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This 1925 White Model 15-45 served as a tour bus in Yellowstone National Park, and needs to be hand-cranked to start.A 50-horsepower inline-four resides under the hood, and the bus can hold up to 11 passengers.There are six days before the Bring a Trailer auction ends, with bidding currently at $7500.Car and DriverThe vivid Kodachrome colors of the Grand Prismatic Spring. The tower of spray erupting from the Old Faithful Geyser. Herds of shaggy bison moseying across lush fields of green. Yellowstone National Park—comprising land in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—features some of America’s most stunning natural scenes. These days you can tour the park from the climate-controlled comfort of your car, but in the early 20th century, visitors were shepherded around the park in busses like the one you see here. This 1925 White Model 15-45 is one of 214 11-passenger buses used by the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company, and it is now up for auction on Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos.Bring a TrailerThe Yellowstone Park Transportation Company (YPTCo) was created in 1898, 26 years after President Ulysses S. Grant signed the congressional act protecting the land. The company initially used horse-drawn stagecoaches, but after securing the exclusive rights to transportation at the park in 1916, the YPTCo commissioned a fleet of sightseeing vehicles from the Cleveland, Ohio-based White Motor Company. (White’s early vehicles used steam power, and two sitting presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, were owners.) The Model 15-45 joined the fleet in 1920, and White would go on to build busses for several national parks—including Yosemite and Grand Canyon—through the late 1930s, with Glacier still offering tours in its vintage people carriers. Bring a TrailerThis 1925 White 11-passenger bus is motivated by an inline-four that was rated at 50 horsepower back in the day—however many ponies are left are sent to the rear wheels through a four-speed manual transmission. The 15-45 requires the use of a hand crank to start and rides on a front beam axle and a live rear axle with leaf springs. The driving controls appear similar to that of the Ford Model T, with three pedals, a floor-mounted shift lever, and stalks controlling the throttle and spark timing on the steering wheel.More Cool Auction CarsThe 11-passenger body, from an Ohio-based coachbuilder called the Bender Body Company, features four doors on the right side and fake doors on the left side, designed to stop passengers from disembarking into the middle of the road. A spare tire sits next to the driver’s seat and a body-colored trunk is strapped onto the rear of the bus. After its tour of duty in Yellowstone, this bus spent its years in Arizona and Montana, with the engine reportedly rebuilt in 2009 just before the seller purchased the vehicle. Under the current owner, the White Model 15-45 also received a repaint in the original YPTCo livery, a replacement canvas top, and a re-trim of the black vinyl seating. The gigantic Goodyear tires are showing signs of dry rot, and there are other signs of corrosion, but this amazing piece of history is in solid shape for a nearly 100-year-old vehicle. If you want to experience the great outdoors in style, there are six days left on the auction, with bidding currently at $7500. Just remember that there are no windows, so don’t get too close to the bison or the bears. More

Chevy is revising the TrailBlazer SUV for 2024 with styling and technology changes.The front- and rear-end designs are revised, and there are new colors and wheel designs.An 11.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system is new and standard across the board.The big news for Chevy’s 2024 small-SUV lineup is the arrival of a new Trax, but the similarly sized TrailBlazer is getting some revisions as well. With updated styling, new colors, and larger screens inside, the 2024 TrailBlazer gets a bit more appealing on the surface but remains the same mechanically. The base price is up by $1000, to $24,395, while the top RS and Activ models now start at $28,395.The new colors are Copper Harbor and Cacti Green, and the wheel designs are new, with the RS trim (pictured at top) getting a new 19-inch wheel to go along with its sportier design elements. The front- and rear-end designs are freshened, with different grilles, bumpers, headlights, and taillights. The Activ, as before, has its own grille design and bits of trim that are meant to make it look more rugged.ChevroletMore on Chevy SUVsInside, the driver is greeted with an 8.0-inch digital gauge cluster and a significantly larger 11.0-inch touchscreen in the center of the dash. This new screen is standard, and that’s a significant upgrade over the previous model, which had a 7.0-inch touchscreen standard and an 8.0-inch touchscreen optional on higher trims. The new screen offers wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.The 2024 TrailBlazer’s base engine is a turbocharged 1.2-liter inline-three with 137 horsepower, and this comes with a continuously variable automatic transmission and front-wheel drive. The upgrade choice is a turbocharged 1.3-liter inline-three with 155 horsepower that pairs with a nine-speed automatic transmission and offers all-wheel drive as an option. This differentiates it from the Trax, which is less expensive but comes only with the 1.2L engine, a six-speed automatic transmission, and front-wheel drive.This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. More

