By Jeff Glucker
I’m not talking about a homologation special here. I want to know about actual factory-backed race cars that you wish you could purchase. This leads me to assume some of you will go with some iteration of the Corvette, as it has been produced in a number of amazing racing versions over the years. There are certainly a handful of Porsches, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi products as well.
This question popped in my head because Ford just announced a new varietal of Bronco that is built for desert battle. It’s called the Bronco DR and we will get into that vehicle a bit more later today.
For now, let’s talk about all the various amazing factory-produced racing efforts and which ones you’d love to own. A Bentley GT3 would be high on my list, simply for the noise it makes:
It’s strange how, 25 years later, there’s one answer that pops to my mind, and really nothing else can compete with it.
Without question the works 1906 Shawmut Roundabout that won the 1909 Ocean to Ocean Automobile Endurance Contest. Not only was it a magnificent effort from a deeply distressed company but the finish line is conveniently just outside my office window.
With the high likelihood that I would put any proper racing vehicle into the nearest ditch, I’d be best served if I had a fighting chance of driving myself out of it. So something along the lines of Jeff’s example would be good, but for novelty’s sake, I’d go with the Dakar 959.
The Group 3 Rover P6, with it’s Traco-Oldsmobile 4.3 litre V8, Muncie gearbox and Jaguar diff.
Could go for lots of Le Mans or Bathurst winners but to be practical a London-Sydney Marathon Falcon GT. Saw one for sale about 20 years ago but of course was not in a position to buy it…
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/7b94c8ba5387833119777602ebe78b56?width=1024
To attach a pic
Do one-offs count? (As long as we’re going alternate-reality, I can choose to imagine a dimension where these went into larger production and got picked up by a few race teams…) Assuming so, the original Stingray (XP-87) is up there for me, just because it’s so darn pretty.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/1959_Corvette_XP-87_Stingray.jpg
Oh right, different image-embed method…