Grandma Teaches A Stupid Driver A Lesson

Grandma Teaches A Stupid Driver A Lesson

A Museum Piece for the Future

People go to the museum to view and appreciate items and artefacts from history. This car is a museum piece for the future time traveller.

Lamborghini has added a new car to its museum, and it’s the one-off single-seater Egoista, which the Italian carmaker debuted last year as Volkswagen Group design head Walter De Silva’s tribute to the brand’s 50th anniversary.

The Egoista supposedly “takes the attributes that are in the DNA of every Lamborghini to the next, extreme level.”

Exactly one year after its debut, the Egoista will be on permanent display at Lamborghini’s headquarters, first in

the showroom and then in the museum.

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A Museum Piece for the Future

Supercars for Hire

Can you guess which country rents Supercars the most?

We delved into our own top secret business data to bring you the definitive list of supercars rented via HolidayCars.com.

1 – Russians

The Russians claim almost one third of the luxury car cake. 29% of the supercars hired through HolidayCars.com were booked by Russians. It was no surprise for us to see Russia holding the top spot when it comes to renting a supercar. The prosperous business part of Russia created a type of jet set that we mortals only know from movies and dreams. It’s common knowledge that Russians love their fancy cars. Back in 2012 Luxury Society researched the most-searched luxury brands in Russia. The top 10 of these brands hosted 8 luxury car brands. More so, the automobile industry accounted for almost 75% of all luxury brand searches. Breaking with their Volga and Lada colored history the wealthy Russians of today seem to live by only one true rule: The more exotic the car, the better. Even their own high-end cars and concepts like the Marussia B2 and Lada Raven look anything but ordinary.

Russian car enthusiasts love to visit the sunny seaside and cities with an eccentric nightlife. Most supercars were picked up by Russians spread around the Spanish Islands and the top cities are Dubai, Milan and Rome. Both these Italian cities have a lot to offer for the high class tourist.

Typical supercars rented by Russians

• Audi R8 Spyder


• Mercedes SLK


• Ferrari 458

2 – Germans

According to research done by CNN in 2013 the Germans are the top spender per capita. Unsurprisingly Western Europe’s economic behemoth takes the second place, a good spot in this list. The Germans are known to love supercars and manufacture a lot of great cars themselves. Mercedes, BMW and Porsche are three examples of elegance made in Germany. German car enthusiasts are bred on the Autobahn but they look for sunshine in other places. Germans are notorious for colonizing Mallorca in the summer and it is one of the most popular pick up locations for supercars booked by the Germans. Next to Mallorca Germans love the Northern regions of Italy. Italy is deceptively close to their own country. A lot of Italians working in the tourism sector learned their fair share of German. A smart move looking at the supercars that the Germans rent the most.

Typical supercars rented by the Germans

• Range Rover


• Bentley Continental


• Porsche 911

Big spenders from Germany travel to more places than just Mallorca. Milan attracts a lot of Germans who presumibly visit the city for business as well as holidays considering the strong economic bond between Italy and Germany. Supercars are also picked up at airports in N

orthern Italy to visit Lake Como and Lake Garda. Two lakes with plenty of resorts and second homes for the wealthy.

3 – The Dutch

The Dutch holding the third place might be a bit controversial. A swift search on the internet will flood you with common Dutch stereotypes including their length, greed and bicycles. To us it doesn’t sound realistic – a 1.85m tall Dutch guy and his date cropped in a Porsche, splitting the rental bill with a cycle slapped on the rear of the car.

How did they show up in this list? We came up with an explanation: The Netherlands has always been a trading nation. Being an outward looking country means you need to find opportunities. Even in times of recession, there’s room for making a profit. With 11% of the supercars booked at HolidayCars.com done by the Dutch we feel that the businessmen from the Netherlands are certainly finding this room. Neighborly love is in the air as we noticed that four out of the five supercars rented by the Dutch were made in Germany.

To be fair – no Dutch booking was made for a Ferrari, Lamborghini or another extremely exotic car. The Dutch seemed to fulfill their needs with the likes of Rover, BWM, Porsche and Mercedes. With Spyker as an example, the Dutch manufactured only a few very remarkable cars themselves.

Typical supercars rented by the Dutch

• Porsche Boxter


• Mercedes SL 550


• BMW M5

The Dutch have always loved to explore the globe and history is said to repeat itself. This said there is simply no clear top destination where the Dutch experience their supercars most. They spread to cities all over the world. There is one country that stood out. The capital of supercars, Italy, is a popular pick-up spot for the exclusive cars hired by the Dutch. The two favorite Italian pick up points for the luxurious Flying Dutchman are Pisa airport or Rome airport.  “

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Supercars for Hire

The Art of Auto

Starting later this month, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta will be hosting Dream Cars, an exhibit of various concept cars from 1932 up to the present.

