With diamond-finish wheels, this Ferrari car packs a 720-horsepower punch

Today on the Pebble Beach Golf Course in California, Ferrari unveiled the 50th convertible model it has ever made, the Ferrari 488 Pista Spider.

This 488 Pista Spider is the continuation of Ferrari’s top-selling 488 line. It has the most powerful Ferrari V8 engine ever—720 horsepower on twin-turbos—and a unique barking rev sound thanks to the fact that it now packs a retractable rooftop. The Pista Spider can go to 62mph in 2.8 seconds; top speed is 211mph. (Pista is Italian for “track,” after all, which signifies just where this car is best suited to live.)

But there’s not much to see here that is new from the 488 Pista, except for that folding roof.

Besides the bold blue racing stripe down the front of the car, the most notable changes to this 488 Pista Spider are its new diamond-finish 20-inch alloy wheels with a novel 10-spoke star-effect and the optional one-piece carbon-fiber wheels that offer a 20-percent weight reduction over the forged alloys that come standard with the car. Launch control is still there, actuated by a button on the LaFerrari-like carbon-fiber outcropping, as are the dynamic traction control settings and a chassis firm enough to make you feel like a true speedracer—even on your way to Malibu Kitchen.

Jaguar to make 25 new D-Type roadsters that will look like 1957's original

Jaguar has revealed its third-ever continuation car, the D-Type.
The six-cylinder roadster joins the Jaguar Lightweight E-Type and the Jaguar XKSS continuation cars in the program the company developed in 2014 to reissue modernized versions of its most iconic models. This latest car, although made this year, will look exactly like the original D-type, which won the Le Mans 24 Hours race three times from 1955 to 1957.
In an email, Tim Hannig, the director of Jaguar Land Rover Classic, characterised the car as a “once-in-a-lifetime” project.

He is biased. But it’s true that this recreation—which, judging from previous continuations, is likely to cost more than 1 million pounds ($1.4 million)—is a special car. One that was once owned by Bernie Ecclestone, the eccentric former head of Formula 1, was offered for sale for $12 million last month at a Gooding & Co. auction in Arizona. While that one didn’t sell, Sotheby’s sold a 1955 D-Type in 2016 for almost $22 million. Against those prices, this new one, for what will likely cost less than $2 million, is practically a steal.

Saudi gives its women first motorshow after granting the right to drive

Women flocked to Le Mall in Jeddah on Thursday to check out the kingdom’s first car exhibition aimed at women, a few months after Saudi Arabia granted them the right to drive.
Pink, orange and yellow balloons hung in the mall’s showroom as women posed for photos and selfies in front of the cars. One woman in the driver’s seat fixed her face cover. Another wrapped her turquoise-painted fingernails around the steering wheel, feeling it out.
In a decree issued in September, King Salman ordered by June an end to the ban on women drivers, a conservative tradition that has limited women’s mobility and been seen by rights activists as an emblem of their suppression.
Saudi Arabia is the only country that banned women drivers. The landmark royal decree has been hailed as proof of a new progressive trend in the deeply conservative Muslim kingdom.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, is the face of that change.

Many young Saudis regard his recent ascent to power as proof their generation is taking a central place in running a country whose patriarchal traditions have for decades made power the province of the old and blocked women’s progress.
“I’ve always been interested in cars, but we didn’t have the ability to drive,” said Ghada al-Ali, a customer. “And now I‘m very interested in buying a car but I would like the payments and prices to not be very high.”
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