Nurburgring

It seems like the news of 4-door supersedans won’t stop. After Koenigsegg and Bugatti announcing there planns for a 4-door production car, the leaders of this supercar category got caught testing together. The Porsche Panamera and Aston Martin Rapide did several laps together on the famous Nürburgring.

The presentation of both cars is planned for the Geneva Motorshow next year. The buyers of the Porsche will have the choice between 3 engines starting with a 3.5 liter six-cylinder producing 300 bhp from Volkswagen, Porsche’s own drivetrain with 350 bhp and a with twin-turbo with 560 bhp. That last one is meant to compete with the Mercedes Benz CLS 63 AMG which is running on 514 bhp.
The Aston Martin on the other hand is sharing it’s platvorm and V12 engine with the DB9’s but will have 480 bhp instead of the 450 in the coupé Aston Martin. Scroll down for more pictures of the battle on the Ring!

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The complete stock version of the Corvette ZR1 lapped the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 7:26,4 last week. Showing once again the importance of a good laptime at the Ring, GM can be proud with their Corvette ZR1’s performance at the Ring. Japanese rivals as the Nissan GT-R that did a 7:29 ring lap last month, but also high-powered expensive supercars as the Pagani Zonda F and Porsche Carrera GT bite the dust.

The ZR1 was completely stock except for additional communications and safety equipment, according to Corvette’s chief engineer Tadge Juechter. The record ZR1 has the exact same tyres and ride height as the streetlegal and production ZR1 that will begin production at the Corvette facility in Kentucky in a few months from now.

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Spy shots of an undisguised Audi TTRS have emerged from the Nurburgring. Some of the features that Audi have used to differentiate the car from lesser models include a new curved spoiler, crome effect wing mirrors and two wide exhaust pipes. The car will have 2.5 litre Twin-Turbocharged five cylinder petrol engine which should produce around 350bhp. The purpose of the twin turbo is to counteract the effect of the turbo lag caused by just having one big turbo. As such one Turbo will be smaller than the other, providing boost at lower revs. Audi’s Dual Clutch DSG gearbox will also help the car reach a goal of 0-62mph in under 5 seconds. An obvious contender would therefore be the Porsche Cayman. There is currently no word on when the car will be available for customers, however the price is expected to be around £40,000.

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This is probably episode 100 in the story around a stronger R8 than the current V8 FSI. We saw it burning down a while ago, later it got spotted and unoffially confirmed. This time the R8 V10 got spotted close to the Nürburgring. Only two pictures were made but we can clearly see this is not the “all-day” V8 we are dealing with! Question is, when will Audi finally confirm that the V10 is going in production?

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The Nürburgring is known as the test-circuit for almost every new car and if we look to our frontpage poll our readers decided it’s best circuit out there. Doing a lap at least once in your life is a must, ofcourse on a public day, and then you don’t have to try to break a record. Sometimes the circuit is closed for lap-time records or just for testing a new car as we mentioned before. Two weeks ago we showed you the lap time record of the Cadillac CTV-S and today we can show you the Nissan GT-R going around the track, in a rather nice time, 7 minutes 29 seconds.

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Remember that we told you that the Cadillac CTV-S clocked the amazing time of 7:59.32 on the famous Nürburgring. Remember we told you that we would show you the entire video of the run, well here you go!

GM Says

To clarify, the car had no performance or operational modifications outside of what we intend to offer in production. We did have a couple of customary safety precautions, as the first goal of our testing is always to keep drivers like John safe. The car had a harness bar upon which a 6-way racing safety belt system was mounted. We also had a fire supression unit on board. These things add a little bit of weight to the car, certainly not helping performance any. Stock tires, too.

Cadillac isn’t the brand wherefrom we expect to see something super sportive, but this Cadillac CTS-V is getting ready to change this. What’s better to demonstrate the performance than to break the Nürburgring lap record for a production sedan. GM claims a time of 7:59 minutes. Confirmation of the record run will be released in the coming days with a video of the entire run.

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With the car being spotted more and more around the Nürburgring, MotorAuthority managed to make a nice video of the car testing. The details of the car stay unclear at the moment but recent speculation suggests that the car could get power from a V12 pushing out approximately 480 bhp (358 kW/487 PS) which could potentially push the luxury sedan to 62 mph (100 kmh) in 5.5 seconds. The sound coming out of the exhaust pipes and the engine is promissing a lot! Enjoy the video after the jump!

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As you can read in the title, the Nissan GT-R managed to do a lap on the famous Nürburgring or Nordschleife in only 7:29 minutes, which makes him join the fastest car on the Ring. This amazing time was set with a production ready GT-R driven by testdriver Tochio Suzuki. The time is not only nice but also bad news for the European supercar producers. Especially when you know that the GT-R V-spec sprints around the track in ly 7:25 minutes… Press release after the jump…

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Recent pre-production shots of the Aston Martin Rapide testing at the Nurburgring show the four door sedan to have a ‘panoramic style’ windscreen. The glass stretches right from the front windscreen of the car, all the way to the back hatch, opening up the sky view to all passengers. Evidently, the car is still in the production process but the lack of camouflage suggests that it is progressing nicely into a full production ready car, the last time it was spotted in public was in the snow.

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After the N400 version of the Aston Martin V8 Vantage coupe that was released at the Frankfurt Motorshow two months ago, Aston Martin has now added a N400 version of the V8 Vantage roadster to the lineup aswell. The N400 is a limited edition version of the Vantage made to celebrate the achievements of the race version of the V8 Vantage (V8 Vantage N24) at the Nurburgring 24 hour race in june of this year. The 400 equals the horsepower the upgraded 4.3 liter V8 produces.

But it’s more then just a fancy name and a bit more horsepower that makes this N400 version special; next to the engine upgrade, better exhaust and air intake the N400 comes with a sports pack consisting of lightweight aluminum wheels, better (read: sportier) springs and dampers, a new bonnet, sideskirts, clear tail lights and a bright grille. The sports pack also includes some interior features like satnav, Bluetooth and heated seats. Last but not least you will find N400 badges featuring a tiny map of the Nurburgring on both the outside and the inside of the car.

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The sedan version of Audi’s most powerful A6 has been spotted on the roads around the Nurburgring this week. Normally car producers release a sedan version first and then follow with a break version, Audi however did it the other way around with their latest RS models. At the release of the new Audi RS6 Avant at the International Motorshow in Frankfurt two months ago, the production of an Audi RS6 sedan was still uncertain. But with this latest video in hand we expect the RS6 sedan to make it’s way to the dealers in mid/late 2008.

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