Octane 272 February 2026

EXCLUSIVE! F1 STAR JOHNNY HERBERT TRACK-TESTS A LOLA T70

25

CARS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

The history-shapers, from 1886 Benz to McLaren F1

HUGE SHELBY CELEBRATION

Iconic Cobra and Daytona, plus much more

ESCORT RS1600i AND RS TURBO

Forgotten fast Ford legends tested

MAGNIFICENT MICROCARS

272

Driving the best and meeting the owners

FEB 2026

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Issue 272 February 2026

PAGE

Contents 68

‘TO ACCOMPLISH THIS SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE TASK, SHELBY UTILISED TWO STRIKINGLY DIFFERENT CARS COMPETING IN THE SAME CLASS’ SHELBY COBRA AND DAYTONA

82

76

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Contents Issue 272

110

Features THE GAME-CHANGERS 54

94

120

It’s 140 years since the first motor car was built. Here are the 25 that changed the world

SHELBY COBRA AND DAYTONA 68 How these two special cars made the difference in the Cobra/Ferrari War

SHELBY MUSEUM 76 Inside the Shelby American Collection

AARON SHELBY 82 The Octane Interview finds out what life has been like as Carroll Shelby’s grandson

ZAGATO ALFA ROMEO 8C 86 Privileged access to the unique DoppiaCoda that stunned all at Villa d’Este

MICROCAR RALLY MADNESS! 94 Octane’s most compact contributor takes part in the world’s smallest car

54

JOHNNY AND LOLA 102 F1 veteran Johnny Herbert track-tests the most storied Lola T70 of all

GHIA CADILLAC 110 Stephen Bayley and Turin’s take on Detroit

HOT FORD ESCORTS 120

128

102

Driving the RS1600i and RS Turbo homologation specials

BY LANCIA TO ITALY 128 An emotive drive from the UK to the home of Vincenzo Lancia in a 1927 Lambda 7

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Contents Issue 272

138

Regulars EVENTS & NEWS 18 The month’s best events; top dates for your diary; fresh take on Lotus Esprit and Shelby comes to UK – in right-hand drive

COLUMNS 43 Leno, Bell, Bayley and Coucher: Octane’s wise men give word to the many

LETTERS 51 The smart that nearly wasn’t

OCTANE CARS 138 A culinary trip to France in a BMW Z4

OVERDRIVE 144 Taking part in the DTO ProDriver Trackday

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN 146 Tuner, racer and engineer Chris Lawrence

146

18

GEARBOX 148 Favourite things of Cosworth MD Bruce Wood

ICON 150 Why Hip-Hop fans love the Kangol beret

CHRONO 152 Apple Watch or Breguet’s Souscription?

BOOKS 154 Superb new volume on Ford’s legendary GT40

GEAR 156 In case you have spare cash after Christmas

156

THE MARKET 158 Insider tips, auction news, facts and figures, cars for sale, Toyota Tercel 4WD buying guide

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 194 Williams Racing Team Principal James Vowles

148 152

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RM 17-02 Skeletonised manual winding tourbillon calibre 70-hour power reserve (± 10%) Baseplate and bridges in grade 5 titanium Power-reserve and function indicators Case in TZP black ceramic and 5N red gold Torque-limiting crown

A Racing Machine On The Wrist

Issue 272 February 2026

WELCOME

FEATURING…

FROM THE EDITOR

McMURTRY AUTOMOTIVE

EVAN KLEIN ‘To work with people like Aaron Shelby and with the Shelby Cobra and Daytona is why I love cars. It’s more than just photography, you feel like you’re part of something bigger, keeping history alive.

Sometimes you wish the cars could talk.’

Our Shelby celebration triple-feature package begins on page 68.

Celebrating innovation ADMITTEDLY A 140TH ANNIVERSARY doesn’t look quite so good on a set of party balloons as a nice round century or 150, but that doesn’t mean it is any less significant an event. And, ladies and gentlemen, as we skate serenely into 2026 it should be noted that it marks the 140th anniversary of the motor car. It was in January 1886 that Karl Benz patented his Motorwagen, widely accepted to be the first practical James Elliott, motor car. It certainly proved to be so a couple of years later, Editor in chief when Karl’s indomitable wife Bertha decided to show just how reliable and practical the motor car was by undertaking a 100km trek from Mannheim to Pforzheim with her teenage sons in August 1888, handily just at the same point as the car became commercially available. I say ‘car’; it was really a small cart, a buggy in the proper sense of the word, with three wheels, tiller steering and a rear-mounted 1.0-litre single-cylinder engine good for a heady 7mph (ish). The brakes are best not talked about.

While140 years may be only half the time since the industrial revolution kicked off, the evolution and development of the motor car, both in its speed and intensity, has been absolutely astonishing. And the best thing is that you can clearly see in the car’s timeline most of the big step-changes in its sophistication, even though the tech is often blurred across several years and manufacturers. Huge fuel-injected W-format engines, ceramic disc brakes and monocoques couldn’t have been dreamed of in 1886, but then neither could a roof and windscreen wipers, or seatbelts and airbags.

You would have thought we had pretty much achieved peak car by now, but the beauty of them, and why they have always entranced me, is that we never quite reach the summit. Even allowing for the EV revolution, petrol and diesel cars still canter into new territory, though nothing has taken my breath away in recent years as much as seeing Max Chilton attack the Goodwood hill in the McMurtry Spéirling. I am slackjawed even now when I remember it.

As if to illustrate my point, we were halfway through readying our list of the most important cars of the past 140 years for print when its author John Mayhead phoned to say that he had just seen the launch of the Longbow Speedster and it had to be included in the future game-changers. Progress, as relentless as it is captivating.

BEN BARRY ‘The homologation specials of 1980s rallying and Touring Car racing are woven into my childhood memories like BMXs, skateboards and mismatched luminous socks. So it was a real nostalgia trip finally to get behind the wheel of both the RS1600i and RS Turbo.’

Hot Ford Escorts: turn to pages 120-126.

JOHN SIMISTER ‘Even an original Mini is huge compared with the multiple microscopic transport modules I met at the National Microcar Rally. I had long wanted to try a mad Messerschmitt or a two-faced Zündapp Janus. Mission accomplished, in a boiling tub of innovation.’

Lots of small wonders on pages 94-100.

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY, THANKS TO: EVAN KLEIN, MATT HOWELL, SAM CHICK, BARRY HAYDEN, RM SOTHEBY’S

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Issue 272 February 2026

NEXT MONTH

EDITORIAL Editor-in-chief James Elliott james@octane-magazine.com

ISSUE 273, ON SALE 28 January

Associate editor Glen Waddington glen@octane-magazine.com Art editor Robert Hefferon roberth@octane-magazine.com Markets editor Matthew Hayward matthew@octane-magazine.com Founding editor Robert Coucher Contributing editor Mark Dixon Italian correspondent Massimo Delbò Design assistance Ruth Haddock Contributor Chris Bietzk

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Lamborghini Miura at 60 The inside story on what it takes to restore one – and what it took to create it originally

Plus The Portuguese Alleggerita Octane drives the world’s most original Alfa GTA Nicholas Mee and the Venturi Atlantique How a well-known Aston Martin specialist became a French supercar importer

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© Kevin Van Campenhout

1992 Ferrari F92A Formula 1 #136 Competed in 5 Grand Prix in 1992 with Jean Alesi 4th in the Australian Grand Prix, 5th in the German Grand Prix Given to Jean Alesi by Scuderia at the end of the 1992 season, displayed in his villa ever since Untouched, complete with its original mechanical and electronic components

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Issue 272 February 2026

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The Month in Pictures

Ignition E V EN T S + NE WS + OPINION

International Historic Motoring Awards 14 November With 400 people including guests who ranged from model David Gandy to Aston Martin design guru Marek Reichman, the International Historic Motoring Awards at The Peninsula London were the best since their inception in 2011. Hosted by Amanda Stretton, the awards followed a superb dinner and preceded the visibly moved guest of honour, design legend Giorgetto Giugiaro, receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award (far right, at bottom).

Car of the Year contenders included Blue Bird and BRM ‘Old Faithful’, plus the winning Ford Escort Alan Mann 68 Edition by Boreham Motorworks.

Gun Hill Studios

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Ignition The Month in Pictures

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP

Rally of the Tests 6-9 November

Reliability reputations were turned on their head when an all-Lotus podium cleaned up on this gruelling event covering 720 miles, 30 tests and 22 regularities over 3½ days. They were led by John King and Matthew Vokes’ Elan +2 from the Cortinas of Paul Dyas and Martyn Taylor and Kurt Vanderspinnen and Bjorn Vanoverschelde.

Will Broadhead

5 Nations Rallycross Championship 8-9 November

2025 SuperRetro class champion Charlie French gets his Ford Escort Mk2 airborne at Lydden.

Eric Sawyer

VSCC Lakeland Trial 8 November

Andy Johnson’s 1924 Bugatti Type 13 Brescia tackles the Drumhouse hill section at the Honister slate mine on one of the most popular trials of the year.

Steve Shelley

Epoqu’Auto

7-9 November This was the 46th running of the impressive event in France’s second city, Lyon. Largely run by 300 volunteers and with 11 special displays, including 70 Years of DS and French Microcars, it attracted 900 exhibitors and 110,000 visitors.

Richard Dredge

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Ignition The Month in Pictures

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP

Roger Albert Clark Rally

20-24 November The Saab 96 Sport of Stephen Higgins and Peter Johnson at night during this biennial five-day event, which was dominated by Ford Escorts with Osian Pryce / Dale Furniss winning.

Ian Skelton

InterClassics

14-16 November This 2009 BMW Sauber F1-09 was part of a huge F1 display to mark the formula’s 75th anniversary, which included other Saubers, the Jaguar R2 and even the short-lived 1992 Fondmetal GR02.

Eric Sawyer

VSCC Winter Driving Tests 29 November

Prof David Wallom completing one of the tests in his 1934 Austin Seven at Bicester Heritage, where heavy overnight rain made the going tricky.

Peter McFadyen

Glyn Memorial Rally 5-16 November

A new record was set for Junior 1000 rallying at Anglesey as 36 cars gathered for the event.

Ben Lawrence

Historic GP of Arizona

14-16 November The inaugural historic racing festival held by the Historic Motor Sports Association at the Apex Motor Club in Maricopa was a big success.

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Ignition Events

Dates for your diary 30 January – 1 February Grand National Roadster Show At the Fairplex in Pomona, California, 500 hot rods compete for the title of America’s Most Beautiful Roadster and the famous, nine-foot-tall trophy that goes with it.

rodshows.com

13-15 February Cavallino Classic See special 2026 Concours d’Elegance preview in this issue.

cavallino.com

14 February VSCC Pomeroy Trophy Entries spanning a century of car design compete against one another in this handicap event, which begins with driving tests and ends with a 40-minute blast around Silverstone Circuit.

Route des Andes, 5-14 March | Image: Rallystory

vscc.co.uk

1 January 2026

17 January

29 January – 7 February

Brooklands New Year’s Day Classic Gathering

VSCC Measham Rally

Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique

14 February

The VSCC’s testing overnight navigation rally, run again on the roads of rural Leicestershire.

Significant changes are being made to the Monte-Carlo Historique for 2026: the event will feature some closed-road regularity stages, and it’s now open to cars of a type rallied between 1911 and 1986.

Concours in the Hills

The UK’s biggest New Year’s Day gathering, featuring hundreds of classics, music and good grub.

brooklandsmuseum.com

1 January Vintage Stony Vintage cars and motorcycles take over the Buckinghamshire town of Stony Stratford.

vintagestony.co.uk

11 January Bicester Motion January Scramble

vscc.co.uk

24-30 January The Winter Trial Starting in Salzburg and finishing near Lake Garda this time, and featuring a brand new 2500km route that will take crews south through Austria, into Slovenia and then across the Dolomites.

classicevents.nl

25 January Traversée de Paris Hivernale

acm.mc

30-31 January International Concours of Elegance St Moritz The spectacular ‘ICE’ St Moritz is held on Lake St Moritz, which by the end of January is frozen to a depth of around 60cm.

Classes at the 2026 event will include Legendary Liveries, Birth of the Hypercar, and Barchettas on the Lake.

Hot rods and modern exotics are displayed alongside traditional classics at this relaxed concours in Fountain Hills, Arizona, held in aid of a local children’s hospital.

concoursinthehills.org

14-18 February Rallye Neige et Glace Based in the French village of Malbuisson, this one very much does what it says on the tin, serving up wintry entertainment for crews in pre-1998 cars.

zoulouracingheritage.com

The first Scramble of 2026 will include a display marking the 40th anniversary of the 1986 WRC season – the last to feature the wild Group B cars.

Classic cars, bikes, buses, vans and tractors trundle across Paris in convoy, passing many of the city’s world-famous landmarks.

bicestermotion.com

vincennesenanciennes.com

15-18 January

28 January – 1 February

Interclassics Maastricht

Rétromobile The 50th edition of the Paris show is set to include a special display of the seven BMW Art Cars that have raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, including the M1 painted by Andy Warhol.

4x4 Performance is the theme for the special exhibit at the 2026 Bremen Show: the organisers are bringing together a collection of significant four-wheel-drive road and racing cars, including one of two surviving Type 53 Bugattis.

19-22 February

The central exhibit at this edition of the Dutch show is titled ‘Legends of the Rising Sun’ and features a score of the greatest sports and racing cars to come out of Japan.

interclassics.events

retromobile.com

classicmotorshow.de

retro-classics.de

theicestmoritz.ch

30 January – 1 February Bremen Classic Motor Show

15 February Shelsley Walsh Breakfast Club Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb hosts its first early-morning gettogether of 2026.

shelsleywalsh.com

Retro Classics Stuttgart Some 90,000 petrolheads flock to Stuttgart each year for this show, which welcomes everything from iconic racing cars to scooters.

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20-22 February

28 February – 1 March

Oberoi Concours d’Elegance

Moda Miami

See special 2026 Concours d’Elegance preview in this issue.

See special 2026 Concours d’Elegance preview in this issue.

theoberoiconcours.com

modamiami.com

20-22 February

28 February – 19 March

Race Retro

Royal Rajasthan

At Stoneleigh Park the static displays of competition cars will as ever be complemented by thrilling demonstration runs on the Live Rally Stages outside.

20-23 February

A drive around India’s largest state, known for its tiger reserves and for the Thar Desert, over 60% of which lies within Rajasthan.

The tour is timed so that the participants arrive in Jaipur in time for Holi, the famous Hindu ‘festival of colours’.

1000 Miglia Experience Florida

bespokerallies.com

raceretro.com

A regularity rally around southern Florida, beginning on the west coast in Naples, ending on the east coast in Miami, and featuring a stop at Sebring.

1000migliaexperienceflorida.us

21 February VSCC Exmoor Fringe Trial The VSCC’s 2026 slate of trials begins with a trip to the forests and muddy fields of Exmoor.

vscc.co.uk

1 March Haynes Breakfast Club In 2026 the Haynes Motor Museum will again be holding a monthly, themed Breakfast Club meeting. After hatchbacks and V-engined cars take centre stage on 4 January and 1 February, respectively, it’s the turn of French cars in March.

haynesmuseum.org

5-8 March

27 February – 1 March

The Amelia Concours

A Novice Trial

See special 2026 Concours d’Elegance preview in this issue.

Based at Hellidon Lakes Hotel in Northamptonshire, and the ideal introduction to regularities, driving tests and Tulip books.

Training sessions are held on the first two days, and the event concludes with a 90-mile rally.

ameliaconcours.com

5-14 March Route des Andes

See special 2026 Concours d’Elegance preview in this issue.

A 2650km route winds through the extraordinary landscape of Patagonia. Crews will cross the border between Argentina and Chile several times as they take in sights including Mount Fitz Roy, the Perito Moreno glacier and Torres del Paine National Park.

sydneyharbourconcours.com.au

rallystory.com

hero-era.com

27 February – 1 March Sydney Harbour Concours

BOOK NOW! Secure your place; make travel plans Highland Heritage Scotland Tour 9-13 May A splendid way to see the Scottish highlands in the spring.

Take in the best of the Cairngorms and Perthshire, with stops including Balmoral, Scone Palace (above) and Dewars distillery, all centred around the Dunkeld House Hotel on the banks of the River Tay. backwatertours.co.uk

Rallye des Princesses Richard Mille 23-28 May The 25th anniversary of the swish, ladies-only rally inspired by the 1929 Paris-Saint Raphaël Féminin will start at Paris’s Place Vendôme and finish at the equally prestigious Place des Lices in Saint-Tropez, via medieval Troyes, Belle Époque spa town Vichy, plus Aix-les-Bains and Nîmes. peterauto.fr/en/events

Modena Cento Ore 6-11 October A blend of competition and spectacular touring, with entries limited to 100 cars across both the competition (pre-81) and regularity events. The two share the same route, just with varying degrees of intensity! It starts in the Adriatic resort of Riccione and heads for Modena via special stages at Misano, the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, and Mugello. The traditional Medici Gala Evening will take place in Florence on Friday 9 October. modenacentoore.canossa.com

Discover Sicily 11-21 October An all-asphalt event for pre-1986 cars, covering 2000km across southern Italy and Sicily over ten days. The route takes in Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria before a short ferry crossing to Sicily for the next six days. A non-competitive rally with the emphasis on ‘discovering the little-known side of southern Italy’ via the ‘sights, smells, architecture, food and drink of this enchanting island’. rallytheglobe.com/rallies/discover-sicily VSCC Exmoor Fringe Trial, 21 February | Image: VSCC

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Ignition Events

Essential concours for 2026 World-leading events you can’t afford to miss!

Palm Beach Cavallino Classic 13-15 February The Boca Raton, Boca Raton, Florida, USA The 35th edition of the prestigious Ferrari-only concours will be held at The Boca Raton resort on 14 February – but the traditional home of the event, The Breakers, will kick things off a day earlier by hosting a display of Best of Show winners from the past 34 years.

cavallino.com

Oberoi Concours d’Elegance 20-22 February The Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India Back following a successful debut in 2024, when the Concours was named Breakthrough Event of the Year at the International Historic Motoring Awards. World-class European and American classics will dot the grounds of the Oberoi Udaivilas hotel, but visitors will also see an array of fascinating cars built and/or bodied in India.

theoberoiconcours.com

Sydney Harbour Concours d’Elegance

ModaMiami

The Amelia Concours

27 February – 1 March The Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables, Florida, USA

5-8 March The Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island, Amelia Island, Florida, USA

Hand-picked classic, vintage, Edwardian and veteran cars fight it out for Best of Show honours on Cockatoo Island– a UNESCO World Heritage Site close to the Sydney Harbour Bridge – before visitors enjoy a display of modern supercars and take a peek at the automotive tech of tomorrow.

The headline attraction at the third edition of ModaMiami is a celebration of the Lamborghini Miura (which, of course, turns 60 in 2026), but there will be plenty to see besides: the field will again boast over 400 cars, and there are classes for everything from Cadillac’s Art Deco Machines to Cult Classics & Curiosities.

A new schedule for 2026 will see the prestigious main concours supported by events including RADwood (dedicated to the cars and pop culture of the 1980s and ’90s), Cars & Community (a gathering of some 400 cars from across the USA), and Legends of Speed (a dinner and audience with racer Dario Franchitti).

sydneyharbourconcours.com.au

modamiami.com

ameliaconcours.com

27 February – 1 March Cockatoo Island, New South Wales, Australia

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Ignition Events

Anantara Concorso Roma 16-19 April Anantara Palazzo Naiadi, Rome, Italy At this much-anticipated new event, 70 of the rarest Italian cars will be displayed in the gardens of Casina Valadier and Piazza Bucarest in the heart of Rome.

anantaraconcorsoroma.com

Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este

Concours on Savile Row

15-17 May Villa d’Este, Cernobbio, Italy

20-21 May Savile Row, London, UK

An invitation-only event, as usual, but on the Sunday the cars move from Villa d’Este to the similarly glamorous Villa Erba, where the public is invited to ogle them.

Savile Row, home to many of the world’s finest tailors, is closed to traffic as dozens of stylish cars go on show for the enjoyment of all; the event remains free to attend.

concorsodeleganzavilladeste.com

concoursonsavilerow.com

Lugano Elegance

Wilton Concours des Légendes

21-23 May Piazza Riforma, Lugano, Italy

19-21 June Wilton House, Salisbury, UK

In May, the centre of Lugano will again welcome 40 first-rate classics and supercars to contest a concours d’elegance. Look out this time around for a special class exclusively for the creations of Ilario Bandini.

An innovative new concours d’elegance at which expert speakers – motorsport personalities, car designers, engineers and more – will be on hand to bring to life the stories of the cars on display. concoursdeslegendes.com

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Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance 16 August Pebble Beach Golf Links, Monterey, California, USA

Back for its ninth edition, remarkable classics and supercars line the magnificent grass terraces at Heveningham Hall, where the four-wheeled attractions are joined by beautiful vintage aircraft.

The 2026 edition of the world’s most famous concours will be the 75th, and the organisers plan to celebrate the history of the event by including a class for Pebble Beach Road Racing Greats; the very first Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was held in conjunction with the Pebble Beach Road Race of November 1950. Other special classes will include one for Le Mans-winning Ferraris and another for early streamliners.

heveninghamconcours.com

pebblebeachconcours.net

Heveningham Concours 27-28 June Heveningham Hall, Suffolk, UK

Salon Privé 2-6 September Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK

A new, two-day driving tour in the Yorkshire Dales will precede the 2026 Yorkshire Elegance, while the concours itself is set to feature entries spanning fully 140 years of motoring history.

The 2025 edition of Salon Privé was some show and claimed the Motoring Spectacle prize at the Royal Automobile Club’s recent awards evening – but Salon Privé’s organisers promise that the concours field for the 2026 event will be the most impressive yet. In addition to the traditional classes, it will feature, we are pleased to report, one especially for the wonderfully idiosyncratic cars of Bristol, in celebration of the marque’s 80th anniversary.

yorkshireelegance.com

salonpriveconcours.com

Yorkshire Elegance 13-16 July Grantley Hall, Ripon, UK

Concours of Elegance 4-6 September Hampton Court Palace, London, UK

As usual, The Quail will serve up a smorgasbord of superb classics, plus brand new models from the world’s finest carmakers.

Sixty jaw-dropping cars gather at Hampton Court to contest the main concours, which will again be supported by a trio of events intended to encourage women and youngsters to get involved in the motoring community. The Levitt Concours is exclusively for cars owned by women, while Thirty Under 30 is open to pre2000 cars owned by those still in their teens and 20s, and the Junior Concours is for kids and their handbuilt half-scale cars.

peninsula.com

concoursofelegance.co.uk

The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering 14 August The Quail Golf Club, Carmel, California, USA

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Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille 13 September Château de Chantilly, Chantilly, France Chantilly Arts & Elegance, held only once every two years, is set to return in 2026 with more than 1000 fabulous cars. As is traditional there, the concours d’elegance will see modern concept cars strut their stuff in the company of models wearing the latest haute couture, while exceptional classic cars – over 100 of them – will take part in the concours d’état.

chantillyartsetelegance.com

ICONS Mallorca 23-26 September Arabella Sheraton Golf Son Vida, Son Vida, Mallorca The programme of events for ICONS Mallorca again includes a public day in pretty Port d’Andratx, where the concours winners will be awarded their prizes in front of the crowd – but the judging will take place earlier, at Golf Son Vida.

The judges for 2026, led by former Pininfarina and Fiat Group design chief Lorenzo Ramaciotti, will have their work cut out to choose between terrific entries in classes devoted to, among other things, Pegasos and Hispano-Suizas.

Concorso d’Eleganza Varignana 1705 25-27 September Palazzo di Varignana, Castel San Pietro, Italy The Palazzo di Varignana in Italy’s Motor Valley hosts a concours featuring a carefully curated field of around 40 significant cars.

iconsmallorca.com

varignana1705.com

Concurso de Elegancia Costa del Sol

Audrain Newport Concours & Motor Week

Concours at Wynn Las Vegas

Royal Bahrain Concours

TBC October Andalusia, Spain

1-4 October

29 October – 1 November

Breakers Mansion, Newport, Rhode Island, USA Named Motoring Event of the Year at the 2025 International Historic Motoring Awards, and returning in 2026 with another full slate of car meets, seminars and tours in the days preceding the concours.

Wynn Golf Club, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA Now a fixture on the calendar of petrolheads, and increasingly an event chosen by carmakers to show off new models. McLaren’s Project: Endurance made its bow here in 2025, for example.

Royal Golf Club, Al Mazrowiah, Bahrain ‘The Arabian Peninsula’s first world-class concours’ lived up to its billing in 2025, attracting rarities including an Invicta S-Type Low Chassis and the one-off Lincoln Indianapolis. Expect to see cars of a similar calibre there in 2026.

audrainconcours.com

lasvegasconcours.com

royalconcours.com

Plans are still being finalised for the 2026 edition of this concours, but past form tells us that visitors will encounter a mind-boggling assortment of rare supercars and some iconic classics, too.

concursoeleganciacostadelsol. com

6-7 November

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La dolce vita delle automobili

YOUR INVITATION TO THE ANANTARA CONCORSO ROMA A gathering of the rarest and most significant historic automobili italiane in the heart of historical Rome.

Join us for a vibrant three-day celebration of the very best in Roman hospitality, Italian cuisine and luxury style.

Visit the website to enter a car into the Concorso, for exclusive VIP guest packages and for entry tickets. anantaraconcorsoroma.com

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Sports cars tame the wild in Africa’s latest driving adventure!

FROM THE creators of the well-regarded Cape 1000, the Safari 500 unleashes an adventurous driving safari and regularity challenge in one of the most beautiful regions in Southern Africa. This inaugural rally starts on Wednesday 29 July 2026 and runs through to Sunday 2 August, covering some 500 miles on exciting and challenging Tarmac roads.

The Safari 500 is an exhilarating new chapter in the grand touring world: a limitedentry rally across South Africa’s breathtaking bushveld landscape blending the core elements of regularity rallying with worldclass touring through the African bushscape.

The rally features structured regularity stages to test precision and skill, alongside grand touring routes that allow participants to appreciate the exotic African environment.

Most importantly, this adventurous route focuses on the dramatic panorama and abundant wildlife of the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, renowned for their proximity to the iconic Kruger National Park.

Safari 500 organiser Ross Crichton says: ‘I’ve been arranging rallies and tours in Africa for decades, so this is my backyard. On the Safari 500 we will ensure optimal driving enjoyment and safety for all entrants in their treasured classic cars and, as such, all the beautiful roads we use are tarred and in good

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condition. Our provisional route includes driving stages through the scenic Magoebaskloof area, which offers stunning views as it descends about 600m from the dry highveld to the lush, sub-tropical lowveld.

This will be an unforgettable adventure.’

The distinctive nature of the Safari 500 lies in the seamless integration of a luxury safari experience with high-quality motoring. The itinerary incorporates dedicated game drive activities, including planned opportunities to experience The Big Five within the Kruger National Park using open game vehicles.

Participants will enjoy incredible access to the game-abundant reaches of the southern Kruger Park.

Maintaining the rich tradition of the Cape 1000, the Safari 500 celebrates automotive and engineering excellence by welcoming vehicles in four distinct classes: Classic (pre-1976); Modern Classic (1977-1996); Sports (1997 to present) and Special (Restomod/Recreation).

The first-rate accommodation throughout the Safari 500 enhances the thematic experience, featuring high-quality four-star hotels carefully selected for their character and service. These include the majestic Protea Hotel Ranch Resort in Polokwane, which is set on 1000 hectares of pristine

bushveld and includes a lion sanctuary; the Radisson Safari Hotel Hoedspruit, offering spectacular views of the Drakensberg Mountains; and the Kruger Gate Hotel, situated less than a minute’s drive from the Paul Kruger Gate.

The Safari 500 is created with communal dinners and exclusive accommodation to foster the camaraderie among like-minded car enthusiasts, inspiring the soul and creating lifelong memories and friendships.

And the event is a relaxed affair, with leisurely start times and routes that allow ample time to explore the incredible scenery and enjoy the wildlife that South Africa has to offer.

For international guests the organisers can offer access to a number of approved rental classic cars (sports cars are not generally available to rent in South Africa) through www.classiccarrentals.co.za.

Entries are now open for the inaugural Safari 500, scheduled to run from Wednesday 29 July to Sunday 2 August 2026, and enthusiasts are urged to secure their spot on this distinctive and desirable new event. All applications are subject to admissions committee approval.

Register your application on the official website. www.safari500.com

11/12/2025 13:36

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Ignition News

Winter is the new spring for launches Avoiding ‘new car season’ has become the norm for a wealth of restomods and other niche vehicles IT SEEMS TO have become a tradition that a flurry of new restomods and hypercars is launched just before Christmas and the New Year, and 2025 has been no exception.

Leading the charge in terms of impact and debate has been the Encor S1, a limited run of 50 remastered versions of the Lotus Esprit S1, a half-century after the original’s Paris launch and with a projected cost upwards of £430,000. The basis is an S4 V8 Esprit reclothed in a carbonfibre

body that mimics the Giugiaropenned S1 – an S1 was scanned before CAD was used to create the new shape – so while it still employs a backbone chassis, it is the later, evolved version.

The Encor has been designed

by Daniel Durrant, former lead designer at Lotus for the Emira, who says: ‘The S1 Esprit was forward-thinking, pure and utterly uncompromised. To touch a shape like this is a huge responsibility. Every line we’ve refined, every decision we’ve

made, is about honouring the original’s intent while letting the car perform, feel and function in the way its silhouette promised.’

The Encor retains the S4’s powerplant in place of the Lotus’s original 2.0-litre slant-four.

However, the Type 918 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged flatplane V8 has an additional 50bhp (400 in all) and torque of 350lb ft, thanks to uprated pistons, turbochargers and injectors. The transmission, though based on the original five-speed, has been tweaked by Quaife to handle performance of 4.0sec for 0-60mph and a top speed nudging 175mph.

‘This car is analogue at heart,’ says Simon Lane, Encor co-founder and another former Lotus man. ‘We wanted to avoid the modern tendency toward gadgetry, therefore the technology exists to enhance the experience, not to dominate it.’

This is reflected in the interior, which is thoroughly modernised though unmistakably reminiscent of the 1975 Lotus, right down to the tartan seats.

Also, and appropriately given this issue’s content, Shelby has made official landfall in the UK for the first time with the launch of Shelby UK, which will be selling right-hand-drive cars from early in 2026. The Edinburgh launch was attended

by Aaron Shelby (see page 82) and Tracey Smith of Shelby American and introduced RHD versions of the 480-810bhp Shelby GT350 and 830bhp 5.0-litre V8 Super Snake, as well as showcasing the Shelby Raptor and Shelby Super Snake truck.

The new company has been set up by CSL Shelby, which makes kits for Mustangs, and will carry out the RHD conversions in Edinburgh, with sales and

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REVIVED DB5 DRIVES MEDIA STORM

distribution of roughly 30 converted cars a year to be handled by Clive Sutton.

If restomod Shelbys are more your thing, Classic Recreations, known for its officially licensed Shelby continuation cars and custom Mustangs, has been taken over by Velocity, which has renewed its license with Shelby and will now focus on 1967-68 steel-bodied GT500, the carbonfibre 1967-68 GT500CR, 1969 Boss 429, 1969 Hitman and Shelby Cobra.

Elsewhere, JAS has unveiled its first supercar at Fuji Raceway, the Pininfarina-styled Tensai, which means ‘rebirth’ in Japanese. With a carbonfibre body, it is described as ‘an ultra-modern supercar reinterperation based on the DNA of the first-generation Honda NSX and remaining true to the characteristics that made it an icon.’ Say no more.

And the team behind the Mercedes W201-based, 190E 2.5-16 Evo II-inspired HWA EVO supersaloon have put in 6523 miles of testing at the Nürburgring (504 laps) with three prototypes and drivers Sebastian Asch, Luca Ludwig, Markus Winkelhock and Reinhold Renger. The 100-off build is due to start soon.

The seemingly uneven 4x4 war dug some new trenches with Ineos officially launching a safari-spec nine-seater Grenadier called the Game Viewer, which was previewed as a concept at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, with conversions being done in Botswana by Ineos Kavango.

Meanwhile, Classic Land Rover says its Defender V8s can now be specced in the OCTA colours of Petra Copper, Faroe Green, Sargasso Blue, Narvik Black and OCTA Black.

A freshly restored 1965 Aston Martin DB5 that had languished on a North Wales driveway for decades became a media sensation when it was revealed at the start of the month. The car, amazingly not stolen given its value and how exposed it had been, had become a local landmark in Mold, Flintshire, where kids had been known to play on it. So when the result of a 2500-hour, £400,000 restoration was unveiled, and the back story behind it unfolded, it went viral globally and featured extensively on television, including the BBC news.

The history was a big part of the appeal of the story because, in spite of the cost of the restoration and the value of the car (both new and now), the owner for the past 50 years has been welder (and later garage owner) John Williams. He bought his childhood dream car from London when he was just 19 for £900 (a lot of money at the time – equivalent to about £15,000 today), after scrimping and saving for years.

The Vantage-spec Aston was then John’s daily driver for four years but it fell out of use when he started working in the Middle East in 1977. Naturally, the Aston deteriorated and remained unused and exposed to the elements as the scale of the project grew. Most extraordinary, especially given the growth of the classic car market, was the fact that it lived outside alongside his caravan all that time, clearly visible and regularly photographed. John and wife Sue received offers for it from door-knockers and via notes pushed through the letterbox or left on the car, but rejected them all, with Sue persuading John not to sell it. ‘You’ll never get another one,’ she advised.

He bit the bullet in 2022 and sent his then blue, but originally Silver Birch DB5 to Aston Martin Works at Newport Pagnell for a bare-metal restoration. Said John: ‘As time went on it had become a goal of mine to get her restored; to be able to drive her again. Being a garage man, I was a bit ashamed that I’d let her get into that state. I worked hard to buy her, and we’ve worked hard to get her repaired.’

The three-year restoration has met with gushing approval from its long-term owner. He added: ‘It’s been worth every penny. It’s just amazing. It’s almost 50 years since I have driven this car, but the experience is phenomenal. It’s just… unbelievable. My girl’s back and up and running! Back to her former glory.’

Clockwise, from top Encor looks like a sharpened S1 Esprit but is much newer beneath; Classic Recreations has renewed its Shelby deal; Shelby has launched in UK with right-hand drive; JAS Tensai; HWA EVO testing at Nürburgring.

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Ignition News

Time for UK cars to shine Drive it Day, the UK’s annual occasion for all classic car owners to get out en masse and raise awareness of the hobby, celebrates its 21st anniversary on 26 April 2026. The event, which started in 2005, honours the One Thousand Mile Trial that took place in April 1900 and originally involved an 11-day round-Britain tour to demonstrate the viability of the motor car.

Concours charity bonanza THE PEBBLE BEACH Concours d’Elegance raised a record $4million for charity in 2025, with many of the donations already distributed to the event’s primary charities at a celebratory lunch held recently at The Lodge at Pebble Beach. Since 1950, the Concours has raised more than $45million for charity, and organisers hope to smash through the $50million barrier by the 75th Pebble Beach Concours in August 2026, though that will require a record single-year effort.

Concours chairman Sandra Button said: ‘The Pebble Beach Concours was founded by enthusiasts who wanted to gather together to celebrate cars, and that’s still the focus of the event on Concours Sunday. But from the start, the event has also had another purpose – that of raising donations for worthy charitable efforts. We are fortunate that celebrating something we love can also serve to benefit many people.’

The acceleration in the fund-raising has been extraordinary. When Button started working with the Concours in 1986, its charity grand total had not yet reached $1million, with cash raised largely via programme and poster sales, but today the fundraising is a huge operation involving entrants, judges, sponsors and volunteers, as well as the concours.

‘Our gratitude goes out to a host of participants and partners,’ said Pebble Beach Company CEO David Stivers. ‘The Concours is truly a community effort; its success and generosity are made possible only through the contributions of everyone who is involved in this event.’

Havana laugh Following a successful debut in August, Los Clásicos de Cuba will return on 28 February. Launched 65 years after a US trade embargo froze Cuban motoring in time, the Plaza de Armas show was Cuba’s first official classic event. See losclasicosdecuba.com.

Hope eternally in spring The 2026 Hope Classic Rally will take place on Friday 15 May. The event, in which participants buy drives in loaned dream cars, has so far raised £2.4million for children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Full details will be at hopeclassicrally.org in the New Year.

