Car Press: August 2011

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Top 4 McLaren F1

The McLaren F1 is a sports car designed and manufactured by Gordon Murray and McLaren Automotive. On March 31, 1998, it set the record for the fastest production car in the world, 240 mph (391 km/h). As of April 2009, the F1 is surpassed by only three other production cars in sheer top speed, but is still the fastest naturally aspirated production car.

McLaren F1

McLaren F1

History

Gordon Murray insisted that the engine for this car be naturally aspirated to increase reliability and driver control. Turbochargers and superchargers increase power but they increase complexity and can decrease reliability as well as introducing an additional aspect of latency and loss of feedback, the ability of the driver to maintain maximum control of the engine is thus decreased. Murray initially approached Honda for a powerplant with 550 bhp (410 kW; 560 PS), 600 mm (23.6 in) block length and a total weight of 250 kg (551 lb), it should be derived from the Formula One powerplant in the then-dominating McLaren/Honda cars.

When Honda refused, Isuzu, then planning an entry into Formula One, had a 3.5 V12 engine being tested in a Lotus chassis. The company was very interested in having the engine fitted into the F1. However, the designers wanted an engine with a proven design and a racing pedigree

Audi R8 burns on a street in Germany

You all know the R8 super car from Audi, but I bet you didn’t imagine this. Here is what’s left of a beautiful Audi R8 after it burst into flames on a street in Germany. While it seems there were some reports of several R8s that burned while in development, this is a production model. It seems that fuel spillage is what caused this, but on R8talk forums there are also some other speculations.
Whatever the reason, I think this affects Audi image pretty bad, because I find this unacceptable to a serious producer like Audi, especially on a super car, which is supposed to be at the highest level of engineering. View more photos after the jump.