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Showing posts with the label Motor Show

The Week in Cars #3

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All the best from the New York Auto Show 2018. The NY show this year was, despite the Koenigsegg Regera poster car, not festooned with hypercars and track specials. The focus was more on practicality, with two pairs of classic rivals fighting it out for the sales advantage, if we're being brutally honest. Jaguar and Maserati both unveiled performance versions of their first SUVs, while Mercedes-AMG and Audi went into classic super-saloon warfare. The RS5 has been timed at 3.2s to 62, proper supercar pace. The Audi RS5 Sportback is a 4-door version of the dull Coupé version, and so is just as powerful, nearly as quick and slightly heavier, at 1840kg. That means 444bhp, 443lb ft of torque, 0-62mph in 4.1s claimed. You can read the whole story on it by clicking  on these words. These two are classic saloon rivals, representing sensible vs stupid. The Mercedes C63 has been given a mid-life facelift, and by clicking on the link, you can learn the 503bhp monster's whole s...

Why Germany is in a Super-Saloon Civil War at the NY Auto Show

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The Audi RS5 Sportback and the facelifted Mercedes-AMG C63 are both revealed at the New York Auto Show. Jaguar unveils the F-Pace SVR. The Audi RS5 Coupé hasn't been given a lot of love by journalists, and has been criticised far and wide for being dull and aloof. Audi's answer to this is the new Sportback version, with four doors, a first for the RS5 (although a regular S5 bodystyle) and normal RS innards. That means a 2.9l biturbo V6, also found in some Porsche models, producing 444bhp and 443lb ft of torque, and rocketing the 1840kg (slightly more than usual) RS5 Sportback to 62mph in just 3.9s, which is two tenths tardier than the Coupé (although TopGear has timed that car at a ludicrous 3.2s), and on to an electronically capped top speed of 155mph, or if you tick certain boxes, 174mph. Pricing starts at around 63 grand. We've got high hopes for this one if they can sort the chassis. Naturally, however, in the German holy trinity of £60k super-saloons, it isn...

The Week in Cars #1

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Geneva Motor Show report and the death of the Audi R8. The Geneva International Motor Show doesn’t need a whole lot of introduction. It is the pinnacle of jaws hitting the floor. Not exactly surprisingly, Geneva last year did nothing short of amazing everyone, with new supercars being the main name of the game. The gleaming machines littered the halls, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that 2018’s GIMS had, despite the weight-reducing efforts of the show cars, a LOT to live up to. Luckily, however, the high rolling cars managed to roll even higher, with the first two days being a frenzy of track-focused hyper and supercars, as you shall see.  As a recap, last year gave us the McLaren 720S, Ferrari 812 Superfast (nope, still sounds weird), Lamborghini Huracán Performante, and much more in the way of start-up electric cars. This is a report on this year’s contenders, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the article. The first thing to come racing onto the showstands was, after a...