Petrolicious

Matthias Beier was a motorcycle rider long before he bought his first bike. Perched on the tanks of his dad’s dual sports, he would get a few chances to take control of the handlebars, but he didn’t really dive in until he got to high school—which is when he sold his car for a Yamaha R1. Matthias has been riding ever since, but he and his dad weren’t the only ones in the family who liked bikes. The Honda CBX featured in today’s video belonged to Matthias’ uncle before he passed, and while it’s been in the family since new in 1982, it hasn’t rolled past 5000 on the odometer yet. It’s a very original, very of its era machine. With six carburetors to tune and a striking early-’80s design, the big Honda is a unique motorcycle in its own right, and this particular one has helped Matthias stay connected to his uncle even if they can’t ride together.

The Chevrolet Corvette is the quintessential American automotive protagonist. It’s a car that Apollo astronauts drove on earth, but also one that’s won its class at Le Mans. Simultaneously a relatable product from Detroit and a sports car that stacks up against the best international efforts, the cult of Corvette has grown to a level of organized religion since the first ones rolled out in the 1950s. The C2 generation (like Matt Euson’s 1967 Stingray in today’s film) is widely loved for its looks, but it was also the first generation of Corvette that saw material success in motorsport. It’s a piece of American racing history, and for Matt Euson, it’s a piece of 1960s nostalgia that he shares with his family and friends whenever he can.

Perched on a rear-facing, foldaway jump seat in the back of the family station wagon. Wedged between your parents on the front bench of an old pickup truck. Or climbing around in the “+2” section of a sprightly red Italian 2+2 with the top down and everyone’s hair flapping wildly. The sentimental value of the vehicles we grew up in—and of the spots inside them that we got to call our own—cannot be quantified. In today’s film, Petrolicious’ own Tiziano Niero sits down with his father, Carlo, to discuss a special Alfa Romeo that’s been in the family garage for over thirty years: a 1971 Spider 1300 Junior.

When Drew Coblitz acquired a 911 that had already been reimagined by Singer Vehicle Design, the company sent a note welcoming him to the family. Just another detail, part of a long list of examples of Singer’s thoroughness when it comes to the experience of owning a car that they’ve put their stamp on. By working up a genius combination of modern engineering solutions and only the best character traits from a more analog era of Porsche, the car’s abilities exceeded Drew’s high expectations. But there was something missing. The comprehensive approach to the aesthetic elements in addition to the mechanical ones is another reason why we’ve seen Singer builds become the defacto high watermark by which all the latest 911 hot rod projects are measured against.

Long before Adrian Miles could go for a drive on the Angeles Crest Highway on a whim with a BMW 1M, he and his brother were developing an affinity for cars by playing with the tools and police-issue Impalas in their grandpa’s garage in Philadelphia. He taught them how to appreciate automobiles and all manner of mechanical objects (radios in the Miles’ household were a frequent target of curious dismantling), and later on in school, a teacher and counselor with an E30 and E21 3-Series steered Adrian towards BMWs in particular.

Looking for a car to match his personality—which he describes as “aggressively way too loud”—Nathan Cali heeded the call of the Ford Mustang’s V8 siren song. His first was a 1966 that he bought for $1,500 when he was 15 years old. As Nathan puts it, “It was a bad idea. But it didn’t matter to me, because I owned it, I loved it, and it became a part of me.” He spent a few years with the ’66, repairing some aspect of it every other week—“four of five days of pure joy followed by four or five of pure frustration”—until he found filmmaking and took a break from wrenching on Mustangs. Eventually the desire for another one took hold, and Nathan set out to find a ’65 Fastback.

You don’t need sunny skies and smooth asphalt to have fun behind the wheel, and as Aurelien Degenève proves in today’s espresso shot of Morning Coffee, you don’t need a rally car to countersteer through pine trees and fresh powder. And if you have a rugged Land Cruiser with some ski racks at your disposal, you certainly don’t need a chairlift. Wake up with us on the snowy slopes and basins around Mont Blanc in Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains, France.

