A few members of our household are currently rather obsessed with BBC4’s Danish language thriller series The Bridge. If you’re not a fan of the subtitles, moody colour pallets, brooding narratives and natter that constitute Nordic Noir, then this series probably isn’t for you. But even if you’re a complete philistine there is at least one reason to take a look — the rather lovely Porsche driven by the deadpan-sexy main character — played by the actress Sofia Helin.

The dusty chocolate/Mustard colour car, with black alloys and coded bumpers, looks to me to be a 911 from somewhere between 74–78 — but according to the chatter over at PH there’s a chance it’s a 912 — and perhaps an American-spec 912E.

Either way, we think the car’s downbeat, effortless style reflects perfectly the temperament of the autistically cool detective. As we’ve said before — the cars cops drive are — at least on the telly — a vital part of their characterisation.

Not being particular Porsche aficionados, we can’t really make a call as to what the car actually is. Any ideas, out there?

Whatever you think of the globally burgeoning scene of hipster-bikers, you’ve got to admit there are some beautiful custom builds emerging.

This ground up build is typical of the sort of lovely machinery that is being put together all over the planet — and packaged and marketed in ways that would have been universally scoffed at by died in the wool, unrecontructed bikers of yore.

Full spec of the thing can be found on the Hammerhead site. And check out the video for a (slightly cringeworthy) insight in to the way these bikes are being built and consumed.

Lovely machine. But is it worth $16,500? You decide.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some truly amazing footage here from a documentary focusing on the 1954 24 Heures Du Mans.

It’s all pretty gripping but highlight for me is right at the start when the Jaguar team emerge from the Browns Lane plant with those immaculate new D-Types, heading for the coast and the drive down to the Circuit De la Sarthe.

You can see here how seat of the pants and simple the scene was this far back: though the Jags were pulling close to 180 MPH on the Mulsanne. No wonder Jaguar development engineer Norman Dewis, who we were lucky enough to meet a few years ago for a feature in the magazine, was keen to introduce disc brakes!

This sort of memory — the sounds, the sounds of those stirred boxes and the pure aesthetic of the whole spectacle — produces a proper lump in the throat.

Note to self: Must go to the Le Mans Classic this year!

Every now and then it’s great to have a look at a concept for pure novelty value. This, though, is not the most outrageous concept to come out of Italy in the sixties, but for us it’s one of the most interesting.

The Scarabeo Prototipo came as the result of a goodly boomtime for Alfa — the Guilietta had been selling hugely, and the ache of mediocrity that popular success sometimes brings must have become something of an unbearable itch. The idea was to develop a series of racing prototypes to offset the uncomfortably staid image of the Guilietta. Alfa had, after all, officially pulled out of racing as far back as 1953.

In late 1964 Alfa sent three H-shaped racing chassis to OSI of Turin, a styling subsidiary of Ghia, and the stylists there came up with a variety of body treatments. One of the key features of the cars was a driving position way back in the middle of the chassis: which, it was thought, would give the driver maximum control; as well as necessitated that long low, flat nose and the squat, breadvan like rear end.

One of the cool innovations the Scarabeo featured was that fuel tanks were incorporated into the large diameter tube chassis to distribute weight evenly: an idea that survives to this day and features in contemporary superbikes and some racing cars. This sensible idea was carried through to the lovely Tipo 33.

Innovative materials such as magnesium was used in the car’s build, too and the clutch and gearbox were integrated into the main body of the engine.

Two of the three chassis survive and are on display in the Alfa Museum — and the silver one apparently lives in a private collection somewhere in the wilds of Canada.

With all these wet weekends, weekdays, bank holidays we’ve been having, it has been the perfect springtime for catching up with old movies. And, watching a bit of Sean Connery action the other day with my nine year old son, I was inspired to have another look into the Japanese classic that is Toyota’s 2000 GT.

Forming probably the most exciting sequence in the first half of the Bond movie, the 2000 GT captured the boy’s imagination — just as it had done when it had been released at the Tokyo show of 1965. Its probably fair to say that this collaboration with Yamaha resulted in a Toyota that changed perceptions of the Japanese car industry forever.

