Take a good look at the picture above. What do you see? If your answer is that you see three black Chevrolet Equinox “cute utes,” you’d be wrong.

I took the picture at about four in the afternoon on a sunny day at my local Chevrolet dealer. According to their window stickers, each of those trucklets are a different color. The Equinox furtherest from the camera, facing the building, is the only one that is Black. The one closest to the camera, next to the curb, is Black Granite Metallic. The third Equinox is painted Tungsten Metallic. Here’s a shot from a different angle of the Tungsten Metallic and Black Granite Metallic trucks. See the difference?

Yeah, me neither.

And if that’s not enough different shades of Pretentiously Named Dark Color That Looks Almost the Same from 50 Feet to satisfy you, Chevrolet offers a fourth shade of Almost Black for the Equinox called Ashen Gray Metallic. Here is a picture of an Ashen Gray Metallic Equinox parked next to a Tungston Metallic Equinox. The AGM truck is on the left. I think.

Keep in mind that these pictures were taken on a sunny day. Time, and the fact that the dealership was still open and I didn’t feel like dealing with any salesmen desperate to close a sale before the end of the month, kept me from examining the trucks any closer. I returned the following Saturday evening after the lot had closed for some more pictures. The sky was clouding over as a thunderstorm approached, so there wasn’t any sun to bring out the metallic flakes that help to differentiate the individual colors. Here are all four of them in order from darkest to not quite as dark.

Black

Granite Black Metallic

Tungsten Metallic

Ashen Gray Metallic

Seriously. It’s not just me, right? These colors are almost the same.

For 2013 the Chevy Equinox is available in 11 different colors. That’s actually on the high end for modern mass produced vehicles and it’s down from 12 options during the 2012 model year. The Equinox’s big brother, the Traverse, is available in 9 shades, as is the Suburban.  The Cadillac XTS makes do with only 8. Somehow, the marketing mavens at GM have given buyers of the fifth cheapest car in Chevrolet’s lineup more color options than they gave the higher end flagship models.

On the other hand, if 4 of the 11 colors are so similar that 9 out of 10 eyewitnesses to a drive- by shooting involving a Chevy Equinox after dark would describe the getaway vehicle’s color as “Black,” are consumers really being offered much choice at all? On Chevy’s  ”Build Your Own Page,” photoshopped onto a beach background, each of these colors appear very different from one another when viewed on a computer screen. But in real life, parked next to one another, they look way too much alike. This lack of choice was augmented at my local dealership by the fact that of 19 new Equinoxes for sale, 10 of them were painted one of the four “Almost Black” colors in question. The point was further driven home by the almost complete lack of diversity in interior color ordered by the dealer. Only a single model had a gray interior. All of the others were black.

Chevrolet (and presumably, the dealer) would most likely reply that they are simply responding to what customers want. Every year DuPont publishes a survey of the most popular automotive exterior colors broken down by market. In the latest survey black and gray were the second and fourth most popular colors in the North American market, as well as in the world overall.

All well and good, I suppose. There’s no reason why black and gray shouldn’t both be part of the lineup. But why offer two of each color and why make your grays so dark? Compare the color range in the four pictures above to the picture of a 2012 Equinox painted in a discontinued color called Graystone Metallic I found for sale on the used car side of the lot.

Graystone Metallic

So why would Chevrolet be so seemingly afraid of color? Their competitors aren’t. At the Ford dealership across the street I found these two Escapes. The dealer had stocked multiple examples of both.

Frosted Glass and Deep Impact Blue

It seems that Ford and Chevy have reversed their traditional roles when it comes to exterior colors. Most people have heard Henry Ford’s famous quote regarding the color of the Model T:  “Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black.” Most people don’t know that prior to 1914 the Model T was available in multiple colors and the black standard was only adopted as Ford refined his assembly line process. The conventional wisdom is that Chevrolet (and GM overall) were able to grab market share because their models were offered in a greater variety of colors. There’s some truth to that belief, but it’s not the whole story.

