'86 Testarossa Stramen Convertible With 9400 Miles. $19,000 Service On 5/13 on 2040-cars

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Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton buys LaFerrari

Lewis Hamilton has driven some of the fastest cars ever devised, like the McLaren MP4-23 with which he won the 2008 Formula One World Championship, the Mercedes W05 with which he won the title last year, and the new W06 he drove to the checkered flag in the season opener earlier this month. But what does he drive in his spare time? According to the latest reports quoting his boss Toto Wolff, the reigning champ celebrated his win at the Australian Grand Prix by ordering a new LaFerrari. The seven-figure, 950-horsepower hybrid hypercar may be made by a rival manufacturer to the team for which he drives, but then his employers at Mercedes don't (for the time being at least) build anything that competes in the segment – unlike his former employers at McLaren that offer the similarly potent P1. Something tells us he won't be invited to drive it at Fiorano, though - which is something his rivals Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel have all had the chance to do. Hamilton has a long-established penchant for driving twelve-cylinder exotic supercars in his spare time. At his previous place of work, he was promised an exceedingly rare McLaren F1 LM – valued at some $4 million – but only if he won three world titles for the Woking-based team. He also owns a Pagani Zonda that was made specifically for him with a 760-horsepower engine (supplied, naturally, by Mercedes) and a six-speed manual – complete with a clutch pedal, which (apart from starting off the line) is something he doesn't usually get to operate during working hours. Related Video:

Colani's land speed record Ferrari for sale

Everyone knows that Ferraris are designed to go fast, but their performance is measured by a number of different metrics. This particular example, however, was designed with one goal in mind, and that was top speed. And now it's up for sale. The one-of-a-kind creation was the work of Professor Luigi Colani. The car started life as a Testarossa, but was extensively modified and entirely rebodied in order to pursue a high-speed run at the Bonneville Salt Flats. That meant an aerodynamically optimized body designed by Colani to dramatic and wind-cheating effect, and substantially reworked mechanicals as well. The flat-twelve engine was fitted by German firm Lotec with a pair of turbochargers to drive output beyond 750 horsepower. The 1989 Ferrari Testa D'Oro Colani - so named, we gather, for its gold cam cover - was clocked at 218 miles per hour back in 1991, winning its class at Bonneville and far outstripping the 201-mph top speed quoted by Ferrari for the F40 that was all the rage at the time. The vehicle has now been put up for sale by Purosangue Maranello, where (as you can see from the images in the gallery above) it sits alongside another one-off Ferrari: the four-door Pinin concept of 1980 (to say nothing of the Minardi F1 racer in the other corner). If it's a completely unique Prancing Horse you're after, Purosangue (Italian for "pure blood" or "thoroughbred") seems to be the place to look. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Why all of this year's F1 noses are so ugly [w/video]

If you're a serious fan of Formula One, you already know all about The Great Nosecone Conundrum of 2014. Those given to parsing each year's F1 regulations predicted the strong possibility of the so-called "anteater" noses as far back as early December 2013. Highly suggestive visual evidence first came after Caterham's crash test in early January, with further proof coming as soon as Williams showed a rendering of the FW36 challenger for this year's championship. That car earned a name that wasn't nearly so kind as "anteater."
Casual followers of the sport - or anyone who gets the feed from this site - probably don't know what's happening, except to wonder why the current year's F1 cars are led by appendages that would make Cyrano de Bergerac feel a whole lot better about himself.
The short answer to the question of ugsome F1 noses is "FIA regulations and safety." The reason there are various kinds of ugsome noses is simpler: engineers. The same boffins who have given us advances including carbon fiber monocoques, six-wheeled cars, double diffusers and Drag Reduction Systems are bred to do everything in their power to exploit every possible freedom in the regulations to make the cars they're building go faster - the caveat being that those advances have to work within the overall philosophy of the whole car.