We certainly like the idea behind the Infiniti Performance Line, but execution has left us . Instead of an M or AMG fighter, buyers are left with little more than fancy paint and a stiffer suspension. But according to Motor Trend, Infiniti may have something more impressive brewing.
An unnamed source spilled the goods on the future of the G line, including a juicy detail about a hyper performance coupe. The next-generation G is set to hit the market during the summer of 2014, bringing with it a rash of changes.
One of those is the introduction of an IPL-specific 3.7-liter V6. The source claims the engine is all-new and features direct-injection and two turbos to help it produce a whopping 530 horsepower. This time, it seems Infiniti has its heart set on stepping up to the and . The engine will be built in Japan alongside the powerplant for the .
Now for the bad news. The shadowy source says the high-performance IPL will be priced in line with the GT-R, at least in Japan. On this side of the globe, the brawny commands a price well north of the $58,930 MSRP on the C63 AMG, which leads us to believe there’s still some pricing to be sorted out on that front.
Judging from the we’ve seen recently, the BMW i8 is coming along nicely. With its more realistic bodywork, the hybridsupercar is beginning to look like something that actually belongs on public streets. Now Sonny Lim, former head of BMW DesignWorks, has taken a stab at what the finished product may look like via a handful of renderings.
With it’s shorter wheelbase and clipped length compared to the concept, the production vehicle is rumored to tip the scales at around 3,187 pounds, or just under the concept’s original weight goal. Much of that weight savings is thanks to the substantial use of carbon fiber reinforced plastic in the vehicle’s chassis.
With the combination of an electric motor and a 1.5-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine, the i8 will reportedly offer buyers just under 400 horsepower and three driving modes. The driver will be able to pick between pure-electric, gasoline or a medley of both. All told, the i8 should deliver a 0-60 mph run of under 4.9 seconds with the help of both power sources.
We tend to think of as a luxury automaker – and indeed it is – but overseas it’s a full-line brand, known as much for its trucks and vans as it is for its upscale passenger cars. And this is the latest.
back in February, the new Citan has just been revealed in Amsterdam ahead of its September debut at the IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Hanover, Germany. Smaller than the existing Sprinter, Vario, Viano and Vito vans, the Citan is geared for use inside Europe’s crowded cities.
The compact panel van will be available in three lengths, with a choice of three turbodiesels ranging from 75 to 110 horsepower. There’s also a 115-hp supercharged gasoline engine mated to a five- or six-speed automatic transmission with an available BlueEfficiency package that includes a stop/start system.
Although the Citan by design won’t be as luxurious as we’d expect a Mercedes to be (hint: it’s based on the Renault Kangoo and will be built at the French automaker’s Maubeuge assembly plant), it does feature a more ergonomic cabin design than most vehicles in this segment and comes packed with all the electronic gizmos we’ve come to anticipate from a vehicle with a silver star in the grille. But while the (like Mercedes’ own Sprinter) has made the journey across the Atlantic to American showrooms, we wouldn’t expect the same from the Citan any time soon.
for the full press release and scope out the high-resolution images in the gallery above for a closer look.
What would a superhero movie be without the fancy cars? Well, it would still be a superhero movie, we suppose, but we prefer the kind that has some flashy wheels. Like the upcoming Marvel flick The Avengers.
As you may have heard, signed a multi-picture deal with Marvel to have its cars featured in a series of superhero movies, and indeed several already have. But for The Avengers, Acura had to work up something special enough to replace Tony Stark’s . Since the old NSX was long out of production when they began shooting and the new one wasn’t ready yet, the Japanese automaker and the film studio put together something of a hybrid.
Not a hybrid as we tend to use the term in automotive spheres, but an amalgamation of the old NSX and the new one. They took a 1991 NSX and gave it a new roadster body to mimic the concept car that’s been making the rounds of the auto show circuit.
Our compatriots over at Inside Line got a behind-the-scenes look at the roadster, along with the crossover and a with a similar treatment. to watch the video clips they put together, and the .
