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When I say, “Electric Pickup,” you no doubt think of either the Ssangyong Actyon Sports-derived Phoenix SUT or one of those toy-like, Chinese-built neighborhood electric vehicles. What you may not think of is a bright green 1958 Chevy Apache owed by Canada’s Steam Whistle Brewery and recharged via wind power.

No, this isn’t a late April Fool’s Day joke: this is serious. And being green is serious business for Steam Whistle, which – among other things – uses renewable energy, recycles damn-near everything and supports various environmental causes as a sideline to its beer brewing enterprise.

Brewery manager Mike Kiraly came up with the idea of electrifying the ol’ girl and even uses it as his daily driver. He explains his brainwave: “What if we could take a sexy vintage ride, save it from the metal scrap heap and outfit it with a zero-tailpipe-emissions engine. Old-school style combined with a modern conscience.”

Mercedes-Benz announced the introduction of new collection with special scale models and branded products to mark the 125th birthday of the motor car. The lineup includes a dedicated range of scale models of legendary vehicles produced over the years by the Stuttgart-based carmaker. Read more »

In 1986, the Porsche 959 was the world’s fastest street legal product car. Some 337 of these road-going monsters were built but not one of them was a factory-finished convertible. Regardless of what you may have heard or seen on forums, such a vehicle was never sanctioned by Porsche. There was a one-off “Speedster” built by Auto-Becker for the 1989 Frankfurt Motor Show but that’s about it.

So is this done and dusted? Of course not; this is the internet we’re talking about. 959 Speedsters are sighted by Porsche enthusiasts as much as Elvis Presley or the Loch Ness monster. If you believe what you’ve read, these things are everywhere. And I do mean everywhere, even in New Zealand.

So our seller throws in the usual platitudes we’ve come to expect from this sort of posting like, “This is one very rare and special car,” and that it was “professionally built”.

At this week’s 50th Furniture Fair in Milan, Italy, Fiat previewed the “Fiat 500 Design Collection”, an initiative by the firm’s marketing boss Lapo Elkann and furniture maker Meritalia. The collection is a tribute to the original Fiat 500 and includes a sofa, a table and a console, all inspired by the 1970's Fiat 500. Each of the three pieces sports a plate that says: “Lapo and Meritalia pay tribute to the Fiat 500”. Read more »

Come on, admit it, tire-smoking burnouts are a blast to watch. Even more so when the vehicle in question is a Japanese kei car stuffed with a GM-sourced LS1 V8. Enter the world of the Curupt, a wildly modified Suzuki Might Boy that comes to us from the land of Down Under.

Largely unknown to most of the world, the Suzuki Mighty Boy is a toy-sized pickup truck-style model from the glorious 1980s that was sold in Japan as well as Australia and Cyprus between 1985 and 1988. Despite its promising name, the fact that it was based on the Giugiaro-designed Suzuki Curve kei car meant the Mighty Boy was anything but ‘mighty’ as power came from a puny 0.5-liter three-cylinder engine delivering around 28 ponies.

If Geo had asked Isuzu to design them a car that would appeal to California’s surfer crowd in the mid-1990s, chances are it’d look a lot like the Thunder Ranch Riot. A fibreglass bodied, Volkswagen Beetle-based turnkey kit car, the Riot looks like a Geo Storm that’s been cut, shut and had Dodge Viper parts tacked on to its exterior. And it can be all yours for the low, low price of US$12,000.

When I was in high school, my teacher had the front half of a mid-‘80s Mitsubishi Sigma (sold stateside as the Gallant) that he used for teaching students car maintenance. It was blocked off behind the front seats with wooden slats and had two castor wheels at the back so it could easily be moved around.

All well and good, but what use would be the other, engine-less half? I mean, it’d just be a steel shell with a generous (if not altogether compact) lockable storage area. This is the question posed by this rather interesting automotive oddity: a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle “Front End Display”.

If you’re the kind of type that falls in love with his wheels no matter what anybody else says or believes, then we’re pretty sure you’re going to be fond of BMW Classic’s new short film called “A Perfect Match”.

