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Porsche board members facing another ˆ1.8B lawsuit over VW takeover bid

Back in 2008, Porsche got the bright idea that it could take over Volkswagen in the midst of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ignoring that this was a catastrophic move for the Stuttgart sports car manufacturer that that eventually resulted in it nearly going bankrupt and eventually being taken over by the same company it sought to control, the aftermath has left Porsche Chairman Wolfgang Porsche and board member Ferdinand Piëch in the crosshairs of seven hedge funds that lost out during the takeover and are now seeking €1.8 billion - $2.43 billion US - in damages from the two execs, according to the BBC.
See, investors bet on Volkswagen's share price going down, partially because Porsche said it wasn't going to attempt a takeover. But Porsche was attempting to take over VW, having bought up nearly 75-percent of VW's publicly traded shares. When word broke that Porsche owned nearly three-quarters of VW (which indicated an imminent takeover attempt), rather than go down like the hedge funds bet it would, VW's share price skyrocketed to over 1,000 euros per share, according to Reuters.
Naturally, when you bet that a company's share price is going to drop and it in turn (temporarily) becomes the world's most valuable company, you lose a lot of money, unless you're able to buy up shares before prices jump too much. This led to a squeeze on the stock, which the hedge funds accuse Porsche and Piëch (who are both members of the Porsche family and supervisory board) of organizing.

Porsche reveals new Panamera Turbo S ahead of Tokyo debut

For many buyers in the market for a luxury sports sedan, style is as important as performance. But while the Porsche Panamera undoubtedly delivers in the latter category, it falls somewhat short in the former. Porsche went to some lengths (if not quite far enough for some tastes) to improve its four-door model's visual appeal with the facelift revealed earlier this year, but now it's time to up the performance game with the new Panamera Turbo S.
Set to be revealed at the Tokyo Motor Show in just a few weeks from now, the new top-tier Panamera benefits from several key upgrades over the existing Turbo and the pre-facelift Turbo S. For one, its 4.8-liter twin-turbo V8 now produces 570 horsepower (up from 520 in the new Turbo and 550 in the old Turbo S and the latest Cayenne Turbo S) and 553 pound-feet of torque (up from the current Turbo's 516 but the same as the previous model). Despite the power boost, however, Porsche is quoting the same 3.6-second 0-60 time for the new Panamera Turbo S as it did for the previous one - but then that hardly required improvement in the first place. Top speed, however, is up to 192 miles per Autobahn-blurring hour, two mph faster than the previous model.
Other features include carbon-ceramic brakes (hopefully with more durable bolts than sister companies Lamborghini and Bentley have been using) packed inside the wheels from the 911 Turbo and an exclusive shade of greige called Palladium. And for the first time, customers will be able to order this top-spec model in long-wheelbase Executive trim. But don't expect it to come cheap: MSRP (before delivery and options) is quoted at $180,300 for the standard wheelbase and $200,500 for the stretched model. That's two and a half times the price of a base Panamera, and makes the new Panamera Turbo S Executive both the most expensive and most powerful Porsche your can buy this side of a 918 Spyder. Haven't passed out yet? There's more to digest in the press release, so head on down below to take it all in.

What's the deal with comedians and their cars?

'Round about the time in his life when it should happen for all of us, Jerry Seinfeld's ship came in with a force that almost split the dock. He'd been doing pretty well with his observational style ("There's a cereal now that's just cookies. Have you seen this? Cookies for breakfast. It's called Cookie Crisp. Cookies for breakfast! They oughta just call it 'To Hell With Everything!'"). But he showed no signs of setting the world on fire until he got cast in a show that was either about – depending on the level of comedy geek you ask – the average New Yorker, the very worst people in the world, or nothing. Suddenly Jerry Seinfeld was pretty much the center of the comedy universe. And while his comedy was at once both brilliantly innovative and rooted in the mundane, his next move was a predictable grab at something exotic – he went out and bought his dream car. A rather nice 911, actually. As almost everyone knows, it didn't stop there, and the man put together one of the most enviable collections of iconic Porsches we're likely to see. So what's the connection, if there is one, between cars and comedy? As far as Jerry Seinfeld (the man) is concerned, he's probably not the same guy as the Jerry on Seinfeld (the show) although it's hard to say for sure; his public persona is almost unnervingly well managed. But cars and comedy were the constants in his life then, and, well, just look at what the guy does now; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is a cultural constant, and we're certainly seeing Seinfeld the man in that one, and cars are obviously still central to his life. And it's been that way with a lot of very, very good comedy guys. Cars seem to round out their lives, to become the yin to their comedy yang. Ernie Kovacs might not have invented visual gags or surreal humor, but he got them both to kill on television in the 1950s, so he's a comedy hero. He died behind the wheel of his beloved Corvair wagon, so he's absolutely some kind of car-guy hero as well. Bill Cosby, the hottest name in comedy for a good long while, had Ferraris, one of two fire-breathing supercharged big-block Cobras (pictured below), and a BMW 2002tii – none of which either contributed to or in any way make up for the profoundly sociopathic creature he turned out to be, but it's still a data point. The Smothers Brothers, who defied the networks and the norms by getting blatantly political before that sort of thing was cool, went sports car racing.