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Jaguar’s new XF to walk the tightrope

22 March, 2015

The Jaguar XF was first released in 2007, and is Jaguar’s biggest-selling and most awarded car. The all-new XF is to be revealed on March 24 and, featuring Jaguar’s aluminium-intensive architecture, is expected to provide class-leading efficiency, weight, and design — Ian Callum, Jaguar’s director of design, has said, “I believe the all-new XF will be the best-looking car in its class.”   

The XF’s lightweight credentials are to be highlighted, and Jaguar have thought of something quite outside the square to achieve this. The aluminium-intensive XF will be driven, in what Jaguar call a high-wire drive, across two 34mm thick wires suspended high above water.

Jaguar has enlisted world-renowned stunt driver Jim Dowdall — whose driving has starred in films including James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Indiana Jones titles — to help pull it off.

A teaser video for the feat can be viewed below.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.

Lancia Stratos – building a winner

12 March, 2025

On his own, and later with his wife Suzie, Craig Tickle has built and raced many rally cars. Starting in 1988, Craig went half shares in a Mk1 Escort and took it rallying. Apart from a few years in the US studying how to be a nuclear engineer, he has always had a rally car in the garage. When he is not playing with cars, he works as an engineer for his design consulting company.
Naturally, anybody interested in rallying has heard of the Lancia Stratos, the poster child and winner of the World Rally circuit in 1974, ’75, and ’76. Just as the Lamborghini Countach rebranded the world of supercars, so, too, did the Lancia Stratos when it came to getting down and dirty in the rally world.