If you need your coffee fast in the morning, this espresso maker could be just the ticket. And it makes your average cutesy Nespresso capsule machine look like a Nissan Note by comparison.
This model of a V12 engine, crafted to brew espresso coffee, hasn’t been designed for any old benchtop, though.
Created by German company Super Veloce, the Espresso Veloce Royale 01 has been cast in 18-carat white gold and features about its body diamonds, thermoset gold leaf carbon fibre and two inlaid royal purple amethyst gems.
So, a rich brew, indeed.
Short of a Liberace-themed cafe in downtown Las Vegas, we can’t figure out who’d want this bejewelled behemoth of roasted beans in their kitchen. But the audacity of it is like a jolt of caffeine to the blood stream.
Bahar has last laugh with Ferrari 412 reincarnation
Grinning, Teflon-coated auto mover/shaker Dany Bahar is a bit of a roguish favourite of ours at The Good Oil.
He’s mainly infamous for helming Lotus head-on through the GFC and into an impossibly ambitious non-future, where no fewer than seven new Lotii were teased for production in as many years.
None of that came to fruition and Bahar left Lotus under a cloud, followed out the door by quizzical mutterings from forensic accountants about “appropriated funds” and the like.
Bahar wasn’t to be heard from again in polite society for a handful of years. But his name made a return to car-related column centimetres a year or so ago, when he surfaced in Italy as head of Ares Design, a studio-for-hire scribbling some deft-looking, low-volume supercar ideas.
You might remember Ares Design’s Lamborghini Huracan-based De Tomaso Pantera tribute car from a few months back. Now the company has created another reimagined supercar. And this one possibly betters the De Tomaso.
The car is that most improbable of things: a reimagined Ferrari 412. Forget your Testarossas and 288 GTOs, Ares Design has chosen as its tribute to the House of the Prancing Horse, an iffy 1970s/80s-era front-engined V12 tourer.
As far as eras of Ferrari’s evolution to draw upon for inspiration go, it’s more cravat than crash helmet.
But the other thing about the 412 recreation is it’s awesome, right down to its pop-up headlights.
The car (dubbed Project Pony internally) is built on a Ferrari GTC4Lusso that Ares Design has rebodied in a vaguely familiar “all glasshouse, all the time” manner.
The 412 was the third of three evolutions of the Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2, which morphed from the 400 to the 400i and finally to the 412 across the 1970s and 80s. The final 412 was produced in 1989.
If you want further proof that the original version of this car hails from a time of cocktails, loafers and linen, the 412 was also the first Fezza to boast an automatic transmission.
Beneath the bodywork, the Project Pony is still all-GTC4Lusso, so a V12 remains in place augmented by a dual-clutch seven-speed gearbox and drive to all four wheels.
There’s no word on whether the Project Pony car will develop into something the well-heeled car collectors of Europe are able to buy. But we can’t wait to see what the Modena design studio does next. C’mon Dany: give us a modern reinterpretation of a Monteverdi Hai, please.
BMW 7 Series drivers the worst offenders
A British car quote comparison website has come up with some interesting (UK-centric) stats showing that owners of more expensive cars have more convictions for motoring offences.
Analysis of more than six million car insurance quotes by the MoneySuperMarket website, has revealed that owners of expensive, fast cars are up to 20 times more likely than those with older, more modest cars to break UK road rules. Well, duh.
The single worst offenders? Drivers of BMW 730ds. More than a fifth (21 per cent) of 7 Series owners who applied for insurance quotes admitted to receiving some form of motoring conviction over the past five years, according to a report published by the website.
The next worst offenders in the UK are Porsche Panamera owners, with a conviction rate of 20 per cent.
The data suggests it’s best to have a wheezy older vehicle if you want to avoid any sort of conviction for motoring offences.
The same report states that Citroen ZX owners are the most law-abiding on British roads, with only 1 per cent having been convicted in the last five years.
Of course, whether this has anything to do with the no-doubt fragile state of surviving Citroen ZXs a good 20 years after they went out of production, isn’t mentioned.
With this sort of data available to the public, it’s no wonder the New Zealand Government is continually scouting around for replacements for its fleet of Beemer luxo-barges.