Octane Bookazine - 100 GREATEST SPORTSCARS 2025

100

The

G R E A T E S T

SPORTS CARS of all time

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When you think you’ve found the one, we’re here.

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Contents 8

100: Matra-Bonnet Djet The world’s first mid-engined production road car

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99 to 91 TVR, Marcos, Nissan, Morgan, Honda and more

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90: BMW 507 John Surtees talks about his favourite sports car

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89 to 81 Triumph, Venturi, Fiat, Vauxhall and Peugeot feature here

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80: Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider The art of making a sports cars beautiful

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79 to 71 Jaguar, Alfa, BMW, Subaru, Mercedes-Benz, Alpine …

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70: Ferrari 166MM How Carrozzeria Touring changed sports cars forever

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69 to 61 Here you’ll find Smart, McLaren and Invicta. Where else?

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60: Vauxhall 30-98 Britain’s first sports car dates back to 1913

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59 to 51 MG! Pegaso! Ginetta! Audi! Alfa Romeo!

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50: Chevrolet Corvette C2 Examining the cult of the Sting Ray

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49 to 41 From Bentley to Lotus via Ariel Atom and Dodge Viper

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40: Aston Martin Ulster Driving the most revered of pre-war Astons

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39 to 31 Legends include Ferrari 250GT SWB and Porsche 944

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30: Datsun 240Z Our design critic on one of Japan’s most popular exports

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29 to 21 Where Austin-Healey and Suzuki both go minimalist

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20: Alpine A110 Berlinette Driving the classic pocket rocket back to its birthplace

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19 to 11 Porsche’s Cayman just misses out on the Top 10…

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Contents 110

126

94

10: Porsche 356 Behind the wheel of the coveted 356 Carrera Speedster

102

9: Dino 246 GT The V6 that changed the course of Ferrari history

110

8: Mazda MX-5 Driving the original MX-5 motor show car in California

118

7: Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 A personal reunion with the 8C 2300 Zagato Spider

126

6: Lotus Elan Racer Dario Franchitti drives the ex-Jim Clark Elan

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5: MGB What led to a sports car more popular than most others

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4: Lotus Elise Speaking to the creators of the definitive modern Lotus

150

3: AC Cobra In Las Vegas to drive the very first of the breed

160

2: Jaguar E-type 150mph, they said. Time to verify that claim…

170

1: Porsche 911 Well, what else were you expecting?

150

170

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

Welcome

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Cover photography Alpine, Amy Shore, BMW, Jonathan Fleetwood, Matt Howell, Mazda, Paul Harmer, Sam Chick, Tim Scott

WHAT IS A SPORTS CAR? That used to be a pretty straightforward question to answer. We would simply be talking about a two-door, two-seat convertible – most likely with a four-cylinder engine – emphasising agility and nippiness rather than outright speed. Handling over power. Fun over fear.

And we were thinking along exactly those lines when we James Elliott started compiling this list – but that approach didn’t last long.

Editor-in-chief Lines have become blurred over the generations, and plenty of cars that might once upon a time have been considered GTs are unquestionably classic sports cars now. Similarly there are myriad 2+2s that are irrefutably ‘sporting’, and even a few full four-seaters that make a case for themselves. And excluding a candidate merely for having a roof just seems silly.

Of course, we opined, nothing with a V8 could possibly be a sports car in the true sense of the word, could it? No more than a front-wheel-drive car could be. Let’s just say that a lot of entrenched beliefs have been challenged in producing this magazine.

After much fevered ‘debate’ our jury agreed that if you are considering the whole history of motoring, a sports car is complicated to define – far more than a tick-list of physical characteristics. So, the final criterion for eligibility was this: ‘A car of conspicuous sporting intent (and that means speed through corners as much as down straights; joy and thrills in equal measure) that does not steadfastly fit into another class of car.’

The Vauxhall 30-98, routinely acknowledged as the first sports car, fits that description just as the fourth generation of Mazda’s million-selling MX-5 does.

For me, watching the whole process play out was fascinating. Our jurors, with more than 100 years in motoring journalism between them, started off with a list of about 30 cars that rapidly exploded to about 300 before being whittled down to the Top 100 you see here. Every one of the selections has been driven by at least two members of the jury, and has therefore been judged on experience, not reputation.

Do we expect you to agree with every selection and omission? Of course not, but we hope that along the way you will find plenty to fire your imagination and kindle your passion for sports cars. Let the countdown begin.

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100 M ATR A-BONNET DJET A car seldom seen in the UK (or anywhere else, for that matter), but a delight to drive and an influence on every mid-engined sports car that followed it.

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LEAD FROM THE MIDDLE

In 1961, a Frenchman set out to develop the world’s first mid-engined production road car. Glen Waddington tells the story of René Bonnet and his landmark creation, the Djet Photography Gerard Brown

RUSSIAN COSMONAUT Yuri Gagarin, the first person to journey into outer space, returned from his short but history-making flight on 12 April 1961 and found that much had changed on Earth in 108 minutes.

He was now a world-famous celebrity, and at home and abroad officials were lining up to shower him with honours and gifts. On 14 April he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, and soon afterwards he received the country’s ultimate status symbol, a shiny black Volga of which he was tremendously proud.

The Volga, however, was not his only car. Gagarin’s extraterrestrial exploits also earned him a more sporting number built not in the Soviet Union but in France: a Matra-Bonnet Djet V, finished in Gris Platine Irisé, or iridescent platinum grey.

The Djet, the very first mid-engined production road car, was an appropriately cutting-edge machine to give to the world’s first space traveller, and Gagarin would probably have been interested to meet the man who conceived it – but by the time of Gagarin’s visit to France in 1965, engineer René Bonnet was no longer involved in the production of the car that bore his name…

THE YELLOW COUPÉ you see here is a 1966 Matra-Bonnet Djet 5S Luxe, an evolution of the Djet design originated at Société René Bonnet Automobiles in 1962. The glassfibre body was provided from the outset

by Matra, a specialist in composite construction among many other things, and it was with the aim of promoting the company’s aerospace arm that Matra gifted Gagarin a Djet.

The opportunity for the stunt presented itself when Gagarin’s tour of France took him to the Renault plant in Flins, where the Djet’s Renault 8 Gordini engine was manufactured. Gagarin’s car, chassis MB8 10146, returned home with him, but beyond a few PR photos taken in front of various Moscow landmarks, little has been seen of it since.

Of course, not so much has been seen of the Djet in general. Over a period of five years, just 1693 examples of the car in all its forms were built. Yet its impact is beyond doubt. It pipped the De Tomaso Vallelunga (a mere 59 built) to be the first mid-engined production road car, and it showed the world that engineering solutions from the world of motorsport could be adapted for everyday purposes.

Then came De Tomaso’s Mangusta, the Lamborghini Miura, the Ferrari Dino and more. And while mid-engined designs quickly became the norm in the stratosphere of the sports car market, there’s something pleasingly Liberté, égalité, fraternité about a Frenchman bringing the first such design to market for a down-to-Earth price; the Djet cost twice as much as a Renault family car, but only half as much as a Jaguar E-type.

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#100 Matra-Bonnet Djet

Clockwise from top left Air extraction and venting in the tailgate aperture features distinctive Djet logo; skinny stature suits country roads; diminutive Gordini engine punches well above its weight; front bootlid tilts sideways, tailgate can be propped open for ventilation; interior is simple and snug, yet charming.

Our hero was the aforementioned René Bonnet, born in Vaumas in central France in 1904. His father, a carpenter, taught him how to work with his hands, but at the age of 20 he decided to join the French Navy.

It was not a happy career move: Bonnet suffered a bad back injury and contracted tuberculosis and was forced to spend time in a sanatorium, where he learned to make shawls.

His new trade sustained him, just about, until his sister found herself widowed and in need of help to run the family garage business. Bonnet stepped in and turned out to be a good salesman, and in 1932 the garage took over a small carrosserie called La Maison Deutsch. The founder’s son, Charles Deutsch, worked with Bonnet and from 1946 the two built their own Deutsch-Bonnet cars, using Citroën and Panhard mechanicals.

They made around 2000 before parting company in 1961, citing differences in design philosophy. Deutsch chose to continue developing the sort of small-capacity front-engined racing cars that had brought Deutsch-Bonnet three class wins at Le Mans and four in the Mille Miglia. Bonnet set up Société René Bonnet Automobiles in Romorantin, about 90 miles south-east of Le Mans, with the goal of producing an agile, mid-engined road car based on Renault mechanicals. Thus was born the René Bonnet Djet.

The rear-engined Renault R8 saloon provided Bonnet with an engine, steering, front suspension, front brakes, 15in wheels, pedals and heating.

Some switchgear for the Djet came from the R10, and the car’s transaxle gearbox was sourced from the front-wheel-drive Renault Estafette van.

The innovative rear suspension, featuring unusually short twinned dampers and coil springs, was inspired by the recently launched Jaguar E-type and designed not to intrude into the luggage compartment aft of the engine. All suspension geometry was adjustable, so every Djet could be optimised for track use.

Bonnet issued an ambitious press release: ‘The program of our new firm is vast. It consists of making French colours shine in competition and offering amateurs a range of safe and fast models, at particularly

competitive prices, benefitting directly and very quickly from the experience of racing, but easy to maintain since they are built from very large series elements.’ In other words, competition-bred cars with inexpensive proprietary mechanical parts.

