Probably the less said about this video, the better. According to the video uploader, the event takes place during the “Still Ballin’ Car Club Nite Out” (yes, really), but we aren’t sure if it’s a proper race or just for show. Heck, we can’t even figure out where the event took place.
At any rate, a pair of drivers are seriously going at it when what looks to be a 240SX pulling up the rear clips a corner and does some unintended tumbling. Thankfully, the driver was apparently alright. We’ll leave it at that – to see what happens. Beware, there’s some explicit language in the video, including the music.
It’s that time of year, ladies and gents, when Formula One teams begin unveiling their new cars for the upcoming season. But while top teams like and McLaren usually compete for the first slot, this time it’s Caterham that has beat them all to the punch by revealing its new CT01.
Caterham, as you may recall, is the new name of what was known until now as Team , a name which has now been reclaimed from the Malaysian outfit that was using it through a contentious licensing agreement by the British automaker and engineering consultancy (which has now taken over the team formerly known as Renault). Got all that?
Bearing a similar green and yellow livery and much of the same design as last year’s Lotus, the CT01 represents some of the changes you can expect to see across the board as the rest of the field fills out. That includes a rather odd-looking stepped nose design and reshaped rear quarters (due largely to the ban on exhaust-blown diffusers).
Underneath the bodywork – shaped in the Williams wind tunnel – sits the same Renault RS27 V8 engine that will be used this season by Red Bull, Lotus and Williams, coupled for the first time (for this team) to a Kinetic Energy Recovery System on the brakes and a Red Bull-sourced seven-speed sequential gearbox.
Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli will return for driving duties once the season kicks off in March. Before then, McLaren is expected to unveil its new MP4-27 on February 1, Scuderia Ferrari and Force India on February 3, Lotus on the fifth, Sauber and Red Bull on the sixth, and on the February 21, with the remaining teams yet to announce the dates for their unveilings. Stay tuned.
is set to introduce a new top-of-the-line pickup at the 2012 Chicago Auto Show next month. The Ram Laramie Limited treats buyers to all the niceties we’ve come to expect from the so-called “ultrapremium” truck segment. Leather seats with contrasting piping, piano-black trim, LED ambient lighting and unique gauges are all part of the package, as are deep berber carpet floor mats. Look for the Ram Laramie Limited to bow with navigation, remote start, a backup camera, power adjustable pedals, along with heated steering wheel and seats. Even rear passengers will stay toasty thanks to seat heaters of their very own.
says the Ram Laramie Limited is a more understated alternative to the brash Laramie Longhorn. As such, the newest line addition comes packing somewhat more conservative exterior badges. That means the usual Hemi, Cummins and Ram hardware has been scrapped. Ram hasn’t completely turned its back on bling, however. The new Laramie Limited rides on 20-inch forged aluminum wheels. The vehicle will be available in 1500, 2500 HD and 3500 HD configurations when in launches in the second quarter of 2012. for the full press release.
This Midsize Cat Discreetly Blows Away its Competitors
The spotlight always shines on the superstars. These are the cars with the most powerful engines, largest wheels and most radical bodywork. In the midsize luxury sedan market, the brightest illumination falls on the flagships such as the , , , and . These four-doors not only frequently secure the cover shots and garner the lion’s share of publicity, they also carry hefty window stickers.
But take a look past the flared wheel arches, side skirts and rear decklid spoilers and drop down a big notch in price. There you will find the unexpected sleepers – vehicles that appear much like their standard siblings yet pack serious firepower under the hood and all the proper go-fast equipment to tame it.
While not everyone in the midsize luxury sedan segment offers a contender in this niche (Audi and Cadillac only muster six-cylinder power), the BMW 550i, Mercedes-Benz E550 4Matic and this Jaguar XF Supercharged we recently spent a week with are prime examples of four-doors ripe for the discreet enthusiast.
The looks like it could be a hit with car buyers, and job seekers near the automaker’s Belvidere, Illinois plant can likely appreciate the new sedan as well. The Detroit Free Press reports that is looking to staff up with 400 to 500 jobs to help move as many Dart variants as possible.
Team Pentastar is looking for part-time hourly and full-time temporary workers to fill those roles. We’re guessing the United Auto Workers union isn’t all that pleased with the choice of temp workers, but we’re betting that most job-seekers will be happy to fill out an app anyway. Chrysler was considering moving the Belvidere facility to three shifts, but the automaker reportedly decided to stick with two very busy shifts, at least for now.
