That monster sidepipe sticking out beneath the driver’s side door? It’s connected to a V6 engine, bored from three to 3.5 liters by the good people of Abarth, feeding itself through three twin-choke Webers to send 270 HP at a delicious 6800 RPM to the rear wheels via a De Tomaso Pantera gearbox mounted directly to the rear axle. And just look at those deep-dish rear wheels, clad in their ultrawide Pirellis.

Not bad at all. And that’s before you consider all the lightness added to the car: the glassfiber-aluminum-plexiglass body tips the scales at a featherweight 2470 pounds. The result is a top speed of 160 MPH.

And now for some photographic trickery: the picture you see above was taken with Leica’s weird and wonderful Noctilux lens, whose maximum aperture equals its focal range, allowing for handheld photography at night and a corresponding razor-thin depth of field.

Source—and further reading: 131Abarth.com, Sporting Fiats Club. Photo of red 131 with Noctilux lens: rin/Flickr

Stumped, aren’t you?

Photo Credit: ANITA.trans - My way of life/Flickr

The even sportier GT-R hits the 1/4 mile in just 11.0 seconds at 127.9 MPH and pulls more than a 1.1G of lateral grip. All this is achieved with the tried-and-true combination of less weight and and better breathing. The suspension has also been modified to take the unique challenge of the Targa, which includes crossing pot-holed city roads, asphalt expanses, muddy fields, open prairies, and sandy beaches. Though we're partial to the understated white of Stillen's past, the orange color is probably a safer choice. Full spec list below.

STILLEN GT-R Targa Race Car

Performance Numbers (As Set Up For 2009 Targa Rally)
• Horsepower: ~620 @ 15psi (91 Octane Pump Gas)
• 0-60mph: 2.9 seconds **
• 1/4 Mile: 11.0 seconds at 127.9mph **
• 0-130mph: 11.4 seconds **
• Lateral Grip: 1.1G+ **
** (as tested by Road & Track)
Performance
• STILLEN Downpipes
• STILLEN Secondary Cat-Delete Y-Pipe
• STILLEN Race Exhaust w/Center Rear Exit
• STILLEN Intake System w/K&N Filters
• Turbosmart e-Boost Street 2-Stage Electronic Boost Controller
• Turbosmart Dual Port Blow Off Valves
• COBB Tuning AccessPORT
• Dodson Motorsports Transmission Cooler
• Red Line High Performance Synthetic Motor Oil – 0W40
• Red Line High Performance Synthetic Gear Oil – 75W140
• Red Line WaterWetter
Suspension
• High Performance Coil-Overs – Adjustable Bump & Rebound, Ride Height – Eibach Race Springs
• STILLEN Adjustable Sway Bars
• STILLEN Adjustable Endlinks
Brakes / Tires
• STILLEN / AP Racing Carbon Ceramic Brake Rotor Upgrade
• STILLEN / AP Racing Brake Pads
• STILLEN Brake Cooling Package
• STILLEN Stainless Steel Brake Lines
• AP Racing PRF High Performance Brake Fluid
• Bridgestone RE070R 255/40ZRF20 Front Tires
• Bridgestone RE070R 285/35ZRF20 Rear Tires
Interior
• STILLEN Designed & Built Custom Chromoly Roll Cage
• STILLEN Designed & Built Custom Seat Frames
• Status Racing Seats
• Status Racing Harnesses
• Monit Rally Computers
• ChaseCam On-Board Video Camera System
• Nordskog GPS Speedometer (KPH)
Exterior
• STILLEN Urethane Front Lip Spoiler
• STILLEN Urethane Side Skirts
• STILLEN Urethane Front Canards
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Custom Race Hood
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Trunk Lid
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Wing
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Engine Cover
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber Radiator Shroud
• Password:JDM Dry Carbon Fiber NACA Ducts
• Password:JDM AeroCatch Flush Mounting Plates
• APR Carbon Fiber Side Mirrors
• BASF Carizzma Orange Sherbet Pearl Paint

[Source: STILLEN Blog]

Carbon fiber is so unnecessarily posh. As shown by the seller of this awesome racing car, welded steel is the way to go. This car is for sale in the town of Záhony, right on the border of Hungary and Ukraine, and while you might be tempted to hit the gallery right away, do stay on for the seller’s wonderful description. I am not a translator of enough finesse to capture the full beauty of the original Hungarian but I hope you get the picture:

For sale is the custom built racing car pictured!

Its size and dimensions resemble original Formula One cars. The engine and the transmission are from a 1.0-liter Škoda 100. Engine sound can be set between normal and sporty. Bucket seat 4–6 inches from the tarmac. Up front is a 12V headlight and four parking lights. It is intended for hobby use on a closed circuit.

