There are road tests of cars and then there are road tests of Bristol cars. The latter are without exception exercises in pleading, begging and the abuse of op-ed columns with the single, inevitable conclusion of no press car. Bristol owner Tony Crook likes to keep it that way, which is perhaps understandable when you consider that the few people who do manage to gain fleeting access to Bristols via owners willing to face Crook’s subsequent wrath usually find that the cars are puzzling examples of shoddy construction sold for Lamborghini prices.

So it came as quite a shock to my friend Zsolt Csikós—road test editor of Hungarian car site Totalcar—that a call to Bristol’s headquarters resulted in Tony Crook himself on the line and the promise of a ride. This lovable geek who often shares Eeyore’s outlook on life managed what even Jeremy Clarkson couldn’t manage: he found himself behind the wheel of a brand-new Bristol. A Bristol Fighter at that, powered by America’s great offering at the altars of displacement: the Viper engine.

Although Bristol Cars is a post-WW2 spinoff of the Bristol Aeroplane Company, they eschew an important engineering principle which crossed over from the world of aviation to car construction: Bristol cars are neither unibodies nor monocoques but bodies over frames, like pickup trucks. It is perhaps fitting then that the Fighter’s V10 engine was originally a Chrysler truck engine. In the Fighter, the all-aluminum block is equipped with Bristol’s own cylinder head and exhaust system, good for 558 HP. Should the latter be found inadequate, turbochargers are available to boost output to beyond a thousand horsepower, coupled with similar amounts of torque.

Of course this being Bristol, the test drive was not a week of freeform excursion on B-roads but a leisurely crawl through London traffic. I shall defer to the author at this point, translated from the Hungarian:

What does it feel like? I gave the throttle no more than a percent of go, save for my rare instances of hoonage when I gave it two percent. It doesn’t really make a difference as 558 HP is so much power that a heartier sneeze will drop you across half of Europe. Why would anyone possibly need the 1026 HP of the turbocharged version? One cannot think of anything other than the potential for great pub tales.

The clutch is remarkably light, not Diablo-heavy at all, and the same is true of the steering. Even though the Fighter could certainly use more upper-class destinations, it is perfectly drivable on the side streets around Soho. The gearshift is American in feel, precision not its strongest asset, but it requires a steady and firm grip for operation. And even if I never exceeded 40 MPH in the Fighter, it was a wonderful experience. The interior, the engine with its endless reserves of power, the execution and the sea of dials combine to make even a crawling Bristol a memorable driving experience.

Bristol is a beautiful, rugged, romantic theory on four wheels. The same goes for the Fighter, with more power and a more professional feel. Take it as it is. If you can.

So there you have it. If you’re no fan of computer displays and like your cars with copious amounts of tech-ed spirit and the charms and personality of handmade construction, your new ride is ready. All you need now is upwards of $370,000—and catching Tony Crook in a good mood. Just make sure you don’t namedrop Jeremy Clarkson.

Photo Credit: Zsolt Csikós/Totalcar

A member of THE H.A.M.B. forum posted the picture from the review showing his car being raced against the X6. The car's owner stated:

This months car and driver has a artical about a bmw twin turbo suv that goes anywhere,hauls anything and beats anything.They show it hauling bails of straw and driving on the e-way and then beating a stright axle,fuel injected,altered wheelbase 63 chevy II on the dragstrip................Whooooooa. That is my chevy and that little red suv couldn't beat my car in its wildest dreams. Do they really have to photo crop and mis-represent the public into thinking if they buy a bmw suv,then thay too can do what their mag says. I hope someone who advertises in that book see's this and decides on why they support the down rite lies they print.

Though the article never explicitly states that it's racing the other cars, the phot ogallery is full of shots of the X6 racing various vehicles it turns out weren't actually there. So what does CarandDriver have to say about this? They use this obviously embarrassing moment to take a tongue-in-cheek potshot at John Phillips, a writer for the buff book who penned the article.

