Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Roads… that’s the tune that some lucky buyer will be humming as they thunder through the countryside in the world’s only Aston V-12 swapped Range Rover Classic.

The idea for the 1971 three-door Rangie to receive its mighty heart transplant came after the crew at Land Rover specialists Bishops 4×4 spent an evening in the pub pondering. The car had been sitting around awaiting restoration with the wrong engine in, and, with suitable lubrication, a plan was formed.

A crashed DB7 V-12 was bought and then the business of modifying the Range Rover chassis began. It took two and a half years, during which “almost every single aspect has been improved, upgraded or strengthened to end up with a fabulous cocktail of Britishness that will likely never be repeated.”

The front chassis rails had to be cut out and re-welded to accommodate the six-liter, 12-cylinder motor and even then it didn’t fit. The engine was so long that the sizeable engine bay still couldn’t house it and the scuttle had to be modified. The alternator needed to be moved, the drive belts re-routed, and cooling hoses adapted as well. The inlet manifold was tweaked, free-flowing air filters installed, and a custom stainless steel exhaust system was devised. Two tuneable ECUs were used—one for each cylinder bank—while the ZF four-speed automatic transmission was fettled by the experts at Ashcroft.

More rugged Defender axles with beefy springs and Bilstein dampers were bolted on, along with powerful six-piston AP Racing disc brakes. The 18-inch alloy wheels were shod with 285-section Toyo Proxy tires and the wheel arches flared to give them sufficient space.

Other visual changes include twin headlamps, four layers of maroon paintwork for the main body and gray for the roof. Aston Martin badges were added and the car literally flies the flag for Britain with a hand-painted Union Jack on its flanks and hood.

Inside there’s Wood & Pickett trim, a DB9 starter button and a digital dashboard and, as a final touch, a kick plate with the build number AMRR007001.

Described as “brain-numbingly complex” the car sold at Iconic Auctioneers for £50,625 ($64,350) which probably represents a mere fraction of the blood, sweat, tears, dogged determination and stiff upper lip that went into it.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post This Range Rover Classic with the Heart of an Aston Martin sold for $60,000 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin has a 25-year tradition of powering its flagship model with a V-12 engine, and apparently that will continue. The British manufacturer has released some details about a new twin-turbocharged V-12 that will debut in Aston’s upcoming flagship, which apparently will be called the Vanquish, reviving a name first used 23 years ago.

The new engine, Aston says, pumps out 824 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque. That’s 64 more horses than you’ll find in the company’s most powerful current V-12, used in the limited-edition DBS 770 Ultimate. ”One last tour before extinction,” says the Aston Martin website for the 770 Ultimate, so get it while you can. Actually, you can’t, at least from Aston: The 300 coupes and 199 convertibles Aston is producing are already sold.

The new V-12 uses a strengthened cylinder block and connecting rods, redesigned cylinder heads with new camshafts, plus new intake and exhaust ports. Spark plugs were repositioned, and there’s new higher flowrate fuel injectors.

“The V-12 engine has long been a symbol of power and prestige, but it is also a statement of engineering passion and technical prowess,” said Aston Martin chief technical officer Roberto Fedeli. “This unparalleled engine represents nothing less than the dawn of a dazzling new V-12 era for Aston Martin.”

The flagship that will be powered by the new V-12 apparently won’t be the Vanquish Vision Concept that the company displayed in March of 2019 at the Geneva Motor Show. That car, which Aston told us “previews the design language of Aston Martin’s first series production mid-engine supercar,” has apparently been shelved, along with its planned V-6 turbocharged hybrid engine. The upcoming Vanquish, we hear, will be a conventional front-engine, rear-wheel-drive GT car. It’s expected to break ground later this year.

It’s likely no coincidence that word of the new V-12, and its accompanying mention that a fresh flagship model is on the way, arrives about the same time Aston Martin’s first-quarter financial report was released. It shows that Aston, according to Reuters, “made fewer cars and burned more cash than analysts anticipated, sending its shares 7 percent lower.”

In fairness, that reflects in part the downtime required to change over from one model to the next, as Aston has been busy building new or freshened models this year. According to Motor Trend, by the end of this year, “Aston Martin will have on sale four models that will have been redesigned or heavily refreshed in the previous 18 months.”

“Our first-quarter performance reflects this expected period of transition,” Aston chairman Lawrence Stroll said. According to Forbes, fashion mogul Stroll has a personal net worth of $3.9 billion; with that Aston Martin the car builder, and Aston Martin the Formula 1 team, should be on firm ground, though it’s rumored he’d like to sell 25 percent of the latter.

Regardless, we can’t wait to see what Stroll has up his sleeve for Aston Martin, both in the showroom and on the track.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post More Potent V-12 To Power Aston Martin’s New Vanquish, Due This Year appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Barrett-Jackson has been coming to Palm Beach (technically, West Palm Beach) at the South Florida Fairgrounds since the mid-2000s, making this the auction house’s most enduring auction that’s not in Arizona. B-J’s sale here consistently brings over 600 vehicles and dozens of vendors to the venue for a smaller version of the collector car fanfare we’re used to seeing in and around Scottsdale. This year, total sales were a solid $45M and average price was rather high at more than $74,000, but there were plenty of budget-friendly four-figure classics as well.

Indeed, Palm Beach usually offers a wide range of vehicles at a wide range of prices, and this year was no different, although offerings at the top end were less diverse. Five of the top 10 sales were a Ford GT of some sort, and eight of the top 10 were built after the year 2000. Only a 1966 Corvette restomod and the replica Dodge Daytona from Joe Dirt brought some American muscle into the top 10.

We examined some of the more interesting cars and significant sales in detail below.

Lot 692: 1972 DeTomaso Pantera

Sold for $176,000

Chassis no. THPNMB02424. Red over black vinyl. Visually maintained, largely original, #2 condition.

Equipment: 351/330hp, 5-speed, Campagnolo wheels, Becker Europa radio, power windows, air conditioning.

Condition: Represented with 1592 actual miles and its preservation is impressive. It shows careful ownership and only light age inside and out, although the paint does not look original.

Bottom line: An early Pantera that hasn’t been cut up or modified is already impressive, doubly so when it is as well preserved as this. The car has been to auction a few times, and bidders have always appropriately recognized its originality by paying a premium price for it. Its auction history also does a good job of tracing the market for these Italo-American sports cars over time. At Mecum Indy in 2014, it sold for $86,400. At Indy again six years later and in a hot 2020 market, it sold for $148,500. At Kissimmee 2022 and in an even hotter market, it brought $181,500, while in 2024 among softer but still high prices it took a small step back in price.

Lot 677: 1987 Buick Regal GNX

Sold for $156,200

Chassis no. 1G4GJ1174HP451735. Black over black and gray cloth. Unrestored original, #2 condition.

Equipment: 231/276hp, automatic, Goodyear Eagle tires.

Condition: Number 438 of 547 built. Showing 1309 miles and the tires are represented as original. Very well kept and preserved.

Bottom line: The GNX was one of the fastest and most desirable American cars of the 1980s. They’ve never really fallen out of favor, but it wasn’t until the last few years that they became six-figure modern collector cars. Way back in 2000, this one sold at RM’s Phoenix auction for just $30,800. Its odometer showed 534 miles and it was in essentially the same condition as it is today. It really is worth five times as much as it was 24 years ago.

Lot 745: 2005 Ford GT Twin-Turbo by Hefner Performance

Sold for $374,000

Chassis no. 1FAFP90SX5Y400061. Midnight Blue with white stripes over black.

Equipment: Twin-turbocharged, Ford Performance exhaust, shorty headers, Penske shocks, transmission oil cooler, removed rear bumper, 6-speed, painted calipers, McIntosh stereo, BBS wheels.

Condition: Paint shows some swirling and scratching but no major issues. Oddly, neither the mileage nor the horsepower numbers are represented.

Bottom line: This is an early production GT modified by an outfit in Florida, and although there are no dyno sheets, it is surely very fast. To drive, it’s probably a blast. As a collector car, though, the mods and the signs of use are knocks against it, and there are cleaner 2005-06 GTs to choose from that hit the auction block every month. Or even the same day, as the 597-mile car Barrett-Jackson sold 20 lots earlier than this brought $451,000.

Lot 440: 1990 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Cabriolet by Gemballa

Sold for $110,000

Chassis no. WP0CB2965LS472097. Black over black leather. Original, #3+

Equipment: 3.6, 5-speed, whale tail, Gemballa wheels, Michelin Pilot Sport tires, white gauges, Pioneer stereo, carbon fiber dash.

Condition: Showing 75,514 miles. Some minor paint blemishes on the nose and mirrors. A few small cracks in the headlight covers. Clean wheels. Clean, straight top. Good interior with stretched upholstery on the driver’s side. Pretty understated for a Gemballa.

Bottom line: Uwe Gemballa founded a tuning company in 1981 and became a big name in modern coachbuilding, at least until he was murdered in South Africa in 2010. Gemballa-modified cars (mostly Porsches) are distinctive at best and ugly at worst, but they’ve never been boring, even if this is one of the more understated body kits they ever did. Body-kitted and tuned exotics like Gemballas, Koenigs, early AMGs, etc. were a bit passé for a while but collectors of a certain age are coming around to them. The bidders recognized this one for what it is, and that it isn’t just a 911 with a kit slapped on at the local body shop. Despite its use, the car sold for a big price. A regular 964-generation Carrera 4 cabriolet would never sell for this much, even in perfect condition.

Lot 356: 1979 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II

Sold for $27,500

Chassis no. SRK38123. Chestnut over biscuit leather. Visually maintained, largely underneath.

Equipment: Automatic, wheel covers, narrow whitewalls, power windows, air conditioning, original AM/FM.

Condition: Supposedly bought “nearly new” for talk show host Jack Paar as a gift from his wife. Represented with $30,000 worth of work over the past six months. Old repaint with a few blemishes but nothing serious. Lightly aged bumpers. Excellent interior. Tidy underneath. The recent mechanical work is very reassuring on any old Rolls-Royce, and the celebrity connection, while not super-relevant, is a nice bonus.

Bottom line: Jack Paar was a TV pioneer, but the number of people who really remember his tenure at The Tonight Show (1957-62) can’t be big. He also wasn’t known as a big car person (at least not the way later host Jay Leno is), and he owned this Rolls well past the peak of his career. The celebrity appeal here, then, is limited. The price, however, is on the high side for a Silver Shadow—one of the avenues to getting a true Spirit of Ecstasy on your hood. Credit the $30,000 worth of recent service, which isn’t usually lavished on affordable Rolls-Royces like this one.

Lot 675.1: 1999 Shelby Series 1

Sold for $165,000

Chassis no. 5CXSA1817XL000039. Silver with blue stripes over black and gray. Original, #2- condition.

Equipment: 244/320hp Oldsmobile V8, 6-speed, Nitto tires.

Condition: Some chips on the nose and dirt behind the headlight covers. Paint crack behind the left headlight. Very light wear on the driver’s seat. Showing 1360 miles and showing very light signs of age.

Bottom line: Despite its looks, the Series I wasn’t quite the Cobra successor it could have been, and people have been holding that against it ever since it came out. Original specifications called for a carbon-fiber body, Corvette transaxle, and 500 horsepower, but the reality was more modest. It got heavier, and the Olds V8 offered up less power, and the price climbed higher than anticipated. Objectively, it’s a great-looking car that’s plenty fast, but it’s always been undervalued relative to its rarity (249 built) and the famous name attached to it. Only in the past 10 years or so have prices really started to climb. In Palm Beach two years ago, this one sold for $126,500, which was on the modest side. The 2024 price is a better match for its mileage and condition.

Lot 788: 1961 Renault 4CV Jolly Beach Wagon

Sold for $36,300

Chassis no. 3607757. Cream yellow with yellow and white cloth top over wicker seats. Older restoration, #3+ condition.

Equipment: 747/21hp four-cylinder, 3-speed, hub caps.

Condition: Represented as one of 50 exported to the U.S. and Caribbean, and bought new by the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas. With the same family for the past 40 years and restored 10 years ago. Good paint. Light pitting on the chrome, including on the edges of the exterior grab bars. The wicker is all original and in solid shape aside from a few cracks. The dash and steering wheel are mostly clean, but the ignition around the keyhole is pitted. The top is a little dirty and aged. A perfect beach car with all the charm of a Fiat Jolly but for a lower cost.

Bottom line: Most of coachbuilder Ghia’s beach car, aka “Jolly”, bodies were on Fiats. The Italian cars are better known and more highly prized. Well-restored ones have sold for well over $100,000. But this Renault has all the charm and similar performance, or lack thereof, for a much lower cost. Are there cheaper ways to hit the beach in style? Certainly, but this is still so much charm and fun per dollar.

Lot 767.1: 2020 Porsche Boxster 718 Spyder

Sold for $126,500

Chassis no. WP0CC2A8XLS240606. Chalk with red top over red and gray. Original, #2 condition.

Equipment: 4.0/414hp, 6-speed, black wheels, red calipers, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires.

Condition: Showing 8086 miles and no real age or wear.

Bottom line: Six figures for a Boxster just sounds wrong, but the 718 Spyder is not your hairdresser’s Boxster. Essentially an open version of the Cayman GT4, it has aero bits on the body, suspension bits and brakes from a 911 GT3, and a much more powerful engine than the base car. It can hit nearly 190 mph. A 2020 718 Spyder started at a little over $97K, so with options this has always been a six-figure car, and the fact that a high-performance Porsche didn’t depreciate after four years and 8000 miles isn’t really surprising.

Lot 370.1: 1970 AMC Rebel Machine

Sold for $69,300

Chassis no. A0M190Y171202. White, blue and red over black vinyl. Older restoration, #3+ condition.

Equipment: 390/340hp, 4-speed with Hurst T-handle shifter, limited-slip and Detroit Locker, Magnum 500-style wheels, BFG Radial T/A tires, high-back bucket seats, console.

Condition: Decent paint with some scratches and touch-ups on the nose and a spot of surface rust under one of the headlights. Decent chrome, but the rest of the brightwork is original and tired. Clean wheels and tires. Upholstery looks newer while the dash and switchgear looks original, and overall the interior looks good. Inconsistent presentation, but a rare piece of AMC muscle that always makes a statement, and a patriotic one at that.

Bottom line: The Rebel was a short-lived model, only lasting from 1967 to 1970, and for its final year Hurst developed a high-performance version called the Rebel Machine. Based on a Rebel SST, it had the most powerful engine available in an AMC product and was dressed up with red, white, and blue reflective stripes. For 2326 buyers, it was an economical way to get in on the peak of the muscle car craze. They’re still economical, at least relative to their style, performance, and rarity. This result is realistic for the condition of this example.

Lot 791.1: 1996 Nissan Skyline GT-R LM Limited

Sold for $105,600

Chassis no. BCNR33023215. Championship Blue over gray cloth. Original, #2- condition.

Equipment: RHD. 2568/276hp, 5-speed with aftermarket shift knob, alloy wheels, Brembo brakes, aftermarket radio, aftermarket exhaust.

Condition: One of 188 LM Limited GT-Rs. Showing 118,190 km (73,440 miles) but recently serviced and looks quite good with a recent detailing. The paint and wheels are blemish-free. It’s clean underneath and the interior looks great as well.

Bottom line: Built briefly in the spring of 1996, the LM Limited was built to celebrate Nissan’s efforts at Le Mans with the R33-generation GT-R, even though those efforts were unsuccessful after four tries at La Sarthe. All 188 cars got Championship Blue paint, special decals, a carbon spoiler blade, different cooling ducts, and a bonnet lip. This is one of the more valuable variants of the R33 (1995-98). The price here seems a bit modest given the mileage and condition, but this auction was also very light on JDM favorites and the right bidders may just not have been in the room.

Lot 731: 1966 Aston Martin DB6 Mk I Vantage Coupe

Sold for $238,700

Chassis no. DB62805R. Fiesta Red over gray leather. Older restoration, #3+ condition.

Equipment: RHD. 3995/325hp, 5-speed, wire wheels, Vredestein tires, wood rim steering wheel, radio.

Condition: Restored in the late 1990s in the UK by RS Williams. Good older paint and chrome. Tidy, visibly but lightly run engine. Lightly aged and wrinkled leather. Older paint. Grimy underbody. Lightly aged restoration on a well-equipped Aston.

Bottom line: This DB6 isn’t perfect and the RHD is a knock to its desirability, but it’s a genuine Vantage wearing a high-quality (if older) restoration by a well-known specialist. It sold for $240,00 on Bring a Trailer just a few months ago in February, with unanswered questions and a lien on the car putting off bidders there. A $240K sale price is very low, low enough that taking it straight to Barrett-Jackson for a flip probably seemed like easy money. But it wasn’t, and given the fee structure of Bring a Trailer vs. B-J, the seller actually lost quite a bit of money here.

Lot 742: 2022 Ford GT Alan Mann Heritage Edition

Sold for $1,292,500

Chassis no. 2FAGP9EW4NH200027. Alan Mann Red, gold and white over black. Original, #2 condition.

Equipment: 213/660hp V6, paddle-shift 7-speed.

Condition: 16 miles, looks new, and pretty much is.

Bottom line: Ford spun off 10 different special editions of the 2016-22 GT, many of them playing on the theme of “Heritage.” The Alan Mann version is a tribute to Alan Mann Racing, the English team that raced GT40s in the ’60s as well as other Ford products like the Falcon, Lotus Cortina, and Escort. Alan Mann also gave the Mustang its first race victory in 1964. Just 30 examples of this special edition GT were produced for 2022. There were seven different Heritage Edition GTs, and whereas base cars typically sell for just under $1M these days, somewhere around $1.2M is more the norm for the Heritage cars.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post 12 Cars That Caught Our Eye at Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach 2024 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It’s official: Adrian Newey is leaving the Red Bull Formula 1 team next year to do—what? Now that he has made his departure formal, that’s the big question: Where will the greatest engineering mind in F1 go next?

According to Red Bull, Newey will pack up and go sometime in the first quarter of 2025. Newey is not a job-hopper—he has spent 19 years at Red Bull and has presided over up and downs, with substantially more triumphs than disappointments. Since he joined the team in 2006, Red Bull has won seven F1 Drivers’ and six Constructors’ Championship titles, with 118 race victories and 101 poles. There’s no question Red Bull driver Max Verstappen is a genius behind the wheel, but an unknown percentage of his winning equation is that he is driving an Adrian Newey car.

Until he leaves, Newey, Red Bull says, will focus his attention on the two-seat, 1100-horsepower hybrid RB17 track-only hypercar that Red Bull is developing. Production is expected to begin for 50 well-heeled customers in 2025. Reportedly, the car’s price will be about $6.4 million. “The final stages of development of RB17 are upon us,” Newey said in a statement, “so for the remainder of my time with the team my focus will lie there.”

After that, the motorsports world is Newey’s oyster. Every F1 team on the grid would love to have him, and some heavy hitters have made it known that they’d be willing to pay him big bucks for a contract. At the top of the list is Ferrari, which would be delighted to pair Newey with the newly hired Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time champion hoping to reinvigorate his career.

Not far behind Ferrari in the Newey lottery is Mercedes, which is on its own rebuilding program after losing Hamilton to Ferrari. And then there’s the perennially rebuilding Aston Martin, helmed by the uber-wealthy Lawrence Stroll, who, like Ferrari, has ostensibly made Newey an offer.

Somewhat less likely is that Newey, 65, would simply hang up his calipers and retire, a suggestion bolstered by the news that he has special-ordered a sumptuous yacht. Or, given the obvious pleasure Newey has taken in designing the world-beating RB17, there’s a chance that he could sign with an automobile manufacturer to build more road-going vehicles.

If you take one of his departing statements literally—“I feel now is an opportune moment to hand that baton over to others and to seek new challenges for myself,” he said—retirement doesn’t seem to be in the cards quite yet.

The smart money seems to be on Ferrari. Joining them in early to mid-2025 would arguably put him there too late to have much of an impact on the 2026 F1 car, which will be built under a new set of regulations, but he may be there in time to leave some famous Newey fingerprints on the car.

The F1 community waits with bated breath.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Confirmed: F1’s Adrian Newey Is Leaving Red Bull, with Destination Unknown appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Complain about journalism in America if you want to, but compared to journalism in Europe, we are the arbiters of accuracy and fair play. That’s why it is so much fun to see what publications across the pond are saying about the apparent departure of Adrian Newey—the man who began working as an engineer and designer for Red Bull in 2006 and has guided the team to Formula 1 greatness. Driver Max Verstappen, undeniably, has aided his success.

According to the European F1 media, Newey is either leaving Red Bull tomorrow, or at the end of 2026, or someplace in between.

Regardless, there’s no question that Adrian Newey is Formula 1’s current prom queen, apparently being asked to the big dance by a variety of well-heeled suitors.

There’s Lawrence Stroll, head of Aston Martin, who reportedly (these Newey stories use the word “reportedly” a lot) offered Newey $100 million to leave Red Bull.

There’s Ferrari, which reportedly is willing to match Stroll’s offer to have Newey come to Maranello and reinvigorate the career of driver Lewis Hamilton.

And there’s Mercedes, which is the quietest of the key suitors, but there’s no question it would welcome Newey with open arms and an open checkbook.

Since Newey is 65, the subject of outright retirement has come up. What does he have left to prove?

A little background on Newey for readers who aren’t F1 geeks: In 1980, after he graduated from college, he began working in Formula 1 for the Fittipaldi Formula 1 team. The next year, he moved to March, and began designing race cars. His initial project was the March GTP car, which won the IMSA championship twice.

In 1984, he went to work on the March IndyCar. His design won the 1985 and 1986 IndyCar championship and the Indianapolis 500 both years. He returned to March’s F1 design team, but moved to Williams in 1991, where Newey’s star really began to rise. In 1992, Nigel Mansell drove Newey’s FW14 chassis to a constructor’s championship, Newey’s first of many.

His time with Williams ended in 1997; he departed with a solid record, though, of 59 wins for his cars, and four world championships.

Next up was a long stint with McLaren, from 1997 to 2005 with titles in 1998 and 1999, and very nearly in 2000. The later years were less productive, and Newey departed for Red Bull in 2006. His influence was felt early on, but the team did not become a genuine contender until 2009, with Red Bull finishing a close second in the constructor’s championship.

In 2010, Red Bull won the constructor’s championship with driver Sebastian Vettel. In 2011, Newey’s car took 18 of 19 pole positions, and won 12 races and the constructor’s championship. Repeat championships came in 2012 and 2013.

Starting in 2014, Newey’s car suffered from using Renault’s turbo V-6 engines, and it wasn’t until the 2019 switch to Honda power that the team became competitive; in 2020, Red Bull was second in the constructor’s championship.

In 2021, it all came together again. Newey’s design, paired with driver Max Verstappen, won the driver’s championship, and they’ve been dominant ever since. At this point in the season, Verstappen and team driver Sergio Perez lead the standings in driver’s points, and Red Bull leads Ferrari 195 points to 151 in the constructor’s standings.

So why would Newey want to leave Red Bull? Reportedly—there’s that word again—he is upset about the internal handling and investigation of a complaint lodged by a female employee against team principal Christian Horner for alleged inappropriate behavior. An internal inquiry dismissed the charge. Is that so upsetting to Newey that he would leave a place he was worked, with great success, for 18 years?

According to the European media, yes. Apparently Newey is under contract with Red Bull until the end of 2025, and there are multiple reports that there’s a 12-month no-compete stipulation included in that contract, so Newey wouldn’t really be available to work for a new employer until the 2027 season.

Yet “Wow! Adrian Newey is reportedly leaving Red Bull,” reads the headline on Top Gear. And “Red Bull stunned by shock news F1’s top designer Adrian Newey to leave,” in The Guardian. And “F1 rumor: Adrian Newey decides to leave Red Bull ahead of formal resignation.”

Oops, that headline is from Sports Illustrated.

Regardless, the F1 media must have some sort of soap opera underway 12 months out of the year, and it’s Adrian Newey’s turn under the microscope now. No one denies that his departure, imminent or otherwise, is Big News in racing, but until he decides his next move, it’s just fodder for dozens of talented headline writers.

Stay tuned, bloke.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post F1’s Latest Soap Opera: Adrian Newey’s Potential Departure from Red Bull appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin has updated its DBX SUV and will now only offer it with a 697-horsepower twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 engine.

Mated to a nine-speed wet clutch automatic transmission the all-wheel-drive DBX707 hurtles to 60 mph in just 3.1 seconds and will max out at 193 mph. Suitable stopping power comes from standard-fit carbon ceramic disc brakes with 420 mm (16.5 in) front rotors and 380mm (15 in) units at the rear, sat behind 22-inch alloy wheels, with 23-inch rims on the options list.

The Aston’s electronic dampers and air springs feature a new calibration which engineers say improves body control for better response and precision in cornering.

Exterior design tweaks are limited to new flush-fit power door handles which present themselves when the driver approaches, and a new design of door mirror that offers a better rear view and includes integrated cameras to aid with parking. Five new paint hues have been added to the catalog: Epsilon Black, Helios Yellow, Sprint Green, Malachite Green, Aura Green and Podium Green. Copper Bronze is an option for the 23-inch wheels, or you can go traditional silver or a selection of black finishes.

The main effort has gone into the cabin, however. There’s a simplified console featuring chrome and veneer detailing, a revised steering wheel, new door handles, and a wider offering of materials such as gloss smoked oak, gloss titanium mesh, zincote wood, and carbon fiber.

Three trim levels are available as standard: Inspire Comfort gets matrix embroidery and quilting, Inspire Sport has vector embroidery, and Accelerate comes in Alcantara. Full personalization is available under the Q by Aston Martin Service. An 800-watt Premium Audio system is included, with the option to upgrade to a Bowers & Wilkins 23-speaker setup with double the power output.

Although there’s a multi-screen arrangement, with a 12.3-inch display for the driver and a 10.25-inch touch-screen center unit Aston has, thankfully, kept analogue switches for gear selection, drive modes, suspension, ESP, exhaust, lane keep assist, parking assist and, heating and ventilation.

Expect to pay around $250,000 when the car goes on sale this summer.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Aston Martin DBX Shifts to 707 Spec appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As seen elsewhere, the trend towards mass adoption of electric vehicle is slowing down. In a report from AutoCar, we learn that Aston Martin is delaying their transition to electric propulsion, instead looking to hybrids powertrains for the next 10+ years of production.

Aston Martin Executive Chairman Lawrence Stroll has plans for plug-in hybrids that go far beyond the timelines contemplated by mainstream automakers who intend to use the technology as a bridge to an EV future. Stroll suggests that Aston Martin customer feedback includes having the “sound and smells” of an internal combustion engine, which further cemented their plan to go hybrid for both V-8 and V-12 models.

While Stroll suggests that electric cars will eventually happen at Aston Martin, their previous plans are no longer relevant. This included an EV Aston to be made by 2025, which has been cancelled. Stroll told Autocar that “demand for electric cars is particularly weak in the luxury segments as Aston Martins were typically not ‘first’ cars for their customers.”

This reality check from Aston Martin mirrors that of their intention to keep physical controls in their decadent interiors, and keeping loyal customers happy seems like a good plan when considering the current financial struggles of Lucid and Rivian. While Lucid recently received an astronomically huge cash infusion from a Saudi investment firm, Rivian is feeling the heat in the EV market.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Aston Martin Sees a Longer Horizon for Internal Combustion Powertrains appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Dimitri Labis is a man of apparent contradictions. He’s Belgian but has made a living out of distributing artisan Italian foodstuffs rather than his nation’s beer or moules-frites and waffles. And when it comes to cars, his head isn’t turned by marques from neighboring France—Alpine, Bugatti, Peugeot, or Citroën—but, with one or two exceptions, by British brands, and one model in particular: the Aston Martin Lagonda.

The 56-year-old Labis owns 11 of the things, the otherworldly vision of the future that was launched at the 1976 Earls Court Motor Show and chimed with the world’s wealthiest drivers during an age when computing and science fiction were dominating culture. Does anyone, anywhere in the world, own more Lagondas? That’s the question I put forth when we meet at a barn housing some of his cars in the Kentish countryside. “Only Rodger Dudding,” comes the reply. Dudding, he tells me had amassed 24 of them over the past 15-odd years, including a rare Lagonda Tickford he bought from Labis.

Labis’ love for the Lagonda grew out of a love for London. As a boy, he was obsessed with London. The only problem was, Labis lived in Mouscron. Our capital city and his provincial Belgian village are separated by 160 miles of land and 27 nautical miles of English Channel.

Such things were minor obstacles to the strong-willed youngster. And, as it was 1982, his parents were quite content to let him gather up his pocket money, buy a ferry ticket, pack a bag, and make his way to Calais, take a two-hour boat trip to Dover, and then rattle up the train tracks from Dover Priory to Charing Cross. Once in London, he would buy a Travelcard and jump on the top deck of a double-decker, sitting in the front row with an A–Z street map in his hands as the city landmarks passed him by.

“Those were the days,” says Labis. “I was only 14, but my parents would let me go. It was quite a trek. I’ve always been attracted by Britain, from an early age,” says the self-confessed Anglophile. It was during one of those trips that he spotted a car that would capture his heart every bit as much as Britain’s red telephone box (Labis admired our nation’s old phone boxes so much he bought one, 15 years ago, and took it back to Belgium so he could install it outside his home). And the car? An Aston Martin Lagonda.

He still has a photograph of that moment, captured on 35mm film outside the front of Knightsbridge Park Tower Hotel, on the edge of London’s Hyde Park. In the photo there’s a silver, early Aston Martin Lagonda Series 2, a car that makes the Mercedes 450 SEL behind it look like a pauper’s jalopy, and behind that is a kinky boots–red Lamborghini Countach, its optional rear wing obscuring the Daimler DS limousine at the end of the parking bay. Taken at a time of historically high unemployment rates and painful inflation rates, the photo is a stark snapshot of the haves and have-nots.

During those London bus tours, Labis would jump off at stops to drink in the stock of some of London’s most exotic car dealerships. One of those was P.J. Fischer, a Bentley and Rolls-Royce specialist in Putney that was run by Peter Fischer, a wealthy Swiss car enthusiast whose warm welcome would prove to be an influence on the young Belgian stranger who meekly stepped into the showroom.

“I like the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, like the one that’s at the back there,” says Labis, gesturing to the car in the corner of the barn where some of his cars are stored. “I remember going to look at the cars, and he was the first dealer who invited me to sit in the Rolls. I said, ‘I don’t want to be trouble—you know, I’m not a potential buyer.’ Of course, he knew it and then he let me sit in there, and it meant a lot to me.”

Another favorite haunt was Straight Eight, on the Goldhawk Road in Shepherd’s Bush. The former classic car dealer was popular with well-heeled car enthusiasts. Its proprietor, Daniel Donovan, would have a trickle of Lagondas in the showroom, and young Labis couldn’t get enough of them. “I would look in the back of the classic car magazines, see which dealers were advertising Lagondas, and I would go around all of them traveling on the double-decker!”

Fast forward to 2005, and after a handful of successful years with his business, Labis bought his first Aston Martin, a 1971 DBS V8 automatic—“a cheap car that was on eBay, but it means a lot to me as my first Aston Martin.” Predictably, he didn’t stop there.

There followed a botched eBay purchase of a V8 Volante where, despite winning the auction, Labis was gazumped by a U.S. dealer. By way of consolation, he bought a glamorous Rolls-Royce Corniche from a dealer in, appropriately, the equally glamorous Beverley Hills. But that car didn’t seem to go down well with him or his fellow countrymen. “I am fair-headed so I would be driving it with the top raised on a hot day. But you can’t drive them on the continent without being insulted—people insult you, spit at you even. They’re all communists,” jokes Labis.

Finally, in 2007, he summoned the courage to meet his hero and bought his first Lagonda, also on eBay. Was he, I wonder, fully informed about the potential pitfalls that can come with Lagonda ownership? “I had been told, and I had been to see many. But I didn’t care, I just wanted one. But I must admit I learned from my mistakes with that car. It was a UK car and had many corrosion issues. After that, I knew more about what to look for.”

Next came a late Series 2 example with the infamous cathode ray tube (CRT) instruments, bought at a Bonhams auction in 2008 after being listed by a former chairman of the Aston Martin Owners Club (AMOC) “because his wife hated it.” The CRT instruments weren’t working, which I suggest must have gone in his favor then, given few people were prepared to risk taking on a troublesome Lagonda. All in, he paid a mere £11,000 for what in 1979 had been the world’s second-most expensive car, at £50,000 (topped only by the Rolls-Royce Camargue), by the time the hand-built saloon reached customers.

The three-year delay between the car’s unveiling, in 1976 (just under a year after the Lotus Esprit), and when it began rolling off the production line can be attributed to one thing: ambition. At the time of its conception, designer William Towns and engineer Michael Loasby were given instructions to build the world’s most advanced saloon car—and, under the orders of Peter Sprague, who led a consortium that bought an ailing Aston Martin in ’75, it should feature electronic instruments.

Sprague, an American, was chairman of National Semiconductor in the U.S. and took Loasby to visit the company’s HQ in California. Loasby was impressed. In 1976, he told Electronics & Power magazine that he viewed the system as something Aston Martin could sell as a package in the future.

During prototyping, Fotherby Willis Electronics, based in Leeds, was to develop the LED digital instruments, but financial problems saw the baton handed to the Cranfield Institute of Technology. The change failed to solve the problem, however, as Loasby recalled in the 2007 book, Aston Martin: Power, Beauty and Soul, by David Dowsey: “You should never get any academic on anything because they will never finish the job and they will never get it to work. Cranfield made a fearful mess of the electronics because, even though they were at the forefront of technology, they had no idea of the realities of what you could or couldn’t do in a car.”

Sprague agrees. Speaking with the AMOC in 2021, he said, “We didn’t explain clearly enough what we needed to accomplish. It was very early, but we ended up with a cable harness the thickness of your wrist, when it could have been three wires.” During that development period, remembers Sprague, things were touch and go for the company, and every deposit taken for the Lagonda kept the company afloat. “I would get there on a Wednesday, we couldn’t make the payroll, we’d sell a Lagonda on a Thursday and we made the payroll.” (Five years after deliveries began, the LED dials were replaced with more reliable CRT instruments. However, the flaw of both systems becomes apparent as soon as sun shines onto the instruments.)

That second Lagonda with its failed instruments marked the beginning of a steep learning curve for Labis, who confesses to having mechanical skills limited to tasks as simple as changing a set of spark plugs. He began hunting for the tiny number of specialists who could be entrusted with a Lagonda and, importantly, deliver on their promise. “I sent it to David Marks, the CRT specialist in Nottingham, and had the dash fixed. It has been working ever since.” That was 16 years ago, testament to the skills of the team at David Marks Garages, who are perhaps best known for their work on cars owned by the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust, including William Lyons’ personal Jaguar XJ6.

Labis’ next Lagonda arrived in 2010, and another fell into his lap a year later after he helped out a friend who had been unlucky in a business venture. He went on to give that friend work, repairing the sills which, he says, had been previously repaired by the factory but “they did it the way they originally came out of the factory, without any rustproofing, so eight years later they were completely holed!”

From there his collection of Lagondas kept growing, including a rare long-wheelbase Tickford model that he acquired in 2014 and would later sell to Rodger Dudding. Pinpointing the motivation to own these cars, however, is difficult. Was he hoping to amass this many? Was there a long-term plan? “I know it doesn’t make sense to have 11 identical cars in a collection, but I just love them, and I have got to know them. I suppose originally there was a little bit of an ‘investment’ idea behind it, but the longer you keep them the more you spend on them to keep them maintained and fully working, because they were designed to be driven, so the investment potential is questionable.”

There’s no doubt that the Lagonda is back in fashion. Wedge cars of the 1970s and ’80s are in vogue, being snapped up by buyers like Labis who grew up gazing longingly at reviews in magazines and hoping to spot one in the wild. He agrees that the car is having a moment. “It stunned the world at the Earls Court Motor Show in October ’76 and it still has that wow factor today.”

That wow factor comes from the single-minded vision of William Towns and the clever packaging of Michael Loasby, meaning this four-seat, front-engined luxury saloon with a generously sized boot stands a mere nine inches taller than a contemporary Lamborghini Countach.

Needless to say, such architecture brings compromises. Open a back door and even before attempting to settle on the back seat you can see what a challenge it will be to squeeze through the tiny aperture. Sure enough, legroom is stingy and headroom is, well, dire. I’m under six foot and my head well and truly presses into the roof. All the more reason to tilt your head toward the Panasonic television and video cassette player, which are somehow squeezed between the front seats.

The front of the cabin is considerably better at accommodating people. Early cars had touch-sensitive “membrane” switchgear flanking both sides of the steering column and controlling the function of the lights, heating element, clock, bonnet release, both fuel filler covers, and the cruise control system. Small beveled knobs took care of the wipers, instrument dimmer, and temperature control. To this day the aesthetic feels novel and innovative. Later cars moved to plastic rocker switchgear that may be more reliable but doesn’t capture the zeitgeist of the 1970s.

Labis is full of praise for the Lagonda’s “fantastic” driving experience, saying they make great GTs that “cruise comfortably at 100 mph.” Hidden beneath the hand-beaten aluminum bodywork are the 5.3-liter, 230-bhp (227-hp) V-8 and three-speed automatic GM gearbox that make the 4542-pound saloon a 150-mph car. He reckons on an average fuel consumption of 20 mpg, has driven as far as Davos, in Switzerland. The stability and comfort are outstanding, he says, so much so that he has even slept in one in the past. The only drawback is the length of the car and its poor turning circle.

As for the community of fellow owners, for Labis it is one of the main attractions. He and his wife spend weekends enjoying road trips with fellow Lagonda devotees. Given only 631 were ever sold before production ended in 1990, and so many have disappeared off the face of this earth, is there, I wonder, a special handshake amongst this exclusive club? “A special handshake? Well, there is a song, the Lagonda lover song. I can get you a copy.” Is it clean? “It’s printable,” laughs Labis.

Wherever he goes in one of the cars, people inevitably ask what it is. And for those who do know, surely they question Labis’ obsession with the quirky British luxury car. “You have to be a little bit eccentric to own these cars,” he says.

Eccentric or not, the car is no laughing stock where Aston Martin’s history is concerned. It saved the company from total ruin, and the men behind it—Towns, Loasby, and Sprague—somehow pulled it off against appalling odds.

Perhaps it is Sprague who best approximates why it is that people like Dimitri Labis have a lifelong fascination with this most peculiar of Aston Martins. When asked whether there was a business plan backed by market research, Sprague explained it was as good as built on faith: “Basically we looked at William Towns’ extraordinary drawings, and we asked Mike Loasby if he and his team could build it. They said yes. We had confidence in the team. It was comparable to building the Spitfire during the Battle of Britain.”

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Owning One Lagonda Takes Patience. 11 Takes Lifelong Love appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A new Aston Martin Vantage is set to make its mark on the street and on the track in 2024—and it will be the fastest, most powerful ever made.

Replacing the car launched in 2019, this is no minor facelift but a thorough re-engineering exercise, with all efforts going into ensuring that the Vantage performs like no other in the marque’s history.

“Any car bearing the Vantage name has much to live up to, which is why this newest model makes an unwavering commitment to high performance in its purest and most explicit form,” says Aston Martin’s chief executive officer, Amedeo Felisa.

Stylistically it’s a game-changer, says Aston Martin. “We took some inspiration from the One-77 supercar, but we wanted Vantage to express its intent and potency more explicitly,” explains chief creative officer Marek Reichman. “One look and you know it packs a real punch, but there’s an elegance of form and proportion that hints at the sophistication that underpins its raw power.”

Most notable is the car’s width—up 30 mm (1.2 inches)—and its even more massive grille. There are additional air intakes in the bumper, an integrated front splitter, along with new matrix LED lights. In profile you’ll note the return of side strakes for a touch of retro cool (and cooling), and those 21-inch forged alloy wheels which fill the extended wheel arches. You may also spot the frameless mirrors and flush door handles. Move to the rear and a wider rear bumper incorporates more vents, exits for the four tailpipes, and a diffuser.

The cabin is suitably sumptuous but driver-focused, its design familiar from the DB12. Bridge of Weir leather is the main material, cladding the sports seats dash, center console, and doors. Alongside a reinvigorated infotainment system running on a 10.25-inch screen, you’ll be pleased to know there are also physical buttons for key controls. Audiophiles will go weak for the 1170W, 15-speaker Bowers & Wilkins surround sound system.

However, it’s the car’s speed and dynamic performance that have been designed to really give the Vantage an advantage over the opposition. Under the hood is a seriously evolved version of AMG’s hand-built 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8. Now offering a peak of 665 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque, it has gained 30 percent power and 15 percent more twisting force.

Drive goes through an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission and there’s adjustable traction control, launch control, an E-diff, and ESP (Electronic Stability Programme) to keep it all on the straight and narrow. Punch it and you’ll see 60 mph from a standstill in 3.4 seconds and a top speed of 202 mph.

All those electronics play a huge part in managing the brutish power of the Vantage, but Aston Martin says that the goal is not to take control away from the driver.

“The art of creating a truly great sports car in 2024 is applying cutting-edge technology in a way that enhances and intensifies the driving experience yet does nothing to remove the driver from the process of driving,” adds Roberto Fedeli, Aston Martin chief technical officer.

Starting with an ideal 50:50 weight distribution certainly won’t hurt the handling, while the bonded aluminum platform and new body structure provide improved rigidity. Double wishbone suspension features at every corner, with intelligent adaptive dampers that are said to offer a 500 percent increase in bandwidth of force for an unprecedented level of control. The electronic power steering system has been designed with “obsessive attention” and features a fixed ratio with 2.27 turns lock-to-lock and variable assistance, which reduces according to the drive mode selected.

Braking is by cast iron discs at 400 mm (15.75 inches) up front and 300 mm (11.81 inches) at the rear. Carbon-ceramic brakes are an option and save almost 60 pounds in weight.

Now to that cutting-edge tech Fedeli mentioned. The Vantage’s Active Vehicle Dynamics system employs a host of sensors, including a six-axis accelerometer, to calculate exactly how the car is behaving and adjust the ESP, E-diff, powertrain, and brakes accordingly. The adjustable traction control has eight settings with levels six to eight allowing increasing slip angles and ever-more armfuls of controlled oversteer. The system can also be fully turned off.

If you’re really serious about tracking your Vantage you’ll want to opt for the GT3 race car. Built to comply with all FIA GT3 regs it’s eligible to race in the FIA World Endurance Championship, IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, Fanatec GT World Challenge, European Le Mans Series, and the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie.

The new race car has been developed in collaboration with Aston Martin Performance Technologies and has been designed to make the car more drivable for both professional and amateur racers.

“The focus on the new Vantage GT3 was to increase their performance window and make something that would work at any circuit, on any tire and with any driver,” says head of performance Gustavo Beteli. “These new generation GT3 cars are more dependent than ever on aerodynamic downforce, so we wanted to make the car more stable under braking. The old car would dive a lot under braking, so we had to try and control the pitch with the rear suspension set-up. But this meant it was stiff, which made it quite snappy and also over-worked the tires.

“Working heavily on damper tuning, we have found a much better balance with the new car so we can generate the downforce without compromising the suspension set-up. The feedback from drivers who’ve tested it has been overwhelmingly positive. Especially the amateur racers, who have been able to achieve lap times that are much closer to the pros. Now we need to go racing!”

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Advantage Aston: Road- and Race-Ready Vantage Is Coming. Fast. appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin fans will be able to declare their love for an all-new Vantage just ahead of Valentine’s Day and it will be “the fastest and most exhilarating” in its history.

The Vantage name first appeared on the DB2 in 1950, providing a healthy 20-hp upgrade to its 2.6-liter Lagonda-designed straight-six engine. Now with 125 horses the DB2 Vantage could top 120 mph. “Whether one would go shopping, to the theatre, on a long-distance tour, or even race at Le Mans, one could have no more perfect companion than the Aston Martin,” wrote John Bolster in Autosport.

Some 74 years after the DB2 Vantage made its debut Aston Martin will reveal its new two-seater sports car, alongside its 2024 Formula 1 challenger, and a GT3 racer. It is “a sports car engineered for real drivers; for those that crave driving purity and revel at the limit. Class leading—but this isn’t just a numbers game. This is an authentic, unadulterated celebration of pure performance,” says Aston Martin.

The Vantage will need to raise its game to outgun the new DB12—a car Aston Martin describes as a Super Tourer, thanks, in no small part to its 671-hp twin-turbo V-8 from AMG. The Vantage will, no doubt, share this motor, but in a more compact, lighter package it should outperform and outhandle its sibling.

The teaser image above doesn’t give much away, but those rear haunches certainly look pretty wide and aggressive. That’s in keeping with the way the car will drive. It is a “complete hooligan”, chief creative officer Marek Reichman told Autocar. This will differentiate it from the DB12 and even the DBX 707 which offers the straight-line speed that, just a few years ago, would have been unimaginable for an SUV.

2024 is set to be a busy year for the British brand. In addition to launching the Vantage and its Volante roadster variant, the DB12 Volante, a replacement for the V-12 DBS, the Valhalla supercar, and an updated DBX will all appear.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Save the Date: The New Aston Martin Vantage Arrives February 12 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Ready for the sound of racing engines?

This weekend’s Roar Before the 24 is the annual three-day practice session for teams participating in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona International Speedway in Florida, which is scheduled for January 27–28, and in the Michelin Pilot Challenge race, which runs on January 26.

The Roar starts on Friday and runs through Sunday, and it’s open to the public. All 59 cars entered for the Rolex 24 (they numbered 60, but one pulled out) are on the entry list for the Roar. That list includes 10 GTP cars, 13 LMP2 cars, 13 GTD Pro cars, and 23 GTD cars. The LMP3 cars, which raced for the past few years with the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, are no longer part of the series, but they will compete in some support races this year. Several of the LMP3 contenders moved up to the LMP2 class during the off-season.

It’s a compelling time for the WeatherTech Championship, which opens its season with the Rolex 24. IMSA president John Doonan said there are multiple reasons for fans to be excited about the upcoming year.

“If you’re looking back to 2023, kicking off a brand-new hybrid platform with the GTP class was important, and it’s still going to be exciting in 2024, especially when Lamborghini comes and joins us at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March.

“But for me, the big story of ’24 is a GT battle like none other. There’s no place else in the world where there are this many manufacturers competing against each other. Eleven of our 18 OEMs are racing in GT. That, to me, is really exciting news for the fans,” Doonan said.

“You have the new cars—the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Corvette, and a new Aston Martin. Lexus finally got a championship last year, and they’re back, in both GTD and GTD Pro. Aston Martin is in GTD and Pro. Porsche, the perennial GT champion, is back. Ferrari brought a new car last year, and they’re back.”

As usual, the Roar and the Rolex 24 “are like an all-star team of drivers. You have Formula 1’s Jensen Button and Felipe Massa, you have IndyCar winners, and from NASCAR there’s Bubba Wallace and John Hunter Nemechek in a Toyota Supra in the Michelin Pilot Challenge series. Both the WeatherTech series and the Michelin Pilot Challenge series are just stacked. As a racer at my core, that gets me excited.”

Besides GT, the LMP2 class is showing some growth. “LMP2 is only racing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the [mostly European] World Endurance Championship, and some of those teams have decided to join IMSA,” Doonan said. “LMP2 has a lot of veteran and up-and-coming talent that we look forward to watching.”

If you’re new to IMSA racing, here is a quick primer for the 2024 Roar.

• The top class is GTP, consisting of cars that were introduced just last year. Manufacturer backing comes from Cadillac, Porsche, BMW and Acura. Looking much like the GTP cars is the LMP2 class, which uses a chassis produced by Oreca or Ligier. They all use the same V-8 engines produced by Gibson, a British company. LMP2-class cars are the only ones racing in the IMSA WeatherTech series that aren’t backed by an OEM.

• The GTD class is invariably the largest. The driver lineup consists of some professional racers (rated Platinum, the highest rating, or Gold, which designates a less-experienced pro) but must also include drivers who are rated Silver or Bronze, which suggests amateur status. The cars are fully modified racers but must begin life as a street-going model (ex. a 911, a Mustang, a Corvette).

• The GTD Pro class is just what it sounds like—a group of GTD cars that are allowed to have an all-pro driver lineup. GTD Pro entries typically have a slightly closer relationship to their respective manufacturers than GTD teams.

• Probably the hardest job IMSA has is to write the class rules so each of the cars has a shot at winning its class. This process is called the Balance of Performance, or BoP. It allows IMSA to adjust the rules for each model within a class to either speed up or slow down the car—that can be done by regulating engine power, adding or subtracting weight, adjusting a car’s aerodynamics, or one of several additional changes. This allows, say, for a McLaren 720S or a Lamborghini Huracán to compete in the same class as a Ford Mustang. Or for a V-8 GTP car like Cadillac’s to compete with one powered by a V-6, like Acura’s.

Five WeatherTech test sessions are scheduled for all Roar classes on Friday and Saturday, with a short sixth session for GTP cars on Sunday, just ahead of qualifying for the Rolex 24. In addition to the WeatherTech Championship, the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge series will use the weekend for testing, and the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge will begin its second season with a pair of 45-minute races. Those races feature LMP3 cars, plus full-bodied GT4 cars, like the Mustang, Toyota Supra, and BMW M4.

The 59 entries for the Rolex 24 constitute a full house. “There are no more pit boxes, no more garage space. From what I’m told, every camping spot is spoken for, every hospitality suite is spoken for,” Doonan said. “It’s a really good sign for our sport that there’s that much momentum, that much interest, both on the competitor side, and probably more important for us, on the fan side.”

More information is available at IMSA.com.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post 2024 Sports-Car Racing Season Starts with a Roar on Friday appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The transition from 2023 to 2024 seems a fine time to celebrate 30 years of the Aston Martin DB7, which made its first public appearance at the 1993 Geneva motor show and then went on sale in the autumn of 1994. Journalist Andrew English is no stranger to the car or the marque and was on the scene from the beginning as the DB7’s buzz grew to a low roar that still echoes to this day. —Ed.

Billed with hindsight as “the car that saved Aston Martin,” the DB7 (aka Project XX aka Project NPX) started life as a Jaguar, but needs must when it came to the crisis which had engulfed the old British GT maker in the late 1980s.

Ford had purchased a 75 percent stake of “The Aston” in 1987 for an undisclosed amount at a time when the company was producing the V8 sedan, V8 Volante, V8 Vantage, and Lagonda, with prices ranging from £65,000 to £87,500 (~$141,900 to $189,700 today). Annual production out of the old Newport Pagnell factory bisected by Tickford Street could barely justify such a lineup. In some years, Aston barely built more than 100 cars, in others it produced fewer than half that. The company had been in bankruptcy seven times since its formation in 1913, and by the late 1980s its finances were as robust as a cobweb. Even Victor Gauntlett, the showman/optimist at the head of the company, didn’t believe that a steady living could be made producing handfuls of virtually bespoke monsters. When things were good, the rich came knocking, but when times were tough, they disappeared and Aston floundered.

In short, Aston Martin required fresh investment and impetus—and a new car. It knew this, of course, and along with Bentley, Aston had been teasing the press with the idea of a smaller, cheaper model for years. Ford’s majority share purchase (it took full ownership in 1994) merely fueled the speculation.

Although while Ford’s chairman up to 1980, Henry Ford II (who was living in England), and its Scottish chief executive, Alex Trotman, might have known all about Aston Martin, Ford’s senior executives didn’t. One of them, interviewed at the Detroit auto show soon after the Blue Oval purchased Aston, didn’t know about the purchase, or what kind of company Aston Martin was and insisted on calling it “Austin Martin.”

Yet in comparison to what was to become a financial train wreck of Ford’s ownership of Jaguar and Land Rover, Aston Martin was very small beer. This was a time when the leading lights of American carmaking were loading themselves up with once-distinguished European car names. Chrysler had purchased Lamborghini, General Motors owned Group Lotus, and Ford had failed to purchase first Ferrari then Alfa Romeo, which went to Fiat. Ford was partly goaded by General Motors into buying Jaguar for $2.5 billion in 1989 (generally reckoned to be about $1.2 billion more than it was worth) and then plowing at least another $30 billion into Jaguar and Land Rover before finally throwing in the towel and selling both companies to Indian conglomerate Tata in 2008 for $2.3 billion.

With all this going on, keeping a low profile was the watchword at Newport Pagnell, and the ostentatious Gauntlett was soon replaced by wily former newspaper man Walter Hayes, who’d steered Ford into racing and eventually Formula 1 and had been partially responsible for persuading Henry Ford II to stump up for Aston Martin in the first place.

If Aston Martin had been looking forward to some transatlantic bounty out of Ford, it was swiftly disabused. “There was no money,” said Hayes as he waved his pipe at me when I interviewed him around the time of the DB7 launch in 1994. As if to prove it, Hayes’s redoubtable assistant Barbara Prince and I had fixed the wheezing central heating boiler at Sunnyside in Newport Pagnell just half an hour before the interview; the board room still had a chill, which wasn’t entirely assuaged by Hayes’s cheerful welcome. I recall him telling me how he’d got permission to use David Brown’s initials on the DB7—one great savior to another. Sadly, Brown died in September 1993, six months after the DB7 broke cover.

So, Hayes took on the role of James Garner’s “Scrounger” in the movie The Great Escape. Can’t afford an all-new car on a new chassis platform? What about the Jaguar XJ41, a canned proposal for a replacement for the XJS designed by Geoff Lawson and Keith Helfet? Tom Walkinshaw, Jaguar’s racing supremo, had proposed a new life for the XJ41 body on top of XJS running gear, which he thought had plenty of life left in it, and he employed the talented young designer Ian Callum to work his felt-tip magic. When Jaguar lost interest, Walkinshaw and Hayes brought a DB5 into the studio and asked Callum to make XJ41 into an Aston Martin, with Neil Simpson charged with creating a cabin.

Can’t afford a V-12 for your new car? Hayes had a soft spot for a twin-cam straight-six, and he had experience with supercharging from America. That repurposed Jaguar AJ6 engine with an Eaton supercharger on top meant a new front subframe had to be created to lower the engine. As Callum tells it, Walkinshaw had a fully working prototype built in just three months for the Ford board unveil. But by the time the car made its debut at the 1993 Geneva motor show, Dearborn’s suits only approved the car’s development, not its production. I was there when it broke cover in Switzerland; it was a sensation and undoubtedly the star of the show, eclipsing everything else, including Ferrari’s 348 Spider.

“What a stunning car,” whispered Jeremy Clarkson as he sat for the first time in the DB7 for BBC’s Top Gear program. It was.

The launch took place in the UK, starting at Walkinshaw’s Bloxham production facility (renamed Aston Martin Oxford), taking in an overnight stay at Goodwood, where journalists were encouraged to drive the famous old airfield circuit under the guidance of racing driver Peter Gethin.

Then the real test cars went out to the magazines. I was at Auto Express magazine at the time, where the road-test team of Angus Frazer, Kathy O’Driscoll, and former Hagerty editor James Mills conducted a road test, including laps at the unforgiving Millbrook handling circuit. In truth, it was a bit soft in that early form, and the steering was too sharp for the springing on the all-wishbone suspension, giving an over-lively feel to the car if you were driving it on a track. Other road testers thought so, too, Autocar magazine’s testers and racer/Top Gear hot shoe Tiff Needell included. Oh, and I hated the seats, which were bulky and spongy, while the rear seats were unusable for anyone with legs.

While the rumored price had crept up, in the end the DB7 came in at £78,500 (~$142,140 today), with a sizeable options list. Not cheap, but as they say, a lot of car for the money. The 3.2-liter, 24-valve six pushed out a well-balanced 339 hp and 360 lb-ft, enough to propel this 3858-pound coupé from 0 to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds and on to a top speed of 157 mph. The Government economy figure at 56 mph was 32.8 mpg, though we achieved just 16 mpg.

And on the road, the car was sensational, with a nicely judged ride quality, but not at the expense of its lithe and wieldy handling, which allowed the DB7 to cover country roads with swiftness and control, but also swallow miles on longer journeys. The five-speed gearbox was heavy, its change a little obstructive. And the trunk was on the small side, but on the whole, we loved it.

Notwithstanding the Jaguar underpinnings, spot-the-parts experts also identified Mazda 323 taillights, Ford Fiesta switches, Mazda MX-5 side lamps, and countless other borrowed bits and pieces, but carmakers had been doing this for yonks. In the modern era of carmaking, developing bespoke small parts for a short production-run car could drain a budget dry, so it was how you incorporated the borrowed bits which counted for more. Less forgivable was a fire in the Autocar test example, which was the result of a poorly fitted exhaust pipe. These things happen …

The rest, as they say, is history. At the time of the DB7 launch, Aston Martin had produced fewer than 10,000 cars in its entire history. The DB7 in a decade of production (1994 to 2004) sold more than 7100 units, making it the best-selling Aston Martin ever at the time, though that total has since been surpassed by the V8 Vantage and by the DBX. The DB7 spawned the V12 Vantage version, along with the drophead Volante and various hepped-up versions. It was superseded by the DB9, which was an altogether more planned car, but you shouldn’t hold the DB7’s mongrel background against it. For it was not just a lovely looking and fine driving car—it was a savior of the marque.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The birth of the DB7, Aston Martin’s mongrel savior appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The transition from 2023 to 2024 seems a fine time to celebrate 30 years of the Aston Martin DB7, which made its first public appearance at the 1993 Geneva Motor Show and then went on sale in the autumn of 1994. James Mills went along for the ride all those years ago during his time with the U.K.’s Auto Express; here he shares fond recollections of this monumental Aston Martin. –Ed.

