Throughout France on New Year's Eve, 1,147 cars met crispy deaths at the hands of arsonists. That's almost 300 cars more than the previous year. Lighting cars on fire as a form of protest has been a habit among youth in France since the 70s, but ever since the protests of 2005, after two boys were killed in an electrical station while hiding from police, burning cars has become a go-to political statement. But if you think 1,147 cars in one night is bad -- and as car lovers, we're not saying it isn't -- in 2007, 43,000 cars were burned, and through November of 2008, 36,700 cars were burned. That's more than 100 cars getting flambeed every single day. French president Nicolas Sarkozy has told police to show the youth no mercy, but they apparently only make up 80% of the offenders. The other 20% of arsonists is suspected to be owners committing insurance fraud on a night that provides a great alibi.
Thanks to a company called fahrmitgas ("go with gas", get it?), our European readers will soon be able to cut their fuel costs to the low, low price of €3 (about $4.20 USD) for every 100 km of driving. Of course, they'll need need to be driving a converted Chevrolet (nee, Daewoo) Matiz converted to LPG, but on the other hand... that's just €3 to go 100 kilometers. The fahrmitgas Matiz LPG Concept has been put through a suite of bench-tested enhancements in order to be so frugal. Since fahrmitgas is a supplier to Chevrolet, it has intimate knowledge of the Matiz's systems. After installation of the LPG unit and some engine tuning for mid-range power, the company added stop/start, lowered the car a whopping 30 mm, and fitted it with ultra low rolling resistance Hankook Optima 4S tires. A shift light on the center console helps the driver get the most of from his or her LPG. A liter of gas in Germany is about €1 (@ $1.40 USD), meaning 3 liters/100 km for the LPG Matiz, instead of 5.2 liters/100 km for the petrol Matiz. fahmitgas is looking at a production run, but no timetable or prices have been announced. In the meantime.
Lawrence Tomlinson bought historic British car maker Ginetta in 2005, and in just three years his team has hit it over the wall with the maker's first car under his tenure: the Ginetta G50, has taken Autosport's number one slot in its Top 10 Cars of the Year. The G50's attractions are obvious: It is light (1,750 lbs), powerful (300 horsepower six-cylinder), and relatively inexpensive (£35,000-or around $51,000 USD). It comes in three flavors for now: Roadgoing coupe, G50 Cup Car, and a GT4 model for the FIA GT4 series. The Cup Car had its own one-make race series in Britain, and that was so successful it also won an award in Motorsport News. Coming in 2009 for Ginetta: a G50Z for GT3 competition, an electric Ginetta G50, and expansion onto the Continent with a one-make series in Spain fielding the Ginetta G20.
The 2010 Peugeot 3008 has been spotted in France wearing a scant amount of camouflage, and unless Peugeot is deceiving us, it looks just like the Prologue HyMotion4 Concept from the Paris Motor Show. Updating the sheetmetal of the 4007, this crossover Pug gets a much smoother grille treatment and a combination of lines and curves out back suitable for a display at MOMA. The interior isn't revolutionary, but it's expected to offer seating for five or seven and looks like it will hold up to consumers cross-shopping the Nissan Qashqai and VW Tiguan. Four-cylinder turbocharged engines are predicted to be sized at 1.6-liters, burning either gas or oil and driving two wheels at launch, with a four-wheel-drive variant offered down the line.
"Have fun with KITT," sniffed some AMG engineers when a group of Norwegians showed up at Germany's Papenburg test track with a 1987 Trans Am. The smug smiles were quickly wiped off the faces of the Mercedes tuner crew when the ancient Pontiac's practice laps were as fast as the AMG cars, and the F-Body wasn't even working hard. Once warmed up, the 8.9-liter V8 unleashed all of its 1400 horsepower on the circuit, delivering a startling 407 kph (252 mph) also known as Bugatti Veyron fast. Better still, unlike the Bug, the Pontiac's lap is official. Needless to say, there's not much stock underneath the skin on this particular Trans Am. The car is the work of Polly Motorsport of Norway, and there's a wealth of top tuner expertise beneath the mostly stock exterior. We're sure even in its heightened state of tune, the Polly Trans Am is infinitely less expensive than the $1.6 million you'd have to cough up for a Veyron, and its creators say it's still street legal. Hit this link for some videos, which would be even more entertaining if we could understand what they were saying.
