for motor cars, driving and car owners in the UK and Europe

The world is in crisis. Europe is sinking under a sea of debt, the UK’s budget deficit is nearing £1 trillion and BP is spewing thousands of gallons of Mother Nature’s finest crude all over the Gulf of Mexico. The people are getting poorer; unemployment is rising, taxes are rising and average incomes are going down. But not everyone is worried. This year the world’s ten richest men are worth $342 billion. In 2009 that figure was $254 billion. There were a reported 793 billionaires worldwide in 2009. In 2010 there are 937.

So not everyone is worried about recessions and rioting on the streets. What does the man who is worth several billion spend his money on? I know what I’d do but we’d be here all day, so let’s keep it simple. Houses, obviously. Lots of houses. And boats. Every billionaire’s got to have a few super-yachts dotted around the world. Cars? They’re nothing special to a billionaire. Most of us take a loan out to buy a Ford Mondeo. The most expensive production car in the world is the Bugatti Veyron at $1,700,000. Pah! Small change. I’ll take two please.

Strand-Craft Loading tender at dockside

With this in mind the worlds luxury yacht and car makers must be rubbing their hands with glee (house builders too but this is a motoring website). Surely there’s no need to stoop to the standard tricks employed by normal retailers who flog their low-grade gear to the general public. Is there? There is now. Strand Craft, a maker of luxury yachts, has decided that in order to flog more boats they’ll have to stand out from the competition with a new promotion. Buy the boat and we’ll chuck a supercar in for free. Specifically, buy a Strand Craft SC122 super yacht and get the world’s most exclusive car thrown in. The yacht itself looks a million dollars, well seventeen million actually. Even to the nautical novice like me the figures look impressive. 122 feet long, two diesel engines producing a combined 18,000bhp (no I didn’t add a nought by accident) with a top speed of 55 knots. Think the figures are impressive? Take a look at the shape of it.

Supercar is the tender for the yacht front image view

view of the Tender

So that’s the yacht, what about the car? It does, after all, come free with the yacht. Well, actually it’s not a car. Strand Craft call it a tender. It’s a tender with an 880bhp, twin turbo engine and a 0-60 time of 3.2 seconds. The top speed is 234mph and it weighs 1179kilos. Stunning. I want one. But I can’t. They’re only making six. Those six lucky owners will be able to berth in their favourite exclusive resort, pop the hydraulic ramp out of the back of the SC122 and drive the car (sorry, tender) straight onto the road. Fantastic. In fact I saw something very similar recently. A canal boat where the owner had fashioned a metal channel on which he parked his 125cc Honda motorcycle. He merely had to attach another channel to the one on which the bike was parked and then he could ride the bike onto the tow path. Genius.

Scale of Yacht to Tender

Back to the SC122. Which of the world’s billionaires will end up buying one? My personal opinion is that the first in line will wear a grey suit, have a scar across his face, be completely bald and he’ll sit in a large chair laughing manically whilst stroking a white cat.After all, which self respecting Bond villain wouldn’t want a massive yacht which hides a car inside?

Visit the Yachting Forums review or the Strand-Craft Website

{ 5 comments }

I don’t want to like the new Lexus LFA supercar. For a start, the chosen corporate colour is white. Fridges are white, washing machines are white. The only car that looks cool in white is the Fiat 500. Then there is the whole car as a computer concept. Analogue versus digital. I want a car to be analogue. I want to feel the road through the seat and the steering wheel, I want to hear the engine. I want to see the shape and lines created through function, as in a Land Rover Defender or an original Mini, or I want them designed by an expert like Pininfarina or Ian Callum (but not Chris Bangle).
It’s the same with computer games. Although I have to admit I haven’t played a decent driving game in some time, Gran Turismo was the daddy. It had all the cars and all the tracks. You could customise and upgrade, fiddle with the settings and change the colour; but every colour was shiny and clean and it was just all too perfect. If you ‘accidentally’ drove the wrong way in Gran Turismo and end up having a head-on collision at a combined speed of 440mph down the long straight at the Nurburgring, instead of the cars smashing to smithereens in a spectacular computer generated fireball, they merely bounced off each other a bit and you lost fifteen seconds. Whereas if you tried having a similar crash in TOCA Touring Cars or Colin McRae Rally then you would be greeted with a mangled car with bits hanging off it that at the very least pulls to the left when you try and drive off. Gran Turismo was all about simulation whilst Colin McRae Rally was more interested in the user experience.
So when I first heard about the LFA I thought – great, another car lifted straight from the Gran Turismo school of thought. So let’s have a look at the facts and figures.
The Lexus LFA has a 4.8 litre V10 with 560bhp and 354lb ft of torque. It redlines at 9000rpm and the whole caboodle is delivered through a 6 speed DSG gearbox with manual or automatic modes. Top speed is 202mph and 0-60 takes 3.8 seconds. So far so good, although nothing spectacular compared to the competition. The monocoque is made from carbon-fibre reinforced polymer with aluminium front and rear sub-frames. The curb weight is 1480kg and the weight-distribution is almost 50/50 front to rear. Inside, the car looks fabulous; black and red leather, carbon fibre and alcantara. A well poised combination of sporty and luxury. Not too many randomly scattered buttons, switches and knobs either, most parts of the car are controlled by a central computer and operated by a large, metallic joystick which sits by the drivers hand.
For acronym spotters the Lexus has enough to fill many pages of your notepad. VDIM, VSC, TRAC, TRC, ABS, SRS, ELR, ALR, CFRP and EPS was what I could find after a cursory glance in the marketing material.
So what’s it like to drive? I have to be honest, I don’t know, so I looked it up on You Tube. I have to say, wow! Have a look at the videos on the Lexus LFA YouTube Channel to see what I mean. It sounds incredible. Toyota (sorry, Lexus) set out to make the LFA sound like a Formula 1 car. Not one of their own of course, that would be silly. If it did then the LFA would sound hugely expensive but slightly underwhelming, and then it would disappear. It sounds like a proper F1 car.
And, I have to say, after watching several other similar videos the LFA has grown on me. Lexus do appear to have made a good car, whether it be analogue or digital. It’s fast, sounds amazing, has class-leading road-holding and is available in colours other than white. You can even choose the colour of the brake calipers. The interior looks brilliant, it has carbon-ceramic brakes with class leading performance and it can lap the Nurburgring in less than 7 minutes 20 seconds.
The LFA costs $375,000, which is £261,500 at today’s rates. Lexus will make 20 a month and the maximum production run will be 500. Customers will be individually selected by Lexus; so no footballers then.
The one aspect of the LFA I haven’t mentioned is its looks. Where do I start? Unfortunately Lexus seem to have gone down the route of copying from other marques. The back looks like an Audi R8, the side profile is copied straight from an Aston Martin V8 Vantage and from the front it looks like, well a Toyota Supra, which is at least from Lexus’ parent company.
To return to my original premise that I didn’t want to like the Lexus LFA, have I changed my mind? I have, to a certain extent. Yes, it’s the same colour as a fridge. Yes, it was styled by a robot with an I-spy book of supercars and yes, it’s massively overpriced. But the LFA is ultimately a hugely capable supercar that does everything as well as any other supercar. Trouble is, it appears to be a supercar that doesn’t have a soul. If I was in the market for a £300,000 car I’d buy a Ferrari 458 Italia or an Aston Martin DB9, and get a Range Rover with the spare change.