Posts
- Car Insurance Quotes
- Ford Ranger
- Used ford fiesta
- car hire Malaga - Car hire in Malaga is a recommended service for a perfect holiday. Make sure to compare Malaga car rental before you travel, because prices and conditions can vary a lot depending where you book a rent a car.
- trade in vehicles - Carsneeded is well known in car selling websites. Carsneeded provides services of trade in 4WD, 4WD Valuation, car value calculator service,sell 4wd, sell car perth, vehicle valuation.
Audi is cranking up the juice on its flagship R8 sports car with the introduction of the Audi R8
V10
5.2 FSI quattro, which got an early reveal on the web today. The Audi
R8 shares some less visible bits with its corporate cousin, the
Lamborghini Gallardo, but until now the Lambo's V10 engine has remained
exclusive to the Italian side of the family. The Audi R8 V10 will be
the street going version of the Audi R8 LMS that debuted a couple of
weeks ago at the Essen Motor Show in Germany.
It's 5.2L V10
is rated at 525 horsepower and 390.91 lb-ft of torque in European spec
form. Those numbers fall a bit shy of the latest Lambo Gallardo LP560-4
even with the same displacement, which ensures that the Lambo can still
command a price premium over the German machine. The U.S. version of
the Audi R8 V10 should remain pretty close to these numbers. That will
be enough to push the 0-62 sprint under four seconds to 3.9 seconds.
Unfortunately, the R8 is still saddled with the same craptastic 6-speed
R-tronic as the only alternative to its proper manual gearbox.
The Audi R8 V10 now also inches closer to the magical 200 mph mark with a terminal velocity of 196 mph. The Audi R8 V10 version gets a new set of all-LED headlights for both high and low beams and the scoops on the side blades now bulge out to suck in the extra air needed to feed and cool the larger engine and new design wheels and tires. A new rear diffuser also helps keep the rear end planted where a set of twin oval tailpipes replace the quad exhausts on the standard model. The R8 V10 will be available in Germany starting next spring with a base price of EUR 142,400 (approx $180,000) and will make its official debut in January at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show. This car now should hang with some serious motorcycles now.
Sunday, May 1, 2005; Page A01
It was a gangland-style hit straight out of "Goodfellas."
A man in a BMW was driving down a quiet side street after an evening meeting at his Fort Lauderdale office when a car slowed to a stop in front of him. A second car boxed the BMW in from behind, then a dark Mustang appeared from the opposite direction. The Mustang's driver pulled alongside and pumped three hollow-point bullets into the BMW driver's chest.
The dead man was Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, a volatile 51-year-old self-made millionaire, a Greek immigrant who had started as a dishwasher in Canada and ended up in Florida, where he built an empire of restaurants, hotels and cruise ships used for offshore casino gambling. Boulis's slaying, still unsolved four years later, reverberated all the way to Washington. Months earlier he had sold his fleet of online casinos ships to a partnership that included Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Abramoff is best known as a target of a federal investigation in Washington into the tens of millions in fees he and a partner collected from casino-owning Indian tribes. But the wreckage from his brief and tumultuous time as owner of the gambling fleet threatens to overtake his Washington legal troubles.
Not long after Abramoff and his partners bought SunCruz Casinos in September 2000, the venture ran aground after a fistfight between two of the owners, allegations of mob influence, dueling lawsuits and, finally, Boulis's death on Feb. 6, 2001. Now, Abramoff is the target of a federal investigation into whether the casino ship deal involved bank fraud. According to court records, the SunCruz purchase hinged on a fake wire transfer for $23 million intended to persuade lenders to provide financing to Abramoff's group.
Although the outlines of the tale have become part of South Florida lore, what has not been disclosed are the full details of the alleged fraud at the heart of the transaction and the extent of Abramoff's role -- including his use of contacts with Republican Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and members of their staffs as he worked to land the deal.
The SunCruz story combines the South Florida of novelist Carl Hiaasen with the Washington of influence-peddling K Street: Thousands of pages of bankruptcy and other court records, along with dozens of interviews in Florida and Washington, reveal secret deals; a forged document; double-crossing partners; and socializing with government officials on a private jet, at the U.S. Open golf tournament at Pebble Beach, at a Monday night football game in a private box at FedEx Field, and at an exclusive party on Inauguration Day in Washington.
Gus Boulis never really wanted to sell SunCruz. He bought his first cruise boat in 1994 and swiftly added 10 more, building an enormously profitable business that took in as much as $30 million in yearly profits.
Boulis, a larger-than-life character, had always been a scrapper and something of a business genius. As a teenager, he jumped ship from a Greek freighter in Canada, where he made his first fortune with Mr. Submarine sandwich shops. After retiring to the Florida Keys, at the age of 30, he built another fortune with the popular Miami Subs chain. Then he launched SunCruz, known as a "cruise to nowhere" casino business. His midsize cruise ships left on day trips from nine ports around Florida, taking tourists, high-rollers and elderly players into international waters, beyond the reach of the state's anti-gambling laws.
Based outside Fort Lauderdale, the business was the bane of Florida officials, who thought Boulis flouted the law, and SunCruz's port city neighbors, who complained that drunken gamblers were urinating on their lawns. For years, Boulis beat back efforts by federal and state lawyers determined to shut him down.
In 1999, federal prosecutors charged Boulis with violating the Shipping Act by purchasing his vessels without being a U.S. citizen. Boulis agreed to pay a $1 million fine and sell his cruise line. The government gave him 36 months to do it and agreed to keep the settlement secret so Boulis would not lose money in a fire sale.
To sell his business, Boulis turned to his lawyers in the D.C. office of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP. Art Dimopoulos, a maritime lawyer, looked for buyers. Jack Abramoff, one of Dimopoulos's partners at Preston Gates, said he could find one.
There are lots firms that offer car insurance or van insurance
but leading the way to go for the cheapest is very difficult and takes
a lot of effort, if you are looking for the best deal on car insurance
then you have to go with a specialist car insurance broker, "also
similar to van insurance" and let them wade through the quotes for you
to dig out the cheapest.
A specialist car insurance broker
have the expertise and knowledge when in looking for the best deals in
car insurance and van insurance, and they will know where to look on
your behalf, which can save you not only a great deal of time but also
money. You will have to give the car insurance broker specialist a few
details in order for them to shop around for insurance that’s right for
your circumstances. The information they will need are the make and
model of the car, your age and a few details about your circumstances.
When it comes to getting the cheapest car insurance with a specialist
car insurance broker, then there are some things you can do to help
reduce the cost of the premiums.
The size of the car’s engine
will play a big part in how much the insurance will cost, a smaller
engine means smaller premiums. A flashy sporty model will cost more to
insure than a more sedate family type car and when it comes to security
then adding safety features such as steering locks, alarms,
immobilisers and tracking systems all help to make the car more secure
and there is a much lower risk of it being stolen, so your premiums can
be lower. A younger driver will also suffer from dearer car insurance
premiums is where possible choose a specialist broker that offers deals
in young car driver insurance quotes.
Taking all these into
account along with going with a specialist car insurance broker is the
best and quickest way to obtain cheap car insurance and van insurance.