The 2 litre straight six punched nice and lively (as you can see in the sequence below), and the rear wheel drive format with popups, plexiglass and carnal, flowing lines, recall the best of the decade’s design. Funnily enough something about them reminds us of Hondas sadly discontinued sportster the S2000.

The Honda may come from another time and another place but a very Japanese spirit of fun is encoded in both cars DNA — and of course the format itself remains consistent across the four decades that separate them.

The Toyota commands silly money these days — whereas you can pick up an S2000 for a song. Perfect fuel, then, for a wet weekend’s automotive fantasy. And you don’t need a murderous femme fatale to complete the picture as far as we’re concerned…

Now we think it’s the first time a pure-bred slice of American brawn has made it on our list of Friday Car Crushes. But we think you’ll agree this oil-black on black bad boy would take a slice out of even the most stony faced Europhiles.

Reminds us of a family that used to live round the corner from us in the mid to late seventies. You know, one of those country and western-obsessed, sprawling families, the head of which was a Lorry driver and rocked the confederate flag in the window and whose front yard was permanently littered with cars an motorbikes in various stages of repair.

Tony was the youngest boy of the family — a sometime bullyish, sometimes vulnerable kid who never ate his greens and whose older sisters were scarily unaccessible and exotic. One day the old man pulled up outside school with one of these babies — not nearly as slick and crsip as this custom job…but about seven of us piled in the back and were taken for the ride of our lives — to the far roundabout on the A-road and back.

Some small seed was planted around that time, some sort of elegiac ache for big, noisy cars that I reckon will stick around in our souls for the rest of our lives.

Well, that’s enough nostalgia. Happy friday and enjoy these killer pics…

There’s something about vintage dragging that retains a raw simplicity that we love. And stumbling across a mad selection of freakoid weapons of quarter mile destruction on the Jalopy Journal’s forum recently we wanted share.

We’re sure that some of you guys out there will point to the various distinctions between what constitutes true originals versus vintage mock-ups — the pretenders from the wannabes from the true hardcore etc.

Not being aficionados ourselves, we can enjoy the pure brutality of the sort of machines that get so much spectacular horsepower out of their garages.

Power to their greasy elbows.

We stumbled across these catalogue images of the T-topped S130 Fairlady Z this morning and it occurred to us that with the evolution of our aesthetic and the return to cool of all things vaguely ‘eighties’, it might be time to reassess how much we dig.

You don’t see this US designation much this side of the pond — and even if you did, their cooler cousins in the first gen cars have much more kudos.

But check out that period interior, check out the t-bar auto shift that mirrors the targa top. We think it might be time to invest!

New Jersey born and raised artist Chris Piscitelli is the son of a car fanatic and the grandson of a fine artist. He attended Rhode Island School of Design then moved to Detroit to attend College for Creative Studies — and currently works as a designer in the automotive industry.

“If I had the money, time, or space, I’d have more junk than I already do, and still never be finished with any of it,” he says. He’s an artist/designer by trade and a motor head by nature and he enjoys combining his love of old iron with a skillfully tempered passion for design to create visions of what could be – for himself and for anyone in need.

Check out Chris’s 165 Design site and his beautifully detailed sketchwork — and if you need any inspiration for your next project be sure to hit the man up.

Ok, here’s the thing. The Alpine A310 is about as unique a motor as you can expect to see. It reminds us of no other production vehicle to come out of anywhere, let alone France. There’s something beautifully exotic about them in an understated, practical kind of way. And though we’ve posted numerous times on these french delights, we don’t care. Stumbling across this fresh example on the webs this week, we’ve decided to share the tricolor love.

It came with that Robert Opron design, a 2.7 litre V6 and enough unique steez to hold its own amongst supercar adversaries. It lasted a good fifteen years on the Renault production roster too — and was only phased out in the mid eighties — much to the regret of Alpinists the world over.

We told tale a while ago of a neglected example, which we were fated to pass each day, rotting away in a front yard, for the best part of 3 years.

Not to have made the owner an offer they couldn’t refuse is one of the greatest automotive regrets we’ve ever suffered.