It’s not every day that a unique debuts. But it sure seems that way. The ultra-high-end automaker cranks out unique one-off versions of the for discerning and well-heeled customers around the world, and this is their latest.
Called the Edition Merveilleux (from the French for “marvelous”), this special Super Sport model is distinguished by an unpainted carbon fiber body, blacked-out alloys and brightwork, and a bright blue interior. It was apparently made for a Chinese buyer named Simon as a 40th birthday present to himself, and stands as the only Super Sport sold to date in China.
The contains about all the information there is to discern on this unique model, and includes personal salutations to the buyer from Bugatti’s chief executive, general manager, sales manager and test driver. to catch a glimpse of how the other half lives.
We considered putting together a holiday gift guide this year, but thought it would be much more fun to give gifts ourselves than recommend what should be given to others. So we rounded up some of our favorite products from the past year and will spend the following week handing them out to you in Six Days of Giveaways.
We’re kicking things off with the (, ), which includes Meguiar’s Ultimate Wash & Wax, ultra plush microfiber wash mitt & Water Magnet microfiber drying towel, Meguiar’s Ultimate Liquid Wax with a soft foam applicator and Supreme Shine Microfiber Towel, and Endurance Tire Gel & applicator. And we’ve got four of these kits to give away.
To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. See below for the complete rules and come back for our next giveaway at 1:00 PM EST on Monday.
HOW TO ENTER
Leave a single comment on this post (if you leave two or more, all of your entries will be disqualified)
You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec)
Limit 1 entry per person during entry period
The entry period ends at 1:00 PM EST on Saturday, December 17th, 2011. We’ll randomly select 4 winners at that time to receive a Meguiar’s New Car Kit valued at $26.99.
Once again, the car versus bike conundrum takes to the track, this time at the behest of the blokes from Auto Express in the UK. is an obvious choice when it comes time to single out a manufacturer, as it offers machines at the pinnacle of performance on both two wheels and four.
And so we have the up against the , lapping the famous Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire, England. With 560 horsepower from its 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 and a curb weight of about 4,300 pounds, the M5 is a formidable competitor. But it’s the bike, with 193 horsepower and a dry weight of just 400 pounds, that takes the power-to-weight crown.
The bike’s advantage can be illustrated this way: 3.0 seconds versus 4.4 seconds. Those are the times it takes the S 1000 RR and M5 to hit 60 miles per hour. But that’s not the whole story. With twice the number of contact patches, the M5 ought to be able to regain plenty of time in the corners and under braking.
Throw in an extremely slippery track surface – wet with a smattering of dead leaves – and we’d expect an awfully tight race. And, despite the conditions making it a bit unfair for the two-wheeler, that’s exactly what we got. to watch it all play out on video. Spoiler alert: The BMW wins.
Need A Bit More Pounce In Your CUV? Mini Has A JCW For That
As part of the ongoing master plan at to attract distinction-seeking buyers who still have some disposable income left, we present the Mini Countryman Cooper S All4 John Cooper Works: the Mini CUV with the mighty long name.
This latest Mini JCW will get its world premiere at this March’s , but we’ve just enjoyed a pre-holiday drive in the remote mountain lair of Kühtai, 6,600 feet up in the Austrian Alps. As you’d expect, there was snow and rocks and animal skin sweat lodges and hot wine, but the Countryman All4 JCW got us out of there and back to our families in the flatlands. Our drive consisted of a two-lane road loop with plenty of overtaking chances and a decently long off-road parcours etched into a local abandoned ski hill.
Thus far, Mini’s strongest JCW model has been gifted with a 208-horsepower version of the BMW/PSA turbocharged 1.6-liter direct injection in-line four-cylinder, dubbed “N18″ as it’s assembled at Mini’s Hams Hall UK factory. Head of chassis development for BMW Group, Heinz Kruche, tells Autoblog that the Countryman will get “around 15 more horses and the same for torque” to help deal with the Countryman’s additional weight. Thus, this 3,200-something pound “Mini” should pack somewhere around 223 horses at 6,000 rpm and 207 pound-feet of torque between 1,850 and 5,600 rpm when it arrives Stateside this June. Good. But is it good enough?
In 2008, a technician at The Centre in Kent, England took a customer’s for a test ride. The tech, Shane Harris, said he was told by the shop owner, Roger Collingwood, to “open her up” and do 100 miles per hour. So Harris opened it up on the A274 highway, and while he didn’t reach 100 mph, he did get up to 80 – and then he crashed. After losing control of the car, Harris plowed into another car and then into a stand of trees.
