Ok, so you’ve probably heard the deal.

You buy an early 90’s 911 but are not quite sure it’s giving you the required style you thought you were buying into. It hasn’t got that hollowed out, race-bred leftism that your favourite, early seventies 911 classics came to the table with.

All you have to do is hand it over to Singer.

They will create something gobsmackingly, darn right beautiful like this. We’re not sure how much it’ll cost you (probably an arm and a leg) but god will it be worth it.

We stumbled across this set of pictures at one of our favourite online haunts A TIME TO GET but go to the SINGER SITE for the inside track on exactly what these guys do for a living.

It might not be original, but my word is it lovely. There’s me and my mind drive for the weekend sorted, then….

This slippery love toy of an automobile, which represents the pinnacle of German experiments in aero, was designed in around 1936. Its designers, working out of the Northern German town of Gottingen were Karl Schlör and engineer Krauss Maffei.

The full-scale car was built on the chassis of the rear-engine Mercedes-Benz 170H, and it scored a never-before-seene low in drag coefficient of Cd: 0.113.

Perhaps inevitably known as ‘the Egg’ it was shown at the Berlin Auto Show in the fateful year of 1939. Rumour has it that after going into mothballs during the war until the car was ‘liberated’ by a team of British soldiers in the British sector of Belin.

We can’t be sure of anything else, except that this was an incredible feat of aerodynamic styling. Herr Schlor died in 1997, and perhaps the secret of the Egg’s wherabouts forever.

Unless you, of course, know different.

via Deisel punks

When we spotted this twisted beauty last week, we were instantly impressed by its ghetto fabulousness. A stipped down, rusted primer coated Mk1 with Tangoed alloys, a matt black hood with comp stripes and all sorts of add-ons, make it an instant headturner.

But it’s the collection of stickers in the rear door windows that make us want to share this with you fully. There’s an urgent sense of creativity in the edit, and when you combine this with the hunkered down steez of the car itself. But really, what we’re seeking to do is to find the owner/creator of this joyous piece of Somerset car culture.

There’s a dedicated crew of modders in the area we spotted the car (around the Midsomer Norton/Radstock area) and reckon there’s a fair chance that someone out there in the North Somerset coalfields is an Influx reader and knows knows whose ride this is.

So there, the shout goes out.

We want to meet you!

This week’s car crush is relatively attainable. Well, it might cost an arm and a leg, but at least the family driver could practically own one without causing too much jangling discord on the school run.

BMW aspirational mainstay receives a lot of flak by the Clarksonian brand of car crit. But we reckon this is simply because of its ubiquity; which is of course in turn based on its practical brilliance.

When Beemer unveiled the latest version, the CRT (standing for Carbon Race Technology), there wasn’t that much hoo-haa. But, despite that, it remains a little bit special.

The BMW M3 CRT embodies a concentrated blend of state-of-the-art development expertise – inspired directly by motor sport – in the areas of drive system and chassis technology and intelligent lightweight design.

It also represents the worldwide debut of a new production process for carbon-fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) components in the automotive industry. Its V8 engine has the customary M car’s high-revving characteristics and a maximum output of 331 kW/450 hp. Pullaway from 0 to 100 km/h is just 4.4 seconds.

This is because of its power to weight ratio is a stunning 3.5KG per horsepower. That means it’s nearly 70 KG lighter than the normal M3.

There’s only 67 of them to be made, and it’s expensive, but hey. It’s got four doors!

It’s the little detailing differences that we really dig, however. There’s something dashingly, subtly assertive about it, and that’s why this particular M3 has got us looking into finance options. Perchance to dream.

It was stumbling across this beautifully detailed cutaway this week (below) that inspired our current romance for Porsche’s first born.

Nay-sayers who claim that the original apple of Ferry’s eye is a Beetle with delusions of grandeur may have a point — but it’s the lovely attention to detail in the 356 that inspires us.

There’s something, too, about the spartan mechanicity of the car — conceived as it was at a time of extreme post-war austerity, that chimes with today’s times.

We believe we can detect a cheeky wink of a rebel heart clothed in the garb of a dutiful conformist in the 356 — particularly the clean, early examples. And that makes us smile.

The interior detailing is as reflective of everything good about Porsche as that of the overall fluid integrity of the exterior’s lines.

Click a couple of times on this illustration to see what we mean.

