It wasn’t too long ago that we were reporting about the all new American super car, the Devon Motorworks GTX set the single lap record for a production car at the historic Laguna Seca circuit in Salinas, California with a time of 1:35.075. Justin Bell, the owner of Devon, might have offended a few people at Chrysler when he gave them a low ball offer to purchase the Viper brand, because earlier today the American automaker tackled the infamous Corkscrew and managed to shave over a second off of the GTX’s lap time with an all new 2010 Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR and Chrysler engineer Chris Winkler behind the wheel. The hard core track tuned Viper unofficially clocked in at 1:33:915, not only good enough to reset the record, but bring a bit more value to Chrysler’s halo car. Press release and video after the jump. > More
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We haven’t reported anything lately on the Saab-Koenigsegg merger, thinking that the deal would be made sooner or later. But now, reports have been pouring that Koenigsegg has done a complete about-face and has decided that it would not be purchasing Saab anymore. In a statement it made moments after announcing its decision to drop talks with GM (Saab’s parent company), Christian von Koenigsegg said, "We regret that after six months of intense and goal-oriented work we have come to the painful and difficult conclusion that we are not going to be able to carry out the acquisition of Saab Automobile”. As you can expect, GM took the news rather hardly with a great deal of disappointed. While no tears were shed, GM President and CEO Fritz Henderson didn’t exactly mince his words in explaining the failed Saab transaction. “We’re obviously very disappointed with the decision to pull out of the Saab purchase,” he said. "Given the sudden change in direction, we will take the next several days to assess the situation and will advise on the next steps next week." Continued after the jump. > More
Much like Subaru, the Korean car maker Hyundai had a plethora of its Genesis Coupes on display at the 2009 SEMA show, however there were also quite a few examples of sport compact in other people’s displays both inside and out of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Now we have already shown you which ones we felt were the finest examples of the new two door rear wheel drive sports car, being the turbocharged Greddy version inside the ropes and the AQ Motorsports version all the way over in the Rotora booth.
Back at the Hyundai display, representing everything from the mundane to the insane Hyundai had a Tskuba White R-Spec version, a model that is easy on the pocketbook and has just the right parts to make it a true driver’s car; items like a turbocharged four cylinder engine, 19 inch wheels and a limited slip differential. Hennessey was in attendance with their Carbon Coupe and while the turbo V6 was impressive it looks like body work classes have been postponed until next semester at the Tuner School. Now Rhys Millen is the veteran in the Hyundai booth after last year’s RMR Genesis Coupe show car, so this year the bar was raised and the engine was moved back a few feet so that all eight cylinders could fit between the fenders. Although the new RMR Genesis Coupe was the most mechanically impressive vehicle of the group, the car’s one off front end was a bit too different, however the side mirrors, scoops and genuine carbon fiber body panels were quite nice. Check out the gallery below to see all our snapshots from SEMA.
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All this talk about new Subaru models is getting us here at Top Speed pretty excited, so much in fact that we just had to show the all wheel drive Japanese automaker’s setup from this year’s SEMA Show in Las Vegas. Being the world’s largest aftermarket car show Subaru pulled out all the stops and brought in everything from an SPT display car showing off all of the automaker’s aftermarket offerings to the ultra ridiculous snowmobile on steroids, Ken Block’s latest creation, the STI TRAX complete with carbon fiber sled in tow. Now those two tuner cars were impressive enough on their own, but when you consider that Subaru also had the infamous white and black Gymkhana car from all those internet videos and the golden boy Travis Pastrana’s number 199 rally car, Subaru showed off every conceivable application that there is for the STI. So no matter whether you are a do it yourselfer, if you have a wild imagination and want to make lots of smoke or if you want to use the Subaru Impreza WRX STI for what we all grew up watching it do; it is nice to see the automaker providing us with four extremely different applications of this very versatile high performance vehicle. Check out the gallery below to see all our snapshots from SEMA.
