Petrolicious

For the first Made to Drive installment in 2018, we got back together with our good friend and all-around good guy Bruce Meyer and a pair of American heroes from his impressive collection. We met up with him and his ‘Vettes at Thermal Club for some track time in these iconic endurance racers—specifically, the Briggs-Cunningham-prepared C1 that brought the Corvette name to Le Mans for the first time in 1960, along with the indomitable force of red-blooded horsepower that won its class in 2009, known simply as the C6.R.

Join us this week as we follow Kevin Doran’s ex-Paul Newman Datsun 280Z to the track and hear the history of this enthusiast’s dedication to the arts and sciences of speed. Kevin Doran has been around motorsports for the majority of his life, from watching his dad racing on short track ovals to working on an IndyCar team straight out of high school, he’s been in or under fast cars for quite a while.

This week we put the top back on Greg Stanley’s 1966 Mustang Convertible to indulge in the unrestricted sounds of its four-barrel carb while we adopt a simpler, more mechanical notion of the American muscle car. Indeed, many a minivan will out-accelerate it today, but the drama and involvement of the senses that comes with cars like the original Mustang is a timeless pleasure. Complete with the original window sticker and plenty of documentation, Greg’s example is a prime example of this motoring icon.

In this week’s Made to Drive episode we fold ourselves into the cockpit of Jasbir Dhillon’s 1991 Jaguar XJR-15 to experience one of the rarest and rawest supercars built in the 20th century. Aimed at transferring the Le Mans-winning XJR experience to the road, just 53 examples of the XJR-15 were produced with the help of Tom Walkinshaw under the banner of Jaguar Sport, and only 27 were optioned for road use. Powered by a beautifully shrill six-liter V12, it’s a lesser known but no less sexy staple of 1990s supercardom, and one of the finest examples of a “race car for the road,” of any decade.

This week we head a few hours north of our Los Angeles HQ to catch up with Bruce Canepa and one his Porsche 959. It’s one of the rarest cars to wear the company’s crest, but he’s certainly no stranger to the thing—after spending over a decade trying to find the legal loopholes necessary to put one on the road in the United States, one tends to form a bond, become familiar. The 959 has been duly lauded for decades as one of the most advanced and ambitious supercars ever produced, but beyond all that it may have also saved the beloved 911 by showing the world what could be achieved with a rear-engine design.

Join us this week as we drive through the history of Alfa Romeo’s motorsport lineage and kick the tail out on a Giulia Sprint 1600 GTA, TZ-1, Giulia TI Super, and the new Giulia Quadrifoglio. A conversation about the history of driving is at any given time no more than a few words away from the land of red racing cars and coach-built curves, and when talk does inevitably land in Italy, you should start with Alfa Romeo. If motorsport enters the discussion, you must—there would be no prancing horses without the cross and serpent, after all.

n this week’s Made to Drive episode we recall less wintry weather in the heartland of the country as we join Cy Schmidt for a late afternoon cruise along the backroads of Ohio in his 1969 Mercury Cyclone CJ. The last two letters designate the V8 under hood as a special one, and at this moment we can’t think of many verbal twosomes possessing as many promises of giddy smoking-tire fun as the words “Cobra Jet”—and the base car, the Cyclone, was named after a fence-ripping, cow-tossing fit of natural aggression to begin with.

In this week’s Made to Drive installment we are in Florida with Petrolicious’ friend and vintage motorsport enthusiast, John Campion. Joining his collection recently, this 1981 March 811 Formula 1 car represents a different era of top-level racing, wherein one could buy an engine and build a chassis to compete without spending hundreds of millions of manufacturer dollars. Though this sinister black sword of a racing car wasn’t on the same pace as that year’s world championship contenders, the Guinness-sponsored machine driven by Irishman Derek Daly was still ferociously quick in an absolute sense, and it’s a treat to see it in action on a race track so many decades later on.

