German Car Blog, Performance, Tuning, Motorsport, and Modification News

Congratulations to the Audi customer GT teams which ran at this past weekends 24 Hours of Daytona. The Alex Job Racing team took the overall GT victory and team APR Motorsport came in second. Both teams running Audi R8 Grand AM cars which use a motor derived from the factory R8 5.2 V10 FSI. The third Audi team, Rum Bum Racing, was also in the hunt making up tremendous ground after a stop-and-go and time penalty but they ran out of fuel on the last lap forcing the car to coast in. ...

Hot on the heels of Weistec displaying their M157 turbo upgrade Renntech is releasing their figures. The car in the dynographs below is a 2012 CLS63 AMG with the full Renntech ball-bearing turbo upgrade featuring billet wheels, Renntech filters, Renntech cooling system, and Renntech hi-flow cats / downpipes. The rest of the exhaust is stock and the pulls were done on a dynojet using 93 octane pump gas with no correction factor. ...

BMW currently has been getting smacked around by, well, everyone in the German performance scene. The M3 has remained basically stagnant while Mercedes continues to improve the C63 AMG with available options to increase horsepower as well as hardcore black series variants for which BMW has no answer. The M3 GTS being the closest thing but that is not available in the United States. And even if it was there still is the SLS AMG Black Series not to mention the other Black Series models Mercedes has released and in the pipeline. ...

Well the Audi A3 sedan is official and it is coming to the United States. It was recently spotted testing and although it is heavily camouflaged one can still tell this is an A3 and it is a sedan. The front headlights do not appear to have differed much from the concept although the rear lights and rear proportions seemed to have changed a bit. Let's pray it looks as good as the stunning A3 sedan concept which was basically an RS3 preview. ...

BimmerBoost visited ModBargains located in La Habra, California last month after the whole BimmerPost/Modbargains debacle. Mike Brown from ModBargains was nice enough to invite me down to tour the facility and see their operations for myself. I came away impressed with what I saw as well as the size of the business. For whatever reason early on when reading on BMW forums when I saw the name bargains I associated it with value parts which is clearly not the case. ...

Interesting development here in the automotive world with BMW and Toyota signing a formal agreement for collaboration. This seems some what similar to agreement between Toyota and Subaru in the development of the BRZ sports coupe. BMW and Toyota will develop a mid-size sports car and will jointly research the technologies to be used. These include a fuel cell system, lightweight materials, and lithium-ion battery technology. ...

No, the price is not a typo. Alcon released carbon ceramic CCX replacement rotors for 997 Porsche's but at $21,895 they cost more than the factory PCCB (Porsche Ceramic Composite Brake) option which is $8,520. Let's see, $21,895 or $8,520 from the factory which can be negotiated or purchased second hand for even less. Not really all that hard of a decision is it when at minimum $13,375 can be saved for what is basically the same thing and the Porsche warranty is factored in. ...

Now this is more like Mercedes-Benz! Rather than using sex to sell the car we get a real advertisement with some attitude and style. The video highlights the design elements such as the new diamond radiator grill style as well as the impressive aerodynamics offering an incredibly low coefficient of drag. The interior is highlighted as well with the impressive leather, seats, as well as available deviated stitching. ...

The crazy thing about this video is you can do this legally in Germany. Seriously, Germans, you have it good and never let them take the autobahn away from you. Basically a Kawasaki ZX-10 and a tuned C6 RS6 by ABT stated to have 700 horses (well within line with the twin turbo V10... which the USA never got) go balls out on the Autobahn. The bike actually tops out its speedometer which reads 299 km/h or about 186 miles per hour although it sure appears both keep accelerating past that speed. ...

A major congratulations is in order to Wesitec Engineering for yet another world's first and yet another record on an AMG platform. Weistec was able to hit an eye opening 727 wheel horsepower courtesy of their M157 turbo upgrade, Weistec downpipes, Weistec exhaust, Weistec tuning, air filters, as well as their own M157 cooling package. A nice combination of modifications which resulted in 727 wheel horsepower and 730 wheel pound-feet of torque. ...

Here we officially have the Kleemann supercharger for the M159 SLS AMG the development of which and release for the M156/M159 platform stirred up quite the brouhaha. Regardless of one might think on the matter the fact is the supercharger is here. Kleemann claims 762 horsepower which the dyno they used in Europe shows a corrected 762 PS. For reference, the Weistec SLS 750 Stage I SLS AMG M159 supercharger system puts out 638 horsepower to the wheels on a dynojet with 91 octane from a 2.3 liter twin screw. ...

Here is a video that will do a better job explaining the difference between a supercharged and standard M3 than any dyno numbers ever will. The camera car is a 6-speed manual E92 M3 with a supercharged S65 V8 courtesy of an ESS VT2-625 kit. The other M3 is also a 6-speed manual but not supercharged and seemingly in a stock configuration. The difference is illustrated quite well with the distance between the two measured in miles rather than car lengths. ...

Ok, so the Porsche 918 Spyder is not actually a bargain. The price in the United States will be $845,000, quite a chunk of change. The optional hardcore Weissach package will make the total $929,000 so let's just say about a cool million when all is said and done. If going for $845,000 might as well go all the way and get the Weissach package to lower the weight 77 pounds, add magnesium wheels, and have the cool looking 6-point harness. You'll be the coolest guy at the Porsche meet. ...

Well, well, well. It finally happened, a power struggle between the two main SoCal California BMW meets in the early party of the year. Yes, Mfest takes place in Las Vegas but it is mostly SoCal BMW fans making the drive. So, we now have a power struggle vying for the same market at the same time with Bimmerfest scheduled for May 18 and Mfest scheduled for May 17-19. So which one does a SoCal BMW fan choose? The answer is Bimmerfest. ...

The CLA-Class has officially been released and now we are going to see all the speculation on additional variants. And AMG variant is a given but that will retain the general proportions of the sedan. Additional variants are rumored and with how popular wagons are a "shooting brake" or wagon version for Europe is within the realm of possibility. The result of what such a model would look like is rendered in the pictures below. ...

Technology marches on and for the most part it makes life easier. That is Audi's goal with their announcement that they will begin to show completely autonomous driving of their vehicles at the Consumer Electronics Expo in Las Vegas. Audi believes these systems could make production by 2016 although an exact date is not set (roughly sometime in the next decade). That begs the question, how many of you are comfortable handing complete control of your vehicle to a computer? ...

Volkswagen's World Rally Championship hopes are off to a good start with a second place finish at the Monte Carlo Rally. The Polo R had a successful debut and appears to be a strong challenger. The 17 months of testing and development as well as the rather large monetary investment certainly are paying off. French automobile maker Citroën was able to get the victory over VW however at Monte Carlo with Sebastian Loeb driving. ...

It seems like everyone in the mid-size luxury sedan segment is giving their cars a facelift and BMW will be joining the fray. The Porsche Panamera is getting an external facelift with driveline changes. The facelifted W212 Mercedes E-Class was recently revealed with exterior changes and driveline changes. That begs the question if the BMW F10 facelift will just be cosmetic as BMW often does or if there will be changes under the skin as well. ...

Some eye opening numbers for the Porsche 960 being reported by Automobile. Quad-turbo 3.9 liter flat-8? 650 horsepower? 3000 pounds curb weight? Certainly amazing figures but it is highly doubtful they are accurate. Regardless, that is exactly what Automobile claims. This motor would be in a mid-engine configuration sending power to all four wheels and mated to a 7-speed dual clutch automatic. Aluminum, magnesium, and carbon fiber would all help contribute to the low weight. ...