If a bone stock Nissan GT-R isn’t special enough, there’s no shortage of tuners capable of making it look meaner, go faster, or both. However, it seems like most tuned R35 GT-Rs – even the double-throwdown 1,000+ horsepower ones from the likes of Switzer Performance – don’t look radically different from the ones rolling off the boats and into Nissan dealerships. Some people are okay with that, and some aren’t.

For people who aren’t okay with a fairly stock appearance for their tuned GT-R, and would prefer more radical alterations, help is on the way. It comes from Florida-based Parker Brothers Concepts and Saudi Arabia’s Team Galag, and is called the TG1. And as you can see, this looks almost nothing like the off-the-shelf Godzilla.

Team Galag isn’t revealing too much about the specifics of the TG1’s bodywork, but word on the street is the new bits are made of carbon fiber. The nose features a rather snowplow-esque shape and what appear to be LED headlights and driving lights. The hood features dual NACA ducts like the stock one, but the bulges have been smoothed out. Conversely, the front fenders have had bulges added, and the rear quarter panels are also widened. The rear fascia ditches the traditional four round taillights for a set of red LED loops, and incorporates a supercar-look bumper and diffuser. All told, only the roof has been left alone, and is thus the only part of the exterior that betrays the identity of this car’s underpinnings.

And speaking of the underpinnings, they’ve been gone through by British tuner Litchfield Motors. The 3.8L twin-turbo V6 has been massaged to unleash 750hp and 701 lb.-ft of torque. Team Galag claims that’s good enough to fling this rebodied beast to 62 mph in 2.7 seconds, and onward to a top speed of 211 mph. Yep, those definitely qualify as supercar numbers.

We expect Team Galag to release more details about their new toy soon. Maybe after the Gumball 3000 – in which the TG1 is competing – has concluded. The number one question we’d like answered is “Will more than one be made?” That way, we’ll know if there’s a chance we’ll see one in the metal, er, composite.

Source: Team Galag

Team Galag TG1 is a High-Powered Mutant of a Nissan GT-R by Tom Anderson

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We’re all quite familiar with the criticisms leveled at the Nissan GT-R, right? It drives like a video game, it weighs as much as an SUV, no Average Joe can afford one, blah blah blah. If only there was a way to get these petrolhead Eeyores to shut their latte slots and appreciate Nissan’s supercar for what it really is: A 2+2 rocket sled that makes you question the veracity of your high school physics textbook (You know, the one in which you drew a 97% accurate Slayer logo on the inside back cover?).

This video, hosted by MotorTrend’s Carlos Lago with a power lap cameo by the mag’s favorite pro shoe Randy Pobst, might not get all of Godzilla’s naysayers to pour their Haterade down the drain. But it’s hard to argue against the numbers the GT-R – specifically the new-to-America GT-R Track Pack – puts up. Those absurd, hypercar-harassing numbers…

Source: YouTube

Oh No, They Say It Really Goes: MotorTrend Wrings out the Nissan GT-R Track Pack [Video] by Tom Anderson

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For four generations and 25 years, the Supra served as Toyota’s high performance leader. With a strong (particularly on later turbocharged versions) and smooth straight-six under the hood, hatchback versatility and room for four (at least in a pinch), it truly was the Toyota of sports cars. And in case the Supra wasn’t famous enough on its own, prominent roles in video games like the original Gran Turismo and movies like The Fast and The Furious certainly bumped up its notoriety even more.

XCar’s Alex Goy decided to see if the reality lives up to the hype by driving a fourth-gen Supra. But this isn’t just any Mk. 4 Supra; not only is it the last one imported to Britain by Toyota, but it has also been turned into a tribute to the iconic Castrol TOM’s Supra JGTC race car from the late ‘90s. And automatic transmission notwithstanding, it looks (and, once the turbos spool up, is) the business.

Source: YouTube

Supra Duper: XCar Pays Tribute to Toyota’s Performance Flagship [Video] by Tom Anderson

If you didn’t know that this year marks the centenary of Aston Martin, you probably have a lot of company. The nameplate hasn’t organized concours d’elegance on each continent, or released centennial edition packages consisting of special paint schemes and sequentially-numbered dashboard plaques for any of its regular production models. The occasion also hasn’t gotten nearly as much ink in the buff books (at least that we have seen) as some other automotive anniversaries – i.e. the Porsche 911’s 50^th birthday – have.

However, we’re willing to bet only the most ripped of the world’s van Winkles will remain in the dark about this milestone anniversary once they’ve gazed upon Aston Martin’s stunning present to itself. This present is called the CC100 Speedster Concept and, if you ask us, it beats the snot out of any store’s or company’s gift card.

