#SuperCars

Let’s stop beating around the bush. The Porsche 911 Turbo S is slow.

At first, the upgrade from a proletarian, 370-horsepower 911 to the 540-horsepower 911 Turbo sounds momentous. But, pfft. Puh-leeze.

The 911 Turbo S should therefore be the answer. 570 horsepower. Nought to 60 in 2.9 seconds. 205 miles per hour.

But I remain unimpressed. You remain indifferent. The Porsche 911 Turbo S is found wanting.

Porsche recognizes this. Porsche has heard our demanding cries for a genuinely fast car. This is the Porsche 911 Turbo S Exclusive Series. It is very exclusive, very expensive, and finally, the 911 Turbo S is sufficiently quick.

Engineering a vehicle with the Nürburgring in mind doesn’t always produce the most enjoyable on-road driving experience, but it often results in one hell of a performance machine. The NIO EP9 electric supercar was already the fastest EV ever to grace the track, which is a feat in itself since the Tesla Model S proved itself incapable of maintaining full-trust for the duration of the 14-mile track. However, after taking another stab at it, the NIO is claiming the EP9 is now the fastest production vehicle ever to grace the track — gas or electric.

Under what NIO admitted to being perfect conditions, the EP9 completed the course in 6:45.90. That’s over 19 seconds quicker than its pervious lap time and 6 seconds quicker than the Lamborghini Huracan Performante’s. The EP9 also bested the Radical SR8LM, which is not globally street legal and only slightly more useful for daily-driving duties than the space shuttle.

Thanks to the increasing wealth of the world’s elite, supercars have remained in fashion. Ferrari profits surged upward in the first quarter of 2017 as the Italian automaker continued a scheme designed to gradually accelerate volume.

The brand’s net income over the first three months of 2017 climbed to 124 million euros ($135 million) from 78 million euros during same period last year. Meanwhile, overall revenue increased 22 percent to €821 million, helped largely by engine sales to Fiat Chrysler’s Maserati — the car you buy when you wanted a Ferrari, but fell just shy of being able to afford one.

Here is sentence that nobody has ever uttered: “Honey, you have to take the kids to school in the McLaren today because the Kia is in the shop and it’s our only other mode of transportation.”

Despite this, the automaker that has continuously brought the world road-going hypercars and track day darlings has also considered building a car with a backseat for quite some time. While most supercar manufacturers have at least mulled over something for the entire family, McLaren seems among the worst-suited for the task.

Ford Motor Company has started production of its 2017 GT supercar.

The first example of Ford’s next-generation halo car completed assembly earlier this morning at Multimatic Incorporated in Markham, Ontario. Vehicle number one rolled off the factory floor today to go home with Executive Chairman Bill Ford.

“When we kicked off 2016, we had two primary objectives for our Ford GT supercar — to excel at Le Mans, and to start deliveries before year-end,” Raj Nair, executive VP and head of Ford’s product development, said at the event. “We’ve achieved both.”

After I spent some time with the McLaren 570s, the British supercar company’s entry-level model for North America, I asked Jack Baruth if he thought the 675LT was worth $200,000 dollars more than the 570S.

I’d driven the 675LT around Los Angeles back in January and Jack’s driven both cars as well. The 570S’ performance impressed me, but I wanted the opinion of someone with more experience driving six-figure sports cars than I do.

Jack’s reply was simple: “Yes, it is.”

I don’t have the income to afford either car, but I realized two things upon consideration. The first was Jack was correct: if I had $400,000 to spend on a car, I’d probably go with the 675LT. Though edging into diminishing returns, the differences are noticeable to even a ham-fisted driver such as myself.

The second realization: at around $200,000, the 570S is a bargain.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will offer five limited-edition versions of the 2017 Dodge Viper before it brings the axe down on the model.

Orders kick off on June 24 for the V10-powered performance beast, with FCA cranking out up to 217 units before it puts an end to the model’s 25-year run. The model bows out the same way it came in — brash, colorful, and obsessed with performance history.

