Auto News 5

You know the Brembo brand, which peeks out from between the wheel spokes on the world's most potent automobiles, as a boutique maker of exemplary braking components. But while you weren't paying attention, Brembo grew from a 1961 Italian upstart into the world's largest independent manufacturer of cast iron brake rotors, aluminum calipers, and carbon-ceramic-material (CCM) discs. Brembo supplies braking equipment for cars, motorcycles, and commercial vehicles worldwide with 35 manufacturing and business operations in 14 countries on three continents. This $1-billion enterprise has over 5000 employees, more than 500 engineers and technical specialists, and its fingers in more than brake rotors, calipers, and friction materials. Brembo affiliates manufacture seat belts, child safety equipment, helmets, and motorcyclist air bag jackets. This firm also assembles corner modules -- consisting of suspension linkages, wheel hubs, brake components, and ABS sensors -- for Aston Martin, Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche.

It took 110 years for the Porsche car company to revisit its founder's concept of a hybrid powertrain with an internal-combustion engine plus electric motors. The Porsche 918 Spyder is one of the most astonishing concept cars ever presented, by anyone. To claim -- and be able to prove, no doubt -- that this missile can get around that crinkly old racetrack in the Eifel mountains faster than a Carrera GT and provide 78-mpg fuel economy (if you respect speed limits) is utterly amazing. Yet, given the source, it's much easier to believe those claims than to question them.