Click to View Larger Image

For what has seemed like years now, enthusiasts have been speculating what kind of power BMW’s next M3 would have. Well, speculate no further, as BMW has finally announced official numbers and specifications of the new M3’s powerplant.

The new M3 will be powered by a 420hp 4.0 liter V8 engine with a peak torque figure of 400Nm (295lb-ft). This powerplant is actually based on the 5.0L V10 found in the current M5 and M6 models. As expected, the new M3 will be a high-revver, with a redline of 8,300rpm and peak torque at 3,900rpm.

But this isn’t one of your typical high revving engines, as it isn’t gutless off the bottom end. BMW claims that 85% of the M3’s torque is availble over a speed range of 6,500rpm thanks to the Double Vanos technology. In addition, BMW has employed several lightweight materials in the engine’s construction, and results in a V8 that is lighter than the straight-six found in the E46 M3.

I don’t know about you, but this engine sounds like an absolute riot. Who knows, it might be enough to make me forget that the new M3 looks like it was designed by ex-APC and Wings West employees.

Click to View Larger Image

Full press release after the jump…

Continue reading 420 is the Magic Number for the New BMW M3

Click to View Larger Image

Click to View Larger Image

Click to View Larger Image

Post by Kasey Kagawa and Zerin Dube

We here at Dubspeed Driven have seen many things in our time, but this recent action by certain members of the automotive industry have forced us to act. The parties responsible should be ashamed of themselves for shamelessly promoting a problem that is slowly sucking the life out of the automotive industry. Not the German Horsepower Wars or the return of the Muscle Car Wars, those are awesome and we totally support those conflicts. We’re talking about the endless battle between the automotive magazines to see who can get away with breaking embargoes on cars that are set to debut at upcoming auto shows.

The latest victim in this bloody war is the 2008 Infiniti G37. Sure, it looks absolutely identical from the side or back, but it’s got new headlights, a redesigned lower front air intake, and a new 3.7L version of the VQ35HR currently in the G35 that’s estimated to produce 330 HP and 270 lb-ft of torque. That’s not much, but it’s enough to make this actually somewhat important, as it’s the latest “me too” effort from Infiniti in their attempts to be just like BMW, with their new horizontally-oriented headlights and lower air intake that looks suspiciously similar to the current chins offered on the BMW 5 and 3-series. It’s set to go up against the BMW 335i, just like the last one was designed to compete with the 330i, and just like the last one, it’ll probably be faster, cheaper, with more toys for your dollar, but not as good a place to be in or as fun to drive.

But back to the issue at hand. The auto industry doesn’t care if the magazines break an embargo, and if they do, they are powerless to prevent it. No, the true victims in this conflict are us, the general public who go attend auto shows hoping to see something new and unexpected, but how can we be surprised when everything’s been online for weeks and the only surprises left are what the interior of the trunk looks like and what colors it comes in? Please, print magazines, think of those you hurt most with your reckless embargo breaking. Think of the children.

2008 Infiniti Coupe First Drive [Automobile]

Click to View Larger Image

Fifty years ago, on 4 July 1957, Fiat introduced the Nuova Fiat 500, which became an icon of our times, and with which Fiat completed a revival that had begun immediately after the Second World War.

This summer, on 4 July 2007, exactly 50 years later, and once again in Turin, the company will be presenting its new Fiat 500, which will go on sale immediately after the launch. This new car will also mark an important cycle of revival for Fiat Automobiles SpA.

Click to View Larger Image

Continue reading Fiat Introduces New 500

Click to View Larger Image

The much heralded Caparo T1 will make its first public appearance as a running car at the 15th Goodwood Festival of Speed. The T1 will be one of the star attractions at this world famous UK event, which will be held over the weekend of 22-24 June 2007.

The T1 will participate in the Goodwood hill climb; a 1.16 mile course running through the parkland grounds of Goodwood House and the principal attraction at the annual Festival of Speed. The car will make its ‘debut in action’ as part of the Sunday Times ‘InGear’ Supercar run.

The T1 will also be displayed as part of the Goodwood technology pavilion, a new feature at this key festival event in the motorsport social calendar. This is particularly relevant to the T1 as the display will help showcase Caparo’s lightweight vehicle design capabilities.

Continue reading Caparo T1 to make its ‘debut in action’ at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Post by Kasey Kagawa

After weeks of uncertainty and rumors of Aston Martin being bought by Jordanian handbag-making multinationalist oil tycoons, the final sale of the storied car company went to a partnership between two Kuwaiti investment groups and Prodrive, the racing company that runs the Aston Martin DBR9 racing cars in American and European GT racing. The company was sold for $925 million, just a little shy of the $1 billion Ford valued the company at. Enthusiasts of the brand, myself included, breathed a sigh of relief at the news, as one of the largest concerns surrounding the sale was that whoever wound up purchasing the company from Ford would ruin what has been done to bring the marque to be one of the most respected luxury brands in the business.