MRL expands yet more Motor Racing Legends has added two more formulae to its portfolio with the inclusion of its first event for F1 cars – GP Icons for 3-litre Grand Prix cars from 1966-85 – and Endurance Icons for sports racers and prototypes from 1995-2012. MRL CEO PierreAntoine Lecoutour said: ‘This era produced some of the most incredible endurance racing cars of all time, so it’s hugely exciting to welcome them into the Motor Racing Legends family.’

Dirty deeds in California The Petersen Automotive Museum’s latest big exhibition opened on 7 December. Legends of the Dirt showcases some of the most successful and extraordinary off-road racing vehicles, ranging from the Baja 1000 and King of the Hammers to the World Rally Championship, stadium truck racing and motorcycle hillclimbing. Included will be the 1983 Lancia Rally 037 that earned the World Rally Championship Constructors’ title with drivers Walter Röhrl and Markku Alén.

IMSA to roar at Laguna The 2026 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion will honour the 45th anniversary of the iconic IMSA Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class with a dedicated group on 12-15 August. The grid will bring together the most evocative and technologically groundbreaking prototypes to compete in North America, including Nissan, Porsche, Jaguar, Ford, Toyota, Mazda and BMW.

$13m Mercedes seized The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized a $13m 2002 Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR Roadster linked to Canadian ex-Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding as part of Operation Giant Slalom, an investigation into drug trafficking. Despite 11 suspects now being in custody, Wedding remains at large.

FoS relives great rivalries The 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed will celebrate The Rivals, the most fiercely contested encounters across motorsport.

Highlights will include 60 years since Ford vanquished the might of Ferrari at Le Mans, and 50 years since James Hunt and Niki Lauda vied for the Formula 1 World Championship.

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XAVIER DE NOMBEL

Monaco Forum gets racy The Grimaldi Forum Monaco will hold an exhibition retracing more than 130 years of automotive history in the Principality from 1 July to 6 September 2026. From concours to racing, including legends from the Rallye MonteCarlo and Grand Prix de Monaco, more than 50 vehicles and rare items will be brought together in a 4000m² exhibition space.

Young achiever doubles up Classic car restorer Ethan BlakeJones of the Paddock Speed Shop added to his International Historic Motoring Award by winning the Beaulieu 100 Young Pioneer Award. Round-the-world motorcyclist Elspeth Beard won the Personality of the Year award, presented by Lord Montagu at the Beaulieu 100 dinner.

Better buy design The Type 00, the car on which Jaguar is pinning its future success, has made its public rolling debut in London as part of JLR’s 90th anniversary celebrations. Wearing a brand new colour – London Red – it was paraded through Mayfair alongside an SS Jaguar, the first car to carry the company name some 90 years earlier.

More comebacks than Elvis TVR is coming back, yet again.

The marque is now a subsidiary of Charge Holdings, which promises it will be a ‘low-volume integrated automotive group’. While Charge Holdings focuses on EV technology, it pledges TVR will initially focus on internalcombustion sports cars (and delivering the new Griffith to customers) before expanding into electrified platforms.

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Michael Turner The doyen of motoring and aviation artists, famed for practising what he preached by flying in his Chipmunk to the circuits where he would paint, has died at the age of 91. Having started in advertising, Michael Turner founded Studio 88 to showcase his work, which could be seen everywhere from Christmas cards to racing liveries.

Even if they are not into motoring art, all enthusiasts will recognise his work from the boxes of Airfix model kits. Michael and his beloved Jaguar SS100, which he had owned since 1955, featured in Octane 250.

Bob Fuller We were saddened to hear of the passing of Bob Fuller, co-founder of the Keels & Wheels Concours d’Elegance at Lakewood Yacht Club in Seabrook, Texas. Bob, a Vietnam vet fighter pilot and successful businessman, launched the event with Paul Merryman in 1996 and his memory will play a large part in the 30th anniversary celebrations on 25-26 April.

Andrea de Adamich The Trieste-born Italian F1 driver competed in 34 Grand Prix races.

He made his debut for Ferrari at Kyalami in 1968 but later got himself in Enzo’s bad books, thanks to a hefty shunt in the Race of Championsw. He moved on to McLaren for 1970, followed

by March, Surtees and Brabham.

He never made the podium and was perhaps better-known for running Alfa T33s in endurance racing before becoming a commentator in 1974.

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Ignition Opinion

The Collector

Jay Leno A blast from the past can still teach a few lessons

A

s I get older I find myself getting more and more interested in ‘Unicorns’. These are cars the general public did not gravitate towards because they’re either too expensive or do not fit into any well-established categories like pony car, muscle car or sports car.

A good example of this is the 1969 Mercury Cougar Eliminator I drove a few weeks ago, powered by the 428 Cobra Jet V8. This was Mercury’s answer to the Mustang, a little bigger, a little heavier, more sound-deadening, more luxury features, electric windows, power steering, power brakes and so on.

More expensive, too. If you were an older guy, successful in business, you wanted something with the cojones of a Mustang or Corvette but with the luxury and sophistication of a Cadillac or Lincoln.

I found a car recently that fitted these criteria exactly – a 1967 Pontiac 2+2. Don’t confuse it with the Bonneville, the Grand Prix or the Catalina: until this point the Catalina was called a 2+2. In 1966 and 1967, a high-performance model became just a 2+2 HO, which stands for High Output, although the ‘HO’ does not appear on any of the badging.

The 428 was Pontiac’s biggest and most powerful, with 376bhp and well over 450lb ft of torque. The wheelbase is 121in long, there are front disc brakes and a heavy-duty stabiliser bar. Weight was listed at 3700-4000lb, which seems light considering how enormous this car is, until you notice the complete absence of safety equipment, such as steel door beams, an airbag or impact-absorbing bumpers. If you slammed your head into the dashboard they just hosed it off and sold the car to somebody else.

My favourite options are the simulated wood-grain plastic steering wheel and the hood-mounted tachometer, which was about as cool as it got back in the 1960s. The big front bench was still common in large American cars at the time, but the 2+2 had bucket seats and a four-speed manual gearbox on the floor. Rally-pack gauges rounded out the package.

This HO model was discontinued the following year, the reason being that if you wanted a highperformance Pontiac you bought the smaller GTO. The number of people who wanted a Cadillac-size car with a manual transmission and firmer suspension was limited. That’s what made this one a Unicorn.

Whoever ordered this car new wanted all the performance options. A 390 rear end. Four-speed manual. High-output engine. No heavy airconditioning or even electric windows.

This is a car I was curious about as a young man because I’d never seen one. I saw this one at the Audrain Concours in Newport Beach last fall. It was in the auction and there always seemed to be a crowd around it. Everyone said ‘I’d love to buy it, I just don’t have a garage big enough to put it in.’

My garage is pretty huge so that was not a problem, and I got the car for less than it cost to restore. Its chromed front end (which should be body colour) and twin spotlights on the front A-pillars gave it a Pimp My Ride kind of look. I think that scared people away. The first thing I did was to restore it back to its stock configuration. The paint and bodywork were superb and so was anything else you could see. Yet when I got the car home I noticed that none of my gauges were working, nor were any of the interior lights.

We pulled the dash apart to check what was wrong and I noticed all the wires in the dashboard had been cut. That’s an old shortcut. If you want to save money, fix only the stuff you can see. That was a nightmare to re-do but even had I known that I still would have bought this car.

And it is so much fun to drive. It’s like you’re piloting the great outdoors itself. Most modern convertibles with their T-tops and huge A-pillars make you feel like you’re enclosed in some kind of cage. This thing makes you feel like you’re standing on a rug going 75mph.

I’m doing one restomod change that I hope will not upset the purists… too much, anyway. I’m swapping out the Muncie four-speed for a Tremec Magnum six-speed TKX. This engine has more than enough torque. The gas mileage will go from horrible to merely terrible.

Pontiac was the performance arm of General Motors. That’s why I always thought the Firebird handled better than the Camaro and the GTO handled better than the Chevelle.

Driving this thing is a bit like square dancing with a fat lady. The fact that it does it at all is really pretty amazing.

‘IT IS SO MUCH FUN TO DRIVE, LIKE YOU’RE PILOTING THE GREAT OUTDOORS ITSELF’

Jay was talking with Jeremy Hart.

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THE DEREK BELL TOUR 2026

a week in Provence

Saturday 12th to Thursday 17th September

We have been doing these DB tours since 2021, and they just get better every year.

After touring through Spain, Portugal, Croatia, and Austria, for the 2026 event we are returning to one of my favourite regions, Provence.

There is nowhere quite like rural Provence for tours. We will be keeping clear of the busy Côte d’Azur hotspots, and will instead be meandering through the timeless landscapes to the west, where the roads are quieter and the ambience more authentic. The lineup of hotels is nothing short of spectacular, and with V Events’ seamless organisation, everything is set for another wonderful week. Entry is limited to just 20 cars (classic and modern sports and supercars are welcome).

I hope you can join us.

For further information and to receive a brochure please contact Chris Bucknall. chris@v-management.com 01635 867705 v-events.co.uk

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CO.UK

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FRANCE

Ignition Opinion

The Legend

Derek Bell Horses for courses, but can you change steeds?

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t’s a few days after Thanksgiving as this column is being written. I am a Brit who loves the USA. It has been very good to me over the years, but I must admit that I am still learning about the holidays. This one is all about family, which is something I get. Family means the world to me. I was fortunate enough to spend time this year in Chicago with my wife Misti and my youngest boy, Sebastian. We were joined by my pal Steve Soper and his clan. His daughter lives five minutes away from Sebastian’s apartment, which has a wonderful view of Lake Michigan.

The point is that we had a wonderful time, and then it unravelled as a snow-storm hit. It rather threw our travelling plans out of the window. I am writing this at my home in Florida, although we will shortly be leaving for Blighty. For someone who is supposed to be retired, I seem to spend an awful lot of time at airports. Anyway, dragging myself back to the point, Steve and I were obviously chatting about motor racing, and then a day later I was transfixed by what had been happening in Formula 1 and the World Rally Championship.

The identity of the new F1 title holder will be obvious to all of you by the time you’re reading this, but bear with me. I watched the penultimate round, the Qatar Grand Prix, with a sense of bewilderment and awe. A lot has already been written about how certain teams didn’t optimise their strategies, while others did. And how. I was floored by how Max Verstappen managed to win. He has an innate ability to grasp every opportunity. The Dutchman was clearly not in the best car but he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘quit’.

My Formula 1 career didn’t live up to much.

I know that, but I was a threat in Formula 2. I went up against the best of the best – Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and so on, and didn’t embarrass myself.

The point is, I saw up close the difference between being merely quick and talented and having that extra something. Jochen Rindt had it, that I remember. He is sadly recalled for having been a posthumous F1 champion, but he was the benchmark in F2 before that. You would be matched on times in qualifying and then, out of nowhere, he would find that extra tenth. He would also do the same during a race. He was always up there.

You can learn race-craft, and pace comes with

practice, but the yardstick drivers of all generations are a different breed. On the same day that Max was making everyone else look ordinary in Qatar, Sébastien Ogier was doing the same on Rally Saudi Arabia. The French superstar notionally stepped back from frontline competition a while back, but still managed to win the 2025 WRC drivers’ title despite missing three rounds. It was his ninth championship win. Let that sink in for a minute.

He’s the wrong side of the Big 4-Zero but clearly the desire is still there. He is another motorsport great who manages to conjure magic out of thin air.

Sticking with rallying, I was intrigued to hear that Kalle Rovanperä, who won the WRC in 2023-24 (and who was in the running for the 2025 crown), is switching disciplines. He is going circuit racing in single-seaters in 2026 with a view to graduating to F1. I will be watching his progress with interest because it’s a big leap. I am in awe of the top rally men. I did the RAC Rally a few times and it was way out of my comfort zone. Ultimately, I got the hang of it. Nevertheless, I was but a mere spectator to the top guys who had been rallying for years. They had talent to spare.

I have read quite a few articles over the years that insist it is easier for rally drivers to adjust to circuit racing than for track aces to show well on special stages. I am not 100% convinced of that argument, but then Kimi Räikkönen made the switch to the WRC a decade-and-a-half ago and didn’t win a round. The likes of Vic Elford and Walter Röhrl raced at a high level having excelled off-piste, but that was a long time ago. I suspect that Rovanperä will find it hard going, but I wish him well all the same. I admire him for having the balls to try something new, and doing so in the full glare of publicity.

That’s the thing these days. There is no hiding place for drivers. Their every move, their every utterance is scrutinised and commented on, on medias social or otherwise. On that topic, I find it appalling that Kimi Antonelli received death threats for letting a rival pass him during the Qatar Grand Prix. Competitors in top-flight motorsport may breathe rarefied air, but they are only human. Those judging from the comfort of their sofas should perhaps remember that.

As for me, my next competitive outing is the Pagham Pram Race on Boxing Day. Obviously.

‘THERE IS NO HIDING PLACE FOR DRIVERS. THEIR EVERY MOVE IS SCRUTINISED’

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1971 Lamborghini Miura P400 S Estimate: €1,600,000 - €1,800,000 To be offered at the Global Icons: Europe Online Auction

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Ignition Opinion

The Aesthete

Stephen Bayley What’s in a name? More than you ever realised

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am fascinated both by lost causes and by names. Of the former, my wife and Personal Financial Advisor can supply authoritative, if embarrassing, detail. Of the latter, read on.

There is a town, once a tiny settlement, in Wyoming called Dreadful. It came about when a passing President arrived, looked despondently around, then spoke to the little group of anxious founding settlers and said ‘You must think this place dreadful.’ And they thought, if that’s what the Prez wants to call it, good enough for us. The name I have changed, but the story’s true.

Corsair is a favourite name of mine. A ’59 version of the doomed Ford Edsel, one of the most fascinating cars ever made, was a Corsair. Today the name exists as a badge on a US-market Lincoln SUV, a gussied-up Ford Escape, ideal for the soccer mom to go off-roading between K-Mart and Whole Foods.

But the history of the name is more interesting.

The original corsairs were privateers in the pay of the Sublime Porte. Although famed for drunkenness and whoring, they are not to be confused with mere pirates, who were independently minded sea-going criminals. Corsairs were rather finer: less yo-ho-ho, more la-di-da, licensed by the Ottoman aristocracy to steal or enslave any infidel goods or persons they found sailing in the Med. They were busy and effective and very good at waving scimitars. (Isn’t Scimitar another splendid name? Weirdly, only ever used once on a car, by Reliant of Tamworth.)

Then there was the 1938 Phantom Corsair by baked-bean heir and yacht designer Rust Heinz, so outrageous as to make the donor Cord look as glamorous as a sink plunge. It seated six (uniquely, four in the front, two out back), all on seats of solid rubber, a solution to a question I care not to imagine.

One of the most spectacular aircraft of the Second World War was the F4U, the first operational carrier-based fighter-bomber to exceed 400mph.

Its designation followed American nomenclatural practice of the day: F for fighter, U for Vought (the manufacturer), 4 as it was Vought’s fourth design for its client. It featured distinctive cranked wings that bring to mind the wobbling gait of a peg-legged pirate, and was always known as… Corsair.

But to return to favoured lost causes: the Ford Corsair, a contemporary of The Beatles’ first LP. This choice of mine is personal, as my father had two.

Its design team was led by American Roy (Edsel) Brown, who had just rubbed his hands together and adjusted his dress after the launch of the Cortina, a fine remedy to the Edsel disaster. Indeed, the Corsair was based on its humbler forebear (named for a Dolomites ski resort), retaining that car’s glazing but acquiring a piratical and off-piste character all its own. The pointy nose was unique, perhaps with a reflection of Thunderbird. The rear lights were rocket-like and vertical, a treatment that suggest fins that had, for psychological reasons known only to the designer of the Edsel, been suppressed. The interior was smarter than a Cortina’s: more BBC2 than ITV, to use a period comparator.

More effort had been put into the style than the structure. So torsionally compromised was the Corsair that I have been told the windscreen would pop out if one wheel was jacked-up. Yet as a child I was careless of such things as we motored along the Kingston Bypass. Our Corsair had the 2.0-litre V4 designed for the Transit van and it was a notably uncouth engine; a pirate, not a corsair. But it could propel us to 110mph between New Malden and Thames Ditton, punchy for its day.

At such dizzying speed, we would pass Tolworth Tower, a dramatically elegant, glassy, splayed and tapered 22-storey monolith designed by Richard Seiffert. Tolworth was my introduction to the skyscraper and I found it thrilling. I see now how much Seiffert’s tower and the Ford had in common: 1960s confidence, eye-catching bravura and a stylish disdain for ordinariness. Like the Ottoman corsairs.

Alas, flamboyance may now join the ever-longer list of lost causes. And the name Corsair is as forgotten as the cars themselves. Only one example of Heinz’s Phantom Corsair was built. It survives in the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada.

Meanwhile, I wonder what is happening in Ford’s Department of Onomastics, a top-secret facility dedicated to research into names, quartered in a paradoxically anonymous building just off the A12.

Riffling through the company’s back catalogue, they have revived Mustang and Capri but these dull cars have not excited spontaneous outbreaks of consumer hysteria. Maybe a new Corsair would remind us why we became interested in cars in the first place. There’s a lot in a name. Even the name of a lost cause. And wouldn’t a Ford Infidel be a talking point?

‘FLAMBOYANCE MAY NOW JOIN THE LIST OF LOST CAUSES. AND THE NAME CORSAIR IS AS FORGOTTEN AS THE CARS THEMSELVES’

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Ignition Opinion

The Driver

Robert Coucher Get behind the wheel of a proper car – while you still can

O

ur 25 Cars That Changed The World feature illustrates just how the car has evolved over 140 years, thanks to supreme engineering creativity and advancement. Yes, the internal combustion engine has morphed from a single-cylinder design of less than one litre in capacity, producing just under one horsepower, to an 8.0-litre W16 leviathan knocking out over 1000bhp.

Yet now the pursuit of net zero is fast killing one of our biggest and brightest industries in a bid to halt climate change, without the provision of a better answer to our real world transport needs.

Of course, our list includes an electric vehicle, as it should. Elon Musk and Chinese manufacturers have shown that EVs can be an effective part of the mix and are a fine means of transport, in some conditions. If you are wealthy enough to afford one (or are subsidised by governmental tax breaks), with your own safe space at home where you can charge it at reasonable rates (not the extortionate costs of high-speed public charging), and you have a charging point at your destination (the luxury of a private parking space at work), then yes, a quick and silent EV is just the thing for effective short-distance use in busy urban areas. Yet the pursuit of this EV diktat has led Porsche AG to a 99% drop in operating profits in 2025, and we await Jaguar Land Rover’s electric Jaguar 00 as designer Gerry McGovern has reportedly been escorted from the building.

So while the world’s biggest carbon dioxide producers – China, USA, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Poland, South Africa, Brazil and Japan – continue to ‘burn, baby, burn’ (their coal-fired power stations) and contribute the lion’s share, little old UK spews out so little (about 1%) that it’s simply a rounding error in the scheme of things. Except we Brits now pay the world’s highest prices for electricity and live in the cold, attempting to reverse our spurious contribution to global warming. The expression ‘farting against thunder’ springs to mind.

Never mind, our illustrious representative Ed Miliband was at the Cop30 summit on our behalf, where he bestrode the world stage as our environmental leader, along with a couple of hundred all-expenses-paid civil servants, determined to ensure we buy our green infrastructure from the Chinese who manufacture it, powered by fossil-

fuelled electricity plants. The UK does not have a single coal-fired power station operational – China has 1195, with 150 new ones in build.

But the European consumers are not playing ball with their virtue-signalling politicians, hence the sales of not-fit-for-purpose EVs are stalling, with Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, VW, Porsche and Aston Martin backing away from full electric. So effective ICE propulsion should continue well into the future, if the last 140 years are anything to go by.

And in the meantime, more good news! As a driving enthusiast, I suggest you get behind the wheel of as many classic ICE cars as you can – the classic car market is as flat as a pancake at the moment, with lots of great deals to be had. Go along to your favourite car dealer and try a few out; he’ll take your arm off ! The old adage applies, ‘buy the best example you can afford’, as restoration costs are high and most classics have been restored a number of times by now – so get hold of one with a resto thrown in for free.

The classic car world has moved along with the times, so modern classics are all the rage. Supercars aside, interesting moderns (cars of the 1980s and 1990s) have the benefit of being affordable, practical and easy to drive. And as most bang-up-to-date moderns feature over-complicated electrics, non-intuitive touchscreens and timing chains seemingly made of chocolate, cars from the mid-2000s are eminently suitable as everyday drivers. Owners know this – the average age of cars on UK roads is now nine years and ten months and climbing as these cars are tough, reliable and capable.

As are most restored ‘proper’ classics. Of our featured list of 25 ground-breakers (see pages 54-66), I have been fortunate to drive 22. I can live without a Benz Patent-Motorwagen, and racing a Ford Model T at Le Mans Classic was an exercise in patience. The Audi quattro was a total game-changer, but its ferocious understeer is tiresome. The Bugatti Type 35 – I enjoyed a near-identical type 51 on the Mille Miglia – and the Jaguar C-type, an example also used on the Mille Miglia, are my most coveted, but my dear old Jaguar XK140 is close enough, thank you. For me, the most important car on this list is the modest Golf GTI: it changed all of us into really good drivers because it’s a really good car.

Real classics rule in our real world.

‘CARS FROM THE MID2000S ARE EMINENTLY SUITABLE AS EVERYDAY DRIVERS’

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Ignition Letters

Letter of the month

I hope that F1’s dominance of the motor racing media space doesn’t mean there is no limelight left for proper recognition of Nick’s [below, on left] incredible attainment in endurance racing.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Andy James, Northamptonshire

Smart thinking I WAS MOST interested to read Stephen Bayley’s assessment of the smart [above]in Octane 271.

I have a very personal interest because I was directly involved in the beginning of the project at Swatch.

Swatch CEO Nicolas Hayek contacted GE Polymer Design Associates via GE Plastics to develop the engineering concept for his car. He bought in a young Swiss designer who developed the styling, the main elements for which remained through to the production car. Unfortunately I can’t remember his name – it was rather a long time ago.

I was responsible for a team of 12 that engineered the development prototype vehicle.

What made it exciting was

Hayek’s willingness to encourage ideas to do things differently, which was very much the culture at Swatch. One particular idea was the concept of modular assembly, for which we did the initial concept work. We got the first prototype built, at which point Hayek needed to bring in an automotive partner to share the cost of developing the car for production. He chose VW. Unfortunately, it became a very frustrating partnership. VW kept telling us on reviewing our development and assembly proposals that they didn’t build cars like that. Our response was that we knew they didn’t, but this was a new concept and was planned to be built on a greenfield site.

It was to no avail. In the end, Hayek got so frustrated that he parted company with them.

That was the end of the project for me and the team, as it was a further two years before he brought Mercedes on board.

David Taylor, Essex

Electrifying Tandy I was struck by Derek Bell’s tribute in Octane 268 to Nick Tandy for being awarded the RAC’s Segrave trophy, and it made me think about Formula 1’s dominance of motor racing.

It’s trite to say that had Tandy raced in F1 he would be better-known, but his unique accomplishment must be up there with the Triple Crown in terms of driver achievement.

American beauty I agree with Mr Bayley in Octane 268 that there was a lot of creativity and beauty in car design from the 1940s through to the 1970s. I inherited a black 1969 Ford Thunderbird with the ‘suicide’ back doors, leather seats and 429 Thunderjet engine that fit his bill many years ago.

However, aerodynamic shapes can be beautiful, too. A case in point would be my 2019 Porsche Cayman in Agate Grey [below].

Simplicity and curves in all the right places! My last romp of Fall took me through several small cities in my home state of Kentucky, and cruising their downtowns netted some attention, waves and thumbs-ups.

Mike Walton, Kentucky, USA

Building the dream Three articles in Octane 270 particularly piqued my interest.

LETTER OF THE MONTH wins a Ruark R1S Smart Radio, worth £299 Polls show that radio is still many people’s favourite entertainment. With wi-fi and Bluetooth built in, the R1S is not just a radio, but a complete musical solution that’s small enough to fit easily into your house or garage.

Ruark is a family-owned British company, passionate about sound and design. Its aim is to make premium music systems that look and sound fabulous, products that will enhance your home and life, including radios, compact active speakers and all-in-one music systems – all with Ruark’s long high-fidelity heritage at their core.

Visit ruarkaudio.com for more information.

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Ignition Letters

Fulvia fantasy fulfilled While acting as Car Zero in the recent Adelaide Rally in South Australia, I was given a back-issue of Octane 264 by a friend.

I was delighted to read about the ex-works Lancia Fulvia.

Driven by Harry Källström (‘Sputnik’), this car passed us during the night in the 1970 RAC Rally. I recall thinking ‘No driver can be that much better – it must be the car.’ Actually, it was both.

The Fulvia 1.6HF was my dream car until 1994, when I was able to buy my first, followed by the acquisition of a works Fulvia.

This car has an amazing history: second at San Remo in the 1972 Italian Championship, racing in California, and nearly 30 years with myself, including winning Targa Tasmania Classic in 2000.

I hillclimbed the car last week. thankfully has now been resolved following the recent change in DVLA rules), my numberplate was withdrawn. This prompted the start of my career in motorsport at the tender age of 72 and the car has now done trackdays at Knockhill, plus two sprints and a hillclimb.

To those of you out there who might be contemplating a restoration, a homebuilt restomod is quite doable and can provide a huge amount of fun and satisfaction. Dream it, build it, drive it and race it!

Simon Richards, Banchory, Scotland

Better than a Jag? Mark Dixon’s piece in Octane 271 about his recent purchase of a P6 Rover 3500S brought back happy memories of a similar car I owned between 2004 and 2006.

Having just got married, I decided to complicate my busy life further and buy an Almond Yellow 1974 3500S [above] with power steering and the bootlidmounted spare wheel. It was

advertised at £1500 with a new MoT and a full history, so I just had to have a look.

There was a race to view the car, as the banger-racing boys were also interested, but luckily I got there first. It was a two-owner car from new and, with the exception of tatty wings and a missing bonnet badge, very genuine.

I found it thrilling to drive, and often it gave a more modern car a run for its money: a real wolf in sheep’s clothing. Eventually, however, my wife refused to go in it unless it was tidied up.

I was fortunate to purchase a set of four perfect wings, which I had painted and then swapped onto the car. To my amazement, there was no rot in the base unit, so all that was needed was a good wire-brushing, a coat of black Hammerite and a full Waxoyling.

After a few years, I decided to part with it because I also had a Mk2 Jaguar. In truth, the Rover was a much more user-friendly car than the Mk2. For a start, it had a heating system that worked! I also found the engineering and attention to detail superb.

Even now, I regret selling it, and occasionally wonder if I should get another one. I am pleased to say that my old 3500S is still out there somewhere, taxed and being used and cherished.

Jonathan Davies, Surrey

GETTY IMAGES

Jeremy R Browne, Adelaide, Australia

First, the Porsche Boxster versus 914 article. As the owner of a Boxster 2.7 since 2000 (with 150,000 trouble-free miles on the clock), a 981 Cayman S since 2013, and a quite recently restored VW/Porsche 914, I was stopped dead by the article and delighted by its conclusion.

Second, your feature on the KAMM 912. The car looks wonderful and the driving experience is obviously special.

My 914 [above] is completed as a fast road/sprint/hillclimb car, with the engine increased in capacity from 2.0 litres to 2.26 litres and further performanceenhancing features, and now delivers 160bhp at the flywheel compared with the 90bhp of the standard engine. The interior is stripped and the exterior loosely matches one of the Marathon de la Route cars of 1970. Not quite on a par with the KAMMs of this world, but quite presentable.

That takes us onto the third article: the wonderful Bugatti Type 57 Atalanta drive across America. Straight after my 914 restoration had been finished, my son and I drove from Aberdeen to the Le Mans Classic. The car performed perfectly apart from two sidelight bulb failures. Such a satisfying and enjoyable trip!

Following a DVLA dispute over the modifications (which

Plane wrong Nice piece on the P-39 Airacobra in Octane 271 – but the aircraft in the photo [above] look to me suspiciously like the later P-63 Kingcobra. From what I remember, the tailplane on the P-63 is more angular on its trailing edge, whereas the P-39’s is distinctly curved.

Jonathan Sharp, East Sussex

The caption from the picture library that supplied the image definitely states that the aircraft are P-39s – but comparing several other images online suggests that Jonathan is absolutely right and they are, in fact, P-63 Kingcobras.

MD Send your letters to letters@octane-magazine.com Please include your name, address and a daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited for clarity. Views expressed are not necessarily those of Octane.

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25 cars that changed the world

VOLKSWAGEN TYPE 2 BUGATTI TYPE 35 BUGATTI VEYRON 16.4 CITROËN TRACTION AVANT LANCIA APRILIA DUESENBERG MODEL J WILLY -OVERLAND MB / FORD GPW ‘JEEP’ WILLYS BENZ PATENT-MOTORWAGEN TOYOTA TA PRIUS T LAMBORGHINI MIURA LAND ROVER JAGUAR CC-TYPE PORSCHE 911 FORD MUST MUSTANG FORD MOD MODEL T CITROËN DS MINI VOLKSWAGEN TYPE 1 TOYOTA HILUX JAGUAR E-TYPE VW GOLF GTI AUDI QUATTRO FERRARI F40 MCLAREN F1 TESLA MODEL S We are now 140 years on from the world’s first car. These are the game-changers… so far Words John Mayhead

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This is the original, the vehicle from which the DNA for all subsequent cars developed. Patent number 37435 was filed by Carl Benz on 29 January 1886, fulfilling his dream of creating a purposebuilt motor vehicle using both the technology of and the generous proceeds from his earlier two-stroke petrol engine design. The Benz Patent-Motorwagen had a tubular metal frame, a four-stroke petrol engine mounted behind a two-person bench seat, and three spoked wheels, the smaller front one steered from a tiller. Two years later, Carl Benz’s wife Bertha took her two sons on the first ever longdistance car journey in it, travelling 180km. Newspapers lapped up the story, sales took off and the rest is all of automotive history.

1924 BUGATTI TYPE 35 Alloy wheels, brake cooling ducts, ‘added lightness’, a roller-bearing crank and a complex oiling system that made the most of then-current technology… in 1924, Ettore Bugatti was exploring novel areas of car design decades before the likes of John Cooper, Colin Chapman and Adrian Newey took the baton and ran. The result – an elegant car that handled beautifully and revved in unsupercharged form to 6000rpm – led to an extraordinary tally of race wins and forced the competition to raise its game. Alfa Romeo and Bentley responded with bulk and power, the fledgling MG with small size and agility. The racing world was never the same again.

MAGIC CAR PICS

1886 BENZ PATENT-MOTORWAGEN

1908 FORD MODEL T By the early 1920s, over half of all registered cars in the world were Fords, most of them the Model T. Launched in 1908, it combined innovations that were later accepted as standard: a removable cylinder head, a windscreen and (novel for the US) the steering wheel on the left, but it was the production method that changed the world.

Although it wasn’t the first mass-produced automobile – that credit should go to the Curved Dash Oldsmobile of 1901 – Ford’s assembly line used conveyor belts to bring the car to the workers, saving time and allowing specialists to become experts in their construction tasks.

Productivity was enhanced by the ‘$5 workday’, a profit-sharing scheme that could double a worker’s wage: according to Ford, mechanics from around the US flocked to work at the Michigan factory. The Model T contributed to America’s expansion as an economic power, helping to enable commerce and able to travel across vast distances that had, until then, been covered by arduous wagon journeys. The Austin Seven later followed in Great Britain, though tiny in number compared to the Ford’s 15million total.

BARRY HAYDEN

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1928 DUESENBERG MODEL J

MICHEL ZUMBRUNN

For the 2013 film adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, the protagonist drove a Duesenberg Model J rather than the ‘yellow Rolls-Royce’ specified in the book. Although an anachronism as the Model J was first on sale six years after the novel was set, it was visually perfect. Elegant, vast, and opulent in the extreme, the Model J was built as the American answer to the grand European models from companies such as Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza and Avions Voisin. A 7.0-litre straight-eight engine on a 20ft-long chassis clad in the coachbuilt body of your choice could be yours for around $13,000 – about $250,000 in 2025 – and, despite the Wall Street Crash just months after the launch, sales continued, especially among the new Hollywood elite. Ford had proven that America could mass-produce cars; Duesenberg proved it could compete with the finest manufacturers in the world.

1934 CITROËN TRACTION AVANT

CITROËN

As with many cars on our list, the technological advances in the 1934 Citroën Traction Avant were not new, but this exceptional car brought them together in a unique way that maximised its impact on the motoring world. Like the Model T, it was mass-produced and, although Alvis had run front-wheel-drive cars at Le Mans in the late 1920s, the Traction Avant (literally ‘forward traction’) was the first production car to combine that with a largely monocoque body, hydraulic brakes, rack-and-pinion steering and independent front suspension. It innovated in many ways and set a precedent that became almost ubiquitous in later road cars.

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1937 LANCIA APRILIA Two years after the launch of the Traction Avant, the Lancia Aprilia was introduced. In many ways, it was similar: its unitary construction allowed a sleek, lower profile and the Italian car had independent suspension, but Vincenzo Lancia’s last design had been created using a wind tunnel, a first for a car. With the compact narrow-angle V4 engine that allowed a lower centre of gravity, the Aprilia achieved a record low drag coefficient of 0.47.

Although the V4 configuration remained a rare choice, the wind tunnel became a key element in vehicle design.

JEEP

1940 WILLYS-OVERLAND MB / FORD GPW ‘JEEP’ Firepower and movement defined the majority of land battles during World War Two and, on the Allied side, one vehicle came to represent these two characteristics more than any other: the Willys-Overland MB, also produced

by Ford as the GPW, and commonly known as the Jeep. Not only did the Jeep offer impressive cross-country capability, it was small enough to be packed into a glider and light enough to be lifted by eight soldiers, and had an extraordinary load-weight capacity, too. Ammunition, radios and stores could be lugged, trailers and artillery guns towed, and casualties evacuated. From Normandy to Russia, Libya to Iwo Jima, it enabled the nature of 20th Century warfare like no other land vehicle. Come the outbreak of peace, the success of the MB Jeep led to another ground-breaking design: the 1946 Jeep Station Wagon, arguably the first SUV.

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1949 VOLKSWAGEN TYPE 2

MAGIC CAR PICS

If the Type 1 (Beetle) provided families with freedom, then the Type 2 (Kombi, Transporter, camper, Bulli…) delivered the same for small businesses. The rearmounted air-cooled flat-four wasn’t only simple to maintain but also allowed a long, flat load space that could be altered simply to suit the needs of the owner.

Bench-seat transporters, plush multi-window minibuses, pick-ups, work vans, and even ambulances – the Type 2 options were almost endless and, thanks to the Westfalia Campmobile and other after-market camper van conversions, it allowed families the chance to holiday at a time when air travel was the preserve of the rich.

Dutch businessman Ben Pon’s original 1947 design lasted from first production in 1949 until 1979, when the squarer T2.5 (T3) was released, but the number of these vans still in use today, still doing the job for which they were designed, is a testament to their extraordinary utility.

If the Jeep was the car that won World War Two for the Allies, then the Volkswagen Type 1 (or Beetle) and its later Type 2 (Kombi, Transporter, camper, Bulli…) offshoot helped secure peace. Along with the Citroën 2CV in France and the Morris Minor in Britain, the original Volkswagen ‘People’s Car’ gave the masses their freedom, taking over the mantle from the Ford Model T and Austin Seven.

Sales were extraordinary, with over 21million Beetles sold in the 65 years between first production in 1938 and the last built in 2003. Real series-quantity production came only after the war ended, but it remains the most numerous car built on a single platform and with the longest production span. Almost everyone over the age of 40 in the UK, US, Europe and South America has a memory of the vehicle, myself included: a 1968 Beetle was my first car, collected with its engine in a box on the back seat and restored with my father.

The Beetle (and Type 2) not only transformed lives but were also a key part of what the Germans called the Wirtschaftswunder: the miracle of economic growth after the war. For many years in the 1950s and 1960s, Volkswagen delivered half of all German exports, bringing in essential foreign currency and establishing an industrial strength that then sat at the centre of West German (and later European Union) economic stability. Today, Volkswagen Group is considered the largest car company in the world by revenue, net income, assets and equity. It grew from these humble origins.

