Zagato takes some of the world’s most incredible cars and makes them even
better. The Milanese boutique has been at if for nearly 100 years, producing
some to the most beautiful custom cars in the world. Their latest effort is no
exception to the rule.
This is the Zagato Mostro. It celebrates the 100th
anniversary of Maserati and the 1957 450 S Coupe Zagato Monster race car.
Making its debut at this year’s Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, this will be
an extremely limited edition car as is typical of Zagato creations. Only 5 of
these cars will be produced so you’ll likely never see one out on the street.
It all starts with a carbon-fiber body. Underneath there is
a V8 Maserati engine with a 6-speed manual transmission and rear-wheel drive.
There are also fixed glass windows and a superwide windshield. The interior of
the car looks like it’s straight out of a race car, which is again a tribute to
the 1957 Zagato Monster.
That coupe was built so that Sir Stirling Moss could race it
in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This earned the car the nickname ‘Il Mostro’ or The
Monster. The new Monster will go on sale later this year.
Hear The Indianapolis 500 As it Sounded 84 Years Ago
The Indianapolis 500 runs for the 99th time this Sunday, and
no race in America can match its rich, and tragic, history. Today’s cars will
average 220 mph around the Brickyard, and while two manufacturers and more than
a dozen teams will back 33 cars, most of the variety in the machines has been outlawed
in pursuit of close competition. As this video of the 1931 race demonstrates,
the Indy 500 was once far more wild.
The top qualifying speed in 1931 was 112 mph, which seems
slow even by road car standards today — but in a narrow-tired, barely-sprung
race car running on bricks and sprayed oil, was more than fast enough.
While
most of the field ran four-cylinder gas engines, the 1931 race saw the debut of
the Cummins Diesel Special, a slow car that finished 13th by running the entire
500-mile race without stopping for fuel.
And at the end of this film, you’ll see the two men who took
the checkered flag — driver Lou Schneider, a former Indianapolis motorcycle
cop, and riding mechanic Jigger Johnson. The Indy 500 required riding mechanics
from 1931 to 1937 even though they had not much to do during the race beside
fear their own death. Schneider would never win another 500, but Johnson would
cross the line first again as a passenger in 1937.
I had tempered my expectations. Sure, it was going to be fast. It
was going to look lovely. But 70s/80s supercars are meant to be as
disappointing in reality as they are iconic in reputation. Right?
Most will think it's a 308; those that know will know
Wrong. Turns out the
288 GTO doesn't disappoint. Not even slightly. A hero car before I saw
it in the metal it's now utterly cemented in my personal number one spot. How much
they going for now? Oh...No matter, I need to commit some words to the page
before the comedown kicks in and the realisation I don't have the keys in my
hand any more dawns.
What makes the
GTO so special? Well, sure, it's worth a million. They only made 272
of them. It's easily the best looking mid-engined Ferrari ever built, elegantly
treading the line between beauty and aggression with perfect proportions and
exquisite detailing. It's got Ferrari's most celebrated and exclusive model
suffix and bona fide 'omologato' provenance, even if the category it was built
for moved in a different direction. It stands as the intersection between the
way Ferrari used to do things - tubular frames, handbuilt
craftsmanship, zero
driver aids - and the modern age of turbos, composite materials and lunatic
performance. Do the maths on all that and you'll realise why most probably
don't get used as intended. Which is a tragedy, because, more than anything
else, as a driving machine it's even more exceptional than you'd dare hope.
Here's where it all gets a bit different though
I expected it to be truculent. I expected it to be scary.
That it's neither of these things as you pull away is a bit of a surprise. It
feels small and wieldy, the visibility is great. The low-geared and unassisted
steering is weighty at low speeds but soon lightens up and, with the fluids
warm, the long, ball-topped gearshifter clicks and clacks around the evocative
open gate smoothly and positively. The pedals are off-set into the centre of
the car but the brake pedal and throttle - latter with exposed linkage visible
disappearing into the centre tunnel - are perfectly placed for heel'n'toe and
instinctively fast and positive in response for doing so. The inertia-free response
of the engine and the sharp clutch would seem ready to catch you out but are
actually pretty friendly and the 16-inch magnesium OZs leave plenty of sidewall
to soak up the bumps. Only the occasional shudder through the steering column
and stubborn refusal to go into reverse lives up to those eccentricities you
read about as a kid in those magazine roadtests.
The front end wanders a little but the controls are all
pin-sharp and beautifully weighted and the consistent, harmonious feel to them
immediately soothes your racing pulse. There's nothing especially exotic about
the flat-cranked blare of the 2.8-litre V8 but the whooshing of boost adds some
theatre and once those turbos spool up you've got other things on your mind.
