The Bugatti Veyron EB16 is currently priced at $1.6 million and the company (owned by Volkswagen), claims to have sold 40 units as of press time. Not to be outdone, a southern California entrepreneur with a background in building some well-known instantly-classic and -collectible automobiles, has thrown his hat in the "Big Money" ring with the "Natalia SLS 2". A Las Vegas development company now says they have already placed orders for 10 of these "World's Most Expensive Cars", which are slated to be outfitted with all-American-made engineering and serve as a running laboratory and showcase of the best American hardware and software. The company is headquartered in Palm Springs, California --- Famed in the auto world for being the place where Raymond Loewy designed the original Studebaker Avanti in only three weeks, with his design team using a home designed by Albert Frey as their base camp.
Luxury Resort Villas, which owns at least 10 luxury resort estates around the world, says they have ordered a fleet of 10 Natalia SLS 2s from DiMora Motorcar. These handcrafted super sedans will be built in Palm Springs, CA, and feature a 1,200-horsepower "Volcano" V16 engine. A Natalia will be available for use by luxury resort home owners in Las Vegas, Hawaii, Tuscany and Dubai, among others locales.
The Natalia SLS 2 Sport Luxury Sedan has too many features to list, but some of the more outrageous and impressive ones include video screens and a video projector housed in the headlights that enable the car to project a video while parked, rear-seat massagers, heat-sensitive color-changing paint, biofeedback sensors that measure the driver's physical condition, a night vision heads-up display, and a $12,000 limited-production Natalia lady's purse and bottle of Natalia wine that features a self-uncorking system that comes with the car. The DiMora Motorcar website is still a little unfinished, though Luxury Resort Villas claims that it's taking delivery of its Natalia fleet in 2008.
Palm Springs and modernistic styling have gone together since the town became the "Playground of Presidents" and "The Rat Pack" hung out there, starting in the 1950s. Here's what one Avanti site says about the place: "Hollywood legends built world class residences in the Modern Style designed by architects now recognized as modern masters. Studebaker's startling Avanti coupe looked perfect beside houses designed by architects Richard Neutra and John Lautner and locals like William Cody, Stewart Williams, and Albert Frey. In the late nineties, Frey's house for Avanti designer Raymond Loewy, with its amoeba-shaped indoor/outdoor pool and its view-framing trellis, was restored by metalware manufacturer Jim Gaudineer. Loewy kept a 1963 Studebaker Avanti parked at the Frey house. Palm Springs architect Stewart Williams, designed a house for Avanti owner Frank Sinatra complete with a piano-shaped pool in which Ava Gardner, Greta Garbo, and Lana Turner splashed."
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