It’s obvious that the old days of dozens of color combinations for each model are gone. That doesn’t mean that consumers shouldn’t be given a few more choices than the manufacturers seem to feel comfortable offering today.  At the very least, there’s no reason to offer four shades of practically the same color. C’mon, Chevrolet. Take a chance and show us some color.  Dump two of those four colors and give us another green or a real brown. Throw in a Burnt Orange or a Turquoise instead. Your competitors are doing it.

You won’t be able to send to or receive from *.Cadillac, *.Chevrolet, or *.GMC, while friends of other brands, from Dodge through Toyota,  will have that pleasure. General Motors withdrew three applications for what is called a “generic top level domain” or gTLD. Oddly, the applications for Buick and the supposedly illegal Chevy are still on the books.

A gTLD replaces the familiar dotcom. In case you want your own gTLD, it does not come cheap. The application fee alone is $185,000 and the annual fee runs another $25,000. On top of this come significant expenses of running  the extension, which “can put the total cost for a new TLD into the millions,” as Steve Jones, COO and Co-Founder of Domainate said.

While GM is saving money, Volkswagen splurges:  It registered a pricey gTLD for each of its vast collection of brands, except for Porsche and Skoda .

Former extreme ski world champion Guerlain Chicherit did what is called the first-ever unassisted backflip in a car. Strapped into a Mini Countryman, Guerlain had to maintain exactly 60kph and be full on the throttle on the ramp to land on all fours after a somersault.

According to the wire report, the driver spotted the moose on a country road near Hanestad, 225 kilometers north of Oslo, went around the animal, not realizing that a bear was following the moose.

“The driver had lost a bit of speed as he tried to avoid the moose before hitting the bear,” Svein Erik Bjorke of the local wildlife authority, said. “We are currently tracking the bear and we have found traces of blood indicating internal injuries.”

The driver escaped uninjured,  the car is damaged.

What ever happened to the TTAC project car? Here is some inspiration of what to do to the poor Sierra. Joel Olsen from Norway converted a 1982 Ford Granada, the European epitome of blah, into a 1,700 horsepower monster.

German magazine Der Spiegel explains how Olsen swapped the original V6 for a 4.7 liter V8. “This engine is in the Koenigsegg CCR, the Ford GT, or in a Shelby GT 500,” says Olsen. But that wasn’t good enough. With a blower by Turbonetics and series of other modifications which make sure that  the power does not cause indigestion, the output was raised to 1,700 hp.

The car will be stopped by a brake system borrowed for the Porsche GT2. The driveshaft is from a NASCAR car, the rear axle from a Mustang Cobra.

No word of the transmission.

Hat tip to Alm Oedi

An anonymous reader sent us these Erlkoenig photos. Apparently, they show a car in full leather get-up.

Since we have no idea what it is, we ask you for help.

•  What car?
• Where taken?

When I agreed to meet Hooniverse Editor-In-Chief Tim at Buttonwillow for an open trackday, I hadn’t fully considered what it would mean to coach in a 1964 Ford Falcon. To begin with, the car doesn’t have five-point belts; it has two-point belts. That’s right. Lappies only, no shoulder. And the bench seat moved from ratchet-stop to ratchet-stop in every turn, sometimes twice. Oh yeah, and there was the fact of vintage crash “safety” to consider. (The shot around 1:10 is particularly cringe-inducing.)

Still, as you will see in this video, Tim failed to kill me and in fact took more than fifteen seconds a lap off his time. Due to the Falcon’s massive steering wheel and rather lazy steering geometry, I had to relax one of my ironclad rules for students — Tim was permitted to shuffle-steer throughout the entire day. Don’t think that means I’m going to let you get away with it in your Miata, okay?

It was great to spend a day with the Hooniverse crew. I really believe that the site represents the best of what Jalopnik used to be: enthusiasm-focused, positive-minded, community-oriented. If you must visit some place else besides us, let it be them, okay?

