Although Jaguar had come close to building a competition version of the F-Type not long after its 2012 debut, apparently working with the Williams F1 team to develop such a model, it never came to fruition. In early 2018 a genuine racer based on the car finally broke cover. But although it was built by Jaguar’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) based in Ryton, having been developed for an independent team, Invictus Games Racing, it wasn’t the works effort many had been hoping for.
AMC debuted a trio of interesting ‘idea’ cars in 1966 and while none of them saw full-scale production, they inspired certain ideas on future models that went into production in the following years…
From blown diffusers to front-tyre-warming, toe-angle-adjusting steering columns, both born then banned in the past two decades, Formula One has been defined by relentless rule-bending engineering innovations since its inception. However, the most primal of them all doesn’t even hail from this century; it supersedes carbon fibre as F1’s go-to construction material in the 1980s.
Page through the CAR guide section at the back of the magazine and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a new model that does not incorporate some form of smartphone integration; be it simple Bluetooth connectivity, or touchscreen systems that accommodate Android Auto or Apple CarPlay functionality. And it was the latter that set the scene for the sort of phone-to- car interaction we enjoy in so many of our vehicles right now.
For one entrepreneur, the lure of Italian beauty with American power was not enough: it needed German build quality, too. The result was the Bitter CD.
