No offense to Drew Barrymore – we love you, Drew – her appearance on Jay Leno’s ‘Green Car Challenge’ is about to be one-upped because no less than Rush Limbaugh will be one of the next celebrities to take on Leno’s car challenge.
Now you’re probably wondering how on Earth is Rush Limbaugh more interesting than Drew Barrymore, and while we can’t blame you for the thought, you have to know that Rush Limbaugh is probably one of the biggest hybrid car bashers in the face of this planet so for him to actually drive one, is poetic irony at its best.
We don’t know what made Limbaugh decide to accept Leno’s challenge – apart from maybe the extra publicity this would generate – but it sure will be a treat to watch the man who once said about hybrids - “Nobody’s buying them! Nobody wants them! The manufacturers are making them in droves to satisfy Obama!” – drive a Ford Focus BEV.
Here’s the rest of what Limbaugh had to say about hybrids: "People are going to buy [hybrids] because Obama’s going to see to it the price [of gas] gets back up to four bucks, since that is the tipping point … Ford and Toyota are manufacturing all kinds of new hybrids to keep politicians happy. Politics. You want to know what killed the auto industry? Politics.”
If you haven’t already seen the “Green Car Challenge” on NBC’s the Jay Leno Show then you might want to check out Hollywood starlet Drew Barrymore making her way around the new track in a zero emissions all electric Ford Focus. In this video, Jay invites world class racing driver Justin Bell to come along and say a few words about the electric orange Focus before the host of the show takes advantage of his title and gets behind the wheel of his latest toy.
Jay Leno is the epitome of a car guy, knowing that the world’s fossil fuel supply is eventually going to run dry, he sees electric vehicles taking over on our daily commutes or for around town shopping, while our favorite gas powered cruisers will be kept for Sunday driving. There is also one other benefit from an electric car, instantaneous torque. One of the things that Jay boats about, is the Ford’s endless amount of low end torque, which is quite useful on the new back lot short track.
The unique battery powered Focus started life as a European production Focus ST, built in Germany before being delivered to Ford’s world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, where engineers went to work, removing the traditional engine and gas tank and installing an entire electric powertrain before fitting a set of Recaro racing buckets, a full roll cage, five point racing harness and bespoke electric orange paint scheme. With a sophisticated electric powertrain, the zero-emissions Ford Focus BEV delivers nearly as much torque at the wheels as a 2010 Ford Mustang V6. It also stores enough energy to power an average household for 24 hours. Thanks in part to the battery placement, the race-ready Ford Focus BEV has a nearly ideal 50/50 weight distribution for improved racetrack handling.
We all know that Jay Leno’s new segment – ‘The Green Car Challenge’ – on his new show is nothing more than a fringe version of what Top Gear does with their ‘Reasonably-Priced Car Challenge’. And while we can’t fault Jay for putting his own spin on the highly-popular Top Gear segment, we probably should be upfront and say that the debut of his car segment didn’t exactly illicit as much excitement as we previously anticipated.
This, of course, is no slight at Drew Barrymore, who, as a matter of fact, is one of the most drop-dead gorgeous celebrities in the world today. But it sure doesn’t bode well for her – or for viewers of Jay’s show – to admit that she doesn’t even have a license, yet she’s more than willing to get behind the wheel of the ridiculous eyesore of a car that Leno is using for this segment.
A week ago, we showed you photos of the Green Hornet’s ride, the Black Beauty, crashing into a small concrete wall. While speculation was rampant that it was merely a stunt, this video we got from TMZ seems to show that the car did lose control and crashed into a cop car first before hitting the concrete wall.
The clip shows the Black Beauty doing a scene where it effortlessly navigates through the scene unscathed. Then the same scene was shot again but this time, the Black Beauty apparently loses control, hits the police car, and crashes into the barrier.
Now, there’s a thin line between a scripted scene and an actual accident, especially in Hollywood, but the more we watch the video, the more it looks like the accident was neither planned nor was it intentional.
Have you always wondered what it would be like to own a Camaro but budget constraints have forced you to just think of it as nothing more than just a dream?
Now – thanks to Sports Radio 850 WEEI, a Boston radio station and New England Chevrolet Dealers – you can own, not just a 2010 Camaro, but a Camaro that is owned by no less than Dustin Pedroia.
If you don’t know who Pedroia is, he’s pretty much a deity in the Boston-area, thanks in large part to being the starting shortstop of the Boston Red Sox.
All you need to do is go sign up at WEEI.com/camaro through September 27 and, provided you get an official Dustin Pedroia Camaro poster from any participating New England Chevy Dealers, you’ll name is going to be entered in the raffle for the celebrity Camaro.
