2015 Ferrari LaFerrari 

 What a year it's been for enthusiasts who love high-performance, higher-dollar automobiles. The past twelve months or so have been consumed with the three horsemonsters of today's hybrid hypercar enlightenment: the Porsche 918 Spyder, the McLaren P1 and theFerrari LaFerrari. Getting into just two of the three would be better than a lump of coal in one's stocking come holiday time, but for me, it'd still leave things feeling sadly incomplete, gnawing from within 'til the end of days.

Getting the call from Maranello, therefore, was even more fortunate and satisfying. The 918 Spyder – the only seriously green hybrid of the trio – shook me up with its sophisticated menu of technologies. The McLaren P1 remains more of a true hypercar than thePorsche, what with its e-motor designed to boost the lightweight beast to supernatural speeds above any terrestrial concerns like fuel efficiency. And now it's time for the Italian with the funny name, LaFerrari. No mistake about it: I've been waiting all year for this car a little more than I've been waiting for the other two.

This run of hypercars built up over the year like a famous three-part opera: The enthralling start of the drama sitting in the Porsche 918, tear-assing the heavier green dart around a track in Spain; then on to the UK with the lightness and quick heart of the biturbo V8 in McLaren's track-inspired P1, and it was all to be topped-off at Fiorano with the LaFerrari, fit for a Wagnerian finish.

Now having had seat time in all three cars, it's my contention that the 918 Spyder, sensational as it is, feels like a stand-alone proposition in its own right. The full-on hardcore hyperdrive combat will be between the 903-horsepower P1 and the 950-bhp LaFerrari. It's going to be interesting as hell, too. Maybe throw in aPagani Huayra and a Koenigsegg Agera just for kicks.

The name "LaFerrari" has seemed silly to me since the car's unveiling in early 2013. Yet it took just one answer from Ferrarihead of road vehicle development, Franco Cimatti, to have it all make sense and even not sound so weird anymore. "The name is a reflection," says Cimatti, "of all of the very best capabilities and most advanced technologies within Ferrari coming together to create a single model." So, by selecting the name LaFerrari, the company is telling all of us which model is the best or the most 'real.' Point taken.

It's still a little silly, though.

On a day blessed with perfect sun and temperatures, my first driving opportunity was off piste, up into the Apennine foothills south of company headquarters in a red LaFerrari. All of its onboard tech would mean nothing whatsoever without a good set of treads and a great chassis setup with commensurately powerful and telepathic steering and braking. To this end, Pirelli has formulated a winning set of P Zero Corsa tires – 265/30 ZR19 (93Y) front, 345/30 ZR20 (106Y) rear – to go with the Ferrari's lower-slung sprung mass. The point lowest to the ground on the LaFerrari is 1.2 inches lower than the same point on the Enzo. Its physical center of gravity is a good 1.4 inches lower than the Enzo. Width is diminished by 1.6 inches, but the driver hip point is down a full 2.4 inches, too, so the greenhouse does not feel pinched.

Again, while the stunning exterior shape of the glassy greenhouse is narrower than that of the Enzo, the interior has all the space a driver up to six-foot, four-inches could ever need. The two carbon composite swan doors are light, too, and hinged in the proper place for simple entry and exit. Between the doors' size and their integration of the rather wide rocker panels, LaFerrari is among the easiest of hypercars ever to live with, even for larger rich people.

Open one of those doors, and the cabin itself is not quite Spartan, but it is at least Etruscan in its simplicity. Everything looks efficient and wisely chosen for the dash and center console, but the climate control knobs at dead center appear to be swiped from the late 1990s. All the rest of the controls are as they should be. That's a 12.3-inch dash screen, by the way, and it is perfectly suited to holding the amount of information required for a serious track car. Everything is very intuitively arranged thereon as well, so there's little fumbling around with the eyes to see what you need to see.

Say what you like about the drivability of this car on the far-less-than-idyllic surfaces all around Maranello, Modena, and Bologna, but both this new hypercar and the old Enzo are simply not meant for ordinary public roads. The positive road-going remarks I have about LaFerrari's third-generation magnetorheological dampers are more like a pleasant surprise, because the 499 lucky owners of this model will be doing the 950-horsepower plug-in-able hybrid flyer few favors if they don't exercise it regularly at their local closed circuit. The interior was designed to accommodate the wearing of helmets, too, it must be pointed out.

