Purple 1914 Rolls Royce Ghost First Owned By Tsar Nicholas II Going for €5.5 / $7 Million

The gruesome assassination of Tsar Nicholas II, who was shot in the cellar of an old house, along with his family, doctor and cook, was preceded the year before by the delivery of a new luxurious car, which had been commissioned from the UK – a classic 1914-built Rolls Royce Ghost. Now that car is reportedly up for sale in Germany.

The sale ad does not specify how long he had it for, or if he ever had the chance to to drive it, considering the fact that 1917 was a pretty busy year, as the Tsar was forced to abdicate by the Bolsheviks.

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Garmin Makes Head-Up Display Navigation Available to the Masses with $130 Device

Head-up display technology is no longer a luxury for expensive cars like the Corvettes or high-end BMWs. That’s because today, satellite navigation expert Garmin revealed a new product called HUD, which is a portable head-up display for smartphone navigation apps. Read more »

Caterham Wants to Build Renault-Based SUV and Hatch!

Yes, you read the title right; Caterham has just announced that aside from the planned sports car they are making with Renault (due in 2016), they have two more models in view for the near future. One is an SUV/crossover, which company CEO Tony Fernandes says “will be huge,” if they get it right, while the other is a subcompact/supermini. Read more »

Jaguar to Show Unique Version of the F-Type at Goodwood

Britain's Jaguar will use the upcoming Goodwood Festival of Speed to premiere an “unique version of Jaguar F-Type convertible sports car”. While some may be tempted to think Jaguar will finally display the F-Type Coupe at the Goodwood hill-climb event, the language used by the UK carmaker is rather ambiguous.

Jaguar say the car is “an exciting new design study based on the Jaguar F-Type convertible sports car”, which should eliminate the production version of the F-Type Coupe.

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Which New Rapid Model is Skoda Teasing in This Picture?

Not to blast you with questions and mystery models today, but Skoda issued a cropped, teaser image of an upcoming, new edition of its fairly new Rapid compact car, which was originally launched in liftback (saloon) form last year.

The successful VW Group-owned carmaker from the Czech Republic posted the above photo showing the rear end of said Rapid on its Facebook page along with the following caption: "Wait a minute, could this be something completely new?"

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VW Wants €26,900 or About $34,500 for the All-Electric e-up! in Germany

If you thought the Volkswagen e-up! would be one of the cheaper EVs in the market, mainly because of its small size, and the affordability of the model which it’s based on, you were wrong.

Reality doesn’t come close to complimenting the previous statement, as VW has just revealed that the all-electric version of their über-compact city car will not be cheap at all, once it goes on sale in the months after its official reveal at the Frankfurt motor show, in September.

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Bernie Ecclestone Might Buy Financially Troubled Nürburgring Circuit

The Nürburgring racetrack, located in the Eifel hills in western Germany, has been reporting serious financial problems in the last year, culminating with their filing for bankruptcy in July of 2012. Now, exactly one year later, it remains without an owner, but that may soon change, if F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone decides that he wants to spend the $170 million (€130 million) required in order to buy it, says Die Welt. Read more »

Open Source Back To The Future II-Like Hoverboard in the Making for…2015

We’re pretty sure that nobody could argue against the cool factor of ‘hoverboards,’ the magically powered skateboards from the future, which have been blessed with a self-explanatory name, requiring no additional clarification. The idea stems from the 1989 movie “Back to the Future II,” which has main character Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, go back and forth in time, from 2015 to the year 1955.

The former year brings us neatly to a very optimistic project from the realm of crowd-funding, because waiting stacked among the many ideas of varying feasibility on Indiegogo, is a page created for a planned hoverboard project, which incidentally is also due in 2015.

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Londoners to Get a Rare Chance to Take a Close Look at The Queen’s Bentley State Limousine

If you happen to be in London between July 11-14, you can have a rare opportunity to admire Her Majesty the Queen’s Bentley State Limousine, which will go on display at the Coronation Festival in Buckingham Palace Gardens.

The unique Bentley, presented to the Queen in 2002 to mark the 50th anniversary of her accession to the throne, will be the highlight of a collection of Bentleys that will be displayed during the celebrations.

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Report Suggests that the Best Cars for Teens Are "Big, Slow and Ugly"

Where I grew up, few youngsters seemed to wait to come of age (in the government’s view) before trying out their skills behind the wheel. There were plenty of deserted roads through forests and fields where this could be accomplished in relative safety (and unbeknownst to the authorities).

By the time most were allowed to get into the driver's seat of an actual car, the basics were no longer a mystery and whatever was still problematic would eventually be ironed out by the driving instructor's professional guidelines, coupled with his or her experience on the job (a very important aspect when choosing who will teach you to drive).

