Inspired by a close encounter with some rare machinery today (and because my original post remains in the development process), today I’m going to present a new feature of the blog - the “Top Five _____ You’ve Never Heard Of.” Today’s installment: the Top Five Italian Cars You’ve Never Heard Of (Illustrated).

Number Five: Lancia Aurelia

Produced for six years (1950 - 1956), the Aurelia was a luxury car available in a variety of configurations, from sedan to sports car. With little over than 18,000 built the Aurelia is a somewhat rare beast, especially the left-hand drive US models, which were only imported starting in 1954. Given the quality of steel and questionable building practices of the Italian auto industry at the time, even fewer Aurelias survive today.

The Aurelia was named after the Via Aurelia. The Aurelia was Lancia’s crown jewel and featured many Lancia-developed innovations. A major technological force in the automobile industry, Lancia introduced the world’s first V6 engine in 1950. Originally available in the Aurelia, the first incarnation of the Lancia V6 was produced for 20 years, gaining over a liter in displacement (from 1754 cc to 2775 cc) and 96 horsepower (56 to 152) over that time.

Aurelias were some of the most beautiful and desirable cars of the Fifties, perfect for long drives and vacationing.

Number Four: Lamborghini Jarama

Marcello Gandini would draw prettier Lamborghinis (the Miura and the Espada), more intimidating Lamborghinis (the Countach and Diablo), and even an uglier Lamborghini (the Urraco) but he never did top the funkiness of the Jarama.

Ferruccio Lamborghini, the Italian farm implement and air conditioner magnate, was a Taurus. His company’s insignia was a raging bull, and many of his cars would be named after areas famous for producing impressive bovine specimens. The Jarama was christened after a district in Spain which produced fighting bulls. Powered by the big Lambo V12, the Jarama could hit 152 mph in standard (350 horsepower) form and 162 mph in GTS (365 hp) trim.

Though it was built for six years, only 327 Jarama’s were produced, making it one of the most rare Lamborghinis. The rarest of all Jaramas was the Rally S that Bob Wallace, Lamborghini’s chief test driver, built as a rolling showcase of Lambo know-how. Tossing out anything not conducive to speed, Wallace cut out portions of the floor and replaced the steel with aluminum. Glass was tossed in favor of plastic. In all, Wallace saved 660 pounds by trimming the fat out of the car. Getting the car down to 2574 lbs (less than a modern Honda Civic), the crazy New Zealander turned his attention to the engine, wringing 380 horsepower from the V12. The car could exceed 165 mph, but its limits were never tested thoroughly, most likely because it would have been insane to do so.

Number Three: Qvale Mangusta

When Alejandro de Tomaso’s company was hijacked by his American partner, Bruce Qvale (”koo-va-lay”), the company had only one product, the Mangusta. de Tomaso had partnerships with a variety of companies throughout his career, including Maserati and Ford, but when hard times came he had been forced to take on an investor, Qvale. After a falling out Qvale took over the de Tomaso factory and continued producing Mangustas. In all, between 270 and 272 were built. Most were imported to the US.

Designed by Marcello Gandini (the man responsible for the well-known Lamborghini Countach and Diablo), the Mangusta sported the same V8 engine as the Ford Mustang. With the kooky Rototop (a semi-mechanical top which gave the car the ability to switch from coupe-targa-full convertible), pedestrian performance for an Italian exotic, and a base price just a few Franklins away from $70,000, Qvale was in trouble. The Mangusta lasted two years and became a footnote in history.

Number Two: Ferrari 308 GT4

Of course, everyone knows about the Ferrari 308. That is, at least everyone over the age of twenty who have ever seen one episode of Magnum, P.I. For most people, that 308 is likely what the word “Ferrari” conjures in their mind - a mustachioed Tom Selleck in a campy Hawaiian shirt and a Detroit Tigers cap, evading dobermans and cracking wise with his buddies at the expense of a unfortunate Englishman. Nothing wrong with that 308 - it’s a gorgeous car - but it wasn’t the first Ferrari with that designation.

