Today, Subaru is the only company in the world to use boxer engines and Porsche is the only other company to use flat engines. These engines feature cylinders that are neither inline nor banked at an angle to form a V-shape. Instead, the cylinders lay flat along a horizontal plane. But not all flats are boxers, even if all boxers are flats.

Ok, so that’s mildly confusing, but what are the advantages of this arrangement? And why do only two manufacturers employ the flat engine design? 

The advantage of having cylinders that are flat, or horizontally-opposed, is that cooling is ameliorated due to increased surface exposure between the cool air and the warm pistons. This was of particular advantage when engines were still cooled by air, instead of the liquid water that now cools everything every motor from that of a Lancia to a Lamborghini. Having a flat engine also lends itself to a lower centre of gravity because the engine occupies less vertical height. This lower centre of gravity in the engine as well as its lower height allow the engine to be placed lower in the engine bay. These advantages were clearly of great interest to Subaru when they chose to identify their company with flat engines and symmetrical all-wheel-drive. But considering that Porsche positions their engines behind the rear axle, in the trunk essentially, Ferdinand God only knows why they chose a flat engine. Oh, that’s right, Porsche does it because Hans Ledwinka did it first.

The difference between a flat boxer engine and a flat non-boxer engine is all in the crankpins. Whereas the boxer engines found in Subarus have individual crankpins controlling each cylinder, the non-boxers engines found in Porsches have opposing pistons sharing a crankpin on the crankshaft and therefore reach top dead centre a half crankshaft revolution apart. If that doesn’t mean much to you, watch the videos below to help you visualize the difference.

The flat engine design also boasts perfect natural balance and therefore does not require extra balancing weights the way other engine configurations do. Aside from the flat engine, only the inline-six and V12 are similarly balanced. The equipoise of the flat engine is achieved because the opposing pistons reach top dead centre simultaneously, thereby balancing each others momentum, as demonstrated below by Subaru’s elegant four-cylinder.

Beautiful, no? Well, it is doubly beautiful when compared to the chaotic clusterfuck seen in a Porsche’s flat engine.

The downside of boxer engines, and flat engines in general, is their affinity for yielding noise. Considered another way, flat engines have a distinctive guttural bellow that seems to appeal to enthusiasts, likely because this unique sound is associated with a car of potent performance (i.e. the Porsche 911 and Subaru STI) and is not associated with, say, a Prius, which is miserable and makes no sound at all. This is the main reason that more manufacturers don’t use flat engines – noise is the enemy in an automotive culture that reads “NVH” the same way followers of the Bible read “666”.

The design of the flat engine was originally patented by none other than Karl Benz, the man mistakenly credited with the invention of the automobile. This popular misconception can be attributed to the commercial pride of Daimler-Benz and as LJK Setright remarked succinctly “the furor Teutonicus of the Nazi party after coming to power in Germany in 1933”. The first man to manufacture a gasoline-powered internal combustion vehicle was actually an Austrian man of Jewish descent, Siegfried Markus. Markus built no less than four such inventions but unfortunately they were all for his own pleasure. Thus, Markus did not patent the motor vehicle despite holding 131 other patents, leaving the distinction of patenting the first automobile to Herr Benz. Wikipedia words it less poetically, although no less accurately, in saying “Markus was removed from German Encyclopedias as the inventor of the modern car, under a directive from the German Ministry for Propaganda during the Second World War. His name was replaced with the names of Daimler and Benz.”

Today, Markus is remembered by this statue in Vienna, Austria. Had I known about it this past summer, I might have visited the small monument to motoring (and Jewish) history. Instead, I saw a BMW 5-series GT, in a museum of all places. Oh, and a lovely Lancia too.

Despite the name of Benz being immortalized in popular culture and that of Markus being relegated to the cerebral cortexes of automotive historians, all on account of an anti-semitic smear campaign, Benz can be given credit where credit is due for the invention of the flat engine. Subaru and Porsche can at least thank Benz for that.

