Car Throttle

What can you get these days for $30 grand and change?  Well, if you're a sensible sort of fellow, the kind that wears slacks and a white polo daily, you could get a really darn nice Honda Accord.  To be specific, $29,755 (plus destination fee and accessories, etc) will get you a 2012 Accord EX-L with Navigation.  It's got a 2.4L engine that makes some horsepower, leather seats, an electronic map to tell you where to go, and it will without a doubt run flawlessly with 0 issues for 10-15 years.  10-15 years of perfectly predictable, sedate, drama and fun-free motoring. Seriously!  These cars last forever.  An acquaintance of mine works as a service adviser at a Honda dealer, and they recently got a 2006 Accord

Once the Megane range gets a mid-life face lift in April, we will be saying bye-bye to the 250 and a big hello to the new 265. It's Renault's latest record breaking hot hatch to hit our roads with a lap time of 8 minutes and 8 seconds around the Nurburgring which makes it the fastest front-wheel drive car ever to go round the famous German track. Thanks to the new 'Renaultsport Dynamic Management' system, the new 265's 2.0L Turbo will produce 261bhp and 265lb ft of torque meaning a 0-60mph time of around six seconds and a top speed of 160mph. All that is available once you've pushed the 'Sport' button, with the car acting calm and civilised, "ish", in normal mode. Renault have

In the rankings of current automobiles, the Ferrari 458 is near the top for performance.  It's a seriously fast car.  A combination of engineering, Italian want-factor, and space ship styling puts it on the top of a lot of people's Christmas lists.  Even though it's the "baby" Ferrari, it can smoke 99% of cars on the road.  A 4.5L direct-injected V8 in the middle cranks out 562 horsepower, with a 7-speed twin clutch automated manual banging out shifts at the 9,000rpm redline.  Car & Driver tested a 458 Italia against it's two closest competitors - the McLaren MP4-12C and Porsche 911 GT2 RS, and it put a hurting on their test equipment - 0-60 in 3.0 seconds flat, 0-100 in 6.5, quarter mile in 11.0

The previous generation Beetle, known as the New Beetle, had a cutesy image that it never could shake off in any of its various iterations. Volkswagen intends to change that image with the redesigned 2012 model, and to signal that different approach it launched the car with the Black Turbo Launch Edition. But what about more intense performance models? The previous generation car only had the Turbo S. At Frankfurt, VW has previewed a Beetle R with the R Concept, another one to put away in the "concept-in-name only" file. It comes looking a lot more aggressive than the standard car, looking the R part. LED running lights are new, and up front there is a lip spoiler along with more aggressive, widened bumpers

I think Christian von Koenigsegg is a big fan of the "go big or go home" mentality. Good example of this: Lamborghini has been slowwwwly revealing their upcoming halo supercar, which will be debuting at Geneva next month, the Aventador.  You're probably heard about it.  It's pretty extreme, y'know: carbon-fibre monocoque chassis, brand-new 700 horsepower V12 engine, new 7-speed twin clutch gearbox, etc.  Pretty extreme vehicle.  What's more extreme than a 700-horsepower Lamborghini, you say?  Well, how about a hand-built Swedish sports car with 1,115 horsepower? The new Agera R is a higher-performance version of the regular Agera, which recently replaced the CCX as Koenigsegg's model.  While the thought of a "higher performance" Agera is a bit absurd (the standard model has 910bhp, remember), in

Another day, another Porsche. The brand that seems focussed on making as many possible derivatives off of as few chassis as possible introduced their latest flavor today, the Cayman R.  Think of it as a Boxster Spyder without the goofy teepee-tent roof, or if you like think of it as a lighter, harder, more basic Cayman S.  However you explain it, it looks like a seriously delicious recipe. Primarily, they've focussed on a making it a better driver's car the right way: less weight, faster responses.  The Cayman R is 121 pounds lighter than the normal Cayman S, weighing in at only 2,855lbs.  The weight loss program is similar to it's topless brother, the Boxster Spyder.  It includes lightweight sport seats, super lightweight alloys, leather straps

I'm sure you're familiar with the term "bucket list" by now.  It's a list of things you want to do before you die. Being automotively obsessed, my bucket list is more of a list of cars that I want to own before I die, or rather before you can't find one somewhere besides a junkyard.  Today, I finally got behind the wheel of one of the top three cars on my bucket list: an old Volvo. Hey, you have to know by now if you've been reading this website that I'm a bit of a weirdo.  But I've had a thing for the Volvo 850 T-5R/ 850R since I knew how to drive a car.  This relates to the fact that my first car was an 850. 

Top Ten lists are a longstanding tradition with automotive journalism outlets. And why not?  People love a Top Ten list (it gives them something to argue about!), and man, they're not exactly hard to throw together.  The issue is that the vast majority of them are fluff, crap, really just a slap on the back to whichever manufacturer schmoozed that rag the most that year. ('’) Well we here at CarThrottle don't subscribe to that happy, shiny version of things.  To be honest, a large number of the cars on our roads are complete, total junk.  This has always been obvious.  The world's full of Chrysler Sebrings and Kia Amantis.  But there are even cars trying to pass as performance vehicles (which is a heavy focus

Not to sound like a broken record, but some of the cars for sale in Europe that we as Americans don't get a chance at is mildly sickening. Now there's one more to add to the list: the piping-hot Volkswagen Scirocco R. The Scirocco R debuted at the 24 hours of Nurburgring today (rather than at Worthersee, where it was expected).  The Scirocco R the high performance variant of the Golf-based Coupe, using bits and pieces from the corporate parts bin to put together one exciting overall package. The engine comes courtesy of the Audi TT-S and S3, an updated and uprated version of the 2.0L direct injection turbo 4 that VW uses for everything.  The main difference is the change from a Borg-Warner K03 to a

It's hard to imagine, but Pagani's heart-breakingly beautiful Zonda supercar has been in production for 10 years now! In addition to that making me feel mighty old (gah, I remember when that car came out!), it means that the replacement for the iconic supercar is just around the corner. While the next Zonda (if it'll even be called that) is the subject of much speculation (will it have a modified AMG 6.2L V8?  A Biturbo V12?  A DSG?), Pagani is sending the current Zonda supercar off with quite a bang.  Meet the Zonda R, the final evolution of the Pagani Zonda which began back in 1999. That original Zonda housed a Mercedes-Benz 6.0L 48-valve V12, mildly tweaked from the S600 sedan, to produce 402 horsepower.  Pagani claimed