#supercar

Those in the Glass House have a deep well of history from which to draw, perfect for crafting low-volume special editions for their raciest machines. This time around, Ford is giving a nod to its 1966 lightweight experimental prototypes, showing up at the Chicago Auto Show in the form of a natty red Ford GT supercar.

Ferrari F8 Tributos are a rather exclusive ride already, and at $277,000 or thereabouts, it stands to reason. German tuning specialist Novitec ups the ante on the F8 Tributo, both in performance and appearance.

The Hennessey Venom F5 supercar has been unveiled in advance of 2021 customer deliveries. The all-new Venom F5 is built to deliver what the company declares is an exhilarating all-around driving experience, coupled with unparalleled performance. With its power, low weight, and vehicle dynamics, the F5 brags about its handling, and how you may have a truly visceral experience behind the wheel.

McLaren says circumstances have encouraged it to get fairly aggressive in its restructuring efforts. Coronavirus lockdowns forced the company, like so many others, to postpone production and forego sales.

While an undesirable scenario for any manufacturer, McLaren Group already faced additional headwinds by being a relatively small manufacturer dependent on low-volume specialty products with astronomical price tags and having its racing program kneecapped the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

Aston Martin is canceling is mid-engined Valkyrie racer and stalling EV development until 2025 as it reassess both the racing and industry landscapes. The Valkyrie was originally scheduled to commence its racing career in Silverstone this fall, before moving on to the main event — the 24 Hours of Le Mans — in 2021. Now, the company says it will halt development on the racer while it reorganizes under new investor Lawrence Stroll (Red Bull is out) and the Racing Point F1 team.

This appears to leave Toyota as the only big-boy factory team participating in the LM Hypercar division for its introductory season. Despite assurances that factory LMP1 teams had an interest in the class, they haven’t been clamoring to get involved. Peugeot and Glickenhaus are technically still in the running, though neither appear to have expended the same kind of cash as Toyota or Aston and are likewise presumed to pull out before the season starts.

This must be confusing for the FIA, as Hypercar was seen by the World Endurance Championship as an affordable alternative to P1 while also allowing manufacturers to adhere more closely to signature body styles that the prototypes would allow. It was assumed automakers would love this, as it allowed for more direct marketing ins and some overlap with the prototype cars.

Ford Motor Co. announced Thursday that it will extend production of the GT due to popular demand. While it might not move like the F-Series, which saw more than 450,000 deliveries over the first half of the year, we suppose it has done alright for a domestic supercar that costs half a million dollars. More than 6,500 applicants signed up for a chance to own a piece of the initial allotment in 2016. But Ford notes that was before the car took overall victory at Le Mans 24 Hours later that same year.

The GT’s run will now include 1,350 examples, 350 more than Ford originally planned, and stretch out an additional two years.

It wouldn’t be a supercar without some risk of getting burnt. Those performance limits are far beyond the capabilities of most owners, after all.

This time, however, the threat of conflagration is real.

According to Ford, certain copies of the GT run the risk of dribbling hydraulic fluid from the lines feeding its adjustable rear spoiler. Since the car’s centrally-mounted exhaust tips are located in close proximity, this problem could set the whole works ablaze.

Last week I had the good fortune to spend a couple of days with Andrew Comrie-Picard, wheeling some gnarly Jeeps and riding along in psychotic 600-horsepower rallycross cars at a GRC event in Seattle. The Jeeps growled like Chewbacca on a bad fur day, while the rallycross cars felt like a freight train speeding up my spine and coming out my ear.

As with all good conversations, the topic frequently centered on cars. On the way to drive Jeeps, ACP posed a great question: What’s your definition of a supercar?

Originally slated for first-ogling at March’s Geneva Motor Show, Pagani shared its new Huayra Roadster with the world a month early, which keeps in with the Italian supercar tradition of if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

As with the hardtop, the Huayra ‘vert uses a carbotanium monocoque but comes with a removable glass targa top and some performance improvements made on the molto speciale Huayra BC. That means the roadster keeps the coupe’s seven-speed sequential gearbox and the 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 from AMG, but receives a bump in output to 754 horsepower and 738 ft-lb of torque.

Even though the DB11 highlights a marked transformation for Aston Martin, there are still a few sexy dinosaurs milling around its factory floors. The Vanquish is one of those dinosaurs and, last November, Aston debuted a 580 horsepower S coupe to keep it from supplicating for its own extinction. This month, the British automaker hacked off its roof to bestow unto us the Vanquish Volante S.

Unless your supercar is completely ridiculous-looking — and Aston’s tasteful examples typically are not — converting one into a droptop is a straightforward way to ruin its grandeur. Fortunately, Aston Martin has a decent track record with convertibles, thanks in no small part to bulging rear fenders and abundance of inoffensive style.

I stood face-to-fascia with a childhood dream, thanks to a tangential connection to Houston’s 2016 Lamborghini Festival. And yet, like all designs born pure and modified to remain relevant, the original Lamborghini LP400’s purity of form is sometimes absent in this time capsule, all-original LP5000.

But please believe that, LP400 or no, it took every fiber of my being to avoid the typical auto journo blather on this sheet of vellum.

Countless hours of development, design and construction. Exacting details wrought in boardboardrooms and wind tunnels. Exotic materials, experimental engine designs, hand crafted bodies. The goal?

Simple. Make the fastest car in the world.

But even if a designer or firm achieves that goal, they don’t necessarily have a winner on their hands. Even when the facts and figures support one supercar design over another, intangibles often decide which one will be a success.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some superlative automobiles over a few decades and see how fate played out.

TTAC’s membership in the Ford GT club just got a whole lot less exclusive (sorry, Sanjay), after Ford Motor Company announced an extension of its supercar production.

Ford Performance will tack on another two years of GT production, meaning thousands of jilted would-be buyers still have a chance to score the carbon fiber beast.

If you’re looking to get into a cutting-edge vehicle and would like to wait until 2019 before driving it, the Tesla Model 3 isn’t your only choice.

Ford announced today that the limited edition GT is gone from shelves for the next two years following an avalanche of applications. Only 500 of the limited edition supercars will be produced for the 2017 and 2018 model years, meaning a long wait for those with cash in the bank but a dodgy reputation.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was working for a crazy little company in Fremont, California in 1995. One day the boss-man pulled up in a shiny new Acura NSX. It was low. It was foreign. It was cool. Little did I know the bitchin’ Acura in the parking lot would upset the supercar apple cart.

Twenty-five years ago, Honda put the big-boys on notice with a fast, economical and reliable supercar. Yes, reliable and supercar can be used in the same sentence without irony when speaking of a first-generation NSX.

If you set the way-back machine to 1990, you’ll realize it was a different world. Supercars were rear-wheel drive, few made more than 300 horsepower, and a modern Volvo wagon would probably eat them alive on a track. By the time the NSX was euthanized in 2005, the competition had more than caught up and Honda decided its resources were best used elsewhere.

For 2017, Acura has resurrected the NSX name and applied it to an all-new mid-engine coupe, but can it fill the big shoes left by its predecessor?