[Photo credit: Ricardipus/Flikr, deplaqer/Flikr]

[Video credit: author, YouTube]

Twelve years is a long time for people, but for cars it’s a coon’s age. In other words, it’s about two car-lifetimes. Just for some perspective, 12 years ago, there was no Google, no Facebook, YouTube, iPod, nor iPhone. The .com bubble had peaked but most people didn’t know it yet and many were buying basement-fulls of Spam and mobile generators in preparation of the impending Y2K crisis. In the automotive world, 12 years ago, “hybrid” wasn’t in our vocabulary, the Diablo was littering magazine covers, the Ferrari 360 Modena was just peeking its nose out of the Maranellan womb, the McLaren F1 had stopped production despite building only a third of the 300 projected cars, and Audi released a premium compact car built largely of aluminum. Now of all those cars I just mentioned, I want to focus on that last one. This aluminum-framed and bodied car was designed by Luc Donckerwolke and it was called the A2, slotting beneath the A3 in the Audi range. Which Luc Donckerwolke? Ah, that would be the Belgian one who also picked up a pen and paper for Lamborghini. The Luc I’m talking about designed the aforementioned Diablo, the Murcielago, and the Gallardo. So while the A2 might seem like a plain-Jane runabout or even a dilution of four-ringed brand equity, in reality, it was anything but. Unfortunately, the market couldn’t get past the steep price tag directly resulting from all that innovative (and expensive) aluminum. As a result, sales were weak. Which is odd because even at, say, CDN$35,000, the Audi A2 was a tenth the cost of Donckerwolke’s other works of art – and that made it a bargain.

Now, 12 years after launching the Audi A2, the company that lit the unintended acceleration torch that Toyota now carries is launching another premium compact for the European market: the Audi A1. The A1 could make it to our frosty shores if there were enough interest, but really, you don’t want one. If you can wait until 2014, I think I can convince you that what you really want is a then-to-be-15-year-old Audi A2. What makes me so bullish and sanguine? It’s all in the details.

If you’re accustomed to Audi’s naming system, you’ll know that the larger the integer following the “A”, the larger the vehicle. So let’s start with some dimensions: the Audi A1 is 3.95m in length, the Audi A2 is 3.82m. Ok, that’s kind of weird. What about width? 1.74m for the A1 and 1.67m for the A2. So far, the more “compact” A1 is longer and wider than the A2. So much for Audi’s nomenclature. Height for the A1 is 1.42m and the A2 is 1.55m tall. So the A1 wins the height, right? Wrong. We’re not talking about supercars, where it’s more aerodynamically efficient to be lower to the ground, we’re talking about city runabouts that will hit 100 kph if they’re lucky. With the A2’s taller height, it boasts greater storage space in the trunk with the seats up or down (A1: 267L/920L, A2: 390L/1085L). With city cars, it’s all about packaging. Chalk one up for the A2.

Also, despite the increased height of the A2 versus the A1, the A2 was actually the slipperier (if that’s a word) of the two, with a drag coefficient of 0.28 against 0.32 for the A1. Chalk another up for the A2. The A2’s aerodynamic efficiency and weight of only 895kg (1975lbs), meant that it could achieve 4.2L/100km on the highway from its 75hp 3-pot diesel engine. That made the A2 one of the most fuel efficient cars on that road in the late 20th century, and would still be considered a miser in today’s ecofanatical social climate. With the A1, I will concede that Audi has moved the game on with its engine technology, mainly because the most fuel-efficient engine, a 1.6L TDI, makes 90hp and gets 3.8L/100km. I suppose Audi had to be researching and developing something for the last 12 years.

The Audi A2 was a daring foray into the premium compact class, years ahead of anything else even half as revolutionary. The A2 never gained mainstream acceptance due to its ill-timed and premature focus on fuel-efficiency over sports car pretensions. In a way, Toyota is currently carrying another of Audi’s torches with their Prius, for a grand total of two torches from Audi. Who knew that the Japanese were so interested in following the lead of the Germans?

The diminutive A2 is therefore relegated to the history books as an innovative, if misunderstood and overly expensive, experiment from a company that is currently “innovating” by creating fictional market niches (the A5 Sportback being the worst offender) and installing LED lights onto every car coming off its assembly lines. The Audi A1 offers nothing particularly innovative or special, just a premium badge on a poorly-packaged and mundane appliance. Come 2014, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be importing a left-hand-drive 1999 A2 from continental Europe. My most difficult choice won’t be between the A1 and the A2, it will be whether to get my A2 with a gas engine or a diesel.

