Brain...Jammed Vandals Destroy Seven New Toyota Models at 2011 Chicago Auto Show

Auto shows seem to have become risky business for car manufacturers. After the BMW 750i that was stolen at the Detroit motor show earlier this year, now more disturbing news comes from the Chicago Auto Show, where the Toyota booth attracted unwanted attention.

According to local newspapers, seven new Toyota models had their interiors vandalized by three young men, aged 20, 21 and 28. We don't know what really caused this deviant behavior, but one report attributes it to the fact that the three vandals were allegedly angry "about American jobs going overseas".

And it seems they wanted the Japanese cars to suffer badly, judging from the tools they used - screwdrivers and razor knives. The three young men were arrested on Wednesday evening before the show's closing time when guards noticed them acting suspiciously around a Toyota Camry. The mess they made inside the seven cars is substantial: dashboards were left smashed and ripped, seat upholstery sliced, windshields scratched, speakers cut open and turn indicators broken.

According to the police, the damage to the cars is estimated at $30,000. Interestingly, they had no preference for a particular model, vandalizing a Camry, a RAV4, a Land Cruiser, a Prius, two Tundras and one Lexus ES350. Funny thing, no accelerator pedal or floor mat were damaged...

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Jump Fail: Chevy Silverado Flies Right Into Dirt Ramp [Video]

Larry the Cable Guy might disagree, but trying to perform a crazy jump / stunt in a beat up Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck on a dirt track, doesn't sound like a sane idea. Fortunately, this brainless daredevil had mother luck on his side when he used his truck to dig a hole in the dirt ramp. Watch the video right after the break.

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225 lb Mother Killed in Crash, Peugeot Admits Not Crash Testing for Heavier Drivers

On the 20th of January, 2009, 56-year-old mother-of-three Judith Evans was killed when her Peugeot 107 hit a Vauxhall Vectra in a head-on collision in Buckinghamshire, UK. The matter recently went to court where it was heard that the victim sustained multiple fractures and chest and abdominal injuries which the Thames Valley Police noticed were unusually severe given the force of impact.

Experts from Peugeot and Vehicle Safety Consultancy Ltd believe that the 107 should have provided good protection for this sort of crash, and yet this was not the case. Why?

Evans' Peugeot 107 met all EuroNCAP safety standards, with the 107 and it's Citroen C1 and Toyota Aygo siblings having scored four stars in a 2005 test. It was fitted with front seatbelt pre-tensioners and load limiters along with front and side body airbags for both driver and passenger.

The investigation suggests it may have to do with weight. Not the weight of the Vectra compared to the 107, as Peugeot has suggested, but the weight of the 107's driver.

You see, Mrs Evans weighed close to 16 stone (102 kg / 225 U.S. lbs). Meanwhile Peugeot, following European regulations, never tested the 107 with a dummy weighing more than 12 stone 14 lbs (78 kg / 172 U.S. lbs). As such, the safety features built into the 107 weren't calibrated for a heavier occupant.

The Evans's family lawyer, asked Peugeot safety expert Richard Zeitouni: "Have you tested with any dummies more than 78kg?" Mr Zeitouni, replied that Peugeot had not.

Mr Horner then asked: "So you have not tested with a weight of dummy that corresponds to 50% of the male population?"

Mr Zeitouni answered: "When we designed this car we found it was good, adequate protection for the majority of occupants. It's an official dummy, a regulation dummy."

Peter Gloyns, a mechanical engineer from Vehicle Safety Consultancy (VSC) Ltd made this comment:

"The accident raises a serious question over the stability of the response of the total restraint system for an occupant of this build and weight in an accident of this severity in which it would be hoped that good protection could be offered."

The driver of the Vectra sustained fractures in her kneecap and internal bruising, but was otherwise unharmed in the crash.

A spokesperson from Peugeot told UK daily 'The Independent' that the company had no comment to make at this stage.

We'll have more on this case as we get it.

By Tristan Hankins

Source: Independent


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VIDEO: Chinese Biker Survives Accident thanks to some Crazy Kung Fu-Like Moves

Talk about lucky; here's a video of a Chinese motorcyclists who seemed to have all the right moves when he slammed into a little carry-all truck. As you can see from the clip after the jump, he was either extremely skilled or extremely lucky to be thrown off his ride the way he was.

If this accident weren't captured on CCTV, it would be the kind of stunt I'd expect to see in some 90's Jackie Chan movie. In that case, however, there would be people swarming the guy and dude would be using the formerly-known-as-a-motorcycle debris to whoop evildoers' behinds instead of probably being in shock. Hey, at least one or two of the surrounding drivers stopped to lend a hand.

