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Drive like a prince: Join us for a walk through Monaco's car collection

Small, crowded, and a royal pain in the trunk lid to drive into during rush hour, Monaco sounds like an improbable location for a huge car museum. And yet, this tiny city-state has been closely linked to car culture for over a century. It hosts two major racing events every year, many of its residents would qualify for a frequent shopper card if Rolls-Royce issued one, and Prince Rainier III began assembling a collection of cars in the late 1950s. He opened his collection to the public in 1993 and the museum quickly turned into a popular tourist attraction. The collection continued to grow after his death in April 2005; it moved to a new facility located right on Hercules Port in July 2022. Monaco being Monaco, you'd expect to walk into a room full of the latest, shiniest, and most powerful supercars ever to shred a tire. That's not the case: while there is no shortage of high-horsepower machines, the first cars you see after paying ˆ10 (approximately $11) to get in are pre-war models. In that era, the template for the car as we know it in 2023 hadn't been created, so an eclectic assortment of expensive and dauntingly experimental machines roamed whatever roads were available to them. One is the Leyat Helica, which was built in France in 1921 with a 1.2-liter air-cooled flat-twin sourced from the world of aviation. Fittingly, the two-cylinder spun a massive, plane-like propeller. Government vehicles get a special spot in the museum. They range from a Cadillac Series 6700 with an amusing blend of period-correct French-market yellow headlights and massive fins to a 2011 Lexus LS 600h with a custom-made transparent roof panel that was built by Belgian coachbuilder Carat Duchatelet for Prince Albert II's wedding. Here's where it all gets a little weird: you've got a 1952 Austin FX3, a Ghia-bodied 1959 Fiat 500 Jolly, a 1960 BMW Isetta, and a 1971 Lotus Seven. That has to be someone's idea of a perfect four-car garage.  One of the most significant cars in the collection lurks in the far corner of the main hall, which is located a level below the entrance. At first glance, it's a kitted-out Renault 4CV with auxiliary lights, a racing number on the front end, and a period-correct registration number issued in the Bouches-du-Rhone department of France. It doesn't look all that different than the later, unmodified 4CV parked right next to it. Here's what's special about it: this is one of the small handful of Type 1063 models built by Renault for competition.

Lamborghini will enter the Urus in off-road competition

Lamborghini still has several months until it starts shipping its new 189.5-mph Urus SUV to customers, but the brand is already thinking about proving its mettle by entering the luxury ute in an unspecified all-roads competition. It also plans to use the Bentley Bentayga, a key competitor in the rarified $200,000 SUV segment, as a benchmark when that vehicle takes on the Pike's Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado in June, even though it denies it will outright follow its Volkswagen Group stablemate into the competition. Bentley just hired two-time Pikes Peak winner Rhys Millen for that endeavor. "Lamborghini welcomes challenges, but whatever we do will be quite different from other brands," CEO Stefano Domenicali was quoted as saying by Autocar. "We will choose a form of competition intended only for our class of vehicle. Our car has many faces. You can enjoy its beauty, it is very fast on the track, very fast off-road and very fast on gravel. We will choose something that combines all of these things." The Urus is powered by a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 that generates 641 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque. It's mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission that drives all four wheels and goes from 0-62 mph in 3.6 seconds. It boasts low-down torque for off-road benefit, plus Terra (off-road) and Sabbia (sand) driving modes, which raise the air suspension for added ground clearance. By way of comparison, the Bentayga that Bentley will race up Pike's Peak features a 6.0-liter W12 making 600 hp and 664 lb-ft of torque and taking the SUV from 0-60 in 4 seconds. Domenicali recently told CNBC that the $200,000 luxury ute has been a hit with Bitcoin investors (of course) and buyers in Russia and India, and could account for more than a fifth of the brand's projected sales of 5,000 vehicles in 2018. Lamborghini expects to double production in its newly remodeled Sant'Agata Bolognese factory by next year. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Lamborghini Tecnomar 63 yacht: Raging boat

A year after being announced, the Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 express cruiser is in the water with its first owner. The co-creation of Lamborghini Centro Stile and Italian boat maker Tecnomar, the water-borne speedster makes the most obvious nod toward the limited-edition Sian FKP 37 introduced in 2019, but gathers cues to the automaker's entire history. The Verde Gea paint matches the Sian's launch color. The helm seats come from the Huracan Evo and are fitted with Sparco seatbelts. The steering wheel, minus airbag and paddle shifters, migrated from an Aventador, the gauge cluster behind sparkling with graphics recognizable from current Lamborghinis. The throttle levers mimic the shift selector in the Urus, the same fighter-plane-style cover hovering over the engine start button. The windows, meanwhile, channel the hexagonal shapes that have ornamented vehicles from Sant'Agata Bolognese since 1963.   Oh, the irony that the heaviest and most powerful Lamborghini ever created fits into the ultra-lightweight class, a segment never graced by one of the automaker's cars. A weight-shaving carbon fiber superstructure slides into a glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) hull to keep weight down to about 53,000 pounds. Two MAN V12 diesel engines — MAN is another Volkswagen Group brand — work together to blow 4,000-hp bubbles into the water. They get the Tecnomar to a top speed of 60 knots (69 miles per hour). Burning about 100 gallons per hour at cruising speeds between 40 and 45 knots (46 and 52 mph), there's enough fuel to run for about 360 miles. That's long distance moving.   This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Occupant spaces include the galley and dinette behind the helm, and sunpads on the fore and aft decks, that latter one with a pop-out television. Accommodations below deck are dressed in leather, Alcantara, and carbon fiber, with Y-shaped motifs most familiar in Lamborghini lighting signatures. There's a master suite forward, its bed overlooked by a sunlight shaped like a Lamborghini badge, and a guest cabin with two twin berths.  There will be just 63 Tenomar for Lamborghini 63 cruisers built, and we know one of them has already been spoken for by UFC fighter Connor McGregor. Reps at Lamborghini and Tecnomar wouldn't say how many of the roughly $3.5 million craft have been sold, but they did admit that production through the end of 2022 is sold out.