Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari and Lamborghini star at Geneva
Well, we may be in a recession, and the mainstream auto industry may be trying to show it is environmentally clean – which it could have done five years ago – but the makers of exotic cars are still going mad, building faster gas-guzzlers.
Aston Martin, which is normally in the supercar class, has decided to go up a notch with the Aston Martin One-77, a wild-looking coupe with a 7.3 liter V-12 engine delivering over 700 bhp. This car will be made the same way as Aston Martin’s racing cars, one by one, not on a production line. It has a carbon fiber body structure, so will be light ad stiff. If you need to ask the price, it is not for you.
Lamborghini straddles the supercar and exotic car markets, but the new Lamborghini Murcielago LP 670-4 exotic car is at the top of the tree. It has a more powerful engine than in the other Murcielagos, is lighter, and has four-wheel drive like all the other Lamborghinis.
Not to be outdone, Bentley is introducing the Supersports, a two-seater version of the Continental GT Speed supercar with the power output raised to 630 bhp, and the weight reduced by about 200 lb – not much on a car weighing two tons. But Bentley did not want to design a new body, or shorten the existing one.
Ferrari has also introduced a limited-edition model called the F599XX, which is a modified version of the F599 Fiorano, with reduced weight, impressive aerodynamics, the latest in electronic driver assistance to allow less experienced drivers to go round a race track very fast, and more power – 700 bhp at 9,000 rpm. In addition, composites and carbon-fibre have been widely used with aluminum to reduce weight.
if that sounds a bit extreme, what about an Audi 2.5 liter sports car with 340 bhp? Powered by a new five-cylinder engine, the new sports car is the fastest TT yet. It is equipped with four-wheel drive, but it remains to be seen how this car handles - generally, Audi TTs with four-wheel drive handle as if they had front-wheel drive which is not good.
This is the newest version of the TT, the Audi TT RS, which is set to stir the sports car market.