2006 4.2 *v8* Nav* Awd* Clean Carfax* Well Maintained* Bose* No Reserve on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Tuner may sue Monaco hotel for damage caused by valet's injury

It's relatively common to hear about unethical valets taking a joyride and wrecking high-performance cars. However, a recent 'accident' in Monaco might be one of the weirdest cases ever. Of course, now the lawyers may get involved.
Andreas Belzek, owner of tuning firm Prior Design, was driving his highly modified, black with gold pinstripes, widebody Audi R8 (pictured above) to the Hotel de Paris in the famously rich city on the shores of the Mediterranean. Upon arriving, he was going to check in but wanted to park the supercar himself, which was against the hotel's rules. He protested to the valet but eventually gave in and handed over the keys. Then the problems began.
The Audi barely moved before the valet herniated a disk in his back and couldn't leave the car. The police and paramedics arrived to the scene, which had to be quite a crowd in a city as tiny as Monaco. To get the guy out, the rescue crew had to hook him to a special hoist and carry him out, according to Germany's Focus Online. Belzek claims the efforts to save the man caused roughly 10,000 euros ($13,622) in damage to the car's carbon fiber, Alcantara and Nappa leather interior.

2014 Audi RS7 is a 189-mph terror

If you have a burning desire to take yourself and four friends to 189 miles per hour, the 2014 Audi RS7 Sportback can help you out. The luxury hatchback bowed at the 2013 Detroit Auto Show today, complete with a 560-horsepower twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 engine thrashing under the hood. Getting to 62 mph takes a shave under 3.9 seconds thanks in part to the 553 pound-feet of torque on hand from just 1,750 rpm. While the base car comes with an electronically limited top speed of 155 mph, customers can request the governor be removed by purchasing the dynamic package plus, upping the V-max to 189 mph.
Ludicrous? Sure, but Audi says the RS7 can also yield up to 25 mpg on the US scale. With a cylinder-on-demand system, the V8 can deactivate up to four cylinders by closing their valves. Once the driver gets frisky with the throttle, the engine automatically kicks from four-cylinder to eight-cylinder mode in a few hundredths of a second. The engine is bolted to an eight-speed automatic transmission, which pushes power to all four wheels. You can read the full press release below for more information, but we think you'll have a better time viewing our live shots from the show floor..

Autoblog's adventures at the Nurburgring 24-Hour race [spoilers]

The brand-new Audi R8 LMS, said to share 50 percent of its components with the street-legal R8 shown off at Geneva, has won its very first race at the 2015 Nurburgring 24-Hours. The No. 28 car driven by Christopher Mies, Edward Sandstrom, Nico Muller, and Laurens Vanthoor for the Audi Sport WRT team out of Belgium finished only 40.279 seconds ahead of the No. 25 BMW Sport Team Marc VDS Z4 GT3 in second place, for the smallest winning gap since the race began in 1970. Those two cars traded the lead throughout Sunday morning and were less than a minute away from one another for the last two hours. They were part of a total 35 lead changes during the entire race – a record for the event – and both did 156 laps. Third place went to the No. 44 Falken Tire Porsche 997 GT3, one lap down. The Audis did what they always do: lurked close to the front, stayed out of trouble, then pounced when everyone else faltered. For the opening stretches the BMW Z4 teams owned it, running 1-2-3 for a while, but all of them hit trouble. When morning came and the race got over its yellow-flag fever, the No. 28 Audi was in front and stayed there. It was the third Nurburgring 24-Hour win for Audi in four years, the brand's first win only coming in 2012. Last year's winner, the Phoenix Audi team that set a race record by doing 159 laps, had both of its cars retire. One hit an oil patch about 12 hours in, spun and was hit by another car behind, taking on too much damage to continue. The other retired with engine issues. Other Notes Three cars crashed out of the race while leading, after the rains that weren't supposed to happen, happened about 90 minutes in. The No. 20 Schubert BMW Z4 led the first 50 minutes of the race, hopped a crest at Pflanzgarten, landed in a pool of water, and hit the wall on the 30th lap. Then the No. 30 Frikadelli Porsche, with a driver team that included ex-'Ring Taxi driver Sabine Schmitz, hit the No. 31 Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 on the approach to Carrousel and crashed out. Then the No. 1 Phoenix Audi, last year's winning car, took the lead but hit the wall after that oil patch near Pflanzgarten and was out of the race. Aston Martin celebrated a class win in the SP8 category with the No. 49 Vantage GT4 N430. This being the tenth anniversary of the Vantage running the Nurburgring-24, this year's car was painted in the same colors as the racecar from ten years ago.