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The dominant Williams FW11B and its turbocharged, 800+ hp Honda V6.
Click the image to enlarge.

I wish I’d been more into the F1 scene at the time, but I was only 8 years old, and thus the whole spectacle was little more than a collection of extremely noisy cars. It’s not that I wasn’t into automobiles—a white Countach poster proudly adorned my bedroom wall—but to me at that age the F1 race cars were a different animal altogether from the relatively “tame” Lambo.

McLaren MP4/3 bodywork in the pits. Click the image to enlarge.

I borrowed these from my parents’ photo albums last weekend. Fortunately for us, my parents have always been into photography, and my dad in particular has always taken it upon himself to organize and catalog our photos. Consequently, we have an almost unbroken chronicle of our family history, from the early ’80s to the present day. Needless to say, I’m glad he decided to bring the camera along for our visit to the Monaco F1 circus in late May, 1987.

A Zakspeed 871. Click the image to enlarge.

We actually got to stroll through the pits. We lived in France at the time, and attended the Trans World Radio church in downtown Monaco; I don’t know if our ability to get so close to the cars was thanks to our connections in town, or simply a byproduct of the more relaxed F1 atmosphere in that era, but regardless, it was amazing to see all the machinery so close.

Coming ’round Anthony Noghés corner in qualifying. Click the image to enlarge.

Sadly we didn’t see the actual race. A friend of a friend had an apartment overlooking the harbor, though, so we were able to observe one of the qualifying sessions from a vantage point above the grid area.

Eventual 1987 world champion Nelson Piquet in his Williams.

So many racing legends… I did gravitate toward the Williams cars at the time, and Mansell particularly, for some reason.

Stefan Johansson in the McLaren leads the Brabham of Riccardo Patrese.

Want more? Here are some pictures from our subsequent trip to the Monaco Grand Prix in 1994.

Click the image to enlarge.

My dad dug these up recently, and during a visit home for the holidays, handed them to me.

Along with the photography information like F-stop and exposure, the date written on the back reads “Nov 1972;” in other words, they were taken one month after my dad purchased the car from Cardinal Imports in Jacksonville, NC. This is genesis, folks.

Click the image to enlarge.

The photos were taken somewhere in the Raleigh, NC, area (my dad was finishing his studies at NCSU at the time) and to my knowledge remained hidden, moved from house to house in a nondescript box, up until this past weekend. During the handover, another tidbit of family lore emerged: My dad actually proposed to my mom in the Z in mid-December 1973. Talk about a car with family history; the Z has it in spades.

Aside from a couple of details, the pictures represent exactly the state to which I want to restore the Z. The only deviations from the condition shown above will be the wheels (the hubcaps have been replaced with slotted mags and meatier tires), the bumper overriders (deleted) and the hatch lid (debadged). Otherwise, the 901 Silver color will return and everything else will be as you see it. Once it’s all done, I’ve a good mind to find the actual spot those pictures were taken and shoot another pair in the same pose. Before and after, 40+ years later.

Editor’s note: This post is Part 19 of an ongoing series chronicling my efforts toward the restoration of my 1972 Datsun 240Z, originally my father’s. Read the other installments here:

• Part 23: Gutting the Interior
• Part 22: The Teardown Begins
• Part 21: …And the Engine Comes Out
• Part 20: Treasure Hunting
• Part 19: Beginnings
• Part 18: VIN Discoveries
• Part 17: The Bad News
• Part 16: On The Road
• Part 15: Getting It Back On The Road
• Part 14: It Lives!
• Part 13: Restoring the Fuel System, Part I
• Part 12: Meat on the Wheels
• Part 11: Inspiration (Sort Of)
• Part 10: Carbs’ Return
• Part 9: First Triad Z Club Meet
• Part 8: Wheel Work
• Part 7: Tactical Changes
• Part 6: Little Things
• Part 5: Coming Home
• Part 4: The Rollout
• Part 3: Confessions of a Poor Car Enthusiast
• Part 2: Opening the Tomb
• Part 1: Projecting Forward

After 6 years, we hardly knew ye.

Among the dozen or so cars departing the US market for the 2013 model year include the Mazda CX-7, the automaker’s first attempt at a midsize crossover SUV.

Normally I don’t devote much (any?) blog space to anything remotely SUV-ish, but as a devoted fan of the brand in general and admittedly, the CX-7 in particular, I thought I’d give it a farewell look. There aren’t many vehicles of an SUV-like nature I’d actually consider for daily driver duty, but Mazda’s outgoing midsize ute is one of them.