Honda’s next hydrogen-powered vehicle will be a plug-in version of the CR-V, arriving in 2024.Honda co-developed the new fuel cell system with GM and said it would cost just a third as much as the fuel cell stack in the Clarity while also being more durable.Honda will build 2000 units of its next-gen fuel cell system a year by 2025, but some will likely be used by industry partners. Honda’s next hydrogen-powered vehicle will be a version of the new CR-V with plug-in capability. The automaker started talking last year about this follow-up to the company’s previous H2 vehicle, the Clarity Fuel Cell, which was discontinued in 2021, and now the picture surrounding the powertrain is becoming a bit clearer.Honda Clarity Fuel Cell. HondaHonda announced in 2022 that its next-generation fuel cell vehicle, based on the CR-V, will go on sale in 2024 in North America and Japan. The hydrogen-powered SUV will use a fuel cell system co-developed with GM and will have two H2 tanks in the rear of the vehicle, an intelligent power unit under the seats and a fuel cell system and drive unit mounted as one under the front hood. The battery in the plug-in part of the equation won’t power the CR-V for too many miles and is apparently small enough that it didn’t merit space on Honda’s vague diagram of the upcoming vehicle. Honda said the hydrogen CR-V will also have a power export function.Who’s Going to Get This CR-V?Honda isn’t saying if the new H2 CR-V will be sold outside California, the only place where the Clarity Fuel Cell could be leased, but did say production of the fuel cell CR-V will begin in 2024 at the Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio, including vehicles that will be exported to Japan.Honda remains coy about further details regarding the vehicle itself but did announce more information about the CR-V’s next-generation fuel system this week. Ryan Harty, senior manager and division lead of the energy solution business division at American Honda Motor Company, said that the new system is more than twice as durable and has “significantly faster” startup times at frigid temperatures (under -22 degrees F). Also, Harty said, compared to the fuel cell system found in the now-defunct Clarity, the next-gen system costs two-thirds less to build. That massive drop is thanks to changes in materials, like using “innovative materials” for electrodes and manufacturing specifications, as well as a plan to simply build more units.Honda never announced how many Clarity Fuel Cell vehicles it sold, although a spokesperson told Car and Driver that there had been 2116 total leases of that model in the U.S. Still, given that Honda sold only around 41,000 of all versions of Clarity vehicles during the five years it was available (most of them being the plug-in-hybrid version), the company will only have to increase production a little to improve the economies of scale. Honda said it plans to build around 2000 units of its next-gen fuel cell system a year by 2025 at the Fuel Cell System Manufacturing Center that Honda and GM run in Michigan. By 2030, Honda plans to build 60,000 units a year of either this unit or a further improved fuel cell system. Honda has not announced any development or manufacturing partners for the future-gen system (in other words, GM is not necessarily involved) but plans to make it even more powerful and cost-effective.Honda”Compared to the next-generation system, we set additional targets to reduce the cost by one-half and to double the durability,” Harty said. “We’re targeting to make the future-generation system to be comparable with diesel engines in terms of ease of use and total cost of ownership.” Looking to Spread This Technology AroundHonda said it sees fuel cell systems as vital players in a carbon-neutral society and doesn’t just want to put them in cars. The automaker is searching for partners to test them in commercial vehicles, stationary power stations and construction machinery. Harty said Honda is actively looking for partners in North America to work on fuel cell commercial trucks. Honda is currently testing hydrogen trucks in China with Dongfeng Motors and will start before April 2024 in Japan with Isuzu. In the mid-2020s, Honda will begin selling its fuel cell system to partners in the transportation and industry sectors.”Basically, our [message today] is really about announcing that the fuel cell power train is technically ready to step in and help not only Honda but other companies to achieve their carbon neutrality and sustainability goals,” Harty said. “To do that, together, we have to develop the business ecosystem and the hydrogen infrastructure around that in order for those customers to achieve their goals.”This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. More