The Renault 5 Turbo is hot-hatch fire: imagine if today's hot-hatches out-accelerated and out-handled today's mid-engine Ferraris. The R5 Turbo beat up on the contemporary Ferrari 308 — as well as every other supercar — by moving its turbocharged engine to the back, where rear seats used to be. Compare that to enthusiast cars like today's Volkswagen Golf R, which is merely a GTI+. VW, too, built a mid-engine, rear-drive GTI, the W12-650. But the Germans built one as a marketing exercise. The French put their Le Supercar into production and sold thousands of them to the lucky public. The photo car is a Renault R5 Turbo 2 Evolution, owned by Bring-a-Trailer cofounder Randy Nonnenberg. The Evo added back in the aluminum bits lost in the switch from Turbo to Turbo 2, and had a bespoke engine with a fractionally larger displacement. For homologation purposes, of course — because this was a WRC rally car.
Months away from production, no journalists have driven the Mk2 BRZ — but we've spent some time with its specs. And a calculator. The BRZ's torque curve tells an important story: adjusted for weight and gearing, at almost all engine speeds, the 2022 BRZ will pull harder than a 181-hp Mazda MX-5 ND2 Miata — a car that is almost universally agreed does not need a turbo. The problem with the old, 2.0-liter BRZ wasn't its peak torque — it was the outrageously high engine rpm required to hit that peak; the torque dip in the everyday rpm range; and the uninspiring noise the engine made. The Mk2 BRZ and Toyota GT86 solve that with a new FA24 engine variant — and fake engine sounds coming through the stereo speakers. Adding a turbocharger at the manufacturer level means a cascading avalanche of cost. Had Subaru put a turbo on the 2022 BRZ, it would likely follow in the footsteps of every other affordable, sporty coupe: it would become so expensive that it would die off. Toyota already has
Porsche has just announced the 992 GT3, and it's the most extreme GT-car yet, with a wholly reengineered double-wishbone front suspension replacing the regular 992's struts. This is the 7th-generation of GT3, and the massive engineering signals a sea change for Porsche: the GT3 is now, unquestionably, the most important car in the 911 lineup. Porsche's GT-Car Division, run by the talented and charismatic Andreas Preuninger, exists within Porsche's Motorsport Department — and has made the most desirable 911s of the last 20 years. It's time to look back at the 996, 997, 991.1 and 991.2 variants to understand the progression of the GT cars in Porsche's lineup. At the Porsche Experience Center's Los Angeles track, Jason drives the 996 GT3 RS, 997 GT3 RS 4.0, 997 GT2 RS, 991.1 911 R, and 991.2 GT2 RS — while recording high-quality sound — so you can see and hear just how far the GT cars have come. Think of this as Andy Preuninger's Greatest Hits, Volume 1.
It's hard to imagine a world without Honda and Lamborghini, but they both first started making cars in the early 1960s. Honda's first-ever passenger car (its first "car" was actually the T360 "truck") was first shown in 1962 as the Sports 360 and Sports 500 prototypes with 356- and 492-cc four-cylinders. The S500 made it to production a year or so later with a slightly larger 531-cc four, which was eventually supplemented by the 606-cc S600 and the 791-cc S800. The aluminum engine was the highlight of this tiny roadster (and coupe), with DOHC, hemispherical combustion chambers, and a roller-bearing crankshaft. Its design allowed it to rev to the moon — up to 9500 rpm in the case of the S600 — a redline that no other production passenger-car engine has beat even today. The car itself was a marvel of simplicity and elegant engineering, with chain-drive independent suspension (later replaced by a conventional solid axle), a 4- or 5-speed synchronized transmission, rack-and-pinion ste
There are a lot of misconceptions about the Porsche-built W124 Mercedes 500E, and Jason explains why the 500E and E500 was NOT a Porsche sports sedan with a Mercedes badge. First off, there's not a single Porsche part on the car. Porsche Engineering Services helped with reengineering the W124's engine compartment to fit in the 32-valve, 4-cam M119 V-8 — for both the 400E and the 500E. But the 500E doesn't use the same V-8 as the 500SL. It needed shorter connecting rods so that it fit in the same physical space as the 4.2-liter 400E — this way only one structural variant needed to be produced. The 400E was a response to the Lexus LS400. Why do you think it wasn't called a 420E? Porsche also did the engineering to bolt up wheels, tires, brakes, and suspension components from the wider and heavier R129 500SL and W124 500SEL. That necessitated fender flares so wide that the 500E didn't fit down the regular W124 production line in Sindelfingen. For both models, Porsche performed the p
The Roma is a sign that things are changing at Ferrari. For the last decade or so, Ferrari's sports cars have gotten more and more aggressive in looks — that's the opposite of the cars that Enzo Ferrari loved: comfortable, drivable GTs. In this episode, we examine the meaning behind the Gran Turismo — and how it's an obsolete term today. But also how the Roma, more so than the Ferrari California upon which it's based, is a return to the idea of an everyday Ferrari. It has adaptive cruise control, free scheduled maintenance, and a back seat. And while it has a rear spoiler, it has no button to make it go up and down — perhaps a way of saying, "leave those showoff antics to the Lamborghini owners." It is a modern Ferrari, after all, so it has a twin-turbocharged flat-plane-crank V-8; light and incredibly precise electric power steering; an instant-shifting 8-speed dual-clutch automatic; and suspension tuning that makes it feel as though it weighs just 2500 lb. And it's elegant. And
The original Bronco was a logic-based response to the Jeep CJ-5, Toyota Land Cruiser, and other 4x4s favored by aging, ex-GIs in the early 1960s who wanted creature comforts. And it was a massive success — in that very small market. It wasn't until the Big Bronco, modeled after the enormous Chevrolet K5 Blazer 12 years later, that Ford achieved real sales success. But the small, billygoat Bronco has become a legend because of its incredibly simple good looks, powerful engines, and (compared to its rivals) easy on-road comfort. History is repeating itself — the 2022 Bronco follows the same recipe, but this time, Ford knows a 4-door will sell in larger volumes. So the new car will be sold in both Big and Little versions. And we suspect it'll be the little, 2-door Bronco that will wind up in videos like this one day.
With a development budget of $3.5 billion, the Taurus was Ford's most expensive project ever. It was also a Hail Mary for the company, which was in financial trouble. And the SHO was the fastest version of the Taurus. If the Taurus failed, so, too would Ford. It was so important to the success of the company that Ford restructured the engineering and design teams to work together on the new family sedan. The Taurus's design was so revolutionary that Ford kept its previous mid-size sedan, the LTD, in production at the same time, just in the new car failed — as the other American car executives predicted it would. Instead, Taurus was an enormous success, eventually becoming the bestselling car in America. The performance version, the Taurus SHO, used the same basic 3.0-liter Vulcan V-6, but instead of pushrods, it used four overhead cams and 24 valves. The DOHC 4-valve heads were designed, manufactured, and assembled by Yamaha in Japan. The SHO used a Mazda-sourced 5-speed manual a
The Porsche 924, 944, and 968 were never meant to be Porsches. This lineup started as a consulting gig for Volkswagen, code named EA425. Which was to be sold as an Audi or VW. VW killed the project, leaving Porsche without one of the two prongs for its 911 replacement, the 4-cylinder transaxle 924 and the V-8 928. So Porsche bought the rights to the project, applied an arbitrary "924" badge to the EA425, and Audi built it under contract for Porsche in Neckarsulm. There wasn't a single Porsche part on it. However, over time, the 924 became the 924S and the 944, with a real Porsche engine, rather than the old Daimler-inspired, Audi-built 2.0-liter from the VW LT transit van. By the end of the car's 20-year run, the 968 had the second interior, second engine, third body — but still used suspension components designed for the Super Beetle (VW Type 1 1302), Mk1 Golf / Rabbit, Microbus, and Thing. And yet it won awards for its handling. That is something only Porsche could accomplish
