First they come for our nuts, but where will it end? Where will it end I ask you!?! Because I can tell you right now, that this God-fearing Murican will give up his nuts when you pry them from my cold dead hands. Wait. Oh. You mean Truck Nutz? Well that’s different.

You know, there’s a lot of reasons, a whole lot of reasons for someone not to have a pair of these hanging from the hitch on their truck. Primary among them is that it’s just a highly visible way to announce that all of your aesthetic sense is in your mouth and you’ve most likely got the mental horsepower of a Trabant.

All that said though, the only people who come off looking more like knuckle-dragging proto-hominids are the members of the Bonneau, South Carolina court and law establishment. For that is the town (most likely comprising a line of hollowed out earthen mounds) which is under the watchful eye of Police Department Chief Franco Fuda, who recently spotted the offending, um, ornaments dangling from the rear of 65-year-old woman’s pickup truck.

Said 65-year-old woman is one Virginia Tice, who faces a hefty $445 fine for her choice of aftermarket adornments. It seems that in South Carolina, something becomes legally indecent “when it describes, in an offensive way as determined by contemporary community standards, ‘sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.’”

Now, anyone with a brain capable of a cursory understanding of the ambiguous nature of words like “offensive”, “contemporary”, “standards”, and “parts” knows that Officer, sorry, Police Department Chief Fuda, couldn’t just throw the ticket at her and say pay up. So, in a premeditated act of fiscal responsibility, Fuda requested a frickin’ jury trial to acquire some lucidity on this staggeringly important legal issue.

To add to this Keystone-esque application of “justice”, there is this quote from Police Department Chief Fuda: “I went to (a) few websites that said, excuse the expression, ‘show your nuts’ … I didn’t see anywhere it said support your local proctologist or farmer.”

Let me just gently pull an excerpt here: ” … support your local proctologist … “. Uh, Officer, proctologist aren’t the guys that fondle your testicles, usually it’s a urologist does that. And framer!? What, for the love of A.J. Foyt, does a farmer have to do with … ah never mind.

And no, I’m not doing up a gallery of Truck Nutz photos.

Source: Gawker

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Automoblog main man Chris sent me an interesting email over the weekend. I looked at the pictures, and my first thought was of a guy who had a motorized barstool at a hot rod run I attended once, long ago. A non-gearhead friend of mine asked, in total shock, “Can you motorize something like that?”

“Of course! You can put a motor in anything!” How could I say anything else? You inhabit this machine world long enough, and that becomes far too apparent. Motorized barstools seemed to be just the beginning. Take a look at what some crazies in California have accomplished: Motorized, wheeled bumper cars. And, judging by the license plates, the Golden State has no problem licensing them for use on the public roadways.

On the one hand, the (un-attributed) accompanying text states that ” … a couple have been measured as capable of 160 MPH, which is terrifyingly fast in machines with such a short wheelbase.” Which is indeed terrifying, but not all that unthinkable, given that the bumper cars you see here are motivated by four cylinder Honda or Kawasaki 750s. The move to JDM plants was provoked by the original engines, two cylinder Harley Davidsons, ” … rattled like heck because of the two cylinder vibration … ” according to someone referred to simply as “Tom”.

We can only surmise that “Tom” is the mater, er, “mind” behind this craziness. There are allusions in the email that the bumper cars were recovered from some place called the Long Beach Pike amusement park located “in the outskirts of San Diego” and that “Tom” felt the old, disused bumper cars “needed a more dignified end than the trash heap.” On that I can agree. I’m a firm believer in keeping things based on their aesthetic value alone. If they have some artistic, cultural or motivational value, then so much the better.

I’m not really troubled by that, or even the (alarmingly successful) fact that they got license plates hung on them. That’s great. That’s part of the fine hot rod tradition that makes being an American gearhead so, well, I’ll go with unique and special, yeah, unique and special, that’s it.

