u/theintercooler

In this week's Ti podcast we discuss the huge disconnect between the prestige supercar market and man on the street with a sports car in his garage.

Things properly frothed over at Monterey Car Week with records falling left, right and centre – some by almost double the previous mark. The most remarkable examples below (most RM Sotheby's but the Diablo was at Bonhams, the F50 and Enzo at Mecum, and the Cobra at Goodings Christies).

Diablo GT – $2,425,000

F40 – $8,365,000

LaFerrari – $8,695,000

288 GTO – $11,555,000

Enzo – $12,100.000

F50 – $14,575,000

Ferrari Daytona SP3 – $17,825,000

Corvette Grand Sport #003 – $18,705,000

McLaren F1 GTR 10R – $34,655,000

Ferrari Luce ‘Tailor Made’, chassis 0 – $40,000,000 (charity lot)

Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, CSX2300 – $42,905,000

What's the consensus on what's going on here? Are prestige supercars a new asset class, comparable to the art market? Certainly doesn't feel like any of these are going to actually be used as cars...

And do we think that this new asset class, whatever it is, is in a bubble - where purchases are driven solely by FOMO and the conceit that they won't ever stop going up?

Or is something more clandestine going on (rumours of money laundering being all over the internet)? Something that Ti certainly can't comment on without any substantial evidence.

One thing we certainly can comment on is how difficult it is to shift garden variety sports and enthusiast cars at the moment, with values being decidedly soft leaving many who bought 2-5 years ago now well under, now matter how much they may have restored or improved their examples.

All thoughts welcome...

Yesterday Ti toiled in the sunshine to shoot the photos and video for this story, coming soon. In the moorland of the Brecon Beacons, we brought together:

A Caterham 360R

Fist Grande Panda

Skoda Superb

McLaren 750S

and a Rolls-Royce Phantom

The question is, what on earth possessed us to put this seemingly unrelated collection together? Well, to our eyes, behinds, fingers and toes they all possess something very special in contrast to so many cars on sale today.

But what is it?

Answers on a postcard.

There’s no shortage of concours competitions to go to these days, but they tend to be populated exclusively with time capsule ornaments. And that’s not the Ti way. What if someone came up with the antidote to the traditional car concours…? Well, last night we did just that, with our inaugural Concours d’Appréciation.

We wanted cars that got driven, hard and fast, for tens and ideally hundreds of thousands of miles. Not basket cases desperate to be put out of their misery, but cars that had been loved not as an ornament, but for what they were designed to do.

One bookend was a 1954 2CV whose paint could not be seen for rust but which, beneath, was in fine fettle and will be driven to Le Mans next year. At the other, a Porsche Carrera GT with 77,000 miles on the clock. In between, a Ferrari 599 GTB found in the desert with its engine on the back of a Toyota Hilux, an E9 BMW 3.0 CSL whose owner insists he'll be buried in it, and a 1992 Caterham Supersprint that's done over 100,000 miles, Finland to Spain and Houston to San Francisco.

Our winners: that Carrera GT, a gorgeous 1750 Alfa Romeo GTV that gets driven across the Pyrenees every year, and a Honda Integra Type R which has covered 131,000 miles since its owner bought it almost 20 years ago.

Add all eight generations of Golf GTI, the first UK public showing of the Longbow Speedster, and rumours of a 911 3.2 ClubSport with over half a million miles having escaped the concours enclosure to go feral in the grassy car park... and the event was a sparkling sell-out success in the sunshine.

Thank you to everyone at Bicester Motion, our partners at JBR Capital, every Ti contributor who entered into the spirit of it, and above all everyone who brought an interesting, well loved, well used car. 

Want to come to the next one? 

Photo credit: Toby Rea, insta: lensograph_tr

We’re pretty sure everyone experienced the joy of flinging their Scalextric car off the bank at max power, all those years ago, but who has actually driven one in the real world?

Many of the most famous ones no longer exist (for driving on, anyway) – Monza, Brooklands, Rockingham. And many of the others are in far flung places (like Indianapolis or Daytona in the US) or for testing purposes only (MIRA, Ehra-Lessien).

In tomorrow’s feature on Ti, we celebrate one particular lost and forgotten banking, and exactly what it’s like to boot it round there well over the design speed limit.

