Octane 255

THE ULTIMATE VINTAGE BENTLEY COLLECTION – YOURS FOR A MERE £17 MILLION

QUATTRO! 40 YEARS OF THE AUDI SPORT QUATTRO

CO-DRIVING WITH RALLY ICON STIG BLOMQVIST AUDI INSIDERS ON WHAT MADE IT GREAT

PLUS

WILDEST WINGED DODGE DAYTONA MASERATI KHAMSIN: GANDINI’S GREATEST PEKING TO PARIS IN PICTURES • LOTUS ELAN SHAPECRAFT • KYLESKU BRIDGE • CITROËN MEHARI BUYING GUIDE £5.99 / AUS $14.99, ISSUE 255, SEPTEMBER 2024

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One of the final 959s built

Quail Lodge & Golf Club | 16 August | Catalogue Online

1993 PORSCHE 959 KOMFORT ‘SERIES II’

The ex Captain George Eyston, Count Giovanni “Johnny” Lurani Cernuschi, Tazio Nuvolari and Elsie “Bill” Wisdom. Mille Miglia, Ulster Tourist Trophy, International Trophy Brooklands

Chichester, West Sussex | 7 September | Entries Invited

ENQUIRIES +44 (0) 20 7468 5801 ukcars@bonhamscars.com

+1 (415) 391 4000 - West Coast +1 (212) 461 6514 - East Coast uscars@bonhamscars.com

bonhamscars.com/revival

bonhamscars.com/quail

1933 MG MAGNETTE SUPERCHARGED (K3) TEAM CAR

Forthcoming auctions ZOUTE SALE Knokke-Heist, Le Zoute | 6 October 2024 +32 (0) 476 87 94 71 | eucars@bonhamscars.com

Issue 255 / September 2024

CONTENTS ‘IT APPEARS WITH LITTLE WARNING AS THE GRASS VERGE DROPS AWAY TO THE DARK LOCH BELOW’ BEAUTIFUL KYLESKU BRIDGE, PAGE 110

76

86

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PROUD SPONSORS OF THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORIC MOTORING AWARDS 2024

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Issue 255 / September 2024

CONTENTS 100

94

FEATURES AUDI SPORT QUATTRO Page 52 Celebrating 40 years of the rally and road legend – with Stig Blomqvist

VINTAGE BENTLEYS Page 64 Driving an exclusive £17m collection 114

64

52

LOTUS ELAN SHAPECRAFT Page 76 Ultra-rare special-bodied 26R fastback

PEKING TO PARIS Page 86 Photographic mementoes of an epic rally

THE OCTANE INTERVIEW Page 94 Insurance, events, more: McKeel Hagerty

DODGE DAYTONA Page 100 The NASCAR-bred winged wonder

KYLESKU BRIDGE Page 110 Well worth making a long trip to cross

MASERATI KHAMSIN Page 114 Gandini left his mark on this prototype 5

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Issue 255 / September 2024

CONTENTS 16

REGULARS EVENTS & NEWS Page 16 The month in pictures; essential diary dates; classic car market opens up to China

COLUMNS Page 41 Monthly motormouthing from Jay Leno, Derek Bell, Stephen Bayley and Robert Coucher

LETTERS Page 49 Insider recalls Bentley’s 2001 return to Le Mans

OCTANE CARS Page 126 134

146

Drag-racing ‘Doris the Daimler’ at Santa Pod

OVERDRIVE Page 134 The invigorating new Aston Martin Valour

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN Page 142 British racing anti-hero Ian Burgess

GEARBOX Page 144 RM Auctions’ Peter Wallman’s favourite stuff

ICON Page 146

152

The extraordinary Sacco beanbag chair

CHRONO Page 148 The collectable origins of quartz watches

150

144

BOOKS Page 150 Everything you’ll want to be reading

GEAR Page 152 Newly extended! Wallets at the ready…

THE MARKET Page 158 Auctions, dealers, stats; buy a Citroën Mehari

AUTOBIOGRAPHY Page 186 TV art and antiques expert Marc Allum 6

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16TH

21ST

MARCH 2025

REGIS TE R AT

C A P E10 0 0.C OM

SOUTH

A FRI C A’S

MOST

BEAUTIFUL

DRIVE

Issue 255 / September 2024

FEATURING

STEFAN WARTER

JAYSON FONG ‘Pre-war Bentleys versus a tiny yet very special Lotus Elan: all British-made, but built with completely different approaches to performance. I’d take the Lotus for the track and Bentley for the pub!’

Jayson’s superb photography accompanies Robert Coucher’s vintage Bentley story on pages 64-74 and James Elliott’s Lotus feature on pages 76-84.

EDITOR’S WELCOME

Four wheels good THERE’S A REASON why the Audi Sport quattro is celebrating its 40th anniversary fully four years after the original model (above) took a bow in 1980. For years the permanent fourwheel-drive quattro and its clearly road-carbased A1 and A2 evolutions were deemed perfectly adequate for road and competition use. They did OK, too, in the hands of Mouton, Blomqvist, Röhrl and Mikkola.

But even with hindsight it is difficult to acknowledge the depth of change that Group B brought to motorsport – there was a 288 GTO, for heaven’s sake – and the sheer lunacy that homologation would then repackage for the road. Group B was gloriously special, and shifted the pace of competition in such a way that the technology race became just as important as the rallies.

So Audi needed a special quattro, and the pumped-up pitbull Sport was born: shorter, broader, lighter, stickier, meaner, brawnier and faster. And then that, too, bled onto the road as one of the BEST. THINGS. EVER. SUCH EVOLUTION IS not dissimilar to what is currently happening at Octane. As many of you know, we were taken over by Hothouse Media just before Christmas and since then there has been a programme of investment and change, all of it for the better.

You will have noticed the improved paper quality in the magazine and also the increased number of feature articles, I hope, but there are

plenty more exciting developments to share.

Some of you will already know that we now have a new website at octane-magazine.com. It is packed with feature articles, buying guides and news, and we will be adding to it daily to keep you abreast of everything that is happening in the classic and performance car world. Better still, we will soon be launching a weekly newsletter, so make sure you visit the website and sign up for that.

As well as selling single issues, books and merchandise, the site has been carefully designed as the perfect place for you to buy, renew and maintain your Octane subscription.

To celebrate this leap in the digital world, the team has come up with two very special deals: trial offers are now available globally and all print subscriptions come with access to the Octane app that, among other things, gives digital access to years of back issues. So you can read about the original Audi quattro, too, which starred on the cover of issue 202.

WILL BROADHEAD ‘Fly to Beijing and drive home: that’s how I describe the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge to people, except the drive home is largely through the Gobi Desert. There aren’t many jobs that include a commute across two continents and eight countries.’

Will captured the spirit of this gruelling 14,500km epic, as you’ll see on pages 86-92.

MARC SONNERY ‘The Maserati Khamsin prototype was an elusive icon, so to have it unveiled back to its original spec before participants at Khamsin Quaranta by Marcello Gandini himself was one of those very special moments that you never forget.’

Find out more on pages 114-122.

James Elliott, editor in chief

COVER IMAGES RETAIL AUDI / ROBERT HEFFERON SUBSCRIPTION EVAN KLEIN

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28 – 31 AUGUST 2024 BLENHEIM PALACE

The Greatest Concours Experience in the World

1957 Ferrari 335 S photographed by Christian Martin

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Ultra-rare Velar restored at the factory

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11/07/2024 13:51

B:228 mm T:222 mm S:196 mm

AUCTIONS & PRIVATE BROKERAGE

GOODINGCO.COM

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REGISTER TO BID

1976 PORSCHE 935 The First 935 Built Part of the FIA Championship-Winning 1976 Season Formerly the Property of Vasek Polak and Matthew Drendel Chassis 935-001

I

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Featuring Selections from THE JACK BRAAM RUBEN COLLECTION from left to right: 1933 BUGATTI TYPE 43A ROADSTER Chassis 43309

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I

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DATE

Bleed 228 mm w x 291 mm h Trim 222 mm w x 285 mm h 196 mm w x 256 mm h Live

FINAL

7-11-2024 1:37 PM Revisions

Notes Int'l RHP/Sept, On Sale Due: 150 Line Screen PDFX1A 7MB limit SHIP: Elaine Briggs elaine@hothousemedia.co.uk

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GCO_OCTANE_Sept_RHP_02SUB.indd

IGNITION / Month in Pictures

IGNITION E V E N T S + N E W S + O PI N I O N

Heveningham Concours, 29-30 June Best of Show at the glorious Suffolk event (with adjacent Country Fair, sprint and aircraft fly-in and concours) was snapped up by a 1961 Jaguar E-type roadster, while setting the pace on the short Horsepower Hill blast was a Ferrari SF90, though it couldn’t compete with the 1934 Barnato-Hassan special for sound and fury. Most stylish owner was Mrs Deanna Peters while the Hanna Aviation Trophy went to a 1934 Lockheed Model 12A Electra Junior. The car judges, marshalled by Max Hunt, included Octane founder David Lillywhite along with designers Peter Stevens and Tony Hatter, racing driver Marino Franchitti and Prodrive chairman David Richards.

Images: Cameron Maynard

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IGNITION / Month in Pictures

CARRERA BAVARIA, 16-26 JUNE

Hans-Jürgen Benze and Reto Mebes piloted a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing to ninth in the Classic category of Rally the Globe’s 2000-mile, all-asphalt event through Germany and Austria. Winners were Simon and Juanita Brien (Jaguar E-type) in Classic and Martin and Olivia Hunt (Frazer Nash-BMW 328) in Pre-War.

SNETTERTON CLASSIC, 29-30 JUNE

Despite off-roading, Ambrogio Perfetti’s GTV was ninth in the HRDC Allstars and Classic Alfas grid.

ALFA REVIVAL CUP, 7-9 JUNE

The Milanese racers visited the Red Bull Ring (Österreichring) in Austria. Giacomo Barri won.

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SPEEDFEST 10, 17-18 JUNE

Bernie’s V8s and Historic Outlaws plus Corvette Anniversary races at Brands Hatch.

NÜRBURGRING CLASSIC, 24-26 MAY

A mammoth 800 cars over multiple grids in the Eifel mountains, including this Maserati.

HOPE CLASSIC RALLY, 28 JUNE

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: GERARD BROWN; MICHAEL HOLDEN; GÜNTHER BIENER; RACHEL PERSAUD; ALFA REVIVAL CUP; JEFF BLOXHAM

Unique charity event in which participants drive a generously donated dream car. See Overdrive next month for Octane’s experiences on the event.

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IGNITION / Month in Pictures

PEKING TO PARIS MOTOR CHALLENGE, 18 MAY – 23 JUNE

LOTUS 26R AT 60, 8 JUNE

32 of the competition Elans were at Silverstone.

BEST OF BRITISH, 1-2 JUNE

Liam Cooper from Exeter attacks Shelsley Walsh in his Force TA.

KITZBÜHELER ALPENRALLYE, 5-8 JUNE

Packed event enjoyed the best roads the Bavarian and Austrian Alps had to offer.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP: WILL BROADHEAD; ALEXANDER SCHEUBER; OLIVER FESSEY; PETER McFADYEN

Truck racer Richard Walker and Faith Douglas tackle a desert in their tough Chevrolet Master Deluxe Coupe. For a full ‘through the lens’ view of this epic HERO-ERA event, turn to page 86.

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LANCIA

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IGNITION / Month in Pictures

SUPERCAR FEST – THE RUNWAY, 18-19 MAY

Fourth year at Sywell Aerodrome.

SUPER TOURING POWER 2, 29-30 JUNE

Nostalgic grids and big names – Reid, Soper et al – at Brands Hatch.

Steve Nuttall (Chevron B8) made the early pace in the Guards Trophy race.

SHELSLEY WALSH VINTAGE HILL CLIMB, 30 JUNE

Dennis Bingham’s smoky Riley Falcon Special.

RODEO DRIVE CONCOURS, 16 JUNE

Masterminded by Bruce Meyer, the popular Father’s Day event draws the likes of Octane columnist Jay Leno to LA’s most famous shopping street.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: OLIVER FESSEY; MICHAEL HOLDEN; PETER McFADYEN; EVAN KLEIN; PAUL LAWRENCE

HSCC DONINGTON, 8-9 JUNE

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11/07/2024 09:49

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IGNITION / Month in Pictures

PENDINE SANDS HOT ROD RACES, 22-23 JUNE

CHRIS TARLING / YELLOW HOUND

The spectacular Vintage Hot Rod Association event in South Wales was somewhat blunted by it being too foggy for timed runs on the Sunday, but many said having the time to relax together was actually a bonus.

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1962 LE MANS WITH DICKSON AND FAIRMAN, EX-SIR JACKIE STEWART

1962 TOJEIRO-BUICK

■ Pioneering first mid-engine GT prototype for Britain ■ Developed by Ecurie Ecosse and Tojeiro for Le Mans ■ Period history at 1962 Le Mans and other events ■ Raced by legendary Flying Scot Sir Jackie Stewart ■ Historic Ecurie Ecosse racer suitable for the best events

14 Queens Gate Place Mews London SW7 5BQ T: +44 (0)20 7584 3503 W: www.fiskens.com E: cars@fiskens.com

IGNITION / Month in Pictures

MILLE MIGLIA, 11-15 JUNE

HSCC DONINGTON, 8-9 JUNE

BOUGHTON HOUSE CAR MEET, 30 JUNE

Cormac Flanagan goes for an excursion in the Alexis Mk14.

Octane’s first invitational event at the Northamptonshire stately home was a huge success.

ARGYLL RALLY, 21-22 JUNE

Mark Higgins (TR7 V8) dominated, but Seb Perez led the chase in his Porsche 911 Carrera RS.

VSCC CADWELL PARK, 15 JUNE

Mike Painter (MG Kaine) leads Adrian Beer (MG K3) in the Triple M race.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP: MILLE MIGLIA; MATTHEW HAYWARD; PETER McFADYEN; BEN LAWRENCE; JEFF BLOXHAM

The 1931 Aston Martin Le Mans of Joe Hurwich and co-driver Mike Ingegno. The blue riband Italian event was won for the fourth year on the trot by Andrea Vesco and Fabio Salvinelli in their 1929 Alfa Romeo 6C.

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CONSIGN TODAY

1936 Delahaye 135 S Competition Estimate: £1,000,000 – £1,500,000 GBP

LONDON | 2 NOVEMBER 2024

LONDON’S CALLING: PENINSULA HOTEL TO HOST CAPITAL AUCTION

UK +44 (0) 20 7851 7070 FRANCE +336 13 55 05 29 GERMANY +49 172 7151 251 ITALY +39 02 9475 3812 info@rmsothebys.com

110_LF24_Octane_UK_V2.indd 1

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IGNITION / Events Diary

Dates for your diary of motorsport history charge around the Nürburgring.

oldtimergrandprix.com

9-18 August Monterey Car Week Car Week serves up auctions galore and more than a dozen car shows, including The Quail (16 August), Concorso Italiano (17 August) and, of course, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance (18 August). At nearby Laguna Seca there’s top-drawer Historic racing in the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion.

whatsupmonterey.com

10 August Holme Moss 100

Utah and floor it on the sunbaked Bonneville Salt Flats.

Organised to raise money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance and to commemorate the Holme Moss Hill Climb of old, which attracted big-name racers including Henry Segrave and Malcolm Campbell between 1920 and 1924.

scta-bni.org

facebook.com/holmemoss100

4 August

11 August

brooklandsmuseum.com

Bibury Classic Motor Hub Coffee & Classics

Brooklands French Day Cars including Vieux Charles III,

2-4 August

The Hub’s next gathering is especially for Italian classics.

Copenhagen Historic GP

classicmotorhub.com

Flat-out fun in the Danish capital on an unusual street circuit.

4-11 August

Malcolm Campbell’s characterful Lorraine-Dietrich Grand Prix racer, will be wheeled out of Brooklands Museum for this French-themed gathering.

chgp.dk

Hot August Nights

brooklandsmuseum.com

Hot August Nights, 4-11 August | Image: Marcello Rostagni

24 July

28 July

Veloce charity track day

Brooklands Summer Classic Gathering & Autojumble

Held this year at Goodwood Circuit, where guests will meet some famous faces and enjoy passenger laps in a variety of classic cars.

v-events.co.uk

26-28 July Oulton Park Gold Cup Classic Grand Prix cars return to Oulton Park, which hosted non-championship Formula 1 races back in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

oultonpark.co.uk

27 July Hagerty Festival of the Unexceptional Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire hosts a gathering of charmingly ordinary cars built between 1969 and 1999.

hagerty.co.uk

28 July Rally of the Giants The All American Auto Club heads to Stonor Park, bringing with it many cars rarely seen on this side of the Pond.

allamericanautoclub.com

Brooklands welcomes two- and four-wheeled classics, and hosts a 100-stand autojumble.

Some of the world’s rarest and most outrageous supercars are brought together in Beaulieu.

Thousands of pre-1980 cars converge on the Reno-Sparks area in Nevada. The main event is preceded on 2-3 August by a smaller show in the historic mining town of Virginia City.

beaulieu.co.uk

hotaugustnights.net

swisscarconcours.ch

3-4 August

6 August

15-17 August

Vintage Prescott

VSCC 90th Anniversary Rally

Eifel Rallye Festival

Pre-war cars blast up Prescott’s traditional 880-yard course, established by the VSCC all the way back in 1938.

Running through the northern part of the Cotswolds, this rally is one of several events planned for the week of 5-11 August to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the VSCC.

Sideways action on stages formerly used in the German rally championship. Over 150 classic rally cars will take part this year, as will 1984 World Rally Champion Stig Blomqvist.

vscc.co.uk

eifel-rallye-festival.de

9-11 August

15-18 August

Oldtimer Grand Prix

The British Motor Show

Cars spanning eight decades

Displays of classics, stunt shows,

3-4 August Beaulieu Supercar Weekend

vscc.co.uk

3-9 August Bonneville Speed Week Speed freaks from around the world bring their hopped-up machines to north-western

14 August Zurich Classic Car Awards A concours for classic cars and pre-2005 ‘youngtimers’, held at Bürkliplatz in the heart of Zurich.

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16-17 August

hosts one of the UK’s premier concours, following which the entries will be joined by some 1500 club cars. We’re particularly looking forward to the ‘Legendary Liveries’ class this year.

Woodward Dream Show

salonpriveconcours.com

Hot rods, customs and muscle cars line the M1 Concourse circuit just outside Detroit.

30 August – 1 September

a trade village and more at the Farnborough International Exhibition Centre.

thebritishmotorshow.live

m1concourse.com

23-25 August CarFest Held again at Laverstoke Park Farm in Hampshire, and again treating visitors to lots of live music as well as car displays.

The Concours of Elegance Sixty of the world’s finest cars gather at Hampton Court Palace to contest the main concours, which will again be supported by the ladies-only Levitt Concours.

concoursofelegance.co.uk

30 August – 1 September

carfest.org

Classic-Gala Schwetzingen

23-25 August

Special displays at this concours in Schwetzingen, Germany, will include a tribute to MG.

Passione Engadina Based in St Moritz, Switzerland, but usually dedicated to Italian cars, and this year’s featured marque is Maserati.

concours-delegance.de

passione-engadina.ch

23-25 August

Circuit Paul Ricard hosts a race meet featuring all nine of the series organised by Peter Auto.

Silverstone Festival

peterauto.fr

Qualifying for all grids takes place on the Friday, meaning the weekend will feature almost non-stop racing.

silverstone.co.uk

25 August San Marino Motor Classic Lacy Park in San Marino, California, welcomes an array of classics. Look out for the dedicated class for police cars!

sanmarinomotorclassic.com

30 August – 1 September Dix Mille Tours

30 August – 2 September

Some of these events may seem a long way off, but you’ll need to secure your place now if you want to take part 21-27 September 2024 Flat 6 Rallye au Maroc Organisers have already received over 20 registrations for the fifth edition of the lavish Porsche-only event in Morocco. The touring rally offers asphalt driving plus five-star hotels and gourmet stopovers. rallystory.com

Lime Rock Historic Festival The racing at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut is followed by a concours and the ‘Gathering of the Marques’, which sees cars and bikes arranged around the circuit.

limerock.com

31 August Aston Martin Heritage Festival

Salon Privé

Held at the British Motor Museum, and this year celebrating the 30th birthday of the DB7 and the 90th birthday of the Ulster.

Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire

britishmotormuseum.co.uk

28-31 August

BOOK NOW!

27-29 September 2024 Founders Run by Cartrack The Portuguese rally for pre-war cars and motorcycles will take participants on a 250km route along the best roads and landscapes in Portugal, starting in Figueira da Foz. See Octane 247 for a full flavour of the event. fundadores.pt

22-29 November 2024 Silver Fern Rally New Zealand’s South Island hosts a rally featuring 1000km-plus of closed road stages that are the equal of any in the world. Starting in Christchurch. silverfernrally.co.nz

11 March to 1 April 2025 Royal Rajasthan Rally A 21-day touring event starting in Delhi and offering ‘a fantastic drive through the colourful and historic state of Rajasthan – home of Maharajas, monuments and majesty’. bespokerallies.com

12-15 May 2025 Vintage Shamrock The sixth running of Rally the Globe and Irish Racing Green’s event. For pre-war cars only, it will start at the five-star Fota Island Resort close to Cork City and will include the Wild Atlantic Way and tests en route. rallytheglobe.com Dix Mille Tours, 30 August – 1 September | Image: Patrick Payany / Fotorissima

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IGNITION / News

WILL CHINA CHANGE EVERYTHING? China is tearing up modern motor manufacture but is yet to make more than a ripple in the classic car world. That could be about to change – dramatically Words Nathan Chadwick Photography Sanhe Classic Car Museum

CHINA NOW DOMINATES the automotive world in a way even Detroit in its heyday would have struggled to comprehend.

Helped by Government incentives, the new car world is dominated by China’s industries: whether full cars that undercut Western models by huge amounts, ownership of storied European brands such as Lotus and Volvo, or ownership and access to the vast majority of raw materials that go into EV cars, its influence is far-reaching and deep.

However, this automotive enlightenment hasn’t manifested itself in the classic world in any meaningful way – until now.

Representatives from European body FIVA (Fédération Internationale des Véhicules Anciens, fiva.org) met with the Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce, Shen Qiuping, in December 2023 to discuss the future of the classic car movement, and in April FIVA President Tiddo Bresters was invited to the

China International Classic Car Industry Outlook Conference held in Haikou, Hainan, an island province in the southernmost region of China. Joining him was Sheng Qiuping, while delegates included Xu Xingfeng, Director of the Consumer Promotion Department of the Ministry of Commerce, and Gui’an Zong, President of the Classic Vehicle Union of China (CUVC).

The conference aimed to define what a classic car was, ponder political reform and foster international cooperation. Bresters said in the aftermath: ‘While the Chinese authorities are taking a suitably cautious approach to legislative changes – not least because of environmental concerns – there is definitely a sea-change in attitudes towards historic vehicles.’

This change has been slow and measured.

After all, it is only in the past few years that China has opened up to any classic cars at all.

Above Sanhe Classic Car Museum is a pioneering facility in Chengdu that was instantly dubbed ‘Blackhawk Museum Pt 2’ by FIVA’s Gautam Sen, who’s visited it.

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Until 2019 the importation of any secondhand car was strictly banned; from that point on only cars more than 100 years old could be brought into the country.

In addition, until last year when the regulations changed, cars already in China and more than 15 years old faced a compulsory destruction order. FIVA estimates that around a million vehicles that would otherwise have been crushed still exist, which if the nation’s view of classic cars continues to change, could provide the basis for a Chinese classic car movement alongside the importation of cars.

However, this attitude change is not necessarily a sudden love of old cars among a population of 1.4billion people – instead, according to FIVA’s Gautam Sen, it is more about the financial opportunities classic cars might bring.

‘I think the authorities realise there is a commercial value in historic vehicles, and

that’s what matters to them – it’s an industry, a business possibility,’ he says. ‘The Chinese Government has encouraged its people to buy art – not just because they think they should buy back their own art, but because it’s a good investment. That kind of thinking was there with Gui’an Zong of the CUVC – he explained to the Chinese authorities that the growth rates for classic car values were higher than for art.’

This commercial focus puts forward a potential future in classic car restoration, too.

‘If an unrestored car costs $100,000 and it’s worth $200,000 restored, but it costs only $20k-50k to restore because labour costs are low, it makes a good business reason for China to encourage people not only to own older vehicles, but also to restore them in China and build up the skills, treating it as an industry.’

Two examples of Chinese-restored cars have made their way to Europe around seven years ago, with a Hongqi apiece at the Louwman

‘THE AUTHORITIES REALISE THERE IS A COMMERCIAL VALUE IN HISTORIC VEHICLES, AND THAT’S WHAT MATTERS TO THEM’

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IGNITION / News

Left Museum pieces? China is likely to allow on-road usage only to cars not considered a threat to its motor manufacturing interests. A threshold of 50 years old is probable.

Museum in the Netherlands and at the Musée National de l’Automobile in Mulhouse, France.

‘In China, Hongqis of this quality don’t exist,’ Gautam says. ‘Both of these were gifted by the Sanhe Classic Car Museum in Chengdu, and have been restored beautifully.’

A couple of restoration workshops are already in operation, one in Chengdu and the other on the eastern coast, in a free trade zone.

These free trade zones are the key to the future of any classic car scene, and the other industry focus of the Chinese authorities: tourism.

Gautam sees the Government encouraging the development of museums, but there are caveats: ‘The free trade zones along the coast allow you to import cars and put them into storage; you don’t pay any duties or taxes, but you can’t use them – however, these cars can then be loaned to the museum inland for a period of time, so you rotate. Say you have 100 cars, 50 are on display and 50 are in storage; though there was a bit of vagueness about this [in the meeting]. However, that seems to be a possibility, and that’s how people are looking at building up collections – using free trade zones for storage and having a museum elsewhere.’

Outward tourism is also an idea being considered by the Chinese authorities. ‘The presentation suggested people from abroad should be encouraged to bring in their cars for events for one or two weeks of holidaying, using them to drive around freely,’ Gautam says. ‘That doesn’t mean that the Chinese will allow people to freely import cars permanently, however.’

The big stumbling block is the new-car lobby.

‘It’s not unlike the situation in India – the newcar industry lobby is completely against the importation of secondhand cars. In India if it’s pre-1950, then the industry doesn’t see it as

competition. But in China, maybe cars up to 30 years old would be competition and the industry might block that, or advocate making it expensive through taxation.’

The definition of a classic car was one of the key tenets of FIVA’s December meeting. ‘We talked about the typical rules in other parts of the world if you import a car from another country; for example, if you import from India into France, and the car’s more than 30 years old, you can get it registered as a historic vehicle,’ Gautam says. ‘I also mentioned that in India it’s 50 years – the Chinese authorities were happy about that. They will probably not get to 30 years straight away.’

Nevertheless, the cars on the Hainan Pride Tour of International Collection Cars that followed the April conference primarily featured 1980s European cars on temporary import permits. ‘On the tour and at the show, people were fascinated by the cars, it was a big crowd,’ Gautam adds.

The big question is what flavours of classic cars are likely to appeal to a Chinese audience;

Gautam Sen believes it depends on where the younger, affluent generation has studied abroad. While some members of this entrepreneurial class have spent time in Europe, the vast majority of students who have since returned to China went to the USA, and have brought back a love of American cars.

This is reflected in the contents of the trailblazing Sanhe Museum in Chengdu.

Gautam says: ‘The owner of that museum obviously knew Don Williams very well – it looks like the Blackhawk Museum part two. All the cars were bought from Williams, and were essentially American, with some pre-war, some 1960s stuff and a whole bunch of 1950s cars, plus one Mini and one Fiat.’

So, can we expect China’s entire 1.4bnstrong population to funnel into the American muscle car market imminently? Obviously not.

Gautam concludes: ‘The timeline remains vague – it could open up tomorrow or in 2027, we just don’t know. However, the Chinese authorities have finally come to the realisation that they need to do something about it.’

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2003 Ferrari Enzo Estimate: $4,500,000 - $5,000,000

1957 Maserati 200Si by Fantuzzi Estimate: $3,300,000 - $3,600,000

1988 Porsche 959 Komfort Estimate: $1,800,000 - $2,200,000

MONTEREY JET CENTER AUCTION 14 - 15 AUGUST 2024

1990 Ferrari F40 Estimate: $2,600,000 - $2,800,000

IGNITION / News

Senna celebration

BRDC / SILVERSTONE ARCHIVE

THE 2024 SILVERSTONE Festival during 23-25 August is to gather more than 20 cars raced by legendary Brazilian F1 star Ayrton Senna. The Northamptonshire circuit has always had a special connection with the three-times drivers’ champion, because he chalked up more senior wins there than at any other major circuit. The cars will be complemented by a selection of memorabilia – ranging from driving gloves and helmets to trophies – that will be on display in the Silverstone Museum, entry to which is included with a Festival ticket.

The cars are descending on Silverstone from all over Europe and will span his entire career, from karting to Formula 1 via Formula Ford and Formula 3. Those on display in Silverstone’s International Paddock will include the Toleman TG184 that Senna raced in his first Grand Prix alongside subsequent Tolemans, Williams, Lotus and a number of racewinning McLarens. The single-seaters will be joined by a handful of lesswell-known curios including a Honda NSX – which Senna famously helped to develop – and a pair of rally cars, a Metro 6R4 and Sierra RS Cosworth, that were tested by Senna in the Welsh forests for a magazine article. Selections of the cars will be taking part in track parades, too, and there will also be a special parade of NSXs. ‘We are proud to be bringing together such a comprehensive display of cars raced by the great Ayrton Senna, encouraging motorsport fans to come together and celebrate one of the greatest talents our sport has seen,’ said event director Nick Wigley. ‘Silverstone was a very special track for Senna, where he enjoyed so many of his wins, and we are honoured to be paying tribute to a true legend in a year of such significance.’

Also recently announced for the event is a celebration of the MercedesAMG Petronas F1 Team’s years of dominance in which it amassed eight Constructors’ and seven Drivers’ Championships from 2014. Organisers are promising five Grands Prix-winning cars on show, including examples driven by Lewis Hamilton – who racked up six of those drivers’ crowns – plus George Russell, Nico Rosberg and Valtteri Bottas.

Visit silverstone.co.uk/events/silverstone-festival.

HIROSHI KANEKO

Silverstone Festival goes big on the late, great Brazilian F1 star

From top Senna’s Lotus and trophies from his maiden victory at Estoril in 1985 will be at the Festival; celebrating one of his six F3 wins at Silverstone in 1983; a number of the Brazilian’s McLaren MP4s will be on display.

RÉMI DARGEGEN

Ferrari greats for Salon Privé THE UNIQUE 1950 Ferrari 166MM/212 Export Uovo (‘egg’) that featured in Octane 170 is to make a rare public appearance at Salon Privé presented by Aviva Private Clients at Blenheim Palace on 28-31 August. Masterminded by Giannino Marzotto in collaboration with Paolo Fontana and Franco Reggiani, the distinctive car had a range of 300 miles thanks to its extra-large fuel tank and famously led the 1951 Mille Miglia and won the Coppa della Toscana the same year. The following year it triumphed in the Trento-Bondone hillclimb, driven by Giulio Cabianca, and then moved to North America, competing for a few years before retirement.

‘This exceptional car has been something of an undiscovered gem for decades,’ said Salon Privé Concours chairman Andrew Bagley. ‘It is an icon that has spent its life largely hidden behind closed doors, so I am thrilled that we have secured it to be one of the star draws at Blenheim Palace this August.’

Another star Ferrari will be a 1957 Ferrari 335 S (chassis 0674) that in a stellar career was driven by the likes of Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, Mike Hawthorn and Wolfgang von Trips, and was even used as reference for Michael Mann’s film Ferrari.

For tickets and more information, see salonpriveconcours.com.

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1988 Rouse Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth Group ‘A’ GUIDE PRICE £240,000 - £280,000

2001 Lamborghini Diablo VT 6.0 SE Coupé # 9/42 - 564 miles from new £400,000 - £500,000

23rd - 25th August 2024

SILVERSTONE FESTIVAL SALE Collectors’ & Competition Cars, Motorcycles & Automobilia

VIEW ALL LOTS & REGISTER TO BID

+44 (0) 1926 691 141

28th Sep The Classic Car Sale at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire

iconicauctioneers.com

9th & 10th Nov The Iconic Sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show, Birmingham

enquiries@iconicauctioneers.com

VIEW ALL LOTS

IGNITION / News

News feed

Hampton Court hero ONLY NINE Siata 208 CS Balbos were built, only seven survive, and this one will be a star car of the Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court from 30 August to 1 September.

Siata (Società Italiana Auto Trasformazioni Accessori) was founded in Turin in 1926 by Giorgio Ambrosini and started building its own cars after WW2, initially small-bore Fiat-powered sports cars before taking the leap to V8 engines with the 208S in the mid-50s.

This rarely seen car, chassis CS 071, is powered by Fiat’s Otto Vu motor, wears a Carrozzeria Balbo-styled aluminium coupé body and has been in one family ownership since 1959, having had a long and varied history in the USA. Dealer Tony Pompeo imported it new and it was competed in widely before winding up on a Queens, New York, car lot, where it was spotted by Dr Julius Eisenstark in 1959.

Dr Eisenstark bought it and turned it into a daily driver, but in 2017 it was involved in an accident that prompted its full restoration by Automotive Restorations Inc of Stratford, Connecticut. The resulting car was good enough to take a class win at Amelia Island in 2018.

For more information see concoursofelegance.co.uk.

Conversion therapy The Aston Workshop is offering an independently developed manual conversion for the V12 Vanquish.

The fully reversible conversion uses the original Tremec six-speed gearbox, but adds a DBS gearknob adjusted to show the new gate pattern. The redundant shift paddles are removed.

Return to Cockatoo The most prestigious concours in the Southern Hemisphere – The Sydney Harbour Concours d’Elegance – will return to UNESCO-listed Cockatoo Island from 28 February to 1 March 2025. The event used Cockatoo Island, which is accessed by ferry, for the first time earlier this year.

Rhode scholars The 34th exhibition at the Audrain Automobile Museum in Newport, Rhode Island, USA is called Color, the Cars of Summer and focuses on the popular beach cars and surf wagons of the past.

