VW Scirocco: the handsome brother who went first to take the bullets for the Golf This year everyone celebrated the Volkswagen Golf’s fiftieth birthday. Fair enough: it’s one of the most important cars ever built, the one that saved Volkswagen, the one that invented a whole class. But there’s something almost nobody mentions while the … Read more
Opel Manta: sketched in six weeks, still standing fifteen years later Ask any British enthusiast about affordable seventies coupés and the conversation starts and ends with the Ford Capri. The car you always promised yourself. Fair enough. But cross the Channel and there was another one playing the exact same game, built by people who … Read more
Ford Capri: the Cortina in a tuxedo that humbled BMW and Alfa Romeo For a car that spent two decades being mocked as a hairdresser’s motor, the Ford Capri has a remarkable secret hiding under its skin. Underneath that long-bonneted, fastback glamour sat a humble Ford Cortina. The most ordinary of family saloons. And with … Read more
Opel GT: the baby Corvette that was never actually a copy Everybody who clapped eyes on an Opel GT in 1968 thought the same thing: somebody shrank a Corvette. The nickname wrote itself. Mini-Vette. Baby Corvette. And for fifty years that lazy shorthand has buried the far better truth, which is that this little German … Read more
The Maserati Boomerang: the Wedge That Drew Your Hatchback There’s a concept-car trope that Jeremy Clarkson loved to mock: the show stunner that turns up at Geneva, gets a thousand photographs, and is never seen or heard from again because it can’t actually move, steer, or stop. A non-car. A sculpture on a turntable. The … Read more
The Supercar That Dared to Be Comfortable: The Maserati Bora’s Secret French Heart Ask any supercar of 1971 the questions that actually mattered to an owner and you’d usually get a sneer. Can I climb in without wrecking my back? Can I drive it for two hours without going deaf? Can I park it without … Read more
Fiat 500: when a car was actually a platform in disguise Chris Harris once said the best small cars are the ones that feel honest about what they are. He was talking about a modern hot hatch. He could have been talking about the original Fiat 500, except the 500 takes that idea further than … Read more
The Phantasm ‘Cuda Wore 440+6 Badges and Hid a 340 Underneath. Nobody Called It for 46 Years. Five films, three different displacements, a cloned Hemi and a vanished original. Don Coscarelli couldn’t afford the car his screen promised. So he lied. And the lie worked. Pause the VHS, the DVD or the 2016 J.J. Abrams-produced … Read more
LAMBORGHINI COUNTACH: WHY THE MOST FAMOUS SUPERCAR IN HISTORY WAS ALSO THE WORST Let’s start with what the Countach actually was. Not what it looked like — what it was. It was a car with no rear visibility. Literally none. The V12 and its intake scoops occupied the space where a rear window should have … Read more
