V for Valkyrie!

On November 19, 2023November 19, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, The Dream GarageLeave a comment

It was in the spring of 2019, almost five years and one pandemic ago, that I travelled to Geneva to attend the annual Autosalon, of which I did the only video featured on this blog – so far. Maybe it’s me but I found it quite funny to watch again today. Five years is not a long time in car development, but as you’ll see for yourself, a few things have happened since.

Charging a battery to 80% in under five minutes as Piëch Design promised hasn’t happened, and the company seems to have wholly disappeared. Side mirrors replaced by cameras as was then featured on the Audi e-tron hasn’t become a success either, at least not yet, but the car we’ll talk about today has them, along with a lot of other fancy stuff.

The Aston Martin Valkyrie is thus now out on the streets for real, which arguably is more important than mass adoption of side cameras, given it’s pretty much the greatest supercar out there.

The Valkyrie is featured in the video from 2019 as well, but took longer than anticipated to reach the market, as was the case for so many at the onset of the pandemic. As I had the opportunity to chat with someone knowing far more about it than me recently, it became clear that it’s such a fascinating car that its story needs to be told!

Aston likes names beginning with “V”, and Valkyrie is taken from the Nordic mythology. When the first cars were finally delivered in 2021, it became clear just how much of the development had really happened with Red Bull and F1 technology. The Nordic Gods would certainly have been impressed!

The street car weighs around a ton, which is impressive but still around 250 kg more than the track version. What is not carbon is 3D-printed plastic, of which Aston is apparently very proud. An extreme illustration of weight-saving is the paint, which including all sub-layers weighs 3.5 kgs for the whole car, and is so thinly layered that you can see the carbon structure under it. Wrapping your Valkyrie is thus very highly recommended, since repairing scratched carbon is not a cheap past time.

*Wind channels all over, including on the roof to cool the enormous engine*

The F1 heritage is visible in the design of the whole car. There’s a lot of wind tunnel testing that has helped shape it, not just in terms of aerodynamics. The shape also produces close to two tons of downforce and an elaborate way air-cooling the (mid-mounted) engine, just like an F1 car does. The front suspension also comes straight from F1.

The 6.5 litre V12 engine is a true monster, reinforced by an electric engine that in a Kers-like way produces an additional 150 hp for short boosts, to be added to the V12’s paltry 1015 hp. The total under acceleration is thus 1165 hp, which the downforce helps the rear wheels get onto the road. Even more incredibly, this huge V12 revs to 9.000 rpm!

When it does so, it’s loud as hell. The interior sound has been measured to 107 dB, which is louder than standing next to a chain saw. Since that’s an activity that isn’t recommended, the Valkyrie comes with two noise-blocking headsets, just like in a helicopter. These are connected to the seatbelts, and also allow the passenger and driver to chat.

*The doors are said to be as light as paper, the headlights see through corners…*

Given however that driving a car with a headset is not allowed in most countries, Aston could only get an exception granted by making sure that the sound of emergency vehicles in every country the Valkyrie can be sold in, can be heard through the headset. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Almost as cool is the windscreen, which is more curved than on any other car. Curving glass to that degree is not easy, so Aston turned to NASA, who have developed the front screen along the same lines as for space rockets. You don’t want to know what replacing one would cost, but you could buy a few Chinese EV’s for the same money.

Other technology highlights include the side mirrors mentioned above, the headlights that like a submarine periscope can see around corners, and of course the titanium wheels that cannot be repaired should you scratch them, and of which the new price for all four is apparently EUR 120.000. And I almost forgot, the fire extinguisher button is located in the center of the inner roof. Given it’s red, a number of clients have apparently mistaken it for the starter button…

*Clean and minimalist, getting in reqjuires removing your shoes*

Speaking of the inside, it’s follows a very minimalist design. There’s not a single button or switch outside of the steering wheel, and the center screen is of a modest size. That said, the street car still has modern comfort features such as AC. The cabin is for two, but it’s an advantage if they like each other, since saying the cabin is cramped is an understatement.

Like in a true race car, you sit with your feet higher up than your bottom – in other words, a lying position. To get in, you need to remove the steering wheel and place your feet on the seat, meaning you should preferably take off your shoes. But once you’re in, you probably won’t be able to put them on again. Go figure…

As new, the Valkyrie costs around GBP 3m, and of course you have to apply to get one. The delivery time is around two years, and just to get on the list of potential buyers takes you a down payment of GBP 500.000. Should you then be approved, you will have to do a second down payment of GBP 750.000 within seven days.

This is of course Aston trying to make sure that whoever buys the car isn’t some car of trader or dealer. As is common practicen in the supercar world these days, the lucky owners are also subject to a minimum owning period of 18 months. That said, the street value of a Valkyrie is today around EUR 4m, and it will certainly not be less in 18 months from now!

The Valkyrie is an incredible car and no doubt the closest you can get to a street-legal F1 car. Unless you have regular access to a race track, it’s unclear what you would use it for, and it’s unfortunately safe to assume that most Valkyries will spend their time in a garage before switching owners for much more than the original price a couple of years from now. But for the lucky ones who will actually drive it, what an experience!

Dreaming of the 250 GT TdF…

On November 12, 2023November 12, 2023 By ChristofferIn Classic cars, News, The Dream GarageLeave a comment

This week is for dreaming. After all, with all the sh* currently going on in the world, I’m quite confident that I’m not the only one feeling a need to flee reality a few minutes. Doing just that, If someone says Tour de France, or TdF in short to you, you most probably think of the world’s most famous road cycle race. Or even dream about it, depending on your disposition to cycling.

As so many other middle-aged men, I’m a road cyclist refusing to realize I’m getting old, and I certainly dream regularly about some of the legendary ascents in the Tour de France such as the Tourmalet, the Col de la Madelaine or the legendary Mont Ventoux, and climbing these at some kind of speed resembling what the pros do. Which of course is never going to happen.

If we go back in time though, there was another TdF as well, namely a car race carrying the same name, which with breaks for various wars ran more or less regularly from 1899 to 1986. As so many other things, the race was especially popular when it resumed after the second world war in the 1950’s. And in the second half of the 50’s, no other brand dominated the race like Ferrari.

*The 250 GT LWB Competizione, nr 15 of 17 in the third series*

So much in fact, that Ferrari chose to call the new, successful 250 GT Berlinetta the “TdF”. And if ever there was a representative of an era when car design was not bothered with safety constraints and aerodynamics but quite simply by designing strikingly beautiful cars, the TdF is certainly an excellent representative of it, and thereby a perfect dream car!

The TdF dominated the race every year between 1956 and 1959, and until it was succeeded by the short wheelbase 250 GT Berlinetta (same name, but with its introduction the original car was from then called LWB), it was built in four different, distinct series.

And yet, no more than 72 cars were built all in all, of which nine in “Competizione” race configuration. The car pictured above is one of those and was nr 15 of 17 in the third series. As you’ll note, the design was quite different to the earlier car from 1956, pictured below.

What all the TdF’s had in common however, was the beautiful, lightweight coachwork, designed by Pininfarina, and subsequently built in aluminium by Scaglietti. Actually the first body was designed by Scaglietti, as were apparently also some later ones. Things were a bit less organized in the old days.

Anyway, sticking with Pininfarina’s design, I don’t think it requires much in words – just look at it, whether it’s the two cars above, the second of which by the way won the Best of Show“-Trophy at the Villa d’Este Concours d’Elegance in 2021.

On the mechanical side, the V12 (what else?) was developed and improved across the different series, but is said to have produced around 260 hp. It was coupled to Ferrari’s “Competizione” gearbox with a limited slip differential, and mechanically the car was seen as far ahead of its time and was therefore also an important milestone for Ferrari.

*This later, SWB 250 GT could become yours!*

It goes without saying that the 250 GT, be it as LWB or SWB, is today among the most treasured and pricey classic cars out there. The car shown at the top was up for sale at Sotheby’s in Monaco five years ago an estimated at EUR 6-8m. And if you read this on the day it’s published, be aware that tomorrow Monday, 13 November 2023, the red 1962 250 GT SWB shown above is going up at Sotheby’s in Monaco, this time estimated to fetch USD 60m. Inflation anyone?

Like many other classic Ferraris, the 250 GT is thus best enjoyed as a dream – but what a dream! Of course things weren’t better in the 50’s than today, but coming out of a World War, optimism was slowly returning, and creativity was high. The 250 GT is a great illustration of that and thereby also of what we would need a bit more of today!

Auto legends: the story of Carlos Ghosn!

On November 5, 2023November 5, 2023 By ChristofferIn Auto Legends, NewsLeave a comment

Before we start off, just a note to say that the fact that last week’s post came out on Friday rather than Sunday doesn’t mean a change of schedule, it was quite simply a mistake by yours truly. Sunday night European time it has been, and Sunday night it will stay! And with that, on to this week’s program.

____________

When you set out to write about a legend from the automobile industry, you have a pretty good feel for what it will run like. From the youth and dreams of making it big, over education, the first jobs, through the career to the older days. The story usually doesn’t include murders (indirectly), prison escapes and financial fraud. Until you get to Carlos Ghosn, that is, because writing about the man who revolutionised first Renault and then Nissan, is like writing a pretty good thriller story. So buckle up for the ride!

Carlos Ghosn is Lebanese, born in Brazil in 1954, but the family then moved back to Lebanon in 1960. HIs father was a diamond trader who after the return was convicted in Lebanon of murdering a priest. Given murder usually doesn’t do wonders for your reputation, he would move back to Brazil when the Lebanese civil war broke out in the mid 1970’s.

*One of few pictures of Ghosn as a young man, here as a student in Paris*

Carlos, after his graduation, moved to France instead where he would spend close to 20 years at Michelin, the tire maker, making a name for himself in the 80’s notably by turning around first Michelin’s failing South American operations in two years, and after that the one in the US. He reported directly to Francois Michelin, the company’s CEO, and would then move on to Renault.

At Renault, Ghosn performed roughly the same trick at the company’s South American operation as he had done at Michelin, which made Renault’s then CEO Louis Schweitzer notice him. The French automaker had just recorded a loss of over USD 500m the year before (doesn’t sound like much today, I know, but this was the age when money was still worth something…), one of the first in its history.

Schweitzer was looking for help to turn the ship around and for the right man to do it. He had also started to think about his own successor a bit further down the line. It took him only one face-to-face meeting with Carlos Ghosn to decide that he was the one. This may not sound too surprising, but we have to take a step back here to put it in the local context at the time.

*Schweitzer (right) and Ghosn, when things were still going well*

Renault is the crown jewel of the French car industry. It was founded in 1898 and the French state has held a minority stake since the end of WW2. It was completely unheard of that the coming CEO of Renault would not be French, and would not come from the inner circles of the French establishment. Ghosn certainly didn’t, and was at the time only a Lebanese citizen. He would later also acquire French citizenshop.

It wasn’t just that Ghosn didn’t come from the inner Parisian circles, it was also that he had no desire at all of becoming part of them. He was certainly not the party-going, champagne-drinking small talker seen at parties among other bosses in the French capital. He hated these occasions, meaning no one really knew him. And what you don’t know, you sometimes don’t like. This has a certain relevance for the rest of the story: Ghosn has always been the outsider, and although a power player, he never really created a support network around him.

*The closure of the Belgian Renault factory didn’t go down very well*

When Ghosn was called upon by Schweitzer as head of production for Renault in the mid-90’s, he went through pretty much every single of the thousands of parts making up an automaker. He analyzed each function, gave out objectives for each division, and started cutting excess fat, meaning laying people off. In 1996, 3.000 workers thus lost their job in Renault’s Belgian factory. A couple of years later though, Renault had turned the largest loss in its 100-year history to over USD 1bn in profits. The man dubbed “Le Cost-Cutter” had done it again.

Schweitzer was at the same time making strategic plans, since in spite of his right-hand man’s good work, it was clear to him that long-term, Renault was too small to survive as a stand-alone manufacturer. His vision was for an alliance with an Asian manufacturer, and when Renault acquired 1/3 of Nissan in 1999, Schweitzer took a big bet on not only Renault’s future, but also on Carlos Ghosn whom he made CEO of Nissan, and without whom he’s said that he would never had done the deal.

*The Nissan line-up in the 90’s was…. yeah. Here the Nissan Pulsar*

When Ghosn came to Nissan, he found what he was used to: a loss-making company without great hope. Its line-up was out of fashion and according to insiders, Nissan had forgotten how to build attractive cars. In addition, with USD 20bn in debt, the company was on the brink of insolvency. Ghosn wasted no time in pretty much rebuilding the company from the bottom and up. He did so spending as little time Japanese cultural courses as he had drinking champagne in Paris, realizing that he would anyway always be the outsider in Japan.

As he had done a few years earlier at Renault, Ghosn travelled through Japan, visiting every Nissan factory and shaking a lot of hands. He then developed a three-year plan to return the company to profitability, based partly on the cost-cutting approach he had become known for, and which Nissan no doubt needed. As a consequence he would fire 21.000 employees, 14% of Nissan’s work force. In the consensual Japanese culture, this was unheard of.

It wasn’t all about cost-cutting though, as another, arguably even more important part, was re-creating the model line-up. For car enthusiasts, the most important here are on one hand the 350Z, a very well balanced sports car that also has the benefit of being easy to tune, and on the other of course, the legendary rebirth of the GT-R, partly referred to as Skyline in Japan.

