Supercars

Some will say a BMW has no place in a book about supercars, while others will complain there aren’t more BMWs in it. Fact of the matter is, once upon a time there definitely was one true BMW supercar: the legendary M1.

The story behind the M1 is the stuff of legends. BMW’s Motorsport division was eager to compete in European GT motorsports, but naturally you’d need a car for that. BMW had to build at least 400 cars for homologation rules, but timing was tight and there was no chance in hell they’d be able to pull it off in time themselves.

Then at some point, someone at BMW said: why don’t we ask Lamborghini? And so it happened. The Italians were eager to sign the lucrative deal as their pockets got emptier by the day. Gian Paolo Dallara (yes, that Dallara) designed a tubular steel space frame (similar to that found in the Countach) and engineers got cracking on the internals.

However, in 1978 it finally happened: Lamborghini had no choice but to file for bankruptcy, and BMW begrudgingly took the project back with seven prototypes having been built. Fortunately for them, several former Lamborghini engineers had gone solo with a company called Italengineering, and they were more than happy to finish the engineering for BMW.

The exterior was made entirely of fibre glass (produced by Italina Resina) and designed by legendary Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italdesign. The interior was also designed and produced by Italdesign in Turin, while Modena-based Marchesi produced the chassis. In case you were wondering just how Italian the M1 really is. The only German element is the engine, developed by BMW Motorsport.

Apart from the hybrid BMW i8, the M1 is the only mid-engined BMW ever produced. Under that rear bonnet is a 3.5-litre straight six developed by legendary Paul Rosche, who also developed the original M3 engine as well as BMW’s first ever V12. The M1 engine would later be reused for the E24 M6 and E28 M5 from 1976 and 1985, respectively.

The straight six has separate throttle bodies, fuel injection, 4 valves per cylinder and twin-cams, resulting in 273 bhp and 330 Nm (243 lb-ft) of torque, not bad given its dry weight of 1.300 kg. All this was mated to a 5-speed manual by ZF, and launched the M1 from 0 to 100 km/h in under 6 seconds, with a top speed of 265 km/h (165 mph).

The M1 turned out to be one of BMW’s rarest models, with only 453 produced, which includes 53 models for motor sports, dubbed M1 Procars (like the car in the pictures). Currently owned by a private BMW collector, the car with chassis nr #1041 was raced under Helmut Marko by Markus Hottinger, who competed against the likes

The story of De Tomaso would make for one hell of a Tom Cruise movie. Alejandro de Tomaso was born in 1928 in Buenos Aires to a “politically prominent” family. His fate took a turn for the worst in 1955 when he was accused of plotting against the Argentinian president of the time, and he was forced to fled to Italy - where his grandfather had emigrated from.

During his twenties Alejandro had raced plenty in Argentina, so he strategically decided we would settle in Modena, the center of the booming Italian car industry. He soon married the American Isabelle Haskell, and became a racing driver for Maserati and others.

His racing career never truly took off: despite participating in four Grand Prix races, he never scored any points. And so he pursued his true passion: building cars. In 1959 he founded De Tomaso. Like most car companies at the time, the original goal was to build racing cars (like the 1970 Williams Formula 1 car), but soon they would expand to building high-performance sports cars.

In 1964 De Tomaso designed their first road car, the 1.5-litre inline-four Vallelunga, hoping to sell the design to another company. With no takers, De Tomaso finally commissioned a coachbuilder to produce the aluminium body and build the car himself. Fifteen were built at De Tomaso, until Ghia offered to build another fifty in their Turin production facility, this time with fiberglass bodies.

During this time De Tomaso met Caroll Shelby, and Shelby commissioned the Argentinian to design and deliver a new Can-Am race car, after finding out the Shelby Cobra would not be able to compete. De Tomaso and Shelby were in constant conflict over the design of the car however, and De Tomaso missed his delivery deadline for five cars. Shelby pulled out and famously joined the Ford GT40 team.

De Tomaso was furious and decided to continue work on the car. Ghia once again offered to finalise the design, and in 1967 it would enter production as the Mangusta - Italian for mongoose, an animal known for killing cobras. I see what you did there, Alejandro. 400 Mangustas would be produced, the majority of which were for the US market.

As soon as the first Mangusta rolled off the production line, De Tomaso started work on its successor: the Pantera. One radical change was the use of a steel monocoque instead of the Mangusta’s steel backbone chassis - greatly improving rigidity. The body was once again designed by Ghia, this time by inhouse designer Tom Tjaarda. It was first shown to the general public at the 1970 New York Motor Show, to great acclaim.

