Keystone Montana 3820FK named 2016 RV of the Year

Thor Industries’ Montana 3820FK front kitchen fifth wheel was named RV of the Year by RVBusiness magazine, the industry’s leading publication. During a year in which towable RV sales reached record highs and RV manufacturers introduced hundreds of new products, the Keystone Montana 3820FK stood above the rest. The combination of a spacious front kitchen, … Read more

Just 9 custom-made unique pieces: Mansory gold-decorated Palm Edition 999

With a keen sense of aesthetics and abundant experience in the processing of Rolls-Royce models, the specialists at German customization company Mansory have created a new piece of art for the road worthing its weight in gold. The ‘standard’ Rolls-Royce Wraith in Mansory’s hands redefines the boundaries of automotive opulence. As a nod to the … Read more

Lotus 3-Eleven. Hypercar experience at super sports car prices

0-100km/h in 3 seconds and 0-100mph in 6 seconds. With this figures, the new Lotus 3-Eleven car has the credentials to keep up with a Ferrari. Produced in a strictly limited edition, the new model without windscreen, roof, and doors is the quickest production Lotus road car ever. The new vehicle features an all-new lightweight body, … Read more

Edition 130 at NAIAS 2016: Mercedes-AMG honors the achievement of the founding fathers with this highly exclusive cabriolet

Mercedes offers 130 reasons to mark the automobile’s birthday in style. The new Mercedes-AMG S63 4Matic Cabriolet “Edition 130” is one of the reasons. The first automobiles from Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, Mercedes-Benz founding fathers, were open vehicles. Mercedes-AMG honours this achievement with a highly exclusive cabriolet unveiled at the North American International Auto … Read more

NAIAS 2016: 745-HP Force 1 V10 – the Ultimate American Driving Machine

745-HP Force 1 V10 debuted at 2016 North American International Auto Show as the New American Supercar.
745-HP Force 1 V10 interior with champagne bottles

Legendary automotive designer Henrik Fisker and American race car driver Ben Keating unveiled the 2016 Force 1 V10, an all new American Super Car, during the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). The two-seat, all carbon fiber-bodied Force 1 is a high-performance, low production sports car, manufactured in Auburn Hills, Michigan by the newly launched VLF Automotive, of which  Fisker is a partner and design chief. With Fisker’s signature balance between proportion, sculpture and graphics, the exterior design of Force 1 boasts classic American sports car proportions with a long hood, short front overhang, long tail and pushed out wheels.

Force 1 is another dramatic example of what we are going to do at VLF Automotive by combining proven world-class platforms and components with elegant designs to produce stunning bespoke luxury sports vehicles,” said Bob Lutz, VLF Automotive Chairman.
VLF 2016 Force 1 V10 - 2 third VLF 2016 Force 1 V10

Fisker and Keating entered partnership discussions in early 2015 after bonding over their mutual love of cars.

Force 1 V10 will be produced in limited numbers with an initial production of only 50 units and available through Ben Keating’s Viper Exchange. Besides owning a limited edition all-American, high-performance luxury sports car, Force1 V10 owners will have the unique opportunity to attend two racing events per year with Ben Keating as an integral part of the team, in the paddock and in the pits where all the action takes place.

745-HP Force 1 V10 front

Force 1 V10 supercar features an all carbon fiber, lightweight body and 21-inch wheels with high-performance Pirelli P Zero tires and Brembo high-performance brakes. The car has one of the most powerful naturally aspirated road engines in the world delivering the best performance in its price class.

“What inspired me most about building this partnership with Ben is that he is the most passionate Viper racer in the world and understands performance metrics in cars, both on the track and on the road, better than anyone I’ve ever met,” said Fisker. “He’s developed a unique active suspension for superior handling and ride, which is seamlessly integrated into the Force 1, enhancing performance whether on track or road.”

745-HP Force 1 V10 interior

“To work with Henrik as one of the world’s best designers to create a super exciting, wide curvy body for this amazing car is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Keating said. “Plus, it’s the perfect vehicle to showcase many of the incredible performance features we’ve been working on for years. It really is the chance to start with an amazing initial platform to develop an incredible American super car with exceptional design and performance.”

“In the case of Force 1, there is an extremely pushed back green house,” Fisker explained. “The sculpture on Force 1 is like a family succession to Destino, dramatic and powerful, relative flat surfaces on the high end of the body side, with lines full of tension, emerging onto a rounder lower section, where Force 1 has a large functional outlet. The sculptural hood has unique, large, negative surfaces, as in the family of the Destino, with six highly needed air intakes and outlets for the 745-HP 8.4 L V10 engine.