*Peak Nissan and peak Ghosn: the GT-R Nismo launch*

The success followed shortly thereafter. In just a few years, Ghosn had changed Nissan’s whole line-up, launched two sports car considerably improving its reputation, and turned USD 20bn in debt to USD 15bn in the bank. Nissan also produced and sold twice as many cars than just a few years before, meaning more than 5.5 million.

The launch of the GT-R in 2007 was no doubt Ghosn’w peak moment at Nissan, and also the start of his downfall. Ghosn was by now hailed as a superstar and was very smart about cultivating his profile and media presence. His aura was so bright that no one really paid attention to what happened behind it, for example the fact that Ghosn owned about seven times more than the CEO of Toyota, and still felt he was underpaid. He had also made sure Nissan hadn’t reported his salary according to stock market rules.

When Louis Schweitzer stepped down as CEO of Renault in 2005, Ghosn succeeded him, but in spite of promises made previously, insisted on staying on as CEO of Nissan. He thus managed to global car companies 10.000 km apart, something that everyone but him clearly saw didn’t work.

*Ghosn’s globetrotter lifestyle didn’t go down well with the low-key Japanese culture…*

Clearly losing touch with the wider world, Ghosn now started to create companies on various warm islands around the world, that he filled with Nissan’s corporate money with the official purpose of investing in riskier ventures and start-ups. In the resulting lack of transparency, it then became clear that some of the money had rather been used for everything from private houses to family holidays. Mr. Cost Killer was certainly not cutting costs for himself…

As can happen to people with nothing but yes-sayers around him, Ghosn started to develop a certain paranoia. So in 2010, when he received an anonymous letter claiming that three highly placed executives at Renault were involved in selling company secrets to the Chinese, Ghosn had them all fired in a major public exercise, only to admit a few months later that the claims had been unfounded.

The scandal was so big that French president Sarkozy was asking for heads to roll, so Ghosn sacrificed his COO without blinking. The French did not approve, and if you remember from further up, Ghosn didn’t have a powerful network in France to protect him. That was starting to show.

*Sarkozy (right) wasn’t amused. Ghosn was happy to drop his COO to make him happier*

In 2018, after close to 20 years at the top at Nissan, Carlos Ghosn was arrested by Japanese police when landing in Tokyo, and charged with fraud. The charges came from a Nissan internal investigation that had been going for months, and no doubt also triggered by Ghosn’s failure to report his salary.

The former yes-sayers at the top of Nissan didn’t just want him gone – they wanted him in prison. And for that, Japan is a great place since once you’re arrested, there is a quasi-certainty that you will also be found guilty. Which, by all probability, Carlos Ghosn was.

The fact is though, that we’ll never know. Ghosn was held in captivity for 130 days, being interrogated every day. His lawyers tried to have his trial moved to France, but with no one in France was really interested in that and as said, Ghosn lacked a strong personal network.

*A similar box to the one Ghosn escaped in*

He was finally released on bail awaiting the trial, but it would never come to that. In a masterful exercise, the details of which go beyond this blog, Ghosn escaped Japan on a private jet, hidden in an instrument box, and fled to Lebanon.

As per today, Carlos Ghosn lives in Beirut and will most probably stay there, as there is an international warrant for his arrest if he leaves Lebanon. He has always claimed his innocence and says he would be happy to stand trial in any country but Japan because of, in his words, the biased judicial system, but that will probably never happen. Nissan has an outstanding personal claim on him of EUR 83m, that will most probably never be paid.

The Renault-Nissan alliance still exists and these days also includes Mitsubishi. In the current setup a co-CEO system is in place, and there is no more reliance on one person. That’s probably good, but It’s also difficult to find three car companies with a less exiting model line-up than these three.

*The “corporate” Nissan house in Lebanon Ghosn now lives in…*

There is no doubt that Carlos Ghosn was exceptionally good at turning businesses to profit and also understanding what customers wanted. It’s also true that he spent 20 years on the other side of the world, in a completely different culture and language, which most certainly contributed to the rest of the story. It’s a shame that it ended like it did, but it’s yet another proof that even the most brilliant men and women often are their own worst enemy. And while Ghosn is gone, quite a few of us are thankful to him for creating the wonderful GT-R!

Talk of the (car) town – October

On October 27, 2023October 25, 2023 By ChristofferIn NewsLeave a comment

This is a new theme on the blog (that will run under the sub-heading “News” such as not to complicate things), where the idea is to bring you a few items currently talked about in the car world from time to time. No strict plans so most probably a bunch of different things with a few weeks’ interval. In this first piece, we’ll travel from Germany to China and back over Italy – enjoy the reading!

Germany used to be the place to start for pretty much anything car related but today, unfortunately, you do so mostly for other reasons. This is however a funny one. In 2022, some 2.6 million new cars were sold in Germany, but only around 400 of those were Ferrari F8’s. That’s perhaps not very surprising, but what is more so is the fact that that number is almost identical to something very far from any kind of Ferrari, namely the good old Land Rover Discovery.

*The Family F8, where you’ll never see it….*

The latest Disco has been around a while and is one of the roomiest and most offroad capable SUV’s out there, if ever you were to venture outside of the beaten path, which of course 99% of all buyers never will. It’s also one of the boxiest, and I guess one reason for its lack of success is that not many people want to confuse their car with their fridge.

Other downsides include the price (superior to a comparable X5 or a GLE), running costs (on par with a Range Rover and not something I necessarily want to go into in more detail, but it’s bad…), and a questionable quality reputation, as is mostly the case with anything from the Land Rover brand.

On the plus side though, next to the roominess that comes with its shape, is sublime comfort, as said unbeatable terrain capability and, as it turns out, the fact that you won’t see one on every corner. So as long as you don’t confuse it with your fridge, the Disco is the Ferrari F8 for the family!

*The say you should always buy a car in the press color. Not convinced…*

Staying in Germany, the next theme is far less funny, but unfortunately very typical of what goes on today. Next to the country’s completely failed energy policy, the Green finance minister Habeck has now removed subsidies on EV’s, which – surprise! – has caused such a drastic fall in sales that VW have had to let go of several hundred workers in their new model EV factory in Zwickau.

One of the reasons EV’s don’t sell very well once subsidies are gone is the fact that they’re not very competitively priced. A good case in point is the VW ID.3, basically an EV Golf, which sells for no less than EUR 40.000 in its basic configuration with a 55 KwH battery, to which you need to add another EUR 10.000 to get the larger 77 KwH battery. As a comparison, a combustion Golf in the same country costs from EUR 30.000 and upwards.

Where it gets really interesting though is when you learn that the same ID.3 costs less than EUR 20.000 in China. The reason is simple: China continues to heavily subsidize its EV industry and it’s only at this price that VW can hope to sell any ID.3’s at all. The practical implication is thus that German EV buyers subsidize Chinese ones, which I don’t believe Herr Müller was necessarily informed of by his VW salesman…

*The original Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale from 1967*

We’ll leave Germany for now and go to a happier place and happier news, namely that Alfa Romeo is planning to build a new supercar! This is of course something that makes any car enthusiast’s heart beat faster, especially since it’s been longer than anyone cares to remember since the 33 Stradale, which Alfa says is the new car’s predecessor, hit the roads.

The new car will thus be built 33 times and before you start making plans, all of them are already sold. It looks neat, much nicer than the Maserati MC20 if you ask me, the car with which it shares its six-cylinder turbo engine, here developing 620 hp.

*The new looks good, but not as good as the original…*

That’s if you opt for the combustion version, because Alfa also gives you the option to order the new car as a 750 hp EV as well. And although the order book is already filled, they haven’t yet divulged how the two version split between the 33 sold.

My guess, especially if the trend we saw last week with the SF90 Stradale is anything to go by, is about 33 petrol. As for the price the 33 lucky owners have paid for the pleasure, it’s a pretty chunky EUR 3m. That would get you no less than 75 VW ID.3’s in Germany – or of course twice as many if you happen to be in China!

The day has dawned for Porsche bargains!

On October 22, 2023October 22, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, The Dream Garage, The Thrill of Owning1 Comment

When I bought my Range Rover, that I recently sold, two years ago, I did so at 1/3 of its price as new back in 2015. Unfortunately though, at the time of selling it, it had lost another 20%. It felt like a pretty good deal at the time of buying, and I attributed the additional value loss to mainly Land Rover’s less than stellar reputation, and also the fact that it had a five litre V8 under the hood, which for reasons I don’t need to name, isn’t really the flavor of the day these days.

As I started looking for possible replacements however, it became clear that something had happened to secondary values in general, not just to old Range Rovers. My 2019 BMW 540i with less than 50.000 km on the clock that I finally replaced the Range with cost me CHF 49.000, from a new price of around CHF 135.000 (yep, it’s well equipped). So again, not far from 1/3 of the original value, in spite of this being a newer and more modern car, with a smaller engine, and from a brand with a better reputation.

*The 540i is in most aspects all most of us will ever need.*..

The sad truth is once more that in spite of fundamentals and common as well as economic sense, anything that is not fully electric is currently falling faster in price than Germany’s power production. The Covid pandemic was a bit of a hick-up in this regard, as it resulted in delivery issues that took a while to work through and that helped keeping prices of used cars artificially higher, but now that we’ve moved on, the trend is clear to see.

Whatever happens to the car market in general though, there’s a group of brands that are never really affected. Ferraris, Lamborghinis an other supercar exotics seem to be wholly uncorrelated to general trends, and bar some exceptions, that doesn’t seem to have changed, more on which below. And of course, anything with 911 in the name coming from Zuffenhausen can only go one way, right?

*…were it not for the attraction of that classic 911 design!*

Actually, no. In a way, this is of course not new. You’ve been able to pick up the 996 at bargain prices (and you still can, even though they’ve clearly bottomed out), but that was typically the only 911 that didn’t hold its value really well. What has become clear lately though, is that the 996 was the starting point for that being the case for subsequent models, rather than the exception to the rule.

The 997 succeeded the 996 in two series, of which the second one is preferrable to the first for quality reasons. A good 997 can today be had for EUR 40-50.000, but perhaps somewhat surprisingly, I don’t think that’s the car you should go for. Not when the far better 991 can be had for not much more.

The 991 was built between 2012 and 2019 on an all new platform, only the third one in the 911 history (the 996 being the second). It also had an all new body that was 7 cm longer than its predecessors but above all, it had a new transaxle construction with the rear wheels having been moved backward to improve the weight distribution. The result is better handling and, a fundamentally better car.

*More buttons than screens, and complete driver-focus*

The base 991 Carrera. came with 350 hp out of the flat six, increased to 400 hp in the stronger Carrera S. Both could be had both as manual and with the double-clutch, seven-speed PDK box. The first series was built until 2016, with the second running thereafter until 2019 having the all new, downsized 3-litre engine used until this day, rather than the original, classic 3.6 litre.

Today, you can find a nice, first series 991 with less than 100.000 km on the clock for around EUR 60.000. Actually, you can even dig out a Carrera S at that price if you search well. This for a modern 911 that mostly cost well above EUR 100.000 as new! Sure, it’s not 1/3 of the new price as my examples above, but it’s around half price and above all, it’s not what we’re used to when it comes to 911’s. Again, a GTS, GT cars or special models will be more expensive. But even a modern, base 911 is a pretty nice proposition, and I would argue a very nice one at this price point!

If most people agree with the above, what comes below will certainly be more contentious. When Porsche introduced the 718 Cayman and Boxster in 2016, as part of the general downsizing trend, they did so with a 2 or 2.5 litre turbocharged four-cylinder, something that was about as appreciated among enthusiasts as the introduction of the water-cooled 996 had been in the 90’s.

*The Cayman is arguably the best-looking, modern Porsche*

The four-cylinder wasn’t well received by the motoring press either, pretty unanimously seeing it as lacking character and producing an awful sound. Be that as it may – the engine certainly sounds different and doesn’t have the character of the flat six. But it’s powerful enough, cheaper to run, and for some people, two extra cylinders isn’t what really matters.

If this sounds like you, you’ll be happy to know that the very good-looking Cayman (that I’d personally prefer over the Boxster) can now be had for about EUR 40.000. And just so we’re clear, the 718 Cayman has been built since 2016, so this is a very recent car.

For me, it would have to be a first series 991 though, since a 911 is after all a 911, and I can’t really stomach the four-cylinder option. I would take my time (which will probably continue to work in buyers’ favour!) and find a nice Carrera S, perhaps pushing the envelope somewhat for the right car. And I’d go for the manual if I had the choice, but the PDK is so good so that it wouldn’t be critical.

*That’s exactly where a (preferably six-cylinder) engine should sit!*

Porsche price stability is thus not what it was, and at least in some, limited cases, this seems to be the case for Italian supercars as well. In a completely different price segment to the above, Ferrari has a bit of an issue around the SF90 Stradale, which unlike other top-of-the-line cars from Maranello isn’t really going anywhere. Literally, since especially in Germany, Ferrari dealers have SF90’s standing around for far too long, and at the time of writing, there’s currently no less than 152 cars for sale on the German market.