Chrysler partnered with the renowned Italian firm Carrozzeria Ghia to design a streamlined, wedged-shape automobile inspired by a small sculpture created by styling chief Virgil Exner, Sr.  The result was the 1955 Streamline “X,” or – as its designer, Ghia technical director Giovanni Savonuzzi, nicknamed it – “Gilda” (after Rita Hayworth’s sleek title character in the film noir of the same name).

Automotive styling was heavily influenced by jet aircraft and rocketry in the exuberant postwar era, and Exner wanted to prove that scientific, aerodynamic design was viable in the American marketplace. A one-fifth-scale plasticine model of the “Gilda” was made by Savonuzzi for wind tunnel testing at the Polytechnic University of Turin. His studies determined that the tapered tail fins improved directional stability in crosswinds at high speeds. The completed “Gilda” illustrated the marriage of scientific aerodynamics with the aesthetics and styling of streamlining.

The “Gilda” debuted at the 1955 Salone dell’automobile di Torino (the Turin automobile show), where it was hailed as “shaped by the wind” and caused a sensation with its “experimental body.” The car went on to tour the European show circuit to great acclaim before it was shipped to the United States that October for permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum”

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The Art of Auto

Test Post from Prestige and Sports Auto

Test Post from Prestige and Sports Auto http://www.prestigeandsportsauto.com

The Design Inspiration Behind the Huracan

Lamborghini’s head of design, Filippo Perini explains how nature helped inspire the new Lambo.

One of the most stunning cars in New York for this year’s auto show was not to be found on the show floor of the Javits Center. Lamborghini’s Huracán LP 610-4 was shown Tuesday atBathhouse Studios, a former site of public baths on the Lower East Side that has been turned into a photo studio and event space.

The Huracán LP 610-4, successor to the Gallardo, has previously appeared on this continent only at the Amelia Island Concours d’Élégance after its introduction in March at the Geneva auto show. The Huracán (pronounced ur-ah-CAN) is named, like most Lamborghinis, for a fighting bull, and 610 refers to the horsepower generated by the naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10, which is also rated at 413 pound-feet of torque.

The company says it already has 300 orders from American buyers eager to commit about $240,000 before picking through the options list.

In New York to explain the design philosophy behind the new car was Lamborghini’s design chief, Filippo Perini, who offered a minilecture titled “Beauty: From the Magic of Nature to the Lamborghini Huracán.”

The new car is a softer, more curvaceous, more elegantly proportioned variation on Lamborghini’s aggressive faceted look. More in the tradition of the sleek Miura than the brutal Countach, it is built largely of carbon fiber. In an interview before his talk, Mr. Perini said the car was designed wholly on computers, without a clay model.

The magic of nature that inspires him, Mr. Perini said, is not flowers or leaves, but crystals. “I like crystals,” he said. “Sometimes you see minerals where they intersect. There is a bit of chaos there. We look at the intersection of volumes instead of lines in our cars.”

The thinking that went into the new design, he said, began one day when he was depressed by the quality of the work of the nine designers in his studio. “Everything they were drawing that week was ugly, ugly,” he said. “And then I thought, how do we know what is beautiful and what is ugly?”

Mr. Perini investigated. The sources of beauty, he concluded, are proportions like the Golden Section beloved by the ancient Greeks. He noted that almost everything in the Huracán is shaped around some form of hexagon, from interior gauges to headlight shapes. The hexagon, he pointed out, is the shape of some of the molecules of carbon fiber that Lamborghini is using in its cars. It is also a form found widely in nature, as in honeybee combs.

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The Design Inspiration Behind the Huracan

Aussie Muscle

The Australians have a well-earned reputation of punching above their weight. With a touch of Hennessey, a monster is born.

American tuner Hennessey has released the most potent version of the Australian-built Chevrolet SS yet: the 745kW HPE1000.

The Holden Commodore-based sedan produces a mesmerising 1000 horsepower in the old scale, out-numbering all-but the most exotic supercars on paper.

In order to achieve such brute power, Hennessey replaced the Chevrolet’s standard 310kW 6.2-litre LS3 V8 with a 7.0-litre LSX V8. It then added a pair of turbochargers and an intercooler for even more grunt.

Performance times of the HPE1000 are yet to be released but, if the softer Hennessey HPE600 version of the Commodore is any guide, it’s going to be a rocket. The HPE600 recorded an 11.84 second quarter mile with the standard 6.2-litre V8.

The HPE1000 is likely to humble the tuning efforts undertaken locally by HSV in the form of the 430kW GTS, as well as Walkinshaw’s 497kW W497. It also outguns the American-tuned Callaway supercharger kit on paper.

Of course, Hennessey is no backyard tuning operation. Earlier this year, the American performance shop set the record for the world’s fastest car with Hennessey Venom, breaking the 431km/h mark set by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.

The regular Chevrolet SS is most closely related to the Commodore SS-V Redline in Australia. The US model gets more power than the Aussie version’s 270kW/530Nm 6.0-litre V8, thanks to its larger HSV-related 6.2-litre V8 worth 310kW/563Nm.

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Aussie Muscle