Audi make great cars. Audi make some superb cars. We had a go in a particularly cool RS5 Coupé the other day and it was a winner in every way It looked great, drove spectacularly — but there was something missing, and it got us thinking.

It always surprises me that Audi haven’t bought out an unashamed retro model, unless of course you count the TT. Perhaps retro is the wrong word. Perhaps we mean something simple, something not pushed forward by technology, but by something approximating ‘levity’.

Because of all the current manufacturing companies out there who are making successful cars, they potentially have one of the richest design heritages on which they might draw.

There are many good reasons for the convergence of good design, both across the car universe and within brands themselves. The argument goes within successful ateliers: why break winning formulae and risk alienating hard won loyalists with creative indulgence?

It might be understandable, but it doesn’t mean you have to like it. The truth is that the consequences of replicating successful design are streets awash with dully familiar shapes, rakes clusters and textures.

We’re extra fond of Audi’s middle period. We love the cold war feel to their boxy designs. We love the way that they assume nothing but provide unexpected delight Now that even the once quirky, groundbreaking TT seems to be wrought from the same style sheet as everything else Audi currently build, we’re hankering for something game-changing.

But that might be just us.

We thought we’d share some nice images of older Audis, as we as our twisted opinions…

The original Opal GT was a quirky piece of design. When it was presented at the 1965 Frankfurt Motor Show it was the manifestation of a real tangent for a European company.

There were low front-end with pop-up headlights, flared arches at the front, a pinched middle section and bulbous arches to the aft — just like its American cousin the Corvette, of course.

Over 100,000 GTs were produced between 1968 and 1973 — when in the UK the Vanden Plas Allegro was the height of domestic sophistication.

The GT/W Geneve was a one-off experiment, a pretty fastback which was specially constructed for Opel’s stand at the 1975 Geneva salon; and would have spotlighted rotary engined aspirations for the German company. It appeals to us for that lovely Joe 90–ish futurism. The extreme rake of the rear three-quarters makes is sight, and the inspired wires and gold flake job sets it off perfectly.

Pity it never made it out to the roads…

Images: VW_Press

It is easy to forget just how this little car changed the car world. When it emerged most stuff was rear wheel drive and badly made with overhangs.

I suppose the GTi really has significance for me because the year it finally arrived in UK spec (right hand drive) was the year I was entered this world. 1979.

Little did anyone realise that thirty-odd years later, that humble little boxy Giugiaro design would have such a worldwide wealth of disciples.

Volkswagen’s Golf was not the first hatchbacked car on sale but, when a bunch of VW engineers set out to make a warmed-over version as an after-hours backroom project, the result rebooted the hard drive of every car manufacturer in the industry.

And to think it nearly didn’t happen.

Drive to work now and the subtly tasty hatchback car is a pre-requisite of daily traffic. It is almost certainly the favourite genre of car in the UK, and you don’t need to look far to see why.

The Golf GTI functions as a jack and master of all trades; a venerable family chariot, a sports car and one that feels special, not to mention affordable. A leading motoring journalist once described the mk1 GTi as ‘the sports cars you didn’t have to suffer to own.’

Prior to the Golf GTi’s birth, to reach its calibre of performance you’d need to drive a cramped coupe or a bulky saloon. The GTi didn’t have the temperamental traits of highly-strung Italian machinery, the hit-and-miss quality of British cars or the kitsch of many ‘70s Japanese try-hards.

It killed the kudos of Ford’s Capri and Opel’s Manta in one fell swoop. I know, because as a kid in the mid-eighties I watched how the Golf headed the crusade for credible front-drive frolics.

The hatchback package ticked off practicality, the Golf was ample sized and lightweight, exceptional build quality and with one of the tautest, sweetest chassis tasted to date.

Fitted with an eager fuel injected front-drive four-pot engine the thing just inhaled meandering B-roads and returned decent motorway comfort, together with real-world mpg. You could cruise it, you could gun it, and you could do the school run without it missing a beat or costing a fortune to keep alive.

And, like a decent Sunday Roast, it’s this 35-year old automotive recipe that just keeps delivering satisfaction and credibility.

The GTi Golf kindled the car classlessness of its era. Bankers, race drivers, career mums and anyone in between fell for its modestly displayed sportiness. Who needed a weekend sports car when you could drive a GTi 24/7?

A lot of cars go down in history for their compromises, but the Golf GTi bucks that trend completely. We love it precisely because it doesn’t compromise a damned thing. Never would you see a Golf GTi classified saying ‘baby forces sale’.