“I don’t think we’re very enamored with being Number One just to be Number One,” Global Marketing Vice President Jim Farley says of his expectations for the . Interest in the Fusion spiked after the 2013 model’s premium-look sheetmetal made a splash at this month’s , so it’s natural to expect that Ford wants to grab the sales volume brass ring. After all, the was the best-selling car in the U.S. for nearly half of the 1990s, but Farley points out that Ford is “much more enamored with getting the right price point and the right kind of people to buy the car.”
Simply put, that means that while Ford is to the AutoAlliance International facility in Flat Rock, MI, success won’t be measured just by total units sold. Besides, even with the added capacity, Ford’s 400,000 per year full-tilt capability still trails the 500,000 models can assemble in Kentucky and Indiana. Ford apparently thinks it’s smarter to focus on the technology, style, and efficiency that customers will pay more for, rather than forcing dealers to take more cars than they want and dumping the rest into fleets just to get the sales crown.
Instead of crowing about a short-term metric that ultimately cheapens the brand image and drives down resale values, Ford’s posture suggests they want to drive continued profitability by getting more money per sale than the competiton. Finding tech savvy buyers will mean spending heavy dollars on digital marketing campaigns, including social media, and for a change, that may mean strong Fusion sales in markets that don’t traditionally embrace the Blue Oval as strongly as the stalwart support of the midwest.
We have to agree that profit-per-vehicle and a good reputation strikes us as a better strategy to long-term health than a strategy based on volume dominance, but we’re guessing that Farley and company would still be pleased as punch if the Fusion managed to outsell the competition.
When Tata’s purchase of and began to appear inevitable, the question “Would you buy a Jaguar made in India?” was oft repeated. Yet it looks like Land Rover will be the first of the two brands to try to benefit from this kind of Anglo-Indian synergy: a report in states that the 2015 Land Rover Defender will be built at Tata’s .
The Defender is a truly old school body-on-frame SUV that sells in small numbers compared to the rest of the Land Rover line. But it has benefitted from technology, and, like the , a warm place in people’s hearts. If it’s going to be around, though, LR would like to move more of them. Building the next generation model in Pune – with final assembly of some examples in England, a reverse of what’s done now with products like the knockdown Freelander 2 (read: ) – could give the Defender’s bottom line the boost it needs, as well as close proximity to Middle Eastern and Asian markets.
It is expected that the next Tata Aria SUV will be close enough in dimensions and manufacturing to share the same facility with the the 2015 Defender. They will remain two distinct vehicles – the Defender will likely go on the T5 ladder chassis that underpins the Discovery/ and , and is predicted to have the general features of the . The current Defender is slated to remain on sale until 2017, and will likely be built in Solihull, England until then.
Last May we went for , a modified that can click of two-minute laps without the driver touching the controls. Now, has packed a with the next iteration of the technology and taken it on to the open road.
This latest ConnectedDrive experiment uses much of the same tech, but beyond the radar and camera systems on the 3er, it includes new ultrasonic scanners and lasers to re-read the road surface, lines and surrounding vehicles. We say “re-read” because like the system we sampled at Laguna, this version needs to have the road data downloaded into the car before it can drive sans human intervention.
Still, out on the autobahn it appears to work well, slowing for traffic, accelerating up to speed and performing lane changes when necessary. It’s still too early to tell if the system will ever gain widespread adoption – particularly given the need for advance road data – but the 2013 BMW i3 will be equipped that will steer, accelerate and brake the city car up to 25 mph in congestion, so the functionality is on its way, just not at autobahn speeds. Check out the demo in the video .
If you’re going to make a mid-engined supercar, you’ve got to make a roadster version. You simply have to, and that’s all there is to it. does with the , just as it did with the F430, 360, 355 and 348 before it. does with the . does with the . And soon McLaren will with the MP4-12C. We know it will – it’s just a matter of time. And now it appears that time is coming up soon.
Caught by in spy shots by Britain’s Car magazine, the MP4-12C Spyder carries a folding solid roof mechanism – not unlike that found in the 458, but unlike the Ferrari’s, does not hide the engine. That’s because the system is more of a targa top. It’s reportedly being built for McLaren by Webasto and – intriguingly enough – , made of aluminum and plastic, and can deploy or retract in about 17 seconds while rolling at up to five mph.
