Axis Of Oversteer is a great blog, one I visit often and occasionally steal from. Last week they posted a couple great videos of Ferrari 250 GTOs and Californias (and a PF coupe) being run at varios locations in Southern California cir. '69-70. The envy with which these 8mm films are likely to fill you is only going to be amplified when the narrator, who owned one of the GTOs reveals that he was only 19 years old at the time!
How cool would this be? Dicing in your Reliant Sabre with a Zagato Alfa in front of nearly empty stands at a disused airfield. Not sure where this is taking place, maybe Sebring, maybe Tustin. It doesn't matter really, just as it doesn't matter if the Sabre is really dicing, or just moving over for the Italian to pass (definitely looks to be the former). It's a great shot that, for me, captures a lot of what's cool about vintage motor sport, and it looks like something I'd much rather be doing right now than what I am.
Sporting Reliants are a bit of a closet interest for me, so I'm totally jazzed to find a site all about them. Click the link at the bottom to learn more about the history of these cool little cars.
Well, that was a depressing little rant earlier wasn't it? Let's just get all that bad taste out of our mouths, with this series of videos I found on Jalopnik. This time we're off to Sicily and the Circuito Piccolo Madonie for the 1965 Targa Florio endurance race! Porsche 904s, Ferrari 275s and Alfa Romeo TZ-1s are just the beginning. The 275s alone make good speakers a must, and it's another long one, but so worth it... you're welcome!
I tend to like my cars rough and ready, and this little Mazda certainly fits the bill. I'm sure it's very fast, and it must be nice to be able to look through the headlamp slot on your car and see nothing but exposed turbo intake. But it's the noise that makes me want this thing.
Here's another clip of the same car.
My favorite part is that the first clip is tagged "p***ywagon" on Youtube.
This video popped up on Youtube today. It appears to be the crowd over at the hoon-oriented German publication Auto, Motor und Sport doing what they do best. That is to say, smearing the tires of very expensive machinery all over Germany. I can only assume that the irony of dubbing video of a $615K car, who's predecessor was famously though unofficially tagged "Yellow Bird" by the motoring press, with four minutes of guitar solo from the end of Lynard Skynard's epic Free Bird, is lost on the producers of this little gem. And because of the German hard-on for 70s Southern-Rock chord repetition, we're left with none of that turbo-charged flat-six growl! The works of Alois Ruf usually justify their eye-watering price with mouth-watering performance and quality, and this one also happens to look the business. Still, for all it's flash editing, this clip isn't nearly as effective at inducing gearhead salivation as 9ff's 30-seconds worth of their mid-shipped 911 chugging around a parking lot. Germans, who can figure them out?
It's a long one, (If you're watching at work, take care to at least look like you're getting something done). But I really would watch this, so sit back and take a moment. It's a film taken by Shell Oil for the 1958 Alpine Rally, and it's a great window into what rally driving used to be like. It's also some of the prettiest motor racing footage I've ever seen (Rallying was done almost entierly on public roads at the time), and features names like Paddy Hopkirk and eventual winner Bernard Consten, as well as enduring gearhead crush object Pat Moss. There's also super-rare in-period footage of a Denzel (an early Porsche rival) which unfortunately comes to grief on one of the Stelvio Pass' less forgiving walls. Of course there's lots of great engine noise, especially from Consten's Alfa SZ.
Really though, it's the footage of Europe in the 1950s that's so captivating. It's amazing how colorful and empty everything looks, a timely look back at a world now completely past.
Just the thing for a Thursday afternoon pick-me-up, a grainy, hand-held video of an Aston Martin DB-2 being hill-climbed at a rate of speed I still can't quite believe. This thing must have a full-on DB-3S motor in it. It sounds like hell breaking loose too. Enjoy!
Well, we've been seeing 9ff's new darling, the little GT9-R in photos for a while. Now though, a video has surfaced. It's not long, but it is the first time we've gotten to see the car in motion, or hear it run. The wail it will undoubtedly produce as it tears its way to 7000rpm will have to wait, what we get here are parking lot maneuvers and a lot of off-idle rumble. Still, it looks fab in its Veritech-ish paint job and bubble-top, and sounds suitably businesslike. Crucially, it also shows that 9ff have figured out how to keep the engine cool without all that exposed radiator nonsense that so uglied the rear of the earlier GT9 prototypes.
Business is exactly what this car is about. Essentially it's a Porsche 997 GT-3 that's been chopped in half just aft of the doors, and had its rear replaced with a braced sub-frame which is stiffer, lighter, and allows the engine to be carried amid-ships rather than slung out back. That engine is 9ff's own 4-liter version of Porsche's traditional flat-six producing a scarce believable 1120bhp in a car weighing at 70kg less than the original. If that sounds a lot like RUF's CTR-3, and Porsche's own 911-GT1, well, it is, but as this car is not bound by any racing regulations, it promises to be much faster than Zuffenhausen's 90s racer. Expect 0-60mph to take less than three seconds, top speed to be over 250mph, while the price is likely to be expressible only using higher maths.
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