Remember the rumors of working just below the ? The evidence trail was so faint that we called it “the most speculative sort of specualtion” when we posted on it six months ago. The trail and the car just got a lot hotter now that the very three-door hatch in question, the M135i, has been spotted burning serious gas around the Nürburgring.
Juice will come from BMW’s N55 inline-six cylinder with somewhere around 320 horsepower, and we’re told there will in fact be an all-wheel-drive version to follow. This will put BMW at ground zero of the small luxury hot hatch battle alongside the 350-horsepower and 340-horsepower Audi RS3. That gives us one more thing to remember: even if the Benz comes in at 340 hp there’ll be 1,000 horsepower between just these three cars in a segment best known for frugal luxury, which means the good old days in this segment are still on the way.
Ever get the feeling that not every grand prix on the Formula One calendar should be worth as much as every other? Aside from the bragging points that go with winning a race like, say, the Monaco Grand Prix, maybe the most prominent races should be worth more championship points, too? So says Bernie Ecclestone, according to the latest reports.
The notoriously outspoken F1 supremo is always hatching new ideas on how to make the series more interesting, and his latest borrows from the world of competitive tennis. The four most important tournaments on the tennis circuit – the Australian Open, French Open, U.S. Open and Wimbledon – are not only more prominent in every way than any other, but they’re also worth more points for the players who win them.
Since the current calendar of 20 races is the most F1 has ever seen and regarded as the most it could possibly accommodate, could awarding more points for a handful of iconic races be what the proverbial doctor ordered to mix things up? Maybe, but identifying which races would get the honor would be another matter. Out of 20 races, we’d pick Australia, Japan, Britain, Monaco, Canada and Brazil as the likely candidates. Is this a good idea? Have your own list in mind? Let’s hear your thoughts in Comments.
Color us unsurprised. Car and Driver reports that officials have confirmed a production version of the company’s concept first shown at the in March. We expected as much – after all, parent has demonstrated real adeptness at building a myriad of derivatives from the basic architecture, and the boutique brand already markets more spinoffs than Law & Order, so what’s one more?
Essentially a panel van version of the , C/D says the Clubvan will appear in U.S. showrooms this September as a 2013 model. It isn’t immediately clear if the model will offer both the standard 121-horsepower four and the Clubman S’ 181-horsepower turbo, but C/D says we shouldn’t expect a John Cooper Works version.
Interestingly, it doesn’t appear that Mini will weld in sheet steel where the Clubman’s rear side windows normally go – instead, C/D reports the company will employ body-color foil on the outside and plastic and safety foil liners inside. Other changes will include a trimmed-out cargo hold with power sockets and tie-downs. As with the concept, a stainless-steel grille will be fitted to keep cargo from intruding on the passenger compartment.
No word yet on whether the loss of rear seats will make the Clubvan any lighter, but Mini says the vehicle will offer more cargo capacity than its passenger-minded brethren. No guidance yet on pricing, either, but we’re guessing that like other Mini models, boutiques and delivery services will have to shell out a pretty penny to get their hands on this dutch-door cutie. Our only question now is… how long will it take for Mini to come out with a panelized version of its softroader?
In between bouts of Olympic games, the official torch that traditionally kicks off the opening ceremonies makes the long journey by a relay of runners to the host site. And you can bet that over the course of years, it has passed through some tricky environmental conditions. But is it ready to endure the unpredictability of British weather?
To find out, – a main sponsor of the fast-approaching London Olympics – lent its wind tunnel facility to test the torch in a variety of conditions. Over the course of the grueling test, the torch was made to withstand temperatures ranging from 23 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, winds generated at upwards of 50 mph, with snow packed into the front and under driving rain. But all the while the flame stayed lit.
The tests were carried out at the BMW Energy and Environmental Test Centre in Munich, a facility which boasts three wind tunnels and two climatic test rooms capable of simulating weather from -4F to 131F, replicating the Arctic Tundra and the Sahara Desert, generating wind speeds at up to 174 mph, and simulating altitudes approaching 14,000 feet above sea level.
Watch a video of the testing procedure shown on the UK’s ITV1 news by .
The group of hackers known as Anonymous last night announcing their intent to hack and take down the officialwebsite for Formula One at for the duration of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Their reason? To protest the increasingly violent crackdown on the people of Bahrain by their own government.
As of this writing, as promised and another website, , is displaying a message from Anonymous that claims responsibility.
In its press release, Anonymous addresses Bernie Ecclestone, president and CEO of Formula One, directly, promising the following:
Anonymous will turn your web site (www.formula1.com) into a smoking crater in cyber space. We will also jam your phone lines, bomb your E-Mail inboxes – and wreck anything else of yours we can find on the internet.
The group also calls upon fans of F1 to ignore the race by either not attending in person or watching it on television. They also appeal to the drivers themselves to protest the race by not crossing the starting line at the beginning of the race.
