April 2020

Creating an entirely new and modern take on the Ferrari sports prototype concept is both an ambitious and complex undertaking. But it was in this spirit, and with very specific input from the client, that the new Ferrari one-off, the P80/C, was conceived. The Ferrari Styling Centre, under the direction of Flavio Manzoni, and the engineering and aerodynamics team worked hand-in-glove with the client, sharing principles and visions in order to create a new “Hero Car” with an absolutely unique and authentic soul.

‘Where is the art in a meme, anyway?’, I found myself asking while researching and filming my BBC4 documentary How to Go Viral: the Art of the Meme. I guess the answer depends on whether, for you, the word ‘meme’ evokes ‘internet’. If it does, perhaps your mind is throwing up visions of the kinds of image-macros (funny text over the top of a photo) that get shared via social media. Maybe you’re thinking of similarly succinct on-line snippets of text or short videos. You know, the stuff that goes ‘viral’ by being rapidly re-shared thousands if not millions of times in the course of a day.

At 8 am a slant of car hacks emerged from the Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa on Lake Windermere to crawl tentatively into a convoy of Jeeps, made up of a mix of Sahara's, Overlands and Rubicons in a rainbow of colours. My colleague Mark took the wheel first so I leapt into the passenger seat of a Granite Crystal Metallic (charcoal grey) Jeep Wrangler Sahara and sat back to admire the interior.
 

I was warmly greeted by Brendan as I ambled out of Dublin airport security. It’s been a while since I was last in Dublin and his easy charm and humour made me regret that as he escorted me over to the Jameson's Bow Street Distillery, for a couple of days whiskey blending and tasting to launch the new Bow Street 18 YO Batch 2. In half an hour we had covered our similar family histories, Brexit and exchanged a jokey tale or two. It was good to be back.

Bloody hell, the Vantage is impressive, a real leap forward for Aston Martin.

In 1934 Hans Trunkenpolz founded a repair workshop in Mattighofen, Upper Austria. It became one of the largest car and motorcycle garages in Upper Austria. Iin 1953, Hans started building his own Motorcycles under the name of ‘Kronreif, Trunkenpolz, Mattighofen’.
Kronreif meaning motor-vehicle, Trunkenpolz was the founder and Mattighofen was the location.
 

What a blessed, fertile, cultured and cultivated island Madeira is. This ‘island of eternal spring’ was a ‘paradise of naturalists’ with its exoticism attracting Thomas Cook and Joseph Banks. I’ts immensely fertile, everything seem to grow here, having been colonised by Henry the Navigator who introduced the sugar cane from Sicily and the Malvesia (Malmsey) vine, mentioned by Shakespeare’s Falstaff, from Crete. And it’s a big enough island to house different dialects with some pronouncing the second syllable of Madeira with an ‘E’ and others with an ‘I’.

Danesfield House and Spa evoked 50's movies as we cruised up the steep winding hill through the gardens in the Aston Martin Vantage, before stopping at a tree lined drive dominated by an imposing gothic clock tower. This vast sprawling and imposing Neo-Tudor mansion was completed in 1991 by architect W.H. Romaine-Walker for a soap magnate's son, Robert Hudson. Later during the war it was requisitioned by the Air Ministry as a reconnaissance and photography unit and was known as RAF Medmenham.

Last night IX Magazine attended the official launch of the new Lexus sponsored film “Takumi - A 60,000-hour story on the survival of human craft” at Japan House in Kensington for a special  screening with the director, writer and Kirie artist Nahoko Kojima.
Lexus has produced a new documentary that poses the question of whether the skills of devoted craftsmen and women can survive in a world increasingly powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Eighty Percent of yacht activity takes place in 20% of the world's oceans. Only 5% of what is beneath the world's oceans has been seen, let alone experienced. Oceanco's newest project, the 105-meter (345ft) diesel-electric driven Esquel has been conceived and designed to explore new territories.
Oceanco has created Esquel in collaboration with Timur Bozca Design, stylist Gina Brennan, Lateral Naval Architects and Engineering, and Pelorus—a leading experiential and yacht expedition travel company.