Month: January 2020

There are few more legendary racing sedans than BMW’s Batmobiles, the bewinged, wide-hipped BMW E9 derivatives which wreaked havoc on race circuits around the world. They won the European Touring Car Championship in 1973 and took a famous class win at Le Mans in the same year, won races in the American IMSA championship in 1975, and did very well in other types of touring car racing all over the world. I once had a little Majorette diecast model of a Batmobile when I was a child, and remember it very fondly. It had purpose and strength visible in its brutal looks, and made other cars of the era look positively effeminate.

And now I am standing next to one, and I am scared. Not of the car, it’s a car, therefore subject to the same laws of physics which I am quite familiar with. Of Dieter Quester, the Austrian driver, a true hero, who has come to Goodwood to drive this car, because I am taking it away from him. Not for long, but he looks at me with a stern unsmiling face, his deeply chiseled features lending credence to the image he projects, perhaps unwillingly. Michael, the BMW Classic mechanic with a Bavarian sense of humor, tells me that over-revving the engine results in the driver forced to buy expensive hamburgers for the technical crew.

I make a mental note, but am sure I’ll forget: the run up the Goodwood hill is so short and so packed with sensations and reactions that my brain will be suffering from overload anyway. The mechanic helps me adjust the seat, and teaches me how to restart the engine,telling me also which dials to watch more closely. The engine is practically brand new, and the car is pristine. Quester drives VIP guests in it at DTM races, probably scaring them to death in the process.

This car is a replica of the car in which Dieter Quester, paired with Toine Hezemans, won their class at the Le Mans 24 hour race, and did so in style. They actually ended up in 11th place overall, in a BMW coupe similar to a road car! The seats and the belts are modern, that’s good, and the gearbox is my BMW favorite, the dogleg Sportgetriebe. I have a lot of experience driving a civilian 3.0 CSL, but the race car in warpaint looks much more purposeful. I am not really apprehensive, as the visibility out of the cockpit is good, the controls fall nicely to hand, and I am not going to try to go fast. Well… at least that’s what I tell the BMW crew.

I manage to get the Batmobile out of its tent in the paddock without stalling, drive over to the assembly area without running any spectators over, and finally am directed to a parking space behind the brand new M8 GTE race car. Funnily enough, especially in this livery, the DNA link between the two cars is unmistakable. I attempt to get out of the car gracefully, and fail, but nobody is looking. All the eyes are directed at my buddy, Mike Skinner, called “The Gunslinger” and his hellishly rapid NASCAR Truck.

At Goodwood, when you are driving an unfamiliar car, there is no opportunity to practice, to learn the behavior of the machine, to judge the grip. A short run to the start, turning the car around, a longish wait, and off you go, watched by 70,000 people and millions more on the web and on TV. No pressure at all. I have been driving here since 2010, and I can say I know the route pretty well by now, but even with this kind of familiarity it can be tricky, with slippery dust being blown over it from the vast, dried up lawns.

My launch is OK, but could be better, with the rain tires hooking up in a manner far from a smoothness I want to achieve. The car feels great, only the driver is cautious, because he remembers the look the Austrian gave him earlier. I whizz past Goodwood House, set the car up gently for Molecomb Corner, and continue next to the flint wall and through the last two turns as cleanly as I can. The run over, I park behind the supermodern M8 again, close to the incredibly fast Pikes Peak Volkswagen. Its driver, Romain Dumas,comes over to talk cars, and then runs away toward the rally stage. “i really prefer rallies,” he says with a slight shrug. Yeah, I know, he is helping Porsche develop its Cayman rally car.

And I trundle slowly down the hill afterwards, happy not to give Dieter any cause for concern. He acknowledges my greeting with a curt nod and gets ready for the next run. I look back at the car over my shoulder. What a well-mannered beast. I need to try to drive it again. Unfinished business…

Overview

The Aston Martin Rapide appeared during the Ulrich Bez era at Aston Martin and was intended to stretch the brand identity. A Rapide existed in the history of the brand, previously made with a Lagonda badge, there wasthe William Towns Lagonda, and there had been some four-door modified cars, so some four-door DNA could be dug up. The vehicle was based on the DB9 architecture with a longer wheelbase, and, with 4 doors, was a practical alternative to a coupe for customers who had children or simply wanted a more comfortable grand tourer to cover long distances in.

Its production started at the Magna Steyr plant in Austria, as Bez was expecting a huge success. As it happened, the annual target of 2,000 units per year was never reached, and when the production capacity at Gaydon became available, the Rapide production was moved there. In 2013 the car was replaced by the Rapide S with still better handling, much more power and an 8-speed gearbox.

