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Cars, Culture and the City

When you think of American cities associated with the car it is Los Angeles of course that leaps first to mind, thanks mostly to Hollywood, and Detroit second. But New York turns out to have been vital in the history of car design, as I found researching an exhibition Cars, Culture and the City at the Museum of the City of New York as guest curator over the last few months, working with the museums curator architecture and design, Donald Albrecht. The show has just opened, on March 25.

Ferrari 458 Speciale (2013) at Frankfurt motor show

More power and pace, less weight and extra helpings of oversteer – here comes the Ferrari 458 Speciale. Regular customers will be reaching for their bank cards and road testers will be jockeying for a test drive of the extreme 458, because Ferrari has taken the most thrilling mid-engined car on the planet and turned the volume up to 11. The 458 Speciale follows in the smokin’ tyre tracks of the 360 Challenge Stradale and 430 Scuderia, in being the maximum attack version of Ferrari’s current mid-engined V8 berlinetta.

BMW's EfficientDynamics teaser (2010)

This rather strange looking black BMW is the German car company’s latest publicity stunt. Painted matt black, and with ‘dontblogaboutthis’ emblazoned across its flanks, it is of course a tease designed to get forums fanatics and bloggers worked up into a frenzy as everyone tries to guess what it is. BMW has released just a few photos, plus a couple of videos, all of which are on www.dontblogaboutthis.com.