The Good Oil: Porsche Performance

Porsche 919 livery speaks volumes

Supposedly "leaked" pictures of Porsche's 919 Hybrid Le Mans car livery surfaced on the interweb this week and showed a car that looked, well, a bit odd. The "livery" appeared to be an odd array of disorganised stripes that looked more like someone had gone a bit silly with the race tape than anything else. Until, that is, you view it from above ...

The bird's eye viewpoint reveals the truth of the livery - that it is in fact the words "Porsche Intelligent Performance" writ large across the top of the car.

Well, almost all of the words.

As you can plainly see they didn't manage to get all of the letters on there.

This leads The Good Oil to think one of two things: either the 919 will feature a trailer that will spell out the rest of the words, or a second car will pick up where the first one left off and have to race mere centimetres away from the rear wing of the first one ...

We are the world

A confused Japanese family recently triggered a high-speed, multi-state chase in the US - all because they didn't understand what the flashing lights behind them meant.

Utah police first spotted the car being driven ''erratically'' in an area being monitored for drunk driving, so attempted to pull it over, expecting to find a drunk driver.

However, the car sped up to 112km/h and swerved across the highway each time the police car pulled up behind it.

Eventually the highway was closed and road spikes were deployed.

Police were shocked when, instead of the expected drunk, a terrified Japanese woman in her 40s emerged.

It seems she - and her equally terrified family, none of whom spoke English - thought that the flashing lights meant they should speed up and get out of the way of the pursuing police car ...

Convertible Nissan GT-R

Nissan GTR is now available as a convertible thanks to a California based tuning house

Owning a Nissan GT-R not exclusive enough for you? How about a convertible one? If the idea of a topless Nissan supercar lights your fire, then you are in luck. And, in The Good Oil's opinion, in need of serious help.

Anyway, Newport Convertible Engineering in Southern California (where else?) is offering to lop the top off your GT-R and transform it into one of three versions after an approach from a client in Abu Dhabi (oh ... that's where else!).

The ''restrained'' version is basically a soft top convertible and will cost US$29,500 ($35,200) to build on top of the purchase price of a donor GT-R. The ''more glamorous'' versions (including the one you see here) will hammer you for a cool US$49,000 ($58,500)
and features roll hoops and a hard tonneau cowl.

F1 goes viral _ but really, why bother?

Marussia F1 testing was postponed due to a computer virus

When you think of motorsport, you tend to think of Formula One as the pinnacle of technology. And it generally is. What with the cars and garages literally bristling with

technology, the computing power in even the smallest team's garage is staggering, never mind the sort of stuff they pack back at home base.

That is why this news out of the recent test session at Bahrain is somewhat ... silly. It seems that perennial back-marker Marussia F1 lost an entire day of the four-day test
because of a computer virus.

''It started off with the first disaster, which was a computer Trojan-type virus in the racks, which cost us the best part of the day,'' Marussia boss John Booth said.

The biggest question is why anyone would bother? Chances are the virus would be faster than Marussia's car anyway ...

Startech strikes back

Startech Range Rover Sport

Let us, for a minute, pretend you are a tuner of high-end cars. You have a particularly cosy relationship with one manufacturer in particular, but still want to play with the other cars. What do you do?

In the case of well-known Mercedes tuner Brabus, you simply make up a silly name and play around with the other cars using that. Brabus is so closely related to Mercedes-Benz that when it wants to do something else, like a horrid mangling of the sexy Range Rover Sport, it uses the name ``Startech''. Not only does Startech sound like a lame 1980s science fiction movie, it also seems to allow Brabus to discard any tiny shred of good taste it had in the first place as well. At least, that is the case if the latest Startech widebody kit for the Rangie Sport is anything to go by.

Appalling front and rear bumpers and spoilers, tasteless quilting and excessive stitching throughout the interior and lots of carbon fibre seem to be the major hallmarks of the Startech molestation, although the impressive 3.0-litre TDV6 diesel engine comes in for a useful tweaking, with an increase to 238kW of power and 680Nm of torque from the
standard unit's 215kW and 600Nm.

At least the cheesy sci-fi Startech name seems appropriate; the kit makes the
handsome Rangie look like a cheap Darth Vader knock-off ...

HSV: Here is your future

Image 1 of 6: Startech Range Rover Sport

With the increasingly likely demise of the Holden Commodore looming, one is left wondering what will happen to the iconic company that churns out hot factory-

approved versions of the venerable Aussie big sedan. That's right, the big question is: is HSV knackered?

Well, while HSV has dabbled once or twice with non-Commodore-based cars, it has never been completely serious about it.
But if it wants to exist beyond the Commodore, it is going to have to get serious about it. And luckily enough, it seems there is a solution that has already been put together by people who are most definitely serious about it.

What you see above is the Vauxhall Astra VXR Extreme _ a stripped-out 220kW street-legal version of the Astra Cup racing car that will soon go on sale in Europe as an
Opel Astra OPC Extreme, as well as under the Vauxhall name in Britain. Yes, that's right: 220kW is pumping out of the Astra's 2.0-litre turbo four-cylinder engine. Add this
to the fact the Extreme has also had 100kg shaved off the standard VXR's weight and you have a very serious little car indeed.

HSV Astra VXR Extreme? That sounds pretty damned serious to us ...

Number Crunching

16 WINSPorsche returns to the top category of Le Mans as the most successful constructor with 16 overall victories.

7 WINSPorsche also holds the record of most consecutive wins at Le Mans with seven between 1981 and 1987.

9 WINSDanish driver Tom Kristensen is the most successful driver at Le Mans with nine wins. So far.

29 WINSBritain and France share the top spot for producing the
most winning drivers, with 29 from each. New Zealand sits in ninth with two. Here's hoping Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber can add one each to the local numbers.