The 1939 Pontiac Deluxe Six was built using a special type of perspex by General Motors and chemical company Rohm and Haas at a cost of £15,000. Dubbed the ‘Ghost Car’ it has clocked up just 140km (86 miles) in its lifetime and is thought to be a visionary in design principles.

‘This motor still turns heads as much as it ever did,’ said a spokesman for RM Auctions which is selling the vehicle in Michigan on July 30. 'The car is in a remarkable state of preservation. It's a testament to the longevity of Plexiglas in an era when automotive plastics tended to self-destruct within a few years. Although it has acquired a few chips and cracks, it is structurally sound and cosmetically clear, showing off the Ghost Car's innards as it did in 1939. It is not, obviously, suited for touring but as a unique artefact from automotive and cultural history.'

The car made its public debut at the New York World Fair in 1939-40 and is just one of two ever made. The model which comes with a three-speed manual gearbox is thought to be the last of its kind.

wooo, flying cars! We're in the future now!

Ferrari has taken the wraps off its "most powerful and high-performance" road car ever ahead of next week's Geneva motor show. The mid-front-engined F12berlinetta is powered by the latest development of Ferrari's naturally aspirated 6,262cc V12 engine, which now develops 730bhp at 8,500rpm and 509lb ft of torque at 6,000rpm (80 per cent of which is said to be available from 2,500rpm). The V12 is mated to Ferrari's F1 dual-clutch paddle-shift gearbox and driven through the rear wheels.

The two-seater can accelerate from 0-62mph in 3.1sec and from 0-124mph in 8.5sec and has lapped Ferrari's Fiorano test track in 1min 23sec - that's faster than any other Ferrari road car. Top speed is quoted as over 211mph. Compared with the 599 which it replaces, the F12berlinetta has a shorter wheelbase, while the engine, seats and dashboard are all mounted lower in the chassis. A new layout of rear suspension and gearbox has also helped to keep the new car compact; at 4,618mm long and 1,942mm wide it is significantly smaller than its rival from Sant'Agata, the Lamborghini Aventador.

Rather than using a carbon-fibre monocoque to keep weight down, as Lamborghini has with the Aventador and McLaren with its MP4-12C, Ferrari has instead worked with Scalietti to design an all-new spaceframe chassis using 12 different kinds of alloy and new assembly and joining techniques. The result, according to the Italian car-maker, is a 20 per cent increase in structural rigidity as well as a 70kg reduction in weight (when the car is specified with "lightweight options") to 1,525kg.

The aggressive styling is the result of a collaboration between the Ferrari Styling Centre and Pininfarina and is said to offer "exceptional" in-car space and comfort, despite the car's compact exterior dimensions. On the outside, two new aerodynamic devices help to boost downforce by 76 per cent compared to the 599, as well as cut drag (Ferrari quotes a Cd figure of 0.299). The first is an "Aero Bridge", which consists of two small bonnet mounted flaps that channel air away from the upper part of the car to its flanks where it helps to decrease drag. The second is "Active Brake Cooling", whereby the brake cooling ducts in the front bumper only open when high operating temperatures are sensed, again reducing drag.

Carbon-ceramic brakes, adaptive damping and Ferrari's now familiar electronic control systems (E-Diff, ESP Premium and F1-Trac) complete the package. Ferrari is yet to announce prices, but expect a figure in the region of £250,000. The first cars are due to arrive with customers at the end of this year or beginning of 2013.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and for Palestinians living on the West Bank trying to break their dependence on Israel for energy has resulted in a new solar powered vehicle. ­The four-seater is covered in solar panels to convert the suns rays into energy to power a small electric motor which pushes the vehicle along at 20 Kph for about 10 hours. And if the sun doesn’t shine it can be plugged into the wall, and the battery recharged from the mains. It looks a bit like an over-sized golf cart and took the Royal Industrial Trading Company around two months and $5000 to develop.

“This car was the first step, and now we are working on two other cars. If the work is successful, then we will do a lot of cars and sell them”, says Nabel Az-Zagheer, chairman of the Royal Industrial Trading Company. Based in the town of Al-Khalil, the company specialises in sanitation and water supply products, and adapted them to create the new vehicle.

A greater use of solar energy could help the people of the West Bank escape escalating energy prices. Israel has control over the fuel supply to the Palestinian population, and according to the Oslo agreements, the Palestinian Authority is obliged not to sell its gasoline for less than 15 percent of Israel’s market price, reports the The Electronic Intifada. "Such supply monopolies are a form of power. They provide easy ways to exert political pressure on the Palestinian Authority and ordinary Palestinians and to enforce their compliance with Israel’s interests", Charles Shamas, a founder of the Mattin Group, a Ramallah-based research and advocacy organization told the Middle East Media Center.

