Ok, so a Neon R/T with Lambo doors might not be to everyone’s taste, but I just love this picture. Something about the total incongruity of a tuner’d-up Neon against the outdoorsy backdrop of rugged postcard-perfect moutain terrain just cracks me up. Plus, you’ve gotta give the owner Mitch some credit—he didn’t know anything about cars before purchasing this stock Neon, and what he’s done with it is impressive. Here’s what he says:

400HP Turbo Neon R/t. Custom is all about being different so I chose a Neon. I went into building this car with no previous nowlege about cars or motors. I paid for and did all the work on this car myself. It has full laptop programming for ign and and fuel, concert sound, and is a blast to drive. It has been in Modified Mag, and in Hot Import Nights several times. Hope you all enjoy.

There’s still a ton of prizes to give away in the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It photo contest, including free gas and trips to see the Le Mans races—and all you have to do is take a gorgeous picture of your ride! Enter here.

When I was growing up in Florida, I saw some seriously freaky weather. Torrential downpours come out of nowhere in the Sunshine State, and the lightning storms are the most severe in the country. But while I’ve seen plenty of hail, fortunately, I never experienced anything like this firsthand. Just look at what it does to the windshield. So how do insurance agents classify incidents like this? Act of God? 

We all know that cops like to be super-intimidating, which makes it all the more hilarious when you catch them totally chickening out. Watch as a wild turkey, enamored of a cop’s Crown Vic, so unsettles the officer that he can’t even get out of his car. The most hysterical thing is that he blips the siren in an effort to dislodge his new friend—but since the siren kind of sounds like a turkey, the curious bird simply becomes all the more enchanted. Someone’s got a crush!

Source: Carscoop

This morning, I woke up at ten minutes to four to hop a bus with the other media folks to Pikes Peak. The trip from the hotel to the 12,000 foot summit took about an hour and a half, and it was dark as we wound along the 12 miles to the top. At times the big van struggled with the grade, but we arrived just as the sun was beginning to rise. The Hill Climb wasn’t due to start for hours, and after the van left, we were on our own. Now, this is the only event that I’ve been to where the press material includes descriptions of hypothermia, heat stroke and altitude-sickness, so you can imagine that the wait wasn’t particularly pleasant. In addition to the temperature—it was a brisk 34—and the thin air, the area is just loaded with bees, which seemed to throughly enjoy buzzing around everyone. I didn’t even think bees could survive when it’s that chilly out. Bonus fact? I’m allergic to bees. But the scenery was unquestionably gorgeous. After all, this is the very spot that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write "America the Beautiful," which I personally think should replace the too-hard-to-sing Star Spangled Banner as our national anthem. Check out more pics from the summit after the jump.

Continue reading "Sunrise on Pikes Peak: Pretty, Unpleasant" »

First off, let me say I think Yellowstone National Park is a wonderful place, indeed, a treasure. Every which way you turn, there’s another breathtaking vista—just look at the picture below!—and it would make me really sad if some developer paved over it and threw up a bunch of condos. But Sunday’s first checkpoint was at the park’s Grand Visitor Center, which is deep inside it, and accessible only by roads with a 30MPH speed limit. Added bonus? Speeding inside the park is a Federal offense, and the tree-hugging rangers who work there didn’t seem particularly stoked about the Bullrun. Maybe it’s just because I was tired and hungry, but riding through there in Mr. Angry’s Ford Fusion made me feel less like I was on a wicked cool rally, and more like I was sightseeing with my parents. My favorite quote about the Yellowstone leg came from Kevin, the driver of the supercharged 928; "30MPH? I don’t even have a gear for that speed!"

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It seems far-fetched, but apparently the ability to make gasoline out of Co2 extracted from the atmosphere isn’t science fiction. The process would take an enormous amount of electricity, so nuclear power would have to be used to run the systems, but that seems like a pretty good trade off. Hey, if France can generate 75% of its electricity from reactors, why can’t we build some to fuel our thirsty cars? Check out the New York Times for more info.

Check out this crazy ice formation. Happened in Lyons, Colorado, which got about four inches of snow Wednesday night. These spikes developed on the rear wheels of a Nissan Frontier after driving through a bunch of wet and melting snow yesterday. Ever seen anything like that on your wheels?

Apparently, automotive sheetmetal is ideally suited for producing the precise geometrical ice-crystal patterns known as "fern frost." Bodywork takes on and loses heat rapidly, encouraging the little guys to form long chains of hexagonal-shaped units—which, interacting with tiny irregularities on the car’s surface, result in the organic-looking formations you see here. A guy in the UK found a whole forest of the crazy patterns growing on his Rover over a couple of nights, and snapped a bunch of pics—check them out at Daily Mail, via AutoMotto.