Bringing together some of the most exclusive and powerful supercars in the world is a challenge well worth the effort.

In this exotic matchup, Automobile magazine assembled four of the fastest carbon-fiber-bodied rides in America to find out which is the king of the quarter mile on an airport runway.

The challengers are the almighty, 16-cylinder Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport, the new V12-powered Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4, the Lexus LFA V10, and the eight-cylinder McLaren MP4-12C.

source : carscoop

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of appropriate ages, your requisite dose of big-screen fast driving is here. And it looks pretty darn funny, too.
The movie in question is called Hit and Run. It was written and directed by Dax Shepard, who also stars in the film alongside such notables as Bradley Cooper, Tom Arnold, a couple of girls named Kristen, a custom ’67 Lincoln Continental hot rod and a 700-horsepower off-road racing buggy. The comedy (not to be confused with the 1924, 1938, 1957, 1959, 1966, 1975, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010 or 2011 movies of the same name) centers around a guy whose past as a bank-robbing getaway driver comes back to haunt him, forcing him and his girlfriend to hit the road.

Every year the Formula One calendar incorporates new races at more far-flung locations around the world. Recent additions have brought the series to such locales as Abu Dhabi, South Korea and India. But the purists know that, no matter where it may roam, F1 is essentially a European series.
With the grands prix in Australia, Malaysia, China and Bahrain now behind us, the circus has come back home for the European section of the calendar that kicked off this weekend in Barcelona, Spain. Keep reading to see how it unfolded.

Coming back from a season when Sebatian Vettel took just about every pole position, this season has seen another driver land on pole at nearly every race. Lewis Hamilton took the first two, succeeded by Nico Rosberg, and Sebastian Vettel at the next two up until now. But in Barcelona on Friday a surprise performance by rookie Pastor Maldonado landed Williams on pole. Surely he wouldn’t be able to keep it up over the race distance, though…would he?
Hamilton had initially posted the top time in qualifying, but having finished the session without enough fuel for the officials to test, was bumped to the back of the grid. So Fernando Alonso lined up his Ferrari alongside Maldonado, followed by the Lotus cars of Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen. Sergio Perez landed hisSauber fifth, followed by Nico Rosberg (Mercedes), Vettel (Red Bull), Schumacher (Mercedes), Kobayashi (Sauber) and Button (McLaren), with erstwhile frontrunners Webber (Red Bull) and Massa (Ferrari) relegated to eleventh and sixteenth, respectively.

Off the line, however, Maldonado couldn’t keep his Williams ahead of Alonso’s Ferrari, and the two-time world champion took a lead he would hold onto uninterrupted for the first 27 of 66 laps. The start had also boded well for Hamilton, Massa and Rosberg, who each advanced several places from the starting grid, but less so for Grosjean who fell behind.
The stage was then set for Alonso, Maldonado and Raikkonen to wage battle up front when Rosberg fell behind in fourth. A long line of cars bottled up behind the German driver who had shown his mettle so aptly two races prior by winning in China.
Things went much worse for his elder teammate on lap 13. Schumacher and Senna collided, spinning off into the gravel. And while Bruno managed to limp back to the pits with a puncture, Schumi was beached and his race was finished. Webber found less drastic setbacks when his Red Bull misbehaved, dropping him further down the field.

After Maldonado retook the lead from Alonso in the second round of pit stops, the third round brought the drama to a head. A jammed wheel gun in the Williams pit box forced the young Venezuelan to rejoin in third behind both Alonso and Raikkonen. Fernando then pitted from the lead and rejoined behind Pastor and Kimi, and the Williams car overtook the Lotus once again for the lead.
Alonso would squeeze past Raikkonen as well, but though he got close, his tires wouldn’t hold on long enough to get past Maldonado as well. And so the relative rookie took a hard-fought and well-deserved checkered flag, and in the process became the first Venezuelan to win an F1 race. It was also the first grand prix victory for the Williams team since 2004 when Juan Pablo Montoya won the Brazilian Grand Prix, and came as a welcome birthday gift to team principal Frank Williams who had just turned 70 a few days prior.
Meanwhile Alonso took second place on the podium and Raikkonen claimed third. His team-mate Romain Grosjean sailed to a smooth fourth place, ahead of Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi who fought hard for fifth place. The other Sauber car, however, didn’t fare as well, having collided with Grosjean and retired after the ensuing pit-stop thanks to an improperly secured wheel over which a mechanic had tripped. The remaining points went to Vettel, Rosberg, Hamilton, Button and Hulkenberg.

