This is our highlight gallery from Day 2 of the 2015 New Hope Auto Show last weekend. Sunday is always about supercars and other european cars, and this year was WAY better than last year.
Everything from a Renntech Mercedes SLR McLaren, to a Lexus LFA, to a Porsche 959 were present, along with the most minty Lamborghini Diablo SV I’ve ever seen.
Enjoy the photos!
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
The Porsche 356 is a timeless classic. Small, lithe, and captivating, this was the first of Porsche’s sports cars to hit the market and it lasted until 1965 when it was replaced by the 911. It may have been saddled with a four-cylinder engine derived from Volkswagen, and it may have somewhat resembled a VW Beetle, but it was far from a VW Beetle in any way. The Speedster is the most desirable, and this 1957 was the second to last year of production for the lightweight, dry-weather model so loved by contemporary racers, and today’s collectors. Continue reading Competition-Prepped 1957 Porsche 356A Speedster at the 2015 Greenwich Concours
It’s time for the Price Game! So here’s the scenario. You’ve just won the lottery, but you’re being smart with the money. You want to buy every car in sight, but you know a few million doesn’t go that far these days, so better to invest most of it and keep the money coming in over time. To quench your spending thirst, you set aside an even $1,000,000 to play around with, and set your garage up in a manner that befits the new you.
There is also another catch, though. You want to be sure that you actually use all of the cars you buy on a weekly basis, so you elect to by exactly seven cars to play with… one for each day of the week.
So, going around to the various car-selling websites, how would you fill your seven garage slots?
Give your picks in the comments, and check out our selections below!
Nick’s Picks:
2014 Ferrari F12 Berlinetta – $355,000
Front-engine V12 Ferraris are my favorite, and the F12 Berlinetta is the latest, and in many ways the greatest. It is the epitome of modern supercar technology, packaged as a Grand Touring car, but with insane supercar performance.
Continue reading Price Game: One Car for Each Day of the Week on a $1 Million Budget
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
The Greenwich Concours was nothing short of epic this year. There were insane cars in attendance of all types, and it was thoroughly entertaining to cover. This year there were a few European exotics mixed in with the American cars on Day 1. I’m not sure why, but it made a nice spectacle.
Of note, Jim Glickenhaus brought out his one of a kind Ferrari 330 P3/4 (above), two Pagani Huayras showed up, and the Packard 8 that won Day 1 was just immaculate.
Enjoy the gallery of Day 1, and be sure to check back for our highlights from Day 2 later on this week!
Continue reading Our Highlights From the 2015 Greenwich Concours Day 1
We’ve just returned from an exciting and car-tastic weekend at the Greenwhich Concours d’Elegance. We have tons of great material to bring you in the coming weeks, but take this as a small teaser.
We were perusing the parking lot, which is always interesting, and this brand new Mercedes AMG GT-S pops out of nowhere. This is the first AMG GT-S I’ve seen out in public, and we actually got to check one out in the show as well. I think it is a great looking car with the right sort of package to take on the Porsche 911s in its price range: 4.0L twin turbo V8, “503” German horsepower, and around 3500lbs with great weight distribution. Looks promising.
Much more to come from Greenwich!
-Nick
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?
I just got back from an awesome but exhausting Memorial Day Weekend getaway on the Delaware Shore with my girlfriend and family. Piggybacking off of the Ford Bronco from Saturday, I want to share some other great cars we saw while out and about. Rehoboth Beach is a lively town, with lots of interesting cars running around. These are what I was able to catch with my phone.
I should also mention that I did see a Ferrari 599 GTB as well as a Mercedes SLR McLaren parked in driveways in a ritzy neighborhood along the coast, but I couldn’t get pics, unfortunately.
My favorite has the be the Ford Thunderbird, featured above. We saw it roll through town later on the same evening, and the thing was a total show-stopper. Below, we saw a Land Rover Defender, Mercedes SL63 AMG and Dodge Viper GTS, respectively.
Fun weekend, enjoy the pics!
-Nick
I am someone who has publicly lamented the decline of the manual transmission. But I’m also someone who has enjoyed the merits of modern paddle shift gearboxes in many different cars.
I find myself very much split on this issue. So lets take a look at the various reasons why shifter paddles are replacing a gear lever and a third pedal in some of our favorite cars, and consider if it really is a good thing or not.
Note: To clear this up right away, by “paddle shift” I mean cars with automated manual gearboxes, either dual-clutch or single-clutch. I am in no way talking about anything like a Toyota Camry with the “sport package”, which has paddle shifters as a marketing gimmick.
1. More versatile on the road. (Having your cake and eating it too)
If you had something like a Lamborghini Diablo back in the mid 1990s chances are you had a lot of fun out on the open road. However, when you got into town and hit traffic, the heavy clutch made driving the car more of a $250,000 chore than an enjoyable way to spend a weekend afternoon. Considering the average speed of traffic on most roads is around 25-30mph, you’d be spending far more time putting along slowly than stretching the car’s legs. It’s a wonder why most owners hardly ever drove their exotic cars.
Today, Lamborghini only offers their cars with a paddle shift transmission. The sales numbers spoke for themselves. Once paddle shift was offered back around 2004, demand for manual Lambos simply fell off.
Paddle shift basically solved all the issues described above with the Diablo. Now, in an Aventador, you can rip your way into town and then just put the car in automatic mode when you hit traffic. You have a car that is a ferocious supercar when you want one, but is also just as easy to drive as a Toyota Camry when you don’t. You are no longer writing a six-figure check to put yourself through misery. And I agree, that is a major plus, especially in cars that had very difficult manual gearboxes like most supercars did.
Continue reading Why Is Paddle Shift Killing the Manual Transmission, and is it a good thing?
Mind Over Motor 