If this lovely Italian number left you in the precarious condition that Jeremy Clarkson describes as “nursing a semi,” then you can go ahead and thank Wunibald Kamm for that. The German engineer and aerodynamicist experimented with air resistance and discovered that by cutting off the tail abruptly, there would be less turbulence behind the vehicle, leading to greater stability at high speeds. And eschewing the dramatic French teardrops of Talbot and Delahaye, the Kamm-tail could bring fuel-saving aerodynamics in a practical package that isn’t stuffed with 18 feet of delicately fragile wheel covers. Which is why the AMC Gremlin exists.

But for every Gremlin X there’s a Ferrari 250GT Drogo. And for every dreary Prius toiling under W. Kamm’s drag-coefficient statistics, there’s the Alfa Romeo TZ3 Corsa with its lovely breadvan profile and full-blooded racing intention. Celebrating 100 years of Alfa Romeo racing heritage, the Corsa boasts the same Maserati-sourced V8 as the 8C Competizione, but the similarities with that equally gorgeous car end there. Instead of a mushy grand tourer, the Corsa is a full-fledged racecar, with a carbon fiber chassis, tubular frame and that beautiful lightweight aluminum body, directly drawing inspiration from the Giulia TZ2 of 1965 and the aforementioned Drogo.

Yes, coachbuilder Zagato says, it IS a race car, dammit! It’s a gentleman’s racer, and said gentleman is German collector Martin Kapp, who has a few other impossibly rare Zagatos to his name already. We will try to hide our envious contempt and will act politely when we ring him up for a test drive and to crash at his place. Have our people talk to his people. Let’s get things rolling here, guys.

— Blake Rong

[For a live gallery of its unveiling at the Villa D'Este concours: OmniAuto.it, Autoblog]

Next to the A-Team van, of course.

With all the flash-in-the-pan golly-gee wizardry that passes for an auto show these days, it’s nice to see one manufacturer actually remember where it came from. And standing quietly and with dignity in the middle of the show floor, away from the booth babes and Hyundai’s laser light show, is where Jaguar rolled out a very special model.

The “SS” in this, the Jaguar SS100, stands for “Swallow Sidecars,” the original company that would later evolve into Jaguar. Founded by, yes, the Sir William Lyons, the company repurposed WWI motorcycles and built sidecars before their moderate success allowed them to break into the coachbuilding business. It wasn’t until 1945 when the company changed its “SS” name to “Jaguar” to avoid some relatively recent Teutonic military connotations. Look past the unfortunate name and suspicious eagle logo, however, and you will find a car that exemplifies what it is that makes Jaguar such a special company — and why the big cat is worth keeping around despite its frequent attempts at financial implosion.

The company was only just starting to move out of sidecars and rebadged Austins, but Lyons had ambitions for the small firm. He knew that a rakish, beautifully-proportioned sporting machine would lift his small company out of obscurity and into the realm of an actual automobile manufacturer, and the long, low SS100 would do exactly that. It came soon after the company’s first car, the SS Jaguar saloon that marked the first use of the name “Jaguar.” When it was unveiled at the Mayfair Hotel in London, it was one of the few cars available to the public that could reach 100mph; most cars would struggle to reach 60. Like the XK120 and E-Type to follow, and a defining Jaguar trait, it was fast, inexpensive, stunningly good-looking, and miles ahead of anything else on the road. And like any Jaguar we can think of today, it was raced with success at the RAC Rally and the Brooklands circuit.

This particular example is one of only 118 3.5-liter-engined models still with us today. If you can find your hands on one of the 198 2.6-liter-equipped models, however, don’t despair — you’ll most likely get £100,000 out of it. If you were around in 1935, you could have plonked down £395 for a new one — approx. $9,000 today. And if you want one yourself, Suffolk Jaguar will happily build you a faithful replica if you can scrounge up the running gear from an XJ6.

And if the SS100 or its saloon counterpart hadn’t been the smashing successes they were, Jaguar most likely wouldn’t exist. There’d be no fabulous E-Types, XJ coupes, aluminum-chassis D-Type racecars, or the car near and dear to this author’s heart, the XJS and its famous Jaguar V12. Motoring would have suffered the loss of a great icon, and we wouldn’t be sitting around pontificating on whether or not the XFR next to it is a worthy successor or not. Is it? It’s certainly a better vehicle in every regard (80 years of progress can make that happen), but is it as romantic, historically significant, or just plain cool as the SS100? You decide.

You know what? On second thought, I’d take this over the A-Team van.

— Blake Rong

Image credits: Jag Lovers

By now you may have heard about the Lexus LFA’s stringent availability restrictions for potential buyers. One does not simply walk into a Lexus dealership and start arguing over finance plans as they would in at, say, Bentley. No, Lexus, the exalted ones, must choose you, Mr. Millionaire Rapper Astronaut Guy, in order to represent Lexus as the brand for trendy and urbane reality-show stars, unfaithful athletes, and Goldman Sachs employees under the Witness Protection Program. A barrage of deposits, credit checks, and painful dental extractions follow. Once you survive the Temple of Doom and successfully defeat Lexus of America vice president Mark Templin in armed combat atop Mount Hachimantai, only them will you receive the opportunity to own it—for a year. Then you have to give it back.

Meanwhile, across the stand, Mercedes—a brand with real history—thoughtfully left the doors up on their latest and greatest SLS AMG for journalists to climb around and spill Coke over the carbon-fiber/Alcantara racing seats. It’s a car that any schmo with $183,000 can buy, cherish, and oversteer into a Peugeot with. You can even walk into the showroom wearing a denim jacket.

Naturally, Lexus wouldn’t let any mere hack with a digital camera go near the car, for fear of staining the matte-black paint finish, which is mixed with the blood of peregrine falcons and polished by hand with the Bayeux Tapestry. But this is only the beginning of the story: here are countless more examples (6, to be specific) of just how badly Lexus wants the LF-A to fall into the right hands. This information was gleaned from press materials, industry rumors, repeatedly badgering attractive product specialists, and conspiracy-spouting forum members who have not yet found how to turn off their CAPS Lock. Just how exclusive is the LF-A? This exclusive:

1.) If the car is sighted outside any department store less expensive than Nordstrom’s, Lexus technicians will douse the interior in hydrochloric acid and perform a full chemical shower, in order to eliminate the stench of poor people.

2.) Once a year, the owner is required to attend at least fifteen (15) Coldplay concerts in order to maintain appearances among rival trendsetters. Expressing a dislike for the alternative post-Britpop band will be grounds for immediate lease termination.

3.) All members of Skull and Crossbones must pass a credit check. No exceptions.

4.) Only one man in the world is trusted to service the LF-A: 103-year old Yomuri Kanyahama, a blind, deaf hermit and Ningen Kokuhō who lives deep in the forests atop Mt. Hakusan. Despite his lack of sight, hearing, youth, and sanity (he still believes Japan is fighting the Russians), he is the only living person qualified to service the LF-A’s F1-developed 560-hp handbuilt aluminum/magnesium/titanium alloy 9000-rpm dry-sump V10 motor. Some of his 28 sons and daughters describe his mechanical prowess as “some sorta ‘Pinball Wizard’ thing.”