[Photo credits: author (1, 3), Audi]

I use the term “invades” rather loosely; “goes to” would probably be more appropriate. No matter.

The 2010 Chicago Auto Show starts today and our very own Janaki will be at the CAS tomorrow to cover the media events and yours truly, your fearless Editor Peter Dushenski, will be there next Tuesday, January 21. Janaki will no doubt cover the meat and potatoes, I’ll just be there to highlight anything that might fall through the cracks. Together, Janaki and I will be focusing on some of the more strange and wonderful motor cars from the show, leaving the mainstream stuff to the big guys. Realistically, we would be foolish to try to out-Autoblog Autoblog, so we won’t even try.

You will be able to follow all the happenings on Twitter. Our handle is @carenvy. Janaki will be tweeting in haiku. Since I don’t know what that is, I’ll just be spewing social media diarrhea in 140 characters or less.

If you don’t have Twitter, or don’t care to find out, just keep coming back here to CarEnvy.ca for your maple-syrup-tinted view of the 2010 Chicago Auto Show.

I recently attended the 2010 Edmonton Motor Show where I saw the usual wares from the usual manufacturers. None of this was terribly exciting. The Canadian auto show circuit is now withering away, signalling the renewed cyclical scapegoatism that the motor car periodically enjoys. It will be years before the internal combustion engine is de-villified (again) and we are reminded (again) that electricity is merely a means of energy transmission, not itself a means of propulsion. George Santayana is attributed with the following quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. This is perhaps a dilution of his original, but the meaning is retained. We usually take the quote in reference to international conflicts of armament, but this is too narrow. It was not by accident, by royal decree, nor divine intervention that the internal combustion engine gained popular acceptance in the latter part of the 19th century while the electric horseless carriage floundered. Nor will electric vehicles replace gasoline-engined ones in my lifetime. But I digress, because gasoline-fueled machines are alive and well. For now.

This year, there were various Maranellan and Sant’Agatan showpieces littering the main hall of the 2010 EMS, but the European that was least expected and most edifying wasn’t from the Continent, but from the other side of the Channel: it was the Bentley Continental Supersports. The example in attendance was pearlescent white; not an unusual colour for a Conti, but that didn’t prevent me from experiencing a revelation; an emancipation from my stone-ingrained views of the two-door Phaeton. To my eye, the Continental GT had always violated the boundary into nouveau riche-dom that would have sent the Bentley Boys into subterranean revolutions. Whether it was the car itself or the new haircuts who flocked to it mattered not, I detested the car and looked forward to the day when I would swap the VW badges on my Phaeton for a pair of wings-flanked “B”s, thus reminding Continental drivers of their idiocy. Then I had that smug premonition wiped from mind with one gaze of the ethanol-inhaling car that is the most powerful Bentley ever.

With gaping DLO, blacked-out grilles, predatory stance, and anorexic wheel spokes veiling obese ceramic brakes, the Continental Supersports suddenly made nine kinds of sense. In an albeit irrational manner. With a price tag somewhere in the neighbourhood of CDN$366,000, sense is largely irrational and as subjective as always.

With only two seats swathed in leather and carbon fibre, the interior is leaner and more purposeful than before. The rear seats were always a cruel joke on the cows who gave their lives to make them, but the Supersports solves that with a simple luggage compartment. This is a Bentley in the same vein as the those inter-War Bentleys that were unimaginatively named for their engine displacement. Now I’m not denouncing those Bentleys of yore, they were frequently successful racers, I’m just saying that their naming lacked ingenuity. No matter, because the Continental GT range could not be monikered more aptly, with the Supersports adding a note of nostalgia to that naming convention. For taking a car from Edmonton to Miami, I can think of few others that would best the speed (328 kph top speed), comfort, and panache of the Supersports. Oddly, in a very un-British move, Bentley has seen it fitting to add E85 capability. Perhaps it will appease some ecomentalists, but it is a limp commitment and a detraction from the best automobile that Bentley has produced in a lifetime. The Supersports is such a momentous car that it would be easy to see it as portentous in light of crescendoing social and environmental pressures. That may be true, but this is not the first time that people have claimed that we are in the waning days of the motor car as we know it. The motor car is not a new scapegoat for our financial, climate, or any other mess. An early 20th century joke is at least as relevant a century later as it was when it was first made.

