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New Die Hard movie wrecked 132 cars in $11 million chase scene [w/video]

It would seem the act of dying hard brings with it lots of wanton destruction of the four-wheeled kind. According to John Moore, director of A Good Day To Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, There were 132 (cars) that could never be used again. Another 518 required a lot of work. And damn right there were some good cars there... That's the fun of it."
Please join us in one great big collective sigh. Done? Okay, let's continue.
"With Die Hard it's about how audacious the action is," says Moore. "So you have to drive over a Lamborghini. An actual one. And yes it hurts me. I'm a car fanatic." Yeah. Sounds like it hurt really bad... though not as bad as the final tally after all the carnage had been counted: "Someone showed me the numbers on the car chase and soup to nuts, you put it all together it was like an $11 million sequence."

X1, 3 Series power BMW back into global luxury autos sales lead

BMW managed to eke ahead of Audi for the global luxury sales crown in February. According to Bloomberg, BMW saw deliveries swell by 7 percent in February, besting the 3.2 percent jump enjoyed by Audi and giving BMW a 407-unit delivery lead over its rival last month. Mercedes-Benz, meanwhile, continued to falter, with the brand selling some 37,229 fewer machines than BMW, whose factories are running at full capacity to keep up with demand. Models like the X1 (shown above) enjoyed a sales increase of 40 percent in February while the company's bread-and-butter 3 Series jumped by 26 percent.
Mercedes-Benz hopes to stem its continued market share loss with the addition of the entry-level CLA sedan to its portfolio in April. The company is set to roll out an updated version of its cash-cow E-Class at the same time, and a new-generation S-Class will follow along shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, the company is increasing production to meet demand for its A and B-Class models.

Daimler names Bernd Pischetsrieder to supervisory board

Some executives in the automotive industry stay with one company for their entire careers, while others bounce from one to the other, often leaving their indelible mark on each automaker at which they serve. Bob Lutz is certainly an example of the latter. So is Lee Iacocca, having presided over Ford and later charing the Chrysler board. Carlos Tavares was chief operating officer of Renault before being nominated as chief executive at PSA Peugeot Citroën. But as far as the Germans go, nobody's jumped from the leadership of one automaker to the next quite like Bernd Pischetsrieder - especially now that he's been named to the supervisory board of Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler.
An engineer by training, Pischetsrieder started his career at BMW in 1973, eventually rising to the office of CEO after twenty years. There he remained until 1999, only to be dismissed after orchestrating BMW's takeover of the Rover Group (of which only the Mini brand remains in the company's portfolio, the other brands having been sold off after his dismissal).
The next year he was named chairman of Volkswagen's Seat brand, and rose to the chairmanship of the entire Volkswagen Group two years later. Despite a largely successful four-year tenure (that gave birth, incidentally, to the Bugatti Veyron), disagreements with supervisory board chairman Ferdinand Piëch saw him leave the helm at VW AG, focusing his attention on the Scania truck division. He's since been touted as a potential chief executive for Opel and for Continental, but neither potential was apparently realized.