By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

I always wondered what you would get if you got the Giovanna wheel designers high. Now I know: you would get these wheels. They are attached to a Toyota EV microcar with a lot of shiny vinyl on it. More pics after the jump!

Continue reading "Toyota EV: Holy Giovanna!" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

We had this pic in the blog back in June of 2007. I figured it might make a decent caption contest. So have at it. You know the drill: Come up with a caption for the picture below by noon PST next Thursday. If you submit the funniest one, we’ll send you some CarDomain swag. And remember to leave a link to your ride page so we can contact you. Three entries per person max. Good luck!

By Ryan Porter

IN-N-OUT Editor

If you’re like Rob you probably are asking yourself what that even means, but here’s the scoop.  Every now and then I like to see who is talking about CarDomain over at Twitter and I’m gonna start calling anyone who updates their ride and tweets it over at www.twitter.com.

So go check out GiniroNoOni’s Mazda RX-7 FD3S since it pulled 380 horses on the dyno and leave him a comment or rating!  When you are done there, update your ride and shoot me a PM and maybe I’ll show your car off in the blog!

By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

Yeah, about the green paint memo. It turns out that almost everyone got it. That’s a lot of metallic green. More green cars after the jump!

Continue reading "NAIAS Global Trend: Green Paint" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

I’m still sorting through some of the shots I took in Detroit. Here are the pics I took in the Lexus booth, including photos of the 2010 Lexus HS 250h hybrid, which was unveiled on Sunday. More pics after the jump!

Continue reading "Lexus at NAIAS" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Pretty sharp, huh? See more pics and read the full press release over at Jalopnik

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

This was a popular one, with over 350 comments. I’m going with Anthony‘s “I know I dropped my tranny somewhere in here…” Thanks, and stay tuned for another caption contest tomorrow!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

The Big Car Showoff is getting closer (January 25th at the Miami Dade County Fair Expo Center in Miami) and now Danny has come up with an opportunity for two people to win round trip airfare, hotel and tickets to the show. Over 200 cars have pre-registered and Danny is expecting another 300 plus, so it should be good. So register here for a chance to win a trip to the sunshine state!

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

Next up in my Tokyo Auto Salon coverage, Toyota and Lexus. Recently, Japan’s biggest automaker hasn’t been offering as many enthusiast-friendly cars as its competitors, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find a bunch of interesting Toyotas at Auto Salon this year. You’ve already seen some of them sprinkled among my other Auto Salon posts, but there are plenty of others I haven’t covered yet.

I figured I’d start with the Corolla Axio Super GT race car that Toyota had in it’s booth, I don’t remember hearing about this car beforehand, so I was surprised to see it amongst the other offerings in Toyota’s booth. The car is scheduled to compete in the GT300 class during the upcoming season. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Mike Garrett

By David Freiburger

David Freiburger

I nabbed four clips off of YouTube for this week’s videos, all of them showing what can go wrong on a chassis dyno. Many of us here have countless dyno pulls under our belts, and it’s easy to get slack about the disasters that can occur even with low-powered cars.

I was at Westech one day when a driveshaft broke about halfway through a pull and launched out from under the car in two pieces. It took about 20 minutes for the stuff to stop spinning on the floor.

Once I saw an engine-dyno room that was annihilated after a damper came off the front of a stock engine.

The moral of the story is that problems can happen. You should not automatically trust the skills of the car owner or the dyno operator. Check this stuff out. If you only have time for one video, do the first one that shows a 1,000-plus-rwhp car nearly launching off the elevated dyno at the Car Craft Nationals a few years ago. The driver is a major hero for getting on the brakes so quickly.

See the rest of the videos at Freiburger’s Junkyard