Sometimes a video is too good not to share.

We’ve blathered on about the brutal beauty of Group B rally time and time again. But we don’t care.

There’s something so brilliant about the way these machines moved — and the Lancia entry into the formula, the S4 has always been our favourite

The sound, the handling and the general stance and poise of these cars makes you ache for a drive, does it not? Up to 1000bhp. A loose-surfaced pull away to sixty in around two and a half seconds. Both sorts of forced induction.

Hold on to your hats!

When Nicolas Refn’s film Drive came out last september we were obviously interested straight away.

What’s not to like about putting the words ‘existential’ and ‘car’ together?

Any close reader of this blog will understand that imbuing meaning into cars is what we’re all about.

But it’s easy to disappear, of course, in a void of pretence — and to project your own fantasies of what cars mean to you — when writing about these things.

We saw the film at the movies and was pretty unimpressed. Not sure wether we expected a full on action extravaganza crossed with a Euro art-house flick — an impossible mix that would have been bound to fail.

However it happened, we were left somehow wanting more.

We had a feeling that the problem might have something to do with time and place and context — and so, we watched it again recently.

What arises on second viewing is a much more powerful, resonant movie. We found that we remembered many of the lines and the scenes hit by hit — and the most important thing that arises is ‘the driver’ and his relationship to the cars that are his vehicles through his many moral minefields.

The video below (taken from the DVD extras, I believe), brings out how deeply tuned into the steel the lead actor Ryan Gosling became during the production of the movie — and I reckon there’s something visceral and real about a bloke’s relationship with his motor that resonates.

Never know, it may turn out to be a classic after all.

And that movie poster is a bit special too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stumbled across an amazing collection of original Motorsports slides today for sale on eBay.

It really brings to mind the glorious beauty of film and transparency photography.

We here at Influx towers are of course obvious revelers in the joys of digital photography. We have utilised the full quiver of readymade tools that have been developed to saturate your pics with that old school, retro feel.

Seeing these slides, though, you can really feel how our user-friendly digital retrospectives can’t yet match the lovely feel of the real thing.

Not sure exactly who the subjects are and exactly which motorsports seasons we’re looking at here: perhaps you can help?

pic: Michael Fordham

Thanks to the kind folks at Wikipedia chrome, or chrome plating, is actually a technique of electroplating a thin layer of the chemical element chromium onto a metal object.

It was originally used extensively in industrial and military applications, from as far back as 2000 years ago in China. Chrome’s hard, slippery properties helped reduce friction and increased the hardness of any metal surface to which it was applied.

But mid-century folk started applying it to objects of desire like cars and bikes, well, the rest is history.

But we couldn’t help noticing that new technologies, not to mention the ease of digital render, has made full body chrome, or chrome effect bodywork, become something to think about. Even this sort of job makes your ride look for Tron than American Graffiti.

We scoped the outrageously chromed AMG at the recent Autosport show, and the gallery is a ragbag digest of shiny contemporaries from all over the webs. Try to separate the renders from the real.

We reckon the mainstream carmakers should offer chrome as an option…

Photograph: John Witzig

Even if you care nothing about the noble art of surfing, if you have a penchant for the abilities of old cars to take you places you won’t fail to enjoy this heart-heart-rendingly nostalgic video from Australia in the 1960s.

And whats more you’ll see how hard these fellas pushed their heavy old heaps of Aussie iron. You could wile away a fun ten minutes trying to name which cars are which. We’re certainly no Australian car experts.

It focuses on the explorations of a coterie of Australian surf pioneers, at the heart of which were Bob McTavish pictured overlooking one of Noosa’s point-breaks, is lovely old FJ Holden in silent contemplation to the right.

The picture by Photographer John Witzig is one of those that’s passed into legend. Noosa heads, now about as crowded and developed as a beach side resort can get, was when Witzig and friends like hydrodynamic Genius George Greenough found it, this eden like exotic spot.

Certainly shows that you don’t need bespoke, surf-marketed SUVs to get you places.

All I’ve Found (George Greenough) — Sea Movies from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever been to the little island of Malta you’ll have noticed at least two truths. The Maltese are mad (in a passionate, hilariouly, brilliant way) and they are into their motors.

In fact, the latter part is taken into their culture right to the heart. And as well as blasting little birds out of the sky with rifles, all things automotive obsesses your average Maltese heart in the same way as food, love and intrigue remain the quotidian passions of your typical Parisien.

A brilliant little book edited by Maltese writer Emma Mattei brings out this seldom focused upon aspect of her homeland — and this is just a little part of its broad and deep appeal.

Two photo essays and a little bit of ruminatively well-written text will take you through the details. The roads are in pretty poor condition and there’s not much total mileage of them anyway, and the wheezing, belching buses transport a lot of the punters around the island.

But even if you don’t care a stuff for cars, this little book is really worth getting hold of. It’s a truly uncommon guide to a place and its people.

Available from Miranda Books

Ok, you can’t drive it on the road, it looks like a nightmare in which Hieronymous Bosch interprets a Wagner symphony in a room full of blood lusted Valkyries, but we can’t keep our minds off AMG’s SLS GT3.

Merc launched the car back in 2010, but this is the first time we’ve been up close and personal. Ever since we saw it in the steel at this year’s Autosport show we’ve been tormented by the potential of the power and the glory infused in this hell’s teeth baring power machine.

The SLS itself is spectacular enough, but give it the AMG treatment and qualify it for the FIA’s GT3 spec and you can bet it’s going to be jaw dropping.