Otherwise it’s expected to be mechanically identical to the fixed-roof version, complete with twin-turbo 3.8-liter V8 pumping 592 horsepower and 442 lb-ft of torque to the rear wheels. Expect the 12C Spyder to roll out some time later this year – in time for the summer, if McLaren’s as smart and quick about it as it is with most things.
The field of cars entered in the British Touring Car Championship has grown incredibly in the last year or two. But as quintessentially British as the series is, few of those automakers represented on the grid are actually, you know… British. But that’s all about to change with the latest entry from MG.
Now you might look at MG’s current line-up of ho-hum Chinese econo-boxes and lament at how far the brand has fallen since its heyday of building quirky yet iconic roadsters, but MG is pulling all the stops with its touring car effort. The cars – based on the GT five-door – are being prepared by Triple 8 Race Engineering, the outfit responsible for turning Vauxhall into a powerhouse that dominated the BTCC for years.
If that’s not enough to get the job done, the Sino-English automaker has also retained one of the very best drivers in the series. You may know the name and face of Jason Plato from Fifth Gear, the British motoring show he co-presents. But he’s also a two-time BTCC champion, winner of 68 races and holds the records for the most fastest laps, pole positions and podiums in the history of the series. Poached from , Plato will be driving alongside up-and-coming talent Andy Neate.
All in all, MG KX Momentum Racing is shaping up as a force to be reckoned with, so the other 22 drivers on the grid had better take notice as the series gears up for its 55th running. Details in the press release .
We can think of a handful of automobiles that appear to be closer to golf carts than what we’d otherwise think of as “cars”. Like the , for example. Or the Tata Nano. Rhys Millen’s rally car, on the other hand, is not the first vehicle that would come to mind for schlepping clubs around the fairway, but Rhys himself appears to think otherwise with this latest video just released by .
In the clip , you’ll see what happens when Millen gives new meaning to the notion of picking the right driver for the course. The added bonus of using competition machinery in place of the usual putter put-putters is that you just might get to the green before your ball does. And that could come in handy on the PGA Tour.
Finally, we suggest you watch all the way through to the end for the blooper reel.
, which still insists on using the term Sports Activity Coupe to describe its least practical ‘ute, has updated its for the 2013 model year. And with good reason – BMW says it has sold over 20,000 X6 crossovers in the States since its launch three years ago and over 150,000 worldwide, making it an important model for the German automaker.
First and foremost, the 2013 X6 offers available power from both the 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged inline six and 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 through its M Performance Package (which is not the same thing as the that carries on for 2013 with its 555-horsepower V8 and six-speed automatic transmission).
By ticking he appropriate box on the order sheet, the X6 xDrive35i is blessed with 315 horsepower (a gain of 15 over stock) and 330 pound-feet of torque (a 30-lb-ft gain). The larger V8-powered model sports up to 440 hp and 480 lb-ft, gains of 40 horses and 30 torques. Models not ordered with the M Performance Package retain the less powerful engines offered in 2012, and all engines are mated to eight-speed automatic gearboxes.
Exterior updates include a slew of subtle revisions to the front fascia that bring the X6 more in line with the latest and models, with grilles that are a bit bolder than the outgoing machine. Also new are available adaptive LED headlights in place of the standard Xenon bulbs. LEDs are new additions to the rear lighting system as well, housed in larger enclosures.
A rash of interior treatment options are new for 2013, as are a few new exterior colors that includes a tasty root beer metallic brown. Expect to see the 2013 X6 in dealerships in the spring. For all the details, we suggest checking out the official press release , but not before ingesting our high-res image gallery above.
It was quite a while back that promised it would have something new for every major auto show. That seemed quite the claim at the time, particularly for a company with a two-car model lineup, but with a few exceptions here and there, the Italian automaker has been keeping pace famously. So what has Sant’Agata Bolognese got in store for us for the upcoming ? A surprise – or two – from what we hear.
All indications are that the Roadster is ready to go. With 700 horsepower and no roof, that would be more than enough to garner its fair share of attention and then some. But that’s not all.
According to the trusty old rumormill, Lamborghini has got something else in store for Geneva. Just what it is, we don’t know. It could be the final production version of the Sesto Elemento, which likely wouldn’t be very different from the concept version we’ve already seen. It could be, as is usually the case, another special edition . But it could be a proper new debut.
If it is, we could be looking at the new third model – be it a sedan or a crossover – or maybe the Gallardo’s replacement. We’ll have to wait and see just what Lamborghini has in store, but if Stephan Winkelmann and company plan on sticking to the formula, they could opt to show the Aventador Roadster at another show and keep the spotlight on whatever surprise they’re allegedly working on.
