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The air-cooled Porsche cult following is not news to anyone who visits this site, and the Luftgekühlt festival has quickly turned into one of the biggest, most obsessive car shows on the planet. We were there this weekend hanging out taking photos. Here’s even more for your perusal.
IndyCar finally made its way to Austin, Texas, and gave fans at Circuit of The Americas a damn fine show. Rookie Colton Herta became the youngest winner in series history, we threw a badass party that Mario Andretti came to, and Stadium Super Trucks substantially improved the lives of many.
Back in September, IndyCar announced that the long wait was over, and that America’s top open-wheel racing would come to Circuit of the Americas. Just over a month later, a couple teams took part in a quick tire test around the 3.4-mile course for the first time, and our appetites only got wetter.
The 2019 Acura MDX A-Spec sounds sporty, but don’t get your hopes up for Porsche Cayenne-pushing performance. It’s an aesthetic treatment. That doesn’t mean the MDX isn’t nice to drive, though. And I should know—I put about 2,000 miles on this vehicle cruising all over Texas.
The 24 Hours at Daytona every January is the first, the longest, the most brutal round that IMSA faces all season. A strong qualifying and practice result means nothing at twice-onto-the-bank road course when you battle against over 50 competitors across four classes. Even the best predictions usually come up short.
Lately in the world of fast Chevrolets, it’s the long-awaited but still mysterious mid-engine Corvette that’s captured everyone’s attention. While there’s still a ton we don’t know, it’s slated to be the true exotic-killer the ‘Vette was always meant to be. But where does that leave the current king of front-engine Corvettes—the supercharged, 755 horsepower 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1?
Bentley is known for its big grand tourers packed with massaging seats and ludicrous W12 power. Looks and features are cool and all in the abstract, but does this new 2019 Bentley Continental GT actually grant you a luxurious enough experience in the cockpit and good enough handling on a fun road to justify the price tag that matches a nice house?
Obsessively detailed interiors. Shocking performance figures. Huge price tags with the weight to match. These are all things you quickly associate with Bentley. SUV? Not so much. But in 2016, Bentley tried to get in on the money-printing SUV game with the Bentayga, a leather-lined and champagne-filled W12 land missile.
The new Acura NSX took an incomprehensibly long time to get here, but anyone who has driven it will agree it was worth the wait. Not without a couple faults, but worth the wait. Now with a slew of updates for 2019, the NSX is somehow even better, if you can believe it.
Plenty of auto manufacturers are known for high-tech factories that make halo cars. But usually those facilities are in Europe, like Bugatti’s sparkling white plant in France or McLaren’s incredible speed laboratory in England. Acura would like you to change your thinking here, one of the most advanced car factories in the world can be found in America’s heartland.
Sedan sales have been taking a plunge all over the car business, yet half of Acura’s six-vehicle lineup are four-door sedans. But Acura needed a better gateway car, something that (might) capture those oh-so-coveted millennials. Enter the updated 2019 Acura ILX, which looks much better now and has the drive to match.
Shop trucks are part of life for any joint that’s painting, restoring, and upgrading power in various cars and trucks. Errands need to be run, and supplies have to be picked up. Classic Car Studio Speed Shop is known for performing incredible upgrades on cool, vintage rides. They can’t make their runs around town in some ordinary Chevrolet Silverado. A quick set of wheels and a meaner exhaust setup wasn’t going to get it done.
Every once in a while, Porsche makes the right combination of revisions, throws together the perfect selection of parts, and comes up with something brilliant. The Porsche 911 GT3 Touring is exactly that.
We have a running theory about Christian von Koenigsegg, the genius founder of Swedish hypercar company Koenigsegg, that basically states he’s actually from the future. He’s stuck in our era, trying to invent a car fast enough to take him back to his home time. After driving the $2.5 million, 1,360 horsepower, 277.9 mph Koenigsegg Agera RS, I don’t doubt this at all, and I think he may be close.