What troubles me is the “engineering” that I can make out from the supplied photos. The craftsmanship looks top notch, and not just the body and paint, but the chassis tubes and shock and brake installs look rather well done. And yes, I’ll interject that simply adding brakes onto these guys gives me a certain amount of comfort. It shows that this “Tom” fellow is only certifiable, and not suicidal.

Anyway, is it just me, or does the roll-center and the center of gravity seem a tad high for something that has ” … been measured as capable of 160 MPH?” Sure, sure, that’s probably in a straight line, but I’d be hesitant to whip a quick u-ee in one of these guys doing 16 MPH, let alone something much faster. And although those brakes do seem rather nicely done, I’m sure that standing on the loud pedal for a block, whoa-ing one of these little critter up and hanging a 90 degree left would be an iffy proposition.

Then again, that is, in a lot of ways, the essence of hot rodding. Ever driven or ridden along in the passenger seat of a blown big block T Bucket? I have. And they are not the most directionally stable modes of transportation you can get. But that, as we all know, is what makes it “fun”.

And I bet, when all is said and done, that driving one of these down to the cruise in or swap meet or that appointment with your clinical psychologist is a whole lot of fun. I just wish I could have been at the DMV when “Tom” and his buddies brought these in to get them licensed.

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Her idea boils down to this: Stop signs plainly don’t make sense for people on two wheels, and cyclists should be allowed to ignore them.

Mia Birk is the president of the consulting firm Alta Planning + Design, which focuses on bike issues and is based in Portland, Oregon, a very bike friendly town. But Portland also seems to be a city loaded with pragmatists, and this strikes me as being a manifestly dim and bone-headed idea.

“You see, stop signs are placed at intersections to keep two-ton vehicles from crashing into each other. One- to two-hundred-pound riders on bicycles do not need to come to a complete stop to avoid serious injury. While stop signs are an efficient and effective way to delineate right of way for motorists, cyclists need something different,” Birk wrote in the Portland Tribune.

Get it? Stop signs simply don’t make sense for people on two wheels.

Birk continued, “don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for throwing out the rule book. When we bike, we should stop and remain stopped for all traffic signals. And when we drive, we should slow down, hang up, yield to cyclists and pedestrians, and chill out. In other words, we can all behave better.”

Right Mia, right. But I see a few flaws in your reasoning.

First off, there’s your assertion that ” One- to two-hundred-pound riders on bicycles do not need to come to a complete stop to avoid serious injury.” Right, sure. One- to two-hundred-pound riders on bicycles do not need to come to a complete stop if they might, possibly, bump into another one- to two-hundred-pound rider on a bicycle. Bumping into another bike at five miles an hour is not nearly as grizzly a proposition as blowing through a stop sign and getting hit by a two ton SUV operated by a distracted mom who just dropped off a couple of her bratty kids at soccer and is now in the middle of a heated conversation with her husband, via cell phone, over what will constitute dinner for tonight. Or perhaps the cyclist would have a nice, mechanical conversation with a six-ton delivery truck doing 30 MPH.

And then there’s this: ” While stop signs are an efficient and effective way to delineate right of way for motorists, cyclists need something different.” Yeah, I think any oil-soaked gearhead might be able to quibble with the efficiency and effectiveness of stop signs – anyone who is stuck at a four-way stop while two dingus motorists try to decide who is going to be nicest and let the other one go has seen just how inefficient and ineffective stop signs can be (although maybe that’s just blaming abysmally poor driving habits on the sign rather than the drivers). No, it’s the ” cyclists need something different”. Oh? They do? Why? Could you enumerate as to why this should be Mia? She doesn’t, really, just takes as true and continues on from there.

“When we bike, we should stop and remain stopped for all traffic signals. And when we drive, we should slow down, hang up, yield to cyclists and pedestrians, and chill out. In other words, we can all behave better.” Yeah, right, hard to fault that and yes, ” we can all behave better,” but that door swings both ways Mz. Birk. I’ve given up counting the number of times I’ve seen bikes do downright stupid and dangerous things let alone show behavior patterns more aligned with toddlers on Big Wheels.

