La Dolce Veloce

This oddly attractive Alfa Romeo concept car has a 300hp V6 mounted in the rear, and is obviously more of a show car than a prototype. Nice to see them working on some more exciting designs, at least! Maybe there’s a chance their eventual return to the US market will be led by a sports car instead of an SUV? Yeah, wishful thinking, I know. The Disco Volante was designed by Giovanni Rizzo, with a design intent seemingly similar to the original Lotus Elise. Click through for a few more pictures, including one of the Alfa Romeo C52 that inspired this design.
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So, what do you do after managing Audi’s successful motorsports group? If you’re Roland Gumpert, you team up with Roland Mayer of Audi tuning shop and build your own supercar! Seems to be quite the thing to do these days, much to the joy of sports car lovers everywhere. The Apollo is powered by a version of Audi’s V8, producing a supercar-worthy 650hp (good for a 360 km/h top speed and 0-100km/h in 3 seconds!). Expensive, of course ($176000 Euro, or $2.1M USD). No word on US sales, but it’s not likely for a limited production car such as this. Annual production will begin at around 80 cars, increasing to 150 per year thereafter. Click through for more pictures.
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PDFs of the letters sent by the FIA to the teams summoning them to Paris for the FIA World Council meeting.

The racing press is discussing the great damage this incident is likely to cause F1:

Grandprix.com

pitpass.com

planet-f1.com- notes there were eleven failures of Michelin tires at Indy before the race started

thatsracin.com- notes that no contract has been signed yet for a 2006 US Grand Prix

more from pitpass.com- short opinion piece, followed by a ton of user-submitted views

Better than any reality TV show Fox has dreamed up, the F1 debacle continues to spiral out of control, threatening the very existence of the sport. No, this is not an exaggeration! Given the hard line stance that both sides took at Indy, and the upcoming meeting of the FIA World Council next week, there is the very real possibility of this affecting the remaining races of the season. Will teams boycott the rest of the races? Hard to say.

Minardi boss Paul Stoddart released an extremely informative press release describing the series of events that led up to this mess. Read on for the full text, or follow the link above.
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The recent fiasco at the US Grand Prix almost surely signals the end of F1 as we know it. Not just in the US, but the international ramifications will be significant as well. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Crawl out of that cave you’re living in and read this for a quick, unbiased overview of the situation. That article doesn’t delve into pointing fingers (there are plenty of others doing that), it gets to the real issue here, that F1 has been trying to build up a fan base in America, and here at Indy they had around 100,000 of their most dedicated fans, each paying an average of $100 per ticket to watch the race. What F1 did to those fans is inexcusable and alienating.

So long, F1. It was nice while it lasted! For those of you seeking an alternative to the F1 circus, I suggest checking out Champ Car.
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The good news is that Lamborghini appears to be serious about producing a four seat coupe, like the Espada. Styling will take some visual cues from the Espada, such as its large flat rear window/hatch that provides access to a sizeable luggage area. Now, the bad news. The name for this new V12 touring car? Lagartijo. Weird. Yes, as expected, there’s a bull fighting story behind this one. Lagartijo was the Spanish matador who spared the life of the bull named Murcielago. It’s a weird name, but then, I thought the same of Murcielago when I first heard it, but it’s grown on me since. Oh, and more good news – if they’re working on a 2+2, that most likely means that they’re not also working on an SUV!

Subaru has released more photos of the mildly restyled Impreza (as previously reported here). The front end is growing on me, I admit. It’s still an odd shaped grill, but the rest of the car is so visually busy that it gets drowned out.
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