OK, so who, exactly, are these guys that work at Galpin ?

Are they, what 14 years old? Because the seem to have the taste of a 14 year old, circa 1983. I have this strong, and nauseating, visual impression of an office filled with Member Only jackets and excessively unbuttoned Rayon shirts and way, way too much chest hair and zodiac medallions on gold chains.

You got to love what they trumpet about this, uh, custom job of there though:

“Two-tone paint scheme, smoked tail lamps, “blacked-out” window trim, wood interior trim and matching black and burgundy leather seats and 22-inch, color-matched Forgiato wheels.”

What?

Forgiato?!

What the hell is that?

Is that some wise-assed half stab at trying to be Italian & continentally hip? Sweet Jesus, are these the guys that invented the name Fiero?

For the strong of stomach, there’s more photographic evidence of the aesthetic atrocities after the jump.

Continue Reading…

The great guys over at Classical Drives have great news: Proteus is coming to the US.

For those of you that don’t know, Proteus is a British car manufacturer that makes spot on rerpos of Jaguar C & D-Types. And I mean spot on. No glass here boys, all aluminum bodywork, hand formed, just like the originals.

And WHAT originals.

I know, I know, sometimes British aesthetic sense is simply terrible, look at what constitutes modern architecture for Britain.

But when they get it right, they produce things like the Spitfire, Jaguar C & D-Types and Quadrophenia.

And seriously, if I had the garage space, I’d think about one of these.

What’s not to like?

You get all the fun of an old race car, with none of the huge potential problems. It’s not worth a Brazilion bucks, so if you screw the pooch, you’re not wasting millions, it has modern (by Jaguar standards) mechanicals, so “authentic” parts are reasonably easy to find, and, these things are sexier then Emma Peel.

Well well, it seems that Jaguar, long rumored to be for sale by it parent FoMoCo, might be bought by Tata, of all people.

All right, all right, knock it off, you dirty minded perverts in the back of class!

For those of you who don’t know Tata is one of the largest car companies on the planet, based in India and not, I repeat NOT, what you think it … er, they, are.

They also have big plans for expanding out of their home market as well as plans to make a car for less than $2,500.

According to “another website” British labor unions are OK with the deal (or is that labour unions?), and Tata also has Fiat on board to help out with production issues.

Who’d a thunk it, Jags built by an Indian car company.

But wait, it gets even better!

Sergio Marchionne, he would be the CEO of FIAT, says that Alfa Romeo could benefit from Tata-Jaguar acquisition.

This just keeps getting odder and odder…

Back in March I wrote a post listing the 10 Fastest Cars in the World. It was hugely popular (and still is,) but I’ve received so many comments telling me that the list isn’t accurate anymore. I plan to do another comprehensive post on this in the future, but for now here is a quick update on the fastest production cars in the world, ranked by top speed. On the last post, I also received a lot of comments about cars such as the Lingenfelter Corvette being faster. Just like the last list, this is only for production cars:

SSC Ultimate Aero

Top Speed: 256 mph

Horsepower: 1183

Torque: 1094lbs

On September 13th, 2007, the SSC Ultimate Aero broke the official top speed world record, traveling 256.18 mph down a closed section of a Washington State highway. Impressive, considering the Ultimate Aero’s engine is only a twin-turbo V8 - half the size and turbo count of the Veyron below. Continue Reading…

VCars brings up a list of the top 10 fastest production cars in the world, ranked by top speed. I’ll go over the list briefly, but be sure to visit VCars’ list for more info and pictures. All the cars you would expect are on the list, ranked from fastest to slowest (though calling any of these cars slow is blasphemy.) We start the list with the king of fast.

Update: I’d like to clarify that this list only includes production cars. I’ve had a lot of comments mentioning the Lingenfelter Corvette, etc being faster, but that ultra-fast Vette is not in production. I’d also like to clear up that this list was created on March 30th, 2007. The SSC Ultimate Aero has since broken the record as the fastest production car in the world, and I plan to address this in my next list. Be sure to subscribe to the AutomoBlog RSS Feed to stay up-to-date.

Bugatti Veyron

Top Speed: 252.2 mph

1001 Horsepower

No surprises here, the fastest and most powerful production car ever makes the top of the list. I wonder when Koenigsegg will decide to take the #1 position and beef up the CCX.

Continue Reading…

Did James Glickenhaus’ re-bodied Enzo (the Ferrari P4/5) not do it for you? It seems the Sultan of Brunei and his brother Prince Jefri were obsessive about their supercars. With a collection much more impressive than Jay Leno’s, they went nuts in the mid-90’s, secretly buying hundreds of supercars and having them custom appointed by the best. In the case of this recently discovered 1995 Jaguar XJ220, they had Pininfarina redesign the body and interior.

Noticeably better looking (in my opinion,) but it looks a bit like a smoothed-out Acura NSX (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.) You’ll notice the fixed headlights which replace the ugly pop-up lights help give the car a more aggressive stance. On a side note, I think all pop-up headlights should be abolished and replaced with the fixed beams. They look terrible when deployed, and destroy and good looks the car may have had when they were down, not to mention kill the aerodynamics.

Giving this car company in the Sultan’s garage were apparently two McLaren F1 LM’s, four astonishingly rare Ferrari FX’s, and fifteen (yes, that’s 15) other XJ220’s. Oh yeah, and that was just one of his garages. At least he had good taste. I should make an “envy” category for these types of posts.

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