Autoblog

SpeedTV did a video podcast featuring Adam Carolla -- along with SpeedTV's Kendall, and 50 Cent -- flogging a Pontiac G8 around a track. Carolla gets a check mark for being able to make jokes at speed and while in a spin. Whether he's actually funny, we'll let you decide. Since it wasn't done as a trial for the US Top Gear, and we have no idea what he was meant to be doing -- or allowed to say -- we shouldn't judge too harshly. But Clarkson doesn't have anything to worry about just yet...

[Source: Final Gear via Jalopnik]

Remember when we suggested there was no way that rapper 50 Cent would choose to put two Pontiacs, the G8 and G6 GXP, in his video for "Amusement Park"? In fact, we went so far as to say that you'd have to suspend disbelief in order to think that Fiddy would want his girlz sliding all over Pontiacs instead of Lambos and Bentleys.

Well, we were wrong.

What we should have remembered is that rappers work in mysterious ways. According to a Pontiac spokeswoman, 50 saw the G6 GXP -- a car that could be called "Flipper" based on that massive, trunk-mounted fluke -- and G8 at the NAIAS, and requested them himself. Total cost to Pontiac: $0.00.

The last time we heard about 50 being pulled over, it was in a Murcielago Roadster, and word is he's also selling his Connecticut mansion. Does his new album "Curtis" and the Pontiac fetish herald a slower, more frugal 50 Cent?

Thanks for the tip, Alex!

[Source: Freep]

Bog-standard Lamborghini a bit too... blasé? Rapper 50 Cent evidently thinks so too. Good thing Fiddy's got mad stacks of cheddar and the surface wizards at Alsa Corp. on speed-dial, then. He of 'In Da Club' fame has apparently contracted the California company to coat his Lamborghini ‘Marcielargo’ <sic> in lustrous chrome paint.

Walk through Alsa’s paint booth as the company’s MirraChrome finish blings the noise here.

 [Source: Alsa]

In the ongoing battle for street cred among younger buyers, Detroit continues to turn to its gritty urban landscapes for marketing inspiration.

DaimlerChrysler's connection with the hip-hop world has been well-documented, resulting in everything from Snoop Dogg swingin' clubs with Lee Iacocca to 50-Cent jumping the line on the Charger. Other companies have been quick to follow suit, General Motors tapping Ludacris to pitch the Solstice, and with the Blue Oval set to trot out Kanye West to promote the Lincoln's Zephyr in the rapper's unfortunately-named new video, 'Drive Slow' (what rhymes with MKZ, Kanye?).

The marketing shift is being viewed as part of a larger phenomenon, wherein companies are seeking out niche groups instead of putting out mass-market product message-- a development that mimics the auto industry's changing production models.

[Source: The Detroit News]