Three decades is a long time, and yet it feels like only yesterday that Ford gave Aston Martin the nod to take the brave but badly needed step from being a quaint manufacturer of hand-made specials to something resembling a 20th century car company.

Before the DB7 made its debut at the 1993 Geneva show, Aston Martin was still something of a cottage builder. You’d have had a slow day counting the cars being pushed to the end of the assembly line at the modest factory in Newport Pagnell, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes.

To understand why that was, you have to go right back to 1958, when production of the DB4 began. That car’s chassis, designed by Aston engineer Harold Beach, would ultimately evolve to accommodate the DB5, DB6, DBS, AMV8, Lagonda, and V8 family. And despite spanning four decades, these cars were all brought to life in much the same, hand-built way, with small crowds of men and women fabricating chassis, assembling engines, beating panels, trimming leather, and sanding down painted bodies between coats. (Presumably with plenty of builder’s brew and biscuit breaks throughout the day.)

Despite the years of practice, it took the Ford-owned company (Ford bought 75 percent of Aston in 1987) about 12 weeks to build each example of the V8 in the ‘90s. The approach held some appeal for the small number of wealthy customers who cared about such things, but it held no appeal to management at Ford, which believed Aston was unviable unless it made more cars.

So when we rocked up at Aston Martin’s new Wykham Mill assembly plant, near Bloxham—TWR’s former production hub for the Jaguar XJ220 supercar—in October 1994, to collect and drive one of the very first DB7s off the production line, we were witnessing so much more than the arrival of a new car. The DB7 wasn’t just a new, more affordable Aston Martin; it represented a transformation in the way the company built cars and the volume aspirations for the brand and its American owner.

It would be fair to say that I and my fellow motoring hacks writing at the time for weekly rag Auto Express were filled with hope for the future of Aston Martin, because the DB7 promised so much—on paper, at least. We had seen the crowds swarm around it the year before, at the Geneva show, and we appreciated the effect the Ian Callum-designed body had on the pulse rate of car enthusiasts. Further, we knew the tantalising technical ingredients of the front-engined, rear-driven, 335-hp supercharged sports car.

But we also knew that Aston Martin needed more than beauty and brawn to lure drivers out of a BMW 8 Series or a Porsche 911. And in this respect, we had reservations. A seat back release lever fell off as we tried the back seats for size, and you certainly didn’t want to spend any more time than you had to in the two chairs, which, as in a 911, were really only for holding a Hermès handbag rather than taking friends to dinner in Mayfair. And then there was the predictable criticism: the Ford-sourced switchgear. Nobody could blame Aston for using what it had at its disposal and saving a fortune in development and tooling, but the opinion among us was that at this end of the market, Aston could have done more to disguise such origins.

The engineers did a better job of hiding the origins of the Jaguar-sourced, 24-valve, all-aluminum straight-six engine. The decision to adopt a supercharger was faithful to Aston’s heritage but flew in the face of experiments that Jaguar had made in using twin-turbo technology during the development of the so-called F-Type—the troubled replacement for the XJS that ended up being canceled by Ford.

The immediacy of the power delivery and distinctive whine of the supercharger gave the DB7 a character all its own, which was pleasing. This was and still is a part of the car market where you have to find your voice, and Aston had unquestionably come up with something different and, importantly, appealing. It had the brawn of Aston Martins before it but combined this subtly thuggish charm with the sort of polished road manners—a pliant ride and good body control—that meant you would happily consider cruising by DB7 from London to a bolthole in the Scottish Highlands.

What we couldn’t fail to notice and criticize, however, was the driveline shunt, weighty clutch, and heavy (Getrag) gear shift. Some care was called for to drive around this trait in stop-start traffic, or when building and shedding speed on a winding road, although three quarters of the customer base leaned toward the four-speed ZF automatic gearbox. (A supercharged, manual-controlled inline-six would be a relatively rare and special thing to have tucked behind garage doors.) It was also something of an omission that front airbags weren’t made ready for the time of the car’s launch to customers.

Yet when all was said and done, we were impressed. Little old Aston Martin had produced a car that was not only one of the most heavenly looking creations any of us had seen come to market during our careers, but one that was confident in itself and had a character all its own. Its success doubtless encouraged Ford to buy up Aston in its entirety by 1994 and invest in the evolution of the DB7, creating the DB7 Vantage, which brought still more buyers to the marque.

If you read the 2021 Hagerty UK Bull Market list, you’ll already know that the DB7 was and remains to this day a fine introduction to Aston Martin ownership. There’s something else about it that’s significant, I think: This is the car that determined the way Astons would look for generations to come, and I’m not convinced the DB7 design’s deft touch has ever been bettered.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Despite 30 years of trying, Aston Martin design can’t eclipse the DB7 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The transition from 2023 to 2024 seems a fine time to celebrate 30 years of the Aston Martin DB7, which made its public debut at the 1993 Geneva motor show and then went on sale in the autumn of 1994. Here Giles Chapman recalls his sit-down interview with the late Walter Hayes and the genesis of the car that would save Aston Martin. —Ed.

Nothing fazes you when you’re young. But I must confess I felt more than a little apprehensive when I approached my meeting with Walter Hayes, one spring evening in 1993. The streets of Mayfair were dark, rain-streaked, and deserted, and my audience with this Pope of the high-performance church had been corralled into an after-hours, 7 p.m. slot, with 45 minutes allocated to ask my questions about the Aston Martin DB7. I imagine I was swiftly dealt with before Walter went to the opera to relax, after his last duty on one of his always-busy days.

Anyone then with more than a glancing interest in cars and motor racing would have been aware of Hayes’ roster of achievements. I certainly was. He joined Ford as head of public affairs in 1962 with a mandate to help sell everyday cars through the image-enhancing medium of motorsport; subsequently he brought Colin Chapman on board to co-create the Lotus Cortina; he was instrumental in making the GT40 a four-times Le Mans winner; he linked up Ford with Cosworth to make the DFV engine that powered 154 Formula 1 victories; and he booted the Ford Escort to the top of the rallying world.

But I can’t have been the only scribbler-down of Hayes’ pithy comments who found his earlier status unnerving. At the helm of the Sunday Dispatch until it merged with the Sunday Express in late 1961, Hayes had been the second youngest editor on Fleet Street, used to stepping over the threshold of No. 10 Downing Street and commissioning stories from W. Somerset Maugham. I mean, what could possibly go wrong for me, except that I would get twisted up in my words, or ask a stupid question, or my tape recorder would malfunction? Looking like an arse of a junior writer as I sought Hayes’ views for my DB7 piece in Autocar had to be inevitable.

It didn’t help that the slightly sinister building was empty, and when I stepped out of the lift on the top floor it was just me and Walt. He was a compact and dapper fellow, and I still remember being intimidated by his steady, unblinking gaze. In his role of strategist and advisor he knew everyone from Henry Ford II to Jackie Stewart very slightly better than they knew themselves, and his latest challenge was a mission not just to save Aston Martin but also to orchestrate its first totally new car in eons. The latest tricky car person he had to handle was Tom Walkinshaw, whose TWR was crucial to engineering and manufacturing the so-called Project XX (later called Project NPX). The effort needed the sort of kid gloves Walter had donned numerous times in his behind-the-scenes roles at Ford.

“There was a huge aversion to Tom Walkinshaw at Ford and Jaguar,” says Walter’s son Richard, who’d worked for Walkinshaw himself and refers to TWR’s various checkered joint-ventures such as the Jaguar XJ220. “But for all his strange personal characteristics, he was very creative. Father’s view was that if you just kept him on a short leash it would work out well. Because at the end of the day, if you didn’t have the Walkinshaws of this world you couldn’t get the thing started.”

This thing, indeed, had all begun in 1987, at the elegant home of the Italian Contessa Maggi during the revival of the Mille Miglia. Walter Hayes and Aston Martin chairman Victor Gauntlett were fellow houseguests at the dinner table. Gauntlett was desperate for investment to fund his dreams of an all-new car, and the conversation gave Walter an idea.

“Henry Ford II was a big Anglophile,” Richard says. “He was really into tweeds and shooting and he supported all sorts of British things. In fact, he got an honorary knighthood later. He had a fantastic house called Turville Grange near Henley-on-Thames, and my father lived at Shepperton not far away, so they used to have dinner often, and Father said ‘Look, you’ve tried Ferrari and didn’t get it, why not Aston Martin?’ Henry trusted him completely. Father even used to chair family meetings in Dearborn where Henry Ford would address them all.”

Despite Ford’s recent doomed purchase of AC Cars, the deal was swiftly done for 75 percent of Aston Martin in 1987, for an undisclosed sum that cannot have been enormous. It was almost the last thing Walter did before he reached official retirement age at 65. He oversaw the transaction in just two months.

“He had no thoughts about being involved,” says Richard Hayes. “My mother was thrilled that Father was finally going to be at home and they were going to have their retirements. In 1989, though, things weren’t going very well at Aston Martin—it was going in the wrong direction. So my father was made a director, put on the board, and he told my mother it would only be a few hours a week in Newport Pagnell. He thought he’d just be giving a bit of sage advice now and again.

“But when people looked under the hood [of Aston Martin], they saw there was a bigger mess than they realized. Ford offered all sorts of benefits of engineering input and economy of scale, but I remember him telling me he was nervous Ford would come in and smother Aston Martin—to apply that budget for building everything on the same platform, and sort of crush the Aston Martin out of Aston Martin. So [Walter] kept them at bay for a year or so, and then when Victor Gauntlett resigned in 1991, Father became chairman.”

A sketchy file already existed within Ford on how the new car, often also known as DP1999, could be conceived. However, because almost nothing had yet been done about it, the success of the project now hinged on Walter’s ability to drive it forward, weld partnerships, and network the heck out of his contacts. Looking back at my report published in March 1993, I see he was remarkably frank about explaining it to me.

“The acquisition by Ford of Aston Martin and Jaguar has enabled it to use the resources of these specialist companies,” Walter said at the time. “I know exactly where to go in Ford for anything we might want; if you have the opportunity to use these facilities you’d be damn silly not to.

“It’s difficult to cost-control a £75,000 car even if it doesn’t sound it, but we had to set precise volumes, objectives, and price. We couldn’t have an engine that cost £21,500 and 56 hours to hand-build, and Newport Pagnell is too restricted to make a volume car—there is no room there. So we had a manufacturing challenge rather than a design one; I didn’t start where the mechanicals were concerned.”

Capricious to some, maybe, but Walter Hayes was able to bring the best out of Walkinshaw. For the new small Aston, a shelved Walkinshaw concept for a super-lux Jag GT was dusted off. It rested on lots of unseen floorplan hardware from the Jaguar XJS and a supercharged version of what was, at heart, a Jaguar AJ6 straight-six engine. The ninja-engineering of the car was deftly handled by TWR/Jaguarsport, with a timeless design by Ian Callum, in a timescale that would shame car industry big-hitters, and it was much helped by full access to Ford’s extensive UK development facilities.

As Walter relayed to me in that shadowy penthouse of Ford’s London office, he rated Ian as “one of the brightest young designers I’ve come across.” The glorious work has more than stood the test of time, and some regard the DB7 as among the most beautiful British cars ever. Then again, it must have been a dream-like brief for the 38-year-old Scot. Hayes in 1993 again: “We photographed the most beautiful DB4s and DB6s we could find, stuck the pictures up in the studio and said: ‘Like that.’”

Richard Hayes recalls the drive that his father poured into Aston Martin. This included not just the car itself but also, for example, motivating the dealer network and building up a new company mantra of “A Car For Life” that got sales moving of that sleepy dinosaur, the Virage, for which another 50 grand was asked over the projected price for what would become the DB7. A Car For Life even got the support of Motown supremo Bill Ford, who in 1992 wrote to Walter with this endorsement: “It is a brilliant strategy, which turns Aston Martin’s low volume “weakness” into an overwhelming strength.”

Richard Hayes: “[Walter] took it pretty much through to the final delivery, using mainly his powers of persuasion and persistence and knowing what to say to whom. He wasn’t an engineer or designer but was very happy to consult people and give them credit and use their opinions if he felt they were worthwhile. He liked to reverse-engineer situations to get where he wanted to end up. I remember he had to fly out to Detroit to see [new Ford boss] Alex Trotman to get him on side, and said: ‘You don’t want to be the British chairman [of Ford] who then killed Aston Martin, do you?’”

A final stroke of Walter’s velvety, diplomatic genius was persuading Sir David Brown to give his blessing to the car, which allowed it to become the DB7 and gave the venerable former company owner from 1947 to 1972 the title of life president. There was then over a year between the DB7’s debut at Geneva and the first one rolling off the production line in June 1994 at the Bloxham factory in Kidlington, Oxfordshire (where Jaguar components were re-engineered by TWR and fitted into steel bodies—Aston’s first ever—made in Coventry by Motor Panels). A proud Walter should have been behind the wheel, his trademark subtle smile clear to see. But delays of six weeks pushed the momentous day beyond his 70th birthday and Ford’s you-have-to-really-stop-now pensioning-off deadline. His parting gift was to be made the next life president, as Sir David Brown had recently passed away. When the Aston Martin Owners Club created the Aston Martin Heritage Trust in 1998, Walter was elected its first chairman, a position he held until his death at age 76 in December 2000. During his time there, he established the annual Aston Journal and edited the first two editions, in 1999 and 2000.

The effect of the DB7 on Aston Martin was seismic. From selling 209 bespoke cars in 1990, the company delivered over 600 production-line DB7s in the first year alone, going on to build more than 7000 examples altogether, including the Volante convertible and the V12 Vantage.

“My father didn’t really blow his own horn,” says Richard. “He liked to move on to the next thing without making a fuss, but even five years after he retired it was still very important to him.

“His advice was always ‘on the one hand,’ and then ‘on the other.’ He’d never just tell me what to do. I used to call him saying what do you think, and when I got home there’d be a two- or three-page fax hanging out the machine. I read them and then threw them away, which I now regret!”

Walter Hayes was an influencer before we even used the word. He turned out to be a great interviewee to this writer, and although he might be bashful at the description, he was Aston Martin’s most visionary savior of all.

The post How Walter Hayes built the DB7 and saved Aston Martin appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It’s also eggs, corn and apples as Britain’s Lunaz claims to have created the most sustainable Aston Martin ever, using a host of innovative materials.

The dashboard fascia, gear shifter and quarter glass handles of the DB6 are made from a biodegradable composite of egg and nut shells held together with an organic binder. The Aston’s door cards are finished in a bio-based polyurethane comprised of corn and wood-pulp fibers, while the car’s hide is actually made from apple pomace which is a byproduct of juice and cider making. In combination with a water-based polyurethane and wood pulp it somehow gives the look and feel of the finest leather.

Recycled cotton, polyester, rayon and nylon are used in parts of the seat and door cards that would be subject to the most wear and are said to be completely free of any ‘forever chemicals.’ There’s also recycled wool, polyester and nylon to created the ‘knitted’ seat surfaces and the carpets are made from regenerated nylon from fishing nets.

“The fact that our team has been able to bring together such a wide range of innovative materials in this sumptuous, tactile and completely harmonious interior is a testament to their skill and creativity,” says Lunaz founder David Lorenz. “It’s an exceptional marriage of materials and methods that elevates automotive interiors beyond anything available in the market.”

Just like other Lunaz classics, the restomod DB6 has been fully electrified. Out goes its Tadek Marek four-liter straight-six for in favor of the firm’s modular powertrain that comprises “the highest standard European-sourced Tier 1 OEM battery cells and motors.” The maximum battery capacity is 120 kWh delivering a range of 255 miles and 375 horsepower.

“Upcycling is a holistic, whole-vehicle process in which sustainability encompasses not only the clean-air powertrain but also the materials and finishes used in the interior,” says Lorenz.

The post The interior of this electro-mod Aston Martin is nuts appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The very last Aston Martin DB2/4 MkII ever made is going to auction after being left disassembled in a shed for 53 years.

The 1957 model is the final example of 199 DB2/4 Mk IIs, was built with coachwork by Tickford, and was bought by the vendor’s father in 1966. Over the next three years the car played a vital role in creating happy memories of family road trips (which explains its 90,683 miles), but it ground to a halt in 1969 after developing a fault with the Panhard rod arm.

The Aston was subsequently stripped down with the intention of undergoing a full restoration, but half a century later that still hadn’t happened so it is being sold as a kit of parts. The bodywork was taken back to bare metal and it has been sat on stands for the last five decades, although it is said to be complete with all running gear, five wheels, bumpers, and boxes full of components. The original logbook is included along with a sales invoice from 1966 and other paperwork.

As the last of the MkII DB2/4s it was fitted with a 2.9-liter six-cylinder engine producing 140 hp. It was also remarkably practical with four-seats and a hatchback with capacious luggage capacity.

The car is for sale without reserve at Historics’ Auction on November 25 at Mercedes-Benz World adjacent to the famous Brooklands circuit in the U.K. It’s clearly quite an undertaking, but could well be rather rewarding. At the same auction a 1958 MkIII DB2/4 is estimated to sell for up to $200,000.

The post This barn find Aston Martin is a blank canvas for restoration appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The only Lagonda Luxury Utility Vehicle ever built is up for auction in the U.K. The one-off concept car was first displayed at the 2009 Geneva Motorshow and, after being sold to a collector, is now seeking a new home.

Powered by Aston Martin’s 5.9-liter V-12 engine, driving all four wheels via a six-speed manual transmission, the LUV was reportedly built on a Mercedes GL chassis and is able to move under its own power—even though the odometer still reads zero miles. It rides on air suspension, has carbon-ceramic disc brakes and wears 22-inch alloy wheels with Continental tires.

The car was conceived to celebrate Lagonda’s 100th anniversary and test reaction to an ultra-luxury all-road capable car in the Middle East, South America, India, China and Russia. Arguably the LUV paved the way for cars such as the Bentley Bentayga, Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Lamborghini Urus, and Aston’s own DBX.

Perhaps aimed at oligarchs and oil barons with their own private zoos, the unique LUV seems to have drawn inspiration, not from a unicorn but a hippopotamus, with its huge snout and chunky rear end. The Oyster paintwork only serves to accentuate the resemblance. At least from the inside the sumptuous four-seater cabin you can’t see it, and instead can focus on wiggling your toes in the silk rugs or drowning your sorrows with a tipple from the cut-glass tumblers.

The seller says that LUV is currently only for show as its electrics aren’t working, although that could be simply down to the condition of the battery. As the prototype was originally drivable, the next owner should be able to get it moving once again—maybe even getting it ready for the road.

It’s for sale now on Collecting Cars and, at the time of writing, bidding had only reached around $15,000. Who will be bold enough to buy it?

The post This Lagonda may look like a hippo, but it’s a real unicorn appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Until the 1960s, big, brawny, front-engine GT cars were the gold standard. On the Autostrada or the Autobahn, a powerful two-seater or 2+2 coupe was a viable alternative to a light plane. With a big Ferrari, Aston, or Maserati at your disposal, you could have breakfast in Marseille and dinner in Munich without breaking a sweat. The advent of mid-engine cars like the Lamborghini Miura and Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer blunted the top-dog status of the front-engine GT, but the sheer practicality of this classic layout meant that the genre persisted for decades.

Alas, the three-pedal GT is all but extinct and destined for a fast-track to collector status. Here are some of our favorites from the last 20 years, some of the last of their kind. They’re bargains (for the moment), even in spite of the frothy post-pandemic market.

2005–17 Aston Martin V8 Vantage

Since the introduction of the DB7 in the late 1990s, Aston Martin has been on a roll, producing one gorgeous car after the next. Of Aston’s modern lookers, though, the V8 Vantage and DB9 of the 2000s might be the high-water mark. Both are timelessly gorgeous, with ample modern performance to match. In Road & Track’s first road test of the V8 Vantage, the magazine called it one of the sexiest-looking cars on the planet with an exhaust note to match. Handling is superb with great balance, and Aston built in a ton of safety, even with the driver’s aids turned off. With 380 hp from a 4.3-liter dry-sump V-8, 0-to-60-mph comes up in 4.7 seconds. From 2009 the engine grew to 4.7 liters for 420 horses. A V-12 model was also available from 2009 on, but the V-8 cars are much more affordable, simpler to maintain, and just as nice to look at.

With its handy hatchback, the two-seater Vantage had more cargo space than the longer-wheelbase (but mechanically similar) DB9, which had a pair of small back seats. Maintenance costs are, well, befitting of the car’s exotic status, but with condition #2 (Excellent) values ranging from $54,000 to mid-$60K territory for most base-model V-8 coupes, the Vantage is an über-sexy car for the money as well as one that is likely done depreciating.

2014–19 Chevrolet Corvette (C7)

As the last front-engine Corvette (and the last one with an available manual), the C7 will always hold a sweet spot in the hearts of Corvette fans. As the truly spectacular car that it is, the C7 has enough going for it to tempt decidedly non-Corvette people, too. The car checks nearly every box—V-8 bellow, enviable Le Mans GT class history (thanks to the Pratt and Miller–prepared C7.R racers), and even an interior that feels far less downmarket than the Corvettes that precede it. C7 manuals have also acquired an impressive track record when it comes to reliability.

The dirty little secret of C7s is the fact that the base cars might just be the most satisfying ones to drive on a daily basis. The stock suspension and brakes work great for real-world driving, while 455 hp and 460 lb-ft from the base V-8 will rarely leave you yearning for more grunt. If you do some occasional track time, the Z51 package is wonderful, adding bigger Brembo brakes, performance exhaust for added sound and another 5 hp, an electronic limited-slip differential, and optional Magnetic ride control. With another 200 hp or so, the Z06 is an impressive car, but even with driver’s aids on, it can quickly tax the abilities of all but the most skilled drivers.

While C7 base cars have depreciated very little from their original price off the lot, they still offer more speed per dollar than almost anything on the road. They’re a screaming bargain in the high-$30,000 to low-$40,000 range.

2015–19 Jaguar F-Type

Ever since 1961, Jaguar has been trying to recapture the magic of the original E-Type. For the most part, the company has failed, but its latest attempt got closer than all the rest. Introduced in the spring of 2014, the F-Type was audaciously named as the direct lineal descendent of the E. And it is gorgeous, albeit not in the same sensational way that the E was at the Geneva Motor Show back in 1961. But other than low-volume exotic stuff like the XJR-15 and XJ220, it is the prettiest sports car Jaguar has produced since the E-Type.

And while the V-8 F-Types have the most intoxicating exhaust notes, and more power, it’s only the odd V-6 (essentially the V-8 block with two empty cylinders) that came with a manual transmission. It’s a low-key, elegant car that is quite reminiscent of a 1960s GT car, and decidedly off-brand for Jaguar. The F-Type also has a pretty good reputation for reliability, as Jaguars go. Jaguar didn’t release production figures for the manual (which disappeared after 2019), but at any given time, there are maybe two or three F-Type manuals for sale nationally, and that kind of rarity translates to solid potential for long-term collectability.

2002–07 Maserati Coupe and Spyder

These two cars led Maserati’s resurgence in the U.S. as the first new Masers sold here since the wedgy/boxy Biturbo series of the 1980s and early ’90s. Neither the 2+2 Coupe, nor the shorter-wheelbase Spyder represented Italdesign’s/Giorgetto Giugiaro’s most striking work, but both were understated and handsome, and powered by a 4.2 liter, Ferrari-derived 385 hp V-8. Both available gearboxes were six-speeds, with one being a conventional three-pedal affair, and the other a two-pedal Cambiocorsa, a manual with an automated clutch. The former accounts for roughly ten percent of production and is far more desirable than the Cambiocorsa, which has a reputation for electrical and hydraulic problems. It likes to eat clutches, and the shifts are generally clunky.

Cambiocorsa values have accordingly taken a huge hit, which, to an extent, has driven down manual prices. Nice Coupes and Spyders can be had for well under $40,000. For a Giugiaro-designed Italian exotic with the heart of a Ferrari, that’s a serious deal.

2003–10 BMW 6 Series

If there’s a bête noire of automobile designers, it’s Chris Bangle, BMW’s chief of design during the 1990s and 2000s. Given the current vandalism that is taking place throughout the BMW lineup, however, some of Bangle’s designs like the E63/E64 6 Series and the Z4 Coupe are starting to look quite a bit better, “flame surfacing” and “Bangle Butts” notwithstanding. Truth be told, the E63/64 were actually finalized by Adrian van Hooydonk; but since they were based on a Bangle concept, Chris generally gets the blame/credit.

Introduced in 2003 after the original was discontinued in 1989, the second-generation 6 Series rides on a shortened version of the E60 5 Series platform. Wonky iDrive interface aside, these aren’t bad cars. The naturally aspirated N62 V-8 was the first to use a continuously variable-length intake manifold to go with variable valve-timing. The 4.4-liter 645Ci made 329 hp, and its replacement, the 4.8-liter unit found in the 650Ci, made about 33 more. Both engines require proper maintenance, and both still suffer from the usual BMW maladies like oil leaks and faulty valve-stem seals. But most importantly, coupes and convertibles were classic GTs and both could be had with a manual transmission. Manual 6 Series are rare but worth looking for, and probably won’t get any cheaper than they are now.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post These three-pedal bruisers are a dying breed appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A 1998 Aston Martin DB7 Volante Alfred Dunhill Edition that was ordered new by Jennifer Lopez and featured in the video for Love Don’t Cost A Thing sold for just over $40,000 at auction.

J-Lo’s DB7 was car number two in a run of 80 examples of this collaboration between Aston Martin and Alfred Dunhill and the first one to be sold. Mechanically identical to the regular DB7 the Dunhill cars came with a host of tailored trim and accessories, along with unique silver metallic paintwork picked to match the Dunhill Millennium watch that was mounted on the dashboard. 18-inch gunmetal alloy wheels were fitted with watch-inspired center caps.

The cabin was trimmed in charcoal Connolly leather with brushed steel dash panels, door trims and gear shifter. The pedals were made in aluminum and the car was fully-loaded with air conditioning, heated electric seats, heated front and rear screens, adjustable steering column and electric mirrors. A built-in humidor was even available, although non-smokers could specify a personal grooming kit to take its place instead.

This car was first registered in California and starred alongside Lopez in the video for her 2000 hit Love Don’t Cost A Thing—making a perfectly-timed entry just as she sings the line “Think I wanna drive your Benz? I don’t.”

Now registered in Germany with only 15,000 miles on the (slightly wonky) odometer it was sold for €40,250 ($42,560). That’s rather less than a #1 Concours Condition car would fetch in the U.S.A according to the Hagerty Valuations team and a better deal than Janet Jackson’s 2003 Aston Martin Vanquish which sold in May for $92,075. Could this be the pop diva deal of the year?

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Love don’t cost a thing but J-Lo’s rare Aston Martin sold for a song appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin’s racing prototype version of the $3M Valkyrie road car will enter the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in 2025, fighting for the overall victory in the Hypercar class.

With the support of U.S.-based Heart of Racing, Aston Martin’s championship-winning endurance racing partner, “at least one Valkyrie racecar will be entered by Aston Martin in the top Hypercar class of each of the FIA World Endurance Championship and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship from 2025. This means that the prototype Valkyrie will participate in three of sportscar racing’s most prestigious events; Le Mans, the Rolex 24 and the 12 Hours of Sebring,” the company announced Wednesday morning.

Lawrence Stroll, executive chairman of Aston Martin Lagonda, said, “Performance is the lifeblood of everything that we do at Aston Martin, and motorsport is the ultimate expression of this pursuit of excellence. We have been present at Le Mans since the earliest days, and through those glorious endeavors we succeeded in winning Le Mans in 1959 and our class 19 times over the past 95 years. Now we return to the scene of those first triumphs aiming to write new history with a racing prototype inspired by the fastest production car Aston Martin has ever built.

“In addition to our presence in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, Aston Martin’s return to the pinnacle of endurance racing will allow us to build a deeper connection with our customers and community, many of whom found their passion for the brand through our past success at Le Mans,” Stroll said.

In total, more than 240 drivers have raced Aston Martins at Le Mans over the past 95 years in 27 different chassis and engine combinations, through virtually every era. “No other venue has given Aston Martin so much success, or more steadfastly proven that our DNA is forged out of the very essence of competition. So in the year the marque celebrates its 110th anniversary, it makes perfect sense to announce its return to the greatest endurance race on earth with the ultimate expression of the most potent Hypercar ever devised,” the company said.

The racing version of the carbon fiber-chassis Valkyrie will use a modified version of its Cosworth-built 6.5-liter naturally-aspirated V-12 engine, which in standard form revs to 11,000 rpm and develops over 1000 hp. The power unit will be modified to fit the Balance of Performance requirements of the Hypercar class and developed to withstand the rigors of long-distance competition. As in the Valkyrie AMR Pro track car, the battery-electric hybrid system featured on the road-specification Valkyrie is absent.

The Balance of Performance is a formula used by IMSA and WEC to level the playing field, so that Hypercars and GTP cars, which differ in specifications, can compete against each other in the two series.

“Once homologated, the Heart of Racing team will spearhead Aston Martin’s programs in both WEC and IMSA as the Valkyrie race car becomes the first purebred Hypercar to participate in both championships, and the only one among its rivals that can trace its origins back to an existing production car,” the company said.

Founded in 2014 by American businessman and philanthropist Gabe Newell, The Heart of Racing team is a charity that raises money for the Seattle Children’s Cardiology Research Fund. The team was conceived in 2020 and has partnered with Aston Martin since its inception, competing predominantly with the successful Vantage GT3 in IMSA’s two GTD classes.

The driver lineup will be announced at a later date.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters. 

The post Aston Martin to Le Mans in 2025 with V-12 Valkyrie appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A 1958 Aston Martin DB Mk III Drophead, believed to be the only survivor of just two examples built, has just come up for sale.

The DB MkIII was the last of the DB2 line and was fitted with the most potent version of Tadek Marek’s legendary straight-six engine. In DBB specification the motor was fed by triple Weber carbs, had special camshafts, a higher compression ratio, strengthened con rods and a unique twin exhaust system. This all added up to a 20 percent power hike over the standard engine and a total of 198 horsepower—higher than the DB3S race car.

In the hands of Roy Salvadori a DBB-equipped Mk III was timed at just 8.2 seconds from 0-60 mph, which was almost two seconds faster than the regular model.

According to seller Nicholas Mee & Co. 85 DB Mk III Drophead Coupes were built by Aston Martin, but only two were powered by the DBB motor, and the car currently sitting in the specialist’s Hertfordshire showroom, north of London, is the only one still in existence.

It was supplied new to an owner in Montreal, Canada, and stayed with the family for 30 years, until it was acquired by a collector in North Carolina. In a case of seller’s remorse the Drophead was re-purchased by the original owner’s son who kept it for a further seven years. It then crossed the Atlantic to be with its current keeper. Despite its international life the car has only covered 36,500 miles since leaving the factory.

Finished in its original black with a beige leather interior the Aston has recently had an engine rebuild. As if this Drophead wasn’t desirable enough die-hard 007 fans will recognise it as the model driven by James Bond in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger novel.

“It really is something special, undoubtedly rare and bristling with British engineering excellence,” says Nicholas Mee’s Director Neal Gerrard. “In the context of later ‘DB’ prices, we think surprisingly affordable. It’s no wonder Ian Fleming chose a DB Mk III for James Bond in ‘Goldfinger’.”

If $603,000 sounds “surprisingly affordable” to you then pick up the phone and you could just capture yourself a unicorn.

The post Sole surviving Aston Martin DB Mk III Drophead for sale appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Bonhams, the auction house, is presenting a sale in Belgium next month with a roster containing the usual interesting stuff: A Bally Harley-Davidson pinball machine, a 1929 Bugatti Type 37 Grand Prix Two-Seater, a pair of Ferrari suitcases, a 1963 Bentley S3 Continental Drophead Coupé, eight matching orange Aston Martins.

Come again, with that last one?

Yes, a highlight of what is being called the Zoute sale has eight orange Astons, none with more than 235 miles on the odometer. They are all 2010 or 2011 models: a DBS coupe, a DBS Volante, coupe and convertible versions of the DB9, a four-door Rapide, and a V-12 Vantage coupe. And rounding out the collection: A V8 Vantage coupe and roadster.

“This is a truly incredible and bespoke offering and I envisage collectors wanting to secure the entire collection with many others trying to win a particular favorite. Whatever the outcome, the new owners will own a unique part of motoring history,” said Gregory Tuytens, Head of Sales at Bonham Cars Belgium, in a fashion that most European auctioneers employ for public sales.

Exactly what part of motoring history a post-millennium suite of glossy-pumpkin Aston Martins celebrates is not especially clear. The cars were apparently commissioned by a Swiss collector, who specified the tangerine color and matching leather interior, but apparently never drove them any distance. Perhaps the sight of orange Astons simply cheered him up: It’s as valid a reason as any to buy a car. Or eight.

Nonetheless, Bonhams’ sale estimates, given in U.S. dollars, aren’t as stratospheric as, say, the 1959 Ferrari Berlinetta, expected to go for up to $7 million.

The predictions for the orange Astons range from up to $64,000 for the V8 Vantages, to $130,000 each for the pair of DBS models. If everything goes for the maximum predictions, you could conceivably buy the lot for $729,000 on the top end, or $480,000 on the low end of the estimates. They’ve all been freshened up, by the way, by Stratton Motor Company in eastern England.

Here’s a promise: If an American buys the entire lot and lets us come see them all together, we’ll send a writer to do a story. He or she is likely to ask only one pertinent question: Why?

The Aston auction is no-reserve and ends October 8, 2023.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Can’t settle for one orange Aston Martin? Try 8 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The Lagonda was Aston Martin’s white elephant. Yet without this over-complicated and over-priced super sedan there would have been no Virage coupe—the car that arguably saved Aston Martin in the 1990s.

The Virage shared plenty with the Lagonda, as demonstrated by this development mule, which even wore a cut-down version of the wedgy William Towns’ bodywork. With two fewer doors and a 12-inch reduction in length the car was clothed in an assortment of pre- and post-facelift Lagonda panels. Under the hood sat a 5.3-liter V-8 and a five-speed manual ZF transmission.

The prototype underwent many thousands of miles of road testing and received a host of upgrades during its service life, including De Dion rear suspension and a four-valves-per-cylinder version of the V-8.

After the production specification Virage made its debut in 1989 the test mule, known as Development Project 2034, was retired, but an enthusiastic Aston Martin collector seized the opportunity to get hold of something truly unique. DP 2034 was stripped back and rebuilt using Virage production components, including a brand-new engine. It was painted in pearlescent Pacific Blue and trimmed to the finest Lagonda specification, including a drinks cabinet. The Lagonda’s notoriously sketchy digital instruments wee replaced with analog items.

“This is a magnificent machine which rides well at low speed but which handles faultlessly when driven fast… it has that thoroughbred feel which inspires faith and confidence…It’s that good: a full-blooded, pure-bred delight and that’s that,” wrote Tony Dron in Thoroughbred & Classic Cars magazine after driving the car.

This exceptional piece of Aston Martin history sold for £287,500 ($356,000) at Bonhams Goodwood Auction—almost three times what a #1 concours condition Lagonda would be worth.

The post Aston Martin Lagonda unicorn coupe fetches almost $360,000 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin has already claimed that the DB12 is in a class of its own as the world’s first ‘super tourer’ and soon you’ll be able to enjoy the exciting new pastime of super touring with the wind in your hair at up to 202 mph, thanks to the introduction of a Volante version.

Powered by a 680-hp, twin-turbo, four-liter V-8 sourced from Mercedes-AMG the DB12 massively outguns the 577-horsepower SL, although you can also expect it cost at least a dollar more for each of those extra horses.

Removing the roof clearly compromises the rigidity so Aston’s engineers have done their best to beef up the chassis. Rear suspension upper and lateral mounts are stiffer and an engine cross-brace is installed to boost the car’s torsional stiffness by five percent. The front axles is stiffened by 140 percent and a non-isolated steering column are claimed to improve steering feel.

Although plenty of metal and glass has gone in the conversion, the Volante is actually 245 lbs heavier than the coupe thanks to the extra bracing. Straight line speed is barely impacted, though, with 0-62 mph taking 3.7 seconds compared to the coupe’s 3.6.

The drop top is ‘K-fold’ design similar to the the DB11’s but now with eight layers of fabric to keep the elements at bay. It can open in 14 seconds and close in 16 seconds while driving at up to 31 mph. When stowed it sits neatly below a sleek tonneau complete with twin aerodynamic fairings.

“For many of our customers, roof down driving is the greatest pleasure,” says Aston Martin Chief Executive Officer, Amedeo Felisa. “Aston Martin Volantes have captured that emotion and expressed it in unique style for more than six decades. With the new DB12 Volante we have changed the rules, creating a car that intensifies those feelings by preserving all the purity and exceptional sporting capabilities of the DB12 Coupe. A rare and true sporting convertible in every respect, this is a car to challenge preconceptions and find a new generation of Volante customer.”

The first deliveries will begin before the end of 2023.

The post Aston Martin drops the top on the DB12 Volante appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Fisker, the all-electric automaker that currently has just one vehicle on the market, the Fisker Ocean SUV, last week held a “Product Vision Day” where multiple future models were showcased.

The one getting the most buzz is the Rōnin Super GT, a 1000-plus-horsepower, four-door supercar named after the 1998 John Frankenheimer movie that is known for its vigorous car-chase scenes. Now Fisker is taking orders for the $385,000 Rōnin, with deliveries to start in the second half of 2025. There will be just 999 built.

They might go fast. Literally. “With a projected 0-60 mph time of approximately two seconds and a 170 mph top speed, the Fisker Rōnin will be able to match up with or surpass any supercar currently on the market while also delivering tremendous range.” That range is projected to be 600 miles on a single charge.

By comparison, the highest performing version of the electric Porsche Taycan, the Turbo S, has four doors, up to 750 horsepower on overboost, and takes 2.6 seconds to get to 60 mph; however, it costs $188,450 less.

“The Fisker Rōnin is for people who love to drive, but who are also thrilled by automotive art and design and demand that their high-performance vehicles embrace a sustainable future,” chairman and CEO Henrik Fisker said. “Our goal was to create a classic grand touring car, updated for the 21st century and engineered for customers who want to drive from Los Angeles to Napa Valley on a single charge or take on the autobahn at steady high speeds without concern for battery capacity.”

Fisker, a designer by trade who has worked for BMW, Ford, and Aston Martin, said the Rōnin will accommodate five people “while taking advantage of an electric vehicle’s layout to provide exceptional cargo capacity, a true rarity in the supercar world.”

The foldable carbon-fiber hardtop will be smartphone-activated and capable of retracting automatically into the trunk, leaving some luggage space; additional luggage space will be available in the front trunk. The hardtop has to be up to make room for five.

The Fisker Rōnin will use a unique aluminum space frame with integrated battery cells to achieve its targeted range of 600 miles.

“Lightweight materials will also feature in the carbon-fiber 23-inch wheels. The interior will set new standards for sustainable luxury and will use innovative recycled and sustainable materials, with the goal of making the Rōnin the world’s most sustainable supercar. The Rōnin will also have a 17.1-inch high-resolution screen and an instrument cluster positioned in front of the driver.“

Want to make a reservation? Go to Fiskerinc.com and send them $2000.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Reserve Fisker’s $385K, 1000-hp EV, if you dare appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The California coastal town will become the center of the auto universe from August 11-20 as the manicured lawns of Monterey Car Week see world debuts from Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Maserati, and Bugatti.

The British sports car brand will celebrate its 110th anniversary in style with an exclusive clubhouse called the Aston Martin Club 1913, and put the mighty Valour on display for the first time in the U.S.A. The DBX707 and DB12 will be on show, while a “world-first new model” will also be revealed—widely expected to be the convertible version of the DB12.

Bugatti is set to unveil a very special Chiron as “an homage to the era-defining moments in the history of Bugatti.” Bugatti references its Golden Era and the teaser image suggests that the paintwork at least will be precious-metal themed.

Maserati, meanwhile, will showcase its MCXtrema race car. The MC20-based machine is said to offer up over 730 hp, with just 62 examples to be built.

It’s Lamborghini, however, which will likely draw the biggest crowds as it takes the wraps off the first prototype EV from Sant’Agata. It’s not slated for production for another five years, but the 2+2 grand tourer sets Lamborghini on a new path. The company claims it won’t be an SUV, suggesting that it could be more of a spiritual successor to the Espada.

Stay tuned over the next few days as we bring more details of each of these exotic unveilings.

The post Bugatti, Lamborghini, Maserati, and Aston Martin to unveil new models at Monterey appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Paul Spires, President of Aston Martin Works, limps into a modern glass-enclosed office, one leg in a brace after a sailing accident. Once our meeting is finished, he will join a pal on a helicopter test flight. Other times you’ll find him behind the tiller of his light aircraft or at the wheel of his two vintage cars: a Rolls-Royce Silver and Aston Martin DB9 Volante.

Spires has a passion for all things motive—hull, wings, wheels, whatever—and his drive has brought this factory restoration operation success after success, even amid the financial ripples that have recently rocked the Aston Martin mothership.

The Newport Pagnell, UK, facility, two hours northwest of London, is a distillation of everything Aston Martin. Tickford coach-built bodies for Aston Martin until 1955, at which point Aston bought the facility and made cars there until 2012.

The small town is now home to a service shop at which three Valkyries await collection by their owner. Rarities such as a One-77, and even a Taraf, are undergoing maintenance. Walk further through the clinically clean and brightly lit buildings and you’ll seemingly step back in time. Artisans keep busy shaping metal on an English wheel or hand-stitching Connolly leather for an interior.

Under restoration during our visit is a DB MKIII which pre-dates Aston’s time at Newport Pagnell, a selection of DB5s from as far afield as Vietnam, and, of course, the continuation cars. In a stroke of inspiration, Spires realized that Aston Martin’s back catalog was incomplete, and he set about rectifying that by building brand-new versions of cars that never finished their planned production runs. Combining modern precision machining and traditional coachbuilding techniques, he wagered, would actually improve on the original recipe. Important, too, was that Aston Martin Works stood to become a highly-profitable branch of the 110-year-old company.

Awaiting completion in the shop is the final Goldfinger DB5, while two DB4 GT continuations are also back “home” at Newport Pagnell for servicing. It is these cars, more than anything else, that will be Spires’ legacy at Aston Martin Works. And if wasn’t for his sheer determination they wouldn’t have happened at all.

Spires joined Aston Martin Works in 2012, originally hired to set up a new-car sales business at Newport Pagnell. By 2013 it was the second-biggest dealership in the United Kingdom. A year later he was invited to take over the whole operation.

“Financially we were okay, but we weren’t generating the level of returns that I felt the business could do,” he explains. “Being slightly romantic as well, we stopped building cars here in 2007, and this place actually pre-dates the internal combustion engine, with horse-drawn carriages being made in the 1850s, and I thought, what a shame that we don’t build vehicles here anymore.

“We couldn’t build a modern vehicle so I came up with the concept of the DB4 Lightweight continuation, which was supposed to be a one-make pro-am championship. It took a long time to get the buy-in from the senior team within Aston Martin to do that program. They looked at it for two, maybe two and a half years and there was a lot of skepticism, and quite rightly so. Will this hurt our heritage credentials, will it destroy the Aston Martin brand. Will people see it as cash cow?

“It was quite brave. I won’t mince my words, I put everything on the line. If it didn’t work, I wasn’t going to be here.”

With the board in agreement, Spires and his team began the job of completely recreating the car from scratch as well as the process to build it.

“It allowed us to not only invest in the place and our processes, we brought in a much younger, very dynamic engineering team into the business to deliver that car, none of whom were even born when the DB4 GT was around so it was a completely clean sheet of paper,” he says.

State-of-the-art three-dimensional scans were taken of original cars so that new jigs could be fashioned with unparalleled accuracy, blueprints were tracked down and CNC machines used to fabricate components from raw metal, while the bodywork and interior were hand-crafted in the traditional way. “It was completely new; there were no old bits on it, every component was new,” says Spires.

“We delivered that project in an unbelievably quick period of time. In nine months, we had a fully functioning prototype car running. Then literally the week after we finished the car Jeremy Clarkson took it on his Grand Tour.”

As well as surviving Clarkson, the DB4 GT was tested at Silverstone and driven flat-out at Nardo in Italy by Aston endurance racer Darren Turner. Spires’ reborn DB4 GT took a beating and never gave up. The mix of modern engineering accuracy and traditional craftsmanship was a winning formula. “From the moment that car started to the moment we sold it to a customer in America, that car has never failed to proceed, which is unbelievable,” he says proudly.

“That car really made a big difference. We sold 25 in three weeks at 1.5 million pounds plus taxes, plus options.”

Next came the DB4 Zagato continuation, which at the time it became available in 2019 was the most expensive production car in the world, costing £6M (about $8M).

“It was a natural progression and I thought we’d do three or four cars, but I went to see Andrea Zagato and he got super excited. He said, ‘Let’s make it our centenary car and make another 19 like we did originally.’ Again, we sold those all over the world.”

Now, the last of 25 Goldfinger DB5s is almost complete, marking the end of Aston Martin Works’ most ambitious continuation project to date. Working with the special effects team at EON Productions, Spires and his engineers were able to build an immaculate DB5 reproduction, with all the gadgets that made it the most famous car in the world. Unlike during filming, circumstances during which each gizmo need only work for a take or two, DB5 Goldfinger owners expect their cars to perform on the button every time.

“We ran every single gadget though five thousand continuous cycles on the bench to make sure we have that robustness in the car.”

Customers also expect the car to drive exactly like a DB5, so the modifications needed to be kept as light and compact as possible. The car’s Kevlar bulletproof shield (which really is bulletproof) is housed within a carbon-fiber cassette, for example. For authentic drivability, Spires insisted the car should run on cross-ply tires and have no power steering.

“It’s very pure. It’s got the look, the sound, and the smell. When you put the 2023 car next to a 1964, sometimes even I can’t tell the difference,” he admits.

When Goldfinger production is finished, Spires says, there will be another model to follow. But he’s in no rush.

“You have to have a good story behind it and a value proposition, but it’s been an amazing journey and it’s not finished yet. We always have something up our sleeve.”

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The romantic who put it all on the line to rejuvenate classic Astons appeared first on Hagerty Media.

“Be careful 007 it’s just had a new coat of paint.” So says Q, as he hands over the keys to this Aston Martin V-8 in 1987’s The Living Daylights.

Bond, of course, pays his quartermaster no heed and the Aston Martin ends up with more than a scratch as he comes to the rescue of Kara Milovy, played by Maryam d’Abo.

“I’ve had a few optional extras installed,” quips Timothy Dalton’s 007 as he proceeds to blast his way through a road block, deploys skis and a rocket engine to escape his pursuers on a frozen lake, before crashing it into a snow bank and, ultimately, blowing the car up himself using its self-destruct system.

Fortunately no real Astons were destroyed during filming, and one of the cars built for the movie will be up for auction at RM Sotheby’s in Monterey on August 18, with an estimate of $1.4-$1.8 million.

The car has quite the backstory. When Aston Martin boss Victor Gauntlett made a deal to supply cars to the Bond franchise again, he overlooked the fact that there was an 18-month waiting list at the factory and no new vehicles would be available. Instead, Aston Martin bought four used models from existing owners, which were updated to look like the latest examples.

The car now for sale is actually a 1973 V-8, originally delivered in Tudor Green with an automatic transmission. In the hands of EON Productions it was fitted with a manual gearbox, fuel-injection, and modified bodywork sculpted from fiberglass. It was also fitted with the rocket booster and skis for the lake chase scene.

After filming finished EON kept the V-8 until 1995, when it was sold to the Cars of the Stars Museum in England’s Lake District, and then, in 2004 an American collector took ownership. The current keeper acquired it in 2021 and set about making it roadworthy again. A Vantage specification V540 engine was installed, together with a ZF five speed stick shift, all corrosion was repaired and the Q-Branch switches were put into a removable center console. The rear rocket booster is now able to shoot real flames as well.

Of the four Aston Martins used in filming The Living Daylights, two are in a private collection, with EON keeping hold of another, making this a truly unique opportunity to buy up one of the best-ever Bond cars.

The post Gadgets galore come with this James Bond Aston Martin V-8 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Drive an Aston Martin DB4 or DB5 really fast and you’ll come across a peculiar trait which simply doesn’t occur in a modern automobile. The entire car body lifts on its springs and rides about three inches higher than its normal ride height. The effect is called aerodynamic lift and is caused by a growing difference between the air pressure on top of the car and the pressure beneath it. The air over the car has to travel further and is less dense, which results in net negative pressure. Since it’s proportional to area, shape, and speed, you need to be going some to feel it, but a four-liter, straight-six bellowing out around 300 hp in a fastback Aston is just the device in which to do so. At almost 130 mph down the Lavant straight at the Goodwood Motor Circuit, there’s elevation in sufficient quantities to warrant getting quite a lot of speed off the car before you so much as twitch the wheel to turn into the double apex at Woodcote; failure to do so can result in some interesting effects.

Which leads us to Wunibald Kamm and the Aston Martin DB6. When time came to replace the DB5 model in the mid-1960s, Aston Martin was well aware of the shortcomings of super-spy James Bond’s choice of company car. It not only suffered aerodynamic lift at anything like its claimed top speed of 145 mph, but it also had rear seats which couldn’t accommodate much more than Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. Further, the cabin was an oven in the summer and the steering weight was a shoulder workout when maneuvering in town. Gorgeous to look at and drive in the right conditions, there were too many of the wrong conditions in the life of owners to warrant purchase. Something needed to be done.

Touring of Milan had already submitted its proposal for a replacement, which, given the design firm’s long association with ‘The Aston,’ Touring thought to be a shoo-in. This Italian carrozzeria had designed—with much input from Harold Beach, Aston’s designer/chief engineer—the DB4 and DB5 and licensed its aircraft-inspired Superleggera body construction system to Aston Martin in Newport Pagnell. Touring was keen to get the DB6 contract as its finances were in a sorry state; in fact, the Italian company went bust in 1966, the year after the production launch of the DB6.

Yet Aston Martin rejected Touring’s concept, preferring instead its own stretched and expanded study, which had benefited from time in the wind tunnel and the adoption of a Kamm tail (also called the duck’s arse in my day), which kicked up on the edge of the boot lid to separate the airflow more cleanly from the body at speed. Without diving too far down the rabbit hole of Daniel Bernoulli’s principle of fluid dynamics, the Kamm tail worked, and the DB6—despite its higher roof line—was faster and more stable at speed than its predecessor. So much so that high speeds could be maintained for longer, which in turn meant that Tadek Marek’s wonderful six-cylinder twin-cam, four-liter engine required yet more oil cooling, hence the big lower grille on the DB6.

That grille also fed the condenser for the air conditioning, which was a popular option, though the reintroduction of opening quarter lights on the DB6 for the first time since the DB2 gave owners an additional cold-air option at speed. What else? Well, contrary to popular belief, the DB6 wasn’t that much bigger than the outgoing DB5—just four inches, almost all of which are down to the increase in wheelbase to increase the leg room for rear passengers. It is also thought the car was much heavier than the DB5, but again not so; just 18 pounds separated the two, with the DB6 tipping the scales at 3298 pounds. Part of that weight saving was the replacement of the Superleggera construction at the rear of the body, which had been used with the DB5, with folded sheet steel. This made attaching the body to the platform chassis more positive and stronger. It was still a heavy way of making cars, though, with steel load-bearing chassis members running down the length of the car to go along with the thick steel sills and outriggers.

The DB5’s double-wishbone front suspension and its live-axle rear with trailing arms and a Watts linkage were carried over, though the rear spring rates were adjusted upward and Armstrong Selectaride dampers (an option on the DB5) were standard. Power steering was either via ZF or, later, an Adwest system. More hench owners could opt for a standard manual rack-and-pinion system, and brakes were largely unchanged, though the Girling servo units were updated.

While the four-liter engine remained wholly unchanged from that of the DB5, Vantage models had high compression ratios, with various different camshaft profiles and timing. There was also the Mark II car, which had the option of an AE Brico fuel injection, though few cars retained this arrangement and most have been converted back to the Vantage tune with triple Webers. Transmissions were a mix of the ZF five-speed manual or a BorgWarner Model 8 three-speed automatic, which was generally considered so awful that few will have kept these slush ‘boxes. One well-known rally car has a modern automatic transmission, which makes it not just a good competition car but also a first-rate grand tourer.

Other changes were bits of trim, split bumpers, and, on later models, slightly flared wheel arches to accommodate wider wheels. Plain center panels on the seats weren’t as elegant as the pleated centers of previous models, and the door trims were so revised and each had an integral ashtray. The plain roof lining lacked the recesses of the DB5, since, as the car was no longer produced with Superleggera principles, they were no longer needed.

So there it is: The DB6 was a bit bigger and a smidge heavier, but not quite as good-looking as the car it replaced. And it was that which has been blamed for the lack of demand and low prices for the 1782 units originally built. Well, that’s old news, daddy-oh. Nowadays, a DB6 is seen as a usable classic and demand has crept upwards, as have prices. Over to Martin Brewer, proprietor of the Runnymede Motor Company in the Thames Valley, which specializes in DB Aston Martin service and often has DB6s for sale.

“I think the DB6 became a more usable car, especially for the man with a family,” he says. “It was a decent four-seater, just as fast as the DB5, and by now most will have gone through the engine rebuild process with a capacity increase to 4.2 liters, or even 4.7 liters, when they go like a rocket ship.”

“A very Grand Tourer,” said Motor magazine in its 1966 road test of a Vantage-engined model, which was only one year after the publication got its hands on the DB5, and indeed there was a fair bit of overlap between production of the two cars. “It makes the overall speed limit of 70 mph look ridiculous,” said the road tester of the car known as LBH 8C, concluding that “the new design is superior in every way to the previous model.” He then went on to detail how they held the car in a four-wheel drift ’round a constant radius corner …

The formidable Motor test team achieved a maximum speed of 147.6 mph, with 0-to-60-mph in 6.1 seconds, 0-to-100-mph in 15 seconds, which was a record for the magazine, and overall fuel consumption was 12.5 mpg—ouch. With fuel enough for 50 miles, the car weighed in at 3360 pounds, and with purchase tax included it cost £4998 (roughly $101,000 today).

Over the pond, David E. Davis Jr. and Brock Yates in Car and Driver magazine concluded that the Vantage DB6 model was “a hard-riding, hard-steering reminder of the The Good Old Days… for virile purists with an Edwardian turn of mind.”

“It’s like Rocky Graziano in a Coldstream Guards’ uniform,” they concluded and then couldn’t resist adding the following (which perhaps says more about the casual sexism of the time than it does the car): “sitting inside a DB6, you can be forgiven if you begin to think that all your wishes have been granted and you’ve been given some foolproof power over women…”

I borrowed a DB6 Mark II with that rare AE Brico fuel injection some years ago from Roger Bennington of the Stratton Motor Company. It was for a friend’s wedding and my impressions were of its long length, narrow width, and prodigious power, which made driving feel like a drier version of the experience of those daredevil nuotatori Italian frogmen who piloted the manned torpedoes in World War Two. On decent modern rubber, it handled well and had pretty long legs, though you needed your own oil well to afford to fill it up. Interesting that even back then, no one failed to recognize it as an Aston Martin, no one disparaged its looks, or unfairly compared it to the DB4 or 5, and everyone wanted a ride, so much so that I had to turn down a crowd of would-be joyriders to allow my friend the bridegroom to climb on board. Of the fuel injection, I have no comment better than to say it performed faultlessly and gave the car a superb refinement and low-down punch compared to the DB5. As Brewer says: “The fuel-injected cars will be super rare by now.”

Thing is, while the DB6 was on sale for five years, from 1965 to 1970, throughout its pomp there was a pretender to the throne, on which Beach and Aston Martin designer William Towns were working almost in tandem with the DB6. The DBS was launched in 1967 and set the tone for a series of cars which would continue right up to the V8, Volante, and Vantage models that took a bow in 1989. This much wider, shorter, and more angular car sat on a widened DB6 platform chassis with a longer wheelbase and the Tadek Marek six-cylinder engine set more rearwards in the car. Despite a weight gain of about 110 pounds, the DBS had a true De Dion rear axle, which improved road holding, and the cabin was a proper four-seater. If the first DB4 made previous Astons look and feel very vintage, the DBS did the same to the DB6.

