Home / Posts tagged 'Ferrari'

• Art inside Art: Putting a Ferrari 512 BBi in Your Living Room [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 23 May 2013

  

  You’ve probably seen Los Angeles-based architect Holger Schubert’s home before. We even included it in our “Top 25 Coolest Garages” feature just over one year ago. It’s just that amazing.

  But what’s up with the old gray exotic that always seems to be parked in the garage/living room? That would be Schubert’s personal Ferrari 512 BBi. Ferrari never actually sent and iterations of the Berlinetta Boxer family to North America, but plenty of dealers and individuals have imported these flat-twelve-powered beauties over the years. And Schubert certainly knows a thing or three about beautiful objects.

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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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• ALMS 2013: Back to Back Wins at Laguna Seca for Muscle Milk

  In Motorsports / By Andre Ravinowich / 13 May 2013

  

  The American Le Mans Series travelled once again (and sadly for the last time) to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca this past weekend. And for the second time in 2 years, the #6 Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a driven by Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf took the top step at the podium. This was Luhr’s 43rd victory in ALMS, making Lucas the winningest driver in ALMS history.

  Luhr and Graf battled for the entire 4-hour race with the #12 Rebellion Racing Toyota powered Lola B60/12 driven by Neel Jani and former F1 driver Nick Heidfeld. Jani had actually set the fastest time in qualifying the previous day with a lap time of 1:13:429. Both Rebellion and Muscle Milk took turns leading the race, trading places 3 or 4 times throughout the 4-hour battle.

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• Revozport Gives the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta Some Carbon Fiber Jewelry

  In Tuning / By Tom Anderson / 8 May 2013

  

  The Ferrari F12 Berlinetta is just the latest in a long, proud line of front-engine, two-seat V12 grand tourers. It belongs to the same bloodline that such classics as the 275 GTB/4 and 365 GTB/4 Daytona and late-model masterworks like the 550 Maranello and 599 GTB Fiorano do. Of course, none of those can deliver the kind of eye-popping performance that the F12 can; a 730hp 6.3L V12 and 7-speed dual-clutch transmission will do that, you know…

  So Ferrari’s latest autostrada eater is quite desirable. But is it possible to make it even more desirable? Some tuners have certainly tried, but what if all you want is a set of subtle upgrades that only the most perky-peepered Prancing Horse pedants will perceive? Well Revozport offers a possible solution.

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• Hublot MP-05 LaFerrari Watch is the Hypercar of Timepieces [w/ Video]

  In Watches / By Tom Anderson / 24 April 2013

  

  Say what you will about its name (but do keep in mind the old saying, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”), but the Ferrari LaFerrari (or simply LaFerrari, otherwise you’ll be saying “Ferrari the Ferrari” in Italian) is one hell of an automobile. Its neck-snapping styling, V12 and hybrid system one-two punch and limited production status have already made it a classic. And the first customer delivery hasn’t even happened yet!

  But what if said customers want to have the LaFerrari experience even when they aren’t near their LaFerrari? No, it doesn’t involve uncorking those 900+ horsepower or negotiating turns as the active spoilers flap away. However, it does involve a super stylish engine-inspired watch that looks like no timepiece we’ve ever seen before. And it comes courtesy of the Swiss artisans and Hublot.

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• Scaglietti Alarm Clock: Waking up with a Ferrari 250 GT Lusso [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 22 April 2013

  

  Owning a classic Ferrari like, say, a 250 GT Lusso, looks like a tremendous amount of fun. But it also looks like a tremendous amount of stress. And almost all of that stress stems from the current values of classic Ferraris. The worth of these cars affects things like service costs and insurance rates, and can engender paranoia about using them on the open road. That last one is most unfortunate but, in this present epoch of drivers who are texting, grooming, eating, fornicating and doing pretty much anything else you can imagine that isn’t driving, it’s also rather prudent.

  But what if you took the other motorists out of the equation? No, we aren’t talking about unleashing a killer supervirus on the world and keeping the vaccine all to yourself, but we are talking about taking your megabuck vintage Italian stallion out in the middle of the night or really, really early in the morning. That’s the strategy of James Chen, who owns an example of aforementioned Lusso and also, as it happens, Axis Wheels. There might be drawbacks to this strategy that are worse than having to get to bed and/or waking up earlier, but we can’t think of any at the moment. After all, the Lusso’s lines are lusty to the point of being quite distracting.

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• 2013 ALMS: Muscle Milk Pickett Racing Victorious at Long Beach…Again

  In Motorsports / By Andre Ravinowich / 21 April 2013

  

  For the third time in 3 straight years, the Muscle Milk Pickett Racing P1 entry driven by Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr took the top step on the podium at this year’s Tequila Patron American Le Mans Series race at Long Beach this past Saturday. The HPD ARX-03a prototype took the win by a margin of only 36.329 seconds over second place finisher Rebellion Racing. The No.12 Lola B12/60, driven by ex-Formula 1 driver Nick Heidfeld and Neel Jani had qualified first the day before.

  Extreme Speed Motorsports dominated the P2 category at this year’s race – finishing 1-2 in its class. The highly competitive GT class also saw a 1-2 finish by the same team, with the BMW Team RLL’s No. 55 BMW Z4 GTE driven by Bill Auberlen and Maxime Martin taking the win. This was only the team’s second race with the new Z4. The Prototype Challenge class win went to the No. 05 CORE Autosport entry driven by Colin Braun and Jon Bennett, also for the third straight year in a row.

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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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• Get Excited: Longer U.S. Trailer for Rush Brings the Awesome [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 12 April 2013

  

  On Monday the international trailer for Ron Howard’s Formula 1 historical docudrama Rush burst onto the internet, and boy howdy, does it make the flick look good. The cars, the costumes, the special effects…it all looks amazing. Of course, with Ron Howard as skipper, you would expect that, wouldn’t you?

  Now a second, longer trailer aimed at U.S. moviegoers is out. And you know what? It’s even more amazing. Example: Check out how well the VFX team managed to replicate the Nürburgring’s old parallel front and back straights and pit complex, all of which were bulldozed in the early ‘80s when the modern Grand Prix circuit was constructed. Plus it does a markedly better job of fleshing out the backstory (kind of a necessity, since so few Americans are familiar with Formula 1 past or present) and, oh yes, more Olivia Wilde. Did we mention September 20^th can’t come soon enough? Because it can’t.

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• Opie’s Open-Wheel Opus: Rush Trailer Hits the Web [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 8 April 2013

  

  When we first got wind that Ron Howard would be making a movie called Rush chronicling the 1976 Formula 1 season – specifically, the rivalry between that season’s top title contenders, Niki Lauda of Ferrari and James Hunt of McLaren – we positively squeed with glee. Yes, pretty much every non-documentary racing movie made after Le Mans has been an over-(and/or under-)acted, Newtonian-physics-flaunting-crash-filled farce, but this project was being helmed by Ron Bleeping Howard. You know, the ginger-maned (or what’s left of it) artist behind such masterworks as Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, and Frost/Nixon. So we had hope.

  Now it looks like our hope was well-placed. After watching the above video, the first international trailer for Rush, we can now say we are officially stoked. The cars, the venues, the fashion…it all looks dead on and lifted straight out of one of F1’s most glamorous (and dangerous) epochs. Even the tobacco sponsor logos on the cars and trackside signage are present and accounted for (though we’re sure they will be blurred out in France, Canada and other revisionist history countries). With this movie and the drag racing epic Snake and Mongoose both set for release in September, we reckon this autumn will be a most bountiful one for motorsports history geeks like us.

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