The Amazo Effect

A 1990 Golf Syncro For Sale. With A Twist...

2012-03-07T12:00:00.013Z

We're a little ambivalent toward 'scene'-driven VWs; they can smack a little too much of follow my leader for our taste without much original thought going on. But there are always exceptions, and we're always open to seeing them.
Thsi MKII Golf is one of those exceptions; its not overdone, the wheel/tyre/colour choice is damn near perfect and the use of an Audi TT dash is inspired. But that's not really what drew us to the car; it's what it has underneath...
Starting with a genuine (and rare) G60 Syncro model; this is like the better-known Rallye but in a standard looking 3 door body shell, add one MKV Golf R32 VR6 lump (good for 250bhp in standard guise) and mate to uprated Syncro running gear on coilovers plus numerous other trick touches to the car. There a build thread on Edition 38 which is well worth a read too.
'Wow, where do we sign up, how much is it?' Well, its on Pistonheads right now at... £16,000. SIXTEEN big ones.
Nice, but £16k nice? Let your conscience (and your wallet) be your guide.

Basic Black

2012-03-07T09:00:00.000Z

Race Car Of The Day - John Bolster's 'Bloody Mary' Special

2012-03-05T12:00:00.001Z

Built by two 1920s schoolboys using only hand tools, this motorcycle-engined ‘Shelsley special’ became a formidable giant-killer…

You have to wonder what today’s Health and Safety brigade would make of John Bolster’s vintage special Bloody Mary. It was, as Bolster once wrote, built by two schoolboys in 1929 ‘…with the object of driving around a field as dangerously as possible’. Those schoolboys made a wooden chassis using a hand drill, and installed a 13bhp motorbike engine that pre-dated WW1. But within a few years Bloody Mary was developing over 100bhp and taking class wins at Shelsley Walsh and other hillclimbs – and it still had that wooden chassis, made by two teenagers with a hand drill.

John Bolster In Bloody Mary 1949; one of the last pictures of John Bolster in the car before his accident in an ERA that ended his racing career

Bolster Special (Single engined Bloody Mary, no. 11), Dorcas (12), Wasp 13; Shelsley 1929

Lewes 1929. John Bolster without a moustache and the tax disc clearly visible as Mary was road legal in those days. One of the rare shots of John without a helmet; after overturning at Shelsley in 1933 he always wore one.

Ingenuity triumphing over meagre resources turned Bloody Mary into one of the most famous of all the pre-war ‘Shelsley specials’. It helps, of course, that John Bolster himself became well known as the iconic deerstalker-wearing broadcaster, commentator and motorsport journalist in later life (he has a cameo appearance in the 1962 comedy film The Fast Lady, along with Graham Hill and John Surtees). Bloody Mary, however, made his name long before the TV and radio work, and will continue to keep it alive long after those ephemeral works have faded from memory.

Richard Bolsters four dirt track Rudge engines in a GN chassis. Shelsley Walsh 1938. The car was very quick, good enough for Richard to win his class at Shelsley. However after experiencing continued chain breakage on start up he dropped the idea and built a Hudson engined special.

The two schoolboys mentioned above were John and his brother Richard, who were lucky enough to have a mother who was not only well-off but herself fascinated by fast cars. During WW1 mother drove her own Napier and 40hp Mercedes on war work, and she later had a Bentley 3 Litre and was at least an occasional spectator at Brooklands. With that kind of upbringing, it’s not surprising that her two sons also became mad keen on motoring.

Blueprints of Bloody Mary by Richard Bolster

Richard, in fact, was perhaps the most mechanical-minded of the two – he went on to study engineering at Cambridge – but he would gravitate towards other specials during the 1930s, while John continued to persevere with Bloody Mary. Sadly, Richard was killed while flying with the RAF during WW2.

John Bolster Revving up Bloody Mary in the paddock soon after the twin engine conversion.

John (in Bloody Mary) and Richard (hands on hips) together

That tragedy was still 12 years into the future when Richard and John propped the components of their would-be special up on bricks in 1929. BM’s chassis consisted – and still does – of three longitudinal ash members joined with steel angle brackets, the two outer members flaring outwards so the chassis is wider at the rear than at the front. The driver sat to one side of the central chassis rail, while on the other was bolted an ancient J vee-twin engine of 760cc, which drove by chain an obscure make of motorcycle gearbox called a Juckes, which in turn was coupled by rubber belt to a solid rear axle from a Grahame White cycle car.