In this week’s Made to Drive installment we are visiting France to spend an afternoon with a young couple infatuated with vintage Alfa Romeos. They currently own two with plans for more, but it was this 1972 Alfetta and its striking factory color of Verde Pino that began the momentum. It’s a unique mixture of a stylish but practical small sedan combined with Italian sporting heritage, and though it isn’t the most well-known from the marque’s impressive lineup in the early 1970s it is a notable piece of their history. In the case of Tristan and Manon, his wife to be, the Alfetta is now part of their family, and it will be starting a new legacy.

Like last week’s installment in our Made to Drive series, we are back in France, only this time at much higher elevation as we power slide through the snowy roads of the Courchevel ski resort perched high in the Alps. With his skis affixed atop and a preference for counter-steering, Mark Birch is using his 1994 RS2 exactly as intended. Sure-footed Quattro paired with a classic Audi turbo five under the hood is a recipe for the ultimate snow day as far as we’re concerned, and though it never received any motorsport attention, it sure does a good job of aping its WRC relatives as it carves sideways ruts into the churned-up powder behind it.

It’s not a shrunken Type 2 VW, but rather an adorable little import built in Japan in an era long before Subaru started to earn its modern granola-crunching and power-sliding fanbase. Sun-soaked Arizona is an altogether alien terrain if you’re arriving from Japan, and as far as U.S. cities go, Greater Phoenix is not wanting for space—certainly not when compared to the tightly-packed streets of Japan’s metropolitan hubs—and a tiny van with an even smaller motor is no way to experience these wide-open desert highways if your version of the American Southwest requires a V8. But traversing the ramps and right angles around the city? This little UFO is quite handy indeed. The Subaru 360 Van is an efficient use of of space and it gets the kind of excellent mileage you’d expect from a barebones and mostly utilitarian machine, and yet its value lies more in its charm than its function.

An automobile that was produced in numbers well into the tens of millions doesn’t seem so unique, but what if one of those cars hadn’t been touched for more than forty years before its rediscovery? That’s the story behind this Soviet-era survivor that shows just under 150 kilometers on the clock, and it’s all original despite the Curtain coming down decades ago. It’s a time capsule from an altogether different history than most of the cars in our Made to Drive series, and though it’s not a sporting machine by any means, the VAZ-2103 “Zhiguli” is still one of the most significant cars ever built. Let the proud owner of this 1975 example tell you why.

Gather up a handful of some choice racing cars along with a trio of top drivers who brought them to the podiums in the period and you’re bound to have a good day at the track. If those cars happen to be a trio of Alfa Romeo Tipo 33s, the drivers have the last names of Bell, Merzario, and Galli, and it’s all going down at speed on the same track these cars were developed on decades ago? There’s really no room for improvement if you’re a cross and serpent devotee. Join us as we accompany these racing legends—both human and machine—for an unbeatable track day at FCA’s private test circuit in Balocco, Italy.

Join us this week on the backroads (and dirt paths) of Los Angeles as we follow James Chen and his Jaguar XKSS recreation for an evening drive without a destination. Built on the underpinnings of an E-Type, his nimble British roadster wears some genuine D-Type parts as well, and because it isn’t one of the 16 invaluable original examples of the XKSS built in 1957, it can be driven without the fear of a multi-million dollar visit to the ditch if things get out of hand. This one is certainly enjoyed to the fullest, and though we understand it’s not the same as the real deal, it delivers a different kind of pleasure for the simple fact that it can be driven “as intended.”

When it comes to the divide between road cars and their motorsport relatives, the gap between the excruciatingly meek Renault 5 and its mid-engined Group B derivation is one of the widest to be found in history. In the United States, the front-wheel drive, front-engined base-model was known simply—and if you ask us a bit presumptuously—as “Le Car.” We’re not in the US for this shot of Morning Coffee though, and it’s hard to be concerned with odd model names when you’re sitting shotgun in a street-legal replica of the R5’s evolutionary apex, the so-called, “Maxi Turbo.” We’re joining Aris Jocelyn for some automotive espresso today inside his Maxi homage built on the already-formidable platform of a 1983 Renault 5 Turbo II, and though the recipe is simple, the ingredients are certainly exotic: first, find some scarcely populated mountain roads in southern France. Next, fire up the turbocharged French rally machine of your choice. Then pull the trigger.

