Barrett-Jackson has claimed its largest-grossing Scottsdale auction in the company’s history this year, raking in a total of $131.6 million in vehicle and memorabilia sales over the week-long auction. Over 1,800 vehicles traded hands, representing more than $118 million and a sell-through rate of over 99 percent, helped along by Barrett-Jackson’s no-reserve policy on most lots.
At the top of the regular lot results was a 2019 McLaren Senna which brought a winning bid of $1,457,000 against its MSRP of roughly $840,000—a nice profit for the seller. Runner-up honors went to the six-wheeled 2014 Mercedes-Benz G63 6X6, one of just over 100 built, which sold for $1,210,000. The G63 6X6 was roughly a half-million-dollar car when new. The third top-seller was a 2012 Lexus LFA Nurburgring Edition, which brought $918,500.
Several highly- anticipated cars were earmarked for charity, which brought greatly [...]
Waymo, which recently launched its autonomous ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area, is betting big on traditional sensing technologies—including cameras, GPS, radar, and those super-expensive spinning lidar sensors on the roof.
These Waymo cars are essentially beta-testers, which means they are not fail safe. (Remember Uber?) If Waymo happens to have an accident and the fault is found to be with the sensor array, it’s a safe bet Waymo won’t be able to blame a blizzard or pea-soup fog.
An MIT spinoff startup called WaveSense hopes to hasten the arrival of autonomy in regions with, you know, weather, by providing an additional “leg” of the environmental perception stool that is utterly weatherproof: ground-penetrating radar (GPR). There are numerous applications for this technology in use today. Law enforcement locates buried booty or bodies with it, road commissions use it to assess road-bed fitness, it helps utilities locate pipes, and [...]
Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid Executive: Let’s unpack all that. Porsche is famous for sports cars. The Panamera is therefore sporty, but with four doors. Turbo S badging indicates it’s the most powerful Panamera in the 18-model lineup, the flagship of the fleet. Now things get tricky. The E-Hybrid bit means this 680-hp Porsche can silently glide 14 EPA-rated miles on pure electric power. And the Executive badge means a stretched wheelbase that delivers rear-seat legroom rivaling an S-Class Mercedes.
A sporty limousine with the efficiency of a hybrid: on paper, this big Porsche adds up to a boiling mass of contradictions. On the road, however, it’s a car that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
We’ve covered the Panamera in detail since its launch in 2016, but to quickly recap, it rolls on the Porsche-developed MSB platform that also underpins the new Bentley Continental GT. The [...]
Got the hankering for a McLaren Senna? Sorry, you can’t have one. Even if your financial portfolio can absorb the roughly $958,966 hit required to take delivery at today’s exchange rates, the hypercar is way, way sold out and has been since shortly after its debut in December 2017.
But wait, what’s this? It’s Lego to the rescue! The Danish toymaker has released a new brickified Senna model perfect for your desk as part of its popular Speed Champions family, a lineup that currently includes the Bugatti Chiron, Dodge Demon, Porsche 919, Ferrari F40, vintage Mustang fastback, and more.
As it has with the other vehicles, Lego worked hard to scale down the proportions as best it could, working with blocky elements to create a swoopy profile. The Senna design is already sort of slab-sided to begin with, so that part [...]
The Buick Grand National is a pretty rare sight these days. It’s even rarer to find one with less than 1,000 miles on the clock. But you know what’s even rarer than that? Finding two Grand Nationals each with less than 1,000 miles. With sequential VINs. Oh, and did I mention they’ve been kept together their entire lives?
Lot #1307 and #1307.1 at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale sale will be auctioned as a pair this Thursday, January 17. Known as “The Twinz,” the two identical 1987 Buick Grand Nationals were built one after the other, optioned exactly the same, and were never sold as new cars. According to our friends at Hot Rod, who have the full story on these Turbo Regal twins, the cars were ordered by a family Buick dealership and kept in the showroom until the business shuttered. The owner’s son eventually took the cars home and [...]
