This fantastic painting is done by John Ketchell, depicting the 1-2 finish of the Le Mans winning Aston Martin DBR1 at Le Mans in 1959.
(click on painting 2 times to get HI-RES version)
For more information on the very talented John Ketchell, visit his website which has an innovative and beautiful online flipbook full of his paintings and works.
1971, to be more specific. Isn’t it amazing how far NASCAR has fallen? I can’t even bear to watch it anymore….full of country music, cowboy hats, media, music videos, cheesy collage videos—–the horror of it all. I grew up watching NASCAR on those weird lonely saturday afternoons in the early-mid 80s, I remember rooting for Richard Petty, because he had the coolest looking car, a blue and red #43 Pontiac Grand Prix! fantastic.
Maybe one day NASCAR will come back to being cool again, maybe when carmakers don’t just tack on those cheesy ‘shells’ of production cars on top of em…maybe when it gets it soul back….if it ever does.
The ITV Formula One commentator, James Allen, has a fantastic blog with thorough insights and inside stories into the Formula One teams, races, drivers, and developing storylines. A highly recommended read for any F1 fan and a worthy bookmark!
Lots of people come up with lots of theories about how to watch F1 races LIVE online. SpeedTV generally has terrible commentating, requires cable tv, and is on the whole a terrible option for F1-deprived US viewers. This year, BBC has taken over the F1 broadcast in the UK and they will surely do an amazing job at broadcasting the races. Still, these broadcasts are NOT available in the USA…..til now….
So where can you watch the race? on BBC? I’ve got the answer.
http://www.justin.tv (go into sports section, look for the F1 stuff at the time of the race, and enjoy excellent streaming….LIVE!)
no words needed! (courtesy of GTpurelyporsche)
click photo 2 times for hi-res version
Who would have thought that behind the clenched fists of the iron curtain, old school russians used to gather on the streets and partake in hardcore racing! No ads on the cars, the cars themselves didn’t have hardcore, hi-revving engines….they were basically street cars (mainly Ladas!) racing against each other, with drivers struggling to prove themselves in an isolated, communist society. I find these photos quite cryptic and mysterious—-but in a very cool way!
more photos….
All hail the MIURA and the origins of the supercar!
(click picture 2 times to get full HI-RES photo)
So i lost my dunhill driving gloves sometime back in February. Actually i lost one side, i still have the other side…..i’m hoping the side i lost turns up unexpectedly.
Meanwhile, check out these sweet Maserati driving gloves! I can almost smell the leather just by looking at the dark blue stitched leather and seeing that glorious Maserati trident logo……hotness. Not cheap, but did you really think Maserati driving gloves would be? With shipping to the US, they come out to about $180. That hurts, but still is tempting.
ALSO, they are available here for $125, from a Maserati Dealer in Texas. (with an extremely unprofessional, pixelated photo! ha):
I love this photo! It’s like a gang of vintage Porsche race cars.
click the photo 2 times in a row, to get the HI-RES!
Going back to the 60s for design? MB has decided that it’s going back to the 80s………..the 1880s! The new F-Cell Roadster Concept takes the design from the original, first car ever produced in the world—-the 1886 buggy made by Mercedes Benz!
Full details are not out yet, but the car is controlled by a joystick, has a top speed of only 25 km/h, and a hydrogen fuel cell technology for power. I really dig the stitched leather seats, which are laying over the carbon fibre seats (imagine that on a 1886 car!). The body is composed of lightweight carbon fibre and F1 type fibreglass. Very interesting stuff…click here to see more photos! Continue reading
The BMW 2002 Turbo was the first production car out of europe with a turbocharged engine. It caused quite a fury in Germany when it was launched, being as it was as quick as many supercars of the early 70s, but with a boxy coupe shape and yet still carried the audacity of a fast car. The car never made it to the USA…. Continue reading
Well it looks like Rob Ijbema has been hard at work on the new Audi R15 already! He’s already put up a beautiful new painting featurein the recent 12-hour Sebring winning R15.
His paintings are for sale, but they sell quick! so if any of you Audi-philes want this one, be quick!
file under: EDITORIAL
14th fastest growing blog on WordPress! hurrah! IEDEI was started on a warm, August weekend, with the purpose of covering the petrolhead culture and soul—in addition to some auto news with focus on its relation to car culture, history, and legend.
There are plenty of car blogs out there, the majority of which attempt to cover ‘news’ as it happens. What i’ve found is that many of these blogs (i.e. Autoblog) appear to simply run on sensationalism, gossip, weak rumours, scouring other blogs for info, treading through other auto websites for scoops, etc. Autoblog for example, writes a piece of juicy gossip on a monday, retracts it on a tuesday, and then re-confirms it on a wednesday—–ONLY to retract it fully a week later! For all we know, they’re making this stuff up after getting bored…who knows!? I think it all gets a bit tiring. I remember having bookmarked several automotive blogs several months ago, and on a particular day I clicked all of them, to find the same tired ‘breaking news’ story about the new Hyundai Coupe. It’s fine to read it on ONE blog, but I really don’t feel like occupying my time clicking bookmarks only to find the same photo(s) and similar writing explaining and re-explaining what soon becomes old news.
