i love this photo! so lovely. Francois Conconi looks so cool. The other woman, is of course, Michele Mouton. Dunno who the bearded bloke is…ha
Yearly Archives: 2011
IEDEI @ the car wash.
I haven’t washed the TT in what feels like months. It had started to look like a Jackson Pollock painting—-so today, after hours of work this weekend—i decided to take the car in for a wash. I really don’t like washing my own car—it is a time consuming flush of an activity! So i’d much rather pay others to do it, which is exactly what I did at my local Brooklyn hand wash. I was joined by some interesting company.
(today i realised my car is quite low…as the R8 was almost the same height)
lost concept: Citroen Karin
As a pure design, this car is unbelievably cool. It takes elements of the 70s wedge shaped concepts, but adds a multi-dimensional feature to them. Designed by Trevor Fiore, obviously the 1980 Citroen Karin Concept never made it into production—-what dissappoints me more than that, is why this geometrically active design was not more influential on the stale, boxy designs of the 80s. This car was looking ahead—maybe too far ahead. I do notice though, that this did the 3 passenger layout featured on the McLaren F1 later…
totally unique, and totally lost.
foto of the day. people & quattro.
what an amazing photo, documenting the insanity of those 80s WRC Group B events; where people were literally inches and feet away from the most amazing rally cars driving full-on through the crowds. Everyone was brave; the drivers and the fans. This is from the 1984 Portugal Rally.
(click to enlarge)
new BMW 6-series. It makes people…..
YAWN.
Hey BMW….bring Chris Bangle back…
037 vs. S1 vs. Stratos
this is an audio orgasm! it makes me sad to see how we have lost this type of insanity in rally cars.
foto of the day. gt3.
Porsche 911 GT3 RS in my favourite colour for Porsches (aside from black)—-mexico blue!
art of the day. A310
Alpine A310 by Rob Ijbema
foto of the day. R8 GT vs. LP570-4.
glorious.
foto of the day. Japan.
As you know, a large earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on Friday. I found this very strange photo on MSN of a huge supply parking lot for Infiniti. Obviously I wish the best to the Japanese readers of IEDEI and everyone else there, and for a recovery from this crazy disaster.
lost concept of the day. Porsche-VW Tapiro
An Italdesign study penned by Guigiaro in 1970. It seems every photo I find of the strange Tapiro is accompanied by women! So here they are in all their early 70s glory. This car is actually based off a 914 chassis, interestingly enough.
Steve McQueen’s Porshe 911s heads to auction.
Cooler than f*ck. Wonder how much this is going to fetch on auction. Yes, this is the 911S from the opening scene of Le Mans and yes this is the 911s that Steve McQueen bought after filming the movie for his own collection.
http://www.leftlanenews.com/king-of-cool-steve-mcqueens-le-mans-porsche-911s-headed-to-auction.html
RS2 vs. M5: battle of the family hustlers.
the uber-cool Audi RS2 and the rare and desirable BMW E34 M5 Touring might be two of the most desirable avants/wagons/touring/estate cars ever made. The RS2 (one of my top 10 most desirable cars) was hand built by Porsche. Amazing that in a time where Audi was struggling after the whole 60-minutes-false-claim-scam-slandering; they decided to have a go with Porsche building them a specialised 5-cylinder monster. The biggest rumour about the RS2? It has been claimed that the RS2 does 0-30 mph faster than a McLaren F1. I’d love to see that. The RS2 never came to the US—i have 9 years to wait til i can use the 25 year-import rule to think about bringing one over here.
The E34 M5 was a great car; in my mind the last great M5. The E39 kinda lost the charm as far as i’m concerned, although i’m sure plenty of people reading this love the E39. The E34 M5 Touring is an even rarer, more obscure proposition! I’ve never seen one; mainly because it was never brought to the US either. Surely the E34 M5 meant business; as did the RS2——so which one is better?
