bwojdyla

Detroit Auto Show: New Cadillac CTS-V Coming To Detroit, Officially

We've been salivating over the thought of the upcoming 2009 Cadillac CTS-V for a good long while now, and the press release we just posted on the Provoq concept unveiling is also confirming the Caddy that zooms will be taking the stage for all to see at Detroit. We almost can't wait to see the ultimate expression of art and science (and Corvette power train) in the flesh, but we're just going to have to wait. We're guessing the Cadillac Provoq concept being released at CES will be enough to

Who Will Service Your Sinclair C5?

How embarrassing. Sinclair's next big thing in the 80's, the Sinclair C5, can be serviced alongside your vacuum cleaner (wonder if this service promise holds up for the jet powered version). Something tells us that nobody with any kind of marketing skills was involved in this ad. 'Hey, let's associate our funny shaped, dangerously slow electric vehicles with an appliance that sucks! Capital idea chaps, well done.' Maybe the ads weren't as misguided as we imagine, considering the C5 sold as man

Google Street View Captures Car Accident

Finally, Google goes and does something worth our while. In what seems to be a completely inexplicable car accident, a Minneapolis woman decided to drive her Mercedes Benz E-Class into a tree - and the Google Street View camera car was there to immortalize it. Unfortunately the moment of impact wasn't captured by the pseudo-surveillance set-up so we're left with a head scratcher. It appears to be a one car accident, on a lightly congested street, in broad daylight - with a big tree. We'll refr

Rustam Mamedov Is Angry With Us

Back in 2007, we posted what we thought to be a request to order an armored Maybach 62 for the President of Azerbaijan. Turns out our cotomer sevis really is that bad. Mr Mamedov sent us what we assume to be an angry letter letting us know that we are silly for transferring such information to the internet, and that something is repeatedly strange. He made sure to let us know that the car was for him and we shouldn't rely on the notoriously incorrect Google for our sleuthing. On behalf of our

2008 Fiat 500

A tour of Germany wouldn't be complete without test-driving some of Europe's forbidden fruits, now would it? In our case we just couldn't pass on the opportunity to sample Fiat's new retro mobile, the reborn Cinquecento. The Bamberg Fiat dealer was more than willing to let us grab the keys for a trip around the block given that we'd provide a little free publicity. So if you're ever in Germany and hankering for a Fiat, maybe think of Matthias Steinfurth at AutoHaus Wittig GmbH & Co. Let it nev

Beautiful Hand-Built Air-Cooled V12 Makes 68 HP Per Liter

68 horsepower per liter! Air-cooled? You betcha. This hand-built V12 engine, the fruit of hobbyist Ralf Drendel's labor, clocks in at a mere 87 cc's of displacement and cranks out a whopping mere 6 horsepower. That's three times the pistons of the worlds smallest 4 cylinder and probably three times the headaches. The little terror was designed with RC planes in mind, but it's so thirsty its creator is having second thoughts. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find pictures of the beast,

Legendary Project Car: 1937 BMW 328

Our German buddy, The Bouncer, was a garage rat growing up. We could clog the tubes with his stories of Deutschland hoonage in hypermodified BMWs and mythical Porsches. As a result of this, we've got the inside track on some of Bavaria's most respected garages and their automeisters. This particular fellow is Dieter W. His full name and location will remain anonymous for reasons that will become evident shortly. Dieter is a BMW guy. His garage services only the steel of the Bayerische Motoren

VW Golf Country Makes Tiguan Look Like Sissymobile

Oh sweet Christkindle, we've found VW's best car ever and it's called the VW Golf Country. Just as we were being screwed at the gas pump filling up, the traffic cleared and this came into view across the street. You all should have been there to see the frantic scramble for the camera as we raced against the owners' intent to scramble with our new found love. Even though these picture make us feel like half private eye, half stalker, we can't help it; seeing this super rare, four wheel drive,

Here With Fanfare, Your Final Tribute To Evel Knievel

Though the kitchy and hilarious "Jump of Legends" didn't make your cut in the vote for Jalopnik's final Evel Knievel tribute, the handsome and impressively constructed "Creation of Evel" did, with a commanding 37.4% of the vote. This tasteful work was contributed by reader Thomas Reynolds, who hails from the beating heart of hoon central, Australia. We asked Thomas to say a few words about his inspiration, process, and what Evel meant to him. His take on Evel, and stories of years gone by afte

