Men Free Blog

The blokes from the real Top Gear are back in the States to test what us ‘Mericans do best – big V8s, rear-wheel-drive and powerslides. Clarkson, Hammond and May flew into San Francisco on Wednesday and then made a B-line for Reno before heading south, reportedly to test the out a trio of American muscle at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

If you’re just as obsessed as us, you don’t have to look at the photos in the gallery to know who snatched the keys to a Corvette ZR1, Dodge Challenger and Cadillac CTS-V. But we’ll spoil the (lack of) surprise for you anyway. Clarkson grabbed the ‘Vette, Hammond is getting his retro kicks in the Challenger and May – the consummate stately sedan man – is piloting the CTS-V. Top Gear is rumored to be back on the air towards the end of October, and we’re hoping this segment kicks off the next season. Thanks for the tip, Ben!

Tucked away in a green, waterfall-riven valley between Akureyri and Husavik, Iceland is the hamlet of Ystafell (who-stuh-fel is the closest we can get to proper pronunciation). Akureyri has some of the best nightlife in Iceland, while Husavik has whales and a museum dedicated to things unmentionable on a family site. That leaves the Transport Museum at Ystafell practically unnoticed, which is a shame, because features two barns full of unlikely vehicles, each with an authentic Icelandic story.

Upon first inspection, MR2forum.de member LaroCroft’s second-generation (SW20) Toyota MR2 is simply a tastefully modded example of a cult favorite. However, peer inside and all preconceived notions are immediately thrown out the targa top.

Any “For Sale” thread that requires “Knowledge in electronics, skills in PC technology and knowledge of programming (especially Visual Basic)” is a clear indication that things inside have gotten thoroughly out of hand. Just check out the gallery and you’ll see what we’re talking about.

The entire instrument cluster and center console have been replaced with three screens displaying every conceivable function and parameter of the MR2’s systems. The trio of displays are controlled by either a touch screen interface or a center console-mounted knob (ala iDrive), and allows the drive to manipulate everything from fuel consumption to engine temp; climate control to GPS functions; mirrors, radar/laser, the wireless transfer of music from a home computer, lights, fog lights, and on and on and on.

It’s pure insanity and incredibly cool. And the best part: it’s for sale in Germany – assuming you’ve got the programming chops to actually leave your driveway.

You may remember our post on the Splinter wooden supercar late last year. At the time, the grad students behind the project being led by Joe Harmon only had renderings of what the Gaia-approved exotic would look like. They deserve extra credit, however, for having the actual car ready for the International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta last week. While they’ve yet to reach the running prototype stage, they did marry the car’s body to its all-wooden chassis. Renderings are one thing, but seeing photos of the actual car is inspiring. The body is comprised of basket-woven wood that’s coated with resin in a mold, which we suppose makes it a different kind of carbon fiber altogether. Next up is actually fitting the drivetrain, which thankfully is not made of wood, and getting the Splinter moving under its own power. We may have doubted at the beginning that this project would ever be completed, let alone be this cool, but consider us converts.

First art imitates life and now video games do the same, with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Nissan having joined forces to create the GT Academy. Over the course of eight months, the academy culled a group of wannabe racers from a field of entrants who posted the best lap times in GT5 Prologue. Then, for five days at Silverstone, the finalists competed in the game and on the actual track, watched by ex-F1 racer Johnny Herbert and a panel of five judges.

The two winners were just announced, and Top Gun status went to Lars Schlomer and Luis Ordonez. Schlomer is a taxi driver in Bonn, Germany; Ordonez is an MBA student from Spain. Now that they’ve won, they’ll be thrown into boot camp for four months to learn to how to race for real silver: in four months, they’ll have to earn their racing licenses and get ready to drive a factory-backed Nissan 350Z in the 24 Hours of Dubai this coming January.The rest of us will have to be content with GT5 Prologue for now…

Ah, the Trabant 601; endowed with a smoketacular two-stroke engine until its very last years and a body made of a toxic recycled plastic that’s similar to what toilet seats are made of, though it’s strangely edible. There’s a lot of fondness surrounding East Germany’s automotive leftovers, though maybe that’s because you can’t get rid of one unless you feed it to your goat. A Berlin stamp dealer has covered his Trabi with more than 3,000 pieces of postage, possibly adding a huge amount of value (i.e. some) to his hunk of Duroplast. The sticky-backed decorations have been presumably preserved with a clearcoat so that one good rainstorm doesn’t wash it all away, and should Scharam Farahbakhsh ever want to travel with his car, he can ship it ahead of himself.