Autoblog

We've finally poked our respective heads out of our interweb caves and unleashed episode 67 of the Autoblog podcast upon the world. We've been pretty nutty lately with our new, improved site design and our groundbreaking car giveaway, so please forgive our delay at getting back to this. Our first delightful round of witty repartee centers around the excellent spy shots from the last couple weeks, and more specifically Jaguar's new Starship Enterprise looking shift selector. Expanding on the abundance of uberteched European cars, we carp for a while on the proliferation of new and ill-conceived user interface paradigms. Coming back to native shores, we touch on the new CTS-V, which will eschew the need for bumper nuts by a conspicuously bulged hood hiding a supercharged V8 capable of roasting the competition. Speaking of big power, we touch on the rumored NSX mule running around the Nurburgring in S2000 drag, and then concede that we really have no idea. Again, we come back to the US after a quick jaunt to the Continent, and discuss the upcoming Chevy version of GM's Lambda CUV. We're split on whether that's a good idea or not, but we all agree that the Utes themselves are a great product from the General. What the heck, let's go back across the Atlantic to close it out with insane VAG concepts at the Worthersee gathering in Austria, which saw the unveiling of a mid engine twin turbo GTI, the Audi TT Clubsport design study, and the Pirelli Edition GTI that is a real production car. We decided to only consume about 37 minutes of your time, as we'll be back soon. Enjoy the show!

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Look too quickly and you'd swear that these two exotics are the same car. Anything longer than a glance and you start to notice the differences. Even then, the silhouette of the Bugatti and the Bentley are quite similar. Both brands are under Volkswagen's corporate umbrella, and both cars were touched by the design fingerprint of Hartmut Warkuss. The shape of these two cars seemingly represents what VW's design folks thought of as a supercar eight years ago. We think it still works pretty well.

Remembering our remedial lesson in how to pronounce Hunaudieres brings 1999 flooding back. Volkswagen had recently purchased Bentley, and they made a splash by debuting a supercar concept powered by a W16 engine with rumored LeMans aspirations. In fact, Hunaudieres is the name of the straightaway at LeMans. The car never made it out racing, though Bentley campaigned the Speed 8 from 2001-2003.

A few months after the Bentley was on the stand in Geneva, the Bugatti Veyron was rolled out at the Tokyo Motor Show. The Veyron was originally slated to run a W18 engine, but the production version wound up with a turbocharged W16. The Veyron has gone on to become the fastest and most powerful new car you can buy today. It looks like the Bentley team donated their engine and interior to the final car, which has turned out quite nicely, thank you.

More pictures after the jump

[Source: Sybarites]

Alex Nunez just posted the preview information and press release last week so we won't waste a lot of space here re-explaining the Joyster. Claimed to be just a concept, the Joyster is a three-door, front-wheel-drive compact vehicle that is mainly targeted at young people. Click through for more pics from Eric in Paris and all of the details about this fun little runabout with the Mazda-MPV-like flip over tailgaters' bench. This Czech branch of the VAG family is starting to distinguish itself from its VW platform-mates with unique and bold styling. More from the company coming soon from Paris.


(Photos, press releases after the jump)

[Source: Škoda]