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Supercar

Targa Classica to Turn One

By Classica, News, sponsors, Supercar

Across four autumn days in Victoria, 95 crews set out on a journey defined not by speed, but by precision. In a 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet, one Porsche team discovered the quiet discipline – and immense joy – of regularity rallying, among friends old and new.

From city streets to country rhythm

Leaving Melbourne behind, the road turns south toward the Mornington Peninsula, where traffic fades into vineyards, farmland and wide coastal skies. Autumn light settles across the landscape, the air cool and clear enough to sharpen the senses.

At first, it feels like any road trip. Then the details begin to matter. Distances are measured. Times are noted. Conversation narrows to numbers, directions and instructions.

We are no longer simply travelling. We are driving with intent.

Precision, not speed

Targa Classica celebrates a different kind of driving. This premier four-day regularity rally honours classic and modern automotive culture. Rather than racing outright, crews aim to hit precise target times and speeds over defined sections of road. Too fast or too slow – even slightly – and penalty points accumulate. What sounds simple quickly proves otherwise. Gradients alter momentum, corners interrupt rhythm and every small input suddenly matters.

From the beginning the experience belongs to two people. My wife, Kerry, and I share the roles of driver and navigator. The navigator interprets the road book and calls distances and timing points. The driver listens and responds.

Gradually a rhythm forms between the numbers and the road ahead. Regularity rallying rewards patience, communication and trust.

Read the full article on newsroom.porsche.com

Celebrating The 40th Anniversary Of The BMW M3 At Targa Classica

By Classica, sponsors, Supercar

The engineers at BMW’s M Division could hardly have known their M3 – initially a by-product of the company’s racing ambitions – would anchor a decades-long dynasty on road and track. The very first M3, known as the E30, was produced as a homologation special: a road-going version built specifically to allow BMW to enter a full-fat race car bearing its resemblance in the DTM series. Not a bad move, considering it went on to become the championship’s most successful race car of all time.

It was a Frenchman who coined the phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same”, but a quick look at the M3’s lineage suggests the Germans were listening in. The neat, friendly styling of the earlier E30, E36 and E46 generations hinted at their youthful, playful driving dynamics, before the approach was turned on its head in 2007 with the arrival of the monstrous, V8-powered E92. The squared-off bodywork of the first M3s gave way to the angry, flared shapes of the E92, F80 and G80, with an equivalent shift in driving manners.

While enthusiasts can argue in circles about this evolution, the M3’s DNA has never wavered: more performance than it has any right to, with almost no compromise on day-to-day liveability. Forty years on, the car has outlasted trends, rivals and entire segments of the market. What it has built along the way, perhaps more than any performance car of its era, is a community.

With three generations of M3 (an E36, E46 CSL and G81 Touring) offered to me by the team at BMW Australia, I found myself in the thick of the travelling circus that is the Targa Classica. A four-day rally paying homage to Italy’s storied Targa Florio and Mille Miglia, stretched across 1,200 kilometres of meticulously planned Victorian roads. Ninety drivers and their navigators got behind the wheel of cars ranging from moving barn-finds to the sharpest two-door machinery fresh out of Modena. But for BMW, and for the M3’s 40th, the Targa was in many ways more reunion than rally.

Read the full article on bosshunting.com.au