One Lap of the Web: Le Mans souvenirs, F1 in 360, and a BMW fit for a biker

-- Collin Woodard was "that weird friend who was strangely committed to riding a motorcycle." Being the weird motorcycle-owning friend, however, can only get you so far until you start an influential motorcycle blog or start making sepia-toned hipster videos on expensive Canon 5Ds and wildly unreliable CB550Fs. Woodward needed a car, and boy did his friends have something to say about that! He looked at a Camry. He looked at a Civic Si. He looked at Kias. Then he relented and bought a 1999 BMW 540i with the M-Sport package. What's it like owning a 15-year old BMW that represents some misty-eyed M-tattooed fanboy's vision of German driving purity? The Smoking Tire has Woodward's story. Bernstein could not be called to comment. We hear he drives an M Roadster.

-- What's a future classic? We always ask ourselves this, as if we're bidding on a house with a bomb shelter and then squirrel away 15 Chevrolet SSs and a couple of Subaru BRZs yet untainted by the evil spectre of Stance Nation, waiting for the time when we can reintroduce them and a pallet of uneaten MREs back to polite society and sell them for BIG BUXX. No, this is our Brave New World, where "forgettable $2500 '60s and '70s cars that we couldn't afford are now $12,500 cars we can't afford." Dodge Darts, Pontiac Tempests, 1972 Mustangs, Porsche 914s, Triumph TR6s, Big Rhondas. BMW 2002s. 2002s! I remember looking through Boston Craigslist four years ago for cheapo high school 2002 projects and thinking a $3,500 asking price for a non-tii 1976 with bumpers the size of Chinook rotors was a stretch. Now? A guy on my street has a cherry red BMW 2002, non-tii, that he bought for twelve grand. Judging by his grin when he told me, he seems happy enough. Anyway, Jamie Kitman of Automobile Magazine says you ought to buy a Saab 900, or better yet, a 99 (the 900 is "a bloated 99," he once told me), but if you do you'll have to get in line behind me first. I will fight you.

-- Ever wonder what it'd be like if an owl rode on board with Nico Rosberg while he drifts an Mercedes E63 AMG S? Before today, we'd tell you to lay off the Ambien. But now you can control a full 360-degree video of the Mercedes 2014 F1 car and a pair of AMG wagons as they lap Silverstone, with Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton driving. Six cameras filmed at 40 frames per second for this footage, available here or via Mercedes' Formula One app for iPads. If owls could talk, they'd watch this and say, "hoo, that's c-hoo-l." (Sorry.)

-- To the victor go the spoils. Mazda knew this as much as anybody else when it won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1991. To celebrate the historic victory, Mazda gave its executives, engineers and management some incredibly cool souvenirs. Case in point: a vial of engine oil, like a pope's blood, drained from the heart of the Number 55 787B before it was embalmed and regulated to museum status. Only four vials are scattered through the world (we thought rotaries used more oil than that), and we assume that if all four vials were located in the same room, it would summon the spirit of Cthulhu from his home in R'lyeh. Or at least reawaken the rotary program. There's also a detailed pewter model and a centerlock bolt used on the 787B's wheels. Us mortals, however, will just have to settle for a rare, discontinued AutoArt model. At $349, anything the 787B touches turns to gold.

By Blake Z. Rong