About a month ago we reported that at the NUMMI plant to see firsthand the progress being made at the automaker’s new California factory. Many of those buyers even got the chance to drive pre-production beta models of the Model S. It’s the least Tesla could do to ease the minds of buyers who have already dropped $5,000 for a vehicle that won’t arrive for another year. Now we know that those 1,500 buyers are but a fraction of overall early orders.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has just announced that the is completely sold out for 2012, with 6,500 models already accounted for. Bloomberg reports that Musk gave the update on pre-sales during an interview on “In The Loop With Betty Liu.” Musk added that most of those buyers were new to the Tesla brand, save for about 600 owners. That’s a lot of potential good news for Tesla, and Musk wasn’t finished. The tech startup mogul also added that Tesla could see an annual profit by 2013 – a lot quicker than many analysts expected.
News of Tesla’s pre-sale orders and the prospect of short-term profits helped jump-start shares of the EV company’s stock by 3.9 percent.
Spotting celebrities at a Formula One grand prix is nothing new. The glitzy racing series in often exotic locales attracts the rich and famous like proverbial flies to honey.
The cameras rarely turn to the celebs present for race commentary, but then Rowan Atkinson is no ordinary celebrity. He’s a celebrity who drives a McLaren F1, gets to lend him their sixteen-cylinder prototype and tops the Top Gear “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” leaderboard.
Mr. Bean himself was in attendance for this past weekend’s inaugural Indian Grand Prix, where ’s Felipe Massa and McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton got at it again with disastrous consequences. The look on Atkinson’s famously expressive face said it all. to watch the clip.
Considering how long the has been in production, we’re surprised that nobody thought of this sooner. The enthusiasts at Omix-Ada Inc. have designed what they’re calling the world’s first power folding soft top kit for the beloved Wrangler, which can be fitted to any 2007-2012 model year four-door model. (The company says a kit for the two-door Wrangler is expected to arrive later in 2012.)
The Rugged Ridge package comes complete with a vinyl top, power top frame, hydraulics, wiring harness and installation pack, and the top itself includes a zip-out, removable, tinted rear window. Omix-Ada says the whole kit comes ready to install with “no fuss or mess.”
We can’t help but notice that the top looks sort of flimsy during operation, but nevertheless, it’s a neat aftermarket tweak to one of the most iconic off-roaders ever to grace our roads (and trails). We’re not sure how well the hardcore purists will receive something like this, but there are plenty of people buying four-door Wranglers as lifestyle vehicles, too. Check out a pair of videos showing the power folding top in action, along with Omix-Ada’s press release.
It may be before the next-generation comes rumbling in, all 8.7 liters of it. But even though there is no Viper currently on offer, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some V10 power to be had. If you’re a drag racer, anyway.
The Group’s performance catalog division Mopar has just announced the availability of a V10 crate engine designed for drag racers, and the figures are positively mind-blowing. The Competition crate engine – hand-built and ordered up as Part Number P5144872 – offers a staggering 800 horsepower and 695 lb-ft of torque. Mind you, that’s coming out of 512 cubic inches (8.4 liters) of displacement, which is staggering in and of itself, but amounts to 95 horsepower per liter. Which is a lot, but not by racing standards.
Those who enjoy their ten cylinders of power away from the drag strip can opt for a 150-horsepower upgrade kit for the MkIII Viper that takes output up to 650 hp. There’s also a new high-output, aluminum-block 426 Hemi V8 available with 590 horsepower, an adapter kit that allows the Hemi to drive the front wheels(!) and a body-in-white for race teams. Check out the full details in the press release after the jump.
Good brakes may be less important in stock car racing than in other forms of motorsport, but on a plane, they’re pretty darn important. That’s what Rick Hendrick found out – the hard way – last night when his private jet crashed off the runway in Key West, Florida.
