4.5
Ben Barry,
18 June 2012 11:12
Last year, my parents’ home caught fire. No-one died or anything, and the fire brigade caught the blaze before the whole place burned down, but there was some pretty significant damage, so my folks took the decision to gut the house and start again. This was a significant event for me, because I’d lived in that house since 1976 and, ...
4
Ben Pulman,
13 June 2012 12:00
Ahead of this weekend's 80th running of the world-famous endurance race, here's CAR's countdown of the 24 most iconic men, motors and moments that have defined the 24 Heures du Mans.1923: The first Le MansThe inaugural race on 26-27 May 1923 featured 33 cars and was won by a Chenard et Walcker, covering 1380 miles at an average speed of ...
4
Ollie Kew,
12 June 2012 12:39
It's set to be a battle of wildly-different drivetrain technologies at the 2012 24 Heures du Mans, which gets underway this weekend (16-17 June) at the illustrious Circuit de la Sarthe. With Peugeot having dropped its endurance racing programme due to budget concerns, this year's headline battle will be a straight fight between the dominant diesel Audis, and petrol Toyota ...
4
Gavin Green,
08 June 2012 11:55
If we exclude the tiny volume luxury car kings, the auto companies probably doing the best cabin designs right now are Audi, Jaguar and Volvo. After a brief drive of the new and impressive Volvo V40 – the best Volvo I've driven – there was one particular stand-out cabin feature that raised an approving smile: the rimless rearview mirror. It ...
4
Gavin Green,
01 June 2012 09:35
On the 20th birthday of the marvellous McLaren F1 road car – it was launched two decades ago at a Monaco GP party – I am reminded of one of its many virtues. But one that never received the praise it deserved. Namely, it’s superb engine presentation. Designer Gordon Murray wanted a very beautiful (ie not full of plastic gubbins) ...
FRIDAY, MAY 18 8.30amI leave Peterborough in our longterm BMW M5 and head towards Folkestone. Easy traffic and no stops means that, by around 11am, I’m edging the M5 onto the Eurotunnel. I’m heading to the Nurburgring to watch the N24hr race with BMW, who have entered a trio of Z4 GT3s. But it feels weird. We’re not doing it ...
- Blogs
- Motorsport
- 21 May 2012
3.5
Gavin Green,
18 May 2012 07:00
How depressing that, according to so many motoring pundits, the headline grabbing star of the recent Beijing Auto show was a 600bhp V12 Lamborghini SUV. The new Rambo Lambo is about as in tune with the modern mood as a gun-wielding Sly Stallone running amok in the Vietnamese jungle. The Urus is more truck than track star, and about as ...
4
Ben Barry,
16 May 2012 07:00
Some people will scoff at this, but I like to think of myself as a fair and considerate driver: I don’t undertake people, I don’t tailgate (okay, I sometimes give dodderers a gentle push out of the fast lane, and there’s another caveat below, but bear with me), I stick to my urban speed limits, and on motorways and dual ...
See the new June 2012 issue of CAR Magazine to read about Mark Walton’s drive of the Jaguar XJR-8/9 Group C Le Mans car. We celebrate 30 years since the introduction of Group C – one of the most popular and successful eras of sports car racing ever – with a drive in the epic Jaguar XJR-8, built by ...
- Blogs
- Motorsport
- 15 May 2012
4
Greg Fountain,
10 May 2012 11:55
Vauxhall has called its new city car Adam. Pause for cynicism. On the face of it, this is plain silly, a clumsy lurch towards cutesy personalisation in the face of wave after wave of the meaninglessly generic names/numbers favoured by pretty much everybody else. Is Meriva, for example, more or less silly than Adam? Is Focus? Is Golf? How about ...