Last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix was , and despite the increasing frequency of protests and leading up to this weekend’s race, it has not yet been cancelled. As a result, activists, now including the Anonymous group, are using the motorsport’s worldwide popularity to gain attention for their cause.
In the music industry, a band’s third album is typically make-or-break. You start with the debut album, introducing the general public to the band’s polished works, then comes the sophomore record, which proves whether or not the band can keep its fan base happy and gain more traction in the music scene. But the third album must show if that band’s sound and style has a good enough mix of individual flare and mainstream appeal to keep them successful in the long-run.
If you think about it, the same can be said about the automotive landscape, and for the purpose of this review, the . The first-generation Escape, launched in 2000 as a 2001 model, entered during a time when small SUVs and “cute-utes” were booming. The redesigned 2008 Escape built upon the first model’s success, and now, as the curtain is about to close on that ruggedly handsome, boxy Escape, this new third-generation model has some mighty big shoes to fill.
Over the past year, the Escape has been an absolute sales superstar. In 2011, moved over 254,000 of the compact crossovers – a 33-percent gain over 2010’s numbers. To get an idea of just how impressive that is, know that in the same timeframe, moved just over 218,000 , while sold 137,000 and hustled around 193,000 models. Building upon that success, Ford announced that with 60,000 units sold in the first quarter of 2012, the Escape posted its best Q1 numbers in its 11-year history. Talk about going out with a bang.
But rather than sticking to the original formula of a small, trucky crossover, Ford has completely redesigned the Escape for 2013. Perhaps the biggest point of contention surrounding the new model is its styling – the two-box, upright design has been ditched in favor of the automaker’s Kinetic language, employing a more, shall we say, Focused appearance.
So here it is, the ever-important third album. Does Ford’s all-new Escape have enough mainstream appeal to take on the best and brightest of the CUV set while still being able to appeal to loyalists? We headed to the roads around San Francisco to find out.
We like the small a lot, but we’re not so fond of the upsized version is planning. When the five-door 500L debuted at Geneva, , indeed. We can’t deny the logic in offering a more family friendly 500, however. But a size-large seven-seater? This quite literally stretches the limits of the 500’s ethos.
Yet Auto Express has captured spy shots of a full-size design study for exactly that: A 500L with a third row. The magazine is reporting that the mockup it spotted in the automaker’s Turin, Italy, design studio rides on the same wheelbase as the five-door model, but with its rear overhang extended by nearly eight inches to accommodate what must surely be the smallest third row of seats to ever grace the interior of a vehicle not made of Lego.
The report goes on to say that the seven-passenger model would use the same body panels and doors as the five-door 500L, basically everything from the C-pillar forward. Check out Auto Express for more images and info.
Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Investments spent $2.7 billion buying 9.1 percent of Daimler in 2009. At the time, Aabar said it was “excited by the commercial potential of our partnership,” both companies said it was a long-term investment and spoke of joint ventures, and committed to building a training center in the emirate. Aabar then bought a share of , and later that year said it wanted to take its .
Turns out three years counts for long term these days, because a story first reported in Germany’s Manager Magazin indicates the fund wants to cash out. There are conflicting accounts as to how big a stake Aabar still has – Reuters says 9.1 percent, says three percent, but based on “sources familiar with the situation” various watchers seem sure that the stock sale is on the way.
Aabar won’t comment on the situation, Daimler has said it isn’t aware of Aabar’s intention to sell. Automotive News suggests increased fiscal discipline of Abu Dhabi’s deal making could be behind the move, other analysts say the position isn’t unusual since the stock price has doubled since Aabar bought in. Still others say that with Aabar having made $113 million from earlier this year, walking completely away from Daimler with money still on the table could indicate broader back-room disagreements.
If you want to buy a new car, you go to a car dealership. If you want to buy a ridiculously expensive and luxurious cashmere sweater in any color imaginable, you go to Harrods. At least that’s the way it once was, but these days the swanky London department store has been turning its front window display into an automotive showroom.
A year and a half ago at Harrods, a lead that in the same space a month later. just a few months ago, and now is doing the same with its Goodwood edition hatchback.
As you may recall, the Goodwood is a Mini hatchback that’s had its interior fitted by the same craftsmen who do the cabins for . Only 1,000 units will be made, each with a whopping $52,000 price tag. The Mini Inspired by Goodwood has been on display at Harrods for a week already and will be for another, with a salesman on hand – swatches and samples at the ready – to answer questions and take orders behind the window on Brompton Road.
Renault Sport invited its fans to suggest challenges for the to overcome, and one of the chosen feats was for it to play the ball in a game of ten-pin. After some establishing shots and burnouts, the 133-horsepower hot hatch gets going down the lane.
