2015 MCLAREN 650S SPIDER REVIE

The McLaren 650S Spider does absolutely everything well. This technological masterpiece will go from 0-62 MPH in 3 seconds flat, and a top speed of 204 MPH will have anyone in the passenger seat shrieking in delight (or maybe panic). On the road, the 650S turns and stops better than just about anything else, and no matter where you park it you’ll draw a crowd of earnest admirers

You want this car. Obviously. The only question is, do you want it bad enough to lay down one-third-of-a-million bucks for it, compared to everything else on the market

Power and performance

The 650S is the latest supercar from McLaren Automotive. The 650 stands for the car’s Pferdestärke rating (roughly equivalent to horsepower), the S is for Sport, and the McLaren means Magnificent. Like past offerings from the exotic car company, the 650S is a pure supercar where price is no object and performance is paramount

Digging right in where it counts, the 650S is powered by McLaren’s own 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 engine, designated the M838T. The engine weighs just 438 pounds owing to its all-aluminum construction, and features a dry sump oiling system commonly found on racing cars. The engine also gets the usual array of nifty features including new development work on the heads, pistons, valve timing, and so on

Most of the engine work, but not all of it, is designed to bring more power to the car throughout the engine’s power band — which stretches all the way up to a shrieking 8,500 RPM. You get four engine/transmission modes: Normal for around-town driving, Winter for driving in poor conditions, Sport for enthusiastic driving, and Track for obvious purposes. Most of the difference in these modes comes in the transmission, which will change its shift points and behavior to match the mode 

you’ve selected

Sport mode contains a gimmicky feature that’s pure entertainment: In this mode, the engine will cut spark for a moment on full throttle upshifts. This produces a bolus of unburned fuel in the exhaust stream. That fuel is ignited when the spark comes back, creating a burst of flame out the back and a delightful pop. Sure, it’s a trick, but it’ll put a grin on your face every time

The transmission is McLaren’s own 7-speed twin-clutch Seamless Shift Gearbox (SSG). Development on this unit has made upshifts lightning fast. McLaren isn’t lying about seamless, either. Upshifts are so smooth you have to listen for them, because at anything less than wide-open throttle, you won’t really feel them

Downshifts give you a satisfying sense that someone (not you) is actually rowing down through the gears with a tight clutch. McLaren gives you a set of paddles to select your own gears, but don’t kid yourself; with the exception of knowing in advance that you want to take off like a bullet, the car shifts itself far more expertly than you can ever hope to achieve

Oh, you get launch control, too. Don’t use it at Cars & Coffee

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You Can Buy Your Own Audi R8 Race Car Starting September 21

For $446,000, this Le Mans-ready Audi can be yours

Back at the Geneva Auto Show, Audi unveiled the Audi R8 LMS, the 2016 Audi R8-based race car. About half of the R8 LMS is comprised of parts from the production model, while the other half includes a GT3-spec roll cage and other racing equipment

However, to conform to racing regulations, the R8 LMS is rear-drive, not all-wheel like the street car. The 5.2 liter V10 makes 585 bhp in race spec (the street V10 makes 540 hp, with the V10 Plus cranking out 610). The body of the car is fitted with all kinds of race-ish goods, including a fixed rear spoiler, wide body extensions, and a plethora of air intakes fitted to the newly-angular R8 bodywork

Audi just announced the pricing for the R8 LMS today. For €398,000 ($446,000 at today's exchange rate) you can buy this race car and never drive it around town because it's not street-legal at all—but if you've got a pit crew and a team of drivers, you can drive it for several hours in any of a number of endurance racing series worldwide

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The 2016 Mercedes DTM Car and the C63 Edition 1s Are Inspired

by each other. Which came first, the DTM or the Edition 1

After Mercedes released sketches of its new DTM car (based off the new Mercedes C63 coupe), we 
were quite taken with the badassery of the design

Said Ulrich Fritz, head of Mercedes-AMG DTM, the team has "used the unique, sporty design language of the street version of the new C-Class Coupé on the DTM version. Striking features like the dynamic design of the headlights and also the typical AMG twin blade grille of the C 63 AMG Coupé stand out immediately

In fact, it seems that the German carmaker is so taken with their new DTM car, they have also released details on the newest special edition C63 AMG models. Named the Edition 1 specials, they are the road cars inspired by the race car that was inspired by the road cars

The Edition 1s will wear the same gray and yellow paint as the DTM, and will feature many racing gimmicks you typically see on these racing-inspired road cars: AMG-specific side skirts and a rear diffuser, a larger front splitter, and performance seats. While this is all well and good, power still remains the same and we wistfully remember how the very special C63 AMG Black Series was hint: not just a racing spinoff

Both the DTM car and the Edition 1s are set to launch later this month, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, where we'll find out if the Edition 1 will cross the pond

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The Twin-Turbo 2017 Porsche 911 Carrera S Sounds Awesome

Still raspy, still guttural, but with a new whooshy element

​After Porsche revealed the twin-turbo direction for its incoming 2017 Carrera and Carrera S models, we were happy that the manual transmission was sticking around. However, as proper car people, we also want to know how the new variant will sound. By way of design, turbochargers muffle an engine's sound and reduce redlines. 

In a video NewCarsTest uploaded of the new twin-turbo Carrera S, the raspy and guttural growl of the flat-six remains so at idle. Once the car takes off, though, you can hear the unmistakable sound of turbos spooling up

From the cabin, things sound good, too. CompleteCar.ie takes a passenger ride along in the new Carrera around the Hockenheimring race track in Germany. The Porsche test driver claims there is no turbo lag, but until we drive the car for ourselves, we're skeptical

With these new face- and engine-lifted base models, Porsche seems to have gone for a more track-oriented philosophy. Previous Carrera and Carrera S owners will be familiar with the Sport and Sport Plus driving modes, but the newest 911s don't stop there. In addition to the Sport Plus mode, which adapts the dampers, suspension, throttle response, and exhaust, the Carrera is now equipped with four-wheel-steer like the 918 Spyder 

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Audi A8

The Audi A8 is a four-door, full-size, luxury sedan car manufactured and marketed by the German automaker Audi since 1994. Succeeding the Audi V8, and now in its third generation, the A8 has been offered with both front- or permanent all-wheel drive—and in short- and long-wheelbase variants. The first two generations employed the Volkswagen Group D platform, with the current generation deriving from the MLB platform. After the original model's 1994 release, Audi released the second generation in late 2002, and the third and current iteration in late 2009.

Notable for being the first mass-market car with an aluminium chassis, all A8 models have used this construction method co-developed with Alcoa and marketed as the Audi Space Frame.^[1]

A mechanically-upgraded, high-performance version of the A8 debuted in 1996 as the Audi S8. Produced exclusively at Audi'sNeckarsulm plant, unlike the donor A8 model, the S8 has been available only in short-wheelbase form and is fitted standard with Audi's quattro all-wheel drive system.

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