de autos cars

NSX on Volk Racing rims, attacking the track. Definitely not a daily drive.

Twin Turbo Supra, with all the boost you need to scrap asphalt off the road. Sitting on CCW rims (18x10 (F) 275/35 + 18x11.5 (R) 315/30). Dopest stuff.

Es un híbrido y además un concept. Es de Toyota, y sin dudas que de fabricarse en serie, esta miniban tendría un éxito tremendo.-

Running on Empty from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

As you head for a holiday weekend filled with congested streets, highways and parking lots, we leave you with this glimpse of my hometown, the City of Angels...in a world without gas. The only cars you'll see are parked on the street. It's called Running on Empty, it's by Ross Ching, and it's only been online a couple of days. More here.

Bloomberg and Automotive News are reporting that Ford is getting ready to wind down the Mercury brand.

Sources say the plan will be presented to directors in July. The stats make a compelling case for euthanasia...the brand's peak sales year was 32 years ago, sales have dropped 74 percent in the last 10 years, ad spending by 88 percent in the last four, and with the 2011 demise of the Grand Marquis and Mountaineer, the brand would have only two models, the Milan and Mariner, clones of the Ford Fusion and Escape respectively.

The truth, of course, is that those were self-inflicted wounds. While Mercurys have had an on and off history of being based on supposedly lesser Fords, there was a time when FoMoCo worked to make them different, establish the argument for spending more for a Merc, and in the process, came up with some compelling and iconic vehicles (helped a bit by Hollywood and the original Mad Men):





The movie "Rebel Without A Cause" starred James Dean, Natalie Wood and a customized '49 Mercury. It made such an impression that 55 years after the film, the cars are commonly called "James Dean Mercurys".






Flash forward 13 years and it was another Merc, also black...driven not by a teenage rebel but by a middle-aged cop. McGarrett's four-door hardtop defined cool.





At about the same time, some star power with four legs and a tail....a real-life cougar serving as the mascot for the new Mercury Cougar...a stretched, re-bodied Ford Mustang, but different enough to be percieved as a major step up.

But just as Mercury was finding its mojo, the party ended. First, Ford marketing lost the thread. Instead of a tire-smoking Steve McGarrett, they tried to sell the 1970 Mercury Monterey Coupe with a W.C. Fields impressionist (35 years after Fields' peak popularity)




And it got worse. The 70s hit and so did the fuel crisis. Practicality rarely makes for an exciting sell, even when one of the vehicles is a "sexy European":



As horsepower evaporated, so did the blue oval's willingness to do more than the minimum required to turn Fords into Mercurys.  By mid-decade, the Cougar was an LTD II with a different grille and the ad agency knew that it would take the sex appeal of a not-yet famous Farrah Fawcett to move them out of showrooms.



And that's been the path since. Jill Wagner makes young men's hearts beat faster...

 

But not enough to actually buy the product. The Mercury customer continues to be a Grand Marquis buyer with an average age of 70 (which means half of them are older). And given what Grand Marquis have been for the last 35 years, that's no surprise at all:



As someone with significant Mercurys in his personal history...a 1956 Montclair and 1970 Monterey Custom Coupe (my parents), a 1969 Cougar XR-7 Convertible (my uncle's) and a 1974 Capri 2800 V6 (mine), I'm sad.  But this, probably more than Plymouth, Oldsmobile and Pontiac, is inevitable. There's almost nothing left to resuscitate.

Debt crises, near-collapse, riots.....

Stuff's getting Biblical in Greece, where now frogs are swarming over a major highway, causing accidents, forcing closures and....well, getting squished.

A Canadian family, mourning the loss of their dog, is being asked to pay for damage to the car that hit it.

State Farm insurance says Kim Flemming let Jake, a 12-year old yellow Labrador, out of the house without a leash...in violation of a local bylaw....and thus caused the accident.

The bill? 1732.80 Canadian...$1648.95 US dollars.

(from Breitbart)

A bad, bad start to the holiday weekend. From WNBC-TV, New York.

1000+ horsepower all together in one place. Pictures of all family together are so rare, but every single one of them just rocks.

Además de tener una apariencia bastante llamativa y original, estos vehículos son ecológicos, es decir no contaminan el medio ambiente por no utilizar los combustibles tradicionales.-

Los eventos tuning siempre presentes en nuestro blog, donde podemos encontrar maquinas como las que vemos a continuación:

                    

 

If that's what Rosalina Ruiz will do for an old RAV4, I'd hate to really tick her off.