It’s been a whole three weeks since we checked in with Volkswagen’s takeoever of , and the most recent news wasn’t so good: investors against Porsche over the Stuttgart maker’s attempt to gobble up VW. Those same investors also filed an arbitration application against . That hasn’t stopped a VW executive from saying that its ownership of Porsche could finally be concluded this year, according to a report in Der Spiegel.
VW had earlier predicted the deal would be done last year, then in September saying that that too many hurdles and unknowns remained concerning investigations and economic ramfications for the deal to get done in 2011. The hurdles centered around previous lawsuits, including one in 2010, and the fact that VW couldn’t evaluate Porsche appropriately until they were settled.
However, the latest upbeat report on overcoming the obstructions to getting a deal done this year don’t mention those lawsuits. Instead, the resolved issues are a one-billion-euro tax payment that VW can avoid by creating a holding company by 2014 to control the Porsche stake, and VW’s agreeing to contractually assure Porsche retains control over its models and where it spends its money. According to that unnamed executive, this opens the door for VW to sponge up the final 50.1 percent of Porsche it doesn’t own, – about $5.1B USD – but we have no idea how or why the lawsuits aren’t mentioned as a factor.
In the meantime, Reuters reports that VW and Porsche ” even though they have the same CEO and CFO and are busy developing cars together, a fact which is testing CEO Martin Winterkorn’s patience. Earlier this month, Winterkorn was quoted as saying he wants to bring the companies closer “without needing to have a lawyer stand next to a Porsche employee every time he screws something into a Volkswagen or vice-versa.”
Wherever you find and going at it, is seldom very far behind. Except in Australia. The Land Down Under has its own unique touring car championship in the form of its popular V8 Supercars series, but the only contestants these days are Ford (with its FPV Falcon) and GM subsidiary Holden (with its HSV Commodore). That, however, could change in the near future.
Word on the Aussie street is that Chrysler Group Australia is entertaining the possibility of jumping into the popular series, likely with a vehicle based (however loosely) on the 300. Because V8 Supercars teams – which budget around $10 million to run two cars for the season – are by regulation independent of any manufacturer, Chrysler would need to woo a few away from their current Ford or Holden partners, but several have reportedly approached the Pentastar automaker about the possibility.
The addition of a third manufacturer to challenge Ford and Holden would mirror a similar move made this season by to challenge and (which was also to be considering a V8 Supercars entry) in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM). Chrysler previously supplied the V8 Supercars series with the first-gen 300C SRT8, which serves as the pace car for several years.
According to Australia’s The Age, SRT brand CEO Ralph Gilles reportedly likes the idea, but stopped short of committing to any impending program. The prospect, however, could be made more feasible by a new, more cost-effective “Car of the Future” being implemented in V8 Supercars, much as the “Car of Tomorrow” was in NASCAR and the “Next-Generation Touring Car” was in the British Touring Car Championship. Another plus is the expansion of the series outside of Australia to locations like India, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa and – most crucially – the United States as a for the upcoming U.S. Grand Prix Formula One race in Austin, Texas.
If you think the looks a bit abbreviated now, you should have seen it before General Motors stretched the vehicle. Take a good look at the spec sheets for the Sonic hatch and Sonic sedan, and you’ll likely notice the four-door is over a foot longer than its twin. According to Automotive News, GM felt that early design attempts at the sedan bodystyle were too stubby looking. While the four-door was always intended to be somewhat longer than the hatch, designers rolled in additional space in the vehicle’s rump to help situate the vehicle’s proportions.
All told, the Sonic sedan is a whopping 14.1 inches longer than the Sonic hatchback, and nearly all of that length is in the trunk area. That gives the Sonic Sedan 14 cubic-feet of cargo area, just 1.4 cubes less than the significantly larger .
Well… let’s rephrase that. A newborn baby is a beautiful thing (most of them, anyway) as is the elation such a bundle of joy can bring to its new mother and father. The actual act of giving birth, on the other hand, is somewhat less than beautiful, at least to our non-rose-colored set of eyes.
Regardless, the proud pair of parents you’ll see in the video after the break decided to film their newborn baby’s birth with a handheld digital camera. For the sake of posterity, we guess. That’s not so uncommon, though we can’t imagine ever wanting to relive the experience in full high-definition glory over and over again.