She: ‘It much be fine to be a motorist’.

He: ‘Alas, young lady, many people think it should be fine and imprisonment.’

Those who feel that we are at the end of an era and that we will never again see high-horsepowered artifacts of internal combustion wonderment don’t seem to see the contradiction. An era is not for all time, it is merely an era. The cyclical tides of social and societal effect may neuter cars for a period, but this will come to pass. On the other side is a new era so gloriously unimaginable that we will laugh at those who prognosticated eternal doom. We will likely even laugh at Jeremy Clarkson and his farewall to enlightened motoring.

So for now, the Supersports represents the culmination of four decades of post-Oil Embargo progress. If ever there were a car to close out an era with a bang, this 621 horsepower wallop is it. Don’t worry though, it’s not the end, just the end of an era.

[Photo credits: alratag twice again/Flikr, author]

Jack Baruth is as well known for his skill on the race track as his editorials on the internet. I’ve been reading Avoidable Contact for nearly two years now. Since then, Baruth decreed that the Nissan GT-R would be an abysmal sales failure in North America, he chronicled the advent of fake luxury, the joys of the Porsche option catalog, and published the seminal work on the futility of comparing lap times at the Nurburgring. I’ve always looked forward to Jack’s next instalment because he combines history, foresight, and a challenge to conventional wisdom. His brashly upstream style of writing is a refreshing change from the usual groupthink crap that floats around the web and print media.

For his most recent literary exploration, Jack likens the Toyota Prius, as a brand, to the Apple iPod. Both have undeniably had a halo effect on the other products their companies offer. This certainly holds true in light of the new iPad, a product that I want desperately to like but can’t seem to justify with anything resembling logic. Between my iPhone 3G and my 13” aluminum MacBook, I don’t see the gap in my life that Steve Jobs and Jony Ive created yesterday with the introduction of their plus-sized book reader.

Regardless, Jack’s argument is that since hipsters buy Apple products and hipsters buy Toyota Prii, all other computers and hybrid vehicles are second-rate and not “cool”. Like Jack, I’ve used Macs for the better part of the last 20 years, and I can say with fair certainty that it was anything but cool to use a non-PC until about 5 years ago. Since then, yes, it has been somewhat of a “cool” thing to do. To me, Apple’s amalgamation of software and hardware from the same company has always justified the price premium because the quality was there. I’ll leave a deeper discussion of “quality” to Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, read it), suffice to say that quality is worth paying more for. This is why I would pay more for a Bower & Wilkins sound system than a Sony sound system. Not because I can’t make do with the Sony, nor because I want to show off how cool I am, but because the quality is superior. Automotively speaking, the Toyota Prius is certainly of better quality than a Hyundai Elantra, despite the recent and voracious increases in quality of the South Korean export.

Jack’s thesis comes from the same person who wears thousand dollar pairs of shoes, has a fetish for high-end watches, has a 993 Carrera, a lime green Audi S5, a maroon Cayenne, and two VW Phaetons, this condemnation of luxury brands (and implicitly quality) is a bit hypocritical. Clearly, this is a man who subscribes to the School of Conspicuous Consumption. Nevertheless, Mr. Baruth is always entertaining and is one of the most engaging and entertaining writers today. He could certianly be mentioned in the same breath as Jeremy Clarkson, as both men entertain and incite introspection in equal measure. The difference is that Jeremy is an international sensation whereas Jack is known only to those in-the-know. Now follow the link and form your own opinion, all the cool kids are doing it.

[Avoidable Contact #30]

[Image credit: coches.blog2.es/Flikr]

The Lexus LFA isn’t getting the respect it deserves. “It costs too much”, they unimaginatively opine. “The shifts are too abrasive”, they continue. Was anyone this harsh on the ultra-expensive hypercars of the early part of the past decade? The Porsche Carrera GT, the Mercedes McLaren SLR, and the Ferrari Enzo have all occupied a similar stratum in motor car society; yet they all received near universal praise, despite their monumental costs. They were also all European offerings. So why isn’t the Lexus LFA, the first Japanese car in decades to even attempt the crown, being mentioned in the company its engineering justly deserves?

Because it needs 50 more horsepower. At least. A hundred horsepower more would move the game on that much more.