5.) When a scheduled service is requested, signed and approved by Lexus executives, the car is airlifted by Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters directly from their owner’s driveway onto an awaiting cruise liner that has been specially reserved for the occasion. It is then transported, with nothing else on board, directly to Ishikawa Prefecture. Here Taoist monks lift the car off the ship and carry it by hand (silk gloves, to be specific, lest the paint become damaged)  the arduous 50+ miles to the summit of Mt. Hakusan. Once this journey is completed Kanyahama will then receive the car and proceed to summon the spiritual life force required to replace the car’s power-steering fluid (extracted from the cerebrospinal fluid of white Siberian tigers, prized for its viscosity), by meditating atop the mountain’s summit for forty days and forty nights. Here, he asks for the blessings of Benzaiten, one of the Seven Shinto Gods of Fortune. When he has received a satisfactory response he will then return down the mountain, spiritually and physically strengthened, and start the work. Kanyahama is a master craftsman, working without the use of powered or even hand tools, loosening every Loctite-doused bolt and tearing down every transmission casing by hand, summoning what little energy the feeble old man still carries within his battered and brittle frame. The process is long and altogether painful, but he will have the full trust of the Toyota corporation behind him. When Kanyahama feels that the spiritual and technical process has been harmonized by the universe and the car’s factory service bulletins (printed on the same parchment as the Meiji Empire’s rudimentary constitution), the monks will carry it through the forest again, the car will be transported atop the ocean liner, and the owner will be billed by the hour at a standard shop rate of $86.75/hr. The entire process takes 11 months.

6.) If the lease is not paid on time, Lexus has the ability to ensure that the owner’s next pop album will chart below Justin Bieber’s, or that the owner’s deviant sex scandal makes the front page of both the Huffington Post AND The Atlantic, whichever leads to greater embarrassment.

But hey. At least you get to drive around the Nurburgring for life.

— Blake Rong

As the Subaru Impreza WRX STI gains bigger and better wings, this will soon be its only logical conclusion.

Hot on the heels of the new, more aggressively revamped WRX, Subaru released its brand-new WRX STI only a few days later. For eagle-eyed car spotters, what’s the difference between the regular 265-hp WRX and the hotted-up 305-hp STI? Appearance-wise, other than the wing (it’s functional, Subaru tells us) there’s, well, little else. Some “STI” stitching on the seats, really, maybe that  “STI” badge on the grille. As well as, of course, the increased street cred among your race crew.

Enterprising WRX buyers who can’t make the jump to $35,000 for the STI will be enthusiastically searching for STI wings to bolt onto their cars.  Take it from the BMW “M3″ owners of the world.

— Blake Rong

If you ask me, the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 would make a perfectly competent daily driver.

Who needs in-dash navigation, Mercedes COMAND, or a radio anyway? Who really needs map storage or reclining seats or windows that roll downwards? Door latches, Bluetooth connectivity, vertebrae-friendly suspension: the GT3 has none of these.

Here’s what it does have, however: a fire extinguisher. A row of toggle switches. Windshield wipers. A functional wing on the back big enough to host the 14th Annual NHRA Midwest Nationals. Carbon fiber chin splitters. A striking orange band around the grille that looks like it’s illuminated. Oh, and a reworked version of the 6.2L V8 (though they prefer if you call it the 6.3), supposedly good for 600 horsepower, ready to roll in the FIA GT3 European Championship. And they’ll sell you one if you’re cool enough.

But if you do need all of those things, Mercedes graciously parked a roadgoing version next to it, just in case its well-heeled owner needed to make a quick getaway through the Italian Alps for the weekend. Supermodel girlfriends tend to get cranky if they can’t turn on the air conditioning.

— Blake Rong

No wonder new Mazdas are so happy, they’re grinning ear-to-ear because they’ve been pounding these. Though hopefully not through the gas tank.

Promoting the new Mazda2, which hits our shores in July, the Mazda booth was sporting these fancy-pants vending machines thoughtfully loaded up with let’s face it, Red Bull for sleep-deprived, hangover-nursing journalists. Meanwhile, across the hall Mitsubishi was inexplicably giving out White Russians, which was curious since the company is neither white nor Russian. Observation: tasty, though it still doesn’t make up for killing off Ralliart.

“Zoom-Zoom Concentrated: Augment Your Reality. Tap into 100% pure Zoom-Zoom. And enhance your reality in radical new ways.”

And since it’s not an auto show gimmick without further Web-2.0 gimmickry, by holding the Mazda logo on the can (shown above) up in front of a webcam, the monitor will show a 3D Mazda2 that erupts in a cloud of digital fireworks. You wave the can in front of the camera and the onscreen 3D car rotates along with your hand positions. There’s no bulky RFID reader or demonic-looking electronic data pattern on the can. It’s just an ordinary aluminum soda. That can create magical images by itself.

I tried this out repeatedly for a good 20 minutes, by which time my mind had been thoroughly blown. Hold your jetpacks, World of Tomorrow: our future is here already!

No word yet from the FDA if 100% pure Zoom-Zoom causes heart palpitations, fever, drymouth, migraines, or has been scientifically proven to reduce the risk of gingivitis.

— Blake Rong

What car haven’t the Germans cut the roof off yet? The Audi 100? The BMW Isetta? The Trabi? No, no, and nope. When it comes to taking a Sawzall to basically anything, they have us beat out of sheer ingenuity and stubbornness.

There’s really nothing more to say here — we’ll let the pictures do the talking.

The R8 Spyder has its crosstown rival, the Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet, within its LED-illuminated gunsights. Which would you choose?

— Blake Rong

As a Massachusetts resident, gasoline enthusiast, and fan of unintended-acceleration-avoiding self-preservation, this…thing is essentially the Antichrist.

The only reasonable course of action for any Red Sox fan, Yankee hater, anybody ever stuck behind a Prius, or sane human being is to burn this car at the stake. That’s what the woman in red is thinking, too. It’s ok, Ms. Toyota Representative. It’s what we’re all thinking.

— Blake Rong

The designers of the Nissan Juke claimed that they drew from Baja racers as inspiration, in the same way that sprinkling a packet of taco mix on some undercooked ramen turns it into Tex-Mex fusion cuisine.

If you were one of the stalwart few who were holding out for the chance that it would be better-looking in person (like so many unphotogenic automobiles are), then allow me to dash your hopes right now: no. Because somehow it manages to look even worse.

It’s easy to dismiss the car’s styling by saying “what the hell were they smoking?”, “where can I get what the hell they were smoking?”, and/or “what sort of illegal narcotic substances were these miscreants partaking in, and where shall I obtain some for my personal use?” But the disjointed styling, mishmash of design themes, busy front end, awkward proportions, bulging fender flares, tacked-on headlights and clumsily sloping roof indicates some sort of conscious, concentrated effort to design something this awkward and ungainly. Clearly the Nissan team went out of their way to take the automotive crown away from the Pontiac Aztek. What sort of design “language” could Nissan cite as a precedent? The Teletubbies, perhaps?

Nissan claims that the Juke “breathes new life” into the small crossover segment, and that it’s “funky” and “distinctive.” The latter is certainly correct. But if this is what passes for “funky” these days, then I’m going to go set fire to my Rick James vinyl collection.

Nissan, why must you turn this convention center into a house of lies?

Here it is next to a GTR, a car that although controversial is still leaps and bounds beyond the realm of ridiculousness. It speaks volumes about modern car manufacturing that these two completely different cars can come from the same company.

— Blake Rong

The bacon, not the airbags. Though those are pretty handy, too.

I wish I could say the same for the Mini Countryman, announced at the Geneva show and making its debut in September, and the fact that it seems like a slightly taller, slightly dumpier version of the Clubman, which was already a slightly taller, dumpier version of the Cooper. Say what you will about brand dilution and BMW’s stewardship of the brand, but it’s a reflection of their awfully Germanic trait of creating obscure new niches in order to dominate by sheer exuberance. If they had wanted a soft-roader, they could have given us a new Mini Moke.