God bless her.

When you create an award-winning ad, the impulse is to go back and do it again. Which usually works about as well as your typical Hollywood sequel. Transformers 2, say.

But this? Hit. Massive home run hit. It begins airing tomorrow (Friday, May 28). But you can start burning it into your brain now.

And if you want to indulge your inner hamster, you could start by dressing like them. Go here.

Remember that video? Big stuff all over the internet earlier this year.

Well, the wheels of justice turn quickly in the UK...driver John Tomlinson has appeared before a traffic commissioner, pleaded his case (that he couldn't see, hear or smell the Renault Clio attached to his front bumper) and has been allowed to keep his license.

In fact, traffic commissioner Beverley Bell praised Tomlinson for his fast action and cool head. You don't see it in the video, but other drivers signaled him to pull over, he discovered the Clio on his bumper, and freed driver Rhona Jane Williams.

Commissioner Bell urged companies to retrofit older lorries (trucks to us Yanks)with the kind of proximity mirrors now standard on newer models.

Vicious black Nissan R35 GT-R! Satin black color makes Skyline so evil, looks like a B-2 Stealth bomber. Definitely color of my choice if I ever collect money for GT-R of my own.

Muchas veces hemos hablado y mostrado fotos de autos lujosos, pero lo que veremos hoy es algo que seguramente no tiene igual.-

Se trata de la miniban Brabus de Mercedes Benz, la cual tiene todos y cada uno de los detalles necesario para un viaje de placer y negocios.-

Though this does kinda explain that "kittens" minivan spot for the Dodge Caravan...

You might remember a rash of highway message sign hacking a few months ago,warning of zombies in Austin, Texas and Collinsville, Illinois and of raptors (the prehistoric birds, not the Ford pickup).

Well, now the message is getting racist, or political, or both. Early morning drivers on Palmetto in Miami ran across the above sign and the highway department had to come out and turn it off. Except it kept rebooting. Authorities finally had to turn the sign away from drivers while they worked to erase the memory.

Highway Technologies of Illinois owns the sign and is renting it to the highway department. They say they're using "all their resources to find out how the sign was hacked and who did it."

The likely charge, vandalism. Though someone will undoubtedly try to build a hate crimes charge in there, too.

The above image is page one of a four-page ad that ran in People magazine last fall to promote the GMC Terrain SUV.

Well, as Rolling Stone once famously said about Jim Morrison of The Doors,


But in Einstein's case "dead" doesn't mean "he can't sue us from beyond the grave". For while Einstein didn't will his body to science (there's dispute whether his brain was preserved against his wishes) and was cremated, Einstein did leave his publicity rights to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is suing GM for the unauthorized use of Einstein's image.

General Motors...even the new, smaller, GM, should have a legal staff that knows (or at least can learn) this stuff. The only upside for them? The university is going easy on them. The suit is for $75,000...a little less than two loaded GMC Terrains.

One day after Nissan's announcement that the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric vehicle is sold out, the carmaker broke ground on its own battery plant next door to the Leaf assembly line in Smyrna, Tennessee.

Opening day isn't until 2012, but when the plant does debut, it will be able to build 200,000 lithium-ion battery packs a year...meaning CEO Carlos Ghosn's plan to build 150,000 Leafs a year won't be done in by outside supplier issues.

All told, batteries and cars, Nissan's investing $1.7 billion in Leaf production ($1.4 million billion of that comes from a U.S. government loan), which, if production hits the levels Ghosn predicts, will create 1,300  new jobs.

The TireKicker take? Good for Ghosn. Critical ventures are all too often undone or kept from realizing their potential by weak links in the chain. Outsourcing production of components has also made some manufacturers feel less responsible about the final product., giving them a convenient third party to whom to point the finger of blame. Let's hope this starts a trend toward more auto manufacturers putting their names on and their resources behind more of their product.

Awesome drift video made by Drift.com.my. Video music: Pride - High and Mighty Color. Real JDM song :D

Vorsteiner presentó un nuevo kit aerodinámico para el E63 AMG Mercedes. El kit se compone de un frente más agresivo y parachoques trasero, spoiler trasero y faldones laterales. Además, E63 AMG de aleación ligera tenía ruedas V-308 con una estructura única. El Set estará disponible a la venta el próximo mes, pero el precio aún desconocido.

Hermosas chicas que participaron en los eventos tuning más importantes del mundo durante el año 2009. LAs compartimos con todos ustedes...