By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

You are looking at one of the most far out GT-R time attack projects ever created. It cost a massive $350,000 to build and has yet to see the light of day on a race track. It all started back in 2006 when Hiroya-san, a very good customer of Garage Ito in Osaka, decided to see if he could challenge the lap time record at Tsukuba set by the HKS CT230R. Hiroya-san is a very successful business man, and with his company pretty much taking care of itself he decided to dedicate some more time to his passion. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Dino Dalle Carbonare

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I know that big rigs are the lifeblood of industry, and they have as much right to use our highways as anyone else, blah blah blah, but when I see stuff like this it makes me think we should go back to shipping everything by train. This car in Brazil was completely squashed when a truck lost control on the highway and rolled over on it. I’m assuming there were no survivors–the thing looks like it’s been through the crusher! Remember to give those rigs a wide berth, guys. Via WreckedExotics.

Continue reading "Pancaked!" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Ever buy a used car that had a part or accessory that you swore you’d remove immediately, but ended up keeping? My old ’70 Fury vert had one of these goofy chrome barefoot gas pedals. My first plan was to get rid of it, but I ended up just thinking it was funny and left it alone. I wonder if it’s still with the car after all these years…

How about you? What’s the lamest part or accessory that you ended up keeping?

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

It’s too old-school to be a Transformer–this bizarre hulk has that 50s-sci-fi-comic-book thing going for it. It appears to include the complete front clips of at least three Cold War-mobiles–can anyone id them? Spotted by English Russia near Odessa in the Ukraine.

By Michael Berenis

Tampa Sports Car Examiner

A Buick runs a red light and smashes into an unsuspecting Corvette as it crosses the intersection. The accident was caught on tape by the intersection camera system. Big brother is good for something! Read more about the wreck at Tampa Sports Car Examiner.

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

The other day, I got a press release from Royal Purple touting their new engine note ringtones site, and today I finally got a chance to check it out. They’ve got some pretty sick ones available for download, including the Aston Martin DB 7,  Dodge Viper,  and Ford GT350 Super. Rob would probably go for the Road Runner, and since there isn’t a Ford Escort it’s unclear which Jen would want, but my favorite was the Ferrari 355 GTB. It’s really hard to beat Enzo’s Cavallinos in the music department.

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

This pure speculation, but given the dealer plates on the ‘Vette, we’re going to guess the moron behind the wheel was out for a test drive when this happened. Southern Cali’s freeways are famously slippery in the wet, so we can’t say why he thought it was a good idea to pound the throttle, but if he was trying to get away from the Justin Beiber track these girls were playing, we totally understand. Only pure luck keeps him from stuffing that hot machine into the wall. Yikes.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Today’s pic comes from Palex’s GMC Jimmy ride page. Keep those photo of the day PMs and e-mails coming!

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

GM’s Hummer division, slated to be sold off to Chinese manufacturer Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company, will instead be discontinued as communist red tape prevented the sale from being completed within the required timeline. Hummer thus becomes the latest casualty of GM’s restructuring effort, after Pontiac and Saturn officially bit the dust late last year. So does this mean the Third World won’t get to enjoy a glitchy, combustion-prone, lead-painted, crash-test-failing, safety-delete version of GM’s obsolete behemoth? The closest they’ll still be able to get is the Chinese knockoff Dongfeng EQ2050 Warrior. More details here.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

You guys better stay up with your car payments, cause repo men are getting a lot more high tech. They now have high-speed digital cameras with optical character recognition software which converts plate numbers to text and then checks them against a database of delinquent cars. And how about this tow truck, with a hydraulic lift and expandable steel arms which allows repo men snatch a car in less than ten seconds, without stepping out of the cab–and that includes cars that are parallel parked! Read the full article at The New York Times