Alfa Romeo Montreal: Italian art

As a car enthusiast, petrolhead, gearhead, and the rest of it, you think you know every car in the world. There is literally no more space in your brain for another interesting piece four-wheeled piece of design. Then while you're scrolling the internet, as you do at any time of day, you're confronted by a shape that you do not recognize but most definitely should.

Alfa Romeo Montreal in metallic gold.

Thankfully I was alone while feeling deep embarrassment of not knowing about the
Alfa Romeo Montreal. An Italian sports car created at the pinnacle of Italian exotica, the 70's and I didn't know what it was. The triangular grill design, though, gave away the cars manufacturer. I was immediately struck by the Montreal's elegant beauty. The classic proportions of a long bonnet and a sloping rear end have indeed stood the test of time.

Lovely subtle buldges on the bonnet

The most unique part of the Montreal is its front end. The grill-like contraptions on top of the headlights actually fold under the headlights when they are turned on. Does it make them pop-down headlights? On top of the bonnet there is an air duct which, weirdly, is blocked off and non-functional. That means the car has a useful piece of engineering used only for design purposes.
How Italian is that!

Seek out a video how the headlights work, it's amazing

Moving further towards the rear and the slots that look like vents you'll notice the shape of the door window. It has a familiar curved shape seen in the Lancia Stratos and Lamborghini Miura. Which is not by accident since the Montreal is designed by the same man as the Stratos and Miura, Signore Marcello Gandini. The six vents he put on the car work as vents for the cabin. But they are mostly a design feature and very successful one at that.

Look at the size of that steering wheel!

 Propelling this stylistic car forward is an Alfa bred 2.6 V8 closely related to the smaller capacity V8 used in Alfa Romeo's race cars at the time. It produces 200 horsepower and sends them all naturally to the rear wheels. The car was made from 1970-77 with only around 3900 produced. Alfa struggled to sell it since it went up against cars like the Porsche 911 but was more expensive.


So a car with an interesting engine, beautiful design, built by a charismatic manufacturer during a time when many iconic cars were built. This I think is why it has retracted into the shadow during the years, well, from ignorant me at least. Now though it's time to bring it to the light. I'm so bored by the Porsche 911.

A vintage bodyshape invigorated by many interesting details

A sportscar for the light hearted

At the 2013 Geneva motor show Alfa Romeo revealed its small and lightweight sports car called the 4C. This then had to carry the torch of the famous Spider and GTV. Now it has finally arrived in the showrooms up here in the north.

Alfa Romeo 4C in Madreperla White

The car immediately caught the eyes and minds of the motoring world with its striking looks. The curvy and smooth lines combined with the aggressive stinger bee sort of glare is quite characteristic of the Alfa Romeo design department (Centro Stile Alfa Romeo). The 4C is mid-engined but if there would be no glass cover I don't think anyone would notice. It doesn't suffer from the short nose syndrome as other mid-engined cars.

For a small car it is extremely wide, over 2 meters wide in fact.

Why no ordinary road dweller will notice the mid mounted engine is because it is tiny. The engine is only a 1.75 litre unit lifted from the company's Giulietta hatchback. With a turbo and some other bits and bobs the power output becomes 240 HP. And in true sports car fashion all of this goes to the rear wheels. This isn't that impressive until you realize that the chassis is almost entirely made out of carbon fibre and the entire car of other composite materials and aluminium. This means the car weighs only 895 kg. With this weight - or lack of it - the 240 horsepower is sufficient enough. This sports car is build like most of the super cars build today, and the performance numbers reflect that as well. Officially the snorty 4-cylinder achieves 100 kph in 4.5 seconds but road testers have done the 0-100 sprint in 4.2 seconds. The 4C will keep on going to an impressive 260 kph.

I'm only small, but I'll bite your head off if you're not careful.

Super car numbers and super car materials in a small compact Italian sports car that also is beautiful to behold comes at a high price of over 50 000€ in Italy. Here in the north the added taxes will push the price to an eye watering 90 000€. The question now is, do you have the heart, soul and riches to own one? Because I now you want to.

The future is here...

