Welcome DriveCult.com

The new site is now live and as you can probably guess by the title of this blog it's www.DriveCult.com. Here is a brief introduction, but I really hope you just click on the link  and go straight to the new site to see for yourself.  

Grand Touring has combined up with DriveCult.com to form the new site retaining the Drive Cult name. Drive Cult was created by Jamie Wolfcale who lives in the far warmer climes of San Diego California.  He brings a mix of new cars news, motorsport reporting and car culture, all in Jamie's easy style.  Eschewing the typical American Muscle car, Jamie drives a Mini Cooper S which occasionally he services and modifies himself.

It's not just Jamie and I working on this project, as the technical brains and creator of the site is Martin Spain, web developer, car enthusiast, and photographer extraordinaire (Martin took the picture above which you can see in much higher resolution at DriveCult.  For his own motoring thrills Martin has recently acquired an early Mazda MX5 whose development into a more potent track weapon will no doubt be charted on Drive Cult.

The team is completed by Chris Ratcliff and Jack Wood. Like Martin, Chris is a keen photographer and both of their photography efforts will be featured on the new site.  Chris is also something of a Nurburgring addict and probably would live there if he could. Jack is a Track Day fanatic and his modified Porsche Cayman can regularly be seen monstering much more powerful machinery on British circuits. Not one to let practicality get in the way of motoring thrills Jack also has a Mercedes C63 AMG estate for those rapid trips to the supermarket.

You will be able to read about life with all of these cars (any my Daytona) in Drive Cult's Garage section.

Expanding beyond Grand Touring's relatively high end sports car theme, Drive Cult aims to bring you news, features, blogs , and great  photography, covering all aspects of motoring culture, both here in the UK and in the US. We are enthusiasts on the outside looking into the motoring industry. and we intend to say things as we see them and free from industry spin.

Thank you to everyone who has followed Grand Touring on this site, and I hope you will continue to do so on  Drive Cult, where most of the GT archive can be found in the blog section. For now I will continue to leave this blog up, and the Facebook page will continue although you can expect this to become the Drive Cult page before too long.

A Change is coming to the Grand Touring Blog

Regular readers may (or may not) have noticed a reduction in activity to the blog over the last couple of months. This has not been due to laziness or lack of interest on my part, far from it. In actual fact I have been working behind the scenes on a new project which will see lead to a new home for Grand Touring.

Rather than be a stand alone blog, Grand Touring will form part of a new enthusiast driven website, that is being created by a bunch of like minded petrol-heads, aiming to bring something different and a breath of fresh air to the crowded world of automotive blogs and websites.

As you would expect the Daytona will continue to be featured only now it will have it's own section. The fine autumnal weather yesterday was the perfect opportunity to take the red beast one last drive before winter (and the resultant salted roads) sets in, more on this in due course including some video footage (if any that I shot yesterday turns out to be usable.

Check back here for updates on the new site as more details will be revealed in the next few weeks.

The search for a Magazine about Italian cars

A significant event in my life as a car nut happened in May 1985, it was the first time I brought a motoring magazine with my own money and I was eleven years old. The particular magazine was the latest edition of Car Magazine the, cover had a picture of the new Lamborghini Countach QV version and the headline read, "Counter-attack the 455bhp Countach which tames the Testarossa, we drive both."

Since then I have long since lost count of the number of car magazines I have brought but it must be somewhere in the thousands. Today my favourites are Evo and Octane both of which I have on subscription. Evo offers the mix of modern cars that I like to read about and has in my opinion the best writers (Dickie Meaden and Chris Harris) and photography in the business. Octane offers much the same for the classic car world and also manages to make the classic car world feel a lot less nerdy than it sometimes can be.

I also almost always buy Car magazine (I've brought all but one copy since that May 1985 edition), but there is a definite feeling that it is not nearly as good as it's 1980s hey day , and Classic & Sportscar mainly for Martin Buckley's amusing writing. Classic Cars is a occasional buy and Top Gear should only come with an alert to be brought when stuck in an airport departure lounge for more than two hours.

Of the more specialised titles GT Purely Porsche is a well produced magazine with quality writing and excellent photography and although I'm currently without Porsche, I buy it periodically. Rival  911 and Porsche World does not have the same production quality but was always a useful buy when I ran a Porsche 944S2, and still has a good classified section. I guess producing a Porsche magazine is a lot easier than a Ferrari one with Porsche launching a new version of the 911 every two weeks it seems.

Now one area that the UK motoring magazine world lacks is a decent magazine about Italian Sports cars. Yes there is Auto Italia, but I have always found this a very disappointing title. The photography is poor and many articles are shot at the Chobham tank test track which is very predictable. The writing often lacks depth although Richard Heseltine can produce a good read.  Trouble is some of the copy just isn't that interesting, featuring a road test about a diesel Fiat Punto is all well and good in What Car but is hardly useful in a specialist title. Also for £4.35 it does not provide that much copy for the money.

So what would be my receipe for a decent magazine about Italian cars? Well top quality writing and photography are a given, but also the design and layout of the magazine needs to be top notch. Italian cars are often brought for the way they look, so it is reasonable to assume that an Italian car magazine must look fantastic and be made from top quality paper.

The content is slightly trickier to nail down. Obviously Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati features are a given and also the weird and wonderful eteceterinis such as the Iso's and De Tomaso but what of the more mainstream Italian manufacturers? Alfa Romeo and Lancia have a huge and wonderful back catalogue (including the rather lovely Alfa Giulia GTA pictured at the top of this blog) to feature but their current offerings are really uninspiring and offer little for the enthusiast (Alfa 8C excepted).  Fiat also have had their moments in the past especially the Abarth derivatives and the Ferrari powered Dino, but again the new cars leave me rather cold.

 A slightly trickier issue is whether or not the cars designed by the Italian carrozzeria for foreign companies should be included? In the sixties the likes of Pininfarina, Bertone, Zagato, Touring and Frua designed some truly great shapes for manufacturers all over the world (remember that quintessentially British Aston DB5 that James Bond drove had a body designed by Touring of Milan). In many ways these cars deserve as much a place in an Italian car magazine as a Lamborghini Gallardo (body designed by a Belgium and with a German designed engine).

Italian cars of all types have a huge following, Their owners appreciate the styling and charisma of their cars, and are often prepared to put up with their foibles. Personally I think it is about time there was a magazine which reflected that.

From Goodwood Revival 2010

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