Category: Cars

GOODWOOD & THE JOY OF HILLS

We love hill climbing. Simple format; there’s a track up a hill – you have to be quickest. Unlike gridded wheel-to-wheel racing, there are no tactics, no strategies available and no one to show you the way. It’s just a pure test of car and driver.
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If Colorado’s Pikes Peak is the ultimate Hillclimb, then Goodwood’s Festival of Speed (coming up this weekend) is a delicious tongue tip taster of the form. Every year a huge variety of vehicles — from priceless vintage cars and the latest in cutting edge Hypercar exotica to Rod Millen’s Pike Peak slaying Celica (above & Below) — gather on the lawn of Lord March’s elegant Sussex Estate.

I was lucky enough to witness this monstrous missile setting its record time a few years ago. Sometimes a vehicle can be so powerful it’s a little frightening to be near it.

This was such a car.

Not sure if Rod Millen will be at Goodwood this weekend – but rest assured it’s the highlight of the petrolhead year. And you should be there.
http://youtu.be/81DeYYK8Dtc

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PIKES PEAK 1958

With the motorsport season finally upon us we can’t help but share with you this amazing little race car.
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Apparently, this open wheeled beast was the vehicle in which legendary US racer Bobby Unser won the 1958 Pikes Peak ‘race to the clouds’.

We’re not sure of much more spec or details on the vehicle itself – only that the thing looks like more fun than a barrel of drunken monkeys. At Christmas.

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Questons, for example include: is that a flathead V8? What kind of carbs are they? And what sorts of times would this machine have made up the hill?

Any info that you, dear readers, can afford, would be much appreciated.

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INDIAN WALL OF DEATH

“Wall of Death?” I hear you say. “Meh!”
But this is no health-and-safety logged, Ofsted approved circus act. This is something really special. This is the Indian Wall of Death.

And man alive, look at the way this video is put together!

It’s a lot stronger than the structure of which the wall is composed.

Seeing is believing.

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MERCEDES 190 VS BMW M3

Classic this one. Sometimes the slickness of contemporary TV car shows forget the gonzo-like beauty of a good old fashioned burn up. And this is a classic old fashioned burn up.
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Mercedes-Benz 190E

We’re not sure where or when this was shot, but there’s something pure and honest about the ragged tearup between this Mercedes 190 (don’t think it’s a Cosworth, version) and a BMW M3 E30. We reckon it dates from some time in the early to mid nineties and yes, it’s definitely in France.
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BMW E30 M3

Any other infos greatly appreciated. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy.

http://youtu.be/ANv83OJk–4

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FORD GT40: THE BEAUTY

Words: Neil Siner

I didn’t have the Scalextric Le Mans 24 hour set, but my mate did. It was on that plastic blacktop in the early 80s that I first fell in love with the Ford GT40.
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I guess it would have been a scaled down version of the Mark II that we fought over on those wet Saturday afternoons, the car’s strange mix of macho bulk and curvaceous lines already appealing to our burgeoning maleness.

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It can be difficult to pin down the quality that draws us to an object but it’s fair to say that often that quality is a fleeting thing. Not so with the Ford GT40. It is a car that stands outside of time. From the 60’s racetrack to the contemporary road it has an enduring beauty the essence of which, I think, lies in its inception. Being the offspring of transatlantic progenitors the GT40 has that special beauty that is a by product of what geneticists refer to as ‘hybrid vigour’. American power and technology combined with British mechanical design has produced here something truly outstanding.
I’m still in love!

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40 inches from tarmac to roof. Nothing looks anything like the Ford GT40
40 inches from tarmac to roof. Nothing looks anything like the Ford GT40

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This was after all a car built from scratch, with the specific job of seeing off Ferraris. It is in its perfect utility and the fulfilment of its function that it finds such an iconic and timeless appeal. So what are these qualities teased out of its hybrid functionality that endow this machine with such beauty? To me they are manifested in the car’s visual contrasts. It is chunky, with super wide sills and deep wheel arches over 15 inch wheels. Yet it is also sleek and low slung, petite almost in its minimal height (the famous 40 inches of its nomenclature).

15 Inch wheels – small by today’s standards.
15 Inch wheels – small by today’s standards.

To my mind, it is in this incongruity of manly power and bulk combined with sensual curves, that the GT40 finds its true and lasting appeal. Like some beautiful automotive dominatrix, it looks like it wants to rough you up and seduce you at the same time.

So maybe it’s just the submissive in me but thirty years or so after we first met on those adolescent afternoons,

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JAMES GARNER: RACER

A few of weeks ago James Garner, her co star in Grand Prix, John Frankenheimer’s flawed motorsport classic from 1966, died peacefully at the impressive age of 86.

Here’s a flavour of the film.

Plaudits were universal on the man’s down-home straight forwardness. We loved his straight ahead, understated macho style. He was a petrol head too, and a self-avowed fan of race cars – driving the pace car at Indianapolis 500 on a number of occasions. He famously commissioned a 4 seater, road-going Indy car too. Here are some pics of that.

Rest In Power Mr Garner!

You rocked that racing suit better than most.

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