We feel the need to add that, while childbirth is a completely natural process, childbirth in a car, on the way to the hospital, is not. And neither is driving with one hand while filming childbirth with the other. We’d argue that brings a whole new definition to the term “distracted driving.” That said, when the baby decides it’s coming… well, it’s coming. Maybe next time, try pulling over, eh? Either way, the birth was apparently so non-invasive that the mother actually made a few phone calls while holding her new baby.
Witness the glory of roadway childbirth in a segment from ABC’s Good Morning America, as well as the father’s unedited YouTube video footage. Umbilical cord and all… which is our way of saying that viewer discretion is advised. Seriously.
Oh, we almost forgot to mention that the parents plan on keeping the car for when the kid turns 16. We guess that’s better than selling it to some unsuspecting used-car buyer, no?
What a surprise. Today’s Congressional hearing over the fire and the resulting investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration turned out to be contentious.
The hearing took place in the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending. Just from the title of the event – “Volt Vehicle Fire: What did NHTSA Know and When Did They Know It?” – it was plain to see that chairman was not looking to mess around. Issa had General Motors CEO Dan Akerson, NHTSA Administrator David Strickland and John German (Senior Fellow and Program Director at the International Council on Clean Transportation) at his disposal, but he clearly didn’t always like what they had to say. Issa and other Republicans questioned the “unnatural relationship” between the Obama Administration and GM as well as why it took NHTSA so many months to reveal the fire in November when it happened in June.
GM’s Akerson stood up for the Volt, saying that the fire that’s caused so much commotion only happened “after putting the battery through lab conditions that no driver would experience in the real world,” . Strickland said NHTSA “pulled no punches” in the Volt fire investigation – which recently ended – but Issa was having none of it. He told Strickland: “I hear you, I don’t believe you.”
You can find the official Congressional website about the hearing (which includes a video of the entire session) . The subcommittee’s staff report, “Government Motors: A Preliminary Report on the Effects of Bailouts and Politics on the Obama Administration’s Ability to Protect American Consumers” is . Be careful when reading it, though, as it starts by subtly misleading the reader. The report says:
Moreover, in the case of GM, the [Obama] Administration has offered substantial taxpayer funded subsidies to encourage production of the Volt. … It has also extended a significant subsidy to encourage consumers to purchase the vehicle, offering buyers of the Volt a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 per vehicle.
A bit of research shows that the $7,500 tax credit was first with the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, well before there was an Obama Administration.
Back on Thanksgiving Day of 2011, when a C5 goes head-to-head on public roads against a C6 Vette – the older Vette spears into the passenger-side door of the newer Vette. The video was our , so we know that well over a million viewers saw the ill-advised drag race. We think that video illustrated that racing on public roads was a bad idea, but sometimes, accidents happen even without a race.
Hit the jump to see what happens when a pair of tuned-out Nissan 350Z models do their best impression of the Thanksgiving Day Melee. The YouTube page claims that the two cars were actually traveling at the speed limit (read: not racing) as part of a caravan of Z models, when the black, supercharged Z coupe tapped its throttle and lost control, veering into the passing lane and right into the path of a Z roadster.
Still, the collision looks like déjà vu all over again, except the quick video is better this time and we actually hear the impact and see the parts flying all over the freeway. The accident reportedly didn’t result in any serious injuries.
Do We Really Want Audi To Think This Small In America? Perhaps…
It is perhaps with all the speed of a mighty iceberg, but increasingly, more and more North American buyers appear willing to think smaller when pondering their next auto purchase. The other shoe, which still has largely yet to drop, is for automakers to convince consumers of the merits of a luxury subcompact, paying a price premium for a longer list of creature comforts, options and badge appeal. However small, this trend in the States is best represented by and its range, followed (with a few stumbles out of the gate) by the .
In Europe, however, there is already a well-defined tradition of premium minicars on which buyers happily lavish extra dollars, and there is no model quite so indulgent for the masses as the Audi A1. Through its first complete year of sales in 2011, the Bavarians built at their factory in Brussels, Belgium – and sold – nearly 120,000 A1 three-doors.
Now we’ve finally gotten the chance to drive an Audi A1 Sportback with five doors, a model first shown publicly at last October’s . The five-door model carries on with the basic A1 recipe of offering big things in small packages, and rather unusually, we think the model with more doors might actually look better this time. That may not seem altogether based on reason at first glance, since both the three- and five-door A1 designs have a length of 155.7 inches and a wheelbase of 97.2 inches. (Only the Fiat 500, , , and various two-door Mini models take up less parking space.)
