It’s easy to see why the Montreal enjoys such a dedicated cult following. There’s very little out there like it. Styled by Marcello Gandini, the maestro of Bertone himself, this diffusion, accessible supercar from the Alfa stable still looks fresh today.

This paricularly crisp version is currently available on an Ebay Auction, and we thought anyone with a heart, a mind and eyes would swoon over the crispness of its paint job and that sexy interior. May not pass muster with the concours brigade, but who cares?

image via Jalopnik

Stumbled across these twin beauties the other day and had to share.

We had the privilege of meeting the noble Sir Stirling Moss a couple of years ago — and though he recently announced his retirement from racing, we will always admire his spirit.

“Movement is serenity” he told me while kicking back in his very cool Mayfair pad. It’s a sentiment that’s stayed with me ever since.

Long may you keep moving, noble knight!

Sir Sterling Moss at the Goodwood revival, 2009

Click here to view the embedded video.

For my Fulvia Sport Zagato I think you’d use the term ‘garage find’ rather than ‘barn find’. As a 1971 Series 2 my new acquisition is the oldest of her model in the country.

Much too clean and pretty to ever have resided in something as rustic as a barn.

Before we got together the car had had one owner from new. The purchase was made at Weybridge Lancia in Surrey and the car lived all its life in the village — right next to Brooklands, in fact.

She comes with the 1.3s engine with five-speed gearbox — as opposed to the four speed box is the series 1 cars. When first introduced in 1965 these cars were all-alloy — but only a couple of hundred of these were ever built.

Image: Chris Nelson

Production soon progressed onto steel bodies with alloy doors, all with distinctive side-opening bonnets, followed in ’71 by the Series 2 cars, as in this example, with steel doors and front hinged bonnets.

The irony is the steel cars don’t weigh that much more than the all-alloy versions, but are much more structurally sound.

In the all alloy, lightened Competizione guise these cars were regulars at the Targa Florio until the late sixties, were highly competitive in their class at the 12 hours of Sebring, while winning the Daytona 24 hour race in 1969, beating the more powerful Porsche team 911s.

Image: Chris Nelson

But whatever the car’s ample heritage, it is the distinctive styling by the house of Zagato that makes this car so appealing, for me, at least.

Zagato’s distinctive signature styling has always polarised opinion.

But believe me, this is one of those cars to which the lens is rarely flattering. In the sculpted steel its beauty really shines.

Why is the D-Type such a beguiling beauty? Well, it remains as in all things aesthetic a matter of opinion, but in the case of the this particular machine there are some concrete factors that help explain its enduring charisma.

The D-Type looked, in 1954, unlike anything else out there on the race track, let alone the road. Its aerodynamic features were all about function, but this focus on winning unwittingly created something spectacularly pleasing to the eye.

The introduction of aviation technology that facilitated the speed and reliability of the cars was a slowly blossoming flower that came to represent a patiently awaited premium for Britain.

When they saw C and D-types swathed in green (and occasionally blue) so successful on the circuits of Europe, Brits started to realise that they really had something to be proud of — that the struggles of the previous decades just might have been worth it.

This was in the years immediately after the Festival of Britain, the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the conquering of Everest by that colonial hero Hilary.

Rationing of basic foodstuffs might have remained a part of people’s every day lives, but the cutting edge of British engineering demonstrated that these strictures could be transcended.

As Norman Dewis told us a couple of years ago, when the Jaguar team set off from Browns Lane en route to Europe the streets would be lined with flag-waving patriots. It’s a far cry from the international corporatism of today’s motorsport.

Jaguar’s spectacularly named race manager Lofty England led the team that produced the Jaguar D-Type. The car was produced to extend and deepen the success of the C-Type — and it immediately performed well. In its first appearance at Le Mans in 1954, the Jaguar team’s cars suffered, apparently, from sand in their fuel. Once this problem had been rectified, however, this car (No 14, driven by Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt) immediately reestablished itself. Eventually it finished less than one lap down on the winning Ferrari.

This D Type was the first first works car to be completed, on the 4th of May 1954. As well as its debut second place at Le Mans, it came second also at the Reims 12 Hours and raced at various Grand Prix and Trophy events in the UK. Interestingly, in 1956 it was converted to a road going version of the car, a sort of almost-XKSS, with a screen frame created and the central member between cockpits removed.

It has been claimed that these innovations originally inspired the factory to go ahead and produce the limited run of the road-going XKSS, though this was denied by the crew at Browns Lane. Either way, the car was used on the road for many years and was sold to its current owner in 2000.

The Monocoque chassis of the D-Type was developed using battle-garnered aviation expertise. Sheets of aluminium alloy formed the central tub which carried the cockpit – and an aluminium subframe was attached to this that carried the engine in its compartment as well as the front running gear and the steering mechanicals. Drive train and rear suspension was attached directly to the tub – and fuel was carried inside ‘bags’ mounted in compartments in the monocoque itself.