Sometime between his seventh and eighth birthday, Philippe Gardette sent a collection of his sports car designs in a letter to one of his favorite marques, Ferrari. Little did Philippe know back then, but his passion would catalyze into a 42-year-long career working with Prancing Horses. To give a sense of the level of kit that passes through his doors, Philippe pulls out a photo album and flips to a page that shows a 250 GTO on a lift above a 288 GTO—enough said. Spending time around these near mythic cars hasn’t jaded him though, and his relatively humble 308 GT4 has more sentimental value than any GTO, as the once-controversial Bertone designed wedge was the first car that that Philippe worked on and maintained. In this week’s film, we invite you to join us in Clermont-Ferrand, France, as we celebrate the only Bertone-designed Ferrari, and Philippe’s ongoing story with his tidy 1980 example.

A white sports car from the 1980s with white badging, white wheels, white louvers, and a healthy dosage of “turbo” signage is ripe for the ultra-low-hanging fruit that is a cocaine joke. This Mazda is too cool for that though. It is very much of its era however, and you’d be forgiven for thinking this car has been modified by someone with a penchant for monochrome. Besides the louvers, fluids, tires, and a sticker or two, this RX-7 is exactly as it was in 1988, and its odometer shows less than 2,000 miles. It’s a true time capsule, and it came to its owner, longtime friend of Petrolicious Sean Lee, by way of the Walker family. Watch the film to find out more about this amazingly well preserved “basement find.”

Two years ago, we featured a “Kaege Retro 911” after being thoroughly impressed by what its creator, Roger Kaege, was able to put together out of a 993 and an array of OEM Porsche parts. We weren’t the only ones who took notice, and today we’re featuring William Lai’s Kaege-customized Porsche pride and joy. Initial searches for what you could call “high-end hot-rod” 911s led

Besides being one of the most roundly loved BMW platforms, the 02 series is commonly credited with defining the brand as a maker of well-engineered but practical cars that were more engaging to drive than their price points. Across the wide range of 02s, one is easily drawn to the higher performance tii and Turbo models, but the joys of classic BMW motoring are not limited by horsepower. In the case of Lisa, the owner of this gorgeous 1967 BMW 1600-2, the 84hp four-pot is plenty of power for the task.

Soon after he obtained a driver’s license, Gernot Aschoff found himself elbow deep in British sports cars. His first was an MGA plucked from the classifieds of a classic sports car magazine. It was in terrible shape, but Gernot was hardly dissuaded from going deeper into the rabbit hole. In today’s film, we join him for a drive in his meticulously restored Austin-Healey BT7 3000. A quintessential piece of the British roadster canon, Gernot’s example sat in a shed for 40 years before he embarked on his two-decade and counting custodianship. He was careful to make sure that the result of the restoration was factory-perfect, but don’t let the time capsule appearance bely Gernot’s habits. Fond of long distance drives with the removable hardtop fitted above the blue sculpture of bodywork, he makes sure the odometer spins.

Kenny Lombino grew up loving cars, and owes his early interest to his father, an enthusiast in his own right. Growing up outside of New York, Kenny remembers visiting the NY Auto Show with his father each year, but 1961 proved to be a particularly special edition as it marked the first time Kenny saw a Jaguar E-Type. As an eight-year-old, he vowed to grow up and own one, and as you can see in today’s film, he kept his promise.

Driving a drop-top mid-engine Ferrari on empty, rain-slicked, twisting mountain roads isn’t a typical reality for most, and the owner of this 360 Spider is certainly aware and appreciative of the privilege to call it hers. Pauline Gardette has worked hard to achieve what she has, but she credits her parents for instilling her with attitudes that have gotten her to where she is. Her father in particular passed down a love of fast and beautiful cars, and Pauline says he shaped the way she drives and perceives cars, and they both share on a passion for Ferraris specifically. Join us this week as we take a drive with Pauline in her 360.

Before he could reach the pedals, Kelly Telfer used to help the local paper boy fold newspapers in the morning just so he could have the first look at the classifieds, where he circled all of the Porsche 356s for sale that he’d nag his dad to buy later that night. “I badgered the hell out of him,” Telfer says with a smile, “and about every three weeks he’d go look at a car or two.” A lifelong artist as well as car enthusiast, he’s been drawing Porsches since the first Speedsters he sketched in his school notebooks, and today Telfer is still portraying the marque he’s loved for some many decades as a professional artist. A great lover of Porsche history, Telfer’s 911 has some of its own, and the previous owner was none other than the Brumos Collection.