The result is an eclectic selection that will be on display until 8 September and features everything from 1930 Packard Eight Sport Phaeton to 2024 Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato via 1951 Fiat 500C Topolino Giardiniera and 2019 Bugatti Chiron Sport Sky View.

Ballon d’or Rétromobile has cleverly repurposed an iconic 1959 advertising image for its 2025 poster. The image of a Citroën DS 19 with balloons for tyres will trail the 70th anniversary celebrations of the era-defining French car in Paris next February.

RM picks the Peninsula RM Sotheby’s has a new venue for its flagship London autumn sale on 2 November. Like the International Historic Motoring Awards, also in November, the auction will take place at the recently opened Peninsula Hotel next to Hyde Park Corner in London. The auction takes place on the eve of the historic London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, during The Royal Automobile Club’s London Motor Week.

Electric boogaloo An electric Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow is nearly ready for road-testing just six months into a two-year development programme. The restored Evice R001 will have 800V architecture and the first customer car is set for delivery in 2026. Evice was founded ‘to create the definitive electric reimaginings of iconic classic cars’ and the Rolls-Royce Corniche and Bentley T-Series are also in its launch portfolio.

Into the ’wood Tickets are on-sale for RADwood 2024, the event that celebrates everything 1980s and 1990s, but principally cars and car culture.

The event will take place at Chatham Historic Dockyard on 7 September; info and booking at hagerty.co.uk/official-events/ radwood.

Moss gathering Enthusiasts will have their final opportunity to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Yorkshire’s Holme Moss Hill Climb on 10 August. This year’s event will be the last to echo the Huddersfield and Bradford Joint Motor Club events held there from 1920 to ’24. Then it attracted the likes of Malcolm Campbell, Sir Henry Segrave, Archie Frazer-Nash and Raymond Mays. This year’s event will use the village pub, The Fleece, as the gathering point.

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THE BEST JUST GOT BIGGER

Classic Collective The new Classic Collective workshop in Bicester drew over 120 cars to its inaugural breakfast meeting on 23 June. The event was co-hosted by content creator Jack from Number27. Classic Collective co-director Dominic Taylor-Lane said: ‘It’s great collaborating with Jack and the success and reach of his channel was plain to see. We very much look forward to working with other content creators and clubs to be able to offer a venue and give people the chance to see the type of work and vehicles we cater for in the workshop.’ Taylor-Lane also said that he was looking at helping to bring creators at the beginning of their journey together to hold combined events.

To get involved, contact Dominic@classic-collective.co.uk.

Haynes goes tribal Haynes Motor Museum has launched a new exhibition called DriveTribe, featuring several cars from the collection of television presenter Richard Hammond, who now owns and runs the motoring social media.

They include the Aston Martin DB9 driven across the Sahara Desert by Hammond in The Grand Tour: Sand Job and Oliver, the 1962 Opel Kadett he drove in the Top Gear Botswana Special.

Jeremy Holden This exuberant character and regular competitor in all forms of classic and vintage motorsport was very well-known in Midlands Automobile Club and VSCC circles, as well as for his classic-car supporting business. His recent death was sudden and Octane’s thoughts and sympathies are with all Jeremy’s family and friends.

N E W FAC I L I T Y O P E N I N G S O O N Since 2016 V Management has provided the UK’s finest secure storage for classics and supercars, and we are now expanding with a new, state of the art facility west of London, just off the M4.

Whether you have a single car or a collection, we offer discreet 5-star management that includes transport, servicing and MOTs, DVLA administration, import/export, detailing and repairs.

DENNIS NOTEN

Museum heads north The National Motor Museum and Bowcliffe Hall in Yorkshire are launching a new type of classic motoring event. Called Bowcliffe & Beaulieu Masters of Motoring 2024, it will take place on Thursday 1 August and, in essence, sees the museum go on tour to engage more with enthusiasts in the north. Cars expected at the stately home include the 1903 Napier, one of the earliest cars to wear British racing green, a 1950 BRM 1.5-litre V16, the 1920 Sunbeam 350hp, plus a Lotus 49, chassis R3, raced by both Graham Hill and John Love. Tickets are available from the Bowcliffe Hall website: bowcliffehall.co.uk.

Paul Berger The keeper of the Monteverdi flame and long-term partner of Peter Monteverdi has died. A natural salesman, charming and engaging, Berger was involved with the company from the early days and latterly was ever-present at the Basel museum dedicated to the lost Swiss marque.

We also provide search, acquisition, and off-market sales within our international network.

To find out more contact Ben Hadfield on 01635 867705 or email ben@v-management.com

v-management.com

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IGNITION / Opinion

JAY LENO The Collector

N

o doubt by this time you’ve already heard about the new Mustang GTD, which stands for Grand Touring Daytona. Daytona is a classic IMSA race. Mustang is undoubtedly Ford’s most valuable nameplate, behind the Ford F150 truck, the best-selling vehicle in America for I don’t know how many years. I’m not sure what the British equivalent of the Ford Mustang would be. Maybe the Mini? Like the Mini it was affordable and appealed to people from all walks of life. They could make it into anything you wanted, from thrifty basic transportation to a club racer.

My first Mustang was the 1965 Shelby GT350.

That was in the early 1980s, when it was already an old worn-out race car. I first passed on it in the late 1970s for $600, because it didn’t run, it needed a lot of work, and I thought I could do better. By the time I bought it the price had gone up to $60,000, and I was lucky to get it for that. I had learnt that lesson fast.

I didn’t get my next Mustang until 50 model years later, in 2015, when I ordered one of 37 built to pay homage to the 37 track cars built by Carroll Shelby to compete in 1965, called the 350R. There has always been debate about how many competition cars were built. Carroll Shelby says two prototype cars and 35 production cars, although most factory records say only 34 models received serial numbers. Ford decided that 37 cars would be constructed. Mine is car number 36. And unlike a 1965 model, you can’t convert your 2015 Mustang into a 350R – there are too many unique parts.

The 350R has a wider front clip and is completely different from the A-pillar forward. The steering knuckles are aluminium, not cast iron. The real jewel in the crown is the 5.2-litre flat-plane-crank V8, which is 13lb lighter than the equivalent Ferrari engine. It’s also the most powerful naturally aspirated engine Ford had produced up to that time, making 100bhp per litre.

One of the benefits of a flat-plane crank is that it eliminates the counterweights on the crankshaft. This not only takes away the rotational weight, it creates a way more responsive engine which screams rather than rumbles. And the coolest feature when you hit 6000rpm is that you still have 2200 more to go.

This is in my opinion the greatest Mustang up to this point. It is a true sports car, outperforming machines

that cost more than three times the price. I’ve been enjoying mine for almost a decade now and the only upgrade I’ve done is to add Apple CarPlay. Well, that and lots of new tyres.

When I first heard about the new GTD I thought to myself: how much better could it be? Then I saw the transaxle and the rear suspension, designed by Multimatic. Much as I love my 350R, it’s a compromise because it’s a road car. This latest is a full-on track car you can drive on the street. It’s even got some technology not allowed in racing, such as active aero, with hydraulically controlled front flaps that help manage the airflow over the rear wing, and like the McLaren P1 you can lower the suspension when in track mode.

Then we come to the price. Over $300,000. Ouch! For a Mustang?

I remember when I bought my firstgeneration Ford GT in 2005, the price was about $130,000 and people wondered if anyone would pay over $100,000 for a Ford.

Then, 20 years later, I bought my next-generation Ford GT and the price had jumped to almost four times that. Of course, in the interim Ford had won Le Mans again, but it shows people will pay if the product is truly worth it.

Rather like the Mustangs, the main difference between the GTs is that the 2005 was a road car that resembled a race car, while the 2017 model is a race car that can be driven on the road. Multimatic did the suspension for it, too. Let’s face it, if it had been some European exotic, it would be at least twice the price.

But while the GTD is expensive too, it’s still a Mustang. Manufacturers often come up with lofty nomenclature for their high-end products – Acura for Honda, Lexus for Toyota. I love the fact that Ford kept it a Mustang. because I grew up in a small town that had a very prestigious prep school. This school had the best and the brightest. I lived in the town and went to the local high school. Whenever we beat the preppies, which wasn’t often, it was a big deal. This is a Mustang that didn’t go to Eton but somehow got into Oxford.

I know it sounds ridiculous that a multi-billion-dollar corporation like Ford is somehow the underdog against smaller European boutique manufacturers, but it has happened before. Remember when Enzo Ferrari said Ford built ugly cars in its ugly factories? Don’t poke the bear – it might lash out at you.

‘THIS IS A MUSTANG THAT DIDN’T GO TO ETON BUT SOMEHOW GOT INTO OXFORD’

JAY LENO Comedian and talk show legend Jay Leno is one of the most famous entertainers in the USA. He is also a true petrolhead, with a huge collection of cars and bikes (jaylenosgarage.com).

Jay was speaking with Jeremy Hart.

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1929 BENTLEY SPEED SIX GURNEY NUTTING The sole-surviving, exceptionally original Weymann Saloon with Preservation Class wins at Chantilly, Salon Privé and 3rd place at Pebble Beach in 2017.

1987 PORSCHE 962 007 WO R KS R OT H M A N S

2011 D U C AT I M O T O G P GP12.0 VR2

The last of six Works Rothmans 962s originally built. Raced in ‘87, led for 5 hours at the ‘88 Le Mans as Works Shell Dunlop #18 and wins with Joest in ‘89.

The first of the full aluminium frame Ducatis. Ex-Valentino Rossi in full running order complete with factory certification.

2010 F E R R A R I F 4 3 0 GTC AF CORSA/WORKS ‘2464’ was originally built and raced in 2007 (#51) and fully upgraded and driven by Works ex F1 Ferrari drivers Alesi and Fisichella in 2010.

HOME OF THE EXCEPTIONAL & THE UNIQUE Carefully selected from a single collection curated over decades, Historic Classics offers the finest classic, historic and competition cars and motorcycles for sale. Making way for new acquisitions, a limited selection will be released over the coming months.

Many have changed hands just once in a generation. Ensure you stay in touch to be kept informed.

historicclassics.com Connect with us at Pebble Beach, Salon Privé and other great events in 2024

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10/07/2024 10:59

IGNITION / Opinion

DEREK BELL The Legend

S

o, Formula 1 is hotting up this year. It isn’t a onehorse race, or rather a Red Bull jamboree. I was thrilled for George Russell after he won the Austrian Grand Prix. He drove brilliantly, as he so often does, but the manner in which erstwhile leader Max Verstappen and his nearest challenger Lando Norris clashed late in the race left a sour taste in my mouth. I have towering admiration for Verstappen. I think he’s an incredible, once-in-a-generation talent, but he edged Lando onto the grass on three consecutive laps before they came together. The net result was two inoperative cars and a race lost.

I chatted with Lando two days later at a very special ‘do’ staged at McLaren’s headquarters in Woking. It was in honour of the much-missed Gil de Ferran, who was an integral part of the team. It was a wonderful event, and one that somehow managed to be reverential and moving yet also informal and joyous. There were probably a hundred people there, with Lando, his team-mate Oscar Piastri, David Coulthard, Ross Brawn and other racing names on hand. Inevitably I broached the subject of the clash with Lando, but I don’t want to betray any confidences. He is a young lad with a brilliant future ahead of him and he had already regrouped.

That’s the thing about the best racing drivers. It’s all about mental programming. Verstappen is ruthless in the same mould as Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher; the sort that will cross the line if needs be and racing etiquette be damned. The Dutchman and Norris are great mates, but Formula 1 isn’t a pillow fight. Now that McLaren has a car that can run at the front consistently, they are going to bang wheels again.

Some of Verstappen’s rivals will mentally check out if push comes to shove while others will fight to the last gasp. In my opinion, Lando belongs very much in the latter camp. It will be fascinating to see how the rest of the season unfolds.

Staying with McLaren, back in June, my eldest boy Justin and I drove a McLaren Artura to Le Mans. We were recreating our journey from 29 years ago when we finished third at Le Mans in the Harrods McLaren F1 GTR alongside Andy Wallace. It was for a promotional film. We left for Dover at 4.30am and I will admit to being a bit frazzled by the time we got to France, but

what good fun all the same. I have written about that race here before, so will try not to cover old ground save to say that it was a wonderful feeling to stand on the podium – on Father’s Day – with my son. I was in my mid-fifties at the time, too, so it was good to show that I hadn’t completely lost it!

McLaren was competing in the race again this year, having been away since 1998, admittedly this time competing in the LMGT3 class. I would love to see McLaren running at the front in the hypercar category, and I am surmising that this may be something that is under consideration. I certainly don’t know, but I have an inkling. Nothing more than that.

I am delighted with how sports car racing is undergoing a renaissance and that some proper blue-chip manufacturers are competing in the top class. Having McLaren battling Ferrari and so on would be fantastic.

I must congratulate Ferrari on winning for the second year in a row. It was such a close-run thing, but I admit that I still can’t get my head around the balance of performance regs whereby cars can unlap themselves under the safety car. In the 1995 race, it rained solidly for 12 hours. It was horrendous but there wasn’t a single caution period.

You made up places on the road. This year, there were several and a hypercar running in, say, 17th, can move ahead of all the LMP2 cars ahead of it to perhaps 12th.

It’s the same throughout all classes, the point being that a lot of leapfrogging goes on without any actual overtaking, if that makes sense.

I am a traditionalist but the ‘show’ is the most important thing these days. I must admit, it was one hell of a show with some pretty choice battles all the same.

The allure of this greatest of great races remains just as strong after 101 years as it ever did. I may not like some of the rule changes, but I love the 24 Hours of Le Mans and always will. It was great being on site for what felt like the billionth time.

Speaking of multiple appearances, I will be on hand for the Goodwood Festival of Speed as Octane goes to press. I never miss an opportunity to participate in my ‘local’ hillclimb, and this year I will be out in another modern McLaren. That, and the Lola sports-prototype aboard which John Surtees won the 1966 Can-Am title.

Any excuse to get my bum in something fast, even if it is only fleetingly.

‘MAX VERSTAPPEN IS RUTHLESS IN THE SAME MOULD AS AYRTON SENNA AND MICHAEL SCHUMACHER’

DEREK BELL Derek took up racing in 1964 in a Lotus 7, won two World Sportscar Championships (1985 and 1986), the 24 Hours of Daytona three times (in 1986, ’87 and ’89), and Le Mans five times (in 1975, ’81, ’82, ’86 and ’87).

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A W O N D E R F U L P L A C E – A N I N C O M PA R A B L E W E E K

O C TO B E R 2 N D – 5 T H 2024

Concours d’Élégance – “The Grand” 2 different Rallys Supersportscar-Drive Sessions on Circuit Mallorca

J O I N U S N OW – T H E J O U R N E Y B E G I N S W W W.ICONSMALLORCA.COM

IGNITION / Opinion

STEPHEN BAYLEY The Aesthete

I

was dosed – some might say over-dosed – with Francophilia soon after birth. Only now are the effects wearing off, but, for a time, I venerated France.

Only now, everything the French ever thought they were good at, they are not. Food? Cinema? Fashion?

The novel? Cars? Their expertise in rioting remains unchallenged, however, as I think we will, alas, soon see.

It’s le chant du cygnet for French culture, I’m afraid.

What I always admired about the French was their genius at opposition. It was the seating arrangements of the French Parliament that gave us the concepts of right and left in politics. They excel at luxury and utility: superlative Baccarat crystal glasses ideal for seducing a princess, but also those Duralex tumblers so strong you can throw them at a wall. And you get a country that manufactured a Facel Vega and a Citroën 2CV simultaneously.

A rite of veneration was my first solo road trip to Europe. I had a romantic reason to visit Lausanne, involving pleated flared skirts, cashmere jumpers, a wicked smile and a taste for untipped Gitanes. I’ll never forget the route: Arras, Ypres, Lille, Reims, Epernay, Troyes, Dijon, Beaune, Besançon.

I wrote it on the windscreen in Chinagraph pencil.

Outside Beaune I spent the night at a vineyard where I parked on pebbly earth and ordered a bottle of Savigny.

I’ll never forget the taste and I’ll never forget the car: a Citroën Dyane the colour of an old lady’s corset. No-one remembers the Dyane because it was based on the original Deux Chevaux, but the older car outlived it.

Mine had the high-performance 602cc engine, good for 28bhp. It was technically a ‘Dyane 6 Weekend’ and this was because it was so slow, two days would be required to reach its startling maximum speed of 71mph.

The eccentricity of the Dyane is remarkable. Since in the late 1960s the Citroën Bureau d’Études was busy revising the fabulous DS, design was delegated to Panhard’s Louis Bionier who had an interest in the morphology of fish and birds. The unsung Bionier created the Panhard PL17 and the Panhard 24CT, two of the most original shapes ever. This new Citroën was called ‘Dyane’ because Panhard had registered a block of similar names including Dynamic and Dyna.

It must have been difficult to improve on Flaminio Bertoni’s inimitable 2CV shape, but Bionier consulted his fish and bird reference books and achieved just that:

headlights are integrated into the garde-boue and there is a useful hatchback. Withal, it looks like nothing before or since. I am not saying ‘good’, I am saying ‘unique’.

The brilliant Robert Opron, Chef d’Études, was alarmed at Bionier’s design and demanded polite revisions. Given the weirdness of the manufactured result, we can only speculate how peculiar the original proposal might have been. And like the best French projects, a glorious cast was involved in its creation.

Besides Bionier, there was the suspension engineer Alphonse Forceau, who I imagine as a Tin-Tin type. He adapted the 2CV’s ingenious system of longitudinal springs in tubes attached to the wheels by tie rods. This gave a sort of self-levelling effect with front and rear wheels inter-connected.

Weird characteristics here included a superlative ride and roadholding so good it made you blink, even while the roll made you shriek with alarm: unsprung weight was very low because all the suspension gubbins were inboard.

Wonderfully, the wheelbase would extend by about 4cm under load.

Another stand-out characteristic was a distinctive squeak because no-one ever bothered to lubricate the hidden springs.

And the Dyane included several features possibly illegal today. Hot air generated by the air-cooled engine was channelled directly to the heater. So, at least in the matter of demisting, the Dyane had hypercar performance. Alas, it had modern wipers. I say ‘alas’ because its 2CV parent had a hilarious system wherein the wipers were directly driven from the gearbox, so their speed varied with road speed. Crawling in heavy rain was scary. Flat-out in thin drizzle was berserk.

They made a Dyane pick-up called Geri in a joint venture with the Yugoslavian Government. These were the happy days when such an arrangement might be made by agreeing to trade Bosnian cereal for Parisian design. Very few survive. Very little of what we Francophiles adored of France survives.

I was in my early twenties when I drove my Dyane to Switzerland, so it was not that long ago. But now I marvel that such a car could have been made in my lifetime. On my return, the throttle cable snapped in Flanders and I managed to improvise a fix with a wire coat-hanger. That makes me feel nostalgic because I have lost that skill of improvisation, just as I have lost my love of French cars.

‘IT WAS SO SLOW, TWO DAYS WOULD BE REQUIRED TO REACH ITS STARTLING MAXIMUM SPEED OF 71MPH’

STEPHEN BAYLEY The individual for whom the term ‘design guru’ could have been coined, Bayley was the founding director of London’s Design Museum and his best-selling books include Sex, Drink and Fast Cars and Taste: the Secret Meaning of Things.

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IGNITION / Opinion

ROBERT COUCHER The Driver

I

n the old days, beach cars, like hot rods and specials, were created by impecunious young types attempting to turn tired old automotive dullards into something exciting to drive on a shoestring. You know: they’d either be handed down the worn-out family hack or find some rusty old thing in a scrapyard and take a hacksaw to it with enthusiasm. A cut-down Austin Seven Special was always going to be a lot more interesting than a tediously slow Austin Seven Ruby Saloon.

The ultimate beach car has to be the beach buggy.

Created by surfer Bruce Meyers in 1964, his Manx ‘dune buggy’ was based on a shortened Volkswagen Beetle chassis onto which he mounted an ingeniously simple, one-piece glassfibre body with a flat windscreen, no doors and a hose-out interior. In the 1960s and 1970s, the West Coast of America was full of rusty and worn old Beetles ripe to be rebuilt as dune buggies. Being incredibly light, with great rear-end traction and large tyres, the Manx didn’t need four-wheel drive to be a fantastic dune racer – a classic icon with real beach cred.

I grew up on the Cape Peninsula, surrounded by some of the most beautiful and challenging beaches in Africa, and beach buggies were part of our lives. As a teenager, moving from my 50cc Yamaha ’bike, I was desperate to build one. It had to be a proper, short-wheelbase Manx with as many original Beetle parts as possible, such as modest steel wheels, chrome hubcaps (no other chrome, please!), original VW steering wheel, simple, original seats and plain Vee-dub instruments, and certainly a stinger exhaust. No hot rod nonsense: fitting massive mags, high-backed racing seats and the like misses the point of a classic, retro, minimal Bug. My dune buggy fantasy never happened because my parents deemed it too impractical and dangerous as an everyday car (I’ll come back to that in a mo’). But I’m really pleased to see that an Octane reader has now resurrected the Meyers Manx Beach Buggy in such a cool way. Simple and deconstructed, an electric buggy (with just chrome hubcaps and no boy-racer flash) makes absolute sense as a beach car for today.

Manufacturers caught on, as with the Citroën Mehari we have in this month’s Buying Guide, a factory lightweight special, in essence a 2CV with fun in mind rather than functionality. Mehari means a type of camel,

so maybe 1968’s open four-seater was aimed at the French colonies in the deserts rather than as a plaything for the Côte d’Azur. Designer Roland de la Poype gave it greater ground clearance, larger wheels and an ABS plastic body that doesn’t rust. The French military bought quite a few and in all some 145,000 were sold, proving it successful as a beach-and-boat car.

In 1979 the rare and desirable Mehari 4x4 was launched – with, heureusement, only one engine, unlike the madder 2CV Safari that has an engine both at the front and in the boot! As well as four-wheel drive, the Mehari 4x4, with its macho bonnet-mounted spare wheel, has independent suspension and disc brakes all-round. A proper off-roader before the current fad of dressing up Porsche 911s as Dakars or Lambos as Sterratos.

Also in 1968 at the Paris motor show, Renault launched its cute Plein Air, which was a cut-down Renault 4 beach car. But it was more expensive and less capable than the Mehari so was discontinued after only 568 had been built. And, by accident – literally – I got one!

As a student I had a Renault 4 runaround because petrol was expensive and my 3.0-litre Lancia Aurelia was a dipsomaniac. Initially I hated the slow but frugal Renault and tried everything to blow it up. But it stoically put up with my intentional abuse and would bowl along flat-out everywhere. It was like a faithful mutt; I couldn’t help starting to like it. Then one evening I got T-boned and the Renault ended up on its side. So we pushed it back onto its wheels, left it by the side of the road and carried on to the party.

Towing it home the next day, we discovered the upper roof section was bent out of shape so the best thing to do was… cut it off. Under the guidance of my father’s resident Bentley restorer, who came up with the ‘Plein Air’ idea, the roof was lopped off and hidden away at the bottom of the property and a car cover thrown over the Renault before father returned home. With the front windscreen and surround left in place, we discarded all four doors, shaped cut-down aluminium side panels et voilà! A Plein Air. I rattle-canned it French racing bleu and thought it made a fine Cape Town beach car.

And so it proved. The open-topped Plein Air and I were chosen to transport the Varsity beauty queens (yes, we had ’em in those days) at the head of the marching pageant through town. God, I loved that little car…

‘I GREW UP ON SOUTH AFRICA’S CAPE PENINSULA AND BEACH BUGGIES WERE PART OF OUR LIVES’

ROBERT COUCHER Robert grew up with classic cars, and has owned a Lancia Aurelia B20 GT, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta and a Porsche 356C. He currently uses his properly sorted 1955 Jaguar XK140 as his daily driver, and is a founding editor of Octane.

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IGNITION / Letters

Letter of the month

in photography at Guildford, I found myself in JT’s office at Falcon Works. Nobody was more surprised than I was when he asked me to produce a series of photographs, initially of the 924 [left] – mainly in black-andwhite, as that was what most publications in the 1970s required. For a young man with a camera it was a dream ticket and it provided the first step in a career that grew to encompass photography, writing and design, not to mention a lifelong passion for all things automotive.

Like many others, I suspect, I owe a great deal to the Aldingtons.

Adrian Knowles, Wiltshire

Debt of gratitude MENTION OF THE Aldington family in Robert Coucher’s article on the pedigree of Bristol Cars, Octane 254, took me right back to the day in 1976 when John ( JT) Aldington gave me my very first commission as a newly qualified photographer.

The Aldingtons were most famously associated with Frazer Nash, John’s father Harold Joseph (HJ ‘Aldy’) Aldington running AFN from 1929 after it took over the Frazer Nash business, trading from Falcon Works in Isleworth.

After the war HJ not only negotiated the rights for the manufacture of BMWs by Bristol Cars, but in 1954 he secured an agreement for AFN to import Porsches, the arrangement being consolidated in 1965 with the formation of Porsche Cars Great Britain Limited.

At the time I went to see John Aldington he was MD of both AFN and Porsche Cars GB and he was seeking some marketing support for the newly launched Porsche 924. My introduction

to him had been effected by Jack Newton, who had competed extensively in his Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica [below] in the early 1950s and was a good friend of the Aldingtons. Newton was also a keen collector of Leica cameras, which brought him into contact with my father, who had been sales manager for Leica.

Through this convoluted series of connections, and having just completed a three-year course

Best of Bayley The first thing I do when I receive my monthly dose of Octane is to go to Stephen Bayley’s column.

I sincerely hope that Mr Bayley has or is in the process of producing a book of his writings because they are worthy of a Nobel or Booker prize, being erudite and entertaining.

David Hughes, NSW, Australia You’re in luck, David: Stephen did issue a book of his columns, although, sadly, it did not win any major prizes. It was called The Age of Combustion and was published

by Circa Press at £19.95, ISBN 978 1 911422 13 6.

JE Just do it Our childhood group of friends has been talking about a road trip to Le Mans for a number of years, though despite plenty of enthusiasm it just never seems to

happen, to our wives’ amusement.

Having failed miserably to set a reminder for the date the tickets went live, I was taking solace in the pages of the latest Octane when an advert for the Spa Classic caught my eye. The rest, as they say, is history.

For the uniquely affordable cost of €30, Spa Classic Super Saturday delivered a relentless spectacle of frenetic racing from the moment we arrived until the early hours of Sunday morning [below]. Over 15 hours we walked, shuffled and ran more than 20km traversing the famous circuit, while enjoying the spectacle of many of the world’s most desirable racing cars of a bygone era doing battle.

I would encourage anyone not to put off this kind of trip.

Spending time with old friends in a place that worships racing and combustion was a priceless experience that I will remember indefinitely.

Ally Simpson, Lincolnshire

Three or four?

I was delighted to read Robert Coucher’s article on the Aston Martin DB4 Series V in Octane 234 and I agree that it’s prettier than the DB5. Where I cannot agree with him, however, is that its predecessor, the DB MkIII is ‘old-fashioned looking’.

Maybe I’m biased because I own one and yes, the DB4 was clearly a step change from the ‘Feltham-era’ Astons, but, as Robert says, the last of the line usually includes all the improvements and the DB MkIII has those aplenty. The grille that became the face of Aston Martin was introduced on the DB MkIII, as was the classic instrument binnacle that Robert likes on the DB4 and which was shaped to mirror the new grille. Finally, at the rear, to my eyes the tail of the DB MkIII is shapelier than that of 49

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MARTYN GODDARD

IGNITION / Letters

the DB4. The tailgate seamlessly blending down to the rear numberplate looks just right, unlike the DB4 where the roof line seems to sit awkwardly on the boot-lid, probably the least resolved part of the design.

One wonders why Aston didn’t continue with the tailgate of the Feltham Astons because it made the ‘hatchback’ DB MkIII thoroughly modern, perhaps even ahead of its time.

Richard Branch, Hampshire Richard is absolutely right on all the points he makes. As someone who drives an ‘old-fashioned looking’ XK140, I like the DB MkIII’s looks. Should have phrased it better, because what I meant is that the sharp, new DB4 was much RC more modern-looking.

Spiked!

Ben Barry’s story on the Bentley Speed 8 Chassis 1 in Octane 254 filled in many blanks in my memory from shooting an exclusive Sunday Times magazine story on Bentley’s return to the Circuit de la Sarthe in 2000/01.

My first sight of the Speed 8 was at Silverstone in September 2000. I was taken aside by the PR team and briefed on the day’s programme: ‘You can shoot whatever you like – but no photographs of the engine bay!’

As the car blasted past me on the Hangar Straight, the deep, thunderous engine note could only be that of a V8. So why all the secrecy? For all I knew, Bentley could be using its own V8 engine, like the Aston Nimrod Le Mans car I had photographed back in the early ’80s. I spent the day shooting hot laps [above] and activity as the car was tweaked and pilot Weaver talked to the men with clipboards.

Fast-forward to June 2001 at Le Mans and my final shoot for the assignment: three days of reportage photography of Bentley’s return to the epic endurance race. Before heading to France, I discovered that the writer had booked us into a hotel in Tours, 100km from the track, so I decided to forgo using his Bentley Arnage press car in favour of my own Fiat Multipla, and slept in that instead.

I covered scrutineering, practice and the driver presentation parade where the six Bentley drivers were chauffeured in vintage Bentleys through cheering crowds in downtown Le Mans. Then it was down to the serious business: 24 hours of pit and track photography in frequent rainstorms. The Team Bentley Car 8 came third.

Unfortunately, the Sunday Times wanted a winning return

to the 24-hour race and ‘spiked’ the unpublished story. But the transparencies are safe in my archive and I still wear the baseball cap the team gave me to keep my head dry during the rainy race.

Martyn Goddard, London NW1 Expensive parking I enjoyed the article about the Portuguese E-type in Octane 251, and to complement it I would like you to know more about another fantastic early E-type [below].

It was abandoned in the garage of a Ford dealership of a good friend of mine, Francisco Lavrador. After some 15 or 20 years the ‘owner’ arrived and wanted to take the car with him, so Francisco told the guy he should pay the storage costs.

They negotiated and the car remained as the property of the Ford dealer. Francisco and his chief mechanic decided to restore the car ‘by the book’ and I’ve been lucky enough to drive it.

Carlos Reis de Carvalho, Portugal

Credit where it’s due I’d like to thank Octane for bringing the story of the 1959 Maserati 3500 GT Bertone to life in issue 252. I wish, though, that I had given Frank Mandarano – who bought the car in 1978 – more credit for saving it and for his restoration.

As Frank wrote to me in July 2023: ‘My restoration, now three decades ago, was done with the information then available, not knowing that this was the show car. I bought it in terrible condition, missing the front bumper, with no engine and no tail-lights; the body was rusty with flaking paint, and the interior was near the point of rags.’

I benefited from a 93-page history document prepared by Adolfo Orsi; Frank simply did not have this as a guide. Adolfo came to the 2023 Pebble Beach Concours to see the car – that’s us in the photo [below], with Adolfo sitting in it – and it drew a smile from all around.

Jim Utaski, New Jersey, USA

Make Surtees a Sir Despite the standfirst to the Rupert Keegan interview in Octane 253, John Surtees was never a ‘Sir’. His unique feat of winning World Championships on both two and four wheels was unrewarded by a knighthood, so perhaps the new Government could posthumously put this right, bearing in mind also his tireless charity work following the death of his son Henry at Brands Hatch.

Philip Joisce, Herefordshire Send your letters to letters@octane-magazine.com Please include your name, address and a daytime telephone number.

Letters may be edited for clarity.

Views expressed are not necessarily those of Octane.

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FERRARI FERRARI FERRARI PANORAMICA ZAGATO PANORAMICA ZAGATO PANORAMICA ZAGATO

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AUDI SPORT QUATTRO

THE SECOND COMING It’s 40 years since Audi launched the Sport quattro, with which it prolonged its dominance of Group B rallying. Glen Waddington celebrates with legendary driver Stig Blomqvist Photography Audi

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O

f course, we Octane types love to drive. But sometimes the passenger seat is a very privileged spot indeed.

And here I am, sitting next to Stig Blomqvist, 1984 World Rally Champion and runner-up in 1985.

Both of those notable championships were with Audi Sport. And the 1984 season was the one in which the Ingolstadt company turned up the wick, building a shorter, more powerful Group B weapon to keep it at the top of the table, Technik having done its Vorsprung to perfection. That car was the Sport quattro and, 40 years on, man and machine are in harmony once more.

Though perhaps with a less experienced co-driver this time.

This is not the first occasion on which I’ve shared the cockpit with the veteran Swedish rally driver, nor my first time in this car. Back in 2021 we were in San Romolo, scene of a closed-road mountain stage in the Rallye Sanremo 40 years earlier, when Michèle Mouton had taken her maiden Group B win, and Audi its second Group B victory (and third podium finish). It’s also the scene of the Sport quattro’s final victory, in 1985. This particular Sport quattro was built in 1984, of course, and finished in second place on the Rallye Monte-Carlo in January 1985, piloted by Audi Sport works driver Walter Röhrl with Christian Geistdörfer, before it became a testing and experimental vehicle – hence its remarkable state of preservation.

Part of the Audi Tradition collection, it still features its original turbocharged five-cylinder engine, although the museum’s own engineer granted that the boost has been reduced just a little in the name of conservation, so maybe the output is down slightly on its former 414bhp at 7500rpm. But you wouldn’t know that, not given the pace with which Stig blasted it away from the Ristorante Dall’Ava and around the winding single-tracks of the Cinque Valli, high above the elegant Mediterranean resort of Sanremo.

As that familiar off-beat baritone blare thundered around and reverberated off the rockfaces, with rictus grin, spellbound and suffering slightly with the petrol fumes, I tried hard to concentrate on what made Stig, Stig. He’s not so tall, maybe a few inches below 6ft, but sitting a long way back in the car, he was smooth, relaxed, committed, inchperfect. Fast? Naturally, perhaps even supernaturally, to the degree that when I wrested my eyes away from his flying hands and dancing feet to try to focus on the view through the front screen, I could scarcely believe the pace with which the epic scenery was scrolling by. And he was driving at ‘maybe 70% or so’. Yup, he still had it, even as a 74-year-old.