The 308 GT4 was designed by Bertone, perhaps the most famous of the Italian coachbuilders. This was Bertone’s first ever design for Ferrari, who were in the habit of using Pininfarnia for body design. For this reason the 308 GT4 is often implied to be a Ferrari in name only, but the fact that the chassis and engine in the GT4 is the same as the components found in Magnum’s car attest to the purebred (if inbred-looking) nature of this car.

The 308 GT4 was also the first (production, as opposed to racing) Ferrari with a V8 mounted amidships, setting a precedent that exists even today. The engine originally displaced three liters and gave 265 horsepower. A later version, the 208 GT4, would be produced for consumption in Europe. At 1991 cc (1.991 liters), this V8 is the smallest ever produced and lost 95 horsepower in the process.

A bonus for potential Ferarri buyers - the GT4 was a four-seater, meaning that the driver can bring three close friends along for a spin. Additionally, as it’s a less desirable model, the GT4 commands prices about ten grand south of a comparable Magnum-style 308.

Number One: Maserati Khamsin

Produced for nine years during some of the darkest days at Maserati, the Khamsin is nevertheless one of the most well-engineered Italian cars ever. Maserati was, at the time of the development of the Khamsin, owned by Citroen, the famously innovated French auto manufacturer. As such, the Khamsin features the fabulous Citroen DIRAVI (”Direction à rappel asservi” - steering with controlled return) power-operated hydraulic steering system, mated to Citroen’s hydraulic suspension and insane high-pressure (2500 psi) braking setup.

The Khamsin, named after a very hot, cyclonic wind in Egypt, was the successor to the Maserati Ghibli, and was styled at Bertone by Marcello Gandini (sound familiar?). The car was propelled by a 4.9 liter V8 developing 320 stampeding Italian horses. The Khamsin could exceed 140 mph, though I certainly wouldn’t recommend doing that in a thirty year old car.

I went out last night to pick up my previously reserved copy of Hill Street Blues (Season Two). Barnes & Noble had called me around 1045 yesterday morning to let me know it had arrived as scheduled, and I told them they could expect me that evening.

For me, a typical visit to Barnes & Noble lasts no less than an hour. I can while away time in a bookstore faster than I can just about anywhere else. My usual strategy is to hit the periodicals first (generally in a Transportation-Food-Technology browsing arc), then on to fiction, cookbooks/other culinary, and recorded media.

Much to my dismay, all the June titles of my favorite magazines have been on sale for a while now, so there were slim pickings for anything I hadn’t already thumbed through. Since this was my second visit in four days, the first being last weekend to reserve said copy of Season Two, I was able to skip by the fiction and cookbook sections and head right back to pick up my DVDs.

I’d brought my buddy Mike out to town with me, as he had some errands to run, and we decided to leave shortly after I nabbed the DVDs. We headed out to my Volvo and started out of the parking lot, only to have me stop dead in my tracks as a Sunflower Yellow Alfa Romeo of classic vintage drove by. I wheeled into trailing position, only to be immediately cut off by a couple of slow-moving Marines emerging, no doubt over-satiated, from Quizno’s. By the time they had meandered off, the Alfa was gone.

We cruised the lot for a few minutes before Mike spotted the Alfa again. I pulled into the empty spot next to it and hopped out to look. It was a 1968 GTJ, a model never officially imported to the US. Unfortunately for the poor Alfa, it wasn’t in the greatest of shape. There was some oxidation under the paint, and one of the rear quarter panels had a fist-sized dent in it, probably from some ham-fisted mook in a sport-utility running his bumper up on the little Alfa.

The car barely came up to chest-level on me (it’s just under 50.5 inches tall at the roofline), but the large windshield and ample side windows gave it a very spacious look inside. It was riding on the correct factory wheels and even had the classic dark blue and gold California liscense plate.

