Autoblog

Click above for a gallery of the Mega Track.

We stand corrected. There's one more vehicle we want in our underground bunker when the Rapture hits: the Mega Track. Built in 1995 by the French Axiam Group, it's the answer to a question that only a few of us were daft enough to ask. With a Mercedes-sourced 394-hp V12 mounted amidships sending power to all four wheels, the Mega Track had the ability to ford streams by day and hit up Monte Carlo at night. The stock ride height was set at eight-inches, but flick a switch and the Mega Track would rise to 13 inches, ensuring that no curb, planter or small shrub could stand in its way. Unfortunately, only five were made, so finding one could be tricky. We're searching Craigslist now and hope to be Mega-equipped before things get really messy.


[Source: Supercars.net via Jalopnik]

click above for more high-res pics of the Williams FW30

Things have gotten a bit foggy over at Williams F1. The once front-running, championship-winning grand prix team has landed on tough times. This year the team opted against holding a glitzy unveiling event like those held recently by Ferrari, McLaren, Toyota and BMW Sauber, and instead focused its energies on developing its new car, the FW30. It seemed like a strange choice for the team that will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and during the season will mark its 500th grand prix and 50,000th racing lap.

But while the team isn't holding an official unveiling, it has whipped up six special paint schemes to celebrate its milestones this year. (We doubt any of them will be as cool as Aston Martin's new-old Gulf livery, but hopefully they'll be better than Honda's tree-hugging paint scheme.) The first time the motorsport press got a glimpse of the new FW30 was yesterday at the Valencia track where the new car was being put through its paces.

Renault was also supposed to take out the R28, the new chariot it has developed for returning former champion Fernando Alonso, but the fog kept them indoors. Honda is scheduled to unveil its new car later this week, as well. Williams, for its part, is hoping the new FW30, powered under contract by Toyota and driven by Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima, will perform and be reliable enough to get it back on the track to its former winning form.

[Source: Autosport, Photo by DIEGO TUSON/AFP/Getty]

On a nice autumn day, some people go play golf. Others toss the pigskin around. Garage 419 shares our idea of a perfect fall day, though: Corvette Flogging. Not just any Corvette, either, but Garage 419's camera wonks were treated to plenty of neck-snapping fly-bys from the new Corvette ZR1. What more do we need to say? It looks great, it sounds great, it goes fast. There's a couple of interviews at the end of the clip that make you want the car even more by noting that there's only going to be about 2,500 made and with the General's crack suspension team on the job, the car won't pound you into renal failure. Maybe we should start playing the ten dollar scratch tickets in hopes of a bigger payout.

video posted after the jump

Thanks for the tip, Brian!

[Source: Garage419]

Speculation over a potential second model from Bugatti has been a colossal roller-coaster. There were rumors of a super-luxury sedan, an entry-level roadster and a targa variant of the existing Veyron.

The Veyron was a pet project of former VW Group CEO Ferdinand Piech, who remains chairman of the VW supervisory board and is said to be keen on moving ahead with a follow-up to the Veyron. When Martin Winterkorn took over, however, he was reported to have shelved any plans for an additional model, prompting Bugatti CEO Thomas Bscher to resign. Bugatti then shifted to the control of Bentley CEO Franz-Josef Paefgen, who, after shoehorning the Veyron's engine into a Bentley Arnage luxury sedan, revealed last September that there would be an additional Bugatti coming.

Reports are now surfacing which indicate that the new model could be an even more expensive, even faster supercar than the Veyron. Whereas the Veyron, for all its enormous, time-bending power and speed, was designed as a comfortable grant tourer, the new model would be a tighter, more track-focused supercar. Power would likely come from a retuned version of the Veyron's 8-liter quad-turbo W16, which was long reported to be under-rated in its power production of 1000 hp, and is tipped to produce 1175 hp in the new version. Artistic renderings from German magazine Auto Motor und Sport depict the car with styling more akin to a Le Mans racer, with a protruding front splitter and an enormous rear wing.

The vehicle, currently rumored to be code-named "Project Lydia" after Ettore Bugatti's wife, would exceed the 400km/h top speed of the Veyron in pursuit of a Nurburgring lap time of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. While these reports could very well turn out to be no more substantial than previous ones, if Bugatti did built Project Lydia in a reported run of 70 examples for a whopping Є2.5 million apiece, it would easily eclipse anything else out there.

[Source: Auto Motor und Sport via Motor Authority]

Click on the image above to view additional images

It was only a matter of time. Audi unveils the R8 supercar, and somebody wants to take it racing. Leave it to the Dutch to pick up the slack, as Netherlands-based Creventic BV is preparing the "CR-8" for an assault on endurance sportscar racing.

Thus far, Creventic has been cautious with its modifications. The current CR-8 benefits from a remapped engine management system to produce 430 hp (ten horses over the stock 420) and the removal of the factory-installed low-gear restrictor, as well as a host of baubles and bolt-ons to the body to bring it up to race spec. 18-inch BBS competition rims wrapped in Toyo racing slicks are put in place, a 90-liter racing fuel tank installed and AST suspension components mounted at all four corners. Creventic is also working on squeezing more power out of the RS4-derived V8 engine, a race-spec sequential gearbox and carbon fiber body panels, among other competition modifications.

The first pair of CR-8s will be shown next month at the Dubai Autodrome in the United Arab Emirates for a race-track shakedown and public unveiling, with the first customer cars to be delivered shortly thereafter.

Check out CR-8.com for more details, and the gallery below for a whole mess of pics.

