pininfarina

How to ruin a perfectly good Ferrari 458 Italia (video)

Money buys a lot of things. Rake together enough dough and it can buy you the $226,000 Ferrari 458 Italia--an impressive bit of Italian engineering on wheels with a Pininfarina-penned design that would be seriously difficult to improve upon.

However, the 458 Italia owner in the video below proudly proves that if there's one thing that money can't buy, it's taste. He (or she) has fitted the Italian supercar with underglow lighting and strobes that would look right at home on the set of 2001's The Fast and the Furious. Check out the video below … Read more

Pininfarina designs EV charging solar tree

Last year, automotive designer Pininfarinia debuted a prototype two-seater electric car, and this year it's making the pint-size Nido EV even more environmentally friendly by creating a solar charging station to power it.

The Italian design house revealed the Antares solar charging tree last month at MoTechEco, a sustainable mobility show in Rome. The 108 sq. ft. treelike modular car charger contains 20 photovoltaic solar panels, capable of producing 4.6 kilowatts, enough to recharge two electric cars for a range of approximately 50 miles each.

Pininfarina isn't alone in its pursuit of a tree-shaped solar charging station. … Read more

Pininfarina designs an electric car

If you want to build a new car, even a small, economical car, get Pininfarina to design it. That lesson is made clear with the launch of the B0 at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, the best-looking small car we've seen here. The B0 has smart lines and a graceful arch between its front and rear wheels, yet maintains the dimensions and configuration to be a practical car. This car is actually a collaboration between Pininfarina and Bolloré, the latter being a consortium of companies with expertise in batteries and capacitors, and is intended to go into mass … Read more

Slide show: Special editions galore at Pebble Beach

The Pebble Beach Concours D'elegance is best known for meticulously preserved or restored classic cars, but more automakers are seeing the event as a launchpad for new models and special editions that cater to the opulence and exclusive nature of the event.

This year was no different with special editions from Lexus and Volkswagen, a new model from Bugatti and a one-off showcase from coachbuilders Pininfarina.

View 2008 Pebble Beach special editions slide show.

Photos: Design concepts in Geneva

One of our favorite aspects of the Geneva auto show each year is the weird and wonderful design concepts that that that the event attracts. This year's show played host to an array of novel ideas including a self-cleaning windshield, a "hybrid" convertible roof, and a new in-car communications language. Check out our photo gallery.

Click here for our coverage of the 2008 Geneva Auto Show.

Back to the (post-war French) future

Alternative forms of eco-friendly personal transportation have been appearing on drawing boards and wacky-tech Web sites for quite some time now, and in most cases they don't actually gain much traction. And many are painfully awkward despite a seemingly 'streamlined,' 'futuristic' design (we're talking about you, Segway). So maybe it's time that personal-transportation visionaries actually looked to the past for inspiration.

Like this one, a new take on the classic VeloSolex motorized bicycle. The VeloSolex, according to oO's Very Eclectic, was originally introduced in 1946 as a low-cost transportation solution for post-war France. The funky little … Read more