We’re all familiar with barn finds, but what happens when carsdon’t have barns to protect them? The results look like ’s photographic series, Paradise Parking, in which four-wheeled classics are shown half digested by the relentlessly hungry matron we call Mother Nature.
Lippmann’s project took two years to put together, and a book of the series will be issued in October. Before that, his photos will be shown at the in Amsterdam. Right now, however, you can find eleven of the shots in our gallery.
NASCAR officials have made the call to postpone the Daytona 500 until Monday, February 27 at 12:00PM EST on account of rain. This marks the first time that the 53-year-old race has been pushed back a day due to weather. The start of the race today was delayed by heavy rains, and while the weather did clear up long enough for track officials to break out their extensive fleet of track-drying trucks, the window didn’t stay open long enough to run The Great American race. Carl Edwards will start on the pole when the race begins at noon tomorrow. Joining him and the rest of the field will be Danica Patrick, who garnered most of the attention the week prior to the race. This year’s season opening race also marks the long-awaited debut of electronic fuel injection to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
has just landed a solid punch in the battle to win over police departments in the post-Crown Vic era. The automaker announced the sale of 500 new Police Interceptor models (a mix of sedans and SUVs) to the Chicago Police Department. The 2013 Interceptor is responsible for the addition of 230 jobs at the Torrence Avenue plant, which is conveniently located in Chicago.
Okay, so the location of the plant likely made the CPD’s vehicle of choice a foregone conclusion, but the latest PI models may also help the department in terms of its fuel expenditures. With an expected fuel economy gain of 25 percent compared to the now-defunct Crown Victoria, and gas prices , the more efficient Interceptor’s arrival is nothing if not timely.
Some municipalities worry that the new Police Interceptors won’t match the old Panther-platform cars’ toughness when it comes to handling the rigors of police use, but Ford counters that its new PI models, a Taurus-based sedan and Explorer-based utility variant, are designed specifically for police work.
The automaker worked with the LAPD and and Michigan State Police to certify the the new vehicles for patrol duty. Departments can choose from of a normally aspirated 263-horsepower 3.5-liter V6 or the turbocharged EcoBoost 3.5 with 365 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque.
When is a teaser no longer a teaser? When there’s no more secret left to hide.
With the emergence of leaked photos and info on the final car, Ferrari’s choreographed striptease of the new F620 GT is basically a moot point. Yes, the usual fanfare will accompany the car’s official unveiling on February 29th, but with , it’s ultimately anticlimactic.
Regardless, Ferrari soldiers on with a follow-up to its first . The new clip gives a good view of the lightweight aluminum skeleton under construction at the Ferrari factory in Maranello.
You can watch the new Ferrari F620 GT “teaser” video , and then just to see the final car in all its glory right now.
On Wednesday, Ferrari will fill in the remaining blanks.
It’s more a rear-lift than a facelift, since only the back end has changed on the 2012 Urban offered in Canada. There are two noteworthy changes for the decontented model, the first being that Suzuki swapped the full-sized spare tire for a temporary “donut” spare and moved it from the rear gate to underneath the floor of the cargo area.
The other big change is the price: a current Vitara JL starts at $28,135 CAD, the revised model goes down in price to $26,995 CAD. For comparison, that new price equates to $27,007 USD, nearly $1,700 more expensive than the base price of the top-dog Grand Vitara Limited AT 4WD, which starts at $25,379 USD here.
It’s been speculated that the changes are meant to lure more female customers (Vitara buyers are 60-percent male). Other specs and features haven’t changed, which appears to make this a stopgap while everyone waits on , which will of the platform.
Long before Jaguar was a five-time Le Mans victor instantly associated with the Leaper icon and cars like the the E-Type, it was Swallow Sidecar, making hexagonal outriders like the one pictured above. When the company got into automobile production it maintained the name Swallow and produced ornately turned-out coupes like the Austin-Swallow, Wolseley-Swallow and the prewar speedster known as the SS-100, the SS standing for Standard-Swallow. It wasn’t until after the war that company head William Lyons would, for obvious reasons, swap the SS tag for Jaguar.
