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Hot Wheels
Celebrated Living has compiled the ultimate automotive wish list
(because even grown-ups want toys for the holidays). BY ERIC PETERS
If you have ever longed to live the dream of piloting an über-exotic with the wind in your hair, possibly airborne — and lesser cars receding rapidly in your rearview mirror — your options have never been better, especially when money is no object. Here are six cars that will put you in the fast lane.
Bugatti Veyron 16.4
Price: $1.4 million
Engine: 8-liter W16, turbocharged and intercooled
Horsepower: 1,001
0-60: 2.8 seconds
Bugatti Veyron 16.4
“Ultimate” is a much-abused term, but when it’s used to describe the 16-cylinder, 1,001-horsepower, 252-mph, million-dollar-plus Bugatti Veyron 16.4, it is merely an accurate statement of the facts. There is no new car that’s more powerful, faster, quicker — or more costly.
Not by a long shot.
The Veyron’s W16 engine (basically, two narrow-angle V-8s arranged together in a “w” configuration) displaces a massive 8 liters — making it bigger than even the mightiest of ’60s-era Detroit “big block” V-8s. It is fed by four turbochargers and feeds so much power to the custom-built wheels and tires that it’s possible to do a four-wheeled burnout at highway speeds through the car’s permanent AWD system and seven-speed gearbox. If, that is, the driver is brave enough to give it full throttle. And with 1,000-plus horsepower on tap, physical courage is what’s required to explore the Bugatti’s ballistic capabilities.
The Veyron makes a Winston Cup stock car look like a weakling — and a million-dollar house seem cheap. There is absolutely nothing like it on four wheels, anywhere — at any price.
Ferrari 430 Scuderia
Price: $180,000*
Engine: DOHC 4.3-liter V-8
Horsepower: 510
0-60: 3.6 seconds
*Figure is estimated
Ferrari 430 Scuderia
The 430 Scuderia takes an already formidable exotic supercar and makes it even more super — and even more exotic. The 430 Scuderia is the closest to a racer that Ferrari produces. It features carbon fiber and composite materials, an extremely low weight-to-power ratio, thanks to a low dry weight of 1,250 kg and to the naturally aspirated 4308 V-8’s 510 horsepower at 8500 rpm, plus F1 Superfast software which reduces gearchange times to just 60 milliseconds.  That would make the Scuderia an easy member of the “500 Club,” that exclusive brotherhood of cars with more than 500 horsepower under their hoods — and one of the most formidable exotics you could hang a license plate on.
The Scuderia will appear in early 2008, alongside the standard F430 Spider stablemate, which is comparably priced at $177,000..
Maserati
GranTurismo
Price: $115,000
Engine: DOHC 4.2-liter V-8
Horsepower: 405
0-60: 5.1 seconds
Maserati GranTurismo
If you love the looks of the elegant Quattroporte sedan but feel it has two doors too many, you’ll want to take a look at the new GranTurismo two-plus-two coupe. The GranTurismo has a complete new design, from the ground up, by Pininfarina
studios. It rides on a shortened version of the Quattroporte’s chassis and features a front-mounted transmission to give it a near-perfect 50-50 weight split for better handling than its competitors.
Power comes from a 4.2-liter, 405-horsepower DOHC V-8; standard features include Maserati’s Skyhook active damping suspension system and a racy carbon-fiber/aluminum-trimmed cockpit option designed to look great as well as shave weight.
Just keep in mind the lyrics of that old Joe Walsh song as you slide behind the wheel: “My Maserati does 185. I lost my license, now I don’t drive.”
 Porsche 911 GT2
Price: $191,700
Engine: Horizontally opposed 3.6-liter turbocharged boxer six Horsepower: 530
0-60: 3.7 seconds
Porsche 911 GT2
How do you beat a Porsche? With another Porsche, naturlich. And with the latest version of Porsche’s much-feared 911 GT2, you’ll be able to whump just about anything else on the road, too. Only the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 trumps it on top end (which it ought to, given it costs several times as much). But even the brutal Bugatti can’t match the Porsche’s footwork in a fast corner — and besides, you’ll still see in excess of 200 mph on top, which makes the ’08 GT2 the fastest street-legal Porsche ever offered for sale to the general public.
GT2s differ from run-of-the-mill 911s in several key respects — including wider bodywork, race car-style carbon ceramic brakes, super-firm suspension and, of course, a brain-smasher engine upgrade. The ’08 GT2’s heavily turbocharged boxer six pumps out 530 horsepower — or about 25 to 30 more horses than the previous generation GT2s. If you see one coming up behind you on the Autobahn, move over — quickly.
Cadillac XLR-V
Price: $100,000
Engine: DOHC 4.4-liter
supercharged V-8
Horsepower: 443
0-60: 4.6 seconds
Cadillac XLR-V
Back in ’97, Caddy was an older man’s brand; not many buyers under 40 lusted after anything in the Cadillac portfolio.
Realizing its buyer base wasn’t getting any younger, Cadillac yanked up the parking brake, cranked the wheel hard over, and did a tire-smoking 180. The dowdy Catera sedan was quietly shuffled off, its place taken by the much more youthful and exuberant CTS and, at the very top of Cadillac’s lineup, a stiletto-heeled retractable hardtop roadster with Corvette DNA appeared. This car — the XLR — took 20 years off Caddy’s buyer demographic all by itself. It also gave GM’s premier division something it hasn’t had in at least that long: a car that was fully capable of going toe-to-toe with six-figure ultra-roadsters from Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, and others. The high-performance ’08 XLR-V takes all that up another notch, from its hand-assembled (and supercharged) 4.4-liter, 443 horsepower V-8 to its “kinetic” brushed aluminum interior accents. For the first time since the ill-starred Allante, and maybe even since the last of the gangster bad-boy Eldorado rollers of the late 1960s, Cadillac has produced a ride for a new generation.
And one which you might find mighty tempting.
AUDI R8
Price: $109,000
Engine: FS1 4.2-liter V-8
Horsepower: 443
0-60: 4.4 seconds
Audi R8
Okay, so Audi hasn’t yet attained the prestige of Porsche (or BMW and Benz) when it comes to exotica — but the just-launched R8 coupe should change that perception in short order. The mid-engined, 443 horsepower R8 features an aluminum and carbon fiber skin stretched taut over a space-frame chassis, which in turn claws the pavement through all four wheels, and an R-tronic six-speed transmission with computer-controlled clutch plus driver-controlled gear changes. Performance is supercar stout: zero to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds and a top speed of nearly 190 mph.
While a few are faster, not many are newer — or can match the cachet of being the first Audi exotic offered for sale to the general public.
And at just over $100,000, it’s one of the most affordable exotics.
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