In the past, many of us have been guilty of approaching the crossover segment with the same zeal a toddler typically reserves for mashed peas. Equal parts revulsion, befuddlement and betrayal have danced across our faces as we’ve struggled to comprehend why anyone would willingly put their hard-earned money towards a vehicle saddled with inherently poorer driving dynamics and fuel economy. As lovers of curve-conquering wagons and hatchbacks everywhere, throwing a couple of extra inches of ride height into the recipe has rarely done us any favors. Not surprisingly, we find ourselves in familiar territory once again: far removed from even the outskirts of popular opinion.
Last year, sold a dizzying 218,373 crossovers, and despite fuel prices determined to bend us over and give us something to cry about, other automakers have fleshed out their lines with a wide array of high-riding vehicles. boasts a total of five crossovers and SUVs in its stable, and it isn’t alone. With vehicles like the , and , offers buyers a total of seven different models that fit into the segment. The news doesn’t bode well for those of us who prefer a vehicle with superior handling mixed with the ability to haul people and cargo.
And there’s virtually no refuge in the suede-lined halls of our favorite luxury manufacturers, either. Brands from every corner of the globe are cashing in on the CUV/SUV craze with unabashed ferocity. So when the showed up in the driveway, we braced ourselves for a week of eating our vegetables, now fortified with doctor-recommended understeer and an extra helping of body roll. But this isn’t your typical CUV. With a 3.5-liter V6 pumping nearly 300 horsepower to the rear wheels and a lower-than-it-looks stance, this is a sport hatch masquerading in crossover clothing.
is known for hyper-exotic supercars, speed and big price tags. There is a reason, though, that we didn’t mention fuel efficiency. Hopped-up V8 and V12 engines don’t exactly conjure up images of tree-hugging, and, for the most part, we’re more than okay with that.
That could change, at least a little bit, with a patent that describes a hybrid powertrain that passes on flywheel technology in favor of a more mainstream effort. Car and Driver reports that the Italian supercar maker has filed patents for hybrid technology that would use a pair of electric motors and a battery pack.
The hybrid system would utilize one electric motor that assists the powertrain while the other runs auxiliary systems like air conditioning, infotainment and power steering. The patent also reportedly mentions that the technology would play nicely with a front-mounted 90-degree engine, making the a likely destination if this system ever sees the light of day.
There has been some speculation that Ferrari might opt for a production version of its racing-derived Kinetic Energy Recover System (KERS) that captures energy via a flywheel to provide short bursts of energy. KERS, which doesn’t utilize a battery pack, is already used in Formula One racing, and Ferrari introduced a in 2010 that included the fuel-saving tech.
Automotive News reports may make a decision on where the automaker plans to build a North American facility as soon as Wednesday of this week. The supervisory board is already scheduled to meet on April 18, and an unnamed source claims the new plant is on the agenda for discussion. Earlier reports indicated the manufacturer plans to , though Audi has been quick to denounce the notion, saying the board had yet to make a decision one way or the other. Publicly, Audi has made noise about locations in both Mexico and the United States.
Volkswagen investigated the possibility of building Audi vehicles alongside the in Chattanooga, Tennessee, though it’s now clear the luxury automaker is hungry for a plant of its own. Either way, the new plant will likely produce vehicles for sale in North America and export to other markets.
Automakers aren’t the only ones who produce concept cars. So do design studios, contract manufacturers, racing teams and even component suppliers. Case in point: Alessi Fiberglass. Back in 1979, the company displayed a supercar concept called the AR-1 at the . The idea, it would seem, was to show off what they could do with fiberglass. Nobody ever expected they’d build it. And they didn’t. At least, not until now.
33 years later, Alessi has resurrected the AR-1, modernized it, and brought it to market. In place of the original show car’s Buick V6 is a mid-mounted, supercharged a 6.2-liter V8 making up to 600 horsepower. Not enough? Alessi also offers a twin-turbo version with 750 horsepower on tap.
The AR-1’s steel frame is covered with, of course, fiberglass bodywork. Pricing has not been revealed, and Alessi says it will build no more than 50 examples. In addition to the attached photo gallery, you can take a closer look in the video clip .
