Nick Hall Drives the Caparo T1

We're always pleased when Master Nick Hall sends one of his missives from somewhere along the Spanish coastline. Usually we hear about what's going behind the scenes. Now, writing for World Car Fans, Hall talks about his turn behind the wheel of the Caparo T1 — that low-volume "Formula car for the street" created by two ex-McLaren engineers and racecar designer (and penman behind the McLaren F1), Gordon Murray. But would you drive it to the shops? Hall answers. – Mike Spinelli More »

Facing Germany's Speed Police in a 910-hp Porsche

Germany is the land of the free when it comes to driving — one endless, luscious, bouncy ribbon of delimited highways. If one could find a 300-mph car, one could drive at 300mph; that's the glossy image projected around the world. But Germany's relationship to highway speed is changing. Already the road to glory is punctuated by restricted zones patrolled by unmarked cars. Participants in a recent Gumball event faced a breathalyser and a stern warning when it got to Germany. They were not to go mad on these roads. The remaining, derestricted parts of the autobahn are now under threat from an environmental standpoint, too, with the plastic-sandal brigade pointing out that cars, at flat chat, use copious amounts of fuel. While that may be correct in terms of physics and chemistry, it's still annoying and looks set to sound the death knell for flat-out motoring in the end. More »

Car Hack's Notebook: Top of the Top Marques

This past week took me to Top Marques in Monaco, the ostentatious home of pure money yet consistent proof money does not buy class. Monaco is populated by rich, orange women well into their 50s who still believe they can carry off miniskirts. But it is also home to the world's most glamorous car show, with passenger rides round the Grand Prix track thrown into the bargain. And faced with such hot metal it is only natural to revert to the child within and go begging rides in the best of the bunch. The fact that the press were limited to one passenger ride per show made it all the more fun, the pits area turned into a black market of promised coverage, favors cashed in and backs rubbed, figuratively anyway... More »

Super Flight: Driving the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera

When he's not writing Car Hack's Notebook columns for the Jalop, our mate from Birmingham, UK, Nick Hall must suffer his day job. Such drudgery it is to fly to Scottsdale, Arizona to drive the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera in the desert at ludicrous speeds, trying to outwit a police force that lives to put his speed-gathering ass in the joint. What torture it must be to face the blank page after such a trip. More »

Car Hack's Notebook: The Dakar

Last month, St phane Peterhansel, Cyril Despres and Hans Stacey cemented their status as legends with victory in arguably the scariest, most hardcore event in the world, and yet their wins on an event simply known as The Dakar barely registered a blip on the news. When a ChampCar driver next complains about a bump in mid-corner, he might want to consider being shot at by Algerian rebels intent on theft and kidnap, lions waiting in the pit lane or even cresting a hill to find the shifting road surface has left a 40-foot drop on the other side. These men are heroes. More »

Car Hack's Notebook: Driving the Jaguar XKR for Fun and Profit

This week's task involved chasing a big black cat in a big black cat, in one of those painfully tenuous story hooks where I took the Jaguar XKR on a futile hunt for the Beast of Bodmin Moor. More »

Car Hack's Notebook: Tomorrow's Classic, Today

My dad's love of classics always bemused me as a child. This was a time of radical leaps in horsepower, performance, styling, every facet of car design, and he was buried in some edition of Pipe Smokers and Classic Jaguar Lovers monthly, with a free anorak with every subscription. He clearly knew nothing... More »

Car Hack's Notebook: Reporting on Porsches from the Essen Show

At a show where pure lunacy struggles to get through the door, it was always going to be tough to pick out a star, but that's the job and ignoring the more obvious option here it is: The Mission 400 Plus. Now why this modified Porsche above the countless others that littered the show? Well how's about the basic figures of 1,069 hp and 921 lb-ft of torque achieved with the delicate act of strapping two dirty great turbos to the 3.8-liter 997 engine for a start? More »

Car Hack's Notebook: Learning from the Tuner Porsche Cayman

Alongside occasional trips to the temples of the automotive world like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani, it is one of my dirty pleasures to tour the German tuning scene whenever I get the chance. Some hacks look down at anything that doesn't come with a bought-and-paid-for test drive in Southern Spain. But for me, the chance to tackle winding roads, the Nordschleife and the kind of automotive lunacy that stays with you forever makes the endless sausage, sauerkraut, Ibis Hotels and foreign porn — the life of a sales rep, in other words — just about worth it. More »

Hackers Notebook: The SUV Rampage Makes No Sense

Now we've all seen the tide turn, smashing the SUV against the rocks like a third-world fishing boat. If you drive one in Europe, you may as well have set off a dirty bomb in a schoolyard - such is the naked aggression towards the forest-burning, baby-seal-clubbing chariots of death. More »

Hacker's Notebook: Ferrari Hits Its Stride

[Big welcomes all around to Nick Hall, international man of letters and reviewer of the world's most potent and storied tractors. This is his first in what we hope to be innumerable Hacker's Notebook columns. And by innumerable, we mean he's being compensated in dollars Kelvin. Thanks, Nick — ed.] More »

Driving the New Noble M15 Test Mule

We'd imagine driving a supercar in test-mule form might be a bit like eating dough out of the bowl or drinking cabernet straight from the barrel. Considering most journos are never allowed that kind of experience, it would seem Lee Noble surely trusts Jalopnik homeboy Nick Hall with his wife life. Lee let Hall take an in-development Noble M15 prototype for a spin at the company's proving grounds, an experience Hall wrote about for World Car Fans. So which is it, dough or whoa? More »

Driving the Farboud GTS

Our globetrotting, supercar-flogging buddy from Blighty, Nick Hall, tells the story of Arash Farboud's bid to build a better Ferrari. After his attempt to acquire an Enzo was met with a prancing, equinine "SOL, champ," Farboud picked up a more accessable Porsche Carrera GT and used a portion of his family's pharma phortune to launch an improbable car-building project. The result was the Farboud GTS, an Audi-powered prototype that's as rough hewn as it is ready for tail-kicking action. The production product will likely be a different machine — Cosworth Ford powered, for example — but Farboud's already got plans to bring his creation to the US. And that's more than we can say for Lee Noble's hardware. What say you, Nick? More »

Driving the TVR Tuscan

We Yanks get nothing so slithery as the TVR Tuscan on these shores. In fact, we get nothing at all from TVR, which became the laughing stock of yuppiedome during the mid-1980s by inflicting some of the most egregious hardware this side of the Baltic Sea on America's newly minted upper-middle rich. But in the UK, these are heady days for TVR, which is now under the fiduciary care of a too-young Russian industrial billionaire who's goal is to make TVR into a global purveyor of wonderful things. How's he succeeding? Check out our mate Nick Hall's test drive of the Tuscan II in World Car Fans. How about a little left-hand drive action? More »

Driving the BMW 130i

We've really taken a shine to the car reviews of UK-based writer Nick Hall, which have been featured of late on German Car Fans. This week, the motoring scribe's attention is on the the BMW 130i, that spry new baby Bimmer powered by BMW's fine 3.0-liter six. Of course we won't see it in the US this year, but if VW's upcoming R37 does as well as predicted, we're sure BMW will damn the exchange rate and bring the Sport across the pond. More »