Toyota Prius GT
Hybrid vehicles don't do much for Toyota's performance reputation. Still, the acknowledged world leader in making you feel bad for driving a massive SUV is putting some Levitra into the Prius at the Paris show. The Prius GT has been tweaked a little from stock hybrid form to give it 147 hp from its tag team of a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine and electric motors. A 60-mph run could happen in 8.5 seconds-think, when was the last time your Barbie Jeep ran that fast? Toyota tuned the suspension to handle all that extra power. As for the racy paint job, doesn't it just make you want to go to Marlboro Country?
Option Video Invades The World
Have you ever spent nights pausing your DVDs and running your fingers through your Japanese-English dictionary just to understand what's going on onscreen? What's that, you only have your "how-to-land-chicks-in-Japan" phrase dictionary? Maybe it's just us. Gone are the days of dropping big dollars on eBay to land Option DVDs you can't even understand. Option announced the launch of JDM Option video magazine, an English language video news series that keeps you in touch with D1 drifting, test drives, and events from all around the world. Option and sister-company D1 Productions have decided to release one English subtitled and narrated DVD a month, a tradition that has carried on for years in Japan.
The DVDs themselves are produced with a professional, attentive view toward entertainment. Averaging about an hour each, the JDM Option volumes feature excellent video quality with multiple vantage points and superb editing. You never get that handheld-camcorder feel with one point of view that makes you wonder what else is out there. Multiple cameras provide multiple views, so you won't miss out on anything. Information is always laid out and easily displayed for each segment, and the close ties with the D1 drift series means some behind-the-scenes action you can't see anywhere else.
Any aspiring drifter or D1 combatant has to add these DVDs to their collection. Keep your eyes open a segment hosted by Nomuken on D1's greatest crashes in the second volume. Other material includes the May 2004 D1 Miami Drivers Search in the fourth volume, the touge street battles in the fifth, and the incredible amount of footage from Round One Irwindale 2004 in the first. Every in-car camera, every run, every battle, every judge's comment. There's so much on the disc, you'll be living it all over again. Check it out at www.d1gp.com or www.jdmoption.com.
MINI's Six-Wheeler XXL: Olympic-Sized Fun
If you jetted over to Athens for the recent Summer Olympics, you weren't totally alone (we saw you in the stands for the women's gymnastics, fast asleep!). MINI was there, and though we normally don't get into British hardware, this one apparently came equipped with its own pair of hotties and an extra set of wheels.
Who could ask for more? Well, the converters at Ultra Limousines in L.A., for one. The company wasn't content with the stock MINI, so for the XXL project it stretched a stock Cooper out nearly 20 feet and decked it out with seats for six-not including the two-person hot tub slung out back. The pre-tuned MINI Cooper S with 200 hp also got a retractable flat-screen TV, a DVD player, CD and radio, air conditioning, a sunroof and a telephone that links the passengers in the rear with the driver.