images via http://www.acontinuouslean.com/

There are cool bosses and there are cool bosses. And there are cool offices and there are cool offices. But when you get a cool boss that sanctions the build of a cool slot race setup to play with in the office, the cool boss doesn’t get much cooler and the office, of course, doesn’t get much cooler!

We saw these images of a Toronto office set up on cultish style blog ACL and thought we had to share. I don’t think it’s even Scalextric , in fact the closer you look the more kiddly and naïve the setup appears to be – but you gots to love in principle the attitude that facilitates little boy play diversions in one’s place of employ.

Forward these to your guv’nor in advance of the next pay review. Fun, not cash, that’s what we require!

Down tools for ten minutes and enjoy with us this informative and entertaining video of Sir Stirling Moss threading a beautiful little Cooper around Donington Park. The car is similar to the one in which Sir Stirling won the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix — and also the one in which Jack Brabham won the 1959 World Driver’s Championship.

We can’t be sure exactly which designation is the car in the video, a T45 or a T51 — but pedantry aside we think you’ll agree it’s a very lovely piece of machinery.

This is the sort of lightweight, rear-engined car that ushered in an area of Empire dominance and loosened Ferrari, Mercedes and Masterati’s stranglehold on the sport.

Despite its lack of torsional rigidity and safety features it still managed to top 160 on a long straight, and achieved amazing performance for such a small car.

Little wonder the guys, like Stirling, who raced these machines were made of rakish, swashbuckling stuff.

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.

full set of images from Ian Wilson here.

Every September vintage and classic racers gather in the historic hillside town of Angouleme, which straddles the beautiful Charente River.

At the hub of the town is an amazing 12th century cathedral, but during the middle weekend of September all eyes are on Circuit des Remparts, which has hosted the street race here since 1939.

The weekend opens on Friday with the Concours D’elegance, where the machinery can be ogled, lusted after and judged. Racing proper begins on Saturday and Sunday — and it’s the close up and personal, visceral nature of the tight circuit that brings such good entertainment — and great pictures too.

Check out the lovely onboard action from what looks like a venerable prewar car, which is really evocative of racing times past.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re loving this onboard from Joey Dunlop around the Isle of Man in 1983. But as well as the always amazing images of Joey ‘keeping it lit and between the hedges’, here is the brilliantly cool, calm and understated Ulster tones of yer maun himself.

Stay with this footage for some hilarious repartée between Joey and the journalist as he sits, gobsmacked, while Joey comments on how ‘careful’ you have to be through this or that particular section.

Really inspiring stuff from the man who walked the walk and never bothered to talk the talk too much.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We make no secret of our passion for McLaren. Our love of the racing brand went to new heights when we got up close and personal with all the important cars in the company’s entire history at the this year’s Autosport International show.

McLaren’s stand was spectacular, and allowed punters to see, smell ( and even, surreptitiously touch) the brilliantly maintained back catalogue of beautiful, championship winning cars.

I must admit, seeing the actual MP4/4 and MP4/5 cars piloted by Senna, Prost and Berger in those devastating F1 seasons of 1989 and 1990 made us genuinely emotional.

Call us old fashioned, but the power and the glory of what went on in these machines is something that needs to be acknowledged and referenced continually. Mclaren do a great job doing just that.

So, when we stumbled upon this very pleasing image of the MP4/5 B recently, we had to post, and repost the spectacular driving of the great Brazilian driver at the wheel.

Enjoy. Again and again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

image via Jalopnik

Stumbled across these twin beauties the other day and had to share.

We had the privilege of meeting the noble Sir Stirling Moss a couple of years ago — and though he recently announced his retirement from racing, we will always admire his spirit.

“Movement is serenity” he told me while kicking back in his very cool Mayfair pad. It’s a sentiment that’s stayed with me ever since.

Long may you keep moving, noble knight!

Sir Sterling Moss at the Goodwood revival, 2009

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It’s one of those events that you might not think is what you’re all about.

But if you save your pennies for Bernie Ecclestone’s circus to come to the Northamptonshire countryside — you really should consider hitting the Silverstone Classic. For us, the Silverstone Classic offers much more bang for your hard-earned bucks.

The appeal is obvious to many of us. Think of every kind of racing formula to have graced the circuit for the last seventy odd years — think of cars and bikes from every era of 20th century racing in fact: and you have it all there.

But not only can you watch these rare and classic cars get an outing at the place for which they were bred — you can get truly up close and personal with the men and women and the machines themselves. There was music, classic aviation displays — an amazing weekend, in other words.

Highlight for us this year was undoubtedly the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the E-Type. Apparently close to a thousand etypes were on site and on-track, a record grid of 52 racing E-types contested a round of the E-type Challenge, the special race series created for 2011 to mark the anniversary year.

Buy your tickets early for next year’s extravaganza.

