FOUND! ‘LOST’ ATS 2500 GTS WHY IT’S TIME TO BUY A LOTUS EXIGE
40 YEARS OF THE PORSCHE SUPERCAR THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
1964 PORSCHE
904 GTS
■ The ex-Scuderia Filipinetti Porsche 904 GTS, Chassis 079
■ 4th in class at Le Mans 1964 with Herbert Müller and Claude Sage
■ Fully documented history, including 25-year custodianship by Porsche Museum
■ Proven historic racer, appearances at Goodwood, Le Mans Classic and Silverstone Classic
962 - 010
‘962-010’ the very last works chassis to be used by the factory team ■ Driven to 2nd place at Le Mans by Derek Bell, Hans Stuck and Klaus Ludwig ■ Impeccable ownership history since sale by Porsche in 1989 ■ Amazing preserved condition, untouched since her last race and wearing her 1988 Le Mans paint
SCAN
THE FAMOUS MORNING REVIVER, REVIVED.
For many years Harris’s famous morning reviver was served over the counter as a remedy, post-revelry, for the roisterous and bibulous of London’s St James’s. With its tinctures of gentian, cinnamon, clove and ammonia, it was the head-clearing jolt needed to start the process all over again. Now, revived as a cocktail bitters, this new version of The Original Pick-Me-Up is no less effective, but a touch more palatable.
STARTER
Historic heroes at Festival of Speed, Peking to Paris... solo, early GT3s, 60 years of Bronco, Willow Springs update and more
40 YEARS OF PORSCHE 959
From Gruppe B design study to production perfection, the 959 is the wunderwagen that rewrote the rules
WHISPERING PHANTOMS
David Lillywhite very quietly gets to grips with two of the most stylish Rolls-Royce Phantoms ever constructed
VIRGIL EXNER’S DESIGN LEGACY
Peter M Larsen profiles the creator of Chrysler’s iconic 1950s Forward Look – the ‘100 million dollar man’
ATS 2500 GTS RESTORED
Up on jacks for decades, this little sports coupé, conceived by legends and one of just 12 made, is back on the street at last
ASCARI, IN LIFE AND DEATH
Remembering Alberto 70 years after his death through a focused selection of the great man’s personal effects KEN OKUYAMA AND HIS KODE61
Meeting world-renowned designer Ken in studio and out on Tokyo streets in the Kode61 Birdcage supercar at night
THE BERTONE CORVETTES
One radically rebodied, the other completely re-engineered, these ’Vettes were inspired by a lizard and a legend
TOP 50 CAR FILMS
Richard Heseltine sifts through decades of celluloid; selects 50 obscure gems and a few obligatory blockbusters
ACQUIRE
Buying a Lotus Exige, collecting rare books, automotive art by Dirk Becker, Harry Winston’s Opus watches, products, book reviews and more
How we love an anniversary or two. Or more. I know we shouldn’t need an excuse to feature great cars and people, but a birthday of some sort should always be reason to celebrate.
In this issue, we have a few: 40 years since the Porsche 959 first appeared at a motor show; 70 years since that racing great Alberto Ascari died; 70 years, too, since Moss and Jenks won the Mille Miglia; also 70 years since designer Virgil Exner created ‘The Forward Look’ for Chrysler (which itself celebrates its centenary this year); 100 years of the RollsRoyce Phantom; and 200 years of the Stelvio Pass, would you believe. There’s probably an anniversary of me writing about anniversaries in the Welcome page, but we won’t go there.
Of course, it’s a sad fact that very few people originally involved with any of the happenings listed will still be around, except for the Porsche – there are plenty of engineers and designers with us from the 959 days.
There’s also Georg Kacher, the now-legendary (and very tall) German motoring journalist who drove the 959 new –and has since become known for breaking hundreds of motor industry stories. His first piece for Magneto is on the development and impact of the 959. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Oh, and if you want more anniversaries, and other news and features, too, please do sign up to our email newsletters. Scroll to the bottom of www.magnetomagazine.com to do so, if you haven’t already. Thank you!
David Lillywhite Editorial director
TONY SWINNEY
Working as Mustard Post, Tony takes raw photography files and transforms them into polished works of art. His colour grading and stylised treatments have helped perfect many of the images in this and recent issues – all with the rest of us pestering him for the pictures as soon as possible.
KUNIHISA KOBAYASHI
A talented freelance automotive and lifestyle photographer, ‘Koba’ works out of Yokohama, Japan. He was clearly in his element shooting the coachbuilt Kode61 designer supercar with deputy editor Wayne Batty in Tokyo’s neon-lit shopping districts at night. See the superb results further on in this issue.
GEORG KACHER
Has any journalist written more auto industry inside stories than Georg? For his first Magneto piece, he deep-dives into a car he drove new: the Porsche 959. Georg still hopes to drive the Carrera Panamericana, find a LHD Bristol 408 and become a social media granfluencer.
PETER LARSEN
Peter has co-authored several revered books on French cars and coachbuilders, and he is one of the world’s most experienced concours judges. His work on designer Virgil Exner in this issue was prompted by his part in organising a celebration of Exner cars for the 2025 Pebble Beach Concours.
Deputy editor Wayne Batty
Marketing manager
Rochelle Harman
Editorial director
David Lillywhite
Creative director
Peter Allen
Staff writer
Elliott Hughes
Marketing and events
Jasmine Love
Managing director Geoff Love
Managing editor
Sarah Bradley
Designer Debbie Nolan Accounts
Advertising sales Sue Farrow, Rob Schulp
Jonathan Ellis, Sarah Dilley
Lifestyle advertising Sophie Kochan
Contributors in this issue
Advertising production Elaine Briggs
Will Broadhead, Jonathon Burford, Nathan Chadwick, Sam Chick, Robert Dean, Richard Dredge, Martyn Goddard, Rob Gould, Rick Guest, Matthew Hayward, Richard Heseltine, Georg Kacher, Evan Klein, Kunihisa Kobayashi, Peter M Larsen, John Mayhead, Robert Powell, Clive Robertson, Tim Scott, Peter Stevens, Tony Swinney, Zach James Todd, Joe Twyman, Matt Walford, Greg White, Rupert Whyte
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The making of Magneto
Multi-hued C 29 (the first 911-based test mule to wear 959 body panels), the pearl white Gruppe B design study and a series 959 together in studio. We had waited months for this moment. Usually they’d all be at Porsche’s brilliant Kallenberg facility in Stuttgart, but the Gruppe B had recently been on display in Hamburg – still in high demand 42 years after its debut.
THE RIGHT KIND OF SUN
For once, we had everything we could need. Generous owner, super-helpful car handler, private roads, even a valeter. Photographer Greg White, creative director Peter Allen and editor David Lillywhite were on site from 8:00am. But the forecast sun didn’t appear. Aware that grey skies would dull the shoot, we waited... This Phantom shot was finally taken around 7:00pm.
Great care has been taken throughout the magazine to be accurate, but the publisher cannot accept any responsibility for any errors or omissions that might occur. The editors and publishers of this magazine give no warranties, guarantees or assurances, and make no representations regarding any goods or services advertised in this edition.
NOMINATE NOW FOR THE 2025 AWARDS
Last year’s relaunch of the International Historic Motoring Awards, the most prestigious global awards night in the world of collector cars, was a resounding success. The 2025 edition will be held on Friday November 14 at the fabulous Peninsula London hotel. To nominate or to book a table, please visit www.historicmotoringawards.co.uk
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Don’t miss out on any issues of Magneto magazine. You can subscribe for one year for £54 including p&p (€62 or $68, plus postage), or two years for £94 including p&p (€108 or $120, plus postage). Magneto is delivered worldwide in strong cardboard packaging. Please visit www.magnetomagazine.com or +44 (0)208 068 6829
CONCOURS OF ELEGANCE
HAMPTON COURT PALACE | 5–7 SEPTEMBER 2025
PRESENTING PARTNER
1 1988 McLaren MP4/4
Seven
of the
best at the 2025 Festival of Speed
Modern Formula 1, WRC and drift have grown at Goodwood – but the historic machinery on display is still off the scale. Here are a selection of our favourites
Until Max Verstappen’s recordbreaking 2023 campaign, no Formula 1 car had dominated like the McLaren MP4/4. Designed by Steve Nichols and Gordon Murray, and driven by the legendary duo of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, the car won 15 of the 16 races in the 1988 season. At this year’s Festival of Speed, in front of thousands of passionate fans, Prost was reunited with the very chassis he used to triumph in Monaco, France and Mexico.
The 300 SLR is one of the most valuable and historically significant cars on the planet. Derived from the dominant W 196 Grand Prix machine, the SLR gained mythical status thanks to its sportscar racing exploits – most famously at the 1955 Mille Miglia with Stirling Moss at the wheel of 722, now retired from active duty. Owned by Mercedes, the example shown at the Festival is rarely seen in public. It was originally used as a test and development chassis for the SLR programme ahead of the ’55 season.
3 Ford SuperVans
It would be easy to dismiss the Ford SuperVans as a cynical marketing exercise – if they hadn’t captured the public’s imagination to the extent that they did. By clothing a racing car’s heart with a Transit van’s workaday body, the SuperVans have become cult icons. To celebrate 60 years of the Transit – hailed by Ford as the “Backbone of Britain” – the Blue Oval brought every generation of SuperVan to the Festival, from the original GT40powered Mk1 to the all-electric, 2000bhp SuperVan 4.2. Naturally, the crowds were thrilled as each mad creation charged up the Duke of Richmond’s driveway.
4 1995 Subaru Impreza 555 WRC
For WRC fans, few cars are more iconic than L555 BAT – the Subaru Impreza in which Colin McRae won the 1995 RAC Rally and secured the World Championship aged just 27. In doing so, he became the youngest champion in the sport’s history and cemented his status as one of the UK’s greatest drivers. Seeing McRae’s car storm up the Hill to mark the 30th anniversary of his title was emotional – made all the more poignant with Colin’s father, Jimmy, at the wheel and his daughter, Hollie, in the passenger seat.
5 1933 Napier-Railton Special
Commissioned by Land Speed Record hero John Cobb and designed by Reid Railton, the fearsome 23.9-litre Napier-Railton was built to conquer Brooklands. With 24 race wins and multiple other records – including the alltime lap record of 143.44mph at the Surrey circuit – it succeeded, becoming synonymous with the derring-do of pre-war motor sport. After its racing career, it served as a test bed for aircraft brake parachutes. To mark the 90th year since its speed record, it was run in Brooklands open-pipe spec, outdoing even the Beast of Turin 1911 Fiat S76 for aural drama.
6 1975 Porsche 917K no. 030
Better known as the Count Rossi 917, chassis 030 was converted for road use by Porsche at the request of Martini heir Count Gregorio Rossi di Montelera after contesting just one race in 1971. Fitted with road-car addenda such as exhaust silencers, indicators and mirrors, and boasting new leather trim, it was driven 400 miles from Weissach to Paris upon collection. Still roadused today, this unique factorymodified 917 was shown at the Porsche Café alongside its modern road-going equivalent, the 963 RSP.
7 1995 McLaren F1 GTR
Few expected the F1 GTR to survive the full 24 hours at Le Mans in 1995 – let alone win outright. Despite its name, the F1 was never designed with racing in mind. Fate, however, had other ideas, and the Ueno Clinic-liveried F1 GTR – prepared by Lanzante Motorsport and piloted by Yannick Dalmas, Masanori Sekiya and JJ Lehto – took the chequered flag after 16 hours of rain. This nowlegendary car sits on The Boulevard in the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, and it’s so valuable that it is seldom shown in public. The 2025 FoS was a rare exception.
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1961 FERRARI 250 GT SWB
CALIFORNIA SPIDER COMPETIZIONE
One of Only Two Alloy-Bodied, Competition-Spec Examples with Period Racing History I Ferrari Classiche Certified Coachwork by Scaglietti I Chassis 2383 GT
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1961 FERRARI 400 SUPERAMERICA SERIES I CABRIOLET
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1957 FERRARI 250 GT LWB CALIFORNIA SPIDER
PROTOTIPO I First in Class at
28 JAN–1 FEB 2026
NOW INVITING CONSIGNMENTS
Pebble Beach and Amelia Island
Ferrari Classiche Certified I Coachwork by Scaglietti I Chassis 0769 GT
Peter Stevens’ lifetime with the Mille Miglia victory of 722
Marking 70 years since the extraordinary Moss/Jenks 1955 Mille Miglia win in the legendary 300 SLR
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT ONE particular story can follow you through your life? It seems rather unlikely, but that story is part of the history of one curious man, Denis Sargent Jenkinson, or ‘Jenks’. Born on December 11, 1920, he was the youngest of five children. His parents were Arthur Stanley and Florence Jenkinson, my maternal grandparents.
On May 1, 1955 the Jenkinson family got together for a reunion. Every member was there except one… Uncle Denis had told me that he was not available (he actually hated family gatherings) because he had something on in Italy. He’d kept me updated on preparations for the ’55 Mille Miglia.
His telegram the next day to my mother and I announced the fantastic news that he and Stirling Moss, the ‘Golden Boy’ as he called him, had won the 1000-mile race at an average speed of just under 100mph. I was so proud of this achievement – but beyond my parents, nobody I knew was interested in motor racing, so I kept quiet.
I was at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 1995 when Moss and Jenks celebrated their Mille Miglia win of 40 years past. Stirling drove the 300 SLR, race number 722, up the hill. This very public event was both emotionally and physically difficult for my uncle. He had recently suffered a couple of strokes and, in his usual independent way, he had believed that he could cure himself. He died 18 months later.
But his story remains with me because, leaping forward to September 2021, I was phoned by a great friend, Ron Pellett, who had been a mechanic at Brabham. He said that since he was helping prepare the 722 Mercedes for a demonstration at the Goodwood Revival, did I want to come down to Mercedes-Benz World at Brooklands to see 722. Goodwood was planned to be its very last public appearance.
I was introduced there to Gert Straub, who’d looked after the car for more than 40 years. After a couple of laps for photography, the SLR stopped and I was asked if I’d like to ride in it alongside Gert. I leapt at the chance. Being a pure race machine that was designed principally to be used only
by the driver, there is just one, minimalist door on that side. I was instructed to step first onto the driver’s seat, then ‘my’ seat, before settling into the very firmly trimmed bucket. It was a tight-fitting space, but the view through the remarkably thick Perspex screen was captivating. The screen was old and wore minute stress fractures; apparently it’s strong enough to withstand a bird strike at 180mph.
During the first lap it dawned on me just where I was sitting, whose seat this was, and what happened 66 years before. The experience was so overwhelming that I considered the very real possibility that I might burst into tears. But I concentrated instead on absorbing every single moment of this unrepeatable experience.
Watching Gert appear so at ease at the wheel, so confident in his gearchanges, I was reminded of what Denis said to me about never tiring of watching the Golden Boy at work.
More than once during that great Mille Miglia drive, 722 arrived at a village travelling what felt like “far too fast”. Such was Jenks’ confidence in Stirling that he never felt afraid, and Moss for his part later told me he had complete confidence in Denis’ notes.
More recently I was asked if I would be free to join Mercedes-Benz on the 2025 Mille Miglia. The marque hoped that I’d like to help it celebrate the extraordinary 1955 victory, by driving for it in a couple of cars. In ’55 there was a specific class for diesels; Mercedes 180Ds came first, second and third, and I was to drive a representative car.
On the next day I was to share driving with Marcus W Breitschwerdt, executive vice-president and head of Mercedes-Benz Heritage, in a 300 SL, representative of the car that won the 1955 GT class. There was also a plan to celebrate that win with a ceremony on the arrival ramp in Rome – Marcus was to drive a 300 SLR, one of the spare 1955 cars, with me alongside.
The car was greeted with great enthusiasm. I then told a brief version of the Moss/Jenks record-breaking story to Italian television, and caught my breath after this latest chapter in the history of car 722.
THIS PAGE From 722 test ride, through to the Mille Miglia finish ramp, little did Peter know that all these years after Jenks and Moss drove to victory in 1955 he’d be following in their footsteps.
Riviera
Alpine icon turns 200
Italy’s legendary Stelvio Pass is rich in heritage, motoring memories and sporting delight – and it has hardly changed since it was completed in 1825. Here’s to the next two centuries
YOU NEED NOT HAVE BEEN A
Top Gear or Jeremy Clarkson fan to know that the Stelvio Pass is one of the greatest driving roads in the world. Even if you haven’t had the privilege of experiencing it in anything at all – from a rental Panda to a Pantera or beyond – one look at its 88 hairpin bends is evidence enough.
Added to the driving thrills on offer are majestic panoramas of the Ortler Alps. Rising to a height of 2758 metres above sea level, Stelvio really is the Queen of Alpine passes. And amazingly, this legendary road has been around pretty much unchanged for the past 200 years.
After the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna had redrawn borders, a route across the Alps linking Milan and Vienna was sought. Emperor Franz I of Austria commissioned the Italian engineer Carlo Donegani to create a permanent road connecting the Valtellina and Val Venosta valleys. The Stelvio Pass itself was to begin in Bormio and end in Prato allo Stelvio
– almost 47km of road wholly set within Italy’s Stelvio National Park. Construction began in 1820 and lasted for five years. With not only road surfaces to construct along steep, rocky slopes, but also bridges, tunnels, hairpin bends and retaining walls to build as well, the endeavour required thousands of labourers.
Upon its 1825 opening, the Stelvio Pass Road was hailed as an engineering masterpiece – the highest carriage road in Europe at the time. A strategic bridge between southern and central Europe, it proved an immediate and enduring boon to commerce and trade.
The Pass has seen motorised action of all kinds over the years, beginning with a race run at a snail’s pace in the late 19th century. The 1928 Coppa delle Alpi showed that cars –and speeds – had improved somewhat. By the 1930s hillclimbing had taken off, with Hans Stuck Sr’s Mercedes-Benz SSKL winning the 1932 Stelvio Pass Hillclimb in a little over 15 minutes. Still on wheels, although half as
many and only pedal-powered, the Stelvio featured in the 1953 Giro d’Italia cycling race for the first time, with Fausto Coppi reaching the summit first and going on to win.
Since its inception in 1965, the special ‘Cima Coppi’ stage of the three-week epic has featured the Pass 12 times, and Stelvio remains a cycling hotspot throughout the open season. The road is shuttered from the start of November to mid-May at the earliest.
Besides the countless thrill-seeking motorcyclists and motorists who have traversed it for fun and pleasure, the Stelvio has also seen its share of battle action. The scene of the ‘White War’, the Pass and surrounding mountains were fortified during World War One as Italian soldiers fought the AustroHungarians through the harshest of winter conditions.
As pass-seeking, road-tripping fans we celebrate the 200th anniversary of an Alpine icon rich in heritage, motoring memories and sporting delight, and look forward to savouring its seminal switchbacks again soon.
Coachwork
14,889km in
30 days from Peking to Paris… solo!
Tomas de Vargas Machuca completed the world’s toughest motor challenge without a codriver. How did he do it?
AS IF NEARLY 15,000KM, OR over 9000 miles, on the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge – much of it through some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain – isn’t enough, for 2025 one man decided to undertake the challenge by himself, driving, navigating and maintaining his 1926 Bentley single-handedly.
Tomas de Vargas Machuca, the chairman of the rally’s organiser HERO-ERA, has already submitted evidence of his drive to the Guinness World Records organisation, but that’s not why he undertook the challenge.
“As chairman, I feel a bit awkward competing – especially if I end up having a good result,” he explains. “But more importantly, the Peking to Paris, for me, represents that motoring event in which you choose something that is just beyond your comfort zone. There are many dimensions of what constitutes going beyond your comfort zone; I wanted to know whether I had it in me to be my first line of defence as a mechanic and to troubleshoot
you can’t do in the evening because the engine’s too hot… all those things.
THIS PAGE
Tomas says his epic undertaking lent a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘stepping outside your comfort zone’.
myself navigating on my own.
“I also have a passion for sailing. As a sport it offers a lot of solo competition, and people often compare endurance rallies such as the Peking to Paris with crossing the Pacific or the Atlantic. So if sailing has it, why doesn’t endurance motoring have it?”
Something else that had seeded the idea in Tomas’s head was his disastrous attempt at the 2024 Peking to Paris in a 1914 LaFrance with co-driver Ben Cussons: the car caught fire and burnt to the ground in Azerbaijan, and its crew were forced to fly home. Undaunted, Tomas collected the 1926 Bentley 3-4 1/2 Litre he’s owned for several years and drove it singlehandedly across Europe to rejoin the rally a week later (Ben would have, too, had his passport not been destroyed in the fire). Tomas was so impressed with the car and the solo experience, that he handed it to Kingsbury Racing to prep it for the 2025 Peking to Paris.
So, how was it? Tomas says it was all about the preparation, not just before the rally but every single day: “I was getting up two and a half hours before my due start hour, just to take the time not to forget the pen, marking up the route amendments, checking the car, doing the maintenance that
“Everything takes three times as long because you can’t say ‘pass me the spanner’, or have one person check in for the room while the other checks the oil. My average day was 1518 hours of driving and maintenance. I averaged about five hours’ sleep.”
He goes on: “It was so complicated to look at both the navigation and the road, because you have got potholes, ruts, sand... you’ve got to concentrate on the driving. Then when you glance across, you look at the wrong tulip, the wrong slot, and you lose half an hour here, you do 100km more there. That happened a couple of times.
“It’s easy to misjudge your tiredness, but I was taken along by so much adrenaline, and you’re so busy, time flies. You have to be absolutely on your game at the first sign of feeling a bit drowsy: stop the car, walk around, drink lots of water, stretch a little, graze on nuts. Just re-harness your energy.”
Tomas finished 14th overall. Would he do it all again? “Yes!” he says. “I would improve my navigation system, make it all a bit safer and improve the timing on the regularities. But I’d definitely do it all again.” He’ll get his chance in 2028, on the next running of the Peking to Paris.
Easy as 1, 2, GT3
GT3 has entered the Historic motorracing realm – and it can be cheaper than you might think. But with so much machinery homologated, which of the early cars make for the best choice?
MORGAN AERO 8/ SUPERSPORTS GT3
What do I get?
Prodrive used its DBR9 GT1 know-how with
Racing pedigree?
The best bit?
How much do I need to buy one?
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride despite a two-team effort, but Hexis Racing eventually took the Teams’ title in 2009’s European series. Was much more successful on national grids, winning the 2006 British GT Championship. Replaced in 2011 by the Vantage GT3.
All the looks and sounds of a GT1 DBR9, but for about a quarter of the price.
RM Sotheby’s sold one in Milan earlier this year for €286,250. Formerly of the BMS Scuderia Italia SpA team, it raced in the 20072009 Euro series.
A 394bhp 3.6-litre flat-six and six-speed sequential gearbox were good for the first year, but the competition moved on. Replaced with the Cup S in 2008. Lashings of carbon body parts, RSR suspension and four-mode ABS.
Tech 9 Motorsport won the inaugural FIA GT3 European Championship with the late Sean Edwards, after a close battle with the Dodge Viper that gave Edwards the title by just two points.
It’s a Porsche, so it’s instantly beloved by the
A 4.3-litre naturally aspirated V8 made 530bhp, more than a GT2 car – but because this Ferrari weighed 119kg more, it was 9.0 seconds slower around the Nordschleife. Replaced with the faster 430 Scuderia GT3.
Kessel Racing narrowly missed out on the ’07 Teams’ title by a solitary point.
The Aero 8 used a 440bhp 4.0-litre BMW V8, while 2009’s Supersports upgrade upped that to 5.0 litres and 600bhp thanks to a BMW S50LA. Holinger leveroperated sequential ’box and carbonfibre body parts completed the package.
Three points finishes in 2008; ’09’s Supersports GT3 took a win at Silverstone and second at Adria. Struggled to maintain form thereafter; increasing big-name brand efforts stymied its prospects.
€55-75k should see you into a 3.6-litre car.
Keeping it British, you can choose from Jaguar’s XKR-S GT3 and various McLarens, but for sonic delight we’d suggest the Mercedes-Benz SLR or BMW Z4...
Keeping it German, the Audi R8 arrived in 2009 and was instantly on the pace. Porsche would take some time to get back on top of GT3...
Howling flat-plane-crank V8 will stir the soul. We found an ex-Kessel car with RM Sotheby’s for €370k. Originally delivered to Scuderia Monza, it was upgraded to Scuderia spec in 2010.
Driven by Jacques Laffite and Jean-Pierre Jabouille. That’s not a bad bit of shared DNA to have on the seat leather.
Silverstone race-winner courtesy of Johan-Boris Scheier and Dimitri Enjalbert is currently up for sale with William I’Anson. It is one of two built by French team AutoGT Racing and is already a regular in the Peter Auto Endurance Racing Legends. POA...
Keeping it oddball, how
CLASSIC CAR SHOW BRUSSELS EXPO
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF INTERCLASSICS BRUSSELS
Timemachine test driver
Corso Pilota Classiche offers opportunities to polish your classic Ferrari driving skills at the circuit where the company hones all its brand-new cars
UNBELIEVABLE! I’M AT PISTA DI Fiorano, the long-time hotbed of Ferrari road and track car testing, and I’m having a ‘moment’ – a swirling mix of anticipation and nostalgia. Before me, a cultural icon of the 1980s and star of television’s Magnum, P.I., the 308 GTS in signature Rosso Corsa. Fortunately for mid-century-aged me, the glassfibre roof panel is firmly in place so I avoid the potential disaster of attempting a signature Selleck entry vault. As a kid I never missed an episode. Watching that Ferrari drift off the verge and onto the Tarmac leaving a trail of dirt and tornup grass in its wake was a weekly rite of passage. Tightening the strap of my helmet, I slide in behind the wheel and settle into the dream. On the passenger seat alongside is former racing driver Lucio Da Zanche. Correctly assessing
my Gen-X status, he smiles and says: “Magnum’s car.” He’s onto me.
The day had begun with an intimate gathering in the Piazza Michael Schumacher outside the whitewashed walls and overt red accents of Enzo Ferrari’s old house. It is a building of great significance, but I was more taken with the 308 GTS and 365 GTB4 ‘Daytona’ parked out front. I’m sure Enzo would have approved. Branded stickers marked them out as belonging to a small fleet of classic Ferraris that are central to the Corso Pilota Classiche programme, which also includes a fascinating workshop tour and time in the company’s incredible archive. Open to Ferrari customers, the well heeled and invited media, this intensive trackdriving course is designed to help collectors and clients get more out of
Behind the wheel of a 308 GTS, lapping the Fiorano circuit as fast as you dare. Enzo’s old house, a constant reminder of the founder’s great legacy.
driving their older Ferraris. Falling decidedly into the ‘fortunate journalist’ bracket, I listened intently to the technical briefing in the slick new restaurant and lounge area adjacent to the circuit’s main straight.
The Corso Pilota Classiche also offers a winter programme on the frozen lake of St Moritz, Switzerland. Top fun, no doubt, but I reckon piloting a Daytona around this tight and testing Fiorano circuit will be equally daunting and smile-inducing. If that doesn’t do the trick, a session with a 472bhp V12-engined 550 Maranello on a wet skid-pad will certainly get your opposite lock on.
In a bid to prevent comparison with modern machinery, we were encouraged to treat the experience as a sort of time machine, travelling back to specific moments between 1969 and 1999. This, while keeping in mind that the cars all represented the peak
technology of their respective eras. As someone who remembers using a choke and navigating by fold-out map, that’s unlikely to be a problem.
One by one at the briefing we were introduced to our instructors for the day, a somewhat stern-looking bunch of retired racing drivers who, like middle-aged dentists, have seen it all, up close. “We are the young hope of Italian motor sport,” joked the designated spokesman of the group. I had clearly misjudged them. Good. A slideshow demonstrating various advanced-driving techniques such as heel-and-toe downshifting and double de-clutching followed, along with a guide on weight transfer and correct driving lines.
The time had arrived to put much of that into practice, and more importantly, not bend the Daytona.
First up is a demo lap in the 550 Maranello, which in the hands of a Fiorano-familiar expert is a smooth, thrilling experience. Switching seats proves just as thrilling, but for all the wrong reasons. Fiorano was profiled as a comprehensive test of a car’s dynamic qualities. Sections of it are designed to unsettle the balance, while the hairpins and blind righthander just after the bridge are as tricky as they come.
It’s not for mugs, and the 550 does not appreciate being both over- and under-driven in what’s meant to be a sighting lap. I’m not positioning the big car well and I’m often in the wrong gear. Fortunately, there’s so much torque it’s hardly an issue, and as I settle down things improve. The signature opengate change expects precision, which it rewards with a satisfying click every time you coerce it through the slight resistance of the neutral zone. Overall, it’s a messy few laps in the heaviest and most powerful car on offer today. Time to dial down the intensity and turn back the clock. All thoughts of Hawaiian highways disappear as I hook the dogleg first gear, ease off the clutch pedal, and manhandle the 308 GTS’s unassisted steering out onto the circuit. Consciously slower, and now with ‘reversed’ gear positions to deal with, I get bogged down in the first hairpin. The 252bhp 2.9-litre carb-fed V8 isn’t happy with me. Being in the correct gear helps, and I quickly learn to carry more speed into the corners, too, gradually dispelling initial fears brought up by the brakes’ long pedal travel and late bite. I’m really starting
ABOVE Daytona lives up to its reputation of requiring a top set of driving skills to fully exploit its potential. Hat-tip to those who raced it in period.
to enjoy this now, and I am finding it increasingly easier to go a bit faster each lap. The bubble soon bursts.
‘Fears of going on a blind-corner date with a gravel trap or, worse, Armco, all but disappear’
As my notes would later read: Daytona equals hot. The combination of an up-to-temperature-and-beyond V12, a deeply raked windscreen and questionable cabin cooling causes me instant discomfort. Then, even with the comically reclined seat slid all the way forward, I’m not close enough to fully depress the firm clutch pedal comfortably. Out on track, the large wooden-rimmed steering wheel feels like it might have given 1969 Mr Olympia Sergio Oliva a workout. With 352bhp on tap you’d expect similar hairy-chested masculinity from the engine, and yes, it’s a fearsome unit – but the power delivery is really quite creamy. Twice, though, the gearlever pops out of fourth down the main straight. Elsewhere, I struggle to hustle the car through corners. Most likely due to my inadequate technique, I emerge from its gorgeous eightgauge binnacled cockpit accepting that the 365 GTB4 is a hard car to drive quickly. Huge respect to those who raced it at Le Mans in period.
Up next, the 1986 Mondial 3.2, the Ferrari everyone hated on for years after its launch. Lucio is quick to tell me that it is the “most fun” car here. Just a few corners in, I concur. Thanks to the longer wheelbase, it’s just more forgiving, more neutral and definitely more playful. While there’s obviously
none of the directness of a modern steering set-up, the Mondial’s helm offers so much more feel – a huge reminder of the thrills lost to ‘progress’.
Three more laps in a second 308 GTS are a delight. My brain appears to have rewired itself to accept that second gear is where third used to be, and this does wonders for my confidence. Fears of going on a blindcorner date with a gravel trap or, worse, Armco, all but disappear. Track familiarity and more than 20 laps in your memory bank will do that. I’m really impressed with the patience and knowledge of my long-suffering instructor. Every lap is a bit quicker, a bit more precise. Win! And, as my lap times improve, I get an opportunity to ‘pass’ the Daytona on track. Told you it was hard to drive quickly.
Our final activity is a short, sharp session on the skid-pan. You won’t learn how to execute an Ebisu-spec controlled drift, but you will certainly have a better chance of catching your next slide. We close out the day with a little certificate ceremony and a chance to thank our hosts and instructors. It has been a joy. Secretly, the Classiche team must also be quite thrilled that none of us tried farming or went tyre-wall shopping.
Short of Tom Selleck teaching me the correct 308 GTS entry method, I cannot think of a more thrilling and nostalgic activity than driving classic Ferraris around Fiorano.
Words Matthew Hayward
Renault reveals plans for radical heritage centre near Paris
Bold venue set to showcase 125 years of history through immersive storytelling and striking architecture
RENAULT HAS ANNOUNCED NEW plans for a striking public heritage centre on the outskirts of Paris, designed to celebrate the French manufacturer’s 125-year history in a manner befitting its status as one of the world’s most inventive carmakers.
Due to open in 2027, the asyet-unnamed venue will be located at Flins, 40km west of the capital, on the site of the former production plant that built millions of Renaults from 1952 onwards, including the Dauphine, R5, Clio and ZOE.
The project is ambitious in scope. More than 650 vehicles from the firm’s historically significant and often underseen collection will be housed within a purpose-built structure, designed by Jacob Celnikier. The angular façade will offer tantalising glimpses of what lies inside – including a soaring multitiered display wall with cars mounted five high and 15 rows wide. An annex will house larger or more unusual exhibits, including the company’s
wartime tank and historic aircraft.
