We’re hardly Apple fanboys – we haven’t owned or used an Apple product in about six or seven years, and even then only briefly – but this is still sad news. To say the world lost a visionary and an innovator who brought beautiful products to market (and perhaps more importantly, made good design accessible to a lot more people than it was before) would be a profound understatement.
Quirky and intriguing, even still.
Back story here. Spoiler: no, it’s not real. But the mind does delight at the thought, even if it would have been fairly impractical.
(Photoshop wizardry by the talented Jason Barker)
Not something we would ever do, but nor would we kick it out of bed.
For as long as this blog exists, you will continue to see the 105/115-series coupe grace its pages— it’s just that pretty.
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Expressway — Shuto Kōsoku Dōro (or just the Shuto) — is Tokyo’s answer to handling large volumes of traffic traversing the megalopolis.
The first sections were opened in time to showcase Tokyo for the 1962 Olympics. Not designed as an unlimited speed road, its main purpose was to ferry cars around at moderate speeds, unhindered by the non-car friendly Tokyo streets above and below.
Yeah, well, his daughter is an actress apparently (yeah, neither did we), and now she’s adding auto-journo to her curriculum vitae.
Actress and now automotive journalist Lake Bell with what appears to be an E-Type
If you’re curious, you can read her inaugural reviews here (as an aside, we never though we’d be linking to the Hollywood Reporter, yet here we are). We wish her all the best in her new side gig, of course, but something tells us Dan Neil can rest easy knowing that his job is probably still safe.
We’re not going to be in the market for at least another year or two, but already we’re thinking about our next car (one that would replace the E30). The pursuit, after all, is half the fun— possibly more. For a budget of $10,000, we think we’ve narrowed it down to the following two choices— ones that shouldn’t be at all surprising to long-time readers of this blog. They are as follows.
BMW 2002:
A well-known car from the Northern California vintage road rallying scene. Pretty much our ideal, although $10K probably won’t get us an example this pretty.
Porsche 944 S2 (not Turbo):
Comments and stipulations:
While very different, both cars have their obvious merits. The 944 will be faster and more comfortable, offering – for better or for worse – a driving experience at least as modern as the E30’s, if not more (perhaps a lot more). The 2002 brings to the table vintage road manners and oodles of late ’60s-early ’70s charm, but will be less obviously athletic (if still plenty spirited). We also imagine it’d be a lot more fun to own insofar as, e.g., being an automatic conversation starter, eliciting random thumbs-up from passers-by— the sort of stuff one might expect from driving an obviously older car. In an ideal world, perhaps we’d have both – the 944 for the track and the 2002 for the street – but this car, whichever we decide upon, would be called upon to do both. We’re not complaining, though— one could do worse.
So, what would you do? Let’s hear it 🙂
(Images: jagpromotions via BaT; Flickr)
Came across these while searching for 405 material and couldn’t resist 🙂 Très amusant!
And an epic little promotional film:
These pretty much sum up why we’re attracted to French cars— because they are weirdly wonderful, just like these ads.
Never seen one in the metal before! Doesn’t sound like there are very many likely to be left (fewer than 5,000 sold in the US from 1989-91), but the oldest ones will be available to import in oh, a little over two years 🙂 Might be worth a closer look. From Automobile:
August 6, 1991, the day that Peugeot joined French compatriots Citroen, Renault, and Simca and officially gave up on the U.S. car market. The 405 was the last new French car introduced here, and the Mi16 was the athlete of the lineup, with a boy-racer body kit that looks great even today. Contemporary road tests smothered the Pug with praise for its exceptional chassis balance, comparing its handling to that of a rear-wheel-drive sport sedan — or even a race car. Its steering was called every positive name in the book, and the driving position, pedal placement, and shifter were all lauded. Those are attributes largely shared with lesser 405 models — the biggest differentiator for the Mi16 was its sixteen-valve engine.
In the 1980s, a 7000-rpm sixteen-valve four-cylinder was an exotic piece of machinery reserved for the performance elite. It’s not much of a stretch to consider the Mi16 in the same league as the original BMW M3 or the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16. Sure, the 405 is front-wheel drive, but the Mi16’s handling belied its layout, and the underhood screamer produced enough power — more than Peugeot’s own 2.8-liter V-6 — to run with many of its six-cylinder competitors.
We were hoping to find an old MotorWeek review, but no such luck. So instead, we’ll leave you with this.
Not an Mi16, but the most famous 405 advert:
And of course, the most well-known motorsport version (although it has little in common with the road-going version)— the 405 from the beautiful and legendary short film Climb Dance:
Motoring Con Brio 