Luxury

Mercedes Benz is famous for its range of cars, trucks buses and vans, but the company has ambitions beyond the land. Last year, Mercedes took to the skies with the Eurocopter EC145 Mercedes Benz Style luxury helicopter, and now it has eyes on the seas as part of its vision of “all encompassing mobility.” Presenting the designs at the 2012 Monaco Yacht Show, Mercedes has teamed up with UK-based boat-building company Silver Arrows Marine to design what it describes as a “14-meter (46 ft) long seagoing Granturismo.”  Read More

Hasselblad, a name synonymous with medium-format cameras, has announced it will produce a mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera as part of a new long-term partnership with Sony that will see it chasing new market segments. But don’t expect to see the Swedish manufacturer churning out any budget compacts. The first model to come out of the partnership is the Lunar, which is described as a “state-of-the-art, Italian-designed ‘ultimate luxury’ mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera.”  Read More

Last Friday, BMW announced that it was releasing a limited series of 15 760Li Sedans in the United States to commemorate 25 years since the company built its first V-12 engine L series cars. By Monday afternoon, all had been snapped up at an eye-watering price of US$159,695 each.  Read More

Kia has announced that its Quoris luxury sedan is going on sale outside of South Korea later this year. The rear-wheel drive Quoris, known as the Kia K9 in Korea, is the company’s latest move to tempt upmarket consumers into the showrooms with a combination of high-tech gadgetry, opulent trimmings and a dash of GT styling.  Read More

We wrote about the new Range Rover a few weeks ago, but after the official launch party last night at a ballet school in London, Land Rover has released a few more juicy details and a ton of new images. Order books are now open and the vehicle is being made at a brand new £370 million (US$590 million) aluminum body plant in Solihull England – the largest in the world.  Read More

If you’re rich, you fly in a small private jet. If you’re a head of state, however, you might opt for your own 747. Nine such customers have already done so, each purchasing a Boeing Business Jet (BBJ) 747-8 from Boeing. Yesterday, the company delivered the first BBJ 747-8 to sport a new optional extra – an eight-person sleeping area, called the Aeroloft.  Read More

How many times have you been aboard some billionaire’s superyacht only to be disappointed because there wasn’t a giant, inflatable slide hanging off the stern? Yes, we’ve all been there. Now, Freestyle Slides comes to the aid of the embarrassed super rich with its line of bespoke Freestyle Cruiser PVC slides that give a hundred million dollar yacht that little something extra – in this case, it’s an inflatable, 45-degree water slide with a one-story drop.  Read More

"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," is a proverb not usually taken literally, but anyone brave enough to live in architect Carlo Santambrogio's glass house (designed by Ennio Arosio) may want to do so. They'll also need to not be the shy and retiring type, have a fair amount of money in the bank, and own a plot of land with no close neighbors or easy points of access. Not for the faint-hearted then, but a property we can all aspire to one day live in ... if we ignore the obvious practical concerns.  Read More

We have commented before at Gizmag at how the luxury watch business can seem to the uninitiated to be an ever-spiraling vortex of pointlessness. Take the latest creation from TAG Heuer. A mechanical watch/chronograph that can time events to 1/2000th of a second. But why? Human reaction time makes it useless and crystal/electronic timers can provide even greater accuracy. For the “haute horologist” the achievement is its own reward, but there are practical spin-offs; TAG-Heuer has essentially re-invented the mechanism that’s been at the very core of mechanical watches for over 300 years.  Read More