But I can’t really badmouth Mini. Any company that offers free smoothies is alright in my book. (Though the Countryman is still ugly.)

— Blake Rong

…you walk in and the first thing you see is the one and only A-Team Van.

Just in time for the new remake film. Which, Mr. T or not, does look fairly exciting – see for yourself.

— Blake Rong

The Smoking Tire’s glorious, half-assed New York Auto Show coverage!

That’s right, we’ve hit the big leagues now (cheesy graphic notwithstanding). We’ve sent your humble reporter to New York with nothing more than a novelty t-shirt and some lessons in groveling and told him to keep an eye out on the cars, the people, the bad food,the air of desperation lingering over the Chrysler stand, overexcitable German executives, cool swag from the Scion booth, Vinnie, the surly Koenigsegg representative, outlandish “tuned” Kias, DYCWTC’s secret identity (and her excellent blog), the occasional gas-mileage-pill-hucking fraudster, anything with over 400 horsepower, and Peter Egan. I’m also secretly hoping for something as bad as the Counter Balance.

Stay tuned to The Smoking Tire for NY Auto Show coverage as well as on Twitter: @bzrong and @TheSmokingTire.

A fiberglass-bodied replica of a tiny 1950s British roadster with a small-block Chevy nestled between those increasingly-fragile-looking frame rails. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s all yours for a song on Craigslist Syracuse. Hey, there’s always more expensive ways to die.

1952 MG-TD REPLICA – $7500 (FAYETTEVILLE)

Click here if the ad gets pulled. Or, just tune into your local news in a few weeks.

If you saw the orgy of multimillion-dollar athletics-exploiting commercialism known as the Super Bowl this past weekend, you might have seen a certain Dodge Charger commercial. Entitled “Man’s Last Stand,” it was the stronger pick of an evening of lackluster, cliche, bombastic, vaguely misogynistic ads with little automotive representation (unless you count Toyota’s creepy public-service announcement) other than Hyundai and Jeff Bridges’ oh-so-soothing voice.

“I will walk the dog at 6:30am. I will eat some fruit as part of my breakfast. I will shave. I will clean the sink after I shave. I will say yes when you want me to say yes. I will listen to your friends. I will put the seat down. I will carry your lip balm. I will watch your vampire TV shows with you. And because I do this, I will drive the car I want to drive.” Cue screeching tires and general disdain for public welfare, set to an Iggy Pop soundtrack.

But will I drive a Furious Fuchsia Challenger?

No doubt scholars and professors could read into this as the eroding of man’s primal instincts, he as hunter-gatherer and protector of the nest, whittled away over centuries of domestic servitude into a life of worrying about patchouli oil and Coldplay tickets. Certainly they have already. Or, it could just be that Dodge’s marketing geniuses wants you to believe that their cars cars are the 4-wheeled equivalent of Chuck Norris punching a grizzly bear in the bonch.

Manly men drive Dodges; manly men can also wear pink shirts and (usually) get away with it. So when the Nostalgia Department at Chrysler Group LLC (the only part of the company actually turning a profit) announced the 2011 Challenger with the same sort of eye-searing pink normally reserved for missile silo kill-switches, it’s the sort of irony that makes Samuel Beckett feel underappreciated. Would you drive a manly, fire-breathing, tire-squealing 400+hp RWD muscle car guaranteed to put hair on your chest…if it were bright pink?

On the one hand, Dodge cars are the last bastion of modern man, an escape pod from all the travails of masculinity—a concept that even crosses gender boundaries. And yet, on the same day, they announce the return of an industrial-strength pink found on Hello Kitty lunchboxes covered in glitter and Edward Cullen stickers.

But whether you’re afraid the drive-thru girls at Rally’s are going to tease you in front of your rugby team, brah, it’s still a very sharp-looking package. Complemented with the optional Pearl White seats and white 1971-throwback R/T stripes on the R/T Classic (left), it’s attention-grabbing without being overly tacky: after all, last week’s G-Power Typhoon X5 is a milder shade of white, but which car would you rather be seen in?

Either way, bright, obnoxious colors are a boon to the masses: it brings a little extra cheer to the 50 shades of grey that pass for “a reflection of an owner’s personality” these days. Bright colors are a rebellion against the relentless domination of silver, a middle finger to Toyota beige, and a necessity in these fearmongering, recession-addled times. They’re visual Xanax. They’re a box of Crayola crayons. And they can even resist the tiresome interpretations of masculinity, trotted out year after year by a jaded and increasingly desperate marketing department.

Just as long as it’s on somebody else’s car.

— Blake Rong

PantherPink.com

Autoblog

(Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here, respectively.)

Night was falling fast: by the time we gave on the bathroom and got on the highway, it was already dark. I gingerly tiptoed past a speed trap, all the while keeping my eye on the Suzuki Vitara that, mercifully, didn’t bother pursuing us. Just as well, too; I wouldn’t know what “do you know how fast you were goin’?” sounded like in Spanish, anyway.  Speed cameras, which the GPS system thoughtfully warned us about, were everywhere: on the tops of tunnels, in the bushes on the median, mounted secretly in the back of vans, underneath Avatar billboards (I saw 15 in one day—5 of which were at the same bus stop). I slowed down to 50kph every time the annoying beep emanated from the dashboard, but soon gave up as soon as I saw traffic flying past us. Evidently the Spanish have far less to lose when it comes to racking up traffic violations.

Eventually we were stopped by a tollbooth, and being late after a long day and not wanting to dice it up with traffic, we pulled into the first lane we saw.

There was no booth here—no tollbooth collector, no ticket dispenser or digital readout showing how much we owed. Nothing was on the machine except a small card reader, which we gawked at like it was the monolith from 2001. “What the hell is this?” My dad asked out loud to nobody in particular. “Where do you put the money in?” He fumbled through his wallet for a credit card then slowly stuck it into the slot. The LCD screen swore at us in a string of gibberish. He tried it again, magnetic reader up, to the left, to the right, and down. No reaction.

I looked behind us. Three cars had queued up behind us, part of the evening rush. Next to us, cars were whisking through their toll lanes with aplomb. In front was a solid arm barrier. It was a flimsy-looking piece, mounted by a mere two bolts, a little above hood level. Slamming on the gas and lurching forward would be quick and effortless. Couldn’t do much damage to our car, right? Sure, they might catch us on videotape, but by the time they got around to tracking down the paperwork we’d be 39,000 feet over the North Atlantic. “Go for it!” I suggested, half seriously. What other option did we have?

“Do something!” my mom yelled, leaning forward and slamming her hand on the emergency blinker. Almost instantly, the drivers’ angry faces were placated as they slowly shuffled out of the toll lane, in reverse. There was no honking or rapid-paced cursing. We joined them in backing out of the lane, then dashed across three lanes in almost perpendicular fashion, swinging the car around to another lane with an actual human being in it. In Massachusetts we would have been tarred and feathered as a warning to others.

Dramatic highway ordeal over, we stopped at a rest area that sold beer, condoms, hardcore pornography, Bacardi Breezers, and the entire Twilight series in paperback.

We bought none of those things. Instead, we drove past Barcelona and headed straight for the airport, our road tour of southeastern Spain over, away from the crowds and into the magnificent scenery that I didn’t bother photographing. Finding a gas station proved to be tricky: we circled the same roundabout 4 or 5 times, up and down a grid of rainy streets in a nondescript industrial park, underneath the massive upright tanks of the nearby Estrella Damm brewery. I didn’t even know why I was in such a rush to get rid of it. We had the car until noon the next day, evidently.

