Carz Arena

Strap yourselves in, the fastest-ever Audi R8 is ready to roar!

Last week we brought you spy shots of the harder, lighter version of the firm’s supercar at the Nürburgring circuit in Germany. Now it has been unveiled at the Essen Motor Show, the country’s premier motorsport expo. Called the R8 LMS, it will take the fight to the Porsche 911 and Aston Martin DBR9 on racetracks around Europe but, more importantly, it give us an exciting glimpse of the forthcoming flagship V10-engined R8, which is due in UK showrooms late 2009.

Audi’s motorsport division has made a series of tweaks to the standard car to ensure that the R8 LMS is the ultimate ‘off-the-shelf’ racer. But it’s not purely a track-based toy – thanks to homologation rules for the GT3 class, Audi is obliged to build a small run of road-legal models, too.

Visually, the LMS packs a punch even when standing still. The wide bodykit, ground-hugging front splitter and wild rear wing give the car a menacing appearance, but also serves to produce masses of downforce at speed.

It’s under the bonnet where this car really shines though. Gone is the 420bhp V8 from the road-going machine, and in its place is a high-revving 500bhp 5.2-litre V10 mated to a six-speed sequential box, operated via wheel-mounted paddles.

The hydraulics used in the gearbox are borrowed straight from Audi’s Le Mans 24 Hours-winning R10 prototype, so shifts should be virtually instant. And with a kerbweight of 1,250kg, it promises to deliver stunning performance – 0-60mph in less than four seconds and a top speed of well over 200mph.

Up to eight customer cars will compete in different European race series and at the Nürburgring 24 Hours. Audi Sport has developed a special endurance version of the R8 LMS for that event which comes with a 120-litre fuel tank.

The first customers are scheduled to take delivery of the new car next autumn. But dream racing cars don’t come cheap: the R8 LMS will set you back £206,000.

For full details on Audi's super racer don't forget to get your copy of this week's Auto Express - on sale Wednesday 3rd December.

The new MINI Convertible has broken cover, and given the success of the previous drop top it’s no surprise that BMW has lifted the lid on the current generation.

Due to reach showrooms in March, the new MINI comes two years later than its hatchback equivalent. These are the first official pictures of the soft-top and it looks like it's been worth the wait.

The second version of the best-selling convertible will make full use of MINI’s ‘Minimalism’ package, BMW's clever term for its EfficientDynamics systems. The result is a cleaner more frugal beast. Performance has also been improved and the range-topping Cooper S now pumps out 175bhp from its turbo-charged 1.6-litre unit.

The new cabrio gets a healthy makeover too. A raised shoulder line and added chrome strip surrounding the car, highlight the cars sporty nature. While the trademark circular headlamps and hexagonal grille both remain. There are also two all-new colours making their debuts; Interchange Yellow and Horizon Blue.

Opting for the same two-stage electronically-operated canvas roof as the previous car, the top can be partially opened to act as a sunroof as well as fully retracted.

Another accessory making its debut is MINI’s ‘Openometer’, the add-on records how long the top has been down, letting passengers know how long they've been 'cool' for, air conditioning also now comes as standard.

Prices start at £15,995 for the standard Cooper rising to £18,995 for the Cooper S.

The famous Ford name is set to return to the BTCC in 2009 after an absence of nearly a decade. Independent team Arena Motorsport has revealed that it will field a squad of Focus STs in next year’s championship. Although not a factory-backed effort, it will mean tin-top fans get to see the series’ most successful manufacturer back in action. Since 1959, the blue oval has won 10 championships and a total of 219 races.



Heading the driver line-up will be Tom Chilton. The 23-year-old last raced for the outfit between 2003 and 2005, claiming six victories in a Honda Civic.

Arena boss Mike Earle says the squad has a bright future. “This is an exciting opportunity for us. We aim to return to the winning ways we enjoyed in the past.”

Italian company turns Alfa Romeo's MiTo into a real hot hatch. A taste of the upcoming GTA?

The MiTo is getting mightier! This wild two-tone version of Alfa Romeo's new supermini made its debut at the Essen Motor Show – and it's the closest thing yet to the forthcoming GTA hot hatch.

