The Giulia range was introduced by Alfa Romeo in 1962, sharing similar bodies and identical chassis to the earlier Giulietta series. Engine capacity was increased, however, to 1570cc and the gearbox now housed five forward ratios instead of the Giulietta’s four. The increased engine capacity provided 12bhp more, but more […]
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1961 Ferrari 250 PF Cabriolet
By 1961, Ferrari was taking road cars very seriously and production was running at a rate of nearly one a day. The 250 GT, in both LWB and SWB forms therefore became the first ‘production’ Ferrari. With the company’s policy of developing models ‘on the run’, it meant that hardly […]
1968 Triumph TR5 Roadster
The Triumph TR series is one of the great success stories in the history of the sports car and many would say that the TR5 is the pick of the line. It was a development of the TR4A which, in turn, was based on the TR3A chassis, but with independent […]
1964 Abarth 2400 Coupe
Carl Abarth (Carlo) was born in Vienna in 1908 and his formative years were punctuated by the two world wars. In the aftermath of the first he started racing cycles and motorcycles, which resulted in his apprenticeship at Castagna, more notable for their coachworks, designing frames for them, and even […]
No Longer The King
It’s painful to watch once high-performing veteran athletes in the last years of their careers, as they try desperately to hold on to their departing glory. We see less of their past brilliance than of their current diminished capabilities. I thought about this while piloting my ’64 Ferrari 330 America […]
1980 Ferrari 308 GTSi
The V8 powered, Pininfarina-styled Ferrari 308 had been on the market for five years when the 308 GTSi was introduced in 1980. Offered in both coupe (GTB) and Spyder versions (GTSi), the big difference between the “i” and its earlier Weber-carbureted brethren was the switch to Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection. […]
The Never-Ending Auction
If I were running an auction company, I’d be paying more than a little attention to the proliferation of cars being sold through the Internet. While much of the hype about the Internet is admittedly overblown, nonetheless there are trends emerging that bear watching.Amongst the proliferating on-line auction sites, the […]
Alfa Romeo Duetto
Pininfarina died just a month after the Duetto’s introduction in March, 1966, so the model carries the distinction of being his last design. Its design is virtually perfect in concept: an aerodynamic profile with a dramatic blood trough down the sides that ties the symmetrical front and rear together.The Duetto, […]
1959 BMW 507 Series II
It would indeed have been a shame if BMW had confined the use of its first V8 engine range merely to its saloon cars of the 1950s. Had that been the case, the world would have been denied what is arguably the Bavarian marque’s finest post-war sports car-the glamorous, high-performance […]
1969 Ferrari 365 GT 2+2
With the intention of competing in the worldwide luxury car market, Ferrari introduced the totally new 365 GT 2+2 at the Paris Salon in October 1967. It bore a strong resemblance to both the 330 GTC Special built for Belgium’s Princess de Rethy and to the famous 500 Superfast. The […]