Ferrari Pinin: The Car That Proved Enzo Didn’t Run Ferrari We take one thing for granted that simply isn’t true: that Enzo Ferrari did whatever he pleased at Ferrari. The old man, the patriarch, sole master of the Prancing Horse, deciding by decree what got built and what didn’t. Well, there was one car — … Read more
Alfa Romeo GTV 916: How to Build a Special Car with Parts That Weren’t Some cars feel special because everything underneath them was engineered exclusively for the job. And then there is the Alfa Romeo GTV Type 916. The Italian coupé of the 1990s did not sit on a from-scratch dedicated sports platform. Chunks of … 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
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
The Italian Who Walked Away From Henry Ford Detroit, 1920. The Rouge plant was still being built but Highland Park was already running flat out, churning out Model Ts at a pace nobody in Europe could match. Henry Ford himself sat down with a 27-year-old visitor from Turin and offered him a job. Stay in … Read more
Lancia: the brand that invented half the modern car and ended up selling Ypsilons in Italy There’s a question Chris Harris has asked, more than once, on camera. It goes something like this: which manufacturer, when you really dig into the history books, turns out to have invented more of the modern car than any … Read more
Ferrari F40: The Car That Was Born So Five Prototypes Wouldn’t End Up In The Scrapyard Everything you’ve been told about the origin of the Ferrari F40 is half-true. That it was Enzo’s gift to celebrate forty years of the factory. That it was the answer to Porsche and the 959. That it was the … Read more
Ferrari 330 P4: The Most Perfect Reply To a Humiliation Ferrari never answered Ford with words. Ferrari answered with a photograph. Daytona, 5 February 1967, half past three in the afternoon. Three red cars crossing the finish line side by side, shoulder to shoulder, drivers revving their engines like men spitting in their rivals’ faces. … Read more
Ferrari 288 GTO and Evoluzione: The Last Ferrari Designed To Win Races That Never Raced There’s a room in Maranello’s engine department where a Ferrari is parked that shouldn’t exist. It has no licence plate. It has no race category. It has no calendar. It’s been sitting there for nearly forty years, preserved by the … 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
NO CURVES, NO DOORS, NO MERCY. THE FERRARI ANTI-FERRARI, THE 512S MODULO The sketch in the corner of a Rolls-Royce blueprint Spring of 1968. Paolo Martin is 25 years old. He has just been made chief of the styling department at Pininfarina. On his drafting table, a technical drawing of the Rolls-Royce Camargue. A large … 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
