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Lamborghini Huracan blown up to create 999 NFTs

The Internet continues to hone its ability to commercialize intangibles. In this case, the situation begins with a tangible, so we'll start there. According to cryptocurrency news outlet The Block, an investor purchased a real car, a 2015 Lamborghini Huracan, for real money. Then, an artist going by the handle Shl0ms led a team of about 100 people who worked together to blow up the Italian supercoupe and turn its bits into 999 non-fungible tokens, known as NFTs, and sell the tokens at auction. The artist, the team, the explosion, and the bits are materially real — every one of them can be touched and squeezed, were one to desire. After that, well, things get digital.  This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Shl0ms told Fortune that his crew experimented with explosives for two weeks, looking for the right bang to bring in the most bucks. When that was decided, they took the Huracan to the desert and put a "federally licensed explosives engineer" in charge of the boom, and used high-speed cameras to capture the detonation. The collective then gathered the Lamborghini pieces, choosing 999 of them to be filmed in short 4K clips of "exquisitely filmed fragments" rotating against a black background. These videos are the non-fungible tokens going up for sale. Of those 999 video segments, 111 are reserved for the people behind the project. The remaining 888, labeled the "$CAR" group, will be listed in a 24-hour auction starting February 25, bids beginning at .01 Etherium coin (ETH) — a cryptocurrency — which is about $26 USD at current exchange rates.   So the short story is: Guy blows up Lamborghini, makes 999 videos of 999 exploded bits, sells videos online. For anyone not clear on the exclusively digital nature of the NFT, none of the winning auction bidders will get a leftover piece of Lamborghini. In answer to a tweet asking about the shards, Shl0mo tweeted that "the fragments are either large, dangerous, greasy, or all 3 and will be kept in secure storage for the foreseeable future." We know that money is one of the reasons for this endeavor. Shl0ms — who's apparently made about $1 million from "NFT art experiments" — also has precedent for this work. He destroyed a urinal akin to the one made famous in 1917 by artist Marcel Duchamp, then sold 150 NFTs of video clips of the leftover bits in 2021. That NFT collection raised $500,000.

Ares Design Panther a worthy tribute to the De Tomaso Pantera

Ares Design finally has its Panther ready. Codenamed Project 1 because it launches the Italian coachbuilder's Legends Reborn series, the Panther prowls as a modern interpretation of yesteryear's De Tomaso Pantera. Based on an all-wheel drive Lamborghini Huracan, the Panther does well to mimic the fat-back wedge of the original, and restores pop-up headlights to the 21st century performance cars. The specs go some way beyond De Tomaso's effort. Thanks to an ECU tune, sports catalytic converters and a new exhaust, the 5.2-liter V10 is rated at 650 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque. That's 300 hp and 110 lb-ft away from the Ford-sourced 5.8-liter Cleveland V8 in the 1988 Pantera GT5 S. It's also 20 hp beyond the current Huracan Evo. The bodywork's been spun from carbon fiber, yielding a 3,138-pound dry curb weight, which is 91 pounds more than the Huracan Performante, four pounds more than the Evo version. Six-piston Brembos up front and four-piston units in back clamp carbon carbon ceramic discs behind a sweet set of staggered bronze wheels, 20 inches ahead, 21 inches astern. Those brakes will come in handy considering the 202-mph top speed. The interior can be dressed up any way an owner wishes, naturally. The demo model smothers the Lamborghini interior in even more carbon fibers, leather, Alcantara and cross-stitching. Ares Design will build only 21 Panthers, with first deliveries in May. The conversion takes three months, the price opens at 615,000 euros before options, or $696,300 in U.S. specie. None of those figures have any bearing on you, though, because all 21 build slots have already been paid for. So enjoy the gallery.

Get a load of these crazy European Nimrods

I've been attending the Geneva Motor Show for the better part of a decade, and it's become my favorite stop on the entire show circuit, in large part because of all the exotic automakers, coachbuilders and green startups. I also love the Palexpo's consistently mind-bending displays of tuners, who typically work exclusively on six-figure automobiles. Some offer subtle improvements and personalization programs, but most seem hellbent on being more outlandish and bizarre than the next, a room full of millionaire class clowns. More often than not, I spy something and think to myself "What kind of Nimrod would do that to a perfectly good ____ ?" This year, that rhetorical question is in fact a self-answering one.
The jokes, they write themselves.
But seriously, if you're wondering who would take a perfectly lovely Ferrari 458 Italia or a Lamborghini Aventador and affix a wild body kit of dubious aerodynamic and aesthetic merit at great extra cost (both to the car's MSRP and to its assuredly grenaded resale value), the answer could very well be Nimrod Elite Tuning, a newer high-end restyling house out of Slovakia. That last locational tidbit might also explain the company's unusual name, which is likely a nod to a mighty Biblical hunter (descendant of Ham and a king of Shinar, Nimrod is mentioned in Genesis and Chronicles) and not meant to be taken as a synonym for "idiot" or "moron."