Not enough people bought them new, and they became unpopular, but that means that now we are lucky to be able to buy them at much lower prices. The Rapide is a much better car than internet “experts” would lead you to believe: the long wheelbase and the nearly perfect weight distribution (because of the transaxle layout) make it a refined and very fast sports car. If you avoid cars which have not been regularly serviced, you can’t go wrong.

Engine

The V-12 has a reputation for oil starvation, but the Rapide tends to suffer from it much less frequently than other models. Cam covers may leak oil. The car must be serviced every 15,000 km or every 12 months, and a major service has to be done at 100,000 km. Stick to the correct maintenance schedule, and you shall be rewarded.

Gearbox

The first model had a 6-speed ZF automatic gearbox with bespoke software, replaced in the Rapide S by a similar 8-speed transmission. Both are generally reliable, but the later one suffered from an issue with a switch which caused the car to select neutral with no prior warning and another issue with the car liable to roll when in Park. Check the maintenance records for evidence of those problems having been rectified as a manufacturer recall. Apart from those issues, the gearboxes are reliable and the same mechanicals are used in many other applications at other brands.

Bodywork

This is a car built on Aston’s VH architecture with aluminum and composites as the main constituent materials. Check the edges of aluminum panels for damage and flaws under the paint. Check for hidden accident damage, damage from speed bumps and parking dings.

Chassis

Due to its higher weight, the car eats through tires and brakes. The front brakes are bigger than on the DB9, and cost more to replace. Please check if all the suspension modes work, as the special dampers can leak and replacing them is a considerable expense. Bushes and bearings must be replaced as needed.

Interior

Check that all switches work, look for damage on sills and wear on seats. The trunk area can sustain a lot of visible scuffs when used for actually transporting baggage.

History

2006: concept car shown
2009: production car presented at Frankfurt
2010: start of production at Magna Steyr in Austria
2012: production moved to England
2013: Rapide replaced by Rapide S

Specifications

Aston Martin Rapide/Rapide S
Power: 477/560 hp
Top speed: 303/306 km/h
Acceleration: 0-100 km/h in 5.2/4.4 s
Economy: 12.4/11.9 l/100 km

The DRIVERSHALL Verdict

The Rapide should be considered not only as a four-door competitor to the Porsche Panamera or Maserati Quattroporte, but also as a slightly more stable DB9 with extra interior space. It has class-leading steering and is insanely stable at very high speeds. The Rapide is also very reliable if regularly serviced. High running costs are unavoidable, and service requirements must be met. The car is very capable and rewarding, the only thing letting it down is the dated navigation display in the older model. Great to drive, and if you can afford to, buy one!

I remember old Italian movies in which the Polizia and Carabinieri chased well-dressed villains while driving boxy Alfa Romeos with rounded edges. I watched them in black and white when I was still a child, so at the time I had no idea what these funny cars were called, but their concave rumps stayed in my memory for decades. Later I learned they were called Giulias. In Italian “Giulia” simply means “Julia”, a common female name. Typical for the Italians to give an outstanding car a banal name which sounds awesome only in their mother tongue.

The squarish Giulia replaced the 1950’s Giulietta which served as a basis for a multitude of special-bodied sports versions, some of them coachbuilt by Zagato, no less. At first the Alfa Romeo management had a different idea, this being the Tipo 103 economy car project. Fortunately for us, this was quickly abandoned and the wizards conspired to build a new sports sedan. The new car was presented to the press at the Monza racing circuit in 1962, and was an instant hit. Compared to contemporary German cars, its technological advancement made it look like a Nissan GT-R facing a row of Trabants.

Italians will race any kind of vehicle, so a special variant of the Giulia was prepared to make it easier for the new car to win. Lighter and more powerful, it was built in a short production run of only 501 examples, very few of which survive. Why? Racing attrition took its toll, but for sure some smug Italian males also used the cars to impress female companions, and ran into trouble. Remember, at the time this car was created, Communist Bloc cars were as simplistic as the combination of hammer and sickle, and popular British cars did not even offer a heater! Under the hood this white car has a version of the 1.6-liter engine from the Giulia Sprint Speciale, fed by two twin-barrel Weber 45 DCOE carburetors, developing 113 horsepower, powering the rear wheels via a 5-speed gearbox (a rarity in that period).

It sports a special light-alloy steering wheel with three spokes, bucket seats in front, and, as of 1964, four disc brakes plus superlight wheel rims made of electron, an aviation alloy of magnesium. as a result, the TI Super was lighter by a whole 100 kilos than the standard car, with a grand total weight of only 960 kilograms. And just look at those 155-section tires, today even shopping carts seem to boast wider rubber. One wiper speed, no radio, Quadrifoglio Verde badges, I am in heaven.

