Don't worry, this video is totally safe for work. But we're saying revolting because we can remember back years ago we watched Clint Eastwood's Pink Cadillac with a friend's father who happened to restore muscle cars for a living. Anywho, as you might imagine the 1959 Cadillac gets pretty dinged up throughout the course of the film – fairly often, too. As such, my pal's dad was not only cringing at every dent, scrape and rumpled piece of metal, but actively screaming at the TV. Mostly stuff like this, "What not-nice-people! Why would they do such horrible things to such a wonderful, historic car?!?" More or less.
Now, we're not prudes. We like the destruction of cars. From the Jeremy Clarkson style (kill bad cars!) and the Ca$h For Clunker$ style (Kill ALL cars – hey, creative destruction is a valid economic theory) to 24 Hours of LeMons style (let's race dead cars! Er, kill that one car!). There's just something wonderful about smoking engines, twisted sheet metal and precious fluids spilled all over tarmac -- no matter what the car. That said, the video you're about to watch, well, it's a little hard to stomach. So, let's just call it mildly revolting. Also, we're supposed to mention something about damage rendering, or the lack there of, but, uh...
The Spada is coming! The Spada is coming! Along with this promotional video put together to get you ready for it. A combination of The Dark Knight, Speed Racer, and The Car, the Codatronca's still an oddball looker, but with that Z06 running gear underneath it should at least be fun to drive. The vid was directed by a Mr. Kobayashi, which makes us think that Keyser Soze must be doing the driving. Follow the jump to watch the vid.
Driving is dangerous. We know that, yet the vast majority of us seem willing to take the risks inherent with strapping ourselves inside a two-ton projectile to share the road with other human-piloted objects of mass destruction. With all of these behemoth chunks of metal flying around at high rates of speed, it's not all that surprising that merely walking can also prove to be life threatening from time to time.
Such is the case with a video that's recently been making the rounds on the internet that shows a pedestrian crossing a street in Russia who just barely escapes certain death at the hands headlights of a runaway bus. Click past the break to see what we mean... whew, close call! Then again, trains can also be extremely dangerous, as can be testified by at least one young mother in Melbourne, Australia, who's occupied baby carriage fell onto the tracks just ahead of an oncoming train.
So too can riding a bicycle be unsafe, and London Mayor Boris Johnson found that to be an undeniable truth the hard way. Finally, as automotive enthusiasts, we love racing. But it sure can be unpredictable at times, whether it's because of another rogue driver or, um, a wayward kangaroo.
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![REPORT: Controversial ads expected from Fiat exec heading Chrysler marketing [w/VIDEO]](http://www.niot.net/blog-images/report-controversial-ads-expected-from-fiat-exec-heading-chrysl.jpg)
Fiat exec Olivier Francois has a big reputation that's based on results. As head of the Lancia brand, he has garnered it more attention than it's had in many years, and the marque sells more cars more consistently. He has done this with a flair for marketing that begs for attention, and if it takes controversy to get attention then so be it. Fiat chief Sergio Marchionne chose Francois to be the CEO of Chrysler vehicles and run the Chrysler Group's marketing, advertising and brand development and strategies. It is expected, then, that he will bring his risque marketing ways to the house of The Pentastar.
Francois was the man behind the Lancia ad that had Richard Gere driving the new Delta into Tibet. As if that weren't enough, the ad was shown during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. You can imagine how happy the Chinese were about that, but the larger story was that it worked: the ad and the controversy got play everywhere, and Fiat only had to make a formal apology to China to get on with business. Francois also made a commercial that honors Aung San Suu Kyi, a political prisoner in Myanmar.
This is the kind of advertising, though, that's more acceptable, and probably more effective, in Europe. In America, a commercial about a robot committing suicide is cause for protests, and VW's Routan campaign in which people have babies in order to justify buying the minivan is decried as insensitive by people who can't have babies. America is not the first country where one would test the limits of corporate daring or broadcast a ribald sense of humor to a mass market audience. The complete remaking of Chrysler and the company's former history of not being just another carmaker could give Francois room to bang up against some cultural boundaries. But we'd still advise Fiat to keep a crisis PR team on hold. Follow the jump to see the Delta commercial.
Gran Turismo 5. We've teased you in the past with constantly shifting debut dates and posted most every video we can find. But today is a new day, and this time we're going to show you... another video. GT5 creator Kazunori Yamauchi sat down with GT Planet to discuss how much work goes into the five-year project known as Gran Turismo 5, along with some speculation as to which vehicle will grace the game's cover.
