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The Road Rat Magazine The Road Rat. World's most beautiful car magazine
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"The 911 GT1 and CLK GTR are the last true homologation specials from tier one sports car racing, preposterous objects t...
09/07/2025

"The 911 GT1 and CLK GTR are the last true homologation specials from tier one sports car racing, preposterous objects that have come to represent the final chapter in one of the most enthralling stories of the motor car. True race cars for the road, they are without equal."

1997 Straßenversion hits the road.

Photography: Porsche Archive

Snippet taken from 'Straßenversion' in Edition 18; a story by Matt Master on the Porsche 911 GT1, which became the last car you could drive home from Le Mans after winning it.

Purchase your copy from the Road Rat archive:

https://theroadrat.com/products/edition-no-18

“That Pininfarina – globally and historically the most respected purveyors of automotive design elegance, with an unmatc...
09/07/2025

“That Pininfarina – globally and historically the most respected purveyors of automotive design elegance, with an unmatched track record of more than half a century of supremely dignified designs – habitually failed at creating a luxury GT design that could even remotely match the R-Type Continental’s grace and style is testament to the scale of Evernden’s and Blatchley’s achievement. Only on paper did their Continental mark the beginning of a bloodline. In reality, it was a singularity, a one-off.”

Photography: Sam Walton

In The Road Rat Edition 9, Christopher Butt () examines the work of designer John Blatchley and engineer Ivan Evernden, in the form of the beautiful Bentley R-Type Continental – now over 70 years old. The epitome of English luxury and style, it emerged in an age of post-war austerity, yet it showed the way forward for Bentley and parent company Rolls-Royce, and remains a touchstone to this day.

Buy this and other archive editions via The Road Rat store:

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France in the 1970s was modernising. TGV, Concorde, Ariane: fast, faster, fastest. A new Speed Age. Yet an automobile of...
06/07/2025

France in the 1970s was modernising. TGV, Concorde, Ariane: fast, faster, fastest. A new Speed Age. Yet an automobile of French manufacture had not won the country’s most important race for over 20 years. Matra was about to put that right.

“In 1972, the president arrived at the circuit in a stretched Citroën SM Décapotable having laid a wreath in Le Mans to commemorate its resistance fighters. He wasn’t planning to stay long: a few laps perhaps. It would be just long enough to see the first Matra retire in a cloud of piston smoke directly opposite the main grandstand – and for privateer Lolas to set the pace during the first hour. A thunder-faced Lagardère walked down the pitlane with a sidelined Jean-Pierre Beltoise. Meanwhile Gérard Ducarouge – an engineer in aviator shades and a blue-and-white Matra Sports zip-up jacket, who was at the heart of this scorched earth programme – likely stubbed out another nervy Gitanes. Even with money no object, failure was unthinkable.
‘Our V12 was still in development,’ said Beltoise in reference to inlet tracts now being inside the vee rather than between the camshafts, to allow for a narrower valve angle. ‘It was only really okay by the end of 1972. We had oil circulation problems, particularly in F1 because we used more revs.’”

François Cevert weaving through the Esses in ’72.
Gérard Larrousse leaving the pits at Le Mans in 1973.
The battered helmet of Henri Pescarolo – Teammate Graham Hill was quick to acknowledge his junior’s talent: ‘I cannot praise Henri highly enough.’
Graham Hill was 43 at the time of his 1972 win, his last major victory. Pescarolo, a mere 29, said of him, ‘He took risks. He did a fabulous job.'

Photography: Bernard Cahier

Extract from 'Rocket Men', a story by Paul Fearnley in The Road Rat Edition 11. Get your copy and other archive editions at theroadrat.com.

https://theroadrat.com/products/issue-011

“Most of the lowriding in the ’90s happened in East LA, Downtown and South Central, and although it originated with Lati...
02/07/2025

“Most of the lowriding in the ’90s happened in East LA, Downtown and South Central, and although it originated with Latino culture, there’s always been African American communities involved. In LA we all live together, go to the same schools, the same churches, the same liquor stores; the music, the clothing, the cars, it all goes together. If you’re rapping about the Hood, lowriding is part of the Hood so it’s like a no-brainer, it goes with the territory. Everyone who was rapping back then grew up around lowriders.”

