coupe – Driven To Write

Theme: Glamour – A Very Irish Coupé

Tainted Love: There wasn’t a lot of glamour to be found in 1970’s Ireland. Not too many coupés either. (Originally published on 23 February 2014)

Image via autobild.de — Nuala and Rory mostly communicate through the medium of silence. Image: autobild.de

The coupé evokes a variety of adjectives in our automotive lexicon, most of which we broadly aspire to; words like glamour, sophistication, affluence. As an ideal it’s suffused with images of impossibly salubrious locations; languid cocktails on the shores of Lake Como, nibbling swan canapés on the Croisette, driving west on Sunset. So from the foregoing it’s fairly safe to assume that Ireland is not a place that readily springs to mind when the subject of the coupé is raised over the hors d’oeuvres. Continue reading “Theme: Glamour – A Very Irish Coupé”

Theme: Economy – When Money Is No Object

We have considered various ways to save money on cars. Now what about when the budget is so big you can see it from space?

This is the 2008 Rolls-Royce Hyperion, designed and made to order by Pininfarina. It turned up for sale in the Middle East in 2012 and may have been sold for about six million dollars. The person who commissioned it, a Briton, presumably had a lot of say in how it looked. Continue reading “Theme: Economy – When Money Is No Object”

Crossroads for the Four Door Coupé

Is the four-door coupé already out of road, or is it just crossing over?

2436x1552_A7_SB_Rear_light — The shape we’re in now. Image: Audi UK

Automotive niches interest me because they represent the closest thing manufacturers come to risk taking. Take the four-door coupé segment for example. I’ve puzzled over this sector’s viability ever since Mercedes-Benz introduced the CLS-Class a decade ago. After all, it hasn’t necessarily set the automotive world alight, has it? Apart from Mercedes, who have we got? Audi has the A7, BMW the 6-Series Gran coupé, Porsche offers the Panamera and VW the CC. That’s pretty much your lot. Common strand? Yes, they all hail from German manufacturers, which does add up to a somewhat one-dimensional bandwagon. Continue reading “Crossroads for the Four Door Coupé”

1961 Fiat 2300 S Coupe : A Short Film

While reading about the Humber Super Snipe and its competitors I stumbled across this.

It’s a very nicely filmed piece about a Fiat 2300S and its owner, Pierantonio Micciarelli. I have to say that the man’s elegant dress sense made me yearn to be Italian. They do know how to choose their threads. But beyond that, this (for me) forgotten coupé is superbly presented and discussed with considerable fluency by the lucky fellow who is its custodian. This is another of those cars that evokes dusk drives around the Cap Ferrat.

Theme : Badging – Emblem of Malaise

A badge can often tell you a lot more than what exactly it is you’re driving behind…

The badging on the rear of this first series Lancia Fulvia coupé is rather lovely. It resembles a signature and perfectly encapsulates Lancia’s quality ethos at the time. This wasn’t a cheap car and the badge told you this with elegance and eloquence.

Continue reading “Theme : Badging – Emblem of Malaise”

Goodbye X150! (2006-2014)

Why you will be missed…

Because you were a first glimmer of hope for any creditable Jaguar enthusiast after a great many, very dark years.
Because your crisp, Ian Callum style lines – albeit still fairly conservatively executed – were nothing short of a relief after years and years of doughy blobs.
Because you always were a decent drive.
Because you were the first Jaguar in ages that was more appealing than what the German competition had to offer.
Because a competent facelift kept you from appearing like some undignified pensioner (one lesson you learned from your grandfather, the E-type, who was kept on life support far too long).
Because you still are more appealing than any modern Mercedes SL.
Because your high performance derivatives served so well as testbeds for the F-type.
Because you hereby prove that you won’t outstay your welcome.
Because you were the car that gave me hope that all was not lost for Jaguar when I saw you for the first time in the aluminium, at the 2005 IAA.