Blog Posts by Justin Hyde

After taking our own stab at guessing what Steve Jobs' dream of a "iCar" might have produced had he lived, Morphyne.com sent us this much more skillful render of modern Apple cues combined with the stance of Jobs' preferred ride, the Mercedes SL. Auto enthusiasts may scoff, but it's been a few decades since anyone camped out at a dealership waiting for a new model.

Flower shows are to Britain what the Westminster Kennel Club is to Yanks, and so I'd never question the skill or dedication it took to create this gold-medal winning display featuring a life-size replica of a Williams Formula 1 car -- complete with pit crew and checkered parking spot -- out of shrubs and flowers. It's not very fast, but it can claim negative carbon emissions.

This is the Motoramic Dash, a daily roundup of the most interesting news in the automotive world.

Cribbing style lines from Aston Martin has only made the 2013 Ford Fusion one of the more anticipated new cars of the year. This shot of the Ford Racing NASCAR entry in its first 2o13 livery colors shows that British looks and southern-fried racing go together like fish and chips. The revamp of NASCAR's Sprint Cup cars for 2013 may be one of the best things for American car enthusiasts in years.

Patrice Toulze's photo of a stunning Jaguar E-Type coupe came from the Motoramic pool on Flickr. If you have a picture to share with us, please add it to the Motoramic group, or send us a message via Twitter or Facebook.

We were wrong. We were all wrong. All of us typing seagulls on the Interwebs whomever made fun of someone taking a power-up to their personal status by wrapping a car in shiny gold vinyl like a Studio 54 dancer were just misbegotten. Because this Mercedes CLS isn't some tuner's weekly paycheck, but an official product of the Mercedes-Benz company, the one that invented the automobile, created to haul stars around the Cannes film festival. I feel so schooled.

We've mentioned Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima's plans to tackle this year's Pikes Peak climb in a custom-built electric racer, and today Tajima revealed his ride in Japan, this carbon-fiber bodied runner powered by a yet-to-be-disclosed electric combo. Too bad it's going up a mountain, because it'd look right at home patrolling Gotham.

Ford Motor Co. wants eBay and PayPal to turn over data on 13 users the automaker accuses of selling fake or unlicensed Ford parts on the online auction site, including names, addresses and bank accounts — and won a court order blocking eBay and PayPal from revealing Ford's demand to the users targeted.

The unusual move for an automaker contradicts the privacy policies at many large Internet companies and service providers which require notifying users whenever someone makes a legal request for their data. Privacy advocates have loudly fought efforts by law enforcement agencies to keep similar requests secret, and the rights Internet users have over personal data plays a key role in congressional battles over bills such as SOPA and CISPA. But the idea of a corporation gathering data while keeping its legal tracks covered has received far less attention.

This is the Motoramic Dash, a daily roundup of the most interesting news in the automotive world.

This weekend, federal auto safety regulators announced Chrysler would recall 67,872 Jeep Wranglers from the 2010 model year to fix a problem that could cause the vehicle to burst into flames -- just as customers have been saying since last October. By typical recall standards, this problem was fixed quickly, yet it shows why owners sometimes have to keep pushing to get their problems answered.