Category: Uncategorized

We start with a wild electric Hyundai, an elderly M, an elderly SUV and an immortal Honda.

For Top Gear magazine, Jethro Bovingdon tests the new Ioniq 5 N-based RN24. Jethro is a bit anti-EV (don’t @ me, he admits it) so it’s interesting to see what he thinks of this…

Jonny Smith of The Late Brake Show (and Fifth Gear) has the story of the fabled BMW M1 supercar. Jonny is so good at getting into the nitty-gritty of a car without boring you to death, so drink this one in.

A channel with a name I can absolutely identify with – Not Economically Viable – rescues a trashed 100-Series LandCruiser. It’s a curiosity because Cruisers are usually looked after by owners, or at least they are in Australia. So seeing one in a bad state is always worth a watch.

No idea why there isn’t a thumbnail, but there you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAL3lHCoQDU

And finally TFLClassics drives a “brand new” 1984 Honda Civic 1000 miles (1600km) back to the Honda Collection.

That’s it for the first February Weekend Watches. If you’re new, sign up to the mailing list which is really just an email you get when I post something.

A personal obsession from the other Czech car company you may not have heard of, another Citroën, some cool Dakar cars and three incredible McLarens.

Years ago I read about the rear-engined V8 Tatra 613 in CAR magazine and I am fundamentally obsessed with it more than three decades later. Thomas from Timeless Driving has got his hands on one in the Czech Republic.

High Peak Autos bought a Citroën C6 – a car I loved when it came out – for just £750 (A$1500). The channel is a car dealer in the UK and has some tasty gear for sale. And when they get their hands on something different, they post a video of it.

Rally raid driver Luc Alphard hosts a video for Red Bull Rally, searching for the coolest cars in the 2025 Dakar Rally paddock. He’s great fun to watch and the cars are awesome.

Henry Catchpoles drives three different types of McLaren GTRs for Hagerty. Not sure you need much more convincing.

If you’re new, welcome! And don’t forget to sign-up to the free newsletter.

This week we’ve got an epic drive through South America, some retro racing from 1973, a ropey video about the Alfa GTA 1300 Junior, Ford’s biggest failure and racing’s biggest failures.

Canadian couple Matt and Stacey (not sure you could be more Canadian with those two cheery names) drive their self-built Toyota LandCruisier “Chinook” from Canada all the way to Ushuaia in Argentina. That’s a long drive.

They posted all this to their channel Toyota World Runners and then stitched it all together in a single video. Which explains the repetitive use of “fell in love” and “unbeknown to us.” It looks great, though.

The Australian Touring Car Championship – precursor to the modern-day Supercars series – has had many guises. Here is the Warwick Farm round from 1973, with Toranas, Chargers and Falcon hardtops battling it out in the wet.

Some incredible history with names like Brock, Bond and Goss falling out of the very calm, cool and collected commentary. Oh, and it looks horrifyingly dangerous.

German YouTube channel Garagengold brings us the Alfa Romeo GTA 1300 Junior story. The AI dubbing is pretty cringey, but you get the picture. You can go back to the original German but there aren’t any subtitles, so you’re kind of stuck with the dubbing. Worth it for this little gem, though.

Corsicar – home of the sarcastic car video – brings us the story of the Premier Automotive Group. I made an oblique reference to PAG in my Emira and Jaguar stories so it’s worth raking over the stinking coals of this debacle.

And the ambitious Roflwaffle brings us a long autopsy on a bunch of dead racing series. Bravo, I say.

And that’s it for this week. If you’re in Australia, enjoy the long weekend and I’ll see you next weekend. For the next few weeks I’ll be travelling on holidays, so we’ll see what I can put together for you all.

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Another Porsche video (but by a legend), a crashtastic off-road video, an insane engine swap, a second insane engine swap and the reason British Leyland died. Or one of the reasons, anyway.

Very good friend and one-time (so far) contributor to The Redline, Scott Newman, has his own YouTube channel Addicted to Sliding. Here he reviews the 911.2 Carrera T.

Scotty has recently had some pretty crappy news, so if you can spare a few bucks, please donate to the gofundme set up by his friend Dan Gardner of MaD Garage.

