A little over two years ago we had the chance to spend some time at the track with Steve Millen and his race-prepped Ford GT before the team embarked on its fifth excursion to New Zealand to run in the Targa Rally.

Last year, the team wasn’t able to compete due to health issues with a member of the Stillen consortium, but this year they’re back and the orange GT is meaner than ever.

For the 2006 campaign, Stillen built up the Ford GT in a few months, equipping the mid-engine supercar with a performance exhaust, catalytic converter delete pipes, AP Racing front brakes, Penske shocks, a full cage and MOMO racing seats and harnesses. This year, they’ve tweaked the suspension, upgraded the brakes front and rear, added a set of Nordskog gauges and a GPS speedometer, along with pulling a few more ponies out of the supercharged 5.4-liter V8 and sending the additional grunt through an AP Racing clutch and a lower final drive ratio.

The Stillen Ford GT will battle it with everything from Evos to Porsches over 38 stages run on closed public roads, and according to Millen’s navigator, they’ll be providing updates throughout the race.

Check out the Stillen website for more, and be sure to peruse both our original gallery of the GT testing at Willow Springs and these latest images, courtesy of Stillen.

Porsche has won the Transsyberia Rally that runs 4,400 miles across Russia, Siberia and Mongolia three times in a row using only slightly modified versions of its Cayenne S. Not only that, it swept the podium in 2007 and took the top six places in this year’s rally that ended just a few weeks ago. In celebration of these achievements, the German sportscar and erstwhile SUV maker is offering a special edition Cayenne called the Cayenne S Transsyberia. Scheduled to debut at the Paris Motor Show next month, the Cayenne S Transsyberia features the 405-hp direct-inject 4.8L V8 from the Cayenne GTS mated to Porsche’s six-speed automatic transmission with a final drive ratio shortened 15% to 4.1:1. That scoots the big ute to 60 mph 6.1 seconds, half a sec quicker than a stock Cayenne S.

What really sets the Cayenne S Transsyberia apart, however, are its exterior color combinations, which include Black/Orange, Crystal Silver Metallic/Orange, Black/Meteor Grey and Meteor Grey Metallic/Crystal Silver Metallic. These contrasting color combos are coordinated with the 18-inch wheels, rear spoiler, skid plates, and air intake slats. The large “Cayenne S Transsyberia” model designation graphic that runs across the doors and the roof-mounted light bar are also both no-cost options but really make the package what it is. The interior is adorned with ornamental trim and the exterior color combo is carried through, and there’s also a twelve o’clock mark on the steering as an homage to this truck’s motorsports connection.

Porsche says deliveries will start in Europe in January 2009, while 600 units of the Cayenne S Transsyberia are slated for North American consumption.

First art imitates life and now video games do the same, with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Nissan having joined forces to create the GT Academy. Over the course of eight months, the academy culled a group of wannabe racers from a field of entrants who posted the best lap times in GT5 Prologue. Then, for five days at Silverstone, the finalists competed in the game and on the actual track, watched by ex-F1 racer Johnny Herbert and a panel of five judges.

The two winners were just announced, and Top Gun status went to Lars Schlomer and Luis Ordonez. Schlomer is a taxi driver in Bonn, Germany; Ordonez is an MBA student from Spain. Now that they’ve won, they’ll be thrown into boot camp for four months to learn to how to race for real silver: in four months, they’ll have to earn their racing licenses and get ready to drive a factory-backed Nissan 350Z in the 24 Hours of Dubai this coming January.The rest of us will have to be content with GT5 Prologue for now…

The courtship between Audi and GT3-class racing teams has legally commencing amidst the automaker’s announcement overly it has matured a GT3 version of the R8 sports car labeled “R16″ internally by its presume overlords at Audi Sport . The rear-drive racer (GT3 procedures prohibit AWD) parts a six-speed sequential gearbox, often times production-spec suspension components, additonally an updated front end and a larger rear wing calculated to still be it planted to the tarmac. No a good deal more tech specs hold continued revealed at now time. Factory driver Frank Biela was at the wheel for the prototype’s roll-out, and purchaser deliveries are innate to take place imminent fall. Look for the car to see wheel-to-wheel action against the likes of the Aston Martin DBRS9 and Jaguar XKR GT3 over the 2009 European racing season. We patiently await its inclusion in a times ahead Gran Turismo update so the we can try it out, too.

It was an ambitious target to design, develop, shake down and launch an all-new spec car across the series in less than a full year, but that’s what the organizers of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport set out to do. Unfortunately, the first major setback inevitably meant that the series would have to be postponed, and that’s just what happened.

