Forgotten Wonder – The First Transparent Car Made in America

Unveiled in 1939, the Pontiac Ghost Car was the first completely transparent car made in America, and eight decades later, photos of it are still a wonder to behold.

Designed to showcase everything that goes into making an automobile in a time when the automotive industry was thriving, the Pontiac Ghost Car was built by General Motors in partnership with Rohm and Hass, the company that invented Plexiglas. The revolutionary material essentially replaced the sheet of metal out of which the car’s body was usually made of, thus offering a clear view of the inner workings of the vehicle. To add to its striking appearance, the metallic structure featured a copper wash, the hardware was chrome-plated and the tires were white, instead of the usual black. The Ghost Car’s total cost was estimated at $25,000 at the time.

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You Can Now Buy a $35,000 Bugatti Electric Car For Your Kids

Introducing the electric toy car for the 1%. Luxury car maker Bugatti teamed up with London-based Little Car Company to create 500 miniature electric cars for kids, priced at a spicy $35,000 each.

The French car maker originally unveiled the children’s electric car, named Bugatti Baby II, at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show, and soon after announced that all planned 500 units had been sold to wealthy parents all over the world. But then the Covid-19 pandemic happened and suddenly some of the buyers decided that spending tens of thousands of dollars on what is essentially a children’s toy was ill-advised under the circumstances. So Bugatti had no choice but to announce that some Bugatti Baby II electric cars for kids are once again available for purchase. They start at $35,000, get them while they’re hot!

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The World’s Cheapest Electric Car Costs $930, Can Be Mailed to Your Door

If you’ve been dreaming of going electric, but can’t yet afford to buy a Tesla, you can start low, really low. Changli, the world’s cheapest electric car, will set you back just $930 ($1,200 with larger batteries), and can be ordered online and delivered to your door.

Designed and produced by Chinese manufacturer Changzhou Xili Car Industry, the Changli, or Changli Nemeca is a tiny electric vehicle that has been getting a lot of attention online after being promoted as the world’s most affordable electric car. Calling this thing a car is kind of stretching it a bit, as it’s electric motor can only produce the equivalent of 1.16 horse power, and it has a top speed of only 30 km/h. Still, it does come with some interesting features, like air-conditioning, independent suspension, heater, radio and even reverse-view camera. But the most impressive thing about the Changli, in my opinion, is that you can have it delivered to your doorstep.

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This Miniature Rolls Royce Costs as Much as a Real Car

If you can’t afford to shell out $330,000 on a brand new Rolls Royce Cullinan, you can still get a 1:8 replica complete with the SUV’s iconic accessories and details for “just” $27,000.

Car miniatures don’t usually cost as much as a decent daily driver, but then again this isn’t your average miniature. It consists of more than 1,000 individual parts carefully put together by hand by Rolls Royce experts in about 450 hours. That’s more than half the time it takes the luxury car company to build an actual Rolls Royce Cullinan. Plus, the Richie Rich-worthy toy comes with working exterior lights, as well as a mini version of the 6.75-liter, twin-turbocharged V12 used for the Rolls Royce SUV.

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Get Your Own Batmobile for Just $850,000

If you’re a Dark Knight fan with money to burn, you may be interested in this cool-looking Batmobile on sale in Russia for just 55,000,000 rubles, or about $850,000.

Batmobile replicas are not that uncommon nowadays, but the one currently being sold on Russian online marketplace Auto.ru, stands out in terms of looks, performance and price. First of all this is  very modern take on the iconic Batmobile, I’d say even more so than the Tumbler featured in the dark Knight trilogy. It has a very aggressive look, complemented by a menacing machine gun that actually comes with realistic sound effects, and measures 4 meters wide, which means you won’t be able to drive it everywhere. Powered by a 5-liter engine, this rear-wheel drive Batmobile has a top speed of 100km/h, and features a bunch of cool accessories – such as bulletproof windows, thermal imaging with 255x zoom, and a night vision camera – designed to make you feel like a real-life Batman.