John Campion as about as cool as car collectors come. He has immense respect for the cars he owns, as well as for the drivers, engineers, mechanics, and directors who were involved with racing them in period. A fan of Lancia in particular, John was happy to share another piece of Italian motorsport history with us in this week’s film. Namely, this Martini-striped Lancia LC1. In racing lore Lancia is best known for its ability to consistently win in the WRC from the 1970s until the 1990s, but just before they really got going in Group B rallying in the 1980s with the 037 and the infamous Delta S4, the Italian marque was also doing quite well for itself in circuit racing. After winning the overall championship for makes in sports car racing in 1980 and 1981, Lancia evolved its successful Beta Montecarlo “silhouette” race car into a full-on Group 6 prototype called the LC1. It wasn’t to last long however, as Group C rules took over and made the LC1 ineligible for the manufacturers’ title.

Eric Rothenhaus comes from a family that viewed cars differently than he did. Whereas a six-year-old Eric bought into the idea that cars are living things from watching the adventures of a certain Volkswagen in The Love Bug, his parents simply used their cars to get around. But still, ever since he painted some racing stripes and taped up the headlights of his dad’s Jeep, Eric has been infatuated with cars. A product designer by trade, Eric appreciates beautiful packaging along with a visceral driving experience in his sports cars, and this beautiful replica Porsche 550 Spyder packing 200 horsepower certainly checks those two boxes.

Presented in partnership with Turtlewax, our film this week is something of a culmination of a car enthusiast’s passion. Paul Geudon credits the Group B years of rallying for catalyzing his car enthusiasm in the first place, but his creative side (and the practicality of driving a WRC car to work) helped him hone in on Porsche road cars in particular. The careful design evolution and the deep motorsport history distilled into the road cars fascinate him, and explain why in the last two decades Paul’s owned and driven just about every new coupe, cabriolet, sedan, and SUV to come out of Stuttgart. The GT3 models were always at the top of his list though, and finally owning one seems to have been well worth the wait. Better yet, Paul’s 4.0-liter 991-generation example is tastefully optioned, driven regularly, has no radio, and perhaps most importantly, has three pedals.

As a product manager for Porsche, Jonas Reinke’s career has taken him from Germany to Australia to the United States in an ongoing journey that has provided plenty of company cars to test along the way. He appreciates the modern machines and their mixture of history and cutting-edge capability, but his love for early Porsches goes all the way back to his childhood slot-car setup, along with a particularly memorable day of driving spent on the Great Ocean Road in a 1972 911E.

This week's film of a father and son and a special Ferrari 308 GTB is presented in partnership with Turtle Wax. The owner of this beautiful blue wedge, Elliott Scherling, grew up in a place where sports cars weren’t. But when he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his post graduate studies he found a new reality where exotic European imports were everyday sights. Elliot had eyes for one of these in particular, though: a Fly Yellow 365 GTB/4 parked in his apartment complex’s garage. It was the most beautiful car he’d ever seen, and that neighbor’s Daytona made Elliott determined to own a Ferrari one day.

No matter how wide one’s appreciation and access may be, there are always those handful of special cars or bikes that reward our patience. We keep our eyes and ears open, go through periodic bouts of trawling the classifieds and probing our friend-of-a-friend network, and generally play the long game in the hope of finding “the right one.” But in the case of this Honda “Street Scrambler,” it basically walked right up to Paul.

This week we’re returning to join host Sam Hancock for a drive in a special Porsche in Italy. Among a certain group of the Porsche faithful, the 924 has long been considered a lowlier model in the company’s 911-dominated history. The base model 924 was in fact not an entirely in-house Porsche project either, born as it was from the reshuffled plans of a water-cooled Volkswagen sports car that never came to be.

Genius Garage goes beyond a typical after-school learning program, and it’s much more of a supplement to these students’ work than any study group organized by the career services department. By giving the next generation of talented engineers and designers not just a base of knowledge to fall back on, but also the crucial hands-on opportunities to work on aircrafts and racing cars, founder Casey Putsch is providing these bright young minds with the resources to reach their potentials sooner. He’s not saying that setting up Corvette race cars or building mechanical pterosaurs is or should replace what his students learn in their classrooms, but rather that these projects are a way of applying and expanding that knowledge.

