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VW joins Daimler's protest of new A/C refrigerant as EU deadline for compliance passes

The case of Dupont and Honeywell's refrigerant R-1234yf is doing the exact opposite of keeping things cool. The two chemical companies have spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing R-1234yf to replace R-134a, the new refrigerant shown to be 99.7-percent kinder to the environment than the one it is meant to succeed. Part of that development has been years of testing by governments, outside safety agencies and automakers to approve the chemical for use in cars. It passed the protocols necessary for the European Union to declare that new and significantly revised cars from 2013 onward needed to use R-1234yf, and mandated that every car as of 2017 must use it.
Enter Daimler AG. The automaker created a head-on collision test with a B-Class at their Sindelfingen test track that would lead to the pressurized refrigerant being sprayed on the engine. The result in 20 out of 20 test was that the refrigerant burst into flames as soon as it hit the hot engine, while Daimler says that R-134a does not catch fire in the same test. Another unexpected result of the R-1234yf test was the release of hydrogen flouride, a chemical far more deadly to humans than hydrogen cyanide, emitted in such amounts that it that turned the windshield white as it began to eat into the glass.
Said a Daimler engineer in a Reuters piece, "It was scarcely believable. The most complicated lab tests conducted using the most sensitive measuring instruments around found nothing and all we do is drive a car around a couple of times, open a tiny hole in the refrigerant line and the next thing you know the car is on fire." So Daimler said it wouldn't use the refrigerant, and it recalled the cars it had already shipped with R-1234yf.

New Die Hard movie wrecked 132 cars in $11 million chase scene [w/video]

It would seem the act of dying hard brings with it lots of wanton destruction of the four-wheeled kind. According to John Moore, director of A Good Day To Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, There were 132 (cars) that could never be used again. Another 518 required a lot of work. And damn right there were some good cars there... That's the fun of it."
Please join us in one great big collective sigh. Done? Okay, let's continue.
"With Die Hard it's about how audacious the action is," says Moore. "So you have to drive over a Lamborghini. An actual one. And yes it hurts me. I'm a car fanatic." Yeah. Sounds like it hurt really bad... though not as bad as the final tally after all the carnage had been counted: "Someone showed me the numbers on the car chase and soup to nuts, you put it all together it was like an $11 million sequence."

Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG is Affalterbach's first big leap into the little pond

The recent history of AMG is turning out amped-up versions of Mercedes-Benz offerings that would hardly ever be mistaken for their sedate counterparts. Sure, you'd need to pay attention to pick a G-Class from the G63 AMG, but dual side-pipes are a quick giveaway. The Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG is not only a new era in Affalterbach's attention on smaller cars, it is probably also the most subtle transformation we can think of in the line-up.
Low and chunky enough in standard guise to make a sporting impression, the aesthetic makeover is confined to black trim around the lower rim of the hatch, black wheels with red brake calipers and a single, rectangular exhaust tip on either side of the diffuser. It's easier to make a positive ID inside, where the flat-bottomed steering wheel, red seatbelts and red-rimmed details say, "You know what I am..."
If the car is running, though, it won't take but a second. The 2.0-liter turbo spitting 360 horsepower and 332 pound-feet will grumble through a sport exhaust at idle, and bellow through the same on it's way to a 0-60 time of less than 4.5 seconds. And if you need something that looks a little harder - and you want those quad pipes - then the A45 AMG Edition 1 is the treasure you seek. There's a press release below for all the info you'll need until the hot hatch goes on sale in Germany later this year, and photos for the rest of us while we wait to find out if we'll get a chance to buy it.