Odds and ends

The second X5 to be stolen from soccer star David Beckham in Madrid has apparently been recovered in Macedonia. A local TV station claims that the car was used by a pair of Bulgarians working in a human trafficking syndicate. Previously, an armoured version of the X5 valued at over $130,000 that...

Veritas was a small German company formed towards the end of WWII by three employees of BMW, who wanted a brand to fulfill their dream of building and racing sports cars. Under the Veritas label, they managed to build 75 cars before the company went bust in 1952. Their most famous car is easily the...

Volkswagen’s mighty V10 Touareg TDI managed to pull a Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet, weighing approximately 155 tonnes, across a runway at Dunsfold Aerodrome in the UK. Fitted with a special towing adaptor to connect it to the jet’s undercarriage, plus almost 4.3 tonnes of metal ballast, the...

Ferrari’s Panamerican 20,000 has come to an end with the two cars, a pair of 599 GTB Fioranos, crossing the finish line at the New York Stock Exchange. The cars started off on the 24th of August in Brazil and completed the trek in 15 stages and with 50 different international journalists...

The Vision concept car from China’s Jianghuai Auto epitomises everything that’s wrong with some of the country’s carmakers. Not only is the styling lifted from some Toyota models, the badge on the car is just the reverse of Lexus’ “L” logo. The concept comes from...

Two Dutton S2 Commander amphibious vehicles made the trek across the English Channel last week, taking a total of 7 hours and 5 minutes to travel from Dover in the UK to Calais in France. The time comes no where near the record of the Sealegs amphibious boat, which can do the journey in just 43...

There is a group of car enthusiasts out there who have no qualms about masquerading low priced standard models as the more expensive and more exclusive high-end versions. Rather then spend the extra bucks on the better equipped model, some people will simply add the extra badges designating that...

The Jiotto Caspita was a prototype supercar developed by Japanese constructor Dome for another company, Jiotto, back in 1988. Touted as the original F1 car built for the road, the original Caspita was powered by a Motor Moderni horizontally opposed twelve-cylinder. This engine developed a very...

How much do you like the car you drive? Would you buy the same car again? These were the two simple questions that were presented to new car buyers by the Consumer Reports National Research Center in a recent survey. For the third straight time in a row Toyota’s Prius came out on top, with...

London played host to the first ever race between electronic navigation systems and a humble road map that was run by the UK’s Which? magazine. Reuters reports that this time, cutting-edge technology took a backseat to the simple street directory, which was found to be a more efficient and...

China’s isolated auto industry has more than 130 national car manufacturers competing for the domestic market. A lack of designers has seen Chinese car companies stealing the design of Western manufacturers for the development of almost identical copy cars. The new Roewe brand can be...

Design sketches from John Z. De Lorean, the creator of the DMC-12 sports car made famous by the Back to the Future, are up for auction on eBay. De Lorean’s folder contains corporate records of the De Lorean Motor Company and design material for a sedan that never made it to production. The...

Any major city will have its share of traffic jams and congestion black spots and its own system of monitoring the flow of cars. Normally this is done by costly cameras and radar systems, underground sensors or helicopters flying overhead. We may be able to add a new technique to the list of...

Chrysler Group may be in the thick of it but its parent, DaimlerChrysler, is enjoying its best results in years. The company saw operating profits jump 127% to 1.2 billion for the third quarter despite Chrysler loosing $1.5 billion over the same period. Sales are up 9.3% this year and according to...

Australia’s Northern Territory is one of the few sacred places in the world where you can drive at unlimited speeds – legally. The region is smack in the middle of the sun-burnt country and is home to Kakadu National Park as well as being almost completely covered in desert. Despite the...

The winners of the 2006 SEMA Vehicle Design Awards have been announced and topping the list this year were three new vehicles and one hybrid. The award is given to the most accessory-friendly vehicles in four separate categories including Car, Truck, SUV and this year’s new entry, Hybrid...

Ever wondered what it would be like to have your car serviced by a Ferrari pit crew led by Michael Schumacher? Here’s a collection of three funny videos of the F1 hero doing some antics down at a Shell gas station in Switzerland. Click ahead to watch the other two videos.

The most stolen car in Germany is the Porsche Cayenne, followed closely by another SUV, BMW’s 3.0L X5. That was the finding from a recent report from Germany’s ADAC Automobile Association. The report also concluded that the number of car thefts in Germany for the past year has also been...

Chinese car companies are notorious for copying (or stealing) the designs of western carmakers, and these latest images from China’s BYD CAR show that they aren’t afraid to hold back either. The model above features an almost identical Mercedes CLK front-end and Renault Megane CC rear...

DaimlerChrysler Group has opened the doors to its latest and biggest brand experience centre located next to the world’s oldest purpose built racetrack in Weybridge, England. The UK centre is the sixth complex of its kind from DCX and is the largest and most unique thanks to the historic...