The recipe for a successful sports car is simple: great looks, great name, and a vocal engine. VW's Scirocco replacement had gorgeous styling and an Italian-sounding name. But the supercharged G60 engine was a disappointment. Slower than the Scirocco 16V it replaced, the new-technology four-cylinder Corrado G60 didn't find many fans. Resurrecting an engine design pioneered by Lancia in 1922, VW created the VR6 — originally called the RV6 internally, which was a 2.8-liter 15-degree narrow-angle V6/straight-six hybrid that fit in the place of the previous four-cylinder. The original 12-valve VR6 is one of the best-sounding engines in a production car; combining the smooth, sultry sound of a straight-six with a wookie warble and none of a V-6's harshness. It was a revelation then and now — and combined with Mk3 GTI suspension components, the Corrado SLC cleaned the floor of the supercoupe class in every performance metric. Including price. It was easily the most expensive car in its
This is an in-depth review of the 2022 Volkswagen GTI, delivered by a VW Fan with a closeup perspective on the previous Mk7 Golf. The Mk7 GTI might have no bigger fan than Jason Cammisa — and in this episode of Revelations, he explains why he thinks it's a better overall car than the new Mk8. This, after comically admitting that his house looks like a Volkswagen shrine. Being a fanboy cuts both ways — it can mean blind adoration for a new car based on the previous version, or it can result in unrealistic expectations. Perhaps both are true this time around. The Mk8 is quicker than the Mk7 (we include testing results) but the problems start with cost-cutting and questionable decisions that seem to prioritize gimmicks over substance. Things like the overwrought exterior styling, GPS-blocking cell-phone holder, or worse — the fact that the interior accent lighting is infinitely color-adjustable, but there's no illumination at all for the volume temperature controls; the two most-used
The Maserati Quattroporte V was developed while Ferrari owned the company, under the guidance of Enzo The Second, Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo. It used a Ferrari-built V-8 whose sound was, thanks to a 2008 study, scientifically proven to increase sexual arousal. This is just the beginning of its appeal — though the Quattroporte wasn't a home-run at first. Thanks to the Ferrari influence, it used a single-clutch automated manual transaxle called "DuoSelect." Automated manuals were, mercifully, a short-lived fad in sports cars, and in heavy luxury sedans, they worked even less well. Drive a Quattroporte 12,000 miles per year and you're looking at $500 per month just in clutch wear. Luckily, after FIAT took control of Maserati away from Ferrari, it reengineered a huge portion of the car to fit a conventional 6-speed automatic. And the Automatica then gave the fifth-generation Quattroporte a chance at being the best-driving full-size luxury sports sedan of all time. Which it became.
The GMC Syclone wasn't just quick — in its day, it was among the quickest vehicles ever tested. And that success was lingering: the Turbo Truck was, by a significant margin, the quickest pickup truck in the world for a staggering 30 years. That's nearly twice as long as the McLaren F1 held the top-speed record. Surprise: it also handled well, keeping up with the supercars of its day. What's not a surprise: the Syclone, and its SUV-bodied brother, the Typhoon, were not conceived through the regular product-planning channels at General Motors: they were dreamt up by a Real Car Guy — Kim Nielsen — and pushed through using the help of outside consultants. To get into production quickly, before the S-15 Sonoma pickup and Jimmy SUV ended their product cycle, Nielsen worked closely with ASC/McLaren and then Production Automotive Services to develop the turbo truck. And then PAS won the contract to engineer, certify, and build the SyTy (Syclone and Typhoon.) With just a little wheelspin o
