It looks like the Chinese aren’t happy with their plain old boring supercars. So they’ve decided to cover them up in the latest trendy accessory – TRON-like reflective trimmings. Several websites have reported sightings of such cars on China’s streets, despite numerous police warnings.

According to Zeng Chaoyi, a car decorator, the trend is very popular among young drivers because of its futuristic and modern appeal. The decoration is believed to be made of 3M reflective vinyl tape. The accents are applied all over the car, including the wheels.

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‘Wheelies’ are the latest accessories for motorcycles, developed by World Moto, a Bangkok-based tech company. Their invention allows bikers to convert a bike’s front wheels into full color LED screens – displaying mobile billboards, videos, animation or text of their choice. What’s great about Wheelies is that the display is stationary even when the wheels are in motion.

According to Paul Giles, CEO of World Moto, “The technology has the potential to turn essentially any wheel in the world into a brilliant, full-color billboard or video screen.” He said that the idea could appeal to motorcyclists who want to put a face on their wheels. “It gives their bike a face, sort of like an avatar.”

The ad for the product is amusing – it shows a gang of ‘hot’ girls choosing a geek on a motorcycle with Wheelies, over a cool biker dude. Wheelies are fun and quirky, and can show 30 seconds of video on a loop, managed by a web application. But they’re still in development stage. World Moto hopes to evolve the product to be able to stream video and play full length movies. Very practical. Not.

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A few weeks ago, we told you how students at a University in Dubai came to school in flashy cars. Now, Dubai’s cops seem to be catching up too. The latest version of the emirates police fleet is so impressive, people on the streets are begging to be arrested and taken for a ride. Civilians actually stop to click photographs as the police cars pass by.

The latest addition to the fleet is a state-of-the-art, US $280,000 McLaren MP4-12C. It joins the Dubai police’s garage of the world’s most expensive patrol cars – a Lamborghini, an Aston Martin, a Bentley, a Ferrari and a Chevrolet. All of these cars can comfortably exceed 190 miles per hour. They are almost impossible to outrun.

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A Canadian automotive products company recently built a pretty cool truck, quite literally. It was made of ice!

Canadian Tire, in Zurich, Ontario, wanted to advertise the MotoMaster Eliminator Ultra battery that works at subzero temperatures. So they built a frozen truck using 14,000 pounds of ice. They also froze the battery to -40 degrees Celsius before using it to start the vehicle. During the test drive, the ice truck actually moved at a speed of 12 miles per hour for about a mile.

To create the Canadian Tire Ice Truck (as they call it), a team of professionals completely stripped the body off of a 2005 GMC Silverado. They fitted it with a steel frame, and ice sculptors were called in to chisel out the frozen vehicle around the frame of a regular chassis. “It was probably one of the biggest challenges we’ve ever done,” said Heidi Bayley, from Iceculture (the company that sculpted the truck).

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20-year-old Raul Oaida, a self-taught technology genius, has built the world’s first life-size LEGO car using 500,000 pieces. It’s not just a model, you can actually drive it. And the fuel costs nothing, because the car runs on air!

Oaida’s partner in this project was Australian entrepreneur, Steve Sammartino. The car was built in Romania, Oaida’s home country, and delivered to Melbourne, Australia for a test drive. Together, they named it the ‘Super Awesome Micro Project’ (I think the name is perfect!).

The engine of the car is also entirely made of LEGO. It has “four orbital engines and a total of 256 pistons.” According to the project website, the top speed isn’t very impressive, around 20 to 30 km. “We were scared of a Lego explosion so we drove it slowly,” the founders wrote. Steve and Oaida say that the project was possible only because of the internet. The two even met online, when Steve accepted Oaida’s Skype request. “I’m teaching him about business and he’s teaching me a bit about physics,” Steve told the press.

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If you love cars, this post is going to be eye-candy for you. We have a bunch of pictures taken by a student at a parking lot of the American University of Dubai. Reddit user Squirrelnelius, real name Meeka Nasser, put up pictures of amazing cars owned by students attending the learning institution in the Middle East.

I know Dubai is chock-full of rich folk, but just seeing all these cars parked in one place is pretty unbelievable. You can spot a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, a Bentley Continental GT, a chrome red Mercedes among hundreds of other luxury vehicles. In fact, you can see a poor Maserati left around a corner without a parking spot. Nasser said that because Cayennes and Range Rovers are a dime-a-dozen, he only included a few of them in the album.

Nasser is a student at the American University. His aim was to show the world the array of models on display at his school. “The cars that the students drive here are just ludicrous,” he said. “If I was back home in Canada, my car would be considered nice, but here nobody looks twice at it.”

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The BMW Z4 is a sleek, modern and luxurious car, famous for its incredible raw power. But not this particular Z4 from China which was transformed into a golden dragon on wheels by some overly-traditional tuners. Golden boy here features dragon wings, a tail, claws, wings as well as some other over-the-top accessories sculpted out of yak bones.