Suspension was basic in the extreme, relying on WW1 ‘balloon’ aircraft tyres at the front and quarter-elliptic springs at the rear. When the front end literally shook itself to pieces, a GN axle and quarter-elliptics were grafted onto the front. ‘I become very angry when people suggest that these springs are bound with string, for the material is best-quality blind cord’ quipped John in later life. And those, along with an unidentified but very quick-acting steering box bought for a shilling and sixpence (1s 6d), were the basics of Bloody Mary. Band brakes on the solid rear axle were described as negligible, and with a weight of about 230kg the whole contraption could do about 55mph.

Needless to say, that wasn’t dangerous enough for Richard and John. By pooling their funds they bought a four-cam J vee-twin for £7 10s that developed a whopping 30.6bhp – more than twice the power of the first engine. The rubber drive belt was replaced by a second chain, a light aluminium body was created to cover the naked chassis, and the name Bloody Mary was proudly painted onto it.Why the choice of name? No-one knows for sure, but the man who has been the chief motivator in having BM restored to running condition in recent years, Sandy Skinner, thinks it was because the two youngsters wanted to tease the establishment. ‘They did it to taunt the commentators at race meetings, who would struggle to come up with euphemisms like The Bolster Mary or even The Tudor Queen,’ he chuckles.

And the Bolster brothers soon made their presence felt at speed events, taking a second place at the Lewes Speed Trials. With torches wired to the mudguards as rudimentary lamps, they would drive BM to and from events, the passenger perched awkwardly above the rear chain. In those days liberties were more easily taken: when Richard built his own 1100cc GN-powered special, the brothers had to ensure both cars were never seen together, ‘…as, no doubt owing to some oversight on the part of the licensing authorities, both cars had the same registration number,’ recalled John.

John and Rosemary Bolster, Brighton Speed Trials, 7th September 1946

Development of Bloody Mary continued rapidly. The Juckes gearbox was ditched for a Sturmey-Archer four-speed and the JAP four-cam, sidevalve engine was meticulously prepared with specially made pistons and repositioned spark plugs. BM was now a serious contender in the 1100cc class and taking regular podium places at Shelsley and other venues. After Richard experienced ‘an alarming moment’ at the Inter-Varsity Speed Trials, however, he lost confidence in BM and moved on to other things, leaving John to carry on its evolution.

John Bolster in Bloody Mary 1957; Not sure of the event, possibly Brighton. Most likely a demonstration run.

‘For 1933 I had a splendid piece of luck, for a wild young man wrote off his Brough-Superior motorcycle,’ wrote John Bolster cheerfully in explaining how he acquired a nearly new KTOR short-stroke, overhead-valve JAP engine for Bloody Mary. With compression raised and running on alcohol fuel, the latest incarnation of BM ‘…could easily beat supercharged Amilcars and Salmsons, and even overcame the very hottest of the new MG Magnettes at Shelsley Walsh’.

Bolster employed a couple of nifty tricks to keep his junkyard special competitive (he always claimed it cost only £25 or so to build). One was to alter the final drive sprocket to suit individual courses, so that the car was running in direct top for as much of the time as possible to minimise power losses in the indirects. He found that best results came if the engine was overrevving slightly when he crossed the finishing line: ‘This usually caused the valves to touch the pistons lightly, but the contact was insufficient to do any real damage, and the marks could be polished off the pistons at the subsequent stripdown.’ His other dodge was to drain the engine and gearbox of oil before starting a run. Because the engine had ball and roller bearings, the traces of oil that remained were enough to last the distance of the course. This was fine as long as the car wasn’t kept idling on the start line for more than a few seconds…

By the end of 1933, Bloody Mary was an undeniably quick if idiosyncratic machine. But with its beam axles, handling was always suspect. Alec Issigonis, who built his own very sophisticated Austin special – with independent suspension – ‘trembled with fear’ when he recalled a drive in BM, while Bolster himself, after a trial run at Brooklands, admitted: ‘the rather strait-laced officials would not have permitted record attempts by a car that travelled largely sideways’. Working on the principle that too much is never enough, John embarked on an ambitious new stage in Bloody Mary’s evolution: to fit it with not one but two engines.

