09 Bmw X6 Xdrive50i on 2040-cars

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On Location in California with BMW and Mini

A mid-winter escape from frigid Michigan to drive a trio of new BMW and Mini products? It'd be a busy couple of days, but you can't argue with Southern California in February. The temperatures in LA, where we drove the Mini Cooper S Convertible, hovered in the mid-80s, and it was solidly in the 70s further north, at Monterey, where we drove the M2 and X4 M40i. The highlight of the trip was Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, which is a rewarding track to drive in a street car. The M2 was a blast there. The canyon roads above Malibu in the Mini were a close second, but even the lazy drive down the PCH to Big Sur was a blast. More important is the California state of mind we were in when driving all three of these cars. I've spent a lot of time in this state, and it has a complicated relationship with the car – and there's also a huge difference in attitude between the greater Bay Area and Southern California. Ample sun and twisty roads clash with image-consciousness, eco-consciousness, and brutal urban gridlock, and each BMW dealt with that paradox admirably, in its own way. Take a quick jaunt to California with me and check out the locations and experiences that helped form our impressions of these vehicles: the 2016 BMW M2 First Drive, the 2016 Mini Cooper S Convertible First Drive, and the 2016 BMW X4 M40i Quick Spin.

2022 Villa d'Este Concours d'Elegance Mega Gallery | The show in pictures

COMO, Italy — Held annually, the Villa d'Este Concours d'Elegance is, in many ways, Europe's version of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. It takes place in a beautiful location, and it brings together an impressive selection of rare and valuable cars. It's a real treat for the eyes, the ears, and, if you're into champagne, the palate. The 2022 edition of the show was no exception: About 50 cars were shipped to Lake Como from over a dozen countries, and it wasn't just the usual suspects. Sure, there were a lot of pre-war cars (including a couple of one-off models), but some of the icons that younger enthusiasts grew up with (like the Lamborghini Countach) were present as well. This year's event was split into eight categories: The Art Deco Era of Motor Car Design, The Supercharged Mercedes-Benz, How Grand Entrances Were Once Made, Eight Decades of Ferrari Represented in Eight Icons, "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday," BMW's M Cars and Their Ancestors, Pioneers That Chased the Magic 300 KPH, And a design award for concept and prototypes. The jury gave the coveted "best of show" award to a 1937 Bugatti 57 S owned by Andrew Picker of Monaco, while the aforementioned classes were won by, respectively: The Bugatti 57 S, shown below, A 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K Cabriolet, A 1956 Chrysler Boano Coupe Speciale, A 1966 Ferrari 356 P Berlinetta Speciale Tre Posti, A 1961 Porsche 356 B Carrera Abarth GTL, A 1972 BMW 3.0 CSL, A 1989 Porsche 959 Sport, And the Bugatti Bolide concept unveiled in 2020. Winning at Villa d'Este is a big deal: The cars are judged by a panel of highly experienced judges. No one gave me a scoring sheet, presumably out of fear that I'd award points to the late-model Fiat 600 lurking in the parking lot, but several cars that didn't win an award caught my eye. One is a 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports, a grand-prix racer that was once owned by King Leopold III of Belgium and that has never been restored — its patina is inimitable. Another is a 1961 BMW 700 RS. One of two built (the other is in the BMW collection), it's a tiny, ultra-light roadster related to the 700 and powered by a 697-cubic-centimeter air-cooled flat-twin tuned to develop 70 horsepower. It won several hill-climb events during the 1960s, and it's one of the rarest cars ever to wear a BMW roundel. Aston Martin's freshly-restored 1979 Bulldog concept was cool to see as well; check out the cassette player integrated into the headliner!

2015 BMW i8 configurator is ready to show the future

Good news if you're one of the lucky few that can afford the new BMW i8. The high-performance hybrid's configurator has gone live on BMW USA's consumer website, meaning you can head in and customize till you drop.
If you've ever played with a BMW configurator, you'll instantly feel at home with the i8's. You have the choice of four trim packages (your author refuses to use BMW's pretentious "World" trim names), followed by wheel and exterior paint options. The interior choices are fixed to the trim level, so aside from trim, color and the choice of two wheel options, there isn't a lot to pick out on the i8.
Head on over and take a look.