You're still thinking too complex; in order for something to be versatile and translate well it needs to not have any elements that would be completely lost in translation if you were to make it into a line drawing.
I haven't shown this anywhere on any forum yet, but I'm currently re-tooling my own business' image and worked with a professional graphic artist to create a new logo; here's a sneak peek at what I'm going to be using:
Nice and simple, no "faded stuff in the background," easy to scale. We also have a version with just the text (no car) that can be used on business forms and other items where there's a need to save space.
Not that there's anything wrong with using something like the globe image you started with, as you can still translate that into line-art if you need to, but the subtleties you're talking about doing still won't translate well. Think *SIMPLE* and you'll have a much better result. :xyxthumbs: