In an effort to reach out to what it sees as ‘new customers in urban areas,’ Aston Martin has joined forces with fashion authority colette to produce a very limited edition city car.

Dubbed the Cygnet & colette, it’s based on Aston’s Cygnet, a thoroughly reworked version of Toyota’s pint size iQ, but with even more exclusivity. Commissioned by colette and crated by Aston Martin Works Tailored, the Cygnet & colette perhaps represents the first true, bespoke city car and quite possibly, a sign of things to come.

Just 14 of these limited editions will be built, each sporting special Lightning silver paint; accented by unique blue colette trim, on the hood and exterior mirrors, along with diamond finished alloy wheels and special Cygnet & colette exterior emblems.

Inside, is a  Bitter Chocolate  themed cabin (inspired by colette’s mascot, the Chocolate Labrador) that sports blue accents along with quilted inserts for the seats, door panels and even the sunvisors. It’s also loaded with goodies, including a satellite navigation system, plus a selection of candies, a Wallpaper guide to Paris, a custom Sigg bottle and a selection of colette CDs.

Orders for each of the 14 Cygnet & colette cars (the number chosen to celebrate colette’s 14 years in business as a fashion retailer) can be placed through the company’s store in Paris. Price? 48,995 Euros ($70,160).

The young and wealthy of New York gathered in the Park Avenue Ferrari showroom in Manhattan on Tuesday to ogle a new coffee-table book that traces the history and heritage of the automaker in words and exclusive photos. Marco Mattiacci, the president of Ferrari North America, was also there to greet the chic crowd, most of them current or prospective Ferrari owners.

The Official Ferrari Opus is not just any coffee-table book, especially the volume made with its red-leather cover featuring the brand’s prancing horse encrusted with diamonds. This edition retails for $250,000 while the cheaper model was priced at a more “reasonable” $3,200.

Mr. Mattiacci later explained, that the rapid growth of the Ferrari brand in China “We were selling 300 cars a year when I left,” he said. “It is now the second-largest market for Ferrari, and the average age of customers there is 32. In the U.S., it’s 47.” He also said that most sales in America were to repeat customers. “My job is to gain more opportunity in the U.S. for Ferrari,” The United States accounts for more than a quarter of Ferrari’s annual sales. Mattiacci said he has worked hard to attract growth among younger buyers, as he recently assembled a show-and-tell session in California to attract the sultans of Silicon Valley.

[Source: Wheels]

The toys are back in town! From their 2010 debut during the Super Bowl, the toys for Kia’s ad are back and pumping up the 2012 Sorento.

The Super Bowl Dream ad, which starred these wacky and wonderfully unique life-sized characters, is back. They take to the road in search of adventure, which includes skydiving, surfing and other great stunts.

It’s great to see the automaker taking a different approach to the same old, same old car commercials that populate the airwaves these days. This ad uses another catchy tune (Those Darlins singing “Red Light Love”) and it’ll have you wondering what’s next for these loveable toys.

Watch the commercial after the jump and let us know what you think about it. Is it one of the better auto ads playing right now or is it just another boring sequel?

[Source: The Car Connection]
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Union employees working for Saab are growing impatient after the automaker said it could not pay wages to its workers because it had not yet obtained necessary short-term funding. The unions have threatened legal action that could end in bankruptcy for the automaker. The IF Metall and Unionen groups will send a formal demand for payment this Monday if their members have not received their unpaid wages. ”Then the company has seven days to react,” IF Metall representative Veli-Pekka Saikkala told Reuters. “After that there are two alternatives. Either we see that the situation can be solved, or we demand that Saab is put into bankruptcy.”

A rescue package for Saab has been set up by two Chinese car companies, Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co. and Pang Da Automobile Trade Co, which would solve longer-term financial issues, however this still needs to be approved by authorities in China and Europe.

Bankruptcy is still very possible for Saab and “The company is in a downward spiral. The longer it takes, the tougher it gets. The longer it takes, the more potential buyers will leave,” said analyst Martin Crum at Dutch Broker AEK

Saab stopped production in April because of payment disputes with suppliers and only briefly restarted production for a week at the beginning of June. So far Saab owes at least $47 million to Swedish suppliers, and the longer the Trollhatten plant is at a standstill, the deeper the hole becomes for the automaker.

[Source: Automotive News]

Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima is no stranger to Pikes Peak: he’s won the International Hill Climb five times, and currently holds the record for the fastest time up the mountain. This year, he’s aiming to win again, and who is his greatest opponent? Himself.

The current best time up the 12.42-mile course is 10:01.408, set by Monster himself in 2007.  Cracking the 10-minute mark is the Holy Grail, the motorsports equivalent of the four-minute mile—but just as that challenge was cracked in 1954, so too will Pikes Peak be conquered in under 10 minutes.

Tajima is driving once again for Suzuki, this time in an SX4 Hill Climb Special with 910 horsepower. He will face challenges from Paul Dallenbach, Dave Carapetyan and Rhys Millen, who was favored to be the event’s front-runner last year in his Hyundai Genesis coupe but ultimately proved to be a dud. The festivities begin this Friday, June 24th, and the racing starts on the 26th in Colorado Springs.

