Ted Taormina
The Italian Job: Where Power Meets Poise
In Redwood City, behind the discreet facade of Taormina Motorsports, a different kind of atelier hums with possibility. Here, polished steel gleams beneath skylights, and the air is laced with the perfume of fine leather and fresh lacquer. This is not simply a workshop — it is Ted Taormina’s salon, where automotive dreams are tailored with the same precision as a couture gown.
Ted himself is a man whose presence carries the calm intensity of someone who has danced with speed — and won. For decades, he has moved in the rarefied world of exotic automobiles, his clientele an unspoken registry of the discerning and the daring. Yet his greatest creation, The Italian Job, is not just a car.
It is a statement piece — a pearl-white sculpture accented in the green, white, and red of his Italian heritage, unapologetically audacious yet impossibly refined.
Style in Motion
Fashion has its runway. Ted has the open road. In both worlds, the magic lies in the perfect union of form and presence.
The Cobra — the legendary silhouette that inspired The Italian Job — is as much about attitude as it is about aesthetics. It’s the automotive equivalent of a backless gown: daring, unforgettable, impossible to ignore. When Ted brought this icon into his atelier, it wasn’t simply to restore its beauty.
It was to imbue it with the kind of rarefied elegance that makes heads turn, whether at a red-carpet arrival or at 200 miles per hour.
In his hands, this Cobra became a fusion of Italian sensuality and American confidence — an object equally at home framed in chrome or in the lens of a fashion photographer.
An Eye for the Extraordinary
The true magic of Taormina Motorsports is not in the engines, but in the vision. Ted approaches each commission like a designer studying the drape of fabric, the fall of light on silk. His garage is a gallery, every car a canvas, every curve considered.
When we photographed West Coast Leather at his shop — supple jackets and second-skin trousers against the gleam of Italian exotics and vintage racing legends — the pairing felt inevitable.
Leather and lacquer. Seam and stripe. Both born of craftsmanship, both designed to quicken the pulse.
The Man Behind the Machine
Ted Taormina is part craftsman, part curator, and part storyteller. His personal history — from growing up in a big Italian-American family to working alongside legends — is woven into every project he undertakes. By eighteen, he was already tuning Ferrari V12s under the guidance of Lamborghini’s great Al Burtoni, his hands apprenticed to heritage . He raced Lamborghinis in Nevada, collaborated on speed runs at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and learned from Carroll Shelby himself.
He speaks of cars the way a jeweler might speak of diamonds: the cut, the brilliance, the way it makes you feel when you wear it — or in this case, drive it. Breaking records, like his 201.1 mph run in The Italian Job, or the later 223.21 mph Sun Valley blitz, is simply the natural expression of his philosophy: beauty should not be static. It should move — and it should move you.
Beyond The Italian Job
While The Italian Job may be his signature, it is not his only masterpiece. Taormina has built over 80 Cobras for clients, each a bespoke work of passion.
His Superleggera is a lighter, sleeker expression — designed to take you from “church to the track to dinner in one day,” as he puts it. His Cobrari marries a Ferrari V12 to Cobra curves, producing a roadster as exotic as a couture gown and as rare as a diamond choker. Limited to just 25 examples, it is tailored to its buyer’s tastes — leather interiors inspired by handbags, paint matched to haute couture palettes.
These creations aren’t cars; they are investment pieces, timeless designs imbued with cultural cachet and personal narrative.
Power, Poise, and Possibility
In fashion, we speak of garments that transform the wearer — gowns that command attention, jackets that embolden, heels that redefine posture.
Ted’s creations are no different. Stepping into The Italian Job is not unlike slipping into a perfectly tailored leather jacket. There is a weight, a fit, a whisper of something daring. And once it’s yours, it feels like it was always meant to be.
Taormina’s salon is more than a workshop; it is a stage for desire. It is no coincidence that his showroom hosts fashion shows, charity soirées, and couture photo shoots alongside Cobras and Ferraris.
For Ted, cars and couture have always been companions: “Cars tell a story, and so does fashion,” he says. Both are declarations of identity, both demand audacity, both are unforgettable when done right.
Cars tell a story, and so does fashion.
Ted speaks of cars the way a woman speaks of fashion — not as necessities, but as indulgences that tell the world who you are. He knows that a Superformance Cobra, like a bespoke jacket, is not for everyone. It is for the woman who understands that luxury is not about having, but about becoming.
Luxury is not about having, but about becoming.
“Cars tell a story, and so does fashion,” he says. And in his world, both stories are written in bold strokes — an emerald stripe down a pearl-white hood, a leather jacket cut to command a room, a record shattered in the desert sun.
What’s more fashionable than being unforgettable?
For Women of Sublime Avenue
For the women of Sublime Avenue — women who understand that luxury is not defined by necessity but by desire — Taormina Motorsports offers something irresistible: style you can drive, speed you can own, and legend you can wear.
Because what’s more fashionable than being unforgettable?
Behind the Scenes
Photography by Komei Harada
Makeup and Hair: Angelina Marycheva, Krystal Nguyen, Yaya Baltazar, Mai Hua
Models: Taryn Murray, Sarah Liang, Jane Huang, Jamie Lee Kendall, Victoria Denysenko, Sneha Vishal, Darlene, Adrienne Wincher
Stage director: Eugene Kremleff
Production Assistant: Atirath Kosireddy
Clothing: courtesy of West Coast Leather
Clothing design: Stanley `Skip` Pas, Joe Crane
Event production: Sublime Avenue
