Magneto issue 2: Summer 2019

ISSUE ISSUE

2 SUMMER 2019

2 SUMMER 2019

GORDON MUR AY ON THE FAN CAR | FORD GT40 VS GT | ASTON MARTIN WORKS | 50 F1 IN OVATIONS | SHAH OF IRAN MIURA

GORDON MURRAY ON THE FAN CAR | FORD GT40 VS GT | ASTON MARTIN WORKS | 50 F1 INNOVATIONS | SHAH OF IRAN MIURA

EnzoTheThe Enzo ManMan

SUMMER 2019

SUMMER 2019

£ 8.00 | £ 8.00 |

PRINTED

PRINTED IN THE UK

MURRAY ON THE FAN CAR | FORD GT40 VS GT | ASTON MARTIN WORKS | 50 F1 INNOVATIONS | SHAH OF IRAN MIURA 2 ++ GORDON 2 + GORDON MURRAY CARU| R FORD GT40 VS WORKS SHAH OF0IRAN G O RON D THE O NFANM R AY OGT N| ASTON T H EMARTIN FA N C A| 50 RF1|INNOVATIONS F O R D |G T4 VMIURA S GT | ASTON M

1954 1954 Ferrari Ferrari 500 500 Mondial Mondial Spider Spider Coachwork Coachwork by

by Pinin Pinin Farina Farina Chassis Chassis no. no. 0448 0448 MD MD •• •• •• •• ••

Ferrari Ferrari Classiche Classiche certified; certified; retains retains its its original original engine, engine, gearbox gearbox and and bodywork bodywork Raced Raced successfully successfully by

by Scuderia Scuderia Parravano Parravano in in California California during during the the 1950s 1950s 11 of of only only 55 Pinin Pinin Farina Farina Spiders Spiders with with ‘covered ‘covered headlight’ headlight’ style style bodywork bodywork Only Only three three long-term long-term owners owners in in the the past past 60 60 years years Highly Highly eligible eligible for for the the world’s world’s most most prestigious prestigious events, events, including including the the Mille Mille Miglia Miglia

Photography Photography courtesy courtesy of of Allen Allen R. R. Kuhn Kuhn

REGISTER REGISTER TO TO BID BID ONLINE ONLINE

1955 1955 Fiat Fiat 8V 8V Coupé Coupé Coachwork Coachwork by

by Zagato Zagato Chassis Chassis no. no. 106.000076 106.000076

2016 2016 Ferrari Ferrari F12tdf F12tdf Chassis Chassis no. no. ZFF81BHB000214162 ZFF81BHB000214162

1931 1931 Bugatti Bugatti Type Type 50 50 Roadster Roadster Chassis Chassis no. no. 50123 50123

25 25 MAY MAY

VILLA ERBA

VIEW VIEW DIGITAL DIGITAL CATALOGUE CATALOGUE ONLINE ONLINE

HEADQUARTERS HEADQUARTERS +1 +1 519 519 352 352 4575 4575 UK UK +44 +44 (0) (0) 20 20 7851 7851 7070 7070 ITALY ITALY +39 +39 02 02 9475 9475 3812 3812 FRANCE FRANCE +33 +33 (0) (0) 11 76 76 75 75 32 32 93 93 GERMANY GERMANY +49 +49 172 172 7151 7151 251 251

1957 1957 Porsche Porsche 550A 550A Spyder Spyder Coachwork Coachwork by

by Wendler Wendler Chassis Chassis no. no. 550A-0121 550A-0121 Photography Photography courtesy courtesy of of Carsten Carsten Frimodt Frimodt

1931 1931 Aston Aston Martin Martin 1.5-Litre 1.5-Litre International International ’LM5’ ’LM5’ Chassis Chassis no. no. LM5 LM5

Some see more.

720S Spider Super Series

Official fuel consumption figures in UK L/100km (CO2 grams per km) for the McLaren Super Series 4.0L (3,994cc) petrol, 7-speed Seamless Shift Dual Clutch Gearbox (SSG): Low 23.3 (528), Medium: 12.9 (293), High, 9.2 (209), Extra-High, 10.2 (230), Combined 12.2 (276). The efficiency figures quoted are derived from official WLTP test results, are provided for comparability purposes only, and might not reflect actual driving experience.

cars.mclaren.com

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18 COMING SOON Don’t miss these world-class collector car events taking place over the coming months

29 S TA R T E R Collector news including new FCA Heritage Hub in Turin, return of the Porsche 917-001, visiting Brooklands and an interview with Le Mans icon Tom Kristensen

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ENZO FERRARI AND HIS EMPIRE

PIERSON BROTHERS COUPE

G O R D O N M U R R AY O N H I S ‘FA N C A R’

SHAH OF IRAN’S PERSONAL MIURA

THE ORIGINAL STREET ART

He left an automotive legacy like no other, as our series of features about the man, the force of nature, The Legend, explains

Chopped, channelled and streamlined, this 150mph 1934 Ford was once the fastest coupe in America – and perhaps the world

Legendary designer reveals full story of the legendary Brabham BT46B in a fascinating excerpt from his newly published book

Truly Lamborghini royalty – and it’s one of the earliest, and best-restored, examples of the model in existence as well

Automotive posters were commissioned from top artists back in the day.

We look at some of the most highly collectible

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FORD GT TRIO H E A D -T O - H E A D

ASTON MARTIN’S FA C T O R Y O R I G I N A L S

C A R -T H E M E D ALBUM COVERS

We drive three generations of the legendary supercar at the Blue Oval’s own proving ground in Lommel, Belgium

Two years ago, the marque renewed car production at Newport Pagnell. Now it’s gearing up for more, using original tooling and staff

Nothing adds more glamour to a vinyl LP sleeve than an exotic automobile. We choose some of the best artwork

TOP 50 I N N O VAT I O N S I N FORMULA 1 Significant and sometimes crazy inventions, from 1950 to the present day

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M A R K E T WAT C H : 911

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M A R K E T A N A LY S I S : 9 1 1

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HOW TO FINANCE A CLASSIC CAR

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COLLECTIONS: CLEANING CARS

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LEGAL ADVICE: E S TA B L I S H I N G PROVENANCE

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HISTORIC RACING: THE RIGHT CAR FOR YOU

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BEHIND THE LEGEND: MCLAREN F1 MAGNETO

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E DI TOR ’ S

W E LCOM E

Issue 2 The ‘difficult’ second issue? Well it could have been but for the fantastic reception to Issue 1. Thanks to all who have supported us.

And to those who have professed to enjoy Magneto but who have raised an eyebrow or drawn a sharp breath at the bravery/stupidity of launching into the ‘dying’ print market, some reassurance – this is a business model that’s simple, not reliant on the vagaries of retail newsstand, and nor is it a vanity project. Forgive me if I share too much information, but it’s gone straight into profit and financial stability. Magneto is here to stay.

Of the many comments on Issue 1, it meant a lot that straighttalking Doug Nye, after initial cynicism, gave his congratulations. As a result, we have Doug – arguably the greatest living motor sport historian – writing a spine-tinglingly insightful study of Enzo Ferrari.

That’s supplemented by the recollections of another great motoring historian and writer, Winston Goodfellow, who first visited Maranello in 1981, aged 23. His recollections and pictures from that inaugural visit describe a place now lost in time.

Other confirmations of faith: renowned broker Simon Kidston, another who will tell you outright if something isn’t right, trusted Magneto with the story of the Shah of Iran’s Miura SV. Aston Martin Works let us loose in its workshops, and Ford did the same on its private proving ground with a GT40 and two GTs. We’re very happy with Issue 2 – and beginning work on the ‘difficult’ third issue...

Click here to subscribe to in print

David Lillywhite Editorial director

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CALIBER CALIBER RM 11-03 RM 11-03

www.richardmille.com www.richardmille.com

Contributors G O R D O N M U R R AY In 2017 Gordon celebrated 50 remarkable years in car design. His portfolio majors on Formula 1, but there are sports cars, supercars, eco-cars and more. He granted us the exclusive use of two superb extracts, on the Brabham ‘Fan Car’ and McLaren F1, from his new 948-page two-volume book, One Formula – 50 Years of Car Design.

DOUG NYE The world’s greatest living motor sport writer and historian? We think so. Lately Doug has been researching the life of Enzo Ferrari, whom he first met in 1973. He’s written a stunning piece on the man – Enzo’s strengths and his many foibles. If ever you wanted to understand the complexities of ‘Il Drake’, then this is your chance.

WINSTON GOODFELLOW Back in 1981, when now-renowned writer and historian Winston was just a “23-year-old kid no one had heard of”, he managed to not only tour the Ferrari factory but also photograph it – and then head to a dinner with Enzo Ferrari, Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi. He recollects a very different time at Maranello.

KEN GROSS Who better to write the definitive feature on one of the most important hot rods of all time, the Pierson Brothers Coupe?

Ken Gross is a motoring journalist, book author, concours judge and hot rod expert. Over the years he’d interviewed all those involved with the ’34 Ford – many of whom have since passed away.

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1972 FERRARI 365 GTB/4 DAYTONA Highly Original Example with Less than 21,000 Miles Ferrari Classiche Certified I Coachwork by Scaglietti Chassis 16501

1939 ALFA ROMEO TIPO 256 COUPE Multiple Award Winner at the 2015 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance® I Raced in the 1940 Mille Miglia as a Tipo 256 Spider Siluro One-Off Coachwork by Touring

1958 FERRARI 250 GT TOUR DE FRANCE BERLINETTA Exceptional Platinum Award-Winning Restoration by Motion Products Inc. I Ferrari Classiche Certified Coachwork by Scaglietti I Chassis 0903 GT

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AUCTI ONS & PRI VATE B ROK ERAGE

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Editorial director

Managing director

David Lillywhite

Geoff Love

Art director

Advertising sales

Peter Allen

Sue Farrow, Rob Schulp

Production editor

Lifestyle advertising

Sarah Bradley

Sophie Kochan

West Coast USA contributor

Australian editor

European editor

Winston Goodfellow

James Nicholls

Johan Dillen

Contributors Sam Chick, Robert Dean, Rob Gould, Ken Gross, Sam Hancock, Richard Heseltine, Matthew Howell (cover photography), Dirk de Jager, Graham Keilloh, Evan Klein, Kieron Maughan, John Mayhead, Gordon Murray, Joel Mutton, Doug Nye, Andy Reid, Clive Robertson, Tim Scott, John Tallodi, Patrick Tregenza How to subscribe Please visit www.magnetomagazine.com or call +44 (0)1371 851892 Single issue with P&P £10.50 (UK), €16.50 (Europe), $20 (USA), AUS $28 (Australia and New Zealand) Annual subscription £38 (UK), €52 (Europe), $60 (USA), AUS $80 (Australia and New Zealand) Subscriptions managed by ESco Business Services

HOTHOUSE MEDIA Geoff Love, David Lillywhite, George Pilkington The Hall, Thorpe Street, Raunds, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire NN9 6LT, UK Printing Buxton Press, Palace Road, Buxton, Derbyshire SK17 6AE, UK Printed on Finesse Silk from Denmaur Paper Specialist newsstand distribution Pineapple Media, Select Publisher Services Contact For subscriptions and business enquiries geoff@magnetomagazine.com For editorial enquiries david@magnetomagazine.com For advertising enquiries sue@flyingspace.co.uk or rob@flyingspace.co.uk

©Hothouse Media Ltd. Magneto and associated logos are registered trademarks of Hothouse Media Ltd. All rights reserved. All material in this magazine, whether in whole or in part, may not be reproduced, transmitted or distributed in any form without the written permission of Hothouse Media Ltd. Hothouse Media Ltd. uses a layered privacy notice giving you brief details about how we would like to use your personal information.

For full details, please visit www.magnetomagazine.com/privacy/

Magneto [mag-nee-toh] noun, plural mag·ne·tos 1. Electrical generator that provides periodic high-voltage pulses to the spark-plugs of an internal-combustion engine, used mostly pre-World War One although still fitted for emergency back-up of aircraft ignition systems.

2. Fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.

3. Great new quarterly magazine featuring the most important cars in the world.

ISSN Number 2631-9489. Magneto is published quarterly by Hothouse Publishing Ltd. Great care has been taken throughout the magazine to be accurate, but the publisher cannot accept any responsibility for any errors or omissions that might occur.

The editors and publishers of this magazine give no warranties, guarantees or assurances, and make no representations regarding any goods or services advertised in this edition.

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Coming in 2020 Lamborghini Miura

MIURA APPEAL

The definitive book After years of exhaustive research Simon Kidston’s ultimate book on the world’s first supercar will be published in 2020.

Including behind-the-scenes interviews with all the key players – many, sadly, no longer with us – and superlative modern and period photography, the deluxe, 400-page volume will set the record straight on the Italian exotic beloved of sheikhs, pop stars, photographers and industrial tycoons.

The Miura was the perfect ‘of the moment’ car that turned the motoring world on its head.

In this new book, its vibrant ‘Flower Power’ persona will be reflected in stunning design work and graphics by the best in the business. Only 762 copies will be available, reflecting the total number of Miuras built at Sant’ Agata from 1966 to 1972.

The Miura Register A call for action Accompanying the main book will be a separate register recording every single Miura, its colours, delivery date, supplying dealer and subsequent, often fascinating, history.

Owners worldwide will want their car to be accurately recorded in the register.

Please contact us at info@miurabook.com

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L O N LDOONND O N C O NCCOONUCROSU R S The grounds The grounds of the of the historic historic Honourable Honourable Artillery Artillery Company Company are theare the grand setting grand setting for thisfor year’s this year’s exclusive exclusive London London Concours Concours extravaganza, extravaganza, billed as billed “an as “an automotive automotive gardengarden party party at the heart at theof heart the city”. of the city”.

A specially A specially curated curated and and themed themed selection selection of around of around 80 of the 80 world’s of the world’s most most precious precious cars will cars bewill on be on display, display, under such underbanners such banners as Theas Italian The Italian Job: Miuras, Job: Miuras, The Icons, The The Icons, Innovators, The Innovators, The Outlaws, The Outlaws, Lost Marques Lost Marques and Made andin Made Germany. in Germany.

Great Great Marques Marques classesclasses will cater willfor cater for FerrariFerrari and Jaguar and Jaguar models, models, while the while spotlight the spotlight will bewill be shone shone on oneon enthusiast’s one enthusiast’s eclecticeclectic and astonishing and astonishing collection collection of British of British and and American American machinery. machinery.

Last Last year’s Best year’s inBest Show, in Show, the Beast the Beast of Turin of Fiat Turin S76, Fiat will S76, make will make a guestaappearance, guest appearance, too. too. https://londonconcours.co.uk https://londonconcours.co.uk PHOTO BY TIM SCOTT

PHOTO BY TIM SCOTT

June 5-6, June 2019 5-6, 2019

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PHOTO BY EVAN KLEIN

PHOTO BY EVAN KLEIN

World renowned World renowned as being the as being the best of the best best, of August’s the best, August’s Pebble Beach Pebble Concours Beach Concours d’Elegance d’Elegance will take its will take its accustomed accustomed place on the place 18th on the 18th fairway offairway Monterey’s of Monterey’s premier premier golf resort golf forresort the 69th foryear. the 69th year.

The world’s Themost world’s spectacular most spectacular historic automobiles, historic automobiles, belongingbelonging to its foremost to its foremost collectors, collectors, will sit against will sit against the backdrop the backdrop of the rolling of the rolling Pacific Ocean Pacific as Ocean they vie asfor they vie for attentionattention and recognition. and recognition.

Style andStyle technical and technical merit, merit, history, originality history, originality and the and the accuracy accuracy of preservation of preservation or or restoration restoration are all important are all important factors infactors the judges’ in the judges’ decision-making decision-making process, and process, and this year’sthis special year’s classes special will classes will include those include for those Bugatti forType Bugatti Type 59 and Touring 59 andmodels, Touringplus models, plus historic Hot historic Rod magazine Hot Rod magazine cover cars, cover as well cars, asas well as centennial centennial celebrations celebrations for for both Bentley bothand Bentley Zagato. and Zagato.

Of course, Ofthe course, Pebble the Pebble Beach Concours Beach Concours is only is only part of the part overall of the Monterey overall Monterey Car Week, Car a bucket-list Week, a bucket-list destination destination for any true forcar any true car fan. If youfan. haven’t If youalready, haven’t already, book accommodation book accommodation now! now! www.pebblebeachconcours.net www.pebblebeachconcours.net

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T H E I TC HE ,E I C E , S T M OSRTI TMZO R I T Z February,February, 2020 2020 Yes, we realise Yes, we we’re realise getting we’re getting rather ahead rather of ourselves ahead of ourselves here, but here, we couldn’t but wewait couldn’t wait to bring you to bring newsyou of this news of this exciting event exciting scheduled event scheduled for for next year.next There’s year.nothing There’slike nothing like planning planning ahead, after ahead, all…after all…

The ICE, St The Moritz ICE, St – Moritz or – or the International the International ConcoursConcours of of Elegance Elegance – brings together – brings 50 together 50 top vintage, topclassic vintage, and classic racing and racing cars on the cars frozen on the lake frozen of lake of St Moritz,Stthe Moritz, most the iconic most iconic and luxurious and luxurious place in the place in the Swiss Alps.

Swiss A unique Alps. A concept unique concept in a seemingly in a seemingly unlikely unlikely environment, environment, it builds on it builds the on the town’s cosmopolitan town’s cosmopolitan mix of mix of nature, exclusivity, nature, exclusivity, sports and sports and prestige. Indeed, prestige.it’s Indeed, a mostit’s a most refreshing refreshing take on the take triedon the triedand-tested and-tested concoursconcours formula. formula.

A smaller,Apilot smaller, event pilot took event took place back place in March, back in where March, a where a 1989 Lamborghini 1989 Lamborghini CountachCountach 25th anniversary 25th anniversary and 1929 and 1929 Bentley 4.5 Bentley Litre received 4.5 Litre received the InstaLake the InstaLake and Spiritand of Spirit of St MoritzSt awards Moritzrespectively. awards respectively.

If you wish If you to experience wish to experience a magicalaenvironment magical environment with with fellow drivers, fellowcollectors drivers, collectors and and enthusiasts, enthusiasts, book yourbook tickets your tickets now for next nowyear’s for next unique year’s iceunique ice party at the party ‘topatofthe the‘top world’. of the world’. https://theicestmoritz.ch https://theicestmoritz.ch

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BELOW Silverstone Classic will be a real spectacular.

CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA VILLA D’ESTE

GRAND PRIX D E L’ A G E D ’ O R

May 24-26, 2019

June 7-9, 2019

Elegance is the watchword for this illustrious event on the shores of Italy’s beautiful Lake Como, which features some of the world’s most exotic historic cars and motorcycles from the 1920s1980s. This year it’s all about The Symphony of Engines, with eight car classes and six for bikes. www.concorsodeleganzavilladeste.com

In June, one of France’s oldest race meetings marks its 55th anniversary. This is also the Grand Prix of the Golden Age’s 15th year on the recently revamped Dijon-Prenois circuit, and to celebrate, nearly 300 historic as well as more modern racing cars will take to the track across a range of grids.

One not to be missed. https://peterauto.peter.fr

NÜRBURGRING CLASSIC May 24-26, 2019 Eighteen races, more than 800 participants, a legendary circuit... the Nürburgring Classic has it all.

Visitors to the German event are also looking forward to numerous Legends on Track anniversaries.

Best news of all? Adult entry starts at just €10. www.nbr-classic.com

H I G H WAY E A R T H

June 23, 2019

This is a car show with a difference. Set on a pine-forested 1.2-mile lakeside loop at Franklin Canyon Park near Beverly Hills, Highway Earth brings together an eclectic mix of collector machinery in a truly picturesque location. Organisers describe this unique walking outdoor museum as “a place for people to share their stories”; all spectators go free, but the $25 car show spaces are limited so make sure you register early just in case. www.highwayearth.com

STELLA ALPINA June 28-30, 2019

MADEIRA CLASSIC CA R R E V I VA L May 25-26, 2019 The Portuguese archipelago of Madeira is the venue for this prestigious gathering of vintage, classic and collector vehicles (above). Pre-1980 cars, motorcycles and even bicycles make up the bulk of the event, which centres around the Praça do Povo in the island’s capital, Funchal. Sunday sees the Rampa dos Barreiros sports car race, celebrating the 1935 original. www.madeiraclassiccar.com

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This event’s 34th running will challenge car crews with spectacular drives through Alpine passes and up into the Dolomites.

Over three days, it will take in no fewer than 99 timed trials and six average-speed trials. Following on from 2018’s success, a Ranking will also be drawn up for modern Ferraris, which will compete along the same route. It starts on the Saturday in Trento, while on the Sunday the crews will drive through Val di Fiemme, across Trentino and back to Trento for the awards ceremony held at Cantine Ferrari. www.stellaalpinastorica.it

C H A N T I L LY A R T S E T ELEGANCE RICHARD MILLE

June 30, 2019

A fantastically elegant concours, based at the 19th century Chateau de Chantilly, 30 miles northeast of Paris. The car side is covered by the Concours d’Elegance of concepts, the Concours d’Etat of 100 collectors’ cars and more than 600 club cars. There’s also art, fashion, equestrian demonstrations and much more. www.chantillyartsetelegance.com

GOODWOOD F E ST I VA L O F S P E E D July 4-7, 2019 Mixing motor sport, car culture and a garden party vibe – on steroids – the FoS is described as “an intoxicating celebration of the world’s most glamorous sport”.

Standouts are hillclimb action par excellence, the Forest Rally Stage, plus easy access to machines and drivers… and new for 2019 will be an enhanced Shootout Sunday for this, the hillclimb record’s 20th year. Speed Kings – Motor Sport’s Record Breakers is the main theme. www.goodwood.com

S I LV E R S T O N E C L A S S I C July 26-28, 2019 Silverstone sits at the centre of UK motor sport, and true to its roots its flagship historic event just gets bigger and better. In addition to 1000-plus competitors racing across Formula 1, GT, Sports Car and Touring Car grids, paddock access and live music, highlights include exclusive events marking the Mini’s 60th, Ford Capri’s 50th and Bentley’s 100th anniversaries.

La Sarthe fans will love the threerace, 150-car Twilight Tribute to Le Mans on the Saturday evening. www.silverstoneclassic.com

BONNEVILLE SPEED WEEK August 10-16, 2019 The Southern California Timing Association’s flagship event is a bucket-list essential. It’s suffered from the vagaries of Mother Nature in recent years, but if all goes to plan in 2019 you’ll be guaranteed the planet’s fastest motor sport action across a plethora of classes.

But don’t forget the Save the Salt campaign – otherwise there’ll be nothing to see in a few years’ time. www.scta-bni.org

THE SEBRING 12 HOURS WINNING, BRUMOS 1973 PORSCHE 911 2.8 RSR One of the most important Porsche 911 of all time. Outright winner of the 1973 Sebring 12 Hours, run by the legendary Brumos team with Peter Gregg, Hurley Haywood and David Helmick at the wheel. Subsequently bought by Roberto Quintinella and went on to share a garage with the Targa Florio winning RSR, R6, for many years. Remaining highly original, restoration work has been carried out by the best names in the business and 0705 is today superbly presented. The subject of multiple Porsche produced short films and recently reunited again with Hurley Haywood at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

FIA GROUP 4 SPECIFICATION 1981 FERRARI 308 GTB An iconic design of the Group 4 era with a well-documented history, beautifully restored to FIA Group 4 rally specification by Foskers and rally preparation specialists BGMsport. Over ÂŁ270,000 has been spent to reach this level. Light, fast, agile and impressive, you will struggle to find a more exciting car to drive on the road. This is an excellent opportunity to take on the growing number of competitive rallies and events such as the Tour Auto, Modena Cento Ore, Tour de Corse and so much more.

T. +44 (0)1285 831 488 / E. cars@williamianson.com / www.williamianson.com

VETERAN OF THE RAC TT AT THE GOODWOOD REVIVAL 1965 AC COBRA 289 A desirable UK supplied RHD AC Cobra 289 with a continuous, no questions history from new. Consigned to K.N. Rudd Ltd. of Byfleet in 1965, it still bears the original SHK 670D registration. Former property of well-known Cobra racer Bill Bridges. Meticulously prepared by BGMsport to be highly competitive with no expense spared. Current FIA papers and extensive history file with the original green log book.

Fitted with a 0 hours latest specification Peter Knight engine and raced in the 2017 Goodwood Revival TT.

THE EX – PIERS COURAGE, JOHN COOMBS 1967 MCLAREN M4A FORMULA 2 Run by the works McLaren team along with Bruce’s own car for Piers Courage while owned by John Coombs in 1967. After a strong European season in ’67, including 2nd at Zandvoort, Courage bought the M4A from Coombs and took it down under for the ’68 Tasman Series. Finishing 3rd overall in the series, Courage drove to an outstanding victory at Longford where he beat the likes of Jim Clark in a Lotus 49. Beautifully maintained with Geoff Richardson Cosworth FVA engine, M4A/2 has a full and complete history, and would be as at home in historic racing circles as it would in a pedigree collection.

/williamiansonltd

/williamiansonltd

S T A R T E R

37 Sole surviving VW39 prototype has been bombed and burnt out in its time, but now it lives once again

30 Turin’s FCA Heritage Hub | 34 The Italian Job cars 50 years on | 34 Porsche 917-001 back in the spotlight 37 Fascinating Beetle | 38 Return of Mr Whoppit | 38 Visiting Brooklands | 40 Tom Kristensen on Le Mans 43 Race photographer John Ross | 45 Auction analysis | 47 New Round the World rally | 48 Vegas road culture on film 50 Artcurial launches June sale | 52 Latest plans for Bicester Motion | 54 Evolution of the grand tourer

FCA COLLECTION

Getting to the Hub of the matter

Thrilling news for fans of all things Lancia, Abarth and Fiat; the new FCA Heritage Hub in Turin is a huge collection of significant cars from the auto giant’s past

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IT’S ALWAYS BIG news when a current car manufacturer steps up its heritage efforts. The latest to do so is FCA – that’s Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, if you’re still reeling from the various ownership changes of the past decade – which has been ramping up the involvement of FCA Heritage, the organisation that looks after the historic side of Fiat, Lancia, Abarth and Alfa Romeo.

Now it has opened the FCA Heritage Hub, located in the former Officina 81 site in Via Plava, part of Turin’s huge industrial area of Mirafiori. The Hub’s 15,000sq m building was formerly used to manufacture gears, driveshafts and

bearings; now, on the original concrete factory floors, are more than 250 Fiats, Lancias and Abarths.

In case you’re wondering, Alfa is well represented 95 miles away in Milan, at the Museo Storico Alfa Romeo.

It’s more of a car collection than a true museum, with an appealing informality and relaxed atmosphere.

The vast building has been very sympathetically restored, using the historic mustard and green paint colours on the walls and the metal columns that it featured when it opened in 1968. However, there’s been no attempt to disguise its origins – and it’s all the better for that.

The centre of the building is

devoted todevoted eight separate to eightdisplays, separate displays, down the middle down the of the middle building. of the building.

ABOVE Records ABOVE and Records and Races display: Races LC2, display: LC2, each containing each containing eight cars,eight whilecars, while The eight central The eight displays centralwill displays be will be Beta Montecarlo, Beta Montecarlo, down the left down side theofleft theside facility of the arefacility changed are onchanged a regular onbasis, a regular withbasis, cars with cars Abarth record Abarth cars, record cars, around 100around Fiats and 100Abarths, Fiats andmany Abarths, swapped many inswapped and out of inthe andcompany’s out of the company’s Lancia D50, Lancia and the D50, and of thethem design of them studies, design concepts studies,and concepts 600-strong and 600-strong collection. FCA collection.

Heritage’s FCA Heritage’s two 1908 racers. two 1908 racers. prototypes.prototypes.

On the right On side the right are a side workshop, are a workshop, less than half lessathan mile half away a mile away LEFT Entrance LEFTto Entrance to similar number similar ofnumber Lancias,offrom Lancias, the from from thethe Heritage from theHub, Heritage will feed Hub, into will feed into the new Heritage the new Heritage very first very to the first most to the recent, most less recent,this, lessand this, is expected and is to expected gradually to gradually Hub. Workshop Hub. Workshop and and attractive, Chrysler-based models. models. work through work some through of the somemore of the more the Centrothe Storico Centro Storicoattractive, Chrysler-based In these daysearly of the days FCA of theimportant FCA important cars – several cars – of several which of which historic records historic base records baseIn these early Heritage it’s open Hub,only it’s open for preonly for are prelookingare a little looking knocked a littlearound knocked around are both nearby. are both nearby. Heritage Hub, booked tours booked rather tours than rather general than general after yearsafter in storage. years in storage. admission,admission, although this although may change this may change The workshop, The workshop, by the way, by has the way, has as it becomes as itmore becomes established. more established.

It’s now It’s started nowtaking startedin taking customer in customer also been also designed been as designed a meeting as a meeting restorations restorations and ‘certification and ‘certification of of and collaboration and collaboration area for area FCA for authenticity’ FCA authenticity’ work – work the latter – the latter employees,employees, clubs, historians clubs, historians and mostly and aimed mostly at rare aimed Abarth at rare models.

Abarth models. visitors, hence visitors, thehence long the benches long benches As for those As eight for those special eight displays, special displays,

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S T A R T E R

RIGHT Bronze Abarth 2400 Coupé Alemanno in the foreground is a one-off built for Carlo Abarth.

BELOW Fantastic Fiat Campagnola AR 51 was driven the length of Africa in 11 days in 1952.

LEFT Fiat 124 Spider is a factory restoration, now available to order under the ‘Reloaded

by Creators’ banner.

they consist of the following: Archistars, which focuses on car architecture for mould-breaking designs such as the Lancia Lambda and Flavia, as well as the Fiat 500 Topolino, 600, Panda and Uno. Concept and Personalised Cars, including the Fiat 130 Familiar and Panda Rock Moretti, the Abarth 2400 Coupé Alemanno by Carlo Abarth, the Lancia Astura Farina and the Flaminia Coupé Loraymo.

Eco and Sustainable, starting with the X1/23 of 1974 and the Ecobasic of 1999 – both of them all-electric and ahead of their times.

Epic Journeys, with the Fiat Campagnola AR 51 that drove the length of Africa from Cape Town to Algiers in 1952 in a record 11 days, as

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well as the Fiat 1100 E, which in 1953 completed the first single-driver round-the-world tour, covering over 72,000km. Then there’s the Fiat 124S, which in 1970 reached the North Cape in 50 days from Cape Town, the Fiat 131 Abarth Diesel that won its class in the 1977 LondonSydney, and Miki Biasion and Tiziano Siviero’s Lancia Delta HF Integral Group A winner of the 1988 Safari Rally. Historic rally enthusiasts will be pleased to see the recordbreaking Cape Town-to-London Fiat Panda of the late Philip Young and Eagle E-type’s Paul Brace.

Records and Races, which stars two cars from 1908 – the Fiat S61 and 12hp ‘Alfa’ Sport – alongside a Formula 1 Lancia D50, three Abarth

record-breakers and two Endurance race champions: the Lancia Beta Montecarlo Turbo and LC2.

Small and Safe, heralding safety and reduced dimensions, shown by the 1933 Lancia Augusta and 1939 Ardea, and prototypes such as the 1968 Fiat City Taxi, and the ESV 1500 and ESV 2000 models.

Style Marks, for cars that expressed their respective brands’ identities at the time, including the Lancia Aurelia B20 through to the Fiat Barchetta.

The Rally Era, covering the Lancia Fulvia HF 1600, which won the 1972 Monte Carlo Rally, the Stratos HF, the victorious Delta HF and the Fiat 124 Abarth Rally and 131 Abarth Rally.

Visiting details will be updated on www.fcaheritage.com.

‘More of a car collection than a true museum, with an appealing informality and relaxed atmosphere’

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THETHE ITALIAN ITALIAN JOBJOB CARS CARS REVISITED REVISITED 50 YEARS 50 YEARS ON ON As anniversary celebrations for thefor iconic As anniversary celebrations the iconic 1969 movie get underway, we examine 1969 movie get underway, we examine just what of its vehicular stars stars justbecame what became of its vehicular

AUSTIN MINI AUSTIN COOPER MINI COOPER S MK1S S MK1S

JAGUARJAGUAR E-TYPE FHC E-TYPE FHC

In the film Inyou the see filmthree you see Minis, three plus Minis, two plus two The dark-blue The dark-blue fixed-head fixed-head coupé, coupé, used for used practice. for practice.

It’s thought It’s that thought 16 that 16619 DXX,619 was DXX, thought was lost thought untillost its until its Minis were Minis bought wereby bought the film bycompany the film company owner ofowner the previous of the previous 20 years 20 realised years realised – at least–six at of least them six Cooper of themSCooper models,S models, that it was that theitThe wasItalian the The Job Italian car. The Job car. The and the rest andmade the rest to look madelike to look Coopers. like Coopers.

Jaguar’s Jaguar’s identity was identity verified wasand verified it and it All were All scrapped, were scrapped, but in 2006 butone in 2006 one has recently has been recently restored. been restored.

David Morton Davidbought Mortonthree bought boxes three of boxes of bits – lamp-bars, bits – lamp-bars, numberplates, numberplates, bonnet bonnet ASTON MARTIN ASTON MARTIN DB4 DB4 straps and straps registration and registration documents documents It wasn’tIt the wasn’t DB4 convertible, the DB4 convertible, 163 ELT, 163 ELT, – said to–besaid from to The be from Italian The Job Italian cars,Job cars, that you that see go you over seethe go over mountainside, the mountainside, and usedand them used to recreate them to recreate the trio. the trio. but a disguised but a disguised Lancia Flaminia.

Lancia Flaminia.

When When the car tumbles the car tumbles down thedown ravine the itsravine its bonnet opens, bonnethinging opens,from hinging thefrom rear;the rear; The Harrington The Harrington Legionnaire-bodied Legionnaire-bodieda DB4’s bonnet a DB4’shinges bonnetfrom hinges thefrom front.the front. coach, ALR coach, 453B, ALR survived 453B, survived until 1990 until 1990Thankfully, Thankfully, the actual the DB4 actual stillDB4 exists. still exists. before being before scrapped. being scrapped.

It startedItout started out with Battens withCoaches Battens Coaches of London, of London, SICUREZZA SICUREZZA BULLIONBULLION VAN VAN before being before converted being converted to take the to take the The hijacked The hijacked security van security was an van was an Minis. After Minis. filming Afteritfilming was turned it wasback turned back OM Furgonato OM Furgonato Sicurezza, Sicurezza, carryingcarrying into a coach, into and a coach, usedand with used various with various a Turin registration a Turin registration and converted and converted service operators, service operators, mostly inmostly Scotland. in Scotland. to look like to look a security like a van. security Its van. Its

BEDFORD BEDFORD VAL COACH VAL COACH

LAMBORGHINI LAMBORGHINI MIURA MIURA

whereabouts whereabouts have never have been never traced. been traced.

The star The of the star opening of the opening sequences sequences LAND ROVER LANDSERIES ROVER IIA SERIES 109 IIA 109 came to undignified came to undignified end in the end film. in the film.

The LandThe Rover, Land BKO Rover, 686C, BKO was 686C, was An already-damaged An already-damaged car was pushed car was pushed equippedequipped with a hoist withtoatow hoist the to tow the over the over ravine, thebut ravine, then but disappeared then disappeared bullion van. bullion It’s thought van. It’s to thought have been to have been overnight, overnight, never to never be seen toagain. be seen again. driven back driven to the back UKtoafter the UK filming, after but filming, but The driving Thecar driving was undamaged car was undamaged but but despite strong despite interest strongin interest Land Rover in Land Rover thought missing, thought missing, until 2014 until when 2014 when communities communities it hasn’t resurfaced. it hasn’t resurfaced. specialistspecialist Ian Tyrrell Ianwas Tyrrell tipped was off tipped off that chassis that3586 chassis might 3586 bemight the Miura be the Miura FORD THAMES FORD THAMES DORMOBILE DORMOBILE from Thefrom Italian The Job. Italian Thanks Job.to Thanks factory to factory The Ford white Thames Ford Thames Dormobile, Dormobile, records and records comparison and comparison of pictures of pictures The white wasDNY, adorned was adorned with English with English of the interior of thetrim interior by experts, trim by it experts, is it is 256 DNY,256 footballers’ names and names slogans. and slogans. widely thought widely to thought be theto film be car. the film car. footballers’ Its whereabouts Its whereabouts are not known. are not known.

