It is common knowledge that human beings have a bizarre attachment to their personal cars that doesn’t extend to other pieces of engineering. Manufacturers cottoned onto this very long ago and changed the simple motor vehicle from being a tool for getting from one point to another conveniently into an expression of individuality and character.
Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s president, described the freshly-unveiled Fun-Vii as “a smartphone on four-wheels,” which sounds like something you would say to describe a car with lots of gadgets. Except Toyota’s new concept car, unveiled ahead of the Tokyo Auto show is like a smartphone on four wheels because it has giant touchscreen doors.
Porsche is designing a $650-million, 57-story highrise to go up in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. Which isn’t that big of a deal. What is pretty insane, however, is the fact that the highrise will feature a robotic car elevator that takes condo owners directly to their door while still in the vehicle.
There appears to be a growing trend among rich New Yorkers in response to the increased attention being paid to “the 1%”. They’ve taken to buying cargo vans that look plain on the outside, but are opulent on the inside, tricked out with massage chairs wi-fi and widescreen televisions. Some of these guys cost upwards of ZAR 4 million.
Ciro blames the scarcity of the luxury SUVs on fat bankers in wall street, who used all of our money to buy small islands, and furnish their offices with polar bear rugs. Ciro’s solution? Replacing this void with the station wagon. Enter the Audi A4 Avant Sportline, a station wagon that’s nothing like those wood-paneled […]
The intrepid journos at Car Magazine nailed this spicy little clip at the Johannesburg International Motor Show a few days ago. Behold, before your very eyes, the unveiling of the Mini Coupe – the fastest production Mini yet to roll off the factory floor. And you can be sure to see more of the Mini […]
On this week’s edition of Car Vibe, Ciro can’t get enough of the Audi R8. Over the course of a few days in the front seat, our long-suffering correspondent was subjected to marriage proposals, business proposals, relentless cell phone texts, paparazzi hoards, and endless shouts of, “Rev it, bru! Rev it!”
23-year old Croatian entrepreneur Mate Rimac unveiled the Concept_One electric supercar at the Frankfurt Motor Show yesterday – a 1,099 horsepower machine that can go a little under 600 km per charge, and can get over 300 km/h on a stretch. Is that enough car numbers? I’m not great at car numbers. Take a look at the thing though, it’s sexy.
The president and CEO of Texas Armoring Corporation wanted to put potential customers’ minds at ease about the efficiacy of his company’s bullet-resistant glass. So, like any other sane person, he got one of his employees to shoot at him with an AK-47 while he stood behind the glass.
Changing a tyre involves more swearing, cursing and scraped knuckles than a bar fight between 500 drunken racehorse owners. It’s something that one day we will all have to face. So you’d think car makers would make it easy. You’d be wrong. Very wrong.
Which, as you’ll see, is pretty damned fine. The August issue also features the very spicy Ferrari FF, which is an interesting development in the Ferrari stable, and a fast one at that. Here’s a little something else, to whet your appetite. The New 2012 Lamborghini Aventador – Top Gear… by videosonlytube Get your hands […]
GM’s Electric Networked-Vehicle (EN-V), the pod-shaped hands-free electric vehicle unveiled last year, is set for release soon. Confined to metropolitan areas, we should be able to live out our Jetsons inspired fantasies a little sooner than we’d planned, once GPS technology catches up a little.
One of the reasons I love driving cars from all over the world is that I wrongly or rightly approach the vehicle with the stereotype of the people who made it clouding my judgement. It’s fun. And with the French, there is a veritable cheese platter of character traits from which to choose.
VW are proposing a new technology that will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel at speeds up to around 130km/h, and let the car’s system temporarily take over. Look, it isn’t exactly Knight Rider, but it’s good that VW’s looking after people who want to multitask while cruising down highways.
As part of an advertising campaign for toy car line Hot Wheels, a facade loop was installed alongside a highway in Bogotá, Colombia, mimicking the loop tracks that you’re always a little crushed to discover woulnd’t work in real life. It looks pretty rad. Nice job, Hot Wheels. Nice job, Colombia.
Lamborghini has introduced designs for the Aventador LP-700, successor to the Murcielago; it is a sexy car from a sexy company, so it is more or less fitting that the designs are pretty sexy-looking too. It’s named for a bull from a 1993 bull-fight, which makes this ethically iffy, but hey. Look for sexy images after the cut.
This hurts me somewhere deep inside. A customer disgusted by the poor service at Lamborghini China service station responded to the situation by hiring a mob with sledgehammers to tear into his Lamborghini Gallardo L140 – this, apparently, to draw attention to poor customer service.
German research facility BrainDriver has put together a kit that lets people make rudimentary driving commands with their brains – you know, without using their hands. I have serious concerns about how this system deals with those brief suicidal thoughts that tend to pop up when knee-deep in traffic on the 9/5 commute.
Well, obviously. It does most weekends. Mostly it talked about don’t-ask-don’t-tell being repealed, which is splendid – but I was focusing more on what was being said about bikes. Bikes and cars. Bikes and cars and pedestrians, and their relationship to one another. The word ‘prawn’ was implied, but not quite stated.