Infrequent bursts of fawning published in these pages will prove that the Citroën SM, in its quiet yet revolutionary way, is perhaps the most remarkable automobile ever manufactured. Yet owning one is clearly out of the picture.

Consider: if the engine goes, you’ll have to find a mechanic familiar with 40-year-old carbureted Maserati engines. Then, if anything else goes, you’ll need another mechanic intimate with 40-year-old hydropneumatic Citroëns. If you multiply the respective probabilities of finding such mechanics, you will feel the blood drain from your face.

The nightmarish nature of this scenario is not specific to the United States: contrary to popular belief, Europe does not have trees with mixed bunches of Maserati and Citroën mechanics cavorting on low-hanging branches either.

Yet the SM exerts a powerful visceral tug. Its parts are remarkable by themselves, but the SM is clear testament to the idea that on occasion the whole is indeeed greater than the sum of parts. The strange yet mellifluous 90° V6, the DIRAVI steering, the hydropneumatics, the incredible cabin: the SM’s components combine to make a car that has the ability to cruise in complete comfort at 125 MPH between fillups without breaking down.

Think about that: neither occasional bursts of speed for joy or overtaking nor a single cross-continental blitz with the result of you being on time and your car a smoldering wreck, but a grand tourer for regular grand tours.

The world has since moved on from such earthbound flights of fancy. The SM’s was a world infinitely less hostile to the automobile than ours. Its vehicular contemporaries were:

1. A hypersonic civilian jetliner flirting with time travel
2. A military spy plane made of titanium which could outrun anti-aircraft rockets
3. An air-cooled twelve-cylinder racing car with 1500 HP
4. A giant space rocket which regularly whisked American men from the gravitational pull of the Earth to deposit them on the surface of the Moon
5. The Lamborghini Miura

Yes, wow. That was four decades ago.

Perhaps we should all just forget about the Citroën SM. Ours is a world not of grand tours but of shuffling in socks through airports and molassing along at 65 MPH in plastic cabins.

Yet imagine! Just imagine a contemporary SM.

The Japanese would have to build it. The Japanese are less interested in haphazard, grandiose revolution than in taking established concepts and polishing them to perfection. The way Toyota usurped Mercedes-Benz’s lead in luxury sedans to produce the last word in personal transportation inside motorized whales, the Lexus LS600hL.

But a modern SM is not a Toyota job. In spite of occasional displays of deep petrolhead inspiration—the 2000GT, the AE86, the LFA—Toyota does not make touring cars you’d like to tour in high style in. The modern SM should be a Honda, built on Soichiro Honda’s legacy of mechanical madness and racing chops.

In fact, Honda has already made something akin to a modern SM: the NSX of 1991, a perfect, luxurious grand tourer disguised as a mid-engined sports car and generally mistaken for a Ferrari. Plus, they have taken the SM’s glass headlights enclosure and installed it on the current Civic, which is as close in chutzpah to the SM as a mass-market hatchback can be.

(And it’s not like cooperation between Japanese and French carmakers is such a long shot either. In fact, Citroën already makes a crossover called the C-Crosser on a Japanese platform, the Mitsubishi GS: a base for excellence like the Evo X and also for the abomination that is the Chrysler Sebring.)

Honda could pull it off. As for what our slow world could do with the perfect idea of the touring car executed with Japenese attention to detail, I do not have a clue. But do we really want to go down in history as the generation which has all but abandoned forward motion?

Photo Credit: PlingPlöng/Flickr, afghtiga/Flickr, Infinite Jeff/Flickr, cosmicspanner/Flickr, Ignacio Conejo/Flickr, Jim Ross/NASA, nielsvk/Flickr, Steve Kay/Flickr

Better even than the pics, or the fact that this guy fled, is the article from a local Seattle affiliate that describes this as a $117K Gran Turismo. Clearly, it's a significantly less valuable Maserati Coupe. Whatever it is, we doubt it's worth the charge of "fleeing the scene." [KIRO-TV]

[Cardesign.ru]

Despite disagreement over what kind of plane yesterday's F100 was trying to emulate, it still flew off with a 74% Nice Price salute. Going from the eulogistic to the sensationalizing, today we have a Malaise-era Maserati that's fun for the whole family.

