mod@tech

According to a March 22 press release by Chevrolet, the final sixth-generation Camaros will roll off the assembly line at Michigan’s Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant in January, 2024. Plans for an immediate Camaro successor have not been finalized.

This isn’t the first Camaro discontinuation. Chevrolet killed the Camaro after the 2002 model year and brought it back eight years later to nip at the heels of the retro 2005 Ford Mustang. Considering the Camaro’s nine strong years in the automotive market with hundreds of thousands sold, the Camaro namesake could still live on.

The latest generation of Camaros are available in coupe and soft-top convertible variants, and according to Chevrolet, are known for supreme athleticism and composure. Whether it is earning awards for on-road performance or collecting race wins and championships at tracks across the world, Camaro has demonstrated Chevrolet’s ability to win in the most demanding environments.

“As we prepare to say goodbye to the current generation Camaro, it is difficult to overstate our gratitude to every Camaro customer, Camaro assembly line employee and race fan,” said Scott Bell, vice president, Global Chevrolet. “While we are not announcing an immediate successor today, rest assured, this is not the end of Camaro’s story.”

The pause of the Camaro model wouldn’t be official without an honorary limited edition package option. Chevrolet will release a Collector’s Edition package for the 2024 Camaro RS and SS models which will also extend to a limited number of ZL1 equipped vehicles available in North America. Chevrolet will release more information on the 2024 Camaro line and Collector’s Edition package this summer, but in the meantime the marque provided a few photo teasers:

As for motorsports involvement, Chevrolet will continue to campaign the sixth-generation Camaro in a variety of series, including NASCAR, IMSA, SRO, NHRA and the Supercars Championship.

Coming soon: The Chevy E-maro, an electric vehicle named with a spin-off of the common misspelling “Camero”. Just kidding. All jokes aside, Chevrolet says that the end of the sixth-generation Camaro doesn’t necessarily mean the nameplate will be gone forever, however, chances are the next reiteration will be of the EV variety.

Sixth-generation Camaro – One more ride | Chevrolet

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The moment Peugeot descended on the Paris-Dakar, Mitsubishi’s representatives knew they had a fight on their hands. Its Pajero, which had handily won the race for the Japanese carmaker just a few years prior, needed a thorough re-evaluation if it were to remain competitive, and starting in 1988 that’s just what it received. Now, amid soaring prices for vintage production-line Pajeros on the collector-car market, one of those 1988 Paris-Dakar Pajeros will cross the block, expected to sell for a quarter of a million dollars or more.

The Pajero’s history with the Paris-Dakar dates back nearly to the introduction of the four-wheel-drive SUV, which debuted in May 1982 as a replacement for the Jeeps that Mitsubishi built under license and which Mitsubishi sold in the United States as the Montero and as the Dodge Raider. With a 4G54 2.6L four-cylinder gasoline engine, torsion-bar independent front suspension, and four-wheel-drive, Mitsubishi racing officials determined the Pajero would do well in the Paris-Dakar. After some blueprinting in Kyoto and reinforcement and rally prep by Sonauto, Mitsubishi’s French importer, Mitsubishi entered four Pajeros in the production car class in the 1983 race. None of the four finished in the top 10, but Andrew Cowan and George Debussy still finished first and second in their class, which Mitsubishi considered a victory.

Mitsubishi upgraded to the turbocharged version of the 4G54 from the Starion, switched first to the Modified Production car class and then to the Prototype class, and managed to notch another class win in 1984, followed by an overall win and second-place finish in 1985, then a trio of top-10 finishes (behind the Porsche 959 supercar) in 1986, but the most significant challenge to Mitsubishi’s Dakar success came in 1987 when Peugeot entered the fray. The French carmaker had taken the final two World Rally Championship Group B titles in its Peugeot 205 T16, but the FIA’s ban on Group B after the end of the 1986 season left Peugeot with a lot of motorsports investment and nowhere to compete, so Peugeot officials turned their eye to the Paris-Dakar.

