At $224k, the GT3 RS ain’t cheap, but try to think of another car that does what this does for less. We’re pretty sure you can’t think of a car that is better for less, so we’d say the 911 GT3 RS qualifies as good value.
When video games come to life! McLaren has announced plans to build (in real-life) the Solus GT, a car inspired by their "Vision GT" creation for Gran Turismo.
Though they’d existed as a company since 1947, TVR really hit their stride when Peter Wheeler took the helm in 1981 and began cranking out the V8-powered, fiberglass bodied, light weight and reportedly hair-raising to drive coupes that the company became synonymous with. When Wheeler sold off TVR to a Russian firm in 2004, a series of logistical missteps would eventually spell the end of the company (at least temporarily), and TVR closed their doors in 2007.
Over the past few years, the addition of hybrid electric powertrains to conventional gasoline motors has allowed automakers to push the envelope of performance and output further than ever before. It has yielded hypercars like the Porsche 918, McLaren P1, and the Ferrari LaFerrari, all of which boast performance figures that exceed 850 horsepower and 0-60 mph times well under three seconds. For many, that level of face-melting thrust we be enough. But some folks, like the people behind the PSC Motors SP-200 SIN, have far loftier aspirations.
When we drove the 2014 SRT Viper TA last year we loved the brutality of the Viper’s V10, the tenacious grip that the massive footprint offered, and the car’s ability to lap all day without missing a beat. But we also left wondering whether the TA was a bit of a mixed message in terms of a package – the competition-ready seats and track-cailber firmness of the suspension tuning gave the car many of the attributes and sensations of legitimate track car – both good and bad – but the car also made plenty of concessions to comfort and convenience as well, leaving us to wonder if there wasn’t some performance left on the table for the sake of daily driving sanity.
“We want to become the first overall winner with an electric vehicle,” said Kristaps Dambis, project director at Drive eO, a Lativa based engineering firm turned race team which specializes in developing high performance electric prototypes. The event he’s referring to is the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a notoriously challenging race which has been known to take out fierce competitors in the blink of an eye – a fate the Drive eO team knows all too well.
Jim Glickenhaus has something of a reputation for not being satisfied with the supercars that are offered to the general public. In the past, his affinity for Ferrari led to Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina, a one-off build based on the Ferrari Enzo, and the 430 Scuderia-based P4/5 Competizione, which had the notable distinction of setting the fastest Ferrari-powered Nürburgring lap on record at the time during 24 Hours of Nürburgring qualifying in 2012. Now, Glickenhaus has decided to break away from Ferrari and build an entirely new car of his own creation, the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG 003.
Not content to just let the likes of Ferrari and McLaren court the hearts and wallets of well-heeled track rats around the world, the speed merchants from Gaydon now have a track-dedicated hypercar offering of their own. They’ve named it the Vulcan, and while it’s not a tribute to the late, great Mr. Spock, we wouldn’t take offense if it were, and we doubt he would either. Consider the Vulcan as Aston’s answer to the McLaren P1 GTR and the Ferrari FXX K – one that might just be the pick of the litter for race car purists.
McLaren has taken the wraps off their new track-dedicated version of the P1 ahead of its official debut at the 85th International Geneva Motor Show. The GTR moniker first saw use on the string of McLaren F1 GTR race cars built in the mid-1990s (with which the P1 GTR shares its stunning Geneva-bound livery), and denotes that despite being based on road cars, these GTR models are squarely focused on road course supremacy.
While The Stones sang that “You can’t always get what you want”, they added that “If you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need”. With Nissan’s unveiling of the GTR-LM (during the Super Bowl, interestingly) WEC LMP1 endurance racing may indeed get what it needs.
On the opening day of the 2015 North American International Auto Show, Ford’s performance division made a strong showing, revealing not only a new-generation F150 Raptor and the Mustang GT350R, a harder-edged version of an already track-focused version of the new pony car, but an all-new Ford GT supercar as well, which brought with it a number of surprises.
On Christmas day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to announce a little gift to fans of the company’s Lotus-based all-electric sports car: a substantial boost in the Roadster’s driving range. Taking lessons learned while fine-tuning the Model S sedan, Tesla has now applied that development experience to the diminutive two seater, which Musk asserts will now “enable non-stop travel from LA to SF”.