As if painting a BMW gold wasn’t bad enough, the people responsible for this extreme tuning job decided it would be a good idea to give it that traditional Chinese dragon look by decorating it with various body parts sculpted out of yak boned. The front of the car features a dragon’s snout complete with two eyes and its characteristic whiskers. The beast’s claws rest above the huge gold rims and the car’s butterfly doors have been transformed into feathered wings. At the back, the dragon’s scaly tail rests on the BMW’s trunk. The masterpiece has been exhibited at the China Import and Export fair in the southern Guangdong province, where it managed to turn quite a few heads. While it is not our cup of tea, we can appreciate the painstaking work that must have gone into carving all those scales from yak bone. We can only hope that next time, the makers of the Dragon BMW will decide to utilize their skills in creating something less tacky.

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Authorities in Sierra Leone have found a really cool and ingenious way to deal with their very undisciplined and uneducated drivers who are involved in thousands of accidents every year – a fun board game meant to be played for several months by any newbie wanting a driver’s license. Before actually being allowed to get behind the wheel, players will find themselves in realistic situations where the only way out is to give the right answers to traffic law and conduct questions.

The game, called “The Drivers’ Way”, might look like your regular board game but it has a quirky twist – the rules of the game are real driving rules and players move pieces modeled like classic cars around a colorful board as they advance. The dice is cleverly made into a traffic light but even if the light is green, players still have to tackle tough traffic law tests to go further. If they fail the tests or have a broken tail light, they get a fine, just like in real life. The game, which apparently plays a bit like Scrabble, seems easy enough if you know your signs and speed limits. Thousands of copies of the game have already been made, each costing 60,000 Leones (about $14). Sarah Bendu, executive director of Sierra Leone’s Road Transport Authority explains that “they (novice drivers) will have to pay for it. Then they will play it for two or three months, or maybe just one if they’re smart enough, then they will come for their test.”  I’m guessing that after playing it months on end, the West African country will have some seriously determined drivers.

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If you live in Yelm, Washington, be very careful where you park your vehicle because Edward Smith may have sex with it. So  far, the 62-year-old car lover (pun intended) has bedded – in lack of a better word – 1,000 cars, which makes him the world’s most promiscuous mechaphile, a colloquial word used to describe people who love machines a little bit too much or who feel an insatiable sexual attraction to cars.

Smith claims he has never been attracted to a human being in his life and that his love for cars started way back in his childhood. He actually lost his virginity to a neighbor’s Volkswagen Beetle. He has had only one female girlfriend 12 years ago but never found it in him to consummate the relationship. In fact, his sexual experience with women began and ended with a one night stand in Seattle. Ever since he can remember, he felt attracted to cars. “When I turned 13 and the famous Corvette Stingray came about, that car was pure sex and just an incredible machine. I wanted it,” he explains. “I didn’t fully understand it myself except that I know I’m not hurting anyone and I do not intend to,” he adds. He’s now in an open relationship with a second-hand Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla, a 1973 Opel GT, called Cinnamon, and an 1193 Ford Ranger by the name of Splash, which he regularly takes for joy rides. However, his heart belongs to Vanilla for which he has real feelings. “When I hold Vanilla in my arms there’s a powerful energy that comes from her,” he says. “I would say it is extremely satisfying but at times a little melancholy because I know she cannot talk to me. But overall I know she feels what I feel and it’s intense. If anything was to happen to her I would be more than heartbroken.”

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There are so many Russian dash-cam videos on the internet that you would think 99% of all traffic accidents happen in the Federation or that Russian people are particularly passionate about video blogging every second they spend driving around. But actually, one of the main reasons dash-cams are so popular in Russia  is the high number of people willingly throwing themselves in front of moving vehicles to exploit a weird law that obliges the driver to pay for damages no matter if they are at fault or not.

According to an Al Jazeera report from last year, most people use dash-cams mainly to capture any instances where the corrupt policemen abuse their power for financial gains, and use the footage in court. The other and more bizarre reason is to protect themselves against crazy scammers that will throw themselves in front of cars and hustle the drivers for large sums of money by threatening to call the authorities. Most scammers will jump on to the hoods of slow moving vehicles to ensure they don’t get run over, but as you can see in the video compilation below, accidents have happened. Those who lack the courage to jump in front of cars, simply pretend to get hit by vehicles while holding old laptops or mobile phones and ask for compensation. Drivers trying to convince the judges they were the actual victims without solid evidence usually fail and are forced to pay damages, so dash-cams have become the only sure way of protection.

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Growing up, Phoenix-based Austin Coulson was always fascinated by all the cool automotive records he found in the yearly Guinness Book of Records, and dreamed of one day having his name mentioned in the famous publication. He recently got his wish, after building the world’s smallest roadworthy car.

