Diy Sports Car

foam_car.jpg

We liked the idea of styling and building our own car and this guy from Lithuania has done just that. While we would probably start with a Datsun 120Y and turn it into something that looked like a Mercedes CL, this guy has taken a perfectly good CL and turned it into a cross between a Ferarri and a Ssang Yong. We do give the guy credit for the amount of painstaking work this mod must of taken to achieve. Basically he has built a new body around the Benz with expanding foam held in place by cardboard. Once it set he has then finished off the styling with a lot of bog and filing. We really hate the grill and the bulberous wheel arches but then again we’d be happy with the untouched doner car, Mercedes Benz probably spent millions on styling the CL, why does a guy in a shed with a can of bog think he can do a better job. For the full gallery head over to englishrussia.com blog.

Read more

The Popemobile

pope-mobile.jpg

 The Popemobile is the name given to the modified car used by the pope when he appears in parades. While the pope has used many modified cars for decades the name only come in to use around 1980 when Pope John Paul II started to use the converted Mercedes Benz G-Wagon. The G Class or G wagon is a Mercedes Benz 4WD that has been in production since 1979. The G wagon is popular with armies around the world and is known for its strong go anywhere design. Pope John Paul II’s G wagon from 1981 is on display in the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart Germany.

Read more

Want a Tank? then its DIY time

[youtube QH5eYCdheLw]

Now building scale models of army stuff like tanks is not a new hobby but when you build a fully drivable half scale WW2 German tiger tiger tank you are pretty much on your own. University student Will Foster from Kettering Uni in Michigan recons he always liked building models so he asked his fraternity if he could build a tank in their yard and they agreed. The tank has 3 cyl diesel engine scavenged from a generator and a fully working gun that can shoot paint balls via compressed air from a scuba tank. He recons there is about 2000 bux worth of parts in his half scale tank but has spent a lot more on trial and error finding the right parts to make it all work.

Read more

Hongqi Century Star

hoggi.jpg

The Hongqi Century Star is a popular car with China’s government and officials. Based on the old Audi 100 of the early 1990s, the Hongqi is made by China’s First Auto Works or FAW. 80% of the Hongqi car is locally produced; it still has a very Audi look about despite a new grill treatment.
Hongqi means “red flag” and the Hongqi century star is China’s own luxury car, with stretch and convertible versions also being produced. FAW also make new VWs and Audi’s locally in China for VW. Volkswagen have other partnerships in China producing various VW and Audi products mainly for the local market. Recently some VW products made in China are being exported to other countries around the world including the Polo small car.

The Taylor Aerocar

taylor-aerocar-iii.jpg

The Taylor Aerocar is one of the most famous flying cars ever built. First designed by Moulton Taylor in 1949 it was a time when popular science magazine was predicting that everyone would own a flying car by the year 2000. Although six prototypes of the Aerocar car were built it never entered mass production but it did gain a bit of interest from Ford at the time making it one of the few aeroplane car combos to even come close to being produced. The idea behind the Aerocar was that once you reach the airport you could fold up the wings and drive it back to your own garage. Amazingly all six prototypes survive today with an Aerocar 1 on display at the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Golden Wings Museum at Blane, Minnesota and at the Kissimmee Air Museum. Florida. An Aerocar 3 (pictured) is on display at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. The Aerocar located in Florida is flying today was once owned by actor Bob Cummings and was used in his 1960s TV program. Taylor went on to design an amphibious aircraft in 1969 known as the Coot that still is being constructed by home builders across the world.

Read more

Would you go flying in a Ford Pinto?

ave-mizar.jpg

The first in our series of the world’s worst cars is one of the worlds worst cars mated to part of a plane to become the AVE Mizar. It was a project by a former Northrop engineer in 1973 to develop a flying car, It consisted of a Cessna Skymaster rear attached to the Ford Pinto with production scheduled to start in 1974. AVE planed to sell the Mizar for between US $18,300 and US$29,000. A few prototypes were built but the project ground to a halt when the developers of the Mizar were killed when the the wings of the craft broke away from the car mid flight resulting in a fiery crash. This would have to be the first time a Ford Pinto’s explosion was not caused by someone ramming them from behind. The National Transportation Safety Board reported in addition to poor design and loose parts, that bad welds were partly responsible for the crash, a bad idea was naturally assumed.  

Read more

Liberace’s car collection at the Liberace Museum

[youtube dioRwB4RvrQ]

Liberace was well known for collecting high priced toys like pianos, jewellery, fur coats and exotic cars. He generally liked to make a grand entrance on stage in one of his fancy cars with most of them modified to give it that Liberace touch. The one in the video above is a rare Rolls Royce featuring thousands of mirror tiles across its body. Today this car along with a hand-painted red, white and blue Rolls-Royce, a roadster covered in Austrian rhinestones as well as cars from a London cab to a heavily modified VW Beetle feature in the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas.

Read more

Ford Airstream Concept

[youtube ezt452INjPg]

With the launch of the FG Falcon tomorrow we thought it only fitting to to check out a ford concept car today to see what the future may hold for the brand. The Ford Airstream Concept uses a plug-in hydrogen hybrid fuel cell to deliver 41 miles per gallon which is pretty good news if it ever makes its way into a production car, what we hope never does make its way into tomorrow’s Ford’s is the LCD display of an open fire, I mean what were they thinking. Sure concept cars are suppose to be way out there, but a display of open fire! Perhaps they thought it was more environmentally friendly than the real open fires we will be using in our cars of the future.