Diesel Supercar Has 190-MPH Top Speed, 2,000-Miles Per Tank

Posted by George Kennedy  

@ BOLD RIDE                         

This may seem like an unorthodox claim, but all supercars are kinda the same. They have an engine placed behind the driver but ahead of the rear wheels, and usually run some sort of twin turbo V8, V10 or V12. Even the latest crop of hypercars are all forms of hybrids– everyone is copying everyone else. So what does it take to mix things up?

Changing the fuel would be one way to go. A small, British automaker is taking performance on in a different way, employing a diesel powertrain, capable of serious output, but also impressive fuel economy. It is called the Trident Iceni Magna, and it is set to change the supercar game.

The 6.6-liter turbo-diesel V8 puts out 395 horsepower, and an immense 700 pound feet of torque. It can get from zero to sixty in just 3.7 seconds, on its way to a top speed of 190 mph, making it the fastest diesel car in the world. It can also go 2,000 miles on a single tank of diesel.

Like other niche British supercars, the styling is heavily influenced by the Jaguar E-Type and various Aston Martin models. The Trident Iceni Magna costs $161,000, but if you seek more power, the company will build a track edition for an additional $50,000. That might seem like a lot, but it will have 660-hp and an insane 1,000 lb-ft of torque!

Corvette's Most Impressive Spec: Sales Acceleration

@BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

By Kyle Stock 

@ DIGITAL TRENDS 

---

                              Courtesy General Motors

 

The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible

Based on numbers alone, American roads still belong to the usual suspects. The top-selling vehicles in the first four months of 2014 were three brands of pickups, the Toyota Camry, and a bunch of cars trying to be the Toyota Camry.

A more interesting and eclectic list, however, shows the best-performing models—vehicles that have been accelerating fastest from their sales pace last year. We took the entire U.S. fleet, stripped out all-new models, and ignored offerings that sold fewer than 5,000 vehicles. Here’s how the field finished:
January-April

2013 vs. 2014: percent change in models sold (total vehicles sold)

• Chevrolet (GM) Corvette: +199% (11,693)
• Lexus (7203:JP‎) GX: +135% (6,546)
• Lexus IS: +119% (15,238)
• Buick Encore: +91% (15,040)
• Mercedes (DAI:GR‎) S-Class: +74% (7,278)
• Acura (7267:JP) MDX: +70% (19,777)
• Nissan (7201:JP) Juke: +68% (19,377)
• Lincoln (F) MKZ: +58% (12,272)
• Subaru (9778:JP) Forester: +54% (46,937)
• BMW (BMW:GR) X3: +53% (46,937)

 

Most notably, drivers are absolutely in love with the new Corvette, as is nearly every auto writer on the planet. Chevy pretty much knocked it out of the park and with a base price of $53,000, and the car is finding fans among regular people—drivers who aren’t centimillionaires, never noodle around a track, and haven’t the foggiest idea what a torque curve is. Meanwhile, Chevy production managers aren’t holding the line on inventory. It’s the peoples’ sports car, and they are supplying it as such.

The rest of the list is heavy on “updated” or even more aggressively retooled models. Each represents a win by the car companies behind them—vehicles that deliver what they promise, stoke some consumer passion, and shift into a promising slice of the market. (The angry new Lexus IS, it should be noted, is striking a similar chord as the Corvette.)

In a way, these are the most impressive cars of the moment. After all, Ford Motor could probably put out a cardboard F-150 and still sell 50,000 a month. Likewise, automakers have aggressively retooled plenty of models recently that failed to gain much momentum with buyers.
 
Toyota Motor, for example, rolled out a much improved Highlander SUV this spring, but sales are up only 23 percent this year through April. The story is similar for Kia Motors’ (000270:KS) new Soul, a mini-utility mash-up that looks like a tiny van.

The car certainly is not a flop, but its 17 percent increase in sales appears sluggish compared with Nissan’s Juke, which sits in a similarly quirky segment of the car market.

