Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all. I hope 2013 is a great year for you.

Last year I did a Christmas-themed diorama, and so this is
the second year in a row, and when you have anything done
two years in a row, that's a tradition! Here's hoping Santa
brings you whatever you want, even if it's only peace on Earth.

What's Santa doing in a Citroen DS19 ute? Well, Santa has had to cut costs, like everyone else, and so he foolishly privatised sleigh maintenance, and ever since then he's had nothing but breakdowns, always at peak periods, like Christmas.

And so from time to time he has to use his reliable, comfortable and very stylish personal transport – the rig he drives the other 364 days of the year – and that's this Citroen ute. 

Hot lap at the Nurburgring

For a while, a few years ago now, I was a Gran Turismo devotee on Playstation, and of all the wonderful tracks that GT3 and GT4 had to offer, the Nordschleife at Nurburgring was where I went just to relax, if I had half an hour to spare. My car of choice for just a couple of quick laps of the Nurburgring was a BMW M3. Fabulous balance, deceptive speed, forgiving and fast, the M3 Beemer has it all.

And so recently when I spotted a BMW CSL in a genuine bricks-and-mortar model car shop in Sydney (Model Cars Too, in Clarence Street in Sydney city) I immediately knew which diorama that quick older-generation Beemer was going to star in. And so, ladies and gentlemen, start your engines, we are going for a quick lap of the Nordschleife at the Nurburgring in our Beemer.

This BMW 3.0L CSL is a 1:43 model by Spark. In the
background is a BMW 2002 Turbo, a Kyosho model in 1:64.

I used to run wide just after this corner in GT4 if I wasn't careful.

Bringing up the rear here is another Kyosho 1:64, a Porsche.

The famous carousel had to be included, of course!

And finally, what posting of a hot lap at the Ring would be complete without a real hot lap at the Ring? Here, a BMW M3 CSL tags along with a Porsche GT3. The first 15 seconds or so look a bit dark, but then the rest is perfectly bright, and somehow to me the feeling in this vid is just 'right', just how I remember those laps in the Beemer, in GT4. Fortunately there was very little traffic about that day, too, so sit back and enjoy one of the greatest modern cars circulating quickly around the greatest track.