Looks like is finally getting a handle on this YouTube phenomenon. The French supercar firm has uploaded a trio of videos showing off its current and future cars; namely, the coupe and the 16C Galibier.
What Bugatti has clearly not figured out, on the other hand, is the definition of a teaser. While the slowly drawn out shots showing the upcoming super sedan from just about every angle are pretty impressive, aren’t teasers just supposed to whet the appetite? And if we’re honest, the narrative that goes with it is a bit… disarming. Finally, while most teaser videos are done and over with in a minute or less, this one is more than four times that length.
Oh well… nobody ever accused Bugatti of being subtle.
You can see the new Galibier teaser video by below, and if that’s not enough, we’ve also included two new videos showcasing the Bugatti Veyron and its most impressive bits and pieces.
It was only a matter of time, folks. As soon as finalized its of the brand, we knew to expect a slew of comparison tests pitting the German automaker’s finest wares against the two-wheeled exotica rolling out of Italy’s .
The scribes from Germany’s Auto Bild have indeed taken up the challenge. But what machinery to choose? Naturally, the mind first turns to the supercar and its -derived V10 engine, but, in reality, Audi officials have conceded to us that its 360-horsepower is actually quicker around most race tracks. So, the all-wheel-drive it is.
Holding the mantle for Ducati is none other than the 1199 Panigale – an easy choice, as this is the marque’s premier superbike for 2012. Sure, there was a replica MotoGP machine a few years back called the Desmosedici RR, but that bike is sold out and the Panigale is likely faster in the hands of all but the most talented riders anyway.
So, who wins? You’ll have to and watch the video to find out, but suffice it to say that it wasn’t even close.
A few members of the Autoblog team have been grappling with the issue of our ages recently. Yes, some of us are feeling old. Given that a primary motivation for getting into this automotive journalism racket in the first place was a desire to avoid growing up by spending our whole lives playing with cars, it is frustrating to find out that having Peter Pan Syndrome does not prevent man from turning 40.
So how’s this for some much needed perspective: Carroll Shelby will be 90 in January.
His exploits on the track made him an American hero and his success as a car designer and businessman only reinforced his status as one of the great ones. But it’s no secret that the octogenarian racer and legend has not been in the best health lately. It’s the sort of thing you have to expect when you start pushing nine decades on this planet, especially when you have lived the sort of life that Carroll Shelby has, pushing the limits in a way that most of us will never experience. He’s even got his fair share of aftermarket parts, having had both heart and kidney transplants.
Shelby shared this message concerning his health on Facebook yesterday:
There have been some rumors about my health lately. So I wanted to clear them up.
I’ve been in the hospital over the last several months with pneumonia. But I’m resting comfortably with my family and working on getting better. My kids are taking good care of me.
I am sorry that I can’t make any appearances right now. If you want someone from Shelby at an event in my place, contact Scott Black at TimePiece PR in Dallas. He’ll give those requests to my team, who will determine the right person to represent me.
I also have asked them to post on my behalf to keep you up to date.
Thanks for the all good wishes and thoughts.
Here’s another: Let’s hope he has a great party on January 11, 2013.
Watching television news can be depressing. Between the political rancor of election season and the “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality of most news directors, positive stories are scarce. But here’s one that should make any lover of fine automobiles pleased.
The story, as reported by CBS This Morning, starts when the owner of a Los Angeles-based rental car company that specializes in exotics and luxury cars noticed that one of his vehicles was uncharacteristically sitting still for a few days after being rented. The $2,000-per-day 2010 was equipped with a GPS tracking system, and the Italian Stallion’s lack of use made Eric Blumberg suspicious. So he notified the police, who eventually found the car – in Hong Kong. It had been shipped through the Port of Los Angeles, labeled as “used fitness equipment,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
It seems that the would-be joyrider who had “rented” the was part of an international crime syndicate worthy of a screenplay, according to the CBS report. When the police investigated further, they found between 15 and 20 other vehicles that were being loaded into shipping containers and exported to Asia, a total of $1.5 million worth of four-wheeled loot.