Hendrick’s Gulfstream G150, registered to Jimmie Johnson (one of Hendrick’s star drivers), slid straight off the runway and almost into the water when its brakes apparently failed upon landing. On board together with the NASCAR team owner were his wife Linda and two pilots. Fortunately, CNN reports that no one was seriously injured.
The incident must have been especially traumatic for the Hendricks, who lost seven members of their family – including their son Ricky who drove for and ran the team with his dad – in a 2004 plane crash. However, the Hendricks aren’t the only ones to have been affected by plane crashes: Fellow NASCAR team owner two such incidents, while off-road racer and his brother Jeff were killed in a small plane crash in California a couple of weeks ago.
Click past the jump to watch an Associated Press report on the crash.
We’re expecting to finally see the production version of the sports car at the in early December, but not before the automaker teases us with one more concept. At this year’s , will unveil this, the BRZ Concept – STI (yes, that’s its official name), showing what the automaker’s in-house tuner can do with the all-new, lightweight, rear-wheel drive sports car.
Curiously, the STI team has chosen to leave the BRZ’s 2.0-liter naturally aspirated Boxer four untouched. A shame, since a turbocharged version of the all-new powerplant would certainly make sense for an STI-badged version of the car. Subaru has, however, fitted upgraded suspension bits, new Brembo brakes and larger 18-inch wheels.
The neat thing about the STI Concept is that this is actually the first time we’ve seen the Subaru’s exterior design – we’ve only seen full models of the of this car. We like what we see so far, though we’re not exactly blown away. Then again, we probably shouldn’t expect much from an automaker that hasn’t exactly been known for aesthetics over the years. Of course, this being the STI version, a large wing has been fitted to the rear deck, and the car is painted in a new evolution of Subaru’s classic blue, called WR Blue Pearl II.
We’ll see the car in person in just two weeks, but for now, for Subaru’s press release and see some official renderings of the BRZ STI in our attached high-res image gallery.
This isn’t really shocking news – we’ve known that has been working on a of its new for quite some time – but it’s nice to have official confirmation directly from CEO John Krafcik and via a live announcement at SEMA. The highly anticipated 2013 Veloster Turbo will debut at the in January, reportedly alongside a refreshed .
The Veloster Turbo will – surprise, surprise – be powered by Hyundai’s new 1.6-liter inline four-cylinder engine that was in Korea. That engine’s previously announced spec is 204 horsepower – 66 more horsepower than the standard Veloster’s naturally aspirated inline four. Assuming the model gets some other upgrades along with it, the turbocharged hatchback should be a pretty enthusiastic steer.
As for the updated Genesis Coupe, Car and Driver says that Krafcik has confirmed the base 2.0-liter turbo-four and naturally aspirated 3.8-liter V6 will get power increases (the V6 will likely get the same 333-hp treatment that the received), and from the we’ve seen, we can expect the coupe’s styling to be more akin to that of the smaller Veloster. We’ll have the full details come January.
Some of the industrial giants in Japan make all sorts of things. Yamaha, for example, makes everything from motorbikes to grand pianos. does lawnmowers, business jets and everything in between. does cars and they do outboard motors. But seldom do these competencies overlap. Feast your eyes, then, on the exception.
The brainchild of a group of students from Ohio Technical College, the Marine Concept is making its debut at in Las Vegas right now. The idea was to bring Suzuki’s automotive and marine powertrain divisions together in one package, but we kinda wish they hadn’t.
The vehicle features an open roof, motorboat-style side glass, a big brush guard, knobby tires, a nautical-style radar arch, a rather strange bass boat paint job and – for some reason – an outboard engine hanging off the back. So does that mean it’s amphibious? Not quite. Which means if you drive it into the water, it will, in all likelihood, sink to the bottom. Hmmm….
As fast as tarmac and competing drivers can vanish behind you in Formula One racing, so can the unfortunate events of the past. In some cases, anyway. Flavio Briatore may still be banned from the sport due to his involvement in the Crashgate debacle, but Mike Coughlan is making short business of putting his scandal behind him, and returning to F1 racing in a big way.
