Flower Power: Alfa Romeo MiTo "Inked" by Louise Dear

Alfa Romeo has commissioned a one-off art piece to mark the UK launch of its congestion charge free MiTo 1.3 JTDM-2 Sprint, which is powered by an 85-horsepower turbo diesel that emits 95g/km of CO2 . Read more »

DIY: How to Drive Your Face into the Sand

Scooters can be a fun alternative form of transportation and recreation, especially during summer vacations. However, as with any other motorized bike or any type of vehicle for that matter, you really need to keep your head up – literally.

Despite the comical end of this young man’s attempt to fool around with a scooter, we reckon that using his face to dig a hole in the sand sounds much better than the alternative ending had he managed to ramp his way over the lump of sand… Follow the break for the video.

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Porsche Restored 1973 US-Spec 911 T Coupe Awaits Lucky Owner

One of the main attractions of the Porsche Club of America’s (PCA) parade in Savannah, Georgia from July 31 to August 7, will be a fully restored, US-Spec 1973 911 T Coupe. What’s more, one lucky winner of a raffle will get to own it.

The idea behind the “Revive the Passion” project, as the restoration process was named, came up four years ago in Daytona and involved offering a classic, instead of a new car, to the winner of the raffle. The search begun and the suitable car was found near LA. It was then presented at the 2010 edition of the Porsche Parade event.

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Buying a New Car? Why Not Bundle A European Holiday

Did you know that there are holiday packages that bundle airfares, accommodation and cosmetic surgery? It’s a sort of incentive program for women (and some men) to have their surgery done overseas and is especially popular in Britain and Australia. Well, as some of you may already know, there are similar programs for people who want to buy a new car.

These so-called, “European Delivery Programs” are offered by companies as diverse as Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volvo. Effectively you’re bundling a discount European vacation with your new car purchase.

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How do you say Ferris Bueller in German? 14-Year old Borrows Dad’s Brand New Ferrari for a Joyride

A German couple living in Berlin was returning from a trip to Spain on Tuesday, when the Polizei stopped them on a motorway and detained them for questioning. The reason? The parent’s 14 year-old son had taken their new €200,000 (US$280,000) Ferrari (the police didn't reveal the model, just the make) for a spin, initiating a police operation for his capture that lasted many hours!

"The 14-year-old was unable to resist the temptation," the police told the AFP. "When an acquaintance of the family noticed the car and the boy were missing, he suspected theft or even an abduction."

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Video: Guess What Scared a 1,200 HP Bugatti Veyron Super Sport at Goodwood…

There’s nothing faster, short of a Formula 1 car, than a Bugatti Veyron, right? In particular, a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport boasting a 1,200HP quad-turbocharged 16-cylinder engine, four-wheel drive tech and a 258 mph (415 km/h) top speed. Whoever is behind its wheel must feel invincible, right?

Well, actually, no. A few days ago, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a Veyron Super Sport that was ready to begin its climb up the hill pulled over and let another car start first. What car was that?

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Redesign Update: Carscoop 5.1

As you probably already noticed, on Saturday, July 9, we passed on to the second phase of our redesign, which started out with a clean sheet back in May (read more about that here).

This time, we focused clearly on the design aspect tweaking and updating the styling after taking into consideration your constructive criticism and ideas. Changes include but are not limited to the larger and more prominent Carscoop logo, the font choices throughout the site and the more compact sidebar sections.

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It Came From eBay Hell: Mercury Cougar Based Bugatti Veyron Replica

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Of all the cars I’ve featured in “It Came From eBay Hell”, this one takes the cake. It’s a 2002 Mercury Cougar with 120,000 miles (193,120 kilometres) on the clock, though that’s not what makes it special. No, what makes it special is the composite and fibreglass Bugatti Veyron body draped over it.

That’s right: it’s a Cougatti Vercuryon! Not only does this modern masterpiece come with (Walmart™ Brand) 20-inch rims, two-tone paint and leather everything, it also comes with all the stuff that made the Mercury Cougar the modern classic it is today:

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Audi Q7 Pickup Truck Photo Begs the Question: Is it Real or Fake?

This photograph of an Audi Q7 SUV turned into a pickup with an aluminum truck bed appeared today on several sites, all pointing towards an Audi fan blog as the source.

Over the years, we’ve seen one too many photo-chops making the internet rounds to take everything we see online for granted. In this case, even though there appears to be an inconsistency in the shadows between the lower parts of the front door and the rear panel, we just can’t be 100 percent sure.

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Kanye West Beware: BMW’s 1-Series Composes its Own Music

It’s a fact that car manufacturers go to great lengths to promote their new products. Traditional means like TV and press advertising are so last year –and so is celebrity endorsement, though they are still employed by the carmakers. However, the new place to be are the social media, like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

BMW has gone one step further in promoting its brand-new 2012 1-Series: it has created a video clip named “check my machine” which shows the process of manufacturing the car.

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Video: BMW Alpina B6 GT3 Flies Over Safety Barriers and Crashes Onto Concrete Wall

The spectators at last weekend’s ADAC GT Masters championship at the Nürburgring witnessed a horrific crash involving Alex Plenagl and his BMW Alpina B6 GT3 racecar when the driver lost control of the vehicle and strayed off the course at a high speed.

Plenagl’s Alpina flew over the safety barriers, passed through a BMW sign and crashed onto the concrete wall.