There were many who thought the Beetle’s mass appeal and legendary status could never be bettered, but the GTi disproves them instantly and follows in its cult footsteps.

Of course, even champions have wobbly moments. The GTi’s thoroughbred DNA has been diluted a few times, with the lowest point for me being 1992. The mk3 was a bit chubby and, well, not very good, in my opinion.

The MK3 was launched with a 2.0-litre boat anchor that was a mere five horsepower more than the ‘70s original, and managed to be no faster in the sprint to 60mph than a 1.3 Toyota Corolla. Bad times.

VW had turned the GTi into a Vegas Elvis with all the luxury and glitz, together with a good portion of pie-loving and bronchial wheeze. And just like Elvis records, it kept selling.

The Mk3 did bring the VR6 though – the beginnings of the Golf’s relationship with a six-cylinder engine. It sounded great, but it felt too middle-aged tracksuit to be a GTi. It fogged up the original GTi philosophy.

I’ve never really found love with the R32s either, but that’s just me. Once immersed into the forum-filled world of GTis you realise this is a religion divided by the six marks and 35 years of evolution.

You’re either a mk2 3-door man or an R32 lover; a G60 worshipper or a Belgian look Mk4 follower. In addition to the Golf’s multitasking talent of refinement with hooliganism-available-on-tap mentality, it happens to take rather well to modifying.

I’ve had a few GTis and have utmost respect for the genre foundation layer. Sometimes the original gets buried amongst the flood of copycats, but VW has always seemed to keep re-inventing their star pupil. Besides the obvious mk1 (how futuristic must this have looked in 1976?), for me it’s the mk2 and mk5.

The mk2 for its sheer longevity and fact it has aged as well as Jane Seymour. And the mk5 for its exquisite combination of retro tartan and logoed lights.

Long may the icon shine on.

1XLR1
Squint a little bit and that front end looks like the Scirocco. But it’s not. The apogee of VW’s new generation of aspiration toward hyper-efficiency, the new Volkswagen XL1 Super Efficient Vehicle (SEV) was unveiled at the Qatar Motor Show this year. Pioneering construction techniques, an advanced plug-in hybrid drivetrain and innovative packaging all play a part in allowing the XL1 to return 313 mpg on the combined cycle while emitting 24 g/km of CO2 to set a new benchmark for vehicle efficiency.

2 W12 (2001)

The W12 was launched at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2001, and may or may not have been one of the earliest aspirational victims of the post 9/11 dip in economic bravado.

Developing 600 bhp at 7000 rpm and maximum torque 457 lbs ft at 5800 rpm, the W12 Coupé, which was commissioned as a design study fro Italdesign, was reckoned to reach 62 mph in less than 3.5 seconds, to go to a top speed of over 217 mph. Weighing just 1200 kg, it was slated to be one of the fastest sports cars in the world.

The key to this performance was a mid-mounted lightweight and compact 6.0-litre 12 cylinder engine with 4 valves per cylinder. The layout of the W12 was basically two narrow-angle V6 cylinder blocks joined side by side at an angle of 72 degrees onto a common crankshaft. This makes a “double V” or “W” formation of this exceptionally smooth and compact W12 engine.

This was of course epoch making in the end, as a version of this engine ended up in the Phaeton. On 14 October 2001 a prototype of the concept set the world record for distance covered in 24 hours. On the Nardo high-speed circuit in southern Italy the sports car covered 4402.8 miles at an average speed of 183.45 mph, improving on the previous record set by a Chevrolet LTS Corvette by a margin of 7.5 mph. At the same time the team of drivers broke two other world records in the W12 Coupé and six vehicle class speed records.

2: Concept T (2004)

This offroad coupé concept was launched at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, 2004. Combining genuine off-road capability with the low-slung, dynamic appearance of a coupé, it initially was installed with a 241 PS V6 petrol engine, allied to 4MOTION four-wheel drive and a six-speed tiptronic automatic transmission.

0 to 62 mph was said to take 6.9 seconds on the way to a limited top speed of 143 mph.
Gullwing doors (always a press-gathering eye-catcher) first open outwards slightly before rising vertically, for convenience in tight parking spaces.

With no arches to frame them, the 19” alloy wheels appeared to ‘float’ beneath the body. This theme was continued with the striking lights, front and rear, which also look as if they are suspended in mid-air.

