I can’t quite explain it, but I’ve always been fascinated with turbocharged engines. I have always found the idea or harnessing exhaust gasses to help force-feed the intake side of the engine such an ingenious solution. While we are currently living through a massive comeback of the turbocharger as more and more modern engines, big [...]
Now here’s our friend Mark Riccioni to continue the story of his road trip through some Europe’s best driving spots in a specially prepared Subaru WRX. In case you missed part one of his tale, you can catch up right here.
Take it away, Mark!
-Mike
Part of what I love about driving in Europe is just how connected you are. With a few hours of driving you can visit multiple countries with relative ease – Germany, Switzerland, Austria and of course Italy.
Great roads and a great car. There are few things better. Here’s our friend Mark Riccioni with an epic tale of a road trip across Europe in a hotted up Subaru WRX. Enjoy!
-Mike
Very rarely are cars actually driven as a manufacturer intended. By that I don’t mean the track enthusiast who spends every weekend hammering his 3-series around the Nurburgring, I mean the multitude of sports cars which spend their lives huddled around city streets – roaming motorways on the daily grind with not a whisper past 4000rpm.
I say that based on my own experience – having previously owned RX7s, GT-Rs and an Evo 10 I can (shamefully) say not a single car hit the circuit. Sure I’d give ‘em the beans now and then, but nothing worthy of testing the car’s full ability. Does that make me less of a Speedhunter? A lot of you will probably say yes, but that’s the harsh reality for the majority of sports cars (and owners) out there, regardless of their excuse.
Ever since driving the Abarth 500 esseesse last year I have always wondered what its bigger brother the Punto would be like. Well I finally got a chance to sample the performance of one when I dropped by Tremauto last month in Italy. Moreno took me out for a ride in a customer's car he had [...]
I think Italy and Japan couldn’t have a more different car culture. No matter where you are in Japan, you could arm yourself with a camera, head out onto the streets and in a matter of minutes you would see something cool worth shooting, be it an old shakotan classic, a modified sports car or [...]
I had to pull a u-turn right in the middle of the piazza in the small wine-producing town of Breganze after passing this parked up little classic. Through the brief glimpse I caught with the corner of my eye, I initially assumed it was an old Ferrari but on second thought it did look a [...]
There is no debating that pretty much anything that comes out of Maranello is a work of art. Sure there are faster and more performing cars available out there, even at a fraction of the price, but nothing quite has the appeal of a car that wears a shiny prancing horse on it’s rear end. [...]
Making the best of my time in Italy I finally had the chance to visit a shop I have been meaning to check out for years. Based a stone throw's away from the picturesque town of Desenzano del Garda, right on the shores of lake Garda, Tremauto Racing is one of Italy's most reputable tuning [...]
A couple of days ago when I dropped by a local tyre shop here in Italy where I'm currently staying, I ran across a pretty rare classic Fiat. With the current success the redesigned Fiat 500 is enjoying around the world, people a lot of the time forget some of the other great cars that [...]
I've finally managed to source a DSLR here in Italy so I'll be getting back to some Speedhunting this week as I try to uncover some cool cars and tuning shops. I ran across this 1962 Fiat 1100 yesterday in the picturesque town of Bassano Del Grappa. Parked up against a beautifully restored house it [...]
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Those of you who are connected to me on Facebook will know that I've been in Stockholm Sweden this week, working out of the EA DICE office. This is after back to back trips to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, London and Portugal too… Now for the first year or two, this serial travel was quite [...]
Hello Speedhunters, my name is Claudio Jacuzzi and I am the owner of the RPS13 you see here. I picked up the car back in 2008 with the idea of preparing the car with a true and authentic JDM feel, something that is hard to find in Italy where I'm from. So the first thing [...]
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It's always interesting to see how passion can push people to create very unique cars, and this Miata from Italy is the perfect example. The owner and avid reader of Speedhunters, Filippo Pirini, has been working on his little Mazda for 3 years and plans to have the car ready in the next year or [...]
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On race day at the FIA GT in Adria it was the GT4 guys that got their racing on first, and what a battle we witnessed! GT4 is open to production cars, which have been prepared for competition. Performance is equalized by various measures (air restrictors and so on) to make sure that all the [...]
I though it would be good to take a brake from all the drifting in Odaiba and head back to Italy to see some more action from the FIA GT week-end. As you may remember the idea of holding the race at Adria was to take advantage of the excellent illumination and to hold most [...]