JAMIE LIPMAN

1945 VOLKSWAGEN TYPE 1

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JLR

1948 LAND ROVER The Land Rover wasn’t meant to change the world.

Rover had been focused on wartime development of the Meteor jet engine, and it wasn’t until VE day that the company could focus on its next motor car. In 1947, Maurice Wilks, Rover’s chief engineer, found his small M1 car design shelved and gained inspiration while pulling his boat from the water on an Anglesey beach, using his military-surplus Jeep. He and his brother, Spencer, drew a design for an agricultural vehicle that borrowed much from it, making use of freely available Birmabright alloy and raiding the Rover parts bin.

Prototypes were being tested within months and full production started in 1948, lasting until the final Defender rolled off the line in 2016. In the meantime, the Land Rover had become Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite vehicle, it powered the British and other armies worldwide, carried expeditions through some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, and excelled as a police riot vehicle, airport fire-fighting truck, and, of course, as the ubiquitous farmer’s companion. It also led to the Range Rover, the Discovery, and many other 4x4 vehicle types that now dominate the roads.

MATTHEW HOWELL

1951 JAGUAR C-TYPE In the context of all its subsequent history, it is sometimes hard to remember just how innovative William Lyons’ team was in the early days of Jaguar. Born in 1945, the company wasn’t simply a rebrand of the old SS but a total rebirth, with the new XK engine at its beating heart and innovation and racing central to its ethos. 1948’s XK120 was a new departure in British sports cars, fast and sleek, and two years later Jaguar’s Bill Heynes and Lofty England watched as three privateer XK120s with factory support acquitted themselves well at Le Mans.

Maybe the car could be a winner there…

The XK120C competition variant (later just ‘C-type’) did exactly that. Designed by Heynes, Bob Knight and Malcolm Sayer, who had joined Jaguar from the Bristol Aircraft Company, the car had a revolutionary triangulated tubular frame over which Sayer designed a streamlined body using mathematical calculations. Wind tunnel tests followed, then brake development: first self-adjusting Lockheed drums; experimental Dunlop discs from 1952.

The C-type won Le Mans at its first attempt in 1951, with Stirling Moss breaking the lap record by six seconds in the process. The following year at Reims, with disc brakes, Moss again triumphed and in 1953 C-types secured first, second and fourth at Le Mans. That success placed Jaguar at the forefront of motor racing, thanks to a car that drew a huge amount from aircraft design and manufacturing procedures – all of which revolutionised car development.

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1955 CITROËN DS

ANDY MORGAN

The DS was another ground-breaker that distinguished itself by using disc brakes, being the first mass-produced car to do so. However, its self-levelling oleo-pneumatic suspension and associated hydraulically assisted clutch, transmission and steering were the real stars of the show, not to mention a futuristic teardrop body design by Flaminio Bertoni and André Lefèbvre, with unstressed outer panels cladding a skeletal structure. The Déesse caused a sensation when it was launched at the 1955 Paris Salon de l’Auto, with a record 80,000 orders taken in the first ten days.

A facelift in 1967 (pictured here) by Robert Opron combined the original, beautiful lines with another innovation: directional headlamps under transparent covers.

Henri Chapron’s beautiful Décapotable convertible and other coachbuilt versions added to the DS’s enduring glamour. But this car is not on our list only as the result of its beauty and engineering; it was a symbol of France’s emergence from the fog of war, and proved that practicality and elegance need not be mutually exclusive. It remained in production for 20 years.

1961 JAGUAR E-TYPE

DEAN SMITH

The E-type cemented its maker as one of the most important motor manufacturers worldwide. In Series 1 form it is one of the most beautiful cars ever built, both in coupé and open-top sports styles, something rarely achieved by even the greats of the car world. It raced and won, it was driven by royalty and movie stars, it was a massive success in the all-important US market, and it epitomised the cool, suave British sense of style that not only defined Jaguar marketing for decades but also inspired other leading British brands. From the 1980s, the E-type became the definitive classic car in this new enthusiast sector, a place it has arguably held until very recently.

The repercussions of the 1956 Suez Crisis were felt in Britain during the years to follow, with fuel prices rising and the temporary reimposition of petrol rationing in 1957. Leonard Lord of the British Motor Corporation commissioned Alec Issigonis to create a small, fuel-efficient family car, and his design, unveiled in 1959, became one of the most influential British cars of the 20th Century.

The Mini employed a compact four-cylinder engine, transversely mounted in conjunction with a front transaxle, allowing 80% of its floorpan to be used for load and passengers. Issigonis’s quirky, cute body was the stand-out feature of the Mini, and soon it became synonymous with London and the Swinging Sixties as the runabout for the new urban elite. Meanwhile, John Cooper’s performance versions excelled, both on track and on rally stages.

It was not without competition: the Fiat 500 held a similar place in Italy’s heart, and bubblecars satisfied some small-and-quirky design ideals, but arguably the Mini set the template for most small family cars until the advent of the EV.

MATTHEW HOWELL

1959 MINI

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1964 PORSCHE 911

JONATHAN FLEETWOOD

CARS THAT STARTED SOMETHING

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Volkswagen changed the world by giving mobility to the masses, but Porsche offered sports car ownership to the middle classes.

Until the 901 (soon renamed 911) was unveiled in 1963 at the Frankfurt motor show, performance cars had generally been the preserve of the extremely rich and influential, and made in tiny numbers. If there was also a cheaper, entry-level version, then it was usually a totally different model and everyone knew they’d had to compromise. The Porsche plan was different.

The company took what Jaguar had done with the XK120-150 and E-type, offering different trim, engine specification and body styles, and moved it onto a mass-produced footing. The result, as the 911 range expanded over the first few years, was to attract the growing middle classes with an entry-level sports car using the same chassis and high build quality as the top model.

Once you were a Porsche owner, the idea went, so you’d aspire towards a higher model, and as Porsche motorsport success blossomed from the 1970s onwards, so the range (and sales) kept growing: around 1.25million Porsche 911s have been built.

Today, Porsche offers 20 different versions of the 911, from the £103,700 Carrera to the £192,600 GT3 RS, all of which can be specified to the customer’s taste.

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1964 FORD MUSTANG

SAM CHICK

Power, freedom, confidence, selfexpression: the Ford Mustang epitomised these characteristics as an American icon from its launch in 1964.

Undoubtedly cool, it was also relatively cheap, with many existing Ford parts used to lower costs. Product placement also helped: Mustangs starred in the Bond films Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965), but it was a Highland Green fastback in the movie Bullitt (1968) that established it as a screen legend. Although slightly predated by the Pontiac GTO, the Mustang led the new muscle car segment of the US auto market, and others followed in the years to come.

According to Hagerty, muscle cars from 1964 to 1972 sold at auction last year for a combined $273million, accounting for more than 5% of the entire collector car market.

STÉPHANE ABRANTES

1966 LAMBORGHINI MIURA Ferruccio Lamborghini’s Sant’Agata Bolognese company was just two years old when the Miura was unveiled. Its predecessor, the 350GT, had been powerful and luxurious, but the design was idiosyncratic; it wasn’t the Ferrari-killer that Ferruccio had envisaged.

The Miura was different. The roaring V12 was still there, but it shared a casing (and lubrication) with the gearbox and differential and, most importantly, was transversely mid-mounted behind the cabin. The body, a double clamshell design by Marcello Gandini, was stunning: low, elegant and with its trademark lifting headlamps. In 1969, the Miura’s reputation in popular culture was reinforced by a starring role in the opening credits of The Italian Job. The Miura set the template for the modern supercar – a term that it actually inspired – and, just as importantly, it made Lamborghini.

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TOYOTA GLOBAL

1976 VW GOLF GTI Anton Konrad, head of the Volkswagen press office, and test engineer Alfons Löwenberg saw the new Golf in 1974 and envisioned a performance version: the Sport Golf. They co-opted six colleagues, pitched the idea to their bosses, and the concept became known as the Gran Turismo Injection – or GTI. Its handling was the stuff of legend, and figures of 113mph and 0-60mph in 9sec were exceptional for the time. Yet the Golf GTI wasn’t only about performance: its tartan trim, red-rimmed front grille and ‘golf ball’ gearknob made it all about style, too. Like the Ford Mustang, the Golf GTI wasn’t merely a new model, it established an entirely new genre of cars: the hot hatchback.

1968 TOYOTA HILUX

DEAN SMITH / VOLKSWAGEN

More than 18million examples of the Hilux have been built since the launch of the N10 in 1968. Its power, load capacity and, for some markets, comfort, were impressive, but the standout feature of this human-scale truck was always its robustness. This was the vehicle that TV’s Top Gear team famously tried – and failed – to destroy back in 2003, and many people in remote locations around the world can vouch for that reputation. For decades it powered the developing world; from the jungles of South America via the tracks of sub-Saharan Africa to the deserts of the Middle East, the Hilux was the vehicle of choice.

AUDI

1980 AUDI QUATTRO The original Ur-quattro of 1980 to 1991 was one of the most influential rally cars of all time, and came to redefine Audi. Not since the 1930s had the company’s predecessor Auto Union been at the forefront of motor development. In 1977, it commissioned a team under Ferdinand Piëch to build a competitive rally car. Piëch oversaw a prototype based on a four-wheel-drive military Volkswagen and the Audi 80-based production version was released in 1980.

Key to the design was a central differential that pushed power to the axle with most grip in the permanent AWD system, and a rear diff that controlled the back wheels, both capable of being locked by a switch in the cockpit.

The quattro dominated the stages, winning the World Rally Championship in 1982 and again, as the highly developed Sport quattro, in 1984. Since then, no two-wheel-drive car has won the title.

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5

NEW CARS THAT ARE CHANGING THE WORLD

1987 FERRARI F40

M C MURTRY SPÉIRLING

Even today, if there’s a Ferrari F40 at a car show, it will grab more attention than almost anything else. This is a supercar in every way: the first road car to hit 200mph, a body made from carbon-Kevlar composite, a 2.9-litre twin-turbo V8 engine and very few driver aids. The design, too, was unlike anything else on the road, from slanted nose to plexiglass engine covers and that huge rear wing. The final version was signed off personally by Enzo Ferrari – the last car that ever was – and it made an impact on the performance car market like no other before it.

New tech created almost an entirely new type of vehicle. And breaking the Goodwood hillclimb record in 2022 stunned many in the industry.

BYD ATTO 2 BYD sold 52% more cars than Tesla in the EU in July 2025, more than triple July 2024. These cars, among others, are putting the Chinese car industry in a global position of power.

The near future for hypercars will be dominated by the hybrid, and the Bugatti Tourbillon and Ferrari F80 came close to a spot here, but Murray took the laurels with his last-of-an-era lightweight, naturally aspirated hypercar.

XEV YOYO This tiny city car was displayed at the 2022 Paris motor show. It not only includes a replaceable battery pack that allows the user to run one/charge one, but also features 3D-printed parts. This could be the future of budget motoring.

LONGBOW SPEEDSTER

1992 M C LAREN F1 If the Miura and F40 established the supercar benchmarks, the McLaren F1 ripped up the rulebook and started again. The most powerful naturally aspirated engine ever fitted to a road car was paired with a six-speed manual gearbox and virtually no driver aids. Weight was kept to an absolute minimum, due to a body and structure composed entirely of carbonfibre and composites, but the car was also extremely practical, thanks to large butterfly doors allowing great access to the three-person cabin and the central driving position that gave a superb view of the road.

Every element was carefully designed by Gordon Murray and Peter Stevens; even the luggage that maximised every spare centimetre. The F1, in GTR guise, also dominated on the track, winning Le Mans outright in 1995, the last homologated production sports car to do so.

RM SOTHEBY’S

Many have tried to redefine the British roadster – lightweight, nimble, affordable – and Longbow is the latest. Its featherweight EV tips the scales at fully 1000kg less than a Cyberster, costs £50k less than a Lotus Emeya and looks amazing, but most impressive is that the company has managed to get a working prototype finished in nine months. The business plan stacks up, too. Could this be the new British automotive success story?

ALEX HOWE

GORDON MURRAY AUTOMOTIVE T.50

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1997 TOYOTA PRIUS

TOYOTA GLOBAL

The Prius was the first truly viable everyday hybrid and used technology that was to become widespread in the decades that followed. Launched in 1997, the car originally employed the Toyota Hybrid System of regenerative braking that stored energy in batteries for use later in assisting the car’s petrol engine. In 2004, this was upgraded to the Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) system that allowed – for the first time – the electric motor to power the car on its own at manoeuvring speeds. It included a new planetary gearset that replaced a traditional gearbox, and drive-by-wire controls. Others also developed similar technology at the same time: the Honda Insight became the first hybrid offered for sale in the US in 1999, its powertrain combined with an aerodynamic design that enabled hitherto unheard-of fuel efficiency.

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2005 BUGATTI VEYRON 16.4

CHARLIE MAGEE

If the Miura, F40 and McLaren F1 were pared down and focusing on the analogue experience of driving, then the Veyron was utterly different.

This was a Rolls-Royce on acid: a statement by the Volkswagen Group that it could make a car more luxurious, more technologically advanced and more powerful than anything else on the road. The result was an 8.0-litre quadturbocharged W16 engine generating 1001 metric horsepower (987bhp), mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox and all-wheel drive, wrapped in a stunning body and with an opulent interior.

It shattered production car speed records by achieving 253mph, yet the Veyron had more in common with the Duesenberg Model J than any Ferrari or Lamborghini before it. The subsequent Super Sport raised that top speed to 267mph, and its succecessor, the Chiron, in 2016, saw power increased to 1500bhp and beyond, with top speed up to a barely credible 304.7mph. As the last of the great ICE hypercar dynasties, the Veyron and its offspring will never be surpassed.

COURTESY OF TESLA, INC.

2012 TESLA MODEL S Every other car on this list combines a beauty of design, be that quirky or elegant, with an engineer’s aspiration to make the process of driving more enjoyable, more efficient or more practical. Tesla’s approach is different. The Model S is just one element of the Tesla network that includes battery tech development and charging infrastructure.

The car itself is the hardware, but the critical software is controlled (and owned) not by the ‘owner’ but by the company. For the first time in motoring history, a car’s range can be increased or shortened and features switched on and off remotely ‘over the air’ (OTA) by the manufacturer at will; the ‘owner’ just licenses the software and does not have the authority to change it. Many buyers don’t care – most of us license software on our computers – and the car goes really fast and has great range for an electric car, plus it makes humorous noises. For others, it’s a worrying trend.

Yet it must appear on our list, as where this car leads, others follow: the Model S showed that, with appropriate charging stations, electric cars could be viable daily drivers, that electric motors could be insanely quick, and OTA updates maintain manufacturer control (and therefore a financial stake in the car) even after purchase.

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Shelby Special Cobra and Daytona

TAG TEAM P

Shelby’s GT40s failed at Le Mans in 1965, but these two special cars – the ex-Dan Gurney Dayton

Words Harry Hurst Photograp

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M PARTNERS

ey Daytona coupé and ex-Bob Bondurant Cobra – took the fight to Ferrari that season… and won

y Hurst Photography Evan Klein

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Shelby Special Cobra and Daytona

‘W

hile it is presumptuous for me to expect to beat a team with so many years of racing experience, we find ourselves in the enviable position of leading on points. It would be a shame if we didn’t at least try to bring the World Championship to America.’

Carroll Shelby said these words right after his Cobras had won the GT class at Sebring in March 1964. This encouraging result led Ford Motor Company to ‘hedge its bets’ on challenging Ferrari’s might with the new prototype Ford GT, finding the money for Shelby to continue to Europe to provide a rearguard action with his Cobras. The goal: to win the FIA World Manufacturers’ Championship for GT cars, a category that Ferrari had won convincingly with its 250 GTO the year before.

To accomplish this seemingly impossible task, Shelby would utilise two strikingly different cars competing in the same class: the venerable Cobra roadster, which had proven itself on the short tracks in the US, and a new secret weapon, the radical ‘Daytona’ Coupe, which was legal in the GT class since it was built on the same chassis as the roadster.

Shelby needed the Coupe since the tracks in Europe put a premium on top-end speed.

‘When Shelby decided he wanted to win the world championship, we had to go to Europe,’ explains Allen Grant, a Shelby team driver for the 1965 season. ‘The tracks over there had straightaways that were longer than entire tracks in America. The Cobra roaster had a top speed of only about 155; we called it “a goodlooking brick”.’

Enter Peter Brock, a graduate of (and teacher at) ArtCenter College of Design, and

‘SHELBY UTILISED TWO STRIKINGLY DIFFERENT CARS IN THE SAME CLASS: THE VENERABLE COBRA ROADSTER AND A NEW SECRET WEAPON, THE RADICAL DAYTONA COUPE’

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This page and opposite CSX2345 is completely original, still running on the same tyres it wore while being raced

by Bob Bondurant in 1965. It won five of the seven races it entered in 1964 and 1965, the most of any of the FIA Cobras.

a former GM designer. Brock convinced Shelby that the answer was to put a new, sleek body on the antiquated, transverse-leaf-sprung Cobra chassis made by AC in England. It was possible to use a different body due to a bending of the rules that Ferrari had originally exploited to homologate the GTO body on the 250 chassis.

Few within Shelby American believed in the concept Brock had come up with, except Ken Miles and the New Zealander John Ohlsen.

After just ten weeks to fabricate the body, the car went to Riverside for initial tests. The new body increased the Cobra’s top speed by more than 30mph. Equally important, fuel economy improved substantially, so it would require fewer pit stops – a significant consideration for endurance racing.

The new ‘Daytona Coupe’, so-named for its impressive debut at the track in Florida, would prove ideally suited to fast courses, but the schedule also included slower tracks and hillclimbs. For these, Shelby built a trio of ‘FIA’ roadsters incorporating all the tricks that the team, led by the legendary fabricator Phil

Remington, had learned while racing in the US in 1963. The roadsters, while not fast at the top end, had incredible acceleration out of the corners. ‘When they went round a corner, the frame would twist a little and keep the rear tyres on the ground, as opposed to lifting an inside tyre and spinning,’ explains Grant. ‘That would gain a mile-per-hour or two out of the turn and you’d keep that speed all the way down the straight.’

The first Daytona Coupe was built at Shelby’s Los Angeles shop. Shelby then contracted a small bodybuilder in Ferrari’s backyard in Modena, Carrozzeria Gransport, to build five further examples on chassis supplied by Shelby. The first chassis it received, CSX2299, had been modified by inexperienced workers who had mistakenly installed the under-windshield cowl 3/4in higher than specified. This resulted in a roofline on this car that is higher than the other five Coupes’, a flaw that turned out to have an unexpected benefit: as a result it managed to accommodate Dan Gurney’s 6ft 4in frame.

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Shelby Special Cobra and Daytona

‘AT THE END OF THE SEASON, SHELBY WAS TRAILING FERRARI

BY ONLY A FEW POINTS’

The first part of the European schedule was disappointing for the Shelby team, but Le Mans raised their spirits. Gurney, along with Bob Bondurant, took CSX2299 to a fourthplace finish overall and first in the GT Class.

Later that summer, Gurney would come in third in this car, now known as ‘Gurney’s car’, at Goodwood, adding to Shelby’s points total.

As the Coupe competed in races on faster tracks, the FIA roadsters were entered in a series of hillclimbs and races on tighter circuits.

One of these was CSX2345, a car that would compete in seven races in 1964 and 1965, winning five, the most of any of the FIA cars.

The FIA Cobras were basically the same as their counterparts back in the States, competing in the USRRC. There were a few small differences, including the windshield, which had to be full coverage, although the drivers figured out a way to allow the screen to ‘lie down’ for less drag. Furthermore, there were two protrusions on the rear deck-lid to accommodate the FIA ‘suitcase’, a relic of Le Mans rules that pretended race cars had a more utilitarian transport purpose.

As the end of the season approached, the Shelby team was trailing Ferrari by only a few points with the next race at Monza, a high-

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speed track that favoured the Coupes. At the last moment, Enzo Ferrari was able to change the race format, removing it from the championship points total. Despite there being races still on the schedule, this effectively gave the championship to Ferrari. This near-miss at beating Ferrari only whetted Shelby’s appetite.

Shelby’s success with the Cobras led to his being given total responsibility for the ailing Ford GT programme for the 1965 season. The team swept the first two races at Daytona and Sebring, with the Ford GTs taking the prototype class and the Daytona Coupes winning in GT. Then, at Sebring, a deal was struck with Alan Mann Racing to run the Cobras in Europe.

Mann had at his disposal all six of the Coupes, but only one of the FIA roadsters was retained: CSX2345. At Monza, the Mannprepped Coupes finished 1-2, with Bondurant in the class-winning car along with Allen Grant. At the Tourist Trophy race, Jack Sears was to race CSX2299, with Sir John Whitmore in the roadster CSX2345 as back-up. As it turned out, it was good that they did.

Sears was fastest in practice but had mechanical problems at the start of the first heat, putting the Coupe out of contention.

All hope then lay with CSX2345, and Whitmore gave it all he had. Unfortunately, the car developed a handling problem and ended up behind the leading Ferrari GTO. In the second heat, Sears, despite having no chance to win overall, led all the GTs, breaking the lap record repeatedly. Whitmore drove the race of his career and won the GT class in the roadster, also breaking the lap record. He finished fourth overall despite the handling demons.

At Spa, the Coupes battled the GTOs, with the Italians coming out slightly ahead, but Cobras still led in the championship. The team returned to form at the Nürburgring and, as Denis Jenkinson wrote in Motor Sport, ‘…the two coupés ran like thundering, great locomotives, never missing a beat, always being on time, making routine stops for fuel and driver changes and finishing seventh and tenth overall, the first pair winning their class and also leading all the GT cars throughout the race, Bondurant in particular driving a most impressive race.’

Two weeks later, in the first week of June, Bondurant took CSX2345 to a resounding GT class win at the Rossfeld hillclimb in Germany (a course he had never seen before), as he had done on several occasions the previous season.

This page and opposite CSX2299 is the first Cobra Daytona built, complete with a flaw in its body that inadvertently accommodated 6ft 4in Dan Gurney. It competed twice at Le Mans and has recently been restored.

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Shelby Special Cobra and Daytona

THE ‘KEN MILES C O B R A’ S T O R Y

Bondurant arrived three days before the event and used a rental car to learn the course.

Shelby’s points total was 80.9 to Ferrari’s 34.7.

All this led up to Le Mans in 1965, a race with huge expectations for Ford. The Ford GT had proven it could race with the Ferraris and, to make things more interesting, two 427ci GT40 MkIIs had been prepped to set the pace.

Ford entered a total of 11 cars: six GT40s and five Daytona Coupes. This was to be its year, and ABC arranged to broadcast the race live – the first live satellite television broadcast of a sporting event outside the US. Fate, however, had other things in mind.

With this many cars to tend, Shelby American’s resources were stretched too thin. The race started with the MkIIs showing their speed, along with Dan Gurney in one of the Daytona Coupes. Jack Sears and Dr Dick Thompson were paired in CSX2299, Gurney’s classwinning car from the year before, an entry he probably wished he had kept. At the end of the race, all the Ford entries were out except CSX2299, limping around with oil pressure problems to finish in eighth spot, third in the GT class.

Shelby still held a commanding lead in the points and would bring the GT Championship to America at Reims, appropriately on 4 July.

Bob Bondurant, who had played such an important role in the battle over the preceding two years, would take the GT win in one of the Alan Mann coupes. Among the throng of Shelby team members who had worked so hard for this crown – John Ohlsen, John Collins, Phil Remington – only Charlie

Agapiou was there to celebrate with Bondurant.

Today, CSX2299 and CSX2345 sit together in the same room at the Shelby American Collection. The roadster is notable for its preservation. ‘You really need to see it in person to appreciate how original it is,’ says Steve Volk, the Collection’s executive director.

‘It still has the same tyres on it that Bondurant ran on it back in 1965. Underneath the bonnet, you can see where the English mechanics, who weren’t that familiar with the 289, wrote the firing order.’ CSX2345 won the Postwar Preservation Class at Pebble Beach in 2012.

The Coupe has been meticulously restored and has even received Peter Brock’s seal of approval. Of all the coupes, it has the most significant racing history, having won its class at all three big endurance races: Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring. It was initially owned by the author of the book Cobra-Ferrari Wars, Michael Shoen. ‘We later were able to acquire the car with the help of Harley Cluxton, who was acting as the agent for the owner at the time,’ says Volk. ‘The owner was running hot and cold about selling it; he had a lot invested in it, but we were eventually able to add it to the collection.’

The 1965 championship season in which these two iconic cars competed foreshadowed what was to come: Shelby’s subsequent prototype exploits with the Ford GT40 and the broader push by American manufacturers into international racing. But the year stands on its own merits: a story of innovation, grit, strategic thinking, and race-by-race execution across Europe.

As Shelby’s Cobras were beginning the war in Europe for the GT World Championship, a battle was starting in the States for the 1964 United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC).

The previous year, Cobras had won this title, established by the SCCA to provide a ‘pro’ level of sports car road racing. Known today as the ‘Ken Miles Car’, CSX2431 was built by Ken Miles and fellow British ex-pat Charlie Agapiou to contest the 1964 and 1965 seasons.

‘It was exclusively Ken’s car, and he had all sorts of little experimental stuff on it,’ explains Steve Volk. ‘The doors were cut back because of the wider Halibrand wheels and flares. He installed special springs with fewer leaves and less arch so the car sat about an inch lower than regular racing Cobras, and installed Heim-jointed adjustable A-arms. This car is the ultimate example of a period competition Cobra, and the modifications influenced all Cobras that followed.’

CSX2431 had a remarkable race history. ‘Miles pretty much won everything that year, along with the USRRC Championship,’ says Volk. ‘We actually have his Championship trophy at the museum, sitting next to his car.’

After a series of owners, CSX2431 was acquired in 1992 by Colorado resident Tom Benjamin and sympathetically returned to its 1964-65 form by Bill Murray.

It has raced at the Goodwood Revival, the Monterey Historics, and was displayed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

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CLASSIC CAR SHOW MECC MAASTRICHT

TICKETS At a discount!

LEGENDS OF THE RISING SUN

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Shelby Special Colorado museum

L E G A C Y

O F

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Join Octane for a guided tour of the Shelby American Collection, a museum dedicated to the rich heritage of the cars of Carroll Shelby Words Harry Hurst Photography Evan Klein

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Shelby Special Colorado museum

S

ingle-marque collections hold a special place in the world of automotive museums. They celebrate not just the machines from one company, but the people who made them possible. These museums remind us that some cars are more than mere means of transportation: they are expressions of human creativity and ambition, best understood through the singular lens of a marque or its creator.

While the Shelby American Collection, located in Boulder, Colorado, houses examples from several car companies – AC, Shelby, Ford, Sunbeam, De Tomaso – they all have this in common: Carroll Shelby and his goal to beat Ferrari. Shelby achieved his success not because he was an engineering genius like Dr Ferdinand Porsche or Ettore Bugatti. He was more like his arch nemesis, Enzo Ferrari: a charismatic leader who had the intelligence to surround himself with exceptionally talented people to help him achieve his dreams.

Executive Director Steve Volk founded the Collection in 1996 along with a group of fellow Shelby enthusiasts, and with the mission to celebrate ‘the rich heritage of the Cobra, Shelby Mustang, and Ford GT40 cars that changed the face of auto racing in the 1960s’.

Beginning with a core group of cars he and some close friends had acquired, Volk has been able to expand the selection through loans and donations from several noted Shelby collectors. ‘The Shelby American Collection is absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, the finest collection of anything that has to do with Shelby Cobras, Ford GTs, and Mustang GTs,’ says former Shelby crew member and driver Allen Grant.

Volk got interested in Shelby race cars when he was in high school. A friend there had a 427 Cobra, a GT40 (chassis 1068), and a Mangusta.

‘We used to play around with those cars quite a bit, and I really fell in love with them,’ he says. ‘I vowed that someday I would own a number of these cars.’ After moving to Boulder and starting a series of data storage companies, Volk fulfilled his schoolboy dreams of collecting Cobras and GT40s. He teamed up with Bill Murray of Murray Racing, one of the last people to race a Cobra in the SCCA, to campaign several Cobras and GT40s.

Although they were starting to escalate in price, Cobras were still reasonable in the late 1980s. Volk was able to acquire some very significant Cobra race cars, but he was also interested in Shelby memorabilia, parts and

moulds. Volk, along with a group of similarly minded enthusiasts, collected a significant quantity of Cobras and memorabilia, but without any end-purpose in mind. Slowly a vision emerged, however. ‘The more I studied what Shelby had done – winning the FIA Championship, along with the USRRC and SCCA – the more I was in awe of him and what the team did for America,’ says Volk.

Volk had first met Carroll in the 1980s when he was racing the ex-Tom Payne factory team car at Road Atlanta. Shelby wandered into Volk’s pits, and they became friends. Their relationship continued for ten years until, in 1995, Volk visited Shelby at his office in Gardenia, California, to make his pitch. ‘We’re thinking about doing a museum that is focused entirely on your accomplishments. But we don’t want to do it unless it has your support.’

Shelby thought it was a great idea and told Volk: ‘Steve, I’ll support you. Not financially, but I’ll support you any other way I can for as long as I’m vertical.’ And he did just that, attending many of the museum’s events until he died in 2012.

One of the most prolific collectors who has loaned cars to the Collection was Larry H Miller of Utah, who has supplied several historically significant vehicles, including the oldest surviving Ford GT40 (also the first to win a race), the first MkIV to win a race, and a car profiled in the feature before this one, the ‘Gurney Coupe’, CSX2299.

‘Larry was very enthusiastic about racing and collecting,’ says Volk. ‘We would find cars that we wanted, and Larry would buy them and put them in the museum. We have a number of his cars, along with cars from other donors.

Larry Miller passed away in 2009, but the cars remain on loan from the Miller Family Automobile Foundation. When we first opened the museum, we had only nine cars.

Then, Tom and Karen Benjamin offered to add the Ken Miles USRRC car, CSX2431. And then it just exploded. We now have a waiting list of folks who want to have their cars on display, but we have only the two buildings.’

The museum houses many extremely significant cars either built by Shelby or prepared by Shelby American for racing. ‘I think the Shelby Collection is probably the best in the country; they are the only ones with real race-proven cars on display,’ attests Shelby Daytona Coupe designer Peter Brock.

The Collection is packed with every variety of make and model car that Shelby American was involved with, and it is impossible to cover all of them. But some of the most significant are these…

The Cobra that started it all CSX2000 is the very first prototype Cobra. AC Cars in England built it with detailed input from Shelby; it carried the identification ‘Carroll Shelby Experimental 2000’. Originally, the design called for a Salisbury differential with inboard rear brakes – similar to the Jaguar E-type’s – but this was deemed too troublesome, and it reverted to outboard brakes. When the prototype arrived in the US, it was finished in Dean Moon’s speed shop. The car was initially painted a pearlescent yellow, but Shelby wanted the public to think there was a plethora of Cobras already built, so he repainted the prototype a different colour for each magazine conducting an evaluation. Even though you see road tests from 1962 with a blue, red, or yellow Cobra, they were all the same CSX2000.

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The first winner GT/103 is the first Ford GT to win a race and, arguably, the single most important car prepared by Shelby American.

In 1964, Ford was attempting to beat Ferrari for overall honours in the top prototype class with its new Ford GT. However, the 1964 season had been a disaster, with the team not only failing to win a single race, it had not even finished any of the races it entered.

At the end of the season, Leo Beebe, the man Henry Ford II appointed to organise the mess, instructed Shelby to take over the programme based on his success with the Cobras.

The two cars then being raced – GT/103 and GT/104 – were shipped to Shelby American to see what the American hot-rodders could do.

‘When Shelby American was handed those two cars, they were totally clapped out, broken down. They had just raced at Nassau and were in terrible shape,’ recounts Volk. ‘The season had gone so bad that Ford fired John Wyer and told Shelby: “You have seven weeks before Daytona. Figure it out.”’

Under the guidance of chief engineer Phil Remington and taking full advantage of Ken Miles’ development-driving skills, the crew set to work, going back and forth to Riverside and Willow Springs to test various changes. They completely transformed the cars, turning them from undrivable to championship cars.

The Shelby Ford GT/103 won its first race at Daytona with Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby. Miles repeated that feat a month later with Bruce McLaren, as GT/103 won its class at Sebring.

In Europe that summer, GT/103 came in fourth at Monza before being sold to airline pilot William Wonder, who continued to race it at Daytona, Sebring and Bridgehampton, scoring an eighth overall at the 1970 Daytona 24 Hours.

‘THE MUSEUM HOUSES MANY SIGNIFICANT CARS EITHER BUILT OR PREPARED

BY SHELBY’

The Hollywood Cobra Few of the Cobras in the Collection are as star-studded as CSX2128.

It made its racing debut at Sebring in 1963, with All-American hero Dan Gurney behind the wheel in his first Cobra drive. Originally painted black with yellow stripes (sprayed on by Peter Brock) to make it easier for the pit crews to identify, the car was the first Cobra with the new 289ci engine and rack-and-pinion steering. Unfortunately, an oil leak dropped it down to 28th overall at the finish.

After making a star turn on the cover of the Rip Chords album Hey Little Cobra, CSX2128 helped Shelby secure the A Production SCCA title for 1963. In August of that year, a young employee at Shelby, Allen Grant, sold CSX2128 to one of its dealers, Coventry Motors in Walnut Creek, California, with the proviso that Grant, who had been very successful racing an AC Bristol, would be allowed to drive the car. ‘I got them to put up an extra 500 bucks for a special engine, because I wanted to blow off the factory team,’ remembers Grant. ‘That’s when I called George Lucas, who had been with me for every race in the AC Bristol, to come be my crew chief. He jumped in his Corvair and came down and slept on my couch.’

That’s the same George Lucas who went on to fame as a filmmaker (and who modelled a character in American Graffiti after his friend Grant).

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Shelby Special Colorado museum

The controversial finish Only 11 Ford GT40 MkIIs, powered by the 7.0-litre Ford NASCAR engine, were built for the 1966 season, and only two of those actually won races. P/1015 was one of them, winning at Daytona in 1966 with Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby driving. Miles would again drive P/1015 at Le Mans that year and was at the centre of the controversial finish when the McLaren/Amon MkII was awarded the win over Miles and Denny Hulme in P/1015, made infamous by the film Ford v Ferrari (called Le Mans ’66 in the UK).

The first win for a MkIV Despite the win at Le Mans in 1966, Ford felt it needed a radically new car to perpetuate its superiority over Ferrari. In 1965, work began at Kar-Kraft in Brighton, Michigan, on the advanced ‘J-Car’ design, featuring aerospacegrade aluminium honeycomb for weight reduction, with Shelby fabricator Phil Remington playing a key role. After a lengthy gestation period, during which Ken Miles tragically lost his life, a lone Ford GT MkIV, as it was newly known, appeared at Sebring in 1967, driven by Mario Andretti and Bruce McLaren. The car, serial number J-4, showed its immediate superiority over the new Chaparral 2F and the Ferrari P4 and won by 12 laps over the second-placed Ford GT40 MkII driven by Foyt and Ruby. It is one of eight MkIVs built. MkIVs entered only two races and won them both.

‘THE COLLECTION REFLECTS THE DIVERSE TEAM SHELBY BROUGHT TOGETHER’

AS IMPRESSIVE AS the cars in the Collection are, they are a reflection of the diverse team Carroll Shelby brought together. Each member contributed their unique talents to the overall mission of beating the competition – first in the United States, and then in Europe. Noted historian and Ford GT authority Mike Teske puts their accomplishments in context: ‘Shelby brought the “New World” to Europe. His team gained the respect of the Europeans and elevated American automobile racing to their level, and then exceeded it. His approach was typically American, a bit brazen, and with a unique way of doing things. But he earned a seat at the table of automotive legends, and his achievements, and the achievements of the people he surrounded himself with, are indelibly marked in motorsports history.’

VISIT shelbyamericancollection.org.

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THE O C TA N E INTERVIEW

AARON SHELBY What was it like to grow up with Carroll Shelby as a grandfather? Was it all tough love or was he just a big softy? Aaron Shelby remembers it all Words David Lillywhite Portrait Evan Klein

‘I’M AARON SHELBY, one of Carroll Shelby’s grandkids.’ We’ve known each other for a while, and he’s just saying it for the recording. But there’s something special about hearing that sentence – I mean, imagine having Carroll Shelby as your grandad! And Aaron is heavily involved with Shelby American; when we meet, he’s helping to promote 60 years of the Shelby Mustang GT350.

