The Altima Coupe is official

Back in October, a blurry photo of what was being called the Altima Coupe surfaced on the Internet. Rumor was that it might have a rear-wheel drive platform, making it an Infiniti G35 Coupe on a budget. Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the Altima Coupe will be produced, as a 2008 model. The bad news is it will be front-wheel drive, just like its four-door counterpart.

The front, from the fenders up, is pure Altima. But the rear, as it sweeps back, following a G35-like roofline, is new for Nissan. Engine options are unchanged with the powerful VQ35 six-cylinder, or the QR25 four-cylinder. Even though the Altima Coupe will send power to the ground through the front wheels, buyers can choose between a CVT or 6-speed manual transmission. Sharing the some of the same sexy styling of the G35, the Altima Coupe is guaranteed to be a hit with coupe buyers.

GTTT footage on Jalopnik

In case you haven't noticed, the GTTT is one of my favorite cars to blog about. My most recent post was about the GTTT's appearance at the local road course. While I took pictures, others shot video. A friend of mine, Carl, uploaded his video to YouTube (embedded above). About a week later, Jalopnik.com stumbled across the poorly-shot footage and posted it.

A few of the comments following the Jalopnik post criticize the driving in this clip, but the keys to the GTTT aren't going to be handed over to just anyone. The driver during this clip is no stranger to high-horsepower cars, even though he overshot the 120-degree right-hander after the straight. It happens to the best of us. This is obviously a small track, way too small for cars with this much power to be able to really stretch their legs, but why not have some fun anyway. Seeing and hearing a pair of twin turbocharged Ford GTs was an experience that doesn't happen every weekend at your local track. You can even see yours truly in the white hat at the 1:27 mark, taking a break from pictures.

Chinese car with an identity crisis

The D120, spotted on Autoblog, looks a lot like a Hyundai Tiburon redesigned by someone on acid, is the Chinese automaker DongFeng's sports car shown at the Beijing Auto Show this past weekend. Don't be surprised if you've never heard of DongFeng Motor Co., or DFM, the company only produces vehicles in China, and actually ranks second out of the five Chinese automakers. They've built trucks and buses under their own name, but have also joined forces with other global carmakers such as Nissan, Honda and Peugeot to produce specific models of those brands in China.

Sadly, this DongFeng "sports car" is only powered with a 137-hp, 2.4-liter engine, making it just as slow as it looks. Translated by Google, the Autoblog Chinese post on the D120 gives more details about the features of the car, but the garbled Engrish doesn't make sense of this accordion-like structure on the hatch.

Parallel parking for dummies

The 2007 Lexus LS460 is getting a lot of hype about its ability to park itself, supposedly. Even a bunch of automotive journalists had a hard time figuring it out. With the use of cameras, sensors and some serious software, the LS460 can parallel and perpendicular park without the driver's input. By the way, how lazy have we gotten? If you can't parallel park, then you shouldn't be behind the wheel.

This isn't the first technology to try to make the task of parallel parking easier. A group of mechanical engineering students at the University of Toledo put together a system in an older Toyota that allows the back end of the car to swing into a parking space. Hydraulics push down a single wheel turned 90 degrees from either of the four normal wheels. An electric motor makes the wheel move when it's on the ground. While the UT students' design isn't fully automatic like the Lexus, it sure seems to do a better and certainly quicker job. The video of the Parallel Parking Device (PPD) in action is embedded below.

The GTTT in action at GIR

Remember the "GTTT"? Sunday afternoon, it made an appearance at the road course at Gainesville International Raceway for a private track event. Wearing some new black stripes and flames, the GTTT was unloaded off a massive Stage 6 Motorsports trailer at the entrance of the track. The car had been on this track before, but this was the first time in twin turbo trim, which has now put down 1181 horsepower on a built motor and upgraded fuel system.



According to Sav Charudattan, who drove the GTTT at 17 pounds of boost for one 10-minute session, the car is still just as easy to drive as it was at the 600 horsepower level. Due to the Hoosier R6 race tires on the rear, the car hooks up relatively well, but understeers in the corners similar to an AWD car, he said. It now makes somewhere between 700 and 750 at this boost level. At 20 pounds, it's closer to 900 horsepower. The car is noticeably more loose on the track when the boost is turned up. The car was just showcased at SEMA by SCT, but the GTTT doesn't belong in a booth, it belongs on the track or street.

Turbonetics introduces the TurboTach

This past week at the annual SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) show in Las Vegas, AutoBlog discovered the TurboTach, a slick gauge and datalogging tool that will be made by Turbonetics that displays turbocharger speed. Knowing this kind of data can be invaluable for turbocharged tuners when trying to determine if their turbo is surging, choking or operating efficiently. It's like hooking your turbocharger up to an EKG machine.

It looks like Turbonetics plans to sell the TurboTach as a package with their turbochargers, since the center sections will need to be modified to fit the required speed sensors. More details will be available after Turbonetics actually releases the product to the public. The only bad news is that cars with twin turbos will require two TurboTachs.

Teen wrecks father's new GT500

Speaking of the GT500, this video has been finding it's way all over the internet today. Automotive blogs, forums and funny video sites have been posting this clip of a 14-year-old cranking up his dad's new GT500, popping the clutch by mistake and ramming through the garage. It's hard to tell how much damage was done to the car in the shot of the aftermath, but I'm sure the boy's pride took the hardest hit. I hate to post two Ford-related videos back-to-back, but this video is just too funny to ignore.