1987 Porsche 944 S Coupe 2-door 2.5l on 2040-cars

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Porsche 918 Spyder debuts with new N"urburgring lap record [w/video]

It's been a long time in the making, but Porsche has finally revealed the final production version of its long-awaited 918 Spyder here at the Frankfurt Motor Show. And yet that's not even the big news surrounding the hybrid hypercar.
No, the big news is that, while Porsche was preparing taking the wraps off the car here in Frankfurt, elsewhere in Germany a team was setting a blistering lap time at the Nürburgring. And not just any blistering lap time, but a new world record.
Porsche claims that, on the morning of September 4, a team of three drivers (including former rally champ Walter Röhrl and Porsche test drivers Timo Kluck and Marc Lieb) broke the Nordschleife lap record, Lieb finally setting the best time at 6:57 at an average of 111 miles per hour.

Porsche Supercup racer dies in crash in Australia

Even with great strides made towards increasing the safety of motor racing, fundamentally it's still a dangerous sport. And now it has claimed another life.
That life belonged to one Sean Edwards, an accomplished GT racing driver. Edwards was killed at Queensland Raceway in Australia, riding shotgun in a Porsche 996 GT3 while acting as instructor. The driver was airlifted to hospital with critical injuries. Sean Edwards was 26.
The son of former F1 driver Guy Edwards (whose car he drove in the filming of Rush), Sean won the European GT3 Championship in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup and drove a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 to repeat victories at the 24 Hours of Dubai as well as this year's Nürburgring 24 Hours. Edwards had been competing in the Porsche Supercup, whose standings he currently leads with just two rounds to go, and could be crowned champion posthumously.

Dealers mobilize to protect their margins from automaker subscription services

Six individual auto brands — Lincoln, Cadillac, Porsche, Mercedes, BMW and Volvo — have established or are trialing a vehicle subscription service in the U.S. Three third-party companies — Flexdrive, Clutch and Carma — run brand-agnostic subscription services. And three automakers — Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and General Motors — have also launched short-term rental services. Dealers, afraid of how these trends might affect their margins, are building political and lawmaking campaigns to protect their revenue streams. So far, three states are investigating automaker subscriptions, and Indiana has banned any such service until next year. It's certain that those three states are the first fronts in a long political and legal battle. Powerful dealer franchise laws mandate the existence of dealers and restrict how automakers are allowed to interact with customers to sell a vehicle. On top of that, Bob Reisner, CEO of Nassau Business Funding & Services, said, "Dealers and their associations are among the strongest political operators in many states. They as a group are difficult for state politicians to vote against." In California earlier this year, the state Assembly debated a bill with wide-ranging provisions to protect against what the California New Car Dealers Association called "inappropriate treatment of dealers by manufacturers." One of those provisions stipulated that subscription services need to go through dealers, but that item got stripped out when dealers and manufacturers agreed to discuss the matter further. In Indiana, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a moratorium on all subscription programs by dealers or manufacturers until May 1, 2019, to give legislators more time to investigate. Dealers in New Jersey have taken their campaign to the state capitol, asking that the cars in subscription programs get a different classification for registration purposes. Automakers run the current subscription services and own the vehicles. Sign-ups and financial transactions happen online or through apps, leaving dealers to do little more than act as fulfillment centers to various degrees, with little legal recourse as to compensation amounts when they're called on to deliver or service a car. That's a bad base to build on for business owners who've sunk millions of dollars into their operations.