1965 Giulia Spider Veloce on 2040-cars

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Ralph Gilles talks minivans, Millennials, mobility, and kissing Alfa Romeos

We sat down with Ralph Gilles, the global head of design for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show. The veteran stylist has worked for the company for 25 years, and oversees the design of all of the products in the FCA portfolio – everything from mobility pods to Maseratis. This serves Gilles just fine, as his personal automotive interests are exceedingly diverse. The FCA stand was unusually quiet (until Vice President Joe Biden stopped by at the end of our time there) and Gilles was willing to weigh in on a wide range of subjects. Autoblog: We're seeing all of these autonomous mobility pods like Portal being presented at auto shows like CES or NAIAS, but we're not seeing any adoption of this kind of small vehicle in the market. What's your perspective on our pod-like autonomous future versus our truck-centric present? Ralph Gilles: Obviously I pay attention to the industry as much as your readers and yourself, and everyone has a take on the future. We had a debate, we could have done a supercar or something for pure sex appeal [ apparently that's also in the works], but we chose something practical, to really look at the future in a different perspective. We have these Millennials, a huge swath of people born between 1982 and 2004, and the oldest ones are turning 35 right about now, and a lot of them are having families later in life but when they have them they have a little more buying power, so it makes for an interesting cocktail. The one stipulation we had on the Portal project was that everyone had to be a Millennial to be on the team. So that excluded me, I had more of a coach role on the team. And to your point, the Portal in its current state as you see it is not going to be on the road tomorrow. But there's a lot of ideas, a lot of connectivity ideas, a lot of styling ideas, even lighting and technologies that will absolutely find their way into vehicles in the next few years. AB: Being a Detroiter, all of this attention we've had recently in Vegas, CES – I heard that they're maybe going to be running the show at the same time next year. Do you feel a little protective of the Detroit Show? RG: Yeah, it's something to watch. I hope it's not an aggressive thing on their part, by moving the shows on top of each other. They're both important shows. CES, I've been going to for the last five years, and it's changing. There's a lot more automotive content, but there are a lot more start-ups too, and it's interesting to watch.

Leno samples Corvette Z06, steam cars, supercars and the wonders of Pebble Beach

While Jay Leno's Garage was conceived to highlight the wonders of The Big Chin's eponymous storage facility, Leno does occasionally get out an into the larger world. Pebble Beach and the festivities around Monterey recently provided a great excuse for a road trip, and Leno seemingly had a pretty full dance card.
In an episode aptly dubbed The Ultimate Car Week, our host takes us through a pretty representative selection of great things to see in and around Pebble. Starting with a ride-along in a steam car, Jay manages to check in on the latest McLaren supercar and drive the Alfa Romeo 4C along the way. Oh, and he takes a good look at the all-new Corvette Z06 (next to the original Z06) before hitting the Concourse d'Elegance, too.

Alfa Romeo SZ, the brutalist 'Il Mostro,' restored by FCA Heritage

Nicknamed Il Mostro — "the Monster" in Italian — because of its unusual, almost brutalist design, the 1989 Alfa Romeo SZ was meant to showcase all the technological prowess of the Milanese firm at the time. It was also meant to plant a stake in the ground and return the revered marque to its rear-wheel-drive roots. Though it was an evolutionary dead end, the SZ is still considered among the most distinctive cars in a brand filled with distinctive models. It should, then, be no surprise that FCA Heritage, the classic car and history preservation arm of Stellantis (which, apparently, was not part of the name change) has just restored one. The SZ began life at the 1989 Geneva Motor Show as the ES-30 concept, which stood for Experimental Sports 3.0-liter. The production car was named SZ for Sprint Zagato, but the design is credited to Robert Opron of the Fiat Style Center, while Antonio Castellana did the finishing details and interior. Zagato used its coachbuilding expertise to build the cars, whose bodywork was formed from a composite thermoplastic material called Modar, made by Italy's Carplast and France's Stratime. Alfa Romeo also claims it was the first car to be produced using computer-aided design (CAD/CAM). Beneath the sci-fi exterior lay a 12-valve, 3.0-liter V6 plucked from the Alfa Romeo 75 3.0i Quadrifoglio Verde. With 204 horsepower and 181 pound-feet of torque, it was the most powerful Alfa of the time. Output was fed through a 5-speed transaxle and the suspension, Koni-designed shocks, and brakes reportedly tuned by Fiat and Lancia rally driver Giorgio Pianta and transplanted from the Alfa 75 1.8 Turbo Evolution Group A racer.  The original run was intended to span just 1,000 cars, but some sources say 1,036 were produced. That run ended in 1991, after which a roadster version called the RZ was built from 1992-93.  The example restored has been in Alfa Romeo's possession since the beginning. It served as a test car on the Balocco proving grounds and was used in promotional photos. There are several details on it that differ from production models, so much so that Alfa Romeo says it could be "considered a prototype." Unfortunately, as history shows, the SZ failed to usher in a real-wheel-drive renaissance at Alfa Romeo. After its end, there wasn't another rear-drive model until the 8C Competizione in 2007.