Weekend Youtube finds.

1. Vintage Nurburgring footage:

2. Nice documentary show called Victory by Design, with shows dedicated to legendary marques like Porsche, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, etc:

Each program features exceptional racing and street cars from the marque. Generally, the cars are presented in chronological order of their production dates. For each car, [host and former racing driver Alain] de Cadenet describes the historical background and impetus for its design. Important mechanical aspects of the car are also pinpointed and described by de Cadenet. The cars are then filmed as de Cadenet enters the cockpit, straps himself in, starts the engine, and test drives them.

As de Cadenet describes in a “making of” documentary, each car is presented in a setting that suits the nature of the car, and they are driven in the way they were meant to be driven. The film captures de Cadenet driving extremely expensive or even priceless vehicles enthusiastically through twisty mountain roads and over dedicated road courses. The same “making of” documentary also points out the fact that the engine sounds of the featured automobiles are faithfully recorded from the driver’s position, and never overdubbed by music or pre-recorded engine sounds. The video footage is presented as raw as possible with minimal editing.

The New York Times described the series as “car pornography”, and it has resonated strongly with enthusiasts.

Sounds good to us. Here’s part one of the Porsche series:

Catch parts two through eight here (via PorscheFanClub).

3. “Cosmic Girl,” a 1996 release by British acid jazz group Jamiroquai.

While we don’t love them (alright, “Canned Heat” was great in Napoleon Dynamite), frontman Jay Kay is a known motorhead petrolhead, and here his indulgence takes the form of a Ferrari F355, Ferrari F40, and Lamborghini Diablo in the “Cosmic Girl” music video.

We admit, we enjoyed the cars more than the music.

The video shows three famous supercars driving and racing each other through several highways and mountain roads across a desert landscape from clear day-light to dawn. The cars on the video are a black Ferrari F355 Berlinetta, a purple Lamborghini Diablo SE30 and a red Ferrari F40. Jay Kay appears to be driving the purple Lamborghini with Stuart Zender on the co-pilot seat, but the drivers of the other cars are not shown in detail.

Before filming, Jay’s Diablo had to be shipped overseas for the video shoot. Apparently, the company which was hired to transport the car had a driver that was keen to drive the car. Jay let the guy drive the car, but he was involved in an accident which wrecked the car, rendering the $239,000 car completely unusable. The car that appears in the video was rented from a local collector. The F40 was provided by the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, who drove in the video as well.

While filming, the driver’s side window in Jay Kay’s Lamborghini was accidentally smashed. Due to the tight timescales involved, the video was still shot, but with the window removed. This is why Jay Kay appears to be driving around the desert late at night with his windows down.

Jay Kay mentioned in an interview that the Lamborghini had its windscreen removed to aid with the filming, due to space limitations inside, and the windscreen angle from outside. The missing windscreen can be seen when the Lamborghini overtakes the black Ferrari on an uphill shot.

The video was filmed at the Cabo de Gata, in Spain (source).