The 2009 Focus Rallye Sport has a price: £24,995 when it goes on sale in the UK in March. That will put you about £4,000 over a Focus ST3, but for that extra money you get a car that could be much closer to Ford's WRC competitor than it is to its ST3 sibling. The 300 horses and 325 ft-lbs is channeled through a six-speed manual to the front wheels, and a wider track joins beefier driveshafts, thicker anti-roll bars, tuned springs and uprated dampers. The car comes with a bodykit that only an RS could wear, as well as things like heated door mirrors and windshield, xenon headlights, Recaros, and Ford's Easy Fill fueling system. Only a few options are available, the ritziest one being the Luxury Pack that will give you things like automatic climate control and rear parking sensors. Thankfully, based on how popular these cars are among the five-finger set, an alarm is also standard.
So while it turns out that PSA is actually not looking to buy Honda's F1 team (that's why they call it the rumormill), the brand could have seriously sporting aspirations of a different sort. According to Jean-Pierre Ploué, PSA's chief designer, there might be a 20-edition run of the GTbyCitroen, the car Citroen created for Sony's GT5. The game car specs came in at 3,000 pounds and 782 horses, some of those powered by hydrogen. If a real car -- actually suggested to be a grand tourer by Citroen's press release -- were built, we hope they opt for a version of the Peugeot 908's diesel V12. For 700 hp and 800 ft-lbs, we'd have no problem driving a car that looks like a catfish up front and a platypus out back. No matter what they put in it, expect it to be tres chere if it ever gets built.
Back when Alain Prost ran an F1 team, after jettisoning engines supplied by Mugen-Honda, it was Peugeot that left Jordan to sign up with Prost. Things didn't go well, and Peugeot jumped ship three years later. But it's possible that Peugeot feels it has some unfinished business in F1. Rumor has it that among the folks snooping around Honda's F1 operations is PSA, the parent company of Peugeot/Citroen. Supposedly not as hurt by the downturn as its rivals, and with F1 cost cutting in extra strength mode, PSA thinks now is the time to buy Honda's operations, benefit from Honda's promised assistance, and go head-to-head with its French rival Renault. Were such a thing to pass, speculation is that Peugeot would put Sebastien Bourdais and Jenson Button in the cockpits.
Two storied European nameplates might combine operations as rumors are flying that Fiat and PSA Peugeot/Citroën may find the road to future profits easier to travel together. The first rumblings of potential trouble at Fiat came when its CEO Sergio Marchionne suggested his company's future looked bleak without a major partner and that there was only room for six global automakers in his estimation. Now, according to Italian newspaper Milano Finanza, leaders of both Italy and France have discussed a possible tie-up between the two companies.
Both countries are said to be considering offering financial aid packages to their respective home-grown automakers, and a merger may be seen as another way of ensuring their future viability. Although the two automakers specialize in small cars and therefore have many overlapping products, the only joint-ventures currently shared between them are for commercial vehicles and MPVs. If the two Euro giants were to merge, the resulting company would roughly match the size of Nissan/Renault and Volkswagen.
What Car is reporting that the European Parliament has graciously agreed to allow Britain to continue using the mile a bit longer. How nice of them. The EU has just passed a broad measure that allows shops to continue to display imperial and metric measures, thus keeping Britain from having to switch their speedometers and road signs to kilometers. The governing body had previously asked for firm dates from Britain and Ireland to make the switch and stop using Imperial measures, and though their neighbors in Ireland have already made the change, Britain remains noncommittal. We sympathize with our British brethren. If the EU could just walk 1.609344 km in our shoes, they'd know that switching to the metric system would wreak havoc on poetry and songwriting as we know it. Smiles would no longer be the longest word. There would be no more Mile High Club. Denver would lose its Mile High Stadium. Eminem would be crushed upon losing 8 Mile Road. Miles Davis would have to change his name to Kilometers Davis. It would be the end of the world as we know it.
