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☆ Silk-FAW drops plan to build Italian plant for electric sports cars
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The facility was part of a wider plan to invest more than a 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to build electric cars in Italy under the Hongqi brand. The document includes acknowledgement by the Emilia-Romagna region of Silk-FAW's decision. Silk-FAW did not respond to a request for comment via the company's website. Two sources close to the matter said Italian prosecutors were investigating the Silk-FAW project. Silk-FAW did not respond to a separate request for comment on the matter via the company's website.

☆ A Tesla SUV drag raced 2 $500,000 supercars from Ferrari and Lamborghini — the results were too close to call
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Tim Levin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A Tesla Model X raced against a Ferrari SF90 Stradale and Lamborghini Aventador SVJ. The Tesla won one race and was extremely close to the Ferrari across the board. The Model X Plaid has 1,020 horsepower but costs less than a quarter of the Italian supercars. Online car-buying marketplace CarWow proved as much in a recent YouTube video pitting the Tesla Model X, Ferrari SF90 Stradale, and Lamborghini Aventador SVJ against each other in a series of quarter-mile drag races. The super-sporty Model X Plaid that CarWow chose for the stunt costs $109,990 in the US.

☆ 2023 Lamborghini Urus Performante: Super-Sport Thrills That Aren’t So Cheap
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Dan Neil | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

RAGING BULL Lamborghini has traditionally named its sports cars after famous fighting bulls, such as Gallardo, Aventador and Islero. For its first SUV of the modern era, the company chose Urus, a now-extinct species of wild bull. IT’S FUNNY the things you think of when you’re going like a bat out of hell in a red Lamborghini. The French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) was among the most celebrated pornographers of the 19th century. Trained in the French academic style, Bouguereau’s brushwork and powers of composition rivaled that of Italian masters Raphael and Titian.

☆ The unraveling of fintech darling Vise
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +28 min

It was April, and more than two dozen salespeople who worked for the fintech startup Vise had been ordered to a multiday off-site at the W Hoboken hotel in New Jersey to share exhaustive reports on their performance. Even salespeople at bigger, established, top-tier investment-management firms typically wouldn't close $250 million in a year, multiple sales employees said. (K-means clustering is an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm often referred to as a form of AI, Vise's founders said). (Vise's founders disputed this, saying the company received updated financial data only once a day for its portfolio-construction engine.) And to address its "leaky funnel" of overestimating prospective sales, Vise was to stop outreach to new clients while it onboards and upsells to existing clients, the document said.

☆ How China's millionaire crowd stacks up against America's, in wealth, spending, and how they made their fortunes
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

China has 780,000 millionaires, while the US has nearly 7 times that. Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty ImagesWhile China and the US are comparable in nominal GDP, there are far more wealthy individuals in America than in China. That data came from a wealth report by the consultancy Henley & Partners, published in 2023. "America is in a league of its own, with three times the total wealth of China and seven times as many dollar millionaires," the report said. The US has 9,630 centimillionaires, or people with a net worth of $100 million or higher, and 770 billionaires, according to the firm.

☆ The Super-Rare Lamborghini He Found at the End of an Oregon Dirt Road
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-18 | by ( A.J. Baime | Photographs Yuri Hasegawa For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Jeff Meier, a 62-year-old automotive consultant living in Los Angeles, on his 1969 Lamborghini Miura S, as told to A.J. In 2000, I was visiting relatives in Oregon. My aunt told me about this guy who owned an old orange Lamborghini. My sister knew everyone in this little town, and she was able to find him. There was this long dirt road, and a shack that looked deserted.

☆ Inside Tracy Anderson's cutthroat fitness empire: Legal threats, paranoia, and trainers who say their bodies were 'breaking apart'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Katie Warren | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +29 min

One day around 2015, a dozen or so gift boxes showed up at the Brentwood, California, studio of the celebrity fitness trainer Tracy Anderson. "It was an exclusive boutique fitness studio," the former New York trainer said. Darren Gerrish/WireImageThe method demanded that TA trainers, most of whom were also professional dancers, perform the strenuous workouts full out, every time. Let's help you do it correctly so you don't get injured,'" the former New York trainer said. "This is at a time where everyone is already overworked," one of the former New York trainers said.

☆ Here are 7 fun details that you might miss in the trailer for 'Air,' the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon movie about Nike signing Michael Jordan
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Matthew Kish | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The movie stars Ben Affleck as Nike cofounder Phil Knight and Matt Damon as Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro. In the trailer, Knight's character, played by Ben Affleck, responds to hearing the "Air Jordan" name for Michael Jordan's line of footwear and apparel. Knight's office is filled with booksIn the trailer, there are numerous books on the shelves in Knight's office. Phil Knight's 'rumpled' clothesIn three scenes in the trailer, Knight's character wears a wrinkled suit with the necktie pulled loose. He had a garage full of raw rubber, got some and put it on his wife's waffle iron," Knight said.

