You know how action movies almost always has to have a car chase scene where a car spectacularly flies over a cliff before crashing down into a ball of flame.

This accident involving a BMW 3-Series Coupe didn’t have the theatrics of Hollywood, but it still was eye-popping enough to catch our attention.

According to the driver of the 3-Series who lived to tell the story of his cliff-plunging ordeal, he was driving along the Angeles Crest Highway in California with a female friend when a group of animals caught him off-guard, causing him to swerve his 3-Series straight into the edge of the cliff where it flew straight off before tumbling down the mountain in a heap.

Remarkably, both the driver and his female companion escaped the cliff-flying episode without any serious injuries, although both of them know how incredibly fortunate they are to have all their appendages intact after such a terrible crash.

There’s no excuse for crashing a car, let alone doing it while under the influence of alcohol so when we found out that a 21-year-old girl did all of the above – in a Maserati Quattroporte, no less – we kind of figured that she’s going to be in a heck of a lot of trouble.
After having one too many alcoholic beverages for her own good, Alex Ford decided to have an even better time behind the wheel of the borrowed Maserati. Initial reports indicated of a speeding Quattroporte to which, Officer Tracy Sheets was quick to respond to.
It didn’t take long for Ford and Sheets to meet though, after the Quattroporte crashed head-on into Sheets’ police cruiser, severely injuring the police officer and leaving Ford in a pretty bad mess of her own.

By now you would’ve figured that General Motors would go through great lengths to promote the mettle of the Chevrolet Volt. Having previously done a water trough test, GM decided that maybe the Volt should be subjected to yet another test, this time, of the scorching variety.

To ensure that any part of the Volt would not be subjected to warping or sagging when exposed into hot weather, GM turned up the knob on the old pressure cooker to see just how the Volt handles being in the figurative spotlight.

In this video, the Volt is being given a solar heat test, with temperatures reaching as high as 200 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t know your conversions, 200 degrees Fahrenheit is twice as hot as the boiling point so you can be rest assured that if there’s any part of the car that couldn’t stand the heat, this test would show it.

Suffice to say, Nissan is gearing up for a busy 2010.

After spending the better part of last year trying to regain its footing in the auto industry following the inescapable effects of the global financial crisis, Nissan has finally decided to direct its attention and resources on making 2010 the year of the comeback.

In a recent round-table discussion held at the Detroit Auto Show, Nissan America chairman Carlos Tavares laid out the Japanese brand’s bold plans for 2010, including the upcoming release of eight new models for this year.

Travis Pastrana is never one to back down from a death-defying stunt so as you can expect, when he talked about ringing in 2010 by jumping 250 feet into the air on board his Red Bull Subaru WRX STI rally car onto a waiting barge, none of us second-guessed his sanity.

After a few botched practice sessions, the time finally came for Pastrana to do his New Year’s jump and as the video of the whole episode will show you, Pastrana surely kicked off 2010 off to a rousing start.