For a brand that has long been guarded about the treasures in its collection, the announcement signals a marked change in approach. Renault has yet to confirm a formal name for the venue, but it is keen to avoid the word ‘museum’. As one senior figure put it: “That term can imply something fixed in time. We want this place to feel alive – somewhere immersive, evolving and forward-thinking.”
The facility is part of the wider Flins Refactory – reimagined by Renault as a hub for circular economy and innovation – but the heritage venue will stand apart. Beyond the main exhibition hall, it’ll have restoration workshops, climate-controlled storage, office space and event areas. Renault says the centre will operate as a familyfriendly visitor destination, with entry kept affordable and a projected minimum of 15,000 visitors annually.
Around 57 percent of Renault’s heritage fleet is currently in running
order. Six technicians maintain the cars full-time, and the brand invests in training to preserve the specialist skills required to keep the vehicles roadworthy. The firm doesn’t currently plan to offer customer restoration services at the site, although this remains under consideration.
While the collection is perhaps best known for icons such as the 4CV, R5 Turbo, R16, Avantime and 5 Maxi Turbo, it spans much more. From early voiturettes and record-breakers to F1 cars, Le Mans entries and modern concepts, it tells a story that mirrors France’s industrial, social and cultural evolution. As CEO Fabrice
THIS PAGE New public heritage centre will be a cultural hub for everything from displays of classic Renault vehicles to a creative residency for artists to reinterpret industrial materials in new ways.
Cambolive puts it: “Renault is part of a universal popular culture. We want this new venue to reconnect the public with that shared heritage.”
Another project component is the integration of Renault’s substantial art collection, which includes over 600 works ranging from Robert Doisneau photographs to Vasarely’s op-art. The centre will also work with the newly formed Renault Fund for Art and Culture to help continue the firm’s patronage of artists, with an emphasis on contemporary and urban work.
A large creative residency – the Art Factory – has already been established on site. Housed in the old paint shop, the space is being used by artists to reinterpret industrial materials in new ways. Some of these works will form part of the permanent heritage displays. Although no figure has yet been disclosed for the overall investment, the visual renderings and scope suggest this will be a significant architectural and curatorial undertaking.
BLENHEIM PALACE, OXFORDSHIRE 27–31 AUGUST 2025
Bronco bonanza
Donald N Frey, arguably the godfather of the Ford Mustang, is also responsible for another Blue Oval icon: the Bronco. The 4WD legend celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2025 – here are the highlights and lowlights
1965 GETTING STARTED
Production starts in 1965 for the 1966 model year, with an entirely clean-sheet design chassis just for the Bronco. All are sold with four-wheel drive, and the engine range grows from an initial 170ci straight-six to a mixture of sixes and V8s. Bodystyles expand to include a twodoor wagon, half-cab pickup and open-body roadster. Sells 23,776 in the first year. A lift-off rear top adds versatility for work and play.
2001 A NEW LIFE?
2004 TRYING AGAIN
Bronco concept is unveiled at the North American International Auto Show using the Ford Escape platform. Two years later a production version will be attempted over a Ford Ranger chassis, but the Credit Crunch-fuelled recession scuppers plans. Around now the scene for restomodding Broncos starts to develop. Bryan Rood is among the first, and now runs Classic Ford Broncos.
2014 CUSTOM DREAMS
Gateway Broncos starts as the pet project of Seth Burgett, founder of sports headphone company Yurbuds.
1965 BAJA BOUNCE
Bill Stroppe and HolmanMoody join forces to take the Bronco off-road racing. They will return in ’69 with a team of six cars for the Baja 1000.
Under the eye of Moray Callum, a new Bronco is developed on the Ranger platform and designed to hark back to the spirit of the original. It is conceived in two- and four-door forms, but the Firestone/Ford debacle forces wider cutbacks that mean the project is cancelled. Last seen at the 2021 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
1994 OJ’S LAST RUN
The Bronco’s most famous moment? Al Cowlings drives OJ Simpson along the Interstate 405 in a low-speed police chase watched live by 95 million Americans.
1996 GOODBYE FOR NOW
Bronco production comes to an end, replaced by the larger Expedition. Twodoor SUV sales have declined sharply; the Expedition is a five-door SUV.
1971 SPECIAL DELIVERY
Baja Bronco boasts quick-ratio steering, fender flares, a roll bar and an auto ’box: 650 are built.
1978 GOING XL
Second-generation Bronco enters the full-size SUV segment courtesy of a chopped-down Ford F-100 pick-up chassis. Engine choices are either 351ci or 400ci V8s. Proves to be a hit, overtaking the Chevrolet Blazer and Dodge Ramcharger in the sales charts. All this despite a two-year life, due to delays over post-1973 fuel-crisis fears. Just one three-door bodystyle is made.
1992 SMOOTHER APPROACH
Fifth-gen Bronco reheats the third-gen mechanicals again, with a slightly more aerodynamic look. Rangetopping models get more luxury items, and the Bronco will be made safer with fourwheel ABS in 1993, an airbag in 1994 and a crumple zone.
2018 THE CRAZE TAKES OFF
Vintage Broncos (now known as Vintage Modern for legal reasons) – another pet project, this time of tech entrepreneur Chau Nguyen – starts restomodding genone Broncos. Later moves into putting new drivetrains into old Bronco bodies, prompting the ire of Ford.
1987 FOUR TO THE FLOOR
Centurion Classic of White Pigeon, Michigan, starts building the Centurion Classic – a four-door conversion of the Bronco that the Blue Oval had considered but dismissed due to the fuel crisis. Two models offered, one based on the Ford F-150 chassis and the other on the F-350, each with seemingly endless opportunities for luxury kit. Production will run until 1996.
1987 EVOLUTION
Fourth generation is given a visual makeover as it carries over third-gen mechanicals. Injection will be added to the straight-six and Windsor V8 in 1988. Rear-wheel ABS and skid plates become standard.
1980 RULE OF THIRDS
Third-generation Bronco enters the fray after a three-year development process. Based on the seventh-gen Ford F-150, the range starts with a straight-six, while a 351ci Windsor V8 tops out the four-strong engine line-up.
2021 FORD RETURNS
Ford releases its modern take on the Ford Bronco with a contemporary design echoing the original’s. Ecoboost four-cylinder and 2.7-litre twin-turbo six power the range. Twoand four-door available.
2022 BEAST UNLEASHED
Bronco Raptor launched as a four-door only; 3.0-litre twinturbo V6 has 418hp and a ‘Baja’ mode. It’s wider, taller and stronger than the usual Bronco, with bigger brakes and driveshafts, among other refinements.
What’s happening at Willow Springs?
Singer, Petersen and Alex Wurz are working with new investors to inject fresh life into California’s historic motor-racing circuit
WHEN THE WILLOW SPRINGS
International Raceway, America’s oldest permanent road course, was put up for sale by long-time owners the Huth family in June 2024, its future looked bleak. Would this be the end of the track that once hosted NASCAR, and which was so beloved of the club-racing scene?
However, in April 2025 it was announced that the circuit had been acquired by “an affiliate” of CrossHarbor Capital Partners and Porsche specialist Singer. More recently, the new owners announced a collaboration with the Petersen Automotive Museum, with the latter taking a role in providing storytelling and exhibits to further develop the appeal of the Californian racetrack.
Crucially, the Willow Springs team said it sees public access as a key aspect of the circuit’s success, and the venue will continue to host public and private events. Various track layouts, including karting, ATV and driver instruction, will continue to be available.
Work has already begun on developing the circuit, with former Formula 1 driver, Le Mans winner and track designer Alex Wurz, head of Wurz Design, leading the drive to
enhance existing layout and safety –including adding more asphalt and kerbs, and improving run-off areas with levelling and gravel.
Speedway Motorsports subsidiary Sonoma Raceway is heading up developments with regard to on-track experiences and track operations, and Singer will be partnering with CrossHarbor to create a members’ club, which will be open to clients and other enthusiasts for track days and further events. The Petersen Pavilion will act as an ‘outpost’ of the museum, hosting exhibits, special events and temporary installations.
“Willow Springs is an important part of California’s motor sport heritage, for enthusiasts and everyone with an automotive obsession,” said Singer’s chief strategy officer Mazen Fawaz. “Singer has two decades of track days, racing and development at Willow’s circuits. We are delighted to help make sure that it’s in safe hands and can be an even more impressive part of California’s car culture for the next 70 years. Its custodianship is a responsibility we are not taking lightly, and our partners could not be better suited to see it through.”
Meanwhile, Terry L Karges, Petersen
executive director, said: “As one of the most iconic racetracks in America, Willow Springs is an ideal place to celebrate the passion, heritage and innovation that define the automotive world. We look forward to bringing our expertise in storytelling and curation to create an environment where enthusiasts can engage with automotive culture in a dynamic and meaningful way.”
As Mazen and Terry acknowledge, Willow Springs has been an integral part of West Coast car culture since it opened in 1953. California-based British driver Ken Miles played a part in its development, and it gained a reputation as one of the fastest tracks in the US, hosting NASCAR during the 1950s and the 1980s, and used by the Renault F1 team as an occasional test facility in the early ’80s, too.
In 1962, Bill Huth bought Willow Springs for $116,000; in 1980 he purchased the lease outright and began expanding the facility, adding the Streets of Willow track configuration in 1988 and a third course, Horse Thief Mile, in 2003. Huth died in 2015 at 91, and Willow Springs passed into family ownership. Its future now looks brighter under the new owners.
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Exciting plans are afoot for America’s oldest permanent road course.
Sailing to victory
Multi-awardwinning Bentley Boat-Tail is riding the crest of a wave. Here’s its story
IN LESS THAN ONE YEAR, THIS unique 1927 Bentley 3 Litre Boat-Tail Speed Model has gone from obscurity to multiple award-winner. Its most recent accolade was Best in Show at the UK’s inaugural Royal Automobile Club Concours in July, but it had previously taken joint first prize in the Restoration category at the Club’s Historic Awards last November, and we chose it for the special Magneto Award at the Concours of Elegance Hampton Court in September 2024.
What’s so special about it? In a world of increasingly well restored Bentleys and other pre-war machinery, it stood out for its style and for its history, as Ben Cussons, chairman of the judges at the Royal Automobile Club Concours, explained at the event: “This is a stunning example of coachbuilding from the 1920s, when owners would purchase a chassis, engine and gearbox, and then choose a bodystyle. Bentleys of the era are usually associated with Le Mans, yet this boat-tail body –complete with ensign flying at the stern and sculpted wings – is very different.
“The car also carries a powerful family story: it underwent nearly a decade of restoration, during which time its owner Chris Jaques passed
away. His son has seen the project through to completion. I’m sure Chris is looking down on us all today, smiling.”
This Bentley is chassis TN1564, and it features coachwork from Martin Walter. It was first purchased by Francis Ronald Lambert Mears, and was registered to his barracks in Ranikhet, India. It went through a couple of owners during the next 20 years, before finding one family who kept it safe for more than 50 years until Chris Jaques contacted them directly and managed to purchase it. It has never been on the open market. Sadly, Chris passed away before the car could be finished, and his wish was for the family to complete it.
At some point it had been painted British Racing Green, but the original cream colour was still evident in places, and it has now been replicated during a three-year restoration by Julian Parker Ltd. Throughout the process, the express desire was to retain all the original features and components.
The Concours of Elegance 2024 was the first time the car had been seen in public for more than 60 years. Following on from its Royal Automobile Club Concours glory, we wish it many more successes on its next outings.
THIS PAGE With unique Martin Walter coachwork, this special Bentley underwent a threeyear restoration by Julian Parker Ltd.
1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing
Stunning bare metal freshening performed by Rudi & Company Motorwerks, An early production example; just the 99th built, Retains its numbers-matching Bosch fuel-injected engine, Complete with custom matching fitted luggage, tool roll kit, and spare tire, Considered one of the most iconic and collectable automobiles ever produced
2024 Porsche 911 GT3 RS
One owner and under 1,600 miles from new, Over $47,000 in options including the $33,520 Weissach Package, Finished in Racing Yellow over an optional deviated stitching interior, A high-performance, well-optioned “race car” for the road
1912 Pierce-Arrow Model 48-SS Seven-Passenger Touring
A highly desirable and rare 48-HP Brass Era Pierce-Arrow, Prominent ownership history, including automotive great Phil Hill, E.C. “Doc” Lawrence, and John Muckel, Shown at the 2022 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and participant of the Tour d’Elegance by Rolex, $50,000 cosmetic and mechanical freshening in 2022, One of the most complete and original examples extant
Coachwork by Touring
1940 BMW 328 Roadster
Accompanied by a large dossier and detailed historical analysis and its FIVA Identity Card, Coachwork thought to be 1 of the first 5 or 6 prototypes constructed by Touring of Milan, Engine bears a period “Spezial” Tag; dimensions and components of the 1939/40 Series I Mille Miglia cars, Meticulously restored by renowned expert Fran Roxas, Finished in correct “German Industrial Silver” as uncovered during restoration, Eligible for vintage automotive events across the globe
Is this the best news ever in the Historic racing world?
Enthusiasts rejoice: the fabulous Le Mans Classic will now be held on an annual basis, with an entry-spicing twist
IT’S INCREDIBLE TO THINK THAT 2025’s Le Mans Classic, a fixture that seems utterly familiar on the calendar even if you’ve never been, was only the 12th running of the popular event. But then, it’s only ever been run every other year since its inaugural edition in 2002, with Covid disrupting the flow from 2018 until it returned in 2023 to celebrate the centenary of the Le Mans 24 Hours.
“Wouldn’t it be great if it ran every year,” we all thought after that long break. And then came the announcement in mid-June that, with organiser Peter Auto under new management, the Le Mans Classic will indeed run every year, from 2025-on.
There’s a twist, but it’s not a bad one: the event will alternate between Le Mans Classic Heritage, featuring cars from 1923 to 1975, and Le Mans Classic Legend, for cars from 1976 to
THIS PAGE 800 race cars, 238,000 fans and 100 years of motor sport nostalgia: Le Mans Classic has it all.
2015. This will provide more variety year-on-year, allow a broader spread of cars each year, and give owners and drivers more time for other events.
The new emphasis on younger racing cars ties in perfectly with a growing trend for machinery of the 2000s and 2010s in Historic racing, and the popularity of the post-1980 cars at recent editions of the Le Mans Classic. Sometimes run as support races, the 1982-1992 Group C Racing cars, the Endurance Racing Legends (Group GT1, Group GT2 and 19932005 prototypes) and the 2006-2017 LMP1 prototypes (pre-Hypercar era) generate huge amounts of excitement.
In tandem, Peter Auto has launched two new series for modern race cars: the all-new Legends of Le Mans is for LMP1, LMP2 and GT cars that competed during the 2010s such as the Audi R18 TDI, Porsche 919 and
Peugeot 908 HDi; and the GT3 Revival Series, which is open to GT3category race cars that competed between 2006 and 2013.
So, the future looks bright for the Le Mans Classic. The 2023 staging, which celebrated the centenary and satisfied five long years of pent-up demand, attracted a then-record attendance of almost 235,000 – but the 2025 edition is said to have surpassed that, at 238,000. Many competitors and visitors said it was the best running to date.
With 800 cars racing on the famous track and more than 9000 club cars on display, it’s no wonder that the Le Mans Classic has become so popular, attracting similar visitor numbers to, for example, the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The next edition will take place on July 2-5, 2026. More details at www.lemansclassic.com.
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Martyn Goddard acquired his beloved watch after a shoot with Butzi at the Porsche Design HQ in Austria.
Eye witness A date with Butzi Porsche
The story of a legendary automotive designer, a special photoshoot and a unique memento
I HAD A CALL FROM THE LATE
Alex Low, then picture editor of The Telegraph Magazine, in January 1978. “You can speak a bit of German, can’t you? I need a photographer to go to Germany and shoot portraits of three designers. Are you interested?”
Why not – when the subjects were Dieter Rams, mastermind of electronic products at Braun; Luigi Colani, expert of organic industrial design; and Ferdinand Alexander ‘Butzi’ Porsche, father of the 911. Between them they had produced some of the great design icons of the 20th century.
In my black Volkswagen Golf loaded with equipment, I ventured on a tour of the Fatherland on snowcovered Autobahns from Hanover, via Frankfurt am Main, and south across the Austrian border to a castle in Zell am See. There I’d be doing my final
photoshoot, with Alexander Porsche.
I often wonder how I used to find these obscure locations in an age before GPS; I guess it was my Boy Scout training. I remember trudging through the snow, tugging the iron bell pull and waiting – and then the door being opened by a bearded man wearing a Loden coat and a hat with a feather. He pointed to his Range Rover and asked me in Schwabischer dialect to climb aboard for a ride to his studio.
Butzi spoke virtually no English, while my German had been picked up on Stuttgart building sites as a struggling photo student, but I did manage to gather that the 911 designer loved his Range Rover on the Austrian winter roads. Once at HQ our photo session lasted most of the day, shooting Herr Porsche working on a clay car model in his studio with other designers
involved in a racing-bicycle project.
I then assembled Porsche Design products in still-life groups: sunglasses, pens, briefcases and a black watch that caught my eye. Departing, Butzi handed me a book signed by his father as a memento of the day. After thanking him, in a fit of what could have been financial madness I asked would it be possible to purchase one of his watches. He replied that he had none for sale at the studio, but said he’d contact me.
A month later, a package arrived containing a Porsche watch with a letter requesting a fraction of the list price. The piece, a 1976 version in a black leather box, surprisingly wasn’t black. It was gunmetal, and the day window showed German text – but hey, I had a Porsche watch on my wrist.
I wore it every day. It was robust and stood up to the life of a photographer
in all weather conditions and locations. I used the chrono for timing both long exposures and the two-minute processing time involved in separating layers in Polaroid test prints.
In 1993 the watch stopped. My then assistant had a vintage watch stall in Camden Market, and offered to take it to his repairer. To my surprise he reported that there were no spare parts to restore my beloved timepiece, so it ended up being put in a drawer and replaced by an Omega Speedmaster while awaiting repair – which I finally achieved with the help of Jasper Bitter at ClassicHeuer in Germany.
The work took 12 weeks. My watch was returned, restored to its former glory. Just as I was finishing this article, a promo email arrived for the retro Porsche Design Chrono 1 All Black – for a whopping £8950.
Martyn Goddard
The ex-Team LoTus, Jim CLark, Graham hiLL, BruCe haLford, monaCo Grand Prix, 1958 Lotus 16
The essex raCinG Team LoTus, mario andreTTi, eLio de anGeLis and niGeL manseLL 1980 Lotus 81 Ground EffEct formuLa 1
The ex – froLian GonzaLez, esCuderia BandeiranTes, maseraTi CLassiChe CerTified, 1952 masErati a6Gcm
The ex-Dyson RAcinG, 2nD in ALMs, 2012 LoLa B12/60 Mazda LMp1
The ex – pRoDRive, hexis AMR, FiA GT3 RAce WinninG, 2010 aSton Martin dBrS9 gt3 ‘g Specification’
The ex – AuToGT RAcinG, FiA euRopeAn GT3 RAce WinninG, 2009 Morgan aero Super Sport gt3
/williamiansonltd /williamiansonltd
Words Georg Kacher
Photography Sam Chick
Post-production Mustard Post
FROM GRUPPE B DESIGN STUDY TO KOMFORT AND SPORT SERIES PRODUCTION MODELS, THE PORSCHE 959 TORE UP THE RULEBOOK, INTRODUCING FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE, SELF-LEVELLING SUSPENSION, ADJUSTABLE RIDE HEIGHT, RUN-FLAT TYRES, ABS, SEQUENTIAL TURBOCHARGING AND KEVLAR TO THE SUPERCAR REALM. FAST AND STABLE, IT WAS NOT JUST AN ‘ULTIMATE 911’ BUT AN AUTOMOTIVE
OPPOSITE
Gruppe B’s two cooling inlets, visible atop the rear haunches, were moved to the sides on the 959 to catch more direct airflow.
FLASHBACK TO 1983. THE INTERNET IS born, Michael Jackson’s Thriller tops the US album charts for 37 weeks, AM General starts producing the Humvee super-SUV, Reagan resides in the White House, the Space Shuttle Challenger takes the first female astronaut into outer space, Motorola premieres the mobile telephone, India wins the Cricket World Cup and – although the car industry is still licking its wounds in the aftermath of the oil crisis –Porsche shifts into fast-forward mode and takes the wraps off a striking Group B concept conceived to compete in top-league rallying...
Two years later, the study had evolved into the 959 and was unwrapped at the Frankfurt show right across the hall from the Audi Sport Quattro.
But the motor sport career of the car that won the 1986 Paris-Dakar was ultimately ill-omened. When FISA pulled the plug on Group B two and a half years later after Toivonen and Cresta burned to death in their S4, the 959’s mission in life took a sudden U-turn: instead of challenging Audi, Ford, Lancia, MG and Peugeot for the WRC title, the Zuffenhausen batmobile transformed from homologation special to supercar darling of avant-garde collectors and the nouveau riche.
The 959 was a joint effort of the CTO Helmuth Bott and a small inner circle of leading engineers and designers. The R&D chief had convinced Ferry Porsche of the need to create an über-turbo
ABOVE
C 29 – a 911 mule with a 959 body, used to assess aerodynamics. The retained 911 panels are in red.
Engineers’ dimensions and notes, and clay touch-ups, still visible on the composite skin.
positioned at least one rung above the whaletail 930. The new image-maker would cash in at long last on motor sport legends such as the 908, Carrera RSR, 935, 956 and the Le Mans-winning 962 – except that cash was a bad catchword at the time, because the Stuttgart sports car maker was notoriously overspending while the financial results typically ranged from dire to dangerous.
Although Peter W Schutz (CEO from 19811987) kicked off the instantly successful 911 convertible, sales of the 924 and 928 were bubbling below expectations, the strength of the Deutschmark burned big holes in the balance sheets, and even the iconic 911 was losing lustre since the last round of major improvements dated back to 1973. To win back trust and regain credibility, Bott positioned the 959 as the brand’s new halo car. Its key innovations – all-wheel drive, sequential turbocharging, double-wishbone suspension with adjustable dampers, water cooling, maximum-downforce aerodynamics –eventually filtered through to the 964 and 993, while the initially quite successful 944 marked the end of the front-engined sports cars.
On February 27, 1983, the four key members of the Group B project team – Bott, the legendary senior power broker Hans Mezger, the chief powertrain engineer Paul Hensler and the head of motor sport Peter Falk – met for the first time in the Weissach skunkworks. Only six and a half months later, after many nightshifts and even more last-minute modifications, the “car filled with technical systems that would offer more than any previously known” (Bott) was launched to great acclaim at the IAA.
Little did we know at the time about the true destiny of the eye-catching showpiece, which was in September 1983 still many budget-busting cul-de-sacs as well as more than three years away from low-volume production. Originally, Porsche had planned to build only the mandatory 200 homologation specials, plus 20 type 961 track racers. At the end of the day, however, 292 Komfort-specification units and 29 upgraded 959 Sport (S) models rated at a feisty 515bhp were produced. An additional eight cars were assembled in 1992 from surplus spare parts. These were sold as used cars – allegedly for way above the original list price of 420,000DM.
Inspired by Professor Bott, young talent heeded the call from the brand’s notoriously understaffed think tank. Manfred Bantle was the up-andcoming mastermind behind the new all-wheeldrive system. Wolfhelm Gorissen was the caloriecounting guru in charge of keeping the car’s weight at a minimum. Roland Kussmaul was in charge of tireless chassis testing and sedulous fine-tuning. And the Latvian Anatole Lapine ran the design department ‘carrot or stick’ 24/7.
Supervised by the studio chief Wolfgang Möbius, Richard Söderberg penned the new model’s sleek low-drag exterior, while Robert Powell composed the almost luxurious interior and the commendably intuitive high-tech cockpit
ABOVE
Flared arches, teardrop-shaped wing mirrors and integral rear wing resulted in a drag coefficient of 0.31 and ‘zero lift’ air profile at speed.
based – as was the entire cabin layout – on the 930’s. Only three months after its debut, the 959 underwent numerous bodywork changes to cure the cooling issues experienced in early testing. Both the front brakes, and the turbochargers mounted on either side of the flat-six, needed significantly more fresh air – which explains the afterthought finned louvres in each bumper. At the same time, the grille in the nose panel was enlarged to cure agonal respiration in heavy traffic. To increase the oxygen flow to the powerplant, softly rounded intakes were integrated in the rear wings ahead of the engine.
Porsche built 37 pre-production cars and prototypes before Rudi Noppen, the jovial and suave head of production, kicked off the innovative modular assembly that took place in a cordoned-off special facility next to building number 11 across the road from headquarters in Zuffenhausen. The body in white and the leather trim were provided just-in-time by nearby Baur coachbuilding of BMW 02, E21 3 Series TC and M1 fame. The 959 was completed entirely offline from four pre-assembled tech packs – a clever but time-intensive process that restricted the output to four units a week.
Customers could choose between cloth and hide upholstery, and they could specify the decontented lightweight sports pack without air-con and height-adjustable suspension, but
bespoke paint and fancy trim were, at least initially, absent from the very short option list. The rarest, fastest and priciest 959 was the 212mph S version, allegedly available with a 530bhp power upgrade if you asked nicely and swallowed the extra cost. It took Porsche 25 years to build a road car with an even higher top speed: the hybridised 216mph 2013 918 Spyder.
The standard 2.85-litre flat-six powerplant fitted to most 959s is good for 450bhp at 6500rpm. The torque curve peaks at 5000rpm where 500Nm is available. Why choose a displacement of exactly 2848cc? Because FISA had imposed a handicap factor of 1.4 on turbos vis-à-vis combustion engines, which would have allowed the car to compete in the 4.0-litre class where the minimum weight was 1100kg.
Derived from the 956 and 962 engines designed for motor racing, the production unit featured two sequentially operating KKK turbochargers, two overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder actuated by hydraulic tappets and a highly complex cooling system using both air and water. While the six cylinders and the crankcase were air-cooled, water was the preferred means of tempering the cylinder heads and the turbos.
Since the 959 was originally also destined for North America, the packaging geniuses made room for the three catalysts required to meet the stringent emission norms. Although 30 US-bound
The 959 cabin featured airconditioning, leather seats, radio and electric windows – unlike the carpetless F40.
OPPOSITE
cars were actually completed in 1987, Porsche eventually pulled the pin because the company did not want to destroy four units in obligatory crash testing. Said Paul Hensler, aka Mr Turbo: “The European customers did not care for the de-smogged variant, but we felt the need to demonstrate that Porsche was in full command of this challenging new technology.”
In contrast to the race version, the production engine swapped the maintenance-intensive and noisy geardrive for a set of duplex chains. Although the sodium-filled exhaust valves were allegedly good for 8500rpm, Porsche played it safe, with its red line starting at 7300rpm.
Riding on a toughened seven-bearing crank made of forged steel are lightweight conrods capped by polished-titanium pistons. The drysump lubrication is in essence similar to that of the 911, but the 959 boasts two oil coolers and no fewer than five scavenge pumps to minimise splashing and foaming through high-G-force bends. The fast-acting two-stage sequential turbocharging makes for a welcome change compared to the sleepy low-rev throttle response and the crevice-like turbo hole for which the 930 is notorious. In the 959, the smaller charger builds up pressure from 1200rpm, peaks at 2000rpm when 1.0bar is on tap, and keeps that punch alive and kicking all the way to the red line. The bigger turbo wakes up at 4300rpm and produces a maximum boost pressure of 2.0bar for plenty of mid-range grunt along with huge top-end urge.
Torque is relayed to a trick six-speed gearboxand-diff unit shrink-wrapped in magnesium, which is mounted north of the engine, 911-style. From there, oodles of oomph are transmitted directly to the rear wheels and, when required, also to the fronts via a four-bearing propshaft. The heart of this inverted transaxle layout beats inside the bespoke chip-controlled transfer case. A complex work of mechanical art, it diverts the twist action automatically to the wheel that needs it most, by means of an electro-hydraulic motor that powers a wet multi-disc clutch. Among the parameters processed by the black box in 50 to 100 milliseconds are surface condition, torque flow, axle load, real-time vehicle weight and tyre slip.
When sitting at idle, the front-to-rear weight distribution is 40:60, but under full throttle with the front clutch almost completely open, 80 percent of the 1450kg (the trimmed-down twoseat Sport version is 100kg lighter) rests on the hollow-spoke magnesium rear wheels. Although the standard tyre size is 235/45ZR17 and 255/40ZR17, extra money did buy 10J rear rims shod with wider, 275/35ZR17 footwear sporting notably stiffer sidewalls. The 959 was the first car equipped with a tyre-pressure monitoring system
FORMER PORSCHE DESIGNER
ROBERT POWELL RECALLS KEY
MOMENTS OF THE GROUP B
SHOW CAR’S CREATION STORY
shell was covered in the same black leather as was used on the dash, and it incorporated a storage recess between the seats. At the front end of the console we fitted a vacuum-formed plexiglass screen over a mocked-up G-force meter. We also modified the last gauge on the right of the instrument cluster to display an overview of the 4WD system. We were quite excited to use LEDs for the first time. Existing racing buckets served as seats, but upholstered in high-quality fabrics bearing the ‘Porsche’ script. The rest of the cabin was standard.
THE INITIAL CALL, FAVOURED BY R&D director Helmuth Bott, was for the development of an all-new car, one that looked firmly to the future. Internally, though, the idea was the subject of intense debate. While Style Porsche wanted to make a serious design statement, both engineering and project management feared they simply would not be able to design and build a completely new car within the time and budget available. They were probably right. While clearly a compromise, without the decision to carry over the roof, doors, glass and core structure of the 911, the Gruppe B show car would likely not exist.
The move to broaden, even redefine, Porsche’s design language had begun in the late 1970s with the Wolfgang Möbius-designed 928. However, some in the company questioned whether abandoning 911 styling cues was the right approach, which even led to discussions about how a future 928 might look. At one point, while working for Möbius in exterior design, I was asked to add a raised, 911-style headlight tube to the 928’s front wing. We spent weeks trying various solutions on a full-size clay model. It never looked right and the project was halted – much to the relief of Möbius, who had felt persuaded to adopt a form language that was tied to the past.
So the great challenge with the Group B project was to begin with carry-over structural and design elements from the existing 911 – effectively still a ‘Butzi’-era 911 – and try to create a vision for the future.
The first exterior design sketches were produced by just a couple of designers working for Dick Söderberg. These were based on the revised, all-wheel-drive 911 package, and represented different design approaches. After an internal presentation, the winning sketch proposal was transferred to full-size tape drawings and then refined before the claymodelling process began.
Time and cost also determined what changes could be made to the interior. I designed a new centre console to fit the revised floor of the 4WD Group B platform. The final glassfibre
As the weeks passed we all followed the exterior design process, taking part in all the outdoor presentations from the first exposed clay model to a more refined DI-NOC-covered design. This stretchable silver film allows the surface highlights to be properly assessed.
An element of Porsche surface design back then was known in the studio as ‘S-reflection’. This was basically a stretched S-shaped highlight visible across intersecting surfaces. Despite the soft forms of the Gruppe B’s wings, and hours of surface refinement, the designers felt the blend of old and new body panels limited their ability to achieve the perfect S highlight. Another compromise was the surface thickness of the rear wheelarch, which even today looks too thin. This area was handled differently on the later, series 959. Identified late in the process, attempts were made to add visual mass to the area, but the design had to be signed off as is to allow sufficient time to build the show car.
Completed just in time for the 1983 IAA Frankfurt Motor Show, the Gruppe B design study was positioned on a grey-carpeted platform not too far away from a grand piano and two porcelain Dalmatians. Motor shows sure were different back then. The car looked incredible in its metallic Pearl White paint, although only a few of us knew just how difficult that finish had been to apply evenly – especially around the rear spoiler.
Visitors loved the idea of this ‘ultimate 911’. It generated far more excitement than we expected. We simply had no idea that it would become a concept car icon that would inform the design of one of the greatest sports machines the world has ever known.
developed by Dunlop and WABCO Westinghouse. Since the matching Dunlop Denloc tyres could not be type-approved in time, most production cars were shod with Bridgestone RE71 rubber.
The super-Porsche’s suspension is extreme in more ways than one. Up front, the overkill arrangement features twin coil springs, one each for the adjustable shock absorber and the second hydropneumatic damper that acts as a scalable ride-height device and is powered by the same tandem pump as the rack-and-pinion steering.
At the back, a single coil spring was deemed sufficient, but the dual-damper set-up still prevails. Supported by a pair of anti-roll bars, this highly sophisticated chassis would satisfy just about every kind of dynamic desire. At speed the ground clearance is a Tarmac-hugging 120mm, but below 94mph and 50mph, the ride height increases in two steps respectively to 150mm and – if so required by the driver – 180mm.