Supervettes SV7 Coming This Fall with “Well Beyond” 625 HP

Posted on 30 April 2014 by Jeff Perez 

@ BOLD RIDE 

Via: WorldCarFans                    

So far, we’ve yet to really see too many tuning houses take the new C7 Corvette and customize it to their own liking. But Florida-based Supervettes thinks the new Stingray needs some enhancing. And a widebody kit.

Announcing the arrival of its new SV7 on Facebook, Supervettes gave us a small sampling of what we could expect from the new tuned Stingray. Along with a revised hood line and a widebody kit, the SV7 will come with “well beyond” 625 horsepower and will “rival of the looks of the new Corvette Z06,” says founder Jason Hunkler.


Other features are still under wraps at the moment, but Supervettes did say that the new SV7 will be ready for sale beginning this fall. All we know is that if it looks anything like the SV8.R concept pictured here, that would be fine by us.



 

Racetrack-Ready $75,000 Camaro Z/28 Is Handful to Handle on Road

By Jason H. Harper 

@ BLOOMBERG NEWS 

 

 

Track-Racing the Fastest and Priciest Camaro Ever

The kid who delivers pizzas near my house in Pennsylvania drives a stock Chevrolet Camaro. The car has a V-6 engine and costs about $23,000. Sure, the interior is plated in plastic, but the high hood and low roof give it an angry expression that’s catnip to the muscle-car set.

I recently tested a Camaro at a racetrack in the Catskills. The car looked pretty much the same as the kid’s, except for a wing protruding off the trunk and aerodynamic carbon-fiber elements skimming the nose and rocker panels. It cost $75,000.

All my car-fiend friends think this special Camaro, called the Z/28, is brilliant. Even the snobs have swooned. Welcome to crazy town.
How did we arrive at a $75,000 Camaro? The price puts the Z/28 in contention with used Porsche 911s or a very new Chevy Corvette Stingray.

You could buy two Honda Motor Co. Acuras for that money, or a BMW M3. This generation of General Motors Co. (GM)’s Camaro has been on sale since 2009, and is on its way to a new underlying platform and a major refresh.

The punch line is that the Z/28 is specifically tailored for a racetrack, a throwback to a special racing model of the late 1960s. Talk about niche upon niche.

When I think of street cars I want to take on a racetrack, the Camaro doesn’t make the top 20. It’s next to impossible to see out of, feels numb when driven hard and is given to understeer. (Its brother, the Corvette, on the other hand, easily makes the top five.)

Photographer: Richard Prince/Chevrolet Photo via Bloomberg

 There is no race series that would let the Z/28 compete against one another, so the prospective customer goes something like this: You love American muscle cars; you have regular access to a racetrack; and you simply must combine these two passions.

Limited Production

Is there demand? Well, only 500 will be produced for the 2014 model year, Detroit-based GM says, and Chevy dealerships have already snatched those orders up because of keen consumer interest. It’s likely that some dealerships will mark up the price. Five times that many are planned for production in the 2015 model year.

Which still doesn’t explain how the new Z/28 came into being, unless you’ve ever spent a long dinner with a car engineer. (Advice: Avoid trying to turn the conversation to pop culture or other non-car-related topics.) Talk to their passion, though, and you’ll get an earful. For instance, these guys love to see how far an envelope can be pushed.

The Camaro’s engineers, basically, could not leave well enough alone. They’d already done a super-powerful version of the Camaro, called the ZL1, but the idea of a Camaro that handled better than any other was just too appealing.

Source: Chevrolet via Bloomberg

The interior is plated in plastic, but the high hood and low roof give it an angry expression that’s catnip to the muscle-car set.

The interior is plated in plastic, but the high hood and low roof give it an angry stance.

7-Liter Engine

So began the Frankenstein. First, the heart of a last-generation Corvette Z06, a 7-liter V-8 monstrosity, was further strengthened and dropped into its chest.

