Automotive
World’s only turbine-powered Batmobile up for sale on eBay
Aug 30th
Auto restoration specialist Casey Putsch built himself the world’s only jet turbine-powered Batmobile, and now it’s for sale on eBay for the low price of just $620,000. The Batmobile design includes a turbine, but the movie prop cars used small-block Chevy V8s instead, so when Putsch decided to make his own, he built in a 365 HP turbine from a Boeing naval drone helicopter. Despite that, the car weighs only 2,800, so it should be fairly quick.
Best of all, this Batmobile is street-registered in the US, so you can drive it to work every day. Inside, you’ll find a pretty barebones cockpit, featuring a center-mounted iPad 3G for GPS navigation and avionics. Oh and you can feed the car Jet A, kerosene, or diesel.
So if your life would be incomplete without rollin like the Dark Knight, pick up your new ride on eBay. For the rest, check out the photos and videos below.
Ford finally retires the Crown Victoria
Aug 25th
After more than 30 years, Ford has finally retired its Crown Victoria sedan, the last traditional rear-wheel-drive, V8-powered, body-on-frame American sedan. Best known through its Police Interceptor variant, which comprises more than 70% of America’s police fleets today, the Crown Victoria offers old domestic mainstays like a soft suspension, front bench seat, and steering column gear shifter. The Panther platform it’s built on dates back to 1979 and also lies under the Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car, which are being retired as well.
Ford stopped consumer sales of the Crown Vic in 2008, but sales to police department and taxi fleets have remained strong. Ford has new police offerings in the works, based on the Taurus sedan and Explorer SUV, but many police departments believe the Crown Vic is still the best option and have driven up sales by stockpiling cars over the last few months. Yet the same sturdy, easy-to-repair body-on-frame construction that makes the Crown Vic the highway patrol’s car of choice also makes it heavy and inefficient (16 mpg city), which Ford can hardly afford in an era of increasingly tight fuel economy requirements (manufacturers must average 35.5 mpg by 2016 and 54.5 mpg by 2025).
The Crown Vic was introduced for police duty in 1983 and became the dominant patrol car in 1996, when its main competitor, the Chevy Caprice, was discontinued. Today, Chevy has a new Caprice (based on an Australian Holden sedan) for the police, and Dodge offers a police-spec Charger sedan. Both are rear-wheel-drive, unlike Ford’s new police offering, the FWD/AWD Taurus. All offer better performance and fuel efficiency than the Crown Vic, but police fleets remain skeptical.
Despite its dominance in the police and taxi markets, the Crown Vic has seen its share of controversy in the last few years. Its vertically-mounted steel gas tank is located between the rear axle and trunk, making it susceptible to puncture in a rear crash and leading to strong and instantaneous fires. Ford faces dozens of lawsuits in the early 2000s following a number of deaths linked to the tank design. The carmaker eventually settled the cases and in 2003 began to install protecting the gas tank from rear-end puncture.
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San Francisco loses last domestic car dealership
May 11th
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Golden Gate City has lost its last domestic car dealer. Since San Francisco Ford Lincoln Mercury closed last week, the city lacks a single Ford/Lincoln, GM/Chevy/Buick/Cadillac, or Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep dealer in its 47.6 square mile territory. The dealer’s original owner returned its franchise three years ago to Ford, which has been running the shop since. Ford Lincoln Mercury president Mel Turner said that when Ford’s attempts to sell the dealer fell through, the company had to make a “very tough decision” to close its doors in San Francisco.
While Ford is recovering nationally, with a new set of globally-competitive models that are selling well and boast higher quality almost at par with Japanese rivals, San Francisco car buyers don’t seem to have caught on. Mike Hollywood, a sales manager at Ellis Brooks Chevrolet — a seven-story, 195,000 square foot facility that stop selling Chevrolets 2.5 years ago and will soon become a flagship Nissan/Infiniti dealer — said, “People in San Francisco just weren’t buying Cadillac Escalades. You can’t even park them in the parking structures here.”
Meanwhile, dealers of import brands, from Audi to Toyota, Scion, Honda, VW, Mazda, BMW, and Mercedes are doing great business just down the road from the former Ford dealer. Dennis Fitzpatrick, regional VP of the California New Car Dealers Association, said “It’s a tough market. Imports have a much bigger share in San Francisco. ”When you can sell 100 imports a month as opposed to 25 domestic, and what with the rents and real estate, it’s tough to make a U.S. car dealership pencil.”
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
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Charger owner beheads robot in new Dodge ad
May 11th
Dodge’s recent ads depict people taking back control of their driving experience from computers, and the latest spot for the Charger follows in the same pattern. The sedan ironically no longer offers a manual transmission, but the ad is simple and works well. A passive owner literally rips the head off of a nanny driver robot and channels a streak of irresponsibility, driving the HEMI-powered gas guzzler through town like a madman. As in all of Dodge’s ads, the spot is narrated by a calm, deep male voice meant to appeal to Dodge’s target audience, which is almost exclusively male.
Ad video after the break.
