$600K Beetle restomod, 850-hp “Family Huckster,” Huayra’s long tail send-off

Would you pay $600K for the ultimate Beetle restomod?

Intake: With a plan to limit production to just 22 cars, Milivié Design may lay claim to building most exclusive Beetle on the road. Customization, mechanical and aesthetic, is an integral part of Beetle history, but Milivié Design takes things to new extremes. Each build takes 1000 hours, says the shop, and every one starts with a hand-selected, original chassis that is artfully modified until only the silhouette remains familiar. Power comes from a Type 1 flat-four punched to 2.28 liters and mated to a Porsche Carrera 2 transaxle. All this custom can be yours for $600,000.

Exhaust: Buying a turn-key build is generally the easiest and most cost-effective avenue to restomod ownership, but this price point is … ambitious. Singer Vehicle Design has certainly popularized bespoke cars on a vintage chassis, and its “reimagined” air-cooled 911s have inspired other shops to apply a similar treatment to dozens of other makes and models—not just Porsches, but G Wagens, Broncos, and Land Rovers. Does the VW Beetle have enough panache to justify such a high-dollar treatment—especially if you have to explain why you spent over half a million dollars? That’s for you to decide.

Porsche settles fuel-economy lawsuit for $80M

Intake: Volkswagen Group and its Porsche division have agreed to a class-action settlement worth at least $80 million to resolve claims it skewed emissions and fuel economy data on 500,000 Porsche vehicles in the U.S. According to court documents—and reported by Automotive News—the settlement covers 2005 through 2020 Porsches. Owners accused Porsche of physically altering test vehicles, impacting emissions and fuel economy results. Impacted owners will receive payments of $250 to $1109 per vehicle. Porsche confirmed the settlement in a statement, but said it has “not acknowledged the allegations in these proceedings.”

Exhaust: Although Porsche says “the agreement serves to end the issue,” that’s likely wishful thinking—or perhaps it refers only to the legal aspect of the situation—since the settlement doesn’t do much for Porsche’s reputation. Making matters worse, the automaker is directly connected to Volkswagen, which dealt with its own emissions/fuel-economy cheating scandal five years ago and paid more than $20 billion to settle U.S. criminal and civil actions.

Pagani goes long with the Huayra Codalunga

Intake: Pagani Automobili has always gone to great lengths to create the most exotic of hypercars. Now, however, the Italian brand has extended things even further with a run of five longtail Huaryas, each destined for one of Pagani’s most loyal customers, who have paid more than $7 million each for the privilege. In fact it was two of these clients who approached Pagani with the idea of a Codalunga (Italian for “long tail”) in 2018, and subsequently worked closely with the firm’s Grandi Complicazioni special projects team to design the cars. The Codalunga is just over 14 inches longer than a regular Huarya, but despite increasing in size the goal was actually to simplify the design.

“We decided to use the simple linear style of the Huayra Coupé as the starting point,” explains Horacio Pagani. “We made the Huayra Codalunga longer and smoother, as if it had been caressed and molded by the wind, to design lines that were even more elegant than the coupe. We drew inspiration from the long tails of the 1960s that raced at Le Mans, which had very clean lines. The Huayra Codalunga comprises very few essential elements; we have taken away rather than added. Simplifying is not at all straightforward, and this vehicle is, above all, the result of a complex pursuit of simple ideas.”

Powered by an 840-hp V-12, the Codalunga could become the most rapid Pagani to date, as it is lighter and more aerodynamic than the Huarya and the brief was to create “a model which would feel at home on the roads as well as on display at international concours events.”

Exhaust: Pagani is set to release its all-new car in September, and what a way for the Huarya to bow out this is. Despite the brief from the very discerning customers who prompted Pagani to build the Codalunga, the chances of seeing one of these on the road is negligible, but hopefully concours attendees will get the opportunity to lust after this longtail.

BMW’s M3 Touring is the fastest wagon to lap the ‘Ring

Intake: Seven minutes, 35 seconds and six hundredths. That’s how long it takes the new BMW M3 Touring to tour the Nürburgring. To put that into context, this time makes it faster than its stablemates the M5 Competition and M4 GTS, and more rapid than such exotica as the Honda NSX, Ferrari 458 Italia, Lexus LFA, and even the Bugatti Veyron. No longer will drivers turn up in a Touring as their track-day support car, it will actually be their track day car. Watch the video above to see how BMW M pulled it off.

Exhaust: As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to petition BMW to bring its new speed wagon stateside. Who’s signing with us?

You’ve never met a Family Huckster like Travis Pastrana’s

Intake: Leave it to the folks at Hoonigan to ready something utterly insane for this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. The graphic-clad brick you see before you began life as a modest 1983 Subaru GL wagon, but thanks to a collaborative effort between Hoonigan and Subaru Motorsports USA, it’s morphed into a sequentially shifted bolt of white lightning that Hoonigan star Travis Pastrana will point up Lord March’s famous driveway later this month. Gone is the GL’s wheezy, 52-hp flat-four: In its place sits a modern, boosted-to-the-moon flat-four that makes an astonishing 850 hp. That fire-breather is bolted to a six-speed sequential gearbox which routes power to all four wheels in true Subaru fashion. There’s an electropneumatic wing out back, plus two active wings in the fender flares of the rear wheels. Each can be raised or lowered depending on downforce needs, but Pastrana has no illusions about the aerodynamic virtues of an ’80 family hauler: “An active rear wing is helpful to an extent, but the ’83 wagon flies about as well as you would imagine … kind of like a brick. This makes the jumps way more sketchy but also more entertaining and less predictable.”

Pastrana will take to the hill in his bonkers creation—known as “the Family Huckster”—at Goodwood’s annual Festival of Speed, which takes place next week, June 23–26.

Exhaust: This isn’t Pastrana’s first time up the hill; last year, he campaigned a heavily modified Subaru WRX STi nicknamed the “Airslayer.” That car, by the way, was the star of Hoonigan’s Gymkhana 2020, which saw Pastrana tear up his hometown of Annapolis, Maryland. We can’t wait to watch Pastrana and many other stars of the automotive world rip up the hill next week.