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Porsche Builds 500,000th Cayenne at the Leipzig Plant

Porsche today celebrated the production of the 500,000th Cayenne SUV at the Leipzig plant in Germany. The milestone comes after 11 years of production, with the first Porsche Cayenne rolling off the assembly line in 2002.

“We started with around 70 units a day. Today we produce five times as much owing to the high market demand. In the past year alone, over 83,000 Cayenne vehicles for customers in more than 125 countries have rolled off the assembly line. A genuine success story of the Porsche plant in Saxony,” said Oliver Blume, Porsche Member of the Executive Board Production and Logistics.

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Volvo Promises All-New XC90 Will Get "World-Class Safety and Support Features"

It may not come as a surprise to you that Volvo will be cramming all of its latest and most advanced “safety and support features” into their all-new XC90, which is set for its official debut around the end of next year, but they are.

In fact, they even put out a press release to inform us that their next flagship SUV will be getting Pedestrian Detection in darkness, road edge and barrier detection (which works on roads without side markings) and adaptive cruise control, with both of the latter two also featuring “steer assist.”

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Last BMW M3 Coupe Rolls Off the Production Line Marking the End of a Naming Era

We guess everything has to come to an end, and that's the case for the BMW M3 E92 Coupe, the very last example of which rolled off the assembly line today at the Bavarian firm's plant in Regensburg, Germany.

While the related E93 M3 Convertible will continue to be manufactured alongside the regular 3 Series Sedan, Coupe and Convertible at the same factory for a few more months until this September, this is the last time we'll see the famed "M3" badge used on a two-door model.

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New Ford Stamping Tech Called F3T Dramatically Cuts Build Time for Prototype and Custom Parts

The task of creating a new automobile, even one that uses a platform common to more than one car, is still a difficult task, and one of the main reasons why few attempt to start from scratch, and even fewer succeed. It eats up massive amounts of resources of all kinds, as well as time, especially in the later stages of the project, when prototype parts are required. Read more »

Texas Cops Perform…Body Cavity Search on Two Bikini-Clad Women During Traffic Stop

Only days after a story of a Florida cop, who asked a young mother to shake her bra during a routine traffic stop, surfaced in the news, another similar incident came to light today. This time, two women in bikinis were subjected to full…body cavity searches on the side of Highway 288 in Texas.

In the dash-cam footage from the patrol car, we see State Trooper Nathaniel Turner pulling over Brandy Hamilton and Alexandria Randle for speeding.

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Ohio Interstate Cops Get Flack for Bogus Drugs Checkpoint

Drug checkpoints are illegal in the US, as per the law, so therefore what Ohio police officers did on the I-271 is illicit. What they did is put up signs announcing a drug checkpoint up ahead, but there was really no such thing.

All the police did was put up the signs, and hope that it would make some people act suspiciously, and it would be those citizens that they would actually pull over and search, or threaten to search in the hopes that bluffing will make them confess.

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Chrysler Recalls 840,000 Vehicles, Toyota 185,000 Yaris and Verso-S Models

Chrysler Group announced that it will recall 840,000 vehicle (mopstly) in the United States and other countries around the world, because of possible flaws with active-restraint head rests, airbags and electronic stability control systems. The Detroit-based carmaker issued five separate recall actions, including nearly 500,000 cars and SUVs for the head rest issue and another 282,000 minivans with possible faulty airbags. Read more »

This is Possibly The First Recorded Crash of a New VW Golf GTI Mk7

Even though there's always going to be a first time for car crashes, we sincerely doubt anyone in their right mind wants to have the distinction of being the number one when it comes to any kind of accident.

Nevertheless, sometimes, you just can't avoid it, as was the case of a duo of journalists trying out the new Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk7 during the hot hatchback's launch event in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Backup Cameras Won't Be Mandatory In the U.S. Until 2015

All important safety features like airbags, antilock brakes, electronic stability program or more recently, autonomous braking, have become or are slowly becoming standard equipment on all cars sold in the US. These will soon have to make room for backup cameras, albeit a little later than expected. Read more »

Jeep Reportedly Readying Baby Cherokee SUV for Next Year

If you though that Jeeps wouldn’t get any smaller, Edmunds has just posted a report which says that the Fiat-controlled builder of off-road vehicles is, in fact, getting ready to add a sub-compact SUV to its range.

The new model will reportedly be built on a Fiat platform, in Italy, and will address a global audience, trying to woo buyers with its Ford Fiesta-esque dimensions, infused with all the brand-specific qualities that they would look for. It is set to be launched some time in 2014.

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