There is something about Italian cars that makes them endlessly desirable. The names help of course – consider how the words Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati force your mouth around unfamiliar sounds so that already you are speaking of something different, exotic and romantic. And there is the Italian body design, so much braver and adventurous than anyone else’s. The sound of the engine, the impracticality, the exhibitionism, everything makes an Italian car the stuff of dreams.

But the really strange thing about them is that everyone’s favorite is the Alfa Romeo. They may not make supercars like Ferrari and Lamborghini, they may have a reputation for falling apart at the slightest opportunity and there may be far better cars in the same class – but the Alfa has soul. We are prepared to put up with the failings because … it’s an Alfa.

You don’t believe me? I remember a Top Gear program in which they put up the Alfa 147 GTA against a Ford Focus RS and a Volkswagen Golf R32. Predictably, the Alfa lost out in all departments except acceleration. But, when it came for the presenters to choose which car they’d rather have, they all chose…

this one.

A while back I wrote about the Cadillac CTS-V and tried to explain why I like its looks. It’s a beefy thing and lives in that narrow world between ugliness and brilliance – in my opinion, erring on the side of brilliance.

But how does it perform? Knowing that it is raced in the States, I was very interested to find that Top Gear had tried it and you can see the result by clicking on this link. Be warned, however, Jeremy Clarkson is at his most obnoxious when talking of American cars!

For a long time Ford in Britain were one of the most conservative of car manufacturers – tried and trusted was their motto. It was not until 1976, seventeen years after the birth of the Mini (which sent everyone else rushing to bring out similar spec products) that Ford dared to design a front-engined car with transverse engine.

Just occasionally, however, they seemed to have a rush of blood to the head and experimented with some strange ideas. The Ford Anglia of 1959 was one of these, heavily influenced by American styling and sporting a reverse-slope rear window that made it stand out like a sore thumb amongst other cars in their range.

To European eyes it looked strange and yet the car sold in large numbers. It was cheap, cheerful, nippy and handled pretty well for the time. Its great secret was the 105E engine – a little powerhouse that never gave up. But no-one seems to have told Ford; they must have thought it was the reverse slope window that made the car sell so well for, in 1962, they brought out the Consul Capri with the same feature.

The Capri flopped worse than the Edsel in America. In 1964 Ford gave up on it and concentrated their efforts on the much more conventional Cortina that was to prove their bread and butter for twenty years. The Capri name made a comeback as a cheap fastback with sporting pretensions in 1969 and this too proved very successful. But the reverse slope rear window was gone forever.

Yet those cheeky little Anglias really had something. Ask anyone who once owned one and they get a faraway, misty look in their eyes as they recall the good times they had in their Anglia.

CNN Money has an article entitled What is an American Car, Anyway?. It makes interesting reading, raising such points as the use of chrome that I would not have thought still applied.

But the central theme is correct – there is something about American cars that make them immediately recognizable, especially to the foreign eye. I have often pondered upon this as I watch the streams of cars on the streets and freeways of America. Even the European and Japanese cars are given tweaks that help them to fit into the American look.

In the end, I have to say that it’s the hood (or bonnet, as the Brits call it) more than anything else. Americans have been used to big engines for so long that any car without acres of hood just doesn’t look right. They may turn the engine sideways these days, just as the foreigners do, but the hood must still hint at power beneath.

And that has implications for the overall shape of the car, of course. While European cars especially have become stubby little things with the passenger section the dominant feature of the car, absorbing the hood and trunk, Americans have retained the traditional three-box format and their beloved hoods.

Obviously, this is a generalization and there are exceptions on both sides of the Atlantic. But it’s as true as the point about chrome mentioned by CNN.