Beauty is only skin-deep, but the Alfa Romeo SZ is also beautiful underneath its composite skin. The love-it-or-hate-it design (we lurve it!) was chosen because it was so attention-grabbing, but the SZ's mechanical layout traces back directly to Alfa Romeo's 1938 race car, the 158 "Alfetta." More than a decade later, a small upgrade turned it into the 159 Alfetta, which competed in Formula 1 — and was one of the most successful race cars in history. Giuseppe Busso did more than design the lusty V-6 in the SZ; it was his dream to put the Alfetta's rear-transaxle and de Dion-suspension layout in a street car. He realized this dream with the original Alfetta (Type 116) in the early 1970s, and that basic layout carried over directly into the SZ, giving this two-door coupe (and the RZ, its roadster twin) predictable, easy handling. The SZ's styling is polarizing but its driving experience is not — it's universally praised as a driver's car, with great visibility, an incredibly responsive
The Saab 99 Turbo and 900 Turbo were Swedish Crystal Balls: they more accurately foretold the future of automotive powertrains better than perhaps any other car until Tesla's EVs. The similarities are many: Saab wasn't a car company; it was an airplane manufacturer, so it did things differently than other automakers. Saab was obsessed with safety. And Saab was concerned about real-world speed and efficiency rather than looking just at numbers. And as a result, Saabs were bought by non-mainstream buyers. Just like today's EVs. In this episode, Jason Cammisa explains why the 99 and 900, which were effectively the same car, were revelations. They included a handful of world-firsts, including low-boost-pressure, high compression-ratio four-cylinders that more closely resemble today's turbos than anything else of the era.
One of the design briefs for the C4 Corvette was that it had a minimal frontal cross-section, so it was less visible to radar. In other words, it helped you get away with speeding. Another target was to be the most powerful car sold in America. The 1990 - 1995 Corvette's ZR-1 option package was the most expensive in the history of Detroit, but it gave the Corvette world-beater firepower. Its LT5 V-8 was designed by Lotus and built by Mercury Marine, an all-aluminum, four-cam V-8 that was developed from the Lotus Etna concept engine, not a Small Block. It shared the traditional Small Block 4.40-inch bore spacing (after a quick redesign) and used an early form of passive Variable Valve Timing. The 32-valve V-8 breathed through 16 individual intake runners, half of which could be closed off at low loads. When opened, those runners breathed through valves that ran on a far more aggressive cam profile. This allowed the engine to be both torquey and efficient at low-rpms, but powerful at
The 3rd-gen Mazda RX-7 has it all: beauty, performance, a Le Mans tie-in, and a sales failure. Like so many other legends, it's everything we want in a sports car. Which made it a hard sell in its time. The FD RX-7 was developed at the same time, by the same man, as the 4-rotor 787B that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was a lightweight, fast, focused sports car that walloped its competition on the road and on track, thanks to a sequential twin-turbocharged rotary engine and a obsessive lightweighting. But it might have gone too far. The 13B-REW engine is fragile and finicky, and the chassis was one last-second reinforcement away from being too light to be structurally sound. Then again, what sports car doesn't suffer from a few problems? At least the RX-7 had incredible performance and looks to kill. It was designed to be a classic, with forms that would make it one day appear on the lawn at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Given how well it's aging, there's little doubt the
