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
Bertone Testudo: Two Months and a Kid Every enthusiast knows the Chevrolet Corvair as America’s cautionary tale — the rear-engined oddball that ended up as the poster child for automotive controversy, the car that became shorthand for Detroit getting it wrong. What almost nobody knows is that the same car, in the hands of a … Read more
Alfa Romeo Alfasud: The Most Advanced Compact in Europe That Rusted Away Because of Politics More than a million units built between 1972 and 1989. 893,719 saloons produced between 1972 and 1983, plus 121,434 Sprint coupés between 1976 and 1989. A massive industrial figure by Alfa Romeo standards — a marque that had historically built … 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
Peralta S: the Giugiaro Name Returns to the Wedge Here’s a neat trick of symmetry. In 1972, a Giugiaro drew an impossible wedge over a Maserati and turned it into a legend. In 2025, another Giugiaro did exactly the same thing. Same surname. Same brand, near enough. Same wedge. But fifty-three years sit between the … 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
BMW NAZCA C2: THE M1 SUCCESSOR BMW WAS TOO SCARED TO BUILD A 350 hp BMW V12 that weighed less than a Mini Cooper S For all the heritage BMW has built around the M1, for all the magazine covers Top Gear and Evo have given the M1 Hommage and the more recent retro pieces, … Read more
Volkswagen W12 Nardò: the supercar that was always a test rig If you watched Top Gear in the early 2000s, you remember the era. Clarkson worshipping the McLaren F1. May still mourning the death of the V12 Vantage. The Veyron was about to land like a meteor and rewrite everything we thought we knew about … Read more
Maserati MC12: The Supercar That Forced the FIA to Invent Balance of Performance Top Gear lapped one. The Stig set a time of 1:18.9 — one tenth faster than the Ferrari Enzo. Clarkson called it twitchy, oversized, and “either a racer, a GT car, or a detuned Enzo in a fat suit.” He couldn’t quite … Read more
BERTONE — THE FACTORY THAT INVENTED WHAT YOU SEE WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES AND THINK OF A SPORTS CAR There are names that need no introduction and then there’s Bertone, which doesn’t even need you to say the full name. You say Bertone and you’re already seeing a car. You don’t know which one, … Read more
MASERATI QUATTROPORTE: SIX GENERATIONS WITH THE ENGINE WHERE IT SHOULDN’T BE The sedan that stole a prince’s heart Picture this. Early sixties. Modena. An engineer named Giulio Alfieri has an idea that sounds like madness: take a competition-derived V8, drop it into a four-door car, and tell the world that a sedan can be the … Read more