According to the Telegraph, Harris was paralyzed by the accident and requires around-the-clock care. Now, he’s suing Collingwood for damages. It was part of Harris’ job to take cars for test drives before returning them to customers, but in this case, he says that his employers were negligent and that testing high-performance cars on public roads is “unsafe.”
Collingwood has denied any wrongdoing, saying that all employees are instructed to never break the speed limit. The case goes to court next year.
It’s amazing what a company like can do with what essentially amounts to two product families. Discounting the -built Cygnet and the exclusive One-77, the company’s entire line-up is based around either the Vantage or the . While the latter has also spawned the , the and the , Aston has also done a lot with the former. There’s the , the Vantage S, the and even the exotic V12 Zagato – not to mention countless racing versions.
And then there’s the convertibles. Aston offers open-top versions of just about all of these (save, once again, the Cygnet, One-77 and Rapide). All that’s been missing is a V12 Vantage Roadster, and now word has it that Aston’s got that one in the pipeline for the near future, too.
The formula is pretty simple: taking the mechanical bits from the V12 Vantage coupe and fit the folding fabric roof mechanism from the V8 Vantage Roadster and presto! an open-top twelve-cylinder roadster. And with 510 horsepower on tap, it should make for one heck of a wild ride. We’re told to expect it’s arrival as soon as the this coming March, so stay tuned.
The official IndyCar accident review has been released concerning at Las Vegas earlier this year. Although Wheldon’s head coming into contact with a fence support post was ruled the specific cause of his death, the verdict on the context of the accident is that “multiple factors that are not uncommon to racing that came together in a way that claimed Dan’s life.”
Two days of safety testing had been conducted at the Vegas speedway, but drivers still knew it could be a “hairy” race. The size of the track allowed for a huge field of 34 cars, and the particular geometry of the track not only allowed high speeds, it also meant that there were no ‘racing grooves’ that would channel the cars into some kind of order. That meant ”nearly unlimited movement on the track surface under race conditions.” The ability for drivers to race just about anywhere the banked oval also meant it would be hard for drivers to know where everyone else was, meaning it was problematic to identify any predictable route to safety without standard racing lines.
Wheldon’s car wasn’t the only one to go airborne, nor was it the only one to impact the fence above the SAFER barriers. It just so happened, however, that his cockpit was turned toward the fence as it impacted. The report’s conclusion was that “While several factors coincided to produce a ‘perfect storm,’ none of them can be singled out as the sole cause of the accident. For this reason, it is impossible to determine with certainty that the result would have been any different if one or more of the factors did not exist.”
IndyCar next year, but more testing will be conducted at the track for a potential return in 2013. Additionally, the Dallara chassis entering the series next year has been engineered to address issues with wheel-to-wheel contact.
The fate of continues to twist in the air, as Autocar reports that the Swedish court-appointed administrator Guy Lofalk has decided to step down. The news of Lofalk’s requested exit from the hearings comes but one week after he applied to have Saab .
If Lofalk succeeded in taking Saab out of reorganization, the automaker would have had less than a week to submit a plan to the Swedish District Court outlining how it will find the money to keep the doors open. Saab wasn’t at all happy with Lofalk’s request, and now the struggling automaker has a little bit of a breather. The Vanersborg District Court has decided to postpone the decision to approve Lofalk’s application on Monday, and his replacement Lars-Henrik Andersson is likely to be appointed the same day.
With the slight delay in the courts, Saab now has more time to pursue additional loans. Since with Chinese partners, Saab parent Swedish Automobile CEO Victor Muller is reportedly looking for an $800 million loan from Chinese investors and unnamed banks.
UPDATE: According to , a Swedish court has apparently ruled against the planned administrator switch, saying that Lofalk is not allowed to quit his job because the process is too far along. The court is still expected to rule on Monday whether or not to extend Saab’s protection from creditors.
is recalling thousands of F-Series pickup trucks from the 2011 and 2012 model years over a transmission problem that, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “fails to comply with the requirements of federal motor vehicle safety standard number 114, theft protection.” NHTSA reports that the transmissions in these defective trucks can be shifted out of the park position without pressing the brake pedal due to a problem with the brake shift interlock switch.
Affected models include built between September 9 and September 22, 2011, as well as trucks built between September 12 and September 22, 2011. A total of 16,091 trucks are included in this recall.
Ford dealers will inspect – and if necessary, replace – the brake shift interlock switch on these affected vehicles, free of charge. The official recall is expected to kick off in the coming days. for NHTSA’s official release.
