: No need to delete them, it's healthy discussion!

: Ferrari have been doing business their way for years, it started
: with the Old Man and it doesn't seem like it's become much less
: Machiavellian since.

: I think the bigger mags just strap timing gear on anyway, but most
: are less about the statistics nowadays than handling impressions
: etc. It's the way I prefer it to be honest, a nuanced story of
: impressions and sometimes as much about the area they're in as
: the car. Not read a Road and Track or such for years, they did
: tend to be stat-intensive but the writing in the UK's CAR
: magazine is much more cup of tea.

Thing with the Old Man was that he didn't care about the road cars, they were an evil means to an end!

The only magazines I read from cover to cover these days are Motor Trend Classic and MotorSport. Autocar, Evo, Car and the classic mags like Octane and Classic And Sports Car I delve into. I think the first two are less commercial than the rest, in the case of MTC it was the baby of the then editor of Motor Trend. MotorSport is privately owned and I always feel like I should be sat in a big leather armchair smoking a pipe while I read it! I liked reading Peter Egan's column in R&T but haven't seen the magazine in a while.

The Ferrari thing might just be that I'm completely disinterested in modern cars. The most exciting thing for me is the next MX5 with about the same weight as the original. Not very exciting I know but the MX5 brings enjoyable and fun motoring to the masses for not very much money. The excess weight of most cars and the reliance on technology really puts me off, I'll just keep driving round in my old bangers until they're not allowed on the roads anymore. I do, however, still want a 550! The last proper Ferrari (manual in dark blue with tan interior, diamond stitch roof lining). For me a proper sports car is one which is powerful and potentially unruly enough to kill you (or which swaps ends without warning in the wet!) and modern ones do everything they can to keep you on the road, especially the supercars which are so powerful that they wouldn't be drivable otherwise. Supercars like Ferraris were best when they were either going to kill you or break down. Nowadays there are a lot of very fast but affordable cars and supercar manufacturers are stuck, people expect reliability but they also need something a lot faster and more powerful than the Golf GTis and Boxsters of the world. There is though some hope at Ferrari and Lamborghini, lightweight carbonfibre chassis and components to get the car's weight to around 1000kg and smaller engines. The combination of the handling, nimbleness and braking of the MX5 allied to the power of a supercar. Just as long as they don't festoon the things with electronic driver aids there might soon be a modern Ferrari I actually like.