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• xXx Performance Audi R8 V10 GT-X650 is a Shiny, Happy Road Burner

  In Tuning / By Tom Anderson / 13 June 2013

  

  The Audi R8 may not be the most attention-grabbing or face-flattening supercar on the market, but it is one of the most user-friendly. And it’s also one of the most popular with tuners. Over the years, we’ve chronicled dozens of tuned R8s with custom treatments running the gamut from mild to way-beyond wild.

  Obviously, this blue-chrome-wrapped V10 example from Germany’s xXX Performance skews much closer to the latter end of the spectrum. But this Audi supercar hasn’t just been treated to a cosmetic makeover. No, it’s also got more power to let it take on much more formidable adversaries.

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• Sunshine State of Mind: Vossen Wheels Attends Nurotag 2013 [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 5 June 2013

  

  Though maybe not as recognizable as the likes of BBS, OZ Racing or even HRE, Miami-based Vossen Wheels has been building stylish, high-end alloys for all sorts of cars for over a quarter century. What’s more, their current range features deep, concave centers, meaning you don’t have to worry quite as much about spacers and offset when you want to add fatter rolling stock. And if you ask us, their designs strike a nice balance between clean and distinctive.

  So you can imagine how much attention the company grabbed when it brought an eclectic herd of rides inland for this year’s Nurotag show. The event commandeered a parking structure on the University of Central Florida’s Orlando campus and filled it with some of the sickest Benzes, Inifinitis, Volkswagens, Hondas, Hyundais and more that the Sunshine State has to offer. And, perhaps coincidentally, many of them seemed to be wearing Vossen rims. To paraphrase one of Mr. T’s more recognizable coworkers, Vossen loves it when a plan comes together.

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• Still Speeding: Britain’s Baddest Tuner Cars Frolic to the Sounds of Sway [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 28 May 2013

  

  Even though Great Britain’s national tree is the speed camera and driving and parking in Central London other major city centers is, in some cases, more expensive than buying enough bicycles, helmets and scrotum-squishing shorts to mobilize an army of self-righteous sprocketheads, the Land of Hope and Glory still manages to have a rather healthy tuning scene. So healthy, in fact, that the lads at the YouTube channel XCar (and presumably a couple other media outlets) managed to gather a whole gaggle of tuner cars at the former RAF and USAF base at Bruntingthorpe to wring them out. Naturally, they got lots of footage of each, but what to do for a compilation video?

  Set it to music of course! In this case, they picked “Still Speeding (Kill the Noise Remix),” a track from homegrown rapper Sway. And even if the soundtrack isn’t your cup of tea, we hope the stylish cuts of hopped up Porsches, Audis, BMWs, Fords and more are. Why else would you have clicked “Play?”

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• For Your Consideration: The Audi A1

  In Sponsored / By Staff / 16 May 2013

  

  There are a lot of Audi’s to choose from and it can be a bit confusing to figure out which one will suit you and your lifestyle. The Audi A1 came out in 2010 so it still one of the most recent Audi’s to grace our roads. With a fuel economy of 72mpg, CO2 emissions of 99g/km, and starting at just under £12,000, its one of the most economical choices.

  Like many new cars, there are added features which you can choose to have if you want too. Those recommended by magazines such as Auto Express are the 6.5 inch screen, stop-start, privacy glass (a big plus on cars now), MP3 connection and cruise control. Its best features are its brakes, handling and ease of driving, not to mention the overall technology.

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• Gran Turismo 6 is Playstation 3-Bound This Holiday Season [w/ Videos]

  In Video Games / By Tom Anderson / 15 May 2013

  

  After a gestation so lengthy that Axl Rose was quoted as saying “What the hell is taking Kazunori and crew so long?”, Gran Turismo 5 finally arrived in November of 2010. And while it was without question a tremendous game with gorgeous graphics and a mammoth car list, it felt, in many respects, rushed. Hard to believe when you consider it came out almost six years after Gran Turismo 4, but things like a new-but-half-baked damage model, continued use of angry appliance exhaust sounds, woeful under-utilizations of the WRC, NASCAR and Top Gear licenses and, perhaps most aggravating of all, many times more “Standard Cars” (i.e. models ported from GT4 and the Gran Turismo title for the PSP) than “Premium Cars” (i.e. brand new car models built from many thousands more polygons and featuring fully-modeled interiors) left many longtime fans of the franchise feeling underwhelmed, if not out-and-out cheated.

  So you can imagine our skepticism when we heard rumors that the father of Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi, and his team at Polyphony Digital would not only be revealing Gran Turismo 6 sooner rather than later, but also bring it to market by the end of the 2013 calendar year. Well, following a massive press event (which also served to celebrate the series’ 15^th anniversary) at England’s Silverstone Circuit earlier today, we can report there’s more than a little truth to those rumors. More than a little truth, and some gorgeous, gorgeous visuals.

