has posted two teasers to YouTube, previewing M Performance versions of both the and . These look to be specially produced for the UK market, and limited to just 30 units of each model in either red, white or blue.
Little information accompanies the low-res videos, saving that each of the cars is being fitted with “an impressively high specification of standard equipment” and that the 30 cars will be split up into 10 of each color. All three hues will feature BMW’s “frozen” paint, the matte finish we’re familiar with from the .
to watch both videos and their accompanying dubstep soundtracks.
Go back a decade or so – before Koenigsegg, SSC and the were on the scene – and the idea of a million-dollar, thousand-horsepowersupercar that could break the three-second barrier to sixty would seem out of this world. Posting those kinds of figures with an electric car? No way.
Way. That’s what the Rimac Concept_One is all about. It chews up and spits them back out into the Silicon Valley from whence they came. The electric motors mounted at each wheel give the electric supercar 1,088 horsepower of thrust and a 2.8-second sprint to 100 km/h (62 mph). Range comes in at a claimed 372-miles. All yours (if you’re one of the first 88 customers to call) for the low, low price of $980,000.
We could hardly believe it when we saw the show car in last year, and neither could the show-goers in Monte Carlo where it made its production debut. So to show the public that it was for real, Rimac put out this short video clip showing its Croatian creation laying down patches of its Giugiaro-designed Vredestein rubber on the tarmac. It’s brief, but it’s worth a watch. to check it out.
When Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, it will be a cause for celebration for her entire United Kingdom. But the Brits aren’t the only ones marking Her Majesty’s 60 years on the throne.
The celebrations will apparently include delegations from around the world, including one mixed party of prancing horses old and new to represent Italy. Not only will several be represented at the first Concours d’Elegance to be held at Windsor Castle, but Ferrari is bringing the 4th Mounted Carabinieri to strut their stuff on the grounds of the palatial estate for Her Majesty’s enjoyment.
The event will form part of the Diamond Jubilee Pageant from May 10 to 13, but you can see a preview of what Ferrari and the Mounted Carabineri it supports have in store . The fancy dress makes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (which you’d otherwise be more likely to see in the other Windsor, where Sergio Marchionne – chief executive of Ferrari’s parent company – went to college) look sober by comparison, but it’s worth watching for the overly dramatic music alone.
Baboons are curious creatures. And, thanks to their opposable thumbs, they are rather excellent at satiating that curiosity, no matter what impediments stand in their way. Apparently, that includes door handles.
decided there was no better way to test the durability of its hatchback (that’s the here in the States) than to send it into Knowsley Safari Park, near Liverpool in the UK. Specifically, into the Baboon habitat.
As you’ll see in the video after the break, the primates do their very best to rip the little hatchback to shreds, biting every surface, jumping up and down and from door to door and generally mucking about. How does the Hyundai cope with this kind of abuse? to find out yourself.
One of the benefits of being a factory driver is that you get to get coffee for Hurley Haywood. And if you’re Le Mans winner Patrick Long, according to this little spot for the Porsche Sport Driving School, you get do it from behind the wheel of a 911 GT3 and on a damp, drift-ready track.
But since Patrick Long apparently lives under a bridge, we’d like to know where he puts the troll and if he lets the pass whenever they want. And where he gets his coffee. Have a look to see the video.
has long had an advantage over and when it comes to maintenance and ownership costs that it has hardly ever advertised – free maintenance for the first four years of ownership. The secret will be no more as the company is about to unleash a major ad push behind the program known as BMW Ultimate Service.
The ads, done by BMW’s ad agency, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners, which took BMW’s whole ad account assignment last August, are set inside a BMW dealership and draw on comedy to depict the surprise and even incredulity that four years of free maintenance comes with every new Bimmer. In one spot, for example, a woman thinks the promise of free maintenance is a come-on, and she reminds the salesman that she is married. In another spot, a man buying a BMW thinks he has to give the salesman sports tickets in order to get the deal.
BMW’s marketing chief Dan Creed says the ad campaign, for which there are 27 different possible endings to the vignettes between salesman and customer, is timed right for a market of luxury buyers, which, though seemingly fully recovered from the economic death march of 2008-2010, is still looking for value along with their luxury.
“The expectation and widely held belief that BMW has very expensive maintenance costs is still a big factor in why people bypass us when shopping, and we think we have a very efficient way of changing that perception here,” says Creed. “Mercedes, Lexus, and our other competitors don’t have this, and we are going to use it as a meaningful point of difference.”
for more on BMW’s upcoming ads and to watch the videos.
wants you to know that the is smart and sexy and has enlisted the aid of Marissa Miller to help get the point across. The redesigned crossover seems more distracting than anything when Miller’s in the picture, but we’ll assume that’s in a good way. And since we don’t expect she comes with the car, buyers should be able to focus on the smart and sexy part.
To of the Enclave and Miller behind the scenes, you know where to go.
German car magazine Auto Bild is planning build a sedan that will slot below the and compete directly with the . Citing no sources (so a grain of salt is recommended), the magazine claims the four-door, codenamed Pajun, will cost no less than $84,000 and be ready for production no later than 2017.
