McLaren F1 – The perfect safe haven in troubled times

The McLaren F1 (along with its ‘Super’ brother, the LM) is considered by many to be the ultimate road car. Light, fast and enormously desirable, the F1 has been a stunning success story. Initially conceived in the late ’80s, and coming to fruition with the launch of the first road car in 1995, just 65 road-going F1s where made between 1995 and 1998, with 5 further LMs (6 if you count the prototype, which is still owned by McLaren and promised to Lewis Hamilton if he pulls of the double World Championship by winning in 2009).

Fisker Karma drives Laguna Seca

The Fisker Karma out testing at Laguna Seca But unhappy as we are at Cars UK with the world’s obsession with all things green – and hybrid / electric cars in general – even we have to admit that some of the work that’s going on does impress us. The Tesla Roadster is a great achievement – if madly expensive for what it is (an electric Lotus) – and the work Koenigsegg are doing with the Quant is very exciting. But one company that is efficiently going about putting together a workable, high performance car is Fisker, who have been working on their electric saloon car – The Fisker Karma – for less than two years.

Volvo XC60 R-design – more detail

Volvo has released more details of the XC60 R-Design Although the XC60 R-Design doesn’t get any sort of power boost, it does get some tweaks to the setup to provide a more sporty drive. Volvo has stiffened up the chassis and added more damping, and tweaked the steering ratios to give a quicker response.  But Volvo reckons this has virtually  no impact on ride quality (which begs the question ‘Why didn’t they do it to start with if there’s no trade-off’) and sensibly they have not gone down the lowered suspension route, so the XC60 still has good ground clearance. Volvo has added a rear seat entertainment package option to the XC60 On the cosmetic front, the R-Design gets body coloured lower section, matt silk metallic finish for the trim and chrome tailpipes.