Share the road means just that: Share. Cars got to give a little, but bikes have to share as well. That doesn’t mean, to give just one example, that a cyclist should be able to blithely ride down the middle of a lane doing 15 miles an hour, hold up a dozen cars, and when the road finally widens snarl at the passing cars, “I have the right to use the whole lane y’know!”

Yeah, and I have the right to drink and carry a gun, but that doesn’t make staggering into a bowling alley and using an AK to help pick out my shoes a good idea.

But this is the line that really stood out to me: ” … don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for throwing out the rule book.”

No, what you’re advocating is having a different set of rules for cyclists than for cars and that is manifestly dangerous. Think about this for a second, and you could see how this would start to look like the chariot race from Ben Hur by the end of the first day.

Say you’re the aforementioned harried soccer mom (or the delivery truck driver). Say that you are actually driving okay, you’re paying attention to the road, you’re driving down the boulevard at 30 MPH (the posted speed limit) and then WHAM! A cyclist has just blown through a stop sign because that stop sign doesn’t apply to them, and they are now all over your grill and windshield like a deer that just bounded out of the woods at the wrong moment.

Cops are called. Ambulances and fire trucks arrive. The remains of the biker are carted away in the back of a dark blue panel van and now the driver has to deal with the cop trying to explain that what the cyclist did was okay, just fine, well within the letter of the law and that it was the driver that was at fault and will now be held liable.

Did Mia Birk not even think it through that far? Did she not even clock to the fact of the obvious negative impact, not just to cyclists (which she seems to think would only benefit from a move like this) but to motorists, the health care system as well as the judicial system?

No, it would seem she didn’t.

It seems that she gave this idea about as much thought as the cyclist that says to themselves, ‘I have the right of way, that semi truck should know that.’ Before they pull out in front of a big rig driven by a guy at the end of another 19 hour day on the road and his bennies are starting to wear off and he’ll barely register the THUMP before he wearily pulls over and will later say to the investigating officer, “Man, I dunno. He just pulled right out in front of me. There wasn’t any time to react, let alone stop.”

Source: Seattle P.I. Photo from Flikr user Jimbohayz

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Ryan Dunn, one of Johnny Knoxville’s Jackass crew, and his passenger died in a crash outside of Philadelphia early this morning.

I could be cynical and say, “What a surprise!” but I won’t.

As one of the sidekick members of Jackass brigade, Dunn was partially responsible for bringing the world one step closer actually being like the movie “Idiocracy”. C’mon, who do you think Mike Judge based the most popular television show, “Ow! My Balls!” in the movie on? Knoxville et al. Or at least that’s my guess. So it seems rather unsurprising that a member of the Jackass retinue would buy the farm by stuffing his Porsche GT3 into a bunch of trees while traveling at triple digit speeds.

Yes, the photo you see above was taken at the scene of the one-car accident that happened in West Goshen, Pa. around 3:30 AM Monday morning, is all that remained of the GT3 when police and fire crews pulled it out of a grove of trees earlier today. Before that, Dunn’s ride looked like this:

At first, the police said they didn’t know whether the 34-year-old Dunn, or the then unidentified person was driving the car. Nor did the authorities know whether alcohol was to blame. But, ironically or maybe just coincidentally, Dunn did tweet the following picture from his Tumblr account hours before his death:

Sure, it could have been a Coke or an iced tea.

The NBC affiliate in Philadelphia reported that “The Porsche shot through about 40 yards of trees before it hit the last one and exploded into flames, according to police.” Which pretty much means that if the impacts (either the final one or the many previous jolts after passing through 120 feet of trees) didn’t kill Dunn and passenger, then the explosion and resulting fire sure as hell did.

MTV, parent network of the Jackass TV series (and producer of the movie spin offs) said, “We’re deeply saddened by the passing of a member of the MTV family, Ryan Dunn. Our hearts and thoughts are with his friends and family.” MTV did this via Twitter, of course. Which is both highly meta and highly ironic, because nothing says, ” deeply saddened” like a 140 character limit.

