This week was Monterey Car Week and the Concours d’Elegance in California, where the weather is beautiful except for when it’s on fire, which part of it is, but fortunately not along the central coast where there were hundreds of immaculate cars showcased. I’m going to have to make it out there sometime, but since I haven’t, go check out Autoblog or any other number of sites with massive galleries of all the amazing old cars on display this week. One of which was the 1970 Ferrari 512S Modulo Concept which looks just about as close to a space ship as a car ever has. In addition to the classics, several automakers brought along some new cars or concepts which I thought deserved their own special feature this week.
First was Infiniti’s Prototype 10, which follows the more classically styled Prototype 9 that the company brought to Pebble Beach last year. This one is also a single seat racer in the style of 1950s-era race cars, but with Infiniti’s current styling language applied. Not only that, it’s apparently sat upon the new rigid, adaptable electric vehicle chassis that may underpin future Infiniti EVs, giving it much greater relevance than your run-of-the-mill concept. Of course this will never see production, and we don’t know exactly what drives it anyway, but man is it pretty to look at.
Another pretty silver single-seat electric racing vehicle showed off was the Mercedes-Benz EQ Silver Arrow, which, like the Infiniti, is a modern take on a classic race car. Unlike the Infiniti, it’s a modern take on a specific race car, the 80 year-old Silver Arrow, a Mercedes that set a public road speed record of 269 miles per hour in Germany way back in 1938. Also unlike the Infiniti, we have performance figures for the EQ Silver Arrow, which lays down 738 horsepower, 80 kilowatt-hour battery that gives the car a respectable range of 249 miles. But I doubt you’d get that far with instant torque and more than 700 horsepower on tap. While the Infiniti will never see the light of day through a dealership’s windows, the drivetrain in this car could very easily slot into an AMG performance car like in the EQ range. Sort of like a rival to the Porsche Taycan or forthcoming Tesla Roadster.
Audi was like Electric Vehicles? Oh ja, we do that too, so they brought out their PB 18 e-tron concept which, while having the worst name of the three electric concepts, also had the worst looking style. Not to say it’s bad, but the Peanut Butter 18 just didn’t quite reach the high bar set by the Infiniti and Mercedes. It’s not a single seat racer, but rather a shooting-brake style two seat wagon-y hatchback thing that still features Audi’s recent trend of the front of their cars being 100% grill despite the fact that electric cars do not need grills. It also beats the Infiniti by having a real powertrain, with a 95 kilowatt-hour battery powering three electric motors putting out a combined 671 horsepower and 612 pound-feet of torque, accelerating the car to sixty in just over two seconds. It’s apparently good for a range of 310 miles on a single charge. This thing looks like it’s straight out of Blade Runner of Minority Report. It’s very, very futuristic and I think we’re in for a very exciting time in car design if these new looks are actually implemented in future production cars.
It wasn’t all electric cars though, as Lamborghini, who haven’t found an electric motor violent enough to put in their cars yet, unveiled the Aventador Superveloce Jota or SVJ. While only 30 horsepower more powerful than the Aventador S, how much more power do you need than the SVJ’s 759 and 531 foot-pounds of torque. It comes from a no-doubt throaty 6.5-litre V12 and drives all four wheels, which also feature four-wheel steering, combining with active aerodynamics to make the car especially agile. Of course it has set a Nurburgring record at some time faster than other people that is totally meaningless. It’s lower, it’s stiffer, it has more downforce and it’s faster than the Aventador S, which means it will be absolute hell to drive around anywhere that isn’t an immaculate race track, but I’m sure that isn’t going to stop some pharma bro or tech entrepreneur from trying. After all, they can afford the chiropractic work this car would create the need for.
Not to be outdone, Ferrari brought along a new car, or rather, a convertible version of a car we’ve previously seen, the 488 Pista. It’s the same as the coupe, with a twin-turbo 3.9-litre V8 engine churning out 711 horsepower and 568 foot-pounds of torque. But with the top down, the car is 0.4 seconds slower to 124 miles per hour than the coupe, taking a whole eight seconds, which I know will probably be a deal breaker for so many people.
