From Wuhu in China's Anhui province comes one of the best worst insurance scam attempts ever.

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As Bruce Lee once said, "Showing off is the fool's idea of glory." Read the rest

Master maker Simone Giertz and her friends transformed her Tesla Model 3 into an electric pickup truck. Their fake TV commercial is above; build video below. TRUCKLA: Available nowhere. Now.

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From Practical Engineering:

Traffic management in dense urban areas is an extremely complex problem with a host of conflicting goals and challenges. One of the most fundamental of those challenges happens at an intersection, where multiple streams of traffic - including vehicles, bikes and pedestrians - need to safely, and with any luck, efficiently, cross each others’ paths. However we accommodate it now or in future, traffic will continue to be one of the biggest challenges in our urban areas and traffic signals will continue to be one of its solutions.

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You could be the proud owner of this customized 1978 Tradesman 200 undercover police surveillance van! Currently for sale on the San Francisco Bay Area's Craigslist, the white, 8-cylinder automatic has just 78,000 original miles. Asking price is $4,000. And now for the good stuff:

It has been carpeted with a bench and workbench inside. It is chock full of surprises and cool modifications including; a CB radio setup (don't think it currently works), police band radio/scanner, black out windows/shades, custom AC unit designed to run off a few deep cycle-cell marine batteries (daisy-chained together), a door to separate the cab from the rear of the vehicle, and best of all.....a periscope that comes out of the vent. It does have some minor dents and dings as a 40 year-old truck will likely have, but no major defects/issues. Everything seems to work on it, but I haven't done much driving in it since it is not currently registered or insured. Seats are going to need to be recovered or replaced. This van would make an awesome undercover PI van, party van, camper van, hippy van, surfer van, boogie van, classic 70's van. I have another one already, and with two jobs, and school, I don't have a lot of free time to convert a second van. I may consider a trade for a 4x4 van, or similar, Suburban, Bronco, Scout, Jeep etc.

"1978 Dodge Tradesman 200 undercover police van - $4000 (san mateo)" (Craigslist)

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You can own this DIY hovercraft Delorean for $45,000 "or best offer." After all, where you're going, you don't need roads. The seller is donating 10% of the sale to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinsons Research. Video of the vehicle below. From eBay:

What you get:

1. Hand-built Hovercraft sculpted to look exactly like a Delorean. This is a functional work of art, it is not a Delorean bolted onto a hovercraft. There's only one in the world!

2. Custom flatbed tilting trailer built specifically for this hovercraft

3. Miscellaneous spare parts and supplies including spare engine parts, fans and propellers, nuts and bolts.

4. Free phone consultations with me for any technical questions you might have...

The Hovercraft is based on the blueprints for the Universal Hovercraft UH-13PT. The basic shape of the hull, skirt, and fan ducts come from those blueprints, but pretty much everything else is customized. The Delorean body is made out of styrofoam wrapped in fiberglass and painted with metallic paint. The 36” thrust fan is powered by a 23hp Briggs & Stratton Vanguard riding lawnmower-style engine. The 24” lift fan is powered by a B&S 875 Professional series push mower engine. The hull of the craft hovers about 6-8 inches over the surface, and can hover over anything relatively flat: land, water, ice, snow, sand, asphalt, etc. The top speed with the current thrust configuration is 31 mph on the water in good conditions.

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Robert Falck from Vancouver built a 1989 Cadillac Brougham limousine onto a Bombardier Skidozer snowcat. You can own this fine vehicle for $6,000. According to the Craigslist ad, it was "last used 2 years ago." From Jalopnik:

Falck said he built this contraption for a movie, which featured a rich guy who owned a ski resort. When filming was done, the Vancouverite decided to buy the Caddy back. Now it’s up for sale on Craigslist for a price that, he says, doesn’t reflect what he’s put into the vehicle.

Falck says the thing will move, but it’s not likely to climb a mountain or blaze its own trail; the vehicle is best left on groomed trails, and it’s not likely to exceed 15 mph.

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This video of radio-controlled model trucks look like an autonomous Ford Bronco off-roading at the beach. It's actually a Traxxas TRX4 Sport radio-controlled truck that's just 21" in length. Excellent smartphone video shot on a Samsung Galaxy S9+.

(Another RC Channel via Uncrate)

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The Japan Federation of Landscape Contractors' Kei Truck Garden Contest challenges people to transform the beds of their miniature pickup trucks into lovely mobile gardens. From Spoon & Tamago:

Other than using the kei truck there are very few limitations and landscapers have incorporated everything from benches and aquariums to elements of lighting into their designs. Judges then rank the entries based on planning, expression, design, execution and environment.