...and it looks bright too. As we all know the future of cars and motoring is all about efficiency and refinement in which the car uses its energy i.e. fuel. That is why many brilliant engineering minds are working on ingenious ways to make a car as environmentally friendly as possible.

But whilst all this is happening BMW have had a vision, for all I know, from the year 2009 to make the best of what we know now. BMW is utilizing the absolute peak of technology to create a series of cars that, in my opinion, closest resembles how cars are going to be laid out in the near future.
This series is called the i-series. Why does it have to be the letter i? I'm really not a fan of that. But anyhow. The star child of the i-series is the i8. It's a car that 5 years back was only a concept called BMW Vision EfficientDynamics. The name is far from being sexy, but the name spoke for itself. The i8 is everything the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics concept promised, it even looks like it if not better.

The BMW i8 has two engines an electrical one with 129 hp and then a rather interesting 1,5 litre 3-cylinder turbo, putting out a quite astounding 228 hp. That is 357 hp in total, which is in the Porsche 911 range. But then again, the i8 is a sports car so we shouldn't expect anything less. And because of those amazing engines the fuel consumption is unbelievably low, only 2,1 l/100km. Not even the small frugal city cars can match that.

I think this is a revolutionary car. I know the idea of mating a normal combustion engine with an electric motor has been around for the last 15 years. But the BMW i8 shows the car enthusiasts that in the world of cars words hybrid and economical have more potential that we ever knew.

I can't believe that this car is already on sale. It looks so much like a concept.
It's brilliant.

The emissions coming out of the back are only 49 co2/km.

It strikes again

I'm sure you car enthusiasts are aware of the new sports car that came out last year. The seventh edition of the only sports car ever to come out of the US of A, the Chevrolet Corvette C7.

But no, that isn't its whole name. It's actually called the C7 Stingray. And in my opinion that's an issue. The original C2 Stingray is a motoring icon like the E-type Jaguar or the Mercedes-Benz SL300 Gullwing. So why would you call a car by a name that has become a legend? The reason is just to make a greater sale. Chevrolet seems to think that 6.2 litre American V8 (455 hp) isn't a good selling point anymore. And they might be right, but that still doesn't make it acceptable. 

How weird would it be if Ferrari suddenly decided to call their next grand tourer the Daytona. 

Chevrolet Corvette C7. I'm never going to refer to it as the Stingray.

Chevrolet Corvette C7. The 4 exhausts next to each other are a nice touch.

And apparently it handles quite well.  

If I write about a car that also is found in Gran Turismo, I'm going to take photos of it in action there. That way I don't have to "borrow" pictures from the internet. The game has such great graphics that you really can't see a difference anyway.

What's that whistle?

Will your friend say when he hears the new Peugeot RCZ-R approaching. The whistle comes from the massively tuned 1.6 L turbo of the R.
The tuning has been done by Peugeot Sport, which means that the new hot version of the RCZ has 270 hp. And that is just what the doctor ordered. The sporty body of the RCZ has finally got the sporty power that it deserves. I'm not saying that the 200 hp version is slow, i'm saying that it wasn't enough to put my hair on end. But now the French two-seater has the power to compete with the Scirocco R.
The RCZ-R doesn't get four-wheel drive either, which appears to be the trend with these type of cars. But at least it doesn't follow the trend of paddle-shifters (like the Scirocco R) but has a proper manual.
To sum up. We had to wait four years for the RCZ to come into production after the concept. Then it took another four years for the car to get the power to match its looks. The whistle is real.

The R is 10 mm lower than the standard RCZ

Those exhaust pipes and the back wing are the biggest giveaways for the R.

Future legend!

This past weekend I got the pleasure to drive an old Mazda MX-5. It was my first driving experience in a low riding two-seater and it was an absolute joy. So I thought that I'd write about it. The car not my driving.

As you all know the Mazda MX-5, or Mazda Miata as it's known in the States, is one of the most if not the most iconic sports car of all time. It was introduced in 1989 and Mazda wanted it to have the feel of a British sports car but with Japanese reliability. A small light weight rear-wheel drive sports car with a 1.6 litre engine putting out a modest 115 hp was the recipe Mazda went with and not surprisingly it worked. It was fast, nimble, good looking and best of all - as in a British sports car - it was a convertible.

