not be placed in front of the axle because the transversely placed engine acts like a wall to block the passage of the steering shaft. Therefore, the steering arm can only be located after the axle, which means there is no place left for the brake system at the same location...

Brake calipers are essential to your car’s ability to stop and are arguably one of the most important automobile brake parts. Some car’s brake calipers are in front of the wheel axle, while other cars have the brake calipers behind the axle.  For example:

– Toyota Camry, Honda Accord: front brake calipers in front of the axle; rear brake calipers behind the rear axle.

– BMW 2/3/4 series, Ford Mustang: front brake calipers behind the front axle; rear brake calipers in front of the rear axle.

– Porsche Cayenne, Infiniti G37: both the front and rear brake calipers are in front of the corresponding wheel axles.

– BMW 5/7-series, Audi A8, Mercedes-Benz S550: both the f...

By now most of you must have read the news that New Jersey had passed a bill to allow ZEV makers to sell their cars directly to the public, without participation of dealerships.

Obviously this is good news for this bill’s major beneficiary – Tesla Motors, because Tesla only allows you to purchase their product directly from them, with MSRP. This is somewhat similar to Apple – you seldom see discounted sales of iPhone or iPad etc.

Proponents of the direct sales model are claiming that without the dealership as middleman, auto makers can eliminate variances in service qualities and marketing efficiencies.

At the same time, opponents are reasoning that, without dealer...

In this section, we will take a look at the last type of automobile suspension, which is usually used for rear wheels.

In the H-arm system, one end of the arm is connecting to two locations of the car body; another end connects to two locations of the wheel hub. The H-arm alone can limit 4 degrees of freedom, so it need another horizontal control arm to limit one more degree to make the whole system with 1 degree of freedom.

However the above design has non-optimal wheel movement trajectory, most automaker will not use such design without modifications...