It’s been seven months since I crammed into a supercharged with the crew and fought tooth and nail for a in the Grand Touring class of the 2011 Targa Newfoundland. That amount of time has done nothing to dull my desire to head right back into the fray as soon as possible. While I was there, the FM team spent a good deal of time hanging out with our friends over at , and the crew just finished putting the final touches on its race documentary.
The first episode shows off the sweet SRT-tweaked the MotoMan guys got to play with. With plenty of suspension adjustments, a full cage and a bare-bones interior, the big white beast was as far from the NC Miata we campaigned as you could get. Watch the clip for an introduction to a few of the other competitors, including SRT CEO Ralph Gilles, as well as an interview with driver Brandon Fitch and myself. Keep an eye out for more episodes, too.
2013 is scheduled to be the final year of production for the sixth-generation , otherwise known as the C6. Having replaced the fifth-generation C5 Corvette in late 2005 as a 2006 model, that will mark a seven-year run on the market, which is impressively long in anyone’s book, but fairly typical in Corvette history.
Keeping the C6 fresh all those years had as much to do with special models like the and as it has with constantly tweaking smaller things like the options, accessories and colors that have been offered.
For its final model year, the 2013 C6 will reportedly get a last new color called Night Race Blue. The Corvette is already offered in two blue hues: one called Supersonic Blue Metallic (an option that costs an extra $300 on the standard Vette) and a lighter blue introduced for the 2012 model year called Carlisle Blue Metallic. The latter to celebrate the Corvettes at Carlisle event in Pennsylvania that claims to attract more privately owned Vettes in one place at one time than anywhere else in the world.
CorvetteBlogger also reports that will be deleting Competition Gray wheels from the options sheet and replacing them with the Black Painted Aluminum wheels you see above.
There’s no doubting the driving talents of one Sebastian Vettel. He won his first grand prix when he was still with backmarker team Scuderia Toro Rosso, and went on to win back-to-back World Championship titles for Red Bull Racing. Heck, he’s even taken the Nations Cup at the Race of Champions with Michael Schumacher for the last five years running now. You might even call his skills the stuff of super heroes. But if it came down a bar fight, the grinning whiz kid wouldn’t exactly inspire fear. (Not like , anyway.) But his latest collaboration might stand to change that.
While in China for this coming weekend’s grand prix, the reigning World Champion met up with action star Celina Jade for a little kung fu lesson. They even shot a short film called Kung Fu Vettel: Drive of the Dragon that’s set to be released next month. And then they headed to the track so Vettel could return the favor.
The crossover is the first in a series of promotional events under the “Inspired Performers” banner, orchestrated by sponsor . What any of this has to do with luxury automobiles is beyond us, but it made for a decent photo and video op, as you can see from the gallery above and the video teaser .
In the automotive realm, there’s nothing quite like the , which, in convertible form, is known as the Grand Sport. With more than a thousand horsepower from its sixteen-cylinder engine and a top speed of well over 200 miles per hour, the Veyron Grand Sport is the fastest and most powerful open-top production road car in the world.
Well… it was the fastest, most powerful open-top production car in the world, until went and created the . This is the topless version of the Veyron that’s been fitted with the 1,200-horsepower engine from the automaker’s Super Sport model. That means it can hit the ludicrous speed of 255 miles per hour – critically beating the regular Veyron by two mph – with nothing over your head but the open sky.
Bugatti has seen fit to honor its Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse with a new video, and we invite you to watch it by . We’ve also embedded three more new videos from Bugatti for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
One might suppose that since Pagani came out with the Huayra, the Zonda would go the way of the dodo. But as the Modenese automaker has said all along, if someone wants to buy a Zonda, it’ll gladly make one for them. And so it has with the very latest one-off supercar.
Called the 760 RS, it’s the most powerful Zonda that Pagani has ever built. With 760 horsepower squeezed out of the AMG-built V12 engine underneath that bespoke carbon fiber rear hood, it’s got 90 more horsepower than the Zonda Cinque and 20 more than the track-bound, hardcore Zonda R. As such, it’s said to be good for a 217-mile-per-hour top end.