The design details are thoroughly modern, including elements like LED taillights, rakish headlights, and plenty of exposed carbon fiber. Additionally, the “doors” are more like swing-out bars that go across the tops of the openings to the cockpit, and the cockpit is split by a tonneau cover. But for all the modern detailing, the overall flavor is reminiscent of the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans winning DBR1 (The car on the left in the above photo.) from the late 1950s. The long hood, short deck, windshield-free profile is pure ‘50s sports racing car, which is fine by us.

We’re also fine with the interior treatment. There are acres of unpainted carbon fiber on the dashboard, console and elsewhere, but some sections are covered with intricately stitched and riveted brown and tan leather. The two racing style bucket seats feature the same tan leather on inserts, but they are mostly covered in black Alcantara. And the dashboard is incredibly Spartan: A digital display directly behind the steering wheel relays data like speed, engine RPM and current gear, while the center stack only houses the ignition switch, selector buttons for the 6-speed transmission (which can be shifted manually via steering-column-mounted paddles), and a row of old-school, long-since-banned-by-NHTSA toggle switches for things like the headlights and hazard flashers.

But the switch for the engine – Aston Martin’s venerable 6.0L V12, producing unspecified quantities of horsepower and torque – is a garden variety pedal you operate with your right foot. Push down on it hard enough (and time your upshifts right) and you should hit 60 mph in 4 seconds, and if you keep holding that pedal down, you’ll reach 180 mph before the computer says “Whoa, big fella!”

Not surprisingly, the CC100 is strictly a one-and-done affair. However, Aston Martin indicates it could set the tone for the design of future production models. Just don’t get your hopes up for partial doors showing up on the next-gen Rapide…

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Source: Aston Martin

Aston Martin CC100 Speedster Concept is One Bodacious Birthday Present [w/ Video] by Tom Anderson

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Not even 24 hours ago we brought you the skinny on the production version of the Porsche 918 Spyder, Stuttgart’s shapely plug-in hybrid hellraiser. It looks wicked cool (particularly with the flashback-fabulous Weissach Package), and puts up staggering performance and economy numbers, but how does it look (and, more importantly, sound) when in motion? The one and only Chris Harris RSVP’d to the car’s launch at Porsche’s Leipzig test track (which is adjacent to the Cayenne and Panamera factory) to find out.

It’s safe to say that Chris finds himself quite smitten with the driving experience, but he’d really love to see a lightweight, non-hybrid version. Frankly, we’d be curious to see how such a creation would perform, too, but we realize that, like the McLaren P1 and the LaFerrari, the 918 was designed around a hybrid powertrain and thus plays the role of technological showcase and assuager of greenie anger toward its maker. Besides, it’s damn fast and sounds like Wagner’s subconscious, and by Georg, that’s good enough for us.

Source: YouTube

918 and Life: Chris Harris Tests the New Porsche Supercar [Video] by Tom Anderson

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Car geeks are intimately familiar with the well-worn saying “The grass is always greener on the other side.” No matter what country on this big wet marble you call home, there’s always some car or car part that was never available in your homeland that you will absolutely covet. How else do you think the JDM scene got to be so popular here in the U.S.?

Conversely, there seems to be a growing demand for USDM cars and components in Japan. One man at the forefront of this movement is Masayoshi Nagano, propreietor of Nagano Koubou. One of his specialties is mating American S13-chassis Nissan 240SX noses with home market Silvia bodies to create what Japanese Nissan buffs call “Onevias” (The “one” in the name is derived from 180SX, the JDM version of the S13 hatchback that shared its front sheetmetal with all three American S13 body styles.). We quite like this two-way cultural exchange, and hope it continues for years to come.

Source: YouTube

USDM Tyte, Yo: Japanese Tuner Cultivates American Style J-Tin [Video] by Tom Anderson

In 2010, Porsche stunned the automotive world by revealing the 918 Spyder Concept, a plug-in hybrid supercar. Not long after the concept completed its tour of the auto show circuit, Porsche announced it would be putting the 918 Spyder into production, with assembly of the first car set to begin on September 18 (9-18…get it?) of this year. Granted, Ferrari and McLaren beat Porsche to the punch by premiering their hybrid hypercars at Geneva in March, but there’s still anticipation aplenty surrounding the 918.

Now Porsche has pulled back the curtain on the production 918 Spyder’s shape, as well as its technical details. And even though it’s the last of the big-name green supercars to go public, we don’t think that has even a slight chance of hurting its chances for success.