☆ Shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon could be a lot harder than it sounds, former Navy pilot says
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Natalie Musumeci | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Shooting down the suspected Chinese spy balloon is harder than it seems, a former Navy pilot told Insider. The military said there were also concerns that shooting the balloon down could result in safety risks from falling debris. Still, some have urged that the Chinese balloon be shot down, despite the risks. Yu said that the US has the "capability" to shoot down the balloon, but doesn't have "the will." The Pentagon, however, has insisted it is a surveillance balloon, but there are no immediate plans to shoot it down.

☆ Google isn't just afraid of competition from ChatGPT — the giant is scared ChatGPT will kill AI
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A perfect example of this is the viral technology ChatGPT. ChatGPT makes a lot of people nervous (here's everything you need to know about it, BTW). Or maybe one day ChatGPT will just teach the class — that's probably part of Google's AI nightmare. If ChatGPT runs rampant, the search giant fears it could ruin AI adoption for everyone. My colleague Hasan Chowdhury breaks down how so-called generative AI — not just ChatGPT — could derail an entire sector of emerging technology.

☆ Twitter auctioned off a $16,000 piece of kitchen equipment known as the 'Lamborghini of meat slicers' from its San Francisco office
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Azmi Haroun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Twitter auctioned off a number of office items from its San Francisco office this week. The auction included luxury kitchen equipment that was being sold at cut-rate prices. During the auction, Twitter's blue bird logo was sold for $100,000, and a high-end machine known as the "Lamborghini of meat slicers," was also sold. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Berkel 330M-STD Manual Fly Wheel Slicer, a top-of-the-line meat slicer used in top restaurants, was one of the items listed during the auction. The meat slicer, which sells for $16,000 at retail price, was originally listed at $7,500 at the start of the auction, and much of the luxury kitchen equipment was highly discounted, per The Chronicle.

☆ Volkswagen Group deliveries lowest in over a decade
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Victoria Waldersee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Buzz, a fresh take on the iconic vehicle of the Volkswagen brand, during its world premiere in Paris, France, March 9, 2022. Group sales rose 14.3% in the fourth quarter, but the outlook for 2023 remains clouded by weak economies and supply chain shortages, extended executive sales committee member Hildegard Wortmann said. Audi, Lamborghini and Bentley weathered 2022 better than Volkswagen Passenger Cars and Skoda, with deliveries down around 4% at the premium brands and down 9% for mass-market vehicles. Group deliveries fell 7% versus 2021. The Volkswagen Group's deliveries were up 12% in the second half of the year, but the full-year figure was dragged down by a drop of over a fifth in the first half.

☆ Rolls-Royce, Bently and Lamborghini had record sales last year, again
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Peter Valdes-Dapena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Lamborghini, car brands that cater to billionaires, had record sales again last year. In fact, it was the third record year in a row for Bentley and the second consecutive record for Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini. The Lamborghini Urus SUV accounted for more than half of that brand’s sales last year while, for Bentley, the Bentayga accounted for 42% sales. The Rolls-Royce Cullinan SUV accounted for nearly half of that brand’s sales last year. The amount of money Rolls-Royce customers paid for options on their cars and SUVs rose to record levels last year.

☆ From a Lamborghini to a custom Rolex, here are the wildest things business owners bought with their PPP loans
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The Justice Department has charged many business owners with fraud over their PPP and EIDL loans. The Paycheck Protection Program made forgivable loans of up to $10 million available for business owners to cover payroll and certain business expenses. The Small Business Administration awarded nearly $800 billion in PPP loans to 11.47 million businesses. A similar low-interest program made Economic Injury Disaster Loans of up to $500,000 available to business owners to pay operational expenses. Here are the most notable charges from the Justice Department.

☆ Fintechs are under scrutiny over fraudulent PPP loans and small businesses could suffer. Here are the biggest takeaways from the federal investigation.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A federal investigation blames fintechs for rampant Paycheck Protection Program loan fraud. It could jeopardize fintechs' participation in future federal lending programs. The Paycheck Protection Program was a federal rescue program intended to help the 7.5 million US small businesses at risk of closing permanently in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Small Business Administration awarded nearly $800 billion in PPP loans to 11.47 million businesses. Here are the biggest takeaways from the federal investigation.

☆ Lamborghini Looks to the Past as It Plans an EV Future
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-10 | by ( William Boston | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Lamborghini, one of the best-known super luxury car brands, is hoping a little help from old friends will drive its first fully electric sports car straight into the hearts—and garages—of future fans. In designing its first all-electric model, the Italian luxury car maker owned by Volkswagen AG’s Audi brand is drawing inspiration from the Gran Turismo, an iconic 1960s-era sports car that Paul McCartney drove and that was parked outside Apple Studios during the Beatles’ last live performance, the rooftop concert featured in the “Get Back” documentary.

☆ His Dodge Viper Is an Apex Predator on the Road
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( A.J. Baime | Photographs Eric Wagner For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Emerson Moser , 46, of Cincinnati, general counsel for Meridian Bioscience, on his 2010 Dodge Viper ACR, as told to A.J. My dad was a General Motors engineer, and we spent a lot of time going to racetracks and car shows. When I was in college at Purdue in the 1990s, I was walking across campus one day when I saw a Dodge Viper on display in the Engineering Mall. I thought: This is the coolest, most exotic American car I have ever seen. It had a V-10 engine partially developed by Lamborghini.