Now, one could get all moralistic about “what this says about our culture” and “speed kills” and “the wages of sin” and all that, but I will leave that up to the seemingly endless supply of people whose job it is to be morally outraged at something, anything.

What can be said though, is that Dunn seriously overcooked it in a place where the price for doing so was going to be plenty high. Like Clint Eastwood said as Dirty Harry applies (as well as to all things automotive): “A man has got to know his limitations.”

Sure, sure, you could say that this sort of behavior – going stonking fast – should be reserved for the track, and the track only. Which is all well and good and true, but tell me, who of you out there with a Porsche or a Vette or some other such ride, always, always, always follow every rule of the road at all times? Hands? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Right.

The point of doing things like this is knowing when and where you can get away with it. What will happen if, say, I lose it right at this spot in the road doing, let’s say for the sake of argument, 10 MPH over the limit? Well try not to show that you’re the next best thing to Rick Mears if there’s a grove of trees on the outside of a corner. Or if it’s wet … or icy … or, well you get the idea.

Source: Jalopnik

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The ability to listen to your updated News Feed isn’t all that bad. It’s still distracting – more so than listening to the radio – but it’s similar enough to where I don’t feel like arguing about it.

The retarded part, as you may have guessed, is the ability to update your status on the go. This is for two reasons.

First, let’s look at the example given in the promo video for the feature (video is below.) The soccer mom in the scene driving in her Cadillac SRX activates OnStar, and updates her status as follows: “On my way home from work, going to get the kids from daycare, need to be there in 10 minutes, hopefully I’m not late.”

Really? As if we need more useless and uninteresting Facebook updates in the first place. Half of the updates in my news feed are already worthless Farmville invites, now people have another method to bore me with too much information. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the update doesn’t even dictate into text – it’s sent to Facebook as an audio file, making you click on the file to listen to that crap you don’t want to hear.

Second, this is just another way for people to be distracted at the wheel. “LOLZ! Jimmy just got a new weapon in Mafia Wars!” “OMFG I have to let everyone know that jerk just cut me off. Onstar…update Facebook.”

Yes, it will help keep people from updating Facebook on their cell phones, but if they’re so obsessed that they feel the need to compulsively update Facebook while driving, do you really think this is going to help?

For the love of god people, do you not realize that you’re piloting a two-ton hunk of metal down the road at deadly speeds when you’re driving? A flick of the wrist in the wrong direction can KILL you, your passengers, and other people on the road. Disconnect – it’s not that important.

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Well, guess what? You do need a reason, in fact you need three.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come to a four-way stop only to sit there for what seems like hours until one of us finally decides to go only to get honked at because I cut off someone who was trying to turn — someone who did not have their turn signal on.

Reason No. 1: To not get side-swiped, rear-ended, crashed into, hurt, bumped, scratched or impaled in any way.

Seems like a pretty good reason, no? And yet there are drivers who still think they are invincible and don’t need to use that nifty little blinking light their car is so graciously equipped with.

Reason No. 2: To be considerate.

If you really do think you’re invincible and can do whatever the hell you want on the road, then at least do so with a bit of a respect for others. Instead of causing your fellow road warriors to slam on their brakes unnecessarily or swerve out of the way as you drift over into their lane unannounced, turn the blinker on before you shoot over and show a little compassion.

Reason No. 3: To give your forearm some exercise.

Today’s society is all about being healthy, fit and toxin-free. From organic foods to all-natural household products, we’re all going green and doing better things for our bodies and our lives.

So, how about you give yourself a little exercise in the car while you drive. I know, I know, turning the wheel can be strenuous enough, but try moving your left arm down or up just a quarter of an inch every time you want to change the direction of your vehicle. I know, it seems like a lot, but just give a shot — your body will thank you and so will everyone else on the road.

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Wrecked Ferrari 458 Italia

WreckedExotics just got pictures of the first wrecked Ferrari 458 Italia. Man these guys don’t have to have their cars for long to really screw up. Other than the pics, no more information has been given about the wreck, so if you have any info on the matter, head over to the WreckedExotics page and let them know. After the info has been received, the first person to correctly guess the date of the crash wins $500.