The 1000 hp hybrid, built since 2020, cost EUR 450.000 in base price as new, but in reality EUR 50-100.000 more once it hit the streets. Should you want to pick one up today, you’ll have no trouble finding a well-equipped one for less than the base price, probably as low as EUR 400.000 after a bit of negotiation, with insignificant km on the clock.

*You’re more likely to see one at the dealer than on the street…*

That’s not the way Maranello imagines its top-of-the-line cars to go, but my guess is that it has a lot to do with aficionados preferring Ferraris to come with a (preferrably naturally-aspirated) combustion engine rather than a hybrid, even it if has 1000 hp. If that’s true, given where the world is at, there could well be further disappointments ahead for manufacturers, but more good news for secondary buyers!

Japan’s only real pony car!

On October 15, 2023October 15, 2023 By ChristofferIn Classic cars, News, The Thrill of OwningLeave a comment

If there’s one thing that is even less featured on this blog than American cars, it’s those from the land of the rising sun. In the case of the US, this is explained by this not being my area of expertise. In the second, its frankly because of a lack of interest. Having said that, Toyota sells about 10 million cars per year and although it’s the biggest Japanese brand by a margin, it’s certainly not the only one. Surely there must be something to write about in those numbers ?

Honestly, these days I’m not so sure. There is the Nissan GT-R we’ve talked about, and then of course the Honda NSX, which however isn’t even close to reaching the cult status the original NSX has these days. The Lexus LC is a cool-looking thing, but as so many Japanese cars, it feels like it lacks personality. And then there’s of course a bunch of hot hatches, mostly from Honda, but if you’re into those, chances are you’re not reading this blog in the first place.

*The original Celica, here in cool, 70’s GT trim*

Last week however I saw a Japanese car I haven’t seen in a long time and which certainly. has personality. It reminded me of the time when Japanese cars were much less present on Western streets then they are today, meaning the early 70’s (which in turn reminded me of how old I am…). In an effort to change that, and especially to enter the US market, Toyota launched the car I’d just seen, the original Celica, in 1970.

Celica is Latin and means “celestial”, which I guess is the direction Toyota wanted sales to go. And over the coming years, they would be proven correct as the Celica became a very popular sports coupé. However, none of the later series had the charm of the first one, which was of course also Japan’s first try at, if not a muscle car, then at least a cool looking pony car!

*The interior, certainly with some US inspiration*

Back in Tokyo in the late 60’s, Toyota’s engineers realized that the only cars they had that could come in question for exports to the US and Europe had too small cabins for a normal Western male, and too small engines for their liking. If they ever wanted to make it big on the other side of the ocan, especially the US, that would have to change, and the Celica was Toyota’s first try at doing that.

The Celica was based on the Toyota Carina, perhaps not the best reference in the world if you want to build a sports car, and also a car with which the first Celica shared a few too many parts. But when it launched in the US in 1971, it was considerably cheaper than the Ford Mustang, which certainly helped. That said, it also offered far less under the hood, with a paltry, 1.9 litre four-cylinder, delivering a rather poor 90 hp, coupled to a four-speed manual box. Neither a six-, nor an eight-cylinder was anywhere in sight.

*It was certainly no Mustang under the hood…*

The original Celica’s looks are both unique as in the angle of the headlights, to the pony car body, also called “coke bottle styling” bridging the 60’s and 70’s. You can spot quite a few US cars in its lines, which is probably no coincidence. It’s also a car along the ladies’ shoe principle, i.e. compact on the outside but roomy on the inside, and this at a time when the Mustang was gaining both in weight and size, but not in power.

Then of course it was also Japanese, meaning it didn’t break, and actually it was the first Japanese car to be fully assembled on an automatic assembly line. It had an independent suspension and disc brakes all around, and of course it was rear-wheel drive, so that even with only 90 hp, if you knew what you were doing, it was happy to swing its tail. That’s all the Westerners needed to know to start buying Celicas in increasing numbers.

*No one drove the Celica faster than Owe Andersson!*

Swinging its tail in fast corners is also what the Celica started doing on the world’s rally stage, and would continue to do long after the first series. The Swede Owe Andersson was the first to drive a Celica, and he did it so well that he later founded Toyota’s European rally team, something that certainly helped sales especially on the European side of the Atlantic. Of course, later version of the Celica would become both more powerful and all-wheel drive, and make it big on the worlds’ rally scenes.

Going back to the original car however, the first series had a few different trims to choose from, and the engine evolved ever so slightly over the years until the first facelift in 1975, gaining in volume and thereby power, but only to a bit over 100 hp. The Celica was thus never a very powerful car, but as the 70’s moved into the oil crises, that was also not the priority for many buyers. In that sense, it came at the right time, partly explaining its success. The total production number of the first series is uncertain, but over 150.000 cars were sold both in 1972 and 1973, not bad for Toyota’s first try at a sports car in the West!

Yet as so often, there’s a big question mark around where all these cars have gone today. Sure, build quality was certainly better than rust protection even on a Toyota in the 70’s, and a fair number have simply rusted away. Given its low price, quite a few will also have ended up with young buyers better at fitting a rear spoiler than a new engine, or for that matter, at driving. That doesn’t mean they didn’t try though…

That said, around something like EUR 20.000, you can still find one of the original Celicas if you look carefully. And please do look carefully, meaning going for one with as few skirts and as little plastic as possible, as you never know what hides underneath. Ideally the car should also be complete in terms of parts, because finding spare parts for a Celica from the early 70’s could be “very difficult”, as the Japanese would put it. But if you find the right car, what you’ve then bought yourself is arguably both the coolest Japanese car from the 70’s, as well as its only pony car!

The world’s best Mini!

On October 8, 2023October 8, 2023 By ChristofferIn NewsLeave a comment

When you think of the British car industry, “legendary” is perhaps not the first word that comes to mind. Or at least, most UK legends are so because of their beauty (think Jaguar E-Type), their elegance (pick your favourite Bentley or Rolls), or for that matter, their quirkiness (the Reliant Robin anyone?). There’s really only one British car that has become a true legend not in any of the above, but actually in sales numbers. It’s not big, it’s very clever, and it was in production for over 40 years. This week we’ll look closer at the legendary Mini, with a particular attention to those that also had Cooper in their name.

As so often, it turns out that automotive development is closely tied to geopolitics. Had we not had the Suez crisis in 1956, when Egyptian president Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez channel and through that, cause surging fuel prices, then the British Motor Corporation (BMC) would probably never have developed the Mini. The crisis however led to a strong demand for smaller, economic cars, and so Alec Issigonis, an engineer at BMC, set about developing a new car concept with front-wheel drive and a small, transversal four-cylinder engine.

*Inside space is plentiful, luggage space is limited…*

The engine , taken from the Austin A30 was of course not a particularly exciting one, but the ingenuity of the construction was impressing. By notably positioning the gearbox under the engine so that it could use the engine’s oil for lubrification, placing the cooler between the engine and the left front wheel, using a space-saving rubber suspension and small, 10-inch wheels, Issigonis built a car that although it wasn’t longer than three meters, still had room for three people in comfort (as defined back in the 50’s…). The initial 34 hp the small, 1-litre engine produced certainly didn’t set any records in acceleration, but again, it was seen as adequate at the time, especially since the car only weighed 600 kg.

We’ll stop here for a second to introduce the Cooper Car Company, set up after WW2 by Charles Cooper and his son John. Cooper was specialised in building high performance cars for racing and motor sport, from F1 to rally cars, and notably counted Stirling Moss among their clients. The Mini was thus quite far off the regular business of Cooper, but as the engineer he was, Charles quickly saw the rally potential the small, light Mini could have. Beginning in 1961 therefore, the company started producing the Mini Cooper with an increased engine size and more power, not realizing at the time that they had built not only. a great rally car, but actually the favourite car stars wanted to be seen in in the early 60’s.

*Never have 10-inch wheels looked more appropriate!*

The Mini Cooper won the Monte Carlo rally four years in a row from 1964 through 1967 and a bunch of other rallies around the world as well, with as principal assets its light weight and small size. It has also starred in over 20 movies, often exhibiting its rally talents, and nowhere more famously than in the original version of “The Italian Job”. If ever there was a true gokart feeling in any car, this is surely the one, with each one of the small wheels placed very much in the four corners. As said, pretty much every star and wannabe in the 60’s wanted to be seen in a Mini, preferrably a Cooper, so that when BMC discontinued the production of the Cooper in the 1970’s, the Cooper Car Company continued to produce it as demand remained strong.

This is also where the story becomes a bit blurry, as is often the case with British cars from this era. It’s not fully clear when production of the Cooper went over from BMC to the Cooper company, neither when the latter stopped producing it. It’s also not fully clear how a Cooper looks as some of them, but not all, came with the characteristic stripes, but of course it didn’t take much for the owner of a regular Mini to fit some stripes on his car and call it a Cooper. And there are, or at least were Coopers out there with no stripes at all, for the true modest ones.

*Not the most potent engine in the world, but enough for 600 kg!*

The original Cooper boosted the paltry 34 hp of the standard Mini to a more respectable 55, and the Cooper S, introduced in 1967, all the way to 70 hp. That made the still sub-700 kg car good for a top speed of 145 km/h, and considering how close to the ground you sit and the 10″ wheels you roll on, that’s really plenty. There’s another peculiarity of the Mini which is worth noting, being the angle of the steering wheel, that is almost horizontal and more reminiscent of a bus than of a car. This was made necessary through the design as it allowed more legroom in the front, but it made the driving experience slightly peculiar.

There have been more special versions of the Mini than anyone can remember during its 40 years of production. As safety standards evolved and improved, that had its effects on the Mini as well, but otherwise, improvements are really mainly in terms of comfort and elegant or sporty looks, depending on the versions. The most famous, luxurious ones of these include the Park Lane and the Mayfair, whereas among the sportier ones, the gold striped 1250 GT with a 1.25 litre engine was the most powerful standard version of the Mini produced. Over the 40-year production run, a total of 5.3 million Minis would be built.

And yet, and I’m inclined to again refer to what’s typical of British cars from the 60’s and 70’s, not many of these remain, and those that do have started to climb in price so that you today will have to pay from EUR 20.000 and upwards for a car in decent shape, and probably a few thousand more for a good Cooper. The car’s construction is very simple and there’s no doubt that its main enemy is rust, rust and, well rust. Next to that, the originality of the car is something to pay attention to and of course, also making sure that if you pay for a Cooper, that’s indeed what you get!

Of course 20-25.000 is a lot for a three-meter car from the 60’s, with limited comfort, even more limited power, and even if there’s enough space for four adults, they really can’t bring much more than a shopping bag for luggage. On the other hand, the modern city cars now being developed often don’t have room for more than two, hardly have more luggage space, and certainly are nowhere close to the character of an original Mini. That’s not even a difficult choice!

On popping balloons and fizzling policies

On October 1, 2023October 1, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, OpinionLeave a comment

if you’re a cyclist like me, you’ll know that punctures can happen in many different ways and are completely unpredictable. Two years ago I rode 3.000 km in a season without a single flat tyre, only to have three of them within two weeks the next year. And whereas some punctures are very much like sticking a nail in a balloon, others are of the fizzling kind and you won’t notice them until next time you want to take your bike (typically to the train or bus, that you’ll otherwise miss…).

There are now a growing number of signs that the from the outset completely unrealistic project referred to as the Green Revolution is experiencing precisely that type of fizzling puncture. From north to south and east to west, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the climate goals set by different states, notably with regards to the automobile world, are by all objective measures as good as dead in the water. And it highlighted once again that at the end of the day, politicians will always do what gets them the votes. That’s not a surprise to readers of this blog but still, what’s happened lately is noteworthy.

*Somewhat more connected to reality than most Euorpean politicians*

10 days ago in the UK, PM Rishi Sunak announced a five-year delay on the planned 2030 ban on new combustion cars. He did so saying that the government could not impose “unacceptable costs” linked to reducing emissions on British families, and that moving too fast on green policies “risks losing the consent of the British people”. That’s a level of realism pretty remarkable for a politician, even though there was of course never any consent by neither the British, nor any other people in this regard.

There is little doubt that Sunak isn’t the last politician reversing course, or for that matter, that he looked to Germany to see what can happen when you ignore the will of the people long enough. In the country anyone putting their trust in clean energy should look twice at, the lack of public support for the government’s policies is now showing in regional elections in a way politicians from traditional parties never could imagine.

The planned partial ban on fossil-fuel heating boilers that would force people to replace perfectly functioning ones with electrical systems running on green energy at an installation cost of up to EUR 20.000, contributed to the anti-establishment, anti-immigration, anti-everythying AfD party scoring over 20% in regional elections in former eastern Germany. For historical reasons that may feel especially scary in Germany, but what’s happening there is very close to happening in a number of other countriees across Europe and by the looks of it, in the US as well.

*“The East (meaning eastern Germany, where AfD has most support) rises!” this election poster says*

Germany has a target of putting 15 million EV’s on the road by 2030, seven years from now. There’s currently about 1.5 million, meaning around 13.5 million are missing, which in turn exceeds the current annual EV production. So, 13.5 million Germans need to be forc… sorry, incentivized, to buy an EV in the next seven years in a recessionary economy. By the looks of it, that will be rather difficult, as the Japanese would say when something is completely unrealistic. Firstly there is barely an economic incentive anymore, with a fast-charging KwH now costing 80 Eurocents at a German supercharger, roughly the same cost as running a diesel. Secondly, there’s all the other reasons we’ve discussed previously on this blog. Thirdly however, there’s something else that has emerged in the last weeks.

