Table of contents for February 2021 in Robb Report

Robert Ross Ross is Robb Report’s automotive consultant. He has covered cars and motorcycles for the magazine since 2001 and has orchestrated Car of the Year since 2003 (p. 100). A passionate collector—as well as a keen competitor at various concours—he offers opinions that are always interesting and not always expected. “Among the 11 cars, my favorite was the Mercedes-AMG E 63 S Wagon, by far,” he says. “It’s like a pack mule with the spirit and performance of a quarter horse, and more fun than any wagon has a right to be.” Sandra Ramani Ramani has been covering travel, wellness and lifestyle topics for over 20 years. She got an exclusive first look at the Six Senses Shaharut for this month’s Robb Report, a new five-star outpost to open…

Most bags these days have the lofty ambition of being marketed as essential elements of a sophisticated, elegant lifestyle, though only one, the Suit Carrier Holdall from Bennett Winch, snagged the instant style cred of appearing in the trailer for the upcoming Bond film, No Time to Die. But the most useful bag from the independent British label might be its least ambitious. The Cargo Range, from $475, is nicely put together yet decidedly unglamorous, unapologetically designed for grunt work: transporting whatever you require moving to the beach house/mountain lodge/ university, or in and out of cars on a road trip. Italian waterproof nylon, military-grade webbing, Tuscan-leather trims and brass hardware combine on a kit bag that won’t flinch from rough conditions or rougher treatment. The smallest of the three…

Even from a distance, it’s clear the McLaren 765LT was designed with performance in mind, a paddleboard-size rear wing being an unambiguous signal that a machine has its sights set on the track. And as a fan of the marque’s 720S, on which the 765LT (for “Longtail”) is based, I was anxious to see how its new, more powerful sibling—the latest in McLaren’s Super Series line—measures up. After I crest the high doorsill and tumble into the comfortable sport seat, a stab of the start button elicits a raspy bark from the 4.0-liter, twin-turbocharged V-8. Making 755 hp at 7,500 rpm and 590 ft lbs of torque at 5,500 rpm, it takes the 765LT to a top speed of 205 mph. But those numbers, while hardly immodest, can’t quite convey…

Phase One, a specialist in medium-format cameras, has designed the XT IQ4 field system especially for landscape photography. It costs $58,990, which buys you the camera and the 32 mm F/4 lens, and there’s a new 90 mm F/5.6 lens available for just under $13,000 more. So what do you get for the total price, more or less, of a Mercedes-Benz CLS Coupe? To start, a crazy-high-resolution, 151-megapixel digital back; a sleek but sturdy body; and the absolute sharpest lenses anywhere. The setup is simple and efficient, allowing quick access to all the features. The XT IQ4 is mirrorless, eliminating a clunky shutter, and supports Rodenstock lenses, also known as some of the world’s finest optical glass. I know from my own collection of Rodenstock lenses over a 30-year career.…

For industries that streamlined pandemic life, made it safer, or both, 2020 did have its upsides. First-time customers to private aviation, for example, swelled by 300 percent year over year, with thousands of people flying privately for personal travel for the first time—a silver lining considering corporate travel by private jet declined by 80 percent during the same period. “From April onwards, two-thirds of our card clients were new,” says Andrew Collins, CEO of Sentient Jet, the industry’s leading jet-card provider. “Thanks to the uptick in new entrants, we saw sales we never would have thought possible during a pandemic.” The influx of novices was spurred in part by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which removed the 7.5 percent federal excise tax for all private air…

Every autumn since 2003, when Robb Report began inviting readers to judge its Car of the Year, participants have asked how to weigh a sexy super–sports car against an ultra-luxury sedan, and the answer has been . . . you don’t. The fact is, one car just can’t do it all. Each year, it seems that some low-slung, hip-high projectile makes the loudest, most memorable impression and, like a weekend in Las Vegas, obfuscates more clear and sober vision. The reality is that our judges—like most readers in the Robb Report universe—have garages populated with two-, four- and five-door choices for scratching different itches at different times. Is a mid-engine slingshot just what the doctor ordered this weekend? Is your preferred daily driver a rolling bank vault akin to an…

“I MADE THE MISTAKE, NO ONE ELSE,”  says former Hollywood power agent Michael Ovitz of the several dozen custom watches he commissioned from Patek Philippe about six or seven years ago. It was the first time Ovitz, who has been collecting for 35 years, placed a bespoke order, but his goal was ambitious: He requested several different references, each in a variety of metals, with one-of-a-kind dials. “They were terrific,” he says of Patek, “and accommodated everything I wanted.” His regret is not foreseeing two problems. The first was misunderstanding his own psychology: Too afraid he’d bang up his special treasures by wearing them, he never even took some of them out of the packaging. In hindsight, he says he would stick to one version of each reference. “My second…

