While most readers don’t peruse the pages of Playboy for insight into the latest car models, the premier Entertainment for Men magazine does happen to have quite a bit of insight into a world of style and elegance beyond most of our wildest imaginations. And it just so happens that we agree with their unique look at everything on four wheels. Taking the top spot was Porsche’s Panamera Turbo, thanks to the German sports car maker devotion to innovation and sophistication along with insane amounts of power. The Best Convertible award went to the Ferrari California with its unique styling and retractable metal roof.

The Best Horsepower Value was deemed to be the Nismo 370Z while the front wheel drive Mazdaspeed3 was named the Best Bang for your Buck and Audi’s diesel sipping A3 TDI became the best alternatively fueled vehicle. Bold styling and a twin turbocharged 365 HP ECOBoost six cylinder helped the Ford Taurus SHO to win the Best Reborn Beauty award. An unlikely candidate for the crossover segment, but BMW’s 5-Series GT was Playboy’s look good while carrying a lot of stuff was the best CUV. Not only is the Ford Fusion Hybrid the most fuel efficient mid size sedan on the market, but it also won Mr. Hefner’s Mean and Green award while the Mercedes Benz E 63 AMG took home the award for best sports sedan with its wide fenders and hand built V8. Now that Playboy has announced the winners, we can’t wait to see the spread.

Press release after the jump.

Playboy announces their picks for COTY 2010 originally appeared on topspeed.com on Thursday, 7 January 2010 14:00 EST.

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In an effort to prevent other manufacturers – and a few ambitious clone-makers – to make any copycat versions of the Bugatti 16C Galibier concept, the Volkswagen Group has decided to file trademark patents of the concept car at the World Intellectual Property Organization.

We’ve all seen from our experiences in the past how a luxury car ends up being cloned by rather cheap copycats and, each and every time, the resulting product completely butchers the original template of the model.
And that’s not even considering that most of these ‘cheap alternatives’ can do this because of a lack of trademarks from the original designers.

With the Bugatti 16C Galibier, however, Volkswagen is making sure to cover all of its bases. The car, while still a concept and has not yet been officially approved for the production line, is nonetheless expected to succeed the Veyron when it ceases production in 2012.

Powered by a 16-cylinder, 8.0-liter flex-fuel engine and an eight-speed automatic transmission that channels power through all four wheels, the 16C Galibier is expected to reach around 800 horsepower, a drop-off from the 1001 horsepower the Veyron is capable of.

We’re glad that Volkswagen Groups finally decided to have its design trademarked. We’ve had enough of those abhorrently horrendous cheap clones popping up from all corners of the world to last us multiple lifetimes.

Bugatti trademarks 16C Galibier Concept originally appeared on topspeed.com on Wednesday, 23 December 2009 02:53 EST.

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The was built on request of John Von Neumann, the US west coast Ferrari representative, who believed that there was potential for an open Spider suited to the Californian sun, a sort of open 250 GT Berlinetta. The car was built by Scaglietti, with 106 units created, nine with aluminum bodies.

The 250 California was a convertible model, with a full folding hood, built in two distinct series: the ‘LWB’ (long wheelbase) between 1958 and 1960, although a prototype was built in late 1957, and the ‘SWB’ (short wheelbase) from 1960 to 1962.

The LWB version was built on a 2600 mm wheelbase chassis, and during its production period the car suffered a few exterior changes: the shape and design of the front wing engine bay exhaust air vents, and more noticeably the rear wing line and lights, boot, and tail profile, which received a step in the panel projecting beyond the base of the lid on late series cars. The very last cars in the series, produced in late 1959 and early 1960, were fitted with disc brakes to all four wheels, instead of the drum brake set-up of the earlier examples.

Ferrari 250 California originally appeared on topspeed.com on Monday, 7 December 2009 06:00 EST.

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Back in September Audi unveiled the battery powered E-tron Concept super car at the Frankfurt Motor Show. For those who were skeptical about the realism of a zero emission production sports car from the German automaker, Audi has just confirmed at the LA Auto Show that the E-tron will become Audi’s first electric model and go on sale in limited quantities at the end of 2012. It was Audi’s own chairman of the board, Rupert Stadler, who in a forward look at the alternative power train said that “electric power will also give Quattro more possibilities, such as powering the rear axle like in the A1 concept, or four wheels in motors like the e-tron. In fact, we want to launch a production e-tron in small volumes at the end of 2012.”

The E-tron concept is powered by a purely electric drive system that consists of four individual motors, two at the front and two more at the rear of the bright orange BEV. All together the electric motors combine to create a maximum output of 313 HP and an astounding 3,319.03 lb-ft of torque propelling the E-tron from 0 to 60 MPH in a very sports car appropriate 4.8 seconds.

Audi E-tron into production in 2012 originally appeared on topspeed.com on Friday, 4 December 2009 14:00 EST.

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