Petrolicious

Although thousands of hours of labor and countless more of accumulated knowledge are poured into the cars that come through the doors of Autofficina Bonini, if you ask the founder, Carlo Bonini, how he spends most of his time, he’ll put it plainly for you; “I’m not working, I’m having fun.” And how could he not be? The founder of the esteemed Ferrari workshop that bears his name is working alongside his equally enthusiastic son, Renato, on some of the greatest cars ever built, from circuit-spec F40s and supercars to 250s and Daytonas. Both father and son grew up loving these cars, sharing a passion born so early in each of their lives as to make it impossible to point to the exact start of it. Their blood runs rosso corsa instead of red.

Carlo Borrani may not have invented the center-lock wheel, but the company that bears his name was instrumental in bringing the technology to the forefront of the automotive world in the post-war era.

Before the Second World War, Alfa Romeo’s racing program brought a steady influx of trophies into the company case, but the post-conflict reality dictated change in the industry. Production shifted away from luxurious low-volume sedans and sports cars into more plentiful and affordable machines throughout Europe, and Alfa Romeo’s answer was the Giulietta. The standard models were good-looking, economical, and fun to drive, but they also helped the brand reestablish itself in the racing world by serving as a basis for high performance models like the car featured in this week’s film.

Canford Classics has been in the business of restoring vintage Porsches for well over a decade now, and Alan Drayson didn’t start the company on a whim, either. He remembers being smitten with the marque since his childhood, and he had his first Porsche at the ripe age of 17; a 912 in need of attention, which Alan gave to it in the form of a restoration carried out after his schoolwork was done (and not always after), fueled by his enthusiasm and financed by his part-time job in a local bar.

The purpose behind The Classic Racing School is easy enough to glean from its name, but it provides more than just a way to learn the basics of driving on an old car around any old race track. The young French entrepreneur behind the project, Julien Chaffard, has created the only full-service curriculum for open-wheel racing enthusiasts looking to connect with the past as they build and hone their talents in vintage machines. We recently visited the school’s facilities near the central French city of Clermont-Ferrand to learn more about this unique program that Julien’s been dreaming up since his childhood.

The scope of BMW’s competition history is a wide one. It includes victories at events as diverse as the Dakar Rally and the Mille Miglia, as well as the production of the most powerful engine Formula 1 has ever seen, to say nothing of the brand’s record in touring cars. And in the very beginning, in 1972, long before the name change to BMW M, BMW Motorsport began translating some of its prowess for racing into production cars. Homologation specials like the E9 3.0 CSL and E30 M3 that supported championship-winning machines are rightfully praised, but none to date have been as ambitious or singular as the BMW M1.

Umberto Galli built his first scale model of a Ferrari Formula 1 car as a teenager in the early 1980s using a humble kit of scissors, glue, and cardboard repurposed from shoe boxes in lieu of lightweight alloys and composites used for the real deal—with a packet of felt-tip markers supplying the paintwork. Today he is a senior aerodynamicist at Ferrari working on Formula 1 cars with almost two decades of tenure. He still builds scale models, only now they go into the team’s wind tunnel instead of the bookshelf in his childhood bedroom.

Bicester Heritage, the former RAF base turned classic car hub, is a compound of hangars and brick buildings in Oxfordshire that’s earned well-deserved international acclaim for its role in the vintage car world. Occupied by an array of restoration workshops, specialist mechanics, and garages in the business of historic racing, it’s a place with no lack of special cars and talented engineers. In this week’s film, we visit one of the exemplary business in Bicester, Classic Performance Engineering.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the best touring car racing in the world was happening in Germany. The Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM) was a hotbed for manufacturer money and talented drivers, the racing was at its door-banging finest, and the pursuit of competitive edges on the track produced some of the most iconic homologation specials for the road. The most famous of which was the first-ever BMW M3.

