Top Marques Monaco

It’s April, and as the ice melts away, the green gets ready to play. No, I’m not talking about the local flora coming around after a long winter’s nap – I’m talking about the well-heeled individuals headed to the 13th annual Top Marques Monaco (TMM) car show, taking place April 14th to 17th. Since 2004, TMM has brought together wealthy car lovers for one of the most over-the-top auto events of the year, showcasing some of the fastest and most exclusive machinery on the planet.

TMM lives by the motto “See it, drive it, buy it.” That means attendees get the chance to pilot any of the for-sale supercars around the adjacent harbor, including portions of the famed F1 track. Additionally, automakers have used the event as a springboard to introduce some of their wilder creations, with last year’s debuts including the Aeromobil 3.0, a million-dollar street-legal vehicle capable of transforming into a plane, and the Toroidion 1MW, the world’s first one-megawatt electric supercar.

But millionaires are a dime a dozen in Monaco, so of course you gotta bring out the big guns if you wanna impress anyone. This year, TMM will showcase several cars from the latest entry to the James Bond franchise, Spectre. Complementing the movie metal will be a lineup of high-speed appliances rarely seen in public, as well as the “world’s first practicable jetpack” and the “world’s first every [sic] flying hover board.”

Wait, what? Read on for the details.

Updated 04/13/2016: TMM 2016 officially kicks off tomorrow, so we’ve updated our preview with more of the vehicular hotness slated to show. Enjoy!

Continue reading to learn more about the 2016 Top Marques Monaco event.

For Porsche, the Speedster name has a special meaning. The name first appeared on the Porsche 356 and that car made the name a legend. Original 356 Speedsters are now some of the most valuable classic Porsches.

In more recent years, the Speedster name has been linked to the 911. These special-edition cars were sold in limited numbers to help keep them as exclusive as possible in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

The cars picked up on features from the original such as a low-roof line and they added in a body colored rear fiberglass cover. These cars were great for sunny areas, but the tops are known to allow some water leakage and excessive wind noise, so they aren’t that great in rainy weather or for extended highway driving. The possibility of water getting into the cabin is so great that Porsche actually made buyers agree to this fact when buying the car.

The looks of the 911 Speedster are unique and eye catching, but what if you want this look in a new 911 (991) with a much better top? Well, DeLaVilla may have the solution for you, as it has created a kit that can turn the 991 Cabriolet into a Speedster. They call this conversion the SpeedRoad.

The car retains the stock engine, so it will still provide you with 350 horsepower found in the standard Carrera form or 400 horsepower in the S model. Handling and brakes all stay the same as the stock car, so you will still have the great Porsche driving package that you had when you first bought the car.

Hit the jump to read more about the 911 SpeedRoad by DeLaVilla.

When little-known supercar builder, Vencer, started teasing its latest creation, we knew there was something special going on at the Dutch automaker’s offices. The Sarthe remained a well-kept secret from its initial teaser image all the way through its debut in Top Marques Monaco, so much so that to date, Vencer hasn’t even released images of it .

Well, we managed to scour around the Interwebz and dig up some images from Top Marques Monaco’s Facebook page. We’re not too sure exactly what to think of what we saw at Top Marques, as the Sarthe is your typical supercar with no real surprises. This could be engineering genius or maybe a complete flop – that decision is ultimately up to those of you with the funds in the bank to buy one.

We already knew what kind of pop the Sarthe would have, as Vencer reveled all of that information pretty early on in the teasing process.

Click past the jump to see all of the images of the Vencer Sarthe.

UPDATE 4/23/2013: The Sarthe officially debuted at the 2013 Top Marques Monaco over the weekend. Some images of the production model made their way onto Facebook, and many of the official details have been revealed. See more after the jump

UPDATE 06/11/13: A new batch of photos of the Vencer Sarthe supercar have been released. Check them out by clicking the gallery!