Roger Kaege first saw a Singer-modified Porsche in a magazine back in 2009 and was drawn to the car’s appearance and ethos. He’s not alone in that regard, but looking into the cost of ownership put him on a different path toward parking a “modern vintage” Porsche in his garage—Roger happens to be a vehicle and chassis engineer, so he decided to take the project on himself. He’s poured 2,000 hours into the build since he bought the base car, a rear-wheel drive 993, and though he was inspired by Singer he didn’t set out to recreate their work. Rather, he stuck with more Porsche series production parts to keep the cost down with the benefit of proven reliability and serviceability. It’s still very much built to spec though, and Roger’s high standards that saw pieces like the front bumper reworked multiple times in pursuit of getting it just right have ensured that such a description fits the car as a whole. He’s achieved the balance between modern performance and retro optics, taking no shortcuts along the way.

This week we’re a few hours north of the Petrolicious HQ in Los Angeles as we follow Lisa and her tastefully modified E10 through the forested curves and rolling highlands of the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s her third 2002 so far, but this one was always defined as her lifetime car—a keeper—and the license plate tells you all you need to know in that regard: translated from Latin, tesoro means treasure, and after a restoration prompted by some unfortunately clumsy tow-truck maneuvering, that’s exactly what Lisa’s 2002 has become. It’s exactly as she pictured it in her head, and with a host of choice aftermarket parts from the likes of BBS, Weber, and Recaro, we imagine she’s not alone in her admiration for this classic German coupe.

This week we’re ditching two wheels from our usual four to take a ride with Efraon Triana around the the foothills and coastal routes that wrap around the central hub of Madrid on his bespoke Harley-Davidson Sportster. By blending the mechanicals of a modern bike with a hand-crafted recreation of the original 1957 design as the wrapper, he’s created a machine that embodies the best of both worlds; the quality rises to OEM standards, but the machine stands alone as a triumph of personal creativity.

Magnus Walker is more than just a well-known figure in the air-cooled Porsche world, but it would be wrong to assume that’s all he’s interested in. So rather than joining him for yet another jaunt in a naturally aspirated rear-engined machine, this week we’re focusing on a 1980 924 Carrera GT. One of just 406 produced, Magnus has added his own stylistic touches to this box-flared beast, which he describes as a unique but similar driving experience when compared to the 911 platform. It still lives up to the badge on the hood though, and he explains the challenges and rewards therein as we take to the elevated Angeles Crest Highway above the city.

Typically we start these descriptions with the location, the car, and the driver, but Heidi Hetzer and her 1930 Hudson Great Eight don’t fit the mold, seeing as the 77-year-old took her rather ancient automobile on a journey around the world. Inspired by Clärenore Stinnes, the first to accomplish such a feat, Heidi battled cancer, nearly lost a few fingers, and defied the odds during the course of her monumental road trip. Possessing a spirit found in few, her love of driving is positively boundless, and so is her cheery outlook on life and the people you meet along the way.

This Tuesday takes us to Thailand to spend an afternoon with an Alfa enthusiast living far from the source of the Italian marque’s classic heroes. Chong Song Ong moved from his home in Malaysia to the country across the northern border, but it wasn’t until his second year there that he even saw an Alfa Romeo. With the help of a friend he found his own, restored it, and has been enjoying it for a decade since. In that time he’s made a lot of new friends thanks to his passion, many of whom have purchased and restored vintage Alfas of their own.

Slow down and join us for a leisurely cruise this week as we join the Glancy family and their pristine Jaguar XJ6C as we escape from the hectic tangle of Los Angeles. Emphasizing the ethos of grace, space, and pace, the stately pillar-less coupe was the last car produced under the directorship of Sir William Lyons, marking the end of an era that helped establish Jaguar as the brand we know it as today. A rare but accessible classic, this svelte feline is in “top nick” as they say, and under Christopher Glancy’s stewardship the elegance of the paint and brightwork will be preserved for the moment he can pass this automotive heirloom down to his daughter. Effortlessly waxed and gleaming under the SoCal sun, it’s hard to imagine a more stylish way to slow life down, at least for a little while.

