Why, yes, that is a Tata Nano covered in pure gold

Try to imagine the most basic car on the road, and you’ll likely conjure up images of the Tata Nano. The Citroën 2CV of our time, the Nano was conceived as bare-bones, bargain-basement transport for the masses. But while it makes the rest of us wonder how much our own cars are really worth, sales of the diminutive budget car have been lagging in the wake of safety concerns after cars were reported to be spontaneously combusting due to bad wiring and such.

To drum up enthusiasm for the Nano, Tata has brought in one of its subsidiaries, Titan Industries, to give the car a more luxe appearance in the form of gold and jewels. Celebrating the 5,000th anniversary of Indian jewelry, Tata and Titan launched a public campaign to solicit designs for a bedazzled Nano. Thirteen designs came in, with the winner you see here chosen just a few days ago. The conspicuous one-off will be crafted out of pure gold by Titan at its facility in Bagalore. Have a closer look at the winning design, along with a couple of the runners-up, in the gallery below.

Ford shows Aussies who’s Boss with special FPV Falcon

There’s no shortage of similarities to be found between Australia and the United States. Both are former British colonies flying red, white and blue flags; both are big masses of land divided into states; both have Top Gear spinoffs and share a common affinity for Crocodile Dundee. We could go on, but the key commonality here is love for muscle cars. More than anything, that’s what ties these two countries together from opposite ends of the Earth.

General Motors has capitalized on that shared trait by bringing powerful Holdens over to America under Pontiac badges. Arch-rival Ford, meanwhile, has gone the other way, taking a popular American performance badge and slapping it on one of its Australian products.

The result is the Ford Boss 335 GT. Based on the Falcon sedan, Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV) has given the Boss 335 GT a touch more power than the 2012 Boss 302 Mustang: the 335′s supercharged 5.0-liter DOHC 32-valve V8 pumps out 450 horsepower and 420 lb-ft of torque (compared to the 440hp and 380 lb-ft on the all-motor Boss Mustang). The power’s driven to the 19″ rear wheels through a six-speed manual and kept in check by oversized, cross-drilled and ventilated Brembo brakes.

FPV’s also made sure the special Falcon got all the requisite striping you’d expect from a Boss, and equipped the interior with everything they bad to throw at it. With the American and Australian dollars close to par, though, the $70,000 sticker price may seem a little steep. UNfortunately, this is an exclusively Aussie product, so if you (i.e. our U.S. readers) want to show ‘em who’s Boss, you’ll have to stick to the Mustang.