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.
Fiat 500: when a car was actually a platform in disguise Chris Harris once said the best small cars are the ones that feel honest about what they are. He was talking about a modern hot hatch. He could have been talking about the original Fiat 500, except the 500 takes that idea further than … Read more
JAGUAR C-X75: THE SUPERCAR JAGUAR CHOSE NOT TO BUILD A British supercar that beat Ferrari, McLaren and Porsche to the punch Three years before LaFerrari, P1 and 918 Spyder were even announced, a British firm in Coventry had already engineered a 890 hp plug-in hybrid supercar with a 1.6-litre engine that revved to 10,000 rpm … Read more
CHRYSLER ME FOUR-TWELVE: THE AMERICAN SUPERCAR MERCEDES MURDERED A 248 mph American hypercar, born inside the wrong corporation McLaren F1Before the Bugatti Veyron set a new bar at 253 mph. Before the Ferrari Enzo was fully digested by the collector market. Before the McLaren F1 looked replaceable. Detroit had a car ready to leave them … Read more
BMW GINA: the fabric-skinned car Chris Bangle spent seven years building in secret to ask one question Chris Bangle is, depending on who you talk to, either the man who destroyed BMW or the man who saved it. Probably both. If you read any British or American motoring press from the early 2000s, you’ll remember … Read more
GMA T.50: The Car Gordon Murray Has Been Waiting 30 Years to Build Gordon Murray has spent his entire career proving one thing: that lighter is better. He proved it with 22 Grand Prix wins at Brabham. He proved it with the MP4/4, the most dominant Formula 1 car ever made. He proved it with … Read more
Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II: the NASCAR weapon Ford buried to save its own brand If you’ve ever watched a David Pearson highlight reel from 1969, you’ve seen the Talladega. If you’ve ever read a paperback history of NASCAR‘s Aero Wars, you’ve seen the Charger Daytona and the Superbird. The shapes are unforgettable. The wings, the … Read more
BMW NAZCA C2: THE M1 SUCCESSOR BMW WAS TOO SCARED TO BUILD A 350 hp BMW V12 that weighed less than a Mini Cooper S For all the heritage BMW has built around the M1, for all the magazine covers Top Gear and Evo have given the M1 Hommage and the more recent retro pieces, … Read more
MERCEDES-BENZ C111: THE GERMAN SUPERCAR STUTTGART REFUSED TO SELL Bronze-orange testbed, white cheques on the counter Every now and again, a car arrives that breaks the rules of how concepts are supposed to behave. It is not killed by its parent company. It is not abandoned because the engineering does not work. It is not … Read more
McLaren: Sixty Years of Building Cars That Hurt, From a Limp in Auckland to the Top of Formula 1 Top Gear’s Chris Harris once said that the McLaren F1 is the only road car that has ever genuinely scared him. Not in the way a Lamborghini Diablo scares you with its switches and its truculence, … Read more
Lamborghini Marzal: One lap of Monaco, then forty years of nothing There’s a photograph from May 7th, 1967 that tells you everything you need to know about the Lamborghini Marzal. Grace Kelly is sitting in the passenger seat. Prince Rainier III is driving. The car has glass doors that run from the roofline all the … Read more
Lincoln Navigator: the king who built the throne and lost the crown Picture a Cadillac board meeting in early 1998. Someone walks in with the year-end sales figures and the room goes quiet. For the first time since 1950, Lincoln has outsold Cadillac in total US volume. Not by a rounding error. By 4,551 units. … Read more
The French Disaster That Built Alfa: Portello, 1906 Picture this. A French industrialist with a handlebar moustache walks into a Naples hotel in April 1906, signs a stack of papers, and announces he’s going to teach Italians how to build cars. Eighteen months later his factory is bleeding money in the wrong city, his Italian … Read more