Unlike Ferrari, Maserati has not exclusively built sports/GT cars, having constructed their fair share of sedans over the years. Much like the BMW or Mercedes range-toppers, these massive four-doors - imaginatively named Quattroporte - share engines and a high level of performance with their GT brethren, but also provide copious room so you can take a few friends along for the ride.

This 1980 Quattroporte III has an asking price of $6,750, and is one of about total 2,200 built over a 14-year run. The third iteration (the Citroën SM-based Quattroporte II seeing only seven cars sold) comes from the De Tomaso era of Maserati. Alejandro bought Maser from Citroën, and exorcised all the hydraulic sun visors, swiveling headlamps and bass-akwards V6 engines from the Quattroporte's portfolio. De Tomaso wanted a car that was competitive with the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, and hence the Quattroporte sported only the choice of Maser's 4.9 or 4.2 litre V8 engine from the Bora and Kyalami.

The seller doesn't say which engine is in this car, but instead simply has copy and pasted the salient section from Wikipedia regarding engine specs. As he does note that the car was "brought in" and required the retrofitting of an 80-MPH speedo (thanks Joan Claybrook), the question of whether this was originally intended to be a federalized car remains up in the air.

Other than that, the paint is shiny, the leather is mostly smooth and the trim bits - while having turned a rather lurid shade of orange - are at least present. All is not perfect in Maseratidom, however, and the seller lists a few shortcomings including some electrical gremlins and window glass issues. Also, it needs a new manual choke cable, as one luxury denied this car was reliable cold starting without the yanking of a dashboard knob. One thing he doesn't mention is the seat-back pockets which look like the kids have been riding with their feet in them. This gives them the appearance of empty clown pants, and takes away from the otherwise nice interior presentation.

Despite those shortcomings, this looks like a fine example of the businessman's express, and how often do you come across a $6,750 Maserati that doesn't have a Biturbo badge, or the unholy stench of K-car wafting from it?

So, does $6,750 make you want to hit that Buy-It-Now button for this mature Maser? Or does that price fail at extending your love past the brand's duoportes?

You decide!

eBay or go here if the ad disappears. Hat tip to SagarikaLumos!

Help me out with NPOCP. Click here to send a me a tip, and remember to include your commenter handle.

The new GranCabrio, powered by a 4.7-liter V8 becomes the convertible with the longest wheelbase on the market. The top? It's nothing more than canvas. Full press release below.

THE NEW MASERATI GRANCABRIO
TO PREMIERE IN FRANKFURT

Modena, August 24th, 2009. The Maserati GranCabrio, the first four-seater convertible in the Trident carmaker's history, will make its world wide debut on September 15 at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show. The introduction of the GranCabrio – the Trident's third prong – completes Maserati's product line-up that now consists of three different families of models: Quattroporte, GranTurismo, GranCabrio.

The GranCabrio represents the very essence of Maserati in terms of open-top cars. It's a Maserati in the purest sense of the word: from the unmistakable style by Pininfarina to the spacious interior, from the craftsmanship of each detail to the driving pleasure and performance. The Maserati GranCabrio enriches all five senses in a shared open-air experience, without sacrificing comfort and performance. A dream car designed and built for men and women who love to live life in an understated – though sophisticated - manner. Like all the made in Maserati open-top convertibles: special cars aimed at refined connoisseurs.

The GranCabrio is continuing the Maserati tradition in open-top fine automobiles, beginning with the 1950 A6G Frua Spyder, and continuing through a long list of significant and thrilling open air models. However, in adding to this tradition, the GranCabrio opens a new chapter, because never before have four-seater top-down models ever been produced at the Viale Ciro Menotti Maserati factory in Modena. Four proper seats are provided, so that the rear passengers are not merely supporting actors, but co-stars of the journey.

The GranCabrio is powered by a 4.7 liter V8, 323 kW engine and is the convertible with the longest wheelbase on the market. The GranCabrio's roof is strictly canvas-made, emphasizing the link with the Maserati tradition.

