Volkswagen have revealed the Scirocco GT24 at the 2008 Wörthersee event, held annually in Austria. AUSringers readers will already be familiar with the race version of the car which will be making it’s competition debut at this weekend’s 24 hour race. This GT24 version, with 239kW, looks fantastic. See AUSringers for more info. If you would like Volkswagen to bring the road going version of the new Scirocco (see pics below) to Australia, please leave a show of support in the comments section.
WIRED magazine’s website has an excellent article written by Mark Seal about ‘Stepney-gate’, the spy scandal that embroiled Formula One in 2007. It involved the leaking of vital information between Ferrari and McLaren, principally from Ferrari’s Nigel Stepney to McLaren’s Michael Coughlan. The article explores Ron Dennis’ dislike of Team Red as well as the apparently innocent, if ultimately foolish, errand that brought Ron Dennis’ McLaren team to its knees. One of the introductory paragraphs reads:
“It was June 2007 in sleepy Surrey County, and Coughlan, a statuesque blonde, sauntered through the door of the shop holding a sheaf of 780 pages. Scan them onto two CDs, she told the clerk, a forgettable middle-aged guy in a forgettable office park in the middle of nowhere. Nothing strange about the order, unless you happened to be a Formula One fan and happened to take a close look at the material: schematic drawings, technical reports, pictures, and financial information — enough insider dope to design a Formula One race car. Each page was emblazoned with one of the most famous logos in the world: the prancing black horse of Ferrari.”
Click HERE to read the rest of the article.
Subaru has unveiled its new generation All-Wheel Drive Impreza World Rally Car 2008, in time for its competitive debut at this month’s Acropolis Rally in Greece.
For the first time, Subaru World Rally Team will use a hatchback design. Following a successful research, development and testing phase, the Impreza WRC 2008 will be driven by Australia’s Chris Atkinson and Norwegian Petter Solberg in the Acropolis Rally starting 29 May.
Earlier tonight I enjoyed the hospitality of Rolfe Classic BMW in Canberra at the launch of the new additions to BMW’s 1 Series range – the Coupé and Convertible. There has been plenty of hype about these cars on the net and I was keen to get a closer look for myself. The drinks were good, the music was good and the mingling was good. Most importantly, though, the cars were good. Rolfe had a 120i Convertible and a 135i Coupé on show and it was the 135i that I was most intent on seeing.
The 135i has the award winning twin turbo inline 6-cylinder that produces a very tidy 225kW (306hp in the old money) along with a nice round 400Nm of torque. That’s some serious mojo for a car weighing in at 1485kg. Sure, that’s no lightweight compared to BMW’s iconic 2002 Coupé of yesteryear. But, by today’s standards, and for its class, that’ll do very nicely thanks. Pricing for the 135i starts at $71,400 plus on-roads. For the average punter that may seem a lot, but compared to the 135i’s competition it is very well priced.
Motorsport Event Management (MEM), the agency contracted to run the Australian MINI CHALLENGE, has been put up for sale by current owner Iain Sherrin.
In a statement issued today by BMW Group Australia, MINI National Manager, Justin Hocevar said, “MINI is confident that any sale of MEM will be to a suitable purchaser who will continue to manage the increasingly popular MINI CHALLENGE series exactly in line with the arrangements MINI put in place with MEM.
“MINI had a five year plan for MINI CHALLENGE and we see no reason to deviate from that plan with the new owner of MEM. Iain Sherrin has indicated his desire to sell the category management business and focus on his multiple race teams. His team – Sherrin MotorSport – manages six cars for a number of clients, with one added to the stable last week,” Hocevar continued.
Recent reports about the new episodes of Top Gear have fans even more excited about the series return on 22 June. From the Top Gear blog, Andy Wilman, the show’s Executive Producer, says “most exciting for me is that we’ve finally come up with another big race – you know, car versus something or other … 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.” My tip is it will feature the Mazda Furai, or a Nissan GT-R. Or both, perhaps!
