Get your iPhone ring tones of the engine of that beautiful car at this url: http://speciali.ferrari.com/458italia/index_en.html

(Via: Straighline)

The set

A sampling:

That’s really an unbelievable move in 12 months.

Even Portland’s prices are showing that dramatic of a drop:

I wonder how low it can go?

My pocketbook is hurting too.. but maybe it will force us to drive less, purchase far more efficient and smaller vehicles, and eventually switch to hydrogen or plug in vehicles like the Chevy Volt.

Ford Escape Hybrid Plug In, originally uploaded by carscomeditor.

I’m really hoping these pictures mean that Ford is going to introduce plug in hybrid on Sunday at the Detroit auto show. Some leadership by North American auto companies would be a good thing.

Update: Yes, I was too excited in my cold state. These are pictures of the Escape that is being tested in California. Darn it anyway. 

My brother and I inside Andretti Winery.

Check this out.. Deep down, who doesn’t want public transportation like this?

It is, at its core, Walt Disney’s People Mover for real, bitches.

(From Autoblog Green)

2009 Lincoln MKS, originally uploaded by carscomeditor.

I find this car quite attractive – at 37 am I getting old and liking Lincolns? Or are domestic car manufactures starting to make some good product?

(Via Auto Observer.)

You know gas prices in the US are bad when they have basically caught up with Canadian prices – which always seem high to me..

Bob – I’d love move to Detroit to work on the Volt. I’m a software engineer and I love cars. And my MBA might be of use somewhere on the team. Email me at lucien at this domain.

Getting a Jolt From Volt

Probably the three biggest things in my life are converging this week (cars, technology, and Apple) and it’s going to be busy.

Some good sites to keep track of things (I’ll be keeping this list updated as I find new sources of info):

Detroit Auto Show

Autoweek
Winding Road – a great new site I’ve recently found for autos
Autoblog
Kicking Tires

CES

Engadget’s CES Coverage

If you have some good CES websites, please let me know

MacWorld

MacWorld Magazine
Macintouch

And the rumor sites (don’t go here if you want be surprised on Tuesday at 10am)
MacRumors
AppleInsider
Think Secret

(Via The Auto Prophet.)

I think I’m becoming a closet environmentalist.

Marcus Marshall’s Champ Car, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Here’s a cool shot I took at the Portland Champ Car race.. I have another 140 to go through, I’ll be posting the rest on my flickr account during the week.

This is just a fine, fine looking car:

Cruise over to Autoblog to check out more shots, and other intros from the NY Autoshow.

(Via Autoblog Home.)

Yes, a bit crazy I know, but I need to replace my current car in December/January (my current car was Jennifer’s old car, and her new car replaces my current car. Ya, it’s confusing).

I don’t know what colour yet, or what options, but it’s either going to be this burnt orange colour, or this blue colour.

There’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few months, in researching the Mini – the culture around the car is very, very similar to the Macintosh. There are Mini groups all over the country, and doing all kinds of really, really cool things. This is a big reason why I picked a Mini. Oh ya, and the supercharger whine.

(Via MacMinute.)

Since Jennifer and I just got an X3 a few weeks ago, this sounds like an awesome thing.. I’ll see if I can dig up some info from our local dealer.

Mini introduced the 2005 Mini Convertible. (If you are in Safari, you’ll have to turn off pop up blocking to get this to work properly. This might just be my next car (in January), if one can actually purchase it with those hot wheels on the burnt orange color. Tell me this doesn’t look hot to you:

I got an email from Volvo about the 2004.5 Volvo V50. Email points to their new web site. I really love the look of this car, but, once again (yes, this is a theme within me), only with those hot wheels.

There was a great article by David Pogue a few weeks ago about the 2004 Toyota Prius. (No link, I didn’t save it before I could use the weblog special thingy to get around the expiry of articles the NY Times does).

This is a serious contender for my new car in January. On my last business trip to the bay area, I lucked upon a brand new Toyota Corolla as my rental from Hertz, and damn, it was pretty nice. It handled 85 and 101 with no problems.. the engine was a bit loud when I floored it to merge, but hey, for $15,000, I can handle that.

The 2004 New York Auto show was last week as well, check out AutoWeek’s coverage, as well as Edmunds.

I’m going to endever to be more pro-active about posting stuff about future cars here, so feel free to stick around if you are interested.