JAGUARJAGUAR E-TYPE DHC E-TYPE DHC

FIAT DINO FIAT DINO The red Series The red 1 3.8 Series Roadster, 1 3.8 Roadster, 848 CRY,848 CRY, The Mafia The drive Mafia three drive black three Dino black Dino was the 12th was E-type the 12thtoE-type be built toand be built the and the coupés, supplied

by Fiat. It’s by not Fiat. It’s not first to befirst involved to be involved in motorin sport. motor It sport. Itcoupés, supplied known became what of became these cars. of these cars. was laterwas bought laterby bought Richard

by Essame, Richard Essame,known what who went who on to went play onthe to part play of theone part of one POLICE ALFA POLICE ROMEO ALFA GIULIAS ROMEO GIULIAS of the Mini of the drivers.

MiniHe drivers. droveHe it to drove Italy,it to Italy, where the where film team the film bought teamitbought from him. it from him.

As they chase As they thechase nimble theCoopers, nimble Coopers, the the Now it’s owned Now it’sby owned Jaguarbyexpert Jaguar Philip expert Philip Carabinieri’s Carabinieri’s Giulias take Giulias a battering. take a battering.

Porter, who Porter, restored who restored it in the early it in the ’90s. early ’90s.

None is known None istoknown have survived. to have survived.

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THANKS TO LONDON CLASSIC CAR SHOW

THANKS TO LONDON CLASSIC CAR SHOW

L E G E NLDEAGREYN DP AO R YS CPHOER S C H E

917-001 917-001 returns returns to the to the spotlight spotlight First-built First-built 917 wears 917 wears original original livery livery once more once after morean after an extensive extensive Porsche Porsche Museum Museum restoration restoration – and –goes andback goes back ‘on tour’ ‘onto tour’ satisfy to satisfy its fans its fans

S T A R T E R SOMEHOW, THE FIRST of the 25 Porsche 917s initially built to satisfy FIA type approval had disappeared into the background over the years.

Chassis number 917-001’s status wasn’t helped by several changes of livery, used to represent other cars to suit the brand’s publicity needs at the time. But now, thanks to the Porsche Museum, it went back on tour in its original livery just in time to mark the 50th anniversary of its original unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show on 12 March, 1969.

Back in early ’69 it was white with a green front, but within a few months it had been repainted in white and orange for the 1969 International Motor Show in Frankfurt. Then, when Porsche later announced the transfer of its racing activities to the JW Automotive Engineering team, 917-001 was refinished in the colours of US oil company and sponsor, Gulf – the now-legendary light blue and

orange. Later still it was reworked as a short-tail version and painted in the livery of the 1970 Le Manswinning Richard Attwood car.

The challenge for the Porsche Museum was to determine how much of 001 was still original. For over a year the museum mechanics – all former technicians and engineers from Zuffenhausen and Weissach – worked with the archives department and partner companies on the car’s restoration, with their priority being the conservation and reuse of original materials wherever possible.

Tests were carried out to determine which of the body materials were original and could be reused, using material analysis and comparison with historical design drawings and photographs. Body parts for the front and rear sections were reproduced using both modern 3D technology and reference to the original design drawings, and the

‘The challenge for the museum was to determine how much of 001 was still original’ rear section of the aluminium spaceframe was also restored with the aid of original documents.

Now 917-001 is just as it would have been at Geneva 50 years ago, and the Porsche Museum has been busy showing it off. First stop was Stuttgart’s Retro Classics, followed by a magnificent return to the track at the recent Goodwood Members’ Meeting, accompanied by three other 917s: the short-tail Gulf-livery 917 KH, chassis 15; the 1200bhp ex-Mark Donohue Sunoco-livery 917/30-001, also just out of restoration; and the Vaillant-livery 917/30 Spyder.

Goodwood was followed by a quick stop-off at the UK’s Fleet Air Arm Museum to meet another icon celebrating its 50th – Concorde.

And now 917-001 is back in Stuttgart for an all-new exhibition, Colours of Speed – 50 Years of the 917, at the Porsche Museum, which runs from 14 May to 15 September, 2019. The display includes ten 917 models, which alone have a combined output of 7688bhp, along with a selection of racing posters and small technical exhibits.

There will also be a 917 concept study, which was created as an homage to the first Le Mans victory of 1970, and has never previously been shown in public. Even the museum shop has joined in, with a selection of 917-themed products for sale including a pink barbecue apron inspired by the unique 1971 ‘Pink Pig’ 917/20.

Find out more exhibition information at www.porsche.com/museum.

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+44 (0) 118 940 1101 • gtoengineering.com

S T A R T E R

BELEAGUERED BEETLE REFUSES TO BE BEATEN The sole surviving VW39 prototype has been bombed and burnt out in its time, but now it lives once again to tell a fascinating tale

ABOVE Fire-damaged 1-00003 has since been resurrected by Automuseum Prototyp, Hamburg.

IT MAY ‘ONLY’ be a Beetle, but this is one of the world’s most historically important cars, being the sole survivor of the 14 Ferdinand Porsche-designed VW39 pre-production prototypes.

It’s now on its third life, having been buried during a World War Two bombing raid and then caught up in the 2011 fire of the large private historic car collection it was part of.

Its chassis number 1-00003 marks it as the ‘high-speed variant’ of the planned run of 50 V39 prototypes, which followed the initial V1, the three V3s, 30 V30s and 44 V38s. The V39s were intended to be the final iteration before production started, using machine tools for the first time for the prototypes – but the outbreak of war curtailed the production run after just 14 had been made.

This car had been fitted with a version of the engine used in the famous Type 64 Berlin-Rome record car. Its 32bhp allowed the 695kg VW39 to achieve a heady 90mph.

Ferdinand Porsche and son Ferry are said to have frequently driven the car between the production location in Zuffenhausen – the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, which was still under construction – and the capital Berlin.

Its final journey was to the headquarters of the German Labour

Front in Berlin, possibly to go on show to potential customers. It was later retrieved from the bombed-out ruins of the building, badly damaged and without its engine.

Around this time, Volkswagen dealer Gerhard von Raffay made a public appeal to find the earliest existing VW, which resulted in him buying 1-00003 (in fact, earlier cars do exist, including a convertible built for the factory’s cornerstone-laying ceremony and later gifted to Hitler, and a VW38, both now VW owned).

Von Raffay rebuilt 1-00003 using later-model parts where necessary, painted it grey and used it to promote the Raffay dealership. It became part of an extensive family collection in Hamburg, which included the 1900/ 1901 hybrid Lohner-Porsche as well as Bugattis, Maseratis and AustroDaimlers. In 2011, a fire broke out that destroyed much of the collection.

The remains of 1-00003 were bought five years ago by the founders of Hamburg’s Automuseum Prototyp, Thomas König and Oliver Schmidt.

Many components had to be specially made, and a prototype engine already owned by the museum has been fitted to return it to its 1939 spec. It’s now on permanent display at the museum.

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S T A SR TT AE RR T E R

CAMPBELL’S CAMPBELL’S LUCKY LUCKY BEARBEAR SPEEDS SPEEDS BACKBACK INTOINTO VIEW VIEW Record holder’s talismantalisman Mr Whoppit is Record holder’s Mr Whoppit is now available in limited-edition run of 1956 now available in limited-edition run of 1956 bears from original toymaker via Danbury Mint Mint bears from original toymaker via Danbury

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P L A C E S PTLOA GC OE S T O G O

PHOTO BY ALAMY

PHOTO BY ALAMY

MR WHOPPIT MR WHOPPIT IS best known IS best as known as the little bear the little that accompanied bear that accompanied Donald Campbell Donald Campbell on every speed on every speed run, right through run, righttothrough 1967’s fateful to 1967’s fateful Bluebird hydroplane Bluebird hydroplane accident. accident.

But he actually But he started actually outstarted in ’53 out in ’53 as Woppit,as a character Woppit, a in character children’s in children’s comic Robin. comic Merrythought Robin. Merrythought the the toymaker toymaker then created then 9in-high created 9in-high Woppits, and Woppits, according and according to David to David Tremayne’s Tremayne’s Donald Campbell: Donald Campbell: The The Man Behind Man theBehind Mask, friend the Mask, andfriend and manager Peter manager Barker Peter gave Barker one to gave one to Donald asDonald a lucky as mascot a lucky in mascot 1956. in 1956.

Campbell,Campbell, like fatherlike Malcolm, father Malcolm, ABOVE Mr ABOVE Whoppit Mraccompanied Whoppit accompanied was highlywas superstitious highly superstitious – both – both Donald Campbell Donald everywhere Campbell everywhere until until would consult would fortune consult tellers fortune andtellersthe andfateful the accident fatefulonaccident Coniston. on Coniston. mediums – mediums and Mr Whoppit – and Mrwas Whoppit was adopted asadopted a ‘luckyas talisman’. a ‘lucky talisman’.

He He quickly gained quickly a Bluebird gained abadge Bluebird badge Bluebird and Campbell sunk to sunk to Bluebird and Campbell and later aand flying later suit, a flying and he suit, first and hethe firstbottomthe of bottom the lake,ofbut theMr lake, but Mr accompanied accompanied Campbell Campbell on the on the Whoppit floated to the surface, Whoppit floated to the surface, 239mph water 239mph speed water record speed record and was rescued. and wasCampbell’s rescued. Campbell’s on Coniston onWater Coniston in 1957.

Water in 1957. body wasn’t recovered until 2001.until 2001. body wasn’t recovered After the success After the ofsuccess that outing, of that outing, That wasn’t thewasn’t end ofthe Mr end of Mr That Mr Whoppit Mrwent Whoppit everywhere went everywhere Whoppit’sWhoppit’s record-breaking, record-breaking, with Campbell with – Campbell in the Bluebird – in theK7 Bluebird K7 hebecause because also accompanied he also accompanied cockpit forcockpit a further fortwo a further records two onrecords on Campbell’s daughter Gina on Gina on Campbell’s daughter Coniston, Coniston, another onanother Australia’s on Australia’s her water speed record attempts. her water speed record attempts.

Lake Dumbleyung, Lake Dumbleyung, and a 1964and a 1964 Merrythought issued 5000 Merrythought issued 5000 land speedland record speed in Bluebird record inCN7 Bluebirdreplicas CN7 ofreplicas Mr Whoppit the of Mrin Whoppit in the on Lake Eyre. on Lake Mr Whoppit Eyre. Mrwas Whoppit was late 1990s,late and1990s, has now andproduced has now produced back in theback cockpit in the incockpit Januaryin’67 January ’67 limited-edition a new run of 1956 a new limited-edition run of 1956 when Campbell when Campbell lost control lost of control K7 of K7 to be bears, sold through bears, to be soldDanbury through Danbury at over 300mph at overon 300mph Coniston. on Coniston.

Both Bothat £149 Mint each.

Mint at £149 each.

Brooklands Brooklands Museum Museum As the birthplace As the birthplace of of British motor Britishsport, motorthe sport, the legendary legendary Surrey location Surrey location is alive and is alive kicking and kicking – – and welland worth wellaworth visit a visit

PHOTO BY MARC VORGERS

S T A R T E R

NO GRAND TOUR of British auto establishments would be complete without visiting Brooklands Museum.

The historic location, established in 1907 near Weybridge in Surrey, hosted the world’s first purpose-built banked circuit, as well as extensive car, bike and aeronautic development during the interwar period.

With Vickers-Armstrongs then occupying the land post-war until the late 1980s, Brooklands was a centre of engineering excellence in an era when Britain was a world-leading powerhouse. Today it provides a unique opportunity to experience the thrills and spills associated with the nation’s motor sport heritage.

The museum was set up with the purpose of recording, researching and preserving that heritage. For more than three decades it has occupied a group of lovingly renovated buildings in the northeastern corner of the site.

It’s a world-class tribute – but it’s far from a dusty, static storehouse. This is a living, working museum, fuelled by the passion of those who keep it

– and its extensive collection of historic vehicles and aircraft – alive.

Original features include the Test Hill, Clubhouse and Paddock, and while only parts of the 2.75-mile concrete oval still exist, walking or driving on the 30ft-high Members’ Banking and the recently restored Finishing Straight make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

In addition to the Motoring Village of original sheds, there’s the Aircraft Factory and Flight Shed, plus the London Bus Museum. New displays are continually being introduced – and while the Concorde Experience and 4D Theatre cost extra, they are unmissable, particularly for children.

Among the cars on show are John Cobb’s 1933 24-litre endurance and speed record-setting Napier-Railton; a supercharged 1926 Delage 15-S8 that came third in the very first RAC British GP, held at Brooklands; a 1923 Aston Martin ‘Razor Blade’ single-seater track racer; and a 1912 Lorraine Dietrich Vieux Charles III, believed to be the sole survivor of the

French 1912 Dieppe GP team of four.

A volunteer network of restorers, mechanics, enthusiasts and support staff keep the machinery cared for, treasured and active, and during any visit you can usually see classics running and being worked on. Many vehicles make regular appearances at events both on-site as well as on-track further afield, ensuring they are not merely immobile exhibits on plinths.

Brooklands holds a raft of special meetings all year round, including hugely popular marque and genrespecific get-togethers. However, its flagship event is the Double Twelve Motorsport Festival organised in association with the VSCC. For 2019, this will be held on June 15-16.

As the birthplace of Britain’s car and motorcycle racing achievements, Brooklands Museum is unique and not to be missed. By following in the wheel-tracks of motor sport greats such as Cobb, Malcolm Campbell and the Bentley Boys, you can share ‘the Spirit of Brooklands’ for a day out you’ll never forget.

D E TA I L S WHERE IS IT? Brooklands Road, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 0QN WHEN IS IT OPEN? Every day, apart from over Christmas. Summer opening 10am-5pm, winter 10am-4pm HIGHLIGHTS Original buildings, Test Hill, Members’ Banking/Paddock, active displays, special events HOW MUCH TO ENTER? Adults £16, seniors/students £15, children (5-16) £9, under-fives go free HOW TO GET THERE? Located between Weybridge and Byfleet, it’s signposted from J10 of the M25 and the A3, which are only minutes away. Use KT13 0SL for visitor car park. Weybridge station is less than a mile away; it’s on the Woking-Waterloo and Staines-Weybridge lines

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S T A R T E R What are your favourite historic Le Mans race cars?

In my Eurosport role, I’ve driven various older cars synonymous with Le Mans, including the pre-blower 1924 Bentley, 1949 Ferrari 166MM, 1967 Ford GT40 and 1974 Matra Simca. I’ve yet to drive the Porsche 917; an iconic machine both in its own right and for the event itself.

That car always fascinated me as a kid. I first saw the Le Mans movie when I was 12 or 13, and it inspired me to love everything about the race.

INTERVIEW

LE MANS ICON TOM KRISTENSEN The most decorated Le Mans driver ever talks historic racing, his kids’ favourite classic and the forthcoming Le Mans tribute at Silverstone Classic

And the guys who raced the 917?

Big respect. Let’s just say I’m happy I had a bit more protection in my own Le Mans years. Mind you, I’d have done the same had I lived back then; the racer heart, the racer blood… you can’t stop, in any given period. But now I’m older I wouldn’t want to make my bread and butter racing hard in a car from those times.

How else has Le Mans changed?

The circuit’s really been developed; it’s very different today to even eight years ago. It has more floodlights, too. I drove many different cars at Le Mans – but for my first ten starts at least, it was incredibly challenging.

Your most memorable moments?

I’m privileged to be able to choose from 18 races and 14 podiums, with nine wins. I recall my first event well, in 1997 in a Joest Racing Porsche; I’d only signed up four days before as a late replacement. In ’99 we had a fourlap lead and then we lost the lead; that hit me very hard, but it set me up for the future, never to accept that we’d won until we’d crossed the line. Then there was the ’08 Audi win.

Peugeot was much faster, but thanks to the rain we kept coming back and putting on the pressure. We won against the odds. My last victory in ’13 was a tough event, as we lost Allan Simonsen. But I’m very proud we won it for him; in that sense, it was dedicated to him.

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Tell us about the Auto Unions…

The Type C and Type D are fascinating. The steering wheel is big and flexible, but – apart from the hot things around you and between your legs – when you get going it drives pretty good. It doesn’t have much grip but it feels nice… easy to slide. The drum brakes are well maintained by Audi Tradition, but if you think you’re going to out-brake somebody like a modern racer, you’ll need big balls.

Do you own any classic cars?

Yes, a VW Type 1 bus, a split-screen of course, from 1967 – the year I was born. That’s the one my kids really love; they’re not interested in any of my sports cars. And a Porsche 964, which is being restored at the moment, inspired by, you know...

[Tom is referring to Singer].

So ‘Mr Le Mans’, how does the 12 Hours of Sebring compare?

They’re very different, but I love Sebring, too. It’s a real challenge, with its different surfaces, blind corners, big bumps... It creates a great challenge for the cars, drivers and engineers trying to make the best compromise. It also has a real party atmosphere, especially around turn ten; the fans bring along what looks like their own living rooms, construct stands, have wild BBQs… It’s an eye-opener; anything goes!

And Goodwood?

I love it; it’s helped me appreciate historic racing even more. Huge respect for the way the Duke of Richmond’s embraced it. Every year I do at least one event; I really enjoy it.

What about the Silverstone Classic?

For me, the UK is the centre of motor sport – and Silverstone is at the heart of it all. Seeing 150 Le Mans cars, from pre-war Bentleys to Peugeot prototypes, driving flat-out into the dusk during the three-race Twilight Tribute to Le Mans will be a real Silverstone Classic highlight.

An event signed by PASSIONI LAB. AG

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Photo: Paul Ripke

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“ Like most people I love the beauty and the elegance of classic cars. At the same time, I’m becoming more involved with issues related to environmental sustainability and climate change. For this reason, I want the drivers participating in this car rally to be able to test the newest technologies available in performance cars, in particular those using hybrid and electric propulsion. Let’s travel in style! “

6th – 9th October 2019, Monte-Carlo – Côte d’Azur www.drivinwithnicorosberg.com

S T A R T E R

ARCHIVE

The pictures of John Ross The former Autocourse chief photographer left a legacy of superb motor racing images, particularly of Goodwood

MOTOR RACING photographer John Ross passed away in January 2019, one of those unsung heroes of the 1950s and 1960s British competition scene. There was a danger that his work might have disappeared forever, but thanks to a deal John struck up with Jarrotts archive before his death, his many stunning images now live on.

John Ross fell in love with motor racing as a boy, and later became a member of BARC (the British

Automobile Racing Club), which gave him access to the pits just as he was starting out as a photographer.

Goodwood was his local circuit.

He practised his craft there, while working during the week at a commercial studio. One day he left some of his Goodwood images lying around in the studio, and they were spotted by model Gillian Rowse, who was married to Autocourse magazine owner David Rowse.

From this encounter he became

chief photographer for Autocourse, covering not only races but leading teams’ headquarters and workshops.

Rather than the more usual Leica of the time, John used a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera, which gave a squarer-format picture. It wasn’t the easiest camera to use for motor racing action photography, but you wouldn’t know that from the results.

His Autocourse work took him around the UK, to the European Grands Prix, and to the Monte Carlo and Liège-Rome-Liège rallies, but it was always Goodwood for which he was best known.

John went on to become a successful advertising photographer, and was also known, perhaps surprisingly, as one of the country’s best photographers of ballet.

More and more of his motor sport photography will become available through Jarrotts as his work is catalogued and scanned, showing not just the action but also the drivers, team members and even the timekeepers (as seen left) from a golden age of motor racing.

TOP Stirling Moss, Carroll Shelby and Phil Hill in 1959 at Goodwood, photographed

by John Ross, pictured above.

RIGHT Colin Chapman speaks with Graham Hill, in the LotusClimax at Monza, 1958 Italian GP.

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S T A R T E R

A U C T I O N WAT C H

Youth is where the strength lies The market is changing and prices are shifting, with older cars suffering but 1980s-on models strong, says Andy Reid

We prefer manual Ferraris. If a modern Ferrari production car, say a 550, 575 or 612, does not have three pedals, then it’s definitely on the down-swing. Buyers of these cars will only pay top numbers for exquisite examples with a manual gearbox. The models equipped with the F1 transmission sell for less than half the price of the manuals. This was well illustrated by a pair of cars at Amelia Island. RM offered a 2004 Ferrari 575 six-speed with 7800 miles that sold for $263,200.

Gooding and Company, meanwhile, offered a stunning 2005 575 with the GTC handling package that had covered under 12,000 miles, which changed hands for a mere $128,800.

‘Youngtimers’ are big news. At Techno-Classica Essen in Germany, the RM Sotheby’s 85-car Youngtimer Collection created by far the most excitement, and prices reflected this.

A highly original 1992 Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo sold for €32,200, a 1979 Mercedes-Benz 500TE AMG went for a remarkable €143,750 – more than double the pre-sale estimate – and a 1984 Mercedes-Benz 500SEC AMG 5.4 ‘Wide-Body’ sold for €161,000, a new world record.

Although not part of the Youngtimer Collection, a 2200km 1985 Lancia Delta S4 Stradale (below) achieved a strong €1,040,000 and a 3500km 1982 037 Rally Stradale almost doubled its estimate to €770,000.

Collections are being sold off. One of the big reasons for the large number of 1930s-’50s American cars currently for sale is that collectors are passing on and their families are

selling off their entire garages at once, often at no reserve. As so many of the collectors in this segment of the hobby, primarily baby-boomers, age out, many more of these groupings are going to be sold. If you’re a buyer of these cars that’s a good thing, but if you’re a seller, I wouldn’t expect to get top dollar for your automobiles.

Special Porsches are strong. On a positive note, the modern Porsche market continues to surprise in its strength and the seemingly everincreasing demand for any special 911 model since the 964 series. The halo car for most 911 aficionados used to be the 1973 Carrera RS, but even this icon is starting be eclipsed. A few years ago the price of a ’73 911 RS Touring was around $1 million. Today these same cars are changing hands for between $650,000-750,000. In contrast, when it was new the 2011 911 GT3 RS 4.0 cost around $200,000. However, Gooding and Company recently sold one at the Amelia Island event for $582,500, and both RM Sotheby’s and Gooding and Company sold 993 Turbo S cars for more than $300,000. I’ll say that for longterm potential I would still put my own money on the ’73 RS, as it’s a true icon and not just the flavour of the month/year.

Watch the Porsche Carrera GT. Another Porsche that is starting to show some strength at last is the Carrera GT. In my opinion this is an extremely important car, and one of the most spectacular Porsche road models we will ever see from the brand. Last year you could get one for as low as $600,000 but this year prices have risen, with great examples costing almost $800,000 at auction. I still feel these cars have room to grow, and expect they’ll be changing hands for in excess of $1 million sooner rather than later.

Where have the big cars gone? At the sharp end of the market there seems to be a slight lack of inventory available at auction. With a few notable exceptions, cars at this level – say, in excess of $5 million – have been noticeably absent. I believe one reason, at least in the US, is the termination of the 10-31 exchanges for cars. This tax rule change made it impossible for a seller to roll their money from one car to another with no tax consequences. Many in this segment of the market are not likely to be in need of cash, so they’ve decided to hold on to their vehicles.

Perfection is required. Another factor is that buyers at this level have become much more educated and demanding of their cars. As a result, whereas in the past any historically important model sold for top money regardless of its later-in-life story, these collectors are demanding that if they’re paying top dollar the car must be perfect in every way.

Originality is still king. Having said all of this, what do I predict for the rest of the year? Keep in mind that I’m no Nostradamus, and that I’ve been wrong as much as I’ve been right. However, I think we can look for further price increases for rare 993 and later Porsches. I also feel that the 1930s-’50s American cars will continue their slow slide. Finally, the part of the market that seems both stable as well as has some room left to grow is with true, completely original ‘preservation class’ sports cars. Not ‘barn finds’, but driving, working and well preserved examples of iconic machines.

Buy what you love. In the end, you really can’t make a bad choice on a car if it’s a good example and you love it. No matter what then happens with that model value wise, you still get to own the car you’ve dreamed about since you were a teenager.

LEFT Lancia was a name to look out for at the recent RM Sotheby’s sale at Techno-Classica Essen in Germany.

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1961 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster Chassis Number # 002756 is 1 of only 5 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadsters which were originally supplied in Fantasiegelb color code DB 653, Fantasy Yellow.

Tastefully restored to show condition and now with a dark green leather interior, matching two-piece luggage, black hard top and upgraded with Rudge wheels.

1961 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster Chassis Number # 002756 is 1 of only 5 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadsters which were originally supplied in Fantasiegelb color code DB 653, Fantasy Yellow.

F U R T H E R C A R S AVA I L A B L E

Tastefully restored to show condition and now with a dark green leather interior, hard top and upgraded with Rudge wheels.

matching luggage, black 1956 Alfa Romeo 1900 CSS two-piece 3-Window Coupe

by Touring 1957 Fiat Abarth 750GT Corsa Zagato ‘Double Bubble’ 1960 Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ, 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB

FURTHER CARS AVAILABLE:

1967 Ferrari 330 GTS, 1974 Lancia Stratos HF Stradale

1957 Fiat Abarth 750GT Corsa Zagato ‘Double Bubble’ 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB

1976 Lamborghini Countach LP400 Periscopica ex Princess Dalal 1977 Chevron B36

1967 Ferrari 330 GTS 1974 Lancia Stratos HF Stradale

1976 Lamborghini Countach LP400 Periscopica ex Princess Dalal

CALIFORNIA

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S T A R T E R

RTW PART 3 VLADIVOSTOK TO LONDON

RTW PART 1 LONDON TO CASABLANCA

RTW PART 2 BOSTON TO VANCOUVER

ROUND THE WORLD 2020-2021

ADVENTURES

Want to drive around the world?

Then you should know about this all-new global rally taking place in 2020-2021 via Casablanca, North America and Vladivostok

DRIVE AROUND THE world. If you say it quick enough it doesn’t seem so daunting, but there hasn’t been a truly global car rally since Philip Young’s Around the World in 80 Days Motor Challenge back in 2000.

That’s now set to change, with the launch of a new event by Rally the Globe. Round the World will take place in three parts during 2020 and 2021: London to Casablanca, Boston to Vancouver, and Vladivostok back to London, with breaks of a few months in between each. Total time will be 80 days, including stopovers

and excursions. Competitors can take part in one, two or all three legs.

This will be Rally the Globe’s fourth event since the organisation was set up in 2018. It’s headed by former professional co-driver Fred Gallagher, who’s since organised events across six continents and has been rally director on Peking to Paris and many other long distance events. He’s joined by John Spiller, who oversaw the Subaru team in the McRae era and has since set the routes for many historic events.

The ethos is to cater for small groups of enthusiasts, staying in

high-quality accommodation, and to organise routes that while being challenging and enjoyable won’t damage the cars. There will be special tests, regularities and timed sections to keep crews on their toes.

Fred explains the route: “Initially the idea was to go east, but we realised that it would get difficult very quickly, then get slowly easier.

So we’re heading west instead, starting in London – right on the Meridian Line at Greenwich – and heading for Casablanca, with a bit of gravel through Spain and more testing stuff into Africa.

“Then, after a few months of recuperation, we will start again in Boston, the cars having been shipped there in the meantime. We’ll head

‘Round the World routes will be challenging and enjoyable but won’t damage the cars’

north through New England in the Fall, taking in both Watkins Glen and Indianapolis, and then passing south of the Great Lakes on gravel roads before travelling across the Rockies. A good, tough challenge.

“In 2021 we’ll start on the toughest leg of the rally. We will begin in Vladivostok, where we’ll be based at a motor stadium for scrutineering etc. We will be exploring new parts of Russia close to the Chinese border, passing south of Lake Baikal and into Irkutsk, before heading south to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, then north to the Caspian Sea, along the old Silk Road, and finally across Europe until we get to the Hook of Holland – and back to where we started in Greenwich.”

Needless to say, this isn’t a cheap adventure. Prices were subject to change as Magneto went to press, but it’s thought that part one will cost £20,400, part two £26,400 and part three £49,200. The entry fee for all three is discounted to a total of £80,000 for 80 days. There’s more on the Rally the Globe website, at www.rallytheglobe.com.

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S T A R T E R

Signs of life from good times gone by Motel Vegas captures the last vestiges of Sin City’s post-war era – and its inextricable link with the golden age of the automobile

SIN CITY. GLITTER GULCH. City of Lights. Entertainment Capital of the World. And our favourite, City of Lost Wages… Las Vegas goes by many different names, but when it comes to design, a single theme rules The Strip: the wilder, the better.

Motel Vegas by photographer Fred Sigman (published by Small Works Press) captures all that was bright and optimistic about Vegas’s golden post-war age. The book concentrates on the city’s dwindling but vaunted Modernist architectural vernacular and its inextricable link with the car.

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Yet the photos also reflect the fact that these surviving 1950s and ’60s motels are among the few remaining aspects of ‘old’ Vegas. Diminished, and forgotten among the high-rise theme parks that now dominate the Nevada skyline, they suffer crippling competition from the mega-resorts.

This is a pictorial treatise on the rise and fall of America’s roadside architecture. They represent Sigman’s fascination with motels and how they have played a significant role in the development of automobile culture, especially with regards to Route 66;

the ‘Mother Road’ that unlocked the west for millions. He says: “What is preserved for me, in the motels, the signs and the themes, are remnants of the oral stories that remind us of early travels in the desert.”

Yet while the exuberant styling of Vegas’s neon-lit motels ensures a cult following among those who prefer old-time charm to the newcomers’ glitz, glamour and corporate feel, the reality of their existence is rather grubbier. Sigman admits that if he was hoping to capture the spirit of a bygone age, he was disappointed:

“What I did not find in the motels were wistful memories of childhood family vacations, or reminiscences of bygone eras of Kerouac-inspired road trips,” he laments.

A culture that all too easily shrugs off its heritage has heralded the loss of much unique architecture in the US’s seemingly never-ending quest for the new and mundane. Countless more buildings look set to share this fate – and falling occupancy rates and rising overheads mean many motels recorded in this book are already among them.

DRIVING HERITAGE

S T A R T E R

AUCTIONS

THE CAR’S THE STAR IN THE CITY OF LIGHT Ferrari 275GTB to head up Artcurial Motorcars’ spectacular new sale at historic Parisian theatre – will this become a bi-annual event going forward?

ARTCURIAL MOTORCARS IS gearing up for a brand-new summer sale right in the heart of Paris. The specialist automotive auction house will be returning to the historic Théâtre du Rond-Point des ChampsElysées, which it last used for a car event back in 2015.

The sale is named Automobiles en Scène (Cars on Stage), in a nod to the Parisian landmark venue, which was built in the mid-1800s and became one of the most popular attractions of Belle Époque Paris. It will take place on 17 June, 2019, preceded by two viewing days for which some of the cars will be parked on the iconic Champs-Elysées.

With this sale, Artcurial Motorcars aims to boost the profile and quality of its regular Paris events, which usually take place at the Artcurial headquarters, less than a quarter of a mile away from the theatre.

Although the auction house hasn’t confirmed its intentions, if the new sale goes well it could possibly

become bi-annual, to fill the gap in the years that Le Mans Classic doesn’t run – the sale at La Sarthe being one of Artcurial Motorcars’ most important events, along with its massive annual sale at the Rétromobile show.

Automobiles en Scène kicks off with a line-up of some 80 collector cars, headlined by a 1965 Ferrari 275GTB from the Jean-Pierre Slavic collection, a 1974-75 Lancia Stratos and nine Porsches from the Eric Coicaud collection.

The 275GTB was sold new in France, and remained in the country until joining the Slavic collection in Geneva a few years ago. Swiss watch maker Jean-Pierre Slavic bought his first Ferrari, a 250GT Lusso, in the early 1970s. As his collection built, he financed a huge underground museum in black marble on the banks of Lac Léman, Geneva, by selling his 1948 166 Mille Miglia.

This is where the 275GTB has lived ever since, having been restored

by Italian specialist Bonini. It comes with a substantial history file and Ferrari Classiche certification, and is estimated at €2m-2.2m.

Meanwhile, the Stratos is a roadgoing version – one of fewer than 500 built – and is likely to be highly sought after due to its eligibility for the Tour Auto and similar events. It’s estimated at €450,000-500,000.

The collection of Porsches was put together over a 12-year period by Eric Coicaud, a well known collector in that specialist world. They are a 1989 3.2L Speedster, 1993 964 RS 3.8, 1993 964 Speedster, 1996 993 RS, 1997 993 GT2, 1998 993 RS 3.8L, 2005 Carrera GT, 2010 997 Sport Classic and 2011 997 Speedster.

Matthieu Lamoure, the managing director of Artcurial Motorcars, says: “We will be making the car the star by putting the rarest models on stage in an exceptional sale on ‘la plus belle avenue du monde’ (the most beautiful road in the world).”

TOP Slavic 1965 Ferrari 275GTB estimated at €2.0m-2.2m.

LEFT Porsches all come from the Coicaud collection.

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• 80 days of adventure across three separate legs • 35,000 km of diverse and spectacular landscapes • 4 continents and 12 countries • For pre-1976 vintage and classic cars

R

ally the Globe’s epic Round the World adventure in 2020-2021 will be the

most challenging and exciting event in its calendar to date – a once in a lifetime opportunity for adventurous drivers and navigators to complete the classic circumnavigation voyage they have always promised themselves.

Split over three legs – each encompassing different continents – and a total of 80 days, the competition and camaraderie will build and become evermore inspiring.

The final stage, an epic 42-days from Vladivostok to London, will be the most demanding and exhilarating event on the historic rally calendar.

With a focus on timed sections and tests on private land, each event will bring a strong competitive element, whilst traversing some of the most diverse and rugged landscapes that the world has to offer.

Only the most adventurous will dare to take on all three stages of what will be the first around the world motoring escapade for vintage and classic cars for 20 years.

Legs can be entered individually but preference will be given to those ‘rallying the globe’.

For more information see: www.rallytheglobe.com +44 113 360 8961 clair.clarke@rallytheglobe.com

Sponsored by:

S T A R T E R

Bicester Expo

Bicester Heritage set for phase two Expansion plans include further specialist businesses, hotel and lodges, conference and exhibition space plus plenty of classic driving opportunities

Brand experience centre

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Hotel

conference development, announced last year, plus an additional 770,000 feet of operational business and leisure accommodation. It should also house a further 30-plus businesses and provide over 2000 more skilled jobs to the area. In this way, the existing on-site historic vehicle specialists will be joined by companies specialising in future electric and autonomous technology.

One of the plans is to include a brand centre offering both on- and off-road driver experiences, with customer facilities such as cafés and restaurants. Near to that, an old quarry and former industrial area will be transformed into the Bicester Reserve. This will give public access to the site’s currently unreachable natural areas, and a new country park complete with foot and cycle paths as well as lakeside lodges for family breaks. Over on the other side

The Radial perimeter circuit

New technical site

F.A.S.T. Zone automotive tech development hub

Vehicle demonstrations and pavilions

NEWS OF THE success of the UK’s Bicester Heritage has travelled far and wide in the five years since it was established. But what was less widely known was that the classic car industry business park – built around the restored buildings of a former RAF bomber base – was merely stage one of the plans for the site.

In fact, although 40 specialists now occupy Bicester Heritage, with more to come, they actually sit on just five percent of the overall site, which also includes land all around the active airfield. Now the plans for that perimeter land have been revealed. The entire development comes under the banner of Bicester Motion, which as the UK’s first ‘automotive resort’ aims to become one of the country’s top 20 tourist and leisure destinations.

The 444-acre Bicester Motion site will include a 344-room hotel and

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Bicester Heritage

of the site, there are plans for a Motor Vaults community of private gallery-style garages for car storage with accommodation.

Adjacent to the Bicester ring road will be the Future Automotive Speed Technology hub, or F.A.S.T. Zone – a centre of excellence for automotive tech demonstration, education and development. The existing perimeter circuit, The Radial, will meanwhile be refurbished to allow visitors to try out vehicles away from public roads. And the two huge former

‘First “automotive resort” aims to become one of UK’s top 20 tourist and leisure destinations’

World War Two hangars will become the Bicester Expo exhibition centre.