The suspension was put on the operating table next. The things that might make it reasonably comfortable on a normal street were done away with, sacrificed for stiffness and minimal front-to-back and side-to-side movement.

Weight is bad, so stuff that could be dispensed with, such as the air conditioner and radio, was chucked. A short-throw manual transmission was installed, and, crucially, carbon-ceramic Brembo brakes. You used to find these type of brakes only on exotic cars.
The final addition was special rubber.

 The Z/28’s P Zero Trofeo R tires from Pirelli & C. SpA (PC) look and act closer to racing slicks than regular road-legal tires. The front tires are wider than any ever put on a production vehicle, GM says, and there is barely any tread on them. This means they literally stick to the asphalt as they get hot. They are disastrous in the rain or cold, however.

Pre-Drive Doubts

The final result was the 505-horsepower Camaro I tested in upstate New York’s Monticello Motor Club. I certainly had my doubts. You can re-tailor an off-the-rack suit to within an inch of its life, and it’ll never fit as well as a custom job from the very beginning.
The temperature was in the mid-50s, and my first set of laps was on cold tires.

 Coming out of a turn, I pushed on the gas -- the engine is ferociously powerful -- and felt the rear tires begin to slip. A quick jiggle of the hands and I regained control. A colleague driving behind me wasn’t so lucky. He spun a Z/28 in the first 300 yards (274 meters), in the first turn, in sight of the pit lane and Chevy staff and other journalists.
 
Those tires simply had to be warmed up. The only way to do that, of course, is to drive on them. Yet by my third set of laps I still wasn’t feeling overly confident. I couldn’t see the front fenders of the car, so it was a matter of faith where I was placing the tires on the outside curbing. The rather numb steering didn’t help either.

Engineer’s Advice

Since the engineers were present, I had a talk with one about the best techniques to drive the Camaro. Most sports cars need to be finessed. Transferring between gas and brake is a delicate affair, as you don’t want to upset the balance of the car.

The engineer basically told me to stop treating the Z/28 like a sports car and more like a race car. Stab the brakes at the last possible opportunity, bound off the pedal, turn the steering wheel and trust that the big tires have enough traction to swing you through a turn.

In other words, be forceful.

The next lap, I warmed the tires up and then I let the Camaro have it. Hurtling toward a sharp right turn that opens to a straightaway, I kicked the brakes at the last possible second, then spun the wheel hard right. My body slammed into the seat belt, while the body of the car stayed level. The car sailed through the tight curve and cannonballed onto the straight.

I would brake later the next lap and later the time after that. The carbon-ceramic stoppers were beyond belief, and the traction from the hot tires was sublime. I could scare myself with a car like this.

Blunt Instrument

Race cars are different than road cars. Even a road car as advanced as the $845,000 Porsche 918 Spyder, which I tested late last year, has to be adept at many situations, comfortable in traffic and fast on a racetrack. That means compromises. A race car doesn’t need to serve those other masters. It can be a blunt instrument, single-minded in its pursuit of naked speed.
 
The current-generation Camaro has issues that simply can’t be solved. You’ll always feel like you’re driving a tank you can barely see out of. And I pity any buyer who plunks down his $75,000 (or more) and tries to drive the Z/28 up a steep driveway. Or worse, takes it out on a cold, rainy day.

But, as to the fair question of whether the Z/28 fulfills its narrow purpose of being a great car on the racetrack, I have only this to say: I can’t wait to get it back out there again.

The 2014 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 at a Glance

Engine: 7-liter V-8 with 505 horsepower and 481 pound-feet of torque.
Transmission: Six-speed manual.
Speed: 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds.
Gas mileage per gallon: 13 city, 19 highway.
Price as tested: $75,000.
Best feature: As close as you’ll likely get to a road-legal race car.
Worst features: Hard to see out of, still heavy and numb steering.