This time it’s different. We’re on the road, in Bavaria, gorgeous weather, rock-strewn countryside and quaint villages scattered an hour or so from Audi’s Ingolstadt hometown. This time I get to work out how he drives, still noting the commitment, the smoothness, alert yet relaxed, his total one-ness with the car. ‘It’s like being reunited with

an old friend,’ he smiles, in that quiet, modest way. Like his fellow Scandinavian rally hero and Audi Sport driver, the late Hannu Mikkola, he is strikingly free of ego, somewhat reserved until he relaxes in your company.

Pulling away from rest, he corrals the lumpy, grumpy pulses of the high-idling five into a seamless herd, matched exactly to the point at which the clutch bites, and thereafter there is no feathering. Likewise his progression up and down the gears, each shift achieved briskly yet without any drivetrain snatch nor any hunting of revs as engine and propshaft speeds seek common ground: it’s there, a perfect match, straight away.

We’re somewhat short of that 70% for most of the time; the liveried works car turns enough heads without going full-shout, but when there’s a straight stretch ahead, and no other traffic around, the glint in his eyes gets a little steelier, the slightest crinkle around his jaw signals a smile and the hammer goes down. Those horses get let loose for just a few seconds of glorious, life-affirming Group B WRC-style acceleration, and Stig is Stig all over again.

Every piece of the car seems to come alive, your hearing is overwhelmed by the engine’s snarl, and the road surface is telegraphed in microscopic detail through your seat; yet it’s all communication, not punishment. The structure feels animated in a way that brings to mind only one other car of my acquaintance and that’s a Ferrari 250 GTO. Power is nothing without control, of course, but it’s the way in which that control is meted out that’s so impressive.

You expect a Group B car to have strong brakes and, sure enough, hauling us down from a high-speed run sees me forced tight against the five-point harness. But what’s noticeable is how Stig brakes for the absolute minimum, to shed only the necessary speed in the shortest distance. If there’s a downshift to match, it’s heel-and-toe perfection.

And obviously there is never a hint of confidence-dabbing before a corner. Precision rules. Right every time. That’s how champions drive.

We pause at the charming Bräustüberl Biergarten Hotel Schattenhofer in Beilngries, a chance to find out more about the man and his extraordinary experiences with Audi Sport.

He admits that his past rally career with Saab gave him an advantage when he joined the team in 1982.

‘Four-wheel drive is very different from rear-wheel drive,’ he smiles. ‘You can’t do it on the throttle, so like a Saab really, using the same technique, left-foot braking to set the car up into turns. With the ur-quattro, traction was incredible, but acceleration was the big difference with those early turbocharged cars.’

The next step-change came during the 1984 season, and the introduction of the short-wheelbase Sport quattro, which brought an extra 112bhp over the long-wheelbase cars, thanks to 20-valve cylinder heads and a bigger turbo.

Stig laughs: ‘I played things safe to start with and carried on using the old car! You have to change your style a bit, it was

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Above and right Rallye Portugal, 1984, the Sport quattro flying with Röhrl at the wheel; Stig Blomqvist won the Drivers’ Championship for Audi Sport in 1984, seen here reacquainting himself with the car.

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AUDI SPORT QUATTRO

Clockwise, from left Octane takes the wheel of the road car – and attempts to keep up with the rally car; Glen Waddington joins Stig Blomqvist; rally car causes a stir on public roads.

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‘Those horses get let loose for a few seconds of glorious Group B acceleration and Stig is Stig all over again’

a bit tricky in corners, you have to do more, use the traction for accelerating and braking rather than cornering. The biggest problem at first was pitching, much more pronounced with the short wheelbase. We ran much stiffer suspension on tarmac, much softer for gravel. I’d always preferred the long-wheelbase car, but the Sport quattro had a better engine to compensate for the handling, so it was a big improvement overall.’

Obviously, evolution was baked into the programme, too.

‘We started with a 50:50 torque split, then came a centre diff, better for turning but the reaction was a little too slow in those days. I wanted to run a limited-slip in front, Mikkola preferred to go without. I was more in tune as I’d been used to similar steering with Saab, only more physical – there was no power-assistance on the Saab!’

Then came the E2 version with its aero package and a further boost to 473bhp, still from the same 2143cc fivecylinder. ‘It did a hell of a lot for the car, stability and cornering speed, so much more of both. And the pitching problem was going away, too. Gravel suited it best, the car was outstanding. So much more power, we just had to get used to it.’

That latter sentiment is a recurring theme. ‘With the quattro, it had taken a while to learn how to win. We had the hardware and it’s not just the driver but the whole operation.

We came up slowly; Michèle came so close in 1982 when Audi won the Manufacturers’ title; then Hannu won in ’83, me in ’84. We just had to get it together. Audi had a big budget, it was suddenly in the game and had to push.’

In a team with more than one star driver, there was rivalry, too. ‘Everybody knows what to do and how to do it,’ says Stig, with a serious expression. ‘We all had the same chance to win – only Audi had that problem! And Walter [Röhrl] didn’t do all the rallies, just his favourites.’

Group B came to an end in 1986, something Stig believes was unnecessary. ‘It was easy for some drivers with little experience to get hold of the cars, so there was a wrong decision somewhere. But within a year the Group A cars were even quicker anyway! In that final season I drove the Ford RS200 and the Peugeot 205 T16. I guess that means I’ve driven more Group B cars than most, but the longwheelbase Audi is my favourite of all the cars I’ve driven.’

Now it’s my turn behind the wheel, not in the works car but one of the 164 road cars of the 224 built in total. With 320mm hacked from the wheelbase, the ‘shorty’ has obviously different proportions from the ur-quattro that sired it, though the nose is longer, ironically, extended to house a bigger intercooler. The windscreen is much closer to vertical than the earlier car’s, too, coming from the 80 saloon, in a bid to reduce the glare and reflection the original E1 and E2 inflicted on their drivers.

The road car features an all-alloy version of the twin-cam, 20-valve five-cylinder engine, rated at 306bhp and featuring thin steel cylinder liners that are known to be rather less robust than the standard engine’s; many ended up retrofitted with a steel block. Such is the complication of owning an exotic homologation special, all of which were built in left-hand drive and were available in the UK only 57

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‘Gravel suited it best, the car was outstanding.

So much more power, we just had to get used to it’ STIG BLOMQVIST

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AUDI SPORT QUATTRO

‘This car’s gulping great turbo saw it to 60mph in 4.8sec, putting it in the company of Porsche’s 911 Turbo’

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This page and opposite Obvious differences between the Sport quattro and its predecessor include bespoke dashboard, steeper windscreen and a 32cm wheelbase chop; less obvious is the lightweight engine, with power up to 306bhp.

as a personal import. It’s reckoned six made it to the UK in period. Value today? Reckon on half a million pounds. You might find a storied works car for three or four times that.

Road cars that could crack 60mph in less than five seconds were few and far between in 1984; this car’s gulping great Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch turbocharger saw it there in 4.8sec, putting it in the company of Porsche’s 911 Turbo and frankly little else. Yet it all feels remarkably civilised! The seats are comfortable and stylishly trimmed buckets, leather swathes the doorpulls and bins, and the doors themselves shut like 1980s German car doors should. There’s a bespoke dashboard that calls to mind that of the 100 saloon of the era, and it puts the ur-quattro’s dated, blocky affair to shame.

Given that so much effort went into designing a new fascia for so few cars, you wonder why they didn’t standardise this one for the Audi Coupé and its quicker siblings.

Perhaps silenced to a degree by the forced induction, the five-cylinder raises its voice only enough that you can enjoy its low-rev growl and high-rev warble. The five-speed manual gearbox is the slightly wooden Audi companion of that time, though it shifts accurately and doesn’t baulk. It rides firmly but feels well-damped rather than merely harsh, keeping body movement in check though rarely inducing discomfort.

Steering feels a tad sharper, as though higher-geared; what’s certain is that the shorter wheelbase makes turn-in more instant, though it doesn’t feel nervous, instead coming across as agile yet mature, engaging yet friendly, even if some report that it can be distinctly twitchy in extremis.

That said, the fact that the Sport quattro is four-wheel drive is rarely an issue, you simply get to enjoy a high degree of neutrality, hardly being troubled by understeer and never feeling threatened by a wayward tail. It’s less dramatic in action than a 911 Turbo but a whole league on from the ur-quattro, the character of which is distilled and magnified in this redux reimagining.

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AUDI SPORT QUATTRO

Left, and below left Road car feels totally at home on these sinuous climbs through the Bavarian countryside; Harald Demuth, quattro development driver, pictured at the 1985 Hunsrück Rally.

REGULAR READERS might remember Harald Demuth from Octane 157; he’s the man who drove an Audi 100 quattro up a ski jump for a TV commercial. He is also a highly successful rally driver, and was instrumental in developing the Audi quattro. ‘It was 1978. Reinhard Rode had moved from Opel to Audi. He was a close friend and there were rumours of turbos, four-wheel drive… I was with VW but I’m a Bavarian and Ingolstadt was much closer to home,’ says Harald.

He’s just as I remember him, frameless spectacles that do little to disguise the twinkle in his eye, still fit and sprightly into his seventies – he’s squeezing in this video call before heading out on a cycling holiday in the Alps.

‘My contract began on 1 January 1979, actually with the press department as Audi Sport had not then been invented.

They were building a car in the cellar with four mechanics. I was taken on with Freddy Kottulinksy, who won the 1980 Paris-Dakar Rally with Gerd Löffelmann.’ That was in a VW Iltis prepared by Audi; all part of the quattro story, of course, as revealed in Octane 202.

The first ‘real’ quattro by any other name was an Audi 80 with the turbo five-cylinder and a front axle turned through 180º in the rear, with a centre-diff and propshaft. ‘We tested it in Algeria, I was driving and it caught fire. The car was burnt out. The next day, Ferdinand Pïech was there and we couldn’t present him a car to drive. “Why did you not stop the fire?” he demanded. “I’m just happy to be alive!” I said.

From that point on, every car had a fire extinguisher.’

Even the early signs were of an impactful car. ‘We were sure it would change rallying. For me it was not simply the four-wheel drive but the power. That was new! And we did so much endurance testing, long runs on the autobahn at night. “Please come back with 1000km,” Pïech would say.’

Pïech, famously a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, had joined Audi in 1972 after time spent at Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. Within two years he was head of

engineering, and by 1975 was on the board of directors, with a goal of building Audi into a rival to BMW and Mercedes. That began with the development of the fivecylinder engine, and evolved via aerodynamics (the Audi 100 C3) and quattro – subsequently proven in motorsport.

It was engineer Jorg Bensinger who hit on the idea of transferring Iltis four-wheel-drive technology to Audi, and he persuaded Walter Treser, Reinhard Rode’s predecessor, of its worth in competition.

‘The problem was, we couldn’t ask anyone for advice,’ says Harald. ‘We had to be inventive. Nothing else had turbos and four-wheel drive! What about the rear brakes?

With a centre diff, you got the same braking force at the rear whether you needed it or not. Much of our testing was to sort out the brakes and suspension. You need drivers who are fast enough, and I first went out in 1979 with Jürgen Stockmar. He became Audi Sport’s chief and was a great engineer. There was a lot I wanted to tell him but he said: “Stop! Are you faster or slower?” Every time he made a change, he didn’t tell me what he’d done, he just asked that same question. And eight times out of ten, if I’d said it was faster, it actually was. “You’re a great test driver,” he told me.’

When the game moved on to the Sport quattro, the engineering team developed three different wheelbases.

‘We went with the middle one,’ says Harald. ‘It was the better car, easier to handle. The wings [the aero package on the E2] were a big step and the more powerful engine was just great. Those cars were so much easier to see out of, too.’

It seems only fitting to give the last word on the Sport quattro to a man who spent eight years working on the project and even took the car on its last competitive outing for Group B in the World Rally Championship: the 1986 RAC Rally for David Sutton. ‘I wasn’t a great fan of the way it looked back in 1984, I thought the ur-quattro looked better. But this car was designed to perform, not to win prizes at Pebble Beach.’ Got it in one. End

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VINTAGE BENTLEYS

FULL

This collection of five vintage Bentleys covers every iteration of the WO era.

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HOUSE

Robert Coucher drives £17m of pure desire

Photography Jayson Fong

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VINTAGE BENTLEYS

D

uring the Roaring 1920s, the white heat of technology had created an automotive arms race in the Western World and Bentley Motors was a leading protagonist.

Personal freedom was becoming more attainable thanks to rapidly advancing mechanisation, and at the forefront of this technological drive was the automobile industry.

Based in Cricklewood, North London – admittedly a world away from Motown, Detroit – Walter Owen Bentley built his first 3 Litre motor car in 1919, and soon thereafter in 1924, privateers John Duff and Frank Clement won Le Mans in a Bentley that put the marque on the shopping list of every fast-driving motoring enthusiast, many ex-servicemen and intrepid adventurers who had no fear of living life on the edge. The Bentley Boys had arrived with a ‘bloody thump’, the epithet applied to the engine noise of the original 3 Litre Bentley by none other than WO Bentley himself.

Not many vintage Bentleys were made, as the company was always run on a shoestring and was only really saved by its top racing customer, Captain Barnato, so he could win Le Mans three times before the marque was rather nefariously taken over by Rolls-Royce in 1931. But Bentley had established its unbeatable reputation thanks to its dominance on both road and track, setting records and standards for all other manufacturers to follow. From winning Le Mans five times and setting high-speed records at Brooklands, to offering five-year warranties on its motor cars, Bentleys were built to last the distance.

Arriving at the impressive Cowdray House, nestled at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex, we are met with this breathtaking WO Bentley line-up. It represents every model of that era: sports car; touring car; grand tourer; Le Mans car; and Brooklands high-speed racer in 3 Litre, 4½ Litre, 6½ Litre and mighty 8 Litre form, with all permutations of coachwork. You would like to imagine that at least some of these fine motor cars visited Cowdray House in the day, as all have been well-used by their enthusiastic owners over the decades and all have ownership history from new.

This has been billed as ‘The Ultimate Collection’, a unique, one-off assembly of the finest WO Bentleys to have been offered as a complete set. A full house, indeed.

William Medcalf and his team at Vintage Bentley have spent years putting together these five Cricklewood Bentleys. Medcalf points out: ‘Each car in this collection has been chosen for its contribution to Bentley’s success and represents the best of its type. Each is mechanically original and has gone through a preservation or restoration by Vintage Bentley so is ready for action.’

Starting with the immaculately patinated 1925 Bentley 3 Litre SuperSports, number nine of only 18 made, 66

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chassis number 1174, registration number TR 829, this 100mph motor car is one of the rarest and most revered of WOs and was the first to wear a green badge, the coveted Green Label mounted atop its nickel-plated radiator.

Being the shortest version with a chassis just 9ft in length, this pert-looking SuperSports is nimble and, with its high-compression 3.0-litre engine fed by twin SU ‘sloper’ carburettors, its damn’ quick as well. The large four-cylinder lump is sophisticated, featuring four valves per cylinder, twin-spark ignition, a hollow overhead camshaft, aluminium block and non-detachable cylinder head. In SS tune it produces more than 85bhp and was guaranteed by the factory to crack 100mph. That’s why Bentley Motors sensibly reduced the normal five-year warranty to just 12 months for its fierce little hot rod.

As with all the special Bentleys assembled here, the SuperSports’ history is known from new. True enough, the car was initially purchased by a successful Bentley racer, Mr W Barlow. Not surprisingly, he spec’d it in a particularly sporting configuration with striking occasional three-seater coachwork by the company Short, notable for its ‘bat wing’ mudguards. In the days when you ordered your motor bespoke like a good Savile Row suit, a clearly enthusiastic Barlow requested a ‘super

This page and opposite The black 1925 Bentley 3 Litre SuperSports is something of a hot rod, driving with a spirit unusual in a 99-year-old car. It’s one of only 18 made.

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radiator and dashboard’, which lowered the rad height to reduce drag, and the steering was raked low to match.

I have to admit, my initial reaction to all these cars is that this SuperSports is the one I want! It’s 99 years old and looks it, but the patina is what gives it such a sense of gravitas. The bat-like Short coachwork is seriously trim and functional and is painted in simple black. The original leather seats are worn but as well cared for as King Charles’ famously ancient brogues.

You flick the magneto switches, pump up the fuel and punch the starter button. The fiery SuperSports snarls into life, fizzing with energy and vim. It just wants to go, so you find first gear in the notoriously recalcitrant nonsynchro gearbox, give the centrally located throttle pedal a push and let the sharpish clutch out. Light(ish) Number 9 is off like a bat out of hell.

It’s sharp and immediate and feels every bit the roadracer. God, what a car. Improbable that it is so old yet feels so quick and capable on the road. The steering is accurate, the 3 Litre has loads of grunt and the tyke can be placed with total precision on small country lanes. Even the brakes are on-side.

Following its slightly surprising privateer win at Le Mans in 1924, WO decided to field a factory Works 3 Litre at the ’25 Le Mans, chassis number 1138, to be driven by Dudley Benjafield and Bertie Kensington Moir.

Team Car Number 10 you see here was specially prepared with Vanden Plas coachwork – with four seats to comply with regs – plus a lower, more aerodynamic windscreen, various stone guards, a 25-gallon fuel tank and stiffer suspension. The engine was uprated to SuperSports specification. The car performed superbly and topped 90mph with the hood up as required for 20 laps. Sadly this impacted on the car’s fuel consumption, so it ran dry before the first permitted pit stop. Despite its rather ignominious debut, Number 10 showed huge potential and Bentley’s domination of Le Mans thus began.

Subsequently used as a factory demonstrator, 1138 was restored to absolutely correct 1925 Le Mans specification by Vintage Bentley in 2017 and has been used properly at leading events including Goodwood and the Le Mans Classic ever since. I must confess to having travelled many hundreds of miles in this fabulous old racer, having taken part in the Royal Automobile Club’s 1000 Mile Trial in 2014, organised by HERO-ERA, which was an incredibly satisfying journey in such a special motor car. Serving to make this even more extraordinary is the fact that I was joined by Bentley Boy Kensington Moir’s great nephew, Duncan.

Now, we know these ‘fast lorries’ are tough and rugged and blessed with very heavy and obstreperous gearboxes, so before the 1000 Mile start I went along to see William Medcalf for some driving lessons. Embarrassingly, I made a bit of a hash of it, crashing and grinding the gears. After

‘It’s sharp and immediate and feels every bit the road racer.

God, what a car’

Opposite, above and right Number 10 is a genuine Le Mans original, built to SuperSports spec and with the correct four-seater coachwork; Bentley specialist William Medcalf has long been immersed in the marque.

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more seat time with William, I finally mastered the moves: first to second gear is slow; second to third is quick, and third to top is easy. And the trick is to get it up into top as soon as practical and leave it there!

Having practised more while driving to Edinburgh and back, I finally got into the Bentley groove – don’t overthink it, remember the throttle pedal is in the middle; double-declutch intuitively and don’t worry about a few grinds, they all do it, and avoid having to change down below second on the move. Apart from all that this works Bentley is a cinch to drive. It’s accurate and responsive, the handling is totally predictable and balanced, and once you build the confidence to never lift, it’s remarkably swift along British B-roads.

By 1927 WO was eager for another Le Mans victory and realised the 3 Litre needed more grunt. So he chopped two cylinders off his 6½ Litre engine, coming up with the venerable 4½ Litre, of which 720 were constructed up to 1931. This includes the 52 Blowers

created by Bentley Boy Tim Birkin. WO did not approve of supercharging as he thought it unreliable – he was right. The 4½ Litre is heavy but tremendously strong and reliable, and its 4398cc four-cylinder engine puts out a useful 130bhp in racing trim. The upshot is that Woolf Barnato and Bernard Rubin won Le Mans in 1928 in a 4½, and the cars came second, third and fourth in 1929, behind a Bentley Speed Six. The 4½ Litre vintage Bentley in this collection is chassis number AD3652 and is one of the most original examples in the world, being the only known vintage Bentley to be in single family ownership for 85 years, having been purchased from the works. A sports fourseater with fully valanced wings, it was delivered in 1930 from North Audley Street in Mayfair to a Mr Grout. In heavy-chassis spec, it features self-wrapping brakes, an aluminium sump and long bonnet.

The 4½ Litre looks sensible and no-nonsense, unlike Mr Grout, who was the owner of the Southampton

Below and opposite This 4½ Litre is highly original, having been in one family for 85 years and never rebuilt. It’s covered fewer than 100,000 miles from new.

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Arms public house in Camden Town, London, which was infamous for being at the centre of the ‘racecourse wars’ of the 1920s and the scene of many a punch-up and general bad behaviour. As Grout’s increasingly erratic repayments ceased altogether, the car was taken back to the factory and in 1935 it was sold to its first ‘proper’ long-term owner, Dr William Leslie, who passed it on to his son in 1975.

You can clearly see this straight 4½ is original and unmolested, having never been rebuilt, just meticulously maintained. Recently it has been the subject of careful preservation work, saving most of the leather interior trim and the exterior body covering. Back in its original green, this motor car has covered fewer than 100,000 miles from new. On the road it’s capacious and comfortable; once again, just get it into top gear and then allow it to waft along, so you can enjoy the serenity of that long wheelbase.

With Bentleys becoming more sophisticated, this Speed Six really put the frighteners up arch rival RollsRoyce, which bought the company in 1931 as an act of self-preservation! This Speed Six Close Couple Coupé, chassis number SB6721, was supplied to Viscount

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This page Speed Six Close Couple Coupé is one of only two Speed Sixes bodied in this style, remarkably refined despite its hot engine, and fully restored following decades of use around the world.

‘It is an incredibly elegant motor car, rakish with those low windows, long bonnet and cropped tail’

Mandeville, the Tenth Duke of Manchester, in 1930.

With Martin Walker coachwork, it was the second of only two built. The Duke had seen the first car at the Olympia Motor Show and had Bentley build him the second one.

Being an aspirant Bentley Boy, he clocked up 4000 miles in the first two months of ownership and after two years had covered 41,000 miles!

‘Researching the car, we found it full of speeding tickets and parking fines, and discovered the Duke was at one point up before the magistrate for running someone off the road. Oh, and his wife was in bandages when they got married, apparently due to another “off ”,’ quips William.

This Close Couple Coupé is an incredibly elegant motor car. A bit rakish as well, with those low windows, long bonnet and cropped tail, it has a fast Continental look. The interior is luxurious and equipped with tools and equipment for long journeys. The throttle pedal is located in the regular place, and the gearlever and handbrake are in the up-your-right-trouser-leg position.

Even though it’s fitted with the hot Speed Six engine, it is remarkably refined, starting quietly and pulling with real muscle thanks to its 180bhp. The chassis is very well-controlled and the car can be conducted with enthusiasm, as the good Duke clearly chose to do. It is a tad more locomotive than a Rolls-Royce Phantom II, but it feels better-planted and faster.

The matching-numbers Speed Six has been in William Medcalf ’s family for over 40 years, campaigned across the

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VINTAGE BENTLEYS

Right Extraordinary Barnato Hassan 8 Litre record-breaker lived up to its name at Brooklands Circuit, where it competed from 1934 to 1938, taking part in 25 races.

world, including the USA, New Zealand, Canada and Australia, and also raced and rallied throughout Europe.

Having been used good and hard, the Coupé deserved a full and absolutely correct nut, bolt and rivet restoration, so Vintage Bentley returned it to the condition in which it left the factory on 15 May 1930.

As William explains: ‘With this restoration, we did exactly as Bentley Motors did. We constructed the running chassis and test drove it as a bare “running rig”.

The chassis frame and other Bentley parts were correctly hand-painted in grey primer and the engine block finished with a careful hand-scraping. All subcontract parts finishes are true to their origins, such as SU, Bosch, Smiths, Lucas and so on – you can’t just put them in a random pile to be painted black because they all have a different black finish. In order to maintain the Bentley Motors warranty of the day, coachbuilders such as Martin Walker were not allowed to dismantle or remove anything, so they had to construct the coachwork and paint around the mechanicals, and we have restored the car in this correct manner.’

That’s serious attention to detail and no wonder the car is a 100-point scorer at Pebble Beach, overall concours winner at Audrain and Salon Privé London, and one of the 13 showcased as the ‘World’s Greatest Motorcars’ at the Geneva International Motor Show, Qatar.

You cannot fail to notice the aerodynamic Barnato Hassan 8 Litre record-breaker, finished in searing Barnato blue. What a projectile – it looks more like a missile than a motor car. Built for Woolf Barnato by the legendary engineer Walter Hassan, this racer’s sole purpose was to take the outer circuit lap record at the fearsome Brooklands Circuit in Surrey. Developed and raced from 1934 until 1938, the Barnato Hassan competed in 25 races and broke the lap record a number of times, achieving an unofficial 143.11mph in September 1938.

With only four custodians since the war, it was owned by noted racer Keith Schellenberg, who competed in it for 54 years! Now fully restored to its original Brooklands lap record configuration, it is the fastest vintage Bentley retaining its original 8 Litre engine and chassis, and remains road-registered as MPE 10 – ready for the ultimate Sunday drive to Brooklands Museum for a (very) swift pint at the Members’ bar…

What a group of cars. The ultimate vintage Bentley collection? Probably. These magnificent examples are all original, with known provenance, and come from longterm ownership. Each is special and represents the best of the great Bentley marque. A carefully curated collection of this magnitude will never be seen again. If you have £17million, this full house could be yours. End THANKS TO William Medcalf, www.vintagebentley.com; and also thanks to Neil Georges of Cowdray House, which is available for exclusive events (cowdray.co.uk).

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The biggest outdoor sale of motoring items in Europe!

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Autojumble 14 & 15 SEPTEMBER 2024

Book your exhibitor space or visitor tickets at

internationalautojumble.co.uk 01590 614614 New Forest | Hampshire | UK | SO42 7ZN

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LOTUS ELAN 26R SHAPECRAFT

SHAPE SHAPE SHIFTER SHIFTER Only three genuine Lotus 26Rs were given the Shapecraft aerodynamic treatment. This little beauty is one of them Words James Elliott Photography Jayson Fong

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LOTUS ELAN 26R SHAPECRAFT

A

Clockwise, from above It’s easy to push lightweight Elan in Goodwood pits; period ads promised an extra 5-8mph from the slippery shape; aluminium roof is bonded to shell; comfy cockpit.

ll Elans are equal, but some are more equal than others. Heck, with the rare beast we have here you could distil it even further to ‘All 26Rs are equal, but some 26Rs are more equal than others.’ Probably best to start at the beginning…

It’s 1962 and Lotus launches a road car, a follow-up to the groundbreaking blind alley that was the glassfibre monocoque Elite.

This new one is cutesy in the extreme, designed not by Lotus’s financiercum-skier-cum-draughtsman Peter Kirwan-Taylor but by South African engineer and Mr-Workmate-to-be Ron Hickman. The car epitomises Lotus philosophy in plastic, taking basic ingredients from Ford and Triumph (except Maserati air horns!), adding its own spices, and scorings Michelin stars for pep and handling. At its core, literally, is a simple, lightweight 18SWG folded steel backbone chassis, reputedly devised to test the Rotoflex couplings that Colin Chapman was so suspicious of but also to give incredibly smooth power take-up. Until they judder or snap.

Outriggers and side-impact protection? They are for wimps. That power? Initially 1500cc (1499cc) for 20-odd cars, then 1600cc (though 1558cc in reality), it came from a Ford Kent five-bearing 116E lump with an intricate Lotus twin-cam alloy head (designed by Harry Mundy of BRM and Coventry Climax) on top that doesn’t like overheating. It was fed by Weber 40s, though later you could end up with Dell’Ortos or Strombergs. In Blue Oval guise that workhorse engine was good for anything between 39 and 111bhp from anything between 996cc and 1599cc. For its Type 26, Lotus would come in just under the top at 105bhp but in a car that weighed only 640kg… or less.

The engine drove through the snappy Ford Classic four-speed ’box, which was a real ruby in the dust and as good as anything much pricier. It had disc brakes all round, the rears inboard. The steering was by ‘just’ a Triumph rack and pinion, but was close to psychic. The result was a pretty, supple, softly sprung road car that was as sharp as a knife yet as forgiving as Jesus, which also rode like a GT and attacked corners like a single-seater. Pure motoring alchemy. The perfectly balanced sports car.

Naturally, there immediately followed a clamour for a more hardened competition version and so was born the 26R in 1964. As Chapman, who was steadfast that the basic Type 26 was nothing but a road car, said: ‘In the second year we thought, well, if these people insist on racing them then we’d better get down to some proper development.’

So they did, largely taking their cues from the racing Elans that Ian Walker Racing and Graham Warner (of The Chequered Flag) had already developed. This meant lightening the body, eventually getting rid of the Rotoflexes, uprating the wishbones, adding dual-circuit brakes with twin master cylinders, fatter anti-roll bars, lightweight calipers, magnesium wheels, Bendix pump and a sprinkling of magic dust from Cosworth (later BRM) tuning that took output to 140-160bhp by boring it out to 1594cc. Overall, the 26R was just a bit extra: everything was stiffer, bigger, thicker, lighter, faster. And more expensive – at £1645 in component form or £1720 assembled, the 26R cost nearly an E-type.

Even so, such was the appetite from the racing world that about 100 were built by the factory: just over 50 Series 1s and just under 50 Series 2s. They cleaned up.

So what next? Racer Barry Wood, whose Surbiton Motors was in the very heart of the UK’s A3 motor corridor, fitted a handful of Elans with a sleek aluminium fastback roof that was attached directly to the glassfibre bodywork and improved aerodynamics. Wood had mocked-up the prototype in balsa on his own car (39 PG) at home in his garage, then the work was carried out by the nearby Shapecraft of Tolworth, later in Leatherhead, a company rather more associated with the aviation industry and eventually to be absorbed by Robert Jankel’s Panther.

Wood displayed one at the 1964 Racing Car Show, where Peter Sellers snapped it up for Britt Ekland. He advertised his ‘Lotus Elan GT

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LOTUS ELAN 26R SHAPECRAFT

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Conversion’ widely as early as November 1963 – cost including standard Elan was £1250, conversion was £170, the promise was an extra 5-8mph – and it’s thought that he did as many as 20, though it might have been as few as ten.

Three of these conversions were on genuine 26Rs, his own racer RFP 696B, Les Arnold’s BPE 230B, and this car, AUT 173B, which has an impeccable history. The first owner was Dick Crosfield, who finished second on aggregate in the 1965 Autosport Championship in it with six wins (with John Harris) after having the engine rebuilt by BRM. He advertised it the next season, initially for £1950, then £1600, and its next owner was Jackie Bond-Smith of the First Ladies International Racing Team (FLIRT). It next went via Tevor Howard at The Chequered Flag to Jim Jones, who is thought to have died young. Then Len Bridge, previously linked to Chris Lawrence and Lawrencetune, bought it for £800 in 1975, having been put onto it by Gerry Marshall and John Wingfield. He restored it over two years and then campaigned it until 1985. Lotus racing guru Tony Thompson, Robert Causo and more owners followed before historic racer Mark Midgley bought it from Swiss-based Mike Humphreys in 2016. Richard Solomons had it briefly after that, when it tested 175bhp at 7500rpm on the dyno following a rebuild, and in 2020 it found its current owner.

Bristol-born architect Robin Ellis owned and ran a 100-person design and build company for A-listers in London, sorting out their subterranean ballrooms and squash courts. He also ran some interesting cars such as Jensen FF and Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3, but his youthful love of a more selfish type of motoring was rekindled by a Lotus Elise and a Porsche 993 RS he used for track-days. Almost inevitably he started racing, at first with the Caterham Academy in 2007, graduating to a Lotus Elite (which he still has and had timed at 138.4mph on the Mulsanne Straight), and then a twin-cam Elva MkVII, Lotus VI, a Ford Falcon and a ‘normal’ Elan. He’s a Goodwood regular but has also piloted a 911 and MGB at Spa. In fact, he had already driven this car at Goodwood when it was owned

by Richard Solomons, before seeing it for sale on the Duncan Hamilton Rofgo stand at Olympia in 2020. After chatting with Simon Drabble, much man-maths and a clear-out of his Porsche and Elan later, he became the umpteenth owner of AUT 173B. ‘I bought it in February 2020 and we immediately went into lockdown.

It was a very compressed season, but it did run in Goodwood’s SpeedWeek, probably the only Elan ever to run in the TT and certainly the only four-cylinder car on that grid. I was sharing with David Brabham and we came 17th, which was a very respectable result when we were such minnows in a sea of big, powerful fishes.

‘The car itself wasn’t sorted geometry-wise at that point and it didn’t drive like it does now. Andy Wolfe has now been right through the car, crack-tested everything, tweaked it in the way that he likes to tweak Elans and produced a delightful, benign car that is fast and looks after you very well. It’s very predictable, almost never scary even when you do things that should be.

‘I have spun it once, at Mugello, but it maintains the famous compliant ride of an Elan. It seems to be on your side most of the time. Compared to my previous Elan, it’s clearly both more powerful and more settled, and inspires a lot more confidence in every area.’

The results back-up such confidence. Fine showings at Goodwood and elsewhere have been plentiful, but the crowning glory to date was a maiden win in the Italian Modena Cento Ore with historic hotshoe and Racelogic founder and MD Julian Thomas in October 2023. This toptable event was contested over four days, competing on four of Italy’s most famous circuits, featuring nine special stages and covering a total distance of 959km. It is not a rally for the faint of heart.

‘We wanted to do it because we just thought it would be fun to do a road-race event together. Then at the end of the first day we discovered that we were second overall to Phillip Walker (who’d won it five times,

Clockwise, from above AUT 173B has been campaigned continuously; Robin Ellis in his car; stripped out for racing – though road-car dashboard remains; profile is still unmistakeably Elan.

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LOTUS ELAN 26R SHAPECRAFT

From top BRM-spec cars were bored out and fitted with twin Weber 45s; Ellis and Brabham were seriously outgunned in Speedweek; no Kamm tail, unlike Ian Walker Racing Goldbug.

‘It’s probably the only Elan ever to run in Goodwood’s RAC TT and was certainly the only four-cylinder car on the grid’ ROBIN ELLIS 82

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LOTUS ELAN 26R SHAPECRAFT

I think) and Miles Griffiths, who had just won at Spa in the GT40, and we thought: “Oh dear, we might have to get serious about this.” At the end of Day 2 we were in the lead and managed to hold onto it to the end.

