Lorenzo

It has 1,874 horsepower and 1,696 lb-ft of torque. It’ll hit 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, 100 mph in 4.3 seconds, and 186 mph in 11.8 seconds. Quarter mile? Gone in 9.1 seconds. Top speed? An autobahn-busting 218 mph. And there’s not a single turbocharger or camshaft or piston to be found. Welcome to the shocking future of the hypercar. Welcome to the Pininfarina Battista, one of the star cars of this year’s Geneva auto show.

Koenigsegg will build 125 Jeskos in two variants. The track-focused version you see here is designed to produce more than 3000 lbs of downforce with Koenigsegg’s revolutionary Triplex suspension at front and rear. The low-drag Jesko version is a more road-friendly machine with a standard front suspension that leaves enough room in the front trunk to stow the removable targa roof.

And good news: No matter which spec you choose, the Jesko will be homologated worldwide—unlike some other extreme performance cars that aren’t road legal in certain nations.

We’ve talked about how special the Koenigsegg V-8 is before. For its last appearance before Koenigsegg goes electrified and camless across the board, the team has really gone the extra mile. You get 1280 horsepower on pump gas, or 1600 hp on E85. That’s partly because the Jesko’s V8 has a flat-plane crank that weighs just 27.5 lbs, milled from a solid steel billet in southern Sweden. To reduce thevibration you’d get from a flat-plane crank engine while as it approaches 8500rpm, Koenigsegg’s engine architect, Dr. Thomas Johansson, came up with new super-light connecting rods that are made from an ultra-strong Swedish steel alloy. Including the bolts, they weigh 19 pounds, which makes them exactly as light as the titanium rods of the Regera engine, but even stronger. Then, there’s the pistons.

They weigh 0.63 pounds each, with a ceramic-coated curved face that happens to be the strongest in production. As a result, they can take a crazy amount of pressure while allowing the long-stroke V8 to rev to 8500 rpm.

The Jesko may not use Koenigsegg’s camless Freevalve heads, but the ones it has are cast by Formula One suppliers Grainger and Worrall, with an extra “tumble” valve on the intake side to increase turbulence in the air-fuel mix.

Koenigsegg’s even-larger turbos would mean even more lag, but the Jesko’s engine features a clever system that uses pressurized air to spool up the compressor wheels and heat up the catalytic converters more quickly on cold start. In principle, the system is similar to one used on Volvo’s PowerPulse diesel, but Koenigsegg came up with a patent-pending turbo housing design, with pressurized air stored in a carbon fiber tank and blasting into the turbos at up to 290 psi. And with the catalytic converters reaching operating temperature in no time, this twin-turbo Koenigsegg V8 will comply with future global emission standards planned for as far away as 2026.

More air demands more fuel, so the engine now sports three fuel injectors per cylinder. The third injector lives in the intake plenum, squirting in fuel directly above the intake runner for each cylinder. The extra blip of fuel also cools the cylinder, making for a cleaner combustion and less strain on the engine at the top of the power range.

Koenigsegg also threw in individual in-cylinder pressure sensors, a first for road cars. This allows the in-house-designed Engine Management System to monitor and control each cylinder at maximum efficiency. All this results in 1106 pound feet of torque to accompany your 1280 pump-gas horses.

Maybe it’s because every new Ferrari debuts in a scorching coat of red paint, or, maybe it is Ferrari’s recent transition to gentle visual redesigns of its products that makes the new F8 Tributo appear, well, familiar. Is it that different from the 488GTB it replaces? Break out that zoom function in your browser or on your phone, look closer, and the F8 Tributo’s familiar visage isn’t quite what it seems.

The very literal name Ferrari has bestowed on its 488GTB replacement, F8 Tributo, is a hint as to what it’s up to here. This is a return to form, on an optics level, for Ferrari’s mid-engined eight-cylinder sports car, which experienced a hard break when the 458 Italia arrived in 2010. That car’s form valued function over beauty, and it had two single round taillights instead of four; when it evolved into the 488GTB, Ferrari really let its hair down and turbocharged its V-8, an act of autoerotic suffocation that exploded the engine’s power at the expense of the free-breathing noise we’d come to expect from Maranello’s eights. It still had two taillights.

