Audrain Auto Museum Part II

In part I of the Super cars at the Audrain Auto Museum in Newport RI I only showed you about half of the exhibit, so, here's more that are currently on display. One of these cars, the Tesla S Plaid, you can still buy new today! Buckle up! 

Let's start with a 2006 Bugatti Veyron, the first production car with 1,000HP. Bugatti is known for their outstanding cars of the 20th Century, and a long history of racing. You can find out more about the history of the company, including the current ownership by Volkswagen at the Bugatti website: Bugatti

The Veyron is named for a famous Bugatti engineer and F1 driver Pierre Veyron.
Top speed is 250mph. You might want to save that speed for the race track. Or, sure, just get through the drive-thru at McDonalds REALLY fast!

This is a 2005 Porsche Carrera GT. The powerful engine had been designed for a Formula 1 car, but wasn't used. Then there was a plan to use the engine in a LeMans car, but that idea fell through also. The engine was finally used when Porsche built this model. 

 

The Carrera GT has a V10 engine, and only 1270 were built. At recent auctions these go for about $1.6Million. I think every review of this car I've read mentions it is difficult to handle, and I'll take their word for it! One that Jerry Seinfeld bought new is up for auction right now, current bid $1.7M at this link: BRING A TRAILER

For the two wheel fans, this Ducati was the only motorcycle on display, one of only 500 built. Reported to be the fastest road legal motorcycle you can buy, this is from 2020. 

Super Light

2020 Ducati Superleggera V4. Top speed of over 200mph, 15,500RPMs! Helmet recommended! Check it out at the Ducati website: DUCATI

The Tesla S "Plaid" has 1,020HP, goes 200MPH, and is the fastest electric car in the world. How fast? It goes from 0-60 in UNDER 2 seconds! If you're worried about range, it's good for 348 miles, and you get all that for only about $124,000. 

This 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder has both a gas and electric motors. One of these cars was the first street legal production vehicle to break 7 minutes at the Nurburgring. These were only about $845,000 when they went on sale, and they sold all 918 of them. 

The fuel filler door closest to us is for gas (labelled "Fuel") and the one on the 
far side that is flipped open is the electric charging port. This hybrid car has a V8 motor and two electric motors totaling nearly 900 HP. 

The Lamborghini Reventon Roadster is a rare Super Car, only 16 open top cars were built, 
plus 20 hard tops.  Top speed is 205MPH from the V12 engine. 

The car on display is on loan from the Ralph Lauren collection, and was 
built just for him. 

This is the only Reventon roadster built for the US market. Yes, it is "something you don't see every day!"

2019 Bugatti Chiron Sky View, limited to "only" 260mph, with 1,500HP! I'm pretty sure I've never seen one driving on the road, or at the local 7-11. I'm just going to say "one thousand five hundred horsepower" again just to see it in writing. 

Named for driver Luis Chiron, who drove for Bugatti and other brands before and after WWII. I found a cool article on someone who drove one on the Jalopnik website, feel free to check it out: JALOPNIK CHIRON  If you look just next to the headlight you'll see another air intake. 

Bear with me on this one, it's a Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR. I'm not up to speed on my Mercedes knowledge, so I'll say that the display informed me that this car is from 1998, and is the "Strassenversion" or "Street Version." The V12 motor is bolted directly to the carbon fiber chassis. 

Even without knowing about this car, just the looks of it, and this rear wing and rear bumper treatment tells you it's something special. This is 1 of only 26 street versions built. The racing rules required that the manufacturer built at least 25 road legal versions of the car to allow it to enter the European GT1 class, and the Mercedes CLK GTR won the championship two years in a row!

2005 Mercedes-Benz DTM CLK AMG, one of 100 produced for Mercedes by HWA, who also built their actual DTM series racing cars. This version is a tribute to the CLK that won the DTM title from 2000-2003, and it has 574HP that is "limited" to 200MPH. 

DTM racing is a big deal in Germany, so it was cool to see a car connected to that series. Many of the body panels are carbon fiber, and the seats are equipped with racing harnesses, so it was no sold in the US because it lacked standard seat belts!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of this exhibit at the Audrain Auto Museum. There were just one or two cars more that I didn't include, so I featured the coolest in the blog. Like I mentioned in Part I, the exhibit just opened in February, so you can see it for yourself in Newport Rhode Island until  May 29th. Audrain Auto Museum