Sunday Drive #1 – Good Morning!
Sunday Drive #1 – Good Morning!
The first issue of the Sunday Drive, which this time reaches you on the Monday, after New Year's Eve.
Let’s talk business…
This is Sunday Drive — a biweekly magazine about the automotive industry, the first issue of which reaches you on Monday. Well… Yesterday was New Year's Eve, everyone had plenty of things to do: washing the car and refueling liquids of all sorts. Today, on The New Year's Eve, this newsletter found some of you reflecting on how 2023 went by and why it ended with such a headache, and, frankly, making plans for 2024. I also have plans and resolutions, and what you are reading is one of them. This biweekly newsletter is intended to be a collection of events, readings, and reflections of my experiences related to motoring. It will come to you alternately with a test or an automotive story, such as the one about the Mercedes EQS or the Nürburgring. Today I will focus on a short summary of the past year, and I must admit — what a year it was! Firstly, at the beginning of 2023 I decided to take up cars more seriously. Secondly, contrary to other New Year's resolutions, I did not abandon this particular one and organized several sessions in which MS helped me. Third, in doing so, I felt joyful and satisfied. Busy times are on the horizon.
M2 Competition
The next week read is a test of the previous generation BMW M2 Competition (F87). As a teaser, I will mention that MS recognized the smallest M-car as the best one that we tested together. Even though it's the smallest one in the entire “M” family, he had no problem with his height (almost two meters, long legs and short arms 🦖) and finding a comfortable driving position. You'll read about what I think about this car next week, and today I'm sending you a photo as a little treat.
Motivation
A bit last minute, but for those who feel up to it, I recommend the 75 Years of Porsche Sports Cars — Driven by Dreams exhibition at the Drive Volkswagen Group Forum in Berlin. The presented cars come from the Porsche Museum and you can see up close such gems as the 911 2.0 Coupé, Porsche 911 SC Safari, Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo, and 550 Spyder. At the last minute because the exhibition will close on January 7. Motivation and haste highly recommended.
P.S. This place (Drive) is worth adding to the list of mandatory points to check during every visit to Berlin. My earliest memory of Drive (or an early iteration of it) is from almost 18 years ago. I don't remember the exact date, but around 2005, while walking down Enter der Linden towards the Brandenburg Gate, I saw a crowd of people standing at the corner of Friedrichstraße. It didn't look like a protest to me, everyone rather window licked a display, where the hot new product of the VAG concern was presented — one of the most important cars in history — Bugatti Veyron.
What goes around… comes around!
Let's stay in 2005… Back then, I was a regular reader of the monthly Auto, Motor & Sport. In one of the spring issues, a photo contest was announced. Topic: rally photo. A friend of mine shared his Seicento, and together we came up with what we now call a “follow shot”.
I sent the picture, but then there was deafening silence on the matter, so I thought that nothing came out of it. The day before Christmas Eve A.D. 2005, a DHL delivery arrived and a package with the competition prize – an HP digital compact camera from the limited edition of the BMW Sauber F1 team – Was handed to me. This year, during a visit to my family home, I dug out a nice aluminum box with a 4Mpx camera. I didn't deal with automotive photography for the next few years, I was more interested in travel and documentary topics. Today I'm adding a motoring thread to those.
Premiere of the year
Or, to be more precise, a market premiere, or even two. The first one, much awaited from 2019, is the presentation of the Tesla Cybertruck to the journalists and the customers. Four years after the memorable speech, during which it turned out that the windows were not bulletproof, and many changes (the ramp on which the Cyberquad was supposed to drive disappeared, trivial mirrors appeared), the car was tested by journalists. I especially recommend three reviews videos, created by creators that had early access to the car.
