The supercar from Down Under

Talk about exclusive! It’s being built in New Zealand – about as far from the UK as it’s possible to get – and only 20 are being made. But for £300,000+ you’ll get a genuinely sensational machine, plus two business class return tickets to capital city Auckland with a week’s luxury accommodation while you have a personal fitting in the car. The machine in question is the Hulme CanAm (above), a 200mph supercar named in honour of NZ race legend and F1 World Champion Denny Hulme. It’s a mid-engined roadster, designed for both road and track use, and based around an ultra-lightweight carbon composite tub and bodywork. The chassis, suspension and braking are all race-derived. Power comes from a 7.0-litre Corvette engine developing 600bhp and 600Nm of torque, fed through a six-speed manual gearbox with paddles or a sequential shifter. The 0-60mph time will be under 3.5 seconds. Each car will be hand-built for delivery from autumn next year and will be individually numbered. The price includes a guaranteed certificate of authenticity, a photo-dossier of the build, and a 1/8 scale exact replica finished in the same livery and specification.

Super Scooby by Cosworth finally unveiled

Black is obviously the special edition colour for 2010. Hot on the heels of the Ford Focus RS500 – see posting of 5 April – comes the Cosworth Impreza STI CS400 (above). It’s the car that Subaru has been drip-feeding us information on over the last few weeks, and which I’ve written about on this blog a couple of times. It promises to be a bit of a brute; 400bhp delivered to all four wheels via a six-speed manual transmission to produce a 0-62mph time of 3.7 seconds. This is the first genuine Cosworth-developed road car since 1996, and features a host of bespoke components in the engine, turbo system, exhaust, suspension, brakes and wheels. There are also subtle improvements to the exterior and interior styling. Discreet Cosworth badging is carried on the lower grille, front seats, brake callipers and floor mats, with individually numbered plaques fitted on the engine and door sills. Each STI CS400 is supplied with a numbered certificate of authenticity. If you want one you’ll have to be quick; only 75 are being made exclusively for the UK market. Yours for £49,995.

Still need a reason to buy a Skoda?

It’s not often the world gets worked up about a new Skoda, but that’s what’s happening with its performance flagship, the Fabia vRS (above). On sale from the end of July, it’s the fastest version of the popular supermini ever, hitting 62mph in 7.3 seconds. It’s powered by a 1.4-litre turbocharged petrol engine that’s then supercharged to deliver 180bhp. And who would have thought you would be able to get a seven-speed sequential paddleshift gearbox on a Skoda runabout? You can now. The vRS is available as a hatch and – for the first time – an estate. Standard kit includes 17-inch alloys, LED daytime running lights, smoked glass and a bodykit. You can even get an optional white or black roof to contrast with the body colour. Inside there are sports seats and a three-spoke multi-function steering wheel. And all that for £15,700 for the hatch and £16,495 for the estate. Impressive value. It’s the thinking man’s hot hatch. Or estate.

The world's only 400bhp Volvo

Writing this from Gothenburg, Sweden – where I’ve just been pulled by the police for speeding (another story, another day) – and where I’ve been driving a Volvo like no other. It’s the fastest road car the firm has ever produced, a C30 hatchback with 4WD and an eye-watering 400bhp. It’s been developed by Polestar, a local firm that builds Volvo’s Swedish Touring Car Championship entries and has ambitions to be as AMG is to Mercedes. The bodykitted blue monster is badged the Polestar Performance Concept, and is effectively a road-going version of the C30 racer. It will do 0-60mph in under five seconds, and Polestar’s engineers say it will outpace an Evo X over a 1km test track by six seconds. Grip is phenomenal and there’s a real growl from the turbocharged 2.5-litre engine. The bad news is it’s not for sale; this is a complete one-off to show what a true Volvo hot hatch could be. It’s not even under consideration at the moment. That’s a shame; it would do wonders for the brand’s image.

The Best Peugeot Ever?