☆ Lamborghini's last purely gas-powered supercar will be an off-road beast
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Peter Valdes-Dapena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —The Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato, officially unveiled in Miami Wednesday will be the Italian automaker’s maker’s last purely gasoline-powered supercar. It will also be unlike any Lamborghini supercar before because it’s designed to go off-road. Other Huracán supercars have air scoops on the side but, in this car, the side air scoops are permanently closed. But the concept of the Huracán Sterrato came entirely from inside Lamborghini, said Brokert, as engineers were developing the Urus, Lamborghini’s SUV. Production of the Huracán Sterrato will begin at Lamborghini’s factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy, in February.

☆ The $113,000 Hummer EV is totally outrageous in every way — and that's what makes it such a good time
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-26 | by ( Tim Levin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The GMC Hummer EV is ridiculously large, astonishingly quick, and excessive in every way. GM lent me a Hummer EV Edition 1, which retails for around $113,000. First, the basicsThe 2022 GMC Hummer EV Edition 1. The Hummer EV pickup launched in late 2021, and an SUV is on the way for 2023. What falls short: New Hummer, same problemsThe Hummer EV is wildly inefficient compared to its competitors, which is both unfortunate and on brand.

☆ Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] A Volkswagen logo is pictured in a production line at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, Germany March 1, 2019. REUTERS/Fabian BimmerBERLIN, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) brands have halted all paid activities on Twitter until further notice, a spokesperson for the company said on Wednesday. A spokesperson for Volkswagen said all the brands had followed the advice, while Audi had opted to halt organic activities, such as direct posts, and only respond to questions from clients on the website. WirtschaftsWoche had previously reported that Audi had halted all activities on the social media platform, citing company sources. "We are monitoring the situation closely and will decide on the next steps depending on developments," an Audi spokesperson added in an emailed statement to Reuters.

☆ Rising interest rates can't stop the surging market for ultra-lux real estate. These 13 PR power players are competing for the attention of billionaire buyers.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Michael Kaminer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The market for ultraluxury real estate is frothy and exclusive. But swanky parties and over-the-top stunts no longer grab the attention of well-heeled buyers. Sign up for our newsletter to get the news, trends and strategies that advertising and media pros want to know — delivered weekly to your inbox. Uncertainty in Europe and Latin America is funneling even more wealth into US real estate in cities like New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Insider has identified 13 of the most sought-after PR executives in luxury real estate based on research and conversations with industry insiders.

☆ Take a look inside the United Nations climate summit in Egypt: luxury resorts, world leaders, bad food, and long lines
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Catherine Boudreau | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

There are some 35,000 people attending the United Nations COP27 climate summit in Egypt. Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest on the culture & business of sustainability — delivered weekly to your inbox. Long stretches of highway separate the luxury coastal resorts, with their green grass and water fountains, from the dusty desert and many half-constructed buildings. Small protests are allowed inside, where UN rules apply, but outside and across the rest of Egypt, political dissent is effectively banned. Take a glimpse inside before the summit comes to a close on Friday.

☆ Porsche just turned its iconic Porsche 911 sports car into a jacked-up off-road beast
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Peter Valdes-Dapena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

But if you want to take a 911 sports car off-road, Porsche has officially unveiled just the car for you. The Porsche 911 Dakar has a top speed of 150 miles an hour. There are two selectable drive modes specifically for off-asphalt use, Rallye Mode and Off-Road Mode. The 911 Dakar rides about two inches higher off the ground than a regular 911 sports car. To save more weight, the 911 Dakar has no backseats, unlike most 911 models, and it has special lightweight glass in the windows.

☆ Zadeh Kicks boss Michael Malekzadeh, who made millions taking payments for Nike Air Jordans he failed to deliver, faces multiple fraud charges
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-06 | by ( Ryan Hogg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A $300 million sneaker mogul is facing extensive fraud charges over the sale of popular shoes. He pre-sold Nike Air Jordan 11 Cool Grey sneakers for $115 to $200 a pair, while they retailed at $225. Malekzadeh has been charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud which carries a 30-year maximum sentence, and money laundering. Malekzadeh, 39, from Eugene, Oregon, went on to accept preorder sales for 600,000 Air Jordans from customers, helping him rake in $70 million. Malekzadeh faces another lawsuit from American Express for unpaid charges, with the group pursuing him for millions more in damages, filings show.

☆ A supercar broker for celebrities like Elton John and Nicolas Cage shares what his job is like: 'I've bought cars in saunas, in swimming pools, and on airplanes'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-05 | by ( Mark Ellwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Tom Hartley buys and sells classic cars at his private estate and showroom in northern England. "I've bought cars in saunas, in swimming pools, on airplanes — you can't name where I haven't bought a car," he said. Courtesy of Tom HartleyHartley said he gets about five customers a day and takes visitors by appointment only. Courtesy of Tom HartleyDespite being around expensive cars 24/7, he's never owned one himself. "I always say when you walk on the Hartley estate, everything has a price, except my wife."

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