Sports Car Net

If you are a sports car owner… heck, if you are a car owner, you have been thinking and paying much attention to the fuel gauge in your car. With regular unleaded gas prices averaging over $4 a gallon and many of our premium sports cars requiring $4.50+/gallon premium, high octane fuel this topic is likely on the forefront of your thoughts.

While some selected segments of our automotive niche certainly rate on the lower end in fuel mileage, many modern models sport better than average fuel consumption rates. Road and Track featured a series entitled The Fast & The Frugal that looks at 10 sports cars that excel in fuel mileage. The list is quite surprising when you notice that some of the best in class in performance are also on this list as gas sipping machines. Cars like the Corvette Z51, the Lotus Elise and others would be attractive even to the non-fuel-mileage conscience buyer for their excellent performance all around.

When you look at the sports car development pipeline I think we can expect this list to grow. Manufacturers like Audi are already deep into their diesel racing engine development programs in their GT cars and others are following suit. I think we can all rest easy that we will not have a repeat of the late 80′s / early 90s where it was the dead sea for sports car fans. It looks like this time around, we will have plenty of choices even in a market where gas mileage will dictate model line ups in all automotive manufacturers.

AutoBlog.com posted a “First Drive” of the new 2009 CTS-V and ran a 3.9 sec 0-60 and 3.9 191 Top Speed.

You read that right, we rode in it. Cadillac wasn’t quite ready to let us climb behind the wheel, but we did get to ride shotgun with some of GM’s top engineers. One of the three cars on hand for this event, the silver one, was the same car that John Heinricy drove to a 7:59.32 lap at the Nurburgring last month. All three cars had the same production level hardware. The only difference with the silver car was fire safety equipment, a pair of racing seats and a brace to which were attached the required five-point safety harness. Cadillac took three CTS-Vs to Germany for a final round of validation testing on the ‘Ring, as well as the autobahn. As the clock was running down on the team’s track rental, there was only time for one full hot lap. Since they didn’t have time to go all the way around the 12-mile circuit to cross the start/finish line at speed, Heinricy went back three corners to make a running start and then blistered the track as time ran out.

We are looking forward to getting our hands on this car for a REAL road test!

What a GREAT helmet! Valentino Rossi debuted this helmet at Mugello and definitely turned some heads!

Click here for the video on motogp.com.