This year is the 90th anniversary of the Swallow Sidecar company, so the Jaguar Heritage Trust is hosting a circuitous Swallow to Jaguar 90th Anniversary driving tour from Coventry to Blackpool. The eight-day jaunt begins September 2, 2012 and is open to any of the marques under the historic Jaguar umbrella, including Swallow, SS, Lanchester, Daimler and Jaguar.
There’s a press release with all the details. And for those who have wondered about the this September, we just spent two days in Coventry walking through the whole collection and we’ll have a report with good news shortly.
invested remarkably in the 928, introduced in 1978, planning for it to supersede the by-then 15-year-old 911. It had a transaxle to keep weight balance 50/50, an instrument binnacle that tilted with the steering wheel, sun visors for rear passengers, polyurethane bumpers that, compared to the chromed monstrosities of the day, actually maintained the car’s lines, and some of the coolest pop-up headlights ever. It’s front-mounted V8 with 297 horsepower got 82 more ponies than the Ferrari 308 GTB.
To sell the car to UK customers in 1980, though, Porsche put together an eight-minute clip that spent as much time on the innovations as it did on women shopping, golfing and driving through a lot of castle driveways.
If you’re ready for “an impression of what motoring in its finest form is like” from the days when you could just “phone your local Porsche dealer, tell him you want a drive and he’ll take care of the rest,” there’s a video for you .
Been wondering what the Infiniti Emerg-E is gonna look like when it takes center stage in Geneva next month? Wonder no more, as the first official photos of the mid-engined, range-extended electric supercar have hit the web.
The pics show a pretty and curvaceous design that holds its own against the likes of the and McLaren MP4-12C; more organic-looking than the sharper lines of cars like the , , and .
Will the concept car’s green drivetrain deliver performance on par with that kind of competition? We’re eager to learn what kinds of numbers Infiniti comes forward with. Regardless, this thing’s already a winner on looks alone. We can’t wait to see it in person.
While the released a couple weeks ago basically showed us nothing, but the latest batch of renderings better communicate what we’ll see at next month’s . Designed by Stile Bertone’s Mike Robinson and named for Giuseppe “Nuccio” Bertone, the concept is based on the 1970 Lancia Stratos Zero concept, a car created under Nuccio’s leadership.
At 1,220 millimeters high, the Nuccio is 7 mm taller than a Ferrari 458. It’s powered by a 4.3-liter V8 making 483 horsepower, which matches the numbers for the engine going into . If past Bertone concepts are instructive, we can expect a lot of surprises from the car when we see it in the metal.
China is ’s second-largest market, so important to the brand that it is building its . Infiniti will also adapt to the local tastes in another way this year when it offers an M37 sedan variant that’s stretched by 150 millimeters for the Chinese market.
By now the Chinese preference for extended-wheelbase vehicles is well known, ’s A6L having left a trail of money that the 5Li, E300L and S80L were quick to follow. The longer Infiniti M will go up against that bunch. Unlike its competitors, however, the M isn’t built in China, so even though it helped Infiniti last year, some suggest the price disparity will handicap its chances.
We’ll know the specifics once the extended-wheelbase M debuts at the Beijing Auto Show in April. A hybrid version after the first model goes on sale in June.
If you managed to read that title without falling into the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” trap, congratulations. You aren’t a child of the ’80s. “Tosh.0″ finally got around to giving Joey, the kid who drove his father’s brand-new through the , a Web Redemption. As it turns out, the story was far worse than anyone imagined. The GT500 didn’t even belong to the family when the gung-ho teen sent it careening through the carpentry. Instead, the local dealer had simply brought the car by to show Joey’s father.
Joey’s dad wound up buying the Eleanor Edition Shelby for $60,000 and immediately had to sink another $30,000 into repairs. It’s unclear whether that figure covered the bathroom Joey also took out in the crash. Ouch.
