Minivans are boring, they just are. While they are incredibly practical, and achieve their goals with far more ease and speed than any wagon or SUV could dream of, they have the balls of a minnow. Add to that a driving experience of a Tuff Shed in a pool of Jell-O and you have a vehicle that was anything but exciting.
Toyota wants to change that.
The Aston Martin One-77: What’s not to like? Despite its million-dollar plus price tag, if I could afford one, they would already have my deposit. But if I were sitting on, say, $23,000,000, I could probably find something more creative to do with it than buy myself and 9 of my family members the same exact supercar. But in the Middle East, where creativity is frowned upon and only excess exceeds, someone with too much money and too little taste has done just that. Ten One-77’s for $23,000,000. We hear that at first, Aston Martin was reluctant to sell that many cars to a single person, especially given the car’s limited production run. Unsurprisingly, paying about a 75% premium on the cars’ actual values greased the wheels a bit.
Source [Luxury4Play.com]
(Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here, respectively.)
Night was falling fast: by the time we gave on the bathroom and got on the highway, it was already dark. I gingerly tiptoed past a speed trap, all the while keeping my eye on the Suzuki Vitara that, mercifully, didn’t bother pursuing us. Just as well, too; I wouldn’t know what “do you know how fast you were goin’?” sounded like in Spanish, anyway. Speed cameras, which the GPS system thoughtfully warned us about, were everywhere: on the tops of tunnels, in the bushes on the median, mounted secretly in the back of vans, underneath Avatar billboards (I saw 15 in one day—5 of which were at the same bus stop). I slowed down to 50kph every time the annoying beep emanated from the dashboard, but soon gave up as soon as I saw traffic flying past us. Evidently the Spanish have far less to lose when it comes to racking up traffic violations.
Part 1 can be found here.
For about 90 kilometers the highway wound through the open countryside, full of sloping, featureless farmland and terrain that seem to have been transplanted from western Pennsylvania. The novelty of tooling around Europe in a funny little hatchback was starting to wear off, so I turned on Spanish radio for a while. Ever get the impression that foreign languages are spoken at a far faster clip than English? By the time an English speaker hammers out “I’ll have a coffee and an amaretto sour,” a Spanish man will have already explained the plot details of Wuthering Heights and seduced your wife in the process. I tried to decipher some of the verbal barrage machine-gunning through the cabin, and an angrily-driven Peugeot 308, lights flashing, almost plowed into the back of our glacially-accelerating Corsa at approximately half the speed of sound. So I turned the radio back off.
They really like wine in Spain, I had noticed. Walk into any convenience store or side stand and you’ll see racks of the stuff: Rioja, Secastillo, Tinto de verano, Sangre de Toro, in full view and right by the entrance. It pours forth at restaurants with a alacrity normally reserved for Bacardi Breezers at TGI Friday’s. The Mediterranean winds that kiss the tops of the cordilleras form hot, exotic climates, perfect for the ripe varieties of Ribera del Duero, Penedès, and Garnacha grown and bottled under the strict Denominación de Origen system. And that’s before one dives into the world of sherry, porto (from neighboring Portugal) and, of course, sangria and calimocho, the latter a 50/50 split of wine and Coke that reflects the Spanish ingenuity of mixing daring wine-based concoctions.
Autowriters.com is a monthly newsletter sent out to all the automotive journalists, and while I have to be honest and say it’s normally not worth reading, this time is different because it’s about meeeeee! For all those people who want to know “how did I get here,” this is your answer. It’s a nice piece, right up until he misspells the name of The Smoking Tire, the website, and the link. However, if you’re reading this here, that shouldn’t be a problem!
*Edit: just found out I posted a bad link. OOps, fixed it now!*
For a modern, trendy city like Barcelona, it’s rare to see any old classic car still puttering the streets. And when I say “classic car,” I don’t mean beautifully restored E-Types or period-patina’d Citroen SMs; I generally mean anything non-diesel built before the SALT II talks. Most people either keep their rare exotica hidden away from the bustle of city life, or generally don’t bother holding onto something so old. And why would they? Used modern hatchbacks are cheap enough to get rid of the old clunkers.
But here, hidden among the Peugeot 306 wagons and SEAT Toledo TDIs (why they would name a car after a depressing city in Ohio is anyone’s guess) is a callback to another era, a working man’s car and today either a chic fashion statement—as all city cars eventually become—or a faithful old friend, depending on how you look at it. It’s the Renault 4, which can rightfully be considered the granddaddy to all these modern-day pretenders.
Welcome into the new 4 door Aston Martin Rapide