I have been a long time fan of BMW cars for their focus on the driving experience and a long time fan of BWM bikes for their off-road prowess. Ever since BMW launched the X5 I couldn’t help but this this is another well appointed suburban SUV whose close encounter to “off-roading” would be speeding orange slices to the weekend soccer game.

This sweet clip from the british show Fifth Gear shows Tiff Needle trying to keep up with a 6 time Paris to Dakar Motorbike rider.

It sure is nice seeing those high dollar SUVs having the screws put to it and Tiff is just the man to do it.

Here is the Tesla Roadster, lots of reasons to praise this car and several reasons to criticize it but make no mistake, this is the future knocking at our door.First the good

2700 lbs

250 hp at 13,000 RPM

0-60 in 3.9 sec.

All Electric 

Equivalent if 135 miles per gallon in power consumption

There are some draw backs as well.

Only 220 miles per charge (good but not GREAT)

3.5 hours to full charge

125 MPH top speed

Questions about what to do with the batteries after 100,000 miles

The green among us will champion this car for it’s absolute lack of emissions, and the freedom from foreign oil. The practical will lament the fact that this car will only go 220 miles on a full charge and god forbid you run out of juice far from home because it will take 3.5 hours to get back to fully charged. The auto purists will complain that performance is good but not great, especially not for the $100,000 price tag.The truth is all these point are correct but they over look the fact that the coming of this car marks the beginning of a new era. Sure the Prius was a huge step in making Hybrids “cool” with celebrities buying them up to show there environmental friendliness, but the Tesla Roadster is a Leap into the future. It is a shift in the way we look at the problems that the Auto industry will face in the coming years with oil prices continuing to rise, and global warming taking a larger place in the American consciousness. The shift is that auto makers can start to look at alternative technologies to make fast, fun cars! Maybe the future will be Sugar Cane or Switchgrass E85, maybe it will be clean diesel hybrids, maybe electric, or maybe the long heralded coming of Hydrogen power, but the shift is to takes these technologies and put them into cars people will want to drive.Being environmentally responsible and fiscally frugal should not have to mean i have to drive a econobox car that makes a honda civic feel like a Ferrari 430. Right now as you read this top engineers at firms like BMW, Porsche, Ferrari and more are working to combine the driving experience they are legendary for with next generation drivetrains. They are being pushed to bring these technologies to market faster by small companies like Tesla.The Future is coming

Sure the music in this clip is awful and the footage is a little rough, but oh the cars. If you like Porsches from amazing rally style 911s to a 910 Lemans proto type, you will be smiling watching hotness. Turn your volume down, and sit back and enjoy the Rally Clasico Isla Mallorca!

Thanks to my friend Adam Swift for the heads up!

Well the reports are flooding in with first drives of the Nissan Skyline GT-R and from what they say, it is every bit as good as Nissan promised. 473 HP twin turbo V6, all wheels drive, Dual Clutch Gear box, and performance numbers that are making the 911s, corvettes, and M3s blush. The good folks at Edmunds Inside Line say the car not only spanks a 911 but how beating up on a 911 turbo??? While it has my Schnitzel eating German brethren up in arms, huffing that it is impossible to replicate the feel of a Porsche, the feedback that comes only from decades of evolution.

What I know is this, Nissan has raised the bar, and made the Auto World re-examine the type of performance that can be achieved in a sub six figure sports car. I can bet somewhere in Germany one if not a few of our favorite auto makers are getting buyers in line to bring a GT-R home to a team of frustrated engineers for immediate dissection. Congrats Nissan you have done a favor for those lucky enough to own a new Skyline as well as any of us who hope to buy a sports car in the next decade.

Everybody loves a hybrid and GM can’t stop making promises about the future of hydrogen, but how about we proud Americans look across the pond at what has been happening in europe for nearly a decade. As fuel prices have long been over $6 A GALLON in Europe the citizens have long endorsed that beautiful high torque, fuel efficient, sparkless wonder known as the diesel combustion engine. Here in the US we think of diesels as dirty polluting big rigs and farm trucks but those days are about to change. With new clean diesel fuel standards coming in 2008 all 50 states we will start to see some of the European diesels come to the US. With fuel prices continuing to rise nearly all the Japanese auto manufacturers are reading new diesels for export. Clean, quiet, powerful diesels are already on their way from VW, Audi, Mercedes, and BMW all getting 20-30% better fuel economy than their gas counterparts.

The Video above is a great digital rendering by World Car Fans is a great way to see how a diesel works from the inside out. Educate yourself now, ’cause you might be driving a diesel sooner than you think.

I am layed out sick on the couch and day dreaming of Dirt bike wheelies, street bike track days and el camino burnouts. This is about the smokiest burnouts you will find, especially out of an 80’s box el camino. Rock on! I am going to throw up…

This is one of the best commercials you will ever see for gasoline. It also covers 60 years of Ferrari history which could inspire even the most most green of my tree hugger friends to agree that gasoline may have been created for the sole purpose of powering race cars. Is it wrong that the sounds of a wailing V12 makes me think the war for oil in Iraq is not as evil as i once imagined. God bless Enzo Ferrari for understanding how to create lust from metal and gasoline!!!!!!!

This car jump pretty much boggles the mind, he pretty much makes it, although that has to be about the worst thing you could do to a front suspension.

1. watch the video
2. be amazed
3. site back and think about whether you would have the balls to do a jump like that
4. think about what the best jumping car might be

Porsche just took off it’s precise white German engineering gloves and slapped the rest of the world across the face with it. Over the weekend they put the new 997 GT2 on the famous “Green Hell” known as the Nurburgring in Germany. It is a 14 mile test track used by manufacturers the world over, and this past weekend the New GT2 ran the circuit in 7:32, which is about 10 seconds faster than a Ferrari 599 GTB. This time is on par with a Mercedes ClS DTM car. Pretty Insane even if insane carries an heavy price tag.