All of those European wonders that you see pictured, launched between 2002 and 2004, boasted in excess of 600hp. Somewhere between 612 and 651, to be exact. The Lexus LFA? Only 552. I refuse to admit that eking out 600+ horsepower was an unachievable feat for Lexus while making the carbon fibre A-pillars with one of the world’s two rotary textile looms was feasible. I mean, if you’re going to make an engineering masterpiece, make sure people notice it. People notice two things, performance figures and appearance. If the performance figures are suitably impressive, people will even forgive appearance (eg. Gumpert Apollo); and if the appearance is suitably impressive, people will forgive the performance aspects (eg. Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione). Considering a design that could most generously be described as a grower, more power would have gone a long way towards making the Lexus the envy of the car enthusiast community.

I understand that there is only so much horsepower that is useable in normal circumstances, but when making such an irrational purchase, numbers matter. Otherwise all city-dwellers would drive Golf GTIs because of their perfect balance of practicality and useable driver enjoyment. When you place that Lexus keyfob down on the bar at the W Hotel, it would be nice to have the numbers to back up your decision to buy a Toyota product instead of an Aston Martin DB9 and a Ferrari 458 Italia. Without those regurgitatable numbers, it would appear to casual observers that the LFA is grossly overpriced. Which is fine, except that it isn’t overpriced at all. Like the Bugatti Veyron and the Volkswagen Phaeton, two other cars of Homeric engineering pedigree, the LFA loses millions of dollars for its parent company. Yet, they all three exist because of the tireless push of a single man within each company.

For its engineering and attention to detail, the Lexus LFA deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the Bugatti that takes its name from the winner of the 1939 24 Hours of Le Mans. It’s that good. But without 50 (or 100) more horsepower, it will never be bestowed the credit it rightly deserves. Instead, when you think of all the amazing high-performance cars you’d like to own one day, you will likely skip over the enigmatic Lexus LFA. Perhaps it will take a James Glickenhaus-like wallet and Pininfarina to turn the LFA into the car it deserves to be.

[Photo credit: author (1,5) and Ethan's view/Flikr]

For Canadians, the Renaultsport brand-within-a-brand may be unfamiliar, which is just fine because Renault doesn’t currently sell its wares on this continent. Perhaps the first time you heard the name “Renaultsport” was when Top Gear Magazine made the motorsports division their Manufacturer of the Year for 2009. Or maybe you missed that too.

Even those of you who are already familiar with their current Twingo 133, Clio 200, and Megane 250 offerings, may not be acquainted with the storied brand’s previous models – all of which were the result of the accumulated artistry, engineering adroitness, and experience of the very best minds within the French company. I happened upon one such result this summer in Barcelona, Spain.

While Renault Sport has a storied history of producing successful racing cars (as exemplified above by the 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning Alpine A442B), it was not until the year 1999 that the Renaultsport division would see its name emblazoned on a road car. That car was the Clio Renaultsport 172. While not the division’s first foray into tuning road cars (lest we forget the Clio 16V and the Clio Williams), it was the first to bear the badge. And it was an absolute corker. This is despite what we, on this side of the Atlantic, might consider to be a lacklustre 172hp. With a 0-60mph of just 7 seconds, just as fast as the original E30 M3, the little hot hatch was plenty quick. It also set the stage for further Renaultsport products, each boasting slightly more horsepower, slightly better refinement, and even better value for money. Really, Renaultsports are not about outright power – a foreign concept for Canadians, both literally and figuratively. Instead, Renaultsport road cars are highly regarded for their millimetre-precise steering, the near-miraculous feat of chassis engineering that combines body control and suppleness, and their rather low cost.

As a follow-up to the Clio 172, the Second Act to the opera that is Renaultsport saw the introduction of the Clio 182. A car that offered a slight bump in horsepower over the 172, while maintaining all of the quaint, loveable insanity of the original – as Jeremy Clarkson demonstrates…

After that gem came a car so blindingly mental and brave that it will maintain a bookmark in Renault’s historical catacombs for, well, ever. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I stumbled upon an example of Renaultsport craftsmanship in Barcelona this past summer. Well, these two cars are really one and the same: the Clio Renaultsport V6. A rear-seatless, rear-wheel driven, mid-engined tribute to Renault’s Formula 1 efforts.