There was much zipping around over the hilly, rough two-lanes with the manettino on the squared-off CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastic) steering wheel set variously to Sport, Race and ESC OFF modes. First, you notice the newly programmed, seven-speed, Getrag dual-clutch gearbox snapping your sense of awareness into the absolute present. With much of the LaFerrari's development done under the watchful eyes of Ferrari's F1 engineers, they know how to take this essentially ten-year old Getrag DCT gearbox and make it young again. From the manettino's Race setting on up, the upshifts and downshifts are simply as quick as your thoughts. The rev-matching is maniacally quick, too, so the sound out the back of the car is that of an F1 gear song of ten year's ago, according to Ferrari team boffins.

Then come the huge carbon ceramic Brembo brakes – 15.7-inch discs with six-piston calipers up front, 15.0-inch rotors with four-piston pincers in back – that allow you to brake as late as you dare with their addictive first bite. These are the same discs found on the 458 Speciale.

LAMBORGHINI HURACAN

We're fresh from the heart of the Lamborghini headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy, where Italian and German executives have been beaming like proud papas in front of their soon-to-debut Huracán LP 610-4. The successor to the ultra-successful Lamborghini Gallardo will have its coming out party at the Geneva Motor Show next week, but there's no need to wait any longer for the details of this hotly anticipated model.

We, like many of you, have of course seen the Huracán in photos and videos before now, but it's safe to say the that the car makes a far stronger impact in the metal than it does in pixels. While the bodywork doesn't lack for the kind of metal origami that made the Gallardo so attractive, the Huracán contrasts areas of soft curvature against hard lines to great effect. We're comfortable ranking the new Lambo with a score of "Monica Bellucci" on the scale of Italian hotness (for those grading at home, that's just one below "Sophia Loren")

Designer Filippo Perini described the overarching hexagonal theme to the design details, pointing out that even the shape of the bodywork around the windows (which he referred to as the "Egyptian Eye") was penned with six sides. Continue to look at images of the Huracán and you'll see hexagons inside and out, with the interior especially bedecked with similarly shaped accents. The bodywork functions as well as it attracts, too, with a three-percent reduction of drag versus Gallardo and a whopping fifty-percent increase in downforce – all without using active aerodynamics, we should 

point out

As we alluded to earlier, the Huracán is also set to make use of Lambo's new ANIMA management software. The Italian word for "soul" is also an acronym for Adaptive Network Intelligent MAnagement (future trivia question), and offers driver selectable modes that alter steering effort and response, transmission and engine mapping, all-wheel-drive systems and the magnetorheological dampers. Set to the race-ready Corsa mode, ANIMA helped the Huracán lap the Nardo circuit some two seconds quicker than a Gallardo LP 560-4 (and Lamborghini's test driver considers that gap to be very conservative)..

n terms of sales figures, but the company fully believes Huracán will eclipse it on that front. With over 700 cars pre-sold already, Lamborghini seems confident that it could best the Gallardo's one-year sales record of 1,844 deliveries in 2008. Execs see more than 1,000 units in 2014 as an easy target, with first shipments starting just after June in all markets. We still don't know what the starting price of the car will be in North America, but European buyers will be looking at a base cost of 201,000 euros – around $275,000 USD – which ought to add a whole lot of cheddar for Lamborghini and the Audi group.

There is, of course, even more granular information to be found out about the Lamborghini Huracán LP 610-4 in the press release below. Drink deeply of the attached photo set, and then feel free to dive in. Of course, expect us to be bringing you more, better live images of the car from the Geneva show next week, as well. 

DUBAI POLICE CARS

Dubai Police has added four more high powered supercars to its fleet of luxury vehicles patrolling the emirate’s roads.
Officers already get to drive multi-million dirham cars such as a Mercedes SLS, a Bentley Continental GT, a Lamborghini Aventador, a Bugatti Veyron, an Aston Martin One-77 and a Ferrari FF, all decorated in the force’s livery.

The recent additions, announced yesterday, of a second Audi R8, a Mercedes SL 63, a Mercedes G class Brabus, and a Nissan GTR bring the number of top of the range sports cars run by Dubai Police to 12.

They were presented for the public on the first day of the Dubai International Motor Show.

Col Nabil Abdulla Al Redha, Dubai Police fleet director, said it all started with the Lamborghini Aventador earlier this year.

