Fresh after news Thursday that Hyundai wouldn’t be making a new sportscar and Kia would be, the latter Korean automaker said it has put on hold its plans to make a four-door coupe until 2017, AutoExpress is reporting.
The first sportscar from the Kia brand would likely be on the Genesis platform and could offer a range of engines all the way up to a V-8.
The GT4 is still a half-decade away, apparently.
Ivan Sentch, the New Zealander who is 3D printing an Aston Martin DB4 and building the car in his garage, is back at it after a two-year hiatus, he told us today.
In an email, Sentch said he’s moved into a new house and is bringing the car back into the garage where he’ll pick at the project, bit by bit, until he’s done.
“It’ll just be a couple of hours at night after the kids go to sleep but you’d be surprised how much you can get done doing just a little bit each day,” said Sentch.
Kinda puts our Facebook meandering before bed to shame, really. Read More >
Kia’s chief in the U.K. says the automaker will have a new sports car by the end of the decade, Autocar is reporting. Hyundai probably won’t.
The two reports roughly detail a global business case the Korean is making for a small, lightweight sportscar that would be sold worldwide and further positioning for the brands.
According to Kia’s chief in the UK Paul Philpott, the car would be based on knowledge gleaned from the Stinger GT4 concept car.
Audi just unveiled its newest super sedan, the S8, and said that the new all-aluminum car would get an 85 horsepower bump and would sprint from 0-60 in under four seconds.
The turbocharged 4-liter V-8, which can make 553 pound-feet of twist and is only about as deep as a case of beer, just became the eighth wonder of the known universe.
Topped only by FIFA, the two next-least trustworthy international sports associations have joined forces today to speculate that we could see Formula E cars race through Tokyo streets for the glory of games and country in 2020, according to F1Insider (via Road & Track).
The original report, which was written in German, says FIA executives pitched the idea to Olympic organizers and offered the Formula E cars for competition.
Canadian driver Jacques Villeneuve said he would “definitely” participate and added that 30 years ago tennis wasn’t part of the Olympic program, but now it’s a staple.
But that’s not even the best part.
*Unless it isn’t.
According to Lotus CEO Jean-Marc Gales, the next-generation lightweight Lotus two-seater sports car has a future in the United States around 2020 — that is, if Lotus is still around then.
The chief executive spoke to Automotive News and said the Elise could be adapted to the U.S. market’s famously fussy safety regulations, which eventually killed the current-generation Elise in 2011 in the States.
This isn’t the first time Lotus has teased us. Remember the Esprit (pictured above) that was definitely going to be a thing? Yeah, um, I guess that one is still in the mail, huh?
The latest creation as part of Rolls-Royce’s Bespoke Collections might as well have come from the Fox-body-loving garage of our own Sanjeev Sajeev Mehta. Showered in a svelte shade of heavy-metal brown, this Wraith ‘Inspired by Music’ model is just as inspired by the Brown Car Appreciation Society as it is Rock & Roll.
According to CAR (via AutoGuide), the next round of Porsche Boxsters and Caymans will have turbocharged, four-cylinder powerplants ranging from 240 to 370 bhp. Porsche could also position a base model Cayman below the Boxster depending on region.
The British outlet says the Cayman and Boxster will become four-cylinder-only affairs, except for top-end specials such as the GT4.
Spyker — the former Saab owner, F1 contender, and builder of aircraft-inspired supercars — has emerged from moratorium and plans to merge with Portland, Oregon electric aircraft manufacturer Volta Volare, said the company in a release on Thursday.
As part of Spyker’s future plans, electrification seems to be the common theme, whether it be for airplanes or automobiles. Now silver-tongued Skyper CEO, Victor Muller, only needs to find an electric train company to complete the set for a modern movie remake.
Yesterday, we reported that in a sales call, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced a referral program that could, possibly, maybe net one free Model X for someone who referred 10 new buyers.
The qualifications for getting the free car: Refer 10 buyers by Oct. 31 and be the first in your “region” to do so.
Turns out “region” doesn’t mean what we think it does.
Mercedes-AMG released a new batch of “spy” shots of its C63 coupe testing at Hockenheimring in Germany, AutoGuide is reporting (via Facebook).
The coupe, which will be unveiled in August ahead of its first public appearance at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, looks remarkably similar to the C-Class sedan from which it’s based.
Dodge will roughly double the number of Charger and Challenger Hellcat models it makes next year and will significantly change the way dealers can order the 707-horsepower model in the future, the company announced Monday. Dodge also announced that it would be cancelling nearly 900 unfulfilled 2015 orders and honoring those prices for 2016.
Dealers will begin taking new orders for the super-performance cars sometime around Aug. 10 and will only be allowed to order their specific allocation. According to Automotive News, reports surfaced last year of Dodge dealers accepting deposits for many more Challenger and Charger Hellcat models than they were allotted.
Dealers will begin receiving Hellcats in September through February.
If the fight to save manuals is going to continue for much longer, it had better make gains in one of its historically important battlegrounds.
Only around 1 in 4 new BMW M3 models have a manual transmission, according to the manufacturer. That’s a steep drop from the reported 53 percent of buyers who opted to row their own in the last-generation M3 sedan — and the news for the manual M4 doesn’t get much better.
Feel bad for the guy whose brand-new car gets smashed less than a mile away from the dealership? We do. Apparently, so does Mazda.
Jalopnik has a great story about a new 2016 Mazda Miata owner whose car met an all-too-soon end less than a mile away from the dealership. The ends were smashed, the driver and passenger were bruised (but luckily not seriously) and one of the first new Miatas fell victim to an F-150.
You’ll never guess what Mazda did next.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles formally filed its initial public offering on Thursday to spin off Ferrari into its own separate company.
The filing doesn’t specify price or number of shares to be offered when the shares are publicly available sometime after Oct. 13.
Roughly 10 percent of the company will be publicly traded, with the rest of the company remaining under control of existing FCA shareholders and Piero Lardi Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari’s son and current vice chairman.
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