That series of the DB cars from 4 to 6 had an enormous influence, however, and not just with fans of Commander Bond. Along with the Mini, the DB6 was seen as a car of the 1960s. Notable owners included Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, who famously crashed his midnight-blue example in August 1966 on London’s Titchfield Street. This could not have been a more rock-star accident. Jagger’s passenger was his girlfriend of the time, model Chrissie Shrimpton (Jean’s sister), and the car he hit was a Ford Anglia driven by the Countess of Carlisle …

Twiggy owned a DB6, as did Peter Sellers, but the most famous DB6 owner is HRH King George. As Prince of Wales, Charles was given a blue DB6 Volante by The Queen. He still owns that car, which has been converted to run on waste wine and cheese whey.

But by the end of the decade, it was time for the aging Aston to take a bow, the last in the line. They say if you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t there, but we’ll remember the DB6 well enough as an unfairly maligned proper four-seat GT, which today is starting to be appreciated for what it is rather than being an embodiment of You Can’t Always Get What You Want, as the Stones once sang.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

Via Hagerty UK

The post Once maligned, Aston Martin’s DB6 is finally getting its due appeared first on Hagerty Media.

They may well say that discretion is the better part of valour, but there is nothing discrete about Aston Martin’s 110th anniversary celebration.

The Valour is a brutally handsome homage to the V8 Vantage of the 1970s and 1980s, but beneath its muscular hood sits a 5.2-liter V-12 that’s been bolstered by twin turbochargers to produce an epic 705 horsepower. As befits this joyful jubilee of Aston’s illustrious past, the Valour sends drive to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission and a mechanical limited-slip differential.

“Inspired by the iconic, muscle cars from our past, we have endowed Valour with an abundance of power and torque, while using modern technology and engineering to make that performance more exploitable and enjoyable,” says Simon Newton, Aston Martin’s Director of Vehicle Performance. “A big part of honouring that driver-pleasing character was mating our fabulous V-12 engine to a manual transmission. It was a unique part of the brief and the end result is something truly unforgettable; a state-of-the-art driver’s car that thrives on being pushed to its limits and has the true heart and soul of a timeless analogue classic.”

The throwback driving experience is echoed in the Valour’s styling which takes cues from the company’s hairy-chested glory days, and the one-off Victor that was released in 2021. The body is entirely fabricated in carbon fiber and the clamshell hood features a giant horseshoe-shaped vent, along with NACA ducts to allow the V-12 to breathe freely. The brand’s traditional grille has been shaped in a mix of aluminum and carbon fiber, with further intakes to cool the brakes. Airflow management is key to the design, with a large front splitter and fender fenders channeling it under and over the car. Covering the rear is a louvred hatch with ‘exoblades’ that perform more aero magic along with the Kamm tail and chunky rear diffuser.

The Valour’s rear end is the only part you’re likely to see as it vanishes into the distance, so Aston has made it truly distinctive. There are stunning six-bladed light clusters similar to the Valkyrie, a full-width milled alumnium accent, plus a striking triple-exit exhaust made from stainless steel.

“Valour is gloriously unapologetic; an old-school brute refined and reimagined through the lens of 2023,” says Miles Nurnberger, Aston Martin’s Director of Design.

Inside the two-seater’s cabin is dominated by the manual transmission and its exposed mechanism which comes with a choice of machined aluminum, titanium, carbon fiber or walnut for the shift knob. It’s a beautiful blend of tradition and tech inside, with tweed woollen fabrics inspired by the Le Mans-winning DBR1 of 1959, along with plenty of carbon fiber.

Aston Martin will also offer a choice of hand-painted liveries and 21 paint colors, with customers also able to take personalization even further with the aid of the company’s Q branch.

Only 110 build slots will be available beginning in the fall of 2023, and, no doubt, they’ve all been allocated to Aston aficionados already.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post The Valour is a 110th birthday bonanza for Aston Martin appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin has announced a new supply agreement with the Lucid Group to “help propel Aston Martin’s high-performance electrification strategy and its long-term growth.”

Under the arrangement Lucid’s current and future battery and powertrain technology will underpin a completely new battery electric vehicle platform that will be developed in-house at Aston Martin. The British sports car maker is set to invest more than £2 billion ($2.5 bn) into its move from internal combustion to electricity.

“The supply agreement with Lucid is a game changer for the future EV-led growth of Aston Martin,” says Executive Chairman Lawrence Stroll. “Based on our strategy and requirements, we selected Lucid, gaining access to the industry’s highest performance and most innovative technologies for our future BEV products.”

The new deal doesn’t replace Aston’s arrangement with Mercedes-Benz, as the German firm will continue to give Aston access to its powertrains and electronic systems, while a long-term partnership with China’s Geely also allows the British brand to use the technology seen in Polestar, Volvo and other Geely products. Essentially Aston Martin now seems able to cherry pick from the world’s leaders in electrification, and also employ the planet-sized brains of the engineers at its Formula 1 team to put its electric vehicles on pole position.

The company has declared the its first BEV will launch in 2025 and that its future range includes hypercars, sports cars, GTs and SUVs. Aston Martin promises “exceptional battery efficiency” and “not just preserving the driving experience, but elevating it to a new level of intensity and enjoyment.”

Twin motors with infinitely-tuneable four-wheel torque vectoring, active aerodynamics and F1-style drag reduction, brake-by-wire, and Pirelli P Zero R Cyber Tyres are among the tools that will deliver on this promise, says Aston.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Lucid will power Aston Martin’s push to electrification appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The one-off Aston Martin Bulldog has finally achieved the mission it was built for, achieving 205.4 mph on a runway in Scotland.

Making its debut in 1979 the Bulldog was the halo car for Aston Martin, designed by William Towns to be the fastest production car in the world. While it did reach 192 mph during testing in 1981 the Bulldog was never able to top the magic 200 mph mark.

Aston originally planned to build 15-20 Bulldogs, but only the one car was ever completed, and that disappeared for decades before being discovered and purchased by renowned collector Philip Sarofim. Sarofim had one goal, to see the car pass the double ton, just as Towns and Aston Martin chairman Victor Gauntlett dreamed.

Sarofim tasked Shropshire, UK-based Classic Motor Cars with a complete restoration, which took 18 months to complete, under the supervision of Gauntlett’s son Richard. The painstaking rebuild of Sarofim’s supercar was rewarded when it won the Coppa d’Oro at the Concorso D’Eleganza Villa D’Este in Italy in June.

Now, finally, 44 years after the Bulldog was first let off its leash, the car accomplished its original mission in the hands of three-time Le Mans winner Darren Turner at Machrihanish airfield.

“Bulldog’s 200mph goal has been over 40 years in the making, being part of that legacy is a fantastic feeling,” said Turner. “The Bulldog has now fulfilled Aston Martin’s 1980s promise and everyone who has worked on the car—from those who first designed and built it, to Classic Motor Cars who undertook the restoration under the management of Richard Gauntlett, can feel very proud.”

“The conditions were perfect for the run and the car performed perfectly too, easily hitting the 200mph mark.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Aston Martin DP-K9 Bulldog (@astonbulldog)

The post Aston Martin Bulldog does 0-to-200-mph in 44 years appeared first on Hagerty Media.

NHTSA wants mandatory automatic braking on all new light-duty vehicles

Intake: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is asking the Biden administration to require automatic emergency braking, including for pedestrians, on all new light-duty vehicles. If the proposal is adopted, most all cars and light trucks would be required to have the crash-avoidance technology three years after the rule is finalized. Tougher requirements would take effect four years after that finalization. NHTSA projects the proposal could prevent at least 360 deaths and reduce injuries on U.S. roads by at least 24,000 a year. Said Ann Carlson, NHTSA’s chief counsel: “In this rule-making, we’re proposing to require that the systems be much more effective at much higher speeds.” The proposal would require the systems to avoid other vehicles at speeds up to 50 mph if a driver fails to react. If a driver brakes, but not enough to avoid a wreck, the system would have to fully avoid another vehicle at speeds up to 62 mph. It also would require vehicles to be able to stop and avoid pedestrians at speeds up to 37 mph.

Exhaust: NHTSA estimates the cost per vehicle to be $82 for each design cycle change per model, according to the proposal. “We know we’re throwing a challenge out here,” Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary of the U.S. Transportation Department, said at a press event Wednesday. “But we know that a lot of this technology is already pretty well-developed, and this is a time to take things to the next level, to make this technology more universally deployed and more stringent.” — Steven Cole Smith

Going, Going, Goon! Peter Sellers’ Aston Martin DB4GT heads to auction

Intake: A 1961 Aston Martin DB4GT owned by British comedy legend Peter Sellers and driven by him in 1963’s The Wrong Arm of the Law is to go under the hammer at Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed Sale on July 14. As ‘”Pearly Gates” in the 1963 Ealing Comedy, Sellers escaped the rozzers in their wheezing Wolseley 6/90 thanks to the 306 hp of the DB4GT’s 3.7-liter straight-six engine. The DB4GT’s getaway go was also aided by its 12-plug head, weight-saving magnesium body panels, and Perspex rear window. Almost all of the 75 D4GTs built by Aston Martin were two-seaters, but Sellers’ car had occasional rear seats installed, which allowed his unlikely accomplice Inspector Parker, played by Lionel Jeffries, to join him in the speedy chase scenes. A confirmed car enthusiast, Sellers did much of the on-screen driving himself, although the sketchiest stunts were done by Aston Martin dealer Ken Rudd, who also had a cameo as a gang member in the movie. During filming, the car’s original engine was damaged and the car was returned to the factory where it was fitted with a bigger four-liter block. A different DB4GT was also used in a scene where it leaps over a humpback bridge. Sellers bought the DB4GT in late 1961 or early 1962 and had it serviced regularly at Aston Martin Feltham where he met expert mechanic Richard Williams, who he hired to look after his car collection. The car had several owners after Sellers, er, sold it, including the chairman of the Aston Martin Owners’ Club, Gerry Keane. It has since been totally rebuilt and repainted in Goodwood Green.

Exhaust: Sellers’ DB4GT ticks all the boxes and “It really has all the credentials to be one of the most coveted examples,” says Bonhams’ Senior Collector Car Consultant James Knight. As a result, Bonhams expects the car to fetch £2.2–£2.6 million ($2.7–$3.35m) but we wouldn’t be surprised if its celebrity provenance sees the price go even higher. — Nik Berg

Toyota’s first U.S.-made EV will hail from Kentucky

Intake: According to a report from Automotive News, Toyota has selected its plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, to build its first U.S.-made EV, a forthcoming three-row crossover. The batteries for the new EV will come from a plant that’s being built in Liberty, North Carolina, which just received a $2.1 billion investment yesterday. That North Carolina plant will have six battery production lines—four for hybrids and two for EVs. Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky, plant is currently responsible for the Camry, Camry Hybrid, RAV4 Hybrid, and the Lexus ES sedan, but production of the ES will be phased out of the plant by 2025. Adding the EV to the Georgetown plant is not expected to have a major impact on production, which the plant says is 550,000 vehicles annually.

Exhaust: The Inflation Reduction Act’s heavy emphasis on North American EV and battery manufacturing is largely the reason behind this move. Since the law passed last August, automakers and suppliers have earmarked more than $50 billion in investments for EV and battery production in North America. — Nathan Petroelje

Lincoln MKCs being recalled for under-hood fires

Intake: Ford is recalling about 142,000 Lincoln MKCs and is advising owners to park outdoors and away from structures while it investigates the cause of under-hood fires. The cause is not clear but it is believed the fires originate near the 12-volt battery, says Automotive News. The model years being recalled are 2015–2019.

Exhaust: Ford said it is aware of 19 potentially related reports of under-hood fires, including seven reports since December, while the vehicle was parked and turned off. Ford said it is unaware of any physical injuries related to this issue. The MKC was Lincoln’s entry-level SUV, based on the Ford Escape. It was replaced by the Lincoln Corsair, which is also Escape-based. The Corsair and Escape are not part of this recall.— SCS

Indy fan whose car was damaged by the flying tire will get a new one

Intake: IndyCar fan Robin Matthews saw the crash that caused Kyle Kirkwood’s tire and wheel to clear the fence in Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, but she didn’t realize that it came down on her white Chevrolet, nicknamed Snowball, until after the race. The impact (pictured above) totaled the vehicle, which had to be towed away. Matthews was treated with a chance to kiss the yard of bricks, and IMS president J. Douglas Boles gave her a ride home. “I didn’t see it come down,” Matthews told the Indianapolis Star. “I came down, and they said, ‘Robin, it’s your car!’ I thought, ‘No.’ I thought somebody was pranking me. It’s a car. It’s fine.”

Exhaust: On Wednesday a  spokesperson told the Star that Penske Entertainment, which also owns the IndyCar Series as well as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, would also give Matthews, a race fan from Indianapolis, a new car to replace the one that was damaged when Kirkwood’s car launched off the back of Felix Rosenqvist’s after Rosenqvist hit the wall between Turns 1 and 2. Kirkwood’s car flipped, and his tire went soaring over the fence, and the corner of a grandstand where many fans were watching the race, before landing in the parking lot, where it crushed the Chevrolet. No one was injured by the flying tire. — SCS

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters. 

The post NHTSA demands all cars self-brake, comedian’s Aston for sale, Lincoln MKCs at fire risk appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin is throwing around a lot of superlatives as it unveils the successor to the DB11. The DB12 is “a quantum shift and sets the benchmark for performance, ultra-luxury and style,” says the 110-year-old British sports car maker. “Combining a scintillating driving experience with exceptional refinement, state-of-the-art technology and indulgent luxury, the DB12 demands a new definition. Grand is not enough; this is the world’s first Super Tourer.”

These are bold claims for what, at first glance looks like a made-over DB11, but there’s an awful lot of new stuff under the skin to justify the bravado. The whole structure is significantly stiffer, with the engine cross brace, front and rear undertrays, front crossmember and rear bulkhead all beefed up. The suspension now features next-generation intelligent active dampers which are said to provide better control across all of the DB12’s drive settings. There’s an E-Diff and revised ESC system for enhanced traction and the electric power steering system offers variable assistance with a constant ratio, giving just 2.4 turns lock-to-lock. Braking is the job of 400mm front discs and 360mm rear rotors which are drilled and grooved to better dissipate heat. A carbon ceramic setup its also offered. Unique-to-Aston Michelin Pilot Sport 5 S tires are fitted with a special compound and polyurethane foam inserts to reduce noise.

With less road rumble you’ll be able to better hear the sounds of the DB12’s engine, which despite what the name suggests, is actually a V-8. The AMG-sourced four-liter, twin-turbo gets a hefty 34 percent power hike compared to its previous installation in the DB11. There’s 680 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 590 lbft of torque available between 2750-6000 rpm which is sent to the rear wheels via an eight-speed automatic transmission. The DB12 will launch from rest to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds and top out at 202 mph.

Aesthetically it’s an evolution of the DB11 with the profile changing little, but there’s a bigger, more aggressive front grille, funky new headlamps, a wider track, and frameless door mirrors. The DB12 is also the first Aston Martin to wear the brand’s new wings badging.

It’s a different story inside where the most noticeable change is the fitment of Aston Martin’s first in-house infotainment system. Supporting Apple Car Play and Android Auto the multi-screen system also, thankfully, has physical buttons for gear selection, drive modes, heating, and ventilation. It looks to strike the right balance between technology and usability, and means that the DB12 will be the first Aston that can receive over-the-air updates, and let customers control certain features from a smartphone app. Of course it’s as opulent as ever, with quilted leather provided by Bridge of Weir in Scotland and a surround sound audio setup from Bowers & Wilkins.

The DB12 is the first new model to be released since CEO Amedeo Felisa joined from Ferrari and he certainly sounds confident. “When a brand has as much history as Aston Martin it is important to honour the past. Not by looking back, but by pushing on with the same energy and passion that propelled our founders 110-years ago,” he says. “With the new DB12 we are reinvigorating the DB model line and reasserting Aston Martin as a maker of truly exceptional performance sportcars. By combining class-leading performance and exceptional chassis dynamics with cutting edge technology, impeccable craftsmanship and immaculate design, DB12 leads Aston Martin into a new era of excellence.”

Deliveries are set to begin in the fall of 2023 with prices and detailed specifications to follow soon.

The post Aston Martin DB12 debuts as a “Super Tourer” appeared first on Hagerty Media.

BMW’s eighth-gen 5 Series brings two new EVs

Intake: BMW has revealed the new eighth-generation 5 Series, and part of the package is the premiere of two all-electric models, each dubbed i5. There are two variants: the i5 M60 xDrive model has 590 hp and can sprint from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, with an estimated 256-mile range. The i5 eDrive 40 has 335 hp, and an estimated 295-mile range. The i5 M60 xDrive starts at $85,095 including shipping. The i5 eDrive 40 starts at $67,795. There are three other gas-powered 5 Series models: The 530i, the 530i xDrive, both four-cylinder models, and the straight-six-powered 540i xDrive. Coming to the U.S. in 2024 will be a plug-in hybrid system.

Exhaust: New features for these 2023 model year BMWs include the Highway Assistant, which allows “attentive hands-free driving at up to 85 mph.” And there’s the “World-first Active Lane Change with eye activation.” The global market launch of BMW’s new 5 Series will begin in October 2023. The new model has grown in length by 3.4 inches, in width by 1.3, and in height by 1.4. The wheelbase has been increased by nearly an inch to 117.9, a change which should improve passenger comfort, especially in the rear. —Steven Cole Smith

Aston Martin will get Honda power in new F1 deal

Intake: Honda will return to the Formula 1 grid in full strength as of 2026, when the Japanese company will supply powertrains for Aston Martin’s race cars. F1’s new engine regulations have tempted Honda back again, even though it could be argued that the firm never really left. Honda officially pulled out at the end of 2021, despite Max Verstappen winning the Drivers’ World Championship for Red Bull, and is still involved in supporting the energy drinks-driven team through 2025. From 2026, however, Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) will again offer full factory support to an F1 team. “In this project, HRC will design, develop, and manufacture the power unit and supply it to Aston. Aston will design, develop, and manufacture the chassis and other components,” said HRC President Koji Watanabe.

Exhaust: Why the U-turn? It’s all down to the more sustainable racing regulations that come into force in 2026. These rules shift the balance of F1’s hybrid setup, mandating an even 50:50 split between the power produced by the internal combustion engine (ICE) and the electric motors. The ICE unit will also be powered by 100 percent sustainable fuel. “This decision was made largely in pursuit of Honda’s goal of carbon neutrality, as the 2026 F1 regulations will demand the usage of electric power and other [sustainable sources] more than three times than the current regulations,” explains Watanabe. — Nik Berg

Ford backtracks, won’t kill AM radio

Intake: In a tweet, Ford CEO Jim Farley announced that the company will keep AM radio in all 2024 Ford and Lincoln models and restore it on two electric vehicles via a software update. Farley said the decision was made after speaking with “policy leaders” about the need for AM radio “as a part of the emergency alert system.” The company removed AM radio from the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning and planned to discontinue it on future products. “Customers can currently listen to AM radio content in a variety of ways in our vehicles—including via streaming—and we will continue to innovate to deliver even better in-vehicle entertainment and emergency notification options in the future,” he said.

Exhaust: Farley’s move comes a week after a group of bipartisan federal legislators introduced a bill to bar carmakers from eliminating AM broadcast radio on new cars and light trucks, citing safety concerns. The bill would direct NHTSA to issue regulations to mandate AM radio in new vehicles without additional charge. U.S. Senator Edward Markey, one of the sponsors of the bill, on praised Ford’s reversal. “AM radio is more than just an essential safety feature—it’s a free, accessible source for anyone to listen to music, news, sports and entertainment.” —SCS

Designed by F1 champ, new electric superbike will cost $87,000

Intake: Two-time Formula 1 champion Mika Häkkinen has partnered with Verge to create an electric luxury superbike that will be limited to just 100 units. A motor is located in the very futuristic-looking, hubless rear wheel, an arrangement that all but eliminates the drivetrain. Power is held in a 20-kWh battery that can be fast-charged in just 35 minutes and provides almost 220 miles of range. A full suite of riders aids include ABS, traction control, and customizable rider modes. Verge has a U.S. base of operations in San Francisco, California, but has yet to open a dealer location.

Exhaust: New electric motorcycles seem to be popping up from just about everywhere, and are currently targeted at well-heeled buyers. A startup with this price tag likely won’t have trouble finding buyers with a name like Häkkinen on board. Even with the bikes impressive specs, Verge may find this bike a tough to sell without a single U.S. dealer. — Kyle Smith 

Mercedes-Maybach goes dark with Night Series design package

Intake: Mercedes-Maybach has announced a new design package for its high-end models called the Night Series. The Night Series package is available on the 2024 Maybach S-Class, the GLS SUV, and the EQS electric SUV. It brings dark chrome styling elements with rose gold details, as well as an extravagant new wheel design and plenty of herringbone interior accents. The cars will still wear Maybach’s distinctive two-tone paint job, with silver up top. The double-M emblem is shot-gunned all over the vehicles, from the grilles to the fancy wheels. The Night Series package will be made available later this year immediately following the debut of the 2024 Mercedes-Maybach S-Class and the EQS electric SUV. The package will be made available for the GLS SUV early next year.

Exhaust: Once a relatively quiet form of ultra-luxury, Maybach is becoming quite shouty. It’s not our cup of tea, but the Maybach folks wouldn’t release a bold package like this without some data suggesting customers will love it. — Nathan Petroelje

NHTSA proposes pedestrian crash tests

Intake: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed updates to its New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) to include pedestrian crashworthiness tests, according to Automotive News. The updates would add tests to measure pedestrian protection in a vehicle collision, plus test the ability of advanced driver-assistance systems to prevent such a collision, according to NHTSA’s request for public comment issued Monday. “These proposed updates to NCAP are an important step in addressing the crisis of roadway deaths in America,” NHTSA chief counsel Ann Carlson said in a statement. “Vehicles must be designed to protect their occupants while increasing safety for those outside the vehicle, too.”

Exhaust: Pedestrian deaths have been on the rise in the U.S. in recent years, a trend blamed on worsening driving behaviors since the pandemic. Drivers struck and killed 3434 people in the first six months of 2022, the most recent data available. That amounted to an average of 19 fatalities per day. —SCS

California seeks EPA approval for ICE ban

Intake: According to an exclusive by Reuters, California is asking the Biden administration for permission to implement limits on ICE engine emissions, ending with a complete ban on gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035, “a landmark move that could speed the end of gasoline-powered vehicles, according to a letter seen by Reuters.” The California Air Resources Board, which approved the plan in August, asked the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to approve a waiver under the Clean Air Act to implement its new rules that set yearly rising zero emission vehicle rules starting in 2026 and would end the sales of vehicles only powered by gasoline by 2035.

Exhaust: If California gets its way, only electric and hybrid vehicles could be sold in the state starting in 2035. The Biden administration has repeatedly refused to endorse setting a date to phase out the sale of gasoline-only vehicles. In the EPA approves the request, it’s likely that other states—including Rhode Island, Washington, Virginia, Vermont, Oregon, New York, and Massachusetts—may follow suit. —SCS

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post BMW adds EVs to new 5 Series, Ford to keep AM radio, CA wants EPA approval to ban engines appeared first on Hagerty Media.

New Tacoma arrives with manual, coil springs; no V-6

Intake: One of the oldest vehicles in the U.S. fleet has finally been updated: The Toyota Tacoma is all-new for 2024. “Redesigned from the ground up and built upon the TNGA-F global truck platform shared with Tundra and Sequoia, the all-new Tacoma was designed and engineered for the U.S. market,” Toyota says. There are at least two notable aspects on the mid-sized, body-on-frame truck: It’s still offered with a six-speed manual transmission, and the once-available V-6 is gone. Still, the engine choice is impressive: The i-FORCE turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine produces up to 278 horsepower and 317 lb-ft of torque; the available i-FORCE MAX turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder hybrid, 326 horsepower and 465 lb-ft of torque. Maximum towing capability is 6500 pounds. Also enhancing ride and handling characteristics on Tacoma is a newly available multi-link rear suspension. This system replaces the previous model’s leaf springs in favor of a set of coils. However, leaf springs remain standard on SR, SR5 XtraCab, and TRD PreRunner grades.

Exhaust: First impression? Worth the wait, even if the new Taco doesn’t offering a locking front differential like the Ranger and Canyon do. The Tacoma, which Toyota calls a “bad-ass adventure machine,” features an all-new Trailhunter model, a factory-developed overlanding rig built from the ground up with integrated off-road equipment from ARB, Old Man Emu, and RIGID. The Trailhunter, which comes with 33-inch tires, features an integrated high-output air compressor in the bed for airing large-diameter tires back up quickly after airing down for spending days, or weeks, on the trail, Toyota says. —Steven Cole Smith

China’s Geely doubles down on Aston Martin

Intake: Geely has doubled its stake in Aston Martin to 17 percent, making the Chinese conglomerate the third biggest shareholder in the 110-year-old British sports-car maker. The other key owners of Aston are Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll and his Yew Tree consortium, along with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, while Mercedes-Benz also holds shares. Significantly, by investing around $290 million in Aston Martin, the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group will get a seat on the board. “Since first acquiring our minority holding last September, we have worked collaboratively with executive chairman Lawrence Stroll and his colleagues and now look forward to exploring joint technology synergies and new growth opportunities to help this iconic automotive brand to achieve its full potential,” says Geely chairman Eric Li.

Exhaust: Geely’s cash injection is much needed and has also helped shore up Aston Martin’s share price after its original listing on the London Stock Exchange failed to deliver as expected. Geely’s plans for Aston Martin don’t end here, however. Although it has agreed not to buy any more of the British company until August 2024, Geely will almost certainly take more control in the future, just as it did with Volvo and Lotus. —Nik Berg

Hyundai and Kia settle class-action lawsuit

Intake: To settle a class-action lawsuit, Hyundai and Kia have agreed to pay more than $200 million to owners of as many as 9 million theft-prone vehicles that lacked engine immobilizers, said Automotive News. The automakers did not include the immobilizers, which prevents the engine from starting without a key, on base trims levels of certain 2011–2021 model-year Hyundai and Kia vehicles. “Last summer TikTok users posted how-to videos that exposed a method to steal the vehicles. The posts triggered a spike in a vehicle theft across the U.S.,” Automotive News said.

Exhaust: A portion of the settlement, $145 million, will go toward out-of-pocket losses experienced by owners, including vehicles lost or stolen. Steve Berman, managing partner at the Hagens Berman law firm in Seattle and lead attorney in the lawsuit, said in a statement that they “worked to achieve a settlement that covers many types of losses—from those who were lucky enough to have never had their theft-prone car stolen, to those whose stolen cars were totaled completely due to Hyundai and Kia’s negligence.” —SCS

Chevrolet EV Work Truck will have 450-mile range

Intake: The Chevrolet Silverado EV Work Truck’s EPA-estimated range is in: 450 miles on a full charge. With this official estimate, the Silverado EV WT is expected to offer over 100 miles more than its closest on-sale competitor. The engineering team targeted at least 400 miles of range, but they were able to go above and beyond to achieve this increase. Over the past several months, extensive development and testing unlocked the increased 450-mile range. “This figure, paired with the ability to charge at 350 kW, makes the Silverado EV WT the choice electric pickup to serve fleet buyers’ needs. After all, this truck wears a Silverado badge—it’s made for tough jobs,” Chevrolet says.

Exhaust: The truck is on track to launch in late spring. This fall, the company will start production of the Silverado EV RST First Edition for retail customers. —SCS

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post New Tacoma is here, Kia and Hyundai settle theft suit, Chevy’s 450-mile electric work truck appeared first on Hagerty Media.

NHTSA wants to recall 67 million airbag inflators

Intake: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has requested the recall of 67 million airbag inflators because it believes there is a safety defect, but supplier ARC Automotive rejected the U.S. regulator’s request, documents released on Friday show, says Automotive News.

ARC airbag inflators are in General Motors, Stellantis, BMW, Hyundai, and Kia vehicles. On its own, GM on Friday agreed to recall nearly a million vehicles with ARC inflators after a rupture in March resulted in facial injuries to a driver. “The GM recall covers 994,763 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, and GMC Acadia vehicles from the 2014 through 2017 model years with modules produced by ARC Automotive Inc. Dealers will replace the driver’s air-bag module,” Automotive News says. This is separate from the massive Takata airbag recall.

Exhaust: GM said it learned of a report that the front driver’s airbag inflator in a 2017 Chevrolet Traverse ruptured during deployment in a crash.  Tennessee-based ARC rejected NHTSA’s conclusion that a defect exists, saying the claim is based upon just seven field ruptures in the United States. NHTSA, the company said, “then asks ARC to prove a negative—that the 67 million inflators in this population are not defective.”

Those 67 million inflators were produced over 18 years. The company said it will continue to work with NHTSA and automakers to evaluate ruptures. — Steven Cole Smith

Aston Martin teases DB11 successor

Intake: Aston Martin is set to unveil the follow-up to its DB11 grand tourer on May 24. The British sports car maker is making some bold claims in advance of the reveal.

“This is no mere GT,” says the press release that accompanies. “Grand is not enough.” Judging from the silhouette shown in the teaser images released, the car, likely to be called the DB12, is an evolution of its forebear and not a ground-up new model. A report in Autocar suggests that it will come with more powerful versions of the V-8 and V-12 engines currently installed in the DB11, including the 770-hp 12-cylinder that features in the DBS 770 Ultimate.

A huge improvement should come in the shape of an updated infotainment system, replacing Aston’s current Mercedes-Benz system, which is past-its-sell-by-date. Aston Martin chairman Lawrence Stroll told Autocar that new system it will be distinctly different from Mercedes’s technology by using “our own faces, our own voice—a proper English accent.”

Exhaust: Aston Martin is riding high on a flying start to the 2023 Formula 1 season, and Stroll says that its F1-tribute DBX and Vantage models have attracted between 300 and 400 customers. He’ll be hoping the DB12 will accelerate sales further. — Nik Berg

86-strong classic collection goes to auction with no reserve

Intake: A single owner’s collection of classic Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes is set to go under the hammer, and there are so many cars up for grabs that RM Sotheby’s had to split the auction into two.

The group of cars has been dubbed the Carrera Collection, after the 44 Porsches included in the sale. The auctions will take place on July 7th and 12th, in Switzerland and Italy respectively. Two 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 Tourings are likely to fetch the highest prices. Other highlights include four BMW Z8s, an Alfa Romeo 8C Spider, and a trio of Mercedes-Benz 280 SE cabriolets.

Exhaust: None of the cars listed feature a reserve price, so they’re guaranteed to sell. But with so much choice here, could supply outpace demand, or will we see record prices? We’ll report back after this extraordinary sale. — NB

Flying car passes wind-tunnel testing

Intake: A flying car is one step closer to airborne reality, electric Brazilian planemaker Eve announced today. Eve, which is controlled by aircraft manufacturer Embraer, said it has successfully completed wind-tunnel testing of its fully electric flying vehicle. The company aims to start commercial operation of that vehicle in 2026, says Reuters.

The concept, called an electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, has been dubbed a flying taxi. “The information we obtained during this phase of development has helped us further refine the technical solutions of our eVTOL, before committing to production tooling and conforming prototypes,” said Luiz Valentini, Eve’s top technology officer.

Exhaust: Production has not yet begun, but Eve says it has a backlog of nearly 2800 orders, with development backed by investors such as United Airlines and Rolls-Royce. The wind-tunnel tests were completed in Switzerland using an eVTOL scale model. — SCS

AM radio continues to take it on the chin

Intake: Multiple manufacturers are removing AM radios from their cars, over protests from AM stations around the country. Automakers such as BMW, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen, and Volvo “are removing AM radios from new electric vehicles because electric [motors] can interfere with the sound of AM stations. And Ford is taking a bigger step, eliminating AM from all of its vehicles, electric or gas-operated,” says the Washington Post.

Exhaust: Some station owners and advertisers contend that losing access to the car dashboard will be a death blow to many of the nation’s more than 4000 AM stations — the possible demise of a core element of the country’s delivery system for news, political talk, coverage of weather emergencies, and foreign language programming.

“This is a tone-deaf display of complete ignorance about what AM radio means to Americans,” Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade journal covering the talk radio industry, told the Post. “It’s not the end of the world for radio, but it is the loss of an iconic piece of American culture.” — SCS

Sierra Club: Some car dealers decline to sell EVs

Intake: The Sierra Club has complied a 15-page report titled A Nationwide Study of the Electric Vehicle Shopping Experience. Sierra club volunteers cold-called 800 car dealers and asked if they had EVs available for sale. Some “key findings” include the fact that 66 percent of auto dealers did not have a single EV available for sale.

Within that 66 percent, 44 percent reported they would offer an EV for sale if they could get one. Also within that group, 45 percent of those dealers reported they would not offer an EV for sale regardless of automaker allocation and supply chain constraints.

Exhaust: Mercedes had the best availability, with 90 percent of dealers having at least one EV in stock. Toyota and Honda had the worst EV availability. Only 11 percent of Honda dealers and 15 percent of Toyota dealers had an EV for sale. The survey did not differentiate between plug-in hybrids and electrics. — SCS

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post NHTSA asks for recall of 67 million airbag parts, Aston teases DB12, and the fade of AM radio appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When Aston Martin announced that it was planning to build a series of continuation cars, many in the brand’s classic community bristled.

There was resistance at first, Paul Spires, President of Aston Martin Works and pioneer of the program, explains. Some owners expressed concern about what making “new” classic cars would do to the values of the originals.

“There was one gentleman who owned an original DB4 GT and an original Zagato and he sent me quite a pointed letter about what we were doing and how he wasn’t very happy about it,” says Spires. “So I invited him in and he was absolutely blown away by the quality of what we delivered and the way that we had gone about it. We weren’t just mashing cars together and trying to make as much money as possible, we were generally trying to enhance Aston Martin’s heritage credentials in the world by doing these cars. From being a naysayer, he was absolutely converted.

“He was one of the first people that actually said, ‘Can I have an engine for my race car?’ and of course, we built an engine for his race car.”

The continuation program has led to hundreds of crucial components for the DB4, DB5, and DB6 being made available new from Aston Martin Works.

“When we started the continuation cars, we looked at every component that was available off the shelf and those that weren’t available off the shelf. We either said, yes, the quality of what’s available to everybody is acceptable, or no, it doesn’t meet our very stringent quality criteria,” explains Spires.

“At the end of the day, we were building the world’s second-most-expensive production motor car, so there is a higher level of quality on those cars than those built in the 1960s. We found that a lot of componentry just wasn’t available, so then we had to reverse engineer those parts where either the original supplier had gone broke or the tooling wasn’t available anymore.

“We spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the tooling to create these components for the continuation cars, and as a by-product, the really good news for owners of the original cars is that a lot of the high quality components are available to them directly off the shelf from ourselves now.”

Spires says the number of new parts is too long to list and includes everything from door handles to steering wheels, but the headline items are the biggest ticket pieces: engine blocks, cylinder heads, and gearboxes.

“The gearboxes we supply today are brand new, built by ZF to exactly the same standards they were originally and although they’re expensive (approximately $63,000) without this program, you just couldn’t afford to do it,” he adds.

“Lots of cars lost their gearboxes over the years, because the cars didn’t have a massively high value. If you broke a ZF gearbox, you would probably buy a Jaguar gearbox and put it in the hole. This enables us to put a lot of the heritage cars back into very good order, and as a consequence, improve the values of the car.

“The engine block (yours for around $25,000) is cast by the same people that cast the Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin Formula 1 engines—the very, very best people, anywhere in the world. In the old days in the 1960s, all the drillings in the blocks were done by hand, and there’s nothing wrong with that, apart from today, with a CNC machine, you can be so much more accurate.

“From a provenance point of view, everybody wants a matching numbers engine, so what we do with the with the new blocks is stamp them with the original engine number, but with a suffix ‘C’ at the end so somebody in 100 years time can understand the car has got an original Aston Martin engine from 2023.”

Spires estimates that there are around 6000 heritage Aston Martins that could benefit from the parts program. However, we spoke to independent Aston restorers who suggested the price may be prohibitive.

“If you start putting that into a DB6, someone’s got to really be in love with the car when you actually look at the end result of what it’ll add to the value,” one expert told us.

Cost certainly isn’t a sticking point for the dozens of vehicles currently undergoing restoration—and benefitting from the new parts—at Aston Martin Works.

“For us, the most important thing is to keep all the heritage cars on the road and keep them in the best possible condition so that we can enjoy them,” Spires concludes. “I don’t want our cars being museum pieces because you can’t get the parts anymore. That’d be a travesty.”

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Aston Martin continuation cars are keeping proper classics alive appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Charles III will be crowned King this weekend. He will be driven from London’s Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace in a golden coach which dates back to 1760. The 10,000-pound gilded carriage will be pulled by eight Windsor Grey horses and travel at a walking pace.

Charles is, however, well-known for being an enthusiast of a different kind of horsepower, and his collection of cars is believed to be worth close to $20 million. The new King has inherited two official state Bentleys—each custom built at a reported cost of $12.5M for his mother’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. Based on the Arnage, the cars were stretched, had their rooflines raised and were fully armor-plated. Not unlike the U.S. President’s Beast, the Bentleys also have puncture-resistant tires, blue flashing lights, and a cabin that can be hermetically sealed in the event of a gas attack.

The King’s personal preference is for Aston Martin, though. He owns a 1994 V8 Vantage Volante, and a 1969 MK ii DB6 Volante which he was given by his parents as a 21st birthday gift. Charles’ love of these gas-guzzling British sports cars is somewhat at odds with his views on protecting the planet, so in 2008 he had the DB6 converted to run on E85 bio-ethanol produced on his Duchy of Cornwall estate.

At the Cop26 summit in 2021, Charles explained that the Aston uses fuel created from “surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process.” While arguably carbon-neutral and able to ease the King’s conscience, gulping down the equivalent of four bottles of wine every mile, doesn’t sound terribly efficient.

Perhaps the new King will go further and electrify his Astons. British specialist Lunaz offers a conversion for the DB6 and with the Crown Jewels now in his possession he could easily afford the $1 million price tag.

The post The new King of England drives an Aston Martin running on wine and cheese appeared first on Hagerty Media.

To nobody’s surprise, the Integra Type S costs more than $50K

Intake: Pricing is out for Acura’s hotly anticipated Integra Type S. The high-performance front-wheel-drive sports car will ring the register for $51,995, just a hair shy of $20,000 more than a base Integra. For that money, you’ll get a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine good for 320 hp and 310 lb-ft of torque, a six-speed manual transmission, and four-piston Brembo front disc brakes. Other performance hardware includes adaptive suspension and lightweight wheels with wider Michelin Pilot Sport 4S summer tires. The Integra Type S is the fourth Type S model launched by Acura in the past two years, joining the MDX Type S SUV, the TLX Type S sport sedan, and the NSX Type S supercar. Order books will open next week, on Thursday at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Exhaust: A $20,100 gap between the Type S and the base Integra is no small sum, but it’s probably better to compare the Type S to the Honda Civic Type R with which the Acura shares its mechanicals. That $8000 delta for a nicer interior, a better sound system, and the 5 additional ponies seems just about right. What’s more, that’s roughly the same pricing gap as the one between the Honda Civic Si and the Acura Integra A-Spec. Viewed in that context, the Integra Type S seems rather fairly priced.  — Nathan Petroelje

Ian Callum crafts the consummate Vanquish

Intake: British designer Ian Callum isn’t done with the Aston Martin V-12 Vanquish just yet. Callum has always viewed his 2001 supercar as incomplete, telling Hagerty.com, “I think more assertiveness was needed for the car to bring it up to scratch.” That led him to develop the limited-run Callum Vanquish 25 resto-mod, but even that doesn’t appear to be enough, for he’s now taken the car further still. Callum has just revealed a proposal for a Vanquish Shooting Brake and it might just be the most sublime take on Aston’s Noughties coupe ever. The render sees the Vanquish re-imagined with a longer roofline, wide rear flanks, and just the hint of a ducktail spoiler. Glorious isn’t it?

Exhaust: “Another twist on our Vanquish VC25,” is all that Callum said as he teased the car. Will he build it? We can but hope. — Nik Berg

New York battling car theft with free Apple AirTags

Intake: New York City is adding a new weapon to its car theft battle: Apple AirTags. At least some residents are eligible to receive the free Bluetooth-powered tracking devices to combat a spike in car thefts in the five boroughs, Mayor Eric Adams announced. According to CBS News, the city will hand out 500 AirTags for free, donated by the Association for a Better New York, to residents, including in the Bronx where car thefts rose 19.4 percent from this time last year. Citywide, the number of stolen vehicles is up 11.4 percent.

Exhaust: “It allows our officers to be more strategic while mitigating pursuits, keeping us safe and keeping the community safe,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said. “Hopefully we recover your car undamaged, we take a bad guy off the streets, and you get a car back to conduct your business and it doesn’t impose on your life.” Car owners can hide the AirTags in places like the car’s glove compartment or trunk. If a user’s vehicle is stolen, they can locate it in an app that tracks the user’s car in real time using a Bluetooth signal, and alert the police.  — Steven Cole Smith

Supply chain issues hit Ford’s F-150

Intake: Ford has been hit with another supply chain issue, says Reuters, and this time the culprit is door handles. The company is parking some new F-150s until the door handle issue is solved. “The automaker is working to resolve the issue,” a source said on Wednesday, “adding that some vehicles have been parked until the proper handle can be installed while some shipments are being held.” “While a supplier part shortage is affecting some of our North American plants, we expect to make up all of the production that is impacted,” the automaker told Reuters.

Exhaust: Ford temporarily halted production at three plants over the weekend where it makes both gasoline and electric versions of the F-150 pickup truck, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. “The automaker is building trucks with temporary door handles and then parking them until correct ones are available,” the Journal said. Production has since resumed at the facilities, but now workers are building some trucks with substitute handles, including ones that are the wrong color or don’t have the proper keyholes, until the proper parts are available. — SCS

Meanwhile, Ford is cutting prices on the Mustang Mach-E

Intake: In response to Tesla’s price cuts on its products, Ford is trimming prices for the second time this year on its Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle. Ford’s price cuts for the Mach-E average $3000 to $4000 for most models, or about 6 percent. That puts the Mach-E’s sticker price at between $43,000 and $60,000.  Ford also said it would increase production of the Mach-E in the second half of this year and has re-opened the order books.

Exhaust: The price change is due in part to a switch from nickel cobalt manganese battery cells to lithium iron phosphate cells for the standard range battery pack, which cost less to produce and charges up quicker. Power and range have also been improved. Tesla’s Elon Musk has been very aggressive in cutting prices at least a half-dozen times this year as the battle for electric vehicles intensifies. Musk is trading price for volume, and the effect on stock prices has been varied. — SCS

Jeep recalling some Wranglers for battery issue

Intake: Jeep is recalling about 2500 of its popular 2022–23 Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid for a potential battery issue. The Wranglers may have incorrect fuse fasteners in the high-voltage battery that could cause the fuse to fail, resulting in an abrupt power loss. The part was manufactured by Samsung, NHTSA says. Possible warning signs may include a malfunctioning indicator lamp, changes in the Jeep’s drivability, or a peculiar noise.

Exhaust: This comes on the heels of a Stellantis recall of nearly 46,000 Jeep and Ram vehicles with a 3.0-liter diesel engine because their high-pressure fuel pumps may fail, which can result in a stalling engine, increasing the risk of a crash. — SCS

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Integra Type S price revealed, the Vanquish Aston should have made, Wrangler 4xe recalled appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Shelby’s first electric car is not for Americans

Intake: Shelby American is to sell a limited-edition upgrade package for the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, but it won’t be available in the U.S. Just 100 of the aftermarket kits will be sold in Europe, available through the small number of Shelby dealerships. “This is our first foray into a production electric vehicle, so we spent a great deal of time testing EVs on the track to understand their unique handling dynamics,” says Vince LaViolette, Shelby American vice president of operations. “Based on that experience, we lowered the SUV over an inch, cut weight off the top of it, reduced rotating mass to enhance stability, and enhanced the aerodynamics.” The Shelby Mustang Mach-E GT gets a carbon fiber hood and splitter, lightweight wheels, carbon mirror caps, plus a set of fetching racing stripes. Inside there’s carbon fiber door trim, new floor mats, and Shelby badging. The electric Shelby is also noisier than standard thanks to a Borla Active Performance Sound System that “generates a hyper-realistic ICE soundtrack that perfectly matches the EV motor status and other vehicle dynamics.” Prices for the package start at €24,900 ($27,390).

Exhaust: Not to say we called it, but … kinda. The Mach-E GT joins the Shelby line-up to celebrate the 100th birthday of Carroll Shelby but American enthusiasts needn’t fear that this defines the company’s future. “Shelby American continues to also be firmly committed to cars and trucks powered by internal combustion engines. We’ll introduce several new models over the next 12 months to keep V-8 fans revved up,” proclaims Gary Patterson, president of Shelby American. — Nik Berg

GM CEO Mary Barra’s 2022 pay worth nearly $29 million

Intake: According to Automotive News, General Motors’ top executive, Mary Barra, received a “pay package” worth almost $29 million in 2022, making her the highest-paid executive among the Detroit Big 3 for the eighth straight year. “In determining her pay,” the story said, “GM’s board of directors noted that the company achieved records for adjusting pretax earnings, global revenue, and profit-sharing for hourly workers, according to the filing.” Barra’s compensation topped the $25.6 million for Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares and the $21 million earned by Ford CEO Jim Farley.

Exhaust: Barra earned a half-percent less than she did in 2021, based mostly on an 18-percent decline in nonequity incentive compensation. GM said President Mark Reuss received compensation worth $14.4 million in 2022, up 14 percent from the prior year. Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson’s compensation was worth $10.2 million, a 6.9 percent increase. — Steven Cole Smith

Factory fresh parts for old Aston Martins

Intake: Aston Martin Works will sell brand new gearboxes, engine blocks, cylinder heads, and other major components so that owners can rebuild their classic cars to factory standards. The parts are available for the DB4, DB5, DB6, and a number of V-8s from the 1960s and ’70s. In some cases, it’s the first time in 50 years that parts have been available new. Every component will be supplied with supporting documentation to prove its provenance. Reach out to Aston Martin Works for more information and pricing.

Exhaust: You can thank Aston Martin’s continuation cars for these newly available components. The multi-million dollar sales of the DB4 GT, DB4 GT Zagato, and Goldfinger DB5 continuations “naturally led to the need for new parts while also generating a full understanding of which parts were immediately available and which had not been manufactured for many years,” says Aston Martin. —NB

California phasing out diesel trucks, regulates locomotives

Intake: On Friday, California regulators approved new rules requiring all medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold in the state in 2036 to be zero-emission, one day after the California Air Resources Board adopted “reduced emission regulations” for locomotives, says Reuters. Existing “Big rigs, local delivery and government fleets must transition to zero-emission by 2035, garbage trucks and local buses by 2039, and sleeper cab tractors and specialty vehicles by 2042.” As for locomotives, all switch, industrial, and passenger engines built starting in 2030 will be required to be zero-emissions, and for freight line haul beginning in 2035.

Exhaust: “With these actions requiring all new heavy-duty truck sales to be zero emission and tackling train pollution in our state, we’re one step closer to achieving healthier neighborhoods and cleaner air for all Californians,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. CARB in August voted to require all new passenger vehicles sold in the state by 2035 to be either electric or plug-in electric hybrids. — SCS

Own Brock Yates’ Eliminator hot rod

Intake: The legendary Ford Eliminator hot rod, built to race against Ferraris in the 1959 USAC Grand Prix Road Races at Pomona, California and later bought and restored by late automotive writer Brock Yates, is for sale on Bringatrailer.com. The car, which Car and Driver columnist Yates wrote about often, was the subject of his book, The Hot Rod: Resurrection of a Legend, which follows his purchase, restoration, and subsequent Pebble Beach win with the Eliminator.

Exhaust: The hot rod was the work of a Pasadena, California-based racer named Duffy Livingstone. Livingstone is most famous as the man who gave go-karting its name, says Car and Driver. Yates dearly loved the car, as he would tell anyone who asked about it. Bidding ends today, and as of this writing, it’s up to $76,013. —SCS

New problem for older Hyundai and Kia owners: Parts availability

Intake: As if the TikTok Kia challenge wasn’t enough—readers were “challenged” to steal an older, key-operated Kia or Hyundai with just a screwdriver and a USB cable—owners of recovered cars “are waiting months” for replacement parts, ABC News reports. “Many of the cars are recovered within a few days after the thieves are done with their joyrides.” Often a window is broken “and the steering column is damaged or destroyed, making those parts the hardest to find.”

Exhaust: Twenty-three states have called on automakers to “take swift and comprehensive action” to curb the rise in thefts. In Minneapolis, thefts of Kia and Hyundais increased by 836 percent in 2022 over 2021. In St. Louis County, thefts surged 1,090 percent from 2021 to 2022. As a result, owners of the affected Kias and Hyundais are finding it difficult to get insurance. — SCS

The first of the R34-generation Nissan Skylines are now legal for U.S. import

Intake: JDM fans, rejoice: As of today, the first of the R34-generation (1998–2005) Nissan Skylines are now legal for import. The R34 Skyline (and all previous generations) were never sold legally in the American market, which means that they were subject to the U.S. 25-year import rule. The fine print of the 25-year rule makes today extra special; that 25-year clock is measured down to the specific month that a given type of vehicle was first manufactured. Full-scale production for the R34 Skyline began in—you guessed it—May of 1998.

However, this doesn’t mean it’s open season on all things Skyline. The R34 Skyline GT-R, the one that most fans picture when they think of this generation, didn’t enter production until January of 1999, so there’s still some waiting to be done to get ahold of the premier R34s. The variants that are eligible now are the more staid versions, such as the GT-T, a coupe-style body that had a turbocharged 2.5-liter inline-six engine.

Exhaust: Whether you first fell in love with the R34 playing Gran Turismo or watching 2Fast 2Furious, the love affair with this JDM legend was often instant and intense. Occasionally, that led to some folks importing R34s here prematurely (read: illegally) or perhaps getting a very special variant stateside through a show-and-display exemption. Now that the first R34s are cresting that 25-year hill, you can almost hear the collective relaxation from the Skyline community. — Greg Ingold

The post Shelby’s electric SUV, Aston remakes old parts, own Brock Yates’ hot rod appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Vaughn Gittin Jr. returns to Formula Drift in 1300-hp RTR Mustang

Intake: RTR Vehicles just showed off its Spec 5-FD Formula Drift competition vehicle that it will make its racing debut at this week’s Formula Drift Long Beach event. The company also announced that two-time Formula Drift champion Vaughn Gittin Jr. will return to competition after taking a year off. The RTR Mustang has the updated look of the 2024 model, but it’s packing 1300 hp of tire-frying V-8 under the hood. The 2024 Ford Mustang is a natural in the series as well as the larger world of grassroots drifting, since it will include a segment-first electronic drift brake that RTR drivers Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Chelsea DeNofa helped tune.

Exhaust: We’re glad to see Gittin back behind the wheel in Formula Drift, as he’s always entertaining. However, we’re even more interested in driving a new Mustang with the electronic drift brake. Ford says the electronic brake has three times the power of a pedestrian-spec one. The brake’s familiar engagement—a center console lever—certainly looks better than the rocker switch found on most cars. We’re sure that the application of braking force is critical to driver enjoyment; judging from the video, Gittin had fun helping Ford dial everything in. — Brandan Gillogly

Genesis previews a sportier side with GV80 Coupe concept

Intake: Genesis is stepping into the performance-oriented side of high-riding luxury with a new GV80 Coupe concept. Genesis’ chief creative officer Luc Donckerwolke says that the GV80 Coupe concept takes inspiration from the low-slung X Speedium concept that the brand revealed in New York last year. Donckerwolke said the GV80 Coupe “emphasizes the duality of the Genesis brand by showcasing the antagonistic character that lives within the Athletic and Elegance parameters of Genesis’ design philosophy.” The four-passenger SUV features many exterior design cues that are now Genesis trademarks, including the large crest grille and the double-line head- and taillamps. The sleek silhouette, blistered fenders, Magma Orange paint, carbon-fiber roof, and rear-drive platform certainly hint at the sportier aspirations of this concept, crossover silhouette aside. Inside, four bucket seats with carbon-fiber backs, plus a sportier three-spoke steering wheel and a hefty structural brace behind the second row, signal this concept’s rapid intentions.

Exhaust: Though it’s just a concept for now, the GV80 Coupe looks very close to production-ready. With its more traditional SUV offerings finding their stride, we’re not surprised to see Genesis embark on bolder executions that mirror those of its M-badged German counterparts. — Nathan Petroelje

Ex-Stirling Moss Aston Martin will weigh heavy on someone’s wallet

Intake: A 1960 Aston Martin DB4 GT driven to its maiden victory by Stirling Moss is now for sale at RM Sotheby’s. The car is one of just 75 featuring a body made by Touring of Italy, built on lightweight chassis with a shorter wheelbase than the standard DB4. Only six right-hand-drive versions were ever made and this example was constructed for Tommy Sopwith (whose father was aviation pioneer Sir Thomas Sopwith). Sopwith’s Equipe Endeavour racing had the car finished in Jaguar Indigo Blue with white detailing, and its 3.7-liter, twin-plug-ignition straight-six engine powered the car to its maiden win at Goodwood on Easter Monday of 1960 with Moss behind the wheel. Two weeks later Jack Sears won the Aintree 200, then followed up with wins at Oulton Park, Snetterton, and Brands Hatch. Subsequent owners include racers Ron Fry, Ted Jones, David Ham, and Pink Floyd’s manager Steve O’Rourke. The current owner has had possession since 2005 and it has been in regular action at the Goodwood Revival and Silverstone Classic.

Exhaust: The car is offered as a private sale, with no price listed. In 2021 a similar race car sold for $2.5 million despite being in bits, but with this DB4 GT’s illustrious history, we’d expect the next buyer’s pockets to be at least twice as deep. — Nik Berg

Student-restored car accepted to Pebble Beach Concours

Intake: Crowning a nearly 10-year effort, the 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300 S Cabriolet owned by McPherson College has been accepted to be shown at the 2023 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this August. This car was donated to the Kansas college and has been the pride of its automotive restoration program—the only degree of its kind in the U.S. The Mercedes been painstakingly restored by students who are in process of getting their bachelor of science in automotive restoration. The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is the oldest concours in the United States and one of the world’s most prestigious gatherings of rare and antique automobiles.

Exhaust: The selection process for the Pebble Beach Concours is no simple task; just being accepted is a huge honor. Now comes the really hard part of finishing the restoration before Sunday, August 20. Students and staff who worked on the car over the last 10 years—and it’s worth noting all the work was done outside class hours—will join the car on Pebble Beach Golf Link’s 18th green to celebrate the process and completion of such a monumental project. — Kyle Smith 

Federal jury orders Tesla to pay $3.2 million in racial bias case

Intake: A federal jury has ordered Tesla to pay about $3.2 million to a Black former employee after he won a racial harassment lawsuit against the company, far less than the $15 million he rejected last year in opting for a new trial, said Reuters. The verdict came after a week-long retrial in the 2017 lawsuit by plaintiff Owen Diaz, who in 2021 was awarded $137 million by a different jury. A judge agreed with that jury that Tesla was liable but said the award was excessive. The judge ordered a new trial on damages after Diaz declined the reduced $15 million.

Exhaust: Diaz had sued Tesla for violating a California law that prohibits employers from failing to address hostile work environments based on race in the Fremont, California factory, where he worked as an elevator operator. Lawyers for Tesla pointed to what they said were inconsistencies in Diaz’s testimony and repeatedly raised the fact that he did not lodge written complaints to supervisors. He worked for the company for nine months. – Steven Cole Smith

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Ford’s new Mustang drift racer, Genesis’ sportier SUV, and more appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Lambo’s new hybrid supercar will keep V-12 promise

Intake: Props to the folks at Sant’Agata. As Lamborghini’s then-CEO Stefano Domenicali promised in March of 2019, the successor to the V-12 Aventador supercar (2011–22) will have a twelve-cylinder, naturally aspirated engine … that spins to 9500 rpm (!). Code-named L545, the V-12 has the same displacement as the Aventador’s (6.5 liters) but is 37 pounds lighter and has a higher compression ratio (12.6:1 compared to 11.8:1 for the final Aventador variant, the Ultimae). Its 814-hp maximum nearly tops that of the most powerful Aventador engines, which generally made less than 800, with the exception of the ram-air-induction-equipped, track-only Essenza SCV12 (819 hp). Factor in displacement, however, and this new mill does squeeze out a superlative: the highest specific output of any Lambo V-12: 125 hp per liter. The engine will be supplemented by no fewer than three 110kW electric motors, as the world learned this morning—one integrated into the double-clutch, eight-speed transmission, and one motor on each front wheel. Total system output is nearly 1000 hp. The car, code-named LB744, is not the first hybrid Lambo (that would be 2019’s super capacitor-equipped Sían) but it is the company’s first model with an all-electric, four-wheel-drive mode. Another first of the LB744: The transmission is mounted behind the engine. Lambo’s PR department is calling this a “brand-new” engine, but we’ll believe that when we hear an engineer say it.

