Car Throttle

Form67.net makes some of the coolest videos on YouTube.  They mix art and automobiles better than most of the pretentious fish-eye-lens-and-Supra crowd out there.  Their videos are always worth a few minutes of your time. This new one, "Mechanical Synfonica" is pretty awesome as well.  It combines beautiful women, an Audi RS5 and an E92 M3 battling on a mountain road, and a Symphony.  If nothing else, it'll make you smile for five minutes (and four seconds.)  Check it out:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmYU0mpCQgU

Not a huge fan of a Rieger body kit on an M3, but the scene where the M3 and the RS5 both pull out of the gravel with wheels spinning more than makes up for it in my eyes.  And the contrast of

BMW isn't quite as special-edition happy with the M3 as Porsche is with their cars, but they're getting closer.  They introduced another limited-edition version of the M3 today, limited to 40 units total in the US called the Coupe Competition Edition. Built to celebrate the M Division's upcoming 40th birthday (40 years already?  Really?), the Competition Coupe is a number of visual changes along with a bit of extra hardware.  The paint is a special "Frozen Silver Metallic," similar to the M3 Frozen Gray special edition from last year, but a little lighter.  This semi-matte-finish color looks simply amazing in pictures; hopefully it won't be as hard to maintain as the Frozen Gray is.  Black hood ducts, and dark chrome kidney grills, side grills and exhaust

Bimmerfest is, quite literally, one of the largest BMW shows outside of Germany.  It's a yearly event held on the West coast, but this year the event added an East coast show for those of us that don't want to drive all the way to California.  Nice of them. The event was held in Ripken Stadium, in Aberdeen Md.  That's about 340 miles from Raleigh taking the most direct route, but the most direct route (I-85 to I-95) is about as much fun as popping Valium and watching C-SPAN, so we planned a longer, more scenic route.  This road trip and show was the first official event for a car club I've been helping a friend coordinate - CRAVE (Carolina Regional Alliance of Vehicle

Times are tough.  Credit used to flow like water, getting a job after securing a bachelor's degree in English was a sure thing, and the world was a lot easier place to live in.  Not so any more: those who once figured "Hell, I have a job and a pulse, I can get a new car" are now realizing that no, they can't.  They don't have a credit score of 700 and a 10,000 down payment sitting around.  What's a car enthusiast to do? If you're handy with wrenches and know a fuel injector from an EGR valve, you don't have to plunk down 40 grand for a car that will both plaster a smile on your face 95% of the time and not leave you

The 1-series M Coupe is 15 pounds of awesome in a 10 pound bag. I think so, anyway.  The regular 1-series coupe is already cool; basically an E92 3-series with a few inches hacked out of the wheelbase, the same great suspension, but 400lbs or so less weight to haul around.  The styling is odd, but I'll admit it's grown on me. But the M version... is probably the best car the M division has cranked out in years. This is a testament to both the awesomeness of the 1M, and the general loss-of-plot going on at M, what with them selling us 5,000+lb X5's stuffed with AWD, twin turbos, and automatic gearboxes.  M used to stand for Motorsports, but these days it seems more like

Sometimes it's hard to mask your disappointment. It'd been two years since I'd ventured from Raleigh up to College Park, Maryland for CPT (College Park Tuning's) Spring show, and I was damn excited.  The event in 2009 was large enough to fill two gigantic parking lots, and this year the event was to be moved to FedEx field in order to fit the massive amount of cars expected to turn out - easily in the thousands. With the event scheduled to start at noon on Sunday, I packed up and headed to the DC region Friday night - I've got friends and family in the DC region I haven't seen in a while; might as well kill a few birds with the same tank of

Beauty is, as they say, in the eye of the beholder. German boutique manufacturer Weismann has made some truly stunning cars.  So I'm going to get this out of the way real quick: the Weismann Spyder... is not one of them.  In fact, it's probably one of the ugliest new cars I've seen in quite a while.  But let me tell you exactly why that doesn't matter at all. A new BMW M3 Coupe, in it's lightest form, weighs in at 1655kg - or a rather portly 3,649lbs.  That's almost 1,000lbs heavier than the original 4-cylinder box-flared M3 from the 80's.  Thankfully, it's got a 4.0L M-designed V8 under the hood that spits out 414bhp at 8,300rpm, and 295lb-ft of torque at 3,900rpms.  So despite all

If you're a car guy, chances are one of your past times is Craigslist. The free online classified ad website that has been running since 1996 is the perfect place to find everything from a sitter, to a new dog, to furniture, to your soul mate, to... a car!  Heck, my last car came from craigslist - friendly, knowledgeable seller, cool car, good price.  And while most stuff on craigslist is a bit normal ("2003 Camry, Grey, 86k, call Jeff...") occasionally you'll find something cool.  Here's what turned up with a quick perusal of my local CL. Don't tell me you're not tempted.  What is this heap?  Why, it's an Alfa Romeo Milano!  And what the hell is that?  Well, it was Alfa's competitor

Let's be honest, some of the latest M-cars have... lost the plot. The X5M and X6M both weigh on the wrong side of two and a half tons, have gas-guzzling twin turbo V8's, automatic transmissions, four-wheel-drive, a center of gravity closer to the moon than the earth, and no place on a racetrack.  And just when we were beginning to think "M" really did stand for marketing, BMW drops this on our collective laps: The 1-series M Coupe. Now, let's not beat around the bush: they could've called it the 135is Lightweight and it'd be more truthful.  But this hardest of hardcore 1-series coupes will appeal to M customers in a way no BMW has since the much-lamented Z4 M Coupe left us a while ago. 

If you had to pick one BMW that is the enduring favorite of car enthusiasts everywhere, it would most likely be the M3 - followed closely by the M5. The M3 is a perennial favorite, and it recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. BMW marked that occasion with another special edition model, the Frozen Gray. However, if given the choice, we would definitely take the M3 GTS over the Frozen Gray. Unfortunately, we don't have that choice - the M3 GTS wasn't sold on our shores. The GTS is a hardcore racing model that takes the existing M3 and ups the performance ante even further. That is evident in the car's lap time around the ring, which at 7 minutes and 48 seconds, comes in at a full