Tyler Hansbrough at Performance Automall

Former UNC Basketball National Champion

Tyler Hansbrough

is coming to Performance Automall Friday, September 17th!

Join us for an autograph session- all donations will benefit the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the North Carolina Cancer Hospital.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

2011 Porsche Cayenne Turbo!

HIGHLIGHTS:

*Exceptional stability and AWD control; an SUV that drives like a sports car,"Sport Mode" included.

*Long-lasting, durable brakes that don't wear out after a few hard stops

*Lots of cargo space with fold-down rear seats for easy loading

*Top-shelf interior materials and all power seating for personalized comfort

For more info: http://www.directshift.com/wordpress/2010/07/23/2011-porsche-cayenne-turbo/utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+DirectShift+(Direct+Shift)

Monday, July 19, 2010

Porsche 918 Supercar

Following interviews with two anonymous sources, Bloomberg News is reporting that the Porsche 918 Spyder will be the automaker's most expensive vehicle. The company plans to sell the car at €500,000, a price €47,000 higher than the Porsche Carrera GT, produced from 2003 to 2006.

Despite the high cost, more than 2,000 people have begun talks to purchase the two-seater. The automaker said they would not greenlight the car unless 1,000 customers put a deposit down on the car. In its history, less than 1,500 units of the Carrera GT were ever sold.

The hybrid 918 Spyder is capable of a 0-100 km/h sprint time of just 3.2 seconds. It uses a 500-horsepower V8 engine combined with an electric motor to hit 199 mph (320 km/h). Porsche claims that the 918 Spyder uses about three liters of fuel per 100 km, producing up to 70 grams of CO2 per kilometer.

A formal decision on the car's production is expected later this year.

Visit here for more photos of the Supercar.

TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2010

Rumor has it... Porsche 911 Speedster!

Of all the names and model designation used by Porsche in its illustrious history, there are two that stand out more than other: the 911 and Speedster. And it's easy to see why. The Porsche 911 has become the de facto sportscar since its introduction in 1963 and many people simply refer to the seminal 356 convertible as the Porsche Speedster.

Might Porsche be working on a new machine that would combine these two icons? According to Auto Express , the answer is yes. Take it all with an appropriately sized grain of salt for now, but the rumormill would have Porsche building exactly 100 911 Speedsters for roughly $300,000 each.

That princely sum will reportedly buy a 911 boasting a cut-down windshield and racing-style sloping rear humps behind each passenger headrest. The German automaker's well-known 3.8-liter flat six would provide power, boosted 17 horses over the mill found in the 911 Sport Classic for a total of 402 horsepower.

Rear-wheel drive over all-wheel drive should make traditionalists happy, and a supposed 0 to 60 times of about 4.5 seconds and top speed of 190 miles per hour ought to please everyone else. Also, Porsche is reportedly cooking up wide-body non-Speedsters that will use the same engine and be available in either coupe of cabriolet forms with a much more reasonable price tag.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/07/12/rumormill-porsche-911-speedster-in-the-works/

TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2010

Porsche, in their Press Release, introduced a new, efficient, high-performance, medium engine, low-emission, and hybrid sports car- the 918 Spyder. The prototype of this model is fused with the latest breakthroughs in technology. Also, it answers the demands of today’s society.

Then, it has one of the fastest accelerations. Although the 918 Spyder only has a medium sized engine, it performs as well as those with large engines.
From rest, the car can go up to a hundred kilometers per hour in just 3.2 seconds with a maximum speed of 320 kilometers per hour; running at a speed which is even faster than most sports cars, even Porsche’s own Carrera GT.

The 918 Spyder has an 8 cylinder hybrid engine. And it weighs less than 3300 pounds. One of its best features is the option to choose a running mode located on the steering wheel. These four running modes are: E-Drive mode, Hybrid mode, Sport Hybrid mode, and the Race hybrid mode. Drivers can choose the best mode in relation to the road conditions. Porsche currently has three hybrid cars that will make their first appearance at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show.

First off, the 918 Spyder is an environmental friendly vehicle having a very low emission rate. After consuming three liters of fuel, the car emits only 70 grams per kilometer of Carbon dioxide. Indeed, it shows that Porsche is not lagging behind in terms of hybrid technology.

Read full article here.

2011 Porsche Cayenne | Sumptuous ride spices up the road

2011 Porsche Cayenne | Sumptuous ride spices up the road

Leipzig, Germany: Even those who don't pay much attention to the car business will remember the noise that erupted when Porsche announced, roughly a decade ago, it was going to build an SUV.
But the Cayenne, now entering its third generation, has gone on to sell approximately 280,000 units worldwide - more than 5,600 of those finding homes in Canada.
And the departure from building just sports cars was essentially in keeping with the company's roots, going back to 1900 and the World Exposition in Paris when Dr. Ferdinand Porsche wowed the world with the Lohner-Porsche - a car with electric motors on the wheels. Porsche later took his car with four electric wheel-hub motors - basically the world's first four-wheel-drive vehicle that, remarkable for its time, also had brakes on each wheel - and combined the battery-powered car with a gasoline engine. So, no, it was not General Motors, Honda or Toyota that invented the hybrid.

Now, Porsche is set to stir the auto world again with the 2011 Cayenne, which adds a hybrid to the company's production portfolio for the first time. Built at the same factory as the Panamera and Carrera GT in Leipzig, the 2011 Cayenne is not so much an evolution from the previous model as it is a revolution, swirling with good looks from every angle, built to an impeccable fit and finish and resonating with an interior rich enough to leave Architectural Digest readers envious. You couldn't say that about the old model.