Modified by Italian tyre maker Marangoni, the MiTo M430 features a striking white and red paintjob, red tyres and a dramatic rear diffuser. However, perhaps the most outrageous details are the Lamborghini-style scissor opening doors.



Inside, it's not for the shy or retiring either. This MiTo now sports some special seats with red stitching and a host of Swarovski crystals too. But the M430 isn’t all show – the 1.4-litre turbocharged engine produces 220bhp, which should be enough for 0-60mph in less than seven seconds. Its suspension has been lowered and stiffened to cope with the extra performance.

While the M430 is just a one-off, Alfa Romeo has confirmed it is planning a flagship GTA, which will be powered by a new direct-injection, turbocharged 1750cc petrol engine producing 230bhp. It should go on sale in late 2009.



In the meantime, we'll be driving the Marangoni M430 early in the New Year, ahead of its UK debut at the Autosport International show at the Birmingham NEC in January.

If you squint just right, you can see them spilling from the vehicle, trench coats tied tight and fedoras tipped low over their eyes, tommy guns held not so discreetly at their sides as they quickly step away from the splaying suicide doors and disappear into an inky, rain-soaked night. Gangsters, old-school, on a job. This is their ride, and not just for all the badges that read “Mobsteel.”

Blink. The fedoras make way for bandanas and knit caps, the trench coats for black T-shirts and grease-stained jeans slung loose and low, the tommy guns for tattooed arms crossed tightly across chests. As you check out their ride, their eyes stay glued on you.

Except for Adam’s. The owner and founder of Mobsteel, in Brighton, Mich., Adam Genei has an affability that belies his ruffian image, and he talks easily about his latest creation, the Mobsteel Flex, while his crew quietly hangs back, watching.

The stock Ford Flex “is a little more realistic for middle America; it’s no Porsche Cayenne. But it’s still a girl’s car,” says Genei, smiling. “It has to have some sort of toughness for me to want to drive it.”

The Flex lends itself to a lot of toughening up, with its naturally strong lines and square stance and proportions that tend toward the long and lean. Genei started by dressing up his SEMA show car in Mobsteel’s trademark all-black palette.

The triple-black treatment is at once understated and graphic, a simple, declarative sentence punctuated thrice: a glossy jet-black body and a flat hot-rod-black roof, courtesy of SEM Products’ Color Horizons, with a full black leather interior, custom-stitched by C&S Stitch Works.

A one-off Mobsteel front fascia replaces the stock, with a blacked-out mesh grille filling out the maw where the Flex’s original triple chrome bars once lay. The headlight buckets have been blacked out, too, and a glance at the back end reveals a similar treatment: customized rear fascia and blackened taillight housings.

The flanks still boast the original strakes, but the door handles have been shaved, the better to disguise the fact that the back doors now open rearward. A pair of enormous billet hinges, custom pieces from Street Dreams by Ross measuring every bit of six inches across, allow the back doors to open extra wide.

The body sits low over its custom Mobsteel wheels--24-inchers painted the same flat black as the roof and closely wrapped in Pirelli 255/30Z P Zero Nero tires--lower even than a slammed stock model would, given the additional steel welded to the Flex’s skirt all around. It gives the vehicle a stance as menacing as that of any of the sleds for which Mobsteel typically is known, such as the Heavy Hitter, sitting across the garage, an all-black 1968 Lincoln Continental hardtop that almost scrapes the asphalt.

The Mobsteel Flex doesn’t look driveable but for a full hydraulic suspension that lifts the body up off the wheels to give the rubber some turning clearance, with adjustable

Air Runner custom front struts and Low Rider Depot air-management components.

The heart of the 2009 Ford Flex remains largely untouched, with the powertrain--a 3.5-liter Duratech V6 tied to a six-speed automatic--getting little alteration but for a Magnaflow cat-back exhaust that peeks out from the bumper through a pair of siamesed tips.

Inside, there’s little of the flashy stuff seen on the typical SEMA show car, the Mobsteel guys instead opting for the same minimalist look as on the exterior. Some of the trimwork has been replaced, with detailed pieces stretching across the dash in a black-over-silver perforated pattern by VC Finishes. Scosche Industries supplied a custom stereo center stack, and the backs of the front headrests house Invision monitors, each with its own built-in DVD player.

