News

A Billion-Euro Question: Who Buys Porsche’s Share of Bugatti Rimac?

In the rarified air where nine-figure hypercars meet nine-figure balance sheets, ownership can be just as transient as a Nürburgring lap record. The latest example comes from the Bugatti Rimac joint venture, where Porsche’s sizable stake may soon be looking for a new garage.

According to new reports, a venture capital fund co-founded by a descendant of Egypt’s billionaire Sawiris family is part of a group in talks to acquire Porsche’s share of Bugatti Rimac. If the deal goes through, it would mark yet another chapter in one of the most intricate alliances in modern automotive history.

Bugatti and Rimac officially joined forces in 2021, creating a marriage between a century-old French luxury icon and a Croatian electric-hypercar disruptor. Back then, the ownership chart looked like a particularly messy pit board: Mate Rimac held 37 percent of the Rimac Group, Porsche owned 24 percent, Hyundai controlled 12 percent, and the remaining 27 percent was split among various other investors. Fast-forward to today, and the structure has been simplified—but only slightly. The Rimac Group now owns 55 percent of Bugatti Rimac, while Porsche retains the remaining 45 percent.

That 45 percent is now the prize.

Bloomberg reports that HOF Capital, co-founded by a member of the Sawiris dynasty, along with private equity firm BlueFive Capital, is negotiating to acquire Porsche’s stake. The transaction could value Bugatti Rimac north of €1 billion (about $1.2 billion), and HOF is also said to be considering an additional capital injection into the Rimac Group to fuel future expansion.

None of the parties involved—Porsche, HOF Capital, or BlueFive—have publicly commented on the report. Rimac, however, has acknowledged that discussions with Porsche are ongoing regarding the venture’s future ownership structure, emphasizing that no agreement has yet been reached. It remains unclear whether Mate Rimac himself is directly involved in the current bid, though he has previously expressed interest in partnering with investors to buy Porsche out.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Rimac has been unusually candid about the downsides of complex corporate arrangements. Earlier this year, he openly vented about the difficulty of running a company with too many stakeholders pulling in different directions.

“I just want to be able to make long-term decisions, to make long-term investments, and to do things in a different way, without having to explain to 50 people,” Rimac said. “When you negotiate with a corporation, there are so many factors. It’s families, it’s multiple families. It’s an emotional topic.”

For a company tasked with building multimillion-dollar hybrid hypercars and shaping Bugatti’s post–internal-combustion future, emotional topics may be unavoidable—but simplicity has its appeal. Whether this potential deal delivers that simplicity, or just rearranges the logos on the letterhead, remains to be seen.

One thing is certain: in the hypercar world, the fastest-moving parts aren’t always the cars.

Source: Bloomberg

SOCIAL MEDIA

Amazon Delivery Truck Gets Stuck Under Queens Bridge

There are few things more unforgiving than a low bridge. Gravity doesn’t negotiate, steel doesn’t flex, and clearance signs are suggestions only if you’re willing to turn your trailer into modern art. Unfortunately for one Amazon delivery driver in Queens, New York, that lesson arrived the hard way—and on Facebook.

A video posted by Trashy Trucker Media has gone viral after capturing the aftermath of an Amazon box truck attempting to slip under an iron bridge in Astoria. It didn’t fit. The bridge won. Traffic lost. And the internet, predictably, feasted.

The footage shows the truck wedged firmly beneath the bridge, its trailer roof peeled back like the lid of a sardine can. Police are already on scene. Cars stack up behind the immovable object. Meanwhile, the video’s narrator—a trucking veteran with a megaphone-style delivery and zero sympathy—provides live commentary.

“Ain’t having no fun up here in Astoria, Queens, New York, folks,” he declares, before delivering the line that launched a thousand comments: “Driver, that’s unacceptable!”

By the time the clip finished making the rounds, it had racked up more than 436,000 views, turning a routine infrastructure mishap into a holiday-season spectacle. Trashy Trucker Media labeled the incident a “door dummy” moment—industry slang for a driver who misses the basics—and many viewers were happy to agree.

And to be fair, low-bridge strikes are about as avoidable as trucking mistakes get. Older cities like New York are packed with legacy infrastructure, where bridge clearances dip well below modern interstate standards. That’s why height restrictions are posted early, often repeatedly, and in numbers large enough to read from orbit. Professional drivers are trained—drilled, really—to know their vehicle’s height and treat clearance signs as gospel.

Amazon, for its part, says it stacks the deck even further. In a statement to Motor1, a company spokesperson emphasized that safety is a top priority and that drivers have access to commercial-grade navigation through Amazon’s Relay app, designed to route trucks away from low bridges, narrow streets, and other urban booby traps. When everything works as intended, you never see a truck playing chicken with 19th-century steel.

But “when everything works as intended” is doing a lot of lifting here.