While i do think those car blogs are entertaining sometimes, and are now considered to be cornerstones of obtaining daily information—I feel what’s missing in many of them is passion. There is hope, however! A few months ago, I came across a modern news-filled blog that DOESN’T sacrifice passion for the sake of quantity. Autofiends is a fantastic blog based out of California that does attempt to address the culture of cars, rather than just the bland news stories. It has a grip on the past, with links to the future—and liasons the in-between. Well done!
Recently, I discovered a great website out of the UK named Drivers Republic, started by Chris Harris (ex-Car Magazine) and some of his mates/colleagues. Great video reviews, daily scoops and news, and a growing community-type atmosphere. What they’ve done is create an e-magazine, the sort of thing which signals the end of those nasty auto magazines such as Car & Driver, Motor Trend, Road & Track, Automobile, etc….the likes of which we are exposed to in the United States. The UK magazines have always been better, and Drivers Republic has created an innovative, interesting website that’s regularly updated and is ready to evolve into more. Good job, sirs.
So where does IEDEI fit in to the automotive news world? This is a blog that attempts to correlate the past into the present. The production car industry, the racing world, the lifestyle, the accessories, lost archives of automotive legend, new frontiers of the industry, places to go, things to buy, interesting links—this blog is attempting find the SOUL of what we petrolheads spend so much time and energy thinking about and being interested in. The history of cars changes in relevance every time a new technology or innovation is introduced. Racing from the past, present, and future are undeniably tied at the hip by a culture—a strong culture of progress, imagination, and most of all fascination.
Grow on! thanks for reading! WordPress.com has thousands and thousands of blogs, and knowing that people are reading, and that there are people out there into the same things I am, is a GREAT feeling!
The film, produced by Audi and NFL Films, and aired on ESPN last Friday, is now available for download on Apple’s iTunes. GO GET IT NOW!
In 2007, there was much hype around this D-Type going to Christie’s auction, where it was expecting to fetch extraordinary amounts of money—however it was revealed around the time of that auction, that the Ukranian gentleman who had rescued this car in the 80s and restored it—lied about its history. It was never a 1st place car, the best it ever did was get 6th place with Hans Stuck behind the wheel in the 1939 French GP. This caused such a stir within the stuck-up pursed lips auction community, that the car was withdrawn from that 2007 auction.
The car goes to auction again this August, at Bonhams & Butterfields. Probably some pompous old guy will pick it up for between $5-10 million…
Amazing car though…
Glorious.
no words are needed, except:
CLICK THROUGH PIC 2 TIMES TO GET HI-RES VERSION!
FILE UNDER: petrolhead culture & community
In one of the most dramatic shifts of web community power i’ve ever seen, the core membership of Audiworld packed their bags and busted out into another brand new forum under the name Quattroworld.
Audiworld was originally started by Audi enthusiasts back in 1999 (thanks for the correction, Matt), and it turned very successful over the years—so successful that it was eventually purchased by parasitic Internet Brands, a company known for taking over forums (especially car forums). Since the takeover, IB had been desperately trying to change the format from an older open source code of KAWF to a newer, more common Vbulletin forum system.
Result? Vbulletin was completely rejected by the users of the forum.
The transition was a mess, a sloppy forum, ruined historical AW posts, and a core member base set irate by the destruction of the long standing, successful, and active Audi community. Quattroworld started itself like a makeshift emergency center, immediately launching KAWF forums which heralded a return to original AW form—and the core members piled into QW. The result? Audiworld appears all but abandoned, a mess of new members which may even be ‘hired’ by IB (people do hire forum posters online, to help promote new forums), and a core base which has left. Within 48 hours, the number of users who joined Quattroworld was close to 3000. Those 3000 undoubtedly contributed at least 80% of the posting done on Audiworld, if not more.
Verdict: the community prevailed in the end, held together like glue by an outdated, but extremely usable format which works, and allows all of Quattroworld’s users to maintain the forum architecture they grew accustomed to for so many years.
Audiworld is dead. Long live Quattroworld!
Essichgurgn posts some amazing photos on their Flickr account, I came across a couple beautiful photos of an ABT Tuned Audi 100 Coupe. ABT, as fellow Audiphiles will know is one of the more well-known and larger tuning houses for Audis.
Click the link below CHECK OUT the rest of their photos! There is some great stuff:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62675811@N00/
(click through the photos 2 times to get the HI-RES versions!)
Audi 100 Coupe S ABT
Porsche 906
This picture is just……too good for words. So i won’t say much.
The cars in the picture:
(front to back)
Porsche 718 RSK Spyder
Porsche 718 RSK F1
Porsche 904
Porsche 356B Abarth Carrera GTL
(to see this picture in HI RESOLUTION, click on it a couple times, and save as)
So from what i gather, this was a ‘film’ made by the Audi Coupe S Club Of The Netherlands about a gathering they had back in 1984. The soundtrack is quite mad scientist, and the whole thing makes me laugh every time i see it…but the Coupes look pretty cool, in that weird grey 80s Europe sort of way….
IEDEI 