The Maserati GranCabrio will be marketed this coming winter, and experienced by customers the world over from the following spring.

While the GranTurismo does have a V8, it sticks out from the crowd here. The engine is a Ferrari-sourced flat-plane V8 as opposed to the vast amounts of cross-plane V8’s cruising down the avenue.

Not that Maserati per se is alien to the Motor City, if you’ll remember the Chrysler TC by Maserati from 1989. We’ve yet to see one of those, though.

Keep a close eye on our Woodward Dream Cruise tag page for coverage all day!

The things to shake your head at here is pretty long. First, the car is in pristine physical condition. It only has 18,480 miles. The leather is in great shape. The wood isn't even cracked on the dash. This is all making us very sad. Sure it's in need of some mechanical love under the hood, but if it ran like a Toyota it wouldn't be a Maserati. The guy tried to sell it for a couple months and gave up, taking $3,500 for the car, the same he was asking on the open market. Here's the final insult to injury, the guy traded it in on an Impreza, not even a WRX. When will the madness stop? (Hat tip to everyone for the tip!) [9News]

Designed by Holger Schubert, this carport is about as dissimilar from the ones you'll find scattered throughout upscale trailer parks as catfish and ahi tuna. For starters, it's attached via a driveway/bridge to a 1953 Ranch-style modernist home overlooking western Los Angeles instead of West Virginia. The 1,200 square foot space includes an 8x12' designated parking spot for the vehicle, leaving the rest free for a couch and a hide-away flatscreen. While that sounds far from our ideal garage space (where isthe kegerator supposed to go?) it does function as a car pr0n gallery with recessed LED lights intended to create reflections of the car on the white walls at night.

Of course, no snobby carport would be complete without greenwashing, so there's solar panels on the roof that power the under floor heating and the home attached to the garage. Conveniently, there's also a ramp that raises up when the car is ready to exit the garage, ensuring exhaust fumes don't mar the white paint. [DesignDriven via CoolHunting]

OK, fine, some hard-to-please types don't consider the Chrysler TC By Maserati to be a true Maserati… but Allpar says it's the 'best vehicle Maserati ever made', and who can argue with the best Chrysler site in the world?

This Italianized K Car is a little rough, but it still gets plenty of street duty. While I was photographing it, a couple of teenage boys passing by assumed I was the owner and asked me how much I wanted for it. "That's a old school Maserati, dog!" one of them exclaimed. You see? If 17-year-olds think it's a Maserati, it's a Maserati!

Iran is, of course, all over the news these days after last week’s presidental election turned into a nationwide protest, with supporters of defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi claiming that the election was rigged in favor of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If you’ve missed out on the news, catch up with pictures of the demonstrations or read Robert Fisk’s report from the streets of Tehran, in defiance of the regime’s crackdown on foreign journalists.

While cars in Iran these days are mostly used as fuel to burn, it’s a big country with lots of cheap gas and a wealth of domestically produced cars. Presented here are a selection of photos and stories about cars which are either built in Iran or have connections to Iran.

Laleh Seddigh

Meet Laleh Seddigh, Iran’s most famous racing driver. It’s tough to be a female athlete in Iran with its strict Islamic dress code, but motor racing offers a quick escape: both men and women are generally covered from head to toe.

She is quick and has earned the respect of men, not an easy thing to do in motor racing anywhere. In an interview with Seddigh in The Observer, a fellow racing driver had this to say: “When she sits behind the wheel she sheds her feminine shell and turns into a man.”

Rest assured: when she is not racing against men, her feminine shell is very much intact.

Photo Credit: HENGHAMEH FAHIMI/AFP/Getty Images

Iran Khodro Paykan

This is the Paykan, Iran’s ubiquitous homemade car. Based on the 1967 Hillman Hunter, 2.3 million of them were made over four decades as the car incorporated new technology but few styling changes. Manufacturer Iran Khodro, the country’s largest domestic carmaker, has ceased production in 2005, sold off the production line to the Sudanese and introduced its replacement: the Samand.

