Excitement building for second round of the CAMS Australia Targa Championship
The hills of Victoria’s
north eastern high country will come alive this week as the second round
of the CAMS Australia Targa Championship gets under way with more than
160 cars vying for a win in any one of 10 Targa categories.
Now
in its fourth year, the Targa High Country will open with a closed-road
stage on the streets in the country town of Mansfield on Friday November
8. The field will head for the hills on Saturday, climbing to the
event’s headquarters in Mount Buller, then passing through Tolmie,
Whitlands and Whitfield before stopping for lunch at Pizzini Wines and
then returning to Mount Buller over the same stages, but in the reverse
direction.
On Sunday, competitors will follow eight stages to
Eildon before retuning once again to Mount Buller for an afternoon
Champagne finish.
Although the event will include 10 different
Targa categories, a lot of interest will focus on the highly popular
Classics class, which is made up of cars built before 1986. The category
will represent nearly 60 of the cars making up the entire field and
will culminate with the winning class competitor taking the coveted
Classic Outright title.
At the top of the Classics class
presently is South Australia’s Simon Hoff, who took his 1975 Ford Escort
RS2000 to victory in the first round of the series in Adelaide. But he
will be followed closely by drivers including South Australian Craig
Haysman in his 1981 Triumph TR7 V8 and Roger Paterson in his 1974
Porsche 911 Carrera RS.
Former touring car star Andrew Miedecke
will be in the mix, driving a 1970 Ford Capri Perana, while the
Australian V8 touring car flag will be flown Greg Garwood in his Holden
Torana A9X, which is replica of the car Peter Brock drove to a Bathurst
victory in 1978.
The 10 Targa categories making up the 160-strong
field will include the outright-contending Modern section, as well
Classics, Showroom cars and Muscle Cars.
Lexus LFA to be totally rethought and hybridized as part of BMW-Toyota joint venture
It's been nearly two years since Toyota and BMW announced an agreement to co-develop sports cars
using state-of-the-art hybrid technologies, and now a source close to
the two companies says the pair has decided on its first joint-venture.
Sorry folks, but it won't be anything like a souped-up Toyota 86. No siree.
In
all their wisdom, executives citing the high cost of developing a
high-performance sports car with lightweight materials have opted for a
$300,000-plus Lexus LFA-style package, but with a hybrid twist.
This
new two-door flagship will pick up where the LFA left off, or should we
say, where the LFA never went. The LFA spent far too long on the
development table (nearly 10 years) with its naturally aspirated V10
engine, while many other car-makers were fitting hybrid and electric
powertrains in their high-performance models.
Interestingly,
Toyota was the first to commercialise hybrids with the original Prius in
1997, but it took many more years for it to apply that technology to
V8s. Ironically, therefore, Toyota is now playing catch-up in the hybrid
hyper-car segment.
Supercar makers are more conscious of CO2
emissions than ever before while at the same time delivering more power
and performance, and powertrain electrification is the key to realising
these opposing goals in the same vehicle.
Take for example the electrically assisted Ferrari La Ferrari and McLaren P1, for example, or the purely battery-powered Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Electric Drive – the most powerful AMG ever made.
Porsche has its Panamera plug-in hybrid too, as well as the million-dollar 918 Spyder super-hybrid that recently set a new production car lap record at the Nurburgring of 6:57.
We
weren't surprised when, during a recent trip to Toyota's proving ground
near Mt Fuji, we saw a BMW i8 plug-in hybrid super-coupe sitting in the
carpark. Our source tells us that in addition to emissions trials,
Toyota is conducting durability testing of the i8's carbon-fibre frame
in relation to the pair's jointly developed sports car.
So the
obvious question is what will each company bring to the R&D table in
this challenging collaboration? It goes without saying that Toyota will
supply its hybrid technology, having already experimented with
high-performance hybrid powertrains for the V8-powered Lexus LS 600h.
The
Japanese car-maker can also offer more than a decade of carbon-fibre
body and chassis lessons learned from the LFA, which also benefits from
V10 engine expertise.
Toyota spent billions developing the LFA
and its V10, just 500 examples of which were produced, so Toyota wants
to leverage that technology to recoup some of those costs.
BMW,
on the other hand, is an engine-producing powerhouse that may no longer
have a V10 in its range, but the M5's 412kW 4.4-litre turbo V8 develops
the same amount of power as the LFA's 4.8-litre V10 while consuming far
less fuel and emitting less CO2.
So it doesn't take a rocket
scientist to deduct that a BMW 4.4-litre turbo V8 married to a Toyota
hybrid system may be the best powertrain solution for a joint-venture
sportster.
Less clear are the origins of the co-developed
supercar's chassis. Toyota has carbon-fibre expertise from its LFA
journey, while BMW has perfected carbon-fibre reinforced plastic
production on a mass scale, as evidenced by the launch of the i3.
There
are other questions too, such as how the powertrain will transfer its
performance to the road, and how good it will look doing it.
While
BMW has a reputation for building "the ultimate driving machine" and
its own brand of unique design, Toyota – through Lexus – must up its
game in the sheetmetal department and perhaps borrow some on-road
mastery from BMW in order to deliver a supercar that handles like a
$300,000 car should.
