Sure, it wasn’t necessarily a cure for cancer but judging from the elaborate celebration Kia hosted after rolling out production car no.1 in the US, it sure looked like one.
The 2011 Kia Sorento made history of sorts in the US after it became the first ever vehicle to be rolled out of the Kia Motors Manufacturing plant in Georgia. The occasion marks a milestone achievement for Kia as the Sorento likewise became the first-ever Kia vehicle to be built in America.
Kia’s vision to become a major player in the US took a huge step forward after the Korean automaker officially opened the 2,200 acre facility in Georgia. As it stands, the plant has over 2,500 employees and, more importantly, has the potential to produce 300,000 cars per year.
According to B.M. Ahn, president and CEO of Kia Motors America and KMMG, “The start of production at our first manufacturing facility in the United States further demonstrates our commitment to growth in North America and we are proud to be adding 2,500 jobs to the local economy.”
With the opening of the KMMG, Kia has spiked its global production capacity to over 2.56 million units year after the Georgia plant joins other production plants located in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Relatively speaking, this occasion is monumental given the circumstances surrounding the auto industry over the past couple of months. Opening a state-of-the-art facility amidst strenuous times shows that Kia is moving on to become one of the major players in the industry now and in the future.
Pontiac will shut down as soon as the calendar turns to 2010 so if you’re the sentimental type and would hate to see Pontiac ride off into the sunset, now’s the time to buy your own Pontiac before stocks run out.
According to Pontiac’s Twitter page, the car brand has a little over 3,600 units left in the US with the Pontiac G8 GXP having the most limited of supplies with only 16 remaining. Stocks of the Pontiac Solstice are also running low with only 139 of the base model still remaining and 160 of the higher-end Solstice GXP coupes available.
We normally wouldn’t advise anyone to purchase a car, but if you’re a Pontiac fan, now’s your last chance to buy your favorite car before, well, supplies go kapoot.
In piecing together a reality TV show, producers have to find a way to attract the TV audience’s attention without turning them off immediately. One tried-and-tested method is to feature people whose backgrounds are completely detached from what they do for a living.
Now that we think about it, that’s exactly what TLC is doing with their new reality show “Family Armor”. In so many words, the show is about two Mormon brothers-in-law whose jobs involve making bulletproof cars. That’s right: Mormons making bulletproof cars, everybody!
If that isn’t enough to capture your imagination, consider the fact that these two guys are just about as ordinary as any two Americans can be, devoting most of their time on their families, their jobs, and their...religion.
So when they’re not at home being the ‘greatest dads in the world’, Trent and Jason – the names of the shows protagonists – are at their factory cocking their shotguns and thinking of new and ingenious ways of blowing up cars just to test how tough their bullet-proof creations are.
You can’t tell us that you’re not at the very least slightly curious now, because quite frankly, the whole plot of the show - "Cars, guns, and God" - is too crazy to be true, which, if you think about it, is precisely why we have reality-TV in the first place.
The 2009 auto show season has pretty much come and gone and as the year continues to wind down, one of the last shows to happen will be the Los Angeles Auto Show.
One of the car manufacturers that are scheduled to participate is Toyota and the Japanese auto giants have begun releasing the fleet of cars that are scheduled to make their way to LA.
Toyota has yet to release further details regarding the new Sienna except for the fact that it’s scheduled to be rolled out to dealerships sometime in the next year.
You would think that releasing a calendar wouldn’t become such a high-profile occasion, because really, who really would go out of their way to dress up for a calendar presentation?
Well, if it’s the launch of the world-famous Pirelli Calendar, then the answer is a lot of people.
To celebrate the 37th edition of the famed calendar, a host of celebrities from all walks of life were invited to attend the premier of the calendar at Old Billingsgate, a 19th century building on the banks of the Thames River in London.
To make the occasion all the more extravagant, the organizers of the event used Lamborghinis to chauffer guests to and from the destination. Among the Lambos that were used during the event included a Murcielago LP670-4 SV, a Gallardo LP 560-4 Spyder, and the automaker’s newest toy – the Gallardo LP 550-2 Valentino Balboni.
To pay homage to the 37th edition of the Italian tire maker’s calendar, the Lamborghinis in attendance were outfitted with LED lights under the wheel arches to illuminate the Pirelli insignia stretched across the rubber.