It’s quite a different experience to reaching and exceeding the limit on the level…

On the back of a new addition to the Ti long term fleet, on tomorrow’s podcast we will discuss whether a sporting SUV can ever be an enthusiast choice.

What does the wisdom of this particular crowd think? Do you own one? Would you consider one if it was ‘right’? What would ‘right’ constitute?

Or is it crosses and garlic?

Do share.

In this week’s podcast the Ti team discuss notorious widowmakers, and Andrew argues the Porsche 964 Turbo was the worst P-car he’s driven in this regard, due to the precarious relationship between power delivery, grip and weight balance. Doesn’t stop them being worth *all* the money now, though.

What’s the scariest car you’ve ever driven? Any that were fine in the dry but an absolute liability in the wet?

In today’s podcast (amongst many other things) we discuss the new manual version of Ferrari’s front engined V12 super GT.

Which if you haven’t heard about it, is a manual stick that selects your DCT gears, in co-operation with a ‘clutch’ that tells the computer to make the engine behave like you’ve pressed the clutch. In theory it should feel just like driving a Ferrari open gate manual. That’s certainly the PR line.

Is it the best of both worlds? Or an unsatisfying imitation?

Thoughts on a postcard. Or just a post…

The press launch for the (slightly controversial) new drop top GT3 is next week.

Ti will be heading out to the Swabian hills south of Stuttgart to get behind the wheel and experience it in the flesh.

So the question is - what do you most want to know about it? Let us know and we’ll endeavour to answer your questions as soon as the embargo lifts (7th July), or sooner if it’s not an embargoed topic!

A quick recap:

503bhp

1497kg

6 speed manual

4.0 N/A flat six revving to 9000rpm

Carbon fibre body panels and anti roll bars from S/T

PCCB & Magnesium wheels from S/T

0-62mph: 3.9 seconds

Top speed: 195mph

Price: £200,500

Ti Top Tip

Did you know that heat is a far bigger deal for your battery’s longevity than charge level?

But combine the two together and it’s kryptonite for your electrons.

As a rule of thumb, the rate at which lithium-ion ages roughly doubles for every 10°C. So if it’s 35C, and your car is in the sun - the effective impact on your cells might be 16x of that at 15C. (Assuming sun impact raises temp on vehicle to 45C)

A pack cooking in full sun at 80% charge is quietly losing more life than one sitting at 90% in the shade. So, in rough order of usefulness:

• Park in the shade, or a garage if you’ve got one. Easily the most effective thing on this list, and it costs nothing.

• Don’t leave it sitting at 100% in the heat for days. Full and hot is the one genuinely unhappy combination. If it’s going to stand unused through the hot spell, leave the aircon on for a bit to drop the charge level.

• Time charging to finish near when you’ll actually drive. Energy that goes straight into the road does no harm; energy left soaking at the top of the pack at 35°C does a little.

• Pre-cool the cabin while it’s still plugged in. You chill the car off the mains rather than the battery, and you climb into something that isn’t a kiln. Everybody wins.

For the PHEV crowd, a worthy reassurance: most manufacturers already hide a chunk of the pack from you - your dashboard 100% isn’t the cells’ true 100% - so there’s a built-in margin and no need to fret day to day. But a heatwave with the car parked and full is exactly the moment that buffer appreciates a bit of help.

Admittedly battery aging i slow, cumulative punishment. But why would you want to speed it up?

And for those with classics with dashboards that melt - windscreen sun visor for the win.

Anyone else having any heatwave related car woes at the moment?

Behind the scenes on a Ti shoot in the very wet Welsh mountains today. The origin of Audi RS put to the test. Might it also shed some light on the era of ‘peak car’?

Which is your favourite of this epic trio?

Today at the Titanic slipways in Belfast, over 90 DeLoreans from all over Europe have congregated as part of Eurofest, celebrating 45 years of the car.

We’re expecting 120 cars at Stormont on Saturday 🔥

This week is Le Mans week, so to celebrate it we have a new Heart & Soul video dropping tomorrow on the Jaguar XJR-8, the car that finally ended the dominance of the Porsche 956 and 962, and today Alex Brundle has written a fantastic story of what the Le Mans experience is like from behind the wheel.

What have been your favourite experiences / memories of Le Mans? In which era do you think the racing was at its peak?

