Aston Martin DBS
MPH will feature such rare monsters as the £839,000 Bugatti Veyron and the blinged -up Phantom coupé but some models are quite affordable, writes James Mills
Aston Martin DBS After star turns in Casino Royale and the upcoming Quantum of Solace, you get the impression that the Aston Martin DBS is trying to muscle Daniel Craig out of the limelight. The flagship of Aston’s range is powered by the same V12 engine that you get in the DB9 but it has been tuned to produce an extra 40bhp, giving a total power output of 510bhp. The doors, bonnet, bootlid and wings are made from carbon fibre, and the brakes are also carbon. All of this means the £160,000 DBS will crack 191mph and go from standstill to 60mph in 4.7sec. Should be enough for Bond to escape the bad guys.
Gumpert Apollo It looks like it was designed and built by a brickie. Yet its collection of wings, scoops and vents are there for good reason: Gumpert’s designers have delivered an aerodynamic package that creates so much downforce that – in theory – at high speed the Apollo could be driven upside down in a tunnel. Just don’t ask us to prove it. The Apollo has also asserted its bona fide supercar credentials by smashing the Top Gear test track lap record with the Stig at the wheel. And that was the “diet” version of the car, with 690bhp from its twin-turbo Audi V8 engine. The full-fat Apollo has 789bhp . . .
Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione Prepare to be seduced by an Italian. The Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione is even more beautiful in the flesh than it appears in photographs, and as all 500 examples of the £110,000 sports car have been sold to collectors who will probably tuck them away, out of sight, the MPH show is one of the few opportunities that petrolheads will get to see it. Under the bonnet is a 450bhp, 4.7 litre V8 engine, shared with sister company Maserati. It delivers enough power to give the 8C a top speed of 181mph and a 0-60mph sprint time of 4.2sec. But it isn’t all about power and looks: the driving experience is raw enough to set your nerve endings tingling.
Mercedes McLaren SLR Roadster Clarkson called the rumble of its supercharged V8 engine “a massive, amplified fart from hell”. The attention-grabbing acoustics are even more evident in the Roadster, which, with its roof down, allows the driver to better bask in the glory of that barnstorming supercar bellow. Built to stimulate sales of the SLR – which was losing out in the limelight stakes to the likes of Bugatti’s Veyron – the £350,000 Roadster has a top speed of 206mph – although whether anyone will reach that speed with the roof down is a moot point. Not that owners will be particularly interested as they cruise the King’s Road, Rolex on display along with a permatan and whitened teeth.
Nissan GT-R To the uninitiated, a £52,900 Nissan sounds like a joke. But to petrolheads in the know, it’s the best money they’ll ever spend. Why? Because the GT-R will leave sports cars twice its price gasping in its wake. Until recently, it was the King of the Ring – the fastest production car to lap the torturous Nürburgring race circuit. Then, predictably, America responded. The Corvette ZR-1 and then the Viper ACR went out and lapped faster still. But remove a professional racing driver from the equation, insert Joe Bloggs who doesn’t know the circuit, mix in a splash of rain and the four-wheel drive, twin-turbo, 473bhp GT-R hypercar will leave them for dead.
Shelby GT500 Mustang Super Snake There’s no satisfying some people. Where the Shelby Mustang GT500 delivers, as its name suggests, a 500bhp whirlwind of power, the new Super Snake version sinks its fangs in with a faintly frightening 725bhp. Built to satisfy hardcore Mustang fanatics in the States, the man behind the legend, Carroll Shelby, proclaims: “I’m going to hunt Vipers and Corvettes with mine.”
We suspect they’ll need a head start: the Super Snake is so powerful that Shelby hasn’t been able to calculate performance figures. A word of warning – this hunk of muscle, which costs £40,129, compared with the “regular” GT500, priced at £24,235, comes without a warranty or spare tyres.
Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé Did someone say bling? Everything about the Phantom Drophead Coupé adheres to the school of thought that bigger is better. It’s longer, wider, heavier, higher and gaudier than most things on the road. And that’s before you’ve hit the button that sends the roof scurrying away like a subservient flunky, allowing the world to get a better look at who’s behind the wheel of this £305,000 Roller.
Bugatti Veyron What can we say that hasn’t already been said about the Bugatti Veyron, a car that enabled Clarkson to see off May and Hammond in a plane during Top Gear’s epic cross-continent race? The car is a triumph of excess. It has an 8.0 litre engine, 16 cylinders, four turbochargers, seven gears, 987bhp and 922lb ft of torque. It has four-wheel drive to channel all that power to the road and an air brake to help slow from its 253mph top speed. But it doesn’t require a driver with the skill of the Stig to get the best from it, which explains why owners in Monaco can be seen popping to the shops for a pint of milk in the dead of night. And it goes without saying that it costs an obscene amount of money – £839,000. Which means you probably won’t be buying one any time soon, but at least there’s the chance at MPH to sample a brief few seconds of life at the wheel of one of the world’s fastest production cars.
Volvo XC60 Okay, so this isn’t quite the stuff of supercar dreams. But Volvo’s XC60 is the newest car at the MPH show, and probably the one that most mums and dads will be interested in, even if they won’t admit it. Volvo calls the XC60 “something entirely new” but to our minds it’s not all that different from a BMW X3. Still, it’s better-looking than most school run wagons, and comes loaded with safety features to protect that precious cargo. The company is particularly excited about its new City Safety driver aid, which aims to prevent rear-end impacts between speeds of 9mph and 19mph. It’s a nice idea but do we really want cars that do the driving for us? Prices start at £24,750 and there will be a choice of two D5 diesel engines or a T6 turbocharged petrol.
source:timesonline
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