And it wasn’t a particularly bad car, either: sure, it was painfully slow, and downshifting on the notchy gearlever to wring that extra hidden burst of speed soon grew tedious, but I expected as much from a car with less displacement than a Big Gulp. It proved to be a surprisingly comfortable highway cruiser, riding smoothly and competently fending off crosswinds, 20-wheel trucks and mad Peugeots. After 350 kilometers, the fuel gauge had barely registered a dent. And since buying gasoline in Europe involves a second mortgage and a firstborn daughter, we were more than grateful for this.

And I could drive it a damn sight better than my old man.

- Blake Rong

Part 1 can be found here.

For about 90 kilometers the highway wound through the open countryside, full of sloping, featureless farmland and terrain that seem to have been transplanted from western Pennsylvania. The novelty of tooling around Europe in a funny little hatchback was starting to wear off, so I turned on Spanish radio for a while. Ever get the impression that foreign languages are spoken at a far faster clip than English? By the time an English speaker hammers out “I’ll have a coffee and an amaretto sour,” a Spanish man will have already explained the plot details of Wuthering Heights and seduced your wife in the process. I tried to decipher some of the verbal barrage machine-gunning through the cabin, and an angrily-driven Peugeot 308, lights flashing, almost plowed into the back of our glacially-accelerating Corsa at approximately half the speed of sound. So I turned the radio back off.

Eventually, we got off the motorway and onto the smaller roads. Here we were just a stone’s throw from France, 40km, a country whose language I could actually somewhat speak. At the very edge of the horizon peered the white tips of the Pyrenees. Underneath them, the rolling plains gave way to squat, squared-off industrial buildings, gas stations and big-box stores: we were driving through a Spanish strip mall. And between the highway and our little resort town, we had to traverse the entire continent’s supply of roundabouts.

“Drive, 200 metres, then enter roundabout. Take the, third, exit. Followed by, a roundabout.”

Despite the signs, Cadaqués didn’t seem to get any closer. Little white houses dotted the base of the mountains like powdered sugar on ice cream. I would build up speed in 3^rd gear, then 20 seconds later slow to 2^nd, circumnavigate half the roundabout, and upshift just in time to frustratingly slam on the brakes for the next one. A Peugeot minivan passed us in a huff, children glaring at me in the back row. This went on for about 20 minutes.

After a while, the flat, featureless highway gave way to an even narrower two-lane road, the last of the side exits disappeared, and the cars slowly thinned out.

It was the sort of driving road car enthusiasts wept over in magazines. The coastal road—the only road into Cadaqués—quickly narrowed, the space between oncoming corners fell to a few feet, rendering every oncoming car a sphincter-tightening moment.  To the right was a sheer 40-foot drop into a tree-lined valley with the guardrail missing in many places. Empty grape vines crossed the hills in neat, evenly-spaced rows, scrounging whatever heat they could extract from the crisp winter air. Beyond the mountains, the Mediterranean stretched out in front of us on the horizon—a tranquil, picture-perfect view of the Old World and the mysteries and the adventures that lay ahead. And then, we got stuck behind a cement truck.

I worked the gearbox furiously between second and third, daring to pick up extra speed, while my mom yelled angrily from the backseat. “DON’T DRIVE SO FAST!” she hollered in that tone mothers get when they insist, almost militantly, on your safety. Only I wasn’t; I was merely keeping the 1.2 liter engine above sea level and with enough power to get around the next corner.

Clearly, the locals knew every corner and could nail every apex with aplomb with the sort of experience garnered only through years and years of imitating Jacky Ickx. The cement truck pulled over at a scenic turnoff to let us pass: us and three cars behind me that had gathered. This included a bright red Volvo 240 wagon that flew up seemingly from nowhere, an inch off my rear bumper—he was goading me to move faster, only slowing to brake early and keep its massive heft in check, keeping pace right behind me in a 20-year old Swedish meatball with the handling properties of a double-wide outhouse. If I obliged, my mother would yell louder and angrier. If I didn’t, the Volvo’s gigantic metal bumper would gladly punt me off the cliff. They wouldn’t find us for days, just a couple of Yank tourists lost in the mountains.

In the end, however, I was relieved of my road-blocking duties by yet another bright red wagon: a nippy little Honda Jazz that had tore past the Volvo at breakneck speed and now had me in my sights. Had he been a less brave man he could have waited for one of the relatively few straights, but he took his chances around the outside corner of a tight right-hander. Here was a man who knew how the game worked. Oncoming traffic was bearing down on him, the corner was blind, off-camber, and pants-wettingly treacherous, but the foolhardy Spaniard could care less.  A gigantic eye-searing tomato streaking past my window, the tiny Honda passed me with a vigor that could have only come from years of practice on these very roads. After he merged back in front of me he gunned it with a shriek, and in three corners he disappeared out of sight.

Screw this. I hung it in 3^rd, leaned back, and enjoyed the scenery.

We slowly found our way into the center of the sleepy fishing town, past the narrow, stone-white buildings and the occasional brightly-colored storefront breaking the monotony. Most of them were closed for the holidays. What stroller-pushing tourists that weren’t already seated at a café were wandering the streets aimlessly. Down the hill, a line of orange-reddish terra cotta roofs dotted the coastline: small roads were cut into the hills and one-garage duplexes sprouted atop. It looked like a scaled-down version of the Los Angeles hills.

I parked the car in the first space I saw. The short strip of rock-strewn sand quickly gave way to the icy Mediterranean. The two sizeable restaurants by the water were packed—understandably—and the lone waiter hurried from table to outdoor table, packed with errant Americans and coffee-swilling fathers—no position to even notice us. Even in the dead of winter the tourists came in droves; they just didn’t stay around very long.

Picasso had stayed here for a summer when he was 29, painting The Port at Cadaques as a reflection of the harbor; though in his famous Cubist style it’s hard to tell at first glance. Marcel Duchamp, the famous French surrealist, honed his passion for chess against the local fishermen, whom he found to be formidable opponents. Salvador Dali proclaimed that he had been “quenched by light and colour” when he visited in 1920—his house today is a museum dedicated to his work.

We didn’t notice any of these things at the time, however, because we were craving seafood. So we went to a restaurant that was all out of it.

“Codfish?” I asked, pointing at the menu like I was hungover at a Denny’s.

“No.” She shook her head slowly.

“Ok, then.” Sardines it is.

“No,” she repeated, shaking her head again, as if she was comforting someone who had just lost a dog.

Surprisingly, however, the enormous plate steamed mussels coupled with gazpacho managed to be filling in a way clams usually aren’t expected to. The bartender hurried over, a lanky, frizzy-haired man who we were told understood English, and enthusiastically showed us the 2008 Don Hugo Tempranillo Rosado we had just dusted off in addition to our pitcher of sangria, diced orange chunks floating merrily on top. We finished our dessert coffees, paid the bill, and ambled about town a bit: my mother took some pictures, and my dad instructed me on the finer points of uphill clutch dumping. The town held no more secrets for us (not that we had tried to uncover any), and we soon left the way we came.

Back on the road, we took a right turn down another scenic drive and promptly ended up in La Port de Selva, a grim little seafaring town with no discernable life whatsoever. The brochure claimed that this was a charming little tourist spot during the summertime, but here in the dead of December it was a grey, lifeless ghost town. Dusty yachts sat naked on the side of the road. Construction zones popped up every 10 feet. Everything appeared a monotonous shade of grey, from the top of the roofs snaking along the mountains to the few cars strewn about the parking lot in front of the communal beach. It was also a town without a bathroom, as I learned from a stone-faced bartender and a supermarket checkout girl, the latter who gawked at me like I had crawled naked out of a storm drain.

At this point, we gave up on the lighthouse (and my bathroom) and started to head back home.