In sync with vehicle height and speed, the second set of dampers muscles up the calibration from compliant over taut to firm. This happens either self-actingly or in accordance with the position of the XL turning knob above the gearlever. In addition to the lookalike rideheight adjustment controller next to it, the aforementioned drive-mode selector operated by a stubby additional column stalk is the third key interface to define the vehicle’s DNA.
In profile, the 959 looked like a heavily tuned 911 fusing a winged long-tail Le Mans-inspired rear with widebody flares, low-drag wheels and an emphatically aerodynamic slantnose front end. Aerodynamic it was indeed: while the standard 911 checked out of the wind tunnel with a ho-hum drag coefficient of 0.39, the notably wider 959 managed a far more slippery 0.31. The bodywork
ABOVE
Rear wing and front bumper in development, circa 1984. Production 959s hand-built by Baur between 1986 and 1988.
combines the 911’s floorpan and passenger cell made of galvanised steel with hang-on panels made of artificial fibres and extra-thin aluminium alloy used for the doors and the bootlid. You guessed it: conditioning and fusing the diverse materials was a huge challenge and one of the reasons for the delayed start of production.
The front section was, for instance, autoclave baked from impact-absorbing polyurethane foam; the roof and the clamshell engine cover-cum-tail rudder consisted of a multi-layer glassfibre and aramid-reinforced epoxy resin known as Kevlar. The final assembly passed through a multitude of different processes such as adhesive bonding, riveting, welding, clipsing, hardening, painting and, of course, still some old-school bolting and screwing. Escalating complexity reduced the available standard colours to Ruby Red, Graphite, Silver and Pearl White.
I wasn’t invited to the official launch at the new Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit on April 17, 1986, but they let me drive a pre-production specimen
in Weissach with the motor sport veteran Roland Kussmaul as guide and instructor. In early 1987, I took a 959 from Weissach to Maranello for the first shootout with the Ferrari F40 on the Fiorano test track and the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. The F40 behaved like a proper widowmaker – brutally uncouth, nerve-wreckingly demanding, a bitch at the limit, heart-stoppingly twitchy in the wet, tramlining on C-roads like a hare on the run, all over the place above 125mph.
In contrast, the Porsche was suction-cup solid even at an indicated 206mph, which we caught on camera twice on the newly opened three-lane Stuttgart-Munich autobahn. Designed in the pre-digital age, the 959 cockpit was 80 percent 911 with a twist. The driver could not only tweak the finer chassis details, but they could also choose from four dynamic modes labelled Traction, Dry, Wet and Snow/Ice. Due to its laterabandoned rally background, the shift pattern of the six-speed ’box featured a very short first gear marked ‘G’ for Gelände aka off-road. In reality, there were thus only five useful forward ratios to choose from, so life typically began in second – which was not too long-legged for take-off.
“The Porsche 959 can accomplish almost any automotive mission so well that to call it perfect is the mildest of overstatements,” is what Car and Driver wrote in 1987 about the new wunderwagen. This was a fair judgement: for a very long time, no supercar had been as accessible and practical yet as inspiring and rewarding as Weissach’s reprogrammed Group B racer. A 911 on steroids, the 959 was for a start super-quick and very fast. The 0-62mph acceleration was over and done with in 3.9sec, the 125mph mark came and went after only 14.3sec, and when the road was sufficiently long, empty and straight, the top
speed of 197mph would paint most knuckles ivory, moisten the palms in anticipation and fuel the glow of those starry eyes deep into the night. In this car, velocity became a relative term: while other road users appeared to be dawdling along in a collective slo-mo protest, the Porsche’s fastforward pace was surrealistically superior, an impression confirmed by every glance at the speedometer, which ran out of digits at 220mph.
Starting the engine and depressing the surprisingly light clutch was a familiar routine, but pulling the slightly rubbery lever down into first – effectively second – took a conscious effort. From here forward, a new universe opened up as every stab on the throttle fired a fresh rocket from the arsenal that crouched low down and far behind. Hard acceleration was a physical drama in three acts, which beamed you from foreplay to climax with a vengeance.
First was merely a prelude, and even second raised only a few hackles – but the flick into third and then fourth would trumpet a hard-charging 959 in two physical thrusts from the drivinglicence danger area straight to the district court jury. And there was more to come as the second turbo wasted no time pressure-feeding raw power into fifth and sixth gear, launching a series of brute-force attacks that spearheaded us through the zone with a vengeance. Completing the picture were the riveting soundtrack of the engine morphing with the mounting road and wind noise, the wham-bam whiplash upshifts angering even well trained neck muscles, the bonkers second-wave push above 5000rpm and the absurd cog-railway traction yielding an eerie sensation of invincibility.
On the journey to Italy, the 959 weathered blistering heat and pouring rain with aplomb. Back
in the days when ESP was still an alien acronym, the Porsche would drive circles around AMGs and S-series Audis, play cat and mouse with M3s and M6s, shame lesser 911s for lunch, devour bigblock Chevys and Fords for dinner, and polish off the odd Aston, Jaguar and Maserati for desert. This car was so utterly wonderful and precious that I slept in it one night in Italy, because I had visions of shady characters nicking it by order of an even shadier Eastern Bloc criminal.
Since the en route adrenalin rushes triggered by the Fernpass and Brenner crossings had evaporated in no time at all, BB PW 970 took a brief detour up the legendary Trento-Monte Bondone hillclimb – what a treat. Undisturbed by radar traps and the elsewhere ever-present Carabinieri, the 959 unspooled a series of monumental waw-waw kicks in the butt that echoed with anger from the mountainside. Moments later, the family-size pizza, ABSequipped disc brakes changed the hairdo from gelled back to dry-blown forward in one braincompressing fast-rewind action after the other. Equally impressive was the suspension’s ability to absorb the worst crests, dips, potholes, aquaplaning ruts and transverse ridges, all the while defying the G-force like a life-size slot racer. The chief rival of the 959 was, of course, the F40. But while the Porsche was happy to trade its shaky vocation as the new star of the rally scene for a more fitting role as the next ultimate street machine, the ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ F40 would with the same enthusiasm indulge in its wilder alter ego better known as LM and Competizione. Derived from the 288 GTO Evoluzione, the two-seater designed by Pininfarina looked like a car that was tailor-made for circuit use, and it drove like one, too. The Ferrari was everything the Porsche was
not: casually put together, sparsely equipped, noisy as hell, positively uncomfortable, an animal at the limit and on the approach to it. The ‘polished ice rink’-effect carbonfibre floor lacked the faintest trace of carpet, the closely spaced pedals were drilled bare-metal items, there was no airbag or air-conditioning, the narrow bucket seats would leave imprints on the bums of full-fat drivers, and when that second IHI turbo (which was as big as a shrunken head) cut in like an axe, the subconsciousness issued an urgent snap-oversteer warning. When it struck, the small metal fire extinguisher in front of the passenger seat broke free on one occasion and careened from one sill to the other in search of a home it never found.
A whopping 500kg lighter than the 959, the mid-engined, rear-drive Ferrari stole 0.8sec from its 4WD contender in the 0-62mph sweepstakes, took 2.3sec less time to hit 125mph, and was a token 8.0mph faster overall. Although it offered a whole new level of dynamic slideability, the F40 was 100 percent death wish and zero percent forgiveness. A restless, oversexed devil that never tired to challenge. From the sandbag clutch and the heavy steering to the stubborn dogleg transmission and the lottery handling on any but the smoothest surface, it was always hard work. In sharp contrast, and perhaps its greatest feat, the Porsche would happily keep on knocking a few tenths off your personal A-to-B best with little to zero impact on blood pressure or heart rate. It scored big points for stoic stability, magnetic grip and absolute user-friendliness, which is rare in this elusive league to the present day. A complete all-rounder, the Porsche 959 is the original everyday supercar.
Thanks to all at the Porsche AG Museum and Heritage and Rory Lumsdon (Porsche GB).
THE 959 WAS A HIT FROM THE START, BUT THANKS TO A SURPRISING TURN OF EVENTS IN THE US ITS FORTUNES TOOK AN UPTURN THAT HAVE CONTINUED TO THE PRESENT DAY
Words David Lillywhite
Photography Zach James Todd
IT WOULD MAKE A GREAT HEADLINE TO say that we can thank none other than Bill Gates for the current revered status of the Porsche 959, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. However, the reason that there are 959s in the US, and why we now have 850bhp examples absolutely perfected for road or track use, does start with not one but two famous founders of Microsoft.
It’s a tale that’s been told many times, but not always correctly – and it also involves Bruce Canepa, former race driver and founder of Canepa collector car sales and restoration specialist in Scotts Valley, California. Back when the 959 was new, it couldn’t legally be imported into the US due to emissions and crash-testing regs – and the situation had been made more difficult by another firm attempting to sneak a batch of 959s into the US as ‘race cars’, which they clearly weren’t.
Around the same time, Bruce Canepa sold a 959 to Paul Allen, Bill Gates’ business partner. “Paul was more low profile than Bill, but he was an equal partner in Microsoft,” recalls Bruce. “He was the car guy, and Bill wasn’t. Paul bought my 959 and took it to the South of France, where he had a home. It stayed there until he passed in 2018.
“Paul called me after he got it and drove it, and
said: ‘You know, Bill Gates wants a sports car. He doesn’t know anything about cars, but this is one he could drive.’ So he introduced me to Gates, and I ended up talking to Bill past midnight one night, because that’s when he could focus on something other than everything else.
“I told him why I thought it was a practical car: because it had all-wheel drive – and it rains in Seattle all the time – and because Porsches have great visibility and they’re easy. You turn the key and start them, and they’re not too big, and they really do check every box for a layman. It’s an expensive sports car, but a fairly practical sports car... so I sold one to Bill.
“On the heels of that, I sold five or six more to very famous people almost immediately. I ended up with maybe not quite ten 959s, but pretty close, sitting in a Foreign Trade Zone, a free-trade zone in San Francisco, locked up in warehouses and with no direction on how we were going to legalise them at that point in time. So that was how it all started.”
The saga escalated, with one owner bringing his 959 into the US on a yacht, then having it confiscated, and subsequently attempting to sue the Government. Gates, through Microsoft, looked into the possibility of simulated crash testing (the Government said no), and Bruce theorised that the cars could be modified to pass emissions tests. A Washington DC attorney, Warren Dean, was engaged, and in 1998 this team of disparate but influential people managed to get the issues onto the Senate transportation bill.
The result wasn’t just that 959s would be allowed into the US. The big-picture result was the 1999 Show or Display bill, which allowed (and still allows) low-volume cars of technical and historic interest to be imported into the US, subject to an annual 2500-mile limit. It was an historic moment.
Bruce and his engineers had worked out how to legalise the 959s, largely around the emissions, but they also developed upgrades to compensate for power lost by cleaning up the exhaust gases.
“I had 23 of them sold before they were even legalised,” he says. “It was one tech guy after another, and everybody who really had a passion for cars wanted one. The demand was very strong, and it never really fell off. It just became consistent. We just kept selling them.”
It’s generally accepted that there were 292 production 959s built, plus 29 of the 959 S. Of those, just over 120 have been through the Canepa workshop over the years. On the day we spoke with Bruce, 13 were there. The upshot is that there are few who are better placed to know how well 959s have survived their four decades.
“I have one in my shop right now that came out of Switzerland,” he says. “When we bought it, it had 165,000km (102,000 miles). As soon as it got here, I told the guys to check the tyre
pressures and fluids. I put a video camera in it, and I took it for a drive. We’ve never seen one with that kind of mileage on it.
“It was a well maintained, original car; it had some wear and tear to the interior, but there were no rattles, no squeaks, no air leaks, nothing. If I told you it had 500km, you’d have said ‘yeah’. It was just as solid as the one with virtually no mileage [a 300-mile example also at Canepa].”
The 959 was never perfect, though, and there are now certain faults that do crop up again and again. For our main feature on the 959, Georg Kacher spoke with Porsche Classic in Zuffenhausen. “One major weakness concerns the suspension, which may at some point need not only new pipes, seal kits and sensors, but also a full set of hard-to-get hydraulic spheres,” says Georg, reporting back from the experts there.
“Also blacklisted are chips, solenoids and all kinds of electronic trickery that don’t age well and are difficult to find even secondhand. Engine-wise, the main trouble zones are lengthened chain drives, coked turbos and leaks in the cooling circuit. More headache material? How about jammed actuators, wilted air-conditioning control units and clogged intercoolers. But the hardest fix is perhaps any serious damage to the bodywork, which can, due to the different bonding methods and exotic materials that apparently age at different rates, virtually burst at the seams.”
Bruce reports similar woes but, as with Porsche Classic, has found ways around most of them and understands why they occur. “I tell people to keep in mind, this car wasn’t evolutionary,” he says. “The 959 was revolutionary. It’s got dual
front coilovers, it’s got a six-speed, it’s got ABS, it’s got all-wheel drive, it’s got twin turbos... it’s got this, it’s got that. It was a really state-of-the-art car, and they pushed the envelope. And it was a hand-built car, which they stopped building after two years, so there wasn’t much development.”
As more 959s passed through the Canepa workshops, Bruce and his team came to understand the cars better and better. Of course, one thing led to another… with the result that gradually Canepa started to improve and upgrade some of the components for better longevity and performance. I drove one of its converted cars around ten years ago, and it was noticeably faster, better handling and better riding than a stock 959. But more recently, the company has released the 959 SC, for Sport Canepa (pictured), which takes the improvements to another level.
Each of the 50 SCs will be fully rebuilt to the customer’s specification. The 959 Komfort’s hydraulic suspension (“it was always a pain in the ass,” says Bruce) is replaced with coilover units based on the factory 959 S set-up but with titanium springs and custom Penske Racing dampers. The air-con and heating unit is replaced with a more modern version hidden from view. The wiring is swapped out for a more modernspecification loom. Interiors are retrimmed in higher grades of material. The stereo head unit is upgraded to modern spec while retaining the period look. And so on... even the speaker grilles are replaced for higher-quality 964 items.
And then there is the engine, of course. “Performance wise, we are now at 850bhp,” says Bruce. “Part of that is the turbos have gotten better. MoTec keeps upgrading [ECUs], ignition systems get better. [Porsche tuning legend] Ed Pink, before he passed away, did all the engine-development work. We would just take a piece at a time and make it better.” That’s included new pistons and conrods, solid valve lifters that need adjustment only every 50,000 miles in place of the hydraulic lifters, reflowed and matched cylinder heads, a titanium exhaust system and much more.
The result is a car that’s sporty but comfortable, with improved noise levels, handling, braking and ride. It’s utterly reliable, because the chassis and transmission were designed for these levels of power. A carefully developed 18in wheel to replace the original 17s simply looks like a better-finished version of the original but with a greater choice of tyres. Next up will be a composite brake-disc development and subtle LED lighting upgrades. The thing Bruce insists on, whatever the level of conversion, is that the 959 character always remains. “It’s just a user-friendly car,” he says of all 959s. “It’s a 911 at the end of the day, but at the highest level. You can just drive it everywhere and use it all the time.”
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AS THE ROLLS-ROYCE PHANTOM MARKS 100 YEARS, WE DRIVE TWO OF THE MOST ELEGANT EXAMPLES OF THIS SUBLIME BREED: THE SIR JOHN LEIGH PHANTOM II CONTINENTAL AND THE GENERAL WŁADYSŁAW SIKORSKI PHANTOM III SPORTS CABRIOLET, BOTH NOW OWNED BY LORD BAMFORD
WORDS
PHOTOGRAPHY
GREG WHITE
DAVID LILLYWHITE
THIS SPREAD With its all-alloy 7.3-litre overhead-valve V12, the Sikorski Phantom III Sports Cabriolet by Vanvooren is a pure delight to drive – top up or down.
ROLLS-ROYCE PHANTOMS
“YOU’LL KNOW WHEN YOU’VE GOT THE ignition timing right, because you won’t hear the engine.” And so ended my brief lesson on driving the ex-General Sikorski 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III. A little later, having mastered the ignition control on the steering wheel, I restart the engine and give the throttle a tiny blip, to be rewarded with a knowing grin from Neill McReynolds, looking after the cars. “You weren’t sure if it was running, were you?”
And he is absolutely right. We all know the clichés about Rolls-Royce – the 1950s claim that the loudest sound you’ll hear is the ticking clock, etc… And after all, the original, phantom-like Rolls-Royce 40/50, given the moniker of Silver Ghost, was renamed the New Phantom when it gained a fresh engine in 1925.
Yes, the Rolls-Royce Phantom name has been with us for 100 years, spanning multiple changes of company ownership. The current Phantom VIII is a masterpiece of luxury automotive
ROLLS-ROYCE PHANTOMS
engineering and craftsmanship – and there was a temptation for us to do the obvious and compare a 1925 40/50 Phantom with a 2025 example. But what would that have achieved really, other than to underline what we already know about the pros and cons of automotive development?
Instead, here we have two of the greatest, most significant Phantoms ever made: the unique 1933 Phantom II Continental Freestone & Webb, and the 1937 Phantom III Vanvooren once owned by Poland’s General Sikorski.
The very first Phantom, that beautiful replacement for the Silver Ghost, took the sturdily engineered 40/50 chassis and replaced the Silver Ghost’s sidevalve engine with a 7668cc pushrod overhead-valve six-cylinder. The chassis were built in Derby, England and in Springfield, US, with customers ordering not only the bodystyle but also their coachbuilder of choice.
Rolls-Royce sold 3512 examples (2269 at Derby, 1243 at Springfield) of the New Phantom, which even the current Rolls-Royce Motor Cars now refers to as the Phantom I. It was a model renowned for its strength and civility, and was made more so in 1929 with the launch of the Phantom II.
This was the third and last of the 40/50 model, this time with a development of the overhead-valve powerplant, complete with fresh crossflow cylinder head, sitting in an all-new chassis that incorporated semi-elliptical leaf springs at the rear instead of the Phantom I’s
THIS SPREAD
The unique 1933 Phantom II Continental Freestone & Webb was built for serial Rolls-Royce buyer Sir John Leigh.
cantilever springs. It also gained synchromesh on third and fourth gears, and on second from 1935.
More excitingly, Henry Royce and designer Ivan Evernden dreamed up a new, shortwheelbase version of the Phantom II, with a sixinch-shorter chassis, higher-performance engine, stiffer rear leaf springs and lower-ratio rear axle. Despite an initially muted reception within the company, the prototype spawned a new production model, named the Phantom II Continental. A mere 281 were built.
I first saw Lord Bamford’s Phantom II Continental Freestone & Webb at Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, where I found thenRolls-Royce design director Anders Warming standing stock-still in the pouring rain, staring at it in awe. He explained how he had pictures of it in the design studio as inspiration – and I could immediately see why. It looks like an oversize hot rod or the ultimate gangster car, but in terms of automotive design history it’s the earliest-known example of the ‘razor edge’ styling that became more common in the following two decades.
Its looks were at the very least influenced by serial Rolls-Royce buyer Sir John Leigh, a Lancashire cotton magnate and the Member of Parliament for Clapham, London. He ordered chassis 42PY in August 1933, specifying a car “for use in the UK and the Continent, mainly fast touring”. The order also included special features
such as a six-inch speedometer and tachometer, and the mounting of the exhaust three inches lower than standard, for a more sporty look.
The genius in the styling is how long and low the Phantom II looks, as if it’s a sporty twoseater, and yet inside there’s room for four. The unusual lack of running boards – something particularly admired by Lord Bamford, who pointed it out during our photoshoot – and the lack of a rear bumper exaggerate the sporty lines still more. It was completed by December 1933 and delivered to Sir John soon after.
Its history from that point is straightforward but fascinating; in 1938 it was sold by Leigh –who had ordered four Phantom IIIs in one day during this period – and bought by one B Sleath of Stratford-upon-Avon. Of course, it disappeared from view during World War Two, but it was spotted driving through London by one Anthony Gibbs in 1952 on the very day that his publishing company went bankrupt due to a two-month printers’ strike.
By this point the Phantom II had been painted black and gained a rear bumper. Gibbs was so taken with it that he stopped the driver and managed to strike a deal, buying the car and driving it every day over the next five years. Many of his adventures and anecdotes relating to the Phantom were documented in his own book, A Passion For Cars, but in 1957 he sold
42PY to an American, Arthur W Seidenschwartz, who (ironically) had stopped Gibbs on the road to ask about the car.
Seidenschwartz kept 42PY for 35 years, attending many Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club meetings in it during that time. The vehicle then passed to David Scheibel, who commissioned a restoration that cost thousands of dollars and saw it finished in a single shade of maroon. The Phantom was rewarded with – among other accolades – Best in Class and the Gwenn Graham Award for most Elegant Closed Car at the 1992 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, Best of Show Pre-War at the 1993 RROC National meeting and Best of Previous Best of Show Winners at the RROC National Meeting in 1994.
Scheibel sold 42PY in 2000 to Roger Willbanks, who kept it until 2014, when it featured in the first RM Auctions and Sotheby’s Art and the Automobile sale in New York in 2013, alongside a Talbot T150 ‘Teardrop’ and a Ferrari 250 LM. It sold for a record-breaking $2.4 million to Lord Bamford – the third ex-Leigh Phantom he has owned – and finally headed home to England.
The Rolls-Royce was quickly despatched to Clark & Carter Restorations in Essex to be returned to its original two-tone colour scheme, and it later starred at both Villa d’Este and Salon Privé, where I saw it for the second time. Now, my third time with it, I am able to
CHRISTOPH GROHE S.A. I 10 ROUTE D’ALLAMAN I 1173 FECHY I SWITZERLAND
1931 ROLLS-ROYCE Phantom II Coupé de Ville by Letourneur et Marchand of Paris.
One-off car ordered by Armand Esders at the 1931 Salon de l’Automobile of Paris without headlights «as one does not drive by night».
A few months before he had ordered his Bugatti Royale Roadster Jean Bugatti with the same feature.
Exhibited on the Letourneur et Marchand stand at the 1932 Salon de l’Automobile of Paris and then hidden in the South of France.
One of the most elegant and pure body styles on a Phantom II frame. Never shown at any Concours d’Elegance since 1932.
touch it, sit in it, start it and, yes, drive it.
It’s three and a half tonnes (at least) of magnificence, and we are about to head onto narrow country lanes. Opening the rear-hinged door, I’m reminded of the controls: gearlever and long, upright handbrake on the far right, hindering entrance into the plushly trimmed cabin. With an inelegant hoist of my legs past the levers, I sit upright on the pleated-leather bench seat, peering under the header rail and the door frames, with my rear view more limited still in the tiny wing mirrors. The small central mirror mostly gives a view of the roof headliner, although there’s a slot of visibility through the low, shallow back window.
So, gearlever in neutral, ignition and engine speed controls on the steering wheel set, electrics on, magneto on… and a push of the starter button starts the straight-six engine instantly. Revving it gently rocks the car almost imperceptibly yet satisfyingly on the suspension, but it’s all uncannily quiet.
I back off the ignition advance, slow the engine speed and prepare myself for what might prove to be a challenging drive – following the Sikorski Phantom III out of Lord Bamford’s estate. I try all of the controls: what’s immediately striking is how precise everything feels, from the clutch movement to the narrow gearshift gate. It’s a long reach down to the awkwardly placed gearlever, and I initially have to peer down to work out what I’m doing because there’s so little side-to-side movement between the firstsecond and the third-fourth places. Reverse is another precise movement further to the left, protected by a lift-up lock-out.
rectified via the steering-wheel control.
Our photographer, Greg, assumed he would be having to wait around for these 90-year-old Rolls-Royces, but both charge along the country lanes. The Phantom II’s engine produces a distant and smooth roar, and the transmission whines in first but quietens in its higher gears. Bumps upset the steering but not the ride, and it doesn’t take long to relax into loosening my grip on the steering wheel and letting the front wheels self-correct the car’s path.
I’m wary of the brakes at first, but those huge drums at each corner pull up the Phantom beautifully. Only the heavy steering and limited turning circle limit the car’s usability on these archetypically English country lanes, as I find out turning back into another part of the estate for photography. But it’s fine, I’m already smitten.
engine. Until 1938, the marque used a clever form of hydraulic tappets to ensure minimum noise from the valvetrain. There’s a twin ignition system, with two distributors, two coils and 24 spark plugs, and twin SU electric fuel pumps, and on the chassis there are coil springs at the front, servo-assisted brakes, a one-shot lubrication system and onboard jacking.
The Sikorski car is already moving out, and I follow, heaving on the huge wheel to make the most of the limited steering lock. I doubledeclutch slowly from first to second ratio, and then to third, before realising that the engine’s huge torque and the transmission’s slick synchromesh make gearchanging a doddle once the awkward reach-down to the lever is overcome. I have already been warned that an unnerving crunch simply means that the engine idle speed is too high, which is easily
It’s fascinating comparing the Phantom II with the Sikorski car. They’re so different, in both looks and engineering, but the feeling of quality and precision is shared. While the Phantom I and II were largely similar, the Phantom III was altogether more sophisticated in its engineering, with an all-alloy 7.3-litre V12 overhead-valve
The histories of these particular examples of the Phantom II and Phantom III couldn’t be more different, either: while Sir John Leigh was important, wealthy and a regular customer of Rolls-Royce, he cannot compare to General Władysław Sikorski, the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces during World War Two. General Sikorski’s Phantom III was ordered for his personal use by a close acquaintance, Count Stefan Czarnecki, to the General’s precise specifications. Chassis 3 CM 81 was built for use in Europe, particularly France and Poland, for town work and high-speed touring. It was fitted with a speedometer in both kilometres and miles, and a fuel gauge in litres and gallons.
Bentley shipped the chassis on the SS Plover in November 1937 to coachbuilder Vanvooren just ROLLS-ROYCE
This spectacular and unique motorcar is presented for sale for the first time in decades:
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Chassis no: T N 1564
Engine no: TN1 563
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Gun Hill Studios
outside Paris, where it was built as a Sports Cabriolet. We now know that it was one of only three Phantom IIIs produced by Vanvooren; the other two were a Saloon and a Sedanca de Ville that was later converted to a Limousine.
It was delivered to Czarnecki in Paris in April 1938, and soon handed over to General Sikorski. By then, as Europe began its descent into war, Sikorski was already a powerful world figure. He had fought with distinction in the Polish Legions during World War One, and then in the Polish Army during the Polish-Soviet War that followed. He went on to hold various governmental posts including Prime Minister and Minister of Military Affairs during the second Polish Republic, and Prime Minister of the Polish Government.
During World War Two he was made Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, based in Scotland. Despite all that was going on during that time, he still had his beloved Phantom III shipped over, to be registered in Perth in August 1941. He wasn’t to enjoy it much longer, though, for on July 4, 1943, General Sikorski was killed when his plane plunged into the sea immediately after taking off from Gibraltar.
The Phantom III was later offered for sale by Jack Barclay Ltd, and sold in April 1944 to one WP Dobson. Four years later, records show that it was owned by Alfred Beaumont of Leeds, who
kept it until his death in 1968. Several years –and owners – later its paintwork was changed from black to maroon, and it was sold in 1984 to (William) John Harwood who had it shipped to his home in Huntingdon, New York.
In June 2012 it was bought from Harwood by Lord Bamford, and sent for restoration at P&A Wood. The finishing touches were copies of Sikorski’s flags, which it proudly displays today.
As far as I can remember, this is the first car with flags I’ve ever driven – although there are more important things to think of. As with the Phantom II, the controls feel reassuringly heavy and precise, but the Sikorski car’s V12 is in a different league. It is creamy-smooth and uncannily quiet; my first paragraph really wasn’t an exaggeration, because even in the peace and quiet of the countryside, it’s not immediately obvious if the engine has started.
The gearlever and handbrake are sited in a similar position, too but there’s more room between them and the seat, while the controls are a little better laid out. It’s interesting to see the many switches – for lights, wipers etc – labelled in French, reflecting the market and the coachbuilder. With the hood up, visibility is restricted, just as in the Freestone & Webb Phantom II, but the sun’s shining and we’re keen to see how the top retracts. Small sections of bodywork are wound back using a handle behind the seats, the hood
drops smoothly and simply out of sight, and the bodywork is wound back into place, followed by the fitment of two end pieces. It’s a fast and simple operation, taking around 90 seconds, but the engineering behind it is complicated and exquisite.
Now transformed in looks, the Sikorski Phantom III is also a pure delight to drive with the hood down. Visibility is, of course, tenfold improved, and the pleasure of bowling along the country roads is increased proportionally. It’s an easier car to drive than the Phantom II anyway, thanks to that beautiful engine, but the gearshifts are much slicker, too, and the ride is smoother as well thanks to the coil-sprung front suspension.
For looks, I don’t think any Rolls-Royce Phantom can beat Lord Bamford’s Phantom II Continental Freestone & Webb. It’s also one of the best-driving examples of the Phantom Is and IIs, thanks to the extra power of the speccedup engine. Longer-wheelbase, non-Continental Phantoms give a smoother ride, but there’s something really special about a Continental.
The Sikorski Phantom III is a beautifullooking car, too, and what’s interesting is that it is better – and easier – to drive than the Phantom II. Which would you choose? Well surely you would have both…
Thanks to Lord Bamford for the use of the cars and the estate, along with Neill McReynolds, Shaun Jeffery, Alex Batts and Richard Tipper.
1937 ROLLS-ROYCE PHANTOM III
One of a kind special Henley 2-door coupé Coachwork by Inskip
Chassis Number: 3CP124
Enquire for information and further details
2019 Pebble Beach winner 1st in class, Lucius Beebe award
2022 Rolls-Royce Enthusiast Club First Class winner at Burghley House
Restored and prepared by Clark and Carter Restorations
Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxx FAR MORE THAN ‘MERELY’ THE FATHER OF THE TAILFIN, THE LEGENDARY VIRGIL EXNER WAS A MASTER OF MID-CENTURY MODERN AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN. HERE’S HOW, DESPITE HIS CAREER LOWS AS WELL AS HIGHS, ‘EX’ MARKED THE SPOT – AND WHY HIS LEGACY AND INFLUENCE WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN
Words Peter M Larsen
1947StudebakerChampionStarlightCoupe
IN DECEMBER 1963, ESQUIRE PUBLISHED one of the most influential articles in the magazine’s history. It featured four remarkable designs presented by Virgil Exner, Chrysler’s charismatic ex-vice-president of design.
Exner – or Ex, as he was known to friend and foe alike – was no run-of-the-mill Detroit car stylist. His 100 Million Dollar Look for Chrysler’s 1955 model year, and the 1957 Forward Look designs, had saved the smallest of the Big Three from going the way of Packard, Hudson and Kaiser – a bitter road Studebaker was soon to navigate. In association with Carrozzeria Ghia, Virgil had also been the originator of a number of fantastic Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge and DeSoto show cars in the 1950s, including two that made it into very limited production, namely Eugene Casaroll’s Dual-Ghia and later the Ghia L6.4.
Now, Exner wanted to demonstrate what a number of famous marques that had fallen by the wayside could have been offering for 1964. As he put it in the Esquire piece, his new designs assumed either: “That each manufacturer had pursued a policy of refinement and modernisation of [his] cars’ identifying characteristics, or that each had decided to resume business after a 30-year lapse… What we are trying to do is capture the spirit of the older car design and body type in a modern package.”
In this short text, what we now know as retrostyling was born. Classic elements abounded with prominent, carefully modernised radiator
shells, twin-blade bumpers and classic fender accents to the wheelarches as well. The cars received widespread publicity, and their lines exerted a massive influence on late-1960s and early-1970s American auto design. Without them, it’s doubtful that the ’67 Cadillac Eldorado would have been styled as it was, or that Lee Iacocca’s opulent masterpiece, the wildly successful 1969 Lincoln Continental MkIII, would have seen the light of day. Today, we see retro styling as a matter of course in cars from many major manufacturers, such as the Mini Cooper, Fiat 500, Renault Alpine and Ford Bronco – not to mention the electric Volkswagen ID. Buzz and the new Renault 4 and 5 models. Exner’s supremely elegant 1963 designs quickly became known as his Revival Cars. There was a Mercer Raceabout, a Duesenberg Dual Cowl Sport Phaeton, a Packard Twin-Six and a Stutz Super Bearcat. Shortly thereafter, Virgil added a modern-day proposal for a Jordan Playboy, a Pierce Silver Arrow and a Bugatti Roadster. While all of these designs fed the dreams of young boys in the 1960s, not least because they were made as model kits by an obscure plastics company named Renwal, it was more difficult to see the cars into real-life production. In 1965, the beautiful Mercer Raceabout design was built by the Carrozzeria Sibona-Basano as a one-off on a stretched AC Cobra chassis for the American Copper Development Association. Used extensively to promote the use of copper
VIRGIL EXNER
1954PlymouthExplorer 1954DodgeFirearrowIV
trim on automobiles, and with its enticing lines ultimately inspired by the long-tail version of the legendary Mercedes 540K Special Roadster, it became a very famous car.
