Automotive Architecture

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Classic Supercars: Ultra-Chic Ferrari 400i and 412i

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Classic car shopping is often like staring over a city from high atop a mountain. Once your eye sees one thing it likes, there are ten more within the same focal point. Such is Hemming’s Classifieds section. This site allows is a much broader type of browsing and car shopping, with long distance delivery of anything bought online. Generally, private sellers online come in two flavors: – extreme obsessives who are forced to part with a car they have cherished – extremely careless people charged with liquidating an asset You can guess which one you want to buy from to …

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McLaren Turbo – Secrets of Black Air – 1987 Buick GNX Story

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Let’s start at the beginning, my personal vantage on the Buick GNX – before and after watching Black Air: The Buick Grand National Story. Here are three things you may not know about the 1987 Buick Grand National: Engine came first, car second. What sporty body could fit this 500HP boost-monster? Housing the huge McLaren turbocharger and intercooler hardware of the 3.8-liter V6 was the hardest part. It was a very sentimental project for the company, allowing unbridled execution of the super-car engine and total styling black-out. That high-gloss, rich paint was pure fantasy at the time. The GNX was the …

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Best of 2013 Awards – New Exotic Car – W Motors Lykan HyperSport

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W Motors is such an exciting success story – it must win the Best of 2013 Award for these  achievements. From the outside world, a new hypercar from a country without automotive expertise is laughable. Even coming close to the levels set by Pagani, Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren is virtually impossible for any new company. At the very least: most of the promises from any new exotic car brand are (very) exaggerated. This spirals development costs out of control, leading to: – insolvency from lack of capital to invest – at the very least, huge delays and unhappy deposit-makers   …

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Ferrari 599XX Heading to Paris for RM Auctions in Feb 2014

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Buckle up. Tighten belts. Hang on! It looks like the day has finally come: one of Ferrari’s ultra-exclusive Corse Clienti XX models is set for public sale by RM Auctions this February in Paris. Widely believed to be pushing out nearly 800 horsepower through its Enzo-plus V12 engine, all of the typical street weight is stripped out. A full carbon-fiber aero redesign nearly doubles downforce (and grip) versus the 599 road cars, and weight is a very private figure – assumed to be at least 800 pounds lighter than anything with a license plate. Type approvals and imports will be …

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What Happened to Caparo? Brilliant T1 Seemingly Doomed from the Start

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You remember Caparo. Their breakout T1 model from 2008 was huge news for any car lover. It takes the track-attack ethos of similar English charms like the Lotus 2-Eleven, Ariel Atom and others, then fast-forwards the technology by 100 years. While the legendary 1950s-designed Lotus Seven continues forward with even more new Caterham models for 2014, it seems that the actual future of these race cars is in a rut. A deep rut, followed by a speedbump in the road. Too low to pass over it, the Caparo T1 now appears to be stuck. Here is a mini timeline of …

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Best of 2013 Awards: Coolest 4-Door – BMW 640i GranCoupe

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Until the new M4 arrives, the BMW 6-series Gran Coupe is by far my favorite current BMW. While all brands like to tout their new cars as longer, lower and wider than before: usually the changes are fractions of an inch (or some other meaningless millimeter measurements!). The 640i GC is a full three inches lower than the 5-series, rocks almost a 117-inch wheelbase, and looks wider than a Hummer H1 on the highway. The whole car is designed to emphasize width, power and stance from all angles. The glasshouse is far more inward of the car’s shoulder-line than any …

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Road Test Review – 2014 BMW X1 sDrive28i M Sport – Alpine White

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This summer’s 2013 BMW X1 sDrive28i press loaner still makes me smile when looking at the photos. As my first week-long loan from BMW, the pressure was on to a) write a brilliant review and b) not hurt the car in any way! The X1 is a hilarious riot to drive in 28i sDrive configuration, which denotes rear-wheel-drive versus the optional xDrive. The turbo-charged engine is zingy and potent, with a broad and low torque plateau and the exceptional ZF eight-speed automatic handling changes. The test car included EcoPro mode and automatic stop/start for stoplights and traffic. EcoPro mode really …

