Europeans in Detroit

Interesting to see a couple of re-badged European cars on display at the 2010 Detroit show earlier this month.



Following its takeover by Fiat, Chrysler clearly couldn’t be bothered to do too much with the Lancia Delta, not even going to the trouble of changing its model name. A minor tweak to the grille seemed to be enough.



The Chrysler Delta.  Or is it?

Buick meanwhile appeared to make a bit more of an effort with the Regal, its version of the Vauxhall / Opel Insignia. The GS shown featured a 252 bhp four cylinder turbo engine. Not quite the 321 bhp that the six cylinder Insignia VXR / OPC has, but it should still be rather quick, with a 0 - 60 mph time below six seconds.

Punto loses its looks

Undoubtedly one of the best features of the Fiat Grande Punto was its styling, which even earned comparison to the design of the Maserati 3200 GT, around the nose at least. Hardly surprising considering that Italdesign was involved in both cars.



So who knows what Fiat was thinking when it signed off the Grande Punto’s successor, the Punto Evo? Being kind, it’s definitely a striking facelift. Being unkind, perhaps they should have left the bandages on. Maybe it’ll look better in the flesh, but the combination of that great chrome strip with the heavy bumper / grille arrangement at the front really isn’t very photogenic.

Not all bad news though - one of the highlights of the Punto Evo has to be the new MultiAir petrol engines that manage to increase power and torque, whilst reducing fuel consumption and emissions. This is achieved by a clever new electro-hydraulic method of controlling the inlet and outlet valves.



It means that the most powerful petrol engine, the 1.4 16v turbo, produces 135 bhp yet will do just over 50 mpg (5.6 l/100km) on the combined cycle (according to Fiat) with carbon dioxide levels of 129 g/km.



By comparison its predecessor, the Grande Punto with the 1.4 T-Jet engine, could generate only 120 bhp, failed to better 43 mpg (6.6 l/100 km) and had emissions of 155 g/km.

Oliver von Feistmantl on Art Cars

Le Baron Convetible Art Car

Racebus Art Car


Oliver von Feistmantl is a comic PoP artist from Vienna Austria that paints on pretty much everything, like houses, ships, snowboards, skateboards and even cars.
He started out as a graffiti artist in the 90´s but got arrested, so he decided to concentrate on legal ways to exhibit throughout Europe, Asia, the Caribbeans and NYC.

He makes acrylic paintings and sculptures in all sizes and in 2008 started to paint on a fishing boat in Thailand and in 2009 started to paint on cars.

The 1974 VW-Bus is called the racebus, because he got an engine from a Porsche 911 and was finished in October 2009. The 93 Chrysler Le Baron convertible was finished in 2010 and is the one he currently drives.

He hopes one day to come across a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow because its his personal dream to one day paint that car as well.

Nissan GT R car Fire Lamp

Nissan GT-R utility vehicle and which is a better place to put it at work than the Nurburgring race track in Germany. This Nissan GT-R fire fighting car is a ultra-rapid response emergency vehicle which was offered by the Japanese carmaker to Nordschleife circuit's officials.

The Nissan GT-R fire fighting car was designed by M&M Automotive and features a medium-pressure extinguisher system (20 bars), winding device for the hose and a radio communication system. The Nissan GT-R fire fighting car will be able to fight an unfortunate event for around 2 minutes on one tank.



The Nissan GT-R fire fighting car is based on the standard model with a power output of 485 PS.