the 1967 Porsche 906E, recently sold for $980,000.
src: modernDesign via stipistop
Category Archives: cars
sighting of the day. Corolla?
Yes you heard right! A vintage Toyota Corolla. But this one is pretty nicely sorted out—-has a very ‘Vintage JDM’ feel to it. Spotted in Brooklyn.
foto(s) of the day. 1-2-3.
Audi now have 11 victories in 13 years, and one of those being the Audi-in-disguise Bentley Speed 8. Total dominance! The last few laps were taken with 4 R18s running side by side, making for some phenomenal atmosphere! More pics as they are released…No other team has ever shown this sort of dominance at Le Mans in such a short period of time.
Today, the 1st and 2nd place finishing cars were the Audi R18 e-tron quattro hybrid, making it the first AWD and Hybrid car to ever win the greatest race in the world! The #1 R18 e-tron quattro finishing the line in 1st place.
As an Audi fan and as a Le Mans enthusiast, I watched 18 hours of this race. I hope some of you enjoyed the coverage using the links I posted here last night. It was a hell of an adventure! I hope to make it to La Sarthe one of these days. Congratulations to the entire Audi Sport program!
src: LeMans.org & joestRacing
nearly 7 hours done. Standings…
The Toyotas started off fantastic, running 2 and 3 for quite a while. As seen before, the #8 was in a terrible crash with a crappy Ferrari driver, and the #7 Toyota had contact with the Deltawing, causing major damage as the car has been stuck in the pits for ages now. The #3 Audi R18 Ultra which was crashed is in 14th position right now, and the #7 Toyota is still in the pits, currently in 24th position.
That leaves Audi in #1, #2, and #3 with the e-tron quattro taking the top 2 positions thus far. There are still 17 hours left to go, so nothing can be said about what is still remaining to happen.
The LMP2 category is solidly competitive at th emoment, with the #48 Oreca Nissan up in the lead with 2 Morgans less than a lap behind! Great to see Morgan back in competition here!
The GTE pro and amateur classes are solidly led by the C6 ZR1 with nearest Aston Martin (my personal favourite in this class) a couple of laps behind (pro).
src for timing images: baekdal live timing
#7 Toyota takes out the Deltawing.
The Deltawing was an interesting concept, albeit not really competitive in any way….if anything it was getting in the way of most cars on the track. That being said, it got nailed pretty hard by the #7 Toyota.
Crash, remove, and drive!
Romain Dumas crashes his Audi R18 Ultra into a tire wall, then proceeds to get out of the car and basically remove the entire front bodywork from both sides, get back in the car and drive it for 5-6 minutes back to the pits! Amazing bit of effort and determination from Dumas! Great to see.
As of right now, the #3 R18 is back in the race! Many laps down….but still in the race!
Here’s the video!
Blame Ferrari.
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.
Where to watch Le Mans online! (streaming)
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!
video of the day. evening onboard amazement.
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!
video of the day. Night Action.
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
Saab LIVES!
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
art of the day. Three’s Company.
Le Mans-inspired, by Paul Holroyd
video of the day. R18 e-tron quattro onboard.
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!
foto of the day. Veyron.
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.
video of the day. GT-R.
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!
art of the day. Stratos.
A lovely sketch by the talented Rob Ijbema, which i’ve enthused about many times here…
foto of the day: TS030.
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!
the saddest junkyard.
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
“The Secret Life of Colin Chapman” documentary.
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.
IEDEI 