Malcolm Sayer, who, along with development engineer Norman Dewis had worked in the aviation industry in the forties, designed the D-Type’s beautifully sculpted coachwork. With the removal of the traditional separate chassis that had featured in the C-Type, a greatly reduced frontal area was made possible. The engine was angled over slightly (notice the off-centre bonnet bulge) and engineers developed a dry-sump form of lubrication so that the whole issue could be lowered. A low-drag underbody combined with the stabilizing fin behind the driver made high speeds at Le Mans just about manageable. After 1955 a long-nose version of the body was introduced which resulted in even greater top-end velocity.

That the D-Type’s aerodynamic properties and road presence would go on to inform that of the E-Type, which in turn went on to define glamorous yet accessible motoring in the sixties is testament to the power of these cars.

Source: Jaguar Sports Racers

Fiat Abarth 750 Zagato
Give a tiny Fiat chassis the Zagato bodywork treatment and a tuned engine and tweaked running gear from Mr Abarth. What more could you want from a pocket rocket for the fifties? Post war Italian austerity gets a shot in the arm, If you couldn’t afford Ferrari’s 250 TR – this was the bargain basement racer of its time.

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Ferrari 250 TR
With a body by Scagietti and Ferrari’s race-focussed engineering, the TR was dominant in its various arenas and remains unassailable in its aesthetic appeal. This was the car that announced the true arrival of the prancing horse as a global force. Not surprising, then that the few on the market command as much dinero as a prime Picasso.

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Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé
Benz’s head of motorsport Rudolph Uhlenhaut bespoke two of these enclosed, gull-winged versions of the W 196 SLR for road use. Reputedly the fastest car on the planet in 1955, the coupé version of Moss’s recordbreaking Mille Miglia winning car invokes the Ride of the Valkyries with a Gene Vincent backbeat. Scarily teutonic.

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Maserati Tipo 61 ‘Birdcage’.
Unveiled with Stirling Moss at the helm in 1959, the Tipo 61 got its moniker because of its cage-like space-frame chassis — which was lighter and stiffer than its competitors at the time. We like it, though, because of its arachnid styling and the way its design exemplifies that moment when the fifties with its make-and-do feel of the ancien regime gave way to the self conscious modernism of the relatively affluent sixties. Lecture on social history over. Just look at it!

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Jaguar XK SS
Contender for sexiest car of all time, let alone the fifties — this was the road-going version of the all conquering D Type racer – with a passenger seat, a door and a proper windscreen. Unseemingly curvaceous and rare – due to a fire at the Jag plant – it remains a totemic road-going piece of British automotive craftsmanship. Steve McQueen and his XKSS were, apparently the focus of a free donut bonus scheme by the LAPD. The Coolest Man in the Universe and his ride would tool around the Hollywood Hills on the limit it seems…

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Maserati A6 G
We’re repeating ourselves here a bit but we couldn’t leave this beauty out. The curved proportions of the coachwork combined with its laid-​​back, hunkered down poise get us in the back of the throat. Those tiny rear headlamps. The huge Maserati trident on the grille. The minimal brushed steel bumpers and the pertly curved boot! Those Webers! Those wire wheels! We’re STILL in love.

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BMW 507
Originally intended for export to the US to compete with sporty and succesful Mercs and MGs, the 507’s pretty roadster lines live on in the Z-series of roadster. Never selling in numbers due to high costs they now fetch silly money. There’s only 200 or so in existence — and we doubt you can name a prettier German car.

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Died in the wool fans of the legend that is James Hunt may recognise this little beauty. Yes, it’s the great man’s 1967 Austin 35 Countryman conversion.

For sale at Silverstone Auctions’ 23 July event, the car has been in storage for 18 years since its current owner acquired it in 1993, when it still had the champion driver’s last cigarette butts in the ashtray and a sprinkling of Trill in the rear where he transported his beloved budgerigars to shows.

Still used by Hunt as his daily transport at the time of his death in 1993, James loved this car — and many a biographer has documented his on-the-limit exploits in this unassuming little pocket-rocket.

According to the auctioneers the car starts and runs, but would likely need some mechanical attention before being put back on the road, and a “well-worn interior bears testament to its bird-loving owner”.

The lucky purchaser with get a registration document in James’ name as well as a bunch of receipts for work carried out to the car during James’s ownership, plus books and magazines making reference to both James Hunt and his A35.

The Austin A35 van joins Hunt’s ‘other’ car, his 1975 Dutch Grand Prix-winning Formula One Hesketh 308/2, also for sale.

This is a slice of F! of history — as well as a great bird-puller.

Feel my pain. For around three years now, I’ve been driving past a Renault Alpine 310, a later V6 GT model at that, rotting (or whatever it is that is the equivalent of rotting for fibreglass) on the wrong side of a skip, just off a country lane that I pass almost every day.