2008 Dodge Challenger “Superbird” Custom Makes a Bold Statement

Posted by Zach Doell 

@ BOLD RIDE                          

Buying a rare muscle car is a pipe dream for many auto enthusiasts, but for those of us with significantly less than six or seven digits of disposable income, the opportunity isn’t very bright. That is unless you can build your own, which is exactly what Joel Highsmith did with his custom-built 2008 Dodge Challenger Superbird, named “Grizz”.

The car is Highsmith’s modern-day nod to the original Plymouth Road Runner Superbird, which debuted in the 1970s to homologate entry into the NASCAR Sprint Cup. But where original 426ci Superbirds retail for about $500,000, Highsmith’s can claim his is a priceless one-off.

Grizz comes fitted with a supercharged 408ci V8 that packs 17lbs of boost and produces over 1,000-horsepower to the rear wheels. The Challenger body wears a custom Superbird kit, reminiscent of the pointed snout and tall rear wing of Mopar’s original bird. All totaled, these enhancements will catapult Grizz all the way up to 200 miles per hour.


In an interesting kink to the story, the car was stolen in San Bernardino, California earlier this year. Local police found the car days later in a bust that recovered at least six other vehicles as well. Grizz was in pieces, but fortunately everything was undamaged and Highsmith hopes to get it rebuilt soon.

Paint Scheme Preview: Talladega

@ YAHOO SPORTS

 
                   

By Staff report

" SPRINT CUP SERIES PAINT SCHEMES "

 

David Gilliland will drive the No. 38 Love's Travel Stop Ford.

 

Michael Waltrip will drive the No. 66 Blue/DEF Toyota.

 

Josh Wise will drive the No. 98 Dogecoin/Reddit.com Ford.

 

Austin Dillon will drive the No. 3 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet.

 

Kasey Kahne will drive the No. 5 Farmers Insurance/Thankamillionteachers.com Chevrolet.

 

Danica Patrick will drive the No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet.

 

Tony Stewart will drive the No. 14 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet.

 

Clint Bowyer will drive the No. 15 PEAK Antifreeze/Motor Oil Toyota.

 

Greg Biffle will drive the No. 16 3M Window Film Ford.

 

Kyle Busch will drive the No. 18 M&M's Pretzel Toyota.

 

David Ragan will drive the No. 34 KFC Go Cup Ford.

 

JJ Yeley will drive the No. 44 All City Leasing and Warehouse Chevrolet.

 

.Aric Almirola will drive the No. 43 Gwaltney Ford.

 

AJ Allmendinger will drive the No. 47 Bush's Beans Chevrolet.

 

Jimmie Johnson will drive the No. 48 Lowe's Valspar Reserve Chevrolet.

 

Michael McDowell will drive the No. 95 Jordan Truck Sales/Black Dragon Tools Ford.



NATIONWIDE SERIES PAINT SCHEMES "

 

Darrell Wallace Jr. will drive the No. 20 ToyotaCare Toyota.

 

 

Dakoda Armstrong will drive the No. 43 WinField Ford.
 

 

2015 Dodge Challenger Preview

@ YAHOO AUTOS

       

Fast Facts:

• Styling updates inspired by 1971 Challenger
• New paint colors, stripe options, wheel designs
• New 8-speed automatic transmission
• Redesigned dashboard and new seats
• Upgraded infotainment and safety technology
• Scat Pack option adds 475-horsepower V-8 engine

Introduction

Though its styling receives only minor changes, the 2015 Dodge Challenger is thoroughly updated with a new interior, new technology, and new engine and transmission upgrades. This large 2-door performance coupe is offered in SXT, R/T, and Scat Pack trim, in escalating levels of power and performance.

Exterior Features

Dodge says the 2015 Challenger's styling updates are influenced by the 1971 Challenger model. On the outside, that means a new split grille treatment and split LED taillights, along with revised colors, stripes, and wheel designs. The hood is also new, featuring cold-air induction for the Challenger SXT and offering an available "Shaker-style" format for R/T and Scat Pack versions. Modern touches include new LED halo running lights and LED taillights.