To develop the Djet, Bonnet worked with chief engineer Jacques Hubert, who shaped a polyester resin and glassfibre hull that would be provided by Générale d’Application Plastique (GAP), a subsidiary of Matra that also happened to be based in Romorantin. Its drag factor was purported to be just 0.25, and it employed the deeply curved windscreen of the rare-groove Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Speciale.

An early prototype was tested in the 1962 Nürburgring 1000km and at Le Mans, but the public launch was delayed until the Paris Auto Salon show in the October of ’62. The reason? Bonnet’s son Claude cited the high cost of embedding a tubular chassis within the plastic bodywork, and noted that the design limited the extent to which the suspension could be adjusted. And so the design was revised around a Lotus-style backbone, with the R8 donating its front crossmember.

A certificate of conformity was granted on 5 June 1963, and just ten days later a modified Djet lined up at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Refined in a wind tunnel and boasting a drag coefficient of 0.22, the ‘Aérodjet’ finished 11th overall and 1st in its class, taking the Index of Thermal Efficiency prize for the highest score based on weight, fuel usage and average speed. Production of the world’s first mid-engined road car then began in July.

Engines came from Renault, too: the company’s 1108cc four-cylinder was tuned by Bonnet, with power raised from the standard 48bhp to around 70bhp via tweaked cams, a lighter flywheel and a carburettor upgrade. Further developments would come later – but sadly Bonnet soon found himself overstretched financially. Between 1962 and 1964, only 198 Djets were built, and Société René Bonnet Automobiles became a subsidiary of Matra. After ceding control of his company, Bonnet himself left the car industry, never to return.

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1966 Matra-Bonnet Djet 5S Luxe Engine Mid-mounted 1108cc OHV four-cylinder, twin Solex C40PHH carburettors Power 94bhp @ 6000rpm Torque 61.5lb ft @ 4000-6000rpm Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front: double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers.

Rear: paired parallel upper and lower arms, twin coil-over-dampers Brakes Discs Weight 660kg Top speed 121mph

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#100 Matra-Bonnet Djet

‘The Gordini engine revs with a fizz and has no fear of the upper reaches of the rev-counter’

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Left and above The Djet was one of the most innovative cars of its era, and its proportions give away its mid-engined layout; René Bonnet borrowed many parts for his car from Renault vehicles, but the sophisticated rear suspension was designed from scratch.

Claude, however, stayed on after the takeover in September 1964, and he revised the Djet alongside Philippe Guédon, who would later create such landmark vehicles as the Renault Espace (the pioneering MPV), the Renault Avantime (arguably the first crossover) and the Matra Rancho (the first soft-roader) as well as the mid-engined Matra 530 and Bagheera that followed the Djet.

Launched at the 1964 Paris Salon, the Matra-Bonnet Djet V and VS (later badged 5 and 5S) featured longer, broader bodywork, improved cooling, and cosmetic modifications to the bumpers and lamps. The production process had been changed, too: to save costs the cars were now built entirely in Matra’s plant rather than being assembled at Bonnet’s works. Engines this time were Gordini-tuned versions of the Renault 1108cc unit, with outputs of 70bhp and 94bhp.

The updated car was a hit with the press. ‘Have you ever driven a Formula 3 car on normal roads? This is exactly what it feels like to drive a Djet 5,’ gushed Robert Hunter in the 21 January 1966 issue of Autosport.

‘It is all there, the roar of the engine, the superb roadholding, the excellent brakes, and the stiff suspension. The only thing you miss is the wind noise. From this you may guess that the Matra-Bonnet Djet is a very special car, and special it is.’

JEREMY WILSON, owner of our feature car – believed to be one of only six Djets in the UK – agrees with that assessement. ‘I had sold an Alfa Romeo 2600 and was casting around for something rare and special,’ he says. ‘I also have a Maserati Khamsin and an Innocenti C, and I like to cover about 2000 miles per year in each. I have already done about 1600 in the Matra, including a trip to France last summer. It was reliable and great fun. The temperature rose to 39ºC on the way home and we drove with the boot open on its short props to allow a flow-through of air.’

Jeremy’s car was registered in France in late 1966, restored in the 1990s and bought by its previous owners in France in 2003. They imported it into the UK in 2005.

‘In the intervening years they used it regularly, and it was displayed in the Cartier Style et Luxe concours at Goodwood in 2005,’ says Jeremy.

‘It seems also to have been raced at Goodwood in 2006 and 2009.

It’s certainly nippy, and wonderfully balanced – although, with my history of front-engined cars, I am still getting used to how to drive it properly and quickly.

‘The chassis was powder-coated when the car was restored and does not have any rust. The bodywork is glassfibre so, again, no rust, though it has the odd signs of age both inside and outside, which is entirely

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#100 Matra-Bonnet Djet

reasonable given that the car is pushing 60 years old. I am now updating cooling, fuel, braking and clutch hoses as necessary to make sure that it stays reliable.’

Up close and personal, the Djet seems diminutive; even the revised Matra version measures only 59in across, though thanks to its tapering nose the car is perhaps longer than it first seems, measuring 166in overall.

For comparison, it’s fully 4.5in narrower than a contemporary Porsche 911 yet 2in longer stem-to-stern. It certainly feels close-coupled inside, though once you’re in there’s decent legroom, and Jeremy (a little taller than me) fits fine, too.

This is the Luxe version, but don’t get carried away: a veneered dash panel, fake knock-off caps and spinners for the domed disc wheels, and that’s about it. Plenty of gauges though, and even a bullseye air-vent in each corner, though they’re fighting a losing battle on this sunny day without propping the tailgate open.

Starting the engine elicits a very familiar-sounding gurgle from behind – think quick Renualt R8, even Alpine. The Gordini four revs with a fizz and has no fear of the upper reaches of the rev-counter. It’s light on torque, of course, but with only 660kg to shove around, it feels perky enough. You need to get used to the gearshift, which likely suffers a bit as a result of the lengthy fore-to-aft linkage, but it’s accurate enough if you’re

assertive and time things well, clacking around the gate with a lightweight feel and only the occasional graunch.

So far, nothing unexpected, and the same goes for the way it feels on the road: agile, handy, entertaining, well-bred. The steering is taut, not too heavy, not over-sharp on turn-in, though that’s more to do with weight distribution than gearing. There’s no nervousness but there is plenty of undiluted feedback.

A series of S-bends soon shows the Djet in its best light, as it flows without the need to rein in momentum, allowing you to make the most of what power it has and feeling extremely neutral throughout. Despite Autosport’s report of stiff suspension, with the benefit of six decades’ hindsight it feels extremely forgiving. Sure, it moves about over the worst vagaries of our broken British B-roads, but you rarely have to endure harshness over the bumps, which often sound worse than they feel.

It comes across as the French equivalent of a Lotus, displaying a similar combination of talents and intelligent engineering solutions, and offering civilians a little of the racing-car experience. Exactly what Gagarin thought of it remains unreported. He might, I think to myself as I steer the car through another corner, have been a hard man to impress having experienced the thrill of orbiting the Earth – but I suspect that he sat behind the wheel of his Djet grinning just as broadly as I am now.

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#99 to #91

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2005 Engine 2384cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 177bhp Torque 166lb ft Top speed 123mph 0-60mph 7.2sec

96

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2001 Engine 4398cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 286bhp Torque 317lb ft Top speed 160mph 0-60mph 4.8sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (WITH 1.6 VTEC ENGINE) Introduced 1988 Engine 1595cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 158bhp Torque 111lb ft Top speed 132mph 0-60mph 8.0sec

Bob Lutz’s extraordinary career in the car industry had taken him back to GM by 2001, when he organised a ‘sketch-off ’ among the company’s designers. They were asked for ideas for a ‘simple, pure, and beautiful’ Pontiac, and the Solstice won out.

A sort of American MX-5, it was shown as a concept in 2002 but production didn’t start until 2005. It wasn’t as lightweight as the Mazda, nor was it initially endowed with all that much power (a turbocharged version came later), but it was nevertheless a lot of fun to drive, and offered show-car looks, too, for relatively little money.

MORGAN AERO 8 The first all-new Morgan in a generation, the Aero 8 was defined not by its 4.4-litre BMW V8 engine, nor by its incredibly stiff and light aluminium chassis. No, what really made an impression was the car’s characterful face, a pair of headlights borrowed from the VW Beetle giving it a cross-eyed appearance!

A switch to Mini lights in 2007 improved the car’s looks, but it would have found an audience either way, for it was truly great to drive. From 2008 Morgan also built a run of 100 AeroMax coupés, with astonishing fastback bodywork penned by 21-year-old Morgan employee Matt Humphries.

HONDA CRX (1988) One of the important lessons learned from the early CRX was that cars destined for Europe need a lot more rust protection than those sold in Japan. Barely any Series 1 CRXs survive in these parts today, most of them having lost their battle with rust long ago.

Honda took this on board when developing the second incarnation of the CRX, and the new car, offered with a line-up of usefully powerful engines, became a big hit in Europe.

The 1.6-litre VTEC unit was a real firecracker that, like most Honda engines, delivered all of its power near to its rev-limit – 7600rpm in this case.

