Editorial

You will see above the first official press photos of Ferrari’s flagship GT car, the 599 GTB. The first car to carry the GTB (Gran Turismo Berlinetta) suffix since the celebrated ‘Daytona’ of the late ‘60s, early ‘70s. And with its Enzo-derived 620 hp V12 it’s clearly going to slay anything in its path be it mid-engined or whatever, short of the very limited-run Paganis et al. And the Bugatti Veyron of course, a car that by all accounts is on a different planet altogether.

Full details will be revealed at the Geneva Salon in February – we can’t wait.

From the sublime to the, er, sublime in a different sort of sublimey way, I quite like the Chrysler Imperial concept car shown in Detroit the other day. Perhaps the modish, very 2006, metallic coffee-colour paint (‘Imperial Bronze’ to you sir) does it for me, or the absence of hundreds of dials and switches? Yes, perhaps that’s it – the opportunity to sit behind the wheel of a car, press and couple of buttons and just go.

And you can see how fast you’re going with one round dial, and that’s about it. If something goes wrong, well, there’ll be bells and klaxons of the ‘Arr! Arr!, Warning!, Warning!’ nature to alert you. Simplicity is all. We’ve said it before but do we need all that clutter set before us – a lot of which is difficult to read and requires an extensive visit to the handbook.

I’m not advocating a return to tiller-steering, but life’s complicated enough, and if you look at the article below on the new B&O mobile ‘phone you can see they agree too.

Steve Wakefield Managing Editor sw@classicdriver.com