‘Carroll has six grandchildren,’ continues Aaron. ‘My father is Patrick, who was the youngest of his three kids. We were a small family, growing up really closely together, and we spent a lot of time with Carroll.

‘I always liked cars but I got into racing and cars more because my father started racing in Formula Ford when I was eight years old, and then moved on to Formula Atlantic. We lived in Southern California, so we had Willow Springs and Riverside Raceway and all those great tracks that we would go to.’

But what about Carroll? I want to know when Aaron realised who he was. ‘We just knew him as grandpa. As a family member, you had to really pry the information out of him.

He would talk about his last trip, he would talk about the cows he was raising in East Texas… anything but cars, unless you pushed him.’

What, the great showman Carroll Shelby never talked about his achievements? By the time Aaron was born in the early ’70s, Shelby had won Le Mans with Aston Martin in 1959, formed Shelby American in 1962, developed the AC Ace into the all-conquering Cobra in the same year, further developed it into the 427 and launched the Daytona Coupe in 1964, collaborated with Ford to create the Shelby Mustang GT350 in 1965, taken over the Ford GT programme – famously resulting in the Ford 1-2-3 at the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours – and developed the Mustang GT500 for 1967. Heck, by 1967 he’d even launched his autobiography, The Carroll Shelby Story, but the young Aaron Shelby was oblivious to most of that.

‘He really was just a typical grandfather,’ reasserts Aaron. ‘He’d show up with bags of candy for me and my brothers, and we spent a lot of time at his farm in East Texas, riding motorcycles, going fishing. We didn’t see him as much as my other grandfather, who lived down the street, but we did all the same things.’

For the car world, these were Shelby’s lost years. He moved away from Ford, and began chasing down the ever-growing number of Cobra replicas. He was always busy, always entrepreneurial. He even launched Carroll Shelby’s Texas Chili mix, which – as Aaron points out – he sold to Kraft. He ran his cattle farm and made up for lost time with his family.

‘Carroll was not a good father from a standpoint of when they [Aaron’s father and his siblings] were little, he was on the road

a lot, racing,’ says Aaron. ‘He was just gone all the time. And then he moved to California in 1960 and his kids were still in Dallas.

‘They wound up being very close, though, once things had calmed down. My dad and his brother went to USC in Southern California, and they lived with Carroll for a little bit out there. Later on, dad really wanted to go racing, so he went to the Shelby School of High Performance Driving at Riverside and Willow Springs. Carroll said: “You can go racing if you can afford it. Good luck.”

‘And so that’s what dad did. He had a manufacturing business by then; Carroll was his partner. It was called Carroll Shelby Wheels, making aluminum wheels. And as soon as dad made enough money, he bought a Formula Ford car.’

In the 1980s, it all changed again for Carroll; he was employed by renowned car industry executive Lee Iacocca – with whom he’d worked so successfully at Ford – to breathe new life into the fading Dodge brand. Finally, Aaron was able to experience some of the adulation that the world had for his grandfather.

‘When I was 12, he was building Dodge cars from Southern California, so we went to see the factory one day. He said, “I’m going to teach you how to drive today.” So that was pretty awesome! We got a little Dodge Omni GLH, and he went onto the skid pad, walked me through the clutch and the gas and all that, and said, “OK, get in the driver’s seat. You’re gonna do it now.”

‘He’s not somebody I would have pictured as having a lot of patience, but he had a lot of patience with me that day. He never raised his voice. There’s little things like that along the way that made me think, “Oh yeah, I couldn’t do this with just a normal grandfather.”’

That became even clearer when magazines started to feature Carroll again during the Dodge era, and in the early 1990s when – outraged by the growing number of unlicensed Cobra replicas out there – he began building his own versions again.

‘I was like, “Alright, this isn’t everybody that gets their grandfather on the cover of Autoweek or Road & Track,”’ says Aaron. ‘And then the real neat part for me was that he drove the Viper as the pace car at the Indy 500 in 1991.

I got to fly out and be with him for the weekend at that race, it was fantastic.’

This was mere months after Carroll’s heart transplant; he’d suffered from heart problems all his life, which famously stopped him from racing from 1960 on. ‘Literally nobody wanted him to drive. Chrysler had said he could do it, but the safety people said “No, you just came off a heart transplant!” But you met Carroll.

There was not a “no” in his vocabulary.

‘I was very fortunate. On the Saturday at Indy, he was doing fast laps with the media.

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Shelby Special The Octane Interview

‘WE JUST KNEW HIM AS GRANDPA. AS A FAMILY MEMBER, YOU HAD TO PRY THE INFORMATION OUT OF HIM. HE’D TALK ABOUT ANYTHING BUT CARS’

Somebody was slow getting into the car and Carroll told me to jump in for a lap. It was sunny but it had rained the night before. We hit 160, maybe 165mph, on the back straight, like it was nothing. He was looking at me the whole time. He just had that natural ability.’

I’m still fascinated to know what other people made of all this, and how they treated Carroll back then. ‘Most of my friends didn’t really equate it. A lot of them got to meet him but, again, it was at the farm. They knew who he was but they weren’t car people, and Dodge stuff wasn’t as exciting as the ’60s Shelby stuff.

He treated them all great but everybody was like, “Oh, it’s just your grandfather.”

‘It wasn’t until he got back with Ford in the early 2000s when it just became incredible.

I tell people that the best thing he did in his life, business-wise, was joining back with Ford. It just re-energised him and re-energised the whole brand. And now my sons – they’re 19 and 21 – know Shelby inside and out, and their friends know Shelby, because you’ve got the [modern] Shelby GT350s and the Super Snakes and the Shelby trucks out there.’

Of course, Carroll Shelby also became famous all over again thanks to that 2019 film: Ford v Ferrari in the US, Le Mans ’66 in the UK and Europe. ‘I just didn’t get it when they announced Matt Damon [to play Shelby] but he did a good job,’ says Aaron. ‘He really got in character and he brought a lot of Carroll’s traits across really well on the screen.

‘It was also pretty true as far as not just the overarching story, but how you would see him going to Detroit with his suit on and politicking with Ford, and then going back to the boys

in California and saying “Don’t worry about what Ford told me, guys, just keep doing what you do.” That’s what he was like, he had their backs, and that’s why his team loved him.

‘A lot of people ask me if he did steal the stopwatch from Ferrari, and did he drop the tyre bolts down there? I don’t think he did but it is something that he could have done, and I think that’s important for people to recognise.’

It’s interesting, though, that this famously single-minded Carroll never pushed any of the family members to get involved with Shelby, even during the 2000s when the brand was recognised again. It wasn’t until after Carroll’s death in 2012, aged 89, that the Shelby American company reached out to the family.

This is where Aaron fits in. He didn’t go into the car business, but instead majored in finance at school and went into banking, which he’s still in today. He remained passionate about the Shelby name, though, and after Carroll’s death in 2012, the management of Shelby American approached Aaron to say that they wanted a Shelby presence at Ford’s roll-out of the new Shelby GT350. Would he be interested in being there?

‘I did that, and I didn’t say anything I wasn’t supposed to say, so they asked me if I could come back the next weekend for the LA Auto Show,’ says Aaron. He agreed, and ended up joining the board of Carroll Shelby International as a brand ambassador in 2016. As such, he’s been around the world, to Goodwood Revival, Le Mans Classic, Monterey Car Week and more.

‘I think I’ve got the best of both worlds. I get recognised at The Quail, say, but 99%

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of my life, nobody knows who I am. Carroll had so much time for people and he had a memory like an elephant’s. He’d say “Oh, yeah, we met ten years ago at Lime Rock and you had your kid with you. How’s your kid doing?” I’m not at that level yet but I get to hear so many stories about Carroll and really talk to those people; that’s what I love the most.’

The Shelby family is also tracking down important items and cars associated with their grandfather, for inclusion in a 7500sq ft private collection at the family office in Dallas.

It includes around 18 to 20 of the family’s 35-strong collection of Shelby cars, plus countless smaller items.

‘He had a lot, but he also lived a lot in his life,’ understates Aaron. ‘He got divorced a lot, he didn’t keep good track of things, so stuff just disappeared. The neatest thing in my mind that we have is the Patek Philippe watch that he got when he won Le Mans in 1959. My father was at the race – he was about 12 – and Carroll gave the watch to him after he got out of college. It sat in a safe deposit box, and now we’ve got it on display.

‘Also, as the story goes in AJ Baime’s book, Henry Ford II was getting pretty irritated that they weren’t winning at Le Mans. So in ’66 he handed all the team members a card that said “You better win”, and signed it. I was going through a box of knick-knacks from Carroll’s office after he passed, and there was an envelope that just said “Henry Ford II card” on it. I pulled it out, and that’s what it was. It said, “You better win, HF II.” ‘My brothers and I are always looking at auctions or talking to people at swapmeets, and we still end up getting trophies from Carroll’s driving days in the ’50s. The internet has been fantastic, too, for being able to delve into historical photographs. We found some great pictures of Carroll racing in the ’50s, for example, that we didn’t know existed.

‘I really think he’d be proud of what I’m doing and I know he would love what the company’s doing today. He was always about the next car, the next innovative thing. He was an entrepreneur. He would probably be playing the politics at Ford a little better than I do – if he wasn’t getting what he wanted, he knew who to call at the top and make it happen.

‘We will continue to develop and sell new things, that’s what we do best, and that’s what brings the next generation of Shelby enthusiasts in the door. But we love to play into our heritage, too, with the replica cars. Carroll was always surprised how many replicas were sold every year. He couldn’t believe it because even then it was 50-year-old technology.

‘I love the passion that people have for Shelby today, and to go around the world and represent this brand is something special.

I love my grandfather and all he did.’

Clockwise, from opposite With Shelby American VP Vince LaViolette (in racesuit) and the new Shelby GT350 at Willow Springs; the late 1980s, Aaron at the wheel of his father’s newly built 1966 Shelby GT350 continuation car; at the 1990 Palm Springs Historics with a 1965 Shelby GT350R; in the mid-1990s, with his father, Patrick, and grandfather, Carroll; at the 1991 Indy 500 in the Dodge Viper pace car – which Carroll drove.

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Zagato Alfa Coachbuilt stunner

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piaCoda C Dop he 8 nt n n e u t d s onloo di lte ker which s nd su re il, a ll Pho t o g r a p hy M l ta as veals a ax S e rr ò re a ica elb ad oD m si

latest collaboration w s ’ o t ith a Alf Zag h t t w in insp aR ar wi c a irat om – ion eo sf at Vill or h a d’ Est its e. M r as

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Zagato Alfa Coachbuilt stunner

F

ew traditions in the car world are stronger than the relationship between Alfa Romeo and Zagato. From the 1920s on, some of the most beautiful (and, in racing, most successful) Alfa Romeos were bodied by the Milanese coachbuilder.

Following Zagato’s creations for the Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 from 1927, including the Turismo, Sport and Granturismo bodies, the relationship flourished to such an extent that a 1933 Alfa Romeo 8C print advert was worded as ‘The Spider that, with the trio Alfa Romeo, Scuderia Ferrari and Carrozzeria Zagato, brought countless victories in the homeland and abroad for the honour of Italy.’

Carrozzeria Zagato was founded by Ugo Zagato in 1919, and aimed to capitalise on his expertise in metallurgy and manufacturing aeroplanes – developed during World War One while working at Officine Aeronautiche Pomilio – by bringing it to the automobile world. When he opened for business, he declared his official activity to be the manufacture and repair of cars and aeroplane bodies.

From the earliest days of its existence, Carrozzeria Zagato appealed to the most dynamic drivers, largely thanks to the clean shapes and lightweight construction of its bodies – true even of a 1929 Rolls-Royce Phantom I that was dressed there. But there is no doubt that Zagato’s most successful partnership came

about with a nearby firm: Zagato was based in Via Traiano, just a few hundred metres from the Portello works of Alfa Romeo.

Back then, Alfa Romeo was considered the best sports car manufacturer in the world, and its chassis and engines were the perfect basis for the design techniques and style offered by Zagato. Ugo Zagato’s skills appealed hugely to two men: Ingegnere Vittorio Jano, technical father of the most successful Alfa of the period, and Enzo Ferrari, in charge of the Alfa Romeo racing team until November 1929, when he founded Scuderia Ferrari. As a result, most of its cars were bodied by Zagato.

After World War Two, links between the two firms became ever tighter, with small-series productions such as the 1960 Giulietta Zagato SZ, the 1963 Giulia Zagato TZ, and the 1964 TZ2. Meanwhile, Ugo Zagato’s son Elio raced in the colours of the Carrozzeria, advertising the performance of its creations. He was often capable of winning yet, when possible, preferred to leave the pleasure of finishing first to Zagato’s customers. Their victory, he believed, was the Carrozzeria’s best marketing tool.

‘And he was absolutely right,’ says Andrea Zagato, son of Elio and at the helm of Zagato since the mid-1980s. ‘Each of Elio’s victories helped to get more customers and to create many of the legends linked with us. The 1960s were the development years, with more and more careful studies of aerodynamics as a tool to increase the performance of the model we were working on. This is why, in the 1950s, the legendary “double bubble” roof

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Clockwise, from opposite Nose all-new yet familiar, and the altered proportions are immediately apparent; luxe interior as per ‘regular’ 8C; the Stresa-Mottarone hillclimb makes a suitably stunning location.

had been created, to reduce the overall profile yet still allow drivers to fit, even when wearing a helmet. And so we further developed our aerodynamic studies, making the original “Wunibald Kamm tail” concept more and more effective as we moved from the rounded shape of the SZ to the squared shape of the TZs.’ The Kamm tail is responsible for one of the most enlightening anecdotes of the car world, which dates back to the first outing of a prototype Giulietta Sprint Zagato fitted with the squared-off rear end. It’s worth remembering that the Giulietta Sprint Zagato is powered by a 1.3-litre four-cylinder engine, and had already been considered a state-of-the-art model with its rounded tail and a maximum speed close to the 200km/h mark (125mph).

Behind the steering wheel was Elio Zagato himself, and in the passenger seat was chief designer Ercole Spada, in the role of timekeeper. The ‘test track’ was none other than the MilanBergamo highway, a well-known stretch of tarmac. After a while, the pair came back to demand a new stopwatch, as the one they were using couldn’t possibly be right… How could it, when it was suggesting a maximum speed of 220km/h (137.5mph)?

Whether a new stopwatch was provided is not known, but from that moment on the Kamm tail became a design trademark of Zagato, both for competition and road use.

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Zagato Alfa Coachbuilt stunner

‘This is why we came up with the idea for the DoppiaCoda,’ continues Andrea Zagato, speaking of the latest Alfa Romeo collaboration. ‘It’s a special project that took over as a sort of experiment with the tails. We had collaborated with Alpine on the AGTZ in 2024, for us a first with a French manufacturer since a couple of Renaults we did back in the 1950s, and we had to develop two tails, hence the name “Twin Tails”: the short-tail version and the long-tail one. During the development of this project we focused on this part of the car. It meant embarking on a comparison between the rounded and the squared tails.

‘When we manufactured the TZ3, celebrating the Alfa Romeo centenary in 2010, we brought a prototype to Villa d’Este. We liked the final result, and when we entered the manufacturing stage of the TZ3 after Villa d’Este, one of the options we had on the table was to use a new tail design, but we preferred to move forward in a more traditional way, as the TZ had a well-established style. That decision left us with a strong temptation to create a car with a hollowed tail, keeping the upper part of it as in a Kamm tail design, but opening its lower part to allow better airflow.

‘In doing so, we paired two tails in the same car, creating a doppia coda. We developed the concept virtually in the wind tunnel and it worked well from the beginning. The wind tunnel

results allowed us to improve its functionality, reaching the final form by mixing an aesthetic concept and a technical one.

Formally, if we go racing, we could still improve its effect but we would lose in beauty, and vice versa if the aim is to show it at a concours d’élégance, as we did in 2025, winning the Design Award at Villa d’Este. But I want to stress that each form has a function and it is not for decoration only.’

Following its success at Villa d’Este, many wondered if the 8C DoppiaCoda would enter production, and there were many different rumours. ‘There was a change of direction from our side,’ says Andrea. ‘Originally, the concept was supposed to be the first of a very limited production, but when the owner of the car saw the final result and the success it had, he preferred to keep it as a one-off, to enjoy the personal pleasure of owning something so special, of which only one exists.

‘I should add that one of the main inspirations was the terrific 1937 Alfa Romeo 8C Aerodinamica, the black car that we had believed to be a one-off, though we recently discovered that it was part of a small group of aerodynamics studies we carried out in that period. It was launched at the 1937 Salone Internazionale dell’Automobile Milano, and became famous for being the earliest example of “post-war design” with integrated fenders.’

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‘AN INSPIRATION WAS THE TERRIFIC 1937 ALFA ROMEO 8C AERODINAMICA’ - ANDREA ZAGATO

This page, clockwise, from top Rear three-quarter is where the action happens, with vestigial ‘double-bubble’ roof giving way to a dual-optimised tail; body-contoured seats; glorious V8; chance rendezvous with an older sibling.

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Zagato Alfa Coachbuilt stunner

As for this latest car, what lies beneath? ‘The rolling chassis is that of a standard 8C Competizione,’ says Andrea. That’s the rather beautiful sports car produced in limited quantities between 2007 and 2010, rather than the pre-war 8C. ‘It’s a model well-known to us, as many of the studies for it were done by Zagato. Wolfgang Egger [then chief designer at Alfa Romeo and the father of the 8C Competizione] was in charge, and much of the mathematics for production was prepared at Zagato, as well as the styling models. At Zagato we imagined “our” 8C, which would have been a slightly different project from the one proposed by Alfa Romeo Centro Stile. Indeed, their design, which entered production, sports a very short tail, while we would have loved to have the tail a little longer for improved aerodynamics and as a sign of respect for our tradition. The 2025 8C DoppiaCoda is the evolution of that idea.’

Seeing the DoppiaCoda in the metal, you’re surprised at the way its shape seems to change according to how you view it: it looks different from certain angles, the tail sometimes more prominent, sometimes less so, but always expressing a clear sense of technical beauty. Wearing its new body, 8C Competizione chassis number 43062 is out on the roads of the famous Stresa-Mottarone hillclimb, probably the best possible place to experience such a car. Indeed, so perfect is this route that we encounter another Alfa Romeo Zagato, just a little older, in the form of a 1930 1750 GS owned by an Australian collector, who is visiting Italy with his wife and his vintage Alfa.

What a coincidence: a triple tails gathering!

‘The Alfa Romeo, still more so when it’s a Zagato, is the best car in the world to drive,’ says Fabrizio Pistochini, a former Alfa

Romeo test driver who joined the company in 1973 and worked with Giulia, GT, 1750, Alfasud, 90, 75, 146 and so on, up to the latest Giulia Quadrifoglio. ‘To test drive and help the development of the rolling chassis has been my daily work for 40 years, with special focus on the hard mechanical elements, such as suspension, brakes, gearboxes and the chassis optimisation,’ he says.

‘When I retired after many years at Alfa, Zagato hired me to help with the development of its projects, 8C DoppiaCoda included. It is a great car, based on one of the best supercars of the last period. Zagato did not alter the mechanics; in terms of power and torque there was no need. Instead, they reviewed the aerodynamics, making this car still better on the road than a standard 8C, with a better response at higher speed. And – this is my personal taste – it looks even better with its streamlined shape. In terms of weight, as the Zagato parts are also in carbonfibre, the DoppiaCoda weighs no more than the standard 8C, so there is enough power to really have fun.’

While, by today’s standards, some will find the decision not to increase the power an unusual choice, it follows a logic dear to Zagato: not to manufacture the fastest version of the model, because Zagato heritage is not linked with engine tuning but is instead a tribute to the model its work is based on.

A further benefit for the owner is that the 8C DoppiaCoda can always be serviced at official Alfa Romeo workshops.

However, the real strength of the 8C DoppiaCoda is not its practicality but the historical importance of its existence. It is a clear reminder of the reasons why Zagato-bodied Alfa Romeos won so many races. Its beauty is a bonus.

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Small wonders Microcar rally

SIZE TRY THESE FOR

Octane visits the National Microcar Rally and samples some of the smallest machines ever to call themselves a car Words John Simister Photography Barry Hayden

WHERE IS THE NATIONAL MICROCAR RALLY? Follow the smoke, the soothing aroma of combusted twostroke oil, and arrive at the Cotswold Wildlife Park just outside Burford, Oxfordshire. Why here, and won’t the animals object? Because it’s where this event started, 50 years ago, so there’s celebrating to do.

So what will we see there? That depends on what it means to be a microcar. Broadly, a microcar for the purposes of this event’s organisers is a car with an engine under 600cc or three wheels, or in many cases both attributes. It’s not vital for that engine to be a two-stroke, but many are, not least because they tend to be smoother and more powerful than a same-size four-stroke and therefore better at propelling something that purports to be a car.

You can picture the sort of thing, and plenty are pictured here. But beyond the vrooming, popping two-strokes we’ll also encounter Bond Bugs, a couple of obscurities with A-series engines and, going up a wheel, various flavours of Fiat 500. The modern world is acknowledged with a smart or two and several Swiss-designed, Italian-made Microlinos, electric-powered and resembling an inflated Isetta.

And, in the spirit of the event, the organisers have also welcomed the odd rule-bender: a four-wheeled Bond Bug and the Steyr-Puch 650S that my Rover 2000 TC and I passed on the way to the event. They even let me park the Rover in the ‘Others of Interest’ section, despite it being anything but micro. One of two very pretty Goggomobil TS coupés in red and white parked next to it.

A quick survey of the assembled miniature motor cars brings me straight back to my childhood, for I am old enough to remember Bond Minicars, Heinkel and Isetta bubblecars, and Perspex-canopied Messerschmitts as regular features of the roadscape. Such machines were often bought by those who had a motorcycle licence, on which the cars could be driven provided there was no operational reverse gear. They were a step up from a motorcycle-andsidecar combination yet didn’t require the taking of another driving test. And then the Mini arrived, along with hire purchase, and – in the UK, at least – microcars ceased to be the marginal motorist’s choice of wheels.

In 1962, however, what was promoted as ‘The World’s Smallest Car’ was unveiled. This was the one-door, monoposto Peel P50, of which 55, or maybe 56, examples were made at Peel on the Isle of Man and sold for £199 each.

And that’s where we’ll start, as we spy a gathering of Peels including a fine red one from the Manx Transport Heritage Museum at, yes, Peel. The museum’s Brian Diehl tells me that 28 P50s are known still to exist, but there are more extant (around 35) of Peel’s next machine with its bubble canopy and two (just) seats.

Quick diversion. The Isetta, of which several are parked nearby, was created by Iso in Italy, hence its name. Iso also made very fast GTs with V8 engines, a pleasing portfolio of extremes, another of which we’ll meet later. BMW took over Isetta manufacture and later passed it on to a British company with a factory behind Brighton station, but let us

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Small wonders Microcar rally

‘MANY REVS AND WE’RE OFF. THE STEERING IS LUDICROUSLY QUICK, CAUSING OCCASIONAL TOPPLINGS FOR SOME EARLY PEEL DRIVERS’ return to the Perspex-roofed Peel, also present here today.

It seems to have a Maserati badge, a trident. Was this another offloaded creation from Italian automotive aristocracy? No. Nor was it anything to do with Britain’s long-lost Trident company, maker of the TVR Trident-inspired Clipper GT among others. It is simply the Peel Trident.

These Peels have a 49cc, single-cylinder DKW two-stroke motor with typically 4.2bhp, a three-speed gearbox and three 5in wheels. They are so light that you can lift up the tail with the handle on the back and wheel it into the tightest of parking spaces. Can I have a go in the pristine red P50? I can, so I squeeze through the door, heed Brian’s warning not to push the clutch pedal all the way down because it will stick there, pull up on the starting lever to my right, engage first gear, give it not enough revs and obviously stall.

Try again. Many revs, decisive foot movements and we’re off. The steering is almost ludicrously quick, causing wobbles and occasional topplings for some early Peel drivers lacking the required delicate touch, and the game little engine might take me beyond 30mph if I dare. But ‘25 is fast enough’, the Manx museum’s John Tarrant has suggested. I turn at the top of the driveway, don’t fall over, briefly snatch third, then return to base ready to try another P50.

This one is new. A replica made by P50 Cars, and powered by electricity. It has a 50-mile range, costs £12,577 if you assemble it yourself (or more for a ‘Turbo’ version offering 80 miles and 50mph), and feels rather more stable thanks to its low-mounted, quite heavy battery pack. In place of a manic two-stroke is an electro-mechanical whine, and of course no clutch and gears. It’s beautifully made and a lot cheaper than an original P50, a few of which have apparently sold for six-figure sums.

While pondering Peels I chat with Malcolm Thomas, who has an original 1965 Peel Trident (in blue, here today) and

co-started the National Microcar Rally back in 1975. He and his wife once drove their Trident from their home in Croydon to a microcar meeting in the Netherlands, and all went well apart from a shredding of the tiny tyres. Another veteran from that first rally is also here: Sjoerd ter Burg from, yes, the Netherlands. He drove to the UK in 1975 in a Zündapp Janus, one of which we’ll meet later.

‘It was going to be the Three-Wheeler Rally,’ he remembers, ‘but the Janus has four wheels. And there were other four-wheeled microcars, so it was changed to the Microcar Rally. I came over every year for the next ten years.’

Now, to four wheels and a 1957 Goggomobil T300 in very rare right-hand drive, belonging to Jamie Cook. It was his grandfather’s: ‘Once he drove it to Germany and it broke down in the dark. There was a problem with the fuel system, so he used his cigarette lighter to get a better look…’

It’s actually an Australian-spec car, but its first owner was a lady in Tunbridge Wells. The engine is a two-stroke vertical twin so its pistons’ oscillations alternate, making for smooth running, unlike in a four-stroke twin with pistons that must move together. I’m discovering this surprising smoothness as I accelerate away with surprising vigour, given that this 0.3-litre four-seater has just 16.2bhp – good for 53mph – and try to remember which way to move the lever through its four gears. That’s because not only is the gearchange gate reversed relative to normality, it’s also rotated by 90º.

This is a dog-clutch gearbox like a motorbike’s, so quick, decisive clicks of movement are needed. Once learnt, it’s all rather satisfying. Test drive over, I peek underneath the front to discover swing-axle front suspension, the ‘axles’ formed from wide-based, centre-pivoted wishbones, geometrically just like that of my favourite 1960s small (but not micro) car, the Hillman Imp. Then I recall that the earliest Imp prototype, an egg-shaped device nicknamed the

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Slug, used the front suspension from a Goggomobil, comically positive camber and all.

After all this excitement I don’t know if I’m coming or going, and the next car we encounter won’t help. Lawrence House is its owner, the 1958 Zundapp Janus is the car that seems to be looking in two directions at once. Two sides (or ends) of the same automotive coin. Like an Isetta or a Heinkel, the Nuremberg-made Janus has an entry door across the front, although it lacks the articulated steering column that moves to the side as the door is opened.

Instead you have to manoeuvre yourself around the column.

There’s an identical door at the back, and a bench seat identical to the one at the front but facing backwards.

Between these seats, which can be folded flat to make a rather high bed, is the engine: this is truly a mid-engined car. The engine is a 250cc, 14bhp, two-stroke single (despite the racy twin-pipe exhaust), laid on its side to the right of the car’s centreline and driving through a sequential fourspeed gearbox. The spare wheel occupies a similar space on the left. The front suspension uses leading arms, the rear trailing arms: another mirror image.

‘It was originally an ice-cream van,’ says Lawrence, who is a veteran of the Microcar Rally, having attended since the second one in 1976. ‘The ice-cream man would sit sideways on the bench seat and serve his customers through the main side window, which opened. There were lots of

Clockwise, from opposite, top left Brian Diehl demonstrates Peel P50 party trick; Perspex-domed Peel Trident; push-me-pull-you Zündapp Janus; Aussie-spec Goggomobil a real rarity.

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Small wonders Microcar rally

Clockwise, from above Simister drives Messerschmitt TG500; more Messerschmitts; driving the Zündapp Janus – and with owner Lawrence House; Janus seats fold flat to make a bed; TG500 shows its maker’s aircraft roots.

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little dents along the side where eager children were banging their knees.’

Time for a drive. The four-forward-speed (but only one reverse, spoiling the symmetry) gearbox with its lever to the left of the driver’s seat is sequential, motorcycle-style, and there’s an indicator above the speedometer to tell you where you are in the sequence. The Janus buzzes along quite eagerly and has remarkable cabin space for such a small machine. It will cruise at 52mph, Lawrence tells me, ‘but if you cruise at 53 it will run the big-ends’.

He and his family have also brought another car along today, one I have long wanted to encounter. It’s a 1959 Messerschmitt Tiger, or more accurately (since production switched to a new company in 1956) an FMR TG500 that cost, Lawrence reveals, ‘more than a Frogeye Sprite’.

He continues: ‘It was bought new in the US by Vic Hyde, a famous circus performer. He used to play five trumpets simultaneously. I’ve owned it for 35 years or more. In 1999 my wife and I drove it to Nordkapp, the most northerly point in Europe, for the Millennium Summer Solstice.

She was three months pregnant.’

Mrs House wouldn’t have had much lounging space in this tandem two-seater, but the Perspex fighter-plane canopy assuages the claustrophobia a bit. Although it is getting very hot in here on this sunny day, as I sit behind Lawrence for a blast up the A361. This is the four-wheeled model, on generous 10in wheels, and Lawrence demonstrates this 389kg lightweight’s astonishing

‘THE CANOPY IS HINGED SHUT, I AM IN A BUBBLE. WE’RE OFF, AND THE TG500 FEELS EXTREMELY CHIRPY’ cornering powers around Burford’s roundabout before the 493cc Sachs two-cylinder motor, a two-stroke with 20bhp, hurtles us back to base.

My turn. Caterhams are dubbed four-wheeled motorcycles but the term is more apposite here because instead of a steering wheel there’s a handlebar. So the steering is extremely quick, adding to the extraordinary agility. The gearlever (four gears, a dog-box again) is to my right, the pedals are normal. The canopy is hinged shut, I am in a bubble. We’re off, and the TG500 feels extremely chirpy. Nordkapp? Why not?

In the Dumpy Book of Cars and Commercial Vehicles that I was given for Christmas in 1959, the two pages devoted to AC showed an Ace, its Aceca coupé sibling, the new Greyhound four-seater… and the incredibly utilitarian

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Small wonders Microcar rally

Clockwise, from top Friskysport sans tail, plus Scootacars; 1958 Earls Court Friskysprint, a model tweaked in Australia to be the Lightburn Zeta; endearingly silly 1938 Rytecraft Special.

AC Petite three-wheeler. Here is that other portfolio of extremes promised earlier, but then versatile AC also made railway carriages. I don’t remember ever seeing a Petite in period but two are here today, one used with a touch of stuff-the-system defiance as an everyday car. There’s quite a long bonnet but the 346cc two-stroke single is actually in the boot. AC went on to build many invalid carriages alongside Cobras and 428s, but the roots are here.

And finally to the oldest car at the event, a 1938 Rytecraft Special newly restored and reintroduced to the road just eight days ago. It has the shape of a late-1930s open tourer but is not much more than half the size, as the disproportionately large yet actually normal-size numberplates reveal. Carl Barnard and his son Rupert rescued it over 11 years ago and, after much work and sleuthing for scarce parts, the beautifully coach-painted result is a feast for the eyes with its hand-fashioned chrome strips and its extraordinary dorsal tailfin.

The Special is the ‘sporting’ Rytecraft Scootacar with a 250cc Villiers two-stroke in the tail. Lesser versions had a 98cc motor, and such a car was driven around the world in

the 1960s by one Jim Parkinson. Today it’s in the Brooklands Museum. The even lesser original versions had electric motors and populated fairground dodgem-car arenas.

The engine is running in, so the Barnards are using a very oily 16:1 petrol-and-oil mix. The brakes and steering aren’t quite optimal yet so they would rather I didn’t drive it, and passengering is tricky because it’s really just a one-and-ahalf seater, but it’s road-legal with a new MoT, and is said to be good for 30mph. So Rupert does a few runs for Octane’s camera, a thick smoke haze marking where the Rytecraft has recently been. Carl also owns a Lamborghini, by the way.

I haven’t the space to detail the sporty Berkeleys, the later (non-Rytecraft) Scootacars, the Piaggios, the smart Meadows Friskysports, the gloriously hideous Gordon with big-car-size wheels and an engine where the driver’s door should be. Nor have I told the curious tale of the Heinkels that were made first in Germany, then in Dundalk in Ireland, and finally under licence in the UK by Trojan. But all, and more, are here. Where size matters least of all.

THANKS TO national-microcar-rally.co.uk.

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Lola T70 Johnny Herbert track-test

green Former F1 racer Johnny Herbert takes to the track behind the wheel of the ‘ultimate’ ex-David Piper Lola T70 Words Damien Smith

BRUTAL, ISN’T IT? Especially in that vivid shade of green. But the Lola T70, even in its ultimate MkIIIB form you see here, was never quite what it seemed. Intimidating to the eye – and the ear, thanks to that wonderfully sonorous 5.0-litre Chevy soundtrack – the T70 was and remains a relatively ‘comfortable’ racing car to drive. Which is just as well.

Because, while an illustrious roster of star names raced it at the height of the model’s late60s/early-70s period life, it was always primarily intended to be friendly to amateurs.

For Lola, the customer always came first.

That’s what Johnny Herbert quickly discovered on his first encounter with this particular T70 on the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit recently. ‘Surprisingly, it’s a bit like when you jump into a road car,’ says the 1995 British GP winner, who today is relishing a new role as cheerleading ambassador for reborn Lola Cars. ‘You sit in it, and you’re

comfortable straight away. Often in racing cars you have to fiddle around to get the seat and pedals in the right place. But the fit was very easy. Then once I got out of the garage and onto the pit-lane, the unassisted steering was easy. I was expecting it to feel heavy – but it wasn’t. It’s very well put together.’

Herbert sampled what has to be among the most famous customer racing cars of them all – and certainly the most familiar Lola. This is SL76/150, the car supplied new in March 1969 to sports car racing’s British privateer archetype, David Piper. The model had been introduced in 1965, first in spyder form, as Lola founder Eric Broadley’s successor to the Mk6 GT – the origins car of the Ford GT40.

John Surtees blazed to inaugural 1966 Can-Am glory in a T70, then the following year the then ex-Ferrari ace raced (unsuccessfully) an Aston Martin V8-powered version in MkIII coupé form at Le Mans. By the end of the decade,

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Lola T70 Johnny Herbert track-test

‘IT WAS REALLY LIVELY. BUT SURPRISINGLY, WHEN IT WENT IT DIDN’T SNAP’ – JOHNNY HERBERT

the uprated MkIIIB had superseded the GT40 as the Group 4 sport prototype choix du jour for the dedicated gentleman privateer endurance racer. Delivered to Piper in his signature ‘BP green’, SL76/150 was among the original run of 16 built.

Herbert’s focus as Lola ambassador is primarily on the present and future rather than the past of a beloved British racing car constructor that wilted under Broadley in the 1990s, gained new life under Irishman Martin Birrane, and has been revived once again under the fresh ownership of Till Bechtolsheimer, an English businessman and, suitably, amateur enthusiast racing driver. Electric-powered Formula E in alliance with Yamaha has been the headline campaign so far, a sign of where a modern-day racing car specialist has to be if it is to thrive. But still, the indulgence of a step back in time is irresistible – both for Bechtolsheimer, who now owns SL76/150, and Herbert, who didn’t need persuading to don a set of racing overalls once again.

A veteran of 160 GP starts for Benetton, Tyrrell, Lotus, Ligier, Benetton again, Sauber, Stewart and Jaguar, and a three-time F1 racewinner, Johnny also gained acclaim in sports car racing, heroically winning Le Mans in the banshee rotary-engined Mazda 787B in 1991, then finishing runner-up at the 24 Hours over three consecutive years between 2002 and ’04 in Audi and Bentleys. Now 61, he still regularly trailers his own kart to tracks for low-key midweek open test days. In other words, he’s an old pro but also a true enthusiast.

‘I always like going back to past days, trying to understand what racing drivers felt in cars from earlier periods,’ says Herbert. ‘The first

thing I noticed – you’ve got the shape, the colour, the David Piper sticker down the back.

