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Stock Miata beats bunch of high-powered cars in wet 1/4-mile drag race

When is a stock, 167-horsepower Mazda MX-5 Miata quicker than a Chevrolet Corvette, Ford Mustang, Lamborghini Gallardo, Lotus Elise and a Porsche 911? When it's raining. Sort of.
Mazda Canada arranged a unique drag race to show off the fact that the Miata's optional power retractable folding hardtop can go from top-down to top-up in just 12 seconds flat. In this video, all six cars line up for a drag race, and it starts to rain (well, sort of - but you'll have to watch the video all the way to the end to see what we mean). The green flag is waved, and the timer starts as soon as the convertibles begin to put their tops up. But because the Miata's roof mechanism gets the car's roof back up a full 5.1 seconds quicker than the second-place car, the Mazda gets a serious advantage off the line for the actual drag race.
It's a fun video. And while we've spoiled the results (come on, the video was uploaded by Mazda, you knew the Miata was going to win), be sure to see how it all unfolds, below.

World's most expensive model car will be wrapped in thin gold sheet [w/video]

A couple of years ago, we featured a car that had a body made out of carbon fiber and an interior and wheels fashioned from gold and platinum and lined with diamonds. The price for that supercar, based on the Lamborghini Aventador, was a staggering $4.7 million. The hook: it was a 1/8-scale model! The man behind that model, Robert Gülpen, is at it again, and will offer for sale at an auction house another baby Aventador, but this one is wrapped in gold and will command a price of at least $7.5 million - making it the most-expensive model car in the world. Compare the model's price with that of the real thing - $397,500 - which means you could have 18 real Aventador coupes (!) for the price of the gold-wrapped model.
The car's details are even more impressive than the last model Gülpen produced, starting with the gold wrap. After baking the carbon-fiber model at a high temperature and under pressure, the body is wrapped in a gold sheet that's 1/1,000-mm thin. The resultant effect allows one to admire the gold hue, but the wrap is so thin that the carbon-fiber weave is plainly visible. The interior is lined with high-carat gemstones and the wheels are cast in gold and platinum, just like the last model. The doors open and close, the wheels turn and, while the engine looks like a smaller version of the V12 found in the full-size car, it does not function.
The materials used in the build are valued at $2.6 million, so what the buyer is paying for is the work behind putting the model together. The car will be mounted inside a bulletproof showcase with a Lamborghini logo made of gold, platinum and gemstones, among other goodies that are included for one well-heeled buyer.

Tour Lamborghini museum with Google Street View

If you find yourself in northern Italy with some spare time on your hands, we could think of few places better to spend it than the Lamborghini Museum in Sant'Agata. The 16,000-square-foot facility houses what is surely the most magnificent collections of Raging Bulls in the world on two levels of glassed-in floorspace. But if your travel plans won't be taking you to Bologna, Lamborghini has teamed up with Google to provide the next best thing.
Now all you've got to do to get a closer look at the Lamborghini Museum is open another tab in your web browser and head over to Google Maps (or fire up the Google Maps app on your smartphone or tablet) to see the whole museum in Street View. There you'll find everything from production models like the Miura, Countach, Diablo and Murcielago to limited-production rarities like the Reventon and Sesto Elemento, prototypes like the Estoque and Zagato Canto, a Gallardo highway patrol car and a handful of Lamborghini-powered F1 cars, like Nicola Larini's 1991 Modena 291.
You can even get into a few of them, which the museum's curators aren't likely to let you do in person. So whether you're at home, at the office or in Sant'Agata Bolognese, it's there for you to check out on Google Street View. Short of that, you can scope out a few screen shots in the gallery above and the details in the press release below.