Where automotive icons live. We dive deep into the cars that shaped history, the posters on our childhood walls, and the machines that redefined performance and design.
Lancia: the brand that invented half the modern car and ended up selling Ypsilons in Italy There’s a question Chris Harris has asked, more than once, on camera. It goes something like this: which manufacturer, when you really dig into the history books, turns out to have invented more of the modern car than any … Read more
The Supercar That Dared to Be Comfortable: The Maserati Bora’s Secret French Heart Ask any supercar of 1971 the questions that actually mattered to an owner and you’d usually get a sneer. Can I climb in without wrecking my back? Can I drive it for two hours without going deaf? Can I park it without … Read more
TVR CERBERA SPEED 12: THE CAR ITS OWN BOSS CANCELLED AFTER ONE DRIVE HOME Blackpool, late 2000. A wet evening on the Lancashire coast. Peter Wheeler, owner of TVR, slides into the driver’s seat of a prototype he’s been waiting four years to drive. The car costs £245,000. It’s been promoted as the machine that … Read more
Spyker 60HP: The 1903 Car That Beat Audi, BMW And Land Rover By 80 Years Top Gear once put together a list of the most innovative cars of all time. Chris Harris has spoken at length about the cars that shaped what we drive today. Every motoring journalist worth their salt has, at some point, … Read more
Ferrari FXX: the most elegant scam in motoring history Run the numbers. In 2005 Ferrari pulled off a move that, attempted by anyone else, ends in a courtroom. They sold you a car for over a million euros. Then they kept it. They stored it at their place. They charged you separately for the privilege … Read more
The 2CV Wasn’t a Car. It Was a Spec Sheet Turned to Steel. Citroën 2CV and AK400: how Boulanger’s design brief wrote the car before anyone picked up a pencil You’re going to read it a thousand times. The 2CV was “four wheels under an umbrella.” It’s a lovely slogan and it sells itself, but … Read more
Brabus Spent 50 Years Tearing Mercedes Apart. For Its Masterpiece, the Bodo, It Picked an Aston Martin For half a century the formula never changed. You take a Mercedes — ideally one already breathed on by AMG — and you hand it to Brabus, the Bottrop firm that exists to take something fast and make … Read more
The Goutte d’Eau. The Most Beautiful Car Nobody Remembers Ask anyone who knows cars which is the most beautiful ever built, and you’ll get a predictable list. The E-Type. The 250 GTO. The Miura. The DB5. All of them deserve to be there. All of them also have the cultural weight to make the conversation … Read more
BMW X5 Le Mans: The SUV That Beat the Cayenne Two Years Before the Cayenne Existed Hans-Joachim Stuck took a BMW X5 around the Nordschleife in June 2001. Seven minutes, forty-nine seconds, ninety-two hundredths. Three hundred and eleven kilometres per hour on the Kottenborn straight. The first SUV in history to break the eight-minute barrier … Read more
Ford Mustang GTD Competition: Ford’s blow at the Nordschleife Six minutes. Forty seconds. Eight hundred and thirty-five thousandths. 6:40.835. Read it slow, because this isn’t going to live long in the papers before someone breaks it, but as I write this it’s the absolute fastest time an American street-legal car has ever registered at the … Read more
Quarkus P3: The 600kg French Supercar That DNF’d at Pikes Peak Before Selling a Single Car They didn’t finish. On June 23rd, 2024, a car that had never been sold to anyone, built by a company most people had never heard of, entered the most punishing hillclimb on the planet and did not cross the … Read more
Lancia Stratos HF Zero: the wedge that was 33 inches tall and won three world titles If you grew up watching Group B onboards, or if Sanremo and the Acropolis mean something to you because of Munari and the orange-and-white livery, you already know the Lancia Stratos. What you probably don’t know is that the … Read more
