barn find!

[kartone]

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/05/business/classic-cars-abandoned-for-decades-in-french-barn-valued-at-20-million/index.html

[kartone]

Owner should be handed over to ISIS ...

[carlo rossi]

How fantastic! without people like this cars like these wouldn't exist, cars like anything collectable when they hit 20 to 30 years enter the unloved period (pick almost any 88 to 95 model car)and then either get chopped, modified and generally butchered and smashed up and off to the wreckers few make it through the twilight years and then by some miracle they hit 40 years and  they become collectable and by 50 rare! funny how life is, I tell my wife Im like a car hopefully it will keep her interested her reply was  yes but there is not a shed full to pick from.

[colcol]

Notice the Mark 3 Cortina, must be worth a few thousand now, how could something like this, not be noticed as there are no walls to hide it.
One of the best collection of old cars, Bugati's in particular was the Schulpf??? collection in France, 2 brothers who run a clothes making business had a collection of cars hid under the factories, even had the last century French Gas Street lights installed for period correctness, on the bucket list, Colin.

[carlo rossi]

yeh the Schlumpf's car museum in Mulhouse ( france near Basel) is exceptional with exceedingly rare alfas.
another great museum it has everything plus some interesting cars in in Germany is Sinshiem about 20kms north of Stuttgart
What happened to ferrari at bathurst?

[colcol]

Results for the MOLY Bathurst 12 Hour,Qualifying,
1 Audi R8,
2 Lamborghini Gallardo,
3 Nissan GTR,
4 Ferrari F458 Italia,
5 Aston Martin Vantage,
6 Ferrari F458 Italia,
7 Mercedes SLS AMG GT3,
8 Mc Claren MP4 - 12C,
9 Audi R8,
10 Bentley Continental.
Coverage starts at 5.30 AM on the 72 mate digital channel, then in the afternoon it switches to the main channel 7 station and concludes at 6 pm.
Last year was a ripper with Craig Lowndes and Shane Van Gisbergen racing each other in the final few laps, this year the organisers of the V8 Taxi series has seen fit to run their 'show and shine' weekend on the same weekend as the MOLY Bathurst 12 hour, good on you James Wobbleton, Colin.

[gtr]

GTR wins the Bathurst 12 Hour today, still showing its superiority, returning after its last wins there in 199i and 1992. And this time it cleaned up Audi R8, Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, etc.,
Seems like Jeremy Clarkson was spot on in his recent article in The Australian, when he placed it first in his selection of the world's best Super Cars.

[colcol]

Very enjoyable race, with the last 2 laps after a long safety car period, a straight fight to victory.
The Bentley looked quite mean as a race car and was involved in quite a few 'incidents', there seemed to be a good crowd, certainly more than was at the cricket, which they showed on the sports highlights.
I wonder how the 'show and shine' went at Sydney Motorsport Park, with the V-8 Taxi's?, Colin.

[Paul Gulliver]

Col, I couldn't agree more watched it on and off yesterday all day .I never thought I would find myself barracking for a Bentley, but I was.

I had reckoned I was going to be like a basketball game, so late afternoon after channel surfing all day  I received orders  from the "war office" , that if I didn't get off the couch I would be forcibly removed. In our house these threats aren't to be taken lightly.  I went out and cut the lawns so I could  return and watch the last 30 - 40 mins.

It was almost  like a top ten shoot out. The Bentley was being driven very well ,in the middle of the Road, on the racing line or wherever he could put himself to block, but you just thought  he might be overwhelmed by the Audi's.. Then out of the blue after a late safety car re start the Nissan GTR went from 4th to first . From there on in things only got worse for the Bentley . After 12 hours of great driving he just went into the last corner a little hot and got shuffled back from 2nd to 4th.

Great motor racing.

PS : I did watch a bit of the V8s . I had forgotten how much navel gazing & commercials they can have only to be interrupted by the odd bit of on track stuff.     