The movie, which was awarded the Golden Dolphin at the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards, follows the story of a man called Jack and his search for appropriate replacement for his battered down BMW 1602. The reason? Blame the lack of an air conditioning system that has made his life unbearable in the hot summer days and nights of Los Angeles. You may or may not suspect what’s going to happen half-way through the film, but either way, we won't spoil the end. To view the film, simply follow the break below.

If you’re familiar with classic cars, you’ll know that the interwar models of Spanish firm Hispano-Suiza are among the most coveted and collectable of them all. These weren’t just cars: these were automotive works of art.

The Hispano-Suiza H-6C of 1932 was a fairly ordinary looking two-seat convertible, but in the hands of race car driver and ex-WWI fighter pilot Andre Dubonnet, it became something all the more special.

With the assistance of specialist coachbuilder Jacques Saoutchik and engineer Antoine-Marie Chedru, the H-6C received a four-wheel independent suspension setup and a sleek, aircraft-inspired body that featured gullwing windows and suicide doors.

In 1961 at the 40th Annual Frankfurt International Motor Show in Germany, Bavarian automaker BMW lifted the wraps off of two very special prototypes: the first of its 1500 “Neue Klasse” mid-sizers. For years, Beamer had been working on a new model to slot between its entry-level one and two cylinder cars and its more expensive, luxury-geared six and eight cylinder ones.

The result was a stylish four door sedan fitted with a 75 hp (56 kW) inline four, front disc brakes and weighing in at 2,095 lb (950 kg).

The design of the saloon was reminiscent of Italian cars, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given that, when developing the design of the 1500, BMW’s chief stylist Wilhelm Hofmeister had sought the advice of Giovanni Michelotti, who had already collaborated on the 700.

The Toyota Prius, a car that is often credited for bringing hybrid-electric technology to the masses, has managed to rack up its one-millionth sale in the USA. The announcement comes shortly after Toyota achieved two more milestones that started with global Prius sales topping the two million mark in October 2010 and overall global Toyota hybrid sales passing three million last month.

It is by far, the most sacred place for a BMW M fan. We’re talking about the BMW M Division’s underground facility where the company stores copies of all the production cars and prototypes it has ever built, including a variety of never before seen in public vehicles. In a surprising but much welcomed move, the German automaker recently opened the doors of the special M garage to the members of the press and select enthusiasts revealing an array of models that most had only heard about.

We already brought you a video of the wild M8 Coupe with the 580-horsepower V12 engine that was eventually used on the McLaren F1, but now we have several videos showcasing the entire lineup of M cars.

These include the E46 M3 Touring (BMW for station wagon), the E36 M3 Compact powered by the same 321HP straight-six from the M3 Coupe of the time, the E34 M5 Cabriolet with open-top seating for four, an M3 powered E30 ute and possibly the strangest creation yet, the so called Ur-Roadster. The latter is said to have been developed after the Z1 with power being delivered by the E30 M3’s 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine.

The story of the Mefistofele started in 1908, when Fiat introduced the SB4 chain-driven Grand Prix racer. After seeing it race, Sir Ernest Eldridge from Britain bought the car with the aim of turning it into speed record breaker.

However, there was one problem: the original car's 18.0-liter engine was considered rather small by Eldridge, who decided to replace it with a massive airplane powerplant (you can read a similar story here). He opted for a liquid-cooled Fiat-built 21.7-liter inline six-cylinder unit (type A-12 Bis) that developed 320 horsepower at 1,800 rpm after various upgrades such as the fitting of four valves and four spark plugs on each cylinder.

The story goes that in order to accommodate the long and heavy engine, Eldridge lengthened the SB4's chassis using parts from a London bus. The car was chain-driven and had brakes only at the rear, which made it a handful for even the most experienced of drivers. Interestingly, experts fail to understand even today the mechanism that allowed the car to reverse, since there is no trace of it left.

If you’re a car buff, chances are you’ve heard about the next chapter in the Fast and Furious franchise that’s scheduled for release in theaters towards the end of April (see the trailer here). Being that the movie series is popular among car enthusiasts, the Chrysler Group decided to team up with Universal Pictures for a multi-tiered partnership.

