Cars in the Fast Lane

The N in N400 stands for Nürburgring, where Aston Martin has raced the V8 Vantage N24 in the annual 24-hour endurance race held on the track. It’s also where the Aston Martin tests cars that are under development and where the N400 has reached a sub-8-minute lap time. The “400″ refers to the car’s power. It produces 400 horsepower and 309 ft-lbs of torque with it’s 4.3L V8 engine.

The DB9 LM celebrates Aston Martin’s GT1 class win at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Finished in Sarthe Silver, each of the coupes features the Touchtronic 6-speed transmission.

Source: Autoblog

Although it looks like a family car, Audi has released a monster. The RS6 has very unique styling with the performance of a supercar meant for every day use.

Pushing out 580-horsepower and 480 lb-ft of torque from it’s V10 engine, it explodes from 0-62 in a mere 4.6 seconds and features a permanent four wheel drive. It also features a 6 speed tiptronic transmission.

It’ll be available in Europe in April, 2008.

Source: Autoblog

The Porsche 911 Turbo is often called the most reliable supercar, one that can be driven every day unlike Ferraris or Lamborghinis.

The Turbo version of the 997 series featured the same 3.6 L twin-turbocharged engine as the 996 Turbo, but this time it developed 480 PS (353 kW) and 620 N·m (457 ft·lb_f) of torque. This was in part due to the 997’s new variable-geometry turbocharger, which essentially combines the low-rev boost and quick responses of a small turbocharger with the high-rev power of a larger turbocharger. As well as producing more power and flexibility, the new turbocharger improved fuel consumption over the 996 Turbo. With these performance upgrades, it accelerates to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3.9 seconds (3.7 with the Tiptronic transmission) and reaches a top speed of 310 km/h (193 mph). However, these are official figures and Porsche is notable for being conservative about their power and performance ratings. Motor Trend Magazine has clocked the 997 Turbo’s 0–60 mph time in 3.2 seconds with the Tiptronic S transmission. The optional Sports Chrono overboost package increases torque to 680 N·m (502 ft·lb_f) for short periods (maximum 10 seconds) but over a narrower rev range.

The 997 Turbo features a new all wheel drive system, similar to the one found on the Porsche Cayenne. Featuring PTM (Porsche Traction Management) the new system incorporates a clutch-based system which varies the amount of torque to the front wheels, regardless of wheel slip front and rear. This, according to Porsche, aids traction and the handling by redirecting the torque to control oversteer or understeer, thus resulting in far more neutral handling, as well as greatly improved performance in all weather conditions (as opposed to older AWD system which gave the Turbo stability under hard acceleration).

The 2001 E46 M3 appeared worldwide with the new 3.2 L S54B32 engine. At the time of the car’s introduction, this engine had the highest specific output naturally aspirated engine ever made by BMW, producing 343 PS (333 SAE net hp (252 kW) in North America) and 365 N•m (262 ft·lbf) of torque. Read the rest of this entry »