Photo Credit: Fabien Dany/Flickr

Iran Khodro Samand

Debuting in 2005 and building on the long-standing relationship between Iran and France, the Samand is made on the platform of the Peugeot 405, a midsize sedan which was European Car of the Year in 1988.

Although it’s named after a breed of fast horse, the Samand is no Secretariat: power from its 1.8-liter inline four tops out at 97 HP.

Photo Credit: hapal/Flickr

Maserati 5000GT

Preceding the Samand by half a century, the Maserati 5000GT has power aplenty. Commissioned by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the CIA-backed monarch of Iran toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the 5000GT was an absolute monster.

Its five-liter V8 was derived from a racing unit and produced a healthy 340 HP. The first two cars went to Pahlavi, while Maserati made another 32 examples in the following 6 years. Enrico’s Maserati Pages has a wealth of pictures and data.

Photo Credit: Enrico’s Maserati Pages

1971 Lamborghini Miura SV

He may have been a despot who squandered away his country’s oil wealth, but at least Pahlavi spent it with good taste. His midnight blue Lamborghini Miura SV is perhaps the most gorgeous Lambo ever. The shah purchased it in 1971 and used it extensively until he was deposed in 1979. The car remained in Iran until 1991, when it was smuggled to Italy, then made it into the caring hands of Joe Sackey, who has had it restored to absolute perfection. Lamborghini Registry has the details.

Photo Credit: Lamborghini Registry

Riots in Tehran on June 15, 2009

This is what cars are used for in Tehran these days. The car is most likely a Paykan and these guys are supporters of opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. They are protesting against the killing of their fellow demonstrators by Iranian security forces.

Photo Credit: -/AFP/Getty Images

Pin-up Paykan

This young man in Tehran proves that Paykans can be put to much better use than impromptu bonfires. Political Islam may be against the public display of women, but what goes on inside one’s vehicle is nobody else’s business.

On the other hand, pin-up girls have a way of transcending both nations and religions.

Photo Credit: kamshots/Flickr

Saipa Miniator, Meet the Democrator

Here’s the man the demonstrators would like to see out of office: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is pictured here in at the inauguration ceremony of car company Saipa’s new production line in December 2008. Saipa is Iran’s second-largest carmaker and it has always manufactured handed-down French designs. Until now.

The car Ahmadinejad is riding in is all-Iranian and has the greatest name since the Corvette Sting Ray: it’s called the Saipa Miniator.

Photo Credit: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

Iranian Peugeot Factory

The Miniator does not mean the end of Iranian production of French cars: when these guys are not taking a break, they make Peugeot 206’s in a Tehran factory.

Photo Credit: BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images

Renault Tondar

Eastern Europeans will immediately recognize the homely rump of this car: it’s a Dacia Logan, manufactured by Renault’s Romanian subsidy. It is also made in Iran, where it’s sold as a Renault Tondar—that’s Persian for thunder.

Photo Credit: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

An SLK In Tehran

Bridging the gap between the deposed shah’s Italian exotica and the Paykans are European imports like this Mercedes-Benz SLK, burdened in Iran with heavy import tariffs. The owner of this Benz will have no problem filling it up with cheap Iranian gas, but he has paid an average Iranian’s lifetime wages for the privilege of driving a white German droptop in Tehran.

Photo Credit: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

Women-Only Taxi Driver

Let’s round up things with another Iranian lady. Sodabeh Kiyali is a taxi driver employed by a women-only taxi agency in Tehran. Buses are segregated in Iran, with women traveling in the back, but taxis are not: Nesvan Taxi is an option for women who don’t want to squeeze into a back seat with other men.

Photo Credit: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

It's interesting to see this Maserati for sale since, less than one week ago, the same vehicle was towed away from pal Sam Ronson's house. This was apparently because of a parking violation. Perhaps LiLo's getting rid of the car because she no longer feels able to park it? Either way, her loss is your potential bizarre celebrity memorabilia. Here's the details:

We at Classics on Sunset are delighted to bring to market this car driven by actress Lindsay Lohan. This 2007 Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT, has been in the press and photographed by the paparazzi on several occasions, while associated with Lindsay Lohan. This white Sport GT comes from Modena, Italy fully loaded with Brembo brakes, power seats, CD player, rear sunshades, parking sensors, suede headliner, white stitching, GT wheels and tires, sport exhaust, navigation and moon roof. This celebrity car has been in US Weekly and in every gossip celebrity site possible. Call us with your best offer. Drive and enjoy your investment.