To make it more enticing, Pedroia will be signing-off on the new car, giving its future, new owner the official stamp that the car was once Pedroias.
The winner will be chosen on September 28, at which time, the lucky bloke who wins it will not just have a Camaro, but a Camaro that was owned by a local sports hero.
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Drew Barrymore will get the first crack at racing the new all-electric Ford Focus as part of Jay Leno’s new car-racing segment in his new prime-time show on NBC.
The segment, which will be titled, the ‘Green Car Challenge’, will feature a number of Leno’s celebrity guests taking turns behind the wheel of an electric Focus to see who can post the fastest lap time around a specially-designed circuit around the NBC compound in Burbank.
If this bit looks oddly familiar to you, then we give you props for knowing your chops. Leno’s ‘Green Car Challenge’ was inspired by a similar segment done on Top Gear, an extremely popular racing feature in the UK where Leno was once a guest.
Barrymore’s racing lap will be seen on the September 18 episode of Leno’s show, which, incidentally, will give Ford a medium to demonstrate the many features of driving an electric car.
The electric Focus won’t be available until 2011 but according to Nancy Gioia, director of hybrid vehicle programs for Ford, it doesn’t hurt to get the word out to the public that electric cars aren’t as quirky as some people think.
Nevertheless, we’re pretty geeked to see just how much racing chops Drew Barrymore has; we haven’t forgotten those Charlie’s Angels racing scenes where she totally rocked our socks.
If you were at Silverstone over the weekend for the launch of the new Dirt 2 rally game, you probably would have been content sampling the game for free and hopefully pick yourself a copy before it runs out.
Never in your wildest dreams would you have bet that Ken Block would take you for a ride on a real rally car. But that’s exactly what happened to these lucky fellows who got a chance to sit shotgun while Block runs through a course on his WRX STI rally car?
We can’t tell you how jealous beyond measure we are, but from the look – and sound – of the video, we figured that those who got a chance to ride with Block never expected to scream as much as they did. One guy even asked Jesus for some divine intervention.
That should tell you never to mess with Ken Block on a rally car.
We’ve seen Lamborghini’s crash into barriers, and burst into flames, but never have we seen two people blatantly jump on top of one and dance on it with no regard for the car’s value and price tag.
Apparently, that’s what Steve-O (the Jackass dude) and Tom Green did to a poor Murcielago. We cringe at a lot of things but this video absolutely leaves us mortified. Jumping on a car is one thing – we don’t condone it, by the way – but jumping on a car that’s worth about half a million dollars is just downright stupid. But being stupid is what these two guys do best and the unfortunate Murcielago had to pay a steep price for it.
Fortunately for these two knuckleheads, the owner of this car – at least according to TMZ – is their rap producer so at least we won’t be seeing a good ol’ fashion smackdown. But then again, this is a Murcielago we’re talking about so we won’t be surprised if Mr. Producer puts the stompin’ on his clients.
If we we’re him, we’d be reaching for a baseball bat already.
The many perks of being Jay Leno makes for a very long list, and for us pistonheads of lesser stature, we probably would kill just to spend one day in that man’s shoes. The connections and access that Jay Leno has in the auto industry is something a lot of us can only dream about.
Recently, America’s number one car freak was given a walking tour of McLaren’s factory in Woking, England where he was shown a number of things we only see in our imaginations. For starters, McLaren Managing Director Anthony Sheriff takes Leno inside the company’s inner grounds to show him the carbon fiber central tub that is being used in the company’s new supercar, the MP4-12C. After that, Leno was taken inside a small room where he was shown a three-dimensional CAD rendering of the supercar and then was given a first-hand look at the McLaren P11. Leno even was given a chance to get behind the wheel of the car to examine its interior.
Sigh, indeed.
While the company didn’t show the MP4-12C in all its glory, the mere fact that he was given a private tour of the facility – including a number of restricted areas that only McLaren employees are allowed to go to – makes us all want to cry in envy.
We normally don’t come across a lot of celebrity news around here, except of course when we’re snooping around to find out which A-class celeb purchased what exotic supercar. But then again, this piece of news we found cortesy of photos shared by Just Jared were just too good to pass up.
As you may very well know by now, Hollywood is buzzing in anticipation of the Green Hornet movie that is currently under production. One of the things a lot of us pistonheads are excited about this movie is the Hornet’s ride, the Black Beauty Crown Imperial.
Unfortunately, while the crew was filming a scene with the Black Beauty, the car ended up crashing onto a cement barrier of the CAA building in Century City with rescue workers scrambling into the scene to check for any injuries. Now, we don’t know if this was a real accident or just part of the script, but judging from the photos, the scene looks more and more likely to be an unscripted one.
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