On the more affordable end of the spectrum, the new BMW Z4 M40i was unveiled with a sharp “frozen orange metallic” paint job and it’s quite a dashing looking vehicle. Of course we’ve seen virtually every part of this car by now, so the complete package isn’t really a surprise, but what will be a surprise are performance figures, because they have embargoed those until September 2018, which is obnoxious. It’s apparently quick though, getting to sixty in less than four seconds, so draw your own conclusions about the car and its Toyota Supra sibling from there.
Back to the extreme end of the spectrum, Shelby Supercar, one time makers of the fastest car in the world, surprised everyone by bringing a new car to Pebble Beach this year. Called the Tuatara, SSC has worked with Nelson Racing Engines to build a 5.9-litre flat-plane crank twin-turbo V8 flex fuel engine, and this is where it gets a little special. If you run this car on E85 gasoline, it will make 1,750 horsepower. If you only have access to 91-octane dino juice, it will “only” make 1,350 horsepower. While we have no idea how fast it will actually go when those ponies kick in, it does apparently have a super low drag coefficient of just 0.279, which slightly worries me that it doesn’t have enough downforce, which you might want when your car is approaching 2,000 horsepower. The car is not desperately pretty and it is painted in a sort of matte primer color, but the point of this car is that number. The reason you would buy one of the 100 they are supposedly going to make, and have been saying they are going to make for seven years now, is that number. And the reason the police report will cite when it finds your body in three different locations in two different counties will also be that number.
Finally debuting this week was the Bugatti Divo, for which we’ve been getting so many teasers, it just seemed like Bugatti wanted to whip a dead horse, and they whipped it real good. But for good reason, the Divo, based on the Chiron, is a beautiful car and was shown with very fetching teal color accents. It’s 77 pounds lighter than the Chiron, generates almost 200 more pounds of downforce and will touch 236 miles per hour if you have a place where doing that is possible. Instead of just raw speed, this car was built with cornering in mind and was named after French racing driver Albert Divo, who raced a Bugatti to two Targa Florio wins back in the 1920s. It’s much more attractive than the Chiron, which is saying something, and probably worth all of the $5.8 million it would take to buy one because it’s only going to appreciate in value. Oh and if you’re thinking of saving up for one, don’t bother because they’re all already sold because there are way too many rich people in the world and I’m not one of them.
Which brings us to the auctions. No Monterey Car Week is complete without a few ridiculous vehicle sales, and this year was no different. One of the special cars that went up for sale was a 1987 Porsche 959 Komfort, which is one of those “homologation specials” we talk about; basically a car that was produced in road-going form just so the company could make a race car version of it and dominate, which Porsche did in Group B racing. There were only 249,959 Komforts ever made, so this was always going to bring a lot of money. Unfortunately for the owner of this vehicle, the trailer carrying it disconnected from the car towing it and the 959 plowed straight into a tree, and the owner just decided to sell it that way. So yeah, there was a very, very totalled-looking Porsche 959 auctioned off, and you know how much it sold for? $467,500. Amazing. I’m sure the buyer has some plans for it that don’t include leaving the tree-shaped damage to the front end.
But the real star of the auctions was a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO being sold by Greg Whitten, an early Microsoft employee who invested very, very wisely. Only 36 of this vehicle were ever made and this particular 250 GTO, one of four upgraded by Scaglietti and one of only seven to have a more aggressive coachbuilt body designed by Pininfarina, making it lower, wider and shorter than other 250s. So you can imagine that this sold for a bit more than the $467k the crashed Porsche fetched. And yeah, it did okay. $48.8 million worth of okay, making it the most expensive car ever to sell at auction. Amazingly, that’s not even the most expensive Ferrari 250 GTO ever sold, as last year, a 1963 model sold in a private sale for $70 million, with another one going in 2013 for $52 million. So it just goes to show, you can get a better deal at an auto auction. You just may have to widen your definition of “deal.”
Authored by
Devlin Riggs