MANY of you have written asking for suggestions for the perfect Sunday car. The Sunday car used to be a big thing. It was something you had in your garage, or a rented garage somewhere.
Very early on Sunday you would sneak out of bed, grab the keys and head off to roads and byways where you were pretty confident the constabulary was not patrolling. They were cars such as MGAs, Austin Healeys, Triumph TR2s or a Daimler SP 250.
Today we’re all older and the pressures on us are immense. No one drives a Premier or a Futura (even if they still made them). Everyone drives a BMW, Audi, Jaguar, Porsche, Lexus or a Ssanyong.
Even my friend Evelyn Martin had trouble finding a new-wave Sunday car. She recently looked at a slightly used Mercedes rally car. “The owner said it would only cost $25,000 to bring it up to a safe driver. I told him that it would be far better if he would just remove the remains of the dead wombat from the grill”.
Weekend A Plus Motoring has the answer. We know you want something that will make you stand out from generation X, Y and other letters of the alphabet. Something that says subtle sophistication. Something that doesn’t scream look at Moi.
Your first chance to redeem yourself in front of the rest of us comes next weekend down at Bonhams’ new and very grand showroom in Bond Street. London’s Bond Street of course.
Up for sale is a tastefully painted yellow car. It’s only had two previous drivers. Ross Brawn designed the car and plonked a nice Ford V8 in right behind the driver’s seat. You may remember Rosco. He had some success in the racing car industry, including responsibility for Michael Schumacher’s brilliant career.
Rosco was at Ferrari for nine years, and doesn’t the Fiat Chrysler-owned company need him back now. The reality is that without Brawn, Ferrari has no racing future. Even with him back, and they opened the door recently, the culture has changed so much that in the future, Ferrari will look more like Porsche.
The architect of Ferrari’s on and off-track success was Luca di Montezemolo. Luca, who ran the Modena carmaker for 23 years, gave himself the flick in September saying, “Ferrari is now American, which represents the end of an era.”
It was 22 years ago when Michael Schumacher, drove his way to his first F1 podium, in Mexico. It was 20 years ago, almost to the day, that Schumacher gained his first drivers championship after winning the Australian Grand Prix. His family is now confident he will recover from his ski crash.
Click here to keep reading: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/executive-living/motoring/schumachers-car-and-not-a-wombat-in-sight/story-fngmee2f-1227130882786