As you may recall, Coughlan was a central figure in the Spygate scandal between McLaren and . While waiting for his suspension to expire, he went over to NASCAR and helped Waltrip engineer some new cars. Then when the coast was clear, he with Williams. That resulted in a , but now that that’s all , Williams has confirmed Coughlan as its new technical director – the #2 position in any F1 team.
It’s a move that’s been anticipated by many ever since Coughlan was as chief engineer back in May, around the same time that outgoing technical director Sam Michael left the team. But the announcement – made by company chairman Adam Parr at this weekend’s Indian Grand Prix – is hardly the end of the rumors circulating around Williams.
Back in September we on rumors that Kimi Raikkonen was negotiating a potential return to Formula One with Williams. The 2007 world champion left the series after the 2009 championship when Ferrari wanted to make room for Fernando Alonso. Since then he’s been racing in the World Rally Championship and in NASCAR, biding his time until he could find a top team with a shot at the title with which he could return to the series he once dominated.
Those rumors are now intensifying, suggesting that Kimi could be brought in to replace Rubens Barrichello and partner with the young Pastor Maldonado. If true, they’d ostensibly demonstrate tremendous faith on Raikkonen’s part in a team that was once at the very top and has been clawing its way back up ever since.
While its styling has refined over successive generations, you don’t buy a for how it looks. You buy one for how it works. And the same could be said of a BlackBerry. The favorite communications tool of businesspeople worldwide and a number of private consumers as well, the BlackBerry is – like a Porsche – more about function than form. Leave it to Porsche Design, then, to up its style factor.
Having already produced phones on its own, Porsche Design has long been rumored to be working on a project for Research In Motion, the Canadian company responsible for unleashing the addictive device upon the world. And here it is.
The co-branded “Porsche Design P’9981 Smartphone from BlackBerry” packs a 1.2 GHz processor, HD video camera, eight gigs of internal (expandable) memory, a QWERTY keyboard and BlackBerry 7 OS into a slick forged stainless steel case with leather back and a touch display screen. A personal concierge service is included with the P’9981, which still doesn’t make its estimated $2,000 price tag any more reasonable. Then again, it’s the kind of thing you’d expect a style-conscious business executive to be talking on when he cuts you off in his . Details in the press release .
We’re almost ready to record Episode #254 of the Autoblog Podcast. Check out the topics below and you can join us live via , as well. We’ve also embedded our UStream player . Thanks for listening!
Discussion Topics for Autoblog Podcast Episode #254
What’s a COPO, you ask? Back in the heyday of American muscle cars, COPO was an acronym for Central Office Production Order, which was, for all intents and purposes, a way for and its enterprising dealer network to sneak high-performance option packages and oversize engines past the bigwigs at and into the waiting hands of automotive enthusiasts.
With ancient history out of the way, what’s COPO mean in 2011? Well, it still means performance, but there’s certainly no way Chevy is going to bypass the powers-that-be at GM HQ, especially not with a Camaro proof-of-concept that’s destined to live out its life at the drag strip in NHRA Stock Eliminator drag racing competition.
According to Jim Campbell, GM U.S. vice president of Performance Vehicles and Motorsports, the COPO Camaro that is debuting this week at “is a clear indication that Chevrolet intends to homologate the Camaro for sportsman drag racing.” Seems pretty clear to us, too – in lieu of the standard independent rear suspension setup is a straight axle that’s perfectly suited to straight-line racing. Plus, there’s a full roll cage for safety.
Buyers of the COPO Camaro, if and when it becomes available, will be able to fit one of two suggested engine packages: one 427-cubic-inch naturally aspirated V8 (7.9 liters for A Stock racing) and one 327-cubic-inch supercharged V8 (5.3 liters for for AA Stock racing). The car you see in our live images is powered by a prototype version of the supercharged 327.
