Alfa Romeo has launched an official fine art collection, which can be found at www.alfaromeoart.com. With their gracious permission, we bring you this selection of some of the luscious images now on sale there. Too bad none of them answer any of the pressing questions facing Alfa today.
Along with flying cars and hydrogen fuel cells, the mid-engined Corvette occupies the most spurious level of automotive rumor-mongery. GM has a deep, rich history of flirtation with the idea of a mid-engine ‘vette (too deep and rich for us not to commission a forthcoming brief history from Paul Niedermeyer), but even in the last three years the engine configuration of the C8 Corvette has attracted intense speculation. In October of 2007, Motor Trend kicked off the modern era of mid-engine ‘vette rumors with a lengthy piece which “revealed” that
GM vice chairman Bob Lutz reportedly has been pushing for a mid-engine C7… We hear Lutz is backing down from his support of a mid-engine C7, though other powerful GM execs reportedly still favor it. Those at GM who prefer an evolutionary, front-engine C7 are facing a tough battle.
Almost exactly a year later, MT took it all back. With GM facing bankruptcy and bailouts, plans for a new Corvette were put on hold and the RenCen pendulum was swinging back towards an evolution of the front-engined C7. And yet now, with bankruptcy still less than a year in GM’s past, the mid-engine Corvette rumors are bubbling back up again.
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There’s lots of places to find old cop car photos, but I was perusing a 1953 Popular Science at bed time the other night, and remembered a story about the just-opened NJ turnpike and its new fleet of cop cars. Here are one of each of the fleet of 23 Fords and stealthy Chryslers. The Fords came with Mercury engines installed; their 255 cubic inch flathead V8s had a whopping 125 hp instead of the stock Ford 110 hp. The also had dual exhausts, “souped up rear ends”, and heavy duty cooling systems. The ten unmarked Chryslers “are capable of 120 mph”, which I wouldn’t question given their 180 hp hemi engines. Three “portable” radar timers (roadside, not hand-held) were also in the arsenal. And every trooper was trained in auto mechanics as part of the training; they would have known how to stop their runaway car.
Old Popular Sciences are a treasure trove of the bizarre and curious, reflecting American’s folksy inventiveness. I couldn’t resist scanning just two of these and sharing: Read More >
No, its not a recall. But not surprisingly, he’s trying to sell you service for your Ford. Service has always been the big profit center for dealers, and nothing has changed in almost one hundred years.
This Saturday is turning into a visual sort of day (NHTSA data dive fatigue?) with an emphasis on vintage ads and photo-chops. How about a combination of the two? Hemmings blog found these at Lowtech, and they brought a smile to my working-on-Saturday face. Nice 1953 Chebby! And the kids and ladies are duly enthralled. Read More >
The Geneva Auto Show always reminds me of one of my prize items of late sixties memorabilia: the 1969 Automobil Revue catalog that was always issued in conjunction with the Geneva show. Here are a few scans from some of the ads, which show another glaring reason for the collapse of the USSR: their car ads. If these two sexy guys posturing in front of the “new” Moskvich don’t quite turn your crank, I assure you, the Russians knew how to make straight sexy ads too: Read More >
When GM’s new 1973 cars, especially the all-new “mid-sized” cars were introduced, my friend Paul Brown, an artist and fellow Bill Mitchell aficionado and I trotted down to Iowa City’s various dealers to experience them in the flesh. We found them to be somewhat over the top, and struggled to understand what Bill and his associates were thinking, or what someone had put in the Advanced Styling studio water coolers. Inspired by the the GM psychedelia, we loaded up on brochures, and went home and got out scissors and paste, and decided that we could “improve” on their imaginings. I wrote about it here before, but after writing yesterday’s CC on the Collonade Malibu, I realized that I still had some of our work (I tend to keep things). I’ve been a little shy about sharing them, but what the hell; it was a long time ago. Read More >
It’s one of my (many) fantasies: fly one-way to Brazil, buy a brand new VW Kombi and drive it back. But alcohol is a little hard to come by here, especially since Oregon has state liquor stores. Actually, the Kombi’s 1.4 liter motor drinks gas too, but I would have preferred a diesel. Anyway, Brazil is celebrating fifty years of domestic production of the VW bus, and today seems to be Brazil day at TTAC. So if you share my fantasy, head to VW do Brasil’s site and their special Kombi 50 Anos site and check out the current Kombi and a disappointingly small gallery of vintage shots. Read More >
If there’s one certainty in the car business, it’s that you know a company is in trouble when their ads forgo showing off their latest models in favor of gauzy images of beloved products past. It’s a trick that the Detroit firms have played to death over their 30 years of decline, and now Toyota is dipping a toe in the soothing waters of nostalgia. For contrast, check out Hyundai’s “more-Toyota-than-Toyota” Super Bowl spot after the jump.
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Reading the book “Winning: The Racing Life Of Paul Newman” last night, I realized that there were several connections between Paul and today’s featured Curbside Classic. Newman raced Zs successfully for the Bob Sharp team in the seventies, having started his career in a Datsun 510. And they’re both celebrating birthdays: The Z arrived in the US forty years ago, and Newman would have been 85 today, had he not passed away last year. I’ve praised the coming and eulogized the passing of the 240Z in the CC, but I’d like to give a moment’s tribute to my life hero: Read More >
I know racing is not a TTAC thing per se. But safety, old photos, lady luck and the human face at work are, at least on Sunday. Going through some an old Car & Driver from 1963, I ran across some remarkable photographs of Julius Weitmann. Two are about those rare cases when drivers lived to remember their rude ejections from race cars, as Hans Hermann here looking warily at the BRM that bucked him at Avus in 1958 after a few flips. Read More >
The Standard Of The World meets cold reality, as the prominent Detroit-area Cadillac dealer, Dalgleish Cadillac, calls it a night. The Detroit News, which eulogizes the dealership “with bitterness, hope and history bound together,” reports that the Dalgleish Cadillac building will become a high-tech business incubator run by Wayne State University’s Tech Town.
1984 was a milestone year in the car world for new cars: the new W124 Mercedes 300E; the Jeep Cherokee; The Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager mini vans. But perhaps the biggest shocker was Honda’s new Civic family: four distinctly different Civics, each with its own unique body and character: The conservative four-door sedan, the popular hatchback, the remarkably roomy tall-boy wagon, and the iconic two-seater CR-X. It was a bold and expensive gamble to make the Civic the number one compact in the land, and it paid off handsomely. With a Civic for each purpose and personality, Honda dominated the niche, and set the Civic (and Honda) firmly on a path of growth and domination that shocked Toyota, crippled Nissan, and utterly blew the domestics into the weeds. Was it Honda’s peak year ever, and have they been coasting since?
About a year ago, Nissan’s response to nose-diving truck sales betrayed some serious ambivalence about chasing the profitable-yet-dangerous segment. Its first plan was to rebadge the new Ram, but that deal has fallen apart in the wake of Chrysler’s shotgun wedding to Fiat. At a loss for options, Nissan canceled the Quest, QX56 and Armada and started tooling up its Canton plant to produce commercial vehicles. It looked like Nissan’s days in the truck market were over. Now, USA Today reports that Nissan is developing a new full-sized pickup (and SUV) after all. By itself. Who’d have thunk it?
And for anyone wanting to relive the past further, here’s a link to a MT Daytona IROC R/T review. Don Sherman’s comments (at the bottom) are the best (brutally honest) part.
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