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The hottest modern sports cars rendered as rally racers

The modern-day World Rally Championship a monumental amount of fun to watch – I should know, as I recently was lucky enough to head to the UK to watch WRC Wales Rally GB – but even the most monstrous of the current WRC cars are based on fairly pedestrian European hatchbacks. Back in the heyday of rally, the Group B era in the 1980s, much hotter cars were the basis of even more incredible competition machines, for the most part. Take the exotic Ford RS200, or the Lancia Delta S4 with its twin-charged engine. And the hatchback-based Group B cars were bonkers, too. So what would some of our favorite modern cars look like if Group B had never ended? A British site named CarWow hired an artist to reimagine everything from the Rolls-Royce Wraith to the Porsche 911 as a retro-inspired rally car, and they were kind enough to let us share the results in the gallery above. The gallery features an Alfa Romeo Giulia in Martini livery, an Audi TT in classic Ur-Quattro colors, a Fiat 500 Abarth sporting massive flares and a hood blister full of auxiliary lights, a new Ford Mustang in RS200 livery, a Lancia Delta in Alitalia colors, a Porsche 911 in Rothmans livery, a Renault-Alpine in classic blue, a Rolls-Royce Wraith tribute to the Jules cologne Corniche Coupe, and a relatively modern-looking VW Touran. So far, the favorite around the office is the incredible Mercedes-Benz S-Class that is an homage to the wonderful 300 SEL 6.8 AMG "Red Pig" that essentially put AMG on the map. Check out the gallery above and see which one you like the best. Related Video:

Luftgekuhlt is an incredible car show for air-cooled Porsches

Air-cooled Porsches: Three lousy words and four lousy syllables. String them together and you get an expensive, emotive cocktail. If you've always wanted to own one, you know that truth, as prices of vintage 356s, 911s, and even 914s have risen steadily and then recently, skyrocketed. That change in the economics of cars once considered workhorses has altered the zeitgeist around what Porsche means to different generations of fans. Back in the day, Porsche didn't strive to be as expensive or as untouchable as Ferrari's metal. As a result, you typically find Porsche owners able — and willing — to twist wrenches on their machines. For one thing, air-cooled cars from Zuffenhausen were relatively easy to maintain and drive in all four seasons. They weren't show ponies. But when cars become collectibles, the scene around them changes, and Porsche FIA World Endurance Championship racer Patrick Long and his longtime pal, designer Howie Idelson, were, as Long put it, sick of meets "at golf courses where you have to worry if your shoes match your pants." Long mixes fine in that world. He's the only American on Porsche's factory team and he's won in everything from ALMS to GT to Baja. That tends to put your loafers at plenty of tony cocktail parties. But Long and Idelson, both SoCal natives who met as kids racing karts, wanted to make something of the air-cooled Porsche car culture, not of the collecting culture. Hence the birth, less than three years ago, of Luftgeku hlt. "It's literally 'air-cooled' in German but has that nerdish, Instagram picture-trading offshoot of a kind of Porsche cult," Long says, noting he's less interested in defining the brand that now sells t-shirts and posters and more interested in keeping things loose. View 63 Photos "We had cars with original paint from guys who work their hands 'til they're bloody and we had 200 of the most collectible cars." As such, he was still floored by the recently convened Luftgekuhlt 3, the third party he and Idelson have put on and by far the largest. It was held in the shadow of the L.A. skyline at the headquarters of Modernica furniture. More than 400 air-cooled Porsches and their owners convened. The location was no afterthought. "We wanted people to come for the cars and then be blown away by the venue: It has to be interesting. It has to attract different kinds of people." To spur that, Long doesn't adhere to the strict fealty of precision that's a default at most collector rallies.

Road & Track names its 2013 Performance Car of the Year

Road & Track recently staged its first annual Performance Car of the Year test, pitting 13 new and updated performance cars against each other on track, then graduating the top six to a road test before picking a winner. Additionally, the magazine staff picked the best automobiles of the year in eight categories.
But first, let's cover the PCotY segment. Here's the list of cars brought to the comparison test: Audi R8 V10 Plus; BMW 435i; BMW M6 Competition Package; Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Z51; Ferrari F12 Berlinetta; Ford Fiesta ST; Jaguar F-Type V8 S; Jaguar XFR-S; Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG S-Model Wagon; Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series; Mini John Cooper Works GP; Nissan GT-R Track Edition; and Porsche Cayman S.
To find out the results of the comparison, head over to Road & Track's website or check the press release below, where you'll also find the magazine's top-rated vehicles in eight categories. Want more? Head over to the 2013 PCotY hub. But before you do that, take a stab at guessing the winner of PCotY (we'll give you one hint: it isn't a Porsche).