JAGUAR XJR-15

The Jaguar XJR-15 was the world’s first fully carbon-fibre road car.

Conceived by Jaguar’s sporting division in collaboration with Tom Walkinshaw Racing, the production of the car was seen as a way to get a fully specced endurance racer into the hungry market for very wealthy revheads. Only 53 were made between 1990 and 1992, each selling for close to a million US dollars.

True exotica

Mechanically they were close to the Le Mans-winning Jaguar XJR-9, with a 450 HP V12 engine, and the bodies were styled by Peter Stevens – who later went on create the brutalist lines of the McLaren F1.

The Jaguar XJR-15 is one of those supercars destined for climate-conditioned hangers, out of the prying eyes of the great unwashed and the tax man – but thanks to the web we can enjoy its uncompromising purposefulness from a distance.

We wonder how much they would go for now.

The mind bogles

[Via influx magazine]

October 16, 2014 0

AUDI R8R LMP PROTOTYPE

If you’re the sort of person for whom the very words Le Mans makes you break out in a fantastic motorsport inspired sweat, then you’ll probably enjoy these images of a very special car.

It’s basically the 1998 design study upon which Audi’s unbelievably successful aspirations of success in the 24hrs was based.

Like all prototypes, it does, unfortunately, look even more beautiful and purely rendered than the cars that actually came to dominate in the first years of this century – but we think you’ll agree this ‘prototype of a prototype’ is worth savouring for its rakish lines alone.

This beauty also teases out the very real relationship between endurance racing success and that of Audi’s road cars – not just in the R8 supercars that are becoming almost as ubiquitous as 911s in certain postcodes – but in the more accessible everyman vehicles that rakishly ply our British byways.

Further justification, if it were needed, of the importance of a racing programme within an illustrious motor works…

October 13, 2014 0

Classic Formula 1 Engines & sounds

Several examples of Toyota, Honda, Renault, BMW, Ferrari and Cosworth engines.

Watch this amazing compilation of F1 engines on dyno shooting flames:

October 12, 2014 0

DEL PORTO ROADSTER

BARE WHEELED BEAUTY

images Chris Sutton

Coming from a place where bare wheeled cars can still be driven on the road without fear of prosecution, we’re currently in love with the Del Porto Roadster.

This slick, black beauty was originally designed in 1951 as a racer on the Salt Lakes. In fact it apparently set a record there of 155MPH – and at the drag strip was clocked crossing the top end at a terminal velocity of 118 MPH. It was a star on the rod scene back then, made magazine covers and scored props at top shows too.

you have to be open-minded you have to she might find the guy at
In 2010, having been wrecked in 1953 and sitting in storage for over 50 years, it went through a 3000 hour restoration at Classic Craft Motorsports in Springfield, Ohio.

The car is powered by a 265 cubic inch Flathead V-8 Engine with four Stromberg carbs and there’s a competition 3-speed gearbox that deals with about 220 BHP.

The thing we’re loving the most is the attention to detail about the resto. You can feel the clunk of metal and the smell of leather from these very beautifully rendered images from photographer Chris Sutton.

There’s a real sense of drama and passion encoded in these sorts of machines. They come from a time when mechanical ingenuity was a passionate obsession – an enthusiasm that bled out and infected the world through the aesthetic of rock’n’roll. You won’t find one as clean and beautiful as this anywhere.

Loving it.

[via influx magazine]