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Emirati Sheikh Build’s World’s Largest, Most Bizarre SUV

Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan combined a military truck and a Jeep to create what he believes to be the world’s largest SUV.

Called Dhabiyan, the monstrous 10-wheel vehicle is based on the Oshkosh M1075 military truck with a Jeep Wrangler annexed to it as a driver cabin. It is powered by a 600hp, 15.2-liter, 6-cylinder Caterpillar C15 diesel engine, weighs a whopping 24 tonnes and measures 10,8m in length, 2.5 meters in width, and 3.2 meters in height. Dhabiyan was reportedly designed and built by Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, one of the most well-known car collectors in the UAE.

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This Book About the History of Ferrari Costs More Than a Car

$30,000 may not buy you a new Ferrari, but it’s enough to cover the cost of this limited edition book on the history of the iconic sports car brand.

Before you freak out about the price, you should know that it includes a beautifully sculptured steel and chrome book stand, as well as an aluminum display case for the incredibly rare book. Together, the two artistic pieces created by designer Marc Newson are supposed to emulate the legendary Ferrari 12-cylinder engine. Titled simply ‘Ferrari’, the book itself is described as a “massive tome” and includes loads of photographs from the Ferrari archive that tell the history of the luxury Italian brand.

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Russian Car Enthusiast Builds Functional Mercedes G-Class SUV Out of Ice Blocks

A motorist from the Russian city of Novosibirsk teamed up with a local ice sculptor to create a unique Mercedes G-Class SUV using blocks of ice mounted on a metal chassis and powered by an old engine.

Vladislav Barashenkov, the host of Garage 54, a popular YouTube channel focusing on cars, recently went viral for an invention that’s as outrageous as it is cool – a budget version of the Mercedes G-Class luxury SUV made largely out of clear blocks of ice. But Barashenkov wanted it to be more than just a cool looking ice sculpture, so he simply had the sculptor create the body out of ice, which he then mounted on the chassis of an old UAZ 469 military utility vehicle. That made the ice SUV drivable, although riding in it isn’t as smooth as a real G-Class.

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In Japan They Use Motorcycles as Musical Instruments

If you’re into motorcycles, you’ve probably heard about Bōsōzoku, the Japanese rebel biker gangs often associated with outlandish motorcycle tuning. But what you probably didn’t know is that they like to use their bike to create really loud music.

Thrill-seeking Bōsōzoku gangs have been known to engage in a variety of dangerous and illegal activities, like racing through city streets, weaving through traffic and running red lights, or removing the mufflers on their bikes to make even more noise than usual. But ever since Japanese police started cracking down on illegal Bōsōzoku activities in the early 2000s, they’ve had to come up with new ways of passing time without breaking the law. That’s how they came up with “Bōsōzoku sound battles”, where participants compete in creating the most impressive dubstep tunes using the throttle and clutch on their motorcycles.

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Hot Wheels Collector Decorates His Jaguar S-Type with 4,600 Colorful Toy Cars

Ever since he decorated his prized Jaguar S-Type with 4,600 colorful toy cars from his Hot Wheels collection, a Malaysian businessman has been turning heads in and around Kuala Lumpur.

Reports of an unusual-looking Jaguar S-Type limousine covered in thousands of miniature cars driving around the Malaysian capital had been circulating on social media for a few weeks, but no one knew anything about it, who the owner was or if it was just some sort of marketing stunt. Luckily, the Harian Metro managed to track down the owner and get to the bottom of this mystery.

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Woman Kisses Brand New Car for 50 Hours, Gets to Take It Home

Dilini Jayasuriya, a 30-year-old woman from Austin, Texas, recently won a brand new 2017 KIA Optima LX after kissing it continuously for 50 hours in a “Kiss a KIA” contest.

