I say, buy one, and kill him.

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Now, seriously, I think the car looks alright. It's got some awesome points, like the wings, the doors, and the aggression and angles which is just so Bertone. I'm staring at a pic of the P4/5 right now, which is so athletic, lean and curvaceous, pure Pininfarina. I laud him for switching to such a radically different design philosophy and doing pretty damn well. However, I do think the proportions look weird from the front 3/4 view, kind of like a halfway house between a conventional coupe and a shooting brake, but without any of the functionality of a shooting brake.

Overall, I'd say a decent design, and surely he's gonna sell it all out, if they go ahead with their production plans. ZR1 platform is awesome, exclusivity is, well, exclusive and sought after by those super-rich.

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Classic cars are beautiful because the designers were only concerned with beauty, not trying for "modernity" or "expression" or other bollocks du jour. This thing is trying not to look "new" so hard that it's deliberately ugly.

Bad news Bertone: if I want deliberately ugly, I can buy a Subaru.

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Seriously though, I don't care much for the car but that doesn't mean he didn't put everything he had into it. I would give my left nut (probably the right one too) to be doing what he is doing.

I raise a glass of Breakfast Scotch to Jason Castriota and look forward to his next masterpiece.

That bastard has stolen the life I was supposed to have. And hearing hi, I'm kinda cool with that.

I can't wait to see the real car, out showing what it can do.

HMMM, he went to emerson, just like Jay Leno, so maybe there'll be a market for this beast after all. And some Corvette groupies...

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The proportions are great, the lines are right, but the details just make it look too busy. His work at Pininfarina looks better resolved all around. Whether that's a result of the environment or the design brief, I don't know.

As for his backstory, that's fascinating, I had no idea. He's like bizarro me. I drew Pininfarina logos on the cars I drew in class too, but I went to Art Center (Europe) straight out of high school. Turns out he's absolutely right, I couldn't handle it. But I hated school and had no desire to go to film school or anything else besides car design, so I'm not sure what I would've done in the meantime.

Guess I should have, because he's got my dream job and I'm a commentariat critic.

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That was awesome.

After reading the interview, I almost feel bad about not liking the Mantide, but unfortunately, Castriota's personable nature is not enough for me to think that it looks good.

It sounds impressive though (A ZR-1, but better), so I suppose it deserves a place next to the Enzo as a car whose performance makes up for some (but nowhere near all) of its aesthetic shortcomings.

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