Car Throttle

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

Every car lover's calender starts with a new batch of machines on show in Motor City. I'm talking, of course, about the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan. The city is famous for being the beating heart of the American motor industry and at the start of every year all the world's manufacturers congregate and show off their new products to see what our stateside friends think of their latest offerings. Here's a half-time round-up of the motors on show for 2012 from each stand from the day so far. Bentley Two new Continentals broke free from the covers at the Bentley stand; the V8 coupe and V8 GTC Cabriolet. Little differences to tell these from the bigger W12 on the outside include a gloss black

Before a certain Mr. LFA was born, a typical Lexus owner would have been pushing 50 years old. A fact probably unsurprising given that all Lexus built a short while back were three saloons; small, medium, large and a convertible to top it off. All were quiet, comfortable, peaceful and they weren't in your face. To then improve their product range, the folks in Toyota City decided to add the same hybrid technology as Toyota's Prius into their cars to make one of the first 4x4 hybrids on the market. However just talking about the not-so-distant past of Lexus induces yawning from your good author. The future, on the other hand, looks very exciting indeed. 2009 saw the first IS-F, a 5.0L V8

One of the best niche body styles out there has to be the four-door coupe. First invented by Mercedes back in 2004, the idea was to make a car that looks as elegant as the CL but gives it the practicality and comfort of the E-Class and the resulting car was dubbed the CLS. There have been others since from Team Germany such as the Audi A7 and the up and coming BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe. They're great if you have executive car money but what if you're bored of your humble Passat? The people's car manufacturer had this problem in mind when they created the Passat CC back in 2008 and now there's a new one. This time they've ditched the 'P' word for us

Not many rugged off-roaders have style these days. There's only one that springs to mind which is the Mercedes G55 AMG, but that costs supercar money to buy and run. However there's now another proper off-roader from Mitsubishi that aims to look good and cross all manner of terrains; the Shogun Black. It's the second of Mitsubishi's products to come with the limited edition 'Black' styling tweaks, the first being the baby ASX crossover. Don't forget to subscribe to Car Throttle YouTube's channel as our winter sports day review of the ASX Black will be hitting your screens soon! The Shogun Black is pretty much the top of the range, long wheel-based, 7-seat SG4 but it comes with black 20" alloys, rear spoiler, wing mirrors,

I went to a junkyard yesterday in search of a few parts for my '97 3-series.  By this point, E36's are starting to pop up in junk yards with mechanical maladies or wreck damage, and the absolute cheapest way to get good parts is from a junk yard.  Sure, it's more of a hassle than finding the bit you need on eBay and clicking "buy it now" - you have to drive to the yard, pay a fee to get in, and find the kind of car you're looking for.  If it's got the part you want, most of the time you've gotta take it off yourself - unless it's already loose.

Turns out the only E36 there was a

Introducing the most economical Continental Bentley have ever made. It's not a hybrid nor is it electric but it has a 4.0L twin-turbo V8 petrol. Okay so that doesn't sound very efficient does it? The new V8 Continental GT and GTC will go on sale in 2012 after launch at the Detroit Motor Show in January along side the mighty 6.0L twin-turbo W12 variants we know and love but the V8s have several tricks up their sleeve to help save you some money on fueling them. For instance the amount of cylinders the engine uses varies depending on how and where you are driving it. If you are popping out to town or you're crawling through traffic it will use only 4 of the cylinders but if

Sometimes I realize I have a certain lack of perspective when it comes to the car thing.  Perhaps it's a regional thing.  I'm in Los Angeles for a few days (a family member is getting married), and some of the cars that raise eyebrows in Raleigh would be taxis around here.  If there's an area in the US that embraces car culture more fully than the city of Angels, I'm not sure what it is.  This is a place where a C-class Mercedes is like a Taurus, and you routinely see more than ten Bentleys a day.  It's special.  My shutter finger has been getting tired.  Check it out. See, in the middle of the eastern seaboard, a CL55 AMG Supercharged is the kind of

One minute of pure sound. That is the title of this new video of the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupe, and it lives up to that. Aural feedback from a properly tuned engine is one of the joys of driving. Few don't enjoy the race car screams of a Ferrari or the burble of a muscle car, even not all want those sounds in the vehicles they drive everyday. The C63 AMG coupe is a jewel in an era where many manufacturers are turning to smaller-displacement turbocharged. Not that we have anything against those (we don't), but it is nice to see some naturally-aspirated big V-8's out there still. Mercedes plopped a naturally-aspirated 6.2-liter V-8 into its smallest coupe to turn it into the C63 AMG.

There's a bit of a dispute going on between BMW and it's performance subsidiary. The performance arm are eager to build their own bespoke car, just like AMG did not so long ago with the SLS. Annoyingly, BMW say that the idea may not make the firm that much money. M are convinced they have what it takes to take on the SLS. BMW's head of product development, Albert Biermann told Inside Line, "From an engineering perspective, we have the skills and we'd love to do it. We've discussed it several times but we've never been able to make the business case. Everything we do has to make money." I would love to see a bespoke M car as well. Imagine, a supercar with a M