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2017 Frankfurt Motor Show | Observations on the Ferrari Portofino, Honda Urban EV and more

Related: We obsessively covered the Frankfurt Motor Show — here's our complete coverage The 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show kicked off the fall reveal season with an impressive array of powerful cars blended with forward-looking concepts. It's a seminal period for automakers, who find themselves at the intersection of disruption and opportunity. With that in mind, here are four takeaways from Frankfurt. The transformation of the curvy yet overbaked Ferrari California T into the Portofino is complete, and its coming-out party in Frankfurt served notice that Ferrari's entry-level sports car is much more formidable. There was nothing wrong with the California (and later the California T), but the Portofino features a cleaner look with stronger lines and an elegant resemblance to the rest of the Ferrari family. The California name is a good one. Used on a number of memorable cars in the 1950s and '60s, it's steeped in tradition, and certainly Ferrari will dust it off again. But switching to Portofino, the name of a scenic town in Italy, is a nice way to change the conversation and generate fresh interest in this part of the Ferrari portfolio. Man, people are stoked over the Honda Urban EV concept. Why? I assume it's the retro look that harks back to early Civics, and the lack of information about the concept itself. What people don't know, they're imagining. Honda hasn't even confirmed the range, the car is very small, and it likely won't be sold in the United States. With this dearth of facts, enthusiasts are filling in their own blanks. I guess that's OK. Count me among the intrigued. When I saw pictures of this thing early Tuesday morning, I was pretty excited, too. We do know Honda is expanding its electric strategy, and two-thirds of its new vehicles sold around the world will have some form of electrification by 2030. The Urban EV launches in Europe in 2019, and a hybrid CR-V rolls out in Europe next year. Unconfirmed for the U.S. market, it seems like a no-brainer to bring that version of the CR-V here. The electrification and autonomous tech parade of concepts continues. You gotta be there. It's the cost of doing business in the modern automotive landscape. This technology takes years to develop and launch, so the next best thing to remind the world you're trying to be cutting-edge is to show off lots of fancy concepts. Frankfurt had plenty. A couple standouts: The BMW I Vision Dynamics and Audi's Elaine and Aicon.

1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona could be world's first great 'condo find' [w/video]

Barn finds are the absinthe of the collector car world right now. They're highly intoxicating and a bit of the 'flavor of the month.' An actual barn isn't necessary, just some form of out-of-the-way long-term storage that involves a car being out of circulation for a long period of time, remaining complete with the time-capsule-like detritus of their slumber-yellowed newspapers, vintage eight-tracks or real pay dirt like a telex printout from Howard Hughes or a receipt from the Playboy Club. RM Auctions has just announced perhaps the first 'condo find' in a 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona coupe that had been stored in a Toronto condominium building for a quarter century. Like any good barn find, this Ferrari is still covered in a layer of thick dust (the removal of which would likely devalue the car considerably) and still has a cartridge entitled "Disco Rock" shoved in its original eight-track player. And while the one and only owner's taste in music may have been questionable, his taste in cars wasn't. The Daytona was the last front-engine V12 two-seater Ferrari produced during the so-called Enzo-era, when founder Enzo Ferrari was still in command of the company. With its 172 mph top speed, a Daytona was famously used by Dan Gurney and Brock Yates in setting a coast-to-coast record of 35 hours and 54 minutes to win the first Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash in 1971. An impulse trip to the Geneva Motor Show in the same year by a Toronto businessman saw him purchase the Daytona where he spent a month touring Europe before sending the car back to Canada on the Queen Elizabeth II. He drove it for eighteen years and put a whopping 90,000 kilometers – 56,000 miles – on the car prior to putting the car up on blocks in a condo garage before a trip to Asia that he anticipated would last just six months. The car remained in that spot until November 14, 2014. The car that originally sold for $18,000 in Geneva, Switzerland in 1971 is expected to bring in excess of $600,000 at RM Auction's Amelia Island sale in March. Carwash not included. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Berlinetta Chassis no. 14385 Body no.

Ferrari SUV officially being considered

A new report from Bloomberg seems to confirm that Ferrari is very seriously looking at creating some type of SUV. The news outlet reports that CEO Sergio Marchionne said the sports car builder will come to a final decision on the crossover in 30 months. This of course means that actual production will be several years off, if it happens at all. He also referred to the hypothetical crossover as an "FUV," which we assume means something like Ferrari Utility Vehicle or Fast Utility Vehicle. We doubt it's something offensive, but Marchionne has been quoted as preferring to be shot than have Ferrari build an SUV. If we had to guess whether Ferrari will build an SUV, we would go with, yes. Both Car Magazine and Bloomberg have reported that the company is in the early development phase of some utility vehicle. Both sources also mention similar details such as the fact that it will be based on the all-wheel-drive GTC4 Lusso platform and that there will be a hybrid powertrain option. Adding an SUV of some sort to the Ferrari line-up could also provide an opportunity to score a healthy number of sales and grow the company. According to Bloomberg, Marchionne said any sales expansion would have to be balanced with maintaining some exclusivity. But even if Ferrari sold just 2,000 units a year, as mentioned in a previous report, that would still be a 25-percent increase over the roughly 8,000 cars Ferrari sold in 2016. That number of vehicles would also keep Ferrari close to the 10,000-vehicle-per-year target Marchionne proposed a couple of years ago. Besides the chance for growth, building a Ferrari SUV would also keep the company in direct competition with other sports car builders planning their own utilities. Aston Martin will begin producing its DBX crossover sometime in 2019 and Lamborghini will reveal its production Urus SUV in December. Related Video: Featured Gallery Ferrari GTC4Lusso T: Paris 2016 View 17 Photos News Source: BloombergImage Credit: Drew Phillips Ferrari Crossover SUV Future Vehicles Performance Sergio Marchionne