Culture|Garage

Geneva, Switz., Ford Motor Company will be unveiling the new and improved Fiesta at this year’s Geneva motor show. Something close to the Ford Verve concept vehicle, this is one new Ford that will actually see U.S. shores.

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GM is supplying the Academy Awards with a 75 vehicle fleet comprised of GMC Yukon Hybrid, Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell, or the FlexFuel GMC Yukon.  Looks like they are bringing the green to the red carpet (insert more witty plays on green tech and red carpet).

I guess it helps get the word out.  But, when I think celebrities, I don’t really think Yukons and Equinox’es.  I would rather see them clamoring out of a Aston or Porsche.  Oh who am I kidding, I won’t watch it anyways.

Fully GM press release

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It appears the Dutch version of TopGear has a picture of the “draft” Saab 9-1. While my Dutch is terrible, rather the free online translation, I can gather that this is certainly a 9-1 and is apparently a draft/pre-pro model. They mumble that it will be offered as a 3 or 5 door.

They also mentioned that it will have 320hp and AWD and cost under $30k. Ok, I lied about that part. The whole shoddy translation, post jump.

Edit: one of our commenter’s confirmed that this is as CGI as a Michael Bay film. And another helped out with the translation.

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Michael Arndt apparently has a surplus of a few things:

1. matchsticks, 956,000 to be precise

2. glue sticks, 1,698

3. time, six years

This guy made a scale model of a Mercedes McLaren 4/41 Formula One car. This German man set out over six years with six thousand Euro and built this full scale model in his kitchen. It can be torn down in 45 seperate pieces for ease transportation to other matchbuilding conventions. FYI, matchbuilding conventions are only slighly cooler than comic book/Star Wars conventions.

Keep going for more pictures…

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You have likely seen the Honda UK ads before, most likely, Cog.   Well here’s the latest one from Honda’s UK agency, Wieden.  In typical Honda/Wieden fashion, it starts out slow and builds.  Also, note that advertisers are egotistical (hey, I can say that), when the engineers are screwing around in the cafeteria they are building a dominoes line up — a throwback to the Cog spot.

It’s an overall brag-about-the-company-and-all-of-our-bad-ass-technology type piece, but pretty cool.

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Can this be true? Saab, doing something cool? Wait, what? Really? This would certainly be refreshing for what is a rather dull product line… a 9-3 (that hasn’t changed much in 6 years, but they finally added AWD), the 9-5 (which is going on 10 years old) and the 9-7 Trailblazer.

This would be a direct competitor to the likes of Mini and the Volvo C30. And if they do it right, decent powerplant, perhaps a bit of AWD shenanigans this could even be a contender against the BMW 1 Series (I still wish they had brought the hatch to the US).

If they did this, it could be a really cool car assuming pricing started in the low $20’s. But how long would it be before something like this finally came to market? 2011? That’s along way away. Won’t cars be flying by then?

via Motortrend

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Scooters seem to be all the rage now.  I think hipsters are trading in their fixie bikes for retro scooters.  So on the most lame romantic day of the year, I bring you a cute couple on a scooter.  Pay close attention to the ad, and you will begin to put two and two together.

Get it?  Boobs!

It’s an ad from the Czech Republic

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I am publishing this at the risk of pissing off Jim, our resident domestic/retro/hodrod intern writer. But it’s something that has to be said. Is going retro a wise move for a car manufacturer?

Initial thoughts, are “well, yeah, if it kicks ass.” Well, what if it only kicks ass for a short time? How do you evolve something that is retro? As sales stagnate, what do you do?

Retro is a great brand boost, it may act as a halo for your entire vehicle line, but is it always worth the risk? My thoughts, are… well it depends.

If your brand is in the shitter coughGMcough, then maybe doing a Camaro isn’t a bad idea. But then what do you do in three years after it is back to boring and everyone and their sister is driving a v6 automatic Camaro.

I have a whole slew of retro themed vehicles after the jump. Let me know, what you think… retro, wise or not?

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