But when I got in the cockpit, what stood out most was the gearstick. I grabbed it and found the top spins in a full 360º. What a bloody good idea. I’ve never had a car with one of those. When I was in F1 especially, you always ripped a hole in the palm of your hand during every single grand prix. This would probably have reduced that.’

Herbert appreciates being comfortable in racing cars, because too often during his career he wasn’t. Not only because it was an aspect most F1 designers of the 1980s and 1990s rarely (if ever) considered, but because of the foot injuries he suffered, the consequences of which he still endures today. How Herbert had a racing career at all, never mind such a good one, is a miracle given the magnitude of his dreadful crash in a Formula 3000 single-seater race at Brands Hatch in August 1988.

Details matter, as Herbert found in the T70.

‘Take the pedals,’ he says. ‘I’ve been in some 1960s cars and they’ve all had puny little pads on the pedals. Substantial is not the right word, but these were nicely proportioned. Because of my issues with my ankles one thing that aided me, but would also aid anybody, was a raised heel rest to the side of the footwell. Little elements are very well organised.’

Still, comfortable it might have been, but Herbert knew the T70 needed to be treated with respect on track. Built as an aluminium monocoque, the MkIIIB weighs in at around 860kg and offers 450bhp from its Traco-built, four-carburettor Chevy V8. ‘It was a bit damp when I went out and that did make my eyes open, especially on its wide-treaded tyres,’ says

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DOM GALL

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This page, clockwise, from below Former F1 driver Johnny Herbert with the T70; simple cockpit is user-friendly; in the pits and being prepped for Johnny’s track session; 450bhp from Chevrolet V8; campaigned in period by Piper, Attwood and others – seen here at Silverstone in the 1980s.

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Johnny. ‘It was really lively. But surprisingly, and considering the weight, when it went it didn’t snap. You could control the slide, it was very forgiving. When it oversteered you could get it a long way out, but you would be able to control it and hang onto the car.’

In truth, the final T70 was already dated by the time it entered racing service. By the late 1960s, bewinged Can-Am cars were already offering up the new elixir for racing drivers: this thing called aerodynamic download – or downforce. From his era, Herbert is wellversed in what real downforce feels like, so we expect him to pick up on the T70’s lack of it.

Instead, he makes another point.

‘With or without downforce, you’ve still got to have drivability and that’s probably the most important thing, especially when you’re doing a 24-hour race at Daytona or Le Mans.

Comfort is important. I always remember in my Audi and Bentley time those cars were very easy to drive. And that was something I felt when I got into the T70.

‘When you haven’t got downforce, mechanical grip is what it’s all about, and this has got tons of traction. I suspect the strength that it had in period was the ability to drift it, get it slightly out of shape, but actually be in control of it. Balance is so important for a driver, because physically and mentally it’s easier if you have it. In that period when the T70 came into effect, motor racing was at that crossroads with downforce, but this car was still relatively competitive. And I think that was purely down to its drivability.’

In ultimate terms, ‘relative’ is the keyword.

Compared to factory thoroughbreds such as the Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512, the customer-focused Lola T70 was usually outclassed. Its biggest win, the 1969 Daytona 24 Hours via Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons in Roger Penske’s dark blue Sunocobacked T70, came in a race of famously high attrition. Most of its successes were earned in lesser races, outside of the premier division World Sportscar Championship.

Piper campaigned SL76/150 extensively through 1969, landing a win at Montlhéry.

But notably he bought a Porsche 917K for 1970 from Rico Steinemann, having first been offered a Ferrari 512S from Enzo Ferrari himself. The T70 was loaned out to invited drivers that season: Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann – Porsche’s first Le Mans winners – and Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Mike Parkes. At Dijon, Attwood used the T70 to beat Piper in his 917 and has since recalled the patron’s annoyance…

Then in the summer ‘Pipes’ loaned the car, among others, to a company called Solar Productions. You’ve likely seen the green Lola playing its part as an extra in Steve McQueen’s Le Mans movie. Piper gave strict instructions

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‘HERBERT ADMITS HE WOULD HAVE RELISHED RACING THE T70 IN ITS PERIOD LIFE’

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that only he or Attwood could drive the car during the shoot – which then took a violent turn for the privateer. During a filming run from Arnage to Maison Blanche, a tyre on the 917 that Piper was driving came off the rim at 170mph. He lost the lower part of his right leg in recovery from the ensuing accident.

The T70 was acquired in 1971 by PierreHenri Archambeaud, who raced it extensively in France for two seasons, before Piper bought it back in 1975. Sold on again in 1979, it passed through various hands in the US, Sweden, France and the UK and enjoyed a new lease of life on the burgeoning historic racing scene.

Bechtolsheimer, who relaunched Lola in 2022, ten years after its demise under Birrane, bought the T70 just over a year ago – so, in a manner of speaking, it has returned to its source.

Herbert readily admits he would have relished racing the T70 in its period life. ‘I still like having a gearstick,’ he says. ‘That ability to brake, blip the throttle, heel and toe.’ Thanks to his injuries, Herbert has adapted his technique: he manages a remarkable level of finesse given the ‘feel’ comes through his hips rather than his feet. ‘The skill in the past was always how smoothly you were able to make the downshifts.

And that is something I missed later in my career when it all became paddleshift. You could never make a mistake, because the electronics wouldn’t allow you to.

‘I would have loved driving in this period, because it was very raw, because of the aerodynamics you didn’t have. You had to be very much in sync with the gearbox and the clutch. I remember Jackie Stewart always used to say to me, when I drove for him: “You’ve got to look after the car. You can’t be too aggressive with it.” It probably was way more important in his day.’

He namechecks Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell.

‘They always had that ability to get the best out of a car, even when the machinery was still a little fragile. It was a totally different challenge to today. Then, you had to find a way to drive.

I don’t think you were ever told what to do or how to do it, like drivers are today. I preferred it when you had to work it out for yourself.’

For most of his racing life, F1 and singleseaters came first – but Herbert always enjoyed the camaraderie of sharing a sports car in the big endurance races. Driving the green T70 rang another bell, too. ‘I can remember seeing it when I watched the Le Mans movie in my younger days,’ says Johnny. ‘I didn’t think much of it at the time, I must admit, but it’s nice to drive it now, given how iconic the movie is.

I used to live in Surrey and I’ve been to Piper’s house a couple of times, so I know David.

I haven’t seen him for quite a few years, but I’m pleased I got to drive his car. The T70 puts a massive smile on your face and gives you a nice little tingle when you’re behind the wheel.’

ANDREW FERRARO/GETTY

Lola T70 Johnny Herbert track-test

Top and above SL76/150 is possibly the best-known T70 of all, delivered new to David Piper in 1969 and one of the last built. It was raced by Piper, Attwood and others, and appeared in the movie Le Mans.

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Lola T70 Till Bechtolsheimer

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT Till Bechtolsheimer on his vision for ‘new’ Lola

ANDREW FERRARO/GETTY

GAVIN BAKER/GETTY

Words Damien Smith

Top and above The 43-year-old Bechtolsheimer took over the reins at Lola in 2022, and is a committed racer and enthusiast; his company currently employs over 50 and will grow at its new Silverstone base.

‘I WANT LOLA to be exactly what it always was.’ That’s how Till Bechtolsheimer sums up his vision for Lola Cars, three years into his spell at the helm of the once-great British racing car constructor.

Bechtolsheimer, 43, is the founder of New York-based investment firm Arosa Capital, which specialises in energy, energy efficiency and renewables, including emerging technologies in the transport and automotive worlds. He is also a racer of historic cars and has competed in modern sports car racing in the US, too. When he took the plunge and bought Lola in 2022, he made it clear that re-establishing the brand in modern motorsport was the intention and he has been good to his word.

So far, the Yamaha-powered Formula E campaign has been Lola’s only public appearance above the parapet – the team finished bottom of the table last season – although Bechtolsheimer says there’s much going on at the company’s base at Silverstone Park, some of which will be revealed soon. But owning and building up a racing specialist firm in 2025 cannot be easy… so any regrets?

‘Ask my wife,’ he says wryly. ‘No, no regrets. It’s definitely taken over elements of my life more than I was perhaps expecting it to, but in a good way. I’m spending a fair amount of time on Lola, but for good reason, because I see a huge amount of potential in it. I’ve been this motorsport nut my whole life, but I’ve never been involved in the industry before. So to see behind the curtain and be involved in what is fast becoming a vibrant motorsport hub is exciting.’

Formula E has clearly been tough so far, but Bechtolsheimer insists the series – and especially the relationship with Yamaha – is ‘a feather in Lola’s cap’. ‘To be able to come into Formula E and develop a powertrain that’s 99%-plus efficient is quite exciting,’ he says. ‘The goal from my perspective was to use Formula E to shortcut our way into being a technology leader in an area that matters to a big part of motorsport, and I think we’re well on our way to doing that.’

So what’s next? ‘We’re gearing up to announce a project we’ve been working on for a couple of years now, which is focused on advanced sustainable materials, sustainable fuels as well,’ he says. He also remains determined to take Lola back into sports car racing and Le Mans, and he absolutely hasn’t forgotten the company’s past. Dusty drawings of original designs of Lola models past were part of his buy-up deal, and Bechtolsheimer reveals that the whole back catalogue has been digitised. He intends to use them, to the benefit of all Lola car owners – of which he is now one, as we have seen.

He says buying the ex-David Piper T70 was just too tempting to resist. ‘It’s the ultimate version of a T70 and I had to have it,’ he says – and his first impressions, after a first drive at Donington Park, echo what Johnny Herbert has told us.

‘When you first get in the car it’s quite intimidating,’ he says. ‘It’s obviously a brute of a car. I’ve driven cars with a lot of power from the 1960s era where the idea of them is great, but the experience is that it’s just constantly trying to kill you. So I was worried, if I’m honest. But actually the T70 is just such a well-balanced car and gives you a ton of confidence. It has so much power, it’s so fast, even by modern standards. You just get all these slight four-wheel drifts everywhere.

I’ve got a Chevron B8, which is one of my favourite cars from a driving perspective. This is like a more powerful B8.’

Back to the future. ‘Around 50-odd’ people are employed at Lola now and that will increase when a new HQ is ready at Silverstone in 2026. ‘I want to re-establish Lola as one of the go-to groups for modern motorsport,’ asserts Bechtolsheimer. ‘If you’re an OEM and you want to go racing in any form, I want Lola to be an obvious port of call, just like it always was. I want to bring Lola back to top-flight motorsport on multiple levels simultaneously, just like it always did over six decades. We’re on a good path.’

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Coachbuilt American Ghia Cadillac

The 1953 Ghia Cadillac translated Italian style into Stateside metal.

Stephen Bayley imagines a life with the stars in the city that never sleeps Images Courtesy of Petersen Automotive Museum Photography Ted7

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Coachbuilt American Ghia Cadillac

Here is a hulking Midwest linebacker dressed in the finest Neapolitan tailoring.

Above and opposite The translation of American technology and scale into European style is as evident inside as it is out; quad headlamps were potentially a US first.

American footballers have shoulders artificially enlarged by statement armour; tailors in Naples don’t use shoulder padding, preferring a more easy-going look, flattering the body rather than exaggerating it. But that might simply be the difference between the American and Italian ways of doing things.

The Ghia Cadillac is a demonstration of these contrasting styles. The result of them coming together is a masterly synthesis of brute force and elegance. The linebacker steps backwards, rips off his sweaty armour, gives a graceful nod and puts on a nice suit. But New York and Turin were involved as well as Detroit and Naples.

Cars, of course, transport you. On the ground and in the imagination. I often think the latter is even more important than the mundane business of connecting the first two letters of the alphabet. In this case, the imagination takes us and our Ghia Cadillac directly to neither Detroit nor Turin, but 154 East 54th Street in Manhattan, where we pull up outside a swish canopy that says ‘El Morocco’. There are blue and gold doors, while a notice says ‘Proper Attire: jacket and tie required at all times.’ Formerly a speakeasy, by 1953 El Morocco had evolved to become a place where you could count the people who count.

The proprietor of El Morocco was one-time boxer John Perona, but now gentrified in his own sharp Italian threads. Never forget, the Italian idea of gentiluomo gave us the idea of gentleman. Born Giovanni in Ivrea, near Turin, Perona narrowly missed an accidental death on his way to the US when, detained by a passionate romantic interest in Liverpool, he missed his sailing on RMS Titanic.

Perona survived, but at the end of Prohibition in 1933 his El Morocco became more sophisticated. Along with Toots Shor’s and The Stork, it grew into New York’s favourite nightclub. If you wanted to find a Vanderbilt, a Whitney or a Windsor, this would be a good place to start looking.

They called it café society, but Champagne, some claimed, flowed from the bathroom taps. It certainly did metaphorically, if not in plumbing reality.

Liz Smith, the Queen Mother of New York gossip columnists, was stationed in El Morocco nightly. And her subjects of the night before were pictured in the next day’s newspapers, seen sitting on El Morocco’s signature zebrastripe banquettes. In this way, a virtuous circle of demand was created for the status-hungry. Truman Capote, not normally a ladies’ man, was photographed dancing with Marilyn Monroe in ‘Elmo’, as its regulars called it.

Perona – who had his portrait painted by Salvador Dali and wanted to organise a motor race around Central Park –

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Coachbuilt American Ghia Cadillac

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encouraged such photogenic dalliances. And, according to RM Sotheby’s, this flamboyant hospitality entrepreneur dallied with one of the only two Ghia Cadillacs built. Rarely can a car have been more suitably tailored to an individual’s style and ambition. It was bespoke glamour.

‘Mid-century Modern’ was the clever term coined by Cara Greenberg to describe the stylised furniture of Vladimir Kagan, Wendell Lovett and Harry Bertoia. And here is a Mid-century Modern car. Like the furniture, it is not traditional. Nothing quite like it had been seen before.

But from the perspective of now, nor does it seem to be forward-looking. It is futuristic only in the sense that the future was understood in Hollywood of the day, and that means on terms of cartoonish crudity. It Came From Outer Space, filmed in the newly fashionable 3D, was a classic of schlock sci-fi and also debuted in 1953. In this case, It Came from Turin and is a perfect exemplar of 1950s Italian design.

But it turned into an American whopper.

Italian and American collaborations were in the air in 1953. This was the year Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck scootered around the Eternal City in William Wyler’s Roman Holiday, in this way making the Vespa as eternal as Rome itself. The Ghia Cadillac Series 62 was another happy allocation of Italo-American resources: a robust and reliable, not to say crude, American chassis with a 331ci 210bhp V8 given the sprezzatura of a coachbuilt Alfa Romeo or Ferrari.

There is a special mystique about the Ghia Cadillacs because, in the early 1950s, Carrozzeria Ghia had a close working relationship – if not an exclusive or formal partnership – with Chrysler. This arrangement was the work of Luigi Segre, one of car culture’s neglected heroes. (With

‘It is not traditional.

Nothing like it had been seen before’ Clockwise, from opposite Dash and wheel could almost have come from a Maserati; lengthy proportions remain obvious from side-on, but Ghia has dramatically reduced the sensation of height; 5.4-litre V8 is regular full-fat Cadillac.

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Coachbuilt American Ghia Cadillac

Mario Boano, Giovanni Savonuzzi and Sergio Coggiola, Segre can take credit for the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia of 1955, one of the very finest car designs.)

Segre was a native Neapolitan who was born in 1919.

Soon after the US invaded Southern Italy in September 1943, Segre put his Neapolitan suits in the closet, declared his enthusiasm for the invaders and began work for the Office of Strategic Command, the forerunner of the CIA. Here he learned English.

Giacinto Ghia died of heart failure while watching his coachworks being rebuilt out of rubble arising from Allied bombing. Soon after, Segre joined the Ghia business, which was then being run by Boano. Segre was no less a racing enthusiast than Perona: his Fiat won the 1100cc class in both the 1949 and 1950 Mille Miglia races. At the same time, he started cultivating contacts at European motor

shows, notably with Virgil Exner, Chrysler’s exuberant, stylish yet professionally frustrated design boss (who also had a thing for Neapolitan sartoria).

The invitation to visit America inevitably came and, as an English speaker, Segre was easily accepted in monoglot Detroit. Probably in the gossipy New York of El Morocco, too. And Ghia’s influence was soon seen in Exner’s concept cars, which revived struggling Chrysler with strong draughts of exhilarating European style. In 1954 Segre became sole owner of Ghia, but he died in Turin in 1963 while recuperating from a routine operation. He was a mere 42.

Was Segre two-timing Exner’s Chrysler when he built a handsome car on a Cadillac frame? No records exist to confirm or deny, but what is certain is that, while in the early 1950s Exner’s Chrysler was open to European influence, GM’s Cadillac division was open to no such thing. Harley

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Earl was very happy layering on chrome with a trowel, taking inspiration from jets, missiles and bombs.

Cadillac did not begin unitary construction until 1976, hitherto manufacturing separate chassis and bodies. Thus, the potential for coachbuilt specials existed, just as it did in the pre-war years. The assumption must be that Segre opportunistically pitched to Cadillac and two Series 62 chassis were made available to him. But how this happened without a nod from Earl, GM’s wizard of kitsch, is not straightforward to determine.

Ghia’s transformation was shown at the Paris Salon of 1953 and caught the eye of Prince Aly Khan, an ItaloPakistani diplomat-playboy who bought it for his then-wife, the actress Rita Hayworth. Khan was an El Morocco regular, where, being a Moslem, he drank tomato juice. He was also adept at the ancient Persian erotic technique of delayed

ejaculation, was previously married to a Guinness and died in 1960 when his Lancia crashed in a Paris suburb.

Whatever, the Ghia Cadillac is an extraordinary thing.

This car (which featured on the cover of the January 1955 Road & Track) was originally white, but the gorgeous fitted luggage in tan leather appears to be original, if highly restored. If you wanted a metaphor of luxury as understood in 1953, look no further than the rear bench. As a fantasy of frictionless travel, these bags suggest you can pack all you need for endless road trips to far horizons. Perhaps like delayed ejaculation. Possibly with a Hollywood actress on the passenger side.

In terms of detail, the Ghia Cadillac could illustrate a small textbook for student designers. The filler cap is concealed behind one of those louvres that follow the lateral chrome strips towards the rear of the car. Quad headlights 117

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Coachbuilt American Ghia Cadillac

‘The almost nautical proportions disguise the Ghia Cadillac’s size’

Above, from top Fitted luggage was the definition of luxury – and suggestive of a carefree life of leisure; Cadillac crest is prominent on the nose; translucent sun-visors are a distinctly Italian touch.

became legal in the US only in 1958 and this may be the very first example of them, permissible, presumably, because this was not a production car.

The fine – almost nautical – proportions disguise the Ghia Cadillac’s enormous size: the donor Cadillac was 214in long. And the lateral chrome trims are a very Virgil Exner motif, which have the visual effect of lowering the car.

They played similar illusory tricks with Greek temples.

At the same time, the longitudinal chrome strip, which begins just after the nose, runs over the roof, bisects the lavish wraparound rear glass and slides onto the trunk, has the effect of dynamism even while standing still. The wire wheels are real, not fake. These too are an Exner touch: wheels were his single favourite feature in the car designer’s repertory. They signified ‘sporty’, and so sporty was Exner himself that he drove a road-legalised Indy car on the street. The egg-crate grille on this example is much more sophisticated than its sister car’s, which has more miserablelooking vertical slats.

The Ghia Cadillac is best viewed architecturally. However, perhaps the reference point is naval architecture rather than buildings, its pontoons being truly majestic. But I am guessing the dynamics and side-effects of sea-sickness.

Imagine a paddleboard in a swell with the muffled sound of cement-mixers in the background. And that whiff of leather.

Seamless road trips might be best left in the imagination.

On the site of El Morocco is now the Citicorp Center, one of New York’s 1970s landmarks: a huge white slab in memoriam to late Masters of The Universe. When I imagine the Ghia Cadillac parked outside, it seems closer to the now-decrepit Chrysler Building, that Art Deco masterpiece.

Leaving El Morocco at closing time, someone asked Humphrey Bogart if he was drunk. ‘Of course I am drunk,’ he replied. ‘Who isn’t drunk at four in the morning?’

Bogart never starred with Rita Hayworth because of contract disputes with their respective studios, but when she had divorced Aly Khan she took the car and she and Bogart were close. I imagine him stumbling into her Ghia Cadillac. It is the perfect symbol of America’s dolce vita.

THANKS TO Petersen Automotive Museum, petersen.org.

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Sporting Escorts RS1600i and RS Turbo

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Caught between the lairy Escort Mk2s and the giant-killing Sierra Cosworth, the front-wheel-drive Escort RS1600i and RS Turbo had their day on the track – and on the road, too Words Ben Barry Photography Alex Tapley

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Sporting Escorts RS1600i and RS Turbo

P

icture Ford’s Group A homologation specials from the 1980s and it’s no wonder the Sierra RS Cosworth springs to mind, especially given the RS500’s dominance in Touring Car racing. The Escort Mk3 gets a little lost in that context, but it too spawned Group A homologation derivatives, with the RS1600i and subsequent RS Turbo marking Ford’s entry into the newly established category.

Though once dismissed by fans of rearwheel-drive Fords, the best road cars can today command over £40,000 and have long been highly sought after by RS enthusiasts (not to mention something of a weakness for yours truly), while the race cars enjoy an impressive championship-winning pedigree. Four decades have passed since both raced in the British Saloon Car Championship, and we’re revisiting them with two immaculate road-going examples supplied by Rutland-based CarIconics. We’ll also be learning more about the motorsport programme from a man who prepared and raced both: Richard Longman.

Ford’s European motorsport operations were undergoing a period of unprecedented change at the dawn of the 1980s. The Blue Oval had tactically pulled out of rallying the

Mk2 Escort to re-group for Group B regulations, but got off to a false start when the Mk3 Escort-based RS1700T was cancelled. Its incoming replacement, the RS200, would share almost nothing with the rest of the lineup but did stand a chance of beating the Audi quattro. And, while that car’s turbocharging and all-wheel drive later evolved and filtered down into the (initially RWD) Sierra RS Cosworth and Sapphire Cosworth, those cars were still a few years distant. Into this competition vacuum the first RS-badged Mk3 Escorts arrived.

Dubbed Project Erika, the all-new Escort debuted in September 1980 and soon became the UK’s best-seller, with the XR3 available from launch as a rival to the Golf GTI. Its carb-feb 1.6-litre CVH (Compound Valve, Hemispherical) engine might have been a little off the pace with 96bhp, but it was upon these foundations that Ford of Germany’s Motorsport department in Merkenich, Cologne, created the 1981 RS1600i – not the later fuel-injected XR3i.

Confusingly for UK buyers, the XR3i offered a largely similar recipe, was only a little more affordable at £6030 to the RS1600i’s £6700, and arrived simultaneously in the UK in October 1982, the big difference being that

‘The engine has a crisp, angry rasp as it fires into life and the unassisted steering makes this a physical thing to manoeuvre’

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Clockwise, from opposite Crisp styling is 1980s-tastic; not an XR3; interior is plush, inviting and features ASS bucket seats; injected CVH with hot cam, high compression and distinctive finned cam cover.

it was developed by Ford Special Vehicle Engineering in Dunton, Essex. The RS1600i’s CVH four-cylinder received Bosch K-Jetronic injection, twin-coil ignition and new pistons that raised compression from 9.5:1 to 9.9:1, while in went a hotter cam and manually adjusted solid cam followers to replace the standard hydraulic items – they were crucial for the higher competition rev limit and shrouded in a new, finned aluminium cam cover.

With a larger-diameter manifold and exhaust helping the engine breathe more easily, power rose to 113bhp with 109lb ft (besting an XR3i’s 105bhp/102lb ft). Fifth gear was shortened from 0.76:1 to 0.83:1 with a 3.84:1 final drive.

The chassis came in for attention, too. Front spring rates of 150lb were comparable to the XR3’s but 340lb rising-rate rears represented a significant increase, while Koni took care of damping. Rather than using the anti-roll bar to locate the MacPherson struts, the RS1600i adopted a new pair of compression links running from the struts to the frame rails.

RS1600i sales exceeded expectations. Ford needed to produce 5000 examples to achieve homologation status, but ended up shifting 8659, of which 2600 were sold to UK buyers exclusively through Rallye Sport dealers. All bar any Northern Irish cars are on Y- or A-registrations. This Sunburst Red example from Car-Iconics was first registered in August 1983, undersealed from new and stripped to a bare ’shell for restoration in 2007.

Styling changes are decidedly modest compared with the XR3, if extremely effective.

A deeper gumshield front airdam in ABS plastic is matched to a unique rear spoiler moulded from the same material, and complemented by bespoke black graphics below the swageline and on the bonnet. Add four spotlights, a set of seven-spoke 15x6in Ronal alloys, suspension lowered by almost an inch and the RS1600i looks fantastically lean and purposeful.

You sit down in gorgeously supportive Shark Grey crushed velour seats produced by the fantastically appropriate ASS of Germany, the trim matched on the rear seats and door casings. Deep-pile carpet and extra soundproofing are surprisingly luxurious upgrades in the context of an otherwise rather humble Mk3 Escort bred to go racing.

This engine has a really crisp, angry rasp as it fires into life – a Janspeed exhaust is this car’s only mod – and the unassisted steering makes it a pretty physical thing to manoeuvre, but the RS1600i is mild-mannered at a gentle lick, including its relatively pliant ride. Tall gearing means it needs to be revved to access its power, but keep it north of 4500rpm and its keen throttle response, feathery 940kg kerbweight and that rasp make it an engaging thing to punt along. The raised competition rev limit would make it easier to keep on the boil, though.

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Sporting Escorts RS1600i and RS Turbo

Threading across twisting B-roads, the RS1600i turns-in nicely, rolls in a controlled manner and communicates clearly thanks to the fizz percolating up through the chassis and steering – the latter sensation emphasised by its lovely four-spoke leather-wrapped wheel. It feels nicely balanced and quite forgiving. In fact, the main impediments to driving quickly are the lack of outright stopping power and the large gulf between accelerator and brake, which makes heel-and-toe downshifts difficult.

Richard Longman debuted his RS1600i in the 1983 British Saloon Car Championship, winning Class C in 1984. Already wellestablished, Longman competed in Formula 3 against the likes of Alan Jones, James Hunt and Jody Scheckter, and had more recently taken back-to-back BSCC titles driving the Mini 1275 GT in 1978 and 1979. Simultaneously, his Christchurch-based engineering company, Richard Longman & Co Ltd, also built

a reputation for preparing race-winning machinery, those Minis included.

The Longman works-supported RS Escorts were built from standard road cars, with engines tuned to 150-160bhp for competition.

Now 79 years old, Longman notes his own chassis upgrades included altered suspension pick-up points to eliminate understeer, lower front wishbones re-engineered from the original’s inclined positioning to a straight design, plus shortened steering arms that effectively quickened the rack. Avon tyres were also specially developed around the car’s setup – sometimes Longman would run different compounds front to rear, sometimes even sideto-side depending on the track.

‘I think we built six of them,’ he recalls. ‘We had four, but the others went to Ford of Germany and raced in Europe. They were very reliable cars and handled so well. We were up against the Alfas and Toyotas, which were

faster on the straights, but our handling was better, so on long curves we could drive round them – Paddock Hill Bend at Brands Hatch was virtually flat out! Hans-Joachim Stuck raced my car at Donington and said it was the best front-wheel-drive car he’d driven.’

Not only did Longman win Class C in that victorious 1984 season, he also finished second overall to Andy Rouse’s Class A Rover Vitesse and saw off the Class B Alfa Romeo GTV6s that finished a distant third and fourth. The Escort’s fuel economy proved a boon in longerdistance races, including class wins at the Tourist Trophy in Silverstone in 1983 and ’84.

If the RS1600i was born from the XR3, so was the RS Turbo – at least in a roundabout sort of way. The genesis was Turbo Technics’ aftermarket turbocharger kit for XR3s, which became an approved Ford conversion sold through dealerships. The Mk3 RS Turbo – widely referred to as the Series 1 – uses the

‘Turbocharging transforms the CVH lump with a far more generous swell of speed and the kick to emphasise it’

Clockwise, from right RS Turbo dates from the ‘all white’ era; viscous diff makes for keen steering; interior still plush, if less bespoke than RS1600i’s; spoiler is a colour-coded version of XR3i’s.

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same Garrett T.03 turbocharger as the XR3 conversion and clearly leans on those learnings.

It was developed on Rod Mansfield’s watch at Special Vehicle Engineering though much is bespoke, including new forged pistons, a lower 8.3:1 compression ratio, fuel injection plumbed in with a new manifold, and an air-to-air intercooler to chill intake temperatures. The gearbox and final drive are uprated, with the latter shortened to a 4.27:1 comparable to XR3i models, while a viscous limited-slip differential is added to the front axle (chosen for its softer, more refined lock-up than a mechanical unit). The novel RS1600i front suspension architecture is carried over, this time with Girling dampers and springs that were largely identical to the XR3i’s, though the front dampers had softer valving.

In total, 8604 RS Turbos were produced from late 1984, almost all finished in Diamond White bar a handful of special-order cars

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Sporting Escorts RS1600i and RS Turbo

(including Princess Di’s black example that was sold in 2022 by Silverstone Auctions for… £724,500). Series 1 RS Turbos cost £9250 new in late 1984 (most are C-plates, some wear Bs, with a vanishingly small number on Ds), rising to almost £10,000 with this fully restored example’s Custom pack of sunroof, electric windows and central locking.

It certainly looks of its era but the excitement I felt seeing them as a primary schooler remains to this day. The fully colour-coded bodykit includes a deeper front spoiler, bolt-on ’arches and sideskirts that are straight from the RS accessory catalogue (and joined by the XR3i rear spoiler), while the three-spoke grille is lifted from the Orion saloon for a very effective parts-bin makeover.

You sit down low in comfortable Recaro seats in grey Monza and Cashmere trim, the fabric and blue piping repeated on the door casings, and a different three-spoke steering wheel in moulded plastic. It feels like a significant step up over a stock Escort, if not quite as special as the RS1600i.

Turbocharging naturally transforms the CVH lump with a far more generous swell of speed throughout the mid-range and the build and kick to emphasise it. It feels so much stronger than the small 19bhp power uplift suggests, really because torque increases by a larger percentage (up by 24lb ft) and is served so much lower at 3000rpm. Given the lag that was so prevalent in the era, the turbo’s small size means boost is surprisingly accessible at

lower revs and throttle response good, so you don’t feel disconnected from the powertrain and its influence over the chassis as you can in some early turbo cars, even if the note is more subdued than in the RS1600i.

The boost builds strongly out of corners, making the front end squirm as it propels you down the road, and lending the steering a stickier on-centre feel as the viscous diff diverts power to the tyre with more grip. This is also a more isolated chassis than the RS1600i’s in terms of outright feel, and doesn’t have quite its sibling’s control in compressions, nor the lightness of its turn-in. But the boosty performance brings drama and the sense that the torque is giving the chassis a work-out.

Both the RS1600i and RS Turbo were on the grid for the 1985 BSCC, the newcomer stepping up to Class B by virtue of its 270bhp or so output in its high-boost setting – a class that Longman won in 1986 while also placing second overall in the championship.

‘The Turbo was a good car, it was obviously a lot faster but it wasn’t quite as nicely balanced as the RS1600i – it had the turbo and intercooler and so on, so it was heavier on the front.’ The RS Turbo was also so powerful that it would rotate its tyres around the nine-inch wide front Compomotive alloys, but initially it failed to realise its potential.

‘It took a season or so to make the RS Turbo reliable, so we made some changes to the engine during 1985 while Alan continued to race the RS1600i,’ remembers Longman, ‘but

once it was sorted we were both driving the RS Turbo and it dominated the class for ’86.’

The race cars will forever be synonymous with their Datapost liveries, an arrangement that dated to Longman’s earlier time in the Ford Fiesta and Austin Metros. ‘My second team-mate Alan Curnow worked for the Post Office, and Datapost was a new fast delivery system,’ Longman explains. ‘Alan and the manager at Salisbury Post Office suggested to head office that we paint the cars in Royal Mail colours. They were very happy with us; we were with them for many years.’

In fact, the success saw the Escorts displayed at the British Grand Prix and star in national newspaper adverts. One memorably said: ‘Off the track, there’s no-one better qualified than Datapost to whisk a piston from Peterborough to Preston, or a crankshaft from Coventry to Crawley… And they promise they won’t bend anything (which is more than Longman and Curnow can say).’

Today, the front-drive RS Escorts’ contribution to Ford Motorsport is arguably overlooked, lost between the flamboyance of Mk2 Escorts and flame-spitting excitement of Sierra Cosworths. But these cars played a key role in giving a new generation of front-wheeldrive Fords credibility among the car-buying public, not least because of the efforts of Richard Longman.

THANKS TO Car-Iconics (car-iconics.com) and Longman Racing (longmanracing.com).

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DAVE ASTON

Epic drive Lancia Lambda to Italy

TAKING IT HOME What better destination for a road trip than the Lancia family villa in northern Italy?

Mark Dixon explains why this was a particularly emotive journey Photography Mark Dixon

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T

he steep and winding drive up to the house is a series of hairpins but we’ve found that, if you judge the approach right, the Lancia Lambda will get round each of them in one. That’s no coincidence. The house in northern Italy is known as Villa Lancia, and it was owned by the Lancia family from the 1840s until just a few years ago.

Villa Lancia is now in the care of two British vintage car enthusiasts, who heard it was for sale on a previous Lancia club visit. One of them is Nick Benwell, a Lancia specialist, and he is quite certain that the driveway was laid out so that Vincenzo Lancia could make it to the top in his own Lambda. ‘There’s a story that Vincenzo was trying to get to his mother at the house in one of his earlier cars, and broke a spring, which impelled him to introduce the Lambda’s independent sliding-pillar front suspension – and to sort the driveway out,’ explains Nick.

We’ve just driven here from the UK in a 1927 Lambda Series VII and the reason for our trip is bitter-sweet. The owner and restorer of this beautiful Lambda, Ian Bingham, lives close to me; we went to Reims Autojumble together in March 2025. In the April he was suddenly diagnosed with brain cancer, which means he can no longer drive and needs

to sell the car. He tires easily, and the doctors weren’t sure he should embark on such an arduous journey – but he remains relentlessly positive, and reckoned it would do him more good than harm. And what could be better than to take the Lambda back to its maker’s home in Italy?

Ian, his wife Francesca, mutual friend Dave Aston and I quickly concocted a cunning plan. The four of us would travel in the Lambda to Italy, spend a few days enjoying Nick’s hospitality at the Villa Lancia, leave the car with him and then fly home. So mid-August sees the ‘Fobello Four’ – as we have named our WhatsApp group, Fobello being the location of the villa – embarking on LeShuttle and heading for our first overnight halt, a guesthouse south of Reims.

This Lambda has quite a storied past. A 1927 shortchassis torpedo, it was found as a dismantled project in Uruguay by Nick Benwell. Ian bought it and then spent years on a meticulous restoration that is now proving its worth as we thrum along the autoroute at a steady 50mph (the engine is still very fresh). We’d meant to take the minor roads but a logistical cock-up saw us having to catch a later crossing and so we need to make up time.

It’s early evening when we arrive at our guesthouse, where the landlady lets us take a peek at her late husband’s eclectic

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Epic drive Lancia Lambda to Italy

car collection: Traction Avant, MGB roadster, Citroën Méhari and vast 1970s Cadillac. Desperate for food, we’re directed to a pizzeria in another village that is run by another redoubtable lady. Old family photos on the wall include one of her mother as a pretty young thing in the 1930s climbing into a Georges Irat roadster. This is why we love driving through rural France.

Next day we switch to the backroads as we head south and east into the Jura region. Lunch is a supermarketforaged picnic eaten in a quiet grassy layby, after I’ve spotted some properly ancient vehicles half-hidden in a dip beside the road. The star attraction is a decomposing 1920s Citroën recovery truck, with signwritten doors and a crane jib made from recycled vintage chassis rails – why we love driving through rural France, part two.

The endless procession of villages that punctuate our progress give the engine a regular breather and Dave and me a chance to practise our gear-changing skills; more of a necessity in my case, I have to say. Francesca bravely does a couple of stints behind the wheel, too. She’s never driven a car of this age but she’s determined to do her bit and copes admirably with what is an undeniably challenging introduction. The steering, for example, is perfectly weighted for fast driving but demands plenty of effort when circumnavigating a roundabout, while achieving silent gearchanges in the four-speed ’box is never easy, even after hundreds of miles. Fortunately, the torque of the 2.6-litre V4 allows you to minimise unnecessary downchanges.

