Car Throttle

British-based auto enthusiasts are certainly accustomed to a bit of rain. Whether it's capturing that special car photo, going for a top-down spin on a Sunday afternoon or walking the London streets in search of a fresh copy of Evo, we've never allowed drizzle to get the better of us. And it's a good job too, as the 2011 Chelsea AutoLegends did have its fair share of moisture on Sunday 4th September but did excel in showing us a host of old and new pieces of metal. In only its second year of existence, Chelsea AutoLegends 2011 welcomed car fans all over the country and was located in the grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea, a fitting location to celebrate the theme of this event, the Swinging

Ahahaha, oh my. An "entry level" supercar - right, that makes sense.  It used to be there were sports cars that normal people could afford (Mustang, Corvette, Porsche 944, etc), and Supercars that only oil barons and filthy rich Enron executives could afford (F512M, Countach, Cizeta Moroder, EB110.)  As the industry moves along, though, we've actually developed upper and lower echelons of the supercar.  It's funny to think of something costing nearly a quarter-million dollars as being "entry level," but despite all the insanity of the Ferrari 458 Italia, it's not the craziest thing they make. There didn't used to be a lot of choice here, either - you could pretty much get an F355 or an Esprit, and a few others have crept in here

You never know what'll show up at Cars & Coffee in Raleigh. Sometimes it's about 50 late-model Corvettes, sometimes it's a bunch of British cars, but this month there was a good amount of variety. A quite rare mid-80's SVO Mustang.  I've already done a retrospective on the SVO on CarThrottle here before, so if you want the details you can take a look.  These were basically the more sophisticated cousin of the GT 5.0, replacing the heavy 302ci Windsor V8 with a 2.3L overhead-cam I4, a turbocharger, and a top mount intercooler.  There was also better suspension, brakes, and a few tweaks on the outside to differentiate it from the regular model.  The huge jump in price over the (almost as fast, and

I've been bad about getting out to Cars & Coffee. It's always held relatively early on Saturdays, and to be honest I'm not a fan of waking up early on Saturdays.  It's always worth it, of course.  This week I was determined to make it out there, and the IV drip of coffee was totally worth seeing exotics stacked like cordwood in the Brier Creek parking lot at 9:30 in the morning.  There were some really interesting vehicles to be seen, along with about 30 late model Corvettes.  You know you're in rare company when 30 Corvettes look mundane. I'm fairly certain they never made Fiero convertibles.  A little research on Google shows there were conversion kits for these back in the day,

At the end of last year, I made a post compiling some of the random cool stuff I've seen around Raleigh. It's been a few months, and I've continued to see more cool stuff, which I am happy to share with you all.  Comments at the bottom! A '91 Alfa Romeo 164 LS 5-speed, in almost perfect condition.  This was a trade-in at Hendrick Fiat of Cary on a new 500 - you almost never see these cars (running) in the US any more.  There's a lot of Saab 9000 underneath, but still awesome. A Daihatsu Hijet mini-truck used as a parts runner at Leith BMW in Raleigh.  Note: sticking a BMW badge on it, does not make it a BMW!  Very odd to see

Hard-parking - Noun.  When one owns a high-performance vehicle which he only drives to and from the garage to the car show. Used in a sentence: "Stop hard parking your car, take it out to the tracks." Hard parking is that guy you know with the sweet M3 with the sweet BBS wheels and the sweet carbon-fibre everything and the sweet AP Racing big brake kit and Tein coilovers and carbon-bucket Recaros and oh my god it's a Grouppe M carbon intake, and all he does it park it up, sparkling clean with the hood up at Euro-snob car shows.  Boo on you, pansies.  Fast cars are meant to be driven heard.  Allow me to explain.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m9Yomop92Y

A Lamborghini Countach was not equipped

We are primarily a performance-oriented website here at CarThrottle. The amount of people interested enough in minivans to go on the web and read about them is pretty small, so performance cars it is.  What does get a little old after a while, though, is the constant one-upmanship of performance manufacturers with each other.  Look at Nissan and Porsche and their fight over Nurburgring lap times, which is about as relevant as comparing car's fuel injector rates as a measure of performance.  Or the whole Camaro vs Mustang V6 power wars - GM re-rated the Camaro's V6 after the Mustang got a new V6 so it would have 7 more horsepower.  Who cares about 7 horsepower?  Couldn't they have spent that money on making it

A new flagship Lamborghini doesn't exactly come along every day. I was born in 1987, and in my lifetime there have been three.  To be fair, I caught the Elvis-style tail end of the Countach, all festooned with slats and spoilers and junk that basically did indecent things to Marcello Gandini's masterpiece no mortal should have done.  The Diablo was the poster child (literally, child's poster) of the '90's, and by the time my car addiction had really gotten into full swing (10+ years now) the Murcielago was on it's way in. I frequently forget that the Murcielago is ancient in car terms, because it's so damn awesome.  But it's actually been around since 2001, back when you could still buy a car with pop-up headlights. 

I spend a lot of time driving around Raleigh, doing a variety of things. I've always got my phone with me, which has a 5MP digital camera integrated into it - it takes better pictures than my old Sony point and shoot!  So when I see something interesting parked around Raleigh, I whip out the phone and take a few shots.  Today, flipping through my pictures folder, I realize there's a big pile of interesting stuff in there - I'll share some of the better "spotted" shots with you all.  Good, bad, pretty, ugly, rare, or fast -  Let me know what you think! This was shot inside Crabtree Mall on US70 while doing some Christmas shopping.  Isn't it sad that the first place I

After a long run spanning from 2001 to 2011, the Murcielago ended production last month. The 4,099th car was a Murceliago LP 670-4 SuperVeloce sold to a Swiss customer. The Murcielago's departure leaves Lamborghini with just one model, the Gallardo. Unusually, the car was phased out before a replacement was introduced. But we shouldn't have to wait too long before seeing it as the successor is reportedly coming to next year's Geneva Auto Show in March. While first rumored to be named "Jota", reports have instead pointed to the a successor called Aventador. Details about the car's 6.5-liter V-12 powerplant were released by Lamborghini last month. The new engine will make 700 horsepower and 508 pound feet of torque, while weighing just 518 pounds. Expect the