Aside from providing 2010 and 2011 model year Dodge Charger vehicles used in numerous chase scenes throughout the Fast Five movie, the Detroit automaker is also sponsoring a Dodge/Fast Five advertisement that will air for the first time on Saturday, April 2 during the Final Four basketball tournaments. However, you can get a sneak peak right after the jump.

In 1975, BMW launched the 3-Series as a successor to the 02 series and essentially established the premium compact car segment. The company went on to produce five generation of the 3-Series selling more than 12 million cars worldwide. Even though it changed considerably from one generation to another, the 3-Series kept its core characteristics: a compact body with a classic design, rear-wheel drive, sporty handling characteristics and potent engines.

Launched initially as a two-door coupe, the 3-Series gained throughout the years new body variants such as the sedan, station wagon, coupe, convertible and even a three-door hatchback model (Compact). Scroll down to read a brief history on each generation.

Hands up who doesn’t like the Porsche 906? Not many, I guess, and that’s rather unsurprising. The 906 was the last of Porsche’s street legal race cars, built to homologate the Group 4 racing category. Weighing in at a lithe 1,300 lb (580 kg), the 906 featured a body comprising a lightweight tubular space frame and unstressed fibreglass shell. Most were fitted with a 220 hp (164 kW) 2.0 L six that gave it a top speed of 170 mph (280 km/h).

And with its mid-engine enclosed by a Plexiglas cover and those oh-so-fashionable gullwing doors, the 906 looked like a prop out of a science fiction movie. A 1970s science fiction movie to be sure, but that’s neither here nor there.

Patrick Motorsports (PMC) of Phoenix, Arizona has recently completed an intensive restoration on one of these cars, of which only fifty were produced. The so-called, “Full Concourse Quality Restoration” of this 1966-built model included the chassis, sub frame, fibreglass body and exterior paint.

A 51-year old man from Bloomfield Township lost his classic 1974 Lamborghini Espada as well as half of his home, which he had just sold to a new owner a week ago, when the vintage car exploded in his garage on Friday. According to officials, the man was trying to start up the classic four-seater Lamborghini in the garage when it exploded and erupted to flames, which quickly spread to the rest of the house. The cause of the explosion has not yet been determined.

Luckily, the 51-year old man as well as his mother and a dog that were in the house at the time of the accident escaped unhurt. Not surprisingly, neither the owner of the Lamborghini or the home's new owner were in the mood to comment on the incident. Watch the video report after the jump.

The folks over at Late Model Racecraft pride themselves for being “Home of the world's quickest and fastest stock suspended LSX”. In one of their latest tunes, they crafted a twin-turbocharged Chevrolet Camaro for owner Kelly Bise who will race the car at the Texas Mile event this weekend. The insane Camaro was thrown on a dyno to see how much power is sent to the rear wheels. The result? 1,809.6 ponies. Impressive, to say the least. Listen to the sounds of the beast in dyno-testing video after the jump.

If there’s one car that has withstood the test of time, that’s the original Volkswagen Beetle. And even though more than 21 million Bugs were built between 1938 and 2003, it’s not often that you stumble upon a pristine example with only delivery mileage on the odometer.

The one you see pictured above is a 1978 Beetle Jubilee with a mere 40 miles on the clock that has never been registered. It’s up for sale by UK-based CVA Auctions.

Back in 2008, Italy’s revived Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera presented a station-wagon version of the Maserati Quattroporte with a fastback-like silhouette called the Bellagio. The stylish Italian family hauler was more than just a pure design exercise as Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera actually produced the car, albeit upon customer request.

We’re not sure how many Maserati Bellagio Fastbacks have been built, but it’s safe to assume that it’s an extremely rare car. That said, we were quite surprised to find one up for grabs in the used car market, and more specifically, by a Dutch dealer.

The blue-colored Bellagio Fastback was built to order in 2008 and according to the seller, has a mere 1,546 km or 961 miles on the odometer. The asking price is €165,000, equal to about $233,300. Photo gallery follows after the jump.