Exhaust: If this plug-in Lambo excites you, you’re either a die-hard fan of the magnanimous sort, who’s thrilled that another V-12 exists even if you will never own it; or you’re independently wealthy, and relieved that the all-electric mode allows this new Lambo to crawl scot-free through London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone so you can shop at Gucci. —Grace Houghton

Chase Elliott undergoes successful surgery

Intake: Past NASCAR Cup champion Chase Elliott, 27, underwent successful surgery after a snowboarding accident in Colorado broke his left tibia. Elliott, the 2020 champ, was replaced in Sunday’s race at Las Vegas by NASCAR Xfinity series driver Josh Berry. Hendrick Motorsports president and general manager Jeff Andrews said that Elliott is expected to miss multiple races while he recovers, and there is currently no timeline for his return. The #9 Chevrolet will continue to compete for the owner’s championship, and the organization can apply to NASCAR for a medical waiver that would keep Elliott eligible for the driver’s title.

Exhaust: Berry, 32, had just two Cup starts to his credit, both in 2021, and he has never driven NASCAR’s Next Gen car, introduced into the series last year. He finished 29th out of 36 cars Sunday. “Without a doubt, it’s going to be a great challenge for me,” Berry said, “but with great challenge comes great opportunity for me to learn and grow as a driver and work around a lot of really talented and smart people here at Hendrick Motorsports.” —Steven Cole Smith

Tough times at Lordstown Motors …

Intake: Electric pickup manufacturer Lordstown Motors posted a net loss of $102.3 million, up from $81.2 million a year earlier. The results included an impairment charge of $36.5 million caused mainly by a decrease in its stock price. The company has been struggling with delivery of its $65,000, all-wheel-drive pickup designed for the fleet markets, says Automotive News. At the start of production more than six months ago, the Ohio-based plant had set a target to deliver 50 vehicles in 2022 and more in 2023 out of the planned first batch of 500 units. However, it stopped production last month due to performance and quality issues and reported sales of only six vehicles. The supply chain constraints, especially in motor components, are also expected to hurt production in the current quarter. “We will continue to execute a capital constrained business plan,” CFO Adam Kroll said, adding that Lordstown will need to raise “significantly more” capital.

Exhaust: We like the Endurance pickup, but with major manufacturers (especially Ford) also targeting the fleet market for electric trucks, Lordstown’s future does not look bright. —SCS

… and there are also issues at Rivian

Intake: Rivian Automotive plans to sell bonds worth $1.3 billion, “as weakening demand and lofty costs tighten a cash crunch around electrical vehicle makers,” said Reuters. Shares in Rivian fell nearly 7 percent in after-hours trading. The capital from this offering will help facilitate the launch of Rivian’s smaller R2 vehicle family, a Rivian spokesperson told Reuters, adding that convertible debt was “optimal cost of capital versus selling equity at today’s levels.”

Exhaust: Rivian is in far better shape than Lordstown Motors, with the Illinois plant actively manufacturing the R1T electric pickup truck and the R1S SUV. But Rivian has been burning through a lot of cash, and apparently needs this infusion. —SCS

Dodge’s second “Last Call” video a puzzler

Intake: Dodge has released its second “Last Call” teaser for the new presumed supercar it will debut on March 20, 2023. “Last Call” is the marketing tag for the last run of Dodge Challengers and Chargers, and previous Last Call models leading up to the debut of the final one have all been high-performance models. This last one is rumored to have at least 900 horsepower. Any less will be a disappointment.

Exhaust: This second video ends with a scale reading 7.1 pounds. Is it the extra boost the new car will get? Some sort of power-to-weight ratio? See what you think here. —SCS

One-of-a-kind DB5 wannabe is for sale

Intake: If an old car given a modern makeover is a restomod, what do you call a modern machine with classic looks? “Retromod” seems about right to describe this BAE Vantare, an Aston Martin DB9 that’s been rebodied to resemble a DB5. Launched in 2021 by startup British Automotive Engineering, it was fronted by comedian Bradley Walsh but was no joke. The company planned to build ten of them and charge over $330,000 for each one. The Vantare’s bodywork was created from “hybrid modern materials,” such as carbon fiber; wire-style alloys were fitted; and the Aston Martin interior was also revamped with a revised center console, new steering wheel, and vents sourced from Mercedes. It’s not clear what has happened to BAE since it announced the Vantare as the firm’s website is currently offline, and it hasn’t posted to social media for a year. In all likelihood chassis number one, based on a 2005 DB9, which is currently for sale at London dealer DD Classics, is the only example ever built. DD Classics describes it as “an Aston Martin collector’s dream,” but we’ll let you decide.

Exhaust: It’s not a completely crazy idea. After all, David Brown Automotive has seemingly made a success of its $700,000 Jaguar XKR–based Speedback GT, although that design does seem a little more complete and the level of craftsmanship significantly higher. Scale down your expectations and The Little Car Company might offer the most fun attempt to recreate the DB5. —Nik Berg

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post Lambo hybrid keeps V-12 promise, Lordstown woes multiply, a DB5 from … 2009? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

One hundred and ten years ago, on January 15 1913, Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford officially set up Bamford and Martin Ltd. to service and sell Singer cars in Kensington, West London. According to company lore the duo were soon “severely underwhelmed” by the cars they were selling and decided to “clench their jaws, hoist their sleeves” and make their own vehicle instead.

His competitive nature would lead Martin to race at the Aston Hill Climb in Buckinghamshire, first with a modified Singer and then with his own car, and by 1915 the words Aston and Martin were seen together for the first time.

The brand’s history is one of incredible ups and downs, of bankruptcies and rescues, of ambition sometimes beyond expertise. Despite all this however, Aston Martin has made some of the most beautiful, valued and exciting cars in the world.

The following 12 machines from Aston’s 12 decades in existence represent just a slice of the company’s incredible story. Feel free to fill in the blanks in the comments.

1914–15 Coal Scuttle

Just one new car left the Bamford and Martin workshop before the Great War intervened. Aston Martin’s official history says it was built in 1914, while other sources claim it wasn’t on the road until 1915. What everyone agrees is that the car soon gained the name Coal Scuttle as its rather utilitarian two-seater design resembled the sort of tool that every household had by its fireplace.

1927 Series 1

The post-war years were tumultuous for the fledgling company. Bamford left the business as the new decade began, while Martin pursued his passion for racing, with funding from Count Louis Zborowski. Speed and endurance records were set at Brooklands and other circuits and by 1923 the company was selling cars to the public. However, with Zborowski’s death in 1924 funding dried up, and Bamford and Martin was bankrupted. Rescue came from another aristocrat with an appetite for automobiles—Dorothea, Lady Charnwood. In 1925 Martin was forced to sell out, and Charnwood and fellow investors Bill Renwick and August Bertelli renamed the company Aston Martin Motors. The Series 1 of 1927 was the first car to wear the legendary Aston Martin badge. There were three derivatives, but it was the racy S-type Type Sports three-seater, with its shorter, lower chassis that set the direction for the firm. Able to top 80 mph thanks to its 57-hp 1.5-liter engine it was quite the star at London Motor Show.

1939 Atom

In 1934 the Aston Martin Ulster, named for securing all three podium spots at the 1934 RAC Tourist Trophy in Ulster, Northern Ireland was the first Aston Martin to top 100 mph. The Thirties was another decade of financial trouble with rescues from Lance Prideaux Brune and Sir Arthur Sutherland yet somehow in the midst of the crises Aston Martin developed the 1939 Atom concept, finished just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Powered by a new 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine, the car’s curvaceous streamlined design would inspire the firm’s next generation—under new management again, of course.

1947 DB1

Aston Martin survived a second global conflict by switching its engineering expertise to war work, but by the end of 1946 the company was once again for sale. Tractor maker David Brown came to the rescue and with that followed a full 25 years of stability. Brown also acquired Lagonda and the rights for its 2.6-liter W.O. Bentley-designed engine, although the first car to be released after the war was built around the earlier 2.0-liter motor. The resemblance to the pre-war Atom is clear to see, although 13 of 15 cars produced were roadsters. As the first Aston Martin built under David Brown’s tenure, it became known as the DB1.

1958 DB4

The company really hit its stride in the 1950s, with the Le Mans prototype-derived DB2, the DB2/4, DB Mark III and the Carrozzeria Touring-designed DB4 making their debuts. While the earlier car’s employed Lagonda’s engine by 1954 Tadek Marek’s 3.7-liter straight-six was being put to very good use. The DB4 also marked Aston Martin’s first collaboration with Zagato, creating possibly the most beautiful and sought-after model in the firm’s history.

1963 DB5

The Aston Martin of the 1960s belongs to Bond. James Bond. When Sean Connery took the wheel of the four-liter DB5 in 1964’s Goldfinger Aston Martin and 007 would be forever linked and the DB5 would become the most famous car in the world. Anyone would have reasonably thought that such desirability assured the firm’s future.

1977 V8 Vantage

Despite the phenomenal PR value of the Bond relationship, Aston Martin was in dire financial straits again. In 1972 David Brown personally paid off the company’s estimated £5 million debts and sold out to Company Developments for the nominal sum of £101. Two years later Aston Martin was in receivership again. A trans-Atlantic group of investors from the U.S.A., Canada and the U.K.  bought the brand and re-opened the factory in 1976 as Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. With new blood came a rush of new models, the V8 Vantage of 1977, the convertible Volante of 1978, the bonkers Bulldog, and the wildly over-optimistic Lagonda sedan. Guess what? By the end of the decade, despite the consortium’s best efforts Aston was in trouble again.

1986–89 Vantage Zagato

In early 1981 Pace Petroleum’s charismatic Victor Gauntlett bought into Aston Martin and became its executive chairman. Gauntlett knew the value of positive PR, rekindled the relationship with 007 by supplying a V8 Vantage for Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights, obtained a Royal Warrant of Appointment from long-term fan Prince Charles, and even returned Aston Martin to its racing roots, with an entry (and seventh place finish) at Le Mans. During Gauntlett’s leadership Aston Martin manufactured its 10,000th car and once more teamed up with Zagato for the ungainly Vantage Zagato. All this was enough to attract the attentions of Ford, who bought 75 percent of the company in 1987.

1994 DB7

Ford’s cash would give Aston Martin 20 years of relative calm and the opportunity to invest in truly new products, the most crucial of which was the DB7 of 1994. It may have borrowed rather heavily from Jaguar and been developed by TWR, but it would become the most successful Aston to date. Power first came from a supercharged, 3.2-liter inline-six and later a 5.9-liter V-12. Over ten years 7000 were produced and Aston Martin’s future looked rosy.

2003 V8 Vantage

After having effectively a one-model range for some time Aston Martin was able to diversify under Ford. 2003 saw the introduction of the “entry-level” V8 Vantage and the more GT-oriented DB9. Ambitions were high with a factory in Germany able to produce 5000 V-8 and V-12 engines a year, but as has been the way through Aston’s history, that didn’t guarantee anything. In 2006 Ford broke up its Premier Auto Group (which also contained Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo). Prodrive’s David Richards bought Aston Martin with the aid of American banker John Sinders and two Kuwaiti companies for $848 million. Thus, another new era of ownership began.

2012 One-77

The early days of Richard’s stewardship were notably mostly for the introduction of the first four-door Aston Martin since the 1930s–the Rapide and for the company’s first hypercar, the mighty One-77. With its all-carbon construction and 7.3-liter , 750-hp V-12 engine this £1M ($1.9M) machine certainly attracted attention. A new investor, Italy’s Investindustrial took a sizable stake in the business and Richards left in 2013. Former Nissan executive Andy Palmer took the reins and a partnership with Mercedes-Benz was agreed, allowing Aston Martin to use Mercedes-AMG engines. The DB11 was the first to do so, followed by the Vantage and DBS.

2021 Valkyrie

After floating on the Stock Exchange somewhat unsuccessfully in 2018, Aston Martin would, yet again, find itself in financial difficulty. Now it was Canadian billionaire Lance Stroll to the rescue, who initially took a 16.7 percent stake and then upped it to 25 percent. On the product side it’s the move into the SUV market with the DBX which has been most significant (and profitable), but it’s cars like the one-off Victor and the no-rules Valkyrie, which was developed with Red Bull’s Adrian Newey, that are doing the most to raise brand equity. (Be sure to read Henry Catchpole’s Valkyrie review here.) As of today the British sports car maker is owned by Stroll’s Yew Tree Overseas consortium, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Mercedes-Benz, and China’s Geely. If history is anything to go by, this arrangement may not last long.

And one to forget…

2011 Cygnet

David Richard’s time at the helm also brought perhaps the biggest embarrassment in the firms’ entire 110-year existence. In a desperate bid to reduce the company’s corporate average emissions, Aston Martin bought up a bunch of Toyota iQ city cars, did some cursory external restyling of the front and rear, re-trimmed the cabin in leather, and charged double what Toyota did. The aim was to sell 4000 of them. Only 768 were built.

The post 12 of the most memorable Aston Martins—and one best left forgotten appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The year is 2063, and people are beaming up their daily edition of Hagerty news over breakfast. The first headline reads Valkyrie Found With Delivery Miles. For reasons that we’ll get to in a bit, that scenario would be lamentable, but it’s also entirely plausible, because in 2023, the Aston Martin Valkyrie is surely a blue-chip investment opportunity. One of those cars to be set aside, in a climate-controlled chamber, until the time is right for a return to market.

This outlook, I think, will only increase as more people realize just what a bargain the owners of the first 235 Valkyrie road cars (150 Coupés, 85 Spiders) have received. Because the more you learn about the development of this two-seat, carbon-fiber hypercar, the more you appreciate how, if Aston were to set the car’s sale price now—rather than back in 2016, as it did—the company would surely charge considerably more than £2 million.

The level of engineering here—a road-legal hypercar infused with the latest thinking from motor racing—is, like the challenges presented by those opposing forces, extraordinary. These factors are partly why it takes more than 2000 man-hours to build each car.

The man behind the Valkyrie is Adrian Newey, the Red Bull F1 team’s design genius. He envisaged a machine with amazing aerodynamic capabilities, one that consequently required packaging tighter than a shrink-wrapped miser’s wallet. This had ramifications throughout the car’s gestation.

There are the obvious things, like the small but ferocious naturally aspirated V-12, which is solidly mounted, no isolation for vibration or noise, to the Aston’s tub. It produces 1001 hp and revs to 11,100 rpm yet also conforms to Euro 6 emissions regulations. (Well done, Cosworth.) But Ricardo clearly deserves huge praise, too. Newey wouldn’t accept a dual-clutch transmission (too big, he said, and too heavy), instead insisting on a sequential ‘box with dog rings, an arrangement common in racing cars. The approach adds immediacy but does away with user-friendly synchromesh, the better to cope with the engine’s load. Making a transmission like this work in a road car required the innovative use of an electric motor (with a battery from Croatian hypercar manufacturer Rimac) to help smooth out the brutal shifts and prolong the life of the helically cut geartrain. That electric motor is also used for reversing and driving at low speeds where juggling the car’s light-switch clutch would be horrible.

Then there’s the torsion-bar suspension—a fully active system designed by Red Bull, with a hydraulic pump borrowed from an Apache helicopter. It too is a first for a road car, although Newey did work with an active suspension on Williams F1 cars back in the 1990s. There is an active aero element as well, but it’s largely concerned with bleeding off downforce, not generating it.

Each of these features are mind-boggling on their own, especially when you think about the intricacies of getting each system to talk to the others and work with them as a harmonious entity. The Valkyrie’s active systems contain 15,817 tunable parameters, according to James Manners, head of the model’s vehicle engineering at Aston Martin.

Why Aston made this monster road-legal

To me, though, that’s not even the wildest part. The really phenomenal thing is the fact that this car has been homologated for road use. Crash-tested and all. We have perhaps gotten used to seeing supposedly track-only cars like Aston Martin’s own Vulcan or the McLaren F1 GTR modified, after manufacture, to be legal on public highways. Aston could have made its life easier by producing far fewer Valkyries (24 examples were mooted originally) and going about things that way. The economics of the project, however, demanded a bigger production run, and to match that with the all-important customer demand, the company believed the car had to wear license plates.

This path resulted in items like the Valkyrie’s amazing windscreen wiper, another torsion bar. That wiper took a year to develop and is made by the company that supplied such things to the Space Shuttle. It had to be tested in a wind tunnel designed for trains, because nothing else could throw rain at the windscreen fast enough.

I also like the story about the high-level brake light. (Not a sentence I often get to write.) The light is absolutely tiny and was originally planned to be even smaller. However, it had to be enlarged just enough so that an official Kitemark logo would fit, signifying that the arm adheres to British Standards Institute regulations for road vehicles.

There are myriad weight-saving stories here, tales of tortuous redesigns and anecdotes about arguments and solutions created. Even before you get to the driving, it all adds up to a car with a fascinating mythology and status. But the Valkyrie is a car that really should be driven.

A few weeks before the Formula 1 circus arrived in Bahrain for its first race of the year, I climbed behind the wheel of a Valkyrie and drove down the floodlit pit lane of the country’s Sakhir circuit, heels higher than my hips, just as they would be in an F1 car.

Specs: 2023 Aston Martin Valkyrie

• Price as tested: £2 million (~ $2.4 million)
• Powertrain:  6.5-liter, naturally aspirated V-12 w/electric assist motor,
  Seven-speed sequential, rear-wheel drive, e-reverse
• Output: 1139 hp @ 10,600 rpm (combined)
• Engine Torque: 575 lb-ft @ 7000 rpm
• Electric Motor Torque: 207 lb-ft from 500 rpm
• Layout: Two-seat, rear-wheel-drive hypercar
• Weight: 2800 pounds dry*
• Fuel economy: 32.1 mpg*
• 0–60 mph: Less than 3.0 seconds*
• Top speed: More than 200 mph*

*Figures provided by Aston Martin; wet (full fuel tank plus all drivetrain fluids) weight not supplied

The steering wheel might be slightly simpler than Alonso’s, but it carries the same vibe. Visibility is far better than you might expect from sitting in the Valkyrie while stationary, and boy, is it a visceral experience, with all those vibrations coming through the carbon tub. The first gearshift is a wake up call, too, with a physicality that sets your head nodding. All this before the last pit garage has passed.

As intimidating as the Aston’s fundamental ergonomics can be, the controls are pleasingly approachable. The pedals have a lovely progression that allows you to really meter out acceleration and braking with confidence. The brake pedal in particular has wonderful feel, with plenty of well-supported travel to lean into. Steering feel is always tricky to judge on glass-smooth circuits, but what’s instantly obvious is the linear, easy way in which you can control the Aston’s nose. It feels calmer than I’d feared it might.

An 11,000-rpm masterpiece

At least, until you open the throttle for the first time. The anger with which the V-12 responds is utterly savage, its 575 lb-ft making the 325-section rear tires feel like skinny remolds as they light up out of Sakhir’s tight Turn 10. That rabid flare of revs is followed quickly by vicious acceleration, thrust that just… doesn’t… stop. The sound inside the car is a sort of loud, guttural growl, quite unlike the shrieking music those outside are treated to. But the sheer, all-consuming volume is so dominating at high revs—the redline sits at a lofty 11,100rpm—that you almost don’t care.

Even strapped tightly to the tub, and within the sanitized security of a relatively wide circuit like Sakhir, the Aston’s straight-line speed is never less than eye-widening. Yet once a lap, even more power is available. Press the Energy Recovery System button on the steering wheel, the car will get a palpable 138-hp kick from its electric assist motor. At Sakhir, by the time you need to brake for the first-gear right-hander that is Turn 1, that motor has helped you see the silly side of 200 mph.

In the low-speed corners, you need to be delicate, or at least prepared to lean on the car’s driver-assist systems. But in the faster corners, where the Aston’s downforce can get to work, the tenacity is both inspiring and intimidating. You know you’re traveling quickly compared to other road cars—quickly in terms of pure mechanical grip, no aero aid—but then you tentatively try to tighten the line halfway through a corner and discover that there is still so much more in reserve. It’s quite humbling, if you’re not used to high-downforce cars.

For those who crave more downforce, and who are willing to spend additional sums on this plaything, a switch of bodywork will almost double the Valkyrie’s downforce, to 1900 kg, almost 4200 pounds. That statement sounds surreal but is more practical than you’d guess: The Aston’s optional Track Pack bodywork, though not road-legal because its use impedes regulation-mandated driver sight lines, makes the car even more ground-skimming, and will let it extract the most from its ample underbody.

But restricting this car to a track is not the point. The Valkyrie obviously needs a track to reach its full potential, but the car’s performance is made so extraordinary by its status as road-legal.

Unfortunately, Aston Martin was not willing to let us test on the road. Yet.

I’m pretty sure the experience of driving the Valkyrie in traffic would be memorable, if not something you’d want to do too often. From what I felt on the track, my guess is, the ride quality would be acceptable, but the engine’s noise and vibration would quickly prove tiring.

Does a road car not really suited to the road make sense? Arguably not. And I imagine there were plenty of times during the Valkyrie’s difficult development when none of it made much sense to Aston Martin. But sensible is overrated. After all, the sensible thing to do if you buy a Valkyrie is to tuck it away with delivery miles on. Return the car to market only when values prove too good to resist.

But that’s not the right thing to do.

***

2023 Aston Martin Valkyrie

Price: £2 million (~ $2.4 million)

Highs: A unique, violent, and utterly special experience. Will soon be certified for road use. Does much like a Formula 1 car because it thinks about air the same way and was chiefed by an F1 engineer.

Lows: Nothing like affordable. Road legality is arguably immaterial. You are not an F1 driver.

Takeaway: An apex predator in an already potent class, a hypercar among hypercars—as ferocious and high-tech as it gets.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

Via Hagerty UK

The post 2023 Aston Martin Valkyrie First Drive: Hypercar apex predator appeared first on Hagerty Media.

U.S. Postal Service buys 9250 electric Ford vans, 9250 ICE vehicles

Intake: After a “competitive search,” the Postal Service awarded a contract to purchase a total of 9250 Ford E-Transit Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs)” the USPS says. Delivery will begin in December for the Kansas City–built vans. The Ford E-Transit BEVs are manufactured in Kansas City, Missouri.

Exhaust: Read the USPS press release closer, though, and you learn that “a contract for 9250 commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) internal combustion engine vehicles will also be concurrently awarded to fill the urgent need for vehicles,” so the USPS isn’t quite ready to go all-electric yet. Still, the USPS is heading that way, announcing also that it’s buying more than 14,000 charging stations “to establish an initial and ongoing Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment inventory.” —Steven Cole Smith

“Eroded car” exhibit opens at Petersen Automotive Museum

Intake: The automotive art of Daniel Arsham is being celebrated at the Petersen Automotive Museum in a new exhibit in the L.A. landmark’s ground floor Armand Hammer Foundation Gallery, which previously heralded Andy Warhol. Arsham’s unique work includes full-scale versions of a Porsche, a tribute to an iconic Ford Mustang, and a famous movie Ferrari, each of which has been transformed with an eroded look that reveals faceted quartz and iron pyrite. Automotive magazine covers, a vintage gasoline pump, and small-scale cars have also received the treatment.

Exhaust: The juxtaposition of familiar automotive shapes and the eroded, geological nature of Arsham’s work makes for a surreal experience. It’s absolutely not what you expect to see when you’re faced with the unmistakable silhouette of a Mustang fastback or classic Porsche. Once again, the Petersen Museum continues to give patrons reasons to return, as the main gallery on the museum’s ground floor has also been recently revamped with a Tesla exhibit. If you’d like to visit, tickets are available at the Petersen Museum website. —Brandan Gillogly 

VinFast makes first U.S. deliveries

Intake: VinFast, the Vietnamese maker of electric SUVs, delivered the first 45 VF8 City Edition all-electric SUVs to  customers at its nine stores across California on Wednesday, which signals the company’s official entry into the North American market. The City Edition vehicles will continue be delivered to customers at VinFast’s stores or through a home-delivery service in the following days. The VF 8 City Edition includes 999 vehicles which were imported to the U.S. last December.

Exhaust: It isn’t much, but it’s a foot in the door for the very ambitious company, which is contemplating building a factory in North Carolina and launching an IPO in the United States. Vinfast is offering a 10-year warranty on both the vehicles and batteries, mobile service, and 24/7 roadside assistance. —SCS

Formula 1 gets Aston Martin upgrade

Intake: It might always be the last car on the starting grid, but the new Formula 1 medical car has more pace than ever. For the 2023 F1 season the Aston Martin DBX707 will take its position on track behind the 20 of the finest drivers in motorsports, ready to provide emergency medical assistance. The 707 PS (697 hp) SUV can accelerate to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds and is kitted out with fire extinguishers, medical bags, a defibrillator, and monitors that display driver biometrics. It will be driven by Alan van der Merwe, who says: “The updated FIA Medical Car is an impressive step forward and ensures that we will keep pace in the high-speed world of Formula 1. It’s definitely going to allow the Medical Car team to fully focus on the job and respond quickly and safely during any on-track deployments. It’s great to be heading into a new season well prepared and well equipped.”

Exhaust: As well as bringing up the rear, an Aston Martin is also guaranteed to lead the field during 2023 as its Vantage FIA Safety Car returns to duty. There’s even a chance that the British firm’s F1 car could be near the front, as it was one of the stars of pre-season testing. Tune in to the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday (10 a.m. ET on ESPN) to watch all the Aston action. —Nik Berg

Tesla presentation a “huge tease,” investor says

Intake: The much-anticipated Tesla Investor Day, after rumors had suggested Elon Musk would show off a new $25,000 model or the final Cybertruck design or something specific detailing future products, turned out to be a “huge tease,” tweeted investor Ross Gerber, says Reuters. Musk showed a couple of future models that were shrouded, and he gave no indication of price. The headline for most financial outlets was that Musk said Tesla could cut manufacturing costs in half, potentially resulting in a much cheaper car. “It’s coming. They laid it all out. 50 percent less cost to build. Would get you a $25–$30K EV!” tweeted Gerber. Musk did confirm that the next Gigafactory will be built in Mexico, near Monterrey.

Exhaust: Musk has long played his cards close to his vest, and clearly he wasn’t ready to make a major product announcement. As it is, Reuters observes, “The automaker has only four models, all priced toward the higher end of the market.” The Cybertruck pickup is still coming this year, executives say. —SCS

Dodge recalls nearly 140,000 Durangos for spoiler issue

Intake: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is recalling 139,019 Dodge Durangos from 2021–23 model years for a potentially defective rear spoiler that could detach from the vehicle. NHTSA said that the affected Durangos have the spoiler mounted too close to the tailgate, which means that when the tailgate is being opened, it can come into contact with the spoiler, “which may result in the spoiler becoming partially detached from the vehicle,” or even detaching completely, which could cause following vehicles “to crash without prior warning.”

Exhaust: There may be early signs there’s a problem, NHTSA says: “Vehicle occupants may hear the spoiler hitting the body when opening or closing the liftgate, or a rattle from the spoiler being loose while driving.” It’s a voluntary safety recall, and if your Durango has the problem, Dodge will replace the spoiler. —SCS

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters. 

The post USPS buys 9250 electric Fords, F1’s Aston Martin medical car, 140,000 Durangos recalled appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Tom Brady teams up with Porsche’s newest race car

Intake: Wondering what’s next for former Tampa Bay Buccaneer quarterback Tom Brady? You aren’t? Well, maybe you might be when you hear that he and his clothing line—did we know he had a clothing line?—have teamed with Jota, which is racing a Porsche 963 in the WEC. Brady’s apparel brand, creatively named Brady, is a sponsor of Team Jota, along with the rental car company Hertz, and Singer, makers of stunning reimaginations of the Porsche 911. Here’s Tom himself: “I have been a big fan of motor racing for a long time, and for Brady to now be a part of Hertz Team JOTA as the future of motorsport apparel and design is an incredibly exciting opportunity. Brady and Hertz are great brands that pride themselves on teamwork, determination and providing a seamless experience, making this the perfect partnership. We’re all looking forward to competing at the iconic Le Mans 24 Hours later this year.” The Hertz Team Jota Porsche 963 will face off in the WEC’s hypercar class against entries from Cadillac, Toyota, Peugeot, and others at the iconic Circuit de la Sarthe this June.

Exhaust: Who knew he was a fan of motor racing in general, Team Jota in particular? News is being made left and right here. Either way, it sounds like Brady (the future hall-of-fame NFL quarterback), on behalf of Brady (the brand), might be at Le Mans, like he has anything else to do. Hertz Team Jota will debut at the 1000 miles of Sebring, the first round of the 2023 World Endurance Championship in Florida on March 17. The Sebring track is just a short drive from Tampa, should Tom decide to attend. Check out his line of largely underwear at Bradybrand.com.  — Steven Cole Smith

Rivian: “robust backlog” will mitigate need to join EV price war

Intake: Citing a robust order backlog that will take until 2024 to fulfill, Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe said that the fledgling automaker would abstain from joining the EV price war started by Tesla and Ford earlier this year, according to Automotive News. Scaringe reasoned that with such a backlog of orders at current price levels, there was no need to enter the race to the bottom. “We feel confident in the value proposition of what we’re delivering at pricing levels today,” he said on Rivian’s fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday. “The demand backlog we have is very robust, it gives us a clear line of sight well into 2024.” Though the company no longer reports the backlog number, it said in November of last year that it had 114,000 preorders for the R1T and R1S in the U.S. and Canada. Rivian also has a long-term order for 100,000 EDV delivery vans from Amazon and others. Rivian forecasted 2023 production to total 50,000 vehicles, which would be double its 2022 output but still below analyst expectations.

Exhaust: The Rivian R1T Adventure, the mid-level trim that the company expects to sell the most of, starts at around $75,000. Add $6000 to that price if you want the larger battery pack, and another $8000 to that if you want the quad-motor setup. That quad-motor, large-battery variant is the only one currently available from the company. The R1S, meanwhile, starts at around $92,000. While the move to fulfill the backlog at current prices makes sense, you have to wonder what will happen a few years from now when the legacy OEMs get their electric truck offerings into high gear and offer prices that should fall below those of Rivians. — Nathan Petroelje

Mini reveals limited Seaside Editon convertibles

Intake: To celebrate 30 years of top-down cruising, Mini is building “around 500” Seaside Edition models based on the Cooper S Convertible for the North American market. Each one built will include high-gloss white trim, a side stripe, and a 30th-anniversary motif in the side scuttles, front bumper decal, and wheel center caps. Buyers will be able to choose between Caribbean Aqua paired with 18-inch Pulse Spoke two-tone wheels and summer performance tires, or Nanuq White matched with 17-inch Roulette Spoke wheels and all-season tires. Inside, both versions feature touchscreen navigation, Carbon Black leather seats, uniquely trimmed floor mats, dashboards and steering wheel, along with unique badging. The price for either color option is $46,455 including destination,

Exhaust: Carribbean Aqua is a fantastic color for a Mini and the package looks great no matter which exterior color you choose, yet it is pricey. We know Mini Coopers aren’t economy cars, but buyers will have to decide if the special edition rarity is worth the upgrade compared to a similarly priced and more powerful John Cooper Works convertible. — Brandan Gillogly

Ferrari prices Purosangue like a Ferrari

Intake: If you want to take the kids to school in the 715-horsepower 2024 Ferrari Purosangue SUV, it will cost you $398,350, excluding an as-yet unspecified gas-guzzler tax, says Car and Driver. The destination charge alone is $5000. It’s a lot, obviously, but with Ferrari finally joining the sport-ute party, we knew it wouldn’t be cheap. By comparison, the 657-horsepower Lamborghini Urus Performante lists for a seems-reasonable-now $264,671.

Exhaust: That 400 grand gets you, of course, Ferrari’s sweet naturally-aspirated V-12 and a trick suspension, but mostly it gets you that little prancing horse on the nose. Ferrari can charge what it wants because it’s a Ferrari—few have remained unsold because they are too expensive, and we expect the Purosangue will make Ferrari a lot of coin—heck, on transportation costs alone. — SCS

Select Tesla Superchargers now open to other EVs

Intake: Via Twitter yesterday, Tesla announced that “select” superchargers are now open for public use by those with EVs from a non-Tesla brand. The move to open 3500 current and future superchargers to other EVs will make Tesla eligible for certain subsidies as part of a $7.5 billion federal effort to expand the nation’s EV infrastructure, according to Automotive News. Tesla is by far the most dominant EV maker globally, claiming about 65 percent of the total EV market last year. Its massive supercharger network is a big selling point, and while some of those charging locations may now find Mustang Mach-Es or Rivian R1Ts among the throngs of Model 3s and Model Ys, Tesla is still holding plenty of superchargers in reserve for Tesla vehicles exclusively.

Exhaust: Because Tesla cars use a proprietary charging plug, the automaker had to modify the charging units that will be open to all EVs to include an adapter that uses the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard, the most common plug for other EVs. While the move to open select superchargers might erode Tesla’s competitive advantage a tad, it’s a massive step forward in catching up America’s charging infrastructure, which is still sorely lacking overall. — NP

A rare and unused Aston Martin Lagonda Taraf is for sale

Intake: Only around 120 Aston Martin Lagonda Tarafs were built, and almost all of them found buyers in the Middle East. However, we do know that at least one example made it to the U.S.A. because it’s now being offered for sale in California. At its launch in 2016, the Taraf was billed as a million-dollar rival to the very best of Bentley and Rolls-Royce, but in reality, it was little more than a stretched Rapide sedan with some mildly-tweaked styling. To make the Taraf, the Rapide’s wheelbase was extended by 7.9 inches for extra leg room although the 5.9-liter, 540-hp V-12 and eight-speed automatic were unchanged. It also rode on standard steel springs rather than the air suspension of its high-end competition, so it could never offer the wafty ride that oil sheiks and oligarchs would have expected. The 2018 example for sale at O’Gara in Beverly Hills comes in a Satin Jet Black finish with a contrasting Kestral Tan leather interior that has barely been sat in. Just 178 miles are on the odometer.

Exhaust: If the original buyer was hoping to flip this Taraf for a tidy profit it’s gone about as well as a crypto crash, with the car being offered for sale at $800,000—a hefty depreciation hit of $200,000. Interestingly O’Gara is actually willing to take payment in cryptocurrency from anyone bold enough to take on this Taraf. — Nik Berg

The post Tom Brady teams with Porsche, Mini’s special convertible cooper, Non-Teslas welcome at some Superchargers appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Production-spec electric Ram REV debuts during Super Bowl

Intake: A clever one-minute ad during the closing half of Super Bowl LVII showed the actual Ram REV, something we hadn’t seen until then. The looks are toned down considerably from the Ram prototype that was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it’s still identifiable as something different from the regular Ram. Details on the REV remain sketchy—the website does announce that “a sophisticated front full fascia and lower grille surround complement this electric truck’s already heroic demeanor,” but that’s about it. Mostly the site shows how you can become a Ram Insider+ by sending them $100 to reserve your place in line when the truck goes into production next year, with delivery in the fourth quarter of 2024. That gives Ford and GM quite a jump on their electric trucks before the Ram REV makes its entrance.

Exhaust: It’s undeniably a good-looking truck, but so are the Ford and GM electrics. Ram will need some innovative engineering and features, something more than a “heroic demeanor,” and it needs to reveal them soon if it wants customers to wait a year and a half before buying an electrified pickup. — Steven Cole Smith

Subaru issues a “do not drive” on some 2023 Solterras

Intake: In what amounts to a re-recall, Subaru is issuing a “do not drive” advisory on 1182 Solterras made for the 2023 model year. These electric vehicles were the subject of an earlier recall requiring the replacement of original hub bolts. Subaru identified an issue with vehicles repaired at two port locations by one particular team of contractors. The teams did not properly complete the repair procedure resulting in the potential for significantly under-torqued bolts. Out of an abundance of caution, Subaru is recalling all vehicles repaired at all port locations supported by the third-party contractor. Vehicles without the original hub bolt recall and vehicles repaired at other facilities are not affected.

Exhaust: For all potentially affected vehicles, Subaru retailers will inspect the hub bolts and, if necessary, retorque to the specification at no cost to the customer, who will be instructed not to drive their vehicle and to contact their retailer to have the vehicle towed for inspection. Towing will be offered at no cost. — SCS

2024 Volkswagen Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport get a refresh

Intake: Volkswagen’s largest SUVs, the seven-passenger Atlas and five-passenger Atlas Cross Sport get a refresh inside and out for the 2024 model year, with the vehicles available in the third quarter of this year. Outside, there’s a new front-end design and greater differentiation between Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport. On both cars, a wide chrome four-bar grille is framed by LED headlights with the newly standard adaptive front-lighting system. At the rear, both models add a larger spoiler, lengthening the overall roofline of the vehicles and giving them a sleeker side profile. Atlas Cross Sport models add a more aggressive rear diffuser than the previous generation, further differentiating the two models. All trims get new wheel designs, ranging from 18 to 20 inches with machined alloy and black finishes available. R-line trims up the ante with a gloss-black grille, 21-inch aluminum-alloy wheels, and signature R-line badging. Under the hood, power will come solely from a four-cylinder turbocharged and direct-injection engine with 269 horsepower and 273 lb-ft of torque. The six-cylinder engine goes away.

Exhaust: We’ll miss the VR6 engine, but the four-cylinder actually has more torque, and towing capacity (5000 pounds) remains the same. An eight-speed automatic transmission and front-wheel drive are standard; Volkswagen’s 4Motion all-wheel-drive system is available across the model lineup. — SCS

Lucid linked with Aston Martin when AMG arrangement ends

Intake: Luxury EV startup Lucid Motors is in talks with Aston Martin, according to a new report. A story by well-connected German journalist Georg Kacher in Car and Driver suggests that a partnership between the two companies would literally electrify Aston Martin’s business, while offering Lucid expertise in vehicle architecture, design, and personalization. It would also give Lucid access to Aston Martin dealers worldwide. Why would Aston Martin need this trans-Atlantic hook-up when it already has an agreement with Mercedes-AMG? Kacher suggests that the rapid exit of former AMG boss Tobias Moers from his job as Aston’s CEO in 2022 means that the German-British relationship is souring. There’s no suggestion that Mercedes would pull the plug early on the arrangement, but an insider told Kacher, “AMG and Pagani—that’s true friendship. AMG and Aston is merely a business case with a fixed expiration date.”

Exhaust: Aston Martin’s 110-year history has been plagued with financial instability and the company seems like it’s almost always up for sale. Under Lawrence Stroll, Aston Martin has been floated (though the share price isn’t exactly buoyant) and refinanced, but it will need a strong partner in order to develop the electric vehicles it will be compelled to produce before the decade is out. Lucid comes with big backing in the form of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, but there’s another potential bidder in the form of China’s Geely. Boss Li Shifu is an Aston Martin fan and already owns a sizable share of the British brand which he could be looking to increase, and with Geely comes EV expertise in the form of Polestar and Lotus. —Nik Berg

John Deere debuts electric zero-turn mower

Intake: Yes, we know it’s not a car, but it has a motor and four wheels, so allow us to present the first electric zero-turn riding mower from John Deere, as the company begins a serious electric campaign. The Z370R Electric ZTrak has a 42-inch deck and is designed for residential customers, and it’s capable of mowing two acres between 110-volt charges to its sealed lithium-ion battery. Reportedly it’s almost silent and vibration-free.

Exhaust: The price is $6399, and it comes with a 5-year, 200-hour battery warranty. That’s about double the cost of a conventional 42-inch John Deere 20-horsepower zero-turn mower. — SCS

Lyft takes a hit as Uber advances

Intake: The ride-sharing service Lyft lost more than a third of its market value on Friday after a “bleak forecast fueled worries that the company’s price cuts to avoid being a distant second to Uber in the North American ride-sharing market would squeeze profits,” reports Reuters. The story quotes analysts who predicted that any additional business at Lyft would not be enough to offset lower prices. Uber and Lyft have been “locked in a battle for market share” with latest earnings showing Uber’s global presence and more diversified business were “giving it an edge over rideshare- and U.S.-focused Lyft.” Lyft shares hit their worst day on record after closing 36.4 percent lower, as the sell-off erased over $2 billion in the company’s market value and nearly all of its share price gains this year.

Exhaust: The battle is reminiscent of the Sirius and XM fight for superiority in the satellite radio business. In the end, there was only room for one, and the companies merged. Maybe that’s the future here, too. — SCS

Build the world’s smallest street-legal car

Intake: “The Peel P50, produced in the early 1960s, was the smallest production automobile in the world. And now a new kit allows handy folks to build their own replica, although this time, it’s electric,” says Electrek.co. Peel went out of business in 1965, but a new company, known as P50 Cars, has created a replica that is “much easier to get your hands onto than one of the original 50 production models.” This P50 uses a 4-kW motor that is good for speeds up to 28 mph. The British manufacturer says it takes about 50 hours to assemble. The kit starts at £10,379 (approximately $12,600).

Exhaust: Sure it’s just a light vehicle, limited in speed and utility like a road-equipped golf cart, but isn’t it cute? Check out the P50 website here. — SCS

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post Meet Ram’s electric pickup, Subaru recalls its EV, Lucid to partner with Aston Martin? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This (and every) Valentine’s Day, we take a moment to celebrate two becoming one. We buy cards, chocolates, and dozens of roses to mark the couplings which lead to a successful and long-lasting relationships.

In the car industry there’s plenty to cheer as well, as these ten happy manufacturer marriages prove.

Toyota and Subaru

Toyota and Subaru hooked up in 2008 in a marriage of convenience when the Japanese giant took a 16.5 percent share of its smaller rival. After a four-year honeymoon period, their first offspring was a set of terrific twins: the Toyota GT86 (née Scion FRS, for the U.S.) and the Subaru BRZ.

Toyota did most of the design and engineering work, but the cars’ character came from their shared Subaru flat-four motor. Just the right amount of power and just the right amount of grip made the BRZ/GT86 siblings a hoot to drive and drift. The first generation lasted nine years with a follow-up arriving in 2021 that’s every bit as entertaining … with yet another name change for the Toyota, to GR86.

Lotus and Chevrolet

Lotus has been married and divorced more times than Donald Trump, having formal relationships with General Motors, Bugatti’s Romano Artioli, Proton, and now Geely.

During its seven-year hitch to GM, Lotus Engineering was brought in to work on a number of GM group products including the Isuzu Piazza Turbo, the Vauxhall/Opel Lotus Carlton, the Dodge Spirit R/T, and the C4 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1. For the “King of the Hill,” Lotus designed a 5.7-liter, 375-hp aluminum block, quad-cam, 32-valve V-8, and installed adjustable Bilstein suspension to live up to the “handling by Lotus” moniker.

Mercedes and AMG

The story of AMG actually began inside 1960s’ Mercedes-Benz when Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher worked together on the 300 SE racing engine. They left to form their own business Aufrecht Melcher Großaspach in 1967 and by 1971 were world famous after their “Red Pig” AMG Mercedes 300 SEL won the 24 Hours of Spa.

Alongside continued racing success Aufrecht and Melcher moved on to tuning Mercedes’ road cars, developing their own engines from 1984. In 1990 the quality of AMG’s engineering was recognized by Mercedes and the pair signed a cooperation contract. In 2005 AMG was acquired by Mercedes leading to the in-house skunkworks that we know so well, thanks to cars ranging from the C36 to the wild One.

AC and Shelby

When this small British sports-car maker and all-American racer hooked up, there were fireworks. Carroll Shelby identified the little AC Ace as a potential race winner if it could just pack a bit more of a punch and enlisted Ford for a motorsports ménage à trois.

The Shelby Cobra and its small-block V-8 would make history at Le Mans, Daytona, Monza, and the Nürburgring, to name but three of its famous victories. In the 60 years since it was conceived, the Cobra has continued to be built on both sides of the Atlantic in numerous iterations. A legend that lives on and on.

McLaren and BMW

The story of the McLaren F1 has been told many times over, but if it weren’t for the relationship forged between Gordon Murray and Paul Rosche at BMW, would this midengine beast have been such a spectacular success?

Murray had been looking to the Formula 1 team’s engine supplier Honda to provide a V-10 but the collaboration didn’t work out. BMW’s M Division came to the rescue with a bespoke, 6.1-liter, 620-hp V-12, quite possibly the best engine ever built by the German brand.

Mercedes and Porsche

In the early days of Mercedes’ romance with AMG, the company was also conducting a one-car stand with Porsche. The result of this dalliance was the 500E, a high-performance version of the W124 E-Class, which was hand-assembled by Porsche.

It was powered by a five-liter V-8 from the SL roadster, with uprated brakes to cope, and building it was anything but simple. Each one had to be shuttled the 20 miles between Mercedes at Sindelfingen and Porsche in Zuffenhausen. Mercedes provided a kit of parts to which Porsche added the car’s flared front fenders, then the 500Es would be back to Benz for painting, before taking a last trip to Porsche for final assembly. It was a complicated arrangement, but made for one of the most exciting sedans of the early ’90s.

Porsche and Audi

Porsche’s affair with Mercedes fizzled out when the last 500E was built, but few rebound relationships produce better results than the RS2, which Porsche built for Audi on the same production line.

Porsche started with the sensible B4 Avant—and went all-out on its 2.2-liter five-cylinder engine. In addition to a bigger turbo and intercooler, plus uprated injectors, Porsche upgraded the powertrain’s cooling and induction and exhaust systems to justify the “Powered by Porsche” cast on the engine’s cam cover. Porsche-branded Brembo brakes sat behind Porsche Cup alloy wheels and the interior was given a retrim with Recaro seats and white instrumentation. Quattro AWD empowered the RS2 to hit 62 mph in just 4.8 seconds—faster, indeed, than the pure-blooded Porsches of the day.

Fiat and Mazda

New Mazda Miatas don’t come along often, just once a decade since the car’s 1989 debut, in fact. Even though the Miata had just hit the million mark, the Japanese knew they’d need a partner to help fund the fourth generation (interally known as the ND), launched in 2014.

Enter an international marriage between Japan and Italy. At first it appeared that Alfa Romeo was being wooed to build a new Spider, but in the event it was Fiat that accepted Mazda’s offer and so its 124 would be built alongside the Miata in Hiroshima. Mazda stuck with revvy normally-aspirated engines, and styled the car around its sleek Kodo Soul of Motion design language. Fiat opted for a turbocharged motor and a more retro look, ensuring that the siblings had quite different characters.

Dodge and Lamborghini

Lamborghini and the Chrysler group had a six-year attachment after the Americans came to the Italians rescue in 1987. Chrysler money ensured that the Countach got a replacement in the form of the Diablo, but there were strings attached. Chrysler used its exotic partner’s name on ill-conceived concept cars like the Portofino sedan and the Bertone Genesis minivan, but one very good thing did come out of the affair: the Dodge Viper.

Chrysler commissioned Lamborghini to transform an iron-block V-10 truck motor into an engine fit for a sports car. Recast in aluminum, Lamborghini’s eight-liter version produced 400 horsepower, giving the Viper the bite it needed. In fairness, it wasn’t a completely one-sided relationship, as the Diablo was penned by Chrysler’s Tom Gale, who also designed the Viper.

Ford, Volvo, and Aston Martin

Aston Martin couldn’t say no when Ford made a very decent proposal to take over the British brand in 1987. Arguably the most successful offspring of their decade together was actually the result of a throuple with Volvo.

For the 2005 V8 Vantage Aston Martin needed higher-end touchpoints than the Blue Oval had in stock, but the recent addition of the Swedish brand to Ford’s Premium Auto Group meant items such as the key and pop-up infotainment system could be sourced from the now-shared parts catalog. A three-way marriage of convenience, you might say.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

The post 10 automotive marriages made in heaven appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Talk about going out with a bang. The final run of Aston Martin DBS models will be the most potent in the British brand’s 110-year history.

With 770 PS (759 hp) the DBS 770 Ultimate is aptly-named. Its 5.2-liter, quad-cam, 60-degree V-12 is fed by twin turbochargers as in the standard DBS, however modified air and ignition pathways and a seven percent increase in turbo boost free up an extra 50 horses. If you want to talk torque, the DBS 770 Ultimate throws down a mighty 664 lb-ft which is available from a barely-above-idle 1800rpm through to 5000 revs. Drive goes via an eight-speed ZF automatic which has been recalibrated for faster shifts, and a mechanical limited slip differential is fitted to the rear axle.

Despite the extra go, stopping power is provided by the same carbon ceramic brakes as the standard DBS, with 410 x 38 mm discs up front and 360 x 32 mm units at the rear. A new solid mounted steering column is installed to improve feel through the wheel, which is further enhanced thanks to a 25 percent increase in front end lateral stiffness. The car’s adaptive damping system gets a unique damper tune and some software tweaks to dial up body control, but without ruining the ride quality.

Distinguishing the 770 Ultimate from lesser DBS models are a range of body mods for aesthetic and functional benefit. The clamshell hood has an unusual horse shoe vent and two new outboard vents in the front splitter which feed more air into the V-12. Carbon fiber features extensively in the cantrail, windscreen surround, mirror caps, fender louvres, side sills, and the exclusive rear diffuser. Wheels are 21-inch designs heavily influenced by the rims of the Valkyerie and Victor  and come in silver, black and diamond-turned finishes, shod with Pirelli P Zero tires. All in all, in the dark and moody images at least, the result is a more menacing, aggressive Aston.

Hop inside and you’ll find seats trimmed in semi-aniline leather and Alcantara, exposed carbon fiber for the center console and shift paddles, plus a rather superfluous strap and buckle atop the center armrest. Laser etched DBS 770 Ultimate logos and limited numbering also appear. Beyond this customers can also call Aston Martin’s Q branch and order up a wide range of personal touches from different fabrics to additional graphics, maybe even bullet-proofing and a smoke screen.

“When an iconic model generation reaches the end of production it is important to mark the occasion with something special,” explains Chief Tehnology Officer Roberto Fedeli. ” In the case of the DBS 770 Ultimate, we have spared nothing in ensuring the final version of our current series production flagship is the best-ever in every respect. Not only is it the fastest and most powerful DBS in our history, thanks to a comprehensive suite of improvements to the transmission, steering, suspension, and underbody structure; it is also the best to drive.”

The Ultimate follows a sequence of DBS specials, from a handful of Zagato models to the 007-cash-in No Time To Die edition. Just 449 DBS Ultimates will be built, of which 300 will be coupes and 199 Volantes, and they’ve already sold out, so whatever premium Aston is charging over the $333,000 price of a standard DBS clearly didn’t concern anyone.

The post This is the most powerful Aston Martin ever made appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As Hagerty’s staff observes Martin Luther King Day this Monday, The Manifold will go on a brief hiatus. We’ll be back on Tuesday with all the car news you need to know. —Ed.

Is this the new Aston Martin DB12?

Intake: Aston Martin unveiled the DB11 in 2016 as a successor for the DB9. It was the company’s first model launched under the Daimler AG ownership and was an instant success; during its official launch at the Geneva Motor Show over 1,400 units were ordered on the spot. However, the car faded over the years, and now after six years of production, Aston Martin is preparing to replace it. Spy photographers caught a prototype of the DB11 successor—probably called DB12—out on the streets for some initial testing.  Initial rumors suggested this will be the company’s first fully electric model, but in early 2022 Tobias Moers, Aston Martin CEO, said that the V-12 is not going anywhere and will still be used until 2026 or 2027. With the DB11 successor set to arrive sometime in 2024 or 2025, it is safe to assume it will also be offered with a V-12 engine. The car’s appearance at a gas station and the thick tailpipes underline just that. We’re guessing it could be between 600 and 700 horsepower.

Exhaust: The exterior design appears to be a slight evolution of the current DB11 and seems to be inspired by the latest Vantage, with elements taken from the Valhalla concept. Initial rumors suggested that the DB11 successor should arrive sometime in 2025. But as Aston Martin has apparently decided to keep the V-12 engine instead of an electric powertrain, we might see the new DB12 arriving sometime in early 2024. — Steven Cole Smith

Motul builds Dakar tribute Jeep Wagoneer

Intake: Motul celebrated its fifth year as the official lubricant partner of the Dakar Rally by building a 2022 Jeep Wagoneer Series I Carbide 4X4 with a 5.7-liter eTorque Hemi. It rides on 18×8.5-inch Black Rhino wheels and 35-inch BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2 tires thanks to a 3.5-inch ReadyLIFT suspension kit meant for a Ram 1500 modified and installed by Rad Rides of Huntington Beach, California, who used custom-fabricated two-inch spacers to get the proper lift in the rear. The vinyl wrap makes it look rally-ready and protects the paint from getting pinstriped by trailside brush. If you’d like to see the custom Wagoneer in person, which will be further outfitted with a rooftop tent and other gear, it will be at the BFGoodrich Tires Mint 400, Overland Expo West, Overland Expo Mountain West, and the eBay Motors Sand Sports Super Show.

Exhaust: A five-year sponsorship is a strange milestone to celebrate, but we admit that the mildly customized Wagoneer looks pretty darn good on 35-inch tires. What we found most interesting about this build is how great the Wagoneer looks with just a mild lift and that the front suspension parts can be pirated from a Ram 1500 lift kit. Perhaps Wagoneer product planners will take notice and begin cooking up an off-road-oriented version of the big body-on-frame SUV? — Brandan Gillogly

You can’t unsee the ugliest Urus ever made

Intake: Searing its hideousness onto your retinas is the latest automotive abomination from German tuning firm Mansory. Called the Venatus Coupe Evo C, it began as a Lamborghini Urus, and, after surgery that makes Dr. Frankenstein look skilled, a motoring monstrosity was born. Overcome the initial horror of its frighteningly flared arches, unnecessary air scoops, wings, and hulking hood and you might notice that it’s lost two doors in the “design” process. Mansory has managed to move the B-pillar back almost eight inches and extended the front doors by the same amount.  The entire front of the car is a mess of slats and vents to feed cooling air to the 900-hp V-8 engine. The only good news is that should you be unfortunate enough to see one of the eight examples being made for the road, you probably won’t have to look at it for long as Mansory claims it will accelerate from 0–62 mph in 2.9 seconds and go on to 200 mph.

Exhaust: The Lamborghini Urus is not subtle at the best of times, Mansory appears to have imagined the car at its worst and then thought, “Yep we’ll build that.” Astonishingly, the German firm claims that the Venatus Coupe Evo C took a year and a half to create and was built at the specific request of customers. We can only hope that none of them live in the U.S.A. because coming across this beast in the wild would be horrific. — Nik Berg (Editor’s note: Don’t hold back, Nik.)

Mercedes will drop EQ branding for EVs

Intake: Mercedes-Benz is set to drop the EQ product brand for battery-electric cars as soon as the next generation of compacts arrives, set to be on the market by the end of 2024, German daily Handelsblatt said on Thursday, citing company sources. Reuters reported that the decision is based on Chief Executive Ola Kaellenius’ focus on electric-only cars, making the EQ brand redundant as Mercedes turns away from the combustion engine.

Exhaust: Mercedes presently brands its all-electric model series under the EQ name, first announced in 2016, with its first model, the EQC electric SUV, launched in 2019. Mercedes currently has four models marketed in the U.S. as EQs. — SCS

NASCAR’s Harvick will bid farewell in 2023

Intake: Veteran NASCAR Cup driver Kevin Harvick says he’ll hang up his helmet after the 2023 season, which begins in February with the Daytona 500. It’ll be his 23rd year as a NASCAR Cup Series driver. The 47-year-old racer will retire after the season finale on November 5 at Phoenix Raceway. Harvick begins his last season in NASCAR’s premier division tied for ninth on the Cup Series’ all-time win list with 60 point-paying victories. He is only 99 laps shy of leading 16,000 laps in his career—one of only 11 drivers in the history of the sport to do so—and the Bakersfield, California-native is slated to make his 800th career Cup Series start April 23 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.

Exhaust: After a couple of rough years, Harvick hopes to go out on top. “There is absolutely nothing else in the world that I enjoy doing more than going to the racetrack, and I’m genuinely looking forward to this season,” said the driver of the No. 4 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing. “But as I’ve gone through the years, I knew there would come a day where I had to make a decision. When would it be time to step away from the car? It’s definitely been hard to understand when that right moment is because we’ve been so fortunate to run well. But sometimes there are just other things going on that become more important and, for me, that time has come.” — SCS

NTSB Chair worried about heavy electric vehicles

Intake: U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy raised concerns about the “increased risk of severe injury and death from heavier electric vehicles on U.S. roads,” Reuters reported. She mentioned the GMC Hummer EV which weighs over 9,000 pounds, and the Ford F-150 Lightning EV, which is between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds heavier than the non-electric version. The heavier weight “has a significant impact on safety for all road users,” she said Wednesday in a speech. “We have to be careful that we aren’t also creating unintended consequences: more death on our roads.”​

Intake: She’s right, of course, heavy vehicles tend to cause more damage. But her administration wants electric vehicles, and batteries are heavy. Hopefully, this isn’t the first time she’s heard of that. —SCS

The post Aston DB11 successor spied, Jeep rally-ready Wagoneer, Harvick to hang up his helmet appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Rarely does Vellum Venom have the luxury of showcasing a prototype hypercar in the metal. That’s mostly because yours truly is rather awful at the many emails and phone calls it takes to set up something like that. Luckily, then, that I’m Houston born and bred. My fair city has itself a metric ton of oil money, which means generational wealth is regularly invested in cars. Slabs drive the Texas streets right alongside the freshest stock from the local Aston Martin dealer.

