Italian styling houses reached the zenith of their influence in the 1980s, delivering an extra touch of glamour to the premium cars of the era, from the ill-fated DeLorean penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Italdesign to the perennial partnership between Ferrari and Pininfarina. Zagato was back...
Planned US legislation threatened to outlaw convertibles—which meant almost all sports cars—but the expected new laws were never implemented. By the 1980s sports cars still in production were antiquated, but a few survived and adopted new engines and running gear to compete with a whole...
One of the most evocative names in the business, after more than 60 years on the road the Corvette is still very much the definitive American sports car. Originally intended as a rival for the UK’s Jaguar XK120, it cost almost twice as much as...
Two oil crises in the 1970s prompted US car buyers to seek more fuel-efficient alternatives to Detroit’s vast and profligate land yachts. At first, those newcomers came from Japanese car-makers, such as Honda and Toyota, and European brands, such as Volkswagen and BMW, which were...
Volkswagen began life with the humble Beetle, Adolf Hitler’s vision of a car for the masses. It was a huge success, becoming the best-selling car of its era, and giving VW a foundation from which it grew into Europe’s biggest car-making group—before the 2015 diesel...
Supercar pace with saloon car space was yours for the asking, thanks to super saloons with epic engines. The in-house projects, like Mercedes-Benz’s mighty 500E and Aston Martin’s futuristic Lagonda, were joined by collaborations across big automotive groups—Fiat’s luxury car brand Lancia dropped a Ferrari...
When Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries ousted President Batista from power in 1959, it signalled a rapid departure for most Americans from the island paradise. The US trade embargo subsequently imposed on Cuba meant that the cars they left behind—1940s and 1950s Cadillacs, Buicks, Fords, Chevrolets, and...
Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) started life as an aero engine manufacturer in Munich, Germany in 1916, before diversifying into road vehicles. The company had a burst of glory in the 1930s, but it was only in 1961 that BMW really started its journey to become...
The world of top-level espionage never stands still. Maverick MI6 agent, James Bond, may have become inextricably linked with Aston Martins, the DB5 especially, but things changed in the 1970s and ’80s. The very latest in British motoring excitement was required, and Lotus stepped into...
The small-car template set in the mid-1970s matured in the '80s. Front-wheel drive, a transverse four-cylinder engine with the gearbox and final drive on the end, and a hatchback body with three or five doors became the format for the majority of car sales in...