Who would have thought that consumers don’t want to lose money. Yet we buy super expensive vehicles only to see our hard earned money go down the tubes the second we leave the stealership. I found this article on vehicles with the best return on them. Surprisingly the Jeep Wrangler took top honors, but I guess when it only gets updated every fifteen years it never goes out of style. This news helps me out since I have been trying to figure out how to get some money out of my current truck to go buy a new JK. Now I have the excuse to tell the wife that it is the best vehicle investment I can make. We’ll see how that goes…

CarGurus (www.cargurus.com), an automotive community offering consumers pricing information on new vehicles, assembled its list of the 10 best and 10 worst vehicles in terms of retention value.

Using its Web Price Index, CarGurus, assembled lists of the popular 2007 cars that have historically had the best and worst value retention in the past (as measured by the percent of MSRP retained over five years and 65,000 miles). Study findings included that:

The 2007 Jeep Wrangler took the top spot, having retained 73% of its value over a five-year/65,000-mile period
Five of the Top 15 value-retaining cars were Toyotas
Surprisingly, sports cars such as the Ford Mustang and Porsche 911 were both on the list of Top 15 value-retaining cars, as shown in the table below:

CarGurus took the 250 most popular cars as measured by sales volume and selected cars shipping in 2007 that had similar trims shipping in 2001. CarGurus then measured the value of a used 2001 version of the car with 65k miles (in today’s dollars) versus the original MSRP (from 2001) to measure “value retention.”

Source: CarGurus. (June 5, 2007). “CarGurus Releases Auto Industry’s First and Only ‘Web Price Index’—Pricing From the Democracy of the Web.” CarGurus press release courtesy of PR Newswire

Well it isn’t a car, but it does have wheels. Who would have thought their would be a market for this. Keeping your feet busy while sitting at a computer. This does look like a nicely done design though. Do you think I can get work to right this off as making me more productive? It says it will be at the Neo Con Show this week in Chicago; which I will be at, so I will get to check it out. I’ll let you know if it is any good.

From Core77;
In order to promote the physiological benefits of movement and motion of lower leg activity, in addition to remedying the all-around-lameness of lazy legs at the workplace, BriteConcepts has developed the Webble. Making its debut today at NeoCon 2007 in Chicago, the Webble is an ergonomic ottoman that lets your lower half surf the floor while you surf the web, pretending to work. There are two versions: Webble features a hardshell surface with grips while Webble AIR sports a flexible mesh membrane–both versions have smooth casters, a patent-pending spring suspension, and a self-braking mechanism.

I broke my arm, so my posts will be short for a while I can not type very well. This is from an interesting blog about past mechanics.

Can you tell what the donor car was for this project? It took me a few minutes while at the SEMA Show last year, but I guess the title gives it away. I just wanted to share one of the hilarities from the show. I guess these builders really like the rolling vault Ford Synus and wanted to make it a brother. I am sure somewhere out there someone thinks this thing is awesome and he is 40 years old with a mullet and a can of the beast (ice).

Well the new X5 isn’t really even out yet (although I saw one and it looks great) and already there is an M version to come. The likes are bigger wheels, lowered suspension, wheelarch extensions, and side skirts. The dislikes are the front bumper. Who designed this? It looks like it came off the pudge called Cayenne. This vehicle certainly isn’t up to par with it sister the M Coupe. That sexy thang!

Thanks Auto Express for the pic.

From the Autoblog:

Porsche’s newest model: the Porsche Design P’9521

Posted Jun 8th 2007 2:02PM by Jonathon Ramsey
Filed under: Etc.

It’s a luxury-branded world we live in, and for some people, life, love, and mobile reception are just a little bit better when your cell phone comes from a high-end car maker. Ferrari’s got Motorola, Lamborghini’s got Nokia, Mercedes has Asus, and now Porsche Design, a subsidiary of the actual auto company, reveals its latest effort in conjunction with Sagem Communication, a French cell phone company: the P’9521.

All the usual suspects are there: quad-band GSM, 3.2 megapixel camera and flash, mp3 recording and playback, video capture, Bluetooth, and all kinds of messaging. It has a dual hinge so the screen swivels in two directions, like the Nokia N90, and you can take pictures around corners. It also has a fingerprint reader, although with so much mineral glass for its surface, we imagine the phone will be ‘capturing’ its fair share of fingerprints one way or another. Frankly, we think the form factor looks a bit clunky, but the aluminum and mineral glass is certainly digable. It will be available later this year, and it’s going to cost a lot, but you won’t be able to buy it in the US. For now, you’ll just have to settle for a pocket knife instead.