The F8, then, is a true tributo—Italian for tribute, in case that wasn’t obvious—to mid-engined Ferraris gone by. There are, for example, four round taillights poking from its tail, as there have been on similar models going back to the 308 (and before that, the not-quite-Ferrari Dino cars). The V-8 remains turbocharged, but hey, so was the iconic F40’s V-8—and Ferrari promises it will deliver “an evocative soundtrack.” And the entire car is actually pretty, a descriptor we wouldn’t use for several Ferraris designed in-house in recent years, a period during which the Italian automaker’s longtime design partner, Pininfarina, was cut out of the process.

Ignore the red paint on the F8 pictured here, and you’ll notice several differences between it and the 488GTB. The headlights, for starters—Ferrari fans will think they’re the same as the 488’s, but what appears to be the darkened upper half of each one is actually a brake-cooling duct. Lighting comes courtesy of thin, horizontal LED strips positioned below these holes. Everything ahead of the windshield pulls forward to nearly a point around a new S-Duct, an aerodynamic pass-through from the lower bumper to a rearward-facing vent in the center of the hood that was borrowed from the hard-core 488 Pista and increases the F8’s overall downforce (relative to the 488GTB) by 15 percent on its own.

The 488’s already aggressive wedgelike shape has been whittled down further for the F8. Each wheel seems to yank the bodywork away from the two-seat central fuselage, and Ferrari’s stylists have balanced aerodynamic concerns against beauty better here than in any recent project. Nothing looks tacked on or strange. The rear spoiler flows out of the rear fenders seamlessly, while every gash and opening in the bodywork has been tastefully integrated into the body lines. Standout features include the Lexan rear window, which is louvered like that on the F40; the tight bubble-look roof; and the way the two elements merge and tuck in between the rear fenders and spoiler like a G-string.

By comparison, the interior represents a stylistic cold shower—in a good way. Like the 488GTB and the 458 before it, the F8’s cabin is businesslike and frill-free. Well, almost. Ferrari has installed its latest infotainment setup, which includes a pair of displays flanking the tachometer ahead of the driver and a small touchscreen readout placed ahead of the passenger that can keep them abreast of performance parameters such as speed and engine rpm; the little screen also can show navigation and audio information. As before, a row of push-button transmission controls lives on a thin console between the seats; the rest of the controls (save for the brake and gas pedals) live on or around the steering wheel.

A litany of new software additions help corral the F8’s burly V-8, and are controlled via the manettino drive-mode switch on that steering wheel. Ferrari’s latest Side Slip Angle Control traction- and stability-control program is present and allows even not-good drivers to appear heroic behind the wheel. (In our experience, the feature helps drivers steer and lay the power down with less finesse and without expensive consequences.) The Ferrari Dynamic Enhancer, which is an electronic program for managing drifts and not, ahem, the social boost equitable to purchasing a Ferrari, can now be used in the hard-core, otherwise hands-off Race drive mode.

By: Alexander Stoklosa, February 28, 2019

For more cars, visit: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a26571313/ferrari-f8-tributo-photos-info/

Source: https://www.caranddriver.com/

Porsche announced today that the second generation of its phenomenal Macan crossover will go fully electric. Apparently the decision was made this past July, with part of the deciding factor being the desire to invest in electrified vehicles at the Leipzig, Germany, plant where the Macan is currently built. Porsche has said that it wants 50 percent of its new cars to have “an electric drive system” by 2025, and an electric Macan will be a big factor in achieving that. The Leipzig plant currently produces the Macan and the Panamera, with more than 90,000 vehicles rolling off the line every year.