Virgil had purchased the very last Bugatti 101 chassis made by the factory. Also in 1965, he had this platform shortened by Ghia, which then crafted his Bugatti Revival design for his personal use. In 1966, the carrozzeria built a revised Exner Duesenberg design on an Imperial platform in a failed attempt to revive the marque, which involved the participation of Fred ‘Fritz’ Duesenberg, the son of company founder August himself. Today, these three unique machines survive in prominent collections.
The only one of all these designs to go into limited production was the Stutz. A new Stutz Motor Car Company was formed, and the car came on the market in 1971 as the Stutz Blackhawk, based on a Pontiac Grand Prix platform. Not very rationally, complete Grand Prix models were purchased from dealers at full retail and shipped to Italy. There, the bodies and interiors were discarded all the way down to the steering wheel, and extravagant yet delicate split-window Exner-designed bodies were handbuilt from scratch by the Carrozzeria Padane in Modena. Why be frugal when you can be wasteful?
The Stutz prototype was bought by Elvis Presley, and the model quickly became the darling of the Hollywood set, just like the Dual-Ghia and Ghia L6.4 that preceded it: Dean Martin, Lucille Ball, Sammy Davis Jr, Dick Martin and Debbie Reynolds were among the glittering clients. Reputedly, Frank Sinatra never bought one because he was miffed that Elvis got the first car. Yet it was not to last. The Series I Blackhawk first retailed at a huge $22,500 in 1971, enough to
buy about three Continental MkIIIs. The price soon increased to more than $35,000, yet Stutz was still losing about $10,000 per completed vehicle. No wonder – buying a Pontiac, shipping it to Italy, discarding half the car, building a brand-new body by hand and then shipping the new, completed model back to the US was perhaps best described as a business plan straight out of a Donald Duck cartoon.
After a mere 25 Series I cars had been built, some corners had to be cut or the newly founded Stutz company would go under. From then on, the Blackhawk lost its fine Exner style and became increasingly gaudy as the factory resorted to merely hanging new sheet metal on the existing Pontiac body structure, including greenhouse, and gold-plating everything it could lay its hands on in the otherwise stock General Motors interior. Sad as the Stutz ending was, Ex’s Revival Cars nevertheless remained the culmination of a long and deeply influential career in automobile design. A career in which he had continually shaped, reshaped and re-identified how cars could look and perform in the marketplace.
Virgil Max Exner was born September 24, 1909 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a kid, young Virgil soon demonstrated that he was gifted with “gasoline in his blood” – a phrase Ex himself would use later in life about people he respected. To the frustration of his teachers, he would doodle cars in his notebooks in school, and as a teenager he saved his money and bought a Model T Ford that he kitted out with a LeBaron coachbuilder plate and a Duesenberg badge on the radiator, and finished off with gold pinstriping. Virgil then proceeded to terrorise local roads in the ‘Lizzie’ – and, like some Butch Cassidy, he carved a notch in the steering wheel
every time he managed to overtake a larger car.
Ex graduated high school in 1926, and in 1927, at the age of 18, he went to work for Advertising Artists Inc in South Bend, Indiana, where he became an illustrator. The city’s own famous automobile manufacturer Studebaker was a major client, and as he applied his talent to drawings of Studebaker cars for the company’s brochures, he inevitably got to rub shoulders with the maker’s staff designers.
Talent will out, and Virgil’s career took off. In 1934, he was head-hunted by GM’s Art and Color Section under Harley Earl. Once there, he promptly won an in-house design competition, beating experienced creators. By the age of 26, Exner was promoted to chief stylist at Pontiac – the youngest studio head ever at GM.
At 29, Ex was back in South Bend, now on the payroll of Manhattan design firm Loewy and Associates. Always on the look-out for talent, Raymond Loewy had head-hunted Exner from GM, only to ‘hire him out’ to Studebaker, a major client. Creatively Exner was a powerhouse, overseeing the design of the 1939 Champion and complete Studebaker line-up for 1940 and 1941 – for which Loewy took the credit, as was his wont. After that came the (in)famous 1947 Champion and Commander, soon known as the Coming-or-Going models. In 1948, he laid the groundwork for the justly revered 1953 Starlight Coupe – for which Loewy also took the credit. In 1949, just as he was turning 40, Exner was brought in by Chrysler president KT Keller and made chief of the Advanced Styling Studio at Highland Park, the Chrysler headquarters in Detroit. There, he would revolutionise the look of American cars. The corporation had hired a daring and creative virtuoso: no one had a
1952ChryslerD’Elegance
better understanding of the magic of automotive fantasy. Beginning in November 1951, and starting with the so-called Chrysler K-310, a series of one-off Idea Cars on Chrysler, DeSoto, Dodge and Plymouth platforms were created by Ex and built by the Carrozzeria Ghia in Turin, which had been brought into the fold by Keller and CB Thomas, Chrysler’s vice-president of exports.
Given a free hand Ex showed himself to be a master of proportion and mass, and something of a wizard when creating a lithe silhouette and a breathtaking side treatment. And the names given to these Idea Cars were as exciting as the automobiles themselves, redolent as they were of 1950s aspirations: Flight Sweep, Firearrow, Firebomb, Explorer and Falcon – the last of these names so good that it was eventually sold to Ford.
While these one-off prototypes were meant for car shows, they were precisely not called Dream Cars, because they were built on existing and functional Chrysler Corporation underpinnings. They accelerated, drove, steered and braked – in other words, they were not like the tantalising but often static mock-ups or undriveable figments of the imagination that came out of the styling studios of GM and Ford. They were real automobiles that, at least in theory, could enter into production if the money for tooling were forthcoming.
Important styling cues that Exner would go on to use repeatedly on future one-off and production designs included a prominent grille, fully exposed wheels, gunsight tail-lights mounted on the rear fender tips and a spare tyre outlined on the trunk lid. This was later popularised as a so-called ‘donut trunk’, while a few nasties called it a ‘trashcan lid’ and true trolls opted for ‘toilet seat’. In mid-January 1952, Ex gave a paper on international automotive styling to the Society of
Automotive Engineers, using the K-310 as his springboard. In his talk, he made a seminal observation about the wheel, which he saw as a central element of automotive design. The wheel is one of man’s oldest and most vital inventions, he said, and it is also one of the prettiest and most beautiful designs. It is... the essence of functional automotive design. Why attempt to hide it?
Why indeed? Large, exposed wheels, preferably wires, became a trademark Exner styling element on Idea Cars and line-topping Chrysler production cars. Over the next ten years, Ghia would make more than two dozen Idea Cars. These were shown to widespread acclaim, and they received copious press coverage of the positive kind. Yet it remained hard work for Ex to push his vivid styling ideas into mass production in the US, even as they were made beautifully real by Ghia.
Virgil hit his stride in 1952 with the Chrysler D’Elegance Idea Car, a sporty and elegant shortwheelbase two-passenger coupe. It featured his open arches, large wire wheels, donut trunk and gunsight tail-lights, while the grille was a purposeful trapezoidal front intake – a shape that would be repeated on several Idea Cars before finally finding its way onto the 1957 production Chryslers. Even a five-year-old could see how striking and beautiful the D’Elegance was. Nevertheless, extreme design conservatism reigned at Chrysler, and the look of the corporation’s mass-produced products was in the hands of engineering. The futuristic Chrysler Airflow had been introduced in 1934 and nearly cost the company its life. Nearly 20 years later, the smell of burnt fingers still lingered at Highland Park, and engineering had little intention of relinquishing its power over the status quo.
However, and possibly brought on by the
D’Elegance, 1953 saw the friction between engineering and Virgil Exner come to a head. The new-car buying spree of the immediate post-war years was over, and Chrysler, whose styling had remained virtually unchanged since 1949, was rapidly losing sales. Consequently, Tex Colbert, who favoured Exner’s work, named him director of styling. This put Ex in charge of Advanced Styling as well as Chrysler production designs.
The 1953 and ’54 model lines were already in the pipeline with tooling virtually completed, so nothing much could be done there. Painfully aware that sales continued to bleed, Colbert unprecedentedly asked Exner to evaluate the 1955 product lines even as they were close to being finalised. Not mincing his words, Ex told Colbert to scrap everything – which the latter then did, to the extreme dissatisfaction of engineering. This gave Virgil and his fellow designers a mere 18 months to come up with the goods.
There was no time to start from scratch. Exner swiftly created new proportions by artfully devising an upsweep of the beltline over a redesigned, fully open rear arch, while at the same time introducing simple changes to sheetmetal surfacing that lightened the overall look. These masterful tweaks created an entirely new and fresh design statement that was implemented on the 1955 Imperial, Chrysler and DeSoto lines. A ‘colour-sweep’ along the sides facilitated twotoning. As a result, these new-bodied cars were bright, fresh and anything but dowdy. They were marketed as the 100 Million Dollar Look, and Chrysler sales shot up from a little under 900,000 in ’54 to almost 1.6m in ’55 for a 17 percent market share. It was official: Styling Sells Cars! Engineering must have had smoke coming out their ears.
The 1956 line-up received only minor facelifts
1960PlymouthXNR
but was rebranded The Forward Look in anticipation of what was to come. In a sense, the rest is history – or to put it a bit differently, Virgil and the absolutely sensational Exner tailfin would make history in 1957. He wiped the slate clean: full-width grilles, optional quad headlights, slim rooflines and greenhouses, as well as new, brighter interiors, were the order of the day. Ex’s groundbreaking work lay in the hugely increased glass area and the fact that everything about the cars was just so much longer, lower and wider than anything else coming out of Detroit. Greased lightning, to coin a phrase.
And those fins! With them, Virgil had created an entirely new design language, where tall, narrow, steep and elegant panels began at the rear quarter window and swept up to a tip at the very end of the car. As a styling element, the fins dominated everything – and it is not an overstatement to say that no one in the industry had ever seen anything quite like it. The 1957 Chrysler Corporation models simply looked like rocket ships. Sales went through the roof. It was still called The Forward Look, but this time the name became a firebrand. The entire competition was forced to go back and take a long, hard look at what they were manufacturing. To their dismay, all they could see was last year’s news coming off the assembly lines. There was a rush to the drawing boards, and at GM it led to Bill Mitchell eventually seizing the reins from a burntout Harley Earl. Yet in spite of the new Chryslers looking like something out of The Jetsons, they were not brash. These startling bodies were beautifully proportioned, elegant, clean and sculpted designs, proving that Ex had not sacrificed his golden touch on the altar of sensationalism.
On July 24, 1956, Virgil Exner suffered a
massive heart attack. Years of living on cigarettes and coffee while constantly battling the powers that be had taken their toll. Ex was away for five months, and came back to a different Chrysler; former colleague Bill Schmidt had taken over styling in his absence and now found it difficult to relinquish power. The revolutionary Forward Look production cars had gotten off to a flying start but were soon plagued by a slew of quality issues that saw 1958 sales sink alarmingly. The problems were exacerbated by the ’58 recession, and sales fell through the floor the following year. It was the beginning of the end for Virgil, and while there were more Idea Cars, they would not be as cohesive as his 1951-57 efforts.
It is a searing irony that internally at Chrysler, styling was blamed. Engineering hadn’t forgotten old grudges, and Exner was wrongfully held responsible for the sales slump. As the fall guy, he never quite recovered his position and stature. Three years of hapless facelifts followed. Chrysler fins kept growing, while front and rear treatments got progressively stranger until they bordered on the grotesque. Meanwhile, GM fielded finless Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Buicks for 1961, and Ford brought out the sleek new Thunderbird and the very sleek and stunningly beautiful ’61 Lincoln Continental. Ex was losing it, and Chrysler was slipping back towards a ten percent market share.
He’d been working on designs for the 1962 model year, targeting his now-famous fins for elimination and exploring asymmetrical lines, while at the same time going back to his classic-era design roots with longer hoods, shorter rears and, in the case of Imperial, freestanding headlights. In late November ’61, Chrysler president Lynn Townsend summoned Exner and told him that Ex would be replaced as vice-president of design by Elwood
Engel, who was being brought in from Ford. Townsend offered to keep Virgil on as a styling consultant until the latter could retire in 1964, but there was no denying that Ex had been fired. He stayed on to see the 1963 models into production. The ’64 models were Engel’s work. Exner then set up his own design consultancy, Virgil M Exner Inc, in Birmingham, Michigan. There he came up with a number of forwardthinking powerboat ideas, as well as designs for the seminal Revival Cars. With their strong classic-era influences, these designs have divided opinion ever since: some deride them as derivative and lacking in taste, while others hail them because they capture the elegance, stance and proportions of a bygone age on modern platforms. Good or bad, they were true Exner creations. Beauty, elegance, glamour and the perfect blending of tones and shades were his hallmark. Diplomatic, well spoken, gentlemanly and with an uncanny sense of proportion, Virgil Max Exner was a true artist in metal, fabric and glass. No one said it better than Ex himself in 1947: “A design is worthless if it cannot be translated into an actual automobile that is structurally sound, economically feasible and functionally beautiful.”
Few designers have left such a mark on mid20th-century car design as did Virgil Exner. He’s gone down in history – unfairly – as a sort of high priest of the tailfin. It’s a legacy that ignores his great and varied talent, his many stirring designs, his intoxicating vision, his widespread influence and, not least, his sure hand and great taste.
Ex passed away on December 22, 1973. He rests in the Saint Joseph Valley Memorial Park in South Bend, Indiana. He will not be forgotten. Virgil Exner Creations will be a featured class at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
1965Mercer-Cobra
THE ATS 2500 GT/GTS WAS THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF MARANELLO’S OWN ‘NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES’ IN 1961, BUT DESPITE A STELLAR CAST OF EX-FERRARI STAFF THE PROJECT FAILED. CHASSIS 2005, THE EX-BILL MITCHELL CAR, IS ONE OF JUST 12 TO HAVE BEEN BUILT, AND IT HAS BEEN RESTORED AFTER BEING FOUND UNDER A TARPAULIN IN DENVER
WORDS
NATHAN CHADWICK
PHOTOGRAPHY
WANTED TO BUILD A WORLD-BEATING supercar in the 1960s, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a finer staff roster. Chief engineer Carlo Chiti, sports car development chief Giotto Bizzarrini, sales manager Girolamo Gardini and manager Romolo Tavoni, among others – a team responsible for bringing Ferrari to prominence on road and track. Oh, and the chequebook of Count Volpi and two more backers.
The ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in 1961 had seen the key men who’d played such a big part in Ferrari’s success sacked in a dispute over the input of Enzo’s wife in the company’s day-to-day running. Any worries Enzo had choosing the home team over his employees when learning they had set up Automobili Turismo e Sport (ATS) would soon be unfounded. The ATS story would produce a disastrous Formula 1 effort and just six complete cars, two team machines and four more unfinished chassis.
It is a story that’s played out in the very construction of this ATS 2500 GTS, chassis 2005, as discovered by its now-owner more than 50 years later. “Whoever built this car did so in a hurry,” says Stephen Bell, who also runs the Colorado-based Classic Investments.
With no handbooks to go by and scant spares, the full breadth of the restoration team’s skills were challenged for this, the first of three GTS ‘street-race’ models built. However, ‘challenges’ and the ATS tale seem to go hand in hand.
The story began just a few months after that fateful night in Maranello. With Chiti and Bizzarrini on the engineering side, the omens looked good – this was a development team that had Phil Hill’s World F1 Championship-winning
Ferrari 156 Sharknose and the 250 GTO on its resume. To fund the ATS F1 car, which Hill would drive, there was a need for a road machine.
The ATS 2500 GT/GTS was the answer – a twodoor rear-mid-engined sports car with gorgeous styling from Franco Scaglione, the man responsible for many of Bertone’s most stylish models of the 1950s. The engine was similarly special: a bespoke road-car unit was out of the question, so the GTS would use a 2.5-litre development of the racing V8 – something that Bizzarrini couldn’t countenance, preferring his V12 design. He left the project, taking Count Volpi’s money with him. With Volpi gone, so too went another investor, leaving just one: Giorgio Billi, whose wealth was based on machinery exports. With the Italian economic miracle driving up inflation and staff costs, Billi felt the pinch in his main business, and so did ATS. Of the 12 cars produced, just eight
OPPOSITE Bar the seats and some soft trim, the cabin is all refurbished original. This was the only ATS not to have a heater.
were finished before the plug was pulled in 1965. Nevertheless, the project had caught the attention of the motoring industry – none more so than Bill Mitchell, the freshly installed vicepresident of General Motors’ styling section. In the early 1960s, Mitchell was pushing forward his Sheer Look agenda, which eschewed the ’50s fins and flair aesthetic for more aerodynamic silhouettes and clean, crisp lines. Fundamental to this change of tack was encouraging his staff to use the likes of Ferrari and Rolls-Royce as their inspiration, and as such Mitchell amassed an enviable collection of international exotica for his staff to pore over – which is where the model you see before you, chassis 2005, comes in.
One of the first to be built in 1963, it’s the earliest-known ATS road car to still exist, reckons Bell. It was used as a long-distance development hack by Carlo Chiti, and would star in Road &
Track’s company profile in the September 1964 edition. This came about almost by accident –journalist Griff Borgeson just happened to be in Bologna and called up Chiti to see if anything new was going on at ATS. “Well if you can get here in the next hour,” Chiti replied, “you can put a few kilometres on the car we’re shipping tonight to Mr Mitchell of General Motors.”
Borgeson was treated to a ride in chassis 2005, where test driver Teodoro Zeccoli “screamed the shit out of it,” says Bell. A brief jaunt around the factory’s public roads saw 150mph on the speedo. This might go some way to explaining the paint issues and minor damage reported on a GM corporate memo when the car arrived in the US… Mitchell’s right-hand man Chuck Jordan brought the ATS home on occasion. His son, C Mark Jordan, vividly remembers sitting alongside his dad for “the ultimate visceral experience” at the age of ten. He also remembers hearing Mitchell resisting overtures from Bizzarrini to buy the car. It remained with Mitchell until 1972, during which time it was fitted with Corvette seats and a bonnet with GT40-style vents. GM memos also reveal it was repaired before appearing at the 1967 Detroit Guard Armory Sports Car Spectacular. In 1972 GM sold the ATS to an employee, who
ATS 2500 GTS
then consigned it to the Royal Toyota dealership in a Detroit suburb five years later.
Not long afterwards it found its next owner –Steve Berry. The avowed ATS enthusiast already owned chassis 1001, the 1963 Geneva Motor Show machine. He stumped up the necessary $7200 and tried to drive the car home to Denver – it almost made it, coming to a halt in Nebraska; it was trailered the remaining 300 miles.
That, sadly, is where it stayed for the next three decades, perched on axle stands under a carport in plain sight of the nearby road. Despite selling chassis 1001 to fund the GTS’s restoration, chassis 2005 would barely see the road again under Berry’s stewardship. The engine was removed, and Steve would set about an ultimately unfinished rebuild in his and wife Sonja’s lounge. “He had always loved cars, and he had a Sunbeam Tiger and an MGA,” Sonja recalls. “When I met him, his family ran a restaurant, Berry’s Coffee Shop, but he also worked on speciality models as a mechanic at Western Motor Works.”
The family lived in Littleton, an area that forbade people from working on their car unless they had their own garage – which is how the engine came to reside in the living room. “We only had the carport, yet Steve disassembled the ATS on the driveway, put everything in tubs and did everything by the book. But because we had no garage, the engine came into the living room.”
Unlike some tales we have heard of similar arrangements, Steve did not use the family dishwasher to clean parts. “He did it all by hand,” Sonja says. “He cleaned it up inside the house, and that’s okay – that’s who he was.” But didn’t she mind having to watch the TV with an engine sitting beside her? “I didn’t make a decision on that –that was his passion and that’s what he did.”
Chassis 2005 would stay in this limbo for years, and it came to Stephen Bell’s attention only during a chance discussion about the ATS with Classic Investments’ chief Ferrari mechanic, Ron Clark.
“Ron said he used to work in an independent Ferrari workshop in Denver, and that a friend of his, Steve, had one,” recalls Bell – who upon
hearing about the car instantly wanted to know more. “Ron got on the phone to Steve that day, and reported: ‘That ATS is sitting on axle stands, under a tarpaulin, still in the same place, three miles from our workshop.’”
Bell subsequently arranged to see the car: “I distinctly remember when Ron and I went down to look at it in the daylight. I was elated just to see it and take a look around its nooks and crannies. The engine was in a shed beside it – I was on a high.”
Steve’s efforts to get the GTS running had been thwarted by ill health and escalating costs, which contributed to it having covered just 8795km. Enamoured with the car, Bell asked to be first on the list should the ATS need to leave the family.
Berry and Stephen would keep in contact over the years, but the latter’s stewardship would come about via sad circumstances. “I recall flying back from Palm Springs to see the car, but Steve had to pull out at the last moment because he was feeling ill,” says Bell. “He passed away two weeks later.”
Obviously, all thoughts of the ATS were put to one side while the family came to terms with their
loss, but about a year and a half later Bell made contact. “I told them my aim was to build it and put it on the lawn at Pebble Beach, come what may – even if I had to sell my other cars,” he says. “The family asked me why I wanted it so badly: I love the beauty and the history – and the chance to buy one put me over the moon.”
The family were impressed and the GTS passed to Bell in 2019. The next big question was what to do with it – a debate that took a good year to be settled. “While it didn’t really have any rust, it had been sitting for too many decades and the finishes weren’t good enough,” explains Stephen. “We decided to restore it to exact original standards.”
The work started on August 1, 2020. “We were slow in the workshop due to Covid, so I drew a line in the sand: let’s do this,” says Bell. “I’m not mechanically minded – I work in sales – but I wanted to put my own blood into this. I spent 500 hours doing all the unskilled labour, stripping the ATS, labelling parts, removing decorative items... getting it sorted and ready for the pros.”
As Ron Clark explains, the pros would still
ATS 2500 GTS
BELOW Chassis 2005 shown as found on axle stands, pre-restoration and finally ready for paint.
The Personal Collection from the Late Richard W. Darling
1953 Lancia Aurelia B20
Third
Chassis
Matching
1
Chassis # BS/530
Chassis
1 of only 33 Motto Spiders built
Bare
Bare
have their work cut out for them: “Trying to understand how to get this car to where it was when it left the factory was the largest challenge. ATS never produced workshop or parts manuals. Trying to understand the engineers’ logic as to where things went or how they were assembled was entirely reliant on our knowledge of Italian cars, knowing that these guys came from Ferrari.”
The other major factor was that no two ATS models are exactly the same. “All were essentially prototypes,” says Bell. “Chassis 2005 was the only one with no heater, and with these types of side scoops. One other GTS had two filler caps, whereas mine had one. The next car off the line had just one wiper – mine had two. The factory just grabbed stuff from wherever they could.”
This sense of desperation in the construction became apparent when Stephen’s team started pulling the ATS apart. “These cars were built pretty crudely, and seemingly in a hurry – there was quite a bit of difference from right to left on the body. The aluminium panels riveted into the mudguards didn’t fit on one side – you could see they just hammered stuff into place,” he says.
The fit of the rear glass section was poor, and the front wasn’t much better, either – as Stephen found when he had a brand-new one made up to the same size. It simply didn’t fit, so an aluminium template had to be made for the windscreen to be rebuilt at a supplier in Canada.
Some work could be done in house, such as on the dampers, which Bell believes were off-theshelf Koni units modified to fit chassis 2005 in particular. Overall, he says: “It’s almost as if the parts were never dry-fitted; they just said ‘we’ve got to get them on, and get the cars out of the door’, and they’d force and bang things into place.”
Given these challenges, some parts had to be modified to make the ATS whole again, but Stephen says there’s been no reproduction, other than some soft materials such as the interior trim
or seats. “We rebuilt, restored or found all the original parts,” adds Ron. Understandably given the car’s rarity, even researching the components, let alone finding them, took a lot of time. Clark says it took Classic Investments’ parts researcher, Spencer Bailey, hundreds of hours just to get an understanding of the suspension bushings.
Getting the engine running was much more straightforward, even if there were signs of a fire in the bay. The front part of the wiring harness, where the fuse block and battery were located, had been cut out, too, but the motor and gearbox were mercifully – if curiously, given Steve Berry’s troubles – mechanically sound. “Best guess is it was something electrical – I don’t think it was anything major,” Ron says. “It has electrical fuel pumps, not mechanical; if it lost those, it wouldn’t run. Same with the ignition. We just don’t know.”
The restoration took around a year, and with just six employees it was a big job. “It was the first time I’ve really bankrolled my own car –with a reduction in customer income, and putting out a lot of cash, this restoration was definitely a little more stressful than most,” Bell laughs.
There are some key changes to how chassis 2005 arrived in the workshop. Bill Mitchell’s Corvette seats were very heavy, and have been removed. The rest of the cabin was kept original. Meanwhile, the paint was matched to Zagato Red and designed to have a period finish, rather than the ‘wet look’ of more modern restorations. Ron – a seasoned open-wheel racer – got behind the wheel first. “He told me that it was a typical race car, built for doing 120-160mph flatout. Up to 4000rpm it was just ‘doggy’ – a thoroughbred racehorse with long legs,” relates Bell. “He also said it felt light at the front end, the steering was tight and the Colotti gearbox shifted beautifully; a typical race ’box – a quick, sharp shift with no synchro on all ratios.”
Of his own impressions, Stephen says: “I’m no
ABOVE ExBill Mitchell car easily identified by uniquely shaped side scoops.
racing driver, so it took me a little time to get used to a racing crash ’box – but with a few tips from Ron I got it. He was adamant I ensure the revs drop to idle before going into first at a stop sign…
“At low speeds the car feels heavy, the suspension harsh, the engine baulky and straining, like a stallion needing to be released from its reins. The GTS is tall geared, and it takes a few seconds for the V8 to come on cam – then all hell breaks loose. As you accelerate, each change requires a pause or throttle blip to match engine and gear speeds. Push the car hard and its demeanour changes dramatically – it is now in its element.”
Bell went on to show the ATS at Pebble Beach in 2021. It won The Amelia award at Amelia Island in 2022, before winning its Post-War Sports Class 1961-75 at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering. That won’t be the end of its concours life –Stephen is keen to tell the story of the ATS project, a subject that’s surprisingly under the radar.
Not only because of those involved at the start, but also due to its legacy: Bizzarrini went on to sell his V12 design to Lamborghini, while Scaglione and Chiti joined forces at Autodelta, playing crucial roles in the development of the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 road and racing cars. Volpi picked up the 2500 GTS designs for his doomed Serenissima project, and ATS was given a second chance in 1970, when Moreno Baldi tried but failed to resurrect it.
For Bell, the biggest buzz was finally showing the finished car to Steve’s family. “His youngest son Jesse was born in 1977, when the 2500 GTS was bought,” says Stephen. “The ATS was just a big part of the family – it’s always very emotional.”
THE SON OF 1920S GRAND PRIX RACER
Antonio, Alberto Ascari was born in Milan on July 13, 1918 seemingly with motor racing in his blood. Despite being just seven years old when his father suffered a fatal crash during the 1925 French Grand Prix, Alberto remained determined to become a racing driver himself.
His fascination with competition began first on two wheels, most notably as a 19-year-old for Bianchi, and later in motor cars. Campaigning an Auto Avio Costruzioni 815 in the Mille Miglia in 1940 would cement a relationship with Enzo Ferrari that culminated in back-to-back World Championships in 1952 and ’53 with Scuderia Ferrari. The team’s first World Champion was also the second and the last Italian driver to win the title, and the only Italian to do it more than once. During those two seasons, Ascari, driving a Ferrari 500 F2, raced 14 times, winning on 11 occasions.
A smooth and unflustered driver, ‘Ciccio’ as he was known was just as quick in sports car racing, winning the Mille Miglia in 1954 in a Lancia D24. The following year, while leading in Monaco, he skidded off the track and into the harbour. He escaped tragedy then, but not at a seemingly innocuous Ferrari test session at Monza just days later. As his father had been at the same age of 36, Alberto was killed on the race track, leaving behind a wife and two children. Seventy years have now passed since his untimely death, but Ascari’s legacy lives on as one of the finest Formula 1 drivers the world has ever seen.
There’s no doubt that Alberto is renowned for his racing exploits, yet what is less well known was his obsession for keeping records of a different sort. Throughout his career he retained everything, from licences and letters to trophies, telegrams, passports and pace notes. Upon his passing his family preserved his legacy, until the collection was acquired some years ago by a custodian as diligent as the man he considers to be his hero.
Now residing in the UK in the owner’s private museum, the collection is better preserved than its original keeper would, or could, have ever imagined. Magneto magazine was given a chance to see a snapshot of what exists – and is privileged to share with you a few significant artefacts which relate to that most astonishing of drivers, Alberto Ascari.
GOGGLES
These Patti Protector goggles can be seen in use early in Ascari’s post-war career, when he was driving for Maserati in 1948 before making the switch to drive for Enzo Ferrari in 1949. This period before the official start of the Formula 1 World Championship in 1950 yielded double-digit wins in Grand Prix machinery.
1953 FERRARI CONTRACT
This one-page agreement for 1953 presented by Enzo Ferrari to then reigning World Champion Ascari is a long way from what would be expected in today’s world. Despite Alberto’s efforts during the previous season, Ferrari offered only 50 percent of the start and finish money –which was accessible only if the driver competed in every single race for the Scuderia.
MEDALS
A selection of the countless medals awarded to Ascari. These represent obvious achievements such as his two World Championships and his 1951 Carrera Panamericana podium alongside friend and mentor Luigi Villoresi. Also within his effects is a 1952 medal that shows the Olympic rings. Confusing at first, it was in fact issued by CONI (Comitato Olimpico Nazionale), which was and still is responsible for all sports activity in Italy. While Ascari didn’t compete at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, that same year he was given a medal bearing the famous interlocking rings.
LICENCES
These four racing licences from 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1954 cover the period in which Ascari won all his World Championship Formula 1 races. His first win came at the Nürburgring in 1951, and he went on to take a total of 13 Grands Prix with an astonishing nine-race winning streak in events he started between the 1952 Belgian GP and the same race a year later. He retained this record until it was broken by Max Verstappen in 2023.
Following a dispute over his salary (perhaps the 50 percent share wasn’t enough for the now double World Champion) Ascari signed to drive for rival team Lancia for the 1954 season. Alongside the outfit’s Grand Prix campaign it ran its potent D24 in sports car races, and it also entered four of its latest variants for the 378-car strong field at the Mille Miglia. Ascari famously finished the 1000-mile race on top, taking victory over the Works Ferrari entry of Vittorio Marzotto. This ribbon was tied around Alberto’s winning trophy, and alongside it sits his personal lapel badge as given to entrants of that year’s Mille Miglia.
1954 MILLE MIGLIA
TINTIN MAGAZINE
This Tintin journal, published in September 1955 and titled ‘The Life of a Great Champion’, post-dates Ascari’s death from the May of that year, and the Jean Gratonpainted artwork on the cover shows an accident that happened during his final Grand Prix in Monaco. Having started on the front row, and while leading the race in his Lancia D50, Ascari memorably misjudged the chicane and went off and into the Mediterranean. He swam to safety, and his beloved helmet – of which the chin strap had broken –floated to the surface and was sent off for repair…
At Goodwood Members’ Meeting this year with an original US-raced 1959 Lister-Chevrolet Costin, fresh from a full restoration with us
Photo: Gunhill Studios
Following his eventful Monaco Grand Prix, Ascari went to Monza to watch his friend Eugenio Castellotti test a Ferrari 750 Monza they were down to share in the upcoming Monza 1000km race (having had special dispensation from Lancia to do so). For an unknown reason Alberto decided to do a few laps in the car, and wearing casual clothes and Castellotti’s helmet he took to the wheel for one final time. On his third tour he inexplicably crashed and was thrown out of the car. He died shortly afterwards.
Following Ascari’s death, team-mate Luigi Villoresi was handed these chilling artefacts that were with Alberto on that day: the wallet, which shows scars from the Monza Tarmac, the lucky charms Ascari carried throughout his career and the watch he was wearing at the time. Approaching things as Alberto had done himself, the Ascari family decided to keep these items despite their connection with such tragedy. They represent the last link the world had with this great champion, and they live alongside his other possessions to tell the full story.
