Sergio Sartorelli – Driven To Write

Me L’ero Persa

Bella Macchina

How could such a design exist without my prior knowledge? I almost felt anger, frustration certainly; emotions usually tethered to unassuming teenagers surfaced upon first setting eyes on such a machine. To exist and spin its intricate web so enigmatically, after so many years we can only dream as to what may have been had circumstances played out more beneficially.

At a time when the United States unveiled the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser and Britain, the Riley Pathfinder, the industry as a whole was in the midst of unleashing a plethora of postwar conformity. Alfa Romeo were undisputed Formula One kings but financial matters began to alter their gaze. The Biscione needed to Continue reading “Me L’ero Persa”

Ritmo Della Strada

There is a good deal more to the Ritmo than a bunch of robots and a certain confusion over its name.

Was any decade as truly modern as the 1970s? One characterised in retrospect within a roseate glow of giddy colours and lurid sartorial fashions; long hair, beards, beads and ABBA songs; what chroniclers ignore however, was how genuinely, thrillingly new it all appeared at the time and after an interval of four decades, appears to be even more so now.

In terms of product design, little that occurred in the decade that followed came even close to the impact of the ’70s. Unfortunately this was probably equally true in other areas. Ah Italy. Bastion of culture, of taste; leaders in industrial innovation and design, but fatally prey to political instability. Certainly no product of this land can Continue reading “Ritmo Della Strada”

Fiat Nox (I)

Apart from contributing more than a few inventions of enormous importance and automobiles of superior significance, Fiat have also established themselves as true masters of the counterproductive facelift.

maxresdefault — Ritmo, post surgery, photo (c) YouTube.com

Italy unquestionably is a country of immense creative energy. More to the point, it is one of the hotbeds of automotive design and style, not to mention: taste.

And yet few marques have so comprehensively struggled to give its products a stylistic boost halfway through their respective productions runs as Fiat has. So much so, in fact, that describing any facelift effort as ‘Fiat bad’ acts as a fixed term denominating a particularly ill-advised attempt at refreshing a car’s design.

So, in order to Continue reading “Fiat Nox (I)”