Not only Germany, but the whole of the EU is now talking about limiting imports of Chinese EV’s in order to protect European manufacturers. That’s the same thing as definitely shelving any European EV 2030 targets, as the main obstacle to people not buying EV’s, next to range anxiety, is the cost. China of course has a huge advantage here, with an EV industry that is both heavily subsidized from the state, and with manufacturers controlling the full battery production chain, knowing that the battery pack makes up 40% of the cost of an EV.

*BMW’s EV flagship, the i7: ugly, expensive (150′ EUR), and at 2.700 kgs, heavier than most SUV’s. It’s also more expensive to run than the 500 kg lighter diesel version…*

Germany’s car manufacturers cannot compete on cost and have therefore left the budget EV segment largely open to the Chinese. French brands are trying to get a foot in, but can still not compete notably with the scale of Chinese EV manufacturers, with BYD this or next year surpassing Tesla as the largest in the world.

I’m personally all for free trade but that’s certainly not what China practices, so you can have sympathy for Europe not letting state subsidized Chinese EV’s kill the domestic production market. However, that doesn’t mean that you can force European consumers to buy cars they don’t want and can’t afford, as is now illustrated by the falling sales numbers in several markets. Something thus needs to give, and what will give is no doubt the climate goals, since in the end, politicians will always do what it takes to win most votes.

That was further illustrated twice this week, first in Sweden where the new right-wing government is slightly less disconnected to the people than its predecessors, and thus presented a budget that increases emissions short-term. Of course the press in the self-elected, moral superpower was scandalized, but the government knows they have public support. And in California, gorvernor Gavin Newsom this week announced the lifting of an anti-smog ban in the state in an effort to bring down retail gas prices. Newsom has been very efficient these last years in de-stabilizing California’s power grid, but now obviously senses that the wind is changing. As does Donald Trump of course, who my American friends tell me will win next year’s election.

*It was the catalyzer, i.e. technical development, that solved the smog issue in LA – not a ban on cars*

A fizzling tire can continue to fizzle slowly until it’s completely flat. Alternatively, the hole can increase in size and thus let the air out quicker. What it cannot do however, is repair itself. Once there’s a hole, it needs fixing, something that doesn’t only apply to bicycle tubes. It certainly looks like the people, aka the voters, have had enough, and that we’ve finally reached a point where last years’ crazy policies slowly but surely come to an end. My guess is that Sunak along with a number of PM colleagues in other countries, will need to revise that 2035 date to… whenever. The sooner the better, since we can then perhaps instead start dealing with real solutions to the world’s problems!

F1 pit stop: MAXimizing!

On September 24, 2023September 24, 2023 By ChristofferIn F1, NewsLeave a comment

The European summer has come and gone and as always, it leaves me with a sad feeling, especially since in central Europe, it was a very nice one. Although a passionate skier, I’m no friend of the dark season which will soon be upon us, but that also means we’re entering the final straight of the 2023 F1 season. In my last update just before the summer, fresh out of a bull fight in Madrid as I was at the time, the analogy with the charging bull Fernando Alonso was a rather obvious one. A few months later, it’s clear some things have changed while others have stayed the same. The bull analogy is still working, but the green bull has been replaced by its red cousin, which wasn’t doing too bad at the beginning of the season either.

*The red bull, or rather bulls, reign supreme!*

The way Red Bull has dominated the 2023 season almost makes you forget the pretty significant updates to the cars we saw before last season, aiming at making the races more exciting, and very much succeeding in doing so last season. This year, Max Verstappen has won 12 of 15 races and been on the podium in all but one. By the time of my last update though, Sergio “Checo” Perez had won in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, which made me speculate that Perez may, just maybe, be good enough to challenge Max for the title. Well I was wrong, because since early summer, Max’s winning streak has continued while Checo has faded significantly, as has Alonso on Aston Martin. Instead, we’ve seen a slow but steady return to form of three other teams and drivers: Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren.

Looking at them in that order, the biggest change in Maranello is probably that with the arrival of Cédric Vasseur as team head, Ferrari now has a strategy when they start a race, something that seemed to be missing most of last season. Nowhere was this more visible than in the fantastic race in Singapore a week ago, where it was the strategy, next to Carlos’ sublime driving that gave him and Ferrari their first win for the season. The end of the race was the most exciting this year, with Sainz managing to keep his first follower Norris behind him but within DRS distance for something like five laps so that the two chasing Mercedeses that were both quicker wouldn’t be able to pass Norris, and thus threaten himself. It was highly impressive driving, and a very deserved win!

*Brilliant driving and a brilliant win for Carlos in Singapore!*

Mercedes on their hand have clearly progressed in the last races with Russell and Hamilton still forming one of the best duos among all the teams. They’re also quite close result-wise, with Hamilton still having the edge, being third in the championship. The biggest progress is however to be found at McLaren. Lando Norris still dominates the young Oscar Pilastri, but the latter is progressing fast in his first full season and in the last races, both have enjoyed a car that’s quicker than both Mercedes and Ferrari.

It’s thus pretty clear that Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren are the three teams that will finish second-fourth when we round up the season (but not necessarily in that order). It’s also not impossible that whilst no one will challenge Max for the title, should Checo’s recent difficulties continue, both Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso could challenge him for second place, if all the stars align. That would however require Alonso and the Aston Martin returning to the form of the first half of the season.

*Mercedes have clearly improved as the season has progressed*

Further down the field it’s especially Alex Albon who continues to surprise positively, managing to regularly place the not-very-fast Williams in the points. He seems to be enjoying his time at Williams, but there are of course limits to how fast the team will ever get. That unfortunately goes for the other teams in the second half as well, with both Alfa Romeo Racing and Haas failing so far to progress in any way. Given the experience in the driver line-up of both teams (Bottas on Alfa Romeo, Hulkenberg and Magnussen on Haas), there’s really no doubt the cars, or rather the development budgets, are the real problem.

Things look somewhat better at Alpine (Renault) whereas they look somewhat worse at AlphaTauri, where Tsunoda swears far more while driving than he collects points. AlphaTauri have also replaced Nyck de Vries with our favorite Aussie Daniel Ricciardo, who without wanting to be mean has a great talent for picking teams on their way down rather than up. With AlphaTauri however there’s only one way to go, and Ricciardo will be there for all of 2024, so maybe, just maybe, things will start to look up both for the team and him again. That’s all relative though, since the chance of AlphaTauri or any of the small teams clinching a podium are all but inexistant.

*Ricciardo will need all of his significant neck muscles to win points in the AlphaTauri…*

As we enter the last straight of the 2023 season, Red Bull is thus as dominant as ever, and Max is in a league of his own. It’s also obvious that he’s gained a new level of maturity in his driving, being far calmer and, by the looks of it, in perfect harmony with the car. Most probably, the season will end with a Red Bull one-two, since although Checo has had a streak of bad luck and seems to be out of form, it should still be enough to hold on to second place.

The other top teams have come somewhat closer but the difference to Red Bull is still significant, and the question is perhaps not if they catch up this year, but rather if they manage to do so next. It’s interesting to listen to Lewis Hamilton in this regard, being very open about what he still sees as a very wide gap to Red Bull, and the Mercedes car still suffering from issues, notably in terms of rear downforce. Leclerc is just as open in terms of Ferrari’s progress but what still remains a significant gap to Red Bull. That doesn’t really bode well for an exciting 2024 season – but let’s perhaps finish 2023 before we worry about that, and hope we get some excitement for second place in the championship!

The lord has moved out, a Bavarian has moved in!

On September 17, 2023September 17, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, Test drivesLeave a comment

Big change in the family garage a couple of weeks ago as my beloved Range Rover moved out and a Bavarian station wagon moved in. I could tell you a thing or two about selling Ranges (or for that matter, any other car as a private seller in Europe these days) along the lines of people having no shame in offering half the asking price, or giving you all sorts of arguments why they shouldn’t buy it, making you wonder why they contacted you in the first place. I’ll spare you the details…

In the end a guy who had previously owned a bunch of Range Rovers got in touch. He ran an independent garage and new all there was to know about them. The week before, his wife had told him to please get rid of the – in her words – awful Audi Q8 he had bought and buy her another Range Rover instead. He was definitely my kind of guy, and evidently had a great taste in women! On a more serious note, I was actually happy to sell the car to someone who had previous experience and mechanical knowledge, should something unexpected occur shortly after the sale.

*Apparently not a car to get for your wife…*

The Range thus left the family garage and for the first time in many years, I was in the market for a car without trading in another one. That was obviously a situation difficult to handle for a car guy, so a certain frenzy broke out to narrow down the short list I had been preparing over the previous weeks, and which had come together following a bunch of criteria based on the new family situation, with fewer to no children in the car and hence less need for space, and also the limited space available in small, neat villages in southern France, where we will be spending more time going forward. That said, it had to be large enough for the (quite small) dog cage and the (quite large) amount of luggage my better half likes to bring.

*Built for 2CV’s, not for Range Rovers…*

I was initially quite agnostic between getting a diesel and a petrol. As discussed notably when I drove the Volvo V60 Polestar, for our kind of driving, a diesel would by far be the most efficient choice, but I’ve always struggled with the character of diesels. A test drive of the new Audi A6 in diesel format made clear that notably that slight hesitation whenever you put the pedal down is still there, as is an improved, but still not great engine sound.

That drive made two things clear: I wanted a petrol, ideally a six-cylinder, and not the new A6. Sure, it’s a nice car, but it’s quite big, relatively uninspiring to drive (the RS6 certainly being the exception), and also with a complete absence of switches and buttons in favor of screens. As you know this isn’t my thing, just as little as the surprisingly large amount of plastic in the interior is. The screens are not intuitive, unnecessarily complicated on some fronts, and full of very visible, greasy fingerprints after like five minutes. I won’t go into the arguments around this again, but it was clear to me that I wanted a car that was slightly smaller, still has a traditional A/C setup, along with some other functions, and a bit less plastic.

*You’ve seen it many times, it remains a good-looking station wagon*

In the end, my choice fell on a BMW 540i X-drive from 2019 with 45.000 km on the meter, in mint condition and at roughly 1/3 of the price as new. The three-liter petrol produces 340 hp (and can easily be tuned to more), and obviously features in a number of BMW’s. It is no doubt one of the best six-cylinderes ever built, smooth as silk and barely noticeable unless you want it to be, when it produces a decent but still somewhat aggressive sound. For the long motorway stretches that dominate our driving the power is clearly sufficient, that said, I’d be curious to see how much difference one of the chip-tuned versions does.

In terms of equipment, I knew I wanted the M-Sports package, giving you not just sportier looks but more importantly, the sporty driving modes and settings. Next to that the Harmann Kardon sound system was important to me (there is a B&O system that is even better, but it’s close to impossible to come by). As for other things the more the better of course, and the car is basically fully loaded. Some stuff I’ll most probably never use, some has surprised me in actually being quite useful, like the gesture controls that didn’t have much faith in. The shortcut buttons BMW offers and that can be used for different functions are also genius.

*A pretty perfect mix of new and old if you ask me*

The car has only been with us a couple of weeks but we’ve had time for a longer stint south, and it’s so far all positive. If you travelled in style in the Range, this is obviously a different experience as you’re driving much more actively, but the BMW is a true pleasure to drive and feels very nimble with notably great steering, and a very well isolated cabin. The suspension may be traditional but is excellent and the engine as mentioned is fantastic, doing so far around 9 l/100km. Finally the size of the car is perfect for our needs. So far so good, and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t continue.

In Switzerland, a 2019 model will have free service until 100.000 km or 2029 (whichever comes first), meaning running it is almost free of service costs. As a new car, it comes with a 5-year full warranty, meaning there’s one year left. As mentioned, the car is really in mint condition, and all this once again seriously makes me wonder who would be 2/3 more to get these wheels as new. Then again I’m happy there is, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a nice Bavarian parked in the garage.

Do I miss the Range Rover? Honestly not really, it’s nice to have a car that you’re really driving again, and a station wagon is in many ways more practical than an SUV. There’s one thing though, which is the feeling of driving something special that you got with the Range and that the BMW doesn’t really give you, being a more “ordinary” car. You felt royal travelling in the Range, and it was a pleasure doing so during two years!

Auto legends: the story of Enzo Ferrari!

On September 10, 2023August 14, 2024 By ChristofferIn Auto Legends, NewsLeave a comment

When one of my readers gave me the idea to the section on legendary personalities from the auto industry, he did so specifically mentioning Ferdinand Piëch, whom I therefore did the first portrait of earlier this summer. Had I come up with the idea myself though, I wouldn’t have started with Piëch. If someone says “automotive legend” to me, there’s really one name that springs to mind before the others, and it is that of Enzo Ferrari. I kind of suspect it may be the same for some of you, so in this second portrait, we’ll have a look at the Commandatore himself, the legendary man who spent his life in northern Italy between Turin, Milan, Maranello and Modena, and whose legend has only grown since he passed away around 35 years ago.

