38-Hour Willie Rally Completed, Powered Entirely By Willie Nelson BioFuel And Lots Of Cheetos

On Wednesday, Nik Bristow and Brian Pierce arrived in LA after successfully completing the course mapped by the Gumball Rally in a record 38 hours, 37 minutes, and 41 seconds. Dubbed “The Willie Run 2008″, Bristow and Pierce’s cross country trek was made in a VW Jetta TDI, powered entirely by Willie Nelson’s BioWillie brand biodiesel. “I know the trip sounds crazy, but it’s more important now than ever,” Bristow explained to Autopia before the trip, “We’re on the cusp of a very important election where oil and energy are universal top concerns, and biodiesel is one of the cleaner, more viable fuel alternatives out there. We need to get the word out.”

Initially, the guys had hoped to make the trip in 36 hours, but fuel miscalculations and their grand arrival during LA rush hour set them behind schedule. “We spent the last hour and a half in stop-and-go traffic,” Bristow told Wired.com, “It was a little anti-climactic after driving across the country.” Other than a brief stop in Phoenix to stock up on more BioWillie, however, Bristow and Pierce completed the trek non-stop as per their original goal, even going so far as to forward all of nature’s calls to a Stadium Pal condom catheter.

Next year, Bristow and Pierce hope to make it in under the 36-hr time limit, and are already preparing for Willie Run ‘09. “We’re gonna run it by Willie,” Bristow said, “We’ve gotta have the patron saint sign off on it, but we’ve had a ton of people say they want to take part.”

[News Source/Photo Cred: Autopia]

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The Science of Car Faces And Why We Love - Or Hate - Them

Have you ever looked up into the sky and seen a face on the moon, or in a cloud; or looked at a tree and seen a face in the bark? It happens all the time, all around the world, people see religious figures in their toast or in a woodgrain pattern. It’s because the human brain is hardwired to see faces. In fact, we have a whole section of the brain devoted specifically to it, the Fusiform gyrus, we’ve talked about that before.

Humans can look at a persons face for a tenth of a second and know what their intentions are. To see if that facial recognition reflex extends to automobiles, a team of researchers led by Karl Grammer of the University of Vienna asked 40 young adults — half women, half men — to rate the front ends of 38 recent-model cars, all of the same color.

The researchers first classified the “expressions” on the cars using a computerized system of standardized measures for human faces that indicate degrees of masculinity or femininity, and different emotions, based on the size and position of facial features.

Then they asked participants to rate each car’s “face” for 19 different factors. For example, they asked if the face was more child-like or adult-like, friendly or hostile, male or female, etc. They were also asked if the car’s front end even looked like a face at all. Finally, they picked the vehicles they liked.

More than a third said that 90 percent of the cars reminded them of a face, and all of the participants indicated headlights for the “eyes” and a radiator grill for the “mouth.”

Their ranking of emotions matched the ones generated by computers in most cases, according to the experiment, reported this week in the journal Human Nature, published by Germany’s Springer group.

As for preferences, both men and women showed a clear liking for cars they described as mature, dominating, masculine, arrogant and angry — characteristics the researchers bundled together under the heading “power”.

These cars had a low-slung bonnet and wide front, associated with with the square jaw and prominent chin of stereotyped masculinity. Topping the list of “power” cars were top-of-the-line BMWs and the Chrysler 300C, 340-horsepower alpha-male of an auto with a V-8 under the bonnet.

At the submissive, friendly and childlike end of the spectrum were Nissan’s New Micra, Volkswagen’s New Beetle and the Kia Picanto.

(via AFP News)

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GM’s Vice Chairman Bob Lutz Proclaims ‘Global Warming is a Crock of ****!’

Bob Lutz wants to hear if you can smell-ell-ell-ell-ell… what the Vice Chairman is Cooking!

Can you hear me now? …How about now? Is this better? Can you hear me Now?

Please feel free to leave your own caption in the comments section. This photo is just too amusing to leave alone.

There are few executives out there that are masters of the sound bite. The one’s that are prove to be so because they are speaking their minds and have minds that are filled with their own opinions, own judgements and own thoughts. Like those other masters of the sound bit Bob Lutz is not out to convince you he is right by talking to you. He is not there to hold your hand and lead you to his conclusion. He is there to build cars and meet new challenges. It is just to our curious benefit that he takes time out of his GM schedule to share his hardened, unyielding sound bites.

So follow us through the link and let us check in on some of the latest from Bob Lutz (quotes provided to us via FrontBurner): (more…)

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Frankfurt Auto Show:Verve Concept to display future styling for Ford

Apparently none of the car manufacturers are eager to go to the Frankfurt Auto Show without something new to show. Ford has already showed one of the cards in its hand with the European Kuga. Now they have announced that the Verve concept will also be on display as the small car model of future design and styling.

The lines of the Verve run quite similar with the ascending slope of the aerodynamic Kuga crossover SUV. The platform upon which the Verve is built will serve across the globe as the B-segment platform for Ford. Taking the initial leap as the first to bring the platform to market will be the all new Fiesta. (more…)

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