The Zonda 760 RS reportedly started out as the Zonda 750, ordered and then canceled by an undisclosed Arabian customer. Pagani turned it into the 760 RS and found a new buyer (said to be in either China or Chile), and while pictures and details have been scarce, this video footage has surfaced giving us a glimpse at the custom supercar. to check it out for yourself.
It may be a bit of stretch to call a McLaren F1 “priceless”, but finding an owner willing to part with his can be a challenge for even the most determined (and cash-rich) collector. But just such an opportunity is coming around the corner at Bonhams’ upcoming auction at the Quail Lodge in August. While every McLaren F1 is a rare bird indeed, this one is even more so.
Even more extreme than the road-going supercar on which it was based, the McLaren F1 GTR emerged as a dominant force in endurance racing in the late 1990s. The F1 GTR proved so successful, in fact, that despite being categorized in the GT classes of production-based racers, it eclipsed the purpose-built prototypes to claim overall victory at the 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans.
All told, McLaren only built 28 examples of the F1 GTR – of which only ten were the aerodynamically-optimized Longtail versions – and this was the very last of them. Built in 1997, chassis 028R contested the FIA GT Championship at the Nurburgring, the A1-Ring, Donington, Spa, Mugello, Sebring, Laguna Seca and Suzuka.
Decked out in Gulf and Davidoff race livery, it’ll go to the top bidder at The Quail, but we dare not venture a guess as to how much he or she will have to pay for the privilege – but the last time this car went up for sale, the asking price was nearly $4 million. Feel free to read more about the car in the press release .
Many countries have produced supercars with price tags that dip into the six figures, but that rare breed of exotic that fetches upwards of a quarter million is all but completely exclusive to Europe: , and Pagani out of Italy, from France, McLaren and higher-end models of Britain, top-of-the-line offerings from Germany, Koenigsegg of Sweden and so on. That’s what makes the so exceptional. It extends beyond the Acura NSX and the that previously defined the top end of Japanese supercars and joins its European rivals at the very top of the market. But that, we’re reading, is only the beginning.
According to a shadowy anonymous source cornered by AutoGuide, Toyota is already working on a successor to the LFA, and their mole says the car will be even more exotic, more powerful and more expensive. Just what that entails when the LFA is already limited to 500 examples, packs a 552-horsepower 4.8-liter V10 and costs $375,000 has us conjuring up images of an animé take on the . AG suggests the car could nudge the million-dollar mark with production limited to just 100 examples.
Could it be a ? It’s probably too early to tell. In fact, we’re going to go ahead and take this entire rumor with a few shakers-worth of salt and advise you to consider doing the same.
High gas prices burning through your checking account faster than a through premium? At least one analyst the pressure might drop soon. , senior analyst for thinks fuel prices have peaked for the year, with the national average sitting at $3.92 for the last week. According to USA Today, DeHaan expects average national gas price to fall to $3.70 before May.
If you’re the type to send Thank You cards, keep in mind all those owners who have sacrificed driving pleasure for greater fuel economy, and the leadership in who have kept things kind of quiet over there for a few days. Depending on your political bent, you can also thank either the and/or for fostering a slow economy. All those elements contributed to lower oil prices and, in turn, lower gas prices. In contrast, the Federal Energy Administration is still predicting a $4.01/gal peak next month.
Either way, don’t rush out and buy that gas-guzzling supercar just yet. Any number of factors could send fuel prices flaring. Meanwhile, enjoy your cheap, $3.92/gal regular while it lasts.
A few years ago, we brought you on the speculative values of Pagani supercars. Whether as investments or frivolous purchases, those with the means, it seemed, were paying well above list price to get their hands on one of the rarest supercars on (or off) the market. But that was just as the world was on the brink of financial collapse. Surely with the global economy still in the drink years later, nobody’s paying those kinds of figures for something as extravagant as an exotic supercar… right?
