Cars are like songs.  Like music, they make terrific, pleasing melodies.  Occasionally, they can seem ground-breaking and fresh when, in reality, they sample or draw inspiration from something that was truly original decades ago. As revolutionary as Porsche’s Panamera sedan was for the sports car brand back in the 2010 model year, it wasn’t the […] More »

Ferrari says the blown 3.9-liter V8 in the California T is the “first turbocharged engine with zero turbo lag.”  You would think that a company that makes championship-caliber Formula 1 racers, famously red sports cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars would be soft-spoken and modest.  Go figure. Automakers and tuners have been turbocharging […] More »

The letter S must stand for “superpowers” behind the doors of Bentley’s Crewe factory.  If it doesn’t, it should.  Those magical English artisans have found a way to make more than two tons zip around a corner without them ending up in a ditch. At 5,060 pounds, the Continental GT V8 S is a real […] More »

Outrageously powerful cars are almost always cool, but not all of them are interesting. Christian von Koenigsegg’s newest example of rolling hyperbole is both. This car is so over the top, it doesn’t just make 1,341 horsepower.  It generates one megawatt. Maximum torque from the revised twin-turbo 5.0-liter V8 is 1,011 pound-feet.  And that’s without […] More »

There was a time—many moons ago—when a four-door Porsche just didn’t exist.  The face-flatteningly fast Panamera certainly changed that.  (Ahem… So did the once-blasphemous Cayenne SUV.)  Long before that car, the 928 was a completely foreign concept to the Teutonic firm.  Its front-mounted eight-cylinder power plant was a radical departure from the rear-engined 911’s flat-six. […] More »

As a car guy, the only thing I like seeing more than a dramatically styled automobile is a scantily clad, attractive woman.  I’ll admit there’s nothing novel about that.  Lots of heterosexual men have the same interests.  And Lexus must know that.  It’s combined the seductive movements of Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Lisalla Montenegro with […] More »

Convertibles are wonderful, aren’t they?  You can take in the limitless expanse of sky above you, hear the wildlife singing a few feet away.  All while the wind tousles your hair and the sun warms your skin.  If you were to do that in the 2013 Audi RS 5 4.2 Cabriolet, you’d be overlooking something […] More »