25 February 2011

2011 Singer Porsche 911 - The Wheel Re-invented

A classic 1970's Porsche? Not quite. Singer Vehicle Design take a pre-1994 911 and effectively re-engineer it for the 21st century, so I'm guessing you can take a last of the line 993 and give it the classic 70's look. I likes it a lot.
More HERE & HERE.

Top Trumps Car Of The Day - BMW Turbo

Prototypes - the definitive 1970s set of Top Trumps cards. More to come.


24 February 2011

VW Beetle Fan? You'll Love/Hate This

The X-E-CUTE-R Beetle.

Not much info in the article, as it was about the 1981 Belle Vue show in Birmingham, but from what I've gleaned from different sources, it was flip-bodied and Porsche 911 powered.
Owned by Ed Papac of Enterprise, Oregon, the car was bought over for Belle Vue and promptly won 'Best Of Show'.
It was rebuilt into a car called 'Spellbound' and then into 'Topgun' in '86. Or there may have been 3 different cars, does anyone know?
'Topgun' was an awesome show winner - 117 wins in 117 shows apparently!
The car was stolen, just prior to it supposedly getting raffled off.
Somewhere in the mid-90s there was an article that Papac was busted for insurance fraud, as the car was recovered in Mexico, but he never reported it to his insurance company or something to that effect (allegedly).
Definitely one that polarises opinion - people either love it or detest it.
But it had pride of place on my bedroom wall as a kid, amongst other things...



23 February 2011

Pro-Street Mazda R100

A Garret GT42-blown Mazda 13B Rotary, with lots of other trick bits.
From here.



Love that lens flare.


The R100 running a 8.1 @ 165 mph at the Nitro Champs at Western Sydney International Dragway. in 2009. Love the way it jumps off the ground as it launches!

22 February 2011

Quattro Concept Meets Ur Quattro



I have not bought an issue of Car & Driver for at least 7 or 8 years.  But I bought a copy of the latest edition the other day after surprisingly seeing the new Quattro Sport Concept splashed across the cover along with the original. Probably my favourite concept car of the last few years - and C&D feature it alongside The Icon that is Ur Quattro (capital 'Q').
To clarify the quattro/Quattro if you're confused:




"The name has also been used by Audi to refer to the quattro four-wheel drive system, or any four-wheel drive version of an Audi model. To avoid confusion, the original Quattro model is also commonly referred to as the Ur-Quattro - the "Ur-" (German for "primordial" or "ancestral") is an augmentative prefix, in this case meaning "original", and is also applied to the first generation Audi S4 and Audi S6 models, as in "Ur-S4" and "Ur-S6".
To commemorate the success of the original vehicle, all subsequent Audis with their trademark quattro four wheel drive system were badged "quattro" with a lower case "q". The original car has the upper case "Q" in the Quattro name."
Wikipedia