How lovely is this? For those Porsche fans lucky enough to be tapped on the shoulder, the limited-run 935 Le Mans tribute version of the present-day 911 GT2 RS has to be one of the coolest things they’ll be putting in their air-conditioned eight-car garage this year.
Produced in a tiny amount for true enthusiasts (just 77 are being built), the 935 Le Mans tribute is inspired by the 1970s-era “Moby Dick” race car. How much has its silhouette changed from the modern 911 GT2 RS? The tribute Porsche is 4.87m long and more than 2m wide and that rear wing is 1.9m wide and 40cm deep.
It uses the same 3.8-litre water-cooled six-cylinder twin-turbo as the GT2 RS, as well as the same seven-speed PDK dual-clutch gearbox. It features a race-optimised limited-slip diff and a lightweight multi-link suspension set-up at the rear (MacPherson struts at the front). It also costs €701,948 (NZ$1.23 million).
Regardless, it’s 50 shades of awesome ... and, presumably, sold out.
Is Horch one luxury sub-brand too far?
With luxury being the new luxury, the desire for carmakers (generally European ones) to unveil a mink-fur-and-mahogany sub-brand for the one-percenters is always present. Daimler brought Maybach, er, back from the brink, then fell out of love with it, and is now keen to re-establish it.
It appears Audi wants to do the same thing. With Horch. It’s German, don’t you know.
Horch, like Maybach, was a luxury marque back in the mists of time, dating from when Audi was one part of the Auto Union conglomerate. Rumours suggest that when the just-released A8 gets its midlife upgrade in a couple of years, it may be branded Horch.
More than just a logo on the bootlid, the refreshed range-topper would feature different styling elements, including wheels and grille design, and an off-the-shelf W12 powerplant.
The Horch brand (we’re not sure whether it would be a single model, or perhaps an uber-luxo version of the forthcoming Audi Q8 SUV) would essentially fill the role for Audi that Bentley does in the wider Volkswagen Group universe.
But where Bentley enjoys a very English pedigree, Horch would, as it says on the tin, be very, very German.
Like Maybach, the big issue for Audi would be educating the globe’s diminishing stock of executive sedan buyers what Horch actually is. It’s hardly the sort of nameplate that rolls of the tongue. Or sounds like a car at all. Pickled veges come to mind.
August Horch was a former employee of Karl Benz back in the 1890s and started making his own “motor carriages” in 1903, beginning with a twin-cylinder 10hp vehicle.
He produced his first Horch six-cylinder engine just a year later and the brand would go on to become synonymous with top-end luxury V8 cars through the 1920s and 30s.
The other factoid about August Horch is that it was he who registered the Audi name in the first place. “Audi” is the Latin translation of the German verb “horchen”, which means “listen”.
Will Audi reinstate its halo sedan with heritage glamour? Only time — and the desires of a dwindling supply of eager buyers — will tell.
So, the cameras instead of wing mirrors thing has finally happened …
Just like cabins without steering wheels and revolving conversational chairs, the idea of a camera instead of a boring wing mirror has long been the stuff of car-show concept imagineering; the sort of idea that designers spit-ball in the same study sessions as 26-inch wheels and LED lights that display the driver’s emotional state to fellow motorists.
Until now, that is.
Lexus has recently revealed that cameras will replace wing mirrors on the 2019 Lexus ES as an optional extra.
Oh, and only for the Japanese domestic market at this stage.
The cameras and displays are officially known as Digital Side-View Monitors.
Instead of mirrors hanging off the A-pillar in the conventional sense, two cameras placed on thin stalks where the mirrors would usually be feed live pictures to 5-inch display monitors at each end of the dashboard.
So, essentially Lexus has brought the external wing mirror inside the cabin.
It seems like a lot of fuss for nothing really, although the luxury carmaker reckons cameras instead of mirrors isn’t a fad. Lexus says the thinner assemblies the cameras need mean that wind noise is reduced and the camera tech itself offers more than a conventional mirror.
Lexus says that its cameras can adapt to changing driving situations, panning to give a wider view of the driver’s blind spot when the indicators are flicked on, for example.
There’s no word on when the technology might be on offer in other markets, or what impact cameras instead of wing mirrors might have on the Lexus ES’s crash test safety score in Europe, North America or Australia.