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Since the first automobile was rolled on the horse-trekked roadways, the usage of these four-wheel conveyances have been governed by laws. With over a century spent driving, some traffic and/or car-related laws have eventually be antiquated or just downright nutty. Among these, some of the earlier traffic laws remain on the books as remnants to the early days of the horseless carriage where only an elite few motorists could putter around in than-bazaar machines. As the automobile became a common and robust form of transportation, some laws of the roadways have faded into obscurity.

Supplying a brief example to some of the wildest automotive laws on the land, the following list catches the legal system spinning its wheels Keep in mind the following laws are for entertainment value only. Please be aware that this writer as well as Automoblog.net expects all motorists to abide to the set (not necessarily the presently listed) traffic laws accepted within their jurisdiction.

1. A car is the only item permitted inside of a garage

Place of Jurisdiction: Long Beach, California

Car culture in California has long been vibrant (and who can blame them for that!) but rewarding the automobile with its own room in the house is unique to the Long Beach area. In attempting to rationalize why such an ordinance would exist, possible thoughts of reducing fire and theft risks comes to mind. Perhaps another reason for the law could be to discourage rock bands from jamming in the garages.

2. When entering city limits in an automobile, you must alert the police

Place of Jurisdiction: Illinois State

A fragment leftover from when there were more police officers than motorists, law enforcement may be facing deeper pressing issues other than daily commuters alerting them of another vehicle in the city.

3. It is illegal for a woman to drive unless there’s a man in front of the vehicle waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians

Place of Jurisdiction: New Orleans, Louisiana, Memphis, Tennessee, Waynesboro, Virginia

A law which even than would constitute as an embarrassment to women, the man would probably feel extremely put out under a predicament such as running down the streets with a flag. However, to a man acting as a guide to his wife’s car would certainly be a deterrent to the escapades of a cheating husband.

Serious though, women have been licensed to drive vehicles in the United States since 1900 but it wasn’t until the deep latter part of the 20^th century that females were properly accepted on roads.

4. It’s illegal to wipe a car with used underwear

Place of Jurisdiction: San Francisco, California

As you can tell, while California remains an automotive friendly state, the region tops other states in stupid laws.In this case, we must remember that many laws have been created for a reason. However, this is one particular bylaw we would probably be thankful not to learn of its origin.

5. When approaching an intersection by car, a driver is required to signal crossing the street with the following procedure: Driver must exit the vehicle with a shotgun, look both ways and fire 3 shots into the air before proceeding back to their vehicle to cross the intersection

Place of Jurisdiction: Various regions including Wichita, Kansas, and the state of South Carolina

First and foremost, it’s important to state this traffic law is obsolete as modern firearm offenses would now supersede this practice. However, in days before traffic lights and signs, electric horns or turn signals were made automotive standard equipment, it was actually considered the law to use a shotgun in a way that would be judged as reckless in today’s traffic laws.

Similar laws can be found on the books in other regions. For example, when traveling down country roads in the state of Pennsylvania at night, it is required that a rocket must be fired into the air every mile. On top of that condition, the driver must wait 10 minutes before proceeding down the road.

Reference Source:www.dumblaws.com

Photo Source: Chris Nagy

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In some ways, this is as surprising as Sarah Palin’s “viability” for elected office. Well of COURSE someone was going to make a rollercoaster that had something to do with NASCAR or, in this specific instance, Dale Earnhardt.

The coaster, dubbed The Intimidator (natch), bills itself as ” … the fastest, tallest, and longest roller coaster in the Southeast.” The irony of it only being the most impressive in a regional sense was not lost on me.

The Intimidator is more than a mile long, is 232 feet high and drops 211 feet in one big go and is located at the Carowinds theme park. Riders of The Intimidator hit 80 miles per hour in rollercoaster cars that are made to look like the #3 Chevy Monte Carlo driven by Dale Earnhardt. Only the cars on the coaster have more than one, cramped, Kirkey seat, and they are set up in a stadium seating style so that everyone gets a clear view.