“The automotive industry is in a fascinating state of flux owing to changing customer requirements and habits, alongside the technology shift in drivetrains and autonomy,” says the Oxfordshire venue’s chief executive Dan Geoghegan. “Bicester Motion will enable both new and existing manufacturers to interact more effectively with their clientele.

“It’ll help build those relationships in a revolutionary way by providing an immersive environment that offers a lifestyle experience beyond merely cars on tracks or visiting a showroom. We plan to offer a first-ofits-kind resort that will have multigenerational appeal.”

He continues: “Being around 90 minutes from 50 percent of the UK population makes the Bicester Motion location second to none.”

S T A R T E R

ABOVE Jaguar E-type and 250GT SWB are cited by McLaren design director Robert Melville as being key examples of classic GTs. LEFT Woking-based supercar manufacturer’s new grand tourer is claimed to be genre redefining.

Have GT, will travel?

McLaren’s brand-new grand tourer is set to break all the genre’s ‘rules’ – but in order to do that, we need to know what the rules are in the first place...

GRAND TOURER, GRAN turismo, GT… the terms get bandied around, and they are clearly understood.

Aren’t they? Or are they actually a little nebulous? We think of the ‘effortlessly crossing continents’ cliché, without considering how few of us ever do such a thing – or just what crossing continents even means in the modern world.

With McLaren announcing the planned launch of a grand tourer that will redefine the genre, this seems high time to consider what actually does define the genre.

Clearly a grand tourer must be capable of rapid progress over long distances – whether or not you’re planning to cross a continent. So that

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indicates a powerful and agile car.

But it must also be relaxing. So now we’re talking comfortable, refined, relatively quiet. And those things don’t always go hand-in-hand with speed and precise handling. Hmmm!

McLaren designer director Robert Melville cites the Ferrari 250GT SWB and the Jaguar E-type as being archetypal classic grand tourers.

Is he right? They were both sportily powerful, well handling and reasonably comfortable by the standards of the day, and they weren’t heavyweights by any means, at 957kg and 1234kg respectively.

Top speeds of 168mph and 150mph were claimed, albeit dubiously, for both. We’ll throw in Lancia’s Aurelia

B20 GT as another classic grand tourer while we’re at it.

All three were, and are, highly enjoyable to drive – an attribute we’d missed until this point, and it’s that which separates them from the more limousine-like examples of fast and comfy machinery. An ability to carve through mountain passes is just as important as an ease of motorway travel. Indeed, Rob defines “the true spirit of grand touring as The Italian Job opening sequence” – as the Miura speeds across the Alps, its driver clearly enjoying the experience, but cool and relaxed (even if we do know that the Miura would have been harder work than portrayed, and that car and driver are about to meet a sticky end).

Rob goes further, saying the grand tourer: “Must not only be lightweight and beautiful, but it must have luggage capacity, big, bold volumes, a sleek and seamless silhouette with powerful rear haunches like an athlete wearing a suit, and should look less angry and intense [than a typical supercar] so that you feel more relaxed as you approach.”

Too specific? When you look back at all the great GTs, they do exactly that. By the time you read this, McLaren will have revealed the results – or will be about to. Will it be the game-changing grand tourer the brand is promising? We shall see.

SC U

RIA TREN NA TI

DE

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fires into life. Take a moment and breathe in the glorious smell

command. Enjoy the glorious sound of that twin-cam on song,

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E N ZO

F E R R A R I

ZO THE MAN

Whether you consider him to have been utterly ruthless or merely obsessively focused, Enzo Ferrari left an automotive legacy like no other. Doug Nye takes a personal look at the life of Il Drake – the man, the force of nature... simply, The Legend

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E

Earlier this year Mauro Forghieri – Mr Ferrari’s chief racing engineer for 27 years – repeated what he’d told me in 1988 when I was writing an Autosport tribute to Enzo Anselmo Maria Ferrari – Il Commendatore – Il Drake – who’d just died aged 90. I’d asked Mauro what he considered to have been The Old Man’s greatest attribute, and he thought hard before replying: “An understanding of human weakness...” The merest chink in a talented man’s armour could, and would, be ruthlessly exploited to La Ferrari’s advantage.

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F E R R A R I

SPITZLEY

E N ZO

Make no mistake, Enzo Ferrari was the 20th century motoring world’s most renowned and revered individual. Almost single-handedly he conceived, nurtured and consolidated the planet’s premier high-performance brand – one whose exotic global stature exceeds that of even Mercedes-Benz, RollsRoyce, Ford and Porsche. The marque he created and ran under his own name from 1947 was – and remains – unique.

Many auto makers have raced simply to promote and publicise their brands. But that absolutely was not Enzo Ferrari’s way. From childhood he had been a committed racingcar enthusiast. He had no interest in running a company that merely built production models for customer sale. Oh no.

Instead, his master plan was always to build and campaign racers, first and foremost, and then hopefully cover the cost by also producing sister cars – the majority of them still eminently raceable – for private sale. The name of his game was to finance factory team activities… never merely to sell

ABOVE Enzo Ferrari, the racer, in 1922 – already forging close links with Alfa Romeo at the company’s HQ in Portello, Milan.

production cars on the shirt-tails of racing success. He reversed normal big-industry practice, and to achieve his objective he subordinated virtually everything else in life to the manic, almost obsessive direction and management of his creation – his Modena and Maranello-based auto ‘boutique’.

During the 1960s – with Mr Ferrari already fully established as a fully fledged legend – I had glimpsed him occasionally on some of his practice-day-only visits to the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Then, in 1973, I was given a mission by Tom Wheatcroft – the larger-than-life character who’d created the Donington Collection of GP cars. He sent me to Modena in his brand-new Bristol transporter to collect a freshly restored 3-litre flat-12 Ferrari 312B Formula 1 car – priced at £10,000…

Tom’s driver, Arnold, and I rumbled all the way down in the

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Bristol, and drew into the yard of the Ferrari company’s Assistenza Clienti building on Modena’s Viale Trento e Trieste.

It was just next door to the famous building that had housed the Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeo racing operation from 1929-37.

We were shown into one of the tiny waiting-room cubicles where billionaires, World Champion racing drivers, industry moguls and assorted royalty had spent long hours being kept waiting for an audience with Mr Ferrari himself – for right there Enzo was very much a king in his own castle.

We were met by a tall, young man with a long face, prominent nose and hooded, sleepy eyes. I remember thinking: “He looks strangely familiar,” but I couldn’t think why. He stuck out a hand and introduced himself as Piero Lardi. He was handling the sale.

We then sat in that tiny waiting room, walled in by olivegreen metal partitioning with frosted glass in the upper part of each panel. The door was the same, except as I recall the frosted glass filled only half the window, the upper half being clear glazed. Then, during our dealings, a figure loomed outside the door. Questioning eyes peered through the glass. Lardi noticeably stiffened. He rose from his chair, stepped across to the door and opened it. And there, come to see just who was buying one of his works team cars, was ‘The Old Man’ – ‘Il Drake’ as the Italian press christened him – Mr Ferrari himself.

I had no way of knowing then that the duo in the doorway were actually father and son. Mr Ferrari would acknowledge Piero’s paternity only after his wife, Signora Laura, had passed away – for Piero had been born to The Old Man’s long-time mistress, Lina Lardi, in 1945, at the end of World War Two. I was transfixed, gazing at the tall, straight-backed, dominating figure of this great man about whom I’d read and heard so much since childhood. Here was ‘Mr Motor Racing’ in person. I was a tongue-tied, awe-struck, 27-year-old fan…

And Lardi had, I guess, explained that no, this young fellow was not actually Mr Wheatcroft from England, but merely a representative. Mr Ferrari looked me up and down; I swear his lip curled. We briefly shook hands – an electric moment – before he strode off. Piero visibly relaxed, and our deal was done.

Years later, in 1987, I fronted a BBC TV camera crew shooting a documentary interview with the great man, in his office at Fiorano. His long-time PA Franco Gozzi would translate my questions from English to Italian, and The Old Man consented to respond on-camera. We set up carefully in his empty office.

I hardly ever get nervous, but I was that day. Mr Ferrari was elderly, unwell and tetchy. Ever-supportive Gozzi had told us that we might get ten minutes, we might get less…

RIGHT Enzo Ferrari, with Carlo Ongaro, hustles the Alfa Romeo 8C-2300 to his last-ever win, the 1931 Bobbio-Penice.

BELOW RIGHT Scuderia Ferrari at the Targa Abruzzo, Enzo in hat and tie, running the Alfa Romeos at fearsome Pescara.

Then a door opened and the great man walked in. In his 90th year he was still as ram-rod straight, as tall, as dominating, as I recalled. He just moved more slowly. We shook hands. No real eye contact – his tinted spectacles inscrutable. He took his seat, the cameramen pulled focus, the lighting man adjusted his floods – and (via Gozzi) we inevitably began the interview with some of the entirely predictable generalised questions that Il Drake had plainly heard and adroitly fielded so often before.

Then I asked specifically about a visit made to his private Scuderia back in 1933 by a group of British MG competitors in that year’s Mille Miglia, including Lord Howe and the charismatic Sir Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin. I knew The Old Man had always had a soft spot for very-British motor racing gents. He brightened up at that recollection, then laughed – two gold teeth flashing in his lower jaw – and I realised we were well set.

He gave us 20 minutes or so before – over-confident – I dropped the ball. I asked him something that had always intrigued me: “Mr Ferrari – could you explain for us how you made the successful transition from being so prominent running your Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeo quasi-works team for the Mussolini Fascist regime in the 1930s, to emerging safely in near-communist Modena after World War Two and continuing racing for democratic Italy?”

I knew instantly I’d gone too far. Franco Gozzi blanched and said: “You want me to ask that?” I felt myself nodding. I knew enough Italian then to realise that dear old Franco actually asked a different question: “Mr Nye seems to think your company was nationalised. Could you explain how you got it back after 1945…?” Such a fatuous, baseless question deserved a non-answer: “Pah! I’ve had enough – basta!” And Il Drake waved one hand dismissively, turning in his chair to rise.

“Give them a book,” he snapped, adding as an emphatic afterthought: “Uno solo!” – “One only!” And that was that…

The great man had not got where he was by 1987 through being over generous. But what a truly extraordinary man he was. From 1948 to when he sold control of his production division to Fiat in 1969-70, any prospective customer required Mr Ferrari’s approval to let him – or her – actually buy a car.

Enzo had spent decades perfecting that image; the king in his court, he loved being the spider lurking at the centre of his

‘His master plan was always to build and campaign racers, and then hopefully cover the cost by also producing sister cars for private sale’

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LEFT Team founders Enzo Ferrari and Tony Vandervell (Vanwall) together at the 1953 Italian GP. The car, the Squalo, was raced in Formula 2 in 1953 and Formula 1 the following season.

ABOVE RIGHT In the build-up to the ’64 Sebring 12 Hours, Vaccarella, Surtees, Parkes, Scarfiotti and Ferrari gather at Modena Autodrome.

Behind them, 275P and 250GTO/64.

BELOW RIGHT At Monza, Ferrari talks with MGM director John Frankenheimer, filming the 1966 movie Grand Prix around the circuits of Europe.

BELOW Enzo was rarely seen without his trademark tinted eyeglasses due to sensitivity to bright light; this pair is one of a limited edition of replicas that sold out almost immediately at the 2012 opening of the Museo Casa Enzo Ferrari in Modena.

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international international web waiting web forwaiting new acquaintance, for new acquaintance, deep new deep new wallets – new wallets prey––new to be prey drawn – tointo be drawn him byinto thehim towering by the towering magnetismmagnetism of the magical of the marque magical he had marque created. he had created.

He exploited Hethe exploited manufactured the manufactured image in spades, image in both spades, in both in racing and racing on theand road-car on thescene road-car – and, scene in all – and, fairness, in allthe fairness, the image reflected imagegenuine reflected success, genuine and success, on many andlevels on many almost levels almost surreal substance. surreal The substance.

FerrariThe marque, Ferrari and marque, the tall,and imposing, the tall, imposing, dominatingly dominatingly alpha malealpha figuremale of Mr figure Ferrari of Mr himself, Ferrari was himself, was – most certainly – most – certainly The Real – Deal.

The Real Deal.

This artisan-class This artisan-class local boy made localgreat boy made had never greatforgotten had never forgotten his roots. Ahis close roots. acquaintance A close acquaintance of his confirmed of his for confirmed me how,for me how, even towards even thetowards end, Il Drake the end, hadIl never Drake lost hadhis never fascination lost his fascination with manipulating with manipulating the great, the good great, and, the good aboveand, all, the above all, the wealthy: “He wealthy: just liked “Hetojust seeliked themtodancing see them to dancing his tune,toyet his tune, yet once they offered once they enough offered money enough he would money sell hethem would anything. sell them anything.

He loved always He loved to make alwaysthe to big make score. the The big score. wealthy The might wealthy might have got what have they gotwanted, what they andwanted, gone away and smirking, gone awaybut smirking, first but first they had left they their had money left their withmoney him, Ferrari... with him, and Ferrari... his people.” and his people.”

It was in part It was thisin merchant, part this some merchant, say peasant, some say ability peasant, that ability that founded Ferrari’s foundedgreatness.

Ferrari’s But greatness. more importantly, But more importantly, he had he had proven himself proven over himself decades over as being decades theasgreat being manipulator, the great manipulator, a a God-gifted God-gifted exploiter ofexploiter others’ skills. of others’ And what skills.aAnd great what knack a great knack he had forhe spotting had fortalent spotting in designers, talent in engineers, designers, engineers, drivers, drivers, mechanics,mechanics, fabricators,fabricators, panel-beaters, panel-beaters, foundry-men foundry-men and more. and more.

For most ofFor hismost long of lifehis helong had life an almost he had unerring an almosteye unerring for eye for talent. He talent. always He fostered alwaysit fostered in depth, it so in depth, reservessowere reserves were groomed togroomed step up to into step a role up into onceaarole senior once specialist a seniorhad specialist had – in effect – in been effect wrung – been dry, wrung used up. dry,Once usedultimately up. Once cast ultimately cast aside, oftenaside, that specialist’s often that specialist’s best days, his bestgreatest days, his potential, greatest potential, would be behind would be him, behind trapped him, at trapped Maranello at – Maranello and later–atand later at Fiorano – by Fiorano the Ferrari – by filter. the Ferrari filter.

Enzo Ferrari Enzo seemed Ferrariquintessentially seemed quintessentially Modenese. Modenese.

There, There, pride in creation pride in and creation achievement and achievement was taken for wasgranted taken for as agranted as a local Emilian local tradition.

EmilianAlfredo, tradition. hisAlfredo, father, had his father, run a modest had run a modest metal-fabricating metal-fabricating business there. business He and there. hisHe wife andAdalgisa his wife Adalgisa produced two produced sons —two Alfredo sons — born Alfredo in 1896, born and in Enzo 1896,born and Enzo born on Februaryon18, February 1898. 18, 1898.

Alfredo – known Alfredoas–Dino known (Alfredo, as Dino Alfredino, (Alfredo,Dino) Alfredino, – was Dino) – was a bright school a bright student. school Enzo student. supposedly Enzo supposedly was not, although was not, although some of hissome school of works his school haveworks survived have and survived his drawings, and hisin drawings, in particular, particular, showed considerable showed considerable talent. He talent. wantedHe only wanted to only to drop out and drop begin outwork, and begin to earn work, a living to earn – yet a living he was – yet alsohe a was also a voracious (and voracious cultured) (and reader, cultured) andreader, harboured and harboured his own his own ambitions to ambitions become atojournalist. become a journalist.

His first real His exposure first realtoexposure the automobile to the automobile occurred when occurred he when he was only ten was – in only 1908 ten––when in 1908 father – when tookfather the boys took the the few boys the few miles south-east miles south-east to Bologna,totoBologna, watch the toCoppa watch Florio the Coppa roadFlorio road race. The giant, race.deafening The giant,cars, deafening the flashing cars, the speed flashing and colour, speed and colour, the dust, the thesmell dust, –the young smellEnzo – young was left Enzoopen wasmouthed, left open mouthed, completely completely star struck.star While struck. interested While in interested motor cars in motor in cars in general, motor general, sportmotor electrified sport him. electrified Whenhim.

Italian-American When Italian-American Ralph de Palma Ralphwon de Palma the 1915 won Indy the500, 1915Enzo Indy saw 500,the Enzo racer’s saw the racer’s GP LIBRARY

ABOVE Latterly, ABOVE Enzo Latterly, was Enzo was supported insupported everything inhe everything he did by long-time did by PA long-time Franco PA Franco Gozzi, seen here Gozzi, with seen thehere with the great man atgreat Monza man1968. at Monza 1968.

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photograph splashed in the sporting press. He made his decision: “I’m going to be a racing driver.”

His formal education was relatively sketchy, but he invested much time in self education and absorbed a precocious understanding of his fellow man. Yet perhaps two great personal tragedies did more to shape his young life. In 1916, during World War One, he lost both his father (to pneumonia) and, within months, his elder brother Dino. In 1918 he was then extremely lucky to survive the killer flu pandemic, but he emerged weak, alone and jobless.

However, he was also engaging and friendly, and he parlayed himself into early motor-industry jobs in Turin and Milan, eventually becoming a CMN test driver. It was standard for such drivers to race the company products. On October 5, 1919, Enzo drove a CMN in Italy’s first significant post-war motor sport event, the 31-mile Parma-Poggio di Berceto ‘hillclimb’. Six weeks later, in Sicily, he drove his first road race – the Targa Florio.

In 1920 he prepared and drove a big 1914 4.5-litre IsottaFraschini Grand Prix car, before joining Alfa Romeo through a friend. An assiduous networker, what he really seems to have brought to the company was his growing circle of contacts, his engaging personality – and his burgeoning address book.

Nicola Romeo, and sales and racing manager Giorgio Rimini, used young Ferrari’s precocious abilities as a ‘Mr Fixit’. Enzo built close contacts with top members of the era’s dominant racing entity, at Fiat. He lured their leading engineer Vittorio Jano to Alfa Romeo, and Jano-designed 6C and 8C Alfas would catapult the marque to international racing dominance through the 1920s and early ’30s.

Ferrari himself founded a little, but upmarket, Alfa dealership back home in Modena, while proving himself a promising racing driver in promoting the brand. On June 17, 1923, he scored his first outright road-racing victory, driving an Alfa RL at Savio, near Ravenna. In 1924 he won at Savio again, then the following weekend he repeated his success, at Polesine.

On July 13, 1924, Mr Ferrari won the Coppa Acerbo road race at Pescara. Alfa Romeo gave him a works drive for the great French Grand Prix at Lyons, in one of the new Jano-designed P2 cars. He drove in practice there – but fled home pre-race.

Some 42 years later, after Niki Lauda had pulled out of the world title-deciding 1976 Japanese GP on only the second lap, The Old Man defended the Austrian’s action by describing how he, too, had made just such a decision – at Lyons in 1924.

He had, in effect, had a nervous breakdown, realising that handling the powerful, twitchy P2 was beyond him.

RIGHT Enzo Ferrari the salesman at his desk in Maranello.

This is 1983 – still powerful, but illness would soon weaken him.

Alfa Romeo could easily have abandoned Ferrari then. It’s a mark of the affection he commanded that this didn’t happen.

Home in Modena, he concentrated upon recovery and his dealership. On May 15, 1927, he began racing again, and won immediately at Alessandria, in an Alfa, of course. By 1929 he’d persuaded a circle of wealthy ‘gentleman’ owner-drivers – all besotted with racing – to back him in forming a racing team.

Ferrari explained how all they’d need to do would be to put in some money, report to the right venue on the right day, and his mechanics would have a car ready for them to race. It was seductively simple – and it worked. Ferrari was the man with the inside line to Alfa Romeo. The equipment would be the best. And on December 1, 1929, the Societa Anonima Scuderia Ferrari was registered.

The Scuderia subsequently achieved immense national and international racing success for Alfa Romeo, promoting the brand throughout the motor racing world until 1937. From 1932 the Scuderia became the factory’s quasi-works team, with the best drivers of the day. The Old Man’s Scuderia served Alfa – and the Italian state – brilliantly, until new Alfa management took works racing back in-house for 1938-39.

Mr Ferrari’s style was cramped and he walked away, agreeing not to race in opposition for four years. His Scuderia facility in Modena became home instead to his replacement new machine-shop business – Auto Avio Costruzioni. For the 1940 Mille Miglia it built two prototype Fiat-based 815 sports cars and, once World War Two ended, Mr Ferrari emerged, determined to establish his own motor racing marque. Indeed, he was urged to do so by surviving old friends, notably including the then-double-Le Mans winner Luigi Chinetti, who had settled in America and was confident he could help sell exotic products there.

At age 49, on May 11, 1947, Mr Ferrari saw Franco Cortese drive the prototype new 1500cc Ferrari 125 V12 in its maiden race, at Piacenza, Italy. Two weeks later, at Rome’s Caracalla Baths circuit, Cortese scored the marque’s first-ever victory.

Many more followed, as La Ferrari grew, developed and diversified. The Old Man assiduously fostered a close relationship of respect and trust with his Modenese workforce.

He drove them ferociously hard – but he punctiliously paid them on the nail. He gloried in the accumulating success their labours gathered, yet his response was always to drive them

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harder. It was in failure that he would become paternalistic, encouraging, optimistic.

Ferrari cars took Alfa’s place as Italy’s great motor racing flag-waver, winning the 1000-mile Mille Miglia eight times, Le Mans 24 Hours nine. Ferrari would dominate in GP racing – 16 times Formula 1 Constructors’ Champions, 15 Drivers’ Championships. From 1951 Ferrari and Pinin Farina would collaborate in building the marque’s production cars; where The Old Man was concerned, these were simply to fund his racing obsession. From 1955 Fiat supported Ferrari financially to race ‘for Italy’, and in 1969 Fiat acquired production-division control.

Mr Ferrari happily presided over his beloved Reparto Sportiva for the rest of his active life – directing, manipulating and scheming relentlessly, but not always fruitfully. Absolutely travel averse, he preferred to become a fortress-bound warlord, directing his forces from his office desks in Modena, Maranello and, later, Fiorano.

There, he was repeatedly both beleaguered and besieged.

With Alfa in the 1920s he’d adored old champ Antonio Ascari, until that superstar crashed fatally in the 1925 French Grand Prix. Ferrari’s first 815 cars were built in part for Antonio’s son Alberto to drive in the 1940 Mille Miglia. Post-war, Alberto became the sport’s first-ever double World Champion driver (1952-53), but he was killed at Monza in 1955 driving a sports Ferrari 750S that had a growing reputation for tricky handling.

That brought some criticism of The Old Man’s products.

Mr Ferrari’s son Dino developed muscular dystrophy in his youth, and died in 1956 – a terrible personal tragedy. Ascari’s successor as Italian champion, Eugenio Castellotti, died testing a Lancia-Ferrari at Modena in 1957, and criticism of Ferrari increased. When celebrity team driver ‘Fon’ de Portago’s works Ferrari dashed fatally into a roadside crowd in that year’s Mille Miglia, its crew died along with spectating men, women and children. Mr Ferrari – and his brand – became vilified by a storm of media and Vatican-led condemnation.

He and his cars were accused of causing the catastrophe. As the legal process began, Ferrari lost three more world-class drivers through 1958-59: Luigi Musso and Peter Collins were killed in Formula 1 Ferrari crashes, while Mike Hawthorn secured the World Champion crown but retired from driving, partly in reaction – and soon to suffer a fatal road car crash. It took four years for the Mille Miglia process to be settled, with Ferrari found blameless yet tainted. The Portago crash furore had barely been settled when the 1961 Italian Grand Prix saw ‘Taffy’ von Trips’ fatal crash – killing 14 more spectators – and launching another four years’ condemnatory litigation…

Through all adversity, The Old Man’s ever-thicker personal

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armour plating prevailed. He had lost drivers, and engineers, and test drivers before. His marriage was stressful, unhappy, tragic. He buried himself within the insulating familiarity of his empire. He drove his people hard, probably himself harder still – but here was a truly formidable man, yet one also capable of warming consideration and kindness for his workers who might have pressing family or medical concerns.

However, if they talked of such assistance publicly – blabbed outside ‘the family’ – then dismissal was almost certain.

Back in 1965, Mr Ferrari’s mother Adalgisa had died, aged 93.

She’d always been both his staunchest supporter and fiercest critic. Nine days after his 80th birthday, in 1978, Mr Ferrari lost his ‘difficult’ wife, Laura. But discreetly in the background his long-time mistress Lina Lardi remained staunch, discreet, a rock. He needed her to help him survive horrific grief on October 9, 1979, when lost son Dino’s tomb in Modena’s San Cataldo cemetery was vandalised. The boy’s body was exposed and witnessed by his father, who’d rushed to the scene. Here was truly Gothic horror… ghastliness piled upon anguish.

The Old Man adored French-Canadian driver Gilles Villeneuve – seeing in him all the old pre-war Nuvolari spirit – and Gilles’ fatal Ferrari crash at Zolder in 1982 was another, almost unbearably bitter, blow. Through the 1980s, The Old Man’s powers waned at an accelerating pace. Fiat assumed more say in his beloved racing department. This had happened before, during Mr Ferrari’s bouts of illness, most particularly involving chronic kidney problems. But repeatedly he had rebounded, firmly grasping new-found control – as several Fiat appointees and apparatchiks remember to their cost. But increasingly, inevitably, the king in his court relied upon information from, and delegation to, his closest courtiers.

Their agenda sometimes differed from his, and the great manipulator – the deft exploiter – increasingly tasted some of his own medicine, without always realising that to be the case.

The old grey-back, this dominant alpha male, deteriorated through 1987. Despite end-stage renal failure, on July 25, 1988, Mr Ferrari ordered his long-loyal driver, Dino Tagliazucchi, to take him one last time from his home apartment on Modena’s Largo Garibaldi to his office at Fiorano. His closest staff were shocked to see him arrive. He could hardly speak.

The effort exhausted him, and within minutes Enzo finally surrendered to the inevitable – he left his kingdom for the last time, and Tagliazucchi conveyed him carefully, lovingly, back home. There, on Sunday, August 14, 1988, this remarkable, extraordinary, quixotic, demanding, difficult and in so many ways admirable giant among men, died. Enzo Ferrari – Il Drake, The Old Man – was the most significant motor sport personality of the 20th century, no less... Believe me, never doubt it.

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Back before Ferrari’s security, tour buses and Disneyland feel, it was possible

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A world apart: The way Ferrari used to be WOR D S & P HOTO G R A P H Y W I N STON G O ODF E L LOW

toto getget upup close close and and personal personal with with thethe cars, cars, thethe workers workers – and – and thethe bigbig man man himself himself HERE’S THIS ISSUE’S crazy story. A 23-year-old no one has ever heard of drives up to the closed Ferrari factory, camera dangling around his neck, and immediately gets in. He walks along the production lines taking all the photos he wants, and ends up in the Formula 1 department. The camera is still around his neck as he spends some time with one of the team’s drivers, and no one thinks twice.

That’s how different things were in 1981, for I was that kid.

This was during the last decade of Enzo’s life, when the Ferrari marque was a fantastic secret yet to be discovered by much of the world, and the cars were still so rare that many aficionados hadn’t seen one in person. Their impact and magnetism was so great that around the time of my visit, a friend got out of a ticket when he asked the policeman who had pulled him over: “Did you see the Ferrari in town?” No, the officer hadn’t, so instead of being written up, they went to my friend’s house to ogle a silver Daytona in the driveway.

While enthusiasts knew about Enzo’s company in the second half of the 1970s, far fewer had heard of Iso and Bizzarrini. Those marques were my passion, and quite difficult to find out anything about. Crazily enough, researching the

ABOVE Enzo Ferrari speaking; note the champagne bottle vineyard name. Standing behind him on the right is long-time assistant Franco Gozzi, while two over on his left is Sergio Pininfarina. BELOW Looking into the factory through that famous automotive entrance. That’s Gilles Villeneuve’s 308...

two Ferrari competitors set up that factory visit, for that’s when I befriended a Piero Taruffi lookalike who called southern California home. In the mid-1960s Italian ex-pat Rino Argento had been a consultant with Iso, and sensing my genuine interest to learn more he set me up with his friend Franco Lini.

Franco was one of Italy’s top automotive journalists, a man who was so highly thought of that Enzo hired him to run the competition department in 1967. Definitely a smart choice, for Ferrari won that year’s endurance-racing crown. Franco promptly retired, and went back to the wordsmith beat. To say he knew everyone in Italy was an understatement, as our two days hanging out with Giotto Bizzarrini illustrated.

Not long after that Livorno trip, Franco called my hotel; would I like to join him for Ferrari’s annual company party?

My “yes” response came quite quickly. The following week we whistled down to Maranello in his Alfa Turbodelta, and were among the first to arrive at the restaurant where the banquet was to be held. We waited out front, and over the next 90 minutes employees arrived along with some TV news people.

A highlight was a 308GTB pulling into the parking lot, on the other side of the row of cars in front of me. It came to a halt, the engine started revving and the driver dumped the clutch. Tyres squealed as its roofline streaked along the row of cars, and disappeared at the far end of the lot. It suddenly reappeared on my row, its rear end waaaay out. The driver masterfully straightened it up, hit the gas, shot forward and came to a screeching halt directly in front of where I was MAGNETO

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ABOVE In the restaurant entryway, Ferrari shares a moment with Didier Pironi, his girlfriend and Gilles Villeneuve.

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standing. The engine shut off and out popped Gilles Villeneuve, acting like nothing had happened. Today there would have been a sea of cellphones recording his every move in and out of the car, but back then we were all deliriously living in the moment, searing that marvellous episode into our memories.

A bit later, fellow team driver Didier Pironi and his striking girlfriend arrived in a Mondial 8, if I’m remembering correctly.

Not long after, a Fiat 131 sedately pulled into the grounds, and the television crews sprang to attention. The sedan came to a halt, the door opened and Enzo Ferrari got out. After briefly surveying the crowd, he headed into the restaurant.

Excuse the pun, but it was as if the Red Sea had parted, and we followed him in. The banquet room had numerous tables each with seating for around 20 people, ten on a side, and a single head table perpendicular to the others. Enzo sat down at the latter, and Franco went up and chatted with him, Sergio Pininfarina and others. Over the next two or three hours multiple courses were served, but Gilles wasn’t interested; in front of him was a mound of tortellini on a single plate.

While the meal was served, Franco pointed to a corner table and said: “See that man over there? That’s Enzo Ferrari’s son.”

“How’s that?” I replied. “Dino died in the 1950s.”

“That’s his other son,” Franco said. Even though I followed Ferrari and other Italian marques closely, that was news. Back then, very few outside the factory knew of Piero Lardi Ferrari.

Over dessert, several people were introduced to the room.

Then Enzo stood and talked about the year’s accomplishments, honouring key people with awards that would likely be worth a small fortune today. I soaked it all in, snapping the occasional photo. Not once did anyone question what I was doing, why I was there at this most private of functions, or who I was.

After the festivities finished, we drove several minutes through rural countryside to the factory. It was quiet when we pulled into the small parking lot in front, and I noticed a restaurant across the street; Ristorante Cavallino was a holein-the-wall eatery in an anonymous two-storey building.

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afternoon light filtering in here and there, it was dark and very silent. Unfinished Boxers, 308s, Mondials, 400i’s, and their components stretched as far as the eye could see into the opacity; it was a mind-boggling display of hand-craftsmanship.

We walked along the assembly lines, me freely snapping away. Eventually we came to a thick door; it swung open to reveal a naked 126C2 tub on a bench. We stepped into the competition department, and my handler wagged his finger: “No photo.” Not once did he ask to take my camera; he simply walked to the other end of the room and switched on the lights.

As he wandered off, a debate raged inside me. “When will I ever be back at the Ferrari factory?” I concluded, not knowing the direction my then-unknown career would take. I kept the camera at my waist, roughly guessed focus and shutter settings, and took two shots. For two decades no one saw those images.

Several minutes later Didier Pironi and his girlfriend joined us. We exchanged greetings, and then the handler passed me a car body panel. Dumbfounded by its tissue-paper weight, I promptly hoisted it above my head and effortlessly swung it around, all of us laughing at my astonishment. We later exited the factory around back, and there were dozens upon dozens of road cars, out in the elements, awaiting delivery.

Franco and I later met in the courtyard. As we walked through that fabled brick entry in the fading evening light, I turned and snapped a few photos of the illuminated Ferrari sign.

Two decades later, numerous professional visits made that magical facility my second home for a while. It’s such a blessing to have experienced that earlier era, where in the 1980s up until around 15 years ago, Maranello and the Ferrari factory possessed a natural, understated and very authentic feel. Things just ‘were’, and you either knew about them, or didn’t. The town and plant weren’t yet monuments, and there were no shrines to all the history the area had seen.

Then memorials and statues started appearing. Buildings were razed so newer ones could replace them. Streets were widened, roundabouts constructed and modern hotels opened. Ristorante Cavallino was completely redone, and is now the size of the original building in which it was housed.

Shops selling Ferrari paraphernalia popped up everywhere, including one directly across from the factory. And don’t forget the half-dozen or so businesses that will rent you a Ferrari for 15 minutes so you too can have your moment of posterity recorded with a small video camera.

The factory morphed along with everything else. What used to be a fabled sanctuary is now Fort Knox, a walled city with thousands of inhabitants (the employees), traffic intersections and street signs to help one navigate their way around. Tour buses packed with invite-only visitors are constantly shuffled between buildings, their movements choreographed to perfection like an F1 pit stop. All this occurs under the watchful eye of a security apparatus any world leader would be pleased to have.

In many ways Ferrari and Maranello have become a bit like Disneyland, where it is almost more about entertaining than history. While that is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, it does make one wonder how many visitors knew before their arrival that there actually was a Mr Ferrari, let alone could tell you his first name.

But in today’s changed world, that’s no more unusual than hearing German spoken on Lamborghini’s production lines.

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Carlo Chiti went on to form Autodelta with fellow ex-Ferrari engineer Lodovico Chizzola, quickly becoming the official competitions department for Alfa Romeo.

This led to the successful Alfas TZ1 and TZ2, as well as the 33 Stradale. When Alfa Romeo teamed up with Brabham in Formula 1, it was Chiti who designed the engines. When Brabham switched to Ford engines in 1980, Chiti helped develop an Alfa Romeo F1 car, although it didn’t prove to be a success.

Carlo Chiti left Alfa Romeo in 1984 to set up Motori Moderni, designing Formula 1 engines for Minardi and Subaru.

SERENISSIMA Count Volpi’s successful Scuderia Serenissima raced in F1 and in the sports car championship, campaigning Ferraris in the latter. But when Volpi helped to fund ATS, Enzo refused to sell Count Volpi the two 250GTOs he’d reserved.

Volpi then commissioned Giotto Bizzarrini and coachbuilder Piero Drogo to create a GTO challenger from his 250 SWB. The resultant ‘Breadvan’ did indeed beat GTOs on several occasions.

Volpi went on to build his own race and road cars, to compete with Ferrari and Lamborghini.

S O C I E TÀ A U T O S TA R AT S Chiti, Tavoni and Bizzarrini formed ATS (Automobili Turismo e Sport) in 1961, backed by Count Volpi, to compete with Ferrari in racing and road cars. Its first F1 car was a disaster, and its ATS 2500GT wasn’t commercially successful. By 1965 the company was gone.

COBRA

T H E G R E AT WA L KO U T

Carroll Shelby had raced for Ferrari but blamed Enzo for the death of his friend Luigi Musso, who was killed in a Ferrari at the 1958 French Grand Prix. It’s said that his anger at Enzo partly fuelled the development of the Cobra – and later the GTO-beating Daytona Coupe that won the GT class at Le Mans in 1964.

With Enzo grieving the death of son Dino, his wife Laura became more involved with the company and the team. Sales manager Girolamo Gardini in particular clashed with Laura, until an argument in late 1961 resulted in Laura slapping him. Gardini, team manager Romolo Tavoni, engineers Carlo Chiti and Giotto Bizzarrini and others wrote to Enzo, demanding the removal of his wife from the company.

Instead, they were fired.

