Amédée Gordini — The Sorcerer Who Took On Ferrari With Nothing A Workshop Against the World There is a man standing in a workshop on Boulevard Victor in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, sometime in the early 1950s. The floor is concrete. The tools are worn. The parts bin is half empty because there is … Read more
Maserati 250F: The Most Beautiful Car to Ever Win a War Denis Jenkinson, the great Motor Sport correspondent who rode shotgun with Stirling Moss to win the 1955 Mille Miglia, did not hand out praise cheaply. He had watched everything the 1950s had to offer. And of one particular afternoon at the Nürburgring he wrote … Read more
McLaren: Sixty Years of Building Cars That Hurt, From a Limp in Auckland to the Top of Formula 1 Top Gear’s Chris Harris once said that the McLaren F1 is the only road car that has ever genuinely scared him. Not in the way a Lamborghini Diablo scares you with its switches and its truculence, … Read more
Ferrari F50: The Ferrari The Press Couldn’t Read Let’s get one thing straight before we start. In 1995, when Ferrari launched the F50, the motoring press of the entire planet agreed on one thing: it was a disappointment. They said it in the United States. They said it in England. They said it in Italy. … Read more
MAURO FORGHIERI: The Engineer Who Held Ferrari Together for 27 Years and Got a Decorative Office in Return Picture this. You’re 26. You’ve been at Ferrari for one year. Last week, every senior engineer in the place walked out at once. You’re the only qualified engineer left because you happen to be the youngest one … Read more
Maserati cooked its own engine, regulations took the heat out Some engines explain themselves. Others hit you. The Nettuno does the first better than almost anything else alive. The second — no. And that’s exactly what you need to know before someone sells it to you as the future of Maserati. Because the future is … Read more
F1 Academy, the Golden Cage There’s nothing more insulting than being gifted something you’d already earned. In 1975, Lella Lombardi scored points in a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Not in a women’s category. Not in a parallel championship. In the same Spanish Grand Prix where men risked their lives every Sunday. Sixth place. Half a … Read more
Maserati: Seven Brothers, One Trident, and the Greatest Race Ever Run The family born for speed To understand Maserati, you need to start with a fact almost nobody knows: there weren’t six brothers. There were seven. Rodolfo Maserati was a locomotive driver for the Italian railways, based in Voghera, Lombardy. He married Carolina Losi, and … Read more
Lotus and Colin Chapman: The Engineer Who Proved Light Beats Powerful “Simplify, then add lightness.” If you had to compress the entire philosophy of automotive engineering into five words, those would be it. They weren’t spoken by a professor or a CEO with an MBA. They came from Colin Chapman — a British engineer who … Read more
COSWORTH: THE HISTORY Cosworth: The Company That Powered Half the World in Competition In competitive motorsport, there exists a name that appears on more winning cars, more championships, and more victory stories than any independent engine manufacturer in history. It’s not Ferrari. It’s not Mercedes. It’s not Honda. It’s Cosworth. A company founded in a … Read more