So yes, I had the pleasure of scoping out the Valhalla’s contours in Aston’s nearby showroom. I did not, however, sample the sounds of theforce-fed V-8 and a hybrid powertrain, good for a reported 937 horsepower. My interest, on this day, was running the body across the vellum. Join me on the journey.

When I was a budding car designer with yet-to-be-dashed hopes and dreams, I’d sketch luxurious supercars in the margins around my math class notes. I was inspired by the itty-bitty horseshoe grille on the Bugatti EB110, and my aim was to turn aspirational design features (Cadillac tail fins, Rolls Royce grilles, etc) into features befitting a mid-engine exotic.

After all, condensing things can be wonderful! Condensed milk turns coffee and cakes into rocket ships dancing across your palate.

And like a proper sherry reduction, Aston Martin nailed the Valhalla design. The dream machine takes Aston’s signature grille/hood contouring and forces it upon a short nose, aerodynamic-intensive lower facsia, and a requisite, impossibly decadent, ground-hugging frame.

The famous Aston grille, though butchered in early versions of the latest Vantage, is a dominant theme on the Valhalla hyper car. The forms that made this face a pop culture icon (thanks to James Bond) and a local car show stunner (thanks to leasing companies) now extends below the headlights, with large silver bars masking aggressive aerodynamics.

There’s a lot of high tech going on here, and some tech ruins grilles. But this black sensor rectangle is about as subtle you can get on a car with such little frontal area and little height.

Stand over it and then the grille disappears! What’s left is that classic Aston hood bulge, on display in some form since the DB Mark III of 1957. When plastered atop the short nose, massive front splitter and the long windscreen of a mid-engine chassis, the end result is a car that looks like nothing else in its class. It’s awe-inspiring to behold, and probably the most honest, creative implementation of “brand DNA” buzzwording by a design studio I’ve seen in decades.

Photography was surprisingly challenging with all the light sources in the showroom. Getting a good badge shot usually isn’t hard, but the Valhalla’s is small and conservative. There’s good reason for that: the coachwork is doing the heavy lifting. But take note of the texture behind the Aston’s signature graphic; this is truly a luxury product that sweats the details.

The proper English term for the Aston’s familiar front-end style is the “bonnet airdam,” which likely serves double duty as a pedestrian safety implement and an aero-trick that creates a negative pressure zone at the base of the windscreen.

Or so I’ve been told. But the further back we go, the more apparent trickery unfolds.

The side view is one of the few angles from which the upturned bonnet airdam looks like a big honkin’ nose. Luckily there’s a massive splitter below to take off some of the visual weight.

Stubby schnoz aside, the entire form is clean and free of clutter. The wide grille accentuates the Valhalla’s long, horizontal lines. From this angle, it’s a night-and-day difference between other manufacturers’ mid-engine designs that are either too overwrought in their sporting pretension, or over-styled with too many action lines.

What really makes the Aston so special is also what differentiates the brand as a maker of grand tourers: a minimal amount of cutlines so the body contours can sing an unfettered song of its designer’s intentions.

No frunk, no Senna-aping cooling ducts/aero tweaks, all of which means more room for headlights to play perfectly with the curves of (the space normally reserved for a) fender. More to the point, everything from the “fender” contours to all the lines inside the headlight likely point to a common vanishing point.

There’s a specific area where styling and functionality merge beautifully on the Valhalla: the front lighting. The (presumably LED) headlights sport cooling fins, jeweled focusing glass, and some combination of turn signal and marker lens. The Valhalla gave these functional bits the futurist, yet delightful whimsy of a Michael Graves teakettle.

And yet, there’s a lot overtly fancy, functional bits on this car as well. Only difference is that Aston Martin took pains to hide much of it under muted tones that are both physically and visually separate from the loud, green body elements.

What pains, specifically, you might ask?

Note the presence of the passenger side tire in the blacked out hole in the fender. Yes, designers did a fantastic job hiding that massive hole. And it’s such a uniquely thrilling element that you can’t stop looking at it.

Go ahead and zoom in, the passenger-side tire is visible. Also note how the bonnet airdam’s raised profile provides the aforementioned “negative pressure zone at the base of the windscreen.” I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it also provides a low pressure zone worthy of hurricane-like wind extraction for the tires, too.

The carbon-fiber cowl is both expressive and subtle, to the point its hard to see just now complex and appealing the “pillarless” windscreen treatment is on the Valhalla. Blackout A-pillars are a common trick on everything from Range Rovers to the Kia Soul, but you’re in the big leagues when a piece of glass wraps around a significant portion of the pillar.

The aerodynamic tricks around the front wheels ends into feather-like appendages on the Valhalla’s dihedral door hinges. We’ve seen these doors too many times, but just like a functional spoiler, their engineering merit endures.

Like every super-hyper car of this modern era, the negative area (i.e. carve-outs for scoops) have the chance to make functional art along the body. It’s aggressive and busy for a run-of-the-mill Aston Martin, but it’s clearly the most refined body in its class. Clearly the work of a luxury coachbuilder.

It would be neat if the door cutline was behind the fender “feathers,” as then the doors would open behind them (eliminating that slash between the A-pillar and the front wheel). The resultant one-piece fender would provide a neoclassic, even pre-war demeanor to the front end. I am sure there are several reasons why that can’t happen, but its alway fun to dream a little dream.

Even the snowflake pattern wheels somehow look like the work of a GT carmaker that is dabbling in the supercar space. You know, just because it can and has a Formula 1 team to puff up.

The Valhalla’s mid-section sports the taut muscles of an Olympic medalist. Added depth via a black roof and charcoal lower insert are almost unnecessary, but do a fantastic job to help the eyes focus away from the functional bits. Instead you are forced to fixate on the aggressive contours finished in the green body color.

The aforementioned floating fender/feathers becomes a dominant element on the door, keeping your eyes from noticing just the A-pillar relative invisibility.

While the entire A-pillar isn’t covered in a Mercury Sable-like sheet of glass, the glossy bit between the two bits of glass is almost invisible. Even in person! There’s simply to many other touches on which to fixate, like the impossibly-thin side view mirror arm.

An exciting mirror from the non-functional side but surprisingly mundane to behold on the business end. That said, the trim that gives the glass a countersunk feel is worthy of the Aston Martin badge. The details never disappoint with this car.

Those slick door hinges have the same external cutout as the McLaren Senna from our 2020 analysis, except these appear to have tighter panel gaps.

And, even with a Senna-worthy intake scoop, the Valhalla’s roof is a more sculptural element. This feels like the right move.

Photographing the scoop’s bi-wing shape is rather challenging, but even under the cover of gloss black, the assertive spaceship-like demeanor cannot be hidden.

Leave the roof again and note how the inner scoop has the gentle curve of a bathtub as it climaxes to the rear of the door. I regularly insist that interplay between hard angles and soft curves makes any design excel; compare the insane angles of the Citroën Karin to the harshness of the Tesla Cybertruck for proof that both must exist in harmony.

That bathtub curve is also functional, forcing air underneath the green wing of the rear quarter panel. Odds are that wing does a great job moving air over the rear wheel, but the soft (closer to the door) and hard transitions (wheel arch) also adds surface tension to what would otherwise be a flabby contour.

Speaking of, note how the curved carbon-fiber contour at the base of the “rocker panel” gets thicker and rounder as it leaves the area right below the side-view mirror. Look at the previous photo to see just how radical the transition truly is.

Unlike the Ford GT, it’s much harder to see what the air is used for once it enters the body, but the carbon-fiber detailing is stunning and brilliantly crafted.

The mushroom-shaped, Nintendo “goomba” roof is rather unique in its seemingly one-piece shape. It visually holds everything from you’d expect from this genre, from intake snorkel to exhaust pipes. Unlike the video game character, the green body underneath rises up to match its contouring, and allows for cooling/extraction fins between both elements.

The B-pillar elegantly transitions into ductwork for the engine compartment. It is a nice move aside from the awkward cutline, as the green door cuts into the body a couple inches farther away from the line used for the door glass (and the roof).

The space between roof and body is both a functional and high-end take on the sad DLO FAIL we seen on the most recent Nissan sedans (8th Gen Maxima, 6th Gen Altima).

To be clear the (seemingly) functional aspect of these ducts ensures this isn’t a DLO FAIL. Too bad front-wheel-drive Nissan sedans don’t need such functionality, no?

The details can be fussy up close (especially at the rocker panels) but once you are 2+ feet away the whole affair is a fantastic blend of long lines, hard edges and soft contours. The lack of a huge hole on the painted quarter panel is a nice change from its competition.

Everything flows in a logical and organic way, much like drawings of the human muscular system. The cooling vents below the roofline remind me of six-pack muscles, and everything else is similarly taut but with much longer lines (like muscles across a femur, for example).

The only flies in the ointment are the hard edges present in the carbon-fiber rear spoiler; they don’t strike the same balance as the hard/soft lines on the side.

While I understand this vehicle’s mission, and our general fascination with carbon-fiber aerodynamic tweaks (both factory and aftermarket) the Valhalla’s coachwork truly deserves a body-color spoiler for a clean, minimal, and luxurious integration worthy of all the effort place on its roof.

Or all the effort of the fourth-generation Camaro, as the Hagerty Community so generously mentioned in the past.

But what does strike a perfect balance are the hard/soft shapes, the light and dark colors and the brilliant integration of functionally-relevant design features into an absolutely stunning hypercar body. Especially in how the black roof seemingly floats atop those vents: the Valhalla looks like an underwater creature worthy of comparison to Mother Nature’s finest.

The spine on the back of the air intake is another example of a pleasant balance of hard lines and soft contours. It makes for a good transition from the angular front of this element (seen 9 photos ago) because the rest of the roof would otherwise visually conflict with such an aggressively angular intake.

While the exhaust panel (for lack of a better phrase) makes for an elegant transition down to the cooling ducts, its almost intoxicating to look at it up close. This way you can admire the contrast of a metal logo and flat charcoal paint: a wonderful keystone to an otherwise shiny and bulbous roof design.

The exhaust panel is indeed a finishing touch for the roof. But can we say the same about the layers of bumperage on the rear end?

The layers make far more visual sense from the three-quarter angle. Sure, the bumper is a bit uh … Georgia O’Keeffe-y, but maybe that’s the appeal?

And before you scroll down, note how well the bathtub side contouring works with the body side, and note how the door’s contour matches that of the rocker panel.

Nice. Very nice.  

The frumpy shaped lower valance/rear diffuser looks more impressive in person, but the Valhalla’s rear end is still an absolute delight. Probably because everything from the roof to the taillights points inward, leading to a vanishing point on the same plane as the “H” in the Valhalla’s license plate frame.

This LED array isn’t exactly busy, but it adds another type of texture to the swoopy carbon fiber, and the organic holes punched into the rear fascia.

There’s a LOT to process, but within those folded textures are rewards just ready for you to reap.

The rear fascia’s honeycomb grille tightens up in the middle, while the company logo rises atop like a brilliantly-rendered relief painting.

The Valhalla gets really serious from this angle. Also note just how much tread is exposed from the rear tire. The tricks seen at the front axle were not forgotten back here.

The textures! The curves! The colors! They give an air of luxury and craftsmanship, which is what we should demand from every modern-day Aston Martin. I can’t imagine what these lines would “feel like” after pairing them with those 937 ponies and a twisty road to really bond with the vehicle.

Brittanica defines Valhalla as “as a splendid palace, roofed with shields, where the warriors feast on the flesh of a boar slaughtered daily and made whole again each evening.” While Odin and his fallen soldiers live a life of privilege in Valhalla, Aston Martin brought it to earth for the human eye to savor. This is one helluva rolling tribute to that Nordic place of myth.

Thank you for reading, I hope you have a lovely day.

And thanks to Aston Martin Houston for their generous invitation to see the Valhalla!

The post Vellum Venom: 2024 Aston Martin Valhalla appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Honda’s biggest SUV grows up, gets outdoorsy

Intake: With the 2023 Pilot, Honda has fulfilled its promise to unveil four new SUVs this year (if you count the CR-V Hybrid as a distinct model). The Pilot completes the incrementally bigger progression, which began with the pint-sized HR-V, which is now Civic-based. Like the updated HR-V and CR-V, the P-LT—sorry—wears a new suit. The C-pillar is the most obvious differentiator; it’s now body-colored rather than blacked out. Inside, there are even more pixels, centered around a landscape-oriented touchscreen (7- or 9-inches, depending on trim) perched on a dash showcasing clean, horizontal lines. Honda offers five, down from six, flavors of Pilot, ditching the Special- and Black-edition models and rebadging the cheapest one as Sport, rather than LX. At the middle of the lineup now sits the Trailsport model, which aspires to outdoorsiness more than any Pilot before it. With suspension lifted one inch and tuned for off-pavement driving, this model gains steel skid plates, all-terrain tires, and Sand and Trail modes. Hill Descent control is now standard on every Pilot. You can go even further with a Honda Performance Development (HPD) package, which adds bronze wheels, fender flares, and snazzy decals. Despite its pretentious to trail-bombing, expect the fourth-gen Pilot to be even comfier on road: Honda extended the wheelbase (by 2.8 inches) and moved both front and rear wheels further apart, side to side: 1.1 inches in front, 1.4 in the rear. Bigger brakes, a bit more horsepower from its V-6, and wide-ranging improvements to reduce noise, vibration, and harshness, complement the growth spurt.

Exhaust: It’s a much more assertive, handsome look for Honda’s biggest SUV, and a fashionable dose of ruggedness, but those who truly want the most practical hauler of kids and the odd sheet of plywood will stick with the Odyssey. Sales suggest Honda’s made the right call, however: The Pilot surpassed the minivan in sales in 2017 when the veteran Odyssey first dipped below 100,000. It’s been slipping ever since. –Grace Houghton

Electric Moke Californian priced at $41,900

Intake: 45 years since the original Mini Moke Californian went on sale the British beach car is back in the U.S.A. Now powered by batteries the 44-horsepower eccentric EV has a top speed of 50 mph, making it highway-legal. Range is just 80 miles, however, so any adventures will have to be restricted to mini breaks. Charging takes four hours on a Type 1 charger, and the Moke Californian will be sold under the 2015 Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act, so just 325 will be imported each year. Build slots can be reserved now for a $990 deposit.

Exhaust: It’s a little over half the price of the classic Mini Recharged, but it’s also a little over half the car so we can’t imagine too many Californians braving the Pacific Coast Highway in the Moke. But for beach town hipsters looking for a guilt-free way to zip between the smoothie bar, yoga studio and surf spot, the Moke might be just the ticket. –Nik Berg

Aston Martin and Brough Superior announce another two-wheeled track tool

Intake: Following the sell-out of its AMB 001 co-lab Aston Martin and Brough Superior have once again teamed up for a run of circuit-only superbikes. The AMB 001 Pro has 25 percent more power than its predecessor at 225 horsepower, thanks to its 997cc twin-cylinder motor which has been milled from AL 5000 solid billet aluminum. This material provides extra stiffness for the structural engine, while a new cylinder design with wet liners improves cooling. Further tweaks have been made to the Aston Martin-designed bodywork to improve aerodynamics. “It’s a beautifully simple formula,” says Aston’s design boss Marek Reivhman. “Form plus technology equals performance. When you push something to the very edge of capacity, and do it seamlessly, the resulting experience can have you breathless. There is no separation between the advanced materials, design and technical capabilities of the bike. We’ve achieved this fluidity again with Brough Superior for those who desire a track superbike like none other. The rider is part of this moving sculpture and will literally feel as though they are part of the track when laying atop the AMB 001 Pro”. Only 88 AMB 001 Pros are to built, and all will be to the same specification with a Verdant Jade and carbon colorway inspired by Aston’s racing models.

Exhaust: The Aston Martin brand is certainly growing with the famous winged logo appearing on whiskey labels, apartment complexes, powerboats, personal submarines, and now bikes. It’s not, however, appearing on as many cars as it would like, with sales dropping in the first half of 2022 and China’s Geely stepping in to snap up shares and shore up its future. –NB

Niki Lauda’s Ferrari for sale

Intake: Says the post by Austrian auction house Dorotheum: “What are the chances of a young fellow at the tender age of 24 getting a brand-new Ferrari as a company car from his employer? Really, really poor, one would think, unless your employer’s name is Enzo Ferrari and you’re Niki Lauda, and you’ve just signed a contract as a Formula 1 driver with ‘il Commendatore’.” The car Lauda received, a 1973 Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2, chassis number 17517 and engine number 00817, was silver when he got it, and was subsequently repainted dark red by a subsequent owner, the son of a Ferrari importer.

Exhaust: The car goes up for online auction in 10 days. Starting price, but certainly not the sales price, is 30,000 euros, or about $30,700. –Steven Cole Smith

Tesla recalls 40,000 cars for power steering issue

Intake: Tesla is recalling just over 40,000 2017-2021 Model S and Model X vehicles due to the possibility of losing power assist to the steering. The company has released an over-the-air software update to recalibrate the system after it began rolling out an update last month to detect unexpected steering assist torque, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Tesla said it is unaware of any injuries or deaths related to the problem.

Exhaust: It’s handy that some recalls can be handled over the air. So far in 2022, Tesla has issued 17 recalls potentially affecting 3,418,596 U.S. vehicles, according to NHTSA. –SCS

Kindred Motorworks teams with CORE for electric power

Intake: Kindred Motorworks, the San Francisco Bay-area producer of modernized vintage vehicles, announced that it has partnered with Idaho-based KORE Power, a developer of battery cell technology, to supply battery modules for the electrified models in the Kindred lineup. The first two vehicles resulting from this partnership are the Kindred VW Bus and the Kindred 3100 pickup truck, both of which will be offered exclusively as EVs. Said Rob Howard, Kindred Motorworks’ founder and CEO: “This agreement locks in our battery supply for the next several years of vehicle production and we hope to further expand this relationship as we grow.” Kindred will use KORE Power’s VDA 355 format battery modules, which are compact, standardized modules already in wide use by various OEMS. Selecting the VDA modules gives Kindred Motorworks the flexibility to build custom battery enclosures that complement the architecture and design of different classic cars and trucks.

Exhaust: Both vehicles will be available for pre-order this month. Full disclosure: Hagerty is one of Kindred’s investors. –SCS

The post Honda’s bigger Pilot, another Aston Martin motorcycle, Niki Lauda’s Ferrari for sale appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When Jerry Seinfeld created a brilliant way to meld comedy and cars into his hit show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, we drank it up. Now he’s coming out with a new book about the streaming series, which is like adding cream to your favorite cup of java.

The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee book (Coffee coffee-table book?) will be available on November 22, timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the show’s debut. Publisher Simon and Schuster says it “isn’t just a record of the show but instead an inventive tribute full of behind-the-scenes photos and anecdotes.”

Seinfeld recently announced the book’s release on his Instagram page (@jerryseinfeld).

“The first episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee went online ten years ago—on our own website, without any press or promotion. Just me and Larry David having a funny conversation,” Seinfeld wrote. “We called it a web series because nobody knew what streaming television was. Ten years later, we have produced 84 episodes and we’re on Netflix. It’s a crazy story, and this book seems like a good way to tell it, along with some of my favorite photos and dialogue from the show.”

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee reinvented the talk show format and drew applause from industry moguls and fans alike, earning multiple Emmy nominations and helping lead the streaming revolution. Each episode features Seinfeld cruising the Los Angeles area in one of his favorite classic cars, accompanied by some of the funniest people in comedy and on television. During their drive they talk about the intricacies of stand-up, the evolution of their careers and personal lives, and whatever else pops into their heads, and the conversation always includes a stop at a coffee shop or diner to continue their conversation.

Seinfeld’s guests have included Steve Martin, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Jay Leno, Martin Short, Will Farrell, David Letterman, Amy Schumer, Seinfeld’s former Seinfeld castmates, and even President Barack Obama. Late comedy legends Garry Shandling, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Carl Reiner, and Norm McDonald also went for rides with Seinfeld, adding a bit of nostalgia to those episodes.

A total of 84 classic cars have been featured, including a 1949 Porsche 356/2 (with Leno), 1966 Jaguar E-Type Roadster (Lewis), 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing (Lorne Michaels), 1964 Aston Martin DB5 (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), 1964 Morgan Plus 4 (Stephen Colbert), 1969 Lamborghini P400S Miura (Chris Rock), 1976 Lamborghini Countach LP400 (Jim Carrey), and 1963 Corvette coupe (Obama).

Simon and Schuster says the book, which includes never-before-seen production photos, “dives into the inspiration and creation of segments, the most unforgettable lines from guests, an index of the cars, and some of the most memorable moments from crew members.”

While we wait for word about new episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (the last installments were released on July 19, 2019), perhaps the Seinfeld book will satisfy our cravings for now. Until then, please pass the cream.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark us.

The post Seinfeld to release <em> Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee </em> book November 22 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Tesla-themed-and-sold child’s ATV recalled

Intake: The Cyberquad for Kids, styled after the Tesla Cybertruck, is being recalled for safety violations, says the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Administration. Though built in China by Radio Flyer, 5000 Cyberquads were sold exclusively through Tesla’s website. Owners are being told to remove the product’s motor controller and send it to the manufacturer for a full $1900 refund. If the owner is willing to destroy the entire ATV, there’s another $50. The Cyberquad features a full steel frame, cushioned seat and adjustable suspension with rear disc braking and LED light bars. It is powered by a lithium-ion battery with up to 15 miles of range and a top speed of 10 mph. Though made for kids, there are videos online of adults riding them. The issue, says the CPSA: “The Cyberquad fails to comply with the federal mandatory safety standard requirements for youth ATVs, including mechanical suspension and maximum tire pressure. Additionally, the Cyberquad lacks a CPSC-approved ATV action plan, which is required to manufacture, import, sell, or distribute ATVs.”

Exhaust: Not a good look for Tesla, which could likely be responsible for injury lawsuits resulting from crashing the Cyberquad. Interestingly, Radio Flyer has only one report of an incident, where the single-seat Cyberquad “tipped over when driven by an eight-year-old child and a 36-year-old adult female, resulting in a bruised left shoulder to the adult female.” While the refund is $1900, aftermarket resale is reportedly as high as $3500. Meanwhile, Tesla just had its own recall of 24,000 2017-2022 Model 3s in the U.S. over a seat belt issue. The firm is also facing a criminal probe into the misleading name of its Autopilot assisted driving hardware. —Steven Cole Smith

NADA study: Dealership employees happy, well paid

Intake: A study by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) suggests that automobile dealership employees are happier than in any time of the 11-year old study’s history, and one reason is that average employee pay at dealerships has topped $100,000 a year, according to Automotive News. Annual turnover at dealerships was 34 percent in 2021, which may sound high but is down significantly over past years, which averaged about 46 percent, which was the rate in 2020. The drop in turnover and the increase in compensation were directly connected, said Ted Kraybill, president of ESi-Q, a research company that conducts the study for NADA, in the Automotive News story. “As much as they may not be happy about certain things about their job, like the hours and all the time they put in and everything, there’s a point at which your compensation kind of outweighs those other negative aspects that normally might cause a sales consultant to leave,” said Kraybill.

Exhaust: The combined effects of the pandemic and the chip shortage led to a backup of available vehicles, and a waiting list of potential buyers. We suspect the 2022 survey, when it’s completed, will show this happy-employee trend will continue, especially if average pay remains a healthy $103,000, as the study shows. —SCS

A facelift for Alfa Romeo’s Giulia and Stelvio

Intake: Alfa Romeo has announced a suite of updates for the Giulia sports sedan and Stelvio SUV. Most immediately noticeable is a new-look front end, which brings the duo in line with the new family face introduced with the Tonale. Adaptive headlights are configured in a triple lens configuration inspired by the SZ, while there are also tweaks to the Trilobo grille and main air intakes. Inside, the biggest change is the introduction of a 12.3-inch TFT screen with three different layouts for its digital instruments. Evolved is a simple, yet futuristic look with both digital and analog speedometers and a rev counter, Relax simplifies the screen to concentrate on a central numeric display of speed, and Heritage recreates the analog dials seen of Alfas of the Sixties and Seventies. Sprint, Veloce and Competizione trim levels are offered, and all are available with an NFT which records the car’s history—a tech trick that Alfa hopes will shore up residual values.

Exhaust: Nothing much changes under the hood with power still coming from a 280-horsepower two-liter turbo motor driving the rear wheels in the Giulia or all four in the Stelvio, so this is essentially a technology upgrade, which is pretty welcome as it’s one area that Alfa was lagging behind. —Nik Berg

BMW adds features and tech to 2023 R 1250 R with no price increase

Intake: The R 1250 R is BMW’s naked roadster that often gets overlooked for more specialized machines, but savvy shoppers now have a reason to give it a second look as the bike now comes stacked with standard features that were previously upcharge options. Included in the list are dynamic traction control, dynamic brake control, BMW Motorrad ABS Pro, a TFT display with “Sport” Core Screen and connectivity, three riding modes with a new “ECO” mode, and an on-board power socket and USB socket for powering GPS, phones, or heated gear. All this comes without a price increase over the 2022 model, which is a pleasant surprise.

Exhaust: While it might appear that most of these new standard features are tech-based, that should not to take away from the value proposition as a buyer. This big boxer twin might not have a front fairing, but with standard options that cover a rider like these, the wind is just a little more enjoyable since you have some extra dough still in your wallet to help weigh you down. Pricing is at $14,995 plus $695 destination charge which gives a rider a lot of capability for the dollar. —Kyle Smith

Some assembly required DB5 for sale

Intake: If you’re handy with the spanners you could snap up this 1964 Aston Martin DB5 for a song. The car is mostly restored, there’s just the small matter of putting all the pieces back together. The Superleggera alloy and steel body has been stripped back to bare metal from its original Black Pearl, giving the new owner a free choice when it comes to color, new panels have been hand-fabricated where required, and the suspension restored or renewed. Five wire wheels in original unrestored condition come with the car, and the interior will need to be re-trimmed as well. The engine has been upgraded to 4.2-liter specification at Bell Sport & Classic, so that’s one less thing to worry about. If you fancy building your own Bond car, then pay a visit to Collecting Cars to bid.

Exhaust: When everything is reassembled in the right order, this DB5 could be worth up to $1.3 million according to Hagerty’s valuation data. At the time of this writing, bidding had reached $350,000, so if all the pieces are there it could be quite a deal. We do wonder why this potentially very profitable project was abandoned, however. —NB

Dodge offering a “horsepower locator”

Intake: Dodge continues to keep the 2023 Challenger and Charger in the news, despite it being the last model year for the venerable but popular vehicles. All the builds for the cars have been allocated to dealers, and the Horsepower Locator, found at Dodgegarage.com, lets you punch in your zip code and see what cars your local dealers have in their allocations. We keyed in our zip and checked “Challenger:” Our local dealer will have 43 available 2023 Challengers, from a bunch of V-6 models to some 485-horsepower R/T Scat Pack Widebody 6.4-liter Hemi V-8 cars. Hellcats? Sorry, none en route at this dealership.

Exhaust: Dodge’s marketing team is doing a commendable job in keeping a focus on some lame-duck cars. Yes, the Challenger and Charger have been around forever, but they will be missed more than we know. —SCS

The post Tesla-themed ATV recalled with prejudice, Dealership employees happy, Alfas get a facelift appeared first on Hagerty Media.

“Holy s**t, if I hadn’t been here for work, I’d have paid good money to see this.”

This was the Aston Martin Virage 6.3, an amazing automobile that I helped test for the U.K.’s Fast Lane magazine back in 1992. My enthusiastic comment is buried among tire pressures and other testing numbers in the yellowing pages of my notebook from that hot summer’s day at the General Motors proving ground at Millbrook, in Bedfordshire, England. What I vividly recall is this big car bellowing its rage at the world on the mile straight. In acceleration tests, it sat down on its tail with smoke curling off its massive 18-inch Goodyear Eagles, headlamps pointing at the stratosphere as the tire and road speed slowly synchronized and the Virage slipped its anchor like a highly animated ocean liner.

A small audience of hardened road testers and Millbrook staff had gathered to watch Mark Hales, a professional racing driver and Fast Lane’s talented associate editor, grimly launch the big Aston off the line time and time again. In the moment, we might not have realized that the hastily conceived performance edition of the slow-selling Virage would eventually be credited with saving the company—but we darn well knew it was something special, which is why I put it on the cover of Fast Lane Issue 102 in September 1992.

Fast-forward 30 years and that same Virage 6.3 test car and I have been reunited outside the Aston Martin Works service department in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire. Company historian Steve Waddingham has already warmed the drivetrain by the time I arrive. The 6.3 is in notably good condition, the only light traces of age being a few stone chips around the lower rear sills and a bit of waviness in the dash underneath the windshield. The paint and chrome gleam, and the interior is clean as a pin, with creaking leather just like new. Massive uncatalyzed exhausts lend their muscular offbeat thunder to the Works courtyard. Is the Virage—all 4500 pounds of it, wrapped in an aluminum body 15.6 feet long, atop hand-built OZ wheels—still as intimidating as it was to my much younger self? Oh yes, with its bored-and-stroked engine pushing out a claimed 465 horsepower and 460 lb-ft of torque, I should say so.

When you hear the name Aston Martin, you might think of James Bond’s DB5 or the more recent Vanquish and Vantage sports cars and DBX crossover that compete with models from Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, and Porsche. Compared with those marques, which are supported by resource-rich automaker parents, Aston Martin is but a minnow among sharks. Although the company has produced many absolutely terrific sporting grand tourers over the past century, “The Aston” has been spectacularly poor at making money. Gordon Sutherland, who owned Aston Martin between 1933 and 1947, once told me that “while saving Aston Martin was a reoccurring chore for all its owners, making money was optional.” It was much the same for Sutherland’s successor, David Brown, whose initials were used to name the longtime series of Aston cars. Estimates vary, but the company has gone bust at least seven times in its 109-year history. Even today, with a 25 percent stake taken by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, who owns the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, the carmaker’s finances are far from wonderful.

In 1992, Aston Martin’s finances were truly dire, the company still reeling from the lukewarm reception to its 1988 launch of the Virage. A replacement for the long-serving, William Towns–designed V8, the beefy coupe wasn’t the best-looking car in the world, but it would be unfair to place the blame entirely at the feet of its designers, John Heffernan and Ken Greenley. When I interviewed Heffernan a couple of years ago, he was unapologetic, explaining just what had happened to his handsome original design. Traditionally, Aston Martin didn’t employ the services of an in-house designer, and, as newcomers, Heffernan and Greenley faced resentment, tiny budgets, and outright opposition from some departments. Heffernan had come from Audi, where each car could spend as many as 6000 hours in a wind tunnel, whereas the Virage got one day in a tunnel at the University of Southampton. When the design was almost fixed, Aston’s engineering department sneaked into the CAD system and added 6 inches to the height of the rear to get the downforce they needed. Then the tilt-up headlamps the designers had specified were abandoned for cost reasons and replaced with Audi 200 units.

But the biggest problem wasn’t so much the appearance; it was that the 330-hp Virage wasn’t very fast. “It didn’t really perform,” said Heffernan. “Victor Gauntlett [Aston’s chairman] said to me, ‘You’ve done your job well, John, but I’m afraid we should’ve got more performance out of it.’”

“I remember driving a Virage when I was at HWM [a longtime Aston dealer and specialist near London],” says Paul Spires, the current boss of Aston Martin Works. “I got back and Richard Zethrin [an Aston engineer who eventually ran his own restoration shop] asked me what I thought. I said it doesn’t go, it doesn’t stop, and it doesn’t go around corners. We need to do something about this.”

He wasn’t alone. Richard Stewart Williams—an independent Aston Martin specialist—and Works Service at Newport Pagnell were collaborating to improve the soft, slow, and spongy Virage. “Everybody was working together,” says Spires, “to keep the lights on at Aston Martin.” Time was of the essence, Waddingham reminded me, as Aston barely had any customers: In 1988, it produced 193 cars; in 1989, 208 cars; in 1990, 201 cars; in 1991, 168 cars; and, in 1992, only—wait for it—46 cars. The company wasn’t just on the ropes, its trainer was reaching for the towel.

A team under David Eales, who is now owner of performance specialists Oselli, started to address the Virage’s issues in handling, looks, and power. This was a true skunkworks special, with work proceeding long into the evening and weekends. Aston chairman Gauntlett wasn’t a huge fan of the effort to develop a factory tuning kit, but incoming chief Walter Hayes was. Ford had purchased 75 percent of Aston Martin in 1987, with the intention that Gauntlett would stay in the top job for another couple of years (he stepped down in 1991). By this time, Virages were being heavily discounted, but even that couldn’t make up for the way they lost value. At the time of the Fast Lane test, the list price of a Virage was £131,500, but you could pick up really good secondhand examples for less than £60,000. Which meant that a savvy performance-car enthusiast could have their used Virage rebuilt into a wide-bodied 6.3-liter, with all the handling upgrades, for less than the price of a new Virage.

The total cost of the tuning package was about £60,000, for which Works Service would increase the engine’s output by about 40 percent; fit a new six-speed ZF transmission from the Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1; stiffen and modify the suspension; fit much larger brakes, with 10-inch front rotors and AP Group C racing calipers—the largest ever fitted to any road car—and bigger OZ wheels and tires; and sheath those bigger boots in handcrafted custom wheel arches. Inflatable cushions were added to the winged seats, and the factory would happily repaint the car in just about any color chosen by customers.

The twin-cam V-8 was bored to accept oversize Cosworth pistons, which connected to the long-stroke steel crankshaft with Carrillo rods. The cylinder heads were reworked by Tickford, an old Aston Martin in-house tuning arm, with Callaway-developed camshafts for the four-valve heads. Weber remapped the ignition and engine management, and the resulting engine revved smoothly to its 6500-rpm redline. Peak power was developed at 5750 rpm and 400 lb-ft of torque was available from 2200 rpm, with the 460-lb-ft peak occurring at 4250 rpm.

“Quite how all this fits with the factory’s engineering department appears to be a slightly touchy subject,” noted Fast Lane’s Hales at the time, although he also wrote that “what you get for the money is visually stunning.”

The performance hike was also stunning. We couldn’t max the car on the bowl at Millbrook, but the 174-mph claimed top speed was in sharp contrast to the 155-mph of the standard Virage. That’s not all. With the standard car’s figures in parentheses: 0–60 mph was reduced to 5.3 seconds (6.5 seconds); 0–100 mph took 12.7 seconds (15.8 seconds); and 50–70 mph in fourth gear was 4.3 seconds (5.9 seconds). This was the demonstrator prototype, and it wasn’t the easiest car to wring performance figures from. The soft drivetrain mountings twisted under the torque onslaught, and when tester Hale changed from first to second gear, the reverse torque pushed the gear lever gate around so he needed some dexterity to performance-test it—which, fortunately, he had in abundance.

It’s poignant to take the wheel after so long. The remarkable overstuffed seats, best described as racing armchairs, still support and cosset in equal measure. The wooden Nardi wheel is slightly too far away for comfort, with only a small rake adjustment, and the pedal box is too small for big feet in shoes with a welt. Vauxhall switchgear abounds, although the instrument binnacle with seven instruments behind a Perspex screen appears quite modern. Period pieces include a car telephone on a curly cord in the center console and a trip computer that looks like something James Bond would be sent off to recover from Smersh back in the ’60s.

One big change on this surviving test car is the replacement of the six-speed ZF gearbox with a five-speed Getrag unit with a dogleg first gear. No one seems to know when or why this happened, but the engine looks and feels like the same unit that rent the air at Millbrook all those years ago. This is one of the first Astons with a conventional handbrake release, which, along with unfamiliar gear positions and gate springing, makes starting off a bit embarrassing. Mind you, Newport Pagnell residents have seen a few supercars staggering out into the High Street in their time, so they take it all in stride.

As soon as you are underway, you don’t need to bother with first gear, so the gear change is effectively an H-pattern four-speed. You should be able to trickle through town in third at idle speeds, but this street-racer engine, with its fairly wild cam profiles, has some shunt at low speed, so it’s best left in second gear.

Out on the Northampton road, though, the old car sniffs the air like a war horse, and the engine has a warbling, woofling voice. You barely need more than a couple of the five gears, though the V-8 is really only pouring on the power from about 2500 rpm. This is a car built by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, and the way it reacts to the road that undulates north from where it was built is old-fashioned but quite up to modern standards. The big Goodyears ride through bumps fairly well, although mid-corner potholes cause a hop, a skip, and a thump. What feels quite ponderous at first is, in fact, a strong and tight car with terrific steering, the Adwest system still one of the finest ever fitted to a road car.

You can push the 6.3 through turns until the rear tires start to slide on exit, and easing the throttle tightens the nose into the corner. The Koni dampers handle body roll better than they do the front-to-rear pitching, which of course is exacerbated if you use the enormous stopping potential of the AP brake calipers. I can see why the factory wouldn’t sell you the engine modifications without the suspension tune back in the day; a standard Virage chassis couldn’t handle all that power.

In deference to the car’s age, I didn’t try a standing start, but even if you floor the throttle from 20 mph, the Aston squats and its hood rises. In less than an hour, I drained the quarter-filled tank, though the touring range of about 325 miles on full tanks would not be unacceptable even if the price of filling the 25-gallon fuel tank would be.

Firm numbers are hard to find, says Aston historian Waddingham, but he reckons Works Service converted about 60 Virages in total—including the cars that just had the cosmetics done. “Between 1992 and 1993, I was forever picking kits for the 6.3 conversions,” he recalls from his time working in the parts department. Spires also notes that few standard-body Virages were sold after the 6.3 conversion became widely known. So the modified Virage kept the lights on and got Aston through a tough spot until Ford took full ownership and lavished resources on the brand as part of its Premier Automotive Group.

Thirty years on and with the benefit of hindsight, I’d not change a thing in the 6.3.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post Savior of Aston Martin: Reuniting with the 1992 Virage 6.3 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Final-edition GT-R due in the spring

Intake: After nearly thirteen years on the market, the current generation of GT-R (the R35) is ready for a send-off edition. Exactly what that entails is only rumor at this point, but the latest whispers indicate that Nissan will announce the final R35 in spring of 2023. The same Japanese online publication, Best Car Web, that heard tell of the date also expects the car to wear a large rear wing with a swan-neck mounting: The horizontal blade of the wing will be “hung” from its vertical supports, which curve around the wing’s leading edge. A few new paint colors are likely in the works.

Exhaust: Nissan already rocked our JDM fanboy socks earlier this year when it re-introduced Millennium Jade and Midnight Purple. The former was only available on the 2002 V-Spec II Nür and the M-Spec Nür, the send-off, high-performance editions of the previous (R34) generation and some of the most desirable models in the JDM collector market today. Modern-day Nissan only offered the frosty green and nostalgic purple on 100,“T-Spec,” GT-Rs, so perhaps it’s planning to expand the colors to “normal” GT-R without the T-Spec carbon-ceramic brakes, carbon-fiber spoiler, or lightened suspension parts. If the sky’s the limit, we’d wish for a modern-day R34 homage wearing the Nür name, with a power bump, just for the heck of it, and clad in Champion Blue from the generation-before-last ($33) LM Limited edition. It’s the equivalent of Gulf livery on a Porsche. Whatcha think, Nissan? –Grace Houghton

Toyota gives in, cuts production forecasts

Intake: Toyota, for most of the year, insisted it could build 9.7 million vehicles in the current fiscal year, but Thursday bowed to the pressures of a semiconductor industry that isn’t recovering as quickly as Toyota hoped, and said the 9.7 million target is no longer realistic. “In abandoning its target, the automaker said it ‘expects’ to lower its worldwide production schedule for the fiscal year ending March 31, though it did not offer a new target,” said Automotive News. Suspensions in Japan will affect 11 lines in eight plants. Models affected are expected to be Corolla, Corolla Cross, RAV4, Camry, Crown, Land Cruiser Prado and 4Runner, as well as the Lexus LS, IS RC, NX, UX, ES and GX.

Exhaust: Analysts thought Toyota’s predictions may be ambitious, and it turned out they were right. Exactly when there will be enough semiconductors to go around is still anybody’s guess. –Steven Cole Smith

Mecum Gone Farmin’ Fall Premier auction to feature 600 tractors

Intake: East Moline, Illinois, on November 17-19, will be a place where semiconductor shortages won’t exist. The annual Mecum Gone Farmin’ Fall Premier is billed as the world’s largest tractor auction, and who are we to disagree? The auction will also include 100 vintage trucks and 700 lots of “road art,” such as signs and displayable machinery. Some of the most notable consignments slated to cross the Gone Farmin’ auction block this year include a rare 1938 Minneapolis-Moline UDLX , a 1929 Minneapolis 17-30 Type B, that has been extensively restored, an Aultman-Taylor 30-60  and a powerhouse last-year 1974 International 1468.

Exhaust: Classic tractors have become genuine collectibles, and are bringing solid prices. In 2019 a 1961 John Deere 8020 articulated four-wheel-drive tractor sold for $178,500 at Mecum’s Davenport, Iowa auction, and prices have just gone up from there. –SCS

Belle-Clair Speedway on the block

Intake: Earlier this week, Dirtrakr broke the news that Belle-Clair Speedway in Southern Illinois is for sale. For $2.4 million, you can be the new owner of a 22.5-acre fairground property which contains the fifth-mile dirt oval. Since COVID put the racing scene on pause back in 2020, Bell-Clair has been gone silent, which is odd considering the multiple-event schedule the track had in 2019. Running everything from midgets to late models, Belle-Clair is known for its tight confines and as one of the last tracks in the United States to still have a section of wooden retaining walls. The sale’s discovery took some sleuthing as there is no mention of the track in the title of the listing. Instead, the Illinois real estate company Barber Murphy lists the plot of land as a “Re-Development Site” at 200 South Belt East. It’s not until you scroll through several images of the property before you see the dirt bullring—now overgrown in weeds—and the grandstands.

Exhaust: It’s wishful thinking to imagine some property buyer purchasing the old track and reviving it to its former glory, considering the number of shuttered speedways that have fallen to the steamroller. Often these type of raceway relics—which should be protected in the same way a house is protected on the National Register of Historic Places—are leveled to make room for parking lots or apartment complexes. Should you have the cash, and the interest in bringing an old track to its former glory, Belle-Clair is a viable option considering that is has only been closed for a couple years and you also gain a full-fledged commercial property in the process. Five buildings totaling more than 60,000 square feet in covered storage and a race track—if I had the dough, you would find me in Southern Illinois. –Cameron Neveu

The Aston Martin V8 hits half a century

Intake: The flags are flying at Aston Martin as the British bulldog celebrates 50 years since the introduction of the AM V8. Launched in October 1972 to replace the DBS V8, it was a subtle restyle of the William Towns’ design, that added a little more muscle, and would extend production until 1989. The nose was more curvy, with perhaps a touch of sharkiness, there was more flare in the fenders, and a prominent power bulge in the hood. This combination gave the AM V8 a more menacing appearance which was backed up by the Tadek Marek 5.3-liter V-8 engine. In standard guise it would produce over 320 horsepower, which was good enough to dispatch 60 mph from a standstill in six seconds, and carry on to a top speed of 160 mph. Five years later Aston Martin would take the fight to Ferrari with the 385-horsepower Vantage which could outrun a Daytona. A Volante drop top was built for open air enthusiasts and featured as James Bond’s drive in The Living Daylights, miraculously transforming into a V8 Saloon by Q branch. In all just over 4000 examples were built in its near two-decade run.

Exhaust: It may have reached a milestone, but according to our price guide AM V8 values aren’t on the up. A #1 Concours example is worth $173,000, while you’ll pay a further $100,000 for a Vantage in the same condition—and that’s the same as 12 months ago. As it celebrates its golden jubilee could now be the time to buy? –Nik Berg

The post GT-R may get a big sendoff, Toyota cuts production schedule, Aston Martin V8 has a birthday appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Marshall, Texas is a rather unassuming place. The self-proclaimed “Pottery Capital of the World,” sure, but otherwise it’s a typical albeit charming East Texas town of 23,000. It’s the kind of place where most folks drive an F-150. Maybe a Corvette if they’re feeling feisty or just turning 50. And yet, last week, Marshall hosted RM Sotheby’s sale of more than 1000 pieces of automobilia, over two-dozen motorcycles (including six rare Maserati-built bikes) and nearly 100 cars, all at no reserve, from the collection of cabinet mogul Gene Ponder.

Among the automobiles were British sports cars (including some great rare MGs), Ferraris, high-end recreations, and one Aston Martin that didn’t quite look right, but sold for more than almost every other car there at $687,500.

It’s a 1954 DB2/4 Drophead Coupe, and that alone makes it plenty rare. Barely 100 Drophead versions were ever built, after all. But the original owner, not content with the standard aluminum bodywork penned by Aston’s in-house designer Frank Feeley, chose instead to send a rolling chassis off to central Switzerland, home of coachbuilder Carrosserie Hermann Graber.

Graber, who in the 1930s built special bodies on Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Packard and Duesenberg chassis, spent the postwar years working mainly with British cars like Alvises, Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, and Aston Martins like this one. After completion, the Graber-clothed Aston spent most of its life in Switzerland, including long-term storage in Basel before being restored by marque specialist Kevin Kay with the goal of displaying it at Pebble Beach. Apparently, it needed a lot. Kay reportedly spent nearly 1000 hours just on the special Swiss body, fabricating new sills, reskinning the doors, and repairing the rear section of the body. It finally graced the lawn at Pebble in 2010.

Twelve years later, it still looks just about show-ready. The Dove Grey paint is beautiful. The gaps are even. The seats look barely sat in, and the engine looks barely run. But while the condition of the car is beautiful, I’m not so sure about the shape. Compared to other coachbuilt sports cars of the 1950s, it’s a little frumpy, no? Put Frank Feeley’s original shape for the DB2 up against what the Swiss came up with, and I’m going with Frank every time.

The thing, is though, it doesn’t matter that the Swiss car isn’t as pretty as the normal one, at least when it comes to price. It’s unique. Not the “one-of-one built in brown with a radio and a bench seat on a Tuesday” kind of unique, but an actual one-off. And uniqueness counts for a lot in car collecting.

How much? Well in this case the Graber-bodied Aston sold for a price approaching twice as much as a normal car, and we need look no further than seven lots ahead at the same auction, where a lovely U.S.-spec 1955 Drophead Coupe with standard bodywork sold for $300K less at $385,000. Lest we think this is a fluke, the Graber-bodied car also sold for $715,000 at Pebble Beach in 2011 and for $720,000 (presumably to Ponder) at Pebble Beach in 2019. Both times, the result was around double the price guide value of the standard car. The world of collector cars, then, looks like exactly the opposite of high school. It’s more important to be unique than it is to be pretty.

As for the rest of the sale, this actually wasn’t RM’s first “Gene Ponder Collection” auction. Ponder, who founded a cabinet company called Republic Industries, built up a collection of sports cars, Anglo-American oddballs like Arnolts, high-quality replicas/recreations and a few blue chip collector cars that RM auctioned back in 2007. Ponder partly funded his new company, Master Woodcraft Cabinetry, with the money from that auction and then built up another collection with the exact same type of cars. Hey, we all have a type.

This auction in 2022 was something of a sequel, then, and it was topped by a well-optioned Mercedes 300SL Roadster ($1.595M), a Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic recreation ($1.155M) and a Ferrari 330 GTC ($797,500). After two full days of automobilia sales, which ranged from books and toys to a $69,000 complete vintage Texaco service station, the action for cars and bikes started on Saturday and saw mostly realistic prices, a few expectation-beating results and a few refreshing bargains on the way to $22M in total sales.

Well-attended in person, the auction also saw plenty of activity from the phones and internet, and RM Sotheby’s reports that nearly 1000 bidders, 51 percent of whom registered for the first time, were eyeing the action in Marshall. In addition to the Aston, we look at the most interesting cars from the Gene Ponder Collection auction in detail on the pages below.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post Sale of the Week: 1954 Aston Martin DB2/4 Drophead Coupe by Graber appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It’s not often you see an Aston Martin DB5 advertised as a “non-runner” and “sold as seen.” The phrases “one careful owner” and “never raced or rallied” do not apply to this car, which is not even approved for use on public roads. And no amount of T-Cut will sort the damage to its Silver Birch paintwork.

So why has somebody spent nearly £3 million (approximately $3.3M) on the car, smashing the pre-auction estimate of £1.5M to £2M, and—according to the U.K’s Hagerty Price Guide—exceeding the price of a genuine DB5 by a staggering 315 percent?

Bond. James Bond.

It’s one of eight DB5 stunt cars built specifically for the famous spy and the only one released for sale by Aston Martin and EON Productions. The car starred in Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007, which—spoiler alert—showed that it really was time to die.

Although it looks like a DB5 on the outside, the stunt car is powered by a 3.2-liter, straight-six gas engine from a BMW M3 alongside a manual gearbox. Other non-Aston upgrades includes carbon-fiber body panels, Tillett stunt seats, and 3D-printed dashboard.

It’s arguably the ultimate DB5: modern BMW engine, lightweight body, suspension and brakes engineered by Aston Martin Special Projects, and the small matter of a starring role in a Bond movie. Do we expect you to drive on the King’s highway? No, Mr. Bond, we expect you to drift sideways on a racetrack in the style of stunt driver, rallying legend all-round good guy, Mark Higgins.

Find 15 minutes of your day to watch Henry Catchpole’s interview with the Manxman. In a comment, Catchpole said: “The DB5 stunt car was utterly glorious; seriously quick, really oversteery (in a fun, classic car way) and with a sound that you would never get bored of. Much as I admire the original, the stunt car is the one I’d have.”

The No Time To Die DB5 was the star lot at the Christie’s sale, where 25 lots were sold at a charity auction. Other cars included the Aston Martin V8 from the same film, which sold for £630,000 (roughly $696,000) and a pre-production Land Rover Defender stunt car, which fell short of its pre-auction estimate, realizing £189,000 (~$208,700).

Although it’s not registered with the DVLA, Christie’s says “it us up to the successful buyer to seek professional advice as to whether it would be possible to convert the vehicle for use as a means of transport.” To the lucky buyer, we say this is no time to dither. Make it happen!

Via Hagerty UK

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post $3M for a fake DB5 you can’t drive? Thanks, 007 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In most Bond films, the woman sits beside James in the passenger seat, looking at once elegant and rattled as he careens coolly down precariously narrow streets evading bad guys. Pleased as I was to be behind the wheel of the DB5 Goldfinger car, one of 25 produced as part of the Aston Martin Works continuation program, driving a $3.5 million car on a narrow English country road unnerved me. Unlike the imperturbable Bond, my palms sweated on the shellacked wooden steering wheel.

The DB5 Goldfinger, built new but to the same specs as the original 900 produced from 1963 to 1965, sports modern parts made to contemporary standards. Every component, from the original Avon cross-ply tires to the ZF five-speed transmission, with exactly the same ratios, was reimagined using current compounds and materials.

After you deposit yourself on the gray leather-channeled seat, the metal-meets-metal thwack of the door shutting is pure 1960s. Upon starting, the 4.0-liter straight-six produces a satisfying swagger, its healthy sound strong and, in its newness, reassuring. Unlike a real antique, this car is years away from suffering the usual and worrisome maladies of age.

To re-create the DB5’s engine, Aston Martin Works ran one from the original car through a CT scanner, digitally slicing it in 1-millimeter increments to ensure it was replicated exactly. The only changes made were to address a cooling issue in the original head. Engineers understood that this new car would be driven in hotter climates than the Isles. Cooling wouldn’t be a problem for me, as the blustery October skies threatened rain during my afternoon tour. It would take me around the hedge-rowed countryside northeast from Newport Pagnell through Chicheley, a primeval village with a population of 134 and history back to 1086.

Nervously dodging the occasional truck, which skimmed a hair’s breadth from the DB5’s driver’s door, I cruised in fifth gear between 2400 and 2500 rpm, the DB5 innocently hitting speeds up to 80 mph using what seemed like half of its torque and rated 282 horses. The engine purred, even above the wind noise in the cabin, which was to 1960s specification as well. The only thing it doesn’t have from the era is the old-car smell. In the DB5, you can feel every pebble on the road through your hands and backside. You’ll also feel your shoulders and arms the next day, as turning requires muscle. At least there are electric windows, which made their first appearance for Aston Martin in the original 1964 DB5.

Before my afternoon drive, Paul Spires, Aston Martin Works president, demonstrated how to deploy the machine guns—or, rather, the metal rods that stealthily extended and retracted from behind the headlights. These are capped with flashing red lights at the “muzzle” and accompanied by convincing sound effects loud enough to startle the trousers off an unsuspecting bystander in line at the fish and chips shop. The DB5 Goldfinger gets every spy gizmo that the one in the movie sported, with the exception of the ejection seat (they studied it but decided against it) and the devilishly handsome Sean Connery behind the wheel.

With the Bond-gadget remote control in hand, Spires was eager to show me the smokescreen feature until his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket. It was the Earl of Snowdon, son of HRH, the late Princess Margaret—and nephew to the Queen. Spires thoughtfully hit the decline button, then continued telling me that the fan-assisted smoke mechanism on this car was far superior to the one in the movie. Even royalty deferred to Bond today.

Between the original production of the DB4 and DB5, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the producer of 16 Bond films before his death in 1996, first approached David Brown about using a car. Originally, Brown refused the request, feeling it wasn’t up to Aston Martin’s standards. Harold Beach, director of design for the DB5, hounded Brown until he acquiesced. Originally the car provided was an engineering prototype in red, but the producers didn’t like the way it looked on camera, so it was changed to Silver Birch. When principal photography wrapped, Brown didn’t think it would amount to anything, so the DB5 was stripped down to the bare metal and sold. The buyer had no idea he owned the original camera car until years later. A Bond DB5 built for Thunderball sold in 2019 for $6.4 million.

Much as I might have enjoyed the surrounding bucolic English vistas, driving required intense concentration. Though it’s technically a new car, the DB5 Goldfinger possessed a proper 1960s quality. Shifts in the original-spec gearbox were as smooth as you would expect with the rudimentary synchros of the era, meaning metal on metal. I did have to take care not to flip open the top of the slender shifter while upshifting and inadvertently press the red button that engages the car’s gadgets. Spy problems.

The DB5’s bottom-hinged throttle wanted a sure foot. The clutch wasn’t unbearably heavy, and it offered up a perfect engagement point. Girling re-created the disc brakes at the DB5’s four corners, and the Goldfinger glided along the pocked country roads on telescopic front and lever-action rear shocks and a mechanical limited-slip differential. It’s not a modern setup by any means, and there was opportunity aplenty to have the tail end of the DB5 squirm away from me around a sharp turn. When you see the DB5 sideways in Daniel Craig’s final Bond bow, No Time to Die, know that the stunt driver did not have to work too hard to achieve the position. One could easily get into trouble without intending it. How deliciously Bond-like.

If I never quite felt comfortable in the car, it was not because the DB5’s cabin lacked for room. The small dimensions of the coupe felt cozy without being restrictive. Rather, any anxiety was born of the knowledge that I was driving a wildly expensive, limited-edition, righthand-drive car on the left side of the road. I didn’t want to be the one to bring it back with curbed wheels or Mother Nature’s bramble pinstriping cut into its liquid paint. But in those glorious moments when there was nothing but open road before me, and no oncoming traffic accosting me, driving the DB5 made me positively giddy.

With its 2020 model year, the car doesn’t conform to today’s safety standards and is not grandfathered into licensing and registration restrictions. But the fact that it isn’t technically street-legal mattered not to buyers; almost all 25 DB5 Goldfinger cars have been spoken for. Indeed, all three continuation models produced by Aston Martin Works, including the DB4 GT and the subsequent DB4 GT Zagato, were quickly snatched up. Some customers own all three. “That triumph was the proof of concept,” Spires said matter-of-factly. If he has pride in the program, which he conceived back in 2017, he wears it as subtly as a conservative pocket square.

After almost two hours of driving, my arms began to ache from muscling the wheel. Reverse was no longer easy to find, the synchros uncooperatively grinding at my failed attempts. As much as I’d appreciated the opportunity, I knew I’d reached my limit. Spent, I piloted the DB5 back to Works unscathed, having bested that villainous duo of fatigue and driver’s error and gotten away clean. But for a few brief and splendid hours, it felt sublime to be the Bond girl who finally got behind the wheel.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post For a few hours, the Bond girl finally got behind the wheel appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Robert Loydell of Aston Martin Works extended a hand covered in that fine sheen of grime you get from working with old tools. I took it gladly and shook it firmly. Loydell walked me over to one of two massive C-clamp-shaped English wheels, both of which have been at the factory since before the Battle of Britain.

“These would have made the panels on some of the aircraft we made here during the war,” he said.

My heart leaped into my throat, wondering if this cast-iron monster had made parts for the planes flown by my grandfather, a wing commander in the wartime Royal Air Force. As Loydell handed me a sheet of aluminum that I tried to bend into a voluptuous shape vaguely resembling a DB5 fender, Aston’s PR man leaned over with some urgency and said, “Please, let me just say to be exceedingly careful when using this.”

