Meet the man who designs Ferraris

10 August, 2016

In a rare interview with Head of Ferrari Design Flavio Manzoni, in the September issue of New Zealand Classic Car, he explains, “There is a very nice phrase of Renzo Piano, the famous architect, that explains that the design is something in between the prudence of tradition and the courage of the future. So it’s always a balance between the two, so you cannot forget such an important history like the Ferrari history, but we have to be really creative in order to imagine that possible evolution, possible transformation of the design, the Ferrari design in a very natural way. So we have also, with our new projects, to anticipate somehow the development of the car industry with very excellent products, so we have to be courageous and respectful at the same time.”

To read the full fascinating interview with Flavio Manzoni, get your copy of the September issue of New Zealand Classic Car here. For now, check out the gallery of Flavio Manzoni and his designs.


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Design accord

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.