

Where do supercars go when they die? Some sacrilegious blend between Heaven and Hell where they get chopped up into little bits, but are then given a chance to give other supercars a new lease on life. One such Nissan GT-R met its demise far too young in its life. With only 4,000km on the odometer, some fool t-boned it and it was a goner. In came Australian motorsport outfit Just Jap Racing, who took the wrecked GT-R and cut it down to use as for spare parts for their racing program.
Not quite the first GT-R roadster as some would believe, but something far more important: Proof that, for Japanese sportscars at least, there is life after death.



Owning a high-end car? Fun. Paying the hefty vehicle tax on it? Not so much -- that is, unless you live in the state of Massachusetts. From the late 1990s to 2007, the state's Registry of Motor Vehicles missed collecting $32 million a year in annual taxes because it used the NADA database to calculate them for some 131,000 exotics or otherwise premium vehicles. Unfortunately for the RMV, NADA's database excludes high-end luxury vehicles, so there was no proper way to tax those cars in the state. If, for instance, you purchased a Bugatti Veyron, instead of paying many thousands of dollars, you could have wound up paying no more than the owner of a Ford Focus.
This is going to suck for owners of affected cars, as the taxman comes to collect what he missed the first time around, right? Wrong. Folks who purchased an affected vehicle through 2007 are completely off the hook. The commonwealth has decided that trying to collect the over $300 million it missed over all those years would be an administrative and legal nightmare. That's a win-win situation for premium car owners in Mass. that's sure to torque off the regular guy, whom the government had no trouble finding and collecting from, as usual. What's scandalous is that no one at the RMV figured this out until now. Bay Staters, that's you're local government (and those tax dollars it collects) at work.
You've got about $130,000 to buy a luxury sedan. We know, it's a terrible situation to put yourself in, but bear with us. You could get the same Audi A8, BMW 760i or Mercedes S-Class as everyone else at the country club. The Jaguar XJ doesn't do it for you and the Bentley Continental Flying Spur is outside your range, so where do you look? The Maserati Quattroporte would be our choice over any of the above, holding down territory as the only four-door exotic on the market. But with newcomers like the Aston Martin Rapide and Porsche Panamera – both from sportscar-makers as reputed as Maserati – the Italians will be keen to hold down their territory. So with an all-new Quattroporte expected around 2012, Ferrari's kid brother is preparing a mid-cycle facelift for its four-door masterpiece.
We've brought you spy shots of camouflaged test mules accumulating development miles, but photos of the revised Maser have now surfaced in cyberspace. From the images – reportedly obtained right from the factory headquarters in Modena – we can see that the physical changes will be kept minimal, but side by side with the outgoing version we're expecting to see new headlights, bumper and grille up front, all subtly reshaped, along with similar revisions to the caboose. What we don't know at this point is whether this facelifted Quattroporte will stick with the same rev-happy engine or swap it out for either the GranTurismo S/Alfa 8C version or the direct-injected variant developed for the upcoming Ferrari California, or if the Trident marque will keep that card up its sleeve for the all-new version to follow. One way or another, the Italians aren't likely to give up to the Germans or the English without putting up a good fight.

Eurospares, based in Essex, UK, specializes in spare parts for Italian cars, boasting 12,000 square feet worth of spares for Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis. As The Independent reports, if you need headlamps for a Lamborghini Miura, a steering column for a Ferrari 360, or a chassis and body for a BB512, the people at Eurospares have your back. But spares for out-of-production exotics need to come from somewhere, and this is where some readers might find themselves feeling queasy.
Eurospares honcho James Pumo gets parts from all around -- in some cases, from sources his father formed relationships with many, many years ago. Sometimes, however, the parts received don't come piled in shipping boxes; sometimes, they arrive as a whole, like the Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 you see above. Nice, right? Don't get too attached. As Eurospares details on its website, rust issues and a problem in one cylinder mean that the old stallion is going to get fully dismantled and parted out. It must die so that perhaps another 330 in need can be returned to its former glory. For car guys, witnessing the company's breakup operations must be akin to a vegan getting a tour of a slaughterhouse -- horrifying and mentally-scarring. On the flipside, to owners seeking the final piece of a restoration/repair puzzle, Eurospares is like that mythical pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It's all about perspective, we guess. Those of you interested in seeing what's scheduled to head to the big garage in the sky courtesy of Eurospares' blowtorch-wielding car slayers, click here. It might make you a little sad, though, so don't say we didn't warn you.

Some of us here at Autoblog tend to avoid WreckedExotics.com. Don't get us wrong, it's a very well done site, but the images just make us cringe. And then cry. Knowing that hooligans with too much cash are regularly wrapping their supercars around poles is one thing, seeing it is another. But this one is just too funny to pass up.
Like something off of the Discovery Channel, the guys at Wrecked Exotics have assembled a collection of "wildlife" photography documenting the mating rituals of exotic supercars. Log on (alongside FIA president Max Mosley) and enjoy the close-up car-on-car action.


Nissan's upcoming supercar, the 2009 GT-R, has a base price of $69,850. It's a relative bargain when you consider the 911 Turbo, offering the same level of all-wheel-drive performance, will cost you at least $126,200. However, it's still far bit steeper than the average sales price of a new car in the United States (hovering just under $30,000 this year), not to mention the insane dealer markups that will likely put the sale price into the stratosphere. To help ease the financial burden, and put one of these turbocharged 473-hp monsters in your garage, Nissan North America has indicated that they will be offering a lease option on the all-new GT-R.
Don't print out your credit score and jog down to your local Nissan dealer just yet. There are about 1,400 Nissan dealerships in the States, and only 691 of them have begun to take pre-orders. Total sales volume allocated to the United States the first year will be just 1,500 units (to put that into perspective, consider that Nissan sold 284,762 Altimas last year).
While a lease program will be in place, Nissan expects most consumers to buy the vehicles. Purchase or lease, with high demand and low sales volumes you can be sure that each and every one of the GT-Rs will be fought over.