Fortunately for John, ‘another wild young man fell off his Brough-Superior’ and he was able to buy another secondhand JAP vee-twin. Fitting them both into the chassis and coupling them together taxed even his ingenuity but was eventually accomplished with the aid of a spring-loaded sprocket that allowed for slight irregularities in the firing of the two engines. The one disadvantage was that the car always had to be push-started by at least four strong blokes to avoid potential backfires that would destroy the drivetrain, but John never found a lack of willing volunteers in the paddock. Now that the car’s weight had increased to all of 350kg, front brakes were necessary; particularly since John wanted to go circuit racing at Donington. Front wheels and brakes from an Austin Seven were fitted, while the rear wheels were upgraded to Frazer Nash knock-offs after BM’s twin-engined debut at Lewes, where one of the old hubs literally burst under full acceleration. As the car went into a series of wild skids, John switched the engine off and coasted over the line – and still won the under-2-litre class.

Bloody Mary was now approaching its definitive form. More power was coaxed from the two JAPs by fitting modified cams and Martlet pistons, while reliability was maintained by keeping the compression at a reasonable 9.5:1. Stiffening the chassis and steering linkage helped shave a remarkable two seconds off Bolster’s time at Shelsley: in June 1937 he climbed the hill in 42.24sec, setting fourth overall best time and the best time for an unsupercharged car. In comparison, Raymond Mays’ supercharged ERA R4B, with independent front suspension, managed 39.09sec. The Motor described Bolster’s performance as ‘a miracle of wheel-winding’.

And that was the problem: to be competitive in the late 1930s with Bloody Mary, Bolster had to work miracles. He was convinced that what he needed now was independent suspension, so at the end of 1937 Bloody Mary was parked up in a barn and the two J engines borrowed for a new project that ran no fewer than four vee-twins. The new car was hugely fast (0-100mph in under 10sec) but overly complex, and Bolster never bonded with it in the way he had with BM. The outbreak of WW2 meant that it was several years before Bolster was able to clean bomb-damage debris off BM and start competing with it again. Typically, he found ways to go even faster post-war, and set some cracking times at the re-opened Prescott hillclimb course: in fact, he held the VSCC course record from 1948 to 1953.

But a major crash while racing a borrowed ERA at Silverstone effectively put an end to Bolster’s competitive driving, and Bloody Mary was retired once more. Truth was, says Sandy Skinner, that BM was increasingly uncompetitive post-war. ‘It was in very original condition, and no right-minded scrutineer would give it a ticket!’
Bolster moved on to other things, namely broadcasting and journalism, and BM’s last competition outing was at Prescott in August 1963. After that it was retired to the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, where it’s still on display – although Bolster’s widow Rosemary is its owner and fiercely protective guardian, John having died in 1984.

With grateful thanks to all for the info used.

Afterburner

2012-03-05T09:00:00.000Z

1967 Alvis Graber Coupé Super

2012-03-02T10:00:00.028Z

Carrosserie Hermann Graber was a coachbuilder based in Wichtrach in central Switzerland. Between 1927 and 1970 the firm supplied coach-built bodies for various European and US car makers, but are probably best known for a particularly close relationship with Alvis, providing them with bespoke and elegant if expensive bodies for almost twenty years, mostly during the 1950s and 1960s.
The history of the business goes back to 1924 when Hermann Graber, then aged 21, took over his father’s wheel making business and changed its modus operandi to the production of car bodies.
The company’s first car, a two seater cabriolet-bodied Fiat 509 was produced in 1927; two years later a Graber-bodied Panhard & Levassor 20CV won the Concours d´Elegance at St. Moritz, as a result of which the Carrosserie Graber business became known across Europe. During the 1930s the company built a number of special bodies on a range of chassis from Alfa Romeo, Bentley, Bugatti, Duesenberg and Packard.