The seats alone are small sculptures, cocooning the driver in a leather lair so comfortable every Cayenne owner will be volunteering to drive anytime anyone needs to go somewhere.
Slightly wider, taller and 48 millimetres longer overall, the new Cayenne might seem like a rolling symbol of contradictions. For instance, even though it's bigger it looks smaller. It has more features, yet lost some 180 kilograms of weight in the Turbo model. The shark-like snout and rounded fenders in front and back look mean, yet come across as elegant, especially with full LED lighting that's more understated than on the Audi Q7. Also, the Cayenne boasts as much off-road capability as a Land Rover LR4, yet few Cayennes will ever see much dirt, despite a simplified off-road management system complete with locking differentials in the centre and rear.
For such a large vehicle, the Cayenne is blessed with astonishing speed, especially the 500-horsepower Turbo that with 516 pound-feet of available torque could easily nudge the Alberta border closer to B.C.

In one open stretch of autobahn on a beautiful sunny day, I came just eight kilometres an hour short of the Turbo's top-rated speed of 278 km/h, yet the SUV felt as though the engine was still gaining on its maximum level of thrust. At that hurricane-like velocity, it would be easy to think the windows would blow out, the paint start to peel and the ride become unnervingly unstable.
After all, I was crossing what amounts to almost one football field every second and displacing about as much air as the space shuttle Atlantis on re- entry. Yet, despite some wind noise around the now door-mounted mirrors, there was stability - comfort, even - and a sense of control that seems hard to rationalize in the Turbo's 2,170-kg package.

Indeed, the Turbo (with sharp-looking, 19-inch, split five-spoke wheels as standard, 21-inchers as an option) will be the most exciting of the first four Cayenne models to initially arrive in Canada. The $123,900 Turbo will be offered alongside the 400-hp-V8 Cayenne S at $76,000.
In October, the fleet will be joined by the $80,800 S Hybrid, motivated by a supercharged V6. A base V6 model ($58,200) arrives in September and a diesel version with 405 lb-ft of torque could potentially arrive in 2012 as a 2013 model. All Cayennes - except for the base model that uses a six-speed manual - will come with a new eight-speed Tiptronic manumatic.
The S Hybrid, however, will unquestionably be the pride of the fleet, able to achieve impressive fuel economy of 8.2 litres per 100 kilometres in combined city/highway driving, better than many four-cylinder sedans.

An hour's drive around the city resulted in a 10.9 L/100 km reading, so driving like a reasoned adult should result in the advertised rating. Like the Turbo, acceleration in the Hybrid S is definitely Porsche-like, thanks to the combined efforts of the blown 333-hp V6, aided by 47 hp from the electric motor. The grand sum of 380 hp is just 20 hp shy of the Cayenne S's V8. Zero to 100 km/h in the hybrid is rated at 6.5 seconds - only 6/10ths slower than the S, The supercharger, too, is positively quiet, yet there's an appropriate growl to the engine under hard acceleration.
Most interesting, the hybrid can ``sail'' at highway speed, so when the driver takes his foot off the gas pedal, the gasoline engine shuts down and is detached from the drivetrain to avoid drag forces by the engine. In this mode, the electric motor works as a generator, delivering electric power.
The feature works up to licence-revoking speeds of 156 km/h. Indeed, it's impressive to see the tach at zero while the hybrid is freewheeling along at more than the legal limit. The second the driver touches the gas pedal, the engine comes back online. The transition between full electric and gasoline electric is as instantaneous as it is unnoticeable - only the most fastidious of drivers will be aware.

Full-power demands are met with right-now enthusiasm. At idle, the engine shuts off completely, as all Cayennes (except the base model) are now equipped with a sensible automatic start/stop function.

But, as impressive as the hybrid technology is, more interesting is the larger picture of how Porsche has put sophisticated engineering and serious performance into an SUV and married it with a sumptuous interior that points to the higher standard of luxury the brand is trying to achieve. An available Burmester sound system, quite possibly the best car-audio system in the universe, is also a signal of that.

The Cayenne may have originally been a questionable proposition, but it now commands such a presence that it would no doubt have made Dr. Porsche very pleased.
Read more:

Porsche 911 GT2 RS Leaked

Porsche 911 GT2 RS Leaked

Performance Porsche of Chapel Hill, NC: Next generation GT2 Update...

The Porsche 911 is seeing its performance aura growing these days, as Porsche moves on with its hot vehicle offensive, developing new incarnations of the iconic performance junkie.

The rear-engined coupe has already received an S version for its turbo model, which comes with 30 additional hp and a massive standard equipment list, while the wilder GT2 facelift version is currently under development, with the production vehicle expected to be introduced this fall, at the Paris Motor Show.

Yesterday, Porsche presented the "icing on the icing", as the company unveiled the 911 GT2 RS monster to German dealers during an exclusive event held in Leipzig. Luckily one of the event’s participants decided to take a photo and set it free on the web.According to a member of the TeamSpeed online community, the new GT2 RS will deliver 620 hp while tipping the scales at 200 pounds lower than the current GT model. The performance data is even more impressive as the focused supercar is expected to reach 100km/h (62 mph) mph in 3.2 seconds, 200 km/h (125 mph) in under 10 seconds and 300 km/h (187.5 mph) in less than 25 seconds. The best has been saved for last: the German coupe should post a Nurburgring lap time of 7 minutes and 22 seconds.

Full article lined here.