Archive for category Motoring

News from Geneva : Green Ferrari?

Mar 7

Posted by The Nut in Motoring | No Comments

Yes, I know the title is absurd. Ferrari’s are supposed to be red. Maybe black, sometimes white or blue, but mainly red. And fast. And dangerous. And downright beautiful.

It’s an interesting thing though – the beauty bit hasn’t always been that consistent for the past couple of years. I mean, stuff like the California doesn’t quite look all that pretty. The rear end is way too huge, thanks to the huge metal folding roof. Still, it goes like stink, and it’s a comfortable cruiser.

Ferrari 599 Hybrid

Anyway, the point is this…Ferrari have announced a hybrid version of the 599.

Close your mouth, assuming your jaw just fell slack.

Trust me, it’s not just the paint job. It’s supposed to be all ‘green’ under the hood as well! Well, it’s not much, but they have a couple of electric motors to the rear tyres. The batteries are neatly arranged under the floor of the car, to keep the centre of gravity as low as possible, which is really important for this car, especially if it wants to be taken seriously as a Ferrari.

What I don’t get, is why Ferrari is bothering at all. It’s not like they sell cars in huge numbers and can make a world of difference to the environment. What if, the hybrid 599 is not at sharp as a regular 599? What if it’s slower (which it probably is)? Why would anybody buy one, assuming it goes into production, which it won’t anytime soon, mainly because the production cost is too high? Will Leonardo di Caprio abandon his Prius, and scamper for a Ferrari showroom? I don’t know and I don’t care… It’s important that this car either be a proper Ferrari, or a proper hybrid. It can’t be both…

Tags: 599, Ferrari, Geneva

News from Geneva : Porsche 918

Mar 6

Posted by The Nut in Motoring | No Comments

I’m still hyperventilating. Haven’t quite recovered from the shock. Am I dreaming? If so wake me up. First, a little background info.

I’m a big Porsche fan. One of the real nutters. I guess it can all be traced back to that one game – Need For Speed : Porsche Unleashed. That game really got me hooked onto Porsches. Fine, I do appreciate all other kinds of cars, but I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Porsches.

Porsche 918

That special place in my heart just may have caused a major cardiac arrest. I mean, just look at it. It’s the new Porsche 918, currently a near-production concept, spiritual successor to the Porsche Carrera GT, the limited production mid-engined supercar.

The Carrera GT was originally meant to be a prototype for a Le Mans racer, but somewhere along the way, it got transformed into the car we know today. A road going, all out supercar. Fine, so it’s quite slow, if you compare it with the supercars of today, like the Zonda, but in its time, along with the McLaren-Mercedes SLR, they were the fastest cars money could buy.

Firstly, it looks gorgeous. I mean, it’s a widely recognised and acknowledged fact that the people working in the design department of Porsche are among the laziest in the world. No matter how hard they try, each 911 looks almost exactly the same as the previous model. It’s like each time they’re instructed to design another body, they just doodle till the night before the deadline, and they hurriedly fish out last time’s blueprints and quickly make some meaningless squiggles, and carefully change a line or two, and rebrand it as a new car. Honestly, the design dept. at Porsche is possible the laziest in the whole world… And when Porsche does occasionally come up with a new car, it either looks hideously ugly (Cayenne), or just like a stretched kangaroo 911(Panamera), or a Boxter with a roof welded on (Cayman). But this looks utterly beautiful. Still recognisable for the Porsche it is, but at the same time, looking rather different from the rest of the range. As a result, this might be one of the first Porsches in a long, long time, that might be universally acknowledged as a pretty car.

What’s more, this supercar’s a hybrid, just like the Ferrari 599. Except, it’s more extreme. With a 3.4 litre V8 straight out of an American Le Mans racer, putting out 500 bhp, this car ought to be fast. What’s more, there are a couple of electric motors on the front axle, putting out another 200+ bhp, making the total effective power output over 700 bhp. Couple that with the fact that this weighs under 1.5 tonnes, and you’ve got yourselves a serious supercar… Can’t wait for this car to come out!

Tags: 918, Geneva, Hyrbid, Porsche

News from Geneva : 898bhp Koenigsegg

Mar 5

Posted by The Nut in Motoring | 2 Comments

Yep…that’s how much power the latest offering from the Koenigsegg stables has to offer. It’s not like the old CCX was a slouch or anything, but it’s just that the Swedes decided to let themselves off the leash.

Koenigsegg Agera

It’s sufficient to say that it’s bonkers. Boasting of numbers like 0-60 mph in 3.1 seconds and a flat out top speed in the vicinity of 250 mph, the Agera manages to pull of a rather rare trick. It is both oh-so-desirable and oh-so-very-fatal.

I mean, exactly how much power can you extract from a 4.7 litre v8? The effing Bugatti Veyron only manages 1000 bhp after 16.4 litres and 4 turbo-chargers! Another interesting fact is the weight of the body – just 72 kilos, which makes it much, much lighter than your average American…

Once you realise that it’s looks suspiciously like the old CCX (that’ s because it’s actually a heavily modified CCX), you realise that this isn’t just any supercar. It’s probably going to carve a little niche of its own. I’d just recommend that niche be in a mental asylum of sorts. And a couple of cells for the guys who came up with it as well… But then it dawns upon me, Koenigsegg need something to keep their customers happy. While they may be upto something in their secret workshops in the Scandinavian mountains, it’s important that the world see that they’re upto something and not just faffing about. I’ll just hope and pray for a 1500 bhp hypersupercar in the next few years or something….