In the early 1930s France had lost to Britain its position as Europe’s largest car producer (a position they would retain until the early 1950s), so after the war Graber concentrated on special car bodies designed to complement some of the more exclusive chassis produced by Bentley, Lagonda, Rolls-Royce and Rover. In 1948 Graber acquired the Swiss distribution rights for Alvis Cars, and two years later in response to a customer order, they produced what would turn out to be the first Graber bodied car on an Alvis chassis. This turned out to be the start of a long a fruitful association between the two companies, with special bodied Alvis cars produced by Graber.

During the 1950s links between Graber and Alvis became close. After long-time Alvis designer G.T. Smith-Clarke left the company, Graber presented in 1955 his Graber bodied Alvis TC 21/100 "Grey Lady" which somehow combined classical elegance with a thoroughly model pontoon format body.
The new Alvis bodies went into series production, initially at Graber’s own premises. Later production was taken over by Park Ward and Willowbrook. Several sources state that the British firms produced the bodies under licence from Graber, but the Alvis Owners’ Club maintains that the resemblance between the Graber bodied cars and those bodied by the UK firms was only superficial. According to this source, Park Ward took the Swiss drawings and adapted them to produce a car with more interior space than the Graber original. All the subsequent Alvis T-series models, up to the very last T21, in any case followed Graber’s basic blueprint.

Meanwhile in central Switzerland Graber continued to build to order special bodied cars based on Alvis chassis at a rate of no more than ten per year. These included four seater coupé-bodied cars (sometimes described as saloons), cabriolets, and at least one four-door special. Graber’s bodies were lower than the standard bodied Alvis cars with more steeply raked A and C pillars. When customers requested improvements, Graber was happy not merely to produce special bodies but also to redesign or adapt aspects of the chassis and running gear.

Hermann Graber died in 1970 and the production of special bodied cars at Wichtrach came to an end; in total, about 800 Graber bodied vehicles had been produced from Alvis, Aston-Martin, Bentley, Bugatti, Duesenberg, Lagonda, Packard, Rolls-Royce, Rover and others. The business continued to operate under the control of his widow, specialising now in restoration work. From 1980 until 1996 Graber was one of the official Swiss Ferrari Dealers and very active in the complete restoration of Italian and German sport cars. In 2001 Graber Sportgarage merged with the workshop of Markus Scharnhorst and moved all activities to Toffen, where the locality were bigger and more appropriate to the activities of the company. Today Graber Sportgarage is mainly focused on the service, maintenance, race preparation and trading of classic and historic sports cars.

Which brings us to our favourite Graber Alvis, the 1967 Coupé Super. We love Graber's work, but a lot of his cars do tend to look a little overbodied. Not this one though, this is up there with the best from Frua and Michelotti as far as we're concerned. Delicate but purposeful, lithe, poised and oozing class. Our favourite part is the tiny vestigial fins at the back and the way they curve down into the shape of the rear deck. Also, that glasshouse says 'Alvis' loud and proud, yet looks totally 60's-contemporary; look how slim the B-pillar is! Lovely stuff, and because it's Swiss you know it's all aluminium under the paint, not layers of thick Italian filler. Maybe it needs to lose the chromed wires and redline tyres, and we're not 100% sold on the mirrors, but otherwise its hard find much to dislike about this.

The Cutaway Diagram Files - Chaparral 2F

2012-03-02T09:00:00.000Z

1963 Ford Unibody - Hole In One

2012-02-29T12:00:00.003Z

What do you do if you have too much time on your hands? Pluck your nose hairs? Sort out your sock draw? Stare blankly at Facebook? I bet the last answer on your mind was build a pick-up truck.
Well Brad Gortsema thinks differently from the likes of us; having just finished one project car, he decides to take on this 'unibody' 1963 Ford F100. Unibody? Well not quite. The nickname comes from the fact that the cab and bed are one continuous piece, with no gap between them. The same stamping forming the back of the cab was also the leading edge of the bed, and the single-wall bed sides were spot-welded directly to the door sills. The one-piece body was then set atop a traditional seperate chassis, making the 'unibody' pick-up more similar to a body-on-frame car, like the contemporary Falcon-based Ranchero. the problem with this radical approach was that the Unibody, shall we say, wasn't as robust as the equivalent separate-cab, separate-bed F100s, with stories of doors jamming open or closed when the bed was fully loaded due to body flex; so bad were the problems that Ford pulled the plug on the Unibody after only two years in 1963 and went back to the separate cab and beds used on the 4x4 models.
Brad's particular well-used example was suffering from old age as well as the 'Unibody Flex', so his initial plan to quickly sell it on for a profit turned into a full-blown project. Thankfully his Dad owns Gortsema Customs, so the two of them massaged the tired F100 into the baby blue (and white), Buick-powered picture of perfection you see here.
Bend your attention and yield to our flexible friend here.