The Mercedes W194 300SL racing car was a recipe for failure, using heavy components from the S-Class luxury car. And yet, in the summer of 1952, it took to the podium in the Mille Miglia, Bern Grand Prix, Le Mans, the Nürburgring, and then, that fall, the Carrera Panamericana, humiliating Porsches and Ferraris and everything else. The 300SL became a legend in just a few months. Convinced there was nothing left to win, Mercedes killed off the racing program, and the 300SL was set to be relegated to the history books. Except that the brilliant Max Hoffman knew a legend when he saw it, and convinced Mercedes to make a roadgoing version. The W198 300SL was a barely modified version of the race car, with an even nicer, "Bordello on Wheels" interior and even more horsepower — thanks to the world's first direct-injected gasoline engine. The 300SL's swing-axle rear suspension came straight from the S-Class, but was tuned for oversteer at the input of the talented race-car drivers who cou
The Miura is the ultimate Delegation Special — it exists only because Ferruccio Lamborghini backed off and allowed his team of young, talented engineers and designers to do what they do best. A finicky mid-engined supercar is the opposite of the Rolls-Royce-like GTs that Ferruccio wanted to build, yet it's the Miura that singlehandedly elevated Lamborghini to the likes of Ferrari. The four men chiefly behind the car were all in their twenties when the Miura debuted: Giampaolo Dallara, 29, senior engineer Paolo Stanzani, 29, assistant engineer Bob Wallace, 27, chief development engineer Marcello Gandini, 27, designer The Miura used the 4-liter Bizzarrini V-12 designed for the 350GT and 400GT, rotated by 90º and mounted transversely in a casting that included the transmission and differential. Power claims were all over the map, but Road & Track's test car banged off a 0-60 in 5.5 seconds, through the quarter-mile in 13.9 sec @ 107.5 mph, and achieved a top speed of 168 mph, making
Within BMW circles, it's a commonly held belief that the U.S.-spec M3 wasn't a "real M3" because it didn't have a real M engine. The 1995 M3 used a 3.0-liter version of the regular 325i's straight-six — whereas European cars used a special 3.0-liter straight-six with a Independent-throttle-body cylinder head taken from the McLaren F1. The horsepower difference was 240 hp (US) versus 286 PS (DIN.) To make matters worse, the 1996 and later U.S. M3 used a 3.2-liter that also made 240 hp, whereas the Euro car got a 3.2-liter with 321 PS. The primary reason for the US engine was financial — the E30 M3 was a sales failure in North America, and BMW NA didn't want to risk another one. The E36 M3 was a bargain — unlike the E30 M3, which was a buzzy, four-cylinder homologation-special race car, the six-cylinder M3 did everything better than the 325i. And instead of an $8000 price premium over the base car, the M3 cost just $3000 more.
In this episode, automotive journalist Jason Cammisa walks us through the difficult birth and runaway success of the Lotus Elise, both Series 1 and Series 2. The Lotus Elise isn't just lightweight — it weighed HALF as much as some contemporary "lightweight" sports cars (like the Porsche Boxster). That's because it was constructed like no other car ever. To hit its outrageous weight target — the same as the original Lotus Seven — the Elise was never meant to have doors or a roof. However, safety regulations made a "step-in car" challenging, and so Lotus' lightweight mid-engine sports car grew doors. Gullwing doors at first — in theory. In practice, the Elise is a marvel of simplicity. It's the first car ever whose chassis is constructed of bonded, extruded aluminum — a practice that's still not common today. Combined with fiberglass clamshells, the lightest Elises weigh as much as today's Formula 1 cars. And the heaviest barely touches 2000 lb. The Elise and its derivatives (the
It took 37 years of cranking for Ford to successfully start the mid-engined followup to the historic GT40 race car. In the process, Ford created — and abandoned — at least seven mid-engined cars meant to recapture the glory from the famous victor of the Ford vs. Ferrari battle at Le Mans. In this episode of Revelations, automotive journalist Jason Cammisa tells the fascinating backstory of the 2005-2006 Ford GT — and how it, like the seven mid-engined attempts before it — was almost killed off before it hand a chance.