After another overnight stop in a typically French provincial hotel, we awake to find a superb BMW 2002 parked alongside the Lambda in the hotel car park. Its jovial owner explains that he’s a restaurateur who takes long weekends to make gourmet road trips around France, and his father used to race a Lotus MkVIII. Why we love driving through rural France, part three.

We’re now beginning to skirt the Swiss frontier, aiming for the Col du Mont-Cenis and a mountain road that will take us into Italy. It was on the Italian side (where the mountain becomes Moncenisio) that Vincenzo Lancia and his chief test driver Luigi Gismondi trialled the Lambda prototype in 1921, celebrating with a drink in a bar at the top of the pass. The Lambda was the first massproduced car to feature a monocoque body and chassis and dispensing with the chassis frame meant it could be built lower, for better roadholding – something we’ll be grateful for as we negotiate the Alpine hairpins to come.

It’s ski country here – we’re not far from resorts such as Méribel and Val d’Isère – and before emulating Vincenzo and Luigi’s double-act we stop over at Lanslebourg in the valley below the mountain. As we’re walking into town for dinner, a dark green 1972 Lancia Fulvia sedan screeches to a halt across the road: it’s Nick Benwell and his daughter Olivia, who are also on their way to the Villa Lancia. The Fulvia belongs to Olivia; it’s her first car, and she’s giving it a shakedown run before starting at university with it.

Coolest girl on campus or what?

Above, clockwise, from top left Night driving in rural France; Lambda romps up mountain roads; Aurelia greets Lambda at Caffé Roma, Varallo; navigating Varallo’s medieval streets; room with a view; rusting Renault Colorale and Citroën B14 garage trucks seen en route; Dave Aston, Ian and Francesca Bingham.

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Epic drive Lancia Lambda to Italy

Clockwise, from left Cheers! Dixon, on right, raises a glass with Giovanni de Virgilio; memorial to Vincenzo Lancia at Fobello; swimming in the nearby river; La Dolce Vita in an Italian village; the view from Villa Lancia; Ian and Francesca in Varallo; Nick and Dave revive dusty Lancia Aprilia for taxi duty.

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‘WE ORDER OUR COFFEES AND ONLY THEN REALISE THAT THE CAFÉ ISN’T OPEN AND WE’VE JUST GATECRASHED A PRIVATE WEDDING RECEPTION’ Next morning, we’re soon into a relentless succession of switchbacks and our Lambda’s performance here is nothing short of remarkable. Dave puts his Frazer Nash ownership skills behind the wheel to good use by keeping the power on in the uphill hairpins and sliding the Lancia a little in third gear; there’s rarely a need to change down except, ironically, when we are held up by a modern hybrid. At the top, we all re-enact Vincenzo and Luigi’s celebration in a layby with a shot each of GET 27 crème-de-menthe that Dave has scored in a petrol station supermarket, knocked back from washed-out glass yoghurt pots salvaged by Francesca after our hotel breakfast.

The final stage of our adventure, across the flat plains of northern Italy, feels somewhat of an anticlimax, chiefly memorable because, having stopped in a torrential downpour at the only café we’ve seen for hours that’s open, we order our coffees and only then realise that it’s not open and we’ve just gatecrashed a private wedding reception…

No one seems to mind, however – we’re in Italy, after all.

It’s late afternoon when we roll into the pretty town of Varallo, where we’ve arranged to meet Nick at the Art Nouveau-style Caffé Roma. From here it’s just a 30-minute scenic drive to the village of Fobello, above which Villa Lancia sits in majestic seclusion, high on the mountainside.

Walking inside its cool, shadowy hallway is like stepping back in time. The huge house, which was rebuilt from three existing properties in the 1920s and ’30s, remains exactly as Vincenzo and his family would have known it, right down to the zebra-skin rug and, yes, elephant’s foot umbrella stand in Gianni’s bedroom (Vincenzo’s son Gianni ran the Lancia business after his father’s death in 1937 until the family sold up in 1955). The complete lack of modernisation extends to hot water that’s piped to the bathrooms by an amazing steam-punk central heating system, monitored by huge brass-cased, enamel-dialled pressure gauges. There are hardly any electrical sockets and the most modern appliance in the house is a 1964 Fiat refrigerator, which still has its original sales receipt and guarantee.

Every corner you explore, every door you open, reveals another period detail, such as the elaborately sculpted wooden clothes hangers I find in the wardrobe in my allocated bedroom. It’s startling to think that Gianni Lancia, maybe even Vincenzo himself, may have hung their shirts on these very same pieces. But by far the most eyebrowraising discovery is the 1890s letterheads for Vincenzo’s father’s business (importing canned meat from Argentina – the Lancia motor company wasn’t founded until 1906 133

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Epic drive Lancia Lambda to Italy

Clockwise, from left Villa Lancia’s steam-punk heating system; old wooden clothes hangers; interior is an oasis of cool calm ; ephemera found in Vincenzo’s desk – that’s his study, below; Gianni Lancia’s bedroom; 1942 calendar hangs on kitchen wall.

‘EVERY DOOR YOU OPEN REVEALS ANOTHER PERIOD DETAIL, SUCH AS THE SCULPTED WOODEN CLOTHES HANGERS I FIND IN MY WARDROBE’

by Vincenzo), just lying in a desk drawer in Vincenzo’s old study. I’m not so naive as to believe they’ve always been there – I suspect a bit of ‘set dressing’ by a visiting Lancia enthusiast – but it’s a spooky find nonetheless.

Vincenzo died at home in Fobello, the village where he was born, on 15 February 1937 at the age of just 55, and his tomb lies across the road (and river) from the village square.

Our visit to Fobello has been timed to coincide with the villagers’ annual Lancia festival, which this year includes a screening of the British-made film Vincenzo Lancia and the Birth of Modern Motoring (trailers for it are on YouTube) but not, sadly, a tour of Fobello’s Lancia museum, which is closed for refurbishment. We have to content ourselves with leaving the Lambda on display outside; meanwhile Nick and Dave have pushed out a dusty 1930s Aprilia saloon from the ballroom of the Villa Lancia, filled the radiator and coaxed it into life, to act as a shuttle from house to village. Over the weekend we’ll be joined by various fellow house guests, one of whom has driven from Geneva in his well-used 1954 Bentley Continental.

The next couple of days are spent relaxing, visiting Varallo, swimming in the river that winds picturesquely between it and Fobello, and having a big village dinner with some visiting Italians – where I find myself clinking glasses with the affable Giovanni de Virgilio, son of the legendary Aurelia V6 engine designer Francesco de Virgilio. Cin cin!

Hearing that I’m booked on a budget flight home from Turin, my new friend with the Bentley Continental offers to lend it to me to drive back to the UK – ‘It’s only going to sit around here for a while otherwise’ – but, sadly, time is against us, although it would have been a great addition to a fabulous trip. The Lambda has performed magnificently and the ‘Fobello Four’ have really bonded on our 1000-mile adventure. Most important of all, Ian has been given a vital morale boost.

As I’m writing this, Francesca forwards an email detailing next year’s visit to Fobello by the Italian Lambda owners’ club, followed by an event in Monaco to which participants are invited. I hope whoever is lucky enough to buy Ian and Francesca’s Lambda will take up the opportunity and have as much fun with the car as we did.

THANKS TO Macmillan Cancer Support, macmillan.org.uk, for the help it has given Ian and Francesca. The Lambda is now back in the UK and for sale with Nick Benwell; see phoenixgreengarage.com.

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Hot topic THE UK BUDGET DRIVE-BY In the lead-up to the UK Chancellor’s Budget on 26 November, reports in the media had suggested unwelcome changes in policy that would negatively impact our sector.

The HCVA identified chatter, attributed to a single source, regarding changes to the rolling 40-year Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) exemption for historic vehicles, and the 40-year exemption for an annual MoT check.

So, it was welcomed that these policies remained unchanged. The HCVA position is that the original rationale behind existing policies remains relevant today, with the UK’s 1.9million historic vehicles exemplifying the circular economy and sustainable motoring, with their majority lifecycle emissions and tax contribution made decades ago.

Some light relief came in the form of an extension to the fuel duty freeze of 5p per litre until September 2026, but there was much more comment around the pay-per-mile charges being applied to EV and PHEV vehicles from 2028.

For employers, an additional £725m is added to the Apprenticeship Programme Budget over the next three years, and extension of the 5% co-investment exemption to 22-to-24-year-olds for SMEs. While welcome, these changes fail to address the deep concerns about a Treasury grab of unallocated funds in the apprenticeship levy pot, estimated to be over £5bn since 2017.

Levy funds in digital accounts will now expire after 12 months, rather than 24, which goes against calls from employers and skills experts for greater transparency and flexibility in the use of the levy, blaming the rigid system for the significant amount of unspent funds returning to the Treasury.

Surely it is time to fully utilise the levy for its intended purpose by securing more high-quality graduates into the apprenticeship schemes and increasing the funding made available to independent training providers, which has reduced in real terms since 2017. Ultimately, we need more apprentices trained via a network of properly funded providers, such as our good friends at Heritage Skills Academy.

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Octane Cars The trials and tribulations of the cars we live with

Channel hopping 2004 BMW Z4 3.0i Robert Hefferon

WHAT YOU SHOULD be reading is how Mark Dixon enjoyed driving his recently purchased Rover in France after graciously accepting a press invitation to the Champagne region – which is full of culture, art, history and good food – and the five-star La Maison de Rhodes in the mediaeval heart of Troyes (pronounced trois). However, with a little over a week to go, an increasingly noisy wheelbearing caused him to pass it on to me.

I was similarly in two minds about accepting this apparent no-brainer: my car has been very reliable but the prospect of taking it 400 miles from home made me

a little anxious. Yet, putting on my big-boy pantalons, I checked the car’s fluids and tyre pressures, packed some tools and the necessities needed for driving in France, and crossed my fingers.

My wife and I were a little behind the rest of our team, made up of a select few journalists, their partners and our hosts from LeShuttle, meaning we didn’t get to meet them in the Flexiplus lounge ahead of the crossing but would catch up at the hotel. We made sure to stop there, however, and stocked up with a small patisserie’s worth of snacks before being fast-tracked onto the train (a Flexiplus ticket privilege).

From Calais, the A26 toll road is the quickest and most direct route to Troyes, if not the most exciting or cheapest, and the BMW cruised happily at 130km/h at just under 3000rpm in sixth gear for hours, eradicating any worries I had. After 430 trouble-free miles had been added to the odometer, tarmac gave way to cobbles as we weaved our way into the oldest part of Troyes – and there, in the shadows of the towering cathedral of Saint-Pierreet-Saint-Paul and behind the Museum of Modern Art, we found the hotel. It felt almost blasphemous parking outside, on a street where time has seemingly

Clockwise, from left Amid the vinyards; outside La Maison de Rhodes; on the Route Touristique du Champagne; hotel courtyard; old cellar; Troyes’ typical medieval buildings; dessert at Le Valentino; aboard LeShuttle; heart sculpture bridging the city old and new; Alexandre sharing his knowedge.

stood still since the 15th Century but which was now littered with my BMW, a Ferrari Roma and a Porsche 911.

Once inside, however, the harmonious juxtaposition of old and new made the cars seem right at home. We were warmly welcomed by owners Julie and Kamil as if we were old friends and, after settling into our suite, joined them for dinner at their restaurant. We talked over plates of fresh local produce with an open fire in the background, sipped perfectly paired local wines, and learned how the hotel was once Julie’s family home, lovingly transformed, extended to the adjoining property and restored by her father, and that the dining room was once the room that the family ate in when she was a child. The love and care that went into the building still echo with the incredible family-like hospitality they offer.

The following day was a full itinerary organised by Julie and Kamil. A tour of the town, then to Simone’s for a typically French spot of lunch, later meeting at Le Cellier St Pierre – an incredible building that was once a canon’s house, the cellars still boasting hidden passageways that allowed the canon to attend services in the cathedral without going outside.

Shop manager Alexandre shared his passion, knowledge and Champagne with us, explaining the subtle differences between bubble sizes, aromas and grape varieties as we sipped.

That evening we were led around the city once more, but this time by Kamil and Julie – who went above and beyond so that we could sample three of their favourite restaurants in one evening. Our gastronomical tour encompassed entrées at Chez Côme, main courses at Octave and desserts at Le Valentino.

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A good road trip is about enjoying the journey as much as its destination, so next morning we planned our route home over croissants and coffee before parting ways. The joy of the Flexiplus ticket meant we weren’t beholden to any particular shuttle, so a little detour took us via a recommended independent Champagne house, Eric Therrey, before pushing north and picking up sections of the Route Touristique du Champagne.

These slower roads allowed us to take in our surroundings and finally enjoy just driving, which we did. The sun was out and the roof was down as we passed through vineyards, local towns and countryside, stopping for lunch and fuel. After all this time meandering, we opted for the toll route once more from Reims back to LeShuttle, secure in the knowledge that trains run every 30 minutes, day and night.

Back in the UK, driving home in the dark, at rush hour and over poorly maintained roads – in stark contrast to what we’d become used to in France – was another reminder of why it’s a good idea to book a crossing and enjoy using our cars. Don’t obsess about the preparation: throw caution to the wind and make some memories.

VISIT leshuttle.com and maisonderhodes.com. For more details and images, see octane-magazine.com.

OCTANE’S FLEET These are the cars run by Octane’s staff and contributors JAMES ELLIOTT Editor-in-chief • 1965 Triumph 2.5 PI • 1968 Jensen Interceptor • 1969 Lotus Elan S4 ROBERT COUCHER Founding editor • 1955 Jaguar XK140 GLEN WADDINGTON Associate editor • 1989 BMW 320i Convertible • 1999 Porsche Boxster • 2001 BMW 525i Sport Touring SANJAY SEETANAH Advertising director • 1981 BMW 323i Top Cabrio • 1998 Aston Martin DB7 Volante MARK DIXON Contributing editor • 1927 Alvis 12/50 • 1927 Ford Model T pick-up • 1955 Land Rover Series I 107in • 1970 Rover 3500S • 1998 Isuzu Trooper 3.1Td ROBERT HEFFERON Art editor • 2004 BMW Z4 3.0i DAVID LILLYWHITE Editorial director • 1971 Saab 96 • 1991 VW Golf Mk2 GTI MATTHEW HOWELL Photographer • 1962 VW Beetle 1600 • 1969 VW/Subaru Beetle • 1982 Morgan 4/4 BEN BARRY Contributor • 2007 Mazda RX-8 MASSIMO DELBÒ Contributor • 1967 Mercedes-Benz 230 • 1972 Fiat 500L • 1982 Mercedes-Benz 500SL • 1985 Mercedes-Benz 240TD SAM CHICK Photographer • 1969 Alfa Romeo Spider JORDAN BUTTERS Photographer • 2007 Porsche 997 GT3 ROWAN ATKINSON Contributor • 2004 Rolls-Royce Phantom 139

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Octane Cars Running Reports

BERTHOLD DÖRRICH Contributor • 1939 Alvis 12/70 Special • 1958 Austin-Healey Sprite • 1972 Porsche 911T ANDREW RALSTON Contributor • 1955 Ford Prefect • 1968 Jaguar 240 RICHARD HESELTINE Contributor • 1966 Moretti 850 Sportiva • 1971 Honda Z600 PETER BAKER Contributor • 1934 Sunbeam 25 • 1954 Daimler Conquest • 1955 Daimler Conquest Century • 2005 Maserati 4200GT • 2008 Alfa Romeo Brera Prodrive SE DAVID BURGESS-WISE Contributor • 1924 Sunbeam 14/40 • 1926 Delage DISS JOHN MAYHEAD Contributor • 1946 MG TC • 1970 VW Type 2 Westfalia • 1988 Porsche 944 MATTHEW HAYWARD Markets editor • 1990 Citroën BX 16v • 1994 Toyota Celica GT-Four • 1997 Peugeot 306 GTI-6 • 2000 Honda Integra Type R • 2002 Audi A2 JESSE CROSSE Contributor • 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 • 1986 Ford Sierra RS Cosworth MARTYN GODDARD Photographer • 1963 Triumph TR6SS Trophy • 1965 Austin-Healey 3000 MkIII DELWYN MALLETT Contributor • 1936 Cord 810 Beverly • 1937 Studebaker Dictator • 1946 Tatra T87 • 1950 Ford Club Coupe • 1952 Porsche 356 • 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL • 1957 Porsche Speedster • 1957 Fiat Abarth Sperimentale • 1963 Abarth-Simca • 1963 Tatra T603 • 1973 Porsche 911 2.7 RS EVAN KLEIN Photographer • 1974 Alfa Romeo Spider • 2001 Audi TT

Beauty treatment 1969 Alfa Romeo Spider Sam Chick

I HAVE A strong cup of tea in my hand as I sit in the open doorway of a workshop bay at Turner Classics, a few minutes from my home in East Kent, and I have much to be pleased about.

After all the hand-stripping and sanding at the very beginning of this restoration, which was followed by nearly three years of what seemed mostly to involve ripping out and cutting lumps off my poor old car, the Duetto’s ’shell is whole once again and being treated to something akin to a spa day.

This second, more subtle though extremely thorough scour

Moretti’s last orders 1966 Moretti 850 Sportiva Richard Heseltine I MAY BE biased, but I think my Moretti is gorgeous. Every time I look at it I am seduced all over again. I am constantly amazed that stylist Dany Brawand managed to squeeze so many curves onto such a small canvas. And, make no mistake, it is tiny. The thing is,

employs fine aluminium oxide powder, delivered via a hopper and blasting machine by the double act of Josh (outside an airflow booth) to young Toby, sealed inside with my Alfa.

Three days of slow and careful graft have worked wonders on both my car and the GoPro action camera bolted inside that, despite being a fair distance from the scouring, now has a delightful starburst effect etched into its semi-sacrificial lens.

But both the lens and the considerable time taken to complete this process are proving entirely worthwhile. I now have a

dramatic stop-motion film from inside the booth of Toby in full protective suit, moving methodically around the car like a deep sea diver pulling his air hose behind him. With a second flexible hose and nozzle he strips any remaining contaminants, minute rust spots and unwanted materials that might trap moisture and create future issues on both internal and external surfaces.

This exfoliation treatment also ensures provision of the fine key required for the paint to adhere to the metal surfaces.

The machine goes quiet, air pumps switch off and Toby

I had to be content with staring at the car during the first half of 2025. I had surgery earlier in the year; the kind that rather got in the way of seat time. I struggled to get into it without the air turning blue. When I did finally get to enjoy the car during late summer, it was everything I remembered: pleasingly vocal, lively, and rather sweet in its own way.

I drove the Moretti quite a bit, too, even if journeys tended to be close to home. I started making plans for the future. I idly daydreamed about a road trip to

Portugal on the assumption that I would courier my luggage to each overnight halt. I had all sorts of grandiose ideas, the sort that came free with a beer and a barstool. I have owned the Moretti for seven years, almost five of which were spent apart for a variety of reasons.

Having had the car recommissioned, I had all sorts of expectations of how I would make up for lost time, but only a few have come to pass. Next year, I concluded, it would be different.

Then I decided to sell the car. It

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Tyre flat spot?

NEVER AGAIN!

emerges from the grey plumes of dust, blinking in the daylight – perhaps now more monochrome The Road To Wigan Pier miner than high-tech North Sea diver – and calmly reports success and satisfaction with his work.

The structural frames covered with curving panels constructed so many years ago on the Pininfarina production line in Turin, bought by me as a solid car hindered by a patchwork of poor repairs, have once again become a pristine example ready for priming, final shaping and paint.

Tea drunk, we grab brooms and brushes, clean down the shell,

then rotate the heavy rig and car onto its side to record the progress and transformation in my ‘proper’ camera.

It’s fair to say I’ve had many sleepless nights worrying about the cost, sense and practicality of this undertaking, along with the dilemmas of replacement, renewal and restoration. Looking through my camera viewfinder, those worries are silenced for a few calm moments. I’m focused literally and mentally on how uniform and frankly beautiful the grey metal ’shell now appears, sculpted by the early afternoon sunlight and ready for priming and paint.

+400% additional tyre-bearing surface from these specially designed product lines of cushions to avoid, seriously, the tyre flat spot phenomenon.

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just hit me. I have many failings; too many to count, really. I am fickle and I have poor impulse control. A week doesn’t go by when I don’t consider spending

money I don’t have on a car I don’t need, but now I’m at a point where I really want to own something different. I have a couple of cars in mind, but not the wherewithal to buy one of them and also keep the Moretti.

I wish I did but I don’t. As such, it is time for us to part.

My great mate Paul de Turris, a man steeped in coachbuilt Italian goodness, is handling the sale (please visit dtrsports.com). I am going to miss the Moretti but equally I am excited about what comes next.

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WORLDWIDE DELIVERY! Brands here eventually represented are property of their respective owners.

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Octane Cars Running Reports

OTHER NEWS ‘After nine years ferrying my kids in a faceless seven-seat box on wheels, I’ve traded up to a rather lovely ex-Japan 2001 BMW 525i Sport Touring: a decision that’s sensible and stupid in equal measure’ Glen Waddington

‘Planning a Porsche boys’ day out to Steve Kerti’s resto-shop in Devon where, if all goes well, my ’73 Carrera RS will be fired up for the first time in five years’ Delwyn Mallett

Another round of Golf 1991 VW Golf Mk2 GTI David Lillywhite YOU KNOW THOSE itches that you just have to scratch? They may go away for a while but often return, sometimes in a subtly different form. Usually, there’s only one way to sort them out…

Well, my itch has always been Mks1 and 2 Golf GTIs. I love them. I’ve had four, maybe five if you count the Mk2 that my brother bought from Robert Coucher in the late 1990s, when Robert and I worked together in pre-Octane days. I drove that a few times so I reckon I can count it as part-ownership.

For the last three years at least I’ve been keeping an eye out for a good Mk1, then backing down because it’s so galling that they’re now £15,000-plus, which is at least ten times as much as I ever paid for one back in the day. But actually I never found one that was quite right.

The more I thought about what I wanted the car for, however, the more I realised that a Mk2 might be better. I have the lightly modified Saab 96 for comedy

blasts around the lanes, kidding myself that it’s fast when of course it’s not – but it is great fun. To sit alongside the Saab, I needed something more civilised for regular, comfortable use. It must be an age thing.

I then further narrowed that down to a late-model Mk2, with power steering. Not just because I have puny arms but because the PAS model has a higher-ratio steering rack that makes it feel much more responsive. And it had to be an eight-valve because they’re a stronger, torquier engine than the revvy 16-valve.

I’ve missed quite a few examples for sale simply through not having time to visit them so, when one came up less than 15 minutes’ drive from my house, I had to take a look. Late model (1991), unmodified (except for useful 16v model front brakes and Bilstein replacement dampers), usable condition (not immaculate but pretty good), owned by someone who really cares (garaged, rarely driven

in the wet, well-documented) and an interesting colour (the rare Capri Green). It even came with a spare set of original-fitment BBS alloys.

It was just edging into a five-figure sum but that’s typical for a decent Mk2 these days. Of course, I bought it, thus breaking a (rare) prolonged dry spell in my car buying.

As I write this, the Golf is sitting in my garage looking rather sparkly. There are a few bits that the previous owner pointed out that need sorting, including a noisy heater blower, stiff driver’s side window winder, and non-functioning ‘MFA’ fuel computer, and I think the front wheel tracking and camber would benefit from adjustment to sharpen the steering response – but I feel like the itch is getting a good scratching at last.

Top A Golf GTI is back in David’s life, this time a late Mk2 in a rare colour with just enough to tinker with.

‘The Rover 3500S is currently grounded – excuse the pun – by a mysterious ignition fault and the Isuzu Trooper is in daily service. To be frank, given the current horrible winter weather, that’s no hardship’ Mark Dixon

‘Getting excited as Rallye Monte-Carlo Classique 2026 looms ever closer. Question is, however: will my 1934 Sunbeam’s engine be back together in time?’

Peter Baker

‘I’ve been busy recommissioning my latest Citroën BX 16v purchase, replacing the front spheres and curing some of the messy hydraulic leaks’ Matthew Hayward

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T H E

H A I R P I N

C O M P A N Y

1995 RANGE ROVER AUTOBIOGRAPHY OVERFINCH 460i One of 26 special build SWB 4.2 Autobiography models. Full Overfinch conversion.

Two owners. 26,000 miles. Perfectly maintained. As new throughout.

PORSCHE 911 BESPOKE BUILD Built by the renowned Canford Classics to a very high spec with incredible level of quality and detail. Complete history and build file.

1972 LANCIA FULVIA HF1600 S2 UK RHD example restored to the highest standards with no regard to cost. Unbelievable detail and £107,000 spent. Comes with two extensive history files.

2011 BMW 1M An immaculate unmodified example. 25,000 miles with full service history. Two owners from new. All books, tools, keys and invoices.

2004 MERCEDES BENZ SL55 AMG F1 PERFORMANCE PACKAGE A rare model and the nicest I’ve seen for years. All the right extras inc Pano roof.

52,000 miles. Immaculate unmarked condition with FSH. All books, keys and invoices.

2023 ALPINA B5 TOURING One of the last made and finished to a great specification. Immaculate and unmarked. Two owners and 20,000 miles. An amazing car to drive.

T E L : 0124 9 76 0 6 8 6 • T H E H A I R P I N C O M PA N Y. C O . U K T H E H A I R P I N C O M PA N Y C O M P T O N B A S S E T T W I LT S H I R E S N11 8 R H

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Overdrive Other interesting cars we’ve been driving

Are you experienced?

Elliott Hughes tries out the Goodwood ProDriver Experience Photography Jonathan James Wilson; Drew Gibson

AS EAR-SPLITTING and life-affirming as a Hendrix solo, the Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo sears along Goodwood’s pit straight, turbos hissing to a crescendo before the Doppler effect discloses the flat-plane V8’s bark. Its driver pummels the brakes, downshifts and dives into Madgwick. From the pits, it looks fast – but nowhere near as fast as it feels from the driver’s seat.

Minutes later I am strapped in with a five-point harness. My helmet is tethered to a HANS device. My hands clutch a Formula 1-style wheel. A bank of switches sits between me and pro driver Gus Bowers, who’d been warming the Pirelli slicks while I watched with nervous excitement.

This Ferrari is one of four race cars on the menu in Goodwood’s ProDriver Experience with DTO Motorsport, a day that allows paying punters (and the odd lucky journalist) to suit-up and play racing driver under professional guidance, and with professional simulators and telemetry.

The day starts with a briefing from Jack Layton followed by about 45 minutes to practise on the simulators, have a light breakfast or just socialise while the pros do some laps to check the cars and track conditions. Then it’s straight into the 15-minute sessions (each good for six laps) that continue all day, punctuated by short breaks and lunch in the Race Control building.

‘Ready? Comfortable?’ crackles Gus over the intercom. After an hour in the simulator, I feel more prepared than I should – because nothing can ready you for the intensity of the real thing.

With 661bhp and 0-60mph in 2.8sec, the Ferrari is properly quick. Motorsport-grade engine mounts and rose-jointed suspension transmit vibrations from the powertrain and track surface straight into your seat. The sole concession to comfort is air-con, which does little to lower cockpit temperature. You’re surrounded by the criss-cross lattice of the rollcage and netting to prevent your limbs from flailing around should you really get it wrong. Which is sobering.

Despite the intimidating atmosphere, a couple of corners reveal that the Ferrari is surprisingly benign and – dare I say it – easy to drive. Steering is communicative and razor-sharp, the power delivery is linear and the 3.9-litre V8 is just as potent and exciting as you imagine.

The brake pedal is firm and progressive, and the carbonceramic brakes rapidly bleed off speed. Nerves evaporate after a couple of laps. Instead, mental bandwidth is dedicated to braking points, apexes and the smoothness of your inputs.

As with any serious racing car, the more you push, the more you’re rewarded with downforce and grip. Up to a point, anyway

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‘I leave Goodwood physically exhausted but mentally buzzing’

Clockwise, from opposite 488 Challenge Evo is one of four cars on the DTO fleet; simulator time is essential before hitting the track; this is no mere trackday: full-on HANS kit and space shuttle wheel; glorious Goodwood.

– slicks break adhesion far less progressively than road-going tyres. Luckily, whenever I am a bit snatchy with the throttle, Gus intervenes over the intercom.

Equally, when I do something well he offers encouragement, which boosts confidence. As do traction control and ABS, which I’m especially grateful for on a circuit as tricky as Goodwood.

After a cool-down lap we roll back into the pit-lane and my heart rate falls from a 124bpm peak. Gus and I grab a coffee and dive into the telemetry. At first glance it’s an indecipherable tangle of squiggly lines, but Gus explains how each line correlates to a particular input – with throttle and brake traces being the most important. Overlaid against his data, it becomes obvious where I can improve – brake later here, be smoother on the throttle there. It all adds up.

I’m soon ready to put the lessons of my first session into practice and it’s amazing how much the data help to build confidence and your practical understanding of what constitutes

a fast lap. By the end of the day I’m lapping at a ‘respectable’ pace and have hit a top speed of 174mph. Gus is a brave man.

You would think that always having the instructor in the car with you might cramp your style, but it does the opposite. I went to about 90% and it’s the only trackday experience I’ve had where the instructor not only allows you to push that hard, but then tells you how to go faster.

I leave Goodwood physically exhausted but mentally buzzing.

Apparently, I’d been grinning so much that several people felt the need to point it out. I thoroughly recommend it; as a driver it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Childhood dreams of becoming a racing driver might be years behind me – but, for one unforgettable day, it was a reality.

The ProDriver Experience, presented by DTO Motorsport, is available now from £1950 per person. Visit goodwood.com/ motorsport/driving-experiences/ prodriver-experience.

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Gone but not forgotten Words by Richard Heseltine

Chris Lawrence The mastermind of the Monica whose racing cars were the ones to beat

IT BEGAN WITH a letter and ended with an epitaph. Chris Lawrence designed and engineered the Monica super-saloon but came close to missing out on the gig. Given that it took over his life for eight long years, only to be extinguished just as it came good, there were times when he wished that he had.

Jean Tastevin’s Jaguar Français was initially to have been powered by a special long-stroke Triumph engine devised by Lawrence, but a letter from the French industrialist initially fell on deaf ears. It arrived in early 1966. Lawrence didn’t speak a word of French so he put it in his bureau. He would attend to it later. Weeks ticked by before he attempted to decipher the letter and it was at this juncture that he realised Tastevin wanted 250 engines per year.

He immediately hot-footed it over to Paris for a meeting and enquired as to what sort of car they would be powering. Tastevin didn’t know. He hadn’t decided yet. Sensing an opportunity, Lawrence suggested that he was better at designing cars than building engines so why not let him have a crack?

Fast-forward to November 1974 and, following umpteen redesigns, changes of powerplant and more than a little rancour, the Monica was finally ready for production. A factory was up and running in Balbigny, near Lyon, and then Tastevin abruptly pulled the plug. There wasn’t much of a market for profligate exotica given the recent Oil Shock, and he wasn’t prepared to throw more money onto the pyre. Following its demise, Paul Frère wrote an article about the car that was akin to a love letter; an ode to a machine whose brilliance went unrewarded.

Decades later, Lawrence could recite much of it verbatim. He remained heartbroken that

the Monica hadn’t taken flight, but rather more so that it left him pauperised. He had been paid costs but the carrot had been the British concession. But then it wasn’t the first time that he had been broke, nor would it be the last. For a man who was extraordinarily gifted in so many areas, he didn’t have a commercial bone in his body. His lack of business acumen meant that relations with investors often flamed out, spectacularly.

Lawrence was born in Ealing, London, on 27 July 1933. He’d inherited an interest in two-wheeled machinery from his father, but he switched to three wheels in 1952 on persuading his mother to give him a 1936 Morgan Super Sport for his birthday. He soon upgraded to the likes of a Bugatti Type 38 during his spell at the Royal Navy Engineering College in Plymouth and went on to earn a degree of success on-track aboard an ex-works MG Magnette (which ultimately gained a glassfibre Microplas bodyshell) and a BMW-powered AFM. Then came a car with which his name would become inextricably linked: a secondhand Morgan Plus 4. Lawrence and ‘TOK 258’ went on to win the 1959 Freddie Dixon Trophy series, which prompted him to create LawrenceTune in association with Leslie Fagg and Len Bridge. Acton subsequently became the centre of the universe for Morgan types. Even more so after Lawrence and team-mate Richard Shepherd-Barron claimed two-litre class honours in the 1962 Le Mans 24 Hours aboard the latest incarnation of TOK 258 (there were several).

This was – and remains – the Malvern marque’s greatest achievement on-track, but

Lawrence was a restless sprit. It wasn’t enough for him to be a racing driver, his career ultimately encompassing two rounds of the Formula 1 World Championship. It also wasn’t sufficient for him to be a tuner, despite his outfit being the first ever to obtain a factory warranty for a go-faster conversion.

Nor was he content merely to design cars, and he was responsible for quite a few, ranging from the groovily named Deep Sanderson 301 to single-seaters, via a twin-engined sprint car and, of course, the Monica four-door GT. The late 1970s saw Lawrence move to the USA, where he largely worked on historic cars. He even made a racing comeback aboard a self-prepared AC Aceca, which was outlawed because it was quicker than most Cobras. He returned from his self-imposed exile in the 1990s to engineer the Marcos LM600 Le Mans challenger before co-designing the Morgan Aero 8’s award-winning foundations.

Appropriately, he also oversaw the marque’s return to endurance racing in 2002.

Nevertheless, he remained guarded around the media, something that he put down to profound shyness.

Chip away at his gruff façade and Lawrence could be wonderful company, and surprisingly emotional. He never – ever – boasted. He would invariably play down his achievements, not that he ever viewed them as such. In later years, he bubbled over with enthusiasm about the steam engine design that he had patented.

He dearly hoped that it would find its way into a road car. It never did.

He slipped away quietly on 13 August 2011 while watching his beloved cricket on TV. He was 78. Lawrence remained leftfield to the end. Defiantly so.

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A HEAVEN FOR AUTOMOTIVE ENTHUSIASTS

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Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 GBP 530,000

Fiat 131 Abarth Tribute GBP 38,000

Lancia Fulvia Coupe 1600 HF GBP 91,000

Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA GBP 162,000

Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI TME GBP 85,000

Subaru Impreza 22B GBP 230,000

Peugeot 106 Rallye GBP 14,000

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Gearbox

Bruce Wood MD of Cosworth – having started there in 1987 as an Engineering graduate – BRDC member and LeJog class winner… in a Bristol 411

1. I’ve accumulated a number of mementos from drivers’ careers, but none more important to me than Kenny Brack’s helmet from the 2001 CART Championship: the ‘one that got away’ for Kenny, who led the championship for much of 2001 before settling for second at the death.

This helmet still bears the scars from his first win of the season at Motegi in Japan.

2. We have lived in our former farmhouse for over 25 years, with my only frustration being the small garage. Converted from the milking parlour, it is the length of a cow and a hay bale – too short for my 1972 Bristol 411 – so I mapped out every mm of space in three dimensions, excavated the rear wall, installed a lift and cut back the rafters so I could squeeze in my three cars. It’s so tight in there that I have to prepare myself mentally before moving them.

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3. How it all began. My father was a cinematographer by profession but enjoyed model engineering in his spare time and had assembled a small workshop. By ten or 11 it was my passion, too, and I spent every spare waking hour in the workshop. That passion was reignited when my wife bought me a lathe for my 40th birthday. It took another decade and a half to set it up, but I haven’t looked back since!

4. I was thrilled to be invited to join the British Racing Drivers’ Club in recognition of my contribution to Cosworth, racing and the world of hypercar powertrain engineering.

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5. My daily-driver key ring. Clearly our son Max could foretell the future aged three, though daughter Abby’s image of long hair and six arms on the other side is more questionable!

6. My ‘big break’ at Cosworth came in 1997 when I became American Racing Director aged 33. The Ford-Cosworth works team – NewmanHaas – was second only to Penske Racing for success and was the most glamorous team in the pit-lane, with Paul Newman as co-owner and the Andrettis, father and son, driving! Carl Haas, the cigar-chomping driving force, gave me this TAG Heuer at the end of the season.

7. I was chief designer on Ford-Cosworth’s 1996-99 Championship Auto Racing Teams ‘XD’ engine, which won 16 races, mostly with Michael Andretti at the helm, but never a championship. Two decades later the engine was resurrected by Wallace Menzies, who won the British Hillclimb Championship four years in a row and sent me a bottle of gin each time!

