Alfa Romeo Canguro: The Contest Nobody Won The most beautiful Alfa Romeo ever drawn exists because of a General Motors executive in Detroit. Not directly. But the method that produced it was Bill Mitchell’s, and Alfa Romeo copied it a year later, right down to the two coachbuilders and the two donor chassis. Both experiments … Read more
Lamborghini Athon: 260 HP, No Roof, Turin 1980 Bertone brought a brand-new Lamborghini to the Turin motor show in April 1980. An open two-seater, futuristic, with a fully digital instrument panel and a single-spoke steering wheel. Lamborghini had been bankrupt for two years. A coachbuilder publicly unveiled a car for a client that was in … Read more
Lamborghini Bravo: 300 HP and 2,390 lb in 1974 A show car does not get driven. It is pushed onto the stand, lit, photographed and put away. The Lamborghini Bravo covered tens of thousands of test kilometers. American journalists drove it and published a verdict. And in April 1978, three and a half years after … Read more
Lamborghini Urraco, Silhouette and Jalpa: Eighteen Years of a V8 That Never Sold Lamborghini spent eighteen years trying to sell a small eight-cylinder sports car. Between the Urraco, the Silhouette and the Jalpa it managed roughly 1,255 cars. Ferrari, in the same segment with a single model, sold more than twelve thousand 308s. That is … Read more
Lamborghini Jarama: Ferruccio’s Own Favorite Asked which of his cars he preferred, Ferruccio Lamborghini did not say Miura. He said Jarama. And he said it late, in 1991, when he had nothing left to sell: he preferred it to all the others because it was the perfect compromise between the Miura and the Espada. That … Read more
Lamborghini Espada: The Four-Seat V12 That Started as a Jaguar Lamborghini’s family car was not drawn in Sant’Agata. It was drawn in London, over Jaguar mechanicals, on commission from a British newspaper. The wooden body buck built for that Jaguar was then reused to put together the first Espada prototype. None of that appears in … Read more
Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione: The Alfa That Alfa Romeo Didn’t Build America got 84 of them. Maybe 90. Nobody has nailed that number down either, and that turns out to be the whole story of this car. The Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione was the car that brought Alfa Romeo back to the United States after … Read more
Maserati 5000 GT: The Supercar a King Paid For Because Maserati Couldn’t In January 1962, Sports Car Graphic ran a road test that should have made the Maserati 5000 GT a household name in America. Bernard Cahier had been handed a one-off Ghia-bodied car before its owner took delivery, and he came back describing acceleration he had … Read more
Fiat X1/9: the industrial mid-engine Bertone was hiding in a corner In 1971, Gianni Agnelli is making an informal visit to the Bertone factory in Grugliasco, on the outskirts of Turin. Nuccio Bertone walks him through the production halls, shows him models, talks him through current projects. And in a corner, between development cars and … 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
Lancia Sibilo: Gandini’s last wedge, a Stratos in alien clothing Picture this. Turin Motor Show, April 1978. The car industry is five years deep into a hangover that just won’t lift. The 1973 oil crisis has rewired everything. Big cars don’t sell anymore. Safety regulations are forcing designers to bolt rubber bumpers onto everything like … Read more
From refrigerator to grand tourer How Renzo Rivolta made the most improbable leap in Italian industrial history, hired a former Ferrari engineer, and built two cars with American hearts that still embarrass Maranello today There is an Italian gentleman you already know without realising it. He’s the one who in the 1950s ran a refrigerator … Read more
