Images Via Life Archive/Conceptcarz/Supercars.net.

Italian neorealist film director Roberto Rossellini had a bit of taste.

Not only was he one of the definitive auteurs of post war European cinema, he also commissioned this gobsmakingly beautiful car. You can see by the cut of his suit that the man had style. But getting on the phone and getting Sr. Scaglietti to rebody your Ferrari?

That’s what we call panache.

The story goes that the car the great director owned was originally a red 375 Pininfarina Spyder but was rebodied as a Coupé by Scaglietti and painted silver.

And you can see how the Coupé format works perfectly for those Northern European winters (Rossellini spent a lot of time in Paris). Notice those wonderfully scalped flanks similar to those on the 250TR, the pinched rear end that was such an inspiration for the E-Type, and of course that wonderfully long, elegently scooped nose.

Whoever restred this beauty showed real attention to detail, as you can see from the beautifully rendered interior. And though you’d have to sell a small family’s worth of kidneys to afford even those wire wheels, there’s something of that spartan, post WW2 Italian aesthetic that’s reflected in its incredible presence.

The perfect car for the perfect creator. We’re in love.

When Nicolas Refn’s film Drive came out last september we were obviously interested straight away.

What’s not to like about putting the words ‘existential’ and ‘car’ together?

Any close reader of this blog will understand that imbuing meaning into cars is what we’re all about.

But it’s easy to disappear, of course, in a void of pretence — and to project your own fantasies of what cars mean to you — when writing about these things.

We saw the film at the movies and was pretty unimpressed. Not sure wether we expected a full on action extravaganza crossed with a Euro art-house flick — an impossible mix that would have been bond to fail.

However it happened, we were left somehow wanting more.

We had a feeling that the problem might have something to do with time and place and context — and so, we watched it again recently.

What arises on second viewing is a much more powerful, resonant movie. We found that we remembered many of the lines and the scenes hit by hit — and the most important thing that arises is ‘the driver’ and his relationship to the cars that are his vehicles through his many moral minefields.

The video below (taken from the DVD extras, I believe), brings out how deeply tuned into the steel the lead actor Ryan Gosling became during the production of the movie — and I reckon there’s something visceral and real about a bloke’s relationship with his motor that resonates.

Never know, it may turn out to be a classic after all.

And that movie poster is a bit special too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stumbled across an amazing collection of original Motorsports slides today for sale on eBay.

It really brings to mind the glorious beauty of film and transparency photography.

We here at Influx towers are of course obvious revelers in the joys of digital photography. We have utilised the full quiver of readymade tools that have been developed to saturate your pics with that old school, retro feel.

Seeing these slides, though, you can really feel how our user-friendly digital retrospectives can’t yet match the lovely feel of the real thing.

Not sure exactly who the subjects are and exactly which motorsports seasons we’re looking at here: perhaps you can help?

pic: Michael Fordham

Thanks to the kind folks at Wikipedia chrome, or chrome plating, is actually a technique of electroplating a thin layer of the chemical element chromium onto a metal object.

It was originally used extensively in industrial and military applications, from as far back as 2000 years ago in China. Chrome’s hard, slippery properties helped reduce friction and increased the hardness of any metal surface to which it was applied.

But mid-century folk started applying it to objects of desire like cars and bikes, well, the rest is history.

But we couldn’t help noticing that new technologies, not to mention the ease of digital render, has made full body chrome, or chrome effect bodywork, become something to think about. Even this sort of job makes your ride look for Tron than American Graffiti.

We scoped the outrageously chromed AMG at the recent Autosport show, and the gallery is a ragbag digest of shiny contemporaries from all over the webs. Try to separate the renders from the real.

We reckon the mainstream carmakers should offer chrome as an option…

Photograph: John Witzig

Even if you care nothing about the noble art of surfing, if you have a penchant for the abilities of old cars to take you places you won’t fail to enjoy this heart-heart-rendingly nostalgic video from Australia in the 1960s.

And whats more you’ll see how hard these fellas pushed their heavy old heaps of Aussie iron. You could wile away a fun ten minutes trying to name which cars are which. We’re certainly no Australian car experts.

It focuses on the explorations of a coterie of Australian surf pioneers, at the heart of which were Bob McTavish pictured overlooking one of Noosa’s point-breaks, is lovely old FJ Holden in silent contemplation to the right.

The picture by Photographer John Witzig is one of those that’s passed into legend. Noosa heads, now about as crowded and developed as a beach side resort can get, was when Witzig and friends like hydrodynamic Genius George Greenough found it, this eden like exotic spot.

Certainly shows that you don’t need bespoke, surf-marketed SUVs to get you places.