Many eyebrows were raised when Red Bull jumped from sponsoring existing F1 teams to buying its own 2005, but then the energy-drink giant surprised the pundits again by buying an unprecedented second team in 2006. So why’d they do it? To give the aspiring talents, which the outfit nurtures through its extensive young driver development program, a leg up into the pinnacle of motorsport.
That’s what has prompted Scuderia Toro Rosso to change its drivers from time to time, but it usually does so one driver at a time. But the upcoming season marks a drastic change for the team, which has just dumped its current drivers in favor of an entirely fresh line-up.
In the place of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi, STR will be fielding newcomers Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne for the 2012 championship. Both are known entities among Toro Rosso’s engineers, having tested for the team previously: Ricciardo as the team’s official back-up driver, and Vergne as the team’s nominee for the Abu Dhabi young driver test this season.
Australia’s Ricciardo also drove eleven races this season for HRT, and both he and France’s Vergne are former champions of the British Formula Three series. As for Alguersuari and Buemi, well, they both drove admirably these past few seasons, but with months still to go before the start of the new season, hopefully they’ll find drives elsewhere.
You’d think that a professional driver’s skills would be universal. You’d also think that the rules regarding drinking and driving would apply the same to the water as they would to the road. But as it turns out neither is necessarily the case.
The point is driven home by the conviction in Finland of one JJ Lehto. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because it belongs to an accomplished racing driver. Although Lehto only managed a single podium finish over the course of seven years in F1, he also raced in CART (today known as the IndyCar Series) and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice.
Back in June 2010, Lehto and a friend were traveling at apparently high velocity via speedboat through a canal in Finland when their boat struck a bridge support. JJ was injured, but his friend was killed. While Lehto’s defense attorneys claimed he was not driving the boat at the time, the courts evidently felt otherwise.
Ruling that he was both speeding and operating the powerboat while intoxicated, the courts sentenced him to two years and four months in prison. Lehto’s lawyer is appealing the ruling, but if the verdict sticks, Lehto will be one of the few former grand prix drivers in history to be put behind bars.
What makes an an Aston Martin? Well, it has to be made by Aston Martin, to start with. But just what does that brand stand for? Performance, on the one hand, and luxury on the other, because Aston Martin doesn’t exactly build extreme supercars, it crafts luxury GTs with prodigious levels of performance capabilities on tap.
And then there’s the Cygnet. Mechanically the same as the Toyota iQ on which it’s based, the Cygnet packs less than 100 horsepower – the next model up in the Aston Martin catalog has more than four times that. But Aston is keen to demonstrate that the Cygnet still offers the same levels of exclusivity, elegance, luxury and fine craftsmanship as its bigger brothers.
Whether it succeeds in convincing is up to you, so check out the pair of to see for yourself.
Most vehicles stay on the market for a good six or more years before they’re replaced. But isn’t most automakers. The Korean brand has a lot to prove, and as it turns out they’re intent on doing just that by keeping their product portfolio fresh.
That’s why, though the current sedan has only been on the market since 2009, Kia is already planning on replacing it in the new year with a 2013 model. And this could be our first look at it.
Reportedly leaked in four-door guise, this trio of renderings shows a rather svelte-looking design that borrows some of the dynamic approach of its big brothers at , with a steeply raked windshield and the new family grille already familiar from the .
It’ll be a while before the new model debuts, but for now this will just have to keep our interests piqued.
Even if hasn’t exactly made its Hemera SUV beautiful, it has kept it on a consistently delivered timeline. The boutique British company showed off the Hemera, it’s -Turbo-S-based “SUV meets ” at the , and now says the final version will rock up to the in April before going on sale later this year.
According to Autocar, only a tiny amount of those sales, though, will take place outside of China: Eterniti plans a first-year run of 50 Hemeras, with 90 percent of them booked for China. The last five of them will be split between Russia, the Middle East and Europe. They could also be paying a little more than previously reported, with the Frankfurt price tag of £150,000 ($240,000 U.S.) now quoted as “above £150,000.”
And that’s before the bespoke options are arranged on top of the four climate-controlled seats, wireless iPad integration and drink chiller. The 23-inch lightweight wheels, however, won’t be extra – shod in low-profile tires they’re said to provide a sporting yet refined ride.
Depending on your point of view, autonomous cars are either long overdue or a technology to be avoided at all cost. We see both sides of the argument, but a recent patent secured by tech giant Google may mean the best of both worlds.
describes a vehicle that can switch from regular human-operated driving to autonomous mode at the push of a button. Sort of. First, the operator needs to direct the machine to a predefined “landing strip.” There, a “reference indicator” (think of something like a QR code affixed to the road) would combine with GPS coordinates to allow the vehicle to know its exact location.