The Ferrari 250—pick just about any version—was the ultimate 1960s grand touring car and it was introduced to the world before that decade had even begun. More than half a century later its genetic code is still identifiable in today’s top sports coupes, but for this edition of Morning Coffee we’ve ditched the roof for a blast around Britain’s B-roads in a rare open-headlight version of the series II California Spyder. With a Tipo 168 3.0L V12 planted below the sultry length of the hood, four-wheel disc brakes, a shorter wheelbase and a wider track than its predecessor, later Sypders like this one owned by Hexagon Classics’ Paul Michaels offer the strongest cocktail of classic front-engined Ferrari performance and Italian coachbuilt style from the house of Scaglietti. If you’ve had your espresso already, here’s the second shot.

This is the story of following a trail of gas into the a tractor barn. It is a story of a family legacy of mechanical inclination and a desire to learn from and build upon classic machines. A story of a father and son taking seven long years to transform a 356 shell and a box of parts into a car that reflects their histories and their personalities. The Auratium Green 356 A Type 2 is the culmination of more than just the hundreds of hours of patient toiling that went into its resurrection, for it represents the passing down of talents and a way of living and approaching material objects with a calculated but still very human touch. It is one thing to understand how it all works, another to to fall in love with the act of making it happen.

Continuation GT40s are not pieces of kit car replica shenanigans put together with a case of cheap beer next to your buddies in the garage. Cars like this week’s subject are built as faithful, well, continuations of the originals—schematically accurate in more than just appearance. When it comes to such cars, Superformance is the standard in the industry, but while he admits to the quality of their work, Ted Baird, the owner of this car, went a step further and using a collection of original parts he’d amassed over time, he made sure his GT40 would be a true 1966-spec machine, complete with pieces from some of the race-winning cars themselves. As he says, the car is still as gorgeous as ever, and Turtle Wax ICE Spray Wax makes quick work of adding a layer of shine and protection to this brute of a machine.

Having spent his formative years doodling and drawing bikes and cars he’d only seen on TV, Dan Untura was determined to become an engineer or a designer. His parent had different plans for his future though, so he became a doctor. But fate it seems has a sense of humor after all. Dan became the most mechanical doctor you can be, doing his residency in orthopedics and trauma. The exact branch of surgical medicine where you’re using “pretty much” the same tools you’d need in a garage. You’ve got your power tools and ratchets. Only difference being that the mechanical problem that your trying to fix is a human body.

This week we are back in Germany with a beautiful 1958 356A 1600 Super. Its owner, Sebastian Wolff, has experienced plenty of Porsches in his time—just watch him riding the diesel tractor to the barn where he makes the switch to the significantly sportier for proof—but he makes no airs of being an expert on the marque. Rather than memorize decimals and stats, the enjoyment is found in the action of driving the car on country roads, or simply admiring the 356 at rest, taking in the distinct curves wearing the elegant shade of Meissen Blue. There’s no wrong way to express your passion for Porsche, but we tend to favor Sebastian’s approach: find a road far removed from the stress of urban density, literally unplug from the nagging call of constant connectivity, and submerge yourself in the joys of driving a simple but engaging sports car.

Those among us lucky enough to call car collecting a hobby typically align these efforts toward a unifying theme. The common centers of gravity are things like “only air-cooled P-cars,” “coach-built cars from the ‘70s,” or perhaps “one of every M car.” For Philip Moffat however, the common ground is colors and shapes, a more open-ended set of criterion that just happen to have resulted in two cars made by the same marque in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Jacques Jenn was a French youth with American dreams. He wasn’t chasing the full gamut of capitalistic treasure though, just a specific piece of it: owning an automobile. No big Buick bomb nor malaise-era sadcompact would cut it though. Jacques needed a Mustang. Grown up and living in Strasbourg with a son of his own but still captivated by these high-horsepower pieces of pop culture, Jacques decided to look for a restoration candidate. Eventually a friend found a ’68 GT Fastback—same year and body as the one in Bullitt—and over the next two years Jacques and his son restored the car to its current lightly modified but thoroughly gorgeous state of being. A few days after completion, he drove it to get married to the girl who supported the project from the beginning. Turns out the American Dream takes to translation.

