Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i Robb Report

Basem Wasef A shutterbug since his days in the high school photo lab, Wasef has authored three books, directed numerous videos and penned multiple features on cars, motorcycles and aircraft. He returned to his passion for photography in this issue and wrote about Hasselblad’s new 907X medium-format digital camera (“Hasselblad Looks Back . . . to the Future,” p. 74). “Digital image quality is better than it’s ever been,” he says. “But shooting a Hasselblad still demands more patience and consideration than the next camera.” Viju Mathew Mathew spent more than a decade covering a broad range of luxury stories prior to becoming Robb Report’s automotive editor in 2017. In this issue, he co-wrote the magazine’s annual Car of the Year feature (p. 100). It was a photo finish for…

Like Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance master who inspires him, Horacio Pagani resides at the intersection of creativity and analytics. A true outlier, the 66-year-old hypercar designer and manufacturer combines latent talent, an innovative approach and enough flair to develop a model line that’s arguably the most exclusive in production: Fabergé eggs—crafted from noble alloys and bleeding-edge composites—capable of 220 mph (and more). Hailing from Casilda, Argentina, Horacio completed the construction of a single-seat race car for the Formula 2 Championship series at the age of 24. Soon drawn to Italy, he helped Lamborghini pioneer the use of composite materials before starting his own atelier, Modena Design. It was all building to the formation of Pagani Automobili and the debut of his Zonda C12 at the 1999 Geneva International Motor…

YOU MIGHT EXPECT a Denver penthouse to be chock-full of health-conscious amenities, since the city ranks as the fourth fittest in the country, and in the case of 1610 Little Raven Street, penthouse 6, you’d be right on the money. To make the most of two structural concrete pillars and the living room’s 20-foot ceilings and windows, the current owners of this 4,097-square-foot home installed a professional rock-climbing wall. Add to that a personal yoga studio (or second bedroom, if you prefer), a sauna inside the primary suite, a hot tub on the private roof-deck and a special faucet serving up alkaline water and you have the makings of a healthier 2022. The location in the Riverfront Park neighborhood piles on the access to active pursuits—the building sits across from…

Endless Summer Pacific Coast, Costa Rica This country’s primal attractions include helicoptering over volcanoes to land beside untamed rivers, zip-lining virgin rain forests and free diving with whales, sea turtles and mega-pods of dolphins as well as navigating shivers of sharks in a submersible off Cocos Island. Taking you to the action, Endless Summer’s treasure trove includes kiteboards, dinghies and snorkeling equipment, plus—naturally—a generous wine cellar. From $250,000 per week via Y.CO Trending San Blas Islands, Panama The remote San Blas feature some of the world’s richest marine life among 365 mostly uninhabited islands. Thanks to adventure firm Pelorus, all areas are accessible aboard the 165-foot Trending. That means solo-exploring Coiba’s diverse ecosystem, snorkeling the Holandes Cays, kayaking rain forest rivers in Cerro Hoya and hiking Pipeline Road in Gamboa…

WHEN ED BOYD, an accomplished designer for brands including Sony and Nike and currently a senior vice president at Dell, approached Revival Cycles founder Alan Stulberg to explore the outer limits of motorcycle design, neither had any idea it would take seven years for their notions to come to fruition. But expediency was kicked to the curb in favor of perfection, as both designers chased quality to the nth degree. “It’s so smooth, it looks like it shouldn’t work.” For example, Boyd’s initial concept was to be powered by a Yamaha V-twin but was eventually revised to have a Ducati engine, based on that marque’s historical and aesthetic allure as well as its adaptability. And along the way, outwardly simple-looking sub-assemblies and even hardware required considerable R&D. And so the…

If you’ve ever shot with an old Hasselblad, you can no doubt recall its inscrutable alchemy of heft, solidity and precision. The new 907X Anniversary Edition Kit, priced at $15,100, commemorates 80 years of that sensation, back to Hasselblad’s first camera, and a story that includes such heady moments in photographic history as capturing the first moon landing, the visuals of which were immortalized by two of the brand’s medium-format film cameras. The 907X keeps a nominal foot in the past with its boxy form and leaf shutter, but its smaller proportion defies the bulk of its forbears, hiding a massive 50-megapixel CMOS sensor within its all-metal body. The resulting 8,272-pixel x 6,200-pixel files offer surgically sharp images enhanced with Hasselblad’s proprietary HNCS color-management technology; by controlling the dynamic range…

It may seem like bliss, but driving 10 ultra-premium automobiles in a single day is an exhausting task. As if that weren’t enough, evaluating all those vehicles in a coherent context is even more challenging. This year, Robb Report utilized three scoring components to determine a final tally. First, the Vehicle Score distilled the evaluation process into five categories, in which a car could garner a total of 50 points from each judge: Looks: Interior and Exterior Luxury and Comfort: Ergonomics, Materials, NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) Performance: Acceleration, Handling and Braking Utility: Capacity and Practicality Intangibles: Wow Factor and Collectibility The second element was Reader Ranking, in which each judge chose their top three finishers. The winner of this tally saw 15 bonus points applied to its average Vehicle…

