The Black Rock Desert is an arid region in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan. The region is notable for its paleogeologic features, as an area of 19th-century Emigrant Trails to California, as a venue for rocketry, and as an alternative to the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah, for setting land speed records (Mach 1.02 in 1997). It is also the location for the annual Burning Man festival (source).
Image via
We are digging everything about this car! Shame it was never produced.
Very little information about it online, but what we do know is that it was a one-off prototype built by in-house Alfa tuner Autodelta, and that it seems to make an appearance periodically at the annual Rétromobile exhibition in Paris.
From autosital.com (loosely translated from French— thank you, Google Translate):
In 1982 Alfa Romeo begins to develop a car to compete in the World Rally Championship in Group B.
“It’s an Alfasud Sprint 6C,” Walter says Alexis Alfa Romeo Club of France. Some experts say no, but officially there was a single copy.
Its origin was a willingness to participate in the World Rally Championship category in group B. So this car is in compliance with the regulation of group B. It is equipped with a V6 rear center position. This is the complete mechanical GTV6 was chosen. This is a car that was produced in a single and has never been developed for the competition since then the championship Group B stopped.
It was considered too dangerous. The cars were too fast, too powerful. There have been some very serious accidents, with the dead. The federation had decided to change regulations to reduce, limit the power of the cars.
Compared to the standard version, there is little in common. Apart from the body or parts of equipment inside. All that part is different chassis and mechanics as well.
It is a V6 2.5-liter that was originally designed for the Alfa 6 and that made the heyday of GTV 6. It is a motor powered by a 60 ° injection Bosch. It is here in a longitudinal rear. The hull is steel with polyester element. It is not much lighter than the standard car because it has a much larger mechanical.
Originally the car was designed with a boxer engine, an engine that was very light. Here the weight of the V6 that the car is not much lighter than a standard car.
The interior is very close to the series. Apart from the steering wheel and bucket seats for the competition, the rest is completely standard.
Aesthetically it is a Sprint inflated bodybuilding. That is to say with flared fenders, wider lanes, wider wheels.”
More information and images can also be found on the Spanish site sprintmania.
Could this be the case of a good chase (race?) scene buried in an otherwise unimpressive movie? That could very well be what we have on our hands with 1986′s “Un homme et une femme, 20 ans déjà”, which collected a whopping 5.6/10 rating on IMDb and an even more unsparing 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. If the brief clip below is any indication, though, perhaps the film may be worth sitting through. This highly choreographed, oddly dispassionate (where’s a raving Dennis Hopper when you need one?) scene plays out like an intricate dance between all your favorite 1980s saloon cars, not to mention a precursor to the much loved “Ronin”. From the Lancia Thema to the Peugeot 505 to the BMW E28 528i, they’re (almost) all here (sorry, Alfisti).
The original 1966 film was highlighted awhile back here.
Hat tip to Clement!
Throw a sports car street-legal race car like the MkIII GT40 into the mix, and it looks like the car may as well have come from another planet. We post a lot of images of older cars on this site, but viewed in isolation and through the lens that is present day, they are essentially seen in a vacuum. To view a car like the GT40 within the context of that time – and on the street, not the track – is pretty amazing and eye-opening.
First Ave, New York
First Ave and E 60th St, New York
E 60s off FDR Drive
Gotham Ford at First Ave and 61st St. Note the Shelby GT350 in the background
via Car Guy Chronicles (very nice article to go along with the above images, by the way)
No words necessary— not when you have a swarm of angry Procar M1s to do the talking.
About the series:
The BMW M1 Procar Championship, sometimes known simply as Procar, was a one-make auto racing series created by Jochen Neerpasch, head of BMW Motorsport GmbH, the racing division of automobile manufacturer BMW. The series pitted professional drivers from the Formula One World Championship, World Sportscar Championship, European Touring Car Championship, and other international series against one another using identically modified BMW M1 sports cars.
Billed as an opportunity to see a mix of drivers from various motorsport disciplines, the championship served as support races for various European rounds of the 1979 Formula One season, with Formula One drivers earning automatic entry into the Procar event based on their performance in their Formula One cars. Austrian Niki Lauda won the inaugural championship. In 1980, the series held some events outside of Formula One schedule, and was won by Brazilian Nelson Piquet. BMW chose not to continue the championship in 1981 to concentrate on their entrance into Formula One (source).
These are by Asphalt Heritage club member Matthieu Brotel and they are from the 2011 Maroc Classic Rallye in yup, you guessed it, le Maroc.
As we’ve come to expect, the photographs are terrific.
A little bit about the rally, as told by Amaury and Matthieu:
This is an historical rally going through Morocco that has taken place each year since 1993. The layout is wonderful and different every year, a bit like the Tour Auto. The cars go from Rabat to Marrakech, passing through beautiful cities like Erfoud, Tangier, and Ouarzazate. The 2011 route traveled 2,147 km through the High Atlas and along the Strait of Gibraltar, with 70 cars participating in the rally.
Morocco is “the country of paradoxes,” in that in a very short period of time, the weather can completely change. The cars drove through a snowstorm in very cold winds followed by a sunny road in the middle of a dry and warm desert just minutes later. These old cars need to run strong! But that’s also one of the great charms of the country, as you can swim in the sea and then go on the Oukaïmeden Ski Resort in the same day without having to travel very far.
As always, view the full set over at the Asphalt Heritage website. Thanks to Amaury for sharing the story and the shots!
This superb image by Dennis Noten. Love it.
This is what might be referred to as incidental automotive photography (compelling photography – not necessarily of the automotive variety – that happens to include cars we love) as opposed to “glossy magazine-style car photography”. Both have their place, but artistically and substantively, our heart lies with the former.
As you can see below, Nick Maggio is great at this stuff.
Know of anyone else shooting this way? Let us know— we’d love to check it out.
