What do you get when you combine the potent potential of the Corvette ZR1 with an Italian coachbuilder that gave shape to automotive legends like the Pininfarina P4/5?
You get the Mantide, an unfortunately named custom from Stile Bertone and head builder Jason Castriota. The Mantide is a carbon fiber creation that takes 220 lbs off the already svelte ZR1, giving the resulting car a 0-60 time of just 3.2 seconds on its way to a top speed of 217mph. Inside, outside, underneath and all around you’ll find custom touches that set the Mantide apart from just about any other car on the planet, and you better, considering they want $2 million from you if you’re going to be one of the lucky ten to own one.
But hey, look on the bright side: At least it won’t get confused for a Prius!
Pictures of the mythical Pagani Zonda R have been floating around for some time now, but I was hesitant to post them because they seemed to be just that: mythical, made up of mostly renderings and drawings.
Well thankfully, the Pagani Zonda R is very real and very worthy of its mythical status, and is set to tear up a track near you in the very near future.
Based on the already potent Pagani Zonda F, but with only about 10% carried over from the street going version, the Zonda R manages to improve on every area of the car. With 6.0 liters of Mercedes-Benz V12 on tap producing 750hp and 710Nm of torque, the 2,359 lb race car gets to 60 mph in just 2.7 seconds, and tops out at a mind numbingly fast 233 mph.
If you can see it, it’s either been stripped down, made of carbon fiber, or eliminated, and everything is designed for one goal: Going fast enough to outrun death itself.
Speed and exclusivity definitely don’t come cheap however, as buyers of this ultra-rare uber-car will need to shell out nearly $2 million for the privilege, but if you’ve got the cash, I can’t think of a better way to spend it.
Domino Day 2008 was on November 15, and the Weijers Domino Productions team tried to break the current world record for domino toppling by setting up 4.5 million dominoes.
Though one of the builder challenges failed, resulting in the loss of a few dominoes, they still managed to break the record with a total fall of 4,345,027 dominoes, including challenges that broke nine other records during the day:
Longest Domino Spiral (200 Meters)
Highest Domino Climb (12 Meters)
Smallest Domino Stone (7 Millimeters)
Largest Domino Stone (4.8 Meters)
Longest Domino Wall (16 Meters)
Largest Domino Structure (25,000 Stones)
Fastest Topple of 30 Meters of Domino Stones (4.21 Seconds) (The sprinter Churandy Martina ran with the dominoes and achieved the time of 3.81 sec for the same distance.)
Largest Number of Domino Stones Resting on A Single Domino (727 Stones)
Largest Rectangular Level Domino Field (1 Million Stones)
Since it’s hard to imagine what 4.5 million dominoes looks like (and I’d imagine it’s impossible to imagine the sound) here’s a video from the event:
If all goes according to plan, Michel Fournier will complete a two decade and $20 million long journey today to balloon into the upper reaches of the atmosphere and then skydive back down in what he’s calling Le Grad Saut, or, The Great Leap.
His leap begins on the ground, where he will load into a 10 foot tall pressurized gondola that will hang from the bottom of a 650-foot balloon. This balloon will take him to a height of 130,000 feet (25 miles) over the course of two-hours, at which point he will open the door and step into the blackness of space.
To survive the fall, which will last for a full 15 minutes, he’s going to be wearing a special space suit and a parachute that is designed to automatically deploy when he’s 5,000 feet above the ground.
Along the way, he will reach, and then cross the speed of sound. (And then top out at a speed of around 1,000 MPH) If that sounds crazy, it is. Scientists are still unsure of what will happen when a person crosses the sound barrier unaided.
With those speeds, Fournier will also be breaking four new records: fastest free fall, longest free fall, highest altitude for a human balloon flight and highest parachute jump.
So what are the potential risks?
If his suit fails, the pressure would cause his blood could boil, and he would loose consciousness in less than five seconds. (Which sounds like a blessing if your blood is boiling during those five seconds!)
His first try was yesterday, and was canceled due to weather related complications, so let’s hope that today provides Michel with smoother sailing, and that he finds his way back to Earth in one piece!
If you are among the 126 million people that have owned a Nokia 3310 cell phone at some point in their life, chances are pretty good that you’ve also played Snake on that phone as a way to pass the time.
However, you probably never played Snake like this guy:
Never heard of the Lotec C1000?
That’s because you’re not an oil baron from the UAE.
This one of a kind supercar was commissioned by one back in 1995, and originally sold for about $3.4M (with an M). At the time, and even today, it was one of the fastest cars in the world, with a reported [...]
