Cars Tips: June 2013

Sunday, June 30, 2013

GM Says, Happy 60th Anniversary Corvette!

On June 30, 2013, the Chevrolet Corvette celebrates its 60th anniversary, but America’s favorite sports car is nowhere near the retirement age.

To mark the anniversary, Chevrolet has released some key facts about the Corvette’s history, and some of them are really interesting. For instance, did you know that the Corvette is the world’s longest-running, continuously produced passenger car nameplate? The longest-running vehicle of any type is also a Chevrolet, the Suburban.

Surprise…FGearTV Says 12-Year Old Ferrari Owner Story Was a Hoax

As many suspected when the crew from FGearTV shared a video of a 12-year old boy from the UK named Callum, who purportedly bought three Ferrari models including a F355, a 458 Italia and a 599GTO, after selling an app to Google for £8.5 million (or $8.5 million, it wasn't made clear) at the age of just 9, the story was nothing more than a hoax. Read more »

New Owner of TVR Reveals Plans on the Future of the Brand [w/Top Gear TVR Videos]

Les Edgar and his investors could be called a bunch of hopefuls in thinking that they can bring back the iconic British sports car brand TVR, a company which never exuded financial stability, under any of its former ownerships.

However, since the name does genuinely mean something to automotive fans, and they don't plan to change much in bringing their cars back onto the radar, it may very well just work out.

After having gone up the Pikes Peak hillclimb in 12:35.61 and been called the fastest production vehicle to have done so, the excessively-promoted Range Rover Sport is getting even more coverage, as it has just been announced as the official pace car, and “will open the legendary course to strong international entry at this Sunday’s 91st running of the racing venue.” Read more »

EVO Drives Classic Lamborghini Espada Through France

The Lamborghini Espada, built for exactly ten years, starting in 1968, was never intended to be a sharp-driving supercar, being more suited to carrying people and some of their bags in comfort and at great speed, if necessary.

For me that had something to do with the way it looked, and in particular the design of the rear, which appeared to have been enlarged for extra boot capacity – it is a more practical sports car, then.

Scoop: This is The New 2014 BMW X4 Crossover in its Production Form

The funny thing about the BMW X4 is that, even though we knew about it for a long time, our spies hadn't captured a prototype model on the road. Of course, as most of you likely remember, BMW eventually came out with a concept version to preview the sporty crossover at the Shanghai Auto Show in China just this past April.

Well, now we can add the X4 to our long list of upcoming cars that have been spied as pre-production test models. BMW engineers may have slathered a few layers of wraps with swirly shapes, but since there are no fake panels, they don't do much to hide the appearance of the actual X4 that will go on sale in the first half of next year.

To get an idea of what it will look like without the camouflage, the relation of the X4 Concept to the X4 production model is exactly the same as that of the 4-Series Concept to the 2014MY 4-Series Coupe presented about a fortnight ago.

Arguably, with the fifth generation of the Elantra, Hyundai took a big step forward on just about every front but in particular, the design and refinement departments, in its ongoing quest to become one of the most bestselling brands in the world. Proof of that was the North American Car of the Year title it snagged in 2012. Read more »

Pikes Peak-Ready Truck With 2,000 HP Can Drift Too…

Drifting is a really spectacular display of vehicle control on the limit, especially when done by pros. In addition, the excitement and interest level for those watching definitely goes up the less likely they think the respective vehicle is to actually be slid around in a controlled fashion. Read more »

Don't Read This If You Don't Want Us to Spoil Top Gear’s New Reasonably Priced Car

If you can’t wait to see Sunday’s Top Gear episode, the first one from the motoring show’s 20th season, then let us spoil it for you…gently. This first paragraph can be read with the utmost confidence that we will not reveal anything, aside from the fact that they are changing their reasonably priced car, and getting one with a familiar badge from closer to home… Read more »

Production Version of New BMW i3 Revealed in Patent Drawings

This ladies and gentleman, is what the production version of BMW's foray into the pure and extended range electric vehicle category, the all-new i3, will look like when the Bavarian carmaker presents it to the public before the end of the summer and ahead of its public premiere at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September.

