This past weekend we stumbled across a 2013 Ford Focus ST wagon prototype, and so naturally our love of wagons—especially of the hot, turbocharged variety—kicked in and we snapped us some photos. The ST wagon debuted last year alongside the five-door hatchback that we’ll be getting here in the U.S. Unfortunately, the ST wagon’s inherent [...]
Mercedes-Benz new C-Coupé became the first of the new-era DTM machines to win a race after claiming victory at Hockenheim’s 2012 season opener. 71,000 fans turned out to soak up the classic Hockenheim ambiance, where they also saw a record 100th 1-2 for Mercedes-Benz, plus the marque’s 166th win in 343 DTM races. 22 cars took [...]
You knew they were coming…there was no way I was going to not post some desktops from last weekend’s HKS Premium Day. When renowned tuners from the land of the rising sun hit legendary circuits like Fuji Speedway only good can come from it: fast times, great sights & noises, and of course images. We’ve [...]
Here is a quickie desktop post for you guys to plaster your computer with some Time Attack machine awesomeness.
Surely most of you would agree that the McLaren MP4-12C is anything but a normal car, particularly if you’ve read Rod’s introduction to the car. Unfortunately I didn’t have the opportunity to drive it, so I cannot speak to how it drives. Nevertheless, I was still blown away by it. But not by how good [...]
To conclude our coverage of the opening round of the 2012 British Drift Championship we bring you some nice shiny hi-res desktops from the action at Teesside. The beautifully-prepared S14a of Team SATS’ Steve Moore. Phil Morrison and the crazy Driftworks 2JZ-powered S15. Brian Egan in the Honda-powered AE86 on his way to a first win. Steve [...]
I’m glad to see that the feature on the M5 has received a decent amount of feedback. This beast of a saloon defines all that is great with BMW and its stunning M-cars and to complete the feature, here are four quick desktops for you to enjoy. You can grace your computer’s screen with a [...]
The new BMW M3 Coupé Frozen Silver Edition features BMW’s class-leading 420hp V8 engine with power transferred to the road via the standard seven-speed M DCT transmission and variable M differential. The car comes with a 10mm lowered suspension featuring a three-stage Electronic Damper Control, 19-inch light alloy wheels and a revised DSC+ system. But [...]
I hope you’re enjoying the new look Speedhunters as much as I am. Even behind the scenes there’s massive improvement which makes things a lot easier for us to get stories to you faster than before. One of my favorite aspects is how easy it is to upload desktops now, a complete change from the [...]
As promised, I’d like to provide you guys with some high res desktops from the Ford Cobra Shelby Reunion at the NHRA Museum. I’ve included images of the Trans Am Cougar. The office of a G.T.350. The mean Mustang in the Baer Brakes area. A group of racers heading beneath the famous bridge. Some more [...]
Chrysler must have a death wish, an inferiority complex, or a burning desire to stay third among the domestic Big Three. Thirty-odd years ago, Lee Iacocca begged Congress for loan guarantees to keep the Chrysler ship afloat. This company had another encounter with the Grim Reaper in the Nineties followed by a full Chapter 11 [...]
Should you find yourself in Los Angeles between now and next February, or if you’re itchin’ to make a trip out west and all you need is a reason, make the “Sculpture in Motion: Masterpieces in Italian Design” exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum a part of the itinerary. This extraordinary showcase currently features 17 [...]
I’m guessing there aren’t too many Speedhunters readers that have not heard of Peter Brock. Whether it was his work as a stylist with GM, his development of the Cobra Daytona Coupe, and of course his with Datsun – Brock and his company are the stuff of legend. Thanks to the efforts of both Peter [...]
China is not the perfect place for fast motoring: Traffic is congested, speed cameras abound, and when you leave the urban centers, people don’t expect you to barrel along country roads at triple-digit speeds. Nevertheless, China is the perfect place for selling powerful cars: The country’s entrepreneurs take great pride in their success and enjoy [...]
Some might call us nitpickers, but we prefer to think of ourselves as students of minutiae. Things like the feel of radio-tuning knobs—and they’d better be knobs; rocker switches awaken our inner Hulk—and window switches—a detent for the auto up/down, Alfred—matter. (more…)
The $54,995 2013 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 will have 662 hp and 631 lb-ft of torque according to SAE ratings released by Ford today—eclipsing the 650 hp and 600 lb-ft the company originally estimated. We’d love to make an analogy to demonstrate what an obscene amount of power and torque this is, but the GT500 [...]
Audi has added two doors to its A1 hatchback, a car that competes head-on with BMW’s Mini, yet does without any retro touches or excessive cuteness. This five-door derivative is called the A1 Sportback and is significant not only for its styling and added practicality, but also for a new engine that’s available on this [...]