When Faralli & Mazzanti announced the first details on the Evantra back in 2012, it revealed that the supercar would make its world debut at the 2013 Top Marques Monaco. F&M held its promise and delivered the Evantra with great improvements, including a V-8 engine in place of the original 3.5 liter flat-six engine.

If you were wondering what "Evantra" stands for, Mazzanti explains that its name comes from the ancient Etruscan language and represents an object that’s unique, eternal and exclusive. It also was the name of the Goddess of immortality for the Etruscan people.

Compared to the six-cylinder version, the V-8 received a new rear wing and a series of inserts made in carbon fiber or brushed aluminum. For the interior, the company added a new roll cage made in chrome. As initially promised, the Evantra V8 will be sold in very limited qualities.

Continue reading to learn more about the Mazzanti Evantra V8.

A standard Audi S4 delivers a total of 333 horsepower, but plenty of people think it has more potential. The guys over MS Design seem to agree with that and today they have unveiled the first official details on the new A46 package based for the S4. What does the name stand for? The answer is quite simple: from the amount of power found under the hood - 460 horsepower.

Thanks to the extra 127 horsepower, the A46 sprints from 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds - half a second faster than the S4 - and can hit a top speed of 178 mph. In order to handle the extra power, the new A46 has also been equipped with a specially adapted brake system, a height-adjustable sport suspension and a new set of 8.5-by-20-inch lightweight wheels.

The new Audi A46 can be ordered either as a complete car or as an upgrade for your standard S4. The model will make its world debut at the Top Marques Monaco set to begin tomorrow.

Click past the jump to read about the standard S4

At one point in time, just about every living man in the world had Pamela Anderson on their minds. Now that she’s up in her years, the former Baywatch babe is still a sight to behold.

Earlier this year, Anderson showed why she’s still beloved by auto nuts when she made an appearance at the 2012 Top Marques Monaco show arm-in-arm with no less than Gemballa CEO Andreas Schwarz.

Needless to say, Anderson was impressed with the decidedly German style of Gemballa, even going as far as to say that the noted aftermarket company really made quite an impression on her.

It’s easy to see why Anderson loves Gemballa because her reasons for doing so are the same as ours. The German tuner is one of the best in the business and they have a track record for producing some of the most impressive tuning programs.

The Gemballa attraction is undeniable and Anderson found out first hand that the German tuner has what it takes to bring her claws out. Rawr!

Russian tuner TopCar is preparing a new program for the Porsche 911 Carrera 4 and 4S. Found a new reason to be excited? Well, hold on to those horses because the car will make its debut at the 2013 Top Marques Monaco.

If you can make the wait, though, you’ll be very excited about TopCar’s new modification package for the 911 Carrera 4 and 4S which has a comprehensive carbon & Kevlar wide boy kit that features a host of new components. There are new front and rear aprons, a new hood, side skirts, and more aggressive fenders. In addition to all that, the 911 will also receive a new set of rims courtesy of ADV.1 Wheels.

The program also has a performance package, which TopCar will be working on with noted Porsche tuner 9ff. Details on that part of the program have yet to be revealed, but knowing how 9ff works, we’re expecting nothing short of something spectacular.

For now, though, check out these preview photos of the TopCar’s new program for the 911. It’s still months away from making its debut so at this point, enjoy these as much as you can.

The Top Marques Monaco is without question one of the most important dates on the tuning calendar, particularly because of the location it’s held at every year. Nothing speaks more to millionaires throwing their money around than Monte Carlo, and some of the best tuners use that platform to show off their latest programs.

Now that the 2012 Top Marques Monaco has come and gone, we can definitely say that the tuners in attendance gave us programs that were for the books. One in particular was Mansory, which only recently wowed us at Geneva with not one, not two, not three, but four programs for some of the finest exotics in the land.

For their Monaco offering, the Swiss tuner brought their very first program for the Ferrari 458 Italia Spyder, appropriately called "Monaco."