Mercedes might be enetering a new market in offering these things to privateer racers willing to engage in what the company call ‘a favourable price structure’ to score one of these babies. Image turning up at your local hillclimb with one of these?

Perchance to dream.

All the details available here.

The name George Barris is synonymous with car customising. It was George and his brother Sam that revolutionised the art of custom cars in America back in the forties and fifties by reworking the likes of Ford and Chevrolet cars to emulate coachbuilt designs. Their creativity went on to influence the way Detroit designed cars.

But Barris is of course a household name thanks mainly to his involvement with the TV and movie car scene, the most famous of these being the original Batmobile. George is still busy building cars in his North Hollywood shop and recently took time out, at the age of 83, for his first visit to UK shores. We were lucky enough to catch up with him at the Rhythm Riot’s Barris Kustom Show and ask him a few questions about his career.

Influx: Welcome to the UK George, it’s great to have you here.

George: Why thank you. It’s amazing to know that what we were doing all those years ago has such an influence on today’s young people.

Influx: We would love to know where the business began for you.

George: Well my brother Sam and I had been playing around with old cars from a very early age, hopping up the family sedan was our first project. It was some time in 1941 that I was first approached by a customer to perform work on a car. I had the job of installing a set of tail lights in a ’32 Ford. The customer was happy, paid his money and a seed was sown.

Influx: Business was booming for you right from the start and you attracted Hollywood stars. Who were your more memorable customers?

George: We were doing work for all kind of flamboyant people. Zsa Zsa Gabor had a Rolls Royce that we reworked for her and we installed a drinks cabinet with crystal glasses and more gold than you would believe. It was however a much more modest star that springs to mind. This young man often visited the shop when he was in town and made a point to get to know every member of staff. He would always strike a conversation, asking how so-and-so’s kids were doing at school, or how another guys wedding had gone, he always remembered the little details and called everyone sir. That young man’s name was Elvis Presley.

Influx: We’re guessing it wasn’t all glamour back then, hotrodders and customisers weren’t always looked on favourably.

George: Man that’s right, I was always in trouble with the cops! They always seemed to be waiting for us when we would take a car round the block for a test run. I would get pulled for different reasons, too low, too loud, I even got stopped once for running dual headlamps! This was the early fifties and every production car has single headlamps so the cops didn’t understand. It was only a few years later that every car out of Detroit would have the same headlamp set-up we had designed.

Influx: What is your all time favourite car from the shop?

George: That’s a tough one, but if there was one car I could have again it would be the Golden Sahara that I built from a my own wrecked 1953 Lincoln.

Influx: We know you suffered a terrible fire at your shop in the late 1950s. How did you bounce back from that?

George: We lost all but one car in that fire, that was the Model A Roadster pickup “Ala-Kart”. We just picked up the pieces and got on with it. We got that car finished for the Oakland Roadster Show and came away with the ‘Americas Most Beautiful Roadster’ trophy. We went back the next year and won it again with the same car, something that had never been done before. Everyone in the shop had a real positive attitude and we have a lot of fun. That’s my advice to everyone out there, do what you gotta do and have fun doing it.

Neil Fretwell runs the Vintage Hot Rod Association

We were thinking recently how pathetically wimpish current oil ads have to be. Gone are the days when you could sell lubricant with hot cars and hot babes. Post BP oil slick,and taking environmental realities into consideration, it’s not particularly surprising that oil companies are managing their image with kid gloves.

So, commercials for oil are packaged with tweeting birds, and laced together with a sting of pure, green air. We thought we’d dig up a couple of gems to show you how it wasn’t always necessarily so.

Here, for example, Mobil use a whacked out, hyped up Charles Manson lookalike to publicise their product, presumably to make the far-reached spin that using their brand of lube will chill you out.

This South African Castrol ad, meanwhile, straddles the hard-edged line between xenophobia, homophobia and the cherished boorishness of the Boers…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Its pretty hard to unravel the semiotics of this animated beauty from India (below). There’s bullets, murder, mayhem and other fun stuff that seem to be equating the performance aspects of Castrol lube with moving faster than a speeding bullet. We love the Bollywood steez, whatever it all means…

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re always interested here in the definitive elements of what makes a car cool. Sometimes it’s that elusive little something — the angle of a raked pillar, the hunkered down detail of a rear end; the air of gracefl poinse with which a particular car corners — that makes us sit up and take note of a car and pick it from the throng of steel on our roads and tracks.

But sometimes, its just really cool stripes.

The latter is certainly the case when it comes to cars which have borne the blue, red and white livery of Martini Racing. More often than not it’s been a Porsche upon which this totemic colourway has been emblazoned. But there are Lancias and Alfas that have at some time or another raced with some sponsorship from the globally recognisable bland of Vermouth.

The branding recalls something essentially European, and the marketing has reflected that. You couldn’t imagine say, a Ford Escort Mexico rocking those colours.

The TV ads in the UK were great too, featuring notable comic performances from the likes of Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins being extremely sophisticated and European.

If you’re a child of the seventies you may associate Martini with your mum’s drunken mates at parties, and you probably did the ‘all spirits in one glass’ cocktail thing laced with Bianco or Rosso on some pubescent New Year’s Eve.

But if you’ve got a soul sensitive to automotive aesthetics you will at the same time be reminded of Porsche 935s at Le Mans and the 037 Lancia scoring unimaginable air, coated in this ultimate paint jobs.

Not sure how it would look on my Volvo.