As a bonus film this week, we've ventured into the facilities of our friends at Hemmels International, where Mercedes-Benz Pagodas and Gullwings are reborn and rebuilt by renown craftsmen. Joseph Sullivan, a 3rd generation mechanic and Technical Director, has had a vision for perfecting Pagodas from the start and created an incredibly rigorous process for stripping, sourcing and rebuilding every single component of a car. As a customer the experience is just like walking into the Mercedes factory in '60s and ordering Pagoda, Gullwing or 190SL to your preferred specification - color, interior materials, performance, you name it. Better-than-new? Yes. Stunning? Absolutely.

Long before it was turned into a model name, the thrill of discovery had become a fundamental piece of the Land Rover story. And while the English 4x4s have enjoyed a renaissance of popularity as of late, for every pristine one parked in a spotless garage there’s an old workhorse being chucked through the mud, used as intended. Basem Wasef falls into the latter camp; his 1963 Series IIA cleans up pretty nicely, but it looks much better fording than it does parked and polished. Early Land Rovers like this one are pieces of equipment built for prolonged and hard use. A tool for travel, for exploration, for finding the pleasure in mechanical purity. To drive it requires constant adjustment and attention, and you’ll barely hit highway speeds down a hill, but to be part of a different era and attitude of the automobile is well worth it.

This week we are outside of downtown Los Angeles in the hills of Thousand Oaks, CA to spend some time with Christopher Mejia and his favorite Chevrolet Corvair Monza out of a collection that’s 25-strong. Owned since new by his grandfather until the day he died in 1995, this car was passed down, crashed, rebuilt, crashed again, and then resto-modded into this beautiful black blade by the same grandkid it used to bring to kindergarten in the morning. The air-cooled flat-six in back made the Corvair a unique piece of American automotive history, and by adding push-rod air-suspension among other custom touches to the car that’s never left the family, Christopher’s Corvair goes a step further.

In a time well before the word supercar entered our vocabulary, the fastest one in the world was built in an economically compromised Spain by a state-owned manufacturing company whose primary focus was on trucks, buses, and other industrial vehicles. In other words, the Pegaso Z-102 was born of strange circumstance, and since it was a wildly expensive endeavor for a country recovering from civil war, not many were built in period, and they remain obscure today with only a few dozen surviving from the original production run. A dry-sump V8 with four cams powers the alloy coachwork (a number of bodies were available from Italian and Spanish coachbuilders like Touring and Serra), and though it saw no success on the racing circuit, the Z-102 was among the most advanced and high-performing GTs of its day. Join us for a ride around the outskirts of Madrid as we put Rafael Pueche’s 1955 example through its paces—rare cars need exercise too.

A 28-year-old living in a small space wherein the kitchen and the bedroom are one in the same is a typical scenario, but unlike this repurposed Volkswagen T4 Transporter, studio apartments tend to stay in one place. Callum Creasey’s modified 1996 example has taken him and his girlfriend all across Europe thanks to the dependable four-cylinder diesel under the hood, and the social media following that’s cropped up in the wake of their adventures has turned their hobby into much more than an Instagram page or just something to do on spare weekends. Full of wool blanket and coffee-mug charm coupled with the functionality required to actually live in it for more than an afternoon picnic, it’s hard to say whether this story is about the journey or the destination—why not both?

Cars and coffee make for a common pairing, but we aren’t talking about a rushed cup grabbed at the gas station that’s slugged down on autopilot as you sit in traffic with the commuting masses on Monday morning. The parking lot car shows that have taken on the Cars & Coffee name are a better way to enjoy the two, but this is a different story altogether. This is one of those perfect mornings when a quality roast is followed by an equally caffeinated drive away from the gridlock of silver and beige, in a car that could easily pass for the automotive manifestation of espresso. Find an empty street, add a hot-rodded Alfa Romeo GTV, and try not to have the time of your life.