Photo Credit: MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

[eBay Motors via Celebrity Cars Blog]

You figure it's going to look like Caddy Day at the pool, right? Unfortunately, the five LeMons veterans (including the Autobahn Racing BMW 2002, the Flakes' 'Chevolvo' Volvo 244, the Faster Farms Plymouth Belvedere, the Ecurie Ecrappe Alfa Romeo Spider, and the Mille Miglia Alfa Romeo Alfetta) were ghettoized in a parking lot, apart from the Rolls-Royces and Ferraris. "We're ghettoized because we are ghetto," explained LeMons Chief Perpetrator Jay Lamm.

Also parked with the LeMons machines was the best beater Aston Martin ever, complete with spinner-removin' Hammer Of Thor mounted underhood. The folks in the crowd- those who trekked over to the bad side of the tracks, at any rate- weren't quite sure what to make of the veteran racing machines, but someday their authentic racing provenance will see them selling for millions of Plutonium Krugerrands at Barrett-Jackson.

Meanwhile, the PA was manned by a guy with an English accent so refined ("…be aware, ladies and gentlemen, that the word Jag-yoo-ah does not contain the letter ahhhh") that we became convinced that he probably grew up in the infamous Red Phosphorus Acres Trailer Park in Lodi, and the San Francisco 49ers Cheerleaders were on hand to add a surreal note to the proceedings. Some pretty cool iron was there in on the grass, including a perfect Kaiser-Darrin, a 427/4-speed Galaxie 500, and a showroom-condition Citroën Traction-Avant. I got enough shots for some gallery action:

There is no way to get used to the size of Ferrari’s 612 Scaglietti. While most Ferraris—indeed, most supercars—tend to be larger in life than imagined, the Scag is a monster. Longer than a Mercedes-Benz E-Class and wider than an S-Class, it is the size and shape of a ballistic missile, especially in dark gray.

The size is a direct consequence of the car’s dual functions of high-speed handling and four-person capacity. Inside are four bucket seats intended to carry in comfort four actual people with eight lower extremities. This is unlike most 2+2’s where the comfortable ratio of humans and legs tends to be an unevenly distributed one to one. And while—unlike the Espada’s very comfortable rear seats—I have never had the opportunity to actually sit in a 612, those who have describe the rear seats as up to the task.

The other factor in the 612’s immense length is the engine, which is mid-mounted. But unlike with the traditional mid-engined layout—where the engine is between the cabin and the rear axle—the Scag’s 5.7-liter V12 sits low behind the front axle, similar to the supercharged V8 in the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. And like the SLR, the 612 has a nose—or substitute your favorite metaphor based on human anatomy—any self-respecting Frenchman would be proud of.

Mounting an engine midships is done to reduce weight in a car’s extremities, lowering its moment of inertia. This comes in handy when you take a corner fast, so I called Nino Karotta, the only person I know who has actually driven a 612 Scaglietti (if you’ll remember, Nino was the guy who showed us how to become a Formula One driver in one day).

The 612 he drove was in an environment rather alien to a leviathan GT—the Hungaroring, a racetrack in a dusty valley on the outskirts of Budapest, home to the Hungarian Grand Prix. He described the experience as similar to what happens when you take any very powerful but heavy car to a track. That while it’s very fast, capable of huge powerslides and much better composed than, say, a large V12 Benz, it is ultimately too soft and too heavy for proper track work. Unlike, he said, the Ferrari 599 GTB, which he drove on the same day and described as a sharp, violent track animal.

We had better find a more suitable environment for the 612 then. And remember: we’re looking for family use here. So let’s head to Regent’s Park, 487 acres of Central London flanked by white stucco houses where rich people live and exercise.

