A few days ago, Mazda announced a special-edition MX-5 Miata in Crystal White Pearl Mica to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the car that restored the roadster. They should have been making a splash about this car instead, a concept MX-5 Superlight speedster that is due in Frankfurt next month.

Mazda has only let a couple of beans spill about the car: it’s extra light weight improves handling, fuel economy, and CO2 emissions. That’s all we know. But we can guess that a Miata that’s missing a windshield, door handles, roof, and any interior comforts beyond seats would be a racer’s dream.

Oh, but do notice that while there’s no radio or speakers, the car does include a curved center console that supports the increasingly common iPhone. We’ll be at Frankfurt next month making a beeline for this one.

Don’t lie: you’ve long pined for understated chic that only a late-1950s East German three-cylinder sedan of your very own can provide, but the price has been holding you back. Even in non-running condition, a real, actual Wartburg could set you back between $300-$400. That’s some serious scratch these days. Feeling your pain, the fine folks at the 24 Hours of LeMons have got a deal for you.

In what’s probably the first ever, and without question the last ever, Win-a-Wartburg contest, all you have to do is write an essay explaining why you deserve such a dignified and exotic crappy-communist pile of rust precision Teutonic machine and the Wartburg is all yours. So what if parts are harder to find than a bride who actually deserves a white dress — check out all the perks!

• The winner of the contest gets the lovely blue 1958 Wurtburg 311 pictured above for FREE. No strings, it’s yours.
• The winner picks up his or her very own Wartburg at the Lamest Day this October at Nelson Ledges Road Course in Ohio.

There are people who have been waiting to find out if Chevrolet’s new Camaro is going to be doing the NASCAR rounds and ovals, and yesterday General Motors’ head of motorsport issued the answer: No. Why not? Because GM wants the Camaro to look like a Camaro when it races, not like that NASCAR Mustang that was rolled out a week ago.

GM’s Mark Kent said that because of “the need to have templated bodies in that series, we felt that by forcing the Camaro into the Nationwide templates that we were compromising the body lines of an iconic car.” Instead, Bumblebee could be headed to the KONI Challenge series or drag racing with the NHRA. No disrespect to NASCAR, but they’ll be places where you can see racing Camaros instead of racing stickers.

[Source: Orlando Sentinel]

The Mercedes G550 is an unlikely niche vehicle. As with perhaps every other military-derived civilian 4×4, it’s a box on wheels, all straight lines and fender flares. Yet unlike most other military-derived civilian off-roaders, it comes standard with solid axles front and rear, three electronically locking differentials front, center, and rear, and, get this, heated rear seats. Celebs, trendsters, and the generally rich keep it in the public consciousness. When Mercedes decided to kill it, a general uproar caused them to belay the order. It costs $100,250, and has no options. Before we drove it, we didn’t know why people dug it. Yet after a week with it in the Autoblog Garage, we think we know why: it is colossally fun.

The Aston Martin Vantage GT4 might be worthy on the track, but what if you want a lightened, hardened Vantage for the street, à la Lamborghini’s Gallardo Superleggera and Ferrari’s F430 Scuderia? Then you have Elite to thank for this, the LMV/R. The car is lightened with the use of carbon fiber body panels and interior kit, widened with bespoke fenders, and given a Galpin Motorsports-esque wheel and tuning treatement.

They don’t get any extra power, however. If it’s any consolation, there will only be thirty of them – but each one will cost a fortune: $173,000 plus the cost of a Vantage.

BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer has confirmed to Reuters that its future electric cars will be badged as BMWs. This contradicts some earlier rumors that the automaker would revive another brand such as Triumph or Isetta for its electric vehicles.

The company will stick with its existing BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce marques, but Reithofer revealed that the board has voted to create a sub-brand for electric vehicles. This new sub-brand will be similar to BMW’s seperate marketing of the “M” line of vehicle, will be targeted at urban drivers and include a two wheeler. The first of these new vehicles will likely start appearing sometime around 2012-13.

On Friday, August 14th at 9:30 PM EST, Infiniti will take the virtual wraps off the next generation M at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, and if you can’t make the trip out to California to see the new sedan in all its 3D glory, Infiniti will be broadcasting the reveal live on its Future Vehicles site.

Typical of recent Infiniti teasers, the sketch above doesn’t divulge much, but we expect a more swooping, organic design compared to the current M, taking cues from the recently reshaped G and FX series, along with a few elements cribbed from Infiniti Design Director Shiro Nakamura’s most recent masterwork, the Infiniti Essence concept.

Ford has just launched an online customizer for the 2010 Mustang, and it’s darn fun to play with. You can choose from a variety of hoods, louvers, scoops, spoilers, grilles, wheels, stripes, and pretty much everything else you can put on the exterior of a Mustang. You can even decide the size of your Mustang’s burnout and even put down some rubber on the pavement.

We went with a monochrome look on our dream ‘Stang, adding a Roush body kit, shaker hood, billet grille, 20-inch chrome wheels, and more. Check out our personalized 2010 Mustang on the site customizer and create your own.

We know the sales numbers in America don’t agree with us, but here at AB we loves us some premium station wagons. The ability to haul ass, kin, and upright bongos all at the same time just speaks to our gearhead souls. All of which goes to show why we may be a bit more interested in Mercedes-Benz’s 2010 E-Class Estate more than we are in the sedan that we’ve already driven – itself a fine automobile.

Whether the load-lugging model will come to America remains to be seen, but we look forward to seeing it in the flesh at the Frankfurt Motor Show all the same. In the meantime, we’ll have to slake our familyman joneses on the new video available after the jump. Oh, perhaps it’s just us, but doesn’t it look like the new E-Wagon has its automotive barn door ajar (or missing completely) for a few split-seconds beginning at 1:10 in the video? We hate to nitpick, but for a company that crows about its precision engineering, they seem to be having some minor quality control issues with their video production teams as of late. Let’s hope that their models are better behaved. Thanks for the tip, Racer!