BADAWÏ TRAIL TO THE LAST OASIS
A breathtaking 20-day adventure through the Arabian Peninsula, showcasing breathtaking landscapes, rich history, and warm hospitality. Starting in Jeddah, the route explores the Hejaz Mountains, Madinah, NEOM, and Al-’Ula before heading through Hail, Riyadh, and into the UAE’s Empty Quarter and Jebel Hafeet. In Oman, drivers navigate the Hajar Mountains, wadis, and Jebel Akhdar before finishing in Dubai with a finale aboard the QE2 liner. Featuring enhanced routes, challenging terrains, and two rest days, this rally is the ultimate journey for motorsport adventurers.
28 March - 16 April 2026 From the creators of the Peking
Photo: Blue Passion
Words Wayne Batty
Photography Kunihisa Kobayashi
ON AN EXPOSED CONCRETE WALL INSIDE the Ken Okuyama Design studio in Jingumae, Tokyo, hangs a painting that in wonderfully organic brush-stroked Kanji characters declares these premises to be a place of ‘creation’. For the graphic artists, architects and product designers who work here, the artwork is a daily reminder to carve out the new.
As a first-time visitor admiring the sheer scope and volume of the facility’s design output, the painting is an ethos-manifesting prophecy. Evidence of a prolific flow of creativity is allenveloping. From the tables, diamond-quilted sofas and bent-plywood chairs, to the exquisite cup and ‘doughnut’ saucer we’re served coffee in, everything has been designed in house. The list extends to achingly beautiful ironware teapots, bespoke office furniture, Gundam models and the 1960s-inspired, Gulf-liveried Kode9 Spyder sports car parked on a height-adjustable floating floor. Even the experimental concept electric guitar hanging up in the architecture department was conceived right here. Renderings and photographs of various district trains, funiculars, metro buses and Shinkansen lines – all in daily operation –decorate the walls. Juxtaposed against a range of tractors and other heavy machinery is the Shiki-shima, a ten-car, 36-passenger, suitesleeper train that offers emperor-level hospitality. From cutlery and eyewear to sports cars, boats and bullet trains, this is the house that Ken built.
Born in 1959 to a family of little means living in the countryside near Yamagata, Kiyoyuki ‘Ken’ Okuyama is probably best known in the automotive world as the former design director of Pininfarina. Cars created under his tenure include the Ferrari Enzo, 612 Scaglietti, Maserati Quattroporte V, 2005 Maserati Birdcage 75th concept and 2000 Ferrari Rossa concept car. After leaving the famous Italian design house in 2006 he founded Ken Okuyama Design (KOD), and he has since been on a mission to create modern,
simple, enduring products and coachbuilt cars.
Photographer Kunihisa ‘Koba’ Kobayashi and I have already been taken on a tour of every nook and cranny of the impressive KOD studio. We’ve drunk the coffee, had the guitar expertly demoed to us, interrupted the graphic designers and the architects, and have been given the lowdown on the outfit’s most recent automotive project. Now Ken’s hyper-efficient PA Miho Hoshimoto gives us the nod. Okuyama-san is on his way.
Although feeling less than his best after catching a cold on a visit to the KOD factory in Yamagata, Ken emerges from an R35 Nissan GT-R wearing two-tone leather over casual whites with a patterned burgundy scarf. He’s stylish, affable and welcoming, and we are quickly talking cars. He enjoys the GT-R, not just because of his penchant for blisteringly fast machines, but also because he grew up travelling in the back of one of its far humbler predecessors: “It is kind of like rediscovering where I came from. My uncle was head of the Nissan dealership,
Ken’s passion for cars began at a young age, when he saw a Jaguar E-type and thought: “What the heck is that?” He says now: “The long nose and the whole thing is so simple, but it is also like jewellery, right?” Later, he saw a silver Porsche 930 Turbo for real, as well as a C2 Corvette splitwindow coupé on TV. “Those three fantastic cars were burned into my memory.”
Pointing to the rear of the Kode61 Birdcage parked a metre away, I mention how, even though the car was clearly inspired by the Maserati Tipo 61 ‘Birdcage’, the E-type and Corvette Stingray influence is still visible. It’s most notable in the way the rear tapers inwards so purposefully, and in the perfectly tensioned spine lines and curves that define the body’s muscle zones.
“Do you see that?” he asks excitedly. “Yeah, you’ll see a lot of that in all the things I do.”
Not in a position to get anything exotic, Ken’s first car was a beat-up Honda 360 that he bought for the equivalent of $500 while studying graphic design at college in Tokyo. “I thought about
THIS SPREAD Strong Tipo 61 Birdcage styling cues executed without a hint of retro design.
becoming an architect – I still love architecture, but I loved drawing cars more. I hated the idea of working for a big company, though, so I never thought I would become a professional car designer… until I went to the States.”
It was while visiting the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena that the penny dropped. “I got jealous because I saw many people my age with red eyes from sketching and working on scale models late into the night. I could see their passion and I said: ‘Shit, what the heck am I trying to avoid? Don’t worry about big company, small company and all that stuff; do what you love.’”
Subconsciously, that epiphany would develop into a code to live by: “Do what you enjoy and continue doing it until you hit your objectives.”
With renewed focus, Ken put a portfolio together and applied to study car design. Chuck Jordan, then General Motors’ vice-president of design, visited the class, interviewed every student and picked Okuyama out for a full scholarship. Despite the support, there was no obligation to work for GM. Still, a grateful Ken turned down offers from other companies and chose the US giant. “I thought I’d be assigned to the California studio,” he says, “but they sent me to Detroit right away. Being Japanese, going to work in 1980s Detroit wasn’t my first choice, but once I walked into the Tech Center and began working with those geniuses on such fantastic projects, it was like Disneyland. I have no regrets, and I still feel part of the GM family: I really do.”
A stint as a senior designer at Porsche AG followed, after which Ken returned to GM – this time to California, as head of the company’s research centre. He then made a prestigious move to Pininfarina in Cambiano, Italy, which proved to be a pivotal point in his career. He will readily admit that his design aesthetic has been largely informed by classic, mostly Italian, car styling. “You see a lot of innovation and great design from the mid-1950s until just after the ’73
oil crisis. By 1975 it had all started to turn, but during that period automotive design experienced a beautiful burst of creativity that produced models such as the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, and a futuristic freedom that gave us the Countach and Stratos Zero spaceships. So really, from 1955 to 1975, those two decades were the best era of car design for me. I live in those 20 years: I still do.”
It follows perfectly that Ken is an intentional, daily sketcher. It’s the one thing he attributes to his ongoing success. “I do at least ten sketches every day, and sometimes as many as 100. It is a natural way to communicate, and the best way to pull ideas from your brain. Sketching is the joy of life. My wife always reminds me that I started sketching while out on our first date. She thought it meant I didn’t like her, but it was just that I felt so comfortable around her.”
Ken started his design consultancy in Japan in 2007 with the aim of implementing many of the things he had learned in Italy. At some point he contemplated shutting the company down – but, a chance to work on a few products for Issey Miyake, and a conversation with Mr Miyake himself, changed everything. “Issey Miyake is not Issey Miyake. The man has now passed away, but the brand lives on. If there’s an end game for me, it is that I would like the Ken Okuyama brand to reach a similar level through the value of its products alone.”
While most car-building efforts are a case of either one-offs or mass production, Ken’s keen on something in between. “We build just one or two cars a year. We’ve done two Kode61s, and we have just completed a third car.” Crucially, the newest Kode61 is powered by a V12 that runs on hydrogen. Okuyama is aiming to reveal it at the Abu Dhabi Formula 1 GP weekend in December, and not without a bit of theatre. “At the press conference, in front of everyone, I’m going to take a glass and drink whatever comes out of the exhaust pipe,” he reveals.
As a coachbuilding operation and not a ground-up car manufacturer, KOD currently sources well used but accident-free donor cars as base points. Okuyama’s 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossainspired Kode57 from 2016 was built off the aluminium-chassised 599 GTB Fiorano. Ken chose the 550 Maranello for his Kode61 because he wanted a steel body frame, as per the original Maserati Birdcage. After being fundamentally re-engineered in house, the car’s final fabrication and modification are undertaken by a GT300 Series race car building firm near Fuji Speedway in Kanagawa. A Kyoto-based company produces the carbonfibre body panels, and the milling of any billet aluminium parts is also outsourced. Apart from that, everything else is done in house. Although powered by a Ferrari V12, the initial idea was to mount a Maserati V8 engine up front – which, along with the radically reimagined Birdcage exterior and cabin structure, is why
Neptune’s Trident is nestled in the grille, with Maserati script out back. It must be stressed, though, that applying the badges was a decision of the owner. They have not been officially sanctioned. Ken explains: “Maserati CEO Davide Grasso came here, saw the car and loved it. I asked if we could put the Trident logo on it. He said that to make it an official Maserati concept car would require a trip to [parent organisation] Stellantis, and that it would take six months to get anything approved. I didn’t have six months, and I didn’t really need it to be official.”
He’s right: everything about the Kode61’s visual presence, from the muscular arches and the blue and white livery (a strong nod to the Camoradi team car), to the pillarless speedster style and the bonnet power bulge, is clearly inspired by the Maserati Tipo 60/61. Even the stylised triple side vents and the MC20’s 20-inch wheels are appropriately on brand. Shorn of badges, most enthusiasts would easily identify it as a Maserati.
In terms of physical dimensions, the Kode61 absolutely dwarfs the original Birdcage – as you’d expect from a modern machine. Great car design starts with great proportions, and in this regard too the Kode61 is a triumph. Wider and lower than the 550 it’s built off, its necessarily long front overhang has been masterfully disguised, firstly by clever livery design, but also by the radical tapering of the car’s pointy nose. Assessing the overall aesthetics is a pleasure. In both senses of the word this is a sharp machine, and one that – hallelujah! – does without superfluous surface detail. Strong design discipline is evident all over the body – the rear
BELOW Tapered nose, Camoradi team-like livery, bulging wings and bonnet vents – inspired by Modena, Italy, made in Tokyo, Japan.
end being particularly clean – but it’s the fronton view that intrigues most. Crisp intersecting lines form balanced triangles that frame the perfectly aligned diamond-pattern grille. Slim, fierce headlights and racy black bonnet vents –like angry eyebrows – let you know this is a serious sports car, not some boulevard cruiser.
Numberplate fitted, it’s time to take this interview on the road. Light but strong doors pivot up and out. Despite the wide, high sills, getting in is easier than I’d feared. The centre spar and diamond-quilted blue leather-covered sills prove to be great ‘launch’ points. Practise this entry/exit method a few times and you’ll soon feel like a gymnast primed for the parallel bars.
Ken says the frame is so thoroughly reengineered that it’s both stronger and lighter than the donor car’s – quite a feat considering the roofless, pillarless bodystyle. There’s no doubt the cockpit-splitting centre spar is there to add torsional stiffness. It’s a ‘floating’ piece of cabin structure, so while it creates a division it doesn’t make the interior feel claustrophobic.
The surprisingly comfortable and very blue Alcantara- and leather-covered carbonfibre bucket seats pull off a great trick of offering significant lateral grip while also being generously accommodating. Ahead of both driver and passenger are symmetrical, domed binnacles that house polished aluminium panels. These have been milled to reveal the donor 550’s instruments and gauges on the left and a custom touchscreen display for the navigation system, and the side and rear camera views, on the right. Beneath the central division sits another aluminium panel, housing fuel-level and oil-temperature gauges, the ignition-key slot and a row of five toggle switches. These are for operating the hydraulic lifter used to raise the nose, deploying the left and right wind-deflector screens, deactivating the Acceleration Slip Regulation (ASR) and toggling power to the daylight running lamps.
Dashboard air vents and HVAC controls come
11 to 14 May 2026
Rally the Globe again join forces with Irish Racing Green for the seventh running of this iconic pre-war car only event. In 2026 we return to the mountains, farmland and country estates of south east Ireland for beautiful scenery, charming hospitality, and plenty of varied competition – all within an easy ferry ride of mainland Europe.
13 to 19 Sept 2026
Sun, open roads and a vintage car – who could ask for more! We transplant the fun and games of the muchloved Vintage Shamrock to Northern Spain for our first pre-war only event on mainland Europe. Get ready for top-down motoring and some truly vintage competition. For full details see www.rallytheglobe.com or contact us on info@rallytheglobe.com or +44 113 360 8961
straight from the 550, as does the traditional gated shifter. Here, though, the gearlever’s exposed linkage housing (usually hidden) has been beautifully polished to match the interior’s birdcage-style structure. Just as in the 1959 original, welded steel-lattice sections form the cockpit structure’s sides, dashboard framework and transmission tunnel. These bright, structural, steel elements are a striking contrast to the blue leather upholstery and complementary yellow circuit-ready multi-point harnesses.
The V12 barks into life and quickly settles into a deep and rhythmic hum. A minute or two later, we pull out of the showroom and head off down streets that seem far too narrow for the car’s width, rarity and current pace. Ken is displaying the kind of relaxed confidence behind the wheel that could only be the result of familiarity and competence. By the time we hit wider Tarmac he’s using a good percentage of throttle-pedal travel as he click-clacks it through the gears, his ever-widening grin matching mine.
As the air hits our faces with ever more ferocity – although never quite at ‘Clarkson in the Atom’ levels – Okuyama reaches for the switches for the powered pop-up deflector screens. With these fully raised, there is a reasonable reduction in the buffeting. Still, this was never meant to be a car for sensitive hairstyles.
The completely rebuilt 5.5-litre V12, massaged up to 540bhp, sounds urgent. It revs freely, the power building to a thick, smooth flow, like pouring a viscous fluid. Hard to say exactly how quick the Kode61 is, but I’m told the car weighs less than 1.5 tonnes. A standard 550 tips the scales at 1690kg and hits 0-62mph in 4.4 seconds, so I’d guess it’s a 4.0-second car.
Stats matter little, though, when you’re about to enter a tunnel in a totally open V12-engined sports machine. Everything in me silently screams: “Punch it!” Telepathically on cue, Ken obliges. Rerouting the exhaust has gifted the Kode61 with a bespoke sound. Not only that, but a propriety carbonfibre airbox directs cooler, high-pressure air to the engine, improving power output and providing an even sportier intake sound. Sweet and sonorous, it roars and sings in mechanical glory as we explode again into the light.
Hitting traffic only enriches the experience. At slow speeds you can hear tiny bits of grit hitting the undertray, feel every twitch of the stiff, sporty chassis, and marvel at the ride comfort – which I’d classify as ‘relatively astonishing’ if the roads weren’t in such perfect condition.
It’s rather bizarre to be sitting in a stormtrooper white barchetta in Tokyo traffic and not feel in the least bit exposed. I suppose that’s the magnetic power of the Kode61’s dramatic styling – there’s no time to stare at the occupants when your eyes are drawn to the car instead, desperately trying to soak in all the details before the lights go green. Back at the KOD studio, Okuyama-san gives
ABOVE Stripped-back barchetta style, re-engineered chassis and carbonfibre body panels keep mass below 1.5 tonnes. Can’t quite fly, though.
final instructions, says goodbye and shoots off to the healing comforts of home. He has left Koba and I in the very capable hands of KOD chief designer Issac Meza and colleague Manabu Takada. Their local knowledge will be crucial to our planned night shoot in some of Tokyo’s busiest shopping districts.
While waiting for the sun to set, I tell Koba that I find Japan fascinating. He asks why I think Japan is a “fast tree”. Joint, wholesome laughter ensues. A few of the conversations we have go this way, but he is patient, accommodating and senses the sincerity of my appreciation. Besides that, he more than understands the photographic assignment, so we get along just fine.
As darkness threatens, Manabu and I head east towards Ginza in the Kode61, with Issac and Koba in tow. Having spent a little time at a college in California many years ago, communication is somewhat easier with Manabu. Then, without much warning, the heavens open up above us. Location scouting in the rain isn’t fun, much less so in a barchetta. We dive into an underground parking lot, after first raising the front suspension a splitter-saving 40mm.
We’ll just have to wait it out. “Drink?” asks Manabu. Clocking all the polite nods, he goes in search of a vending machine and returns with little plastic bottles of… fruit juice? Gratefully received, I chug a mouthful of what turns out to be warm green tea.
Fortunately the rain abates, and it’s not long before we’re back on the road with the Kode61,
which I quickly rename ‘The Rolling Phenomenon’ for its insane ability to turn heads and stop traffic. Even Tokyo’s notoriously insistent pedestrians give way as we glide through the human torrents that flood the side streets of Shinbashi, Ginza and Akihabara. Photoshoots are never glamorous, but again the Kode61 makes it easy. Shop and restaurant owners forgive the disruption –bystanders, policemen and passers-by, too.
With a KOD-designed Yamanote-line train passing overhead, I take one last look around the Kode61 in this rich, neon-soaked environment. After comparing notes on our favourite details of the car, Issac tells me how much Ken and the team enjoy presenting it. “People don’t believe us when we say it is made in Japan. Especially Italians.”
And that’s really the take-home for me: a Japanese coachbuilder engaging in the type of activity that was, and in some cases still is, traditionally the preserve of Italian legends: Bertone, Ghia, Pininfarina, Frua, Touring, Zagato and others. By clothing Italian chassis and mechanicals with contemporary bodies that reference Italy’s great sports cars of the late 1950s and the 1960s, Ken Okuyama is doing exactly what he loves, and he will in all likelihood keep on doing it until he reaches his objective.
With five distinct Kode car designs (7, 9, 57, 0 and 61) having already transitioned from his sketchbook to reality, Ken is carving a new chapter in the great book of coachbuilding. What comes next? Apart from sharing that KOD is looking to develop its own chassis in the next few years, he won’t say. However, in an earlier discussion about the 1957 Testa Rossa’s influence in the Rossa and Kode57, I had mentioned that my all-time favourite Ferrari concept was the Testarossa-based Mythos from 1989. Along with immediate silence, I caught the briefest glimpse of a smile. Could it be a case of ‘watch this space’? We certainly will.
FOUND IN TRANSLATION
REIMAGINING THE FOURTH-GENERATION CORVETTE. RADICAL ITALIAN TAKES ON AMERICA’S SPORTS CAR
AS
DESIGNED BY HARLEY EARL, THE 1953 Chevrolet Corvette was General Motors’ postwar response to an onslaught of European sports cars led by Jaguar’s XK120. A stylish, lightweight body and a 3.9-litre straight-six promised excitement, but a two-speed auto and leaf-sprung solid rear suspension curbed the enthusiasm. It was GM newcomer Zora Arkus-Duntov’s pushing for the installation of a powerful smallblock V8 in 1955 that first set the Corvette on the path to becoming ‘America’s sports car’.
For much of its seven-decade life, the Corvette has majored on two tenets of sports car desirability: good looks and driving thrills. An engineering-development programme geared towards constant improvement took care of the latter, while the inspired efforts of designers Bill Mitchell, Larry Shinoda, Irvin Rybicki, Jerry Palmer, Tom Peters and others ensured that being handsomely shaped remained a Corvette staple. If ever there was an American car that didn’t require a sprinkling of magical Italian design dust, it’s this one. Still, the borderline universal affection did little to dissuade the great Italian car design houses from repeated attempts at reclothing these iconic slices of Americana.
The first efforts came in 1961 with three overtly Italian, Scaglietti-designed, aluminiumbodied C1s – not identical triplets, but all pretty coupés heavily inspired by the Ferrari 250 GT
OPPOSITE Minimal lines and simple surfaces – the Nivola’s drama is all in its proportions.
Words Wayne Batty
Photography Sam Chick
Post-production Mustard Post and Radwolf
Tour de France. These were followed by Pininfarina’s 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Rondine, an elegant rebody (in steel) of the glassfibre C2 Sting Ray. Italdesign also got in on the act, although much later on. Designed by company founder Giorgetto Giugiaro and son Fabrizio, the C5-based Moray was unveiled at the 2003 Geneva Motor Show in honour of the Corvette’s 50th anniversary. Then, at Auto Shanghai in 2009, Bertone revealed Jason Castriota’s strikingly provocative praying mantis-inspired Mantide. While originally set to be a BAT-series-style concept car using an Alfa Romeo 8C chassis, the switch to a C6 Corvette ZR1 base offered benefits beyond wider availability – serious speed being one. Remarkably, this was not the first – or even the second – time Nuccio Bertone’s carrozzeria had taken on the task of reimagining a ’Vette. It was Bertone commercial manager Enzo
ABOVE A foot shorter than the Corvette, the Ramarro’s dramatic wedge profile and reimagined proportions are simply sublime.
OPPOSITE Two-tone ‘wave’ cradle seat, lizard skin-patterned upholstery, rotating gear selector and radical new switchgear console inspired by geometric abstraction art are evidence of truly creative minds at work.
Prearo, keen to promote collaboration with GM, who proposed the idea of a rebodied Corvette. Nuccio, always partial to a sports coupé bodystyle, was easily convinced. Despite wild future Corvettes filling GM’s own drawing boards (as evidenced by the ’86 Indy concept), the company’s design division agreed to supply a new car to Bertone in 1983. Vice-president of design Irv Rybicki and his team were presumably keen to see what might emerge from the Italian outfit’s fountain of creativity. The well received 1963 Testudo show car had proven Bertone’s prowess when it turned Chevrolet’s neat but humble rear-engined Corvair coupe into a spectacular Jetsons-spec sports car.
Post-1983 Geneva posing duties, the goldhued pre-production fourth-generation Corvette show car was sent directly to Bertone’s Stile SpA design studio and prototype workshop in Caprie, around 17 miles west of the company’s main factory in Grugliasco, Turin. Named after a green lizard native to Italy, the angular, edgy and equally green Chevrolet Ramarro featured here is that very C4 utterly transformed.
A second Bertone Corvette reimagining was unveiled six years later in Geneva, just two months after GM had shown its rear-midengined, all-wheel-drive CERV III concept at Detroit in 1990. Named after Tazio Nuvolari and painted pearlescent yellow in reference to the Flying Mantuan’s yellow racing jersey, Bertone’s
Nivola also featured an engine mounted behind the driver. A press release revealed that Nuccio had been “fascinated yet again by the advanced technology and elegant engineering embodied in the Corvette ZR1 powerplant” and that he “set out to develop this theme in the way where his [company’s] talents and expertise are universally recognised: the centrally mounted engine”. Marc Deschamps had joined Bertone from Renault in 1979 as head designer in place of the departing Marcelo Gandini. With a string of showstoppers and production stars in the studio’s back catalogue, there was hardly a need to chart a radical new course. Judging by the cohesive series of tightly designed wedge-nosed concepts that followed, he appears to have settled into his role intent on progressive continuity instead.
While unable to match the shattering impact of the Alfa Carabo and Lancia Stratos Zero, the Deschamps-era concepts added fresh layers of intrigue and artistry to the Bertone legacy. Skilful infusion of deep swage lines, flush glazing, strong graphics and strategic edge chamfering – which gave shutlines and panel gaps a modular, spaceshiplike feel – added a unique futuristic slant.
It’s probably worth noting the cultural impact of the Star Wars movie franchise during this period. The Ramarro is clearly the result of supplementary exploration of design themes initially employed on the 1980 Lamborghini Athon and 1981 Mazda MX-81 Aria, and further
RIGHT The nose reads Chevrolet, and it’s all-American Corvette underneath – but the Ramarro looks like it arrived from another realm entirely. It’s not hard to imagine those doors sliding open to a burst of compressed gas and a synthesised ‘whoosh’.
developed for the Alfa Romeo Delfino of 1983. Today, the Ramarro-Nivola duo forms part of the Automotoclub Storico Italiano’s (ASI) impressive Bertone collection, currently housed at the Volandia Park and Museum of Flight a few minutes from Milan’s Malpensa airport. Luca Gastaldi, who runs the ASI press office, kindly arranged to give Magneto access to both cars.
Away from the kaleidoscope of the fullspectrum Bertone collection, the Ramarro is concentrated 1980s futurism. Absorbing tri-tone metallic green paintwork – pear over lime over apple – it would stand out at a peak Cyndi Lauper concert. Also outstanding are the crispness of its lines and the sheer real estate of the flat bonnet. Juxtaposed against that, and creating an unlikely visual balance, is the car’s shortened rear deck. Of the design, Deschamps says the thinking was “to propose a completely new image of the frontengine coupé. It had to be radical looking with simple surfaces and graphics. We wanted to place the wheels as far apart visually within the volume by reducing the overhangs to the minimum”.
To achieve that, Marc cut 25cm from the standard Corvette’s rear overhang and nearly eight from the front, but left the wheelbase unchanged. Flush-fitting smoked headlight covers, sharply defined corners and air inlets reduced to a single slot split by gold ‘Bertone’ script, gave the front a clean, chiselled visage. As if compensating for the deletion of the Corvette’s pop-up headlights, Deschamps worked pop-down foglamps into the bumper beneath the front indicators.
The rear, while still sharply truncated à la its Corvette contemporaries, is more detailed. It includes a concave recess that houses hot-air
exit vents and tail-lights hidden behind greentinted translucent plastic panels. The distinctive arrangement is finished off with a ‘floating’ greypainted strip incorporating the indicators. Various grooves and recesses down the flanks hint at unusual door theatre, while the pyramidal smokedglass greenhouse looks just as futuristic as the day it first stunned visitors to the 1984 LA Auto Expo. According to Deschamps, a mid-engined layout was chosen for the Nivola “to explore a new theme, as we’d already done a front-engine Corvette. Our aim was to make a simple shape with few lines, but to use the volume to show more muscle than in the Ramarro”. As a result, the Nivola is hugely more ‘cab-forward’ in design, with an even more pronounced wedge profile. Standing just 1.1m high on its Bertone-designed OZ Racing alloys, 4.2m long and 1.98m wide, it is significantly more extreme in every dimension than a C4 Corvette. With the shoulders of a padded-up linebacker and a stubby, bulbous rear end, it’s by no means conventionally pretty but appears every bit the exotic supercar. Marc tells us that “the design was not well liked at first”. Even he wasn’t sure of the project’s success, “right up to the very end”, adding that “Nuccio and other managers didn’t like it until it was almost finished”. Asked which aspect he is most proud of produces a quick response: “The stance.”
By this time, Deschamps’ swage-line feature had reached peak exaggeration, splitting the body into distinct upper and lower sections. Neat touches include a removable roof panel, a tail-light band and a single wiper blade integrated into the grey plastic ‘moat’ that separates glass from metal. Bertone has history when it comes to unusual
door-opening systems – as the 1963 Testudo’s front-hinged canopy and ’68 Carabo’s pioneering scissor doors attest. For the Ramarro, Deschamps and interior specialist designer Eugenio Pagliano opted for a sliding set-up as a good solution for the problem of opening long doors on a car even wider than a Corvette. Unlike on vans and people-movers, these open forwards, tracking diagonally away from the body at first to avoid banging into wheels that may have been left on full lock. Even 40 years after the car’s debut, they still slide quite smoothly – although clearly with more effort than they once did, judging by Bertone’s original promo film. Unsurprisingly, their operation is accompanied by a sound best described as ‘commercial’. With them slid fully forward the aperture is also not as gaping as you’d hope, but definitely useful in a tight parking lot.
The ‘green lizard’ inspiration continues inside with alternating sections of patterned olive green and light brown upholstery – looking faded and jaded now – lining the doors, dash, steering boss and ‘seats’. Clearly the most creative item in the Pagliano-designed cabin, these are not traditional chairs but rather a single wave-like sofa formed of co-joined cradles. This can be slid fore and aft via a rotating lever set into the seat’s connecting ‘hump’.
A similarly styled rotary gear selector on the centre console controls the auto ’box. Pagliano retained all of the Corvette’s standard switchgear but artfully rearranged the buttons, sliders and warning-light cluster into a bespoke driver-aligned centre console. The donor car’s distinctive digital instrument display is set into a full-width patterned black strip that also includes subtle grille areas for the ventilation. With the curtailed
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boot fully consumed by the radiator and ancillaries, luggage space is limited to the area behind the seats. Access is via the individually folding upper sections of the chair backs.
In contrast, entry into the Nivola’s cabin is via conventionally hinged doors. However, this being Bertone, their outrageous cross-section thickness hides storage areas, made accessible by a separate release of each door’s outer skin via a handle at the base of the A-pillar. Pressing a button at the base of the B-pillar opens the actual door. Again, as with the Ramarro, it’s the twotone seats that shout loudest, in terms of both colour and tech. Although independent, with individual electric adjustment, they were designed to appear as a single unit, their teal leather sections swirling around, flowing up, over and down into the adjacent seat.
The feature act was a built-in massage function, something that would not appear in a production car – the Mercedes-Benz S-Class – until ten years later. A deep binnacle houses the main instrument cluster, a horizontal dash panel corrals semi-auto suspension switches and HVAC controls, while an Alpine radio-cassette plus powered-seat and massage buttons sit within a lower centre console.
The Ramarro’s outer body panels may have been all new, but it was all factory Corvette underneath. “We moved the radiator to the rear to ‘clean’ the front look and make it different from the ’Vette, and to reaffirm the idea that air shouldn’t be pushed but rather pulled in order to make it flow better,” explains Deschamps.
Switching positions in effect, the space-saver spare tyre moved up front and was canted over to facilitate the lower-profile bonnet line. An
electrically powered intake panel just behind the rear window opened up to feed air to the radiator when required. It was hoped that the air would cling to the slick glazing and follow the rear window, but Marc admits: “In the end, the radiator was somehow hidden too low and the flow above the car was not perfect.”
Other changes from the donor included a set of newly developed lower-profile 17-inch Michelins mounted onto light-alloy wheels designed by Bertone to both look incredible and draw cooling air in towards the brakes. GM also sent a 1985spec version of the 5.7-litre V8 – the L98 – to replace the older ‘Cross-Fire’ unit. Tuned-port fuel injection and a higher compression ratio liberated 25 more horses and 40lb ft of torque. For Chevrolet, these significant gains were worth shouting about at the LA show, even if the car was pure Italian fantasy on the outside.
Building a properly resolved rear-mid-engined Corvette called for far more than a reskin. In August 1990, Popular Mechanics reported that it took Bertone about 30,000 man-hours, and cost $1.4-$1.6 million to create the Nivola. On the face of it no shortcuts were taken, with the carrozzeria even calling on the services of leading Formula 1 specialist Nova Progetti to assist with the design and realisation of the mechanical assemblies. An entirely new square-section steel-tube spaceframe, hubs and some suspension components were all conceived, designed and fabricated from scratch. The official press release read: “The design of the structure has successfully married high torsional rigidity and a very light weight.” Light on detail, but vaguely reassuring, too.
Where standard Corvette ZR-1 parts could be
incorporated, they were. These included the Lotus-designed quad-cam 32v LT5 V8 engine, ZF five-speed gearbox, steering rack, ABS, some repurposed suspension components and the repositioned radiator. Electronically controlled self-levelling hydropneumatic suspension with semi-active ride-height adjustment developed by ITT Way Assauto was an innovative addition.
Bertone’s usual modus operandi was for its concept cars to be fully driveable, and it was no different for either of these machines. After a brief stint behind the wheel, American automotive writer Winston Goodfellow called the Ramarro “properly engineered, quite tractable and well behaved”. He added that it “never got close to overheating”. The latter was in response to fears the repositioned radiator wouldn’t be as efficient.
Typical of the attention to detail on the Nivola, meanwhile, was the involvement of Lotus engine guru Ian James, who spent several days in Turin checking the LT5 V8’s installation, helping to wire it all up and making sure it all worked to spec. Such meticulousness was a far cry from many concept cars that were built exclusively for the roped-off motor show plinth.
Driven by a Corvette fetish and a strong desire for US automaker recognition, Nuccio Bertone twice tasked his design team with conjuring distinct interpretations on the Italian Corvette theme. Sadly, neither car would advance beyond the fully driveable concept stage, but each is testament to an age of delightful thematic exploration and analogue creativity, the likes of which we will almost certainly never see again. Thanks to Marc Deschamps, Eduardo Robledo, Massimo Delbò, Luca Gastaldi and the ASI.
RIGHT Cab-forward proportions and side air intakes are the tell-tale signs of a rear-mid-engine layout. Nothing, though, in General Motors’ long history of mid-engined Corvette concepts, looked anything like the Nivola.
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Words Richard Heseltine
Illustration Rob Gould
THIS PAGE To Please a Lady and Winning: two films made for different generations but both featuring exciting Indy 500 action.
To Please a Lady
CLARK Gable stars in this 1950 melodrama which centres on veteran racer Mike Brannan whose career is on the uppers. His willingness to push the boundaries (and his rivals off track) doesn’t sit well with reporter Regina Forbes (Barbara Stanwyck). She writes a coruscating article about his lack of track etiquette. But, wouldn’t you know it, the two fall for each other. Suitably rehabilitated thanks to the love of a good woman, Gable then battles for honours in the Indy 500 (stuntman and oval star Joie Chitwood doubles for Gable and also appears as himself).
