Restored Mercedes Benz 300SL with rare detachable hardtop and those sooo American wide whites.

I'm driving around the streets of Ramallah, Palestine, with Noor Dawood, the celebrated Palestinian street racer and the only female drifter in the Middle East. Noor is one of four members of the Speed Sisters, the first and only female racing team in the Middle East, who have brought international attention to the burgeoning Palestine street-racing scene, pissing off Muslim clerics and dismantling the caricature of Palestinian womanhood as they go. Click on image to view full story.

Old School vs. New School was a magazine ad designed to represent the automotive industry. Many companies are taking older models and giving them a modern look, for example, the 40 Class A-BMW. Without the automobile, many people today would not have as much freedom or convenience to get to where they need to be in a timely fashion.

1961 Porsche 718 RS61 Spyder

Stealth Lambo.

Advertisement for the Bantam 60.

Irv Gordon and Magnus Walker next to his 3 millon mile 1966 VOLVO P 1800.

The second day of the New York Auto Show festivities have just kicked with the annual World Car of the Year awards, and we've just learned that the top honors for 2013 go to the seventh-generation Volkswagen Golf. The win marks the second in a row for Volkswagen, which also collected the hardware in 2012 for its Up! supermini.

The World Car awards are handed out by a panelist of 66 auto journalists from around the world, including Autoblog European Editor, Matt Davis. Runners-up for the big award included the Audi A3, Land Rover Range Rover, Mazda6, Mazda CX-5, Mercedes-Benz A-Class, Peugeot 208, Porsche Boxster/Cayman, Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ/Toyota GT86 and Volvo V40.

Also announced this morning is the winner of the 2013 World Performance Car award. In this category, the Porsche Boxster and Cayman has been picked by the jury over a number of other contenders, including the Aston Martin Vanquish, Audi RS5, BMW M6, BMW M135i, Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster, Renault Clio Sport and the Toyobaru triplets.

Moving to more eco-friendly matters, the World Green Car award has been handed to the – surprise, surprise – Tesla Model S. The all-electric sedan topped the Renault Zoe, Smart ForTwo Electric Drive, Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid and Volvo V60 Plug-In Hybrid Diesel.

Lastly, the annual World Car Design laurels have been awarded to the impossibly pretty Jaguar F-Type, besting other attractive finalists including the Aston Martin Vanquish, Renault Clio, Land Rover Range Rover, Mazda6 and Volkswagen Golf.

Have a look at all the World Car winners in our galleries below.

With over four hundred historic sports and racing cars taking over the grounds of Victoria’s iconic Phillip Island circuit for a massive weekend of historic motorsport, the Phillip Island Classic is one of the world’s great historic motorsport events.


This year’s event more than lived up to expectations, and you can get a front row seat with these photos from Derek Hanbidge.

Michelin X-Stop - 135R400. Just the sneakers needed for my Austin Healey. $197 from Cokertire.com

Michelin X-Stop - 135R400. Just the sneakers needed for my Austin Healey. $197 from Cokertire.com

The perfect couple with a perfect ride!

Audi used the Geneva Motor Show to pull the wraps off the latest iteration of its RS5 touring car, which will compete in Europe’s 2013 DTM championship. Audi says that it optimized 4000 different components for the updated model.
Despite the same name, the racing car has little in common with the standard Audi RS5 coupe (pictured below) that is available in showrooms. DTM rules require 4.0-liter V-8 engines which generally produce around 500 hp, a Hewland sequential transmission, carbon-fiber brakes, and 18-inch wheels with Hankook Ventus tires. The race car gets a bespoke body kit with a tall rear wing, low front lip and aerodynamic flics, and safety gear like a roll cage and fire extinguisher.
This year, Audi will field eight RS5 DTM cars by way of three different teams — Abt Sportsline, Phoenix, and Rosberg. New to the roster is 30-year-old British driver Jamie Green, who will be the teammate of Swede Mattias Ekström for Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline. The pair has a combined25 race wins and two championship titles in the DTM series.
The 2013 DTM season kicks off May 5 at Germany’s Hockenheimring. There are ten races in the schedule, and all but four (Austria, Britain, Russia, the Netherlands) are in Germany.
Source: Audi


Read more: http://rumors.automobilemag.com/geneva-2013-audi-reveals-rs5-racer-for-2013-dtm-series-209315.html#ixzz2MuNA0wgQ

In 1992, when David Gooding worked in the car department at Christie’s, he received a telephone call from a lawyer charged with settling the estate of an elderly woman who had died alone in Vevey, Switzerland. For a time this woman summered at a hotel in Greenwich, Conn., and among her possessions there was a dusty old Mercedes that had been languishing in a warehouse, surrounded by old carnival equipment. “It’s black,” Gooding recalled the lawyer saying. “It’s a convertible, and it’s old.”