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NISSAN

PONTIAC SOLSTICE

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (WITH SR20DET ENGINE) Introduced 1988 Engine 1998cc four-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 205bhp Torque 202lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-60mph 5.5sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S ( W I T H V O LV O B 2 0 E N G I N E ) Introduced 1964 Engine 1778cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 114bhp Torque 110lb ft Top speed 115mph 0-60mph 9.1sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1991 Engine 2975cc V6, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 250bhp Torque 258lb ft Top speed 160mph 0-60mph 5.4sec

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NISSAN SILVIA S13

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It wouldn’t get a second glance from many folk, but the S13 is well-known among fans of Japanese cars, and is worshipped by some.

When it arrived in 1988 it was acclaimed as Car of the Year in its homeland, the judges appreciating its combination of practicality and sporting personality. Enough examples were sold there that it ought not to be difficult to find an original car in decent shape, but the S13 became a favourite of drifters, and so many cars have been modified almost beyond recognition. Most prized are those with the 2.0-litre turbocharged SR20DET engine and the five-speed manual gearbox.

The 1800 GT was aimed at moving Marcos into the MGB market. Available in kit form, it had a lightweight, strong plywood chassis that was glued together from 386 separate pieces. Power came from a Volvo engine, and thanks to an advanced suspension layout the car handled very well.

Sales were slow, however, and in a bid to widen the car’s appeal, Marcos eventually did away with the things that made it a bit special, ditching the expensive Volvo engine in favour of Ford units, and abandoning the sophisticated semi-trailing arm/de Dion rear suspension for a simpler live axle.

ALPINE A610 The GTA’s successor reverted to traditional Alpine naming conventions, though it didn’t do much good for sales; no more than a few dozen A610s were sold in the UK each year despite positive reviews.

A pity, that; the A610 really was a fine driver’s car, with bags of character and ability.

Differences between the new car and the GTA included pop-up headlamps, a stiffer chassis and revised body panels, while the size of the engine increased from 2.5 to 3.0 litres, the change resulting in a gain of 50bhp. The A610 was sadly the last car badged as an Alpine for many years, but it wasn’t a bad way to go out.

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MARCOS 1800 GT

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2005 Engine 3996cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 406bhp Torque 349lb ft Top speed 185mph 0-60mph 3.7sec

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1934 Engine 1726cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 56bhp Top speed 90mph

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1995 Engine 1747cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, front-wheel drive Power 130bhp Torque 121lb ft Top speed 120mph 0-60mph 7.9sec

TVR SAGARIS Conceived as the basis for an endurance racer (the serrations in the front wings were orginally intended to be open vents to release air pressure at high speed), the Sagaris was the last – and many believe the best – of the Blackpool TVRs. The wild bodywork was matched by savage performance from the 4.0-litre 406bhp engine, but there was an underlying feeling of thorough development and quality, too – something TVR’s cars had sometimes lacked.

Sadly the closure of the factory brought a premature end to production. Today, the most coveted of all modern TVRs.

RILEY MPH With a chassis based on that of Riley’s 1933 Tourist Trophy racer, the MPH was an early example of the ‘racing car for the road’ – and like modern cars in that vein, it was not cheap and was seldom seen.

It’s believed that perhaps 15 were made (replicas abound today), the factory offering customers the choice of a 1.4-, a 1.6- or a 1.7-litre straight six. With the largest of those installed, the car was capable of 90mph, and to haul it up massive 15in finned drum brakes were fitted. The car was beautifully styled as well as fast, with long, flowing wings and a neatly rounded tail.

F I AT BARCHETTA The fact that it was only available with the steering wheel on the left somehow added to the charm of the Barchetta, which proved to be a hoot to tool around in despite being front-wheel-drive and based on the humble Punto. The 1.7-litre four-pot with variable valve timing delivered a healthy 130bhp, and the handling was friendly.

Production suddenly stopped in 2002 when coachbuilder Maggiora, which built the car, went bankrupt, but Fiat moved production to its Mirafiori plant in Turin and updated the car for 2004, changing the front bumper and rear spoiler and tweaking the engine.

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ONE CAREFUL OWNER The late, great John Surtees acquired this beautiful BMW 507 in 1957, and he cherished it for the rest of his life Words Mark Dixon Photography Charlie Magee

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BMW 507 Launched in 1956, the 507 offered a combination of easy power and friendly handling, and it looked a million dollars. Unfortunately, surviving examples cost even more than that…

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#90 BMW 507

‘COUNT AGUSTA DID GULP A BIT WHEN HE ASKED WHAT I’D LIKE AS A GIFT AND I TOLD HIM ABOUT THE BMW 507’ 20

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‘I

t’s not a racing car – but it’s a very drivable car. In the late 1950s, whistling from here to Italy and back on the roads that existed then – with hardly any traffic, of course – I could average over 70mph door-to-door.

I’d set off in the morning from Gallarate, near Malpensa airport in Milan, and be in Bromley by the afternoon. And at over 20 to the gallon!’

John Surtees is reminiscing about his BMW 507, a car he has owned since it was brand new. He was given it, sort of, by Count Domenico Agusta after winning the 500cc motorcycle World Championship for the MV Agusta team in 1956. John racked up three more 500cc world titles in 1958-1960 and then went on to win the Formula 1 World Championship for Ferrari in 1964, and he remains the only man to have won world titles on both two wheels and four.

The BMW represents a very significant period in his life.

‘I think Count Agusta had been feeling a bit guilty after I won the championship for them because [Carlo]Ubbiali, their successful 125cc rider, was being paid more than I was,’ says John. ‘But he did gulp a little bit when he asked what I would like as a gift to show his appreciation, and I told him about the 507. So I chipped in and we did a 50/50 deal.’

John’s choice of the BMW was no whim. He had been a fan of the marque ever since he was evacuated as a child from the family home in Elmers End, Croydon, to Yorkshire during World War Two. The young John’s imagination was fired by a box of magazines that his father brought with him when they moved. ‘Towards the top was a copy of Motorcycling with a photo of George Meier, the BMW works rider, standing on the footrests of his 255 Kompressor and winning the TT. That fascinated me – so much so that many years later I tracked down and bought the actual bike I’d fallen in love with as a youngster.’

If circumstances had been different, John might have become a BMW works rider himself. ‘They asked me to ride their bike during the 1955 German Grand Prix. Alex von Falkenhausen, who looked after bike and car development at the Nürburgring, wanted me to race for them, but the

directors could only afford to run one works bike, and they already had their own rider, Walter Zeller. What was perhaps a little bit disappointing for them was that in 1956 I won the World Championship, and Zeller came second!’

Nevertheless, John remained on good terms with Alex von Falkenhausen, and when the two met at Hockenheim for the 1957 German Motorcycle Grand Prix, Alex promptly offered John a go in the new 507 in which he’d arrived. The car appealed enormously but there was a long waiting list to buy one. Alex suggested that John should have a word with BMW’s press officer, Carl Hoepner, to see if he could help.

In July 1957, John received a letter from BMW stating: ‘We have secured for delivery in the middle of August a 507 in metallic grey with removable coupé top in the same colour. We would be extremely happy to know you as a famous motorcycle champion drive our model 507, and we are sure the car will meet your most exacting requirements.’

So John travelled to Munich to collect the car and drive it to MV Agusta’s headquarters in Gallarate. But as he put some miles onto his new BMW, he realised that it didn’t have quite the ‘punch’ that he remembered from von Falkenhausen’s example. It turned out that his friend Alex’s car had been slightly modified: ‘Normal engines put out about 150bhp but that one had been taken up to 170… So I asked them to do the same to my car [by changing the Zenith 32 carburettors to 36s, upping the compression ratio, porting the heads and altering the valve timing], and also to fit a full-length undershield. I was given the option of having Rudge wheels with knock-off hubs, but because of the way the spinners projected there was some doubt about their legality on the Continent. And the last thing you wanted to do at a race meeting was chop someone’s leg off while trickling through the paddock…

‘Before I officially imported the car to the UK, I ran it on its export plates. When I did come to register it in England, they gave me a couple of choices for the registration number – and 22 was my father’s racing number. If you see any pictures of him in his sidecar outfit, it’s always 22. So it seemed quite appropriate.

From far left 3.2-litre V8, tuned at the request of John Surtees to give 20bhp more than a standard BMW 507 engine; John with his muchloved car in 2012, five years before he died at the age of 83.

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#90 BMW 507

1957 BMW 507 Engine 3168cc all-alloy V8, pushrod OHV, two Zenith 36 NDIX carburettors Power c170bhp; standard car 150bhp @ 5000rpm Torque standard car 173lb ft @ 4000rpm Transmission four-speed manual, rearwheel drive Steering pinion and sector Suspension Front: wishbones, torsion bars, telescopic dampers.

Rear: live axle located by A-frame, Panhard rod, torsion bars, telescopic dampers Brakes Discs Weight 1330kg Top Speed 120mph plus 0-60mph c11sec

‘Because I was travelling so much to and from England, I ended up doing a bit of development work for BMW. At the time they were contemplating fitting disc brakes to cars – working with, I think, ATE, who in turn were working with Dunlop – and von Falkenhausen invited me to lend a hand. So I took the 507 to Dunlop in Birmingham and they fitted it with disc brakes all-round. It’s the only 507 that had them on the rear as well as the front.

‘Oddly enough, the rear discs were originally a bit bigger than the ones on the front, because Dunlop was worried about whether the handbrake would work properly on the rears. But they were later made the same diameter.

