1985 Ferrari 308 Gtsi Quattrovalvole on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2015 Ferrari LaFerrari [w/video]

What a year it's been for enthusiasts who love high-performance, higher-dollar automobiles. The past twelve months or so have been consumed with the three horsemonsters of today's hybrid hypercar enlightenment: the Porsche 918 Spyder, the McLaren P1 and the Ferrari LaFerrari. Getting into just two of the three would be better than a lump of coal in one's stocking come holiday time, but for me, it'd still leave things feeling sadly incomplete, gnawing from within 'til the end of days.
Getting the call from Maranello, therefore, was even more fortunate and satisfying. The 918 Spyder - the only seriously green hybrid of the trio - shook me up with its sophisticated menu of technologies. The McLaren P1 remains more of a true hypercar than the Porsche, what with its e-motor designed to boost the lightweight beast to supernatural speeds above any terrestrial concerns like fuel efficiency. And now it's time for the Italian with the funny name, LaFerrari. No mistake about it: I've been waiting all year for this car a little more than I've been waiting for the other two.
This run of hypercars built up over the year like a famous three-part opera: The enthralling start of the drama sitting in the Porsche 918, tear-assing the heavier green dart around a track in Spain; then on to the UK with the lightness and quick heart of the biturbo V8 in McLaren's track-inspired P1, and it was all to be topped-off at Fiorano with the LaFerrari, fit for a Wagnerian finish.

Ferrari 458 M spotted, is there a turbo under there?

While it's still absolutely beautiful and a performance marvel (especially in Speciale trim), the Ferrari 458 Italia has to keep up with the rapidly evolving world in supercars if it wants to continue its success. Ferrari seems to know that it can't sit back and relax, because we're now seeing a disguised 458 testing for the second time.
Since we first saw it, rumor has emerged that it updated 458, reportedly called 458 M, may follow the lead of the recently revised California by using its turbocharged 3.9-liter V8 engine. The mill makes 553 horsepower and 557 pound-feet in that application, but those numbers clearly won't be enough for the Prancing Horse, because the standard 458 already makes more. Instead, Ferrari is expected to turn things up significantly to produce around 670hp, even more than the already gutsy Speciale.
Of course, to make the big change work, the 458 M must be able to ingest huge quantities of cool air to feed those turbos, and the camouflage on this test car is likely hiding the body changes to make that possible. Ferrari does a great job here of disguising things up front on this prototype, making it frustratingly hard to spot any changes.

Get lost in Evo's sublime 2013 Car of the Year testing

Every year Evo stages its Car of the Year test, bringing the best performance cars in the world to one location for an epic shootout. This year the magazine pitted eight CotY finalists against each other on Route Napoleon in Southern France - Evo claims it's the "best road in the world" - and then proceeded to nitpick the smallest of faults on each car until the winner could be named. You see, this year's lineup of machines was just so good that only one car obviously wasn't CotY material from the get-go. Can you guess which one judging from the list below?
- Aston Martin V12 Vantage S
- Audi R8 V10 Plus