VR: How did you start writing? CC: My wife had a job with the local police department working nights doing...
Vintage Roadcar Features
During the late 1920s changes in automobile design began to be seen. After the stock market crash, even Henry Ford...
In order to understand the Pegaso story, it’s first necessary to understand the man behind the car and the tumultuous times that he lived in. Wifredo Pelayo Ricart y Medina was born in Barcelona on May 15, 1897. By 1918, he graduated from the Barcelona School of Engineering as an...
Swiss-born Bernard Juchli is the Higgins to Jay Leno’s Robin Masters and serves as the Major Domo for the Big...
Ercole Spada started his design career with Carozzeria Zagato in 1960.Photo: David Gooley Artists and artisans have called Italy home...
The aristocracy of automobile marques in the days before the Great Depression was comprised almost exclusively of products from European manufacturers: Hispano-Suiza, Isotta Fraschini, Minerva, Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce. American buyers who wanted the finest luxury car that money could buy inevitably chose vehicles that were imported from the Old World;...
Martin Swig is a former multi-franchise new-car dealer based in the San Francisco Bay area who is an avid vintage...
“MAYA –Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable”– was the acronym industrial designer Raymond Loewy used to describe his design philosophy. To catch...
Delahaye, for those who recognize the name, conjures up a mixed vision of large and long French Grand Prix, sports and touring cars of the late 1930s and a variety of extraordinary coach-built luxury machines constructed in the post-war decade of the late 1940s through the middle of the 1950s....
VR: Like so many of us, I’m sure that you were influenced by the automobile very early on in your...
The 1920s and 1930s were not only a pivotal time in world history, they proved to be the crucible from...
Billed as “The Aristocrat of the Automobiles,” the vehicles produced by the Fabbrica Automobili Isotta Fraschini were owned by some of the most exclusive clientele ever boasted by one marque: movie stars like Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino, athletes like Jack Dempsey, magnates like William Randolph Hearst and all manner...
VR: It was recently announced that you have been chosen to be the chief judge for the Pebble Beach Concours...
After World War II, Enzo Ferrari began the work of retooling his small company from manufacturing parts for Italy’s war...
Like so many early automobile manufacturers, the Auburn Automobile Company started out as an evolution of carriage making. Charles Eckhart started a company, the Eckhart Carriage Company, building carriages in 1875 in Auburn, Indiana. As the 19th Century wound to a close, his two sons, Frank and Morris, wanted to...
Like so many great automobiles of our time, the Mercedes-Benz SL series can trace its origins directly to the racetrack....
The story of the production model 300 SL really picks up where our story about the W194 Le Mans racecar ends. After a highly successful 1952 racing season where the W194 “Gullwing” won the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Carrera Panamericana, the entire sports car program was closed,...
Two Citroën Traction Avants at the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum, examples of fairly mild French styling of the Deco era....
The history of Automobili Lamborghini is one that almost parallels the success of post-World War II Italy itself, and is synonymous with the word “Supercar.” The founder of the company, Ferruccio Lamborghini, was born in 1916 in Northern Italy, and as a young man studied engineering. Following World War II...
VR: How did you first get involved with cars? DS: Well, I got involved as a young boy. My grandfather...
When Enzo Ferrari began building cars under his own name in 1947 he built racecars, satisfying a pent up desire...
To anyone interested in automotive history, the late 1940s and early ‘50s was a fascinating period of time, especially in the UK. With Britain still suffering the effects of an extremely costly war, it wasn’t until July 1954 when all rationing came to an end. Mostly the rationing affected foodstuffs...
VR: How did you first get bitten by the “bug”? Drew Alcazar is president and founder of Russo & Steele Auctions....
Photo: David Gooley One glance at a late 1937, ‘38 or ‘39 Darl’mat 402 Special Sport tells you it’s classic...
1952 Lancia Aurelia B50Photo: Peter Collins On a rare sunny day in late spring, on empty roads in Wiltshire, this car was a complete delight. It handled well, was very comfortable, had plenty of interior space and went well enough. So it should have done, it’s a Lancia, derived from...
Bricklin Company namesake and founder, Malcolm Bricklin. Malcolm Bricklin has more balls than a Christmas tree. Charismatic and effervescent, his...
The 275 GTB occupies a very rarified space in the pantheon of Ferrari road car history. It sits at an...
Photo: Casey Annis It’s rather ironic that both the birth of the “Pony Car” movement in the mid-1960s, and its eventual death in the early 1970s, would be brought about by the “economy car.” Perhaps even more interesting, and less well known, is the fact that the first car to...