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One of the unexpected consequences of the frightening flux within the British car industry of the 1980s was the emergence of serious motorsports divisions within the corporate structures of car makers.

And the Metro 6R4 was perhaps the nuttiest, most unlikely fruits of this phenomenon — cultivated to add its exotic flavour to the hugely popular and spectacular Group B rally regime which was at the time making rally the most popular motorsport on the planet.

Calling this monster, whose naturally aspirated V6 engine had elements of the Cosworth DFV and Rover V8 machinery stuffed in its rear end, was a little disingenuous. Destined to appeal fondly to the British masses because of its moniker, it really only vaguely looked like the cheap, huge selling Metro.

Development of the 6R4 was taken on with the help of Williams Grand Prix Engineering — and the resultant racer was of course made of fundamentally different stuff than the production Metro.

Panels of Glass Reinforced Plastic and a little bit of steel clothed a seam welded tubular frame — and the car was actually laid out apparently on the bigger Austin Maestro; hence that jutted jawed and bulbous backed profile.

There was permanent 4WD and the gearbox constructed so that it was relatively simple to change ratios and torque bias between the diffs. Rover of course had to make at least 200 of these cars available to homologate them for Group B — and in 1984 you could buy the homologated package which punched to the tune of around 250 BHP, for around £25K.

Later specs pushed this already punchy figure closer to the 400 mark — and fully race ready packages of these full Rally monsters would have cost you around £40K.

Group B was slain by the FIA in 1987 — and the 6R4 didn’t enjoy much race success.

What it did achieve was a lasting, justified reputation as the most bonkers British car ever created.

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Why is the D-Type such a beguiling beauty? Well, it remains as in all things aesthetic a matter of opinion, but in the case of the this particular machine there are some concrete factors that help explain its enduring charisma.

The D-Type looked, in 1954, unlike anything else out there on the race track, let alone the road. Its aerodynamic features were all about function, but this focus on winning unwittingly created something spectacularly pleasing to the eye.

The introduction of aviation technology that facilitated the speed and reliability of the cars was a slowly blossoming flower that came to represent a patiently awaited premium for Britain.

When they saw C and D-types swathed in green (and occasionally blue) so successful on the circuits of Europe, Brits started to realise that they really had something to be proud of — that the struggles of the previous decades just might have been worth it.

This was in the years immediately after the Festival of Britain, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the conquering of Everest by that colonial hero Hilary.

Rationing of basic foodstuffs might have remained a part of people’s every day lives, but the cutting edge of British engineering demonstrated that these strictures could be transcended.

As Norman Dewis told us a couple of years ago, when the Jaguar team set off from Browns Lane en route to Europe the streets would be lined with flag-waving patriots. It’s a far cry from the international corporatism of today’s motorsport.

Jaguar’s spectacularly named race manager Lofty England led the team that produced the Jaguar D-Type. The car was produced to extend and deepen the success of the C-Type — and it immediately performed well. In its first appearance at Le Mans in 1954, the Jaguar team’s cars suffered, apparently, from sand in their fuel. Once this problem had been rectified, however, this car (No 14, driven by Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt) immediately reestablished itself. Eventually it finished less than one lap down on the winning Ferrari.

This D Type was the first first works car to be completed, on the 4th of May 1954. As well as its debut second place at Le Mans, it came second also at the Reims 12 Hours and raced at various Grand Prix and Trophy events in the UK. Interestingly, in 1956 it was converted to a road going version of the car, a sort of almost-XKSS, with a screen frame created and the central member between cockpits removed.

It has been claimed that these innovations originally inspired the factory to go ahead and produce the limited run of the road-going XKSS, though this was denied by the crew at Browns Lane. Either way, the car was used on the road for many years and was sold to its current owner in 2000.

The Monocoque chassis of the D-Type was developed using battle-garnered aviation expertise. Sheets of aluminium alloy formed the central tub which carried the cockpit – and an aluminium subframe was attached to this that carried the engine in its compartment as well as the front running gear and the steering mechanicals. Drive train and rear suspension was attached directly to the tub – and fuel was carried inside ‘bags’ mounted in compartments in the monocoque itself.

Malcolm Sayer, who, along with development engineer Norman Dewis had worked in the aviation industry in the forties, designed the D-Type’s beautifully sculpted coachwork. With the removal of the traditional separate chassis that had featured in the C-Type, a greatly reduced frontal area was made possible. The engine was angled over slightly (notice the off-centre bonnet bulge) and engineers developed a dry-sump form of lubrication so that the whole issue could be lowered. A low-drag underbody combined with the stabilizing fin behind the driver made high speeds at Le Mans just about manageable. After 1955 a long-nose version of the body was introduced which resulted in even greater top-end velocity.

That the D-Type’s aerodynamic properties and road presence would go on to inform that of the E-Type, which in turn went on to define glamorous yet accessible motoring in the sixties is testament to the power of these cars.

Source: Jaguar Sports Racers