All Entries Tagged With: "Italian"
ex. 5) Alfa Romeo Spider
By Gunnar Heinrich
CHE BELLA MACCHINA!
Battista Pininfarina must’ve fallen into a bed of four leafed clovers to have found the inspiration to direct his artistic team to draw the original ’66 Alfa Romeo “Duetto” for the 36th Geneva Auto Show.
Among the longest lived production models ever built, the little Alfa Romeo Spider – locked into US car history by The Graduate – sold in four variants worldwide over the course of three decades. Such was the sweet ‘n chic longevity of the design that two of the last four years proved to be the Spider’s best selling years; 7,106 and 9,073 units in 1990 and 1991, respectively.
Not a fast car by any stretch (the most powerful Spider featured a 130 horsepower straight-four) the small but sexy Alfa featured style and driving charm over mechanical substance to woo a select group of car buyers out of their dollars and lire for 28 years.
[IMG Wikipedia]
Cadillac XLR-V at Lime Rock
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG by Larry Henrikson for Automobiles De Luxe
TRACK time at Lime Rock is a precious commodity.
Like oil, it was once free-flowing and easy to come by. But when a heightened awareness met an increased demand, the track has begun to command a value in minutes like traders price out gold in ounces.
So, when we initially told colleagues that we were going to test out a new Cadillac on Northwestern Connecticut’s premier race course (the Constitution State only has two), the typical reaction was “huh?”
Cadillac isn’t known for building performance cars. Why should we waste time on something other than the usual German / Italian / British suspects?
The answer to that question is in the next segment. It’s match up between BMW’s E39 M5, E60 550i and Cadillac’s XLR-V.
In the meantime, here’s some pictures of King Caddy taken (on film of all means) by our man Larry Henrikson.
Ferrari California: Life In The Shadow Of A Legend
By Steane Klose
I often wonder what it must be like for the siblings of movie stars and famous people, living their lives in the shadow of their famous brother or sister.
With the exception of the severely introverted it would have to be an odd existence, constantly feeling like an underachiever despite their own talents in less publicly recognized fields.
What would it be like living in the shadow of a legend?
Ferrari has recently announced their first ever retractable hardtop convertible, an all new model referred to as the F149 during its development phase. Ferrari to their credit managed to keep their new cars existence largely under-wraps and even when word eventually hit the streets there was little in the way of hard fact available regarding its specification or production name.
In another first for Ferrari, the folks in Maranello established a website – ferraricalifornia.com- complete with countdown timer, with the intention of slowly and provocatively undressing their new model. Ferrari was finally embracing the marketing power of the internet and at the same time started referring to the F149 as simply the “GT”.
