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Peugeot 908 HDi FAP Hybrid Racer Debuts, Fails To Charge Audience

Photo Source: Motor Dude

Recently, Peugeot unveiled their new green Le Mans contender, the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP Hybrid Racer. Although heralded as a major achievement in the racing industry and praised for its environmental progressiveness, I am not enthused. If an automobile doesn’t translate into a real world application, like the Peugeot 908 hybrid racer largely fails to do, then I’m just not interested. To be perfectly honest, I think dropping that kind of cash to engineer a top performance race car that stores any unused kinetic energy is a waste. When was the last time a Formula 1 racer interrupted his crew chief by saying, “Well yes Hank, 0-60mph in under 3 seconds is very impressive, but what kind of gas mileage does it get?”

I’ll hand it to Peugeot though, the design department did a hell of a job creating an aesthetic for the 908 HDi that was both sleeking and imposing, in an impending-alien-probe sort of way. Bottom line: if this were street legal, I’d be all over it, but as it stands, it doesn’t seem particularly exciting.

The 2010 Ford F-150 Raptor: “We’re Going To Drive This Right Up Toyota’s Ass”

In comeback-kid news, Ford has something up its sleeve for the seemingly ill-fated F-150 in the form of the new 2010 Ford F-150 “Raptor”. Intended to be an extreme, off-road version of the current Ford F-150, Ford has been overheard bragging that the F-150 Raptor will be “The first and only Baja 1000 Trophy Truck you’ll be able to buy from a dealer.”

Spy shots of the new 4×4 desert hauler show an F-150 that does indeed appear to have hit the gym. To view gallery, click “Read More”

Sporting a heftier suspension, the Ford Raptor will feature custom-built Fox Racing long-travel shocks that will have 50% more travel than the 8-inch shocks currently found on the Ford F-150 FX4 off-road package. Further attempting to minimize dune-impact, the F-150 Raptor will also be outfitted with a set of bulky 35-inch all-terrain tires. Expected to be badged as a Ford SVT [Special Vehicle Team] product, the Ford F-150 Raptor will be powered by Ford’s 6.1L BOSS V8 engine and although preliminary output was rated at 380-hp and 400lb-ft of torque, experts expect the F-150’s large displacement engine to ultimately net about 420-hp.

Although we’re a little skeptical of its authenticity, one source quoted a Ford exec. on hand at the Raptor’s desert premier in Las Vegas as saying, “We’re going to drive this right up Toyota’s ass.” Now that’s the attitude we like to hear, Ford.

Who has 5000+ cars in his garage?

If you were rich enough to drive any car you wanted, absolutely any car, and money is no object, what would you go for? A Lambo, Bugatti, Merc, Aston, how about something outrageous like a Formula 1 car.

But what if you were truly rich, not just “getting by” like that Bill Gates guy, but truly rich. The Sultan of Brunei is the richest man on earth; he is not counted on rich lists because he does not earn his money it comes from his tiny country’s oil reserves which are basically his. Estimates of his wealth pop up from time to time but the truth is no one has any idea how much cash he has.

So which car do you think the richest man in the world drives, well if you said Lambo, you would have been correct, and if you said Aston that would have been right as well, if you guessed F1 Race-car you would have been nearly right, he owns every F1 championship winning car for the last thirty years.

These cars fit very nicely into his garage which is a bit bigger than your garage at home; it has to be to be able to accommodate the estimated 5000 personal vehicles owned by the Sultan. If he picked one car to drive down to the supermarket for a pint of milk each day, it would take him thirteen and a half years to use each one.

He seems to quite like the Rolls Royce range he has over 500 hundred of those, if you tried unsuccessfully to buy a Rolls during the 1990’s that would be because he accounted for over half of their entire sales for that decade.

His collection which may well be far more than 5000 vehicles is estimated to have cost over $4 billion, filling them all up may be a little expensive at $4 a gallon, that is estimated at a minimum of half a million dollars.

Those that voted for the Lambo will be happy to know that he has 20 of those, but he seems to prefer the sleeker appearance of the Ferrari’s as he opted for 367 of those, Jag’s are nice little run-arounds, all 177 of them, as are the 362 Bentleys.

He also likes to not just buy boring, run of the mill BMW’s (185) he also likes something a bit more exotic such as Bentley Dominator 4X4 and the Bentley Java, Ferrari FX (6) the worlds only right hand drive Merc CLX-GTR and the Cizeta Moroder V16T (3)

I personally would not want to be burdened with the stress of having to select a car each day so I will stick with my two door Kia.

Stile Bertone’s B.A.T.-mobile

While the manufacturing arm of Bertone – Carrozzeria Bertone – sits in the tangled web of Concordato Preventivo, Stile Bertone is reviving the family name with the North American debut of the Alfa Romeo Bertone B.A.T. 11 concept.

The B.A.T. 11 is a remake of the 1950’s Alfa Romeo Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica [B.A.T.] car, and seems to be just what the doctor ordered for the ailing Bertone family. The partial brainchild of [and funded largely] by dentist Gary Kaberle, the B.A.T. 11 is based on the platform of the Maserati GT and is ultimately intended to be a longer version of Alfa Romeo’s 8C Competizione.

The B.A.T. 11’s original debut was planned for the Geneva Auto Show back in March, but was instead revealed at a private party separate from the showroom floor. At first blush, the design flaws were obvious and a lot of engineering clean-up was needed before the B.A.T. 11 would be ready for its Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance run in August. Squashing fears that it wouldn’t be completed in time, the B.A.T. 11 was revealed to the press on Tuesday, July 29th.

Although admittedly not the sexiest piece of machinery Stile Bertone has ever designed, with the kinks worked out, the B.A.T. 11 is certainly an engineering marvel worthy of the Bertone name.

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