The cars are also bolted to the track, as are all rollercoaster cars.

Which is why I find rollercoasters boring.

Sure, you’re doing these big drops, and hitting fairly high speeds and pulling some occasional elevated Gs, but the damn things are bolted to the track. You can look out in front of you and say, “OK, looks like I’m going to be making a left in a few seconds.”

That’s way different than driving your own car in, say, an SCCA rally, where you will be hitting fairly high speeds and pulling some occasional elevated Gs, and you can look out in front of you and say, “OK, looks like I HAVE TO be making a left in a few seconds.”

It’s a totally different thing when YOU have to control the car, and if you don’t, THEN you are on one hell of a ride governed by Dr. Newton and ending with you in a hospital or worse.

The only thing that would make The Intimidator truly interesting is if one of its troglodytic riders where to pull some sort of stunt that caused him to snap his neck and end up winning a Darwin Award.

Source: Autoblog

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In a law that seems to be inspired by those moronic and self-centered “baby on board” stickers, the state of New Jersey (The Garden State!) as decided to implement a new law that requires drivers under the age of 21 to attach red stickers on their front and rear license plates. It’s called Kyleigh’s Law because a teenage driver, by the name of Kyleigh, was killed by another teenage driver while operating a motor vehicle.

The new law in New Jersey (The Garden State!) requires that a red sticker needs to be placed in the upper left hand corner of the license plate while the teenage driver is driving. Naturally, the red sticker of shame and infamy can be removed when an older, assumedly safer, person is driving. The red sticker can be transferred to another car that the untrustworthy teenage driver might be operating.

Attorney Gregg Trautmann said that the red sticker is equivalent to tagging teenagers with a scarlet letter for age discrimination and can make them a target for police and sex offenders. And Raymond Martinez, the guy in charge of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, called the law “one of the most significant steps forward in teen driver safety.”

Ray didn’t elaborate on just HOW this was going to make things “safer”, but I will give him an award for making a statement even more pandering and fear mongering than Trautmann’s.

Naturally, the red stickers of shame and infamy will not come free to the teens required to use them. They can be purchased at motor vehicle agencies and cost $4.00, with sales beginning in April of 2010. The new law will take effect on May 1, 2010.

So what happens if you take the sticker off, or it falls off or some such other scenario happens? That will cost you $100.00 if you get caught.

Source: Top Speed

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Is this some sort of a joke? Is there a hidden camera watching me? Just how much of a sadist are you Chris? OK, so this lands in my inbox this morning: ” Barracuda Racing Wheels “GIRLZ-STYLE”,” and besides the atrocious and blatant use of the letter “z”, the Englishing in press release is too funny.

” The passion which the female part of human kind has for a nice pair of shoes has already become legendary. It will probably remain a secret from men for all eternity as to why a woman will regularly drop everything and always pursue the latest shoe trends, regardless of the danger of thus ruining themselves financially.”

See, this is why BabelFish is a bad idea when it comes to doing your international corporate communications.

Not only that, but I’d love to be in the offices of Barracuda Racing Wheels when the heir aperients to Andrea Dworkin get wind of this. The blood bath will no doubt look like something out of a Peckinpah film.

BARRACUDA RACING WHEELS (another Euro firm that insists on their company name being in all caps) is a Swiss rim forging company. Maybe they think that being Swiss gives them some sort of neutrality when they toss off misogynistic BS like: “BARRACUDA RACING WHEELS is now giving trendy girls the opportunity to apply their “shoe tick” to the “shoes” of their car as well. Make way for the new, extravagant BARRACUDA rim line GIRLZ-STYLE!”

Yeah, make way for seeing your liver flying out the office window bub. And what’s with that exclamation point? Trendy girls? I won’t even start on that.

” The newly offered products by BARRACUDA will make women’s hearts beat faster … ” only if they fly into an Artemisian-style frenzy, gracefully draw their bows and level that ewe wood bolt at your Swiss skulls.