Wrong. In fact, it seems, the value for Pagani models has only gone up. According to Evo magazine editor-in-chief (and Zonda owner) Harry Metcalfe, buyers with the means are paying as much as double the already grandiose list price to get their hands on a Zonda or Huayra. Apparently the white Huayra that Pagani displayed at the never reached the Middle Eastern buyer who ordered it a year prior and was supposed to take delivery after the show, having flipped it to another buyer who was willing to pay him an astounding 1.8 million euros for the car. That’s $2.35 million in American greenbacks, or twice the 900,000 euro ($1.18m) list price.
Think that was an isolated incident? Hardly. A Zonda F Roadster (said to be the last ever made), a 2008 Zonda F coupe and a used Zonda C12S were all, according to Metcalfe’s sources, recently sold for double their MSRPs. So if you’ve been scrimping and saving every dime to get your hands on a Pagani, better keep saving.
Stand at the business end of a doing a smokey burnout and you’re bound to get a lung or two full of all kinds of noxious chemicals. But if a showboating isn’t at your disposal, soon you’ll be able to light up a Lamborghini cigarette.
The Raging Bull smokes are reportedly being launched by South Korean tobacco giant KT&G on April 18 in collaboration with (read: under license from) Tonino Lamborghini. The brand already offers an of high-end cigarette lighters (like the one pictured at right), cases, ashtrays and other smoking paraphernalia.
Tonino Lamborghini, we should note, is a merchandising brand that – while founded by supercar and tractor guru Ferruccio Lamborghini’s son and bearing a similar logo – has nothing more to do these days with the automaker than that. So if you find the correlation a bit too commercial, you’ll just have to look to the models standing next to the company’s supercars at any given auto show, the ones stepping out of them onto the curbs outside any city’s hottest clubs or the temperature of their engine’s cam covers for your official dose of Lamborghini-grade smokin’ hotness.
If you fancy a new but are looking for some added muscle, few places will give you what you want and what you need like Roush. The veteran tuning house has just released its latest range of customized pony cars, and at the top of the line sits its most powerful model yet.
In full-fat spec, the Stage 3 Roush Mustang supercharges the 5.0-liter V8 up to a whopping 565 horsepower and 505 pound-feet of torque. But the Roush kit isn’t all about power: it also features an upgraded suspension riding on 18-inch cast aluminum wheels with Cooper rubber that help it pull a full g on the skid pad, an enhanced aero kit and a choice of four different brake packages.
There’s also plenty of optional equipment to make the Roush Mustang your own – all covered under Roush’s bumper-to-bumper warranty – but if the Stage 3 model proves too much car, buyers can also opt for the Stage 1 body kit or the Stage 2 suspension upgrade without the supercharged engine. to read the press release.
There are many names you could associate with tuning, but few are as iconic as Steve Saleen. The American tuner extraordinaire made a name for himself tweaking the muscle coupe under the Saleen brand until he left his own company to start SMS Supercars. But now that the two have been , word has it that Saleen is moving ahead with plans to produce a new mid-engine exotic to follow in the footsteps of the famed S7.
Saleen, as you may recall, branched out of tuning pony cars with the S7 in 2000. The car packed a 7.0-liter V8 that was later twin-turbocharged up to 750 horsepower to make it good for a 0-60 run in under three seconds and a top speed of nearly 250 mph. The car endures as an American performance icon, but while an S5S Raptor concept (pictured above) was showcased four years ago at the , the schism between the two Saleen companies kept it from ever seeing the light of day.
With that ugliness now behind us, however, Autoweek reports that Steve Saleen is intent on picking up where the S7 and S5S left off. Getting to that point is expected to take Saleen a while, but in the meantime, he’s working at integrating the two operations. The SMS facility in California will continue building the cars – White Label for mild upgrades, Yellow Label for supercharged models and Black Label for the works – while his Saleen facility in Michigan will distribute the parts. Look for a tuned to come rumbling around the corner in the near future.
2013 is scheduled to be the final year of production for the sixth-generation , otherwise known as the C6. Having replaced the fifth-generation C5 