‘Another mod I tried, to take advantage of the greater horsepower, was to install a higher rear axle ratio. It did raise the maximum speed, but the car was easier to manage with the standard ratio, especially in traffic.’

The 507 was always John’s preferred method of travelling between Italy, Germany and England. ‘From Gallarate, I’d take the Simplon Tunnel into Switerland and then through the French Jura mountains and up through France – or, if I wanted to have the car checked over in Germany, I’d come through the Brenner Pass into Austria and then drop down into Munich. Once at the Channel, I’d put the car onto Silver City Airways, hop over to Lydd and drive up to Bromley – fantastic!

‘I don’t remember ever having mechanical trouble. The worst thing that happened was that someone tried to break into the car when it was parked overnight at Gallarate. You did have to be a bit careful in very hot weather because if you got caught in a traffic jam the engine would suffer from fuel vapourisation. Then you might have to stop and let things cool down a little. But in those days you didn’t get much in the way of jams, unless there’d been an accident.

‘There were also no speed limits outside of built-up areas!

You could maintain over 100mph hour after hour because there just wasn’t the traffic. I did have one hairy moment when I was driving with my teammate John Hartley through Sweden. It was one of those up-and-down roads where the telegraph poles run alongside, and then the poles continued straight on beyond a crest, but the road turned sharp left…

I’m not sure John came with me so often after that!

‘But the 507 is a nicely balanced car and, to a degree, forgiving. It’s not like my Mercedes 300SL, which you have to drive in a different way. That has a bit more ultimate performance than the 507, but it also demands a lot more attention when you’re driving quickly. I had in fact tried out an SL before I got the 507 but while I was driving the Mercedes, with my mother’s doctor in the passenger seat, it started to rain and I ended up travelling up the road sideways. That rather frightened the doctor – and my mother when he told her about it later.

Clockwise from below John Surtees gives writer Mark Dixon the lowdown on his 507; the pretty interior, never restored but practically like new despite the fact that John regularly drove the car between home and Italy during his racing career.

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#90 BMW 507

‘IN 1963 JOHN JOINED THE FERRARI TEAM. UNSURPRISINGLY, ENZO TOOK A DIM VIEW OF HIM DRIVING A BMW’ ‘The 507 is a user-friendly car, in contrast. Neutral would be a good word to describe the handling. Depending on how you drive it, you can make it understeer a bit; you can make it oversteer. Even though it’s not a racing car, I think my experience with it is one of the reasons I was very prepared when I jumped into that Aston Martin DBR1 [in 1958, at the invitation of Reg Parnell] and had my first ever drive of a racing car.’

In 1960 John made his Formula 1 debut, driving for Lotus; for the 1961 F1 season he joined Parnell’s Yeoman Credit (latterly Bowmaker Racing) team, and in 1963 he moved to Ferrari. Unsurprisingly, Enzo took a dim view of John driving a BMW… ‘The Old Man said “Ah, macchina Tedesca – you can’t drive a German car!” So the 507 was parked up in England.

A friend of my dad would give it the occasional run, and that’s the only time it’s actually been out of my hands.’

John treated the car to a repaint (in the original silver) in 1981, but that’s the extent of the restoration work carried out in his long ownership. The interior still looks virtually new, and the car is still ‘on the button’ – as John proves when he fires it up for our driving shots.

What a wonderful, wonderful sound! It’s pure muscle car, fast-idling with a gorgeous rump-rump-rump-rump V8 beat, as liquid and dark as melted chocolate, oozing into a mellow growl as John gooses the throttle slightly. Following John and photographer Charlie in the 507, I have to work Charlie’s Saab Turbo pretty hard to keep up; the BMW was always a quick car, and John has had over half-a-century to get to know it.

The 507 is one of three classic BMWs in John’s collection, the others a 503 convertible that used to belong to AFN boss ‘Aldy’ Aldington’s wife; and a 3200CS. He also has the aforementioned 300SL Gullwing. But surely the 507 must be his favourite of all the cars he’s owned?

‘There are lots of things I’ve owned that I’ve not been able to keep, including some of my motorcycles. When I look at my house, and the restoration of it, I can think “that driveway represents a Ferrari”, “that roof is a Honda Formula 1 car”, and so on. But the 507 came along at the time of my first World Championship, and for that reason it will always be very special.’

THANKS TO BMW Group Classic (bmwgroup-classic.com).

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#89 to #81

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1963 Engine 1982cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 150bhp Torque 138lb ft Top speed 125mph 0-60mph 8.3sec

MAGIC CAR PICS

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1994 Engine 2946cc V6, twin-turbo Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 306bhp Torque 291lb ft Top speed 171mph 0-60mph 4.7sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1986 Engine 2792cc V6, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 160bhp Torque 162lb ft Top speed 128mph 0-60mph 7.6sec

D AT S U N FAIRLADY 2000 The Sports Fairlady, to give the car its export name, was proof that the fledgling Japanese motor industry was willing to follow Western design themes. The sports car closely resembled an MGB, but it was underpinned by a crude ladder-frame chassis with leaf springs at the rear. It might not sound that promising, but the Fairlady looked good and sold well in the USA – and it’s from there that most of the UK and European examples have originated.

It was launched as a 1500 in 1963, a muchimproved 1600 appeared in 1965, and the best model to have is the 2.0-litre, 150bhp five-speed version that arrived in 1967.

VENTURI ATLANTIQUE The Venturi story is an interesting if slightly sad one. Founded in France during the early 1980s, MVS offered its own mid-engined alternative to the Renault-Alpine GTA . The cars were accomplished, but ultimately failed to gain enough sales.

A new company owner in 1994 ushered in this, the Atlantique 300. Powered by a PRV V6 in either naturally aspirated or top-spec twin-turbo form, it was a beautifully built car that offered a very capable alternative to the Lotus Esprit. A far superior all-alloy ESL V6 engine came along in 1998, which saw power swell to 306bhp. Very few were built, sadly.

TVR S1-S3 The convertible S range was introduced as an entry-level traditional sports car, specifically aimed at those who thought TVRs had grown too fast, expensive and wedge-shaped.

Bearing a strong resemblance to the 1970s M Series, the S1 was pitched 30% cheaper than the 350i. Early versions used the same Ford 2.8-litre Cologne V6 as the 280i, but this was replaced from 1988 in the S2 by Ford’s new 2.9-litre Granada V6. For 1990, the S3 got a better interior and four-inch-longer doors for easier access. The ultimate version was the V8S, and there were also around 40 S4Cs – basically a V8S with the V6 engine.

88 VAUXHALL

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2000 Engine 2198cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 145bhp Torque 150lb ft Top speed 130mph 0-60mph 5.6sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1962 Engine 1147cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 67bhp Torque 67lb ft Top speed 92mph 0-60mph 15.5sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1972 Engine 1498cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 84bhp Torque 87lb ft Top speed 115mph 0-60mph 11.8sec

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TRIUMPH SPITFIRE Inspired by the success of the Frogeye Sprite, and Triumph’s firm belief that it could build something better, the Spitfire was born in 1962, after the Frogeye had gone, but in time to tackle the MG Midget head-to-head. With similar performance and the benefit of independent rear suspension, it fulfilled that task with great success. Thanks to styling by Giovanni Michelotti, who had also penned the Herald on which this was based, it was a looker, too. Overdrive became an option from October ‘63, with the MkII arriving in March 1965 and sporting a new grille, improved interior and a crucial extra 4bhp.

F I AT X1/9 There’s a lot to be said for a compact mid-engined two-seater with a targa top, and the X1/9 was something of a revelation when it was launched in Europe in 1972, and the US in ’74. Early cars had 1.3-litre engines and were considered somewhat underpowered, but in 1978 the X1/9 received an uprated 1.5-litre engine and five-speed box. Sadly, it also gained US-spec impact-absorbing bumpers.

Fiat had lost interest by 1982, as it had pulled out of the US, but Bertone took over production and continued selling non-Fiatbadged versions in reasonable numbers right through to 1990.

PEUGEOT

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2009 Engine 1598cc four-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Six-speed manual, front-wheel drive Power 266bhp Torque 243lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-60mph 5.9sec

84 CHEVROLET

The VX220 (also known as the Opel Speedster) was the result of a partnership between Lotus and General Motors. Hethel needed funding to develop the S2 Elise, and Vauxhall needed a sports car. Although fundamentally the same platform as the Elise, a 30mm longer wheelbase, more inviting interior and GM’s 2.2-litre Ecotec engine made this a car with its own – less hardcore – character. Slightly lower sills and larger doors make passenger access marginally better than the Lotus! The later 197bhp VX220 Turbo, and even more extreme VXR220, transformed it into a junior-sized, 150mph supercar-slayer.

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2020 Engine 6162cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Eight-speed dual-clutch, rear-wheel drive Power 490bhp Torque 465lb ft Top speed 184mph 0-60mph 3.5sec

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HONDA

VAU X H A L L VX220

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1991 Engine 656cc three-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 63bhp Torque 44lb ft Top speed 86mph 0-60mph 13.3sec

PEUGEOT RCZ Peugeot’s answer to the Audi TT was a pleasant surprise, coming at a time when the rest of the range lacked any inspiration whatsoever. Under the skin it was closely related to the humdrum 308 hatchback, but it’s the fantastic two-door coupé bodywork – with Zagato-style double-bubble roof – that steals the show.

