2013 Lamborghini Gallardo Lp560-4 Coupe 2-door 5.2l on 2040-cars

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Bugatti Veyron, Lexus LFA, McLaren MP4-12C and Lambo Aventador in 1/4-mile shootout... who wins?

Automobile Magazine scribe Jason Cammisa was sent into the desert to referee four carbon-fiber-bodied wild animals fighting it out over the quarter mile: the V8 McLaren MP4-12C, the V10 Lexus LFA, the V12 Lamborghini Aventador and the W16 Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport. It's a tough job, innit?
The Head 2 Head race was run elimination style, with the winner of each two-up challenge facing the next devil up the totem pole. Although you might not have any doubts about the eventual victor, how each of these supercars fared is good watching. See all the screaming for yourself in the video below.

Watch a Lamborghini change color thanks to thermochromic paint

German artist Rene Turrek went from being a punk kid using spray paint to illegally tag walls to a global celebrity artist working with clients such as Mattel and Nikon. He may have become a little more corporate, but he still finds a way to do some playful work for himself. Recently he has turned his attention to creating incredible paint jobs on some pretty cool cars. Turrek released this video last week of his Lamborghini Gallardo, which at first just seems like a pretty purplish color. But a little bit of water splashed on the hood reveals an awesome tribute to that most awesome of crimefighters, Captain America. Turrek isn't some sort of nerdy witch. The car is coated in thermochromic paint, which reacts to temperature changes. When not activated, the Lambo is disguised as a mild-mannered purple supercar. A cup or two of warm water thrown on the special paint and it becomes translucent, revealing the car's true colors. After a few moments the paint becomes opaque again. Turrek calls the work 'The First Avenger.' We've seen a similar use of the paint on a R33 Nissan Skyline, which allowed the car to turn from orange to black and back to orange again. This isn't the first superhero supercar Turrek has produced. He also created a BMX X6 that looked blue under normal conditions, but revealed The Incredible Hulk on the hood when hit with warm water. Unfortunately the disappearing effect fades once the paint is exposed to too much sunlight, so to keep the paint job safe these cool cars would have to be kept in the dark. And at $400 a pint, Thermochromic paint can cost thousands of dollars to coat a car. It may not be the most cost-effective way to enhance your ride, but certainly one of the coolest. Related: Video:

Lamborghini Huracan Performante's active aero is the secret to its speed

The most revolutionary real technology at this year's Geneva Motor Show didn't look like it on the show stand. If you squint at the Lamborghini Huracan Performante, it merely looks like a Huracan with a big wing. Up close, you can see the fractal texture of the forged-composite aerodynamic add-ons, but that still doesn't tell you why this car is so special. Lamborghini calls it Aerodinamica Lamborghini Attiva (ALA), or active aerodynamics. This is one of the biggest keys to the Performante's claimed production-car record lap time at the Nurburgring Nordschleife of 6 minutes, 52.01 seconds. The Huracan Performante's number is not without controversy, but I personally care very little about the obsessive phallic-measuring contests that are 'Ring lap times. What's fascinating about the Performante is that, if the lap time is even close to legitimate, it shows that ALA is a major step forward in automotive performance. More than just lap times, the Huracan Performante is an example of why Lamborghini remains special in a world of democratized performance. We sat down to discuss this with Lamborghini's Research and Development Director, Maurizio Reggiani. And one last note on the lap time: Reggiani says with the same temperature and exclusive access to a dry track, "that in this average of speed we can repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat." In previous conversations, Reggiani said that the key difference in performance would come not from horsepower, but weight reduction. For Lamborghini, that means plenty of carbon fiber. But the newest Huracan is not a Superleggera, the old title for the hardcore variant. "Superleggera is too much an objective, a description. Performante is really the DNA of the car. In Italian, Performante means really the best performance," he said. Reggiani continues, "Nothing happened by chance. It's really a building-block approach where you say this can give this contribution, this can give that. Where can you improve something and what is needed to improve something?" That brought them to the active aerodynamics solution, which channels air to stall the front or rear aero elements of the car to change the downforce and drag. Reggiani says, "This can be achieved only with a system that is really light, [has] fast responsiveness. Based on this ...