The Palestinians are also heavily dependent on electric power provided by Israel. A power station in Gaza provides some 40% percent of the Strip’s electricity; the rest has to be purchased from Israel. Some small amounts are also sold by Egypt and Jordan. “We want to lower as much as possible our dependence on Israel, because we won’t be able to reach a reasonable level of national security if Israel can, at any point, disconnect our electricity, and even harm the power plant in Gaza, as it did in 2006 as punishment for the abduction of Gilad Shalit,” Hanna Siniora, chairperson of the Palestinian-American Chamber of Commerce, has told Al-Monitor.com

Constantly rising fuel prices affect the cost of basic foodstuffs such as maize, vegetable oil and bread. Palestinian efforts to reduce its dependency on Israeli energy have met strong opposition from Tel Aviv. In March RT reported on Israel’s plans to bulldoze eight solar panels in the West Bank. They were donated by a number of international charities in 2009, yet have were deemed “illegal” by Israeli authorities due to the lack of an appropriate building permit.

The 62% of the West Bank controlled by Israel is not connected to the national energy grid. On the other hand, the Jewish settlements in the area are connected to national energy and water grids, reports the Guardian.

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now that's especially cool.

Plug-in electric car? That’s so 2013. The electric sedans of the future will also generate their own photovoltaic power. That’s the philosophy behind a new class of competition in this year’s World Solar Challenge. Since 1987, the challenge has had solar-powered cars racing across the parched Australian outback every couple years. But the solar-powered vehicles that have competed in the challenge, while exciting and innovative, have been anything but consumer-friendly. They have typically carried only an uncomfortable driver in a craft shaped like a sheet of aluminum foil precariously perched over three wheels.

This year’s challenge, scheduled for October, will push teams to go even further. The new Michelin cruiser class has been created for vehicles that could conceivably be marketed as family sedans. Ten teams have entered, and they will compete against each other for points awarded based on such criteria as practicality, attractiveness, and energy consumption.

On Thursday, one of the those teams unveiled its entry, taking a car it dubbed Stella to cordoned-off Dutch streets to strut its photovoltaic stuff. And it’s pretty as a pug. The team of 22 Eindhoven University of Technology students behind Stella has vowed to register the car for on-road use, helping to demonstrate its potential commercial viability. From a press release:

‘Stella’ is the first ‘energy-positive car’ with room for four people, a trunk, intuitive steering and a range of 600 kilometers. By combining aerodynamic design with lightweight materials like carbon and aluminum, a very fuel-efficient car has been designed, which also has ingenious applications like a LED strip and touchscreen that make all the buttons and knobs we know today superfluous. Intuitive driving is enabled by a steering wheel that expands or contracts when you are driving too fast or too slowly. STE will have the car officially certified for road use to prove that this really is a fully-fledged car.

With a makeover that would have Del Boy tipping his hat, a car enthusiast has built the world’s smallest working fire engine – from a Reliant Robin. Complete with six water hoses, an escape ladder and sirens, the tiny tender is the work of self-taught engineer John Ward.

He spent four months converting the three-wheeler, which has a top speed of 60mph, to accommodate a 50-litre water tank. The vehicle features a brass bell, red and blue lights and fire extinguishers for tackling, well, small blazes and other minor hot spots. It has two water cannons on the roof, two on the bonnet and two on the back of the car, which are all operated by a button on the dashboard.

Mr Ward modified the car following government plans to merge fire forces and use retained staff on call at home. ‘With all these cuts to the service I wondered how small you could go, and there isn’t much smaller than a Robin, unless you go down to a bike,’ said Mr Ward, from Spalding, Lincolnshire. ‘It is all street legal with an MOT, tax and insurance. I take it for drives and get lots of grins and beeps from other cars. If you have a fire in a phone box, we can put it out for you.’

Mr Ward is using the rare Robin to raise money for the Firefighters’ Benevolent Fund. The fire engine can seat two and carries the motto: ‘You’ve not been put out until we put you out.’ Mr Ward, who says he is ‘in his 70s’, has spent ‘several hundred pounds’ on the conversion, collecting bits and pieces from car boot sales. He spent £2 on the bell and £20 on the ladder. ‘I’ve done some speed trials with it and it handles well up to about 60mph,’ he said. ‘The reaction is unbelievable.’