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• Set Phasers to “Fun”: Spocks Old and New Ham It up in Audi Advert [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 7 May 2013

  

  For a television series that only ran for three seasons and garnered rather lukewarm ratings, Star Trek has proven quite profitable for creator Gene Roddenberry and his heirs. This is due in no small part to the fact that the franchise enjoys one of the sci-fi community’s largest and most vocal fanboy and fangirl armies. But we reckon it also stems from a long line of iconic characters and the gifted actors who portray them.

  One of those characters is, of course, Spock. The mostly logical and emotionally-distant half-Vulcan, half-human chap has only been played by two men throughout his existence: Leonard Nimoy and, beginning with the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie, Zachary Quinto. Audi of America has brought both actors together in this quite hilarious spot that showcases the Audi S7 and its principal competitor, the Mercedes-Benz CLS. Normally we consumer goods company/upcoming movie cross promotions (Star Trek Into Darkness hits theaters May 17^th.) as cynical, forced-looking-and-sounding cash grabs. But this? This. Is. Gold. Bravo Audi and Misters Nimoy and Quinto.

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• Flat Chat Fever: Audi R18 e-tron quattro Longtail Testing Sounds Amazing [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 2 May 2013

  

  It used to be that racecar builders like Alfa Romeo, Porsche and Ferrari would construct special low-drag “longtail” versions of their sport prototypes for high speed tracks like Le Mans, Daytona and Monza. But as those tracks were reconfigured to reduce vehicle speeds, the need for such extended-rump specials disappeared; the last one we can think of is the McLaren F1 GTR Longtail of the late 1990s. This makes us sad.

  However, the fact that Audi has created a longtail version of its R18 e-tron quattro diesel-electric hybrid (set to debut at this weekend’s 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps) has turned our frown upside down. And this video taken by Italian racing paparazzo 19Bozzy92 makes our smile even bigger. It shows Audi’s latest LMP racer blasting right past Monza’s tight first chicane and hauling the mail through the long, sweeping Curva Grande at a speed our cameraman estimates to be above 211 mph. And that sound? Just plain incredible! If we close our eyes we can almost picture that 3.7L V6 turbodiesel is wooshing its way through turn 1 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the back of a Dallara DW12. Oh well, maybe it is in some parallel universe (maybe the one where we’re behind the wheel of it).

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• MS Design Readies Audi S4 ‘A46′ for Top Marques Monaco 2013

  In Tuning / By Ari Cox / 19 April 2013

  

  The B8 Audi RS4 is only offered in Avant flavor, or in more plain speak, wagon body style. So, what’s a saloon (sedan) aficionado to do? Austrian tuner MS Design thinks they have the answer. Their Audi S4, dubbed the A46, serves up 450 horsepower and can sprint from 0 to 62mph in just 4.5 seconds on its way to a top speed of 178 mph. The engine tuning kit from MS adds a whopping 117 horsepower to the all aluminium-alloy 3.0L TFSI supercharged V6 engine.

  But the fun doesn’t stop there… A stylish body kit adds a new front and rear fascia with red accents, more pronounced fender flares, side skirts with black accents and a rear deck lid. A height adjustable sport suspensions drops the car down on the 20 x 8.5-inch lightweight alloy wheels.

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• The Top 25 Homologation Specials of All Time

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 18 April 2013

  

  Purpose-built racing cars – be they single seat open wheelers, sports prototypes, dragsters or any other automobile whose sole reason for being is to compete – have always inspired awe and been capable of extraordinary performance. But when it comes to truly connecting with the fans in the stands, these thoroughbreds are no match for production-based (even if it’s just the shape of the body) machinery. The idea of watching a particular car win a race and then walking out to the parking lot and driving home in or driving to the local dealer to check out an identical (save for some safety and performance equipment and a whole heap-o-decals) car holds widespread (if not universal) appeal.

  Of course, to stand a better chance at winning on Sunday so they can sell on Monday, manufacturers load their showroom-bred competition models with go-fast bits. However, many sanctioning bodies used to require (though, sadly, very few still do) that those same upgrades to be fitted to a certain number of the street-legal models Joe Bloe can buy, meaning the factories have to sell what are known as homologation specials in order to race that model. The annals of automotive history are brimming with such four-wheeled entry forms, yet we’ve managed to pare that manifest down to the 25 fastest, coolest and most outrageous ones ever to wear a license plate.

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• Rocket Chip: Chris Harris Discovers What an ECU Tune Can Do for His Audi S4 Avant [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 9 April 2013

  

  One of the virtues of owning a modern car is the fact that, if you want extra power under the hood, you might not even have to open the hood to add some. Re-flashing a vehicle’s ECU (engine control unit) is often as simple as plugging a computer or specialized programming module into the OBD port, turning the ignition on, transferring the new code into the ECU, and hitting the road with newfound oomph. It almost seems too good to be true, right?

  Well, Chris Harris is known for his healthy skepticism with regards to most things automotive. So he wasn’t expecting the guys from REVO Technik would be able to do much with his new-to-him Audi S4 Avant. But as you can see in the video above, the REVO geeks were able to turn Harrismonkey’s Audi wagon up at least one notch (the same notch as a new, much more expensive RS4 Avant, as it turns out), simply by rearranging some zeroes and ones. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: These are the good old days.

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