While Central London is perhaps not the perfect location to strecth a 550 HP grand tourer’s legs, nothing beats it when it comes to arriving home. The car is understated, elegant, majestic, no Italian waving of hands apparent in its flowing lines, inspired by a one-off Ferrari 375 MM its namesake Sergio Scaglietti created in 1954 for Italian neorealist film director Roberto Rossellini’s wife Ingrid Bergman.

An elderly couple then arrive in a Citroën C3—this is a very small French car—and maneuver into the space in front of the Ferrari.

They turn out to be the parents of the Ferrari’s owner, a dapper man who has by this time emerged from his house. My mate Máté and I are soon in the midst of a family cavalcade, admiring the lovely Ferrari.

Also in tow is a young girl, Orelia by name, who climbs down from her grandmother’s neck. This is it then: a real, live kid who actually rides in the back of a Ferrari! Our conversation as I remember it:

“Hi Orelia, my name is Peter.”

“Hi Peter.”

“So how is it riding in a Ferrari’s back seats?”

“It’s great. I sit there with my two sisters.”

Roominess? Check!

“And when you go for a ride, do you go real fast?”

Substituting for words, she offers a huge, jubilant nod. We wave our goodbyes. A few steps later, her father reaches down to pick a white strand of thread out of the Pininfarina logo on the left fender.

Gentlemen, a Jalopnik midlife plan is emerging here. Make a quarter million bucks, get a Scaglietti and a fine woman, sire children, then transport them in style and at speed.

And if you have dogs (or elephant guns), go get that Maserati Quattroporte wagon.

Photo Credit: Balázs Fenyő (Ferrari 599 GTB), Máté Petrány and the author (612 Scaglietti)

This Maser packs enough punch to pick-up and joyride ten of your closest gold chain-wearing friends down to the Crazy Horse Two with all the class and romance that an Italian super sedan can muster. Florida-based, Padilla Car Collection built this Maserati Quattroporte stretch limo and it's claimed to be the only one in the world like it; We'll be thanking God every day, until that is, they build another one. [carscoop via padilla car collection]

For someone untrained in the language of vehicular design, it’s not easy to describe what makes a car particularly Pininfarina or Bertone—but suffice to say that once you’ve seen examples of both, you will be able to tell them apart at the blink of an eye. An easy metaphor would make Pininfarina the designer of jet planes with Bertone in the business of sci-fi spaceships.

Think Bertone and you think Marcello Gandini, the man whose forehead the Lamborghini Miura sprang from like Pallas at the incredible age of 27. Gandini joined Bertone in 1965 and—following the Miura and the wonderful Espada—he went on to design cars which crave, simply crave ion drives and proton cannons, first amongst them the Lamborghini Countach.

The news last fall that Pininfarina’s Jason Castriota was to leave his employer of many years to follow in Gandini’s footsteps at Stile Bertone was quite a shocker. Pininfarinas and Bertones just don’t mix. Add to this that the cars Castriota had worked on at Pininfarina—the Maseratis Birdcage 75th and GranTurismo, the Ferraris 599 GTB and P4/5—are very Pininfarina, their aggression expressed not by sharp angles but flowing lines that hit you like an aikido throw.

Yet six months later, Castriota unveiled the Mantide, a car Bertone to its core. And while it has not become easier in the past three paragraphs for someone untrained in the language of product design to describe what that precisely is, there is one design element very easy to pinpoint: the angular rear wheelarches.

Like most things Bertone, this is from Gandini. As far as I know, he first used it on the Lamborghini Countach LP500, the prototype which served as the basis for the first production Countach, the LP400. Over subsequent iterations, the Countach lost the angularity, but the motif cropped up in later Gandini designs like the Maserati Shamal—and this Quattroporte IV that was parked the other day on the very street I live on:

By Gandini’s outrageous standards, this car is a subdued Q-ship, especially in the neutral Germanic silver this example—one of only 1,138—was painted in. The Quattroporte IV was produced at the tail end of Maserati’s doldrums, before the company was acquired by Ferrari, and this is their last car that was built in the old Maserati factory, before the Ferrari people threw out all the old machinery. There was a lull of four Quattroporte-less years at the reborn Maserati until they began building the Pininfarina-designed Quattroporte V—the latest version of which we recently drove in Italy.