Crossplot
IN this pre-Bond 1960s romp, Roger Moore plays a thrusting advertising executive who gets ensnared in a murder plot. And the car interest? Well, there are a couple of chases, one staged in the environs of Woburn Abbey involving a ‘Paxton Flier’ and a helicopter. It’s enough to make you wince –not least the bit where the chap with a machine gun suspended from the chopper morphs into an Action Man toy upon connecting with power cables. As for the Paxton Flier, in reality it was an Opus HRF kit car modified by Liam Churchill of the Barnett Motor Company.
STARRING Al Pacino as the eponymous race ace, the story centres on him becoming estranged from his wife while falling for Lillian Morelli (Marthe Keller), who just happens to be terminally ill. Stick with it – and get past all the misty-eyed stuff (interminably long trips in hotair balloons and suchlike) –and you’ll get to see BrabhamAlfas (Pacino is supposedly driving one), Tyrrell P34s and McLaren M23s in action, invariably at Dijon. As is customary in any Hollywood race flick, Deerfield survives a fiery crash. As an aside, Carlos Pace and Alain de Cadenet double for Pacino on-track.
Winning
THE film that turned Paul Newman onto racing. In this intermittently entertaining drama, Newman plays veteran ace Frank Capua, whose biggest rival – on-track and in life – is Luther Erding (Robert Wagner). They vie for the attentions of Elora Capua (played by Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward), and… It’s pretty dull, but the racing stuff is superb – not least the scene involving the Honker Can-Am weapon (no racing car has ever looked so good in metallic lilac). There is also some eye-watering stock footage showing the 1966 Indy 500 startline pile-up.
Road Racers
THE plot in this 1959 flick centres on Harry Wilson, who blames his son Rob for the death of his rival Billy Johnson in a crash at Willow Springs Raceway. Thereafter, he lends his support to his kid’s under-resourced rival, Greg Moore, who is competing in his Ol’ Bucket o’ Bolts (in reality, the Ol’ Yeller 1 special). There is some corking on-track action amid the hammy acting, culminating with a showdown at Riverside. The film was remade by Robert Rodriguez in the 1990s. His version, which stars Salma Hayek, keeps the name but does away with the racing element…
Bobby Deerfield
THIS PAGE Driven on the street or on the track, fast cars piloted by someone with a point to prove always make for an interesting plotline...
The Last Run
THIS feel-bad thriller from 1971 is not an easy watch. It endured a tortuous development even before filming had begun, and there were several changes of script and cast along the way. Nevertheless, it’s a treat to see George C Scott channel his inner Humphrey Bogart as an old-time driver for Chicago’s underworld who has been pensioned off to a fishing village in Portugal. Out of the blue he is tasked with transporting a lowlife to Italy. Cue a chase between his purportedly supercharged BMW 503 and a bunch of baddies in a Jaguar XJ6.
Poliziotto Sprint
THE 1970s saw Italy release a raft of police dramas where there were at least a couple of car chases. This 1977 offering is different in that it mostly comprises stunts, and they are memorable. According to some sources this film was inspired by the exploits of real-life lawman Armando Spatafora, who chased down wrong ’uns in a Ferrari 250 GTE. Here, the hero played by Maurizio Merli is similarly armed. The climactic chase where he battles a gun-totin’ robber in a Citroën DS21 ends with both catching air in the biggest way possible.
The California Kid
MARTIN Sheen and his quiff are on good form in this 1974 made-for-TV film, but the real star is the eponymous hot rod that was built by Pete Chapouris. Set in 1958, the plot centres on Michael McCord (Sheen) who arrives in a small town that is infamous for its low tolerance for speeding. The local sheriff, played by Vic Morrow, was responsible for the death of McCord’s brother and his friend; he ran them off the road and is due some payback. The embittered lawman falls into a trap set by the mysterious out-of-towner, and is hoisted by his own petard.
The Devil’s Hairpin
THIS hokey melodrama from 1957 stars Cornel Wilde (who also directed) as retired racing driver Nick Jargin. He is famed for his take-no-prisoners approach that crippled his brother in an accident (his mother won’t have anything to do with him). He is chided into making a comeback, and his road to redemption is paved by Jean Wallace (Wilde’s wife at the time). There is some cracking footage of D-types, Allard J2s, Siatas and the like, mixed in with real and staged battles – the titular hairpin at Paramount Ranch Raceway serving as a plot device.
The Crowd Roars
THIS 1932 gem is often confused with a film of the same name that’s rooted in boxing. Directed by Howard Hawks, it stars Jimmy Cagney as a battle-hardened ace on the ovals who dices with death aboard his Greer Special. There’s plenty of melodrama, too, not least the battle of wills with his brother (played by Eric Linden) who dreams of being a champion. The on-track footage alone makes it watchable, but it stands repeat viewing on its own merits even if you’re not into the old stuff. Incidentally, the film was remade seven years later as Indianapolis Speedway
RIGHT Arguably the best of B-movie auteur Roger Corman’s racing-orientated films, this features McLaren and Clark among other names.
THERE have been umpteen films with the words ‘hot rod’ somewhere in the title, many of them awful. This longforgotten flick from 1979, by contrast, is worth watching despite the many plot holes. A penniless racer rolls into town aboard his Plymouth Belvedere for a big-money drag race, and falls foul of the event’s sponsor, his racer son and the sheriff. He then crashes his car. Thanks to the kindness of strangers, he acquires an old Willys, transposes the parts and claims the spoils. Hurrah! In all seriousness, this is a fun watch.
Days of Thunder
THINK Top Gun with cars – and then stop thinking. Überproducers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson went for broke with this Hollywood-ised take on NASCAR. Every cliché was thrown at it, and most of them stuck – which isn’t to say that it isn’t entertaining. Tom Cruise plays arrogant newbie Cole Trickle, who manages to wreck every car Robert Duvall builds for him in his barn. He also finds a fierce rival in Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker), has a big shunt, starts a relationship with his doctor (Nicole Kidman) and becomes whole again by steering his car through fiery wreckage.
The Green Helmet
THIS is another racing flick where a former star seeks to regain his mojo. Oh, and win the heart of a young lady. Bill Travers is the nominal star of this 1961 drama, but he shares billing with real-life ace Jack Brabham and Sid James as an Aussie mechanic-cum-designer (his accent wavers throughout). The best bit has to be the accident in the opening scene; it’s a mix of real and staged footage spliced together, so it starts at Le Mans in 1955 and ends at Spa a few years later, all in the matter of a few seconds.
The Young Racers
ONE of several racingorientated films from B-movie auteur Roger Corman, this was arguably his best. It’s all relative. With the tagline ‘A Little Death Each Day… A Lot of Love Every Night!’ this was never going to be high art, but it has its good bits. The plot revolves around a former driver writing an exposé about one of his former rivals who is an absolute rogue (and not a lovable one). There’s plenty of footage from Aintree, Spa, Rouen and Monaco from the 1962 season, and Jim Clark, Trevor Taylor and Bruce McLaren appear as themselves.
THIS 1976 flick preceded The Cannonball Run, and similarly concerned a slew of oddballs racing across the US. It’s worth watching for the standout performance by Raúl Juliá as Italian racing superstar Franco Bertollini. There’s also a standing joke about Jaguars –or rather their lack of reliability (Coventry’s finest refused to loan a car, so this was the producers’ retort). The humour is broad, yet there are some great cars (the Ferrari Daytona versus Cobra 427 play-off at the end is super). This film might be crap – but it’s the right kind of crap.
Hot Rod
ONE of the better adaptations of an Alistair MacLean novel, this British-made, Americanset thriller nevertheless deviated from the source material in several areas. Chief among the changes was the insertion of a thrilling car chase in Louisiana following a staged breakout. The sequence was choreographed by stuntman Carey Loftin, with Barry Newman channelling his prior role as Kowalski in Vanishing Point as he evades the fuzz in a Ford Torino. Several cardboard boxes are destroyed early on before he and his pursuers start to connect with things that are more substantial (or immovable).
THERE are some who revere this counter-culture throwback from 1971, while others find its 103-minute running time a mite too long (by about an hour). Touted as being Easy Rider but with cars rather than motorcycles, the thin narrative surrounds singer/song-writer James Taylor as enigmatic hero ‘The Driver’ and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson as ‘The Mechanic’. They prowl the American South-west aboard a 1955 Chevy racing for pink slips, and encounter a Pontiac GTO-driving ‘straight’ with a big mouth played by the always-watchable Warren Oates. A cross-country race to Washington DC ensues. That’s about it.
MOTOR sport served as a backdrop for this 1966 classic. Seemingly filmed entirely in the rain, this gorgeous movie was essentially a love story involving a bereaved racing driver and a grieving widow who fall in love following a chance meeting. He drives for Ford France, so you get to enjoy GT40s and Mustangs at Montlhéry. Director Claude Lelouch had previously attempted to make a documentary about motor racing, and some of his unused footage was incorporated here (look out for Jean-Louis Marnat demolishing his Works Triumph in front of the Le Mans pits in 1964).
KNOWN as Le Mans 66 in some European countries, this much-garlanded biographical film from 2019 works brilliantly as a buddy movie. The many racing sequences as the Blue Oval takes the fight to Italian exotica aristocracy make for impressive viewing, too. Unlike most movies rooted in motor sport, there’s enough of a story to hold the interest of even those inured to this sort of thing. However, if you are partial to motor-racing history, and you are unable to put that interest to one side, you’ll cringe at the many inaccuracies.
THE plot here centres on a comic-book illustrator who helps a beautiful East European spy escape to the west. They make good their getaway in Romani garb aboard an old camper. However, the Prognoviach pursuit squadron are waiting for them in Yugoslavia. How can our heroes possibly outrun them in such a heap? No problem: with the press of a button the Condormobile bursts out of the camper shell and they evade the baddies on land and sea. If you don’t want a flame-throwing camper-cum-supercar-cumhovercraft after watching this, you must have a heart of stone.
F1: The Movie
THIS much-hyped 2025 flick benefitted from the surge of interest in ‘Eff One’ generated by the Drive To Survive documentary series. It promised to metaphorically put viewers in the cockpit, and inevitably many reviews couldn’t resist making comparisons with Top Gun: Maverick. This big-budget offering has a ridiculous premise, ropy dialogue and some star-driver cameos. Every cliché was thrown at it and most of them have stuck, so in this regard it is like virtually every film rooted in motor racing ever made. Get past this and the cinematography is excellent, while some of the driving scenes are tightly choreographed. Brad Pitt shines as the Senna-era F1 star who has become a journeyman racer turned gambler turned caravan dweller turned… The idea of a 60-year-old returning to F1 is laughable, but Pitt is on good form as the reluctant mentor to hotshot Damson Idris. So a healthy suspension of disbelief helps, but it’s fun all the same.
The Fast Lady
THE Vanden Plas-bodied short-chassis 1927 Bentley that appears in The Fast Lady was referred to by this moniker. This ‘lesser’ Ealing Comedy from 1962 was another of the type where a diffident sort attempts to woo a young lady by means of a desirable motor car. He does so while dissuading her from falling for the charms of a blackguard. The cast – with star Stanley Baxter, real-life former racer James Robertson Justice, Julie Christie in only her second film
role and über-cad Leslie Phillips – seemed to enjoy themselves, while the memorable chase sequence where the Bentley hunts down bank robbers is played for laughs. There are also cameos by John Surtees, Graham Hill and journalist/ broadcaster John Bolster. As for the car itself, it was dried off following a dunk in the drink. In 2010, it was sold by dealer/racer Gregor Fisken £500,000-plus. As an aside, director Ken Annakin went on to make Monte Carlo or Bust!
BELOW A Barkerbodied 1931 Phantom II Sedanca de Ville and equally stellar cast helped make The Yellow RollsRoyce a box-office hit.
School for Scoundrels
ALTHOUGH the clue was in the title, strictly speaking, it should have been The Yellow and Black Rolls-Royce. This long-forgotten 1964 drama was, nevertheless, a box-office success way back when, despite some rather lukewarm reviews. It was also garlanded in period, if only for the score. With a stellar cast including the likes of Rex Harrison, Alain Delon (in a rare English-speaking role), Ingrid Bergman and Omar Sharif, the anthological plot revolved around the titular star, a Barker-bodied 1931 Phantom II Sedanca de Ville. The story centres on three different owners: an English aristocrat, a Miami mafioso and a moneyed American socialite. It depicts fictional events up to and including the start of World War Two, and spans everything from extra-marital naughtiness in the ample back seat to aerial bombardment from the Luftwaffe. Intriguingly, Metro Goldwyn-Mayer put out a general casting call for the star car, not least in Motor Sport in 1963. The Phantom used in the movie still survives, too.
THE original School for Scoundrels from 1960 features several car-related cameos. Rotter-in-chief Raymond Delauney (the always watchable Terry-Thomas), for example, drives an Aston Martin DB3S – or rather a ‘Bellini’, complete with a bizarre-looking dorsal fin. However, the ‘1924 4 Litre Swiftmobile’ is pivotal to the plot. Hapless hero Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael) is bamboozled into buying this pre-war monstrosity in a bid to impress the film’s love interest (Janette Scott). With its comedy grille, giant elephant mascot, serpentine horn and faux exhaust pipes, it is as ghastly to look at as it is unforgettable to watch in action (strictly speaking, inaction). In reality, the Swiftmobile began life as a 1928 Bentley 41/2 Litre with fixed-head coupé bodywork by Freestone & Webb. The car was sold by the studio in 1961 for the princely sum of £50. The subsequent keeper rebuilt the Bentley, adding a replica Vanden Plas tourer body that was painted in a Land Rover green hue. H&H sold the car at auction in 2003 for £110,000.
The Yellow Rolls-Royce
BELOW The Countach-starring Cannonball Run remains a cultural touchstone for a certain generation.
Monte Carlo or Bust!
MONTE Carlo or Bust! – or Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies in the US – appears a mite dated in the here and now, much of the humour anchoring it in the 1960s (it was released in 1969), but that is a large part of its charm. It represented director Ken Annakin’s follow-up to Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and similarly starred Terry-Thomas, but here early record-breaking aviation attempts made way for circa-1930 rallying.
We won’t give the game away, but it all boils down to a ‘race’ for glory and some prize-giving shenanigans. However, not all that appeared on screen was as it seemed: some of the vehicular stars weren’t strictly pre-war. Several were built by Costruzioni Meccaniche Giannini and they employed Fiat 1100 and 1800/2300 running gear. Then there was the ‘Mercedes’ driven by Gert Fröbe which, cue disbelief, featured a lengthened AC Cobra chassis. Perhaps inevitably, it later formed the basis for a ‘real’ Cobra.
The Cars That Ate Paris
IT was labelled variously as a horror film and an arthouse movie, not least by its makers as they tried out alternate promotional campaigns in a bid to land a distributor. This is a cinematic gem, and one that was due to be screened at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival – the first Australian-made flick to receive such an honour – only for it to be deselected on the grounds that it was too gruesome. To many, it’s a satirical comedy where the humour is of the blackest hue. What The Cars That Ate Paris is not, is a film set in France. Nor, it must be said, does the alternate US title The Cars That Eat People make sense, given that nobody is consumed by a cannibalistic automobile –more that a small town survives by staging accidents and then picking over the remains of the cars and selling them. The vehicular content inspired the likes of Mad Max, a clone of the film’s ‘Spiked Beetle’ making a cameo appearance in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.
The Driver
WALTER Hill’s films tend to feature anti-heroes, and this stark thriller from 1978 was no different. Ryan O’Neal as ‘The Driver’ gives a bare-bones performance to the point that he delivers only 350 words of dialogue throughout the entire 91-minute running time. His nemesis, a scenery-chewing Bruce Dern, plays ‘The Detective’, who is determined to capture the man behind the myth by all means necessary. Shot primarily at night, this existentialist cops ’n’ robbers flick is memorable because of the chase sequences that bookend the slender plot.
The first 15mins comprise a chase. There is no dialogue as the wheelman for hire departs a robbery with his paymasters in a Ford Galaxie and eludes the fuzz. Later, Dern’s character orchestrates a bank job of his own to lure The Driver into his web, the gang strong-armed into hiring him demanding a test of his skills. Queue the destruction of a stolen Mercedes-Benz 280 SE in an underground car park. The classic finale involves a Pontiac Firebird and a Chevy pick-up.
STUNTMAN turned director Hal Needham was rarely lauded in period for his output. Critics generally wrote off his films as lowest-common-denominator trash. If your formative years were the late 1970s or early 1980s, and you loved cars, his movies were mesmerising. The Cannonball Run emerged in ’81 and its all-star cast appeared to have had a ball making it. The never knowingly underpromoted Brock Yates, who initiated the real Cannonball Run, wrote the screenplay and appeared in the film, although
he later distanced himself from it. He said that he’d envisaged it as a vehicle for Steve McQueen, but the latter’s part was taken by Needham’s former housemate, Burt Reynolds (aside from anything, McQueen died in ’80). In terms of vehicular content, you had everything from a weaponised Aston (driven by Roger Moore) to a Lamborghini Countach steered by Spandexclad Adrienne Barbeau. Viewed in middle age, The Cannonball Run is perhaps not as good as you remember, but it remains a cultural touchstone all the same.
The Cannonball Run
HAVING already appeared in the time-travel sci-fi comedy, Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea, the Skoda 110 concept car underwent a metamorphosis ahead of its starring role in this 1981 Czech horror flick. It was remodelled by Theodor Pištěk, who is perhaps better known for his Oscar-winning work with auteur Miloš Forman.
Dubbed ‘Ferat’ in the movie (a play on Nosferatu), this vampiric car has an insatiable desire for human blood – which it extracts via the throttle pedal. Whomever drives it soon falls under its spell.
The plot, such as it is, centres on a doctor whose ambulancedriver friend is hired as a Works pilot for the Ferat rally squad. His concern that something sinister may be afoot is soon proved to be well founded. Our favourite line has to be: “Hundreds of people cannot wait to feel the thrill of dying in a Ferat.” As horror films go, it is devoid of scares, but it is shot through with black humour, social commentary and a lot more besides.
Christine
STEPHEN King novels often make for awful films, one of the few exceptions being this 1983 adaptation. Directed by horror maestro John Carpenter, it nevertheless deviated from the source material in several respects. For starters, the 1958 Plymouth Fury in the novel was possessed by the evil spirit of a former owner. In the film, it was demonic before it had left the production line. Carpenter was a reluctant helmsman, too. He admitted later that he simply needed a paying gig after
his previous effort, The Thing, had bombed at the box office and been critically mauled. Christine may have been a means to an end, but it bore typical Carpenter flourishes such as the regeneration scene where the titular star un-dents herself after being attacked (the use of rubber panels and hydraulic rams were employed for this visual trick), and when she drives along on fire, having killed some gang members and blown up a petrol station. King disliked the film. It bored him.
THIS fun flick from 1977 may have a plot that suggests a B-movie, but The Car was produced by a major studio (Universal Pictures), and had a reasonable budget despite appearances to the contrary. In its makers’ minds at least it was a high-concept vehicle (it was pitched as ‘Jaws on land’). The narrative surrounds a dusty small town in Utah that is plagued by a sinister-looking black car. At the start of the film, a couple of teenage cyclists are toyed with before being dispatched into the afterlife. Word is soon out that a car is on the rampage. What’s more, according to a wise old Indian lady, there is no driver. It falls to James Brolin and his moustache to save the day. Cue some fun chase sequences –one involving the satanic coupe barrel-rolling over a couple of cop cars before driving off at an ungodly lick. This motorised evil entity is finally exorcised after it is persuaded to depart a cliff just before said cliff is dynamited. The end... or is it?
THIS Norwegian stop-motion animated yarn dating from 1975 is a tale of warm-hearted heroes and dastardly villains set in a “…little hill village perched under the Azure sky, which has a steam-driven cheese factory, a campsite, a newspaper and its own TV station”. Assuming you’ve made it past the words ‘Norwegian’ and ‘stop-motion’ (not to mention ‘steam-driven cheese factory’), you may be wondering why it is included in our Top 50. There are many reasons, primarily because it is truly joyous.
The plot centres on Theodore Rimspoke, the local bicycle repairman and serial inventor, and Rudolf GoreSlimy, who has made the leap from nobody to World Champion, his car being equipped with a new-fangled doohickey that he snaffled while serving as Rimspoke’s apprentice. Cue a bid to beat the ne’er-do-well in a new track weapon. Just to illustrate the film’s lasting legacy, hypercar titan Christian von Koenigsegg became obsessed with it as a young pup. So much so, he vowed that he would one day follow Rimspoke’s lead and make a car of his own.
BELOW Bet that didn’t do the electrics much good: Bond’s Lotus Espritcum-submersible cemented the car’s legendary status.
FOR full disclosure, the plot of this 1974 heist flick doesn’t require much brain wattage: steal billions of dollars’ worth of diamonds from a vault located in the bowels of the titular house, and get away with it. That isn’t the story in a nutshell. That is the story in its entirety.
Nevertheless, the stunts during the climactic chase sequence are enough to make your eyes water. The heroes attempt to evade their murderous paymaster known only as Massey aided by a noblewoman in a Lotus Europa. The climactic chase sequence was staged by legendary stuntman Ken Sheppard and his Nine Nine Cars team, with much of the footage being shot in the environs of Blenheim Palace. The purportedly dieselengined Transit used by the goodies (it was equipped with a modified V6 for the jump) managed to leap 10.4 metres before descending to earth with what you might euphemistically describe as ‘a bump’, causing Sheppard to suffer a slipped disc and displaced vertebra.
IT’S easy to forget the impact made by the Lotus Esprit in period, not least in the eyes of impressionable youngsters – and much of this was due in no small part to its appearance in this Roger Moore vehicle. Shooting of the action scenes began in Sardinia in August 1976. The dramatic chase sequence on the Costa Smeralda, which involved Ford Taunus-mounted henchmen and the deadly Naomi (Caroline Munro) aboard a Bell 206 JetRanger, caused headaches for the stuntmen. They didn’t get on with the mid-engined Esprit. Into the breach stepped Lotus’ handling guru Roger Becker. He was asked to drive the car to another location, which he did as only he knew how. The director was gobsmacked at how expertly he guided the Esprit, to the point that Becker steered the car in every action scene save for the one where it famously departs a pier and turns into a submersible. ‘Manned’ with mannequins, it was fired out of compressed-air rockets and guided by steel cables.
THIS 1968 Anglo-American production boasted a witty script written for the most part by Roald Dahl (and loosely based on an Ian Fleming novel) and, of course, the titular fourwheeled hero. Yes, you had to suspend disbelief at what is meant to be rural Britain when you can clearly see vineyards (those would be the bits filmed in the South of France). But honestly, who cares? Production designer Ken Adam played a blinder, but it was left to race team principal Alan Mann to construct the
cars used in the movie. The film’s star Dick Van Dyke, who rarely had a bad word to say about anyone, made an exception for director Ken Hughes, whom he felt was a tyrant. And of his automotive co-star, he wrote in My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was hard to drive. It had a four-cylinder engine [actually a V6...] that coughed and spluttered in real life, and the turning radius of a battleship, but we still had a lot of fun in it.”
IN the eyes of some, this 2013 release falls down due to its central tenet: that Formula 1 heroes James Hunt and Niki Lauda loathed each other. They didn’t. It was a fabrication. In reality, Lauda sofa-surfed with ‘Master James’ when racing in Formula 3 in the UK. Which isn’t to say there wasn’t an intense rivalry – but show us an F1 driver who doesn’t have a competitive streak a mile wide. Get past this, and Ron Howard’s film scores primarily because of the stellar performance of Daniel Brühl as Lauda. He not only looks and sounds like the Austrian, he nails his mannerisms, too. Chris Hemsworth as Hunt, by contrast, fails to convince. There are also myriad historical inaccuracies, but – and it’s an important but – Rush evokes the 1976 season with stylistic elan. Unlike, say, other car-related flicks of the past two decades (think the risible Fast & Furious franchise), the use of CGI here doesn’t make you groan.
The Spy Who Loved Me
Rush
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
BELOW Your enjoyment of Le Mans the film rather depends on your viewpoint, but the cars are great...
Checkpoint
WHILE nominally majoring on lantern-jawed hero Anthony Steel and Stanley Baker as the wrong ’un of the piece, the true stars of this hokey 1956 flick were the Lagonda V12s and Aston Martins that featured extensively (they were dubbed ‘Warren-Ingrams’ for their roles on the big screen). The plot, such as it was, centred on Baker as an industrial spy known only as O’Donovan who is tasked with obtaining secrets for a new demon tweak from the Volta D’Italia works.
The problem is, a security guard is shot trying to stop him, while five policemen perish in a factory fire. Preparations are then made to smuggle O’Donovan out of Italy. But how? The Arno-Alpi road race is being staged, and the finish line just happens to be over the border in Switzerland, so… While the majority of filming took place in Italy, other scenes were shot in the UK. The Volta D’Italia factory in the opening scene, for instance, was the home of the Fairthorpe marque based in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire.
Le Mans
THIS represents 106 minutes of unadulterated ecstasy for racing nuts, and utter misery for those not interested in motor sport. Michael Delaney (Steve McQueen) returns to the Le Mans 24 Hours after being involved in an accident the previous year that claimed the life of a rival. He then meets the fallen star’s widow, and the lingering implication is that he’s starting a relationship with her. That’s pretty much all there is in terms of plot. Fuelled by his megalomania,
McQueen fired director John Sturges and bullied replacement Lee Katzin, while roping in the likes of Derek Bell, Jacky Ickx and Masten Gregory among other real-life racers to realise a drivers’ view of the round-the-clock classic. The movie may have been mercifully free of cliches, but it cost – and lost – a fortune.
Le Mans is beyond evocative, given the selection of cars and the period in which it was made. Just don’t watch it with anyone who isn’t similarly inclined.
Le Casse
IN this 1971 euro-thriller, JeanPaul Belmondo and his band of crooks stage an emerald heist in Greece. There is no dialogue for the first 21 minutes, the robbery scene being interrupted only by the appearance of the other main protagonist: a bent copper played by Omar Sharif. Cue a game of cat and mouse as the former finds his means of departure cut off. After 33 minutes Belmondo’s crew splits up, and it’s at this juncture that he becomes aware of a rattylooking Opel Rekord nearby. He puts on his sunglasses, which can mean only one thing: it’s time for business. Belmondo departs the Piraeus bus station car park accompanied by squealing tyres and some dodgy back projection that lead you to suspect that the ensuing car chase is going to be rubbish. It isn’t. Instead, the hero’s Fiat 124 Special T and the Opel go to war. The irony is that this sequence orchestrated by Rémy Julienne added little to progressing the plot, but it’s the main reason why this film is still remembered today.
Smokey and the Bandit
HAL Needham wrote the script for this, his directorial debut, while performing stunts on Gator. His story revolved around a character called ‘Bandit’ who was a bootlegging trucker. He then set about raising one million dollars to make it. Jerry Reed, who was a heavy in Gator, would play his titular hero. Then Needham’s bestie Burt Reynolds read the script. He said he would star in it on the proviso that Needham directed the film. However, there was resistance to letting a stuntman helm a film before Universal Studios finally coughed up. The revised script called for Reynolds to become Trans Am-driving Bo ‘Bandit’ Darville, who runs interference for truck-driving Cledus ‘Snowman’ Snow (played by Reed), as they’re chased by Sheriff Buford T Justice (Jackie Gleason). Needham produced a classic famed for its stellar stunts – including the Bandit’s epic bridge leap that was performed by an unheralded Alan Gibbs. Smokey and the Bandit became the second highest-grossing film in 1977, beaten only by Star Wars
Duel
STEVEN Spielberg established himself with this suspenseful car-versus-truck thriller that was originally made for TV (it first aired in November 1971, and an extended cut was later released in cinemas, complete with mild expletives). The 20-something famously had no interest in what car was used by the central protagonist played by Dennis Weaver, the only proviso being that it had to be red. In marked contrast, he staged an ‘audition’ for the truck and selected a 1957 Peterbilt because he felt it had
a ‘menacing personality’ thanks to its long nose and bluff front.
Dale Van Sickel doubled for Weaver in the Plymouth Valiant during stunt scenes, with Carey Loftin on hand to drive the truck. Intriguingly, the evil-doer’s face is never seen, Spielberg opining that fear of the unknown is what drives the film. Only the trucker’s feet and hands appear in-shot, and they were Loftin’s. As an aside, some footage from the film subsequently appeared in assorted 1970s TV shows, much to Spielberg’s displeasure.
BELOW Featuring the legendary London to Brighton Run, the oh-so-British Genevieve did much to boost the Veteran car movement.
WHERE were you in ’62?
That was the tagline for George Lucas’ ode to a pre-Vietnam War America; to rock ’n’ roll and cruising the strip. It’s a coming-of-age drama, but with a lightness of touch that is otherwise missing from many of the director’s other works. It is set in a single night and tells the story of a group of teenagers and the adventures that ensue, with every scene played out to a piece of music that is integral to the action. It was also made the hard way, Lucas having repeatedly butted heads with studio heads (they wanted it to be an exploitation piece with plenty of sex and violence).
The low-budget American Graffiti made a fortune following its release in 1973. It also made stars of its youthful cast. As an aside, the ’55 Chevy driven by Harrison Ford (as Bob Falfa) that races against the ‘piss yella’ ’32 Ford coupe of Paul Le Mat (as John Milner) also appeared in Two-Lane Blacktop
Genevieve
IT took a Brit to make the perfect American drive-in movie. John Hough was a veteran of TV shows such as The Avengers and Hammer horror films prior to arriving in the US. His first assignment was to direct this cheapie, the end product making a fortune when released in 1974. To paraphrase comments made by its star Peter Fonda in period, it is basically a series of stunts with some dialogue thrown in. He plays a so-so racing driver who has been “...busting my crank for five years” trying to make it. A lack of funds is holding back his progress, so he stages a kidnapping/robbery with the aid of his mechanic (played by the superb Adam Roarke).
Then there’s ‘Miss Mary’ (Susan George) who refuses to be just a one-night stand. She willingly gets embroiled in the duo’s getaway, and in many ways is the architect of their misfortune. The stunts here are incredible – not least the bridge jump, for which stuntman Carey Loftin pulled off a heroic save on landing.
AS cosy as a comfort blanket, Genevieve did much to popularise the British Veteran car movement. The film was originally meant to be a vehicle for its emerging stars Dirk Bogarde and Claire Bloom. Instead, shooting started in October 1952 with John Gregson (as young barrister Alan McKim) down to drive Genevieve, the titular Darracq, alongside Dinah Sheridan (as his wife Wendy). The latter is initially reluctant to join him on the London to Brighton Run, fearing that he loves his car more than her. Meanwhile, their friend, Spyker-driving Ambrose Claverhouse (Kenneth More in a breakout performance), participates on the same event alongside his latest love, the extremely fashionable Rosalind (Kay Kendall). Cue lots of breakdowns, arguments, a battle of the sexes, wagers, dirty tricks, run-ins with the law, a dented Allard and panoramas of lovely English countryside. It won’t be to all tastes, but Genevieve is essential viewing if you like gentle ye olde comedies.
American Graffiti
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
Bullitt’s Mustangfrying car chase is infinitely more memorable than its actual plot.
Gone in 60 Seconds
FIRST things first, this 1974 release was not well made. Anyone who has ever seen it will be aware of the continuity errors. The acting is wooden and the plot is gossamer thin (steal lots of cars, outrun the cops). Even so, this chase flick isn’t so much a guilty pleasure as a guiltless joy. It is a thing of wonder. HB ‘Toby’ Halicki wrote, directed, produced and starred in this, his first-ever film. He roped in friends to serve as actors or, in some instances, unwitting stunt performers. He didn’t always have permission to shoot in
certain locations, so he employed guerilla tactics. Oh, and some of the many crashes that appeared on screen weren’t planned.
Halicki, who at various times had been a customiser and owner of a large junkyard, built many of the film cars – including the famous Mustang, Eleanor, that he drove in the 40-minute chase. He performed all of his own stunts, and compacted ten vertebrae in the climactic 39-metre jump. This film has heart – but the same cannot be said of the 2000 remake.
THE car chase in Bullitt is justifiably lionised – even if it is nit-pickable. As we all know by rote, Steve McQueen’s Mustang appears to have 27 ratios given the number of double-declutch gearshifts you hear. He and the Dodge Charger-mounted baddies overtake the same Volkswagen Beetle umpteen times, while the Mopar can be seen departing the climatic shot in which the petrol station blows up. Despite this, however, there is so much to love. British helmsman Peter Yates
channelled much of what he’d learned in his previous film Robbery to make it a thrill ride.
And Bullitt really is thrilling to the point that, in many ways, it established the template for what was expected of a car chase in a US thriller, with the likes of The French Connection and The Seven-Ups following its lead. Where the film falls down is that it is otherwise eminently forgettable. All that anyone remembers is the car chase. Seriously, the next time anyone mentions how brilliant Bullitt is, ask them what it’s about.
