As of this post the average age of our staff is twenty-eight, with myself being the youngest. This fact may seem like it has little to do with car design, but from the perspective of someone who goes crazy over the right shapes, I hope it foreshadows the tone of my dissenting opinion against current car aesthetics.
I hate the high belt lines and short windows on today’s cars. Continue reading
While walking around at Barrett-Jackson 2014, I spotted this ’65 Mustang Fastback nicknamed “Bad Apple.” Honestly, it looked so good I thought it was a Ringbrothers car at first glance. The shaved door handles and no side mirrors give it a really sleek, streamlined look. As it turns out, this car was actually built by Jim Green’s Performance Center in Monroe, WA.
On the one hand, this is a really nice build. The work that has gone into this car is first rate and I truly believe that it was a $200,000 build, as mentioned in the auction notes. On the other hand, this car exemplifies just how ridiculous the muscle car world has become.
One of my favorite things about Barrett-Jackson is coming across all of the weird, limited-production, boutique cars that you just never see anywhere else. The Mosler Raptor GTR is a perfect example of this.
Started in the mid-1980s, Mosler Automotive has been the side project of hedge fund manager Warren Mosler. Unfortunately, the company seems to have dissolved in 2013. The Riviera Beach, Florida-based company made a variety of cars for the street and for the track, and one of these was the Raptor GTR.
The history of the automobile in America is filled with dreamers who saw an existing car or idea and thought to themselves “I can do better.” People such as Henry Kaiser, John DeLorean, Malcolm Bricklin, Henrik Fisker, and countless others held that dream for a short time, only to watch it slip through their fingers. Starting a car company is really, really hard to do – even for those who are blessed with talent, ideas, money, and a whole lot of luck.
Enter Jeff Lemke, an entrepreneur from Holly, Michigan (a small town about 50 miles outside of Detroit). Lemke has years of experience in building aftermarket parts for Dodge Vipers. In 2009, he decided he wanted to do his own car and started a company called Falcon Motorsports.
When it comes to Italian supercars, there is an unwritten social order of things. Ferrari is at the top, with decades of racing experience and some of the world’s best road-legal supercars money can buy. Lamborghini is a close second, having designed and built some of the wildest and most iconic vehicles in the world.
Both companies have been around for over 50 years. Both make very fast and very expensive cars. Both have proven that they’ve got what it takes when it comes to radical engineering and even more radical design. They’ve both got pedigree.
Then in 1992, this Lamborghini engineer by the name of Horacio Pagani decides to leave the company to do his own car. Continue reading
One of the cars that caught my eye at the Arizona Concours d’Elegance was this gleaming white coupe. It had the classic long hood and short decklid look of a European car, like a Jaguar E-type. The car also had a large diameter wooden steering wheel like a sixties-era Ferrari. However, the car I was looking at was neither British nor Italian – it was a Toyota from Japan!
The 2000GT is a very rare car, with only 337 ever built. This one is particularly rare, because it is one of just 62 left-hand drive models made for the U.S. market. This car is significant because it’s the car that made people sit up and pay attention to Toyota as an automobile manufacturer.