See more here.

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At first I was disappointed that the Mystery Machine and Knight 2000 weren't invited but then I realized they were probably on a separate TV star car field trip.

All of these iconic autos and many more are available for rental from Movie Cars Central in France.

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Designer Giulio Iacchetti was inspired by the clean lines of the classic Vespa 98 to create a spec concept for an all electric model. He nicknamed his digital mockup the Vespampère. Read the rest

On Sunday night, Orange County Fire Authority tweeted images from Santa Ana, California of a car that hit a center divider and flew into the air before embedding itself in the second floor of a building. Amazingly, both people in the car only suffered "minor injuries."

DASH CAM VIDEO: Bus barely misses getting hit by a car that went airborne and crashes into 2nd floor of a Santa Ana dental office. We showed you surveillance of 2 near misses, including this bus. Now, a look from the bus driver's view. @nbcla @KHOLMESlive pic.twitter.com/WiMCXr0RF4

— Christine Kim (@ChristineNBCLA) January 16, 2018

OCFA in Santa Ana with a vehicle that crashed into the second floor of a small Office building. The vehicle hit the center divider and went airborne and landed into the building. One person self extricated, the other person is still trapped in the vehicle. USAR from OCFA On scene pic.twitter.com/Lm5b4oyCIm

— OCFA PIO (@OCFA_PIO) January 14, 2018

OCFA in Santa Ana of a vehicle that crashed into the building. The fire was quickly extinguished, both victims are out of the vehicle safely with minor injuries. Members from OCFA & LA COUNTY Urban Search & Rescue teams are removing the vehicle from the building. pic.twitter.com/x29WvTkNGk

— OCFA PIO (@OCFA_PIO) January 14, 2018

Unbelievable new surveillance video shows a car hitting a median and launching into the second story of a Santa Ana dentist office. Driver and passenger transported with minor injuries. @NBCLA @ChristineNBCLA pic.twitter.com/Yw4poZXUNR

— Kenny Holmes (@KHOLMESlive) January 15, 2018

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Bonhams is auctioning off a 1966 Mini Cooper 'S' once owned by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. It's expected to fetch US$120,000 - 160,000. From Bonhams:

The Mini was the standout motoring icon of the 1960s, so it was only to be expected that that era's defining popular music act – The Beatles – would all own examples of Alec Issigonis' motoring masterpiece. But while it is relatively easy to carry your guitar around in a Mini, a set of drums is another matter entirely, and it is said that Ringo stipulated that his must be able to accommodate a drum kit, making it different from those purchased for the other members of the 'Fab Four'. The solution to the lack-of-space/accessibility problem was a hatchback conversion, which coachbuilder Harold Radford was offering as an option on its up-market Mini de Ville GT, introduced in October 1965.

(via Uncrate)

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Here are new images of Apple's self-driving car technology (Project Titan) mounted on a Lexus RX350. That gear on the top is a rack of six LIDAR sensors that use lasers to collect spatial data about the vehicle's surroundings.

Going to need more than 140 characters to go over 🍎's Project Titan. I call it "The Thing" pic.twitter.com/sLDJd7iYSa

— MacCallister Higgins (@macjshiggins) October 17, 2017

I saw one of these a few weeks ago pull up to an Apple shuttle stop-sit there for a few then drove off. pic.twitter.com/gUudZY1TIA

— idiggapple (@idiggapple) October 18, 2017

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Some models of Russian GAZelle Next commercial vans and trucks have Tetris integrated into the instrument cluster as an Easter egg. Here's the Google translation of the YouTube poster's instructions of how to bring up the game:

1) Turning the ignition on 2) Start a car 3) Three times the right turn signal 4) Two times distant 5) Five times on the clutch 6) raise the speed to 2000 and at that moment we light the arrow to the left

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I bet he's a master at parallel parking his daily driver too.

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Along with directing such classic films as Escape from New York, Halloween, The Fog, and The Thing, John Carpenter also composed the soundtracks. For those who want a survey of Carpenter's synth stylings, I recommend the new compilation from Sacred Bones Records, titled "John Carpenter Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998." The celebrate the release, Carpenter created this music video for the theme from Christine (1983), in which a woman summons an Uber and the demonic driverless 1958 Plymouth Fury shows up. Just kidding about the Uber part.

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