From the sheer decibels cranked out by the Rockford Fosgate system, you’d expect

to see an interior stuffed full of speakers, on display in every nook and on every sur-face, as with so many SEMA vehicles. Instead, the Mobsteel guys have hidden most of the 18 tweeters, woofers and subwoofers discreetly behind panels in the doors or behind the seats, all the better to maintain the vehicle’s unmolested simplicity. Only a bead of red piping stands out against the pitch-darkness inside.

“At the end of the day, when I go home,” says Genei, “I want to look out my window and see only black cars sitting in my driveway.”

That’s just as it should be with a modern-day mobster.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this sleek new Hyundai Genesis SEMA show coupe from Rhys Millen Racing is not that it features a 500-hp turbocharged engine in a lightweight carbon-fiber body and a structure ready to race in the JGTC or that it was built on a shoestring budget by a small crew working long into the night for many nights.

No, the most amazing thing about it is that Rhys Millen Racing finished the car three weeks before SEMA.

In the tuner world, where most cars are being painted inside the trailer on the way to Vegas, where “yes” means “probably not” and $14,000 means $255,617 or more, where everyone expects everyone else to be at least exaggerating or at most lying, building cars from stolen parts and repainting each car 14 times to fake homologation, Rhys Millen Racing brought a car in on time and under budget! We know--we saw it roll out of the trailer and drive around a racetrack exactly three weeks before SEMA. And that was two days after Millen won the triple crown of drifting using largely the same crew that was building the show car. Kudos, Rhys!

And it’s a nice car, we thought, as it was being backed ever so gently out of the trailer and onto the tarmac before us, forcing us to reassess our former belief not only in tuners but in all of humanity itself. Maybe in Hyundai, too, because, as we said, it’s a nice-looking car. It looks like a show car that might be as much show as go, as the kids say.

“We wanted to take something that looks statically appealing, something that you would see at a car show, but which also has all of the form and function of a race car,” said Millen, who should be in some sort of sleep-rehab clinic but instead was talking to us.

The car looks more like a race car than anything else. Indeed, Millen said the main influence comes from the Japanese road-racing series JGTC, specifically the GT300 class, “a modified street-car sort of thing.”

A really modified street-car sort of thing. Almost every body part you see is carbon fiber, taken from molds made directly off the body of a Genesis coupe. The hood, front fenders, roof, doors, decklid, wing and diffuser tunnels are all carbon fiber. The rear fenders are fiberglass. The RMR body retains the same lines as the donor Genesis coupe, though they are exaggerated. Since they have the molds now, RMR could start selling parts immediately, though the U.S.-spec Genesis coupe won’t arrive in showrooms until March.

The team hasn’t weighed the show car, but it should be considerably lighter than the 3,303-pound curb weight of the stock version. For instance, the doors alone went from 68 pounds stock to eight pounds on the show car.

Underhood, the team chose the 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine instead of the 3.8-liter V6, because the four is likely to be the choice of tuners. Tuners love turbos, and the stock Hyundai starts out with turbocharged induction. The V6 is normally aspirated.

The goal with the four is 500 hp, to be achieved with a Turbonetics turbocharger and an AEM engine-management system. A big intercooler was in place at the front of the block, but while it was in complete running form, the engine was not fully modified at the time we saw it. RMR had only about five weeks to build the whole shebang, after all. It should be closer to fully sorted out by the time we see it again at SEMA.

Likewise, there are big plans for the suspension in the next three weeks. Right now, it’s mostly stock underneath, but Millen has plans to include his own links with adjustability for castor, camber and sway bar settings by SEMA time.

And then?

Well, Millen’s contract to run the Pontiac Solstice in Formula Drift and at Pikes Peak has run out, leaving career possibilities wide open. He politely declines to

answer any questions about the future of the race car you see here, except to say, “I’m a free agent, so if Hyundai is interested in me for Pikes Peak or Formula Drift or road racing, I’m open.”

Well, Hyundai?