Cars

The Nissan 370Z is one of our favorite affordable cars; it looks pretty good and offers excellent performance (for the price).  The Japanese manufacturer has now released a new racing version of the car called the Nissan 370Z Nismo RC, the RC doesn’t stand for Radio Control.

The Nissan 370Z Nismo RC is a bare-bones version of the 370Z Nismo and includes deletion of the passenger seat, carpets, AC, sound system, and other “luxury” items.  The car loses 360 pounds, now weighing 2,954 pounds.  Power from the 3.6 liter V6 engine has been slightly increased to 355 horsepower and 276 pound-feet of torque.

The Land Rover Defender and the Mercedes G-Class (also known as G-Wagon or Geländewagen) are at the top of our list of tough off-road vehicles that we would love to have in our garage.  A few months ago Bulgarian tuning firm, Vilner, worked their magic on the Defender and today they present us a tuned version of the Mercedes G-Wagon.

The Defender, in stock form, is a very bare-bones vehicle in terms of creature comforts, so the transformation on that vehicle was massive.  The Mercedes G-Class, on the other hand, comes with a very luxurious interior but Vilner took its interior to the next level.

In October 2013, Lamborghini will be celebrating its 50^th anniversary and I’m certain we can expect something special being unveiled around that time. While suckers like us wait around wondering what the company will come up with, people like Mark Hostler are already visualizing the possible designs should Lamborghini decide to release something.

Mark Hostler is a transportation design student at Staffordshire University and the car you see here is the Lamborghini Ferruccio Concept designed by him. The hard-edged and extremely aggressive concept Lamborghini is supposed to blend the shapes and design details of various Lamborghini’s over the past 50 years.

The sixth generation BMW 3 Series finally has a station wagon (F31) in the lineup and unlike the previous generation, this 3 Series wagon will be available in North America.  The 3 Series wagon will be called Touring in Europe and Sports Wagon in North America, in Europe the car will go on sale later in 2012 while North Americans will have to wait until spring 2013 to get their hands on these sporty wagons.

I’ve been a Datsun/Nissan/Infiniti fan many, many years now. Although the design of the Nissan Juke is way too bold for my taste, I still enjoy looking at the vehicle and admiring the very unique design. And those of you who are Juke fans, you are already very familiar with the Juke-R which started out as a bad ass concept and Nissan is now producing in very, very limited numbers.

Since most of us can’t afford the 485hp Juke-R, there is some good news as Nissan has announced that they are releasing a Juke with the Nismo badge. There is also a 400hp Juke by Fox Marketing but lots of Nissan fans want to keep it “factory” with no outside influence. Although the Nismo Juke is not nearly as powerful as the Juke-R, the 1.6 liter turbo engine will be tuned to bring more life to the vehicle.

Although Toyota had a bit of a head start when it comes to hybrid technology, the competition has pretty much caught up to them and the playing field is relatively level at this point in time. Ford has its marketing guns aimed right at the Toyota Prius V Plug-In Hybrid with their all-new C-MAX Energi.

The 2013 C-MAX Energi is Ford’s Plug-in Hybrid and is scheduled to hit the show room floors during the third quarter of 2012. The C-MAX Energi is powered by a 2.0-liter Atkinson-Cycle four cylinder engine that works in conjunction with an electric motor reaching a peak of 195 horsepower on a fully charged battery.