Read more from TreeHugger.com:
Exotic car maker Lamborghini has announced they will be entering the hybrid fray with their iconic Gallardo.
Company CEO Stephan Winkelmann told Germany’s Automobilewoche that the first one is slated for 2015. He says that the Gallardo’s electric motor will be used for low demand driving in slow, congested city traffic much like the Toyota Prius. When the Lambo hits higher speeds the 10- or 12-cylinder gas engine will kick in and immediately drop your MPGs back to a single digit.
Recently Lamborghini has cut tailpipe emissions by 18 percent with the latest Gallardo, achieved through conventional refinements in the existing V10 powerplant.
Winkelmann said the company will spend $50.3 million between now and 2015, to reduce emissions in both its vehicles and its production facilities. He also confirmed that they will not be producing an all-electric car like the Mercedes-Benz Gullwing.
And I say, why the heck not? This is clearly a vanity effort on Lamborghini’s part. They have a lot more wiggle room design-wise with a starting price of $180,000 for the Gallardo than say Honda.
While this helps the Audi-owned company meet its goal of cutting emissions by 35 percent, I cannot help think it’s all just a big pissing contest with Ferrari.
Ferrari’s hybrid is also set for a 2015 release.
from CNNMoney.com:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — General Motors Corp. said Tuesday that it has signed a deal to sell its Hummer truck unit, just one day after filing for bankruptcy.
But GM (GMGMQ) would not identify the buyer nor name a price, saying only that the deal would close by the end of September.
GM had revealed in April that it was courting three serious offers for the Hummer brand. The automaker would not confirm Reuters’ report that offers ranged from $100 million to $200 million.
Read more HERE
In this video performance meets designer labels. Mercedes has developed a new limited edition vehicle, the exclusive SL 63 AMG Edition IWC. Limited to a total of 200 units, the new roadster features an eye-catching Kashmir white finish as well as an AMG Exterior Carbon package with a matte surface. In keeping with the exterior appearance, the vehicle’s interior is fitted with Carbon matte trim as well as Tobago Brown nappa leather upholstery that creates additional visual and tactile highlights. In addition, the vehicle features the AMG Performance package to ensure unparalleled handling. All SL 63 AMG Edition IWC vehicles will be delivered to customers along with an exquisite “Grosser Ingenieur” (Great Engineer) watch from the renowned Swiss watchmaker IWC Schaffhausen.
Will a Hummer be considered a classic in 50 years? Jay Leno has the answer in this article from PopularMechanics.com:
Stocks and bonds? I don’t know much about them. In fact, I don’t know anything about stocks and bonds. I’ve lost money in the stock market; come to think of it, I’ve lost money in real estate too. But I’ve never lost money on cars.
The reason is simple: I’ve always bought cars I really want to own. If you buy a car that you like, and it loses its value, at least you still like it. Besides, even if the car’s value does go down a little, it will come back up at some point down the road.
About 10 years ago, I had the chance to buy a McLaren F1. A new one was almost a million dollars. This was a secondhand car with less than 2500 miles, and it was $800,000. I thought, it’s crazy to spend that much money on a car. So I talked it over with my wife. And she said, “You’ve worked hard. If you want to get it, get it.” And I thought, ohhh … kaaay! So I bought it.
Last year, a McLaren F1 sold at auction for $4.1 million! I now realize this is the greatest investment I’ve ever made. In less than 10 years, I more than quintupled my money. Best of all, I have a car I really enjoy. But there are plenty of modern cars you can buy at real-world prices that are fun to own.
People ask me if they should buy a new car and tuck it away as an investment. I think it’s ridiculous to buy something and just squirrel it away. The fuel will eventually go bad, all the moving parts will still have to be lubricated, and you still have to insure it. Cars should be driven. If you let a car sit, you’ll eventually have to flush the fuel system, replace the electronics and more. Buying any car and putting it into storage for years gets you nothing. It’s a bad idea. You won’t be buying something you like—you’re just trying to make money.
There are plenty of guys who bought the original Dodge Viper as an investment. When that car first came out in 1992, it produced 400 hp, an incredible level of power for that time. People thought, “That’s it. They’ll never make a car more powerful. I’ll buy one and stick it in my garage.” Now, every day people call me: “Hey, I’ve got a ’92 Viper with 800 miles.” Sorry, I’m not interested. “Three hundred miles?” Nope. You didn’t buy it to own it.
