On April 16 the Porsche 911 GT3 RS set another benchmark for road-approved sports cars at the Nürburgring-Nordschleife circuit in Germany: Porsche works race driver Kévin Estre set a lap time in 6:56.4 minutes with the 520-hp GT3 RS. The Frenchman’s lap time was 24 seconds faster than the best time achieved with the previous GT3 RS model. [...]

Regardless of its real-world importance or relevance, kudos to Porsche for continuing to blow minds with each generation and subsequent iteration of its sportscars.

Don't miss the short prologue video either.

As a follow-on from crafting the 'lost' series of E-Type Lightweights, JLR Classic has now turned its attention to producing nut-and-bolt restorations of Jaguar's iconic Series I E-Type.

The inital batch of 10 'Reborn' cars should set you back an entirely reasonable £285,000.

A masterpiece profile of a McLaren-owner of the best kind.

In Tokyo we meet Go Hiramatsu, a lawyer who uses his McLaren P1 for the daily commute - and also takes it into the mountain passes at the weekend.

My hero.

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?

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.

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.

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

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...

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

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.

Jay Leno profiles and gets behind the wheel of a mint 1st gen Toyota Celica straight out of the Toyota USA Automobile Museum.

Love these things.

Classic Driver take a stroll through the Porsche Museum's now-not-so-secret warehouse of concepts, prototypes, retired race cars, and other special examples produced by the famed marque from Stuttgart.

16 glorious minutes of BMW M cars being hustled around the World's Greatest Public Tollway, just as they were designed to.

As good as it is, the producers seemed to have skipped over the E34 M5, forgot to film the E12 M535i having a crack, ditto the E36 M3. Shame on you. Hearing the E46 CSL being wound out might make up for it. Just a little bit.

via Road & Track

Petrolicious profile the first turbine-powered car to win a race, the Howmet TX.

The first Howmet car was so interesting that it was different and you had to rethink everything you were doing to built it, so that was a challenge. It's the only turbine car to have won a race. It ran in the endurance races at that time, racing against the GT40 Fords and the Porsche factory and Ferrari teams. For an experimental car with a turbine engine in it, we were pretty proud of that.

The sound this thing makes...

To celebrate Honda's 700th motorcycle Grand Prix victory last Sunday, Motor Sport Magazine have taken a look back to where it all began: the 1959 Isle of Man TT.

Honda’s nine staff – including five riders, who did double duty as mechanics – flew to the Isle of Man from Tokyo, via Hong Kong, Bangkok, Calcutta, Karachi, Beirut, Frankfurt and London. They flew most of the way in a BOAC Comet, the world’s first commercial jetliner.

During the previous months they had spent their time learning how to eat with a knife and fork, how to wear a suit and tie, instead of traditional Japanese dress, and also mourning the death of a team-mate, who had died while doing stunts for a Japanese biker movie. All these men were members of the Honda Speed Club, a gang of keen young Honda employees who raced and did movie stunts on Hondas.

After 21 months of production, the 918th and last Porsche 918 Spyder has been built.

The 918 Spyder was systematically developed to be a performance hybrid with plug-in technology. The hybrid super sports concept car made its debut at the 2010 Geneva International Motor Show where it met with overwhelming approval. In the summer of 2010, the Supervisory Board of Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG gave the green light for its production development. When the car was launched on the market in late 2013, the 918 Spyder represented a continuation of a series of super sports cars in Porsche history. As technology pioneers they were, without exception, among the ultimate sports cars of their respective decades: the 904 Carrera GTS, the 959, the 911 GT1 and the Carrera GT.

Future classic?

Legendary BMW tuner ALPINA looks back and celebrates fifty years of tuning and racing Bavaria's finest.

Goodwood Road & Racing take an exclusive first peak inside the once secretive offices underneath the historic Bristol Cars Kensington showroom.

XCAR take us inside Ford's secret Heritage Shed in Essex, UK.

Deus Ex Machina describe Luftgekühlt as a celebration of Zuffenhausen’s finest air-cooled cars.

And finest they certainly got at their second event held earlier this month, hosted by Bandito Brothers in Southern California.

Here's a short video of the event.

Speedhunter's profile the new headquarters for Nissan's motorsport offshoot, NISMO.

Love that this Espada has been owned from new and used as a daily driver.

To my way of thinking, the 2002 is one of modern civilization's all-time best ways to get somewhere sitting down. It grabs you. You sit in magnificently-adjustable seats with great, tall windows all around you. You are comfortable and you can see in every direction. You start it. Willing and un-lumpy is how it feels. No rough idle, no zappy noises to indicate that the task you propose might be anything more than child's play for all those 114 Bavarian superhorses.

Car & Driver magazine reminds us of one of the greatest pieces of automotive prose ever written, a review of the BMW 2002 by David E. Davis, Jr. published in April 1968.

C&D also released a PDF reprint of the article.

Great little back story of the colour scheme used for McLaren's recently shown P1 GTR concept.

Speaks volumes about the quality of the McLaren F1 chassis that they took a road-car, modified it to GTR-spec, used it as a development hack to test the GTR concept, took it to Le Mans and won first time out.

"The development of the body-in-white tooling was undertaken by the same department that builds all Jaguar Land Rover prototype vehicles, so the expertise applied to the project was world-class. The build process and assembly procedures were initially proved out on Car Zero; this is effectively an engineering prototype and will not carry one of the six Lightweight chassis numbers."

Incredible attention to detail.

'Car Zero' is to be shown at the upcoming Pebble Beach Automotive weekend.

M8, E46 M3 Touring, an early X5M concept, and an M3 Compact for starters.

We'd love to read more about each of these one-off proof of concepts.

A fascinating project by the new JLR Special Operations department:

Jaguar is to build six brand new 'Lightweight' E-types - the 'missing' six Lightweights that were never built from the intended 18-car series.

You can't get much more special than this.

Over on Petrolicious, Markus Haub recounts his childhood visit to the Ferrari factory:

In the fall, shortly after Enzo’s passing, of 1988 I was on a vacation with my parents in Austria, and one rainy day I convinced them to drive to Italy. Not just any part of Italy... Maranello! It was my wish to see where all the cars from my dreams were created.

Say what you want about electric vehicles, there's no denying the tech involved in the production of the new BMW i3 BEV and REEV is without peer.

/DRIVE tours Aston Martin's newly opened Heritage workshop in Newport Pagnell, where AM will restore, rebuild and upgrade your new or old Aston.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the McLaren F1 and then some. Split over at least four volumes, this latest one is up to 425 pages...

Pistonheads interview new owner, Les Edgar.