As many Paris-Dakar contestants complained, Peugeot didn’t simply enter the race to win, it entered to dominate. “The team deployed 30 mechanics and enormous supply of spare parts, preparing a practically new car each night for the next day,” Mitsubishi noted in its history of the race. “(Peugeot driver Ari Vatanen) tackled the marathon rally as a series of sprint-type rallies and fought a hard battle every day.” In the end, Mitsubishi placed third, about four hours behind Vatanen.

To remain competitive, Mitsubishi and Sonauto made the most wide-ranging changes to the Pajero to date. It rode on a shorter 4.03-meter wheelbase, benefited from a longer-travel suspension, received a power boost to 275 horsepower thanks to an increase in compression, and was fitted with a larger 400-liter fuel tank. Because the Pajero had all the aerodynamics of the shipping container it arrived in, Mitsubishi tasked its Passenger Car Technology Center back in Japan with redesigning the body to be more slippery, fine-tuning it in a wind tunnel to ultimately reduce the body’s coefficient of drag by 20 percent.

Still, it retained its predecessors’ same basic ladder-frame chassis, rather than the Peugeot cars’ tube-frame structure, for which Mitsubishi granted Peugeot the advantage. Paris-Dakar veteran Pierre Lartigue – who’d previously raced Range Rovers and Lada Nivas – joined Cowan and Kenjiro Shinozuka on the Mitsubishi team and even managed to win one of the early stages before throwing in the towel, reportedly due to overheating. (This was the same Paris-Dakar in which Vatanen’s Peugeot was stolen as he was leading the race, putting him out of contention.) Juha Kankkunen won the race for Peugeot, but Shinozuka managed a second-place finish.

The 1988 Paris-Dakar Rally

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Lartigue and the Pajero would both go on to greater success in the Paris-Dakar: After finishing second in a Pajero in 1991, Lartigue switched to Citroen and three-peated the race from 1994 through 1996; Pajeros bookended Lartigue’s success with overall wins in 1992 and 1993, 1997 and 1998, and then the remarkable string of seven consecutive wins from 2001 to 2007.

Still, Lartigue had a soft spot for that 1988 Pajero. After the Paris-Dakar, he took a pair of second-place finishes in it in the Rallye de Tunisie and the Rallye de l’Atlas, won the Course de Cote TT de Brive and the 1989 Rallye de Tunisie, and then turned in a pair of sixth-place finishes at the Rallye TT de Cognac and the Rallye TT de Vitrolles. And despite the switch to Citroen, he held on to the Pajero from the time Mitsubishi was done with it after the 1989 rallying season until 2021.

Photo courtesy Aguttes

Lartigue’s Pajero has since passed to a French collector, who restored it to its 1988 Paris-Dakar condition and made it the centerpiece of a small collection of Dakar vehicles, including a 1976 Opel Manta GT/E that had previously run in the European Rally Championship, a 1986 Audi Quattro placed atop a Range Rover chassis by Franco de Paoli, a 1981 Range Rover that ran the Paris-Dakar when new, and a 1991 Range Rover also prepared for the Paris-Dakar by de Paoli, all of which French auction house Aguttes will put up for bid in its spring sale. The Opel and Range Rovers are expected to sell for anywhere from €40,000 (about $44,000) to €80,000 (about $88,000) while the Quattro is expected to sell for €150,000 (about $165,000) to €250,000 (about $275,000) and the Pajero is expected to sell for €250,000 (about $275,000) to €350,000 (about $380,000). While production-line Pajeros (and Monteros and Dodge Raiders) don’t come close to those numbers, the Pajero Evolution that Mitsubishi offered from 1997 to 1999 to homologate the company’s entries in the Paris-Dakar has, over the last year or so, steeply climbed in value with examples now selling for anywhere from $35,000 to $50,000.

The Aguttes spring sale will take place April 2 at Hotel Espace Champerret in Paris. For more information, visit Aguttes.com.

The E30 325i is a cool car as is, offering an analog driving experience paired with a small, maneuverable wheelbase. This extra exciting example ups the smiles per mile with by adding 70-plus horsepower via an engine swap. The car’s original 168 horsepower 2.5 liter engine was traded for the more performance-oriented 3.2 liter inline-six out of a U.S.-spec E36 M3.