Now a bit of a history lesson. The Koenigsegg CCX or Competition Coupé X is a very mad car. It does 0-60 mph in 3.2 seconds, 0-125 mph in 9.8 seconds, and will go onto a top speed of 259 mph. Plus, the Koenigsegg CCX also holds the world record for the fastest speeding ticket ever recorded. The car was clocked by the rozzers doing about 242 mph. Must’ve been just a blur. Whoosh…and it’s gone.

Originally, the CCX was meant to have a Ford sourced engine, but later an in-house-production engine, a 4.7 litre was put in, with dual superchargers to finally end up producing a mind-warping 806 bhp at 6900 rpm and 678 lb·ft of torque at 5700 rpm.

So, going by the rule of more is better, the Agera should be even faster than the CCX.

Tags: Agera, Geneva, Koenigsegg

News from Geneva : New Lambo

Mar 3

Posted by The Nut in Motoring | 6 Comments

As you may or may not be aware, the Geneva Motor Show is underway at the moment, in Geneva (d’uh). Open for public from 4th to 14th March, a visit to that place would be the ideal birthday present for me. Since that’s not gonna happen, I’ll just be happy drooling over some of the cars being unveiled.

Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera

Oh great, another version of the Gallardo from Lamborghini. First of all, it’s very important that you pronounce the name properly. It’s Ga-yy-ardo, unlike the spelling suggests, and Superleggera is pronounces as super-lajera. Now that that’s sorted out, let me get to the car. The Gallardo’s an amazing little car. OK, I don’t really mean little. It’s only little compared to it’s big bro, the Murcielago. In reality, the Gallardo is a lean, mean 4-wheel drive mad Italian sportscar which will rip your head off, given the opportunity. So it was only natural that Lamborghini decide to put it on a diet (hence the Superleggera). The new version has a 5.2 litre V10, putting out 562 bhp, 10 more bhp than you get from the standard car. And the whole car is lighter by about 40 kg, by replacing everything which wasn’t carbon fibre, with carbon fibre.

It’s a good thing that they didn’t remove the 4-wheel drive system, or like the Balboni edition, more and more people would eventually end up in trees with their Gallardos.

But, at the end of the day, it’s a mad bull, and that’s all that really matters…

Tags: Gallardo, Geneva, Lamborghini

Zenvo ST1 : Nordic genius

Feb 26

Posted by The Nut in Motoring | 6 Comments

<Little trumpeting parp>
The blog is back. I somehow managed to get all of the posts back. Now it’s just a matter of reorganising them. Would like to take a moment to thank Ankur for helping me.

Images courtesy Top Gear.

For those who may be unaware, I’m a big petrolhead, apart from being a tech nut. As a result, I’ve decided to diversify into the area of ‘car porn’ as well.

Bugatti Veyron

Firstly, you need to know what car this is. It’s the Bugatti Veyron. Incidentially, Bugatti was taken over by Volkswagen, so essentially, the Veyron is a 1,000,000$ 1,000 bhp Volkswagen, which really defeats the purpose. That’s because Volkswagen means ‘people’s car’ in German, and, well, a million dollars isn’t really all that cheap.

Thing is, this car can go upto 252.9 mph, which in other words is around 407 kmph. That’s not quick. That’s eye-wateringly, face-alteringly rapid. The trivia surrounding this car is amazing. If you leave the car running at 253 mph for more than 15 minutes, the tires will melt.

Anyway, needless to say, it looks like a mutant Volkswagen Beetle. It really just is like a squashed bug. Albeit an extremely fast squashed bug, but a bug nevertheless. As a result, I’d kill myself before looking at one for an extended period of time.

Zenvo ST1

The reason for this, I guess would the fact that there’s a new kid on the block. It’s from Denmark. It’s called the Zenvo ST1. And you’ve got to hand it to it. It looks stunning. It looks mean. It looks angry. And it looks ready to wipe that vapid expression off the Veyron’s face.

Funnily, enough the creators, Jesper Jensen, Troels Vollertsen and Lasse Stenkilde, are not. They claim to have created a supercar which is easy to drive, one that can be used as an everyday car. But a quick peek at the stats, reveal an alarming story. 1,100 bhp being pumped out by a 7-litre V8. It’s like a Corvette ZR1′s V8, only lighter. Onto this magnificent specimen, they bolted a supercharger and a turbocharger, presumably to help low-end and high-end delivery of power along the rev meter.

Although no official announcement has been made, it’s safe to assume a 0-60 mph time of around 3 seconds. For the record, a Veyron does that in 2.5 seconds. But then, we’re talking about a 16.4 litre W16, which is essentially 2 V8′s joined at the hip. Incidentially they’ve taken the V8 out of a Vokswagen Phaeton, and well, the V8 of that is nothing but to V4′s bolted end on end. I think I’ll do a detailed post on engines sometime later.

Anyway, the point is that the Zenvo will go like stink. I mean, you can expect the kind of acceleration that would pin your head against the seat considerably. And well, it’s not really got the market to itself. Before the Zenvo came along, there was just one Nordic supercar manufacturer – Koeniggsegg (koh-nig-zeg…say it five times). The cars they rolled out were mad. Plus, the CCX was also fast.

So, to add a bit of variety, we now have the Zenvo ST1. Although it’s still just a prototype, just 15 will ever be built, making it one of the rarest cars in world. Rarer than the Lamborghini Reventon, 20 of which were made. Now it’s just a matter of seeing where this thing is going to priced. Agreed, it will be out of reach for you and me (you refers to average reader, not Simon Cowell), it’s still nice to know it’s around.

And the funny thing is, that this monstrously fast car is coming from Denmark, a country know to be the second most peaceful country and the least corrupt in the world…:-P