The Alfa Romeo Spider is one of the most popular classic cars of all, so it's no wonder that this model also graces the cover story of the new SwissClassics Revue, which is arriving with subscribers these days and can be purchased at newsstands. And, of course, you can also find out why Teddy Burckhardt bought a Spider 2000 Veloce.
Pre-war cars are often considered difficult to maintain and complicated for the driver. With a Ford Model A, however, this doesn't have to be the case, as this six-page buying guide proves.
In the second part of the article "Monteverdi - Leap to America", Roger Gloor reports in detail on the Monteverdi 2000 GTI, which was developed in 1967 in collaboration with Pietro Frua in parallel with the plans for America based on BMW technology.
Downsizing is now considered a modern trend, but BBC engineers were already talking about it around 40 years ago and developed the Comprex pressure wave supercharger, which was intended to overcome the disadvantages of the poor response of conventional turbo engines. Unfortunately, BBC gave up its research activities after the merger with Asea, but around 200,000 Mazda 626s with Comprex diesel engines were sold (on the Japanese market) under the aegis of Mazda. Incidentally, one of these vehicles is in the collection of the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.
And then there was the Startomatic, developed by Swiss cab entrepreneur Paul Schmidli at the end of the 1960s and successfully marketed in the 1970s. With fuel savings of 30% and more, the Startomatic was the forerunner of today's widely used start/stop systems.
Worth reading in the new issue, however, are the review of the antiquarian book "The French Sports Car Revolution", the more than 170 classified ads with some extremely rare classic cars, the previews and reviews of events in Switzerland and abroad as well as the calendar of events and the current market prices in Swiss francs and many other articles.
SwissClassics Revue 44/4/2014 is on sale now and costs CHF 9.00 for a single issue or CHF 48.00 for a six-issue subscription (per year) including postage. SwissClassics Revue cooperates with www.zwischengas.com. Subscription and archive issues can be ordered on the publication's website.