In Austria in 1980, just a year after four-wheel drive cars became eligible to compete in the WRC, Audi debuted the first Quattro rally car and forever changed the sport. Over the next half of the decade (and onwards, if you count the Pikes Peak specials), these Audis would be subjected to a period of rapid iterative evolution that led to the short-wheelbase Sport Quattro models that helped define the infamously fast and dangerous era of Group B rallying. The relatively lax nature of the Group B regulations gave rise to a number of downright ferocious cars from Audi’s competitors (most notable being Lancia and Peugeot), and while it was not the most successful nor technologically advanced of these top tier cars by the end of the Group B era, the Sport Quattro is a worthy poster child for the lot of them—being first to the punch has its advantages.

From drag racing to circle track to IndyCar to endurance sports cars and prototypes, Ed Pink has earned his reputation as a master engine builder many times over. Combining his prodigious talents with an impressive work ethic and attention to detail, Pink distinguished himself as someone who could not only adapt to new challenges, but thrive each time. He is no longer running the show at the company that bears his name, but it’s in capable and familiar hands.

The Porsche 356 brought the automaker into a new era. The model started the trajectory that would eventually lead to the venerable 911, and prototype versions of the car earned Porsche its first major achievements in endurance racing—namely a class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In addition, the 356 can be seen as something of a democratizer of Porsche’s racing efforts, with coupes and roadsters and speedsters being a popular choice for privateer competitors the world over.

Many of us who own a classic vehicle—particularly if there’s any intent to restore it—often end up on a journey of intrigue that hardly ever takes the path we initially plotted. Rahail Tariq began just such a journey with the purchase of a Datsun 240Z in 2001, and at the end of it he didn’t just appear from the other side of the rabbit hole with a sorted car, but with a whole new business as well. MZR Roadsports is a company that has been born out of a desire to create and a passion for taking an already-adored vehicle and produce something that’s simply, better: a car that retains its classic identity, yet is refined and reformed and can cope with the vigor of modern motoring.

If you’d ever wondered what a Ferrari Enzo built for GT racing might look like, look no further than the Maserati MC12. Developed off of the Enzo’s chassis and V12 power plant, the road-going MC12 was built in very limited numbers (there were just two batches of 25 cars), and it was primarily built to return the Maserati marque to the international motorsport stage.

The workspace of this long-running restoration shop in the Modenese commune of Bastiglia is brightly lit, spotlessly clean, and religiously organized—if you squint, it doesn’t look far off from a science fiction film laboratory set. But at Bacchelli & Villa, you will find an abundance of good old hammers and welding torches alongside the high tech gear. Here the panels are beaten by hand, and passion is just as much of a prerequisite for getting a job here as raw talent. After all, it’s better to have both.

By the end of the very first official season of the World Rally Championship in 1973, Renault-Alpine emerged victorious, with the extremely light and lithe A110 helping to take the honors back to Dieppe, where the Alpine story can be followed back to the 1950s and the tuning efforts of Jean Rédélé. Rédélé’s ability to coax performance from Renault’s 4CV caught the marque’s attention, and they were quick to support the young Frenchman’s ambitions to build his own car. With powertrains supplied by Renault, Rédélé started the lineage that would eventually include the WRC-winning A110. The early A106s and A108s were competent machines, but the A110 was a revolutionary step for Alpine.

Growing up in Berkley in the 1970s, Conrad Stevenson saved enough paychecks from his dishwashing job to buy his first Alfa Romeo. He took his driver’s license test in an Alfa, and long before he became one of the world’s go-to guys for restorations, he also used a Giulietta Spider in lieu of a business card. People would ask Stevenson who was responsible for the tuned and dialed car, and he would be happy to share that it was all his handiwork.

Tuscany has all manner of public roads doing a laudable impressions of a tarmac rally stage, and if you’re going to drive an Italian homologation special around for a day you’d struggle to find a better area to get lost in on purpose. The Fiat-Abarth 131 Rally had some big shoes to fill when the Fiat Group hung its WRC hopes over its widened fiberglass shoulders. Unlike the Stratos which had brought Lancia a trio of constructors’ titles in the mid 1970s, it was decided that the Group’s rallying involvement would be more directly related to its mass-produced road cars; in this case the humble Fiat 131.

