An awful crash which just took out the #8 Toyota TS030 today in Le Mans. A damn shame…..amateur privateers driving Ferraris ruining the LMP1 class race again this year.
Meantime, Toyota have done superb today—until this terrible accident. Anthony Davidson is apparently OK after the accident. The driver of the Ferrari is also OK.
I will be updating this during the course of the next 24 hours. Unfortunately I am not able to embed any of these sources directly onto here, so the best I can do is link to some sources. If one of them fails, use the others as alternatives!
Edit @ Noon, US EST: I now have a great French-English Le Mans TV live video feed embedded in this post! Just click the play button. This feed should be reliable for 24 hours. If you don’t like the bilingual feed, my suggestion would be to play this video feed and listen to Radio Le Mans (linked below) at the same time.
These are not scams! these are good, hopefully reliable sources to stream the best race on earth!
SOURCE 3 (Le Mans-TV, French-English, watch it on IEDEI!)
SOURCE 1 (Eurosport) (Not working)
SOURCE 2 (Eurosport)
SOURCE 4 (English, average quality)
SOURCE 5 (Eurosport, better quality)
SOURCE 6 (Eurosport, better quality)
SOURCE 7 (Eurosport, better quality)
Le Mans Live (Live timing, Multiple on-board views, thanks Serge)
Audi TV (cockpit view, intermittent other views)
Audi TV #2 (cockpit view)
Radio Le Mans (audio feed)
Baekdal Live Timing (great live timing feed! thanks Piotr)
more to come soon!
TOMORROW is the day! Here’s some amazing onboard footage from the Audi R18 e-tron quattro. A hell of a warm up for tomorrow’s 24 hours of madness. A must watch!
A short minute and a half video of the first night of Le Mans practice. The atmosphere is glistening….less than 2 days left til the glory of Le Mans!
src: lemansLive
This time it seems it is for real. NEVS (National Electric Vehicle Sweden), which is a Swedish company—-has purchased Saab! Price is not disclosed. BBC reports this as a “Swedish-Chinese investment group”, however I find that a bit odd, seeing as the CEO of NEVS is a Swedish Citzen…..
EDIT: Apparently NEVS is owned by a Hong Kong firm, so ‘Swedish-Chinese’ is accurate assessment!
As someone who has always admired Saabs and at one point wanted a Saab 900 as my first car when I was 15 (i never did get one, but my mum did!), I am really glad to think that the marque may live another day!
Here’s hoping it sticks this time…
src: BBC
Le Mans-inspired, by Paul Holroyd
This is Spa on May 5th. Totally gets my blood rushing. The bizarrely wicked frequencies of the Audi R18 e-tron quattro! I’m so ready for Le Mans!
I love this colour combination, a dull grey and a shiny grey combining to create a visually striking textural enterprise! As we all know, there have been many limited edition Veyrons cross the stage since the car was launched, primarily for rich sheikhs who have nothing better to do with their pocket change. That being said, none of that negates the fact that the Veyron is by far the most staggeringly well-engineered production car made in our lifetime—and while i’m never much a fan of ‘open top motoring’ (as I look and feel like Dracula-in-a-convertible every time i have driven a convertible), this Bugatti Veyron Gran Sport Vitesse really does look the part with its ‘Jet Grey’ paint scheme.
The latest in the Depth of Speed series, and in my opinion the best video in the series by quite a margin—Eric Bauer and his KPGC10 GT-R. Beautiful. Eric seems genuinely gushing over his purchase, and rightfully so!
Nice video too—with no overdramatic cheeseball piano music like most of the ‘new’ car videos are inserting!
A lovely sketch by the talented Rob Ijbema, which i’ve enthused about many times here…
Toyota has a monumental task this year at Le Mans—with a brand new Le Mans team and race car, trying to fill in the vacant shoes of Peugeot. Audi are trying to surpass Ferrari on the all-time list of Le Mans victories, amidst the most dominant period of endurance racing ever seen by any marque this side of Porsche in the late 70s/early 80s.
I really miss Peugeot, however am also very pleased that Toyota have put their guts into building a race car that will most definitely be competitive. In early practices, it has been reported that the TS030 was only a bit over 1 second slower than the R18 e-tron quattro—-and considering all of the madness which actually goes down in the race and the traffic issues; I’d say Audi definitely have some competition this year.
That being said…The TS030 is fantastic to look at, and nicely fills in the shoes of the missing Peugeot blue and white race cars with their new blue, white, and red livery!
I was thoroughly intrigued when I was told about Gerard Gombert by my friend Misi from the superb Stipistop. At first i was enthralled and so excited to learn that a hardcore automobile enthusiast and hermit had aggregated a massive collection of glorious race cars, sports cars, and supercars. My excitement soon turned into anger when I read this written on Forocoches by “Felishuko” (who assumingly took some of the following photos):
“The sad part is that none of this is available and that after his death, his will says, “the whole lot will be crushed.””