PML PML is an offshoot of bespoke trouser maker Pommella-Napoli and, like any younger brother, feels a bit more irreverent. Besides ready-made pants in Pommella’s one-pleat, Neapolitan style, it skillfully tailors easy but elegant items for the rest of one’s wardrobe, such as cashmere overshirts, reversible wool overcoats and long-sleeve polos with one-piece collars. Chester Mox LA-based Chester Mox creates wallets, bags and small leather accessories on par with Europe’s finest, using an impressive stable of hides, such as French chèvre, shell cordovan and American alligator. As each piece is handmade to order, customization is king. Options include the exterior and lining materials, monogramming and even the ability to upgrade to colored linen threading. CQP CQP is yet another Swedish brand with a hip acronym—short for Conversations & Quintessential Products—and…

Not only is it the fastest, most powerful pure-combustion production car from a heritage manufacturer; there’s also a good chance it will remain so forever. So here it is: peak internal-combustion engine. Since Karl Benz built his Patent Motorwagen 135 years ago, carmakers have been refining and emboldening the gas-guzzling power plant that still propels most of our cars, but we’ve finally reached a tipping point. Automakers are announcing they’re ceasing the development of conventional engines in favor of hybrid and electric power trains, even setting dates by which they’ll no longer offer the former at all. Bugatti is no exception. Now with a majority of it controlled by supercar and EV-tech start-up Rimac, the French marque will go hybrid for its next all-new model, eventually to be followed by…

Pre-pandemic, injecting fun into a business trip likely meant grabbing a few days of post-conference R&R at a five-star resort. Now, though, fliers are optimizing their private-jet access in more creative ways. “The lines are more blurred than ever,” says D. J. Hanlon, executive vice president of sales at fractional provider Flexjet. “Clients figure they can work off-site with a cell phone and laptop, so they’re exploring domestic vacation spots and realizing they don’t have to come back Sunday night.” Leona Qi, president of VistaJet US, says one in four flights now includes children. “We’re seeing a trend of clients flying farther to remote locations and bringing their families with them,” she says. Clive Jackson, chairman of UK-based charter firm Victor, describes a recent customer: a Swedish hedge-fund manager who…

As an automotive journalist of a certain vintage, I get approached from time to time for the occasional special project. A few years ago, I worked with a private-equity house that was considering investing in small British sports-car makers. As part of our research, we identified 22 new or revived brands that had launched over the previous 15 years, such as Invicta and Austin-Healey. Of those 22 start-ups, just one had survived: Ariel, which is still making its extreme, exoskeletal two-seaters to great acclaim but in tiny numbers. Designing a new car is the easy bit; building it to scale with doors that thunk nicely is really hard. Ariel has endured by not bothering with either scale or doors—nor a windshield (unless ordered), roof nor pretty much any of the…

In the spring of 2020, when the whole world suddenly came to a halt, city dwellers began concocting all kinds of escape fantasies. Some imagined moving to a rural area and becoming sustainable farmers; a number nursed long-dormant artistic ambitions; still others devised plans for new tech ventures, with visions of blockchains dancing in their heads. But one Parisian couple, Victoire de Pourtalès and Benjamin Eymère, dreamed up a project that combined all three of these scenarios, plus a few more. Their bold new venture, as Eymère explains while steering his Citroën Ami electric buggy toward their hemp field in the French countryside, is a kind of highbrow ecological amusement park: “an open-sky R&D laboratory” that links art, nature and science. It helps that the couple’s new base of operations…

Landing at the airport on the tiny West African island of Príncipe, the plane seems to skim the top of the dense jungle canopy, almost like a pebble skipping the surface of the water. Runway and shack-like terminal aside, there’s barely any evidence of human intrusion into the Jurassic Park–like landscape. Later, as you roam through that jungle on foot, the sensation of time warping is only magnified. The strange caws and yelps that ricochet round the canopy, evidence of the dozens of unique bird species here, could just as easily be a dinosaur's, out of place and time. It’s an impression that also hit Mark Shuttleworth when he first touched down here in his Bombardier jet over a decade ago, casting around with his pilot for a handy pit…

Nights on Moskito Island can be quiet. That’s due in part to geography—the tiny, 125-acre private isle is in the tranquil British Virgin Islands—but it’s also very much by design. My first evening at the Branson Estate, after a dinner of fresh mahi-mahi, lamb shanks and tuna sashimi, I strolled the dark, meandering path back to my residence, swung open the door (with no room keys, the place felt like a second home) and was met by a pin-drop silence broken only by the waves gently crashing just outside the window. But that’s only one sublime experience on Moskito Island, created by Virgin Group founder and space-adventuring billionaire Sir Richard Branson. There are more to be had. What sets this newest escape apart from other postcard-worthy BVI destinations—including Branson’s neighboring…

