JG Francis is an man who knows a lot about the older products in the family. He owns Los Angeles-based , which is where Francis turns wrenches on classic tri-stars and breathes new life back into the lumbering German coupes, sedans and wagons. Sometimes Francis will travel far to bring a new project back to his California shop, and his pal Sean always seems ready to make the trek with him.
The duo’s latest conquest was a 1969 240 D sedan that was located all the way up in Fairbanks, Alaska. After 10 days and 4,000 miles, the men and their machine arrived back in the Golden State, and were given no issues by the classic diesel four door. Mercedes-Benz put together a short video about JG Francis and his shop, and the automaker is currently editing another about his most recent roadtrip. , we have the bio video for Francis and a teaser clip for his Alaska-to-California adventure.
-Benz proves to be perfect west coast road-tripper
Health advocacy takes many different forms. Whether it’s a quiet reminder from a friend that tobacco use can kill you, a shocking television ad from the likes of the American Lung Association or a bold billboard from the American Cancer Society, it seems like smokers simply can’t catch a break. They’ve been relegated to cramped, sealed-off rooms at (some) airports and banished from bars and restaurants all over the country. Nearly every public space is protected from second-hand smoke, and as a result, smokers themselves are forced to huddle around safe zones like dehydrated animals at a far-flung watering hole.
Still, some individuals chose to carry on with the habit, including a shocking number of young people. No matter what doctors, parents, scientists or even the tobacco companies themselves can convince these individuals that the risks associated with smoking outweigh any potential benefits. What does all this have to do with cars, you ask? to find out how one group of upstanding young men is working to deter smoking in their area to find out.
has prepped an all-new Panda, and the high-riding city car is set to make its world debut at the . The 2012 Panda represents the current zenith of the four-wheel-drive compact’s evolution. This third-generation Panda features a restyled exterior paired with an updated interior design and a handful of engine choices.
Two new engines join the Panda powerplant family, which brings the total number of available mills to six. The new units are both two-cylinder 900-cc engines equipped with Fiat’s Start&Stop system to help cut down on emissions while raising fuel economy. Both engines are TwinAir mills, with one breathing naturally and the other utilizing forced induction by way of a single turbocharger. The non-turbo engine produces 65 horsepower while the turbo version pumps out 85 horses.
The rest of the engine lineup doesn’t grow larger than 75-horsepower 1.3-liter Multijet II, and you can read all about it and the 2012 Fiat Panda by to see the full press release.
We now know what is planning for the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show. The manufacturer has released a slew of photos and information on its new Evos Concept – a design study that will likely influence the look of the company’s products in the near future. While we aren’t likely to see many four-door gullwing hatchbacks in the Ford product line any time soon, chances are that the automaker’s artists will roll in elements like smaller, more discreet headlamps, more vertical hexoganal grille and a sleek silhouette. According to Ford design guru J Mays, the new look is penned, “not to provoke, but to seduce.”
The look is likely to command Ford design for the next five years or so, and you won’t hear any complaints from us on that front. Inside, the Evos also hints toward what’s coming down the pike in terms of interior design as well. With a driver-oriented instrument panel and an inverted ‘L’ climate system, Mays says that future Ford models will boast a more cockpit-like feel.
Befitting a true concept car, Ford says that the Evos is powered by the same plug-in hybrid drivetrain found in the C-Max Energi. That means that a set of lithium-ion batteries store and release electricity to allow the vehicle to operate primarily as an electric vehicle. for the press release.
2012 Toyota Camry, Frankfurt Motor Show, Russia to Alaska tunnel, Bentley SUV and hybrid
Episode #245 of the Autoblog Podcast is here. This week, Chris, Dan, and Zach are joined by Drew Phillips, just back from Monterey. Topics we cover include the 2012 Toyota Camry, concepts we’ll see at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show, the tunnel from Russia to Alaska and Bentley hybrids and SUVs. Your questions and comments power the last third of the podcast, and for those of you who hung with us live on our , thanks for taking the time. We’ve embedded our Q&A module for you to scroll through and follow along, too. Thanks for listening!
