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2014 BMW M6 Gran Coupe is ready for your favorite roads

We've known about the ins and outs of the lovely BMW M6 Gran Coupe for a while now, but that doesn't mean we weren't happy to see the thing in the metal for the first time, here in Detroit.
The M-tuned Gran Coupe utilizes the same 4.4-liter forced-induction V8 that powers both the BMW M6 and the M5, with an output of 560 horsepower and 500 pound-feet of torque. The fast four-door brings up 60 miles per hour in just 4.1-seconds - the same sprint time as the M6 coupe and a few tenths quicker than the M5 - and up to a limited top speed of 155 mph.
We love those performance figures - this is one new Bimmer that we're amped to get some seat time in - though we're not super crazy about the selection of chrome wheels on this particular show car. Tells us what you think about the hotted up Gran Coupe in comments, below.

BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coup'e bows at Villa d'Este

The first collaboration between BMW and Pininfarina is this blunt-force two-door called the BMW Pininfarini Gran Lusso Coupe revealed at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este. Said to be the "interpretation of a luxurious BMW Coupé as seen through the eyes of Pininfarina," once you get past all of the design-speak, you can focus on the full-bodied and keen-edged missile sitting on 21-inch wheels.
The long wheelbase makes for short overhangs. Up front, BMW's design language gets scraped across a whetstone, everything getting sharper, including the usually round cat's eye headlights that have gone dihedral. Under the hood is a V12, behind the twin-kidney grille in matte-sheen aluminium and high-gloss black. The same aluminum treatment also backs the taillights, the lenses designed to let air flow through them.
Inside is room for four, a cockpit canted toward the driver, Foglizzo leather in black and Tobacco Brown, 48,000-year-old kauri wood from New Zealand, deep pile carpet on the floors, a patterned virgin wool headliner and an "oblong aperture in the roof liner" set off by white LEDs.

Tesla only 8th greenest automaker, BMW is best, says Newsweek

We imagine some readers will be surprised by this. Newsweek has just put out its rankings for the top "green" companies in the world, and while Tesla Motors chief Elon Musk can crow about how green his electric vehicles are, the company as a whole apparently falls behind some traditional automakers. Quite a few of them, actually. In Newsweek's Global 500 list of the greenest 500 largest publicly-traded companies in the world, BMW ranked best among automakers at Number 26. Not surprisingly, Toyota was close behind at 35, while Nissan came in at 152. What's a little more puzzling is that Tesla fell behind Ford (178), and General Motors (289). That's a lot of pickups versus a few Model S EVs. Go figure. Then came Hyundai (306) and Honda (316), which are a little more palatable. Tesla? It came in at 431. Newsweek's measurement standards include eight categories that include a lot of verbiage and involve things like energy productivity (which is defined as revenue in US dollars divided by total energy consumption), greenhouse-gas emissions productivity (revenue divided by GHG emissions), water usage, waste levels and something called "green revenue" (revenue derived from products that "contribute positively" to the environment). Newsweek says that its results are reproducable by a third party. Take a look at the list here and find the details on how the numbers are compiled here. Featured Gallery 2014 BMW i3: First Drive View 33 Photos News Source: Newsweek via Torque News Green BMW Tesla