*Young Enzo on an Alfa Romeo, sometime in the 1920’s*

It apparently took little Enzo 10 years from his birth in 1898 to be stung by the racing bug, which happened when his father took him to a car race in Bologna. Enzo had an older brother and early on dreamt of becoming an opera singer, but the Spanish flu that swept across the world at the time killed both Enzo’s older brother and his father, forcing him to grow up quickly and lay his ideas of a singing career to rest. He joined the army in 1917 and was very close to dying from the flu as well shortly thereafter, but survived and was honorably discharged the same year. Rather than becoming a soldier, his big dream was now to work for Fiat, but his application was rejected, which we should perhaps all be grateful for.

Enzo instead went on to work for a company called Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali for whom he also debuted as a racing driver. He took part in a number of races over the coming years with quite some success, before a very defining moment for him but also for the larger automobile world occurred in 1923, when Enzo met the parents of the noble flying ace Francesco Baracca. Baracca had done some heroic flights but later perished in the war, and his parents now invited Enzo to use their son’s coat of arms on his cars for good luck. You’ve guessed it, that coat of arms was none other than a prancing horse, and the Ferrari logo had thus been born.

*The original look, and use of the Cavallino Rampante!*

In 1929, Enzo’s racing career was crowned when he was knighted for his achievements and given the title “Commandatore” (Commander), that would stick with him for the rest of his life. He would end his driving career in the coming years and instead set up the sporting society Scuderia (“team”) Ferrari, a kind of racing club for aspiring drivers with as symbol the prancing horse. The club would a few years later become affiliated to Alfa Romeo, but the association would only last a few years.

Enzo had now also become the proud father of a boy called Dino, but as he didn’t know then, Dino would only have a short life, dying of dystrophy in 1956. Between the Spanish flu, his son’s dystrophy and other terrible viruses and bugs at the time, it doesn’t hurt to remember that modern medicine has done quite a few wonders in curing and exterminating what people died of less than 100 years ago… Dystrophy however, as a genetic disease, is unfortunately one we don’t yet have a remedy to.

*The 125 S was the first Ferrari car to score a race win.*

Just before WW II broke out, Enzo had founded his new company Auto Avio Costruzioni in Modena, later moved to Maranello. As soon as the war was over, Ferrari started racing and the 125 S would score its first victory in 1947. That would be the start of many race wins over the coming years, including notably the Mille Miglia in 1948, the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1949, and the world racing championship both in 1952 and 1953, in both cases with the legendary Alberto Ascari as driver. it was at this time that Ferrari also started producing road cars, already then with the rich and famous in mind.

If the late 40’s were all happy days, the 50’s and early 60’s would be less so. Next to the loss of his son, six Ferrari drivers would be killed between 1955 and 1965, Enzo as head of Ferrari would be charged with manslaughter following the accident in the Mille Miglia in 1957 that I described in my post about the race, and Enzo would also lose several of his top people in the Palace Revolt in 1961, that we looked into in the post on Bizzarrini back in February 2021. These events and of course, especially the death of Dino, changed Enzo into a reclusive man. It was most probably also these events that led him to consider a sale of Ferrari to Ford in the 60’s, that would however never happen. Instead it was Fiat that Enzo sold half of the company to in 1969, because Ferrari by then had serious financial issues.

*The Dino, one of the most beautiful of them all*

At the age of 79, Enzo would resign as president of the company he founded in 1977, but president or not, it was still clear to everyone who was really running the company. A further personal blow was the death of his beloved wife the year after, and finally Enzo himself took his last breath in 1988 at the age of 90, in Maranello that he made so famous. He was later introduced to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, given the 13 world championships and 4.000 race wins achieved over his lifetime.

Next to the racing successes, Enzo of also led the development of Ferrari’s road cars during the decades he was active. Going through them all is a post by itself, but let me pick two of my (and many others’) favorites. The Dino, named in honor of Enzo’s son, is to me one of the most beautiful Ferraris, and the F40, which was the last car Enzo signed off on personally, one of the most spectacular. These and others are shown in the Ferrari gallery in Maranello that it’s well worth visiting if you’re in this beautiful region of Italy, going by a single motto: Forza Ferrari!

Street finds – the Fiat X1/9!

On September 3, 2023September 3, 2023 By ChristofferIn Classic cars, News, The Thrill of OwningLeave a comment

It’s not only the times that are a’changin, as Bob Dylan noted long ago, but last week in central Europe, very much the weather as well. We thus went from several weeks of wonderful summer days and late dinners on the terrace, to 12-13 degrees C and rain. Luckily things are set to improve, however to something more reminiscent of autumn by the looks of it, so I guess I was very lucky to spot a surprisingly exotic street find just before the weather change – the nowadays very rare Fiat X1/9. It’s no doubt a car that is best enjoyed in the summer, but it’s also a great testament to Bob Dylan’s changing times, as we’ll see!

*Angular body, engine right behind the seats and thus perfect weight distribution!*

The Fiat X1/9 is also very much the flashy family member in an otherwise quite boring group of 60’s and 70’s Fiat cars. It’s the successor to the Fiat 850, a four-cylinder, 60’s creation that looked like a bun (although to be fair, the Spider looked better than the coupé…). But it also belongs to the Fiat 128 family where the rights to the four-door sedan were later sold by Fiat to Soviet Lada, and which most therefore associate with old east-west spy movies.

Contrast both of those with the very futuristic X1/9, and it’s not only the model name that stands out. The angular design with the pop-up headlights was a design that would be if not copied, then definitely repeated in many other 70’s cars, such as the Lotus Esprit and of course the Lamborghini Countach. The X1/9 didn’t look anything like the rest of the family, but somewhat surprisingly Bertone had still designed all siblings, proving design houses can have good and less good days.

*Pop-up headlights were of course a must in the 70’s!*

As spectacular as the looks was the fact that the engine was right behind the seats, making the X1/9 Fiat’s first mid-engined car. Unfortunately though, that engine came from the boring part of the family, meaning at the launch in 1972 a 1.3 liter, 4-cylinder with a very modest 75 hp, coupled to a 4-speed manual box. In 1980 that grew to 1.5 liters, another 10 hp and five gears. Of course, at around 900 kg it’s fair to say that they X1/9 was a light-weight, but I think we can safely conclude that it looked about five times faster than it really was. That was of course especially true in the US, where emission regulations made the engines even weaker than in Europe.

It wasn’t only emission standards that became strict on in the 70’s, the same was very much the case for safety, again especially in the US. Fiat had actually built the X1/9 with North America in mind and had thus tried to adapt to the coming rules during the development process. Thanks to the mid-mounted engine and the targa body rather than a full convertible, the X1/9 was one of very few cars had no problem complying with what became the new US safety standards.

This gave Fiat’s faltering US a welcome boost, especially since the small coupé was far cheaper than other, somewhat comparable sports cars. Everything was going swell until the mid-70’s when those safety standards were developed further, forcing Fiat to fit what must be the ugliest bumpers in automobile history to the X1/9. Luckily these were later re-adapted to what can be seen on my street find, which is most probably a US import. Around 165.000 X1/9’s were produced in total between 1972 and 1988, and no less than 3/4 of those were sold in the US.

*The garden hedge – ugliest bumper ever seen!*

As observant readers may have noticed on the first picture, the logo isn’t that of Fiat, but rather of designer Bertone. The reason is to be found back in 1982, when Fiat wanted to discontinue the X1/9 and pull out of the US market, and Bertone therefore bought the rights and continued to produce the car in its name all through 1988. Not much changed on the car in the last years but Bertone would improve both equipment and materials, making the Bertone-branded cars such as the one I saw, the most attractive ones.

So what about the changin’ times? Quite obviously, it’s the concept of a sports car weighing in at less than a ton, making even a small, 1.5 litre engine with less than 100 hp if not plenty, then at least enjoyable enough. This is obviously very far from where we are today and if it sounds like your thing, you may think that with 165.000 cars produced, finding one will be easy. That’s however not the case as very few have survived – estimates talk about less than 1.000 cars in the US. Few are thus up for sale, but those that are tend to come in around EUR 15-20.000 in Europe.

*Cars from 1980 had five speeds and (slightly) more power*

The only question left to solve is then that around the name, because for a company who have typically been naming cars with real names or with numbers relating to the engine size, how did X1/9 come about? It turns out that prototype cars at Fiat were called X1, with the second number indicating the prototype in the order it was developed counting from a certain start date. The small Autobianchi A112 was for example called X1/2 as prototype, and the X1/9 was thus prototype number nine. It was however the only model to retain the prototype name in actual production and why that was, no one seems to know. But who cares? With the wind in your hair and the humming of a four-cylinder right behind you, you’ll have better things to think about!

Finally driving the Macan!

On August 27, 2023August 27, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, Test drivesLeave a comment

Wendelin Wiedeking is the very German name of one of the most important CEO’s in Porsche’s history. Wiedeking took over the helm in 1993 when Porsche was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy with a stock market value of only EUR 300m, and had a decisive role in turning things around and increasing that to EUR 27bn 15 years later when he left his post. Interestingly he also did so being paid a (relatively) modest base salary with a significant bonus component, directly tied to Porsche’s profitability. Needless to say, this made Wiedeking both a respected and a rich man, and one of the main drivers behind his and Porsche’s success was no doubt reading the market correctly and launching the Cayenne in 2002, as Porsche’s first SUV.

*Wiedeking saved Porsche before being forced out in 2017*

Until then Porsche had only built sports cars, but Wiedeking and his colleagues had noticed that next to their 911/Boxster, most people also had a family car, which increasingly tended to be an SUV. Wiedeking failed to see why that second car shouldn’t be a Porsche as well and from its launch, the Cayenne quickly became crucial in Porsche’s recovery. Without it, Porsche may have gone the same way as Bentley would have without the Continental GT that we looked at a few weeks ago. And to get to this week’s topic, without the Cayenne there would not have been its smaller brother, the Macan, that I had the opportunity to try out last week, and that today is Porsche’s best selling model!

*A good-looking car with an almost coupé-like roof line*

The Macan was launched in 2014 as part of the trend towards smaller SUV’s, and shares its platform with the Audi Q5. A major facelift first took place in 2018 and then again in 2021 and engines will vary with the series and production years. Essentially though, good first series cars with all engine types are now to be had around EUR 50.000 in most markets, while later series are still more expensive. Even for the first series however, this means that a Macan has held its value better than many other cars in its segment, including the Cayenne. The most visible difference between the first two series is the light bar between the rear lights and the updated infotainment screen, but it’s only the still produced third series that saw a more complete overhaul of both exterior and interior.

I had the opportunity to test drive a Macan Turbo from 2015, i.e. the first series, and a GTS from 2020, i.e. the second series. The two engines are a good combination and the two different cars also illustrate the evolution of the Macan quite nicely. The Turbo in the first series produced 400 hp and the GTS in the second 380 hp, however with only slightly less torque (520 Nm vs 550 for the Turbo). Both are also six-cylinders since I personally still struggle at the idea of a Macan, or any Porsche for that matter, with only four cylinders – not to talk about a diesel… In the current series, the GTS is the top-of-the-range engine with 434 hp, as the Turbo has been discontinued.

*The light bar between the rear lights was added in the second series*

The cars have far more in common than setting them apart, starting with the excellent driving position. You sit low and tucked in in an excellent seat, in a position which doesn’t resemble that of any other SUV, not even the Cayenne. Those who like the sports car feel and don’t have too many kilos around the waist will like both the position and the seat, and everyone will love how the Macan drives. This is by far the most car-like SUV I have ever driven, with a precise steering with lots of feel, and very little and well controlled body roll. We’re not in 911 territory, but for the type of car, it’s really good.

What’s also very good are the engines. Both are supercharged with one turbo for the Turbo and two for the GTS, and you can’t fault either of them. The GTS develops power almost like a naturally aspirated engine would, but the Turbo is also very well behaved with a barely perceptible turbo lag and the sense that it’s more powerful. The PDK box does an excellent and imperceptible job with both engines, being very quick on kick-downs and otherwise mostly unnoticeable.

*The less options you have, the more black buttons there will be…*

Looking round the interior and especially the center console, you notice a very large number of buttons for different functions. The way they’re organized means there will be blank buttons in almost all cars for options that haven’t been selected, which looks a bit cheap. It’s only the current series that changed this into screen-based system, which still isn’t the clearest however. Be careful though, as of all the German automakers, Porsche is the one offering the least as standard equipment, so if you pick up a pre-owned car, make sure the first owner ticked the right boxes!

Interior build quality is otherwise good in both cars, however with lots of relatively cheap looking plastic in the rear, especially in the first series, the second being a bit better. Rear seats are also quite cramped, especially in terms of head room, and behind them, luggage space is on the smaller side, especially in height. This makes the car a non-starter for us given we need to fit a dog cage which there wouldn’t be a chance of doing here. The other argument I have against the car comes back to that excellent resale value, as for a prospective buyer, that means there are quite a few alternatives at the respective price points, depending on your needs and preferences.

In summary, a Macan with the right engine is not only the sportiest, but to my mind probably the best small SUV in the market – and of course it carries the Porsche badge! Even the by now almost 10-year old Macan Turbo I drove felt very solid, and the fact that the difference in looks to later series is small means it’s also aged quite well. It’s a neat car that, if it covers your needs for space, will serve you well, and obviously fit very well alongside the 911 or Boxster you may already have in the garage. If not, perhaps it’s time to get one of those too, to make up the Wiedeking duo?