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Cool 2015 BMW i8 Animations + Live Visualizer Links

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The 2015 BMW i8 is beautiful. Make no mistake about it: this will instantly be the most-exciting car on the roads from the second half of next year. BMW i Visualizer – see this exact i8 and change the colors, wheels, leathers… It is significantly more challenging to grasp the i8’s performance potential in advance, like we can for most new sports cars and even hypercars from the big names. But while the i3 might be a bit funky, the i8 is stunning. Low roof, scorching pace, style for days: this i8 is hot. It also brings forth never-before-executed concepts …

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What To Watch: NISMO GT Academy Is High-Quality, Big-Budget Reality Competition!

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Updated 11.10.14 The new season of GT Academy is online and watchable via the below YouTube embed! To celebrate, we’ve paired the episode with some of the coolest NISMO cars from SEMA 2014. Mostly, relaxing for me is commercial-free online television of some kind. Just stumbled upon the latest for GT Academy, and feel compelled to share this exciting series. Imagine a mix of a few shows like Toughest Soldier Challenge, TopGear, … and … America’s Next Top Model…. and you will get an idea of what GT Academy offers viewers. Instead of shooting or pouting, these guys train to …

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New Tech: Graphene Replaces Carbotanium as Ultimate Automotive Material

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Graphene is new on the scene but exploding with promise. It makes carbon-fiber look like a wool sweater from the 1800s. Graphene is two-dimensional sheet of honeycomb lattice molecules just one atom thick, but stronger than any other substance on earth. As a sheet, it’s carbon. As a stack, the material is graphite. The applications are tantalizingly endless, as the material is super-lightweight and even has conductive properties to relay electricity better like a circuitboard. In the car world, the 2D sheets will be layered and stacked to create 3D panels that are customizable in strength as needed. Future applications …

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Eagle Low Drag GT Finished! Only Two More Chassis Available…

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Eagle Low Drag GT Launches New Website Since discovering Eagle’s latest project a few months ago, the anticipation of the finished car has been palpable. After hitting the lawns of Buckingham Palace with the St James’s Concours d’Elegance in early September, it appears that the car is in finished form for the latest photos on http://www.lowdrag-gt.com/ Secrets Secrets While the pricing and the buyer for this first Eagle Low Drag GT are very private, Mr. Brace let us know that the single car has been in progress for more than the last five years. He also hinted that there is …

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Iconic Classic Showcase: Porsche 959 Komfort and 959 Vorserie from RM Auctions

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Iconic Classic Showcase: 1985 Porsche 959 Vorserie This start-up sequence video from RM Auctions must be the most blissful 30 seconds ever recorded. Plus, the 1988 Porsche 959 Komfort  from RM Auctions Sometimes I find it helpful to look at two pristine examples of a classic masterpiece when prepping these articles. All the variations in styling, specification and lifestyle really cannot be summed up with one car. Unless it only came in Rosso Corsa red and had a twin-turbocharged V-8 mounted mod-ship, that is. The 959 has always been a beguilingly brilliant exercise in refined aerodynamics, among its other achievements. …

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Iconic Classic: 1938 Dubonnet Hispano-Suiza H6C Xenia

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Iconic Classic: 1938 Dubonnet Hispano-Suiza H6C Xenia If it seems like we have an unhealthy fascination for the Mullin Automotive Museum, you might be right. The cars inside this collection just… write their own stories. I have a dozen more that I would like to feature, but we must start at the true nexus – or “Xenia” perhaps – of the art of French coach-building by Jacques Saoutchik and his contemporaries. How all these cars got to sunny California is no accident. In many cases – the cars in the collection were painstakingly built – sometimes from only drawings – …

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