Daniel Tosh gave Joey his Web Redemption by putting him through a uniquely Californian driving test and pitting him against a too-fast, too-furious Honda S2000 in a unique street race. to check out the interview as well as an expanded and “uncensored” version. In reality, both videos are clearly Not Safe For Work.
is launching a new commercial for the redesigned that will initially air during the Daytona 500 this weekend. This is the first time that the Blue Oval has promoted its pony car on television since it launched the new 2011 Mustang V6 in 2010.
Conventional marketing wisdom might dictate that Ford would use the airtime to promote the 2013 Mustang’s revised design, the 420-horsepower V8 or the pony car’s history of nearly half a decade. Instead, Ford is touting the personalization aspect of the Mustang, counting on the fact that more than four million people have already built their own version using the .
The commercial depicts a real-life version of the customizer, with a variety of bystanders “unleashing their inner Mustang,” turning the car into a custom Mustang GT, or … and at least one tiny dancer injecting a little darkness into her ballerina outfit for a ride worthy of Natalie Portman.
Have a look at the 2013 Mustang commercial for yourself , and let us know whether you think it’s the most effective use of Ford’s ad dollars in the comments section below.
There seems to be no end in sight for the rapidly expanding Racing program. In the past couple of years, the team has branched into Formula One, Indy, GP2, GP3 and a number of GT racing series around the world. Thing is – while IndyCar runs primarily in the United States and F1 is coming here too – none of those endurance championships in which Lotus has been competing have been American. That is, until now.
Teaming up wit Alex Job Racing, Lotus is supporting a factory-backed entry win the GT class of the American Le Mans Series. Together, AJR and Lotus will field a 2012 Lotus GTE running the same black-and-gold livery that has proliferated across the automaker’s entire motorsport division.
AJR has a whopping 39 ALMS race wins and three GT titles to its credit, and will put IndyCar driver Townsend Bell and two-time ALMS Founders Cup winner Bill Sweedler behind the wheel for the full season that will kick off at Long Beach on April 14. for the full press release.
The paradigm has shifted. Normally an automaker’s range-topper gets the latest and greatest technology, but with the introduction of the all-new A-Class, is flipping that order on its head.
At next month’s , Mercedes will show off the next A-Class and with it, its updated COMAND infotainment system. The user interface has undergone a complete overhaul, ditching the black and beige color scheme for a sharp, modern, three-dimensional design and a range of new features and functions, nearly all of which are centered on the iPhone 4S.
The new Digital DriveStyle app allows drivers to stream AUPEO! radio (Europe’s equivalent to Pandora), connect with Facebook and Twitter to read out status updates, find your car in a crowded parking lot and get real-time traffic data and point-of-interest searches through a new Garmin navigation system. All of which is available with the entry-level “Audio 20″ setup.
More intriguingly, Mercedes is the first automaker to support and integrate Apple’s Siri voice-recognition technology, allowing users to make appointments, send text messages and emails, get weather status and access all their songs through voice commands.
While all these features will be limited to the Euro-only A-Class at first, Mercedes says that the iPhone-integrated COMAND Online suite of services will be coming to the B-, and models this fall. for the full details.
Though many may not realize the extent of it, the auto business has been booming in China for a while now. actually sells more vehicles there than they do in the States, and huge market growth in China has been crucial to the bottom lines of all the carmakers that do business there. But according to Fortune, these boon times may be coming to an end.
LMC Automotive predicts that the 2012 vehicle market in China will only be growing at a 9.2-percent rate, less than half of last year’s rate, according to the report. Perhaps more chilling is that the Chinese government wants to , in an effort to shield it’s own domestic industry. While GM and are already established in China, – which does not build cars in the country yet – might be shut out given the new policies, Fortune says.
Then there’s the possibility of an economic crisis in China, fueled by a combination of rapid middle class income growth and the expansion of state-owned companies, which some analysts say could happen in just three years. No matter how you look at it, the gold rush in China is likely coming to its inevitable end.
While we wait for the unveiling of the , the inevitable speculation over what it’s going to look like continues. In broad terms, we already know what we’re going to get in the third generation of Chrysler’s flagship sports car. We’ve seen enough , and to know that the final product is going to look like, well, a Viper – long hood, wide stance, massive grille, big wheels.