For ultimate driving thrills, the 1.6-litre, 266bhp RCZ R ramped up the aggression considerably in 2014. A limited-slip diff, sticky tyres, huge Alcon brakes and heavily revised suspension signalled the return of Peugeot to the arena of dynamic excellence..

CORVETTE C8 STINGRAY There was a collective sigh of relief from enthusiasts the world over when the first verdicts on the mid-engined Corvette were published. Not only is the C8 worthy of the name, but it’s actually an incredible sports car with handling to rival the best Europeans.

The Stingray is the most basic version offered, and is powered by a 6.2-litre naturally aspirated V8 engine with 490bhp and 465lb ft – driving via an eight-speed twin-clutch gearbox. Not spicy enough? There’s a more extreme Z06 with 670bhp, the 655bhp hybrid E-Ray, as well as the upcoming ZR1 with a twin-turbo, 1068bhp V8 in the back.

HONDA BEAT Zebra-patterned seats are a peculiar thing to be remembered for, but it’s one of the reasons the Honda Beat remains so widely adored.

Designed within the confines of the tax-beating ‘kei-segment’ city car regulations in Japan, it’s a car you wear rather than sit in.

Thanks to Honda’s experience in building small-capacity engines, it’s no surprise that the Beat’s mid-mounted 656cc three-cylinder is an absolute gem, revving comfortably to 9000rpm. The low 760kg kerbweight gives the Beat an incredibly nimble and lithe chassis, while narrow 155-section tyres keep the limits low and feedback high. It’s a rewarding drive.

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ALONG CAME A Ever since it was unveiled in 1954 the Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider has been lauded for its looks – but it’s much more than a pretty face Words Andrew English Photography Charlie Magee

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SPIDER

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L A NCI A AUR ELI A B24 SPIDER Arriving in 1954, the B24 Spider benefitted from several years’ worth of improvements made to the Aurelia concept, meaning that the famous Pinin Farina bodywork is but a part of the car’s appeal.

T

he curve of the bonnet as it extends from the panoramic windscreen into the prow of the grille looks, from where I’m standing as the Aurelia emerges from its trailer, like the muzzle of a lioness.

In fact the whole car looks like something gorgeous but dangerous seen fleetingly through dense bush.

Those proportions are just heartbreaking, with a tension that would be all too easy to spoil. An inch more height or squareness in the rear wings and this lovely Lancia’s beauty would evaporate like Ayesha in the flames of the Spirit of Life in Rider Haggard’s She. Each constituent part is almost a caricature, the screen, for example, immediately calling to mind the glamorous boats built by Riva.

The car was named after a Roman road, the Via Aurelia, constructed around 241 BC and running between Rome and Pisa. Follow the etymology of the word Aurelia, though, and you end up at aureus, meaning ‘golden’ – an entirely appropriate descriptor for the Aurelia series of cars.

The first Aurelia appeared in 1950, and with its V6 engine (a first in the automotive world), its transaxle-mounted rear transmission and its inboard rear brakes it cut a swathe through the Triumphs and Austin-Healeys of the period, and even the Jaguars and ACs. The Aurelia was offered in several different body types, roughly categorised as the B10 saloon and derivatives; the shortened B20 coupé; and the B50 platform for coachbuilders.

Total production for the eight-year run of the entire Aurelia series was just 18,201 – and one estimate suggests that only 1050 of those cars survive today.

The B24 Spider was launched at the 1954 Brussels Motor Show. It was based on the shortened chassis from the B20 and featured a body designed by Pinin Farina, which also built a four-seat cabriolet version. Some 240 B24 Spiders were built, 59 of them right-hand-drive cars. Folklore has it that 50 B24 Spiders were lost in the hold of the steam ship Andrea Doria when she collided with the MS Stockholm in July 1956 and sank off the Nantucket coast en route to New York.

‘That’s bollocks,’ says Anthony Hussey, the longtime owner of one of only two B24s ever to have started the original Mille Miglia road race.

There’s not much Hussey hasn’t done with his car, including smashing it up on the tough Le Jog regularity rally, his unfortunate off necessitating a complete rebuild.

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#80 Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider

‘If the B20 GT was the giant-killer, the B24 Spider was the film star’ Hussey cites several impeccable sources to disprove the Andrea Doria canard, which is tied up with the story of Max Hoffman.

Born in Austria, Hoffman moved to New York during World War Two and built a very successful business importing European cars.

He had a hunch that the glitterati and the postwar class of wealthy youngsters would snap up exotic two-seater sports cars, and he backed his hunch with big orders for models including the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the BMW 507, the Porsche 356 Speedster, and the B24 Spider.

Research, though, shows that the 50 Aurelias he’d fronted for were loaded onto a ship to New York the year before the Andrea Doria went down.

LANCIA IS AT a low ebb these days, with only the Ypsilon supermini in production. Its cars haven’t been sold in the UK since 1995 (the Delta Integrale), and Lancia is largely known in these parts for the 1980s rust scandal, during which it was forced to buy back corrosion-stricken Beta models from owners.

Even before it became an afterthought in the Stellantis portfolio, though, Lancia was never very profitable and it was still handbuilding cars when rivals including Fiat were into massproduction. Yet Lancia, founded in 1906 by former Fiat racing drivers Vincenzo Lancia and Claudio Fogolin, was for many years one of the world’s most innovative and progressive carmakers. It led the way in the use of electrical lighting, monocoque chassis and independent suspension, and prior to World War Two it developed pioneering V4 and V8 engines with narrow angles between the cylinder banks, which shared common cylinder heads.

Vincenzo died in 1937 and his widow, Adele, and son, Gianni, were left in control at Lancia.

But economies of scale were never really achieved, and high production costs and the expense of Lancia’s motor racing activities forced the pair to sell their stake in 1955, to

members of the Pesenti family. They didn’t fare much better, and sold Lancia to Fiat for a peppercorn in October 1969.

So its last fully independent, family-owned days in the early 1950s were probably the best and worst of times for Lancia. The promising D50 Formula 1 racer took pole and fastest lap on its 1954 debut with Alberto Ascari at the wheel. And then there was the Aurelia, a hit in terms of driving dynamics and styling, even if the per-unit profits weren’t high.

After some experimentation, permission had been given in the late 1940s for engineer Francesco De Virgilio to begin work on a 60degree V6. Its lightweight block was topped by cylinder heads with hemispherical combustion chambers and valves inclined along the engine’s length, actuated by aluminium-alloy pushrods.

As first fitted to the B10 Aurelias, the engine displaced just 1754cc, and the cars had semitrailing link rear suspension and sliding-pillar front suspension. As a former editor of mine once said: ‘Morgan pioneered the sliding-pillar front suspension, and the world has singularly failed to beat a path to its door ever since.’

While the system offers a featherlight unsprung weight and good control of individual wheel travel geometry, when the car rolls the front wheels’ camber angles change in direct proportion to the amount of body roll.

For that reason, it is best to run standard narrow-gauge tyres on cars so equipped, or the hard anti-roll bar and springs required to keep the tyres flat on the ground give a crashing ride quality and odd steering behaviour.

To replace the B10, Lancia produced the B12 with a 2266cc engine, plus a B15 longwheelbase version and the B21 and the B22, the last three all fitted with a 2.0-litre engine. It was the 1951 B20 GT coupé, however, that was the driver’s car. It started as a 2.0-litre before the engine grew to 2451cc for the third series, and for the fourth series the car gained a full de Dion axle and Panhard rod at the rear.

Don’t walk away thinking the early cars were inferior, though. The first Aurelias were quick straight out of the box, and were among the finest-handling cars of their time. In the deluged 1951 Mille Miglia, Giovanni Bracco drove a works B20 GT to a sensational 2nd place overall, winning his class.

Bracco was an enormous if madcap natural talent behind the wheel, and an archetypal period Italian gent, with his brilliantined hair and tombstone teeth that usually held between them a Pall Mall cigarette. He first entered the Mille Miglia in 1938 with a Fiat 1500 Spider, finished 4th in 1950 driving a 2.0-litre Ferrari 166 MM, and in 1952 he won in a 3.0-litre Ferrari 250 Sport.

In 1951 his co-driver was Umberto Maglioli, who must have had an interesting day at the office passing lit fags to Bracco as the latter danced his little Lancia through the rain for 13 straight hours.

It was only after Florence on the way back up north that Luigi Villoresi managed to stretch away from Bracco’s Lancia in his evil-handling 4.1-litre Ferrari 340 America. When the little Aurelia finally skidded over the finish line, Bracco grabbed a bottle of wine and glugged the lot without drawing breath.

If the B20 GT was the giant-killer, the B24 Spider – based on the fourth series GT and often called the America – was the film star.

They’d taken 185mm out of the wheelbase and lowered the ride height beneath Pinin Farina’s coachwork. The car had all the fourthgeneration Aurelia chassis modifications and the 2.5-litre V6, which was producing about 118bhp on a single Weber carburettor mounted in the vee. The B24 Spider weighed 1054kg, and performance was quite modest, with a top speed in the region of 115mph and 0-60mph achievable in about 11.5 seconds.

‘It’s not what they do, it’s the way they do it,’ says Hussey. ‘The balance is perfect. On twisty roads, a faster Jaguar XK140 can’t catch you.’

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Below Low-cut, wraparound windscreen resembles that of a Riva speedboat; interior is an exercise in understated elegance.