As for the future of the marque, Prodrive has withdrawn their team from the American Le Mans Series for the time being, but they have stated that they will return. The Rapide has been green-lit for production, which will go head-to-head with the Porsche Panamera, and their replacement for the aging V12 Vanquish, the DBS, is almost ready for production. Ulrich Bez has been retained as CEO, and Ford will still hold 8% ownership of the company, which will go some way towards keeping the culture that brought Aston Martin to where it is now alive. Most importantly, their new Kuwaiti owners have some deep pockets, to the tune of more than $5 billion, guaranteeing that Aston Martin will have plenty of capital on hand to continue developing some of the most staggeringly beautiful cars around.

Aston Martin Sold To Kuwaiti Investment Company For $925 Million [Jalopnik]
Rapide leads the way for Aston under new ownership [Autoblog]
Dubspeed Driven Photo Gallery – Aston Martin Rapide [Internal]

Post by Kasey Kagawa

Top Gear, in case you didn’t know, is a British show. It’s broadcast on a British network, made in Britain, by Brits, and for a British audience. That means that the show will be made from a British point of view, which means that they will mock all and sundry that isn’t perceived as British or generally European as being subpar and designed by monkeys that live in a shed, particularly things designed and made in “the Colonies,” and will portray Americans as being fat, dumb, and having a preference for cars being large sofas with wheels. American Top Gear fans, myself included, take this in stride, as it’s part and parcel of the show’s humor (or humour, if you will) and with the knowledge that if it was an American show about British cars, we’d be just as eager to mock them for the positively ancient designs that their auto industry had, right before it went completely belly-up, and their seeming inability to reconcile their Pax Britannia days with their current position as the bridesmaid to the USA’s bride.

But recently things have taken a rather ugly turn. Clarkson, in his The Good The Bad The Ugly DVD, put what he claimed to be a V8-powered Ford Mustang GT against an actual horse around a quarter-mile oval track. The horse won handily, but then it would, as it was painfully obvious in the video that the Mustang Clarkson claimed to be powered by the 4.6L V8 was actually the 4.0L V6 base model, with a horsepower rating of 210 versus the 300 HP the V8 mill puts out. Yes, that’s a blatant lie, but it’s a Clarkson DVD, which as we’ve seen from past performances, have all the neutrality of an Ann Coulter speech on Democratic moral values, so seeing him go from stretching the truth to outright lies, while unfortunate, isn’t exactly unexpected.

Top Gear, however, has always managed to temper Clarkson’s rantings with some facts and solid points from the other two presenters. This week, though, that all ended. Hammond, in his review of the Shelby GT500, places it on a chassis dynamometer, and measures the horsepower to see if it actually makes it to its rated 500 ponies, and is rather disappointed when it only produces 447 HP. A crushing blow to the Shelby, then. Well, not quite.

Chassis dynamometers measure horsepower and torque from the actual wheels of the car, instead of the flywheel of the engine, as in an engine dynamometer, which is what the Ford Motor Company used when they had the engine independently rated by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Now, since that power has to travel through the transmission, the differential, and the tires, some of that power will be lost along the way. Roughly 10-20%, actually, and if you subtract 10% from 500 HP, you get 450, which is suspiciously close to the number that Hammond got on the dynamometer at the Top Gear test track. The men who brought the dynamometer to the track would know this information, but they neglected to put that information into the show, presumably because it wouldn’t make the “point” they wanted.

Guys, I love Top Gear. So it breaks my heart to say that I will no longer watch the show until they publicly apologize for the inaccurate information presented on their March 4th, 2007 show. If you feel strongly enough about this, email them at top.gear@bbc.co.uk to tell them how disappointed you are. I sure will be.

(EDIT: Check out the video for yourself here: Top gear Shelby GT500 3/4/07 [YouTube]

Mini, apparently aware of the demand for versions of the Mini Cooper S that combine the model’s great handling with that extra oomph it needs to go from fun back-road cruiser to full-blown corner-devouring beast, has announced the first of the tuning packs the now in-house John Cooper Works team has cooked up. Called the John Cooper Works R56, the kit ups the power from the turbocharged 1.6L straight-four to 192 HP and the torque to 184 ft-lbs of torque, with an additional 16 ft-lbs on tap with an overboost function. US price is currently unknown, but the JCW R56 will set you back €1,689 in Germany. Expect more details when the package officially premieres at the Geneva Auto Show later this month.

Press release after the jump.

Geneva Pre-Show: Mini John Cooper Works R56 [Jalopnik]

Continue reading Just A Little More Heat: Mini Debuts John Cooper Works R56

Post by Kasey Kagawa

Don’t panic quite yet, it’s not currently slated for use in the 911 or Boxster lines. Porsche’s Australian managing director announced the plans to bring a hybrid version of the Cayenne to the land down under, something that I don’t think they’ll keep locked up in the southern hemisphere. This system will work with all the engines in the Cayenne line, thus allowing us to buy a Cayenne Turbo S that not only sucks down gallons of fuel per mile, but also allows us to get all those nifty hybrid car benefits. It turns out automotive engineers do have a sense of irony, after all.

Porsche to offer Cayenne Turbo Hybrid [Autoblog]