“The single purest driving experience any supercar can provide.” Alrighty then. Hit me.
This is the 1988 Assoluto Crinale. I have been infatuated with this car since I was a baby. 4.37m worth of bright red motoring madness. 559 hp turbo V8, smidgen over 1 ton in weight, barely anything else. This is a psychoaxe-murderer of a car was gift to the company’s founder, an ultimate vision of the sports machine. From what I see today, it’s a glaring, wondrously eighties art piece aptly combining excess with performance.
The sound is something of a performance. The drama of an orchestra being shot to pieces by a broadside from the HMS Victory whilst playing the lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. It roars with triumphant glory, all at once exerting authority over the meager 4-pots I overtake on this b-road but also wanting you to push it further. An athlete who only lets themselves bask in their glory when they’ve done their absolute best.
The handling is reminiscent of the Ballet Russes performing Swan Lake. It’s a masterpiece. Majestic, delicate, sharp, moving. It always, always wants to send you into the nearest hedge, and merely asks that you, the driver, don’t do that. Oversteer is guaranteed if you even slightly overstep on the power during the exit, but drive it properly, and the rewards are immense.
It stops with all the force of a Eurofighter Typhoon coming out of supersonic flight. You will stop, regardless of what direction you’re facing at the end of it, and regardless of how many pieces you’re in.
You get a cassette player and a radio, plus what appears to be a heater for creature comforts. That’s really all you need. It’s a dreadful casette player at that, and I’m fairly sure it’ll overheat and ruin anything you put in there if you drive for long enough. But that’s not the point.
Indeed, all of what I’ve said misses the point. This is, at the end of the day, a car. It drives terribly for an everyday machine, it’s almost certainly hopelessly reliable and did I mention that it’s also hugely uncomfortable? And you can dress it up all you like, in history, story, with marketing, heck even with this review. But you can’t avoid that this is a hard car to drive and live with.
But that’s not the point of the car though. The '88 Crinale is about all of that guff. It’s the experience. It’s about driving something scary and dangerous because of why it’s dangerous and scary. The way I’ve written about it reflects the fear I felt whilst driving it.
Almost all the great cars in history are dressed up in a little excess and certainly a lot of embellishment. But it’s all a part of what makes a car ‘legendary’, or indeed, ‘legendarily bad’. We never really know until we actually get to drive one of them, which sadly for many of us, never happens. So this stuff about the “purest driving experience” - it is, of course, a fabrication. But if ‘pure’ refers to being incredibly close to something that is totally untamed and unhinged, then I can safely say that this beast meets all expectations perfectly.
I remember seeing the Crinale when I grew up. I was fascinated by it, and I still am now. Only now I know, it’s almost undrivable and thoroughly, thoroughly terrifying.
-Gavin Anderson