When people hear I am a car designer, questions come up: “What is your favorite car?” “What car do you...
Vintage Roadcar Columns
I don’t know if it was coincidence or not, but at least a half dozen times—throughout the course of this...
A few weeks ago McLaren released their new sports car to the public. It’s not fair to really call it a sports car anymore. Sports cars have radically changed since the term first classified these vehicles as lightweight steeds with agile road handling capabilities and spirited performance, more than 60...
Since first offering its wares to the automotive public, Lancia has excelled at engineering some of the most technically advanced...
If you think about the classic car community, as a whole it is obsessed with categorizing things. It’s difficult to...
The Earth is round. These days we say this with reasonable certainty (thanks in part to space travel) and considerably less caution than 500 years ago when it might have gotten our heads cut off. Strangely, all that planetary curvature has a big impact on everything we see. Even the...
Some 9,500 miles separate Davenport, Iowa, and Victoria, Australia, but this great distance is no obstacle for a group of...
In 1954, the AC company, in Thames Ditton unveiled a new car, a beautiful coupe called the AC Aceca. Many...
I recently gave a talk to a collector car gathering in the Bay Area. The Q&A after these talks is always enlightening, so I try to remember those questions as a way to improve my presentations. After the group departed, we funneled into the parking lot where I greeted someone...
The remarkable Alfa Romeo Sprint Speciale must be counted as among the most beautiful sports car designs of the twentieth...
Last November, in this space, I addressed the hot button issue of where tomorrow’s enthusiasts and collectors will come from....
So often the cars I research come with stories permanently attached. Stories of celebrity ownership or the classic “Fangio drove this car (insert any make) all over Europe.” It is great fun to research these stories but more often than not they are simply not true. Our subject car this...
Italians do some great things with cars. Well, to be fair, they pretty much do everything with a great deal...
How one car changed the culture of Japan and the mindset of America, one sports car at a time With...
Let’s embrace the enthusiast passion… even if we don’t always understand it. I was recently having a conversation about a car show, with a colleague, when he launched off into a rant on the inclusion of “Rat Rods” in this show. For those unfamiliar, Rat Rods are an “homage” to...
You may have read the news piece we posted a week ago about Jaguar’s announcement that their Classic division will...
Designed by the legendary Leonardo Fioravanti, the same man responsible for some of the greatest Pininfarina/Ferrari designs, the original 206...
It’s come to my recent attention that I have an alcohol problem. Truthfully, I had no idea, but apparently, I’ve had one for at least the past two years. It was insidiously gradual. At first, it was just occasional, but then as time progressed, it became pretty much every weekend....
This month one of the most iconic Mustangs to ever hit the road is going up for auction, the 1968 Bullit...
“Simplify, then add Lightness.” Whether fully attributed to Colin Chapman, or simply the lore that surrounds his engineering genius and design prowess, this philosophy is certainly embodied in the cars that have made Lotus a legendary performance company for more than half a century. And nowhere else is this more...
During the early days of the automobile (1890–1940), coachbuilding—the construction of bodywork for a vehicle—was as vital a part of...
For years, I’ve had readers of Vintage Racecar comment, “I love your magazine…I wish you did something like this on...
The genius of Colin Chapman is evident in every one of his cars. Each of his creations were uniquely endowed, not only with clever engineering, but a special blend of design and mechanical innovation that seemed to illude virtually all other manufacturers, or at least be years ahead of them....
Very few machines are more engaging than an Italian automobile built during the post war era. Literally every Italian manufacturer...
The Shelby Daytona Coupe is the best American car ever built. Maybe even the best in the world. I can...
Living in Southern California, we’re admittedly pretty jaded when it comes to the classic cars we see on the road, on a day-to-day basis. Porsches, Ferraris, Cobras (real and re-imagined) for sure, but even exotic pre-war machinery. It’s like living in an alternate dimension when you see a Type 35...
Another little piece of our motoring heritage is about to be banished to the rubbish bin of automotive history. Like...
As you’ll read in this month’s news, Bloomberg News recently confirmed that a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO has been sold...
“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” Since I own an Alfa Romeo—and publish the national Alfa Romeo Owners Club magazine Alfa Owner—I’m always interested when Alfa sends out a press release. In the waning...