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…)

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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…)

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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…)

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BY MARK GILLIES

In case the F430 wasn’t fast (or good) enough.

The great thing about the 430 Scuderia”a faster, lighter, and even more compelling version of the F430”is that Ferrari didn’t have to make it. Automakers create new versions of their existing models to stimulate sales, but with North American waiting lists at two years for the F430, Ferrari didn’t need to drum up showroom traffic.

Ferrari people say the primary reason for building the Scuderia is that it showcases the company’s racing technology in a street car. Another reason is that, historically, Ferrari has built more extreme versions of its entry-level sports car, going back to the F355 Challenge in 1995. And Lamborghini, its northern-Italian rival, has just introduced the Gallardo Superleggera, while Porsche, its perennial competitor, is continually making go-faster versions of the 911. (more…)

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BY STEVE SILER

You think Bond would approve? Actually, he already did.

To most James Bond movie hounds, Daniel Craig was the star of the most recent James Bond film, Casino Royale. But we speculate that most Car and Driver readers were more interested in seeing his new ride, the Aston Martin DBS, than the hunky new Bond boy. Unfortunately, Bond rendered the slinky supercoupe’s appearance to more of a cameo than a starring role, choosing to roll it several times in a ditch to save his damsel in distress within just minutes of hitting the engine start button for the first time (indeed, some of us might have chosen to save the car). (more…)

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BY LARRY WEBSTER, PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON KILEY

Inner Beauty: The new-for-2008 Vette doesn’t look much different, but more power, better steering, and an available inteior upgrade address the car’s few shortcomings.

From a list of 22 new and notable features on the 2008 Corvette, item 12 caught our eye: improved steering feel. (more…)

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BY ERIK JOHNSON

A Conti GT with 50 extra horsepower takes Bentley to a place it’s never been.

How many times in your career as a Bentley salesperson have you found yourself in the embarrassing position of having nearly closed the sale on a Continental GT only to be rebuffed when the customer finds out it isn’t capable of 200 mph? (more…)

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BY STEVE SILER

210 mph with no windshield? Reeves, you may have a problem.

Callaway is a name synonymous with wild styling, Corvettes, and, of course, speed. (more…)

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BY DAVE VANDERWERP

For its fourth go-round, the icon gets a can-do-no-wrong chassis and a beastly V-8.

Maybe you’ve been following the trickle of information flowing out of Munich ever since BMW showed the concept of the fourth-gen M3 at the Geneva auto show in March. (more…)

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BY STEVEN COLE SMITH, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE VALENTE

A new, old-school coupe for the high and mighty.

Interesting that in the literature for the new Bentley Brooklands, a limited-edition, even-more-upscale version of the Arnage, there’s little mention of the last Bentley Brooklands, a sedan sold from 1992 to 1997 that replaced the Mulsanne as the marque’s flagship. (more…)

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