Any (I'm guessing) Mandarin speakers out there, feel free to throw us a translation of the text in the comments below.

By Phil Alex
Via: Gizmodo / Jalopnik



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We're Goin' Surfin': Rental Corvette Abandoned in Pacific Ocean [With Videos]

Some presumably drunk people out California way decided to have a little bit too much fun in their recently-rented Corvette and ended up parked in salt water halfway up the car's doors. Thankfully in this day and age everyone has some sort of video recording device within arm's reach, so we have some post-parking-surfing videos below.


The story goes something like this: between two and four people - who may or may not have been racing - decided to roll on down to the end of Law Street (seriously) and take the normally pavement-pounding Corvette out to play in the sand. Once actually on the beach, the driver proceeded to do a few donuts, calmly drive the car into the water, and flee the scene.


The report indicates that some people who were involved have been detained, and that at least some of the expenses involved in pulling the car out of the sand could be recouped. All I can say for certain is that puling a car out of wet sand and water must have been hard as hell due to the suction; I learned that lesson when my friend took his Grand Marquis four-wheeling and the night ended...let's say poorly.


By Phil Alex


Source: CBS8



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Bumblebee Camaro Crashes into Real Cop Car During Filming of Transformers 3

BUMBLEBEE is racing down a side street to catch up with the other AUTOBOTS, who have found another piece of the ALLSPARK. Suddenly, a DECEPTICON POLICE SUV appears and cuts BUMBLBEE off!


Well, not really, but it sure looks like that in this video. According to The Washington Post, the story goes that a Metropolitan Police SUV was on its way to investigate a suspicious package in the D.C. area when it strayed onto the Transformers 3 set.


Just at that moment, a yellow Chevrolet Camaro a.k.a. "Bumblebee" rounded a corner and slammed into the right side of the police vehicle in the sort of scene you previously would only have seen in a Michael Bay movie.


District Police spokeswoman Tisha Gant told The New York Times that the officer driving the SUV was taken to a local hospital and that the driver of the Camaro was uninjured.


The Camaro seems to be the worst off of the two, having sustained damage to its front end up to the wheel wells. All of us here at Carscoop are hoping and praying that Bumblebee will be okay...

By Tristan Hankins


Via: The Washington Post




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US Trying to Perfect its Safety Rating System; Can't we Just Meet EU Standards and Call it a Day?

US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has announced a new and improved 5-star safety rating system for 2011 vehicles. If you're interested about your new car, scroll on down for some of the vehicles tested. As of now, the BMW 5-Series (RWD) and Hyundai Sonata are the only vehicles to be top-rated (33 of the 55 models to be tested have been graded thus far).

The NHTSA says the new protocols will also test "side-pole" accidents and crash-prevention systems, as well as using new dummies (hopefully these will be set up properly). One new addition will be the use of a smaller "female" dummy to gauge accidents involving women. Also, new "injury criteria" will be implemented, as well as the use of an Overall Vehicle Score.

NHTSA Administrator David Strickland says, "We want consumers to embrace these new safety technologies as a way to make vehicles safer. We believe electronic stability control, lane departure warning, and forward collision warning offer significant safety benefits and consumers should consider them when buying a new car." Well, yeah.

By Phil Alex

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Desert Drifting a Sonata: Knowing When to Stop is a Sign of Wisdom...

What happens when you live in / near the desert and have a bunch of money to waste? Cars get destroyed, that's what. Here's a small clip of somebody taking their Hyundai Sonata out for a little slideways action and utterly shredding the rear passenger side. I'd venture to say it's totaled, considering the rear wheels aren't meant to be pushed up into the wheel well like that.

Also, how fast do you have to be going to launch the spare tire out of the trunk? If anyone knows what event this was or what specifically was going on (other than putting that poor white Sonata into a mound of dirt), give us a shout.

By Phil Alex






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FAIL No2: Volvo V60 Safety System Flub Ends with a Dead Dummy Named Bob

This is officially the second safety system demonstration in as many "Look at this!" announcements that has gone horribly wrong for Volvo. That's right, two. The first one was back in May and led to a new S60 estate crushing itself into the back of a truck - see the video here. This latest mishap occurred during a media demonstration to Australian journalists in Europe.


Now that the known-as-safe Volvo brand is officially owned by the Chinese, is this a sign of things to come?


The mechanism in question is part of Volvo's pedestrian avoidance technology, which makes use of cameras and radar in the nose of the vehicle to control the brakes and stability control system in order to reduce driver/pedestrian injuries. The object that the system was meant to detect was Bob the Dummy; as you can see in the vids below, it didn't detect a damn thing.


