Tag Archives: alfa romeo brera

January222011
9 Comments
automotive, cars, iedei

Alfa Romeo Spider/Death of the Brera.

As i’ve found, the Alfa Romeo Brera is reaching the end of its production.  It was a beautiful original concept design, pretty much ruined for production (however STILL much better looking, even in ruined form, than most other cars out there), which never really translated into a glorious return to form for Alfa.  The Brera Spider was even a bigger fail; floppy, slow, and completely failure of a drive!

How did Alfa Romeo ruin the Brera? I don’t know, but they really did.

So i’m guessing this 2010 Pininfarina Spider Concept introduced last year will somehow find its way in as the next Alfa Romeo Spider.  I love the design, and i would LOVE to see a Coupe version of it……i think it would be a fitting successor to the design of the Brera.


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May242010
5 Comments
automotive, cars, iedei

3 reasons why IEDEI does NOT like the VW Scirocco.

I’ve grown quite tired of people gushing over the “good looking” VW Scirocco. I’ve seen several in person and I find it to be quite an ugly little machine.  A couple reasons why the Scirocco makes no sense to me:

1. It is a low budget, uglier, misproportioned, and german copy of the Alfa Romeo Brera.  Sure the Brera may suck to drive, but who cares!!! It is drop dead gorgeous.

2. The MK2 Audi TT is a better car; better interior, better proportions, and much more interesting to look at.  Of course I concede that the MK2 TT is a much uglier and nastier affair than the original MK1 TT which will go down as one of the 20th centuries landmark automotive designs; but the MK2 is close enough to the MK1 that it can carry at least a little bit of that over in legacy.  The argument that the TT is a “squashed Beetle” is countered by the fact that the Scirocco is a “squashed Golf”.

3.  The “new” Scirocco carries almost NONE of the passion the beautiful ORIGINAL Scirocco carried.  The original had very unique proportions in its time, different to the other notchbacks of the time (Audi Quattro, Alfa GTV, etc).  It was small and cool.  The new Scirocco is bulkier than a Golf, worse proportioned than a Golf (i much prefer the looks of the MK6 Golf to the Scirocco), and doesn’t really perform any different than a Golf.

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September212008
13 Comments
iedei

automotive design: going backwards?

With all the technology, flair, and innovation on the side of today’s automotive engineers and designers—how is it that they cannot make classic designs anymore. Once in a while, you get a design like an Alfa Romeo Brera, Audi TT, Audi S5, or Mercedes-Benz CLS come into play. Cars which have character and verve. But in the 60s and early 70s, there were so many amazing designs which were thrown around.

Point in example, one of THE most desirable cars in the world is the Porsche 911. It has been for 40 years now. Why? because it captures imagination, steers clear of in-the-moment design cliches—-and instead aims for a timelessness which is quite valuable and unwavering.

Dodge recently re-introduced a new version of the Challenger for 2009. The original Challenger was a classic—in a time of cheap gas, muscle, and war. Right now, we have expensive gas, muscle, and war. The 2009 Dodge Challenger is a well designed car, albeit a bit contrived. I find it surreal that 30+ years after the original Challenger, you have a similar design looking back on the original. So is it really 1970 again? No, not really. The original Challenger had CHARM—bucketloads of it. The new one does not have charm. The original Challenger was loud, raw, sloppy, and frankly a bit of a design mess—-BUT it came together in a way which felt organic and natural. The new one is perfectly molded, with stiff suspension, 20″ wheels, and organized body parts.

look at the picture down below—-in fact there is NOT that much similar between the two cars at all. The charm of the original is gone! The new one evokes the old one in a slight, sort of alzheimer-ish memory problem type of way.

So what is in the future of the state of cars? I’ll tell ya that CURVES ARE COMING BACK. They’ll be back in the next 5 years. We’ve had enough of the straight-edge-wannabe-modern-look. Curves are modern. Curves are timeless. No one is gonna look back at the Cadillac CTS in 25 years and say—–“oooh that was a classic”!

Oh, and Dodge should fix their new Challenger. Take out those demented 20″ wheels, and make it less ‘thick’ looking.

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