A THROWBACK to carchase movies of old, Ronin represented a late-career triumph for director John Frankenheimer – even if the plot is mostly guff. In reality, it’s mostly a series of set-pieces; brilliantly orchestrated chase sequences where the cars appear to be travelling at an almighty lick – because they were. The American helmsman hired real-life racing drivers Claude Laginez, Michel Neugarten and Jean-Pierre Jarrier to guide all manner of Euro saloons. Most of the cars in this 1998 release were current, not least a Peugeot 406 seemingly capable of being turned with millimetre precision simply by applying the handbrake. The Audi A8, meanwhile, hadn’t been officially launched when filming began but it was used to great effect, while the baddies’ BMW M5 fishtailed perfectly through Parisian underpasses. The real star, though, was the aged Mercedes 450 SEL, which performed some impressive burnouts.
Bullitt
Ronin
RIGHT 1968 movie
Vanishing Point
The Italian Job
IT’S a thoroughly British film that was partially set in Italy and financed by an American studio. Oh, and it was made great in no small part thanks to a French daredevil. This staple of bank holiday weekends since time immemorial has long since taken on a life of its own, and it inspired a tepid 2003 remake. The Italian Job notionally stars an on-form (and endlessly quotable) Michael Caine, but the real focus are the Mini Coopers;
the same ones that are able to outrun Alfa Romeo Giulia Super police cars despite being weighed down with gold following a bullion heist. Don’t read too deeply into this 1969 film, but the scenes in which Rémy Julienne’s stunt crew outrun the fuzz remain magical. Then there’s the cryptic ending with the gang dangling off the edge of an Alp in a Bedford bus. There has never been a sequel to explain how, or if, they made their escape...
A CULT film from the moment it was released in 1971, Richard C Sarafian’s existentialist opus nevertheless bombed in the US. The studio execs at 20th Century Fox had no faith in the movie, to the point that it was shown in only a few cinemas prior to being withdrawn. It was a much bigger hit in Europe, and was eventually re-released in its homeland in a double bill with The French Connection. It isn’t necessarily an easy film to get your head around, mind, not least because of the non-linear story and the red-herring flashbacks. Star Barry Newman seemed to be a staple of any early-1970s flick that had a car chase (see also Fear is the Key and The Salzburg Connection). Here he plays Kowalski, a Vietnam War veteran and washed-up former bike racer, stock car driver and cop, who is now delivering motors over long distances. He is tasked with driving a 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours, having only just dropped another car off at midnight. It’s a film about death, but oddly a scene involving Charlotte
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Marvellous Minis and a 1970 Dodge Challenger were the respective vehicular stars of two very different cult classics.
Rampling that foretells the anti-hero’s downfall was cut from the US version (she is dressed in black and shrouded in mist when he picks her up…).
Amply fuelled by ‘ups’ (amphetamines), Kowalski attempts to outrun the law, bat away the attentions of some hitch-hikers who aren’t what they initially seem, and best an E-type-driving road-racer – but it’s only ever going to end one way. The finale, which famously involved a Dodge Challenger/bulldozer interface (the car morphing into a Chevy Camaro on contact), remains, er, impactful. For reasons that defy logic, Vanishing Point was remade in 1997 with Viggo Mortensen as the anti-hero. Spoiler alert – this time Kowalski doesn’t die.
Grand Prix
THINK back to a time before Rush, or even Le Mans, and films rooted in motor sport fell into two camps: big-budget melodramas in which the central character was on a downwards slope and in search of redemption (or a good woman), or B-movies that comprised corny dialogue and stock footage. For all its faults, Grand Prix was the first in its genre to make a stab at realism. It was, for the most part, shot on location at genuine Grand Prix venues – often on race weekends, and real drivers were employed to drive real racing cars. There was no back projection here.
John Frankenheimer insisted on realism, and as such refused to borrow cars and speed up the footage later. Legend has it that he initially mooted fielding his own team, shooting exterior and in-car footage at each round of the F1 season. This scheme was soon shot down on the grounds that it would be unwieldy and cost a fortune. The production team then approached each outfit requesting technical
drawings. Thus armed, the special-effects department could clone their cars. Remarkably, no constructor was willing to hand over their intellectual property.
Frankenheimer then tapped Carroll Shelby for his thoughts. The latter’s star driver Bob Bondurant recalled in 2016: “I was at Riverside in 1965 testing the new GT350 [Mustang]. Shelby called me in to meet someone he was talking to in the pits. It was Frankenheimer.
John explained how he was going to make an epic film about F1 racing, and Carroll suggested that I spend some time with him the following day out at Willow Springs with the GT350. I would show him from inside the car what racing on a track was really like; go through the fundamentals. From there we hit it off, and I was invited to be the movie’s technical advisor and a driving double for the actors.”
Bondurant was one of more than 20 active or recently retired drivers who participated in the shoot, with the likes of Graham Hill, Richie Ginther, Phil Hill,
Bruce McLaren, Jo Bonnier and Jochen Rindt also having minor speaking roles. As for the real actors, Yves Montand who played silverback racer Jean-Pierre Sarti wasn’t without talent, while stage star Brian Bedford, who shone as stricken ace Scott Stoddard, didn’t have a driving licence. James Garner, meanwhile, was a keen driver who, according to Bondurant, was: “A natural. He listened and took direction very well.”
While the running time was way too long thanks to all the soap-opera-like padding, the footage of Monaco, Spa and elsewhere was – and remains – sensational. Intriguingly, Frankenheimer didn’t want Garner to star as US ace Pete Aron. He was overruled, but admitted after the film was released in December 1966 that he had been wrong to object. Garner, for his part, later wrote: “At the end of three hours, you felt as though you’d been in the races, not at the races. I think it’s still the greatest auto-racing picture ever made.” We are inclined to agree.
TOP 50 CAR FILMS
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By Richard Dredge
Lotus Exige
In S1 and S2 form, this British sports coupé has earned an enviable reputation as a track-day weapon. Just do your homework before taking the plunge
MARKET WATCH
THIRTY-ODD YEARS AGO, THE notion of Lotus building a 2.6tonne electric SUV would have been utterly fanciful – but here we are, with the huge Eletre a reality, and affordable lightweight sportsters but a distant memory.
Thankfully, though, it wasn’t always like that; we had the Seven, Type 26 Elan, Type 14 Elite... and in 1996 Lotus launched the Elise, which created chatter aplenty about what a gloriously uncompromised sports car it was. But it was just the hors d’oeuvre; the main course that followed in 2000 was significantly more hardcore, and it would go on to become a landmark car for enthusiasts and collectors alike. We’re talking about the Exige S1.
In 1998, Lotus decided that it wanted to return to factory-backed motor sport. By spring 1999 it had developed the Motorsport Elise concept, which was unveiled at the Geneva Salon. This Elise coupé was designed to look like a shrunken Group C racer, and it was created for the BTCC support race that would spearhead Lotus’ new motor sport programme. Customer requests for a road-going version were soon flooding in, and within 18 months the Exige was a reality, the car taking its name from ‘exiger’, the French word for ‘demanding’. Introduced in 2000, towards the end of Elise S1 production, the Exige S1 carried a 177bhp version of the Elise 340R (Rover K-series) engine, but with the option to upgrade to 190bhp with a decat kit. The Exige also brought a close-ratio gearbox, much more downforce (80kg at 100mph) thanks to a huge rear wing, and more direct steering courtesy of a quicker rack that gave a mere 2.3 turns between locks. Throw in a wider track, improved brake cooling and recalibrated suspension to virtually eliminate roll, and you have one of the greatest track-day cars ever created – or the ultimate point-to-point machine for those early-morning crosscountry runs. One of the reasons why it’s so good is its ludicrously low kerbweight of just 780kg; a figure that is now a pipe dream thanks to current regulations.
Exige S1 production ended in 2001 just as the Elise S2 was being launched, yet we would have to wait until 2004 before there was a
second-generation Exige. This car had the same 1.8-litre Toyota engine as its contemporary Elise sibling, but with 187bhp instead of that model’s 134bhp. Some reckon this naturally aspirated unit feels a bit underpowered, so the supercharged Exige 240R that appeared in 2005 with 240bhp was very welcome.
The 50 available examples sold swiftly, so in 2006 the boosted engine became standard, but in 218bhp form. This supercharged Exige was known as the S2 S and it ran until 2008; when launched it was Lotus’ fastest-accelerating car ever, with a 0-60mph time of just 4.1 seconds. Evo reckoned “it is a very fine thing and in many ways a performance bargain”.
In 2008 Lotus wheeled out the 240bhp Exige S 240; this time Evo’s verdict was that “as a track-day tool it’s a brilliant package – faster than a GT3”. An Exige S 260 producing 257bhp followed in 2009. Evo said: “There wouldn’t be much that could live with it on a circuit.” A raft of special editions appeared along the way, too, including the matteblack Scura of 2009 (sold in Japan as the Stealth) and the Exige S RGB of 2010 (a tribute to Lotus guru
‘It’s one of the greatest track-day cars ever – or the ultimate point-topoint machine’
Roger Becker). For the US market there were also the Matt Black Final Edition and the S 260 Final Edition, created as run-out models before the introduction of the V6-powered Exige S3 in 2012.
THE VALUE PROPOSITION
Phil Benfield is the sales manager of the long-standing Bedfordshirebased Lotus specialist Allon White (www.allonwhite.co.uk). He says:
“Just 604 Exige S1s were made, and you’ll be doing well to buy one for less than £30,000, while £45k is nearer the mark to secure something that isn’t a liability. The best cars are now touching £55,000, although some vendors are optimistically charging significantly more without acknowledging that the market has dropped in recent years.
“Mileage is important because of these cars’ highly stressed motors. So before buying a high-mileage example with an untouched engine, ensure you won’t have to fork out for a costly rebuild any time soon.”
Hagerty’s John Mayhead says:
“The S1 Exige is collectable as the first iteration of the car, and because it was built in such tiny numbers. So many were modified and tracked that a low-owner car with its original engine in good condition, as well as the all-important air-con option, is hard to find, and therefore valuable. UK Hagerty values vary between £20k-£42k, and although higher prices have been achieved in the US and mainland Europe, they have yet to be seen in the UK.
“Early, naturally aspirated S2s aren’t as sought after, with even
the best examples worth under £35,000. Supercharged versions can achieve more – especially those with the Performance Pack that delivered 240bhp from the factory and came with the full-length roof scoop and various other upgrades. The holy grail is the car with all three packs: Performance, Touring and Sports. Scura/Stealth models are very rare, especially in good condition, and these are starting to become collectable.”
With the S2, sought-after options include a limited-slip diff and aircon. But the latter is fragile and costly to fix because the condenser can fail, while the pipework that runs through the sills can corrode.
Lotus offered three key option packs. The Touring Pack adds leather trim, carpets and some soundproofing; the more common Sport Pack brings traction control, sport seats, Bilstein sport dampers and an adjustable front anti-roll bar. The Performance Pack has twin oil
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Thanks to a multitude of modification options, the Exige can be honed into a superb trackday weapon.
‘Getting the best out of one can be really hard work; you have to give 100 percent’
coolers, racing seats and harnesses, but goes without carpets and stereo.
John Mayhead goes on: “The S1 didn’t reach the US, and the earliest examples have only just passed the 25-year import barrier, so prices there aren’t yet firmly established. The S2, exported with the Toyota engine only, sold in much smaller numbers than the Elise and is more collectable, so its median value of $86,900 is much higher than the $55,400 for the Elise. Both cars’ values remained pretty consistent through the 2000s and 2010s, but they rose quickly in the early 2020s and have recently flattened out.”
In the UK, a high-mileage Exige S2 being sold privately can be found for £25,000; a 60,000-mile S from a dealer is more like £30,000, while a 30,000-mile S2 S is another £10,000. Most S2s are £30-£42k, but find an exceptional late car and you can pay up to £45,000; again, at the top end there’s some optimistic pricing.
Mayhead concludes: “Some S2s
were written off in the US back in the 2000s and early 2010s as a result of minor but expensive-torepair bodywork issues. These now have a salvage/rebuilt title, and while they are less valuable, there’s not so much of a red flag attached to this as there may be for other cars.
“The Exige has a strong enthusiast following, and so the outlook is strong, especially for the final-year (2011) examples that are highly sought after and come with a hefty premium. Lotus’ future in the US is uncertain, with no more Emiras being sold for the time being. This could work in the Exige’s favour, making it an even more exotic buy.”
THE NUTS AND BOLTS
Phil Benfield notes: “The list of Exige S1 check points is long –things not helped by the fact that these cars weren’t built to a high standard. Uneven panel fit is the norm; much more problematic is a rippled chassis from a crash. To
2000
Exige S1 launched – essentially a fixedhead Elise with 177bhp, close-ratio gearbox and more direct steering; 190bhp upgrade is optional. Extra power achieved with decat kit (a factory modification); some say standard car is more tractable, others reckon high-power engine is more free-revving.
2004
Exige S2 launched with naturally aspirated Toyota 1.8-litre twin-cam engine featuring variable valve timing. Also gets an updated bodyshell and anti-lock brakes.
2005
Supercharged 240bhp Sport Exige 240R arrives; just 50 made.
2006
More hardcore Exige Cup debuts in 190bhp naturally aspirated or 240bhp supercharged forms, with limited-slip diff. Exige S has 218bhp supercharged engine to give 0-60mph in 4.1 seconds. Exige sales get under way in US.
2008
Exige S 240 boasting 240bhp goes on sale.
2009
Both 257bhp Exige S 260 and Stealth/ Scura arrive, along with track-only Exige GT3.
2011
Facelift brings new nose design with fresh headlights incorporating LED daytime running lights, plus revised rear bumper and engine cover.
2012
Exige S3 supersedes S2.
restore the car’s glorious handling the only proper solution is to fit a new tub, but these have been unavailable for years. Put the car on a ramp and look for evidence of buckling or rippling, mismatched adhesives or welding – although much of the structure is hidden by the bodywork and undertrays, so inspection isn’t easy.”
Electrolytic corrosion can be an issue around the front suspension pick-up points, and the undersides of the car get bashed because of the minimal ground clearance; analyse the front valance and splitter, headlamps (most cars have fairings) and nose-cone.
The K-series engine was used in VVC form, with variable valve timing. It’s quite stressed, and if driven hard it can need a rebuild within 50,000 miles. Blue exhaust smoke under acceleration belies worn piston rings and cylinder bores. A well maintained Exige should not overheat, but radiators
can be fragile so look for a white mayonnaise-like substance on the underside of the oil-filler cap. Even better if you can inspect the radiator, but this is hidden in the nose and replacing it takes six hours.
Phil goes on: “The manual fivespeed transmission lasts well, but bearings can be noisy at idle, which means overhauling the gearbox. Differentials whine if the car has been driven hard, while gear selection will be tricky if the synchromesh has worn. However, don’t confuse the latter with a badly adjusted cable-operated gear linkage, given away by recalcitrance at low speed. Clutches wear, and replacement takes ten hours, plus the cost of a clutch kit.”
He continues: “The steering is unassisted, and racks typically wear out within 35,000 miles. This is given away by play. The balljoints in the front suspension wear out after 35,000 miles, while shock absorbers usually last just 20,000
miles, after which the dynamics suffer. It is worth investing in a four-wheel suspension-alignment job once a year, because if things are out the handling will be compromised and the tyres will wear unevenly and prematurely.”
The alloy wheels are frequently damaged or even corroded, and replacements are unavailable. Used or aftermarket items can be fitted; they often already are. Be wary if the tyres are new; this is the cheapest way to mask a twisted chassis. There is no brake servo to worry about, while MMC (metal matrix composite) discs were fitted originally. These aluminium units last well but they need special pads that are costly and scarce. Steeldisc conversions are common. With the S2, checking for impact damage is also essential. These later cars were built to a far higher standard than the S1s, but the way the bodyshell was constructed was much the same. Bodywork aside,
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the key thing to check is that the engine has had fresh oil of the correct grade, at least every 9000 miles if not used on the circuit. Any regularly tracked car should have had its oil changed at least every 5000 miles to avoid premature camshaft wear. Overheating isn’t a given, yet the radiators can leak, so check the coolant level and, again, look for mayonnaise-like evidence of head-gasket failure.
S2 gearboxes are strong, but hard use does result in tired synchro, especially the mid-range gears on supercharged models. Any S2 regularly driven on track will probably need some cash spent on the suspension, steering and brakes, which need to be treated as consumables. Any wear should be obvious from the driving experience, but having an expert check things over before you buy could save you plenty.
Phil notes: “A lot of these cars have been modified; if done well, that can make them more desirable. The key thing is that any changes are reversible. On an S1, switching from the original Koni dampers to the S2’s Bilsteins will improve the dynamics noticeably. The standard brakes are okay for road use, but they soon wilt on the track.
“The S2 doesn’t really need any upgrades unless you plan to do a lot of track days. In that case, coilovers and stronger brakes might be worthwhile, along with a more efficient radiator and a sports exhaust. There are various supercharger options, but the safe limit for the gearbox is around 300bhp, so don’t get carried away.”
THE FINAL DECISION
If you want an ultimate car, designed with just one thing in mind, the Exige is for you – as long as the one thing is to turn every drive into an event. This Lotus is one of the most driver-focused sports cars ever created, so it’s a thrilling drive. Getting the best out of one can be really hard work, however, because they’re unrefined, the ride is firm and the steering is very direct. You really do have to give 100 percent at all times.
An Exige will be either everything you ever wanted in a car, or something that you would never even consider. There’s nothing in
between, so if you’re buying for regular road use you need to make sure you can live with it, especially where the S1 is concerned.
It comes as no surprise that crash damage has reduced the number of surviving Exiges, while electrolytic corrosion and mechanical wear aren’t helping matters. However, most of these cars, especially S1s, are now bought by collectors and used sparingly, so the rate of attrition has slowed dramatically.
The biggest problem with the S1 is finding one to buy, because they rarely come up for sale. Your best bet is to join one of the clubs and get to know some owners. The jury is out on whether a standard 177bhp car is better to drive than a 190bhp version. The extra power was achieved via a factory-fitted decat kit; some reckon the standard car is more tractable, while others believe the high-power edition features a more free-revving engine.
It’s a lot easier to find an Exige S2, and these later cars are also easier to live with in terms of refinement and build quality. But whichever one you buy you’ll get the best out of it on track, and if you want to go touring you’ll probably
find the experience wearing.
Completely standard Exiges are rare; non-factory wheels, brakes, exhausts and suspension aren’t unusual, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Naturally aspirated S2s are a bit underwhelming, yet adding a few more horses needn’t be costly, and there are plenty of tuning options available.
Phil concludes: “The Exige is an incredible machine that offers a driving experience unmatched pretty much anywhere else. But while it’s amazing to drive, the lack of refinement or comfort makes the Lotus a very tiring companion on long-distance journeys. Find a really good one, and driving it very hard, might seem like sacrilege – but unless you buy it as an investment that’s what you need to do to get the best out of these road-ready racers.
“However, the Exige’s fragility means hard-driven cars will need plenty of expenditure, so you really must purchase with care. Talk to owners and specialists before buying, because while the Exige is incredible to drive, its singleminded design means taking one on is a commitment. You need to ensure you really are ready for it.”
MARKET ANALYSIS
By John Mayhead, Hagerty
Yin and yang
Looking at the complementary, interconnected and opposing forces in the classic car world that make up the bigger picture
THERE’S A YIN AND A YANG TO collecting. On one side are all the traditional factors that make a car desirable: the perceived strength of the brand and the model, the quantity made, whether it has racing DNA, the condition and the originality of the car itself. At the extreme end of the scale are delivery-mileage vehicles, preserved in aspic since purchase with seats and footwells still covered in the manufacturer’s protective wrapping.
Last year, Hagerty used these markers and many more to create a collectability algorithm, a mathematical way of quantifying and predicting how attractive a car may be to buyers. If you’re looking to purchase an example with a healthy chance of maintaining or even increasing in value, then this rating could be a good indicator of what to buy. This is the yin.
Yang is different. It encompasses all the elements that make a car usable, driveable and fun. They are the passion, the excitement, the enthusiasm: a car that makes you smile as it clocks up the miles along a windy, bug-spattering summer road. This is why we drive, why people stop you in service stations to talk about your car, why we meet in groups at shows and buy magazines such as Magneto. Yang is our automotive religion.
The car we all seek has the perfect balance: collectable, rare, powerful, cool, but also a superb driving machine. Its mileage must be at the ‘Goldilocks’ point: not too few to be worth preserving, but not too high to mean it drags the car’s value on an ever-downward trajectory. The same goes for condition: not too perfectly restored that you are scared to use it, but not shabby.
I recently drove 1000 miles in
five days in my 1988 Porsche 944. It is firmly in the yang category: over 135,000 miles on the clock, a bit rough around the edges and (for a Porsche) the engine has too few cylinders and is in the wrong place. I had the option of driving a 1960s Porsche, all matching numbers, fresh from restoration and one of about 25 on the road. When some kids stopped me in a car park to ask whether they could video the 944’s headlamps popping up, I knew I had made the correct decision.
Speaking to other enthusiasts and those in the trade, I think I may be reflective of a wider trend within the classic and performance world, in which owners err more towards driveable cars than trailer queens. Over the past few years this has been evident in the winners at top concours, peaking last summer at Pebble Beach when a Preservation car, a 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports, won overall Best of Show.
Hagerty’s data trends suggest the same is happening on a more grounded level: in the past five years, sale rates of cars with 100,000-plus miles have increased by over three percent, while in the same period sales of models with under 5000 miles have remained static – the former sitting well above the latter.
Similarly, in the Hagerty Price Guide, values of cars worth $30,000 in ‘excellent’ condition have risen every year in the past three, outperforming those valued at between $500,000 and $1m that have, on average, dropped each year.
One reason may be economics: a turbulent world is encouraging buyers to be more careful with their cash, and higher-mileage, cheaper cars are less of a risk than their more exclusive brethren. But there may also be a generational shift:
CHEAP AND CHEERFUL
Average US Hagerty Price Guide condition 2 (‘excellent’) value changes for cars worth under $30,000 compared with $500k to $1m
‘I’m still looking for that sweetspot car with yin and yang in perfect balance’
SMILES PER MILE: SALE RATES OF HIGH- VS LOW-MILEAGE CARS
Mean sell-through rates of cars with over 100,000 miles compared with those with under 5000 miles, 2020 to May 2025
since mid-2022, Gen X owners (born from 1966-80) have overtaken Baby Boomers (1945-65) as Hagerty’s biggest source of quotes worldwide, and those even younger, born up to the mid-1990s, are gaining fast. Could this cohort be bored of commenters and influencers telling them what’s important? Maybe that is the post-modern trend: yang is in. In the meantime, I’m still looking for that sweet-spot car with yin and yang in perfect balance. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but I doubt an algorithm will help me; I’ll just know it when I find it and achieve automotive enlightenment.
COVID SPIKE
WATCHES
By Jonathon Burford
Jewel in the crown
Harry Winston’s Opus series represents the ultimate collaboration with horological visionaries
HARRY WINSTON, ONE OF THE jewellery world’s most esteemed names, has built a legacy crafting some of the most extraordinary high-jewellery pieces ever. Dubbed the ‘King of Diamonds’, Winston revolutionised the industry with his keen eye for exceptional gemstones and his ability to transform them into works of art. Since the brand’s 1932 foundation, it has sourced and created some of the most significant and historically important pieces of jewellery, including the legendary Hope and Jonker Diamonds.
Traversing the worlds of high jewellery and watchmaking can prove problematic for brands. We often see gem-set watches, but finding a jewellery house that can credibly and legitimately move into the world of high horology is rare. Winston, however, spotted a young visionary who could bridge that gap.
Trained engineer Maximilian Büsser joined Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1991, when the company was still rebuilding in the wake of the Quartz Crisis. After seven years, at only 31, he was headhunted to become CEO of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces –before founding MB&F (Maximilian Büsser & Friends) in 2005.
His vision ran against prevailing norms in Swiss watchmaking, which has long depended on collaboration – multiple firms and watchmakers producing components for a final product. Even Rolex, the ultimate symbol of integration, once used Zenith and Valjoux movements, Universal Genève hands and Singer dials, before ultimately consolidating production. Yet such partnerships were kept invisible to the public.
Büsser’s vision for Harry Winston was the opposite: to celebrate these partnerships with independent makers. His vehicle? The Opus series, which he launched in 2001.
François-Paul Journe’s name is now omnipresent in the world of collectable watches, but in 2000 he’d only just launched his own brand. He agreed with Büsser to collaborate on the first Opus watches – a run of three models made in editions of only six pieces each. They focused on Journe’s areas of specialty: a tourbillon with remontoir d’égalité (constant force escapement); a resonance watch (synchronisation of dual movements); and a singlebarrel, automatic, extended power
reserve model. All bore a striking resemblance to Journe’s own watches, but were uniquely cased in a distinct Harry Winston style.
Büsser then approached yet more visionary independents. Some –Vianney Halter, Felix Baumgartner, Robert Greubel, Stephen Forsey –would go on to become household names among collectors. Others, while less well known, are equally important in modern horology.
Opus 3 (pictured), created with Halter, had a rectangular case with six porthole-shaped apertures. Blue numerals indicated the hours, black numerals, minutes, and vertically stacked red numerals, the date. Only 55 examples were produced.
Urwerk co-founder Baumgartner developed Opus 5 with satellite hour indication and a case-back service indicator. These would define his work. For Opus 6, the collaborators were Greubel and Forsey, modernday masters of the tourbillon.
Others included Eric Giroud, JeanFrançois Mojon and Christophe Claret among others – major figures in the independent scene, albeit with lower public profiles. The secondary market has finally begun to recognise the significance of these ground-breaking alliances. In June of this year, an Opus 1 Chronomètre à Résonance piece unique in platinum and adorned with Winston diamonds, sold for $840,000 in New York. While this result was unsurprising given the current fervour around FrançoisPaul Journe, opportunities remain at more accessible levels.
The Opus X, made by Mojon and featuring a dazzling rotating dial system, regularly trades below $100k at auction. The Opus 9, developed by Jean-Marc Wiederrecht and Eric Giroud with its linear time display, remains underrated. Even the Opus 5, made by Baumgartner, still feels undervalued in today’s market. These are all truly limitedproduction watches – genuine collaborations between some of the greatest creative forces in horology. As the market continues to mature, it’s likely to be only a matter of time before their value and historical importance are fully recognised. Writer Jonathon Burford is SVP and specialist at Sotheby’s watch department. For its ongoing watches sales, see www.sothebys.com.
MOTORING ART
By Rupert Whyte
DIRK BECKER’S AUTOMOTIVE art is a distinctive blend of technical precision and expressive flair. His work is often compared with that of the renowned German artist Horst Janssen, particularly in his use of ink and the raw, unrefined style that defines his pieces. Janssen’s influence is evident in Becker’s approach, because both artists embrace the ‘imperfections’ that make their works come to life. Becker’s artistic journey began more than 40 years ago, while he was studying electrical engineering. To support his education he took on commissioned artwork, starting with airbrush techniques. Despite no formal art training, his extensive career in the automotive industry – which spans more than three decades – has made him an expert in the mechanics of classic cars. His self-taught mastery is evident in his highly detailed and dynamic renditions of historic vehicles.
Inspired by Janssen’s ‘dirty’ etchings and ink drawings, Becker infuses his artwork with an intentional sense of imperfection. “Old cars and racing are both often gritty and flawed, so I want the viewer to sense the fuel, oil, leather and rubber through my work,” he explains. For Becker, it’s all about finding the ‘perfect imperfection’ – embracing the organic flow of ink rather than adhering to rigid, straight lines. His approach is deeply emotional. He views cars not just as machines, but as living, breathing entities that evoke love or even disdain. “Cars were never just transportation to me: they are emotional, mechanical beings,” he shares. This emotional depth is apparent in the loose, freeform quality of his drawings. His pieces are far from sterile or precise; instead, they convey a raw, energetic feeling that
Perfectly imperfect
An intentionally raw and unrefined style makes Dirk Becker’s classic car work really come to life
ABOVE Simulating motion and speed, Aston Martin DB3S exemplifies Becker’s technically proficient and emotionally resonant work.
and are unpredictable in their outcomes. “You never know what you’ll get until the first print is in your hands,” he notes. This element of surprise and experimentation is what makes printmaking so appealing to him.
mirrors the subject matter itself.
Although Becker has begun exploring digital tools such as the iPad, he primarily works in traditional ink on paper. The tactile relationship between the artist and materials is crucial to his process – the feel of the ink flowing from pen to paper is central to his style. While his original works are often monochromatic, he occasionally adds colour to emphasise certain elements, such as car bodywork. For his limited-edition prints, different hues can be digitally applied, allowing collectors to personalise the artwork with their preferred car colour. In addition to ink drawings, Becker also creates etchings, woodcuts and linocuts, all of which require considerable effort
Becker’s work is more than merely a depiction of automobiles. He integrates hand-written notes and annotations into many of his pieces, such as his rendering of the Dodge Charger R/T, which blends technical information with artistic flair. His Aston Martin DB3S at Goodwood is another example where words subtly enhance the composition – repeating the car’s name in the dust cloud behind it to simulate motion and speed.
This attention to detail, coupled with Becker’s signature ink splatters, imperfect lines and use of off-white paper, make his work stand out in the realm of automotive art. It is both technically proficient and emotionally resonant, creating pieces that are much more than mere illustrations.
Becker’s original works start at £250, prints from £55 and woodcuts from £95. Writer Rupert Whyte runs Historic Car Art, www.historiccarart.net, selling original works and posters.
COLLECTING
By Nathan Chadwick
Read all about it
Fancy a digital detox? Building your own library might just be the first step to taking a more analogue approach to life
EVERY BOOK, WHETHER IT’S fiction or not, tends to have a grand narrative. It is much the same in the book market itself.
“Tastes don’t tend to change every five years,” says Ian Ehling, the director of Fine Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams’ New York office. “It changes with new generations of collectors coming onto the market – and when you are building a collection, you’re at it for 15 to 30 years.”
Ian says the last major change was 20 years ago. Prior to then, the focus was on being a ‘completist’, he says: “If you collected Dickens, you wanted all his editions in parts, the bound volumes and the ephemera – theatre tickets, programmes and so on. That kind of collector has taken a back seat.”
Instead, Ian says that the modern collector is acquiring ‘highlights’ – recognisable names, and then the best or most famous works by those authors. “So for Dickens, you would have David Copperfield and Great Expectations, but you would also collect other books that have had an influence on the development of mankind, such as Darwin or Einstein or, for economics, Ricardo. There are collections out there that touch on everything,” he explains.
However, there are emerging trends, too. “When it comes to historical figures, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass and other African American authors have picked up recently,” Ian says. “For female authors, Jane Austen has always been collected, but the prices are currently very strong.”
The heavy-hitting collectors with whom Bonhams deals tend to be older, starting in their late 30s and
40s, Ian explains – which is reflected in certain authors finding new prominence. For instance, tech entrepreneurs have a liking for Tolkien, while JK Rowling’s stock has risen considerably – Bonhams sold a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for £220,800 in 2022. Stephen King’s horror writing is also popular, particularly his earlier work.
More broadly, while the auction appeal of a signed copy, excellent physical condition or a first edition is obvious, provenance can often play a part. “For modern literature, if you have a copy owned by the author or someone associated with them, that can be
THIS PAGE Rare version of revered Darwin book is a collector’s dream.
huge,” Ian says. “For earlier printed books, it might come from a royal owner or library, or perhaps a notable private collection.”
For books produced before industrial printing, the binding is hugely important: “If you can buy something from the 18th century in its original wrappers, you’ll get a different price than for something in a contemporary or 20th century binding.” Last year Bonhams sold the first bound book edition of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Dickens for £2304. In 2021, it sold the first edition of the 20part original for £50,250.
Despite particular nations understandably treasuring their own authors – the Germans with its romantic literature, and the French with Molière and Voltaire –it is in the US where the big money is paid for books, even those in the original, non-English form.
“Bonhams recently had a Hans Christian Andersen sale in New York, because he’s such a household name that collectors would go after the first editions in Danish,” Ian says. “People in the US spend more money on first editions than in any other country. The highest price for a first edition of Faust wasn’t in Berlin, it was in New York.”
The biggest change in the book market is how books are bought.
“Since Covid, bidding online has become really popular,” Ian muses.
“It is the most common way of buying at auction now.”
So, an evolution of the species, much as in one book Ian would love to own personally – the first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species Alas, at $500,000, that ownership story may have to wait a while... More details at www.bonhams.com.
