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BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coup'e bows at Villa d'Este

The first collaboration between BMW and Pininfarina is this blunt-force two-door called the BMW Pininfarini Gran Lusso Coupe revealed at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este. Said to be the "interpretation of a luxurious BMW Coupé as seen through the eyes of Pininfarina," once you get past all of the design-speak, you can focus on the full-bodied and keen-edged missile sitting on 21-inch wheels.
The long wheelbase makes for short overhangs. Up front, BMW's design language gets scraped across a whetstone, everything getting sharper, including the usually round cat's eye headlights that have gone dihedral. Under the hood is a V12, behind the twin-kidney grille in matte-sheen aluminium and high-gloss black. The same aluminum treatment also backs the taillights, the lenses designed to let air flow through them.
Inside is room for four, a cockpit canted toward the driver, Foglizzo leather in black and Tobacco Brown, 48,000-year-old kauri wood from New Zealand, deep pile carpet on the floors, a patterned virgin wool headliner and an "oblong aperture in the roof liner" set off by white LEDs.

Finalists for 2014 Green Car of the Year announced

The list of finalists for the 2014 Green Car of the Year has been announced, and in a genuinely bizarre twist, there's only one hybrid and no electric vehicles among the five contestants, despite the arrival of cars like the BMW i3 and Tesla Model S. Taking the place of the EVs are a pair of diesels, repping a technology that last won a Green Car of the Year award in 2009, when the Audi A3 TDI took the title. No diesel was in the running for last year's award.
Naturally, both of the diesel finalists are fielded by the Germans - with BMW's 328d and Audi's A6 TDI getting the nod. In the case of the 3 Series, BMW installed a 2.0-liter, turbodiesel, capable of delivering 180 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque, while returning 45 miles per gallon on the highway. Audi and its larger, 3.0-liter, V6 turbodiesel produce quite a bit more grunt, with 240 hp and 428 lb-ft of grunt, but net a very impressive 38 mpg on the highway in the A6.
Finalists for this year's awards include two diesels, three gas-powered cars and a plug-in hybrid.

BMW M235i in circuit scrap with legendary E46 M3 CSL

Earlier this month, we brought you news that BMW's one-year wonder, the 2011 1 Series M Coupe, is actually trading for more money today than it did when new. That sort of short-term appreciation is a major rarity with modern production cars, but apparently it's not the only BMW enthusiast coupe to enjoy far-above-average residual values. The not-for-North America 2004 M3 CSL, itself a single-year offering, apparently also fits that description, as we've just learned from Auto Express.
The M3 CSL ruled overseas BMW showrooms a decade ago, with just 1,400 examples built. Based on the well-regarded E46 M3, the rare two-door was relieved of extraneous bits for improved track work and driver fidelity, coming in at around 240 fewer pounds than a garden-variety M3. With carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic bodywork, thinner glass and a lot less sound insulation, the CSL was one of the more raucous cars of its day. Like the 1M Coupe, it was also one of the more connected cars of the era, with a retuned suspension, quicker steering, and a bit more power than its brethren.
As Auto Express points out, a good used one commands about the same money as a brand-new 2014 M235i - the closest thing BMW makes to a 1M Coupe today - which makes this video track battle an interesting new-versus-used showdown. According to AE, a well-sorted used M3 CSL will run UK consumers anywhere between £30,000 and £35,000 - roughly $50,000 to $59,000 US. That's a massive premium over the $10k-17k British buyers can expect to shell out for a comparable standard M3, similar to the story that plays out for the 1M versus lesser 1 Series variants.