Ah, but the details. The big questions concerning and performance specs and such won’t truly be answered until actually rolls out some real cars. But perhaps more importantly, we do have a good sense of the Viper’s new face. Its triangular headlights and triple hood scoops look to raise the aggro level, and those features have been nicely illustrated by one of our readers.
Spen Oner created the rendering you see above, using that Hot Wheels image as its basis. As we noted in our original post about the Hot Wheels car, the wheels are a bit over-sized, and the angle of the shot only accentuates that. We also know that there will be something other than gaping black space in the grille area, as we’ve seen a stylized version of Dodge’s crosshair grille in the .
Thanks to Spen Oner and stay tuned for more news. We promise we’ll do our best to make you sick of the Viper before it’s even released!
It’s been a long while since the guys at Motor Trend went through the trouble of picking the best driver’s car, and for good reason. In order to pull off an actual test with any merit, the publication would need to wrangle some of the most impressive pieces of automotive engineering together on the same track on the same day. When we’re talking about vehicles like the , , , and the like, that can be a daunting feat, even for a rag of MT’s swagger.
The stars aligned, however, and the crew managed to collect the hardware above as well as heathens like the , Porsche 911 GT3 RS, Porsche Cayman R, Audi R8 GT, and the Ford Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca. All told, the collection was worth more than $1.5 million, and Motor Trend took the time to put them all through a battery of grueling performance tests before handing over the keys to a pro driver for a few quick laps at Laguna Seca. Rough times, guys.
The decision-making process has been split into three parts, and Part 1 is . Enjoy.
and the company’s lawyers are nothing if not determined. After a judge smacked down the electric vehicle manufacturer’s and Top Gear for comments made about the range of the , the automaker rallied with a second, amended lawsuit. It didn’t take long for the the same judge to nix the new case, too, saying the amendment was “not capable of being defamatory at all, or, if it is, it is not capable of being a sufficiently serious defamatory meaning to constitute a real and substantial tort.”
That sound? It’s the smack of the judicial backhand.
The judge went on to say drivers know a manufacturer’s claim about range is dependent on driving conditions and habits.
The dustup, as you may recall, began when Top Gear put the Tesla Roadster through its paces on the show’s test track. While Jeremy Clarkson lauded the car’s acceleration, the segment claimed the vehicle ran out of juice after just 55 miles of abuse. That figure is far south of the 200 mile range Tesla claims for the vehicle. CEO Elon Musk called the show “completely phony” not long after the segment aired and brought out the legal guns. The rest, as they say, is history.
has unveiled a prototype version of the upcoming European ahead of the model’s debut at this year’s Geneva Motor Show. As with most prototypes from Honda, the vehicle is a thinly veiled version of the production CUV set to hit dealerships later this year. If the 2012 CR-V looks familiar, it certainly should. At first glance, the tall-riding five door looks to be a carbon-copy of the U.S. market vehicle. Peer a bit closer, however, and you’re likely to notice the Euro prototype wears a grille with a slightly different finish compared to its American cousin.
Our eyes also spot a mildly tweaked lower front fascia with different fog lamp openings and different – dare we say more attractive – headlights to match. Honda isn’t saying much about what sort of drivetrain options European buyers will be able to enjoy once the 2012 CR-V lands. Odds are we’ll have to wait until the official debut next month. In the meantime, for the brief press release and check it out in the gallery.
Rally racing is amazing to watch, and it no doubt it’s blast from behind the wheel. But while we’d love some time behind the wheel of a genuine rally car, we’re guessing that the sport is a lot harder than it looks. Then again, dirt racing looks really easy when Ken Block is behind the wheel.
Block and his seemingly ever-present camera crew hit the 100 Acre Wood course for some practice time before his attempt at a sixth consecutive victory, and the proof is in the video shown here. As you might’ve guessed, there is a lot of high-speed drifting of his , some gratuitous high-definition slow-motion awesomeness and some bonus Alex Gelsomino on the mic. to watch for yourself.
on the 1970 Lancia Stratos Zero concept, a car created under Nuccio’s leadership.