The fall-out family tree Behind every cloud... in this case, the inevitable rows with Enzo Ferrari led to new cars and companies.

Here are some of the most significant silver linings W O R D S DAV I D L I L LY W H I T E

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BIZZ ARRINI SPA After a dispute with Iso, Giotto Bizzarrini began building his own version of the Iso Grifo, changing the company name to Società Prototipi Bizzarrini in 1964 and then to Bizzarrini SpA in 1966. The Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada was one result, although the company also worked with American Motors to develop the AMX/3, among other projects.

Giotto Bizzarrini formed the engineering company Società Autostar in 1962. One of his first commissions was from Lamborghini to design a V12 engine for the newly formed company. He went on to develop cars for Iso Autoveicoli SpA, including the Iso Grifo.

LAMBORGHINI The most famous of all.

Industrialist Ferruccio Lamborghini bought his first Ferrari in 1958, and more followed, but he thought their interior fittings sub-standard and was dissatisfied with the company’s after-sales service.

When he relayed this to Enzo Ferrari, he was given short shrift – the final spur to create his own sports car company, Automobili Lamborghini, which launched in 1963.

FORD GT40

ENZO

Another battle of egos, after Henry Ford II spent time and company money negotiating to buy Ferrari, even to the point of auditing the Ferrari factory assets, only for Enzo to pull out at the 11th hour. The sticking point was a non-compete clause in open-wheel racing.

The late exit from the deal drove a furious Henry Ford II to create the GT40 to beat Ferrari at Le Mans – which it did 1966-69, as well as winning at Daytona and Sebring.

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Chopped, channelled and streamlined, the 150mph Pierson Brothers’ 1934 Ford was the fastest coupe in America – and perhaps the world. Now it’s on show at Petersen Automotive Museum WOR D S K E N G RO S S PHOTOGRAPHY TED7

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THIS HAMMERED THIS HAMMERED HOT ROD HOT copped ROD an copped an attitude long attitude before long that before expression that expression was applied was applied to anything to anything on four wheels. on fourFor wheels. a brief For time, a brief it time, it was US’s was fastest US’s closed fastest car. closed Its wide car.exposure Its wide exposure at at the dry lakes, the dry andlakes, in period and in rodding periodmagazines, rodding magazines, defined the defined post-war the post-war youthful youthful obsessionobsession with with power and power speed. and It also speed. helped It also put helped Edelbrock put Edelbrock Equipment Equipment on the high-performance on the high-performance map. map.

The Pierson TheBrothers’ Pierson Brothers’ 1934 Ford1934 coupe Ford was coupe was a sensation a sensation when it topped when it140mph, topped 140mph, and soonand soon over 150mph. over 150mph.

Back then, Back hotthen, roadsters hot roadsters defined defined the hot rod. theIn hot 1949-50, rod. In 1949-50, the quickest the roadsters, quickest roadsters, with 296ci with flathead 296ci flathead strokers, strokers, stripped stripped of all of all non-essentials non-essentials and probably and probably 250lb lighter 250lb than lighter than a hardtop,a could hardtop, barely could topbarely the 130mph top themark.

130mph mark.

Coupes were Coupes déclassé. were déclassé.

The SCTA The (Southern SCTA (Southern CaliforniaCalifornia Timing Association) Timing Association) didn’t even didn’t even consider them consider to be them raceto cars be race – ancars in-your-face – an in-your-face gesture to gesture pioneer-era to pioneer-era rodders such rodders as such Lou as Lou Baney, Lyn Baney, Yakel, Lyn Bob Yakel, Rounthwaite, Bob Rounthwaite, and two and two brothers, brothers, Dick and Dick Bob Pierson, and Bobalong Pierson, with along theirwith their friend (and friend crack (and engine crack builder), engineBobby builder), Meeks.

Bobby Meeks.

All three were All three members were members of Inglewood’s of Inglewood’s Coupes Coupes RIGHT Aircraft RIGHT Aircraft club and the club RTA and(Russetta the RTA (Russetta Timing Association), Timing Association), worker Bob worker Bob Pierson used because the because SCTAthe wouldn’t SCTA wouldn’t let them run. let them run. Pierson used his knowledge his knowledge “We didn’t “We think didn’t coupes thinkwere coupes realwere hot rods,” real hot rods,” of aerodynamics of aerodynamics says Alexsays Xydias, Alexthen Xydias, an SCTA then an board SCTA member. board member. to conceive tothe conceive the “We were“We conservative were conservative guys, andguys, theseand cars these aerofoil-like, cars aerofoil-like, flat flat didn’t fit our didn’t pattern. fit ourWe pattern. didn’tWe even didn’t believe even the believeundertail the undertail section, section, which which probably numbers numbers – but when – but they when started they going started fast,going we fast, we probably helped hold helped downhold down had to give hadin.toI give actually in. I recruited actually recruited Bob to run Bob to run the light rear the light end. rear end. under theunder (Glendale) the (Glendale) Sidewinders Sidewinders banner sobanner we so we could wincould the points win the championship points championship one year.”one year.”

It’s hard today It’s hard to understand today to understand what the what coupethe coupe vs roadster vsfuss roadster was all fuss about. was all “Lakes about. cars “Lakes werecars were roadsters,roadsters, modifieds, modifieds, lakesters and lakesters streamliners,” and streamliners,” Bobby Meeks Bobby explained.

Meeks explained.

“But a lot“But of guys a lothad of guys had coupes and coupes sedans, andand sedans, they and needed theya needed place toa place to

‘IT WAS ‘IT WAS A A SENSATION SENSATION WHENWHEN IT IT TOPPED TOPPED 140MPH 140MPH – AND– AND THENTHEN 150MPH’ 150MPH’

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P I E R SP OI E N R BS RO ON T B H RE O R TS HCEORUS P C EO U P E

‘EDELBROCK ‘EDELBROCK KNEWKNEW WE WE HADHAD HIS HIS KIT; KIT; WE WE WEREWERE HIS HIS GUINEA GUINEA PIGS’PIGS’

run, too. run, The too. old Western The old Western Timing Association Timing Association (WTA) would (WTA) take would anything. take anything.

And thenAnd there then wasthere was Russetta.Russetta.

We wereWe equal were to equal the SCTA to the in SCTA many in many ways, especially ways, especially after those after guys those sawguys the light.” saw the light.”

Coupes were Coupes heavier werethan heavier roadsters, than roadsters, and untiland until the Piersons the Piersons and Meeks andbegan Meeks setting beganrecords, setting records, it was believed it was that believed closed that cars closed couldn’t carspossibly couldn’t possibly run as fast. run The as fast. last thing The last many thing roadster many jockeys roadster jockeys probablyprobably saw was saw this was coupe’s this deck-mounted coupe’s deck-mounted Coupes club Coupes plaque clubasplaque it spedas out it sped of sight. out of sight.

Seventy years Seventy ago,years hot rodders ago, hotdrove rodders or towed drove or towed their carstheir to the cars drytolakes the dry for alakes weekend’s for a weekend’s racing. racing.

Faded photos Fadedshow photos lines show of scruffy lines ofroadsters, scruffy roadsters, patientlypatiently waiting for waiting a chance for atochance run thetocourse run the course and stormand through stormthe through time traps. the time In the traps. midst In the of midst of these dust-covered these dust-covered warriors is warriors a beautifully is a beautifully built, built, painted and painted chromed and chromed ’34 Ford coupe. ’34 Ford “You coupe. could “You could walk down walk thedown line and thefind line only and find one or only two one cars or two cars that werethat evenwere painted,” even painted,” Bob Pierson Bobrecalled.

Pierson recalled.

So, why was So, why this was coupe this turned coupeout turned so well? out so well?

LEFT Meticulously LEFT Meticulously “Some of “Some the sports of the car sports guys had car been guys had sneering been at sneering at prepared prepared by engineby engine our hot rods,” our hot Pierson rods,” explained.

Pierson explained.

“So we decided “So we decided wizard Bobby wizard Bobby Meeks, tripleMeeks, tripleto finish this to finish car like thisthe carmidgets like theand midgets Indy and racers, Indy racers, carbed 267ci carbed 267ci with shiny withpaint shinyand paint chromed and chromed suspension.” suspension.”

Mercury flathead Mercury flathead Dan Gurney, Danhimself Gurney,ahimself lakes racer, a lakes remembered: racer, remembered: V8 wouldV8 revwould to a rev to a “When the “When Piersons the Piersons showed up showed with this up with car, this car, heady 5800rpm. heady 5800rpm. compared compared with ourwith roadsters our roadsters it lookedit as looked as though itthough had come it had from come another fromplanet.” another planet.”

And there And wasthere a meteor was abehind meteorthe behind wheel: the “Iwheel: “I was a bombshell, was a bombshell, looking for looking a place for toaexplode,” place to explode,” Bob Pierson Bobonce Pierson toldonce me. “Vic told me.

Edelbrock “Vic Edelbrock knew knew we had his we kit; hadwe hiswere kit; we his were guinea hispigs. guinea What pigs. What we’d learn we’dtesting learn on testing Sepulveda on Sepulveda or Lincoln or Lincoln Boulevards Boulevards (topping three (topping figures) threeon figures) a Thursday on a Thursday night, we’d night, use at we’d El Mirage use at ElonMirage Saturday.” on Saturday.”

Was he Was he worried about worried hitting about someone hitting someone at those speeds? at those speeds?

“There wasn’t “There much wasn’t traffic,” much traffic,” he shrugged. he shrugged.

“We’d run “We’d till the run cops till showed the copsup, showed then scatter.” up, then scatter.”

Working Working at Douglas at Aircraft, Douglas Aircraft, Pierson learned Pierson learned the rudiments the rudiments of aerodynamics. of aerodynamics.

He conceived He conceived the car’s aerofoil-like, the car’s aerofoil-like, flat undertail flat undertail section with section with its narrow itsopening narrow opening that allowed that rushing allowed wind rushing wind to exit across to exita across flat panel a flat andpanel probably and probably helped helped hold down hold thedown light rear the light end. rear The end. stockThe gasstock tank gas tank was axed,was andaxed, a small andracing a small tank racing wastank located was located alongsidealongside the driver,the next driver, to the next battery. to theBob’s battery. kidBob’s kid brother Dick brother did Dick muchdid of much the prep, of the butprep, it was but it was modest Meeks, modestan Meeks, Edelbrock an Edelbrock employeeemployee for 50 for 50 years, who years, was who responsible was responsible for the coupe’s for thehighcoupe’s highperformance performance Ford flathead Ford–flathead and its unique – and its look. unique look.

“One of my “One jobs ofat my Edelbrock jobs at Edelbrock was to find was guys to find guys who could who be could successful be successful racers,” said racers,” Meeks. said“IMeeks. “I recruitedrecruited them andthem we helped and we with helped the latest with the kit.”latest kit.”

DevoteesDevotees included included Bill Likes, Bill Fran Likes, Hernandez, Fran Hernandez, Don Waite, Don Alex Waite, Xydias Alex and Xydias the Piersons. and the Piersons.

“That’s “That’s why Edelbrock why Edelbrock cars had cars so many had so records.” many records.”

After the After Piersons the agreed Piersons toagreed prep their to prep coupe, their it coupe, it M A G NM ET AO G N/ E 8T3O

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‘THE COUPE JUST HUNKERED DOWN AND WENT WHERE YOU PUT IT’

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was Meeks who decided on the excessive roof chop. “High speed dictated the narrow front end, full belly pan and chop,” he said. “The rules said the windshield had to be seven inches high but didn’t specify the angle. So I laid the posts back until you almost lost vision, then raised ’em up a bit, and that was it. Those thin plexiglas side and rear windows helped, too.”

When he stood back to look at the car, he realised immediately what he’d done. “We didn’t even paint the racing class letters on at first,” Meeks recalled, “because we knew the officials would take one look at it and raise us a class.”

Besides the nine-inch chop, the gutted body was channelled three inches. A stock hood was mated to Harry Jones’ beautifully crafted race car nose. The frame horns were snipped and new tubular crossmembers made. An old tank bucket seat and a khaki seatbelt were the main safety touches. The steering-wheel top was cut off to aid the driver’s already limited vision. A flat panel held Stewart-Warner instruments, but it’s doubtful they could be read as the stiffly sprung coupe bounced along the dusty course.

“We soon realised there was a lot of frame flex,” Bob Pierson said. “Vic Edelbrock boxed the centre section of the rails, and we added a roll bar and even more stiffness.” A ’38 Ford tubular axle was used with precise ’39 Ford cross steering, beautifully fabricated hairpin

wishbones and reworked Ford friction shocks.

A high-priced piece of tech sat in back; a Ted Halibrand alloy quick-change centre section.

Supported by a modified Model A crossmember and buggy spring, it permitted a choice of highspeed gears. The first records were set with a 2.94 ratio. Firestone-shod stock Ford steel rims wore ’48 Ford beauty rings and hubcaps.

Meeks used much of the same fine speed kit (Edelbrock high-compression heads and triple manifold, Stromberg 48 carbs, Winfield Super H cam, Kong dual-point, dual-coil distributor and Belond W-2 headers) here as did many rivals. However, his high level of preparation, machining and assembly preceded what later became known as ‘blueprinting’.

In The American Hot Rod, Dean Batchelor – himself a successful lakes racer – extolled Meeks’ virtues. “Some engine builders became legends in their own time... arguably the best is Bob Meeks,” he wrote. “He gave them his own special touch; partly the result of many years of building engines, and partly from many hours of experimentation on the dynamometer. If any ‘speed secret’ was in these engines, it was one of extreme care in assembly.”

What was the coupe like to drive? “It hunkered down and went where you put it,” Bob Pierson recalled. “I’d pitch the car from side to side, outside the cones, trying to break the tyres

X X X XXXXXX X X X XXXXXXXXXX X X X

ABOVE Basic ABOVE Basic cockpit placed cockpit placed battery and battery and fuel tankfuel in tank in close proximity. close proximity.

A cut-off A wheel cut-off wheel facilitated facilitated vision vision through the through the chopped screen. chopped screen.

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loose, so the revs would get up even higher.

Then when the tyres bit, I’d really get on it.”

Hot rods are known by the name(s) of their original builders, so this ’34 will always be called the Pierson Brothers Coupe. But it was passed through several hands over the years.

Seldom away from racing, it continued to run faster and faster. In 1953, then-owner Dawson Hadley achieved 165.23mph. In 1956, Tom Cobb turned 198.86mph. In 1991, Tom Bryant actually set more records in the car than anyone else. He achieved the coupe’s best speed – 227.33mph, albeit with Chevrolet V8 power.

Present owner and noted historic hot rod collector Bruce Meyer bought the coupe from Bryant and commissioned Pete Chapouris to restore it to 1950 specification back when his shop was called PC3G. “I’ve always loved that car,” Meyer explains. “It’s the quintessential hot rod coupe. When I bought it, Tom Bryant was still racing it. He wasn’t anxious to sell, but thankfully he did. This car just had to be restored to its original configuration. What’s remarkable is that it later ran well over 200mph, and the body and running gear were still substantially the way the Piersons and Meeks had built it. Talk about right first time.”

Pete Chapouris took what he called “an archaeologist’s approach” to the Pierson coupe’s restoration. “Most of the sheet metal was intact, but over the years, extensive frame bracing had been added,” he said. “I peeled away the layers until it looked exactly like the Rex Burnett

ABOVE Coupe starred in Hot Rod Magazine, shown at El Mirage dry lake with Bob Pierson.

SHOWING NOW...

The coupe is on display at Petersen Automotive Museum until 19 January, 2020.

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cutaway drawing and Tom Medley’s photos in Hot Rod Magazine. A perfectionist, Chapouris saved as much of the original steel as he could, and metal-master Steve Davis massaged the old panels back into shape.

Although they took a few fit liberties and lowered the nose a tad, the restorers left the characteristically ragged door gaps. Thankfully, there was enough of the original paint below many accumulated layers that they could duplicate the candy red and blue hues. “The front A-pillars were shot, so we replaced those,” Chapouris said, “and the roll cage was welded to the body panels, so we had to separate them. But most of the car is exactly the way it was built.”

In November, 1992, Bruce Meyer held a gala coming-out party for the finished car. Boyd Coddington, one of many hot rod luminaries on hand, waxed philosophically about the return of the Pierson Brothers Coupe. “This is one of our ancestors,” he noted at the time. “It’s important to understand cars like this one, to know where we’ve been and where we’re going.”

Since its restoration, the Pierson Brothers Coupe has made countless public appearances.

It was the first car inducted into the Dry Lakes Hall of Fame. It’s often on exhibit at Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. But Meyer doesn’t hesitate to take it out. He’s raced it up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. “It was awesome,” he says, “a real challenge, particularly because you can’t see out of it. Of all the cars I have, it’s the one people find the

most interesting. And it’s amazing how many people knew what it was. Besides saving an important piece of hot rod history, the fact that so many people can share its significance makes me warm all over.” In 2001, the Pierson Brothers Coupe was also on display at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

I’ve long been a fan of this car, so when I was Petersen Automotive Museum director and the opportunity came, while setting up an exhibit, to drive it around the parking structure, I didn’t hesitate. The 267ci flathead fires after a few spins and, thanks to its lusty Winfield cam, it ‘idles’ at 1200rpm. Blip the throttle and the Meeksprepared motor responds instantly. There are no frills in the cramped office, just an unlined tank seat, tapered shifter and cut-off steering wheel.

The exhaust note echoed loudly off the walls, and within seconds we’d set off many car alarms in the parking garage. Inside, it was deafening – like driving a motorised snare drum. I nailed the gas and the coupe leapt ahead, eager to run.

Peering through the slit of a windshield, I couldn’t imagine the courage it took practicing speed runs in this car late at night on Lincoln Boulevard, let alone pointing it towards the far horizon at the lakes and hammering the pedal...

The Pierson Brothers’ ’34 remains a key link in the legend of early hot rodding – a fast, raucous missile speeding in harm’s way. Dean Batchelor graciously told his readers: “I wish you could have been there, it was great.” Surely cars like this were the reason.

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FANFANCLUB CLUB Gordon Gordon Murray Murray reveals reveals the the full full story story of the of the legendary legendary Brabham Brabham BT46B BT46B ‘fan‘fan car’,car’ in this , in this fascinating fascinating excerpt excerpt fromfrom his newly his newly published published book book OneOne Formula: Formula: 50 50 Years Years of Car of Car Design Design

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T THE BRABHAM BT46B has become known as the ‘fan car’. In 1977, the Lotus 78 introduced the ground-effect phenomenon to Formula 1.

However, due to the car’s unreliability and a few driver errors, the 78 was initially inconsistent and far from dominant. As a result, the opposition didn’t take it too seriously.

With the dawn of 1978, it was all change.

In the hands of Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson, Lotus 78s won two of the first three races. The successor 79 announced itself with a win in Belgium, a one-two in Spain and France, and victories in Germany, Austria and Holland, finishing the year on 86 points to Ferrari’s 58 in second position.

“The 46B was absolutely born out of necessity,” says Gordon. “After all this pain with Alfa Romeo [engines] through the early bad years, we suddenly had a car in the 46 that could win races again. Bernie [Ecclestone] and I and the drivers were just patting ourselves on the back, and reckoning we could have a good season that year, and Colin Chapman came along with ground effect and the venturi cars.

“In the beginning, I am not sure even they knew quite what they had. They were still experimenting with big changes and sections, and skirts and stuff. But everybody could see

they had masses of downforce with not much drag. Of course, for anybody with a DFV or a V12, it was easy because you just copied what Lotus did. But we had a flat-12 engine, and the cylinder head stuck out into where the venturi should be. Just where the slope from the throat of the venturi coming up into the diffuser should be, the cylinder head sort of poked out into that. I said to Bernie that we had just realised what Chapman and Lotus had got, and we couldn’t have it. Bernie said: ‘Why?’ “Of course, I explained to him why, and he said: ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ I said: ‘We are going to lose the Championship, basically.’

We had just got this car that’s really competitive with the Alfa flat-12, and we’ve had it.

“I put my thinking cap on, and the first idea I came up with was a twin-monocoque car. I’ve got a drawing of it somewhere. I did the first monocoque up to the back of the driver, and then it stopped right behind the driver – no fuel tank. By then, most of the fuel was carried behind the driver. Because the engine moved from behind the fuel to behind the driver, that put the cylinder heads in the low part of the venturi so they could stick above the sidepods and not interfere.

“Then I had a second little monocoque, which was bolted onto the back of the engine and held the fuel. That had a hole through it, and the input shaft into the gearbox ran through that. Then on the back of that, I bolted the gearbox. So I had a quill shaft running through the second monocoque; that meant the flat part of the engine was right where it didn’t affect the aerodynamics, and the fuel cell was where the sides started to sweep up. I thought, well, that wouldn’t take long to build. We would only lose a race and I will have those running. That will be our 46B,

‘Bernie and I and the drivers were just patting ourselves on the back, and reckoning we could have a good season that year, and Colin Chapman came along with ground effect and the venturi cars’ 9 0

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and we’ll be back winning races again.

“However, when I did the calculations, it added about 20-25kg with the extra driveshaft and all the bolt flanges and bulkheads. And it was a compromise on torsional rigidity and engine access. Changing engines was going to be a nightmare. So I thought, it’s not going to work at all.

“I read the regulations again, and Article 3.7 on aerodynamic devices said: ‘Anything that’s primary function is to have an aerodynamic influence on the car must always remain stationary and be fixed relative to the sprung mass of the car.’ I spoke to a lawyer friend and said: ‘What does primary function mean?’ He said: ‘Well, how many functions are there?’

I said: ‘Two.’ So he said: ‘The primary function is the one that has more than half the influence.’

“So if we could get skirts to seal like the Lotus ones, and have a cooling fan that uses more than 50 percent of its flow to cool the car and the rest to suck the car down...

“Chaparral had previously used fans, but that was a completely different situation with separate, independent engines driving the fans, and no restrictive aero regulations, so their design just wouldn’t work for us.

“A lot of stuff has been written that says we tried to hide the fact that it was sucking the car down. We didn’t. We always said: ‘It sucks the car down, but that’s not its primary function.

Its primary function is cooling.’

“We got a fan guy involved, because I knew nothing about fan design, absolutely zero on what pitch and size you needed. His name was David Cox. He did all the calculations and designs for the size of the blade and the diffuser behind the blade to recover the pressure.

“Then I thought, OK, but this is in the middle of a racing season. How do you solve all the

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problems? So we wrote them all down, between David North and myself. One of the first problems was, how do you drive the fan? It turned out that David Cox’s calculations showed we needed a fan about 18in. First you’ve got to find one. Then how do you drive that, off the engine or the gearbox with all that inertia, and get round things like gearchanges and starts?

“Then there was starting inertia. You’ve got an 18in fan that’s standing still, the guy’s got the clutch in, engine’s revving at 10,000, light goes green, you take your foot off, then you’ve got to wind up that much inertia in a matter of a second. It was geared up to 7900 revs. So, the Alfa had 11,000 or 12,000, but the fan was doing 7900 – that’s the gear ratio I used so the fan wouldn’t explode. And also to control the tip speed, which couldn’t go supersonic.

“I thought, that’s never going to work. The quill shaft that’s driving the fan is just going to twist itself round and snap, because you’ll never go from a static fan to 8000 revs in half a second. I mean, it’s just not going to happen.

“I designed a torque-limiting clutch, which was a little clutch with springs and screws. It enabled you to adjust the torque so that with the drag on the fan at maximum speed, the clutch was engaged, but when the driver slipped his foot off the main clutch, that clutch would slip and slowly speed up the fan, just for the start of the race. It would slip until it got to the right torque, and then it would grip, and the fan would be running. So that was clutch number two.

“Gearchanging on a straight-cut gearbox without synchromesh is really an art, with double de-clutching and blipping the throttle, and getting the inertia of the slowing-down gear and the speeding-up gear matched so you can change with a dog change. I know how

ABOVE LEFT Despite Niki Lauda’s initial misgivings about the fan car’s complexity and driveability, he scored an historic victory in Sweden.

LEFT These fascinating drawings, taken from Gordon’s 1978 notebook, show the basic concept of the revolutionary racer.

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ABOVE Seeing his advantage slipping away, Chapman whipped up a protest against fan car.

difficult that is when you go to bigger-weight gears on, for example, a Le Mans car. The gearchange is far worse because of the inertia and the gears. Now I’m adding an 18in fan to the output shaft, the poor driver’s never going to be able to match the gears.

“We did a third clutch, which was a sprag clutch, a one-directional clutch. As soon as the driver put his foot on the main car clutch and took the torque out of the shaft, this sprag clutch would freewheel and de-couple the fan inertia from the main shafts of the gearbox, de-couple that completely, and then when he banged his foot off the clutch again the sprag clutch would catch and the fan would be re-engaged. You took the inertia out of the drive. So that was three clutches.

“We weren’t trying to pretend it didn’t suck the car down, but when the guys were just revving the car up in the pits, it was going up and down on the springs by about two inches. It was sucking itself down and springing up, and Bernie said: ‘That’s going to aggravate people.’

“So I did a fourth clutch, a mechanical dog clutch with a lever that stuck out of the bodywork, and that was just a dog engagement clutch. I said to the guys: ‘When you want to warm up the car, you just push that forward and that will de-couple the fan.’ So the fan stayed still while you were warming up the car.

When the car was warm, you’d pull that back

and go out to practice, and you’ve got the fan on again. Those were some of the problems.

“The biggest problem by a mile was sealing the skirts. We’d had a lot of experience with the side skirts, and we just used flexible skirts with a little stainless-steel leaf spring that we could tune. We could tune how hard it pushed into the ground, because if you had too much spring on the skirts the sacrificial wearing strip would wear out before the end of the race, and you’d had it, basically. If you had it too loose, the suction from the fan working on the inside of the skirt would lift them up and you would lose the seal. So, we just tuned and practised with these at Brands Hatch and Balocco in Italy.

“The rear one came down across the back of the car. We tuned the leaf spring and those were all proportional to the suction from the fan at maximum revs, so it was easy to tune.

The front skirt was a different issue, because it went across the front of the car like a dam, just behind the nose. With the front skirt, you have the suction on the back of the skirt like all the others from the fan. At maximum fan revs, there will be a certain amount of suction trying to lift the skirt up.

“So, you tune the stainless-steel leaf springs.

Fine. But what you’ve also got, as the car goes faster, is dynamic pressure on the front. One is car-speed dependent and the other is enginespeed dependent. You can never match them.

In testing, we just kept either lifting skirts or wearing out skirts; we could never get it right.

And it was different on different lengths of straights, different car speeds, different fan speeds… It lasted two or three laps, and the thing would either lift up or wear out.

“I think it was David North who came up with an idea, and then we worked on it together.

We came up with two balloon sail cloths, tadpole-shaped things – bags behind the skirts – and my wife stitched them on a sewing machine at home. Then we punched a series of about one-inch holes in the skirt facing the dynamic pressure. These bags could blow up and change shape, and there were two of them; one behind the other. They had holes punched in them but at different places, so the suction on the back of the skirt was constant but, as the car

dynamic pressure got more, it started lifting the skirt, which opened the hole to the first bag, which blew up and put pressure on the skirt.

“When it got to be even again, it opened a hole to the second bag, which blew up and put pressure on, and it modulated itself. That was finished the week before the race, and it worked. We were brilliant by this time, David and I, because of bouncing ideas off each other.

“All of the testing was done in secret, some at Brands Hatch and some at Balocco, the Alfa test track. I remember one test at Balocco when Niki [Lauda] was practising starts – a real art, because a 2g start was possible with almost no wheelspin. I was standing by the rear wing as Niki dumped the clutch and the car leapt forward without wheelspin. The mechanics later discovered that the titanium driveshafts had wound up and stayed wound up!

“There were more than 100 drawings to do in a couple of months. The original fan blades were glass-reinforced nylon mouldings, as was the two-part fan hub that locked the blade roots at the desired pitch angle. During the first test, we

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ABOVE Gordon’s early concept sketches show evolution of the fan-drive set-up.

BELOW One Formula: 50 Years of Car Design – Gordon Murray, comes as a two-book set, slip-cased with 948 pages, 300x300mm, 1200 illustrations.

It’s £225 from www. porterpress.co.uk.

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had a catastrophic fan failure and tried different materials, which appeared to work. But with just weeks to go, we had another fan-blade failure, so I had them cast in magnesium, which made them significantly heavier. With just one week to go before Sweden, we had another catastrophic fan-hub failure. I had just enough time to machine two hubs from solid aluminium, and the final assembly went off to Sweden untested!

“Bernie loved the fan car because it was going to piss everybody off. When we were testing, it was very different for the drivers, but they eventually got it. I kept saying to Niki and John [Watson] that, with regard to the entry speed into the corner, forget what you know.

It’s just to do with engine revs, so you have to go in using a much lower gear than you would normally and at higher engine revs. Don’t brake; you can go in much faster.

“But the only problem was that they wouldn’t know if they had damaged the skirt. They could go into a corner 30mph too fast and then have no suction and go flying straight on. So, David went down to a scrapyard and got an altimeter out of an old aeroplane. We had a pitot tube on the front, which you can see in all the photographs, which measured the static pressure. All an altimeter does to read the altitude is measure static pressure and local pressure, and it uses the pressure differential to calculate the height.

So that’s what we did. We had this altimeter tiewrapped in the cockpit, right in front of the driver, with a green zone and a red zone. We

said: ‘Forget the numbers; that’s nothing to do with it. If you’re coming into a corner, the needle has to be in the green zone. If it’s in the red zone, you’ve lost suction. Slow down.’

“People were photographing the fan blades, so the mechanics found a dustbin lid, which fitted perfectly! We were so fast, Bernie didn’t want to piss everybody off completely, so he made the drivers qualify on full tanks.”

In spite of this, Watson shared the front row with pole man Andretti in a 79. Lauda was third fastest, with the other 79 of Peterson for company. “The rest is history. We won the race.”

That amazing victory in Sweden was the BT46B’s one and only race but, as Gordon puts it: “The one thing that’s been completely misreported in all the books and magazines is that the car was banned. It was never banned.

“I have still got the letter from the CSI, the ruling technical body in those days. After the race they came and sealed the car, sealed the fan, put the cars in the truck and sealed the truck, came to Chessington. I had explained already to the scrutineers that more than 50 percent went through the radiator and the rest of it sucked the car down; I wasn’t trying to hide it.

“So they came to the factory with an anemometer and they got us to go up through the revs – 5000, 6000 – and then measured the air through the fan and the air through the radiator. They got more than 55 percent of the air going through the rad, and wrote me a letter that said: ‘It’s absolutely legal. You can run it until the end of the year, but then we’ll close the loophole.’

“It was Bernie who came to me and asked me to withdraw the car, because he was being put under massive pressure from Chapman and Tyrrell and the other constructors. Bernie was just getting powerful in Formula 1, and they said: ‘If you carry on racing that car, that’s the end of the Formula One Constructors’ Association.

You can forget it; we are walking away from it.’

“It was all led by Chapman. We would have won every race and he could see his Championship flying out of the window. He got Andretti to go round and tell the other drivers the thing was throwing stones out. It never threw stones out; the fan efflux was 55mph. It was never throwing dust or stones anywhere.

Chapman told Andretti to go round saying it was dangerous, it should be banned. When he didn’t win that argument, he got the constructors together and said: ‘If they don’t take that thing off the road, we’ll just ban them from the Constructors’ Association.’ So, Bernie came to me and asked me to scrap the car.

“He was looking at the bigger picture, for sure, otherwise he would have just said: ‘We’re going to win the Championship.’”

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K i n g This is Lamborghini royalty. Not just because its first owner was the Shah of Iran but because it’s one of the earliest, and best-restored, examples of the Miura in existence W O R D S DAV I D L I L LY W H I T E P H O T O G R A P H Y P I E T R O B I A N C H I

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SS SO, HAVE SO,YOU HAVE spotted YOU the spotted chrome the bumpers? chrome bumpers?

And the And the painted door painted slats? door These, slats?if These, you really if you know really your know Miuras, your Miuras, mark thismark early this P400 early outP400 as something out as something unusual. unusual.

And thenAnd there’s then itsthere’s first owner. its first Not owner. a tight-trousered Not a tight-trousered rock rock star nor star a mini-skirted nor a mini-skirted model, but model, fanatical but fanatical car enthusiast car enthusiast Mohammad Mohammad Reza Shah Reza Pahlavi Shah–Pahlavi better known – better asknown the Shah as of the Shah of Iran, supreme Iran, ruler supreme of Persia ruler from of Persia 1941from to 1979, 1941who to 1979, also who wentalso went by the title byShāhanshāh the title Shāhanshāh (‘Emperor’ (‘Emperor’ or ‘King of orKings’).

‘King ofFrom Kings’). From the 1950s-on the 1950s-on he amassed he an amassed estimated an estimated 3000 cars,3000 and cars, became and became the most the important most important customercustomer of the period of theofperiod Rolls-Royce, of Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Maserati, Ferrari, Maserati, Aston Martin Astonand Martin Lamborghini. and Lamborghini.

His cars His cars included the included very first the very Maserati first Maserati 5000GT, 5000GT, designed designed specifically specifically for him, and for him, not one andbut nottwo oneFerrari but two 500 Ferrari Superfasts.

500 Superfasts.

This P400 This wasP400 the first wasof the four first Miuras of fourowned Miuras byowned the Shah. by the Shah.

The last of The thelast four ofwas the four the legendary was the legendary SVJ, a much-modified SVJ, a much-modified take on the take SV,on created the SV,especially created especially for the man forhimself. the man himself.

We’ll return We’ll to the return Shah to in thea Shah moment. in a moment.

Let’s come Let’s right come up toright up to the present theday present first, because day first,by because the time byyou the read time this, you read the car this, the car will havewill left have Italy left andItaly haveand landed haveinlanded the US, in where the US,it’swhere it’s expected expected to appearto atappear the Pebble at the Beach Pebble Concours Beach Concours d’Elegance. d’Elegance.

A likely class A likely winner classifwinner ever there if ever wasthere one. was Its modest one. Itsnew modest new owner has owner exquisite has exquisite taste in cars tasteand in cars a distinguished and a distinguished Pebble Pebble Beach history.

BeachWatch history. closely Watch inclosely August.in August.

It has been It has in been restoration in restoration since early since 2017, early under 2017,the under the watchful watchful eyes of world eyes Miura of world authorities, Miura authorities, collector car collector brokercar broker Simon Kidston Simonand Kidston long-standing and long-standing colleaguecolleague EmanueleEmanuele Collo. It Collo. It emerged in emerged February in February 2019 as one 2019 of six as one Miuras of six (plus Miuras prototype (plus prototype chassis) on chassis) the Kidston on thestand Kidston at Rétromobile stand at Rétromobile in Paris. in Paris.

Remarkably, Remarkably, it’s the 27th it’s the Miura 27th restoration Miura restoration to have been to have been commissioned commissioned

by Kidston,

by Kidston, all from all the from samethe collection same collection of of Italian specialists.

Italian specialists.

There’s another There’slined another up to lined takeupitstoplace, take its place, but the restorers but the restorers are adamant are adamant that this that is the this best is the they’ve best they’ve done. Simon done.

Kidston Simonventures Kidston that ventures it’s the that best it’sinthe thebest world. in the world.

That setsThat the scene, sets the so scene, let’s get soback let’s to getthe back early to the days. early Thedays. The

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LEFT The Shah in early 1968 on his winter break in St Moritz, Switzerland, heavily guarded as ever, with his newly delivered Miura P400.

Shah ordered this Miura P400 – chassis 3303, engine number 1630, production number 101 – direct from the factory. The Iranian embassy in Rome handled the details of the sale, just as it did for other acquisitions for the Shah from Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini.

The Miura was delivered direct to the Shah at the fantastic Villa Suvretta, his winter retreat in the Swiss ski resort of St Moritz, on 9 February, 1968. It had been fitted with studded winter tyres and was wearing TEH 3988 Iranian transit plates, having been registered in Tehran.

Photographs, like the one above, of the Shah enjoying his new car in the snow of St Moritz (usually accompanied by dark-suited security men in Mercedes-Benz limousines) became commonplace: he was the ultimate playboy in the ultimate playboy car.