‘We treated it seriously, but not with the expectation of winning anything. All the fun we were planning to have went out of the window as soon as that became a prospect. I was full of trepidation on the last day, when it was only there for us to lose. We had three road stages and two tracks to tackle and only a 20-second lead to defend. There was no margin for error at all on those last few stages.’

And that was the last time Robin had sat in the car until our photoshoot at Goodwood, where he was preparing for the Members’ Meeting. For full disclosure, an administrative issue that was of neither Robin’s nor Goodwood’s making kept me out of the car on the day and, as a devoted Elan fan, I was distraught. Even though I have driven other 26Rs, even though I have driven the Ian Walker Racing Goldbug at Goodwood.

Truth be told, any big differences over a 26R that I would be able to share with you would be Andy Wolfe’s doing – he’s said to have teased 185bhp out of one of these engines – rather than Barry Wood’s, and without a direct full-speed comparison with a stock 26R, no-one could tell you exactly how much difference that aerodynamic lightweight ally roof makes. Still gutted, mind.

What I can tell you from the three genuine 26Rs that I have driven is that it’s going to be hard work in comparison to Robin’s Elite, which is a fingertips and tiptoes car, but there isn’t much else on four wheels and four cylinders that is going to make a 26R seem like something you have to wrestle. There’s continual steering adjustment, but it feels very natural, an extension of the driver rather than a separate entity that you are reacting to. For a racing car, it is incredibly benign right up to the limit and even then it’s predictable and doesn’t give you a jump-scare. You

1964 Lotus Elan 26R (BRM) Engine 1594cc DOHC four-cylinder, two Weber 45 DCOE carburettors Power 150bhp-plus @ 6500rpm Torque 125lb ft @ 5000rpm Transmission Close-ratio four-speed Ford manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front: double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar. Rear: lower wishbones, Chapman struts, coil springs Brakes Discs, inboard at rear Weight 600kg Top speed 126mph 0-60mph 5.5sec

drive almost on intuition; it’s a car that encourages you to drive fast rather than goading you into it.

As Robin concluded on that Goodwood test day, beaming to be back in the Shapecraft again: ‘It’s such a special little car on all fronts, it looks fabulous and it now goes extremely well and it is a delight to drive. The more you get to know it, the more it gives back to you. It’s a virtuous spiral of driving pleasure.’

Since Octane’s day with Robin and the Shapecraft, the good results have kept coming. He was victorious again with Julian Thomas in the GT & Sports Car Cup’s outing in Sicily in May, and started on the third row and finished seventh in Equipe Classic Racing’s Lotus 26R 60th anniversary race at Silverstone in June – 33 Elans, 28 of which were said to be 26Rs. AUT 173B’s already fat history file just keeps piling on the pounds.

Unlike the beautiful little Lotus itself, with its shopping-car-derived engine yet supercar power-to-weight ratio. End THANKS TO Goodwood Motor Circuit and Robin Ellis, who is selling the Elan Shapecraft via simondrabblecars.co.uk.

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PEKING TO PARIS THROUGH A LENS

Shooting an epic Photographer Will Broadhead followed every metre of HERO-ERA’s Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. These are his favourite images Photography Will Broadhead

THE PEKING TO PARIS Motor Challenge is a 14,500km rally for vintage and classic cars, a modern recreation of the original event that took place in 1907. I had the privilege of being the rally photographer for this year’s rally, the eighth edition of the P2P and the seventh since its revival by the late, great Philip Young.

I’ve worked all over the world, covering many facets of motorsport, but there is nothing like the challenge of documenting a rally that takes place across 37 days in seven countries, and travels across the world’s largest continuous land mass. I’ve worked for HERO-ERA, the current custodians of the event, for five years, but this was my first P2P. You become completely immersed in it. The rally governs everything you do and real life disappears into another plane of existence. Those of us filming and photographing it are operating for days at a time in deserts, often camping, and the stresses on your kit and your body are high.

We work in teams of two, living in each other’s pockets for six weeks, driving the same route as the competitors. We have the pink line on a Garmin to follow as a failsafe, but navigation is done using the competition roadbook and tripmeter. It’s imperative not to hold up the rally, whether on dirt roads and rocky tracks, or technically challenging mountains, always doing the mental arithmetic to figure out our place in the field, how long we can stay in one place and where we can make up time and get back ahead.

The rally moves at an incredible pace, some days chalking off 750km, and it is easy to lose touch with it, so you have to balance getting full coverage against not losing the field. There is also only one chance to nail the shot – the cars won’t come round for another lap!

The actual taking of pictures is a tiny element of the job. It has its stresses and, as with all motorsport photography, the days are long, but my goodness it’s exhilarating. You meet all kinds of people and have the pleasure of observing everyone’s rally evolve.

Everyone completes the same route but, on a journey like this, every competitor creates their own story, and as well as attempting to take brilliant stand-alone images we must also remain in-tune to what is going on in the rally. ‘Rally’ hardly does it justice, actually. It really is driving the impossible.

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15TH OVERALL Jorgen Witting (DK) + Casper Andrup (DK)

1939 Dodge Coupe This was taken as we left our final camp in China, in the foothills of the Tian Shan Mountains. We were at last camping somewhere other than the desert and had even enjoyed overnight rain, and the morning light was stunning.

Jorgen’s Dodge, covered in the scars of two weeks in the sand and mud, complemented it beautifully. The shot was a compromise of getting in the sunrise as well as the mountains, because for photos like this, the mountains have always been built in the wrong place!

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PEKING TO PARIS THROUGH A LENS

1ST OVERALL Andy Buchan (GB) + Mike Sinclair (GB)

1928 Bentley 4½ Le Mans This was a photograph that was conceived around four years ago. As soon as I learned that I was on the event, I knew I just had to get some night sky photography in the camps, but all the skies were cloudy – except for one. I had to take this after the rest of the camp had gone to sleep and all the lights had been turned out, so it was a bit odd sneaking around the tents in the dark.

There had been visitors in the camp that evening, too: venomous snakes, scorpions and camel spiders had all come to see us, but it was worth the risk to capture this photo of the eventual winner.

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Local lady

Inner Mongolia // Day 3 One of the most amazing things about P2P is the people you meet on the road. Everywhere we went, we had our photos taken, whether we were drivers, marshals, or, in this instance, a photographer! This was happening whenever we stopped, and as the locals started to put their camera phones in my face, I began to take a photo of them taking a photo. It was a great icebreaker, and they would then insist on photos with us, introduce us to their families, and offer us water and food.

Those that have the least always give the most.

Local mechanic working through the night

Gobi Camp // Day 5

This guy was one of a number of local mechanics that came out to the camps. These people are incredibly skilled and can fabricate parts seemingly out of nothing. Here the chap is working on some modifications to Federico Grom’s Fiat 124, which needed a new axle and then subsequently other suspension and brake parts fabricating. The guys worked through the night, health and safety optional, and the car rolled out of camp the next morning.

Sandstorm

Gobi Camp // Day 9 I remember this being a really hard day on the road, everyone was exhausted and the last thing any of us wanted was to be messing about pitching tents. So, just to really push our buttons, a massive sandstorm rolled in that seemed to last most of the night. HERO-ERA’s travelling mechanics – the sweeps – had it worst, working on the cars in the maelstrom. It was awful at the time, but the beer tasted all the sweeter for it!

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PEKING TO PARIS THROUGH A LENS

9TH OVERALL Richard Walker (GB) + Faith Douglas (GB)

1939 Chevrolet Master Deluxe Coupe

Inner Mongolia // Day 6

Richard is a former truck racing champion, so it’s no surprise that he can muscle a big bus like this Chevy. This was on a Sporting Time Control section, when you know the drivers are going to be pushing, so you’re looking for a spot where you think they might be making some shapes. Most were lifting the front wheels over this small wadi, but Richard came out of the preceding corner visibly quicker than everyone and nailed the jump in the 85-year-old car.

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3RD IN CLASSIC CATEGORY Kevin Bradburn (US) + Cole Bradburn (US)

1969 Porsche 912 Kev and Cole are a father-and-son team, in a car built by Cole. They compete in all kinds of motorsport, from motorcycle racing to Baja, and are the epitome of a pair just in it for the fun and the memories. This was shot on Day 7, a day when the scenery kept switching. We could see the 5000m peaks of these mountains for some time and took a risk by skipping on down the road in search of the right photo, rather than just ‘a’ photo.

22ND OVERALL Hernan Levy (CL) + Felipe Ledermann (CL)

1928 Ford A Tudor Taxi Sunrise on day 13, our penultimate day in China.

We didn’t always get to see the sunrise – you’ve got to sleep at some point – but Hernan and Felipe saw it almost every morning, as they worked out very quickly that they needed to leave an hour or two before everyone else to get their tiny Ford in before midnight. This photo sums up their rally for me. They didn’t always follow the official route, skipping along highways when they could, but I dare say their rally was longer than almost anyone else’s.

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PEKING TO PARIS THROUGH A LENS

19TH IN CLASSIC CATEGORY Katarina Kyvalova (SK) + Jon Minshaw (GB)

1967 Ford Mustang Fastback

Kazakhstan // Day 16

The Prodrive-built Mustang was crewed by Kat and Jon, who both know a bit about racing. This was another sporting section, on powdery sand on a day with zero wind. It was a nightmare for us; not wanting to hold anyone up, I had to drive blind in the tyretracks of the car we followed into the section. We hit this spot and might have taken off ourselves, so I knew that it would only be a matter of time before someone else did the same, and Jon unwittingly obliged – not lifting at all before the jump.

24TH OVERALL Tsuguo Shintani (JP) + Sumiko Kokonno (JP)

1929 Buick Doctor’s Coupe

Kazakhstan // Day 19

Two of the most fabulous competitors on the rally, full of enthusiasm and a never-say-die attitude.

Tsuguo and Sumiko’s car was one of the slowest on the event, and they took it steady, so it was a real surprise when they did this! I’ve got better photos at this spot, of cars going higher and faster, but you expect it from the 911s et al. I didn’t expect it from a 1929 Buick that chugged along everywhere at a sensible pace, and you could hear the subsequent laughter in the cockpit over the engine. End

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1992 ALLARD J2X-C “A UNIQUE 3.5 LITRE GROUP C THAT REVOLUTIONISED AERODYNAMICS IN ENDURANCE RACING“

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COLLECTION

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THE O C TA N E INTERVIEW

McKeel Hagerty 40 years ago, the Hagerty family started a hobby-focused specialist insurance company from its basement. It’s grown a bit Words James Elliott Portraits Hagerty archive

THERE IS SOMETHING rather zen about McKeel Hagerty, an air of pensive calm that suggests deep thought, reflection and divine equilibrium. It will come as no shock later in the interview when he reveals that he came close to taking religious orders, but for now he is chuckling at the accusation that he might be taking this video call in a hotel suite or some labyrinthine office at the centre of his sprawling Traverse City, Michigan, classic car empire, when it is ‘just’ his home office.

Having turned away from a future of piety in the Russian Orthodox Church, he instead finds himself commanding a business the scale of which has never before been seen in the classic car industry, a lifestyle brand that straddles insurance, an auction house and more. The conglomerate now owns and runs a host of events, from The Amelia in Florida to the Festival of the Unexceptional in the UK (this year celebrating its tenth anniversary) via RADwood. It owns Broad Arrow Auctions; the industry-standard price guide; and generates enough market data to power SpaceX. At the heart of it, though, is the insurance company, one that this year is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

The stats: in the US, Hagerty insures 2.4million collector cars and has a drivers’ club with some 830,000 members, akin to the entire stock of historic vehicles in the UK, plus a YouTube channel with over three million subscribers. It employs 1600 staff in four countries.

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Mc KEEL HAGERTY INTERVIEW

It wasn’t always thus. ‘We were not particularly wealthy,’ says McKeel. ‘My parents Frank and Louise sold a general insurance business in our small town in the Midwest of the USA and were looking for a retirement project, so started insuring wooden boats. It was run in our basement and everybody pitched in and in the summer we went to shows and found our customers also owned classic cars.

They persuaded us to go into the car space. It wasn’t a big strategic dream, it was just them asking: “Why don’t you start insuring cars?” So we did. We were all equal partners, I was still a teenager and my sisters were in their twenties.’

Classic cars were already in the blood, McKeel’s father having grown up in Detroit. ‘There was always a project to work on. When my older sisters and I became teenagers my father would find a car to restore with each of us. My eldest sister Kim had a 1962 Corvair station wagon, then Tammy, who is nine years older than me, bought a 1960 Porsche 356B Roadster for next to nothing, 500 bucks, and restored it with dad in the garage. For me we found a rusted-out hulk of a 1967 Porsche 911S, again for $500.

So when I restored that 911 and was driving it in high school, it was just kind of who I was, not anything special.’

After high school, however, he very nearly opted out of the family business, falling in love with the idea of teaching philosophy. Straight out of college he joined Saint Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox seminary and studied to be a priest. As it happened, he chose not to pursue the cloth and started his doctoral work in ancient philosophy.

Then an epiphany. ‘I was in a class reading Plato’s Republic in Greek at Boston College in 1995, and in the margin of my notebook I wrote down this idea that the family business would work better if we thought of ourselves as a club, a membership organisation, rather than an insurance sales outfit. I closed my notebook, stood up in the middle of class and walked home to my wife at that time and said I’m quitting, we’re leaving, and we packed up our apartment and moved from Boston back to Michigan and I started building the business into having this more community approach.’

To be fair, it’s done OK. ‘I was confident we could be successful, but we had no sense of how large the car world was. There was barely any data so we added up the membership of car clubs and the circulation of magazines and decided the total collector car world was about 3-4million people globally. Much later, when data was more accessible, it was like, oh my God, ten times that big, easily. This is not just a grown-up cottage-industry kind of business, this is a real opportunity and we’re probably uniquely suited to grow in that space. So that was it.’

The above anecdote probably explains why the Hagerty business seems obsessed with data, analysing every aspect of the classic world in minute detail, pumping out information on the market and the cars that make it up, pouncing on themes and trends, worshipping the value of the knowledge that data brings.

This page, from top Winters can be harsh in Michigan; at Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary In Yonkers, New York, studying to be a priest; at 13, the budding apple tycoon planted a 600-tree orchard and sold the produce out of the back of his dad’s 1933 Ford pick-up; cleaning a Porsche with father Frank.

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‘MY PARENTS WERE LOOKING FOR A RETIREMENT PROJECT, SO STARTED INSURING WOODEN BOATS’ But it has also done rather more than that, the empire extending like Minecraft into media, events and now even an auction house, Broad Arrow, that is set to come to Europe imminently. It has also culminated in a flotation, and public listing brings with it a whole heap of other voices and masters who may not be driven by the same virtues. Surely that leaves him a bit hamstrung?

‘For years I watched big capital looking at the car world and figuring out what they were going to invest in.

Anytime something becomes visible in public and appears sexy, big investors are going to take a poke at it and outsiders are going to come in to take advantage of it.

So I kind of said to myself, well, look, we’re either going to do this for ourselves or we’re going to let somebody else do it to us. That was the nexus of the decision – raise the money to stay in the car world rather than to just sell out.

It was a massive leap of faith.’

After raising a mindboggling sum of capital, major investments in tech, data and businesses followed, including live and digital auctions. But does the newfound corporate accountability cramp his style and ambitions for Hagerty? ‘We’re a for-profit business, but we’ll continue investing in things that are maybe less about profitability, like youth programmes, on-ramps, media businesses and events. Events can be pretty challenging to produce and not make big money, but it is important to keep them going. We like the things we have, I don’t see us acquiring a lot of other stuff right now.’

Maybe not, but expansion of what they already have is on the cards. ‘Broad Arrow will have a number of sales in UK and Europe over the next couple of years. I don’t know exactly. It’s really up to that team to decide how many and where, but we’ve had a UK Hagerty business for 20-plus years, now operating out of the Bicester Heritage site. We have our Clubhouse there, we activate member events there and we’re starting to think about what and where a Broad Arrow auction would need to be.

‘It would most likely not be stand-alone. If a car event is good enough, multiple things grow up around it, and that’s what we’ll be looking for. We take a very neutral approach and try not to get into hyper-competitive environments where people block each other.’

Is the current market strong enough to sustain that?

‘The top end is levelling, but it’s levelling up really high. I have a hard time hearing the Chicken Little view that the sky is falling; it’s not falling, it’s just not growing the way it was before. People also misinterpret a macro-trend of collectors shedding some of their vehicles as a portent of doom when they are simply thoughtfully and selectively selling some cars while they are still alive. Harsh, but true.’

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Mc KEEL HAGERTY INTERVIEW

‘YOUNGSTERS ARE JUST INTERESTED IN DIFFERENT KINDS OF CARS THAN THEIR PARENTS, AND THAT’S OK’ Above, left and right In his 1965 Cobra 289, part of a small (well, in the teens) but perfectly formed collection that includes his first car, the $500 Porsche 911S; passionately speaking at a conference on the future of the automobile.

Talking of car collections, we suspect McKeel might have a few gems tucked away. He still has that 911S, but what else? ‘I don’t have a huge collection, probably in the teens. I have a Porsche 356 in which I did the California Mille this year [an event that Hagerty now manages] and a Bocar I bought specifically for the Colorado Grand.’

There is a recently acquired 1955 Gullwing plus a 1903 Knox for the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. Last year, he flew in on the Saturday, no fanfare, no ticker-tape parade, completed the run on the Sunday and then flew straight back to Traverse City. We met then and he spoke passionately about providing as many ‘on-ramps’ into the classic car world as possible, enlisting youngsters into the hobby and associated industries to ensure future generations don’t only have the interest to perpetuate the hobby, but also the skills.

‘The questions I get asked all the time are “Isn’t the age of the automobile over? Young people just aren’t into cars anymore, are they?” Well, the next generation is into cars.

They just approach them differently. And, like every generation, they’re susceptible to economic downturns.

After the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, young people couldn’t get jobs. They were coming out of the university or out of high school and were living with their parents and not getting driver’s licences and not buying cars. It didn’t mean they weren’t interested, it wasn’t just cars they weren’t buying! Fast-forward to today and what we see is that there is this engaged next generation and they are getting into it. They’re just interested in different kinds of cars than their parents were, and that’s OK. ‘Our job is to facilitate that, a couple of examples being our youth judging programmes at concours and other events, plus manual transmission training. So far we’ve involved more than 20,000 kids in judging and taught over 4000 young people to drive a manual, which may not be a big deal in the UK where a lot more manual cars are sold, but in North America, we’re at a crisis point.’

That’s not to say that he is anti-auto, just as he isn’t antiEV conversion ‘as long as it doesn’t butcher the car’, because he is adamant that youngsters have to be introduced to motoring on their terms rather than the previous generation’s. ‘Our view is that these beautiful, well-designed, cool, well-engineered things are worth keeping around even if the future owner, 50 years from now, has a different view of what the engine should be.

‘Like archaeologists, we don’t study what is lost, we study what remains, so the first priority is to make sure they are still around and that well-tuned, well-maintained internal-combustion-engined cars can still operate on public roads legally – that’s my ultimate goal. To achieve that, we need to make sure that people are interested in them, that they know how to operate them and maintain them, that they’re fun and that they’re considered a piece of cultural history and not just a piece of technology.’

There are twin approaches to bringing youngsters onboard: bringing them to where the hobby is by making events more involving, more inclusive and familyfriendly, or taking it to where they are, hence Hagerty’s partnership with Sony PlayStation. The third element, of course, is passing on the knowledge and skills to keep classic and vintage cars alive indefinitely.

McKeel says: ‘I discovered back in 1999 this school in the US called McPherson College in Kansas, which now has a four-year automotive restoration degree. We started giving scholarships out to young people to attend it and have clocked up over $5million-worth so far.’

What he doesn’t mention is that he sits on the McPherson board, as he does the Petersen Museum’s.

He’s a former CEO of the Young Presidents’ Organization, he’s been a Pebble Beach judge for 25 years, founded a Michigan venture capital firm, and set up the Historic Vehicle Association (since renamed the Hagerty Drivers Foundation) to develop the National Historic Vehicle Register. Puts himself about a bit, this one. End

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ASTON MARTIN

1962 DB4 VANTAGE

Supplied new by Brooklands of Bond Street, the build of this DB4 Vantage was completed on the 26th September 1962. This matching numbers example has been fully restored by Aston Engineering, completed in July 2017.

Presented in its original factory colour combination of Caribbean Pearl with Red

Connolly Vaumol trim and Wilton carpet.

Additional upgrades now include: 4.7Ltr engine, overdrive gearbox, handling kit, Borrani wire wheels, air conditioning, electronic power steering and a Becker Mexico radio.

The ultimate specification of DB4 ready to be used and enjoyed. £585,000

ASTON MARTIN

ASTON MARTIN

ASTON MARTIN

LHD model supplied new by Garage Mirabeau, Paris. Original colour combination of Moonbeam Grey with Red Connolly Vaumol trim. Engine upgrade carried out in 1960 to DBB specification which includes 3x Weber carburettors, higher compression ratio and twin exhaust system. £275,000

Finished in the desirable Cumberland Grey with Dark Brown leather and matching mohair hood.

Upgraded to Ronal 16” alloy wheels and Nardi wooden steering wheel. Extremely well maintained example presented in superb condition throughout. £179,000

Ex Demonstrator for Brooklands of Bond Street, London. Fully restored example finished in Snow Shadow Grey with Black Vaumol leather trim and Wilton carpets. Extras include 4.2Ltr engine, Handling kit, Power Steering, alloy wheels and Becker Mexico radio. £POA

1958 DB MKlll

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DODGE CHARGER DAYTONA

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The winged warrior This 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona has been in one family since 1970. Octane charts its history and discovers a highway hero steeped in dirt tracks and ovals Words Preston Lerner Photography Evan Klein

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ature or nurture? Philosophers, behavioural scientists and bewildered parents have been arguing over that one for centuries.

Sean Machado blames both for his devotion to – no, make that obsession for – the outrageous high-wing, shark-nose exemplar of American exceptionalism officially known as the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona.

In 1969 and 1970, the Daytona and its Mopar twin, the Plymouth Superbird, leveraged the power of the Chrysler Hemi V8 and the skills of drivers such as Richard Petty and Bobby Allison to dominate NASCAR’s superspeedway races. But first, to homologate the models for stock-car racing, street versions of the winged warriors were briefly sold in Chrysler showrooms.

And Machado’s father, Joe, had to have one of his own.

The thing you’ve got to understand about Joe Machado is that he was a diehard Charger guy. He’d bought a new one in 1966, then another in 1967, and a third in 1968. He passed on the ’69 version (he didn’t like the grille), but when the high-wing Charger Daytona went on sale he found one of the 500 cars slated to be built on sale locally at a dealer.

Then his wife discovered that it had been spec’d without airconditioning, so was a no-go as a family-hauler in Southern California. Joe tore up his sales contract, bought a Daytona wing from a dealer and slapped it on the rear deck of his ’68 Charger.

A year passed. Then Joe’s sister spotted another Daytona for sale at a local dealership. Turns out it had been bought new by an undercover narcotics cop who’d reluctantly traded it in for a Dodge van because it was too conspicuous to use for surveillance (though it performed admirably in car chases, except for drum brakes that faded after repeated stops from 135mph). When Joe bought the car, his son was nine months old.

‘I grew up in that car,’ Sean Machado says. ‘I’ve got pictures of me as a little kid standing on the wing. I learned how to drive in that car. When my sister was born, she came home from the hospital in that car. She took her driver’s test in it. And they deducted two points for no front bumper. Seriously!’

Today, the younger Machado owns the car. Not because it was handed down from father to son like a family heirloom. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The story begins in the mid-1960s. Change was in the air – literally – as race-car designers began exploiting the benefits of what we now call downforce. Until then, aerodynamicists had been concerned primarily with streamlining bodies to reduce drag. But they then realised the wings and spoilers dramatically increased the load on the tyres, and the net gain in cornering speed translated into faster lap times. Jim Hall had provided the proof of concept with his sensational Chaparral 2E Can-Am car in 1966, and Formula 1 machines sprouted ever-bigger and wider wings – until a series of wing failures in 1969 inspired

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1969 Dodge Charger Daytona Engine 7206cc OHV V8, Carter AFB four-barrel carburettor Power 375bhp @ 4600rpm Torque 482lb ft @ 3200rpm Transmission Three-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive Steering Recirculating ball Suspension Front: double wishbones, torsion bars, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar. Rear: live axle, leaf springs, telescopic dampers Brakes Drums Weight 1815kg Top speed 132mph 0-60mph 6.4sec

Clockwise, from top left Riverside Raceway, early 1980s, the wing strong enough to support a cameraman; the young Sean Machado with his mother, 1972; smooth nosecone was high-tech for the era; in Bobby Allison tribute form, 1979.

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regulations limiting their size and placement. NASCAR came late to the aero party.

Winston tobacco sponsorship and TV coverage were yet to come to stock-car racing, and most races were run on short ovals and dirt-track bullrings. In fact, the only genuine superspeedway on the schedule was the banked tri-oval at Daytona. But in 1969, NASCAR supremo Bill France spearheaded construction of an even faster high-bank track at Talladega, where speeds were expected to nudge up against the 200mph barrier, and Chrysler decided to pull a fast one on the competition.

Stock cars have never been truly stock. (As the good ol’ boys like to say: ‘If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.’) But in 1969, the NASCAR race cars were a hell of a lot closer to street cars than they are today, when all the teams use a common chassis clothed in bodywork that very, very vaguely resembles the current Ford Mustang, Toyota Camry and Chevrolet Camaro.

In 1969, Chrysler had a sleek mid-size B-body coupe in the Dodge Charger. The problem was that the flying buttresses of the rear pillars generated a ton of rear-end lift, which made the car squirrelly. So the race engineers persuaded the designers to replace them with a flush-mounted backlight and grille that improved airflow. Then, to homologate the car, they convinced the bean-counters to build a limited run of so-called Charger 500s to sell to the general public.

Unfortunately, Ford had an even better idea – two of them, actually. Working with the renowned Holman & Moody race shop, the company fashioned a pair of radically reskinned intermediate coupes dubbed the Ford Torino Talladega and the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II. Not only were these cars slicker than the Charger 500, they also generated more downforce.

Advantage, Ford. Disgruntled Mopar engineers declared war. To win it, they created a car unlike anything that had ever been seen before. Or since.

Built at Nichels Engineering, the Chrysler analogue to Holman & Moody, the Charger Daytona featured an 18in-long wedge-shaped nosecone with a chin spoiler grafted to the front clip. But the big news was found at the tail, which sported an eye-popping wing, 7.5in deep, 58in wide and towering 23.5in above the rear deck so that it was fed by clean air undisturbed by the roof. Powered by a 7.0-litre Hemi, the car reportedly posted a trap speed of 243mph on Chrysler’s five-mile test-track.

The Daytona debuted at Talladega in the fall of 1969. Charlie Glotzbach – who raced in cowboy boots – qualified on pole at 199.466mph, and Richard Brickhouse gave the car its maiden victory. Six months later, Buddy Baker – in slip-on sneakers – set a closed-course speed record at Talladega by clocking a lap at 200.447mph. ‘I could have gone a lot faster than 200,’ Baker said.

‘I said, “Let’s go to it and really set ’em a record.” They said,

Clockwise, from below Daytona is hot work in the desert; Sean Machado is the second-generation owner; 440 ‘Magnum’ offers a tractable 375hp; sweeping roads are perfect Daytona territory; sharing garage space with its brethren; cloth interior is a rarity.

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Above and right Console shift and FM radio are the only deviations from original spec; piercing nose and high tail lend this ‘mid-size’ coupe enormous character.

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‘Joe painted the Daytona red and gold, with “22” on the doors, as a tribute to Bobby Allison’s 1970 race car’ “Well, the next barrier is 300mph. Do you want to break that one?” And I told them, “Nooo! Scratch my name off that trophy.”’

The success of the Daytona prompted Chrysler to use the Plymouth Road Runner as the basis of a second aero warrior, dubbed the Superbird. Resplendent in electric blue, Superbirds driven by Petty and his wingman, Pete Hamilton, were the winningest speedway cars of the 1970 season. ’Birds and Daytonas also won a ton of races in second-tier stock car series sanctioned by USAC and ARCA. In 1969, a limited run of 500 Charger R/Ts were pulled off the assembly lines sans badges, stripes and grilles and shipped to Creative Industries, where they were converted into street Daytonas. (The next year, 1920 Road Runners were reborn as Superbirds.) Forty of the Daytonas packed 426ci Hemi V8s rated at 425 horsepower and 490lb ft of torque. The rest came with a wedge-head 440ci V8 – a Magnum, in Dodge parlance.

Although it produced ‘only’ 375 horses and 482lb ft with the standard four-barrel carburettor, Magnum-equipped Daytonas were 80lb lighter and more tractable on the road than the more expensive Hemis.

Like ancient Greek heroes, the winged warriors earned great glory but at the expense of short lives. The race cars were grounded in 1971, when NASCAR limited all the aero cars – Dodges, Plymouths, Fords and Mercurys – to 305ci, while their rivals could use big-blocks. With the race cars rendered instantly

obsolete, Chrysler wasn’t interested in building any more street versions. The long nose was a headache in traffic and the limited trunk opening compromised access to the spare tyre. Also, the looks were, ah, polarising, which made them a tough sell.

But Joe Machado wanted the real deal. And after finding the red car traded in by the narc, he bought it for $2418 – a tick more than a Beetle Cabriolet. It wasn’t a Hemi, his original choice, but this Daytona was one of only three known 440 models sold with a cloth interior rather than vinyl. Also atypical was a columnshift automatic transmission, which left space between the front seats. ‘Dad said it was great because, when my sister was a baby, she’d lie on the floor next to him,’ Machado recalls.

Joe was a true believer – so much so that, in 1975, he cofounded the Daytona and SuperBird Association (after going through many iterations, the club is now known as the Winged Warriors/National B-Body Owners Association.) But he was also a SoCal guy with a taste for customisation. So a week after buying the car, he rattled-canned the black wing and black vinyl top with white paint and two-toned the wheels. ‘My mom was pissed because she couldn’t believe what he was doing to his new car,’ Machado says. ‘But it looked really sharp.’

In 1979, Joe primered and painted the Daytona red and gold, with ‘22’ on the doors, as a tribute to Bobby Allison’s 1970 race car. About a decade later, he repainted it blue. Along the way he also installed a longer final-drive ratio to optimise the car for

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DODGE CHARGER DAYTONA

‘Put it on an empty interstate and the Daytona is in its element’ highway and road-tripping. In 1989, he sold it for $25,000 – big money in those days. By that time, his son was already following in his footsteps. In addition to restoring multiple Daytonas (and other Mopar products) for customers, Sean was amassing his own fleet of aero warriors.

Machado now owns an air-conditioned clone that he uses as a daily driver – it has 353,000 miles on the odometer – and he recently sold a Charger upgraded with authentic Daytona parts that he’d tracked relentlessly. About 25 years ago, while attending a Winged Warriors car show at Talladega, he spotted a 440 with a cloth interior. When he checked the VIN, he confirmed that it was his father’s car, returned to the original red-and-black colour scheme. Three years later, he bought it. ‘I just had to have that car,’ he explains.

Over the years, the column shifter had been replaced with a centre-console unit, though the TorqueFlite transmission itself is the same. The engine had been rebuilt decades ago after Machado ran a bearing by zinging the motor to impress his high school buddies. Oh, and the headliner was redone long ago after Machado ripped it with a toy truck. More recently, Machado upgraded the AM radio to AM/FM. Other than that, the car remains unrestored.

As such, it is a time capsule. Fit and finish are typical for the period, which is to say pretty crude. The steering wheel is big and thin. Steering effort is low, but the workload is high because you’re constantly making corrections. Operating the drum brakes reminds you why discs were such a revelation. Clearly, this isn’t a car for British B-roads, but put it on a cruise-worthy American boulevard or, better still, an empty interstate, and the Daytona is in its element.

The engine makes muscular V8 music and pulls effortlessly to a rev-limited top speed north of 160mph. The softly sprung suspension and cushy seats make for a plush ride, and it feels surprisingly capable in high-speed sweepers. This is a car that will knock out miles at triple-digit speeds until it runs either out of gas or afoul of a vigilant highway patrolman. Machado recently put 6400 miles on the Daytona – bringing the total up to 265,000 – during a 16-day cross-country trip. ‘The only problem I had was when I lost a wheel weight at well over 100mph,’ he says.

Machado acknowledges that his non-AC-equipped car isn’t ideal for tooling around his home town in Palm Desert, where the average mid-summer temperature is 106ºF. But he loves the Daytona, warts and all.