The 1985 Subaru XT 4WD Turbo was what happened when Subaru tried not to be weird. Honda had the Prelude, Toyota had the Celica, and Subaru had a problem — at the end of the malaise era, sports coupes were getting fun and fast. And Subaru didn't have a car to compete with them. The company's EA-series flat-four gradually got a turbocharger and overhead cams, and in the XT Turbo it made a full 111 hp. With AWD traction and a 5-speed manual, it got to 60 mph in 10.2 seconds — which was genuinely quick for a Subaru. It had a coefficient of drag as low as 0.29, making it the most aerodynamic car sold in America. Looking back, the XT previewed many technologies and features common in today's cars: height-adjustable air suspension, turbocharged four-cylinder engines, all-wheel drive, digital dashboards, a hill-holder feature, speed alarm, a focus on aerodynamics, trunk pass-through, trip computer, you name it! That preview was done, however, though the eyes of what was possible using 1980
On the heels of the 2023 Nissan Z, it’s a worth look at the history of the original Nissan Fairlady Z — sold in America as the Datsun 240Z, 260Z and 280Z. And, in particular, the Fairlady Z432. This S30-generation Z not only changed the definition of “sports car” from 2-seat (British) roadster to 2-seat enclosed coupe, but changed the reputation of Japanese automakers around the world from manufacturers of curious cars to world-class automakers. The 240Z was powered by the L24-powered, a somewhat-Mercedes-derived straight-six that gave it performance on par with Ferrari Dinos and Porsche 911s, at a fraction of the cost. But with all the looks of Ferrari’s front-engine V12-powered coupes. The 240Z had waiting lists for years in America. It was such a runaway success that credit for its design became hotly contested, leading to a threatened lawsuit by Albrecht Goertz, a German aristocrat who had been hired by Nissan to consult on the project — which was originally a collaboration b
Toyota's 2000GT was one of the fastest cars in history. Its 16 international and world endurance-speed records have nothing to do with it: the Yamaha-built Toyota 2000GT did for Toyota in eight short years what took Hyundai more than three decades: it catapulted Toyota from the laughingstock maker of Japanese curiosities (like the 1958 Toyopet Crown) to the esteemed manufacturer of a Porsche-beating supercar. Set out to be a world-beater, the 2000GT had the Jaguar E-Type in its sights (and its long hood) but the Lotus Elan under its skin. With a backbone chassis inspired by (read: shamelessly stolen from) the Lotus, the 2000GT competed directly with the best sports cars of its time. In fact, its spec sheet reads like the best sports cars from decades later — with a 7000-rpm twin-cam engine, fully synchronized 5-speed manual, 4-wheel disc brakes, limited-slip differential, rack-and-pinion steering, and 4-wheel independent suspension with double wishbones at each corner. The intricate
Here's the history of the legendary A-B-C Cars, all in one place! The SUV is to America as the Kei Car is to Japan — nearly half the car on the road in Japan are Kei Cars, a classification of small car that created tax benefits to encourage mobility after the second World War. KeijidÅsha, or "light automobiles" were created by the Japanese government in the early 1950s, and really started to become popular a decade later. But when this economic measure to favor the economically disadvantaged crashed head-on with the unprecedented economic boom of the 1980s' "Japanese Bubble Economy," ,the result was three Kei sports cars known together as the A-B-C cars: A for the positively insane Autozam AZ-1, B for the Pininfarina-designed, 8500-rpm ITB-equipped Honda Beat, and C for the turbocharged Suzuki Cappuccino. In this video, veteran automotive journalist Jason Cammisa examines the history of the Kei-car regulations, including their start, their initial success with the Subaru 360, and d
The Pontiac Fiero answers the question of why a 1980s economy car would have a big-displacement, mid-mounted engine and four-wheel disc brakes? These were characteristics of a sports cars with Ferrari and Lamborghini badges. The Fiero shared another characteristic with exotics: its propensity to catch on fire. In this video, Jason Cammisa examines the history of the Pontiac Fiero, and the automotive con job behind its creation. Built under the guise of an ‘efficient commuter car,’ The Fiero aimed to usher in a new era of sporty, automotive design, and bring General Motors into the future (after a decade of malaise-era cars.) It was a mid-engine ray of hope for the domestic car market, until Pontiac’s plan went up in flames… Or, less cynically, maybe the Fiero was just a victim of Mission Creep? Once Pontiac's engineers got a taste of the mid-engine layout, which was necessary for aerodynamics required to hit the commuter car's 50-mpg EPA target, they got carried away and turned it i