From a practical point of view, such unprecedented coverage of an early Miura means that there are now plenty of pictures to show the bespoke features of the car, and confirm its original specification. As delivered to the Shah, it was Rosso with a Bianco interior, the rim of the slatted-spoke steering wheel covered in a matching light-coloured leather.

As already mentioned, the bumpers were chrome plated – Simon Kidston has only ever seen one other Miura with chrome bumpers, and that’s his own late-model SV, one of the last Miuras ever made. The window frames were also chromeplated rather than the usual black, and the door slats painted in body colour, also rather than black.

Perhaps fortunately for its longevity, the Miura stayed in the snow-laden Alps only until the end of the Shah’s winter break.

In March 1968 it was flown to Iran, and apparently used by the

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Shah for a few months at least. In November 1968 it was involved in a minor accident, according to Iranian historians who have accessed government records of the Shah’s cars, but no one was hurt and it seems little damage was done.

The Shah’s love of individual cars was famously short lived, as he always wanted the next new thing, and the Miura was sold in 1973 to Firouz Ansari, a member of the Iranian financial elite close to the royal family. It’s likely the car hadn’t seen much use for some time at the point it was sold.

But in the outside world, political unrest was brewing. The Shah had ascended to the throne during World War Two, aged only 21, insecure and nervous after a childhood blighted by his overbearing father. Yet he rose to the challenge of modernising Iran, using the country’s huge oil revenues to fund radical reforms of the education system, industry and the military. This set him against traditionalists and the country’s strong religious forces; as did his flamboyant spending and open unfaithfulness to his wives.

After the Shah was diagnosed with cancer in 1974, his weakening physical strength and confused mental state caused by anti-cancer drugs left him ever-more vulnerable to his many opponents. In February 1979 he was overthrown and escaped to exile, his presence usually marked by violent protests as he hopped between countries, denied medical treatment. In July 1980, ravaged by cancer, he died in a hospital in Egypt.

As soon as the Shah had been overthrown, the new government began to remove all traces of his rule – including his cars. The Miura was seized and placed in storage, where it remained for several years. Against the odds it survived, to be

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LEFT The steel central cell of the Miura had suffered the usual corrosion. Heavy bracing protects the flimsy roof pillars from distortion.

BELOW Rebuilding the steel doors. Note the simple slats, painted in body colour on this car.

ABOVE The 101 build number was found all around, stamped into metalwork (this the passenger side door) and chalked onto the back of the interior trim components.

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‘I‘Idon’t don’t believe believe that anyone that anyone has has ever ever restored restored a Miuraa Miura to tothis this standard. standard.

So if you So if you want want thethe ultimate ultimate P400 P400 then then this this has to has be it’ to be it’

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sold in 1987 at an Iranian state auction. With cunning sleight of hand, the Miura was bought by the Shah’s younger son, Prince Alireza Pahlavi, with his best friend Alireza Ittihadieh acting as intermediary. It’s thought that the car was shipped out of Iran described as a Fiat, with badges removed for good measure. By 1988 it was in London.

In the early 1990s, the Prince commissioned an overhaul of the Miura by a London garage then based behind Hyde Park Corner, later Notting Hill. The Prince wasn’t keen to spend much on the work, but nonetheless the bodywork was repainted in orange and the interior cleaned up. At this point the car’s odometer was showing around 10,000km, or just over 6000 miles.

It was completed in 1993, and presented on behalf of the Prince by Alireza Ittihadieh (who had also overseen the restoration) at London’s Hurlingham Club for the 1993 Louis Vuitton Concours d’Elegance. This is when Simon Kidston first laid eyes on the car.

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“I was showing an Alfa Monza, which of course was borrowed. We were parked a couple of cars away from the Miura, and having always had a soft spot for Miuras I had a good look. It was a nice old car.

“That was the last time I saw it for a number of years until, in the 2000s, I got to know Alireza Pahlavi – an Iranian friend introduced us. By this stage he was living in Boston, and he owned this car but didn’t really know what to do with it.

“It was still in London, and he said to me he’d used it once or twice but every time he went out he found the clutch too heavy and the car too hot, too noisy and uncomfortable.

He didn’t really have the patience to deal with it. We talked about him selling it – in the end he sold it to the Iranian friend who’d introduced us.”

This was in 2010, and at the time of sale the Miura was showing 10,545km on the odometer. Its new owner had cars in Geneva, including a Ferrari 275, a 300SL Roadster and a 300SL Gullwing, so he kept the Miura in storage in the UK.

ABOVE Perfecting the aluminium front ‘bonnet’ or clamshell.

One of the greatest challenges on a Miura restoration is getting this large panel to align accurately.

LEFT Recreating the intricate pattern of punched holes in the Miura’s leather seat coverings.

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A tragic sidenote: A tragic sidenote: the Prince theended Prince hisended own his life own in 2011, life in 2011, aged 44, aged having 44,suffered having depression suffered depression since thesince deaththe of death his of his sister in sister 2001, inboth 2001, of both them ofunsettled them unsettled since childhood since childhood from the from trauma theoftrauma exile. of exile.

Meanwhile, Meanwhile, the new owner the new of owner the Miura of the had Miura decided hadto decided sell, to sell, and offered anditoffered to Simon it toKidston, Simon Kidston, who waswho in the was process in the of process of building up building “the world’s up “theultimate world’s Miura ultimate collection Miura collection for a dream for a dream client” – client” around–15around Miuras15atMiuras that point, at that including point, including two of the two of the three existing three SVJs, existing oneSVJs, of them one the of them Shah’s. theOf Shah’s. course, Ofthe course, the Shah’s first Shah’s Miura first would Miura sitwould well insit thewell collection... in the collection...

After tricky After tricky negotiations, negotiations, in 2015 a in figure 2015was a figure finally was agreed finally upon. agreed upon.

“We ended “We upended payingupquite paying a high quite price a high for price the car,” for the sayscar,” says Simon, “but Simon, we specifically “but we specifically wanted the wanted Shahthe of Iran ShahP400. of Iran P400.

The deal was The done, deal was thedone, car stayed the car in stayed the UKin while the UK ourwhile backlog our backlog of Miuraof restorations Miura restorations was completed, was completed, and thenand we then shipped we shipped it to Italy.it We to Italy. decided We to decided go balls-out to go balls-out and do the andabsolute do the absolute ultimate Miura ultimate restoration.”

Miura restoration.”

The Kidston Theteam Kidston has team used the has same used the companies same companies for all 27 of for all 27 of its Miuraits restorations Miura restorations so far: that’s so far: Carrozzeria that’s Carrozzeria Cremonini Cremonini for for bodywork bodywork and paint; and thepaint; former theLamborghini former Lamborghini employees employees at at Top Motors Topfor Motors enginefor and engine otherand mechanicals; other mechanicals; and specialist and specialist Lamborghini Lamborghini trimmerstrimmers Alessandro Alessandro BussolariBussolari and Andrea and Andrea Barbieri for Barbieri the interior. for the As interior. you might As you have might guessed, have guessed, all are all are based around basedModena, around Modena, close to the close Lamborghini to the Lamborghini factory. factory.

“The biggest “Thesingle biggest factor single is that factor Miuras is thatwere Miuras builtwere in that built in that area, andarea, someand of the some people of the who people builtwho those built carsthose are still carsalive are still alive and someand aresome still working,” are still working,” says Simon. says“The Simon. father “The of father the of the mechanicmechanic who restored who this restored car built this it car when builtititwas when new it was and new and still popsstill intopops the workshop into the workshop every week every to check week on to check progress on progress and help his andson. helpHe hiswas son.anHe employee was an employee for 40 years, for 40 andyears, his son and his son also worked alsoatworked the factory at the but factory in thebut Countach in the Countach and Diablo and eras.

Diablo eras.

“If you’re“If restoring you’re restoring a car like athis carand likeyou’re this and notyou’re sure about not sure about this widget this orwidget that weave, or that you weave, go toyou the go local to bar the local that evening bar that evening and there’s and a good there’s chance a goodyou’ll chance meet you’ll an old meet boy anthere, old boy having there, having his aperitivo, his aperitivo, who worked whoon worked those on cars those when cars new when and new still and still remembers remembers the way they the way were.they were.

“Let’s face “Let’s it, this faceisit, the this neighbourhood is the neighbourhood where these where cars these cars were built, were andbuilt, there’s and almost there’sa almost knowledge a knowledge ingrainedingrained into the into the land. Youland. wouldn’t You wouldn’t restore a restore Gullwing a Gullwing in Modena in unless Modena you unless you had a very had good a very reason good toreason do so.to Ifdoyou’re so. Ifrestoring you’re restoring a a Duesenberg Duesenberg you wouldn’t you wouldn’t do it in Europe. do it inYou Europe. go to,You as much go to, as much as possible, as possible, where the where mindset the mindset of the surrounding of the surrounding areas areas reflects that reflects of the that people of the who people first who builtfirst the car, builtsothe when car, you so when you come across come a problem across a it problem gets solved it gets in solved a similar in away similar and the way and the end resultend is as result accurate is as as accurate possible.” as possible.”

RIGHT ARIGHT common A fault common fault of Miura restorations of Miura restorations is is the use of the leathers use ofthat leathers are that are too modern tooinmodern look – too in look – too soft, too matt. soft, too No such matt. No such problem here; problem the original here; the original trim is perfectly trim is replicated. perfectly replicated.

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And so the Shah’s Miura went to Carrozzeria Cremonini – although not before its owner had given permission for the Kidston team to drive it to Switzerland in homage to the Shah, and to film it drifting at high speed along icy tracks through an Alpine forest. Named A Winter’s Tale, it’s worth a watch!

Once at Cremonini, the Miura was stripped down to the very last nut and bolt, taking note of all the evidence of originality – for example, the build number (101) stamped into metalwork and hand written in chalk on the undersides of the seats and on the back of other trim parts. The bodyshell was water blasted to strip the paint without distortion of the panels, revealing some corrosion.

“Like most of the Miuras we have restored, the coachwork was used but not at all in terrible condition,” says Cremonini director Roberto Bertaccini. “The parts in aluminium, the front and rear bonnet, which make up for most of the body, were healthy and have remained very original. The main cell of the car, which is made of steel, needed more repairs to be brought back to perfection. These works were made with the tools and techniques similar to those of the late 1960s.

“This restoration was a bit more challenging than any other carried out by the carrozzeria, because of the pedigree of the car and the pressure to achieve a concours result. The Miura is a complex car to restore due to the large size of the front and rear bonnets and the need to align all the gaps perfectly.”

In fact, early Miuras are particularly difficult in this sense, because they have two catches at the front and two at the rear to secure the clamshells. The SV has one catch at each end, making panel alignment at least a little easier.

Those unusual chromed bumpers proved hard to restore, and the car also had higher-profile tyres than is usual on a Miura, so there was the need to be even more precise with wheelarch clearance. The restorers also found that it had been fitted with an extra air intake to increase cooling to the engine – a factory addition to Miuras heading to hot climates.

“The interior upholstery of the car had become too fragile to be kept,” adds Roberto, “so we decided to remove it and frame it as a work of art [and historical reference]. An interior 108

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ABOVE Aluminium rear grille, visible in completed form in the top picture, is basic in construction but prone to corrosion, unsurprisingly.

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TOP AND ABOVE Two of the four triple-choke Webers atop rebuilt V12; original interior has been preserved and framed for historical reference.

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of the same exact colour and material was commissioned.

“The goal of this restoration was to maintain 100 percent of the car’s originality, from bodywork to unique specifications, mechanicals etc, but also for the car to be totally driveable. We want to put cars back on the road, not only in museums.”

At Top Motors, Luca Salvioli explains that all mechanical parts were overhauled and serviced, and that gearbox bearings were “updated to a similar specification to that of the Miura SV, as the P400 gearbox was delicate and prone to issues”.

Of course, the entire wiring loom was replaced – the electrics are the weakest link of any Miura – and the car was slowly, fastidiously rebuilt. The wealth of colour pictures of it in the Shah’s ownership proved a huge help, as did Simon’s Bertone build records, gifted to him after he lent his own Miura SV to Bertone for the 1998 Geneva Motor Show.

And the result? Roberto Bertaccini thinks that the first series of any model is always the most pure and genuine, and the P400 of the Shah is his favourite project to date.

Meanwhile, Simon is similarly enthusiastic: “People often claim that something is the best in the world, but it’s not fair to claim that unless you’ve seen every other example. But in the case of this car, there were no other owners as important as the Shah of Iran, of any Miura, and I don’t believe that anyone has ever restored a P400 to this standard. So if you want the ultimate early Miura then this has to be it.” Pebble Beach, here it comes...

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FROM PEBBLE BEACH TO PARIS – after winning Best in Show at the 2018 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance® David and Ginny Sydorick took their 1937 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Touring Berlinetta to France in February to be honored with The Peninsula Classics Best of the Best Award at The Peninsula Paris. With great pride, Cosdel arranged the international transportation. PICTURE PERFECT!

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WHAT’S MORE STRIKING than a beautiful, super-sized vintage automotive poster? The best are rare, stylish and evocative, but prices still start in the low hundreds. Which to select is entirely down to personal choice.

One of the world’s leading specialists is California-based Tony Singer, who has been dealing in posters since 1980 as Vintage Auto Posters (www.vintageautoposters.com).

“The price depends on the rarity, the image itself, the artist and the event depicted,” says Tony. He has a rough guide: 1970-80s are $300 to $1000-plus; 1960s are $500 to $2000-plus; 1950s are $800 to $3000-plus; and 1900-40s are $1000 to, typically, $9000 – although can go to much more. These are for event posters; marque-specific posters are generally higher.

“The market is stable; I don’t tend to see ‘trends’,” explains Tony. “If there’s a change it’s that there’s less supply, but there’s less demand, too. Porsche and Ferrari are popular, but the gold standard is pre-war Monaco Grand Prix and 1920s Le Mans. For example, a 1923 Le Mans poster sold at Artcurial for 20,000 euros.

“Photography back then was rare, so the posters were illustrative not photographic, and created by the leading artists of the day – Geo Ham, Cappiello, Alexis Kow, Falcucci... There were often barely hundreds of posters printed, and their intended life was six months, maybe just three months. Provenance is not a major issue, but condition is. We have our posters mounted on pH-neutral archival linen using a water-based wheat adhesive. We can attend to any edginess [damage to the edges] during this.

“The worst is DIY mounting; that might need solvents, heat and pressure to rectify...” he warns, but concludes: “People buy for the wackiest reasons, yet the important thing is to buy what you love. It’s pure art.”

When posters were the primary form of publicising an event or new car, top artists were commissioned to produce them. Now, they’re highly collectible.

These are some of the greatest W O R D S DAV I D L I L LY W H I T E P H O T O G R A P H Y PAT R I C K T R E G E N Z A

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PREVIOUS SPREAD Grand Prix Suisse 1934.

This is one of the most famous, powerful and important Art Deco images ever. Swiss graphic artist Kaspar Ernst Graf (1909-88) was a relative unknown, inspired by Italian artists, when he produced the image of the Bugatti passing an Alfa.

LEFT 1958 Le Mans.

French artist Michel Beligond (1927-73) is best known for his Le Mans posters of the late 1950s and 1960s. This was his first, showing a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa charging under Dunlop Bridge; the following year he produced a similarly iconic design of a Le Mans start. Beligond also produced artwork for the French Grand Prix, among others. But he was a car designer, too, responsible for the Alpine A310, which he designed in 1968 despite already suffering from the multiple sclerosis that would eventually paralyse him.

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ABOVE Darracq by Thor, 1905. Imagine that this is nearly 115 years old, and yet the colours are still incredibly vibrant, and the design striking. The poster celebrates the Darracq company’s victory in the 1905 Vanderbilt Cup with Victor HÊmery driving.

German artist Walter Thor (1870-1929) was known for his automotive posters combining touches of humour with his Art Nouveau style. One of his most popular and best-known posters was for Peugeot bicycles.

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RIGHT Grand RIGHT Prix Grand Prix Automobile Automobile de Nîmes,de Nîmes, 1932. Although 1932. this Although event,this event, a 70-lap race a 70-lap on a 2.9km race on a 2.9km street circuit street in south-east circuit in south-east France, is France, little known, is little this known, this poster is highly posterdesirable is highly desirable for its dynamic for itsand dynamic and colourful Art colourful Deco style.

Art Deco style.

It was the It work wasofthe French work of French artist Geoartist (shortGeo for (short for George) Yrrab.

George) In the Yrrab. In the same year,same Yrrab year, alsoYrrab also produced produced a similarlya similarly striking poster striking for poster the for the Grand Prix Grand de Vitesse Prix de Vitesse de Marseille. de Marseille.

Generally,Generally, though, hethough, was best heknown was best known for his advertising for his advertising artwork artwork for drinksfor anddrinks cigarette and cigarette companies, companies, such as Source such as Source Verdier, Blanchet Verdier,and Blanchet and Pelican. His Pelican. postersHis areposters are sometimessometimes misattributed misattributed to ‘Yeo Yrrab’ to ‘Yeo dueYrrab’ to due to the way hethe signed way the he signed the first letter first of hisletter name of his name on his artworks. on his artworks.

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ABOVE Florentia, circa 1905. The appeal of this Italian poster is in the style and bold colours rather than the car itself. Still, for those in the know, the Veteran (or Brass Era) Italian manufacturer Florentia burned brightly for a few years, from 1903 to 1910, creating cars and motor boats, as hinted at in the artwork. Florentia’s cars were advanced by the standards of the day, and the company also built a race car and experimented with a valve-less engine design. As for the poster, it’s one of the best designs of the era, and the colours have lasted incredibly well.

It was created by prolific Milanese publisher Stab G Modiano & Co, although the artist is unknown.

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ABOVE RIGHT Sebring 1963. This is the most popular of all posters for the 12 Hours of Sebring.

It’s by world-renowned artist John Zito – not an automotive specialist, but a successful illustrator usually referred to simply by his surname. He had previously produced other Sebring 12 Hours posters, from 1958-on, all relatively unconventional, although none as appealing as the ’63 poster. This example has ‘FLORIDA’ and the printer’s name in the lower right, both of which were ‘over printed’ (added) after the initial print run.

RIGHT Daytona 1-2-3, 1968. This world-famous poster celebrates the sweeping victory by Porsche at the 1968 Daytona 24 Hours, with the 908. It’s by Erich Strenger (1922-93), a German artist who returned to his home town of Stuttgart after time as a prisoner-of-war during World War Two, to spot and fall in love with an early Porsche 356. He ended up working for the company, producing most of its posters from 1951 through to the early 1980s – and yes, he was able to buy himself a Porsche, too.

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ABOVE 12 Hours of Paris 1939. This is another very famous artwork, by one of the best known of all automotive poster artists, Geo Ham (1900-72). Born in France as Georges Hamel, he fell in love with aeroplanes and racing cars as a child, and was inspired to sketch them prolifically. He went on to become a successful poster artist, using the pseudonym Geo Ham, producing some of the greatest-ever posters for Le Mans and the Monaco GP. He was also a talented illustrator and motor-racing journalist, in love with the sport.

His work later fell out of favour, and he died in relative obscurity – although now, of course, his work is highly sought after.

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ABOVE RIGHT Grand Prix Automobile de la Corse, 1921. This one-off race around the southern half of the French island of Corsica – three laps of a 147km road circuit – formed a part of Corsica’s commemorations of the centenary of Napoleon I’s death. French artist Georges Belnet was chosen to illustrate the poster for the event – he was well known for his landscapes of Corsica as well as his bleak portrayals of World War One scenes; he wasn’t specifically an automotive artist, which perhaps explains why the car features so small in the beautiful scenery.

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FORF D OGRTD TGRTI OT R I O

W O R DW S O J ORH DASNJ O DH I LALNE N DILLEN P H O T OPG HROATPOHGYR A DP I RHKY DDEI RJAG K DEER JAG E R

Where Where better better to drive to drive three three generations generations of Ford’s of Ford’s legendary legendary GT GT supercar supercar thanthan the the BlueBlue Oval’s Oval’s ownown private private proving proving ground ground in in Lommel, Lommel, Belgium?

Belgium?

JoinJoin us behind us behind the the wheel wheel in this in this exclusive exclusive head-to-head head-to-head

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BELOW BELOW A triumvirate A triumvirate of GTs of takes GTstotakes Road toNo. Road 7 No. 7 at Ford’s at Ford’s privateprivate Lommel Lommel Proving Proving Ground Ground in Belgium. in Belgium.

ECRETIVE ECRETIVE PLACE PLACE THATTHAT this is,this is, these gates these don’t gates open don’t easily open easily for visitors. for visitors.

The fences The fences at the at the entrance entrance give not give thenot slightest the slightest inklinginkling that Ford thatkeeps Ford keeps its ownits own automotive automotive Disneyland Disneyland here, while here, there while is there an open is an hostility open hostility towards towards folk carrying folk carrying cameracamera gear. ‘Here’ gear. ‘Here’ is Lommel is Lommel Proving Proving Ground, Ground, a 220-hectare a 220-hectare domain domain hiddenhidden in the Belgian in the Belgian woods.woods.

Lommel Lommel was chosen was chosen because because it wasitstrategically was strategically locatedlocated mid-way mid-way between between Ford’s Ford’s factoryfactory in Cologne in Cologne in Germany, in Germany, and and the brand’s the brand’s UK operations UK operations in Dunton. in Dunton.

Over 100km Over 100km of gruelling of gruelling test roads test and roads a full andhigh-speed a full high-speed oval await oval the await arrival the arrival of pretty of pretty much much every every new European new European Ford model Ford model since 1965. since This 1965. isThis is wherewhere the Blue theOval’s Blue Oval’s legendary legendary handling handling characteristics characteristics are are defined. defined.

Every day, Every 24/7, day,Ford 24/7,hunts Ford down hunts prototypes down prototypes on these on these roads. roads.

Normally, Normally, you and youI are andnot I are welcome not welcome here. However, here. However, when when we come we come knocking knocking with three with generations three generations of GT of in GT a in a trailer trailer behindbehind us, things us, things are slightly are slightly different. different.

Ford has Ford opened has opened up Road up no.

Road 7 for no.our 7 for exclusive our exclusive use today. use today.

If youIfthink you the think Nordschleife the Nordschleife is treacherous, is treacherous, you obviously you obviously haven’thaven’t been round been round Road no.

Road 7 atno.

Lommel.

7 at Lommel.

There There is no denying is no denying that the that Nordschleife the Nordschleife is a dangerous is a dangerous place, place, but at but leastatthere’s least there’s some logic someinlogic the way in the the way track theturns. track turns.

On theOn other thehand, other Road hand, Road no. 7 has no.been 7 hasdesigned been designed to expose to expose flaws in flaws car in handling, car handling, thus thus creating creating one very onetricky very tricky rollercoaster rollercoaster wherewhere long, fast long,turns fast turns have ahave tendency a tendency to tighten to tighten towards towards the end… the preferably end… preferably on a on a crest. crest.

You have You left have over leftcrest over followed crest followed by right by over rightcrest, over crest, but ‘easy’ but is ‘easy’ never is in never the notes. in the notes.

And you Andbetter you better be careful be careful carrying carrying any flat-out any flat-out hopes hopes through through this maze this maze of corners. of corners.

Ford’s Ford’s test drivers test drivers have put have put

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ABOVE 4.7-litre V8 was reported to put out 335bhp during this test mule’s 1400-mile European road trip in December 1965.

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speed indicators in place at the corner entry points. If those signs say 60kph, don’t try to make it 61kph. Best-case scenario, you’ll end up digging the car out of the gravel trap; at worst, there’ll be some serious dents in your confidence, your car and the Armco. Welcome to today’s playground, where we have assembled the entire Ford GT dynasty.

The current GT is actually a rare sight even at Lommel Proving Ground, as development was done Stateside. The same can be said of the 2005 GT. The GT40, however, was largely a UK affair, with the design originating from Lola and John Wyer’s Ford Advanced Vehicles operation doing the assembly. But the idea for Ford’s first supercar stems straight from Henry Ford II’s office in Detroit. The GT40 was not born out of love for the supercar, but rather spawned out of hatred.

This was the boss’s vengeance after Enzo Ferrari stood him up at the very last minute, when the agreement regulating Ferrari’s takeover by the Blue Oval was literally just waiting to be signed by both parties in Maranello, in May 1963.

Henry Ford II wasn’t used to being thwarted like this. Here was a man betrayed and humiliated – and not just a man, but automotive royalty. “OK, we’ll beat Ferrari’s ass. We’re going to race him,” was his response when he heard Ferrari had blown up the agreement. The first GT was born with revenge in mind. It wasn’t meant to be nice or flowing. It was meant to be a sledgehammer driving a message home: “Don’t mess with Ford.”

Today, the original GT40 no longer delivers this message. It actually looks tiny in this company. The car we have in front of us is a Mk2 first registered in 1966. Chassis 1013 was effectively the very first GT40 specifically adapted to road use. It has seen a bit of racing throughout its career, but it was mostly used as a road car. For homologation purposes, and because Ford hoped to sell at least some road-going GT40s to get back a bit of money from the programme, a road-registered series of GT40 was always envisaged. The company’s real idea was to build a better-adapted GT for everyday use, with a bit more headroom. But somehow, it never really got round to making this proposed ‘GT44’.

What we did get was the GT40 Mk3: a lengthened version of the Mk1 with bumpers and higher-placed twin headlights.

Only seven of these were made through 1968 and 1969. Poor build quality and a resulting bad press reception of the Mk3 didn’t help, along with an $18,000 price tag – $2000 over that of the race machine. This car is a Mk2 generation, however.

Chassis 1013 was Ford’s prototype and press demonstrator to publicise the fact that Dearborn was embarking on a roadgoing programme for the GT40. In the end, some 25 GT40s ended up as road cars, most of them delivered in the US. No. 1013 was the test mule, and reports accompanying the car document the extensive testing programme through which Ford Advanced Vehicles put it. In December 1965, 1013 embarked on a 1400-mile journey through Europe, in what the test drivers described as “mostly wet, sometimes icy” conditions. With destinations including Adenau, Spa, Le Mans and Rouen, the GT40 linked some of Europe’s most iconic circuits into one epic drive. The top speed wasn’t officially established, but the report states that during the test drive “6000rpm in fifth gear was exceeded once, with the car still accelerating”. Not for the faint hearted! The 4.7-litre V8 was

ABOVE The original and the best; Ford’s GT40 left a legacy that’s never been beaten.

LEFT Classic steering wheel, dash and dials from an intimidating analogue era when drivers really drove.

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ABOVE 2005 GT is based on original car but is ten percent bigger; technically it’d need a GT44 badge.

RIGHT Dash is a more modern interpretation of GT40’s – but plastics and toggles haven’t aged nearly as well.

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reported to give 335bhp at 6250rpm, although the test report for 1013 quotes a more humble 289bhp at 5500rpm. Its top speed should be around 164mph (260kph). The first racing V8s in the GT40 gave 350bhp at 7200rpm, with the cars maxing out at close to 200mph.

The newer GTs will have to wait, because 1013 is the one we really want to get our hands on first. This is where the legend started. To start with, it looks every bit like the race car we have come to know – only this one keeps the beautiful Borrani wheels that proved too fragile for racing and were replaced on the competition cars.

You have the characteristic doors taking a large bite out of the roof to allow for easy and quick access during pitstops; only the Gurney bubble on the roof is missing in this car. In reality, this ‘quick access’ proves to be a very theoretical concept once you actually try to get in the GT40. The massive sill and big steering wheel limit you to only one option; put both feet on the seat, and then drop your legs each side of the wheel. To the right, the gearlever complicates matters. This is one of the reasons why it was moved to the middle for the Mk3 road cars.

It takes a bit of manoeuvring, but once you lie down behind the wheel, the GT40 turns out to be a relatively comfortable bath tub. The driving position is very typical for this era; bent legs but stretched arms. Your feet have trouble identifying the very small and closely placed pedals. A first turn of the key activates the pumps. A slight move from your right foot gives the four Weber 48 carburettors a first sip, after which a further turn of the key is all it takes to unleash hell on your ears.

This isn’t music, this is the sound of construction works, right behind your back. This is what it must feel like if you were to unintentionally lock yourself up in the base drum at a Behemoth concert. One of the previous owners in the UK used this car regularly for road trips, taking the odometer to more than 100,000 miles. He was either barking mad, or completely deaf. But we can understand; if you have a GT40 with road registration in your garage, it must be an everyday temptation to take the keys.

The five-speed ’box has a dog-leg pattern, with all the gears closely stacked together and a locking mechanism to prevent you from accidentally selecting reverse. The clutch has hardly any travel at all. Pulling away without stalling has more to do with luck than feeling. The enormous torque wave quickly takes over. On numbers, the GT40 is at least 200bhp down on the 2005 GT. The 3.5 V6 turbo in the latest GT has double the power on offer. But none of these even comes close to matching the GT40’s 900kg weight, thus giving the oldest contender here easily the more impressive driving experience.

You don’t simply crush the throttle as you do with the others. Every inch of travel of your right foot leads to more thunder and an enormous kick in the back. It’s exactly the characteristic Yank you think it is; no finesse, no build-up, no foreplay. The GT40 drops you straight into the war zone. It wants to be the fastest, by out-accelerating any Italian stallion that crosses its path – and thus, in period, delivering a knockout punch to Enzo where Ford knew it would hurt the most; by having a better engine than Ferrari.

The gearbox is slow but precise, and the wide tyres offer plenty of grip to give you confidence in the corners. The big

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ABOVE With 550bhp on tap, GT’s supercharged 5.4 V8 invites you to play; car hits 0-62mph in 3.8 seconds.

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03 BELOW With 655bhp, smallest engine here – and the only V6 – gives the biggest kick in the back.

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steering wheel demands more muscle, but the GT40 is more agile then you’d give it credit for at first sight. It does all the things Thor can come up with when angry, bellowing and thundering away. It goes quiet only when you switch off the engine. Around here, it’s glorious, it’s epic. But I can’t imagine driving it through town, or getting stuck in traffic.

This car is the mould on which the younger GTs were based – literally in the case of the 2005 GT, philosophically where the latest model is concerned. The GT story lived on only in the form of replicas until 2005, when Ford brought back what was a copy of the GT40, only ten percent bigger – and without the GT40 name, which the company had never bothered to register. Someone else did… Theoretically, you could argue that the project started life in 1963 as the GT. The ‘40’ was only added later as a reference to the height of the car in inches. The bigger GT from 2005 technically would need a GT44 badge. On the other hand, GT refers to a lot of cars; only GT40 is associated directly with Ford.

Whereas the GT40 was a competition car, developed to outdrag a Ferrari at Hunaudières, the 2005 GT was never intended to become a race car. It was just Ford’s modern homage to the GT40. Eventually, it turned up at Le Mans in GT1 form and in the FIA GT series as a GT3 racer developed by privateers: the Swiss Matech and Belgian VDS Racing outfits. As a racer, the 2005 was not the most successful. The road car, however, was much talked about. For the first time, Ford adopted a strategy where potential clients had to apply.

Only if you could prove you were ‘Ford enough’ were you allowed to buy one. Being a celebrity helped as well. Ford sold 4038 examples… and still had to let down plenty of candidates.

Yet this was also key to the car retaining high values.

Our car today is one of the few original European GTs. Of those 4038, only some 100 were directly delivered to Europe.

Looked at in this company, the 2005 GT is the odd one out.

Compared with the futuristic, youngest GT, it suddenly has little more to offer then being a copy of an original. Especially standing next to said original, it has difficulty retaining its presence. It’s nice, no doubt about it. But if at a party you could talk to The Beatles, would you choose Oasis instead?

That isn’t to say the 2005 GT has lost its charm. More than ten years on, it still looks great. And with a 5.4-litre supercharged V8 in the back, it holds a serious ace up its sleeve as well. Climbing in is easy compared with the GT40; the sting in the tail is in getting out. It’s easier to bump your head on the bigger door cut-outs in this GT. That extra ten percent gives you all the space you need at the wheel. The dash is a modern interpretation of the GT40’s, only the plastics and toggles don’t age as well. The minute you start this V8, you feel you’ve entered a more civilised environment. Contrary to the GT40, this car was made for the open road and daily traffic. It’s wide, but thanks to the power steering it’s just as easy to drive as grandma’s Nissan Micra.

The 2005 GT quickly invites you to play, with 550bhp on tap.

The tall gearing lets you hang on to each ratio for what feels like eternity. That’s fortunate, because the six-speed ’box seems to stem from a truck. At times, you feel like you need both hands to change gears. Although the GT copy is undeniably faster – it hits 0-62mph in 3.8 seconds, and 205mph (330kph) – it lacks the old GT40’s crisp response in corners, due to its rather

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LEFT Latest-generation GT’s hi-tech dashboard is for PlayStation generation; car’s drive has corresponding feel.

BELOW Never to be mistaken for any other supercar, it’s wide, futuristic and looks like it was designed by NASA.

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BELOW Throughout six decades, the car that started a Ford-Ferrari grudge match has set the pace on road and track. This is how legends are made.

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Factory

originals Two years ago, car production returned to Aston Martin’s old Newport Pagnell buildings. Now the facility is gearing up for even more – aided by the tooling, records and staff with decades of factory history W O R D S DAV I D L I L LY W H I T E P HOTO G R A P H Y SA M C H IC K

IN THE RAFTERS of the main workshop at Aston Martin Works, pictured in its nowpristine glory above, there’s a lifesize model of an owl. Why? Because before Aston Martin’s revival, this was one of many run-down factory buildings, plagued by water leaks, draughts and pigeons. The owl was a typically idiosyncratic measure to fend off unwanted avian invaders.

How different it is today. Although some of the factory buildings here in Newport Pagnell have been demolished, replaced by a housing estate, several remain. These are from the days, in 1955, when the marque first moved to the Buckinghamshire town, having outgrown its original factory in Feltham, West London.

Production continued here until 2008, when the company HQ upped sticks to Gaydon, Warwickshire, 40 miles away.

Now these Newport Pagnell buildings house Aston Martin Works, the heritage division of the company and also the UK’s flagship Aston 1 3 8

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Martin dealership. Owners can have their cars, classic or modern, serviced, repaired or restored here. Even buyers of new Astons can request that their vehicles are bespoke painted or trimmed at Works.

Over the road, the former Aston Martin head office, Sunnyside, sits awaiting restoration.

And further along the street are the buildings that originally housed Salmons and Son (later Tickfords), a coachbuilder from circa-1830 that moved into the brave new world of the motor car in 1898. It’s one of the oldestremaining car factories in the world.

In 2017 auto production returned to Newport Pagnell, albeit on a small scale, when Aston Martin Works started its now-completed run of 25 DB4 GT Continuation cars. With production of 19 DB4 GT Zagato Continuations about to start, and plans for Goldfinger-spec DB5s and perhaps even electric conversions to follow, now seemed like a good time to re-visit.

ORIGINAL BUILDINGS AND BUILD RECORDS The Works buildings consist of the flagship showroom up front, which leads into the Modern Workshop (above left) for DB7 and later. To one side is the glass-fronted Continuation build room.

Classics go to the Heritage Workshop. There’s also a state-of-the-art paint shop, body shop, accident-repair area and trim shop. Then there’s ‘Olympia’ (so-named because it looks like the famous London venue), now the Heritage Showroom. It was originally an aircraft shed dating from 1913, and was used briefly as a cinema.

The company, Aston Martin Works, is part of Aston Martin, but it has to stand alone commercially.

It’s not funded by Gaydon.

At its core are the factory records. Original build sheets for every car produced give invaluable reference, as do thousands of technical drawings (450 were found for the DB4 Continuation).

The build records are now all on the computer system, and most of the technical drawings have been scanned – as much to protect from fire as for the worldwide access the digitising allows.

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B O D Y B BU OC DK YS BA UN CD K S A N D C H A S S ICSHJAISGSSI S J I G S If you’d paid If you’d a visitpaid to Aston a visit to Aston Martin Works Martin during Works April during April 2019, you 2019, mightyou have might beenhave been steered away steered fromaway the body from the body shop. It’s been shop.undergoing It’s been undergoing a a complete refit complete to ready refititto forready it for production production of the DB4ofGT the DB4 GT Zagato Continuation Zagato Continuation cars. cars.