Interior Features

Inside, the flashback to 1971 continues. Dodge calls the cabin driver-focused with a retro-themed "high sill" center console design. New Tic-Toc-Tach gauges surround a standard 7-in. driver information display within the primary instrumentation, and the new dashboard supports the addition of Dodge's Uconnect 8.4 touch-screen technology, a first for the Challenger.

Buyers choose from a long list of new interior color treatments, and the seats are available with several different upholsteries, including a new Houndstooth cloth.

Optional Features

Dodge offers an extensive menu of options for the 2015 Challenger. In addition to safety and technology features discussed in greater detail below, highlights include performance-bolstered front seats, premium leather or leather/Alcantara upholstery, heated and ventilated front seats, heated power tilt-and-telescoping steering wheel, heated folding side mirrors, and HID headlights.

Additionally, buyers can opt for a power sunroof, premium 18-speaker audio system with 900-watt amplifier, power sunroof, and a variety of paint, stripe, and wheel combinations.

Under the Hood

The 2015 Dodge Challenger SXT is equipped with a 3.6-liter V-6 engine making 305 horsepower and, thanks to a standard cold-air induction hood design, 90% of its 268 lb.-ft. of maximum torque from 1,800 rpm to 6,400 rpm. An 8-speed automatic transmission with a Sport mode is standard, and die-cast zinc paddle shifters are optional. It takes a Challenger SXT less than 6.5 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph, according to Dodge.

The Challenger R/T models have a 5.7-liter "Hemi" V-8 engine making 372 horsepower with the 8-speed automatic and 375 horsepower with the 6-speed manual gearbox. With the automatic, Fuel Saver Technology shuts off half of the engine's cylinders under certain driving conditions in order to conserve fuel.

 A functional shaker-style hood with cold-air induction is optional. Dodge says the Challenger R/T accelerates to 60 mph in about 5.5 seconds.

A 6.4-liter "Hemi" V-8 from the Challenger SRT is installed in the new-for-2015 Challenger Scat Pack model. Cranking 485 horsepower and 475 lb.-ft. of torque, this engine gets the Challenger to 60 mph in a claimed 4.5 seconds on the way to what Dodge asserts is a top speed of 182 mph. A manual transmission is standard, with an 8-speed automatic transmission optional.

 To make best use of the available power, the Challenger Scat Pack models include an active exhaust system, performance brakes, performance suspension, launch control, 3-mode stability control, and 20-in. lightweight forged aluminum wheels wrapped in performance tires.

In other news, all 2015 Challengers feature a new electric steering system with Normal, Comfort, and Sport modes. The Challenger SXT and R/T trim levels can also be upgraded with a Super Track Pak for 2015, which includes a 3.07 axle ratio, lowered performance suspension, steering and braking upgrades, 3-mode stability control, and 20-in. wheels with performance tires.

Safety

Dodge adds several safety-related features to the 2015 Challenger. New upgrades include rain-sensing wipers, automatic high-beam headlights, adaptive cruise control, forward-collision warning, blind-spot monitoring, and rear cross-path detection. The 2015 Challenger is also available with 911 Call/Assist technology, which automatically summons rescuers in the event of an air bag deployment.

Technology

The Challenger's new 911 Call/Assist feature is a part of a free trial to Uconnect Access services, which also supports voice texting and access to thousands of global radio stations, as well as making it possible to transform the Challenger into a mobile Wi-Fi hot spot. It is a part of the optional Uconnect 8.4 infotainment system, which features an 8.4-in. color touch screen and can be upgraded with new 3-D navigation technology.

Challenger buyers can also get Dodge Performance Pages, viewable on the car's touch screen, on their brand-new retro muscle car, which includes launch-control technology plus the ability to record 0-to-60 acceleration times and track lap times, as well as measure maximum g-forces when taking corners.