BMW Z4 with a Dodge Viper V10 engine

Right now in Germany someone’s selling the BMW Z4 coupe from hell.

You’ll need Google Translate’s help to read the EBay listing, but there’s no mistaking the numbers and letters ‘8.3-litre V10’.

That’s right, crammed into this black-on-black Z4’s bonnet is the beating heart from a Dodge Viper SRT.

There’s no story on the engine swap, but we suspect BMW’s own 5.0-litre V10 from the M5 might have been hard to find. Or its SMG-transmission hard to consider. This has a Tremec six-speed manual.

Amazingly, though, the seller’s managed to keep this ride street registered. So you can do the milk-run while surrounded by race seats, roll-cage, and six-point harnesses.

But we don’t think anyone will be using this thing anywhere but a racetrack. After all, there’s a reason it’s packing the six-pot Brembos from an Audi R8.

Better get clicking.

Pics via Ebay

The six-door Mini Clubman will be the next model in the Mini stable to receive the JCW treatment, with the BMW-owned British marque confirming today that the John Cooper Works version of its micro-wagon will make its first public showing at next month’s Paris Motor Show.

In a departure from tradition, the 2017 Mini Clubman JCW will transition from the front-drive configuration of its predecessor and adopt Mini’s All4 all-wheel drive drivetrain, making it the first F-series Mini to take power to all four wheels (the Countryman is also AWD, but is built on Mini’s older R-series architecture).

Power will be provided by a 170kW/350Nm turbocharged petrol inline four that makes the same power but 30Nm more torque than the blown 2.0 in the JCW hatch and convertible, with power being sent to all four wheels via a six-speed manual or eight-speed automatic.

Mini claims a 0-100km/h sprint of 6.3 seconds both the manual and auto JCW Clubman, which is identical to the JCW hatch manual’s zero-to-hundred dash time – despite the Clubman’s 250kg-odd of extra mass.Credit that to its extra torque (30Nm more than the JCW hatch) and grippy AWD driveline.

The rest of the JCW Clubman’s spec sheet reads much like that of its hatchback counterpart, with the availability of electronically adjustable dampers (which are expected to be standard in Australia), Brembo brakes, speed-sensitive power steering and 18-inch alloys. Engine, transmission, steering and suspension characteristics can all be altered through the drive mode selector, with three modes offered; Sport, Mid and Green.

Like the JCW hatch, the interior will feature JCW-specific sports seats with fatter bolsters, a girthy JCW steering wheel and a head-up display with unique graphics.

However, the JCW Clubman will boast a more practical cabin, with four-door access, seating for five, a 40:20:40 split rear seat and a hands-free sensor for opening its split tailgate.

The JCW Clubman will also debut Mini’s latest touchscreen-enabled infotainment system.

Local timing, specifications and pricing have yet to be announced, with the Australian launch for the John Cooper Works Clubman expected in the first half of next year.

BRITISH supercar maker and Formula One team McLaren has slammed the brakes on suggestions it is about to be bought by smartphone and computing giant Apple.

“We can confirm that McLaren is not in discussion with Apple in respect of any potential investment,” a McLaren spokesman said overnight as reports that the iPhone’s creator had opened the door to talks flooded the internet.

“As you would expect, the nature of our brand means we regularly have confidential conversations with a wide range of parties, but we keep them confidential.”

Likewise, Apple has declined to weigh in, stating it “does not comment on rumours or speculation”, media reports said.

A report in the British business newspaper, the , read as though the talks between the computing giant and the Formula One manufacturer had already progressed.

It claims that if a takeover was not possible, Apple would also be keen to talk about a strategic investment in the company that could have seen the California-based tech company’s logo emblazoned on the successor to the Honda-powered McLaren MP4-31.

However, Andrew Benson, the chief F1 writer for the BBC, sees more in it.

“What the McLaren statement means: ‘We were in talks with Apple but we’re not any more.’ Clearly was re Apple car, future of which is unclear,” he said.

Apple is believed to be reversing an earlier decision to develop a self-driving car – it recently started shedding staff tied up with the top-secret Project Titan, the name given to its autonomous push – and instead focus on developing the add-on bits that help cars drive themselves.

Its play for McLaren is believed to have been a means by which the cash-heavy Apple could buy much-needed credibility in the car-making game – unlike McLaren, Apple outsources almost all of its manufacturing to third parties.

In contrast, McLaren technology Group, which last financial year bounced back from a significant loss, plans for aggressive growth.