The next Macan will be based on the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) platform that is being developed in conjunction with Audi, which will use the platform to underpin its own all-electric models; PPE will underpin the next-generation Taycan sedan. (The Taycan that is debuting later this year is on a different platform, code-named J1, that will be shared with the Audi e-tron GT.) The Macan will have the same 800-volt tech as the next Taycan and will probably share its electric motors and battery packs, too.

We know that the upcoming, first-gen Taycan—or at least one version of it—will have two electric motors producing 600 horsepower, a range of more than 300 miles, and a zero-to-60-mph time under 3.5 seconds. If those specs carry through to the following generation, then the top-end Macan EV should match or get close to those numbers, too. But expect multiple lower-end variants to have less power and a shorter range than the “Turbo” equivalent. The current Macan does start at less than $52,000, after all, and Porsche will likely want to keep the Macan’s entry-level status intact.

This news is bittersweet. The prospect of a compact, fully electric Porsche crossover is pretty exciting to us, especially if it drives anywhere as well as the current 10Best-winning model does. But part of the existing Macan’s appeal is its varied engine lineup. The Macan is available with a turbocharged inline-four and multiple different turbocharged and twin-turbocharged V-6s in different states of tune.

Porsche says the next Macan will enter production at the start of the next decade, most likely in 2021. It will follow the first Taycan sedan, which will make its debut by the end of this year, and the Taycan Cross Turismo and Sport Turismo wagon variants, which Porsche says will come soon after the standard car. The second-gen, PPE-based Taycan will likely arrive midway through the decade at the earliest.

Trend Alert

The Cullinan is a big deal, and not because it weighs nearly 6,000 pounds. Although Rolls-Royce‘s first SUV starts rolling into driveways this holiday season, you don’t have to wait for one to appear under a freakishly large Christmas tree to learn more about it. As we discovered when we drove the 2019 Cullinan, the Rolls-Royce is more of a stately super-luxury cruiser than a quick and posh back-road carver. Great. But how much do you really know about the 563-hp, 12-cylinder Rolls-Royce Cullinan? Keep reading for six cool facts about the new SUV.

Rolls-Royce says it’s starting to hear interest from a few customers who want an alternative to high-quality leather. Such an option may become available on the Cullinan down the line, but not until the right, no-compromises leather alternative is found, one representative told us. We’ve begun to see premium fabrics on lower-priced luxury cars, from a base-model Volvo V60 wagon whose interior wowed MotorTrend editors, to the non-leather seating options on the Range Rover Velar and electric Jaguar I-Pace, which combines a wool blend with a suede-like material.

Options

For the type of experience the Rolls-Royce Cullinan offers, $330,350 (including destination and gas guzzler fees) is an appropriate price. But no one drives home in a base-model Rolls-Royce. Sales to early adopters of the new model are in the $380,000-to-$390,000 range, Rolls-Royce says.

Lounging

For a traditional Rolls-Royce experience, order the Cullinan with the so-called Individual seating—a four-passenger layout with two separate rear seats. Between the reclining seats sits a drinks cabinet with a refrigerator and champagne flutes, as well as Rolls-Royce whisky glasses and decanter. If this is your family road trip car, maybe go for the five-seat Lounge option. Although you can order the Cullinan any way you wish, Rolls-Royce expects about 80 percent of American customers to pick the five-seat Lounge option, but just 50 percent for Chinese buyers.

Wheels

Twenty-two-inch wheels make the most of the Cullinan’s imposing presence (yes, like that Cadillac). Those wheels are standard in the U.S.—Rolls-Royce will make the 21s a no-cost option. Winter tires are available on the 21-inch wheels, and all Cullinan tires are specially designed to reduce road noise. And maybe it works, because the Cullinan provides a smooth and quiet ride, just as you’d expect from a Rolls-Royce.

By: Zach Gayle, December 29, 2018

For more cars, visit: https://www.motortrend.com/news/2019-rolls-royce-cullinan-6-cool-facts/

Source: https://www.motortrend.com/