Friday, December 30, 2011

India's Mahindra & Mahindra Interested in Saab, Turkish Suitor Also pops up on the Radar


The sad story of Saab is far from over as the court-appointed administrators who are overseeing the Swedish automaker's bankruptcy are now on the lookout for possible investors to either sell parts of the brand or the company as a whole.

In today's news, Bloomberg reports that Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, a maker of SUVs and a flagship company of the Mahindra Group, which is a multinational conglomerate based in Mumbai, India, is in private talks with Saab's administrators.

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Ford Brand's U.S. Sales Surpass 2 Million Mark for the First Time Since 2007


With less than two days left before 2011 comes to an end and gives its place to a another new year, Ford announced that sales of the Blue Oval brand in the United States this week topped the 2 million mark for the first time in four years making it the best-selling vehicle brand in America.

The last time any automotive brand managed to hit the 2 million sales milestone in the States in a single year was in 2007 -and again, it was done by Ford.

“Ford’s lineup of high-quality, fuel-efficient cars, utilities and trucks continues to attract more and more new customers,” said Erich Merkle, Ford’s sales analysis manager.

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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Stock Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Challenges Tuned Nissan GT-R on the Drag Strip


The Nissan GT-R and the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 are two very different beasts made by two companies that couldn't be more different, but there's one thing these two sports cars have in common: they are blazingly fast.

On one hand, you have a stock Bugatti Veyron 16.4 with 1,001-horses and a $2 million price tag while its Japanese contender, currently priced from US$90,000 in the States, normally gets between 480 and 550-ponies depending on the model year, but this particular model, is said to have been "lightly modified".

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New Toyota Camry Excels in Consumer Reports’ Tests, VW Passat Not So Much


Consumer Reports has just announced its latest test results. This time, the nonprofit organization put two brand-new, family sedans under its microscope – and while the one came up trumps, the other was a mixed bag.

Starting with the new 2012 Toyota Camry, Consumer Reports tested three different models with a four-cylinder, a V6 and a Hybrid engine, all of which ranked amongst the best in their class.

As the magazines notes, compared to the model it replaces, the new Camry has a plusher interior, more responsive handling, improved ride and better fuel economy, with only the increased road noise and some cheap details tainting the overall picture.

In fact, while the 173HP 2.5-liter four-cylinder version ties with the Hyundai Sonata for best-in-class fuel consumption delivering 27 mpg (8.7 lt/100 km), the more powerful 268HP 3.5-liter V6 is just a smidgen more thirsty and, at 26 mpg (9.0 lt/100 km), beats most four-cylinder rivals.

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Brooklyn Designer Creates Autodromo Watch Line Inspired by Car Instrument Gauges


Bradley Price is 31-year-old product designer from Brooklyn, New York, with a special passion for cars and a pretty creative mind. Combine those two and you get an interesting mix.

A couple of years ago, while driving his red 1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6 2.5 (yes, he's our kind of guy), Price had an inspiration: design a line of watches loosely inspired by sports car instrument panel gauges. Upon returning home, Price went to the drawing board and began rendering watch faces based on car gauges he admired.

The Brooklyn native continued to work on the designs of both the watch faces and casings and ended up creating a new company named Autodromo for his products.

“There are so many wonderful gauge designs from the 1960s and ’70s that I love,” Price told the New York Times in a recent interview. “I did some research and saw that no one was doing that for watches.”

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Is this Video Real? Speeding Car Passes Between Police Cruiser and Truck at Intersection


We're not ready to call this video real yet, but if it proves to be genuine, the driver that violated the green light at this intersection passing between a cop car and a truck, allegedly in the capital city of Baku in Azerbaijan, should feel more epic than Chuck Norris in any of his 1980s movies.

Take a look at the security video footage after the break, and tell us what you think.

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SPIED: 2012 Mercedes A-Class Hatchback Stretches Out in the Snow


The upcoming third generation A-Class is one of the most interesting new vehicles currently being prepared by Mercedes-Benz and all for good reason as the only common factor it has with the current model is its name.

You see, the Stuttgart-based company decided to compete more directly with the BMW 1-Series and even the higher-end versions of the VW Golf and as a result, opted for a sportier looking hatchback body built on a conventional platform instead of the tall, minivan-like shape and sandwich floor of the first two generations of the A-Class.

These latest spy shots of a five-door prototype of the A-Class testing in Europe suggest that the development of the car is nearing its end as engineers have removed much of its camouflage. If you want to see what the final model will look like, you can check out the patent images we posted earlier this year.

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