The buck you Thesee buck here you is see here is new, but some new,of but the some old of the old bucks andbucks chassis and jigschassis are jigs are still used. All stillthe used. same, All the same, Works hasWorks been digitally has been digitally scanning them scanning to enable them the to enable the remanufacture remanufacture of new jigsof new jigs to the correct to the dimensions correct dimensions – – the alternative the alternative is scanningis scanning original cars, original which cars, might which might not be the not correct be the shape correct shape anyway after anyway yearsafter of use. years of use.

Most of theMost original of thejigs original jigs survived, ending survived, upending in up in a corner ofaacorner factory of a factory storage unit storage – although unit – although Works president Works Paul president Spires Paul Spires remembers remembers “walking round “walking round the back here the back and finding here and finding the DB5 convertible the DB5 convertible jig with jig with brambles growing bramblesthrough growing through it. Nothingit.got Nothing scrapped got scrapped because every because so often every a so often a customer car customer wouldcar get would get damaged and damaged a jig would and a be jig would be needed to needed repair it”. to repair That’sit”. That’s the advantage the advantage of having of having relatively few relatively models, few with models, with relatively high relatively values. high values.

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MAGNETO

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14 1

D A V I D LY M A N , F I T T E R “When I started here the two-valve V8 was in full production. That was 1987, 32 years ago! I’d done my apprenticeship down the road building caravans, and came here as a bodymaker.

“We used to do stripdown of all damaged bodywork, fixtures and fittings, then rebuilds, or we’d strip cars for retrims, or take out all the glass for accident repair.

“One of my first accidentrepair jobs was a red V8; I remember it because the front nearside corner was in the top offside of the

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KEEPING ARTISAN SKILLS ALIVE windscreen but the door would still open. That’s how strong those cars are.

“The money wasn’t in secondhand cars like it is now, though. There were a few DB5s, a few 6s, and a couple of shooting-brakes.

“It’s a lot warmer here now; it’s friendlier to work in. Before, it was cold and draughty. The cars are the same – we’re seeing cars now [for restoration] that were restored in the 1980s, but of course restoration then was done at a different level from how it is today.”

Many of the bodymaking tools at Works, including the English wheels, date back to the early days of the DB models.

But that’s no use if no one can use them... Last year 12 apprentices were taken on at Works – the highest intake anyone can remember, even from the time of full production at Newport Pagnell.

“We’ve got to transition the skills to the next generation,” says president Paul Spires. “We get the younger people in early, give them a life skill and show them that even if they pull out of full-time education

they can still end up with a really rewarding career. A lot of people have very good hand-eye co-ordination.

“Things like making a new panel for a DB4 GT Zagato are absolutely key and fundamental, so in 100 years’ time someone could bring a DB5 here and have a new front wing made, as opposed to everyone looking at it scratching their heads.

“The apprenticeship in the body shop here is four years, and they don’t touch the English wheel until year three. It’s lovely to see experienced members of the team handing those skills to the young guys.”

ASTON

M A RT I N

WOR K S

CHRIS BREWER, TRIMMER

CAD: ‘CARDBOARD-AIDED DESIGN’

“We have a laugh, because we used to sign our names on the back of jobs,” says trimmer Chris Brewer.

“That’s how I know I’ve been here a long time, because I’m now retrimming my own jobs!

“I joined Aston Martin on December 12, 1988.

I’d done my apprenticeship with British Rail, so I was 25 when I came here. The trim shop was in ‘Olympia’ back then. We used to have wooden duckboards to stand on for when it rained, to keep our feet dry.

“My first job was an old V8 dashtop. They were just finishing the V8s here, and we were working on

On the back wall of the trim shop are a series of canvas pockets, each one marked (many hand-written) with the name of a particular model. Within those many pockets are the cardboard patterns used to create every item of trim for all cars.

Some of the cardboard patterns are originals from the production line, although most of the older or more frequently used patterns have been replaced over time, with exact copies of the originals.

Across the room from the

14 4

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Lagondas, everything.

Then I went up to Gaydon for four years before coming back to Newport Pagnell.

“The process is exactly the same now as it was back then. At the moment there’s a lot of work on the [new] Zagatos; there’s more trim on those, as well as the heritage cars. We also cover worldwide dealerships; they send seats in, for example, to be restored or retrimmed.

“We need to know every Aston built, how it’s put together. A typical seat will take 60 hours to retrim; a complete interior, 250 hours.

“My son works here as well. We’ll be retrimming his work in 18 years’ time!”

stocks of ‘cardboard-aided design’ patterns is a dark store room filled with rolls of leather and carpet.

Again, some of these are originals, including a roll of hide from a royal DB. What everyone at Works mentions about trim is DB seats. It’s a contentious subject, because many DBs come in with incorrectly stuffed seats, placing the occupants too high, and sliding around. They’re done properly at Works, in-house of course, and it’s a matter of some pride...

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Car-themed album covers; music for the... eyes?

Nothing adds more glamour to an LP sleeve than an exotic automobile. We chose some of the best cover artwork from the golden age of the vinyl disc W O R D S G A R Y A XO N

THE COCKTAIL OF cars and music has long made for a fruitful mix. Cool motors not only provide personal transportation for a wealth of rock stars to flaunt their success and show they’ve ‘arrived’; John Lennon’s psychedelic yellow Rolls-Royce Phantom, ZZ Top’s Eliminator hot rod, Elvis’ stricken and shot De Tomaso Pantera, and so on. They also inspire many memorable song lyrics, from Joe Walsh’s Maserati that apparently does one-eighty-five, to Janis Joplin screeching for her Lord to buy her a Mercedes-Benz.

Cars have also featured strongly in music videos.

What about the ‘models of the moment’ Saab 99 Turbo and Rover SD1 appearing in the Human League’s Don’t You Want Me Baby promo (subsequently parodied by Fiat for a Punto TV ad)? Or Kavinsky’s ProtoVision, featuring a 1980s Ferrari Testarossa being chased by a puny police Ford Mustang II. And then there was Kylie Minogue behind the wheel of a De Tomaso Mangusta in her huge 2009 hit Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

The days of the vinyl LP also saw cars regularly featured on album covers as either street furniture or stylish props to enhance the disc’s appeal. The Chemical Brothers’ 1995 Exit Planet Dust showed a 1968 Plymouth Belvedere, while Peter Ustinov sat under the bonnet of a blue Jaguar XK140 in his rib-tickling 1959 motor-racing spoof LP, The Grand Prix of Gibraltar.

The advent of music downloads and streaming is now making the art of the album cover a dying and marginalised craft, but carefully considered cars still occasionally appear on modern-era sleeves. To celebrate this passing art form, here are 12 auto-related classic album covers from the halcyon days of the vinyl disc…

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1 PETER GABRIEL, ONE, 1977

2 THE CARPENTERS, NOW & THEN, 1973

Lancia Flaminia 2000 coupé Pininfarina

Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona coupé

The cover of Peter Gabriel’s first, unnamed solo album – known as One or Car, and featuring the hit Salisbury Hill – saw the ex-Genesis singer peering through the rainsoaked screen of a ‘mystery’ car.

It was, in fact, a Pininfarinabodied Lancia Flaminia 2000, as owned by Hipgnosis founder Storm Thorgerson. Photographer Peter Christopherson sprayed the coupé with a hose, and then hand coloured the black-and-white shots for the cover. Further images of Gabriel gazing through the Lancia’s side window were used for the album’s back and inner sleeve.

The Carpenters’ rapid rise to fame and fortune was clear to see when the easy-listening siblings released Now and Then in 1973, as named by their mother Agnes. This bestseller’s triple-fold cover showed the duo ironically driving past a ‘regular’ suburban house – alleged to be the humble California home they grew up in – in Richard’s personal 365GTB/4 Daytona.

With this album littered with major hits such as Yesterday Once More, Top of the World and Sing, The Carpenters’ bank balance continued to grow substantially until Karen’s early death in 1983.

7 D AV E C L A R K F I V E , C AT C H U S I F Y O U C A N , 1 9 6 5

8 B E I R U T, G U L A G O R K E S TA R , 2006

Jaguar E-type Roadster Series 1

Lada 1500

In the swinging ’60s, the Dave Clark Five were riding high on the swell of Brit pop euphoria, led by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks. DC5 were the second group of the ‘British Invasion’ to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.

For 1965’s Catch Us if You Can (with a UK film of the same title to match), the band posed with the car that best reflected the upbeat mood of the moment, a drophead Series 1 E-type. The svelte Jaguar was a popular choice with other musical acts of the period as well, also appearing on albums by Donald Byrd, Count Basie, The Impressions plus many more.

The unusual shot used on Beirut’s 2006 debut LP shows two Baltic ladies leaning against a Lada 1500 (known as the VAZ 2103 in Russia) in the middle of nowhere. The image was supposedly ripped out of a book from a library in Leipzig.

This odd picture of the obscure Lada – found after the album’s release to have been taken by Sergey Chilikov – perfectly reflects the mystery of Beirut’s otherworldly music. The album’s name is a combination of Gulag, from the old Soviet governmental agency that administered forced-labour camps, plus Orkestar, the SerboCroatian word for orchestra.

CA R -T H E M E D A L BU M

3 SNOOP DOGG, E G O T R I P P I N ’, 2 0 0 7

4 T H E S TA R G A Z E R S , WAT C H T H I S S PA C E , 1983

Datsun 510 Bluebird wagon

Austin A90 Atlantic

Cars have played a significant role in hip-hop culture, typically with brash Cadillacs or customised low-riders starring in rapping videos and on album covers. Snoop Dogg’s use of a 1971 Datsun 510 (Bluebird 1600) wagon for 2007’s classic Ego Trippin’ was therefore something of a left-field choice.

Selling 137,000-plus copies in its first week on release in the USA, Ego Trippin’s cover shot was taken at Snoop’s old high school, Long Beach Polytechnic. In the States, the 510 enjoys a certain ‘poor man’s BMW’ cult status, helped by its giant-killing success in SCCA racing in two-door form.

The Brit rockabillies appropriately used a 1950s Austin A90 Atlantic convertible on their 1983 debut album Watch This Space, with the five sharply dressed band members standing inside the car. One of the UK’s most influential 1980s rock ’n’ roll outfits, and still going strong today, The Stargazers revived the use of the trans-Atlantic Austin for their ‘best of’ LP Groove Baby Groove, released in 2000.

The short-lived but swanky A90 was aimed at the lucrative post-war USA export market – but it failed to capture new car buyers’ imaginations, and was quickly and quietly withdrawn from sale.

9 H A M I LT O N B O H A N N O N , THE BOHANNON DRIVE, 1983

5 THE STREETS, T H E H A R D E S T WAY T O MAKE A LIVING, 2006 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow Series 1

COV E RS

6 JACKSON BROWNE, L A T E F O R T H E S K Y, 1 9 74 1953 Chevrolet 210 sedan

English alternative electronic hiphop band The Streets used front man Mike Skinner’s own 1967 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow for the cover of the hit 2006 album The Hardest Way to Make a Living.

It sees a grumpy Skinner leaning against his lowered, Moon discshod Rolls – which, much to his dismay, had no form of audio system when he bought it.

An early Silver Shadow also famously appeared on Oasis’s 1997 album Be Here Now – sinking in a swimming pool, wearing the reg SYO 724F as seen on the BMC J4 police van from Abbey Road.

“I’m sitting in a car across the way, let’s just say. It’s an early model Chevrolet, let’s just say. It’s a warm and windy day, you go and pack your sorrow, the trash man comes tomorrow, leave it at the kerb and we’ll just roll away.” These lyrics – taken from The Late Show, one of the eight tracks on Browne’s 1974 classic Late for the Sky – mention the Chevrolet shown on the cover.

Shot outside a now-restored house in South Pasadena, the image was inspired by Belgian surrealist René Magritte’s 1954 painting l’Empire des Lumières (Empire of Light). Martin Scorsese later used the title track in Taxi Driver.

10 LUSH, TOPOLINO, 1996

11 CHRIS REA, AUBERGE, 1991

12 T H E B E AT L E S , ABBEY ROAD, 1969

Panther J72

Fiat 500L

Caterham Super Seven

VW Beetle, Triumph Herald, BMC J4 van, Ford Escort estate

Not a name that springs to mind when thinking of 1970-’80s R&B and disco, yet Hamilton Bohannon was one of the genre’s leading lights in the USA. In Britain, his biggest hit single was Disco Stomp, which reached number six in 1975.

The Bohannon Drive (1983) produced two USA hits (Make Your Body Move and Wake Up), with LP sales possibly helped by the inclusion of a rare J72 on the cover. The Jaguar-based Panther was a neo-retro pastiche of William Lyons’ SS100; the creation of fashion guru Robert Jankel, it was one of 368 built by Panther Westwinds near Brooklands.

The London alternative rock band Lush were masters of the short pop song. Their 1996 album Topolino (confusingly with a Fiat 500L on the cover, rather than its 500 Topolino predecessor) was essentially a compilation of B-sides from their earlier third LP, Lovelife, released in Japan and Canada.

Opening track 500 (Shake Baby Shake) is a love song dedicated to the Fiat’s distinctive shape and compact size. It includes the lyrics: “They call you ‘Little Mouse’ by name in Rome and Turin.” An origami box-set collectors’ edition of the album included extra images of the 500L inside.

Chris Rea’s 11th studio album was one of his most successful, topping the British charts upon release in 1991. UK sales achieved double platinum (exceeding 600,000 discs), with another 500,000-plus sold in Germany. The Auberge title track also charted at number 16.

A follow-up to the equally popular The Road to Hell album (which included Daytona, inspired by the Ferrari 365GTB/4), Auberge famously featured a painting of the car-loving singer’s Caterham Super Seven, Blue Seven, on its cover.

Rea sold Blue Seven at auction in 2005, although he still retains a respectable collection of classics.

Abbey Road has one of the most iconic sleeves of all time, with typical late-1960s vehicles playing a supporting role to the Fab Four on a zebra crossing. Behind The Beatles, a now-famous white VW Beetle is parked. Its LMW 281F reg has been the subject of many myths and theories, and the plates have since frequently been stolen by fans of both the Beetle and The Beatles!

There’s also a pale blue Triumph Herald 1200 estate (NHS 31F), with a black BMC J4 police van on the opposite side parked in front of a then-recent Ford Escort estate.

An Austin 1100 is visible beyond.

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50 THE TOP 50 INNOVATIONS IN FORMULA 1

As Formula 1 passes the 1000th race milestone, we look at the most significant inventions, changes and additions since the inaugural event in 1950.

Some were pure genius, many were quickly banned and others now look ludicrous, with the benefit of hindsight...

W O R D S R I C H A R D H E S E LT I N E A N D G R A H A M K E I L L O H

50

C O M P U TAT I O N A L FLUID DYNAMICS

In a wind tunnel, experiments are conducted by driving air over an object in a controlled environment.

With Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the same experiment can be directed by means of a computer simulation. British designer, ex-Benetton man Nick Wirth, created the ALMS-winning Acura ARX-01 sportsprototype using only CFD, and followed through with the first Formula 1 car designed entirely using this system, the Virgin VR-01, in 2010. Its fuel tank was too small to finish a race, making it a laughing stock, but CFD is now omnipresent in F1 design.

45 HALO

The introduction of the ‘halo’ to all F1 cars in 2018 was not received warmly by race fans, some drivers and certainly not designers (it all added up to an additional 15kg weight gain). While this safety feature is ungainly, the halo is in place to deflect foreign objects such as a wheel assembly from impacting with a driver’s head. Following the deaths of Jules Bianchi, Henry Surtees and others in a variety of single-seater categories, the FIA was forced to act, and it did. Charles Leclerc owes his life to the halo, given that Fernando Alonso’s McLaren landed on his Sauber at Spa last year.

e first to Dan Gurney was th lmet, during wear a full-face he ix the 1968 British Grand Pr

49

T Y R E-WA R M I N G BLANKETS

Cold tyres equate to minimal grip, so nowadays teams go to great lengths to heat up rubber prior to the start of a race. In the build-up to the 1974 Canadian GP, the mercury plummeted to the point that the McLaren squad ‘borrowed’ every duvet and towel they could find to wrap their cars’ tyres. Their lead driver Emerson Fittipaldi won (the Brazilian’s final victory in F1). The tyrewarmer as we know it arrived in 1982, and was attributed to Gordon Murray.

Other F1 insiders also claim that they came up with the idea first, mind...

44

F U L L- F A C E H E L M E T S

It’s hard to comprehend now, but there was a time when F1 drivers groused about full-face ‘lids’. These would obscure vision, cause visual distortions, were uncomfortable… the list went on. American star Dan Gurney was the first to adopt this kind of helmet, during the 1968 British GP, followed by Jochen Rindt. The last driver to win in F1 wearing an openface lid was Swiss hardman Clay Regazzoni at Monza in 1970. The last driver to race in F1 without a fully enclosed physiognomy was Leo Kinnunen, four years later.

Crash testing finally came into place in F1 in 1985

48

CRASH TESTS

As with road cars, F1 machinery must undergo stringent crash tests before it is deemed fit for purpose.

Remarkably, this policy didn’t come into place in the sport until 1985; the evaluation process nowadays comprises 18 separate tests. These encompass everything from static loads to rollovers.

Different parts of the driver’s ‘survival cell’ in particular are subjected to a raft of tests, spanning everything from the cockpit rim area to the rear-impact structure.

Crashes are now infinitely more survivable thanks to the work of the boffins at Cranfield University, whose work in this field has largely gone unheralded in the mainstream media.

43

S A F E T Y B E LT S

Time was when F1 drivers railed against safety belts.

They preferred to be flung from a car during an accident – or famously in the case of the Kansas City Flash, Masten Gregory, to bail out before connecting with something immovable. The tuck ’n’ roll approach was no longer an option once cars moved from frontengined behemoths to the spindly rear-engined ‘cigar tubes’. Nevertheless, some drivers (and car designers) remained sceptical. Sixpoint harnesses only became mandatory in F1 in 1972. And it only became compulsory for road users in the UK to wear seatbelts in 1983…

47

G R AV E L T R A P S

Gravel traps are becoming a thing of the past. This is due to the current vogue for ‘playmat’ circuits, with their carpark-sized run-off areas.

The proto-gravel traps were the sandbanks at Le Mans and Monza, but tree-lined circuits were once the norm.

The central tenet behind the gravel trap was to slow cars down to the point that crashes became less violent or there was no impact at all.

However, F1 drivers have been forever slating them, because they claim the bumpy surfaces lead to rollovers. Speak to any GP driver who has been upside down in one, and expect a lecture…

42

CARBON BRAKES

Carbon brakes were another Gordon Murray innovation, and were first employed by Brabham in 1976. He was purportedly inspired by the set-up used on Concorde, such items being lighter than steel anchors while also having a much higher coefficient of friction.

Accordingly, they could operate at high temperatures without suffering fade.

They also pulled a car up four-square considerably quicker. Strictly speaking, though, perennial also-ran Team Surtees was the first to test carbon brakes. It did that same year – the difference being that it wasn’t the first to race with them.

46

CRASH BARRIERS

These days, we’re inured to F1 driver fatalities.

Yet it was once the norm that each season would witness the loss of several drivers – at least until Jackie Stewart began his safety crusade.

Into the 1960s, it was still common for tracks to be lined with haybales, or spectators separated from the action by mere rope.

The march of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association to install barriers at circuits used by the F1 circus began in 1969.

Sadly, poorly installed Armco would also contribute to fatalities – and not just for the drivers. Then there was catch-fencing, which often did more harm than good.

41

HEWLAND GEARBOX

If for the bulk of its history F1 had an off-the-shelf, competitive, reliable and affordable engine in the Cosworth DFV, it had its equivalent in gearboxes with the Hewland. The company was founded in 1957, and nimble British garagistes such as Cooper, Lotus and Lola soon perceived the potency of its products. Just like the DFV, the Hewland was dominant in its time, used essentially by every team aside from Ferrari. It was everywhere in racing beyond F1, too, from CanAm to IndyCar to even Formula Ford. It was standard in F1 until the early 1990s, when teams started to design their own transmissions in earnest.

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40

COSWORTH DFV

In early 1967 F1 was in a bad way, with low grids and uninspiring engines. Then, in the Dutch round, Lotus ran its Ford Cosworth DFV for the first time – and F1 was never the same again. It was a vast stride ahead of all rival units, and then Ford made it available for sale to all-comers – for only £7500. In 1969, all wins were taken by DFV cars – something repeated in 1973. Grids burgeoned, as did competitiveness. The engine was still winning titles in 1982, and won its final race – win number 155 – in 1983.

35

H A L F -T A N K REFUELLING CAR

This innovation was an upshot of another innovation. In 1982, Brabham brought in the first modernera planned in-race refuelling stops. For the following year, it surmised that it therefore needed only a half-capacity fuel tank, saving both space and bulk. Yet something surprised the team: “For 1983 I was sure that all the other teams would copy us,” says designer Gordon Murray.

“But we arrived in Brazil [for round one] and nobody had half-tank cars. Nobody had done the maths. I said to Bernie: ‘We’ve got away with it!’” Nelson Piquet won that year’s title for the squad.

wheels Four wheels good; six g to anyone better? Not accordin other than Tyrrell ...

1 52

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MAGN E TO

disciplines Various motor sport heel drive, flirted with four-w power but it had little staying

39

THE GURNEY FLAP

This innovation was born in IndyCar but transferred over to F1. Devised by Dan Gurney, his eponymous flap comprised a right-angle piece of metal affixed to the uppermost trailing edge of a car’s rear wing. Pointed upwards, it was found to increase downforce and improve traction. It was devised in 1971, and all sorts of flimflam was employed to disguise its true purpose – our favourite being that it was in place to protect those pushing Gurney’s Eagles from cutting their fingers.

A good couple of years passed by before his rivals finally twigged.

34

E N G I N E- M A N A G E M E N T SYSTEMS

ECUs have been a key ingredient in F1 design since the 1980s, gathering data from sensors on a car before wirelessly transmitting it to support crews in the pits. The problem for scrutineers is that software can be coded in such a way as to provide ‘virtual’ traction control – or the equivalent of a ‘push to pass’ burst of additional speed.

This resulted in several teams being accused of cheating – most notoriously Benetton, McLaren and others in 1994.

ECUs have been standardised since 2008, with all cars featuring units made by a subsidiary of McLaren.

38

FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE

This one is a debatable inclusion, but bear with us. Four teams built F1 cars with four-wheel drive for the 1969 season: Lotus, Matra, Cosworth and McLaren. The concept wasn’t a new one, the Spijker brothers having got their first in 1902, but the reasoning was simple; such a set-up would aid traction, especially after stilt-mounted wings were banned. None met with success at World Championship level, though, and it was left to rallying to make hay. Famously, the only win for a four-wheel-drive F1 car was Stirling Moss’s victory in the damp (non-points) 1961 Oulton Park International Gold Cup aboard the Ferguson P99.

33

ONBOARD TV CAMERAS

While not an innovation in terms of making cars go faster, the use of onboard TV cameras has unquestionably improved the ‘show’ for viewers watching from the comfort of their sofas.

Australia’s Seven Network pioneered their use as far back as the late 1970s in touring cars, with the US being not far behind in NASCAR and IndyCar. The first use of a live onboard camera in F1, however, wasn’t until the 1985 German GP, where one was attached to Francois Hesnault’s Renault. Since 1998, all cars on the grid have been equipped with three or more cameras.

37

GAS TURBINES

Gas turbines were once the hot ticket in motor sport.

The brilliant Rufus ‘Parnelli’ Jones came within two laps of winning the 1967 Indy 500 aboard Silent Sam, only to be forced out at the last gasp with transmission failure. A raft of other ‘steam kettles’ also competed at The Brickyard with varying success.

Team Lotus re-employed its experience racing gas turbine cars in the US during the 1971 F1 season. Emerson Fittipaldi starred in the non-points Race of Champions in the whistling four-wheel-drive 56B during a sodden practice.

‘Emmo’ was nowhere in the dry race, though, and the scheme was soon axed.

32

S I X-W H E E L E R S When Derek Gardner designed the Tyrrell P34, he chose the six-wheel set-up because using four small wheels/tyres up front would lower overall drag while improving straight-line performance. Their diminutive size would also, in theory at least, ensure clearer airflow to the rear wing. A one-two finish in the 1976 Swedish GP was a high point, but you can gauge how influential it was by the fact that no other team ever fielded six-wheelers in F1 – although March and Williams tested such cars. Their designs had four wheels aft of the driver, though, and the March had some success in hillclimbing...

36

X-W I N G S

You had to hand it to Tyrrell.

It appeared to be a spent force by the end of the 1980s, only to bounce back with the influential 019 in 1990. Then, in its final year under the aegis of Ken Tyrrell in 1997, it belied its lack of finance to find extra performance through innovation. The X-wings were derided for being ugly, but they worked.

Designed for use on circuits where high downforce was required, each wing and their supports formed part of the 026 model’s sidepod structure.

They provided additional ‘clean air’ downforce, which was applied amidships.

Then they were banned…

31

T W O -WAY TELEMETRY

Telemetry in F1 has been around since the 1980s, but the arrival of two-way telemetry at the start of the following decade changed everything. By 2001, it had evolved to the point that it allowed teams to change engine mapping and ‘save’ an ailing engine from the pits. It also meant that teams could deactivate certain systems if need be. However, by 2003 this was no longer the case, as the FIA banned two-way telemetry. Still, the technology has continued to evolve, and is still widely used in other categories and disciplines of motor sport.

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29 30 Contrary to popular belief, non-trade commercial sponsorship on F1 cars wasn’t pioneered by Team Lotus with Gold Leaf in the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix, although that was when such sponsorship – now so familiar – started in earnest.

Yeoman Credit Racing competed with British Racing Partnership then Reg Parnell in the early 1960s, with a naming arrangement and the car painted in company colours. And little-known Team Gunston beat Lotus by a race, as in the South African round its drivers John Love and Sam Tingle raced with Gunston cigarette brand liveries.

The timing wasn’t a coincidence, as the FIA’s Commission Sportive Internationale had, late in 1967, given such deals the green light in response to the recent withdrawal of trade backers such as Esso. And it reflected that F1 and the world were changing, that races and their results were being broadcast around the world on the TV sets that more and more households now possessed, and that companies viewed branding the cars as a marvellous means of spreading their message.

And F1, with an ever-greater appetite for cash as tech advanced, reciprocated.

The saga behind the Lotus twin-chassis cars began with designer Martin Ogilvie reading the rule-book. Aero parts and bodywork had to be attached rigidly to the chassis, but as the word ‘chassis’ is both singular and plural, he reasoned that a car could have one for the driver and suspension, and another for the aero parts. The Type 86 was constructed in secret around a Type 81 aluminium chassis and running gear, but was never really developed as Team Lotus pushed ahead with Type 88 evolution for the 1981 season.

At the car’s heart was a carbonfibre/Kevlar monocoque carrying suspension tuned to the needs of the driver.

Surrounding this was another chassis that carried the rear wing and the undertray, through which the bulk of the aerodynamic forces would act. This was carried on the uprights via stiff springs. Once the car began to develop significant downforce, they would compress onto hard end-stops, lowering the undertray to the optimum height above the track and conveying the aerodynamic forces directly to where they were needed – the tyres.

The car was outlawed before it got a chance to race…

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LOTUS’S TWINCHASSIS F1 CARS

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AIRBOXES

The Lotus 72 incorporated many innovations, one being the airbox – or high-mounted air-intake chamber in period speak. It was sited behind and above the head to capture high-pressure air. Inside was an expansion chamber that directed cold air onto the 3-litre Cosworth DFV engine.

Air was not pushed into the inlet, rather the engine sucked air in. Made in glassfibre, the lightweight airbox was held in situ with nothing more exotic than spring clips.

Soon, everyone was at it, and nothing was more redolent of the era than huge airboxes and fat rear boots.

Inevitably, some teams took things to extremes; the Ligier JS5 ‘teapot’ looked absurd but rather fabulous with it. It’s just that the rules stipulated the airbox should be no taller than the rollover structure. In 1976, the rules changed and airboxes were reduced in size or split either side of the roll bar. Or, once turbos came in, abandoned – only to return with the adoption of 3.5-litre, normally aspirated units.

Gunston established l non-trade commercia car sponsorship

C O N T I N U O U S LY VA R I A B L E TRANSMISSION In 1993, Williams created its Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) set-up.

In essence, when a car is accelerating and decelerating, it isn’t operating at peak efficiency. In order for it to do so, it would need to rev constantly at the sweet spot between optimum power and torque. One way to do this was to ditch a conventional gearbox and instead use a system of pulleys and belts to provide a stepless, fully automatic trans. If this sounds familiar, this system was pioneered by Dutch car maker DAF with its famous Variomatic transmission.

And strictly speaking, Williams wasn’t the first manufacturer or team to employ such an arrangement.

London’s Chequered Flag team got there a quarter of a century earlier with a brace of specially built F3 cars (Brabham clones). What’s more, this plucky equipe also won races with its Variomatic cars on occasion.

The problem as far as F1 was concerned was finding a strong-enough belt to accommodate megahorsepower loads. Williams cracked it, and a specially adapted car was tested

by David Coulthard and Alain Menu. The FIA promptly outlawed CVT transmissions…

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S A F E T Y/ S I D WAT K I N S F1 history is a story of progress – in technology and in commerce. Yet thankfully it’s also a tale of progress in safety. And central to that is Professor Sid Watkins. He was brought in at Bernie Ecclestone’s behest in 1978, and it’s not an exaggeration to say he transformed how things were done. Well equipped medical centres, a helicopter at hand and a medical car following the pack on lap one are now the norm, yet they were far from being so when Watkins started. “[My] first year at Hockenheim, the medical centre was an old converted bus with only two doctors to staff it, neither of whom was an anaesthetist,” Watkins recalls. “If a helicopter was required, they had to call in the Autobahn traffic team, who might well be busy elsewhere.” Watkins also led scores of safety advances in cars and equipment over time. And the all-powerful Ecclestone always backed him, to the point of standing in front of the cars on the grid and refusing to let the race start if the ‘Prof’ was not completely happy.

F Dutch car maker DA its th wi pioneered CV T set-up ic famous Variomat

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SAFETY CAR

Whereas in American racing the ‘pace car’ has long been a staple, first used in the 1911 Indianapolis 500, F1 instead rather equivocated. The safety car is viewed as a modern F1 addition, but it had a little-known brief prelude in 1973. Then, it was brought in after two incidents that year, wherein rescue crews tended to major accidents as racing continued unabated nearby. It was then first deployed in anger in the Canadian race, but it resulted in chaos and the idea was dropped for near enough two decades. Either continuing racing or an outright stoppage remained the sole options.

It was brought back for the British Grand Prix in 1992, although it wasn’t actually used in a race until round two of the following year in Brazil. Ostensibly it was to minimise the disruption to TV schedules from lengthy stoppages, although the potential of the safety car to ‘spice up the show’ may not have escaped minds, either. This was a time of insulting Nigel Mansell and Williams’ FW14B dominance, after all.

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It seems such a long time since McLaren was a force in F1. Think back to the start of the decade, however, and the team was not only highly competitive, it was also at the vanguard of innovation within F1’s ever-tightening engineering constraints.

Its 2010 challenger, the romantically named MP4-25, ran into a thicket of complaints and countercomplaints the moment it was first seen publicly.

Arch-rival Red Bull Racing immediately protested the car’s rear wing.

In essence, a small ‘snorkel’ scoop mounted fore of the driver channelled air through a duct in the cockpit before expelling it towards the rear of the car.

Changes in pressure within the duct effectively reduced drag, which allowed the car to cleave the air more cleanly and thus make it travel faster on the straights. The effect was controlled by the driver covering up a small hole in the cockpit with his left leg.

Movable aerodynamic aids had long been outlawed, but Red Bull Racing insisted that the F-Duct (or RW80 in McLaren speak) was precisely that. The FIA disagreed, and the protest was thrown out.

arrived Mova ble rear wings d an in the late 1960s – ... were swiftly banned

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M OVA B L E REAR WINGS

Think DRS is new fangled?

It’s not. Well, not entirely.

And it arrived perhaps surprisingly quickly after the rear wing itself arrived; just four races later. Ferrari debuted the first proper set of wings in 1968’s Belgian round, and its rivals soon followed suit. Then, about as soon, plenty of squads sought a ‘best of both worlds’ solution with systems to flatten the wings when in a straight line, to still give the downforce benefits but with less resultant drag. Come the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, one of the Matra V12s was fitted with an electronic device to flatten the rear wing, operated by the brake pedal.

Various alternative interpretations followed, some involving pedals and straps, while Ferrari came up with an ingenious device that moved the rear wing automatically using engineoil pressure, dropping the rear wing to a steep angle when in first, second and third gears or when on the brakes, but flattening it out when in higher gears and when the throttle was open.

Before long, though, movable aerodynamic devices were banned. That was until DRS…

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RAISED NOSES

Looking back, it’s hard to comprehend the impact two unfancied cars had on F1 designers in 1990, especially given that neither won a race.

Long before he was deified, Adrian Newey’s genius became evident with the creation of the Leyton House CG901. So much about this car screamed innovation, but perhaps the most outwardly noticeable aspect was the nose area. Up until this point, most front wings were separated by a broad nosecone and obstructed by a bulky monocoque and flat

the Raised noses came to 019; fore with the Tyrrell e norm they soon became th

floor. Newey astutely reasoned that slimming down the nose and creating more clearance for its exit flow would render the wing more efficient. This resulted in a distinctive ‘stepped’ nose.

However, the concept came into full flower with the Tyrrell 019. Harvey Postlethwaite and JeanClaude Migeot’s brilliant design made F1 newbie Jean Alesi a star following his breath-taking performances during the first half of the 1990 season, not least the US Grand Prix where he famously jousted with McLaren’s Ayrton Senna.

The underfunded Tyrrell with its ‘customer-spec’ Ford engines shouldn’t have been contending for victories, but there it was, running at the front. Raised noses soon became the norm.

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TV COVERAGE/ COMMERCE

Strange though it is to the modern perspective, for a long time television didn’t really think of F1 in terms of a championship whole.

In that regard, for decades the sport was not that far removed from the individual isolated grands prix of the pre-World Championship days. Yet that, of course, changed – and the departure point was the famous 1976 James Hunt vs Niki Lauda championship showdown in Fuji. Hesketh boss Alexander Hesketh recalled that in advance of the race – with suddenly increased interest in watching it – Bernie Ecclestone got his hands on the TV rights.

Amusingly, Ecclestone (above) offered each of the constructors an equal share of the rights in return for $100,000 apiece. The constructors thought “just think how much testing we could do with that money...”

Ecclestone also had the idea to only sell the broadcasters rights for the Fuji race if they committed to show all the rounds. TV rights and their associated riches, in return for a coherent F1 championship ‘package’, has since burgeoned, and more than anything has provided the backbone of Ecclestone’s power.

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McLaren’s brake-steer system raised Ferrari’s ire; it didn’t last long

FOCA

There is something ironic about the fact that the all-powerful über-capitalist Bernie Ecclestone built his F1 empire on the basis of being, in effect, a trade-union leader. When he bought the Brabham team in 1972, circuit owners had the whip hand in F1. Drivers had power, too, via the GPDA, to the point of having races cancelled if they weren’t happy with something. Ecclestone twigged that if he organised the constructors and negotiated on their behalf as a block, the power instead would be with them. Or rather, him. And so it proved, after he took control of the already-existing Formula One Constructors’ Association.

For the first time F1 became efficient; now you knew all the drivers and teams would attend every round. More and more, F1 and its championship could be thought of as a coherent whole. FOCA heralded plenty of safety changes, too – serious accidents weren’t good for business. It faced down the GPDA – with appearance contracts signed, the drivers could scarcely refuse to race – and firmed up its commercial dealings.

B R A B H A M B T46B ‘FA N C A R’

Brabham in 1978 had the same problem as just about everyone else; just how do you topple the ground-effect Lotus 79? Brabham had the added problem that its flat-12 engine was too wide to allow it to simply ape Lotus’s solution. Its designer Gordon Murray – never afraid of lateral thinking – explored putting an engine in the front or even some of the fuel tank behind the engine. Then he noticed a loophole in the regulations. Movable aerodynamic devices were not allowed, but it defined these as devices where aero was the “primary function”.

tionary ‘Fan car’ was revolu drawn. but ultimately with 88...