[carlo rossi]

Now the rumours are abound, was the GTR playing possum where did it get that mysterious 100+hp from to out drag an R8 v10 and a twin Turbo v8  Bentley.
Is it true that Renault red BUll used new f1 technology on the 3,8 ltr twin turbo GTR after all  they own over 40 % of Nissan
Or was it a great win or a combo of all of the above.
bit of an upset that the ferrari number 88 was taken out in practice,would have been great to see the STIG drive he was the Lowndes replacement
Oh and the V8s that you cant buy,drive or care about they are slower than cars you can get from the dealer by over 5 seconds a lap surely the 12 hour is the real Bathurst it is more in keeping with the original formula buy it friday ,drive to bathurst Saturday ,race it Sunday , sell Monday
the add reads "" only driven on sundays""

[carlo rossi]

Ps the new Ferrari 488 replacing the 458 has just come out with a very hot all new 3.9 ltr v8 killing off the current 4.5
it has reputedly 80hp at over 600hp thats the same as the GTR but with NO turbos more hopefully we see this next Bathurst

[colcol]

The Bathurst 12 hour cars are hardly standard, see the bodywork and flares, the Mercedes were running Hewland sequential gearboxes and the Bentley had an X-trac, and there was not much of an interior left, but loved the tough look of the Bentley, didn't expect WO Bentley or Wolf Bernardo to get out of the car, but some gold chained rapper.
The V-8 'test day' was shown on Foxtel, but channel 10 had a highlights package later on.....get used to it.
I noticed that 6 cars in the Taxi series had no sponsorship, out of 25 or so cars thats not a healthy sign, the two Lucas Dumbrell Racing Commodores were virgin white for Tim Blanchard and Nick Percat, with Blanchard's car having a sticker on the back from daddy's company, One of the Mercedes car's driven by Ash Walsh had 'Erebus' on the side, not a paying sponsor, the Ford Australia Race Team, now branded Prodrive, because Ford won't give them any money, had a new car, 'Super Black Racing' or something for New Zealanders, not too much sponsor ship money there and the 4 Nissans had 'Jack Daniels' on the side, but the other 3 had 'Nissan Academy', which is Nissan tipping the money in.
Bring on the 12 hour again, [but don't give any ideas to Neil Choi], Colin.

[carlo rossi]

No I didnt mean standard or base model but you can order them from the factory via your dealer  as in like the old days with the GTA or Autodelta therefore they are a car that given buckets of money anyone can own and drive .I remember seeing jags, alfas and Gt falcons and escort bda  racing at bathurst and the first thing anyone did after Bathurst was go down to the dealer to sit in one and kick the tyres and finding out that you could buy 2 base models for the price of a GT.Oh to dream and then one day you wake up your 40+ and you say to yourself "what the hell Ill buy one".So the stable grows thank heavens for car stackers.

[colcol]

You must be as old as me!, before Bathurst, there was Phillip Island's Armstrong 500 and the cars were driven to the track and driven back to the dealers, to be sold on Monday, with a few paint chips.
They had to work on the cars with the tools supplied by the manufacturers of the cars, so for a few years they had excellent tools supplied.
Scary, back in the olden days, there were no seatbelts or roll cages...or safety.
At one race at the Island a bloke knocked down a fence and drove onto the track with his road car and started to race the cars, got sprung when they noticed there was an extra car in the race, officials signalled him to pull over, so he just drove back the way through the fence and back to Melbourne, now that was Series Production, Colin.

[Sheldon McIntosh]

The Bathurst 12 hour cars are hardly standard, see the bodywork and flares

I was up on top of the mountain for the entire weekend, with 6 other Alfa Club lunatics, and what a great weekend.  It's true, the GT3 cars are far from standard. For starters 4wd is not allowed, so the GTR, Bentley, Audi, Lambo are not exactly representative of the road cars.  Didn't see any flares on the cars though Col, pretty sure that's not allowed.  Huge rear wing, diffusers, yes.


And the Bentleys sounded incredible from the side of the track.   I thought the AMGs sounded amazing the last two years, but the Bentleys were awesome, they sounded like a Spitfire cruising around looking for a target. 

The fastest lap time during the race was a 2:03.3.   No wonder the V8 organisers wanted to try and take focus away from the event.

When Phil and I went in 2013 it was just us 2, last year we had 4, this year 8.  Next year we need 16 people, to keep the equation going.  Keep it in mind people, it's an amazing event, easily the best motorsport available in Australia.  Pics from the weekend to come very soon.