Monday, September 14, 2009

1995 Herdez Lola Ford Goodyear Dick Simon Racing #22 Carlos Guerrero IndyCar.











Carlos Guerrero (born November 20, 1957, Mexico City, Mexico) is a former driver in the CART Championship Series who was a multiple Formula Three and Formula Two champion in his native Mexico. He raced in the 1995–1996 CART seasons with 17 career starts, including the 1995 Indianapolis 500. He was eliminated in a crash on the first lap, becoming one of a handful of drivers to qualify for only one Indianapolis 500 and fail to complete a lap. His best career finish in CART was 11th position at the 1995 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

He is not related to race driver Roberto Guerrero.

Monday, September 7, 2009

1998 Chevrolet Corvette C5 Convertible Burago 1:24











The Chevrolet Corvette (C5) is the fifth generation of the Chevrolet Corvette sports car, produced by the Chevrolet division of General Motors for the 1997 through 2004 model years. Production variants include the high performance Z06. Racing variants include the C5-R, a 24 Hours of Daytona and 24 Hours of Le Mans GTS/GT1 class winner.
A major change from its predecessor the C4, was a hydroformed box frame, a design that offered an improved structural platform, especially for a convertible bodystyle. To improve handling, the transmission was relocated to form an integrated, rear-mounted transaxle assembly. Connected to the all-new LS1 engine via a torque tube, the engine/transmission arrangement enabled a 50-50% front-rear weight distribution. The LS1 engine initially produced 345 hp (257 kW), subsequently increased in 2001 to 350 hp (261 kW). The 4L60-E automatic transmission carried over from previous models, but the manual was replaced by a Borg-Warner T-56 6-speed capable of a 175 mph (282 km/h) top speed. Relative to the C4, the new platform and structural design substantially reduced squeaks and rattles.

Friday, August 28, 2009

1955 Volkswagen Type 1 Käfer Beetle Fusca Bug Sedán Oval Window 1:25 SS












The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German der Käfer (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, intended for five occupants (later, Beetles were restricted to four people in some countries), that was manufactured and marketed by German automaker Volkswagen (VW) from 1938 until 2003.

The need for a people's car (Volkswagen in German), its concept and its functional objectives were formulated by the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, who wanted a cheap, simple car to be mass-produced for his country's new road network (Reichsautobahn). Members of the National Socialist party, with an additional dues surcharge, were promised the first production, but the Spanish Civil War shifted most production resources to military vehicles to support the Nationalists under Francisco Franco. Lead engineer Ferdinand Porsche and his team took until 1938 to finalise the design. Béla Barényi is credited with first conceiving the original design for this car in 1925, notably by Mercedes-Benz, on their website, including his original technical drawing, five years before Porsche claimed to have done his initial version. The influence on Porsche's design of other contemporary cars, such as the Tatra V570, and the work of Josef Ganz remains a subject of dispute. The result was the first Volkswagen, and one of the first rear-engined cars since the Brass Era. With 21,529,464 produced, the Beetle is the longest-running and most-manufactured car of a single platform ever made.

Friday, August 21, 2009

1991 Chevrolet Beretta GTZ AMT 1:25











The Chevrolet Beretta is a front-wheel-drive two-door coupé produced by Chevrolet from 1987 to 1996. The Beretta was designed in the same design studio as the Camaro and the Corvette, Chevrolet Exterior Studio 3, and was built at the Wilmington, Delaware, and Linden, New Jersey assembly plants with other GM L platform models, the Chevrolet Corsica which came shortly before the Beretta, and the Canada-only Pontiac Tempest four-door sedans. The Beretta was produced in base, CL, GT, GTU, Indy, GTZ and Z26 models. A convertible was the pace car for the 1990 Indianapolis 500, and GM initially announced a production convertible replica, but a coupe version was offered instead.

Friday, August 14, 2009

1982 Citroën 2CV 6 Charleston 1:24 Welly











The Citroën 2CV (French: deux chevaux or deux chevaux-vapeur, pronounced [dø ʃ(ə)vo (vapœʁ)], lit. "two steam horses", "two tax horsepower") is an air-cooled front-engine, front-wheel-drive, economy family car, introduced at the 1948 Paris Mondial de l'Automobile, and manufactured by Citroën for model years 1948–1990.

Conceived by Citroën Vice-President Pierre Boulanger to help motorise the large number of farmers still using horses and carts in 1930s France, the 2CV has a combination of innovative engineering and utilitarian, straightforward metal bodywork—initially corrugated for added strength without added weight. The 2CV featured low cost, simplicity of overall maintenance, an easily serviced air-cooled engine (originally offering 9 hp), low fuel consumption, and an extremely long-travel suspension offering a soft ride and light off-road capability.

Often called "an umbrella on wheels", the fixed-profile convertible bodywork featured a full-width, canvas, roll-back sunroof, which accommodated oversized loads, and until 1955 even stretched to cover the car's trunk, reaching almost down to the car's rear bumper.

Michelin introduced and first commercialised the revolutionary new radial tyre design with the introduction of the 2CV.

Manufactured between 1948 and 1990, more than 3.8 million 2CVs were produced, making it the world's first front-wheel drive car to become a million seller, after Citroën's own, more upscale Traction Avant was the first front-wheel drive car to sell in six-figure numbers. The 2CV platform spawned many variants, as detailed in the "Production numbers" section. The 2CV and its variants are collectively known as the A-Series. Notably these include the 2CV-based delivery vans known as fourgonnettes, the Ami, the Dyane, the Acadiane, and the Mehari. In total, Citroën manufactured over 9 million of the 2CVs and its derivative models.

A 1953 technical review in Autocar described "the extraordinary ingenuity of this design, which is undoubtedly the most original since the Model T Ford". In 2011, The Globe and Mail called it a "car like no other". The motoring writer L. J. K. Setright described the 2CV as "the most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car", and a car of "remorseless rationality".

Both the design and the history of the 2CV mirror the Volkswagen Beetle in significant ways. Conceived in the 1930s, to make motorcars affordable to regular people for the first time in their countries, both went into large scale production in the late 1940s, featuring air-cooled boxer engines at the same end as their driven axle, omitting a length-wise drive shaft, riding on exactly the same 2,400 mm (94.5 in) wheelbase, and using a platform chassis to facilitate the production of derivative models. Just like the Beetle, the 2CV became not only a million seller, but also one of the few cars in history to continue a single generation in production for over four decades.