Innholdsfortegnelse for Supercar Legends i Supercar Legends

When the Turin motor show opened on 3 November 1965, everybody present was bowled over by a beautifully crafted chassis featuring a V12 engine located amidships, race-car style. Its maker, an upstart called Lamborghini, claimed that the combination would form the basis of a street-legal ʻsuper sports carʼ. The young car-makerʼs plan was clear: owner Ferruccio Lamborghini wanted to take on the automotive prima donna of Italy – Ferrari. Yet, at first, enthusiasts and industry experts didnʼt really take the project seriously. It was therefore quite a shock when, a little over four months later, Lamborghini unveiled a complete car on the opening day of the Geneva Salon. The Miura became not just the star of the show but the progenitor of the term ʻsupercarʼ. For the best part of…

Respected international market expert Simon Kidston (0041 22 740 1939; kidston.com) also happens to be a huge Miura enthusiast and long-term owner of an immaculate SV. “The Miura market has been steadily progressing for over a decade, with the US leading the way,” he says. “Serious collectors who previously shied away from Lamborghinis have slowly come to embrace landmark models such as the Miura – the best examples of which are well into seven-figure territory for original SVs – the 350GT and even the early Countach. Look at a Miura alongside a contemporary Ferrari and you see why it created such a stir. Drive one and, assuming it works properly, which isn’t a given, you’ll be hooked. “The most affordable Miuras are the original P400s, with rough auction cars starting…

‘You quickly appreciate that the Stratos was designed from the outset to be a competition car’ This is the sort of machine that reminds you why you fell in love with old cars in the first place. Visceral rather than cerebral, itʼs the exotic poster child that conquered the worldʼs toughest rallies, a beguiling mix of supercar looks and pure-bred competition engineering. Throughout the 1970s, it defined its rapidly changing sport as precisely as the Mini had done the previous decade and the Audi quattro would do in the one after. More than 40 years after it was introduced, the Lancia Stratos remains one of the most exhilarating ways to blow away lifeʼs cobwebs. Even at rest it oozes charisma. Its styling genesis can be traced to a time when…

The Aston Martin DB5 may be the enduring Bond car for a certain generation, but for others itʼs the moment the Wolfrace alloys tilted into the wheel wells of Roger Mooreʼs Series 1 Lotus Esprit that is burned into the memory. Possibly the ultimate Bond gadget was paired with one of the most desirable sports cars of the 1970s, earning legions of admirers from billionaire Elon Musk – who bought the original ʻWet Nellieʼ movie prop in 2013 – to Fabian Steele, an airline pilot and lifelong 007 fan whose passion was sparked when he was just a boy. “I went to see The Spy Who Loved Me with a friend in the summer of 1977,” says Fabian. “We were both 10 and we couldnʼt believe this little Esprit. I…

‘The contentious part with this particular car isn’t so much the reworking beneath the skin, but more the skin itself’ Your main point of focus is the gauges, in particular the ones calibrated in bar and degrees Celsius. It has been drilled into you that this isnʼt a car that likes being driven slowly. Itʼs packing a twinturbocharged flat-12 engine, a bear-trap clutch and a hair-trigger throttle: stop-start motoring really isnʼt its bag. Unfortunately, as of right now, weʼre inching our way through roadworks. As a result, there is every reason to expect a meltdown at any moment. But no, only the driver is boiling over, exhausting his repertoire of curse words as other road users would rather reach for their smartphones and snap away than thread their way through…

‘It could lap Fiorano faster than Gilles Villeneuve managed in his 312 T5 single-seater only seven years earlier’ That’s the beauty of supercars: the disorientation, the mind-melting lack of any reason. Concessions to ordinariness don’t apply. You just get in, disengage the part of your brain marked ‘think’ and rely on instinct instead. Supercars are seductive for the simple reason that they are completely and utterly ludicrous. All very groovy, but illogicality here doesn’t end with the be-thunderous, be-quick stuff: this one appears to be hermetically sealed. Thank the Lord (or Nokia) for mobile phones: “Oh Hi. Yeah, it’s all going well. Yeah, the Bug’s fab. Just one thing: where, precisely, is the doorhandle? Oh there. Natch… Er, of course. Bye.” In that one probably-going-to-regret-mentioning-that anecdote lies the reality behind…

