Bathurst’s on Sunday Aussie time. Last outing for the Holden brand this year - the end of an era.

There’s no new law involved, and ANCAP’s not “requiring” anything: they’re not a regulatory body. You just won’t get an ANCAP 5 star safety rating if you don’t offer the feature. 

“that was the last time F1 cars took on American open-wheel racers in competition.”

Can you get them without sunroofs in the US? Because that makes a massive difference to headroom. I’m 6’1 and I used to fit comfortably in my 01 XJR even with my helmet on (yes, I tracked it. Once.).

“It’s gonna go nyoooooom so much”

I saw a virtual conference presentation by F1’s CTO last year in which he said that implementing cellphone-based people tracking at the courses had taught them that depending on venue, up to 30% of people who attended an F1 event never visited the actual track - they were just there for the attractions or the evening…

...and Michelin were doing them for Citroen roughly five decades ago. Well, single piece apart from steel inserts under the wheel nuts, anyway. There’s nothing under the sun that’s as new as Marketing departments would like us to think it is.

The Lada Niva. Lada sits just above Yugo on the “respected brands” totem pole, but the Niva is a tough little fucker that was built for people whose idea of a road barely qualifies as most Americans idea of a trail, so when they say “off road” they really mean it. With excellent approach, departure and breakover…

Spyker 60hp.

…or, for non-US buyers, why anyone buys either over the more versatile still (and significantly cheaper) Skoda Octavia VRS, which is basically a Jetta GLI in liftback or wagon form.

I’d forgotten about that - that was blazing quick for the time, and not bad even by modern standards. Darn close to the same power to weight as a mk8 GTI.

The Peugeot 309 GTI. Its little brother the 205 got all the glory and is worth a bucketload more now, but the 309 was only a whisker slower (thanks to weighing a mere 20kg more), had even better handling, and was considerably more comfortable and capacious. Just not as pretty.

They put it in purely to futz with Jason Torchinsky’s head, and it’s worked exactly as designed. Everybody in GM’s PR team was looking over that guy’s shoulder chortling as he typed his responses to your emails. 

Simplicate yourself and add lightness: Chapman would have approved.

These things have unbelievable presence in the flesh - there’s one in this color which shows up at car shows and C&C type events in my town every so often. Pictures just don’t convey how looooong and looooow and wiiiide they are, even by modern standards, and how massive the wheels are. They make any other supercar…

TVR Cerbera. I’m pretty sure this is what the alien mothership’s dash looked like after they cleaned the slime off (though maybe with less yellow):

• Cars (which operate above the plane of contact) rely on a different set of parameters than a boat. Boats deal with surface tension and the underlying forces beneath the water to create forward propulsion. Hence, the use of a centerboard in some types of hulls, or the (ideally) lack of friction in other designs, that…

This. Sensible and cautious people wear seatbelts. Sensible and cautious people also stay home as much as practical during pandemics.

Source. The F Type V6 is not the same engine as their earlier Duratec-derived V6, it is literally what ChaosphereIX described. It’s not even part of a modular family, they just half-assed a V6 by sticking 3 cyl heads on the V8 block and leaving a couple of pistons and conrods out. The economics played for them…

The accuracy of this article is further proof of the truism that money doesn’t buy taste.