Hot Wheels, the company that specializes on building miniature toy cars, has been regarded as a company that loves to think outside the box.
Whether its commissioning world-record stunts, or building tracks with double loops, the toy manufacturer has proven time and again that it can think of just about anything to promote and market itself to its demographic of choice.
This time, it’s done it again, except in a totally different way.
It made a movie - a 22-minute short film, to be exact - to find out the World’s Best Driver. In what can be best described as a novel approach in its goal, Hot Wheels commissioned different teams - aptly named Red Outrageous, Yellow Powerful, Blue High Tech and Green Superfast - to compete in a series of challenges at the Hot Wheels test facility in an undisclosed location.
We’re not going to keep you waiting any longer because the movie definitely warrants your time. Be advised, though, the kind of racing you see in it isn’t exactly the kind you’d want to do on any normal race track.
Just sayin’.
Click past the jump to watch more of Hot Wheels’ stunts over the years
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A lot of folks expected Pagani to introduce a new model at the Geneva Motor Show. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the Italian automaker showcased a new and extremely expensive option that customers can add to the Pagani Huayra.
Collaborating with Sonus Faber, Pagani introduced the custom Huayra sound system that was designed by the two companies to fit perfectly in line with the lightweight philosophy of the Italian supercar.
The overall setup is pretty remarkable for a sound system. It comes with carbon-fiber speaker cones, which is no small feat for those who designed and developed it.
In addition, the sound system also comes with neodymium magnets and an advanced amplifier system that results in a staggering 1,200 watts of power - three times as much as the "regular" sound system already installed in the Huayra.
That’s a lot of audio power to complement a car that already boasts of a 6.0-liter twin-turbo V-12 engine that produces 700 horsepower and 730 pound-feet of tire smoking torque.
Click past the jump to read about the Pagani Huayra
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We’re pretty sure that if you want to buy an American sports car this year, you may opt for the SRT Viper, and not the new Corvette Stingray. While Chevrolet failed to capture the usual Corvette allure, SRT did an amazing job in developing an awesome sports car - no slight to the Corvette, of course.
The SRT Viper is powered by a new 8.4-liter, all-aluminum V-10 overhead-valve engine that will deliver a total of 640 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque. The new engine will be mated to an improved Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual transmission.
According to Hennessey Performance, which was the latest one to dyno test the 2013 Viper, the new Viper develops a total of 558 rear wheel horsepower and 515 pound-feet of torque. So, how do we get from here to the numbers announced by SRT? Well, simply add forced induction; In fact, you will obtain almost double than SRT announced with some pressurized air flowing through the intake.
A lot of automakers have taken to movie tie-ups to promote their latest line of vehicles. Audi, in particular, has done it in all the Iron Man movies.
Well, now it looks like Chevrolet is doing the same, except that instead of Iron Man, it’s tying up with Captain America.
In this video captured by YouTube user Jason Vandervliet, a black 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray was seen making an appearance in the set of Captain America: Winter Solider in Washington D.C.
The car, it appears, was being driven by Scarlet Johansson who plays Black Widow in the movie. Look a little closer and you might notice what looks like Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, coming up to the Corvette to have a little chat with his co-star.
There has been no confirmation regarding a potential marketing partnership between Marvel Studios and Chevrolet. But if there is one, they couldn’t have picked a better car to promote than the Corvette Stingray.
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To review a century of history in just 1 minute can be pretty difficult, especially if you want to highlight those special moments that made you famous. Somehow, however, Audi did it with the release of a video that tells the story of over 100 years of Audi innovation in just 60 ticks of a the second hand.
According to Audi, the video tells the story of "doing things that have never been done before. And doing them until they’re perfect." It starts with the first Audi built, then continues with the Audi 100 and all the way up to the quattro all-wheel drive, ASF space frame technology, the iconic TT, motorsports and all the great things Audi has offered and continues to offer.
In developing the story behind the video, Audi was inspired by the words from the poem, "It Couldn’t be Done" written by the late poet Edgar Albert Guest: "He started to sing as he tackled the thing that couldn’t be done, and he did it.”
Check out the above video to see all Audi’s 100-year summary.
A few days ago, BMW was positively beaming in reporting about its latest achievement. No, Bimmer didn’t introduce a new car or win any races. What it did was set a new world record and a pretty impressive one at that.