‘It’s a credible alternative to German and Italian supercars, rather than something that feels as if it collided with a Halfords’ History will probably judge the original Italdesign Lotus Esprit, current for 13 years, to be visually the most enduring of all the mid-engined Lotus cars. It is bolder, sharper and somehow more authentic than Peter Stevensʼ revised, soft-edged late-ʼ80s version. Hindsight and perspective are beginning to play that cruel trick of making the older car seem younger and fresher. Rewind to 1987 and it is easier to appreciate the rationale behind Peterʼs revised Esprit, codenamed X180. The origami school of styling was rapidly falling out of favour and the cars that had once spearheaded the fashion did not always lend themselves to being reinvented in the new soft-focus idiom.…

The year 2021 was a significant milestone for McLaren, marking a decade since the launch of the MP4-12C. While the British firm had produced the seminal F1 many years before, not to mention Bruce McLarenʼs wild M6GT road car proposal and the build of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren at its Woking headquarters, the 12C represented its rebirth, as the first supercar from the freshly minted McLaren Automotive. And today represents the perfect opportunity to measure just how far McLaren Automotive has progressed in that time, by driving the MP4-12C back-to-back with its spiritual successor in the modern range, the 720S. Not just any old MP4-12C, either, but ʻJob 1ʼ, the very first production car from 2011. Many thought the Frank Stephenson design generic at the time, but it looks strikingly…

‘Not a car you would ever describe as pretty, the MC12 has a certain something beyond the obvious brutish machismo of a roadgoing GT1’ The summer sun was high in the sky, beating relentlessly down on a baked Kyalami circuit. The mercury had hit 90ºF and the jet-black asphalt was sucking up the heat like a sponge, reaching at points a tyre-destroying 140ºF as choking clouds of cement dust – laid down to mop up an earlier oil spill – wreathed the track. Soaring temperatures, coupled with the 5000m altitude of the circuit, wreaked havoc across the field. Fuel boiled in pumps and cars spluttered and struggled, while the steed of Pedro Rodríguez began to exhibit gearbox problems. Things werenʼt looking great for the Maserati-engined Coopers. The 1967 South African…

It’s hard to tell which is racing faster, your heart or your head. The runway is straight and hypnotic, and you have the better part of 1500bhp to harness. The problem isn’t so much getting up to speed, more the slowing down because we cannot use the full length of our airfield playground. Early pluck has given way to intestine-wrangling tension – not that there’s anyone close enough to hear you curse a blue streak. It’s just you, a Bugatti Chiron that is limited to 261mph, and an ugly scar of blacktop that doesn’t feel level, even on foot. Take a breath. You know the drill. Word to the wise: if you absolutely have to talk to a car, for best results adopt a respectful tone. Launch… and we’re done…

There are faster, prettier, more valuable cars, certainly. But few can hope to match the sheer thrill and blue-collar appeal of our test cars – gathered as a trio for the first time in their history. Weʼve been at Fordʼs Dunton highspeed test circuit for five minutes and are already struggling to contain schoolboy levels of excitement, pressing our noses to the glass of the brand-new, otherworldly blue GT and eyeing the sumptuous lines of its white predecessor. But one of the three commands our attention like nothing else: the spectacular GT40 MkIII. The story of the GT40 began with a bust-up. Henry Ford II attempted to buy his way into top-flight competition by throwing money at Ferrari, but it ended with a bad-tempered parting of the ways. Ford, peeved…

Here we are again: Daytona versus Miura. But we make no apologies for revisiting these rivals. Individually or in a natural pairing they are as exciting and fascinating as ever, the two key products from the beginning of the great age of the Italian supercar. These fusions of science and beauty represent thrillingly different conclusions to the search for the ultimate GT car, that happy ʻproblemʼ of how best to transport two very wealthy individuals as quickly and entertainingly as possible. It was the Miuraʼs precocious challenge that made the Daytona so eagerly anticipated in 1968, and cast the Italian art of exotic-car building in perhaps its best-ever light. But if the Miura was precocious, where did that leave our third and most intriguing protagonist, the De Tomaso Mangusta? An…

The term ʻracing improves the breedʼ applies to few cars as appropriately as it does the Porsche 911. The Stuttgart company has continually developed its flagship model since its 1963 introduction, and there is little doubt that, for the first 20-odd years at least, this was done with one eye firmly on motorsport success. The result is that there have been many peaks in 911 production, with cars that not only formed the basis for competition models, but which also made stunning road cars, now coveted over and above their ʻstandardʼ brethren. The 911 had already achieved a great deal of success through the 1960s, but the first derivative to really show the heights to which the concept could be taken arrived in 1972. With the 917 being outlawed by…

‘During the 1970s and much of the ‘80s, no other car represented such a visualisation of childlike wonder; even now it triggers a primal response in people of a certain age’ You donʼt need to have driven one to ʻgetʼ the Lamborghini Countach. It gets you, every single time. Itʼs only a cliché because itʼs true, but the Lamborghini Countach really was the supercar pin-up for prepubescents the world over during the 1970s. And for much of the ʼ80s, too, come to think of it. No other car represented such a visualisation of childlike wonder, and even now it triggers a primal response in people of a certain age. Seeing – and hearing – four iterations together, in contrast, merely leaves you with a knot-in-the-stomach feeling. Few cars, if any,…

Much of this is the Porsche 911ʼs fault. At a time when Italian aristocrat Ferrari and upstart Lamborghini were concentrating on their 12-cylinder models, Stuttgartʼs nimble and efficient little sports car was making hay in the class below. Maranello was first to expand into similar territory with the sublime 206 and 246 Dino. Its gorgeous styling and sweet, race-derived V6 now place it into the pantheon of greats – even if, at the time, Enzo preferred not to apply his illustrious name to this most junior of Ferraris. Despite its many obvious and enduring qualities, the Dino was still just a two-seater. Over the course of the following decade, however, many sporting marques would create 2+2s with which to broaden their appeal. At the four-cylinder end of the market, Lotus…

The rest of the Italian exotic-car establishment rather took its time in responding to the mid-engined gauntlet thrown down by the Miura. As ever, engineering pride and tribal chauvinism reigned supreme in the valley of the Latin supercar, and neither Ferrari nor Maserati wanted to look as if it had been rattled by the impact of the P400 – an event of seismic proportions in this internecine world – with a product that was anything less than fully sorted. By the time the Berlinetta Boxer and Bora became commercial realities, Lamborghini was well on the way to replacing its frail but fabulous prodigy with a new sensation, the Countach. But the caution in Maranello and on the Viale Ciro Menotti was understandable. Where the newcomer from SantʼAgata could afford to…

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Although the F40 was trumpeted as a road-car-cum-racer, the bods at Maranello failed to take into account one nettlesome detail during its conception: there was no championship in Europe that would accept it. The model would have to wait until 1989 before making its race debut, with Jean Sage entering his modified F40 LM in the last two rounds of the IMSA GTO series. Jean Alesi was third at Laguna Seca, with Jean-Pierre Jabouille running out of cogs at Del Mar. And that would have been that, had it not been for BPR Global GT racing in ’94, with Luciano Della Noce and Anders Olofsson winning the Vallelunga 4 Hours in Bo Strandell’s entry. In 1995, the championship-status series attracted the mighty McLaren F1: Strandell equipped his drivers with a…

‘Wind up the revs in any gear and you’ll be rewarded with a manic, addictive howl that neither of its rivals can match’ Funny thing, fashion. One moment youʼre sporting the latest threads and a cutting-edge haircut, the next youʼre being ribbed by kids who think that New Order is a proscribed terrorist organisation. But just imagine the looks on their faces when it all comes back around, and the things we once considered slightly uncool become desirable again. Iʼm not suggesting you step outside wearing bell-bottoms or a mullet, but where once it took a brave person to consider buying one of the crop of unloved junior supercars from the late ʼ80s and early ʼ90s, you now find wisdom. Itʼs a rising market, and thereʼs never been a better…

Recalculate. Recalculate. Whatever the breadth of your driving experience, and whatever your accepted conventions, the McLaren F1 turns them on their head. There is simply nothing normal about this car, which is possibly why it remains such an enigma. Yet you would be wrong to assume that different is necessarily bad. So, so wrong. In one sense, while every other supercar in this issue is a game-changer (the first, the surrender of Ferrari to the concept, the comfort revolution, the biggest monster et al), the F1 didnʼt actually change anything because no one followed its lead. Yet it did set a benchmark and remains a beacon of what is possible in motor engineering when money is no object and a genius is given a clean sheet of paper. What else…

The MP4-12C ignited McLaren’s production ambitions, but the project owed everything to two legendary road cars that came before it: the groundbreaking 1992 F1 and the machine that started it all, the 1969 M6GT. As a constructor, McLaren’s greatest early successes came in the musclebound Can-Am series. The team walked the championship in both 1967 and ’68, and a year later swept to victory in all 11 races with the fearsome M6B, closing out the top three places in two of those with Bruce McLaren himself, Denny Hulme and Mark Donohue behind the wheel. McLaren’s next target was endurance racing success, and to homologate the M6B for use in the World Sportscar Championship a fabulous prototype was built. Low, light and blisteringly quick, the M6GT was powered by a Bartz-tuned…

‘There is something quite liberating about the big, confident inputs the Murciélago encourages’ V12 engines unite this trio – large-capacity, naturally aspirated V12s that blow past 500bhp and 200mph. But the execution, from the minutiae of how these incredible power units feel to what the cars set out to achieve, could barely be more different. Two decades since the Lamborghini Murciélago, Ferrari 575M and Aston Martin Vanquish first arrived on the scene seems an appropriate time to re-evaluate their legacies. Rutland-based Car-Iconics is generously supplying both the Ferrari and Aston, but Lamborghini owner JosephWheeler has kindly loaned us his Murciélago, provided we agree collect it some 90 minutes cross-country from our location. Oh, go on then. The Murciélagoʼs scissor door is up like a cowboyʼs pistol when we arrive, V12…

Stradale, Scaglione and show cars – all are linked to Alfa Romeoʼs most exotic supercar, based on the Tipo 33 sports-prototype, which wowed the automotive world when it was unveiled at the Festival dellʼAutodromo at Monza in September 1967. Even Enzo Ferrari was impressed, stating that the only thing wrong with it was the badge! But the word ʻstruggleʼ would be equally apt for the troubled gestation of this fabulous mid-engined 2-litre coupé. In 1963, Carlo Chiti was enlisted to run Alfaʼs Romeoʼs racing operation as a separate wing christened Autodelta, and as well as developing the TZ coupés he was given the challenge of creating a 2-litre sports-prototype partially based on the old Scarabeo. The first T33 was launched at Balocco in March 1967, but the mid-engined 270bhp V8…

It’s hard to believe that driving a Miura will live up to the external drama of its exquisite shape, but the experience is unforgettable for so many reasons. Even the simple act of getting into it has the potential to undo any air of nonchalant ‘cool’ that you might be trying to exude, thanks to the required technique of dropping – or perhaps falling – into the low, reclined seats. Once ensconced behind the wheel, one aspect strikes you more than any other. No doubt you will previously have read about the Italian ‘long arms, short legs’ driving position. The Miura takes this to extremes. For shorter folk such as me, the only way to achieve a usable position with your arms is to splay your legs either side of…

The 1960s were littered with exotically named men who lusted after global automotive domination; obscure but fabulously rich industrialists with money to burn in pursuit of immortalising themselves in a car badge. Hindsight bathes them in an almost Bond villain-esque romance, but the reality of how they tried to turn their mundanely made millions into a supercar legacy is usually rather more run-of-the-mill. Hard work and luck – no techno-hideaway in a hollow mountain – brought one Peter Monteverdi his rewards. And Enzo Ferrari, too. Thank heavens that Il Commendatore was such a difficult man. He might have an impressive roll-call of great cars to his name, but just as mouth-watering for historians and enthusiasts – and rather more intriguing – is the list of debauched GTs and supercars born…

I magine a visitor from another world with no prior knowledge of the intricacies of British politics stumbling across David Miliband standing in the road. Then, drawing alongside, his brother Ed. From a distance the similarities are plain to see, but take a few steps closer and, despite the family resemblance, the two could not be more different. Like screaming and yawning – only thereʼs nothing boring about either of these game-changing supercars. By the late 1960s, Lamborghini had taken a comprehensive lead over De Tomaso in the hunt for ever-increasing top speeds. With the Miura, SantʼAgata was the reigning champion, while its rival was reeling from the perceived failure of the incredibly beautiful yet dynamically challenged Mangusta. As a result, it was all to play for at the turn…

PRESENTS If you missed the first two superb editions in the Legends series, bringing together some of our favourite stories from the past 20 years of Classic & Sports Car magazine, don’t worry because there are still copies available. We kicked off with Sports Car Legends, which features everything from the first vehicle created for pure driving pleasure, the Vauxhall Prince Henry, to the greatest modern classic roadsters. The second edition, Porsche Legends, celebrates the finest Stuttgart icons, from the 356 via the iconic 911 to mighty sports-racers such as the 917. ON SALE NOW! Simply visit magsdirect.co.uk/classic-sports-car-presents/ Coming soon in the Legends series: • Jaguar Legends (on sale 16 February)• Japanese Classic Legends (on sale 23 March) • Ferrari Legends (on sale 27 April)• Modern Classic Legends (on sale…

‘If the extreme looks didn’t grab your attention, the vaudeville performance of its arrival certainly will’ How do you reinvent a true legend? That was the near-impossible question asked of SantʼAgata staff as Countach production entered its second decade in 1984. The shockwave Ferruccio Lamborghiniʼs second supercar had sent through the automotive world was still resonating, despite the fact that his compatriots over at Maranello had already created machines to trump it in the form of the Testarossa and the epic 288GTO. By 1990 the answer was ready, and the gloriously un-PC Diablo roared out in a blaze of horsepower and 200mph bluster. This was to be the last full-fat Lamborghini, unfettered by practicality considerations or nannying electronics. Yet in the history books it hangs in a strange period of…

Some great cars have been the result of a sketch on the back of a whisky-stained nightclub napkin, the feverish scrawl of a gifted engineer having a flash of inspiration. Others come about through dour analysis of market segments, balance sheets and opinion polls. Then there is the Honda NSX – a supercar that represented the achievement of one manʼs ambition, a dream that he worked for a lifetime to turn into reality. Like most of the greatest characters in automotive history, Soichiro Hondaʼs success was not handed to him on a plate. And nor did it come to him overnight. He grew up in the shadow of Mount Fuji as the son of a blacksmith, helping his father to repair swords and bicycles in his childhood. As a youngster,…

What exactly is it? The stubbiness hints at an M100 Lotus Elan, especially with that afterthought of a roof. Itʼs too wide, though, and those grilled tail-lights are pure ʼ80s Ferrari: some Sheikhʼs commission, perhaps? No Prancing Horses. From some angles it could be a prototype for Marcello Gandiniʼs Bugatti EB110, but surely youʼd never see one barrelling down the M11, would you? The Pantera-style graphics running the length of the bodywork give the game away, identifying the De Tomaso Guará as effectively as the script on the underside of a Matchbox model. To the average rubbernecker, however, that doesnʼt make things much clearer. In theory, the Guará was a replacement for the Pantera, the long-lived, Ford V8-powered supercar famously shot by Elvis Presley and crashed by Mötley Crüe vocalist…

At a pinch, you could mistake the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren for a particularly musclebound species of Mercedes SL. Out in the real world few are fooled, least of all the breathless youth who accosted me at the petrol station near Salisbury Plain. Having popped open the butterfly door and tried to look suave as I slid over the deep sill, conscious that Paris Hilton famously flashed all when alighting from one of these cars, I carefully inserted a disclaimer about ownership into the conversation (just in case the young man mistook me for a very over-the-hill former footballer) before fielding the usual questions about speed (207mph) and value (£235k for insurance in this case). Perhaps the most surprising number about the SLR is not ʻhow muchʼ or ʻhow fastʼ but…

2010 Ramp-up begins for the McLaren Automotive era: £40m is invested in the McLaren Production Centre, where up to 1000 cars can be handbuilt annually; 300 additional staff recruited, taking the total to around 1000 2011 The first production MP4-12C is completed 2012 P1 previewed, starting the Ultimate Series line. The second car of the new era is a limited-edition hybrid hypercar with 727bhp from its petrol V8 and 176bhp from its electric motor, plus further advanced suspension 2013 Managing director Antony Sheriff departs (and takes McLaren to court), replaced by COO Mike Flewitt. First year in the black: 1395 cars delivered, £12.4m operating profit 2014 650S launched as a facelifted 12C, addressing various issues with the original car. McLaren Automotive increases headcount to 1283, 25% more than 2013, and posts…