Dayna Hart, GM China’s Director of Communications, and resident of Shanghai, has been shanghaied as a spokesperson for an amazing new weight loss product on Twitter.

Dayna also has been seen sending out tweets to other people telling them “Hey this user is saying very bad things about you …”, followed by an URL that purports to be leading to the alleged on-line defamation.

Apparently, Dayna became the victim of a common Twitter scam: Click on the link in “Hey this user is saying very bad things about you …” (and who does not want to know who’s saying bad things about us ?) and you land on tvivviter.com instead on twitter.com. The site asks you for your login info, you give it – and your Twitter account has been turned into an instant spam machine. If that happens to you, follow these instructions. If you just see the message, don’t click on the link.

People saying bad things about me? Come on, Dayna, what else is new?

If you value your life, don’t get on the road on Tuesday. Your chances of getting killed in an accident will be six percent higher than on any other days. Why? Tuesday, April 17th is tax day.

Researchers from the University of Toronto sifted through 30 years of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration records. They found that there is a significantly higher risk of being in a fatal road accident on tax day. On average, about 13 additional people get killed in car crashes every tax day, an increased risk of about 6%. It happens every year, it is as sure as you know, death and taxes.

We fully expect that Ray LaHood will suggest a ban of tax day.

The study was published in the April 11, 2012 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

(Hat tip to the woodman.)

U.S. president Obama was not allowed drive the Volt down the Hamtramck assembly line. His colleague in Turkmenistan does not suffer such tight restrictions and was allowed to win Turkmenistan’s first car race.

Last Saturday, Turkmenistan’s unpronounceable president Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov drove to the track in the capital Ashgabat in a lime green Bugatti Veyron, ostensibly just to watch the country’s inaugural car race.

When an event presenter introduced august guest, Berdymukhamedov asked: “Can I take part?” You deny such a request at your own peril in Turkmenistan. The president suited up, hopped into a likewise lime green Turkish-made Volkicar and won the time trial challenge. He could have raced his Veyron, but that would have been unfair.

The Associated Press has suspicions that the whole thing might have been choreographed. Who would think such a thing?  Berdymukhamedov simply likes lime green, just like Jack Baruth does.

While attending a preview drive in Charleston, SC, I spied a most unique vehicle parked near a major thoroughfare: a pickup based on a W124 Mercedes-Benz wagon.

Some people still regard the W124 as the best all-around car the company ever made. A quick Internet search will find a few other “Benzaminos,” but this could be the only one based on the W124. Also unlike the others, the intent with this conversion–performed by an independent repair shop that specializes in Mercedes–appears to have been to make the end result look as close to “factory” as possible. No badge on the tailgate, so the powertrain is unclear. If it were a diesel, though, the ad would probably mention this.

A final difference: this one’s currently for sale. $17,000 or best offer takes it.

Where is global warming when we need it? Europe has been hit by a gigantic blizzard, and the Grüne Hölle of the Nürburgring has been converted into the Weisse Hölle. What happens when hell freezes over shows this clip by Spiegel TV.

Maruti Suzuki’s big news at the Delhi Auto Show was the debut of its production compact MPV, the Ertiga. But it wasn’t all staid family-carriers at the Suzuki stand, as the Japanese-Indian automaker also debuted its XA Alpha concept, described in this dramatically-narrated (to put it mildly) video as “The Small God For The Big Future.” Remember the Suzuki Samurai (our global readers will certainly remember the Jimny)? It’s getting ready for its 21st Century makeover…

Suzuki says that the styling of this subcompact SUV, aimed at Ford’s new Ecosport and GM’s forthcoming Mokka, was inspired by traditional Indian wrestlers. Which may well be the case, but there’s no deny that there’s at least a little Range Rover Evoque in the look.