Below about 4,000rpm the GTO feels really fast. Above it feels absolutely
ballistic but the transition is progressive rather than binary and the power
band feels vast and exploitable. As it should given a specific output of 140hp
per litre.
I've no doubt it becomes properly scary as you get nearer
the limit. But at a considered pace the GTO is utterly absorbing, astonishingly
accommodating, readily exploitable and - most of all - fun. Yes, fun!
Back to basics but how it should be
Here's the major revelation. It's a brilliant road car.
Somehow the performance is both completely relevant to street use and yet at
the same time so utterly inappropriate as to be almost comedic. 400hp in this
day and age isn't quite as mental as it was back in the day but the GTO is
properly, thrillingly fast and the sensory overload as it spools up and things
go all a bit blurry is exactly the kind of turbocharged rush we want. And that
modern turbo engines seem so keen to mask. Boo! Give
us our boost back!
It'll be interesting to see how Ferrari handles this with the
488 GTB we'll be driving next week. Like many manufacturers they'll
likely be wanting to keep it feeling linear and normally aspirated, so as not
to spook those who've grown up with howling normally aspirated 360s, 430s and
458s. But at the same time with legacy like this why not make it feel
overboosted and a bit unhinged? We'll see which way they have chosen to go very
soon. What's astonishing in this modern context of downsized, turbocharged V8
supercars is how far ahead of its time the GTO was.
You know the modern car it most reminds me of? The
Alfa 4C. Or, at least, the car the 4C could be if someone from Alfa Romeo
took a GTO out for a day, came back used it as inspiration for a proper set-up
and controls calibration. Sure, it's not got the relative performance advantage
the GTO had over its contemporary rivals. Or the manual gearbox. But at a basic
sensory level the Alfa has a lot of the same DNA, from the size and seating
position to the view out, power delivery and even the noise.
Stop grinning, you've got to give it back now
But, of course, even properly set up it could never match
the real thing's iconic status, its finely balanced combination of beauty and
aggression, its surprising combination of delicacy and brute force. I love
everything about this car. Even the way you can see the gearbox jutting out
from under its truncated rear valance, reminding you this is something over and
above the 308 family it superficially resembles.
I'd have been blown away just seeing a GTO. Having driven it
I can't think of a single machine that encapsulates all I love about fast cars
more. Damn. With that I've probably just put it another couple of hundred grand
out of reach.
Never meet your heroes? Rubbish. Drive them if you can. And
relish every second.
Whether you’re a fan or not, Germany’s Nurburgring
Nordschleife has become the litmus test for the performance automotive world.
The target? Break the seven-minute mark. So far, only a handful of street legal
machines have done so, and now Lamborghini can add its name to that short
list.
Its track star? The 2016 Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 ‘Superveloce’, which lapped the ‘Ring in 6:59.73 –
three tenths of a second in the clear. The stunning lap occurred during joint
Lamborghini and Pirelli tire tests and was captured on camera. The driver’s
identity remains a mystery for now, but the mastery over the Nordschleife
is duly noted. Watch the whole thing below.
The lap is blisteringly quick, manic, and for those of us
who aren’t racing drivers – jaw-dropping. The Lamborghini test pilot threads
the Aventador SV through the Nurburgring’s 73 corners and 12.9 miles like a
flying ace, at some points getting very comfortable with riding the curbs. Then
again, the car in question is quite the performer as well.
The 2016 Aventador LP 750-4 SV benefits from a 110 pound
weight loss, nearly 50 horsepower over the standard model (739 hp), and is now
capable of blasting to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds and sprinting all the way to 217
mph. Certifiably fast, and now shoulder to shoulder with hypercars. McLaren
claims the P1 went sub-seven around the Nurburgring, while Porsche has proven
the 918 Spyder to be a 6:57 lapper.
This isn’t a race that you watch to see who wins. As amazing
a car as the McLaren 650S is, Ferrari would
have to answer to the world’s most irate customers if the range topping LaFerrari hypercar
couldn’t outrun a 650S. The purpose of the race in this video is to, as
Shmee puts it, show the difference between a supercar and
a hypercar. Or to put it another way, the difference between a $1.4 million car
and a $267,000 car. There is also nearly a 300-horsepower difference, 950 vs
666.
Even with the winner already being a foregone conclusion,
these are some of the most interesting kinds of races to watch, just to see
where all of that extra money goes for the more expensive car. It’s especially
impressive when you consider that the point at which the LaFerrari is becoming
little more than a dot off in the distance, the 650S is traveling at 193mph.
