The latest hotted-up safety car for DTM is the . If we’d been in a racing accident, we’re not sure we’d trust the men who stepped out of a car that’s half steroids, half Satan, but after 12 years of providing the safety cars (along with ) for the German touring car series, we’ll assume knows what it’s doing.
The most powerful ever will rush to the scene with 517 horsepower, an “aerodynamically optimised light bar” and other Christmas lights, AMG Track and Aero packages and an AMG-specific exhaust.
The safety car is more powerful than the 500-horsepower Mercedes actually racing in the series, so if it weren’t for the extra weight it’s carrying, it might even beat the other cars to the scene of the accident. You can read all about it and peep it in the high-res gallery of images.
There’s a that the designers at might have been dreaming about before they penned the Lithia. We don’t think this kind of inspiration is anywhere near criminal, though, and before anyone broaches the topic of Chinese design, they should know that the is an ex-General Motors man: , who has work on the and the on his resume.
CH Auto helps automakers prepare cars for sale in China, from design through to engineering – part of Darancou’s brief is to make sure those two departments work together. The Lithia, showed off at the , has probably been done as a company calling card. Powered by lithium-ion batteries, the spec sheet claims a 150-kilometer range (93 miles).
To some residents of Midtown Manhattan, sex is a problem. Specifically, is a problem and they’ve asked the Community Board to ban weekend parking on their streets.
The board granted the request, citing chronic drug use, double parking and rampant sex. Unfortunately, the board has no power to enforce the ban and is awaiting a review by the Department of Transportation. If passed, the NYPD will presumably get involved and start asking frisky fornicators to get a room.
Half the problem could take care of itself soon. Patrons of two nightclubs in the area are being blamed for the illegal displays of public affection, medication and parkification: The Parlour Midtown and Rebel NYC. The Parlour’s liquor license is is under review due to “several violations.”
And, by the way, if you’re wondering how to properly do the backseat mamba, check out (kinda NSFW) for some helpful tips. Just stay out of Midtown.
Have you ever bought a brand new cars only to forget where you put it? How about 300 of them? Probably not – unless you’re Miami-Dade County, which was recently reunited with 298 vehicles it bought brand new between 2006 and 2007.
The county “discovered” this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a there (see the source for more images). Most of the misplaced motorcade is made up of hybrids whose warranties either expired with very few miles on the odo or will very soon.
Looking to save some face, the county has rushed at least 123 of the hybrids into service. The warranty covered the hybrid bits for eight years or 100,000 miles, but we’re not sure if that covers cars parked for five of those eight. We’re also not sure what that much time in Miami heat and humidity does to an unused hybrid powertrain, but it can’t be good.
The county, as you probably guessed, is looking into how it lost so many cars. The leading theory is that they might be part of Carlos Alvarez’s time as mayor. He was the mayor during the period the Toyotas were purchased, but a 2011 recall election successfully removed him from office. Apparently the voters “felt, among other reasons, that he had been behind multiple acts of misappropriation of funds.”
We’ve tried to contact Toyota to see what kind of warranty support these cars will get but haven’t had any luck so far. We’ll update with their response.
It’s been almost a fortnight, which just might be a record, since we last visited . Next up to keep the high-po exotic ball in play is Tushek Supercars, hailing from Slovenia (that’s ), with its quaintly archaically named Forego T700. The company just made an appearance at the Top Marques Monaco with its first car, the 444-horsepower Renovatio T500 (pictured in our gallery below) with a modular hardtop, but the T700 will push things much further.
Founder Aljosa Tushek told Autocar the T700’s targets: less than 2,200 pounds, more than 700 horsepower, up to 3.3gs for cornering. That latter number sounds like a math error would not only double the Renovatio’s number, it would triple the cornering force sustained by the around the Nardo test track.
The limited-to-30-units Renovatio is priced at £245,000 ($394,934 U.S.) with deliveries promised later this year. Due in 2013, you can expect the T700 to outdo the T500’s price by at least double as well, and you can expect both of them to never be sold in the U.S.
Imagine you’re a spy shooter at the Nürburgring. You’ve got your ancient Scorpio parked nearby, but you’ve hoofed it up to the top of a hill in the hopes of getting the perfect angle on the track. Three heavy cameras are strung about your body like you’re a contestant in The World’s Strongest Man competition. It’s early and you are tired. And cold. The morning temperature was in the single digits Celsius, and while you’re not exactly sure what that translates to in the Fahrenheit scale, this certainly ain’t Miami.