If only that double-decker tourist bus hadn’t jumped into my shot like a Japanese tourist with her two-fingered gang sign, you could have had Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya as a backdrop. Oh well. Launched in late 2000, the Clio V6, unlike the pedestrian front-engine, front-wheel drive car on which it is based, was known for its unwieldily on-limit handling due in part to a weight increase of 660lbs over the stock Clio. Most of said weight was over the rear, leading to to handing that wouldn’t be out of place in an early 911 Porsche. The Phase I car, built by Tom Walkinshaw Racing, featured the 2946cc 24V 230hp engine from the Renault Laguna mounted behind the front seats. In 2003, when the Clio recieved a mild face-lift, (now Phase II) production was taken over by Renaultsport in Dieppe, the same port where thousands of our Canadian soldiers valiantly fought and gave their lives on August 19, 1942.

Barcelona was our first stop in Europe and Plaça de Catalunya was our first stop off the bus from the airport. As I gazed around the Spanish port to establish my bearings in the new city, my eyes stopped dead on a compact silver beast with side-nostrils flaring. I dropped my bags and jogged across the street, noticeably forgetting to look either way for traffic. My 10-minute-old vacation was nearly ended when an Alfa Romeo Brera came barrelling through in typical European pedestrian-disrespecting fashion. No matter, because before me lay the most special car my eyes had ever laid eyes upon. I was already familiar with the Clio V6, at least in principle, so I knew what my eyes were seeing. And yet, I didn’t – it was as if the action potential from my rods and cones was being lost at the optic chiasm, destined to never reach my lateral geniculate nuclei.

After production of the Clio V6 ended in November of 2005, Renaultsport went back to making more sane, but still very good, hot hatches. No more rear-wheel drive. No more engine behind the driver. Only slightly less Gallic flair. It wouldn’t be until 2008 when Renaultsport unleashed the Megane R26.R on an unsuspecting hot hatch community, that we would again be reminded of the motorsport division’s potential. The R26.R was the swan song for the previous generation of Megane, itself not a particularly special car. But when dressed up for the races with a full roll cage, 6-point racing harness, cut-slick Toyos, carbon fibre hood, and a titanium exhaust, the R26.R lapped the Nordschleife faster than any other front-wheel drive car had ever done before. Or since.

When compared to the likes of the Clio V6 and the Megane R26.R, Renaultsport’s current line-up is admittedly tame. But just wait, because something special is on its way. I just know it.

Image credits: author, Canal Blog, author, author, author, steven_bullock_uk/flikr

Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you…and your name is Nokian Hakkapeliitta R. Follow the jump for more.

Some of you are, no doubt, already familiar with the charms of Nokians in snow. I’m sad to say I wasn’t…until now. However, these things put a truly silly grin on my face about a mile wide when I’m having no trouble whatsoever driving our snowy roads in the MkIII GTI VR6 you see in the photos. Did I mention the “with no trouble whatsoever”? Just checking. Meanwhile, SUVs and other assorted clowntards are going approximately the speed of exhausted turtles, afraid they might lose traction. Boo hoo. Cue tiny violins as I roar past.

In summary, if you aren’t looking for studs, Hakkapeliitta Rs are lovely. And if you are looking for studs, Nokian’s got those, too. ONE SNOW TIRE TO RULE THEM ALL.

[Photos: Joe Lucente]

NOTE: Nokian is in no way responsible for the content of this post, except the silly grin on my face whenever I drive the car with their tires on. That is entirely their responsibility. They have in no way paid for the content of this post…they’re just that unbelievably awesome. If you feel at all timid in the snow, try a set of these and fear no more.

Earlier this week we took a look at a video review from Autocar UK comparing the GT-R, the R8 V10, and the new 997.5 Turbo. Now we’ve also got a splendid collection of photography to go along with it. Nothing quite like a perfect photograph of a bulgingly brutal supercar, innit eh?

Take particular note of the shots caught mid-drift. The visual proportions of the R8 are wretched, the Turbo looks like it’s VW Beetle forebears, and the Nissan looks huge, if extremely purposeful as well.Follow below for more.

[Autocar]

Castle Combe is a bit of a bumpy, unevenly-surfaced circuit, but you just know this is going to be good…

[Autocar UK via YouTube]