An unusual sign will be going up this month across the street from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the High Line in lower Manhattan: In place of a sexy ad for sneakers or a fragrance, a billboard will celebrate Native Americans and, in doing so, tackle the complexities of their place in the United States. Chicago-based artist Andrea Carlson’s piece—mounted by the museum with the help of the elevated park and the luxury building providing its façade—is a busy pattern of colorful, detailed images from Native cultures, including a birchbark canoe, a hand merged with a talon, a diving loon and an upright, seemingly ambulatory Man Mound, a reference to the continent’s only surviving effigy earthwork of a human, located, as Carlson puts it, “in what is now…

In 1995, when chef Massimo Bottura opened Osteria Francescana, his restaurant in Modena, Italy, he introduced a menu that dared to rewrite traditional, classic Italian dishes. The experimental menu would be playful, bold and cerebral: Dishes would be inspired by jazz great Thelonious Monk and evoke the creativity of Damien Hirst, bridging the worlds of art and music through food. Predictably, the restaurant initially baffled locals and aggrieved arguably the most powerful guardians of Italian cuisine—Italian nonne—who bristled at the breaking of longstanding food traditions. But things change. Since earning three Michelin stars and topping the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list twice (in 2016 and 2018), Bottura has become recognized as a pioneer of modern Italian cuisine. In recent years, Bottura was tapped by his childhood friend Gucci CEO Marco…

IF ROME ever had a royal lineage, the Borgheses were it. The family arrived in the city in the 1500s, quickly rising to power, with Camillo Borghese being tapped to become Pope Paul V in 1605. From there, the noble family’s influence only grew, producing cardinals, princes and dukes, some of whom were among the largest landowners in the region. They built the Palazzo Borghese and Villa Borghese, and you can visit the villa today; it holds the family’s collection of fine art. As for the current Borgheses, the winds of fortune shift. The most well-known might be Lorenzo, who starred in the ninth season of The Bachelor. Just a short distance from the former palazzo and the Spanish Steps sits another Borghese home, constructed in 1550, that has undergone…

Powered by a 100 hp, parallel-twin four-stroke and weighing around 403 pounds with a full tank of gas, the $11,299 Aprilia RS 660 recalls the type of svelte, apex-hunting bikes on which the Italian brand built its name. And with its electronic assists (such as cornering ABS, a Continental six-axis inertial measurement unit, traction and wheelie control, an up-and-down quick shifter and even first-in-class cruise control) and five ride modes, including a pair for the track, it’s a machine on which beginners and experts alike can safely explore their limits. Cornering poise and agility are top-notch thanks to the bike’s sporty steering geometry, with the handling complemented by a more comfortable riding position than that of a superbike or super-sportbike; the handlebars are angled above the steering head, and the…

“We can create amazing finishes without one tree being felled.” WHILE A zero-carbon-footprint business jet is likely a decade away at least, Swiss design firm Yasava has a multi-pronged plan to offset the carbon footprint of an aircraft’s interior right now. The program includes a laser focus on the supply chain, sourcing materials like leather and wool from eco-conscious producers as well as locating high-quality recycled aluminum instead of using newly mined metal, all of which has an immediate effect. “Right off, we can reduce our impact by 80 percent,” says Christopher Mbanefo, Yasava’s founder and CEO (pictured). There’s also a clever high-tech component. Yasava incorporates high-res OLED displays, like those under the glass of the latest smartphones, into larger wall surfaces across the aircraft’s interior. These allow almost any…

The 2021 Robb Report Car of the Year competition was—against all odds—one of the more notable bright spots in otherwise “interesting times,” the essence of a supposedly ancient Chinese saying that best characterizes our present pandemic preoccupations. Traditionally held during November and December in St. Helena, Calif., and Boca Ra ton, Fla., respectively, the gathering in Northern California this year was quickly scuttled when much of Napa Valley, home to the Meadowood resort, the event’s longtime base, suffered a wildfire in late September. Then public-health concerns in December preempted the Florida event. But the spirit of Car of the Year was not so easily shaken. The RR1 team quickly relocated to Allegretto Vineyard Resort in Paso Robles, a tranquil community in Central California about 30 minutes from the Pacific Ocean…

The killing of George Floyd last May released a wave of pent-up rage against racism and police brutality that swelled into a global rallying cry for equality and justice, echoing through the small towns and big cities of the United States but also heard as far away as war-torn Syria and even the racially homogeneous societies of South Korea and Japan. ¶ Yet life continued as normal in many wealthy American communities, the storm a mere darkening of the distant horizon. One such isolation tank, according to Sophie Gochman, a teenage show-jumping champion, was the elite equestrian enclave of Wellington, Fla. Sophie, whose family owns a large horse farm in Wellington’s Grand Prix Village and an estate in nearby Palm Beach but who attends a private high school in Manhattan,…

