Bentley has reportedly been given the green light by parent company Volkswagen to build a new SUV model.
The new ‘ultraluxury’ vehicle will be based on the EXP 9F concept (pictured) first shown at last year’s Geneva Motor Show.
Ironically the project is codenamed ‘Falcon’ inside Bentley, with reports suggesting prices will start at $262,000.
Bentley expects to launch the new model within three years, setting a sales target of 5000 units annually.
The move to build an SUV sees Bentley join fellow high-end brans Lamborghini and Maserati, all of which are aiming to tap into a growing market for expensive, luxury SUVs.
Aussie superstars Mark Webber, Casey Stoner and Craig Lowndes will do battle in a world first race at Sydney Motorsport Park next month.
The stunt is dubbed the ‘Aussie Speed Showdown’ and will see Webber pit his Red Bull Formula One car against Stoner on a Honda CBR1000RR superbike (not his MotoGP machine), while Lowndes will race his new VF Commodore V8 Supercar.
It’s all part of the Top Gear Festival which runs from March 9-10, with the three champions to race on the North Circuit at the freshly revamped SMP.
Lowndes and Stoner will then go head-to-head in a special segment called “Fish Out of Water” which will see the pair swap machinery. Stoner will strap into Lowndes’ V8, while Lowndes will jump on the superbike.
The stunts will headline the festival which also includes Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May, plus a host of celebrity races, stunt plane displays and the Stig.
Toyota has built a GT4 racing version of its hugely successful 86 coupe.
The stripped-out racer is powered by a 300kW 2.0-litre turbo four, developed especially by Nicholson McLaren Engines.
Although not an official factory effort, the car does have the blessing and technical support of the Japanese manufacturer.
Testing is scheduled to take place later this month in the United Kingdom, with Toyota keen to prove the 86 is a winner on the track as well as the road.
Cancel the funeral and file away the eulogies, the Holden Commodore is not dead after all.
GM Holden managing director Mike Devereux has confirmed the Commodore will live on past 2016.
He made the announcement at a media preview of the VF Commodore at the Melbourne headquarters ahead of the official public presentation on Sunday.
“We will launch another Commodore after this one,” Devereux said. When pressed for more detail, he said: “This thing will run through the end of 2016.”
“After that we will be putting two global architectures into the plant, one of them will underpin the next Commodore,” he said.
The VF Commodore will go on sale around June and Holden hopes it will revive the vehicle’s flagging sales, which slumped to an all time monthly low of 1656 last month.
A cloud has been hanging over the future of the vehicle beyond the life of the VF, which is a heavily updated version of the $1 billion VE Commodore released in 2006.
Devereux would provide no more detail on the future of the Commodore, other than it would continue.
He refused to discuss whether the next Commodore would be built on a rear-drive platform or whether it would continue on as a large sedan. Both elements have been considered central to the character of Commodore, but the new car could be a size smaller and there is every chance it will be front-drive.
It is also not clear whether Holden would lead the design and development of the car in Australia or whether it is contributing to a global program headed out of North America or South Korea.
Holden had previously confirmed it would be producing two vehicles at its Elizabeth plant near Adelaide from 2016 onwards, a commitment that was central to it receiving $275million of federal and state government funding.
Devereux previously confirmed the small Cruze would be one of those vehicles, but would not be drawn on the second, until now.
He will travel to the US on Thursday in order to help General Motors North America president (and ex-GM Holden chief), Mark Reuss, reveal the new Commodore in the form of a Chevrolet SS at Daytona Raceway. The SS has been chosen as the car Chevrolet will use for the skin of its NASCAR racer in this year’s Sprint Cup series as it looks to build up publicity before the Australian-produced car goes on sale there later this year.
Remember the $3.4 million, diamond encrusted, 390km/h Arab hypercar we showed you last month?
Well despite the fact it’s the world’s most expensive production car, over 100 people have ordered one.
That’s a huge number for fledging car maker W Motors, which originally planned to make just seven models of the LykanHypersport 2013 supercar.
First showing it to the world at the Qatar Motor Show, W Motors is already planning a second model with a similarly insane price tag.
The LykanHypersport boasts a 560kW twin-turbo flat-six, a 0-100km/h time of 2.8 seconds, diamond encrusted headlights and gold stitching.