Straight away you realize something’s a bit different about this Dino. The wheels are beefier, the arches are angrier, the sound it makes doesn’t sync with your memory of these cars (probably because there are two extra intake trumpets underneath the transparent engine cover), and while the badging looks factory-correct, you don’t think there was ever an Evo version of the mid-engined sports car named after Enzo’s tragic son. The car is a one-off, and it’s part of the venerable collection of classic and modern Ferraris owned by collector David Lee. By borrowing a block from the F40, losing the turbos, boring it from 2.9 to 3.6L, and fixing twin banks of velocity stacks, David’s “Monza 3.6 Evo” is a naturally-aspirated screamer that combines modern performance with the Dino’s ageless style in a package that doesn’t compromise on either end.

Joseph DeBattista came to the United States in 1974 with $600 to his name. Hard work and the right attitude allowed him to start a family and a car collection later on, and while he drove E-Types and the like in the interim it was the unexpected addition of an unassuming Lapis Blue Opel Kadett that built the strongest bond between him and his son Joey, who first cut his restoration chops as a rubber mallet-wielding toddler making a few dents in Dad’s MGB GT project. The DeBattista’s Opel was received in trade for Joey’s Volkswagen (the company that GM was targeting when they revived the Opel name in the early 1960s), and the subsequent restoration process kicked off an odyssey of a restoration project that’s paid off handsomely in ways that money can never measure.

The power of Porsche is rarely measured on a dyno, but you can always tell when it’s taken hold of someone. Eli Kogan is certainly no stranger to the marque from Stuttgart, and today we’re joining him for a spirited run through the gears in the type of empty space in the Arizona desert that almost audibly eggs on right feet. In between heel-and-toes and counter-steering his Maritime Blue 964 RS (it’s not an RS America either, despite the US plates), he explains the reasoning behind his Porsche infatuation—from the first triple-digit speed run in the passenger seat of his dad’s 993, to the race-derived nature of the legendary RS line, but we’ll shut up now and let him and the flat-six do the talking.

Driving fun cars with your friends is, by no stretch of definition, time well spent. Being able to do so while you’re in high school and can say that your first car wasn’t a typical five-speed automatic Corolla only makes it better, but owning half-century-old baby Brits like Daniel Harrison’s 1958 MGA and Daniel Hornstrand’s 1962 Austin Mini Cooper isn’t simple. Both have rebuilt his car’s engine, and while their pack of petrolhead friends all offer competent help in the garage, it’s a rare time when all the group’s cars are running well at the same time. They don’t mind though, and adopt an attitude that focuses on the fun times with friends who will spend weekends in the garage chasing the inevitable gremlins that come with not only owning and driving (often), but maintaining cars like these.

Lots of people will tell you how they feel about a car, but if it’s Érik Comas you know he’s not parroting some review he read in a magazine once upon a waiting room. He’s raced Skylines for Nismo in Japan, 911s at Le Mans, and after taking up karting as a teenager he turned his talent into a path that got him to Formula 1. He’s raced touring cars, multiple formula series, and dabbled in some rallying for good measure, but of all the incredible machines Comas has driven in his day it’s the Stratos that earns the most emotions when he gets behind the wheel. It doesn’t hurt that this is garden variety Stradale version either, and after watching Erik slide his Group 4 rally car around on wet pavement it’s not hard to imagine why this racing driver says it handles “perfectly.”

Not everyone gets the chance to own the kinds of cars they adored as children, and far fewer end up with the exact same one that made them fall in love with sports motoring in their impressionable youths. Tony Parkinson’s Austin Healey 100S is one such example of that story though, and he is the proud owner of the exact car that his boyhood self idolized growing up outside of Adelaide, Australia. He recalls seeing it out for testing and tuning when it was being set up as a competition car, and now Parkinson is the one behind the wheel during historic race events and road rallies. Patience pays off, and if you’re dedicated and persistent enough then your boyhood dream can live in your garage.

Spence Canon already knew his way around a Lotus Europa before he bought his second one, but it wasn’t his plan to double up on the ‘60s British sports car. After building his first into a race car to run in vintage motorsport series in California like VARA, this bright orange street car project was both familiar territory and a new challenge, seeing as it was his first time putting one together with license plates. As with his other Lotus, he’s done all the work on it in his driveway with basic tools and a standard floor jack, and even though it gets its work out in the canyons on a relatively regular basis Spence says this rare Type 54 Europa street car is a rolling restoration—and the satisfaction of putting it together and modifying it to make it his own is equal to the joys of downshifting on the way into a hairpin.

