East African Motorshow

This weekend, The East African Motorshow will take place. Its touted not as a competition but a celebration of the culture of modifying vehicles to create a personal touch. In light of this I would like to pay homage to the pioneers in the field of vehicle modification

Back in the day, luxury car makers such as Rolls-Royce used to build a cars chassis and engine only, specially appointed coachbuilders built the body of the car,kinda like what happens with Matatus today, GMEA sells the Canter chassis then coachbuilders like Dodi, Sembi etc build the Matatus body to the specifications required

One such company, Pininfarina, was founded by Battista “Pinin” Farina on May 22nd 1930 in Turin. The company was designed to build special car bodies for individual customers or in small production runs. They are responsible for most of the designs of Ferraris, Alfa Romeos and the 406 coupe among others

By the way, theres a 406 Coupe in Kenya owned by some chap who works at Marshalls

Since I'm talking about personalization, let me talk abut the man before I deal with the Car

New York property magnate Peter S Kalikow is the chairman of the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (the western hemisphere's largest public transport provider, covering New York's buses, rail network and subway system),

He has amassed one of the world's finest collections of Ferraris. With badges like 330 America, 250 GT California Spider and 410 Superamerica, they're obscure, mostly from the Fifties and Sixties, and are worth tens of millions of dollars.

Now this seems like a man who has everything but NO!!! apparently Kalikow lacked a Ferrari built to his exact and very specialist requirements. To this end, he sought the involvement of Pininfarina, the result, The Ferrari 612 Kappa

First of all, the car is based on a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. This roughly £170,297 coupe has a 5.8 Litre V12 Engine with an output of 540HP which enables it move from a complete standstill to 100 Km/h in 4.2 seconds, a time slightly shorter than it will take you to read this paragraph. The car will then move on to its top speed of 320 Km/h (199mph) at the behest of its owner

This process is aided by the 6 speed manual transmission with F1 stlye paddle shifts on either side if the steering wheel

For rather obvious reasons, Kalikow did not feel the need to modify the engine

The body however has been reworked,its been done in such a fashion that you only begin to see the changes by staring at an adjacent standard car. In truth, only one panel remains unaltered - the rear bumper.


To reflect just how obsessive those modifications are, lets start with the front grille: now handcrafted from polished aluminium, recessed further back than the standard car's and with smaller vent holes. This sets the tone - a huge effort for a minimalist result.

Scaglietti

Kappa

Look across to the boot. Here you'll find a badge made up of crossed Ferrari and Pininfarina flags as on Fifties Ferraris, rather than a prancing horse.

Returning to the front of the car, the chrome-backed headlamps are a reminder of Ferraris of the same era, as is the deep scoop set into the bonnet.

"With this you'll find something nostalgic," says Paolo Garella, Pininfarina's Special Projects Manager. "We polished the very edge of it to reveal the aluminium beneath. The effect is known as a 'colpo di luce', or a ray of light."

Entry to the car is through personalized door handles.

These feature the owner's initials, psk, in the trademark Pininfarina font. These were not specified, but were added as a present by Pininfarina. If this is not enough to identify the car's initiator, there is a plaque in the door sill that explains the details even more clearly

Translated: Pininfarina Coachbuilders Special for Peter Kalikow, 2006

The car's most complex modification, and one of the hardest to pick out, resides at the rear. Thin buttresses now run down either side of the back windows, flowing towards the bootlid and providing a more hunched-forward, muscular stance.

The rear lights and their housings are altered, too, taken from an F430 and closer to those in early design sketches for the Scaglietti, but absent in the production car.

Kalikow was taken with the leather used in a 456 GT in his collection, officially unavailable from Ferrari since the early 90s, but unearthed to trim the interior of the car at his request. The extending seat bases and the pneumatically adjustable seat edges are unique features, as are three extra knurled aluminium switches that have appeared on the centre console.

The first switch swaps between a pianissimo 'town' horn and a fortissimo 'country' horn, a further retro Ferrari touch.

The second opens and closes blinds beneath the new, twin glass roof panels.

The third acts on liquid crystal elements set within the glass roof to give a variable degree of tinting. The glass' transparency can be changed from completely clear to pitch black.

The roof also houses a solar panel running up its centre,between the glass panels, which drives fans built below the parcel shelf to vent hot air out of the car when its parked in direct sunlight.

UPDATE
I recently discovered that The VW Group have been using this technology for some time now and a "solar sunroof" which even in very low sunlight, produces electricity to power the ventilator inside the vehicle using light-sensitive elements under the glass sunroof panel is available as an option on everything from an Audi A8 to a Skoda Superb

For all the discretion of Kalikow's Ferrari, a couple of CMB Prezzo type flossing stunts have sneaked in.

His signature appears on a dashboard plaque ,below the radio and there's the small matter of the car's name.

This is no longer a 612 Scaglietti, it's a 612 Kappa - Kappa being the letter in the Greek alphabet equivalent to a K; a K being the first letter on the licence plate of each of the cars in Kalikow's collection.

As mentioned before, the engine remained unaltered ,this explains why Ferrari was quick to sanction the car's existence. "Also, Mr Kalikow is a personal friend of Piero Ferrari" Garella points out. Ferrari also agreed not to copy any of the unique cues of the Kappa for future models.

As to the small matter of the, surely incredible, cost involved in the 612 Kappa's creation? "If you have to ask," Garella says, "you dont need to know"





SOURCES:
Basically pilfered from :-
-An article by Peter Grunert for www.topgear.com
-The images are from www.ultimatecarpage.com and www.topgear.com
NB:The Quote by Paolo Garella in the last paragraph is entirely a figment of my imagination
The actual exerpt from his interview with Peter Grunert was:
As to the small matter of the, surely incredible, cost involved in the 612 Kappa's creation? "You may ask," Garella says, "but this we can never disclose."