Okay, so it might not be the best-kept secret – the cars are, in fact, publicly accessible in one of the halls of the Ferrari factory grounds in Maranello. But if you’ve visited the factory recently and not taken a detour through the hall where they are stored, you might well have missed these particular treasures. Take, for example, the 225mph precursor to the F40, the 288 GTO Evoluzione (one of just five built).
Standing on four, 20-inch, off-road tyres, the Ener-G-Force Concept car is a G-Class adapted to the requirements of a possible future. The concept is the work of the Mercedes Advanced Design Studio in Carlsbad, California and, judging by appearances, the team behind it clearly expect leisure pursuits to become vastly more challenging.
The matt-black monster, running on tyres big enough to ford the Nile, is based on the wheelbase of a five-door G Class, but with an extra flat load area built onto the back. Overall length has been increased to 6.3 metres.
German Shepherd apart, what would you place in it? Our guess is either a super-sized Weber grille, or The Scorpions’ practice amp.
Photo: GWF
In 2008, the California broke new ground for the Italian company when it married a front/mid-engined layout with an electrically retractable hardtop, twin-clutch 7-speed gearbox, generous space (or seating for children) behind the front seats and a commodious boot.
To be fair, the productionised version of the Aventador J is not quite the same, and the undisclosed buyer of the first open Aventador will have had nine months' exclusive use of the only official convertible example of the Sant’ Agata Bolognese company’s flagship V12.
“But hang on,” I hear you ask, “haven’t the good burghers of Affalterbach already produced a go-even-faster SLS?”
Yes, they have. That was the SLS GT. The Black Series model carries many features of the successful GT3 racing car (wing from a Starfighter, lots of carbonfibre and a headache-inducing paint scheme) and transforms an extremely fast car into one that goes that little bit quicker.
For an awful lot more money.
Nowadays it is better known simply as ‘BMW M GmbH’, maker of some of the best high-performance cars in the world, with the M1 supercar and generations of M3s and M5s to its credit.
In the 1960s and early 70s, though, BMW as a company was happy merely to supply excellent four-cylinder engines for F2, as well as supporting tuners such as Alpina and Schnitzer which prepared small racing saloons (1800 Tis, 2000 TIs, as well as the entire 02 Series).
Understandably, BMW pulled out all the stops for this one. The historic fleet, along with a full chronological roster of M5s and M6s, took to the Nordschleife; meanwhile, a selection of M convertibles headed off into the switchbacks of the surrounding Eifel mountains. Some of the manufacturer’s more agile offerings of recent years (E46 M3 CSL, 1M Coupé etc.) used a loop of the GP circuit to highlight handling abilities, and the event was rounded off by a thunderous display from racing cars spanning four decades, with the drivers clearly enjoying being reunited with their old steeds.
Video: Joe Breeze
Just one hour’s drive from Zurich, high above the city, the mountains are now white with snow and the wind swirls with ice crystals. This, truly, is the beast risen from the depths of Lake Walen. Except that instead of crawling from the bowels of the earth, this car was born in the laboratories of BMW M GmbH, in Munich. Every sinew of the muscular bodywork strains to cover massive chromed low-profile wheels. With LED headlamps ablaze, the ‘Phantom Menace’ stalks the German Autobahn like no other.