Swarovski? Oh dear God. “The gleaming “brilliant art” Swarovski crystals also come into their own with the sporty Karizzma wheel, in particular in its matt black design. They are available in the colour tones “Crystal”, “Light Sapphire” and “Light Rose”. Other colour variations are available on request.”

Yeah, here’s a request for you … oh never mind.

Photos: BARRACUDA RACING WHEELS

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Here’s an interesting conversion that should send Ralph Nader into a full loop lock up of the main processor: A rather nice EV conversion of a very nice looking Corvair Corsa convertible. But before we get into that, I’ve got a great story about electric Corvairs.

I now, how many of them are there?

Lord, I don’t know, but I do know that back in the late 1960s MIT built an electric Corvair of their very own. My oldest brother is a frighteningly smart guy, and a car guy to boot. He was attending MIT, and working on his masters (see, I’m not kidding) and right down the hall from his lab was the lab for these other grad students that were converting a Corvair to run on a few scores of Sears Diehard car batteries.

It was part of an EV competition happening back in the day. They had already run the thing out at the Bonneville Salt Flats (cool!) but they brought it back to Cambridge for some tweaks to make it faster.

So one day my brother is working in his lab, making a thing that you put a normal book in and it will turn it into Braille in real time so blind people can read (cool, huh?), and he says, ‘All of a sudden I hear this commotion from one end of the building. And then I smell smoke like an electrical fire. So I open up the door and look down the hall. And coming from the end where the garage is, there’s acrid smoke just billowing out, but I can see it’s calming down.”

So he goes down to investigate, and there’s the MIT electric Corvair covered in soot.

Turns out that one of the guys had dropped a Craftsman combination wrench on the main positive and negative terminals, and grounded out the array of batteries in a split second. The wrench literally welded to the terminals.

Bad scene man.

Anyway, this EV Corvair looks to me a LOT better than the MIT version.

Under the bonnet of the eBay car there’s a 144V AC 24 conversion kit made by Electroauto. That kit alone costs rings in at around $10,000, without batteries. Which this car has 18 eight-volt lead acid batteries “mounted as low as possible for good balance.” nice touch.

The seller is offering to take $1,500 off if you don’t want the Hurst wheels with redline tires and opt for stock rally wheels. But I say go for the Hursts. Nice look.

Source: AutoBlogGreen

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Two shiny new exotic cars – a Lamborghini Murcielago and Ferrari F430 – wrecked into each other in South Africa, and that’s not even interesting part. The two drivers involved were attending a wedding reception for the family of the ruling political party in the town of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, when the cars collided. The Lamborghini was apparently driven by a former hitman convicted of six murders, but was granted political amnesty and let off.

According to WreckedExotics:

After the accident, the drivers apparently beat up people who were trying to take photos. After the police arrived, they took no statement or accident report and ignored the beatings. A light pole that was bent in half will be repaired using tax payer money.

Right, clearly there’s no corruption going on there. Someone still managed to take a few pics of the wreck though, and here they are for your enjoyment.

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Here at Automoblog.net, we are all car enthusiasts. We like driving fast, sometimes too fast, sliding around, and generally having fun in our sports cars. We write a lot about fast cars and their various high-speed abilities, but rarely talk about the importance of driving safely on public roads. I know it’s boring, but pay attention.

Earlier today I was driving to the Olive Garden for lunch (love the soup, salad & breadsticks) and witnessed a lady in her Chrysler Town & Country taking a left turn at an intersection, not paying attention, run off the side of the road into the ditch and hit a sign, almost flipping the minivan. She was okay, but it got me thinking about how little people pay attention to driving when they’re driving.

Nowadays we’re so busy with our lives that we multitask everything. While driving, I’ve seen people put on makeup, read a newspaper, eat and drink, talk on their cell phones, text message, and even use a laptop while driving. Somewhere in the course of their commute, they felt it was reasonable to pilot a 2 ton hunk of metal down the road at 55 mph and check their email at the same time! Let’s evaluate ourselves here and think about why that’s a really, really bad idea. Shouldn’t take long.