Take the styling, for instance. It mirrors that of the gorgeous concept version quite closely, though there are a few detail changes, such as the sidepipes being replaced by tailpipes poking through the top of the engine cover. Some people might dismiss it as derivative, but we think it comes across as an evolution of the Carrera GT. But if you do happen to feel it’s too generic, you can always order the “Weissach Package” (named for Porsche’s legendary test track and technical center), which adds one of many snazzy retro-inspired graphics package modeled on a famous Porsche race car livery from back in the day. It also adds bare carbon fiber trim, magnesium wheels, Alcantara seats and less sound deadening.

But cosmetics and trim aren’t what the 918 is about; it’s about the powertrain. And boy is that powertrain fancy: The 4.6L V8 is based on the 3.4L V8 found in last decade’s RS Spyder LMP2 racer. It delivers 608hp and revs to – get this – 9,150 rpm. It teams up with a pair of electric motors, one at the rear making 154hp and one at the front delivering 127hp, plus a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission. The most combined power the car will make at any one time? A neck-straining 887hp and 940 lb.-ft of torque (though that torque figure only comes in top gear). Egad.

And because the 918 Spyder is a plug-in hybrid, it can putter around on just electric power for a short distance. Specifically, the 6.8 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack (which can be fully recharged in less than seven hours from a normal 110-volt outlet) should hold enough juice to propel this supercar for up to 18 miles at speeds up to 93 mph. When not in EV mode, the 918 will supposedly top 211 mph, and hit 62 mph from a dead stop in 2.8 seconds. That’s mighty fast, but Ferrari and McLaren have thrown out slightly more extreme numbers for their tree-hugging rocket ships. On the other hand, neither the LaFerrari nor the P1 has a removable roof, something the 918 Spyder, as its name suggests, does.

Expect Porsche to start delivering the first 918 Spyders to customers around December. And if you haven’t ordered yours yet, well, you’re too late: All 918 (There’s that number again!) copies scheduled to be built were spoken for years ago. As a consolation, we do have plenty of pictures of a Weissach Package equipped 918 Spyder on which you can feast your peepers.

Source: Porsche

Porsche 918 Spyder Production Model Revealed in Full by Tom Anderson

After a gestation so lengthy that Axl Rose was quoted as saying “What the hell is taking Kazunori and crew so long?”, Gran Turismo 5 finally arrived in November of 2010. And while it was without question a tremendous game with gorgeous graphics and a mammoth car list, it felt, in many respects, rushed. Hard to believe when you consider it came out almost six years after Gran Turismo 4, but things like a new-but-half-baked damage model, continued use of angry appliance exhaust sounds, woeful under-utilizations of the WRC, NASCAR and Top Gear licenses and, perhaps most aggravating of all, many times more “Standard Cars” (i.e. models ported from GT4 and the Gran Turismo title for the PSP) than “Premium Cars” (i.e. brand new car models built from many thousands more polygons and featuring fully-modeled interiors) left many longtime fans of the franchise feeling underwhelmed, if not out-and-out cheated.

So you can imagine our skepticism when we heard rumors that the father of Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi, and his team at Polyphony Digital would not only be revealing Gran Turismo 6 sooner rather than later, but also bring it to market by the end of the 2013 calendar year. Well, following a massive press event (which also served to celebrate the series’ 15^th anniversary) at England’s Silverstone Circuit earlier today, we can report there’s more than a little truth to those rumors. More than a little truth, and some gorgeous, gorgeous visuals.

As you can see in these screenshots and the videos below, the graphics do look to be a step up from those of GT5, which were themselves knocking on the door of real life. This is quite remarkable given that GT6 will be a Playstation 3 title. That’s right, kids, even though the Playstation 4 is also coming out later this year, GT6 will stick with the tradition of having two full-fledged GT games on each generation of Sony’s game console. And while there are already plenty of sourpusses complaining that this new game should be on a new console, designing it around the PS3 ensures many more potential buyers thanks to a larger install base, and allowing the development team to work with a familiar platform and optimize the game for it.

But despite using said familiar platform, Yamauchi and team decided to scrap the GT5 engine and start over. According to Yamauchi, the new engine not only makes better use of the PS3’s capabilities, but it’s also less cumbersome and is more future-proof. Additionally, Polyphony Digital enlisted the help of Yokohama Rubber and KW Automotive for developing more authentic tire and suspension modeling, respectively.

