Next thing – crash! I lost both legs. Still, at least she lost her licence. The Comic Strip Presents ... s2e5: Gino, Channel 4 1984
Take most people, they’re crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they’re always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon … I don’t even like old cars. I mean they don’t even interest me. I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake. J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951
Only three hundred will ever be built. And to buy one will cost you over a million pounds. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 in just 2.5 seconds. With a top speed of more than two hundred and fifty miles an hour. And incredibly it can break from this speed to a standstill in less than ten seconds. This iconic brand is brought back to life and into the twenty-first century. The Bugatti Veyron. Unlike any car ever made. Bugatti Super Car, Dave 2010
In 1998 Volkswagen brought the rights to the brand. ibid.
They decide to bolt together two V-8 engines and create one giant 16-cylinder monster. The new engine is called a W-16. ibid.
It takes a week to assemble one engine. ibid.
It takes fifteen hours to build one radiator, and each Bugatti Veyron has ten. ibid.
They call it a double-clutch transmission ... Two gears can be engaged at the same time. ibid.
One thousand and one horse-power. ibid.
A set of replacement tyres costs £11,000. ibid.
At top speed the Veyron gets less than three miles to the gallon. ibid.
People who want to own an extremely rare piece of mechanical art. Part aeroplane, part car. The Bugatti Veyron is a unique piece of engineering. ibid.
There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble – we’d move a foot – hope would rise – then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we’d be stuck again. Everyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so far and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger p137
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1957
General Motors confirmed today it is going to close plants employing almost 30,000 workers. Dan Rather, CBS evening news November 1986
Today we are announcing the closing of eleven of our older plants. Roger Smith, General Motors
We are in love with the car. Six hundred million of them keep us on the move. But this object of desire is also a killer. Around the world each year over a million people die on the roads. But scientists hope to change this. We are now entering a bold new era of research and design. Horizon: Surviving a Car Crash, BBC 2011
The first step to saving lives on the roads is to understand what really happens when things go terribly wrong – in a crash. ibid.
During this third impact, the movement of fragile organs inside our bodies can be lethal. This third stage is the hidden killer in the car crash. ibid.
They start to explore the extreme limits of human biology and mechanics. The goal: nothing less than a future with no lethal car crashes. ibid.
Miami – an American city in love with the car it is also home to some of the world’s most innovative safety research projects. ibid.
Not all research happens in the laboratory. ibid.
Fast diagnosis and treatment are essential. ibid.
More passengers die from abdominal trauma than anything else. ibid.
An entirely new breed of crash-test dummy. ibid.
48,299. The way our mind works is coming under increasing scrutiny than ever before. ibid.
At the time thousands of people were needlessly dying every year on the roads ... In the 1960s up to eight thousand people a year died on Britain’s roads. Impact! A Horizon Guide to Car Crashes, BBC 2013
Style often conflicted with safety. ibid.
In 1983 wearing front seatbelt finally became a legal requirement. ibid.
The motorcar has shrunk the world … Soon we will be in a position to have our automotive cake and eat it. This is a world where cars will drive themselves. Horizon: Dawn of the Driverless Car, BBC 2017
Could we actually be sleepwalking into a nightmare? ibid.
Artificial Intelligence is the latest technological new kid on the block. ibid.
The motorcar has shrunk the world, increased personal freedom, and in so many ways expanded our horizons. But there’s a flipside: cars have destroyed our environment, poisoned the air we breathe and killed us in far more straightforward ways. But all that’s going to change. Soon we will be in a position to have our automotive cake and eat it. This is a world where cars will drive themselves … Could we actually be sleepwalking into a nightmare? Horizon: Dawn of the Driverless Car, BBC 2018
Building a race-car is an art-form like no other ... In the battle that was the Cobra-Ferrari Wars that something was personal. This is the story of two cars, two men and one race. It is the story of one man’s dream to build the car that would take on the imperious aristocracy of European racing and win. That car was the Shelby Cobra. The man who named it – Carroll Shelby. Cobra-Ferrari Wars, BBC 2012
Shelby pursued a career as a racing driver. He had a raw talent for driving. ibid.
Shelby found himself on the circuits of Monaco, Monza and Spa. This was the home of Maserati, Jaguar and Ferrari ... He had joined the European elite. ibid.
Shelby and Aston Martin set their sights on the cruellest, toughest race in the world – Le Mans. ibid.
Unbelievably, Shelby had mastered the most prestigious of all races, and beaten Ferrari on his first attempt. ibid.
Shelby’s idea was to build a race-car that would take him back to the racetracks of Europe. ibid.
A remarkable marriage of continents: a lightweight British chassis from the narrow country lanes of Europe powered by an enormous V8 engine built for the 5-lane highways of America. ibid.
Shelby’s little Cobra was showing the Corvettes the way home. ibid.
The new Cobra – product of Phil Remington’s workshop and Ken Miles’ endless testing proved a spectacular success. ibid.
Ford wanted to hit Ferrari where it would hurt – the racetrack. ibid.
Shelby realised that if he was going to win he would need a more aerodynamic car. ibid.
They ironed out the problems and produced a car that was not only aerodynamically sound it was fast, damned fast: Shelby American Cobra Daytona. ibid.
Daytona Speedway and the Ferrari were out in force. ibid.
Shelby and his crew headed for the tracks of Europe with the new Daytona Coupe and a brace of roadsters. ibid.
Le Mans 1964: Carroll Shelby and his ’mule’ versus the rest of the world. ibid.
The car that Carroll built had made it to the end of the hardest twenty-four hours in motor-racing and finished in front. ibid.
It’s amazing to me how much we all tolerate the carnage that occurs on the world’s highways ... We are addicted to the automobile. Dr Stephen Olvey, University of Miami
He’d have to get under, get out and get under
And fix his automobile. Grant Clarke & Adgar Leslie
The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad and incomplete in the urban compound. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964