CarandDriver Official Response:
John Phillips became so attached to the BMW X6M that it - appropriately enough - triggered many irrational responses. One of these was his insistence that we photoshop the BMW beating the clearly superior Chevy Nova. Any attempt to dissuade him - by telling him, for instance, that only an idiot would believe a BMW SUV could beat a purpose-built drag car - just resulted in heated calls to the suicide hotline and even more foaming at the mouth than usual.

It's funny, but we think CarandDriver needs to either apologize to the owners whose cars were being portrayed as losers or actually race them for pinks. We'll even pay Csaba to come out and judge.

(Hat tip to Cody!) [THE H.A.M.B.]

What really happened was—well, nobody knows. This photo was posted on A Time To Get, along with a number of similar ones, and the only explanation is this:

A couple highlight pics from the trip just because. What better way to get down on a Monday than with some beat-up old hood badges of multi-million dollar rides and a little reckless driving on the Autostrada?

What’s beyond certain is that Nick Maggio had a killer time.

Photo Credit: A Time To Get

That's right, "back." We remember when Time used to have employees here in Metro Detroit. Until about ten years ago, they had a whole editorial and advertising team in the cushy Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Then, a decade ago, they left, tail between their legs, afraid of sinking auto advertising revenues and lonely for their even-more-cushy Manhattan high-rise.

But do you blame them for leaving a decade ago? Detroit's most certainly a city with its fair share of ups and downs, and anyone honest with themselves will tell you it's been mostly downs for quite a while. The thing is the place got considerably better over the last decade. The rampant crime and gang activity of the 80's and 90's has subsided, the sky-high murder rate has declined to meet the average large city, and the downtown has seen a remarkable rebirth in business entertainment. Were it not for the onerous city income tax we'd probably be considering a move downtown ourselves.

However, for someone just coming back to the city, it's hard to see the improvement, so, like Time Magazine, it's much easier to apply a story line to a situation rather than put things into context. Throw up some pictures of the city's urban prairies, talk about the decline of the big three and things like the Heidelberg Project, urban farming, and the creepy-weird Russell Industrial Complex like they're something new and make that look like what Detroit is about. Detoit's a city where lazy journalism is possible, even easy. Point a camera, take a picture, sensationalize. A sure-fire formula.

It's far more complex than that. Detroit's probably the oddest metro area in the world. On one street you'll find mansion after mansion of immeasurable quality with pristine lawns and professionally maintained English gardens, and on literally the next will be burnt out crack houses and a street littered with discarded tires and garbage. A boulevard lined with high-class boutiques will have another behind it lined with prostitutes. The insanity of the city is why people stay. There's a certain hard-boiled grit to Detroiters you don't find in other places. They know they've been dealt a tough hand but they're not going to let that stop them from playing.

But now Time is moving back into town because it's the vogue and hip thing to do. But we're happy to have 'em here — mostly so we'll finally have another media company that'll hopefully be willing to look deeper than the vacant lots and the houses burned down during the bad old days. In fact, we'd encourage them to look at the entire new neighborhoods minted by the volunteers at Habitat for Humanity, the rejuvenated Eastern Market, the constantly entertaining downtown, the many, many interesting festivals, the vibrant art scene and the always incredible music of Detroit. Heck, we'll even show 'em around. [Time]

This jibes with what we've been hearing about their budget issues. Writers for the site have been forced to accept near Internet slave wages for their work and we've heard many second-hand complaints as well as seen some of their staff also part ways with the site. The rumor is that it's a lack of editorial budget and respect from the current company's owner that led to his departure but we know nothing for sure yet other than the new owners plan on distributing his paycheck to the writers. [Autoblog]

Jalopnik and Stick Shift are certainly no aliens to each other. Earlier this year, our Messrs. Wert and Siler gave a helping hand to Stick Shift’s Brett Berk in driving the bollocks Bentley Continental GT Speed, all twelve cylinders and six hundred horsepower of it.

To keep our cylinder counts steady, Brett, Hyperleggera’s Natalie Polgar and I drove out to Long Island on a recent August day to see a Lamborghini Miura in its full glory. William Branston of Champion Motor Sports was kind enough to let us all climb inside and imagine a life of 60s Italian playboyship.