745-HP Force 1 V10

The windscreen wraps around into the side glass, followed by an elegant, yet aggressive side line sweeping up towards the rear deck. The graphics are uniquely sleek with ultra-thin lights in front and UTV laser-blade tail lamps, the thinnest tail lamps in the world, at the rear. The day light opening (DLO), or side window, has a completely new and never before seen graffic that ends up in a sharp spear.”

Production commences at the end of April 2016 in Auburn Hills and deliveries begin in third quarter 2016, with the base price starting at $268,500.

VLF 2016 Force 1 V10 - rear

 

Silicon Valley approach to mobility: See Faraday Future’s FFZERO1 Electric Race Car Concept in action

FFZERO1 Electric Race Car Concept wants to achieve a seamless interaction between vehicle, data, and driver.

Faraday FFzero1 concept - CES 2016

At this year’s CES, California-based Faraday Future (FF) introduced its plan to rethink mobility unveiling its FFZERO1 Concept and the proprietary engineering platform on which it’s built, in addition to revealing the details of a strategic cooperation with Letv, a leading global technology brand.

The company’s first ever concept, the FFZERO1 is a high-performance electric vehicle built upon FF’s Variable Platform Architecture (VPA), a modular engineering system optimized for electric vehicles, on which all future FF production vehicles will be based.

“The VPA will enable FF to minimize production costs, deliver exceptional quality and safety, dramatically increase its speed to market, and could easily support a range of vehicle types and sizes. FF applied the high-performance FFZERO1 Concept to the VPA in order to maximize the platform’s potential and showcase its flexibility,” explained Faraday Future.

“We believe there is a future where the natural world and the man-made world harmoniously co-exist – each nourishing the other in sustainable balance. Getting there requires harnessing the power of technology to effect beneficial change. We believe such a future is within our grasp – so long as we have the courage and the will to act,” added the California-based global company with a Silicon Valley approach to mobility.

Featuring four motors, one at each wheel, FFZERO1 is built for its use case: the track. Ifdeveloped for limited production, it will have more than 1000 horsepower and will accelerate from zero to 60 in under three seconds, with a top speed in excess of 200 miles per hour.

Faraday FFzero1 concept electric race car

Utilizing lightweight materials and composites on the VPA platform, the FF design team experimented with new driver-focused
proportions, pushing the canopy forward for a perfectly aerodynamic teardrop profile.

FF’s soon-to-be signature “UFO line” runs around the center of the vehicle and is intended to give the sense that this vehicle is not completely of this world. Aero tunnels run through the interior length of the vehicle, allowing air to flow through the car rather than around it, dramatically reducing drag and improving battery cooling.

User-centric design is core to FF’s product development approach. Like future FF production models, the FFZERO1 electric race car concept has a sixth sense for its drivers’ needs: featuring adaptive personalization, seamless transfer of custom vehicle configurations, access to live images and real-time data visualization.

Faraday Future has directly integrated the smartphone into the steering column, representing the intersection of technology and automotive engineering. Conceptually, this setup could enable the smartphone to serve as the interface between the vehicle and the driver in – and outside – of the car.

The FFZERO1 Concept could be fully autonomous, meeting its driver at the track and perhaps taking a few perfect laps on its own to compare with, and improve upon, its driver’s performance.

Another of FF’s core philosophies is to design from the inside out. The FFZERO1 Concept’s interior is primarily white with a carbon fiber finish – a pure and extremely clean aesthetic atypical for combustion engine race cars, but reflective of a clean, quiet electric vehicle.

Faraday FFzero1 concept - CES 2016--

FF also announced a strategic cooperation with Letv that will enable it to benefit fromLetv’s expertise in content and technology. The two companies will build advanced electric vehicles by bringing together resources from the following four domains: technology, automotive, internet and cloud, and entertainment content.

“What we’ve announced illustrates the strength of our team, vision, partnerships, and speed. We’re a forward-thinking company focused on the future of mobility, but we also share a passion for driving and performance,” said Nick Sampson, SVP, R&D and Product Development, FF. “On our platform, electric vehicles will not only deliver on sustainability, but will be seamlessly connected and exhilarating to drive.”

These announcements come on the heels of a reveal of FF’s plans to invest $1 billion in the creation of a 3 million square foot state of the art, environmentally conscious manufacturing facility in North Las Vegas. The company will break ground on this phase one investment in the next few weeks and ultimately employ 4,500 people.

“The FFZERO1 Concept is an amplified version of the design and engineering philosophies informing FF’s forthcoming production vehicles,” said Richard Kim, head of design, Faraday Future. “This project liberated our designers and inspired new approaches for vehicle forms, proportions, and packaging that we can apply to our upcoming production models.”

Faraday FFzero1 concept - CES 2016-