Kanye West Drives $1.7 Million Mercedes-Benz Stirling Moss

Okay so generally I don’t really become enthralled or jealous of celebrities, but this is something I pretty am jealous of.

Kanye West was invited to attend a charity fundraiser put on by Elton John in Cannes, France this week. And his choice of ride was the Mercedes-McLaren Stirling Moss Edition while wearing a classic black and white tux with sunglasses. I have a serious boyhood dream of wanting to actually be James Bond and there’s no doubt that Kanye is purposely trying to channel Mr. Bond in the photo pictured above. And who could really blame him. I know, I know, Bond usually drives Astons, but work with me here.

Anyway, the car itself, as you probably are aware, is extremely rare. It was the last car built by the Mercedes-McLaren partnership back in 2009. Only 75 examples were ever made  The Stirling Moss was actually Korean designed and inspired by 300 SLR speedster. It was powered by a supercharged V8 and was rated at 640 horsepower with a top speed of 350 km/h. It took only 3.5 seconds to reach 100 km/h from not and it had incredible handling capabilities.

It’s not clear whether Mr. Bond West is just lucky enough to know a Stirling Moss owner who let him borrow it, or if Kanye owns the vehicle himself. The latter is entirely possible since the Stirling Moss was only sold to SLR owners and Kanye West is indeed an SLR owner. His vehicle collection includes said SLR, an Aston Martin DB9, a Range Rover SuperSport and a Porsche Panamera. Oh wait, the Panamera was totaled in Hawaii a while back. Still, not a bad lineup to have in your garage.

Hit the jump to see more pics of the amazing Stirling Moss.

[The Daily Mail]

Read the rest of this entry »

Top Gear is Back June 26th

Top Gear will be back to creating awesomness on June 26th, according to finalgear.com. There isn’t much info as to what we can expect other than an adventure with May, Clarkson, the Nissan LEAF and Peugot iOn (that’s Mitsubishi i-Miev in Canadian speak).

I would imagine that the bloakes will take a few shots at Tesla for filing a lawsuit against them, May and Hammond will take a few shots at Clarkson for an alleged affair and a falling out with some locals and everyone will take shots at Hammond for being short. Also expect lots of crazy challenges, reviews of your favourite exotic supercars and of course stars in the reasonably priced car.

The only rumour right now is that the McLaren MP4-12C may have taken the top spot on the leader board for the fastest lap around the Top Gear track.

Can’t wait!

[Final Gear, photo credit: Daily Mail]

McLaren Choses Toronto for First Canadian Dealership

McLaren has just released a list of new dealerships around the world where it hopes to sell quite a few more of their exotic hypercars. Unsurprisingly, the centre of the universe Toronto was the lone Canadian city on the list.

The States managed to snag seven cities, Europe got 12, the Middle East got two, and South Africa got one.

I suppose we should be thankful that McLaren believes such a market exists in Canada – enough to sell cars here.

McLaren will be announcing 12 new dealer locations across the world next year, so we may even see more McLaren dealerships on Canadian soil.

(Pick Halifax!)

Miss the SLR? Blame the MP4-12C

The McLaren Mercedes SLR was quite possibly one of the most significant supercars in the last decade. It was blisteringly fast, great on the track, had the classic long hood, short rear design and was actually quite comfortable in normal driving situations.

It was announced a while ago that the SLR would no longer be produced and that the SLS AMG would be its successor. This was a bit unexpected, especially since McLaren would have nothing to do with the new SLS AMG. This caused rumours of a rift between the two companies, and well, those rumours turned out to be right.

McLaren had been working on the MP4-12 supercar and wanted to produce it independently from Mercedes. This got Mercedes pretty upset and thus, the SLR partnership fell apart.

Who the real winner and loser is will be determined by who ends up making the better supercar. We can’t wait for the SLS AMG vs MP4-12C comparos to come fourth now that we know what really went down. Our money is on McLaren.