Sticking true to its print roots, VF could only publish a handful of the photographs Natalie and I took of the Miura. But here at Jalopnik, we’ve got internets aplenty, so lean back and enjoy all twenty shots that made the cut, plus the narrative accompanying each shot.

If you’re interested in what it feels like to sit inside a Miura—or how one ends up with a classmate who drives a Countach to his senior prom—click through to Vanity Fair. But only after you’re done with the photos.

The Miura could be a prime candidate for a star role in the Italian remake of Transformers.

Rear quarter panels. Oh my, oh my.

Looking down the transversely mounted V12.

The P400 was the first Miura, the one with the eyelashes, the tendency to catch fire at idle and to become airborne in top gear.

This is the vicinity of the left front wheel. You can see the Fiamm horn and the chassis elements, drilled for lightness.

A view through a cooling vent in the trunklid—which, of course, is in the front.

The supremely competent Will Branston, director of Champion Motor Sports’s Collectible & Investment Car Division, is standing in front of a late model Diablo.

Cam cover with the famous twin choke Weber carburators.

Oil reservoir.

If you have a tattoo of this, please post in the comments.

About six inches behind the head of the driver and the passenger is the engine. That single pane of Perspex is tasked with quite a lot of sound and heat deadening.

If you’re 5'7" like Natalie, a Miura’s cockpit is the coziest place in the world.

Please dress up for your Miura. Thank you.

Yes, the speedo really is maxed out at 200 MPH. The Miura would do around 175.

The patina on this car was particularly beautiful. Concourse quality can be alienating: this Miura could probably be driven off the lot without guilt.

Vintage and very cool seatbelt arrangement. It’s a big metal hook you latch into a receptacle.

The eyelashes serve as brake cooling ducts. They would be gone in later editions of the Miura.

A curious tailpipe solution, most often seen on diesels with no particulate filters.

Perhaps the best angle to the Miura. You simply cannot spend too much time studying its lines and surfaces.

One day, we will be back to listen to it idle…to ride in it…to drive it. One step at a time.

All photos by Natalie Polgar and Peter Orosz.

Spurgeon’s work was published in the Times over the race weekend but if you’re in the mood for a lot of direct quotes from the man who has made F1 what it currently is, Spurgeon has uploaded a transcript of his chat. Here’s a choice bit or two:

On people he admired or considered role models:

I’m a big, big, and have always been a big, big supporter of Mr. Ferrari, when he was alive, he was a special person. But in those days, I mean, they were entrepreneurs. So you know, he had the same sort of background as I had. He was a good used car dealer. And like Colin [Chapman, founder of Lotus]. All those people when we started Formula One bringing it to what it is.

On racing in the first F1 race at Silverstone:

Yeah, I was in the race. In a Formula 3 car. With Stirling Moss and Harry Schell and Peter Collins. But I used to race motorcycles. So I’ve always raced something.

Read the rest at About.com, including his thoughts on leaders versus dictators.

Photo Credit: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

According to a note sent by their corporate communications department, the company has been "pressing" the NHTSA on Cash for Clunkers dilemmas. Have they been using the bully pulpit? Did Michelle Krebs chain herself to Ray LaHood? Not quite, here's what they've done:

Consumers have been heavily engaged on Edmunds' CarSpace.com message boards (http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/WebX/.f1db290?displayRecent) and Edmunds Answers (http://answers.edmunds.com/) seeking advice on their Cash for Clunkers purchase made over the past several weeks after learning their vehicle is no longer eligible because the EPA made mileage "refreshes" late last week.

Ah, as we've always expected — it will be the message boards that slowly change the face of human history.

Why didn't we think of that? Silly us. When we started receiving consumer complaints related to to the EPA switching numbers we actually called the NHTSA and informed them of the problem which, before hearing from us, they were unaware of.

And rather than setting up an "answers.jalopnik.com" site we hounded the EPA to actually release a list of cars, which we first brought you yesterday. It was, it seems, all a waste of time. Edmunds had it under control the entire time. Our bad. Thank goodness a site like Edmunds had readers talking to themselves about it or we'd never have the answers consumers need.

