Car Throttle

A special edition of a Lotus seems like a redundant concept. I mean, a Lotus is special.  So a special Lotus is...?  Regardless of the existential question therein, there's a new special Lotus out, and you can bet your overweight German sports sedan that I would absolutely kidnap someone's mother for one. Called the Exige Cup 260, it's to the Exige S what the RS is to the Porsche GT3.  Which means that it's a slightly more mental track-weapon version of the range's already mental top-of-the-line track weapon.  Which brings me back to the concept of redundancy. I don't so much care if there's a point to the Exige Cup 260, though.  What they've done is taken a car that was basically as light as feasibly possible,

Today, Maserati is a purveyor of what I like to call automotive pornography. They produce two products - the almost criminally good-looking Gran Turismo and the equally seductive Quattroporte.  Both sell for north of $100k, are chock full of Ferrari bits, and are absolutely wonderful, top-notch modern supercars.  This hasn't always been the case. Maserati returned to the US market in 2002, after leaving without saying goodbye in 1991.  They, like Alfa Romeo, were basically chased out of the US thanks to persistent rumors of suspect reliability as well as a less than favorable exchange rate which artificially inflated prices.  Many say that the reason for Maserati's failure in the US was the Biturbo.  Let's take a look at that car (and it's derivatives) and return to