The blending of the E30 and E36 BMW generations resulted in a high-performance custom with several notable upgrades. Aside from its M3 power and matching five-speed manual transmission with an AKG short shifter, this 325i convertible sports a custom-fabricated exhaust system, an E36 steering rack, Ground Control coilover suspension, and larger aftermarket Wilwood brake calipers. Upon installation, the engine was equipped with an E34 oil pan, a Mishimoto aluminum radiator, and a Racing Dynamics carbon-fiber engine cover.

If you’re thinking that the exterior also looks updated, you’re right: the build also included an M-Tech body kit and BBS 17-inch wheels. Inside, the tan leather interior is refreshed and an aftermarket Pioneer stereo with Bluetooth was added.

All the listed modifications were completed by the pros at Castro Motorsport, a BMW specialist shop in North Hollywood, California. The seller states that the engine and transmission swap was completed in May 2017, and he only out 10,000 miles on it since.

“This car has been with me for many years, and I’ve put a lot of resources and love in it,” he said. “I never cut any corners.”

Visit the auction listing for more details but be quick! Time flies and the auction ends on Monday, March 27^th.

Date: March 1973

Location: Bethesda, Maryland

Source: Yoichi Okamoto, via Documerica

What do you see here?

Ferrari, the world-renown Italian Supercar manufacturer, sent customers an email on Monday disclosing that the company was attacked by a data breach. A threat actor demanded a ransom from Ferrari regarding customer contact details that may have been exposed in a ransomware attack. The unnamed attackers, while accessing a limited number of Ferrari’s IT systems, may have had access to the personal information of the marque’s customers, such as names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers.

In the letter to Ferrari customers, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna wrote, “We regret to inform you of a cyber incident at Ferrari, where a threat actor was able to access a limited number of systems in our IT environment… However, based on our investigation, no payment details and/or bank account numbers and/or other sensitive payment information, nor details of Ferrari cars owned or ordered have been stolen.”

According to a separate statement made by the Ferrari company, the breach did not impact any operational functions. It is unclear what technologies Ferrari is using to track what the attackers actually had access to, and the number of customers affected is either unknown or not yet released to the public. As of this writing, even the actual date of the breach is unknown.

Ferrari had a similar incident in October 2022, when a ransomware group called “RansomEXX” made online claims of breaching the firm, allegedly stealing 7GB of data from Ferrari, including data sheets, repair manuals and other internal documents. Ferrari denied those claims.

“As a policy, Ferrari will not be held to ransom as paying such demands funds criminal activity and enables threat actors to perpetuate their attacks,” Ferrari said in a statement on March 20. “Instead, we believed the best course of action was to inform our clients and thus we have notified our customers of the potential data exposure and the nature of the incident.”

It makes sense for Ferrari to be a target for Ransomware considering the high-dollar car lineups and a contact list full of wealthy customers. However, even if the attackers did gain access to the customer’s basic contact information, the result could simply be an onset of tricky malicious targeted emails.

Ferrari also states that after receiving the threat, the firm hired a third-party cybersecurity company to assist with an investigation and boost the security of its systems.

You’ve made our day by checking in on this week’s Hemmings Auctions Roundup. Forty-nine new vehicle listings launched between Sunday, March 12 and Saturday the 18th, and 30 of those sold, including 6 post-auction Make Offer listings. This equates to a sell-through rate of 61 percent. You can stay on top of the latest consignments by subscribing to the daily Hemmings Auctions email newsletter.

1959 MG MGA

1959 MG MGA

Reserve: $10,000

Selling Price: $18,690

Recent Market Range: $8,000-$13,000

While it looked like it was doing 100 mph standing still, the classic 1959 MGA roadster was not a powerhouse in standard form. Replacing its 1,600-cc engine with the 1,800-cc version from an MGB is a tried-and-true way to add oomph. This example got such a heart transplant as part of an early-2000s refreshing that brought new paint (now admittedly containing some blemishes but no rust) and a vinyl-upholstered interior (replacing factory leather). The four-speed driveline worked with only a minor oil leak, while no water leaks for the top or body seals were revealed and the brakes and suspension were serviced within the past five years. This British classic handily exceeded its reserve.