To make sure it doesn’t disappoint, a stern gang of mute, pouty models looks on because, well, you can’t have car-bowling without that, now can you?
Okay, so maybe this isn’t much in the way of confirmation, but M division president Friedrich Nitschke told Car and Driver that the company was “considering” building an M Performance version of the . While that’s not quite an M7, it’s close.
Remember, that BMW has created to offer a higher performance version of its vehicles to slot between the standard models and the full-blown M cars. M Performance will also allow BMW to create performance diesel and all-wheel-drive models without sullying the M badge.
Of course, enthusiasts looking for a full-size BMW performance sedan can already have an like the one pictured above, but there’s something alluring about a real M-badged 7-Series. Given that BMW has already , it only seems fair that the 7-Series gets some love too, even if it’s just in M Performance form.
Nitschke’s interview revealed a few more interesting details about BMW’s product plans, namely that turbocharged engines are here to stay. He said BMW has no plans to use superchargers for its M products, and it sounds like naturally aspirated M engines are a thing of the past as well. Manual transmissions will continue to be offered, as according to Nitschke, new models will be equipped with transmissions that use software and electronics to “protect” the tranny from mismatched shifts. We won’t be seeing a hatchback M135i here in the U.S., however, nor are any of the diesel M Performance models headed towards our shores.
Oh, how we’d like to go all grumpy-old-man-get-off-my-lawn on for this latest bit of hipster marketing. But dammit, it’s got robots in it. Real robots, industrial robots, installed inside a 2012 hatchback. And it’s just so cool.
The robots are there to help Jeff Soto paint a mural on an empty brick wall, and while we’re pretty sure the final product of this collaboration is still something like 90-percent man and 10-percent machine, we really like what we see. Chevy calls Soto a “respected street artist,” which we figure just means a graffiti artist with a degree rather than a rap sheet. (Soto’s is from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.) Soto, in turn, refers to the compact Sonic as the first “robotic art car.”
While Soto did a lot of conventional work on the mural, he also used the Sonic’s robotic arms, which were controlled from within the car and could be operated while Soto drove. The painting appendages emerged through the Sonic’s windows, sunroof and hatchback, and seem to take up all the available space inside the car, save for the driver’s seat.
While we were fairly impressed seeing the Sonic , we definitely think the little car should focus on its art. There’s some real talent there.
Last year aimed cameras at the the 150 Camaros making the drive to Phoenix for Camaro5 Fest. The footage has been pieced together into a ten-minute documentary called Alter Ego, a celebration of owners in celebration of their cars.
It’s more than that, though, since it pauses to take a look at the model that made the name, and the annus horribilus of 2002 when Camaro production ceased.
There’s also lots of tire smoke. Naturally. to watch.
The challenge of small, efficient and clever hatchbacks catching on with the American masses is a long story that shows infrequent signs of becoming less challenging. The bottom line is that most U.S. consumers feel such vehicles are simply too small for our wide-open-spaces sensibilities. This smallness is only enhanced when one looks around while stopped at American intersections, only to see big and tall sheetmetal in all directions. There are admittedly serious strides being made in this segment in various U.S. markets, usually of the urban variety and on the coasts, but it will always be a struggle.
The last time Peugeot tried directly communicating in American English with imported product was back in 1991 with its 505 and 405 ranges that unceremoniously flopped. There was ongoing talk at that time of bringing over the 205 hatchback to try and improve things, but we missed out and Peugeot was gone. Perhaps the seven percent of PSA Peugeot-Citroën now owned by General Motors will someday result in the importing of the solid hatchback tested here, but I won’t hold my breath.
Recently, the new Peugeot 208 was all over the French giant’s show stand at the , together with its legendary GTi trim and new XY upmarket trim. Back in 1984, it was the 105-horsepower 205 GTi that established the legend of the French hot hatch. While the 206 was then a smash hit with buyers between 1998 and 2006, the subsequently larger 207 has been far less popular in the face of much improved competitors – a group that blossomed from just 16 different models on the European market in 1998 to now 27 separate hatches today. In its prime, the 206 outsold even the mighty Volkswagen Golf and stayed at the top of Europe’s sales charts for a time. The outgoing 207, however, has routinely lingered behind the and Polo, Renault Clio, Opel Astra and Corsa, not to mention the and .
is using the to reveal a special edition with Victoria Beckham – not “created with” or “by,” just “with.” It was , but Posh Becks has been busy doing the kinds of things keep a woman called Posh busy.
LR has made a vid to support the cause, but it stretches the definition of “teaser” since it’s more like 17 seconds of Fashion TV meets Tron in monochrome, bracketed by titles. If you look really closely, you might even see the Evoque in it. to check it out.