German sportscar maker Porsche is celebrating quite a milestone this month, as it has now exceeded the 300,000 mark for the total production number of the Boxster and Cayman models. This special occasion comes exactly 15-years to the month after production started back in 1996.

The car carrying the exclusive 300,000 build number was a platinum silver Boxster Spyder model with a red leather interior. It is intended for a customer in Germany.

The Boxster started out as a concept car back in 1993 at the Detroit Auto Show, but thanks to its overwhelmingly positive reaction, Porsche decided to put the car into production. It spent the first decade as only a convertible model, but then in 2006 was joined by the Cayman coupe. Nowadays, both these models come with a variety of engine, gearbox and trim packages to appeal to different clients.

While 300,000 units is an impressive number, it is far from the being the most populous sportscar on the market. Mazda for instance has produced over 900,000 of their MX-5 models, while Chevrolet has produced just over 1.5-million Corvettes.

Click here to read AutoGuide’s Porsche Boxster Spyder Review

You can’t make a viral video, it just happens. But that doesn’t mean marketing agencies aren’t going to try and spend multi-million dollar budgets trying.

The latest such example is Scion‘s new ad campaign. It’s a comedic piece using the Greek god Zeus, who is credited for creating the limited edition “High Voltage” Scion tC Release Series 7.0.

Created by the minds at Attik, the idea, says Scion marketing manager Owen Peacock in an interview with AdAge, is to generate something people will want to share with their friends, thus created a viral sensation. Along with a more mainstream commercial, there are also a series of accompanying videos titled “On the Set with Zeus” that take a mock look behind the scenes at the making of the commercial, showing Zeus trying to fit in on a Hollywood set and failing at picking up women.

By definition, a corporate video made by an agency can’t really be viral. But is it funny? You be the judge. Watch all the commercial as well as all the related videos after the jump. And read AutoGuide’s 2011 Scion tC review here.

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Dany Bahar, the man responsible for running Lotus at the moment, has his fair share of critics. However, he is moving the brand forward through expansion, and his latest move is to give this famed British marque a brand new test track.

The new Lotus Test Track is situated in Hethel, U.K., a stone throws away from the old Lotus factory in Norfolk.

This 2.3-mile track boasts 12 pit garages, and is FIA approved, so not only can it hold races for thr FIA GT championship, but can also be used for testing F1 cars.

This $15-million circuit will also be mainly used to develop the new breed of Lotus road cars, which should hit the market in two years time.

F1 legends Jean Alesi and Nigel Mansell were at hand to open this new facility, with Mansel piloting his 1980 Type 88 car around the new track, followed by Elesi in the Lotus Type 125 Exos Experience car, as well as Vitaly Petrov and Bruno Senna in their Lotus Renault GP F1 cars.

GALLERY: Lotus Hethel Track Grand Opening

U.S. auto thefts may be at their lowest rate in 40 years, but if you’re a resident of Fresno, CA there’s a good chance you’re in disbelief. That’s because Fresno holds the title of the number one city for car thefts.

In a report issues by the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), Fresno has risen from fifth in the nation last year with a spike in car crime totaling of 7,559 vehicles stolen as compared to 5,875 in 2009. Fresno leads its California neighbor Modesta, which placed second in the NICB study, by a significant margin averaging 812.4 car thefts per 100,000 people.

Third place on the list belongs to yet another California city, Bakersfield. In fact, eight of the top 10 cities for car theft are in the Golden State, with the remaining two also on the West Coast in Washington State.

So far this year vehicle theft rates are down significantly, dropping 7.2 percent over the year before. It that number holds, 2011 will prove to have the lowest vehicle theft rate since 1967.

Hit the jump for a list of the Top 10 Cities for Car theft in 2010:

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Years from now you’ll remember reading this article. It will be the first time you ever heard about Volkswagen‘s new Temporary Auto Pilot, a technology that lets a car essentially drive by itself.

Science fiction? Hardly, VW claims its far closer to rolling this auto pilot option in production models that you’d expect.

Anyone who’s been paying any attention to the development of autonomous cars will likely have heard of Google’s driverless ones. While those vehicles are a somewhat distant reality, cars using Volkswagen’s TAP system could be on the road soon, thanks to the use of technology already in place in production cars. In a statement released following the debut of the system, Volkswagen claims that, “TAP is based on a relatively production-like sensor platform, consisting of production-level radar-, camera-, and ultrasonic-based sensors supplemented by a laser scanner and an electronic horizon.”

Revealed at the HAVEit (Highly Automated Vehicles for Intelligent Transport) conference in Boras, Sweden, VW research director Dr. Jürgen Leohold described it as “An important milestone on the path towards fully automatic and accident-free driving.”

The Temporary Auto Pilot function, which can be switched on or off by the driver, will allow what VW calls “semi-automatic” driving at speeds of up to 130 km/h, or roughly 86 mph. It bundles features like adaptive cruise control, and a lane assist system allowing the vehicle to stay centered in a lane and maintain a constant distance from the vehicle ahead. Added innovations include the ability to reduce speed in a corner, as well as the ability to recognize speed limits.