Well, for a tiny-volume manufacturer such as Ruf (you did well in pointing out that his is, actually, a proper car manufacturing company, not a “tuning” one) it was always going be easier to create a super special car to obliterate the competition, even when the “competition” were in fact Porsche AG and Ferrari SEFAC.…

I wonder whether Tesla has (or should have) some way to sort of “brick” the car in those cases where the owner has a previous, obvious record of recklessly putting himself and/or others at risk with their product.

If your 912E feels slow you should probably sell everything else, get in touch with Dean Polopolus and fit one of his “930/4" engines. The nice bit is that on top of a rather sizable increase in performance you get to keep the better weight distribution of the 912.

Well, this AX was front-wheel drive and still had (most of) its original body:

Sometimes an old car does not necessarily have to be judged on its power, ability to accelerate, roadholding or grip, but purely on aesthetic terms. I think the first generation TT is (or rather, will be) one of those.

Look up “Steppenwolf”.

Indeed. But the spoiler (together with driver aids and some suspension tweaks) were added later, after a spat of high-speed crashes in Germany. Unfortunately that also meant the purity of the original design was lost.

Yup, I remember. But that spoiler really destroys the original design of the tintop version... which, in any case, was farther removed from the concept than the roadster.

I seem to remember Pete Brock mentioning that the back of the TT, same as the original 911, created a lot of “dirty air” - leading to instability. He also predicted, I think, that unfortunately it would become fashionable (350Z, for example. By, the way, talking about copycats, Peugeot’s RCZ was a particularly sad…

Buy while still cheap, turn it into a keeper. Then all expenses become an investment - of course you should not think about them in terms of future financial gain, but of mature, long-term enjoyment.

I feel irrationally attracted to a rather rare (and, admittedly, not rally-oriented) Fulvia HF variant, the barchetta F&M:

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Lancia Delta 4WD, the one that came before the Integrale. No blister wings, no huge wheels and tyres or unsightly bulges.

Oh that’s a difficult one. I think I’d choose the Stratos. Fabulous (and lovely) as it is, the 037 was not quite a Lancia effort but an Abarth one. It had much more Fiat content, shall we say.

To be honest I don’t much care about slantnoses but those 3.0 RSR rear wings... look at the huge cooling inlets for the rear brakes.

Maybe it started life as a Karmann Coupé (which basically was a cabriolet with a welded-on hardtop)? Those were rather unloved, back in the day.

Back in Soviet times there was no need whatsoever for a blue light on a Chaika. Maybe on a Volga. But if you were driven on a Chaika you were so high up the ladder the other motorists would not even dare get in your way. In fact I seem to remember some roads had even dedicated lanes exclusively for official cars.

If I remember correctly, Colin Chapman once hired an ambulance in order to speed up his way to the British GP (it may have been in Silverstone? there was a horrendous traffic jam.)

You mean old, mean Enzo?

Hear, hear!

I always found the small Hustlers quite lovely, but then I am weird. The Highlander version, not so much. (Interesting arrangement for the rear, à la Frazer Nash. Of course, chain breakage could, not at all metaphorically, “do your head in”.)