Your job is boring. Boy racers driving all manner of would-be performance cars squeal by, inexpertly holding a line that betrays their inexperience. “Go back to your videogames, kids,” you think as you nurse your cramped and sore legs. You shift your position and the wait resumes. Sport bikes zip by and the wail hurts your ears. You get up and stretch before resuming your regimen. A momentary break in the traffic causes you to do a mental rehearsal, double-checking your gear.
Then you hear it: The tires, disembodied from the roar of an engine, but creating their own . You reach for the camera with the longest lens and barely get it up to your eye as the whooshes towards you, followed by the loud rumble of something more internally combusted. The camera is now firing on all cylinders as you expertly track the car’s pace for the few seconds it’s in your field of vision. A enters the viewfinder and you exhale, lowering the camera and turning your back to the track.
The will take just one lap of the Nürburgring that day, but you were there to capture it. It may not surface again before it goes on sale next year, but you don’t care about that. You need to hustle back to the car to download the images, so the world can see what an without exhaust pipes looks like, so the fanboys can obsess about the extra cooling vents in the hood for the batteries and the blacked-out rear window.
You will e-mail the photos across the Continent, across the ocean, back home. You’ll get a few bucks deposited in your German bank for your trouble, but that won’t happen for a while yet. By then you will have taken more photos and sent more e-mails.
And drank countless lagers. It is still early, but you think of the cliche about it being noon somewhere and head off home. Nobody will be in your favorite expat bar at this time, but you think there must be at least one bottle left in your refrigerator.
If you were waiting for those savings bonds to mature so you could get your hands on an Aston Martin One-77, we’re afraid we have some unfortunate news for you: they’re all gone.
According to the reports circulating the interwebs, all 77 examples of the range-topping, seven-figure supercar – complete with its specially-built 7.3-liter, 750-horsepower V12 engine – have been spoken for. That’s after the last example was apparently sold since reports surfaced in February indicating there was still one left.
Don’t worry too much, though, as Aston should still have a few examples of its new top-of-the-line model up for grabs. Production of the V12 Zagato is pegged at 150 units – barely more than twice that of the One-77 – with a sticker price of £330,000 – roughly half a million dollars, or a quarter the price of the One-77. Of course if you’re hell-bent on spending over a million on a new supercar, there are some gentlemen in Modena and who’d be glad to help you out.
The venerable was tiny, cheap and nimble transportation in post-World-War-II Europe. In this day of $4-a-gallon gas, could a similar car be an attractive alternative? That’s the question University of Applied Arts graduate asked as he endeavored to imagine a modern Isetta.
Tony calls his interpretation the eSetta, with the “e” indicating an electric motor in place of the original Isetta’s gasoline-powered motorcycle engine. Such a small package couldn’t hold much of a battery pack, but it doesn’t need to in Tony’s plan. The eSetta would be part of a car sharing system where the little cars would be charged via induction stations where the eSetta could be borrowed and returned.
For now, the eSetta is only a concept, but its familiar retro look and frugal philosophy could do well for short trips in a compact urban center.
There are literally thousands of videos on YouTube highlighting riders performing all manners of mind-bending stunts on motorcycles. Most of them merit a passing glance and little more. The video you’ll see after the break, featuring French trials rider Julien Dupont, is an exception. You really should watch this video from start to finish.
Brought to us by the energetic group from , Dupont’s antics through city streets and their many obstacles – stairs, poles, walls and cars – are impressive. Coupled with incredible views of Rio de Janeiro and the awestruck looks on the faces of local residents is icing on the proverbial cake. See for yourself by watching the video that we’ve pasted .
Details on the pair of Dear Qin concepts that unveiled at the this week are sparse, but they do hint at something interesting coming to every market where the Japanese automaker sells cars.
Calling them “global-strategic concepts,” Toyota says the sedan and hatchback versions of the Dear Qin models have “a design aiming to attract more people to the user base.” With that curious statement in mind, the first promotional video for the Dear Qin models (which you can watch by ) is both language- and information-free, emphasizing the design of the cars for a global audience. With explosions and lightning, of course.
Reports have said that Toyota is working on a new global, front-wheel drive model that is supposed to be launched in 2013. We can imagine these concepts foreshadowing those cars, and hope we get a pair of highly efficient compacts out of the design process. We’ll skip the explosions and lightning, though.
has been building the in Greensburg, Indiana, since 2008, but now the company’s newest American assembly plant has some variety on its lines. The joined its mass-market relative at the 2.1 million square-foot facility yesterday.