Experience the fantastic feeling of driving a race car!

The future owner should prepare for doing a new paintjob and fitting four new wide tires. With a little work this can be turned into a fabulous machine

Before you dismiss that 1.0-liter engine, remember that for five years between 1961 and 1965, Formula One cars had engines of but 1.5 liters. If they were good enough for Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Jimmy Clark and John Surtees to win world championships, a thousand cc’s of Škoda power should be enough for you, shouldn’t it?

Convinced? Hit this link and have $1300 ready.

Hat tip to Kari. Photo Credit: Expressz.hu

A classic equestrian statue—albeit with neither Archduke Charles of Austria nor Tamerlane riding it—was the first massive automotive installation at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, created in 1997 to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Ferrari. The practice has since become a major visual hallmark of the festival along with the endless bales of hay and the scores of racing drivers in attendance.

I had already heard of this year’s colossal outcrop of Aluminum und Shteel before emerging from behind a copse to arrive at the entrance of Goodwood House but that did not diminish at all its power to awe. A 40-ton loop of steel played heavenly tarmac to two pinnacles of Vorsprung durch Technik. On one end was parked Audi’s latest and greatest, the V10-powered Audi R8. Opposite the R8 was a seventy-year-old race car with 1.6× the cylinders.

Quite a car, that. A contemporary of Art Deco marvels like the Chrysler Airflow and the Cadillac Sixteen, it is a streamlined version of the V16 monster that Bernd Rosemeyer drove to win the 1936 European Grand Prix Championship with. During the Rekordwoche—Record Week—of October 1937, Rosemeyer drove this car to 406 km/h (252 MPH) on the public road. That’s within rounding error of the Bugatti Veyron’s top speed and is officially the second fastest anyone has ever gone on a public highway. The record was set three months later on a cold January morning, when Rosemeyer’s nemesis Rudolf Caracciola drove his Mercedes-Benz W125 Streamliner at 268 MPH. Rosemeyer followed ninety minutes later in the Auto Union’s successor, which accidentally developed ground effects that broke the car apart at a speed very close to Caracciola’s, killing the ethereal German.

The man who makes these leviathans of car geekery is a rather unlikely candidate for the job. Gerry Judah is a Baghdadi Jew from Calcutta living in London since 1961.

He is a classically trained artist with diplomas from Goldsmith College and the Slade School of Fine Art. Like a fellow Baghdadi Jew—Sir Victor Sassoon, builder of the gorgeous Peace Hotel in Shanghai—Judah is drawn to making large things. He has worked with many institutions and artists in creating oversized sculptures, displayed outside of museums. Like at the Festival of Speed.

A most interesting aspect of Judah’s work for the Earl of March is its remarkable variety. From Land Rovers climbing a wireframe mountain to a line of Toyota racecars strung up in line, he rarely does the same thing twice. Or, as he was quoted by Wallpaper* magazine in a grammatically correct play on the classic Apple tagline: “You've got to think differently every year.”

Photo Credit: Wallpaper* (second from top), Bruno Postle/Flickr (second from bottom), Mark Thompson/Getty Images (bottom) and the author

The W25 was created by a resurgent Mercedes-Benz to rule the world, which it did after some teething pains. It was designed in 1933 to race in the 750 kg formula, which stipulated that a car’s weight cannot exceed 750 kilos (1650 lb). Unfortunately, upon closer inspection the W25 did exceed that weight.

Driver Manfred von Brauchitsch recalls in his autobiography the decision to scrap all the German racing white paint off the aluminum bodywork during the night before the car’s first race, the 1934 Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. The jettisoned paint dipped the car’s weight below the threshold and in his legal and lightweight car von Brauchitsch proceeded to win the race.

The car was a brilliant, dominating achievement for Mercedes, which had been struggling at this point against Scuderia Ferrari’s Alfa Romeo P3’s. The shriek you hear in the video is the supercharger blowing through the carburators of the 3.3-liter straight eight engine, giving it 354 HP at 5800 RPM, incredible numbers for its day.

On the morning of the Festival of Speed’s closing day, Brawn GP’s championship-leading driver Jenson Button took it for a ride at Goodwood. He rather liked it.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

The 905 arrived on the scene at the tail end of the 250 MPH turbocharged Group C era, when Peugeot’s motorsports division—led by Jean Todt, who would later captain Ferrari’s dominant Schumacher years—entered the fray. That cross between an athletic shoe and a slightly evil spaceship you see up there was the first version of the car.

