Car Throttle

Custom, custom, custom. Let me say that again, custom. I'm not just ripping off a catchy EA tagline when I say "It's in the name" because it really is - the smart BRABUS Tailor-Made is tailored to you and it's likely you won't find another one on the road quite like it. So when this fortwo Cabriolet rocked up on my doorstep, I ignored the annoying lack of capitalisation on smart and fortwo and took it for a test drive. The results? Well you can see the funky video on YouTube and in the embed above: 2011 smart BRABUS Tailor-Made ForTwo Review (phew that's a mouthful!) Not familiar with the badge? The chaps behind smart were the same ones behind the swatch customisable watches in the 20th C. After partnering up with the big dawg Mercedes Benz, the name swatch Mercedes Art became compressed into smart. Over the years, the brand has become best known for its fortwo range which as the name suggests, allows room for 2 people side by side. It started off as more of a laughing stock and transformed into the ultimate city car - it's short, stumpiness aiding in the menace that is inner-city car parking. Adnan's Fact Of The Day: If you’re wondering why

The M Performance line is intended to fit in between regular production BMW's, and the full-fat M models (M3, M5, 1M Coupe, etc).  Sort of like S-Line Audis, R-Design Volvos, and AMG Package Benzes, but with a catch: all four M Performance models that are coming to the Geneva Show in March are powered by diesels. Go cry in your beer if you want, but I'm not joking about the "Monster diesel" part.  Case in point: BMW's 4.4L twin-turbo V8 as seen in the 550i, 650, 750i, etc makes a healthy 400 horsepower and 440lb-ft of torque.  This new 3.0L I6 diesel going into these models makes 381bhp and 546lb-ft of torque.  Yes, five hundred forty six, or 740nM if you prefer that scale.  That's enough torque to alter the earth's axis, according to my highly scientific calculations.  The motor uses piezoelectric direct injection and common-rail fuel delivery at an operating pressure of 2,200 bar (32,340psi), and the engine revs out to a surprisingly high 5,400rpm.  It also has stop/start tech to save fuel. The big difference with the regular 3.0L diesels is the presence of an extra turbo - that's right, the 50d engine is a triple-turbo setup.  Two small ones, one big one, all providing boost by

Welcome back to News Bites, Car Throttle's one-stop-shop for the this-and-that of all that's auto news.  What's on the plate for today?  Track times, the President's old whip, Volvos, wrecking Datsuns, and some other fun stuff. Car and Driver is one of the few automotive print publications people still like, because they still produce some unique content.  Best example: the annual Lightning Lap challenge.  They take road-going cars, divided up into classes by price, for hot laps around Virginia International Raceway - street tires, pump gas, license plates and full interiors, to see what's fastest.  This year they didn't run any LL5 cars ($250,000+) or LLU (non-street-legal, like the Ariel Atom and KTM X-Box), but they did add a new class: LLT, for trucks.  There's a lot of data, and some of it is interesting: like the new Jetta GLI is 8 seconds(!) slower around VIR than the GTI, and the BMW X5M is faster than the B7 RS4, and almost as fast as a Lancer Evo.  The full article is available here, and you can watch the video here.  Spoiler alert: the ZR1 is the fastest. Chinese owned Volvo is looking to expand the lineup of the S60 mid-sizer in the US, with a T5 AWD model. 

42 degrees, overcast, with a chance of rain and some mud: not ideal conditions for a stance society meet, ever, really.  Still, the turnout for Eurowise's meet on this frigid January day was great.  Sponsors included Wrong Fitment Crew, Stance Society, ISO, Hoodstatus, and others.  There was everything from slammed hoopty Hondas to a pair of nearly matching late-model NSX's to drool over.  Check out some of the great stuff from the show, with a more complete gallery below. A Subaru STI tucking tires is odd, considering the rally-bred background, but that doesn't mean it can't look good.  White makes the gnarly Scooby seem almost classy; the huge scoop and wing negate most of that seriousness.  Dig the hood pins. Almost 20 years on, Supras still look menacing and purposeful - especially with good wheels and the basket handle.  Green is a pretty quiet color for a JZA80. This Toyota Corona wagon (T130, '78-'83) had a 1JZ-GTE under the hood.  Thus the huge front mounted intercooler.  So gangster, extra points for the Japanese wing mirrors. When was the last time you saw a Gen 3 Mitsubishi Colt Turbo running?  Or in really good shape?  The paint on this one was still pretty shiny, too.  Wheels don't get much more

Right off the bat with that title, I'm lying.  The Chrysler 300 is the product of a company that's more than half-owned by an Italian company.  The point of final assembly is Brampton Ontario, Canada.  The engine's from Mexico, and the transmission is from ZF in Germany.  The rear suspension is based on an old E-Class Mercedes design, and actually only 59% of the Chrysler 300 is made of "domestic" parts: and for some reason Chrysler counts Canada as being domestic.  Want an American car?  Buy a Honda Accord. Still, this is an old and tired argument.  It's easy to poke fun at diehard domestic fans who trash talk the (built in Texas) Toyota Tundra for being Japanese (despite being designed and engineered largely in America, by Americans) in favor of the Dodge Ram (built in Mexico) or the Chevy Silverado (some built in Canada.)  It's a truly global market we live in, the world's getting smaller every day, and these days it's wise to judge a car on it's merits rather than it's origins. So, what are the Chrysler 300's merits?  Well, I'll be honest: they used to be mostly surface-level.  That is, it's a damn good looking car.  Even the original 300, which debuted in 2004, still pulls

