1974 Karmann Ghia on 2040-cars

Auto blog

YouTube's Super Bowl commercial buzz list dominated by automakers [w/videos]

After Sunday's big game, YouTube will be the place to watch every commercial that you missed when you left your seat for an emergency guac refill or, as we say in Cleveland, took the Browns to the Super Bowl. That makes YouTube the nation's water cooler on Monday, and it's got some preliminary stats to share in the lead up to kickoff.
As you know, Super Bowl advertisers, particularly automakers, like to endlessly tease their big budget commercials in the weeks before the game, many times revealing them outright days in advance. Because of this, YouTube can tell us which commercials have been viewed the most so far, and their top five list is all automakers.
Kaley Cuoco appears to have been a good investment for Toyota, as her ad for the RAV4 has garnered the most YouTube views - six million and counting - among Super Bowl commercials so far. Second place goes to Mercedes-Benz, though not its actual Super Bowl commercial, but rather the teaser for it. You know, the one with Kate Upton and the car washing, which is up to 5.6 million views. Third place is Audi's Prom commercial (3.3M views), fourth goes to Volkswagen's slightly controversial Get In, Get Happy ad (3.3M views), and the fifth and final spot is bookended by the teaser video for Kaley Cuoco's commercial (3.2M views). You can watch all five in order below.

Volkswagen loses thousands of vehicles in Chinese explosion

Yesterday, a blazing, explosive fireball erupted from a port in the city of Tianjin, in China, lighting up the night sky and shattering windows with the force of 21 tons of TNT. Hundreds were injured and the death toll continues to rise, with the most recent reports claiming 50 were killed. While the human cost of this tragedy simply can't be overstated, it hasn't taken long for corporations to look into what the enormous explosion cost them. And for Volkswagen, the answer is quite a lot. According to our friends at Jalopnik, a Chinese source claims the German giant, which remains one of the PRC's most popular brands, lost thousands of vehicles. The automotive casualty sheet lists 1,065 Touaregs, 391 Beetles, 257 Tiguans, 114 Golfs, 84 Up! minicars, 39 SportVans, and 28 Magotans (a locally built version of the Passat). While those are the only vehicles listed, the Chinese source said over 2,700 vehicles were destroyed. For example, both Land Rover and Renault lost an unspecified number of Discovery SUVs and Koleos CUVs, respectively. The explosion also affected Toyota. Its research and design facility with joint-venture partner Sichuan FAW also suffered an unspecified amount of damage. You can check out the translated source article here. As Google Translate jobs go, though, this one is particularly bad, but it still offers some details of the automotive cost of this disaster.

Porsche 911 and Nissan 350Z get smoked by unlikely hero

So a Nissan 350Z Procharger and a current Porsche 911 GT3 drive onto the Autobahn together - stop me if you've heard this one before - and they decide to race. We're not sure how much power the Z is packing, but the stock model topped out at 306 horsepower on the last year of its run in 2009. And if that's a stock GT3 then it will be rocking something like 475 horsepower. So the Z and the GT3 give it a racing go, and just as one of them starts to pull away they're both overtaken by one of the most unlikely dark horses you could imagine. It's a really short video and we won't spoil the surprise, so check it out above. News Source: Woreth V12 via YouTube Nissan Porsche Volkswagen Coupe Hatchback Luxury Racing Vehicles Performance Videos porsche 911 gt3 autobahn