While these are drawings, they are official patents of the production i3 previewed by a concept of the same name some two years ago at the 2011 Frankfurt auto show. To see the differences between the conceptual and the actual i3, we placed pictures of the two cars side by side.

It looks like Jaguar is having a hard time giving up on its C-X75 hypercar. As you probably remember, the company announced late last year it was going to axe the project due to difficult market conditions that would have made a £1 million Jaguar ($1.53 million) hard to justify. Read more »

GM Marks the Start of 2014 Corvette Stingray Production with Special Premiere Edition

Chevrolet announced on Friday that it will build a limited run of 500 units of a special 2014 Corvette Stingray Coupe named the Premiere Edition, with all units being top-of-the-line 3LT models. With this model, GM will basically kick off production of the 2014 Corvette Stingray.

All limited-run editions feature a Laguna Blue Tintcoat exterior with a Brownstone suede interior along with a suede-wrapped interior trim and carbon fiber packages.

PSA Peugeot Citroen is the modern development of the coffee mill company founded by the Peugeot family in 1810. In fact, the same family still holds a 24.4 percent stake in the company as well as 38.1 percent of the voting rights – they still kind of run the automaker.

However, that may soon change, as according to a Reuter's report, unnamed internal sources apparently suggested, “the Peugeot family has now accepted that they’ll lose control, so this is no longer an issue.”

A number of road users, including several children, received an unwanted surprise today (Friday, June 28) in the Russian city of Irkutsk when an out of control bus slammed into three cars and a small truck.

As seen from the dash-cam of a car that was not involved, the bus veered onto the sidewalk and came crashing into the other vehicles at speed. According to a report from the local news station Irk, rather amazingly, everyone made it out alive and only a couple of motorists and passengers suffered some very minor injuries that were treated on the spot.

Just because we're a very long way (news-wise) from this November's 2013 edition of the SEMA aftermarket show in Las Vegas, doesn't mean that there aren't any related stories to report on.

Today, the folks from Morgan's & Phillip's Speed Apparel (M&P) sent us an email informing us about a project car they're working on for the upcoming SEMA event. Whereas last year, they went with a classic Mini Cooper, for the 2013 show, they've chose a 1967 Ford Fairlane 500 Coupe.

I’m pretty sure there is no driver out there that wasn’t surprised at least once by a vehicle he or she didn’t see in the car’s rearview mirrors. It’s called a blind spot and every mirror has it. This is why automakers have begun offering systems that alert drivers when a vehicle is in the blind spot. Read more »

Allegedly Real Photos of 2014 Honda Fit – Jazz Surface Online

After the all-new Mazda3 came to life on the web before its official reveal, it's time for another Japanese carmaker to have one of its upcoming models pre-maturely released online – or so we believe, as we're not 100 percent sure yet.

Today, we were tipped off from Shrawan Raja of Indiasautoblog about three screenshots of the next generation Honda Fit sub-compact, which is also marketed as the Jazz in other markets around the world, including Europe, purportedly sourced from an official brochure.

Diesels have migrated in perception from being associated with clattery farm equipment, to sounding almost like their petrol counterparts, aside from at idle, when the difference is more obvious.

In fact, with new direct-injected petrol engines, the idle noise is suspiciously diesely, so even if some modern oil burners still haven’t done away with the characteristic small hammer quickly tapping on pipe sound, they should be given a chance and tried out, even (or especially) by those who thought they didn’t like them before, simply to have an informed future opinion, if nothing else.

Nissan’s performance division Nismo and Williams Advanced Engineering have announced an agreement to collaborate on the development of high performance road cars.

In a press statement, Williams Advanced Engineering says it will use its expertise of aerodynamics, simulation and material science to help Nismo develop future products that will launch from 2014. It is not clear on which models Nismo and Williams will collaborate, but a unique Nismo model shouldn't be written off.

