Motive’s article, To Catch A Predator, which is all about the current trend of factories bringing their hot rod building in-house, is another example of why Motive is quickly becoming the place to go on the web for interesting automotive information.
The full range of tuners is covered, including AMG, M Division, John Cooper Works (JCW), Nismo, SVT/Ford Racing, SRT, Quattro GmbH, F, SS, GXP, V-Series, Super, Alpha, STI and Mazdaspeed, so if you’ve got a brand, they’ve got a tuner for you.
Perhaps the muscle car wars aren’t over after all…
[Motive - List: A Look At Factory Hot Rodders]
Rhys Millen isn’t good at going straight.
Rhys Millen is good, however, at going sideways. And he’s good at doing it very, very, very quickly.
Lucky for Rhys, there are two driving sports that don’t require much forward momentum: drifting and hill climbing. And also lucky for Rhys, he’s a god of both.
Why then did he give up his tire frying V8 powered GTO that was given to him to conquer the hills and slides with?
Because Pontiac made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Would you turn down a 500 hp turbocharged roadster?
Didn’t think so.
Rhys’ new GXP uses the 2.0 liter ECOtec engine that comes from the factory, but it’s been tweaked and tuned to produce over 500 horsepower thanks to turbocharging and a host of other go fast goodies (thick-wall iron cylinder liners, a race-ported cylinder head, tubular stainless steel exhaust headers, a performance camshaft, a unique engine control system and a water to air intercooled turbocharger).
Rear-wheel driven, Red Bull painted, six-speed shifted Pontiac Solstice GXP that runs off of E85 ethanol-based fuel (it’s good for the environment too)?
Yes please.
[Via: Autoblog]