All thoughts and comment welcome.

Lotus have just announced their Eletre X plug in hybrid, after underwhelming sales of the EV model.

They’ve essentially reduced the size of the battery from 112kWH to 70kWh and added a 2.0 litre turbo petrol engine to act as a range extender.

So it quenches range anxiety (especially given that the Eletre was never particularly efficient with its electrons), but does adding a 4 cylinder range extender petrol engine that doesn’t actually drive any wheels actually satisfy the enthusiasts amongst us?

Given a choice it’s probably the pick of the range now, given UK charging infrastructure still lags behind other parts of the world, and will likely sell better than the full EV model has done. Losing some weight (‘up to 120kg’) is also a bonus.

We understand why the expense of platform re-engineering means a 500bhp V6 isn’t driving the rear wheels only, with a motor on the front axle for 4 wheel drive, but can’t help but feel this is a bit of a sticking plaster solution.

What do you think?

Some stats for the top model below.

Drivetrain

•	Total power 939bhp 

•	Two dual permanent magnet motors

•	2 litre turbo 4-cyl engine-generator (200bhp)

•	70kWh battery, 52 litre fuel tank

Range & charging

•	EV-only range: up to 218 miles WLTP

•	Combined range: up to 746 miles WLTP

•	20–80% DC charge in 9 minutes (350 kW charger); max DC charge rate 436 kW

•	Fuel tank: 11.4 gallons

Chassis highlights

**•**	Vehicle weight ‘up to 120kg’ lighter than pure EV model

•	48V active anti-roll (up to 1,033 lb-ft roll-stabilising torque)

•	Dual-chamber air suspension

•	Dual-valve adaptive dampers (2ms response)

•	Front double-wishbone

•	Brembo six-piston front brakes (H1000)

•	Custom Pirelli P Zero 5 LTS tyres

Morgan have just released a punchier version of their recently updated Supersport (take note on pace of model development please, Lotus), which has the BMW B58 engine ramped up to 402bhp (torque remains the same).

Some other upgrades come too:

Suspension

The 400 comes with the Nitron 24 way adjustable dampers as standard, set slightly stiffer than the standard car (but you can adjust back if you like)

Wheels

New 19 inch forged wheels running Michelin PS5 tyres.

Interior

Fancy new gear selector – addressing the standard car's somewhat incongruous BMW-derived item, plus new Alcantara options including single-tone black or four two-tone combinations, and a unique stitch pattern throughout.

Exhaust

It's louder than the old one.

Price

£135k plus options

Competitors?

So this is the big one. If Ti do a comparison test for it, what should we put the Supersport 400 up against? Doesn't have to be a direct competitor, could just be an interesting contrast. How many customers will really cross shop a Morgan with a 911, for example? What truly are the alternatives - an older classic? Or a more expensive restomod?

Please weigh in with any and all of your thoughts.

Hot off the press yesterday, Britain’s oldest car manufacturer has just pulled the covers off the production version of its new Cobra GT Coupe - timed to mark AC Cars’ 125th anniversary.

It’s built on the same extruded aluminium spaceframe as the GT Roadster (which Autocar drove a prototype of last year), with full carbon fibre bodywork including a double-bubble roofline and a Kammtail rear end – the latter apparently inspired by AC’s own A98 Le Mans racer of 1964.

Around 75% of the engineering is shared with the open car. The 5.0-litre Ford Coyote V8 (from the Mustang) comes in two states of tune: 450bhp naturally aspirated, or 720bhp supercharged. The blown car does 0–60mph in under 3.5 seconds. Six-speed manual or ten-speed automatic.

Weight quoted at ‘under 1600kg’. A far cry from the originals. You do wonder a little at how a carbon body on an aluminum chassis can weigh half a tonne more than the original cars carrying iron blocks up front.

Pricing starts at £234,300 + taxes for the NA car, £256,300 + taxes for the supercharged version. Each car will be built to order, and first deliveries won’t happen until 2028 – behind the Roadster queue. AC are saying they’ll be building 1,000 cars a year - up from 100. We hope they’re right.

Nobody outside AC has driven it yet, so whether it delivers on the considerable promise is a question for another day. But as a statement of intent, fair play to them. We look forward to having a go in one and reporting back.