[Source: CR-8.com via Le Blog Auto]

Click on the images to view in high-speed and high-resolution

Remember the Maybach Exelero? The ultra-premium marque from Merceceds-Benz built it almost two years ago as a high-speed test vehicle based on its Maybach 57 luxury sedan, but unfortunately never offered production versions to the public. To the rescue comes Brabus, those whacky German tuners who give the go-fast treatment to everything produced by the three-pointed star, from the Smart ForTwo all the way up to this 730-hp limousine.

Like the Exelero, Brabus' monster is based on the Maybach 57 and was built in order to achieve the highest speeds attainable. To get there, Brabus tuned the Maybach's twin-turbo V12 to the same standard as the CLS-based Brabus Rocket speed record car: that means boosting power from 550 hp to 730, thanks to an increase in displacement from 5.5 liters to 6.3, coupled with a new crankshaft, pistons, cylinder heads... the works. The turbos were beefed up, and along with the intercoolers, a custom exhaust was installed and the ECU was reprogrammed.

The result is a top speed of 330.2 km/h (205.2 mph in American speak) achieved at the same Nardo test track in Italy where the Exelero was put through its places. A far cry from the 218.4 mph achieved by the Exelero, but not to shabby in its own right. And here you thought the S versions of the Maybach 57 and 62 were obscene enough....

Check out the images in the gallery below, and the press release after the jump.

[Source: Brabus]

Ultima, one of several dozen independent British sportscar companies and makers of the GTR, could only take so much rejection. The cottage automaker claims it offered its road-legal race-car to the producers at BBC's hit TV show Top Gear several times, only to be repeatedly refused. So Ultima took things into its own hands, brought its latest fire-breather to the same converted airstrip that TG uses for a test track, retained a Stig of its own, and undertook to beat the fastest lap on the track.

Aside from the occasional exception like the Renault F1 car, the current record holder on Top Gear's power-lap board is the Koenigsegg CCX (which Top Gear can't spell). After the Stig famously spun the Swedish supercar off the track, the designers mounted a new rear wing to keep the tail planted, and the CCX set a fastest lap of 1:17.6, which was enough to beat the Ferrari Enzo, Maserati MC12 and Pagani Zonda that previously sat atop the chart.

Ultima drove the GTR720 to the track in full road trim and set a fast lap of 1:12.8, which easily beat the Koenigsegg. In fact, Ultima claims that at that rate, the GTR would lap an Enzo every 12 laps. Dang. Shame it would also beat the Ferrari in an ugly contest, though. Ultima says another visit in the more powerful 800-hp version is in the works.

[Source: PistonHeads]

Click on the image above to jump to our 52-image high-resolution gallery

Can't get enough of Ferrari's latest hotness? Neither can we, and the first batch of eight official images to come out of Maranello just weren't enough. So we flew out to Germany and got some more from the 430 Scuderia's unveiling at the Frankfurt auto show. But that still wasn't enough. So we got in touch with Ferrari North America to ask for more, but unfortunately our requests went unheeded.

Thankfully our Italian friends over at Automobilismo.it came to the rescue with a whole F1-calibre convoy full of new press images of the new Scuderia, that stripped-out supercar that laps Ferrari's private Fiorano test track faster than any Ferrari road car in the company's sixty-year history – including the Enzo.

Without confirmation from Ferrari, we can't be 100% sure these are all factory-issued, but until we hear otherwise, we give you this gallery of 52 high-resolution images. Enjoy them, because it can't have been easy for the photographer to get the 430 Scuderia to stay still for long.

[Source: Ferrari via Automobilismo.it]

If for no other reason, love these cars for the utter straightforward simplicity of their name – they are exactly what they're called: Radical. While many sports car manufacturers claim the mantle as their own, few follow the creed of "racing car for the road" quite so faithfully as Radical, the small British outfit that produces track-day specials like the SR8. They may be certified for road use, but few concessions have been made towards comfort or usability. These cars are meant to be driven to the track and back home again.

As if its previous offerings weren't fast enough, Radical has now unveiled its latest race car for the road: the SR8LM. The LM designation should give you a clue in case the picture doesn't say it all. It's built to offer Le Mans prototype levels of performance to anyone with the means. While the "ordinary" SR8 is powered by a 360-hp Powertec-modified superbike engine from the Suzuki Hayabusa, bored out from 1.3-liters to 2.8 and designated RPA, the SR8LM gets the revised RPB powerplant pumping out a whopping 455 horses and revving to an atmospheric 10,500-rpm redline. The engine is mated to Radical's paddle-operated Powertec P-tec transaxle and PS1 pneumatic shifter that have been engineered for foot-to-the-floor upshifts and automatically blips the throttle on the way back down.

While we don't have performance stats just yet, Radical claims the new £89,000 SR8LM will keep pace with actual Le Mans prototype race cars. That's quite a claim, but considering that the previous 360hp SR8 already holds the record for fastest street-legal car to lap the Nürburgring Nordschleife at 6' 55", that may not be so far-fetched.

(Press release after the jump.)

[Source: Radical]

We first told you about a little Italian company called Gioielli Circuiti a bit over a year ago. The jewelers craft necklaces and other sparkly things in the shape of race tracks around the world, all decked-out in diamonds, rubies and other precious stones.

Being the Italian racing fans they so evidently are, Circuiti couldn't have their national circuit get the same respect as all the others. And so the jewelers are offering the Monza "Pole Position" bracelet, featuring white diamonds, black diamonds and rubies on a white gold setting laid out in the outline of the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza.

The pictures are enough to tell that this must make for quite the dazzling tribute to the track and the race, but for €9000, you'd have to really love Monza. For the rest of us, Circuiti offers an array of pendants, cufflinks and such at a variety of price points. But if you're the kind for whom nine grand is pocket change and who watches the Monaco Grand Prix every year from a yacht in the Monte Carlo harbor with a delicate model on your arm, what else would look better on hers?

[Source: Gioielli Circuiti]