That's not to say the system is terrible; after all is said and done, it worked 75% of the time. Of the twelve runs, only one ended with Bob getting the full force of the Volvo unleashed on him, with the other two still being less than perfect. Some of the blame has been placed on a camera that doesn't work well in low-light conditions (infrared / night vision, guys?).


Volvo's Jonas Tisell, Active Safety Systems manager, told journalists, "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being set up properly, therefore it did not give an echo enough for the system. So the dummy was not relevant in this situation." So...blame it on the dummy? And "not relevant"? How does being to blame (according to Volvo) translate as irrelevant?


More like Volvo just got caught with its pants down...again.


By Phil Alex


Via: Drive and Autoblog.com

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Segway Company Owner Dies After Riding Two-Wheeler Off a Cliff...

British tycoon and owner of the Segway company, Jimi Heseldon, has died after reportedly driving one of the firm's motorized two-wheelers off a cliff and into a river near his estate in Thorp Arch, Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, on Sunday, according to news reports.


"Police were called at 11.40am yesterday to reports of a man in the River Wharfe, apparently having fallen from the cliffs above," a spokesman for West Yorkshire Police force told reporters.


"A Segway-style vehicle was recovered. He was pronounced dead at the scene. At this time we do not believe the death to be suspicious."


The 62-year-old businessman, whose personal fortune was worth £166million earning him 395th place on this year's Sunday Times Rich List, brought the Segway from its U.S. inventor Dean Kamen in January 2010.

Source: Daily Mail / AP

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FAIL: Toyota Land Cruiser vs Puddle [Accident Content]

Nothing brings you back to driving-reality quite as effectively as good a ol' cold shower, or in this case, a puddle bath. The sinkhole incident involving this new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado reportedly happened during a test-drive event organized by a Prado fan club (we're assuming it occurred somewhere in Russia). Photos and a video of the accident after the break.

Spasiba to Alex V. for the tip!

Via: Carlifeblog , Source: Prado-club






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BP Ultimate 1, Ultimate Driving Machine 0; Porsche 911 GT3 Crashes into Gas Pump

The Porsche GT3 RS is widely accepted to be one of the best handling performance cars on the road today. So how is it that this driver managed to slam it into the petrol pump at a BP service station?


In any case, you only have to type, "car + petrol station" into YouTube to see just how lucky this guy was... Sure, the repairs will no doubt cost more than a well-equipped Toyota Corolla but at least he wasn't burnt alive.


We gather this accident happened in England because of the blue-and-yellow-marked Police Mitsubishi (Shogun?) parked in the background, but that's about all the information we have.


We would have contacted BP for a statement, but we assumed they were busier with some...ahem...other, little accident...


By Tristan Hankins


Via: Autoblog.nl & Jalopnik , Photos: Quattroworld

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VIDEO: Bentley Continental GT Burned to the Ground in Russia

Hot on the heels of the Ferrari 458 fire recall, here's some footage of a toasted Bentley Continental GT in Irkutsk, Eastern Siberia. Now, my Russian's a little weak, so if anyone could clarify these video reports that would be greeeeeaaaat.


According to the email we received from reader Alex, it appears as if this occurred in the Baikal neighborhood of the city. The investigation is ongoing, and arson is suspected. Mobsters? Could be, but there's really no telling.


Here's the interesting part (bear in mind, what you'll read here was translated through Google): "Testimonies of two cotton suggest arson, the reasons may be the mass, such as a place of competitors, insurance payments or assume illegal parking, as the car was across the parking lot and took three cars."


That suggests that someone either couldn't afford the car anymore, or some people just plain got pissed because the owner took up more than one parking spot. If it's the former, I've got two words for the owner: MONEY MANAGER. If it's the latter, well, learn how to park properly.


By Phil Alex


Hat tip to Alex V.!


Via: Carlifeblog.ru

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FAIL: BMW X5 Jump Stunt Takes a Turn for the Worse - Literally... [Video]

We're not quite sure what the driver of this dark colored BMW X5 SUV (or at least it looks like an X5) was trying to do here, but something tells us that performing a 180-degree flip and crashing into an electricity / telephone pole wasn't part of the plan / stunt. See the accident for yourself in the video after the jump and don't forget to rate the freestyle flip in the comments section below.

Via: Motofilm

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VIDEO: This is what a Ferrari 458 Italia on fire looks like on film

With so many Ferrari 458 Italia super-duper-cars going flambé on their owners, it was just a matter of time when someone would get one roasting on film. This prime example of Italy's hottest model was cooked somewhere in China's eastern coast.