But there are some interesting modern cars that are potential collectibles you can drive and enjoy—cars considered common transportation today. I think the first-generation Toyota Prius is a future collectible. Although it was technically innovative at the time, now it just seems cute. It’s kind of slow, and it doesn’t have tremendous range. But it was the first of its kind—the first mass-produced hybrid—and there’s an honest simplicity to that. So if you have an original Prius, in 10 or 15 years, you’ll meet people who say, “I bought one of those!” And they’ll want to relive the feeling of watching the little dashboard display jump from charging to consuming. That neat feature will bring back a flood of those memories.
It’s like when I talk to people who once owned early and mid-1960s push-button Chryslers. They say, “I learned to drive in one of those! You press the D button to go, and you press R for reverse.” They remember that feeling of freedom and American progress—simply pressing buttons to drive down the road. So cars with unusual features, technology that cars today no longer have, can be collectible.
Years ago, I was told Mustangs would never be collectibles because Ford built millions of them. We’re a disposable society. But eventually, we want what we used to have—the cars we ran into the ground. We’ve used most of those old Mustangs up, and now they’re gone. So the survivors are highly prized.
Once, when I was visiting England, one of my relatives said, “You like motorcycles—you should talk to our vicar. He has one.” So I met the vicar, who owned a ’66 Honda 160. I asked how long he’d had it. He looked at me kind of quizzically and said, “I bought it new.” He’d had that bike his whole life, and he’d maintained it. To him it wasn’t a collectible. Many of us would say, “Oh, I had one of those, and my father threw it away,” or “We gave it to a neighbor,” or “We rode it to death,” or “We finally broke it and got something else.” In other countries, because motor vehicles aren’t seen so much as appliances, they’re treated with great respect. This vicar had been riding that Honda 160 for 40 years! It was his only transportation. And it was a survivor.
That’s the difference. We want what we used to have. We get rid of it, and then we pay 10 to 15 times over what it was worth originally just to get it back—often to recapture whatever lost youth we thought we had.
That’s why I think the Mazda Miata will be the ultimate affordable collectible by, say, 2025. The first-generation Miata was extremely simple, and that’s part of its charm. Years ago, when we were restoring Mustangs, they seemed so complicated compared to a Ford Model A.
A brake-light switch? Why do we have to have thaaaat? In a Model A, you just strung together a couple of yards of wire and boom! You were done. So the early Miata, with no traction control, no stability control—no nothing—will certainly be a collectible.
I think the first-generation Taurus, the forward-looking aerodynamic sedan, will be collectible too. That was seen as a real styling triumph in the mid-1980s. Almost anything built before today’s government safety regulations could be collectible. In the future, cars lacking these systems will appear so odd to people.
Read the rest of the article HERE
At the beginning of the year, Tesla Motors had announced that by spring the company would be producing 30 of their all-electric luxury Roadsters weekly. Well, it’s spring, and the company is now saying it’s likely they’ll only reach that benchmark in the summertime: right now they’re making 20 per week. The company is not expected to show a profit this year. Read more…
A beast of a machine…
or two:
Welcome to the Ferrari California. Cue the Eagles song, because the cover has finally come off of the Prancing Horse’s newest offering, and it’s what you’d expect it to be — another powerful, expensive, and ultra-exclusive offering from Maranello.
No, the California isn’t a less-expensive Ferrari in the tradition of the Dino — the automaker has bristled at those comparisons for months now, shouting to all within earshot that their newest model would not be “cheap.” Indeed, the California, a front-engine machine with an aluminum folding hardtop, is expected to be priced higher than the F430 Spider, which retails at around $210,000. Read more…
According to Mike Floyd
For the first time since 1967, the Guinness World Record for “Fastest Production Car” belongs to an American automobile. Guinness has officially confirmed that Shelby Supercars’ Ultimate Aero hit 256.19 miles per hour on a remote highway in Washington last month.
A local 71-year-old car enthusiast named Chuck Bigelow drove the Ultimate Aero to the new world record. “We wanted to show that you don’t need to be a dedicated professional race-car driver to drive the car at this speed,” said Jerod Shelby, owner of Shelby Supercars and no relation to legendary muscle-car tuner Carol Shelby. “The very first time [Bigelow] got in the car, I said to him, ‘Why don’t you keep it under 200 miles per hour so you can get used to the car?’ Then he went 228 [mph] his first time down the road. He said, ‘It felt so good, I figured I might as well keep going.’” Read more…
According to Christopher Diken
Audi’s A3 shares its platform and some mechanicals with Volkswagen cousins the Rabbit and Jetta. But it has a sleeker roofline and unique styling cues, including Audi’s now-ubiquitous trapezoidal front-grille design. Its interior is also more luxurious. Read more
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