Rare Mercedes Benz Hood Star Hood Ornament Flower Base Ponton on 2040-parts.com

2012 Audi R8 facelift, more power & S-tronic ‘box

Audi R8 getting a facelift - and more power - in 2012 The supercar with a mainstream car maker’s badge attached that is the Audi R8 has been something of a success as a halo car for the Audi range since it arrived in V8 form in 2007 (well, probably 2008 by the time most customer cars turned up). Since the original V8 R8 arrived we’ve had an absolute deluge – in supercar terms – of R8 models from Audi including the R8 V8, R8 V8 Spyder, R8 V10, R8 V10 Spyder and the rather costly R8 GT and R8 GT Spyder. But through that time the engines – apart from in the R8 GT – have remained the same, as has the woeful R-Tronic gearbox.

One lap of the Web: The birth of the supercar, an #EpicFail and Ferrari 250 GT eye candy

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- The 1970s: An era of hippies, disco, space exploration and, most notably to us, the supercar.

Alpina unveils B4 Bi-Turbo at Tokyo Motor Show

It didn't take long for German tuning house Alpina to debut its version of the new BMW 4-series, and they've chosen the Tokyo Motor Show to unveil the new model. Under the hood of the Alpina B4 Bi-Turbo is a 3.0-liter straight-six engine with two turbochargers, making 410 hp and 442 lb-ft of torque. Alpina has tweaked the suspension a bit as well, installing their adaptive-sport suspension and an eight-speed automatic transmission.