In a world where physics holds no sway, one cop is ready to take on corrupt politicians and the mobsters that pay them off… or something. Honestly, we don’t care about the plot to Singham – a Bollywood remake of the 2010 Tamil film of the same name. What we do enjoy is watching two Mahindra SUVs playing bit parts in an action-adventure that’s one part Lethal Weapon and two parts Naked Gun. If nothing else, the lead character is inspiring a last minute revision to our Troopers Halloween costume. Check out the absolute best part of the film .
It’s not every day that comes out with a new . The roadster that anchors the top of the company’s non-AMG production range tends to enjoy an unusually long lifecycle. The iconic first-generation Gullwing was on the market for ten years. The second-gen model lasted just eight years, but the third iteration was around for a whopping eighteen. The boxy fourth version was around for fourteen years, and the current model that replaced it has been on the market since 2003, with a facelift that came in 2008.
Fortunately, a new model is on its way and should put the MkV out to pasture after ten long years of service. Due sometime next year as a 2013 model, these are the clearest shots we’ve seen yet of what to expect.
Now stripped of all but a bare minimum of disguising, the 2013 SL looks a bit more svelte than the model it replaces, though that doesn’t tell us if it’ll be any lighter: the current two-seat folding hardtop convertible weights as much as some SUVs. The more upright front grille is both a nod to the and likely a measure to comply with pedestrian-impact regulations enacted in Europe.
It looks as though LEDs are lurking in the lower front intakes on either side, with what seems like it could house a side intake behind the front wheels. The test mule is draped in a new shade of copper we haven’t seen before, and we suspect that those unflattering wheels are temporary. Take a gander yourself in our high-res gallery.
Hemmings reports that Craig Breedlove is preparing to jump back into the land speed record game in an attempt to break through the 800 mph barrier. Breedlove made a name for himself while vying with Art Arfons for the world land speed record back in the ’60s. His efforts eventually landed him the title in his jet-powered Sonic 1, and he would later set a total of 23 FIA speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in a 1965 Shelby Daytona Coupe. Breedlove was recently named the recipient of the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum Spirit of Competition Award, becoming only the third individual to receive the award since its inception.
During the ceremony, the racer announced that he intends to return to Bonneville in 2013 – the 50th anniversary of his first record on the salt flats – with someone else at the controls. Breedlove already has a pair of GE jet engines lying around as well as some of the engineering necessary to put the power units to work in a LSR car. At this point, it’s unclear exactly who will pilot Breedlove’s new machine or what the design will look like, but a motorsports legend returning to the scene of his greatest triumph is something worth keeping tabs on, even if he isn’t in the driver’s seat.
For a quick refresher on Breedlove in his glory days, watch the excellent in-period video of a 1963 record-breaking effort .
NASCAR and New York may strike you as diametrically opposite pillars of modern America. But if Formula One can race in Texas, surely NASCAR can race in New York, right?
F1 has recently announced two new races in the United States: the U.S. Grand Prix slated to race in Austin, Texas, for the first time next year, and the Grand Prix of America that will follow a year later in West New York and Weehawken, New Jersey. In other words, F1 racing is coming to two very different parts of the country. So surely NASCAR can as well.
The stock car racing series is already big in the South, but while series organizers have in the past sought a location closer to New York to mount a race, that probably won’t be happening any time soon. According to The Wall Street Journal, organizers feel they’re already reaching their target audience through the races they have in place, and that expansion into new markets wouldn’t be prudent given the lagging economy.
So if you’re a NASCAR fan stuck far away from the racing action in the Big Apple, it looks like you’ll still have to make the trek upstate to Watkins Glen or out to New Hampshire.
We record Episode #254 of the Autoblog Podcast tonight, and you can drop us your questions via our Q&A module below. Check out our discussion topics or chime in to help determine what else the crew chats about this evening. Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast if you haven’t already done so, and if you want to take it all in live, tune in to our (audio only) channel at 10:00 PM Eastern tonight.
Discussion Topics for Autoblog Podcast Episode #254
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