Its UK-based McLaren Technology Campus houses more than 3000 employees, and the company plans to increase the size of its facility by another 50 percent “to accommodate its projected future growth”.

McLaren has flagged that it wants to launch as many as 15 new models and derivatives by 2022, making it ripe for taking on a resource-heavy technology partner such as Apple.

As many as half these new models could directly tap into McLaren’s Formula One experience, featuring high-performance hybrid systems – technology that, like Apple’s products, sit at the cutting edge of development.

IT wouldn’t be a very correct analogy to say the HSV Maloo R8 LSA is the food equivalent of a good, old-fashioned Aussie meat pie.

Sure, it might look that way from the outside, but peel back the Australian pastry and you’ll find American beef (that 400kW 6.2-litre supercharged LSA V8) and some added spice thanks to not pepper, not chilli, but jalapenos.

Hanging off the back of that big slab of donk is a Mexican six-speed manual gearbox. And Ford fans, you might want to check the ingredients on the back of the Falcon’s label before chuckling at Clayton’s own odd recipe. You’ve got jalapenos, too.

Rated to as high as 950Nm it’s not hard to see why. Plus, it’s not a bad jigger. We’ve as many memories as this thing has synchros of clunky, cranky TR6060s. Its shift action has been compared to stirring a bucket of gravel with half a broomhandle but it’s come a long way; in fact for apparently inexplicable reasons it seems a much sweeter thing in VFII than VF.

In “MG9” spec, the Maloo R8 LSA’s TR6060 is rated to 747Nm, bolts to a twin-plate clutch and comes with its own oil cooler. And in Gen-F2 guise the heavy-ish clutch feels to bite a little less abruptly than Gen-F, the shift feels like it’s been regreased and banging up the gears is just a bit nicer than it was before.

Not that we tried, but it could probably still pull from a standstill, though. Unsurprisingly, the Maloo R8 LSA is the ‘torquiest’ car here, its 671Nm more than the Polo and Peugeot put together. Enough to pull even the biggest dill’s head in.

And lord is it fast. There’s grunt a-plenty, such that the gear ratios feel just right – a tad tall, but in a way that feels bang-on in a car like this. And it’s not like the Maloo R8 LSA is all engine, either. It absolutely has the chassis to match the power, cornering confidently and never getting scrappy, the tyres giving up the ghost before the chassis does – which is how it should be. The rest of the car absolutely keeps up with the engine to the extent that you need to remind yourself what it is you’re actually driving – an 1887kg ute with a three-metre wheelbase.

Extra points for the brilliant brake pedal feel, and for being easy to heel-toe. But minus points for at times simply being unable to conceal its bulk and an exhaust that sounds better outside the car than in. Oh, and the thirst. You’ll be treated like royalty at the local servo.

But the most impressive part is, you forget you’re in a ute. It drives better than it should. And you would absolutely take the manual over the GM-supplied six-speed 6L90E auto (which merely does the job).

YES, you would absolutely grab any HSV in manual over auto in Gen-F2 guise. It wasn’t always this way, the manual formerly just a little too heavy and clunky. But these days the clutch is friendlier, the gearchange slicker and the enjoyment higher.

SPECS 2-door, 2-seat ute rear-wheel 6162cc V8, OHV, 16v, supercharger 103.3 x 92.0mm 9.1:1 400kW @ 6150rpm 671Nm @ 4200rpm 212kW/tonne 6-speed manual 1887kg struts, coil springs, anti-roll bar multi-links, coil springs, anti-roll bar 5112/1899/1480mm 3009mm 1616/1590mm (f/r) electrically-assisted rack-and-pinion 367mm ventilated discs, 4-piston calipers 372mm ventilated discs, 4-piston calipers 20.0 x 8.5-inch, 20.0 x 9.5-inch (f/r) 255/35 ZR20 (f); 275/35 ZR20 (r) Continental ContiSportContact $76,990 Supercharged grunt; practicality; handling balance Fuel thirst; tyre wear; rear vision

First published in the September 2001 issue of Wheels magazine, Australia’s best car mag since 1953.

Ford gives its XR8 a 220kW kick in the guts, then sets off in pursuit of the long-departed Commodore SS. It’s a wheelspinning wow of a drive.

Ford against Holden. Falcon against Commodore. Five litres against 5.7. Iron against aluminium. And 220kW versus 225kW. Now that’s a contest. You care about the result. I care about it, too. Maybe you’re an enthusiast, a loyalist or a fanatic who desperately wants the outcome of this comparison to go one way or the other.

