Tag: coupe
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Monday Money: The Maserati 4200 GT
These days, if you were to walk into a showroom looking for a new car, £15,000 is only enough to buy you a small supermini. However, thanks to depreciation you don’t have to spend all that dough on some dingy little tin can, instead you could buy something bigger, with more leather, and Italian. Something…
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Monday Money: The Porsche 914
Never before had a manufacturer dared to make a car’s front and rear ends looked so similar, until in 1969 Porsche and Volkswagen teamed up to produce the delightfully symmetrical Porsche 914. However, by the looks of things, both companies seemed to think they were designing the front. Or back? Hard to tell, but that’s…
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Monday Money: The Z3 M Coupe
1998 saw the introduction of the Z3 M Coupe; also known as the bread van, the clown shoe, or my personal favourite, the smurf hearse. It started life as an engineering study to work more structural rigidity into BMW’s Z3 M, but today it has been elevated beyond a mere mechanic’s experiment and has earned…
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The OG WRC Champ: Alpine’s A110
Launched in 1961, the rear-engined, air-cooled, rear-wheel drive Alpine A110 shared many similarities with the iconic Porsche 911, which would be unveiled two years later. However, the A110 is by no means “just a French 911”, as this sexy little coupe would go on to become a legend in its own right. The A110 was…
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Porsches in the Rain at Luftgekühlt
On Sunday morning I met up with Head Mechanist in Charge, Hedi Sersoub, to head to this year’s British Luftgekühlt, which is arguably the coolest and most confusingly named Porsche meet in the world. However, unfortunately, our chariot for the day was not the coolest thing in the world; a black Fiat 500. No, it…
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Permanent Ludicrous Mode: The V550
The 90s was a wild time; Tim Berners-Lee had just invented the World Wide Web, Will Smith was still The Fresh Prince, and Aston Martin decided to hand build what would become the most powerful production car in the world, the V8 Vantage V550. During the 90s, Ford had their Budweiser-drinking, burger-munching, American flag-saluting hands…
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Pure 80s Joy: Porsche’s 944 S2
Rear-wheel drive? Check. Manual transmission? Check. Coupé? Check. Naturally Aspirated? Check. Near-perfect 50-50 weight distribution? Check. The Porsche 944 S2 ticks a lot of the boxes on the petrolhead’s wish list and yet, for the most part, it hasn’t been hit by the massive appreciation that seemingly every other Porsche has. Maybe it’s time to…
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The Supervillain Special: Jaguar’s XK120
There’s something intrinsically sinister about a Jaguar. Whether this impression is born from Jaguar’s association with the infamous Kray Twins, whose ride of choice was a Jaguar MK X, or the mark’s long-standing role as the transport for Bond villains such as Le Chiffre and Mr Hinx; these cars perfectly evoke the svelte ferocity of…
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Alfa’s Forgotten Flagship
If you were to ask someone who doesn’t spend every waking moment thinking about cars to name a couple of 60s Alfas, the Spider and Giulia Sprint would probably be the first they would mention. However, arguably far more desirable is the Alfa Romeo 2600 Sprint; the gorgeous six-cylinder flagship of the 60s Alfa range.…
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From Beautiful to Badass: the Story of BMW’s E9 Coupés
BMW’s E9 generation of coupés are probably the finest examples of automotive design ever to leave Munich’s doors. They represent a clear high water mark in the history of not just German automobiles, but cars in general; not to mention human accomplishment and the success of evolution as a whole. What’s even more commendable is…