“How old?” Gooding asked.

“I don’t know. But it has pipes coming out of the side.”

This was no ordinary Mercedes. It turned out to be an exceedingly rare 1936 540K Special Roadster. Fewer than 10 such cars are said to survive in comparable condition, and Gooding, who is now the president of his own auction house, Gooding and Company, believes the completely restored roadster might set the record for the most expensive car ever sold at auction when his firm offloads it in August during the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

The car, post-restoration.
“We sold a Ferrari Testa Rossa last year for $16 million,” Gooding said, noting the last time he set a record. “If this car hits that number, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

Back in the early 1990s, Gooding failed to get the Mercedes consigned to Christie’s, and eventually a private buyer swooped in. But now that same buyer is keen on selling, which means Gooding finally has his chance to bring the roadster to the open market. “I’ve been chasing this car for a long time,” he said.

Much of the car’s value is derived from its rarity and its condition — “every panel on this car is original,” Gooding said — yet it also possesses a ludicrously colorful provenance. It was purchased 76 years ago by the family of a Prussian baroness who is straight out of a Alan Furst novel: she was elegant, coquettish, depressive, a dead ringer for Marlene Dietrich who fancied jewels and lived in the best hotels in Paris and Cannes. This was the Baroness Gisela Josephine von Krieger, born into old Prussian aristocracy in 1913. She was a society fixture in London, even attending the coronation of King George VI. She resided in France until 1938 and, after being summoned back to Nazi Germany, fled to Monaco, then Switzerland. The Mercedes, which was being repaired when war broke out, was shipped to her after she negotiated a Swiss visa by feigning an illness. (All this history was entertainingly sussed out by George Maley for a 2005 story published in a magazine called The Classic Car.)

In the 1950s, von Krieger brought the roadster to New York, where the baroness lived in hotels like the Waldorf-Astoria and the St. Regis. She left the car in the United States when she returned to Switzerland, in 1959, and in the subsequent decades grew increasingly reclusive. In 1989, when she died of a heart attack, she was living in Havishamian squalor, with $320,000 worth of jewels by Cartier and others — later auctioned off by Sotheby’s — scattered around her filthy apartment. “She really died very much alone. It was quite a tragic story,” Gooding said. “When they discovered her body, she had been dead for quite some time.” Her Mercedes Roadster, secreted away for four decades in Connecticut, proved to be the best custodian of von Krieger’s glamorous legacy. When the car was found, the glove box contained a pair of the baroness’s white silk gloves. In the ashtray were ancient cigarette butts, stained with lipstick.

When bad things happen to good cars.

Sick stop motion shot of a Subaru sailing through the air.

Check out the world's quickest EV. Some specs: Power output (wheels): 550 WHP
Power output (motor): 600 HP
Torque: 900 Nm
Weight: 1150 kg
Stored energy: 24 kWh

Range: 180 km
0-100km/h: 3.3 sec.
¼ Mile time: 11,3 sec.
Max. speed: 280 km/h

Gorgeous Delage dashboard.

Formula Drift 2012 season is about to commence. A public tech day was held in Irvine California at Source Interlink Media (Import Tuner, Super Street, and Modified Magazines). This ended up being a bit of a meet as well. Here is a quick highlight of some of the cars that came for inspection.
Main: Hellaflush.com/society/formula-drift-2012-tech-day/
Filmed & Edited By Shavi W.
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From Jamie Kitman... on its way from the UK, one 1982 Austin MiniMetro. BL's intended replacement for the classic Mini, it is historic in the sense that it soldiered on as BL's volume vehicle in various forms and selling well in UK long enough to allow the company (known at the end simply as Rover) to be bought by BMW, who'd promptly launch the new, improved Mini. The Metro also permitted the old Mini to creak along in its original form for an additional two decades. The beige blob pictured here, a very early and original example revivified during a three-year stay with Richard Bremner of The Autocar, has no rust and has only completed 27,000 miles. Very much representative of the state of British automobile manufacture in 1982, it is thus very likely due for a complete rebuild, though Bremner assures us this is not so.

James Bond Aston as seen at the LA Auto Show. From Aston historian Nick Candee... Four and nominally five were constructed: two were used in GOLDFINGER; two more replicas were produced for movie promotion in Europe and in North America. The nominal 5th is the replica done by Aston Works for the recently released SKYFALL. Lots of reference material from Aston Martin Owners Club - NA East and from Aston Martin Heritage Trust !!

Prius buyer review.

Jenifer Lopes and Audi.

1959-1965 VW paint chips.

Porsche 356 in one of the nicer colors.