BY TONY SWAN, PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM FRENAK
So here it is, the third and final entry in the 21st-century pony-car-revival derby. Get your bets down early because we don’t expect to see any more resurrections of famous makes from the galloping go-go Sixties—Barracuda, Firebird, Javelin, et al.—and even gloomier, we think it likely that, given fuel prices and other concerns, this revival is likely to lack the fervor and duration of the original movement. (more…)
BY JOHN PHILLIPS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON KILEY
Antique Road Show: What would Andy Warhol drive?
This road test may be irrelevant. Which wouldn’t necessarily make it unique to the pages of C/D. This time, however, it isn’t our fault. See, Bentley is going to create only 550 Brooklands—delivering the final one toward the end of 2009—and 549 of them are already spoken for. The grand-touring coupe you see on these pages, in a color Bentley calls “Porcelain,” is the last copy for sale. Or was at the time this was written. (more…)
BY ALISA PRIDDLE
BMW adds a performance diesel to the U.S. lineup, but no seven-speed dual clutch.
BMW has released the first official pictures of the new 3-series sedan and wagon that will be unveiled this fall at the 2009 Paris auto show, prior to going on sale in North America in October. (more…)
BY AARON ROBINSON, PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID DEWHURST
Day 2 Second and First Place: Extremists
2008 Porsche 911 GT2
Second Place: Extremists
Check it out: Black leather, red seatbelts, splashes of fuzzy Alcantara, deep-scallop buckets in glossy carbon-fiber shells, fish-gill vents, and flaring air snorkels on the wing posts. The GT2’s visual cues mix the subtle with the animal. (more…)
BY AARON ROBINSON, PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID DEWHURST
It’s man against motherboard in this four-way flog of max-horsepower machines.
Behold four machines sitting on the pointy end of a horsepower skyrocket that lifted off sometime in the 1980s and hasn’t hit the chutes yet.
For now, anyone can buy these vehicles by flashing a valid driver’s license and a healthy checkbook. But this may be it. The last act. The apogee right before reentry, when post-peak oil prices and carbon-emissions limits and general economic malaise threaten to make memories out of 500-horsepower cars. Maybe someday you’ll bore grandchildren with tales of Porsche GT2s practically falling out of trees for just $198,875. Is it 1971 all over again? Who knows? Maybe you’ll be telling them from the back seat of their parents’ 700-hp minivan. (more…)
