A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:
Volvo's 450 horsepower triple-turbo two-litre Ah, Volvo. Nice people, those Swedes, what with their boxy designs, safetyfirst mantra and tractorlike durability. No wonder they're always so popular with the professorial crowd - it's the automotive equivalent of a cardigan.
Wait, I'm sorry, what does that headline say? Three turbos? Oh that's right, I almost forgot that before Ikea and Abba, Sweden was full of Vikings. Here comes Ragnarok!
Actually, Volvo's long been known for putting out incredibly over-boosted sheetmetal (remember the Group A 240s?), but this one really takes the Swedish meatball. Coming hot on the heels of their superchargedand- turbocharged Drive-E powertrain, now appearing as a replacement for the venerable T-5 base engine, this new high performance four-cylinder engine cranks the forced induction straight into the stratosphere with three turbos.
Basically, the system is a normal parallel twin-turbo setup with an electrically fed turbocharger providing instant boost at the low end to eliminate lag.
Mark my words - one of the spinoffs of F1 turbo technology in the coming seasons will be electric turbocharging in passenger cars, starting out in the luxury marques and then trickling downwards.
Anyway, the resulting 450 h.p. is simply a colossal amount of power from a lowly 2.0-litre engine, yet retains on-paper drivability. Expect to see a detuned version perhaps showing up in the XC90 crossover, but here's hoping they shove the thing in that shooting brake concept and release it as the Bork.
Porsche releases 911 GTS The GTS moniker on the back of a Porsche has always indicated something special. In the Cayenne, for instance, you could even get that full-sized crossover with a V-8 and a stick shift.
Now that you can't get either the 911 Turbo or the GT3 with a manual transmission, the 911 GTS will be your highestperformance 911 available with an old-fashioned clutch-pedal and gearshift. As the GTS versions of Porsches are usually intended as a mostsporting variant for the street, that's a very good thing again.
The cars come with 430 h.p. and all the suspension and aerodynamic goodies you probably want on your 911, and are available in coupe and cabriolet, in allwheel drive or rear-driveonly. Purist-spec would be stick shift and rear-drive, and with a slightly lower stance and rawer dynamics, we might just have found the sweet spot in the 911 range.
Bentley SUV inches closer to production Spotted at the Nürburgring, Bentley's upcoming SUV looks closer than ever to production spec, and some of the camouflage is coming off. I think I speak for us all when I say please, put it back on again.
While a seven seater, plug-in Bentley is surely in the company's best interests financially speaking, why does it have to look like that? We'll leave the photos out as you may be reading this paper while eating breakfast, but just imagine a Continental that's been jacked up in the air and hooked up to an air-compressor. It looks odd, and ungainly, and whatever the opposite of genteel is.
A Bentley is certainly allowed to have something of the bounder about it, stretching all the way back to Woolf Barnato, the diamond mine heir and gentleman prizefighter. Really, that's what a Bentley should be: a gentleman's prizefighter. So far, this thing looks like cauliflower ear on wheels. Keep training Bentley - it ain't done yet.
Kawasaki releases 300 h.p. Ninja Are you on an organ transplant list? Good news! Kawasaki just released a 300 h.p. supercharged motorcycle. I expect we'll be up to our eyeballs in spleens by Tuesday.
With a 1.0-litre engine huffing out as much horsepower as a Subaru STI in a motorcycle that weighs next to nothing, the H2R is completely insane. Kawasaki says they'll put out a Street version with something around "just" 200 h.p., but the full-strength track version seems to be capable of in excess of 340 kilometres per hour.
Wait, hang on. I see a flaw in the plan here. You can't transplant puree.
All joking aside, superbikes for bragging rights are cool, but something like the new Ducati Scrambler is a bit more sensible: a lightweight, fun-to-ride bike at a reasonable price, without feeling like you're Wile E. Coyote strapped to an Acme rocket.
Top Gear thrown out of Argentina Will the lads never learn? I hope not - it makes for such good television.
Moreover, it looks like this may not have been entirely the Top Gear trio's fault. While filming a special in Argentina, the crew and hosts were chased out of the country by a rock-throwing mob, who claimed that the licence plate on Jeremy Clarkson's Porsche 928 held a hidden reference to the Falklands war. Clarkson claims that the whole thing was politically motivated so that local politicians could claim to have ejected the Brits and gain brownie points with the locals.
Either way, it's yet another rumbustious scandal for the show, which is bound to boost viewership through the roof. Love 'em or hate 'em, they sure know how to create a spectacle.
This weekend: Thanksgiving run If you have a pre-1979 classic (or something special from the '80s or '90s), why not join in a early morning cruise up the Sea-to-Sky with a bunch of other like-minded classic car enthusiasts. A free event put on by the Classic Car Adventures crew, this drive benefits the Squamish Food Bank; simply bring along a nonperishable item and go for a spin.
Meet-up time is 8 a.m. Thanksgiving Monday at Capilano University, parking lot 4, and the route runs to the Sea-to-Sky Gondola. The CCA's Type-2 VW pickup will be there to be loaded with provisions, and the reserved parking lot will be full of interesting stuff to look at, and interesting/wacky people to talk to.
Nothing shakes the tryptophan cobwebs out of the head quicker than a little windows-down blast, so join in. Bright and early, see you there, pumpkin spice latte optional.
Watch this space for all the best and worst of automotive news, or submit your own auto oddities to mcaleer. [email protected].
