Renault has turned over a few photos of its all-new Alpine A110-50 ahead of the machine’s debut at this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix. The new shots show off the sports car’s rear end for the first time. The total package looks more than a little like the Renault DeZir concept, though we’re told the chassis is borrowed almost entirely from the company’s Megane Trophy.

If the two machines share more than bones, that means we can expect to see a 3.5-liter V6 engine mounted mid-ship. The powerplant churns out 360 horsepower in standard guise, though the A110-50 is said to clear over 400 horsepower.

In addition to the few photos, Renault also served up a brief teaser video showing the covered machine as it is being unloaded from a transport. Check it out for yourself, and stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

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Matte. Mirrored chrome. Gold-plated. You can now add diamonds to the growing list of ostentatious and extravagant finishes being applied to cars these days. Longtime Porsche tuner Gemballa has announced a new automotive finish that literally uses diamonds to create its million-dollar sparkle.

The German-based company claims its new diamond finish is the first of its kind to ever use the actual gem rather than other reflective ingredients like metal pigments, glass fragments or crystals. The trick was grinding the diamonds down to a size small enough that they could be applied like paint, which Gemballa says also helps increase the refractive qualities of its shine.

There’s no mention of price or other specifics like how many precious stones are sacrificed per gallon of twinkle juice, but you can imagine as well as we can what kind of premium it will command. With any luck, Justin Bieber can’t afford it.

An unusual topiary sculpture took the top honors at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show in London. It took King & Co. a full seven years to grow these bushes into a replica of a Williams F1 car, including a full standing pit crew.

Owner Paul King said he wasn’t entirely sure the design would be embraced by the Chelsea judges because of its off-the-wall nature, but the show’s organizers took a shine to the creation, and even Sir Frank Williams, founder and team principal of the Williams F1 team, stopped by the show to take a look. The piece also featured a few components from an F1 car and Bruno Senna’s race helmet.

There’s no word if the Williams team will roll out of the paddock with a Miracle Grow livery next year.

SOURCE via BBC

We love four-door convertibles, reciprocating saws and watching other people make bad decisions, so the video seen here is a bit like our perfect YouTube cocktail. In it, the owner of a slammed Lexus LS decides he’s had enough of living under the oppressive shadow of his sedan’s roof. While at StanceWars Belgium 2012, he decides to fire up a generator, plug in his trusty sawzall and go to town. Not surprisingly, the sheetmetal on the roof gives up quickly, and the whole extraction takes less than eight minutes from start to finish.

Hilariously enough, it starts raining just as the owner makes the final cut. How’s that for a sign from the universe? Scroll down to check out the carnage… just be prepared for the painful sound of shredded metal. Read more…

Think back to childhood for a moment. What did you do when you wanted, say, a new skateboard, but mom and dad were dragging their heels about ponying up for one? That’s right, you built your own, out of bits of scrap plywood and some old wheels discarded by an older sibling. And it sucked.

We see the same situation playing out here. The children at Top Gear are absolutely gaga for the DeltaWing race car, which Nissan will be campaigning at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. And even if they are Top Gear, nobody at Nissan is going to just give them an experimental race car for futzing around. So they are building their own. Or at least a simulacrum of the DeltaWing, out of what appears to be junk.

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There was nary a peep of discontent about the looks of the Subaru Advanced Tourer concept revealed at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show. But when everyone was clamoring for Scooby to transfer the Advanced Tourer’s looks to a production vehicle, never once did people ask for that transfer to be foisted on the WRX. A report in Motor Trend, though, says that’s what’s happening: the concept “was actually an early look at the next-generation Subaru WRX.”

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You don’t hear too much about the Henrik Fisker-designed Artega GT, but its occasional appearances are always welcome. In this episode of Where’s Artega Now?, the folks at eGarage worked with Germany’s Christopher Kippenberger, who make a quadrocopter designed for capturing aerial footage.

A day was spent at Germany’s Blister Berg Drive Resort, essentially a German version’s of Spain’s Ascari Race Resort. One slight difference: Blister Ber’s track isn’t finished, so the Artega was left to drift it out over the construction site threading around haulers and front-end loaders.

Kippenberger’s quadrocopter is of his company’s design, meant to bring both Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and helicopter shots into the range of the enthusiast video shooter. At $5,000, it’s not cheap, but that’s a steal compared to other UAVs – and just pennies compared to a helicopter – and each unit is built-to-order.

But enough reading. Have a look at what it and the Artega GT can do in the video below. Read more…

It may not be the first time Porsche’s 918 plug-in hybrid has had a chance to flex its 770 horse power for the camera, but when we last saw the pricey insanely expensive speed demon strut its stuff on record, it certainly didn’t look like this. The freakish prototype has emerged as a beautiful, high-performance vision of efficiency, blasting its way past 100 kilometers of terrain for every three liters of petrol (78 miles/gallon). The $845,000 machine pairs a combustion engine with electric motors to achieve that consumption rating, and sports a carbon-fiber reinforced-plastic monocoque (self-supporting) shell, rear-axle steering and that unique upward-venting exhausted system that you may have noticed in the shot above. The 918 Spyder is slated for its initial production run beginning in September of 2013, with the first models making their way to US customers late next year. It’s time to start saving — just a few thousand blog posts to go.

SOURCE via Porsche

Drifting’s been off the front pages for a while, the latest reports having more to do with turmoil than tire shredding. As with most things, though, just because it’s not headlining doesn’t mean it’s disappeared. NOS energy drink sent one of our favorite filmic chroniclers, Will Roegge, across the country to survey the drifting world. The result is a mini-documentary called Keep Drifting Fun.

And we do mean the word “documentary” – it’s 30 minutes long. Although there’s plenty of smoke and wall-kissing, its length gives us an opportunity to hear from drifters and organizers to find out what’s behind the sport, as well as their own motivations, where drifters come from and why they drift. It looks at venues beyond the track, like tree-lined back roads in Houston and alleys in late-night El Paso, and we dig that it starts off with the protagonists themselves admitting, “Drifitng is so stupid,” “It’s pointless,” and “When you boil it all down it’s pretty silly.”

The movie, on the other hand, isn’t. Scroll down to check it out.

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The University of Michigan has had one of the preeminent solar car teams in the world for more than two decades, but a new group of students is looking to make its own mark in the world of green engineering. The school will be fielding its first entry in the annual SAE Supermileage competition this year.

If you think a bunch of newbies would launch their effort somewhat low-key, you probably aren’t from Michigan or familiar with the Wolverine Way. Michigan has set its goal at nothing short of the North American record of bettering 3,169 miles per gallon with its single-cylinder, Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine. The expectation is that the Michigan car will hit 3,300 mpg.

The Supermileage competition has been held since 1980, requiring students to design and build extremely lightweight, single-seat vehicles. The competition itself involves circling the Eaton Corporation Proving Grounds test track. Last year, 27 teams competed, with Quebec’s Universite de Sherbrooke dominating the competition, recording 2,158 mpg, over 500 mpg more than its cross-province rival, Universite’ Laval.

The 2012 Supermileage competition is scheduled for June 7-8 in Marshall, MI. Scroll down to watch Michigan’s promotional video. Read more…