September 2, 1973, Ontario Motor Speedway

2012-02-29T09:00:00.006Z

Tom Bigelow was the driver for the Norton/Bryant Heating and Cooling Special at Ontario Motor Speedway on September 2, 1973. The Volstedt chassis was powered by a turbocharged Offenhauser engine and took Tom to an 11th place finish.

Holy Cobras! A Mangusta Racer On eBay

2012-02-27T12:00:00.010Z

Another day, another De Tomaso racer. After getting hot under the collar for this beauty back in January, another one of Alejandro's finest turns up in race duds on eBay. This Mangusta appears to have SCCA papers and FIA historic ones on the way, but alas the seller is keeping mum on the car's history. What he has divulged about the car is in his eBay description below:

This auction is for a very rare and beautifull 1970 DeTomaso Mangusta Race car. There are none like this one.This race car is in race ready condition with a freshly rebuild engine. This car is just perfect and very fast. I drove this race car has been driven for the past 3 years very succesfuly in many events including Monterey Historics, many wins. Check the web , it is all over the place including youtube. Engine is a fully build 289/302 Ford, with Rare 48IDA's webers on Fomoco manifold.Transmission is a ZF 5 speed also rebuild.This race car has had many modification done but still retains its original chassis. Rear deck lid is fiberglass and in one piece, it has pin drive knock offs, it is a real race car, with great history and welcome at any events in the world. Original SCCA log book.This is the rarest of Mangusta ever....
FIA papers in process and full history and documentation available upon request.

The auction ended at $92,100 with the reserve having not been met. Which gives us time to scrape the necessary funds together. Hello, Ocean finance?

At Monterey Motorsports Reunion 2010:

Its Rude To Stare

2012-02-27T09:00:00.000Z

Seperated At Birth...

2012-02-26T12:25:00.001Z

Range Rover Evoque Convertible:

Fisher Price Mustang:

Drag Racing History - Mr. Gasket Mustang

2012-02-24T12:00:00.002Z

MR GASKET MUSTANG AA/GS

‘Ohio’ George Montgomery was already a successful racer, with his ’34 Ford and then his famous ‘Little Eliminator’ 1933 Willys that took class wins in the NHRA Nationals in ’59, ’60, & ’61.

He became one of the first racers to win consecutive Nationals with his back-to-back victories in Little Eliminator in ’59 & ’60. Throughout the 1960s, George was one of the most frequently booked AA/G supercharged racers on the match-race circuit, going head to head against other now-legendary racers of the day. We’ll get to those in due course…
Drag racing’s popularity soon caught the eye of the Big Three in Detroit, who began recruiting quarter-mile talent for their own factory race teams.
In 1966, George was picked up by Ford as one of the racers selected to develop their new 427ci SOHC hemi engine. He quickly made use of the engine’s power, racking up class wins at the ’66 & ’67 U.S. Nationals along with a class win at the ’67 Winter Nationals (note the space; the words weren’t combined until the ‘70s). At this time, he was still racing with the ’33 Willys body, until Ford persuaded him to race with the current model Mustang body – so that the race-going public could connect the car to the ones being sold in Ford’s showrooms. So in 1967 George built a new car, with the Mustang body on a Willys frame, this car became known as the Malco Gasser.

It has a C6 trans, Ford 9 inch rear with halfshafts made by George along with a number of custom-made items, as his profession before becoming a full-time racer was his machine shop business. He immediately took advantage of the new car’s aerodynamics and subsequent handling: “The Willys was actually a very poor handling car; at the time I never realised as it was the only drag car that I drove.” said George at the time to Hot Rod magazine.

