2015 Porsche Boxster on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Motor Trend holds World's Greatest Drag Race for the third time

As part of Motor Trend's Best Driver's Car competition, the buff book has held its third iteration of the World's Greatest Drag Race. With an airfield and a dozen of the world's finest performance cars at its disposal (oh, and a helicopter), the MT team did what any good group of enthusiasts would do, and tried to figure what car could cover a quarter mile the quickest. World's greatest drag race, indeed.
The contestants, as MT points out, cover a huge variety of engine types, drivelines, aspiration types and body styles, making for a genuinely varied and interesting field of competitors. Here's the full list of cars taking part.
Aston Martin Vanquish

McLaren boss' exclusive Porsche 935 Street is worth three 911 Turbos

McLarens may be exclusive, but there are still hundreds - if not thousands - of people out there who can say they own one. Mansour Ojjeh is one of them, but he doesn't just own a McLaren - he owns McLaren. As in, the company that makes the racing and exotic supercars. Or 25 percent of it, anyway. As the head of Techniques d'Avant Garde, Ojjeh is one of the British outfit's largest shareholders, previously having owned Heuer watches (before selling it to luxury giant LVMH) and engineered Porsche's most successful foray into Formula One - winning the world drivers' championship three times in a row and the constructors' title twice with Alain Prost and Niki Lauda behind the wheel of McLarens with Porsche engines developed and branded by TAG.
In short, he probably could get any McLaren he wanted at the drop of a hat, but also had strong ties to Porsche in the 80s, and this is the car he wanted. It's called the Porsche 935 Street, and it's the only one ever made. Inspired by the 935 racer that won Le Mans and over 120 other races, Ojjeh contracted Porsche Exclusive when it was still in its infancy to make him one for the road. So they took a 930 bodyshell, slotted in the 3.3-liter turbo flat-six from the 934 but cranked output up to 375 horsepower, and gave it the brakes, suspension, BBS wheels and wide-body aero from the 935 racer. They painted it a deep metallic red and trimmed the interior with cream leather and wood veneer.
When all was said and done, a total of 550 modifications were performed, detailed on a seventeen-page invoice and costing as much as three new 911 Turbos at the time. Ojjeh only put 12,000 miles on the odometer, running up and down the French Riviera, and has now put it up for sale at the upcoming Bonhams auction at Spa where it's tipped to fetch upwards of 300,000 euros - equivalent to $410k at today's rates, or, once again, the price of about three new 911 Turbos.

Porsche 911 GT3 RS facing delay over GT3 fire problems?

Porsche has never been afraid to introduce variants of its cars. However, its even higher spec, next-generation 911 GT3 RS may be delayed from its planned launch this summer while the engines in the standard GT3s (pictured above) are replaced.
A delay isn't certain, but executives want to make sure the high-strung mill is no longer a problem before they press forward with another model using it. Germany's Auto Motor und Sport asked Porsche CEO Matthias Müller about pushing back the launch, and he responded that it was too early to say. The company's current focus is making sure the engines get fixed and working on internal measures to prevent this kind of flaw in the future.
When fires claimed two 911 GT3s in Europe, Porsche initially stopped the model's sales and asked owners to stop driving them. It finally diagnosed the blazes as being caused by a loose screw on a connecting rod, which then resulted in crankcase damage and an oil leak. The company is replacing the engines on all 785 affected cars. A source told Autoblog that under 200 customers were actually affected, and the other cars were either at port or dealer lots. Hopefully, the recall doesn't postpone the road-going GT3 RS too far because we want to see what Porsche has up its sleeve.