The investigators told CBS that the vehicles can command up to twice their value overseas. While no arrests have yet been made in the case, at least these cars now have a chance of being returned to their rightful owners.
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.
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.
Beneath the gorgeous and impossibly long looking hood of the Mazda Takeri Concept lies plenty of real estate. By our estimation there’s room for any number of powerplants, from a high-revving to a twin-turbo V6. However, when launches the new 2014 , which will , it will only contain a measly little four-cylinder, according to Autoweek.
So that’s being a bit harsh, as despite the reported demise of a V6 engine option for the Mazda6, at least it will be getting a four-banger, according to the report. Skyactiv is, of course, Mazdaspeak for its suite of technologies that includes its next-generation powertrain with direct injection and a fancy new automatic transmission design, a combination we when we sampled it in the .
With , , and having dumped their V6’s in favor of an all-four-cylinder lineup for their midsize sedans, we’re not surprised to see Mazda follow course. We do, however, wonder how the intends to compete when it comes to performance.
With 155 horsepower and 150 lb-ft of torque, the 2.0-liter Skyactiv four in Mazda’s new crossover isn’t particularly powerful, so we hope we might see a slightly larger displacement version with a few more ponies for the bigger sedan. Or one with forced induction. Or how about a diesel engine option? Mazda has promised a diesel for North America, though it hasn’t specified which vehicle it will arrive in. The automaker has making 173 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque for the CX-5, at least in Europe. Now that might be just the ticket to make a top-trim Mazda6 get up and go.
and Pure Detroit have agreed to a settlement in the legal wrangling over Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” tagline. According to The Detroit News, the automaker and T-shirt purveyor have asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuits against one another. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Chrysler had sued the entrepreneurial company in March 2011, after Pure Detroit sought to cash in on the popularity of the phrase following last year’s . Chrysler has its own line of “Imported” merchandise, which it has used to . Pure Detroit counter-sued and went on selling its wares after a judge against the smaller company in June 2011, according to the report. Pure Detroit maintained that Chrysler’s campaign “amounts to false advertising,” said the News, because none of the vehicles (the , and ) shown in the ads are built within Detroit proper.
The pair of legal combatants had in March. Their resultant deal should preempt a trial that would have taken place in August.
We Finally Sample Scion’s Irresistible Lightweight At Home
, we flew nearly 11 hours to spend a fleeting afternoon with the highly anticipated at Japan’s Sodegaura Forest Raceway, a track located just outside of Tokyo. Last week, we were in the air for less than an hour en route to Las Vegas to spend a much longer day with the sports coupe on our own turf.
The FR-S impressed us during our first drive in Japan, but the weather turned lousy and we didn’t have a chance to drive it on public roads at legal speeds. This time, scheduled plenty of seat time on public roads and on a racing circuit, while Mother Nature provided us with excellent weather.
Driving the coupe again in proper U.S. spec on home roads (and under much more favorable conditions) gave us better insight into the naturally aspirated four-seater. Not only did we learn a lot more about the engine, chassis and its driving dynamics, but we were able to finally interact with the FR-S as a daily driver.
It was, in effect, an interesting and informative second date.
A Carnegie Mellon paper gauges that it to read all of the privacy policies for the companies you deal with, and that’s before you get to the terms and conditions and other small prints. Judging how quickly states are adding new laws to their driving codes and swapping punishments, staying informed might also require a semester of reading pretty soon.
In honor of a woman who was paralyzed from the waist down as a teenager because of a road rage incident, New Jersey has just made Jessica Rogers’ Law official. Rogers was a passenger when the driver of the car she was a passenger in went after another car that cut him off. Rogers’ driver subsequently lost control and crashed.
The law upgrades the degree of a vehicular incident – from Disorderly Persons to fourth degree or fourth to third degree – if road rage is established as a factor. How will road rage be established? That will be up to officers and juries to decide. But short of obvious rage-worthy cases like who pulled a gun after being honked at or who fatally stabbed another, we see a lot of legal wrangling and plea deals plus big fines to go down to aggressive driving.
