Everything There Is To Know About Ayrton Senna's Final Days

Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today, we have reports from 8W, Autoweek and Messy Nessy Chic.

Hours after his death May 1, 1994, Nigel Mansell said he thought Ayrton Senna "was bulletproof." Read the account of Senna's final days and it's understandable why he and others thought that.

In the morning Senna caught a helicopter to the circuit at 8:30am, ready for the start of practice and qualifying. In-between Japan and Imola, Williams had been testing intensively at the Nogaro circuit in south-west France to find the source of the Williams car's problems. A number of changes were promised for Imola but Senna was sceptical that the modifications would work. The car had been consistently slower than the Benetton despite a much more powerful engine. Both Senna and his team-mate Damon Hill had said openly it was horrible to drive. Hill remembers: "We were always changing the set-up of the car in an attempt to find that perfect combination which would turn the promise of a great car into a reality. But it is difficult to become familiar with a car if it is constantly being changed – it becomes a vicious circle."

We remembered the 10-year anniversary of Oldsmobile's passing on Monday, but Autoweek's own Blake Z. Rong wrote up this on the Aurora. I've always liked the Aurora. I guess we're weird like that.

The Aurora set the template for all succeeding Oldsmobiles. It arose from the fertile grounds of the late 1980s that saw engineering ingenuity as diverse as the Ford Taurus and the Acura NSX, itself stemming from the Tube Car concept – a styling exercise that combined an impossibly sleek Coke-bottle shape, wheels pushed to the corners, and frameless, pillarless windows that were more painted on than installed. It looked, simply, like it had fallen out of the sky. The nameless car sat in the lobby of GM's headquarters for half a decade before starving Oldsmobile, desperate for reinvention, took it.

Yet another collection of still gorgeous cars that are in depressing condition.

This might be painful sight for classic car enthusiasts. Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW; just a few of the iconic names whose logos you would never expect to find on cars in such a sorry state. But what might really shock you is that these unfortunate automobiles are not actually abandoned, and their owner is in fact a classic car lover and expert himself, who has deliberately left these cars here at the mercy of nature.

Photo: AP Images