Mat Watson from Carwow seems to be able to do whatever the hell he wants and – crucially – has fun doing it. He gathered a couple of friends and took three old German sedans on an off-road course. And it really is a lot of fun.

Twin Engine Corsa has the story of a Daewoo Matiz with a 3.2-litre V6 crammed into it. I don’t think it needs any more explaining. The Porsche wheels may need some explaining however…

On the them of engine swaps, Practical Performance Car meets the owner of a Citroën 2CV with a BMW road bike engine and about four times the power.

Square steering wheel-equipped Austin Allegro is the subject of another excellent Big Car video. The Allegro is a national punchline in the UK – perhaps only beaten by the Marina – so it’s interesting to look back and see how bad it really was.

And that’s it for the week. Have a great weekend and if you haven’t already, check out my Corvette review or my VW T-Cross review for drive.com.au. And don’t forget to sign up to the mailing list.

Well a happy new year to you all and if you’re new here, welcome! Say hi in the comments.

We’ll kick off the year with a video from a channel I nearly skipped because it looked a bit too cringey for my liking, an iconic V12 Italian supercar, a German car for agents of chaos, a short film featuring a digital Lancia Delta lookalike and a very cool tarmac rally.

Selected Car Investments sounded a bit like a giant ad for a used car to me, but I’m wrong. A dapper Danish fellow steps out of one of history’s oddest supercars and tells us all about the very much-forgotten Bugatti EB110.

Derek Tam-Scott for YouTube channel OTS tells us about another very different supercar that we all remember, or at least we do if we’re over 40. OTS is another channel I’d normally skip, but it seems like they got Derek to do the vid and do it well.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle covers the Mercedes 600 so beloved of celebrities and psychopaths – often both at the same time. Weird to see a state-owed broadcaster being so honest, but Germans are often quite good at that.

This one is a bit different, a ten-minute short film called Rally. Made by filmmaker Santiago Menghini and built in Unreal Engine 5, I was drawn to this owing to my years as a video game review.

Anyway, it’s spectacular.

Travel channel GoBeyond brings us the story of the 2024 Balkan Rally which looks amazing. The video is essentially an extended promo for the 2025 event but I’ll take it. Also, if anyone needs a driver, I’m in.

And that’s the first Weekend Watches for 2024. Don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss a post and if you haven’t already, head over to our channel to watch my Lotus Emira review.

The last Weekend Watches of the year is upon us and it starts with a rarity (a video from me), a busted Merc SUV, another wacky Swede, a gorgeous Italian and one from the archive.

It’s been a while, even since the Cupra video, and I’m a bit rusty and the audio isn’t great but hellfire, it’s the Lotus Emira.

A chap called Waldo from Waldo’s World got himself a free Mercedes GLE450 that he’s hoping to get working again. I’m a fan of folks who can fix things so this is a fun ride and he’s not an obnoxious twerp.

Rare Cars has the story of the mad Saab Sonett and Sonett 2. They weighed less than nothing (who needs to see them grow up anyway?), had a triple-carb three-cylinder two-stroke and are so Swedish it hurts.

Another Big Car video is always worth a watch and this time it’s the gorgeous Fiat Barchetta, one of my favourite I’ll-never-get-to-drive-one cars.

So with not much new this week, why not go back and watch my Lotus Evora video? It was one of the earlier videos on The Redline but it wasn’t bad at all.

Have a safe and happy New Year and we’ll be back next week. Don’t forget to sign up to the newsletter!

The last WW before Christmas and I’ve got some bangers lined up. We’ve got why a once-popular racing series isn’t, 10 race cars that should have got a better shake, a classic Targa race and a not-so-classic Holden.

JakeSimRacing has a story on why he thinks the German Touring Car championship – or DTM as we know and love it – has fallen from grace.

Continuing on the subject of race cars, Automobilistic’s Fred Knight counts down the top ten race cars that he feels deserved better. There are some great cars in here, so watch it just for that.

YouTube channel AlfaModels has dug up a 1972 report about the Targa Florio. Grainy footage of Sicily, unmanaged stages with kids and animals everywhere, it’s a bit wild. And then, of course, the Alfa Tipo 33 race car.