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UK Insurer Parts the Most Unreliable and Costly Car to Fix

In an article on a BMW-faced Honda Accord we found for sale on Craigslist back in 2008, we wrote that in a perfect world, our ultimate car would be “designed by Italians, engineered by Germans, built by Japanese and marketed by Americans”.

So, what’s the worst car one could imagine? Well, if we played around with the above statements, we’d say one designed by Japanese, engineered by Americans, built by Italians and marketed by Germans.

But UK insurance firm Warranty Direct had something a little bit different in mind. Instead of playing the origin card, the company decided to check out its database of 50,000 live policies on cars aged five years on average to part the UK’s most unreliable vehicle that would break down every other month and cost an average of £2,050 (equal to US$3,270 - €2,330) to fix each year.

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Sir Stirling Moss Buys an Aston Martin Cygnet for his Wife

You would never think that an Aston Martin would need any sort of marketing push from a personality like Sir Stirling Moss, but to play around with our own words, up until recently, you would never think that Aston Martin would actually try to sell a hugely overpriced city car that’s a rebadged Toyota model…

In any case, the British racing legend is one of the first customers to receive the Aston Martin Cygnet, which he purchased as a birthday gift to his wife, Lady Moss. Appropriately, there was a photographer in hand to capture the gift-wrapped Cygnet.

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Top Gear: McLaren MP4-12C Records Second Fastest Power Lap Time, Trumps Ferrari 458 [with Video]

We have already seen Fifth Gear’s Tiff Needell and Jason Plato pit the new McLaren MP4-12C against the Ferrari 458. Now, it’s time for BBC’s Top Gear TV hosts and in particular, Jeremy Clarkson and the Stig to get behind the wheel of McLaren’s finest and try it on the show's test track.

At Top Gear's famous power lap, the MP4 12C recorded an amazing time of just 1:16.2 minutes, which puts it in second place right behind the insane Ariel Atom V8 (1:15.1) and in front of some of the world’s fastest supercars such as the Bugatti Veyron S (1:16.8”), the Gumpert Apollo (1:17.1”) and most importantly, Ferrari’s rivaling 458 Italia (1:19.1”).

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It’s a Man’s World: 7 in 10 UK Women Prefer to Leave Car Servicing to Men

Despite all the talk about equality of the two sexes, there are still some things that even women prefer to be done by men like having their cars serviced – at least in the UK. And we ‘re not talking about getting their hands dirty but actually taking their car to the service station.

According to new research from car servicing network, Bosch Car Service, which surveyed 1,022 UK adults (18+) representative of the UK adult population, just three out of every ten women take their cars for servicing on their own, in comparison to seven out of ten men.

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Yeeeee-Haaa! Fail Jump: The VW Caddy Edition

Many have tried, but few, if any that is, have succeeded. We’re talking about people who try to imitate the driving style of the Dukes of Hazzard, but who eventually end up in a situation that’s closer to what you’d expect from Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane than Bo and Luke Duke.

In this video, we see the driver of Volkswagen Caddy small van getting off the road to use a knoll as a lifting ramp… Do we need to say more? Watch the clip for yourself after the break (for a better viewing experience we propose playing both videos at the same time).

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Video: F1 Racing Cars Launching at Goodwood Festival

OK, so a highly-tuned Toyota Celica with the innards of a Corolla WRC (and then some) may have posted the fastest time at the Goodwood hill climb. And yes, it beat a handful of Formula 1 cars to achieve this win.

But we’re pretty sure that the sounds and sights of an array of F1 cars ranging from a 1939 Mercedes-Benz W165 to 2010 editions of Ferrari, Lotus and Red Bull, will make the back of your hair stand up. To find out if that’s true, just watch the video after the jump.

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Caught on Video: Nissan GT-R Crashing into Parked Cars in Moscow

A crazy car crash that took place in Moscow, Russia, on July 6, 2011, was caught on film by a pair of security cameras. The person responsible for the catastrophic scene you see in these aftermath photos that were shot on location is the driver of a black Nissan GT-R.

From what we can tell, the GT-R driver was either street racing with another car or simply trying out the full potential of his high-performance sports coupe on the streets of Moscow. Whatever the case, he failed to steer left after passing a black vehicle from the right and ended up crashing into three parked vehicles.

The force of the impact was so severe that the parked cars were literally thrown into the air as if they toys. Watch the security cam tapes of the accident in the videos after the break.

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Toyota Forklift Comes to the Rescue of Chevrolet Camaro Stuck on a…Curb

It can’t get more embarrassing than this – well, that is, unless someone has footage showing us how the owner of the blue Chevrolet Camaro got himself in this sticky situation in the underground parking garage in the first place.

In the Youtube clip after the jump, we see the aftermath with a...Toyota-branded forklift trying to free Chevy’s pony car, but without any success. One very strange incident indeed.

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Pole Turns 1991 Audi 100 V6 into a 2008 Audi A4 Lookalike

The latest addition to our automotive travesty replica section comes from Poland and it concerns a 1991 Audi 100 2.8 V6 Quattro (the A6’s predecessor) which has been stylistically converted to remind a 2005 Audi A4 sedan. To achieve the look, the Polish owner of the car crafted the front and rear end sections of an A4 to the 100 saloon. But that’s not all he did. Read more »