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Company car offers in decline, but not at The Cheesecake Factory [w/poll]

As businesses look to keep high-level employees happy, it seems that use of company cars can still be an effective method, although fewer companies are employing it. According to Businessweek, only about 25 percent of companies offer company vehicles as a perk, while less than half give allowances for employees to use their personal vehicles for work purposes.
The report says that one business still in the practice of handing out company cars is The Cheesecake Factory, which offers the benefit to top managers. And we're not talking about some econobox, either. The article indicates the restaurant chain hands out BMWs on a three-year basis - although the company's own report says that the type of vehicle "varies with the executive's level."
Still, we mostly agree with the article's conclusion that money is the best way to keep employees or attract new ones, even if a corporate car is a big perk. What do you think? Let us know, in the poll below, whether a company car could sway you to work for a certain company (not just the Cheesecake factory, where the "Glamburgers" portion of the menu alone is enough to keep a guy hanging around).

A BMW i3 will cost you $100,000 in Brazil

Brazil is a long way from the US, and the price of the BMW i3 in that South American country is even further away from what Americans pay for the same electric vehicle. But that hasn't stopped a few wealthy Brazilians from taking the plunge. The BMW i3 REx – i.e., the one with the gas-powered range-extender – is the first mass-produced vehicle of its kind to be imported to Brazil (there are a few Nissan Leaf vehicles in fleet use), and those intrepid buyers are forking over about $100,000 to own the vehicle, according to Just-Auto. The country's first 100 i3's were recently received in Sao Paolo, and about 30 of them have been sold. That pricetag is a wee bit higher than in the US, where the i3 starts under $42,000. BMW did open a $261-million factory in Brazil this year, but the i3 continues to be produced exclusively in Germany. It's not just fancy new plug-in cars and World Cup tickets that cost a lot in Brazil. The Volkswagen Golf, which retails for less than $18,000 in the States, costs about $23,000 in Brazil and the Economist ran a series of articles last year explaining how currency changes have resulted in the dollar-to-Brazilian real exchange rate surging in recent years.

Drifting can be dangerous for spectators, too

Okay kids, here's your lesson for the day. When you go to a motorsports event (that isn't a rally), there are these things called walls. They're big and hard. There might be stacks of tires in front of them. There are also these things called barriers, catch fences and run-off areas. They exist to protect you, the spectator, when something inevitably goes wrong on the track.
If you don't have these things, you probably shouldn't be watching whatever four-wheeled mayhem is taking place. This gentleman learned that the hard way, after getting a bit too close while some hoon drifts his BMW 3 Series.
Scroll down for the video, and be warned, while there isn't any blood that we can see, some viewers might find the sight of a human getting punted by a BMW disturbing.