But what’s more enticing than the styling itself, is the question of whether or not a vehicle like this could bolster Suzuki’s muddled US product line. Suzuki has already established itself as the go-to option for low-cost AWD vehicles in the US with its SX4… but one can’t help wondering how many sales that model leaves on the table due to its small-hatchback design. With a more rugged, more-SUV-looking model on similar underpinnings, Suzuki might just be able to build a rugged-entry-AWD image in this market as Subaru moves inexorably upmarket towards an “Audi Junior” positioning.

In any case, the B-SUV market is starting to get some real attention globally, as the global giants update their aged entrants in the segment for ever-more-demanding developing markets. And as a fan of this genre, with its small, funky, affordable and surprisingly utilitarian mini-utes, I certainly hope someone decides to test the US waters with something like this.

Danny writes:

I am looking to buy an RX-7 (FC) convertible. I currently own a hand me down 2000 Honda Accord V6 from my mother in law. this car drinks WAY too much gas. 20 dollars in 89 octane gas DAILY! my commute is about 50 miles round trip. but I always loved Mazdas my dad had a 1984 323 with a 1.3, a 929 with the V6. I grew up playing with FDs in Gran Turismo. now that I can buy a cheap used car I was thinking about an FC convertible. BUT the major problem that I have is my job, I work for a Chevy dealership as a salesman. The GSM and the SM fired a guy who bought a Toyota Corolla S brand new.

I don’t wanna lose my job but I LOVE the FC and will not buy anything else, I know rotaries are as unreliable as an iron duke but that doesn’t matter. I have access to a repair shop so free labor is there. the parts might be a problem, though i think there are plenty of them in my local junk yard. so please help me figure out my dilemma I Don’t want to drive that POS accord in the summer heat, because it has no A/C, brakes are almost shot.

Sajeev answers:

So let me get this straight…your POS Accord drinks too much gas and you want to replace it with the bastion of efficiency, reliability, and cost effectiveness: an old RX-7? Really???

You just complained about getting kicked in the stomach, and subsequently ask to get kneed in the nuts. Because someone who doesn’t want to fix a somewhat old Accord (even with free labor) and wants to buy an ancient RX-7 is asking for said attack on one’s crotch. I would say that you should wear a cup, but that won’t help. The knee will hit with way too much force to your crotch. I mean wallet.

I like the part where you mentioned your dealership fired someone for buying a Corolla. While owning a Corolla is (often) punishment in itself, getting fired over it is a good reason to get a lawyer. Obviously you have to document every interaction where said employee was harassed for their car. Print out emails, wear a wire, write a journal with all the details, etc. That could be kinda fun. And hey, we all know that salesmen do have fair bit of downtime after the holidays!

I’m not kidding, after getting fired for a similarly idiotic reason a few years back. Plus, now I know what to do. And I might even have fun with it, if it happened again. Regarding your severely misguided passion for RX-7s, I suspect you’ll only learn from your mistakes by burning your hand on the waffle iron.  Enjoy the pain, but try to find a kevlar-reinforced cup.

Steve answers:

At first I thought you were plain nuts. But then I saw your French email address and figured that unreliable cars may just run in your blood.

Yes, the Accord is a truly terrible vehicle… if you’re one of those who fears ‘overquality’. What you need is a car that has the turn stalk on the wrong side, a powertrain that’s guaranteed to break sometime around Bastille Day, and an interior that biodegrades over time.

I do know of at least 3 Peugeot 405′s that have remained untouched since I harvested them for parts back in the late 90′s. But you are hungering for power instead of pauper. What can moi offer you?

Well, I took my family to a bowling alley earlier today, and there in all it’s glory was a red 1975 Ford Granada with the Cleveland V8 engine. The vinyl red interior is still completely intact and the manager told me that it’s only been sitting there for four months.We call that ‘free pickins’ here in Georgia; especially since cars older than 1986 don’t require a title here.

This would the perfect car to bring to your dealership. Just rip off the Ford emblem, replace the ‘Granada’ emblem with ‘Grand Am’, and you’re set. Now onto the RX-7.