Honda is building both the standard ILX and the ILX Hybrid at Honda Manufacturing Indiana, which is the only plant slated for assembly of the new compact . Greensburg will continue to build Civic sedans, including the , both for domestic consumption and export. Since the ILX is based on the Civic, the two cars sharing an assembly line is a natural.
The ILX on May 22, at a starting price of $25,900 plus $895 for destination. to read the full press release.
The facts are still coming in, but what is known is that on March 30 an armada of exotics, said to number from 25 to 30, was escorted by two New Jersey state troopers with their lights flashing down the Garden State Parkway at triple-digit speeds to Atlantic City. On top of that, all of the civilian cars had their license plates taped over. Among the drivers was supercar fan and NFL player Brandon Jacobs, recently of the New York Giants but now with the San Francisco Forty-Niners. According to NJ.com, Jacobs “told RidesMagazine in October that he often cruises with the Driving Force Club,” a car club out of New York, but it isn’t clear that this was a club outing.
One more established fact: someone has a lot of splainin’ to do. Authorities began receiving complaints that very day, with one beginning, “I had the great pleasure today of nearly being killed by, not one, but two, Lamborghinis traveling in excess of 110 mph in a (New Jersey State Police) escorted ‘caravan’…”. Others wrote in to say that the cars were weaving across all three lanes and that an elderly driver was so shocked she almost ran off the road. One motorist even labeled it “Death Race 2012.”
An NBC New York report indicates that Jacobs called a sergeant in the NJ force that he’s friends with and requested the escort. That sergeant and another officer have been put on leave without pay, the station commander has been transferred while his role is investigated. And speaking of investigations, they’re coming from everywhere, with looking into the matter. At least everyone involved can use history as a guide: police on the same road with a different supercar group two years ago. Check out an NJ Today video on the story by .
Based on the cars that usually feature in the videos we get from Dubai, we can’t really call the tale of this Ferrari Enzo that outrageous. Pictures of the dusty stallion have been zooming around the Internet while the real thing sat in a police impound lot for reasons that have never been clear – rumors ranged from it being hot goods in transit to China, to a casualty of the authorities for having been caught doing insane speeds on the Emirates Road.
According to a story in the Daily Mail, the truth is a bit more prosaic: the owner was a British businessman who couldn’t pay traffic fines and who knows what else almost two years ago, so he abandoned the limited-edition thoroughbred to its fate. The police are going to send it to auction with 128 other vehicles, 23 of which are other luxury vehicles that were each burdened with fines anywhere from $26,761 to $27,225.
Most of the auction fodder was owned by companies; only 18 were individually owned. The auction is expected to be the biggest Dubai has ever held, but folks who bid on the Enzo should read the terms carefully: we can’t see anyone abandoning million-dollar car for a $27,000 fine, so there’s likely another payout lurking somewhere in order to take ownership. In addition to the cleaning bill.
In keeping with the CUV-crazy theme of this year’s , has introduced this Urban Crossover Concept penned by the French lion’s design studios in Paris, Shanghai and São Paulo. Eight inches shorter and three inches narrower than a hatchback, the concept is meant to be the ultimate expression of the company’s decades of popular small cars, crossovers and design.
It is also said to show off Pug’s new design cues, but we aren’t told exactly which cues those are. At the moment, Peugeot isn’t talking about what (if anything) powers its UCC, but perhaps we’ll learn more as the vehicle continues to make the rounds of the auto show circuit. In the meantime, check out the press release by and admire its angles in the high-res gallery.
“Stock” is a relative term. Stock cars, for example, like those raced in NASCAR, are anything but showroom stock. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, “stock” is just the starting point when ordering a new . The high-end marque offers its customers a virtually endless array of personalization options, and to drive that point, home Rolls-Royce is showcasing the show car seen here at this week’s .
Called the Six Senses concept, this specially equipped is designed to stimulate each of the five senses – sight, sound, scent, taste and touch – and proffers the singular luxury of a Rolls-Royce as the sixth sense. Sure beats seeing dead people.
The concept is painted in pearlescent Carrara White, with unique forged alloys and an interior decked out in walnut burr veneer, deep-pile lambswool carpeting (even in the trunk), leather headliner with panoramic sunroof, an upgraded sound system and champagne cooler. Check it out in the gallery above and follow the jump for the details in the press release.
