Over in Brazil, Nissan found itself in hot water after one of their commercials directed at Ford drew the ire of the American automaker’s Brazilian arm.
The music-video style parody commercial that Nissan released features two men representing Ford engineers, dressed to the absolute nines decked with gold chains, rings, and fur coats, while sipping champagne and flocked by a multitude of scantily-clad women. Oh, and if you didn’t notice, there’s also a Ford Focus in the background. Yep, a Ford Focus in a Nissan commercial.
While the TV spot isn’t in English, the lyrics, when translated to Portuguese, translate to something like "All the luxury that I got, I got it with your money" and "Don’t weep because you’re paying extra money — your money was well spent, look what I do with it."
Obviously, the whole commercial didn’t sit too well with Ford, who thought that Nissan was sending a message to consumers that the Focus is overpriced in Brazil compared to the Japanese automaker’s Tiida sub-compact (it’s called the Versa in our neck of the woods). While there’s some truth to it - the Tiida is actually cheaper by a little under $2,000 in Brazil compared to the Focus - Ford didn’t like the way Nissan portrayed their company.
Ford’s lawsuit prompted Nissan to pull the television commercial, but apparently, not before the video found its way on the Internet. With the web being a lot more expansive and lenient than any form of medium these days, Ford’s going to have a hard time curtailing the showing of this Nissan ad.
Anytime you get the chance to see four exotic cars on the road together continuously trying to one-up one another, it would be a complete crime to not bring out the cameras and videotape the whole proceedings.
Fortunately, the man sitting shotgun inside a Ferrari 430 Scuderia had the wherewithal to take out his camera and videotape the entire action up close and personal. Not to be outdone by the 430 Scuderia, the other three supercars in this video include some of the finest exotic machineries on the planet like a Ferrari 458 Italia, a Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale, and the only non-Prancing Horse of the group, a Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Balboni Edition.
You normally don’t see a group of cars with this much power oozing out of them together for a joyride along the highways of Brazil, so when it happens, you can definitely expect to have someone recording the action in all its ear-piercing glory.
Here in Top Speed, we have every intention of ringing in the new year with a bang. That pretty much means that for the next few days until 2011 rolls along, we intended to keep the noise and decibel level up a few notches with some eardrum-shattering, high-octane videos featuring some of our – and yours too, we hope – favorite exotics on the planet.
First up is a Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale screaming along the streets of Brazil. While we understandably dig the whole video game-to-real life effects done at the start of the video, we’re more interested in the sound of that powerhouse engine piercing through its surroundings.
Watch the five-minute video until the end and you’re going to be treated to the joyous sound of the car heading inside a couple of tunnels with the shriek of the engine reverberating and bouncing along the tunnel’s walls.
Ramp up the volume, fellas. This Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale is certainly not for the weak of heart.
In the weeks that have followed since the release of Gran Turismo 5, Sony has apparently yet to tire of promoting their new racing game. This is probably their way of making up for all the negative press they received for delaying the game’s release so many times in the past.
A few weeks ago, Sony welcomed the release of GT5 by heading over to France for a pretty intense supercar run at the Champ Elysees in Paris. This run featured some of the most desirable supercars on the planet. Sounds like a one-time promotional event, right?
Not quite.
Recently, another GT5-sponsored supercar run took place in Brazil. This time, the cars running roughshod all over Sau Paolo included a Mercedes SLS AMG, a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, a Nissan GT-R, a Ferrari 360, a Maserati 4200 Spider, a BMW M3, and a BMW Z4. All cars were decked in the now-familiar GT5 livery as they raced along the busy streets and thoroughfares of the populated Brazilian city.
Just goes to show that GT5’s influence reaches far and wide in this world.
Just when you thought that we’ve seen the last of all those burning Ferrari 458 Italias, we wake up to the unsettling news that the ‘458 Curse’ has struck again.
Reports are saying that the incident happened in Sao Paulo, Brazil – that place is getting a lot of news lately – and while details are limited as of the moment, you only need to look at these photos to come to the conclusion that the 458 Italia is not getting the kind of news it was expecting when it was released a year ago.
Make no mistake; the new Ferrari supercar is still awesome by most accounts, except when it comes to reliability issues. We would have thought that Ferrari’s recall of the model two months ago would have already put a stop to these unfortunate incidences. Unfortunately, we couldn’t be more wrong on that end. Let’s just all hope that Ferrari continues to be vigilant in fixing the 458 Italia, otherwise, it would be a waste of an awesome supercar.
