The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts
36 photos by Jonathan Sharp
Stop: Forget rivet counts and restoration details.
Stop: Enlarge each photo by clicking on it to double the size. Slow it down.
Stop: Enjoy the ambiance for there is nothing else quite like it in the world.
Stop: Look at the faces, feel the tension, imagine the noise, thrill with the excitement.
For this is Goodwood at its most glorious, and how great it would be there to see and hear and feel what Jonathan Sharp did on that wonderful September day in 2019.
By Wallace Wyss
We’re supposed to be hunkered down because of the plague. I get it.
But being a car guy, I can’t help (properly masked of course) going to Malibu at dawn each Sunday morning to see what’s at the informal cars ‘n coffee. And recently I was rewarded with the sight of a 1967 Bizzarrini GT5300 Strada so fresh from France it still has French plates (or are those vanity plates?)
Story and photos by Sean Smith
From our Archives, 2018
On June 4th, 2017, Walter and the SIATA won the “Vintage Rallies” award at the 2017 Greenwich Concours d’Elegance. But the car still was not running right—so off it went to Automotive Restorations in Stratford Connecticut.
They were chasing what they thought were some electrical gremlins. They got the SIATA running better, and technician Chip Webb took the car out for a road test.
On June 8th at 1:30 in the afternoon, Chip was waiting for a light at the corner of Stratford and Surf Avenues with his signal on, when a woman in a Toyota Camry came along doing something she shouldn’t have been doing… one hand on the wheel and the other on her ubiquitous cell phone… driving distracted.
BANG!
Jim Donick, editor of the Vintage Sports Car Club of America’s quarterly magazine, Vintage Sports Car, created a 2021 calendar, “The Automotive Legacy of France.” You’ll love the photos and descriptions of rare French cars, but it also includes important dates in motoring history.
We’ll send one free, including shipping, to every U.S. Domestic reader who subscribes to VeloceToday while supplies last, and they are going faster than a 4CV! Read on for details. [Read more…] about This Offer Can’t Last! Free French Calendar
By Paul Wilson
All Photos by Hugues Vanhoolandt unless otherwise noted.
In the late 1930s the fastest, most advanced, most beautiful sports car in the world was the Alfa 8C2900B, or “2.9.” So, of course, I wanted one.
This was back in the 1970s, when many great cars were cheap–one of the Bugatti Royales spent time in a junkyard, for example. But not the 2.9s, which dipped only to the price of a nice house. I was driving a rusty Valiant station wagon, bought for $175 when I was married. A 2.9 was laughably out of reach.
My solution, sort of, was to make one.
Not the whole car, just the body. Bodies on the great prewar classics, like the Alfas, Talbot-Lagos, Bugattis, and Delahayes, were mostly built by independent coachbuilders. [Read more…] about Coachbuilding on the Alfa 6C 2500 Chassis
This Talbot Lago Grand Sport of 1948 is also a Le Mans veteran with no less than five participations from 1949 to 1953. Chantilly 2015
Photos and captions by Hugues Vanhoolandt
Text by the Editor
Hugues Vanhoolandt has traveled the globe, accumulating a great wealth of digital images from a wide variety of shows and events. This week, to accompany Paul Wilson’s Alfa Romeo coupe debut in the pages of VeloceToday, we searched the Vanhoolandt archives to feature those sexy Italian and French creations of a certain age – that age being between 1935 and 1953, give or take a year on either side.
Photo courtesy Dick Ruzzin
By Dick Ruzzin
In the 1990s I was Director of Design for General Motors of Europe, involved with all design work for GM, exclusive of North America. We had a design contract with Stile Bertone in Turin Italy and did many interesting advanced design projects there, most never revealed to the public. Included was the OPEL MAXX that was a big influence on the Swatch car.
Designers from Opel Design in Germany would spend time in Italy working with the Italians at Stile Bertone. It would be a gross understatement to say that an assignment at Stile Bertone was highly desirable by my designers. [Read more…] about Bertone’s Z.E.R.
Story by Sean Smith
From our Archives, 2017
In Part 1, Sean Smith relates the fascinating life of a Siata that has been in the same family for almost 60 years, a story that begins back in 1952 with a most unlikely car….Ed.
Dr. Julius Eisenstark had an eye for unique cars. In 1952 when everybody else was buying Fords and Chevys, he bought a Hudson.
Not just any Hudson, but a Teaguemobile.
Isotta Fraschini was Milan’s premier marque, to be enjoyed by the upper class wealthy patrons of the city.
By Aldo Zana
Graham Gauld’s feature about the September 7, 1908 “Targa Bologna” (see Veloce Today) prompted the idea to tell the following short story about a little known historical fact: The early capital city of the Italian automotive industry wasn’t Turin, nor the Motor Valley around Modena, as Maranello entered history about half a century later.
It was Milan.
Wallace Wyss art.
By Wallace Wyss
You have to admire Ferrari. They bring out almost half a dozen new models in one year, and constantly cope with the pressure from Lamborghini and McLaren.
Yet they still manage to bring out fresh new designs. Ferrari must have figured out that part of their appeal is not only to have all that tradition going for them, but to constantly introduce new models and be the newest kid on the block. In 2018 they introduced the SF90 Stradale Hardtop, and new for 2021 is the SF90 Stradale Spider convertible with a power-folding hardtop.
Story and photos by Graham Gauld
Above: Somewhat ironic that the iconic statue of Williams in the Bugatti by Francois Chevalier is removed from St. Devote during the race! From the VeloceToday archives, October 2013.
If you should ever be in Monte Carlo, keep a look-out for an almost life-sized bronze statue to “Williams”, or William Grover-Williams to give him his correct name, the winner of the first Monaco Grand Prix in 1929.
Story and photos by Dale LaFollette
It was a typical spring day sometime in the mid-1990s, with a light mist in the air as I was on my way to work. We were going to have an Indy Lites test session and I already knew there would be complaints about the weather. As manager of Portland International Raceway (PIR) weather was one thing that I did not manage nor did I make excuses for. It just was.
When I got to the office, one of the Lites drivers, Ray Richter, was on the phone asking about the weather and then asked if he could land his RV4 airplane on the main straight. This was something I had allowed before as the FAA seemed to have no problem with it as long as he stayed below 800 feet. I asked what time he would arrive, after he told me I said I would have everyone on the property alerted to his arrival so there would be no issues.