That’s what’s happening under the hood, but what’s some of the new stuff you can actually see? Well, both the car and track lists will grow noticeably. Some of the new or updated rides revealed today include the KTM X-Bow R, Ferrari Dino 246 GT, Audi Sport quattro S1 rally car and Tesla Model S. All told, Yamauchi says we can expect more than 1,200 vehicles to ship with the game, and most will be customizable with wheels and aero parts; however, there’s no word how many (if any) of those will be a) Standard Cars, b) near-as-makes-no-difference duplicates (e.g. Japanese, European and U.S. versions of the Honda S2000), or c) both. There’s also no word on what exactly “Players can create their own personalized custom car in the game” means. (Could it be a Forza-esque livery editor?)

In terms of tracks, the claimed number is 71 course layouts spread out over 33 locations, with Silverstone being one of the seven new locations. And apparently we can expect the car and track tallies to grow through routinely-released downloadable content (DLC) packs, though you can create new tracks any time through a more capable and robust “Course Maker” feature.

As for the gameplay itself, we’re told the user interface will be simplified and streamlined (a welcome relief from the busy, patchwork quilt “GT Home” menu in GT5) and that loading times will be shortened. And the online community aspect will be even more refined, allowing users to create clubs and groups as well as setup their own online events and championships. And when you don’t have access to your PS3, you’ll still be able to interact with GT6 through your computer and apps for your smartphone or tablet. Very cool, but also very ambitious; we’re anxious to see how much of it makes it into the final product.

Yamauchi-san says he will be releasing more information at E3 next month, as well as Gamescon and the Tokyo Game Show in the fall. Rest assured we will be reporting on all the new tidbits as they emerge. After all, we’re just as interested as you are.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Source: Sony

Gran Turismo 6 is Playstation 3-Bound This Holiday Season [w/ Videos] by Tom Anderson

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The rear-drive sport coupe wonder twins from Toyota/Scion and Subaru get all manner of praise heaped upon them, and deservedly so. But there is one noteworthy bone that even some of their most ardent supporters have to pick with them: Lack of power. While the 2.0L flat-four’s 200 horsepower and 151 lb.-ft of torque is okay for virtually all situations, it won’t cause your cheeks to ripple like a pond that’s been bombed a pebble, either.

But leave it to the Subaru experts at Crawford Performance to change all that. You see, this pearly BRZ’s lump has been fully rebuilt and treated to a laundry list of hot rodding tricks. Oh, and it also now breathes through a rather hefty turbocharger. And as our host Matt Farah explains, roughly 430hp and 500 lb.-ft in a 2,700 lb. package is not something to be taken lightly.

Source: YouTube

Boxer Rebellion: Crawford Performance’s Cray Cray Subaru BRZ Turbo [Video] by Tom Anderson

The all-new CLA-Class represents a sizable philosophical shift for Mercedes-Benz. It’s an extension of the company’s “four-door coupe” portfolio, and it’s the first front-wheel-drive Mercedes-Benz offered in the United States. But it also represents an open and concerted effort by the world’s oldest car company to court the highly-desirable youth market.

And if there’s one thing younger car buyers like to do, it’s modify their rides to make them look different from everyone else’s. But because the CLA is so new, there aren’t very many options for making one’s baby Benz stand out from the crowd just yet. Thankfully, one of those options – from the German firm Piecha Design – looks damn good.

These cosmetic enhancement parts (which collectively transform a CLA250 to a CLA250 GT-R) include a new pair of splitters and matte silver “blades” that, at first glance, look a lot like a set of oh-so-trendy LED running lights for the front bumper, lower side skirts, a new rear diffuser (incorporating four round tailpipes), and spoilers atop the back window and the trunk lid. Piecha Design also fits bigger and brasher wheels and tires. If you ask us, the kit does a nice job of bridging styling aggressiveness gap between the regular CLA and the spicy Wurst CLA45 AMG.

However, if you want to bridge the performance gap, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Piecha doesn’t have anything that will cause the CLA250’s turbocharged 2.0L inline-four to generate more than the standard 208hp and 258 lb.-ft of torque. Then again, a good many motorists in the 18-35 demo don’t know a wastegate from a waste basket, and they’re probably perfectly happy with those 208 ponies.

No word how much Piecha will charge for all the GT-R bits, but we can’t see it being all that much. Of course, considering how much snazzier it makes the already snazzy CLA look, they would have to be priced pretty high before they start to lose appeal.

Source: Piecha Design

Piecha Design Mercedes-Benz CLA250 GT-R Emboldens Stuttgart’s New Starter Sedan by Tom Anderson