Etceterini

When the Shah of Persia came to Maserati in 1958 looking for a unique and distinctive gran turismo, Maserati included a two-page description of the sports-racer 450S in the information he received. The 3500 GT, then entering production, was not exclusive enough for Shah Reza Pahlavi, whose garages housed some of the world’s finest cars,…

In the early 1970s, Bertone’s brilliant chief designer Marcello Gandini was developing a new show car for one of Italy’s wealthiest men-and its newest automaker-Ferrucio Lamborghini. Lamborghini’s intent was to create superlative grand touring cars for the world’s richest and most powerful men. Having started with the graceful 350 GT and 400 GT 2+2, he…

Few realize the roots of Nissan reach back to 1912, when a young man named Masujiro Hashimoto created a car. The car was named DAT, after three family member’s initials. By 1934, the cars were Datsuns and the company was Nissan. By the late 1950s, Yuraka Katayama, a young engineer educated in America, advocated both…

Rock-and-roll star Rod Stewart was no stranger to the Lamborghini Miura, the world’s first mid-engined supercar-he has owned both a Miura S and SV. When he ordered the right-hand drive SV shown here, he specified a bright yellow finish with dark blue leather upholstery. He also ordered air conditioning, which was relatively novel on a…

Brothers Ernesto, Ettore and Bindo Maserati, the vagabonds of the exotic car world, had sold their family company in 1947 to the Orsi family. They then returned from Modena to their original manufacturing home in Bologna where they established the company first known as “OSCA Maserati,” and subsequently just as “OSCA.”Under this acronym-today so familiar…

Launched at the 25th Geneva Salon in March 1955, the Fiat 600 was designed by Dante Giacosa. This successor to the Fiat 500 “Topolino” (“Mickey Mouse”) mini-car was hailed as “an intriguing car with a future…[showing] how a rearrangement of the basic components can often result in a considerable saving of space.” With a water-cooled,…

The definitive Gran Turismo of its era, the Maserati 3500 GT debuted in 1957 and was the company’s first genuine series-production road car. Maserati’s three decades as constructors of perhaps the world’s finest racing cars showed in every detail of the elegant Touring-bodied coupe, from its exquisite, race-derived 3.5-liter engine through its impeccable road manners,…

The Flaminia was the first Lancia designed by Antonia Fessici and was the company’s flagship when launched in 1957. Fessici had finally broken with tradition and discarded the previously used vertical coil independent front suspension in favor of wishbones. The engine was a 2.5-liter V6 driving through an aft-mounted gearbox and de Dion rear axle.…

This wonderfully useable, well-presented and historic product of the world-famous Maserati brothers’ company “Officina Specializzata Costruzione Automobili,” better known as “OSCA,” was purchased new from the Bolognese factory in Italy by Kleenex millionaire James H. “Gentleman Jim” Kimberly, in 1956. At the Road America circuit in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, that September, Kimberly and his brilliant…