Pretty little lies…

On August 20, 2023August 20, 2023 By ChristofferIn Electrical vehicles, ev's, News, Opinion1 Comment

You remember Dieselgate? If not, it was the emissions scandal in 2015 when it emerged that Volkswagen, keen to sell more diesel cars in the US and doing so under the slogan “clean diesel”, had manipulated the software of several diesel engine types so that these produced less emissions only during test cycles, not in real life thereafter. It emerged that a total of 11 million cars with the same software had been sold in other regions as well, notably in Europe, and after a few months of management denying any knowledge of anything at all (What? Do we build cars??), the group’s chairman Martin Winterkorn had to resign.

*Martin Winterkorn having a bad day at work…*

Of course this was nowhere close to the first scandal in the car industry. To stay in modern times, just the year before, issues emerged around GM’s management after it had delayed a major recall regarding ignition switches which could lead to the engine turning off while driving. In 2009, Toyota scared the world as some of its cars accelerated unintentionally, which of course no one at management level knew anything about. And in 2016 and 2019, as if Dieselgate had never happened, Mitsubishi and Fiat Chrysler were caught violating emission regulations or lying about fuel consumption. The list goes on and on, and now it seems we’re there again. This time however, it’s the stock market darling that has been found with not one but both hands very deep in the battery p… sorry, cookie jar.

*Toyotas accelerated by themselves, long before self-driving…*

As Reuters uncovered a couple of weeks ago, since about 10 years, Tesla has been programming their cars to show rosy range projections and use these in their marketing. More precisely, the software was set to show a longer, unrealistic range until the battery was half depleted, and then to switch to a more realistic one. The result (and desired effect) was of course that customers bought cars believing they would have a longer range than they actually did. Many of them would then complain to Tesla and book an appointment to investigate the issue. In between the contact and the appointment however, Tesla would tell them they had performed a remote diagnostic on their car, that everything was fine with the battery, and that the appointment was therefore cancelled.

With time, the number of complaining customers apparently became so great so that Tesla created a separate team with the task of killing complaints by proceeding as described, something that saved Tesla around USD 1000 per cancelled appointment. Apparently it was common for the responsible team to sound xylophones and dance on their desks for every cancellation. Personally this reminds me of “The Wolf of Wall Street” which is an excellent movie, but perhaps not the culture the renewables’ hero company is meant to portray. In a test from April this year by the engineering organization SAE International, it was shown that most EV manufacturers lie about range, but none more so than Tesla, whose three tested cars in reality had a range that was on average 26% inferior to what was claimed. Ouch.

The range of an EV will vary with conditions, driving style and temperature, as will that of a combustion engine, however then mostly depending on driving style. This leads to the two important differences with EV’s we all know of: firstly, that low temperatures limit the EV range disproportionally (and this by the way also if the car is parked in the cold during for example your ski holiday, as a friend of mine discovered in the French Alps last year…). Secondly, the fact that charging, although slowly improving, is still not comparable to filling up at a petrol station, neither in speed, nor in availability. What Reuters uncovered however helps solve the mystery around Tesla’s superior range claims. As it turns out, it had little to do with more efficient battery integration as a consequence of internal battery production, and more with dirty business practices, not too far from Dieselgate. Who would have thought?

Staying on the electrification theme, one thing that has been noticeable in Europe this summer is an increased number of EV’s from Chinese brands. It seems these are making rapid progress in Europe, doubling their market share from 4 to 8% (as a group) of EV sales since 2021. The biggest brands include MG (yes, sorry to say it’s Chinese these days), BYD (short for Build Your Dreams, the second largest EV manufacturer globally after Tesla) and Lynk & Co (owned by Geely). My understanding is that of these, only BYD is present in the US, however building buses rather than selling cars. In Europe however, given none of these brands have any brand recognition, they sell on the only argument of being cheaper than Western EV’s. And now Western car executives are getting nervous, promising to offer cheaper their own, cheaper EV’s going forward.

*This is what an MG looks like these days*

This means that range numbers, real or invented, will not be improving in the coming years. You see, the costliest part of any EV is the massive, 400-600 kg battery pack. It’s also the most controversial, as I’ve illustrated on this blog with a focus on cobalt, but where you could say the same about many other materials as well. Many of the metals in current lithium-ion batteries will quickly become a scarce resource since we are nowhere near extracting the quantities required for the electrification of the world, especially since the green movement in their infinite wisdom do everything they can to stop any additional mining. This also leaves us at the mercy of great countries like China and Russia, where China already sits on the extraction of a lot of these resources, and something like 15 of the 18 major cobalt mines in the Congo. When metals get scarce, China will of course make sure their manufacturers are supplied first.

*Lynk & Co, becoming increasingly frequent on European roads*

This bodes well for Chinese EV manufacturers, however given it takes decades to build a brand, they will keep selling on being cheaper for the foreseeable future, meaning keeping battery costs down. The way to do that is to substitute metals where possible, especially cobalt (horray!), against cheaper alternatives. Substitutes are however not as performing as metals used so far, meaning less stability and less range. Assuming Western manufacturers get their hands on enough metals to be part of the race at all, and that they indeed wish to build cheaper cars, they will obviously have to do the same. This will not change until we have some kind of technological revolution in batteries, which looks to be well beyond 2030.

The moral of the story is thus that EV builders are no more honest than traditional car manufacturers (if anyone really thought so), but also that Chinese EV’s will tend to make EV’s globally even less competitive. That they contribute nothing whatsoever to a cleaner planet is well known to those of you reading this blog regularly – otherwise please see here, here and here. In Germany, the MG ZS or Lynk pictured above are yours for EUR 35.000-40.000. They will take you something like 300 km, best case. The same money will buy you a VW Tiguan, equal in size, better in quality, with a modern, low emission petrol engine taking you twice as far and then needing five minutes to fill up. It’s also built in the West, not by underpaid workers without rights in a Communist dictatorship. Seems like a sensible choice to me!

Bentley Continental GT – now or never!

On August 13, 2023August 13, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, The Dream Garage, The Thrill of Owning2 Comments

When I bought my 2015 Range Rover a couple of years ago (for which I’m sad to say, I’m not even close to finding a satisfactory replacement, but thanks to those of you who have helped me trying!), there were a lot of people telling me how it was no doubt the beginning of the end, provided long assessments of everything that would break and how the car would drive me in financial ruin. Of course most of these had never actually owned a Range but of course they knew anyway, especially since the car had around 100.000 km on the clock.

As mentioned previously, there were a number of factors that made me confident with the purchase, most importantly the selling garage’s excellent reputation, the fact that they were willing to extend a two-year full warranty, and that I knew that the car had mostly been used for longer distances. Cars are made for driving, not being parked in a garage, so in many instances a car with more km’s can be preferable to one with less. To that came the fact that the car was extremely well maintained and that the Land Rover V8 is not only a very solid engine that is just about run in at 100.000 km’s, but also quite an economical one. I’m currently averaging at around 12l / 100 km, roughly 8l less than what the self-proclaimed experts told me would be the case. This is of course mostly long distance, but that’s what I bought the car for.

*Best car I ever had – and it hasn’t ruined me in any way!*

Of course I could still have had issues and no, Land Rover certainly doesn’t have the best reputation for reliability. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, just like I was 10 years ago when I owned an Alfa 166 a few years without a single issue. The fact of the matter is however that now, two years after I bought the Range, I’ve forgotten where I put the warranty papers as not a single thing has gone wrong. The lesson there is certainly not that I’m never wrong, but rather that here as well as in other areas, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear, but rather do your own research and form your own opinion.

Against that background, let’s look at a similar case to my Range but one that no doubt will cause severe cardiac issues for every naysayer. Because if the Range would drive one to financial ruin, this machine would probably do so with the rest of your family and neighbors as well. It’s a car that was actually suggested as replacement to me as alternative to the Range, but that unfortunately doesn’t really fit the bill. Because in terms of bang for the buck, there can’t be much that beats an early version of the by now classic Bentley Continental GT.

*The first series launched in 2003 – slightly heavy, but an elegant design*

11 years ago, in the early days of this blog when it was still in Swedish, my co-blogger Sven drove a Continental GT after its first face-lift (more on that below), and provided a rather sober assessment of the car not being for him (he’s a fan of Maranello machines) and also not really being worth the money as new. That I won’t argue with, but now 11 years have passed since the face-lift and 20 since the new Continental GT was premiered, so that second point has certainly changed. This makes it worth revisiting the case, also since I had the opportunity to drive an early Continental GT last week.

For memory, Volkswagen bought Bentley in 1998 and five years later, launched the Continental GT as the first Bentley ever to be produced not by hand by elderly men in coats up in Crewe, but rather by modern production techniques to a budget. Those last words are important as they certainly contributed to putting quite a few Audi parts in the car as part of the process, which made the true enthusiasts reject the Continental right away as some kind of pimped Audi not worthy of the brand.

*The permanent 4WD ensures as much fun on snow as on road!*

I think a more sober assessment makes it pretty clear that without the VW take-over and the launch of the Continental GT, the Bentley brand would be long gone. Instead there are today 4000 car builders working in Crewe, compared to around 1500 at the time of the take-over. It’s also worth noting that with every new series of the Continental, it has become less and less Audi – at least in the visible parts. Here we’ll focus on the two first series, i.e. not including the current one launched in 2018, as these cars are still quite pricey.

To me, the Contintental has always been a good-looking and timeless creation. Seen from the side it’s a testament to many classic Bentleys, and the front is just about aggressive enough. Its least good angle is certainly the rear which lacks a bit of finesse, something that didn’t really change until the current series. The first version was produced until 2011 and was only available with the W12 engine that VW had previously featured in the Phaeton (another car that can be had for not much these days but that contrary to the Bentley, there is no reason to get…). It put out 560 hp with much, but not all the refinement of a more traditional V12.

*Yes, there are some Audi switches, but this is still a beautiful interior!*

All cars had four-wheel drive and were also available as convertible, and the Speed that appeared in 2007 along with the Supersports from 2009 deserve a special mention. The former saw power increased to 608 hp and rode lower on larger wheels, the latter had performance pushed even further to 630 hp, which along with a 110 kg weight reduction made it the fastest Bentley ever at the time, with a top speed of 330 km/h.

The Series II, launched in 2012, introduced the double-turbo, four-liter V8 as alternative to the W12. At 500 hp it was less powerful but the car was also lighter and still capable of a top speed of over 300 km/h. Cosmetic changes on the outside were limited but the inside showed an improved cabin less reminiscent of Ingolstadt. Above all though, the ride, handling and steering were clearly improved over the first version. As with the first series, various special editions including Speed and Supersports were launched through the years.

*The Supersports is a bit more bad boy, notably sitting lower on bigger wheels*

I drove a W12 from 2008 this week and driving-wise, I can only concur with what my friend Sven observed 11 years ago, which basically boils down to the fact that you can’t hide 2.3 tons. That means the Continental in all versions, possibly with the exception of the Supersports, is far more a GT than a true sports car. That’s however something it does very well. Comfort is opulent, the ride is sublime, isolation from the outer world almost total.

Of course anything in terms of infotainment feels very old, but you don’t really think about it and if you do, there are after-market options for most things. Leather and wood however both age pretty well, and that’s what dominates the interior. This is a car that will transport two in utter comfort on longer journeys, be it in summer or winter, and that will allow you to stretch your legs on more or less frequent fuel stops, depending on which engine you opt for…

*The rear is the least flattering angle of the first two series*

An early, well-maintained first series Continental GT with decent mileage will today be yours from EUR 25-30.000 in Europe, a second series is around twice that, whether with the V8 or the W12. For the first series, that means around 10-20% of the car’s price as new. Of course a Continental in any version, but especially as W12, will never be a cheap car to run, and buying one should always come with a budget for running costs and unforseen repairs. If you buy a first series and set EUR 10-20.000 aside for unforseen repairs however, you will sleep well at night knowing you’ll be able to cover most things that can come up.

The main reason that a Continental GT is an easier purchase than with the Ferraris and Porsches we love, is that most of these have previously been owned by elderly people with money who don’t know what a track day is, read the manual from the first to the last page, never rev the car beyond 2000 rpm and follow the service intervals meticulously. And it that wasn’t enough, I would also think that the fact that Audi bought Bentley five years before the Continental was launched bodes pretty well. This certainly made the modern Continental more reliable than its predecessor, that cost EUR 120.000 more as new, 12 years earlier!

*The original Continental was big, heavy, handbuilt and expensive!*

Cars like the Continental and engines like the W12, or even the double-turbo V8, belong to the past as we all know, and will never be built again. It’s very difficult to know which way the car world will evolve in the coming years but at this price point, if you’re into big, opulent GT cars, then a Continental of the first or second series is a wonderful proposition. It may come at a bargain price but will always look like a million bucks, but if you do your research carefully, chances are it doesn’t require you to be a millionaire. All in all, that’s not a bad proposition, and this is clearly a case of now or never!

Classic races – the 24 hours of Le Mans!

