2024 Porsche 911 on 2040-cars

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Jay Leno puts carbon fiber wheels to the test on a Porsche 911 GT3 RS

Jay Leno's Garage usually focuses on looking at cars new and old, speaking to their owners and then Jay taking a drive to see what he thinks. However, Leno throws his usual shtick to the curb this week to do a full product test of the carbon fiber wheels from a company called Carbon Revolution. If you're not interested in hearing about wheels for 18 minutes, don't worry. They get mounted on a Porsche and are tested back-to-back with stock wheels, and Leno takes the 911 for a track test, too.
While carbon-fiber wheels aren't exactly a new idea, Carbon Revolution's goal is to create a lightweight, one-piece product that can be mass produced. The company even claims that it already has a deal with an OEM automaker to offer them on a vehicle in a few years. The key to the technology is that it doesn't need an expensive autoclave to be made.
In the meantime, the company's carbon fiber wheels are available as an aftermarket option for about $15,000 a set, according to the video. They weigh in at about 15.5 pounds each and offer OEM-levels of stiffness, so they could cut some unsprung mass off of a performance car. Watch here as Jay and his mechanic Bernard lap Willow Springs and give their feedback about what they think of this cutting-edge technology.

Gary Cooper's 1935 Duesenberg SSJ fetches record price at Pebble Beach

The 1935 Duesenberg SSJ formerly owned by Gary Cooper sold for a jaw-dropping $22 million over the weekend at the Gooding & Co. Pebble Beach auction, setting a record for the most valuable pre-war car ever sold at auction. It also appears to have become the most expensive American collector car ever sold at auction, eclipsing the very first Shelby Cobra ever made, which sold for $13.75 million in 2016. The Duesenberg was also the lone American-made entrant in the list of top 10 sellers, which was crowded with the names Ferrari and Porsche. You have to go all the way down the list to No. 21 to find the next American car: a 1930 Packard 734 Speedster Phaeton, which sold for a mere $1.127 million. All told, Gooding & Co. said it realized more than $116.5 million in auction sales over the weekend, with a whopping 25 cars sold for north of $1 million, an 84 percent sales rate and an average transaction price of $947,174. Clearly this is how the other half 1 percent lives. Gooding & Co. said there were five world-record sales at the auction. Joining the Duesenberg were a 1955 Ferrari 500 Mondial Series II, which sold for $5.005 million; a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France Berlinetta, $6.6 million; a 1967 Ferrari 330 GTC Speciale, $3.41 million; and a one-of-two 1966 Ferrari Dino Berlinetta GT, $3.08 million. Oh, and that 1969 Ford Bronco test vehicle we told you about? The one that was rebadged by Holman & Moody as a Bronco Hunter? It sold for $121,000, which was well below the expected range of $180,000 to $220,000. Perhaps it was the presence of all those gorgeous Porsche Spyders and Ferraris that meant collectors weren't interested in boxy, utilitarian off-roaders. View 24 Photos Gooding and Co. had expected the convertible Duesenberg coupe to go for more than $10 million. It was one of only two of its kind built by Duesenberg — the other having gone to Clark Gable — with a specially shortened, 125-inch wheelbase and a supercharged straight-eight with double overhead cams, able to produce around 400 horsepower and a top speed of 140 miles per hour. It features a lightweight open-roadster bobtail body produced by LaGrande out of Connersville, Ind. The car was also owned at one point by race driver Briggs Cunningham.

Porsche 911 spied looking like a Porsche 911

The 2017 Porsche 911 hasn't gone on sale yet and spy photographers have already snapped an early mule for the next-generation 911 due in calendar year 2018. It might be difficult to make out underneath the cobbled-together bodywork of the previous 991-version 911, but this one has a wider rear end that could be hiding the plug-in hybrid powertrain expected to come with the next big model update, perhaps codenamed 992. The strange white plug would be where owners plug the coupe in, according to this patent drawing. There have been rumors of a hybrid 911 coming for more than a year now, with some suspicious bits in a mule seen last year, and early prognostications being that Porsche is lining up the powertrain for the 911 Turbo to produce somewhere around 720 horsepower. That would make sense as the first stop for the learning and components of the 918 Spyder to trickle down to the 911 range. If Porsche migrated the 918's 156-hp electric motor unchanged into the 560-hp 911 Turbo, you're looking at a 716-hp monster that accelerates even more quickly. A hybrid 911 Carrera model would sit above the standard turbocharged engines. Elsewhere, the 992 model will come on the current MMB platform, and the exterior will be one of evolution, naturally. Interior upgrades will include a fully digital instrument panel. Or, going off the reservation, former Porsche chairman Matthias Muller said earlier this year that, "the high-speed high-tech laboratory of the 919 Hybrid will benefit all our future vehicles" in reference to expanding the Porsche model line to seven models. At the time, Bloomberg wondered if Muller was referring to the long-rumored Ferrari competitor Porsche has debated.