Alfredo Lopane moved his family to Milan in the 1950s and wasted no time finding work to support their life in a new city. A lover of cars and motorsport, a job in a body shop was a natural fit, and as Alfredo still puts it today, “I am a bending machine operator. It’s something I wanted to do.” A humble and simple description of an increasingly rare vocation that he’s dedicated his life to mastering. “I still do it with the same joy as when I started. It still thrills me.”

If a car is only a collection of smaller bits serving specific purposes, the badges it wears have the job of placing all those bits in context. When we look at a specific car we might remember its achievements in sport or design, but when we look at the symbol of the marque our minds are freed to wander further out. Timelines distend to their bookends, legacies come into focus, and we are sucked down into the deep wells of lore capped by the prancing horse of Ferrari, the cross and serpent of Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini’s raging bull.

It’s not surprising that Le Mans is home to specialist automotive businesses, and just outside of the city sits a restoration and preservation workshop that’s among the best in the world. Provost Automobile Le Mans is a place where perfectionism is part of the status quo, but the team that carries out the work is always learning, viewing each project as an opportunity to hone a technique or add to their collective knowledge, while simultaneously showcasing what decades of experience can accomplish.

Lancia’s motorsport legacy spans many decades and disciplines, but the Italian marque earned its most consistent and most significant victories in the World Rally Championship (WRC). As far removed from a one-trick pony as possible, Lancia won 10 WRC constructor titles between the 1974 and 1992 season with three very different cars (four if you count the precursor championship to the WRC, which Lancia won with the Fulvia), but the extraterrestrial, wildly successful Stratos was the company’s only completely purpose-built machine.

The Negri family business, Il Bottegone ISO Restoration, has defined itself as the last word in the restoration, preservation, and recreation of ISO sports cars, but the father and son workshop also produces something intangible. Their work keeps the interest alive and guards the history from ever becoming ancient—Il Bottegone’s reputation as the definitive source among ISO owners and enthusiasts has been well earned.

The creation of the Renault 5 Turbo is one of our favorite stories of automotive augmentation, at once unique and stereotypical; it’s another somewhat odd-looking French car, another rally icon with econobox heritage. But the “R5 Turbo” was also an iconoclastic machine that diverged from its humble origins to a degree that was arguably unmatched until the infamous Group B cars that arrived in the World Rally Championship (WRC) years later.

Robert “Rorky” O’Rourke isn’t particularly interested in cars’ engines or their cornering characteristics. Like anyone who spends working hours amongst classic Ferraris and the like, Rorky appreciates the superlative elements of the cars that come to O’Rourke Coachtrimmers, but his company is unwaveringly focused on one element. This is not a one-stop shop for full-car restorations, though if you’re looking for an interior done to a degree of perfection that can only come from an obsessive dedication to craftsmanship, this is the place to get it.

We featured Jack Olsen’s multifunctional 1972 Porsche 911 during the very early days of Petrolicious films, and for this episode of Master Mechanics we met up with Jack again, this time to put the spotlight on the other Swiss Army knife that he’s built. Like the 911 that lives inside of it, the 12-Gauge Garage—named after the thickness of the steel cabinetry within—is a study in maximum utility extraction. In this case, a typical 20’ x 20’ two-car garage in Los Angeles that’s been rethought and redesigned to function as a respectable workshop for Jack’s Porsche.

Japanese manufacturers found no shortage of success in the World Rally Championship (WRC) throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, with Toyota, Subaru, and Mitsubishi trading constructor titles almost exclusively amongst each other for more than a decade, in turn canonizing the Celica, Impreza, and Lancer among the sport’s all-time greats. But while Toyota and Subaru kept their rallying efforts focused on the WRC during this era, Mitsubishi also took on the greatest long-distance off-road race in the world: The Paris-Dakar. Their weapon of choice was the Pajero.

Francesco “Ciccio” Liberto, humbly describes himself as a “happy shoemaker,” a career he’s had since he was a teenager. What started out as a small workshop for handmade shoes and repairs eventually led—thanks to providence and skill—to Ciccio’s handiwork taking on an iconic status in the world of racing.

