More Great Gifts For Car Nuts

Car nuts are tough bunch to understand. Here's a great way to delight them this holiday season.

When they start talking about autos, technical terms such as “co-efficient of drag” and “horsepower per liter” come up. The conversation is spirited. Eyeballs roll. Girlfriends leave the room. Allegiances are hotly debated. Are you a Porsche lover, or do you prefer Ferraris? New cars or classic cars? Ford trucks or Chevy trucks?

For people who don’t care about cars or don’t understand their loved ones’ obsessions with them, picking out gifts can be a daunting task. Case in point: Executives who love cars are particularly hard to shop for, because their station demands a luxurious--but appropriate--gift. If you’re not sure what to get your car-obsessed dad, be warned: A new keychain or an Exxon Mobil (nyse: XOM - news - people ) gift certificate is not going to thrill him.

In Pictures: Great Gifts For Car Nuts

To help you please even the pickiest auto enthusiast, we have compiled a list that includes such affordable items as the 30th-anniversary edition of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, as well as Porsche’s new, $120,000 911 Turbo supercar.

If you’ve got the cash, you can always give an actual car as a gift. Multimillionaire entrepreneurs who bleed 93-octane blood will be lusting after the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (not cheap at $450,000), but the Daimler Chrysler (nyse: DCX - news - people ) Maybach 62 sedan with handcrafted features such as customized leather interiors and monogramming is slightly more affordable at $390,000.

But there are plenty of just as fancy auto-related gifts that are more reasonably priced. Ferrari (nyse: FIA - news - people ) makes chronographs, BMW has a line of clothing and golf accessories and Aston Martin makes chessboards.

It’s also possible to properly indulge kids who love cars. Forget Matchbox. These days, you can buy your son or daughter an $875 toy Ferrari--an electric car that drives and has a working horn--and give the kid a head start in developing proper cornering, braking and accelerating techniques.

Make no mistake: The world of the car nut can be a world of extravagance and privilege. You may not understand your loved one’s interested in motoring, but that shouldn’t stop you from pampering him or her.

LaneFX proven better solution to the blind spot problem than stick-on convex blind spot mirrors

Top Fun Gifts for Tech Lovers Under $40

Basic Auto Safety Facts

Plus the Economic Benefits of the LaneFX Blind Spot Exposure System

1. According to the US government's Department of Transportation, 1 out of 25 collisions on America's highways is due to improper lane change / lane merge. That's 630,000 accidents annually and almost 2% of which are fatal. The estimated annual insurance cost of these collisions $2.3B not accounting for economic loss. There are no specific statistics on whether these numbers improve by use of conventional convex blind spot mirrors or even by the driver setting the side mirrors wide.
2. Second, consider the driver awareness benefit. By eliminating the average of 2 seconds of a complete head turn / blind spot check, LaneFX can afford you over 205ft of advance emergency stopping/maneuvering distance. This could be a life-saving or accident avoidance distance.
3. Thirdly, let's approach this from a competitive landscape: The blind spot detection segment has just recently begun heating up at the OEM and teir-1supplier level. University of Michigan's Center for Automotive Research (CAR) study of emerging technologies, automotive executives from around the world have predestined a 10% market penetration of blind spot detection systems by MY06. So far this figure has been lagging a bit, but there is evidence of momentum building up in this area. Volvo has recently announced their blind spot detection system called BLIS and Audi has launch its Lane Assists passive system on its brand new Q7 SUV. As matter of fact, Volvo's VP of marketing in the BLIS systems' media preview indicated that that "blind spot problem solution is the number of asked for feature by Volvo owners." Volvo in this detection system chose to use pattern/image recognition technology as their chosen horse for this race. Raytheon and Valeo-Sylvania, two heavy hitters in the teir-1 supplier arena have joined forces to develop a sonar-based detection system under contract with one auto OEM. In both instances Volvo and other system are passive detection systems. Here's what's public from Volvo's own press release: "Because the system is camera based, it not work in the rain, snow, fog, or at night." When Automotive Week and Auto Blog test drove the BLIS system, they encountered a disproportionate number of false positives when driving by a row of parked cars or in the left-most lane on the highway against a concrete divider wall." K. Malhas, inventor of LaneFX expressed his opinion on this design approach as follows: "It's difficult for to understand why the one automotive manufacturer that has coined its existence on occupant safety would release a system that does not appear to have been well-though out." But it actually gets worse from there, estimated price for the system is $1,200 that's over 800% the suggested retail price of a complete LaneFX package and, according to Volvo if the its alert mechanism - a small orange light on the inside of the A-pillar - becomes "too annoying" to the driver, the driver has a switch to turn it off! Unbelievable!

Compare Backup Sensors & Cameras to ParkFX

Get the Latest Information on the Most Reliable Backup Warning Technologies

Not all reversing aids are equal. The sensing technology and the indicating method are critical to your driving safety.

How a park assist system alerts you

One option is video, which at first seems like a great choice. But one major flaw with having a video camera affixed to the back of your car with a monitor on your dashboard is that it also forces you to look forward while backing up. That can disturb your perception, your reaction time, and feel very unnatural. They are also extremely expensive, and you'll pay thousands of dollars to have a video system attached to your car, whether from the dealer or an aftermarket supplier.

Compare that to other bargain basement devices which actually have LED displays (little red lights) on your dashboard. These are cumbersome -- almost useless -- for much the same reason as video: when you drive in reverse, you naturally look behind you, and you'll never see the little red lights. They are also hard to read in bright sunlight.

Some other bargain technologies use a tone which beeps more rapidly as you get closer to an obstacle. You can at least hear the relative distance just by listening to the beeps, but you have to practice a bit to really understand how far you are from danger.

That's why an audible voice sensor is best. It tells you in a spoken voice exactly how far away you are. Not only do you not have to awkwardly look forward at your dashboard, you'll know without guessing how much further you can safely back up.

How a reversing aid detects objects

If you've never seen or used a reversing aid, you might be surprised at how technically advanced they actually can be.

Reversing aids use a variety of technologies to sense an object behind the car. Some units use Doppler radar, and others use infrared sensors, but by far the most accurate method of detection is the one the U.S. Navy uses on its submarines: sonar.

Sonar can operate in any weather, including direct sunlight or rain. And it doesn't require that the car be moving in order to sense an obstruction.