Just months after filing trademarks for Urus (the eventual name for its SUV concept) and Deimos (still unassigned), Lamborghini has added Huracán to its portfolio of pending applications. Huracán, as you can probably guess, is Spanish for “hurricane.” Not only does English essentially borrow the word intact from Spanish, but the Spanish people adopted it [...]
When it debuted in January at the Detroit auto show, the Acura NSX concept wore techy silver paint, and that didn’t change when the car made an appearance in Geneva wearing Honda logos. At the Beijing show, the car reverted to its luxury-brand badge—and showed up in a racy shade of red. A sports car usually [...]
Aston Martin will introduce a new DBS for 2013 at the end of the year, which means that the current car is on the way out. As a send-off to the outgoing model, the final 100 examples will be built as special DBS Ultimate Editions. The Ultimate Editions will not receive any powertrain or suspension [...]
Chinese-owned MG unveiled a concept SUV called the Icon at the Beijing show, but we’re thinking it would have been more accurately named Iconoclast—which means one who attacks cherished beliefs and institutions. Despite design director Anthony Williams-Kenny’s attempt to incorporate classic MG design cues, the result is less than satisfying. The MGB-inspired grille is nice, [...]
What It Is: A heavily camouflaged example of the next-generation Aston Martin DBS, seen here undergoing cold-weather testing in Sweden. We previously reported this car to be the next DB9, but our European sources have informed us that it actually is the new DBS. We’re told the car is wearing a significant number of dummy [...]
Ford has announced that the 2012 Focus Electric will silently pace this weekend’s Capital City 400 Sprint Cup race in Richmond, Virginia. The company says this is historic, because never before has an EV paced a NASCAR race. Ford’s previous pace car “first” came in 2008, when it fielded NASCAR’s first hybrid pace-setter in the [...]
Self-driving cars have arrived: Google has a fleet of autonomous Toyota Priuses roaming Silicon Valley, Audi raced a driverless TTS up Pikes Peak, and Ford has proven that a modern Walkman can parallel-park better than you. Here’s a handful of hacks, tips, and cheats that’ll help humans get back some of their dignity once the [...]
No matter how beguiling its looks or convincing its Opel-derived specifications, the Buick Regal has one major handicap: a name laden with disappointment. Buick has overhauled its model names, but “Regal” inexplicably survives. What’s in a name? Well, gas shortages and vibrating V-6s and gussied-up Luminas are evoked by this one, introduced in 1973, just [...]
Toyota’s new “global strategic” Dear Qin compact sedan and hatchback debuted this week at the Beijing auto show alongside the Chinese-market-only Yundong Shuangqing concept. (more…)
Toyota brought three concepts to the Beijing auto show, but only one—the Yundong Shuangqing hybrid—can claim to be inspired by clouds. (Details on Toyota’s two additional Beijing auto show debutantes can be found here). (more…)
The sad truth is that the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is simply too fast for this world. You just can’t go cruising around at something like 20 mph faster than a pole-winning qualifying lap for the Indy 500. But if you must find a place to blast around in one of these land-bound rockets, you could [...]
After last year’s IndyCar debacle at Las Vegas resulting in a 15-car debris field and the death of two-time Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon, series organizers had no choice but to overhaul their sport. Fortunately, that process was already under way. Two years ago, a panel of experts began brainstorming a fresh IndyCar with improved [...]
Another China-only car debuted at the Beijing auto show this week, although this one didn’t feature dragons or extra space between the wheels. Shanghai Volkswagen introduced the New Lavida to maintain its position on the top of the very competitive A-segment in China; this model’s predecessor has sold more than 700,000 units since its introduction [...]
The Beijing auto show debut of Land Rover’s Range Rover Evoque Special Edition with Victoria Beckham had us initially scratching our heads. Not necessarily because we were perplexed by Mrs. Beckham’s taste, or even by the fact that it exists, but because the few examples that will come here likely will run around $100K. That’s [...]
Introducing the Mercedes-Benz Viano Vision Diamond concept, the fanciest van you’re likely to see this year, which debuted at the Beijing auto show. The luxurious van follows the yacht-themed Viano Vision Pearl concept that debuted in Frankfurt last year. Instead of the Pearl’s maritime ambience, the Vision Diamond gets a subtle nod to the number [...]
Mercedes-Benz has announced that for the 2012 DTM season, it is retiring the C63 AMG sedan safety car it fielded last year—and replacing it with a C63 AMG Coupe Black Series. We already feel, uh, safer. Despite the apparent irony in pairing AMG’s most hard-core and angry C63 iteration with the title of safety car, [...]