On August 6, 2023August 6, 2023 By ChristofferIn Classic races, NewsLeave a comment

Le Mans is a quiet, French town of about 150.000 inhabitants in the western part of the country. It has a few churches and monuments and is, I’m sure, a pleasant place to live, however one that for anyone without connection to it would go unnoticed. If it weren’t for one thing that is, namely one of the most famous car races in the world: the 24 hours of Le Mans. Every year, the event engages pretty much every single family in the town, now as well as in the past, in various volunteering roles at and around the race. The whole region around Le Mans thus breathes the famous 24 hours, to the extent you can’t imagine the town without the race.

A few weeks ago in June the 24 hours celebrated its 100 years of existence, a time over which the race has seen not only typical racing bravery but also several evolutions in terms of brands, car types and even different fuels that have won the race. Famous drivers have proven their talent in Le Mans, and the race has figured in several movies. This week therefore, let’s look closer at the race that for 100 years has been, and today still is, one of the leading car races of the world!

*Due to the different classes, there’s a great mix of cars on the track at the same time!*

Everything started in the early 1920’s when the French gentlemen Charles Faroux and Georges Durand, the latter president of the Automobile Club de l’Est (ACO), decided to organize a new car race in the region in the form of a “confrontation” between the leading French car makers of the time. This would constitute a rebirth of racing after the first world war, but also after a number of other races and, well, pretty bad accidents before it. The ACO remains the organizer until this day, however the confrontation initially imagined is now of course no different from other races, if it weren’t for the distance and the format, i.e. the 24 hours of racing. The initial idea in 1923 not to let the winner count as such until he had won the race again the subsequent year was however dropped. Even for the French with their penchant for the slightly complicated, this was apparently a bit too much…

The 24 hours is driven on a 17 km (11-mile) track called Circuit de la Sarthe, a combination of normal roads and racing sections that in spite of going through a number of changes through the years, has remained largely the same since 1923. It’s thus quite a long track and one where more or less every curve is known to enthusiasts. Landmarks include the Dunlop corner and footbridge, allowing spectators to cross above the track at the height of the curve, the Tertre Rouge curve, named after the red soil where it’s located and where many races have been lost, as well as the famous Mulsanne straight, 5.5 km (3.5 mile) long where in 1988, a speed record of 407 km/h was set, leading to a couple of chicanes being added to the track to make sure that record stands forever…

*The famous Circuit de la Sarthe, close to Le Mans*

What is special about the race is of course that it’s run over 24 hours and won by the team which in that time covers the longest distance. Nowadays with modern cars, this leads to winning teams covering more than 5000 kms during the race, far longer than most other somehow comparable events, such as the Indy 500. Above all though, and especially in earlier days, there’s quite a bit of tactic involved in correctly weighing outright speed with the cars’ durability, the longevity of brakes and tires, and of course also drivers, who tend to switch at least every two hours.

If the race initially was a confrontation between different car brands, those days are long passed and now it’s of course dedicated race cars that compete in different classes. It has however remained a largely European affair both in terms of drivers and teams, without forgetting however the Ford GT40 that counts among the most successful cars historically. Some others include the 1970 Porsche 917, driven in 1969 by a certain Ferdinand Piëch and also featured in the film “Le Mans” with Steve McQueen from 1971, the Audi R18 from 2013 which with different drive trains from diesel to hybrid became a winner, and also the 1995 McLaren F1 GTR, considered McLaren’s best race car ever, also since it was fundamentally a street car. The list could of course be made much, much longer.

*The 917 was Porsche’s first Le Mans winner – a true legend!*

In terms of the brave men driving those and other cars, these come in teams as no one would manage to drive the full 24 hours on his own. These days teams typically consist of three drivers and of these, no one has been more successful than Tom Kristensen, referred to as “Mr. Le Mans”. The very fast Dane won his first race in 1997 and went on to win another eight races until 2013. A certain Jacky Ickx won six races in the 60’s and 70’s while racing in F1 at the same time. He shared three of those victories with team mate Derek Bell, who appeared in no less than 26 races until 1996. Again the list could be made much longer, but in general, accumulating multiple victories wasn’t possible in the early years, such were the strains both on machines and drivers.

As for the races, it’s of course hard to do them justice in writing, given they run over 24 hours in day- and night time and all kinds of conditions, quite often including heavy rain. To name at least a few however, 1933 counts as the first tightly fought Le Mans race. Tazio Nuvolari and his team mate Raymond Sommer were set to win on their Alfa Romeo 8C when, shortly before the end, their fuel tank started leaking. Having repaired the leak with chewing gum (!), the caught up with he two other Alfas that had passed them and won by a margin of 400 meters – which was however plenty compared to Jacky Ickx’s margin of 120 metres in 1969!

*Jacky Ickx in 1969. The running start was skipped a few years later.*

In 1988, Jaguar scored its first Le Mans victory in 30 years, however with only a two-minute margin to Porsche, the dominant team at the time, sounding far more than it really was. As became known after the race, the last Jaguar driver Raul Boesel noticed a strange sound from the gearbox towards the end and decided to leave the car in fourth gear for the remainder of the race. He also turned off the radio, not really feeling like discussing his tactic with the team. He finally held off the chasing Porsche but had the race gone on for five more minutes, the roles may well have been reversed.

Le Mans is however noteworthy as one of very few, if not the only race format where diesel cars have been successful. This is of course linked to their fuel economy, potentially leading to fewer stops. Both Audi and Peugeot have won the race with diesel engines, and their struggle in 2008 counts as the greatest Le Mans race ever. Audi’s highly successful R10 TDI was getting old by then, and the more modern Peugeot 908 HDi was the favorite. However the Audi was better in the rain that came in the middle of the night, expected by Audi but not by Peugeot. Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello on the Audi lost the lead again when it dried up, but a short rain spell towards the end where Peugeot chose to leave their car on slicks finally made the difference, allowing “Mr. Le Mans” Kristensen to score on of his nine wins.

100 years later, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is thus alive and well and will hopefully remain so for many years to come. Teams and drivers will vary, as will fuel types. And if you happen to be in western France in June and feel like doing an all-nighter on a racing track, there’s certainly no better place to go than Le Mans!

When the going gets (really) tough!

On July 30, 2023August 28, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, The Dream Garage1 Comment

Are you a fan of classic, serious all-terrain vehicles like the Land Rover Defender or the Mercedes G-Wagon? Are you of the opinion that everything was better in the old days, that the new Defender is far too comfortable, and that the G-Wagon has become a status symbol for people with no interest whatsoever in its off-road capabilities? In both cases (and especially the latter) you have my sympathy, and I’m therefore very happy to say that this week, we’ll lay your worries to rest by talking about not only a new car, but actually a new brand: Ineos and its new Grenadier. And before going any further, let me thank reader John who made me aware of this new machine!

*You won’t see too many of these on the high street!*

In the unlikely event that Ineos rings a bell, it’s most probably not as a car company but rather as a chemical business, or indeed a road cycling team. It was founded by majority owner and long-term Defender fan Sir John Ratcliffe who may well have been one of the least happy people when the old Defender had to go and was to be replaced with, in his view, a chick city SUV.

When it became clear that there wouldn’t be a “real” successor to the Defender and after Jaguar Land Rover had refused to sell the rights to the original Defender to Ratcliffe, in 2016 he instead approached long-term Ineos employee Dirk Heilmann, today CEO of Ineos’ car business, telling him he wanted to create a true Defender successor. Seven years later I think we can safely conclude that Ratcliffe and Heilmann succeeded, making the Grenadier the closest thing to what a more offroad-focused Defender successor would have looked like!

*Unfortunately, you need to open the small door also to open the larger one….*

So what is then the Grenadier, built since 2022 in France in the old Smart factory in Hambach, close to the German border? Starting on the outside, there is no doubt that what you’re looking at is a Defender at heart, however with subtle differences and improvements. An example are the lateral roof windows that have been replaced with bars to which various pieces of kit can be attached. An even better one is the trunk or rather rear luggage door that has been split into a smaller and a larger part, so that for small items you only need to open the smaller door. Otherwise the Grenadier comes in a few different body styles and trim levels, but what they all have in common is a body with short overhangs, sharp angles and large windows. It’s practical, provides a great overview of the car, and has a strong resemblance to the you-know-what.

The utilitarian aspect is carried over to the inside which is dominated by a very large, center console. Apparently Ineos have looked at trucks and airplanes when designing the different buttons and switches, and consequently created an interior without shiny surfaces to touch, preferring controls of a size that allows you to operate them with your gloves on. The infotainment screen above the center console is actually a touchscreen, but one that can also be operated by a control in the middle. The unit allows you to save off-road maps on it for when you leave the beaten path, but also offers practicalities like Android Auto and Apple Car Play. A bit strange is of course the absence of a gauge cluster, and also the switches next to your head, which may be cool but are probably quite difficult to read off when driving…

*You can have leather seats – if you must…*

All Grenadiers will have one of two six-cylinder BMW engines, either a diesel with 249 hp or a petrol with 285 hp. These are coupled to an eight-speed auto box from ZF and permanent all-wheel drive with as standard a central differential. Helping ensure the Grenadier is used as intended is also the fact that both axels are rigid, meaning on-road comfort risks being rather limited. The Italian supplier Carraro is otherwise specialized in axels for agricultural machines and trucks, which can clearly be seen on the size of that central differential…. You have been warned! Both engines will need to work hard though as the Grenadier weighs in excess of 2800 kg, some 600 kg more than a new Defender 110.

The launch of the Grenadier was delayed by Covid, having initially been planned for 2021. However, the company started taking pre-orders last that year and now, it has established a network of sale points, or rather agents, in different European countries and the US. The process is for clients to order their Grenadier directly over the website, and then pick it up at an agent who also acts as service point. And even if the price has increased from that initially planned and advertised, the car, given how capable it is, remains quite a bargain. In Europe a well-equipped Grenadier will come to EUR 90-100.000. By coincidence, that’s more or less aligned with the new Defender, so at least that have that in common…

It’s not everyday that a new car brand is launched and certainly not one that builds true terrain vehicles rather than yet another EV. Somehow however, compared to some others, there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that Ineos will succeed. Ratcliffe is a dedicated man able to secure the financing, but he has also surrounded himself with a team of experienced car people, making the whole setup look very promising.

That said, recent tests indicate that the Grenadier is by no means a perfect car. To name a few things to be aware of before you sign on the dotted line, the steering is very much set up for offroad use, meaning there’s close to no self-centering on road. I’ve already meantioned the weight, which obviously means it’s quite thirsty and generally cumbersome, and it also has a terrible turning circle of around 13.5 metres, 2 metres more than the Defeinder. Differentials are manual, not electronic like in modern terrain cars, adding to the complication. This is explained by Ineos’s wish to create an analogue car – but does it really make sense to ignore modern technology when it improves things? Buyers will need to be the judges of that.

The plan is to produce 40-50.000 cars per year, which given what we know so far seems reasonable, and should they succeed, you can count on further body styles and perhaps also engine options being added to the range. There’s thus little doubt that the Grenadier is the real thing when the going gets really tough. The question is perhaps if it’s also the real thing on the road… Expect to see fewer around than that shiny G-Wagon or the new Defender, but as a Grenadier owner, every time you cross one of those, both of you will know who’s the real king!

Street finds: the Jaguar F-Type!

On July 23, 2023July 23, 2023 By ChristofferIn News, The Dream Garage1 Comment

The first street find in a while is actually more a forest find, pictured above next to my son’s Lupo GTI that I used earlier this week for the drive to the local exercise trail. It was when I came back from my run that I saw the F-Type from the angle depicted. Looking at it from the side, I was struck by how nicely the lines flow, something I hadn’t noticed before (my temporary lack of oxygene may have contributed to the revelation moment…). An F-Type isn’t that rare but it’s also not something you see everyday, and given it has its 10-year anniversary this year, I thought we’d have a closer look at the car that was Jaguar’s first two-seater in 50 years!

When the F-type was presented in 2013, it was about 30 years after Jaguar had recognized the need for a replacement for the quickly aging, and by then too big XJ-S, that I wrote about three years ago. Two prototypes were thus developed already in the early 80’s, but then Jaguar was taken over by Ford a few years later, meaning plans and priorities changed. The prototypes instead became the Aston Martin DB9 and Jaguar XK8, which however, at least in theory, are four-seaters. Various other events, notably Jaguar’s decision to enter Formula 1, meant that they F-Type wasn’t shown to the world until 2013, and was then presented as the “spiritual successor” to the legendary E-Type.

*Nice proportions with a touch of E-Type Coupé seen from the rear*

Built since 10 years by now, it’s clear that apart from having only two seats, there’s not much the E- and F-types have in common, although the rear of the coupé does bear a certain resemblance to its predecessor. To me the coupé is also the one to go for since it looks far better than the convertible. Designer Ian Callum produced a very well-proportioned and good-looking sports car seen from the side and the rear, with the front being a bit too anonymous. The convertible was launched a few months ahead of the coupé in 2013, and both versions received a face lift in 2020 that notably improves the front.

*The face lift version from 2020 has a more aggressive front*

The inside is well in line with the F-type’s natural role as a GT car, and anyone familiar with Land Rover and Jaguar interiors from this period will quickly find their mark. Engine-wise, these days the range starts with a 2-litre, 4-cylinder engine with 300 hp, in line with the general trend of less somehow being more. When the car was launched though, it was with two versions of a 3-litre, straight six or alternatively, with the well-known Jaguar/Land Rover 5-litre V8. The V6 versions could be had with a six speed manual rather than the more common 8-speed automatic box, and the stronger version was also available with all-wheel, rather than rear-wheel drive.

