Must See!! 2000 Black/black Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet 2dr, Convertible on 2040-cars

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Porsche reveals new 911 Turbo Cabriolets, starting from $160,700*

Porsche has come a long way from the days when its entire model line revolved essentially around the 911, but its prototypical rear-engined sports car is still what it's known for best, and still keeps the German automaker pretty busy. With a seemingly endless array of variations on the theme, the 911s just keep on coming until a new generation arrives and then it starts all over again. And what we have here is the new king of the hill (for now, anyway).
Set to debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show a little less than two months from now are the new Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolets. And no, that's not a typo: that's cabriolets, plural, because what you're looking at are two new models. First up is the 911 Turbo Cabriolet, whose 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six develops 520 horsepower, driving the droptop to 60 miles per hour in 3.3 seconds. That's Porsche's claim, and we have a feeling it's a bit conservative. But if that's still not enough, the 911 Turbo S Cabriolet adds an extra 40 hp for a total of 560 to drop the benchmark acceleration run down to 3.1 seconds.
That makes the new topless Turbos 30 horses stronger and 0.2 seconds quicker than the respective models they replace, but the weight penalty involved with replacing a fixed roof with a folding one (and the necessary structural reinforcement) does make the new 911 Turbo Cabs a smidgen more lethargic than their contemporary coupe counterparts, which run the gauntlet in 3.2 and 2.9 seconds in standard Turbo and upgraded Turbo S specs, respectively. They only lose a single tick on the top speed, though, which clocks in at a follicle-tickling 195 mph in either spec. Otherwise the specifications are as identical as you might expect.

Mercedes may be working on a new electric car dubbed 'Ecoluxe'

Automobile has a lengthy piece this month on how the four German mass-market luxury manufacturers each plan to go after Tesla with their own electric vehicles. It was written by Georg Kacher, the magazine's European bureau chief, and the English version came a month after he wrote the German-language original for Autobild. Tesla isn't exactly a threat to the Germans, but, according to the report, the Model S is planting the right kinds of seeds in niches that are important to the luxury players. The thinking is that - in addition to needed electric vehicles anyway for stricter US regulations - it's better to start designing the machinery now. The article posited Porsche's attack would rest on the coming Panamera platform, but a big hurdle would be battery placement. Unable to find one large space for a lithium-ion pack, engineers would instead put batteries everywhere they could, for a supposed tally of some "108 battery pouches" throughout the body. A few days after the Automobile piece, however, Porsche publicly said it had no intention of challenging the Model S, because the enthusiastic driving the brand is known for doesn't jive with useful range. In Kacher's retelling, Mercedes' plans are even more ambitious, supposedly taking aim at the Model S and the coming Model X. It would do this with an investment in excess of $2 billion in a program called "Ecoluxe" – Mercedes has no brand division akin to BMW's i and Audi's e-tron. The new brand would create a four-strong family of bespoke electric vehicles: a smaller platform with a wheelbase around 106 inches and a larger one with a wheelbase around 118 inches. In addition, the range would have "provisions for rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and rear-wheel steering." The numbers are impressive: seating for seven in the larger vehicles, both longer than 16 feet, front and rear storage areas, ratings of up to 610 horsepower and production capacity of 80,000 units per year. When would we see such creatures? Perhaps as soon as 2019. We do know that if Tesla can knock the Model X over the outfield fence, automakers are going to have to do something. We don't know what the chances are that Ecoluxe is Mercedes' first move - but such a plan could help explain the weird Mercedes concept spied in October.

1949 Gm?nd Porsche shows the birth of an icon

The Austrian village of Gmünd is more than just difficult to pronounce; it's also the birthplace of the Porsche brand. Before the company ever started building sports cars at its current home base near Stuttgart, the fledgling business completed several vehicles in the tiny town in Southern Austria. In this video, former Pikes Peak International Hill Climb champion Jeff Zwart takes a look at a 1949 Gmünd coupe to see how the company has evolved since its earliest days.
The thing to note about the Gmünd-built Porsches is their absolute design simplicity. The phrase "form follows function" gets bandied around a lot, but it really means something when you look at these early cars. However, the minimalism was partially out of necessity. The vehicles were meant to be sporty but certainly weren't rockets. Power came courtesy of a modified Volkswagen Beetle engine, and anything extraneous would have slowed the models down. Scroll down to watch Zwart go back in time to Porsche's beginnings.