Giving further clues as to what we can expect Wilman states, “we go to war, literally, with a German version of Top Gear (which incidentally means Sabine is back) and there’s a very exciting shootout with the RS6 against the most suicidal of skiers”
One thing that Wilman doesn’t state, however, is the Veyron feature filmed in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. This has been revealed on the Releaselog website, which has a few spy shots of the the Stig captured during the shoot.
All in all, it is shaping up to be a great series, or at least, the fans hope it will be. So far there has been nothing to indicate anyone will be disappointed. Keep reading AUSmotive for more updates, or check in to the FinalGear forums for more leads.
If you have, then you’ll be interested in a current and upcoming stories on independent Australian website CarAdvice. They recently witnessed a live crash test at the RTA’s Australian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP). The program responsible for crash testing cars sold on the Australian market to determine their safety credentials. The CarAdvice team saw a 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer VRX being tested. Here’s a couple of quotes:
“The visual of this impact is alarming, far worse than you can ever imagine.”
“It’s a pity that every driver in Australia can’t witness what we saw today. If they did, you wouldn’t think twice about the need to purchase a car with curtain airbags.”
They also took part in some controlled testing on cars fitted with and without Electronic Stability Control (ESC). For those of you thinking of buying a car that offers this as an option, please, just get it. It may sound overly dramatic, but it could save your life. To the car manufacturers who offer such systems as an option only, lift your game and make these systems standard equipment across your model range.
Read the full CarAdvice article HERE.
Current Wheels Car of the Year, the Mercedes-Benz C Class, has a new stable mate sharing the showroom floor in the form of the new C Class Estate. For those of you reading this that do not realise just how cool Euro wagons are, trust me. Think of Euro wagons as the Dunlop Volley of the automotive world. You’re probably thinking terms such as ‘daggy’, ‘unfashionable’ and a bit ‘pointless’. If that is you, then I am sorry to say, you could not be more wrong. You just are. Euro wagons are the business and this new C Class Estate further enhances that fact.
The new Benz wagon is available in three models, a supercharged four-cylinder C 200 Kompressor Estate (available now), a turbo-diesel C 220 CDI Estate and the cool enough to make hell freeze over high-performance C 63 AMG Estate (both available from September 2008). Just like the Saloon, the Estate version of the new C Class has been awarded an Environmental Certificate, which attests to the environmentally-oriented development process as conforming to the international ISO standard. Try fooling your mates over an organic soy latte that any petrol powered SUV has any bona fide environmental credentials. But, an AMG Estate, well, that’d be enough to make Alan Partridge cower into a quivering mess of denial.
Yesterday’s post about the Ferrari California was the good. Well, sadly, this is the bad and the ugly all rolled into one for the owner of what used to be a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano. First reported by the UK paper The Sun, the story goes the owner wasn’t even at the wheel when the towering Fiorano went up in smoke. One of the owner’s employees was driving the car when it made some sort of noise and then erupted into flames.
Unfortunately for Ferrari, this isn’t the first time a 599 hasn’t been able to stand the heat, follow the Autoblog link below for more.
Internet speculation suggests that Series 11 of Top Gear will go to air on UK televisions on 22 June. Keep an eye out for more updates as they come to hand. In the meantime, to help you get by during the TG off-season see below for one of my favourite Top Gear challenges. The £1500 Porsche Challenge from Series 5.
Yikes! Images of this R56 MINI Cooper S rollover have recently surfaced on the Minifinity.com internet forum. The accident happened in Malaysia and, while details of the moments leading up the incident are only speculation, there has been an alleged eye witness report stating the driver and passenger walked away with no serious injuries.
See below for more images, or read the thread on Minifinity.com for more detail.
‘The new Ferrari California will satisfy even the most demanding of owners in term of its superb vehicle dynamics and driving pleasure.’
Well, that’s what the press release says anyway. One thing is certain, the new California is beautiful. It will be making it’s live debut at the Paris Motor Show in October. In the meantime, Ferrari recently released these official images of the car on the net after earlier giving Ferrari fans some audio of the car at full noise. If pictures say a thousand words, then I’ll simply let the pictures do the talking. See and read more below…