BRABUS is evolving, and their approach to unveiling cars is far from conventional with the introduction of the ‘BRABUS Signature Night’ – an annual showcase which started in 2022 and sees both motor and model take the catwalk in a night of performance and fashion.
The dream of al fresco motoring in an Italian sports car is arguably something that lives deep inside the psyche of every bona fide driver. Picture the scene: you sit bathing in Tuscan sunlight outside a bar on the Piazza Garibaldi. The glowing white marble ostentatiously matches your white chinos, complemented by your Fairfax and Favour suede loafers. Caterina Murino gently brushes your shoulder as she brings you a freshly poured espresso, powerful enough to rouse even the most content debutant. She leans and whispers into your ear, “Andiamo a casa per poche ore e guardiamo il tramonto dalla camera da letto.” You slink over to your Alfa Romeo 4C…
It all started as I was entering 3:15am into my alarm. Strangely, I was not worrying about the time but whether I would be able to get any sleep at all. The anticipation of test driving the new Aston Martin V12 Roadster, and of all places, in Monaco, made sleep a bit of a non-starter. It reminded me of the feeling I used to get on Christmas Eve as a nipper. Having secured a few hours’ sleep, it was off to the airport. It felt odd flying solo for a change; usually I have the Rugby boys in tow. It made a difference to know that I could sleep on…
So, we’re five up and the speedometer is reading 130mph. I then hear a ‘bing’ and a message appears on the central screen. It reads: ‘Your tyre pressures are too low to safely proceed beyond this speed’. Disheartened, I lift off, feeling that discretion is the better part of valour, only to see another message appear: ‘Bing. To reach 170mph, you will need to inflate your tyres to the following pressures’. That really sums this car up. It has a can-do’attitude. Chances are, you’ve made your millions by probably not taking no for an answer. Why then, after shelling out £250,000 pounds on a motorcar, would you want it to…
Never has a car been plagued so badly by cheap clichéd jokes as the Porsche Boxster. ‘Girl’s car’, ‘hairdresser mobile’, and even the intellectual leviathan that is Jeremey Clarkson waded in and gave the world ‘cockster’. But what caused this? Why the hate? Back in the halcyon days of the Porsche 930 Turbo being bought by the city’s emerging middleclass or yuppies in the mid-1980s, Porsche was a badge that the lower end of the gene pool saw as an easy target, and one that the less fortunate loved to hate. Less than a decade later and combine this badge with a car that, upon launch, had cheeky looks along…
I like to think that we’ve all been there (in truth it’s probably just my very small warped mind that’s obsessed about this, but you’re reading it, so hey-ho). Allow me to set the scene: I was having a lovely evening in polite company and someone had brought an American with them. Either as a quaint distraction or through a genuine love of all things dumbed-down. Whilst said American was grappling with a receptacle that holds less than one (US) gallon of drink and was staring at knives and forks with confusion, I found myself feeling constantly uneasy at the next topic of conversation or misnomer to be blurted out…
I don’t think I have ever looked so good stepping out of something. Walking out of business class from LHR to JFK is a close second, but even then you know you’re heading into passport control with the great unwashed. The Maserati Gran Turismo Sport lives in the rarefied atmosphere of the layer cake. My first real super car experience was a jaunt across nonchalant France in a California a few years ago. Paris, Bordeaux and Le Mans were all taken in over the space of a week and it really forged my appreciation for the marque. We would only have two real days with the Maserati and so like…
I sat there, motionless, in my own deplorable car, watching the 2013 V8 Vantage get smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror. Perhaps if I careered into a post or a wall the team at Aston Martin might take pity on me and drive me to the hospital in it, giving me few more fleeting minutes of motoring nirvana. How do you go back to anything other than an Aston Martin? I should have been given some counselling by a tenured therapist on how to cope with my grief. Since its launch in 2006, the Vantage has had a number of tweaks and minor remodels. In 2009 we saw…
“Snow at this time of year? You have to be joking. Hasn’t global warming severely dealt with Mother Nature on that front.” “No,” scorned the women from the MET office, as she put the phone down on me. This wasn’t something that I had considered: a foot of snow at our intended destination. This wasn’t the Alps, you see, so the English are hideously unprepared to deal with anything other than an onslaught of damp. We were driving the Ferrari FF though – so how would the Italians fair? At first glance the FF (four seat and four-wheel-drive) is unconventional. It might be the prancing horsed manufacturer’s most audacious looking vehicle to…
London is a city like no other, according to LedburyResearch the increase in London in Centa-Millionaires is likely to rise by 44% this year. It isn’t all about Brazil and China. The total net worth of the elite Centa-Millionaires is around $39.9 Trillion. London has always been a safe haven to the rich and powerful, with lax corporate tax law and a million fiscal personal loopholes. London has never seen so many transient affluent characters reaching the banks of the Thames. So your one of the 63’000 people worldwide with $100m or more in assets, wedged into some ungodly diamond encrusted wallet or gold plated purse. You’re in central London,…