I passed the helm onto my dad, in whom I had supreme confidence in his driving abilities. Here was the man who had taught me to drive, doing loops in the high school parking lot in our 1996 Nissan Sentra XE. He hadn’t flinched when I suggested that his next car (he got bored with cars easily, switching them out every 3 or 4 years) should sprout a third pedal. So I was surprised, to say the least, when he took a wrong turn, backed the car down a slight incline, put it in 1^st and promptly lurched forward into a curbstone with a piercing CRUNCH. Some locals looked up from their Diari de Girona. “I know how to drive manual,” he explained, “I just haven’t done it in 20 years.”

“You better drive,” he then said, hurriedly stopping the car and almost forgetting to set the parking brake.

(Stay tuned for Part 3…)

- Blake Rong

They really like wine in Spain, I had noticed. Walk into any convenience store or side stand and you’ll see racks of the stuff: Rioja, Secastillo, Tinto de verano, Sangre de Toro, in full view and right by the entrance. It pours forth at restaurants with a alacrity normally reserved for Bacardi Breezers at TGI Friday’s. The Mediterranean winds that kiss the tops of the cordilleras form hot, exotic climates, perfect for the ripe varieties of Ribera del Duero, Penedès, and Garnacha grown and bottled under the strict Denominación de Origen system. And that’s before one dives into the world of sherry, porto (from neighboring Portugal) and, of course, sangria and calimocho, the latter a 50/50 split of wine and Coke that reflects the Spanish ingenuity of mixing daring wine-based concoctions.

I may have been imbibing some myself when I conceived the idea at the last possible second. Our travel guide had, tucked away on page 116, a short one-paragraph blurb about a secluded resort town on the coast of the Mediterranean, up the Costa Brava (the “wild coast”) and neatly tucked away from civilization, where the mountains would soar, the wine would flow like waterfalls, the women would be curvy olive-skinned beauties and the roads would be free of diesel Skodas. “Just a short drive north,” our Eyewitness Travel Barcelona guide proclaimed. “One of Catalonia’s trendiest beach towns,” it continued. “The picture-perfect scenery will leave you speechless!”

“It’ll be fun!” I hammered incessantly to my parents, who were busy doing touristy things like fumbling with their maps in broad daylight and scoping out the nearest McDonald’s (of which I was guilty of, but only once). The Barcelona vacation was their idea, and they controlled the checkbook. But I was in charge of the itinerary, and there’s only so much Gothic Olde Worlde streets you can wear out your Skechers on before you complain about how tiny all the cars are and that you really crave a diet Pibb.

Eventually, they capitulated.

So on the fourth day of our whirlwind Barcelona vacation, my parents and I found in our possession an Opel Corsa D with a five-speed manual and a Garmin Nuvi GPS system, courtesy of the nice woman at the Hertz of Aeropuerto de Barcelona who had thrown in the GPS for free and saved us from having to eat each other once we wandered off into the Pyrenees. We would look for Cadaqués, the resort town by the sea, a favorite vacation spot of Picasso, Dali, and Marcel Duchamp. And I had left my license back at the hotel, but no matter: the coast roads of Catalonia were simply waiting to be conquered, atop my mighty 1.2 Ecotec steed.

Midday Barcelona traffic on the AP-7 was cramped but flowing, with a steady, unaggressive stream of traffic merging at 60kph. The motorway passed through central Barcelona and winded its way up north through tunnel after tunnel. Up ahead in one some truck had eaten it and was holding up the right lane: lights, high-vis jackets, the usual roadside panic. As traffic merged, I slowed down, downshifted, and clumsily stalled the car at 40kph in the middle of the crowded tunnel. Traffic piled on behind me. I fumbled for the keys, hearing the starter motor grind itself back into life, jamming the clutch down—stalling it once again.

If this had happened back home in Massachusetts, I would have been executed by firing squad. But no, the Spanish motorists behind me were, for reasons inexplicable to my cold and misanthropic heart, understanding and sympathetic, lining up behind me with nonchalant patience. The air was still with the sound of horns not being pressed. Traffic was still moving on the left lane, and after I had finally remembered the pedal/clutch relationship, the middle lane started moving again. We were finally on our way out of Barcelona proper, and on our way to getting spectacularly lost.

(Part 2 to follow…)

- Blake Rong

At first glance it looks like a 348. And that’s exactly what Ferrari wants you to think: to ward off spy photographers and Nikon-armed ne’er do wells, lurking here underneath the body of one of the more lackluster Ferraris in existence lies the prototype for one of the greatest.

Back in 2000, two years before the Enzo was announced at the Paris Motor Show, three engineering mules M1, M2, and M3 were developed with the intention of transferring high-tech F1 wizardry to the street. It had been something Ferrari had dabbled with in earnest, most notably in the F50, which had an F1-drived engine and suspension bits. And while the engine was the race-honed V12 that would later go in the production car, the all-aluminum F140 good for 660 horsepower, the daddy of the Enzo was actually a mishmash of parts from the Ferrari brain trust: the drivetrain, brakes, and suspension were lifted from the 355 Challenge. The radiator came from a 550. The interior and switchgear was pure 348, while the dashboard was modified to fit the 360′s. And the fenders and hood were custom-made composites: no black canvas Boy Scout tenting here or Razzle Dazzle camouflage here.

Thanks, in part, to that unusual body. Passers by might notice it for a run-of-the mill 348, complemented by generic-looking gold wheels. The elongated rear end might seem a little strange, however. And then, those sneaky car spotters will get close to notice the details: hey, those exhaust pipes are mounted funny. And what’s that giant aluminum thing in the back window?

To be honest, I never was a fan of the Enzo’s styling—it seemed like too many ideas at once, and F1 styling never translates well to the road. (Just look at Mercedes’ attempts, which, as Top Gear pointed out, could be mistaken for something quite rude.) But for some reason, the 348 mule just looks right: somehow, the 80s styling of the 348 translates well to Caminoesque proportions. It’s certainly one of the most well-finished, meticulously detailed and cleverly-disguised prototypes ever built. Owning a (hopefully) priceless piece of Ferrari history doesn’t hurt, either.

The M3 prototype was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2005. We’re not sure which one of the three this one is, but like the M3 it will probably sell for around the same Jay-Leno-attainable price of $236,300, and we’d only be shocked if it didn’t.

And if you play it right, you can trick those gullible journalists into the next Enzo successor. It’s not exactly hard to do.

Ferrari Enzo Prototype for sale: Anamera

- Blake Rong

For a modern, trendy city like Barcelona, it’s rare to see any old classic car still puttering the streets. And when I say “classic car,” I don’t mean beautifully restored E-Types or period-patina’d Citroen SMs; I generally mean anything non-diesel built before the SALT II talks. Most people either keep their rare exotica hidden away from the bustle of city life, or generally don’t bother holding onto something so old. And why would they? Used modern hatchbacks are cheap enough to get rid of the old clunkers.

But here, hidden among the Peugeot 306 wagons and SEAT Toledo TDIs (why they would name a car after a depressing city in Ohio is anyone’s guess) is a callback to another era, a working man’s car and today either a chic fashion statement—as all city cars eventually become—or a faithful old friend, depending on how you look at it. It’s the Renault 4, which can rightfully be considered the granddaddy to all these modern-day pretenders.

There’s not much to be said for automotive longevity these days. The unloved PT Cruiser, which can certainly call this a direct ancestor, has been around since late 1999 and is now only being chased off the market. Pah! The Renault 4 has been ferrying cheese-eating surrender monkeys (and many, many other people) virtually unchanged for almost 40 years. From 1961 to 1994, over 8 million of these baguette-ferrying 4s left the factories of 11 countries, including Spain (Valladolid). The closest thing we have is the Ford Ranger, which only feels as old.