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#80 Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider

1955 Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider Engine 2451cc V6, OHV, Weber 40 DCZ5 carburettor Power 118bhp @ 5000rpm Torque 127lb ft @ 3500rpm Transmission Four-speed manual transaxle, rear-wheel drive Steering Worm and sector Suspension Front: sliding pillars, coil springs, telescopic dampers. Rear: de Dion axle, Panhard rod, semi-elliptic leaf springs, telescopic dampers Brakes Drums, inboard at rear Weight 1054kg Top speed 115mph 0-60mph 11.5sec

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‘On twisty roads, a faster Jaguar XK140 can’t catch the Lancia’ 33

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#80 Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider

The natural balance afforded by the car’s transaxle layout is complemented by the weighting and progression of the controls – immaculate. This is a surprisingly He-Man car, with big pedals, a large-diameter steering wheel, and a massive gearlever sticking out of the right-hand side of the transmission tunnel.

Despite Italy converting formally from driving on the left to the right in 1923 (Rome converted in 1925 and Milan in 1926), righthand-drive cars continued to be popular even after World War Two, and the Aurelia’s gearchange is mechanically better-suited to a right-hand drive configuration.

The interior has a charm and simplicity that modern automobile design has left far behind.

The engine coughs into life and adopts a whirring tenor note. It’s no rev-happy beast, but it feels vivacious and the six cylinders give it a portentous presence. And the gearchange is a delight, especially in view of its tortuous route back to the transaxle.

Hussey has owned his car since 1966, when

he bought it for the princely sum of £375.

He’s raced it, rallied it, and driven all around Europe in it, and today the car is fitted with an uprated engine made by specialist Jim Stokes.

‘It’s an expensive car to run,’ Hussey admits. ‘It needs a full service every 2500 miles, but I just love driving it so much.’

Of course, servicing costs are hardly the biggest barrier to ownership: today the market analysts at Hagerty put the value of a concourscondition B24 Spider at just shy of £1m, with those in merely ‘fair’ shape still worth over half a million quid.

Beyond the price tag, though, there’s little to criticise: the B24 Spider is unusual, quite quick, rewarding to drive, and beautiful. What more could you want from a classic sports car?

‘Well,’ says Hussey, ‘I’ll warn you that the heater is an absolute fobster – looks impressive, but it’s useless!’ I reckon I could live with it.

THANKS TO the team at Hexagon Classics (hexagonclassics.com).

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#79 to #71

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2003 Engine 2979cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 231bhp Torque 221lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-60mph 5.7sec

JAROWAN POWER

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1958 Engine 1798cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 95bhp Torque 110lb ft Top speed 108mph 0-60mph 11.0sec

RENAULT

73

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1996 Engine 1998cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 147bhp Torque 129lb ft Top speed 131mph 0-60mph 6.5sec

BMW replaced its somewhat compromised retro-styled Z3 roadster with a properly modern take that somehow still managed to reference past glories. Maybe it’s the long-nose proportions, but it was thoroughly up-to-date underneath the edgy bodywork and featured a range of engines. Hotshoes will go for the Z4M (in roadster or coupé form), but there’s real mainstream value in the standard 3.0-litre straight-six – all the better to exploit the Z4’s inherent poise, and it assails your ears far more satisfactorily than the cheaper four-cylinder versions. It’s a rival to Porsche’s Boxster and begat two further generations.

TVR GRANTURA

78 SUBARU UK

BMW Z4

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2012 Engine 1998cc flat-four, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 197bhp Torque 151lb ft Top speed 140mph 0-60mph 7.4sec

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Anyone familiar only with the wedges of the 1980s or the crazy missiles of the Smolenski era will find the Grantura rather quaint – but this is where it all started.

Think of the Grantura as an expertly curated assemblage arranged in such a way as to maximise sporting performance from humble and easily accessed component sources. They all feature a blend of AustinHealey brakes, VW Beetle or Triumph suspension, and BMC axles, with engines ranging from Ford, Coventry Climax and MG – all housed within a prett y glassfibre body.

Huge fun and with a matching fan following.

R E N AU LT SPORT SPIDER Despite the relative affordability, availability and track suitability of the Lotus Elise, there’s something seriously cool about its slightly more oddball French rival: the Sport Spider.

Built at the old Alpine factory in Dieppe, the mid-engined Renault uses the same 16-valve engine as the Clio Williams. Early cars did without a windscreen, but all 96 right-handdrive UK cars had one fitted. At 930kg, it’s not actually that lightweight, but performance and handling are both impressive.

Investment-wise, it could be a good long-term bet due to limited numbers – and those dramatic looks.

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1971 Engine 1605cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 127bhp Torque 108lb ft Top speed 131mph 0-60mph 8.1sec

72

JLR

JORDAN BUTTERS

79

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2013 Engine 2995cc V6, supercharged Transmission Eight-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive Power 374bhp Torque 339lb ft Top speed 171mph 0-60mph 4.8sec

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Strange brew, here – though a tasty and satisfying one. The BRZ was born from a collaboration with Toyota that also bore the GT86, something of a legend in itself. Yet most of the bits that are important to the likes of we enthusiasts are Subaru through and through, not least the flat-four engine and the rear-drive chassis – basically a Subaru staple though with the front wheels unhooked.

It’s an absolute belter to drive, making for an interesting and more left-field alternative to the Mazda MX-5 or Audi TT. You need to really rev it to go hard, but that’s part of the fun. Find a good one and hang on to it.

ALPINE A310

77 MERCEDES-BENZ

SUB A RU BRZ

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2004 Engine 5461cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Seven-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive Power 355bhp Torque 376lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-60mph 4.9sec

74

Bringing the Alpine family into the 1970s, the A310 was developed from the rear-engined A110 GT4, but civilised to such an extent that it could be used as a day-to-day road car – far more easily than the old rally winner.

The wedge styling was certainly striking, and the glassfibre body was as light and aerodynamic as Alpine tradition demanded.

Powered by the Renault 17TS’s high-output 1605cc engine, it could easily top 125mph.

It was never officially imported into the UK, and as with the A110 all are left-hand drive.

Very scarce today and good ones change hands very rarely.

Seems only five minutes since Octane was busy driving the launch cars, celebrating Ian Callum’s beautiful styling and enjoying a proper modern sporting Jaguar that recalled something of the old E-type in supercharged six-cylinder form – and introduced something well beyond tradition in the mind-bogglingly rapid and soulful supercharged V8 R versions.

Introduced in roadster form, the F-type really came into its own as a two-door fixed-head coupé with a tailgate: practical, relatively comfortable, rapid and with thrilling handling. As a car that mixed GT and sports car to perfection, it’s already much-missed.

71 ALFA ROMEO

J A G UA R F-TYPE

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1968 Engine 5733cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 370bhp Torque 370lb ft Top speed 135mph 0-60mph 7.2sec

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2013 Engine 1742cc four-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Six-speed dual-clutch, rear-wheel drive Power 236bhp Torque 258lb ft Top speed 160mph 0-60mph 4.4sec

MERCEDES-BENZ SLK 55 Let’s face it, some things are prett y simple: a 5.5-litre V8 wedged into a pint-sized roadster is a recipe for success. While at 1.5 tonnes it isn’t exactly a flyweight (we can probably blame its complex folding hardtop), 355bhp is plenty to bring it to life. And it’s easy to raise that roof for cosiness if you want to pootle in Merc-style comfort – or listen to that V8 give its all, unencumbered by the rush of wind.

Only the slightly lazy shift of its sevenspeed auto scores dynamic demerits.

Get past that and AMG’s SLK has a superb chassis, well up for a bit of lairy oversteer.

And even 20 years on, it still looks fantastic.

CORVETTE C3 STINGRAY Based on the Mako Shark II concept, the Corvette’s late-1960s makeover is largely defined by its long, pointed nose and fat tyres – at 8in wide for 1969, they were the largest on any car at the time.

Coupés started to outsell convertibles, so the latter are now the more valuable and worth around 25% more. Engines come in a variety of small- and big-block options, with outputs ranging from 300 to 435bhp.

Emissions regulations put the squeeze on power from 1971, so earlier cars are the ones to go for if you want the grunto to match the styling and the soundtrack.

A L FA R O M E O 4C Few cars were more hotly anticipated than the Alfa 4C. Mid-engined, rear-wheel drive, a carbonfibre tub: ooh, we might not have expected that. Like a bolt from the blue, Alfa’s long awaited sports car arrived like an Italian take on the Lotus Elise, with more power and pizzazz to tempt drivers from their Boxsters.

Looks-wise, Alfa was onto a winner. First acquaintance was a memorable experience, and the taut, lightweight body made for excellent handling and performance. Some moaned about the engine note and the steering, both solved by fitting the optional Race Pack. So you know what to do.

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70 FER R A R I 166 MM BA RCHET TA Equally at home on the road and the track, critical to the development of Ferrari as a manufacturer and a racing power, and a landmark design to boot.

THE LITTLE BOAT THAT MADE GIANT WAVES When Enzo Ferrari needed help to establish a signature look for his cars, he turned to the stylists at Carrozzeria Touring, who delivered a radical design nicknamed the Barchetta, or ‘Little Boat’ Words James Elliott and Karl Ludvigsen Photography Drew Gibson Illustrations Peter Allen

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#70 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta

From left Carlo Anderloni of Carrozzeria Touring in 2002; on paper and in the metal, the earliest 166 MM cars had a grille with straight bars, not the egg-crate grille that had already been seen on some Ferraris. That feature would be added to the 166 MM in time for its amazing run of competition success in 1949.