In September 2011, the Pajun could spawn coupe, convertible and even a shooting brake variant. Back then, rumors swirled about powertrain options that included a 550-horsepower V6, 600-hp V8, plug-in hybrid and an -sourced diesel.
Hopefully, Porsche is also working expeditiously to find a better name than Pajun, which in Korea is a , in Finnish it means willow, and, according to , in Welsh it means – wait for it – Cajun. That’s the name Porsche was using to refer to its smaller-than-Cayenne SUV before to Macan in February. Clever coincidence.
Nothing to see here, kids, unless you like watching powerful V8s with orotund exhaust notes kicking up walls of snow via a right-pedal workout and heaps of opposite lock. If that’s the case, there is something to see here, and it’s a promo vid for the AMG Driving Academy Winter Sporting held in Sweden.
This video is merely highlights. But if you like it, then you can book a trip to Moder Svea for this year’s sessions. for ice sculptures of rooster tails.
It is nearly impossible to avoid reminiscing about the 1983 Volkswagen GTI while driving the . As you may recall, “the original hot hatch” arrived on our shores seemingly eons ago with a naturally aspirated 1.8-liter four spitting out just 90 horsepower. While hardly brawny, even in an era of wheezy outputs (the 1983 Mustang GT 5.0 generated just 175 horsepower), its low curb weight of 2,100 pounds and a base price of $7,995 made the range-topping Rabbit not only light, tossable and reasonably quick, but very affordable.
Fast forward nearly three decades to the 2012 Golf R, a direct descendant of that first-generation . Thoroughly modernized, and riding on a sixth-generation chassis, the new two- or four-door range-topping boasts a bit more displacement and gobs more horsepower. But that is not all today’s hot hatch has gained. With innovation and refinement come mass and cost – both of which have risen dramatically over the past three decades.
After falling head-over-heels for the 2012 Golf R after our last spring, it was time to put one in our garage for a longer run on domestic soil. With an eager and open mind, we welcomed the Golf R into our lives for a week. While we didn’t have a chance to toss it around a closed racing circuit, we did put in several hundred miles on the highway, wrung it out on Mulholland and frolicked in wet Southern California mountain snow. In the process, we not only learned plenty about Volkswagen’s hot hatch, but we met several other Golf R drivers who were more than willing to talk to us about their own experiences.
has rolled out a new video for its vicious . The 510-horsepower machine spends a little time frolicking through an industrial complex before taking to an open stretch of track for a little more fun. The entire clip is appropriately shot in black and white and set to the riotous tones of the hefty 6.2-liter V8 banging off the limiter. Not a bad way to blow two minutes of your day.
As you may recall, Chris Harris recently lined the C63 AMG Black Series up against bruisers like Porsche 911 GT3 RS and the BMW M3 GTS for a little . Harris found the C63 to be a willing dance partner with appropriate levels of presence on the street, but still found the machine out gunned by the track-bred Porsche. to check out the Black Series video for yourself.
shows off the dark side of the C63 AMG Black Series coupe
Michael Bay’s Transformers were true enough (for a Bay production, at least) to the original articles in their car and robot states, but their transforming sequences were epilepsy-inducing explosions of cranks and gears that made no sense at all. Admittedly, it didn’t stop us from enjoying the first movie.
But the work of a Japanese modeler is what we’ve been looking for: his Transformer takes us all the way back to the original eightes series when Bumblebee was a . This is version eight, fitted with 22 servo motors – it even throws punches and does a jig – and we’re told that version nine is on the way. We’d like to humbly request that all research on flying cars stops, and every resource be poured into a production version of this right now. to check out the video.
is not an outfit that would miss out on the enormous opportunity presented by the Chinese market. Having won the grand prix there three times out of the first four it was held, the Prancing Horse marque launched a there in 2009, followed by an even more exclusive .
For 2012, Ferrari a special-edition to mark the year of the dragon, and to launch it, the local dealership in Nanjing rented out a section of the Great Wall. It’s what they did with it, however, that has local authorities seeing red in more ways than one.
Apparently at some point during or after the demonstration, an employee of the dealership got behind the wheel of the limited-edition V8 supercar and pulled some smokey donuts. The problem is that the stunt left tire marks burnt into the ancient surface, leaving authorities understandably upset. What repercussions will ensue remains to be seen, but we certainly wouldn’t want to be ticking off China’s notoriously strict government.
When Lingenfelter Performance Engineering announced it had in its tuned , the man guiding the wheel was Hot Rod editor-in-chief Dave Freiburger. We of the run in the 702-horsepower – that’s at the wheels – coupe, but in the latest episode of Hot Rod Unlimited, Freiburger offers the long-form backstory of what it took to get to 202.6 mph exactly.
Continental Tire’s proving grounds in Uvalde, Texas aren’t Italy’s Nardo Ring (where the did 202 mph), and there was much more involved than keeping steady on the straights and hanging on the banks. for the video.