1972 Cadillac Eldorado

1972 Cadillac Eldorado 

Reserve: $19,333

Selling Price: $23,100

Recent Market Range: $18,000-$27,000

In dollar-per-inch terms, few cars offer as much value as the early-1970s Cadillac Eldorado. This head-turning 1972 convertible looked period-perfect in Sumatra Green Metallic with a coordinating green leather-upholstered interior. Its seller described the general condition as “great” with scratch- and rust-free paint and a fully intact interior with working A/C and AM/FM radio; the clock was described as the car’s only component to have failed. Just under 100,000 miles showed on the odometer, but the 500-cu.in. V-8 and three-speed automatic had no reported issues and the car showed little evidence of that mileage. The hammer price represented a very good result for the winning bidder.

1957 Chevrolet Corvette

1957 Chevrolet Corvette

Reserve: $80,000

Selling Price: $86,625

Recent Market Range: $79,000-$107,000

The 1957 Corvette is beloved in Chevrolet circles for its clean styling and extra power, and this Arctic Blue over Beige example was a head-turner. Its excellent-appearing condition resulted from a body-off restoration that took place circa-2009, while its double-four-barrel-carbureted 283-cu.in. V-8 and other mechanicals were refurbished in 2016. That 283 was paired with a three-speed manual, a minor oil leak was noted. The ’Vette’s cosmetics were very nice, with a few scratches present and an interior in “excellent” shape with the addition of a retro-look modern stereo. Older radial tires were fitted, and the chassis appeared very tidy. Buyer and seller could be happy with this auction.

1968 Buick GS 400 

Reserve: $43,000

Selling Price: $70,350

Recent Market Range: N/A

This GS 400 was a real hot ticket, and two bidders went back and forth with no fewer than 18 time extensions leading to a total of 45 bids. Why did the Buick convertible beat its reserve by more than 50 percent? It was a rare, low-mileage car that enjoyed a documented body-off restoration less than 10 years ago and was driven fewer than 5,000 miles since. Its paint and interior colors were changed at that time, but this obviously didn’t hurt its desirability. The 400-cu.in. V-8 and automatic operated without issue, and recent reproduction redline tires made it look period-perfect. A video and comprehensive, top-quality photo documentation reassured interested parties of the GS’s goodness.

1971 Chevrolet C10  

Reserve: $35,000

Selling Price: $44,100

Recent Market Range: $28,000-$42,000

The clean, timeless lines of late-Sixties/early-Seventies Chevrolet pickups make them perennial favorites for restoration and customization, the latter being what this 1971 C10 was treated to. It turned heads with its two-tone paint, which was said to have just a couple of noteworthy chips, as well as its bold 20-inch alloy wheels wearing staggered-size tires. The interior featured black vinyl bucket seats and a column-mounted tachometer, as well as working A/C. Go was provided by an Edelbrock intake- and header-equipped 350-inch small-block V-8 mated to a column-shifted TH350, and whoa was courtesy of front disc/rear drum brakes. This stylish truck handily beat its recent market range.

1957 Ford Thunderbird

Reserve: $40,000

Selling Price: $44,000

Recent Market Range: N/A

Few can resist the siren call of a black 1957 Thunderbird, as this handsomely restored two-seater proved. Offered by a well-reputed classic-car dealer, the Ford convertible was said to be totally rust- and accident-free. While it was originally equipped with a removable hard top, that accessory was no longer present, the car simply having its paint-color-matched soft top. The two-tone black and white interior was stylish and looked fresh, and the four-barrel-carbureted 312-cu.in. V-8 and floor-shifted automatic transmission both operated without issue. Chromed wire wheels mounted recently installed bias-ply tires. The seller answered questions and the Thunderbird exceeded its reserve.