Autoblog Podcast #244:
Frankfurt concepts
In the Autoblog Garage 2011 Ford Fiesta SES Hatchback
2011 Chevrolet Suburban LTZ
Long-Term 2011 Volkswagen Jetta TDI
Hosts: , , , Runtime: 01:14:27
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Automakers are always looking to push the boundaries with experimental technology, but seems to be ahead of the curve with respect to autonomous vehicles. Previously, BMW was . Now, however, the German automaker is venturing out on to public roads, and it’s doing so with an automated fitted with advanced ConnectedDrive technology.
The system is enabled with a push of a button, once a driver has reached a highway. After it’s allowed to work its technical sorcery, the ConnectedDrive system takes over acceleration and braking duty. If the system detects a slower moving vehicle in front, and no vehicles to the side, it’s capable of passing said traffic.
BMW is hard at work teaching its prototype how to deal with more traffic situations, such as construction sites and intersections. As the system continues to learn, it will only get better at making sure you’re non longer needed. to learn more about this autonomous BMW prototype, and be sure to get a closer look by clicking through the gallery.
Here in the U.S., garbage trucks are mainly for picking up, crushing and dumping trash. The same garbage trucks roles no doubt apply in Saudi Arabia, except when the trash hauler doubles as a crowd-pleasing stunt car.
Beyond the jump is video of a thankfully trash-less garbage truck that has a knack for driving on two wheels. That’s always fun, and the enjoyment lasts for over two minutes, thanks to some very impressive Dukes of Hazzard meets skills. Halfway in, a Jeep Cherokee joins in the two-wheeled fun.
It’s cool and all… but we’ll stick with Big Foot and his Monster Jam friends for our after-hours crazy truck coverage. to watch the video.
More than anything else, Lotus has (historically at least) been about two things: it’s serious about lightweight construction (following its founder Colin Chapman’s ethos of “adding lightness”) and it’s quintessentially British. And you could say the same about Gordon Murray.
The celebrated designer and engineer behind countless Formula One race cars, the McLaren F1 supercar and, most recently, the is now joining forces with Lotus. In an advisory capacity, anyway.
Lotus has announced Murray as the latest addition to its Advisory Council, a board that already includes such names as Bob Lutz, former NA chief Tom Purves, former BMW designer Burkhard Göschel and engineer Frank Tuch.
The appointment shouldn’t interfere with Murray’s independent design outfit, but brings him full circle to when he first started out in F1 and hoped, above all, to join the Lotus team before being hired by Bernie Ecclestone to work at Brabham instead. Official announcement .
Having a drag strip behind your office would be both a wonderful play thing and an unyielding distraction. Hennessey Performance Design has such a delightful strip of attention-destroying asphalt at its disposal, and it uses this quarter-mile test track to examine the straight-line acceleration of its latest products. The most recent vehicle to run down this stretch is the Hennessey-tuned .
According to Hennessey, the supercharged engine of this Boss 302 pumps out 650 horsepower. That’s enough scoot to push the car from 0-60 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds, and on down the strip in 11.9 seconds with a trap speed of 124 miles per hour.
It’s fast, it’s loud and it’s captured on video. for the clip.
According to The Detroit Bureau, is aiming to produce a new high-end flagship on the massive Omega platform. The news comes in the wake of the exuberant public reaction to the company’s Ciel Concept, and General Motors says that a hard-top version of the lengthy convertible is already in the works. We may see that concept in as little as a few months. While General Motors is being fairly tight-lipped about the vehicle’s actual production schedule, The Detroit Bureau reports that the new Omega may land in dealerships by 2015 at the latest.
But that’s not the only news from Cadillac. The company has also made it clear that buyers can expect to be able to snap up a range of hybrid vehicles from the luxury automaker. While that includes efforts like the upcoming Volt-based ELR, the brand intends to flex its tech muscles with multiple hybrid technologies in the near future. The Detroit Bureau hypothesizes that Cadillac may dabble in incredibly efficient vehicles as well as high-performance hybrids similar to what is currently producing.
Be warned, fans: this video isn’t for the faint of heart. According to the YouTube description, an owner decided to see just how much his car had in common with the screaming machines of the World Rally Championship by submitting it to a torturous, rocky section of fire road. After somehow enduring 12 miles of abuse, the car struck a rock, gouged its oil pan and came to a stop. The vehicle was subsequently abandoned there for some time, whereupon it was graffitti’d as well as stripped of its stereo and seats.