For almost 30 years, Toyota off-road enthusiasts have looked to Toyota Racing Development to lead the way in factory-engineered performance mods. And understandably so: The in-house skunkworks operation has provided Toyota with numerous titles at the legendary Baja 500 and 1000. That successful desert-racing legacy has provided Toyota with a foundation of knowledge to build its [...]
I find it funny that in his recent post on the HKS Premium Day in Japan, Dino Dalle Carbonare mentioned the rainy weather that's been so frequent in his recent Speedhunting ventures. Here in California, my feelings are the opposite. Sometimes there are just too many damn sunny days here.
The big event in the past seven days has been the opening of the Beijing International Auto Show in China – the first chance for the world’s biggest manufacturers to show off their 2012 models and future concepts to the South-East Asian market. As importantly, it’s where the local car companies also get to prove [...]
The 2012 UK Drift season is officially go! Close to 100 drivers descended on Teesside Autodrome for the opening round of the 2012 Maxxis British Drift Championship. My first impression on walking around the paddock was, “Wow! Things have changed”. For 2012 the BDC have really stepped up a level with new teams, new liveries [...]
The journey that Alfa Romeo’s Giulietta compact has taken from sporty, Euro-only Italian hatchback to global sedan staple reads like a biblical epic. At first, there was only the Alfa Giulietta. Chrysler then swoopeth down and taketh the Giulietta, stretching it and widening it into the 2013 Dodge Dart. Now, Chrysler giveth the Dart-ifed Giulietta [...]
Among the 2012 Beijing auto show’s debutantes is a large new sedan called the 950, offered up by China’s homegrown Roewe brand. It has lovely proportions, a big back seat, a strong front end with bold headlamps that sort of look like—hey, wait a minute—that’s a Buick LaCrosse! After a little digging in the concrete [...]
Two years ago, Daimler and fledgling Chinese automaker BYD partnered up to create an electric vehicle for the Chinese market, and now the first fruit of that relationship has debuted. The unnamed concept car is badged as a Denza—a new brand drummed up by Daimler and BYD—and the EV made its debut at the 2012 [...]
The addition of a supercharged V-6 engine is the most significant change to Audi’s Q5 crossover, which is getting an otherwise subtle update for the 2013 model year. Final U.S.-market specifications and powertrains haven’t been announced, but below, we run down the global changes and highlight the ones we expect to see here. (more…)
Just like many other automakers displaying at the Beijing auto show, Aston Martin has released a celebratory Year of the Dragon package called the Dragon 88 Limited Edition. This special version will be available for the DBS, Virage, and V8 Vantage S. Despite being adorned with dragons that are synonymous with power and strength in [...]
The appeal of the 24 Hours of LeMons, the world’s best beater-endurance series, lies in its simplicity: Buy a $500 car and go racing. It’s not quite that easy or cheap—even though there is a spending limit on the car, there’s none on safety gear—and it’s amazing how many stupid modification mistakes you’ll witness in [...]
China loves it some long-wheelbase versions of existing cars. So it’s only fitting that the 2012 Beijing auto show played host to several new or revised LWB rides, including the stretched BMW 3-series, the Rolls-Royce Phantom Extended Wheelbase, and the Audi A6L e-tron. Now Infiniti is in the game, having debuted this extended M. The [...]
The evolution of the AMG subbrand can be divided into three eras—pre-Benz ownership, when AMG merely tuned Mercedes cars; subsidiary status, as vehicle development became contemporaneous; and the post-SLS period, from 2009 on, when AMG got serious about engineering and building its own sports cars for the Star. Even as it continues to tune and [...]
When Lotus unveiled the Evora GTE Road Car concept at last year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the company made no secret of its intentions to build and sell approximately 25 examples for the Chinese market. Initial interest was encouraging enough, but when the Lotus Evora GTE was shown again a month later at the Frankfurt [...]
Not content to let fellow premium manufacturers Ferrari and Rolls-Royce grab all the Year of the Dragon headlines coming out of the Beijing auto show, Bugatti has unveiled its own vehicular interpretation of the theme. Based on the Veyron Grand Sport, Bugatti’s Wei Long 2012 one-off model was developed in conjunction with revered German porcelain [...]
Nissan unveiled its Chinese-market Sylphy at the Beijing auto show. Normally, we don’t pay much attention to Chinese-market cars, but this Sylphy is our first look at Nissan’s new compact sedan, meaning it’s pretty much the Sentra we’re scheduled to get this summer. Keep Reading: 2013 Nissan Sylphy Previews Next Nissan Sentra – Auto Shows
Just the opportunity to see so many amazing Shelby and Ford vehicles parked in one place would be more than enough to excite most red-blooded car enthusiasts, but what really made last weekend's Ford Cobra Shelby Reunion special was track time.