Excuse me while I put my *face in palm*. Let me just show you a bit of what exactly lies in his garden junkyard. The photos are of graphic degredation and deterioration, especially when understanding what the ultimate fate is going to be of these cars. Mr. Gombert is said to be an old-school race car driver himself; so then we can assume that he is the real deal.
I will also extend a word to Mr. Gombert (who will likely never read this!) saying that If you are worried about someone monetizing these cars into something and using them to achieve wealth, I can promise you that there are enthusiasts in the world who will NOT do this….they don’t exist at RM auctions, Christie’s auctions, or any other high-brow, artificialized trader market—they do exist in the hearts and minds of true enthusiasts who don’t love cars for money; they love cars for their history, engineering, design, and the feeling they provide. In fact, some of them at least deserve places in a museum as you’ll see in the photos below.
These cars are serving life in prison, with no parole, and ready for the death sentence:
Alpine A310s:
Alpine A110s (oh the horror…..)
Lotus 30 (oh man…):
At least 2 Lamborghini Miuras (not pictured)
but by far….the most painful thing kept in this junkyard is the 1968 Le Mans class-winning Alpine A210. IT MUST BE RESCUED!
thanks to Misi for tipping me about this!
src: Forocoches and classicDriver
I like people who challenge the status-quo…in fact I most respect people who challenge the status quo. Whether it is in science, writing, art, or motoring. In the history of the automobile, there are several names that instantly come to mind; Colin Chapman would definitely be one of them.
This is a fantastic 5-part documentary uploaded onto YouTube, and originally aired on Channel 4 in the UK several years ago. A pleasant way to spend 50 minutes—-even if his fall wasn’t nearly as graceful as his rise.
Over the past several months, i’ve really started loving these NSU Prinz/TT/TT-S models. I have seen a couple of these in the past in person and always get the feeling that these cars must be an absolute BLAST to drive around in. Lightweight, rear-engined, tossable, stiff, and epic 60s cool. These are so rare in the US, however they enjoy an enthusiastic following in Germany. I would love to have a go in one…
Thanks to Marco for sending me these pics, and you can see the full album of photos from this AutoX NSU event HERE
What a week it’s gonna be for the Audi Sport team at Le Mans! 4 R18s are ready to pounce next weekend. Here’s a photo of the sinister R18 e-Tron quattro lurking in the transporter.
As an Audiphile, this week feels like a holiday! You’ll be seeing a lot of Le Mans coverage through next weekend on here…as Audi gets ready to surpass Ferrari on the Le Mans all-time win list this year.
src: Audi Sport
As my tastes continue to evolve into mixing vintage ethos and future technology, I have found myself moving the Bac Mono higher and higher in my list of favourite cars in the world. For starters, the design is simply phenomenal; with massive attention to detail and advancing the otherwise ungainly track car stereotype into something which transcends its function.
The price is high when compared to other cars in the ‘track day specials’ category (75k GBP) and the production is low (50 units in 2012); but here’s hoping the company takes off and brings more cars to production. Supposedly, distribution to the US market is also secured through a Lotus shop in San Francisco. I get the feeling that after driving this around, everything else would simply just be boring—in any price range.
I’ll take mine in bright yellow-green OR stone cold black.
I fell hard for the Renault Alpine A110-50 Concept introduced on May 25th at the Monaco Grand Prix. Here are some fantastic close-up detail shots of the concept, confirming that the level of detail is just beautiful on it. From the success of the concept, it appears we are going to see some sort of a production Alpine concept at the Paris Auto Show in the Autumn. I’m really not sure how finished of a product we may see—however i’m quite confident based on people i’ve spoken to that there will be something on display at the Paris show resembling a production Alpine, at least in concept form.
50 years ago, Jean Redele introduced the production Alpine A110 at the 1962 Paris Auto Show. Renault is going to do something similar with a production, street-version of the A110-50. As usual, IEDEI will be ahead of the game when it comes to publishing news about it!
Click to enlarge these brilliant photos by one day one tone:
oh and WHERE CAN I GET THIS BAG!?
src: oneDayOneTone
I’m envious of my friend George (of Fourtitude) for a couple reasons. (A) He is just arriving to France for Le Mans week….and (B) he posted the photo of this RS3 he gets to drive from Paris to La Sarthe.
It’s a hard life, eh George!
The most desirable Mercury Cougars are the 1967 and 1968 versions (1st design); after which the Cougar progressively became bigger, bulkier, and overall worse. That being said, sometimes in the right light in Brooklyn, when one sees a ‘lost’ Cougar like this 1973 (i’m estimating)….it looks absurdly large and early 70s in a cool way. Vinyl roof, chrome wheels, and look at the size of that trunk lined complete with flying buttresses! Pimptastic….and funky.
The timelessly beautiful MK1 Audi TT. I’m not usually a fan of BBS wheels, but in all black on silver it does the trick quite nicely!
src: TT Forum UK
IEDEI 