You would think because this article was written in a magazine called BMWCar, this article would be biased—–but i have to say that I think they’ve done a remarkably fair and excellent write-up on these 2 amazing cars. I don’t really care for wagons——but i love both of these…..albeit one more than the other.
Oh and to my 2 friends I was discussing the Cadillac CTS-V Wagon with a couple days ago—–i’ll take either of these thankyouverymuch!
CLICK TO ENLARGE THESE PAGE SCANS:
BMW: the (de)generations of design.
I grew up with BMW as my favourite marque; mainly because of my undying love for the E30 M3 when i was a young child. I’m not sure why I wasn’t like other children who loved Corvettes and Porsches, because I wasn’t. I still remember my parents buying me a radio controlled car when i was very young (9 or 10?), and I didn’t choose the red Porsche, i chose the dark grey E30 M3. I wish i still had that radio controlled car…
Anyways, BMW is a company who i’ve watched deteriorate in charm. They may still build very fast and potent automobiles—-but they leave me feeling numb. The modern BMW design is stale and very non-BMW in many ways. To be honest, the 1-series is the only BMW I am really a fan of—-and that is a great car to drive as well.
Here are 2 photos. One of all the 5-series and one of all the 3-series. The best ones are on the left side of the pictures.
art of the day. A110.
this is an amazing commissioned drawing of the Alpine A110 by the superb automotive painter, Miha Furlan
foto of the day. C30 Polestar.
This car is badass…and nobody even knows what it is. AWD. 400hp. 5 Cylinder turbo.
my sister has a regular C30, which I have to say—is quite an enjoyable to drive with the stock 210hp. It is also, in my opinion, the best looking hatchback on sale in the US at the moment. This Volvo C30 Polestar is only a concept, but it pretty much kicks absolute arse! The big question then is—why does Volvo refuse to build it?
new sunglasses.
I have a ‘bond’ with Dunhill sunglasses—i really enjoy all of their products. I have broken my nose several times throughout my life, which causes most sunglasses to fit like a circle on a square. Dunhills, however, fit quite well and since observing this, i have continued my cycle of buying their sunglasses. This being said, i do have a pair of Persols which fit quite nicely; however those are my backup gangsta glasses I keep in the car.
I ordered these last week, and they came today—-with a lovely alcantara rimmed leather Dunhill carrying case. Apologies for this ghetto photo, as i hate using flash, and that’s the only way i could capture the beautiful matte black finish of the frames.
the USA-elusive TT quattro sport.
This is a tasty TT quattro sport on sale in the UK, tuned by Jabbasport; They’re claiming 450hp, which is quite a bit more than the 350hp that Stage 3 tuning takes it to quite predictably. The quattro sport, was the highest end MK1 TT which was sold in Europe; stock it had a slight upgrade in power (240 vs. 225), upgraded suspension, special GT3-like seats, special wheels, special 2-tone paint schemes, different front bumper (3.2 bumper) and rear seat delete. 18,000 GBP for this 2005. Tasty……and everso elusive here..
foto of the day. 904 collage.
a lovely collage from the excellent Carfreax site. As usual, everything is better in black!
Ford GT70; Ford’s ‘lost’ A110 fighter…
Apparently, Ford had decided to fight back against the successes of rally cars in the late 60s and early 70s like the Porsche 911s and the Alpine A110 with their own small purpose-built rally car named the Ford GT70.
From OCTANE MAGAZINE:
‘The GT70’s creation had been triggered by our poor performance on the 1970 Monte Carlo Rally,’ Ford Competitions manager Stuart Turner says. ‘The Escort Twin-Cams, driven by Clark, Timo Makinen and Hannu Mikkola, at best finished fifth and seventh, and had been left behind by the winning Porsche 911S and Alpine-Renault A110.’”
Thanks to Jalopnik for turning attention this burning issue!
I believe the ‘yellow’ livery is in its current state; previously, the lone prototype was in silver finish:
IEDEI 