Jeremy Clarkson did an 11-minute interview with a South African radio station that has a name to match its geographic location. Clarkson discussed what it took to make the Top Gear segment that had them circuit on a race weekend, the coming Ron Howard movie Rush about the 1976 F1 battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt and Top Gear Festival 2012 “with an array of cars that has never been seen anywhere.”
But what has caught everyone’s attention – everyone except for the radio interviewer, that is – was Clarkson saying that the festival would be “about the only time” he, Hammond and May would work together in 2012 because “there’s no Top Gear this year.” There’s below, the bombshell at about 8:10. Since it’s all a bit confusing, Mr. Clarkson himself has set the record straight via , confirming that Top Gear will return in January of 2013, though there will be a Christmas special some time before that.
The reason petrolheads will be missing out on their BBC fix? Simon Cowell, apparently. “Sunday nights will be full of fat people singing,” said Clarkson. “Top Gear is a medium size van. Cowell is a juggernaut. When he has finished his singing competition, our new series will start.”
If you read the owner’s manual of your car you’d begin to realize how much of your own vehicle you didn’t know about. If it’s a car made within the past few years, then the owner’s manual covering the dirty bits will be joined by an even thicker manual that covers just the infotainment system. , however, has a better way for buyers to learn the CUE-powered mysteries of the $44,995 XTS: give owners an iPad with the car, loaded with tutorials on how to get the most out of the system.
Yes, when the was introduced it installed with a multimedia version of its owner’s manual. Based on Wired’s discussion with Cadillac, however, this is much wider implementation, with each Cadillac dealer required to have two “certified technology experts” on duty, plus a CUE call center for owners, an online media team looks for CUE questions to answer, and a mobile CUE specialist who makes house calls. The point seems to be that this isn’t about getting an iPad with your car, it’s about understanding ever tech thing your car can do. If you still don’t know how to access the full power of your XTS, it will only be because you don’t want to.
In 2011, commenced its People’s Car Project in China to create crowdsourced concepts of the VW of the future. More than 33 million people visited the site, and three concepts were created from the inputs: the Music Car, the Hover Car and the Smart Key.
The Music Car is a wrapped in LEDs that change colors to match the driver’s choice of music. The Hover Car is a zero-emissions two-seater that, no surprise, hovers over electromagnetic road networks. The Smart Key is Big Brother for your car, in your pocket: the high-def touchscreen on the nine-millimeter key can track the status of your car and keep an eye on it via “satellite transmission.”
The project is continuing, so you can still post your thoughts to VW’s future. In the meantime there’s a video and a couple of press releases for more on the story.
’s People’s Car Project in China has produced three concepts [w/video]
The crew at MotoMan has rolled out the second episode of its Targa Newfoundland coverage. This time around, Brandon Fitch and I spend plenty of time talking with the guys about the challenges of Day One, how the supercharged handles some of the more technical stages and joy of hauling ass through a subdivision. Meanwhile, team MotoMan gets a few valuable lessons on competition in targa from veterans of the race like Rob Pacione and learns a little about Newfoundland hospitality at the same time. As the week continues, competitors are forced to overcome a variety of challenges, from an entire engine swap in a Lotus to a water-logged 911.
Part Two gives us all a better idea of what it’s like to compete in Grand Touring, where the goal is to hit a specific time and speed, rather than simply beat a time like in Targa class. Both competitions are challenging in their own right, but we have to sympathize with MotoMan’s frustration at being forced to limp a along at 40 miles per hour with an open road ahead of you. to check it out for yourself.
The 2013 Dodge Dart’s trajectory towards dealer lots has officially begun. The first rolled of the line at Chrysler’s Belvidere Assembly yesterday, en route to a late June appearance at your local showroom.
Belvidere’s future was uncertain after the poor reception given its previous product line, the and its platform mates, the and . The Dart launches with more promise than any product since the original Neon, which began production at the Illinois plant in 1995.
While Belvidere has been open since 1965, it has had a long history of building inexpensive Mopar models since the Dodge Monaco and Plymouth Fury went out of production in the late 1970s. Belvidere built Dodge Omnis and Plymouth Horizons through the 1980s, and the K-car-based New Yorker and Dodge Dynasty before retooling for the Neon.
Belvidere was also home to several of Chrysler’s awesome budget performance models, the Shelby GLHS, Neon ACR and Dodge SRT4. Here’s to hoping that it can soon add a hot-rodded Dart to that resume.
to see video of the event and read the full press release.
Toyota Supra successor, Nissan Juke-R, Cadillac ATS pricing, GM Europe restructuring, Prius PHEV sales
Episode #281 of the is here, and this week, Chris, Dan, and Zach chat about the fresh rumors of a new Toyota Supra, the Nissan Juke-R heading for (very) limited production, Cadillac ATS pricing, GM Europe headed for another restructuring, and sales of the Toyota Prius PHEV. Your questions and comments power the end of the ‘cast, and for those of you who hung with us live on our , thanks for taking the time. We’ve embedded our Q&A module for you to scroll through and follow along, too. Thanks for listening!
Autoblog Podcast #281:
Topics:
In the Autoblog Garage:
Hosts: , ,
Runtime: 01:19:48
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