Not only were the looks futuristic, the 905’s Formula One-derived 3.5-liter V10 was naturally aspirated, unlike its contemporary turbos, which were by then choked with restrictions. The 905 was quick but laden with teething bugs. Both cars entered in the 1991 race at Le Mans retired with mechanical errors.

Unlike with the 908, Peugeot didn’t need three years to arrive at the top. The 905’s came in first and third at next year’s race, beating a swarm of Toyotas and Porsches. Gone, though, were the wicked triangular headlights for the droopy units you see on the successful version.

The cars would retain the title in 1993 with a proper GT40-style 1-2-3 finish. Peugeot then left sportscar racing to become an engine supplier in F1.

Still, those headlights on the original 1990 version! What an absolutely gorgeous design. I wonder why it’s never come back on road Peugeots.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia, MARCEL MOCHET/AFP/Getty Images, SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/Getty Images

For serious road racing, you need a car with the engine in the middle: behind the driver but in front of the rear axle. While pretty in its physics on paper, the idea of mid-engined car construction was a difficult birth. In spite of its conception and very successful application by Ferdinand Porsche in the pre-war Benz Tropfenwagen (pictured left) and various Auto Unions, motor racing emerged from World War Two with front-engined cars.

But then physics came marching down on a racing establishment uncomfortable with the idea of horse-pushed carriages. 1958 would be the last season in Formula One won by a front-engined car, followed by Le Mans in 1962 and the Indianapolis 500 in 1964. Since these respective years, all of these races and championships have been won by mid-engined racing cars. Road cars soon followed, with the tiny fiberglass De Tomaso Vallelunga in 1964, then a year later the very car that gave birth to the word supercar: the Lamborghini Miura, with its transversely mid-mounted V12.

In Formula One and at the Indianapolis 500, it was pesky outsiders who convinced the ruling elite with their performances that mid-engined was the way to go. At Le Mans, a most unlikely development occured: reigning Ferrari replaced its front-engined 1962 330 TRI/LM Spyder (a derivative of a five-year-old design) with the radically new 250 P (pictured above at the Nürburgring) for 1963. The scuderia promptly won both at Sebring and at Le Mans.

It was all doom and gloom for the front engine as the Ferraris were followed by the Ford GT40 and decades of Porsches, beginning with the monstrous 917. But then in 1997, an American decided to give the mid-engine the finger. His name was Dr. Donald Panoz and he liked his six-liter V8’s up front, thank you very much.

The Panoz Esperante GTR-1 was a closed coupé with a Roush V8, named after the Panoz Esperante roadster with which it had little in common. In a sense, it was also mid-engined—but unlike every other mid-engined car, it had its engine between the front axle and the driver.

The GTR-1 had its share of teething problems in its debut year, but it returned for 1998 to take seventh place at Le Mans. One of the drivers was David Brabham, the son of triple Formula One world champion Jack "Black Jack” Brabham, who would go on to win last weekend’s race with Peugeot.

At the end of the 1998 racing season, the GT category that the GTR-1 raced in was eliminated. Panoz countered with a brand-new prototype for the next season: the open-top LMP-1. The car retained the GTR-1’s Batmobile proportions and its six-liter thunder-happy V8, presenting an even more Cyrano-esque nose.

The LMP-1 raced at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race made famous by the flying CLR’s of Mercedes-Benz. Driven by Brabham and company, the car finished seventh, similar to its closed-top sibling at the previous year’s race. The LMP-1 would produce its best result in 2000 with a fifth overall finish—which it would repeat in 2003 behind the all-conquering Audis and Audi-derived Bentleys.

By then, the LMP-1 was an aging design, and it was replaced with the LMP07, which would prove disappointing. Panoz withdrew from prototype racing and returned to Le Mans in the GT2 class for 2005, to compete against Ferraris, Porsches and Spykers derived from road cars. Their first outing at the scorching 2005 race would produce no results, but a front-engined Panoz Esperante GT-LM driven by three Brits would beat both Ferrari and Porsche to win GT2 in 2006.

While Panoz’s front-mid-engined prototypes could never really hold up against mid-engined racing cars from major manufacturers, they proved that the front-mid engine construction was a viable concept. In the years that followed, a crop of supercars built on the same principle would emerge: the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and the Ferrari 599 GTB. The latter is now also available as a track-only version, for decades inconceivable in a front-engined Ferrari, showing perhaps that we have indeed come full circle since Enzo Ferrari first commissioned a mid-engined prototype for Le Mans in 1963.

All we need now is a team with the funding and the guts to follow through.

Photo Credit: Matt Turner/ALLSPORT, Speedhunters, Lokis_world/Flickr, Mike Hewitt /Allsport, Ferrari, Ker Robertson /Allsport