Fine. For me, it’s a little different. I just want our cars – Australian cars – to be good. And I especially want our most affordable V8 performance cars to be bloody good. Which is why I’m going to be hard on the new 220kW Ford Falcon XR8 and the year-old VX Commodore SS.

Criticism can make them both better, stronger cars. But that’s not going to be easy for some of you …

We’re here today because it finally dawned on Ford that a V8 with a ’90s power output wasn’t such a smart idea in the early noughties. Applying lessons learned during the development of the aluminium headed 5.0-litre V8 for the TS50 to the standard iron heads of the imported engine, the Ford-Tickford team managed to duplicate its 220kW output.

Why? Our bloody Correvit fell off. At something like 150km/h. So there I was with a couple of kilos of very expensive German microwave sensor being dragged up he bitumen at the end of its cable, with computer operating co-pilot Adam Porter making anguished noises in the passenger seat. Not only because, like me, he could imagine how expensive this mishap might prove. No, Porter was also preventing the sensor dragging the rest of the performance testing hardware through the window by clutching the cable connecting the sensor head to the small Correvit signal processing box in the footwell which was, in turn, linked to the computer on his lap.

I got hard into the brakes, but not too hard. Didn’t want to make things even worse by having the bouncing Correvit sensor catch up with the car to be run over.

There wasn’t too much damage to the SS. A shallow dent in the left rear door, near the doorhandle, was the worst of it. As well, there were a couple of superficial grazes to the rear quarter panel and bumper. The completed insurance form is in the mail. Good luck with it Holden. And sincere apologies.

But the Correvit was ugly. The microwave sensor’s machined aluminium casing has been badly ground and gouged. The sheathing of the cable had been rubbed through in several places. And the magnetic mat we’ve used for years without mishap to attach the microwave sensor to the side of all sorts of cars was mangled. Off to Correvit hospital for the whole sorry mess. And no SS standing start performance data.

It’s illuminating to compare the 220kW XR8’s dry strip standing start acceleration to the last SS we tested. One year ago the VT Series II SS ran 0-100km/h in 6.9 seconds and 0-400 metres in 15.0 seconds.

And no, I haven’t forgotten that Holden’s 5.7-litre V8 received an additional five kilowatts with the transformation from VT Series II to VX last year, but a piffling two percent power increase isn’t going to have a major impact on performance. These old SS figures are very slightly slower than the new XR8 delivered.

There’s no way I’m going to call it one way or another. Not when we don’t have data recorded on the same day at the same place with the same driver. What is abundantly clear is that the XR8is now in the same performance league as the SS when it comes to a straight drag race.

In normal driving, however, the Holden engine’s additional cubic centimetres and superior torque give it a slight edge in responsiveness in third, fourth and fifth gears. The gearing of the two cars is very similar all the way from first through to fifth.

The big difference is, of course, that the Holden has a sixth slot. It’s not a completely useless gear, although it is remarkably tall. Sixth delivers more than 65km/h per 1000 engine revs. Put another way, 110km/h equals about 1600rpm.

The XR8’s top gear, in contrast, means 110km/h equals 2400rpm.

Or two.

I’m not sure that anyone interested in cars like the XR8and SS cares much about fuel consumption.

But you’re going to hear about it anyway. The Holden’s sixth gear does deliver a decided advantage in country cruising. The SS’s best figure on this test of 8.2litres/100km is amazingly good, especially considering it burns regular 91 octane unleaded and the Ford requires premium 95. Even so, the XR8’s best of 9.2 litres/100km, is impressive. But drive these V8s like you’ve sometimes got to and the consumption gap narrows.

More often than not the Commodore will prove the more economical, but there was one hard-driven stage during our more than 1000km of testing where the XR8 beat it. What we’re talking about here, with both the Ford and Holden, is consumption in the 14.0 to 16.0-litres/100km range when doing the kind of driving you enjoy and remember.

All these numbers are very interesting, but they give no sense of the quite different characters of these two drivetrains.

The SS’s Gen III is a mighty effective chunk of aluminium, but it’s a remote and rather uninvolving engine. Its voice is too muffled, for a start. And even at the upper end of its rev scale it doesn’t communicate a feeling of eager willingness to the driver.