As you can expect, Mansory did some serious bodywork upgrades on the 458 Italia Spyder, complete with a body kit that’s made out of carbon fiber. The kit includes a restyled front apron with air inlets for the front coolers, a new bonnet, side skirts with integrated ducts, a rear skirt with an integrated diffuser, carbon blades that replace the rear window, and a rear wing. All told, the carbon fiber components shaved of 60 kg (132 lbs) from the supercar’s overall weight.

Under the hood of the Italian stallion, Mansory reprogrammed the ECU, the sports air filter, and the sport exhaust, translating to an increased output of 590 horsepower and 413 lb/ft of torque with a 0-62 mph time of 3.2 seconds and a top speed of 205 mph.

UPDATE 07/10/2012: Youtube user, Marchettino, was able to film the Mansory 458 Italia Monaco at an undisclosed auto show in France, providing a more in-depth look at the modified supercar. Check it out after the jump!

Check out videos of the Ferrari 458 Italia Spyder Monaco by Mansory after the jump!

The Genevart Celcius was a mix of design elements from the 918 Spyder with the Carrera GT. The model was based on a Porsche 997 Turbo and featured two KERS units for each of the front wheels. Its total output was somewhere in the 960 HP area - just enough to sprint the car from 0 to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds.

If you cast your minds back to late August 2011, you may remember how we reported that a 2,801HP supercar from little known German manufacturer Rotary Supercars was supposed to debut at the 2012 Top Marques Monaco event, and guess what? Top Marques Monaco recently rolled around and to our surprise RSC was not in attendance.

The tiny brand promised that its unnamed supercar would debut at the event and also promised some performance statistics simply out of this world. First and foremost, it predicted it could extract 2,801HP and 2,580lb-ft of torque from an eight-rotor engine which could launch the car from 0-62 mph in less than 1 second and onto a top speed of over 280 mph.

Prior to RSC releasing details about its halo-car, it also announced that it was developing a 1,184 horsepower car dubbed the Predator GT and unsurprisingly, no further news has been released about that car either. It too promised to lay down some extremely impressive performance times, but nothing in comparison to what RSC supposedly had up its sleeve.

Just a few months ago, if you headed over to RSC’s official website, it took you straight to all of their proposed supercar plans and broke down detailed information about each one of them. Now however, the brand’s website is simply blacked-out with some contact information and without a single hyperlink in sight.

Now we don’t know about you, but this has all the tell-tale signs of a car company too ambitious for its own good, which has eventually gone bust. We were always doubtful if RSC could really walk-the-walk rather than just talk-the-talk, but it seems likely we’ll never see its near-3000 horsepower hypercar, which is a shame.

Our favorite Youtube user, Marchettino, has managed to delight us one more time by attending the 2012 edition of the Top Marques Monaco to film all of the amazing vehicles in attendance. We have to admit the list of supercars is quite impressive.

For those who don’t know, the Top Marques is an important supercar show that brings together some of the most expensive and exclusive supercars, hypercars, and tuning projects every year. It’s kind of like Christmas for us auto journalists, but without the big, jolly guy giving one of these supercars to us as a present. This kind of Christmas comes with huge prices and tremendous power backing it up.

Our favorite from the entire list of vehicles in attendance this year is the Koenigsegg Agera R, but the list is much, much longer.

Hit the jump for a full list of the cars featured in the video and pick out your favorite!

While we are all waiting for the new generation Porsche GT3, French tuner Delavilla has unveiled a very cool upgrade package based on the current 997 GT3 at the 2012 Top Marques Monaco. While the standard GT3 delivers a total of 435 HP, the French tuner has found a wayn to increase the total output to an impressive 530 HP. The only problem is that we’ll have to pay 126,000 euro (about $166,000 at the current exchange rates) if you want to drive one.

The package includes four vertically superposed exhaust pipes, a reworked chassis with specific dampers, an active suspension, and, of course, a new set of wheels offered in any color desired by the customer. The Porsche 911/997 GT3 on display is painted in a very cool yellow color, but customers can choose between 21 color options. The interior can be dressed in the same color as the exterior with a combination of Alcantara and carbon fiber.