Stark, ethereal landscapes abound in Israel’s vast Negev Desert, but there’s something special about its southern region, in the Arava Valley. On a clear day you can look west toward Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula or spot the red mountains of Jordan to the east. Sunsets glow like the sky on fire, followed by a canopy of stars. It’s here, about an hour north of the Dead Sea resort town of Eilat, that you’ll find the new Six Senses Shaharut—assuming, of course, you can spot it. “Our design is about creating a seamless flow with nature, so that you can barely see the man-made structures even when you’re in the middle of the resort,” says general manager Manish Puri. Once atop the hill on which it’s built, “none of the brick and…

A high-class sit-down sushi experience can quickly become a reverent study of a master at work, and safe to say, this is not the atmosphere you should expect for sushi night at home. Take it from chefs Taka Sakaeda and Jihan Lee, who met and honed their skills at the much-revered Masa, America’s only Michelin three-star sushi restaurant, and now serve a laid-back, convivial take on temaki (sushi hand rolls) at Nami Nori, their current venture, in New York’s West Village. Their approach is simple and delicious and skimps on neither craft nor fun—the perfect at-home sweet spot. First, Sakaeda says, don’t be intimidated. “It’s pretty common in Japan for people to have these temaki parties,” he says. “All the ingredients and vegetables are laid out and people make their…

WOOD HAS BEEN mankind’s constant companion for millennia. And while its value has been superseded by metals and minerals over the centuries, when worked by skilled hands it retains an ability to mesmerize that few materials can match. Artist Joel Parkes was making large public artworks before switching to bowls and smaller pieces six or seven years ago in his workshop in South West England. He fells nothing: The wood he uses has generally been down a long time in field, forest or river. Drying and manipulating it until it ruptures, he uses melted metals, gold leaf and other natural elements to ornament his work in remarkably elegant ways, giving them an aesthetic that is both ancient and futuristic. The Japanese call it kintsugi—the mending of broken ceramics using lacquer…

AS YOU read this, the latest Vendée Globe race winner may have already been crowned. Or not. A record 33 competitors left Les Sables d’Olonne, France, on November 8 of last year to tackle a singularly grueling and dangerous contest: a 21,638-mile solo circumnavigation of the globe through some of the world’s most dangerous waters. It’s an unforgiving, months-long sprint with no help allowed; many boats break or even sink, often hundreds of miles from help. Here, a look at the race, most likely still underway, known as the Everest of the seas. True Grit Two weeks in, the port foil on Thomas Ruyant’s boat, LinkedOut, shattered. With no possible repair, the Frenchman still managed to take the lead while tackling 30-foot seas in the Southern Ocean. Such indomitable spirit…

The pandemic has brought thousands of new fliers into private aviation. Travelers love the industry’s enhanced cleaning protocols, private terminals, direct flights to hundreds of small airports and limited exposure to the many touch points found in commercial air travel. But as the number of first-time fliers has grown, so have the scams. In Europe, two aviation associations have warned about websites that offer bogus charter aircraft with registrations lifted from legitimate operators. These websites accept payment, then disappear. At the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), which vets charter operators (and of which I’m a senior vice president), we’ve also seen an alarming rise of illegal charters aboard uncertified aircraft in the U.S. These prey on newcomers, who tend to shop by price rather than prioritizing aircraft maintenance and pilot…

Men don’t always make new friends easily beyond college. We have family, those university buddies and then colleagues. Maybe a group of neighborhood or gym guys you play pickup with. Chances are many of them are like you: They live in the same kind of house in a familiar part of town. Or you share professional interests, skills or educational backgrounds. Poker, however, is not like that. You have nothing more in common with the people around the table than . . . you all play poker. They could be a bunch of guys you might otherwise never sit down with. And that’s where the magic happens. In fact, one of the closest friendships of my life began during one of the most disastrous poker games I’ve ever played. I…

On February 18, Robb Report, in partnership with the Equus Foundation, will host the second Horsepower Gala to honor some of the equestrian world’s most significant figures. Robb Report established the gala and awards ceremony in 2019 to benefit Equus, America’s foremost equine-welfare organization, which works to raise awareness of horse abuse, neglect and slaughter. At the debut event in Boca Raton, Fla., Frank McCourt, a philanthropist and the then co-owner of the Global Champions League, was honored with the Horsepower Leadership Award, while Jessica Springsteen and Georgina Bloomberg were also honored for their success as riders and their dedication to equine welfare. This year, Robb Report is maintaining its commitment to the world of equestrianism with an invitation-only virtual celebration. At an online benefit auction, participants will toast a…