Offered starting in the 2007 model year, the CX-7 and to a lesser degree its bigger near-twin the CX-9 never really caught on. Reasons include the turbocharged 2.3l, 244-hp 4-cylinder’s relatively poor fuel economy (an important consideration in the car’s class), sub-par name recognition (no one really goes to Mazda looking for a midsize crossover) and interior space compromised by the CX-7’s styling.

A word on the styling: To my eyes, as crossover SUV’s go, it’s fantastic. It communicates Mazda’s fun-to-drive philosophy exceedingly well using SUV proportions, and looks far less generic and much more cohesive than anything else in its class (contrast the utterly anodyne shapes of the Hyundai Santa Fe or Toyota Highlander for reference). No, Mazda attempted something more ambitious, shape-wise, than its rivals, creating a kind of capable-looking urban jungle transport capsule, and succeeded in crafting a design at once accessible and futuristic. 20 years ago, looking at the concept car landscape, didn’t we all think we’d be driving cars with overtones of the CX-7? I did.

Couple the winning design with a dose of Mazda’s traditional dynamic excellence (such as it can be on something with a CG so high), and it’s a true shame the CX-7 is leaving the market.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series featuring cars whose design I find appealing, in contrast to mainstream opinion. Read the other installments here:

• ’89-’91 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Coupe
• ’99-’04 Toyota Solara Coupe
• Mazda CX-7
• ’93-’01 Subaru Impreza
• ’96-’98 Chrysler Sebring Convertible
• ’86-’91 Mazda RX-7
• ’92-’97 Cadillac Seville STS
• ’95-’96 Nissan 240SX
• ’87-’88 Ford Thunderbird
• ’94-’97 Lexus LS400
• Subaru SVX
• ’03-’04 Infiniti M45

For the second year running, let’s compile a list of the the seven most enjoyable/significant automotive publications of the past 365 days, the Spannerhead Seven™:

• Autoblog. A mainstay of the online automotive press, this site’s opinions are almost always right on the money, and their motorsport coverage (esp. F1) is top-notch as well.
• Autoextremist. Essays on the automotive industry from a former insider, the language is cutting, the writing razor sharp and the insights spot-on.
• Car and Driver. A pillar of the automotive media world, Car and Driver‘s reporting and features are frequently impudent and always interesting.
• Left Lane News. Often first with breaking developments in the automotive world, Left Lane provides eminent reporting and commentary on political and car industry-wide happenings.
• Motoring Con Brio. Fantastic photography and pitch-perfect taste in cars highlight this beautiful blog. The editor’s Monday “grab bags” are not to be missed.
• Tamerlane’s Thoughts. One of my new favorites, this one has a little of everything, from thoughts on upcoming cars like the new Tesla Model S to ruminations on classics and a host of other topics as well.
• Top Gear. An institution among car buffs, Top Gear is the standard by which all (and I do mean all) automotive shows are judged. Highlights of 2012 for the program include the India Special (technically broadcast on the 28th of December 2011, but we’ll count it for this year) and especially the 50 Years of Bond Cars feature.

Thanks to all of you for reading these past 12 months. See you next year!

So, to make an ever-so-slight detour from the theme of this series, the Mercedes W123 280E isn’t really “worthy of enthusiast consideration” if the enthusiast in question highly prioritizes performance. Its target market is the discerning enthusiast, someone who knows performance is only part of a car’s appeal and values qualities like substance and craftsmanship.

I have a personal connection with the 280E: It was my parents’ first car that I really related to. Sure, before the Merc came along, we lived in the US and my brothers and I were shuttled around in “The Big Blue Whale,” a massive Chevy Caprice station wagon typical of the era. Don’t remember much of that one except its girth, the fact that it had rear-facing seats in the “way back” and the fact that my parents were…less than thrilled with its reliability. But then we moved to France in the mid-’80s and needed a family car. Fortunately, our landlord was looking to unload his, so he cut my parents a very good deal on a late-model 280E, dark green, with exactly the same trim and wheels you see in the image at top.

A few memories stand out. In the ’80s, something like 90% of all European cars were equipped with manual transmissions, and our 280E had an automatic. It was a point of distinction I was very proud of at my young age. I remember the way the door handles felt to pull to open, and the legendary bank-vault thunk of the doors closing. My dad liked the Merc, and when I asked why it was debadged (as is typical of many European cars), he told me it was because the car came with the most powerful engine Mercedes put in that bodystyle, and without the badges would-be theives would mistake it for a lesser-engined model and move on. Sneaky, clever, exciting. The most significant memory, though, was of the sound of the engine as my dad wound it out, accelerating away from a toll station on the Autoroute up into the Alps, heading to church in Monaco on a Sunday morning. The 185-hp, 2.8l straight-6 engine sounded absolutely fantastic, and the surge of power was noteworthy, especially in a fully-laden car accelerating uphill.