The Pantera used Ford’s 5.8-litre Cleveland V8 engine with 330 BHP and 408 Nm (301 lb-ft) of torque. The high torque numbers made the Pantera famously easy to drive at lower speeds, an advantage over the competition at the time. At the same time it meant impressive acceleration: thanks to its light dry weight of 1.400 kg, the Pantera did 0 to 100 km/h in just 5.5 seconds. Its transmission was a 5-speed manual ZF transaxle, shared with the Maserati Bora. The car also featured several novelties at the time, including electric windows, air conditioning and “open door buzzers”.

In 1971, Ford saw potential in the Pantera and offered to sell it through their Lincoln-Mercury dealerships in the US. Ford had noticed quality problems on many of the body panels, and offered to get involved with their production, greatly improving the overall quality on post-1971 cars.

Ford had sold about 5.500 US cars by 1975 when they decided to pull out. They had also discontinued the Cleveland V8 engine in 1974, but De Tomaso found a way to source them through Australia. Despite Ford disengaging, De Tomaso would continue to sell the Pantera for another two decades in the rest of the world. Several iterations would follow, including the GTS model with several internal upgrades and more performance. A total of 7.260 Panteras were produced.

THE STORY

I wasn’t particularly hopeful of finding a Pantera to shoot any time soon, and had already anticipated on having to go abroad for one. Turns out I didn’t have to go far at all: CarCave, a classic car dealership near my hometown, didn’t have just one Pantera: they had two.

Owner Roel Geraerts was more than happy to accomodate a shoot, and give some history on both of the cars. They were both early Panteras, with a full service history, currently being restored to their original state.

Being alone with these two mythical creatures in the dark was, as you can guess, an almost religious experience.

The birth of the Viper was an unlikely one. Bob Lutz, CEO of Chrysler at the time, wanted to launch a sports car for the Dodge brand in the 1980s. Dodge was mostly living off its passenger vans and trucks back then - with the sportier Charger being a distant memory from the seventies - so the idea of a sports car seemed like an unusual direction.

But Lutz persisted, and soon a first clay model was produced by Chrysler designer Tom Gale inside Chrysler’s Advanced Design Studios. The Viper would first appear to the public as a concept car at the 1989 Detroit Auto Show.

The public went nuts, so Lee Iacocca (spiritual father of the Mustang and new Chrysler CEO) greenlit the project while appointing Roy Sjoberg as chief engineer to lead “Team Viper”, a group of 85 engineers.

In 1991 the Viper RT/10 would debut as a pace car for the Indianapolis 500 (driven by Carroll Shelby, who was heavily involved in its PR campaign), and the final production version went on sale the year after.

The Viper looked unusual, especially for its time. Most agreed it was a stunning car, but were somewhat confused by its extreme proportions and smooth, rounded nature - especially during a time when every car looked like a square box on wheels. To put it bluntly: everyone loved it as a concept car, but couldn’t make much sense of it as an actual production car. Its hood in particular seemed straight out of a Batman graphic novel, molded from a single piece of fiberglass. Length-wise it was only marginally shorter than a modest battle cruiser.

Because the Viper was originally intended for raw performance, many “nice to haves” were left out: door handles, locks, airbags, a roof, air conditioning, traction control, ABS and even windows were deemed too luxurious (although you could close the cabin by means of wonky canvas windows with zippers). Eventually small updates and upgrades were made available with newer models.

Ironically, many rather upscale features (especially for the time) were available from the start: manually-adjustable seats with lumbar support, an AM/FM stereo player, a clock and carpeting to name a few. These made it somewhat acceptable as a daily driver.

The main attraction was of course the engine: the V10 was an evolution of Chrysler’s LA engine, essentially a truck engine. Lamborghini, owned by Chrysler at the time, assisted with the design of the aluminium-alloy 323 kg behemoth, with help from Dodge chief power engineer Dick Winkles.

The numbers were staggering, especially for 1992. 400 BHP, 630 Nm of torque, 0-100 km/h in 4.6 seconds and a top speed of 266 km/h. Of course, those numbers also impact the fuel consumption: for every 100 km of city driving, 20 liters of fuel guzzles down the cylinders (that’s 12 mpg for you Americans). Surprisingly, despite the enormous engine, curb weight is only 1490 kg (in part due to the lightweight fibreglass panels). The gearbox was a Borg-Warner T56 manual, a pretty common transmission among General Motors vehicles at the time.

The Viper is notorious for being raw and unkind to the inexperienced driver.

Despite its great looks, few people believed the Viper would make it beyond the concept car, let alone that it would stick around for over 25 years. But it did, and not only did it gather a religious following, it also became an icon in the world or supercars, albeit an odd one.

