Coolest Smart Cars

It’s rare. You might never see one in person.

EDITOR WES RAYNAL: I just drove the $36,000 Mazda CX-9 and a $39,000 Chevrolet Traverse, so I’m sitting here wondering why I’d pay $13,000 more for this VW.

In today’s News Brake: Tooling around in a topless Audi R8, Toyota backs its fixed cars, and Mahindra and Mahindra gets ready to sell pickups in the States . . . But Wait, There’s More!

EDITOR WES RAYNAL: Breathtaking.

A few weeks ago, we heard about an obscenely wealthy man who purchased two Aston Martin One-77s with the purpose of using one for his own driving pleasure and the other as an enormous art decoration in his house.

While we cringe at the mere thought of having a $2 millon-dollar supercar idly hanging on a wall and collecting dust, we do have a suggestion for our wealthy friend and opt instead for this DRIVE IN wall art that’s being sold by a company called JELLIO for a ‘paltry’ $2,500.

So what if it’s not a car? It’s actually a pretty cool concept, which takes those plastic car kits of yesteryear and supersizes them to become a limited-edition 44” x 44” sculpture.

The limited edition sculpture even pays homage to the chrome heavy hot roads that were prevalent back in the 1950’s, which pretty much guarantees it a ton of attention by itself.

Don’t get us wrong; an Aston Martin One-77 that’s hanging on a wall is guaranteed to be the center-of-attention. But we’re afraid that not everybody will appreciate that work of art, especially if they see themselves sitting behind the wheel one.

Super-sized plastic car kit gets turned into a sculpture originally appeared on topspeed.com on Sunday, 7 March 2010 15:30 EST.

read more

On the surface, the Porsche Panamera and the Aston Martin Rapide looks to be set on an even playing field. But if you dig deeper behind the differences between the two, you’ll realize that the Panamera is just about a notch out of reach for the Rapide in some pretty critical performance elements – speed, power, and torque to name a few.

Autoblog knows that a heads-up race between the two cars wouldn’t even be competitive so they decided to set a handicap. Whereas only one person will be on-board the Rapide, the Panamera will have four people inside of it, with the hopes that the added weight on the Panamera would be a fair compromise for the Rapide.

So they set out to do two separate time tests for both cars – one person on board the Rapide and four people riding the Panamera. Sounds like a fair fight, right?

Turns out, the added bulk in the Panamera didn’t make a difference.

The Porsche luxury sports car easily beat the Rapide’s time in the 0-60mph time, the 0-100mph time, and the 0-100-0mph time. And it did so pretty convincingly.

The Panamera scored times of 4.6 seconds (0-60), 10.6 seconds (0-100), and 15.8 seconds (0-100-0), besting the Rapide across the board, whose times of 5.6 seconds (0-60), 12.2 (0-100), and 17.6 (0-100-0) was far less competitive than we initially thought, especially the pretty significant handicap the Panamera was given.

Video: Aston Martin Rapide and Porsche Panamera compare speed times originally appeared on topspeed.com on Sunday, 7 March 2010 13:34 EST.

read more

It’s pretty much been common knowledge to a lot of folks that the new Chevrolet Camaro has become quite a popular item for General Motors re-launched the brand last year, but we had no idea that it had become THIS popular.

According to Camaro5, the Camaro recently reached a historic milestone after the GM’s Oshawa assembly plant rolled out the 100,000th Camaro. Fittingly enough, the historic Camaro was an Inferno Orange Metallic SS.
The feat is even more remarkable considering that the Camaro reached 100,000 units in less than a year’s time – if you wanted to be anal about it, the first Camaro was rolled out on March 16th of last year.

If you round out the average, that’s about 282 Camaro’s being rolled out every day!

Remarkable; to say the least.

General Motors rolls out 100,000th Camaro originally appeared on topspeed.com on Sunday, 7 March 2010 06:42 EST.

read more

Lotus will unveil a hybrid version for its now famous Evora sports car at the Geneva Motor Show. Called Evora 414E Hybrid, the new version develops a total of 414 hp, makes the 0 to 60 mph sprint in in under 4 seconds and has a hybrid range of over 300 miles.

The hybrid drive-train system consist of twin motors each limited to providing 204 hp of power and 400 Nm (295 lbft) of torque to each wheel via independent, single speed, reduction transmissions integrated into a single housing, enabling torque vectoring dynamic control of the vehicle. There is also a Lotus Range Extender engine that 47 hp of power at 3,500 rpm via the integrated electrical generator .

The Evora hybrid version is painted in Copper, in both exterior and interior, and is distinguished by circuit inspired graphics.

Press release after the jump.

Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid originally appeared on topspeed.com on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 14:19 EST.

read more

Audi revealed today the official details on the 2011 RS5 sports coupe that will make its world debut in March at the Geneva Motor Show. The car will go on sale this spring with European prices stating at €77,000 (about $104,000). Audi said there are no plans to bring the RS5 to the US market (yet).

The RS5 will be powered by a turbocharged V8 engine with a total output of 450 bhp at 8250 rpm and a maximum output of 317 lbs-ft of torque between 4,000 and 6,000 rpm. The car weights only 3,802 lbs and sprints from 0 to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds. Top speed is limited to 155 mph, but it can be increased to 173 mph.

Like any other performance model, the RS5 comes equipped with Quattro all-wheel-drive system, seven-speed S tronic transmission with three different options: auto, comfort, and dynamic.

Besides this amazing power, the RS5 will be distinguished by a huge diffuser, two oval exhausts and an extendable spoiler.

Press release after the jump.

Audi RS5 originally appeared on topspeed.com on Monday, 22 February 2010 11:30 EST.

read more