Bugatti EB110: the supercar that arrived ten years before the future caught up Ask most people under forty when Bugatti returned to building cars and you’ll get the same answer. The Veyron. 2005. Volkswagen. End of story. That’s wrong by about fourteen years and one country. Before the W16, before Wolfsburg’s open chequebook, before the … Read more
Eccentrica V12: The Analogue Rebellion That Just Spent a Million Quid on a Diablo In an age where the average new supercar fields three electric motors, fifteen hundred horsepower from a battery pack and a Nürburgring mode that scores your laps to Hans Zimmer, a quietly stubborn man from San Marino has set about doing … 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
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
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
Maserati 250F: The Most Beautiful Car to Ever Win a War Denis Jenkinson, the great Motor Sport correspondent who rode shotgun with Stirling Moss to win the 1955 Mille Miglia, did not hand out praise cheaply. He had watched everything the 1950s had to offer. And of one particular afternoon at the Nürburgring he wrote … 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 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
Ferrari 125 S, A Promising Failure: How Ferrari Began with Three Broken Words May 11, 1947. Piacenza circuit, northern Italy. The first car ever to wear the Ferrari name is leading its debut race. Then a fuel pump dies. The driver pulls in. The car stops. There are two normal reactions to this scenario. One: … 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
Maserati MC12: The Supercar That Forced the FIA to Invent Balance of Performance Top Gear lapped one. The Stig set a time of 1:18.9 — one tenth faster than the Ferrari Enzo. Clarkson called it twitchy, oversized, and “either a racer, a GT car, or a detuned Enzo in a fat suit.” He couldn’t quite … Read more
Ferruccio Lamborghini: the farmer who insulted Enzo Ferrari and built an empire The man who answered an insult with a V12 A 47-year-old tractor manufacturer walks into Enzo Ferrari’s office in Maranello and tells him his cars are rubbish. Ferrari tells him to go back to his tractors. Four months later, the tractor manufacturer has … Read more