BMW 320D Touring Turns Fox Into Hamburger (Not Safe For Weak Stomach)

Imagine cruising in your brand new, 2007 BMW 320D Touring at 230 kph (~143 mph) along the pristine asphalt of the Autobahn, listening to the finest in German techno. All of a sudden from the roadside, a flash of fur streaks across the road and you feel a mild thump, accompanied by a spray of rouge across the bottom of the passenger side windscreen. All of the warning lights explode across your instrument panel. If you are the fellow who drives this particular BMW, you don't have to imagine any

Ferrari SUV On The Far Horizon?

Don't go getting you're panties in a bunch just yet, but rumors have been flying around the net lately about a new SUV concept being worked up to join the rest of the Italians in the Ferrari stable. The name given to this blasphemy against the name of Ferrari at this point is FS 599 Fuoristrada. Yes, the 599 denotes the engine stolen from the 599 GTB Fiorano already in the lineup. Things are so sketchy at this point that all the artists' renderings floating about that are complete flights of fan

Dodge Challenger SRT8 Buyers Lining Up, Paying $20K Over Sticker

Buyers are getting desperate to ensure one of the five thousand 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8's initially rumored to be available for purchase will end up nestled snugly in their garage. We've already told you about the pricing details on the SRT8 Challenger, and the impressive presale orders of Dodge's new muscle car, but now CNN is reporting buyers are bidding up to twenty grand on top of sticker for one of the reborn legends. The Mopar madness is reaching a fevered pitch folks.

Jesus Car Confuses, Intrigues

We can almost hear the howls from Pastafarians already about religious slant on this site, or something about the truth of his noodly appendages (RAmen), but to be honest, we don't think the string of holy postings lately is anything but coincidence. At first glance, this Saturn wagon looks like the ultimate Christophile's art ride, but on closer inspection, it's just confusing. It's almost like the creator stuck everything they could find onto the car, regardless of message. The result is a c

Border Patrol Exhibits Poor Understanding Of Border And Patrol

What you see above is an International MXT. It is a vehicle that the United States Border Patrol, no doubt through grants from the Department of Homeland Security, has deemed a reasonable vehicle to patrol the highest traffic border crossing between the United States and Canada, the Detroit-Windsor crossing. There are, shall we say, a couple of things wrong here. First, this particular unit was caught outside of Mexican Fiesta in Dearborn during the lunch hour feeding frenzy. To help visualize t

Project 1964 Lincoln Continental: Trunk Lid Ballet

This is just going to be a set of pictures with the trunk lid on. There are no pictures of the trunk-lid-putting-on process. There are no pictures of the process because it involved a Friday night, a case of Bud, me stubbing my toe on the trunk lid as it leaned against the wall, and me deciding to man up and put it on myself. The previous sissy version of the plan had been to ask a buddy for help, perhaps use rope or pulleys or something to ease it into place. With the insult of the stubbed to

Project 1964 Lincoln Continental: A Tale Of Two Bondos

Using bondo is something nobody likes to have to do. The stuff is an admittance in your failure of metalsmithing mastery. Still, Bondo is no wussy taskmaster on it's own. It requires a steady hand and a sense of surface space, gradient approximation, and speed - or more appropriately, the sense of balance between speed and perfection. Maybe most critical is the ability to gauge available possibilities with the stuff, and what requires more drastic measures. The roof came to me dented, the result

Ford S-Max Spotted On The Mean Steets Of Detroit

After being berated for the crappy quality of my pictures here, and here, and many other times, I've decided to upgrade to a Lumix FZ18 from the three year old Exilim that had horrible fading, limited dynamic range, and no optical zoom. The ironic part is that though this new piece of kit takes gorgeous pictures, the first you'll be seeing from it are full 18x zoom at speed looking through a mirror. So, in a word, crap. Nonetheless, look what we found running up and down Detroit's Woodward cor