Through the years many new variants would be produced, most notably the GTS (a much improved coupe version) in 1996. The fifth and final generation launched in 2013, but in 2017 Dodge announced the Viper would finally be axed. Too bad if you ask me, I think the fifth was the best ánd best looking one of the bunch.

THE STORY

My fascination with the Viper started with my uncle, who had a miniature RT/10 in his living room. Somehow it immediately struck me as beautiful, and not much later I managed to save up for one myself.

During a brief “drawing cars” period in my early teens the Viper would often be one of my test subjects, which is when I learned how very balanced its long lines were, and how hard they were to replicate.

The Viper shown in pictures is an original US-imported Viper RT/10 which I shot at Deman Brussels, a supercar dealership run by former Belgian racing driver Loic Deman. It wasn’t the first time I saw one in real life (although they are very rare in Europe, I did see it before at a car show around age 12), but it was the first time I got up close with it.

hen I was 5 years old, I got one of my first miniature car models: a yellow Lamborghini Diablo. I knew about the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959, but Lamborghini was new to me. It struck a chord. It looked so flat and aggressive, while still beautiful at the same time. Hooked, instantly.

The Diablo was launched in 1990, but development had already started as “Project 132” back in 1985. Lamborghini was run by two Swiss-based brothers at the time, Patrick and Jean Claude Mimran, who realised that a Countach replacement was necessary. Apparently the brief only had one requirement: the car had to go at least 315 km/h. Weird.

Like so many Lamborghinis, it was named after a bull. Diablo was a bull raised by the Duke of Veragua and battled “el Chicorro” in 1869. Fun fact: Lamborghini’s tradition of naming cars after bulls is in part because Ferruccio Lamborghini was a taurus, and in part because he identified with bulls himself. In case you’d like to know.

The original design of the Diablo was penned down by legendary Marcello Gandini from Bertone, who had already done the Miura and Countach. Unfortunately for Gandini, when Chrysler bought Lamborghini in 87, the Americans were “uncomfortable” with his design, and Chrysler-designer Tom Gale stepped in to smoothen out the hard lines and sharp edges. Something Gandini was famously gutted about. It is sometimes claimed that his original design was re-used for the Cizeta-Moroder V16T, but in reality it was only applied to the front portion of the car. Although I admire Gandini greatly, I do think it’s a good thing his original Diablo design never made it to the production model (and if you Google them I think you’ll agree).

The Diablo was an impressive leap forward from the Countach: although it carried the existing V12 engine used since 1964, it was heavily upgraded with a 5.7-litre displacement, dual overhead cams, 4 valves per cylinder and multi-point fuel injection. Result: 485 BHP and 580 Nm (428 lb-ft) of torque. 0-100 km/h in 4.5 seconds and a top speed of 322 km/h. At least the briefing requirements were met.

In addition it was also fitted with fully adjustable seats & steering wheel, electric windows and an Alpine stereo system. In 1993 the Diablo VT was launched, boasting even more tech: all wheel drive, ABS ánd power steering. An optional $10.000 dollar Breguet clock could be fitted to the dashboard too (although there don’t seem to be any pictures of it, which makes me wonder if any were ever sold). Perfect daily driver, I reckon.

The Diablo received a facelift for its final few years, with bigger side vents, new wheels and a restyled interior (still keeping the familiar “bubble cockpit”, but adding a thin strip on top to display the warning lights). Most notably, the iconic pop-up headlights were replaced with regular headlights, borrowed under license from the Nissan 300ZX. In fact, the facelifted Diablo’s carbon “eyelids” on top of those headlights are solely there to hide Nissan’s logo.

When I started writing about the Diablo, I honestly expected it to be a long chapter, but somehow it’s not an easy car to write entire pages about. Despite its important role of taking the brand from the 80s to the 90s and beyond, there’s a harsh truth about the Diablo: in many ways, it’s still a Countach. Sure, the engine was upgraded and it has countless new features to make it more driveable. But underneath, not much changed. There’s still the similar (somewhat enlarged) spaceframe chassis, an aluminum body and even the transmission layout is virtually the same.

The transmission itself was upgraded however. The original plan was to launch the Diablo with all-wheel-drive from the start, using the LM002’s AWD system. Engineers couldn’t get it ready in time, so although the gearbox was ready to deliver to four wheels, the system never made it to the early models until the launch of the VT three years later. The original RWD-versions were notoriously sketchy to drive, and the VT ended up far more popular for that very reason.