For this year’s Pirelli Calendar, the tire makers chose American photographer Terry Richardson to photograph the models with the theme of ‘Brazil’ and using his uncanny talent and eye for provocative yet classy photos. Among the models that were immortalized on the pages of the 37th edition of the calendar include Australians Catherine McNeil, Abbey Lee Kershaw and Miranda Kerr, Marloes Horst of the Netherlands, the UK’s Lily Cole, Daisy Lowe, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Georgina Stojilijkovic of Serbia, Gracie Carvalho and Ana Beatriz Barros of Brazil and Eniko Mihalik from Hungary.
We knew that the Bugatti Veyron incident from last week drew headlines from all corners of the world. But what we didn’t expect was that a lot of people would have a field day making jokes and and selling inane items at its expense.
Two of these items that we found include a ’Pelican Repellent’ and a Bugatti Veyron AquaticAvoidanceSystem. Before you believe the validity of these items, it’s wise to put some context into them and think of these two things as nothing more than just people having fun at Mr. Alan House’s - the unfortunate driver of the Veyron - expense.
First up, we have the ’so-called’ Pelican Repellent at the Car Guy Garage website. It’s not so much that it describes the product in this light: "When it comes to pelicans, you never can be too safe. Not only can they unload a nasty stain on your new paint job, but they have been known to swoop down on drivers of fancy French cars attempting to run them off the road." Care to venture a guess how much it costs? $2 million. That’s right.
If you can find a car manufacturer that has had a more successful time crossing over into making mainstream items than Ferrari, then we’d love to know who it is.
The latest brainchild of Ferrari – and one that is quite a ways away from supercars – is a carbon fiber guitar, which it created in partnership with Blackbird.
The Blackbird Rider Ferrari Edition carbon fiber guitar was created by Joe Luttwas, who, incidentally, spent some years working for Ferrari. In addition to being lightweight, compact, crisp sounding, the guitar comes with some pretty noticeable designs that are well and truly inspired by the Prancing Horse, including a red interior, a red A string, and obviously, a Ferrari insignia on the head of the guitar.
Before you start fawning over this guitar, we do have to say that, unfortunately, all of the guitars – which, by the way, was autographed by Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa - have already sold out. Don’t worry though; we do have a video of the Blackbird Rider Ferrari Edition carbon fiber guitar in all its musical glory.
Now we here at top speed have a bit of a thing for the Cadillac CTS-V ever since we had the chance to get well acquainted with the supercharged four door sport sedan. Now when we first saw the CTS Coupe concept we couldn’t help but dream that one day General Motor’s luxury brand would incorporate all of the same high performance stuff you don’t see that makes the V Series car so great into the two door version. Well Cadillac made our dreams come true when they confirmed the future CTS-V Coupe and things are looking up even more because they have just announced when we will see the 556 HP M3 obliterator. There is no better venue to show off Detroit’s finest than at the North American International Auto Show, and that is exactly where the CTS-V Coupe will make its debut.
One unlucky Audi R8 owning Californian learned what it feels like to be a piece of meat in when he unexpectedly taken from behind by a BMW 6 Series and sandwiched between it and a much larger (and heavier) Range Rover SUV. Unfortunately for the four ringed super car driver his dream car now looks like it was chewed up and spat out like a rotten piece of salami. The good part is that the Audi’s aluminum skin took the brunt of the impact and everyone inside was fine, however the worst part is that the R8’s aluminum skin too the brunt of the impact and even a slight fender bender looks like quite a bit of damage.
On the upside, if the red R8 owner’s insurance is any good and the adjuster is a nice guy, this just might be the perfect excuse to upgrade his wheels to the new 5.2 Liter V10 powered aluminum super car. Honestly there is no excuse for 4.2 Liter FSI owners to trade in their perfectly good mid engine machines, if it is a bump in output that they are after then the aftermarket already has a plethora of forced induction options that makes the old car even more powerful than the new car and combined with the V8’s weight savings should make for a more nimble machine. That is if you aren’t provided with an opportunity like this guy. This is just another silver lining on a very ominous dark cloud, it just depends on how you look at it.
At some point, our threshold for seeing exotic car crashes is going to be snapped. But until that time, we just have to stomach them and move on. The latest victim of the lethal mix of bad driving and bad weather is an Aston Martin DB9. In this video shot in Warsaw, Poland, the DB9 was speeding along a wet road when it loses control before slamming into a tree, breaking it in half in the process.
The DB9 then spins a couple of times before resting to a stop with the fallen tree just a few feet away from the car. Imagine what would have happened if the impact of the crash forced the DB9 to stop and the tree falling on top of it. Despite the damage done to his ride, the driver was enormously lucky not to have been crushed under a tree trunk.
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