Paul Walker may not be with us anymore, but his Toyota Supra from the flick The Fast and the Furious is – and it’s now up for auction.
The tango-orange coloured beast is well known and loved by fans of the movie franchise, and features in the final race scene between Walker and Vin Diesel.
Built in El Segundo, California, by Eddie Paul, the Supra is powered by twin Holley Performance nitrous oxide bottles and comes equipped with a 5-speed manual transmission.
Estimates put the final sale price at around $200,000, which isn’t half bad for a car driven by a legend.
Second-Hand Car Trade Emerges In China
China is the world’s biggest car market, but until recently, few Chinese were willing to dirty themselves with second hand cars, preferring instead to always buy brand spanking new vehicles that had no previous owners and which cost a mint.
Indeed, the stats are that for every four new vehicles, only one used car is sold. In Europe and the USA, where buyers couldn’t give a toss about giving an old banger a go, the opposite is true: We buy one new car for every four used cars.
Yay for bangers!
One of the reasons for the reluctance to go for used scrap in China is that 65% of buyers in 2014 were first-time buyers, which invariably means there are actually few second hand cars to go around. Moreover, the Chinese as a culture just love new things, and strongly question the quality of something that has already been used for a few years – especially a Proton.
Now, though, used car sales are booming in China, with used car sales jumping 16.3%. Ford Motor Group are already sniffing around and saying that “used car sales is an area we want to work on with our dealers.”
Sure, course you do. You just wanna flog those crappy second hand Fiesta’s to the cash strapped, gullible Chinese, don’t you?
Floyd Mayweather Snaps Up 100 Cars From Dealership
According to the respected periodical, USA Today, boxing champion Floyd “Money” Mayweather recently walked into Towbin Motorcars, Las Vegas, and bought over 100 cars.
It’s not quite like walking into Tesco and snapping up 100 cans of Carlsberg because they’re on offer.
The boxer, who is due in the ring on May 2 to take on Chilean rival Manny Pacquiao, reportedly always pays for his cars in cold hard cash, often walking into dealerships with duffel bags loaded with $$$.
Among his shopping list this time around – which was 17” long – were 16 Rolls Royce and “several Bugattis”, the latter of which can cost up to a staggering $2 million each. According to reports, there were “no Renault Zoe’s on Mr. Mayweather’s list this time around.”
Analysts came to the conclusion that in a single trip, Mayweather bought “82 more cars than most of us will purchase in an entire lifetime.”
Recession? What f****** recession!!
China Launch Their Very Own BMW i3
It’s well known that China don’t really have any ideas of their own. For the last decade, they’ve been copying America when it comes to the economy, and they’ve been copying European’s when it comes to cars. And now they’re about to launch the Jinma JMW2200, which is essentially their version of the BMW i3 – only not quite as good.
It looks the same, even sounds the same – Jinma is Chinese for Golden Horse, whilst BMW in Chinese translates back into English as Treasure Horse – and even drives the same. The only real difference is that, whereas the BMW i3’s interior is lush and chic, the Jinma’s is, well, awful.
I guess the idea is that you’re sold the Jinma JMW2200 before actually getting inside it. After all, it looks like the i3, so why wouldn’t you snap one up as soon as you arrive at a Beijing dealership? It’ll get you from A to B. Maybe.
The company behind the tiny little Jinma is Quingzhou Da Jinma Motorcycle Corporation, a company who just a few years ago were still making bicycles. We’re wondering if they’ve not made the step up from bikes to electric cars a little too quickly.
Rumour has it that Floyd Mayweather walked into a Beijing dealership last week and bought 77 Jinma JMW2200’s.
Honda Proposes Idea To Speed-Up American Traffic
America suffers from mega traffic jams, and because it’s such a huge country, state governments have for some time now been trying to solve the problem of transporting people from city to city by land more quickly. With teleportation still a non-starter, people have instead been looking at cars and railways.
Elon Musk of Tesla fame had the idea of a high-tech ‘hyper loop’, whilst the state of California proposed a high-speed rail scheme that has so far been deemed to be too expensive and too controversial.
And now Honda are the latest to come up with a barmy scheme in a bid to move people about with greater efficiency. The idea? High-speed lanes for driverless cars.
Frank Paluch, president of research and development for Honda Americas, said:
“(Elon Musks’) Hyper-loop is a pretty big idea. But here’s one that I think is even better because it’s centered on the human desire for personal mobility. How about a dedicated lane on the I-5 for highly automated, connected vehicles, using swarm technology to travel at speeds upwards of 300kph [180mph]. LA to San Fran in less than two hours. No drive to the train station, and no constraints on when you can come or when you go.”
The idea sounds awesome: Once you enter the high-speed lane, you can sit back, relax, have a nap, have a burger etc, whilst your car does all the hard work for you. Come on Vauxhall, do something for us Brits!
