News is breaking that Red Bull Racing has just signed off on a sponsorship deal with Infiniti that will effectively give the team free engines. Aside from a few stickers on the car, and a £7 million cheque (the same as the annual budget cap for engines), everything else will stay the same. That is, [...]
Over at MotorTrend they’re talking about a new lightweight Audi R8, codenamed the NF. Lighter even than the R8 GT, which has 100kg stripped from it, the new NF will rely heavily on the use of carbon fibre. The image above is a regular R8 being used as a prototype in the development of the [...]
The Saudi Arabian motoring community is back to entertain us once again. This time, there’s no singing, just a few crazy stunts. You have to ask though, in a country with strict alcohol and drug policies, where on earth did these guys get the gear they must have been on to carry out this stunt! [...]
David Lapworth, Technical Director at Prodrive, has dropped in via YouTube to complement our recent update on the progress of the team’s new MINI WRC. The 2011 WRC season continues next weekend with Rally Mexico. Meanwhile, Prodrive has just 67 days to go until their Countryman-based racecar makes its WRC debut on 5 May at [...]
More than two years have passed since the Abarth 500 was released in Europe but the car, in its hottest essesse form, has now been confirmed for Australia. The news emerged a couple of weeks back and demand for the fiery 117kW/230Nm pocket rocket has been very strong with the first shipment already selling out. [...]
According to BMW specialist website BimmerFile the new M5 won’t be fitted with a conventional automatic transmission. It’s only a bit over a week ago that fears emerged the F10-based M5 might be fitted exclusively with an 8-speed slushbox. Thankfully, the rumour has since been put to bed with BimmerFile quoting a BMW exec flatly [...]
Street cred comes to the world of motorsport in the guise of stencil art from artist Xander Walker and his Street spirit series. Featured above is Nigel Mansell’s 1992 Williams FW14. Also in Walker’s portfolio are a couple of Ayrton Senna’s F1 cars, along with some classic GT racers and more. The works are limited, [...]
Earlier this week the launch of the Ferrari FF promised much. It took place in the wee hours of Thursday morning (AEDT) and we expected to awake to a new raft of images from the Ferrari press machine. Alas, we got to see Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa in a suit and a few FF [...]
The leaked material on the Lamborghini Aventador continues with new shots of its interior as well as photos taken at the part-built Lambo stand from the halls of the Geneva Motor Show. We can see that Lamborghini has taken the art of origami car manufacture to a new level. Thankfully, only Lambo can get away [...]
Today we have taken the wraps off AUSmotive 2.0. If you fear change, you can relax, because we’ve taken AUSmotive 1.0 and smoothed out its rough edges. The new site is cleaner, better organised and has also been optimised for iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices. AUSmotive 2.0 owes a huge debt of gratitude to [...]
The caption to this pic translates as “4C, the dream Alfa.” Even with a dodgy fold in the middle of the pic, the Geneva-bound 4C GTA concept car looks the business. As far as we can tell this image was first posted to the AlfaMitoClub.it forum yesterday. The 4C GTA is based on the ball-tearing [...]
The new MINI Countryman; some strident MINI fans cannot warm to it. And they may never warm to it. Others are willing to embrace MINI’s move into four-door territory. Here at AUSmotive we’ve kept an open mind and, in photos at least, we reckon if MINI has to go forward by upsizing its range then [...]
Chris Harris has just filed this new video review of the McLaren MP4-12C. He gave us a teaser a couple of weeks ago after driving the car in Portugal at its official launch. But now he’s driven the car in the UK on familiar roads and, importantly, on a familiar, albeit very wet, track. Those [...]
The 90 second verdict vids provided by Autocar are generally pretty good value. Here’s one on the Audi A7 Sportback, which, is quite a smart looking 4-door “coupé” thingy. Thisreviewisquitegoodtoojustdon’texpectthereviewertohavetimetotakeabreath. The model tested is a 3.0 TFSI quattro and it gets a respectable 4 stars. Shouldn’t be too long until we start to see these [...]
The 4motion versions of the new dual-cab Volkswagen Amarok have been awarded a 5 star safety rating by local authority ANCAP. Scoring 32.99 points from a maximum total of 37 the Amarok is the first ute in its class to earn a 5 star rating. You can read the short press statement from Volkswagen Australia [...]