Even if their contemporary periods are decades in the past, old cars and trucks don’t stop evolving over time, though not always literally. Whether it be the case that a previously underrated machine develops a following as a “classic” as the decades go by, or just the continuing development of restoration techniques, we are always applying some kind of current context to the vintage machines we love.

When Alfa Romeo decided to compete in touring car racing with the Giulia in the 1960s, the car’s motorsport baptism at the manufacturer’s racing arm, Autodelta, yielded only minor changes to the base model’s appearance. No doubt a doppelgänger, the form of the lightweight Sprint GTA that resulted from the extensive reengineering betrayed little evidence of the genetic shift that had taken place—its skin looked the same, but it was reconstituted in aluminum, magnesium, Perspex, and, for the roof, a unique alloy called Peraluman 25.

Since its founding in 1984, the team behind Eagle has steadily worked their dedication into an obsession, with the outcome being the last word in the world of the Jaguar E-Type. Unlike many restoration specialists, Eagle keeps all the work in-house, and none of it is rushed.

Besides heralding the dawn of the great post-war grand touring cars—or as our host Sam Hancock puts it, “vehicles that could win a hillclimb by day and pull up proudly to the opera house later that night”—the Lancia Aurelia B20 Coupés also found success on the circuits and sprint courses of Europe with just a few modifications. In specifications close to the standard road going form, Aurelias finished second in the Mille Miglia and won their class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1951, before going on to win the Targa Florio in 1952, and the Monte Carlo Rally in 1954. In other words, it has an impressive racing résumé.

Whether you’re in the market for a modified outlaw Lancia Aurelia for the street, a meticulously perfect Bentley 4½ Litre for your collection, or a 12-cylinder Ferrari for historic motorsport, there’s a place in Gloucestershire that can take care of it all under one figurative roof. Wayne Thornley and Simon Kelham—the founders of the Thornley Kelham restoration company featured in today’s film—established their business a little more than a decade ago, but their relationship with cars has been all but lifelong, and the level of workmanship they produce proves as much.

In an automotive world in which long legacies of high-performance are continually trotted out and watered down for commercial appeal over time, it can be hard to find examples of restraint. That word might not be the most apt descriptor of Porsche 911 models that wear the italicized “RS” on their rumps, but the company has shown plenty of it over the last half-century by resisting the urge to turn their legendary Rennsport treatment into the equivalent of a glorified sport package for soccer mom Macans. Since the very beginning, Porsche RS road cars have meant nothing but business.

When it comes to riding motorcycles, Stacie London isn’t the type to shy away from a challenge. Her goals see her chasing and breaking speed records, but while it takes a lot of determination and focus to do so, there’s no tunnel vision in this story. For Stacie, being involved in the whole process is essential to why she rides at all. In this week’s film, we dive into that process, to all the months of preparation that manifest in more than just long hours spent in the shop, from setting up and tuning her vintage single-cylinder Harley-Davidson, to the less tangible, more philosophical elements that culminate in the act itself: getting out onto the salt flats and going as fast as possible.

Lino has been intrigued by electronics since he studied the subject in school decades ago, and it’s always been for the same reason: not for money, but just plain enthusiasm. “As an amateur collector,” Lino says, “I have collected them even if they didn’t have real monetary value. Because a real enthusiast is not attracted by worth; an enthusiast is in love with that specific thing, not with its value, but with what it represents. With its flaws along with its qualities.”

In the 1980s and ’90s, Mercedes-Benz produced nearly two million units of the 190 compact sedan, but these were not created equally. The variants of the entry-level Merc ranged from beige Moroccan taxi cabs with workhorse diesels under the hood and fewer amenities than a room at the YMCA, to the homologation specials with Cosworth-and-AMG-developed engines wearing aero kits shaped by wind tunnels and phDs. The ultimate road-going iteration, the 190 E 2.5-16 Evolution II featured in today’s film driven by none other than Alain de Cadenet, was born to support Mercedes’s battle with BMW and Audi in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM), homologating the competition version that went on to win the manufacturers’ championship in 1991 and 1992, besting its rivals during one of the headiest periods of touring car motorsport.

In today’s film, we visit the workshop of Nardi-Personal, and get some insight into the historic brand from its current CEO, Lorenzo Cerfolini, who takes us through the timeline of the company from its foundation at the hands of Enrico Nardi.