Earlier this year Mini unveiled a design study that showcased what a next-generation drop top might look like, were the automaker to actually build such a car. Most pundits agreed that it was unlikely that the concept would amount to much more than a clay model, but if these patent images are any indicator, the Superleggera might just become a reality in a showroom near you very soon.
It looks like the long and at times difficult gestation of the new Acura NSX is finally coming to a close, as Acura confirmed today that the production-spec NSX would make its official debut at the 2015 North American International Auto Show on Jan. 12, 2015. And to whet our appetites, Acura has also released a handful of teaser images of the new sports car.
Historically, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class has been the model which foretells the future of the common automobile – after all, features like ABS, stability control, and adaptive cruise control all made their production car debuts in an S-Class, and typically it takes about five years of progress for those innovations to become commonplace in the market. Jaguar Land Rover might be looking to shake things up in that regard though, as the automaker has just announced the development of a pair of new technologies which have every indication of being as revolutionary as anything we’ve seen from Daimler.
For many years now, Honda enthusiasts stateside have had to watch from the sidelines as European buyers hooned around the countryside in the hot-blooded Civic Type R while we had to make do with the Si model as the sportiest iteration available. That might be about to change.
Palatov Motorsport, builders of race cars like the highly successful D4PPS hill climb car are currently developing a revamped version of the rear-wheel drive D2, which will now include some modularity in terms of the body design to include a fully enclosed cockpit configuration to go along with the open-roof configuration that the D2 is typically known for.
Sources at Road and Track are reporting that at an even this morning, Ford President and CEO Mark Fields has confirmed that the Focus RS will be sold worldwide. “We have a new Focus RS coming to market, and it’s coming globally”, said Fields. While rumors about the super-hot hatch coming stateside have been circulating for some time, we now have confirmation that it’s just a matter of time. Moreover, sources close to R&T shared some additional details on what the RS treatment will entail.
The hottest version of the third generation Mini Cooper is set to official debut next month at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show, but Australian site Car Advice has decided to beat them to the punch, revealing shots of the new car as well as some details on what the JCW treatment will entail.
A mere three months after its production announcement, the first Ferrari Sergio has been delivered to a customer in the United Arab Emirates, one of just six Ferrari Sergio examples scheduled to be built. Much like the F60 America’s relation to the F12 Berlinetta, the Sergio is a wildly modified version of the 458 Spider. Made in honor of Sergio Pininfarina, the founder of the eponymous design studio that dished out numerous iconic car designs over the decades, including many models that wore the Ferrari badge.
McLaren has just launched a new program which will offer separate tiers of customization work that buyers can opt for when outfitting their supercars. McLaren Special Operations will now compartmentalize the bespoke work available to cars including the 650S, 12C, P1, the Asia-only 625C, as well as “heritage” products like the F1 and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and the track-only McLaren P1 GTR.
In 1950s, Roger Baillon, an entrepreneur and automotive enthusiast who ran a transport company based in the west of France, amassed a collection of incredible automobiles with a dream to conserve the heritage of pre-war automobiles in museum surroundings. During the 1970s, before he could complete the restoration work he’d planned, his business suffered some setbacks that forced him to sell off fifty cars from his collection, leaving some sixty undiscovered gems sitting in makeshift corrugated iron shelters for the last four decades, until the collection was recently discovered by the The Collectors’ Car Department at Artcurial Auctions, who will be selling off the lot – which includes a Ferrari 250 GT SWB considered to be worth approximately $15,000,000 as it sits – on February 6th, 2015 at the Retromobile Salon in Paris.
Not content to let McLaren and the P1 GTR hog all the hyper track-car headlines, Ferrari has just pulled back the curtain on the FXX K, a track-focused beast based on the LaFerrari that gets more power, less weight, and a whole lot of aero dynamic tweaks. As part of the FXX program, the FXX K will be strictly for track use, and it’s worth noting that it doesn’t qualify for any race series currently running. But anyone who’s fortunate enough to get behind the wheel of an FXX K probably won’t be very concerned with that after they drop the hammer in the latest and greatest offering from Maranello.