Several iterations would follow after the original Diablo, notably the VT, the Roadster, the SV (SuperVeloce) and SE30. The final model was launched under Audi ownership: the Diablo 6.0, designed by Luc Donckerwolke who would later design the Murcielago. The Diablo 6.0 looked very different, and although it’s often credited as being the best-driving one of the bunch, to me it always looked too different to consider it a Diablo.

All in all, the Diablo was the second-longest produced Lamborghini from 1990 till 2001, after the Countach which ran for an incredible 16 years.

THE STORY

It frustrated me never having shot a Diablo, my favorite childhood Lambo. I decided to ask around in my network, and a friend recommended Portofino Classics - a classic car dealership in my area.

I reached out, and they loved the idea: we scheduled a shoot, I went over and after a few minutes a gorgeous yellow Diablo VT showed up. When the two scissor doors opened I fully expected two grey-haired men in their 50s to get out, complete with mustaches and corderoy blazers.

To my surprise, two very casually dressed twenty-somethingers stepped out and introduced themselves as Julien and Emiel. We had a great time shooting my childhood hero, and we’ve been doing other projects ever since.

The GT3 version of the current generation 911 is already a legend on its own, but sometimes you’d forget that Porsche’s track-focused 911-tradition is a fairly recent one. The story goes back to 1999: for homologation reasons Porsche had to build their first production GT3 series of the 996 generation.

Virtually all sound deadening was removed, rear seats had to go, even the sunroof and aircon were deemed too much weight. It received the dry sump flat-six engine from the 962 and 911 GT1 race cars, also known as the legendary “Mezger engine” after its designer Hans Mezger.

That first GT3 was received rather poorly, however. In terms of performance it was pretty mediocre with only 355 BHP, and suspension and brakes were definitely not up to par with its supposed racing pedigree.

But things changed in 2004. A young man named Andreas Preuninger had recently joined Porsche’s Motorsport division in Weissach, and he had a very different vision on things. His first project became the second 996 GT3 generation, or 996.2.

Its engine was upgraded to 381 BHP and 385 Nm (284 lb-ft) of torque, and thankfully the brakes were now 6-piston callipers in the front with optional ceramic composite disks. Preuninger also made it clear that this car was for the true enthusiast, rather than a production necessity out of homologation needs. In addition, he wanted to turn the GT3 into a sub-brand, so additional badging was foreseen and the wheels also received the GT3 logo. A first. An even more track-focused “RS” (short for Rennsport) version was released shortly after.

Everyone loved it. Preuningers efforts paid off, and Porsche finally understood there was a substantial market for the GT3. In the years to follow, Weissach grew from somewhat of a skunkworks laboratory into a proper production and research facility, and it’s fair to say it had a substantial role in the revival of Porsche’s motorsport image. Every generation, the GT3 grew in output and tech, to a point where it is now considered the immortal holy grail of the 911 range.

So here we are with the latest generation, the 992 GT3. The first thing that catches your eye is the giant swanneck wing in the back (you can get the Touring version which has the standard active pop-up spoiler from the regular Carrera). Porsche claims additional downforce through the swan-neck design, although I prefer the more conventional spoiler design on the previous 991 generations.

Then after you get in and let that sweet sweet smell of Alcantara sink in, it’s time for the essential party piece of the GT3. That gorgeous sound of the naturally aspirated, almost unbelievably high revving flat six engine. I love V12, V10 and V8 engines, but when revving the GT3’s racing block up to about 9.000 RPM, it truly makes you wonder why you’d need a multitude of cylinders. Find a tunnel, hit the throttle and let that needle jump. I guarantee a smile that’ll last for days.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk numbers. First off, the engine is almost exactly the same as the previous generation. Why? In all honesty, because that engine was perfect just as it was, although Porsche did push it with a few extra horses up to 503 BHP and 470 Nm (347 lb-ft) of torque. It might not sound like a whole lot (especially compared to the current 911 Turbo S with an insane 640 BHP), but for its intended use it is more than enough. In fact, I’m convinced that more horsepower would make it a scary death chariot rather than a fun machine.

The biggest revolution in this GT3 is the first use of double wishbone suspension in the front, something all car journalists couldn’t get enough of. And to be fair: yes, it does make an impressive difference, and makes the GT3 even more of a purebred race car than it already was.

Since the previous generation, Porsche also makes a limited Touring version of the GT3. It’s nearly identical to the regular one, just no massive wing and some painted bodywork in the front bumper. It’s safe to say it’s my favourite Porsche of all time, since it has all the bonkers GT3 performance and sounds, but still goes under the radar for most, except those who know.