The drab shoebox 4 was also innovative: it was famous for being one of the first hatchbacks in production, setting the standard for the modern small city car. Like any automotive first, however, it’s a matter of debate. The Citroën Traction Avant of 1934 had a top-hinged door. But they never built 8 million of those.

And parked around the corner from the Park Güell, the wonderfully dorky Renault manages to fit in with legendary architect Antoni Gaudí’s colorful Modernist vision. Both are cartoonish, weird, and all too easily written off as goofy-looking curiosities to the unitiated. But both have become minor cultural symbols in their own right. Both have been heralded for their groundbreaking quirks (the wheelbase is a few inches longer on the right than the left, due to the transverse torsion bars). And both are designed for the masses: the world car for all people, outside the park of a world-class city.

In Colombia the Renault 4 was nicknamed the amigo fiel, or “faithful friend.”And the fact that these three are still sticking around, even when their owners could have scrapped them in favor of some diesel Skoda, doesn’t make that nickname a surprise.

- Blake Rong

(All photos by the author. Renault 4 ads from allez-y.info.)

Used Cars

“Your van appears to have rabies, sir.”

Look at what I stumbled across in Aisle 7 (Bath products, Automotive, Office Supplies, Toys, Seasonal) at Price Chopper:

Chevy never put a V8 in the Vega. After all, why would they? The zoomy Camaro (on which the Vega’s looks were based on) came with a stonkin’ 402 cubic-inch V8 in 1971, the year of the Vega’s introduction, and it could seat 4 bleach-blonde Ted Nugent groupies just as easily. Sure, the Camaro would be castrated to a piddling 180 horsepower in top trim by the time the Vega ignominiously bowed out in 1977, but who was surprised? After all, we voted Jimmy Carter for president!

That’s why it’s baffling that Hot Wheels would immortalize the Chevy Vega, perennial “Worst Car In The World” list-topper, with this snazzy teal tape-striped little number. Mercifully lacking the worst excesses of Malaise-era car customizing (Day-Glo stripes, screaming chickens, T-Tops, Ram Air scoops, etc.), the economical 70s runabout is a strange car from a toy line famous for its Deora, Twin Mill, and Red Baron flights of fancy—what’s next, a 1979 Dodge St. Regis in Sable Tan Sunfire Metallic with 8-track and full vinyl option? Buy this for your kids and they will instantly lose it under the refrigerator.

Yet given enough patience, your kids will come to appreciate the eccentricities of this little Vega: after all, it can’t warp aluminum engine blocks or shoot unburnt gasoline through the exhaust like the real thing. It claims to be a Custom V8 Vega, but let’s face it—with no official V8 model ever sold from the factory, and the enticing word “custom” in the title, who knows what’s in it? Let your imagination run wild! It could be a 302 hooked up to a Turbo-Hydramatic, similar to what Hot Rod Magazine was offering back in the day. It could be a super-rare Baldwin-Motion LT-1 350, of which only 3 exist. Or, hell, there’s a firebreathing 572 under there, pumping out 700 horsepower (imagine the rattles!) and worth more than the car itself, or a Rolls-Royce Griffon V12 ripped out of a Bristol Beaufighter, or an Incom 4L4 fusial thrust engine, or a Bistromathic. That’s the charm of Hot Wheels: encouraging young hot-rodders to perform engine swaps without regalvanizing subframes that have the consistency of Swiss cheese.

And at least the Hot Wheels model will rust slower.

- Blake “I’m secure enough to admit I still collect Hot Wheels toys” Rong

[So do I.] – Matt

The final stage in the Hot Wheels assembly line.

Celebrity can turn up in the strangest of places. When you peruse the fine vehicles of eBay Motors for blinged-up Escalades, Lamborghinis owned by adult film stars, and the chance to drive WHYI-FM Fort Lauderdale DJ Don Cox’s 1988 Corvette convertible, you might just scroll past this man’s hot-rod Lincoln.

While not a rock star per se, Ralph Stanley is a legend in bluegrass circles—known for his mastery of the claw-hammer banjo style and for his distinctive singing voice. Born in 1927, he first started playing at the tender age of 16 and went on to find success with his brother as the (recently revived) Clinch Mountain Boys. His cover of the traditional folk song “O Death” was featured in the Coen Brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? He won a Grammy in 2002 for Best Male Country Vocal Performance and performed for John Edwards at a rally in 2007. He was nominated into the Grand Ole Opry as the first new member this decade as well as the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame—twice.

And yes, you can be forgiven if you still don’t know who he is.

A good ol’ boy with a good ol’ car: how more American can you get? How more American, indeed, when the backroads of western Virginia disappear under the chrome-slabbed nose of “Dr.” Stanley’s twelve-cylinder 1948 Lincoln Club Coupe. Its gracefully sloping rear window, reminiscent of the bumpy slide at a carnival, distinguishes it from the more common Continental coupes out there (if a postwar V12 Lincoln could ever be “common”). The all-original, 83,000-mile car is in perfect working order, with the amount of rust “less than a man’s hands.”

And it’s just the ticket into the strange and wonderful world of folksy mountain bluegrass music: just drive this through Kentucky or up to the front steps of the Ralph Stanley Museum and Traditional Mountain Music Center in Clintwood, Virginia—not far from where he was born and where he still performs today. Once you put up the $76,000 needed in order to own a car once driven by the 2004 Distinguished Virginian of the Year, you’ll be welcomed with open arms by the curiously-named Advanced Alternatives Commission for Community Transmutation via Technology & Sustainability Strategies (AACCTTSS), which promises you that it is a legitimate foundation and not a front by Cobra Commander. They’re aiming to redevelop the Lyric Theater in sleepy St. Paul, Virginia into a cultural museum, via a well-heeled Lincoln enthusiast enchanted by “I’ll Answer The Call.”

Of course, the charity is only the icing on the cake. After all, we are talking not about a mere man but a living legend, according to the ad copy: one who was awarded the Key to the City of Garner, North Carolina, who holds an honorary Doctorate of Music from Lincoln Memorial University in sunny Harrogate, Tennessee. Stanley the man himself will even autograph the car for you, a “once in a lifetime opportunity!” Or, failing that, a photograph.

Is bluegrass celebrity worth $76,000? Will the Lyric Theater be saved? Is it worth sitting in the seat once reserved for a National Medal of Arts recipient? Let’s hope so. Because for some, this will be too good to pass up.

For everyone else, though, we’ll just play along with the music.

Ralph Stanley’s “Celebrity Memorabilia” 1948 Lincoln V12 Club Coupe

- Blake Rong

One man dares to live the dream that we all share: firing explosive projectiles from his motorcycle. That’ll teach that bastard in the ’98 Avalon to cut me off! With the push of a button, left-lane hogs miraculously disappear, revenge is exacted upon tailgating Ford F-250 drivers, and the world once again finds balance.

Of course, this man isn’t the first one to pull this off:

If such vehicular awesomeness is to be topped, I can’t think of a better man to do it than Chuck Norris, “the world’s greatest human!”. This is 1986′s too-rad-for-words America, Fuck Yeah epic The Delta Force,  also known as Norris’s dissertation on how Regan-era America will destroy your face.

No wonder the Soviets lost.

- Blake Rong

[Edit, 12/17:] Well, apparently the video’s been pulled from Youtube. Story is, the one who shot it is looking to enlist in the Navy, and for some reason they frown on explosive vehicular felonies complete with video evidence posted on a public forum. Who knew? Guess there are still some things that are sacred on the Internet.