Lotus' first and only-ever 4-door sedan was badged the Lotus Omega (left-hand-drive versions) or Lotus Carlton (RHD.) Based on the European Car of the Year award-winning Opel Omega and Vauxhall Carlton twins, it was the fastest regular production sedan in the world, and that caused major controversy in the socioeconomic class-conscious United Kingdom. 180-mph supercars like the Ferrari Testarossa had already been around for years, but when a pedestrian brand like Vauxhall endeavored to sell a sedan that could be purchased by non-aristocrats, it rocked the establishment. Still, the Lotus Carltomega was a tour-de-force, offering 377 hp — 2 hp more than the also Lotus-engineered, 4-cam, 32-valve, 5.7-liter LT5 V-8 from the C4 Corvette ZR-1. The Carlton/Omega sent that outrageous power (and 419 lb-ft of torque!) from its 3.6-liter twin-turbo, DOHC 24-valve straight-six to the rear wheels via the same ZF 6-speed manual used in that King of the Hill Corvette. It was the only 6-speed manua
The E26-chassis BMW M1 — the first car ever from a new subsidiary of BMW, creatively called "BMW Motorsport" — is one of few cars ever produced that started out as a race car and then was developed into a road car solely for homologation purposes. Cars developed this way are in ultra-exclusive rarified air, but the M1's development was so fraught with problems that it was never allowed to go racing. However, the car's fundamentals were spectacular, from its beautiful Giugiaro design to its powerful BMW M88 straight-six, to its Lamborghini-Dallara racing chassis. It received nearly universal acclaim — as quick as the 12-cylinder Ferrari 512 BB and the Lamborghini Countach, but civilized and docile to drive. The difficulties in getting production ramped up were mostly the fault of Lamborghini, which went bankrupt during the development after misappropriating funds received both from BMW for the M1 and from the U.S. government to develop an off-road military vehicle, and then being su
This is the story of the Tesla Roadster — and thus, the beginnings of Tesla, which has grown to be the most valuable automaker in history. Tesla's promised new roadster is a very different thing — this Roadster went into production at a time when electric vehicles weren't just in their infancy, they were a joke, disregarded by enthusiasts and regular customers alike. The story begins with the Piontek Sportech, which was a home-built tube-frame sports car created by Ford Engineer Dave Piontek in his garage in Michigan. It used a 1300-cc Suzuki 4-cylinder motorcycle engine (with Nitrous injection) and could hit 60 mph in just 4.5 seconds, weighing only 1234 lb. A California-based startup called AC Propulsion bought one of the Sport-Techs and converted it to run on Optima Yellow-Top lead-acid batteries. They called it the tZero, and a prospective custome
Popular lore has taken an out-of-context quote from Enzo Ferrari that "a Ferrari is a twelve-cylinder car" to mean that Il Commendatore thought any car with fewer than twelve cylinders is not worthy of the Ferrari badge. And thus, the Dino Ferraris aren't real Ferraris. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dino was the name of Ferrari's only one legitimate son, who died young at the merciless hands of Muscular Dystrophy. Dino himself was named after Enzo's father and older brother, both of whom died when Enzo was a teenager. The "Dino" badge wasn't an insult — it was an honor. And it adorns two of the best-driving Ferrari road cars ever created. In this episode, automotive journalist Jason Cammisa explains the history of Enzo's Double Ds — the 206/246 Dino and the 308 GT4 Dino — and how they both foretold the future of Ferrari's road cars, both in layout (mid-engine sports car) and in engine (with the 308 GT4's flat-plane-crankshaft V-8.)
This is the story of the first-generation Acura NSX, known in the rest of the world as the Honda NSX. The all-aluminum NA1-chassis NSX was developed as Honda was on top of the world — it had just begun an incredible string of Formula One victories, its Accord was the best-selling car in America, and its new Acura luxury brand was a resounding success. The NSX would be the company's flagship, demonstrating that Honda could apply its F1 know-how to a Ferrari-challenging, mid-engined supercar. It was received with near unanimous praise from the American automotive media, but ultimately the NSX struggled to find buyers for the majority of its 15-year production run. In this episode of "Revelations," automotive journalist Jason Cammisa takes us through the history of the original NSX and why, in retrospect, it was actually a success despite being unable to live up to its sales expectations — and how it differs from the second-generation, Ohio-engineered and -built NC1 hybrid.