T

he earliest Ferraris were either functional-looking racers or uncomfortable and rather uncharismatic road cars.

Enzo Ferrari had, courtesy of Gioacchino Colombo, a magnificent V12 to offer, but customers could annoyingly not be relied upon to share Enzo’s view that the engine was all that counted, and so in early 1948 Enzo and Colombo turned to styling house and coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring for help developing a range of sports cars on short and long Ferrari Type 166 chassis.

Touring was founded in Milan in 1926 by Felice Bianchi Anderloni, and in 1937 it came up with a novel method of body construction that it called Superleggera, or ‘Super-light’. Small-diameter steel tubes were artfully arranged to form a skeleton around which aluminium body panels were then wrapped. The resulting structure was light yet rigid, and well-suited to the more modern, independently-sprung chassis that were being developed by the late 1930s. ‘Weight is the enemy,’ went the company’s motto, ‘air resistance the obstacle.’

Touring’s designs were always attractive as well as forward-thinking, reflecting the good taste of Anderloni, who was in his mid-60s by the time Enzo and Colombo came calling in ’48.

‘Up to this point,’ wrote Colombo later on, ‘there had been no distinctive “Ferrari look”. We spent many hours in the late spring and early summer of 1948 trying to get exactly the right lines for the bodywork of the new Ferrari 166 MM, a design to be entered in the Mille Miglia road race of the following year.’

Anderloni’s son and right-hand man, Carlo, recalled the period well.

‘Gioacchino Colombo was closely involved, and being an artist himself he was very co-operative in seeing to it that the final design was as clean and beautiful as possible.’

For evidence of Colombo’s importance to the project, you need look no further than the bonnet of the car. An early drawing by Touring’s Federico Formenti of the 166 Inter (a grand touring model) showed an unsightly bulge in the bonnet, grudgingly added to allow room for an air cleaner above the engine’s single carburettor. To work around the three Weber carburettors fitted to the engine of the sportier 166 MM would have been even more difficult. Only with Colombo’s help could the

manifolding be revised to lower the carburettors and air cleaners to give the bonnet a smooth surface, broken only by a small air scoop.

Carlo visited the Ferrari factory frequently to keep Enzo abreast of developments. ‘Working with Enzo Ferrari was always interesting. Work alternated with talk that covered a very wide range of subjects: politics and engineering, his son Dino’s health, social and union problems, good food, the characters of racing drivers and journalists.

‘The longest discussions were obviously to do with the body of the car.

But many times – when we had to decide the wheelbase or the track that would improve the appearance of the body, for example – Ferrari would cut short the discussion by telling me: “My dear Bianchi, when you have returned to Milan and have chosen the most suitable specification with your collaborators, give me a ring.”

‘This was his way of working when he totally trusted his suppliers. [His relationship] with the men at Touring went a long way back, to when Ferrari himself was a racing driver and my father was an amateur driver for Isotta Fraschini and Peugeot.’

The design of the 166 MM was finalised on 6 July 1948, just a few weeks after Felice Bianchi Anderloni had died suddenly following a demanding drive from Rome to Milan. The car, the capstone of Anderloni Senior’s glittering career in auto design, was revealed to the press and public on 15 September 1948 at the Turin motor show, where it caused a considerable stir.

‘It was deliberately designed,’ said Carlo, ‘to resemble no other sports car. We overturned one of the strictest canons of sports car design, which was: wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, and close to the ground.’

Instead of sloping outward, the sides of the 166 MM rolled under to soft, rounded forms, and the car’s widest point was high, at the character line that joined the wheelhouses, while the lower portion of the body tapered to resemble, in Carlo’s words ‘the hull of a rowboat’.

The distinguished journalist Giovanni Canestrini wrote in La Gazzetta dello Sport that the new Ferrari was so radical as to be disconcerting. This was not an open sports car of the usual type – a spider, torpedo or skiff.

Instead, he said, it looked like a small boat, a barchetta. The name stuck.

‘The distinguished journalist Giovanni Canestrini wrote in La Gazzetta dello Sport that the new Ferrari was so radical as to be disconcerting’

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#70 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta

1949 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta by Touring Engine 1995cc V12, SOHC per bank, three Weber 32 DCF carburettors Power 140bhp @ 6600rpm Torque 117lb ft @ 5000rpm Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Worm and peg Suspension Front: double wishbones, transverse leaf spring, hydraulic dampers. Rear: live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, hydraulic dampers, anti-roll bar Brakes Drums Weight 800kg Top speed 130mph 0-60mph 10sec

TOURING HAD ESTABLISHED a design language for Ferrari and had created a car to turn heads, but the 166 MM was even more astonishing to drive than it was to look at. Thanks to its Superleggera construction it weighed just 800kg, and with Colombo’s magical V12 under the hood, the car was good for 130mph.

Competition success came quickly, and no 166 MM did more to burnish Ferrari’s reputation than the one you see here, chassis 0008M, or ‘22’. With Clemente Biondetti at the wheel it won the 1949 Mille Miglia, and two months later it scored Ferrari’s first Le Mans victory. No other chassis of any marque has won both events, and today many argue that 0008M is the most important Ferrari ever built.

Seventy-six years on, the circumstances of the car’s win in the 24 Hours of Le Mans remain almost incredible. Ahead of the event, Ferrari sold 0008M to a 36-year-old British nobleman, Lord Selsdon – actually Peter Mitchell-Thomson, a 2nd Baronet. He entered 0008M in the race and chose Luigi Chinetti to share the driving duties. Chinetti, the Ferrari agent who had arranged for Selsdon to buy 0008M, had already won at Le Mans twice, first in 1932 and again in 1934.

Selsdon’s 166 MM was pitted against cars with much larger engines and seemed to have no hope of an outright win, but in a staggering feat of endurance Chinetti drove for all but 90 minutes of the 24 hours and brought the Ferrari home in 1st place.

The official line was that Lord Selsdon was ill. The lingering suspicion was that he scared himself so much in his first session that he refused to go out again. The truth? Probably somewhere between the two. He had, for the record, raced throughout the 1930s and ’40s and had driven at Le Mans on two previous occasions, managing a fourth-place finish in 1939 in a Lagonda V12. Whatever went on in ’49, his name is on the trophy – not bad for an hour-and-a-half ’s work.

Also, don’t rule out the possibility that his brief stint was a tactical choice intended to give Ferrari the best chance of securing a Le Mans win. After all, Chinetti, an American citizen having stayed on in the US after the 1940 Indy 500, was a formidable competitor and was both financially and emotionally invested in the success of the marque: he was Ferrari’s first US distributor and the founder of the factory-supported North American Racing Team, and he was a personal friend of Enzo, too.

It no doubt gave Chinetti great pleasure to see the Le Mans trophy perched atop 0008M at the 1949 Paris Motor Show. The car still belonged to Selsdon at that point, but he sold it the next year. The car’s subsequent owners have generally not been so ready to part with it, and for almost 30 years now 0008M has resided in Nevada in the Robert M Lee Collection.

Lee was one of the world’s foremost car collectors, with two Pebble Beach wins and a host of other trophies to his name. When he died aged 88 in 2016, his wife, Anne, made sure that the 166 MM continued to appear at public events. But while the Lees have always been generous in displaying their priceless piece of motoring history at shows, we cannot recall any magazine being permitted to track test the car, so when the opportunity was presented to us, we didn’t need to be asked twice.

‘In a staggering feat of endurance, Chinetti drove for all but 90 minutes of the 24-hour race’

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#70 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta

HEAD-ON, with that spotlight aiming at you and the purposeful transverse leaf spring visibly girded under the engine, 0008M is gorgeous – petite but muscular. Plus, of course, there is that metalwork Zapata moustache tumbling either side of the egg-crate grille. This is the ‘face’ that inspired John Tojeiro, and in turn therefore the AC Ace, so it follows that here are the visual roots of the Cobra. My favourite view is from the side, though, watching the gentle wave of the wingline as it crests and dips over the door and wheels. It’s not bad from the back, either; who wouldn’t be charmed by a tapering tail with a Le Mans lamp on it?

Open the featherweight door and drop into a surprisingly comfortable bucket seat. You’re not too close to the steering wheel, nor is the wheel uncomfortably close to the dashboard, as in so many cars of the period.

There’s a reserve fuel tank in the passenger footwell, onto which the door gap sheds plenty of light – very authentic. There’s also plenty of Superleggera frame on show, and it’s surprising how thin the exposed tubes are (I’d guess 1cm, maybe 1.5), and how few of them there are.

Put in the key, push the button and wait for the V12 to settle into its staccato drumbeat. ‘Good luck with second,’ whispers James Cottingham of DK Engineering (0008M’s guardian while it is here in the UK) with a grin. The 166 MM’s five-speeder is famously tricky, its higher-gear synchros more theory than reality and the first-to-second change trumped only by that of vintage Bentleys (and the Austin Maxi) for notoriety. We opt to avoid it, initially, when first to third is so much easier.

Some journalists think the often repetitive business of driving for photography is a waste of time, but I revel in it. You learn so much about a car, how it would be in real life, its temperament. You learn that first gear is right up against the dashboard and that there is a fearsome drilled handbrake sprouting from under the dash. You learn that the low-speed steering is not too cumbersome, that there is no wobble in the dashmounted rear-view mirror. And you learn that everything is as taut as

could be, but equally it all feels so dainty and delicate that it’s hard to believe the car could last 24 hours of all-out racing.

