And now we bring you our second round of highlights from the 2015 Radnor Hunt Concours d’Elegance. These were some of the more modern cars on the field, everything from supercars like the Porsche 959 seen above, to a Dodge Charger with a 426 Hemi under the hood. The Radnor Concours was really great this year.
Enjoy the gallery!
Continue reading HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2015 RADNOR HUNT CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE: PART 2
This 1957 BMW 507 roadster stood out starkly for me at The Elegance at Hershey this year. I always love seeing BMW 507s, but this one, glistening in luscious red paint, took hold of my attention and would not let go.
With just 253 examples built, the BMW 507 was a product of 1950s, post-war Germany, commissioned by US importer Max Hoffman along side the likes of the Mercedes 300SL and Porsche 356. The 507 was a new league of sports car for BMW, and helped to really set the foundation for the exotic automobiles we love today. The 507 cost an outrageous $9,000-$11,000 brand new back in the mid-late ’50s, making it quite similar to modern supercars today in adjusted cost.
The BMW 507 packed a 3.2L V8 under its hood with around 150hp. Not much over a Miata today, but back then its performance was very solid, and it could reach 124 mph (200kph) flat-out.
Today the BMW 507 is a rare collectable piece that demands a huge amount of money. Values today easily top $1,000,000, and a perfect one will fetch over $2,000,000.
Enjoy the photos of this stunner!
-Nick
It feels like an age ago when I drove my first 8-Series. It was a dilapidated ’97 840Ci with bad brakes and a busted horn–and it felt every bit as rock solid as any BMW I’d ever wheeled around the East Coast. Here we see the polar opposite of that spectrum. BMW put a V12 in the 8-Series coupe, but then pumped it full of whatever stuff found its way into Alex Rodriguez’s bloodstream, and presto, here’s the 850 CSi. Continue reading BMW 850CSi at the 2015 Greenwich Concours
We visited The Elegance At Hershey this past weekend out in Hershey, PA. There were many beautiful cars in attendance, but the swoopy 1948 Daimler you see above won Best in Show. This was my second time seeing that particular car. It won Best in Show a few years back in Detroit, and it stunned me just as hard this time around.
This is the first Gallery of highlights from the show, with much more to come.
Enjoy!
On Day 2 of this year’s Greenwich Concours d’Elegance we were blessed with a sudden downpour that made everyone run for cover. However, it also covered all of the immaculate cars in some beautiful water droplets, making for some wonderful photos. Rain and clouds also really make the colors “pop”, so I actually prefer it to direct sunlight for shooting cars. I’d imagine that the gentleman in the silver Porsche RSK Spyder (below) might disagree, though.
There were some truly beautiful cars displayed on Day 2, including that bright yellow/green Lamborghini Miura you see above – we saw him driving around on the streets of Greenwich before the show, and promptly lost bowel control. Thankfully we all had a change of pants in the car.
I should also point out that the green Ferrari Daytona Spider (seen below) is the only one ever made in that color, so one of the rarest examples of an already rare car. The Pagani Huayra was also said to be “one of one”, but every Pagani is built custom to order, so every other Huayra is equally “one of one” – people just love to toot their own horn, I guess, but an incredible car for either way. (My Subaru is “one of one” too, if you count it’s unique stone chips)
I thought last year’s Greenwich Concours was the best in recent memory, but this one just may have topped it. There’s more to come from the event, but enjoy looking through our highlight gallery of Day 2!
Continue reading Highlights From the 2015 Greenwich Concours Day 2
I despised this BMW M5 when it came out, but then I drove it and it totally won me over. You see, I had always seen the E39 M5 as the quintessential BMW M5, and in many ways I still do. But I had been defining the M5 as a driver’s car, which is only a part of what it is actually meant to be. The BMW M5 has really always been about being a four-door useable supercar. As supercars have changed over the last decade or so, the BMW M5 has changed along with them.
The F10 generation M5 you see here is the most modern idea of what a four-door supercar should be, and I must admit that it blew my mind with it’s bag-o-tricks.
What’s Good?
It Does More of Everything Now
The original E28 BMW M5 from the 1980s was a practical 5-Series sedan with the engine from the BMW M1 Supercar stuffed under the hood. Sedan practicality with supercar levels of punch, and handling to match. Back then, refinement only really went so far, and there was a trade off between comfort and performance.
Over time, that has become less, and less the case. And now the craziest thing about the M5 is that it is basically a full-fledged luxury cruiser in addition to being a practical supercar.
Looking back to the early 2000s, the E39 M5’s era, the current 5-Series is the same size as the 7-Series was back then. If this M5 were out 10-15 years ago, it would’ve been an M7.
It’s not just the size, though. The M5 can have almost all of the same luxury features available on today’s BMW 7-Series. If it weren’t for the M-Badge and all the extra performance, the M5 would do just fine as an everyday luxury sedan.
Continue reading BMW M5 Review (10/10): The Epitome of the Modern Automobile?
Here is some fun stuff from the CF Charities Supercar Show last year. Naturally, when you hold a car meet on an open airstrip, some shenanigans are going to take place… in fact, the more, the better!
It was a motley crew of cars at the show, everything from everyday tuner cars to a mighty Bugatti Veyron and a straight-piped Porsche Carrera GT.
If you love hearing some engines being thrashed, and you love some tire smoke, then you’ll be glad you gave this video a watch!
