With Black Friday a day away and the holiday shopping season about to go full bore, Lotus let loose a bevy of images that are making us revert back to our pre-teen days.

The Lotus Hot Wheels concept that originally debuted at SEMA was one of our favorite in the group and the 1:5 scale model, created to celebrate Hot Wheels’ 40th anniversary, will likely foretell the future styling direction of our favorite British sports car manufacturer.

The team that’s currently working on Project Eagle had their hands in developing the concept, and although the model has a distinctly Elise/Exige feel to it, there are several elements, particularly the exposed center spine, Coke-bottle haunches, air intakes and rear diffuser, that give us hope for Lotus’ future. Read more »

With sales of Aston Martin’s existing sports and GT lineup continuing at a strong clip, the question of where to build the new Rapide four-door becomes more problematic.

For a company that is still relatively low-volume (7,000 cars last year) like Aston, investing in tooling for more capacity is difficult. That’s where contract builders come to the rescue.

Aston is reportedly talking to Pininfarina, Karmann, Magna-Steyr and Valmet about assembling the new car, with a decision due by the end of the year. Read more »

The Corvette is no stranger to being used for pace car duty, having led racers around tracks like Indy countless times over the years.

Come February, NASCAR will be staging its flagship Daytona 500 race for the fiftieth time, and the two-seater from Bowling Green will be making regular trips out the track to create the appearance of competition whenever an empty beer cup or stray hot dog wrapper lands on the racing surface.

In honor of the anniversary status of next years race, the Z06 pace car will blind onlookers with a special, super-blingtastic gold paint job. Read more »

There might be dozens (even hundreds?) of Mustang variations out there, but when Saleen sends you an invite to drive its new 620-horsepower S302E Extreme Mustang, you take it without thinking twice. You see, they have been working their magic on Ford’s pony car for 25 years now, so if anyone knows how to do it right, it’s Saleen.

Company founder Steve Saleen might no longer be at the helm, but that doesn’t mean the company’s passion is gone for producing high performance automobiles. In fact, there seems to be a renewed enthusiasm, or what Saleen’s General Manager Marques McCammon calls a “reawakening” of the company.

Part of this is due to the recent acquisition of ASC (American Specialty Cars), and new key personnel in place including Paul Wilbur as the new President and CEO, as well as Chris Theodore, the father of the Ford GT program, as the new Chief Technology Officer. Read more »

Despite floating a plan that would attempt to stop the inevitable customer speculation in the GT-R by voiding the car’s warranty if it were sold in the first year, Nissan has come to the conclusion that they are, frankly, powerless to stop it. The company says it gave up on the plan because it wouldn’t be fair to the guy who really had to sell his car within that time.

The other folks who Nissan won’t be able to stop from making a bundle by marking up the car are its own dealers, who, let’s face it, are frothing at the mouth to have a GT-R on display in their showrooms.

Honestly, after years of trying to push Maximas and Sentras, if you were lucky enough to get some GT-Rs to sell, wouldn’t you add a little cream? For some new shoes for the kids? Especially since there will be only 1,500 sold the first year ? Read more »

The hummer is one hot 4wd that generates alot of attention both on and off the road.

The hummer H3 has been design especially for off road driving with a 216mm of ground clearance it makes it easy to clear those offroad obstacles.

The hummer has execellent fuel consumption for a big car it is able to get 13.5L/100km from manual transmission and 14.5 L/100km from automatic transmission. Read more »

Lamborghini already had an SUV for sale more than 25 years ago and today Porsche’s Cayenne is a global success. Ferrari hesitated for a long time but has now decided to develop the world’s fastest SUV, or so says our Italian contact with insider info.

Our DTP expert than set to work with this information and produced the following renderings.

The project has been coded the “Ferrari FS 599 Fuoristrada” and its supposed world debut target date is the Geneva Auto Show 2010.

While the five-door will feature four-wheel drive its off-road capabilities are not among the top priorities of the Ferrari development team. Read more »