Top Gear is back :)

and…

CONGRATULATIONS, SÉBASTIEN LOEB!

besides taking a paintball to my left kidney yesterday, the other big upset this weekend was Sébastien Loeb’s misfortunes at the WRC’s inaugural Jordan Rally which he led until his premature retirement.

it would’ve been okay if he had done it by rolling his car in a spectacular off or something but the unfortunate truth is that the reason for his early departure was purely idiotic. basically, Loeb’s C4 collided head-on with that of fellow Citroën driver Conrad Rautenbach between stages. what a disappointment.

well, that was fast. BMW of Lincoln backed down under pressure and agreed to sell dooma350 the car for the original stated price of $60k. congratulations!

nothing else really happened today, sorry.

so this is a story about a guy named dooma350 (last name unknown) who won an auction for a new M3 sedan on ebay from BMW of Lincoln[, Nebraska] for 60,000 USD. with some dealers currently price-gouging the hell out of the M3, it’s nice to know that there are still some respectable dealers who are willing to sell it for a little over invoice, yeah?

of course, that would be true if only BMW of Lincoln hadn’t tried backing out of the auction saying that they’ve “made a mistake.” this has enraged dooma350 (and the multitude of people that have heard his story) and so now he’s going after BMW of Lincoln with truth and justice (and “the power of the internet”) on his side.

so spread the word! post it on other sites, send it to your local media outlet, tell your baby’s mama, and let’s make an example of this dealer.

click here to read the whole story

according to the gibbons at the BBC, someone (or a group of someones) in southeast Scotland has been sneaking into peoples’ houses, taking car keys, and driving away in the vehicles they correspond to.

*yawn*

but get this: sometime after the cars are driven away, they’re driven back. and parked in the same spots. and the keys mysteriously returned to the homes they were taken from. apparently the only indication of any foul play is that the proper owners “misplace” their keys and then find some extra miles on the odometer. oh, and one car was found crashed in a nearby town.

and now for some WRC news that you’ll probably ignore because you don’t follow it.

another year, another season of the World Rally Championships. this year starts off, as always, in Monte Carlo with new tire rules (Pirellis, no run-flat mousse, less compounds to choose from) set in place to make things more interesting. the new rules had claimed its first victim early on as Ford’s #2 driver Jari-Matti Latvala suffered a puncture during the first stage costing him nearly four minutes as he and his co-driver pulled over to change the tire. don’t feel sorry for him, though. he’s only 22 years old and he’s already a professional rally driver. i didn’t even have a car at 22.

in other news, the freshman Suzuki World Rally Team has been running two new SX4′s though one suffered turbo problems pretty early on. big news also for Subaru as they plan to introduce the next generation Impreza later this season while their current car continues running the stages. it’ll be exciting to see how much of a difference the new car will make and whether or not it’ll give former champ Petter Solberg the extra edge he needs to realistically challenge the likes of Sordo, Hirvonen, and Loeb. well, maybe not so much Loeb.

out of curiousity, how many people out there have any idea what i’m on about?

it’s sad to know that a few wet blanket terrorists can spoil something as harmless as the Dakar Rally.

my most unpleasant nightmares always involve horrible things interrupting something i enjoy. sometimes i get knifed while i’m taking photos, sometimes my friends and i are running for our lives, and sometimes i’m being chased by a lion while driving on the highway.

according to Autoblog, Toyota has built a crazy driving simulator by placing an actual car into a big moving spherical chamber whose interior is completely lined with screens. a simulator of this calibre completely destroys the Gran Turismo games and even puts the Chicago Auto Show Subaru rally machines to shame.

it probably costs more money than God but good heavens, do i want one.

Danica Patrick drove her new Indy car down Michigan Avenue today and i missed it.

sigh.