MOTOR Magazine Australia

front end. ed’s note

“I RESEARCHED WHICH is more deadly,” says random dude on an internet forum. “Racing at the Isle of Man versus storming the beaches of Normandy at D-Day. If a rider contemplates racing the IOM TT for two to three years, his odds of surviving D-Day are the same as odds of surviving the racing.” That’s an incredible statistic. It’s also completely untrue. One in 36 who braved the beaches at Normandy lost their lives. Some 376 riders competed in the TT in 2019, so to replicate that attrition rate, nearly 10 of them would have to have perished. Only one did. Yet these nonsenses concerning safety in motorsport often go unchallenged. I write this in the wake of the outcome of this year’s Targa Tasmania, where three competitors lost their lives. Motorsport…

[01] the meg

IF IT HAPPENED THIS MONTH, IT’S IN HERE KEEP YOUR EYES open on an industry pool day at the Nurburgring and you’ll see Katharina. You probably won’t hear her coming as she’s not the shouty type, but an encounter is not an experience you’ll forget in a hurry. She’s rapid. For Katharina is the project title of BMW’s little 50th birthday present to the M Division and it packs a solid megawatt. That’s a cool 1000kW, or 1321hp. Koenigsegg Agera RS power, if you prefer, or more than a modern F1 car, all wrapped up in the body of an M2 CS. The iM2, as it’s dubbed within the halls at Garching-Hochbruck, is serious business. Powered by four electric motors and boasting radical four-wheel torque vectoring, the iM2 is, for the time…

baby driver

BMW HAS SOME form when it comes to one-off pocket hot rods as little gifts to itself. Back in 1996, it built the E36 M3 Compact, which would have been comfortably the quickest production hot hatch in the world at the time, had it ever entered production. Instead, BMW teased us with images of the 1300kg 240kW hatch, built to commemorate the 50th birthday of German automotive magazine Auto Motor und Sport. The guts of the E36 M3 Compact would later be resurrected in the form of the Z3 M Coupe, the one-off E36 Compact these days residing at BMW Group Classic.…

[02] alpine swallows renault sport

ALPINE IS A COMPANY in transition. What was once a minor offshoot of the Renault empire based on the bleak northern coast of France has suddenly been shunted into the limelight. Rebranding Renault’s F1 team beneath the Alpine banner has boosted brand awareness to the tune of 433 million race viewers a week, but now it’s Renault’s job to turn that recognition into products that people will actually buy. Thus far that has been a problem. The A110, for all its critical acclaim, has been a poor seller. Here in Australia, year to date sales stand at a single car, sold through its sole dealer in Melbourne. Only 35 cars found owners in 2019 and a mere seven units were registered last year. Even in stronger markets, such as France and…

[03] corvette lands in oz

THE CHEVROLET C8 Corvette is nearing an anticipated local launch following the public debut of a left-hand drive model last month. While a factory-built right-hook model is yet to appear locally, GMSV says deliveries of the Aussie C8 will begin in Q4 this year. Both the Z51 Performance Package and Front Lift kit will be standard for Australian Corvettes, with the former adding a dual-mode performance exhaust, performance suspension with MagneRide dampers, larger Brembo brakes, an electronic limited-slip differential, extra cooling, and a new, shorter rear axle ratio (a 5.2:1 final drive vs 4.9:1) for the Tremec-built eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. With the different gearing, the Z51 is able to better deploy the 369kW and 637Nm produced by the midmounted 6.2-litre naturally-aspirated V8 for a claimed 2.8 second sprint to 97km/h (60mph). Both coupe and…

[04] “no mr bond, i intend to save this company”

BEFORE TOBIAS MOERS jumped ship to Aston Martin from his job at AMG, he probably thought he had a decent grasp on the issues facing the venerable British manufacturer. Not so, it turns out. The former head of Mercedes-Benz’s performance division has had his feet under the desk at Gaydon for roughly a year now, and he has revealed that things at the historic brand were rather dire upon his arrival. “Some things were obviously fundamentally wrong,” Moers told our sister-publication, CAR. “We were, for instance, wasting cash on a new V6. It did not even comply with EU7 regulations at a point in time when it was already clear that combustion powerplants will soon be a thing of the past.” In a bold move, that V6, set to be fitted to the mid-engined…