A confusing picture; its the Mr Gasket gasser, but still in the Malco Gasser colour scheme...

The first time out with the Malco Mustang Gasser, it ran in the 9s. The new set-up led him to Super Eliminator titles at the Spring Nationals and Nationals in 1969. Next came the Mr. Gasket Gasser, with a one-off 1969 Mustang Mach 1 handcrafted ‘glass body from the Ford drag racing programme.

A 1933 Willys frame with a 110” wheelbase was again used to meet class rules. The car initially debuted with a blown Cammer, but by 1971 had switched to the turbo Boss 429. The Mustang set six NHRA-certified class records, including a Super Eliminator win at the 1969 US Nationals and wins in the same class at the Gator Nationals in 1973 and 1974.

The car's quiet turbo nature and class dominance caused the NHRA to eventually saddle the car with a 0.50-second index, and then in 1975, the rulebook outlawed the turbos. Montgomery's car typically ran mid 8s in the quarter at nearly 170 mph. Regarding the Boss 429 as a drag race engine, Montgomery has been quoted as saying: "I don't know that it was ever a very good normally aspirated drag motor, but it sure did love boost. We dyno'd it at Sonny Meyer's shop in the early '70s, and it was making 1,800 horsepower."

Although the switch to the Mustang body in 1967 improved the performances of his cars, the move proved costly to the class. The newer bodies didn’t have the identity with the fans that was established with the older body styles and the emerging late-model Funny Cars began to grab the fans' attention.

At its sale at RM auctions in 2009

Period pics with the blown SOHC fitted

After back-to-back wins in the Gatornationals ('73 & '74), Montgomery retired the car and built a turbocharged '74 Pinto. The Mustang was retired from drag racing in 1975 (the same year turbos were banned by the NHRA) and Montgomery stored the car in "a little spot behind my office." Car collector Bob Perkins coveted the car for years, saying that George preserved the car in a Plexiglas cubicle. Montgomery sold the '33 Willys, now in the possession of the Henry Ford Museum, and the Malco Gasser '67 Mustang, on display in the Petersen Museum, but the '69 Boss was his favorite car. He says the '69 was never restored because "it never got dirty." This car is in the same guise as it was in '75 and the condition looks amazing.
Montgaomery sold the car through RM Auctions in 2009, but the car became available again, much to Perkins delight. said, "I could never have bought that car if the owner hadn't gotten into financial trouble. He paid Montgomery a million and a quarter for the car and I bought it for a fraction of that price."
More about the car in 2011 here.

Montgomery retired from drag racing in 1985 at the age of 53 and still operates, with his son Gregg, George's Speed Shop in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

Top Trumps Car Of The Day - Fiat Town Car

2012-02-24T09:00:00.001Z

Cars & Music - Grace Jones

2012-02-22T12:00:00.022Z

Grace Jones and the Citroen CX; two entities with a lot in common. Both idiosyncratic, misunderstood and just plain weird to some, but entities that were on a wavelength only the truly enlightened could fully comprehend. We've always been a fan of both, so when Citroen used Jones in their 1986 advert for the series II Citroen CX, it was a perfect fit to our eyes. The Citroen CX was arguably the last 'true' Citroen; launched in 1974 before the company went bankrupt (a story in itself), which resulted in the Peugeot takeover.

The CX took on the massive task of replacing the truly iconic DS and found sales beyond the normal Citroen buyer. The 1986 series II CX was a little more conventional than the series I and lost some of their earlier distinctiveness as a result; gone were the wonderful rotating drum instruments reminiscent of 70's sci-fi, replaced with more down to earth conventional dials, the radio migrated to the new dashboard from it's previous incumbency between the front seats, the stainless steel bumpers were replaced by ABS plastic items and the door mirrors replaced with items that eventually lived way beyond the lifespan of the CX on cars such as the 4th generation Lotus Esprit and TVR Griffith.