The one I drove was with the more powerful 1.8 litre engine that came along in 1994. It has 130 hp but the acceleration from 0-100 kph stays about the same as in the 1.6 litre version at 8.7 seconds. But when that engine came along the people at Mazda decided that the gap between the 1.6 and the 1.8 was to small so they detuned the 1.6 litre engine to only develope 90 hp. Which - as you may imagine - was not a success.

But all in all the Mazda MX-5 has been a success story. Mazda have made over 900 000 of the MX-5 and they haven't stopped yet. It has changed appearance somewhat over the years but the recipe is still the same.  The Mazda MX-5 Miata will go down to the car hall of fame, no question about it.

Oh, and keeping in the theme of future classics, this is certainly a car that belongs there. But the annual special editions or otherwise called M Editions are the ones to look for.

Yes, the roof down in just above freezing temperature

And it has the coolest things ever fitted on a car, pop-up headlights.

In the cockpit there's nothing to distract you from the road.

This example was not in the best of shapes, but still huge fun.

All the generations of the iconic Mazda MX-5 Miata.

 Geneva Motor Show goodness

Now that we have dealt with the awe inspiring supercars of the Geneva Motor Show, let's start talking about the luxurious, sporty and even affordable cars from Geneva.


Let's start off with the new and hopefully improved Chevrolet Corvette Stingray or the C7 if you prefer. And yes, the Stingray name is back. In Geneva Chevy showed the convertible version of it and I have to say it looks good and possibly even better for a middle-aged man. The coupé version was revealed at the Detroit Motor Show a few months ago and it was an instant hit. Now that the roof has disappeared in the boot hasn't made it less desirable. The only issue I have with it so far is that I think it resembles a bit too much a Ferrari which is no surprise since Chevrolet has a joint venture with Fiat, who happens to own a little company called Ferrari. 

Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Convertible

Chevrolet Corvette Stingray coupé

No metal roof origami here

To cover for the luxurious part of the motor show in Geneva Rolls Royce showed up with its new Wraith. It's basically a Ghost underneath but with a coupé body on top. It also has the same 6.6 litre twin turbo V12 BMW engine as the Ghost but obviously fiddled with to give out 624 horsepower. It's a huge coupé with a massive engine which indicates that the Wraith is more built for the driver than the other modern Rolls Royce's so far. But don't by any means mistake this for a posh Bentley Continental GT.

Rolls Royce Wraith

Yes the door opens backwards

The much anticipated production ready Alfa Romeo 4C also made its debut in Geneva. It's a new small sports car from a manufacturer that should know what they're doing. The numbers at least sound promising. It has a turbocharged 1.8 litre engine putting out a respectable 240 hp. And all that goes to the back wheels. It's light too, Alfa claim it weighs less than 1000 kg which is impressive these days. So the new 4C touches all the right sports car buttons and it looks great. Is it a possible Audi TT beater?

Alfa Romeo 4C

The women were all over it, that's good

Stylish interior but hopefully not cramped

Honda NSX

In 2005 Honda decided that they make enough exciting cars and stopped building the NSX sports car. It was a huge loss. Granted the Honda NSX didn't sell very well and was a tad expensive but it was one of the greatest cars ever built in the 1990's.
At the Detroit Motor Show earlier this year Honda (or Acura if you want) showed us how the second generation NSX will look like when it'll be launched in a couple of years. This new one may have a Honda V6 as the old one but it'll be joined with an electric motor or two. That apparently is the propulsion of a modern sports car. I don't like the hybrid nonesense but to please the emissions people they got to do it I guess.
The styling of the old car was descrete. It was built to make the driving experince like in no other car, utter balance. This new one - at least the concept - looks a bit flashier but still no where near a Zonda. I doubt the finished product will look like this, but be assured, it will please the driver.

Acura/Honda NSX second generation

Old Honda NSX after facelift

Most underrated sports car ever?