Unusually, the twin stainless steel exhaust pipes are part of the tail light modules, for a neat, more integrated look. For more flexibility, the concept T had a T-bar roof, whose twin panels can be removed easily, as can the rear hard top roof with integral tailgate. Hellish, innovative fun. A buggy for grownups.

3: Atacama (2006)

The perrennially successful crafter van was given the rugged, offroad treatment in this concept from 2006. Built by the Design Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany it was rumoured to become a limited production vehicle, but, unfortunately, it never happened.

The design study gained its striking presence through its proportions. The front end, with slight modifications and the aluminium components such as the radiator, headlights or air vents, also add to the Atacama’s powerful appearance. The side air inlets in the wings lend the Atacama a sporty finish.

For protection during off-road use, the vehicle was equipped with robust panelling and powerfully modelled wheel arches. Aluminium inserts further emphasised its off-road appeal and give the Atacama a more exclusive appearance. The unique side window design demonstrates the integration of exterior and interior.

The roof railing formed in a U-shape with integrated box is a modern interpretation of a carrier system. To match this element, the team designed the rear ladder which frames the brand logo in its shape and also has the door handle integrated in it.

We think VW missed a trick here. What more perfect a surf wagon would the Atacama have been?

4 The Eco Racer

At the 2005 edition of the Tokyo motor show, one of the biggest surprises came from VW in the shape of the rear-drive, mid-engined Eco Racer.

It had a carbon fibre shell, racing running gear and a ‘race mode’ switch that would sharpen steering and the shifts of the DSG gearbox.

The engine was a a four cylinder 1.5-litre turbo-diesel. It produced134bhp at 4000rpm and 184lb ft of torque between 1900 and 3750rpm. This was enough for VW to make the claim that the Ecoracer could move to 62mph in 6.3sec and on to a top speed of 142mph. It was also reckoned to return as much as 83mpg.

You could take off the top and turn it into a roadster, too. All in all– this sort of cheap to run sporting format is a rare one — hardly anyone has managed to pull these two desirable motoring poles together — and who would have been better to do that than the boys from Wolfsberg?

Of all the manifestations of VW audacity, the Buggy represents something particularly deep-lying and playful in the minds of VW enthusiasts.

They originate from the simple workability of the Beetle platform and a creative impulse that is common to folk who like to tweak ‘the people’s ride’.

So when an updated version of the idea of a stripped down beach-oriented vehicle that is solely about fun fun fun appeared at this year’s Frankfurt show, it was always going to turn heads

The buggy up! is of course, inspired by the Californian beach buggies of the 1960s — but this one is based on the forthcoming small car star the Up!

The original buggies were custom jobs pioneered by the likes of Caifornian Bruce Meyers.

Custom shops like the one run by Meyers replaced steel bodies with hand moulded fibreglass jobs.

The result were agile, fun vehicles that perfectly reflected the ethos of California in the sixties.

The Buggy up, meanwhile, doesn’t utilise composites — these bodies are made of lightweight steel and keeps its city sibling’s reinforced underbody, running gear and drive technology.

The roofless, doorless exterior is completely redesigned and the ride height is lowered by 20 mm. C-pillars are banished and the storage compartment is constructed of two pieces: the main part of the lid lifts upward like a saloon’s bootlid, but the section above the bumper folds down, like the tailgate on a pick-up, making it easy to stash all that fun beach gear.

There are also trad-style tie-down straps for luggage on top of the bootlid itself.

Inside there are specially designed neoprene-covered seats (that’s wetsuit material) which are slung low, and so engineers have reduced the basic angle of the height-adjustable steering wheel by four degrees. This creates a real go-kart like driving position, and there’s a useful handle on the dash panel for when you assault the dunes properly.

Unlike most of the original Buggie the interior is completely waterproof with a basic cloth cover — and seats, sills and floors have drains in them that will allow any pesky brine to drain away easily.

Even the controls for the iPod-compatible infotainment system are waterproof, and you can remove the entire module – including the integrated loudspeakers – so that you’ve got a sound system for your beach party.

By resurrecting a vehicle that is purely for fun, VW seem to be pushing the versatility of their brand — and engineering their ongoing status as a the daddy of manufacturers. Wether or not the Buggy Up! will ever be produced en masse remains to be seen.

If they do so, we recommend they lose the exclaimation mark.