Votren De Este · Articles

Want to feel ancient? Well, consider this. Temporally speaking, the launch of the E31 BMW 8 Series was closer to the first televised appearance of Elvis Presley than it is to today. But then the 8 Series is a car that has a rare ability to catch you off guard. Despite none finding customers during the ’80s, it’s viewed by many as a quintessentially ’80s BMW yet the technology that underpinned this car was anything but a throwback.

Have you ever wondered what influences automakers to choose the names for their different vehicles? In Maserati’s case, many of their creations are inspired by wind. For example, their newest sport utility vehicle is named Grecale and refers to a strong, cool, northeasterly Mediterranean wind that blows off the coast of southern Malta. What’s in a name, you ask? It turns out there is a lot more than many of us think.

Among Toyota’s myriad multi-seater options, the fourth-generation Kluger installs itself as the singular car-based choice for Aussie buyers more focused on crossing suburbs than going cross-country

Touring Superleggera’s latest stunner re-wraps the guts of an undisclosed ‘wellknown, mid-engined exotic’. Dale Drinnon discovers that the result is even more exotic.

Historic racer and classic collector Aaron Lewis is a driver first and foremost. The business of restoration, he says, can be frustrating

Electric seven-seaters remain a rare breed. Other than the £100k Tesla Model X, all that’s available is a glut of vans with windows – the Mercedes EQV, the Nissan e-NV200, or about 60 variants of the same Stellantis model.

The truth is reliably stranger than fiction, and with the near-mythical motor BMW M built for Gordon Murray’s extraordinarily neat BT52 Formula 1 racer there’s almost as much strange fact and fiction as there was boost. (And there was a lot of boost.)

When a nostalgic enthusiast brought his ailing BMW into Yves Decan’s Belgian workshop, he wanted a 1970s street racer. Looks like he got it.

Two strokes, warts ’n’ all A soviet oddball with ties to one of the world’s biggest carmakers.

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”.

Built for one year, the Chrysler Town & Country Newport Coupe was the last of marque’s true ‘woodies’. We drive one in the UK, and we’re stirred by its sense of wanderlust.

Vauxhall’s eighth-generation Astra is here – and it’s promising to be better than ever. The range has been simplified into three-well-equipped trim levels – Design, GSLine and Ultimate.

Although as a younger man (Sir) William Lyons had often competed on motorbikes, even in his later years he had little experience in racing cars.

Fancy owning classic Škoda built in the days when the Iron Curtain hung heavily over Eastern Europe? Then look no further as this rare 1200 is looking for a new home.