Truly incredible.
Back in April, we were thrilled to see the coolest Ferrari
F40 in the world return to the public eye. We’re talking about the one-off LM
Barchetta, which has returned to the track after quite some years of absence.
Alas, it seems that this Prancing Horse’s track passion is biting back.
To be more precise, the footage below shows the open-air F40 scraping its front
apron while being unloaded for a session on the circuit.
With a front slipper the size of Maranello and a ground clearance that
threatens to scare daylight away from the machine, the team handling the car
simply wasn’t able to prevent this.
While the angle of the truck ramp wasn’t too steep and the unloaders use a few
pieces of wood to keep that splitter from getting up close and personal with
the road, the episode was a painful one. Nevertheless, with a car that sees so
much track abuse, a few scratches here and there are inevitable.
For those of you who might be wondering why we labeled the Barchetta as the
coolest F40 in the world, you should know this is a project that goes far
beyond the extra treats offered by the already special LM version of the F40.
It’s only normal to see this Ferrari spending so much time flying from one
vibrator to another since this car saw plenty of racing after it was born back
in 1989.
The vehicle went through an extensive modification process, so the lack of a
roof is literally just the tip of its customization iceberg. The project was
handled by Michelotto, the man who helped Ferrari turn the F40 into the LM,
together with Tony Gillet, who’s responsible for the Vertigo supercar. For
instance, the F40 has no problem hitting 229 MPH (369 KM/H) in its current
topless state.
And you thought the Bugatti Veyron was the fastest car in
the world? Well, Mr. LaFerrari doesn’t
agree, at least when it comes to raw acceleration on a two mile-long stretch of
runway in England.
It’s a fascinating battle: A 1,001 hp Veyron that puts the
power down via all-four wheels versus a 950 hp rear-wheel-drive LaFerrari that
uses hybrid power to fill any underlying gaps in the torque curve. And the
specs blur further when you consider the Veyron is roughly 1,000 lbs. heavier
than the Ferrari, and almost a decade older. And yet both hit 60 mph in
precisely the same 2.5 seconds.
As Motor Authority reports, there are no definitive times
or speeds on offer in this video; it’s simply a race to a set of cones. From
the angles we’re given, it appears the Veyron gets the initial jump thanks to
its AWD, but once the Ferrari’s rear tires settle and the electric motor can
flourish, it quickly pulls away. By the end of the stretch, the LaFerrari
clearly shows the “world’s fastest car” a lesson or two; however if the
road kept going, the Veyron would sail by laughing to its top speed of 253 mph.
It all comes down to a difference in approach: The Bugatti
is more of a GT hypercar, built to float at an unfathomable pace. Whereas the
Ferrari has a mission to excel on the racetrack, therefore it’s tuned and
geared towards acceleration rather than outright top-end.
With the Veyron the aging relic in today’s gang of
stupidly-fast hypercars, its replacement remains imminent. When it arrives, we
might just need a rematch.
Imagine for a second that you are driving an original ‘50s
Ferrari racer at the beautiful Italian countryside. Well, Chris Harris is doing
just that in his latest video.
The 1952 Ferrari 212 Export Barchetta by Touring is the last Touring-bodied
racer built by the factory and fitted with the Tipo 212 160hp 2.5-litre V12
engine. It competed in the 1952 and 1953 Targa Florio and the 1956 Mille
Miglia. It is a matching-numbers racing V12 Barchetta, never involved in an
incident. It is the
Holy Grail for collectors.
There’s something incredibly nostalgic when it comes to old-racers, with all
their racing history and the gorgeous patina on them and despite the
ridiculous prices they command these days, it just feels right to see
them being driven around and being enjoyed.
Yes, this is a car with an estimated price of €5,5-€7million but since most of
us will never be able to even come close to afford such price tags, we can all
relax and enjoy the fact that past icons like this
Ferrari 212 Barchetta will continue to exist and being used.
If you think stuffing a three liter Ferrari V8 into a custom
frankenstein motorcycle is a bit looney, you’d be right. But would you believe
this wasn’t the first ridiculously fantastic creation by former two-wheeled
racer Andreas Georgeades? And it wasn’t the last either.
After Georgeades realized he was pretty good at motorcycle
racing, he spent the later part of the 1960s in the pursuit of creating the
ultimate racer. In his quest, he became the first to successfully build and win
first place with his Honda 600 four cylinder automotive engine powered Gran
Prix racer.