Story and photography:

The early ’90s, and West Coast hip hop is rattling windows from Compton to Preston, with rappers like Dr Dre, 2Pac, Snoop Dog and Cypress Hill selling albums in the millions. The atmosphere is febrile, with riots erupting in Los Angeles. As for the ‘Hood sport’, that’s lowriding, the Chevrolet Impala the car of choice. Estevan Oriol, tour manager to House of Pain and Cypress Hill, is at the heart of it. When he’s 26, his dad gives him a Minolta SRT SC-II camera and says, ‘You should document all this.’

Enjoy his story 'Lowriding in the '90s' in The Road Rat Edition 16 – available via our archive:

https://theroadrat.com/products/edition-no-16

“Not even the post-fuel-crisis end of the Wankel craze can diminish the C111’s continuing relevance though. As a high-pe...
30/06/2025

“Not even the post-fuel-crisis end of the Wankel craze can diminish the C111’s continuing relevance though. As a high-performance test bed, it remains without equal, whether powered by a Wankel engine, a regular V8, or used for developing the first ABS systems. At the behest of German motoring journalism Grandseigneur, Fritz B Busch, it even enters a third career, as a Rekordwagen.
Fitted with Mercedes’ five-cylinder diesel engine, on 12 June 1976 the C111-II D sets three world and 16 class records, as it drives 10,000 miles over the course of 60 hours on the Nardò track at an average speed of more than 155mph. Then on 29 April 1978, the C111-III, an aerodynamically focused design, sets nine speed records, reaching an average speed of 200mph over 310 miles. A year later, on 5 May 1979, the C111-IV sets the model’s final speed record (of 251mph) on the Nardò circuit. This rigorously aerodynamic version is powered by a 493bhp, 4.8-litre V8 engine with twin turbochargers.
Rekordwagen, engineering test bed, supercar, design statement: over the course of a decade, the Mercedes C111 – all 15 iterations – takes on many roles with aplomb.”

The C111-III encased in aerodynamic bodywork, 1977, and on a record run at the Nardò Ring, 1978.

Photography: Mercedes-Benz AG

Snippet taken from a story by Christopher Butt () in The Road Rat Edition 16 on Mercedes’ record-breaking prototype that ruled the Nardò test track, the C111.

Get your copy today via our archive.

https://theroadrat.com/collections/buy-magazines

In the same week reports suggest AMG may scrap its 4-cylinder PHEV in favour of straight-sixes and a new V8, the brand r...
29/06/2025

In the same week reports suggest AMG may scrap its 4-cylinder PHEV in favour of straight-sixes and a new V8, the brand reveals an entirely different future.

The new AMG GT XX concept is a 1,340bhp electric prototype with echoes of the C111, said to preview AMG’s incoming e-hypercar. Design experiment? Powertrain statement? Bit of both?

Tell us, would you welcome an all-electric AMG flagship? Or is the V8 still the soul of Affalterbach?

Artist Joe Rush first introduced ‘Carhenge’ at Glastonbury Festival back in 1987 – a scrap-metal homage to Stonehenge, c...
27/06/2025

Artist Joe Rush first introduced ‘Carhenge’ at Glastonbury Festival back in 1987 – a scrap-metal homage to Stonehenge, constructed in response to the ban on New Age travellers accessing the ancient site. That moment sparked one of the UK’s largest mass arrests since the Second World War, and the installation quickly took on a deeper cultural resonance. This year, Carhenge returns once again, reimagined as a tribute to the trailblazers of underground culture – figures like Quentin Crisp, Vivienne Westwood and Chuck Berry.

The structure is built from a chaotic sprawl of mutated classics – everything from battered Morris Minors to Cadillacs and Jaguars, all a long way past economical restoration – and this year’s version comes complete with its own bar, music stage and smoke machine.

At first glance, it’s not an easy sight for the automotive purist: a scrapyard fever dream where once-beautiful machines have been pushed past recognition. But spend a little more time with it, and its intent becomes clear. The decay is not accidental, but essential – a confrontation with nostalgia, rebellion and the shifting meanings of heritage. In its own rough, theatrical way, it’s one of the most thought-provoking classic car displays we’ve seen.