The advert was directed by Jean-Paul Goude, who also did Grace Jones' music videos at the time (footage from the ad was used in the Slave To The Rhythm video). The idea of Jones being in the advert was probably a no-brainer, seeing she and Goude were an item at the time. The concept is pretty simple and totally normal and realistic: Grace Jones, at the time fresh out of James Bond and riding high in the charts with her songs, is seen driving the CX atfer a giant replica of her head spits it out. That’s precious. Amongst other things, Goude did a Chanel Coco advert in 1991, with Vanessa Paradis (paramour of Johnny Depp) as a bird in a cage. Lucky git.
If the name means nothing to you, you're probably under the age of 35. Go ahead and Google Vanessa Paradis, we'll wait.
See what I mean? Lucky git.

It's a little known fact that hordes of little Grace Jones helped to design and build the series II CX; they were also the test drivers but their parking left a little to be desired; they'd always Pull Up To The Bumper of the car in front too quickly...

"Careful where you put that engine, don't drop it - too late..."

"STAY!!!"

A quick snack before lunch

The imagery of Jones from the advert was also used for her 1989 album Bulletproof Heart. This was Jones' last studio album for 19 years, until she released Hurricane in 2008.

"I'm peckish, bring me a CX"

Not A Cobra In Sight

2012-02-22T09:00:00.002Z

Porsche 962 Derek Bell Signature Edition

2012-02-20T12:00:00.008Z

One of the true petrolhead dreams: a road-legal race car. There was a time where you could buy a sports racer off the peg, drive it to the track, thrash the yambags off it and then drive it home, but as cars became more dedicated to the track, the 'road' part became an untenable dream. Well, the car you see here wouldn't have a hope of winning a proper FIA GT race, but boy you'd be the toast of any trackday you frequented. Not to be confused with the Schuppan 962CR or Dauer 962, nor a home-brew conversion; this is chassis no. 00 of a planned (but aborted) run of road-legal Porsche 962's. It was built at a cost of about $2 million and based around an aluminium Fabcar engineering monocoque originally destined for the Dyson Racing IMSA team in the USA, an outfit that raced Porsche-powered racing cars. The standard 2.8 litre flat-6 race engine is totally unsuited for road use (and no doubt a bugger to start on a cold morning), so a more mundane twin turbo 993 GT2 engine with 'only' 580bhp and 547lb/ft of torque is fitted. The legendary LeMans racer Derek Bell gave his name to the car, but alas only the one was built. It's for sale too; POA. But hey, if you have to ask...

Brands Hatch, 1982

2012-02-20T09:00:00.003Z

Elio de Angelis testing the Lotus 91.

Spot The Bus

2012-02-17T16:00:00.000Z

Checking Out The Vitals

2012-02-17T14:30:00.000Z

1964 Chevrolet Impala - Sinful Sin

2012-02-17T12:00:00.052Z

The 1964 Chevrolet Impala: probably the signature lowrider car. So many have been modded to the 'slam & scrape' way of life that you'd think the bar couldn't possibly be raised. Well, this 'pala might just have upped said bar just a scoosh. Well, how about a fully chromed engine with matching ancillaries, chromed running gear, a full length floating tube grill and a paintjob that runs throughout the car. A toda madre indeed.
Get sinful here.

Carissa Rosario. Those boots were made for something...

Never Challenger

2012-02-17T10:30:00.000Z

Feline

2012-02-17T09:00:00.007Z

Hazzard Avoidance

2012-02-15T16:00:00.000Z

Summertime...And The Living Is Easy

2012-02-15T14:30:00.000Z

Dan Drofenik's 1980 Lincoln - Sloppy Seconds

2012-02-15T12:00:00.085Z

A Lincoln lowrider owned and built by a man living in Canada; proof that the lowrider phenomenon knows no geographical boundaries. Dan Drofenik wasn't deterred by the fact that he was born in British Columbia, more famous for the Rocky Mountain range and the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort than Chicano-style cars; he'd been been a convert to the cause since he was a kid. He even dared to be that little more different by picking a 1980 Lincoln MK VI coupé as the base car when conventional wisdom would have been to choose an Impala. Bravo sir; I'd venture to say that you might have even created a sub-genre in the lowrider world. This Lincoln has a touch of 'Pimp' to our eyes that even Black Dynamite wouldn't look out of place in.
Strut on over to here for more info.

And now to show you some love. Tanya Love, that is: