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Porsche AG:

Goodbye 2015. Accompany us on a journey through 2015 and see all our highlights on four wheels in this video.

A banner year: Le Mans triumph, an almost entirely refreshed product line, Australian sales up 45% for the year. How could 2016 possibly top this?

• dept of commerce

Increasingly hard to find and getting expensive on the secondary market, this 272-page historical tome tells the inside and official tale of the genesis of the supercar of supercars, the McLaren F1.

This history of the McLaren F1 explains how the McLaren Cars’ team pursued their quest for perfection to create the fastest road car in the world - setting the record at 240.1mph in 1998. The book has been created with the full support and involvement of McLaren Cars.

Authors Doug Nye, Ron Dennis, and Gordon Murray provide a most intimate account of McLaren’s immense effort to produce the F1, including never seen before design sketches, stories and interviews, patent applications, plus photos of early prototypes and models used during the F1’s intense development program.

Available in hardcover via Amazon.

• marques
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As part of a program to support local Group N competitors, Subaru Australia via Possum Bourne Motorsport can now supply FIA-homologated competition cars in three different tiers and any combination of six option packs to suit a range of different series requirements.

Official presser.

• for sale

One of the most beautiful cars to leave the Carrozzeria Zagato studios and one with a very special Australian history. This is shaping up to be the blockbuster sale to close out the year.

The 14th of only 19 DB4GTs built by Zagato, delivered new to Australia where it was successfully campaigned in the hands of Doug Whiteford, Ian Georghegan, and intrepid owner Laurie O’Neill. Originally white in colour, chassis 0186/R underwent a comprehensive restoration back in 2002.

To be auctioned by RM Sotherbys in New York on 10 Dec 2015. Bidding estimate listed as US$15,000,000 - $17,000,000.

• collections

Mike Garrett for Speedhunters takes us inside the iconic Japanese plastic model kit and remote control car makers in-house museum.

Don’t miss their earlier installment showcasing Tamiya’s annual open house event.

• motorsport

To coincide with the recent F1’s 2015 United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas, Ars Technica got an inside view of the technical nerve centre that supports the data and networking requirements for hosting an F1 Grand Prix.

From the outside it was a relatively anonymous temporary building, one of many that travel with the teams and organizers to the so-called flyaway races—events that take place outside of F1’s traditional but endangered heartland of Europe, where the cars and equipment are trucked from track to base and back again. Instead, for the races in the Americas, Asia, and beyond, everything gets loaded into freight 747s. In luggage terms, the tech center alone is responsible for a single jumbo—130 tonnes of servers, networking hardware, cabling, and so on.

Nuts.

• motorsport
• video

26 minutes of gritty onboard, pitlane, and behind the scenes action from NISMO’s tilt at the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans, filmed in glorious 4K.

Brilliant.

via @sportautolive

• design
• marques
• news

CAR Magazine has the scoop on early talks of a collaboration between BMW and McLaren to develop a proper supercar for the Munich marque.

BMW is developing a mid-engined supercar with a V8 engine – and is in talks with McLaren to put the car into production. CAR can reveal that the top secret flagship is scheduled for a Frankfurt show unveiling in exactly two years’ time, if talks with Britain’s supercar specialists are successfully concluded.

Last time these two got together, they made McLaren F1 babies. Good times ahead if this story holds any water.

• design
• profile

Road & Track profile the lost and dark art of mechanical fuel injection.

Wes Ingram and his business partner, Herb Sanborn, collaborate on rebuilding and modifying mechanical injection pumps for vintage Alfa Romeos… We visited them in their Washington shop, Ingram Enterprises, because it’s one of the only centers for such work. Also because SPICA injection—found on every U.S.-market Alfa from 1969 to 1981 is widely maligned. And thus a good way to illustrate the tech’s darkness and light.

Loads more info on their website, Ingram Enterprises.

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Epic Andrew Ritter photo essay of the recent Porsche love-in at Laguna Seca Raceway.

• motorsport
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Footage of Brembo bench testing their Formula 1-spec carbon-carbon front brake assembly.

via @scarbsf1

• design
• marques

GRRC get the skinny on the latest flight of a Bugatti aeroplane design from the 1930’s that never actually flew in period due to the outbreak of WWII.

Ettore Bugatti and his designer, the Belgian aero engineer Louis de Monge, set out to make the fastest, most aerodynamic and advanced racing aircraft in the skies in the 1930s – obviously as a Bugatti nothing less would do. It was designed to get close to 500mph, but on half the power of rivals. In planes as with cars, Bugatti’s way was innovative engineering over brute force every time.

Incredible.

More info…

• marques
• video

Short video promoting one of the stars of the upcoming Bond flick Spectre, the Jaguar C-X75. Jaguar Director of Design Ian Callum discusses how elements of the stillborn supercar can be seen across the revamped Jaguar range.

I want people to look at a car and know that they’re excited and not quite know why or how. What’s important is the atmosphere… You don’t see it. You feel it.

Just. Build. It.

via Road & Track

• for sale

Chassis 017 of the original 20 Rennsport models assembled by the Porsche racing department at the behest of Ferdinand Piëch:

Piëch and his racing mechanics replaced front and rear deck lids, doors, front fenders, and both bumpers with duplicates in fiberglass-reinforced plastic, formed and assembled at Karl Baur works in Stuttgart. Wider rear wheels forced slight flares onto the bodywork. The hinges – doors and deck lids – were in aluminum. Because it was a racing car, engineers shaved windshield thickness to 4mm and side glass was thinned to 2mm. It’s safe to describe a 911R as “interior delete”, because Porsche’s racing shop pulled more content out than it left in. In fact, it was the job of one racing mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, to run a drill press, perforating every pedal, lever, handle, and panel with holes to lighten each by a gram at a time. By the time they finished, the cars weighed just 800 kilograms – 1,764 pounds.

Even the legendary 2.7 RS pales in comparison to the 911R, this is the early 911 to have. #017 is more special still, not only does it have a fully documented history, it is also fitted with a very special engine with a thick race-winning history file.

Currently offered by Road Scholars, $POA.

• review

evo take a nostalgic drive around the Peak District in a pristine example of Audi’s RS2 Avant, a Porsche-engineered weapon from 1994.

• motorsport

dailysportscar.com preview next years crop of new and revised GT3 sportscars.

Looks like 2016 is going to be another banner year for the ever expanding category.

• marques
• news

Steve Cropley for Autocar reports on TVR’s plans for a return to production:

Returning after an absence of nearly 10 years, the new TVR has been designed by engineering guru Gordon Murray and will be powered by a unique, hugely powerful Cosworth V8 engine and backed by an ambitious and well-funded ownership team.

The iconic sports car marque’s backers have already spelled out the first details of a 10-year plan that will put at least four new TVRs on the road from 2017.

Selling out the first year’s production certainly sounds promising. Great to see some Gordon Murray Design iStream tech being used also.

• design
• motorsport

Mark Hughes for Motor Sport:

The turbo’s compressor is too small – part of that ‘size zero’ concept – and cannot be made to run fast enough to compensate in terms of creating enough heat to give the ersH something to work with. But whether the breakthrough even comes next season could depend upon what happens with the engine homologation regulations. As things currently stand, the engine token system reverts in 2016 to how it was in 2014. i.e. tokens cannot be spent during the season

Fascinating analysis of the underlying design issues holding McLaren-Honda back in F1 this season.

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TOYOTA GAZOO Racing cook up a breakfast for 171 friends using a mystery chef and barista: their TS040 Hybrid LMP1 car.

Not the highest of production values (those reactions and that electricity); nonetheless interesting and entertaining.

via SportscarOne

• motorsport
• profile
• vale

In streaming rain on Bathurst’s 190mph Conrod Straight, the yellow BMW M3 appeared to aquaplane gently onto the grass verge. It glanced the wall and crossed the track, still clearly under control, to be braked safely to a halt.

It was October 4, 1992, on the 33rd lap of the Bathurst 1000. At the wheel was the 1967 F1 World Champion, Denny Hulme. The 56-year-old had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Twelve months earlier, Hulme had driven a similar BMW M3 to fourth at the mountain classic. The following day, he and I travelled to Tasmania to tour the route of the inaugural Targa Tasmania road rally.

Michael Stahl reflects on time spent with 1967 F1 World Champion, Denny Hulme, in this 2013 profile for Motor Sport Magazine.