Not to be outdone by its chief rivals Ford and General Motors with their F-Series and Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra respectively, the Chrysler Group has revealed its updated 2014MY Ram truck lineup, with the biggest news for the 1500 being the introduction of a diesel engine. Read more »

Who's at Fault Here in This Road Rage Curse Fest? [NSFW]

Most of us spend a heck of a lot of time on the road behind the wheel of a car or the handles of a motorcycle. Sometimes we're not in the best of moods, which is when ugly things can happen.

Filmed in the UK from the helmet camera of a motorcyclist, this video shows the squabble between the former and a driver of an older generation Honda Civic saloon on the road, which evolves into a lesson on British curse words (hence the NSFW tag).

Here's another one for the road; Daimler is joining the foray of car and truck makers that will be present in the upcoming 2014 Transformers 4 film with not one, but at least two vehicles.

After the announcement on the custom-built Optimus Prime from Western Star, which is a subsidiary of Daimler Trucks North America, director Michael Bay's show and tell for the movie continues with the release of a photo of a Freightliner truck.

It’s hard to believe looking at the current BMW range, but the Isetta was once built and marketed as a BMW. Various companies built the Italian-designed Isetta under license in a number of countries, but to this day, the BMW version remains the best known.

Powered by a single-cylinder engine ranging from 250cc and 12hp to 300cc and 13hp, the BMW Isetta was a cute-looking bubble car that had (and still has) a broad fan base. However, it is pretty rare to find the owner of an Isetta who bought the car new and still keeps it running.

Of all the cars featured in the 23 James Bond films, two stand out the most, beginning with the original Aston Martin DB5 used by Sean Connery in the now classic 1964 Goldfinger and 1965 Thunderball movies, which was sold for a paltry £2.9 million (US$4.4 million / €3.4 million at the current exchange rates) during its 2010 London sale.

The other one is the Lotus Esprit Series 1 ‘Submarine’ Car used more than a decade later in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me, starring Roger Moore, and now, it could be yours – well, theoretically, that is.

As a new model that's only been in the market for less than a year (sales started in November 2012), the Pathfinder is entering the 2014MY with only a few equipment changes, a small increase in price across the range, and most importantly, the addition of the new hybrid variant that was introduced at the New York Show in March. Read more »

Smart Makes Fun of the ForTwo’s Off-Road Capabilities in Brilliant Commercial

The Smart ForTwo is a minicar that needs no presentation. It is a car only for the city, as any trip outside the urban environment shows obvious limitations: it has no space for luggage, only offers seating for two, it’s unstable at high speeds and I’m pretty sure Smart ForTwo owners could easily fill in more blanks. Read more »

Surprising Success of Three Wheeler May Prompt Morgan to Make More Variants

If you love driving in its purest form, as well as old-fashioned mechanical engineering, with little or no electronic aid associated, then the attraction exuded by the Morgan Three Wheeler is undeniable. Furthermore, you don’t have to be an older gentleman to understand, appreciate and want one for yourself – this has even caught the company off-guard, as they were not expecting this much interest from younger people. Read more »

Thursday, June 27, 2013

You Just Won't Believe This Reckless Cop and How This Story Ended

If watching this police car camera footage and more importantly, learning what took place after the incident ended, doesn’t make you angry, then you're probably walking around with a glowing ring over your head…

Off-duty Baton Rouge (Louisiana) police officer David Stewart was driving his patrol car on April 30, 2012, just outside his jurisdiction, when he noticed a Ford F-150 truck driving erratically and nearly twice the 45 mph (72km/h) speed limit. Stewart decided to take action and signaled the truck to pull over. The Ford driver continued to disregard the cop for a few miles, but in the end, he decided to pull over.

The funny thing with cars that you may have dismissed for any number of reasons when they were parked spanking-new in dealership lots, and which could range from their design to their engineering and cost, is that there's always the possibility you may find them interesting enough to collect after few decades have passed by.

The even bigger irony is that sometimes, it's precisely those quirky characteristics and features, which would have once deterred you to buy one new, that make you want one as a used collectors model…

I don’t really understand why some people used to call the old Mk V and Mk VI VW Golf GTIs boring, when in actual fact, with 200 – 210 hp, they are anything but that, and neither is the latest one, which is the lightest and most powerful one in years.