They’re cheap at the auctions. Dirt, dirt, cheap. You can get an inoperable one for around $1000 and then buy a nice spare engine at car-part.com. Ummm… well… forget that actually . There are no replacement engines for the last Gen RX-7. Murilee and his damned LeMons racers destroyed them all.

I’ll tell you what though. Go to Carmax and tell them of all the woes this cretinous Honda has inflicted on you. Whatever they offer, I’ll beat it by $200. Between now and then, look at Craigslist and keep abreast of what salvage auctions such as Copart and Insurance Auto Auctions have to offer you.

Good luck!

Need an engineering project? Got 1,200 hours to kill with nothing to do? Take a tip from this heroically patient Spaniard, and hand-machine your own tiny (12 cc displacement) V12. This would be amazing feat of handwork even if it weren’t fully operational (using compressed air injection), but the fact that it works, runs and was made without a single CNC machine is nothing short of astounding.. If, as the book suggests, Shop Class is Soulcraft, this guy is like an engineering bodhisattva, inspiring us with his precision, patience and skill. In a world where not much is made by hand anymore, this achievement is worth taking a few minutes to marvel over… [Hat Tip: Dean Huston]

Here’s hoping your weekend motoring has been a little bit safer than surfboard designer Roberto Ricci’s…

Usually it’s the Germans who we find continually pushing the crash-test envelope, but this time around the UK’s Fifth Gear TV Show that decided to crash a car at 120 MPH. Sure, the Germans already proved how much of a difference can be made by crashing at 50 MPH instead of the traditional 40 MPH, just as the Chinese can make any of their cars appear safe by testing at 35 MPH rather than 40 MPH. But 120 MPH? It’s never been done before…

Axle and transfer case-maker Marmon-Herrington is still around, supplying OEMs and the aftermarket alike with up-rated drivetrain components. But back in the ’40s and ’50s, the firm designed its own vehicles as well, from an air-droppable tank, to a South African armored car, to monocoque electric trolley buses. Its predecessor company, Marmon Motor Car Company, even built the first car to win the Indy 500, the Marmon Wasp. Sadly this beast, an experimental amphibious off-road (on-marsh) vehicle called the Rhino (more here), was never produced. Otherwise, the Marmon name might have been exhumed during the ’90s SUV boom by a bespoke coachbuilding firm, offering specially-bodied medium-duty truck chassis bearing the brand name that won the first Indy 500 and parachuted into Nazi Germany. Imagine the possibilities…

America has a fine tradition of automotive spy shots, but it pales in comparison to Germany’s “Erlkönig” tradition. So much so, that Germans seem to exhibit a downright Pavlovian response to camouflaged vehicles, chasing anything that looks like it might be a factory prototype. Even if it’s actually a vehicle they probably see every day. How did this conditioning take root in the German psyche? For that, we need a brief history lesson.

The first-ever spy shots of an automotive prototype (a Mercedes 180), taken by Auto Motor und Sport in the 1950s, were accompanied by lighthearted adaptations of Goethe’s poem Der Erlkönig because, in the words of one editor

These images, which by todays standards are ridiculously harmless, were considered an unprecedented provocation by the automobile industry. [Then-Editor-in-Chief Heinz-Ulrich Wieselmann] finally decided to sweeten the bitter pill for the industry by accompanying the images with endearing text. In this spirit, he rhymed a little poem in the style of the Erlkönig (Alder King) to go with the first pictures

Who rides there, through the rain and wind so wild?
Is it a street cruiser from the other side,
who in this dimension was left behind,
Or could it be Daimler’s youngest child?

[Ed: translation is mine]

Goethe’s poem, which tells of a child’s death at the hands of a mythical Alder King that his father (who carries him through “rain and night”) can not see, is so well known that the reference was clear. Ever since then, camouflaged prototypes are know as Erlkönigs, and Germans hunt them with abiding passion.