The results catapult Alonso into a tied lead with Vettel at 61 points each as Hamilton trails with 53. Raikkonen now holds 49 points in fourth, just ahead of Webber with 48, Button’s 45, Rosberg at 41, Grosjean holding 35 and Maldonado now eighth in the standings with 29 points. The combined scores leave Red Bull still firmly in the lead with 109 points ahead of McLaren’s 98, Lotus’ 84 and Ferrari’s 63 as Mercedes and Williams each hold 43.

source : autoblog

Yesterday’s Spanish Grand Prix was an enormous cause for celebration for Williams. The Formula One team that was once at the very top of its game hadn’t won a race since 2004, but it broke that losing streak when Pastor Maldonado claimed the checkered flag for the team against Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen and against all odds. But the celebrations in the team’s garage were cut short when a massive fire broke out just after the race.
The fire erupted an hour and a half after the grand prix’s conclusion as team members were toasting their victory in the garage on pit lane, sending smoke billowing out over the track. Members of other teams –Force India and Caterham chief among them – quickly sprung into action to help their comrades put out the fire. A total of 31 people were subsequently sent to the emergency medical center on site, with all but one treated and released. The remaining Williams team member is being treated for burns suffered in the incident and is expected to be sent back to the UK for further treatment in the coming days.
Officials are still looking into the cause of the fire, which reportedly emanated from the racecar that Bruno Senna drove until it was disabled in a collision with Michael Schumacher that took both cars out of the race. Suspicions center around a malfunction in the Kinetic Energy Recovery System. The incident is not the first time a Williams facility suffered from a fire, the factory back in Grove having caught on fire a few years ago.Scroll down to watch video of the incident in Barcelona this weekend.

source : autoblog

Southern California Datsssun collection. Be sure to watch in HD mode music by cfcf filmed and edited by Ryan Washburn ryanwashburn5atgmaildotcom

We see some fairly radical machinery come up for sale on occasion, but few creations manage to raise our eyebrows so high as Project Sea Lion. Created to nab amphibious land speed record, the machine uses aMazda 13b rotary engine for propulsion, and its creator says the drivetrain is good enough to launch the vehicle to 180 miles per hour if there’s enough roadway. Given that the current record sits at 125 mph, the Sea Lion should have no problem nabbing that title.
Top speed on the water may be a bit more cumbersome, however. The quickest amphibious vehicle can get to 60 mph right now, and Sea Lion’s builder says the creation will need more horsepower to make that happen.
He suggests a Renesis conversion. We tend to agree.
Made from tig-welded aluminum and a variety of CNC-machined components, the car comes only with a bill of sale. That means we can forget all about driving/floating this thing to work. If you like what you see and what to give the amphibious land speed record a go for yourself, Project Sea Lion is for sale over at Fantasy Junction for the low price of $259,500. Scroll down for a quick video and be sure to check out Fantasy Junction for more details and photos.

Temporarily changing the color of your entire car or certain parts of it is something that crosses the mind of most drivers at one point or the other, which explains the success of foil wraps. Still, this solution can be relatively costly going upwards of a couple of thousand dollars for a full wrap.

A more economical solution for a purportedly easily applied and reversible paint job that seems to be gathering a bit of attention lately is "DipYourCar". What we have here is essentially a plastic paint that is applied via a spray can or a dedicated spray gun.

The team at DipYourCar says that if you rub on at least four or five coats on the car, the paint will last for a "very long time", without clarifying what that means. All they note is they have seen wheels, grilles and other parts "dipped for over a year without having to be touched up".

On their website, they say that 2 gallons of paint should be enough for a regular sized sedan. The basic color options are black, white, blue, yellow, red monster green, firebelly orange, gunmetal grey, florescent purple and pink, though they can also whip you up a custom hue.

Pricing for an 11oz can is $7 (€5.4) while professional kits that include a Wagner spray gun along with 2 gallons of paint, thinner, blue masking tape, washer and other items start at US$243 (€187) for a small car, US$307 (€237) for a large car and US$357 (€275) for a pickup truck or an SUV.

And for those that are not the handy type, DipYourCar says it cooperates with select shops in certain states that can do the job for you.

source: carscoop

From the "What will they think of next?" file comes our next video of a new styling accessory for the Nissan 350Z Coupe and Roadster models (known as the Fairlady Z in Japan).

Evidently inspired from Hollywood’s latest super-hero serving, the creative minds over at ZLeds came up with the bright idea of designing a pair of headlamps and turning signals that are supposed to mimic the lights from Iron Man’s metal suite.

source : carscoop

Depth of Speed is Josh Clason’s video series that cosses the country looking for cool automotive stories to tell. He found another one in Utah at JDM Legends. They let Clason take one of their vintage Skyline GT-R projects out on track for some sunset lens time, and the result is nothing less than you’d expect from Clason.

source : autoblog

We at Autoblog, por supuesto, love us some behind-the-scenes car development videos. We also dig smart humor, and we think the two are gloriously combined in this German take on almost every dramatic engineering/track/shakedown vid that has hit the YouTubes. Until it gets a tad too absurd, at least…
Put together by the same gents who earlier made an aluminum-foil Porshce 911 bike, this time they’ve worked up a car they call the Fahrradi Farfalla FXX which is loosely based on a whole lot of other cars. When they give it the shakedown in a German tunnel, well, you’ll just have to see for yourself what happens. Scroll down to see what’s up.

source : autoblog