If you missed your chance getting into a limited edition Ford GT supercar last week, your EcoBoost-powered dreams might not be over.

Dave Pericak, director of Global Ford Performance, recently told Autocar that the 600-plus horsepower heart of the GT could beat on — in other low-volume specialty models.

The auto show press conference is a strange phenomenon. More often than not, it’s an executive from a foreign land, reading what is likely his third or fourth language from an obvious teleprompter, getting ready to introduce a car that we’ve all already seen at a “preveal” party. He’s typically using words like “social media,” “lifestyle,” and “aspirational,” all to describe a car that will likely sell less than twenty thousand units — if it even makes it to market.

The speeches are full of safe, non-threatening language, and normally take place in front of screens that rotate stock photos of happy multicultural families enjoying life on sunny, non-homogeneous days. The music is more Wagner than Bach, with thunderous bass and drums booming through speaker systems that even The Darkness might look at and say, “That’s a bit excessive.” And then, finally, a wall lifts and a car appears through a screen of smoke to thunderous applause from a press corps that can’t wait to rewrite the embargo materials already in their collective inbox.

So when Masahiro Moro, President and CEO of Mazda North American Operations, calmly stood next to his gorgeous new creation last week, with little fanfare or adulation, and said these words in while standing front of a black wall, accompanied only by the silence of the room, I believe he did it purposefully. Here’s what he said:

“Other companies have become quite successful by not caring if their cars are boring or not.”

Mic drop. And you know what? Moro-san is absolutely right.

The rich are different. They have nicer things. – Leonard Schreiber, DVM

I try to avoid superlatives unless the object of said superlatives is, well, truly superlative. In this case, however, they may be applied without reservation. The McLaren 675LT is an extraordinary car, with performance capabilities exceeded by fewer than a handful of very limited production vehicles. Perhaps what makes it most extraordinary, though, is just how well it performs as an ordinary car.

Guidelines for the new Australian V8 Supercar series outline specifications for its new cars, including an option to use smaller engines for the manufacturers who compete.

According to the racing series, the new platform “allows more flexibility in terms of body style and engine configuration, provided they comply with the regulations. The V8 engine, which has been mandated for more than 20 years, is also expected to continue as the dominant power plant of the sport.”

The guidelines allow for 4-, 6- or 8-cylinder engines, as long as they meet power specifications. The plans also call for a minimum noise limit of 85 to 95 dB. Take that, Bernie.

Mercedes-Benz keeps moving their high-end sports cars down market just as the company keeps making their high-end sports cars more attractive. The SLR McLaren was absurd in more ways than one, and it took a couple of vehicular lifetimes for Mercedes-Benz to rid themselves of all the copies they built.

The SLS AMG, on the other hand, was a bold yet tasteful maneuver into a more reasonable supercar sector, where prices are closer to $200K than $400K, and if by reasonable we mean the domain of Ferraris with eight, rather than twelve, cylinders.

The new AMG GT, on the other hand, has an advertised base price of $129,900, just ten grand more than the new S-Class Coupe and some $21,000 below the price of a Porsche 911 Turbo. Two different AMG variants of Mercedes-Benz’s own SL-Class have significantly more costly points of entry.

Not surprisingly, then, Mercedes-Benz sold more copies of the AMG GT in its first month on sale in the United States than the SLS AMG ever managed at any point in its tenure.

This headline is as true as any other you’ve read over the past few days.

Finally. The Veyron is done.

Bugatti reportedly sold the last Veyron, a car which will be displayed at the Geneva auto show in March, to a customer in the Middle East.

Volkswagen-owned Bugatti’s 450-unit production run comes to a close after nearly a decade of delivering cars to customers. Although the cars routinely sold for more than $2M, Bloomberg referenced Singapore-based analyst Max Warburton who believes VW lost €4.6M per car, more than USD $5M.

Unlike the detailed sales reports we see each month from Volkswagen of America’s namesake brand, Veyron-specific numbers were never formally reported. Automotive News reports that approximately one-quarter, or 113, of the Bugatti Veyrons produced ended up in the United States.