Details of the eagerly awaited Toyota Supra successor are beginning to leak, with new reports suggesting it will use a 300kW 2.5-litre turbocharged hybrid powerplant.
The all-new car is a joint venture between Toyota and BMW and will be based on the hugely successful Toyota 86 platform. News from inside BMW says the Z4 convertible replacement will also use the same platform.
Sadly Toyota isn’t expected to produce the new Supra until late in 2017, although we may see a concept version at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show.
The car is expected to have bigger proportions that the current 86, with sources tipping its design to be inspired by the FT-HS hybrid concept car (pictured) first shown in 2007.
Toyota will head up the Supra’s engine development while BMW is expected to provide the suspension and handling settings.
The Holden Commodore has donned a bow-tie and stepped out in front of American racing fans at Daytona International Speedway as the Chevrolet SS.
Four-time Nascar champion Jeff Gordon helped present the Chevrolet version of the SS Commodore in front of cheering fans within metres of the banked speedway.
The production Chevrolet SS made its debut overnight in Florida, on the same day the opening race of the 2013 Nascar series. The Sprint Unlimited race also marks the debut of the Chevrolet race car that takes on the SS design and name, indicating how important the four-door muscle car is to Chevrolet’s marketing program.
General Motors North America president Mark Reuss introduced a silver production SS that was driven into the staging area by Gordon, who has a keen interest in the success of the car given he also owns a Chevrolet dealership.
It was a huge moment for Ruess, who started up the VF Commodore program when he was the managing director of GM Holden. Back then, he envisaged the next-generation Commodore could be sold in the US and started working on the plan as soon as he was appointed to his current position in the US in late 2009.
He said using the Commodore-based SS as the Nascar racer, or at least as the design theme, was a key part of the Chevrolet SS export plan.
His idea was that Chevrolet should offer a road car that was closer to its Nascar machine than the front-drive Impala, in that it should have a V8 and send its power to its rear wheels.
Chevrolet’s rivals in the 2013 Nascar season, Ford and Toyota, use race cars based on front-drive production models that are not offered with V8 engines.
“It’s all a bit fake really,” Reuss said. “Only Chevrolet races what they sell, in terms of the design and configuration of the powertrain and engine.”
The Chevrolet SS marks the third attempt to sell Australian-made Holdens to the American public, following the Monaro-based GTO and VE Commodore-based Pontiac G8, which was dropped, along with the Pontiac brand in 2009. Holden exports the current Caprice police car to the US, but there are no plans for a civilian version.
The Chevrolet version of the Adelaide-made SS looks almost identical to the VF donor car, apart from the bow-tie badge (which some Commodore owners have already fitted to previous models), but there are some key differences. The biggest is found in the engine bay.
While the SS Commodore will continue to run the 6.0-litre GEN IV when it is introduced in the middle of this year, the Chevrolet model gets the 6.2-litre LS3 V8 that is fitted to the soon-to-be replaced Corvette and current HSVs. The same engine was used in the G8 GXP Pontiac introduced in 2008.
This time around, the LS3 produces 309kW and 563Nm. It’s not as much as the HSV models produce thanks to a slightly more muffled exhaust to appease stricter US drive-by exhaust noise standards and a slightly different engine tune.
Chevrolet will only sell an automatic SS as anticipated manual sales are so low that it’s not worth offering one. The American SS will come loaded with every feature available in the VF program, including heads-up display and forward collision alert.
Chevrolet has also announced the car will come with a driver-side knee airbag as standard, taking the airbag count to seven. Holden will also fit the knee airbag to all VF Commodores as standard equipment.
Gordon has been big supporter of the SS program, praising GM for introducing its first V8 rear drive family sedan since 2006.
“I know one you’ve already sold one, and that’s to me,” he said after stepping out of the car during the presentation. “It’s a four-door sedan with the heart of a Corvette, I love what you guys are doing with this, bringing that luxury and performance together.”
The SS Commodore could live on as a rear-drive muscle car, even if the regular Commodore becomes a front-drive model when the VF is replaced at the end of 2016.
Wheels sources suggest the next Commodore is likely to be based on a new FWD platform, while a performance version of the existing SS could continue on but would drop the Commodore name.
