Bewerp - Worlds Fastest 4 door Convertible

Bewerp launches four-door Savage Rivale Roadyacht convertible


Over the past couple of years, the number of upstart supercar manufacturers has bloomed. Brands such as Zenvo, Ascari, SSC and others have brought their six-figure machines to market to challenge more storied brands like Ferrari and Lamborghini.

Some, however, are a little more quirky than others. A prime example is this, the oddly-named Bewerp Savage Rivale Rodyacht GTS.

But the name isn’t the only peculiar thing about this Dutch droptop. Firstly, there’s the way it looks. It’s a bit odd, and rather angular in a cool, Italian ‘80s Lamborghini Countach kind of way, and what’s more is that its beetle-style doors should give Lamborghini’s a run for the money. Traffic pylon paintjob aside, its kitsch factor is furthered by the fact that its doors can be opened remotely via a custom wristwatch.

The second odd thing is the fact that the Roadyacht is a four-door convertible, a body configuration that isn’t popular. Besides the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, I’m hard pressed to think of another four-door droptop.
Last but not least is its performance. Based on the Chevrolet Corvette, the Roadyacht GTS is powered by a supercharged LS7 V8 that develops 670 horsepower and 538 lb.-ft. of torque. This engine provides sufficient power to propel it to 100 km/h in less than 3.5 seconds, and to 200 km/h in less than 35 seconds.

With a top speed of 330 km/h, the Bewerp is also the world’s fastest four-seat convertible, snatching the title from the 322 km/h Bentley Continental GTC Speed.

By Justin Couture

Pontiac - End of the Road for an Icon

Pontiac, pop culture icon, hits end of the road


LOS ANGELES - It could crash through burning buildings, make a fool of any number of small-town Southern sheriffs, help save the world from giant robots, even take criminals off to jail while engaging in witty repartee with its driver.
In the end, about the only thing a Pontiac automobile couldn't do anymore was persuade enough people to keep buying it.
So General Motors announced this past week that it is killing off the Pontiac brand, maker of muscular, noisy, gas-guzzling V-8-powered vehicles immortalized in song and movies for the way they seemed to shout to every other car on the block: "Out of the way, pipsqueak!"
When Burt Reynolds needed to outrun Jackie Gleason's bumbling Sheriff Buford Justice across the South in the 1977 movie "Smokey and the Bandit," he chose a black Pontiac Trans Am. When he needed a car to crash through burning buildings in "Hooper," it was a red Trans Am.
On TV, the star of the hit 1980s series "Knight Rider" wasn't really David Hasselhoff, it was his talking Pontiac. When Jim Garner's private eye Jim Rockford needed to hit the road to solve a crime, he didn't get behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang or a Chevrolet Camaro. He chose a Pontiac Firebird.
And when a bored high school senior from Nashville, Tenn., decided to tune out his physics teacher's lecture one day and check out a copy of Car and Driver magazine, it was a picture of a hot new Pontiac he saw on the cover. By the end of class, John Wilkin had written the 1964 pop classic "GTO."
Soon after, he would become known as Ronny Wilkin, frontman for a Beach Boys-soundalike group called Ronny and the Daytonas, and he would have the country singing: "Little GTO, you're really lookin' fine. Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389. Listen to her tachin' up now, listen to her whine. Come on and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out GTO."
For a time, the Monkees rode around in a tricked-out GTO, too.
Sometime in the '80s, however, the love affair began to fade.
Car enthusiasts speculated this week whether it was changing tastes, the move toward more environmentally sensitive cars or perhaps Pontiac's inability to keep coming up with new signature muscle cars that was to blame.
Pontiac's more recent contributions to America's automotive efforts included the very uncool Aztek, a chunky vehicle that looked like an SUV that tried to squeeze under a low-clearance bridge.
Jim Mattison, whose Michigan-based Pontiac Historic Services provides information on the model to collectors, noted that for whatever reason the company hadn't produced anything to capture the public's imagination in a long time.
"In 1963, they came out with this wonderful car called the GTO, then the Firebird in 1967, and then that evolved into the Trans Am," Mattison said. "The momentum kept on building until more recent years."
Pontiac, which discontinued the Firebird and Trans Am in 2002, tried bringing back the GTO in 2004. But the new model, produced in Australia, never caught on and was discontinued two years later.
"It didn't look like a Pontiac. It was still an Australian car," said Chris Brown of the Petersen Automotive Museum, where Pontiacs were on prominent display during a muscle-car exhibition a couple years ago.
Brown had praise, however, for two of Pontiac's current models, the G8 and the Solstice.
The latter even had enough muscle to be featured in the 2007 Shia LeBeouf movie "Transformers" as the good-guy robot-disguised-as-car named Jazz. But in perhaps an indication of things to come, Jazz was killed off fighting the evil Megatron and probably won't be around for the sequel.
Pontiac, however, will live on, at least in museums (there's a 1939 Woody on display at the Petersen), in private collections (Mattison owns more than a few himself), and in song.
Wilkin heard "GTO" on the radio just the other day.
"It made me happy and sad at the same time," he said. "I was happy to hear the song but at the same time it was like it was being played at a funeral."

