2014 New York International Auto Show - Media Day

I was able to attend the first of two days reserved for press access at the 2014 New York International Auto Show on April 16th, so I made sure all of my cameras were charged up and ready to go.  I am not a professional photographer by any means, but here's my gallery from the show (if you'd like to skip to the video page, click here.  The photo gallery can be found here.):


Soleil Anadi

The first car I saw as I walked in appeared to be a customized Corvette, and to an extent, it is.  You may have seen one of these cruising through Monaco in some YouTube videos recently.  This is the Soleil Anadi, a new car from the upstart luxury sports car-maker, Soleil, based out of Milan, Italy.  They are taking the platform and engine block of the C6 Corvette and adding some luxury and Italian styling to create their own interpretation of a sports car.  The car features a 6.2 liter V8 that produces at least 650 supercharged horsepower (they are also offering a non-street legal version that will push out over 900 horsepower).  Soleil will build 25 of these machines, with three coming to the United States and each will start at $295,000.  Buyers will be able to fully customize their Anadis, with many high-end options not costing any additional funds.

Maserati

Nobody knew what to expect from Maserati at the New York Auto Show this year.  They're celebrating their 100th Anniversary this year, and they recently unveiled the Alfieri concept car, which could preview the GranTurismo's replacement.  As expected, they showed up with a number of Ghiblis, which is the most easily accessible car in Maserati's current lineup.  They introduced a new special edition of the GranTurismo for New York, and it's called the MC Centennial Edition.  The car features minor exterior changes from the existing MC Stradale, but also an upgraded interior and commemorative badging (I think I just made up the word "badging").

Maserati surrounded this particular MC Centennial with speakers that played the exhaust note of the car.

2013 Americana Manhasset Concours d'Elegance (spectator lot pictures)

Sunday, October 20th (2013) was the much-anticipated Americana Manhasset Concours d'Elegance.  Below is a gallery from the back parking lot/spectator lot.

For pictures from the main show, click here.


"Spectator" Parking Lot (back lot):

Bergen County C&C - Sunday, September 29th

We decided to have a last-minute C&C since we've been off for so long.  Here are some pictures:

Would Enzo Ferrari be happy with his company today?

The horse that inspired the infamous logo for Mr. Enzo Ferrari's company.

Any passionate Ferrari enthusiast can tell you how the company was founded: Enzo Ferrari was working for Alfa Romeo's racing teams in the 1930s and needed to fund Scuderia Ferrari, so he started to produce road cars as a side gig, and well, the rest is history.  Enzo never wanted to produce road cars, but for the sake of the entire sports car and supercar industry today, it's a damn good thing he did.

Throughout the course of Ferrari's storied history, most of their road cars followed one of two platforms: a mid-engined car with a six or eight cylinder engine or a twelve-cylinder engine in front of the driver.  There were rare exceptions to these platforms under Enzo Ferrari's reign, but for the most part, that's how he wanted his cars to be designed.  And Enzo was a perfectionist, so everything had to be done his way.

Ferrari's mid-engine V8 458 Italia.

The new V12 F12 Berlinetta.

Since Enzo's death in 1988, the company he left behind continued to produce road cars with the traditional pair of layouts, the mid-engine V8 and the "front-engine" V12 (the engines on V12 cars are in front of the driver, but the layouts of the car are not necessarily traditional front-engine cars).  Just as the 308 and 328 were designed under Enzo's watch, the 348, 355, 360, 430 and 458 have all taken each other's places as the company's line of V8 cars, while Ferrari's other current production cars are all different layouts of V12 cars.  So everything is status quo at Ferrari...or is it?