Above all, it was a quality item, built to last forever. Yes, the tape player would overheat and eat cassettes a few hours into a long car ride, and yes, the exhaust system did come apart just after the downpipe and scare my mom half to death in midtown Nice, necessitating a quick search for the nearest muffler shop, but overall, our 280E was a beautifully-made piece of superior German engineering. I wouldn’t object in the slightest to the idea of owning another.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series highlighting Mercedes models worthy of enthusiast consideration. Read the other installments here:

• W123 Coupe
• W126 560 SEC
• C111
• W124 500E/E500
• W202 C36 AMG

How far would you go to win one race?

Would you design an engine completely from scratch with the knowledge that it would almost certainly be banned by the next race, expending hundreds of thousands of dollars in development and production costs just to score that lone victory?

Mercedes and Ilmor would—and did. Their 500I 3.4l turbocharged, methanol-fueled V8 was a clean-sheet design constructed with a sole purpose: To exploit a loophole in the 1994 IndyCar rulebook and thus win that year’s Indianapolis 500. It could be argued that the nature of the race in question—the prestige of winning the Indy 500 being up there with the Monaco GP or Le Mans—made the resources committed to the project slightly more worth the investment. Still, the scale and audacity of the endeavor shocked the racing world.

Some background: The IndyCar technical regulations for the 1994 season allowed pushrod engines to run higher turbocharger boost pressures, as well as additional displacement, over their multi-valve counterparts as part of a kind of equivalency formula. IndyCar reasoned that some constructors would simply use non-optimized off-the-shelf production-based pushrod engine designs as a less-expensive starting point, and gave teams who chose to do so a leg up on their more affluent competition by allowing them the benefit of a few extra cubic inches and pounds of boost.

Prior to the 1991 season, engine manufacturers had indeed been limited, by the rulebook, to production-based engine blocks. After 1991, however, that requirement had been dropped, a development that went largely unnoticed—except by engine maker Ilmor. They figured that a clean-sheet, carefully-designed pushrod engine could take advantage of the regulatory loophole to overcome its inherent design disadvantages compared to a multi-valve engine, and thus trounce the competition for at least one race before the powers-that-be cracked down on the rulebook’s oversight. Ilmor placed their bets on the 1994 Indy 500, and before long Mercedes came on board to help finance and lend technical assistance to the top-secret project.

It worked. Mated to Penske’s all-conquering PC-23 chassis, the 500I’s extra 650cc and 2.5 psi of boost (as allowed by the regs) netted it an extra 150-200 horsepower compared to its multi-valve rivals, and Al Unser Jr won the race going away. Some sources quote a remarkable figure of over 1,000 hp over the duration of the 500-mile race. And naturally, caught with their pants down, as it were, the regulators banned the engine almost as soon as the checkered flag waved at Indy. Still—it’s to Ilmor’s and Mercedes’ credit that they had the creativity to consider an “inferior” engine design in light of the racing series’ rules, and the commitment to follow through with it, with spectacular results.

For a more in-depth look at the engine and the racing politics that surrounded it, check out this 8W article.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series examining unique and significant powerplants. Read the other installments here:

• Saab Variable Compression Engine
• Rolls-Royce Goshawk
• Napier Nomad
• Mazda R26B
• Pratt & Whitney R-4360

As if any reminder were needed, this clip consolidates the case that the post-war racing heritage of Japanese automakers extends almost as far back as that of outfits more commonly renown for their competition pedigree, such as Porsche.

The misconception, of course, is that Japanese cars have no character, no soul; they’re relatively sterile both in their demeanor and in the amount of racing success they’ve given birth to. And yes, in the race featured in the clip the Skyline does lose to the sole foreign entrant, a Porsche 917—but the effect on Japan’s burgeoning racing culture of the fact that the Skyline held its own for a few laps cannot be overstated.

Via Tamerlane.

Merry Christmas to all my faithful readers! You’re the best gift a blogger could ask for.

Well, this is a lovely car. That’s really the only adjective for it.

There are, of course, overtones of the Alfa 1750/2000 GTV, but the ’63-’76 Lancia Fulvia Coupe carves out its own niche. The four-headlight grille treatments of the GTV and Fulvia are similar, but the latter’s profile is much more delicate and lithe-looking, subtly betraying its FWD nature with more visual bias toward the front of the car. Between the pencil-thin C-pillars and the uninterrupted flow of the beltline alone the car’s ethereal flanks, the Fulvia has all the visual substance of one of Tolkien’s elves.

