Jaguar’s taken another step into AMG and M territory with the new XFR-S, which promises to take the already-beloved XFR and make it faster, sharper, and even more likely to encourage sketchy behavior and reckless hooniganism. Which means it just might wind up being our new favorite four-door. (more…)
It’s been a hot minute since we heard anything from Toyota’s AMG-like performance division TMG, and now we can see why: they’ve been hard work turning the Lexus LS into an S63 AMG-fighting monster. Time well spent, gang. Time well spent. (more…)
It’s been a while since Jaguar offered a stick shift in any of their cars here in the United States—the last manual Jag we can recall here is the XJ220, though our brains also keep distracting themselves with the mental image of Austin Powers nutting himself on his E-Type’s gearshift. But the drought will soon be over: Jaguar brand director Adrian Hallmark said the car maker will be bringing back the manual gearbox in the near future. (more…)
Note: This story first ran on our sister website, rides-mag.com. Hence the watermarks.
When Audi invited us to upstate New York for a day of eating fancy food and driving their new S6, S7 and S8 performance sedans on some of our favorite roads last month, who were we to say no? We’ll have full reviews on these cars in the future, but in the meantime, we wanted to share our first impressions about Audi’s three new Teutonic terrors. Spoiler alert: We really like them. (more…)
While the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy may be fading from the news, trust us—the damage inflicted on the New York/New Jersey area hasn’t gone anywhere. Thousands of homes and dozens of neighborhoods still lie damaged or destroyed from Long Island to Atlantic City, and tens of thousands of people still need help. So we’d like to thank Ferrari for auctioning off North America’s first F12berlinetta for Sandy relief during the United States Grand Prix last weekend.
To their credit, the wealthy USGP attendees did their part as well; they drove bidding on the F12berlinetta (which has a base price of $315,888) up to $1.125 million. Combined with other donations made to Ferrari’s fund, and the total amount being given to the American Red Cross to help with Sandy relief reached a little more than $1.5 million.
Of course, Ferrari isn’t the only car company donating money to the Sandy relief efforts. As The New York Times discovered, plenty of other carmakers have been ponying up the dough:
->BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Toyota each donated $1 million to the American Red Cross
->Volkwagen and Hyundai each donated $500,000 to the American Red Cross
->Mazda donated $100,000 to the Red Cross, and also made $5,000 grants to two food banks
->General Motors donated $250,000 to the Red Cross Disaster Responder Program, as well as donating 50 Silverados and Express cargo vans to the Red Cross
->Ram (i.e. Dodge Trucks) donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross, along with 20 Ram 1500 Tradesman trucks
->And Ford donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross, as well.
Good to see the car industry helping out.
[via Ferrari]
Press Release:
First Ferrari F12 Berlinetta Delivered To U.S. Sells For $1.125 million, over $1.5 million raised for the American Red Cross
As it has already successfully done in the aftermath of recent natural disasters in Japan and Italy, Ferrari has once more moved to support relief efforts, raising a total of over $1.5 million for the American Red Cross society to help the areas most afftected by the Hurricane Sandy superstorm.
The first F12berlinetta to be delivered in the U.S. was sold for $1.125 million at auction on Saturday at a Ferrari event in Austin, Texas during the Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix weekend. Since the superstorm hit two weeks ago, Ferrari had already raised a further $345,000 in in-kind donations thanks to the generosity of dealers, clients and friends. During the auction a further sum of over $50,000 was raised through on-line and personal donations bringing the total of fund-raising activities to over $1.5 million.
The F12berlinetta, the most powerful production car in the history of the Prancing Horse, debuted in the U.S. at the Concours d’Elegance of Pebble Beach earlier this year to critical and public acclaim. The first delivery is due in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2013 and there was strong participation in the auction with a starting bid of $315,888 that quickly rose to $1.125 million thanks to bidders who were both in attedance in Austin and who pre-arranged to bid via phone.
It is still possible to make donations to the superstorm relief efforts through the America Red Cross society’s website in a dedicated Ferrari area: https:american.redcross.org/ferrari
Update: An Instagram user caught the new Cayman under the barest of neigligee (really, more pasties than anything else) in Los Angeles, so we’re pretty much considering it a lock that the car will appear at the auto show.
In a hardly unexpected but still delightful announcement, Porsche says they’ll be debuting a new compact sports car at the Los Angeles Auto Show on November 28th. If you’re thinking it’ll be the new Cayman, you’re almost certainly right. (more…)
It’s been a while since Audi sold the RS4 on these shores. In fact, it’s been a while since they sold an RS model here in the United States at all. Now, the RS5 recently began making its way to America, which we’re grateful for, but it wasn’t the RS we had our heart set on. No, we wanted the RS4—444 V8 horsepower in a sexy wagon body. (more…)
We’ve been following the C7 Corvette with all the enthusiasm you’d expect from a magazine that mentioned Corvettes on the cover five times out of a total run of 15 issues. (more…)
