Continuing our series looking back at the early days of Ferdinand Porsche’s engineering career, we chart the design and development of the Type 166 Schwimmwagen, an amphibious off-roader…
It’s possibly the most famous example of one of the world’s most revered cars – and owner Nick Mason has driven his Ferrari 250 GTO absolutely everywhere. Here’s why it’s now firmly part of his family.
Reeves Callaway is inextricably linked with the Chevrolet Corvette, the sometime single-seater driver turned tuner having made ‘America’s Only Sports Car’ go faster than ever seemed feasible. When you produce a hotted-up Corvette with, say, the name ‘Sledgehammer,’ you know it isn’t going to be shy or retiring. The C12, however, had a title that was positively tame by comparison, but then it was so much more than a reworked Corvette. It was a road car with racing car credentials, and one that was part-German.
Giovanni Michelotti shaped a bewildering array of cars, from oneoff coachbuilt exotica to best-selling mainstream future classics. We recall the Turinese styling great.
The peak of hatchback design was arguably reached all the way back in 1993 – the year the pretty Peugeot 306 was launched, with a design by Pininfarina. Sure, it might look slightly dated now, but has the simplicity of its lines, its perfect proportions, shapely hatchback or even its dainty door mirrors really been improved upon? Most contemporary hatchbacks have a grille like a surprised emoji.
We’re talking about the best rally cars of all time. The World Rally Championship (WRC) was never more exciting and chock-full of memorable machinery as it was during the Group B era of the 1980s; a time when the cars were considered more wild and outrageous than their F1 counterparts, coining the phrase “Formula 1 for the forest”.
When you think of motoring in 1950’s America, it’s likely that lashings of chrome, tail fins and bodywork for miles will come to mind. It’s fair to assume lightweight materials won’t feature anywhere on the list of all of the things that make up mid-20th century Americana.
After the closure of Abingdon and the end of MGB and Midget production, the prospect of a new MG sports car seemed a distant dream but, at Frankfurt in 1985, Austin-Rover stole the show
Jaguar may have pulled out of The World Sportscar Championship at the end of 1991 but it had one last season in endurance racing; the 1992 International Motor Sports Association’s GT series in the US. As with the WSC, Tom Walkinshaw Racing oversaw Jaguar’s IMSA entries and used a variety of cars for the 15-race series, including the V12-engined XJR-12 for the 24-hour events, plus the V6 turbo XJR-14 and its XJR-16 replacement for the others.