At only 1.3 liters, the tiny four-cylinder engine put out 84 horsepower. But it was gutsy, and combined with the 5-speed manual, it could run all the way up to 108 mph, plenty fast to still drive on all the major highways down here.

Visions of blasts up the coast with the windows down on a sunny Saturday afternoon filled my head, set to a soundtrack by Belle & Sebastian, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Architecture in Helsinki. In the early afternoon I’d pull off Highway 1 to eat at a roadside café somewhere just north of Big Sur. I’d have a BLT, or maybe a grilled cheese on rye, and a cool glass of iced tea with a lemon wedge. All this came to me as I rested my hand on the little Alfa’s flank.

I was pulled from my daydream by the presence, in the corner of my eye, of a California Highway Patrol officer. He was eyeing me like I was carefully threading a coat hanger in between the rubber seal and the window, ready to pop the door open and dash off. Since the nearest coat hanger at my disposal had to be at least six hundred yards away, over at a Mervyn’s store, I was a little annoyed. I hopped back into the Volvo, backed out, and drove off, leaving the Alfa where it sat.

Someday, I’m going to have one.

But when we’re driving in my Malibu,
It’s easy to get right next to you.
I say, “Baby, scoot over, please.”
And then she’s right there next to me.

- Cake, “Stickshifts and Safety Belts”

While Glen and I were out getting haircuts and dinner tonight, I happened to see a large black and white photo of a drive-in theater in the area. The photo must have been taken in the late Fifties judging by the style and height of the tailfins.

In the foreground was a couple, probably in their late twenties, sitting on a bench seat in a hardtop coupe. The guy had his arm around the girl, she was leaning her head on his shoulder, and they were staring intently at the screen. This scene was repeated in all the other cars around them, big, rocket-themed American living rooms on wheels with couples skootched up against each other, watching the movie, as comfortable and relaxed as if they were lounging on their couch at home.

That drive-in is closed these days, the land owned by the city, waiting to become a Sam’s Club or Costco. Those chromed, highway-cruising yachts are quickly receding into history. And the bench seat is disappearing along with them.

There are only three new cars available for purchase today in our country that offer a front bench seat - the Cadillac DTS, the Buick Lucerne, and the Chevrolet Impala. Toyota offered one in the Avalon as late as a year or so ago, but dropped it when they restyled the model.

How did we let this happen?

I understand, of course, the convenience of the bucket seat when the car is equipped with a manual transmission. Most of my favorite cars have sticks, and driving one on a winding country road is a joy. Benches get in the way of the shift lever. Most cars these days come with some sort of automatic, though, and yet they’ve retained the center console and parking brake lever of the manual transmissioned car.

The majority of modern cars are also front wheel drive, of which one of the original marketing points was the resulting flat floor in the front, making bench seats all the more comfortable because the hump for transmission and driveshaft wasn’t there anymore.

So why have we forsaken the bench seat? Are we uncomfortable with the thought of three people up front, a by-product of our large personal space bubbles, no matter the amount of room afforded by the bench?

Years ago the youngest child would have occupied the middle of a bench on family outings. With the advent of airbags this is no longer possible, as all children below the age of 12 are confined to the rear seat. But if safety were the reason to eliminate the bench seat, then safety would also be a bigger consideration in the purchase of a car by the average individual. If safety were really that big a deal to the average American, we’d all be driving Volvo 240s since there wasn’t a single fatality in one in the United States until the final year of its nineteen-year production run.

But I digress.

Provided I had the money, it would really be nice to sidle on down to, say, a Chrysler dealer and pick up one of those gorgeous 300s with a bench in the front. I’m not asking for them to tack on tail-fins. I don’t need a push button transmission, satellite navigation, or even power windows. But I would like one car with a bench seat in my fleet, a car Jo and I can take down to the local root beer stand for some floats on a Sunday afternoon.