Fortunately, a few helpful off-road enthusiasts offered to pull the car out of the forest and back to civilization. There was only one real problem: making it to the fire road’s exit meant bashing the hapless Subaru across even larger stones, while taking the trail in reverse meant covering 12 times the distance. The recovery team decided to pursue going forward, and mechanical carnage ensued. Call it proof positive that bad things happen to good cars whose owners make poor choices. to see the damage.
’s performance division, Abarth doesn’t have a lot to work with. Just two models, in fact, but that hasn’t stopped the Scorpion marque from making the most of the 500 and Punto ranges. Clearly, there’s a lot of room for hot-hatch workings. Just take a look at what Abarth has in store for the upcoming .
On the floor of the Frankfurt Messe, Abarth will present three new vehicles. Well, new derivatives or editions of existing vehicles, anyway.
Having sold 1,695 examples of the 695 Tributo Ferrari – the fastest to date – Abarth is moving on to the 695 Competizione. Packing the same 180-horsepower 1.4-liter 16-valve turbo four, paddle-shift transmission, 17-inch alloys and Brembo brakes as the Ferrari edition, the Competizione does away with the Ferrari logos and bridges the gap to the Assetto Corsa but legal for street use.
Next up is the 500 Cabrio Italia to celebrate, once again, the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Underneath the special blue paint job and the folding roof panel is a 160-horsepower turbo four with overboost function and five-speed manual.
Finally the Punto SuperSport takes the existing EsseEsse to new lengths with a 180-horsepower 1.4-liter MultiJet engine, Koni suspension and tricked out interior with Sabelt buckets and Jaeger instruments. You can scope out all three in the high-res image gallery and the press release , but we’ll have more up-close-and-personal shots from the Frankfurt show for you in just a couple more weeks.
’s – perhaps trying to outrun its boring name – smashed the for an electric vehicle on the famed 12.93-mile Nordschleife track with a time of seven minutes, 47.79 seconds. This beats the previous electric car time by a healthy margin and puts Toyota’s electric racer on par with the lap times recorded by vehicles like the and , but is still a ways off the any-powertrain-goes record of . The just-bested EV record was set by ’s earlier this year (watch a video of that run ). The EX1 averaged a rather impressive 85.9 miles per hour on the grueling track. Prior to the EX1’s blazing run, a held the electric vehicle record at the Nürburgring with a time of 9 minutes 51 seconds.
The new record, comfortably under Toyota’s pre-attempt target of eight minutes, should help TMG sell the heart of the EV P001 . The powertrain includes components from Rational Motion and EVO Electric. We should also see at least some sort of improvement in Toyota’s other electric vehicle offerings, since Pascal Vasselon, TMG’s Technical Director, said in a statement, “We also wanted to learn more about the operation of our electric powertrain in extreme circumstances… We have enhanced our electric powertrain development thanks to the information our engineers have gained and our future EV products will benefit from this project.”
Given the rapid advancements in electric vehicle technology, we’d assume that Toyota’s record will be challenged in the near future, but we don’t expect Toyota to give up its spot without a fight. There’s video of Toyota’s electrifying Nurburgring run .
is almost ready to sell you a . Before it does that, however, it needs your help. The Korean automaker has posted a link that leads you to a configurator for the 2012 Azera, and there is a survey posted at the end. The configurator will give you a good idea of how much the Azera will end up costing, as well as what color choices will be made available.
We built our own 2012 Azera, and think it looks mighty fine in Smoke Gray Metallic with a Graphite Black leather interior. Checking the box for the Premium Package, our prototype Azera would cost us around $36,000.
Check out the configurator for yourself by , and be sure to answer the survey at the end. Maybe your decisions will help dictate what type of car we see when the .
It looks like the next-generation will borrow a few styling elements from the . Our army of spy photographers managed to snap a closer look at the upcoming Exige successor, and the car boasts a low, wide nose borrowed from its V6 sister. In addition, the canyon-carver wears a longer roof line and extended rear that may house the same 280 horsepower six-pot found in the grand tourer, though a 350 horsepower supercharged S variant may be in the works as well. Larger brakes are clearly visible through the spoke wheels and that massive spoiler likely helps generate some much-needed downforce at speed.
When can we expect to lay eyes on a non-camouflaged version of the Exige? Hard telling, but our guess is that it won’t be long before dealers start filling out order forms.