Not just any track time, but track time on a historic road course that had been resurrected for this special event.
BMW has announced that moving forward, all of its i electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles—meaning the i3 and i8— will wear “eDrive” badging, which the company says will represent the cars’ electric bona fides. The eDrive moniker made its debut at the Beijing auto show, where it was affixed to the rear bumper of the [...]
On Monday we presented this week’s shifter and asked you to identify the make and model of the vehicle from whence it came. A few of you guessed that the shifter belongs to a late-1990s Toyota Camry sedan, which was close. It is in fact from the Camry’s close sibling, the 1999 Camry Solara SE [...]
Honda brought two obliquely named concepts to the 2012 Beijing auto show; the first is the Concept C sedan and the second is this Concept S tall hatchback. Like the Concept C, the S previews a new production model—in this case, a hybrid people mover. However, while the Concept C’s production offshoot will stay in [...]
The Audi A6L e-tron concept is the latest addition to the company’s growing family of e-tron concept cars and production models. Although we may never get the A6L here in the U.S., we may get an A6 e-tron. Keep Reading: Audi A6L E-tron Concept – Auto Shows
These shots of the new Viper give us our first look at the 2013 Viper in a color that’s not red. That’s, well, pretty much what’s notable here. (We have sort of also seen the Viper in silver, in the form of the new ALMS race car.) This prototype car features the same upgraded interior, [...]
Ghost? Six senses? The M. Night Shaymalan/Haley Joel Osment jokes practically tell themselves. But this isn’t a Sixth Sense homage, 13 years late. Introduced at the 2012 Beijing auto show, the Ghost Six Senses is a concept intended, says Rolls, to excite the five primary senses. It also exists ostensibly to advertise the company’s bespoke [...]
There is something magical about having races on city streets. It would be illegal and not to mention very dangerous to push any car to the limit on these downtown streets, but for one week out of the year exhaust notes reverberate off the high rises in downtown Long Beach. What I like about this course is [...]
It was almost exactly 50 years ago, back in April of 1962 that the very first Shelby Cobra debuted at New York Auto Show. This was just a short time after that first AC chassis was shipped from the UK and quickly fitted with a small block Ford V8 in the back of Dean Moon's shop in Santa Fe Springs, California. 
I’m getting tired of rain. Over the last few weeks I’ve had to endure far too many rainy days, and while shooting in the wet can have its advantages, it didn’t do anything for today’s proceedings. You see when you are trying to put on a track event, with time-attack sessions thrown in for extra [...]
Update 4/23: Our ever-diligent spy photographers have managed to snag a few more shots of the McLaren F1 replacement, and although the new photos don’t reveal many more details, they do show that the mid-engine supercar will have share some of its looks with the MP4-12C; this car’s side and lower front intakes are similar [...]
A new season – and new surroundings. It’s been a long time since my last blog on Speedhunters, but don’t think I have been lying on the sofa since the Dubai 24 Hours back in January! I’ve been busy preparing for the start of the main racing season and also having some fun on frozen [...]
If you mention the word “Pomona” to most car enthusiasts, images of smokey burnouts and record-setting quarter mile runs will come to mind. The drag strip at Pomona is legendary, and considered hallowed ground in the world of drag racing. What some people might not know, is that at one time Pomona was also home [...]
This is the new Dacia Duster – a compact SUV with the price of a small city car! Available in two wheel or four wheel drive, it is a very capable medium sized car with a very small budget. The range will start from less than £10,000, with 4×4 versions available from less than £12,500. [...]
Ok folks, here's another drop of desktops from last weekend's opening round of the 2012 Blancpain Endurance Series. While the wet conditions in Monza made for some soggy Speedhunters' photographers, the resulting imagery was well worth the discomfort.
As car enthusiasts we love messing with our cars, whether improving performance or just making it look cooler, we continue to tinker to our heart’s content. But I don’t think I’m alone in saying that with age comes a respect for proper fitting panels, high quality precision and factory durability. Therein lies the bane of [...]
: skip to main skip to sidebar Friday , April 20, 2012 How would you like to have your ad on 2 Million Websites We have developed a software that automatically places your ad on millions of . blogs You will receive thousands of targeted hits to your website as Blog Blaster places your ad on blogs that match your ad's category . 160 This method has never been released to the public before . Very few , if anyone has implemented . this Full : Details http : blogblaster.advertise-bz.cn detail.php id=15 : Unsubscribe http : advertise-bz.cn mach view.php id=5 Email=corner5wally.itmn blogger.c om Posted by WALLY at 8:50 AM 0 comments : Post a Comment Older Post Home Subscribe to : Post Comments Atom Inside Track Holiday Buyers' Guide Click to launch the full edition in a new window Digital