[Source: Carscoop]

From the Autoblog:

Comics and cars paired in new sketchbook

Posted Jun 6th 2007 2:29PM by John Neff
Filed under: Etc.

Chris Ring has 20 years under his belt as a professional illustrator. He also has an appreciation for autos. Those two passions have come together in a new sketchbook called Costumes & Cars in which Ring pairs some of the most popular comic book characters of all time with the cars that best match their personalities. The idea for the sketchbook came about when Ring was doing a sketch of the Punisher and decided he needed a new car. The Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 seemed like a perfect fit for this anti-hero with an agenda. From there, other characters were paired with their four-wheeled counterparts. The Joker likes to laugh, so he gets a 1974 Mustang II. The Green Arrow was paired with a Corvette Stingray that’s as sharp and fast as his namesake weapon, while the gruff Wolverine of X-Men fame hops on the back of a Harley Davidson Heritage Softail. Costumes & Cars is 32 pages thick, and well over half are sketches like the ones you’ll see in the gallery below. It costs just $5, but only 300 will be printed, so if there’s a dad or grad in your life that shares Chris Ring’s passion for comics and cars, you better move quick and click here to order a copy.

Gallery: Comics & Cars

From the Autoblog:

Some things just shouldn’t be combined, like a Smart and Eleanor

Posted Jun 5th 2007 12:29PM by Sam Abuelsamid
Filed under: Coupes, Economy, Etc., Hatchbacks, Ford, SMART

Mashups are a really cool idea, when you take two disparate things and blend them together to create something new and interesting like Danger Mouse’s Grey Album or Reese’s peanut butter cups. However, sometimes, no matter how much you might want it to happen, things just don’t mix, like oil and water.

Into the latter category falls the smartinor created by THALONDESIGN. Smartinor is the evil spawn of a Smart ForTwo and an Eleanor Mustang. Wearing all kinds of fake scoops, strakes, lights and a rocker panel stripe with the name “GT50%”, the smartinor is one of those things that may have seemed like a cool idea, but should have been abandoned long before it ever saw the light of day.

[Source: THALONDESIGN via CarScoop]

From the Autoblog:

Go Speed Racer, Go: Movie Mach 5 debuts

Posted May 31st 2007 12:38PM by Alex Nunez

Click image for high-res version

Well, now you know what we’ll be covering breathlessly post-Transformers. Shooting for the Wachowski brothers’ live-action Speed Racer film begins next week in Germany, and Warner Bros. has released the first official pic of the Mach 5 hero car.

Awesome.

It’s a modern take on the Speed’s iconic ride, and is sleeker and way badder-looking than the Mach 5 prototype created in 1999 (and on permanent display at the Petersen museum in L.A.), which is more faithful to the original ‘toon car. As you can see, the movie car retains the same general look as the hand-drawn Mach 5, but incorporates details like a racy full-wraparound windscreen, sleek rearview mirrors, and chromed dubs shod in Yokohama Advans. It looks absolutely killer. As the film’s star Emile Hirsch (he plays Speed) summarizes, “Yeah. They got the car right.”

Indeed. Hopefully Chim Chim doesn’t make a mess on the seats….

UPDATE: High-res photo added.

Thanks for the tip, Joe!

[Source: USA Today]

 From the Autoblog:

Motosketches’ auto-inspired two-wheeled designs

Posted May 30th 2007 5:57PM by Jeremy Korzeniewski
Filed under: Etc., Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz

I ran across this posting over at Motorcycle News and thought I would share my findings with the rest of the class. A man by the name of Oberdan Bezzi has his own blog where he sketches his two-wheeled fantasies and posts them for all to see. That takes some guts, unless, of course, you are extremely talented, which we think Oberdan qualifies as. As we are a site that obsessively covers the automotive industry first and foremost, we think you should take a look at his ideas on the types of bikes companies such as Audi, Mercedes Benz and Bugatti could produce. BMW already produces motorcycles, but he tackles the Bavarian automaker anyway. Now that you have started off with those, feel free to take a look at some of his other designs and notice how he integrates well known styling cues from major manufacturers into his designs. Very good work indeed!

[Source: Motosketches via Motorcycle News]