No, Aston Martin isn’t just any other car company. Look past the glamour and style, past the slick new Formula 1 team and today’s carefully crafted brand image of a tuxedoed James Bond stepping from his carbon-fiber road missile (equipped with real missiles) and see an outfit that has been building cars since King George V sat astride his horse. Most companies never get the chance to survive a single bankruptcy, yet this one has survived seven. When the stock price fell below a dollar in 2020, one might have considered that a dalliance with number eight. But, somehow, Aston Martin keeps bouncing back.

The answer as to why might be discovered, I thought, if I traveled to a sleepy, two-pub village 50 miles northwest of London called Newport Pagnell—not as one of the regular visitors to the dealership who comes to purchase a new car and select leather swatches, but to get my hands dirty with the people who repair, rebuild, and restore the cars. I wanted to see exactly how the magic happens at the historic home of this storied British marque. Fortunately, Paul Spires, president of Aston Martin Works, was game.

In 1947, a machine tools manufacturer named David Brown bought Aston Martin, which had already experienced two financial collapses since its launch in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford. Brown moved the business from its headquarters in Feltham, West London, out to Newport Pagnell in 1955, where a three-story building topped by a weathervane served as the original coach house facility. Brown believed it would be more efficient to build an entire car in one location rather than build a chassis in one place, the engine in another, and have coachwork assembled somewhere else. That building on Tickford Street across from the current Works location still stands. It predates the internal combustion engine and, according to Aston Martin, is the oldest surviving car factory in Europe.

Spires packs a schoolboy mischief into his youthful 50-something manner. If he was trying to rein in his enthusiasm for Aston Martin, which he joined in 2012, he failed miserably. By way of introduction, he rolled through some interesting but studied figures: In 2021, which was the 108th year since Aston Martin’s founding, the company produced its 100,000th car, an impressive number considering how rarely you see an Aston Martin on the road (but one that Volkswagen Group matches every four days across its various brands). Unlike VW, however, Aston estimates that 95 percent of all the cars it has ever built, including the 13,300 originally produced at Newport Pagnell, still exist and are either roadworthy or capable of being so with a certain amount of “fettling,” as the British call it.

That is where Aston Martin Works comes in. A subsidiary of Aston Martin Lagonda, which produces pricey luxury sports cars and SUVs at factories in central England and Wales, Aston Martin Works’ main business is all that fettling of vintage Aston Martins and treating new ones to special modifications for owners who want their cars done “by the factory.” In recent years, Works has also gotten into the business of completely reproducing obsolete Aston models from scratch—and for astronomical prices. Currently, it is wrapping up a 25-car run of the DB5 Goldfinger, which—at around $3.5 million a copy—can put you behind the wheel of the hero vehicle from the 1964 James Bond thriller of the same name, complete with working spy gadgets. Previously, Works built continuation runs of the 1959 DB4 GT and 1960 DB4 GT Zagato.

At first glance, Aston Martin Works appears to be nothing more than a modern dealership. The smooth sandstone walls of the outer building frame floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing contemporary DB11 V-12s and DBS grand-touring cars posed for a keen test driver. But go past the glassy facade and you’ll find a company successfully straddling the line between preserving its past and reinventing itself for the future.

For 11 years, Loydell, the metal craftsman who’s been recruited to babysit me in the panel room, has worked here shaping the bodies of some of Aston Martin’s most beautiful works of art. Before Loydell handed me a piece of pancake-flat, pristine aluminum that is just ¼ millimeter (or 1/100th of an inch) thick, he adjusted the pressure between the two rollers of the English wheel. The upper is the rolling wheel; the lower, the anvil wheel, which is interchangeable depending on the desired shape of the metal. There are four hash marks Loydell’s made with a Sharpie marker on the jackscrew that moves the anvil, or the lower jaw of the wheel. The hash marks indicate preset adjustments to the amount of force applied to the metal. Each pass through the wheel produces striations, or “blows,” to the panel, stretching, thinning, and shaping it.

The idea, Loydell explained, is to pass the piece of metal through, back and forth, applying different pressure on different sections to make the desired shape. Working the metal back and forth feels almost the same as running a vacuum cleaner over a rug; with each stroke forward, you shift the angle to the right or left so that the entire carpet gets cleaned.

My work was slow, and I easily forgot which way I was supposed to be shifting the metal to feed it through the rollers. The metal almost takes on a life of its own as your hands feed it through. “Don’t put too much pressure on it with your hands; that will make a difference in the shape, too,” said Loydell. “I can tell if someone’s leaned on a fender a bit too hard.” The cars on which he works are made of the softest aluminum you can get.

Loydell and I carried the 10-by-10 sheet of metal I worked into the subtle curve of an hors d’oeuvre platter to the buck, a plastic compound model of the DB5 made from computer scans of six original DB5 cars. The buck or jig—the equivalent of a costumer’s dress form—helps Loydell create the correct shape for body panels. He held my panel to the buck to see what contours needed to be accentuated or flattened. When he’s fashioning a component, sometimes he runs the metal through the English wheel to reshape it accordingly. If finesse is needed, smaller tools come in handy.

Loydell opened a drawer full of hammers and shapers with various heads, his initials carved into his tools, “so no apprentices walk off with them,” he joked. An apprenticeship at Works lasts three years, “but even then, they’re not quite ready to do some of the more precise shaping work.” He’s made several custom tools over the years. “This,” he says, holding up one shaped like a small wedge of Gouda, “I made for one car and never used it again. Just waiting for the right spot now.” Loydell is a legacy employee, as his grandfather worked in this same panel room back in the 1950s and ’60s, perhaps on the same cars Loydell restores now.

Other implements of the craft submit the sheetmetal to a more violent treatment, and the aforementioned cautious PR man winced when Loydell showed me to the crimper. “I realize I said it before, but I really mean it with this one,” he said. “Please be careful.” I giggled at him, then took the metal and placed it between the two vertical metal rods that, driven by a large electric motor, smash down on each other with devastating speed and force producing an ear-rattling patter like machine-gun fire. This is the metalworking version of gnashing teeth, I thought, imagining what my finger would look like flattened to a pulp. The various plates that can be fixed to the ends of the rods contour the metal in specific ways to whatever shape you’re going for. I was making the more dramatic slope of the front right-side fender where the headlight goes on a DB5.

As on the wheel, the metal gets fed into the crimper’s pounding yap, but the shaper must maintain a firm grip or it will snatch it from you. If the English wheel is finesse, the crimper is an angry hippopotamus, mashing its way through anything in its chops. It seemed incongruous that such a savage machine could create the graceful shoulder of such an elegant automobile. The final step of my tutelage, cutting out the curve that would be the right wheel arch with massive metal shears, almost sent the PR man into cardiac arrest as jagged raw metal curled its barbed edges perilously close to my fingers.

It wasn’t perfect, but after more than an hour in the panel shop, the flat shiny piece of aluminum Loydell first handed me was starting to look surprisingly like a fender. For a real artisan like Loydell, the front end of a DB5 takes about 220 hours to shape.

I didn’t have 220 hours, much less the years it would take to learn how to do this job properly, so we left my DB5-ish-looking unfinished fender to Loydell—probably for recycling—and moved on.

The light-gray floors throughout Works carry a high shine. The walls are a spotless white and lined with gray Dura-brand industrial cabinetry. If there was a spot of oil anywhere, I didn’t see it. Each tech has his or her own space, and their tools, which they bring themselves, line the drawers like a chef’s mise en place. All technicians wear black trousers and polo shirts with the company logo embroidered over the heart. It is so clean that the place feels surgical.

In a glass-enclosed corner of the facility resides the trim shop, like a life-size museum diorama. Until recently, the team inhabited a dim, cramped, cavelike room in an outer building. Upholsterers and trimmers now sat bathed in light in their fishbowl, where I was put in front of a sewing machine and asked to thread a needle. The sumptuous leather interiors of an Aston Martin are unquestionably part of the cars’ appeal, and I was about to learn how they are crafted from whole cowhides. But first I had to put on my glasses so I could see the hole in the needle.

The machine before me felt more analog and circa-1980s with its many dials and knobs than the cutting-edge, digital-touchscreen kind you’d find about 45 miles northwest at Aston’s main plant in Gaydon, where it moved its modern and mechanized assembly line in 2003.

Sue Turner, a seamstress who has been at Works for 21 years, happily banged a piece of dove-gray leather with a mallet for me to sew, as if preparing a piece of veal for a piccata. “Just making sure the cow’s dead,” she joked.

Modern car seats conceal foams of varying densities under aluminum or composite structures covered in newly engineered fabrics, including high-tech poly-blend cloth, recycled materials, or faux leathers manufactured by massive machines. However, at Works, the job of constructing a car seat recalls the ancient arts of a saddler or cobbler. Carefully vetted pieces of dyed Bridge of Weir leather are hand-cut to patterns that have existed for decades, then sewn with heavy-duty thread to an underlay of muslin. Between those layers, the inside padding, stuffed by hand, creates the shapes and contours of the seatbacks and cushions. If a customer orders contrast stitching, the thread color of their choice is used on the exposed stitches.

Turner placed the piece of pounded leather in front of me. Were I an actual Aston seamstress, this would become part of a seat cushion for a 1960s-era Aston. A piece of ecru-colored muslin with vertical grid guidelines drawn at approximately 2-inch intervals was placed behind the leather like a document being typed in duplicate. Turner’s banging had produced accordion folds about 2 inches apart in the leather that I would match up to the gridlines on the muslin. I was to run both through the sewing machine along each fold in the leather, attaching it to the muslin and creating around a 2-inch tubelike channel between the two in which to insert the wadding of the seat cushion.

It took me a minute or two to master working the electric foot pedal. The operator’s heel raises and lowers the machine’s foot, securing the fabric in place, then his or her toe works the pedal to move the needle up and down, marrying thread from the upper spool with that in the bobbin below for the complete stitch. Even in the trim shop of Aston Martin, your heel-and-toe technique matters. Indeed, there’s a cadence to sewing not unlike working a throttle. Too much and your thread and bobbin can get out of control quickly. Too little and you’ll be holding up the rest of the team after you.

“I used to be that slow, too,” Turner said, watching me, and I chuckled at and appreciated her British candor. As I repeated the process four or five times, proudly increasing my speed with each puffed channel sewn, the likes of a DB5 seat bottom started taking shape.

Turner doesn’t always sew with a machine. Sometimes she does finishing touches by hand. I asked her if she has a signature, some design or initial she puts into her work to stamp it. “I don’t personally, but there was one fellow here who did, as his father did before him. One time he was working on a car, redoing a seat, and came across his father’s work. They’d both ended up working on the same car.” At Works, such bridges across time and generations are not uncommon.

From the sewing machine, I took my semi-decently sewn seat cushion and carried it to the table where I was to stuff it. Padding a seat, I’m told, isn’t a haphazard affair. The padding, or wadding, looks like what’s inside your couch pillows, has about a 1-inch “loft,” or thickness, and the rough texture of a cat’s tongue. The amount can change your driving experience, according to Spires. “Too much padding and you’re sitting higher in the seat,” he said. “You’re too close to the steering wheel and don’t have the right feel in the seat of your pants. We insist that all cars that come through this shop are as the engineers originally intended. The details are critical.”

Inserting padding into a seat-cover channel might sound easy, but it’s more akin to squeezing on tight leather pants when you’ve just put lotion on your legs. It requires muscle. Simon Holmes, a 21-year Works veteran, and Rocco Garofalo, with 12 years on the job, showed me how to fold a long strip of wadding over a flat metal rod the perfect width of the channels I’d sewn into the cushion. A leather strap folds over the entirety of that setup to help smooth the way of the coarse wadding into the equally rough inside texture of the leather of my seat cushion.

There was gritting of teeth, and I almost impaled myself in the stomach before getting the wadding in properly. Once in, the metal rod and leather strap were removed. A final pull on the muslin and leather stretched it out properly. I repeated that a couple of times and held up my work to Holmes and Garofalo, seeking their approval. I took the, “Not bad for your first time,” they offered and scurried off, but not before Holmes handed me an embroidered DB6 patch for my efforts.

At Aston Martin Works, a frame-off restoration costs a flat-rate £400,000 (about $548,000) plus tax. After the car gets stripped to its bare chassis, trued, and repaired, the body is put back on and removed twice more, once for powder-coating, then for proper alignment to drill out badge and bumper holes before it goes to paint. Spires counts access to all of the original build books and manuals a key part in the two-year restoration process.

Once back on the chassis, a car will spend 250 hours in the Works paint shop being “flatted,” or sanded, and polished. Any unseemly orange peel gets a good sanding so the owner is left with a shine that looks as though the paint were poured onto their car like tempered chocolate on a cake. Aston Martin Works can color-match any car to the perfect shade of cerise or chartreuse. When asked if he’s ever persuaded a client to change questionable tastes, Spires, the consummate businessman, responded without faltering: “All that means is when the next owner buys it, the car will be back here to have more work done.”

I was ushered into the engine room to meet Tony Young, who’s been elbow-deep in the mills that power Astons for over two decades. He showed me a 5.3-liter V-8 that’s getting the POW-spec treatment. The confusion must have read on my face. “Prince of Wales,” Spires explained, which made infinitely more sense than what I’d imagined.

As Aston Martin did with a car made for Prince Charles back in the late 1980s, Young is converting this formerly fuel-injected engine into a four-carburetor version. Only 27 of the POW-spec Vantage were made, with the highest output engine possible but normal bodywork. But any customer with any Vantage can transport it to Works and have that conversion done. And that is the case for any Aston Martin. If you want it and are willing to pay for it, you can have it done. “By having the work done here, its provenance is assured,” Spires said. “And while it’s not an original car, it’s done and certified by us, so it’s legitimate.” As there are so few cars, of which provenance is well known, Spires can easily spot a seller pulling a fast one.

If there’s a part Young needs, he can head to the parts department, home to over 2 million of them. If it’s one that no longer exists, such as the vacuum container on this newly carbureted POW V-8, he can walk over to the guys in the panel shop and ask for one to be made.

For its services, Aston Martin Works will come collect your car, whether in-country or from your Bond-esque desert oasis or snowy ski chalet. The discreet folks at Works have circumvented more than one international incident by sending technicians to an owner’s car in undisclosed locations to change some sand-clogged spark plugs or purge an engine running rough on dubious fuel.

In modern car-manufacturing terms, it might be easy to dismiss Aston Martin Works’ use of old-world guild knowledge and Industrial Revolution–era techniques. But Works possesses something that no newly launched robotic car company can buy: history. Aston Martin’s century-long survival has been a hard-fought victory, now delivered in part by the callused hands of the craftspeople inside the factory’s Victorian-era brick walls, using the methods of ghosts.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post Inside and hands-on in Aston Martin’s factory restoration shop appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The world still has a few more barn finds left in it, but it’s hard to imagine discovering many matching-numbers Aston Martin DB4s among them.

That’s what you’ll find in the U.S. on eBay however, where a 1962 DB4 that has been in the same ownership for more than 40 years, and in storage for thirty of those, has come up for sale in New York.

How the right-hand-drive car with its GB plate ended up on the other side of the Atlantic isn’t shared in the ad, but the story behind the car’s storage certainly adds to its intriguing appeal.

According to the author, the car’s previous owner had returned from Vietnam in the 1970s and went back to work at his local body shop. After helping to repair his boss’s car, the reward was the DB4. Doesn’t sound like such a bad boss, to us …

After having the 3.7-liter, straight-six Aston towed back home, he intended to restore it but, proving that some stories repeat themselves time and time again, our new Aston owner never found the time. The DB4 languished in his barn for decades.

Recently extracted and brought into the sunlight after spending fully half of its life untouched, the DB4 is certainly rough around the edges—but it is original and, in the photos at least, appears largely complete. Storage has protected it from the harsh, northeastern U.S. winters, but as most evaluations, only seeing it up close and getting the car on a ramp will reveal exactly how extensive any restoration would need to be.

The DB4 is being offered for sale at $325,000. That falls a bit below the model’s #4 condition value of $344,000, the value of a running, driving 1962 DB4 with obvious cosmetic flaws. That asking price might explain why the car’s recent eBay auction seemed to end without a winning bid; at that figure, any buyer would really have to value the its originality and story.

Perhaps, inspired by our recent trip to the Patina show, the real course of action is to ensure it is structurally and mechanically sound (no small task, we suspect) and drive it as-is, with its barn-find heart on its sleeve.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

Via Hagerty UK

The post Stored for 30 years, barn-find Aston Martin DB4 needs some love appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This year, the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion featured cars and stars from the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In celebration of the French endurance race’s 100th year, the paddock at WeatherTech Laguna Seca was packed with the most iconic cars to ever rip around Circuit de la Sarthe, divided into four run groups. Organizers even staged a Le Mans running start for the “1972–1982 Le Mans” group. The gathering also showcased what was, according to the Reunion, “the largest exhibition of winning or historically significant Le Mans cars ever assembled,” parked cheek-to-jowl under a large tent in the infield—replete with armed security guarding the (inter)national treasures.

Indeed, the pedigree and the volume were jaw-dropping. Eclectic, too. Even after four days at the track, you never quite grew accustomed to the neck-snapping scenes—a Gulf-liveried 917 rolling through the crowd, the Le Mans–winning 1967 Ford GT40 Mark IV basking in a wash of California sun, or the four-rotor roar of a Mazda 787 signaling the commencement of the day’s activities. Among the cars that traded the three-mile blast down the Mulsanne Straight for a two-story drop down The Corkscrew, there was something for everyone.

We highlighted a dozen of our favorites, making sure to not duplicate marques so that we may give a flavor of the diversity within Laguna’s pits. Did your all-time favorite Le Mans racer make the cut?

1949 Aston Martin DB2

Following WWII, English businessman David Brown purchased Aston Martin—which was, at the time, nothing more than a low-volume sports car manufacturer. Brown also bought coach-built luxury marque Lagonda and installed its Bentley-designed 2.6-liter inline-six in Aston Martin’s newest model, the DB2.

Riding on a shortened DB1 chassis, this Frank Feeley–designed coupe was the first car to be fitted with a Lagonda six, in an effort to win at 1949’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. The car was one of three entered by Aston Martin, but the only DB2 to utilize the novel engine, which produced 166 horsepower. Mechanical gremlins struck the new combo early, as a broken water pump forced the DB2 to retire after only an hour of competition. Despite the early retirement, the new coupe would prove to have lasting effects on the English marque, in style and in performance.

1950 Cadillac Series 61 “Le Monstre”

American gentleman racer Briggs Cunningham brought two Series 61 Cadillacs to Le Mans in 1950. In a high-speed A-B test, Cunningham kept one relatively stock and commissioned fabricators from Grumman aircraft to transform the second into a streamlined prototype that, upon completion, resembled an alien pontoon. Despite the wild looks, the boat-shaped Cadillac prototype retained most of the Series 61 running gear, including the 331-cubic-inch V-8, under its lumpy skin.

While in France, it was dubbed “Le Monstre” for its imposing proportions amongst Europe’s petite sports cars, and (according to legend) Le Mans officials spent hours crawling around the car to certify that it was, indeed, a Cadillac. Three inches narrower, and some 13 mph faster than its Series 61 counterpart, Le Monstre finished 11th in the French endurance race, ironically one spot behind the other Caddy.

 1952 Mercedes Benz W194 300 SL

By the ’50s, Mercedes Benz had won every race that mattered—except one. A conquest at Le Mans was noticeably absent from its mantle. That all changed in the summer of ’52, when the German manufacturer entered three 300 SLs into the French endurance race and emerged victorious, capturing the top two steps on the podium. To differentiate the three silver beasts, each car sported a different color around its grille. With blue on its nose, the Series 194 belonging to Hermann Lang and Fritz Riess stormed across the line first, at the conclusion of 24 hours.

1958 Ferrari 250 TR

Arguably the most beautiful car to compete at Le Mans, this Ferrari 250 TR is one of 19 pontoon-bodied, V-12-powered Ferraris. Purchased new from Maranello by Jaroslov Juhan, this 250 TR was painted blue (!) and raced at Le Mans in 1958. After 72 circuits, the roadster was involved in an accident and rendered unable to finish.

Luckily, the Ferrari was returned to the factory where it was repaired, painted red, and shipped to Vasek Polak. Once stateside, the car was campaigned throughout the West Coast. Bad luck struck again, though, and it ended up in a tree, on fire, during a race at Laguna Seca. The car was eventually repaired and sold to David Love, who campaigned the born-again Ferrari in SCCA and then at the Reunion for 25 years straight.

1964 Alpine M64

The Index of Thermal Efficiency is bestowed to teams using calculations derived from vehicle weight, fuel consumption, and distance covered. In 1964, the honors went to this Alpine M64, which averaged 21 mpg for 292 laps (2436 miles) with aid from a 1149-cc, inline-four-cylinder sipper. The group finished first in class (17th overall).

A year later, the Alpine team returned with the same efficient bullet—wearing additional M65 cladding—in hopes of collecting more hardware. However, the second year wasn’t as kind to the home team. Sporting a new rear clip that would make Exner proud, the Alpine’s second go was cut short due to cooling problems. The fantastic, finned racer was squirreled away in storage for a decade until a Renault executive arranged its sale to a Bugatti enthusiast. After trading hands once more, the Alpine returned to the site of its original, efficient triumph 57 years later, in 2022.

1965 Iso Bizzarini A3/C Corsa

A low, V-8 growl might be the last sound you’d expect from the exhaust tips of an Italian-bodied Le Mans racer, especially one that shares the grid with other high-pitched wails and shrill buzzes. Such is the case for this Iso, which borrowed a Chevrolet 327 to shove it to a first in class in the 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans. The 400-horse, front-mid-engine coupe was designed by Giotto Bizzarrini, the same Italian fellow responsible for the Ferrari 250 GTO. Cash was tighter at Iso than at its Italian counterpart, and (according to legend) Bizzarrini drove the Iso to and from Le Mans, ultimately lacking funds for a haul. Hard to believe; then again so is the engine choice.

1967 Ford GT40

One year after Ford broke through for its first win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Blue Oval returned with a brand-new car, save for the 427 engine and transmission. Four GT40 Mark IVs were entered in the 1967 race. With American icons Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt behind the wheel, the only GT40 to avoid trouble finished a whopping 32 miles ahead of the second-place Ferrari, setting a record for race pace in the process. This was the only time chassis J-5 saw competition, as it was promptly retired and donated to The Henry Ford in 1971.

1969 Porsche 908/02 LH “Flunder” Langheck Spyder

Selecting a car to represent Porsche on this Le Mans list is difficult task. Rather than opting for the low-hanging 917, 935, or 962, we went with a more obscure choice. (Also, the name is just fun to say.) Flunder Langheck translates to “flat fish long tail.” The predecessor to the world-beating 917, this was the only 908 to receive the extend-o treatment ahead of the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans. The odd creature—propelled by an air-cooled, 3.0-liter flat-eight—crossed the finish line third overall and first in its sports prototype class.

1996 McLaren F1 GTR

According to legend, Gordon Murray never aspired to enter his F1 supercar in wheel-to-wheel racing. It was McLaren’s customer base that tipped the scales, as the firm received numerous requests for an F1 racer. After a couple serious dudes approached McLaren with the idea to race in an endurance series, an agreement was reached, and a three-car racing program was born. Since Le Mans regulations capped horsepower at 600, the race version was less powerful than the road goer, despite sharing the same BMW-sourced 6.1-liter V-12. In its first race at Le Mans, the F1 GTR shocked the world and took first overall. One year later, the mighty Mac was back for more, with seven entrants, including this FINA-liveried Team Bigazzi entry that finished eighth overall.

1999 Panoz LMP Roadster

After the FIA discontinued the GT1 class, which included the aforementioned McLaren F1 GTR, Panoz opted to transform its fleet into Le Mans Prototype (LMP) spec and compete in the Euro Le Mans and American Le Mans series. Underneath its big schnoz, Panoz fit a 6-liter 625-horsepower Ford by Elan Power. In its first 24 Hours of Le Mans as an LMP racer, the Panoz finished seventh overall. Stateside, the car experienced success, capturing the Petit Le Mans on the road to the 1999 ALMS team—and manufacturer—championship.

2003 Chevrolet Corvette C5.R

As part of the fleet that secured Corvette Racing its 2003 manufacturer’s championship, this C5R finished third in class and 12th overall at that year’s French contest. But it didn’t slip into retirement quietly after the victorious season. Instead, it was crashed by Dale Earnhardt Jr ahead of a race at Sonoma Raceway.

Years later, the NASCAR driver revealed on his podcast that he thought he was pulled from the fiery wreckage before his trip to the hospital: “… Somebody pulled me out of that car. And I thought that it was a corner worker because I felt somebody put their hands under my armpits and pull me out of the car. I didn’t get out. I don’t have any memory of myself climbing out of the car.” He went on: “…When I got to the hospital, I was like, ‘Who pulled me out of the car? I gotta say thanks to this person,’ because it was a hand! It was physical hands grabbing me! I felt it. And there was nobody there.”

Since the accident, the car has been restored by Pratt & Miller to its original form, resplendent in the livery in which it ran at Le Mans in 2003.

2005 Audi R8 LMP1

Aboard this Audi, Tom Kristensen won the 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans and became the all-time most successful driver in the French endurance race, surpassing Jackie Ickx’s six career overall wins. The victory was also Audi’s fifth triumph in the race. 2005 also marked the final year for the R8 LMP racer, as the diesel-powered R10 TDI swooped in the following year to continue Audi’s dominance in endurance racing.

2012 DeltaWing

We saved the wildest for last. Designed by Ben Bowlby and constructed by Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, the DeltaWing was entered in the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans under the Garage 56 banner. This entry slot is reserved for experimental cars, and the rocket-shaped roadster was just that, featuring front tires just four inches wide, and a cockpit just in front of the rear axle. Approximately half the weight and half the power of the prototypes it ran again, the DeltaWing utilized a 1.6-liter turbocharged engine to shove it around Circuit de la Sarthe. Sadly, the 1,047-pound experiment was involved in a wreck on lap 75 and did not finish. The DeltaWing would undergo several iterations in the following years, before retiring for good in 2016.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post 12 Mulsanne-eaters from Rolex Reunion’s Le Mans celebration appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Droptop V12 Vantage looks fantastic, but you can’t have one

Intake: Following the release of the coupe version earlier this year, Aston Martin has unveiled a drop-top variant of the herculean V12 Vantage. Powered by the same 690-hp, 555 lb-ft twin-turbo 5.2-liter V-12, the roadster variant will rip off 0–60 runs in 3.4 seconds on its way to a top speed of 200 mph. An eight-speed ZF automatic transmission and a mechanical limited-slip rear diff round out the drivetrain hardware, and like the coupe, the roadster gets massive carbon ceramic brakes (16.14-inch fronts and 14.17-inch rears) as standard. A lighter exhaust (15.8 fewer pounds less the standard Vantage Roadster’s kit) helps the V-12 sing a joyful noise. Like the twelve-cylinder coupe, the roadster is 40 mm wider than a regular Vantage and incorporates a new bumper design that, in conjunction with new side sills and a new rear bumper, generates extra downforce. That massive rear wing on the V12 Vantage won’t come standard on the convertible, but you can option it back on if you’d like. The interior looks fantastic, offering leather sport seats as standard and more rigid carbon-fiber performance buckets as an option. If the standard options sheet just won’t satisfy, you can enlist Q by Aston Martin, the marque’s in-house bespoke order team, to personalize your V12 Vantage Roadster exactly how you’d like, from exterior paint and graphics to interior materials and stitching. possibilities are only as limited as your checkbook. Interested in getting your hands on one? Bad news: Aston says that all 249 examples of the V12 Vantage Roadster have already been spoken for. Production is slated to begin this fall, with deliveries beginning in Q4 of this year.

Exhaust: As the brand faces an expensive shift to EVs, it’s clearly using a few limited-run examples of nostalgic models to stock its coffers. Although modern Astons are hit or miss when it comes to ROI, this model will probably be desirable immediately, says Hagerty Price Guide editor Greg Ingold. — Nathan Petroelje

Ford cuts 3000 jobs, mostly in Michigan

Intake: Ford confirmed on Monday that it’s laying off 2000 salaried and 1000 contract white-collar positions, mostly in Michigan, a state in which the company has pledged to create more jobs. Executive Chairman Bill Ford and CEO Jim Farley sent a letter to 31,000 employees detailing the layoffs, stating that the company is “eliminating work, as well as reorganizing and simplifying functions throughout the business.” David Whiston, U.S. autos equity analyst for investment services firm Morningstar Inc., told The Detroit News that the job cuts had been expected. “It’s not a surprise given Farley being very open about Ford having too many people. They also need to cut costs to get profits moving again so this is one of those steps. They seem to really want to focus on EV now and need EV people, not more ICE people.” Spokesman Mark Truby told the Detroit Free Press that the move does not affect Ford’s June announcement that it would create 3200 union jobs, including nearly 2000 jobs in three assembly plants to increase production of the electric F-150 Lightning pickup.

Exhaust: Ford said that the layoffs are across the board, affecting multiple departments, but all indications are they are jobs the company considers expendable because they are primarily tied to the internal combustion market. This is part of the new reality as Ford and other manufacturers reshuffle the deck toward an all-electric future. —Steven Cole Smith

Koenigsegg CC850’s gearbox is best of both worlds

Intake: At The Quail: a Motorsports Gathering late last week, Koenigsegg unveiled the CC850, a striking machine that pays homage to 20 years since the brand’s first model, the CC8S, debuted. (It also tips the cap to company founder Christian von Koenigsegg’s 50th birthday, because why not.) For this contemporary reimagination of the first Koenigsegg, the company didn’t want to leave the driver with only two pedals. The solution is the Engage Shift System (ESS), which allows the driver to toggle the transmission between the functions of six-speed manual, which requires the use of a clutch pedal, and nine-speed automatic—”more laid back,” in the company’s words. The new ESS transmission is based on Koenigsegg’s existing Light Speed Transmission found in the Jesko hypercar. As impressive as the gearbox is, the beating heart of the CC850 is just as technologically formidable: 1385 hp and 1020 lb-ft of torque from the 5-liter V-8 mounted midship.

Exhaust: Drivers have been lamenting the slow demise of the manual transmission, but this transmission stands a chance to bring at least some of the experience of driving a manual back to drivers hands and feet. Yes, this is currently only in a hyper-exclusive “megacar” but as with a lot of similar technology over the years, if it works reasonably well, it stands a chance of trickling down to more common cars. Consider our fingers crossed. — Kyle Smith

Lucid Air Sapphire plans to out-Plaid Tesla

Intake: Lucid has been teasing a higher performance version of their dual motor, 1111-hp Air Dream Edition flagship sedan, and the plans have firmed up with an extra motor and a new trim level: Sapphire. The extra motor is fitted in the rear, creating a “twin rear-drive unit” with torque vectoring and a revised cooling system to provide “over 1200 horsepower.” Lucid claims zero to 60 mph in less than two seconds, a sub nine-second quarter mile time and a top speed over 200 mph. Sapphire models are finished in a unique blue color, sport wider tires (+20mm front, +30mm rear) with fender flares, a stiffer suspension, and carbon ceramic brakes to slow it all down. This price for such performance perfection? A lofty $249,000.

Exhaust: The Sapphire is a lot of car for a lot of money, but the price isn’t that terrifying once you spec a Porsche Taycan Turbo S with desirable options. (Mine hit $233,930 before I stopped clicking my mouse.) And the Sapphire walks away from both the Porsche and the Tesla Model S Plaid in a straight line, and might have the handling and braking upgrades to run with Germany’s finest on a road course. Oh, and unlike the Plaid, the Sapphire retains a normal steering wheel, so you can actually drift it. —Sajeev Mehta

Goodwood plans ahead for 2023 Members’ Meeting

Intake: The Goodwood Revival is still weeks away, but the British racing circuit has already announced dates for its first event of 2023. The 80th Members’ Meeting will take place on April 15–16 and tickets are exclusive to Members and Fellows of the Goodwood Road and Racing Club. Further details will be announced in due course so as not to distract further from this year’s flagship Revival.

Exhaust: The Members’ Meeting is always fully-focused on the racing, without the distractions of donning period costumes, taking in a tea dance or any number of other entertaining side shows that make up the Goodwood Revival. Although becoming a fully fledged Member of the GRRC is neither easy or cheap, anyone can become a Fellow for the price of around $54 a year and take in this rather special race weekend. —Nik Berg

Toyota president rallies for hydrogen power

Intake: Akio Toyoda has joined four-time World Rally Champion Juha Kankkunen to demonstrate the potential of hydrogen on a rally stage in Belgium. While the Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally team was racing to second and third places on Rally Belgium, Toyota’s speedy boss drove the unique GR Yaris H2 on one twisty special stage, with Kankunnen by his side to advise. The car uses a modified combustion engine fueled exclusively by hydrogen for emissions-free motorsports, and it was the first time it car has been put through its paces outside of Japan.

Exhaust: Toyota is one of the few firms still pursuing hydrogen as an alternative to batteries to fuel a greener future. Using the universe’s most abundant element to power combustion could be a way to keep ICE enthusiasts, like Toyoda himself, on the road for years to come. Even rally legend Kankkunen seems convinced: “Akio’s driving was great. And the hydrogen engine put out solid torque, making it no different from a gasoline engine. Because they emit zero CO2, I believe hydrogen engines will become one of the options for achieving carbon neutrality not only in the world of motorsports but also in the world of everyday cars.” —NB

The post V12 Vantage drops top, Lucid wants to out-Plaid Tesla, Toyoda rallies for hydrogen appeared first on Hagerty Media.

California DMV skewers Tesla “Autopilot,” “Full Self-Driving”

Intake: Ten months after Tesla moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas, the California Department of Motor Vehicles charged Tesla with making “untrue or misleading” statements concerning Tesla vehicles equipped with advanced driver-assistance features. Under the microscope are Teslas with “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving Capability,” about which the company claimed, “All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go … Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigating urban streets, complex intersections and freeways,” according to the suit. And, “The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat,” which the California DMV considers misleading. The advertisements may be a “deceptive practice” under California’s Civil Code. Tesla chairman Elon Musk still hasn’t responded to the situation specifically, tweeting this weekend only that Tesla had made its one-millionth car in China, bringing Tesla’s total to well over three million. Similarly, Tesla has had little to say about the scrutiny it is receiving from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regarding its self-driving capabilities. Since July 26, 2022, there are 48 crashes on NHTSA’s the agency’s Special Crash Investigations list, 39 of which involved Tesla vehicles. Nineteen people, including drivers, passengers, pedestrians, other drivers, and motorcyclists, were killed in those Tesla crashes, according to The Verge.

Exhaust: It’s a fascinating exercise in public relations—or the formal lack of them—when it comes to Tesla’s decision not to issue statements countering criticism of its products. Any other auto manufacturer would have sent out a half-dozen statements per incident, but Tesla’s policy is to remain mum, thus keeping the issues out of the public scrutiny by refusing to engage in a conversation. It’s a risky strategy, but so far it seems to be working. —Steven Cole Smith

Full-size Lego 007 DB5 used almost 360,000 bricks

Intake: Visitors to London’s flagship Lego store can get behind the wheel of a one-to-one replica of James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5. The massive model took 1366 hours, or almost 57 days, to construct, and used 357,954 bricks. Weighing in at 2300 pounds, the Aston features rotating number plates, working headlamps, and illuminated instruments. Alongside the car is a life-size 007 minifigure and Blofeld’s cat. The spy sculptures mark Lego’s 90th and James Bond’s 60th anniversaries and are on display in London’s Leicester Square.

Exhaust: If you don’t happen to have two full months to spare, then a 298-piece 007 Aston Martin DB5 Speed Champions model might be a little more practical. It’s based on Bond’s No Time To Die Aston, comes with a Daniel Craig minifigure, and costs just $19.99. —Nik Berg

MB Classic tosses open doors of expanded West Coast shop, museum

Intake: Mercedes-Benz Classic just bid auf wiedersehen to its 28,000 sq-ft dedicated facility in Irvine, California, and guten tag to a new workshop up the coast in Long Beach. The German automaker reworked 40,000 sq-ft of its sprawling West Coast Campus facility for the vintage stuff, now operating adjacent to the existing Vehicle Preparation Center, Western Region Office, and a personnel training facility that take up a stunning 1.1-million sq-ft of real-estate. Fresh digs, but the familiar MB Classic services remain the same. If you’ve enough coin and patience, the automaker will restore your classic Mercedes from any era and provenance to better than when it left the factory. The new workshop is prepared for any restoration challenge, right down to using an English wheel for hand-shaped aluminum or rebuilding ultra-complex race-engines. Aside from the obvious benefit of having the original manufacturer resuscitate your car, MB Classic maintains an unparalleled historical archive containing detail production information on every single car to ever wear the tri-star, supported by a wide catalog of OEM replacement componentry to boot. If you don’t yet have a Benz oldtimer of your own, MB Classic can help you source one to your specifications. Or, simply serve you a cup of coffee and give you a tour, if you’d like—right after you stop by the gift shop and pick up your MB Classic apparel, mugs, models, and other branded accoutrement.

Exhaust: We were part of 400 guests to the new Classic Center’s red carpet unveiling. For all its motions toward its electrified future, MB is quite proud of its heritage, and opening a new, state-of-the-art restoration workshop goes a long way in showing its support for the gas-burnin’ old stuff. The inimitable 300 SL is clearly the centerpiece of this pride; prior to the dramatic curtain drop, a veritable fleet of gleaming Gullwings lined the red carpet. Inside, the theme was “A star is reborn”: A W116 like that featured in Ronin, a W111 Cabriolet similar to the car from The Hangover, and a W113 mirroring the same in Audrey Hepburn’s Two for the Road, among many other four-wheel movie stars. Additional 300 SLs filled the nooks and crannies of the workfloor in various states of repair and restoration. Our favorite spectacle was the freshly painted bodyshell of a 300 SL Roadster done up in dark gray. The corner of that space, which held a large pegboard filled with MB Classic paint swatches, was too cool not to futz with. —Conner Golden

James May in Grand Tour Evo crash

Intake: James May was hospitalized after filming a stunt for The Grand Tour went horribly wrong. According to a report in The Sun, May hit a rock wall in an underground tunnel inside a military base in Norway. While shooting a scene for the Amazon Prime show, May, Clarkson, and Hammond had to drive their cars through the unlit tunnel, whose lights flicked on as they progressed through it. At the end was a rock face, and the trio’s task was to brake before hitting it. Captain Slow arrived at the braking point rather too fast in his Mitsubishi Evo 8 and hit the wall, breaking at least one rib in the process. After being checked out at a local hospital, May was able to join his pals to film the rest of the show, which will be released later this year.

Exhaust: It’s not the first time May has been injured on adventures with Hammond and Clarkson. In 2010, while filming the Top Gear Christmas Special in Syria, he was floored by a tow rope and suffered a concussion. Normally, however, it is Richard Hammond who is the most accident-prone, having crashed a dragster at almost 300 mph in 2006 and then launching a Rimac off the side of a Swiss mountain in 2017. Thankfully everyone is okay and we’ll be able to see exactly what they were up to when The Grand Tour season five hits our screens. –NB

Aston Martin isn’t done with nostalgic V-12 concepts, thank Q very much

Intake: Aston Martin has digitally revealed a new concept, dubbed the DBR22, which will make its physical debut later this week in Monterey, California. The roofless wonder is meant to celebrate the 10th year of Q, Aston Martin’s in-house, bespoke-creations division responsible for some of the brand’s wildest achievements: the track-slaying Vulcan; the road-going Victor, which was basically a Vulcan converted for street use (with a manual, no less); and older machinery, such as the V-12-powered Vantage V600. The DBR22 pays homage to a few notable open-cockpit beauties from its past, too—specifically, the alloy-bodied 1953 DB3S and the DBR1, which won Le Mans under the hands of none other than Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori in 1959.

The DBR22 features a 5.2-liter twin-turbo V-12 good for 705 hp and 555 lb-ft of torque, as well as an eight-speed automatic transmission. There’s a 3D-printed rear subframe, a first for Aston Martin, and adaptive dampers at all four corners. However, this is first and foremost a style statement. From the tiny windscreen to the nacelles behind each seat, the resemblance to older Astons (like the DBR1 with which it’s pictured) is uncanny. There’s loads of leather and carbon fiber inside, as well as a new dashboard design. Aston says that while the DBR22 is just a concept right now, it intends to make the striking machine a reality for a select group of customers who have already been involved with Q by Aston Martin.

Exhaust: Homage cars can get cringy from time to time, but Aston knocked this one out of the park (pitch?). The single panel for the rear lid of the car must have been wildly complex to make, but the result pays dividends here, making that bespoke paint pop in all manner of lighting. No word on the price, but we’re guessing that, like us, you haven’t spoken with Q lately. —Nathan Petroelje

The post CA DMV skewers Tesla “Autopilot,” MB Classic expands West Coast shop, V-12 Aston Martin concept honors DBR1 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

EPA levies fines on diesel exhaust companies

Intake: Red Deer Exhaust Inc. and Thunder Diesel & Performance Company are on the hook for a $1.6 million fine and must stop selling products that bypass vehicle emissions control systems in violation of EPA regulations, following a 2018 investigation. Red Deer, based in Alberta, Canada, manufactured the parts (notably the Flo~Pro Performance Exhaust) and Thunder Diesel, in Mountain Home, Arkansas, distributed them in the U.S.  The defeat device products they sold, more than 100,000 per year, were prohibited by the Clean Air Act and caused the vehicles to emit excess pollution. “Defeat devices violate Clean Air Act emissions requirements meant to protect public health and the environment, as well as vulnerable communities that are disproportionately impacted by air pollution,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division. “This settlement ensures that Flo~Pro will stop the sale of all defeat devices in the U.S. and is the latest reminder that the Department of Justice will hold the aftermarket automotive parts industry accountable for violations of federal anti-pollution laws.”

Exhaust: Thunder Diesel is no longer selling the defeat devices and is no longer in the aftermarket parts business at all; otherwise, the penalty levied by the U.S. government would have been even larger. These companies aren’t alone, as the EPA has been going after parts manufacturers that sell products that defeat or bypass emissions equipment—particularly diesel pickups. As much as we love to modify cars and trucks, emissions laws have made air quality so much better. Flouting those laws makes automotive enthusiasts as a group look bad, and from a health and safety standpoint we’re all better off without excess diesel fumes in the air. —Brandan Gillogly

Aston Martin to unveil two new models at Pebble Beach

Intake: Aston Martin will reveal a brace of British sports cars at its Club 1913 on Pebble Beach Golf Links during Monterey Car Week. First, the wraps will come off a limited edition car built by Aston’s Q Division to celebrate its tenth anniversary and simultaneously celebrate Bentley’s record at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It “encapsulates the brand’s winning track bloodline,” says Aston Martin. The second car will be a “new truly thrilling performance focused model which continues the high-octane emotion and intense driving pleasure defined by breath-taking new models such as the DBX707, V12 Vantage, and the uncompromising Aston Martin Valkyrie.” All will be revealed on August 19, and Aston Martin will also show the Valhalla with an updated interior design as well as the DBX707. It will also be the first major showcase for the company’s new logo and branding.

Exhaust: We don’t know what model the Q-car will be based on, but we rather suspect this will take a similar approach to the recent 007 editions, and therefore be a largely cosmetic treatment for an existing car. As for the new model, our money is on a V12 Vantage Roadster. Another good reason to visit Car Week, as if anybody needed one. —Nik Berg

Fernando Alonso to replace retiring Vettel at Aston Martin F1

Intake: Well, that didn’t take long: Aston Martin filled the seat vacated last week by the retiring Sebastian Vettel with another tousled-hair Formula 1 driver, Fernando Alonso. It’s a surprise but not a shock; Alonso has spoken previously with Canadian zillionaire Lawrence Stroll, the team owner and father of the other driver on the Aston roster, Lance Stroll.

Exhaust: The team strategy has always been about making Lance a better driver by pairing him with a veteran, and with Alonso on board Lance’s tutor goes from excellent to also excellent. Alonso just turned 41, and while this is a nice birthday present for him, it’s probably safe to say he has already figured his retirement into the Stroll package. He has 32 wins but none since 2013, and it may be unlikely he’ll get another, but like Vettel, he keeps Aston Martin’s name in the mix. Alonso’s departure from Alpine is an unexpected blow to the team, but easing the pain is the fact that Oscar Piastri waiting in the wings. With a little luck, Piastri is expected to be a star, and sliding into Alonso’s still-warm seat, if that happens, should accelerate his learning curve. —Steven Cole Smith

New MG roadster teased as it nears production

Intake: The MG Cyberster concept is edging closer to the road. When it arrives it will be the brand’s first sports car since being taken over by China’s SAIC and, understandably, the marketeers are quite excited so have titled a teaser video Return of the Legend. Unlike every previous MG roadster, this one will be all-electric albeit no less useable than its ancestors. The original concept was claimed to be able hit 62 mph in less than three seconds and yet still return a range of 500 miles on a full charge. Technical details haven’t been revealed, but the video does show a few changes to the design in readiness for production. The concept’s speedster styling has been tweaked and the car now appears to have a more conventional folding fabric roof, the wheels look smaller and the car looks to ride a bit higher as well. However, the scissor doors look to be staying and so does the yoke-style steering. There’s no confirmed launch date yet, but at this rate of progress we should expect to see it in 2023.

Exhaust: MG’s recent efforts in hatchbacks, sedans, and SUVs have been capable, if unexciting, but this shows the brand’s ambition—remember it wasn’t long ago that Kia and Hyundai were in the same boat, and now look at them. This may not convince the die-hard Teslarati to cancel their deposits for the much-delayed Roadster, but the MG’s adventurous styling and promised performance might just fit the bill for anyone else who fancies some open-air Euro EV fun. —NB

Toyota Gazoo Racing posts 2023 GR Cup season schedule

Intake: Yesterday, Toyota Gazoo Racing North America (TGRNA) unveiled its 2023 GR Cup schedule—a 14-race romp though the United States most iconic road courses (and one street course). International sports car racing sanctioning body SRO will oversee the seven dates, which will feature two races per weekend. The single-make series comprised completely of GR86 race cars, will open its inaugural season in March at Sonoma Raceway and end in October at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in October. If you’re a road racing diehard, you’ll find this schedule familiar; GR Cup will run as a support series to SRO’s Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS. Should you decide to attend, you’ll be treated to a bevy of SRO action, which includes its three other GT and TC undercards. TGRNA also announced the purses for the 2023 season. The group will award the top-eight finishers, up to $12,000 for the race winner, and 50,000 big ones for the season champion.

Exhaust: Toyota GR and SRO were smart to include GR Cup in SRO race weekends. There, the captive audience—who most-likely showed up to watch the wide-bodied sports cars in the GT World Challenge series—will be in attendance for the Toyota spec series. The run class will perform in front of an especially packed house when they invade Nashville for IndyCar’s Music City GP weekend. Should the series feature a decent car count, look for GR Cup to make waves early on. Spec Miata racing, especially at large tracks, always brings good spectators, what with bump drafting and frequent passing among a swarm of four-cylinder fury. We will see in March, at Sonoma. — Cameron Neveu

Mazda gets dirty with CX-50 Meridian Edition

Intake: Mazda has unveiled a more trail-ready version of its new CX-50 crossover, dubbed the Meridian Edition. The Meridian Edition slots just above the $38,425 CX-50 2.5 Turbo, ringing the register for $41,225. Opt for the package, and you’ll get 18-inch black alloy wheels and narrower 225 section-width Falken all-terrain tires, a new headlight garnish, a matte-black hood graphic, black wheel locks and lug nuts, and side rocker panels for added off-road protection. Spring for the Meridian-exclusive Apex Package ($1235) on top of that, and you’ll score roof-mounted black crossbars, a roof platform for mounting extra adventure gear, and front and rear splash guards. Mazda’s Polymetal Gray or Zircon Sand are the only paint choices here, and the only interior shade offered on the Meridian Edition is the new Terracotta leather with black interior accents. All Meridian Edition CX-50s will utilize Mazda’s 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, good for 256 hp and 320 lb-ft of torque on 93 octane gas or 227 hp and 310 lb-ft on regular 87 octane fuel. Mazda’s i-Activ all-wheel drive is also standard here, as is the familiar six-speed automatic.

If the prospect of a sturdy roof rack is enticing but you don’t need that burlier rubber, the Meridian Choice package ($1899 dealer-installed) will offer those crossbars, roof platform, rocker protection, splash guards, black lug nuts, and the matte black hood graphic for whichever CX-50 trim level you choose. All trim levels of the Mazda CX-50 will jump $750 out the door, meaning the cheapest way into the svelte new crossover is now $28,825 including destination for the CX-50 2.5 S.

Exhaust: Our first-look review of this new ute showed that Mazda is off to a great start courting a more rugged, more practically minded buyer than before. (Those interested in optimal handling and a fuss-free interior can still get the delightful CX-5.) The Meridian Package will seek to build on that momentum, offering an even more trail-ready machine that looks fantastic to boot. The competition have all begun spinning up tire and graphics combos for their mid-sizers (hello, Honda Passport TrailSport), so why shouldn’t the CX-50 take advantage? Expect this to be a very popular package that we imagine will help pad Mazda’s margins. — Nathan Petroelje

The post Aftermarket diesel exhaust companies to pay $1.6M fine, Alonso to Aston F1, MG teases EV roadster appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Forget Bond’s Silver Birch Aston Martin DB5; surely the DB4 is the best-looking of all the DBs? More sophisticated and less vintage in feel than its predecessors, better proportioned and prettier than its successors. But the crucial question is: What it’s like to drive?

Best to park all conceptions of the DB4 being an out-and-out sports car. It’s really not. The same is often said of the E-Type, but even that is considerably more sporty than the Aston.

So what is the DB4? At best it’s a sublime GT that intoxicates with its performance, its soundtrack, its smell, and its looks. At worst it feels heavy and slightly cantankerous, particularly in tight corners. What separates the two extremes? Steering geometry setup, quality of restoration (it’s a rare DB4 that hasn’t been completely rebuilt at least once), tires, and modifications, which can be for better or for worse.

What doesn’t change is the appearance. Before the DB4, Aston Martins were good-looking if a little clunky in some of the detailing, but handing the design of the new DB4 to coachbuilder Touring of Milan propelled Aston Martin to new heights of stylishness by which it’s still judged today.

It’s become the definition of a 1960s GT: the clean sweep of the lower body work, interrupted only by the side vent and strake in the front wing and the delicate door handle; the discreet tail fins, the delicate pillars; and, of course, that defining, Aston Martin front grille. The DB4 is delicate without seeming fragile, pretty but utterly masculine. Only the placement of the rear window edges is awkward, the glass seeming to sit too high in the roof line. But we’re getting picky.

The panels are aluminum alloy, built on Touring’s patented superleggera lattice of steel tubes. Superleggera means “super light,” but the hefty steel platform chassis offsets much of its weight advantage. It was never meant to be that way—the original design was for a perimeter frame that Touring quickly dismissed as unworkable.

No biggie, though, because it’s a straightforwardly decent base that was made even simple when it became clear that the chassis-mounted differential needed for the planned De Dion rear suspension setup was going to transmit too much noise into that lovely cabin, which would have been completely off-message for this great grand tourer. The setup reverted to live rear axle and the interior was spared a few decibels.

That’s quite a relief, because it’s a lovely place to be. Like so many cars of the era, but in a DB4’s case more so, it usually smells of aged leather and fuel and oil and perhaps a whiff of tobacco smoked long ago. The backs of the seats are low, the glass area expansive thanks to those thin pillars, and the dashboard surprisingly plain—arguably dated, even for the early 1960s. But who doesn’t feel special when sat behind an array of chrome-bezel Smiths instruments, warning lights, and switches? If you were expecting the clichéd wood trimmings to complement the leather you’ll be surprised, because only the steering wheel rim makes use of timber, satisfyingly riveted to the metal frame.

Of course the ignition key feels small in our hands now, so accustomed as we are to huge key fobs. It slips into the ignition switch in the middle of the dashboard and, if you’ve got a good example, the straight-six engine churns,, then fires quickly. It’s not loud but there’s a rumble that tells of power and torque, which is backed up by the hefty feel of the clutch pedal and the slim, chrome gear lever, which needs a firm hand.

Of the many differences between the DB4 and its DB5 successor, the earlier car’s four-speed gearbox is also one of the most obvious. The DB5 received a ZF five-speeder, but the DB4 gets away with its four speeds thanks to high gearing and plenty of low-down torque. The performance figures perfectly demonstrate the effect of that gearing: 140-mph top speed, but a 0-to-60 run of around 9.5 seconds. There’s no synchromesh on first, but second gear will usually suffice for slow-speed work; first is needed only for standing starts. It’s not a gearbox to be rushed but it feels satisfyingly mechanical in action.

The six-cylinder engine was as important as Touring’s bodywork and the company’s new Newport Pagnell factory in the transformation of Aston Martin. Designed by Tadek Marek, it was all-aluminum and couple-overhead camshaft, neither of which was new even immediately post-war, but it was still special, as was the 240 hp and 420 lb-ft of torque.

Though peak power is at 5500 rpm and maximum torque above 4000, this isn’t an engine that feels desperate to rev. It just builds up to its peaks with a muscularity that shoves the DB4 forward without drama or fuss. It’s not quiet, but then very few cars of this era would ever be described as being quiet. It feels strong and no-nonsense, in the very way that the on-screen drivers of the DB5 would later be portrayed. It’s very … English.

You have to work at the DB4, too. There’s natural play around the straight-ahead position of the steering, and then it weights up in the corner, just as, say, that of an unmodified MGB does. Except this is a much heavier car, so the steering wheel needs a really strong heave in tight bends, and the brakes need a similarly muscular shove to bring the car to a prompt halt. In a well set-up DB4, it’s something that becomes learnt and part of the experience, but subtle steering assistance, upgraded brakes, and some additional engine cooling modifications (particularly on overheating-prone early DB4s) can help things along without taking anything from the character.

In fact, character is what the DB4 is all about. There’s a satisfaction in mastering it, and then the rumble of the straight-six, just audibly accompanied by the whine of the gearbox below the growl of the twin exhausts becomes a heady soundtrack that sits perfectly with the view down the long bonnet and wings. Point the DB4 down a twisting A-road and it does everything you’d expect it to do, the ever-so English version of a Ferrari 250GT Lusso or Maserati 3500GT. It leans controllably through the corners as you pull on that thin steering wheel rim, and if you happen upon a tighter corner and you’re feeling brave, then an armful of lock and a gentle poke on the accelerator pedal on the way out will show off why DB4s were so good on the race track. It lets go and laps up the treatment, proving that actually there is more sports car in this GT than we might have given it credit for.

Generally we think in terms of DB4 and the shorter, lighter DB4 GT and DB4 GT Zagato variants, but there were a surprising five series of DB4 between its unveiling in 1958 and its replacement by the DB5 in 1963—even though there were only just over 1200 built in total.

There’s not much difference between the first four, except for the addition of frames to the door windows from the Series II onwards, which cut down the wind noise. The Series IV gained the option of the famous Vantage-spec engine, with triple instead of twin SU carburetors and reworked cylinder heads, pushing power up to a claimed 266 bhp (270 hp). And then came the Series V, with its longer, taller body, and smaller wheels to compensate for the gain in height. It’s more practical, more akin to the DB5 that soon followed, but less attractive. A convertible was also introduced with the Series IV, many of which were ordered with the Vantage engine.

Sometimes, recalling great drives, the words rush out in a way that conveys the sheer excitement of certain cars. But a DB4 doesn’t do that, and don’t believe the words that say it does. Driving one demands a slower build-up, a gentle but satisfying learning curve until suddenly—like a golfer hitting a ball just right—you’ve matched gear change to torque characteristics, learnt not to over-compensate the steering and to allow for the weight of the car going into the corner, using the power to sweep you out through the exit. Just as suddenly, you’re in love with the DB4.

David Lillywhite is editorial director of Magneto magazine, which offers fresh perspectives on the world’s greatest cars.

The post Master Aston Martin’s sublime DB4, and you’ll be intoxicated appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Two pickups top the list of 10 most stolen vehicles in the U.S.

Intake: The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has released its annual list of the top 10 most stolen vehicles in the United States, and by the looks of things, thieves need hauling and towing capability. For the second year in a row, the top two spots belong to full-size pickups, with Chevrolet just edging Ford (48,206 to 47,999) for total thefts in 2021. The final podium spot belongs to the Honda Civic, which was stolen 31,672 times last year. Though many of the models on this list are quite old when they’re stolen (according to the second column, which lists out the model year most frequently boosted), we were a bit surprised to see three newer cars on here—the Nissan Altima, Jeep’s Cherokee and Grand Cherokee, and the Toyota Corolla—with model years listed (2020, 2018, and 2020, respectively). With supply chain constraints causing used car values to jump, vehicle theft has become more popular—up eight percent in 2021 over 2020. “We have seen a nearly 35 percent increase in used car values over the last two years due to supply chain issues and inflation,” said David Glawe, president and CEO of the NICB. “Stolen cars can be shipped overseas and resold or broken down for valuable used parts here in the U.S.”