John Rogers, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 02, 2009

PostScript:
Goodbye my sweet Pontiac. We will be forever the poor-er without you
This is like Goliath being slayed by David. The end of an Icon has
come to pass and we the yuppies and those before us will never forget you.
RIP - Pontiac
1929 - 2009

Chrysler: A Historical Timeline

One hundred and one years after Walter P. Chrysler first became a “car guy,” has the company he created finally collided with one crisis too many?

1924 Chrysler Six (Photo: Chrysler)Walter P. Chrysler's involvement with the automobile began at the Chicago auto show in 1908. The then 33-year-old railway executive fell deeply in love with a white Locomobile -- and went deeply into debt to buy it. Then he spent months tinkering with it before even learning to drive.

By 1912 Chrysler had parlayed his new obsession into a new career. Beginning as production manager for Buick, he rose to become president and general manager of that GM division.

Persistent conflicts with GM chief William Durant led him to resign in 1920. But by now, Chrysler's career was in high gear. Over the next two years he fulfilled a contract to resuscitate the failing Willys-Overland company, and did the same for another basket-case firm, Maxwell-Chalmers.

Working with three former Studebaker engineers, Walter P. developed and launched the first car to bear his name in 1924. With its high-compression 3.3-litre engine, and full hydraulic brakes, the Chrysler Six offered upscale features at a not-so-upscale price.

From zero to Big Three in five years

1953 Plymouth Sedan (Photo: Chrysler)The following year, Chrysler purchased the assets of Maxwell, and Chrysler the company was on its way. In 1928 Walter P. purchased the Dodge company, and the same year created Plymouth and DeSoto, giving the company a GM-style hierarchy of brands. The brands were ranked Plymouth, DeSoto, Dodge, and Chrysler (though in the '30s Dodge and DeSoto would swap positions; and later, for a time, Imperial was also a stand-alone luxury brand).

Within five years of its start-up, Chrysler was a full-line manufacturer competing with the Big Two, Ford and GM.

Despite the sales failure of the ahead-of-its-time, aerodynamic 1934 Airflow, Chrysler survived the Great Depression, helped in no small part by the success of its budget brand, Plymouth. After the U.S. entered the Second World War in 1941, the firm switched from civilian to military vehicle production.

At war's end, production of civilian vehicles resumed with lightly seasoned prewar models. When the first all-new postwar cars arrived (somewhat late) in 1949, they were knocked for dreary styling - but the arrival of former Studebaker stylist Virgil Exner that year would soon fix that. Another boost was the launch of the soon-to-be legendary Hemi V8 engine in 1951.

Success through engineering

1957 Chrysler 300C (Photo: Chrysler)The very first Chrysler had established a depth of engineering excellence that persisted through much of the company's history. Even when Chrysler didn't develop the new technology from scratch, it was often the first to use it on a mass-market car.