Cadillac’s new XTS isn’t just headed to China, it will be built there. The forthcoming full-size luxury cruiser had already been earmarked for production in General Motors’ Oshawa, Ontario Assembly Plant, but the automaker has just announced in that it will also be built in China with its joint venture partner Shanghai General Motors.
is still a relatively small player in China’s premium segment, with just 68 dealers and 30,000 sales last year. However, it’s growing quickly, with March sales up more than 35 percent year-over-year to 2,745 units. Better still, General Motors says Cadillac’s average buying age is very young – just 35 – and it expects to have 120 dealers online by the end of this year to meet growing demand.
The idea of local XTS production strikes us as a smart one, as China is enjoying a swell in demand for luxury cars, and it has always maintained a strong demand for vehicles with large rear seats. Cadillac already has a solid track record building in the communist nation, as it first began assembling the China-only SLS Executive Sedan – essentially an extended wheelbase – back in 2006.
has used the to launch two new concept cars that it says “show the direction of mass-production models Honda will introduce to the market next year.”
First up is the imaginatively named Concept C. According to the automaker, ‘C’ stands for “Cool, “Challenge” and “China.” As much as we wish we were making that up, we aren’t. The car itself, though, looks pretty bold, with striking character lines down each side and a fascia that would look right at home on the next Battlestar Gallactica spinoff. We’re curious to see how much of the C’s conceptual styling makes it into production when a mass-market version hits the Chinese market in 2013 – if it were toned down just a bit, we think Honda could do worse than inject some of this boldness in its American lineup, though some might suggest the grille has overtones of the controversial styling decisions seen at .
Moving along, we have the Concept S, which supposedly stands for “Stylish,” “Smart” and “Surprise.” Like the Concept C, Honda says Concept S will spawn a production model that will debut in China in 2013, with global sales following thereafter. Honda isn’t saying exactly what is powering the S other than mentioning it’s a hybrid.
below for the complete press blast from Honda, but not before perusing our two high-res image galleries of the Concept C and Concept S.
has created the BMW i sub-brand for its upcoming production plug-in models, which currently include three concepts: the and the i8 Spyder. After keeping that third model away from our eager cameras at the New York Auto Show, BMW finally showed off the i8 Spyder Concept in the metal at the today.
The car itself we’ve already , but seeing it on stage shows once again that BMW is serious about putting cars like these on the road (toned down from the concept’s style, of course, perhaps with ). We’re more than ready for the through-the-road, plug-in hybrid that packs a 96-kW (131-horsepower) electric motor in front and a turbocharged three-cylinder gas engine offering 223 hp in back. 0-62 in five seconds and maybe 78 MPGe? Yes, please.
BMW is also making official the “eDrive” name, which is the new catch-all name for all of the electric drivetrain components: motor, battery and motor management system. First , the eDrive designation will be used “for the drive technology of all future electric and plug-in hybrid cars,” so get used to seeing it a lot.
We may have gotten used to it by now, but the bottom line is that the is an astonishing feat of engineering. The task of summing it all up, then, would fall to one Jeremy Clarkson.
In addition to hosting BBC’s celebrated Top Gear and penning columns in an array of magazines and newspapers, Jezza was tapped by the people behind the Xbox driving sim Forza 4 to voice-over the video clips showcasing some of the exciting cars in the game’s virtual stable, including the Veyron.
You may have already seen it while playing the game, but evidently pleased with the job Clarkson and Turn 10 Studios did, Bugatti itself released the video for your viewing pleasure. to watch the brief clip.
James Bond has driven a lot of noteworthy vehiclesover the course of his long, fictitious career in Her Majesty’s secret service: , , , … and those are just the cars. There’ve been countless motorcycles, tanks and trucks as well. And in between high-speed chases across dangerous and picturesque terrain, 007 has streaked across the sky in helicopters, jets and hot-air balloons, above it in the space shuttle. Let’s not forget that Bond is also a commander in the Royal Navy, so he’s also no stranger to speedboats, jet-skis, yachts, warships and submarines.
It’s hard to keep track of it all, so with the latest film, Skyfall, coming out in October, we’re glad to share this tidy infographic that lays out all the Bond vehicles from every movie, plus some trivia and miscellany for the most die-hard Bond fans and automotive enthusiasts. It’s similar to , only updated and more comprehensive. Click the image above to .