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Brabham therefore stuck a large fan on the back of the car, with its “primary function” being engine cooling. If it also sucked the car to the ground and let it corner better – much better – then that’s just good luck, isn’t it? Niki Lauda easily won the ‘fan car’s only race, at Anderstorp. Predictably there was uproar, and the fan car was never seen again. Contrary to common conception it was never banned – rather it was withdrawn, as Brabham boss Bernie Ecclestone feared losing his political support from other team bosses.

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BRAKE STEER

The F1 pitlane these days is akin to a military encampment; security is ludicrously tight. It wasn’t hassle free in 1998, either, but photographers were largely given free reign – which would explain how snapper Darren Heath managed to shoot inside the cockpit of the MP4-12 without any problems. His pics were published but they didn’t raise eyebrows at the time, not least because the team had a so-so season, if only by its lofty standards. But then the MP4-13 romped to victory in the 1998 season opener in Melbourne, and Ferrari kicked off in the biggest way possible. It wanted clarification as to why the inside rear disc on Mika Häkkinen’s winning car glowed under braking but not the corresponding front disc.

The extra pedal seen in the photos activated a brakesteer system. The driver could suppress understeer by braking the inside rear wheel to turn the car into a corner. It was, in essence, a non-automatic variation on the stability-control theme, which was banned. Nobody had cared much while McLaren was best of the rest, but now it was competitive, so... The FIA ended play before the second round.

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DISC BRAKES As we all know by rote, Jaguar’s victory in the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours was the first for a car equipped with disc brakes. A further two-and-a-bit years would elapse before a Grand Prix weapon packing such stoppers would emerge victorious. Not only that, but it was a virtual unknown driving for an unfancied team that vanquished the might of five Maserati 250Fs and assorted Ferraris to emerge on top in the October 1955 Syracuse Grand Prix.

And the winning driver?

That’d be 23-year-old Tony Brooks, who had been boning up ahead of his dentistry exams en route to Sicily.

Nobody expected the young Briton to win, nor the latest Connaught B-type to feature (a second car was entered for Les Leston). How much having disc brakes contributed to Tony’s victory is open to conjecture, but remember this was the first F1 win for a Brit driver in a car designed and built in its entirety in the UK. And at a stroke, the floodgates were opened.

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Connaught B-type opened the floodgates for d UK-built cars – an F1 disc brakes in

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R A D I AT O R S IN SIDEPODS

In April 1970, a brace of Lotus 72s made their F1 debuts in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Resplendent in red, gold and white Gold Leaf colours, and characterised by their wedge-shaped profiles and hip-mounted water radiators, they were driven by Jochen Rindt and John Miles. On October 5, 1975, Ronnie ‘Superswede’ Peterson and Brian ‘Superhen’ Henton finished fifth and 12th respectively in the US Grand

Lotus 72’s radiators were sited in its sidepods

HANS DEVICE

Prix during the 72’s final World Championship outing. The car raced for six seasons, accrued 20 GP wins, two Drivers’ gongs and three Constructors’ titles.

The 72’s remarkable longevity can be likened to no other frontline F1 weapon save, perhaps, the Maserati 250F. The model was innovative for several reasons, even if it wasn’t universally loved by its drivers to begin with. In addition to inboard brakes, its radiators were sited in the sidepods, as opposed to the nose, which had been commonplace since time immemorial. That said, this was the first such application in F1. Matra had used an ostensibly similar set-up in sports car racing many years prior, while Gemini had dabbled with side-sited radiators in Formula Junior.

If ever there’s a theme in motor sport lore, it’s that racing drivers, teams and organisers alike react with scorn to the implementation of safety-related regulations.

Countless drivers owe their lives to the once muchmocked Head And Neck Support device that was designed in the early 1980s

by American biomechanical engineer Dr Robert Hubbard, in collaboration with his brother in law, IMSA star Jim Downing. They began work on the device subsequent to the death of their friend Patrick Jacquemart following an accident at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The Frenchman hadn’t a mark on him, but died from a basilar skull fracture. His body had remained in place because of his Renault’s safety harnesses yet his head’s momentum had remained unchecked.

The prototype device was completed in 1984, with Downing acting as guinea pig. The design kept the head from being pulled away from the upper body, and it was awarded a patent two years later. Nevertheless, only 250 were sold in the first ten years after it went on the market in 1990. It has been mandated in F1 since 2003.

Countless drivers owe their lives to the HANS device

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out TC has been in and es; of favour many tim . just ask Williams..

TRACTION CONTROL Driving for Williams these days is about appealing as being a works Trabant man in the German Touring Car Championship. It’s easy to forget that the outfit was the benchmark operator back in the 1990s. The Adrian Newey-conceived FW14B, for example, was the most advanced car of its era, and it steamrollered the opposition.

It had a semi-auto trans, computer-controlled active suspension, anti-lock brakes (if only briefly) and traction control that prevented wheelspin under acceleration.

TC was subsequently banned, however, although rumours continued to haunt Benetton – not least that lead driver Michael Schumacher had it concealed in his car’s software during the 1994 season, which gave him an unfair advantage. Not only that, but Ferrari test driver Nicola Larina (subbing for Jean Alesi) let slip to the Italian media that he had used traction control during the practice session for the Pacific GP. It had been banned at the end of 1993 in an effort to slow cars down, but it was then reintroduced part-way through 2001 after the FIA admitted that it was incapable of policing the regulations effectively. It was outlawed again in 2008 following the implementation of standardised ECUs.

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CARBONFIBRE MONOCOQUE CAR

A recent biography describes the carbon monocoque of John Barnard’s McLaren MP4, introduced in 1981, as “the greatest innovation in motor sport since the engine was moved behind the driver”. It’s hard to argue.

Just like the rear engine, the carbon chassis had massive benefits and quickly became a given to the point that it was hard to imagine anyone having done different.

It had the win-win of being both stiffer and lighter than the previous aluminium, with auxiliary benefits of boosting safety in the event of an accident.

While carbon composites had already been used for parts of F1 cars such as rear wing posts and brakes, it shouldn’t be under-estimated how far Barnard’s idea of building the entire car from the material was from base-camp thinking. Much promise had been made on carbon’s behalf for decades, but without living up to it.

A consensus even suggested that the material would turn to dust upon a crash impact.

But a massive John Watson shunt at Monza in ’81, from which he walked away, dispelled most doubts.

The rest was history.

MP4’s carbon st monocoque: “Greate r oto innovation in m ne sport since the engi was moved behind the driver...”

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rs Safety device? No, paddleshifte saved space first and foremost

PADDLESHIFT GE ARBOX

The reason for the paddleshift – or ‘semi-automatic’, as it was initially known – gearbox concept may not be what you would assume.

That it allows the driver to keep both hands on the wheel at all times, rather than require one hand for a traditional gearstick, seems a no-brainer benefit. But we should have guessed something so altruistic wouldn’t have been what its father, John Barnard, had in mind. Instead, he understood that not needing room for a gear linkage, clutch pedal or elbow room to operate the stick would save space in the cockpit. And a narrower cockpit was better for aerodynamics. Missed gears and over-revving

also could be stopped.

It wasn’t an innovation flush with early success, although it did win its first race against considerable odds – Nigel Mansell taking the 1989 Brazilian Grand Prix for Ferrari. The Scuderia, particularly in its first year, struggled to make the ’box reliable – not helped by the infamously abrasive Barnard not having the best or closest relationship with Maranello.

But the paddleshift gearbox quickly stuck in F1. By the mid-1990s, it was ubiquitous.

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11 10 COKE BOTTLE

This innovation was born of frustration. Weeks after the 1982 season ended, the FIA decreed overnight that the all-important ground effect was to be eliminated forthwith, with flatbottomed cars. It was a relief to most drivers and fans, but for designers such as John Barnard it was devastating – whatever had gone into the next year’s cars now was worthless. In Barnard’s case, it included his engine dimension spec for McLaren’s forthcoming TAG-Porsche motor.

Barnard, thus fired up, set to work with the new rules to get the lost downforce back.

He noted the problem of getting air around the wide rear wheels. He investigated various shapes in the wind tunnel, and his colleague Alan Jenkins made his own model with the back of the car swept in. Barnard added sidepods to the concept, and we had the ‘coke bottle’ – so called because the car’s plan resembled a bottle neck at the rear. It helped flow air away from the wheels and towards the rear wing and diffuser. Other teams swiftly followed suit, and today the coke bottle still defines the shape of F1 cars.

ACTIVE SUSPENSION

‘Active’ suspension was a computerised system to keep the car at an optimum ride height over bumps, through corners and the like, replacing more standard dampers and springs. Lotus first developed the system from 1981, in a ground-effect era where consistently shallow pitch-free ground clearance was vital and suspension was run rock hard meaning drivers would struggle to even keep their feet on the pedals. It was raced on one Lotus car – Colin Chapman reckoned the single model without turbo power needed a special boost – in the first two rounds of 1983. But it proved still too heavy, underdeveloped and unreliable, and was put on the backburner.

Come 1987 Lotus brought it back, and Ayrton Senna bagged two wins while Williams introduced a similar system late in the year. But Senna’s success was considered to be in spite of active suspension, which remained ponderous and bulky. That was until 1992 and the mighty Williams FW14B. Finally the system was got right and the car – aided by other mod cons such as traction control – had a gigantic advantage.

fines ‘Coke bottle’ still de today en ev rs shape of F1 ca

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DOUBLE DIFFUSER

Renault turbo paved the way for others to fo llow

For 1966, F1 ditched its puny 1.5-litre engine spec for 3-litre units. With that, it added to the regs an option to run 1.5 turbos. It was assumed to be a transitionary measure only, and no one went down that path. However, a decade later Renault decided to enter F1, and already was developing turbos – compressing exhaust gasses through the air compressor – for its Le Mans programme, having found this the best way of converting its existing racing engine.

Initially in ’77 the F1 turbo Renault was a joke, acquiring the ‘yellow teapot’ nickname for its propensity to blow up.

But it qualified on the second row at Monza in 1978, then got pole at Kyalami early the following year. Its potential, particularly once the more responsive twin-turbo was introduced, was clear. Sadly Renault never got on top of reliability, and it was ‘secondgeneration’ BMW and Ferrari that took turbocharging’s first titles in 1983. Come the mid-part of 1985, the entire F1 field was turbocharged.

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TURBO ENGINE

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Remember the 2009 F1 season? Honda had pulled out abruptly at the end of 2008, with team principal Ross Brawn keeping the team afloat with (mostly) Japanese money, a Mercedes engine and a lot of good fortune.

Jenson Button and Brawn GP claimed the Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles with a race to spare. Such was the team’s apparent performance advantage from the outset, several teams lodged an official complaint about the Brawn BGP 001 plus rival offerings from Williams and Toyota at the first round in Melbourne. They protested the size of those outfits’ rear diffusers, claiming these didn’t fall within the dimensions set out in the rules. They lost, but then appealed and then lost again.

The other teams were incensed because the cars’ double diffusers (aka double-decker or multi-deck diffusers) exploited a loophole in the rules. FIA regulations stipulated that the diffuser had to start at a point aligned with the centreline of the rear wheels.

By incorporating holes into the underside, which fed a diffuser channel above the principal diffuser, cars gained a significant amount of extra downforce worth roughly half a second per lap.

Double trouble? ed Double diffusers prov l ia rs ve ro highly cont

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Red Bull Racing and Adrian Newey pioneered exhaust-blown diffusers in F1

E X H A U S T- B L O W N DIFFUSERS

A diffuser is employed as a means of reducing drag and increasing downforce. In essence, it’s a device that forms a low-pressure area beneath a car while also creating negative lift. An exhaustblown diffuser, by contrast, is a means of lessening the disturbance caused by exhaust gases interacting with the diffuser airflow by moving the ‘wake’ from the rear wheels outwards.

Renault experimented with such a set-up in the mid-1980s, as did McLaren, but it took the genius of Adrian Newey to revive the concept and make it his own.

Red Bull Racing’s 2010 challenger, the RB6, was tested with conventional exhaust exits until the last day of public testing. Then it revealed its new ‘secret demon’ tweak. Newey inserted a vertical ‘window’ into the diffuser, which allowed exhaust gasses to drive more air through the diffuser to increase downforce. That’s by far a layman’s explanation, and doesn’t even begin to describe the intricacies of this set-up, but doing so would require several more pages. That, and Newey on hand to explain it.

And the result? Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel claimed both F1 titles.

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SLICK TYRES

Slick tyres first appeared in F1 during the 1971 South African Grand Prix.

Predictably, their arrival was greeted with a degree of antipathy, due in no small part to the belief that they were simply bald tyres. What if it rained? Not only that, but drivers complained of vibrations, while designers and engineers had to revise suspension geometries and settings. And on it went. After around half a decade of false dawns, slick tyres were now part of F1 and here to stay.

The thing is, slick tyres had been around in one form or other for almost 20 years.

The idea of a super-sticky treadless tyre was conceived with drag racing in mind, the ‘wrinkle sidewall’ design being perhaps the most redolent of the era. Then there was the embryonic karting movement, which was a full ten years ahead of F1. Firestone, meanwhile, had developed what constituted a semi-slick for oval racing in the 1950s, with only partial grooves at the outer edge of tyre. It fell to Goodyear to make the first true F1 slick tyre, and these are now part of the furniture.

l Slick movers; specia tyres took a while to catch on in F1

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Brabham’s pitstop strategy didn’t quite work out...

PLANNED PITSTOPS

While pitstops had been part of F1 strategy in the past, they had never been part of the ‘show’. That all changed during the 1982 British GP at Brands Hatch. In the buildup to the race, Brabham had garnered more than its usual share of attention, not least because it had been involved in clandestine testing at Donington. The team arrived in Kent armed with massive fuel churns, while the cars now had built-in air jacks and huge fuel filters sited behind their rollover bars.

Some were sceptical that Brabham had any intention of stopping in the race to take on fuel and tyres, pole-sitter Keke Rosberg among them.

He reckoned it was “…another Gordon Murray hoax”.

It wasn’t. Brabham wasn’t simply out to unsettle its rivals. It intended starting the cars driven by Nelson Piquet and Riccardo Patrese with enough fuel to blast into the lead on light tanks and build up a sizeable cushion to their pursuers before pitting.

Unfortunately, Piquet dropped out early thanks to a broken fuel pump. Patrese, by contrast, stalled his car on the grid and couldn’t get it started again.

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MONOCOQUE

The monocoque – that is, using a car’s outer skin as its structure – is now a given in F1. It was heralded by the Lotus 25, introduced in 1962.

Prior to this, F1 cars had a ’spaceframe’ structure, made up of a network of tubes.

The monocoque had several benefits by comparison. It was much stiffer, as well as allowed the car to be lighter and much more compact.

The last point was at the forefront of Lotus kingpin Colin Chapman’s thoughts, as he wanted to achieve a smaller frontal area – indeed he managed a reduction to the tune of 17 percent – to compensate for F1’s 1.5-litre engine spec that had come in for 1961 and left cars rather short on straight-line punch.

The monocoque had existed outside of F1 long before this, though. It had been standard in aviation for half a century, and was already known in other forms of motor sport.

Chapman got the idea of applying it to F1 when he was surprised how stiff the Lotus Elan was for its weight when torsion testing the car.

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When Stirling Moss won the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix aboard Rob Walker’s privateer Cooper, and Maurice Trintignant followed suit in the succeeding round at Monaco, the writing was on the wall for front-engined cars in F1. The likes of Enzo Ferrari refused to read it.

‘The Old Man’, as he was sometimes called (but never within earshot), would not be influenced by garagistes from Surbiton. He could see no worth in “…putting the horse behind the cart”.

Cooper and works driver Jack Brabham walked to the 1959-60 championship titles, with Team Lotus and its

Type 18 model also proving the mid/rear-engine ideal.

Of course, Ferrari did eventually relent, the Carlo Chiti-conceived 156 ‘Sharknose’ winning all bar two rounds of the 1961 F1 World Championship. This was in no small part due to the fact that the regulations had just changed in a bid to curb lap times, with 1.5-litre engines now holding sway.

There weren’t sufficiently competitive proprietary engines available to British constructors, but the axis of power had clearly shifted – and how. Non-entity British start-ups soon overtook the Continental elite – a position that the UK holds to this day in F1 (but decidedly not in other categories of motor sport). By the dawn of the 1970s, Cooper was out, but Team Lotus was joined by the likes of McLaren, Tyrrell and countless others. They may have been garagistes, but such squads generally held sway where innovation was concerned.

Strictly speaking, though, the mid-century, mid-engined revolution wasn’t all that revolutionary. Racing cars with powerplants sited behind the driver stretch all the way back to the early 1900s. And let’s not forget the remarkable Auto Unions of the 1930s. It’s just that it took a bunch of blokes from Surrey armed with ‘chalk marks on the floor’ nous to reinvent the wheel.

They did so brilliantly.

Ground effect revolutionised F1 in the late 1970s

2

GROUND EFFECT

behind the Putting the engine tch on... driver? It’ll never ca

When F1 discovered aerodynamics in the late 1960s it was done almost entirely via airflow over the car; most sought to stop air flowing under the car at all. But even so, something was going on – mainly from designers Peter Wright and Tony Rudd at BRM, who were exploring the concept of turning the entire car shape into a wing.

For various reasons the BRM experiment didn’t work, nor did a similar attempt on the March 701. Yet by the mid-1970s Wright and Rudd, now at Lotus and with access

to its resources, picked up the baton once more. The key, as it transpired, was sealing off the sides of the car to keep the low pressure sealed in, which was completed in time with flexible sliding skirts that would retain the seal even over bumps and the like.

The increases in downforce were astonishing. Cornering ability sky-rocketed – and further, it was somethingfor-nothing grip, as the drag penalty was minimal.

The Lotus 78 raced in 1977 was the year’s pacesetter and should have won the championships, but it often didn’t make the end of races due to unreliable engines. Yet come 1978 this, plus a few other problems such as the car’s high drag level, was sorted with the Lotus 79.

It wiped the floor with the opposition, and Lotus cantered to a title double.

The ground effect sadly created safety concerns, as the strength of components and circuits’ safety features became obsolete almost overnight.

Sadly, too, 1978 saw the final Lotus championships, as it was others that took full advantage of the ground effect. Lotus for 1979 sought the ‘next leap’ with the Lotus 80, which backfired.

Williams created in effect a well sorted Lotus 79, improving it in areas such as stiffness, and started its own domination.

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I N N O VAT I O N S

I N

F 1

1 WINGS Wings in racing can be traced back to the 1920s, but took hold in F1 in the 1960s Anyone with even a casual interest in modern F1 will likely know all about the importance of aerodynamics.

It’s the chief discriminator of who wins and doesn’t. It’s talked of constantly; it keeps team bosses awake at night.

At its most basic level, it comprises in effect upsidedown aeroplane wings – sending the car into the ground and therefore offering more cornering grip.

Yet for much of F1’s history aerodynamics barely registered, with the bare cigarshaped machines prevailing until the late 1960s. But the wings’ provenance isn’t simple.

Negative-incidence wings had appeared sporadically on

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racing cars going all the way back to 1928, and F1 wasn’t the first motor sport form to make big strides, despite its status in time of being the ultimate apex of aero.

Rather, that status belongs to sports car racing and Jim Hall’s Chaparral 2C in 1963, and his subsequent 2E with its vast suspended rear wing.

It took F1 a little time to recognise the benefits; the ’68 season was the watershed. In the opening round in South Africa, cigar-shaped machines were still ubiquitous. By the Canadian race, the third last of the year, the entire field featured a wing of some sort.

And they were hardly modest, then tending to be high,

suspension-mounted contraptions. After harrowing failures for the Lotus pair in the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix, these were banned and replaced by more compact, bodywork-mounted wings of the sort we’d recognise today.

Wings in F1 started with Jim Clark, taking part in a

‘It took Formula 1 a little time to recognise the benefits of aerodynamics’

Tasman race early in 1968 at Teretonga. Far from his boss Colin Chapman’s steely gaze, he convinced his mechanics to bolt a Chaparral-style system to his Lotus 49T, using a rather rudimentary sawn-off section of scrap helicopter rotor blade acquired from a nearby dump. Clark practiced with it, but he and his team thought better of using it in the race as there would be hell to pay from the blindsided Chapman if anything went wrong. Unfortunately for them, though, a young Ferrari engineer called Gianni Marelli, there because Chris Amon was taking part in the same race in a Ferrari 246T, noted Lotus’s scheme and

photographed the winged car from every angle.

By that year’s Monaco Grand Prix, the Lotus featured a modest front wing and a wedge-shaped tail. However, it was the next race, at Spa, where things really took off. And it was thanks to Ferrari, which rolled up with large strutted wings suspended above the gearbox; despite the Tasman tale, designer Mauro Forghieri insisted they were developed independently of that. The wings were rapidly honoured by imitation; indeed, even before the Spa weekend was out, Brabham had mounted something similar to its own cars. Before long, all rivals had done the same.

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RHD 1973 CARRERA RS LIGHTWEIGHT M471.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY ROBERT COOPER.

Y e s t e r d ay ’ s P o r s c h e s .

We have owned, driven, raced and restored these icons for in excess of forty years. So if you are thinking of restoring or purchasing a classic Porsche we can help – from pre-purchase inspections, including chassis X- Rays or car history research, through to preservation and restoration.

P r e s e r v e d f o r T o m o r r o w.

We have our own in-house master craftsmen, factory Celette body jigs and brackets, NOS hard to find panels and parts. This ensures we carry out sympathetic and period correct work that retains the integrity and value of your Porsche. We pride ourselves on our team and our award winning finished product.

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M A R K E T

WA T C H

Porsche 911 2.0-litre For many enthusiasts, these early examples are the purest and most desirable of all Porsche sports cars. From stock to full race spec, there’s a version for everyone – here’s how to buy wisely W O R D S J O H N TA L L O D I P H O T O G R A P H Y M AG I C C A R P I C S

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M A R K E T WAT C H

THE PORSCHE 901 was unveiled to the public at the 1963 Frankfurt Motor Show. Designed to be a step up from the flat-four 356 in every area, and styled by Ferdinand ‘Butzi’ Porsche, it ended up becoming one of the most iconic sports cars in history. But first its name had to change; Peugeot already had the rights to the zero-in-the-middle three-digit format, so Porsche added a number and the 911 was born.

The very first cars went on sale in 1964. Initially powered by an overhead-cam 2.0-litre flat-six, the 911 proved to be a spirited if somewhat tail-happy performer. In true Porsche style a series of incremental upgrades were carried out, and within five years the longerwheelbase B series model had been introduced to quell the snappy onthe-limit behaviour. The range had also expanded to include a Targa, a semi-automatic Sportomatic model and a variety of engine outputs from 110-170bhp. The more powerful E and S models even had fuel injection by 1969. That year also heralded the end of 2.0-litre production, with subsequent models receiving everincreasing engine capacities.

T H E VA L U E P R O P O S I T I O N The market for these early 911s has been on a mainly upward trajectory for some time now. Sustained interest in air-cooled 911s, and especially these pre-impact-bumper variants over the past ten years, has seen prices rise across the board – but there is still a lot of variability based on models and overall condition.

Mix-and-match cars that have components sourced from different model years can generally be found for less than their matching-numbers counterparts. However, be sure to insist upon evidence of at least a partial service and maintenance history, as not all modifications were carried out to the same standards.

The demand for modified 911s has been on the rise, and younger owners are less fussed about keeping everything as the factory intended.

“The rise of the Porsche-modding community spearheaded by people such as Magnus Walker and Singer has opened up 911s to a whole new generation of car fans,” says Mick Pacey, owner of independent Porsche

ABOVE Early 911 cabin combines best of classic and sporty design cues for that period-perfect feel. specialist Export 56. He still baulks at the idea of chopping up a rare, matching-numbers car, but there are plenty of tired, non-original 911s. Still, for the earliest cars in particular, the market trend is for originality – or historic motor sport.

T H E D E S I R A B I L I T Y FA C T O R Despite this being the very first 911, Porsche wasted no time in offering customers a wide array of options.

While any well cared-for example is valuable today, some variants are particularly favoured by collectors.

Not every model is a sure-fire winner, though; Mick says that the Sportomatics are a bit of a challenge to drive, especially in heavy traffic, and many have been converted to manuals over the years.

As a general rule, the Targas trail the coupés by around ten percent, and cars fitted with the Sportomatic transmission are much less desirable than the manuals. The base T models tend to fetch 20 percent less than the mid-range Es, while the S variants enjoy a ten to 15 percent

‘A largely original, matching-numbers car will often command the highest prices’

premium again. Right-hand-drive cars are extremely rare, and can often sell for 20 percent more than their LHD counterparts.

While the more powerful E and S manual coupés still command a premium, even a mint-condition base four-cylinder 912 can be a high-value car these days. One model that has always been particularly prized is the very rare 1967 911R; producing 210bhp from a racing-spec 2.0-litre motor and featuring a fibreglass body, only 20 are thought to have been made.

Of the mainstream models, most people default to the range-topping 160bhp 911S. Mick says that the mid-range E variants can be a better drive thanks to their less fussy lowend power delivery and broadly similar performance. Only the very last 1969 model-year E and S models received fuel injection, so they are far rarer than the earlier carb-fed models, but once again they may not always be worth the extra expense.

While virtually every early 911 has by now undergone at least a partial restoration, a largely original, matching-numbers short-wheelbase car with low mileage will command the highest prices. Many examples have been through multiple owners – and as a result may have suffered from deferred maintenance and neglect – so a traceable history is pretty valuable, too.

In more recent years, 2018 saw the introduction of the 2.0L Cup for pre-1966 911s. Started by Porsche specialists Lee Maxted-Page and James Turner, it caters for the

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earliest short-wheelbase cars, and it’s proven to be extremely popular with competitors and spectators alike. The race series has already had a positive effect on values, especially for cars that are less than perfect, as competitors will be more inclined to compete in nonconcours examples.

As a guideline, a matchingnumbers 1968 911S can command around £200,000, while a similarcondition 911T may fetch only half that. Properly sorted, race-prepped cars are no less pricey, and the very early 1964 cars tend to be the most valuable of the lot.

ABOVE Stock, modified or fully race prepped; plenty of specialists can help create perfect 911 for you.

over the years. Parts are available, but if originality is what you seek, things can get expensive.

Both carb and fuel-injected models need to be set up properly to give their best, and once again a specialist is best placed to get everything running as it should.

The early gearboxes can suffer from worn bearings and synchro rings. Due to the modular nature of these cars some owners may have fitted newer components, but even the original ’box should shift sweetly if not with the most accuracy between changes. Period-correct engines and gearboxes are getting harder to source – something clients looking to compete in the 2.0-litre race series should bear in mind.

If the car feels especially wayward under hard braking or cornering, then check the suspension for worn bushes and incorrect or old tyres.

The earlier short-wheelbase cars do need to be treated with a bit of circumspection when driving with any degree of enthusiasm.

Getting the trim back to original spec can be a tricky proposition as numerous changes were carried out

Demand for these early 2.0-litre cars has been strong for some years now. Their styling, untainted by later performance and regulation requirements, has a timeless appeal, and well sorted examples offer the kind of pure, immersive 911 driving experience that has been slowly but systematically engineered out of each successive generation.

Enthusiasts who are after that raw, untainted 911 experience need look no further; this is where the legend started. Professionally modified examples can offer a more modern driving feel without diluting that distinctive early 911 vibe, and can be the ideal choice for more regular use.

Collectors looking to add to their fleet are also well catered for.

Values have climbed steadily though levelled off lately (see the next page), and there are plenty of specialists out there who can help ensure that your 911 looks and drives at least as well as it did when it left the factory.

THE FINAL DECISION

T H E D E TA I L S ENGINE POWER TOP SPEED 0-60MPH

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1966 911S

1964 911 2.0-LITRE FLAT-SIX 130BHP 134MPH 9.0SEC

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ENGINE POWER TOP SPEED 0-60MPH

2.0-LITRE FLAT-SIX 160BHP 137MPH 8.0SEC

PROJECT GOOD CONCOURS

£20,000-50,000 £60,000-100,000 £150,000-500,000

TIMELINE

T H E N U T S A N D B O LT S There was a time, not that long ago, when a ground-up restoration just wasn’t financially viable, so look out for patchy rebuilds and poorly executed repairs. For most owners who have neither the time nor the inclination to get personally involved, entrusting a specialist to sort out their car is the best route to take. Mick says a complete nutand-bolt restoration can run to as much as £140,000; fine if you pick the right car, but spending that much on a Targa Sportomatic is not advisable. It’s therefore worth knowing what to look for when assessing a potential purchase.

Rust is one of the biggest problems on these early cars. Fully galvanised 911 bodyshells weren’t introduced until 1976, and after 50-plus years even the most pampered example may be showing signs of rot. Common trouble spots include the inner and outer wings, front crossmembers, sills, jacking points and around the front and rear windscreens.

Just about every early flat-six motor tends to leak a bit of oil; if you don’t find a few drops on the garage floor, then it has most likely run dry.

Excessive leaking should obviously be attended to, but unless the engine pressure is low, and the car is smoking under hard acceleration, a full rebuild isn’t always necessary.

1963

901 unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

1964

911 production commences with 130bhp, five-speed manual transmission, discs brakes and independent suspension all round.

1965

First righthand-drive models are produced.

1966

Targa arrives.

Triple-choke carbs offered on certain models. Iconic Fuchs wheels introduced.

1967

Entry-level 911T with 100bhp introduced. Four-speed Sportomatic gearbox offered as an option.

1968

Wheelbase extended by two inches and engine gets new magnesium crankcase.

Twin batteries now mounted ahead of front wheels. Bosch mechanical fuel injection debuts on E and S variants.

1969

2.2-litre engine introduced across all 911 variants.

No buyers fees, and sellers receive 95% of the purchase price 1964 MERCEDES-BENZ 230SL BUYER PAID £61,650

LORD FORD ESCORT RS1800 ‘RASCAL’ HANDCRAFTED MODEL SILVER/GOLD/DIAMOND

SELLER RECEIVED £58,560 ASTON MARTIN DB7 VANTAGE BUYER PAID £25,850

SELLER RECEIVED £24,557

AUCTION ENDS MAY 14TH

SUFFOLK JAGUAR SS100 SOLD APRIL 2019 BUYER PAID: £40,250 SELLER RECEIVED: £38,237

M A R K E T A NA LYS I S

300,000

1 CONCOURS 2 EXCELLENT

250,000

3 GOOD

Early Porsche price watch

4 FAIR

200,000 150,000 100,000

911 2.0 values have fluctuated over the past eight or so years, but Hagerty price tracking shows these models are a safe long-term buy

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PORSCHE ENTHUSIASTS ARE picky; I should know, as I’m one myself. Model years, originality, correct numbers and trim levels make a big difference to values – and nowhere is this more true than for the early 911 variant.

From 1964 until 1969, Porsche’s flagship model was powered by a 1991cc flat-six engine in a number of guises. Prices vary from around the £50,000 mark for a good 911T to more than ten times that for a very early 1964 car in perfect condition.

911 values have fluctuated a great deal over the past eight or so years.

Way back in September 2012, the Hagerty Price Guide valued a short-

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wheelbase 2.0 911S example in ‘excellent’ condition as being worth £64,000. This model led the pack in terms of collectability, and as demand rose, so did the prices.

By January 2015, the same car was worth £93,600, and by late 2016 values peaked at around £150,000, boosted by some very strong auction results. Since then, the market has cooled and the current value sits at £125,000, but with the very best still well over £200,000.

Except for very early cars, the 911 isn’t a rare model. Numerous examples offered for sale combined with a general market downturn have made buyers more picky in the

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past couple of years. Well restored or very original cars, especially homemarket models, continue to demand high prices, but the sellers of rough cars, sub-standard restorations or low-specification variants are now having a hard time.

An analysis of recent auction

‘Sellers of rough cars, sub-standard restorations or lowspec variants are having a hard time’

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results illustrates well this difficult market; of the seven 1965 Porsche 911 2.0-litre models offered at public auction over the past 12 months, three were bid to below-estimate level, three mid-estimate and only one came anywhere near the top predicted sale price.

Ultimately, though, the design purity of the 1969-and-earlier shortwheelbase models will always be in demand, even if the 2.0 engine doesn’t have the grunt of later models. This means values are likely to start creeping up again now that they have corrected. Long term, these vehicles are a safe buy of a wonderfully beautiful car.

At the famous Newport Pagnell factory, we have unsurpassed expertise to service, repair and restore Aston Martins. The same knowledge and passion lives on through our sales showrooms – including newly-opened 8 Dover Street in London’s Mayfair.

1954 DB2/4 SALOON

1960 DB4 SERIES II SALOON

1964 DB5 SALOON

1970 DB6 MK2 VOLANTE

One owner from January 1955 to May 2006. Detailed history file with many expired MOT certificates from 1966 onwards. Supplied with a one-year warranty.

Snow Shadow grey with black leather.

Original factory colours and LHD steering.

Sold new in Milan, Italy. DB5 grille fitted by the factory in 1965. Supplied with a one-year warranty.

Dubonnet Red with black leather.

Original factory colours and RHD steering.

An excellent example of an iconic car.

Boasting a large history file. Supplied with a one-year warranty.

Silver Birch with Black leather. Original factory colours and RHD steering. Sold new in London to a notable owner.

Converted to 5-Speed manual transmission.

Supplied with a one year warranty.

£295,000

£395,000

£775,000

£950,000

1974 AMV8 SALOON

1979 AMV8 VANTAGE SALOON

1979 AMV8 VOLANTE

1995 V8 VANTAGE V550 COUPE

Rare and appealing colour combination of Cornish Gold with Fawn leather.

Original factory colours and RHD steering.

Exceptional history file. Supplied with a one-year warranty.

Supplied with a most interesting owner history, the car has been featured in several publications, a television feature and AMOC Concours. Supplied with a one-year warranty.

Windsor Red with Magnolia leather.

Original factory colours and RHD steering.

Very good history file to support just 47,500 miles. Supplied with a one-year warranty.

A former Factory demonstrator. Original factory colours of Brewster Green with tan Connolly piped Spruce. Less than 37,000 recorded miles with a good history file.

Supplied with a one-year warranty.

£129,950

£265,000

£225,000

£245,000

RESTORATION

TRIM

SALES

SERVICE

BODY WORK

PARTS

Tickford Street, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire MK16 9AN | 8 Dover Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4LF Tel: +44 (0)1908 610 620 | Email: enquiry@astonmartin.com | www.astonmartinworks.com

HOW TO. . .

Financing a classic vehicle purchase Bespoke flexibility is the name of the game when it comes to borrowing money to buy a collector car. We speak with the specialists who know what they’re talking about W O R D S J O H N TA L L O D I

FINANCING A MODERN car is fairly straightforward, as the banks, dealers and auto makers are all well equipped to cater to your needs.

The collector market is a different prospect altogether, however, and attempting to go through the regular channels will end in frustration.

That is where the services of a classic car finance specialist can be invaluable. Whereas new values are easily calculated from purchase price and depreciation, a classic needs to be assessed by a specialist who understands how history, originality and rarity all influence the final value.

Also, insurers, transportation and storage firms may need to be taken into consideration – not something a bank or new car dealer will be interested in. And whereas most people finance a new car due to a lack of cashflow, there are several reasons why a classic owner might consider using a finance specialist.

THE INVESTOR Sustained interest in older cars has seen a sharp rise in values over the past decade, thus attracting a lot of attention from people who wouldn’t usually consider getting involved in the automotive scene. Robert Johnson, MD of Classic & Sports Finance, has been in the business for 20 years, and he is very wary of referring to classics as investments.

Values can fluctuate due to various unforeseen circumstances, and while Robert and his team are extremely knowledgeable about the classic scene, he stresses that they are not financial advisors. He says those interested in buying a car as an

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investment should be intimately aware of the risks involved before committing themselves financially.

With those caveats out of the way, many classics can enhance a financial portfolio. Also, aside from diversifying risk, there is no Capital Gains Tax if they’re then sold for a profit.

THE COLLECTOR Curating even a modest selection of desirable classics can be rather cash intensive. A discerning collector can often wait for years for the right car to become available, and it doesn’t always happen in correlation with the necessary cashflow being on hand. In these cases, a finance house can help the collector by releasing equity in any existing vehicles.