According to several sites of , Disorderly Persons charges come with a maximum of six months in county. Fourth degree ups that to 18 months max, but things get serious at third degree with three to five years in the hoosegow and . Get ready for enforcement gymnastics, though, for as the wise defendant once said, “It ain’t what you know, it’s what you can prove.”
China’s middle class is predicted to mint up to 500 million new bourgeois comrades in the next 15 years, and not only will that mean new car owners, but more of those owners will be women. Along with rising incomes, that has put The Middle Kingdom into an SUV-buying boom driven by “tiger moms,” similar to the splurge that happened here in the 1990s but with big, striped cats replacing black-spotted white balls.
The trend has enough force already that SUV sales are expected to make up for other slumping segments, which is just about all of them. In addition to mothers wanting an SUV to haul their lone kid around there are other cultural factors at play, one being the fact that car ownership has only recently become a practical aspiration and having an SUV is a way to make a big splash in the new pool.
Carmakers obviously have no intention of denying the Chinese their desires, with Daimler declaring this “the year of the SUV.” It’s probably no coincidence that showed off its Jota in and its in , nor that every other automaker showed up to the Beijing Motor Show with plenty of high-riding hardware (see above). It probably is a coincidence that carmakers dreamed of selling squillions of SUVs just as Earth Day ended.
Do you spend a lot of time pinning your favorite things on ? may be looking to hand you $500 as part of the company’s first campaign on the social outlet. Honda is singling out active Pinterest users and handing some of them $500 to indulge in a “Pintermission” to make a visit to the places they’ve been pinning or pick up some of the retail items they’ve highlighted.
Honda is making its the focus of its first foray into Pinterest because it’s a vehicle with a lot of appeal to women, much like Pinterest itself. So far, two of the women that have been handed a big, shiny check by Honda are putting the funds toward travel. One’s going to London, the other is headed to Hawaii, according to Lauren Ebner, American Honda Motor Company’s assistant manager of social media. We’re watching waiting to see what kind of artisanal luxury goods the CR-V inspires.
Dreamworks was founded by three Hollywood titans as an independent studio with the aim of making good, and profitable, movies. That didn’t happen. Now the Paramount-owned Dreamworks just wants to make money the Hollywood way: opportunistic copying. It is in talks with Electronic Arts to make a Need for Speed movie, perhaps because it wants its own Fast & Furious franchise, certainly because it is bankrupt of ideas. In either case, Dreamworks is not alone.
Word was that a deal should have been done already, but nothing has been announced. That deal is said to already have a script for the film written by George Gatins, whose borther wrote Real Steel. If the deal doesn’t come off as planned, it’s been said that other studios are waiting in line to chat with EA about the same thing.
If you want to a glimpse of a Hollywood vision of Need for Speed, for Need for Speed: The Run last year. To extrapolate the movie, imagine that trailer being fifty times longer, fewer sound effects lifted from Transformers, actors who look like their in-game counterparts but can’t act nearly as well, and explosions. And even more hot women. for the vid.
Considering how short some product lifecycles have become, it boggles the mind to think that has had the Phantom on the market for nearly ten years now. And with the next-generation model not expected to arrive for another few years, the model that relaunched the brand under ownership stands to reach its Bar Mitzvah before it’s replaced. But in the meantime, Goodwood is keeping the Phantom fresh with the Series II update.
The revisions include a refreshed front end with new bumpers and adaptable LED headlamps, the latest in infotainment systems and a new eight-speed automatic transmission to help the 6.75-liter V12 marginally improve its emissions and fuel consumption figures.
New versions of the , and convertible are already finding their way to eagerly awaiting (and obscenely wealthy) customers around the world, but Rolls opted to wait until the to unveil the new Extended Wheelbase model. Particularly popular in the Chinese market where extra rear-seat legroom is deemed the pinnacle of luxury, the Phantom Series II Extended Wheelbase model measure a whopping 20 feet long.
That’s more than a foot longer than the now-departed Ford Excursion, and you can check it out in the gallery of high-resolution images above.
has gotten quite a bit of mileage out of its “” ad, if only for the comedic value. Saturday Night Live pulled off what was perhaps the of the two-minute spot, and the hits just keep on coming.