DIVERSIONS
Compiled by Nathan Chadwick and Sophie Kochan
PININFARINA SCARPE BY SABELT
This Pininfarina x Sabelt collab brings a dash of Italian design flair to driving shoes. While not FIA approved, they’re perfect for sports cars with tight footwells thanks to ultra-thin leather, a safety strap, domed side protection, flexible rear insert plus grippy sole. Available in EU sizes 40-44, at €199. https://shop.pininfarina.it
CHOPARD MILLE MIGLIA CLASSIC CHRONOGRAPH TRIBUTE TO SIR STIRLING MOSS
ARENA MODELLI CARRERA PANAMERICANA MODELS
Italian model maker Arena Modelli has produced a line of cars celebrating vibrant Carrera Panamericana liveries and legends, from Chevys, Hudsons and Chryslers to Porsches and Borgwards. One of our favourites is this 1:43-scale version of the Bill Toya Hot Rod Shop Cadillac Series 62 driven to 24th place in the 1951 event by John Fredericks and Joe Bozied. POA. www.arenamodelli.com
Chopard unveiled two Mille Miglia 2025 special editions, and this model celebrates one of Britain’s most revered competitors. At 40.5mm in diameter and crafted in Lucent Steel, just 70 are being made to mark 70 years since Sir Stirling’s victory at the 1955 event. Price is on application, via Chopard boutiques only. www.chopard.com
PORSCHE CLASSIC ASSEMBLY GLOVES IN RED PEPITA
Available in size 9 and 10, these assembly gloves feature Porsche’s famed Red Pepita pattern, a 901 engine illustration and an embedded magnet, at $47. https://shop.porsche.com
DIVERSIONS
PATEK PHILIPPE CALATRAVA PILOT TRAVEL TIME
Inspired by the aeronautical world, this replacement for the 5524G‑001 (called the 5524G‑010) has a vintage style ivory lacquered dial, khaki green composite material strap with fabric pattern, Travel Time display and date indexed to local time. The 42mm case is constructed from white gold. It costs CHF51,700. www.patek.com
FAEMA FAEMINA X BBKRT COFFEE MACHINE
To mark Bimota’s presence in World Superbikes, two special editions celebrate riders Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani. Reflecting their racing numbers, 22 of the former (shown) and 47 of the latter (in black) will be made. Each one is £6234. www.faema.com
RAY-BAN FOR SCUDERIA FERRARI MONZA
These limited-edition carbonfibre sunglasses have been designed to celebrate the 2024 Monza GP, as won by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Based on the Wayfarer, they feature gold-mirror brown lenses and cost £520. www.store.ferrari.com
OTTOMOBILE RENAULT 17 MONTE-CARLO 1975
This 1:18-scale set depicts an unlikely Renault success story from 50 years ago. Alpine Renault entered a fleet of A110s for the 1975 Monte Carlo Rally, plus a Renault 17 for JeanFrançois Piot. Against all the odds he came home fifth overall, winning his class. This set includes the suitably Gordini-tuned 12 Break wagon and a trailer, and costs €179.90. www.otto-models.com
Power Unleashed
BOOK REVIEWS
By Nathan Chadwick and Mark Dixon
IT’S COMMONPLACE NOW FOR rock stars still to be touring well into their 70s and (if they’re the Rolling Stones) 80s, but not many people can boast of producing their best work when they turn 90. Take a bow, then, automotive historian Karl Ludvigsen, who at a modest 91 has published his most ambitious work yet: a three-volume, 665,000word history of forced induction.
If that sounds like overkill for a relatively niche subject, remember that the idea of putting air into an engine at above-atmospheric pressure, to increase combustion efficiency and thus power, goes back to motoring’s earliest days. By c.1917 this process was known as ‘supercharging’, and a parallel tech called ‘turbocharging’ soon evolved, too. At its simplest, supercharging is forced induction by mechanical means such as a crankshaft-driven compressor, while turbocharging uses exhaust gases to spin up the compressor, or turbo; indeed, it was initially called ‘turbo-supercharging’.
The three volumes that make up this slipcased trilogy sit in loosely chronological order, with some natural overlapping of separate subjects. For example, aviation engineers realised they could make their machines fly higher by using forced induction to compensate for the thinner atmosphere at altitude
‘Ludvigsen began this 15 years ago; it’s never been more relevant than today’
Indulge your inner engineering nerd with this wideranging and hugely in-depth history of forced induction
– a huge advantage for military planes – so Ludvigsen devotes half a volume to aircraft engines of the interwar and wartime years. There’s something quite compelling about an all-black, sinisterly purposeful Daimler-Benz aero engine...
Marine engines also get a look in but, naturally, it’s motor vehicles that dominate these books. That aviation section in volume two is bookended by the development of road and race cars from the 1930s70s, while volumes one and three, respectively, chart forced induction from its origins through to its use in competition cars of the 1950s, and road and track applications from the 1970s to the 2020s. Superstars such as the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 956 are balanced with significant but less often remembered models such as the Renault 21 Turbo. And, of course, the Formula 1 ‘Turbo Era’ gets plenty of coverage.
All this history is brought to life by a vast number of images that are well reproduced over 1960 pages –both the quantity and the quality of the work fully justifying the £395 price. Of course, engines dominate the visuals, mainly as photos or archival technical drawings, along with many fascinating cutaways.
Ludvigsen began this masterwork 15 years ago, and it has never been more relevant than today, when an ever-increasing emphasis on higher efficiency and lower emissions means over a third of ICE-powered cars are turbocharged. While some of us may cling to the belief that ‘there ain’t no substitute for cubic inches’, physics and human ingenuity have proved that isn’t the case –throwing the internal-combustion engine a lifeline in the process. www.evropublishing.com
THIS PAGE Karl Ludvigsen’s latest tome is an incisive and fascinating work set over three mighty volumes.
BOOK REVIEWS
The Yanks at Le Mans 1980-1999
Two-volume set is a tribute to not only the racers that took on the endurance classic, but its late author, too
LE MANS MIGHT ‘JUST’ BE A little town in the middle of the French countryside, but in the States it represents perhaps the ultimate challenge – even against the US’s own gruelling endurance races. Perhaps it’s about putting one over on those snooty Europeans....
Nevertheless, the American love affair with La Sarthe continues to hold a fixation, with big-name makers staking their reputations on taking up the challenge to this day. The genesis for all this could arguably be the era on which this magnificent two-volume set focuses – even if the US manufacturers had not quite made the leap. After all, this was the era in which endurance racing bounced back from a turbulent 1970s with big budgets,
Pininfarina has had a challenging time of late, with Paolo Pininfarina’s passing in 2024. This book provides a great overview of the carrozzeria’s origins, work and philosophies.
Although the 240-page tome might not get into the juicy period detail, it still prompts surprise and delight at not only the magnificent designs, but also the firm’s technical advances. Luca Dal Monte writes in English and Italian, and at €55 this represents a good way to begin your immersion into the illustrious brand. www.giorgionadaeditore.it
increasing TV coverage and, most critically, American drivers right at the forefront for the likes of Porsche and Jaguar. It was a spectacle as wild as the speeds and bodywork, and the narratives are just as gripping; Al Holbert’s last-lap dramas in 1983 on the way to victory sit strong in the memory.
Each year is profiled in detail, with every American ‘combatant’ –be it car, driver or team – referenced and detailed. And that is what makes this book so engaging: the joy of the event is not just the battles up front, but the fights further down the field and in different classes.
This means that there’s a wealth of interest and different shapes, from the Chevrolet Camaros of 1981 to the wild and wonderful
LE MANS 2000-09
The first decade of the new millennium was dominated by Audi – well, at least in the top class of Le Mans. If you’re not a fan of the four rings (or of diesels) you might switch off, but further down the order it was a true battle royale among the GT runners at La Sarthe, with emotional victories for Aston Martin and gritty performances from Chevrolet and Porsche. Well written by John Brooks, this $90, 400-page book provides a great overview of each year, with some juicy stats and graphs, too. www.evropublishing.com
Callaway Corvettes and Dodge Vipers of the 1990s, plus the Clayton Cunningham Nissan 300ZXs. There is a wealth of interviews and period photography, which really immerses you in the subject. On the downside, some of these images are pushed a little too far beyond their limit in terms of reproduction, but this doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of this 768-page publication.
There’s great insight into not just the races but the story behind the rise, fall, rise and then fall again of endurance racing. This all rather neatly happens in the very timeframe of this era, from the meddling that ultimately destroyed the Group C/World Sportscar Championship of the early 1990s,
Alfa quite rightly makes a big play of its pre-war successes, but its post-war efforts provide more easily accessed and perhaps more vivid memories for most. This £80, 330page book charts the marque’s victories and failures through F1, touring cars and rallying. Each of those subjects deserves a book of its own, but Peter Collins’ words provide an excellent jumping-off point and overview. The period racing images are great, and the ‘forbidden fruit’ unraced cars are always fascinating. www.veloce.co.uk
to the FIA over-reach at the end of that very same decade after the success of the BPR/ACO regeneration. If you’re a fan of stats, there’s an excellent appendix, too.
The fact this book exists at all is testament to the publishing team. Author Tim Considine passed away a few years ago – but thanks to the efforts of his friends and peers, this $225, two-volume set maintains the quality of his earlier volumes covering the previous decades. It’s touching to see a section dedicated to Tim’s memory, too.
A worthwhile purchase, and not just for American readers – because without the US interest, Le Mans rarely thrives. Europeans would do well to remember that too.
www.bullpublishing.com
FERRARI 275 P 0816: THE ONLY FERRARI TO HAVE WON LE MANS TWICE
Porter Press has taken a slightly different approach to its usual single-car books – and if ever there was a model that deserved it, it’s this. The only Ferrari to have won Le Mans twice, first as a 250 P, then as a 275 P, the story of its dual life and the discovery of the facts beggar belief. Keith Bluemel’s granular text complements the scintillating images, elevating this 240-page tome to ‘art book’ status beautifully. Well deserving of its £125 price. www.porterpress.co.uk
PININFARINA 95: TIMELESS BEAUTY
ALFA ROMEO: CARS IN MOTORSPORT SINCE 1945
BOOK REVIEWS
Alpine: French Speed & Spirit
Palawan’s passionate, in-depth take on this revered brand doesn’t disappoint
FOR ALL OF HIS CRITICS –and there are many, certainly within his former company Stellantis –Carlos Tavares does deserve due credit for revitalising the Alpine brand. After all, the same sheer ‘determination’ that led to his downfall at Stellantis and Renault ultimately bore fruit in the A110. In many ways, it follows on from the incomparable drive of Alpine founder Jean Rédélé himself. Using humble ingredients but with added dedication to lightness and highly knowledgeable tweaking, sports car excellence ensued. Pretty soon these little marvels attracted the attention of Renault, and soon after Alpines were taking on the world’s best in rallying and racing. They were winning, too – and in doing so,
FORMULA 1: ALL THE RACES
2016-2024
Formula 1 has never experienced quite the same shift in popularity as it has between 2016 and 2024, and Roger Smith’s insightful £55 book profiles each individual race, plus the shenanigans going on behind the scenes over each season. Perhaps not a light read for casual observers –the ones Liberty Media has courted so deftly via Netflix – nonetheless this 240-page book provides a great overview of this tumultuous period. It also looks at F1 in the States going back over the decades. www.veloce.co.uk
they became a flag-bearer for not only Renault, but France in general.
For all the motor sport success and well regarded road cars, there have been few books on Alpine, certainly in English, so Russell Hayes’ 496-page dedication to the brand is welcome. As befits a Palawan production, the design and materials are exemplary. However, it’s the text that is most impressive; Hayes mixes the wider narrative and the engineering nous perfectly, with pleasing detail on diversions such as the Brazilian and Bulgarian takes on Alpine. There is also the tumultuous tale of the brand in endurance racing, one that fizzled out after much promise. It’s rallying for which Alpine is best known, though, and it is only right that a
ITALDESIGN: ENGINEERS OF IDEAS
Italdesign is in a tricky spot, with VW putting the Giorgetto Giugiarofounded house up for sale. This great design studio’s influence shouldn’t be underestimated, and Aldo Colonetti and Valentina Croci’s 288-page book serves as a fantastic marker for its achievements both before its 2015 absorption into VW and after. It’s not just cars – the Italdesign touch can be seen in watches, kitchens and even wine glasses. Well priced at €60, the book highlights the studio’s distinct nature – one we hope continues whatever the future holds. www.giorgionadaeditore.it
large chunk of the book is dedicated to the A110’s remarkable 12-year tenure at the very top of the sport. This tome also covers the car’s V6 follow-up, the A310 and Alpine’s work on the Renault 5 variants, plus the 1970s Le Mans efforts – but the most satisfying section talks about the GTA and A610 of the 1980s and ’90s. Great cars that, while critically lauded, failed to find their feet with customers outside of home turf. So, with countless books on the Porsche 911, it’s a treat to get such an in-depth take on a series of cars that always deserved better sales. Yet it is the forbidden fruit that provides the most exciting reading, from the Project W71 to the twinturbo A610. However, the tide was turning, and Renault Sport as an
The Alfa Romeo 33 is the kind of project few would have envisioned for the brand in recent years, but the passion among marque enthusiasts was proven when all 33 examples sold out almost immediately. This 250-page, $85 book tells the story of the car’s conception, design process and delivery via its key players, with the Museo Alfa Romeo’s Lorenzo Ardizio providing historical context via the 1960s cars. Featuring extensive sketches and renders, it is a fascinating insight into a clear passion project for all involved. www.rizzoliusa.com
entity was more important.
The book’s ninth chapter brings the story back to Alpine, charting the redevelopment of the brand, and the short-lived tie-in with Caterham. Again the detail is impressive, with the politics within Renault and with Caterham’s Tony Fernandes proving to be engrossing. The Alpine story continues to be written; the two new electric models and Le Mans racers form the tail-end of the book, alongside a profile of single-seaters.
Just 500 standard editions are being printed at £400 a pop, and 50 leather-bound issues start at £1000. Not cheap, but Palawan productions are single-minded passion projects that don’t disappoint. Very much like Alpines themselves... www.palawan.co.uk
Lee Noble’s legendary nous for building cars that handle beautifully is known the world over, even if the models that bear his name no longer have anything to do with him. From the Ultima to the heyday of the early 2000s with the M12-era cars, and the falling-out that saw him locked out of his own factory, this unflinching profile doesn’t pull its punches. The 314-page, £60 book has fascinating insight into a driven, down-to-earth man and the cars that have used his input. As such, it highly recommended. www.veloce.co.uk
ALFA ROMEO 33 STRADALE
LEE NOBLE: SUPERCAR GENIUS
2019 Aston Martin V8 Vantage GTE / GT3
Please call for more info.
Podium finisher in the final ever GTE race, as well as British GT and Spa 24 Hours Pro Am Champion, this car played a significant part in Aston Martin Racing History over the last few years. Run by leading Aston Martin team TF Sport and maintained by them throughout its life the car remains in excellent condition. Rebuilt to its final race specification by leading Aston Martin team TF Sport, this car is available for sale complete with an impressive spares package, setup and running equipment worth over £500,000. A great car for collectors, the ultimate track weapon or to race in historic racing today.
The Lawyer Clive Robertson
Cross-border transactions will likely involve different legal systems – so make sure you are prepared!
BUYING A CLASSIC REQUIRES
something in the nature of a binary process. First, there is the emotional commitment in locating the required car, following which the buyer needs to secure the acquisition. This second stage requires yet another double process, being the establishment of agreed terms and the conducting of a satisfactory inspection. If asked, most would say that finding the perfect car constitutes the greatest challenge –but in truth, the terms and inspection demand far greater effort.
Increasingly, as classics become more of an international asset, the likelihood of a buyer needing to take account of a legal system other than their own becomes a troubling prospect. There are two principal systems of law that fall to be considered.
The Civil Law, which holds sway in most of Europe, was founded upon detailed codes and statutes enacted by legislation. The sixth century Emperor Justinian was responsible for the uniform rewriting of Roman Law, in the form of the Corpus Juris Civilis – his work enduring until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople in 1453. Emperor Napoleon subsequently revised and updated Justinian’s work, thereby creating the world’s most common legal system practised in about 150 countries, including Scotland.
In contrast, the English system, the Common Law, relies upon court or tribunal decisions and precedent. Itinerant merchants travelling throughout England in the early medieval period set up their stalls at fairs and markets. Inevitably disputes arose, which needed swift resolution. The seniors of the various Guilds were called together to consider complaints and to make judgements based upon the fair and proper conduct of the parties.
A body of custom and practice evolved, into what we now call commercial law. The courts at the fairs became known as Pie Powder
Courts, on account of either the dusty attire worn by the visiting merchants or by the flour covering the representative of the Pie Makers Guild. I can’t but help favouring the latter interpretation, which conjures a wonderful picture. The last Pie Powder Court was abolished in England in 1898.
Classic car buyers will be confronted by the Common Law in most English-speaking countries, and by Civil Law in Europe. Nonetheless, the parties can jointly agree any system of law. Of course, contracts can be agreed orally, but best advice is to commit to writing. As well as the choice of applicable law, the written contract should deal with the following terms: the parties, the price and condition of the car, title, warranties and arrangements for payment and delivery.
Lawyers should be consulted over
www.healys.com
+44 (0)7768 997439
BELOW Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis formed the basis of the world’s most used legal system.
the terms of the contract, well before funds are committed. The fees might be seen as an unwelcome additional cost, yet they will be but a small percentage of the overall purchase expenditure.
I was recently consulted by a UK resident who had bought a 12-cylinder Italian car in central Europe. A contract had been provided, with an English translation, the applicable law being of the country of purchase. The acquisition price was paid, but delivery of the car is proving problematic. Local lawyers were engaged. The European
‘Caveat emptor: the onus to investigate and assess rests entirely with the buyer’
concept of ‘title’ appears to be subtly different from that applicable under English law. Negotiations are ongoing. Before parting with any funds, including a deposit if payable, the buyer must engage an independent marque expert to undertake a full inspection. There can be no exception to this requirement. Time out of mind do I hear of buyers who persuade themselves that they know ‘a good car’ when they see one. More unfortunate are buyers who proceed without inspection, on the perceived reputation of a renowned dealer. A knowledgeable friend recently purchased a Big Healey from a business specialising in that model. The advert promised an engine with high-performance parts that produced considerably more power than standard. There was, however, no independent inspection. The engine turned out to be in near-standard tune. It should be acknowledged that, on occasion, an inspection will not reveal defects where there is an intention to deceive. Even the most highly rated experts and dealers can be fooled. I worked with a client who’d sent his Ferrari 365 to be appraised prior to sale. It transpired that the steeringcolumn shroud and the chassis plate had been changed to represent another car of the same model. Fortunately the original selling dealer came to the rescue and resolved the problem. Despite the ideological differences between Civil Law and Common Law, the latter has chosen to adopt the Latin maxim ‘caveat emptor’, in allocating legal responsibility between buyer and seller in a commercial transaction. The full translation of the maxim is ‘Let the buyer beware’. The word ‘let’ denotes an intention to create something akin to a command. The onus to investigate and assess rests entirely with the buyer. The seller is not under any obligation to make any disclosures.
Clive is a solicitor and consultant with London law firm Healys LLP. Contact clive.robertson@healys.com.
See the full schedule at hagerty.com/events Join us throughout 2026 for a year packed with concours, auctions, parties, behind-the-wheel-experiences, and so much more — all built to take your car love to the next level.
Amelia California Mille Greenwich Concours d’Elegance Motorlux RADwood
The Curator
Robert Dean
Tough times call for... keeping a clear head, moving slowly and not doing anything drastic
A LOT OF BIG THINGS HAPPENED at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. In the November my dad died. In the December I left the Ecclestone Collection after 23 years. And in early 2020 I started my new business and was invited to go, in February, to Rétromobile. I went with my friend Dylan Miles (Aston Martin dealer extraordinaire and general all-round good egg) and his father Simon Miles (also a splendid cove), who was restoring a Brough Superior for another friend, now employer.
I doled out all my cards and flyers, and talked about my new business, Curated Vehicle Management, to anyone who would listen… and then, on March 26, the UK went into lockdown. This rather scuppered my business, because everyone was now at home happily looking after their own cars and motorcycles, instead of asking me to do it while they flew round the world on business.
This left me in a predicament, because I had no income and no business. On the bright side, my wife and I had a few savings for food, the mortgage and utilities – and I was spending almost no money otherwise.
My friend Ade Hackett had a gardening business, and he gave me one day’s work a week that paid £80. This gave me petrol money for my 1964 MGB, which was now my only means of transport – and I am sure this cash came out of his pocket, for which I will always be grateful.
My father used to say: “When you are up to your chin in shit… don’t make any waves.” What this means is move slowly, don’t panic and don’t start making bad, hurried decisions that may very well overwhelm you and sink you in the smelly stuff. Slowly, the situation changed. It took six months for me to be able to function again and think clearly. My friend of 30 years, James Davies (who is now that employer I mentioned), started to give me projects to manage for him, as and when he was able. My
BELOW A driving Jaguar E-type for £18k? Not unheard of in today’s climate – although it won’t be as nice as this one.
wife and I finally sold our house in Kent after a year and a half of trying, and we bought a place in Oxfordshire because my son had got into a school just outside of Henley-on-Thames. This enabled him and my wife to stop living out of, variously, Travelodge hotels and a motorhome.
I did my HGV licence, and I was driving all manner of trucks for Unipart as an agency driver, which I loved. Isn’t it funny that when you are into cars, the universe seems to keep you doing things connected with them? I delivered parts to the railway system and McLaren Automotive among other things, and I was still able to manage projects for James. The agency driving eventually came to an end, and I was able to go back to being a full-time curator. It took four years to get there, moving slowly and making one decision at a time, with a bit of luck thrown in.
I am now incredibly honoured to be asked to do all sorts of other things. For instance, I commentate at several classic car shows that raise money for good causes, editor David Lillywhite commissioned me to write this
Magneto column to keep me out of trouble, and I have been asked to give evening talks about some of the mad things I’ve done over the years – many of which you’ve read about here.
Just recently I sat on a panel of experts giving our thoughts about the recently launched Classic Car Register, which aims to be the archive of ownership and history for any classic car owner who lodges that knowledge with it, in a similar vein to The Art Loss Register and The Watch Register. If a car is sold, the auction house or prospective new owner can start their due diligence. Meanwhile, if a car is stolen, the authorities have a place to go for instant information. This discussion took place during the London Concours, at the City’s
‘Anyone who has been in the industry for a long time will have seen it all before’
Honourable Artillery Company.
As an aside, the classic car and bike markets seem to be having a hard time of things at the moment – especially pre-war and Veteran models. I recently saw an E-type FHC S2 for £18k, and while it needed a lot of work as well as an interior, it was apparently driving and MoT’d. Now while that is unusual, it makes you think, doesn’t it? A running E-type for less than £20k.
Anyone who’s been in the industry for a long time, however, will have seen it all before, and we know it will take a few years to start going up again. On the bright side, the enthusiast is now more able to afford to buy the car or bike of their dreams, and everything will balance itself out in the end. Clever people (not me, I’m afraid) will move and adjust to the market, just like we all do in our daily lives.
So remember, when times are tough just move slowly and carefully, and don’t make waves. The time for waves is when you’re riding high and can afford it. Keep being part of the machinery.
Former Ecclestone Collection manager Robert now runs Curated Vehicle Management. See www.c-v-m.co.uk.
The Designer Peter Stevens
Why post-war America witnessed the emergence of silver-screen heroes of an unlikely kind
THE CAR IS THE STAR IN SO many memorable films – as our car movie Top 50 in this issue of Magneto proves – but was it the same back in the 1950s and ’60s? Following the end of World War Two, thousands of young men returned to the US to find a country pretty much like the one they’d left four years before. Meanwhile, they had learned to drive, and to obey only the orders that kept them alive, and they had a desire to continue the freedom and excitement war can give. Hot rodding was a low-cost way to get the thrills that they missed – and racing on the streets of Southern California, in the face of opposition from the cops and a very conservative public, was exciting and a part of a counter culture they could embrace. The rodders’ burgeoning unpopularity was fed by stories in the press of misbehaviour on the streets and a belief that hotted-up cars were used to seduce innocent girls. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union would confront hot rod club members in diners and clubs, where they carried signs with slogans such as ‘Save our Girls’, ‘We Seek to Save’ and ‘Danger: a Wet Road and a Wet Driver’. Hollywood took up this story with low-budget B-movies in which bad boys corrupted nice girls, or bad girls corrupted nice cops. The titles were aimed to shock, reinforce prejudices and titillate. Delinquent Daughters, Dragstrip Girl, Youth Runs Wild subtitled ‘Emotion in the Raw – the Truth About Modern Youth!’, Dragstrip Riot – ‘Murder… at 120 Miles Per Hour!!’, Hot Rod Harlots – ‘It’s Their Last Stop on the Road to Ruin!’, Hotrod Sinners – ‘Wanton Paula Was the Passion-Prize at the End of the Race’ and Hot Rod Rumble – ‘Piston-Hard Drama! A Scorching Story of the Slick Chicks Who Fire Up the Big Wheels!’
With no exclamation marks spared, there was no shortage of Rock ’n’ Roll Love, Backseat Bimbos, Roadside Romeos and Teenage Terrorists tearing up the streets. The plots were generally
BELOW Rod for rent? Even local ‘delinquents’ could make good money back in the golden era of hot rod movies.
film that was loaded with Hollywood’s idea of ‘hip’ language, with words such as ‘dig’, ‘squares’, ‘dolls’ and ‘cats’. I am reminded of Dustin Hoffman’s The Graduate, a movie about young people, made by old people who knew little about American youth.
simple: a story, a conflict, a showdown, the good guy wins, the bad guy loses (and sometimes dies in the process), and the good guy gets the girl.
The line used in many posters of the time was about introducing new young stars – including actors and singers who went on to bigger things. Actresses Connie Stevens and Fay Wray, singers Gene Vincent and Jimmy Lydon, and Mamie Van Doren, too. The last of these is a ‘blonde bombshell’ actress, singer and model; still with us at the age of 94, in period she was one of the ‘Three M’s’ along with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.
Perhaps better known is Jack Nicholson, who starred in The Wild Ride as Johnny Varron, a hot rod hooligan who gets his kicks on Route 66 by running motorcycle cops off the road. Nicholson also has it in for his one-time buddy, Dave (Robert Bean); he ‘objects’ when his friend decides to go straight and work with the cops. Nicholson, who had earlier made his movie debut playing another young hood in The Cry Baby Killer (1958),
summed up the quality of The Wild Ride in a 1974 interview: “The people who never saw my [early] movies are better off than I am, man…”
Part of the theory behind these movies was to get hot rod racers off the streets and onto proper quartermile dragstrips, with the help of both local city officials and police forces. There were films where the ‘good cop’ tried to work with the ‘delinquent’ racers: “One pest you can’t control,” quoted from Hot-Rod Girl (1956).
The low-budget 1950 film Hot Rod saw Jimmy Lydon as David Langham, the hot-rodding son of a local judge. In what was to become a standard hot rod film plot, Lydon is implicated in a hit-and-run fatality, which places his father in a difficult position. But all comes out well when gearhead Lydon captures the real killer during a car chase, thanks to his superior driving skills. Due to his responsible behaviour, the townspeople reward the local hot rodders with a public dragstrip… as far out of town as possible.
Six years later came Hot-Rod Girl, a
This was a period in which any young people with properly running hot rods could earn good money by offering their cars for use in movies. A contemporary advertisement in Car Craft magazine read: “Wanted – cars for motion picture and television work. Need good-looking RODS and CUSTOMS. Call Hollywood 2-3621. Make your car a MOVIE STAR.” And the car really was the star; just as in cowboy movies, the girls came second. In 1967, MGM’s Hot Rods to Hell was released in California. Unusually it had a professional storyline, taken from a published short story by Alex Gaby that first appeared in the January 1956 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, entitled ‘52 Miles to Terror’. Two punks, driving a hopped-up Corvette, set out to terrorise a family of four who are taking a trip through the California desert. The father of the family becomes riled by the antics of the young hoods and sets a trap for them. This results in a crash that wrecks the Corvette (sounds a little like the plot of Duel). In a bit of soft-headedness, the father lets the punks off on the condition that they behave themselves and quit bothering him and his family – particularly his teenage daughter. This might be considered the end of the hot rod movie era, because they were soon replaced by titles such as The Wild Angels, The Hard Ride and The Wild Rebels, featuring stories about much more sinister motorcycle gangs. The hell-raising behaviour seen in these films was modelled on, and continued to influence, the notorious real-life Hells Angels: a true case of art imitating life and life imitating art. Peter is a past chief designer for Lotus, McLaren, MG-Rover, Mahindra and more. He’s now a consultant designer.
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The Interview
Elliot
Moss
The renowned chef, and Sir Stirling’s son, on organising a befitting – if “surreal” – funeral for Moss Sr and not living in his father’s slipstream
What was it like growing up as Sir Stirling Moss’s son?
Some kids go to work with their dad on a plumbing job, but that wasn’t my upbringing. It wasn’t just racing – it was a whole identity. We’d go to events, I had to be suited and booted, sit up straight and mind my P’s and Q’s. It was brilliant in some ways, but incredibly strict.
Did you ever consider following in your father’s footsteps into racing? I did. Dad once asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I said: “I want to be a racing driver; a racing driver gets to meet lots of crumpet.” I thought he’d love that. But dad just looked at me and said: “At no point did you mention loving cars or driving – don’t you think that might be important?”
Was that the moment you realised you were on a different path?
It definitely planted the seed, but I think the moment came later. When I was 14 dad said something that really stuck: “I’ve watched Damon Hill come up – and I think he’s a better driver than Graham ever was. But no one will ever say that.” And that was the point – you don’t have to be as good as your father, or even a bit better. You have to be a lot better to escape the shadow. That’s when I thought I should maybe go find something else.
And you found that in the kitchen. What appealed to you about cooking? I wanted to build something for myself – not live in my father’s slipstream. It took a while, but I realised I needed something that was mine; cooking gave me that. It’s creative, intense and totally separate from my dad’s world. At least I know I had his number on that. He was not my father in the kitchen.
Has carving your own path affected your relationship with his legacy? Yes, I like it more now. It became easier when I got older and no one asked if I thought I might be a racing driver.
Being the one to organise Stirling’s funeral at Westminster Abbey must have been incredibly emotional. It was. It was also hugely humbling and incredibly stressful. Just walking through the Abbey, with people taking photos and looking up at 1000 years of history. It hits you. I felt sick – and I hadn’t even done anything yet.
We had several of dad’s cars outside. We wanted 722 inside the Abbey, but that was one of a few things we weren’t allowed. I’d also wanted the ‘ushers’ to wear hats that said: “Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?”
I also suggested that the organist play Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life. Frank dedicated that song to my dad; it was his way of recognising someone who should have been World Champion several times, but wasn’t, and still kept going. Frank really admired that.
I received a beautiful letter from His Majesty the King, apologising for not being able to attend, and explaining why. That meant a lot.
What was it like being at the service?
More people attended dad’s funeral than Nelson Mandela’s. The Duke of Kent represented His Majesty. Prince Michael of Kent was there, too, and Sir Jackie Stewart represented the Princess Royal. It was all a bit surreal and it felt quite spiritual – even though that’s not entirely my thing.
For my speech I read part of a letter dad wrote to me before he died. He told me about it years before. I said: “That’s pretty morbid – let’s have a
Elliot at the 2025 Mille Miglia, 70 years since his father’s win with Mercedes.
look at it now,” And he said: “Oh no, dear boy, this is for after I’m gone.” I thought the part of the letter that I read was quite inspirational and would resonate with anyone. It was a fantastic experience – but I’m glad that I’ll never, ever have to do it again.
Have you ever read the detailed diaries your father famously kept? I have. What struck me the most was just how much he packed into every day. He’d be up early and would go to bed ridiculously late. He’d say: “When I go to bed I want to be tired, because if I’m tired, I won’t be thinking.” That was his way of coping during such a brutal time in racing. People you were with one week might not be there the
next. His first wife, Katie, said that was one of the things she couldn’t deal with. Losing friends so frequently. Going out with other drivers and their wives, then having to comfort the widow a week later. She just couldn’t put it in a box the way my dad could.
What do you think your father made of the risks he took?
In the ’60s Ken Purdy wrote All But My Life about my dad’s life. Dad had once said: “I took a lot from racing, but I gave a lot back, too. I honestly feel as though I gave it all but my life.” I think that goes some way to explaining it.
It’s astonishing that dad made it through. He had nine wheels come off cars – that gives you an idea of the risk they were living with. Tony Brooks retired for that reason; he felt you could only push your luck for so long.
How do you think your father should be remembered?
As someone who transcended racing and kept going. Surrounded by all those people at the Abbey, I remember thinking: “Wow, you made a hell of an impact on the world. Good for you.”
