The Maserati 250F Rsce Car Legacy

The above is the Maserati 250F. In its time between 1954 and 1960, it became the most decorated Grand Prix race car in history having earned 277 starts more than any other before or since.

Not least notable, the Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio drove it to two F1 World Championship titles as well as British driver Stirling Moss together earning eight wins.

Incredibly, this legendary and much admired car is set to have been sold for between 1700 and 2000 euros.

Second pic from here.

The Global Reach Of Italian Auto Designers

Italy owns a wealth of brilliant industrial car designers among them Giovanni Michelotti, whose prolific designs extended beyond Italian borders.

Among them was the Triumph TR4 under the British banner and BMW 700 in Germany.

He was the first European to influence the Japanese car industry which was on the rise in the 1970s.

Ercole Spada also left an imprint on German automobiles through his work on BMW 5-series.

Volkswagen in particular was dependent on the creative minds of Marcello Gardini and Giorgetto Giugiaro.

Over the next few posts, I'll be expanding the roster of masters of automobile designers from Italy.

Journey Into A Fabric Factory

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

"A thick fog decends over the Piemonte countryside as I arrive in the Biellese Alps, the heart of Italy's famed textile-producing industry. I'm here to visit Vitale Barberis Canonico, the legendary producer of fabrics for Savile Row tailors with over 350 years of history...."

"...While the factory floors are filled with the most sophisticated fabric-making machinery, human nous and an expert eye are still indispensable.

Nowhere is this more so than in the checking of the cloth. Every metre of every fabric is run past a well-trained eye skilled at spotting a torn thread, a nub of unwanted yarn or a glitch in the pattern. If the flaw can be corrected it will be done by the equally skilled hands of those trained in the precision craft of re-weaving..."