Nature or nurture? A little bit of both. End

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2024 PEKING TO PARIS WINNERS 2024 2024 PEKING PEKING TO TO PARIS PARIS WINNERS WINNERS 2024 PEKING TO PARIS WINNERS

SOURCED, REBUILT, PREPARED, MAINTAINED SOURCED, SOURCED, REBUILT, REBUILT, PREPARED, PREPARED, MAINTAINED MAINTAINED SOURCED, REBUILT, PREPARED, MAINTAINED

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILL BROADHEAD PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY BYBYBY WILL WILL WILL BYBROADHEAD WILL BROADHEAD BROADHEAD BROADHEAD PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILL BROADHEAD

KYLESKU BRIDGE

BRIDGING

THE GAP From the 1700s to 1984, the only way across Scotland’s Loch a’ Chàirn Bhàin was by ferry. Then came the beautiful Kylesku Bridge – and a boom in North Coast 500 drivers Words and photography David Shepherd

A

economical), with just one bridge, judged to be ‘aesthetically exciting pproaching from the south, it appears with little warning and elegant’. It featured an asymmetric curved design, considered unusual as the grass verge drops away to the dark loch below at the time, allowing it to align with the cutting as it reached the north shore. and ahead the tarmac takes on a gently tightening The water depth meant the pier legs had to remain on land, built into the curve, guided by aluminium rails bounding the bedrock supporting the 278m span. It was said the height was set at 24m by the modern concrete structure that you’re driving Department of Trade, to allow the Royal Yacht Britannia to pass under the over. The best view is now behind you and, perfectly on cue, a bridge for the planned opening by the Queen. parking area allows you to pull over and take in the full panorama The approach roads and island-linking causeways were constructed first and of the Kylesku Bridge. finished in August 1982, then work began on the bridge. The main span was a It has become one of the iconic landmarks of the north-west cantilevered hollow box section made of pre-formed stressed concrete, and coast of Scotland – no NC500 trip is considered complete the entire construction used 4000m³ of Portland cement, poured on site. without that classic bridge photo, taken from an overlooking knoll, Despite the adverse weather conditions of two Scottish winters, the grass worn thin by Instagram. Opened by HM The Queen in 1984, construction was completed on time, taking just two years, although the bridge was already 16 years old when I made my first visit. I’d seen the projected cost of £3.5m had ballooned to £5.3m. an image of it in a newspaper years before and was struck by the simple The finished design won awards for its technical innovation concrete curves and the way it sat comfortably within the watery landscape. and visually striking construction. In 2019 it was officially This was an age without social media or Googlemaps, and decades before a renamed Drochaid a’ Chaolais Chumhaing. This was Arup’s marketing agency dreamed up the NC500. The roads were still empty of car clubs, first curved bridge and Jørgen Nissen went on to design the bikers and motorhomes; just a few locals going about their everyday lives. huge 4.9-mile Øresund Bridge linking Denmark and Imagine then, prior to 1984, having to cross that deep stretch of water by ferry, Sweden, featured in the Nordic TV crime series The Bridge. because that was the only way to travel between Kylesku and Kylestrome. It was a The redundant ferry jetty remains by the Kylesku Hotel, circuit-breaker in the only West Coast road: come tourist season, the ferry queues with the north bank jetty and old boathouse just visible would have stretched for miles. Rowing boats had provided a rudimentary passenger across the dark loch. I spoke with a boatman giving trips to service from the late 1700s, somehow managing to carry horses and carts into the the Eas a’ Chual Aluinn waterfall about life before the bridge.

20th Century. A car ferry service was introduced after the First World War, using He attended the 1984 opening by the Queen as a boy and turntable boats, and by 1975 a roll-on, roll-off ferry, the Maid of Glencoul, was remembers when the ferry was the only crossing point of Loch operating – but only during hours of daylight. And those hours are short during a’ Chàirn Bhàin. Contrary to what I’d assumed, he didn’t long Scottish winters, forcing motorists to make a 110-mile detour via Lairg. remember it being much of a bottleneck; summer tourist traffic was Factor in high winds and snow, and you can see why this remote corner of still very light even into the 1980s.

Sutherland remained hidden from the casual tourist for so many years.

Using old maps, you can trace the original road leading down to the In 1978 the Highland Regional Council appointed civil engineers Ove north shore jetty at Eilean na Rainich, facing the hotel. Pass a heavily Arup, led by Jørgen Nissen, to design a bridge and new approach roads.

CCTV’d courtyard of recently renovated estate buildings – owned by the The technical brief was stringent: it had to straddle deep tidal water Duke of Westminster – you walk 1.5 miles to the old slipway. It’s a narrow, and withstand wind loadings of 48m/s (fully 107mph), more than any winding single-track, following the same 1840 course in use up to 1984; the bridge in the British Isles. Ove Arup looked at four alternative routes, tarmac is original and now broken. It’s hard to believe this was the major using a combination of bridges and causeways of varying lengths.

West Coast A-road, barely wide enough even for cars of the 1970s.

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Above and below Jørgen Nissen and Ove Arup came up with an elegant and efficient solution for physically linking Kylesku and Kylestrome in Sutherland.

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KYLESKU BRIDGE

COURTESY ARUP

COURTESY ARUP

Left, from top The old ferry just wouldn’t cope with today’s summer traffic; construction took two years, used 4000m³ of Portland cement, and cost £5.3m; hard to believe the old single-track lane was a major route.

The 1840s six-inch map already shows an established ferry crossing and the old boathouse remains, now renovated, housing a large modern boat (also owned by the Duke, I’m guessing). Standing on the slipway, you take in a backside view of the bridge from an angle not often seen.

Silhouetted against the massive baulk of Quinag, the once bright concrete is now mottled, weathered by 40 tough West Coast winters. It has a noticeably simple profile, bereft of superfluous detail and with no requirement for messy bracing or suspension. From this angle, it exits and enters the land very discreetly, modern and imposing but certainly not overwhelming its surroundings.

As well as making the ferry obsolete, the bridge was accompanied by an upgrading of the A894 road heading north, bypassing sections of the old single-track that had followed the contours of the land. It’s quite easy to see where the modern road construction takes over, with causeways linking the island of Garbh Eilean to Kylestrome. The new road then ploughs through rock cuttings and straddles small lochs heading northwest, leaving behind stranded loops of the old West Coast route that had evolved from ancient paths and trackways.

Walking back to the main road and crossing to the seaward side, you can spot what looks like a small rocky island but is the remains of an Iron Age Broch, a complex double-skinned stone dwelling. People have existed in this landscape for many thousands of years.

You can still walk these abandoned loops, heading inland, crossing the Duartmore bridge and then dipping down to the sea at Duart Beg, where the old tarmac and boundary wall are still visible but now crumbling. Clearly these single-track roads would have struggled with today’s traffic levels and, as with the Skye crossing, a bridge was inevitable and with it came change. The boatman said that back in 1984 there had been mixed feelings about the bridge construction but that, personally, he welcomed the easier access it brought. However, he shared concerns about the increasing number of motorhome rental companies, sending inexperienced users out onto the narrow roads. For better or worse, the bridging of that last gap on the West Coast was always going to bring change with it.

I’ve never been attracted to completing the whole 516 miles – there are north- and east-coast sections I positively avoid – but each to their own.

For me the Achnasheen-Gairloch-Ullapool section is an unmissable drive, with alternating glimpses of mountain, loch and sea and endless fast, open stretches through beautiful wilderness. But the magnetic pull of the bridge makes the run north from Ullapool the one I’m always drawn to. Forking right at Loch Assynt and gaining height past the peaks of Suilven, Canisp and Ben More, the road assumes a more desolate look, heading up and over to the hairpin at Loch na Gainmhich. Stopping briefly in the layby to take in the huge vista stretching out to the coast, you’re close now but the bridge still hides coyly from view.

So I’d forget driving the full NC500 circuit: just pick and mix the best roads and use the time saved to linger a little longer. Take a coffee at Flossies, the smallest shop in the Highlands, and walk the white sand beaches of Clachtoll or Achmelvich. By all means climb that grassy knoll at Kylesku but pocket the iPhone – just stand quietly in the rain, absorb the surroundings and appreciate the graceful concrete form that sits so well against the Assynt landscape.

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TA L A C R E S T

the world’s number one classic ferrari dealer

1989 FERRARI F40

# 83783 is Ferrari Classiche Certified, a non catalyst, non-adjustable suspension example, p resented in exceptional condition. The car arrived in the UK in 1997 from its original owner in Italy a t 1,900 kms as confirmed by the history file and was registered in the UK on 1st December that year.

The car was subject to a major service, including replacement of cambelts, cam seals, lower front spoiler lip, fuel tanks, coolant, front and rear and discs, pads.

Since then the car has been sparingly used by it’s last owner as part of major collection.

Mileage shown is 9,836 kilometers, just over 6,100 miles.

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1967 Ferrari 330 GTC

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MASERATI KHAMSIN PROTOTYPE

RIGHT FIRST TIME

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With this long-hidden prototype, Marcello Gandini defined the shape of the seminal Maserati Khamsin. Marc Sonnery explores its history – and uncovers the detail differences that establish its provenance Photography Dennis Noten

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MASERATI KHAMSIN PROTOTYPE

C

hange was afoot at Maserati in the early 1970s, following its acquisition by Citroën. The ageing Ghibli was beautiful but the mid-engined Bora and Merak were evidence of modern thinking at Viale Ciro Menotti. The Modenese firm simply needed a new front-engined gentleman’s GT to match.

There was a brief exchange with Pininfarina, and Pininfarina’s response exists in a private archive near Modena. However, because Pininfarina was the designer for Ferrari, Maserati’s board chose Bertone for the task, which fell to design chief Marcello Gandini. The design would follow the wedge-shaped Alfa Carabo and Lancia Stratos Zero concepts, not to mention the Lamborghini Countach, but this was the late maestro’s first opportunity to apply that design language to a front-engined car. As he once confirmed to me, his starting point was the Lamborghini Urraco, though the job wasn’t as simple as moving the glasshouse back.

The result was stunning. Unusually for that era, the production models would be very, very similar to the prototype – which is the

car you see here, chassis AM120-004. There from the start were the bonnet’s asymmetrical louvres, hinting at a mighty motor beneath.

The horizontal and vertical surfaces were given impeccably tapered transitions and flowed seamlessly and deliciously from nose to tail in a masterclass of subtlety. At the rear, Gandini set the tail-lights into a glazed panel, as he had on Lamborghini’s Espada, only even more stylishly here. The Khamsin was ethereal and arresting, named after a Mediterranean wind.

The mechanical specification was an impressive mix of tradition and innovation. This was the only Maserati to feature a 4.9-litre version of the firm’s V8 (on carburettors, to keep the glory of its voice intact), transmission came in ZF five-speed manual or Borg Warner automatic form, and the structure was monocoque with a tubular steel frame. Ingegnere Giulio Alfieri had configured the double-wishbone suspension front and rear, with special consideration given to geometry, while the differential was held in a subframe to cancel vibrations.

A near-50:50 weight distribution made for predictable handling, in contrast to the treacherous sudden oversteer of its mid-engined siblings. And then came the Citroën elements: hydraulic brakes, an LHM-assisted clutch and the brilliant DIRAVI power steering

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‘The Khamsin’s mechanical specification was an impressive mix of tradition and innovation’ Clockwise, from top left Exacting restoration meant casting a unique front bumper; centre console is specific to the prototype, too; sill bears the signature of the design house and coachbuilder.

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MASERATI KHAMSIN PROTOTYPE

seen in the SM allowed for very light controls even in town. Such ease of use was unique among GT cars at the time. The hydraulics even extended to driver’s seat adjustment and headlight levelling, as Alfieri showboated his ambitions after the tight budgetary leash of the Orsi family, prior owners of Maserati. The technology had not been imposed by Citroën, the president of which, Pierre Bercot, had delegated only four Frenchmen to the factory and forbade fellow directors and engineers from meddling.

Before AM120-004 there had been a rough test mule, AM120002, finished in white with black interior. Its longer tail housed the spare wheel, like a Ghibli, and as soon as it was ready administrator Guy Malleret, Alfieri and Gandini himself gathered around it in Modena to discuss adjustments. Gandini wanted to make the tail shorter and noted that the spare prevented that.

Alfieri’s solution was to take advantage of space under the nose, ahead of the engine, fitting a space-saver tyre (as used on Meraks) on a cradle behind the hinged grille.

Chassis 002 was tested at the Modena Aerautodromo, sharing track time with the first Bora Group 4. High-speed runs showed its shovel-shaped nose generated lift, so the radiator opening was made wider in subsequent cars. In December 1973 it served as a sacrificial lamb for the crash test and its remains were scrapped.

Long before that, however, Gandini defined the final Khamsin lines with our subject: AM120-004. It had a full-width radiator

aperture, inaugurated those asymmetrical hood vents, featured the shorter rear end with the spare tyre in the nose, more traditional half-bumperettes at the rear, and the fuel filler behind the rear numberplate. A most becoming gold livery was chosen, but which gold exactly? It did not look like the Oro Kelso or the Oro Longchamp that Maserati used, but more on this later.

Bertone’s press officer, Gian Beppe Panicco, took it to the nearby Avigliana golf course for a photoshoot, the results of which revealed the Khamsin to the world in the press release. It made its public debut at the Turin motor show on 1 November 1972, where it stunned the audience and immediately received glowing reviews.

In Autosport John Bolster anointed the Khamsin ‘car of the show’, continuing: ‘Among specialised cars the Khamsin is by far the most attractive. Shown by Bertone, it is just perfect with every body line exactly right. It has the big 4.9-litre V8 engine but, of great interest, it has wishbone-type rear suspension. The Ghibli and Indy were beginning to age with their live rear axles, so this is a welcome improvement.’ His Italian contemporary, Mario Poltronieri, later the voice of Italian F1 TV broadcasts, covered it in an article titled ‘The wind of novelty by Bertone’. Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport saw its design as the show’s highlight of Italian art on wheels.

Four months later the prototype was displayed again, at the Geneva show in March 1973, this time on Maserati’s own stand

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This page, top, and then clockwise from middle left Khamsin profile remains one of the most stunning ever penned; the prototype, at launch in Turin, 1972; engine finally being rebuilt; Gandini unveils the car, post-restoration – having signed its glovebox lid; being repainted in the mysterious Oro Chiaro Metallizzato; nose returned to its original style.

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‘The future seemed as bright as could be for the Khamsin, a grand tourer of great pedigree’

Clockwise, from left Distinctive from any angle; prototype’s steering wheel didn’t make production; space-saver spare fits in nose; unique rear seating; shoulder line and glazed tail panel are sublime.

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and, for a second time, it featured Pirelli Cinturato lettering on the tyres. When a production model, AM120-010, was unveiled at the Paris show in October 1973, it wore Michelins – again with prominent lettering. Michelin owned Citroën, after all.

Although with 004 Gandini had defined the Khamsin’s shape, it differs in detail from the production car, with an aluminiumskinned bonnet (rather than steel), one more slat in the bonnet louvres on each side, hexagonal front indicators from an Alfa Montreal (instead of the rectangular ones from an Alfetta) and different tail-lights, the latter set in glass rather than the Perspex of production cars. The front grille has seven slats instead of three, it has a chromed front bumper rather than a resin one, rear wheelarches are flush with no lip, and the sills are not interrupted by apertures. In profile it differs slightly as the door glass height is 1cm lower.

Inside it varies more, with a wood-rimmed steering wheel, unique centre console, seats and doortrims, and a U-shaped rear bench. In short, while it may look the same from afar, up close virtually nothing is shared with the production car. Even the chrome Khamsin logo differs slightly!

At that Paris premiere in 1973, the future seemed as bright as could be for the Khamsin, a grand tourer of great pedigree, competitive on performance yet with driving ease denied most of its rivals. Then, only two days into the Khamsin’s official life, on 6 October the Yom Kippur War began and brought about the 1973 energy crisis. Disastrous fuel price hikes, oil embargoes and shortages, endless lines at gas stations, Sunday driving bans and the widespread introduction of speed limits struck at the same time as global economic shock. All this caused a collapse in sports

and GT car sales, which had become politically incorrect almost overnight. Citroën was already in trouble and Maserati began bleeding every remaining vein.

To make matters worse, the US version was disfigured with federal bumpers worthy of garbage trucks and the banning of rear lights set in vertical glass meant they had to be set below it.

Importer Bob Grossmann confirmed to me decades ago that the styling revisions ruined US sales. Only 155 cars were sold there.

Gandini told me that not only did he have no involvement with the USA version, he discovered it, shocked and appalled, only decades later at a show in Los Angeles. Because of the sales collapse and stress upon management, Maserati had not consulted Bertone for the US version. All this led to the Khamsin, despite its shining qualities, being known by extraordinarily few people.

As for our gold prototype, as confirmed by Fabio Collina of the Maserati historical archives, AM120-004 was sold on 26 March 1974 to a Sicilian client, Rosario Bombaci. Nine months later it was back at the factory after a small front-end incident, receiving a standard front bumper (no other chrome front bumper existed), an upgrade to the vented nose, and a service. It was then repainted black, not by the factory. Sicily had very few autostradas, so lowspeed driving and hot summers meant the improved cooling afforded by the vented nose was a good idea. It must have been parked indoors as the interior is perfectly preserved to this day.

In January 1982 it passed to its second Sicilian owner, Dr Domenico Nicita, and was retired from the road and stored from 1993. Five years later a Dutchman got wind of it and sent a dealer to Sicily to haggle on his behalf. Surprisingly, he tried to drive it all the way to the Netherlands and made it as far as mainland Italy.

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MASERATI KHAMSIN PROTOTYPE

As with any car not driven for years, that was asking for trouble – which is exactly what he got soon after driving off the ferry. He had the car flat-bedded to Candini Maserati, the respected workshop in Modena. Giuseppe Candini removed the cylinder heads, identified the problem and gave an estimate, but the Dutch dealer declined, preferring to transport his car and parts home. The initial client then backed out of the deal so the car went into storage and languished in a dark warehouse, gathering dust.

During the years that followed, interest in Khamsins increased and cognoscenti were wondering where the prototype was. Then Dutch enthusiast and Khamsin aficionado, Wil van Lierop, heard of the car by chance via a photographer who had been asked to take some shots of it in that warehouse. Hearing that it had two split bumpers at the back, he straight away realised what it was and called the dealer, asking to see it.

It was love at first sight. The dealer explained that its engine needed to be overhauled due to a leaking head gasket, the lower block and head being in otherwise good condition. After much insistence, van Lierop bought the car in 2007. The actual prototype whose photo had decorated his childhood bedroom wall was his!

I first saw it when Wil invited me to his home four years later.

It was still in black, stored in a shed, but you could see some gold in a few hidden spots. The interior was perfectly preserved and the differences between the prototype and the production model were fascinating to discover.

Then, in preparation for the Khamsin Quaranta international 40th anniversary reunion of June 2012, major work took place. A chrome front bumper was recreated from scratch, based on period photos, the nose was returned to the original un-vented version, and the body was repainted in its original – correct – shade of gold. Research had revealed that it was not a Maserati colour but one that Bertone used for the Alfa Romeo Montreal: Oro Chiaro

Metallizzato. Most of this was achieved by the talented craftsman Ivo Steentjes. Once ready, it was transported to France’s Burgundy region for the celebrations, which were organised by yours truly.

There it joined 26 other Khamsins from all over Europe and was unveiled by Marcello Gandini and Maserati’s in-house historian, Ermanno Cozza. Always a quiet, retiring person not given to attending events, Gandini felt at ease within a respectful group and his satisfaction and pride were obvious. Then he broke into laughter when he received a surprise gift from its owner: Dutch wooden clogs in matching Oro Chiaro!

Today the glovebox lid still bears his signature from that event.

And now the engine is at long last being carefully rebuilt, with the brief to keep as many original parts as possible. This photoshoot is the Khamsin prototype’s first since the official press shots were made in 1972 at the Avigliana golf course. One likes to think that Gandini would have smiled with quiet satisfaction.

It should come as no surprise to hear that the Khamsin is a favourite of designers such as the late Oliver Winterbottom, himself a wedge proponent. Ian Cameron (Rolls-Royce), Pierre Castinel (Peugeot, then Renault and later Tata) and Jean-Pierre Ploué (Stellantis) all own or have owned one. Numerous architects love them, too. Telling signs.

Far above the impractical teenage fantasy contraptions with engines right behind your ears, the Khamsin is the definitive Gandini design for an audience of more mature connoisseurs – and chassis 004 is his signature rendition of the concept. It does not get more iconic than that. End Author and Maserati historian Marc Sonnery has been the international Maserati Khamsin registrar for 20 years (maseratikhamsinregistry.net) and is currently working on the definitive Maserati Khamsin book, from which this is abridged.

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7/8/24 6:45 PM

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Hot topic GETTING BEHIND NEW FUELS One key HCVA campaign area is Sustainable Liquid Fuels, which are now starting to become available and offer a way to drastically reduce the fossil-derived CO2 footprint of unmodified internal combustion engined vehicles.

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Politically, the HCVA sees Governmental recognition of the use of these fuels as an essential step towards guaranteeing a future for unmodified historic vehicles in a Net Zero world. ‘For once,’ says Executive Director Guy Lachlan, ‘we have a chance to show that the Historic Vehicle industry can step-up voluntarily, and be at the forefront of environmental advances.’

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by Octane staff and contributors

Octane Cars OW NING + DR I V ING + M A IN TA INING

Doris the drag queen 1954 DAIMLER CONQUEST Peter Baker

IS THERE A more unlikely car than Doris to take drag-racing?

I think not. Be that as it may, yours truly and the stately Daimler duly turned up at Santa Pod in Northamptonshire ready to be laughed out of court. That nobody did only confirmed my inner thoughts: I was surrounded by people as mad as me. After all, who in their right mind would strap themselves to a jet engine, 126

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‘A best elapsed speed of 62.90mph beat the figures published by The Autocar in 1954 by almost 2mph’

OCTANE’S FLEET These are the cars – and ’bikes – run by Octane’s staff and contributors

ROBERT COUCHER International editor • 1955 Jaguar XK140 ANDREW ENGLISH Contributor • 1962 Norton Dominator • 1967 Triumph GT6 • 1972 Moto Guzzi V7 Sport GLEN WADDINGTON Associate editor • 1989 BMW 320i Convertible • 1999 Porsche Boxster SANJAY SEETANAH Advertising director • 1981 BMW 323i Top Cabrio • 1998 Aston Martin DB7 Volante • 2007 Mercedes-Benz SLK200 MARK DIXON Contributing editor • 1927 Alvis 12/50 • 1927 Ford Model T pick-up • 1942 Fordson Model N tractor • 1955 Land Rover Series I 107in

close their eyes, pray, and hope to wake up five seconds later, a quarter of a mile away, still in one piece?

Since it meant an early start, I took the opportunity of staying local the night before. And where better than at the fantastic Art Deco, centre-piece Aviator Hotel, created from the original Officers’ Mess at Sywell Aerodrome?

Rooms are very comfortable, while the atmospheric restaurant is dedicated to air ace Group Captain Douglas Bader, who attended the opening back in 1958.

Boasting its own museum, Sywell also hosts a series of aviation and classic car meetings throughout the year, top of the list being the Sywell Air Show. Short of time? Why not just stop by for coffee, or afternoon tea in the garden, with the constant coming and going of interesting aircraft

as a backdrop. You’ll love it.

When we arrived at the drag strip, Doris stayed calm and collected, and completed three timed runs, putting in a best elapsed speed of 62.90mph.

Hardly ground-breaking; modest, perhaps. But still satisfactory, as this beat the figures originally published by The Autocar in 1954 by almost 2mph. I put it down to improved fuel, and the fitment of a stainless steel exhaust system with less restrictive straightthrough silencer.

Meanwhile, life, reality and classic car ownership continue, not necessarily in that order.

While Doris soldiers on without complaint, I wish I could say the same about Audrey, her sister car sharing the same garage. Audrey, the 1955 Daimler Conquest Century that I purchased on a whim, is bodily in very good condition, but let’s just say that

Clockwise, from opposite Driver’s eye view of the drag strip; Doris takes on Dodge Challenger; stop-over at Sywell Aerodrome; Audrey gets stuck in the garage.

the driving experience could be improved.

Last week, for example, the starter motor jammed. Not a problem: undo a couple of bolts, let it drop, then take to my good friend Tim for a refurb. Happy days. Except the two bolts, followed by the front exhaust system, and half-a-dozen other items – carburettors, air filter, etc – took a week to remove and now lie abandoned around the place, while awaiting Tim’s return from foreign climes.

A tip for those who keep cars in confined spaces: always reverse in, leave the car out of gear and the handbrake off. Just saying.

JAMES ELLIOTT Editor-in-chief • 1965 Triumph 2.5 PI • 1968 Jensen Interceptor • 1969 Lotus Elan S4 ROBERT HEFFERON Art editor • 2004 BMW Z4 3.0i DAVID LILLYWHITE Editorial director • 1971 Saab 96 • 1996 Prodrive Subaru Impreza MATTHEW HOWELL Photographer • 1962 VW Beetle 1600 • 1969 VW/Subaru Beetle • 1982 Morgan 4/4 MASSIMO DELBÒ Contributor • 1967 Mercedes-Benz 230 • 1972 Fiat 500L • 1975 Alfa Romeo GT Junior • 1979/80 Range Rovers • 1982 Mercedes-Benz 500SL • 1985 Mercedes-Benz 240TD ROWAN ATKINSON Contributor • 2004 Rolls-Royce Phantom 127

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Octane Cars Running Reports

Left Extraordinary tail of the Tatra has been hiding a problem with the carburettor – a good clean and a new needle valve haven’t sorted it.

Fuel for thought 1946 Tatra T87 Delwyn Mallett

MY LAST TATRA missive in Octane 245 chronicled my switch from an electronic ignition distributor back to conventional points, with the observation that, in my experience with ‘old’ cars, fixing one problem inevitably reveals another lurking.

In the Tatra’s case, regaining mobility produced a hitherto undetected ‘clunk’ from a front brake/hub area. Having failed to remedy the situation, I let the

Tatra ‘rest’ for a while before deciding to pick up spanners again. New problem. Car wouldn’t start. This was a bit of a headscratcher, given that it was running perfectly on the new/old distributor shortly before.

A squirt of fuel down the throat of the carb and a stab at the starter produced a brief burst of activity from the engine, but it died almost immediately. This confirmed that there were sparks where they were needed but clearly not enough fuel to sustain life. I noticed that the contents of the inline fuel filter had assumed the colour of stagnant pond water, so the first step was to replace it.

With that done, but fearing the well-documented ill-effects of modern fuel, I thought a peek into the carburettor might be wise.

Sod’s law dictated that to get a screwdriver onto the float’s retaining spindle also dictated

removal of the carb from its manifold. Carb on bench – for bench, read ‘kitchen table’ – and float removed: quelle horreur!

A glutinous green slime covered the bottom of the float chamber, confirming all that has been said about the effects of modern fuel.

So bad was it that I half-expected to find some kind of primeval life-form wriggling through the sludge. The underside of the brass float was also bright green up to its plimsoll line.

With float chamber cleaned and a blast of air from my airline, the carb was soon back in-situ. Not wanting to reintroduce suspect fuel, I decided to rig up a temporary supply by running a pipe from the electric fuel pump (conveniently positioned in the engine bay – the tank is at the front of the car) to a soft-drink bottle full of petrol.

With a chum standing at the rear as an observer, I turned on the ignition, pressed the starter and heard a reassuring rumble from the V8 – followed by a frantic cry of ‘Stop! Stop! Fuel leak!’ Repeating the exercise with chum at the starter button end and me as observer, I could see a copious volume of petrol was spurting from the carburettor’s overflow. Must be a needle valve problem, I concluded.

Top off carb, yet again, and needle valve removed, it seemed OK but I decided to order a replacement as a precaution.

A few days later a new valve for the Solex arrived. Valve fitted and expecting satisfaction, I turned on the pump but once again an inch-high column of fuel shot from the mouth of the carb.

Given that the car has run for 30 years in my ownership without spurting fuel out, I am now puzzled. Next step will be to fit a fuel pressure regulator. With the rumble from the front brake still not addressed, I feel the need for a professional rapidly approaching.

ANDREW RALSTON Contributor • 1955 Ford Prefect • 1968 Jaguar 240 SAM CHICK Photographer • 1969 Alfa Romeo Spider RICHARD HESELTINE Contributor • 1966 Moretti 850 Sportiva • 1971 Honda Z600 PETER BAKER Contributor • 1954 Daimler Conquest • 1955 Daimler Conquest Century DAVID BURGESS-WISE Contributor • 1903 De Dion-Bouton • 1911 Pilain 16/20 • 1924 Sunbeam 14/40 • 1926 Delage DISS MATTHEW HAYWARD Markets editor • 1990 Citroën BX 16v • 1994 Toyota Celica GT-Four • 1996 Saab 9000 Aero • 1997 Citroën Xantia Activa • 1997 Peugeot 306 GTI-6 • 2000 Honda Integra Type R • 2002 Audi A2 JESSE CROSSE Contributor • 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 • 1986 Ford Sierra RS Cosworth MARTYN GODDARD Photographer • 1963 Triumph TR6SS Trophy • 1965 Austin-Healey 3000 MkIII DELWYN MALLETT Contributor • 1936 Cord 810 Beverly • 1937 Studebaker Dictator • 1946 Tatra T87 • 1950 Ford Club Coupe • 1952 Porsche 356 • 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL • 1957 Porsche Speedster • 1957 Fiat Abarth Sperimentale • 1963 Abarth-Simca • 1963 Tatra T603 • 1973 Porsche 911 2.7 RS • 1992 Alfa Romeo SZ EVAN KLEIN Photographer • 1974 Alfa Romeo Spider • 2001 Audi TT HARRY METCALFE Contributor • 20 cars and 15 motorbikes To follow Harry’s adventures, search: Harry’s Garage on YouTube.

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Rolls-Royce and Bentley Heritage Dealers “Attention to Detail”

Rolls-Royce Phantom III 1937 Sports Saloon

by Gurney Nutting

Bentley 4 ¼ litre 1937 3 seat All Weather Tourer

by James Young

Sable with Sand sides and Tan Ostrich hide upholstery.

One family owner since the late 1960’s and fully restored with little use since.

Chassis number 3BT35.

Black and Grey with Black hood and Dark Blue hide upholstery.

Maintained by P & A Wood for over 10 years.

Extensive history. Very good useable condition.

Chassis number B30KT.

Rolls-Royce Corniche III Convertible August 1991

Bentley S3 Continental 1963 2 door Coupé

by H.J. Mulliner

Vermilion with Cream hood and Parchment hide upholstery contrast St. James Red. Only 16,000 miles.

Full history and maintained by P & A Wood since 2015.

Prize winner at the RREC Annual Concours.

Burgundy with Beige hide upholstery. One of only 8 right hand drive models made from only 11 cars. Restored by P & A Wood many years ago and maintained by us for nearly 40 years.

Chassis number BC40XA.

Bentley Continental R Mulliner March 2000

Bentley Azure Mulliner LHD January 2001

Meteor with Cotswold hide contrast French Navy and Burr Walnut veneer. 40,000 miles with full service history.

One of only 63 made.

Excellent condition.

Racing Green with Beige Hood and Barley hide contrast Tangier.

Only 18,000 miles with history. Maintained by P & A Wood in recent years. One of relatively few wide bodied Mulliner models made. Excellent condition.

Great Easton, Dunmow, Essex CM6 2HD, England Telephone: 01371 870848 Fax: 01371 870810 E-mail: enquiries@pa-wood.co.uk www.pa-wood.co.uk

Octane_FP_6Car_7:24.indd 1

02/07/2024 11:23

Octane Cars Running Reports

Conducting a symphony in paint 1974 ALFA ROMEO SPIDER Evan Klein

TOMORROW KEEPS ON creeping up on me. It has been months and I’ve been beginning to give up hope. Something’s gotta give, but at a certain point you have to put your foot down (in a gentle way), right? Am I prepared to take the car somewhere else?

Do I tell them ‘Four weeks or else’? If they rush, will it look horrible? I hate being a car guy.

This is it. I drum up the courage to confront the bodyshop, going by, unannounced. I drive over, prepared to change the world while fighting with Los Angeles traffic. I park and make my way in.

‘Gustavo!’

‘Mr Evan!’

‘Where have you been?’

‘I’m here, I was worried, I lost your number…’

Then he points to the car. The engine bay is painted, the trunk is painted, the doors, the hood, the trunk lid: painted. I look at the

hood… I try to stay calm, it’s beautiful. ‘I haven’t even buffed it yet!’ he says. He grabs a few different magic potion compounds and the sander. I watch the orange peel melt away, then he squirts something, it gets shiny, then another liquid, more shiny, then the third liquid, and it looks like wet glass. The reflection is 20ft deep.

He says ‘I’m painting the rest of the car Saturday, I can’t keep it here forever. I’m doing it at 6am, when the shop’s quiet. If you want to take picture, come then.’ Friday I call, no answer. I text, no answer;

I call again later, no answer. I get that sinking feeling. I have all my strobes in the car, my alarm is set for 5am. Is this all for nothing?

We’re so close. At 5am the alarm wakes me and I text Gustavo: ‘Are you at the shop?’ No answer. Do I go? Of course I go; if he’s not there it only secures my case.

The best thing about Los Angeles at 6am is that there’s no traffic. I make it in 15 minutes.

I walk up to the front door, the lights are on, I slide through the crack, and there’s the Alfa sitting, waiting to be painted. Gustavo is putting paint in the spray gun.

Our eyes lock. ‘You’re here!’

‘I told you I was going to paint it Saturday.’

I grab my strobes and set up the lights, shoot a few frames, beautiful, and then he starts spraying. I love the smell of paint, the mist in the air. Like a ballerina he dances around the car, waving the spray gun like a conductor.

When the symphony finishes the car is covered in green paint.

A week has passed since and I’ve hired the tow truck to bring the Spider over to the Alfa shop.

The new motor sits on a stand: now the fun begins.

Above and left After months without news, Evan headed to the paint shop and discovered his Alfa in the final throes of its body restoration.

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Spreading the love 1968 JAGUAR 240 Andrew Ralston

EVERY JUNE, ON the outskirts of Glasgow, the local Community Development Trust brings together businesses and charitable, environmental and cultural agencies to run a week-long festival, when the pedestrianised precinct fills up with around 100 classic cars. The event is a mere ten minutes from my home, so it made an ideal occasion to show my Jaguar 240.

This year, a pre-war Rolls-Royce sat beside a humbler Hillman Imp, built not far away at the Rootes factory in Linwood, while classic Jaguars, Austin-Healeys and MGs lined up with everyday cars of previous generations such as a ’60s Ford Anglia and a Peugeot 205 from the ’80s, plus the occasional more exotic interloper.

I mean, when did you last see a Matra Murena?

Naturally, there were plenty of conversations with visitors who remembered similar family cars from their childhoods, but it was particularly encouraging to meet those who walked round the car, examining it critically before

commenting that body and interior work had been carried out to the highest standards. In several cases, these were people who had either restored their own Mk2 or worked on them in the past as Jaguar mechanics.

One or two asked to see under the bonnet, but the most frequent request was: ‘Do you mind if I take a sniff of the interior?’ The unmistakable aroma of classic upholstery was undoubtedly heightened by the hot weather and, encouraged by sunshine and the friendly atmosphere, even this owner was persuaded to let a bemused five-year-old sit in his pride and joy to be photographed.

The performance of the Jaguar has been transformed by its recent carburettor rebuild. After the briefest of warm-ups it pulls away smoothly without missing a beat and, although I haven’t yet measured the fuel consumption accurately, the needle on the petrol gauge no longer moves rapidly and visibly downwards during each outing.