All I’ve Found (George Greenough) — Sea Movies from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever been to the little island of Malta you’ll have noticed at least two truths. The Maltese are mad (in a passionate, hilariouly, brilliant way) and they are into their motors.

In fact, the latter part is taken into their culture right to the heart. And as well as blasting little birds out of the sky with rifles, all things automotive obsesses your average Maltese heart in the same way as food, love and intrigue remain the quotidian passions of your typical Parisien.

A brilliant little book edited by Maltese writer Emma Mattei brings out this seldom focused upon aspect of her homeland — and this is just a little part of its broad and deep appeal.

Two photo essays and a little bit of ruminatively well-written text will take you through the details. The roads are in pretty poor condition and there’s not much total mileage of them anyway, and the wheezing, belching buses transport a lot of the punters around the island.

But even if you don’t care a stuff for cars, this little book is really worth getting hold of. It’s a truly uncommon guide to a place and its people.

Available from Miranda Books

All images Emile Kozak

Emile Kozac is a prolific creative type.

He photographs strange, absences, landscapes where the captured flies fleetingly by and then disappears. He documents normal things that through the lens become strange, even extraordinary.

he Barcena based Dane also creates amazing graphic work, identities, corporate logis and typography — all shot through with this same minimalist edge that beguiles and intrigues.

Here is a little selection of Emile’s work that has, almost by accident, the road into it.

Bravo Emile. Keep up the good stuff…

We were thinking recently how pathetically wimpish current oil ads have to be. Gone are the days when you could sell lubricant with hot cars and hot babes. Post BP oil slick,and taking environmental realities into consideration, it’s not particularly surprising that oil companies are managing their image with kid gloves.

So, commercials for oil are packaged with tweeting birds, and laced together with a sting of pure, green air. We thought we’d dig up a couple of gems to show you how it wasn’t always necessarily so.

Here, for example, Mobil use a whacked out, hyped up Charles Manson lookalike to publicise their product, presumably to make the far-reached spin that using their brand of lube will chill you out.

This South African Castrol ad, meanwhile, straddles the hard-edged line between xenophobia, homophobia and the cherished boorishness of the Boers…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Its pretty hard to unravel the semiotics of this animated beauty from India (below). There’s bullets, murder, mayhem and other fun stuff that seem to be equating the performance aspects of Castrol lube with moving faster than a speeding bullet. We love the Bollywood steez, whatever it all means…

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Dauphine was of course one of the pioneering small, economic continental cars that steered the world away from two ton gas guzzlers at the end of the fifties.

It was a cute, compact issue designed inhouse by Renault with assists from carrozeria Ghia.

You can see the moddish elements of the three box design, whose Euro motifs where decidedly other than the American chrome clad giants that were being designed at the time, and with whome the Dauphine would attempt to do battle.

Check out this interesting ad for the little Frenchie from North America — its interesting to see how, as far back as fifty years ago, urban utility and fuel economy were becoming a marketing element. America might have been booming, but they also wanted to keep an early eye on the pennies.

We’re not sure how successful the car proved to be in the states, but it would have cut an alternative dash on the streets of Manhattan, as it would do today.

These little cars, with their rear mounted engine and rear ‘swing axle’ would have been a quirky little handler too — a lot more fun to chuck around than your average Buick at the time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re always interested here in the definitive elements of what makes a car cool. Sometimes it’s that elusive little something — the angle of a raked pillar, the hunkered down detail of a rear end; the air of gracefl poinse with which a particular car corners — that makes us sit up and take note of a car and pick it from the throng of steel on our roads and tracks.

But sometimes, its just really cool stripes.

The latter is certainly the case when it comes to cars which have borne the blue, red and white livery of Martini Racing. More often than not it’s been a Porsche upon which this totemic colourway has been emblazoned. But there are Lancias and Alfas that have at some time or another raced with some sponsorship from the globally recognisable bland of Vermouth.

The branding recalls something essentially European, and the marketing has reflected that. You couldn’t imagine say, a Ford Escort Mexico rocking those colours.

The TV ads in the UK were great too, featuring notable comic performances from the likes of Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins being extremely sophisticated and European.

If you’re a child of the seventies you may associate Martini with your mum’s drunken mates at parties, and you probably did the ‘all spirits in one glass’ cocktail thing laced with Bianco or Rosso on some pubescent New Year’s Eve.

But if you’ve got a soul sensitive to automotive aesthetics you will at the same time be reminded of Porsche 935s at Le Mans and the 037 Lancia scoring unimaginable air, coated in this ultimate paint jobs.

Not sure how it would look on my Volvo.