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Mercedes unveils 2012 C63 AMG Coupe
Mar 20th
Mercedes-Benz just released some photos of its 2012 C63 AMG Coupe. The coupe is based on the recently introduced 2012 C-Class Coupe, which is essentially a C-Class sedan with two door lopped off and a slightly lower roofline. AMG’s smallest model is scheduled to be introduced at the New York Auto Show later this month and should hit showrooms by September.
Key specs are nearly identical to the 2012 C63 AMG sedan– the rear-wheel-drive coupe sports AMG’s 6.2L V8 engine producing 451 HP (or 481 with the optional AMG Development Pack) and a 7-speed Speedshift MCT transmission. 0-60 mph should come in 4.4 seconds, with an electronically-limited top speed of 155 mph. The AMG Development version boosts those numbers to 4.3 seconds and 174 mph, respectively.
Compared to its non-AMG siblings, the C63 Coupe gains a stiffer suspension, wider tracked, sharper steering, larger wheels, and more powerful brakes, along with an aggressive AMG body kit.
Press release after the break.
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Super Bowl 2011 Auto Ad Roundup
Feb 8th
This year’s Super Bowl had its fair share of entertaining ads. Here’s our roundup of some of the interesting automotive ads:
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Epic Kia Optima Super Bowl ad features Poseidon, Aliens, Mayans
Feb 4th
Kia’s upcoming Super Bowl ad for the 2011 Optima takes an epic twist. The spot features a bad cop stealing the all-new sedan from a couple; a yacht-cruising villain, however, has other plans and sends his RAH-66 Comanche-flying henchmen to bring the car to him. But before he can get it, the Greek sea god Poseidon emerges and takes the car. We won’t spoil the rest, but we have to mention that it features aliens and ancient Mayans.
The madness comes together to make one of our favorite Super Bowl ads this year so far.
See the video after the break.
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Cella Energy claims hydrogen breakthrough, $1.50/gallon synthetic fuel
Jan 27th
Hydrogen-powered cars were once considered the future of transportation– a title seemingly now usurped by battery electric vehicles. But hydrogen may be back, thanks to Cella Energy, whose system dispenses of the usual approach– big tanks of pressurized gas feeding into fuel cells emitting electrons and water. Cella has developed a way of storing H2 gas inside microfibers, but more importantly, also in microbeads.
The hydrogen-infused microbeads, in a liquid suspension, form a synthetic fuel that can actually be burned in an internal combustion engine without modification. Best of all, Cella says its fuel could be sold for just $1.50 per gallon when ready for commercial production. No word on when that will be, though.
Via: GizMag
Source: Cella Energy
Mercedes SLS AMG E-Cell: Electric Supercar for 2013
Jan 12th
Mercedes-Benz just announced at the Detroit Auto Show that it will be putting the electric version of its SLS AMG supercar, the E-Cell, into production in 2013. The E-Cell sports four electric motors (one per wheel) that together produce 526 hp and 629 lb-ft of torque. The standard SLS has a 6.2L V8 putting out 563 hp and 479 lb-ft, so the electric version is down 37 hp but up 150 lb-ft versus its gas counterpart.
Unfortunately, the E-Cell weighs a whopping 880 lb more (400 lb of which is in the 48 kWh lithium ion battery) than the regular SLS, which was already not terribly light at 3,571 lb. Auto Express reports that the extra heft does have a decidedly negative effect on the car’s handling. Mercedes says, however, that the weight should be reduced by the time the car hits production, and regardless, the motors’ massive, instant torque is an undeniable attraction. The E-Cell even manages a respectable 125 mile range.
The normal SLS AMG attracts so much attention that should Mercedes choose to produce the E-Cell in the color it’s being displayed in (“AMG Lumilectric Mango”), you’ll always be the center of attention for miles around in one of these. And hey, maybe the extra weight won’t matter, because with all the wide-eyed bystanders surrounding the car, you won’t be moving terribly fast anyway.
Auto Express driving impressions video after the break.
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Leaked: 2012 Mercedes C-Class Coupe
Jan 7th
Mercedes’ new C-Class coupe is scheduled to be unveiled at the Geneva Auto Show in March. Some European bloggers seem to have beaten Mercedes to the punch, however, releasing three leaked press shots of the new car. The coupe shares its front-end styling with the facelifted 2012 C-Class sedan but is unique from the A-pillar aft.
Interestingly, this is not the first Mercedes two-door to resemble the latest C-Class. For a while, the company sold the CLC (outside of America), which was actually a previous-generation (W203) C-Class Sportcoupe (hatchback) facelifted to match the current sedan’s (W204) exterior styling. This time around, however, the car has standard trunk instead of a hatchback.
No further details have been confirmed, though we expect the coupe to gain the same engine options as the sedan- the C250 (a new 1.8L twin-turbo direct-injection inline-4 with 201 hp, 229 lb-ft), C300 (retaining its 3.0L V6 with 228 hp, 221 lb-ft), and C350 (a new 3.5L direct-injection V6 with 302 hp, 273 lb-ft).
The C-Class sedan and coupe are almost sure to get AMG, and possibly AMG Black Series, versions sporting AMG’s 5.5L twin-turbo V8.
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