If you want a boring GTI, then look no further than the Mk IV, which only had a laughable 148hp (150PS) when it first came out, and was virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the range – it didn’t even have a proper visible exhaust tip, hiding its pipe behind the rear bumper.

If you ever wondered why Porsche fans called the 911 GT2 series the "widow maker", just consider this: the GT2 series is essentially a 911 Turbo without the all-wheel drive system that allows the latter to behave in a more cooperative and civilized manner, with even more power and less weight. Do we need to say more?

With the presentation of the new 991 Turbo and Turbo S having taken place last month, we have an idea of what to expect when the next generation of the GT2 hits Porsche dealerships next year.

After having seen our fair share of mediocre and bad car- and motorsports-related films, we were wondering whether the genre was getting a star any time soon. Then “Rush” came along, promising a well-documented dramatization of the 1976 Formula 1 championship, and more specifically, the personal battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt, who raced for Ferrari and McLaren respectively. Read more »

The Ultimate Barn Find: Chevrolet Dealership Is Unearthed Decades After It Was Locked Up

This has to be one of the most improbable barn find in years: a former Chevrolet dealership from Nebraska that had been locked for decades has been opened so that employees of an auction company could assess the inventory.

Their surprise couldn’t have been greater: among the 500 vehicles that formed Lambrecht Chevrolet’s inventory were 50 “brand new” cars, such as a 1956 Chevrolet Cameo pickup truck with only 1 mile on the odometer, a 1964 Chevrolet Impala with 4 miles, a 1978 Corvette with 4 miles, a 1960s Chevrolet Corvair with 17 miles and many more.

All these cars still have their window stickers and plastic on the seats, so there’s a good chance they will regain their brand new look once the dust is removed and a mechanical check is done (provided that rust hasn’t crept into the bodywork).

To be frank, I never understood the allure or the reasoning, for that matter, behind the aftermarket conversion of four-door sedans to convertibles, but I guess each to his own taste.

While we're on the subject of taste (or the lack thereof…), the drop-top specialists over at Newport Convertible Engineering (NEC) from Placentia, California, have sharpened their scalpels on the roof of an Acura TL sedan turning it into a four-door cabriolet with a center roll-bar to keep things in place. The gold stripes running down the middle are the cherry icing to this strangely flavored cake.

It’s no secret that no matter how much an automotive designer wants to take credit for his or her creation, there’s only so much that can be called genuine creativity. Most of the better shapes we see are inspired by nature, usually by muscular predatory animals, which have clearly defined flanks, perfectly resembling the shape of a feline crouched down, ready to pounce – somewhat of a cliché in the industry.

The idea is: the more extreme the flanks, the more coke bottle-like it all gets, and the more we begin to hear names, most of which are Italian (and one Japanese).

Adding to the many existing styling packages that are widely available for the second generation of the Porsche Cayenne, is a new widebody aerodynamic kit from German tuning brand Prior Design.

The parts that come with the package are pretty much standard and include a reworked front bumper that gains extra LED lights along with a different grille piece and which connects to the swollen front wheel arches.

We kept the opening shot for this piece deliberately unrevealing, because this is not at all what you were imagining when picturing the world’s fastest amphibious car – or so the company that makes it claims. However, the WaterCar Panther is just that, and it’s also available for order, after “fourteen years, countless successes and failures, 27 patents, and untold labor hours,” as we're told by the company. Read more »

Elderly Lady Fogs Out of Luck and Crashes [NSFW]

You know it's a bad sign when a video starts with an elderly passenger asking the elderly driver on the highway "What do you see?" only to get the response "Nothing".

And you can pretty much guess what's going to happen next when the same passenger advises the senior woman driver, "Well turn on your headlights and pull over" to which she replies, "I don't know how"…

Audi is looking to increase its UK sales of the A4 Sedan and Avant model with a revised 2014MY SE Technik trim grade that comes with additional equipment features and upgraded engine, but at the same time, carries a lower premium than before. Read more »

Fresh Details About the Upcoming Gran Turismo 6 – Demo Out Next Week! [w/Video]

Any new Gran Turismo game is a hot topic, even if the next one is predicted to be an improved version of the current game, as it will not be designed to run on the new PlayStation 4 console, so it will have to really push the current-gen tech to the very limit.