It’s comforting to see how quickly Castriota has grokked the essentials of Bertone design, as evidenced by this reference to Gandini’s last car for Bertone. I can’t wait to see how he will manage over the years to balance on the shoulders of the giants he’s standing on—and what he’ll add to the Bertone canon. Based on his work at Pininfarina, one is compelled to think he will do just fine.

Photo Credit: Lamborghini, Cartype, 25ora.ro, Stile Bertone and the author

Eight hundred miles in the dark, four hundred milligrams of caffeine consumed from cans and ceramic cups and there it is: Lake Como. The road approaches from the top of the steep hills which flank its five cubic miles of frigid slate-gray water. We descend toward the city of Como then on to Cernobbio, home of the Villa d’Este, a magnificent lakeside hotel built half a millennium ago and for a day every late April, home to a handful of the world’s most beautiful cars ever built.

I can feel the small white rocks through the thin Kevlar soles of my sneakers. If you focus your eyes to ground level, a honeycomb pattern emerges, cast by the grille of a red coupé. On this very spot two years ago stood another red coupé, designed by the same man, who is now showing me secret archways of aerodynamics. The car is, of course, Jason Castriota’s Stile Bertone Mantide and this is the Concorso d’Eleganza, a show to fry every brain even vaguely interested in cars.

Classic cars, you say? Then what is Castriota’s new concept, unveiled a week ago, doing here? The Concorso was first held in 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression, as a beauty contest—for the most beautiful new cars. It certainly is the perfect geological backdrop for automotive beauty, a stone’s throw from the villa where Anakin Skywalker wed Padmé Amidala, and this will be the very last Darth Vader reference in this blogpost. The Concorso soldiered on through the Depression until World War Two, then was briefly relaunched only to die a quick death and remain in a coma until BMW resurrected it ten years ago. It is now the premium event on the European concourse circuit.

There is a tendency among petrolheads to arrive at the cars of the 50s and the 60s as the most perfect embodiment of the automotive form. It certainly is easy to see why. Prior to World War Two, the car was a luxury good, clearly evidenced by the prewar cars which make up three classes of the Concorso. These are mostly huge, baroque battleships and visually, they have more to do with horse-driven carriages than with the vehicles we think of as cars. It is very pleasing to look at, say, a 1936 Auburn, but it would be more at home on the waters of Lake Como as a hydrofoil boat than on the public road.

Something happened during the production lull which was World War Two. The cars that emerged in the 50s were smaller, more human in scale, and much closer mechanically to modern cars. To look at a Ferrari 250 GT is to look at a fairly modern sports coupé.

There is a particular 250 GT on display, a Lusso, the last model in Ferrari’s labyrinthine first production model, and this car is chestnut brown and was owned by Steve McQueen. It is deeply beautiful and next to it stand a 250 GT SWB, a Lamborghini Miura, Paul Frère’s old Maserati, and so on. Most of these cars were closely related to motor racing, a pioneering and highly dangerous— therefore very cool—activity back then. They also happen to be really pretty.

But their prettyness stems not from the fact that they are old, au contraire, they are pretty because they were radically new for their day. The Miura was one of the first road cars to have its engine midships. The Ferrari 250 GT SWB was perhaps the best road racing car of its day. The Jaguar D-Type had disc brakes.

These were cars made by people who believed in progress.

This is why it’s wrong to treat them as anything other than fine museum pieces and why it’s so refreshing to see new concepts make up a separate class at the Concorso. Concepts which may be very abstract exercises in design, never making it into production, but concepts which may introduce new ideas. Like the many trick wings on the Bertone Mantide.

What is the point of it all? It’s hard to tell. There are people here who collect cars the way they collect wristwatches and vacation homes and then there are car geeks with mischievous twinkles in their eyes, people like you and I who happen to be wealthy enough to own an interesting old car and it is their cars which bear evidence to daily driving.

But make no mistake: this is a beauty contest. A day of fine escapism, and while there are new cars on display, the answer to the future of the automobile will not emerge from here. However space age the looks, the Corvette ZR1-based Mantide will not be an answer to a world running out of space and oil and filling with people who have never owned a car but would certainly like to do so.

