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From the first few frames of this video, you can tell that something has gone wrong with the car being filmed, though it takes our intrepid videographer a little while to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. What happened seems to be a sinkhole opening in a Brazilian road and swallowing an automobile whole like an enraged mud elemental. For those of you who can spare 3 full minutes of your Friday afternoon to watch this hatchback be claimed by the proud and ingenious mole men who dwell just beneath out feet, we fully recommend watching the entire thing, for the sake of context and narrative. If you're busy folk like us, though, feel free to skip to about 1:30 to see the real fun begin as the hole widens and a full-sized automobile does it's best impression of a Hot Wheels car being flushed down the toilet by a toddler. Bye bye, car!

As if to one-up last week's Gene Simmons VW bug, a new challenger appears in the form of Truckcar. If you can't decide between purchasing a classic truck or crappy car, then this Knoxville Craigslist seller has the solution for you!

If you've ever wanted to wash your car easily and then never have to wash it again, I've got the method for you. Of course, you'll never have to wash it again because it will have been totaled, but that's no biggie, right? The real downside is having to pay for that huge truck.

Debuting yesterday at the 42nd Tokyo Motor Show, the Toyota Fun-Vii is a bold vision of the future. A future where the entire exterior and interior of your car is a video display, for some reason. Also, it looks like the Batmobile mated with a Prius. I'm dreading the future already.

Last year we told you about a car that runs entirely on coffee. Since then, while we've been writing about caffine-chugging bacteria and other, somewhat dubious, uses for your coffeemaker, the car-puccino's creators were not content. The U.K. team have created an all new car, and this one just set a world record for the fastest gasification vehicle. Like the previous model, this car was made in conjunction with the BBC program Bang Goes the Theory by engineer Martin Bacon and Durham England's Teesdale Conservation Volunteers. This new iteration of the coffee car tops out at 66.5 mph, snatching the previous speed record from a wood chip powered vehicle. That car, from Beaver Energy, topped out at 43mph. The record breaking run is sure to turn some heads as the buzz around alternative energy vehicles reaches a fevered pitch. To get this Rover SD1 to go on nothing but coffee grounds, the vehicle needs a few modifications.

Remember that "Reality Hits You Hard, Bro" guy? Well, he's back. In auto-tune form. (via Jalopnik)

This may appear to be a tiny model sports car with a coin on its hood for scale. It may even appear to be a remarkably detailed model, perhaps placed in some kind of diorama. Both of these statements are, however, completely incorrect. This is a full-size car, photographed using the tilt-shift technique with a 20:1 model of 50-cent Euro coin to distort the viewer's view. The project is called Big Money, and was carried out by the ingenious minds at Skrekkøgle, the same folks who brought Microsoft Solitaire into the real world. It may be a statement about how money distorts our perspectives on life, much as these images or distorted. Or it might be some artists having fun. Read on below for  more images of things made small, thanks to a giant coin.

If you've ever gone for a long, cross-country drive, you've probably noticed the hundreds if not thousands of smooshed and splattered insects that tend to accumulate on fast-moving cars. It turns out that the exact number of these tiny fatalities, at least in the Netherlands, has been calculated by Dutch biologist Arnold van Vliet at around 133 billion per month. To work all this out, van Vliet enlisted the help of Dutch drivers through a website called Splash Teller. Drivers were asked to count the number of squished bugs on their car's license plates, and submit the death toll along with some other vital information via the website. Given the standardization of license plate sizes in a country, they make a suitable testbed for such a study. After receiving the results and figuring that the front of a car was some 40-times larger than the license plate, van Vliet concluded that about two insects are killed for every 6.2 miles of driving.

The 4th of July is nearly upon us, and what better way to spend it than behind the wheel of a classic car turned into a barbeque/diner? This two-tone beauty has been completely gutted, its engine block replaced with a high-powered fuel-injected four-burner propane grill, and the passenger compartment converted into retro dining for four. It even has a sun umbrella. More pictures after the break, and bonus points to the commenter that correctly identifies the make, model, and year of the carbeque.