TopGear:
MKBHD:
Hagerty:
More interesting customer premiere for me is GMA T.50. For those to whom the GMA acronym means nothing, I hasten to inform you that the founder is Gordon Murray (Automotive), the father of McLaren F1. Its grandson (according to Professor Murray) is marked T.50 and is something that has the predispositions to be an automotive absolute: naturally aspirated V12, manual gearbox, central driving position and conservative styling. Journalists from the British Top Gear were the first to drive it, and extensive material appeared in issue 378 of the Magazine. Text: Ollie Marriage, photos (great as always) by Mark Ricchioni. A video was also created, published on TG's YouTube channel:
Press
There will also be space for a press reviews in the Sunday Drive newsletter. I want to focus primarily on titles that I buy myself and whose reading inspires and educates. The form of a motoring magazine seems to me to be the perfect culmination of what I do – photography and writing. I choose titles based on what I consider to be the best photos and the most interesting content, which I aspire to. The strongest candidate is the British EVO. Photographs, texts, columns – all at a very high level. Especially the photos, especially by Aston Parrott. We will come back to this gentleman in the coming months.
I have been a British Top Gear subscriber for the longest time. I appreciate it for its wide range of stories built around cars and great photos. I have to point again to the article about GMA T.50, but also nostalgic material from the premiere of Pagani Utopia. The illustrations for Paul Horrell's text were taken by Tom Salt with an analog Gibellini camera designed by Mr. Pagani himself (GP810HP model)!
The third title on the list is The Road Rat Magazine. Broad, not chasing new products, focused on design and the process of creating legendary cars. In the fifteenth issue, you will find: Ferrari F40 creation history, the reason why the Mercedes 300 SL Roadster was even more important for the brand than the Gullwing was, and the first part of the article about Giampaolo Dallara, the designer responsible for, the creation of Lamborghini Miura. This magazine is a high art on wheels experience.
Returning to Top Gear for a moment, Chris Harris, one of the hosts of the last iteration of the TV show, has his column there. Everyone misses the seasons hosted by Claskson, May and Hammond, but what happened (through the fault of the first one) cannot be undone, and Top Gear had to find its way with a new crew. The first season after the changes was very chaotic – the main host was Chris Evans, who resigned immediately after shooting six episodes. In the next season, Matt LeBlanc, Rory Reid and Chis Harris came to the fore, as the third chap was the only one to survive subsequent personnel changes. Three superb seasons aired. Harris's most recent co-hosts were Paddy McGuinness (a TV personality popular in the UK) and Frieddie Flintoff (a cricketer). Everything indicates that after Flintoff's accident, that took place on the set, the show will not return. Or maybe another Velvet Revolution awaits us – not so long ago we learned that the Grand Tour is also going to be discontinued.
Harris writes about these experiences and the path leading to Top Gear in his autobiography: “Variable Valve Timings”. Conclusion after reading: it is challenging to make a living on writing about cars.
Podcast
A few years ago, Harris created the Collecting Cars auction platform (together with Edward Lovett) and as part of the project's promotional activities, they record the “Collecting Addicts” podcast, co-hosted by Chris Cooper (racing driver and automotive industry consultant), Manish Pandey (director, creator documentaries “Senna” and “Lucky!”) and Neil Clifford (fashion businessman). The conversations in the podcast are not pompous, often on loose topics that appear in the head of every petrol-head (for example, what would be the perfect duo of cars up to a quarter of a million or which car gives the greatest satisfaction when shifting gears manually). The perfect listen for afternoon traffic jams.
Motorsport
“2023 will be remembered forever in the history of Polish motorsport.” This sentence has and will appear hundreds of times. So what happened? The Polish team won the LeMans 24 Hours, and Kuba Śmiechowski became the first Polish winner of this race. In addition, Inter Europol Competition recorded its best season in history and, apart from winning the highest price in the 100th anniversary edition of the above-mentioned race, it took second place in the general WEC classification in the LMP2 class. This success did not reach the media as strongly as the success of Robert Kubica, who finished the LeMans 24 Hours in second place, but already became the WEC overall champion. Hats off to both Drivers!
Retro
Today we admire the Mercedes 500 SL, that we photographed at the request of Julia, who runs a detailing studio next to Rondo Starzyńskiego in Warsaw. Precise work, professional service
Thank you!
Thank you for your attention, and I invite you to subscribe to the subscriber list. I also encourage you to support me on the Buy Me a Coffee website. It's a competitor to Patronite and Pateraon, but with a name closer to my heart ☕️ 😉 The purpose of the crowdfunding model is a development of the Heel and Toe Magazine and will ultimately enable full concentration on the project. In addition to monthly support, the sale of collector's prints in numbered series on archival papers will be launched in January.
Have a good one!