Anyway, you should have seen it, man. It was, like, totally freakin’ awesome and shit, bro. Like…I don’t know, but yeah, like, holy crap…you should have just been there, dude.

On an episode of last season’s Top Gear, the trio went on a search for the biggest car bore: the sort of man who can tell the difference between the K-series and G-series Porsche 911E based on year of production and factory camber adjustments. At the classic car rally they dug up a few worthy of the title, but eventually concluded that it was none other than James May himself. (Watch the video on Top Gear’s site here.)

Well, now they may have found their match.

“It had to be a car from January 1993 to August 1993, because after that they changed the name from 600SL to SL600, and I preferred the script of the old lettering, which wasn’t italic, but underlined.”

Carsten Günther: airplane pilot, Mercedes aficionado, and the last person to be stuck in a zombie apocalypse with. Talking to Mercedes Enthusiast Magazine in January 2006 about the Mercedes SL73 AMG he fastidiously hunted down, and the SL600 (not 600SL, he’ll be quick to tell you) he owned before that.

Article scanned from German Car Zone, via Jalopnik.

- Blake Rong

Your friends and family won’t understand. People will look at you strangely. They’ll want to shun you, then hold an intervention. Anything for you to break the habit. Who the hell wants an 20-year old Honda Civic 4WD Wagon, especially when it looks like that? They’ll never get it, you tell yourself. They’re all a bunch of ignoramuses. What do they know?

But it’s ok. Your friends here at The Smoking Tire? We understand. And we feel the same way.

Watch with caution; this video may just change your life. You’ve been warned.

And there’s still one on eBay Motors right now. Act fast, however: this video’s already up to 44,000 views.

- Blake Rong

According to some on the Interwebs, the Mazda Miata is “girly.” Says who?

In order to compensate (ahem) for this shocking heresy, here is a collection of wild, wacky, and shocking body kits, culled from various Japanese sources. Many of these kits were offered by Japanese tuners and performance companies during the mid-90s, when the first-gen Miata was a darling of the tuner scene. Turns out, with its diminutive looks and self-professed British inspiration, the Miata is also a darling of the aftermarket retro movement that we gaijin just couldn’t understand.

Included in the list are kits to turn your Miata into a clone of an Austin-Healey Sprite, a Lotus Elan, a Toyota Supra, a Ferrari Daytona, a Dodge Viper, a cross between a Jaguar XK120 and an Oshkosh Striker 4500 Aircraft Rescue Vehicle, a surprised chipmunk, or some sort of prehistoric fish. Many of the kits are variations on a theme: enlarged lower lip, bolt-on fender flares, big-block 5-spoke wheels, and the occasional skyscraper rear wing usually round out the package. And if you’re going to add foglights, evidently, it’s go big or go home.

But there’s the occasional complete body transformation designed to draw from the Miata’s Euro-roadster influence, turning the traditional underpinnings of the Miata into something you won’t likely see in the 7-11 parking lot. Want a completely new roadster that will turn heads? Enjoy tweedy European looks and good ol’ Mazda reliability, through a set of ill-fitting fiberglass fenders and countless man-hours of do-it-yourself cutting and swearing! The quirky Japanese love of retro-European styling is alive and well here: who knew bolting on a pseudo-250 GTO rear end on the shape of a boiled sausage could be so vaguely convincing?

Not enough? Here’s another collection of wacky kits, but this time with the intention to transform your worn-out Miata into a completely new car. Can’t shell out the $450,000 to buy one of the 842 T0yota 2000GTs built? Just turn your Miata into one! Think big here: Mustangs, MG TDs, even an Aston Martin – the sky’s the limit when it comes to assuming a new identity. You can even get away with a Cobra replica, but don’t be sad when bystanders anticipate a snarling Ford V8 and are disappointed with a lightweight Asian-built 4-cylinder instead. (There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.) But hey, Carroll Shelby’s done worse.

Or you could just paint your Miata pink—very pink. That’ll show the “girly” crowd!

And if anybody knows any more info on any of these kits, feel free to enlighten us in the comments.

- Blake Rong

“There is no charge for awesomeness.”
- Kung Fu Panda

Well, maybe 550,000 Euros.

Lamborghini is not a company known for convertibles, ironically enough. For a line of cars designed to be the most outrageous, attention-grabbing Freudian extensions known to man, there’s not been a single car designed from the onset to show off your Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and let your hair extensions blow freely in the humid Miami sun. After all, what’s more attention-grabbing than driving a car that exposes you to gawkers, the elements and pigeon droppings alike? If attention is what you crave (and it’s surely what Lamborghini owners crave) surely a convertible would only add to the insanity.

But unlike Porsche, Mercedes, Ferrari and even Koenigsegg, Lamborghini’s open-air dream machines been half-assed on a scale known only to the builders of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Lamborghini’s entire engineering process consists of taking a Sawzall to the center of their latest and greatest and leaving owners a Boy Scout pup tent and some matchsticks to cover up the gaping hole. Oh sure, the marketing materials can go on about “rigidity” and “balance,” but when the owner’s manual tells you that the awkward-fitting canvas top is only meant for “emergencies,” “not to be driven over 100mph,” and “may be susceptible to spontaneous combustion,” you know the fine people at Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. just plain don’t frega un cazzo.

This special Lamborghini Countach follows the Lamborghini convertible strategy to a tee—well, aside from a few differences, such as the fact that it’s an aftermarket conversion and Lamborghini had nothing to do with it. The principle is still there: how do you make one of the most outrageous cars in the world even more outrageous? Take the roof off, and give it to Sir Rod Stewart.

In fact, the radness of the car featured here can only be counted scientifically lest we risk blowing people’s minds. What we know is this:

1. The Countach is, arguably, the most legendary of Lamborghinis, already the raddest of cars.
2. Open-topped cars are awesome by nature. (See: early Ford Broncos, any Trans Am, etc.)
3. It was owned by “The Rod,” who was such a rock titan the Queen had him knighted.

This trifecta of unholy earth-shattering celebrity-touched coolness can be yours, mere mortal, for a 550,000 Euro asking price from French dealer Autodrome Paris. For those of us keeping score in the Colonies, that’s $825,242.02 dollars, give or take a few McDonald’s Double Cheeseburgers. What do you get for all that lettuce?

You get a fine example from Mardikian Engineering, founded by Californian entrepreneur Al Mardikian. During the Dark Ages of strangled emissions controls, Mardikian made a tidy profit restoring European exotica to their rightful power outputs, uprating Porsche 911 Turbos and Ferrari 308s past their European counterparts while balancing the nefarious government emissions regulations. His other side projects at his laboratory included turbocharging Rolls-Royce Camargues, providing the Corvette-based Ferrari Daytona replicas for Miami Vice, inspiring Tom Cruise’s character in the film Rain Man, and going to prison for tax evasion. If the 80s were embodied in one person, it would have been the love child of Mardikian and Burt Reynolds.

Mardikian’s masterwork was this 1977 Countach LP400 Spider. It featured a removable roof that presumably came with a list of personal-injury attorneys to call in case of installation mishaps. The regular Countach’s miserable mail-slot side windows also became detachable, leaving only a “roadster” window extending halfway up the sides. Mardikian’s brochure cover featured it with the infamous LP400S wing and larger gold wheels, which have subsequently been removed in the never-ending quest for good taste. The result is a startlingly sleek barchetta that bridges the gap between Gandini’s original futuristic design and the cheesy fender-flared excesses of the Cannonball Run days.

