Dallara: Italy’s Underdog Race Car Builder

When you’re told to think of Italian race car manufacturers, Ferrari and Maserati come to mind. You may not have thought of Dallara, but the company has regardless worked behind the scenes of prestigious racing series for nearly 50 years. Building chassis for IndyCar, Formula 1, and Le Mans teams, as well as providing street …

Italy’s Prestigious Automotive Design Houses

Automotive design is just as much an art as it is a science, and some of the best car-tists are living in Italy. These companies, known as design houses, are responsible for some of the most iconic auto concepts to hit the streets. Both in their home country, and globally. The design houses evolved from …

The Greatest Corvettes in Motorsports

The original Corvette was created by Chevrolet in an effort to steal some thunder from popular British sports cars, but the Vette itself wasn’t much of a performer. It was saddled with a weak straight-six engine and a two-speed automatic gearbox. After a few years of mediocre sales, the Corvette would finally gain its trademark …

Timeline of the Porsche 911 Turbo

Since the 70’s, the 911 Turbo has been one of Porsche’s most prestigious nameplates. The original 930 brought racing technology to the street, and each subsequent Turbo has upped the ante with technical advancements like all-wheel-drive and anti-lag. They’re also some of the most powerful and violently accelerating cars to bear the Porsche badge. Stick …

Why Sports Cars Go Mid-Engine

The most exclusive supercars on Earth all essentially have one thing in common: An engine mounted directly behind the driver. It’s not just a design choice. Mid-mounted, or midship, engines have proven to be the choice for uncompromised performance. But why is that? It’s a fairly simple matter of gravity and weight distribution. 2005 Ford …

The Roadster: An Automotive Tradition

In the modern day, two-seat droptop roadsters are often seen as an enthusiast’s luxury item, but going back over a century, the segment actually describes many of the world’s most pioneering cars. These early “horseless carriage” models were quite literally based on horse carts, and naturally inherited their open-top design. Ford Quadricycle – Images by …

What Exactly is a Kei Car?

Not to be confused with Chrysler’s old “K Car” platform. Dating back to 1949 in Japan, the Kei designation offers some of the tiniest vehicles that could still be legally considered a car. In Japan, and other East Asian countries, vehicles are often subjected to tax rates based on their external dimensions and engine displacement, …

What Makes a Porsche GT3 RS

For almost 20 years, the GT3 RS has been one of the Porsche 911’s most desirable packages, mating a lightened chassis with strong downforce and high-revving power. Porsche takes the already-formidable GT3 formula, and spices it up with racing-spec goodies like carbon fiber trim and center-lock magnesium wheels. Every time an RS is released, it …

What Makes a Boxer Engine

Updated: May 19, 2021 Although they are currently associated with Porsche and Subaru, horizontally-opposed “boxer” engines were once one of the most popular engine types, with lineage going back over 100 years. The first boxer was patented by automotive pioneer Carl Benz in 1897, and the design would go on to be adapted to all manner …

A Brief History of the Sports Sedan

For a lot of automotive history, if you wanted a nimble handling performance car, your choice was limited to cramped roadsters like the Cobra, Corvette, and various MGs, but in the late 70’s through the 80’s that all started to change. Sports sedans exploded out of Europe and became a huge portion of the enthusiast …

The Brave New World of EV Hot Rodding

Going back to the 1930’s and 40’s, a quintessential part of hot rodding and car modification has been swapping an engine with a more powerful one. Now that we’re a ways into the 21st century, some shops and manufacturers have taken to replacing the engine altogether, converting it to a fully electric drivetrain. Such modifications …

Celebrating the Mustangs that made the Name Legendary

We’ve just recently celebrated the 57th anniversary of the venerable Ford Mustang, with its official release on April 17th, 1964. In those 57 years, the Mustang has pretty consistently been the consumer choice for an affordable American GT sports car, almost to the point of being cliché. Base models of the pony car have ranged …

A Brief History of the Porsche Boxster and Cayman

Updated: Apr 30, 2021 Although the platform has long lived in the shadow of Porsche’s flagship 911, the Boxster and Cayman remain solid little sports cars for the more budget-minded enthusiast. Special editions such as the recent Cayman GT4 can even give big brother 911 a run for its money performance-wise, and the weight distribution offered …

Why Car Collectors Love Naturally Aspirated Power

Updated: Apr 30, 2021 Be they BMW’s straight sixes, Porsche’s flat sixes, V12s from Ferrari, or Honda’s Vtec engines, automotive enthusiasts largely love high-revving naturally aspirated performance engines. The feeling and the sound coming from one of these machines flat-out at 8,000 RPM is hard to match with anything short of rocket power. Natural aspiration describes, …