Part of the reason is that the accelerator pedal feels dead and heavy underfoot, at least until wheelspin invokes traction control system activity. The TC jerks about with the pedal, literally. It’s a feature designed to encourage the driver to lift off.

Funny, but I thought that’s what the TC electronics were supposed to do.

Rubbery, notchy, vague, heavy and with reverse in a dopey place (out on a dogleg beyond fifth); there’s not a single positive thing to say about it except that it seems to cope pretty well with 460 newton metres.

The XRS’s Australian-made T5 five-speeder is better. Its chief advantage is that it isn’t so rubbery. Unlike the Holden, it actually feels like the Ford’s gear lever is connected to a box full of oily, whirling cogs. With a conventional five-speed gate, the placement of reverse isn’t an issue.

And, finally, the XR8’s clutch is a little lighter and has a deal more feel than the SS’s. In just about every way that counts, this is a better manual transmission.

And the engine? What about the engine! Love it. This has got to be the dear old Windsor V8’s finest hour. Cast iron may not be the fashion today, but this engine’s booming responsiveness is never going to go out of style. Not until the oil runs out, anyway.

It sounds great. Suitably muted at idle and acceptably quiet at cruise speed revs, the 5.0-litre begins to sing as the needle swings past 3000. By 4000 it’s V8 Supercar soundtrack. Low-pitched exhaust from behind, high-pitched mechanical whine up front. While the red on the tach dial starts at 5750, the Ford V8 feels eager to spin harder all the way to the rather coarse cut-out at 6250.

There’s only one thing I can complain about, and that’s the tingling vibration that can be felt, especially through the floor, when the engine is spun into the thrill zone.

Unlike the SS, the XR8 has a light throttle pedal, which helps reinforce the impression of precise responsiveness. It’s a recurring theme in the Ford. The steering, likewise, is light, consistent and precise.And firm feeling brakes are bitingly effective with only moderate pedal pressure.

Our test car was equipped with Ford’s premium brake package. What this means is larger diameter front brakes and weird looking eccentric circular grooves cut in all four discs. Able to deliver dry road stopping distances from 100km/h of less than 40 metres, this is the one XR8 option you must have. Even though the cost is a steep $3050.

None of the other options in the test car – leather upholstery, Momo wheel and knob, body kit extras or in-dash six CD premium sound system; enough to push the price well beyond $50,000 off a base of $45,828 – is absolutely essential.

While the brakes, despite their feel, are competitively effective, the steering can sometimes behave strangely. Flinging the Holden sideways on dirt (traction control switched off, obviously), I found that getting the rear wheels spinning caused a startling decline in the level of assistance. It made what should have been fun damned hard work.

No such problem with the Ford. From the driver’s seat it’s a stark comparison between SS and XR8. The SS feels blunt-edged, desperately in need of a thorough sharpening.

Get past the marked differences in quality of the car-to-driver interface and the actual chassis dynamics of the two are not dissimilar. Both have a firm, but not too firm, ride. On second-rate rural roads they feel right at home, in control no matter how holed and heaved the surface may be.

The SS does tend to understeer a little more than the XR8, during both the turn-in and power-out phases of cornering. And the Ford also enjoys a small advantage when it comes to directional transitions. With its slightly superior roll control the Ford is the better tool for stringing corners together in a smoothly fluent sequence.

The new XR8, then, is a winner. It’s a much more rewardingly responsive drive than the SS, and now delivers similarly thrilling performance. Ford has ended the reign of the Gen III-engined SS as king of the affordable Australian V8-performance cars.

Deny it if you like. But that’s your problem, not mine.

Criticism can make them both better, stronger cars. But that’s not going to be easy for some of you …

Commodore SS drivers should worry, because the XR8 is now a 14-point-something second car. Just like theirs. The Ford’s vital statistics are 0-100km/h in 6.6 seconds, 0-400 metres in 14.8 seconds. I’d love to tell you how much faster or slower the SS Commodore is, but I can’t.

I got hard into the brakes, but not too hard. Didn’t want to make things even worse by having the bouncing Correvit sensor catch up with the car to be run over.

This disaster occurred during our second attempt at performance testing the XR8 and SS. First time out it rained. We got good in-gears rolling start data. Traction isn’t an issue in the rolling increments, but a damp strip obviously means standing start times are far from representative. Just to give you an idea, the XR8 was seven tenths of a second slower 0-100km/h in the wet than dry.

The XR8’s top gear, in contrast, means 110km/h equals 2400rpm.