Perhaps the best way to approach it is as a game. Dress up in a fine spring suit, grab a glass of champagne, and enjoy the Alpine sun as you walk around the mammoth sycamore by the hotel and lean in close to the leather straps which hold engine covers above triple Webers. Tomorrow will be another day. But if you lean in close enough, you can just about hear a racing V12 scream down the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans.

Just make sure you step back when the car’s owner guns the engine for real. These things are LOUD.

Next up, we’ll look at the more interesting cars of the Concorso in detail. Like this 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B pictured above, which won this year’s Coppa d’Oro: the grand prize of the event.

Photo Credit: Natalie Polgar and the author

The Concorso d’Eleganza is no Goodwood Festival of Speed: the cars are parked on the lawn of a fancy hotel. Because of this static nature, it’s not much of a video event, being much better suited to photography. Still, in breaks between photo sessions, we couldn’t resist turning on our trusty Flip camera to capture the few moments when the cars were in motion between the exhibition area and the garages.

If you click play, you can hear the sound of a 1955 racing Maserati, a 1969 Miura, a 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB—and Jason Castriota’s Stile Bertone Mantide.

And click here if you missed our video of the Aston-Martin One-77 idling its 7.3-liter V12.

In the early 1980s the Italian manufacturers were trying to shake off the ‘70s maliase. Ferrari was cultivating its Miami Vice image; Alfa Romeo was punishing everyone for not buying more Alfas by introducing the Milano; And Maserati attempted to emulate cool-kid BMW by debuting the Biturbo.

The 1981 Biturbo cut a dashing figure, looking like a more debonair and muscular version of the 320i. As with the small BMW, it arrived with an available 2.0 litre engine, but the Maser's was a 6 rather than a 4, and those 6 cylinders were fed by the twin turbochargers of its honorific. While not sharing any parts with its predecessors, the design borrows liberally from the Citroen-era V6 which had powered the Merak. Those cars seeking a better life in America received a 2.5 litre version of this 18-valver, that provided a 5-horsepower bump over the displacement-tax hindered relatives back home, for a total of 185.

These cars were developed under the time of DeTomaso's ownership of Maserati, and Alejandro never made a car that didn't have one or more quirks to it- the Biturbo being no exception. In addition to a build quality only a communist would find acceptable, the original biturbo motors were topped by a Weber carburetor. That little Weber was housed inside a pressurized plenum, fed by the eponymous turbos. This led to air leaks, cooked carbs, and hours in which to contemplate your latin lemon while on the side of the road due to frequent breakdowns. All of which leads us back to this particular Biturbo.

Our car is an '87, and by then Maserati had abandoned the carburetor for a Weber Marelli fuel injection system, and an additional 3hp. This SI version complements the improved motor with a lowered and stiffened suspension, ZF 5-speed and an air-to-air intercooler. Zero-60 times were quoted as under 7 seconds, competitive back in the day. Sadly, you wouldn't be able to immediately test that out as the seller claims this car has been sitting a year, and that It CANNOT BE DRIVEN, it DOES NO RUN as it is. They do say that there doesn't appear to be any visible reason for this, such as a giant anvil having fallen through the roof, or a family of rabid badgers having taken up residence inside. Speaking of rabid, it appears the rust fairy has feasted voraciously on this car on more than one occasion, indicating that perhaps a more thorough appraisal of its condition would be warranted.

So, to bi or not to bi, that is the question. Is $2,800 a Nice Price for an Italian car, built under an Argentinean, with a German gearbox and an engine based on a French design? Or does that price call out the Crack Pipe, despite all the multiculturalism?

You decide!

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We knew the day would finally come when Planelopnik and Jalopnik would finally mix, but thanks to our boy Aaron, that day came sooner than we thought. Cha-ching!! Apparently the two Ferrari F430s and this Maserati Gran Turismo are being unloaded in Hong Kong for a local auto show. We say f&@k the economic crisis and it seems that we're not the only ones as evidenced by the image below. Do you think they get double the air miles for something like this?
[via Airliners]