So far this summer, several drives in the countryside to Callander and the Trossachs – taking in some long, straight stretches of road to get up a bit of speed using the overdrive – have proved that the car is now ready and willing to undertake more ambitious trips. The 90-plus-mile run to the revamped Jim Clark Motorsport Museum in Duns, Berwickshire, is sounding especially tempting.

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Octane Cars Running Reports

Fingers crossed for good weather 1989 BMW 320i & 1999 PORSCHE BOXSTER Glen Waddington

WELL, we had some for a while.

And some other good luck, too, in that both the BMW and the Boxster have flown through their MoT tests in the last month or two, most recently the Boxster – which I’ll come back to.

There’s little I enjoy more than a long drive with the roof down, and the BMW is superb in that respect, for those in the front seats at least. With fresh oil in the sump and a fresh ticket, it was time for a proper spring clean, then we set off to a lovely country pub south

of Oxford. The occasion was Mrs W’s birthday (below); eldest offspring joined us and we could hear her giggling from the back seat the whole way. This is what family-size convertibles are about.

More beautiful weather greeted the morning of the Classic Stony car show, in Buckinghamshire (above). Classic Stony sees 500 or so cars of all types take over the pretty town centre, which is closed off specially for the occasion. The event dates back to 2009 and the idea of a classic car meeting to bring visitors to the historic town centre. The first Stony Stratford Classic Car Festival was held in the Market Square and attracted 150 cars and hundreds of visitors.

As well as bringing footfall to local cafés and shops, funds are raised for the local Willen Hospice. It’s free to enter, free to visit, and attracted cars as diverse as a Tatra T87, Cadillac Eldorado Convertible and a Towns Hustler, owned by a former Aston Martin employee and which paid homage to the Aston Martin Bulldog (another wedgy Towns design).

The spring clean came thanks to the arrival of some new Autoglym products (below), of which I’m a regular user, particularly the Foaming Car Wash shampoo. I was offered some new stuff for review, including Ceramic Wash and Protect shampoo and Advanced Wheel Cleaner, as well as a wheel brush. I have a few of those in various shapes; this one is great at getting into narrow gaps between spokes, and with the Advanced Cleaner made light work of brake dust staining. As for the Ceramic shampoo, it’s a game-changer. It claims to leave wax coatings unaffected and build a layer of protection; a rinse-off and shammying left no water-marks whatsoever. Impressed with the results, I treated the Boxster to a deep clean, too.

As I write this, I await the Boxster’s return from Templetons Garage (templetonsgarage.co.uk).

Service and MoT: check. But the big thing is the roof, which has been erratic in its operation, first refusing to work at all, then coming down but refusing to go up again. Stuart Templeton reckoned there was a fault with a potentiometer, which needed recalibrating. Soon as it’s back, I’ll be out to check – and hoping the rain holds off…

OTHER NEWS

‘My recent 650-mile road trip in the ’Healey saw torrential rain – and left the boot going mouldy!

A thorough disinfection and new boot seal have restored its hygiene’ Martyn Goddard

‘I’ve decided to upgrade as much of my BMW Z4’s front supension as I can.

I think it’s all original, and it is past its best after 83,000 miles – but dare I try to tackle it myself?’

Robert Hefferon

‘Revealing my “modern classic” 4x4 purchase here has been delayed by a global shortage of the new tyres I want – but its steel rims are refurbished and ready’ Mark Dixon

‘I’ve had to change the six-year-old battery in my Mercedes 230 Fintail, just days after doing the same in my 500SL. Fortunately the 230’s battery failed while the car was on my driveway’ Massimo Delbò

‘The repairs to the floorpan and sills on my BMW 323i Top Cabrio are now finished, and the car is being prepped for a bit of localised fresh paint’ Sanjay Seetanah 132

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by Octane staff and contributors

Overdrive Other interesting cars we’ve been driving

Better than discretion 2024 ASTON MARTIN VALOUR David Lillywhite

ASTON MARTIN’S director of design Miles Nurnberger grins when I suggest that this must be the car he scribbled on his books at school. With its shark nose, boxy ’arches, Kamm tail and even faux rear window louvres, it’s an

almost cartoon-ish take on the original V8 Vantage, peppered with modern touches such as the LED rear lights and clever aero.

It’s certainly not subtle.

This, then, is the Valour, of which 110 will be made, priced at just over £1m each depending on the Q Division options chosen.

It’s a supercar that doesn’t look like a supercar, an Aston Martin that only sort of looks like an Aston Martin – but underneath the carbonfibre skin is an adaptation of the aluminium architecture that graces all modern Astons.

It’s powered by the AMGsourced twin-turbo 5.2-litre V12, tuned to match the hooliganistic looks. How brutal is it? Well,

705bhp and 555lb ft promise a monster to easily vanquish the legendary Vantage-based RHAM/1 ‘Muncher’ Le Mans racer, which Miles says Valour was part-inspired by. Appropriately, and uniquely for this and its more track-focused spin-off the Valiant, it’s a manual, too, combined with a mechanical limited-slip differential. The six-speed Graziano transaxle was specially adapted to replace the sophisticated eight-speed ZF automatic of the rest of the range.

It’s not a track weapon, though.

This was designed as a road car, and to see it on the street feels joyous – as is your first prod of the starter button in its relatively stripped-back cabin.

How wonderful to be pressing down an actual clutch pedal in a modern supercar, and pushing the stubby gearlever solidly into first.

Aston Martin clearly anticipated such joy, and has left the gear linkage artfully exposed beneath the lever to emphasise the manual ’box. Back in the ’80s, a car like this would have provided a thigh-tremblingly heavy clutch movement and a clunky shift, but somehow the Valour’s controls are reasonably light despite that monstrous torque. Pulling away smoothly is easy and there’s never a time when the gearshift feels anything but natural – though such are the performance and gearing that it’s not as though many gearchanges are needed

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Left, right and below Valour takes the Vantage-based RHAM/1 ‘Muncher’ Le Mans racer as its inspiration and offers a pleasingly analogue driving experience – as David Lillywhite found.

‘How wonderful to be pressing down an actual clutch pedal in a modern supercar’

in reality (third is epic on curving A-roads).

The Valour’s adaptive dampers provide three suspension modes, which vary from pleasantly firm to rock-hard for track only. On UK roads, the first setting feels right, with only a little jarring over the worst of the ruts and potholes.

I was expecting a shouty, noisy soundtrack but the V12 is classily smooth and refined, so that the noises you hear are mostly exhaust – sporty in Sport, subtly louder in Sport+ and lairy in Track. Unless you’ve only ever driven new cars, you would never call the Valour driving experience ‘crude’… and yet there’s a delicious hint of crudity to it. It’s the faint transmission whine just

detectable beneath the exhaust note, it’s the way you can feel the mechanical differential working, it’s the scrabble for grip from the huge tyres and it’s the view from the driver’s seat of those unusually high-edged front wings and the bulging rear ’arches visible in massive mirrors. What a beast.

This car is the first to be built, specced by the Aston Martin design studio in F1 team green with a dark red ‘lipstick’ (actually carbonfibre over a regulationspleasing bumper) around the grille. It’s already been sold to a customer – as have the other 109 Valours, which are heading to owners around the world. I hope you get to see one on the road, because it’s quite a sight.

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Octane cars Overdrive

Left and below More revolution under the evolutionary skin, though perhaps not in the way you might have expected.

Hybrid Porsche springs a surprise PORSCHE 911 CARRERA GTS Ben Barry

THAT THE 911 would one day be hybridised was inevitable.

The twist here is just how well Porsche’s new T-Hybrid technology works. I’m testing it in the facelifted Carrera GTS, the only electrified 911 so far

confirmed, and I’m instantly struck by its synaptic throttle response, mid-range thump and urgent top end. This thing feels strong.

Then again, this is not your typical hybrid – it’s about performance, not gaming the emissions cycle. In a reversal of the usual roles, the flat-six grows 600cc to 3.6 litres while the 1.9kWh battery over the front axle is far smaller than other hybrids’. It powers two electric motors – one nestled in the single turbocharger to eliminate lag and to add up to 15bhp, another tucked away in the dual-clutch PDK gearbox to chip in an extra 53bhp and 111lb ft torque.

There is no zero-emissions mode, no plug-in capability and circa 26mpg is merely incremental, but a towering total of 534bhp is 60bhp greater and, because the system weighs only

40kg and is packed so low down, Porsche claims no significant alteration in weight distribution.

The new motor starts with a deep, mechanical rumble, a reminder that pistons and petrol still rule here, and as I thread out of Stuttgart, the only whiff of electrification is a zeeew on deceleration (so low you have to cup an ear to the transmission tunnel to hear it), and the engine’s more obvious willingness to shut down as you coast to a stop (though only in Normal mode).

At all speeds, the e-motorboosted turbo is transformative, dialling out the lag of earlier blown Carreras for a much more direct connection between me squeezing the throttle and the 911 snapping to attention.

Performance is turbo-muscular in higher gears, but drop a cog or two and it’s a much more naturally aspirated sensation than

before, plus there’s a new-found fury to the delivery towards peak revs as cams, turbo and e-motors work themselves into a frenzy.

Darker sort of flavour to the flat-six soundtrack, too.

This is no GT3, but the T-Hybrid system moves the GTS more in that direction, which is perhaps why the 7500rpm redline feels a little low even with a taller final drive, the (very quick) gearshifts a little soft. Almost as though Porsche is intentionally holding back.

When I’m snuggled down low in its perfect driving position, the GTS feels wide and stable at typical road speeds, its handling a fusion of control, compliance and precision steering. I do not notice the extra weight, though our car benefits from an optional carbon roof and carbon-ceramic brakes and there are just two seats – the plus-twos are a no-cost option these days. Grip limits are sky high, but there’s agility if you dig deeper, partly thanks to standardfit rear-wheel steering and a malleable balance when driven more aggressively.

So this is a very Porsche sort of hybrid but, if you really can’t stomach an electrified 911, you could always plump for the base Carrera, which sticks with an evolution of the previous 3.0-litre twin-turbo motor. Plus it narrowly ducks under £100k, while the GTS soars to £135,834.

My pick would be the T-Hybrid, though. No question.

I didn’t expect to say that.

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Return of the snake 2024 SHELBY COBRA CSX10000 Glen Waddington

A BRAND NEW Shelby Cobra?

Seems so. London-based luxury and performance car specialist Clive Sutton Ltd has secured the licensing rights to the name and works in partnership with US-based Superformance, which builds the cars in South Africa.

The resulting Shelby Cobra CSX 10000 starts from £195,000, and the UK is its first market.

The bodywork looks familiar, of course, but in this case it’s constructed in glassfibre with reinforcing inserts on a heavyduty TIG welded ladder-frame chassis. In the case of cars sold by Clive Sutton, you’re paying for an exclusive ‘turn-key’ package, fully built and finished, complete with engine and transmission.

This demonstrator features Ford’s 5.0-litre ‘Coyote’ V8 engine, shared with the latest Mustang. It’s naturally aspirated, fuel-injected and produces

460bhp and 420lb ft of torque.

Which should be plenty in a small, lightweight roadster. If you’re really brave, a supercharged version offers 700bhp at 5000rpm and 550lb ft at 5800rpm!

This car’s ample output is fed to the rear wheels via a six-speed Tremec manual gearbox and limited-slip differential. There is independent suspension front and rear, braking is by Wilwood discs, there is power-assisted steering, and specially designed 18in wheels resemble the original Cobra’s 15s but wear lower-profile tyres: 275/35ZR18s on the front and 335/35s on the back.

It all looks suitably period inside, with Smiths gauges and even the old Beetle-style indicator stalk. There’s a leather-wrapped three-spoke wheel that feels wonderful to hold, and, apart from a starter button and modern power sources, the fascia is free of

incongruous equipment. Bucket seats, doors, dash and tunnel are swathed in leather.

The V8, as you’d expect, sounds glorious: loud, unfettered, characterful. The gearshift is tight, the lever long and set unusually far back, as is correct for the type and you soon get used to it. To be frank, you don’t need it much, as second, third and fourth are plenty for most needs. You can let the engine rev out tunefully, though equally you can rely on

its torque, grab a high ratio and simply bimble along.

Not a bad idea on A-roads, where the Cobra cruises quite easily and the ride is civilised. Of course, with a car like this you’ll be more interested in twistier roads. In the damp, it is very easy to unsettle, demanding caution with your right foot whatever gear you’re in, but boy is it fun! Sure, it gets a bit jerky over poorly maintained surfaces, but you quickly get used to staying in a higher gear than you’d use in something with fewer cubes and a greater need for revs, and you soon work up a rhythm that somehow sees the distances between corners shrink even more than you’d imagine.

For me, the power steering is a little on the light side, a bit like it is on a Jaguar XJ-S only without that car’s cushy ride; some more heft would be welcome. Braking is strong, however, and really it’s all about the raw thrill of putting your foot down and feeling the other-worldly pull of that V8.

Just as it always was.

Above and left Looks familiar, though the body is glassfibre and packs a modern-day Ford V8 punch.

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The Ex-Works, Eddie Hall, 1934 Mille Miglia, 1934 MG K3 Magnette

1925 Vauxhall 30-98 OE Velox Tourer Please see website for more details.

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Octane cars Overdrive

The future of nostalgia 2024 MG CYBERSTER David Lillywhite

HOWEVER STRONG YOUR nostalgia for MGs, there’s no escaping the fact that the marque is now Chinese-owned. Across its more than 60 territories (though not the US), MG’s ICE, hybrid and EV hatchbacks and saloons are gaining a reputation for competitive pricing, long warranties and decent driving experiences.

But what we have been waiting for is the new sports car; designed between MG’s studios in London and Shanghai, honed by the engineering team still based in Solihull, and built in China, the Cyberster was previewed at the 2021 Shanghai motor show as a concept and is little-changed in appearance since then, right down to the electrically operated scissor doors.

Octane was invited to a studio viewing last year (see issue 241), and now we get to drive it. There are two versions, both EV, but don’t let that put you off. The rear-wheel-drive single-motor Trophy will sell in the UK at £54,995, while the four-wheeldrive, twin-motor GT goes for £59,995. All memories of MGs of yore being underpowered for their looks and promise are irrelevant here: the Cyberster GT develops 375kW of power and a massive 725Nm of torque to achieve 0-62mph in 3.2 seconds (supercar territory!); the Trophy gives 250kW and 475Nm for 5.0sec.

It’s not a bad looker either, though larger than you might have expected, 20cm longer than a current BMW Z4. At least it’s not Left, from top MG is back with a roadster, battery-powered and with electric scissor doors; range-topping GT pictured.

massively tall, thanks to its ultra-slim (110mm high) battery pack forming the floor.

And the drive? It’s good, really good, taking the advantages of EV – massive torque and instant, smooth power delivery – without being punished by the obvious disadvantage of its extra weight (1885kg for the Trophy, 1895kg for the GT), which is mostly down low and distributed 50:50 front to rear. You’re rarely conscious of its mass on the road, even through fast corners, when the Cyberster stays flat and remarkably planted.

The ride, too, is excellent for a sports car, while the steering is precise and gives reasonable feedback. MG has done a great job with the chassis, and that’s complemented by blistering performance in both derivatives, accompanied by a choice of subtly synthesised soundtracks in the background. They cunningly add to the experience, even if they can’t match the rasp of a tuned engine going up and down through the gears.

The GT is ridiculously quick but you wouldn’t feel shortchanged if you stuck with the less powerful Trophy, which is livelier in the steering and handling than the heavier GT. The range is reckoned to be 316 miles for the Trophy, 276 for the GT, which seems to correlate with our fast drives through 120 miles of the Scottish highlands.

Both versions are pleasant cars to be in, too, with leather-look trim throughout, electrically operated hood and four screens around the driver. Heating/ air-con controls are touchscreen but many of the other functions can be operated via the steering wheel, thankfully. You might find you’re peering under the windscreen header rail if you’re much over 6ft, though.

If you’re in the market for a roadster, EV or not, don’t discount the Cyberster.

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05/07/2024 14:36

Gone but not forgotten

MOTORSPORT IMAGES

Words by Richard Heseltine

Ian Burgess This Formula 1 driver claimed shadowy connections were responsible for his big block of heroin. No one believed him IT WAS A FANTASTICAL yarn and the judge wasn’t buying it. Ian Burgess’s trial in August 1981 wasn’t going as well as he might have hoped, but then you could argue that he was his own worst enemy. The London-born businessman had been collared attempting to smuggle heroin into the UK and claimed – insisted – that the smack was merely a cash substitute. MI5 preferred to pay for services rendered by means of ‘nasal party favours’; smack was the currency of espionage, apparently. The 51-year-old had been helping Queen and country in the Middle East and he had been rewarded with Class A pharmaceuticals worth an estimated £1m.

The intelligence service didn’t corroborate his story. Nor, it must be said, did it deny it.

Burgess was sent down for ten years. This would probably have been another court case consigned to obscurity had he not once been a Formula 1 driver. Born in July 1930 as David William Allan, he was adopted as a baby by a Scottish couple and raised in Surrey. Burgess aspired to become an engineer, only then to be enraptured by motor racing. He first ventured trackside as the 1950s dawned, and

was immediately a frontrunner in the half-litre Formula 3 category in a Cooper MkV. In 1951, Burgess defeated benchmark performer Ken Wharton during the Eifelrennen meeting at the Nürburgring. He did so at the final corner on the last lap. A year later, he shared a Jaguar XK120 with Stirling Moss on a recce ahead of the Mille Miglia.

However, an accident with an errant van driver would have repercussions. Moss had been at the wheel at the time, and the car was straightened out, but Burgess was blamed for the shunt all the same. Or at least he was after someone else queered his pitch, if only according to Burgess. The point is, he wasn’t invited back and money thereafter was in short supply.

Burgess was clearly a talented driver, but his career was in danger of stalling. He picked up a works drive with Kieft for the 1953 Tourist Trophy, and was leading the 2.0-litre class when a wheel came adrift on the daunting Dundrod road course, but it was mostly slim pickings. Then salvation appeared: in 1957, he was hired by the Cooper Car Company.

Strictly speaking, he was the sales and office

manager, but he later parlayed that into operating the hugely popular Cooper Racing School while blagging the occasional works drive. This, in turn, led to a seat with the High Efficiency Motors team owned by the pugilistic CT ‘Tommy’ Atkins.

Burgess would go on to race intermittently in Formula 2 and in Grand Prix racing for the likes of ‘Lucky’ Casner’s Camoradi International, Scuderia Centro Sud, and the ill-starred Scirocco-Powell team. He made just 16 World Championship starts across the board before throwing in the towel in 1963.

He then married a Swede, built-up a profitable glassfibre laminates business, lived in Switzerland for a spell, ran factories in Greece that made prefab houses, and operated a yacht charter outfit based in the Mediterranean. He may or may not have also been a spy operating in sandier climes. It’s hard to tell.

According to Crispian Besley’s entertaining Driven to Crime, Burgess displayed larcenous tendencies during the 1950s while he was still competing. Charles Cooper’s holiday home was burgled, a large wodge of cash from his racing school having been stashed under the floorboards to avoid paying the taxman.

Burgess was the only other person aware of his boss’s nest egg, yet Cooper was hardly in a position to report the robbery. But then so many stories were attached to a man who was a willing raconteur: the sort of anecdotes that were best accompanied by a stout drink, a barstool and a healthy dose of scepticism.

Burgess didn’t see out his sentence. Having been a model inmate, and consequently deemed a low-risk prisoner, he was transferred to Ford Open Prison – from which he did a bunk. Waiting for him outside was a girlfriend who spirited him away to her native Czechoslovakia. Thereafter, he travelled extensively within Europe and settled in Spain. Burgess also had a habit of heading back to the UK from time to time incognito, catching up with friends and former rivals, and even giving interviews with journalists over lunch (so long as they picked up the tab).

Increasingly frail in his autumn years, he eventually settled in Harrow, which is where he died in May 2012, aged 81.

Burgess was an enigmatic figure, that’s for sure. The biggest mystery remains how he was able to move around seemingly unhindered, and eventually move back to his homeland while still a fugitive. Did the authorities turn a blind eye? If so, why? Maybe, just maybe, he really was an MI5 spook after all. Perhaps the cocaine narrative wasn’t bull. Or maybe he believed his own spiel and those tasked with nabbing him weren’t much cop at their jobs.

Whatever the truth, Burgess’s off-track notoriety massively overshadowed anything he ever achieved behind the wheel.

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THE CLASSIC ASSIC

MOTOR HUB

AVA I L A B L E F O R S A L E

1965 Ferrari 275 GTB Alloy Long Nose

1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Competizione ENQUIRIES : +44 (0)1242 384092 : SALES@CLASSICMOTORHUB.COM : CLASSICMOTORHUB.COM

Gearbox

Interview and pictures by James Elliott

Peter Wallman Former ad man who chairs RM Sotheby’s in the UK, Europe and Middle East

2

1

1 I wanted an E-type for as long as I can remember and I managed to buy one when I was 21 and have had it ever since, 36 years.

I’ve probably done 150,000 miles in it.

2 I enjoy listening to vinyl because it is an immersive analogue experience and forces you to hear the music in the way the artist intended. I listen 80% to jazz and my favourite artist at the moment is Donald Byrd, a great trumpeter who also had the coolest car-related sleeves. I also like Blue Note album cover designs; you can spot one from 100 paces and somehow they represent the cool style of the music better than others.

3 I’ve been a hi-fi buff since my teens and currently have a Linn system. Inspired by the old Maxell cassette advert, I love the experience of focused listening. The problem is technology constantly evolves and there is always pressure to upgrade to the latest thing, which gets expensive.

4

4 My love of Riva comes from the same place as the E-type, but using a boat on a lake is pure freedom compared to driving a car.

I have an Ariston and a Super Aquarama.

On paper the latter is better in every respect, but the Ariston is very original and was my entry into the Riva world. It’s special to me.

3

5

5 I bought this banjo cocktail trolley at a little store in Greenwich called Deco Mania, 30 years ago. I enjoy the ritual of making cocktails – you can buy ready-mixed ones in a can, but where’s the soul in that?

6 During a bad patch I started reading the stoics to understand my emotions. It helped me greatly and I still follow it, even though I’m more of a hedonist. I keep a daily stoic journal, which keeps me centred and helps me to manage my routine and my thoughts.

7 The art of living is having aesthetically pleasing things that you can use and enjoy. If you’re going to write, use a nice pen, sit at a nice desk. I’ve got a bunch of pens, but I’ve just had this Montblanc Boheme rebuilt.

6

8 I lost my father a couple of years ago, but during Covid I went down to Dorset and spent three months with my parents. I took on lots of physical work that he couldn’t do, but he was with me every minute and his Swiss Army Knife was in my hand or my pocket the entire time I was there. That’s how I remember that time together.

7

8

9

10

9 I got into PG Wodehouse in my early 20s.

It is just so jolly and witty, it was what made me love the English language and humour.

There was a new series by Everyman, which published his books in a beautiful hardback collector’s series, about 100 of them, and I bought them all as they came out.

10 I convinced my parents to buy me a nice racing bike – a Carlton Pro-am – when I was 13. I used it until I was in my early 20s and then it was down in Dorset, hanging in the garage, going rusty, so I had it restored and will pass it on to my 12-year-old son Jasper.

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1948 Maserati 4CLT/48 Maserati 4CLT/48 1948 1948 Maserati 4CLT/48 1948 Maserati 4CLT/48 The ex-Reg Parnell, Richmond and Goodwood Maserati 4CLT/48 litre supercharged, HP, Grand 1948 Maserati 4CLT/48 The ex-Reg Parnell, Richmond TrophyTrophy and Goodwood TrophyTrophy winningwinning Maserati 4CLT/48 1.5 litre1.5 supercharged, 260 HP,260 Grand The ex-Reg Parnell, Richmond Trophy and –Goodwood Trophy winning Maserati 4CLT/48 1.5 litre supercharged, 260 Grand The ex-Reg Parnell, Richmond Trophy and Goodwood Trophy winning Maserati 4CLT/48 1.5 litre supercharged, 260 HP, HP, Grand Prix monoposto Chassis #1596 Engine #1593.

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Graber Sportgarage AG 3125 Toffen / Switzerland ch.traber@grabersportgarage.ch Graber Sportgarage AG AG3125 Toffen /Toffen Switzerland ch.traber@grabersportgarage.ch Graber Sportgarage 3125 Toffen / Switzerland ch.traber@grabersportgarage.ch Graber Sportgarage AG 3125 / Switzerland ch.traber@grabersportgarage.ch Graber Sportgarage AG 3125 Toffen / Switzerland ch.traber@grabersportgarage.ch 20240424_Octane_FP_GB.indd 1 20240424_Octane_FP_GB.indd 1 20240424_Octane_FP_GB.indd 1 20240424_Octane_FP_GB.indd 1 20240424_Octane_FP_GB.indd 1

24.06.24 07:21 24.06.24 07:21 07:21 24.06.24 24.06.24 07:21 24.06.24 07:21

Icon

Words by Delwyn Mallett

Beanbag chair Water was unyielding, ping-pong balls too expensive, but expanded polystyrene pellets

ZANOTTA

were just right for Gatti’s ‘big sack’

IN 1968, THREE young and innovative Italian architects from Turin – Cesare Paolini, Pierro Gatti and Franco Teodoro – disregarded all preconceived notions of what constitutes a chair and proposed a radically different seating solution. It was the antithesis of the hard-edged minimalist aesthetic that had preoccupied industrial designers for much of the 20th Century.

They called it Sacco and that’s exactly what it was, a brightly coloured pear-shaped deformable sack stuffed with a few million expanded polystyrene pellets. No legs, no arms, no rigid components.

One of the sacred tenets of the mid-20th Century industrial designer was ‘form follows function’, yet here was an artefact that had a function and only the loosest relationship with the norm of ‘form’. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Sacco strongly resembled a Claes Oldenburg version

of something that might have been deposited on the pavement by a passing canine.

Italy was riding the crest of its economic miracle, more than a decade of growth and the transition from a largely agrarian economy into one of the most modern industrialised countries in Europe. Many were enjoying La Dolce Vita; Italian movies, fashion and industrial design were admired worldwide; and ‘Made in Italy’ had become a status symbol. Even staid old Britain was becoming aware that spaghetti didn’t grow on trees, and its streets were buzzing to the sound of Vespas, Lambrettas and Fiats.

Gatti later recalled that inspiration for the seating came from a peasant’s mattress, which consisted of a sack stuffed with leaves and which moulded to the sleeper’s body.

Having found water too unyielding as a medium and miniature ping-pong balls too expensive, the trio finally hit upon expanded

polystyrene and three-quarters filled a vinyl bag with the miniature insulation beads.

So much did Sacco tap into the zeitgeist – the Sixties were swinging, Pop Art was popping – that New York department store Macy’s placed a large order for the funky seating when it was still a prototype. With no production facilities, the architects pitched their idea to the progressive furniture outfit Zanotta, which bought into it immediately.

Aurelio Zanotta had started his company in 1954, making sofas and armchairs. Sensing that a new and more adventurous designconscious market was emerging, he developed an interest in less conventional materials and, with the lofty ambition of producing ‘profit and culture at the same time’, sought out some of the country’s more experimental designers from the Radical Design Movement.

In 1969 Sacco was launched to the world at the Paris Furniture Fair. The world instantly ripped it off. After all, although a patent was applied, the Sacco must rank as by far the easiest ever piece of furniture to copy. Sacco may have used premium-quality materials in its construction, but cheap beanbags were soon being pumped out of factories across the world and the eager public were throwing themselves into them as fast as they could.

The beanbag craze swept across the western world. Through the 1970s you would have been hard-pushed to find student digs or a hippy pad that didn’t feature at least one, usually accompanied by a lava lamp or two, a soundtrack featuring Jimi Hendrix or Pink Floyd, and the aroma of a herbal cigarette.

Suddenly, sitting – or should that be lounging?

– was ‘groovy, man’.

The beanbag may have been perfectly suited to a laid-back lifestyle, but the ‘laid-back’ bit, irrespective of any intake of mind-altering chemicals, was also a serious impediment to regaining the vertical. Once absorbed by the bag, and without hard bits to lever against, the occupant, particularly the older and less agile who, perhaps ill-advisedly, may have ventured aboard, frequently had to resort to rolling onto all fours beside the bag before standing.

By the 1990s the beanbag craze had deflated and they were largely converted into landfill, but the beanbag refused to die and in recent years has even enjoyed something of a resurgence as a fun retro-fashion item.

Sacco also lives on more than half-a-century after it first deformed, and Zanotta proudly features it among its products, recognising Sacco as a groundbreaking design classic and cultural phenomenon that typified an era. In 2020 the Zanotta-Sacco was endowed with the prestigious Compasso d’Oro (Golden Compass) Lifetime Achievement Award, the world’s oldest industrial design recognition,

by Italy’s Industrial Design Association.

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1964 LOTUS ELAN 26R 26-R-07 SHAPECRAFT

As featured in this issue of Octane.

2023 Winner Modena Cento One. One of only 3 26r Shapecrafts built in period. Continuous history from new.

Highly competitive, run by Wolfe Manufacturing, fresh Neil Brown engine.

UK road registered, £275,000

t: +44 7584 243004 | e: SD@SIMONDRABBLECARS.CO.UK i: SIMONDRABBLECARS.CO.UK

SD Octane advert JULY 24.indd 1

04/07/2024 11:49

Chrono

Words by Mark McArthur-Christie

Origin of the species?

First out of the blocks is not always first to market, as the Swiss learned to their cost with quartz NOWADAYS ‘paradigm shift’ is a phrase waved about by councillors when they announce bigger bus lane fines. Thomas Kuhn, when he coined it, meant something rather more seismic: a fundamental shift in the way a system works. In timekeeping, the change from a spinning balance to an oscillating quartz crystal was such a shift. Watches went from being accurate to a few seconds per day to a few seconds per month. More significantly for the Swiss watch industry, that accuracy – once the preserve of the rich – became cheap, Far Eastern and fast.

The popular narrative is that the Swiss were caught napping by the Japanese. It was as though Seiko execs rolled up in Geneva’s Place du Bourg-de-Four one morning, perhaps in a newly launched Datsun 240Z Coupé, waving their new quartz Astron before the heathen Swiss like a monstrance. In fact, the Swiss had been developing quartz since May 1965 and had a working watch – the Beta 1 – by July 1967, nearly two-and-a-half years ahead of Seiko’s launch.

The Swiss had founded the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH) in 1962 to look at developing electronic wristwatches rather than specifically quartz timekeepers. They’d been working on alternatives to the balance wheel and trying to integrate them with the new semiconductors then coming to market. Remember, this was just two years after Bulova had launched its revolutionary Accutron, a watch that did away with the balance and replaced it with a tiny tuning fork, powered by a battery. Slow off the blocks the Swiss were not.

The Beta 1 doesn’t look like a development mule or some sort of Dan Dare special. In fact, it could grace the catalogue of a firm like Nomos today with square, clean lines, and an uncluttered, almost Bauhaus dial. It would fit neatly into a modern watch line-up.

What did stand out was the new watch’s accuracy. When the observatory at Neuchâtel tested it at the end of summer ’67, it blew any mechanically powered and regulated wristwatch out of the water, running at a rate variation of 0.0003 seconds per day rather than the standard mechanical chronometer variation of 3-10sec.

Behind the caseback the movement used a quartz bar rather than the more modern tuning-fork-shaped crystal. It was adjustable to take the crystal’s ageing into account and even compensated for temperature.

Like many early quartzes, it was power-hungry – fine in the workshop but a tough sell commercially: ‘Here’s your new watch, madam. Pop back in a couple of weeks or so and we’ll charge you for a new battery.’

After CEH cycled through the next prototype, Beta 2, and plenty of political wrangling, it launched the Beta 21 movement commercially in April 1970 – three months after Seiko’s gloriously 1970s Astron.

Seiko, with its singular focus and heavyweight industrial electronics base, capitalised on its lead, flattening everyone in its way. When Hamilton launched the first LED quartz digital in April 1972, it should have knocked Seiko off the tracks. Instead, Seiko swerved powerinefficient LED display technology and in October 1973 pushed past with the LC VFA 06LC, an LCD digital watch.

It took until the early 2000s for the Swiss to shift the paradigm again as its less accurate and more expensive mechanical watches flew out of the shops. The Swiss had realised that the last reason people buy a mechanical watch is to tell the most accurate time.

ONE TO WATCH

Omega Electroquartz – Beta 21 Trying to save money on one of these could prove very expensive watch-spare.com

LET’S SAY you’d like a historic quartz on your wrist. Where do you start? Perhaps the most affordable way would be the Omega Electroquartz. Despite saying ‘Omega’ on the dial there’s a Beta 21 inside. The bad news is that early quartz prices have gone nuts (remember, you heard it here first, years ago). The good news is that Electroquartzes are still relatively common because Omega made around 10,000 of them. Stainless examples are the most common, simply because most of the full-on bling gold-cased versions ended up in the smelter when their movements failed. Which is the other bit of bad news – Beta 21s aren’t the most robust of things and repairing them, while possible, can be a challenge. Far better to go for one without problems, even if it’s more money. You’ll pay around £2500 for a stainless-cased watch and £12,000 for gold.

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5 R 1 X J r a u 199 0 Jag al ! and the only one d Leg Roa Winner Monaco e! in g n e s r e it L 7 h it known w

p538@yahoo.com

Books

Reviewed by Mark Dixon

NashHealey A Grand Alliance

JOHN NIKAS with Hervé Chevalier, Dalton Watson, £195, ISBN 978 1 956309 14 0

THE ‘GRAND ALLIANCE’ subhead to this impressive two-volume slipcased set could equally well apply to the people involved in the book project. John Nikas has already authored a 2020 Healey history, Healey, the Men and the Machines, which our own James Elliott described in his review as ‘a masterwork… brilliant’. As Nikas explains in his foreword to this new work, however, he wasn’t able then to devote as much space to the Nash-Healey as he would have liked.

Coincidentally, leading Healey expert Hervé Chevalier, who himself has written nine books about various Healey models, was working on a book about Nash-Healeys in competition and, very graciously, rather than produce a rival title he agreed to pool resources with Nikas. Combine this dream-team with publisher Dalton Watson’s legendary high production values and you have a formula for an outstanding work on a relatively little-known car: until now, there hasn’t been a standalone book dedicated to the Nash-Healey.