On flat country roads the SS wafts along with only slight pressure on the accelerator pedal. While the Holden will climb gentle grades in sixth, actual acceleration demands a downchange.

Or two.

I’m not sure that anyone interested in cars like the XR8and SS cares much about fuel consumption.

All these numbers are very interesting, but they give no sense of the quite different characters of these two drivetrains.

Funny, but I thought that’s what the TC electronics were supposed to do.

Despite this criticism, the SS’s engine is better than its manual transmission. The US-made T56 six speeder is an awful old thing that Holden should cease buying. Now.

And, finally, the XR8’s clutch is a little lighter and has a deal more feel than the SS’s. In just about every way that counts, this is a better manual transmission.

There’s only one thing I can complain about, and that’s the tingling vibration that can be felt, especially through the floor, when the engine is spun into the thrill zone.

The SS, too, is cohesive. In a bad way. To go with the ghastly gearbox and doughy throttle pedal, Holden adds lumpily inconsistent steering weighting and a soggy brake pedal.

No such problem with the Ford. From the driver’s seat it’s a stark comparison between SS and XR8. The SS feels blunt-edged, desperately in need of a thorough sharpening.

Deny it if you like. But that’s your problem, not mine.

Lamborghini now offers a rear-drive alternative to its all-wheel-drive Lamborghini Huracan. What you lose in AWD wizardry is replaced with rear-drive magic.

TELL ME ABOUT THIS CAR

This is Lamborghini’s most affordable model, but it’s also arguably the Italian manufacturer’s most challenging and engaging, as it ditches all-wheel drive for rear-wheel drive, making it a properly testing – and rewarding – proposition for enthusiast drivers.

STRENGTHS

The engine dominates the experience. The 5.2-litre (non-turbo) V10 is truly a very special powerplant, indisputably one of the best engines on sale today. For punch, noise and character, the free-revving V10 is nothing short of epic, feeling almost hardwired to your spine in this application.
Removing the hardware that drives the front wheels in this car’s more expensive sibling saves 33kg, and other mechanical changes combine to make it even more lively and reactive at the limit of its performance envelope. Skilled drivers will love it, as demands precision and talent to deliver its best.
Striking styling and low-slung stance screams supercar, and turns heads accordingly. Not for shy retiring types.
Wonderfully planted and stable at high speed, unless provoked.

WEAKNESSES

Marginally less power and torque than the all-wheel-drive variant, although Lamborghini claims this is in deference to the rear tyres’ ability to harness the V10’s output.
An experts-only car with the electronic stability control turned off. For everyone else, the Corsa (Italian for “road”) mode allows sufficient slip at the limit to be both fun and challenging.
Low-slung driving position requires dexterity for entry and egress.
Low nose requires lift-kit function to clear speedhumps and driveways.
Limited luggage space and daily-driver usability.

ANYTHING ELSE I SHOULD CONSIDER?

Ferrari 488 GTB is even faster, but almost $100K more expensive, and the wait list is extensive. A McLaren 570S is line-ball on price, has a heavy-hitting twin-turbocharged V8 engine, but its sound is a bit muted against the Lambo, and the Mac is generally more clinical and less extroverted in character. This only leaves the Lambo’s under-skin twin, the Audi R8 V10. It’s a polished jewel of a supercar, but all-wheel drive means it’s more benign; less manic on the limit than the slightly nuts Huracan LP580-2.

Forget Max Verstappen, at 18 years old he’s already over the hill.

Meet 15-year-old Kalle Rovanpera, who if his current trajectory continues will be driving in the World Rally Championship very soon and winning it shortly after.

In fact, Rovanpera’s age is currently his biggest hurdle; most championships won’t allow him to compete. One that will is the Latvian Rally Championship, which Rovanpera is currently leading.

The above video is from the first stage of the weekend’s Rally Liepaja. This was a round of the European Rally Championship, which Rovanpera is unable to compete in due to his age, but he traded fastest stage times with the eventual winner Ralfs Sirmacis, including winning the opening stage by 4.4sec.

Rovanpera’s efforts earned him the Colin McRae Flat Out Trophy, awarded to a competitor who shows exceptional speed or bravery.

Long-time rally fans may recognise the name Rovanpera. Kalle’s dad is Harri Rovanpera, who competed in 111 world rallies as a works driver for SEAT, Peugeot, Mitsubishi and Skoda, winning the 2001 Swedish rally and scoring 15 podiums.