Before Yves Morizot started Stand 21—one of the oldest and most impactful safety wear companies in the world of motorsport—he baked and sold bread out of a little storefront in Paris. And for a time he was content in that line of work, until a riotous offshoot of the city’s 1968 student protests tried to break into his shop and steal loaves of bread that were meant for a nearby hospital. Disheartened by the act, Morizot subsequently lost his taste for his trade.

In this episode of Homologation Specials, Alain de Cadenet spends an afternoon with BMW’s supremely beautiful bid for touring car supremacy in the 1970s, the 3.0 CSL. Conceived by a group of brilliant minds at Alpina and BMW Motorsport, the CSL more than measured up its task in the European Touring Car Championship, winning the manufacturers’ title in 1973, ’75, ’76, ’77, ’78, and ’79. Proving its endurance chops for good measure, it also won its class at Le Mans in 1973, and overall at the 1975 12 Hours of Sebring and the 1976 Daytona 24 Hours.

It sounds like a recipe for a satire of hipsterdom; a room full of modified old motorcycles, someone un-ironically wearing an alligator-print vest, and a photographer whose quest for authenticity has led him beyond film and into the mostly forgotten world of wet plates. But unlike the feckless and fickle hangers-on, Bernard Testemale doesn’t seem to care if anyone else thinks he’s cool. Photography is not a replacement for his personality, but it is an obsession.

Mauro Schedoni represents the third generation of his family to work with leather, but more important than the subject matter is the philosophy. His father instilled him with a respect for high quality work, leading by example, always striving and honing. While he was mainly involved with shoes, Mauro would later forge a connection between Schedoni and another of Italy’s low-volume manufacturers.

Rünge Cars (pronounced “run-ghee”) started as Chris Runge’s idea to build a car from the ground up, some basic tools, and a few books. He had a fascination with early aluminum-bodied sports cars and the coachbuilt one-offs commissioned by post-war privateer racers, and credits being exposed to many such cars from the book “Porsche: Excellence was Expected” in particular for planting the seeds. Building something similar to those cars stayed in the back of his mind for years, until 2010, when he found a 1967 Porsche 912 for sale in North Dakota.

It’s easy to find a company that makes a diecast of your car at the make and model level, but unless yours is spec’d just like the one in the dealer catalog, chances for a perfect match are slim. Not to worry though, for there’s a Frenchman named Steph with fine motor skills and a 3D printer who will work up an exacting replica for you.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the rallying world began the process of passing the torch. The European constructors that defined the 1980s during the Group B years were still dominating in the form of Lancia and its Delta Integrale, but by the 1993 season of the World Rally Championship, the Japanese teams made their presence known on the podium. First with Toyota, then with Subaru and Mitsubishi coming into their own too. On the streets and in pop culture, the battle was primarily played out by Subaru’s Impreza WRX and STI road models against Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolutions.

“It’s a human adventure, it’s a mechanical adventure, you go as far as you can… dance with the dunes, surf the waves.” For the 2021 edition of the Dakar Rally, we packed our camera kits and joined our friends at Rebellion Racing to witness the triumphs and tribulations of competing firsthand, and to capture and share with you the unique atmosphere of competing at the top level in one of the wildest places on the planet.

For the 2021 edition of the Dakar Rally, we packed our camera kits and joined our friends at Rebellion Racing to witness the triumphs and tribulations of competing firsthand, and to capture and share with you the unique atmosphere of competing at the top level in one of the wildest places on the planet.

For four decades and counting, the Dakar Rally has been host to the widest variety of vehicles in any form of motorsport in the world. From VW Bugs to Porsche 959s, the BMW GS to the KTM 450 Rally, Mercedes Gs to jacked-up Peugeot 405s, and every type of buggy, truck, and tube-framed prototype in between, the infamously difficult rally raid has been the target of many a manufacturer and competitor.