The cult of Eye-Ear-Ton (correct pronunciation) Senna is a worthy one. Not only could even the uninitiated see his incredible driving talent just by watching a single GP performance, but the way he carried himself and the sensitivity he demonstrated in developing the sublime Honda NSX is a perfect validation of top-level Motorsport’s apparently decadent and anachronistic existence. He might have been brutal at times. But genius is seldom perfect.

Senna is a hero. And every now and then we need a hero.

While it’s easy to be cynical and write off hero worship of both the deceased individual and discontinued car, there’s something about Senna’s style that endures.

Like the cult of Steve Mcqueen that litters aesthetically oriented auto blogs all over the WWW, nestling at the heart of the bull***t is a truth: these men represented a kind of untrammelled will-to-live that was fundamentally tied into the art of driving. There are a lot of people out there who can identify with that. And, we wager, many of our readers are among them.

Enjoy the video.

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It could be the late surge of summer this September or the rapidly growing awareness of our own mortality here at Influx towers, but we’ve been seriously thinking of late that it might be the right time to by a ridiculously impractical piece of automotive machinery.

And with that in mind, we’ve been seriously drawn to a certain brand of motorbike that we rarely see these days: MV Agusta.

It’s the sort of brand that evokes a lot of passion: launched just after the war by a bunch of Italian noblemen, they made truly beautiful caff-style machines through the fifties and sixties.

The 350 from 1961 was perhaps the apogee of MV bike’s lithe prettiness.

In the seventies, like a lot of Italian bike brands, they seemed to turn their aesthetic in the direction of muscle, particularly with the stripey-tanked 750 S model (top).

We are currently coveting the latter. Can anyone do us a good price?

Now, we know how attached our biking brethren can get to their machine. And when you’re on a world tour, the bond can get well, a little weird, frankly.

So reaching out to this passionate community of bike lovers, the Nomad Tent Company have recently released a portable dwelling for three — rider, pillion and huge tanked Ténéré.

“A good night’s sleep isn’t just important when you are traveling the world by motorcycle, it’s essential, ” says the company’s blurb, “We’ve been soaked through at the end of a long ride with many days, weeks or even months ahead of us on the bike. We’ve tossed and turned in cramped tents, laid like sardines in tight bivi bags, cracked our heads on cold helmets and cuddled with boots that could walk by themselves. Every tent is a compromise. That is until now,”

Makes sense to protect your ride from the aquisitive eyes of the bandits in whichever far-flung region you have strayed. But we’re not sure how different this model is from other standard head high two man tents. We suppose it’s all in the marketing. But at least the bike won’t snore. Shame about your hairy mate. And please don’t make me go with Charlie Boorman.

Stumbled across this interesting little video recently. It seems that the bog standard, straight out of the factory version of the AE86 was always well-disposed to kicking out the tail.

Subsequent generations of the obsessed have of course created a drift legend by welding up the diffs and weighing out the back of these mid-eighties period beauties.

In this video a Toyota team take a couple of the cars around the classic circuits of Europe with top drivers at the helm, you can see that they didn’t need any drivetrain jiggery pokery to slide nice and twistedly-like.

Reminds us that you don’t need a full aftermarket, race-specced track day monster to have fun on a racing circuit.

via JNC

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Stumbled across some very nice artwork from London based artist Conrad Leach.

Vibrant colours, interesting two wheeled machines feature in the work, which he has exhibited everywhere from Tokyo, LA to Norway and back again.

Stay tuned for more on Conrad’s work in our forthcoming print mag.

VIa Dice Magazine

It’s amazing to think, with the current controversy raging about team orders and corporate shenanigans seeping into the noble Scuderia’s image, that in the first year of Ferrari’s entry into the rear engined, 1500cc Formula One, they were so gentlemanly and yet still dominant.

The Shark nosed 156 had at it’s heart a V6 engine whose banks were angled at 120 degrees: crucially smoother and more efficient than other engines with less of a rake. This, combined with the innovative nostrils on the shark nose (an aerodynamic  styling flourish that was revived for the F430 more recently) and of course the skills of Hill and his team mates, made the 156 unbeatable.

There’s great footage below of the Spa GP of that year, when the 156 Ferraris finished in the top four places.  Let’s hope Ferrari shake off their recent tarnishes and return to their haloed roots.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s not often you meet a car that’s a cross between a Mercedes Gullwing CW 311 and a batmobile. But that’s what the ridiculously strange and exotic Isdera Commendatore is. With all the subtlety of a rally at Nuremberg and an air brake – the sort of analogue tech that makes a rear parking camera look crass — the commendatore was for true freaks of nature: folks who like to pay through the nose for exotic, for exotic’s sake.

And the thing is that in the early nineties, when the car was designed, there wasn’t exactly a lot of hypercar competition. This was the depths of a recession almost as bad as the one in which we currently find ourselves: and it doesn’t take a genius to imagine why you don’t see many of them down at the local Waitrose. Even if you live in an area posh enough to actually have a Waitrose.

It had a Mercedes V12 and apparently enough gumption to get from 0–60 in 4.7 and a top end of 212 MPH. It is reckoned that only 70 Isderas have been sold since launch. Please send in pics if you ever get to see one.

Sometimes, we just want to share some love. This is the case with these images of the beautiful single-cylindered Ducati from 1960 — the Elite 200cc.

Though we wish we could relate what it’s like to blast through the hills of Tuscany onthis pretty little italian Stallion, alas, we haven’t even seen one in the flesh. All we do know that we would love to hear from anyone who has actually had the privilage of ownership.

It might be that we’re getting old, or spending too much time in inferior cabins of late: but car interiors really seem to matter to us of late. Of course, out favourite interiors are usually direct analogues of our favourite all-round motors. But every now and then, there comes along a cabin that outstrips the quality of the car.

The 458’s super high tech contruction is reflected perfectly in its display. It might seem illogical to some, but we’ll take the progression for chance to drive the future.

On a more classic note the lounge of the Volvo p1800 smacked of Euro bohemianism. And we like that very much.

The Jag XJS interior, on the other hand, was a rakish piece of leather and walnut that was directly of its time and place.

One of our all-time faves was The Citroen SM’s vision of the techno future.

Any reader of a certain vintage will hold numerous ideas about the Ford Capri in their minds. If you were of the age that they were marketed in their original guise, you will think of them as that treat yourself, only-live-once sort of motor that you once dreamt of.

If you were a school leaver in the eighties, when they were coming to the end of their technological tether, they were a bit of lairy step up from the usual crappy MK 3 Cortina you could actually afford.

If however, you were a late seventies twentysomething in a skilled manual job, nestling in the upper echelons of the great British Working Class: then they were probably as cool a motor as was possible to practically aspire to.

Thing is about the Capri, they were a stroke of Dagenham genius, because while there was a Capri for whoever you might have been, it was always a Capri you really aspired to.

And as for the RS2600: I want one. Right here, right now.