“When we first launched the Lamborghini, we studied the impact of this car and we looked at the reaction of the people and the media,” he said.

“It was a good advertisement, so we decided to expand it more.”

It is not known the total value of the 12 cars, but the limited edition Aston Martin One-77 alone is worth Dh11 million.

Rather than use the cars in high speed pursuits, Col Al Redha said they are used solely as a means of promoting the police force and the city. “We are mostly using them in tourist places, as a means of promoting to tourists, and allowing them to take pictures,” he added.

This is promoting the image of Dubai, this is just advertising. Because most people like sports cars.

“If you are putting an advert for just Dubai Police, perhaps not many people would be interested. But if you put an advert for a sports car, most people would be interested; people would be more attracted.”

Nimrod Katyusha: Geneva 2014

I've been attending the Geneva Motor Show for the better part of a decade, and it's become my favorite stop on the entire show circuit, in large part because of all the exotic automakers, coachbuilders and green startups. I also love the Palexpo's consistently mind-bending displays of tuners, who typically work exclusively on six-figure automobiles. Some offer subtle improvements and personalization pr ograms, but most seem hellbent on being more outlandish and bizarre than the next, a room full of millionaire class clowns. More often than not, I spy something and think to myself "What kind of Nimrod would do that to a perfectly good ____ ?" This year, that rhetorical question is in fact a self-answering one.

The jokes, they write themselves.

But seriously, if you're wondering who would take a perfectly lovely Ferrari 458 Italia or a Lamborghini Aventador and affix a wild body kit of dubious aerodynamic and aesthetic merit at great extra cost (both to the car's MSRP and to its assuredly grenaded resale value), the answer could very well be Nimrod Elite Tuning, a newer high-end restyling house out of Slovakia. That last locational tidbit might also explain the company's unusual name, which is likely a nod to a mighty Biblical hunter (descendant of Ham and a king of Shinar, Nimrod is mentioned in Genesis and Chronicles) and not meant to be taken as a synonym for "idiot" or "moron."

In any case, not much information is available on these two Nimrods, but the white and red-trimmed 458 is the Katyusha, and it appears to be an homage to the ultra-rare Ferrari FXX track car. The Aventador-based model, dubbed Avanti Rosso, channels a bit of Lamborghini's own Sesto Elemento. Sadly, there were no Nimrod representatives on hand who were able to offer further details, and the company's official website descriptions are of little help. We've got an inquiry in and will let you know if/when we learn more. In the meantime, check out our galleries and let us know what you think of these aftermarket specials in Comments.I've been attending the Geneva Motor Show for the better part of a decade, and it's become my favorite stop on the entire show circuit, in large part because of all the exotic automakers, coachbuilders and green startups. I also love the Palexpo's consistently mind-bending displays of tuners, who typically work exclusively on six-figure automobiles. Some offer subtle improvements and personalization programs, but most seem hellbent on being more outlandish and bizarre than the next, a room full of millionaire class clowns. More often than not, I spy something and think to myself "What kind of Nimrod would do that to a perfectly good ____ ?" This year, that rhetorical question is in fact a self-answering one.

The jokes, they write themselves.

But seriously, if you're wondering who would take a perfectly lovely Ferrari 458 Italia or a Lamborghini Aventador and affix a wild body kit of dubious aerodynamic and aesthetic merit at great extra cost (both to the car's MSRP and to its assuredly grenaded resale value), the answer could very well be Nimrod Elite Tuning, a newer high-end restyling house out of Slovakia. That last locational tidbit might also explain the company's unusual name, which is likely a nod to a mighty Biblical hunter (descendant of Ham and a king of Shinar, Nimrod is mentioned in Genesis and Chronicles) and not meant to be taken as a synonym for "idiot" or "moron."

In any case, not much information is available on these two Nimrods, but the white and red-trimmed 458 is the Katyusha, and it appears to be an homage to the ultra-rare Ferrari FXX track car. The Aventador-based model, dubbed Avanti Rosso, channels a bit of Lamborghini's own Sesto Elemento. Sadly, there were no Nimrod representatives on hand who were able to offer further details, and the company's official website descriptions are of little help. We've got an inquiry in and will let you know if/when we learn more. In the meantime, check out our galleries and let us know what you think of these aftermarket specials in Comments.