Autoblog

Click above for more gruesome shots of gold-plated exotics

Do you ever wonder what company actually does the 24-carat gold plating jobs on those gilded exotic and luxury cars that surface on the web from time to time? Perhaps you're looking for someone to do the same to your Camry? Alchemist is the appropriately named company behind these works, and its specialty is gold plating just the roof panel, though it will to dip the entire car in gold for the right price. The company is based in London, England and headed by a Frenchman named Jacques Blanc, who will soon be taking a perfectly good Aston Martin DBS and gilding the entire thing with 24-carat gold and platinum-leaf at the upcoming MPH Show in London.


[Source: Alchemist]

Click above for gallery of the gold-trimmed Camry

Taste: some have it, some don't. Case in point this Toyota Camry spotted in Dubai where the burgeoning middle class apparently wants to roll just like their oil-funded upper class but lack the money to secure a Rolls-Royce or Bentley. While we've reluctantly grown accustomed to customers opting for the gold-tone bright-wear instead of the standard chrome detailing – especially on cars like the Camry – this owner actually had the badges, grilles, side mirrors and wheels plated in 24k gold. Seriously.

If this somehow strikes you as a good idea, it can be yours for only 135,000 Dollars. Thankfully those are Arab Emirate Dollars, worth about $37 grand in American greenbacks. But please, if you're even thinking about it, contact us first and let us convince you of all the better ways you could spend $37k on a new car that won't instantly lose half its value the minute you take a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood.

[Source: Auto Unleashed]

This isn't exactly what the recording industry had in mind when The Beatles went gold for the first time. But then, who would have predicted back then that the Iron Curtain would fall and that Eastern Europe would grow into one of the world's largest markets for tasteless luxury items.

This 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, unveiled at this year's Luxury Show in Bucharest, Romania, is covered in tiles made of glass and 18-karat gold. We'd say if you have to ask, you can't afford it, but it strikes us that the whole point of building or buying something this perversely ostentatious is to flaunt to the world just how much it's worth. In this case, the figure is actually just $88,000.

If you're thinking that eighty-eight grand will buy you a well-equipped Porsche 911, we're not far behind you. But then, whoever would even consider buying something this ridiculous probably has a couple of "ordinary" Porsches lying around the grounds already.

[Source: Luxurylaunches.com]

How do you know you've got too much money? When you spend a chunk of it on something like this. The leather Bentley key case is one thing, but this ... this operates on a level all its own.

This shift knob, made for Bentley by IcedOutEmz, a brand of the Las Vegas-based LP Wheel Group, comes studded with 30 karats worth of diamonds trimmed with 10 ounces of 18-karat white gold.

All that bling comes with a hefty price tag: $150k (spitting distance of the Continental GT's $170,000 MSRP itself). That's what it takes to stand out at the SEMA show, where the shift knob will be unveiled this coming November.

[Source: NY Times via Luxist]

While we were mighty impressed with Mitsubishi's upcoming new Outlander during its debut at the New York auto show, we had no idea Mitsu was planning to pimp it out with gold plating. The Outlander G-Limited features 18-inch aluminum rims, a grille surround and pin stripes that are all colored gold. We hesitate to say dipped, cast or painted gold, because that rare yet soft yellow metal may not be a part of the process as far as we know. Otherwise the G-Limited is standard Outlander fare with the company's 2.4L MIVEC four-cylinder and CVT transmission. The subtly pimped G-Limited will go for about $25K in Japan.

[Source: NoonzWheels]