His son has clearly inherited his gifts behind the wheel, sliding around frozen lakes in a Toyota Starlet from the age of eight before rapidly progressing to his current Skoda Fabia R5, a class of car one step below World Rally machinery.

Rovanpera Jnr has already caught the eye of several WRC teams and recently conducted a short test in the 2017 Toyota Yaris WRC car under the watchful eye of Tommi Makinen.

Kalle Rovanpera – remember the name.

THE CADILLAC ATS-V has arrived in Australia – but it’s not what you think.

This lightly camouflaged left-drive prototype was spied on Melbourne’s Toorak Road last weekend and with its bonnet bulging and menacing quad tailpipes looked oh-so-right on Aussie soil.

This particular car could be even faster than the current American-spec ATS-V, too, given it’s undergoing development work and could be boasting who-knows-what under the skin. The current-spec ATS-V does 0-97km/h in 3.8sec with launch control and costs AUD$80K in the USA.

Instead this rogue 346kW super sedan was sent across the Pacific to have its powertrain calibration honed by none other than Holden’s own engineers.

“It’s here for ongoing global powertrain calibration work”, he said. “We’re going to be retaining that powertrain calibration engineering department and that’s the exactly the work we’re going to be doing – ongoing global work.”

It has an electronically-controlled limited slip diff, head-up display and magnetic ride control. There’s next to no chance of the ATS-V coming to Australia as sadly this generation was not engineered in right-hand drive. Here’s hoping the next one will be.

Toyota’s next ‘Supra’ has been filmed leaving a BMW facility at the Nurburgring.

It’s been known the two marques have joined forces on an all-new sportscar, one pegged to succeed the now-ceased Z4 and long-dead Supra.

This video, from the folks at Supra MkV, proves the project now lives and breathes, albiet in heavily disguised form.

Despite the swirls, we’re treated to our first preview of what the new car sounds like as it pulls from the precinct’s gates.

Visually the car sizes up much smaller than the old gen-four Supra, but still sports design signatures like a long bonnet and heavily raked windscreen.

Meanwhile there are hints of Toyota’s FT-1 concept about it, the company’s biggest clue about the project so far, like the far-apart front headlights.

Nor is it clear wether we’re seeing BMW’s or Toyota’s take on the project, as how similar each will be is not yet known.

More will be revealed closer to the car’s reveal, expected in 2018.

Fifteen years after BMW changed the way people consumed its marketing by using big-name directors to produce a series of internet-only short films featuring BMW cars, the German automaker has announced the initiative will be relaunched.

The first film of the new series will be aired at 6pm on 23 October (EST) via BMW’s microsite and, like each of the previous eight films which formed the series named The Hire, the protagonist known as The Driver will be again played by British actor Clive Owen.

The yet-to-be released filmed titled The Escape will be directed by 37-year-old Hollywood director Neill Blomkamp, who already has box-office hits such as the 2009 film District 9 and, more recently, the 2015 film Chappie to his name.

“I was like, ‘man, count me in’,” Blomkamp told The Hollywood Reporter. “When I was in film school, these films were really groundbreaking. They seemed like the perfect halfway point between commercials and features.

“I actually emailed the production company as a 20-year-old and was like, ‘I’d really like to make one of these.’ They wrote back, ‘Never contact us again.’ And here I am!”

The 11-minute short film will be a continuation of the original eight-part series, where regardless of each film’s individual plot, Owen would save the day with an impressive display of highly skilled driving in an equally impressive BMW car.

Owen will be joined by other big-name stars such as Dakota Fanning, Vera Vermiga and Jon Bernthal in the film which, though so far unconfirmed, is likely to be the first of many in a new series.

The original eight-part, internet-only series was enormously successful. The films were directed by the likes of Joe Carnahan, Wong Kar-wai, Guy Ritchie, John Woo and the late Tony Scott, and all featured talent like Gary Oldman, Mickey Rourke and Madonna starring alongside Owen.

In the early days of broadband internet, the films returned incredible traffic for the German carmaker, with 11 million views reported in the first four months, a figure which blew out to a reported 100 million views in four years — impressive by the world’s internet viewing standards of the early 2000s.

BMW reported a 12 percent rise in new car sales following the release of films, which it in part accredited to the series’ remarkable popularity.

Search

Suggested Categories

Ford gives its XR8 a 220kW kick in the guts, then sets off in pursuit of the long-departed Commodore SS. It’s a wheelspinning wow of a drive.