JOE BEATRICE SPENDS his day tasting whiskey, assessing the character of the contents of barrel after barrel throughout his multiple maturation warehouses. It’s one of his jobs, along with his two full-time blenders, to know the flavor profiles of the over 10,000 casks of bourbon and rye they own. But while this is standard work at a distillery, what’s different about Barrell Craft Spirits, the company Beatrice founded in 2013, is that it’s never distilled a drop. Barrell is one of the most celebrated of the new wave of non-distilling producers, or NDPs. In and of themselves, NDPs are nothing new; if you drink American whiskey, you’ve probably enjoyed many of them over the years, perhaps without even knowing it. Bulleit, for example. Or Redemption Rye, Templeton or Angel’ Envy.…

FOR DECADES NEW builds in Los Angeles have resembled overlarge white cubes. Now, following a period when homeowners spent more time than ever within these glossy, austere showplaces, their tastes—and needs—are changing. We asked four renowned firms to solve the square-shaped design’s problems by drafting a version of the California abode that responds to these evolving desires. WINDS OF CHANGE Alex Josephson Partisans Josephson, a Toronto architect, is known for creating twisty, unconventional buildings, so it makes sense that his blueprint drastically reimagines the Los Angeles home by “using new materials and processes to support turning radical forms into being and avoid the ease of consistency and the age-old, white-box design.” Josephson cites innovation in fabrication processes and modular living as examples of these new techniques; his sketch depicts sizable…

“What’s unique about yachting expeditions are the intimate experiences these small groups have, alone in some of the most beautiful, remote places on Earth. That’s something you can’t replicate.” Patrick had previously chartered boats in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the Adriatic and set foot on all seven continents. Still, he’d never witnessed anything like this. “Twenty humpback whales surrounding our Zodiac, a feeding frenzy on krill,” he recounts. “Diving, water boiling, coming up a few feet away—it was a life experience to see these mammoth mammals having the time of their lives.” Such was a typical afternoon last October aboard the Nansen Explorer, a 236-foot ice-class vessel converted into an amenity-laden 12-guest explorer yacht. Patrick, who requested a pseudonym, was sailing with his family for two weeks in northern…

The prototype’s spec sheet lists a top speed of 50 mph, a max hover of about eight feet and a 40-minute range. HOVERBIKES HAVE been on every sci-fi geek’s wish list since Luke Skywalker first rode one in Return of the Jedi. Now, Japan’s A.L.I. Technologies is taking deposits for the world’s first real commercial unit. The XTurismo Limited Edition features two large rotors in the center of its frame, with four smaller fans on the outer edges. While the support rotors are powered by electric motors, the main thrust comes from a 228 hp gas-powered Kawasaki motor, a compact performance engine designed for motorcycle competition. It’s part of a drive system co-developed with Toda Racing. The body, constructed from lightweight carbon fiber, looks like a cross between a sportbike…

A [Car of the] Year Unlike Any Other. Nineteen years into an annual event that has become a welcome tradition within the pages of Robb Report, our 2022 Car of the Year (COTY) disproved the old adage that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Indeed, in addition to the cars, just about everything was different this time around: The venues, the roads and courses and the food and wine all changed names and places. And fresh, too, was the judging, which our editorial team tuned up to be more akin to how automotive journalists on assignment assess the latest and greatest cars. For the 178 readers who drove our 10 COTY competitors, we reorganized the judging criteria and developed a new points scale to make the…

After the vehicles were parked for the night, the judges continued to enjoy the perks of officialdom: Even the most ardent car enthusiast eventually needs to slip out from behind the wheel and into something more comfortable, like a glass of great Cabernet Sauvignon. And because one cannot live by wine alone, culinary delights orchestrated by master chefs were the highlights of the pre- and post-drive dinners savored by Car of the Year judges and their guests. During the day, attendees availed themselves of the opportunity to add a little extra luxury to the experience, provided by a host of event partners. New this year was our West Coast venue, the Montage Healdsburg resort in Healdsburg, Calif., and on the East Coast, we stayed for the first time at the…

Exclusive air travel isn’t all private jets and helicopters anymore. In the coming years, dirigibles will make a major comeback. A massive blimp dubbed Airlander 10 will fly adventurous passengers on a frigid trip from Norway to the North Pole come 2025, and Space Perspective expects to send tourists into Earth’s stratosphere in 2024 via a balloon. Of course, the big question is: Are they just full of hot air? Airlander 10 VS. Space Perspective I’M PAYING WHAT FOR WHAT? $79,000 for a two-person cabin for a 38-hour trip. (For comparison: A superyacht trip to the North Pole with Ariodante Travel runs at just $23,450 per person for a weeklong jaunt.) $125,000 per seat for a six-hour journey. (It’s one of the less costly space voyages; Virgin Galactic asks $450,000…