Artwork by Jennifer Chong

We at onlydominican would like to do our part with helping build the donation efforts to help the people affected by the major earth quake that struck japan. You can all participate by visiting your local Red Cross to make donations.

via Motorworld Hype

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Mazda Minagi Concept

via Car & Driver

Mazda has announced that it will show a compact crossover concept in Geneva, called Minagi. The production version is widely expected to be named CX-5 and fit in under the automaker’s CX-7 and CX-9 crossovers.

The new model will be one of the first Mazdas to use the brand’s newest design language, Kodo, which was previewed on the Shinari concept. This new language means “soul of motion,” and should not be confused with the alien from The Simpsons, Kodos. (For starters, Kodo is Japanese, while Kodos is from Rigel VII.) The sketches show a nice evolution of Mazda’s basic crossover silhouette, as well as the disappearance of the controversial smiley-face grille.

Future Mazdas, including this new cute ute, will use the company’s new family of SKYACTIV engines and transmissions, previewed here. Mazda has also promised to focus on lightweight construction for this and other new models.

British university suggests removing road safety features could be beneficial.

via 0-60MAG

A new study conducted in the United Kingdom claims a good way to make driving less deadly is to ditch safety features in order to place motorists and pedestrians in more danger. Don’t bother checking that calendar—there are still 85 days until April First.

According to Newcastle University’s research, 31 percent of drivers are bored enough behind the wheel that they sometimes drive recklessly—just to feel something, man. The solution, the school suggests, is to make driving less boring—by making it more dangerous. The study’s lead reseacher, Joan Harvey, said (and to quote Dave Barry, we swear we are not making this up), “In towns we may need to start considering some radical schemes such as removing kerbs [sic] so there are more hazards – like pedestrians – around your car. Our research suggests that this might actually improve people’s driving.”

Let this sink in for a minute. At first thought reading this, I thought the local engineers may have been onto something. I remember a few years back when the boulevard was built, the Designer claimed it was purposely made narrow with the intention of slowing traffic down. This design decision has also made the road unsafe, with no available soft shoulders, tight radius merge and turn lanes and increase in traffic. These decisions in design have to an extent contributed to the rise in accidents in the area.

Goodwill Road, image courtesy of Domnik.net

Now, in larger countries with large roads, I do agree that driving can become tiresome and boring. People tend to find things to do to keep them awake or alert on long expansive drives. We don’t have the same situation here, our roads are challenging and filled with surprise. It can be said making our roads more dangerous would not have an impact on the way most of our road users drive, but improving the safety of it would help make it better for the rest of us and help curb unnecessary accidents.

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Drift Hiace

More Pics and Vids after the break

First we’d like to welcome our new Contributer, Hillius. With him joining our ship, we’ll be introducing the Swag portion of the Automotive Lifestyle. Stay tuned for some interesting articles!