Breaking News: Snow and Ice are Slippery!
The More You Talk, The Slower You Drive

Driving enthusiasts get it a little bit more. We value the driving experience. Paying attention to what we’re doing while driving is part of the enjoyment, so that’s not a problem most of the time. However, we tend to get overconfident in our driving ability at times (admit it guys,) and drive way too fast, or corner a bit harder than we should on public roads. I admit I’ve curbed my Z once (overcorrected my slide, lesson learned) and I’ll take it far past the speed limit on occasion, and it’s not smart. Car parts are expensive, and really add up when repairing your car. Trust me.

We’ve covered a few instances of this type of driving that didn’t end very well for the driver:

Idiot Crashes Bugatti Veyron Into Lake
Dealer Crashes Ultra Rare Koenigsegg CCX
Ferrari Enzo Wreck
Wrecked Ferrari 360 Modena
Ferrari Testarossa Crash
140 mph Speeder gets Nailed via Youtube

All due to negligence from the driver. This sort of thing happens so often, in fact, WreckedExotics.com is dedicated to exotic car wrecks, and is one of the most popular websites on the internet. Thanks to them for three of the pictures in this article.

Driving while impaired is even worse, because you know before you even get into the car that you’re being irresponsible. Innocent people get killed every day from drunk drivers, yet thousands of people still do it every night because of the fundamentally incorrect “won’t happen to me” mentality. It’s a stupid decision that has always confused me as to why someone would think it’s okay to drive drunk.

It’s rather simple, actually. When you’re driving a car, no matter how boring it is, pay attention. You have other people’s lives in your hand – other drivers as well as your passengers (spouse, children, friends,) who are all trusting you with their lives, and when you put their lives and your own at risk because you feel it’s more important to text message your BFF, that’s totally not cool.

Driving enthusiasts…here’s a secret: you’re not as good a driver as you think you are. Tracks exist for a reason. They’re made so you can go fast and do almost anything in your car you want and have a great time going fast. Save it for the track, it’s not worth the risk.

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Andy House, owner of Performance Auto Sales (specializing in repaired exotics, ironically) in Lufkin, Texas, was driving on Interstate 45 early last week when he crashed his 2006 Bugatti Veyron into a nearby lake. According to Mr. House, a pelican distracted him, making him drop his cell phone and lose control of the car.

Galveston Daily News reported:

The man, who refused to give his name, was looking at real estate in Galveston.
About 3 p.m. a low-flying pelican distracted him as he traveled north on Interstate 45 just south of the hurricane levee near Omega Bay.
The man jerked the wheel, dropped his cell phone, and the car’s front tire left the frontage road and entered a muddy patch, which foiled his attempt to maneuver away from the lagoon.

Luckily, two dudes listening to Sublime caught it all on video, thinking they were watching a Lamborghini crash into the water. Check out the video:

“I think it’s a Lambo, dude.”

The creator of the video said:

I recorded this 5 miles away from my house in Galveston County, Texas. We have a very rich neighborhood right next to the beach. I was stunned! Third or fourth Veyron Crashed A distracted owner of a Bugatti Veyron, one of the world’s fastest production cars, accidently drove Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009, into a lake in Galveston, Texas. The driver was uninjured, but the car, which can sell for around $2 million, was partially submerged in three feet of water.

Some are reporting that the crash was a hoax for insurance fraud. Did you see a pelican in the video? I’m not here to make judgment, but I wouldn’t count out the possibility.

According to reports, Mr. House bought the Bugatti for $1.25 million from a Jonesboro, Ark. dealer last month and was on his way to Galveston, TX to look at real estate. The Bugatti Veyron was one of 15 made for the United States.

We have more footage of the Bugatti below, this one is of the car being towed out of the lake:

Related posts:

1. 2009 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport – Yep, It’s Official: the Bugatti Veyron Goes Topless
2. Bugatti Veyron Reaches 253 mph Top Speed
3. Bugatti Veyron Pegaso Edition