The plan to continue the rear-Zeta platform, that underpins the Commodore and Camaro, past the introduction of the next-generation Commodore in late 2016 is by no means locked in and the decision doesn’t need to be made for some time.
In order for the plan to be approved, sales of the Commodore SS and the American Chevrolet SS would need to continue to sell strongly.
GM North America chief Mark Reuss was asked how long the Chevrolet SS would be sold for, given it is tied to the production of the Commodore SS, which is due to be replaced in late 2016.
“We can sell this for as long as we can make it and sell it,” Reuss said.
After another question along the same lines, Reuss again indicated SS production could continue in Australia past the introduction of the new generation Commodore is introduced.
“What if we have a really cool, loyal, buyer base (for the Chev SS)? What if we had that? What if it becomes the reason to go into a Chevrolet dealership? What if we say we’re not going to do it anymore and there is an uproar saying that we want these? What if that happens, what would you?”
When Wheels suggested GM should keep producing the rear-drive SS, Reuss said: “I think that is a pretty good idea.”
Reuss was asked whether the rear-drive SS could be made in a plant that is making the small Cruze and next generation Commodore. He said “You need another body shop to keep it going, so what? There are two body shops in a place people said we could only have one, they said we couldn’t do it…but we did do it.”
There is a concern GM could switch Chevrolet SS production to the US, but Reuss seemed to suggest there was no point doing so because the tooling is all in place in Australia.
“It is paid for, it’s all there,” he said. He said the fact the car comes from Australia would not hurt its sales “People said we couldn’t sell the Police car here if it wasn’t made it America, well, what a croc of poop. American’s love it, they love Australian’s, it’s a Chevrolet, they know what it is, they’re not stupid, and they love it.”
Audi has unveiled its new high-performance RS Q3 ahead of its Geneva Motor Show debut.
It’s the latest addition to Audi’s growing RS lineup, and will be the first RS model to cost less than $100,000 when it goes on sale in the first quarter of 2014.
Boasting a new 228kW turbocharged five-cylinder engine, the compact SUV is capable of 0-100km/h in just 5.5 seconds, yet will use just 8.8L/100km.
Audi has also used a unique ignition sequence for the 2.5-litre engine, designed to deliver a sound similar to the iconic powerplants that made Audi so popular in the late 1980s.
A seven-speed S tonic gearbox shifts the power to all four wheels, with RS Q3 also given unique visual highlights to separate it from the rest of the Q3 range.
General Motors has ruled out introducing its new VF Holden Ute in America, but left the door open for the Commodore wagon.
The news models, which were first shown to the world just days ago, will go on sale in Australia alongside the new sedan in July.
But hopes for a new-age Chevrolet El Camino in America peaked late last year with a media report on GM renewing its copyright for the El Camino name and suggesting the move preceded the return of the model.
But General Motors North America president, Mark Reuss, told Wheels that the Ute won’t join the VF Commodore-based Chevrolet SS in the US.
“We just can’t do it,” Reuss said. “We can’t get a price point that will work.”
GM came close to introducing the Holden ute as a Pontiac, showing the car at the New York Motor Show in March 2008, but the Global Financial Crisis and the demise of the Pontiac brand killed the program.
“We almost had it here and then everything went upside down,” Reuss said.
But Reuss explained the strong Australian dollar meant the new-age El Camino would be too expensive.
He said the last El Camino, which was killed off in 1987, was not a premium model.
“Dad had one, he used it to cart woodchips.”
There were some SS El Camino models made, but Reuss said the numbers were small and that utes in the US were not seen as muscle cars like they are in Australia.
“Some people think it would be really cool to do here, but they don’t think it would be cool to do here at a high price,” he said. “You would get to find that out in a very painful way.”
When asked whether a wagon version of the VF Commodore would also fail to make it to the US because of the pricing issue caused by the strong Australian dollar, Reuss made it clear the situation was different and that the wagon could make it Stateside.
“The wagon would be a much different formula if we did that,” he said.
Asked if it was too late to do a VF-based Chevrolet SS wagon if it had not yet been approved, Reuss said.
“It’s not too late for a wagon,” he said.
Reuss then recalled his time in Australia and his Calais V wagon: “That’s what I drove most of the time I was in Australia,” he said. “It was not a cheap date, but it was a great car,” he said.
Click here to read the full range review of the Holden Ute