Where were you when the matte meme began? I was looking at photos of the then-unveiled Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 from the 2006 Geneva Motor Show and reveled in the punk gesture of gunship gray from a carmaker known for Miura green and Day-Glo orange.

Kustom kulture has probably employed the device before, but its spread in the past few years has been wildly expansive. Observing it first-hand on a short-lived matte black hood of a Toyota Corolla AE86 drift car, I couldn’t help but notice how the finish attracts and amplifies grime from dust and rain like no other.

But then cars are supposed to be shiny shiny, aren’t they? At least according to Nick Maggio of A Time To Get, who writes:

Show me the ‘69 SS with the cheap-ass primer, the ‘32 Coupe with the patchy, flat gray, and I’ll show you a smile. Like all trends, there is a time and a place. But let me tell you, a ‘10 Lambo perched on mirrors, rotating behind velvet ropes at SEMA… ain’t it. […] If Enzo wanted his cars to be murdered out, he would’ve petitioned to have Italy’s race color changed, and trademarked a matte black instead. Show some respect.

If naval technology were suddenly to regress to its state in the early 1900s with madly colored Razzle Dazzle camo battleships, we could do an honest comparison to decide whether ships and cars can carry each other’s colors. Until then, it’s a question of style—and I honestly cannot make up my mind. What do you think? Should cars ever be camouflaged as military equpiment?

Photo Credit: Metro, saebaryo/Flickr, Razzle Dazzle

Should the Constellation program ever bear distant fruit, mankind will take its first steps on Mars, several decades after first steps on a much closer celestial body. Peter Dushenski, editor of CarEnvy.ca, has imagined a future where Martian humans are faced with the dilemma of choosing a car for a Red Planet already lined with maglev tracks:

Let’s say that the year is 2086 and you’ve just moved to the Mars Colony. You’ve been assigned a job as a geologist in search of mineral deposits that can be exploited and marketed back on Earth. Since you’ve left your family back on Terra Firma, you’re free to take any car you want with you, but, your residence at the Shangri-La hotel only has one garage stall. Thanks to your handsome relocation allowance and your necessity for nothing more than one seat, your mind reels with the possibilities.

It’s a fun, beautifully rambling read, illustrated with hand-drawn-hand-photoshopped art. Read the rest of it here.

Sir Francis has not had it easy. He has been in Formula One for an incredible four decades now, starting out with a second-hand Brabham chassis in 1969, and it wasn’t until ten years later that his team scored their first win, with Clay Regazzoni taking the 1979 British Grand Prix.

His grassroots operation has seen its share of deaths, beginning with Piers Courage at Zandvoort and ending with Ayrton Senna at Imola. Williams himself has been confined to a wheelchair for 23 years since he flipped his rental car in France and crashed his spine into the roof.

None of this, however, has managed to cloud his essential devotion to motor racing:

I love what I do. All the people at Williams love what they do. Patrick [Head, Williams engineering director], my partner, feels exactly the same — he just wants to go racing, winning. We’re very upset with ourselves because we haven’t done any real winning for a very long time. It’s now about 10 years or something. And it’s very embarrassing, but we have to live with that. It’s our own fault, nobody else’s. And we have to get the sun to shine again soon.

That sun may shine on a forlorn landscape: talks between the Formula One Teams Association and Max Mosley’s FIA have broken down a few hours ago, leaving only Force India in Formula One from the current grid, apart from Williams.

Whatever happens, Williams will be at the British Grand Prix this weekend, the stage of their first victory thirty years ago. Barring supreme weirdness, they are not likely to mark the occasion with another win. Brawn GP driver Jenson Button enters his home Grand Prix as the runaway favorite, after winning six of the season’s seven races thus far.

Still, consider the sheer enthusiasm of the man for noisy, fast machinery:

One of the biggest thrills of my life was I went to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and I watched from 50 meters to the right side of the runway, the flight of four F-15c’s at takeoff, two by two, the second just five seconds after the first, and the noise! The ground shook! I was a guest of a colonel in the air force. I said, ‘Will you be using reheat?’ — which you call afterburn — and he said, ‘No, but if you want it, I can tell them.’ And I’ve never forgotten it. The noise! The power! And they got to the end and they went whoosh, it was almost vertical. Fantastic. Speed and noise.