Significantly, when James Elliott reviewed Nikas’s previous book (Octane 201), his one complaint was that the text was too dense and

the pictures too small. Neither criticism can be levelled at this coffee-table production. The font is a very generous size, there’s plenty of white space, and images are generally used large and often whole-page. No ‘postage stamps’ this time.

That room to breathe has also allowed Nikas to be expansive about the Nash-Healey story. In fact, there’s as much here about Donald Healey as there is about the cars. Volume One is broadly divided between his biography, the story of Nash cars and the Anglo-American tie-up that became the Nash-Healey; the former includes a chapter about Healey’s World War One service flying FE2b biplanes – he was invalided-out after a nasty crash – plus extensive coverage of his rallying exploits in the 1920s and ’30s, and his time as technical director at Triumph. Did you know that among Healey’s subsequent thoughts of a name for his own car were ‘Winston’ and ‘Churchill’?

All of this is superbly illustrated (including the flying) with period photos. Naturally, most are in monochrome but there’s also some evocative period colour, such as the shots on the spread shown here, inset left, that were taken when Healey toured the USA in 1948 with a Westland to gauge potential export interest.

The story of the Nash-Healey itself, from conception to rapid demise in the face of competition from Chevrolet’s new and much cheaper Corvette, is fully told, of course, and Volume Two picks it up again by detailing the cars’ competition history over three chapters (which is where Hervé Chevalier’s research comes into its own). There’s then a succession of appendices that cover everything from production figures to a complete reproduction of a 1951 owner’s guide.

All-in-all, this is a lovely piece of work – and, who knows, perhaps it will rekindle interest in a car that’s been too long overlooked.

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COLLECT OR BOOK ’S

Bristol 403

Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit

The Lamborghini Miura

Written by a long-time 403 owner – he bought his car in 1972 and used it as a daily driver for some years – this nicely produced softback is an eclectic look at every aspect of the model: not just its history, but all the things that make it uniquely attractive as a car to own, not least its aesthetics (there’s a chapter explaining how it meets all of product designer Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of Good Design). It’s not a substantial book in terms of size, just under 100 pages long, but it is elegantly written.

Did you know that Kyalami means ‘my home’ in Zulu? Everything you could want to know about the South African circuit is contained in this 500-page coffee-table hardback, recently reprinted after its 2022 launch – which is why the 60 years run from 1961 to 2021. Very much picture-led, it details all the race series, the car liveries, drivers and the associated personalities (including marshals and photographers).

Beautifully produced and a worthy tribute.

A contender for one of the top ten motoring books of all time, this was a passion project

by Miura fan and high-end classic car dealer Simon Kidston. It oozes quality, and all 762 copies printed (the number of Miuras built) sold out in a little over two weeks, even at a retail price of £400. Beautifully designed, with a sense of pop-culture fun throughout, it will always be the definitive work on the Miura – which helps explain why its value has increased more than ten-fold in the four years since publication.

Ben Horton

JOHN MANLEY, Amberley, £15.99, ISBN 978 1 3981 1670 2

DENIS KLOPPER, SA Motorsport Memories, £150, ISBN 978 0 6397 3177 3

Edited by JON PRESSNELL, Kidston SA, published 2020, value now £5500

60 Years of Memories

Ferrari Uovo

In 1969, three young men set off on an incredible overland adventure that would see them visit 40 countries and cover 40,000 miles in just nine months. Dubbed UNAtrek, because the trip was promoting the work of the United Nations Association, it was based around a standard ex-utility company Land Rover, bought for £400 and fitted with an extra 60-gallon fuel tank and a roo-bar.

Their journey encompassed much of Asia and Africa, and inevitably included moments of high drama, not least being arrested for ‘spying’ in Iraq and, on their release, seeing bodies strung up with piano wire in the city of Basra. At other times they were arrested on suspicion of murder and held up at gunpoint. But, as they were young and relatively fearless, this was all part of their adventure, and they arrived back in London remarkably unscathed by accident or illness.

Ironically, a Fleet Street strike meant that their return did not attract a lot of media attention.

In the months that followed, that situation improved but only now have the hundreds of fabulous colour photographs taken by team member Chris Wall been published: this lavishly produced hardback draws on the recollections of all three companions to tell their story. Now in their 70s, they still meet up annually for a reunion; sadly, the whereabouts of the Land Rover are unknown.

It was sold for £455 on their return, and exported to India. What a find that would be today.

If you attend Salon Privé on 28-31 August, held at Blenheim Palace just north of Oxford, you can inspect this one-off Ferrari for yourself. It featured in Octane 170, and now it’s the subject of James Page’s superb new book about the car, which tells the story of how it was conceived by young racing driver Giovanni Marzotto (who had won the Mille Miglia, aged 22) and designer/engineer Franco Reggiani, was raced in Italy, and then went to the USA, where it ended up languishing semi-derelict before being gradually restored from the 1980s onwards.

Marzotto himself seems to have been a thoroughly good uovo – although the car was originally called the Jet Coupé – and Page begins by filling out his family background with the help of some fabulously evocative photos. This high bar is maintained throughout the book, and it results in an engrossing read that’s far more than just another car history.

WAXY WAINWRIGHT, MIKE PALMER & CHRIS WALL, Porter Press International, £35, ISBN 978 1 913089 03 0

JAMES PAGE, Porter Press International, £35, ISBN 978 1 913089 62 7

Three Men in a Land Rover

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Gear

Compiled by Chris Bietzk

Ariel Dash The history of the modern-day Ariel company goes back only as far as 1999, when Simon Saunders launched the brilliant Atom sports car. The history of the Ariel name, however, goes back over 150 years. In 1871, James Starley, the father of the British bicycle industry, developed an advanced penny-farthing that he christened ‘the Ariel’. Uniquely for the time, it was available with a ‘speed gear’ that gave two revolutions of the front wheel for one revolution of the crank.

An example of Starley’s creation is displayed at Ariel HQ, and it inspired Saunders and his team to produce this, the Ariel Dash e-bike. Like the Atom, the Dash is impressively svelte, with the titanium and carbonfibre frame weighing just 1.3kg. Two variants are being offered: the Dash Urban (pictured) is a single-speed city bike with a maintenancefree belt drive, while the 12-speed, chain-driven Dash Adventure is optimised for long days in the saddle.

From £8320 plus VAT. arielmotor.co.uk

Jaguar D-type model by Amalgam The latest addition to Amalgam’s stable of 1:18-scale models is a detailed likeness of the car that won the 1956 12 Hours of Reims – a race in which some sort of mercy rule should have been invoked. D-type chassis XKD 605 was shared by Duncan Hamilton and Ivor Bueb, and was challenged only by the three other D-types that followed it home; by the finish, XKD 605 was over 107 miles clear of the Ferrari 500 TR that took fifth place. £895. amalgamcollection.com

Nikon Z6 III Only a few years ago Nikon seemed in danger of being lapped by rival makers of full-frame mirrorless cameras, but it made up ground with the monstrously good Z9 and Z8, and some of the capabilities of those models are offered by the new, more affordable Z6 III. It has a 24MP ‘partially stacked’ CMOS sensor, and autofocus performance is claimed to be comparable with that of the Z9 and Z8. And to make it even harder to take a bad picture, the Z6 III features pre-burst capture, allowing you to photograph the moments that you’d otherwise miss. £2699. nikon.co.uk 152

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Unimatic x Morgan Modello Due U2-MMC Morgan teamed up with Italian watchmaker Unimatic to produce this limited-edition 38mm field watch. It’s supplied with two straps – the biscuit-coloured one shown here and a black band, both of them made from the pebbled leather used to upholster the interior of Morgan’s cars. £675. shop.morgan-motor.com

Ray-Ban RB4433M sunglasses These new shades are part of Ray-Ban’s Scuderia Ferrari collection, but the Prancing Horse branding is so inconspicuous that you’d probably have no idea if not for the fun splash of Giallo Corsa on the temple tips. £204. ray-ban.com

British Grand Prix poster

by Gavin Renshaw Formula 1 and partner Automobilist have commissioned a number of new posters, each one celebrating a particular Grand Prix and designed by a local artist. Gavin Renshaw was tapped to create this 2024 British GP poster, and the Preston-based painter and illustrator might now be wishing he’d had a flutter on the outcome of the race, since his artwork correctly predicted that Mercedes and McLaren would be the chief protagonists at Silverstone! £86. automobilist.com

Schott ripstop cotton shirt Schott’s classic leather motorcycle jackets are enjoying a moment again after featuring prominently in the well-received new Jeff Nichols film, The Bikeriders, but for our money the best thing Schott sells today is this vintage-style shirt, inspired by the workwear of old, available in three colours, and made to last. $80. schottnyc.com 153

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Gear

Fender Tone Master Bassman guitar amp The Fender Bassman was introduced in 1952, but it wasn’t until late 1954 that the iconic narrow-panel version with four ten-inch speakers arrived. It was punchy and dynamic, and it distorted in an utterly thrilling way. Of course, it was also a pretty heavy beast, and seriously loud when wound up to its sweet spot. Now, though, players can buy a Bassman that will hurt neither their back nor their ears: the digital ‘Tone Master’ version gets as near as dammit to the sound of the original, but it weighs only 14.5kg, and it features an attenuator that allows you to reduce the output power to as little as 0.5W. £1429. fender.com

Farer Segrave III British watchmaker Farer has reworked (for the second time) its tribute to the record-breaker Henry Segrave, who was the first person to exceed 200mph in a car, and the first person to hold the Land and Water Speed Records simultaneously. The latest iteration of the watch is a 41mm monopusher chronograph with a GMT function, and it’s being made available as a limited edition of just 50 pieces. £1995. farer.com

McLaren Artura Ultimate sim racing steering wheel

by Ascher Racing Sim racing specialist Ascher has for some time been beavering away on a series of steering wheels based on the one used in the McLaren Artura GT4, and it’s not hard to see why they’ve been at it so long. The range-topping Ultimate model features an array of programmable dials, buttons and switches, plus a high-res dashboard – but less anxiety-inducing versions will soon be available, including an exact replica of the Artura GT4’s wheel, which looks positively primitive in comparison with the Ultimate. ¤1499. ascher-racing.com 154

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1972 Volvo 1800ES

1974 Lancia Fulvia Monte Carlo

manual/overdrive, power steering, very nice Ex-Italian car, all correct restored .................................... £21,995 ...................................................£27,750

1965 Fiat 1500 Cabriolet

1978 Porsche 928

one owner 1965 to 2003, recently driven automatic, very early car, history back to Spa ........................................£19,995 to new ........................................£24,995

1995 Aston Martin DB7

1979 Lotus Elite 504

supercharged, 51,000 miles, cream and 32,000 miles, total history from new, plum interior, history ..................£17,995 original paintwork, fantastic .......£19,995

If it matters to you, it matters to us.

E: admin@rps.storage

T: +44 (0) 1993 222 777

WWW.RPS.STORAGE

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Lego Lamborghini Countach LP5000 QV

Caterham 7 shirt

Among the very best of the charming little Speed Champions models released by Lego in recent years was a blocky approximation of the Lamborghini Countach LP5000 Quattrovalvole, and the company’s designers have finally scaled it up: this new offering, part of the Icons range, is 14in long and is built up from more than 1500 pieces. £159.99. lego.com

Caterham marked its 50th anniversary last year, but it wasn’t until 1974 – 50 years ago this year – that the company began building the Lotus Seven Series 3based car we all know and love. £35. shop.caterhamcars.com

OUR EXPERTS RECOMMEND

Riesling Troken, Weingut Dönnhoff, Nahe 2021

A. Lange & Söhne – Lange 1

Schuco Pro.R 1:43 1984 Audi quattro

Recommended by Private Cellar

Recommended by The Swiss Watch Company

Recommended by Grand Prix Models

Perhaps the best way to read about Germany’s most significant performance cars is with a glass of crisp Riesling. The groundbreaking Audi quattro was ‘King of the Road’ and this elegant wine, from the famous Dönnhoff vineyards overlooking the river Nahe in Germany, is widely regarded as a ‘King of Riesling’. With a racy floral nose and white flowers on the palate, it’s fresh with a vibrant finish and will make you smile, just like a quattro. ‘Prost!’ Walter Röhrl. £34.50. privatecellar.co.uk

Hand-crafted in Glashütte, Germany, this Lange 1 features the emblematic decentralised display and double date aperture characteristic of its collection. It’s housed in a polished 18ct yellow gold case and driven by the meticulously finished calibre L.901.0 manual wind movement, showcased behind an exhibition caseback.

Crafted in very low numbers and typifying high-end German horology, it’s a work of art you don’t have to leave at home. £29,995. watches.co.uk

Continuing this issue’s quattro theme, if you can’t quite stretch to the real thing – whether a Sport or otherwise – this brand-new high-quality resincast release will fill some shelf-space a bit more affordably. When the four-wheel-drive quattro was first shown at Geneva in 1980, it was as a road car, giving little hint of the rally weapon that lurked within. Over the next decade Audi built nearly 11,500 with a wide range of engines, but few major visual changes. £69.95. grandprixmodels.com

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Mannheim

ASMotorsport Motorsport ltd AS ltd Poplar Farm, Bressingham, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 2AP

Maimarktgelände

Tel: 01379688356 Mob: 07909531816 Web: www.asmotorsport.co.uk Email: info@asmotorsport.co.uk

11. Oktober bis

13. Oktober 2024 ASM hand build bespoke versions of the R1 roadster, inspired by the Aston Martin race cars that won Le Mans and the world Sportscar championship in 1959.

Contact us for details of commission builds and stock.

Poplar Farm, Bressingham, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 2AP

Tel: 01379688356 • Mob: 07909531816 Web: www.asmotorsport.co.uk Email: info@asmotorsport.co.uk I-307295.indd 1

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SPEEDMASTER SPECIALIST IN HISTORIC AUTOMOBILES

(0)1937 220 360 or +44 (0)7768 800 773 ASM R1 Stirling Moss tribute car enjoying trackTel: time+44 at Goodwood.

info@speedmastercars.com ASM hand build bespoke versions of the R1 roadster, inspired by the Aston Martin race cars that won Le Mans and the world Sportscar championship in 1959.

Contact us for details of commission builds and stock.

1981 Williams FW07B

9764.indd 1

| speedmastercars.com

Built for the early races of the 1981 season, chassis 10 was driven to victory in the South African GP

by Carlos Reuterman, and was used by Alan Jones in Long Beach and Brazil. Retained by Williams until 2004, this car has more recently been raced with great success in Historic Formula 1 races in the USA and Europe as well as the recent Monaco Historic Grand Prix where it finished an impressive 13:08 4th overall. Maintained to the highest standards by OC Racing in the UK, the15/11/2018 Williams FW07 was the benchmark car F1 racing in the early 1980’s and is still the car to beat today.

Please call for more information.

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The Market B U Y I N G + S E L L I N G + A N A LY S I S

TOP 10 PRICES JUNE 2024 £1,242,500 1967 Ferrari 330 GTS RM Sotheby’s, Berkshire, UK 12 June £1,196,135 ($1,509,700) 1989 Ferrari F40 Collecting Cars, Bangkok, Thailand, 26 June £1,130,000 ARTCURIAL / LOIC KERNEN

1963 Ferrari 250GT Lusso RM Sotheby’s, Berkshire, UK 12 June £1,112,200 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Collecting Cars, Oxfordshire, UK, 23 June

Artcurial hosts €11m ‘garden party’ Steady result though few stand-outs at auction house’s first Saint-Tropez sale DESPITE A somewhat lethargic European market, Artcurial managed to achieve a near-€11m result from its inaugural ‘Garden Party’ auction at the Golf Club Saint-Tropez. That’s an especially impressive total, given that just 66 out of the 100 cars parked up on the lawn sold successfully, and a good number of those barely nudged their lower estimates.

Top-seller was a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster, which made €905,920. The German manufacturer was well represented in this sale, with other highlights including a 2006 SLR McLaren 722 Edition at €512,560, as well as a 1997 MercedesBenz SL70 AMG at €226,280.

Of the cars that failed to find homes, more modern supercars seemed to struggle – with neither the 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder nor 2010 Ferrari 599 GTO gaining enough interest to get over the line.

One of the strongest performers of the day was the

1996 Ferrari 550 Maranello offered with no reserve, which sold for €226,480, perhaps owing to the fact that it was originally owned by Michael Schumacher.

Bonhams returned to the Swiss town of Chéserex for its fifth Bonmont auction, where sales totalled CHF8.5m. Modern supercars were represented, and at the top of the tree was a 2015 McLaren P1 – painted in an MSO special colour, Mauvine Metallic – selling at CHF966,000. At around £850k, that’s about right for a one-owner car with 14,000km on the clock. This was closely followed by a 2021 McLaren Elva, which ended up at CHF 920,000 (around £809,000).

This month also saw ‘The Silver Bullets & Red Arrows Collection’ offered online by Collecting Cars. Eight of the ten UK-based cars offered were sold for a total of £2.15m, led by a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing at £1,112,200.

RM Sotheby’s held its first auction at Cliveden House in June, which held up fairly well given the slightly difficult trading conditions. With 17 of the 60 cars offered failing to sell, sales concluded at just over £7.8m. A 1967 Ferrari 330 GTS was top-seller at £1,242,500, stopping slightly short of its £1.31.6m estimate. Bargain of the day had to go to the ‘no reserve’ 1966 Bristol 409, which didn’t even make half its lower estimate at £11,500.

All eyes are now turning to Monterey, which as always should act as a bellwether for the health of the US market. With some very special cars already consigned (see previews on following pages), things are already hotting up.

Matthew Hayward

£849,597 (966,000 CHF) 2015 McLaren P1 Bonhams, Cheserex, Switzerland, 30 June £809,140 (920,000 CHF) 2021 McLaren Elva Bonhams, Cheserex, Switzerland, 30 June £792,700 ($1,007,499) 2021 Ford GT Carbon Series Bring a Trailer, California, USA 18 June £783,781 ($991,500) 2017 Ford GT ’66 Heritage Edition Bring a Trailer, Georgia, USA 21 June £767,767 (€905,920) 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster Artcurial, Saint-Tropez, France 29 June £725,000 1956 Porsche 356A 1500 GS Carrera Speedster RM Sotheby’s, Berkshire, UK 12 June The top ten data is supplied courtesy of HAGERTY

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There are values… and values John Mayhead examines why relying on one dataset when trying to value a single model might not yield the most accurate results A FEW MONTHS AGO, after I’d just finished giving a market talk at a car show, I was approached by a dealer. We started chatting, and he told me that, in his sector of the market, advertised values are vastly different from those achieved by the same models at auction. He was frustrated that some people based their price expectations on auction results. ‘They’re two very different things,’ he told me.

‘The cars we sell are in a different league.’

For the most part, he’s right. Although most top auctions, both online and live, tend to select high-quality cars for reputational reasons, sometimes larger collections that have been stored for long periods of time are sold and these can present in various states of repair. A good example is the number of 1960s and 1970s Aston Martins that have hit the auctions over recent years, some from a significant Middle East collection that had sat, undriven, for some time. Taking the prices that these cars achieve at auction as an indicator of the model’s value is likely to be inaccurate.

The Aston Martin DB6 saloon is a superb example.

Many of these have been sold recently at auction. It’s a strange model in valuation terms anyway, instantly recognisable but not quite the DB5, but there are usually plenty on the market to choose from.

Relatively expensive to maintain and restore, some have been neglected while others have been superbly restored by the top names in the business and at significant cost.

To see what the difference in values really was, I compared four ranges of prices for the standard DB6 (MksI and II, ignoring Vantage, Volante, shooting brake and other oddities), plotting the low, mean and high values for each. I looked at live auction sale prices in 2024, current UK advertised prices, values of the model insured by Hagerty in the UK, and the values of cars that clients have asked us to quote for in the US over the last year, converted to Sterling (£). The results were fascinating.

At the low end, the values weren’t all that different except that the US quoted some very cheap examples, maybe indicative of a larger number of unrestored or project cars that tend to emerge onto the American market, something that is very rare in the UK. But then, the trajectory for UK-advertised, UK-insured and US-quoted values all followed a very similar path, while the mean and top auction values trailed way behind, the latter being less than half of any of the others. As expected, the (mainly dealer) advertised prices were highest, but remove the assumed 10-15% margin and these prices are pretty much exactly where the insured and quoted values are.

For the potential buyer, the main takeaway here is to find out exactly what you’re looking at and value the car accordingly. Auctions are a very accessible aid to this process, but the condition of cars consigned may vary, so an inspection of whatever you’re buying is a great idea.

John Mayhead Hagerty Price Guide editor, market commentator and concours judge

Four sources of low, mean and average values compared for the Aston Martin DB6 reveal that dealer cars must justify their prices over auction cars.

A S T O N M A R T I N D B 6 P R I C E R A N G E C O M PA R I S O N ( G B P )

Advertised UK-insured US quotes

450k 400k 350k 300k 250k

Auction

200k 150k 100k 50k 0 LOW

MEAN

HIGH

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The Market Auctions

Star of the show RM Sotheby’s, Monterey, California, USA 15-17 August

RM SOTHEBY’S / REMI DARGEGEN

VISITORS TO THE Geneva Motor Show in 1960 were among the first members of the public to witness the style and beauty of the glorious SWB 250 California Spyder first hand. This exact SWB, to be precise. Chassis 1795 GT was the first of the 56 that Ferrari would produce in total.

On the show stand it was finished in Grigio with a red leather interior. It is also one of very few to be fitted with a competition-spec engine from the factory. Other desirable features include a factory hardtop and covered headlights. RM also states that the dashboard layout is believed to be unique.

Following the show it was returned to Maranello, where the interior was re-trimmed in black, before being delivered to its first owner, racer John Gordon Bennett, who was residing in Geneva at the time. Although it’s known to have ventured onto the Nürburgring early on, it was never raced competitively.

It was exported to the USA in 1963, where it has remained since, in the care of only four further owners over the past six decades.

Today it is Ferrari Classiche ‘Red Book’ certified, which means it retains its original engine, gearbox, rear axle and bodywork.

RM Sotheby’s will auction this incredible car in Monterey – the first time this example has been offered at auction – where it is estimated to sell for between $16,000,000 and $18,000,000. rmsothebys.com

Zagato trio Gooding & Company 16-17 August BEAUTY IS SUBJECTIVE, and no coachbuilder is as polarising as Zagato. This trio of limited-run Zagatos is to be offered at Gooding & Company’s Pebble Beach auction.

Front and centre is the one-of-three 2001 Ferrari 550 GTZ Barchetta, featuring the same 5.5-litre V12 and gated six-speed manual as the 550 Barchetta. It’s estimated at $600-800k.

Next up, on the right, is a 2010 Alfa Romeo TZ3 Stradale, one of only nine built. This was based on the 8.4-litre V10-powered Dodge Viper ACR ($450,000-550,000).

Last but not least is a 2013 Lamborghini 5-95, built to celebrate Lamborghini’s 50th and Zagato’s 95th anniversary ($400-600k). goodingco.com

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1995 Mercedes-Benz E60 AMG Limited

AUC T ION DI A RY

Broad Arrow, Monterey, USA 14-15 August, broadarrowauctions.com

24 July H&H, Buxton, UK 24-26 July Mathewsons, online 24-27 July Mecum, Harrisburg, USA 25 July SWVA, Poole, UK 27 July Richard Edmonds, Showell, UK RM Sotheby’s, Gmund am Tegernsee, Germany 28 July Hampson, Oulton Park, UK 31 July Brightwells, online 1 August Brightwells, online 10 August Barons, Southampton, UK 10-11 August Mathewsons, online 14-15 August Broad Arrow Auctions, Monterey, USA 15-17 August Mecum, Monterey, USA RM Sotheby’s, Monterey, USA 16 August Bonhams, Carmel, USA 16-17 August Gooding & Co, Pebble Beach, USA 17 August Cheffins, Harrogate, UK 24 August Iconic Auctioneers, Silverstone, UK 24-25 August ACA, King’s Lynn, UK 29-31 August Worldwide Auctioneers, Auburn, USA 30 August Gooding & Co, London, UK 31 August Lucky Collector Car Auctions, Tacoma, USA 31 August – 1 September Silver Auctions, Sun Valley, USA 4-6 September Mathewsons, online 4-7 September Mecum, Dallas, USA 7 September Bonhams, Goodwood, UK 11 September Brightwells, online 12 September Brightwells, online 13-14 September Bonhams, Beaulieu, UK

Mercedes-Benz worked with Porsche to develop and build the ‘bahn-storming 500E, yet for a select few that car’s 322bhp 5.0-litre V8 wasn’t enough. This is where AMG stepped in, fitting a 6.0-litre, 381bhp ‘M119’ V8. This is one of the 45-or-so built, previously living in Japan and then the UAE. Est: $250,000-300,000.

1933 MG K3 Magnette

1961 Lotus Seven S2

1981 Vauxhall Chevette HSR

Bonhams, Goodwood, UK 7 September, cars.bonhams.com

Brightwells, Herefordshire, UK 27 July, brightwells.com

Iconic Auctioneers, Silverstone, UK 24 August, iconicauctioneers.com

MG celebrates its centenary this year, and Bonhams is offering one of the marque’s most significant racing cars at the Revival. This K3 Magnette, K3003, challenged the might of Maserati in the 1100cc class at the Mille Miglia in 1933, then Tazio Nuvolari won the Ulster TT – leading to the outlawing of superchargers the following year.

Est: £700,000-800,000.

Although this charming Lotus Seven was originally fitted with a 997cc Ford Anglia 105E engine, it now features a 1650cc Cosworth engine and Ford-Lotus four-speed semi-close-ratio gearbox. Following its full mechanical and cosmetic restoration in 1999, it’s covered only around 2500 miles and still looks great. It’s expected to sell for £26,000-30,000.

The HSR was the further pumpedup version of Vauxhall’s Group 4 rally Chevette HS. Somewhere between 30 and 50 were built, with most ending up on the club rally scene. This is one of only 18 known to survive, and is described as ‘arguably the best HSR in existence’. With known history from new, it’s guided at £70,000 to £90,000.

Also Look Out For… Dwight Eisenhower always had an obsessive streak. As a boy, he developed an interest in military history and became such a voracious reader that his mother was sometimes forced to lock away his books to persuade him to do his chores and his homework.

When he joined the United States Military Academy, Eisenhower, already a skilled poker player, was turned on to bridge, and he played six nights a week for five months.

He is remembered in particular, though, for his preoccupation with golf. He didn’t take up the sport until he was 35 but, by the time he was elected President of the USA in 1953, he was hooked. He set up a driving net in the basement of the White House, and installed a putting green outside the Oval Office. He would practise his swing while dictating letters to his secretary, and he carded more than 800 rounds during his presidency.

The amount of time he spent playing golf was noted by his critics, one quipping that Eisenhower ‘invented the 36-hole work week’. For all his dedication to the game, though, Eisenhower was never better than a bogey golfer. He was a habitual slicer of the ball and was impatient on the green – failings that at least made him more relatable to voters!

The Spalding clubs pictured here were used by Eisenhower in the mid-1950s and each is engraved with his signature. The set was given by Eisenhower to the club pro at Fort Meade, the US Army base in Maryland that used to boast its own golf course. On 23 August the set will be up for grabs for the first time, at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, and the house is expecting bids of ‘$80,000 and up’.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

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The Market Data Mining

Hidden in plain sight

FERRARI F355

+25%

Ferrari’s fantastic F355 is an underrated modern classic, and prices are starting to rise THERE ARE SOME models that tick all the boxes but don’t seem to get the press that other classics do, and the Ferrari F355 is a great example. It’s at a sweet spot where pop-up headlamps, a stylish interior complete with retro-style chunky switches and – at least in the more desirable manual – a chrome-gated gearchange meet excellent handling, proper power and just enough driver aids to keep you on the road.

This is the car that former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo launched to fight off the challenge of the Honda NSX, and in many ways it won,

Auction Tracker

Porsche 911 R (991) The road-focused 911 R was one for the purists: manual gearbox, 4.0-litre 493bhp engine from the GT3 RS, no fixed rear wing, and the lowest weight of the 911 range.

Launched in 2016, only 991 were built, priced at £136,901, all pre-sold to preferred customers.

It didn’t take long for the first example to turn up at auction, with Bonhams’ Zoute sale in October 2016 indicating just how much of a premium the market was prepared to pay. Estimated to fetch

VALUE OF A MANUAL CAR OVER ONE EQUIPPED WITH THE F1 TRANSMISSION

but values haven’t kept pace with some of its period competitors.

Take the Porsche 911 (993) Turbo: also considered a sweet-spot model, values have soared, and its Hagerty Price Guide ‘Excellent’ value is now nearly twice that of the F355.

That said, in percentage terms, F355 values have increased sharply over the past five years, and Hagerty’s analysis of the ages of people asking for quotes worldwide shows a fascinating trend: F355 owners tend to be younger than for other, similar cars. OK, so it’s not exactly a Millennial favourite yet but 18% of owners are less than 40 years

of age, more than for the Porsche 993, the Ferrari Testarossa and 360, and nearly three times more than for the 550 Maranello.

Also, the percentage of younger F355 owners has fluctuated by just two points in the past five years, compared with the 550’s, which changed by seven points, and the 360’s (by five). The values of these two models also changed most during the post-Covid boom but then stagnated, compared with the F355, which continued upwards. This points to the car being a steady riser, rather than a flash-in-the pan sensation, and one to watch.

John Mayhead

F355 NÜRBURGRING NORDSCHLEIFE LAP TIME, 1997.

PORSCHE 993 CARRERA, SAME YEAR, SAME DRIVER: 8MIN 28SEC.

€250-350k, its European-spec example (pictured) with only 52km set the bar at €483,000 (£408,000).

RM Sotheby’s raised the stakes four months later at its Paris sale, with a French-delivered car that had covered 600km bringing €515,200 (£435,000) – a portion of which went to charity. Auction results dipped in 2018, coinciding with the arrival of the new GT3 Touring, which also offered a manual gearbox. An uptick in 2021 saw the best examples once again making over £350k.

It’s not uncommon for cars to have been sold multiple times, including number 292, which first crossed the block at Amelia Island in 2019, achieving $313,000 (£246,500), re-selling in 2022 at $555,000 (£437,000) and in 2023 for $533,000 (£420,000). The current

auction record of $1,105,000 was set at the RM Sotheby’s sale of The White Collection in 2023, an outlier result that hasn’t had a significant effect on values since.

Jonathan Aucott of Avantgarde Classics comments: ‘Designed to be the best 911 for the road, it was also the perfect 911 for most people: a manual gearbox, RS engine and no spoilers and wings.

‘This optimal mix makes it so sought-after and is why values have remained so high over the last couple of years. Their all-time lowest value of around £200k for left-hand-drive cars with more than delivery miles came in 2018/19, when people wondered whether the 911 GT3 Touring was going to take away from the 911 R, but by 2021 they were stronger than ever.

‘The downside is that none of them are being used. You see tinymileage cars and those with a few thousand miles: nobody is buying an ultra-low-mileage 911 R to drive.

‘I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to buy one under £200k again, unless we find that elusive car that someone’s actually put a few miles on. At the moment the European market sees them up to £300k; I think they are more highly prized in the UK and US. Although they are never going to be plentiful, Europe is where most of the cars are, so it makes sense that they are going to be cheaper there than in the UK. The best UK-delivered collector-mileage car would trade at £400k, maybe a touch more if it’s done only a few hundred rather than a few thousand miles.’

Rod Laws

14

THE REPORTED NUMBER OF UK EXAMPLES WITH THE FIORANO HANDLING PACK

375bhp THE HIGHEST SPECIFIC OUTPUT PER LITRE OF ANY NATURALLY ASPIRATED ENGINE OF THE TIME

8min 18sec

£500,000 £400,000 £300,000 £200,000 Line charts the top prices for comparable cars at auction.

£100,000 2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

Glenmarch is the largest free-to-access online resource for classic and collector car auction markets.

Visit glenmarch.com to keep up to date.

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1996

PORSCHE

993 C2 TARGA

L25D TURQUOISE METALLIC

3.8L MANUAL 87,000 MI

1997

PORSCHE

993 TURBO COUPE FOREST GREEN EXTERIOR

MANUAL 34,000 MI

1996

PORSCHE

993 C4 COUPE 6 SPEED

MANUAL 57,000 MI

For Collectors of Modern Art, experts in Ferrari, Porsche, Jaguar and AC Cobra W: hendonwaymotors.com

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T: +44(0)20 8202 8011

12/07/2024 10:47

The Market Dealer News

SHOWROOM BRIEFS

1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom II £265,750 Originally ordered by the Spanish Royal Consort to the UK, and believed to have been bought on behalf of King Alfonso as it was shipped directly to Spain. A beautiful example. graemehunt.com (UK)

1996 Gemballa GTR 600 £245,000 from Hexagon Classics, London, UK OF THE MANY companies that have turned their attention to tuning Porsches over the years, German outfit Gemballa has always been one of the most extreme, not to mention the most technologically advanced. This 1996 Porsche 993 Turbo-based GTR 600 – which cost £173,000 on top of the price of the base 911 Turbo when new – is a slightly different take on the factory GT2.

To begin with the external transformation, Gemballa fitted its own full wide-body kit, carbonkevlar front wings with ‘Le Mans Bi-Turbo’ headlights, and an aggressive front and rear aero kit.

A set of 18-inch BBS wheels finishes it off.

Sitting behind the rear wheels, as you might expect, there is something particularly monstrous.

The car was ordered from Porsche with the X50 Power Kit, and Gemballa pushed power to 610bhp, thanks to high-lift GT2 camshafts, reinforced cylinder heads, race-spec oil cooler, larger KKK turbos, a wide-bore exhaust and remapped ECU. Inside it’s still relatively plush, especially in comparison to a GT2, and features white leather hardback sports seats and blue carpets. A roll-cage and carbonfibre-finished side bars take it up a notch.

This example has covered 31,700 miles and is ready to be used. The term ‘bargain’ is always relative but, with standard 993 Turbos with similar mileage fetching in the region of £200k, and GT2s upwards of £1m, this is an interesting and rarer alternative to both. hexagonclassics.com

1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia Ti Super €130,000 Well-preserved example of this race-ready homologation special. Enthusiast-owned in France from new, it still retains all the original parts unique to the model. historiccars.fr (FR)

1991 Volkswagen Golf Country $38,000 VW built just 7735 of these off-roading Golf crossovers, in collaboration with Steyr-Puch.

