Felice Mario Boano and his coachworks may be little known but the influence that he, his son Gian Paolo and their companies had on the evolution of modern automotive design is vastly out of proportion to their size. Felice Mario Boano and his coachworks may be little known but the influence that he, his son…
This gently patinated, tastefully restored 1956 Jaguar D-type sports racing car exemplifies all that was most impressive, most innovative-and perhaps above all most beautiful-about the legendary British manufacturer’s mid-’50s design. The immortal D-type survives today as the supreme example of semi-monocoque frontier technology. After three Le Mans wins in 1955, ’56, and ’57, it was…
Following Aurelio Lampredi’s departure from Ferrari in 1955, a new engineering team was formed for 1956. It soon came up with a new two-liter sports racing car-the 500 TR. This was the first Ferrari designated with the mystical name “Testa Rossa,” Italian for “red head,” the color the camshaft covers were painted. For the 1957…
{vsig}2006-11_1966{/vsig} At the end of World War I, Walter Owen Bentley gathered a small group of dedicated and skilled artisans to create Bentley Motors. The first Bentleys appeared in 1919, a group of three experimental 3-liter cars. In the following decade, the 3-liter gave way to the 4 1/2-liter, the 6 1/2-liter, the Speed Six,…
Originally a bicycle manufacturer, and probably best known as a maker of fine racing motorcycles, Edoardo Bianchi built his first automobile in the early 1900s. A wide variety of models followed over the next 30 years, though by 1940 the firm was concentrating on motorcycles and commercial vehicles. Car manufacture resumed in 1957 under Fiat…
We at SCM have long maintained that a well-filled garage is like a well-stocked wine cellar. Just as different times of day, different events, and different meals call for different pourings, so, too, do different motoring adventures require different motoring choices. And just as each wine has its own trademark taste, bouquet, and color, each…
The hurdle many owners encounter is a big one-any money spent on a restoration is just being thrown down a rat hole The Avanti may be one of the most polarizing designs ever created. Those who love it really love it and those who don’t appreciate it loathe it. But among the former, at least…
The BMW 3.0 CSL “Batmobile” was one of the most outrageously brutal road-going homologation specials ever conceived, designed to exploit several loopholes and bring to BMW a German Saloon Car Championship. In order to homologate a more competitive racing car, the monocoque was formed from thinner-gauge steel, and aluminum was employed to skin the hood…
Without hard evidence of Babe Ruth’s ownership, the extra $300,000 paid for this car represents a giant leap of faith The Continental is acknowledged as the crowning achievement of Edsel Ford and the head of his design department at Ford, Eugene T. “Bob” Gregorie. Like many great accomplishments, it was the creation of a gifted…
ABS brought the realization that it was possible to allow computing power to do far more than keep the wheels from locking World Champion Alain Prost once described the Williams-Renault FW15C, as “really a little Airbus” -his way of describing an F1 car in the electronic era. Prost campaigned seven grands prix in the 1993…