First the Oscary Meyer wienermobile gets smashed up and now this — It seems that during, what looks to be, a supercar rally that took place in Moscow, Russia a driver behind the wheel of a Bugatti EB110 lost control resulting in the car being completely demolished, as you can see above.

Sure, it’s not a Veyron but the Bugatti EB110 is a classic peice of machinery with it’s quad-turbocharged 3.5-liter V12 engine capable of 543HP. Couple that with the car’s AWD and you have a top speed of 214MPH and a 0-62MPH sprint of just 3.4 seconds.

View of the destruction included after the break.

via Jalopnik

(more…)

Tags: Bugatti, crash, eb110, moscow, Russia, veyron

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It seems Volkswagen is actually looking to introduce a new pickup to market entitled the Amarok. While it almost seems like whoever came up with the name picked letters at random out of a hat, this is not the case; VW let us know that Amarok means “wolf” to the Inuit people and translates to “he loves stones” in “the languages spoken in South America”. Either way, VW is obviously trying to market this car as a heavy duty pickup.

Anyways, there are no real specs or even real pictures to go by as of now with the above being just a concept. However, we do know that the Amarok will debut as a double-cab sporting 4WD pickup with a single-cab model hitting market shortly after.

Volkswagen says their Amarok pickup truck will launch in South America early next year, Central America in spring of next year and Russia, Africa, Australia and Europe sometime after.

Read (Autoblog)

Tags: africa, amarok, Australia, central america, double cab, Europe, pickup truck, Russia, single cab, south america

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Here is quite the unfortunate story — As the tale goes, a Russian woman purchased a brand new Ferarri 612 Scaglietti in the ball park of $850,000. Presumably estatic the woman proceeded to drive her new car off the dealership when she noticed some smoke coming from under the hood.

Minutes later the entire car caught fire and burned to the ground. Below is a quote from the woman telling the story in her own words:

I owned Ferrari for 30 minutes. Just bought it for 600,000 EUR and was heading home, when I noticed some smoke coming out from under the hood, I promptly pulled to the sideway and ran out of the car. Just in minutes all my new Ferrari was caught on fire. I really don’t know what has happened.

It looks like she was unfortunate enough to buy a defective Ferrari. Oh well, I’m sure Ferrari will replace it and express their deepest sympathy.

Read (Jalopnik)

Tags: 612, accident, burned down, Ferrari, Russia, scaglietti

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Due to slumping demand, Ford Motors has halted operations for its plant in Russia. For now, it seems that workers will have to make do with the one-third pay from their normal wages for the duration of the shutdown phase. Operations are said to continue in June although this will only be for a four-day work week until October.

“We have suspended production at the Vsevolozhsk factory because of the market situation and forecasts for falling sales in the automobile industry,” spokeswoman Yekaterina Kulinenko

Ford’s assembly line in Vsevolozhsk, near Russia’s second city, has produced the Focus and Mondeo models for sale on the Russian market since 2002 and employs about 200,000 people.

The highest selling vehicle of Ford in Russia is the Ford Focus. However, due to the spreading economic turmoil, Ford is also experiencing a sales slump thus the need to make the necessary preventive measures to avoid adding more loses for the embattled U.S. car making giant.

(Source) AFP

Tags: assembly line, automobile industry, duration, economic turmoil, Ford, ford focus, ford motors, ford plant, giant source, market situation, models, mondeo, phase operations, preventive measures, Russia, russian market, second city, spokeswoman, wages

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Yes you heard me right folks, the Russians are going to offer a local Top Gear version, but will it be as successful as the original? The American version hasn’t really been a big hit so far so it will be fun to see what the Russians make of the show. The show comes with a local Stig so with the right subtitles it might be fun to watch. Will it bring anything original to the table or will it try to copy the madness from the UK version?

via Final Gear

Tags: America, Russia, Top Gear, UK

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In another development related to the hard times most car manufacturing companies are in, Russia’s largest car manufacturer, OAO AvtoVAZ, was forced to cease operations due to lack of car parts. Apparently this comes in the light that OAO AvtoVAZ accumulated a large amount of unsettled promissory notes, which has forced its suppliers to stop car parts delivery.

Industry analysts said AvtoVAZ is piling up debt with suppliers who now want the company to pay them mostly in cash instead of the promissory notes that have been used to cover 80 per cent of invoices.

“The problem is you can’t exchange those promissory notes for anything, and at this point no one would take them as a collateral because everyone knows how deeply in debt AvtoVAZ is,” said Mikhail Pak, auto industry analyst with the Metropol investment bank.

(Source) The Canadian Press

Tags: auto industry analyst, avtovaz, car manufacturer, car parts, promissory notes, Russia

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A decline in sales and continued global recession placed the construction of two new Toyota plants on hold. The new plants that were supposed to be put up in Russia and Thailand were temporarily shelved until some improvement in car sales and the economy would occur.

Toyota already made it public that it is expecting a net operating loss at year’s end. To help cut down on costs, downsizing the global plants situated in key regions of the world had to be done.

Toyota’s car-making plant in Russia was put in operation on the 21st December of 2007. Encouraged by the growing number of Russian motorists favoring Toyota-made cars, the company eyed building another plant in Russia, though now it has to hold up its plans.

(Source) Russia IC

Tags: car sales, Cars, economy, global recession, motorists, Russia, Thailand, Toyota

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Well, what do you know! There’s a Russian fresh car which is built on a Mitsubishi platform. It’s the E-Go the company I am talking about and their latest model is the supercar in the image above called Revolt.

The Revolt will get you a 3.0 liter V6, twin turbocharged engine ready to pump 550 hp with the help of that six-speed stick. It offers active air suspensions, 19 inch wheels from the Japanese Work company, and touch controlled electronics made by National Instruments.

No news on pricing an availability yet folks! But I hear that E-Go is producing cars already! Go ahead, check them out in Russia.

via cardesign

Tags: E-Go, Revolt, Russia, Supercar

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