Source: The New York Times, Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images, ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images, Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

If you’ll pardon the pun and the allusion to body snatching, you must have all seen this segment of Top Gear’s Series 12 Episode 6 last May December. So, no news. In fact, we've even posted a part of it already in another Fiesta-related post.

But it does not do this pinnacle of televised motoring journalism justice. It is magnificent on many levels, including on the questions it raises about the very concept of road tests.

The second coming of Top Gear—as opposed to the original series—has never been about road tests per se, which are usually boring, videographed articles smattered with Excel spreadheets. On the contrary, Top Gear is a reflection of Jeremy Clarkson’s weird persona, which—as beautifully summed by my AK-wielding F1-driving friend Nino Karotta—is a decades-long career built on descriptions of what seventeen-year-old boys would like to do with cars.

Unlike seventeen-year-old boys, of course, Clarkson actually does everything a seventeen-year-old boy fantasizes about. With cars, that is. We’re not that intimate.

Still, you’ve got to grow up at some point, haven’t you? Just to prove that growing up does not necessarily mean discarding one’s seventeen-year-old self but can also be accomplished with a layering of older personalities, Clarkson road tests the new Ford Fiesta.

He does so in a way that will make you question the very essence of motoring journalism. Or, as Nino put it: “Azt hiszem, az autósműsor el van készítve. Keressünk másik feladatot.” Which roughly translates to: “Televised motoring journalism is a done deal. Let’s find other projects to occupy ourselves with.”

On a helpful note, Clarkson’s test also proves that no matter your profession, an amphibious task force will always come in handy.

Watch it if you haven’t done so yet. Watch it again if you already have. Then go and do something slightly dangerous.

Photo Credit: Top Gear

In January of 1981, my parents packed up their possessions—which included a 5-month-old kid yet to become a car boy—and set out west from the Hungarian city of Szeged to fly all the way to Washington, D.C. We were people from the satellite of an evil empire yet welcomed kindly, in spite of the total sum of 25 American dollars burning a hole in my parents’ pockets, the maximum amount allowed for export by the Communist state when you left the country.

I have no memories. We settled in the Maryland suburb of Rockville, I was sent to a municipal pool to float with American neonates and my dad went to work at the National Cancer Institute to probe the secret life of bacteria.

Then we got a car.

It was a first generation Oldsmobile Omega, as identified by Murilee over iChat, a compact car which has transformed into a proper land yacht in the recollection of my parents. I have no memories of the car. It was a sickly shade of yellow and judging by the only photographic evidence which remains, I rather liked it. So did my dad, who hates cars with a vengeance.

The leviathan Oldsmobile took us scrappy Hungarians all the way up and down the East Coast, it took us to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina where I saw the ocean for the first time in my life. I have no memories of this event, only my mom’s story—usually told with a grin—that the muscular Atlantic waves knocked my dad clear off his knees with me sitting on his neck, sending us both into the surf. We survived.

There are no Oldsmobiles in Hungary, save for a few derelict 88’s slowly melting into the tarmac. In fact, most people with no knowledge of American cars tend to think that oldsmobile is simply an English term for a veteran automobile. I know it’s not.

We came back to Hungary in the summer of ‘82, the Oldsmobile was sold off to a friend, and my first memories would not stick for another year: a single image, lying delirious from a stomach bug in a tent by a swollen, raging river. I have no idea what my furiously developing toddler brain made of the Omega. I don’t even know if it had a V8. Although I guess it did. What else would explain the love affair with the lazy rumble of crossplane V8’s, alien to the European continent.

My family would acquire other Oldsmobiles on later stays in the US. My dad still has an Oldsmobile badge on his keyfob. I recall Oldsmobile’s death from a few years back. And now General Motors has gone bankrupt.