“The haircut dates it and geolocates it; all American men of a certain age wore their hair that short in the 1960s. The ...
26/06/2025

“The haircut dates it and geolocates it; all American men of a certain age wore their hair that short in the 1960s. The hair itself – more salt than pepper – dates the man. The watch (a 1960s Tudor, maybe?) and the plain white race suit fills in still more details. As do the miles those unadorned, backless soft leather driving gloves have steered.
There’s a whole story in this photograph, first published in Edition 10 of The Road Rat. If only that gloved left hand didn’t quite so effectively disguise the identity of the driver…”

“How good was Walt? In the 1950s and 1960s he raced in sports cars for the premier teams in America; he was the fastest rookie to qualify for the 1964 Indy 500, and at 44 was the oldest to do so up until that date; he was a driver who competed against the very best of the era, including Moss, Gurney, McLaren and Brabham, and who would on occasion out-qualify or beat such legends. Walt Hansgen was fast.”

The hidden face of Walt Hansgen. Racing the Lola T70 at the Riverside Times GP in LA, 1965.

GETTY IMAGES / TOM BURNSIDE, REVS INSTITUTE

Extracts from ‘The man in the tan leather gloves’ by Colin Goodwin. Read the full story on Walt Hansgen in The Road Rat Edition 11, available via our archive.

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"Kawamoto was different, as I noted in the Wheels magazine story written on my return to Australia: ‘While other chief e...
24/06/2025

"Kawamoto was different, as I noted in the Wheels magazine story written on my return to Australia: ‘While other chief executives might relax over a round of golf, Nobuhiko Kawamoto’s idea of quality time is 180mph hot laps of the giant banked oval at Honda’s Tochigi test centre in Nelson Piquet’s old Williams FW11. Or riding shotgun in an F/A-18 with the US Navy’s famed Blue Angels aerobatic team. Or ramming the throttles to the stops in a 3600-horspower quad-engine racing boat off the coast of Hawaii. “I need to have fun,” he says, his face creased with an impish grin.’"

Photography and concept:
CGI:

Extract from 'White Heat', 's story about a supernova of a supercar, the NSX. Read the full story in The Road Rat Edition 9, available via our archive.

https://theroadrat.com/collections/buy-magazines

A low-slung blend of beauty and brutality, the 5300GT was Giugiaro’s vision made real during his time at Bertone, crafte...
20/06/2025

A low-slung blend of beauty and brutality, the 5300GT was Giugiaro’s vision made real during his time at Bertone, crafted under the Bizzarrini name and produced between 1964 and 1968.⁠

Photography: .border

You’ll find it in Edition 6 of The Road Rat, where Stephen Bayley explores why Turin has long been the beating heart of car design.⁠

Purchase this and other back editions from The Road Rat archive: https://theroadrat.com/collections/buy-magazines

We only print a limited number of each edition of The Road Rat, but continue to offer archive editions where available. ...
18/06/2025

We only print a limited number of each edition of The Road Rat, but continue to offer archive editions where available. Edition 16 is one of our more popular titles and won't be around in stock for long.

Edition 16 delivers a Porsche Turbo bonanza, as Mel Nichols recalls driving the very first 911 Turbo in 1974 and The Road Rat is granted exclusive access to Porsche’s archive to explore the boost, the beginnings and the bravado of a legend.

Elsewhere in the edition, Lotus VP of Design Ben Payne reflects on the boundary-breaking beauty of the original Esprit, while Richard Meaden celebrates the legacy of the Golf GTI — from Mk1 to Mk7.5. Estevan Oriol documents the raw energy of LA’s ’90s lowrider scene. Stephen Bayley muses on the dream — and myth — of the SUV, and Paul Horrell considers the lasting design impact of the Audi TT.

It’s one of our most compelling editions yet — and copies are nearly all gone.

Secure yours before they disappear: theroadrat.com/products/edition-no-16

We’re down to the last few handfuls of The Road Rat Edition 20. Fittingly, just 20 copies remain, but they're only avail...
16/06/2025

We’re down to the last few handfuls of The Road Rat Edition 20. Fittingly, just 20 copies remain, but they're only available to new subscribers.

Take out a subscription now and Edition 20 is yours – with a 20% saving over four editions.

Order yours via The Road Rat store. https://theroadrat.com/collections/road-rat-subscriptions

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