Project 1964 Lincoln Continental: Fuel Line Funhouse

Nothing says I love you like a puddle of gasoline on the floor in the morning. A couple of days after fiddling with the inner fender business mentioned earlier, I walked into the garage to the overwhelming smell of dino juice emanating from a spot directly under the inner fender. That'll show me. Taking the panel back off as well as a secondary inner panel, revealed a sweaty, smelly, series of tubes rusting away. Among them were the fuel delivery line, fuel return line, and brake line. The bra

Project 1964 Lincoln Continental : The Saga Begins

It's been almost a month since the announcement of the '64 Lincoln Continental Personal Project Car. The madness of preparing for, traveling to, partaking of, and returning from the Tokyo Motor Show consumed all of our blogging powers and there have been exactly zero progress-update posts. This is not to say there has been no progress. Indeed, to the contrary, big, rusty things are happening.

Tokyo Motor Show: Sleek Suzuki Biplane Revealed

Wow. Just wow. Even if the execution of biplane inspiration is questionable, this thing is flipping gorgeous. I'm quite certain a twenty minute ride would have you begging for the sweet release of death, but you would look really cool during those twenty minutes. Just think of all the broken necks you'd cause in the unsuspecting streets. It's pretty, in ways that we couldn't have comprehended in the sneak pr

Honda CB1100F Concept - Bringing Sexy Back

We'd like to welcome the return of the big standards. It seems that the drought of standard bikes in favor of rockets is finally ending. Honda dipped its toe in with GB550 a decade ago, then Triumph, er... triumphantly returned to the market with the remade Bonnies; now that Ducati is donning the mantel all hell is about to break loose. Now it's Honda's turn to make some waves with the CB1100F Concept, which will seeing at its world premier here at the 2007 Tokyo Auto Show. You can smell the C

Personal Project Car: 1964 Lincoln Continental

When Sir Murilee penned the PCH, Personal Dilemma Edition: 1964 Lincoln Continental post, I was certain that not only would the readership clamor to vote in the poll, but also attempt to deduce the J-lop mad enough to make such a poor decision. Surprisingly, Mad Science was the only commenter to venture at a guess of either Bumbeck or the venerable Murilee. Such is not the case. So it is with unsound mind and withering pocketbook that I announce that the unlucky owner of this most badass of luxo

#18 Porsche 911 GT2 is down, pit crew thinks CV is dead, but it's an awefully smokey CV. towed into pit without incident. Driver quote of the the day "That corner still has a lot of rubber and oil in it, it's kind of like playing chess going through there. I don't know how to play chess, so I don't know what that means." 20 minutes to go.

First report in - #22 Esperante loses brakes but all is well, some rubbing between an LMP and a Porsche and one showing of the pace car. Early leaders: LMP1- MkNish (Audi), LMP2 - Briscoe (Porsche), GT1 - Magnussen (Corvette), GT2 - Salo (Ferrari)

Billetproof 2007: Hot Rod Wrap Up

There were so many cool rods at this event that it's hard to highlight them all. Can you really highlight a Caddy with an air suspension that's "layin' frame" over a nutjob that put flappers on all eight hand made exhaust pipes? Or how about epic pinstriping over oh so smokin' hot rockabilly chicks? You don't. If you're lazy (like me), you post all the great shots of cool stuff in one gallery for the people of the year (you) to ogle for a while. At the end of the day, even though I ran from t

Jalopnik Drives The Can-Am Spyder!

When it comes to segment blurring, the team at BRP's Can-Am have aimed a shot across the bow of both ultralight sports car makers and motorcycle manufacturers with their new Spyder. We've been following the release of this snowmobile with wheels since spy shots first surfaced back in December. And now we've just made sweet, sweet test-driving love to it. Given this is such an oddball vehicle, it makes a lot of sense to get into the hands of reviewers and early adopters to build some buzz bef

Greatest Barn Find Evar! 1938 Bugatti Type 57C Atalante Coupe

Okay, not gonna lie, we're unabashed vintage Bugatti fans here at the Jalop. Given the era of their birth, they are invariably the fastest, most beautiful, most perfectly crafted and most utterly desirable cars in the collector's stratosphere. That said, at no time in history was an automaker so akin to an übermensch as was Bugatti during the 1930's. The storied Type 57 chassis was the fruit of experimentation by Jean Bugatti, the ill fated prodigal son. From this platform came some of the m