Also like the GTV, the Fulvia has a racing pedigree, winning Lancia’s first (of an eventual 11) International Rally Championship in 1972. Like the Mini Cooper, whose rally success preceded it, the Fulvia’s triumph vindicated the quality of its FWD architecture, coupled with an emphasis on light weight and handling precision over brute power.

The delicacy of the interior matches the exterior as well, with a beautifully functional bank of readable gauges set into a swath of warm wood, and ample space in every direction. Rack and pinion steering is perfectly weighted and accurate, the front wheels connected by wishbones and the rears located by a beam axle and Panhard rod, similar to the later Saab 900‘s setup.

The Fulvia’s engine is somewhat unique: It’s a 1.2-1.6 L, longitudinally-mounted V4 tilted at 45°, sending power to the front wheels via a transaxle mounted to the rear of the engine. The powerplant is similar to the much-later Volkswagen VR6 engine in that a single cylinder head spans the narrow angle between the two banks. In the end, the piston arrangement is as much a staggered inline-4 layout as a V configuration, allowing a measure of compactness in both width and length.

Mechanically and aesthetically, the Fulvia is simply an elegant car, and I imagine that it moves with grace and aplomb befitting its lines. If there was ever a car to convert me to FWD, this is it.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series highlighting FWD cars I think highly of, in spite of my overwhelming RWD bias. Read the other installments here:

• Peugeot 205 GTI
• B4 Volkswagen Passat
• Acura Vigor
• Mazda Millenia
• Citroën SM
• Fiat Coupé
• ’91-’96 Infiniti G20
• ’91-’94 B13 Nissan Sentra SE-R
• ’88-’92 Mazda MX-6
• Audi Coupe GT
• Volkswagen Corrado
• Peugeot 405 Mi16
• ’78-’93 Saab 900
• Volvo 850 T-5R
• 5th-generation Honda Prelude
• 1st- and 2nd-generation Volkswagen Scirocco

As we did with the design of the 4-door version of this car, the recently-released F30 3-series, let’s put the styling of the upcoming F32 4-series under the microscope. Granted, this car is officially billed as a concept, but considering BMW pulled the same thing a year or two ago with a “6-series concept” that ended up looking exactly like the production car, it’s fairly safe to say this is BMW’s new bread-and-butter 2-door.

So as sorely as I’m tempted, I’ll refrain from ranting about BMW’s absorption of the numeral “4” into their incredibly convoluted nomenclature system, and simply focus on the aesthetics:

The proportions. There’s a lot to like here. BMWs have long excelled in this area, and if I had one bone to pick with the otherwise lovely outgoing E92 3-series coupe, it was a manifestation of BMW’s capitulation to the “swept back” fascia profile, where the bumper is smoothly integrated into the grille area and the signature kidneys sweep back into the hood. This was at odds with the Bavarian automaker’s traditionally upright, forward-swept nose profile, and the 4-series concept restores that classic look, to excellent effect. Additional noteworthy elements include the front wheels pushed well forward to emphasize the car’s handling prowess and the nicely-sculpted rocker panel that reduces the profile’s visual height.

It’s been said the 4-series seems to crib a lot from Audi’s A5 coupe in profile, but regardless if that statement’s truth value, if you’re going to raid design themes from another automaker, stealing from the A5 shows excellent taste on the part of the thief.

The details. The 4-series concept’s details are somewhat less successful. The front and rear valences are essentially mirror images of each other, and while they’re nicely-tailored and aggressive, their similarity seems to suggest a lack of creativity on the part of the designers about how to resolve those two areas in context. Also, the fascia adopts one of Mercedes’ worst habits recently: Too much chintzy aluminum bling filling and underscoring, again and again, each design element. It’s a look that will date itself much more rapidly than a simpler, more restrained approach. I can’t recall a BMW styling precedent for the fender vents aft of the front wheels, so it could be the automaker’s trying to start some “design heritage” with that detail. If it pops up on the fenders of future BMW coupes, we’ll know that was the case.

The interior. I could just be dazzled by the presence of an increasingly rare manual shift knob sprouting from the center console, but so help me, as much as I criticize some areas of the exterior for “over-design,” the 4-series’ interior looks like a very pleasant place to be. I particularly like the stitching pattern on the seats, the “baseball glove brown” of the leather, the lovely analog instrumentation ensconced within the traditional 4-gauge BMW binnacle, and the fact that the multimedia/navigation screen seems to be retractable into the dash, de-cluttering that area for a more “classic” view over the hood.

No, all in all I like the new 4-series concept very much—far more than the F12/F13 6-series. The proportions are spot-on, the interior charming and aside from some niggles with the details, it’s a great effort.