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8. We have had a cottage in Snowdonia for 20 years, close to where my parents had a cottage when I was a small child, so I have enjoyed those amazing views for most of my life.

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9. In my late 40s I stumbled upon LeJog and had to do it! I knew I could count on my best friend John Vaughan to navigate, but lacked a suitable car. I’m not sure how I concluded that a Bristol was suitable, but in December 2012 we tentatively left the Land’s End start and by John O’Groats we were somehow first in class!

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THE EXPRESSION OF A CHIC AND REFINED STYLE V6-42-EV-CHIC

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ALAMY

Words by Delwyn Mallett

Kangol beret How the British ended up adopting a French staple and exporting it to the world YOUNGER READERS (those susceptible to wearing their baseball caps back-to-front) will no doubt associate the name Kangol with the Hip-Hop crowd who also tend to wear their berets in an unconventional fore-and-aft disposition and are probably unaware that it was once a major British brand.

The beret started life centuries ago as an oversize floppy felted-wool pancake of a hat for shepherds in the Basque Country that straddles Spain and France. Industrialised production in the 19th Century saw it adopted en masse by working class men across much of France, to the extent that the beret (usually in conjunction with an ‘Onion Johnny’ striped Breton jumper) became an international cliché for a Frenchman.

Impoverished artists also took to the beret, including the far-from-poor Pablo Picasso,

Left Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, cutting a dash in the beret he adopted after his bush hat kept blowing off in the desert.

as well as Left Bank intellectuals hanging out in St Germain’s cafés, and ex-pat Americans such as macho war reporter and novelist Ernest Hemingway. Coco Chanel, well-known for borrowing male fashions, popularised the beret in the 1920s as a chic fashion item for adventurous women.

Meanwhile, across La Manche, a Polish Jewish émigré with a French name had spotted a business opportunity. Jakob Henryk Spreiregan was born in Warsaw in 1893 but, by the early 20th Century, he had relocated to France and changed his name to Jacques Henry Sergene before moving on to England.

During WW1 he was back in France serving in the medical corps and it was during this spell that he decided to import berets into a Britain dominated by the flat cap. By the mid-1930s the female beret business, encouraged by high-profile stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Katherine Hepburn dressing in an androgynous way, was doing well enough for Jacques to start production in the UK, opening a factory in Cleator, Cumbria.

The name Kangol was coined in 1938, formed by taking the ‘K’ from knitted, the ‘ang’ from Angora and the ‘ol’ from wool. The kangaroo logo wouldn’t arrive for another 50 years.

The name had barely been registered before WW2 erupted and Kangol would become the British Army’s major supplier of military berets. When soon-to-be national hero General Bernard Montgomery arrived in the North African desert to take command in 1942, his favoured Australian bush hat kept blowing away when he stuck his head out of his command tank. Eventually his driver, in frustration, presented him with his own beret, declaring that progress would be much quicker if they didn’t have to keep stopping to retrieve the hat. From then on the much-fêted ‘Monty’ adopted the beret as a signature part of his unconventional military wardrobe.

Before the war, only the Royal Tank Regiment wore berets, having adopted a black one in 1924 as a more practical form of headgear within the confines of a tank. As the war progressed, the Commandos and the Parachute Regiment also adopted the beret, green and maroon respectively, with others gradually following suit. Today virtually every army in the world wears the beret.

Post-war, many ex-servicemen wore their berets in civvy street. My ex-Tank Regiment uncle looked like a hero to my young eyes as he arrived at my parents’ house on his Norton wearing his black beret (crash hats were for wimps) and RAF-surplus Mk8 goggles.

The first Olympic Games since the Nazi propaganda-fest of 1936 were staged in London in 1948 and The British Olympic team, men and women, cut a dash as they paraded in navy-blue blazers, white slacks and Kangol-supplied berets.

The 1950s and ’60s were the era of Beatniks, bongos, black shades and berets, as devotees of modern jazz adopted the sartorial style of Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, who made it ‘Cool Man’.

Thousands of aspiring student revolutionaries adorned their walls with Alberto Korda’s totemic image of bearded and beret-sporting revolutionary Che Guevara. The black beret was also adopted by urban guerrillas, like the Black Panthers and, nearer to home, the IRA. However, British (and American) men in general never took fully to the beret. In an attempt to give its beret man-appeal, an early Kangol press ad featured a couple of cravatwearing ‘spiffing chaps’ in an open two-seater sports bolide, one with a ’tache, each wearing, as the ad proclaimed, ‘The Sporting Beret’ at a jaunty angle. Strangely, it eschewed the advertising convention of having the man ‘accessorised’ with a token female.

In the 1970s, as far as the UK was concerned, any sophistication that the beret had acquired took a dent when it became the headgear of the bumbling accident-prone but lovable nerd Frank Spencer in the Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em TV series.

A new era of popularity for Kangol started in the 1980s when it was noticed that New York’s style-setting Hip-Hoppers were asking retailers for one of ‘those kangaroo hats’, perhaps an understandable misnomer given the dearth of words starting with ‘kang’.

Turning the misunderstanding to its advantage, Kangol in 1984 adopted the bouncing marsupial as its logo.

Perhaps the ultimate commercial for Kangol came in 1997, when Samuel L Jackson wore not one but two Kangol berets – black and red and worn backwards, of course – in Quentin Tarantino’s movie Jackie Brown.

Kangol diversified into safety products in 1954 and, even if you have never contemplated wearing a beret, there’s a fair chance older readers will once have owned a Kangol crash helmet and also been restrained in their motor by Kangol’s famous Magnet inertia seatbelt, because by the 1970s it was Britain’s biggest helmet manufacturer and Europe’s biggest seatbelt supplier.

Kangol is no longer in the helmet or seatbelt business and no longer in the UK. The Cleator factory, once turning out four million hats a year, shut up shop in 2009 and Kangol berets are now made on distant shores.

More surprisingly, perhaps, of the hundreds of beret manufacturers that used to exist in France, only one now survives.

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About 50 selected vehicles

Viewing in Gstaad: December 28th & 29th 2025

2019 Ferrari 488 Pista

1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz

2006 Bentley Azure

1964 Mercedes 220 SEb Cabriolet

1969 Maserati Ghibli 4.7

1963 Chevrolet Corvette Split Window

2008 Ferrari 430 Scuderia

1969 Jaguar E-Type Series 2 Roadster 1970 Lamborghini Espada Series 2

1962 Chevrolet Corvette Fuel Injection 1969 Maserati Mexico 4200

2001 BMW Z8 Roadster

2002 Rolls-Royce Corniche Last of Line 1989 Porsche 911 Speedster

2009 Lamborghini Murciélago

Please use our online-form for your catalog orders (EUR 40.-) Guerbestrasse 1 Phone +41-31-8196161 CH-3125 Toffen info@oldtimergalerie.ch www.TheSwissAuctioneers.swiss 151

Chrono

by Mark McArthur-Christie

Telling you the time – or telling you off ?

IN 1911, THE ENGINEER Frederick Winslow Taylor – the man who gave us the modern workplace with its managers, targets, obsession with metrics and job descriptions – published his Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor believed that everything in an organisation could be measured and, indeed, should be.

This could almost have been Tim Cook’s pitch for the launch of the Apple Watch in 2014. All the information and measurement you could possibly need (and quite a lot that you don’t) is on your wrist. And everything is so easy to use; there are mechanical watches where changing the day and date is more complicated. Worried about sleeping through your alarm? No bother, your watch will tap your wrist to wake you. Forgotten your to-do list? Twirl the crown and it’s there. Need a prod to get up from your desk, move and measure how far you’ve walked? Done.

The Apple Watch is a beautiful thing, too. The curve of the case edges, the depth of the screen, the way the strap is secure but swappable in seconds, no tools required (we’re looking at you, Q/R springbars), the satisfying haptics when you turn the crown… even the way the crown is offset, so it’s easier to spin with a fingertip. Don’t like the dial it comes with? There are 5687 more to choose from and you can select any of them from your phone. Jony Ive succeeded in making his creation an exemplar of intelligent design thinking and usability.

This should be the sort of beautiful, life-enhancing technology you come to love. Apple’s SuperWatch is so thoughtfully designed, usable and useful that people said it rendered mechanical watches obsolete and even defined a new consumer goods segment. But that’s the point; you come to love it like you love your laptop or your microwave.

In any rational world, the Apple Watch is a better piece of kit than any mechanical watch ever made. But we are not rational creatures.

If we were, those constant nagging government exhortations to eat our greens, ride bicycles and stop glugging gin would be unnecessary.

Perhaps ‘better’ isn’t necessarily what we really want, or what’s really good for us.

One of the beauties of a mechanical wristwatch is that it is a self-contained, tiny universe on your wrist. And, despite this inherent complication, you can see – and understand – at a glance what makes

APPLE

Quite clearly the greatest and most complicated watch ever made, but no one likes a nag

it work. With enough determination, you can deduce from first principles how to fix it if it goes wrong. And there’s joy in the daft but beautiful things, like the useless hand-filed angles on the bridges or the pointless engine turning.

In contrast, you can’t even get into the case of an Apple Watch – you’re rendered a passive observer. Even if you did get in, the electronics inside are mute in the way a train of gears and springs isn’t. It’s a clever thing that reminds you constantly of your own stupidity.

Then there’s the way your i-watch’s measurement of your every activity turns your days into a single-player RPG; always a wristborne nudge to beat yesterday’s distance, time or workout intensity. This nagging is, of course, splendid for your physical, if not your mental, health. But sometimes you need to go for a walk just because you want to feel the sun on your face, not to get your steps in.

We optimist horophiles see the Apple Watch not as a replacement but as a gateway drug. Once your wrist computer’s battery finally dies or won’t upgrade to a new OS, you’ll be looking for something with wiggly springs and cogs – and a heart – to replace it.

ONE TO WATCH

Breguet Souscription Embodying the spirit of anti-revolutionary France since 1796

THE ORIGINAL Breguet Souscription is perhaps the antithesis of the Apple Watch, yet was created for similar hardnosed commercial reasons.

Breguet had fled revolutionary France and was left with minimal capital, tools and materials. He needed to re-establish his business, and fast. His answer was to use advertising to get customers to subscribe to a new watch, giving him capital and cash for materials and kit.

The modern tribute comes from rather less fraught circumstances, but carries the original’s simplicity, beauty and sheer craftsmanship in manufacture. It won’t measure your heartrate, but it’ll make you smile every time you check the time.

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v2-JonathanWood-Award-Advert-Octane-Nov-2025.pdf

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MY

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OUR RESTORATION OF THE

1924 HISPANO-SUIZA H6C 'BOULOGNE' — Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance 2025: 2nd in Class & Winner of the Alec Ulmann Trophy.

— Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court 2025: 1st in Class & Winner of the Spirit of Motoring Award.

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jonathan-wood.co.uk | info@jonathan-wood.co.uk | +44 (0) 1799 586888

— Royal Automobile Club Historic Awards 2025: Winner of Restoration Category.

Books Reviewed by Mark Dixon

Book of the month

Ultimate Ford GT40

The Definitive History Volume Two

JOHN S ALLEN, GRAHAM ENDEACOTT & MARK COLE with MIKE TESKE Porter Press International, £325, ISBN 978 1 913089 72 6

A few months ago we had the first volume in this four-book project, which was a greatly expanded and updated version of Ronnie Spain’s seminal 1996 chassis record and race history. Number two in the series traces the evolution of the GT40 from genesis through to the 1964 and ’65 competition seasons, ending with the 1965 Le Mans 24 Hours.

So, you may be thinking, what sets this book apart from all the many others that have been written about the GT40’s history?

Well, for a start, it’s the production values.

The book is massive – large-format, and running to 576 pages and over 1000 period photos and documents – but it’s also beautifully designed, not just in terms of ‘artiness’ but also for its clarity and ease of reading. The text and captions are in sensible type sizes and there’s just enough white space to avoid information overload. The print quality is also first-class.

It’s those aforementioned period photos that

are the real clincher, however. In 1992, Ford decided to cut its motorsport picture archive dramatically: before the cull, it took up 30cu ft of storage; afterwards, it was 7cu ft. Thankfully, rather than being skipped, the remainder was given to GT40 historian Mike Teske, one of the four contributors to this book.

There will definitely be many images here that even the most well-read GT40 enthusiast won’t have seen before. One amusing highlight is a sequence of shots taken outside Ford Advanced Vehicles’ factory in Slough, where GT40 chassis 1001 was pushed into the road for photography. Unfortunately, someone had left a Morris Minor convertible in just the wrong spot, resulting in works superintendent Tony Tocock and a mechanic having to resort to fetching a trolley jack to move it out of shot!

A more poignant image appears towards the very end of the book, taken after the Le Mans 24 Hours had ended and showing a Peugeot 404 estate towing the failed Team Shelby chassis 107 back from exile out on the circuit, the GT40’s front clamshell tied precariously onto the Peugeot’s roof.

As the spread at the top here illustrates, a fine selection of period colour images has been unearthed to leaven the monochrome ones, while biographies of key GT40 personnel – many of them freshly published – are pickedout in pastel-coloured panels throughout. Even where documents exist only as photocopies, the thoughtful design means they don’t jar, visually.

At £325, this entry-level version of the book (there are much pricier Collector’s and Owner’s editions available, too) is hardly a bargain buy – but the quality will remain long after the price has been, if not forgotten, then forgiven.

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Porsche 911 The Art of Speed

Volvo Cars 1927-2025

The Grand Prix Year

Maybe a little too substantial for its own good – the binding on our review copy was already starting to fail – this large-format picture book is devoted to stunning studio shots by photographer and Porsche Turbo devotee René Staud, who has run 25 of the latter as daily drivers. No fewer than 88 cars from every era of 911 are depicted in colourful and imaginative ways, including rarities such as the narrow-bodied Turbo no.1 that was given to Louise Piëch. While there’s a bit of text, it’s all about the pictures.

As anyone who has seen a ‘prancing elk’ Ferrari-spoof sticker on a Volvo will know, these paragons of Nordic rugged reliability now have a cult following – and it’s said that more than 20,000 Volvo Amazons are still registered in their native Sweden. Each Volvo type in this neat little softback is profiled by an expert in the relevant model so the info is impeccable and there are plenty of photos – and, for the price, you can forgive the happy-snaps quality of many of them. Move those recycling bins, people!

While this hardback is a recent work, it’s not a round-up of the 2025 season; instead, it takes you through the vagaries and unique characteristics of each race venue, with insights from drivers, pit crew, medics and so on. So, for example, you’ll learn the favourite places to eat, and why a cold bedroom is best for a good night’s sleep.

It’s a very accessible yet grown-up read, and one that you can enjoy for those nuggets of information without having the slightest interest in Eff One.

RENÉ STAUD & JÜRGEN LEWANDOWSKI, Prestel, £65, ISBN 978 3 7913 9181 6

ANDREW ANDERSON, Amberley, £15.99, ISBN 978 1 3981 1813 3

PHILIP HORTON, Bloomsbury, £14, ISBN 978 1 3994 1493 7

Mr Wilman’s Motoring Adventure

Joseph Figoni Vol. II, III, IV: Bugatti If you’re wondering why this slipcased set doesn’t include a Volume I, it’s because that particular book was a stand-alone work devoted to Joseph Figoni’s coachwork on pre-war Alfa Romeo chassis. Now it’s Bugatti’s turn to get the Moteurs! publishing treatment.

And what a gorgeous treatment it’s been given. Presented in a sturdy black slipcase with an inset brass Carrosserie J. Figoni ‘maker’s plate’, the three volumes are a catalogue raisonné of all the Bugatti chassis known to have been bodied or retailed by Figoni – the latter including a Type 35A that was one of a pair ordered by Edsel Ford and delivered to the USA. Particularly important cars tend to have very storied backgrounds, of which Type 57S Atlantic chassis 57473 is a prime example. Following a horrific crash with a train at a railway crossing in 1955, its mangled remains were retrieved from a scrapyard in the 1960s and a blurry photo of them, apparently stored in a farmyard, makes a dramatic contrast with Michael Furman’s beautiful studio shots of the same car after an incredible Paul Russell restoration/recreation. This mixture of images showing cars when new in the wealthy enclaves of Europe, then their often careworn and rundown state after World War Two, followed (in some, but not all) cases by recent resurrections, is endlessly fascinating.

Such a generous canvas – the three volumes add up to over 1100 pages – has allowed the authors to include plenty of background atmosphere about Figoni and the Parisian milieu of his time, so this is far more than simply a chassis register. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s gorgeous.

PETER M LARSEN & BEN ERICKSON, Moteurs!, £650

His face isn’t nearly as familiar as those of Clarkson, Hammond and May but, as the co-creator and producer of Top Gear and The Grand Tour, Andy Wilman was as important as any of them. He’s been a friend of Clarkson since schooldays and in the 1990s it was to Wilman that Clarkson turned for help making his first TV series, Motorworld. The rest, as they say, is etc etc.

What you get in this very entertaining autobiography is the inside line on just how close-to-the-wire the making of those shows could be; it’s worth buying just to read the harrowing account of how narrowly the Top Gear film crew escaped being murdered in Argentina. The problems of booking guests in the early days make very amusing reading – and it’s good to hear that Tom Cruise was just as unbelievably nice in person as his public image suggests, even when Wilman’s then seven-year-old son was telling him that absolutely no one knew who he was…

ANDY WILMAN, Michael Joseph, £22, ISBN 978 0 241 78895 0 155

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Gear Compiled by Chris Bietzk and Sophie Kochan

Colnago Steelnovo Last year, Colnago celebrated its 70th birthday by creating the Steelnovo, a design that blends traditional steel-tube construction and newfangled 3D printing. The venerable Italian bicycle maker got a helping hand from Additiva, a Modena-based company that supplies 3D-printed metal parts to F1 teams. The finished bike offered both the ride quality of good old-fashioned steel and beautifully sleek, modern lines – but production was strictly limited, and the price was steep. Now, however, Colnago has decided to make the Steelnovo available as a standard model (though no more than 400 units will be made each year), and you can buy the frameset alone if the cost of a complete bike from Colnago makes your eyes water, as we suspect it might…

Frameset £5290; complete from £14,811. colnago.com

Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 McLaren Edition headphones

Porsche 917 LH chassis 043 model by Werk83 ‘When it was finished, nobody could move their fingers anymore,’ said Hans-Dieter Dechent, recalling how some 1500 rattle cans were used to decorate the famous purple-green-and-white ‘Hippie Car’ ahead of the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans. The irony is that the car, 917 LH chassis 043, looked better when it was only half-done: it appeared at practice wearing the comparatively restrained paintjob seen on this 1:18-scale model.

£91.95. grandprixmodels.com

Bowers & Wilkins, a longstanding partner of the McLaren F1 team, has given its flagship cans a splash of Papaya in time for a triumphant conclusion to the season for McLaren. With Lando Norris having secured the Drivers’ Championship in the final race, and McLaren already having scored the Manufacturers’ trophy, now all that remains is to sit back, relax and listen.

£729. bowerswilkins.com

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Brünnchen print

by Rachael Clegg In her own inimitable style, Rachael Clegg tells the story of Jackie Stewart’s hair-raising trip through Brünnchen corner during the 1968 German GP at the Nürburgring. In foul conditions, the great man aquaplaned and almost lost control, but he caught his car and charged on to win by over four minutes.

From £550 rachaelclegg.com

Renault 5 Maxi Turbo model by CaDA An officially licensed, pocket-money model of Renault’s brilliant pocket rocket, made up of 308 pieces and featuring printed bricks; there are no fiddly stickers to attach here!

£14.99. wonderlandmodels.com

McKlein 2026 Motorsport Classic wall calendar

Nivada Antarctic Glacier 35mm Nivada Grenchen’s Guillaume Laidet recently stumbled upon a small cache of new-old-stock Antarctic Glacier dials and ETA movements from the 1960s, and used them to make 18 watches. Those sold out immediately, of course, but Nivada Grenchen is now making a very handsome recreation of the Antarctic Glacier, powered by a Soprod P054 movement and available in 38mm and vintage-correct 35mm forms.

£860. nivadagrenchenofficial.com

McKlein has published a new Motorsport Classic calendar every year since 2001, but the company’s archive of great motorsport photographs from days gone by shows no sign of being depleted. Notable shots featured in the 2026 edition include one of Jochen Mass in his McLaren M23, catching some air during the 1976 German GP; a charming snap of the Scuderia Ferrari crew in front of the team transporter at the 1961 Belgian GP; and a corker showing Henri Toivonen The Sound of Speed, a curious butLotus innovative short film showing sliding his Talbot Sunbeam around a narrow strip a muteofLance Reventlow testing a Scarab F1 car, was chosen tarmac on the 1981 Rallye de Portugal, hemmed in byto compete theentirely 1962 Cannes Festival, but even fansin with too littFilm le regard for their own today safety.few people €49. haverallyandracing.com seen it (though it is available on YouTube). Fewer still have set eyes on an original example of the poster produced to promote the film, but one has turned uy. £3250. atthemovies.uk

The Sound of Speed poster

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Edited by Matthew Hayward

The Market B U Y I N G + S E L L I N G + A N A LY S I S

TOP 10 PRICES NOVEMBER 2025 £15,744,816 (€17,915,092) 2025 Ferrari SP3 RM Sotheby’s, Las Vegas, USA 21 November £4,892,136 (CHF5,181,250) 1956 Jaguar D-type Broad Arrow Auctions, Zurich, Switzerland, 1 November

RM SOTHEBY’S

£4,730,000 (CHF5,009,543) 2015 Ferrari FXX K RM Sotheby’s, London, UK 1 November

Gordon Murray creations smash auction records RM Sotheby’s sells Murray’s latest S1 LM and McLaren F1 for record figures IT HAS BEEN an interesting few weeks in the world of Gordon Murray-designed cars. In November, RM Sotheby’s managed to sell the final allocation for the GMSV S1 LM for $20,630,000 during the Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend. John Mayhead has gone into some depth about this car in the Data Mining section, but suffice to say it’s the most expensive brand new car ever sold at auction (aside from the Ferrari SP3 sold for charity a few months back). While the car doesn’t actually exist yet – which is why it’s missing from our Top 10 auction prices – the buyer will get the chance to work with Murray directly to shape its development.

Of course, the car that influenced it remains the king, as demonstrated by the next record announced

by RM: $25,317,500 for a 1994 McLaren F1 (above), featuring the high downforce kit and an LM-spec interior. This car was the top-seller in the RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi Collectors’ Week auction, which totalled $85,064,125.

Sticking with the McLaren theme, this auction also witnessed the ‘triple crown’ of racing cars,

including the 2026 McLaren MCL40A F1 car – making history as the first Formula 1 car sold before it has even been raced, and making $11,480,000. The owner will take delivery following the 2026 season.

Gordon Murray fans had a slightly more affordable option, with the sale of a T.50 at $5.6m. One other outstanding result was the 2006 Pagani Zonda Riviera at $10,130,000.

Artcurial held its €11m auction of Renault’s hidden treasures, to help fund the building of its new heritage centre on the site of the Flins factory.

Consisting of several significant F1 and Le Mans racers, as well as one-off prototypes, the stand-out result was the championship-winning 1997 Williams Renault FW19 at €1,312,400. Close behind was the very special 1977 Renault Alpine A442. This was the first example built, and the car that Arnoux, Pironi and Fréquelin drove in that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

It sold for €1,278,080. Lots of more down-to-earth cars were offered, too, such as a 1994 Renault Clio Williams Phase 2 (retained by Renault from new), which made €54,180.

Matthew Hayward

£2,817,500 (CHF2,984,014) 1937 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 B Spider ‘Zagato’ RM Sotheby’s, London, UK 1 November £2,555,241 (CHF2,706,250) 2024 Aston Martin Valkyrie Spider Broad Arrow Auctions, Zurich, Switzerland, 1 November £2,226,875 (CHF2,358,483) 2024 Aston Martin Valkyrie Coupé RM Sotheby’s, London, UK 1 November £2,183,462 (CHF2,312,500) 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB Alloy Broad Arrow Auctions, Zurich, Switzerland, 1 November £1,748,750 (CHF1,852,101) 1954 Maserati A6GCS RM Sotheby’s, London, UK 1 November £1,439,905 (CHF1,525,000) 2023 Ferrari 812 Competizione A Broad Arrow Auctions, Zurich, Switzerland, 1 November £1,338,994 (CHF1,418,125) 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder 918 Broad Arrow Auctions, Zurich, Switzerland, 1 November The top ten data is supplied courtesy of HAGERTY

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The balance of payments Classic car trade between the US and UK has dropped off a cliff. Which leads to unexpected opportunities…

IN THE LAST edition, I delved into the apparent differences in value between similar cars in the US and UK, and the growth of that delta over time.

The obvious question is, if there’s a transatlantic price difference, is anyone taking advantage of it?

One of the data sets tracked by Hagerty may offer some clues: the record of cars over six years old (so ignoring new car deliveries) shipped into and out of the US each year.

The information tells an interesting tale. Totals plotted since 2018 show a decline in the number of cars shipped both ways, with the US to UK traffic showing a marked drop: the 2025 UK imports total is less than a quarter of the 8073 cars shipped in 2018 and, other than a slight upsurge after Covid, it has been a downward trend each year.

Plotted alongside on the same scale, UK to US exports seem relatively flat, but look closer and the trend is similar: the 2025 export number of 1121 is around half the 2187 total for 2018. Year-on-year, a list of the 15 most regularly exported marques shows falls in everything except Porsche and Honda, although Land Rover remains the most shipped vehicle, accounting for a quarter of all exports.

This isn’t what I expected; not only are value differences growing, but there are also many examples of the very top cars owned or produced in the UK being sent for sale overseas, including the British-registered 1961 Ferrari 250GT SWB California sold in Monterey by Gooding Christie’s in August, and the 2025 Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1 LM sold last month for $20.63m in Las Vegas, both on the top ten list of global auction results in 2025. Only one car has been sold at public auction in the UK for over £7m since 2020, a 1960 Ferrari 250GT SWB Competizione that crossed the block at Gooding & Company (now Gooding Christie’s) in 2022 for £7.762m.

The assumed logic behind these overseas sales was that sellers expected higher prices and better sales rates in the EU and US than in the UK, which

John Mayhead Hagerty Price Guide editor, market commentator and concours judge

Below Collectable car imports from US to UK are reducing. The line graph depicts the number of cars over six years old shipped from UK to US and vice versa from 2018 to 2025 (2025 annual values predicted on basis of results year to August). In terms of UK to US classic exports, nearly all major makes are down in 2025. The blockchart shows the percentage of cars over six years old shipped from UK to US, 2024 vs 2025 (predicted to year end).

-20%

Austin

Nissan

Rover

BMW

MercedesBenz

Ferrari

Ford

Jaguar Honda

4000

Volkswagen

0

Aston Martin

6000

Porsche

US to UK

Mini

20%

8000

Toyota

U K T O U S C L A S S I C E X P O R T S : N E A R LY A L L M A J O R M A K E S Land Rover

COLLECTA BLE C A R IMPORTS

suggests that the number of collectable cars shipped across the Atlantic should be growing. And it’s not.

I’m prepared to accept the data may be incomplete – Hagerty’s list tracks only surface-shipped cars, not those flown – but the huge cost of flown freight means that cheaper collectable cars are likely to be transported on water. Export costs could still have hit these cars: sea transport prices have risen significantly in ten years thanks to Covid, conflicts and capacity, the latter dominated by an everincreasing demand for goods, especially from Asia.

But transatlantic (UK/US) traffic is down, as reported by the major transport companies and by dealers such as Martin Chisholm at the Classic Motor Hub, who has been selling cars worldwide for decades. Chisholm’s feeling is that, with a 5% historic vehicle import tax, the UK used to be the import location of choice for US cars: they’d enter here, complete the paperwork and then be shipped on to Europe. Following Brexit, that option is now closed. In his opinion, that has removed the UK’s position as the main hub of entry for US cars.

He could have a point. From 2018 to 2023, the number of cars over six years old shipped from the US to Germany rose 74.7% and, although it has dropped back since then, the rates are still over a quarter higher than they were at the start of the period, suggesting that more cars are heading directly from the US to EU ports.

So, as ever, the picture is complex and British classic car companies are having to deal with a unique set of challenging circumstances – but, for the enthusiast, an opportunity may be emerging.

A general downward trend in transatlantic car shipping has accelerated this year, probably thanks to uncertainty over tariff controls, and reduced demand usually prompts a reduction in price.

Combine this with the UK/US difference in sale price for many cars and, if you can be bothered to fight through the bureaucracy, then an import or export may make financial sense.

UK to US

2000

-40%

0 2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

-60%

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GOODING CHRISTIE’S

The Market Auction Previews

A hot rodder’s charity legacy Gooding Christie’s, Amelia Island, Florida, USA 5-6 April

IT’S NEVER EASY to think about what might happen to our cars after we die, but for the late historic racer and founder of the Hot Rods motorcycle parts company, Curtis Leaverton, the answer was obvious. After building this stunning collection over the years, he instructed the trust administering his estate to use the proceeds from its sale to support organisations assisting children with cancer and other illnesses.

Headlining the collection – to be offered with no reserve at Amelia Island – is his 1932 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Series V Gran Sport. A well-known and beautifully cared for example, it retains its correct engine and original body and is estimated at $1,750,000-2,250,000.

Another Alfa highlight is the 1971 Alfa Romeo Tipo 33/3 racing car, which was notably driven to second overall at the 1971 Targa Florio by the late Andrea de Adamich (see page 39) and Gijs van Lennep, and is estimated at $1,000,000-1,400,000. The white and blue 1955 Austin-Healey 100S on offer also comes with notable period racing history, including Sebring 12 Hours appearances, and is estimated at $450,000-600,000.

Modern supercars feature too, with the 1807-mile 2005 Porsche Carrera GT estimated at $1,500,000-1,800,000, and the considerably rarer 1991 Jaguar XJR-15 given a $900,000-1,200,000 guide price.

goodingco.com

Silver stars RM Sotheby’s, Paris, France 28 Jan THIS FANTASTIC SELECTION of Mercedes-Benzes is one of the early highlights of RM’s Paris auction. The 300SL pair at the front nicely represents both the early vs late and open vs closed arguments, with the 1954 Gullwing (est €1,250,000-1,750,000) being one of the earliest steel-bodied cars and the 1962 Roadster (€1,200,000-1,500,000) one of the last to leave Sindelfingen. Equally timeless is the immaculate 1969 280SL Pagoda, offered at an estimated €120,000-140,000.

When launched in 2010, the SLS AMG saw the return of those legendary Gullwing doors.

The 2013 example for sale here is expected to make €240,000-290,000, while its Roadster sibling is estimated at €210,000-260,000.

rmsothebys.com 160

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2001 Ferrari 550 Barchetta Broad Arrow, online, UK 23 Jan, broadarrowauctions.com Just 448 of these appealing roofless 550s were produced by Pininfarina, and this is one of the few right-hand-drive cars originally destined for the UK. Specified in this Extracampionaro Blu Le Mans colour from the factory, it has been exceptionally maintained since it was delivered. Having covered 10,836 miles from new, it’s recently been serviced and is estimated to make £325,000-375,000.

1990 Porsche 944 S2 ACA, King’s Lynn, UK

1966 Reliant Scimitar SE4 GT MPC, Southampton, UK

1957 Fiat Multipla 600 Marinella Bonhams, Paris, France

31 Jan, angliacarauctions.co.uk

24 Jan, manorparkclassics.com

29 Jan, cars.bonhams.com

Winning multiple awards for exceptional handling in period, the 944 remains a joy to drive to this day. This S2 version has covered a fair number of miles (144,000) but, having just had the big timing belt service – and having been well maintained for the past two decades – we think this could make a great usable classic, especially at £6000-8000.

It’s not uncommon to see the later shooting brake-style Scimitars being driven and enjoyed; however, these early Ford straight-sixpowered SE4 GT Coupés are much scarcer, and also (arguably) much prettier. Around 300 were built and this example has been maintained well, never requiring any major restoration work. It’s expected to make £15,000-18,000.

Supercars might thrill on the open road, but few vehicles bring joy to the whole family quite like a beach car. This is the special Marinella by Fissore, thought to be one of very few survivors. Featuring a cut-away roof to allow the stowage of water skis, it has gorgeous boat-inspired wooden trim throughout – including bumpers! It is estimated to sell for €140,000-180,000.

Also Look Out For… In 1911 Garfield Wood, then scratching out a living as an underemployed marine-engine mechanic in Minnesota, hit upon an idea for a hydraulic lift that would allow the bed of a truck to tip backwards and deliver its load in an instant. This invention and others made Wood rich and allowed him to indulge his passion for motorboats – very, very fast ones.

Wood manufactured exquisite speedboats under his Gar Wood marque, but even the quickest of these was tame compared with the racers he built for his own use. With help from designer Nap Lisee, Wood made ten boats named Miss America, the last of which, Miss America X, was powered by four Packard aero engines. Packard engineer MJ Steele likened the boat to an egg crate carrying a bomb, but it worked well enough to deliver Wood’s sixth Water Speed Record (124.86mph in 1932) and his seventh and eighth wins in the prestigious Harmsworth Trophy race.

Wood and Lisee, though, didn’t rate Miss America X

as highly as they did Miss America VIII, which won the Harmsworth Trophy in 1929 and 1931. ‘That’s my masterpiece, the Eighth,’ Lisee said of the 104mph boat, which was fitted with two 18-litre Harry Miller V16s that made 930hp each. Recently restored and reunited with those engines, it is an astonishing machine likely to fetch an equally astonishing sum when sold by Mecum in Kissimmee on 17 January.

AUC T ION DI A RY 29 December Oldtimer Galerie, Gstaad, Switzerland 6-18 January Mecum, Kissimmee, USA 17-25 January Barrett-Jackson, Scottsdale, USA 23 January Bonhams, Scottsdale, USA RM Sotheby’s, Phoenix, USA 23-30 January Broad Arrow Auctions, online 24 January Barons Manor Park Classics, Southampton, UK 27 January Artcurial, Paris, France 28 January RM Sotheby’s, Paris, France 29 January Bonhams, Paris, France Gooding Christie’s, Paris, France SWVA, Poole, UK 31 January WB & Sons, Killingworth, UK 31 January – 1 February ACA, King’s Lynn, UK 4-6 February Mathewsons, online 14 February RM Sotheby’s, Boca Raton, USA 18 February Brightwells, online 20-22 February Iconic Auctioneers, Stoneleigh Park, UK 21 February Morris Leslie, Errol, UK 27 February RM Sotheby’s, Miami, USA 5-6 March Gooding Christie’s, Amelia Island, USA 6-7 March Broad Arrow Auctions, Amelia Island, USA 7 March Historics, Ascot, UK 11-13 March Mathewsons, online 15 March Aguttes, Paris, France 17-21 March Mecum, Glendale, USA 18 March H&H Classics, Newark, UK 21 March Oldtimer Galerie, Toffen, Switzerland WB & Sons, Killingworth, UK IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Thought you’d like to know: the Macrospondylus bollensis fossil (see Octane issue 271) sold for $93,750.

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The Market Data Mining

Gordon Murray SV S1 LM

THE NUMBERS

WHEN THE HAMMER fell at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel on 21 November during the amfAR gala dinner, it ended an auction like no other. Not only was the car being auctioned not in the room, but the car suspended from a helicopter hovering in the background was a mock-up; the original hasn’t yet been built.

Nevertheless, the winning bidder paid $20,630,000 including commission for the Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1 LM, making this the fourth most valuable British car ever sold at live auction and the most valuable new car ever sold at live auction that wasn’t a charity lot.

No wonder Gordon Murray, its creator, grinned like a Cheshire cat as the auction ended.

The winning bidder was buying the right to work with Murray and the rest of his team, including three-time Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, to finesse the first of the five chassis of this extraordinary car to be built.

In fact, ‘extraordinary’ is an epithet that can be added to everything Murray touches, from his 75% win rate for McLaren in F1, to dominating the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1995 with the McLaren F1 GTR, and even the Ox, a low-cost flat-pack all-terrain small truck that he designed for developing countries.

Even in comparison to those achievements, the S1 LM is special: over 700bhp from a naturally aspirated 4.3-litre Cosworth V12 that tops out

at 12,100rpm and is mated to a six-speed manual gearbox. The body panels are made from 0.6mm-thick carbonfibre, while using ultra-lightweight alloys and polycarbonate wherever possible has maximised its aerodynamic potential, without the need for the relatively heavy ground-effect fan fitted to the GMA T50, and has kept its weight to 957kg.