How do you make an outrageous car even more outrageous? What a difference lopping off the roof section makes: it transforms a special car, already given to excess, to even more of it. Is it any wonder that a rock star like Rod Stewart would own something like this, flying about the South of France in leather Spandex and leopardskin shirt open to his navel, grinning wildly and speeding too fast while Britt Ekland clutches his leg for dear life?

And now, for a meager, negotiable* sum, you can live the dream.

*Negotiable only for your soul.

“The Mythical Rod Stewart’s” Lamborghini Countach LP400 Spider

- Blake Rong

Cars don’t have souls.

There, I said it. Alfa Romeo drivers, prepare to have your hearts broken.

That’s a rather controversial statement for a first column, don’t you think? It’s like getting a pentagram tattoo on your chest before your first communion. I expect to have my lifelong petrolhead credentials called into question here with such blasphemy—the belief goes against everything we’ve been bred to believe. This we know already, drilled through hearsay and repetition:  a stern, Teutonic Porsche will inevitably be inferior to the fiery, wild-tempered Ferrari, even if it is faster, better handling, stops quicker, and churns out faster lap times—and if a car happens to break down, catch on fire, inhales head gaskets, snap your neck off, or spray oil like a fire hose at a peace protest, that’s “character” and “quirkiness” in the same sense that your ex-girlfriend waking up screaming in the middle of the night was “personality.”

Well, don’t believe it for one second. The idea, as argued by vitriol-spitting fanboys around the world, that a technologically-advanced car with the latest electronic advantages is saddled with the “soulless” argument as a detriment is pure bunk; a vicious myth perpetuated by misleading ideology and half-truisms from the mouths of fanatics. And by those standards, an ox cart is the automotive equivalent of Marvin Gaye.

Let’s take a look at the Nissan GTR, frequently portrayed as motoring’s clean room when compared to the S&M dungeons coming from Italy and even Germany. From the brochure, the following:

“The Nissan GTR is quite simply the sum of everything we are. Passionate. Innovative. Driven. Real world.”

Too often, mere mention of the GTR is usually accompanied by the words “Playstation on wheels,” stemming from a land that knows its way around mass-produced, efficient products that just work. Nissan GTRs are supposed to be perfect; that’s why they have more computing power than Project Gemini. Efficient in their speed and single-minded in their purpose, their computers guide them like silent, precise, deadly cruise missiles. They’re not supposed to flinch. They’re merely supposed to tick off perfect track times through superior technology: variable all-wheel drive, 15” Brembo brakes, a twin-turbo engine built in a clean room by men dressed in HAZMAT-style suits. The in-car display reads out G-forces and yaw rates and track telemetry data, for God’s sakes, that the obsessive driver can upload onto a Cheeto-stained USB drive and analyze on his computer in his parents’ basement. And it’s dead-on reliable—you won’t have to add a quart of oil and adjust the wheel bearings every 1,000 miles.

After all, computers don’t have soul, right? They’re merely machines that make beeps and boops and passionless calculations of input data, designed to serve a function without drama—just like the GTR. Yet here is the brochure, spouting off about “passion” and “drive!” What sort of malarkey is this?

Moving on to another Japanese company: remember what Lexus says? “The relentless pursuit of perfection.” Perfection may be well and good, but critics will say that there’s no soul behind it. Once you stamp out all the imperfections and quirks, you end up with something eerie—something that does its job almost too well. It’s something the Japanese have been satirized for decades.

On the other side of the globe, Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons was fond of saying “the car is the closest thing we will ever create to something that is alive.” And we all know living creatures certainly aren’t perfect. No, as automotive enthusiasts we need a semblance of personality even in our efficient little commuter pods—something that we can feel connected to in a completely irrational and rose-tinted manner that we wouldn’t reserve for our rotary washer/dryer combo.

Sir Lyons may have a soul himself, but his products never had. Even a 1959 Jaguar XK 150 Drophead Coupe has no more of a soul than a Honeywell 4-slot toaster, a pair of faded winter boots, or an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. With the exception of Morgan, Bristol, or the laughable remainder of Britain’s once-proud automotive industry, all cars are the byproducts of the same robots churning out the same welds from the same hunks of steel and petrochemicals. No part of a car is arguably alive, at least—mercifully—in the biological sense. Until Geiger Motors introduces the Necronomicon GSR onto a fearful and terrified populace, no car can be defined as having anamorphic traits such as “personality” or “character.” Why should it? In the most basic, unromanticized sense, the automobile was made to perform a specific function, like a pair of boots or the aforementioned toaster.

Where on the assembly line is the “soul” installed? If an Alfa Romeo crashes, does its soul go to heaven?

This may sound lifeless and depressing to you, but fear not: there is still “soul” and “passion” involved in the business of building cars. Where do they come from? They stem from the legions of engineers and designers who set out to work, every single day, to build the best car with the constraints they have. They are the ones who toil over the car day and night, designing and redesigning to meet their deadlines, working fervently to craft the best machine they can that they’re proud to have worked on before the draconian marketers, lawyers, and beancounters get to it.

“Passion” Available at Target for $39.95 a bottle.

There’s inherent passion in everything—whether it’s to build the most technologically advanced, hardest-gripping, precise supercar like the GT-R; expanding on multiple legendary racing victories like Ferrari or Porsche; defying the status quo with a lime-green, ten-cylinder middle finger as Lamborghini does, or sticking with a tried-and-true formula with the Dodge Viper’s “big-ass truck motor on a 1880s stagecoach chassis” principle. Drawing from years and years of training, experiences, and book learning, the professionals who develop them are part of companies with immense resources and virtually limitless funding at their disposal. Naturally they’re going to go and build the world’s greatest, most reliable cars, and if they do it via thoroughly modern supercomputers or (transverse) leaf springs then so be it.

Somebody once argued to me, “Since a car is made from thousands of parts, a good portion of which differing from one model to the next, every model of car has a number of traits, and cars can have character and personality when the traits become numerous enough.” I accepted it as a rational argument, even though it merely happens to go against every single engineering and mass-production principle ever devised.

The notion that a car’s imperfections, even the drastic ones, are somehow viewed as a charming trait is a long-overdue anachronism, dating back to legions of MGB and Triumph apologists who spend more time on the side of the road adjusting Lucas points than actually driving the damn things. “Ooh, it’s character,” says the stereotypical tweedy driver as he struggles to contain the steam emanating out from the hood of his Jensen-Healey. If the passion of the engineers is to devise a product that functions perfectly, then frequent carburetor adjustments and throttle linkage replacement is anathema to their original visions. Would you buy an old toaster that shot six-foot flames out the top every other Monday? That’s not “character,” that’s merely defective engineering, and if it’s not sorted out by a proper professional then you’re just cheating yourself.

What you are experiencing then, when you mash your pedal into the carbon fiber and the visceral roar of aluminum pounding steel hits your ear, is the collaborative efforts of the men and women who set out that day to design something that puts a smile on your face. The passion comes from their dedication and hard work, not the bits of 6111 aluminum alloy flinging about at 8700 RPM from behind your shoulder blades.

We don’t need fiery Italian temperament to find soul and passion. Even the lowliest 1994 Kia Sephia—and this is the part where I stretch my own enthusiast credentials—was designed passionately, if to a far lesser extent than a sports car: if it ticks the boxes of function, efficiency, reliability and low cost then you know somebody lost sleep on achieving that feat. Even if the end result became distorted as a result of running the beancounter gauntlet, its stalwarts still bravely tried. After all, who sets out to build the 2^nd best in class? Not even the Chinese companies. [I might argue that point – MF]

Think about that next time you watch a GTR Nurburging lap video. Or climb into a rental Hyundai.

- Blake Rong