The Mazda Miata has succeeded where every other lightweight sports car has failed, by decidedly NOT giving the customer what they want. No more weight, complexity, speed, or luxury. On this episode of Hagerty's Revelations with Jason Cammisa, we welcome special guest and father of the Miata, Tom Matano, to tell the story of how the Miata has survived economic downturns and done the impossible. In the process, it's proven every other carmaker wrong — cars can indeed be light, simple, and fun, even while meeting modern emissions and safety regulations. But it all almost never happened — battles between Mazda's North American office, which conceived the Lotus Elan-like roadster, almost resulted in a front-wheel drive or mid-engined car, and led the original team with Matano and Bob Hall, to ask for the project to be killed off. Forget the whole thing. Just kill it. Thankfully, Mazda didn't. And 35 years later, the Miata reigns King of Sports Cars, selling the same amount of cars in t
You've heard of Land Rover — but who is Rover? Well, same company, just without the Land. And when Rover was folded, together with Triumph, into the dysfunctional British Leyland conglomerate, this is the outcome. The SD1 replaced both the Triumph 2000 and the Rover 2000, formerly direct mid-size sedan competitors. It used Triumph construction methods, suspension, transmission, and steering, together with Rover's 3.5-liter all-aluminum V-8, which started out as the Buick 215. Its exterior styling was straight-up copied... errr... inspired by the Maserati Indy and Ferrari Daytona and BB, inside and out. In addition to immediately winning the coveted 1977 European Car of the Year award, the magazine reviews were outrageously positive. And then it all started to fall apart — literally. The SD1 was a victim of Leyland's cost-cutting and dysfunctional management, and sometimes-hilarious build quality issues scarred its reputation. However, as automotive journalist Jason Cammisa points o
The Lamborghini LM002 didn't start out as a Lamborghini at all. It wasn't much of a Lamborghini at the end. And yet, if it's the job of a Lamborghini to be outrageous, it's actually the Most Lamborghini Lamborghini ever.
Volkswagen once made a 2-seat, carbon-tubbed, mid-engine, butterfly-door pint-sized supercar with only 68 hp. This is the amazing story behind the most efficient internal-combustion car ever made.
This is the History of the Bugatti EB110 — the perfect 1990s supercar. It had a carbon tub, four-wheel drive, Gandini styling, Billionaire Doors, and a mid-mounted bespoke V-12 with four turbos. And yet it all ended in tears. What happened?
The E31-chassis BMW 8-series was not a replacement for the E24 6-series — it was a completely new kind of GT, designed not to be rolling art, but a way to show off BMW's R&D Department. The 850i was one of, if not the, most technologically advanced cars in the world. Its list of industry firsts is enormous, and includes drive-by-wire, CAN-bus technology, and the first German V-12 in 50 years. But BMW forgot to install the fun. the 850i was a sales disaster. At its debut in 1989 at the Frankfurt Auto Show IAA, BMW received 35,000 orders — enough to sell out 3 years of planned production. However, once the car magazines drove it, the reviews were brutal and customers cancelled their orders. (Largely in favor of the R129-chassis Mercedes SL.) 850i sales were so poor that BMW cancelled plans to make an E31 convertible, and also killed off the planned M8, which used the McLaren F1's S70/2 640-hp V-12 with ITBs and carbon intakes. Instead, M engineered a less-expensive M8, the formula f
The Lexus LFA was a hard sale: it was more expensive than its Ferrari and Lamborghini counterparts. Didn't matter that it had the best-sounding V-10 in history. Didn't matter that the Nürburgring Package variant set the production car lap record at the Norschleife. Didn't matter that it was innovative, rare, and beautiful. Didn't matter that it was a carbon-fiber chassis supercar that actually went racing. Lexus' F Performance Brand just hadn't earned the right to command those kinds of prices. Learn the full history behind the Lexus Flagship that changed our world for the better.