This week we’re in England putting our harnesses on in Mark Brown’s modified BMW M3. The E30 generation was the very first of the now-iconic M3s, and the only one that was built as a race car first and street car second. The homologation special supported the most successful touring car of all time for the German marque, and Mark didn’t escape the draw of the M3 when he watched them compete in the period. Following a debilitating accident, he’s now recovered and behind the wheel of his own E30 M3 that he’s modified into a tasteful, street-legal, track car that looks the absolute business with a set of driving lights on the hood.

Let’s say you’re a mechanical engineer who’s always wanted to build a sports car. Let’s say you’re living in Italy in the 1960s and you happen to be friends with some of the country’s greatest minds, including a certain prolific and talented designer at Ghia: Tom Tjaarda. What do you do? When Peter Giacobbi found himself in such an auspicious situation after sharing a bottle of wine with Tjaarda one night, he got to work. In a time well before computers did the precise calculations and modeling involved in creating something as challenging as a high-performance automobile, Peter and Tom did the math and the drawing all on their own, and the result is something that you’d never call cobbled together. Peter calls it the Sinthesis, to represent the marriage of Italian design and American engineering, and 40 year later it still provides the same go-kart experience it did when it was a newborn in 1970.

Maxime Gransart grew up around motorsport. His father raced all over France in the 1960s in various cars–including a go at the 24 Hours of Le Mans—but his Lotus Seven left the greatest impact. Maxime was set on owning one, but when it came time to purchase his first car he went with something a little more modern in the form of a first-generation Elise. He loved it and bought another one, but he eventually found his way into this 1964 Super Seven. A longtime devotee of Colin Chapman and his emphasis on lightweight, minimalist designs, Maxime fell in love with the tube-frame chassis, its street and on-track characteristics offering an experience that no other marque can. When he isn’t heading for the backroads in the Seven, you might find him sharing another Lotus—an Elite—with his friend in the Le Mans Classic. His actions follow his words: “I started with Lotus. I’ll continue with Lotus.”

Today we are in the company of a Dutchman who’s keen on driving a particular French coupe in a historic Italian road race. After acquiring it from a loving owner who’d taken care of the car for the last twenty years, Mark Geessink became the proud owner of this rare piece of automotive history. The A106 was the first car to wear the Alpine badge, and only a few years after founder Jean Rédelé created the polyester-bodied car based on Renault running gear, it found success in Italy when it won its class in the 1956 Mille Miglia. The model’s history is kept alive and well thanks to current caretakers like Mark, who’s competed in the modern-day version of the race since 2014, always completing the full route in the small but stalwart Alpine.

This week we’re joining Antonio Albacete outside of Madrid’s city center for some laps on the world class Circuit of Jarama. The famously narrow racetrack has hosted the world’s fastest automobile and motorcycle series in its day, but rather than the giants of motorsport that are Formula 1 machines and MotoGP bikes we’re here in the pits and on the tarmac with a classic Mini that’s even smaller than standard. Antonio’s father built this car in the 1970s to serve as a hill climb racer and a development mule of sorts, and a few engines later and a brief stint as a rally car with different owners, it’s back in the family that it was born into. Beyond the sectioned bodywork, this Mini’s mechanicals have been comprehensively converted to full go-kart spec. In other words, it’s the perfect representation of 1970s privateer engineering gone right.

In the 1970s, the Belgian gendarmerie had its stable of national police cars bolstered by the likes of BMW’s 2002ti, and later on they counted the Golf GTI and Volvo 240 Turbo among their mechanized ranks, but no cop in the country—or the rest of the world—had ever kept the streets safe with the same pace as provided by the 2.7 RS-powered 911 Targas. Until 1993, the small batch of 911 Targas that Porsche delivered to the Belgian government in 1976 were the fastest police cars in the world, and today they’re some of the rarest; of the original 20, only three are known to exist, with most of the rest succumbing to the rigors of the job. The lucky officers that drove these beautiful workhorses had to pass stringent testing, and Ari Epstein put in two years of his own hard work in order to find this rare specimen. Since cleaning it up and bringing it back to life he’s been sure to drive it often, always obliging the officers who pull the Porsche over so they can take a photo with their retired colleague.

