Car and Driver has a review up of the best Corvette not made by Chevrolet, the 2008 Pratt and Miller Chevrolet Corvette C6RS.
“The C6RS is what a Corvette can become when not restricted by the requirements of assembly-line-based manufacturing,” says spokesman Brandon Widmer of Pratt & Miller Engineering and Fabrication, the outfit GM hired to build its enigmatically successful C5.S and C6.R race cars. That’s right, the same cars that have been pummeling the field in American Le Mans Series races for years, and the same cars that have clinched five class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. If anyone knows how to make a Corvette more exciting, it’s these guys.
If given the option, picking between this and the Corvette ZR1 would be a terribly complicated task. Look for a preview of the Corvette C6RS here on this site in the coming days.
It’s no secret that Bugatti has refused to let Top Gear’s Stig take a Veyron around their test track, despite having loaned them numerous other Veyrons for top speed runs and car vs plane contests. Well, thanks to some very rich individuals over in the UAE, it looks like the Stig will finally get behind the wheel; albeit in the hills of Abu Dhabi and not Dunsford Park.
Reportedly, Top Gear sent out an urgent distress call to anyone willing to lend them a Bugatti Veyron for a “photoshoot.” However, instead of one, they got three. “No other place in the world could we have found three Bugattis in a span of 48 hours,” said Charlie Turner, the creative director for the magazine.
There is also a report of a Koenigsegg CCX taking on two of the 1001hp Bugatti supercars.
We didn’t realize it was a Top Gear event until we went to dinner and a group of Brits sat at the next table and started arguing about how they would cut the shots of three Veyrons doing 200 mph down the Abu Dhabi corniche with the Jebel Hafeet shots…something about the Stig being chased out of town by the Veyrons in a Koenigsegg. - Evolve.ae forum member
The photo to your right is of the Koenigsegg CCX on set with the Veyrons… So by all indications, all of this looks to be true.
Just a quick note that 7Tune.com has some nice coverage up of the recent 2008 Tsukuba Super Battle.
The Super Battle, started here by RevSpeed magazine in 1989, is a well anticipated annual event for tuning shops, their respective teams and the spectators who come out to see what these super machines can do. They could well be classed as the F18’s of the automotive and tuning world but since the inception of the event, each year the lap times around the course have gradually slipped lower and lower. It seems that the faster the teams here go the more attractive the event has become and second by second, to the current lap record, many a competitor and challenger has come. The current fastest time stands at 53.589 seconds which is held by the HKS all carbon fiber CT230R Lancer Evolution.
Read the full article for more coverage and a great photo gallery.
Subaru has unveiled their 2008 WRC car ahead of next week’s Acropolis Rally in Greece where it will compete for the first time. David Richards, the head of Prodrive (the company responsible for Subaru’s rally program), is quoted as saying that this 2008 model is “the most radically different Subaru World Rally Car in 15 years.” Click images for full resolution.
Information on Season 11 of Top Gear has just hit the web, thanks to Top Gear themselves. Apparently Season 11 will feature a whole host of new changes, mostly in an effort to get back to their basic formula for success: lots of fast cars and lots of good laughs.
Things we have to look forward to? An epic “mega car” battle filmed in Japan (and they do really mean epic); the new Mitsubishi EVO X battling the new Subaru WRX STI; Jeremy Clarkson’s much beloved Mercedes CLK Black getting a spin around the track (see latest issue of Top Gear Magazine), and “hopefully” a review of the Mazda Furai.
Most exciting for me is that we’ve finally come up with another big race - you know, car versus something or other. The last time we did one was a couple of years ago, with the plane against the Veyron, and in hindsight we lost the plot in that one - too pompous, too overblown and preposterous, too much work on the scripting to make it funny. This one is back to basics, more hardcore, mega car, mega opponent, with a solid premise. And a clue for the geeks: we did it in Japan.
Have you ever fancied the idea of owning a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti? What about a 612 Scaglietti fresh from a 72 day, 7,000 mill trek across India? Well, apparently someone did, because they just paid $311,820 for it on Ebay. The car in question was used in Ferrari’s promotional tour of India to help promote Ferrari Awareness, or something.
I’m sure that 7,000 miles worth of sand and dirt might help conceal the car’s awful paint job.