However, nowadays it’s about more than just the game itself, because we have the GT Academy, 2013 edition, which has been made an integral part of the experience you buy into with GT5 (and 6).

Mark Webber has signed a contract with Porsche for “several years” to drive the German carmaker's new LMP1 sports prototype at the Le Mans 24 Hours and in the sports car World Endurance Championship (WEC). The Australian will leave the Infiniti Red Bull Racing at the end of this season. Read more »

First Videos of Heico Sportiv's Volvo V40 T5 HPC with 345-Horses, Should They Build It?

The hot hatch segment has come a very, very long way since Volkswagen wrote the first page in the segment with the original Golf GTI powered by a 108hp (110PS) 1.6-liter engine in the summer of 1976. Nowadays, we're seeing hatches with close to 50 percent more power than a Ferrari 308 GT4 from the mid-1970s…

Volvo has tried to venture in the category with a number of proposals over the years, but it never really hit the mark, something that Heico Sportiv is aiming to achieve with its latest concept that may very well enter production.

The Pro_Cee’d GT, the first production Kia to bear the new two-letter performance badge, isn’t even really out yet, and the Korean automaker is already reportedly planning to launch additional models which would get similar treatment with the same badge. The information comes from AutoExpress, which had a chance to speak to “a source from within the company,” at the Pro_Cee’d GT UK launch. Read more »

Priceless in Australia: Crazy Old Bastard Shot Me for Doing Burnouts! [NSFW]

We're not going to lie and say we don't like watching or doing burnouts ourselves, but truth to be said, there's a place and a time for these things, and constantly annoying your neighbors by leaving loads of rubber outside their house, isn't something we advised you to do, because you may end up in the same situation as this young Australian named Shane Tenhaguis.

A long running dispute between the 23-year old father from Marrakai in Northern Australia and an unnamed 61-year old neighbor over the former's love for burnouts in his Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore turned violet when the latter had enough and came out with a gun and began firing shots at the young man and his cars!

You probably remember the Mercedes-Benz Viano that Carisma Auto transformed into a very luxurious van. Now, for its latest conversion, the company chose a car that normally doesn’t have anything that could be described as luxurious – we’re talking about the rugged Land Rover Defender.

As the UK-based aftermarket specialist usually operates, the exterior of the Defender remained untouched – which is why we don’t get to see it in the gallery (either that, or the owner wanted his or her 4x4 to remain anonymous).

Remember the Smart ForTwo BoConcept study? Well, Daimler has decided there is a market for a ForTwo designed by Danish urban interior design specialist BoConcept and will build a limited edition model that can now be ordered as a coupe and cabrio and will arrive in European at dealerships this November. Read more »

New 2014 Ford F-150 Tremor Combines 365HP V6 Turbo with Short-Wheelbase Body

Ford is reviving a name from the past for its all-new 2014 F-150 Tremor that introduces the Taurus SHO's more powerful 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 into the pickup truck's range. The "Tremor" moniker was used in a 1998 Explorer Concept SUV fitted with a V8 engine and made its appearance on a special edition version of the Ranger truck in the 2000s.

On the F-150, Tremor translates into a sportier edition of Ford's highly-popular truck series highlighted by the use of the 3.5-liter turbocharged V6 with 365 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 420 lb.-ft. (567Nm) of torque at 2,500 rpm, on the regular two-door cab model with the short-wheelbase.

It seems that EV buyers from California see the sense made by the battery-powered Fiat 500e, which is exclusively sold in the sunny West Side state, because according to a report from Wards Auto, they have sold out the production run for the remainder of the year. However, it isn’t specified exactly how many that means – can’t be a lot, since it’s only been available since April. Read more »

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Friday, June 28, 2013

Thursday, June 27, 2013

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