Sponsored by iHeart radio station 96.7 KISS FM, the Kiss a KIA contest started on Monday morning, with 20 people gluing their lips on the new car for the chance to win it. The rules were pretty straightforward: the last person to be smooching the sedan after 50 hours would be declared the winner. If multiple contestants reached the 50-hour mark, the winner’s name would be drawn in a raffle. Participants had a 10 -minute break every hour, so they could visit the bathroom, have a drink of water and stretch, but other than that, their lips had to be touching the car or they would be disqualified.

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Meet the Female Mechanic Challenging the Male-Dominated Auto Repair Industry

Sick of being taken for a ride by male car mechanics whenever she went to an auto repair shop, Patrice Banks became a certified mechanic herself. The ambitious woman is now educating other women on car maintenance and running an all-female car repair business in Philadelphia.

Born poor to a single mother, Patrice Banks has done very well for herself. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school and after engineering at Lehigh University, she went on to work as an engineer in a cellular analysis lab at DuPont for over a decade. It’s safe to say that she was a very ambitious and confident woman, but there was always one thing that made her feel insecure – having to take her car to a repair shop. The mechanics would either try to overcharge her, be condescending or make her wait simply because she was a woman.

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Turkish Farmer Spends $2,000 on Custom Sound System for His Tractor

When Murat Karlıoğlu rolls into town in his tractor, his neighbors can literally hear him coming from a mile away. The 30-year-old farmer has spent over 7,000 Turkish lira on a custom sound system for his farming vehicle, which he uses to pump out his favorite music wherever he goes.

Karlıoğlu, from the town of Nazilli, Turkey’s Aydın Province, loves listening to music as he works in the fields. He had a decent sound system installed on his tractor a while back, but was never really satisfied with the output, so after saving a bit of money, he decided to invest it in a custom sound system you would expect to find in an expensive sports car or a tuning project from the likes of West Coast Customs.

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Man Sleeps in His Car for a Month to Catch Serial Car Scratcher

A Belorussian man who had had his car scratched over 20 times in the last six months, finally managed to catch the perpetrator in the act after sleeping in the vehicle for a month.

Finding your car scratched is unpleasant, but definitely not uncommon, which is why Kot Matroskin, a driver from Minsk, Belarus, didn’t pay much attention when it first happened to him, about six months ago. But after noticing subsequent scratches on the fender of his Volkswagen Polo, in a relatively short period of time, he started looking for clues about who might want to scratch his car and why. He was soon able to deduct that the scratching occurred only when he parked his car near a pedestrian walkway at the entrance of a park, and seemed to be done with the same object, as the scratches all looked very similar.

In a story posted recently on automotive forum Scooter Club, Kot points out that he only parks in that particular spot when there aren’t any other places available near his apartment building, and always makes sure not to leave his car on the grass or block pedestrian traffic. But that didn’t seem to matter to whoever had it in for him, as new scratches kept showing up on his vehicle. He started thinking about people he might have had conflict with recently, but revenge didn’t seem likely, as scratching only occurred when he left his car near the park.

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Ukrainian Motorist Builds His Own Lamborghini Reventon

Oleg Hrycak, a sports car enthusiast from the Ukrainian city of Lviv, spent four years building his very own limited edition Lamborghini Reventon. He admits it was a lot of work, but it beats having to pay over $2 million for a real one.

Having worked as a designer at a Ukrainian bus factory, Oleg says he had some experience modelling fiber glass and one day decided to use this knowledge to build himself a drivable luxury sports car replica. He took the chassis of an old Audi A8 sedan and modified it to fit the fiberglass body of a Lamborghini Reventon. He also moved the Audi’s 4.2-liter, 300hp engine to the back of the car to power its rear wheels and even built the iconic Lamborghini scissors doors. Hrycak says he did all of the work on the DIY sports car himself, in his spare time, to prove that anyone can build their own luxury automobile if they set their mind to it.

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