We'll remind you that Ferrari has admitted through its UK spokesperson that it is currently investigating the 458 fires. According to media reports, in the past three months, a total of 11 Ferrari 458 Italia models (including this latest incident in China) have crashed with five of them being ruined by fire. Grab a bag of chips and enjoy the short film "A qualcuno piace caldo" right after the break.


Via: Autosblogs.fr

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FAIL: The General Lee's got nothing on this Flying Pontiac Firebird [VIDEO]

Words cannot describe how mega this crash is. If you haven't seen it yet, do it...DO IT NOW. It must be seen. Even if you have seen it, check it out again. The victim was a 19-year old who was speeding, tried to pass on the left, ended up in the median...then something CRAZY happened, he got ejected from his Firebird, somehow survived, and is now in critical condition.


The wreck shut down I-675 South for six hours (it's no Chinese traffic jam, but what is?). Thank you state trooper dash cam for making my day a little more horrifying and reminding me to always wear my seat belt and not do 100+ mph in traffic. Let's all hope this guy's ok.


By Phil Alex


Via: CNN

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Surprise, Surprise: Ferrari looking into 458 Italia Fires

Turns out that we're not the only ones to think that the unusually high number of brand-new Ferrari 458s catching fire, is well, at tad suspicious, to say the least. So does Ferrari which is looking into the potential issue. While at least 10 Ferrari 458s have been involved in accidents since the beginning of the year, Ferrari is investigating three specific cases in which the supercar caught fire. One of those cars was roasted in a storage facility blaze at London's Heathrow airport.

A Ferrari spokesman in the UK has officially confirmed that the company is investigating the cause of the fires. "We are taking all the reports very seriously and are looking into them but we are treating them all as separate incidents," the unnamed spokesman told the Daily Telegraph.

In a another report on the same topic, the Italian automaker's spokesperson told 'Just-Auto': "It is important to differentiate between what is a vehicle fire and outside factors and I would include driver error."

Which, of course, is a reasonable argument if you take into consideration that we're talking about a 570HP -strong mid-engine exotic supercar that's capable of reaching 100km/h (62mph) in 3.4 seconds before topping out at 325 km/h or 202mph.

"Six have been incidents where it potentially could be the driver or other factors", the spokesperson added. "I am not in a position to comment on the vehicle fires and all we can say is we are taking it obviously very seriously."

You can check out the Ferrari 458-related crashes / fires we've reported on by clicking on the following links:


- Tool of the Day: Owner Crashes Brand New Ferrari 458 Italia Outside Maranello Factory [VIDEO]
- Once Upon a Time, this Heap of Metal was a Ferrari 458 Italia...
- Rental Ferrari 458 Italia gets a Nasty Nose Job
- Ouch... Ferrari 458 Italia Lights Up in Paris
- Two More Ferrari 458 Italia Supercars Smashed Up- irst Recorded Crash of Ferrari 458 Italia!


Source: Daily Telegraph & Just Auto (sub. req)

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FAIL: Video Lesson on how NOT to Flee the Scene of an Accident

Some people are just no good behind the wheel. Reader Sebastian sent over this video of what appears to be an intoxicated driver finding a way to make a bad situation significantly worse (don't they always?).


I've personally been in this situation; drunk dude slammed into me at 11:30 in the morning and fled right into a fence in a fashion similar to this video. That being said, I'm simply thrilled to see this guy fail so epically. Fast forward to about 45 seconds in and watch the driver's daring escape.

All this is being said under the assumption that the driver wasn't having a heart attack or something, in which case, sorry to hear about that.


By Phil Alex


Thanks to Sebastien from Motofilm for the tip!

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FAIL: Rental 2010 Camaro SS in Dukes of Hazzard Style Antics Results in Crash [with Video]

And yes, we have another accident involving a rental sports car. Today's crash concerns a 2010 Camaro SS (not that it matters, but that's the one with the 426-HP 6.2-liter V8 powerhouse) engaging in some railroad track hoonery with the usual outcome.

Here's the description from the person who uploaded the video on Youtube: "Guy rents 2010 Camaro SS, jumps railroad tracks in Houston TX going roughly 90 miles an hour." See what happens next in the video after the jump - just be prepared for some annoyingly random and topsy-turvy footage.

Props to Jonathan for the tip !

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Rental Ferrari 458 Italia gets a Nasty Nose Job

We know, we know and we know (click the highlighted links) that a Ferrari 458 Italia crashing or burning up is hardly news these days. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised at all if the number of wrecked 458s exceeds Maranello's available production capacity... At least this dark gray (or is that black?) example is said to have been a rental car hired from a company in the UK. More photos after the jump.


Via: Autoblog.nl & GTspirit

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