Such schemes can be individually structured, but in a typical example the owner would pay back the loan over five years while still using the car. “This is generally available on vehicles worth in excess of £75,000,” says Robert. “The option is attractive because we aren’t offering a shortterm bridging solution and the customer still gets to enjoy their car.”

It’s worth bearing in mind that most service providers can release equity only in vehicles that are registered in the country in which they operate.

‘Their ability to structure a package to suit each individual is a big draw-card’

Then there are serious collectors who have a certain monthly budget to allocate towards new acquisitions.

They can approach a financing house to work out a package where they can add to their collections based on a pre-approved value working with these contributions.

THE ENTHUSIAST Those looking to get into the classic market may baulk at the high values of certain sought-after collector cars.

While they may have the means to buy a vehicle outright, it can often be more desirable to take out a loan and put the cash to better use elsewhere.

“It always surprises me that people are perfectly willing to pay off a steeply depreciating new luxury car, but hesitate to do so when it comes to a classic,” says Robert. While not every older car is set to appreciate, most are unlikely to lose anywhere near as much value as a new model.

Even considering potentially higher running costs, a classic can often be more cost effective to own overall.

THE RACER Racing can be a very costly pastime; historic racing more so. Financing a race car is one way of freeing up capital that can then be used for the various associated costs.

The common theme across these financing scenarios is that they free up cashflow and let customers more effectively manage their wealth while still enjoying their classics.

T H E F I N A N C I A L I N ST I T U T I O N S Classic & Sports Finance’s UK-based team offers pre-approved facilities for auction purchases, and has packages for vintage, classic, race and sports cars. It can structure loans with flexible deposits, balloon payments and up to 60-month repayment terms.

Meanwhile, Twin Spark Finance works at the very high end of the market. MD Karsten Le Blanc has decades of international finance experience, and is a keen historic racer, too – an ideal skill set to cater to the high net-worth collector.

Twin Spark Finance deals in loans above £100,000, and offers both short-term flexi-financing and fixedterm loans for UK clients. It’s also partnered with RM Sotheby’s. Karsten stresses that Twin Spark Finance is a direct lender and not broker, which

means it can make quicker decisions and tailor terms for each individual.

The US sector has also seen huge growth in the classic car scene, and financial institutions are starting to cater to this market. Classic car insurer Hagerty says banks are now seeing collector cars in a similar light as they do fine art, allowing clients to borrow against the appraised value while retaining vehicle possession.

While Hagerty itself doesn’t offer these services, financial institutions such as JJ Best Banc & Co can offer up to $1,000,000 loans on collectible vehicles from any era. Woodside Credit is another specialist that offers loans, ranging from $10,000 up to $600,000, and it’s endorsed by the Barrett-Jackson auction house.

T H E D I F F E R E N T I AT O R S Aside from the basic loan, the real value add for most customers comes in the form of the additional services and assistance that many classic car financing companies provide. They can offer pre-purchase inspections by industry professionals, and can also put you in touch with the right insurance, transportation and storage companies.

Their ability to structure a package to suit each individual is a big draw-card for many, while being able to speak with like-minded car enthusiasts who also happen to be financially knowledgeable makes the process far more pleasurable, too. In addition, a specialist will know how best to assist a customer, whether the client is buying from an auction, private seller or dealer.

THE BOTTOM LINE Classic car financing is quite specialised and relatively new, and it’s best to spend some time finding a provider that has the relevant experience and services for you. Knowledge is key, especially with older, rarer cars where values are based on many factors. On the back of a decade of consistent growth, the classic car scene has been levelling off for the past two years – good news for those looking to get into the market for the longer term. It should also encourage the financial institutions, as this stability may see more offerings tailored to the classic car enthusiast.

Telephone 01753 644599

RUNNYMEDE MOTOR COMPANY

A

STON

M

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ARTIN IN THE

Mobile 07836 222111

THAMES VALLEY

1954 Aston Martin DB2/4 Coupe

E

UNNYMED

Fresh from 40 years of single ownership by an enthusiastic member of the AMOC, this 1954 DB2/4 has remained in Mobile fine condition and is a delightful driving car. The engineer owner, now in his 80’s, has enjoyed this car to the full.

07836 222111 Accompanied by his wife, he has taken part in numerous UK and continental A S T O N M A R T I N I N T H E T H A M E Stours V A Lon L Ewhich Y the car has performed faultlessly. These have included tours to Monte Carlo, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Sweden as well as hill climbs at Wiscombe and various concours events. Maintained by the owner with more major maintenance being carried out by Marque experts Davron Engineering in Wiltshire. Converted to unleaded fuel in 1997, repainted in 1988 Ferrari Testarossa finished in Rosso Corsa with Crema Hide interior. This is a very 1998 Ferrari 355 GTS F1 finished in Rosso Corsa with Nero Hide with red stitching. This is a 2008, re-trimmed interior and a new clutch fitted with improvements in 2013 fine example that has had only 5 owners from new and is in superlative condition as to be very pretty example of the marque that has covered a relatively high mileage of 89,000 but to the steering box and wiper motor. If you are looking for a very presentable expected from an 80’s Supercar that has covered only 21,000 miles. This is a twin mirror has always been well maintained and comes with a full maintenance record which includes DB2/4 at reasonable cost, please make an appoint to view. £145,000.

Telephone 01753 644599

MOTOR COMPANY

example and comes with a comprehensive service history together with numerous MOT certificates all of which back up the low mileage of this fine motor car. Both the exterior coachwork and the sumptuous interior are completely unmarked and the car has only just had a full cambelt service and refinishing of the cam covers with Ferrari experts QV London, an invoice for which is on file. Competitively priced for such a low mileage example at £137,500

1988 Ferrari Testarossa finished in Rosso Corsa with Crema Hide interior. This is a very fine example that has had only 5 owners from new and is in superlative condition as to be expected from an 80’ s Supercar covered only 21,000 miles. This is a twin mirror 1958 Aston Martin DB Markthat IIIhas Coupe example and comes with a comprehensive service history together with numerous MOT certificates all of which back up the low mileage of this fine motor car. Both the exterior 1958 Aston coachwork Martin DBand MkIII in pale metalic blue withunmarked contrasting thefinished sumptuous interior are completely and grey the car has only just hide interior.had This carcambelt has been the and pride and joyofofthe a fastidious who QV London, a full service refinishing cam coversgentleman with Ferrari experts has owned itanfor over 20 years.

The car is also fitted with the essential overdrive invoice for which is on file. Competitively priced for such a low mileage example at £137,500 unit. New Michelins fitted in 2016 since when the car has covered only 2,500 miles One of the best driving Feltham Astons that we have ever had the pleasure of handling. Around £82,000 has been spent on the upgrades to the engine , steering and suspension and every invoice for this work is included with the car.

Also present 15 mot certificates showing a total mileageand of less than 10,000 The 365are GTC/4 shares the chassis, wheelbase, suspension engine with the 365 Daytona. miles since Maintained anthe annual basisby Wrendetuned Classicsfrom whose In the2003.

Pininfarina designedon 2+2, engine was slightly the detailed Daytona to 340bhp, invoicing towards a very comprehensive history file - maintenance the contributes suspension set-up was slightly softer and power-steering and air conditioning were has been onas a “No expense spared” Please come and drive to apprecifitted standard.

However, withbasis. only 500 being produced and itsuch a close relationship ate its with exceptional qualities. the iconic Daytona,£250,000 the 365 GTC/4 has remained an under-appreciated and under-

valued car, making it an enticing investment opportunity. This 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC4 is a LHD, concours example (a term we rarely use), finished in black with black hide interior and sitting on perfect Borrani wire wheels. It has had just one owner for the past 27 years during which time it has formed part of an important collection, rubbing shoulders with an early The 365 shares the chassis, wheelbase, suspension engine with 365 Daytona.

Testarossa andGTC/4 a 275 GTB 4 cam and other iconic motor cars. Itand comes with anthe original book Pininfarina designed 2+2, the engine was slightly detuned frombooklet the Daytona to 340bhp, pack inInathe leather bound wallet including the original Ferrari warranty and both sets the suspension set-up was slightly softer and power-steering and air conditioning were of original tools. A full service has just been completed and the car is now completely ready fitted as standard. However, with only 500 being produced and such a close relationship for use. Fitted as standard with air conditioning, this car has Ferrari Classiche certification with the iconic Daytona, the 365 GTC/4 has remained an under-appreciated and underand is valued Probably The Best in the World. £365,000. car, making it an enticing investment opportunity. This 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC4 is a

LHD, concours example (a term we rarely use), finished in black with black hide interior and sitting on perfect Borrani wire wheels. It has had just one owner for the past 27 years during which time it has formed part of an important collection, rubbing shoulders with an early Testarossa and a 275 GTB 4 cam and other iconic motor cars. It comes with an original book pack in a leather bound wallet including the original Ferrari warranty booklet and both sets of original tools. A full service has just been completed and the car is now completely ready for use. Fitted as standard with air conditioning, this car has Ferrari Classiche certification and is Probably The Best in the World. £365,000.

all cam belt changes, the next of which is not due until 2019. Fitted with the GTS removable roof panel which stows behind the seats, air conditioning 5 spoke alloy wheels, paddleshift transmission and Ferrari wing badges. A new set of Pirelli P Zeros have only just been fitted and a new mot certificate will accompany the car together with the benefit of a 12 month warranty which is annually renewable. Sensibly priced at £65,000.

1998 Ferrari 355 GTS F1 finished in Rosso Corsa with Nero Hide with red stitching. This is a very pretty example of the marque that has covered a relatively high mileage of 89,000 but has always been well maintained and comes with a full maintenance record which includes all cam belt changes, the next of which is not due until 2019. Fitted with the GTS removable roof panel which stows behind the seats, air conditioning 5 spoke alloy wheels, paddleshift transmission and Ferrari wing badges. A new set of Pirelli P Zeros have only just been fitted and a new mot certificate will accompany the car together with the benefit of a 12 month warranty which is annually renewable. Sensibly priced at £65,000.

2009 Ferrari California Spider finished in Tour de France Blue with biscuit hide interior. This is a beautiful example that has covered just over 37,000 miles and comes with Ferrari service history. The 4300cc engine produces 435 BHP and 358 lbs of torque and has a top speed of 193 mph. This cleverly designed coupe convertible is both versatile and practical for use in all weathers and the cockpit remains cosy with the roof open even at very high speeds. The specification includes Carbon ceramic brakes with yellow callipers, DVD navigation system with 6.5” screen, Bi-Xenon headlamps, front and rear parking censors, Wing badges, alloy pedals, full Ferrari tool kit, climate control and a fully retractable electric roof. The car has had just 2 previous owners and has been well kept throughout and is competitively priced at £74,950.

2009 Ferrari California finished in Tour de France with biscuit hide interior. This 1967Spider Aston Martin DB6Blue Saloon is a beautiful example that has covered just over 37,000 miles and comes with Ferrari service history. The 4300cc engine produces 435 BHP and 358 lbs of torque and has a top speed of 1967 Aston Martin DB6 Saloon finished in Silver Birch with contrasting black 193 mph. This cleverly designed coupe convertible is both versatile and practical for use in hide interior and original speed ZF manual Sold all weathers and the cockpit remains cosy with5the roof open even attransmission. very high speeds.

Theby us over 20 years ago to thebrakes current owner completely restoredsystem by us back in specification includes Carbon ceramic with yellowand callipers, DVD navigation 2010. The restoration leftrear noparking stone censors, unturned and the car was taken back to with 6.5” screen, Bi-Xenon headlamps, front and Wing badges, alloy pedals, bare shell.

Any completely at2the time full Ferrari tool kit,aclimate control andminor a fullycorrosion retractablewas electric roof. Theerradicated car has had just andhas every part was either refurbished or replaced where previous owners and beenmoving well kept throughout andcompletely is competitively priced at £74,950. necessary. The suspension was upgraded with an RS Williams handling kit for improved road holding and the engine was completely rebuilt to 4.2 litres and to beyond Vantage specification. The car was fully re-trimmed by GH Wright and Company in Milton Keynes using Connelly hides and best quality Wilton Carpet throughout. Since the restoration, the car has covered only 7,900 dry miles and has been used for club events. Realistically priced at £325,000

1990 Ferrari 328 GTS finished in Rosso Corsa with Crème hide interior and red carpet 1984 Ferrari 308 GTS finished in Rosso Corsa with Crème hide interior. This is an extremely throughout. The 328 GTS was designed by Pininfarina and built by Scaglietti. This beautiful well maintained motor car that has covered above average mileage but has been regularly comes with a DB6 very comprehensive 1969example Aston Martin Vantage service history and during the most recent maintained regardless of cost. The condition of this motor car belies the mileage and custodians ownership it has been regularly serviced by the well-respected Ferrari preparers, both body and interior are in very good condition. Accompanying the car is a detailed QV in Windsor. As an original UK supplied right hand drive model, this car is a very record of past works including all cam belt changes, together with an original book pack.

1969 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage finished in Dubonnet Rosso with contrastcollectable classic and becoming increasingly difficult to find in this condition at what we It will be supplied with the benefit of a 12 month comprehensive warranty and a fresh mot ing pale beige hide interior. Only 3 owners from new, the last of whom is an consider to be a realistic price level. The car has the benefit of a maintenance portfolio certificate. Undoubtedly one of the most inexpensive 308’s currently available at £57,500. enthusiastic lady member of the Aston Martin Owners Club who purchased it full of service receipts by the likes ofin QV, Lancaster, BobCrème Houghton, Talacrest, Neal Lucas Ferrari 328car GTS Corsa with hide interior in 2003. She1990 has used the forfinished numerousRosso events organised by the club and and red carpet 1984 Ferrari 308 GTS finished in Rosso Corsa with Crème hide interior. This is an extremely and Monaco Motors.

QV have justdesigned completed a full cambelt service and the This fitting of a well maintained motor car that has covered above average mileage but has been regularly throughout.

Thehad 328the GTScar was

by Pininfarina and built

by Scaglietti. beautiful during her ownership has regularly maintained with various well new clutch.

The car sits on its factory alloy wheels all and of which are in excellent example comes with veryoriginal comprehensive service during known marque specialists, all ofawhich is recorded within thehistory well-kept historythe most recent maintained regardless of cost. The condition of this motor car belies the mileage and condition.

The original bookitpack is supplied with the car inthe itswell-respected original leather bound wallet custodians has been regularly file. Built from new to ownership Vantage specification, this isserviced one ofby only 69 genuine Ferrari preparers, both body and interior are in very good condition. Accompanying the car is a detailed and contains all of the As relevant documentation together with drive 2 setsmodel, of keys.this Thecar Ferrari QV with in Windsor. anZF original UK making supplied is a 328 very record of past works including all cam belt changes, together with an original book pack.

RHD Vantages the 5 speed gearbox itright veryhand rare indeed.

Rehas always had the strong being one of thetomost Ferraris produced collectable classic andreputation becoming for increasingly difficult find reliable in this condition at what we It will be supplied with the benefit of a 12 month comprehensive warranty and a fresh mot corded within the chronologically kept history file is the fact that in 1970 when and the mileagetospeaks volumes.

Realistically consider be a realistic price level. The priced car has£65,950. the benefit of a maintenance portfolio certificate. Undoubtedly one of the most inexpensive 308’s currently available at £57,500. the car was only one year old, the wheel arches were flared in line with the full of service receipts by the likes of QV, Lancaster, Bob Houghton, Talacrest, Neal Lucas new design and of the DB6 MkII which appeared that year.

At the same time, More Astons can be by visiting our website at www.runnymedemotorcompany.com or please call Martin Brewer for more details on any of our cars.

Monaco Motors.

QVfound have just completed a full cambelt servicethe and the fitting of a gear lever was replaced with MkII gear lever.

Meticulously maintained newalso clutch.

The car sitsaon its original factory alloy wheels all of on which are in excellent We are seriously low stock, please telephone if you have an Aston Martin to sell. and a delight to drive.The Although DB6pack prices have levelled the condition. original book is supplied with theout, car in its Vantage original leather bound wallet version remains the most and documentation this car is nowtogether represents good and contains alldesirable of the relevant withvery 2 sets of keys. The Ferrari 328 value at £250,000 has always had the strong reputation for being one of the most reliable Ferraris produced and the mileage speaks volumes. Realistically priced £65,950.

Email: sales@runnymedemotorcompany.com www.runnymedemotorcompany.com

I-254604.indd 1

We currently havebe35found cars in which can be at found by visiting our website at www.runnymedemotorcompany.com please call on Martin for More Astons can bystock visiting our website www.runnymedemotorcompany.com or please call Martin Brewer foror more details any ofBrewer our cars.

18/01/2018 more details on any We of our We are on telephone stock, please telephone you have something are cars. seriously lowseriously on stock,low please if you have an ifAston Martin to sell. interesting to sell.

Email: sales@runnymedemotorcompany.com www.runnymedemotorcompany.com

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COL L EC T IONS

Keeping your collection clean PHOTO BY ALAMY

Don’t make this necessary but time-consuming task any harder than it needs to be, says the former curator of the Bernie Ecclestone collection WOR D S ROB E RT DE A N

THE ISSUE WITH looking after a collection of more than 100 cars and bikes is that the economy of scale features in almost everything. Take cleaning and polishing, for instance.

If you own one or two cars or bikes, then you can spend a morning washing and polishing them, then hoovering and dusting the interior.

You can put your pride and joy back in the garage well pleased with your efforts – and after a week of use you can start again. However, you can’t do that with numerous cars – otherwise that’s all you’d be doing.

I won’t bore you with ‘how to polish’ details, but it may interest you to know how I managed to keep everything clean on my own. Over the years I have been offered every conceivable cream and potion that the supplier will tell you is the best on the market, but I always try everything because, well, it might be.

Yet some polishes just produce more dust than was already on the car, which simply means more work.

A person who looks after an F1 team’s historic racers once told me they use Mr Sheen, but when I tried it I found that, once buffed and left for a few days, it turned into a matt, sticky smear that attracted every dust particle in the building. This worked for them because they had one person polishing cars all the time.

Then I was told to use a siliconbased spray that did a similar thing to Mr Sheen – but it turned out to be

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infinitely more difficult to re-polish.

In the end I keep going back to Autoglym, which goes on nicely and comes off with minimum dust. It also leaves a lasting shine; I then just use a ‘detailing’ spray to remove dust and spider poo. This spray has saved me many days of extra work, as it cleans back to the original polish using just a fine mist and a cloth.

Rubber components also need to be cleaned, or else a sort of oily black carbon leaches out of it that turns the tyres brown and your trousers black (and it never comes out, believe me). Curiously enough, the Autoglym rubber cleaner never did it for me. I tried other products, but in the end I found that WD40 sprayed onto a cloth left a nice, clean, matt finish. I never liked the ‘wet look’ on tyres, even on a show car – it always looked like they were trying too hard.

Incidentally, if you have whitewall tyres, these tend to go a sort of dirty yellow colour. It took ages with me trying different things including household cleaners; I even tried the stuff you put on cricket whites, but it looked terrible and I had to clean that off as well. In the end, it turns out white spirit cleans the whitewall up a treat. Simply splash some onto a soft cloth and scrub away, give it a buff up afterwards with a clean cloth and Florida here we come.

On the subject of tyres, if your car stands for a long period of time these will ‘flat spot’, and it will be

ABOVE Keeping a collection of classics gleaming requires elbow grease – but these tips will help you.

like driving on Thrupenny bits (ask your grandad what they are – unless he’s a Cockney, in which case it means something else). For storage I used to inflate the tyres to 50 percent more than the driving pressure – but if you have only a few cars you can buy a ‘tyre saver’ cradle, in which you sit the tyre and it keeps the bottom of the rubber round. Works, too!

The classic car industry is overburdened with polishes. These wares range from those that are supposed to be a quick ‘squirt and go’ – which they never are – to ones that require you to warm the product on the thighs of Tyrolean nuns before polishing it to a celestial shine. Still, a bit of competition is a good thing.

What I’m saying is that for me, after the initial really good polish, speed of clean was the important thing. If I was to get through everything, then I figured about

‘Some polishes just produce more dust than was already on the car, which means more work’

ten to 15 minutes per car.

So try different cleaning products and pick what works for you, but don’t buy “because it was cheap” as there is always a reason why it was cheap. Similarly, don’t go for a very high-end polish for use on your everyday classic; it’s not necessary.

Looking after the interior is easy, but if your car has a soft-top please, please always park it with the roof erected. This applies to both vinyl and mohair hoods. The reason for this is that both fabrics shrink like mad, and you end up with creases.

These become full of dust, twigs and crumbs (I never know how they get there, but they do), and the creases can be difficult to remove.

To de-crease a vinyl roof, raise the hood and stand the car in the sunshine. For mohair, get a cotton tea towel, damp it and place it over the crease. Then take an iron on full steam and gently run it over the affected area. You can make a thick pad from another tea towel to put inside if you need to press on it, but generally I let the steam draw out the crease. I’m not going to say anything about ‘health and safety’, as I assume you’re all sensible enough not to use the flat of your hand to iron against.

There are many other tips, such as painting watered-down Swarfega onto your spoke wheels to clean them before hosing them off, but you’ve probably got more important things to be doing in the garage...

ASTON MARTIN

SHORT CHASSIS VOLANTE We are delighted to offer this extremely original LHD example which was delivered in December 1965 to Los Angeles as the official Motor Show car. With just 12 LHD Short Chassis Volantes ever built, this is considered by many to be one of the most sought-after and rare Touring models ever produced by Aston Martin.

Presented today in its original colour combination of Autumn Gold with Beige trim, and is further complemented by a Tan Everflex hood, manual gearbox and Normalair air conditioning. This matching numbers car has been extensively restored for its current owner, overseen by David Jack of Aston Engineering. £POA

astonengineering.co.uk LONSDALE HOUSE, KINGSWAY PARK CLOSE, DERBY DE22 3FP Tel: +44 (0)1332 371566

THERE ARE FEW COMPANIES WITH THE COMBINED EXPERIENCE AND VERSATILITY ENJOYED BY ASTON ENGINEERING — N Linney DB5 owner RESTOR ATION

CAR S

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SERVICING

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L EGA L A DV IC E

How to verify provenance Establishing the true identity and history of a car is crucial, as our collector car expert at Healys solicitors explains W O R D S C L I V E R O B E R T S O N , H E A LY S L L P

1965, OPALESCENT SILVER blue, navy leather, wires; buying an E-type was going to be a step up, and while I knew about plugs, points and so on, I felt I needed a second opinion.

Just as well, since it transpired that the car had suffered from heavy frontal damage – and so steered to the nearside over 60mph. This was my first lesson in what is now known as provenance. The Oxford English Dictionary refers to: “A record of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality.” As far as classic or collector cars go, verifying provenance is the precursor to any purchase. This is found in an examination of the model’s history in terms of documentation and condition, with ‘authenticity’ or originality of both being key.

Interestingly, many believe that originality requires a car to retain its chassis, engine, gearbox and body as fitted at manufacture or construction, but the Court of Appeal took a more pragmatic approach in the case of old Bentley No.1. The only remaining part from original manufacture was the front crossmember. However, the Court took the view that the proven continuous history could, in essence, constitute originality.

T H E D O C U M E N TAT I O N Road-car documentation is relatively simple. The UK’s registration V5c states: “This document is not proof of ownership.” This is followed by a note of the Registered Keeper. The buyer is thus put on notice to determine the owner’s identity. The V5c also records basic data that assists in identification, including number of former owners, chassis/ engine numbers plus paint colour.

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MoT certificates accompany most UK cars (not necessarily MoTexempt models), confirming that the vehicle is roadworthy and showing recorded mileage at the time of the annual test. Maintenance records should be available for inspection, and an HPI check or similar (according to territory) will record accident damage, theft and mileage.

THE COMPETITION CAR Unregistered race or rally cars present more problems where documentation is concerned, as there are no statutory requirements in place and hence no registers of information available for inspection.

The following information, which might accompany the car, should be examined: original documents such as ownership history; Bills of Sale; history files; race and competition entries and results; magazines; FIA/ HTP papers; photos; correspondence; repair/maintenance invoices. Thirdparty sources of data include maker and constructor records, museums and archives, as well as the archives of race tracks and host clubs. Onemarque clubs can be valuable, too.

Assembling data from available sources can prove daunting for a single purchaser, so thought might be given to the appointment of independent auto historians. These are skilled in researching and collating information from many different sources, often having access to material not available to all.

Such specialists can add positive value by augmenting the history of a known car. More crucially, they can unearth evidence that exposes wrongly attributed provenance, or uncover cars that do not match

their purported history.

Outside of the established grand marque dealers and auction houses, it seems that such historians are rarely consulted. This is surprising, given the affordable cost of this expertise as an expense when set against the cost of a successful acquisition – and even more so the cost of an unsatisfactory transaction.

Finally, if examination of a car’s papers raises concerns of any kind, those papers should be very closely scrutinised. If a document looks unconvincing, there will be a reason; ageing and alterations often appear overdone. If necessary, consideration should then be given to consulting handwriting and/or forensic experts to settle authenticity.

THE INSPECTION Inspection is an absolute must for any classic. Firstly to ensure that the car complies with representations made in terms of spec, matching numbers and so on, and secondly to understand the model’s mechanical condition and its suitability for purpose, also as represented by the seller.

Specialist engineers should be appointed who are familiar with the marque. Their inspection should include an extensive road test, with a full written report of the findings.

This will form another paragraph in the history of the car.

As with classics, unregistered race or rally cars also require thorough examination in the context of their known history and documentation.

It’s extremely rare to find any form of competition car with matching numbers – as witness old No.1.

Matters can be further complicated by manufacturers and constructors changing and re-issuing chassis numbers in period for quite plausible reasons. Such moves can create much confusion down the years; if there’s any hint of this, call in an historian.

Similarly, when looking to buy cars that are exceptional in terms of

‘Assembling data can be daunting, so thought might be given to appointing an auto historian’

race history, rarity or value, it’d be wise to ask an instructed historian to ensure there are no competing chassis. Often, however, there are reasonable grounds for such apparent duplication. Race-car chassis are subjected to extraordinary wear and tear in the course of several seasons, and tired units are often replaced. It happens that the discarded chassis can be acquired in later years and then built up with period parts.

Competing chassis can also be found in other circumstances that are less sensibly explained. Where a particular car has been ‘lost’ for many years, that vehicle may be ‘rediscovered’, only for the original, genuine ‘lost’ car to reappear.

Fortunately, science can assist in helping to establish provenance.

One instance involved my work with a client who owned a wonderful torpedo-bodied 1939 Alfa Romeo 2.5 SS. The English club had been disparaging about the car, as had the Alfa museum. A sample of the chassis was removed and submitted for analysis – which confirmed that it was made from metal cast in 1939.

THE CONTRACT Having successfully undertaken due diligence, the prudent buyer should then secure the purchase by setting out the agreed terms in a contract.

The parties, buyer and seller should be clearly identified. The car should be described in detail by reference to the disclosed documentation, and any included parts should be detailed in a Schedule to the agreement.

The price agreed should be stated, along with any arrangements for payment of a deposit, the balance and delivery. Most importantly, vital representations made by the seller relating to matters such as mileage, condition, previous owners and history can be cast in terms of warranties, so allowing the buyer recourse in the event of those warranties being breached.

In conclusion, while most of what’s been discussed here can be categorised as common sense spiced with a dash of law, we often rush to purchase our dreams despite best advice and our better instincts.

I so very nearly bought that glamorous E-type, but settled a decade later for a ’67 in white with a black interior. It never hit the spot.

Visit us at Automobilia Monterey Monday ~ Wednesday, August 12-14

H I STOR IC

R AC I NG

PHOTO BY ASTON MARTIN LAGONDA

What’s the right race car for you?

Our professional motor sport driver, coach and historic racing specialist advises on what to buy WOR D S SA M H A NCO C K

THESE HALCYON DAYS of historic racing, triggered by Goodwood’s motor sport revival 20 years ago, appear limitless. The landscape has evolved from friendly gatherings of enthusiasts enjoying (relatively) affordable competition, to something resembling a sport of kings. Car values have followed suit – and the price of entry can be eye watering.

The silver lining, however, is that competitors can often offset the cost of their hobby with the appreciating value of their machines.

How long can it go on for? Who knows, but as the classic road car sector stutters slightly, the extensive usability of competition models – buoyed by the recent introduction of some excellent new series – seems to have provided tangible resilience.

So, what to race? Well, it depends on your taste, budget and experience.

Not to mention geographic location, availability and so on. That’s too broad a brush to paint with here, so allow me to recount contrasting examples of recent suggestions to clients with very different briefs: CLIENT 1: Made a few bob, new to the scene, keen to dip a toe in For newcomers, the sheer cost of motor sport can be terrifying – even for those who can afford it. I always encourage buying a car that ticks as many use boxes as possible. One you can use on road and track, in circuit races and rallies. If you can go out to

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dinner in it, so much the better.

One great candidate is an early Porsche 911, race-prepped to FIA pre-66 regulations and eligible for the booming 2.0L Cup. Just a season old, this series is already a roaring success; the 911’s charm and versatility attract newcomers and experienced racers alike. The car is a dream to drive, sliding progressively enough for a novice to manage, but demanding absolute precision and commitment from old hands trying to top the times.

Would I prefer something with a bit more power? Yes, but you can’t have it all, and with opportunities to race, rally and tour 911s the world over, you’ll struggle to find a more eligible car. Values have risen five-ten percent since the series’ inception; co-founder James Turner of Sports Purpose says these now range “from £160,000 to £250,000 subject to condition and level of chassis and engine prep”.

So, not exactly an entry-level purchase, but the cars hold their value and, once in, you can race in places like Monza, Paul Ricard and Spa for £5000-£8000 per weekend including entry fees and team support. As ever, it’s possible to spend less – and it’s certainly possible to spend more!

CLIENT 2: Experienced historic racer with several cars, looking for the best overall experience.

Budget? Not a ‘priority’ concern…

There’s a motor sport myth that the

ABOVE Newly historic-eligible GTs such as this Vantage GT4 are fast, forgiving and relatively affordable.

faster the car, the harder it is to drive.

I also assumed this, until my first experience of a ‘serious’ racing car, testing for Kremer Racing in 2001. Its Lola B98/10, fitted with a snarling Roush V8, represented the top tier of sports prototypes; with 600bhp, massive downforce and huge slicks, it was double of everything I was used to.

I was genuinely nervous, but it took half a lap to realise I was worried about nothing. The smooth power delivery was delicious, the gearbox effortless and the handling sublime. It was infinitely easier than anything I’d experienced; I learned never to fear ‘quick’ cars again.

The myth pervades in historics today, and seems to dissuade many competitors with appropriate means from considering young, powerful sports prototypes or single-seaters.

Thankfully, things are changing

‘ For newcomers, a car you can use on road and track, in circuit races and rallies is the best bet’

courtesy of Peter Auto’s Endurance Racing Legends series and the Aston Martin Masters Endurance Legends.

Each caters for Le Mans-style machinery of the past 20 years or so, both GT and prototypes.

The former, more affordable, less intimidating, cars are popular, but some prospective competitors have hesitated about their ability to handle prototypes. Such a shame, as they’re missing out on a fantastic drive. Yes, it can take time to extract a high-downforce prototype’s full potential, but any seasoned sports car pro will say that keeping a GT on the road can be harder than doing so in a prototype.

Naturally the illustrious brands in GTs enhance their desirability, but this simply makes prototypes even better value. Early adopters are now laughing all the way to the bank; eligible prototypes have doubled (or more) in value in the past few years, making it hard to find bargains.

At the ‘lower’ end, £300,000£500,000 will buy a great LMP2 or less prominent LMP1. Around £1m will buy a major privateer LMP1 entry, such as a Pescarolo or Dallara, with a Judd V10 and probably a top-six Le Mans finish. And £2m-£3m will snare an ex-factory LMP1 Peugeot or Bentley… if you can find one.

Beware the running costs, though.

That recent photo of a black hole in a galaxy far, far away springs to mind...

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Gordon Murray on the McLaren F1 How do you go about creating a clean-sheet supercar with innovative features and worldbeating performance?

This is how...

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I WROTE MYSELF notes on what the car should be. It was really interesting, because from day one I just wanted it to be the ultimate driver’s car; the ultimate engineered car. I didn’t want to look at what Ferrari did and go: “OK, well, we’ll make that a bit better.” I just wanted to clear my head of everything. It was much more about exorcising the bad things sports cars and supercars had. So that’s why I drove everything – the Bugatti EB110, Ferrari F40, Jaguar XJ220, Porsche 959...

I’d just got an NSX from Honda, which was very good. I said: “Right, we’ll keep the good bits – the ride and handling – and I’ll drive all these things and write down their failings; that you can’t see out, the pedal offsets, lack of luggage space, air-con doesn’t work, quality of the welding and all that.” I’d just try and exorcise all those bits and then, of course, the other thing was the construction.

I thought, I know nobody’s made a carbonfibre road car before, but it’s just got to be carbonfibre. I’d used it in Formula 1 in the late 1970s.

McLaren was famous for having the first honeycomb carbonfibre chassis in 1981, and it should be carbon. But how the hell are you going to do that? There’s nobody around to make those bits or design those bits or calculate on a road car how the doors would work or whatever. So it was quite a leap into the unknown from a materials point of view.

Everybody said: “You will hate moving from racing to road cars, because there are all these regs about where the mirrors have to be,

where the lights have to be and stuff like that.” It couldn’t have been more opposite because there were no performance regulations. After years of people telling you: “You can’t have moveable aerodynamic devices, you can’t have this and you can’t have that,” there was not one. And still today, there’s not one performance regulation for road cars. I thought, this is a great job – it’s fantastic!

I was building this picture of what the car should be, writing all these notes down of what it should look like, how big it should be, what it should do. But never once was there: “It should have the highest top speed of any car.” That was an accident.

I was adamant it was going to be the world’s first ground-effect road car, because I’d come from that in F1. It was going to be the world’s first carbonfibre structure. Wherever possible, I’d get rid of metal – it’d all be composites. And it’d certainly be the lightest supercar by a long way.

The secondary list included active brake cooling and aerodynamics – you can have all that stuff.

I’d driven all the other supercars, and the one thing that was absolutely dreadful was the offset driving position. They all try to make the cabin very small so you’ve always got the cant rail and the glass up against the side of you. The A-pillar is right where you want to try and see to place the front wheels when you’re driving quickly. The pedals were offset in relation to the seats because of the front wheel intrusion.

That was all just horrible.

So I started just sketching layouts.

Then I remembered I’d drawn, when I was at college, a central-seat car.

And, of course, I was drawing one at that time with the Rocket.

Our brand was racing cars, and they were all central seat with the driver in the middle. Surely that’s got to be the ultimate. I remembered that when I’d sketched this car all those years before, it didn’t only have the driver sitting in the middle, but it had two slightly offset rearward seats. Ferrari had done a prototype with a central driving position, but it hadn’t done the offset seats. But when you have three people in a row, the car gets big and wide. And that’s what I didn’t want.

The sketch I’d done in college in the 1960s had this arrowhead formation where the passengers were far enough behind the driver that their shoulders went behind the driver. Your hips are very narrow; it’s your shoulders that are wide.

Actually the car was the same width as a two-seater, so I revived that idea.

Suddenly everything started falling into place in my head. If there was a central driving position, it negated all the horrible things you had in current supercars. It certainly gave you fantastic control and visibility for driving fast. With the three-seater tucked-in idea, it didn’t make it any bigger than a normal car.

And most of all, if you were going to buy an expensive, ‘best in the world’-type car, then: “It’s my car.

The passengers are incidental. They are slightly behind me. If I’m driving quickly down a lane, I’m in control, I’m in the middle, like an F1 car.”

THIS EXTRACT IS TAKEN FROM THE NEW BOOK ONE FORMULA – 50 YEARS OF CAR DESIGN

F1 was unique in so many ways – but Murray still upholds that its world-beating top speed was purely an “accident”.

1969 FERRARI 365 GTC Regarded as one of the ďŹ nest Ferrari GT models. One of just 22 right-hand drive cars with an outstanding ownership history, delivered new in 1969 to Viscount Portman, subsequent owners included Sir Anthony Bamford and 250 GTO owners the Hilton Brothers

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