Race Cars

BMW Group Classis is a YouTube series where the good people from BMW Classic acquaint us with some of the brand’s most iconic models. As most BMW enthusiasts would point out, there were plenty of epic BMW cars made throughout the brand’s history. Today Benny and Mark are on screen so they can talk about one of the most iconic cars ever made – the BMW 3.0 CSL Batmobile.

The internal combustion engines are on the verge of getting knocked off into oblivion, but that doesn’t mean electrification is the only way to go. A lot of automakers are fighting to keep them alive for as long as possible before euthanizing them. Toyota is one of them, and it recently gave us a preview of the hydrogen-powered version of the GR Yaris’ engine. The automaker plonked it into a Corolla hatch and released a video of how it sounds. If this doesn’t give you the chills, we don’t know what will.

You don’t really see Audi come up with such stuff, but the automaker has revealed a ‘Color Edition’ of its most powerful product - the R8 LMS GT2. But, in all fairness, it deserves to be pampered with such appearance editions, considering it is the German automaker’s flagship race car. Audi is offering it in six different exterior shades, each one looking better than the other. There are no changes made to the cabin or the drivetrain, but you can’t expect much with a premium price increase of just $13,000.

The Monaco Historique, like the Le Mans Classic, is one of those rare transcendental events. It takes you back in time to what many argue was the ’Golden Age’ of motor racing. Over one weekend every couple or so years, some of the world’s most revered F1 and sports cars gather to once again race in anger. In 2021, the gang got back together for more battling on the streets of Monte-Carlo and it all got a little bit too hot, multi-million-dollar metal being bent in the process.

Lamborghini Squadra Corse, the division that handles Lamborghini’s motorsport efforts is teasing what looks to be a new hardcore race car via a short video that leaves us wanting for more. Especially since it’s hard to pinpoint what this car is and where and if it will race.

Two years after breaking and making a record at the 2019 Pikes Peak, Bentley is looking forward to another fruitful year this time at the event. The British automaker’s entry this year is also based on the Continental GT and goes by the name Continental GT3 Pikes Peak. This year, Bentley wants to go for the Time Attack 1 record, and for that, it has created a car that runs on renewable fuel. How about that?

After having launched the 205 hatchback in 1983, Peugeot wanted to boost its image even further by competing in the rally madness that was the Group B. To homologate the necessary rally car, it needed to churn out 200 street-legal versions that had to be based on a current production vehicle. That vehicle was the 205 supermini and the result was the bonkers Peugeot 205 T16, aka Turbo 16 in France.

Pagani’s Huayra R, the car that’s supposed to be the swan song for the Huayra supercar is an 838-horsepower, V-12-powered track jewel. But for some reason, Pagani decided that’s it’s for the best to reveal the R using 3D animation and not the rear car. Which is lame.

Ever since its debut, the GR Yaris has been putting a lot of smiles on a lot of faces, mostly those of the car journos that had the chance to sample the feisty hot hatch. But the time has come for Toyota’s pocket-rocket to go rallying and looking at this video, it really seems up to the challenge.

The Leon Competicion might be based on the five-door Cupra Leon hatchback, but in designing it, Cupra had to rethink a lot of areas, including the body kit which was developed using 3D-printing technology.

Race cars must abide by a particular set of rules depending on the competition they are enlisted. Cupra developed the Leon Competicion with TCR-racing customers in mind, so to deliver the finite product, a lot of tweaks were in order.

Born out of the sheer need and desire to push boundaries, Big Oly wrote history at Baja 1000, where it came out victorious two years in a row, in 1971 and 1972, with further victories at the 1973 Baja 500 and Mint 400. Mind you, this was not your run-of-the-mill Ford Bronco.

The time has come for the aging Pagani Huayra to sing its swan song. And what a song has Pagani come up with. Meet the Huayra R, a track-only supercar that costs $3.1 million and will only be made in 30 units.

The first Huayra saw daylight all the way back in 2012. Since then, Horacio Pagani’s boutique car company has churned out different variations of the Huayra, although nothing comes close to the R.

Ferrari, the most powerful brand in the automotive world - and, perhaps, the world as a whole - has only competed in full, factory-backed capacity in Formula 1 for the past 48 years. Now, with the birth of a new set of regulations at the sharp end of the FIA’s World Endurance Championship, the planets aligned for the Prancing Horse to return at Le Mans with the intent to win the race overall. But we’ll have to wait until 2023 for the new car to debut.

Ford’s RS200 Evolution had quite an up-and-down career path, yet it remains one of the raddest cars to ever go rallying, mostly because FoMoCo took a different approach when building it compared to what Audi and Lancia were doing.

One of the things we love about internal combustion engines is the sounds they make. This is especially true when we talk about high-performance and racing engines. With that being said, the LMP grid for the 2023 FIA Endurance Championship will be quite busy. Big names like Ferrari and Porsche are making a comeback, joining alongside others like Toyota and Audi. Scuderia Cameron Glicenhaus is also bringing in a proper challenger and it sounds like the devil.

More than 60 years have passed since Aston Martin raced in Formual 1 so the news that the carmaker is making a comback in the Big Circus can be counted as a major reason to celebrate. The new F1 car is called AMR21, which is obviously an immense step forward from the 1960 DBR5 named after David Brown but closely related to the Valkyrie.

A digital artist has created a modernized rendering of the Renault Espace F1, and it’s got us itching for one. The rendering is based on the concept model that Renault unveiled at the 1994 Paris Motor Show to celebrate the nameplate’s 10th anniversary and the French automaker’s involvement in Formula One. Nothing came out of the Espace F1, but 27 years later, it’s still fondly remembered as one of the gnarliest minivan concept vehicles ever showcased at an auto show.

Ferrari is returning to the top flight of endurance racing beginning in 2023. The Italian automaker made the announcement, confirming plans to line up in the ‘Hypercar’ class of the FIA World Endurance Championship. It will be the first time since 1973 that Ferrari will be competing for outright victory in the WEC. The automaker’s return to endurance racing also puts an end to what would be a 50-year absence in the Le Mans 24 Hours, a race that Ferrari has won nine times, including six straight wins from 1960 to 1965.