Rolls-Royce, the global power systems company, has won an estimated $250 million in long-term maintenance support business from Cathay Pacific. Cathay will provide TotalCare long-term services and support for the Trent 700 engines that power the new Airbus A330 aircraft produced by Rolls-Royce. Confused yet? Allow me to explain that Rolls Royce is far more than just luxury automobiles and exotic car rentals, but an entire fleet of engines covering land, sea and air!
Next time your going to hit the town with your significant other, get ahold of BlueSky Taxi and make sure they are the ones who pick you up. Don’t look for a yellow car with a light on top though. BlueSky is going to need you to meet them at the airport closest to your house, and that is where the fun will begin. Just call Imagine Lifestyles Luxury Rentals and we will arrange for you to be picked in one of our Chicago chauffeured vehicles or have one of our cars from our fleet of Chicago luxury rental cars sitting out front waiting to take you to your hangar.
BlueSky uses Cirrus SR22-G3 planes to escort their fortunate passengers around the city on private tours. As long as there are no flight regulations that get in the way, you can personally tell your pilot which way to go. Make sure to make some arrangements to have that special bottle of wine or champagne waiting too.
Mobile applications, everyone loves them and they are quite the hot commodities in today’s plethora of smart phone options. While everyone knows you must pay for some mobile phone apps, and that according to iPhone, “There is an app for that”; did you know that there are also luxury mobile phone apps? Meet ASiQ Limited, who is offering a mobile phone app for the bargain price of $12,500. Gulp. This is like the luxury rental car of mobile phone apps!
LeBron James seems to be settling into the Miami lifestyle just fine since joining Miami Heat, as he has just purchased a 12,178 square-foot mansion for $9 million dollars in Miami’s swanky Coconut Grove section, waterfront, overlooking Biscayne Bay.
Gulfstream knows luxury jets, and for the swanky G550 business jet, they have ‘pulled out all the stops’, so to speak! The Gulfstream G550 is an ultra-long range luxury business jet charter that has been setting records since its inception, beginning with a nonstop flight from Seoul, South Korea to Orlando, Florida in 14.5 hours, just two weeks after it entered service. This model certainly stands out among other private jet charters!
In fact, the G550 Gulfstream luxury jet established around 40 city-pair records within its first five years of service, not too shabby for a $50 million dollar advancement in aviation! Don’t worry, it is available for charter for far less, and there are always light jet charters and medium jet charters for smaller trips. The G550 jet effortlessly links Washington D.C. with Dubai, London with Singapore and Tokyo with Paris, removing the angst of commercial air travel from business trips.
In Chiba, Japan, the premier electronics show featured an energy efficient city of the future. The futuristic city had a special show floor devoted entirely to it at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (Ceatec), amid the electronics, gadgets and robots.
The city of the future is a crack at selling a vision of urban life in 2020 and beyond, a “Smart City” so to speak. The vision is of a post-fossil fuel world, utilizing alternative energies derived from the sun, wind and nuclear power, harnessed in mass quantities. The idea is much the same as the latest hybrid automobile trends, using alternative forms of energy to decrease our dependence on non-renewable resources and be more environmentally friendly in the process. So what is the vision for the future of Japan’s cities?
The power harnessed from various natural sources is distributed to buildings, homes and even electric cars that are connected through “smart grids”, which have the capacity to monitor usage throughout the energy network. Carbon emissions are decreased drastically, which are thought to be one of the causes of global warming.
A test city will be set up in Yokohama, just southwest of Tokyo, where the social and infrastructure of a smart city can be tried for the rest of the world to emulate. This will be a five-year experiment, and is titled “Yokohama Smart City Project”. Seven Japanese companies are participating in the smart city experiment, including Nissan Motor Co., Panasonic Corp., Toshiba Corp., Tokyo Electric Power Co., Tokyo Gas Co., Meidensha Corp., and Accenture’s Japan unit. The end result hoped for is a social model to sell to the rest of the world.
But Japan is not the only country creating smart grids; Australia has invested around $100 million into developing a commercial-scale smart grid in Newcastle. South Korea is also going green, embarking on a smart city project on Jeju Island and aims to slice national energy consumption 3 percent by 2030. China is also jumping on the green wagon, investing a cool $7.3 billion toward the technologies.
Toyota will launch its own home smart grid system called the Toyota Smart Center in Japan while simultaneously releasing its plug-in hybrid cars in 2012.