It's no secret that the Mercedes Benz SLS AMG will be featured in GT5, and Yamauchi actually took the uber-exotic gull-winged supercar for a spin on the legendary Nürburgring to ensure that GT5 has the proper driving dynamics. Both the 'Ring and the SLS AMG were digitally rendered pixel by pixel, aided by the game's physics calculation model. Yamauchi calls the game a driving simulator because the calculation model adds exact information about every physical aspect of each vehicle, ensuring that each one behaves in the game exactly how it drives on the road because "that's something we can't actually touch. If the original car is made well, it'll drive well."
Yamouri likes the SLS AMG so much that the vehicle could hold the honored position of being the cover girl on the upcoming game's packaging. And speaking of the game's cover, the video also shows a few seconds of Yamauchi handing over what appears to be a GT5 box set to a co-worker. The glossy box contained what appears to be black, red and blue Blu-ray cases. We're thinking it's a special edition box set for the most rabid of fans, and we hope we're right
You know what's wrong with kids today? We don't either, but one thing we're sure of is that they just don't read enough P.J. O'Rourke. True, Republicanism has fallen totally out of favor among today's youngsters, but that stuff is cyclical. Like when Nixon swept into the 80th Congress -- the GOP was all the rage then. And the Newt Gingrich led 104th Congress was pretty popular for a few minutes back in the Lewinkski-charged Nineties.
Anyhow, O'Rourke is a great Republican. Our favorite, in fact. You all should sit down and read P.J. to your children as bedtime stories. Might we suggest a passage from his 1978 classic, "How to Drive Fast On Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." Here's a taste:
Even more important than being drunk, however, is having the right car. You have to get a car that handles really well. This is extremely important, and there's a lot of debate on this subject – about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest. Another thing about a rented car is that it's an all-terrain vehicle. Mud, snow, water, woods – you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can't always get it back – but that's not your problem, is it?See? As for why we dug this old chestnut up, may we suggest you make the jump and watch the video? P.J. would be so proud.
Until cars drive themselves and we absolutely can't get lost, automakers and sat nav companies are steadily enhancing the graphics of navigation systems to make it easier to find the next right turn. Navigation systems in Renaults, for instance, provide a graphic representation of buildings that you'll see as you drive along, and now Microsoft, working with researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany, have added video to navigational maps.
The project took the snapshots of cities collected by mapping companies (like Google Streetview does) and 'plays' them like video at important sections of the route. The text route and route overview are still provided, the video simply aids in noting or remembering where you need to remember a crucial direction.
You can watch the video before you actually get in your car so that, like cheating for an exam, you'll visually recognize the turn or a landmark when the time comes. The photographs are also skewed as necessary to create the right perspective, and when you get to a turn, the video will look in the proper direction beforehand so that you can note specific features. It's currently still in trial phase, but during the first study it improved people's ability to follow direction by 20 percent. Follow the jump to watch the video, and here's to no more getting lost. Soon.
In a video that should be titled "Things You Can't Do in a Corolla," the FT-86 has been caught in motion and sound at the Nürburgring in Germany. Of course, the pictures posted last week gave no indication of how it ran, but we can tell you – and so can the video – that it is, as they say in the business, "Hot."
We know what the Toyota concept looks like, but we're not exactly sure which version we see on the 'Ring in the video. It could be the FT-86 from Toyota or Subaru's version. However, if Toyota's version goes like the car in the video, when it finally does arrive, Toyota will truly be able to say it is back in the business of fun. At least a little. Follow the jump to see the vid.
VW's Fun Theory project, with its European ad agency DDB, takes on a third task to show that you can get more people to do the right thing if you make it fun. This time it's bottle recycling, and the tool used is a bin fitted with an arcade scoreboard. After a "player" presses start, lights flash above any of the six holes in the bin and the recycler collects points for putting a bottle in the correct opening. It's the same theory as whack-a-mole but with glass bottles.
Just as the other Fun Theory demonstrations with the bottomless garbage can and the piano steps, people flocked to the Bottle Bank Arcade: it was used 50 times more than the plain green bin sitting nearby. Put a scoreboard on something and all of a sudden people will celebrate doing anything – when's the last time you saw a grown man shaking his fist over throwing away a bottle?
There are some images that don't fit into Newton's laws of physics. In nature, flying pigs and twinkle-toed Grizzly Bears come to mind. On the track, we can't think of many things more odd-looking than a drifting Smart ForTwo. After all, it's about as tall as it is long, and it's awfully narrow, too. It's like drifting a postal truck... only smaller... and less agile... and more prone to flipping on its side.
That didn't stop one pioneering tuner from turning the ForTwo into the ultimate lunchbox drifter. The white Smart looks to be modded to the hilt with an overhauled powertrain ('Busa, anyone?), exhaust and larger wheels and tires. Those wheels are also pushed out by several inches as evidenced by the bulging wheel arches. Hit the jump to watch the video shot in Japan. The drifting of this one-of-a-kind Smart car won't make anyone think about Ken Block or Rhys Millen, but this little two seater can sure get around the track, spitting flames in the process.
