A Supercar is a sports car, typically an exotic or rare one, whose performance is highly superlative to its contemporary sports cars. They are pure bestial look and performance. Even if you never own one of these they will change the way you feel about cars just by looking at them.
In today’s world of ungodly-powered supercars, an old hat that has been lost in the shuffle is looking to re-enter the conversation, determined to remind everyone that while their name hasn’t been mentioned in talks of ’fastest supercar on the planet’, it was a matter of choice rather than cause.
Rumors are coming out of Woking, England that McLaren is finally in the process of developing the long-awaited successor to the iconic McLaren F1. This is the very same car that ushered in a new generation of supercars when it made its debut back in the mid 90s, setting the standard on how supercars are built these days.
While official details are still being withheld, Autocar managed to get some juicy information on what’s in store for this new supercar, including the nickname it’s been given: ’Mega Mac.’
It sounds like it doesn’t inspire a lot of fear and trepidation from its competitors, but nonetheless, we’re confident that ’Mega Mac’ won’t be the final name of the car. Somewhere along the lines, McLaren will have something more suitable for their new flagship supercar. Right now, they are internally calling the new hypercar the P12
UPDATE 11/21/2011: McLaren has confirmed that the company’s next supercar will be called the MP4-27 and it will be launched sometime next year. When talking about the company’s future plans in an official press release, Mclaren said that they were "preparing build-work on next year’s car, MP4-27 – we are nine months into the development programme and have already stored 18,918 individual components from more than 3,000 different works orders and signed off more than 5,500 technical drawings."
UPDATE 1/19/2012: British magazine, CAR,is offering new details on the McLaren successor for the F1 supercar. The magazine reports that the P12 will be share a similar carbon Monocell structure as the MP4-12C and will be powered by a 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 engine combined with a KERS energy storage system. The price for the car will be in the €750k area (or $960,000 at the current exchange rates.
For now, immerse yourselves in the first details of the car after the jump.
High tech dreams, art on wheels, poetry in emotion. This is what AutoExotika promises to feature when the new series kicks off.
What is AutoExotika? It’s a "high energy, high quality, celebration of the world’s most exotic automobiles and the men and women who design, build, collect and drive them." Basically, a team of experts will be filming at iconic racetracks, manufacturing plants, and some of the most amazing roads in order to provide viewers with an eyeful of auto erotica.
Aside from the scintillating vehicles to be presented, AutoExotika will be hosted by race car celebrity Ashley van Dyke, exotic car owner John Temerian, and serving as the brains behind the operation, technical and mechanical guru, Evan Blaustein.
Short of being able to tag along for what promises to be an insane ride, we can’t think of anything better than sitting back and experiencing AutoExotika!
Back in 2009, Lamborghini unveiled the Gallardo LP 550-2 Valentino Balboni - a 550 HP special edition limited to only 250 units. This model was only offered in a coupe version, but at the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show, Lamborghini has brought out a Spyder version to offer a "stunning level of open-air driving fun that can come only from a super sports car with a folding roof and an unbelievably agile and spontaneous handling." The new roadster model has dropped the "Valentino Balboni" name and is simply called the "Gallardo LP550-2 Spyder."
"With the Gallardo LP 550-2 Spyder, we are expanding the Lamborghini lineup with a purist model that adds yet another dimension of driving fun. This will appeal in particular to a very special group of customers that enjoy a spirited driving style and also like to experience the sheer pleasure of open-air driving," says Stephan Winkelmann, President and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini. "This special model with rear-wheel drive is a logical expansion of our lineup of spyder models with all-wheel drive."
Just like the coupe model, the Gallardo LP550-2 Spyder uses a 5.2-liter V10 engine that delivers a total of 542 hp and 398 lb-ft of torque. With a total weight of 3,351 lbs, the roadster will accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds on its way up to a top speed of 198 mph.
UPDATE 01/16/2012: Lamborghini has announced that the new Gallardo LP550-2 Spyder will go on sale this March at a starting price of $209,000, excluding the $2,995 delivery and gas-guzzler charge.
Back in September of 2011, word came out that Lexus was officially axing the LF-A Roadster out of fear that economic instability in a lot of markets around the world would hamper the supercar’s power to sell.
So imagine our surprise when a video from the 2012 Tokyo Auto Salon popped up on the Internet and there it was in all its pristine glory: the Lexus LF-A Roadster.
The car, which made a surprise appearance at the D1GP Kick Off Drift event that took place just outside the venue where the Tokyo Auto Salon was being held, quickly caught the eye of a lot of people, some of whom were wondering whether Lexus changed their minds one more time.
Then again, we’re well aware that this LF-A Roadster could just be a one-off custom job from one of its owners. But seeing what a drop-top version of the Lexus supercar could look like has us pining to see the roadster program get kick-started again.
Check out the video at the 48-second mark to see the LF-A Roadster burn some rubber on a drift track at the 2012 TAS.
For the benefit of those who are fanatics of Lamborghini Gallardos, this video just might be a little too much to stomach. But if you enjoy the spectacle of supercar crashes - injuries notwithstanding - then check out how a Lamborghini owner managed to destroy his beloved Gallardo in spectacular fashion.
As is the case most of the time with these exotic crashes, the scene for this episode is a rather busy highway where two Gallardos - an orange and a green one - are trying to stretch their legs with their Italian supercar. We understand the adrenaline of putting the pedal to the metal when it comes to cars like the Gallardo, but we also are aware of the dangerous ramifications that could happen should anything go wrong.
Apparently, these two idiots either forgot that memo or they just couldn’t care less.
In the middle of their public showboating, the driver of the green Gallardo inexplicably lost control of his LP 560-4 - yeah, it has AWD - sending it into a massive tailspin before crashing in to the center cement divider.
As you can expect, when that happens, cement always wins.
A poor decision to race that was compounded by some less-than-stellar racing skills all add up to a pretty dinged up supercar and a more than expensive repair bill.
