This wonderful image from the 2011 Ardenne Roads rally by Guillaume Tassart
Okay, we could so rock this
•June 1, 2011 • 22 CommentsMaking it a day of E36. Hairdresser’s car you say? Fine, we don’t care— so what if we don’t take it to the track. We’d still rock this E36 M3 Cabrio just like this— with the dark green paint, caramel leather and Forged M Double Spokes (okay, maybe not the wooden steering wheel— on the early-’90s four-spoke airbag wheel we’ve always disliked even without the wood).
Maybe it’s the recent warm spell around these parts that’s getting to us, but it looks good— no shame in admitting that, we say. Hairdresser’s car or not.
1992 E36 Touring Art Car by Sandro Chia
•May 31, 2011 • 4 CommentsIt doesn’t have the name recognition of Warhol’s or Lichtenstein’s, but we happen to be quite fond of Sandro Chia’s Art Car, which BMW Art Car aficionados like to sleep on.
The BMW Art Car by Sandro Chia, 1992
“I have created both a picture and a world. Everything that is looked at closely turns into a face. A face is a focus, a focus of life and the world.” -Sandro Chia
“Paint me, paint me!”, the racing car’s surface had called out to him, said Sandro Chia. So he started to paint, painted faces and a sea of intensive colours until the car’s whole bodywork had been completely covered. “The automobile is a much coveted object within our society”, said Sandro Chia commenting on his work. “It is the centre of attraction. People look at it. This car reflects those looks.” The design of the Art Car was not his first artistic involvement with an automobile. Even as a child he painted graffiti on cars.
The renaissance city of Florence, where Sandro Chia was born in 1946, is the world of his childhood and his youth, a world in which he learned to take a playful and relaxed approach towards the fine arts. As early as in the seventies he displayed his work at important individual exhibitions and was soon recognized as one of the most significant artists of the Italian Transavanguardia. He sees himself as a neo-expressionist, his figurative painting revealing signs of having been influenced by Carrà, de Chirico, Picasso as well as Montegna and Giorgione.
Sandro Chia – Prototype of a BMW 3 Series Touring racer
- four-cylinder inline engine
- 4 valves per cylinder
- displacement: 2,494 cm³
- power output: 370 bhp
- top speed: 300 km/h
(source: BMW Group)
Look for more of these in the future.
Mark 1 Celica
•May 26, 2011 • 8 CommentsGod what a nice-looking car that was. Sadly, it was pretty much all downhill for the Celica after that— slowly at first, then precipitously.
Shame you don’t ever see these anywhere but on the west coast, either.
Images: Dylan Leff (plenty of nice stuff here)
What we’d rather be doing now..
•May 26, 2011 • 2 Comments..is ripping through a perfectly groomed dirt road somewhere on the edge of heaven.
Europa and 911
•May 25, 2011 • 3 CommentsTo continue our “juxtapose a small car next to an even smaller car” series. It takes something as familiar as the 911 to provide scale to some of these cars you see on the Internets (or occasionally at events) but are almost never likely to see on the street. Like the Lotus Europa.
Image by Adam Swank (who has a great collection of classic motorsport photos)
Sushi or hamburger?
•May 25, 2011 • 5 CommentsAs Jeremy Clarkson once famously posed. We reply, why not both? There is enough room at our proverbial table where you wouldn’t have to choose either/or. And it’s probably not even the right question, besides— it should be more like, ‘vegetarian curry or hamburger?’
Or should it? Help us out, Brits.
Our forefathers taught us how to hoon
•May 24, 2011 • 5 CommentsAnd yet, things were still so much more civilized back then. Note the gent with the pipe and the pocket square, who totally makes this pic.
This is extraordinary
•May 24, 2011 • 3 Comments
Photographer’s notes: Ferrari f40 Polaroid scan circa 90 or 91. Taken by my dad somewhere in Philly.
Love it.
Motoring Con Brio 