The secretive nature of a car designer’s job makes it very difficult to give credit whereit’sdue, to the point that actual authors of celebrated design icons often remain unknown, even among enthusiasts.

This sad, age-old state of affairs is particularly unfair in the case of Federico Formenti, quite possibly the greatest car designer you’ve never heard of. While the mention of the name“Carrozzeria Touring” is likely to send most car enthusiast’s minds fantasizing about graceful, elegant mid-20th Century cars, it’s far less likely said enthusiast will know that those timeless beauties were mostly designed by one man.

Continue reading “Il Designer Dimenticato”

Driven To Write has some news for anyone who has been reading the UK motoring press.

Far from being “an undiscovered bourne from whom no traveller returns” (copyright W. Shakespeare 1599-1602), it appears death is a place car brands can pop over to and come back from much like an obscure place with an out-of-the-way airport served by Ryanair. I think Saab is dead but it might not be. Or it might be. It died spiritually under GM, it died again physically, was reborn under Spyker but soon expired. National Electric Vehicles revived the firm in 2012.

Continue reading “Death Has a Revolving Door”