Now I am one of the legions out there who would truly, madly, deeply love to own and drive a modern classic like this — but for whom the practicalities of family life rule out the purchase of temperamental French two seaters made from fibreglass.

The design of the later versions from the great Robert Opron, who was responsible for the latter restylings of the DS, as well as Citroen’s sexiest creations the SM, CX and GS — and went on to pen the marmite-ish Fuego, too. You can see that rakish, front-heavy attitude in the 310 — signature of a very Gallic futurism that you don’t see very much these days…

I’d been meaning for at least twelve of these last thirty six months, to pluck up the courage to walk up to the doorway of the property where the Alpine is parked and make them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

This morning, being on the brink of making the leap and striding manfully to make an epoch making decision in my motoring life, the Alpine had disappeared — gone, I can only presume, to some lucky individual able to dedicate the time and commitment to bringing this beauty back to life.

And what a life it would be. These latter models, with a 2.9 litre V6 engine that made around 200 BHP, must have been a blast. Not ever having driven one we can only wonder at the handling, but with a hefty steel tube chassis and clothed in strong but lightweight fibreglass they must have flown.

But more than the potential performance of these things it was the unique styling that attracted me – and no doubt the striking resemblance they had (in my mind at least) to Captain Scarlet’s patrol vehicle.

When we stumbled upon a picture of Scaglietti’s stunning Ferrari 750 Monza Spyder this morning it led us to want to share some of the work of a rather unsung master of coachwork.

Baring in mind that this is the designer responsible for the body of the 250 TR as well as the development of that of the 250 GTO — it’s surprising that his name is not as well known as many other designers.

Sergio Scaglietti began working in the motoring industry in 1933 — when he was barely into his teens — when his father died and the necessity of making a living weighed hard on his shoulders.

He began by repairing and rebodying other people’s cars — eventually in the 1950s founding his own carrozzeria and swiftly becoming the stylist-in-chief to Scuderia Ferrari. In this amazing period, Sergio’s gut-borne aesthetic for the flowing yet aggressive line resulted in some of the most gorgeous (and valuable) automotive constructions ever.

It was also during this period that he turned his hand to a number of short run projects, including a very distinctive pod of custom bodied Corvettes.

Perhaps the fact that selling his company to the Fiat Group in the sixties — and subsequently more or less disappearing from view: Scaglietti never moved on from his identity as a classic coach builder — never getting involved in the the messy businesses of either engineering or marketing — that he remains a relatively anonymous name in the grand history of Italian car styling.

We think also, that when Ferrari honoured his memory with the name of its 2+2 GT the 612 Scaglietti in 2004, didn’t do his name any favours. Despite the aesthetically challenged sensibilities of its detractors, the 612 (soon to be replaced by the FF shooting brake) ‚it was never the best received car to bear the badge of the prancing horse.

We, though, always loved the Long legged 612. For some reason it never photographs well. In the flesh, however, it is a real classic.

No matter. A quick look at the gallery can dispel any doubts remaining that Mr. Scaglietti new how to bend some of the most beautiful steel imaginable.

Somewhere back in the mists of time I spent a lot of time dreaming of riding a Moto Guzzi Le Mans 850. I was at the harrowing cusp of adolescence at the time, so this bike was about as unattainable as Farrah Fawcett (images of both the Charlie’s Angel and the Guzzi adorned my bedroom wall at the time).

A new supermarket opened directly opposite the place I lived, and the motorbike was on display as the first prize in some sort of promotional competition.

Needless to say, I got my dad to enter a couple of dozen times (as you had to be over eighteen to enter). Every day after school I would nip over to the supermarket and stare at the thing. I would pull its levers when the security guard wasn’t looking, and run my gaze over the engine and the exhaust and those mag wheels as if I knew what I was looking at.

The cliché goes that first loves never die.

And I have to admit, every now and then I sit and trawl the web for images of this machine. Trying to work out what remains so appealing about the bike, it’s now obvious.

At the time of its release in 1976, the streets were awash to full fairing Japanese machines with a colour pallet full of yellows and red white and blue stripes. The Guzzi’s stretched out, bulbous pots and duotone meanness represented everything other than that; everything exotic and desirable.

It represented, in other words, getting the hell out of there. And that is what I wanted to get.

Ironic, really, that a thing as banal and spirit crushing as the local supermarket should offer this powerful totem of escape as a promotional prize.

image Nissan press

If modern Japanese classics are your thing, you have to take a look at this very beautifully made HD video from the people at JDM classics. Sometimes, looking at flat pictures fails to capture the true essence of a car’s design, especially on the WWW.

This video, on the other hand, with its super high-quality lensmanship, thoughful shot selection and unhurried edit, really brings out the best in these cars.

With everyone and their little brother wielding an HD camera these days, its refreshing to see someone put some time and effort into evoking some of the coolest analogue design ever to come out of the Land of the Rising Sun.

via Autoblog/ JNC

Click here to view the embedded video.