Alex Unleashed on Cars

  1993 saw big changes in the world of endurance racing. Group C had collapsed following the rule changes to favour 3.5 litre naturally aspirated engines in 1991, GT racing was on the rise and manufacturers knew this. The 1994 24 Hours of Le Mans saw a tidal wave of entrants into the GT1, 2 and IMSA GT classes. Everything from a Bugatti EB110 to 3 Honda NSX's were being entered. But 1 manufacturer had a plan on how to exploit the rules. Dauer was an unheard-of brand at the time and still is, but in collaboration with Porsche, they planned to homologate a Group C Porsche 962 into a limited-run road car and then enter it into the top GT1 class. Now this isn’t the first time car makers have bent the rules to win races, hell this wasn’t even the first time Porsche had cheated to win Le Mans, they did it back in 1969 with the 917 and then again in 1996 with the 911 GT1 (which would later win Le Mans in 1998 after extensive modifications). But anyways. Dauer’s plan was set, with back...

  Boy, this was a tough list to make, I had 10 entries in mind, but deciding an order was tough, I wanted to take aspects like online gaming and sentimental experiences out of the equation but that felt wrong. So, here’s goes nothing. Honourable Mentions F-Zero 99 (Switch) 2023 F-Zero 99 really came out of nowhere considering, we hadn’t seen a new title since 2003. But, boy is it fun. It takes the original SNES F-Zero and modernizes it with better visibility and modern touches from F-Zero X & GX like boosting and spin attacking. It’s free to play (and I mean it), but what stopped it from making the top 10 was the fact it’s online only, which means that in a few years, this high octane, thrilling racer will be nothing but a waste of space on your Switch. Pity. Mario Kart Double Dash (Gamecube) 2003 Much like F-Zero 99, Double Dash is a really exciting game to play, what with 2 characters to a kart, special items and so on. It also has a fantastic roster of characters, ...

  When the oil crisis hit in 1973, the US car market was devastated. They’d gotten used to big powerful engines with single digit MPG figures and then to suddenly have to create small and frugal cars was a big upset. America did try to make muscle cars in the oil crisis era, but they were mere shadows of their former selves. This lasted throughout the 70s and 80s until 1988, when Chrysler engineers decided to make a car in the image of the Shelby Cobra to put America back on the map. I’d also like to clarify something; the Vipers engine is not literally a truck engine as the block in the Viper is aluminium and the truck’s block is cast iron but apart from that they are both very similar. In fact, the block was made by Lamborghini (who were owned by Chrysler at the time). The Viper really did reignite the love and pride Americans had for their cars, here was a 160 MPH no-compromise supercar that could out-gun all but the most expensive exotica. That said, owning an early Viper...

  At times the future of the car and the motorist can seem scary. The oil will one day run out and there are those in the media and online who try to convince us that the electric car is some sort of satanic contraption whilst those aforementioned folks and governments also ignore other solutions to the issues of going net zero and powering the cars of the future. But, those who read and write about cars know that the future is actually pretty good and that the present day mirrors that of the very early days of the car when there were multiple choices for what powered cars, in the old days, it was petrol, steam and electric. Now it’s, electric, hydrogen and synthetic fuels. Both me and James May agree that BEV’s (battery electric vehicles) are a stop gap solution, in that, for now they are the closest thing to the solution that will solve the issue of cars and pollution, much like hybrid cars did in the 2000s and early 2010s prior to the likes of Tesla and Renault EV’s taking o...

Fiat has many ups and downs over its lifespan. On the one hand, you have forgettable and poorly built drivel like the Stilo, Multipla facelift and Doblo. But then you also have the 124, Panda, 500 and of course, the Coupe. Fiat’s Coupe really did define the era that gave us almost too many affordable coupes to choose from, everyone from Alfa Romeo to Volvo had a coupe for you, with varying degrees of excellence, from Ford’s Puma and the VW Corrado down to the Vauxhall Calibra and Alfa Romeo GTV. First thing you have to talk about the Fiat Coupe is the looks. I’m not it’s biggest fan, but I do think it is very striking indeed as did a lot of people when it was first unveiled in ’92, it caused quite a stir, I mean you’ve got the slashes along the wheel arches, the rather butch looking front end and inside you get a strip running across the dashboard with pininfarina in the middle. But what is even more interesting is it’s chief designer, Chris Bangle. The man who was hounded for his ...

  The year was 1996 and a certain someone had lined up an Aston Martin Vantage, a Porsche 911 Turbo, Lotus Esprit V8, Caterham 7 JPE, Dodge Viper RT/10 and a TVR Cerbera for a 1 mile drag race. In the end, the ballsy coupe from Blackpool took a decisive win. I bring up this story because it’s just one of several events that propelled the Cerbera to fame. The second was a year later, when the TVR faced an even bigger challenge than a turbocharged Porsche, a Panavia Tornado jet. Yes, long before Richard Hammond raced a Bugatti Veyron against a Eurofighter, Top Gear Magazine had a TVR race a Tornado. And lost. But not by much! These 2 events for me sum up the Cerbera, an underdog from (until then) a small brand from a seaside town capable of great things, taking the fight to cars far more expensive and exclusive. The general consensus among road testers was you’d need at least £300,000 to beat a Cerbera in a straight line. When first being conceived, the Cerbera was originally goi...

  When we talk about cars that saved their manufacturers such as the Porsche Boxster or the Bentley Continental GT, we’re normally talking about class-leading cars, cars that do the job better than anyone else. And yet I’d argue that the Aston Martin DB7 is probably the only car that can claim to have “saved a brand” but isn’t best in class. Why? Well: the chassis is derived from the Jaguar XJ-S, the build quality is still sus, the interior is full of Ford switchgear it wallows through corners and the price was very high. So I ask, did it deserve to be the success it was? Now at the time of conception, Aston Martin had been on the verge of collapse (again) so Ford bought a 75% stake in 1987 and then fully in 1993, Ford later bought Jaguar and then Land Rover from BMW. The DB7 was conceived as a cheaper entry level model that would bring back the glory days of the 60s when Aston epitomized cool and sophistication, consider the fact it was the first Aston to have DB (insert num...