Very little beats that news car smell or the benefits that come with buying a car brand new. We ask Dave Raybould whether the novelty, or that smell, ever wears off.
In the early 1970s, a racing enthusiast in possession of an accident-damaged 910 decided to transform the Porsche into a no-excuses sports car for the road. Calling in leading experts, he succeeded in creating an automobile of rare sculptural excellence…
This is not an Eighties car, I can hear the naysayers proclaim – and yes, the elegant E24 first edged its (shark)nose into public consciousness halfway through the Seventies. However, it’s here because it was the halo car for BMW’s Eighties ascent into the upper echelons of desirability. We have to strip back years of 2 Series Active Tourers and ratty 320Ds to uncover the BMW of old. The badge was a status symbol – king of the keyfobs at yuppie dinner parties. All the prestige of a Jaguar or high-spec Rover without the whiff of old-school England, and much sportier than a Mercedes-Benz. The BMW was engineered of the right stuff – its sharp, crisp lines a foil to British notions of luxury and prestige still predicated on more chrome, wood and leather than an MP’s secret cellar. BMWs were properly expensive too – sift through the price list of the era and the difference between a E24 635CSi Highline like the one seen here and the top-of-the-tree M635CSi E24 could swallow a semi-detached home in the Midlands. So E30 3 Series aside, Eighties BMWs were always a fairly rare sight; nowadays every third car seems to wear an ever-more gopping kidney grille.
Step inside the spacious cabin of Haval’s midsize SUV, slide into the generous, leather-look seats and hit the keyless start button and you’re met with a pair of high-resolution displays...
Profile of Italy’s little-known design genius. Shy and modest but brilliantly talented, Federico Formenti was Touring’s golden child. We tell the story of one of the world’s greatest car designers you’ve probably never heard of.
The Fiat 124 range was the brainchild of Dante Giacosa, the brilliant chief designer at Fiat during the 1950s and 1960s. He could never have known just how successful the saloon version was going to be.
When Mazda introduced the MX-30 small crossover to its already comprehensive small-vehicle family in March 2021, it wasn’t immediately obvious how it fitted in. With the CX-3 looking after the compact-SUV crowd, the Mazda 3 taking care of the hatchback audience and the CX-30 filling in any gaps between them, how could the mechanically almost identical MX-30 find any attention at all?
VW’s reborn icon challenges the car BMW said it would never build. The latest incarnation of VW’s hot-hatch icon is now sufficiently upmarket to take a swing at the 1 Series BMW once said it would never build. They’ve got a lot of front, this pair...
Not to say there’s causation, but the world went a bit pear-shaped when the Toyota Tarago left us. The people mover of choice for tens of thousands of Aussies ended production in the final weeks of 2019, since replaced by the more luxo-bent Granvia. But this page of Wheels hasn’t paid homage to the trusty Tarago until now.
Step One of raising your profile as a car brand: build a supercar. And since you’re BMW Motorsport GmbH (the snappy one-letter nickname isn’t official until 1991), best make one that’s a racing car as well as a road car.
