Cars for Tinkerers?

Lots of interesting things on the automotive front. First off, jotap starts us off with this question: "The 'smart' with its auto/semi-auto sequential gearbox, traction control, electronic managed turbo engine, electronic accelerator and clutch control, G force sensors, and more. Some companies sell chips to upgrade the engine power and change the (slow) original gear shifting timings. It would be nice to have a custom control panel on board and change the settings with a click. I think there's no other car with a better price/technology/size ratio then the 'smart', or is there?" The more modifiable they are, the better! While we are on the subject, let me relate some of the other interesting car news that happened to be lying in the bin. io333 notes: "These direct quotes from this CNN article are self explanatory:

'Since 1996, all new cars sold in the United States have been required to have an emissions-control system called OBD-II...'

'...One company, Davis Instruments, has a new device that probes and records what our OBD systems see, and is trying to find a broad market for it....'

'...Called the CarChip, the product is a small recording plug (about the size of a 9-volt battery) that you attach to your car's OBD-II port, which is usually hidden under the dash but easily reachable from the driver's seat. Once installed, the plug records and time-stamps a selection of OBD data (speed, braking events, coolant temperature, and several other, more technical data points) every five seconds. When you remove the CarChip and plug it into your PC, you can download the information and see graphs of what your car's been doing.'

There are two versions and they really don't cost very much. Unfortunately my car is one of the few listed that this won't work with, but I thought some of you might find it useful." ThatTallGuy sent in the Business 2.0 version of the story, which you can read here.

You may not know it, but there's an interesting relationship between VisiCalc and cars! index72 explains: "Ever wonder what happened to Bob Frankston, the inventor of VisiCalc? Ever the computer pioneer, he proposes the creation of a generic programming interface for automobile data displays."

So it sounds like car enthusiasts and tinkerers might be in for some interesting times in the upcoming months. If you guys do manage to come up with something cool, please do share some pictures?