Such cars must be driven in a manner different to today’s turbocharged, obese sedans. There is no violent acceleration on the straights, no sensations of one’s kidneys being crushed. Braking very late creates no advantage, because the car cannot accelerate swiftly out of corners. You learn to carry more speed through turns, and learn the art of energy management this way. The same energy management that glider pilots display while doing aerobatics, and the same art which the late Bob Hoover demonstrated so many times in his aircraft.

I start my sightseeing tour of Milan at Portello, the original location of the Alfa Romeo factory, and later move closer to the new railway station. The whole front of the building is taken up by a huge billboard, advertising the Freccia Rossa express train. And here we arrive at the explanation of the essence of Italian engineering. Where the Swiss would have advertised the fact that their train is the most environmentally-friendly, where the Germans would have said it was either the fastest or the most punctual, and where the Poles would have told the world theirs was the cheapest, the Italians claim their Red Lightning is simply the most beautiful train extant. Simultaneously this viewpoint does not mean that Italian take technology lightly, without them we would not have screaming Ferrari engines, Common Rail diesels and the Beretta 92F handgun.

This whole car is a deliciously analog, not coldly digital, experience, and I am enjoying it immensely. The way the forces on the steering wheel grow smoothly in a corner, the way the controls work, the way the engine sings in the upper register… it all gels together to give the driver a lot of satisfaction. And is there anything else worth living for?

Jean Bugatti, the eldest son of Bugatti founder Ettore, is one of the most distinguished figures in the company’s long and proud history. Having become the creator of the most iconic Bugatti vehicle and leading his father’s company at the age of only 27, he tragically suffered a fatal accident in 1939. On January 15, he would have turned 110 years old, coinciding with the celebrations of the 110th anniversary of Bugatti.

On January 15, 1909 Jean was born in Cologne, Germany where his father Ettore worked as head of the production department of Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz AG (it is worth noting that Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach were also associated with Deutz). Jean’s full name, Gianoberto Carlo Rembrandt Ettore Bugatti, reflected his family’s Italian roots, yet he was called Jean due to his French home. For it was in the fall of the same year of his birth that the Bugatti family moved to Molsheim. In the small Alsatian town, Ettore Bugatti opened his own company in a disused dye works, before officially signing the tenancy agreement for his factory on the 1st of January 1910.

Since he was a child, Jean was highly interested in his father’s business, spending most of his free time around the workers in the factory. When he was a teenager, he already showed to be very skilled in different crafts and took on more and more tasks and responsibilities. By the late 1920s, Jean Bugatti was already an essential part of the Bugatti company. He even succeeded his father as the head of Bugatti at the age of 27 in 1936.

Jean is best known, however, for designing many of the brand’s most renowned models, complementing his father’s engineering skill and making Bugatti one of the greatest names in automobile manufacturing. The revolutionary and legendary Type 57 SC Atlantic was Jean Bugatti’s most iconic creation. It featured flowing coupe lines and a unique riveted spine and a chassis with significantly lower ground clearance. It is considered to be one of the world’s most exclusive and astonishing sport coupés. With only four units built and only two surviving with original parts, it is one of the most expensive vintage models.

The second Atlantic out of the four was the 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC – Aéro Coupé, a car that would be known as “La voiture noire”; it is maybe the most mythical car in history. After having been built, its elegant, iconic appearance was used for internal brochures as well as different motor show exhibitions in France. It is said to never have had a registered owner, but it was used as the personal car of its creator Jean Bugatti who only permitted his race driver friends like Mr. William Grover-Williams, and sometimes his wife, to drive. The last certain mention of the vehicle was on an inventory list of a train that Ettore Bugatti used to send some of his most valued possessions to Bordeaux, trying to escape from Nazi-occupied France. What happened to “La voiture noire” after this is a matter of legends. The most common theory is that the Nazis got hold of the vehicle and towards the end of WWII and having dismantled it, they used its aluminum components for their last desperate war efforts. There are rumors that it survived, and, hopefully, time will reveal the truth.

Jean Bugatti himself didn’t live to see the dramatic loss of his beloved “La voiture noire”. On August 11, 1939, at the age of only 3,0 he was driving on one of his usual test drive routes not far from the factor,y near the village of Duppigheim. A cyclist got through a hole in a tree fence and abruptly crossed the road. Jean tried to avoid hitting the cyclist and lost control over his vehicle, crashing into a tree, fatally. Today, a monument at the site of the accident reminds us of this tragic loss. Jean’s final resting place is at the Bugatti family plot at the municipal cemetery in Dorlisheim. Very close, at the Château Street Jean and on the Bugatti premises his and his father’s legacy lives on to this day.