Hurricane Irene was an impressive storm by every measure. Despite losing some of its ferocity before making landfall, the system brought torrential rains to parts of the country that were already suffering from severely saturated soil. As a result, widespread flooding occurred up and down the east coast. One enterprising soul in Oceanside, NY decided to make the most of the situation by taking his out for a little romp down Lawson Boulevard.
Now, we should probably take a moment to point out that playing in flood water is all sorts of dangerous. Besides obvious threats like hidden currents, obstacles and fluctuations in depth, floods also pack all sorts of bacteria washed up from septic and sewer systems. Yummy.
Even so, it looks like this guy is having a blast in his own personal water world. to take a look at the video for yourself, and be sure to consider sending donations to the or relief organization of your choice.
We’ve given a fair amount of flack for the – and justifiably so. All the things we held dear in previous generations – high-end materials, solid driving dynamics and that general sense of premium the Germans do so well – were all nixed in the name of market share.
But as we suspected, it’s working. Jetta sales in the U.S. are up 74 percent over last year as consumers view the redesigned, cut-priced sedan as an upmarket contender to the , and . And honestly, more power to them.
What we’ve really been waiting for is this, the 2012 Jetta GLI. Packing VW’s ubiquitous turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder, a six-speed manual or optional DSG and an independent rear suspension, the GLI is here to assuage enthusiasts’ fears that VW has lost the plot in its relentless pursuit of global market dominance. Just as hasn’t given up on sports cars as it expands into un-Porsche-like segments, neither has VW in its efforts to appeal to more people. But unlike Ferdinand’s second child, we still have the nagging sense that Volkswagen is leaving something on the table – despite the GLI’s potential on paper.
We recently stumbled upon some of what appeared to be a completely uncovered , showing off its new -inspired nose. Now, our intrepid spy photographers have caught a pair of Genesis Coupes out testing in the Death Valley heat, showing off the brand new nose.
These prototypes appear to either be the top-trim Track model or the hardcore R-Spec, featuring large, 19-inch wheels and a set of Brembo brakes. We’ve also managed to get our first glimpse at the coupe’s revised interior, though from the looks of things, not a whole lot has changed (we’ll wait until we see a console shot before drawing conclusions, though).
As for what’s under the hood, a safe bet is that the coupe will get the revised, direct-injected 3.8-liter V6 from the , producing 333 horsepower. Of course, we’re all crossing our fingers that has found a way to shoehorn its new 429-hp 5.0-liter V8 under the two-door’s sleek hood.
The 2013 Genesis Coupe is expected to debut at the in January. Stay tuned for more details.
McLaren Special Operations may sound like a new unit of special forces in the British military, but is, in fact, actually the new client customization division of the supercar manufacturer behind the MP4-12C. We first got wind of the new service at Pebble Beach where it was , one year after the North American debut of the car itself, but now McLaren has unleashed more details and a full batch of photos.
Through the Special Operations division, McLaren is offering its elite clientele a range of customization options for their new exotic. The show car displayed at Pebble Beach, for example, included such special touches as satin matte Volcano Orange paintwork, a gloss black roof, diamond-cut wheels with gloss black inserts, carbon door sills and steering wheel, and extra vents on the front fenders, engine cover and rear deck.
We have a feeling this will only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to customizing new McLarens. After all, as the division’s new director puts it, “We never say no, we just say how much and let the customer decide.” Yes, quite. But for now you can , as well as the full gallery of images – including shots of Jay Leno and the former Governator checking out an MP4-12C decked out in the same chrome finish as McLaren’s Formula One racers – for a closer look.
When Alfa Romeo pulled back the veil on its 4C Concept at the this past March, we were as taken in by its unique matte red finish as we were by the rest of the package. In a few weeks, Alfa will showcase the 4C once again in , and its new paint job – among other things – is sure to impress.
As you can see from the quartet of high-res images released so far, the 4C Concept has been given a “fluid metal” finish that looks similar to the highly sought-after Alubeam paint offers on the . It seems to show the Alfa in a completely different light, one we look forward to scoping out in person at the Messe next month.
Alfa also says it has refined the technical package of the concept. Trimming the fat, as it were, to optimize the power to weight ratio, the aluminum and carbon fiber construction is motivated by over 200 horsepower from the 1.75-liter turbo engine that drives the rear wheels through the company’s new dual-clutch transmission that is also making its debut in the Giulietta. for the full press release.
