If you’ve noticed an uptick in the number of diminutive runabouts populating the roads, you are not alone. The subcompact city car is ganing popularity, from Mini to Smart and now Fiat. But while these brands make their bones on the small car core, profit is earned through expansion and when you deal with city cars, the only way to expand is upward. Hence Mini’s recent explosion of newer, larger models. Fiat is taking a page out of this growth playbook with the all-new Fiat 500L- a multi purpouse vehicle that may share little with the standard 500, but is the perfect key to the Italian automaker’s American invasion.
Holy moly! We finally have a new Pope. What seemed like an eternity of waiting for some smoke to come out of a chimney turned into the first Pope to reign from South America in the Church’s 2,000 year history. Naturally, the most important question is: what will Pope Bergoglio choose for his new ride?
There is an old addage, which I will not repeat verbaitim, likening coitus with a heavier member of the opposite sex to riding a moped- It’s fun as long as your friends don’t see you do it. While a sophomoric and inconsiderate statement (hey, I’m just repeating what I read on the internet…the internet is a cruel place), it aludes to a notion widely held, regarding cars that, under pain of death, you should not be seen in. Most times it is because is is a “Chick Car,” or a vehicle that is so deplorably awful for the environment, that a passer-by in certain parts of Northern California might yell “Fur is Murder!” as you drive by (albeit a misguided environmentalist).
According to marketers, nobody my age buys cars anymore, which makes sense since most of us don’t have jobs (broke), are swimming in mountains of debt (broke), or are hipsters who believe their multi-tier tandem fixed gear bikes are the future (absurd). See the key to reversing that downward trend of doom doesn’t rely on making really lame cars like the Chevy Spark, or BMW M3 Lime Rock Park Edition (yeah I’m picking that scab). The key lies in making cars for the car enthusiast, because automotive enthusiasm is at an all time high.
If you are in the market to start or fill-out your car collection, there is no better place in the world to be than Monterey, CA in August. The place has more high-dollar car auctions per square inch than Snooki has communicable diseases…per square inch. Yuck.
There are no less than five major auctions in competition for your dollars this year, and one of the best has to be Russo and Steele Monterey 2012 car auction. Here’s a little sampling of the unique and noteworthy vehicles they will be shuttling across the auction block come August 16th.
According to my mind, the only time George Clooney and Jay Leno have met in person was on the couch of the Tonight Show (although I am most likely wrong). But what these two mega-stars lack in, um, meeting each other, they more than make up for in amazing car collections. Hell, Jay Leno even struts his denim wearing self around in a new car every week for his internet series Leno’s Garage.
Thank the car gods. We know the first thing that everyone asks themselves when they see the cute little Fiat 500 is ‘what’s the biggest engine we can shove in there?’ Well, now we have our answer. The 4.5-L V8 off the Ferrari 458 Italia, of course.
Loads of special edition Fiats have come out of Torino, the latest in the form of the Abarth 695 Maserati Edition. This special guise will be displayed at the Piazza della Loggia and is set to honor the historical revival of the Mille Miglia, what Enzo Ferrari called “the most beautiful race in the world.”
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