The forums at CBX International chronicle a brief history of “George
the Greek’s” two-wheel exploits. After achieving a fair amount of racing
success including a podium in his first year at the Isle of Mann, he went on to
tour the European and Canadian racing circuit in a Matchless 500 GP50 gran prix
racer that he took possession of as payment for work in the restaurant
business.
Exposed for the first time to Honda while in Canada, he
found their small, four-piston car engine a nice fit into a Norton Manx frame.
Deleting the water jackets and machined fins on the block, it was converted to
air cooling. Cylinder heads were then swapped in favor double of overhead cams
with four valves per cylinder from a Honda 250 Twin race kit. Sleeves were
added to the cylinders to strengthen the block and tighten tolerances.
Andreas also had to also fabricate his own couplers to
connect the cams and converted the chain driven cam gear to belt drive proving
he was years ahead of what manufacturers were offering. The resulting build was
a 500cc race bike that lumbered through corners but was fast as blazes on the
straits and won several races in South Africa and the USA.
The ASG (Andreas Susan Georgeades) special received many
revisions including a complete set of fairings, custom curved megaphone exhaust
and even disc brakes.
With a successful racing career behind him, including a
Canadian National Championship, Andreas decided to hang up the racing suit and
continue to pursue his passion of homologating car and motorcycle into one
fantastic vehicle.
Between 1978 and 1998 Andreas went on to build three Ferrari
powered custom built motorcycles. Two Ferrari V6 powered called “Dino” and the
the third a 308 Ferrari V8 called “Andreas”.
His first two-wheeled creation with a Maranello mill
resulted in this Honda CBX stuffed with a Ferrari 2.0 Dino. This V6 appeared in
Ferrari’s very first mid-engined road car and produced nearly 200 hp. Ferrari
later later handed the motor off to Lancia for use in its WRC-champ Stratos in
the early 1970s when they updated the Dino to eight cylinders.
The Ferrari Dino originally had gear/chain driven cams which
were converted to belt drive and the motor was also modified to accept the
transmission and clutch from a donor Suzuki motorcycle. It looked good and rode
great, but there was still something missing.
Andreas’ next evolution was to obviously add more cylinders.
A 1978 Ferrari 308 engine with a hand-built aluminum frame that uses suspension
components from a Kawasaki 900 Ninja became the next radical iteration. The
rear wheel came from a Yamaha V-Max but the drive shaft was ditched in favor of
a conventional chain drive. The four-cam, eight cylinder Italian motor pumps
out a credible 250 hp and would cost nearly $55,000 in 2015 dollars. Andreas
had to trade a prize bronze trophy from his podium finish at the Isle of Mann
TT to source this prancing horse power plant.
Modifications to the bike also include a new cam-belt drive
that also powers the water pump, and a three-gear transfer case between the
engine and Honda CBX transmission. A bank of Yamaha V-Max carburetors fuels the
front cylinders while Suzuki GS1100 carbs feed the rear. Suzuki GT750 radiators
mount at the rear of the bike to keep the wheelbase down to a short 59 inches
hence the massive ducts on the back to aid in cooling. A truly glorious
Frankenstein.
Andreas went on to create a third and equally amazing bike
based around the same Ferrari Dino motor that powered his first. But why use
the same engine again? A new level was achieved by bolting on a home-spun
supercharger to force performance to unprecedented levels. The blower was
designed personally by Andreas and machined from some seriously big chunks of
billet aluminum.
If you’re in the market for a custom built, Ferrari
motorcycle from the personal collection of an acclaimed retired motorcycle
racer, you’re in luck. This rare beast recently hit the market for a cool
$250,000. Where else would you expect to shop for what could possibly be
considered a museum quality bike? You guessed it, head on over to the Craigslist and
try to out your best offer.
You’d think that three separate Ferrari powered motorcycles
would be the crown jewels of any collection, but no. Georgeodes has continued
his search for the most insane build. Next on the drawing board is a 2.0 liter
V12 Honda CBX. Yes, that’s two six-cylinder CBX engines welded together.
The front end is from a ’98 Yamaha YZF. The rear wheel and
brakes are Suzuki ’98 and the transmission is from a Honda CBX, which he also
used on the Ferrari V8. All 12 intake manifolds are fueled by three Weber
carburetors and the exhaust is a complex 12 into 4 system muffled by modified
Yoshimura cans, and by modified, I mean gutted.
Just listen to the roar of this quad exhaust V12 as Andrea
fires up the beast and takes it for a spin around the neighborhood.