Ask Imagine: How does private aircraft charters work?
Dear Imagine Lifestyles,
I am planning a trip to Orlando over the holiday season this year and am considering flying private. Can you please explain to me the general process of booking a private jet charter as well as some of the benefits that justify the higher price tag? I have never flown private before but two of my partners constantly try to convince me that it is well worth it.
It appears that Shelby SuperCars has done it again, producing the SSC Ultimate Aero II supercar. And by ‘it’ I mean unleash one hell of a fast supercar upon the market, one perhaps even capable of beating out the luscious Bugatti Veyron for the coveted title of ‘Fastest production car available’.
The Bugatti Veyron can get up to 267 miles per hour, and the SSC Ultimate Aero II is capable of rocketing up to around 274 miles per hour. Basically, the SSC Aero II not only looks like a jet fighter, it is damn fast like one, too! Check out our fleet of private jet charters, you will see the resemblance.
Before we go forward, let’s go backward, to the predecessor of the Ultimate Aero II, the Ultimate Aero. The original never really had a shot at outdoing the Bugatti, but the new one seems to have filled in all the holes. Not that the original was an embarrassment by any means, it reached speeds of about 257 miles per hour, and had the sleek appearance of a DeLorean from ‘Back to the Future’ with sweet gullwing doors. The new SSC Ultimate Aero is simply more powerful and robust, and obviously had the design team working overtime. It is literally astonishing.
Specifications include the same twin-turbo V8 engine, but kicking out 1350 horsepower instead of 1183. That is around 150 more horses than the Bugatti Veyron SS. So theoretically, the SSC Ultimate Aero will reach speeds of around 274 miles per hour, though we still must wait for the official record. I assume the brains behind Bugatti are already looking to the future, as the war wages on for the best and fastest supercar in the world. As far as a price tag, I am going to guess the SSC Aero II will hit the market at around a million USD, which will make it a bargain compared to the Veyron SS. I think after stealing a market percentage and gaining a reputation, Shelby SuperCars will gain the confidence to raise prices like Bugatti.
Follow links for more on Bugatti, luxury news and to scope out our fleet of very sexy luxury rental cars. That is right, you don’t have to be loaded to indulge in an exotic car on occasion, just rent one of ours!
I am a reader of your blog and a fan. I am about to propose to my girlfriend of 2 years, and have been researching ideas for how to pop the question. I have considered renting a luxury car, or maybe a private yacht for a day to surprise her. What awesome proposals have you helped with in the past, and what do you recommend? Any tips would be helpful.
While it will likely remain a concept, the Lamborghini Indomable is certainly some food for thought, eye candy to be exact. What is so special about this concept Lamborghini? For starters, it is based on a mash between the Gallardo and an F22 jet fighter. Yes please.
Lamborghini took time out of its packed schedule touting the new Jota is the potential replacement for the Murcielago to help inspired students with this concept. The Lamborghini Indomable was designed and developed by students Daniel Chinchilla Ochoa and Alberto Fernandez Albilares at the Scuola Politecnica di Design Master in collaboration with Lamborghini. The project was overseen by head of the Centro Stile Filipo Perini and designer Alessandro Salvagnin.
The Lamborghini concept’s exterior is unbelievable, with even more lines and curves than the already voluptuous design cues that are classically Lambo. Oh and it is inspired by the next generation stealth F22 jet fighters, making it the Chuck Norris of Lamborghinis. While this is awesome, it is not the first time a luxury car has taken design cues from a jet, remember the Range Rover’s interior, inspired by a cockpit? Thank you Design Q!
The Indomable Lambo in its concept phase is a V10 supercar, with an engine visible through a Y-shaped class surface reminiscent of the F22 Raptor. The bonnet boasts elements borrowed from the jet, with rectangular intakes to cool the brakes. The rear of the Lambo features a taillight that doubles as a wing, integrating LED lights with a honeycomb shape.
According to the students, 

“The side view shows an abstraction of a folded wing, which gives the feeling that the car is waiting for the action, like a jetfighter before the take off in a carrier."
I, for one, want to see this supercar concept bolt right off the paper and into garages and showrooms around the world. Perhaps if it could also fly…
nds, using alternative forms of energy to decrease our dependence on non-renewable resources and be more environmentally friendly in the process. So what is the vision for the future of Japan’s cities?