Online commenters were quick to point fingers at the driver, with many arguing that the incident represented a failure at the most basic level of commercial driving. “Got to do better, driver,” one wrote. Another wondered aloud how it even got that far: “At what point does he notice his truck getting too close? There are measurements everywhere.” A third cut straight to the credentialing issue: “I thought CDL school taught reading signs.”

Others leaned into gallows humor, suggesting the mishap might explain some mysteriously delayed packages. “So much for Xmas presents,” one joked. “So that’s where my package is,” another added.

Still, not everyone was eager to throw the driver under the bridge—figuratively speaking. One trucker chimed in with a more empathetic take, recounting his own early-career brush with a low-clearance scare in Queens. He caught the signs too late, needed help backing out, and escaped with nothing worse than wounded pride. No damage, no delays, no viral video. Just a lesson learned.

That’s the quiet part of trucking the internet rarely sees: most mistakes don’t end in shredded trailers and comment-section dogpiles. They end with embarrassment, paperwork, and a renewed respect for signs bolted to old steel.

This time, though, the consequences were loud, visible, and expensive. Bridge strikes are dangerous, disruptive, and costly—not just for the driver and the company, but for everyone stuck behind the mess. They’re also almost entirely preventable, which is why they draw so much heat when they happen.

In the end, this wasn’t a story about Amazon, algorithms, or even bad luck. It was about overconfidence meeting immovable infrastructure. The bridge didn’t move. The truck didn’t fit. And the internet, as always, was ready to remind everyone why clearance signs exist in the first place.

Source: Trashy Trucker Media via Facebook

News

2024 Nissan GT-R Skyline Edition Tests the Collector Market

The Nissan GT-R has always lived in a strange limbo—too advanced to fade quietly into obscurity, too stubbornly unchanged to chase reinvention. For nearly two decades, the R35 generation carried on with incremental updates, daring the world to decide whether Godzilla was aging gracefully or simply refusing to age at all. Now, as production winds down and nostalgia starts doing what it does best, certain versions of the GT-R are inching toward collector status. Exhibit A: this 2024 GT-R Skyline Edition that just tried—and failed—to rewrite its own market value.

At a recent Cars & Bids auction, an ultra-low-mileage Skyline Edition coupe surged to an eye-watering $222,000 after 46 bids. That’s real money, and a lot of enthusiasm. It’s also not enough. The seller’s reserve remained untouched, suggesting that even a six-figure profit on paper isn’t sufficient when rarity, timing, and optimism collide.

Introduced for the 2024 model year, the Skyline Edition was Nissan’s carefully calculated nostalgia play for the U.S. market. Only 100 examples were built, each finished in Bayside Blue—a color so closely associated with the R34-generation GT-R that merely mentioning it sends certain corners of the internet into meltdown. It’s a paint choice that does most of the talking before the engine ever fires.

When new, the Skyline Edition carried an MSRP of $133,500. By modern supercar standards, that almost feels restrained, especially when you consider what Nissan bundled into the package. Mechanically, it’s the familiar R35 formula: a hand-assembled 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6 producing 573 horsepower and 467 pound-feet of torque, sent through a six-speed dual-clutch transmission and all four wheels. It’s still brutally quick, still devastatingly effective, and still more video game boss than analog sports car.

But the Skyline Edition’s real differentiator isn’t horsepower—it’s atmosphere. Open the door and you’re greeted by a Sora Blue interior that makes most other R35 cabins look positively dour. Light blue leather spreads across the dashboard, door panels, seats, steering wheel, and center console, creating a look that’s equal parts luxury lounge and concept car throwback. Carbon-fiber trim cuts through the pastel palette, reminding you that this is still very much a performance weapon, not a fashion accessory.

Nissan sweetened the deal further with a titanium exhaust system, 20-inch Rays wheels, and electronically controlled Bilstein DampTronic dampers. It’s a greatest-hits list of GT-R hardware, curated for buyers who wanted the full experience without checking the aftermarket catalog.

This particular car was originally delivered by Riverside Nissan in California and had just 80 miles on the odometer when it crossed the virtual auction block. Eighty. That’s barely enough to warm the fluids, let alone wear in a clutch. In collector terms, it’s essentially a new car with a time capsule warranty.

So why didn’t $222,000 seal the deal? Because the modern collector market is as much about belief as it is about numbers. The seller clearly believes the Skyline Edition represents a future blue-chip GT-R—one that will sit comfortably alongside the most desirable R35 variants once the dust settles and the internal-combustion era feels properly distant. The bidders, enthusiastic as they were, weren’t quite ready to make that leap.

Still, the takeaway here isn’t failure—it’s momentum. A GT-R that originally sold for $133,500 attracting bids north of $220K tells you everything you need to know about where the wind is blowing. The R35 may have overstayed its welcome in showrooms, but in the collector world, it’s just starting to make sense.

Godzilla isn’t done evolving. It’s just changing arenas.

Source: Cars & Bids

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