If the stars are aligned and the moon is in the seventh house everything is found to be in working order, Google could send the car directions on where to go and how exactly to get there.
Naturally, there’s a ton of technical mumbo jumbo in the patent, and if you’re game, you can . As pointed out by ConceivablyTech, Google is packing plenty of uber-smart star power behind this technology, so we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see cars autonomously taking occupants on short trips within a relatively short period of time. Just so long as we can switch it off when the roads get good…
The stereotype of elderly drivers preferring Lincolns and Buicks has to come from somewhere. took a look at the past two years of car sales to buyers at least 65 years old and found a couple common threads. The first thing these buyers are looking for is familiarity. The nameplates and vehicle types that were popular when these buyers were younger rank high with senior buyers, kind of the same way people’s musical preferences get frozen in time.
Value is also a big attractor for the senior dollar, a consideration for buyers nearing the end of their careers or already on fixed incomes. The brand names on the list may not surprise anyone, though the Cadillac and Buick brands high scores show that those divisions’ push for a younger average buyer age hasn’t put off longstanding customers. In fact, there are some models that owe their continued existence to this older demographic.
So which cars are they? Hit the gallery and find out.
Starting a new automaker from scratch is no easy feat. is a visionary designer, but to get his luxury hybrid on the road, he knew he’d need a good management team behind him. So he brought in and native Bernhard Koehler as Chief Operating Officer, number cruncher Joe DaMour as Chief Financial Officer and former marketing chief Richard Beattie as the company’s new Chief Commercial Officer. And now Fisker Automotive has added another name to the roster: Tom LaSorda.
No, we’re not talking about the Los Angeles Dodgers coach here. We’re talking about the former chief who managed Detroit’s No. 3 automaker starting in the days, through the Cerberus period and helped broker the sale to . Prior to that, the Canadian-born auto exec spent years working for GM, but in his new role at Fisker, he’ll be acting primarily in an advisor capacity as Vice-Chairman of the Board and Chairman of its Strategic Council.
LaSorda will undoubtedly have some experience to impart on the upstart automaker, and since his role will be principally to provide advice, hopefully the Karma’s build quality and panel gaps will be a bit better than a Sebring’s. Follow the jump for the full press release.
Combining electric propulsion with a performance orientation is a delicate balance. Tesla managed to pull it off to some success. has toyed with the idea with its E-Tron concepts. And some have been experimenting with bringing F1’s KERS regenerative braking system to road-going sports cars.
, for its part, tried to nail it down with the , which was supposed to be a hybrid sport-hatch, but like the , it ended up lacking in the “sport” part of the equation. Which is why this latest development has caught our attention.
Just a few weeks ago at the , Honda showed off a tempting little package called the . The concept spoke of a zippy little ride around town, all on electric power. Now, reports are indicating that, based on positive feedback from the show, Honda has already decided to green-light the project and put it into production. Sources suggest it will be ready sometime in the new year ahead, and could offer a more conventional gasoline engine in addition to the electric powertrain.
Of course none of this is to say that Honda would bring the production EV-STER to the North American market, but we’ll be excited if it gets built at all.
When you get more, you usually expect to pay more. But that’s hardly the case with the latest . Despite representing a comprehensive revision of the previous model and packing more features, American Honda has only increased the popular CUV’s base price by an average of $181. Models equipped with the navigation system have actually dropped by $300, on average.
In the grander scheme of things, the base CR-V LX 2WD starts at $22,295 (*not including $810 for destination), while the top-of-the-line EX-L AWD model with navigation comes within spitting distance of the $30k mark. for the press release to view the full breakdown through the various trim levels.
Congress is gearing up for a comprehensive overhaul of the , implementing some significant safety measures for automobiles along the way. The campaign, encouraged by safety advocates for over a year now, has gained significant ground as the Senate Commerce Committee endorsed a series of measures which it will seek to incorporate into a highway reauthorization bill due for approval early in the new year.
According to The Detroit News, measures approved by the committee include significantly stiffer fines for automakers delaying necessary recalls. Currently the maximum fine that can be imposed in such instances is $17.35 million, but the new regulations would up that to a whopping $250 million. Naturally, many automakers are opposing this particular measure, but they are, however, backing an additional regulation that would equip all new vehicles with ‘black box’ data recorders.
Automakers aren’t the only ones targeted by the new measures, however, as the new regulations would also increase fines for using electronic devices (like mobile phones) while behind the wheel, and up the penalty tenfold for fraudulently rolling back a car’s odometer.
The bill, sponsored by two Democrat senators, would take at least a year to be put into effect should it be voted into law.