Any trip to Texas in September is expected to be a scorcher. But that’s what Americas Rallycross and the new World Rallycross got when they came to Circuit of The Americas this weekend. Still, 18,000 fans braved the heat and patches of rain for one hell of a show, and what we hope will be a strong start to years of quality dirt-filled racing in Austin.
Once upon a time, a Mercedes-Benz inline-six was the very model of smoothness and opulence and grace. It went away for some time, but now it’s finally back and boasts some impressive power and tech. Then the mad scientists at AMG got their hands on it. Meet the 2019 Mercedes-AMG E53, one of the more interesting AMG cars you can buy right now.
The wickedly fast, ridiculously expensive, please don’t call them sedans even though they’re totally sedans segment has blown up in recent years. “Four-door coupes” like the Audi S7, BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe and Porsche Panamera all fight for damn near $200,000 from your well-diversified portfolio. Mercedes has had an offering in this class—the CLS—for many years, but it wanted to introduce a more dedicated performance four-door grand tourer. Meet the 2019 Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door.
Thanks to the insane popularity and profitability of the Porsche Cayenne and Macan, Porsche has granted us an insane selection of the 911 to suit every single driver’s demands. But! With 24 different models in the U.S., it’s hard to sort out which coupe, Cabriolet, Targa, S or Turbo is the right 911 for you. But now we have the addition of the Carrera T in a crowded lineup.
For those who crave wheels from the Radwood generation, getting a super clean 1980s Honda these days is no easy task. This particular 1984 Honda CRX looks showroom condition now, but it certainly didn’t stay in this condition all its life. It was meticulously restored by a guy in Austin that truly appreciates all the CRX is. Discovered under a tree in Wimberley, Texas, it had seen better days.
Because I simply have not had enough seat time in various Porsches this summer, I’ve got the 2018 911 Carrera T. It’s the lighter-weight, not as hardcore, very slightly easier on the bank account version of the 991.2, and I’ve tasked myself with seeing how this package really comes together.
Laguna Seca, Road America, Lime Rock, Mid-Ohio—if you have the cash and the nerve, it’s not hard to find a good driving school at a solid race track. Over the past year, Austin, Texas’s Circuit of The Americas has stepped up its game for students of speed, and it’s added a whole new stack of toys to play with.
Since Red Bull Global Rallycross went down in a smoldering heap, Americans have been deprived from experiencing top class racing on a mixture of dirt and tarmac. Fortunately with the announcement of Americas Rallycross and the FIA’s World Rallycross making their way to Circuit of The Americas in Austin this year, fans can get a taste of dirt in the Texas heat.
I’m no stranger to road trips, and have a habit of doing them in fun cars. Most of the time they go as planned; other times they go very badly. But a trip from London to Le Mans and back in a 2018 Porsche 911 GT3, one of the most hardcore and extreme Porsches you can buy, was thankfully be one of the smoother ones—and surprisingly more comfortable than anticipated.
It comes as no surprise that more attention was paid to Toyota’s overall win at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans, with its triumph in the top class this year coming after two heartbreaking losses to Porsche in 2016 and 2017. Toyota also added Formula One’s two-time world champion Fernando Alonso to their driver lineup, hoping that would give them another advantage.
When I flew to France to shoot the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans, it was more than just a work assignment; it was a life goal. Less than two years ago, I decided to quit a much more lucrative career to pursue my passion, rather than just sporadically doing photography as a paying hobby. It was a big risk, but now I’ve completed the bucket list, and I keep wondering one thing: what’s next for me?
As an accredited motorsports photographer, I’ve been fortunate enough to cover many of the biggest series on the planet. With Formula One, MotoGP, WEC, IMSA, Pirelli World Challenge, and others on my résumé, I’ve experienced a solid mix of hurdles and successes at racetracks all over the globe. But until last week, the the 24 Hours of Le Mans had always been at the top of my bucket list.
Getting to complete my photography bucket list didn’t come easy. For years I’ve bothered Jalopnik Editor-in-Chief Patrick George to get me there, but it ain’t cheap, and credentials for the 24 Hours of Le Mans are not easy to obtain for anyone. Finally this year the stars aligned, and I made my way down to France for the annual biggest race on the planet.
