Taxonomy
Italy
6 entries
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Book IV
Alfa Romeo — the Biscione
A serpent with a human being in its mouth, on the nose of every car the company has ever built
Since 1910 every Alfa Romeo has carried, on its grille, a crowned serpent from which a human figure is emerging. Whether the figure is being eaten…
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Book V
De Tomaso Mangusta
The mongoose. Named, allegedly, as an insult, and shaped like an apology for it.
Mangusta is Italian for mongoose: the small, fast, faintly rabid carnivore famous for one thing, which is killing cobras. Alejandro de Tomaso built…
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Book V
Apollo Intensa Emozione
Named for the god who killed the Python and then took its oracle for himself
Apollo’s first recorded act on reaching Delphi was to kill the serpent that lived there. He then established his oracle on the spot and named its…
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Book VI
De Tomaso Pantera
The mongoose gave up and became a cat
Having named one car after the cobra’s natural predator, Alejandro de Tomaso named the next one after a big cat and sold it through Lincoln-Mercury…
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Book VI
Abarth — the Scorpion
Venomous, arachnid, and chosen because of a birthday
Carlo Abarth was born in mid-November and was therefore, by the reckoning of newspaper astrology, a Scorpio. He put the animal on the badge and it…
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Book VI
Iso Grifo
A griffin: eagle in front, lion behind. Both halves eat snakes.
Giugiaro drew it, Bizzarrini engineered it, Chevrolet supplied the V8, and the name is a mythological composite of the two animals most reliably…