In 50,000 years, when our mutated evolutionary relatives comb through the still radioactive debris of our civilization, in an effort to reconstruct early transportation history, they'll stumble on this 1974 Karmann Ghia and puzzle over it. Is this the long postulated early missing link between Audi and Volkswagen? The …
Bam, it hits you in the face with all dat chrome. This rolling bling hole is an Isotta Franschini 8A that was built in 1933 and is one of three completed and two surviving. A bling hole? Well, that's something with so much bling, no attention around it can escape its bling field, think Mr. T in his heyday. All eyes…
Okay folks, last day of tardy Autorama coverage. I'm going to go all out and provide a show-centric post every hour, on the hour. Why? So that all you slackers suffering through a Friday in the confines of your cubicles can keep from going insane waiting till five o'clock rolls around. See if you can hang on to your…
Sometimes, on this great journey through life, you witness something so truly breathtaking, so utterly, impossibly perfect, pure and good, it shifts the paradigm of your perception. It is deceptively easy to go right by the "First Love" exhibit in front of Detroit's Cobo hall. A passing glance will reveal nothing out of …
Yes, those are 30" wheels made by DUB. Yes, that's a Cadillac Caprice with a Rolls Royce schnoz. Yes, the kid after the jump is barely taller than the wheel with which he is posing as if it were Spongebob (who was incidentally posing with kids not a hundred feet away). Does that about cover it? It's becoming a…
Yeah, that's right, I'm thumbing my nose at the establishment, giving the finger to the man, and gesturing in any other phalangically based displays of disrespect. I say this is the first C6 Corvette-based conversion that does not, in fact, suck. In pictures it may not work; our very own commenters raked it over the…
On hand for this past Sunday's Autorama festivities in Detroit were Chip Foose of high hot-rod art (and Overhaulin') fame, and his partner in crime/sidekick Chris Jacobs. Apparently Foose is kind of a big thing in hot rodding circles, as evidenced by the throng of fans awaiting a signature in what I could only assume…
Rivets, rivets, rivets. Everywhere, on everything, holding all parts together, acting as thematic motivator and functional fastener de rigeur. The WW2 themed offering is a really cool take on a the open-topped hot rod. It's spartan interior is reminiscent of early Jeeps and Willy's runabouts. Check out the trunk with…
Some of us Jalops have busy lives and a fan base that is not only extensive, but always demanding of attention. As such, sometimes the coverage of a major hot rod show like Detroit's Autorama may be posted a bit late. Hey, you'd post late too if you had to beat off all those fans with a bent tie rod. Anyway, in the…
The reason Damnation Alley didn't make a whole lot of sense back when we saw it in the theatre was that the projectionist ran the reels of this 1977 cinema gem 1-3-4-2. We're still confused. What we do remember is George Peppard driving all over a mixed up apparition of a post-nuclear southern California in the Dean…
While nowhere near the triage conditions of the Paris Media Center
We gave the Sweeter Peeter some rightful business last week on his beef with Karl Brauer. He sent us the static he sent Karl back, and frankly, it was basically more of the same, "Since I started Autoextremist on June 1, 1999..." schtick that he's been parroting since, well 1999, so we didn't bother posting it. That…
Years ago, Pontiac debuted a concept called the 'Rageous. At the time, the joke was, "They should've called it the ''Diculous'." Reader Punkey spotted this C6 set to debut at the SEMA Show over at Autoblog, and our lord and savior is currently trembling in his sandals for the future of humanity. We'll leave the words…
We're back from the Paris auto show, a few millimeters of shoe leather shorter, a few Euros poorer and a few Gitanes smokier. Now, it is the time on Jalopnik when we look back on what we've seen and try to make sense of the Euro-focused cavalcade of cars and put the glitz into global context. What better way to do…
Ten years ago, we were on a boat in Germany celebrating a friend's high-school graduation. Suddenly, this horridly catchy earworm of a song came on and people started to move strangely. Synchronized strangeness, even. "Dear God," we thought to ourselves. "We hope this is one of those weird European things that never…
As the hoary old maxim goes, it ain't over 'til the overweight female bursts into song. And while the large lady with the Viking helmet has yet to belt out her last at the Mondial de l'Automobile press days, she is in the dressing room squeezing into her metal bustier. Mindful of that, we thought we'd offer up a…
We posted a couple of shots of Peugeot's new 908 diesel Le Mans car carelessly gleaned from our big blue screen yesterday. In the interest of reader service, we then shed shoe leather like a PCP-addled Bruce Jenner on a quest to capture images for our files and ended up running across it's li'l brudder, the 907…
Humina. Great Scott! Fabulosity is at hand, revealed by the wacky Frenchmen at Peugeot. The 908 Le Mans coupe prototype is poised to take on the already-stupidly-successful Audi R10. Packed full of diesel and walnuts, the Peugeots and the Citro ns are hoping to ratchet their cachet by taking on the all-conquering…
I'm alone, sitting with Wert's broken glass. My four walls follow me through my past. I was on a Paris train; I emerged in London rain. And Spinelli was waiting there, swimming through apologies. I remember searching for the perfect words. I was hoping Wert might change his mind. I remember Spinelli sleeping next to…
Carrying on with their tradition of unintentionally wacky weirdness, the French have assembled The Prodigious Collection, a display housed in a special section of the Paris show. Past shows have featured collections of James Bond cars and comic-book vehicles, but this year it's all about rare classics; 60 or so of 'em …
