The Lamborghini Diablo, a car that adorned the walls in poster form of many 90's kids. A car that still is a show-stopper, 20 years after it ceased production. A car that was so outrageous for it's time (and still is), deserves a centerfold in our digital magazine.
Gooding & Company will be holding an auction next week in Pebble Beach, California during the 71st Pebble Beach Concours. After going through their online auction catalogue of 160 incredible cars, these are our top-10 favorites.
Developing a successor to the Jaguar C-Type was a daunting task. The roadster had won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1951 and 1953 so its heir had to be highly competitive, but stiff competition from big names like Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin made winning the endurance more difficult than it had ever been.
The Chaparral 2 was designed as a follow-up to the Chaparral 1, but the two cars shared little other than a name. While the Chaparral 1 was the work of a company named Troutman & Barnes, the Chaparral 2 was largely designed and built by a team led by race car driver and engineer Jim Hall and his business partner James “Hap” Sharp.
Derived from the Palatov D1 sports racer, the D4PPS is a single-seat racecar designed specifically for hill climb competition. The D4 PPS, or Pikes Peak Special, also includes additional rollcage components as well as other reinforcements in order to comply with the unique regulations of the Pikes Peak hill climb.
A look through the pantheon of automotive history reveals car companies have often struck up unlikely partnerships with each other. One of the more obscure tie-ups is an agreement signed by BMW and Lamborghini in the middle of the 1970s that outlined the joint-development of a mid-engined sports car.
The DP02 is the series spec car for the International Motor Sports Association’s Cooper Tire Prototype Lites series. Outfitted with either a 2.0L or 2.3L engine, the DP02 is the exclusive chassis of both the L1 and L2 classes. Additionally, the DP02 is homologated for the SCCA’s P1 class, and can be configured to run in P2 as well.
Maserati put an end to its successful factory-sponsored racing program in 1957 because it found itself in dire financial straits after enduring a challenging decade. Racing boosted the company’s image worldwide, but it also drained precious resources that management believed could be better allocated to developing profitable road-going models.
Honda started toying around with the idea of building a supercar in the early 1980s when it teamed up with famed Italian design house Pininfarina to present a concept called Honda Pininfarina Xperimental (HP-X) at the 1984 edition of the Turin Motor Show. Powered by a 2.0-liter V6 engine, the HP-X was merely a futuristic-looking design study that was never seriously considered for mass production but it showed Honda was already thinking beyond economy cars.
Ride along in the #25 Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Gallardo FL2 as Tomas Enge battles back from a rough start to take the victory at the Cadillac Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
The new Chevron GT3 marks the British company’s first foray back into the North American market in decades. Set to go toe to toe with the likes of the SRT Viper and Chevrolet Corvette in the NARRA GT Unlimited class in the US and other European rivals in the GT Cup in the UK, the GT3 is Chevron’s most powerful car to date, with a 680bhp configuration of the GT3 delivered to American businessman Harry Blazer and ex-UK racer, Briton Chris Hall for use in the GTU class in the 2014 season.
Introduced in late 1972 as a simple homologation car, the Porsche 911 RS was an instant hit because it was packed with technology gleaned from the automaker’s racing program. The initial production run of 500 units sold out almost immediately, and Porsche ended up building over three times as many cars as it had initially planned.
A joint project between Caterham and Lola, the SP/300.R is a track day car designed for racers who’re ready to move beyond street cars like the Porsche 911 GT3 and into something that is truly built from the ground up to attack road courses at maximum velocity.
Where else can you find Group B rally beasts, Le Mans prototypes, and vintage Ferrari racecars in the same place at the same time other than the Goodwood Members’ Meeting? We’d wager that the list is pretty short.
Generally speaking, the large-displacement muscle car era gradually came to an end in the late-1970s. Consumer demand remained strong but the United States was still feeling shockwaves from the oil crisis that rocked the world in the middle of the 1970s, leading legislators to continuously push for ever-stricter emissions regulations.
The SR3 is the most popular offering in Radical’s racecar lineup, with nearly 1000 examples delivered to customers worldwide. Designed to be fast and agile in the hands of both seasoned pros as well as novices, the SR3 offers incredible traction, light weight, and a wide range of adjustability to suit the driver’s requirements. Since its introduction in 2002, the SR3 has proven itself to be very competitive within multi-marque championships around the world, with a multitude of class wins to its credit. With its two seater configuration and advanced data logging capabilities, it is also an ideal design for driver coaching and instruction. Let’s take a closer look at the Radical SR3, as well as the extensive list of options and services offered by SR3 builders here in the US.
The Pinin Farina-bodied cabriolet that Ferrari introduced at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1957 was not only heralded as a triumph in design for its elegant rear haunches, covered headlamps, and long, shapely hood, but it was also the car that marked a new chapter in Maranello history as the company’s first series-produced open-top model.
Nestled in the basement of Mazda’s North American R&D offices in Irvine, California, is an incredible stash of rare and interesting vehicles from Mazda’s motorsport history. But this basement isn’t just some sort of sarcophagus for bygone race cars – many of the cars housed here are kept in race-ready shape, and a fair amount of race prep for cars currently being campaigned occurs here as well.
This past weekend Multimedia Editor Chris Amos bolted on his summer wheels/tires and headed out to a local autocross hosted by the Corvette Club of Michigan at General Motors’ Cadillac assembly plant in Detroit.
Over five decades after its introduction, the Citroën DS is remembered as one of the most influential cars ever to come out of Europe. It’s not the rarest or the most expensive Citroën ever built but it left an indelible mark on the automaker’s history.
Formula 1000 is an open wheel SCCA class that utilizes a 1000cc motorcycle engine in a single seat race car with full racing aero, chassis tuning, suspension and brakes. 200 horsepower may not sound like an excessive amount of grunt for a car, but consider this: A race-ready F1000 weights 800 pounds (or less), which means these F1000 cars actually have a better power-to-weight ratio than a Bugatti Veyron. To put it another way – F1000 racing is serious business.
Unveiled last January at the Detroit Motor Show, the 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 has been hailed as one of the most advanced sports cars ever manufactured by General Motors. While the technology it packs is the fruit of decades of research on and off the track, the origins of the Z06 name go back to 1957 when the American Manufacturers Association (AMA) instated a prohibition-like ban on factory-backed racing.