Victor Muller’s on-again, off-again love affair with Spyker seems to be back on track. During the executive’s fling with , Spyker was up for sale to the highest bidder. No one stepped forward to take the exotic Dutch luxury manufacturer off of Muller’s hands, which has apparently turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Now that Saab has collapsed into bankruptcy, Muller has renamed Swedish Automobile Spyker once again. With the goal of running an international car company all but faded, Muller is expected to return his attention to building up Spyker.
According to reports, the executive aims to push Spyker to produce 1,000 units a year and introduce a handful of new models. Those include the seen above, a model first unveiled in 2006. Of course, that plan hinges on securing investors for the company. Spyker needs around $32 million to get production up and running again, and Muller is currently courting a number of potential funding sources.
Not surprisingly, investors are a bit skittish after the executive’s failed attempts at both Formula One and Saab.
You’ve probably heard it a hundred times before: a product or service calling itself the of its category, or the of another. Well you might call the St. Regis the of hotels, and not by some spurious correlation.
The British automaker has been using the chain’s high-end hotels around the world for years to launch its new models, and last year kicked the relationship up a notch by hosting a driving event through the Italian countryside for Bentley owners and guests of the St. Regis hotels in Rome and Florence. Now that they’re done flirting, the two luxury marques are about to consummate the relationship with a more comprehensive partnership.
The freshly inked collaboration will see fleets of stationed at St. Regis hotels around the world from Singapore and Abu Dhabi to the flagship location in Manhattan. But that’s not the end of it.
The St. Regis and its associated locations in The Luxury Collection of hotels and resorts in the Starwood group will also be hosting a series of driving programs, special events and brand initiatives for Bentley and guests of the hotels, starting with the Springtime Bentley Grand Tour that will take participants over the course of two days from Vienna to Salzburg behind the wheel of the new . for the full press release.
Want a hot little hatchback? You could do a lot worse than a . But as with many cars, your budget will determine how much speed you get: Cooper, Cooper S, JCW or – with the first-gen model, anyway – the top-of-the-line John Cooper Works GP.
Introduced just before Mini launched the second-generation model line, the GP edition packed more power, less weight and a sportier suspension. After receiving a few months ago that Mini was planning a similar version of the current model, we brought you a few weeks ago of a prototype hatchback wearing some tell-tale signs of GP-ification. But what is this? A GP coupe?
That’s what it would seem, with the less versatile and more backwards-hat-wearing Mini Coupe wearing a minimally camouflaged lower fascias front and rear, plus four-spoke wheels like the first GP edition.
The question is whether Mini is planning GP versions of both the hatchback and coupe, or if one of these prototypes is merely a diversion of some sort. We’ll have to wait to find out, but you can take a closer look at the spy shots and start to wonder as well.
If you’ve got an hour to kill and an itch to watch some exciting Targa Newfoundland action, we’ve got good news for you. SPEED has been kind enough to stream the network’s one-hour special free online. The episode spends plenty of time following both the Modern and Classic divisions with barely a nod toward Open or Grand Touring. That’s a shame for plenty of reasons, both because the competition was incredibly tight across the board this year and because I hung out with in both the latter classes during my .
Still, the Flyin’ Miata guys get a little time on screen. The rest of the coverage details the fight between Scott Giannou in his and Bob Yuille in his . There’s also plenty of interviews with Ralph Gilles. You can check out the full episode by clicking .
We for the coming-some-day-but-not-anytime-soon Acura NSX starring Jerry Seinfeld, but we really wish it would have popped back onto our radar for a different reason than this. (Like a production announcement from .) TMZ is reporting that when the commercial was cast, the ad the agency responsible had sought an African-American actor to play the car dealer who was, “Nice looking, friendly. Not too dark.” And the website has a copy of the document to prove it.
To paraphrase one of Seinfeld’s catch phrases: “Yes, there’s everything wrong with that.”
While we’d like to think that some day the obvious interpretation might be that the casting director was referring to the actor’s mood, clearly that’s not the case here. TMZ says an unnamed source associated with the commercial told it that “not too dark” had something to do with lighting and special effects, and we hope that’s true. Still, the way the brief description reads, it certainly sounds like whomever was casting the spot thinks dark-skinned people are neither nice nor friendly.
We’re not about to throw Honda under the bus – it was, after all, an outside ad agency named RP& that shot the ad, according to Motoramic – as the automaker apologized, issuing the following statement:
We apologize to anyone offended by the language on the casting sheet used in the selection of actors for one of our commercials.
We sought to cast an African-American in a prominent role in the commercial, and we made our selection based on the fact that he was the most talented actor.
The casting sheet was only now brought to our attention. We are taking appropriate measures to ensure that such language is not used again in association with any work performed on behalf of our brand.
While we’re glad to see Honda react promptly and properly, re-watching the commercial gave us further pause: If Honda indeed sought to cast an African-American in a prominent role, did it consider an African-American for the part of the guy who’s first on the list for the NSX, as opposed to the salesperson?
