Societa Italiana Auto Trasformazioni Accessori was an aftermarket company that produced parts to “hot rod” Fiats. The company was started...
There are only a few cars that can be considered “Holy Grail” machines. The Ferrari 250 Short Wheel Base, the...
Before WWII, the term “sports car” was an alien phrase in the USA. There was no such thing. Returning G.I.s changed that when they came home with MG TCs. This gave America its first taste of small, nimble, four-cylinder sports cars. Enthusiasts on this side of the pond said, “Please...
At the end of September, I spent a week in a RSR Project 911 driving from Colorado to California and...
We all remember James Bond driving a DB5 in Goldfinger and a DBS in In Her Majesty’s Secret Service and...
There are many cars you would not expect to find at a British restoration shop, and certainly a Safety Orange 1975 Bricklin SV-1 is one of them. Peter Brauen, owner of that restoration shop, saw his first Bricklin as a teenager. It was behind his dentist’s office in Metairie, Louisiana,...
What’s in a name? Let’s examine the two simple words that make up our feature car. Super: Very good or...
The DB2 was a grand success, but Aston Martin wanted to entice more people to its creations. In 1953, AM...
Long ago when racecars used tires with tread, I owned a couple Lotus cars. While stationed in Germany, I bought a 1968 Lotus Europa and picked it up at the factory. After returning from Vietnam, I bought a 1956 Lotus 11 LM that I raced in the early ’70s. Then...
In the late ’70s, Lancia wanted something to grab some of the market share from the popular VW Golf. A...
Just after midnight, in February 1973, there was a battle being waged on a Daytona Beach, Florida race track. All...
Carlo Abarth was born Karl Alberto Abarth, in Vienna, Austria, on November 15, 1908 (He would go on to change his name to Carlo when he moved to Italy after the war). In his teens it was seen that young Karl had a talent for engineering. He became an apprentice...
When West Coaster Johnny Von Neumann went to the mighty Max Hoffman and asked him for an inexpensive, bare-bones, open...
Porsche put the word out to all its foreign concessionaires, in the summer of 1958, the now 4-year old rough...
Enzo Ferrari’s focus was on racing, not road cars, but he needed money to finance his racing addiction, so he sold road cars to feed the habit. In November 1948, the first show cars ever exhibited by Ferrari were on a stand at the Turin show—a 166MM racer and a...
Jean Rédélé loved cars! His father was a dealer. In 1946, he took over from his father and became the...
Few cars in the history of the automobile can be viewed as more revolutionary than the Mini. Designed by Sir Alec Issigonis, the Mini was both ground-breaking and game-changing in 1959, when it made its debut. A true “compact” car, the Mini featured a short (120-inch) all-steel monocoque construction body,...
The Sprint Speciale came to life under the hand of Bertone designer Franco Scaglione. You can trace its lineage back...
Just a few years into the life of the 911, Porsche was already looking ahead. In their minds, to have...
William Lyons was born in 1901. His father owned a musical instrument store and his mother was the daughter of a mill owner, but what grabbed William’s fancy were automobiles. Following his studies at The Arnold School, Lyons won an engineering apprenticeship with Crossley Motors, at the same time continuing...
When you think of Volkswagen you don’t often use of the word rare, but in this case, with a 1958...
The Bavarian Motor Works was established in 1916. Originally building aircraft engines, at the end of World War I, they...
Sir William Lyons, founder of the Jaguar car company, knew, as domestic car production returned to the UK, after World War II, that it would be a fast race for the hearts and minds of car enthusiasts around the world. Lyons also knew that while Jaguar—and in its earlier iterations...
The year 1957 was one of firsts for Corvette. It may have been a virtual twin to the 1956 model,...
In 1948, Jaguar launched the wild and wooly XK120 at the London Motor Show. It was a testbed and show...
When Chevrolet introduced the 1972 Corvette for the fifth year of C3 production, the basic car remained essentially unchanged from the previous year, still built on a full-length welded and boxed steel ladder frame with five crossmembers and a 98-inch wheelbase. Independent suspension and vented disc brakes could be found...
The Super 90 was Porsche’s way of giving driving enthusiasts more power, in a pushrod 356, without resorting to the...
Alfa Romeo has designed and built many desirable automobiles, in-house, during its century-plus existence, but some of its most interesting...
By the early 1950s, several British automotive manufacturers had completely devoted themselves to satisfying the seemingly insatiable postwar appetite for affordable sports cars. One such manufacturer was Coventry’s Standard-Triumph. After a woefully misguided attempt to enter the market with the underpowered and frumpy-looking 1800 Roadster, in 1953 Standard unveiled a...