Last year at the Paris Autoshow, Jaguar rolled out the C-X75 as a way to commemorate their 75 years of auto manufacturing. As a concept car, the C-X75 was really something: A ridiculous, over-the top super car that was also a fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle. Of course, fuel-efficient is a relative term when the car in question is powered by one electric motor for each wheel and two jet-turbines in the back. But it was the C-X75's symbolic marriage of fuel efficiency with performance and high design that really captured the imagination.

In what can only be an attempt to one-up the knit Ferrari, Audi approached designer Taras Lesko to create a model of their A7 completely out of paper. The task took 285 pieces of card stock, creating 750 individual pieces of the car. Amazingly, he used no special tools; just laser printers and X-Acto knives. The full 245 hours of construction are compressed in the video below, which has the astonishing affect of making the car seem to rise out of Lesko's desk. Watch and be amazed.

For reasons unknown, the so-called "Mr. Zhang" decided that since he had nothing better to do that day, he would drive around China in two bumper cars. At the same time. He can be seen here, straddling the two fair-ground roadsters, and tooling around amiably without a care in the world. Eventually, he was stopped by police, which Metro reports resulted in little punishment for Mr. Zhang.

Officer Xiao said: 'Traffic regulations say that bumper cars are not engine vehicles, so they can't drive onto street.' However, because the law doesn't stipulate what punishment a bumper car driver should receive Zhang just got a warning.

So let's recap on the subject of China, shall we? You can't freely search the internet, you can't have time-travel plots in TV shows, but driving two bumper cars through busy traffic is no big deal. (via Autoblog)

The next time you see someone crowing about their fancy restored classic vehicle, just remember that they are riding around in a death trap. This video celebrates the advancements made in car safety technology by crashing a classic and contemporary car together. The contenders in this death match is an extremely boring and pedestrian looking 2009 Chevy Malibu and a rather gorgeous 1959 Bel Air. The results are dramatic. Despite the size and weight difference, the BelAir is completely, and dramatically destroyed. The classic lines of the Bel Air melt like butter against the small, fuel efficient Malibu. The hypothetical injuries sustained by the drivers is, perhaps, less surprising as the BelAir lacks airbags or even seat belts. Though I am happy to see the how well new cars fair compared to an older vehicle, I have to admit that the sight of a classic car being so utterly destroyed was both mesmerizing and hard to watch. Maybe it's because I grew up near Detroit, I don't know. (via Reddit)

You want a Chevy Volt, the new plug-in hybrid from GM, and you want it sooner rather than later. That, at least, is the assumption made by the auto giant as they ramp up distribution to bring the $40,280 car to all 50 states before the end of 2011. In their press release, U.S. VP of Chevy marketing Rick Scheidt said, “we’re accelerating our launch plan to have Volts in all participating Chevrolet dealerships in every single state in the union by the end of this year."  (Full disclosure: my father, and other members of my family, are current and former employees of General Motors. I am not, to my knowledge, getting a free car out of this.) Volts have been available in California, Connecticut, D.C., New Jersey, New York, and Texas since December 2010. Michigan will begin seeing the car in spring 2011, with Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington in the third quarter. Everyone else will follow-on before the end of the year. The push to bring the car to consumers faster comes on the heels of it winning big at the Detroit International Autoshow, among other honors. Furthermore, the Volt recently replaced the Prius as the most fuel-efficient vehicle in America. While the Volt is shaping up to be a technological marvel, the real success could be the psychology behind the car.

Never has the band Tenacious D seemed more prophetic than now, when Swiss company Acabion is prognosticating that by 2100 C.E. that we will travel through vacuum tubes at speeds around 20,000 km/h (about 12,000 mph). According to Wired, the company is aiming to introduce a new class of vehicle it calls the "streamliner," which looks like a jet fuselage mated with a motocycle. The aircraft- inspired design is intended to increase efficiency and speed, which Acabion is hoping will revolutionize transportation across the globe. So confident are they in their design that they have outlined the future of transit as revolutionized by the streamliner.