The Alfa Romeo 75, sold in North America as the Milano, was a compact sports sedan / compact executive car produced by the Italian automaker Alfa Romeo between 1985 and 1992. The 75 was commercially quite successful; in just three years, 170,000 cars were produced and by the end of production in 1992, around 187,300 had been built. The Alfa Romeo 75 was the last model alfa romeo developed before being acquired by Fiat.

(photo courtesy of jason mcginnity) jason mcginnity spotted and submitted this photo of a rare beast indeed….. lets hear it in jason’s own words, shall we ? “i heard this one coming while i was sitting at a light in downtown Portland. it is manufactured in the u.s. by tmi autotech under license from ariel atom, england. I’d never seen one in real life. amazing sound. luckily I was able to snap a couple photos as I heard him accelerating from down the block.” thank you jason…. this is an extremely interesting car, it does 0-60 in 2.9 seconds, has a minimalist exoskeleton and you can see all the controls and mechanical parts as you drive. very nice.

Something of an anachronism in the 2000s, the Defender has no unibody structure and is still largely hand assembled. All its major body panels and sub-assemblies simply bolt together. Thus not only can a Defender be literally broken down to its chassis with simple hand tools, there are no irreplaceable stress points. While appreciated in the field and by enthusiasts, this method of manufacture has become increasingly expensive relative to unibody and modular construction.

i like the cadillac seville with the bustle-back. it symbolized a rare stroke of risk taking by the milque-toast and soul-dead general motors corp. when i was a kid my step-mom had a lemon meringue diesel example that i once drove as a hired 16 year-old chauffuer to a prince concert circa 1984. the car was subsequently sold to a good friend of the family who attempted to drive it back to atlanta…. needless to say it completely shit the bed somewhere around tennessee and after that the friendship kind of soured. herve villechaize would look good behind the wheel of this weird american ‘luxury’ car.

The Citroën DS was an executive car produced by the French manufacturer Citroën between 1955 and 1975. Styled by Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni, the DS is known for its aerodynamic futuristic body design and innovative technology, including a hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension. The DS advanced achievable standards in automobile ride quality, handling, and braking. Citroën sold nearly 1.5 million D-series during the model’s 20-year production run. The DS came in third in the 1999 Car of the Century competition, recognizing the world’s most influential auto designs, and was named the most beautiful car of all time by Classic & Sports Car magazine.

To meet the demands of the post-war market which called for economy cars, the Fiat 500 was rear-engined on the pattern of the Volkswagen Beetle. Several car makers followed this now nearly vanished design at the time and were quite successful, but only the Fiat 500 was used as the template for other car makers in Europe. Despite its diminutive size, the 500 proved to be an enormously practical and popular vehicle throughout Europe. Besides the two-door coupé, it was also available as the “Giardiniera” station wagon; this variant featured the standard engine laid on its side, the wheelbase lengthened by 10 cm (4 in) which yielded a usable rear seat, and a full-length sunroof.

there is no way around it, the volkswagen rabbit was a revolutionary vehicle. the boxy unlikely successor to the revered beetle, the rabbit represented the dawn of a new age of automobile design and technology…. a world away from the mechanical and hand-built aesthetic of the beetle. i spied this rabbit sprinting along and it occurred to me i seldom see nice roadworthy rabbits out and about.

i have been going through a pretty significant air-cooled volkswagen phase lately…… to the degree that i just purchased my 2nd beetle this year, a 1953 standard ‘zwitter’. there is something just so ‘right’ about an air-cooled volkswagen…. the quality, the simplicity, the mechanical nature, the design, the egalitarian appeal. i don’t see too many type 3′s running around, so when i spied this one i knew i had to apprehend it.

The Alfa Romeo GTV Gran Turismo Veloce (Fast Grand Tourer) was produced by the Italian manufacturer Alfa Romeo from 1995 to 2006. The GTV is a 2+2 coupé, and the rear seats on the GTV could be optionally deleted to increase the small boot space. Known by the internal Alfa Romeo designation 916, the GTV was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1995. The GTV’s name placed it as the successor to the long-discontinued Alfetta GTV coupe.

continuing my journey from stockholm to amsterdam, i entered danish road-space and spied this majestic old mercedes-benz ponton sedan. this shot was taken about 60 kilometers prior to embarking on the ferry which carried me into german road-space. an interesting thing about denmark is the tax on a vehicle is 100% of the purchase price….. a real discouragement to car ownership. on the bright side, denmark has the best modern bridge designs my weary eyes have ever seen.

shortly after i captured the porsche 996 with me trusty iphone, i spied this here audi A5 in the swedish countryside. i’m not so sure i “get” the A5…..is it germany’s answer to the camaro? or perhaps it is audi’s answer to the bmw 335i coupe. either way i think i will pass

the great icelandic ash-cloud had me stranded in stockholm sweden and i was getting restless. by the 4th day of being stranded i decided i needed to make a break for it so i rented a car and drove a ford ka all the way from stockholm to amsterdam. along the way i spied this handsome porsche 996. i generally have a degree of disdain for the 996 but this one looked pretty good….. but then again everything in sweden looks pretty darn good

i was riding a bicycle heading back to my hotel room in berlin when i spied a hearty inflammation of moto-bike mounted polizei. now, i am not versed in german customs….. and especially not versed in the ways of the polizei, but it seemed kind of odd. it almost looked as if they were banded together in required group formation back to base after a shift. there was no sense of urgency or emergency for that matter. perhaps they were headed to the splügen brau and then homeways for a bit of spatchka ?