According to the comments, the piece is lifted from The Speed Merchants by film-maker Michael Keyser. Weirdly the commentary sounds remarkably like that in the spoof documentary series People Like Us.

Mark Behr’s channel, Mark Behr, has an ongoing series on the iconic Australian car, the Holden Commodore. In this video he covers the VP Commodore, the facelift to the 1988 VN. I remember driving a few of these in my youth and honestly, they were crap, but they were our crap.

And thanks to co-pilot Mark Dewar for this spot, the Girardo and Company Christmas video.

That should do you for a while. If I don’t post again, have a fantastic and safe Christmas and I’ll see you next week for another Weekend Watches. I’ll be posting through to the end of January before I go on holidays.

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Hasn’t this week just blown by? For your weekend pleasure, we have the story of a storied French car maker, a less-storied but fascinating carmaker, an even more obscure story of a forgotten car company, I break the rules of this edition with a video I just really enjoyed and then the story of Stellantis’ recent slide in the US.

Big Car brings us a settle-in-with-the-popcorn story of Citroën. You don’t need more context from me on that brand.

The very thorough Ruairidh McVeigh has the story of NSU, a German car company and that other company that ran a fully-sick rotor under the bonnet. There’s one of these under a tarp under a carport near me and it’s been sad to watch it decay, but anyway, here’s the story.

Automobolistic has the story of the brand that went global – at least for awareness – via the magic of Gran Turismo. TommyKaira was a kind of coachbuilder on steroids who wanted to do their own car…and…well…

Not a month can go by where I don’t find a video with my favourite (owned) car, the BMW E60 M5 with that glorious V10. The excellent Top Dead Center [sic] look at an M5 and a C63 for around the same price as the UK’s cheapest car, a Dacia Sandero.

Related: new cars are outrageously expensive in the UK. Nearly $27k for a very basic hatchback is tough even by our rising price standards.

And finally, trade union-backed More Perfect Union has the story on the slide of Jeep under the Stellantis umbrella. Hilariously, since this video went live, company CEO Carlos Tavares has been shown the door.

And that’s Weekend Watches for the week. We’re almost at Christmas, everyone, just another full week and we can all hopefully have a week off and I’m hoping to knock out a bunch of reviews for you.

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Well, it has been a little while, sorry for the break in transmission, had actual paid work happening.

First up, a car I saw a lot of in my youth, a list of cars that you might find interesting, another car from my youth and a car Top Gear gave a (loving) pasting.

Marty from Mighty Car Mods has completed the Holden/Isuzu Gemini rebuild and it looks superb.

Speeed’s James Pumphrey has done another list for his (US-centric) audience telling you what counts as a cool car for car nerds. I think I might be on board with a fair few of them.

A channel I’ve never heard of of, Psivewri has bought himself a Corolla Seca from the early 90s which is…well it’s another car from my youth. My mate Brad had the quick(ish) one.

The ever-reliable Ruairidh MacVeigh goes where few will and has produced this terrific Reliant Robin history.

And Drivetribe’s second channel, More Drivetribe, covers the story of how Top Gear’s most ambitious story, the ahem, Reliant Robin Space Shuttle.

And that’s it for the weekend. Enjoy and don’t forget to subscribe!

An old burping Saab, a dubstep V10, another BMW (sorry), why a certain car is such a good driver’s car and what to look for in a Focus ST.

Aging Wheels buys a classic two-stroke Saab and, naturally, hilarity ensues.

The Straight Pipes tackle my favourite BMW M car, the E60 M5. I owned one for a year and miss it dearly. It had such a tremendous, cranky startup up I called it the Dubstep V10.

Evo takes a look at the Alpine 110 and asks why it’s so good as a UK driver’s car. Probably pretty good for Australia, too, but I don’t think it fired here, sadly.

The team at ReDriven has taken a look at one of my favourite cars, the Focus ST and asked a sensible question – what goes wrong and should I buy used one after all is said and done?

And that’s it for Weekend Watches. Don’t forget to check out my rant about people getting upset about Jaguar’s rebrand. And don’t forget to subscribe to the email list so when I post, you get it in your inbox.