gt3

If you're thinking about starting your own career as a "gentleman racer", this is the machine you'll need: the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. It's one of the most popular race cars of all time, and is the staple machinery used in a whole variety of racing series in American, Europe and abroad. And for 2010, Porsche has released a newly revised version that is expected to debut at the Frankfurt auto show next month.

Based on the recently-released GT3 RS, the new GT3 Cup is treated to the same improvements as the rest of the revised 911 range. But from there it's all business. It packs the same 3.9-liter 450-hp flat-six engine as the street-legal GT3, but offers more downforce courtesy of extra wings and competition-spec suspension, wheels and more. It comes in white so each team can emblazon it with their own sponsors' logos, and sells for a cool 150,000 euros.

Owners of exotic supercars around the world are finding it increasingly frustrating to drive their high-performance machinery on public roads. There's only so much of their potential that you can safely, responsibly and legally use on city streets and rural highways. So many are beginning to turn to the race track to get their thrills. But if you're already heading to a closed circuit, then who says your car has to be street legal? Might as well make it a proper racing car, like the one you see here. German racing firm Reiter Engineering has taken the already amazing Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 and turned it into a track-focused racing machine the likes of which the factory in Sant'Agata Bolognese has only dreamed. To bring the Gallardo up to GT3 level specifications. Reiter has taken out all the excess weight they could, retuned the 560-horsepower V10 engine, dropped the suspension, tweaked the aerodynamics with giant wings fore and aft, fitted new brakes and transmission and mounted the whole thing on slick racing tires. No wonder Reiter-prepared Lamborghinis have won, and continue to win trophies in racing classes around the world. Of course all the racing equipment on top of the price of a stock Lambo doesn't come cheap: 265,000 euros in this case. But the flexible platform means that the GT3-spec Gallardo can be converted to the even more extreme GT2 formula for another 30,000 euros. So if the gentleman racer feels like stepping it up another notch, he won't need to start again from scratch.

At this year's Geneva Motor Show, Porsche was originally scheduled to unveil its highly anticipated new Panamera four-door model, bridging the gap between its sportscar line-up and the Cayenne sport-utility vehicle. The German automaker, which recently acquired majority stake in the entire Volkswagen Group and all its many subsidiaries, opted instead to delay the Panamera's launch. Purists were undoubtedly pleased to see Porsche instead use the occasion to unveil its latest performance-focused driving tool, the revised 911 GT3. Slotting in below the Turbo and GT2 models in the 911 range, the new GT3 features a 3.8-liter flat-six that generates 435 horsepower without the need for turbochargers...good enough to propel the lightweight sportscar to sixty miles per hour in only 4.1 seconds. Center-locking wheels, a big rear wing and vents aplenty set the GT3 apart visually from the more ordinary versions of the 911, as you can see from the photographs in the gallery below.

After making it's debut a few months ago, the new Porsche 911 Turbo drew a crowd at the New York Auto show this week and Michael Bartsch, the vice president of Porsche Cars North America gave out some release dates. The Porsche will be available for purchase starting in June with a sticker price of more than $122,000. Shortly afterward, in August, a street-legal version of the Porsche racer the 911 GT3 is to be released in the United States at $106,795. The company plans to sell about 800 units during their first year.