This time, NBC’s 30 Rock gets in on the gag, with veteran tough guy actor Stacy Keach filling in for the otherwise irreplaceable Clint Eastwood. In the show, Keach was tasked with selling furniture with a tough guy attitude, but what we get instead is a solid laugh.
Actually, for our money the third faux ad is by far the funniest, with Keach selling Bazooka Joe bubblegum. After all, “life is hard, shouldn’t everything else be harder?” to watch the spoofed spots.
Rumors and conjecture will only get you so far, particularly when we’re talking about the stratosphere of supercardom where speculation can disappear back into the ether from whence it came as quickly as it emerged in the first place. What we need to really anticipate the arrival of a new record-breaking hypercar is concrete evidence. And concrete evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is what we have here before us today.
The car we’re talking about is the long-awaited successor to the legendary McLaren F1. Considering how thoroughly that bolide smashed all preconceived notions of what a car could do when the original hit the streets in 1992, its successor is something worth anticipating indeed. It’s expected to have nearly 700 horsepower on tap, challenge the for straight-line pace and emerge as a de-facto challenger to the Enzo replacement is working on.
The styling is expected to take greater advantage of the skills of one Frank Stephenson, father of the modern , , and countless Ferrari and models. His arrival at McLaren Automotive is said to have been a little late for him to truly leave his mark on the MP4-12C – its big brother expected to be his first clean-sheet design since moving in at Woking.
From the spy shots, we can see some distinctive common stylistic elements to the existing MP4-12C, tempered with some references to the original McLaren F1 – particularly in the shape of the greenhouse that packs a windshield that looks like it was lifted from a glass-bottom boat. A rooftop hood vent also appears to be popping up through the camouflage, with a giant exhaust pipe protruding high up through the rear (like a Pagani), with what looks like the biggest underbody diffuser we’ve seen yet.
The overall shape also looks longer than the MP4-12C, presumably to accommodate an engine packing 50% more cylinders than its eight-pot kid brother. With the V12 F1 expected to arrive around the same time as the Ferrari F70, it looks like Maranello and Woking are gearing up for once heck of a high-stakes grudge match.
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.
Following the debut of the SUV in this week, it’s only natural to ask: What happened to the ?
At the 2008 , unveiled the striking sedan concept as a way to preview a new model line for the brand, but since then, nothing has come to fruition. AutoWeek sat down with Lamborghini CEO Stefan Winkelmann, who shed some light on the decision to move forward with a sport-utility vehicle rather than a rakish sedan.
“It was placed on hold because of a number of reasons, including the lack of a suitable platform. We haven’t given up on the idea of a sedan entirely, but we see more potential in a sport-utility vehicle encapsulating typical Lamborghini attributes.”
Given the fact that the production Urus isn’t slated to hit the market until around 2015, that means a Lamborghini sedan will likely be even farther out. Nearly four years later, we’re still quite fond of the 2008 concept, but we aren’t sure if we can hold our breath for another five-ish years.
The intricate structure of brands and sub-brands in a consolidating global automotive industry is enough to make your head spin. And each major auto group has its own way of organizing itself. Over at Daimler, each of the automotive divisions is considered a sub-brand of . That’s becoming even more true for and , but AMG has been increasingly differentiating itself as a brand on its own.
Not only have the bulk of Daimler’s motorsport operations been rebranded as AMG and brought closer to their counterparts, but the stands apart as the first AMG-only product in the company’s history. And now the performance brand from Affalterbach has inaugurated its first dedicated dealership.
Situated at the high-end Sanlitun Village shopping mall in northern , the AMG Performance Center is unique from any of the other 195 AMG dealerships already operating in 18 countries around the world in that it is a stand-alone shop, not a corner of an existing Mercedes-Benz showroom. It encompasses 381 square meters of floor space on two levels, which Daimler chose as the location to unveil the new G63 AMG. Scope it out in the press release and the high-resolution images in the gallery.
-Benz opens world’s first AMG-only dealership in Beijing
