The history behind the brans that shaped the automotive world. Origins, evolution and the moments that made them great.
Tramontana: the Spanish supercar built by the man who turned down Star Wars A designer once got the kind of offer most people would frame on a wall: come to the United States and design for the Star Wars movies. He said no. He didn’t want to build spaceships for the screen. He wanted to … Read more
Panoz: the nicotine-patch millionaire who chain-smoked and saved American racing There’s an irony so cruel at the center of this story that if a novel served it up you’d say the author overreached. The man who made his fortune leading the team that invented the nicotine patch — the device meant to help people quit … Read more
Studebaker: the last independent Detroit couldn’t let live There’s a grove of 5,000 trees near South Bend, Indiana, planted back in 1937 so that from the air they spell out a single word: STUDEBAKER. You can still find it on Google Earth today. A whole automaker reduced to a piece of landscape gardening you have … Read more
Autobianchi: The Brand Fiat Used to Take Risks It Wouldn’t Sign Its Name To Almost nothing you drive today would exist in its current form without a company most Americans have never heard of. That’s not hyperbole and it isn’t nostalgia. If your car has its engine mounted sideways, driving the front wheels, with the … Read more
The Genius Who Built Cars Pricier Than a Bugatti — and Ended Up Fathering the Poorest Car in Spain If you’ve ever wandered the lawn at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, you may have stopped dead in front of an Avions Voisin. They have that effect. Sweeping Art Deco bodywork, aircraft-grade aluminium, aerodynamic rooflines drawn … Read more
Spain Built a Hyper-Luxury Car That Stole the Paris Motor Show — Then Its Own Widow Had the Blueprints Burned Ask almost anyone in Britain or America to name a great Spanish car of the 1920s and you’ll get a blank look. Maybe, if they’re sharp, Hispano-Suiza. And that’s it. The received wisdom is that … Read more
The Maserati Brothers Who Quit Maserati to Avoid Building Road Cars — Then Put Their Engine in a Fiat Here’s a question worth chewing on. What do you do when you’ve built one of the most famous names in motoring, sold it, and then legally lost the right to ever use your own surname on … Read more
Braid: the Spanish factory that quietly puts half the racing world on its wheels Chris Harris can tell you everything about a car the second it leaves a corner. The throttle, the slip angle, the way the rear steps out. But ask anyone, Harris included, what the car is rolling on, and the answer goes … Read more
Fiat: 126 years to build an empire, five to dismantle it Every so often Top Gear used to do those hagiographies about brands that “shaped motoring”. They did Ferrari. They did Aston. They did Porsche. They never quite did Fiat properly, and if you think about it for more than thirty seconds, that omission is … Read more
Ricart Cars: A Century Later, the Family Name Returns to Building Cars In 1922, a 25-year-old engineer from Barcelona designed and built two racing cars with double overhead cams and 16 valves. In 200 days. By himself. Engine, chassis, bodywork, suspension, brakes. Everything. With those cars he won races, beat Bugatti, and then dropped the … Read more
MAT: The Secret Workshop in Turin Where Other People’s Hypercars Are Actually Built Pop quiz for the readers of Top Gear, Petrolicious, Road & Track and every magazine that ever ran a launch story on a boutique hypercar. Where is the Aspark Owl built? Where is the Glickenhaus SCG003 assembled? Where does the Apollo Intensa … Read more
The Italian company that builds every IndyCar, F2 and F3 chassis — and almost nobody outside racing knows the name Forget the F1 paddock for a minute. Walk down pit lane at the Indianapolis 500 instead. Every car you see — every single one of the 33 starters — was built by the same company. … Read more