The hike in price for tuition fees will mean getting into Uni next year will be tough. Renault understands the struggle and to help out they're giving one lucky student the chance to win one year's worth of tuition fees. The competition involves putting the artistic touch to Renault's forthcoming car, the Twizy, which is an all electric two-seater. All you have to do is visit www.designatwizy.co.uk, download the template to suit the software you have installed and let all your design inspiration invade it. You can enter as many designs as you like as long as they're uploaded before February 20th 2012. All entrants must be aged 17 or older and either registered or officially accepted at a further education establishment such as a college or university. First prize is, of course, all your tuition fees paid for you (up to £9,000 in most cases) with the runner up getting a weekend for two in Paris and third place getting £250 to spend in French Connection. Further T&Cs and more information are at Design A Twizy. Best of luck!

There's a long precedent of rappers referencing cars in their songs.  It's part of the baller lifestyle: huge house, lots of skeezy women, and a gold-plated Range Rover with 38" gold-plated wheels.  Since rap these days is all about conspicuous consumption, it's part and parcel. But as much as we like seeing Jay-Z and Kanye cut the doors off a Maybach, weld sheet metal fenders on it, and drift it around an industrial parking lot, there's something amusing about local rappers laying down a track about... their Volvo.  Awww, hell yeah son!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKOVF1qwPzI

The above video is by Seattle-area rapper Grynch, and I actually kinda like the song.  I mean, not just because I'm partial to ancient Volvo station wagons - it's a pretty good song.  I like the shot of the Bentley Continental GT pulling away and the camera panning back to the Volvo. See if "Tank on empty, whippin' my mama's Volvo" doesn't get stuck in your head.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYaIFvRqv2k

This one's definitely not safe for work; you've been warned.  How you can make a gangster-rap video about a W201 190-class Benz is beyond me - these guys have a great sense of humor.  No points for technical accuracy, though:  in the first verse

Porsche recently launched the "all-new" 2012 Porsche 911 and more recently the "all-new" 2012 Porsche Boxster. But it seems both of these cars look totally like the previous models they replaced, and I'm sure that if you told a 15-year-old nonchalent teen or a pretty 25-year-old girl from Essex that these are brand new models, they'd probably say you're telling porkies. The reason is that Porsche undeniably look similar to one another. You can clearly see the DNA of the first Porsche, the 356 in the current 911, Cayenne, Boxster, Cayman and the Panamera. You also saw the same basic styling in discontinued models like the 968 and the 928 too. The original Porsche 356 gave birth to all of them from its tiny, tiny tailpipes and there's a running joke amongst motor hacks that Porsche employ a bunch of lazy designers that use the same template for all Porsches they churn out of the factor. Note that Porsches have the same frog-like rounded front and rounded rear. You could clearly tell that the Cayenne is an SUV or that the Panamera is a 4 door sedan, but because they have the same basic design cues, any car clueless person would be able to recognise that the car is

To give the team its full title, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes will launch their new race car for 2012 in February. The car is known as the MP4-27 (yes, McLaren have a knack for numerically-boring names) and the world will get its first glimpse of it on the first day of the month when it is revealed at the Team’s HQ in Woking, and just 6 days later it will begin its first 4 day test at a race track in Jerez. Naturally that first test will be very telling. Will this year’s car be faster than the new Red Bull? There have been many changes to the rules and regulations for the 2012 season and every team hopes to capitalise on the changes. Blown diffusers were the controversial feature of 2011 but they will be no more and as a result there will be less downforce. There have also been changes to the regulations concerning the nose of the cars. However the McLaren designers might have interpreted the new rule changes, one thing of which you can be certain is that the MP4-27 will look great. Although there should be no correlation between how a car looks and how it performs on the track, there does seem to be, and

Whilst your humble Car Throttle author is keen to show-off his motoring madness via a late entry into the Mongol Rally this year, chances are it won't have anything on the mighty Dakar. In fact, multiply the "sissy" journey of London to Asia in a small banger by the rough factor of one hundred, and you still won't be close to imagining the sheer terror, excitement and energy that the Dakar Rally shoves in your face with abundance.

The Dakar Rally 2012 was a tad misleading by name this year, and has been since 2008. Participants do not race from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal due to continued high security threats in Mauritania. Instead, they are treated to some of the roughest terrain known to man by motoring from Argentina across the Andes to Chile and Peru with the finish line set in Lima. A brief primer for Dakar newbies: racers compete in four vehicle classes - motorbike, quadbike, car and truck - and race a grand total of 9,000km separated into daily stages of 800-900km per day. It's a gruelling 15 day stint of pedal-to-the-floor driving and drivers must keep their wits about them if they're to succeed in a brutal punch-up against unforgiving terrain. The euphoric