Exhaust: To be fair, it’s a bit of a popularity contest. Both Chevy and Ford make light- and heavy-duty full-size pickups, and there are simply more trucks on America’s roads to steal. We understand why a 1997 Accord would be popular to steal—turn-of-the-century Hondas were alarmingly easy to snatch, so much so that the Acura Integra was one of the most expensive cars in the country to insure. Still, you’d think that with all of the high-tech security equipment that comes standard on new cars these days (even the Altima, which has a reputation as a low-dollar lease special, comes with systems like a vehicle immobilizer as standard), no car built within the past few years would crack a top 10 list like this. Best keep your head on a swivel and be extra sure to lock those doors. — Nathan Petroelje

Maserati’s 740-hp, limited-run track weapon looks wicked

Intake: We know what we want for Christmas now: Maserati’s Project 24, a two-seat, track-only sports car with a limed production of 62 units. Says Maserati: “The truly extreme track-only car inherits the specifications of the Maserati MC20, enhancing it with technical specifications that have advanced even further: the state-of-the-art V-6 Nettuno engine adds new turbochargers to raise its power to 740 horsepower, innovative suspension, carbon-ceramic braking system and tires tuned up for racing, as well as FIA-approved safety features.” That includes a roll cage and a fire suppression system. There’s adjustable front and rear wings, a six-speed sequential racing transmission with paddle shifters, Lexan windows, air jacks, racing slicks and, interestingly, air conditioning.

Exhaust: How much? Maserati isn’t saying yet. But we’d wild-guess about $275,000, maybe $15,000 more than the cost of a top-of-the-line MC20. —Steven Cole Smith

Everrati offers its electric expertise to all

Intake: British electro-resto-mod specialist Everrati has set up a new Advanced Technologies division to provide EV tech to other firms. The company will offer a range of services including design, development, and engineering to allow low-volume and luxury car makers an easy way to electrify. A complete turnkey solution based on Everrati’s EV propulsion system will also be available. Founder Justin Lunny says, “Everrati’s reputation is built on our own OEM-grade proprietary EV platform technology combined with the skills of our team—many of whom have held senior engineering positions at leading automotive brands. This unique combination has quickly driven global demand for our products, which set new standards in the sector. We are now delighted to offer the same levels of expertise to specialist and luxury vehicle brands to support our commercial clients’ electric ambitions.”

Exhaust: Having driven Everrati’s controversial Porsche 911 and its Series II Land Rover we’ve certainly been impressed with the quality of execution and the depth of engineering that has gone into them. The firm’s upcoming collaboration with Superperformance on an electric GT40 is a good indicator of what to expect from this new division. — Nik Berg

Testing once more, Vanwall eyes 2023 LMH entry against Ferrari, Peugot

Intake: Add one more LMH car to the World Endurance Championship’s field next year: SportsCar 365 reports that the ByKolles Vanwall LMH car completed a two-day test at the Lausitzring that was described as “very positive” by the team’s head of operations. According to Boris Bermes, the Gibson V-8-powered car driven by Tom Dillmann completed “more than 270 laps”, equating to 583 miles. “We collected many data on the aero and reliability, which was the main goal of this test. It was very, very positive again,” Bermes said. The car had not run since a test three months ago, leading some to believe the program had shut down. But Bermes said those three months were spent getting the car through FIA homologation.

Exhaust: With more testing planned, it looks like the Vanwall is the real deal. But it may face a name change: Vanwall was the name of a Formula 1 team that beat Ferrari for the 1958 championship, and ByKolles is facing some opposition to using that name. Whether or not that squabble could negatively impact this new team’s efforts next year remains to be seen. — SCS

Aston Martin celebrates a century of Grand Prix racing

Intake: Aston Martin has marked 100 years since its racing debut by setting Sebastian Vettel loose in its first Grand Prix car. TT1, known affectionately as “Green Pea”, was built for Count Louis Zborowski who campaigned it at the 1922 French Grand Prix in Strasbourg. Aston Martin founder Lionel Martin was paid £10,000 by Zborowski to build the car which featured an all-new 1486-cc, 16-valve twin overhead cam engine, producing just 56 hp. The Green Pea only weighed 1650 lbs, however, so it was pretty sprightly. Exactly 100 years later at Le Castellet, current Aston Martin F1 driver Vettel got behind the wheel in tribute. “Green Pea holds a very special place in Aston Martin’s heritage, and you can almost feel that century of history beneath your fingertips when at the wheel,” he said.

Exhaust: Aston Martin’s celebrations omit the fact that Zborowski retired on lap 15 of the 60 lap, 500-mile Strasbourg street race due to engine failure. The team persevered, however, and was rewarded with second place at the Grand Prix de Penya Rhin, and third place at Grand Prix de Boulogne a year later. In the Formula 1 era, the British brand competed rather unsuccessfully in 1959 and 1960 with the DBR4 and DBR5, before rejoining the grid, first as a sponsor of Red Bull, and then as full-works team in 2021. The team’s best result so far in 2022 is sixth place; hopefully Vettel’s extra lap of practice will give him a boost this weekend. — NB

The post Trucks top stolen car leaderboard, Everrati offers EV expertise, Aston Martin’s century of Grand Prix racing appeared first on Hagerty Media.

USPS doubles percent of EV trucks in replacement fleet

Intake: The U.S. Postal Service has announced that it will increase the percentage of electric vehicles included its new fleet from 20 percent to 40 percent. The USPS says at least 50 percent of the new trucks will be purchased from Oshkosh Corporation. The Wisconsin-based manufacturer was awarded the contract in February 2021, but how many of the planned 50,000 vehicles would be EVs has been a bone of contention ever since. In April, 16 states sued for a more thorough environmental review before the USPS could move forward with its $2.98 billion plan. Britt Carmon, a clean vehicles advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, applauded the EV increase, telling the Detroit News that “the U.S. Postal Service finally got the message that cleaner vehicles are a win all around.”

Exhaust: The USPS and environmental advocates have been squabbling over this issue for nearly 18 months, and while it may seem like the two sides have finally reached a compromise, we aren’t so sure. Neither is Carmon. “This change pushes the envelope in the right direction, but it’s also not nearly enough,” she says. “To save money and protect our health, the Postal Service should go much further and electrify most of its fleet.” Stay tuned. — Jeff Peek

R32 N1’s no-sale proves selling GT-Rs online can be tricky business

Intake: This is one lot that JDM fans watched very closely: a street-legal motorsports special that derives much of its of the R32-generation Skyline, whose NISMO varaint dominated Japanese Touring Car and Group A competition in the early ’90s. Nissan only made 64 of these “N1” V-Spec cars, each finished in a thin coat of Crystal White paint and shorn of air-conditioning system, radio, ABS, and rear wiper. The centerpiece: a twin-turbo, 2.6-liter inline six with hand assembled and balanced internals and upgraded turbos to improve longevity under hard track use. The example on Bring a Trailer (#63) is remarkably original (modifications are very common) but far from flawless.

Bidding rose quickly, but the top offer of $141,000 wasn’t nearly enough to entice the owner to let the car loose. Smart observers will note the high bidder is none other than the YouTuber tommyfyeah, who is known for his Connecticut-based shop and his affinity for GT-Rs of all vintages. Understandably there were plenty of dejected fans, but as the seller later commented, the car meant too much to him to let go at that price (despite some assertions that the offer was about right).

Exhaust: From a valuation perspective, we think the seller did the right thing. With pristine, standard R32 GT-Rs now well into the $100,000 range, an N1, which sits in an entirely different league, should realistically command a far higher price. At the end of the day, this sale goes to show how tricky selling a GT-R at auction can be, even for important models like the N1. Established auctions houses haven’t yet gained the experience to market these cars successfully, leading to mixed results; for now, a seller’s best strategy is to either list their car privately or go through a reputable JDM dealer. — Greg Ingold

Aston Martin gets new wings

Intake: For the first time in almost two decades, and only the eighth time in 109 years, Aston Martin has updated its logo. British graphic designer Peter Saville, perhaps best known for his New Order and Joy Division album covers, was recruited to gently finesse the sports car maker’s iconic wings. “The Aston Martin wings update is a classic example of the necessary evolution of logotypes of provenance. Subtle but necessary enhancements not only keep forms fresh, but allow for new technologies, situations and applications to be accommodated in the future. The process was one of clarifying and emphasising the key feature of the Aston Martin marque,” he explains.

In addition to the visual tweaks Aston Martin has adopted a new slogan. “Intensity. Driven.” replaces “Power, Beauty, Soul.” and “marks the next phase in our evolution of the Aston Martin brand, as we unleash its global potential and maximise our unique position at the cutting-edge of ultra-luxury and high performance,” says Renato Bisignani, Head of Global Marketing and Communications.

Exhaust: Aston Martin just announced a massive $776 million cash injection from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which will pay off a bunch of debt and give it a “substantial liquidity cushion to underpin and accelerate future capital expenditure”. In other words, money to invest in future products and its Formula 1 team. The relationship between road and track is likely to become closer as Aston focuses on performance, adds Bisignani. “Building on our return to the pinnacle of motorsport in Formula One, the launch of Intensity. Driven. marks the next phase in our evolution of the Aston Martin brand, as we unleash its global potential and maximize our unique position at the cutting-edge of ultra-luxury and high performance.” – Nik Berg

Confirmed: NASCAR to invade Chicago streets next season

Intake: After much speculation, NASCAR confirmed earlier this week that its Cup Series will invade the streets of Chicago next season, marking the first time the premier stock car series has raced on a street course in the modern era. Chicago welcomes NASCAR back to area, as the series abandoned its annual race at the Chicagoland Speedway—a 1.5-mile oval in the Chi-town suburb—a few years back. The new, proposed 2.2-mile circuit, positioned in the heart of the Windy City, utilizes a portion of Lake Shore Drive and runs past Buckingham Fountain. Stock cars will race along Lake Michigan on the first weekend of July, supplanting the series’ stop at Road America, which has occupied that weekend the past two years. “We’ve seen some great racing there,” said Ben Kennedy, NASCAR senior vice president of racing development and strategy. “That said, it is unfortunate we’re not going back in 2023. Just because it’s a ‘no’ for 2023 doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a ‘no’ forever.” An unspecified IMSA road racing series will join Cup in Chicago next season as an undercard.

Exhaust: While we’re sad to see the Cup Series leave Wisconsin’s Road America next season, we understand the move. The four-mile road course produced great racing but remained a logistic nightmare during caution flags and stage breaks. Pace-car speed and mandatory laps under yellow made for excruciatingly long pauses in action. A shorter Chicago course should solve this problem. We also give credit to NASCAR for not resting on its laurels. First the group covered Bristol in dirt, then raced in the L.A. Coliseum, and now plans to tackle a street course. Like the dirt date and the stadium romp, NASCAR’s street course harkens back to the early days of the Cup Series, despite seeming like a novel idea. Remember, NASCAR’s Daytona Beach Course was a street course that used a portion of Florida’s Highway 1. And finally, we should take note on how this track was developed. Initially, iRacing built a concept track on its platform and invited NASCAR drivers to take part in an exhibition race. A similar tactic was taken was the newly reconfigured Atlanta Motor Speedway and the reborn North Wilkesboro. Could this be the new norm for NASCAR track development? Time will tell. Until then, we wait to see how NASCAR’s street soiree is received on July 1–2, 2023. — Cameron Neveu

The post USPS doubles EV percentage for new fleet, Aston finds new wings, NASCAR confirms Chicago street race appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Not a Porsche 911. Sometimes that’s enough. We are, of course, huge fans of Porsche’s rear-engined icon and crave all sorts of versions, from a simple air-cooled ‘70s car to a scary, wide-body monster like the 997 GT2 RS.

However, with Porsche’s recent success steamrollering most rivals, killing-off others and filling every corner of social media in many different rare groove colors and suffocating houndstooth fabric, it’s easy to forget that plenty of people don’t really get the 911 at all.

Luckily for them there are other options. Even better, amidst stories of somebody buying yet another rotted-out barn find 911 for an unlikely (and frankly ludicrous) sum of money, these would-be rivals still mostly fly under the radar. That means values are firm but not yet stratospheric. The anti-911s really are a rich hunting ground.

Especially those from the first decade of the millennium, where for a while the 911 looked under siege and, maybe, about to lose its position as the de facto choice for any car enthusiast. That seems a crazy notion today, but with Aston Martin undergoing another revival, Audi selling pure sci-fi, and Nissan taking a brute force approach with the R35 GT-R, these were heady days and the 911 didn’t seem as impregnable as it does today.

Which brings us to our two very-much-not Porsche 911s. Gorgeous aluminum sculptures packing naturally-aspirated V8 engines, six-speed manual gearboxes and offering two unique takes on the dream of the ultimate all-round sports car. The Aston Martin V8 Vantage is clean and handsome, channelling the past by updating the traditional front-engine/rear-drive layout and creating a quietly powerful and peculiarly English personality. It truly is a timeless piece of design. Audi’s R8 is different. Mid-engined, packed with unusual design motifs and so forward-thinking it still looks almost like a concept car today.

The R8 should be heinously awkward and passé by now, of course. A clumsy monument to a moment in time that’s long passed. Yet it’s not. The Audi looks sensational and as fresh as it did all the way back in 2008. In fact, both Vantage and R8 make their successors look bloated and more than a shade heavy-handed. Better than a 997-vintage 911? That’s not a question for today. We just want to experience them again and see if they’re as delightful to drive as they are to behold.

Aston Martin V8 Vantage

Remember when we wanted—no pleaded—for Aston Martin to move their design language on? DB9, V8 Vantage, DBS, Vanquish, Rapide… different cars but (save for the impossibly long and sleek four-door Rapide) almost indistinguishable at 50 feet. “Come on, Aston,” we said. “Try something new. Anything new.”

Oh boy, were we wrong! Richard Lupton’s 2005 V8 Vantage is an absolute beauty. Quietly aggressive where its replacement is all shouty intakes, gaping grille and squinty headlights. Every line is scribed so cleanly, every curve so effortlessly flows to the next. I wouldn’t change a single thing. To think an early V8 Vantage is available now for $43,00 on average in Good condition seems more than reasonable.

Luckily, there’s more to it than that. Beneath the flawless skin there’s real substance. The V8 Vantage features a shortened, stiffened version of Aston Martin’s aluminum VH (Vertical Horizontal) architecture also seen in DB9, a 4.3-liter quad-cam V8- pushed back as far as possible and behind the front axle line, six-speed Graziano transaxle and double-wishbones all around. In 2008 the engine was bumped to 4.7 liters and 420 hp but even this early ’05 car produces 380 hp at 7000 rpm and 302 lb-ft at 5000 rpm. Enough for 0-60mph in 4.8 seconds and a top speed of 175 mph.

Richard’s car is absolutely pristine and extremely lightly used, too. It shows just 8000 miles. The interior seems much better than I remember. The seats are slim yet brilliantly comfortable and mounted lovely and low; the machined metal dials look bespoke and the way the needles for speedo and rev counter wind in opposite directions just adds a bit of intrigue and fun; the steering wheel manages to feel chunky without erring towards overly thick and clumsy and little details abound to make the V8 Vantage really feel special. I love the triangulated bracing bars behind the seats, for example.

All the good stuff certainly outweighs the slightly cheap feeling and very busy centre console and the ugly switches for the electric seat controls. Besides, a short, flat-topped manual gearshifter rising out of it is enough to overshadow all manner of sins. In September 2006 Aston began to offer the SportShift paddle-operated gearbox but we’d recommend sticking to the manual ‘box if at all possible. It just seems right and the automated manual is slow-witted and slightly clunky.

Once settled inside the only real oddity is that this compact car can feel strangely big and intimidating. It’s wide and you sit so low, with high shoulder lines for those swan-opening doors (they rise upwards ever so slightly as they open) and the steeply-raked windscreen seeming to put you a long way from the outside world. A twist of the key brings the engine close, though. The 4.3-liter V8 has a deep, jagged note and is surprisingly aggressive. There’s no mistaking this is a proper sports car with a brutal side to its character.

It’s an impression backed-up even at low speeds by the V8 Vantage’s dynamics. The steering is pretty heavy if you’re used to the smooth, lightweight feel of modern EPAS systems but it imparts a sense of purpose. Plenty of feel, too. The gearbox isn’t one of the greats but its rather vague, rubbery feel is at least partly rescued by a hefty weighting and a very short throw. The ride is busy and physical but stops short of harshness and with that V8 always spitting wickedly from the exhausts the Vantage has a muscular, no-nonsense feel. It exudes toughness. And excitement.

Start to drive it a little harder and some of that persona does erode. The engine struggles against the 1570 kg (3461 pounds) until it’s spinning past 4000 rpm. The V-8 might sound hard-edged and fierce but the performance can feel flat at times and the 4.3-liter unit only really bites if you’re prepared to wring it out. Luckily, it feels happy to do so and has an unburstable quality that was proven in period by many class wins at the Nürburgring 24-hour in production spec. However, you can see why the post-2008 facelift cars fitted with the torquier 4.7-liter engine are considered more desirable.

Those cars also got a revised chassis set-up with stiffer damper mounts and bumpstops, new Bilstein dampers, and stiffer front and rear springs, up 11 percent and 5 percent respectively. Again, on these roiling Yorkshire, U.K., roads you can see why those changes were made. The V8 Vantage feels generally very well tied-down, there’s excellent traction even in wet conditions and overall the package is balanced and agile.

Yet you want just a little bit more. The body control goes from tight and precise to soft and heaving over large crests or nasty lateral bumps, the steering column itself feels like it has flex in it and so the steering wheel chatters like you might expect in a convertible car, and these mixed messages at times make this small, taut car feel heavy. The engine eggs you on but the chassis seems like it’s crying “enough!” The brakes seem fragile, too. This is a car that you enjoy at slightly lower speeds, reveling in the sights and sounds—oh, that sound—rather than its all-out ability.

After several hours in this lovely example it’s clear that an early V8 Vantage is a fantastic first stab at making a genuine 911 rival. It looks and sounds fabulous and feels special and hand-built in the best sense of the phrase. However, there’s no question that the later cars got closer and closer to matching the Porsche for absolute dynamic capability while building on the inherent brutish character already evident.

It is an entirely covetable car, one that was a significant step forward for Aston Martin and proved popular with more than only the brand die-hards. If you can afford to stretch to a 4.7-liter car then that’s the route I’d be inclined to take. Of course, even an early 4.3-liter V8 Vantage is still an event and is arguably the purest-looking of all. You might decide that’s enough. And we’d understand completely.

Audi R8

It seemed implausible at the time. The notion that Audi could create a car with the subtle, nuanced appeal and dynamic polish to match a Porsche 911 when the R8 was launched in 2007. In fact, that’s not strong enough a word. It was laughable. Sure, there had been little hints that Audi could produce a properly multi-faceted performance car, most notably with the B7 RS4 that arrived in 2005.

But for the most part, Audi went down the sledgehammer route: Lots of power, tonnes of grip and a sort of invincible, relentless momentum. Effective but ugly. A world away from the elegant poise, tactile feedback and lightness of touch required for a true sport scar or junior supercar. The R8 looked a million dollars but nobody believed it could deliver a truly memorable driving experience.

And yet 15 years later I can remember my first drive in an R8 with crystal clarity. It blew my preconceptions—and everybody else’s—clean apart. So light, such purity of feedback, and an effortless poise that was a genuinely new flavor. Despite sharing much with the Lamborghini Gallardo and losing two cylinders and a heap of horsepower, the R8 had its own identity and was simply more polished, more precise, and more entertaining than the Italian supercar. Not a bad start for a 911 rival.

A full 15 years later I’m pleased to report that not much has changed. The R8 is superb. Maybe even better than when new simply because performance cars have got bigger, heavier, and more focused on lap times and track performance in the intervening years. In a world of locked-down, ultra-responsive supercars with extreme tires and sky-high limits, the fluidity of the R8 and its ability to deal with ragged roads and heavy downpours with equally deft control is deeply beguiling and bordering on the magical. It has a Lotus-like quality to its chassis married to a free-spinning engine that is sweeter than honey straight from the hive.

The good news starts before that engine bursts to life. To me at least, the R8 still looks so fresh and distinctive and when you swing open the door the interior has aged just as gracefully. Of course, it’s not as extroverted as a Lamborghini and after the Aston the slightly generic Audi-ness of it all feels a little bit conventional.

The flip side is that the quality is good and even this well-worn example—check out the scratched-up metal shifter!—feels ready to take on another 50,000 miles. Unlike the pristine, low-mileage Aston Martin, this battle-hardened Audi U.K.-owned car is representative of a lower-priced example you might find on the market. It could do with a cosmetic tidy but I think you’d still happily live with it and gently improve elements over time.

The highlight, of course, is the open-gated manual gearbox. I suppose there was a danger this could become a pastiche of an old Ferrari, but in reality it’s just a bloody lovely detail, the scrapes, clicks and clacks add a real sense of drama and it shows that Audi has a bit of a sense of humor, too. It helps that the gearbox action is so short and precise. The dry-sumped 4.2-liter V-8 starts with a little flourish and settles to a quiet, cultured idle, and selecting first is enough to know that it’s going to greatly enrich the driving experience.

Once you’re rolling you can feel the sophistication of the R8’s chassis, underpinned by the stiff and lightweight Audi Aluminum Spaceframe concept (the entire body in white weighs just 210 kg, 463 pounds), double wishbone suspension and optional Magnetic Ride Control dampers. There’s such cool control and although the ride is befitting of a sports car, the way the R8 rounds-off lumps and bumps is first class. This fleet-footedness is matched by the fast-spinning direct-injection engine and light and wonderfully detailed steering feel. There’s such cohesion. The R8 isn’t much lighter than the V8 Vantage at 1560 kg (3439 pounds) but it feels so much more agile.

The gearbox really is a joy. The only trick to driving the R8 smoothly is to be mindful of how quickly the engine revs build or fall away. Upshifts need to be quick and assertive and the downshift blip is very easy to overdo. Delicacy is the key, not grand gestures. That’s true of the whole car. The steering is low effort but highly precise, the chassis rewards accuracy and calm inputs. Drive the R8 with the subtlety and progression that it’s feeding back to you. It really is captivating.

That isn’t to say the R8 is all good manners and no thrills. Quite the opposite. The R8’s all-wheel drive system is rear-biased and can send up to 35 percent of torque to the front wheels. The remarkable thing is that you’d never know. From the clean, uncorrupted feel of the steering to the wonderfully neutral chassis, there’s very little hint that the R8 is all-wheel-drive at all.

In fact, at the limit it tends towards oversteer and even at lower speeds always reacts to throttle inputs just as you’d expect a finely resolved mid-engined, rear-drive car to do. Ramp-up the dampers to Sport and there’s extremely strong body control, too. Everything turns more intense.

I’m aware that this has turned into a eulogy, but I’m comfortable with that. The Audi R8 is a triumph and a simply joyous place to spend time. If you like your sports and supercars loud and raucous then perhaps look elsewhere. However, should you appreciate balance, innate control, intuitive dynamics and one of the world’s great engines spinning in a frenzy towards 8250 rpm then don’t hesitate. This is not a 911 (reason enough for some). But it’s every bit as brilliant.

The Specs: 2005 Aston Martin V8 Vantage vs. 2007 Audi R8 4.2 V8

Engine: 4280 cc V8 vs. 4163 cc V8
Power: 380 hp vs. 414 hp
Torque: 302 lb-ft vs. 317 lb-ft
Gearbox: 6-speed manual vs. 6-speed manual
Kerbweight: 3461 pounds vs. 3439 pounds
0-60mph: 4.8 seconds vs. 4.0 seconds
Top speed: 175 mph vs. 187 mph

Via Hagerty UK

The post Retro Rematch: Aston Martin V8 Vantage vs Audi R8 4.2 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The best car bosses are true car people. Bosses like Jim Farley who takes to the track in a GT40, AC Cobra, or, appropriately, a Boss Mustang. Or like Akio “Morizo” Toyoda who’s raced at the Nüburgring 24 Hours and takes a special interest in driver-focused products like the Lexus LFA.

Ben Hedley of the Little Car Company belongs in that same category. When he’s not steering the British startup that creates stunning scaled-down version of Bugattis, Ferraris, and Aston Martins, Hedley races a (suitably small) Caterham Seven.

Today he’s demonstrating his skills in an Aston Martin DB5 Junior on a short test track at the company’s base at Bicester Heritage, Oxfordshire. Hedley hurtles into a right-hander at the limit of adhesion, tires squealing as he carves an arc that extends into the following corner. The car may be just two-thirds of the size of the original, but Hedley’s commitment is 100 percent.

Powering through the exit, dialing in some opposite lock it’s looking like a textbook turn, but just a touch of over-correction and the DB5 has swapped ends in flash. Hedley grins as he heads back to the watching staff.

“We designed the car to be a bit more playful than the Testa Rossa J,” says Hedley. “In fact we had a V-8 Vantage from Aston Martin as our benchmark, rather than a DB5.”

Aston Martin racer and test driver Darren Turner helped set up the Bilstein dampers, Faulkner springs and Brembo brakes (from a Ducati Diavel). The ten-inch wire wheels are by Torino and the tires are the least sticky rubber that Nankang makes for classic Minis. “To be honest we’re looking for tires with even less grip,” he adds.

If you’ve read our drives of the Bugatti Baby II and the Ferrari Testa Rossa J you’ll be aware that the Little Car Company really is a proper car company, only smaller, with an attention to detail that matches the brands it miniaturizes. The DB5 Junior is sold as an Aston Martin, just as the Testa Rossa J is a Ferrari and the Baby is a Bugatti.

The Aston is, however, at an even further reduced scale. While the Ferrari and Bugatti are 75 percent replicas the DB5 is at 66 percent. “We wanted to make it the same size as the Bugatti so all of our cars have similar proportions,” says Hedley. “The DB5 is just a bigger car in real life.”

The original car is also a four-seater but the Junior was only ever going to be designed for two. “It had to be big enough to fit an adult and a child for it to have that family bonding experience,” he adds.

Aston Martin was involved throughout the car’s development, providing unlimited access to original design material so that the shrunken body would be perfectly proportioned, and even designing interior, with its Bridge of Weir leather trim and Smiths instruments. The smallest quick-release wood-rimmed steering wheel in the world is a beautiful finishing touch.

Like any new Aston Martin the options list is long, and rather pricey. Start with a base model DB5 Junior at £35,000 ($42,100) and you get a composite-bodied car with 5kW of power and a 1.8 kWh battery for a 30km (18.6 miles) range or pick the Vantage for £45,000 ($54,100) and upgrade to carbon-fiber bodywork, a 10-kW motor and double the battery capacity for double the range. A range of metallic paints can be optioned at £2000 ($2400) and you can plump for wool carpets and Connolly leather for a further £3250 ($3910).

Start adding these up and you’re looking at vehicle for your 14-year-old son or daughter that’s considerably more expensive than a V8 Vantage of a similar age.

Time to see what kind of a driving experience that buys, then. What’s most immediately noticeable is that, once I’ve stepped over the side of the DB5 Junior and into the cockpit I do feel like I’m actually “in” a car rather than “on” one as I did both in the Bugatti and the Ferrari. That feeling’s reinforced by the wrap-around windscreen, which is just at the wrong height for me (or rather I am just the wrong height for it). My view ahead is precisely bisected by the top of the frame so I either need to sit up to see over it or hunch down to look through the screen. Your kids will likely just grow through this stage, but I’m stuck with it.

Like a go-kart the accelerator and brake are either side of the steering column, so both feet will be busy once the drive mode has been selected and the fly-off handbrake released. The regular Junior has a restricted Novice mode and an Expert setting to release full power, while the Vantage adds a touch of drama with a special aircraft-style switch hidden under a side panel to unleash Vantage mode. Concerned parents can also use a remote key fob to restrict how far their offspring can go to prevent junior from taking off to the mall.

Vantage mode selected and I’m off. The acceleration is on a par with an indoor electric kart, but the steering is much lighter—more so than both the Bugatti Baby and the Testa Rossa J, which does somehow make the Aston feel a bit more refined. It rides the bumps better than its stablemates as well. Not wishing to emulate Hedley’s spin, I take a couple of laps to build up, touching the brakes before turning in and feeding the power back in through the bends. Nothing for the kids to fear so far.

Now to try a more boss-like approach. Flat out into the corner, a more aggressive steering input and a lift off the throttle encourages the back to step out. Back on the power and a quick correction and I’m through for another go. Aiming for a bump at the apex helps further unsettle the little Aston so that the slide lasts longer. This is big fun for such a small car.

Even more entertainment is promised from the £90,000 ($108,000) No Time To Die Edition that will follow soon. With a smoke screen system, gatling guns, and digital number plates the 007-themed car will also be considerably more powerful. Definitely a sequel to look forward to.

The post The Aston Martin DB5 Junior is a little Brit with big fun appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Despite its highly entertaining onscreen aerial display, the military accuracy of Top Gun: Maverick has already been poo-pooed by our real-life fighter pilot. Now we’re about to toss another fly or two in the soup—or at least ask some legitimate questions about the non-military modes of transportation in the film. (Forgive us in advance, because we enjoyed this movie a lot.) First and foremost, where did these people get all of their money? Maybe we can figure it out together while looking at four glorious rides of Top Gun: Maverick.

P-51 Mustang fighter plane

Yes, the P-51 Mustang was originally a military aircraft, but it’s now retired and serves as Pete Mitchell’s personal plane (which Tom Cruise reportedly owns in real life). While it’s feasible that a career Navy pilot would naturally be attracted to a plane with some military history, a P-51 is worth seven figures. Although the average annual salary of a U.S. Navy pilot is $72,410, Mav is a captain and also something of a legend, so he probably makes a lot more than that. In other words, if he made some smart investment decisions over the past three-plus decades, it’s possible that he could afford a P-51.

However, he keeps it in his personal hangar in southern California, which can’t be cheap, either. And then there’s this …

1956 Aston Martin DBR1

Mav doesn’t drive it in the movie—it’s just sneakily placed in the background of a scene with the P-51—but yes indeed, that’s a 1956 Aston Martin DBR1 in the corner of the hero’s hangar. One of only five built … and this one has Le Mans history. Yes, it’s that exclusive. In fact, the most recent sale of a DBR1 at auction brought $22,550,000 at RM Sotheby’s in 2017. Even DBR1 replicas cost millions, so we’re starting to wonder if Pete Mitchell is actually into some Risky Business while managing to make All the Right Moves.

1973 Porsche 911

Mav isn’t the only character in Top Gun: Maverick who knows The Color of Money. His love interest, Penny Benjamin (played by Jennifer Connelly) is a single mother who runs a bar near Fightertown USA, and business must be goooooood.

Penny drives a 1973 Porsche 911 S coupe, which is valued at $181,000 in #2 (Excellent) condition. For reference purposes, Mav’s love interest in the original movie, astrophysicist Charlie Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), drove a black 1958 Porsche 356 Speedster, which wasn’t actually a 1958 Porsche 356 Speedster but a replica. According to Top Gun: Maverick filmmakers, Penny’s car is the real numbers-matching deal. Is she charging $25 for a shot and a beer?

As if owning that spectacular car isn’t hard enough to believe—as it would likely stretch Penny’s budget to its limits—she and Mav also take to the high seas in her …

J/125 Sailboat

At 41 feet long, the J/125 is not exactly a recreational dingy, but we’re told it doesn’t require an eight-person crew to operate. Well, duh. Penny and Pete handle it just fine, though Pete isn’t a sailor, even though he’s in the Navy. (Movies don’t lie, kids.) It’s no wonder that the J/125 has been compared to “a street-legal Indy 500 car that’s easier to drive than the family sedan.”

It’s also valued at $300K or more. Penny’s middle name must be Pincher … or, more accurately, Wise.

The post 4 high-dollar rides in <em> Top Gun: Maverick </em> that don’t make financial sense appeared first on Hagerty Media.

First company to Hemi-swap the Wrangler drops ’70s throwback

Intake: American Expedition Vehicles (AEV), a prominent outfitter for popular off-road platforms such as the Dodge Power Wagon and the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator, introduced a 1970s throwback model at last weekend’s Overland Expo West in Flagstaff, Arizona. The JL370 Wrangler Classic (and the matching JT370 Gladiator Classic) incorporate yellow Rubicon lettering on the hood as well as orange and yellow striping along the body, hood, and custom dash panel to evoke the loud feel of many graphic packages found on some of the best ’70s 4x4s. Custom White Salta XR wheels shod in meaty 37-inch BF Goodrich K03 tires ensure plenty of ground clearance, and AEV’s standard stamped steel front bumper houses a Warn winch to lug you or fellow crawlers out of tight spots. The Rubicon’s meaty Dana axles are upgraded with 4.56 gears to handle the upsized tires and a custom DualSport RT suspension system hoists the vehicle an additional 2.5 inches to ensure proper body clearance and even more ground clearance. The package starts at $20,500, and plenty of lighting and gear add-ons ensure you can spec this retro Rubi’ just how you like. AEV says that the package is a limited production affair, so if a ’70s-inspired modern Wrangler stirs your soul, don’t wait to make a move.

Exhaust: The AEV JL370 Wrangler Classic is a nod to the Jeep CJs of the 1970s, and it’s another illustration of how the off-road aftermarket can move faster than the factory: AEV put a V-8 in the Wrangler before Jeep did (as far back as 2012), and it fit the JL Rubicon with 37-inch rubber before the OEM, whose largest current factory-backed options are 35-inchers via the Xtreme Recon package. Though it may arrive fashionably late, Jeep isn’t missing the Rubicon nostalgia fest: At this year’s Easter Jeep Safari, Jeep unveiled the Rubicon 20th Anniversary Concept, a Wrangler Rubicon 392–based creation with a 2-inch lift and—at long last—37-inch BFGs. The concept has a high chance of making it to the production line, which begs the question: Retro throwback from a trusted aftermarket name, or modern celebration straight from the marque itself?

Scott Dixon scores Indy 500 pole in record-breaking attempt

Intake: On Sunday, IndyCar champion Scott Dixon earned his fifth career Indianapolis 500 pole award, aboard his Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, with the fastest qualifying run ever recorded in the race’s 105-year history. Qualifying for this year’s Indy 500 began on Saturday, with 33 cars, each making a four-lap attempt. The 12 best four-lap averages advanced to Sunday’s Fast Twelve qualifying round. Then, the top six from the dozen qualified a third—and final—time to determine who would lead the field to green next Sunday for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Six-time champ Dixon was last car to qualify in the final round. Despite the immense amount of pressure, “Iceman” Scott Dixon lived up to his name as he delivered a run of the century, with a four-lap average speed of 234.06 mph, which Scott Brayton’s old pole record speed of 233.718 set in 1996.

Exhaust: Dixon’s epic run Sunday pulled the future Hall of Famer even closer to Rick Mear’s record six Indy 500 poles. It should be noted, though, that the all-time speed record comes with a caveat. See, back in 1996, “The Flying Dutchman” Arie Luyendyk posted a run of 236.986 mph on the consolation day of qualifying (under the old format) which precluded the blistering run from the record books. Still, we’re not taking anything away from Dixon, or Chip Ganassi, for that matter, who placed four of his six entries in the final round of qualifying. Rinus Veekay and perennial contender Ed Carpenter carried the Chevrolet banner in qualifying, securing second and fourth position, respectively. Less than a week, now, and we’ll see which driver—and which powerplant—is out front at the end of 500 miles in the 106th running of the Indy 500.

You could bond with Sean Connery’s Aston Martin DB5

Disclaimer: Hagerty has entered into a joint venture with Broad Arrow Group as of January 10, 2022.

Intake: A 1964 Aston Martin DB5 owned by original 007 actor Sir Sean Connery is to be auctioned in California in August. Broad Arrow Auctions will put the Snow Shadow Grey car under the hammer at its Monterey Jet Center sale, where it is estimated to bring between $1.4 and $1.8 million. The DB5 was delivered new to a Mr. A. White in the U.K. in the same year that Goldfinger rocketed a gadget-laden version to screen stardom, however Connery didn’t buy the car until 2018. “Dad used to talk about owning his own DB5, for no other reason than he loved the car,” son Jason Connery says. “He did tell me that driving the movie cars, all laden down with the gadgets, especially the machine guns in the front, made the car really front heavy and turning at slow speed was a Herculean task, so driving without gadgets was a joy! He loved how well balanced it was. Dad also said he would have kept the ejector seat. I didn’t ask who for.” Connery kept the Aston at his home in Switzerland before he passed away in 2020 at the age of 90. Proceeds of the sale are set to go the Sean Connery Philanthropy Fund, and as an additional incentive Sir Jackie Stewart has offered to take the buyer for a drive.

Exhaust: Despite the on-screen image, Connery didn’t share Bond’s taste in metal. Though he had a soft spot for British performance, Leno remembers that Connery—”one of the cheapest guys” he’d ever met—was more taken by the affordable, off-beat Jensen C-V8 and its Chrysler eight-cylinder than he was with the six-cylinder Aston. “We were talking about his Bond car once, the Aston Martin DB5, and he said, in his Scottish brogue, ‘I’m not paying top money for that! You’re crazy!'” Considering that a real 007 movie car is worth five times as much, Connery’s car could be a steal. 

Suzuki’s focus on automotive sector spells end of MotoGP program

Intake: Suzuki is cancelling its MotoGP effort for the second time in the last decade citing a required increase in focus and financial support on Suzuki’s automotive efforts. Interestingly, this puts the team at odd with Dorna, MotoGP’s organizer, over the contract Suzuki signed promising to be in the paddock through the 2026 season. Suzuki claimed in a leaked dealer memo obtained by Cycle World that the exit is currently being negotiated with Dorna, but final details are unknown at this time.

Exhaust: Factory involvement in racing is a constant ebb and flow, even between various series and disciplines. Suzuki’s exit from MotoGP comes as a surprise to many but, in hindsight, the company’s reasoning checks out. Interestingly, one of the big things Suzuki felt the need to clarify was that its exit from the MotoGP paddock is not a signal of its departure from the powersports market. New Suzuki models will continue to be delivered to dealer showrooms and the factory will continue support for MotoAmerica, AMA Supercross, AMA Motocross, and NHRA Pro Stock Drag Racing.

Pagani C10 to debut on September 12

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Pagani Automobili Official (@paganiautomobili)

Intake: Pagani has confirmed that its new model will finally be revealed in the fall. The successor to the Huarya (and the Zonda before it) is known as the C10, although we expect a more evocative name to accompany its fanfare launch in Milan on September 12. What we do know is that the car will maintain its AMG V-12 heart for now, although Pagani is also planning an electric version. Just don’t expect that battery-powered version to appear in a hurry; the combustion-powered C10 has been in development since 2017.

Exhaust: As only the third new model since Pagani made its debut at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show, the C10 is keenly anticipated. The spy shots and sketches show little of the architectural beauty that the brand is known for, and we can’t wait to see what kind of barmily bejewelled interior will come with as well. 

The post JL Wrangler dons ’70s flair, Sean Connery’s DB5 for sale, mark your Pagani calendar appeared first on Hagerty Media.

F8 Tributo-based SP48 Unica is Ferrari’s newest one-off creation

Intake: Ferrari’s latest creation from its Special Projects program has arrived. Meet the SP48 Unica, a glistening, red-orange metallic masterpiece based on the F8 Tributo but evolved to meet the very specific design brief of one of Ferrari’s long-standing clients. Designed by Ferrari’s Senior Vice President of Design Flavio Manzoni, the shapely mid-engine creation used additive manufacturing to create complex forms for the front grille—one of many steps taken to rework the front end to appear more arrow-shaped. In place of a rear windscreen (objects behind you are losing, right?), a large clamshell hood helps the SP48 Unica to appear formed from a single, large hunk of material. Ferrari says the reworked rear body adjusts the aerodynamic characteristics of the car. The cabin retains the same layout as that of the F8, but special material adjustments such as the iridescent reddish-orange fabric beneath the laser-perforated Alcantara leather seats and matte carbon fiber trim pieces make it clear that this isn’t just an off-the-shelf interior.

Exhaust: Look at the SP48 Unica from the right angle, and you might get whiffs of a Bugatti Chiron. Surely, the client behind this project would get a kick out of that. Although, there’s a strong possibility that he or she already has a Chiron in the stable as well. Heck, all told, the SP48 Unica might end up costing more than the Chiron’s $3M price tag.

Lucid’s price jumps show production in 2022 is one hell of a rocky road

Intake: It’s becoming quite apparent, in 2022 and beyond, that none of the EV darlings of today will enjoy the material costs and supply chain timing that Tesla had on its rise to prominence and full-scale production. Prices are already rising across the board in the sector, forming a harsh headwind for startups to work against. In its Q1 earnings report, Lucid revealed that it too will need to hike prices to cope with the rising costs. Beginning June 1, the Lucid Air will be priced as follows: $154,000 for Air Grand Touring, $107,400 for Air Touring and $87,400 for Air Pure. Those are increases of $15,150, $12,550, and $10,500, respectively. Pricing on the new range-topping Grand Touring Performance model remains hardly affected for now, sitting at $180,650. The Air Grand Touring Performance was revealed recently as the new top-of-the-line model, now that the Air Dream has sold out.

Lucid was quick to note that existing reservation holders would not be subject to the price increases. Fellow EV upstart Rivian recently announced some price hikes but initially failed to insulate existing reservation holders. The resulting outrage eventually led CEO R.J. Scaringe to pen a personal note apologizing for the mistake, walking back the increases for those who had already plunked down a deposit. Despite the pricing news, Lucid assured investors that it remained on solid financial footing. “We continue to have a healthy balance sheet, closing the quarter with nearly $5.4 billion of cash on hand, which we believe is sufficient to fund the company well into 2023,” said Sherry House, Lucid’s CFO.

Exhaust: Nobody likes price increases, but customers who can afford the debut prices of the Lucid lineup are an unlikely demographic to be detrimentally crippled by any oncoming economic woe. If anything comes from these shortages (that are smacking the entire industry), it will likely only amount to a slowing of consumer interest in Lucid, not a stoppage.

Abarth puts on a rally good show with 131 tribute

Intake: Abarth is marking 40 years since the incredible 131 last took to the rally stage with a special-edition run of 695 Tributo models. Appropriately, just 695 examples will be available worldwide, and buyers get a host of awesome upgrades to the Fiat 500-based hot hatch. Power is from a 1.4-liter T-jet turbocharged four-cylinder with 180 hp and 184 lb-ft of torque, which will catapult this diminutive dynamo to 62 mph in 6.7 seconds. Koni FSD shocks are fitted at the corners, alongside Brembo brakes. There are 17-inch black alloy wheels, and a Record Monza Sovrapposto exhaust. There’s also a 12-point adjustable rear spoiler that Abarth calls “Spoiler ad Assetto Variable” that can be set at five degree increments from zero to 60 degrees to add up to 92 lbs of downforce at 124 mph. The Blue Rally glossy finish is a new three-layer paint that harkens back to the 131, while inside the silhouette of the rally legend is engraved in the doors, dashboard, and the headrests of the Sabelt seats. The original Group 4 Abarth 131 Rally competed from 1976–1981, notching 18 wins and securing three World Constructors’ Championships. Markku Alén won the FIA Cup for Rally Drivers twice in the car, while Walter Röhrl was World Drivers’ Champion.

Exhaust: Abarth has plenty to celebrate in the 131. The original Group 4 Abarth 131 Rally competed from 1976–1981, notching 18 wins and securing three World Constructors’ Championships. Markku Alén won the FIA Cup for Rally Drivers twice in the car, while Walter Röhrl was World Drivers’ Champion. Sadly, this stage-inspired pocket rocket won’t be available in North America, as Abarth abandoned us in 2019. European buyers can pick one up for the equivalent of $40,000. 

Fisker goes long range with Project Ronin

Intake: Fisker is going beyond the Pear and Ocean SUV with the announcement of Project Ronin: a sleek, low-slung, grand touring vehicle that promises stellar performance and the longest range of any production EV. Named after the famous 1998 action movie with heart-stopping car chases, CEO Henrik Fisker suggests Project Ronin will “showcase for our internal engineering, powertrain, and software capabilities.” The vehicle is a four-seater with “unique doors” for better ergonomics, and a suitably high-end interior constructed with sustainable materials. Details are otherwise sparse, but Fisker suggests Project Ronin will be unveiled next August, with production starting in the second half of 2024.

Exhaust: The rendering presented for Project Ronin leaves much to the imagination. We can’t tell if it will be a traditional coupe, a sedan, or something in-between. Fisker products usually cover the top end of the motoring spectrum, and the sheer volume of competition for best-in-class EV performance at this price point suggests we should consider Project Ronin’s performance claims to be more like forward looking statements, taken with a grain of salt. No matter, the next two years will be even more interesting if Project Ronin comes to life.

Virage or mirage? This rare Aston Martin shooting brake is for sale

Intake: The first factory-made Aston Martin Virage shooting brake is headed to auction. The car, which was displayed at the 1992 Geneva Motor Show, was claimed to be the world’s fastest wagon with a top speed of 152 mph thanks to its 330hp V-8 that was massaged by Callaway Engineering. Coachbuilders had created shooting brakes based on the DB5, DB6 and DBS before, but according to Bonhams, the Virage represents the first factory-backed effort from Aston. Sold new for £165,000 (equivalent to $370,000 today), this example originally left Newport Pagnell with an automatic transmission but was later converted to a manual. The current owner bought the car in 2005 and sent it straight to Aston Martin Works for an extensive and expensive overhaul. Rather than being driven as intended, however, the car was put on display and now needs recommissioning. It’s for sale as part of Bonhams’ Les Grandes Marques à Monaco auction with no reserve and an estimate of €100,000-€200,000 ($105,000-$210,000).

Exhaust: We’re suckers for shooting brakes, and the fact that only five or six were built makes this Aston even more appealing. The Bonhams sale, which includes some plnety of delicious metal such as a few vintage Bugattis and a 959 Komfort, begins on May 13. Bidding is open now.

The post Ferrari’s latest one-off, Lucid’s hefty price hikes, Abarth’s pocket rocket tribute appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Self-proclaimed as the world’s fastest SUV, Aston Martin’s DBX 707 boasts very impressive performance numbers; 0-60 mph in 3.1 seconds, a top speed of 193 mph, and 707 PS—for the U.S. audience, that’s 697 horsepower. We share these numbers up front, as it’s what I imagine the driver who can afford a $291,386 SUV is longing to convey with dinner guests over a 2012 Promontory and an A5 Wagyu filet.

The setting for our Aston Martin-hosted press drive was the island of Sardinia. It’s most famous for being a blue zone, the backdrop for The Spy Who Loved Me, and the location of the Sardinian Rally. We started the day with a detailed description of the metamorphosis that the DBX 707 had to undergo to get better reviews than its meeker DBX sibling. Yes, we live in a world where 550 hp is defined as meek.

Andy Tokley, Aston’s Senior Vehicle Engineering Manager, headed the presentation. I had the pleasure of dining with Andy the night before. He impressed me off the rip, sharing the list of vehicles he chose to build through his formative tuner years. One stood out: the Honda CRX. For those of you that have experienced Honda’s yaw-machine, you know that it is capable of physics-defying maneuvers. Andy’s tuner tales of increasing hp, tweaking suspension, and tuning clutch packed differentials reassured me that I wasn’t speaking with a bench engineer. His quest for balance in handling and power kept my attention. The DBX 707 presentation was no different.

Andy’s approach to increasing performance in the DBX 707 is based on two fundamentals: no expense spared in the use of performance materials plus relentless calibration testing and programming. It’s no secret that the DBX’s powerplant is Mercedes-sourced. However, its creators only squeeze more power out if this 4.0-liter V-8 biturbo, the M178, in the 720-hp AMG GT Black Series. Not surprisingly, Andy and his Mercedes-poached engineers were able to accomplish record setting numbers with the use of bigger turbos, ball bearings, and lots of calibration testing.

How to harness the newfound power and transfer it to the ground in a predictable and controllable manner? This may not fit the bill for the high horsepower lovers that like to breathe in tire smoke and spend their parts allowance on replacing shredded tires, as this vehicle is well poised upon power delivery. Aston accomplished this using a bigger, stronger and more durable electronic differential with a shorter drive ratio. Combined with a deftly honed calibration, the wet-clutch e-diff with locking torque reacts quickly. On the road, I was able to rotate all 4949 pounds through switchbacks with ease, and an extra squeeze of the throttle broke the rear end loose enough to bestow amore marks on Italian soil!

The long list of engineering improvements and calibrations presented include:

• Active center differential distributing 100% traction to the rear or up to a 50/50 front/rear distribution, mated to a carbon-fiber prop shaft for increased strength and less rotating mass
• New stainless-steel exhaust reducing back pressure and improving sound (for those of you that like to wake up your neighbors, an open exhaust is just a button away)
• Nine-speed wet-clutch automatic transmission instead of a torque converter, along with a brand new powertrain control module calibration to maximize torque and traction through ALL the gears
• Carbon-ceramic brakes, 16.5 inches front 15.4 inches rear, reducing un-sprung mass, providing razor sharp response to outwit Italian radars, and keeping cool through mountain descents
• Adaptive damping and the use of hydraulic bushings eliminates understeer and creates a supple ride when there is no vehicle roll. Inversely, seamlessly stiffening the chassis progressively through corners for that sport car feel
• Three driver modes: Standard, Sport and Sport Plus, each easily attainable with the rotation of a dial. Sport plus affords two additional options to reduce traction control, or 99 percent removal of stability control (my favorite mode)

Design cues worth noting—both fashionable and functional—include a stout grille that’s reminiscent of a 1940s Aston Martin. The increase in surface area is required to cool the bigger turbos and let that voracious engine breathe, and give the DBX 707 a more masculine look. In the words of Marek Reichman, Chief Designer, “the testosterone-infused [DBX 707] is, about power and prowess—there is dominance in the front of the car.”

In the rear, like with the DBX, the ducktail carried over from the Vantage. Luckily, the team did not go with a deploying spoiler, keeping the allure of a slippery, natural aerodynamic look. Plenty of carbon fiber was added throughout; the splitter and side skirts give the appearance of a lower stance and a rear diffuser not only compliments the quad exhaust but reduces turbulence and drag at high speed.

On the outside, the DBX 707 is clearly an SUV. Behind the wheel, however, it does not behave that way. Despite its five and half foot height, the body roll is less than that of a Sherman Firefly. So other than your driving position and retraining your eyeballs to be two feet closer to the road, the 707 does not give off too many SUV vibes. Only at triple-digit speeds through fast sweepers does one have to wait a skosh longer for all 2.5 tons to transfer weight from port to starboard tires and back again.

Two local driving enthusiasts were taken by surprise when they attempted to lead the pack through a series of canyons. The über-tuned banana yellow Fiat Cinquecento and bright white Audi S4 part took part in our cat-and-mouse chase. Both were impressed with the 707’s show of dominance not only on the straights, but especially through the long bends. When we took to the exit ramp, they exhibited their approval by a show of “the nod”, shortly followed by a break in character with a genuine ear-to-ear grin and a thumbs-up.

On the tighter and steeper switchbacks, the twin-turbos, nine-speed transmission, and new adaptive damping suspension were my true co-pilots. Sardinian roads are full of surprises, narrowing and widening with jagged rock formations protruding into the road and the occasional hay tractor. But it’s easy when you have power on tap, not to mention brakes that we could not get to fade even on mountain descents.

Paddle shifting through the gears as we sprinted from one bend to the next felt more like competing in autocross in a boosted CRX. Furthermore, a newly added sheer panel (tying into front subframe) gave the 707 an immediate steering response. Not once could I force the 707 into understeer. Building lateral acceleration through the mid-corner was comfortable and confidence-inspiring. Corner exit provided the most fun; in the right gear and mode, the 707 gives you an impression that the wheelbase is much shorter than the almost 10 feet it really is. Not only does it rotate in a predictable manner, but the accurate throttle response allows you to flirt with stepping it for show or keeping it in a more civilized slip angle.

While the jury is still out on where the DBX will fit into Aston Martin’s storied history, the 707 is certainly a step in the right direction. Call it the Wagyu filet of sport-utes: expensive, pedigreed, and not for everyone.

***

2023 Aston Martin DBX 707

Price: $239,086 / $291,386 (base / as-tested)

Highs: Faster, more exclusive, better sorted than the standard DBX.

Lows: The Aston image sits uneasily on a Mercedes-powered station wagon.

Summary: More of everything makes the DBX 707 more of a compelling proposition.

The post First Look Review: 2023 Aston Martin DBX 707 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The top brass at Aston Martin continues to change with the predictability of a European Premier League club struggling to keep out of the first division, with the news that former AMG chief Tobias Moers will step down from his CEO position with immediate effect.

In his place, Aston Martin Lagonda (AML) has hired Amadeo Felisa, best known for his eight years as CEO of Ferrari—a company that, in contrast with Aston, has had several decades now of near-uninterrupted prosperity and growth.

Felisa joined Ferrari in 1990 as technical director and in 2001 became general manager of the gran turismo division, before serving as CEO between 2008 and 2016. Felisa has served in a non-executive director role at AML, but now moves into both CEO and executive director roles vacated by Moers.

While Moers also left his previous role at AMG on a high, having rapidly expanded the Mercedes-AMG portfolio, times at Aston Martin have been tougher. Since Moers replaced previous CEO Andy Palmer (formerly of Nissan) in May 2020, AML has struggled to deliver financial results—compounded by the global pandemic—while also suffering several high-profile departures, including former Lotus chassis ace Matt Becker.

Joining Felisa in the AML shakeup is fellow Ferrari alumnus Roberto Fedeli, who will serve as chief technical officer (CTO) from June.

Fedeli has previously worked at brands including Alfa Romeo and BMW and most recently served as CTO at Chinese EV supercar firm Silk-FAW. He had previously left his post at Ferrari in 2014, where he presided over cars such as the much-admired 458 Italia.

With so much uncertainty at AML it’s not easy to predict where the brand goes next though executive chairman Lawrence Stroll is keen to develop a portfolio of electric vehicles—something Moers notably canned when he adopted his CEO role. AML will also no doubt be keen to maximize sales of important models like the DBX SUV.

Aston’s next few years are unlikely to be easy, but perhaps the hiring of two successful ex-Ferrari names will go some way to righting the ship.

The post Action at Aston: Moers out, ex-Ferrari Amadeo Felisa in appeared first on Hagerty Media.

An Aston Martin specialist in London had a lucky escape after fire took hold of its premises overnight and threatened to engulf two early DB4s, a pair of DB6s, and many other significant models from the marque.

Pugsley and Lewis—based in Beckenham, near Bromley, south London—suffered fire damage on April 8, losing parts stock and sustaining damage to parts of its first floor and roof, but thankfully the Aston Martins inside the workshop survived unscathed.

With the capacity for as many as 50 cars on site, the shop had a relatively lucky escape. Pugsley and Lewis’ Facebook account before the accident showed a full workshop of cars, including two early DB4s, two DB6s, its DBS restoration project, a V8 saloon, a V8 saloon race car, a DB9 FHC, and a V8 Roadster. Updates after the accident show that work continues apace on a DB6 Mk2 brought in for a full restoration.

A Pugsley and Lewis spokesperson told Hagerty: “No cars in the workshop were damaged but there were two cars parked outside the building that had some falling debris and hot tar fall onto them. There was no damage to the workshop at all, [it was] just purely the office and the roof of the building that was damaged. Our electrics are back up and running […] we are operational [but] with a walking stick, as it were.”

No one from the firm’s eight-man team was on site when the fire broke out, reported at 1:40 in the morning. No injuries were reported, but the garage’s first floor and roof were destroyed before London Fire Brigade, which attended with ten engines and nearly 70 fire fighters, could quell the flames.

Founders Martin Pugsley and Tim Lewis met while both employed at the garages of the late Richard (RS) Williams; the pair formed their own company in 1989, moving to their current Beckenham premises in 1994.

David Reed, station commander with London Fire Brigade’s Fire Investigation Team, said: “The center section of the building was alight. Firefighters worked incredibly hard to bring the fire under control. The blaze was producing heavy smoke, which went in the direction away from residential properties, but those in the immediate area were advised to keep their windows and doors closed.”

London Fire Brigade is still investigating the cause of the fire.

Via Hagerty UK

The post Lucky escape for historic Astons after London horror blaze appeared first on Hagerty Media.

“Off-road” edition confirms 2023 Pathfinder trades on looks, not brawn

Intake: One year on from the unveiling of the all-new fifth-generation Nissan Pathfinder, the marque has unveiled the 2023 Pathfinder Rock Creek, a mild upgrade to the unibody SUV. Spec the Rock Creek and you’ll get an off-road–tuned suspension with a 5/8-inch lift, 18-inch all-terrain tires mounted on “beadlock-style” (read: not actual beadlock) wheels, a tubular roof rack capable of carrying 220 pounds of gear, an exclusive front fascia, special seats, orange contrast stitching in the interior, and an off-road mode for Nissan’s Intelligent Around View camera monitoring system. The Pathfinder’s transversely mounted 3.5-liter aluminum V-6 also gets a bump in power (295 hp vs. 284) and torque (270 lb-ft versus 259) in Rock Creek spec when you use premium fuel, thanks to revised fuel mapping. The new trim will go on sale late this summer.