The Ferrari 412 might not carry the same cachet as the marque’s truly definitive road cars, but the three-box design of Maranello’s stately GT was made with the same ingredients as its more iconic kin, and the result is aging better than anyone would have guessed had you asked them even five years ago. Styling by Pininfarina, thrust by V12, it was a marked departure from Ferrari and their trusted design partner’s curvaceous work in the 1960s, but the 412 stayed true to the Ferrari ideals of fast-paced grand touring spiked with a dose of Italian verve. Only 576 examples of the car were ever built—the last of a lineage that began in 1972 with the 365 GT4 2+2—and finally, more than thirty years later, the boxy but sleek design is being regarded for what it is instead of what it’s not.

Skip the coffee and ditch the Red Bull today, it’s time to upgrade your morning ritual with an Iso Grifo A3/C and the accompanying soundtrack of a modified small-block Chevy echoing in the hills of Bergamo. Almost impossibly low and wide, it is only more striking today than when it debuted in the 1960s. The original cars are exceedingly rare today, and their story in period was rather short-lived and fraught with disagreements between the men responsible for its creation. It was really Giotto Bizzarrini’s baby, and the great Italian motorsport mind—having such cars as the Ferrari 250 GTO and Breadvan to his credit—did not half-ass it when it came to the A3/C either. The Corvette-sourced engine was robust and reliable, Giugiaro’s wind-tunnel-developed shape was endlessly sexy, but the car wasn’t destined to live up to the greatness of the men who built it. Today’s film star is an exacting recreation of one of the original ten cars produced with the riveted alloy bodywork, and better yet it’s owned by a former employee of Iso, who today runs a restoration business that is emphatically the place to go for a perfect restorations of the marque’s machines.

We’ve featured a lot of Porsche 911s on Petrolicious, but few have lived as many lives as this 1971 example has. It belongs to a barrister from Johannesburg named Andre Bezuidenhout, and since he acquired it in the early 1990s as a candidate for a race car conversion it has been through a few phases. After an accident that totaled the car and ended its motorsports career, it was restored to road-going specification, sold to someone who lived out in the countryside, and thought to be gone from Andre’s life until he chanced upon it a few years ago and decided to repurpose it once more. Now it’s in proper touring car guise by the literal definition of the word, fitted as it is with a rugged luggage rack among other mods meant for drivability over long distances, and it’s definitely got a good gig these days; whenever Andre and his wife want to travel some place new, they forego the rental car and just ship their 911, affectionally named “Frisco,” and use that to explore instead.

The F40 ranks among the most recognizable and beloved road cars ever produced, and so there is very little new left to say about the machine itself—we all know that it is a potent performer, a spartan go-kart powered by a twin-turbocharged V8 nestled up between tires of construction site proportions. But cars that attain levels of popularity like the F40 has don’t become any less special the more we fantasize about them, and though the spec sheet might be committed to the memories of many a supercar enthusiast, each example has its own story. In the case of Jasbir Dhillon, this F40 is woven into the fabric of his life beyond the excitement that it provides to the lucky soul in the driver’s seat. It’s a means to bond with his family, a link to his childhood and his past, and as something well beyond the definition of an inanimate object, it’s a piece of his being that he has plans to hold onto well into the future.

Ask someone on the street to name an Italian automaker and chances are your question will be answered with “Ferrari” or “Lambo,” but there would be no Miura without the 250, and no prancing horses to speak of without the cross and serpent of Alfa Romeo. The Milanese marque has a history that spans over a century of ingenious engineering, triumphs on the track and the street, and evocative styling from the greatest names in coach building. From humble but charming city cars to Grand Prix podiums, Alfa is arguably the purest embodiment of everything that we love about Italian romanticism and ingenuity, and for Petrolicious founder and CEO Afshin Behnia these cars are the perfect vessels for Driving Tastefully. Join him this Christmas for a drive along the Angeles Crest Highway in his 1956 Giulietta Spider.