A cataclysmic thunderstorm that produced baseball-sized hailstones for over three hours hit Dallas, Texas, late Wednesday afternoon, leaving thousands of residents and drivers stunned and scared at the same time. State officials predict that the damages from the storm that include many broken car windows could well exceed $400 million.
Despite the fact that several drivers were caught off guard on the road when the hailstorm started to intensify, some were calm enough to film the apocalyptic scene on their cell phone cameras.
Other car owners shot some videos of the damages caused to their cars the following day. You can check out all the clips right past the jump.
For our third photo quiz, we picked out four models from the Ford brand and upped the difficulty level just a little bit since most of you were spot on with your answers last week.
Here are two clues to assist you on the Ford puzzle: a) there are two production vehicles and two concept studies seen in this collection and b) each car is from a different region.
If you think you can tell which Blue Oval models are depicted in these cropped photos, hop over to the comments area to leave your answers.
As for our previous "Identify This", here are the four production Audi models:
Identify This No2 Answers:
No1: 2009 Audi S5 Sportback No2: 1974 Audi 50 hatchback No3: 1989 Audi 200 quattro 20V No4: 1993 Audi S2 Sedan
We knew it was destined to happen sooner or later: the first reported crash of a Scion FR-S. The hapless driver is a member of the FT86 Club forums who goes by the nickname Neutral. The 24-year old FR-S owner posted two pictures and a rather remorseful account of the incident that occurred during a right turn when he lost control of the rear-wheel drive sports car at about 20mph (32km/h) and then ended up smashing it into a telephone pole.
He says that he was a previous owner of B16-swapped Honda CRX and that he had taken the same wide turn "a million times over the past 4 years".
So what happened on that fateful day? Well, like many other drivers, Neutral turned off the traction control. "I entered the turn at about 20mph, and halfway through it, I got on the gas and I honestly can't remember exactly what happened after that", said Neutral.
The young driver said that both airbags went off but neither he nor his coworker was hurt.
It's worth mentioning that Neutral noted that he is fully aware of his mistake and that he has learned his lesson.
"I want you guys to know that I truly feel awful about the whole thing," he said in a forum posting. "I am truly sorry for letting my fellow FR-S owners down, and through making a complete ass out of myself, I feel I've learned a valuable lesson, albeit a hard one."
Well Neutral, we know where you are coming from, as most drivers of rear-wheel drive sports car have been involved in at least one accident that in hindsight, could have been avoided.
Lorenzo Ramaciotti to lead design team that will establish a common design language for the two brand
What is the common denominator between Fiat Group and Chrysler LLC? So far it was only Sergio Marchionne, the architect of Fiat's takeover ofChrysler and who also serves as the CEO of both companies.There are also a few Lancia models based on Chrysler cars and Chrysler cars based on Lancia's. However Marchionne is not satisfied with that level of integration, that is only badge engineering.
Now he aims to create stronger links and more substantial integration between the two nameplates in order save costs and double sales.In order to achieve his goal he chose Lorenzo Ramaciotti, Fiat Group's chief of design since 2007 is to lead a design team that will develop cars for the two brands."We are trying to find an international language, which could have a place both here in Italy and in the U.S.," said Ramaciotti to Bloomberg.com. "If you put all the models into the showroom, they must fit together. It's a delicate problem."
Before joining Fiat, Ramaciotti had worked for Pininfarina, the Italian coachbuilder, for 32 years. He was involved in the design of Ferrari cars, among them the 612 Scaglietti. He headed Pinifarina Design for almost 20 years and under his watch the company created some 20 concept cars for various customers.However his latest mission, to combine the two worlds, that of European car design with that American car design is going to be his toughest task, as Marchionne's ambition is to sell 800,000 Lancia-Chryslercars by 2014, more than double the current sales volume.
Modifying an all-time classic such as the 1963-1971 Mercedes-Benz SL roadster, nicknamed "Pagoda" after its concave hardtop, is never an easy task but it is one that the crew over at Sofia, Bulgaria-based tuning studio Vilner is willing to take.
The design studio prepared the classic SL for one of its clients starting with the exterior that was finished in a warm clay color with a matte mocha hue for details such as the wheels and the racing decals.
The same two colors were used for the interior that was re-trimmed in leather from top to bottom, while Vilner also redid the décor as well as the roadster model's trunk.
As a final touch, the client asked Vilner to add Gentle Pagoda labels both on the exterior and interior of the car.
We knew that it was only a matter of time before the Spanish-flavored twin of the Czech Skoda Rapid sedan would make its debut in production trim, but the crew over at the Seat Fans Club speeded the process by dropping what we believe to be the first official photos of the new Toledo.
Not much has changed from the near-production Seat Toledo Concept displayed at the Geneva Salon this past March, with the Spanish brand simply replacing the upscale trim pieces from the study's exterior and interior like the grille surround, large alloy wheels and flat bottom steering wheel with more conventional pieces.
The website that posted the photos says that the production car will launch in Europe with a choice of four petrol engines, including a gutless 1.2-liter three-cylinder unit with 74hp (75PS) and 84hp (85PS), a more peppy 1.2-liter TSI turbo with 104hp (105PS) and a 1.4-liter TSI turbo with 120hp (122PS).
The diesel range is said to include a 1.6-liter TDI CR with 104hp (105PS) and from 2013, a 1.6-liter TDI CR with 89hp (90PS).
The new Toledo compact sedan will be offered with both manual gearboxes and a DGS dual-clutch transmission.
Like its Skoda Rapid twin, the Seat Toledo is expected to make its first public appearance at the Paris Motor Show this fall, with sales to follow shortly after.
The refreshed for the 2014 model year Kia Sorento has been inadvertently revealed early as a completely undisguised model was photographed (allegedly) in its home market of South Korea. The obvious bodywork changes concern the redesigned fascia with new headlights sporting "eyebrow" accents on top, a wider upper grille that now extends to the lights and a new front bumper with different air vents and upright fog lamps.
In a similar fashion, the rear end of the crossover model has been reworked and now features new tail lamps (possibly with LED fixtures) together with a redesigned tailgate and a tweaked bumper.
The rest of the body seems to be unchanged.
We still do not know for sure if and what kind of changes Kia will make to the crossover model's interior and engine lineup, but we...promise to tell you as soon as we find out.
For the second consecutive year and 11th time in the last 13 years, Audi nabbed the chequered flag at the famed Le Mans 24 hours endurance race with drivers Marcel Fässler (CH), André Lotterer (D) and Benoît Tréluyer (F) behind the wheel of the R18 e-tron quattro.
Audi's win at the Sarthe circuit was of particular importance as it was a first for a diesel-hybrid car. In 2011, Audi had won the top spot with a diesel model.
Some early mishaps from Audi's chief rival Toyota, gave the two R18 e-tron quattro diesel-hybrids and the two conventionally diesel-powered R18s an edge in the race with the German brand occupying positions one (R18 e-tron), two (R18 e-tron), three (R18 Ultra) and five (R18 Ultra).
"By achieving this further success at the world’s most important endurance race our engineers demonstrated their high technological expertise in a particularly impressive way," commented Audi board member Rupert Stadler.
He continued: "With the e-tron quattro in combination with ultra-lightweight design, we put a completely new technology on the grid and immediately won with it – this cannot be taken for granted by any means, particularly here at Le Mans."
Rounding out the top six was the No.12 Rebellion Racing Lola Toyota of Neel Jani-Nicolas Prost-Nick Heidfeld that finished in fourth place and the No.22 JRM Motorsport HPD ARX-03a of David Brabham, Peter Dumbreck and Karun Chandhok that came in sixth.