After 26 years and four crazy bikes under his belt, Andreas
was not content to sit idly and while appreciating his own accomplishments. He
is now in the process of attaching two flat-eight cylinder engines to create an
enormous H-16 based off a British Racing Motors Formula 1 design used to win
the 1966 US Grand Prix in a Lotus 43.
Four Yamaha YZF600 engines gave their lives in order to be
reborn into one mega motor. The gearbox has to fit between two of the flat
eight engines so two separate shifting drums are used and then connected with a
chain. One of the sprockets will be slotted for perfect timing between the
drums. If one is off a little bit he can engage two gears at the same time,
which would be a very bad thing.
While the H-16 is still five years in the making, you can be
assured that one day it will roar to life and Andreas will be cruising to his
favorite coffee shop in La Jolla rattling windows and setting off car alarms
along the way.
If you’d like to keep up with his build process and learn
more about this crazy genius, checkout this Facebook group, V12 CBX that’s
dedicated to all things Andreas Georgeades.
A crashed example of the Ferrari 458 Italia has been
recently spotted on the back of a trailer at the famous German track, the
Nurburgring.
The Ferrari 458 seems to remain one of the most crashed
exotic rides these days and this particular 458 Italia isn’t making an
exception. According to the guys from Wrecked Exotics,
the driver of this expensive ride has lost control of the wheel at the race
track. The incident took place at the Nurburgring, in Germany, and it seems
that no one has been injured in it. If you happen to know more about the
subject, please feel free to share.
Ferrari has been producing the 458 between 2009 and 2015,
when it was replaced by the facelifted 488 GTB. The model in question was
offered in two body styles, 2-seat coupe, the 458 Italia, and 2-seat roadster,
the 458 Spider, and it has been officially presented to the public during the
2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. The supercar has a rear mid-engine and rear-wheel
drive layout and it stands at 4,527 mm in length, 1,937 mm in width and 1,213
mm in height, weighing in at 1,485 kg. It is coming with a 4.5 liter V8
naturally aspirated engine under its hood, which is capable of putting down 562
HP (419 kW) and 540 Nm (398 lb-ft) of torque. This is connected to the 7-speed
dual clutch transmission allowing it to reach 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3 seconds
and to go up to 325 km/h (202 mph).
We die a little inside whenever we see a million-dollar car
reduced to scrap, but for whatever reason we can't look away. Such is the case
with this Ferrari LaFerrari, which crashed in Shanghai earlier this week. CarNewsChina reports
that the accident occurred on a highway overpass during a thunderstorm. The
driver lost control of the car and slammed into a barrier, causing the damage
you see here. No one was hurt in the accident, but we can't say the same for
the driver's wallet. The hybrid hypercar costroughly $1.4 million when new, and is extremely rare with
only 499 copies built. CarNewsChina reports this car is one of only
seven known to exist in the Asian country. As we can see in these images,
courtesy of Wrecked Exotics, the damage to the front is extensive, and the
rear driver-side wheel is also more than a bit worse for wear. To say the
least, that's not going to buff out.
The Ferrari LaFerrari is powered by a naturally aspirated
6.3-liter V-12 aided by an electric motor, which together deliver a combined
950 hp to the rear wheels. The LaFerrari is undoubtedly an impressive machine,
but this accident proves that even the best from Maranello isn't impervious to
heavy rain. The driver involved in the crash reportedly also owns a McLaren P1. Here's hoping he doesn't wreck that one too.
This particular Ferrari F355 has recently met its end in
Spain after being crashed into the guardrail.
The newest supercar incident is coming all the way from
Spain and it is involving a Ferrari F355. According to the guys from Wrecked Exotics,
the model in question has been crashed into the guardrail in Guipuzkoa, after
its driver lost control of the wheel. The vehicle was part of a fund-raising
drive for bone marrow which didn’t go so well. Two people have been injured
when it has been crashed into the guardrail and it seems that this will end up
in the crusher, as it has been significantly damaged.
Ferrari has produced 11,273 units of the F355 between 1994
and 1999. The model in question was offered with a mid-engined and rear-wheel
drive layout, in three body styles, Berlinetta, Targa Top and Spider. It stands
at 4,249 mm in length, 1,900 mm in width and 1,171 mm in height, weight 1,350
kg. The supercar has been first introduced in May 1994 as a Berlinetta and it
was followed by the Spider, one year later. The F355 GTS was also introduced in
1995, along with the F355 Challenge. The Serie Fiorano was a limited production
debuting in March 1999. Power to the F355 was being provided by a 3.5 liter
DOHC V8 engine, connected to the wheels through a 6-speed manual or a 6-speed
F1 electrohydraulic manual transmission. The supercar was eventually replaced
by the 360.