Stickshifts and safety belts,
Bucket seats have all got to go.
When we’re driving in the car,
It makes my baby seem so far.

I need you here with me,
Not way over in a bucket seat.
I need you to be here with me,
Not way over in a bucket seat.

There’s a VW Beetle in my parking lot which hasn’t moved in quite some time. It’s not in the greatest of shape - one tire is very low, the paint has a very suede-looking finish to it, and the interior could use some work. But it looks like a very fun little automobile, admirable for its utilitarian nature.

I’d love to own a Beetle. My grandpa had one when I was pretty little, a red coupe. Not sure if it was a Superbeetle, as my memory isn’t that sharp. But the charm of that car has always stuck with me, and I know owning one would be a blast.

It seems like low-cost transportation used to have much more personality years ago than it does today. The inexpensive cars we have now - the Dodge Neons, Chevy Cavaliers, and Honda Civics - are much more reliable than their predecessors, and they feature things like air conditioning and power locks/windows, which were parts of luxury packages back in the Beetle’s heyday. This comes at a price, though, since Neons and Civics by and large lack the spirit of their forefathers.

I’d love to drive a car like the Beetle, a VW Bus, Corvair Monza, or Datsun 510. I’d be ecstatic to have an Alfa Romeo 1750 GTV. These cars had style and zest which made up for whatever technical faults they might have had, faults which were often part of the charm of ownership, the ongoing love affair between owner and automobile.

There aren’t many “modern” cars I could say I’d actually be enthusiastic to own. The only one that comes immediately to mind is the reincarnated Mini. I’d actually probably prefer the new Mini to the old one, which strikes me as somewhat odd. The car is incredibly tiny, but I really won’t need a large car for a few years yet. I’m not incredibly tall or broad, nor do I have several children or massive amounts of stuff I need to move on a regular basis. I could totally get by with a car the size of the Mini and be just fine.

But other than the Mini, I can’t really think of a car in production I’d really rather have over one of the oldies. Dodge has come out with a couple of provoking concepts in last few years which pique my interest, cars like the Slingshot, M80, and Hornet. Yet each one of these has drawbacks.

The Slingshot is a very pretty little sports car. But there’s the key word, little. The Slingshot, based on the Smart microcar, is downright tiny, the spiritual successor the MG Midget or Austin-Healy Sprite. It’s too tiny for a trip over 100 miles (unless that trip was from Minneapolis to Winona on Highway 61), and the lack of storage space would cause problems for even the most efficient of packers. But what a fun car it could be.

The M80 isn’t a car, of course, but it’s a very sharp-looking little truck. Of the three vehicles, it would be the one I’d be most likely to buy, though I wouldn’t be too happy with the gas mileage. Whatever the trade-off in fuel consumption, the M80 would make up for it in practicality. I rarely go anywhere with more than one passenger, and the bed would allow me to still carry a lot of stuff around if the need arose. It strikes me as the kind of vehicle you could load up with a friend, a cooler, a basket of food, and a couple of dogs and go spend a wonderful afternoon in a park somewhere.

The Hornet is new this year, and while I like the some of the features, the styling bugs me. It bugs me too much for me to actually consider the car seriously, which means that I’d never get it, no matter the gee-whiz utilitarian features. It’s nifty, but it’s ugly, too.

Thinking about cars is something that happens several times a day for me. I know it’s a result of my upbringing, a part of me nurtured by both my dad and step-dad. I take notice of the kinds of cars characters in movies drive almost without noticing. For example, Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) drives a early-Nineties Ford Mustang coupe in Hannibal. Brian McCaffrey (Billy Baldwin) has a maroon BMW 2002 in Backdraft. Bobby Blaine’s (Delroy Lindo) wheels in Heist is a black Volvo 780.

So it’s a natural thing for me to whittle preference in a car down to minor details like interior trim. The quirkier the car, the more I’ll like it. And they don’t make quirky cars like they used to.