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Besides the WRX STI Special Edition, Subaru will also present at the Los Angeles Auto Show the 2010 Impreza WRX Limited model. It is based on the 2010 Impreza WRX Premium and adds a leather interior, standard moonroof and SIRIUS® Satellite Radio over the feature content of the Impreza WRX Premium model. Turbocharged excitement remains courtesy of the 265 HP, 2.5-liter turbocharged boxer engine powering Subaru’s Symmetrical All-Wheel-Drive system through a five-speed manual gearbox.
SpeedArt revealed the official details on the PS9 kit based on the new Porsche Panamera luxury sedan. The tuner has done intense modification under the hood, and as a result the PS9 kit can deliver up to 520, 550, 600 or 650 hp depending on the modifications made: modified turbochargers, sport-catalyst system, sport-exhaust with sound control and twin tailpipes, sport-airfilter and ECU-update.
The 650 hp version can sprint from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds while top speed goes up to 200 mph. The Aerokit includes: speedART front chin spoiler, side skirts, rear diffuser, rear air outlet and rear spoiler, 22" wheelset type LSC-FORGED Black-Matt-Edition. On the interior SpeedArt adds a sport steering wheel and carbon kit, aluminum F1-shift paddles, instrument backgrounds in various colors and specific floor mats.
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It’s not really the most ideal promotion to entice people to buy a new Panamera, but then again, free stuff is free stuff, no matter what it is. That’s right; the first 195 people who buy a Porsche Panamera in the US will also receive a free Porsche luggage set, valued at around $3,580. The highly-unusual promotion came as a result of the delayed release of the Panamera in the US, which came because of a malfunctioning software. To make it up to those that have been waiting longer than usual for the car, Porsche has decided to throw in some nice digs to the first 195 buyers of the Panamera. According to a spokesperson for Porsche, 72 of the 195 cars are already in dealerships with the rest of the 123 cars set to be delivered at the end of the month. Make no mistake, it’s a nice gesture by Porsche but we’re pretty sure that all those disappointed customers would want something more than just fancy luggages. Five-year free maintenance, perhaps?
The Ferrari 212 Inter was revealed in 1951 at the Brussels Motor Show as a replacement for the 166 and 195 Inter. The 212 was built between late 1950 and 1953, in Inter and Export model configuration. Ferrari built 82 units of the 212, more than any other Ferrari before. The 212 was offered in three different bode versions: berlinetta, cabriolet and coupe and carried coachwork by Ghia, Ghia Aigle, Pininfarina, Stabilimenti Farina, Touring, Vignale, and even the British firm Abbott.
The difference between the Inter and the Export version was made by the wheelbase: the Export version were built on a 2250 mm wheelbase chassis and they were normally carrying an E or ED suffix to the number, whilst the Inter road models were constructed on a 2600 mm wheelbase chassis in the odd number road car sequence, initially with an EL suffix, and then with an EU suffix. The 212 Inter were the first models equipped with left-hand drive as standard, as until then the standard steering layout had been right-hand drive, in the racing tradition. > More
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This is definitely not the first time that we have heard about a rebirth of the greatest Rotary Experimental model that the Japanese automaker Mazda has ever produced and we hope that it won’t be the last. It turns out that the Zoom-Zoom brand has been preparing a successor for their current rotary powered RX-8 sports car, and while some might say that the next evolution should wear an RX-9 badge, we are happy to hear that Mazda is considering to bring back the RX-7 moniker that was used from the beginning in 1978 all the way up until the 13B powered twin turbocharged FD3S was forced out of production in 2002. 
This is definitely something to look forward to, because if Mazda can get the RX-7 formula right again then we are in for a real treat. It was never the biggest or the most powerful of the super cars that cme out of Japan in the 1990s, but its spirited engine and nimble lightweight nature made it a threat to anything on the road. Just like the last generation model, the upcoming RX-7 will be a two seater sports car powered by a boosted rotary engine. If you think that a high revving twin rotor motor sounds like fun, then you ought to know that there is talks of using the same 1.6 Liter Renesis 16X Wankel design that was used in the 2007 Taiki concept, delivering an even 300 HP. The production version is expected to debut in 2011, however we expect to see a concept version a bit sooner.
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