Misc. Auto Shows

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Hennessey Venom F5 Roadster headed to The Quail

Monterey Car Week is like a debutante ball for supercars, each high-horsepowered hopeful announcing itself to be of good age, etiquette and parenting, and looking for a worthy home. Next up for a planned introduction to the suitors who will crowd the Monterey Peninsula next week is the Hennessey Venom F5 Roadster. The debut happens August 19 at Monterey Car Week’s The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering. The teaser image gives us a clue of what to expect, filling in the blanks should tax too much of the imagination.

Behind the airier cockpit is the same 6.6-liter twin-turbo V8 apparently based on GM’s LS architecture. With a redline at 8,000 rpm, the mill nicknamed “Fury” will spin out 1,542 horsepower and 1,193 pound-feet of torque on regular premium gas, 1,817 hp when given E85 to drink. Those prodigious mechanical facts are shunted through a seven-speed automated manual transmission to the rear wheels only. In the coupe, that results in accelerating acceleration up to 124 miles per hour; it takes 2.6-seconds to get to 62 mph, 4.7 seconds to hit 124 mph. Assuming enough runway and courage, 15.5 ticks of the second hand can see a driver to 250 mph. Hennessey claims a 311-mph practical top speed for the hardtop and a theoretical 328-mph terminal velocity, but so far as we know, prototypes have “only” touched 271.6 mph to now.

The Texas car creators began delivering the Venom F5 coupe late last year, the entire run of 24 examples already sold. According to Top Gear and Autocar, the Roadster will field a more populous run of 30 units, around seven of which are claimed at a rumored price of $2.75 million apiece. If that’s true, shoppers who like their hair mussed the natural way are paying a $1.15 million premium over the Venom F5 coupe’s price to have that done. We’ll get all the details from the source next week. Also, with a high-downforce version of the F5 supposedly planned after the Roadster, there’s probably a dais at next year’s Quail already reserved.

August 10, 2022 / Comments Off

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1995 McLaren F1 with only 242 miles sets record auction price

Update: The McLaren F1 you see above set a new auction record for the model at Gooding and Company’s auction. The winning bid was $18,600,000, with the final sale price of $20,465,000. According to Hemmings this tops the previous record set in 2019 of a little over $19,000,000. The text has been updated.

With a run of just 106 examples, a massive top speed of 240 miles per hour, and a Le Mans-winning racing pedigree, every McLaren F1 sports car is special. Some are just a bit more special than others, though, such as the 1995 example you see above. It’s a unique color combination and only has 242 miles on the clock. It also set a record for sale price at Gooding and Company’s auction at Pebble Beach this year.

The car is the 25th McLaren F1 built and the only one to have been finished in a paint color called “Creighton Brown,” which the auction house notes was named after an executive who helped get McLaren’s road car business up and running. The interior continues the brown theme with dark and light leather throughout.

And as for the low miles, it’s evident beyond the odometer. Apparently it’s still sitting on the same tires it came with back in 1995. So, if you do happen to put more miles on it, please get a new set to drive on, and put the originals in a safe place for your safety and their preservation. The car also comes with all its matching luggage, its original watch, the complete tool chest, roadside tool kit, owner’s manual, service book and official book talking about the development of the car.

Gooding and Company says this is the lowest mileage F1 example to go to auction, and coupled with its unique color scheme, they expected a high price, and they got it. With a final sale price of $20,465,000, it’s the most expensive McLaren F1 ever sold.

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August 14, 2021 / Comments Off

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Virtually attend ‘The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering’ via our high-res photo gallery

While the description of the yearly “Motorsports Gathering” at the Quail may sound a bit odd to many of our readers at first blush — it’s basically a huge garden party for wealthy automotive enthusiasts to get a look at vintage and newly available vehicles targeted at their healthy checking accounts — there’s no arguing that the vehicles on display are worthy of attention. And since most of us either weren’t invited or couldn’t afford to attend (or both), the next best thing to being there is scrolling through our high-res gallery of live photos taken at the event.

Visitors to this year’s event were treated to the usual grade of high-end machinery that we’ve come to expect, which is to say the best, most desirable and most expensive in the world. Our gallery is filled with vintage racers from Ford, Ferrari and Jaguar, classic Trans Am competitors and even a gaggle of Volkswagen-based dune buggies. More modern machinery was also on display from Lotus, Pagani, Koenigsegg, Pininfarina and Acura.

Electric vehicles are becoming more commonplace at high-end events, and this year’s gathering at The Quail was no exception. In addition to a strong showing from Rimac and Lotus we mentioned earlier, Lucid was in attendance as was Gateway Bronco (see here for more on that). We also got shots of things you may never have heard of like the Delage D12 and Radford Type 62-2. Oh, and the return of the Lamborghini Countach, too.

For those who keep track of such things, this year’s Best of Show winner was a 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster. You’ll see all that and more in our high-res gallery above. Enjoy!

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August 14, 2021 / Comments Off

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New Lamborghini Countach teased again with three images

Lamborghini posted three more teaser photos of the coming Countach resurrection to its Instagram page. We’ll have to let the pictures do most of the talking since we don’t have any more information than we did when the first tease dropped a couple of days ago. We get a shot of a nose unlike any other Lamborghini in the current stable. A narrow black grille just inches wide splits the upper and lower section of the front fascia, recalling the area where the original exotic placed its black front bumper and fog lights. The name “Countach” appears on the right side of the coupe, in all lowercase letters just like the original, but stretched and angular befitting the brand’s modern design language.

A second shot exposes the engine cover, this a new design based on the clear cover that can be fitted to the Aventador. Three flat hexagon panels, thickly bordered in black, step down from the roof to the tail. Beneath them is the longitudinal and posterior V12 portion of the LPI 800 powertrain. The initialism stands for Longitudinale Posteriore Ibrido, and we’re still waiting for any information on that last bit, the hybrid. The V12 in the Lamborghini Sian FKP 37 received help from a supercapacitor, but that special edition didn’t get official designation as a hybrid. The last car from Sant’Agata to do so was the 2014 Asterion LPI 910-4 concept from the 2014 Paris Motor Show. The Asterion hid a V10 in back for the rear wheels, and two e-motors with a combined 296 horsepower on the front axle powered by a lithium-ion battery. The Sian produces about 785 horsepower, the Countach will deliver about 789, the Aventador S makes 690. So Lamborghini isn’t using electricity to chase gaudy numbers. Yet.

The last pic presents the area behind the side window. This is a slightly tighter shot of an image that a site called Lamborghini Specs posted a few days ago, snagged somehow from the automaker’s customer-only site, Lamborghini Unica. This reveals a Huracan-like intake treatment, the opening descending from the roof to the rear fenders. Ahead of the intake, a row of slats harks back to Gandini’s Countach prototype that arranged a flat row of vents along the fender, just behind the glasshouse. The fender is decorated with a cap that could be the fuel filler or a charging port or something else.

Way back in 1987, Lamborghini worked up a Countach Evoluzione prototype to test new technologies that made their way into the last of the production Countach run and the successor Diablo. This Countach could be doing something similar. The brand has already been taking orders for whatever’s coming, so there’s an excellent chance it will be sold out by the time it debuts on Sunday, August 15, at Monterey Car Week.

August 11, 2021 / Comments Off

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