You all have clear memories of American cars. I do not. I can only point your way to P. J. O’Rourke’s elegy in the Wall Street Journal:

In 1970 a Pontiac GTO (may the brand name rest in peace) had horsepower to the number of 370. In the time of one minute, for the space of one foot, it could move 12,210,000 pounds. And it could move those pounds down every foot of every mile of all the roads to the ends of the earth for every minute of every hour until the driver nodded off at the wheel. Forty years ago the pimply kid down the block, using $3,500 in saved-up soda-jerking money, procured might and main beyond the wildest dreams of Genghis Khan, whose hordes went forth to pillage mounted upon less oomph than is in a modern leaf blower.

Goodbye then, Oldsmobile Omega, goodbye.

Photo Credit: László Orosz

The video has no narration and is in black and white, but the soundtrack and the ample helicopter time more than make up for the loss. It’s an interesting period piece from the ultra-rapid decade of aerodynamic development, which took cars from the thin aluminum cigars with no downforce of the mid-60s to the ground effect Lotus 78’s and 79’s which had wings underneath, sucking them to the tarmac.

1969 was only the second year where aerodynamics was in play in Formula One and you can clearly see the results. Every car is equipped with a solid rear wing and various front wings. At the Flugplatz straight, where the no-downforce cars of 1967 would take to the air, ‘69 cars hunker down and stick to the ground.

Also visible is a token nod to safety—roll bars!—accompanied with its total disregard otherwise. People stand inches from a track with no Armco—not even bales of hay.

The race was won by the Jacky Ickx of Belgium in a Brabham. The guy in the ditch at 04:07 is his teammate Piers Courage, who crashed out on lap one. He would become Formula One’s next casualty in less than a year’s time, when he burned to death in his magnesium De Tomaso at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix. And in just seven years, following Niki Lauda’s famous—and similarly fiery—crash, Formula One would be gone from the Nürburgring Nordschleife for good.

Photo Credit: Lothar Spurzem/Wikipedia (the picture depicts Bruce McLaren driving his M7C during practice for the race and you can download it at 2,098×1,529)

The EldoradoMiata is nothing but the Second Coming of the Ghettocharged FrankenMiata, but then you already knew that, didn’t you?

Murilee is about to hit the road to Reno to bring you the EldoradoMiata on the track. Until then, check out Edmunds’s profile of this turbocharged chariot only a mother could love. It has got an airbrake like the Mercedes-Benz 300SLR that raced at Le Mans in 1955 and you can’t beat that for sheer cool.

Photo Credit: Edmunds Inside Line, Daimler

Reporting for the April 2009 issue, Goodfellow writes:

Still pinned in the seat and with 6500rpm rapidly approaching, shift into second. That split-second when you shift is one of the most heavenly events you’ll ever experience in any car, equalling or bettering the feeling of flooring the pedal of a Bugatti Veyron for the first time or running a 250GTO past 8000rpm. The 12-cylinder symphony that bellowed at ten-tenths is momentarily muted as revs drop, the sudden silence bringing the sound of the whining gearbox to fore. You feel a slight catch as you shift out of first and hit neutral, then another slight catch as the lever slots into second. Right foot back on the floor now, and the crashing wave of unabated acceleration and spine-tingling 12-cylinder, four-trumpeting-exhaust symphony once again blankets your being.

[…]

Blast down a straight, brake hard (this car cheats a bit here, for it was fitted with discs at the time of our drive, soon to be changed back to the original drums) and then enter a hairpin. Stand hard on the gas as you exit the turn; the rear hunkers down as the steering wheel slides through your fingers as it quickly centers. The sensation of it all is as fluid and surreal as anything I’ve experienced. And all the while you are looking out over one of the best automotive road views ever – those curvaceous fenders, long hood and sloping metal covering the carbs.

And so on. Please make note of Goodfellow’s comparisons — to a Veyron and a 250 GTO. I imagine his life is that of a hopeless cubicle-dweller.

On a sad note, Octane do not appear to put their old articles online so I’m afraid you’ll have to hunt down a copy of their April 2009 issue to get the rest. Or you can try and pry mine from my cold, dead fingers.

Photo Credit: Darin Schnabel/Octane