Ferrari 512 BB: The Boxer That Never Was There is a Ferrari where almost nothing written on the car turns out to be true. The engine is not a boxer, despite half a century of the factory saying it is. The two letters in the name do not mean what Ferrari says they mean, according … Read more
Ferrari Daytona: The Name Enzo Cancelled America gave this car its name. America redrew its face. America ran it across the continent in thirty-five hours. America faked it twice over. And then America priced Ferrari’s twelve-cylinder engine out of the country for eleven years. The 365 GTB/4 is one of the most imposing things Maranello … Read more
Audi V12 TDI: The Greatest Diesel Ever Built, Killed By Audi America never got the Audi V12 TDI. That turns out to be the least interesting thing about it. Here’s the more interesting thing. The V12 TDI is not the Le Mans engine. It doesn’t share the vee angle, the displacement, or the architecture with … Read more
Panoz: the nicotine-patch millionaire who chain-smoked and saved American racing There’s an irony so cruel at the center of this story that if a novel served it up you’d say the author overreached. The man who made his fortune leading the team that invented the nicotine patch — the device meant to help people quit … Read more
MA-FIA Chapter VII: Balance of Performance, or how to punish the kid who did their homework Chris Harris once said that the best motor racing is the kind where the best car, driven by the best driver, wins. Old-school logic. The kind of thing Clarkson would nod at while James May rolled his eyes. Here’s … Read more
Nissan R390 GT1: the race car Nissan had to fit with headlights and a number plate to be allowed to run at Le Mans If you were a manufacturer in the late nineties and you wanted to win Le Mans in the GT1 category — the one that actually won the race overall — you … Read more
The first journalist to drive it was also the last Bill Thomas didn’t know he was making history. Nobody at Bentwaters Park on August 19th, 2008 thought they were making history. They thought they were making a magazine feature. Top Gear had arranged a photo shoot with Mazda’s Furai concept at the former RAF airbase … 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
Ford Mustang GT3: the wild horse at Le Mans June 2024. Circuit de la Sarthe. Centennial of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Twenty-four cars line up on the LMGT3 grid. Porsche 911s. Ferrari 296s. Aston Martin Vantages. BMW M4s. McLaren Arturas. Corvette Z06s. Mercedes-AMG GTs. Lexus RC Fs. Mid-engine cars. Rear-engine cars. Mid-rear-engine cars. … Read more
The Ferrari that Ferrari didn’t build: the uncomfortable truth about the 333 SP Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. When Ferrari came back to sports prototype racing in 1994 after twenty years of absolute silence, the car that restored their dignity wasn’t built in Maranello. It was built in Varano de’ … Read more
Porsche 911 GT1: the legal loophole that won Le Mans Here’s the part most people get backwards: the Porsche 911 GT1 is not a road car they turned into a race car. It’s a race car they were forced to register for the road. Because if they hadn’t, the FIA wouldn’t let it onto the … Read more
Bentley: the Man Who Built the World’s Fastest Lorries It all started with a paperweight. An aluminum paperweight sitting on a desk in a French office. That single object changed British military aviation, Le Mans history, and the luxury car industry forever. Because Walter Owen Bentley wasn’t a businessman playing at making cars. He was … Read more
