Articles

How staff at GM design pranked their vice president’s personal Daytona

DrivesToday recounts the story behind a famous picture from Porsche’s past…

Porsche’s first space framed Spyder, the 550A, competed at Le Mans in coupe form to win its class, marking the only time the model raced as a hard-top. One such car has survived an interim American body to be reborn through a sparkling restoration…

This Mk1 Cortina may appear to be period correct when you first see it, but look a little closer — the discreet modern touches take it to another level.

Fioravanti on the ultra-rare convertible. Few cars are as sexy as a Ferrari Daytona, even more so in Spider form. Massimo Delbò finds out why designer Leonardo Fioravanti was so surprised to see it go topless.

In the early 1970s, a racing enthusiast in possession of an accident-damaged 910 decided to transform the Porsche into a no-excuses sports car for the road. Calling in leading experts, he succeeded in creating an automobile of rare sculptural excellence…

Profile of Italy’s little-known design genius. Shy and modest but brilliantly talented, Federico Formenti was Touring’s golden child. We tell the story of one of the world’s greatest car designers you’ve probably never heard of.

When Mr Ikeda, of Garage Minimum in Japan, came up with the idea of producing a ‘short-tail’ fastback Mini he had no idea that someone else had designed a similar concept back in the 1960s.

The top-of-the-range Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio parked in the Silverstone paddock costs £93,000. It is a 510bhp, two-tonne rocket ship that will blast you from zero to 62mph in 3.8 seconds and peak at 176mph

As the world’s most affordable mid-engined car, the Fiat X1/9 was a true revelation 50 years ago. Karl Ludvigsen – who went on the 1972 launch – tells the golden story of an ingenious icon.

Want to feel ancient? Well, consider this. Temporally speaking, the launch of the E31 BMW 8 Series was closer to the first televised appearance of Elvis Presley than it is to today. But then the 8 Series is a car that has a rare ability to catch you off guard. Despite none finding customers during the ’80s, it’s viewed by many as a quintessentially ’80s BMW yet the technology that underpinned this car was anything but a throwback.

There’s much to like about the C-Class, but that doesn’t include the engines

If there's a cliché of the typical Italian, it's Renzo Rivolta. Spirited, impatient, full of ideas and enterprising. The businessman had become rich with refrigerators, got into the booming two-wheeler production after the end of the war and started the car company Iso Autoveicoli SpA in the early 1950s with the Isetta from his company in Bresso. With BMW taking over the license, the Italian smooch ball became a successful Bavarian model, but Rivolta wanted more.

They are two Ferraris at the turn of the last millennium, two grand tourers for an audience that can't do without twelve cylinders. And yet, they are so different! The Testarossa successor, the 512 TR, is a result of racing evolution, while the successor 550 Maranello follows in the lineage of the elegant 365 GTB/4 Daytona.

Bugatti’s origins were in this tin voiturette, small in stature but gigantic in ambition. Massimo Delbo takes a trip back in time.