So much so, in fact, that a firm selling graphic wraps for automobiles decided to give a BMW X5 a mule-style wrap that was actually an advertisement for its services… and it ended up on Youtube, identified as an “Erlkönig” of an X5 facelift. Which proves not only that even non-auto-obsessed Germans will chase anything with four wheels and camo on it, but that this was genius marketing move.

Incidentally, the motto that makes up those spirals says “make your car look new.” Brilliant.

It’s been… several months since I last indulged my strange obsession with Kia’s forthcoming funky take on first-gen Scion xB values, known as the TAM. And back then, all I had to share were a few crummy photos. Now, thanks to Youtube user daniel78park, we can see the Tam flying down the Korean freeway in glorious cell-phone-o-vision. And though I’ve always assumed the TAM was just a boxy, city-delivery variant of the Picanto/i10 platform, it seems my weird crush is more than that. Automotive News [sub] reports

Kia has dubbed its EV effort the TAM project. Kia’s first EV will be a small vehicle based on the platform underpinning the Hyundai i10 minicar. The company plans to produce 2,000 units in 2012.

Hold up… is my weird crush electric?

If so, this would explain why so little is known about it. And all the more reason to bring it to the US, as an escalation of the “reverse halo” strategy that Hyundai is leveraging with its Veloster. In fact, with an unconventional door configuration of its own (three standard doors, one slider), Kia just has to call this thing the “Soulster” and watch Scion squirm. Of course, with only 2k units planned for next year, this car isn’t leaving Korea anytime soon. Unless, of course, there will be a gas version too… say, the direct-injected, turbocharged 1.2 liter four-banger that Karesh mentions in his Hyundai i10 review. Or, maybe, just maybe, I’m getting a little carried away with this weird crush of mine…

No, it’s not a special-edition 911 with a few extra horsepower and leather-wrapped mirror-adjustment levers. Nor is it a water pipe built to the most exacting standards ever imagined by German engineers. No, Porsche has a freaking palace for sale, Schloss Bullachberg to be precise. Conveniently located in Bavaria’s castle district, near  some of Germany’s most famous castles, Bullachberg was once the seat of the von Thurn und Taxis dynasty… and can now be yours for an undisclosed sum. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that Porsche bought the property five years ago, for some six million Euros, with plans to turn it into a luxury resort hotel for “kaufkräftig” (literally purchase-powerful) customers and management retreats. Fast forward through one financial crisis and one overambitious attempt to buy Volkswagen, and Porsche has decided to let the property go. But be warned, as the FAZ reports that

only the most necessary work was done on the building’s upkeep.

Now that Ferrari even has its own amusement park (conveniently begun before the financial crisis), there’s no way Porsche will ever match its Italian rival in terms of cross-branded destination tourism. Which is fine. After all, we’re talking about car companies here… right?

“We” being Nissan, and “this” being shortening a GT-R powertrain enough to fit a Juke bodyshell over it. It won’t ever make production, and it will probably spin dizzy, short-wheelbase circles every time it even thinks about a corner… but even the haters have to admit that this is a clever way to highlight the Juke’s unexpectedly sporty nature. But despite the argument that “there’s a history of Nissan engineers driving the business,” let’s be clear about one thing: Nissan’s involvement in this project is all on the marketing side. Once upon a time, Nissan’s engineers might have built a little monster like this out of sheer passion, in their spare time. Today, though, the work gets outsourced to specialty race engineering shops, RML in this case. It’s not a knock, that’s just how the world works anymore.

In the annals of poorly-chosen songs, this one is right up there with the State of New Jersey’s almost-decision to make Springsteen’s “Born To Run” the state song. Yes, Maserati, you can do anything, you can be anyone… and you’re choosing to be the brand that pimps upgraded Grand Cherokees by invoking the ghost of Fangio over crappy power-pop. Do you really want to be reminding viewers that this is a conscious choice, picked from an infinite range of options? Because that kind of willful douchbaggery makes you, Maserati, look like you’re a half-step from becoming the official luxury brand of Jersey Shore.