There’s something about seeing an Abarth 124 Spider which makes you do a double take. Yes, if you squint, Abarths look like Fiats. But they ain’t. Not really. There’s more there, something more boisterous, pugilistic, testy. You don’t see Abarth’s scorpion badge around much either. The brand is a sort of secret, only known to people who’ve looked at the offerings of the Fiat Chrysler group and then asked where they keep the good stuff. Come right this way, signore. Because from the moment you see one in the flesh, you realise that an Abarth has a kind of purpose, a certain spirit about it. Then you turn the engine on and you hear it. It’s the Spirit of Carlo.
Author: FitzroyMotor
For decades now the BMW M3 has been The People’s Sportscar. From a well-travelled daily driver for a few grand to a six-figure special edition you’ll never have the guts to drive, there is a car out there for you. Indeed, now is an especially good time to be on the hunt, as two of perhaps the finest M3 models are within the same price range – the E46 and the E92, the somewhat stale codenames for the far-from-stale third and fourth generations. Yet while both are held in high esteem, they are rarely compared directly. So what exactly does the M3 canon look like, how do these two fit into it and, of course: which should you buy?
As a little boy I used to play with toy cars. My favourites from the fleet were a red Rolls Royce, a battered Lamborghini Miura and a raceworn Jaguar XJR-9. But there was one rather quaint toy car which I remember as having a particular significance. It had elegantly curved front wings, delicate cutouts in the side doors, and a distinctive wedge of a rear which, however many times you had seen it, always tempted your gaze down to the chromed rear exhaust.
Holding it in my hands, I remember asking my dad what it was. “This is a Morgan,” he said. “It’s a very special kind of car.” Little was I to know that twenty five years later, I would find myself feeling like a very special kind of driver, coaxing a purring jet-black Morgan 4/4 along a winding country road with a huge grin on my face.
But let’s not get carried away too soon.
The modern car is a lie. All you’ve been told about the necessity of power steering, traction control, heated seats and Radio 4 muttering away as you cruise down the M6 is false. Society does a great job of filtering most of our experiences through several layers of abstraction, and almost every modern car reflects this philosophy. Carefully designed to protect us, and keep us comfortable and safe as we get from point A to B, modern vehicles are in a balancing act; how to navigate through the natural world without spending too much time in it.
I say “almost” every modern car, because there are vehicles in production today which do away with familiar luxuries in order to capture some of the original rawness and thrill of motoring as it used to be done. It’s the simple magic of using exploding gas to propel a human object through beautiful surroundings at thrilling speeds. One such vehicle, and perhaps the archetype, is the Caterham Seven sports car. And we had two of these at our disposal over a glorious English summer weekend.