bmw

The grueling Paris-to-Dakar rally finished last month, and a few proud automakers showed off their winning cars. Mitsubishi has the honor of many consecutive first place wins with its Pajero SUV. One of the Team Repsol Pajeros, which took first place, is on display in Mitsubishi's booth at the 2007 Geneva Auto Show. Another successful entrant, which placed in the top 10, was the X-Raid diesel-powered BMW X3. Volkswagen, which put out a lot of press during the rally about its top 10 placing Touareg entrants, neglected to bring any of its cars to Geneva.

Sure, it's just a concept. Nothing to get excited about. Concepts hardly ever make it intact to production, anyway. But it's the new M3, and we're just going to go ahead and get our hopes up anyway. BMW unveiled the new M3 at the 2007 Geneva auto show, and this picture hardly does it justice. It's a sleek, beautiful-looking car and we want it now. In the press materials, BMW nonchalantly says that it will use a high-performance V-8, typical of what you would expect in an M3. We actually expect quite a bit.

The car … Read more

Drivers of the new BMW 5 series will have the option of an extra tech safety device to ensure that they make it to the boardroom meeting in one piece. The 2008 5 series, which will make its official debut at this week's Geneva auto show, will come with the intelligent Lane Departure Warning system (LDW), which will warn drivers if they are about to cross over a lane-dividing line without using their turn signal.

Rather than sounding a chime or flashing a light on the dashboard (a la the system in the 2007 Infiniti M35 Sport), the BMW … Read more

If H.G. Wells had envisioned a set of speakers that could take over the planet, they would have looked like these.

This Martian-impersonating pair hails from Western Ireland, created by former BMW designer Aonghus O'hEocha. Hammacher Schlemmer says the hand-crafted 200-watt isobaric speakers "provide the clearest three-dimensional soundstage performance available." They'd better, when you see the price: $9,000.

Then again, as eyeball-shaped alien speakers go, that's a lot cheaper than Cabesse's $150,000 "La Sphere." Talk about the end of the world.

It takes some doing to create a significant buzz among jaded bloggers, but BMW has managed to do just that (and just as it had planned, we assume). The minicontroversy centers on a special Flash page that teases what looks to be some kind of uberdevice that "touts the ability to play MP3s, DVDs and CDs, has USB and Bluetooth connectivity options, can recognize voice commands, and has a 65,000-color LCD to boot," according to Engadget.

The question, of course, is universal: What is it? And BMW has done little to answer it, naturally, thereby heightening the … Read more

Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off the second day of the LA Auto Show here today by telling carmakers that clean energy is the future of the auto industry. Surrounded by a collection of alternative-fuel vehicles, including BMW's Hydrogen7, Tesla's electric-powered roadster, and Honda's hydrogen fuel cell-powered FCX Concept, the California governor said that it was time for automakers to "get on the train" to alternative energy.

He also thanked car manufacturers for what they have done to date in their efforts to produce vehicles that run on alternatives to gasoline. A troupe of automotive executives joined … Read more

When we got the 2006 BMW X5 in for review eariler this year, we panned it for its pathetic tech offering: the baseline model (which came with a price tag north of $50K) didn't even come with a CD player, insulting our tech sensibilites instead with--brace yourselves--a cassette deck. Well, from famine, we go to feast. Today at the 2007 LA Auto Show, BMW unveiled its next-generation, 2008 model-year X5. We're pleased to announce that the cassette player is gone, and in its place is a veritable host of interior tech features, including a simplified iDrive, a rear-seat … Read more

After we posted the (faux) diamond-clad Mercedes last weekend, we were shocked to hear that some people thought it was a tad gaudy. So those seeking a more muted statement might find this more to their liking: a BMW covered in chrome.

The Canadian owner of said Beamer, an E46 M3, wasn't just into appearances either: According to Motor Authority, "He added a Flossman GTR-style wide body kit, supercharged the inline six motor to the tune of 600hp and then stacked the boot with an audio system that looks like it came out of a flying saucer." … Read more