At 340 and 380 hp, the strongest six-cylinder was 115 horses down on the V8 (at 495 hp) at launch. It was also slightly, but only sightly less loud. Because if there’s one thing the F-type has in common with the E-type after all, it’s the very loud engine, or rather exhaust sound. With the V8 under the hood, forget all about sneaking away early in the morning without waking up the neighbors…

This is obviously the same engine I have in my Range, where it’s however so discreet that you sometimes wish they would have allowed for slightly more exhaust noise to come through. The F-Type is in other words a nice testament to the power of a good exhaust! If however nothing’s too loud for you, then be aware there’s also an SVR version of the F-Type, adding another 80 hp to a total of 575 hp and producing even better cornering speeds. In any case, power and sound will be plentiful!

Even if the F-type won’t reach the legendary status of the E-type, the good-looking and driving-wise, well-balanced and well behaving two-seater is quite popular, with second-hand values holding up pretty well. That it appeals to other buyers than those wanting a complement to the family Discovery was clearly shown a few years after the launch, at which point 75% of all F-Type buyers came from other car brands.

*The roadster doesn’t look bad, but less special than the coupé*

Well-maintained coupés and convertibles trade between EUR 35-50.000 in Europe depending on mileage, the face-lift version will start at about 10.000 more for the 300 hp, two-litre version. If you’re more into nice weekend cruises than track days and can’t withstand a roaring engine, the F-type is probably a good alternative – and one that requires for less maintenance than its “spiritual predecessor”!

The latest from the car world!

On July 16, 2023July 16, 2023 By ChristofferIn ev's, News, Opinion3 Comments

It’s been a while since we did a roundup of news from the car world, which isn’t because there hasn’t been any, on the contrary, rather because there have been other things to write about. There’s of course a lot happening that you could theoretically write about all the time, but a few more specific things happened this week, making me think it’s high time to provide you with a very arbitrary selection of the most important recent news from all our favourite pasttime. Let’s dig in!

To start of on a positive note, Aston Martin‘s owner Lawrence Stroll, pictured above in his usual, low-key style, apparently let the Aston team know in no uncertain words that the new DB12, expected next year, was a tad too expensive to feature a 10-year old infotainment system from Mercedes. This was of course the case both in the DB11 and in the DBX, as I wrote about back in Oct -21. I don’t think Lawrence reads this blog but if he would, then there’s a small chance both the DB11 and DBX are, by any objective measure.

*No, it’s not a DB11, it’s the new DB12. Why change a winning look?*

Given Aston sources not only the outdated infotainment unit but also the even more important engine from Mercedes/AMG, Lawrence’s hope was probably to get his hands on the MBUX system, but that didn’t happen. Instead therefore, Aston have developed their own system, which according to the first test drives is a pretty laggy thing, quite a bit off the MBUX or BMW’s latest unit. So getting better, but still not there. The DB12 does look very promising though, more on that next year. And for those not interested in infotainment but rather in driving, expect quickly deteriorating second-hand prices on the DB11!

You may have seen that the DB12 will no longer feature a V12, in spite of its name, but only an AMG V8. That’s however plenty compared to what Mercedes have put in their new E63. This is a theme I’m sensitive about, having owned, and on a day where the starts really didn’t align, sold, an E63 2014 with the fantastic, bi-turbo V8. The E63’s before and after have until now all had V8’s, but the new one doesn’t. Neither does it have a V6. It has precisely four cylinders, combined to an electric engine. One of the most legendary four-door power cars out there has become a four-cylinder hybrid…

That could theoretically have been fine even if it’s a lot to take in. Some hybrids work great though, such as the V60 Polestar that I drove the other week. It didn’t convince me but it wasn’t the fault of the hybrid solution. Trouble is, again according to early reports, the rest of the new E63 isn’t that great either, especially the chassis, which obviously makes the whole thing totally unacceptable. No one, I repeat no one, ever asked for a hybrid E63, so why on earth did they build it? If Mercedes finds that eight cylinders doesn’t go down well with the electrification strategy they’ve chosen, then just don’t build any more E63’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if demand for previous V8 ones picks up though!

Otherwise the world’s electrification journey rolls on, with Tesla setting new records in sales numbers, shipping close to half a million cars in the first quarter. The stock is up more than 100% so far this year, so great for shareholders – so far. However, Tesla must also have set a new record in terms of various types of discounts both in the US and elsewhere so as always with Elon’s companies, how much they’re actually earning is rather difficult to figure out. That goes for Rivian as well by the way. The company that didn’t even build 50.000 cars last year still spent roughly as much money as Tesla in the first quarter, namely around USD 6.5bn. They claim bottle necks in production are now behind them and that’d better be the case if Rivian wants to survive in the far less favourable financing environment we’re now in. The target for this year is 50.000 cars, and we’ll see if they get there.

Interestingly, Toyota continues to refuse getting in line with everyone else, instead digging in to their hybrid technology. That earns them lots of bashing from the green lobby who are as bad as doing the maths here as when it comes to counting emissions from battery production. Toyota on the other hand remain as calm as Mount Fuji, simply stating that in total, hybrids achieve greater emission reductions than trying to supply the whole world with EV’s does. I haven’t verified their numbers but my intuition, combined with the fact that they are after all not only the world’s second largest company, but also Japanese, tells me they’re right.

Toyota also came out with another piece of news recently, namely that they expect to put solid state batteries into production in five years. Don’t focus too closely on that number since they’ve promised that before, but clearly, the solid state technology is making progress. In practical numbers in the case of Toyota, this means an indicative range of 1200 km for much less battery weight and only 10 minutes of charging. As discussed back in January 2021, solid state batteries would be a true revolution, but we’ll see when we get there. When I wrote that piece I said three-four years, which obviously was too optimistic. Sometime around 2030 is perhaps a realistic target.

*The Mahle engine – is this what will revolutionize the EV world?*

Solid state batteries are better than the current lithium ion ones, but they’re not without issues, meaning metals. Which is why a piece of news from Germany this week caught my eye. The German engine building company Mahle, that I had never heard about, is developing a new type of electrical engine that not only promises to be even more efficient than current ones, but in addition, does without any metals. It’s called the Magnet-free Contactless Transmitter (MCT) and as the name suggests, works without magnets. They’re replaced by an electricity-induced tension field, and the energy then flows inductively, reducing frictions and thereby energy loss as well as wear and tear. The technology has apparently already been proven to work in various prototypes.

Mahle is currently in talks with several manufacturers, targeting to make the engine ready for mass production in three-four years. This is a fantastic example not only of how to develop batteries, but also how it has always been, and always will be, innovation that leads the world forward. We’ll see if it’s Mahle’s technology, alternative fuels or something else that becomes the new standard at the end of the day. I remain convinced that it will not be EV’s as we currently know them. Until we’re certain, it’s difficult to find a more compelling proposition than an Aston DB11 with a V12, even with an aged infotainment!

The UK’s most successful sports car!

On July 9, 2023July 9, 2023 By ChristofferIn Classic cars, News, The Dream Garage, The Thrill of Owning1 Comment

As we’re still in the first half of summer in the Northern hemisphere, the theme of a nice roadster continues to feel very timely. A few months ago I wrote about the legendary Triumph Spitfire, perhaps the easiest and cheapest entry into the British roadster tradition, and more recently we also looked at the forgotten Porsche 914, a German take on the roadster concept. This week we’re back in the UK for a slightly more robust alternative to the Spitfire that remains very reasonable budget-wise – the MGB. And you may be surprised to hear that the car we’re all somehow familiar with ranks as the UK’s most successful sports car ever!

It’s also very timely to look at the MGB right now, not just because we’re in the summer, but also since not only is it 100 years since the Morris Garages (MG) brand was founded, it’s also 60 years since the MGB was premiered. Originally however, MG wasn’t a proper car brand but rather a side kick to the regular garage business belonging to a certain William Morris in Abingdon, UK. In the side business, Morris and his colleagues would take boring Morris Oxford cars, work on them and hereby especially the chassis frame and transform them into if not sports, then at least sportier cars that they would then take to the race track on weekends.

*The guys around the car are probably the ones that built it the week before!*

In the late 20’s the MG brand separated from Morris Garages and start to make a name for itself in on the racing circuit. It hereby also created a bit of a mystical reputation, often being talked about as a car company with a soul that was almost palpable when you entered the factory. Be that as it may, it was certainly a car company with guts, as the MG guys choose to race the MGB’s predecessor, the MGA, in prototype form at Le Mans in 1955, managing to finish the race with two cars. They continued to do well in 1956, the first official year of production of the MGA, notably in the Mille Miglia.

Fast forward to the early 60’s and MG had become part of BMC, later to become the British Leyland group, as was notably Triumph. The time was rife for a replacement to the MGA had come but before that, as a side project, MG built a machine called the EX-181 that looked like a soap and was powered by a 300 hp, supercharged engine. Driven by Phil Hill, the car would set a speed record of 254 Mph (408 km/h) on the Salt Flats in Utah, thereby also doing wonders for MG’s racing reputation. When MG introduced the new MGB roadster in 1963 as the MGA’s replacement, they actually claimed the design was derived directly from the EX-181, which is perhaps something that doesn’t exactly jump to the eye…

*Phil Hill was a brave man, driving the EX-181 at more than 400 km/h in Utah…*

MG’s original plan was to use the MGA chassis for the MGB as well, but in the development process it was discovered that it didn’t leave enough designer freedom to create the wider but still low car they wanted the MGB to be. MG therefore re-thought the whole project and in the end, built the MGB as a monocoque rather than the traditional body-on-frame construction. One of the advantages of the new construction was enough strength to handle considerably bigger engines but as it turned out, MG would only make use of that in the MGB GT V8, more on that later.

The design of the new car was a purely internal affair, with no fancy Italian design houses involved. Basically the head of design brought his idea to the model maker, who in turn built a small model for approval by the CEO, after which he would do a full-scale model. The development would then start, leading to the finished car a few months later. Not many committees or Zoom meetings there! Even if the MGB didn’t really look much like the EX-181 record setter, most would agree that it’s a nice design, very roadster-specific and relatively timeless. It was also hugely successful notably in the US, to which MG started shipping around 40.000 cars per year in the mid-60’s, as compared to around 5.000 for the UK market.

*A timeless look, more modern than for example a Triumph TR4*

A selling point for the MGB was clearly the superior room both for people and their luggage that the relatively wide car body offered. Another was no doubt its relative simplicity. The power unit in the form of an 1800 cc, four-cylinder, transersal BMC engine was perhaps not very exciting as it was essentially a larger version of the engine used in the MGA. The 95 hp it developed were however sufficient, but when emission regulations became stricter in the crucial US market, the power number started dropping to just below 70 hp for MGB’s from the mid-70’s. The engine was coupled to a four-speed gearbox with overdrive available as an option, and disc brakes in the front were combined with drum brakes in the back.

To increase the appeal of the car, MG were set on offering the MGB also with a roof, but the MG guys didn’t manage to find a solution that looked attractive, so in the end the had to turn to, you guessed it, one of those fancy Italian design houses. Pininfarina created the MGB GT that was shown to the world three years after the roadster, in 1965. It was also the GT that in 1973 finally saw MG making use of that larger engine bay, by fitting the Rover V8 engine used notably in the Range Rover Classic in it.

*The roadster is a great looking car, perfectly usable as a practical daily driver*

The V8 may have been bigger but given it was an aluminium construction, it actually weighed less than the 1800 cc four-cylinder, meaning not many modifications were required. There were however various other problems, leading to very few V8’s being produced. On one hand MG could never get enough engines from Rover to build as many cars there was demand for, and on the other that demand quickly vanished with rising oil prices in the 70’s. In the end, the V8 would be taken out of production only two years later, in 1975, after no more than some 2.600 GT V8’s had been built.

Given the increasingly tough regulations not only on emissions but also on safety standards in the US, the 70’s weren’t kind to the MGB. I’ve mentioned the dropping engine power of the 1800 cc unit above, and added to that were some pretty horrific, moulded rubber bumbers that MG had to fit to the cars from 1975 onwards, replacing the stylish chrome model that had been used until then.

*The late 70’s wasn’t a great design period for the MGB – either…*

There were other, corporate problems as well, linked to a generally cash-strapped British car industry and other British Leyland brands such as Triumph that were given higher priority to develop the futuristic TR7, rather than trying to modernize the ageing MGB. And so the last MGB rolled out of the factory in Abingdon in 1980, and the factory itself closing its doors later the same year.

Between 1963 and 1980, no less than 387.000 MGB’s were produced, a record for any UK sports car. To that should also be added 125.000 GT’s, a pretty remarkable number given the far shorter production run, but only 2600 MGB GT V8’s. This is of course reflected in today’s prices with the V8’s being most sought-after. They start at roughly twice the USD/EUR 20.000 the four-cylinder roadster or coupé trade at in good condition. At that level it’s difficult to go wrong, as the MGB is also a simple and thereby economical car. Get a nice roadster version with chrome bumpers, and as a US MG commercial at the time would say: “at no extra cost, MG gives you the sun!”.