-Nick Walker
I saw my first BMW i8 out in the wild the other day, but only for just long enough to be awestruck, and then it was gone. While I didn’t manage to get a photo of that silver one on the road, I do have the photos from the i8’s first viewing at Amelia Island last year.
I must admit that I have love for everything that the BMW i8 represents, and I don’t think BMW could have executed this plug-in hybrid sports car any better. I remember in Monterey this year, we saw one parked in front of a restaurant, right next to a green McLaren P1. Which car drew the crowd?… The i8.
In fact, the most memorable part of that night was when I spent 10 minutes trying to convince a group of people that the i8 wasn’t a concept car, but was, in fact, on sale. They kept saying BMW would never make a car that looked so radical and actually expect to sell them. I had to pull out my phone and show them the i8 on BMW’s website, complete with its $136,000 base price. At that point, they finally believed me, and were wowed.
The BMW i8 is in the same price range as the higher-end Porsche 911 Carrera models, but BMW has given it the head-turning exotic appeal of a Pagani or a McLaren P1. The i8 looks like nothing else on the road. It even has show-y gullwing doors so you can make a grandiose entrance, or so you can’t get back into your car if people park on either side of you. Yes, that wonderful supercar idiocy is present and accounted for in the i8.
Performance wise, the i8 isn’t really a supercar by modern standards, but it’s plenty fast to have a lot of fun with. 0-60 takes 3.8 seconds, the 1/4 mile goes in 12.4 sec, and it tops out at 155mph. The kicker is the fuel economy. Where a Porsche 911 Carrera S can manage a respectable 29mpg, Motor Trend saw an Average of 45mpg in the BMW i8.
Put in 2004 terms, the i8 has the performance of a Ferrari 360 with the fuel economy of a Toyota Prius. This is progress people.
Enjoy the pics!
-Nick Walker
Let’s begin with a story…
A few years ago, BMW created an all-new segment. They looked at the idea behind Mercedes’ beautiful CLS 4-door coupe, and then BMW thought… “what if we did that with an SUV?”, And the BMW X6 was born!
Now, unlike the Mercedes CLS, which is essentially just a sleeker, more beautiful Mercedes E-Class with no tangible drawbacks, the X6 didn’t turn out so well. The tapered roofline that makes a car look sleek wound up looking really awkward on the X6’s larger SUV proportions. It also compromised the size of the trunk. So a sleeker, more beautiful BMW X5 the X6 was not, not by a long shot. In fact, it really only served to remove the “utility” from “Sport Utility Vehicle.”
So why, then, would you buy a BMW X6? If you wanted an SUV for all of the reasons anyone wants an SUV, then you’d buy the X5. If you wanted a stylish coupe for all of the reasons people generally want a stylish coupe, then you’d buy a 6 Series. Where is the market for something that looks like a sad humpback whale on wheels?
Well, Mercedes-Benz has clearly been watching closely, and whatever the market may be, they want a peice of it! So, with that, they decided to take their M-Class SUV, break its back like Bane did Batman, and boom!… the Mercedes GLE is here.
Continue reading Mercedes’ New Bro-Chariot Has Arrived, And It’s Called The GLE
In today’s market, $40,000 marks a sort of barrier between “normal” cars and “luxury” cars. You can basically find any sort of car for under $40 grand, so it can be argued that nobody needs to spend more than that unless they’re interested in fluff. It is a realistic budget for many middle class Americans, and that is why we have chosen to kick off our new “Our Picks” segment with it.
We will give our picks for two $40,000 budget scenarios, one as an only car, and the other as a second car. We will also give our second choices for each. Keep in mind, this is how we would spend our own money, with our rather discerning tastes in cars, and not necessarily our recommendations for more average buyers.
We are currently out at Monterey Car Week having a blast. We know we’ve missed a few posts in the last couple days, but that’s because we have been quite busy gathering all sorts of fantastic content, so fear not friends!
Just so none of you feel neglected, here is a BMW i8 we saw out and about tonight. There has been a few of these things running around the Monterey area, and we’re hoping to do a more proper shoot of one before the weekend comes to a close.
We are seeing, and even driving, all kinds of awesome things out here, and we will be sharing it all with you in the coming weeks. Be excited!
-Nick
Back in the 1980s, the BMW 3 Series really put BMW on the map. It drove like a sports car, but was a practical and economical for everyday use. Generation after generation, the 3 Series built up its reputation, but now it has grown in proportion so much that it isn’t really the same sort of car that it originally was. This is where the 2 Series comes into the equation, as a car that is much more the flavor of the first few generations of the 3 Series. If you want a new BMW that is more like the E30, E36, or E46 generation 3 Series, then the 2 Series may be the answer for you. Let’s have a look at the M235i, the top dog of the current 2 Series lineup.
The 2 Series is not the first BMW to undercut the 3 Series. The 2 Series comes to us as the direct replacement for the previous-gen 1 Series. BMW re-branded it as a 2 Series because a smaller, front-wheel drive model will be taking the 1 Series nameplate in the near future. I know this is all very confusing, and very trivial, but welcome to the auto industry where the bean counters have to find a way to make their superfluous jobs matter.
The BMW M235i is a fantastic sports car of the modern variety. What I mean by that is that it utilizes the best aspects of modern automotive technology, but that it also may leave some old-school driving purists wanting for more.
Mind Over Motor 