This Montana Green car has 108,753km, and has been well cared for throughout its life. lbilimited.com (US)

The Insider QUALITY SELLS, especially in today’s more challenging market. The best examples tend to be owned by well-heeled collectors who do not have to sell, and there seems to be no shortage of buyers for excellent original or correctly restored examples, which continue to command strong prices.

The collector market has tactically acknowledged that we have seen ‘peak car’. The last normally aspirated and manual models are increasingly in demand: witness the strong values of Porsche’s 997 GT3 RS 4.0 and 911 R, Ferrari’s 458 Speciale and even the VW Golf Mk7 Club Sport. All are regarded as better than the current offerings. I have taken many calls from drivers of ‘moderns’ looking to experience the driver involvement provided in the past: great news for the classic car movement, as these new buyers will become increasingly brave. Expect ownership biographies to reverse the norm, beginning with a Porsche Taycan and ending on an ’80s 911.

Neil Dickens With Charles Reis, copurveyor of ‘cars we would want to own ourselves’. thehairpincompany.co.uk

2012 Tesla Roadster $279,995 AUD Strange to think that Tesla’s Roadster has now reached collectable status but, as the first vehicle produced by the now huge company, there’s no denying its significance. classicthrottleshop.com (AU)

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2 0 18 A S T O N M A R T I N VA N Q U I S H Z AG AT O VO L A N T E ( L H D) Cairngorm brown (Q department colour) with ivory rekona and bitter chocolate leather interior and a bitter chocolate hood. Number 69 of 99 produced, a UK supplied 1 owner car, One-77 steering wheel, satin chrome pack, touring pack, embroidered `Z` logo on the headrests | 312 miles | £POA

2 0 15 A S T O N M A R T I N V 12 Z AG AT O ( L H D) Sunburst yellow (Q department colour) with obsidian black analine hides and contrast yellow stitching, 1 of 61 cars produced, believed to be the only example in this colour, Bang and Olufsen 1000W audio, yellow brake callipers, carbon fibre lightweight seats, black textured tailpipe finishers | 1,375 miles | £POA

19 6 3 A S T O N M A R T I N D B 4 S E R I E S V VA N TAG E Black pearl with soft tan leather, this is the last series V built according to the Aston Martin register and has been brought up to full GT specification by marque experts Bodylines, Spraytec and RS Williams including the correct twin plug head | £POA The leading specialist in sourcing the rare and unobtainable. We are always looking to buy interesting cars.

+44 (0) 1772 613 114

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27/06/2024 15:52

The Market Buying Guide

THE LOWDOWN

WHAT TO PAY In the UK, £10,000-15,000 is the starting point for a decent Mehari, and prices in Europe are largely similar. Condition plays a big part, and a perfect example – especially one that has been fully restored – could fetch up to £20,000.

Mehari 4x4s are the most valuable and, just like when they were new, prices are roughly double those of the standard car’s. Expect to pay £25,000-40,000 depending on condition. If you can find one, it’ll most likely be in Europe.

LOOK OUT FOR

Citroën Mehari The no-frills open 2CV-based car that’s surprisingly easy to own – and great fun, too FEW METHODS OF transportation inspire such unconfined joy as a beach car. Who wouldn’t grin at the sight of a Mini Moke or Fiat 500 Jolly? Get behind the wheel of a Citroën Mehari and, even more so than with its 2CV siblings, unbridled laughter is destined to follow. While Citroën never thought there would be any call for something so exposed to the elements in the UK – the Mehari was never officially sold here – we can’t help but think they make a brilliant buy. Not only affordable, but easy to run and, of course, great fun to drive.

The brainchild of World War Two fighter pilot turned plastic expert Roland de la Poype, the Mehari was intended to be a rugged utilitarian vehicle. It was launched in May 1968, based on the chassis and running gear from the Citroën Dyane – including its 29bhp 602cc flat-twin engine – with a corrugated ABS plastic body.

The advantages of the plastic body were obvious: it was cheap, lightweight, rugged and obviously resistant to corrosion by its nature. It also didn’t require paint, as the plastic was impregnated during production to give the desired colour. It was initially sold in either red, green or beige. There’s no solid roof, though a canopy can be fitted to protect the occupants from the elements.

In 1969 the Mehari was introduced into the USA, with round sealed-beam headlights and a few other tweaks to make it legal. It lasted just one year before production of this version ended, making official US cars particularly rare today.

Orange had been added to the colour options in ’69, but the first major change to the Mehari came in 1970 with the addition of small opening plastic

doors. Lime green was added to the range of colour choices in 1976. The first and only real facelift took place in 1978, as the front end and dashboard were treated to a few minor spec changes. Atacama Yellow, arguably the best colour for a Mehari, was made available in 1980.

For 1979, a 4x4 version of the Mehari was launched, initially for the French Army, turning an already very capable vehicle into something that was genuinely good off-road. It was especially impressive on sand, finally living up to its namesake, a breed of camel. Fitted with a three-speed transfer box sending drive to the rear wheels – unlike the four-wheel-drive 2CV Safari, which was twin-engined – it generally runs in front-wheel-drive mode for normal driving.

Other specific changes for the 4x4 model include a bonnet-mounted spare wheel, four-wheel disc brakes, and flared wheelarches for those built after 1982. Production of the 4x4 stopped in 1983, by which time around 1300 had been built.

Production of the front-wheel-drive Mehari continued until 1988, with a total of 144,953 built in various locations around the world – including France, Spain, Portugal and as far away as Argentina and Uruguay. Citroën revived the concept in 2016, with the electric E-Mehari, although only 1000 were produced in conjunction with Bolloré.

Although the Mehari is still a relatively rare sight on UK roads, quite a few have been imported over the years. Thanks to the wonderful community that exists around the 2CV, these characterful little cars are actually very well supported, too, meaning there aren’t really any major headaches to expect if you take the plunge.

Matthew Hayward

Inspect the bodywork for any damage. The ABS plastic body and panels were not originally painted but impregnated with dye. That finish is prone to fade over the years, and prolonged exposure to UV rays will cause the plastic to become brittle and chalky.

Quite a lot have been painted, which if done well looks better and will protect the plastic.

The steel chassis, like that of any 2CV or Dyane, is prone to corrosion, especially if it has been used in UK winters.

Although that’s less likely than with a 2CV, a full inspection is always necessary. Thankfully, most of the problem areas can be seen without needing to get the car on a ramp.

Ideally, the engine should be serviced every 3000 miles and, while they generally take abuse well, excessive oil consumption due to damaged piston rings is not uncommon.

Rebuilds are generally straightforward, and many owners are happy to take this on themselves.

Parts availability for the Mehari is outstanding, with most parts available – even a full bodyshell or a replacement chassis – from Mehari Club Cassis, via the 2CV Shop in the UK. If you manage to track down a 4x4, bear in mind that the spare parts are significantly more difficult to find.

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PETER BRADFIELD LTD PETER BRADFIELD BRADFIELD LTD LTD PETER PETER BRADFIELD LTD

19641934 Works Healey 3000 Frazer Nash TTLightweight Replica

“767 KNX” is has an the important historic racing car.and It 1967 was hand built byItthe Healey Motor Company Department a Maserati Mistral Chassis 2125 desirable long wheel-base Meadows engine. was delivered on July 6th 1934Competition to its first owner and bothwith he and lightweight chassis and an all-aluminium body.

It was the only ‘Works’ entry for the 1964 “Sebring 12 Hour” driven by Paddy Hopkirk Maserati’s Modena factory built over onlycourageous 23 in rightthird handowner, drive. aThis matching example has the super rare the second owner competed with the800 car. Mistrals The storybut of the war-time RAFnumber pilot, leaves a lasting impression and and campaigned

by TedItspec Worswick the Targa Florio with Minshaw and intrace 1968 with Richard Bond.

The current 1964 Works Healey 3000 alloy body and impressive a 4 1966 Litre, sixofcylinder, twinAlan plug engine that can its heritage back to the legendary 250F. canthen be read onitsmy website. laterincludes cameininto the care well-known racer andLightweight enthusiast, Joe Fairley in Ireland who kept it for 49owner years.

1967 Maserati Mistral 1964 Works Healey 3000 Lightweight acquired it lots in is2015 and Jeremy Welch thoroughly it.its KNX very fastMotor handles well.

The high performance 3with litre “767 KNX” important historic car.

Itrace was hand built by theisand Healey Company Competition Department Delivering ofanlow range torque andracing smooth power atprepared high revs performance is and impressive and well matched to the 5The speed ZFisa In 2018 ‘Chain-Gang’ specialist, Patrick Blakeney-Edwards acquired 2125 started a body off/bare chassis restoration. result Maserati’s Modena factory built and over 800round Mistrals butbrakes only 23give in right hand drive.

This matching number example has the super rarecage “767 KNX” is an important historic racing car. was hand built by the Healey Motor Company Competition Department with engine with three 45DCOE Webers all disc it a very nice edge.

It has a fuel cell, fire system and safety anda ’ lightweight chassis and an all-aluminium body.

It was the only ‘Works’ entry for the 1964 “Sebring 12 Hour” driven by Paddy Hopkirk a highly original TT Rep with the best specification and history that defies comparison.

Offered in its original colours, ‘bullet-proof gearbox and all-round disc brakes.

The current owner commissioned a complete restoration that took over four years and was recorded alloy chassis body and its impressive spec includes a 4ItLitre, six twin plug engine that can trace its heritage back to driven legendary 250F.Hopkirk lightweight an all-aluminium body. was thecylinder, only ‘Works’ entry for themeticulously 1964 “Sebring 12your Hour” byThe Paddy overand four years has filled ain trophy cabinet.

Comes with sets of wheels, spares etc, buy ownthecabinet. and then campaigned Ted Worswick the 1966 Targa with Minshaw and in 1968 with Richard Bond. current owner mechanicals and matching number in hundreds of detailed photographs. was stripped towith the bare chassis and throughout. engine a Delivering lots of by low range torqueThe andcar smooth power at Florio high revs its Alan performance is integrity. impressive andrebuilt well matched to the 5The speed ZF had and then campaigned by Ted Worswick in the 1966 Targa Florio with Alan Minshaw and in 1968 with Richard Bond.

The current owner acquired it in 2015 and Jeremy Welch thoroughly race prepared it.

KNX is very fast and handles well.

The high performance 3 litre new crank and rods, triple 45DCOE Webers replaced its asthmatic fuel injection system and a new wiring loom was fitted.

The body was gearbox and all-round disc brakes. The current owner commissioned a complete restoration that took over four years and was recorded acquired ithundreds in three 2015 and Jeremy Welch thoroughly prepared it. iswheels very fast and handles The system high performance 3 litre engineinto with Webers all car round disc brakes give itKNX achassis very nicemeticulously edge.

It has aOxblood fuelwell. cell, leather fire and safety cage and stripped bare metal and repainted inand Maserati blue with thetoBorrani alloy in black and to the interior. of45DCOE detailed photographs.

The wasrace stripped the bare and rebuilt throughout.

The engine had a Offered engine with threeand 45DCOE Webers and all round disc brakes give it a very nice edge.

It has a fuel cell, fire system and safety cage and new crank rods, triple 45DCOE Webers replaced its asthmatic fuel injection system and a new wiring loom was fitted.

The body was over four years has filled a trophy cabinet.

Comes with sets of wheels, spares etc, buy your own cabinet. in exceptional condition, its a lot more car than an E Type and a lot less money than a Ferrari. over has filledina Maserati trophy cabinet. withalloy setswheels of wheels, spares etc, buyleather your own stripped to barefour metalyears and repainted blue withComes the Borrani in black and Oxblood to thecabinet. interior. Offered in exceptional condition, its a lot more car than an E Type and a lot less money than a Ferrari.

1925 Bentley 3-4½ Litre YK 1360 is a Short Chassis Speed Model still fitted with its original Vanden Plas coachwork. It has been uprated with a perky 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Litre 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Litre 4½ litre engine giving it a good turn of1954 speed andBentley mechanically feels good on the road. The talented Mr. Getley at Kings1925 3-4½ Litre Frazer Nash Mans Mk II9” 1952 Frazer Nash TargaLe Florio “KYN 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Litre 1952 Frazer Nash Targa Florio “KYN 9”Itishas bury has it.high However, aBentley number of previous owners have taken a dogged delight in ignoring 3-4½ Litre Speed Model Targa Florio designed asquality, a1925 sports car withfitted competition potential combined with enough comfort and boot space forwith touring.

TheRacing LeThe Mans waswas aChassis super hand-made and bloody expensive competition car.

This the last of thewillfully 29 built has the the YK 1360 isRep amaintained Short Speed Model still with its original Vanden Plasjust coachwork. been uprated aand perky YK 1360 is a Short Chassis Speed Model still fitted with its original Vanden Plas coachwork.

It has been uprated with aperky perky The Targa Florio was designed as a sports car with competition potential combined with just enough comfort and boot space for touring.

“KYN 9” is unique because it was the only Frazer Nash built with the 2.6 litre Austin-Healey derived engine and was the 1952 London Chassis 1066 was delivered with the desirable Vanden Plas coachwork and both chassis and body numbers are stamped in the right highest spec of the lot with Speed the light-weight MkII chassis, engine mounted 5 good inches rearward and 1 inch lower than previous models, YK 1360 is a Short Chassis Model still fitted with its original Vanden Plas coachwork.

It has been uprated with aaDe paintwork and it has accordingly developed a depth of patina you could drown in.

Its bears its battle-scars and witness marks 4½ litre engine giving it a good turn of speed and mechanically feels on the road.

The talented Mr. Getley at KingsYK“KYN 1360 is Short Chassis Speed Model still fitted with its original Vanden Plas coachwork.

ItRace has uprated with perky Motorshow car.

It was sold toin Louis Keller in the USA who competed with it good in the 1954 Golden Gate Park inbeen San Francisco.

Innew 4½ litre giving it a good turn of speed and mechanically feels good on the road.

The talented Mr. Getley at Kings9” isaengine unique because it was the only Frazer Nash built with the 2.6 litre Austin-Healey derived engine and was the 1952 London places.

It was uprated to 4½ litres 2010 with new crank and rods giving it a turn of speed and reliability.

That Mr. Getley has been Dion rear axle, larger MM radiator and Alfin brake drums.

The body is unique with a longer bonnet and wider cockpit.

Delivered to the litre engine giving it a good turn of and mechanically feels good on the road.

The talented Mr. Getley at Kingsbury has maintained However, adistinction number of previous owners have taken a to dogged delight inand willfully ignoring the as4½ badges ofRacing honour and appeared with on at least three Flying Scotsman Rallies raced at the Goodwood 1986 the car was discovered byit. the famous British actor, John Rhys-Davies and brought back the UK. Inpaintwork 2008 9 was fully race 4½ litre engine giving ithas good turn ofinspeed speed and mechanically feels good the The talented Mr. Getley at24,000 KingsMotorshow car.

Itowner was sold Louis Keller the USA who competed with itand in the on 1954 Golden Gate Park Race in Francisco.

In the looking after it but clearly aato number of36 previous owners have taken dogged delight intaken ignoring the and itSan has accordingly USA, its second kept the car for years and competed in races,asprints hill-climbs.

Itroad. returned to theKYN UK in 2004 with just bury Racing has maintained it.

However, a number of previous owners have a dogged delight in willfully ignoring 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Litre Speed Model paintwork and it has accordingly developed a depth of patina you could drown in.

Its bears its battle-scars and witness marks bury Racing has maintained it.

However, a number of previous owners have taken a dogged delight in willfully ignoring the prepared by Blakeney Motorsport and the car has been campaigned by three subsequent competitive owners.

The current owner bought Revival.

Concours types and ‘try-hards’ need not apply but will suit any number of bounders, blaggards or cads.

1986 the car was discovered by the famous British actor, John Rhys-Davies and brought back to the UK. In 2008 KYN 9 was fully race miles on the clock.

Offered for sale in exemplary condition, in its original colour scheme, with matching number integrity and a service bury Racing has maintained it.

However, a number of previous owners have taken a dogged delight in willfully ignoring the 1925 Bentley 3-4½ Litre Speed Model developed a depth of patina you could drown in.

It bears its battle-scars as badges of honour and has appeared on at least three Flying Chassis 1066 was delivered with the desirable Vanden Plas coachwork and both chassis and body numbers are stamped in the right paintwork and it has accordingly developed a depth of patina you could drown in.

Its bears its battle-scars and witness marks the car in 2021 and had BMS prepare the car to the highest standards.

Presented in beautiful condition, “KYN 9” is one of the finest postas badges of honour and has appeared with distinction on at least three Flying Scotsman Rallies and raced at the Goodwood paintwork and it has accordingly developed a depth of patina you could drown in.

Its bears its battle-scars and witness marks prepared by Blakeney Motorsport and the car has been campaigned by three subsequent competitive owners.

The current owner bought history that reflects its cherished nature.

Weighty paperwork, new wheels and tyres.

Eligible for everything, impeccable road manners.

Chassis 1066 was delivered with the desirable Vanden Plas coachwork and both chassis and body numbers are stamped in the right Scotsman Rallies and raced at Goodwood.

Concours types, ‘try-hards; and matching number zealots need not enquire but will suit any places.

Itand was to 4½ litres in 2010 condition with crank and rods giving itAaweighty good turn of speed andRallies reliability.

That Mr. Getley has been paintwork ituprated has accordingly developed anew depth ofnot patina you could drown in.

Its bears its battle-scars and witness marks war Nash’s andConcours isand offered in race ready with current HTP papers. history fileofaccompanies the car with magazine asplaces. badges of honour has appeared with distinction on atgiving least three Flying Scotsman and raced atthe the Goodwood Revival. types and ‘try-hards’ need apply but will suit any number bounders, blaggards or cads. car in 2021 and the to the highest standards.

Presented beautiful condition, “KYN 9” israced one ofitGetley the finest postas badges honour and has appeared with distinction on at least three Flying Scotsman Rallies and at Goodwood Itof was uprated toBMS 4½ litres in 2010 with new crank and rods itits good turn of and reliability.

That Mr. has been blaggard, bounder oraowners cad.in Also available looking after it buthad clearly aprepare number ofcar previous owners have taken aalldogged delight inspeed ignoring the paintwork and has accordingly articles, photos, bills and letters documenting and competition history. as the badges of honour and has appeared with distinction on at least three Flying Scotsman Rallies and raced at the Goodwood Revival.

Concours and not apply but will suitany any number of bounders, blaggards orcads. cads. war Nash’s and is offered in race ready condition with current HTP weighty history file accompanies car with magazine looking after itdepth but clearly atypes number of‘try-hards’ previous owners have taken apapers. dogged delight ignoring the paintwork and it least has accordingly Also available developed of patina you could drown in.

Itneed battle-scars as Abadges ofinhonour and appearedthe on at three Flying Also available Revival. types and ‘try-hards’ need not apply but will suit number of bounders, blaggards or 1925 Bentley 3bears Litre Speed Model 1931 Invicta S Type Revival.a Concours Concours types and ‘try-hards’ need notits apply butmore will suit any number of has bounders, blaggards or cads.

See Website for details articles, photos, bills and letters documenting all itsbadges and competition history. developed depth of you could drown in. Litre It3-4½ bears its battle-scars asType ofby honour and has appeared at least ScotsmanaRallies andpatina raced at Goodwood.

Concours types, ‘try-hards; matching number zealots need enquire butthree will Flying suit any 1925 Bentley Litre 1934 Invicta Sowners Type Carbodies 1925 Bentley 3/4½ 1933 Invicta Sand 1965 Alfa Romeo TZ1 not on 1931 Bentley 4½ Litre Blower 1952 Frazer Nash Targa Florio Scotsman Rallies and raced at Goodwood.

Concours types, ‘try-hards; and matching number zealots need not enquire but will suit any Also available See Website details 1954 Bentley Rfor Typemore Continental blaggard, bounder or cad.

See Website for Invicta more bounder ordetails cad.

1925 Bentley 3-4½ blaggard, Litre 1934 S Type by Carbodies Also available

See Website formore more details 8 REECE MEWS 1925 Bentley 3/4½ KENSINGTON AlsoRInvicta available See Website for 1954 Bentley Type Continental Litre 1933 S Typedetails 1965 Alfa Romeo TZ1LONDON SW7 3HE See Website for more details 8 REECE MEWS1925 Bentley 3/4½ Litre 1933 KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 3HE Invicta S Type 1965 Alfa Romeo TZ1 peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com REECE MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW73HE 3HE 888REECE KENSINGTON LONDON REECE MEWS MEWS KENSINGTON LONDON SW7 SW7 3HE peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 0207589 7589 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: www.bradfieldcars.com peter@bradfieldcars.com Tel: 020 020 7589 8787 8787 www.bradfieldcars.com 00135515_CSC_010224_D_PeterBradfiled.indd 2 00135515_CSC_010624_D_PeterBradfiled.indd 2

15/12/2023 14:15 10/04/2024 12:27

2017 Aston Martin Vanquish V12 Zagato

1 owner example comes optioned with Villa D’este package, Carbon fibre centre console, 1-77 Style steering wheel, Fully electric and memory front seats, Alarm upgrade. 69 miles. £389,990

2018 Lamborghini Huracan V10 LP 640-4 Performante

1 owner from new, dark chrome interior package, Lazer engraved stitching, 20” Loge alloy wheels finished in Gloss black. 16,000 miles. £215,990

1967 Jaguar E-Type Roadster

Supplied via Jaguar cars of New York in October 1967, full nut and bolt restoration, spanning over several years including LHD to RHD conversion and full UK registration. 120 miles. £189,990

Carbon twill interior package, Front lifting system, Multi functional steering wheel in alcantara, Cruise control, Branding package. Full Lamborghini main dealer history from new. 11,000 miles. £179,990

2013 Ferrari 458 Spider

Carbon fibre race seats, Carbon fibre driving zone with LED’s, Exterior stripe in Argento Nurburgring, Rear parking camera, Yellow rev counter, Silver brake callipers, 12,000 miles. £169,990

2016 Lamborghini Aventador V12 LP 750-4 Superveloce

1 owner, Gloss carbon exterior, Carbon fibre interior package, Sports exhaust system, 20/21” Dianthus centre lock alloy wheels. 6,800 Miles. £339,990

2018 Ferrari 812 Superfast V12

Front bumper mouth piece in Carbon fibre, Carbon fibre front spoiler, Carbon fibre racing seats with seat lifter, Privacy rear windows, Matte black forged racing wheels. 11,600miles. £205,990

2023 Porsche 911 T 992 Dakar

Black leather and Race-Tex interior. Carbon fibre roof, Carbon bucket seats, Heated GT sports steering wheel, Extended Race-tex package, Fully body PPF. 800 miles. £189,990

2015 Lamborghini Aventador V12 LP 700-4

2020 Ferrari 812 Superfast V12

Suspension lifter, Adaptive headlights with SBL function, Scuderia shields, Rear privacy glass, Titanium exhaust pipes, 20” forged diamond alloys, Ferrari main dealer history. 2,400 Miles. £279,990

2019 Lamborghini Urus V8 BiTurbo

Terra Asia leather interior. Comes highly optioned from factory with Fully electric and memory front seats, Cruise control, Soft close doors, Full Carbon fibre interior. 12,000 miles. £194,990

2008 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640

A full specification car including Hemera alloy wheels, ceramic brakes, Lifting gear and a Transparent engine cover. comprehensive service history. 19,000 miles. £184,990

2022 Porsche 911 992 GT3

Nero leather interior with contrast Verde stitching.

Full Carbon fibre exterior package, Full Carbon fibre interior package, Sports exhaust system, Front end PPF. 17,000 miles. £174,990

Black leather and Race-tex interior. Carbon backed bucket seats, Carbon fibre lightweight roof, Clubsport package, 7 speed PDK, Exclusive design taillights, Privacy glass. 8,000 miles. £169,990

2013 Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Performante Spyder Edizione Tec

2014 Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Performante Edizione Tecnica

Believed to be the only example finshed in Ad personam Blu Cepheus, Carbon bucket seats, Carbon fibre interior package, 8,900 miles. £144,990

Carbon fibre interior package, Branding package, Full body PPF, 19” Superleggera alloys finished in Titanium. 12,500 miles. £139,990

BUYING OR SELLING LAMBORGHINI MOTORCARS T +44 01580 714 597 E sales@vvsuk.co.uk W www.vvsuk.co.uk (Viewing by appointment only) Address: VVS UK LTD PARK FARM, GOUDHURST ROAD, CRANBROOK, KENT, TN17 2LJ www.lamborghinibuyer.com Additional Websites: www.justlamborghini.com

AC HERITAGE

1990 AC Cobra MKIV Lightweight Ordered by Drambuie Liqueur Company in corporate colours, 16,300 miles from new. Retains full factory specification. £199,995

1957 AC Ace Bristol 3 owners. SCCA race history. Matching numbers. Goodwood and Mille Miglia eligible. Current FIVA and FIA papers. £299,995

1970 AC / Allard J2X 1953-1963 AC Ace project Thames Ditton 428 rolling chassis. Prototype J2X fitted by ‘Emery Cars’. POA Thames Ditton unnumbered chassis, AC engine & gearbox for rebuild. £69,995

For more information about any of these vehicles, please contact our sales team.

AC Heritage · International Broker of Historic & Classic Motorcars · Brooklands Motor Circuit, Surrey, UK Telephone +44(0)1932 828545 · Mobile +44(0)7557 878123 · www.acheritage.com

THE UK’S OLDEST INDEPENDENT FERRARI SPECIALIST | EST. 1968 2005 Ferrari 575 M - Manual

1997 Ferrari F355 GTB

1974 Ferrari 365 GT4 Berlinetta Boxer

1988 Ferrari 328 GTB

1988 Ferrari 418 Manual

1978 Ferrari 308 GTS

£189,995

£84,995

£134,995

£74,995

£POA

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D ELIVERING U NRIVALLED F ERR ARI S ALES , S ER VICE & R ESTOR ATION FOR OVER 50 YEARS

FOSKERS.COM E M A I L : info@foskers.com | S A L E S :+44 +44 (0)1474 874555 B R A N D S H AT C H P A R K , K E N T , DA3 8PU

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1961 JAGUAR XK150 3.8S ROADSTER The ultimate, factory built touring XK – the ultra-rare Home Market 3.8S Roadster. One of only 24 Right Hand Drive examples built and considered the test bed for the 150mph E-Type, this is the transition between the post-war XK of the 1950s and hypercar E-Type of the 1960s

T +44 (0)1869 357126 W www.pendine.com E cars@pendine.com

Located at

MILESTONE MOTORCARS

1995 512 M

561 509 7251

For our current inventory please visit our website

www.MilestoneMotorcarsLLC.com

Awarded Platinum twice at Cavallino Classic.

One of only 75 made for the US, & 3 delivered in black.

Last of Ferrari’s Flat-12 Supercars.

Low mileage, fully documented, books, tools & luggage

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1974 Alfa Romeo Tipo 33-3/Flat 12: Rare, fantastic race record, Ickx, Stommelen, Reutemann, Monza, Nurburgring, Imola.

All orig., fresh rebuild, race ready.

WE WILL BUY AND CONSIGN ALL FERRARI AND ALL VINTAGE SPORTS RACING & GT CARS PARTIAL TRADES CONSIDERED - FINANCING AVAILABLE

1966 Porsche 910-001: First of 29 910 1951 Ferrari 212 Inter: Vignale / Drogo, racers built. Full frame-up restoration.

Mille Miglia 1952, 1954. Ground up restoHistorical, FIA and title papers. Driven by ration. Race and Rally ready.

Niki Lauda, Hans Hermann.

1968 Fiat Dino Spider: Rare. Frame-up resto; bare metal repaint. Driveline & suspension rebuild; new interior top & chrome. With photo docs. Stunning!

1974 Jaguar XKE V12 Roadster: One of a kind, uniquely built. Bare metal repaint, new interior, 5-sp, Webers, SS headers, Alloy radiator, Two tops.

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Autobiography Interview & portrait by Mark Dixon

Marc Allum Antique collector, auction house consultant, and long-time BBC TV Antiques Roadshow expert I GREW UP in a modern house that had nothing old in it, but my father had inherited tea-chests full of car spares from his own father, and I remember being fascinated by the huge old Lucas headlights and oil cans that cluttered up his garage. One of my earliest memories is of helping him to silver-paint the rusty bumpers on his Ford Pop. While my parents had no particular interest in antiques, my father would sometimes take me to see the cars at the Coventry Motor Museum, when it was part of the old Herbert Art Gallery, because it was an interest we shared; he was a quantity surveyor for the city so had a foot in the door of many places during its post-war reconstruction.

In recent years, in my role as an ambassador for the Association of Heritage Engineers, it’s been really nostalgic to go back to Coventry for MotoFest and see all the buildings around me that he was involved in.

By the time I could drive, my father had graduated to a Rover P6 V8 and my mum had seriously got into sporty cars – TR7s, X1/9s, and a Fiat 128 3P Berlinetta. As a 17-year-old who had just passed his test, I was allowed to drive them in return for looking after them and keeping them clean and polished. They always looked absolutely immaculate because I was a total perfectionist – a typical Virgoan.

Naturally, though, I really wanted my own wheels. While at college in Bournemouth, I’d made a fair bit of profit on the sale of a picture and I saw a newspaper small-ad for a one-owner 1957 Austin A35, £350.

The lady selling it was very sweet and, when I explained that I’d brought £250 but would go and get another £100 if she’d hold the car for me, she

said there was no need: she could see that I’d look after it and I could have it for £250. We stayed in touch for years afterwards.

The A35 ended up being parked at my parents’ place because, soon after finishing my degree, I went to America, where I bought my second car – a 1972-ish Oldsmobile Cutlass Coupe. Having never experienced anything like it in my life, I drove this thing off the dealer’s forecourt, and when I put my foot to the floor – oh my God! Within a few days I found myself getting into some very interesting car tussles, because everyone seemed to want to race me… I got to drive several other big American cars over there, which instilled a life-long love of them.

Coming back to England, I needed a sensible car and I persuaded my mum to sell me her Fiat 3P, which I thought was an amazingly stylish little thing. I drove that until the front suspension collapsed due to corrosion, and then moved into my Renault Fuego period – I had two.

I’ve always liked cars that are stylistically interesting, and later I had two Citroën BXs, which to me had a very Captain Scarlet vibe.

By then I’d met my wife Lisa and set up as a self-employed antiques dealer. We had an Audi 100 Avant as practical transport, then another, and then a 1990s Mercedes estate that I never really liked. But by that time we had a bit of spare money and I started to buy wacky cars: one day I went out to Sainsbury’s and came home with a 1960 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. I think that was the car I’ve loved the most out of all of them; driving around London in it was bonkers, really.

Even wackier was the 1953 Bedford army truck that I bought about the same time. It was just humongous, an absolute monster, with an observer’s hatch in the cab roof. Being army surplus, it had covered 4000 miles from new and was a thousand quid, which I thought made it a no-brainer. Of course, if I had used my brain, I probably wouldn’t have bought it, especially since we lived in Camberwell. The neighbours were getting fed up with me, and then the council started to mark out allocated parking spaces. Since my Cadillac wouldn’t fit in any of them, I threatened to take the council to court – and they backed down and said I could have two spaces for it. I bet they wouldn’t do that today.

A move to France for nine years, where we bought and restored a 17th Century château, meant plenty of barn space and lots of interesting old cars – mostly found in fields – to fill it. I was offered a VW Karmann Ghia convertible for free, if I could get it running. That took me ten minutes and we then drove it around for quite a few years. Living in France, running art and antiques courses, flying back regularly for the BBC and lecturing work, and Lisa doing exceptionally well trading online in French linens, was a really interesting time. Eventually, though, we came back to the UK for family reasons, where I then had a heart attack and wasn’t well for a while. When I got better, I decided life was for living and started indulging in cars and guitars more.

In recent years I’ve become a bit over-obsessed with vehicles. The current fleet includes an ex-California 1974 Jensen-Healey, a 1956 Citroën Light 15 ‘Traction’, and a 1974 AMC DJ5 Jeep. This last is a real rarity, being one of two that were shipped over to Perkins in the UK to be fitted with diesel engines as an experiment. It’s a bit like a tractor to drive, but I like it. When lockdown happened and I was sitting around out of work, I was straight onto eBay and bought a Reliant Scimitar that needed a few jobs doing. The eight weeks of doing car gymnastics on it were like therapy for me, and probably saved my sanity.

What I’ve found with all the cars I’ve owned is that you don’t have to spend an absolute fortune to have fun. My latest buy is a Ford V4-powered 1970 Marcos GT in Tangerine. It cost a little over £11,000 and I bought it because my sports teacher at school had one and I thought it was amazing. Some cars leave an indelible impression on you.

Rather like the way I work in the antiques world, I often don’t know what I want until I see it. That said, I definitely would buy another Fiat 128 3P Berlinetta. Like the Marcos, it’s one of the markers in my life.

Octane (ISSN 1740-0023, USPS 024-187) is published monthly by Hothouse Publishing Ltd, UK. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named World Container INC 150-15, 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA. Periodicals postage paid at Brooklyn, NY 11256.

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1989 PORSCHE 911 CARRERA 3.2 SPORT A really special UK RHD example, completely original and only 12,800 miles from new. Finished in rare Velvet Red with optional black pinstripe interior.

1985 BMW M635 CSI A very original UK supplied example that has covered 53,000 miles from new. Full black leather interior and a great history with all invoices and books. In super order.

1972 LOTUS ELAN SPRINT DROP HEAD COUPE Elan perfection! A really special example restored by all the right people for ace driver and collector, Steve Soper. Extensive history and an amazing drive.

1973 CITROËN SM European supplied and surely one of the best SMs remaining. A manual example with full black leather interior. Great history, restored to the highest standards.

1986 PORSCHE 911 TURBO Completely original and lovely. 19,000 miles in the hands of five owners. We sold the car to the last owner in 2010. Full history, all books and tools.

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

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RM 65-01 Skeletonised automatic winding calibre 60-hour power reserve (± 10%) Baseplate and bridges in grade 5 titanium Split-seconds chronograph Function selector and rapid winding mechanism Variable-geometry rotor Case in grey Quartz TPT®