29-year-old Austin Coulson says he developed a passion for tinkering with mechanical stuff very early in life. As a young boy, he used to  ride bicycles with his friends, and always fond some parts to add or remove. When he turned 16. Austin bought his first car, a Bronco with a blown transmission. So he bought a repair manual and learned from scratch how take the thing apart and put it back together. It wasn’t easy, but he got the hang of it and he’s been building custom cars ever since. Two years ago, he saw a small go-kart with a car body on it, that made it look like a real miniature roadworthy vehicle. It got him thinking whether someone could really build such a small car and make it street legal. It also reminded Austin about his life-long dream of having his name in the Guinness Book of Records, so he started searching to see if there was already a record for the world’s smallest street-legal car. A guy from England held the record, but after seeing his creation, Coulson thought to himself “I can beat that”.

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What do you get if you combine a skateboard, a jetski and an ATV? That would be the DTV Shredder, a new toy for power sports enthusiasts created by the guys at BPG Werks.

Designed to appeal to a variety of extreme sports fans, the Shredder is a personal vehicle unlike any other you’ve seen before. The steering is done via a skateboard-like platform mounted on top of two sturdy treads, by leaning into the direction you wish to go, while the handlebar offers much needed stability. The board is the only component that moves, while the rest of the machine stays fixed to your body. It has a 196 cc, 4-stroke gas engine, patented dual-CVT drive system that keeps you from having to shift gears, 13 horse-power and a top speed of 30 mph. The guys at BPG Werks say they limited the Shredder to 30 miles per hour because that’s the top speed most people feel comfortable at standing up. After that, it’s just plain scary. Weighing just 200 lbs, the DTV Shredder can be folded and fits in the trunk of a medium-size truck, which makes it more practical than motocross bikes or ATVs. It can be ridden all year long, on any kind of terrain, unlike most other power sport vehicles.

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Seen from the outside, the 2008 Nissan Patrol modified by Ali, of Kingdom Customs Garage, in Dubai, looks completely normal, but open the front door and you’ll notice a few details are missing. And by details I mean the steering wheel, pedals, shift stick…

You probably haven’t seen anything like this before, I certainly haven’t. Probably sick of sitting behind the wheel while his friends had all the fun in the back, Ali, a tuner from Dubai moved the driver’s seat to the back of his 2008 Nissan Patrol. The steering wheel now sits behind the front seats, along with the pedals, dashboard gauges, manual transmission and even the rear-view mirror. All that’s left in the front is the dashboard and a series of LED screens for the passengers to pass the time while the driver does his thing in the back. Looking at the photos below, you’re probably thinking this is either photoshopped or a just a show-off tuning job, but this thing is actually drivable, as Ali himself demonstrates in the video at the bottom of this page.

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When Knight Rider came out during the 1980s, the nearly indestructible KITT, a heavily modified Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, blew everyone away. Even today, it remains one of the coolest cars ever, and fans spend valuable time and resources building their own real-life KITTs.

One such auto enthusiast from Detroit-area recently showcased his homemade perfect replica of the famous movie car, which he spent about three years working on, in a promotional video for a car insurance company . Chris Palmer says he needed five Pontiac Trans Ams, numerous custom parts and countless hours of work to create his four-wheeled masterpiece. He also had to rely on the generosity of his friends to finance his obsession of owning his own perfect KITT, but in the end “it was totally worth it – more than worth it”. He has been dreaming of sitting behind KITT’s steering wheel ever since he was a little kid, and his obsession stuck with him throughout the years. He has owned 15 or 16 Pontiac Firebird Trans Ams since he started driving, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that he decided to take on the challenge of building a perfect replica of the Knight Industries Two Thousand.

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Eleven years ago, Scottish biker Stuart Gunn was involved in a horrific accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Seven years later, following a seizure caused by the same accident, he lost his sight. Last Saturday, he became the fastest blind man on a motorcycle, after after hitting 167.1mph.

In 2002, Stuart Gunn was heading to a hospital for a pre-op on his shoulder. To avoid parking troubles, he decided to ride his bike instead of taking a car. At a junction in Edinburgh, Scotland, a van jumped lanes and crashed into the experienced biker. “When the van hit me, the base of my back hit where the windscreen and roof join. My head and shoulders went through the sunroof and my legs went through the windscreen, literally snapping me in half backwards. He then braked, as you might, and I got lobbed back out of the van,” Gunn remembered in an interview with Suzuki Bulletin. He nearly died, and doctors told him he was never going to walk, let alone ride a motorcycle again. But Stuart had always hated being told what he could and could not do, so he worked hard during his recuperation sessions, and in two years time he was walking with a stick. Unfortunately, the accident had caused more damage than anyone had realized, and in 2008 he started having really bad seizures which eventually left him completely blind and paralyzed on his right side.

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