To name but a few of Chrysler's engineering "firsts": power steering, push-button automatic transmission, AC alternator, curved single-piece windshield, replaceable oil filter, rubber-isolated engine mounts.

Later, Chrysler was a lead adopter of standard airbags, and introduced the industry's first integrated child safety seats. There was also a 20-year fascination with gas-turbine engines, which may yet find an application as on-board generators in hybrid-electric vehicles.

Through the 1950s, '60s and early 70s, Chrysler had its ups and downs, but the 1973-74 energy crisis - which hit just after Chrysler had expensively redesigned its large cars - set it on the path with a near-death experience. The hiring of Lee Iacocca to head up the faltering company, and subsequent government-guaranteed loans that staved off bankruptcy in 1980, are now Chrysler folklore.


The right cars at the right time

1984 Dodge Caravan (Photo: Chrysler)So too are the simple front-drive K-cars that launched in 1981. The Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant helped engineer a recovery so rapid that the company paid back its loans seven years ahead of schedule.

Beyond Aries/Reliant, the K-car platform was remarkable for its ability to spawn countless spin-offs. None was more significant than the minivan, which created a whole new breed of vehicle in 1984.

Jeep joined Chrysler's portfolio in 1987 with the purchase of American Motors from then-owner Renault. Chrysler then created Eagle, its first new brand since 1929, to market the Ontario-built AMC Premier and other Renault-built cars that came with the package.


Foreign (mis)adventures

1978 Dodge Omni (Photo: Chrysler)Chrysler never matched the scale of GM's and Ford's overseas operations, but had its share of foreign dalliances. In 1958 it bought into the French automaker Simca, and later added Britain's foundering Rootes Group. In 1978 it unloaded both to Peugeot-Citroën, though not before the Europeans had designed what would become the successful Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon -- the first domestically built small front-wheel drive cars.

In the mid-'80s the Big Three went on a European boutique brand buying spree; Chrysler did its share, taking an interest in Maserati (remember the TC by Maserati?) and briefly distributed Alfa Romeos in North America. Chrysler even owned Lamborghini for a short period of time.

More successfully, a durable partnership with Mitsubishi provided Chrysler with countless "badge-engineered" small and sporty cars over the years.

Chrysler comeback – the sequel

1994 Chrysler Concorde, a member of the LH car family (Photo: Chrysler)By the early '90s the largely K-car-derived range was stale and sales were sliding. Once again Chrysler re-invented itself. Adopting a "platform team" approach to streamline vehicle development, Chrysler put 1989's show-stopping Dodge Viper concept into production for 1992, followed by the radically proportioned LH sedans in 1993, the in-your-face Ram pickup in 1994, and a string of other bold designs. All-time record profits of US$3.7 billion were achieved in 1994.

When Germany's Daimler-Benz acquired Chrysler in 1998's so-called merger of equals, Chrysler was still profitable - more so, in fact, than its acquirer. Yet, nine years later, the Germans rid themselves of the American company for a fraction of what they paid for it.

The failed merger: victim or perpetrator?

2009 Dodge Ram (Photo: Chrysler)Experts will debate endlessly what went wrong with DaimlerChrysler. Widely cited causes include promised synergies that failed to materialise, and deep chasms between the two organisations' respective cultures.

But the merger did not cause the ballooning health-care and pension costs that burden all three Detroit automakers, nor the serial gas-price shocks that have rocked an American industry unsustainably addicted to gas-swilling pickups and SUVs. Chrysler completely redesigned the Ram pickup for 2009 - but still does not have a subcompact car in its lineup.

Now, over and above Detroit's own self-inflicted injuries, Chrysler is swept up in an economic storm that transcends all industries and all nations.

If it's true that some companies are simply too big to fail, then this still may not be the end of the road for Chrysler. But one thing seems certain: the years that lie ahead will look very different from the first 85.

By Jeremy Sinek
April 23, 2009