The new car has been under development with Ferrari for the past ten months or so – based on Ferrari’s Formula One racing car design – and things had been going well. However, when test driver Patrick Friesacher was injured after a vital suspension component failed, it was back to the drawing board. The delay means that the start of the fourth season, which was originally scheduled for September 21 at the Mugello track in Italy, will now be pushed back to Zandvoort, Holland, for October 4, which was initially planned as the second race of the season.

To such a end, Ecclestone is now reported to be attempting on launching a new GP3 series. The new feeder succession should sit one stage underneath GP2, that itself has handed out a crop of new talent – along with Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Heikki Kovalainen, Nelson Piquet Jr. and Timo Glock – to the F1 grid each year from the time its inception in 2005. GP3 can fight directly in the fractioned Formula 3 – beneath that separate succession managed close to the industry without a single united championship – and swallow the International Formula Master’s line founded persist year. While Mosley’s discredited vision of a low-cost Formula 2 are able to cap annual budgets at 200,000 euros per car (compared to the 800,000 euro have a price of of the F3 Euroseries), GP3 would stay details at a slump to the a great deal more reasonable 450,000 euro budget central in the aforementioned IFM.

Bottom line: there is a war of racing chain going out on between Mosley and Ecclestone, and racing fans am able to stand to help based on what i read in the competition.

[Source: F1-Live]

We’ve currently proven you pics based on information from Gordon McCall’s party and from what i read in the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, but today’s indemnity picks up an Italian accent. The Concorso Italiano is one of the highest annual gatherings of all conditions Italian, be it music, cuisine, fashion, tourism, and of route cars. Previously apprehended at the nearby Bayonet Black Horse Golf Course in Monterey Bay, such year’s gathering took place at the Marina government airstrip. Just covet the previous 20-something years, now year’s Concorso brought out a few stunning cases of Italy’s finest, cars calculated provided passione and implemented to be driven con brio. And recently similar to in past years, a few non-Italian cars the current bid the same driving thrill got invited in for the party.

While the tarmac did not supply the same soft picnic grove as the golf course, the organizers tried the most ideal to motivate up for it surrounded by a plethora of shady tents to visit filled in vendors, food and fun. Concorso has presistently been heard a greater amount of laid coming back as opposed to selected of the a larger amount of considered occurreneces for the duration of the week, and that much providing the somewhat a good amount rigid airport setting there was that much a feeling too you got at a good deal more of a car club equate as opposed to a genuine concours. Check out the gallery by clicking one of the images right here and you will hopefully see how we mean. The natural Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, and Alfas got joined by a collection of Lancias, DeTomasos, Fiats, and a smattering of “others” the included German, Japanese, American, and British cars. Our prefered prevent was the supercar lineup too featured two MC12s, two Veyrons, an Enzo and an F50. We significantly spotted Valentino Balboni, Adam Corolla and Jay Leno additonally we got there.

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Ever ever since 2006, when Peugeot, Skoda and Mitsubishi pulled such a factory runs teams out of the World Rally Championship, the WRC has been heard desperate to draw a different central automaker returning to reinvigorate the series. Emerging argues signal the present Volkswagen has kept on inquiring in regards to joining the championship following the company’s motorsport main Kris Nissen visited the Finnish rally to balance among sequence regulatory officials and committe leaders.

We criticize the thought of design by committee when it comes on a sizeable automaker, but Local Motors touts its open, inclusive method of collaboration as a deep strength. LM has concluded to put Sangho Kim’s Rally Fighter notion to production. Just such as a best automaker, plenty of phrases bloom on the webpage — multiple of them the etymological equivalent of weeds. The Rally Fighter is planned to scream around a variety of surfaces in glorious four-wheel drifts. Watching the progression of Kim’s styling for sketch to metal ought to be intriguing. The drawings substantiate a automobile investing in the routine bombastic levels of a concept, but if presently fact ends up in creation provided its outlandishly ample wheels, impossibly low roof, and exoskeleton-inspired person sculpting, we will positively be clamoring something like the Automatic provide evidence stand to look into it out.

Corvette ZR1; not significantly the horrid compression this YouTube serves up should ruin the sound of a force-fed LS-series V8. Rides are nice, and we would hop better on in for adrenaline therapy, but how we desire to do is push the Super-’Vette. 0-60 Magazine shares our thinking, so properties stuck the own shoe, Thomas Lyman, behind the wheel and sent him off virtually Milford. It appears such as it was awesome, but everybody’s keeping mum until the embargo lifts on August 20th. The video performs a quite astronomical job of talking for itself. Putting idioms in our future-mouths, our beforehand impression is would&wshyp;be to go somewhat desire “holy dad of pearl!” repeated a large number of times additonally respiration to a paper bag.

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