Actually, the record for longest drift was set back in February by Johan Scwartz while piloting a BMW M5 and covering a ground of 47.71 miles. Well, it didn’t take long for Schwartz to break his own mark, besting it over the weekend at the BMW Performance Center near Greenville, South Carolina.
This time around, Schwartz, using the same BMW M5, managed to run a total of 322.5 laps around a circumference of 841 foot circle. All told, he was able to travel a distance of 51.278 miles - while drifting.
When news of the record-setting mark first hit our news feed, BMW kept a video of the attempt under the covers. But now, Bimmer has finally released it and you can enjoy the whole show when you click past the jump.
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Sony is celebrating Gran Turismo’s 15th anniversary with the announcement of the sixth installment of the series. Gran Turismo 6 was announced today by legendary Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi and will be released later this year. Sony’s exact wording in the press release was “Holiday, 2013,” but we are unsure if that is a typo or if it means Christmas of another holiday. We are awaiting a reply from Sony on an exact release date.
Gran Turismo 6 will bring a total of 1,200 cars; it will retain the models from Gran Turismo 5 and will add new ones, including historic, road and race cars. The game will also offer a stunning new tracks and cars, and a revised user interface.
The new GT6 will also add 33 locations - including seven all-new ones, with 71 different layouts available; 19 of the layouts are brand new. There will also be regular additions of new tracks available online.
The celebration of 15 years of Gran Turismo event at Silverstone included a demo of GT6, featuring the famous Silverstone circuit itself. Guests were able to play the game in the familiar circular Gran Turismo race pods before having a chance to take to the real track in cars provided by Audi, Ford, Jaguar, KTM, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Toyota.
Click past the jump to learn more about the new Gran Turismo 6 features.
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Now this is a ride we have been waiting to see for a very long time!
Chris Harris - our favorite presenters when it comes to reviewing performance cars - was invited by Porsche to test a pre-production version of the 918 Spyder. Of course, when you receive an invitation like this, you forget the fact that you are not testing the finished car, that there is no time to prepare and that you only get three laps in the driver’s seat; you just take the first plane and go for the quick spin.
So, what do you think, was Harris impressed by the upcoming 918 Spyder? We bet he was, after all the 918 Spyder is powered by a V-8 engine combined with a pair of electric engines, one powering the front axle and one on the rear.
This system delivers a total of 887 horsepower and 920 pound-feet of torque and sprints the car from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds and up to a top speed of 202 mph.
One of our favorite parts was watching the Porsche rep in the passenger’s seat as Harris whipped the crap out of the Automaker’s £20 million project. It looked like he was on the verge of tears at certain points.
One of the most hyped parts of Lamborghini’s 50th anniversary is the Grande Giro parade, a four-day grand tour that will feature over 350 Lamborghini supercars, all of which began their tour at Lombardia, Italy before it finished off at Bologna on the 10th of May. From there, another day of driving ensued before the parade of Lambos reached their destination at company headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese on the 11th.
Needless to say, the whole parade was chronicled by Lamborghini itself. That’s what happens when you celebrate your 50th birthday. You take the time to make it as special as it can be.
In addition to all the special-edition supercars that Lamborghini has unveiled as part of its celebration, including the absolutely bonkers Egoista, the Grande Giro parade has to be considered one of the finest ways to blow out the candles on Lamborghini’s 50th birthday.
Having all those Lamborghini owners sharing in the event only made the parade that much more special.
Click past the jump to watch the four-day Grande Giro parade through the eyes of Lamborghini
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Subaru BRZ is a nice sports car, but with quite a disappointing output for real car addicts out there. Luckily for us, where Subaru decided to stop at just 200 horsepower, Crawford Performance comes into focus and increases the output to more than double.
By adding a new turbo, replacing the standard exhaust system and doing some ECU upgrades the tuner obtained an output of 450 horsepower. There are no official detail on the peak torque, but it looks like it has been tripled, so we guess it is somewhere in the 450 pound-feet area. Now, this looks like a number more suitable for a sports car, no?
The guy over Drive took this car out for a test drive in an attempt to see how the updates improved the car’s performance and phenomenal dynamic features. According to them, this package managed to "add to the BRZ’s performance without taking away from it’s character."
Click past the jump to see Drive taking the Crawford-tuned BRZ to task and to read more on the base BRZ.
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