More than a decade ago, a friend of mine ordered two Audi TTs. One was for himself, the other just a place in a queue which he subsequently sold for £2k. We quickly forget quite how radical and how much excitement the car generated in the run-up to its 1999 launch. I’m not suggesting the same is going to happen with the Peugeot RCZ – because the game has moved on in the last 10 years – but it deserves to. This car takes what you know about Peugeot and turns it on its head. Comparisons with the Audi are inevitable, but they’re missing the point. You won’t get change from £27,000 for a basic TT, but you can have an RCZ for £20,450. That’s a massive difference, and if you can live without a premium brand badge, one that’s well worth considering. Even more so because the story of the RCZ is a fascinating one; this is a car that was never meant to be. It started life as a 2007 motor show concept, something that would act as a teaser for 308 hatchback. Such was the public reaction, Peugeot bosses decided to give it the green light. Smart people.

Test your mettle on the track

Ever done a track day? There’s something about being on a race circuit, even if you’re not going flat out, that’s pretty intoxicating. If only all roads were that flat and wide, with nothing coming the other way! If you’ve never done it, may I humbly recommend the ones staged in conjunction with my journalist colleagues at Evo magazine. You can meet the staff, see the cars from the mag’s legendary Fast Fleet and drive your own vehicle on a track. Spaces are filling up fast, but there are three dates and two venues to choose from. The next Evo Track Day is 21 May at Bedford Autodrome, then it’s 13 August at the same venue and 8 September at Silverstone. Prices range from £119 for an evening to £250 for a full day. You can even have a ChaseCam solid state digital camera installed in your car to record your performance, with the downloaded footage stored on a USB stick to take away. Visit www.evo.co.uk/trackdays for more information.

Sporty SEATs - but not estates

Been driving SEAT’s new estate version of the Ibiza, the ST, and came away from the Barcelona launch a bit confused. The car is identical to its three and five-door siblings bar having a decent sized boot on the back (above). At the event bosses confirmed this load-lugger isn’t going to be available with the Ibiza’s sportier badges – FR, Cupra and the recently unveiled Bocanegra. Apparently they don’t fit with the car’s more practical image. All fair enough. But here’s why I’m confused. SEAT is meant to the sporty arm of the VW Group’s mainstream volume brands. Skoda is pitched as the value-for-money one. Yet there’s a performance flagship of the Skoda Fabia range on the way, to be badged the vRS, and it’s going to be available as an estate. But there aren’t going to be hot versions of a very similar product from SEAT, the sporty arm. It doesn’t make sense. Would love to have been a fly on the wall when that decision was taken.

199 or 200mph, it's Audi's fastest road car

There are a number of witty and well-known motoring quotes which are attributed to Lotus founder Colin Chapman. One is “To add speed, add lightness”, while another is “Adding power makes you faster on the straights, but subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere.” Both of these apply to Audi’s latest version of the R8 supercar, the GT (above). Bosses have announced the car goes on sale this summer priced £142,585 with first deliveries due next spring. Just 33 examples are available for UK customers. The car is 100kg lighter than before, and the V10 engine’s power has been boosted by an extra 35bhp to give it an eye-watering 560bhp. It will hit 199mph and because of that is Audi’s fastest ever production road car. But why not make it go 200mph? ‘Audi’s first 200mph car’ is surely a better headline than ‘Audi’s fastest road car’. I put the question to the company and the answer is that the targets were all metric – a 100kg weight saving and a 320km/h top speed. “Unfortunately the imperial conversions rarely end up being evocative numbers. However, the experience of driving the R8 GT will be equally thrilling for both imperially-minded and metric-minded customers,” said an Audi spokesman. That’s a quote Colin Chapman would have been proud of, but the irony is that 320km/h is 200mph!

MG back from the dead?

MG’s place in motoring history is assured, but what about its place in the future? Now owned by Chinese firm SAIC, a new model (above), was unveiled at the Beijing Motor Show last week and it’s quite a tidy looking hatchback. Imagine it as the ZR replacement and you won’t go far wrong, which means there’s plenty of potential for hot hatch derivatives. The car is called the MG Zero and has been developed by a Brit-led design team based in Birmingham. The interior features touch-screen technology and a ‘floating console’ instrument panel. It’s a pretty funky machine and there’s plenty to please die-hard MG enthusiasts. But the designers have also managed to give it enough of an edge to excite everyone else – and that’s no easy trick to pull off. Not surprisingly, the company is talking it up, calling the Zero “crucial to the development of the brand globally”. It’s expected to appear in production form 12 months from now and be on sale before the end of 2011. I don’t think there’s anyone in motoring who would begrudge MG a bit of success.