The car is achingly beautiful, its DNA back to the Murray-created McLaren F1 strikingly obvious, but the lines are clean, modern, unique. As I mentioned on this month’s Markets page, it’s notable that a car built in Surrey should be sold in the US, but that makes sense: Gordon Murray is automotive royalty.

John Mayhead

HAGI Value Tracker

gauges for oil pressure and temperature, usually only found on race-bred exotics. With luxury-car soundproofing and excellent door seals you could cruise comfortably at 80mph and still hear the radio. The overdrive, standard in most markets, made it almost serene at these speeds.

In price terms, the P1800 plots its own path. From 2010 to 2020 it came on strong, outperforming the affordable classics segment.

Had we measured its five-year price performance a couple of years back, the P1800 would also have been on the pace with HAGI Top overall market measure for investment-grade classics, and indeed inflation. However, it hit a ceiling in 2023-24, reflected in its 3.22% compound annual growth over five years, compared with 4.73% for the HAGI Top. In early 2024 a showcase concours restoration commanded $95,200 (£75,200). In November this year a car restored at a cost of €80,000 (£70,800) fetched €67,200 (£59,400). Such prices

are reflected in some optimistic high-end asking prices, but less so in the real world, where £40,000 puts you in the driving seat of high-quality restored P1800s, with decent roadable cars from half that. A P1800 bought in 2012 for £12,500 and restored for £30,000 is on sale for £25,000.

The wide pricing is a measure of a market finding its level, while the legacy of the strong 2010-20 growth that prompted a flurry of restorations is now bringing cars to market for less than the cost of

Volvo P1800 The 1961-72 Volvo P1800 2+2 coupé defies comparison and occupies its own space. Price is part of that. At £1948 in 1961, the 1778cc four-cylinder P1800 cost only £100 less than a 3.8-litre E-type FHC yet offered a fraction of the performance.

Early 108bhp cars had a top speed of 107mph; 130bhp 2.0-litre fuel-injected P1800Es topped out at 115mph. The P1800 was on a par with the Alfa 1750 GTV and twice the price of the outgoing MGA coupé. When the MGB got a tin-top, it wasn’t far off double that, either.

The P1800 is an in-betweener, sporting in the way a cravat is… compared with running spikes.

What sets it apart are its practicality, robust mechanicals, spec, interior appointments, ride and overall quality. For example, the Smiths instruments included

5

GMSV S1 LM TOTAL PRODUCTION RUN:

BUILT SO FAR

0

TOTAL PRICE INCLUDING COMMISSION

$20,630,000

4.3

LITRES ENGINE CAPACITY

700 18

MAX POWER OUTPUT

BHP

Spending $20m on an idea is far from daft if that idea is Gordon Murray’s

CARAT GOLD USED TO SHIELD EXHAUST SYSTEM

that work. Another reality is that, with its pleasantness and robust mechanicals, if you own one alongside higher-priced exotics, you’ll likely drive the P1800 more often. Let’s not forget, Canadian owner Irv Gordon drove a P1800 into the record books, notching up 3.2million miles from 1966 to 2018.

HistoricAutoGroup.com

5 -Y E A R % AV E R A G E A N N U A L I S E D R E T U R N S 6 4.73

5 4

3.60

3.22

3 2 1 0 Volvo P1800

HAGI Top Index

UK Inflation

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The Market Dealer News

SHOWROOM BRIEFS

1922 Rolls-Royce 20HP $89,990 NZD Nicknamed the baby RollsRoyce, and this example was delivered new to New Zealand.

Today it’s in beautiful, lightly patinated condition. waimakclassiccars.co.nz (NZ)

1983 Aston Martin V8 Volante POA from The Hairpin Company, Wiltshire, UK SAY THE WORDS ‘Prince of Wales spec’ and the ears of any Aston Martin enthusiast in the immediate vicinity will prick up. It was coined after Prince Charles, as the King was then, requested a subtly enhanced V8 Volante, with the extra power of the full-fat carb-fed Vantage yet without the aggressive bodywork. The configuration later became one of the most desirable of all Newport Pagnell-era cars.

Delivered new in 1983 in Buckinghamshire Green with fawn leather, the car currently offered by The Hairpin Company started life as a standard V8 Volante. Its transformation came in June 1988 when then-owner Nick Channing returned it to Newport Pagnell for a full Works Service conversion to PoW spec. That means it has the Vantage engine, manual

gearbox and very subtly flared wheelarches to allow the fitment of wider Ronal wheels.

The Volante went on to enjoy a succession of knowledgeable owners, who have maintained the car properly, with plenty of big bills throughout the 1990s with RS Williams. Significant work includes a full repaint, new hood and a major engine overhaul in 2000. A German owner followed in 2003, continuing the fastidious upkeep both in Britain and Germany and returning the car to RS Williams in 2009 for extensive servicing and cosmetic attention.

A Nardi steering wheel was also fitted.

Now on 53,000 miles, it has been fitted with a discreet modern hi-fi to make it even more enjoyable on the Sunday pub jaunt. thehairpincompany.co.uk

The Insider HOW’S BUSINESS? Business is going very well!

How have you got to where you are today? My father Nico started our familyowned business in 1975. We’re the biggest classic car dealer in Europe and have built up a large international customer base over the years.

Is the market as strong as it was? Yes, but there is more emphasis on the quality and history of the cars on sale. Also there is a shift to a younger segment, cars from the 1980s and ’90s. We also see businessmen buying the Ford Capri or Opel Manta they couldn’t afford when they were 18. Just for fun!

What road or race cars are currently most in demand? Iconic cars such as the Ferrari F40 or the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster are always in demand.

What’s the next big thing? 1980s/’90s classics and the iconic cars from yesteryear.

What cars are good value at the moment? Those youngtimers with the best prospect of generating increasing interest over the next five to ten years.

What can’t you understand the high values for? Nothing, values are governed by demand and supply in the market. There will always be ups and downs.

What classics do you currently own? A Ferrari 275 GTB and Ferrari 275 GTB/4.

What’s your dream car? There are too many cars I like, so I change frequently.

1978 Autobianchi A112 Abarth €22,950 An intriguing and adorable baby hot hatch, which makes the most of a 70bhp output thanks to a circa-700kg kerbweight. This clean car has covered 16,038km. oldtimerfarm.be (BE)

2015 VLF Force 1 POA This is one of five Viper-based coupés built by VLF, a company started by Bob Lutz and Gilbert Villarreal, who later teamed up with designer Henrik Fisker. fantasyjunction.com (US)

FR ACT IONA L OFFER S

Nick Aaldering Director of the huge Netherlands-based classic car dealer Gallery Aaldering, which was founded in 1975.

1988 Ferrari 328 GTS, minimum fractional bids of $2500 This 1350-mile 328 GTS is a prime, concours example of the breed that will soon be offered as a direct asset acquisition via the aShareX platform, in partnership with The Car Crowd. asharex.com

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ALVIS TE 21 DROPHEAD COUPE 1965: Opalescent Silver Blue with Grey hide interior.

Navy Blue mohair soft-top and hood cover.

Chromium wire wheels. 5-speed ZF gearbox.

Factory ZF power steering and other useful upgrades. Restored some years ago. Classic British coach built four-seater touring car. ............. £79995

TURRINO WHEELS LTD

7.5 x 16 light alloy rims, stainless spokes and centres

+44 (0)1780 470460

info@turrinowheels.com 165

The Market Buying Guide

THE LOWDOWN

WHAT TO PAY

Toyota Tercel 4WD Rugged and with cult appeal, this rare Japanese wagon is surprisingly sought-after

Finding a mint Tercel in the UK is very likely to take a while, so if you see one for sale don’t hang around!

Expect to pay around £6000-8000 for such an example. Something in solid but well-used condition might fetch around £4000-5000, with project cars selling for £1500 and up.

The market is somewhat healthier in the USA, with a much better supply of cars, parts and expertise. There’s a scattering of nicer examples selling on Bring-a-Trailer for sub-$10,000 prices; you’re potentially better off looking on Craigslist or engaging with the club to find an enthusiastowned example for around $5000. Projects are similarly available from around $2500.

LOOK OUT FOR

THIS WOULDN’T BE the first time a car had appeared in this slot because it had caught someone’s attention while re-watching old episodes of Breaking Bad. The Tercel 4WD was always something of a cult car in the USA but, after frequent appearances throughout the series as Jesse Pinkman’s main vehicle, a new generation of enthusiasts followed.

Yet the real reason it’s here is because a couple of particularly nice examples at Festival Of The Unexceptional events had a few of the Octane team admiring what was (even when new) a relatively uncommon sight on UK roads.

Launched in 1978, the first-generation Tercel was a compact two- or four-door saloon, with a hatchback following soon after. It was significant for Toyota as the company’s first front-wheel-drive car, although it retained a longitudinally mounted four-cylinder engine up front – with the gearbox mounted on the back of the engine, much like a traditional rear-wheel-drive car.

A far more modern-looking second-generation car – known internally as the L20 – followed in 1982.

Offered as a three- and five-door hatchback, as well as a four-door saloon, it was an appealing car for sensible buyers in the USA and, to a lesser extent, in Europe, thanks to typical Toyota reliability and keen pricing. Under its skin, the same 1.3- and 1.5-litre longitudinally mounted four-pot petrol engines were carried over and, while not particularly exciting or groundbreaking, the Tercel’s unusual layout gave Toyota the option of making a four-wheel-drive version. Which is exactly what was offered with the introduction of the wagon (above).

While it might not have the ground clearance

to make any serious off-road expeditions, the Tercel was equipped with a four-wheel-drive system that was more than capable of getting it out of sticky situations, making it a useful little thing. Though rudimentary by modern standards, it’s quite a clever solution, using a live rear axle borrowed from the Corolla and a six-speed transmission.

With no centre differential in the transfer box, the rear axle can be engaged only at low speeds on loose surfaces. There’s no conventional low-range option either, but, (vaguely) like the Porsche 959, the six-speed gearbox is equipped with an EL (‘extra low’) gear for off-road-only use. All this means that, for regular on-road driving, the Tercel runs in front-wheel-drive mode, returning reasonable mpg.

All of the wagons were fitted with the carburettorfed 1.5-litre engine, developing between 83 and 90bhp – although the US-market cars with their emissions control systems were down to 63bhp, so don’t expect spectacular performance figures.

The Tercel wagon was available only in fourwheel-drive form in Europe and the USA, though a front-wheel-drive variant was offered exclusively in Japan – where it was also possible to buy the saloon with the four-wheel-drive set-up. The L20 became the last generation of Tercel to have been offered in Europe when it went out of production in 1988, although it would be replaced in the US. A new 4WD wagon lived on as part of the Corolla range.

While there’s love for the boxy Tercel 4WD today, the UK and Europe community is considerably smaller than that in the US, where a fair number survive. Finding one will be a challenge, but it’s a useful and characterful classic. Matthew Hayward

It should be no surprise that a 1980s Japanese car is likely to rust, especially one that would potentially have been used throughout the winter when it was new. Check the rear wheelarches, tailgate and all external panels carefully, as replacements aren’t easy to find. On the underside, inspect the chassis rails, sills, suspension mounts and inner wheelarches.

Spares availability is not brilliant, with the 4WD model using a few bespoke parts.

The international community is active, but shipping and duties on parts from Japan and the USA add up.

Toyota reliability is legendary, and mechanically speaking the engines should happily run for well over 200,000 miles if properly maintained. Vacuum leaks are common, causing a poor idle.

The six-speed transmission is one of those unique Tercel components, so it’s vital that you test its operation. Check that it engages all gears cleanly and doesn’t whine once up to speed. If possible, check the operation of the four-wheel-drive system.

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PETER BRADFIELD LTD PETERBRADFIELD BRADFIELD LTD LTD LTD BRADFIELD PETER BRADFIELD LTD LTD PETERBRADFIELD BRADFIELD LTD LTD BRADFIELD

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Also available 1931 Bentley 4½ Litre Blower 1934 Invicta S Type Also available See Website for more details Revival. Concours types1925 and1931 ‘try-hards’ need not apply butmore will Frazer suit any number bounders, blaggards or cads.

Bentley 4½ Litre Blower 1934 Invicta S of Type See Website for details Also available Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model 1952 Nash Targe See Website for more details So Revival. some Continentals are 1925 better than others and this is one of the best.

Quite mediocre examples were trading Concours types and ‘try-hards’ need not apply but will suit any number ofFlorio bounders, blaggards or cads. at 1952 Frazer Nash Targa Florio 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model See Website for more details Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model 1952 Frazer Nash Targe Florio 1934 Invicta S Type by Carbodies 1939 Frazer Nash BMW 328sexamples were trading at 1952 Frazer Nash Targa Florio 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model So some Continentals are better than others and this is one of the best.

Quite mediocre peccab y esto ed ith a esome sto y a d matc ng umbe 1954 Frazer Nash Le Mans Rep 1933 Rolls-Royce 20/25 Roadster 1934 Invicta S Type by Carbodies 1939 Frazer Nash BMW 328 £800,000 and BC 22 A can be yours for less than half of that. peccab y esto ed ith ahalf esome sto y a d matc umbe s 1954 Nash Le Mans Rep 1933 Rolls-Royce 20/25ngRoadster See website for more details Also available £800,000 and BC 22 A can beFrazer yours for less than of that.

See Website for more details See Website for more details See website for more details Also available Also available See Website for more details See Website for more details 888REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE 1931 Bentley 4½KENSINGTON Litre Blower 1934 Invicta S Type Also available Also available REECE MEWS LONDON SW7 3HE See Website for more details KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE See Website for more details 1931 Bentley 4½ Litre Blower 1934 Invicta S Type 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model 1952 Frazer Nash Targe Florio LONDON SW7 3HE 8REECE REECEMEWS MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE Also available See Website for more details 88REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE REECE MEWS KENSINGTON 1952 Frazer Nash Targa Florio 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model 8REECE REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE See Website for more details LONDON SW7 3HE 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model 1952 Frazer Nash Targe Florio peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com 1934 Invicta S Type by Carbodies 1939 Frazer Nash BMW 328 8 MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE 8 REECE MEWS KENSINGTON 1952 Frazer Nash Targa Florio 1925Rolls-Royce Bentley 3-4½ Speed Model 8 REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE 1954 Frazerwww.bradfieldcars.com Nash Le Mans Rep 1933 20/25 Roadster Tel: 020 7589 8787com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com www.bradfieldcars.com 1934 Type by Carbodies 1939 Frazer Nash 328 peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com Tel:BMW 020 7589 8787com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 See website for more details 1954Invicta Frazer SNash Le Mans Rep Rolls-Royce 20/25 Roadster peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com www.bradfieldcars.com SeeSee Website for more details peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com Website for1933 more details

www.bradfieldcars.com

See website for more details SeeSee Website more details 88REECE KENSINGTON LONDONSW7 SW73HE 3HE Website for for more details REECEMEWS MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON 88REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW73HE 3HE LONDON 3HE 88REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDONSW7 SW7 3HE REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 REECE MEWS KENSINGTON 8 REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 0207589 75898787 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com LONDON SW7 3HE 8 REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE 8 REECE MEWS KENSINGTON Tel: 020 7589 8787com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 www.bradfieldcars.com 8 REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel:020 0207589 75898787 8787 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com www.bradfieldcars.com Tel:Tel: 020 8787com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel:7589 0207589 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com 00144472_CSC_010226_D_PeterBradfield.indd 2 00144472_CSC_010226_D_PeterBradfield.indd 2

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Where Great Cars Are Bought & Sold.

AVAILABLE 1948 DELAHAYE 135M

by FIGONI et FALASCHI

AVAILABLE 1959 FACEL-VEGA HK500

SOLD 1929 ISOTTA FRASCHINI TIPO 8A

AVAILABLE 1904 CADILLAC MODEL B

SOLD 1930 DUESENBERG MODEL J

AVAILABLE 1950 MASERATI A6 1500

SOLD 1961 JAGUAR E-TYPE LIGHTWEIGHT

AVAILABLE 1958 DUAL-GHIA

AVAILABLE 1930 BENTLEY SPEED SIX

SCAN FOR OUR FULL INVENTORY

hymanltd.com +1 (314) 524-6000 2025 Copyright Hyman Ltd. St. Louis, Missouri

2024 PORSCHE 911 (992) GT3 RS This 1 owner car is presented in white with black and guards red interior. Equipped with the Weissach package and Club Sport package along with other desired options including GT3 RS forged magnesium lightweight alloys painted in Pyro red, front axel lift system, BOSE surround sound system, reversing camera, Porsche ceramic brakes, Porsche Dynamic light system plus much more.

+44 (0) 1772 613 114

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sales@williamloughran.co.uk

www.williamloughran.co.uk

08/12/2025 11:40

C HARLES P RINCE Worldwide Collector Car Sales

1931 Bentley 4 Litre Tourer by Vanden Plas

This wonderful Vintage Bentley is perhaps the finest existing example of this model. It carries its original delightful tourer coachwork by VDP, has a full history from new, and is in first class condition.

Recent history includes numerous rally and concours awards.

1925 Bentley 3/4.5 Litre Le Mans. Excellent history. Very reasonably priced.

1929 Bentley 4.5 Litre Tourer. A very resaonably priced 4.5 Litre. Matching numbers.

We are always eager to buy important collectors cars.

All cars can be seen tried and tested at Quin Hay Farm Petersfield Hampshire GU321BZ or in central London.

Please see our website for full stock photos videos and details. Valuations always available.

Int T 0044 (0) 79 85 98 80 70 sales@charlesprinceclassiccars.com charlesprinceclassiccars.com

2025-12-08_Octane_Feb-26.indd 1

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1987 SPICE SE87L BUICK C2 G ro u p C el i g i b l e M a s te r s , G ro u p C R a c i n g a n d L e M a n s C l a s s i c

1937 SIMCA GORDINI 8 A veteran of the 24 Hours of Le Mans E n t e re d i n 1 9 3 8 & 1 9 3 9

1996 RILEY & SCOTT MKIII F u l l y re s t o re d . E l i g i b l e f o r L e M a n s C l a s s i c L e g e n d 2 0 2 6

2015 LIGIER JS P2 JUDD KROHN RACING Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans.

Eligible for Masters and Le Mans Classic

www.ascottcollection.com  cars@ascottcollection.com Gazeran - France Xavier Micheron  +33 (0)9 67 33 48 43  +33 (0)6 17 49 42 50 L’ E X C E P T I O N N E L P A R P A S S I O N

1984 PORSCHE 930 TURBO Single ownership from 1988 to 2015, subsequently restored by its most recent custodian. Significant investment throughout, including a repaint and retrim in the original colour and a comprehensive mechanical overhaul. Just 56,000 original miles from new. POA

1971 FERRARI DINO 246 GT Originally owned by D. Mason-Styrron. Just 60,000 miles from new.

Accompanied by a fully comprehensive history file. One of the earliest right-hand drive production Dino 246 GT's. Original Rosso specified coachwork. £275,995

1963 ALFA ROMEO 2600 SPIDER BY TOURING - RUDDSPEED One of a limited number of right-hand drive cars converted by Ken Rudd and approved by Alfa Romeo. Equipped with a triple Weber carburettor setup, in line with original Ruddspeed specification.

Recently undergone mechanical recommissioning. £74,995

1950 JAGUAR XK120 Early steel-bodied model. Originally exported to Australia.

- Driver-focused upgrades including: Power steering, 5-speed gearbox, Telescopic dampers, Kenlowe electric fan.

- Race-inspired enhancements Twin Brooklands aero screens, Recessed Monza-style fuel filler, Period-style bucket seats. POA

Located at Brooklands Motor Circuit, we have a dedicated team to help you with all your classic motoring needs, whether a service, a full restoration, valuations or selling on consignment. Please contact our sales team for further details, viewing by prior appointment.

International Brokers of Historic & Classic Motorcars. Brooklands Motor Circuit, Surrey, England.

T +44 (0)1932 828545 M +44 (0)7860 912217 www.brooklandscarsltd.com

Central London’s Largest Classic Car Showrooms A selection of our 75+ cars currently for sale

1963 Bentley S3 Continental Flying Spur

2020 Bentley Continental GT ‘Launch car specification’

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Coupe

1998 Land Rover 110 Defender Special Commission

1973 Jaguar E-Type V12 Roadster

1990 Bentley Turbo R

www.graemehunt.com

+44 (0) 20 7937 8487 mail@graemehunt.com Graeme Hunt Ltd, The Garages, 1A Coppock Close, Battersea, London, SW11 2LE

A C

H E R I T A G E

1957 AC Ace Matching-numbers engine with four-speed overdrive gearbox. Restored in its original colour scheme by a marque specialist, with a recent mechanical overhaul. Known ownership history from new and supplied with detachable hardtop and full weather gear. Accompanied by a very impressive history folder. Mille Miglia eligible with current FIVA papers. £184,995

1969 AC 428 Frua Fastback This is one of only 51 coupes ever produced. 7-litre Ford V8 engine with a automatic gearbox. Left-hand drive, with three previous owners.

Currently registered in the EU. Meticulously maintained. £149,995

1964 AC COBRA 289 Matching numbers, cosmetic restoration by AC Heritage. Hillclimb history with Paul Channon, continuous history from new. Factory hardtop and weather gear, one of the finest examples of the marque. POA

2001 AC Cobra CRS

1960 AC Aceca Bristol Matching-numbers example, paired with overdrive gearbox. Single ownership for the past twenty years. Restoration undertaken by renowned AC Bristol author Tony Bancroft. £109,995

One of 37 built. Only 6,600 miles from new. Factory-built CRS with 320 bhp engine upgrade and a range of mechanical improvements. A significant history file documenting ownership, maintenance, and upgrades. POA

AC HERITAGE

For more information about any of these vehicles, please contact our sales team.

AC Heritage · International Broker of Historic & Classic Motorcars · Brooklands Motor Circuit, Surrey, UK Telephone +44(0)1932 828545 · Mobile +44(0)7557 878123 · www.acheritage.com

ASMotorsport Motorsport ltd AS ltd Poplar Farm, Bressingham, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 2AP Tel: 01379688356 Mob: 07909531816 Web: www.asmotorsport.co.uk Email: info@asmotorsport.co.uk

ASM hand build bespoke versions of the R1 roadster, inspired by the Aston Martin race cars that won Le Mans and the world Sportscar championship in 1959.

Contact us for details of commission builds and stock.

Poplar Farm, Bressingham, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 2AP

Tel: 01379688356 • Mob: 07909531816 Web: www.asmotorsport.co.uk Email: info@asmotorsport.co.uk I-307295.indd 1

12/11/2019 12:30

ASM R1 Stirling Moss tribute car enjoying track time at Goodwood.

ASM hand build bespoke of the R1 roadster, inspired by the Aston Martin THE UK’S OLDEST INDEPENDENT FERRARI SPECIALIST | EST. versions 1968 race cars that won Le Mans and the world Sportscar championship in 1959.

Contact us for details of commission 1972 Ferrari Dino 246GT builds and stock.

1974 Ferrari Dino 246GT

1978 Ferrari 512 BB

£299,995

£254,995

£279,995

I-279764.indd 1

1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona £485,000

1975 Ferrari 308 GT4 £74,995

15/11/2018 13:

2003 Ferrari 360 Spider £79,995

D ELIVERING U NRIVALLED F ERR ARI S ALES , S ER VICE & R ESTOR ATION FOR OVER 50 YEARS

FOSKERS.COM E M A I L : i n fo @fo s ke r s.co m | S A L E S :+4 +4 4 (0 )1 4 7 4 8 7 4 5 5 5 B R A N D S H AT C H P A R K , K E N T , DA 3 8 P U

178

1991 Ford Sierra Cosworth 4x4

Beauford 4 door Tourer

Gloss black, 52,000 miles, long term Long bodied, cream over metallic blue, ownership............ ......................£42,995 cream leather piped blue ...........£14,995

2002 Porsche 911 996 C2

1942 Ford Jeep

1933 Aston Martin Le Mans Short Chassis Black leather, 63,000 miles, full history, Found in a museum in France and restored comprehensive engine rebuild ....£29,995 by specialist, correct tools............£24,995

1969 MGC GT

1982 Lotus Esprit S3

Overdrive, black leather, restored, 23,800 miles, fully refurbished, extensive beautiful bodywork.....................£24,995 file..... .........................................£32,995

Selection of other cars available: 1931 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Gran Sport Zagato 1953 Alvis Healey 3Litre Sports Convertible. 1 of 25. Alloy body 1933 Aston Martin Le Mans Short Chassis. Matching #s. Superb 1923 Bugatti Type 30 w. T35A engine 1938 Delahaye 135M Figoni & Falaschi Cabriolet. Concours 1969 Ferrari 365GT 2+2. Azzurro Metallizzato over beige 1991 Ferrari Testarossa. 3 owners. 60.100km 1963 Mercedes Benz 190SL w. Factory Hardtop.

1965 Mercedes Benz 300SE Coupe. Silver Grey/Red leather 1969 Porsche 911T 2.0Litre. Matching #s. Rare ‘Goldgrün’ colour 2007 Porsche GT3 RS. 22.000km. Orange.

Phone: +45 5363 8956 | Email: info@centurylimited.eu

W W W. C E N T U RY L I M I T E D. E U

Price POA. Come along and speak with Bruce. The finest collection of W113 Pagodas for sale.

280 SL Pagodas all for Sale

280 SL concours edition

280 SL Pagoda

280 SL manual

R129 SL320 concours edition

R107 300 SL Concours edition

230 SL LHD Manual

280 SL concours edition

179

Ferrari 575M Maranello F1

Ferrari F430 Spider F1

Argento Nurburgring 50,746 Miles

Rosso Corsa 37,062 Miles

£59,995

Stock Number - 23421

Ferrari F430 Coupe F1 Rosso Corsa 19,984 Miles

£74,995

Stock Number - 23316

Ferrari 328 GTS ABS Rosso Corsa 16,768 Miles

£89,995

Stock Number - 23378

Ferrari F355 Berlinetta Manual

Ferrari F355 GTS Manual

Rosso Corsa 37,500 Miles

Rosso Corsa 37,008 Miles

£134,995

Stock Number - 23151

£69,995

Stock Number - 23507

£134,995

Stock Number - 23504

www.tfcgb.com

True Ferrari Connoisseurs Cavallino Building, ME15 9YG

180

181

R AW L E S M O T O R S P O R T LT D

Austin Healeys for Sale - Over 30 Cars In Stock at the World’s Largest Healey Showroom

1961 Austin Healey 3000 MkI Road/ Rally - I.O.M & Monte Carlo Winner with Full Refined Interior!

1969 Jaguar E-Type S2 FHC - The Ultimate Gentleman Racer (Road Car)

A very well developed and successful Healey. 30 years of wining provenance in high-level events but entirely usable on the road as well as the rally stage. Finished in Jaguar Flag Blue Metallic with valuable factory hardtop plus many period-correct works-style body modifications to give a exciting aesthetic. £62,000.

Famous in the 1990s/ 2000s in Jaguar circles for dominating the Jaguar Challenge race series whilst sporting a full interior, this E-type was a development passion project of Classic Motor Cars Jaguar specialists. Now further evolved into a extremely usable road car with an excellent sporting aesthetic. £58,000.

1966 Austin Healey 3000 MkIII - Restoration Project Original UK RHD

1955 Factory Austin Healey 100M - Genuine Le Mans Car Restoration Project

For sale to be restored by Rawles Motorsport, an original right hand drive, matching numbers example of the iconic late big Healey in its most powerful and refined form. Build your perfect Healey with our team of artisans with your choice of colours, upgrades and engine specification. £POA/ varies.

A seldom seen opportunity to restore a genuine Austin Healey 100M. This legendary model began Austin Healey’s motorsport legacy at Le Mans with 640 production cars following in the footsteps of those iconic racers. This example is an original Healey Blue Metallic car with Blue interior and is the first we have ever provided for restoration. Sold fully certified as original. £POA/ varies.

Rawles Motorsport Ltd, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 4JR

182 92 Winspeed - Octane 272 - February 2026.indd 1

01420 23212

Enquiries@RawlesMotorsport.com

www.RawlesMotorsport.com

01/12/2025 13:22

Select E-Type Roadsters now available.

1965 Jaguar E-TYPE OTS • Numbers-Matching • Restored with upgrades Chassis 1E10502 1959No. JAGUAR XK150S 3.4

1967 ASTON MARTIN DB6 VOLANTE

Correct 3.4 260bhp car JAGUAR from longXK150S term ownership and presented in first class condition with a warranty.

1959 3.4 Matching numbers with1965 PAS upgrade Just 140 Volante cars were Jaguar E-TYPE OTS Correct 3.4 260bhp car from long term ownership and presented in fi rst class condition with a warranty. produced. This series 1 1959 JAGUAR XK150S 3.4 £149,995 Matching numbers with PAS upgrade car presents superbly • 29K Miles since new Correct 3.4 260bhp 1959 car from long term ownership rst class condition with a warranty.

JAGUAR XK150S 3.4 and presented in fi£149,995 with gunmetal metallic Matching numbers with PAS upgrade • Numbers-Matching Correct 3.4 260bhp car from long term ownership and presented in fi rst class condition with a warranty. paint and contrasting 1959 JAGUAR XK150S 3.4 £149,995 Matching numbers with PAS upgrade green interior. Matching Correct 3.4 260bhp car from long term ownership and presented in first class condition with a warranty. £149,995 numbers, 5 speed 1959 3.4 numbers with PAS upgrade 1959JAGUAR JAGUAR XK150S XK150S 3.4 Matching Chassis No. 1E10570 manual fromcar long term Correct 260bhp fromlong longterm termownership ownership and and presented presented in condition with a warranty.

Correct 3.43.4 260bhp car from infifirst rstclass class condition with a warranty. £149,995 ownership with huge Matchingnumbers numbers with PAS Matching PAS upgrade upgrade history file. 3 minute film £149,995 £149,995 on website £450k

1967 Jaguar E-TYPE OTS • Only 30K miles since new • Includes factory hardtop

1965 JAGUAR E TYPE SERIES 1 4.2FHC1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III DHC Virtually concours, On the button UK registered from

1970 Triumph TR6 Chassis No. 1E13274

Ferrari 400iA

We have 2 outstanding UK RHD CP model cars FOC concours winner, £49,995 Ferrari 400iA uprated and ready to go On the button UK registered from We have 2 outstanding UK RHD CP model cars FOC concours winner, £49,995 UK RHD, mechanical 1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III long DHCterm ownership 1970 Triumph TR6 uprated and ready to go Ferrari 400iA upgrades, fully We have 2 outstanding UK RHD CP model cars On the button UK registered from FOC concours winner, £49,995 documented, 1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloudlong III DHC 1970 Triumph TR6uprated and ready to go Ferrari 400iA term ownership we have over 20 collector cars serviced, tested by us and ready On the button UK registered from We have 2 outstanding extensive history. UK RHD CP model carsFrom our Bath location FOC concours winner, £49,995 to be driven.Ferrari Viewing is by appointment only. All the cars are detailed on our website 1965 Rolls DHC 1970 Triumph TR6 400iA longIII term ownership uprated and ready to go400iA 1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud IIIRoyce DHC Silver Cloud 1970 Triumph TR6 Ferrari The best I haveFrom our Bath400iA location we have over 20 winner, collector cars serviced, tested by us and ready On III the button UK registered fromWe have 2 outstanding We outstanding UK RHD CP model cars On the button UK registered from UK RHD CPhave model2 cars 1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud DHC 1970 Triumph TR6 Ferrari FOC concours £49,995 FOC concours winner, £49,995 driven £89995 to be driven. Viewing is by appointment only. All the cars are detailed on our website longUK term ownership uprated andUK ready toCP go model uprated and ready to go On the button registered fromlong term ownership We have 2 outstanding RHD cars FOC concours winner, £49,995

1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III long DHCterm ownership matching numbers,

1970 Triumph TR6

1965 Jaguar E-TYPE OTS

• Great color combination SALES • Numbers-Matching SALES SERVICE SERVICE SALES STORAGE From our Bath location we have over 20 collector cars serviced, tested by us and ready long term ownership uprated and ready to go Chassisour No. 10155 STORAGE SALES SERVICE TRANSPORT to be driven. Viewing is by appointmentT: only.

All the cars are detailed +44 (0)7794 477 on 785 website / E: NEIL@FENDERBROAD.COM From our Bath location we have over 20 collector cars serviced, tested by us and ready SALES TRANSPORT SERVICE STORAGE SALES FINANCE to be driven.

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2003 DB7 GTA as featured in Aston Martin Driver issue 16 - £29,995.

We are looking for all V8 and V12 Vantage models We can offer Winter storage of your Aston in a heated, dry and secure facility near to Winchester in Hampshire. Please get in touch for full details. Contact us for details.

2003 Aston Martin DB7 Vantage Sports Pack

Alresford, nr. Winchester Call Rupert Keyzar on 07595 954882 cars@racinglines.uk

Rare option pack. FSH £19950

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2019 Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Shootingbrake

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Autobiography Interview by Tamara Hinson

Left Renowned motor racing strategist James Vowles had to go back to university to get the engineering qualification that opened F1’s doors.

James Vowles Atlassian Williams Racing team principal with previous at BAR, Honda, Brawn and Mercedes I DIDN’T START watching motorsport until the late ’80s. It was mainly Formula 1 and Moto GP. I’ve done some competitive driving but only at a junior level. I did some karting, and whenever there have been opportunities I’ve taken them – I’ve done a bit of Formula 3 and Formula Renault. I did it to feel really connected to the drivers, to understand what they’re going through.

But to make it as a driver, you need a lot of financial backing and you need to be the best, and I wasn’t – it was as simple as that. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that if I couldn’t be a driver I wanted to be as close to the action as possible, and I knew I had to be in a world that moves at a very fast pace.

Initially I was doing a degree in Maths and Computer Science, which bored the hell out of me. I did it because I was good at it, but I knew I couldn’t do it for 60 years of my life. I woke up one day and applied to all of the F1 teams… and I got rejected by all of the F1 teams. But two of them, British American Racing and Williams, at least replied to explain their reasoning. They said that they didn’t really need mathematicians, but they needed engineers, and suggested which universities were great ones to go to, and one of those was Cranfield.

So that’s where I ended up studying Engineering.

I was severely in debt after two degrees, and I was designing a small race car as part of a project. It won several awards and there were employees from two F1 teams in the audience. I received multiple job offers from F1 teams the next day.

My career highlights? I’ll never forget winning the championship with Brawn in 2009. There were real hardships, and we were fighting giants, but we prevailed, and that emotion is hard to describe. Another highlight was the day I walked through the door here at Williams – having an opportunity to run a team. Every day at Williams is different.

Our sport is filled with the best engineers you can find, and I always walk away exhausted – you feel like you’re running on a treadmill on full speed. But I also walk away knowing I’ve been challenged. Ironically, the sport is about driving around in circles on a track, but the work that goes into it is so dynamic.

At Williams, it’s not necessarily the legacy that sets us apart – Ferrari also has that legacy. It’s a string to our bow, but what sets us apart as a team is that we’re not here to sell things like fizzy drinks. The thing I enjoy most about working with our current drivers is that they share the same mindset as me. They’re brilliant in their own right, and they’ve got every right to have an ego, but they don’t.

My favourite F1 track in terms of driving is Suzuka, and for the atmosphere it’s Silverstone, where you’re got 150,000 people shouting their lungs out. For sheer spectacle, it’s Singapore.

For me, the biggest change in recent years is F1’s popularity. The age group of fans is younger. It’s fantastic, because it’s a sport I care about.

We’re in a place where it’s the most successful the sport has ever been and its fanbase is literally growing hourly. The regulation changes in 2026 will be a reset point, and there will be a shift in the order. You won’t necessarily get overtaking in the traditional spots, and there will be more opportunities for teams like us.

My perfect car would be the Porsche 911 GT3, because it’s a fast car that you can drive daily. Dream cars aren’t ones you leave in a garage; Ferraris are beautiful, but not really cars that you can drive every day.

If we’re talking about cars I’ve dreamt about since I was a kid, it would be the McLaren F1. I remember going to the showrooms and just staring at them through the windows. My current car is a Porsche Taycan. It’s not because I believe electric cars are the be all and end all, but not having to go to petrol stations is handy. And it’s really fast!

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