Exhaust: Credit Nissan’s product planners for realizing that adventure sells right now. Still, our test of a 2WD 2022 Pathfinder confirmed that Nissan’s “return to rugged” messaging was a bit far-fetched—and for a nameplate that, unlike Subaru’s Outback or Ford’s Explorer, was once legitimate trail conquerer, this half-hearted upgrade stings. The Pathfinder has long waffled between body-on-frame (first and third gen) trucklet and unibody crossover (second, fourth, and fifth generations). We’re hard-pressed to say that the 2023 model, whose all-wheel-drive system defaults to FWD in most circumstances, is truly “rugged.” The Rock Creek may be the Pathfinder’s strongest argument since 2012, but it doesn’t inspire us to stray too far from the beaten path.

Glimpse Lincoln’s electric future on 4/20

Intake: As part of Ford’s commitment to electrification, Lincoln offered a teaser video of a forthcoming concept vehicle reported to sport a fully electric propulsion system. This yet-to-be-named vehicle sports backlit Lincoln emblems both on the front and sides but is only an “inspiration for the brand’s fully electric vehicles coming in the near future.”

Exhaust: While teaser videos are purposefully short on details, the unnamed Lincoln concept appears to have an SUV’s roofline, which is logical considering the brand’s current portfolio. Ford recently hired Anthony Lo as chief design officer, and this concept is proof positive that he’s indeed committed to shaking things up with more concept vehicles that highlight Ford’s electric future.

Aston Martin’s F1 safety car is too slow, says Max Verstappen

Intake: The Australian Grand Prix will be one to forget for Aston Martin. After lead driver Sebastian Vettel crashed, the British brand’s flagship Vantage safety car was deployed and subsequently described as a “turtle” by 2021 World Champion Max Verstappen. “There’s so little grip and also the safety car was driving so slow, it was like a turtle. Unbelievable,” Verstappen said. In a further blow, the Dutch driver claimed that the Mercedes-AMG safety car, which is used at around half the events on the F1 calendar, is significantly quicker. “For sure the Mercedes safety car is faster because of the extra aero, because this Aston Martin is really slow. It definitely needs more grip, because our tires were stone-cold.”

Exhaust: It gets worse. Mercedes-AMG driver George Russell, who finished third in the race and Charles Leclerc, who won in his Ferrari, also chipped in. “We don’t have the issue with the Mercedes-AMG safety car,” said Russell. “On a serious note, the Mercedes-AMG is like five seconds quicker than the Aston Martin safety car, which is pretty substantial.” Leclerc then added that F1 should get a Ferrari safety car instead as it would be another “five seconds quicker.” 

This 1931 Bugatti is a Grand Prix car in a tailored suit

Intake: Race cars don’t often get second chances at life, but this week on Jay Leno’s Garage appears one such reborn workhorse. This Bugatti Type 51 was originally a racing car, which was purchased upon retirement and draped with a body commissioned by Carrozzeria Louis Dubos of France. The final result looks like a scaled-down Atlantic. The car is powered by a 2.3-liter straight-eight fed by a side-mounted supercharger. When combined with a very robust transmission and big mechanical brakes, that mill could push a Type 51 handily through whatever race the owner entered. Add on a curvaceous body, and you have a timeless package.

Exhaust: Bugatti is a brand that has always wielded high-end cachet and this particular Type 51 is a great example of just how exclusive these cars can get. This is a one-off body built by Dubos, and the chassis was raced by Louis Chiron, the man whose name graces the late-model hypercar still rolling out of the Molsheim factory. Even a car like this was once one step from becoming scrap metal, though, and it the Nethercutt collection to save it way back when and restore it to the beauty you see today.

Watch a “self-driving” car run away from the cops

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by B-RadAbroad (@b.rad916)

Intake: An autonomous Chevy Bolt taxi operated by Cruise got pulled over by San Francisco police for driving at night without its lights on. As a bemused cop walks up to have a word with the driver, he discovers there’s nobody behind the wheel. Then the Bolt, er, bolts and the police give chase for a few yards before the Chevy stops again. The police appear to try to get into the locked vehicle as a crowd gathers in disbelief and hilarity as the officers have no idea what to do next.

Exhaust: Maybe robocars only respect RoboCops, and our dystopian future is closer than ever.

The post Nissan’s wanderlust Pathfinder, Aston’s F1 pace car is “too slow,” dim AI runs from the law appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Subaru’s WRX STI is dead … for now

Intake: Subaru’s WRX STI has long represented the pinnacle of performance for the brand, eschewing the granola-munching reputation associated with the Outback and Forester for a rally-born, no-holds-barred rowdiness. With the new WRX now in play, we expected a hotted-up STI version to be waiting in the wings, but those hopes were in vain. Subaru of America confirmed via a statement that it has no plans for a purely gas-powered STI, and that the model will go on hiatus for the duration of this current WRX platform. However, Subaru is looking into electrification options for the performance variant. “As the automotive marketplace continues to move towards electrification, Subaru is focused on how our future sports and performance cars should evolve to meet the needs of the changing marketplace,” said the statement.

Exhaust: The death of the outgoing STI was largely a result of its ancient EJ-series 2.5-liter flat-four, and it would seem Subaru was unwilling or unable to replace that venerable powerplant. Rally fanatics are certain to lament this news, but a future hybrid STI isn’t without precedent. The FIA World Rallycross, the top tier of competition for the fire-spitting, dirt-slinging cars made famous on forested jumps and winding mountain roads, has gone hybrid for the 2022 season under the Rally1 technical regulations. Subaru’s STI originally made a name for itself dominating these international battlegrounds in the late 1990s, trouncing the competition and notching manufacturers championships in 1995, ’96, and ’97 with the stars like the late Colin McRae at the wheel. While we’re no doubt bummed to hurry up and wait for a new STI, we’re hopeful for what a hybrid-assisted machine may bring to the table. More power at the very least, right? Maybe even a re-entry into rallying’s premier championship?

Aston Martin’s final V12 Vantage will go out with a bang

Arriving 16.03.22#AstonMartin #V12Vantage #NeverLeaveQuietly

— Aston Martin (@astonmartin) March 11, 2022

Intake: Aston Martin is teasing the imminent arrival of the final V12 Vantage on social media with the hashtag #NeverLeaveQuietly. Powered by a 700-hp, 5.2-liter twin-turbo V-12 paired with an eight-speed automatic, this latest V12 Vantage is expected to be a limited edition swan song model. “V12 Vantage, the final descendent of its lineage, marks the end of an era. Crafted with unapologetic power and luxury, it overtakes the senses through its unmistakable and deafening V12 Aston Martin roar,” says Aston Martin. All will be revealed—and heard—this Wednesday, March 16.

Exhaust: The last ever front-engined V-12 Aston Martin sports car looks set to be quite something. Sharing its engine with the V-12 Speedster, it certainly won’t leave quietly. The Vantage’s successor is likely going to be all-electric, so consider this a fitting ending for this chapter of Aston’s smallest sports car.

Porsche and Pixar are creating a Sally Carrera-inspired car for charity

Intake: She’s real! She’s real! Well, she will be soon, anyway. Commemorating the 20th anniversary of Sally Carrera, from Pixar’s Cars franchise, Porsche is creating a unique tribute car that will be auctioned for charity. (If the math doesn’t seem to add up, it’s because Pixar and Porsche are marking the anniversary of the car—Sally is a 2002 911 Carrera—not the original movie, which came out in 2006.) The Sally-inspired Porsche will wear unique features like Sally Blue paint, custom wheels, and badges. The character is modeled after Dawn Welch, the real-life proprietor of the Rock Cafe in Stroud, Oklahoma. The Sally Carrera will eventually be auctioned by RM Sotheby’s, and all proceeds will support programs for girls and young women through Girls Inc., as well as the USA for UNHCR (a UN refugee agency), to provide aid to children and families affected by the conflict in Ukraine.

Exhaust: This isn’t just a cool idea from an automotive perspective, the project will benefit those in need. We’ve all seen Pixar-inspired cars and trucks at events, but only one person will own one created by Style Porsche in Weissach and Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur in Stuttgart. It’s a win-win that the entire community of Radiator Springs can be proud of.

A sensational stable of Prancing Horses is headed to auction

Intake: An incredible private collection of Ferraris is set to go under the hammer at The Artcurial Rétromobile Auction on March 18–19. Held at the annual Salon Rétromobile in Paris, the Ferraris are part of the Maître Étienne Léandri estate. Léandri, a wealthy Monégasque collector, was a lifelong fan who was known as “The Ferrari Lawyer” and owned five of the most sought-after Modena motorcars ever made.

Up for grabs are a 1989 F40, a 1996 F50, a 2003 Enzo, a 2010 599 GTO F1, and a 2013 LaFerrari. Léandri clearly enjoyed his collection, as the F40 covered 13,284 km in his hands. He also drove 4760 km in the Enzo and 3390 km in the GTO. The F50 and LaFerrari are barely broken in by comparison, with 1318 km and 952km, respectively. Léandri’s collection also included a 2010 458 Italia, a 2009 Fiat 500 Abarth Ferrari Dealers Edition, and a 2003 Lamborghini Murciélago, which are similarly bound for the block.

Exhaust: This single auction will be a great opportunity to chart the current values of the Ferrari’s “Famous Five”. Most affordable is expected to be the 599 GTO, which is estimated to sell for €500,000 to €800,000 ($548,000-$877,000). Perhaps surprisingly, the F40 is next at €1.3m-€1.6m ($1.42-$1.75m), while the Enzo and LaFerrari are both predicted to go for €2.2m-2.8m ($2.4m-$3m) . Top of the tree is the F50, which Artcurial estimates will go under the hammer for €2.7m-€3.5m ($3m-$3.8m).

De Tomaso P72 teased in cold weather testing

Intake: Ever since De Tomaso announced that it would move its operations stateside as part of Mission AAR (Automotive American Renaissance), we’ve been wondering how things are progressing on the stunning P72 supercar. Thanks to a snowy teaser video released by the Italian-Argentine-American firm earlier this month, we now have our answer. Witness the P72 enduring cold weather testing in the frigid climes of Switzerland. Even with camouflaged coachwork, the curvaceous P72 looks great on the snow, and the supercharged Ford Coyote V-8 engine—tuned by Jack Roush, no less—sounds like pure heaven. All 72 examples of the P72 will feature a six-speed manual of the firm’s own design, which should only add to the appeal for potential customers.

Exhaust: The P72 is an homage to the Pete Brock-designed Shelby-De Tomaso P70, a gorgeous mid-60s racing project involving Carroll Shelby, Brock, and Alejandro De Tomaso. As far as lineage goes, that’s some lofty company. With a base price that’s “determined at $1,000,000 USD” it’s clear the P72 isn’t for most folks. But if you are so inclined, you should register your interest to get on De Tomaso’s waiting list.

Kyle Jergensen wins 2022 Mint 400

Intake: After a solid qualifying session, Kyle Jergenen and codriver Shawn Shanks weathered 400 miles of Nevada desert and outlasted the competition to take the win in their Brenthel Industries Unlimited Truck. Along with the win, they’ll take home a $10,000 contingency check from BF Goodrich.

Exhaust: Last year’s winner, Rob MacCachren, took the lead midway through the race when Ryan Arciero fell out due to engine trouble. Jergensen kept up the pressure, and when MacCachren also fell back due to engine trouble, Jergensen took the lead and didn’t look back. The Mint 400, in its 15th year back after 20 years on hiatus, is making a great case that it’s America’s must-see off-road race and makes it easy for spectators to get a great look at the action. Congrats to Jergensen and Shanks on their first-ever Minto 400 victory!

The post R.I.P. Subaru WRX STI, Aston’s last V-12 Vantage, Porsche and Pixar bring Sally Carrera to life appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Dodge temporarily drops row-your-own option from Challenger Hellcat

Intake: Dodge’s inimitable Challenger sports one of the best option sheets anywhere in the industry, but a glance at the current 2022 model year configurator reveals a rather dismaying hole: the six-speed manual transmission is no longer an option when you’re building a tire-smoking Challenger SRT Hellcat. The situation was first reported by Road & Track. When asked about the lack of a three-pedal option, a Stellantis spokesperson noted that the move is only temporary; SRT is apparently working on a revised powertrain calibration to help the 6.2-liter, 717-horse V-8 jive with the six-speed Tremec box, but there at present is no firm date for when that revision will arrive.

Exhaust: While the ubiquitous eight-speed ZF automatic is surely the more popular option for the Hellcat, there was something commendable about giving customers a manual option. If your Challenger must have three pedals, you can still get the 485-horse, 6.4-liter Hemi V-8-powered Scat Pack or the 375-horse 5.7-liter Hemi V-8-powered R/T with a six-speed. Here’s to hoping that revised calibration gets here soon, and before the lineup flips to pure-electric power.

Take a peek at the first electric Jeep

Intake: At a press event in Amsterdam, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares announced a massive push for EVs in the coming decade: Globally, the 15-nameplate conglomerate is targeting 75 new BEVs by 2030. Leading the way for American customers is an all-electric Jeep SUV, the first of its kind for the darling marque. According to Tavares, the electron-powered Jeep will arrive early next year. Whether this is an electric-only version of an existing nameplate or the start of a new one, we’ve yet to see. Keen eyes will note that the cute yellow ute pictured here is very much not a Wrangler; Jeep previewed an electric Wrangler, dubbed the Wrangler Magneto, at last year’s Easter Jeep Safari. We had a chance to drive it and came away thoroughly impressed with the practicality of electric rock crawling. This year’s EJS will be held on April 9. Perhaps a more production-ready version of an EV Wrangler, which is due in 2024, will be unveiled there.

Exhaust: While it’s a bit late to the Oprah Winfrey EV party (YOU get an EV! YOU get an EV!) relative to other manufacturers—Toyota announced a 30-vehicle electric onslaught due by 2030 late last year, and GM and Ford have been dumping obscene amounts of cash into grandiose EV forecasts—Stellantis’ decision to lead with Jeep is a smart one here. The brand has remarkably broad appeal—it’s why you can pay $25,000 or four times that for something with a seven-slat grille. Expect this new eJeep to compete with Chevy’s recently announced Equinox EV, likely priced around the same $30K mark.

Ford splits ICE vehicles and EVs into separate business units

Intake: Divide and conquer seems to be the name of the game in Dearborn. Ford announced today that it will split its gas-powered vehicles and its EV division into separate business units: “Ford Blue” will now encompass all ICE vehicles, while “Ford Model e” will stand up the electric vehicles, such as the Mustang Mach-E, the F-150 Lightning, and a slew of other forthcoming EVs. Ford says the move will allow it to “compete and win against both new EV competitors and established automakers.” The two units will operate as distinct business but will share relevant technology and best practices across the Blue Oval family. Along with Ford Pro, the business unit aimed at commercial customers, all three businesses will have their own Profit & Loss statements (P&Ls) by as early as next year.

Exhaust: The ongoing development of EVs has sparked a wave of newcomer companies, from Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid to Faraday Future, Fisker, and others. Splitting the EV business into its own unit is, in Ford’s eyes, essential to remaining agile enough to compete against smaller startups that don’t suffer the large-scale product planning, production, or other aspects that established legacy automakers manage. Speaking with CNBC, Ford CEO Jim Farley explained the move clearly “The reality is, our legacy business was holding us back. We had to change.”

Ram teases 1500 EV due in 2024

Intake: As part of its Dare Forward 2030 business plan, Stellantis announced that it that will have an all-electric Ram 1500 on the market in 2024. The teaser images don’t give us much to go on, but Ram promises that its EV 1500 will outperform existing electric pickups in the places customers care about: range, payload, and charging times.

Exhaust: With the Rivian R1T, GMC Hummer EV, and Ford F-150 Lightning out now and the Silverado EV poised to hit the road next year, Ram may be a bit late to the EV pickup party. That might not matter though; truck buyers are fiercely loyal and if Ram delivers on those aforementioned promises, it could win some new customers of its own. We’ve previously heard that Ram is contemplating a range-extender on some of its electric pickups to woo those that are on the fence regarding range. If so, that may give the brand a significant edge.

This glutton for punishment owns 25 Aston Martin Lagondas

Intake: Roger Dudding, the keeper of Europe’s largest private car collection, now owns a quarter of all the Aston Martin Lagondas in Britain. Although 645 of the famously-unreliable William Towns wedges were built, only around 100 remain in the U.K., and 25 of those are on display at Dudding’s Studio434 collection in Hertfordshire, north of London. Dudding has amassed more than 500 vehicles dating back to the early 1900s, and his love of the eccentric extends to forgotten marques such as Clyno, which made cars, vans, and motorcycles in the 1920s and 1930s before disappearing. Other highlights include an AC 378 GT Zagato prototype, a Jaguar XJ200, one of only two Railtons, and one of the first Ferrari Dinos off the production line. Studio434 isn’t open to the public, but is available for private visits from car clubs.

Exhaust: One would think that owning one Lagonda would be enough trouble, so we can only imagine the difficulties Dudding has had in keeping 25 of them going. According to howmanyleft, barely 30 of the 100 Towns’ troublemakers are actually road registered and running in the U.K.

The post Challenger Hellcat pauses manual option, Jeep reveals its first EV, Ford divides to conquer appeared first on Hagerty Media.

DeLorean’s new EV concept will bow this August in California

Intake: A lot has happened in the world of DeLorean in recent months. The marque associated with the iconic stainless steel–bodied “DMC-12” has split into two companies following its Texas-based resurrection in 1995: DeLorean Motor Company, which sells parts for and restores the original DeLoreans, and DeLorean Motors Reimagined, the group that will be building a recently-teased EV inspired by the DMC-12. ItalDesign, the Italian design house whose founder, Giorgetto Guigiaro, penned the original DMC-12, is involved with the new EV project. According to a report from Car and Driver, the fledgling EV—which we’ve only seen silhouettes of thus far—will bow at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance on August 21.

Exhaust: We’re looking forward to seeing that DMC-12-inspired EV in full this summer. However, we also can’t help but wonder what this means for the run of “new” DMC-12s with updated drivetrains that were reportedly in the works at DeLorean’s production facility in Humble, Texas. We’ve reached out to DMC for details and will update if we hear back.

The last Elise goes to the person behind its name

Intake: Elisa Artioli, granddaughter of Lotus’ former Chairman Romano Artioli, is the owner of the last vehicle to bear her name. Lotus tweeted that “the last Elise built for customer” is an Elise Sport 240 in Championship Gold, and confirmed it’s going to Elisa. Judging by the smile on her face, this was a win-win for everyone involved with this famous sports car.

Exhaust: While it never hurts to have a strong family connection with an automaker, not every final vehicle is lucky enough to get such a worthy owner. We previously profiled Elisa here, so we are confident she’s the perfect person to receive such a special piece of automotive history.

Aston Martin is almost guaranteed to lead a Grand Prix in 2022

Intake: With new regulations for Formula 1 shaking up the grid the 2022 season could be full of surprises. However, one thing is all but certain: Aston Martin will lead the field at some point as its Vantage is an official safety car, for the second year running. A DBX crossover will also serve as the medical car for 12 of the 23 races on the calendar. The Aston duo will make their debut at the Australian Grand Prix weekend on April 8-10.

Exhaust: Aston Martin is sharing safety and medical car duties with Mercedes-AMG which will provide an AMG GT Coupe and a C63 wagon for 11 rounds of the championship. Hopefully the safety cars won’t be cause for consternation again this year as they were at the season decider in 2021.

Porsche ponders a stock market float

Intake: While thousands of Porsches may be in danger of sinking at sea aboard a stricken and smoldering transporter, the German sports car maker is eyeing up a more successful floatation. The VW Group and Porsche Automobil Holding SE have said that they are exploring an initial public offering (IPO) before the end of the year. The planned stock market listing could value Porsche at up to $95 billion, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. “The actual feasibility of an IPO depends on several different parameters as well as general market conditions. No final decisions have yet been taken,” said a VW statement.

Exhaust: A stock market float would inject a huge amount of cash into Porsche which would help fund the brand’s transition over to an EV maker. If you’re interested in getting in on the action then, according to Autocar, the shares will be split into two portions: 50 percent will be ordinary shares with voting rights, and 50 percent will be preference shares that give early access to dividend payments. However, Autocar says that only 25 percent of the preferred shares will actually be put on the market, leaving Porsche Automobil Holding and the VW Group firmly in charge.

NHTSA investigating 1.7M Honda vehicles for “inadvertent” automatic emergency braking

Intake: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched an investigation into more than 1.7 million Honda Motor Company vehicles for unintended automatic emergency braking. The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) has received 278 complaints—107 for 2018–19 Honda Accords and 171 for 2017–19 Honda CR-V compact crossovers—for “inadvertent activation of the collision mitigation braking system,” which prompted the probe. The ODI document summarizes that activating the braking system while driving “can cause unexpected speed reductions that can lead to increased vulnerability to rear end impact collisions. The complaints allege that the inadvertent braking events occur without warning and randomly.” Honda spokesman Chris Martin told the Automotive News that Honda is aware of the situation and will cooperate with the NHTSA while continuing its own investigation.

Exhaust: At least a dozen automakers—including Acura, Honda’s luxury brand—install automatic crash-avoidance technology as standard equipment on their newer vehicles. So, considering that the Honda probe comes on the heels of last week’s news of a NHTSA investigation into 2021–22 Tesla Model 3 and Y vehicles, other automakers are most certainly taking note.

The post Electric DeLorean due this August, Porsche ponders IPO, NHTSA probes 1.7M Hondas appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Canadian sells house to fund Rolls-Royce EV conversion

Intake: A resident of British Columbia forever changed his life when he sold his house to fund his homebrew EV project. His now Tesla-powered Rolls-Royce Ghost, the result of four years of labor, has a reported 310 miles of battery-powered range. Vincent Yu, an engineer by trade, was inspired to convert the Rolls Royce’s powertrain after a conversation with his daughter, who critiqued him for his combustion-powered driving style, and subsequently hired a team of craftsman to assist him in making his dream a reality. And while these difficult times led to Yu’s wife leaving him, he now has his own company specializing in EV conversions.

Exhaust: This is an impressive story about the financial stress and the personal toll it takes to create something, but Yu evidently takes it in stride: “Growing up, I have always been this crazy kid who kept dreaming of doing something ground-breaking in the world—even if it seems impossible.” Yu joins a growing cottage industry of entrepreneurs creating EV-conversion companies, and we wish him and his team the best of luck.

Lamborghini’s having a tough week

Intake: Last week, the 656-foot Felicity Ace transporter was abandoned in the Atlantic as a fire ravaged its cargo of roughly 4000 vehicles, which included Porsches, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis. The Lambos are mostly Urus SUVs, but some Aventador and Huracan models were also on board, according to a report from Automotive News. Lamborghini planned to sunset the Aventador with the LP 780-4 Ultimae series, a 600-unit send-off run. Most likely, the Aventadors on the Felicity Ace were part of that sold-out series. As the fire has since subsided, salvage crews boarded the ship yesterday to assess the damage, and we may know more later. Lamborghini CEO Andrea Baldi speculates that if any Avendators are damaged or destroyed, Lamborghini would have to go back to its suppliers to see whether it can source the parts necessary to rebuild the lost cars. That’s not the only drama on Lamborghini’s hands: NHTSA is ordering a recall of 4796 Huracáns from model years 2015 through 2020 for a headlight issue. The NHTSA report details a blanking cap that was not installed over the adjustment screw for the headlights, which could potentially cause the aim of the headlights to skew horizontally, presenting a hazard for oncoming motorists.

Exhaust: When it rains, it pours—even if you’re a storied Italian sports car manufacturer. Baldi tells AN that Sant’Agata: “Does not know yet the final outcome. We have informed our dealers, and they have informed out customers, because whatever happens, in any case, there will be a delay.” Huracán owners affected by the recall can contact their dealer, who will install the missing blanking cap free of charge.

U.S. Porsche dealers compete for best resto prize

Intake: More than 60 dealerships across the U.S.A. are taking part in the 2022 Porsche Restoration Challenge. First run last year, this internal competition pits franchise against franchise as they each take on a project car from the 1950s to the 2000s to be returned to factory condition. Eligible cars include the 356, 914, 944, 928, and no less than five generations of 911. Even early Boxsters and Cayennes can be entered. Using some of the 60,000 available Porsche Classic Genuine Parts, the workshops will have until July to complete their restorations. Entries will be whittled down to regional finalists for the East, South-central and West before the last three we will be judged by a panel from Porsche Cars North America in September.

Exhaust: Authenticity will be the key to success in this challenge, says Porsche, who will judge each car based not only on the quality of its restoration but the originality of its documentation. No doubt Porsche Ontario will be hoping to repeat its success after taking the top prize in 2021 with a 1989 911 Targa (pictured above).

Americans can’t get enough Aston Martin (SUVs)

Intake: Aston Martin sold almost 2000 cars in the U.S.A. in 2021, in a massive, 115 percent hike over the previous year. During the 2021 calendar year, 1984 Astons found homes in America, comprising almost a third of the company’s global total of 6178 sales. Sales gained the most momentum in the first half of the year: Aston reported that sales were up by 224 percent over 2020. “Retail demand for our brand in the Americas [is] at an all-time high,” says a delighted Aston Martin Americas Regional President Adam Chamberlain.

Exhaust: Unlike Lotus’ nostalgia-driven sales records, much of Aston’s commercial success is due to the DBX crossover, which went into production in June of 2020 and accounted for over half of vehicle sales in the first half of 2021. The bigger picture? After several painful stumbles in the past year, including a shave with bankruptcy in 2014 and a depressing IPO in 2018, Lawrence Stroll and Tobias Moers might just be turning things around. 

USPS new fleet will be 90 percent gas-powered

Intake: Six weeks after the U.S. Postal Service pumped the brakes on its new fleet to reconsider the percentage of electric vehicles, it has finalized plans to purchase up to 148,000 gasoline-powered mail delivery trucks—accounting for 90 percent of the fleet—from Oskhosh Defense, in defiance of the Biden administration’s objections. According to The Washington Post, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy disregarded requests from both the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency to increase the percentage of EVs, which would have added as much as $11.3 billion to the bottom line. EPA officials say the Postal Service has vastly underestimated the emissions of its “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles,” the first of which is now expected to hit the streets in 2023.

Exhaust: President Biden has pledged to transition the federal fleet to clean power, so the USPS plan to move forward with a 90/10 ratio of gas/electric is a major blow. The USPS says producing a higher percentage of EVs will cost the country billions; critics argue the same is true (mainly in maintenance costs) by going with a mostly gasoline-powered fleet. Perhaps there are no winners in this fight.

Automotive “eyeballs” are getting smarter

Intake: Misleading marketing (looking at you, Tesla) and development hiccups abound, but autonomous-driving technology is continuing to advance. The latest innovation is a LiDAR sensor from Oregon-based PreAct Technologies, founded in 1999 to support the defense industry with high-speed sensors. These LiDAR sensors use light as bats and whales use sounds, to locate objects around them by emitting a pulse (sonic or otherwise) and analyzing the feedback to determine distance. The news for PreAct is that its T30P flash LiDAR sensor (flash means that it emits a diverging arc of light, rather than parallel beams) can be programmed via software, which can be delivered over the air, and doesn’t have to be physically updated with a chip. PreAct also hopes to court Tier 1 suppliers and OEMS with the T30P’s wide-ranging compatibility; it integrates easily into an existing arrays of autonomous tech, and will be available in July of this year. Want the techy details? Check out PreAct’s website.

Exhaust: Though we associate LiDAR with autonomous driving, and the heated discussions about its safety and/or desirability, these sensors can be programmed for more mundane, less controversial uses. It could warn you if you’re about to open your door into a trash can, for instance, or scrape your bumper on a curb. Semis could use them to detect trailer position. The digital eyeballs could even keep watch as part of an anti-theft sensor array—and because PreAct’s units can be configured via software, a sensor could be retasked or assigned additional duties via an over-the-air update. 

The post Canadian sells house to build EV, U.S. dealers compete to restore Porsches, USPS prioritizes ICE appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Toyota patents a “pseudo clutch” … and that’s an apt name

Intake: The path toward electrification is very much in progress, and for enthusiast that so far means further lamenting the loss of user-controlled manual transmissions. Toyota’s latest patent filing is an attempt to retain the driver engagement of the manual transmission but without much mechanical complexity beyond a third pedal and shifter. The core of the design is a computer which would change the torque output or characteristics of the electric motor based on the drivers “gear selection.”

Exhaust: We hate to rain on this well-meaning parade, but the flat torque curve of an electric motor does not require the changing of gears to optimize the motor’s output at a given speed, so cynics will rightly judge this system as not much more than pandering to enthusiasts. If Toyota deserves any small kudos, it’s for calling this system what it is: Fake. This is only a patent, so it doesn’t exist yet, and with any luck it will stay that way.

Finally, the front-engined Aston Martins are getting touchscreens

Intake: Shapely though they may be, few have called the front-engined sports car lineup from Aston Martin—consisting of the raucous Vantage, the sleek DB11, and the godfather DBS—high-tech. Speaking with Autocar, Aston chairman Lawrence Stroll indicates that is about to change. Stroll confirms that the madeover cars will get touchscreens to replace an aging Mercedes-Benz-sourced trackpad system. Elsewhere, the trio of engine-first cars will get updated suspension, uprated versions of Mercedes-AMG’s 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8, and possibly new gearboxes. “You’ll be very impressed with the all-new front-engines next year,” Stroll tells Autocar. “There’s no similarity at all to the current cars.”

Exhaust: While the powertrain news is certainly noteworthy, we’re most excited to see these new interiors, which are currently a major pitfall of the three front-engined models. Under the technical partnership with Mercedes, Aston was granted the ability to utilize the Mercedes-Benz infotainment system, but only after the tech had already been in a Silver Star vehicle for three years. Stroll puts it best: “How can you have an Aston Martin that sells for £150,000 with three-year-old technology? It is a silly thing the previous management agreed to.”

2022 will see DeLorean get back to the future with Italian flair

Intake: ItalDesign and Delorean Motor Company have put a 2022 date on their retro-inspired collaboration. For those keeping track of DeLorean’s two-pronged return, this project is inspired by the original stainless-steel wedge but distinct from the planned (and repeatedly delayed) run of “new” DMC-12s that will be produced under the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Act (LVMVA). In a video taglined “The future was never promised,” we see a silhouette of those famous gullwing doors in action. Perhaps more importantly, the social media posts that accompany the video use the hashtag #ElectricVehicle, which all but confirms that the new ItalDesign-DeLorean project will be battery-powered. Here’s what James Espey, vice president of DeLorean Motor Company, told us in January of 2021: “Those [LVMVA] regulations stipulate that a vehicle must resemble a vehicle made at least 25 years ago,” says Espey. “I would not expect a Italdesign project to fall under that criteria, should one be produced in any way—whether strictly a concept vehicle, or one with some plan for production.”

Exhaust: We’re not entirely sure what’s in this for ItalDesign, or how closely the final concept will adhere to the original Back to the Future icon beyond those top-hinged doors. If recent history has told us anything, though, what’s old is new again—whether that’s live-action remakes of animated Disney classics or the return of the Ford Bronco. We can’t wait to see what ItalDesign and DeLorean have concocted. 

Would you go double Dutch on a pair of Lotus concept cars?

Intake: A duo of one-off Lotus concept cars has surfaced at a dealer in the Netherlands. Metropole Classics in Druten is selling the M200 speedster and Etna show cars for €125,000 ($142,000) apiece. Of the pair it’s the Etna which is most significant as it set out great ambitions for the British sports car brand when it was revealed at the 1984 Birmingham International Motor Show. Designed by Giugiaro, the lower half of the car resembled the Esprit, but the plexiglass canopy was unique. So, too was the promised V-8 engine, active suspension, anti-lock braking system, and traction control. Although the show car wasn’t equipped with any of the fancy technology, it did have an operational prototype four-liter V-8, and, after being sold to a private owner, the car was made operational.

The M200 made its debut at the 1991 Frankfurt Motor Show and was a first chance for Julian Thompson to show his ideas for Lotus design direction. Working with the M100 Elan production car, Thompson turned the controversial front-wheel-drive Lotus into a chopped speedster with individual cockpit openings for driver and passenger, fixed headlights and a massive rear wing. It, too functions, with the original Isuzu four-cylinder motor transversely-mounted under the hood.

Exhaust: This is an incredibly rare opportunity to buy a piece of Lotus’ past future. Most significant is the Etna’s in-house quad-cam V-8, made from two of the company’s 907 heads fitted to a new V-8 block. While the Etna itself died when GM took over Lotus after Colin Chapman’s death, the V-8 gave the Esprit a new lease of life.

Ford publishes the CAD files you need to 3D-print Maverick accessories

Intake: Thanks to recently published CAD files for the Maverick’s center console and under-seat storage area, Ford both allows and encourages owners to make accessories to help the trucklet address specific needs that the factory can’t possibly satisfy. Called the Ford Integrated Tether System (FITS), a series of slots in the Maverick’s rear passenger compartment accommodate the 3D-printed add-ons of your choice. For those without the printer, knowledge, or time, Ford also offers a package of five pre-made items in its accessories catalog, including a cup holder, phone cord organizer, bag hooks, storage bin, and dividers for the under-seat storage area. The asking price is $50, with an extra $10 for dealer installation if you’re really that busy.

Exhaust: Open sourcing has been a big deal in software for years, be it Android mobile or Ford’s very own EEC-IV fuel-injection system from the 1980s. It’s great to see the Maverick taking the concept to the next level, ensuring everyone can participate in Maker Culture. But if you aren’t inclined to do it yourself, this traditional option from Ford accessories still has you covered.

Price on all Ford F-150 trims increases by at least $1500

Intake: A leaked dealer memo has revealed that starting February 15, the MSRP on all Ford F-150s will increase by at least $1500. The mid-year price hike affected many Ford models, but F-150 went up the most. The biggest price increase in the Ford lineup is the F-150 Raptor, which saw a $3300 increase. This is in addition to a price hike that came at the end of December that had all but the base F-150 XL add $880 to the window sticker.

Exhaust: The ongoing chip shortages and global inflation have led to high dealer markups and an increase in used car prices. It was inevitable that the actual MSRPs would rise as well. Hopefully, domestic semiconductor manufacturing can soon be online to help avoid production bottlenecks in the future.

The post Toyota patents EV “pseudo-clutch,” DeLorean’s Italian job, print your own Maverick cupholders appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Bonhams will host its Les Grandes Marques du Monde à Paris auction on February 3, and the cars crossing the block are nothing if not eclectic.

You can of course expect the usual high-end metal (and carbon-fiber): a Bugatti EB110 GT, for instance, as well as a 1993 Jaguar XJ220, a hugely tasteful Ferrari 550 in Verde Inglese, and even a selection of vehicles from the early days of motoring.

But scroll down the lot list and another grouping emerges: The oddballs. From replica racing cars to a one-off roadster and an Aston Martin that’s somewhat more practical than the norm, these are our picks of the less-usual suspects at the upcoming Les Grandes Marques sale.

1995 Sauber C9 “BMW M1” Group 5 replica

You’ve probably heard of the BMW M1, and probably heard of the Sauber C9, which twice won the World Sportscar Championship. That the two were ever combined is more of a surprise, but that’s exactly how this BASF-liveried replica was conceived when it was built in Switzerland.

It’s not, if we’re being frank, the prettiest of race cars, even though both the original BMW M1 and Sauber C9 racers are spectacular lookers in their own right. With M1 styling stretched over a prototype carbon-fiber C9 chassis, it’s certainly unique—the original C9 racers used an aluminum structure.

The engine too you won’t find in either the M1 Procar or a factory-spec C9, since this car is running a 5.9-liter Chevrolet V-8 making more than 628 hp. It’s a real hodgepodge then, but pending a mechanical check-up it’s said to be ready to return to racing, and carries an estimate of 200,000 to 300,000 Euros (approximately $225,000 to $337,600).

1974 Mercedes-Benz SLC Paris-Peking replica

However unlikely something might seem as a racing candidate, somebody, somewhere, has probably raced it. The Mercedes-Benz SLC of the 1970s is case in point, designed very much as an elegant cruiser but competing with no small success in off-road endurance rallies in period.

This SLC, with a 150,000 to 200,000 Euro estimate (~$168,000 to $225,000), isn’t one of the original rally cars, and was instead built for a private collector in 2016. SLC Racing in Slovakia built a 450 SLC donor car to the same specification as the original works cars, up to and including an expensive Reiger suspension system capable of handling the most challenging terrain.

Judging by the condition of this car it seems to have barely seen a layer of dust, let alone far-flung dirt, but it would be a fabulous way of tackling a rally like the Paris-Peking. A relaxing companion too, since it maintains the donor’s automatic gearbox—juxtaposed with an enormous hydraulic handbrake lever.

2015 Volkswagen XL1

Volkswagen’s eco-supercar is one of the more remarkable models launched in the 2010s. The production-ready conclusion of a project that began with former Volkswagen boss Ferdinand Piëch’s desire to build a “one liter” car (that’s 1 liter of fuel per 100 km, around 235 mpg), the XL1 made its debut at the Qatar motor show in 2011.

History has already rendered it something of a likable folly. XL1s are indeed ludicrously efficient, unique to drive (a combination of pure electric power and a two-cylinder diesel engine), remarkable to look at (with gull-wing doors and a teardrop shape), but also wildly expensive to service and somewhat compromised by their dedication to fuel economy.

This XL1 is rarer than most in its Sunset Red paintwork, and is thought to be the 59th built from a production run of 250. Its original owner has only added 405 km to the clock which, given they cost around $130K when new, has made it a very expensive way of being fuel-efficient, particularly with an auction estimate of 75k to 95K Euros ($84,500 to $107,000).

1993 Aston Martin Virage shooting brake

The internet goes wild for a longroof conversion, so what would people have made of the Virage shooting brake had the web been more widespread back in 1993? It’s likely that opinion would have been mixed, with some simply praising its existence, and others questioning its somewhat-brutalist lines.

Not that the base Virage 6.3 was subtle, particularly given its choice of powerplant: a bored and stroked version of the standard 5.3-liter Virage producing 450 hp. Aston Martin Works built a run of seven shooting brakes on an existing Works project, the Virage four-door, with a 12-inch increase in wheelbase over the more familiar coupe.

This particular one is known as “Vacances,” since its original owner, a German client, used it to go on his holidays. It also features a further power bump, to 468 hp, and even has a manual transmission. Bonhams does say the car—with its 150,000 to 250,000 Euro estimate (that’s roughly $168,000 to $281,500)—may need recommissioning before use.

2016 Porsche 911 Turbo S

If this Porsche 911 Turbo S doesn’t look quite right to you, then give yourself a pat on the back. The auction doesn’t list a specific figure, but the car is sitting on a rare factory option of raised suspension, apparently requested by the original owner for greater comfort on long journeys.

We’d be surprised if there weren’t a little more to that story—maybe those long journeys also contain a few unpaved roads—but given we’re now seeing “Safari”-style prototypes of the latest 992-generation 911 circulating the Nürburgring, you might call this 991 ahead of its time.

Other than that, and a fetching shade of British Racing Green paintwork, you might think there’s not much more to this Turbo S, but there’s one final thing you can’t see: an odometer showing 333,000 km, or 206,916 miles. That must make it one of the highest-mileage 991s in existence. Bonhams lists an estimate of 60,000 to 80,000 Euros (about $67,500 to $90,000).

1996 Opac Più Roadster

If you’re familiar with Fiat’s Barchetta of the 1990s then you’ll know that under its svelte skin you’d find the platform of the contemporary Punto. Well this cute Opac Più Roadster is what you’d get if you applied the same treatment to the Peugeot 106, and it’s the only one in the world.

Displayed at the Turin motor show in 1996, the Più was built by Opac, a company typically contracted by other manufacturers to build soft-tops and prototypes. The car was based on a Peugeot 106 XSi but clothed in a typically 1990s bubble-like body and with a custom interior (albeit using some familiar 106 parts).

The current owner discovered the car while researching the Lancia Hyena, with some body panels on the unique Delta-based coupé produced by Opac. The Più was apparently in a rough state and had never been registered, but has since been brought back to running order—and its rarity is reflected in a 40,000 to 60,000 Euro estimate (roughly $45,000 to $67,500).

Via Hagerty UK

The post 6 unusual suspects from Bonhams’ 2022 Paris sale appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Aston Martin crowns its love affair with AMG V-8s with 697-hp DBX

Intake: The rumors reckoned it would be a V-12, but the highest-performing Aston Martin DBX has landed with an even more grunty version of the twin-turbo AMG V-8. Packing 707 PS (697 hp) the nominatively determined DBX707 can also lay claim to being the world’s most powerful luxury SUV, outgunning Porsche’s bonkers, 631-hp Cayenne Turbo GT,  the 634-hp Bentley Bentayga Speed, and even Lamborghini’s 650-hp Urus. (Luxury is the key word here, since Dodge’s Durango SRT Hellcat lays claim to a 707 non-metric hp.)

Aston’s powertrain boss released the extra horses by fitting ball bearing turbochargers and using a new engine calibration. A nine-speed “wet-clutch” transmission has been installed to make the most of the additional power, and the DBX707 can accelerate to 60 mph in just 3.1 seconds, with significantly faster gearshifts than the regular torque-converter transmission fitted to other DBX models. Stopping power comes from carbon-ceramic discs measuring 16.5 inches up front and 15.4 inches in the rear. The standard fit wheel is a 22-inch alloy, but 23-inch rims are also offered and said to offer an improved steering response, better body control, and faster lap times. A revised e-diff is placed on the rear axle, and the all-wheel-drive system can actually send 100 percent of the power to the rear wheels if required. The 707 retains the standard car’s air suspension but features new damper valving and a change to the dynamic spring volume switching which provides more roll control and better steering than before.

Exhaust: Gather ye V-8s while ye may. Aston Martin has seriously escalated the high-zoot SUV horsepower wars with the DBX707. Already one of the best-handling and, arguably, best-looking machines in its class, the DBX now benefits from 155 more hp and the added romance given to any fuel-swilling machine in internal-combustion’s supposed twilight period.

Concours d’Lemons gets further hooptified thanks to Hagerty

Intake: This March, Hagerty takes the helm of Concours d’Lemons for the first time at The Amelia. Concours d’Lemons celebrates the cars that’ll never have a chance at a “normal” concourse as it makes a point to celebrate the “oddball, mundane, and truly awful of the automotive world.” Long-time organizer Alan Galbraith joins Hagerty’s team as part of the Concours d’Lemons licensing agreement, and added that the show “gets bigger and dumber every year, and putting the show on the golf course is really ridiculous.” But in all seriousness, a portion of ticket sales also supports local charities.

Exhaust: While Hagerty’s been a part of Concours d’Lemons for years, the deeper connection generated by this licensing agreement means Hagerty’s outreach to all shapes and sizes of automotive enthusiasts continues apace. Watch this space for more coverage from The Amelia next month!

Koenigsegg’s new electric motor packs a serious punch in a small package

Intake: When none of the electric motors in today’s market proved up to snuff for the sky-high engineering demands of Koenigsegg, the Swedish hypercar manufacturer did what it often does: take the project in-house. The result is a pancake-shaped electric motor blends radial and axial flux topology to create a very power-dense package. Dubbed the Quark, this motor was developed with the 1700-hp Gemera four-seater in mind to get the supercar off the line before the internal combustion engine takes over for high-speed performance. The figures are appropriately insane: A single Quark fitted to the Gemera weighs just 66 pounds, but output is as much as 442 lb-ft of torque or 335 hp. Alongside the Quark, Koenigsegg unveiled the Terrier, which combines two Quarks and one in-house-developed inverter to create one seriously power-dense EV drive unit.

Exhaust: Critics may be quick to point to the power drop off of this new design under 20 seconds of wide open load, but  holding a Quark wide open for 20 seconds in anything but a full-size pickup would easily put you in jail on most public roads. It’s also a design meant for hybrid powertrains. McLaren developed something similar for the Artura, but that electric motor utilized just axial topology, not a blend of radial and axial. We’re excited to see where tech such as the Quark and the Terrier go from here.

Toyota’s new Tundra starts south of $40K, Capstone clears $75K

Intake: Pricing is out for all-new Toyota Tundra. At the low end of the ladder, a Tundra SR 4×2 with the double cab, the longer 6.5-foot bed, and the non-hybrid twin-turbo V-6 will run you $37,645. On the ritzier end, the Tundra’s lavish new Capstone trim, offered exclusively as a 4×4 with the crew cab, 5.5-foot bed, and hybridized drivetrain good for 437 hp and 583 lb-ft of torque, rings the register for $75,225. If adventure-readiness is the name of your game, a Tundra TRD Pro, again offered exclusively as a 4×4, crew cab, short bed with hybrid powertrain, will set you back $68,500 before options.

Exhaust: All that new tech ain’t gonna come cheap. For the 2021 model year, the most expensive Tundra you could get was the TRD Pro, which started at $54,645 before options. A nearly $14-large hike for the same trim is no joke, but you could argue that this new Tundra—at least on paper—is that much better. (Interior-wise, that’s a lock.) The Capstone trim is going to be interesting to watch; a $75K pickup isn’t a shocker these days, but the market for those has been dominated by the GMC Sierra, the F-150 Platinum, and the Ram Limited. How many more buyers are up there? Time will tell. 

Act fast to score this Hot Wheels limited-edition 1968 Corvette Stingray

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Hot Wheels (@hotwheelsofficial)

Intake: Corvette collectors will soon have another Hot Wheels car to add to their shelves, but they won’t last long. Beginning at today (February 1) at noon Eastern Time, members of the exclusive Hot Wheels Red Line Club can order a limited-edition 1968 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray for $25. The Spectraflame black-painted Corvette harkens back to the redesigned-for-1968 model, which was based on the “Mako Shark II” concept car. Before the real-life C3 was revealed to the world, fans got their first look at the Stingray when Hot Wheels released it as part of its original 16 die-cast lineup. The actual 1968 Corvette did not, in fact, carry the “Stingray” name, but Hot Wheels added it for this one. It even wears a STNGR license plate.

Exhaust: Depending on when you read this, these may already be sold out. That should come as no surprise. Corvettes remain extremely popular, regardless of their size or generation. Here’s hoping that you scored one.

Rolls-Royce confirms silent running by 2030, Ghost marks end of ICE line

Intake: Rolls-Royce boss Torsten Müller-Ötvös has previously announced that the entire range will be fully electric by 2030 and now, in an interview with Autocar the CEO says that Britain’s poshest car brand won’t launch any new combustion-driven cars. This decision makes the latest Ghost the luxury carmaker’s final creation to be powered by dino juice. The 2023 Spectre coupe will be first to arrive, replacing the Wraith, but the Phantom, Ghost, and Cullinan will all get new EV versions on the company’s Architecture of Luxury platform before the decade is done.

Exhaust: Rolls-Royce says that it’s not just law-makers that are driving change, but a new breed of customers. “We aren’t only driven by legal: we’re also driven by our fairly young clientele worldwide, and we’re seeing more and more people asking actively for an electrified Rolls-Royce,” adds Müller-Ötvös.

The post 697-hp DBX proves Aston isn’t done with V-8s, buy the tiniest collectible Corvette, Rolls-Royce ghosts ICE appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Mini’s Oxford factory will now convert classic Coopers to electric power

Intake: Classic Mini owners can now have their cars converted to electric power under an official works program. The Mini Recharged project at the company’s Oxford plant switches out the original A-Series engine for an EV powertrain providing 90 kW of power, and a range of around 100 miles. The Mini Recharged is said to be able to sprint from 0 to 62 mph in nine seconds and is aimed at city drivers who wish dodge emissions and congestion charges while driving an iconic British classic. Unfortunately, for now, the program is limited to the U.K. Each car converted will be numbered individually and the conversion is reversible, with Mini keeping hold of the original powertrain just in case an owner wants to revert to ICE in the future.

Exhaust: With a number of other firms already converting Minis to battery power, it’s no surprise that the BMW-owned brand is getting in on the action. The Mini Recharged closely resembles the one-off example built for the 2018 New York Auto Show, which was extremely well-received by pundits, so this factory-backed process will likely prove popular.

Ford to auction custom, Popemobile-inspired 2021 Bronco to serve Detroit’s homeless

Intake: As if it weren’t busy enough Raptorizing the Bronco, Ford has also made time in its Bronco-building schedule to invest in the city of Detroit. This one-off 4×4, a custom-built tribute to Detroit’s Pope Francis Center, will be auctioned off this Thursday in Scottsdale, Arizona, by Barrett-Jackson. All proceeds will benefit the Center, whose mission is focused on serving the city’s homeless. 

The trucklet itself was donated to Ford by David Fischer Jr., president & CEO at The Suburban Collection Holdings, LLC. The First Edition model is awash in first-gen Bronco nostalgia, starting with a lacquered coat of Wimbledon White paint. (The shade was available on the ’66 Bronco but is not available on any modern Bronco trims.) As only appropriate, wheels are by Detroit Steel Wheels and, like the body, are Wimbledon White accented with Rapid Red. Various metallic bits receive a silver treatment. The build also dips into the Ford Performance Parts bin for extra lighting elements and into Ford’s accessory catalog for tube doors. There’s even an in-vehicle safe. 

Exhaust: Ford’s Dearborn headquarters are situated just outside of Detroit, and we applaud the OEM’s worthy investment in the metro community. This for-charity build makes even more sense considering that, back in 1980, Pope John Paul II rode in a specially modified, Wimbledon White Bronco on his trip to the United States. This build is no Popemobile, but we expect the Vatican approves nonetheless.

Is this what Acura’s reborn NSX should have looked like?

Intake: Perhaps you’ve heard of Autobacs, the Japanese retailer of automotive parts and accessories. Its racing team, ARTA, has evolved into a self-proclaimed “racing sports brand” that even builds custom carbon-fiber body panels. Enter ARTA’s new “Legavelo,” a radical design based on the modern-day NSX. The name is a portmanteau of Lega (Italian for alloy) and Veloce (speed), and the end result is a vehicle with carbon-fiber/fiberglass-reinforced carbon body panels, unique wheels and a suede-lined interior. Purchasing the Legavelo conversion is almost as complex as that fancy styling, as prospects need to fill out a “Business Negotiation Application” with ARTA, and there are only five reservations available—ARTA’s only planning to build five. Considering the exclusivity, one shouldn’t be surprised the cost is 25.3 million yen (or a little over $222,000) which doesn’t include the cost of an NSX donor car (clean, used examples retail for roughly $150,000).

Exhaust: It’s nice to see Japanese brands taking a page from Italy, tackling the world of custom, low volume coach built, vehicles for well-heeled car enthusiasts. In many ways, the NSX needs the Legavelo upgrade to truly shine. ARTA’s creation is arguably what the NSX should have looked like in the first place: a super car with styling to match its radical hybrid powertrain. Whether or not its worth the hundred of thousands of dollars needed to make this vehicle are somewhat moot considering the five examples ARTA plans to make, it’s gonna sell and appeal to fans of supercars, JDM engineering, and those who love any custom vehicle.

After nearly 50 years, Volkswagen waves goodbye to the Passat in the U.S.

Intake: The last Volkswagen Passat has rolled off the assembly line at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory. First sold in the U.S. in 1974 (under the Dasher name), the Passat accounted for 1.8 million units sold over its 48-year lifespan. The Chattanooga plant will now turn its focus to the Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models as well as the ID.4 electric SUV. VW is investing $800 million in the facility to optimize it for production of EVs and their components, such as battery packs.

Exhaust: We’re not surprised to see the Passat reach the end of the line. The sedan’s biggest selling point in recent years has been the price, and while it’s a fine car, the Passat has not received the same level of investment and development that remaining U.S.-market sedans—such as the Camry and the Accord—have enjoyed from their manufacturers. The current Passat was 10 years old this year, and that’s simply too long to let a mid-tier product languish. Those insistent on a Volkswagen sedan can still choose between the everyman Jetta and the stylish VW Arteon.

Refreshed Honda CB300R looks like a recipe for small-bore fun

Intake: Honda was one of the first brands to make small motorcycles popular stateside, but things have come a long way since the “you meet the nicest people on a Honda” campaign. The CB300R ABS is the latest bike to get a refresh and now packs features well above its $5549 price tag (that number includes $400 for freight and $200 for destination). Weighing in at just 317 pounds ready to ride, the CB300R now comes fitted with a slipper clutch for smooth downshifts, along with IMU-controlled ABS and the same 41-mm forks as its larger CB siblings.

Exhaust: The sub-400cc motorcycle market was once a destitute land that many dismissed as full of “beginner bikes.” That perspective has changed thanks to manufacturers’ increased focus on building small-bore bikes that reward both novice and veteran alike. The ’22 CB300R has our attention as a machine that possesses all the features of the big CB1000R while still managing to be playful and fun. We think it would be perfect for the vast majority of riders and hope to get our hands on one soon to try it out.

All-powerful Aston Martin DBX to launch on February 1

Intake: Aston Martin is inviting you to join the live reveal of the most powerful production SUV on the planet. If the rumor-mill is to believed the DBX will be powered by the company’s V-12 engine, boosted to 700 hp, to surpass the likes of  the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Bentley Bentayga Speed, and the Lamborghini Urus. Aston has launched a new website for fans to follow the unveiling which will go live on February 1 at 1 p.m. GMT (8 a.m. EST).

Exhaust: The teaser film is titled “Change is coming,” which supports the suggestion that the DBX’s V-8 will be swapped rather than merely enhanced, and spy shooters have previously captured the sounds of a V-12 Aston Martin crossover testing at the Nürburgring. We’ll find out for sure next week.

The post Mini factory offers classic EV conversions, goodbye U.S.-market Passat, Aston dangles V-12 super SUV appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Carrera GT becomes most expensive car ever sold on Bring a Trailer

Intake: Porsche’s infamous 2000s-era analog super car had a hell of a year in 2021, and it’s starting out 2022 with a bang. This Guards Red example just became the most expensive car ever sold on Bring a Trailer with a final price of $1,907,000 (buyer’s premium included). That’s nearly half a million dollars above the previous BaT recordholder, a Mercedes-Benz 300SL that sold this past August for $1.4M. 

Exhaust: Over the past five years, the Hagerty Price Guide value for a Carrera GT in #1 (Concours) condition has doubled. In 2021 alone, the model set three successive auction records. This 2005 example capitalized on that momentum with low miles and an uncommon color—it’s likely that fewer than 50 Guards Red examples came to North America, compared to 400+ in silver/grey and 100 in black. “Presently, the #1-condition value is $1.5 million,” says John Wiley, Hagerty’s manager of valuation analytics, “but with this sale it looks like the Carrera GT continues to appreciate.” At this rate, the Carrera GT could soon be more valuable than the venerable 959.

Chrysler Airflow unveiled, just another electric CUV

Intake: The reborn Chrysler Airflow was unveiled yesterday, realized in a crossover-utility concept that looks very close to production-ready (certainly compared to 2020’s concept). As Chrysler CEO Christine Feuell says, this concept “represents the future direction of the Chrysler brand,” which aims to be EV-only by 2028. Using the latest engineering in Stellantis’ global arsenal known as the “STLA Brain platform” and the “STLA SmartCockpit,” the Airflow concept also sports Stellantis’ Level 3 autonomous driving technology. The Concept Airflow “envisions the next generation of premium transportation” and sports an interior with the brilliant displays and decorative lighting expected in both concept cars and production EVs. While details are still thin on the ground, the Airflow is reported to have a 350 to 400 mile range, probably dependent on battery-pack size.

Exhaust: Considering how well Stellantis’ technology manifested itself in its U-connect line in the past, don’t bet against the Airflow bringing some of the best features to the table. Sadly, however, the Airflow is wrapped up in an uninspiring package, especially considering the risks the brand took in the past. Not only with the original Airflow—which was a CUV in proportions and styling before such a thing even existed—but with the (formerly red-hot) Chrysler 300 sedan. It’s unfortunate Chrysler didn’t take styling risks with the new Airflow. Perhaps even the original’s massive upswept grille would be right at home with the likes of modern Lexus products, and forthcoming luxury EVs from BMW.

BMW uses Kindle tech to make a color-changing car

Intake: BMW has doused its new iX in E Ink which can change color at the touch of a button. It’s essentially the same stuff as used in e-book readers, but given an additional protective coating for automotive use. BMW’s demonstrator, shown at CES, can switch from black to white, but the company says that other color combinations will be possible in the future. E Ink paint would also allow customization of specific parts of a car or even allow the body to display messages or images. E Ink only requires a small amount of power to switch states, so it shouldn’t sap much energy from an EV’s battery. BMW also showed off a massive, 31-inch-wide, 8K cinema screen in the back of an iX. With 3D surround sound and 5G connectivity, it turns the back seats into a movie theater.

Exhaust: We’ve all seen paint jobs that shift hue in different lights, from TVR’s Purple Illusion to Mazda’s Soul Red Crystal, but this is something else entirely. If only BMW had E Inked the grille, perhaps it could be made to disappear.

There’s an affordable, electric Chevy Equinox on the way