Of course, when the photography is over and the car can be let off the leash, you learn a whole lot more. Dainty and delicate become precise and responsive, nowhere more so than the bulkhead-mounted throttle – and there’s enough space in the footwell that your feet can play without hindrance from the steering column.

Eventually, I man up and head off round the back of the circuit to try and find second out of earshot. To my surprise it is there, a stern haul on the heavy lever bringing a satisfying connection and opening up new realms of enjoyment. With each shift it gets easier, and I begin to think that this is not like other MMs. It’s still fun to double-declutch, though.

More time with the car reveals that the brakes are more of a problem than the gearbox. They are not unusual for the era, but that era was characterised by the fast-growing gap between the technology available to make a car go fast and the technology available to make it stop.

Steering is fluid and the balance is lovely, the car pitter-pattering through sharp corners and attacking sweepers with effortless poise. The driver sits so low and contributes so much to the total weight that they become the fulcrum around which the delicious handling develops.

Yet nothing tops that V12, which barks with terrier-like intensity while displaying a labrador’s eagerness to please.

This car is simply a masterpiece. If Selsdon was so ill that he couldn’t drive at Le Mans in ’49 he has my deepest sympathy, because I can now comprehend what he missed out on – but if he opted not to drive this car then he was poorer for it. You would have had to prise me out of it.

Actually, Cottingham did have to. End THANKS TO Anne Brockinton Lee, Clive Beecham, and James Cottingham of DK Engineering (dkeng.co.uk).

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#69 to #61

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1966 Engine 1987cc V6, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 160bhp Torque 127lb ft Top speed 124mph 0-60mph 8.0sec

PORSCHE AG

63

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1969 Engine 1679cc flat-four, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 80bhp Torque 97lb ft Top speed 110mph 0-60mph 14.8sec

F I AT DINO SPIDER When Enzo Ferrari wanted to go racing with his company’s 65º V6 Dino engine, he faced a problem: in order to homologate the V6, he would have to put it into production in a road car, and build 500 examples. Ferrari couldn’t take on such a task, so Enzo arranged for Fiat to build a new car using his engine.

For a car born as a box-ticking exercise, the resulting Fiat Dino was astonishingly good, benefitting not only from that Vittorio Janodesigned, all-alloy V6, but also from glamourpuss styling by Pininfarina. It remained in production, in coupé and spider forms, until 1973, with a few changes made along the way.

V W-POR SCHE 914 The cheerful 914 was a joint venture between Porsche and Volkswagen, developed as a replacement for the entry-level, four-cylinder Porsche 912.

The flat-four engine was borrowed from the VW 411, but it was mounted amidships in the new car, giving the 914 excellent balance that was complemented by all-independent suspension. The targa roof clipped neatly out of the way to the underside of the bootlid when you wanted fresh air. From 1973 the 1.7-litre engine was joined by a 2.0-litre unit, and the next year the smaller engine’s capacity was raised to 1.8 litres

M C LAREN

Launched in 2003, the Roadster was based on an extended version of the City-Coupe’s platform and powered by a enlarged version of its rear-mounted 698cc, 79bhp turbocharged three-cylinder. Tiny dimensions make it a joy to thread down the smallest of B-roads and city streets alike, although the glacial six-speed semi-automatic transmission and overly-light power-assisted steering weren’t the best. Gordon Murray famously loved his daily driver, however, as it was a true featherweight. In its most basic form – which still includes airbags, electric windows and a power roof – it tipped the scales at just 790kg.

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2015 Engine 3799cc V8, twin-turbocharged Transmission Seven-speed semi-automatic, rear-wheel drive Power 533bhp Torque 398lb ft Top speed 199mph 0-60mph 3.5sec

65 MERCEDES-BENZ AG

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2003 Engine 698cc three-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Six-speed semi-automatic, rear-wheel drive Power 79bhp Torque 81lb ft Top speed 109mph 0-60mph 10.9sec

SMART ROADSTER COUPÉ

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1903 Engine 9293cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 60bhp Top speed 68mph

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SAAB

MAGIC CAR PICS

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (S ONET T I I I ) Introduced 1967 Engine 1699cc V4, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, front-wheel drive Power 75bhp Torque 94lb ft Top speed 100mph 0-60mph 14.4sec

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When is a supercar a sports car? Is the line ever blurred? Just as editor James Elliott’s opening introduction suggests, some entrenched beliefs are there to be challenged, and there’s no doubt that the 540C is ‘a car of conspicuous sporting intent’.

It competed with both the Audi R8 V10 and the Porsche 911 Turbo, yet it was the baby of the McLaren range, making do with a ‘mere’ 533bhp and offering a top speed shy of 200mph. Just. But what’s important is that the 540C proved what McLaren could do when its cars were pared back and made a bit less powerful. And more sporting as a result.

MERCEDES SIMPLEX 60HP

67 SAM CHICK

McL A R EN 540C

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1988 Engine 2494cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 170bhp Torque 164lb ft Top speed 136mph 0-60mph 9.0sec

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Soon you’ll turn over to page 48, where you’ll find the Vauxhall 30-98. It’s widely described as Britain’s first sports car. And it dates from 1913. What you’re looking at here was already distinctly secondhand by then.

The Mercedes 35HP that the 60HP replaced already had a reputation as the world’s fastest production car – though that had largely been intended for racing. The 60HP was Mercedes’ range-topper, available in a variety of coachwork styles from roadster to limousine. Its low, pressed steel chassis made for unusually agile handling. And, well, it had a 9.2-litre engine…

The Sonett II was added to Saab’s line-up at the urging of the marque’s North American dealers, who wanted a piece of the pie that was being greedily consumed by MG and Triumph at the time. Designed by Björn Karlström, the car was powered initially by the Saab 96’s two-stroke, but then received Ford’s more potent 1.5-litre V4.

The Sonett II made way for the revised Sonett III in 1970: this kept the same centre section and delivered near-identical performance in spite of a new 1.7-litre V4, since it was heavier than the Sonnet II as well as more powerful.

61 JONNY FLEETWOOD

SAAB SONETT II/III

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1966 Engine 1438cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 102bhp Torque 110lb ft Top speed 109mph 0-60mph 10.9sec

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1930 Engine 4469cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 110bhp Torque 173lb ft Top speed 93mph 0-60mph 14.8sec

BMW Z1 The Z1 was initially displayed as a concept at the 1987 Frankfurt show, but buyers were soon clamouring to buy one. Most notable for its doors, which drop into the sills, it bristled with advanced design features and weightsaving touches, though with the same engine as the 325i it was no ball of fire.

Possibly as a result, interest soon waned and BMW halted production with just 8000 built and only 50 official UK imports, though more have been shipped in. The plastic body can crack, so check carefully – panels are hard to find. Door mechanisms can fail, too. So it’s not without issues, but what a spectacle!

F I AT 124 SPIDER Pininfarina was responsible for the design of the 124 Spider, and from late 1981 it was responsible for manufacturing the car, too, taking over the task from Fiat. The styling was more specifically the work of Tom Tjaarda, who borrowed liberally and to most pleasing effect from the Ferraris of the 1960s.

Around 85% of all 124 Spiders built were sold in the USA, but over 1500 have since been imported into the UK. The first and last of the breed are most popular: the pre-1975 cars have lower suspension and prettier, slimline bumpers; those made from 1979 have 2.0-litre Bosch fuel-injection engines.

I N V I C TA S-TYPE LOW CHASSIS Noel Macklin’s Invicta company was bankrolled by Oliver Lyle, of Tate & Lyle sugar fame, and the cars cooked up in Macklin’s workshop in Surrey were appropriately sweet.

Best of them all was the S-type Low Chassis, which in terms of sheer quality was rivalled only by the Alfa Romeo 8C. With its Reid Railton-designed, underslung chassis and its 4.5-litre Meadows engine, it was a magnificent fast road car, and when dressed for the occasion it was also a fine racer: a stripped S-type could lap Brooklands at 109mph, and Donald Healey drove an S-type to victory in the 1931 Monte Carlo Rally.

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ORIGIN STORY The beginnings of the British sports car manufacturing industry can be found here, in the mighty Vauxhall 30-98 Words Nigel Boothman Photography Richard Faulkes

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VA U X H A L L 3 0 - 9 8 A masterpiece of British engineering that was streets ahead of the competition when it was launched just before World War One – and formidably quick even compared with cars that came much later.

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#60 Vauxhall 30-98

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B

last. We’re off-route and, we quickly realise, much further away from our next filling-up stop than planned. Sure enough, as we motor back in the right direction, the car stops in as remote a spot as it can manage.

Not for nothing did the Vauxhall 30-98 earn the nickname ‘Thirsty-98’.

The fuel gauge is on the tank itself, and short of leaning recklessly out of the back you can’t read it while travelling – and it’s not accurate, anyway. We kick our heels while our navigator runs away down the lane. Just when we’ve given up on seeing him again, he reappears on the back of a quad bike driven by a burly, blood-spattered sheep farmer.

The farmer introduces himself as Jim and tips a generous measure of petrol into the Vauxhall from his plastic bowser and takes a tenner from us – which he then returns just as we’re about to set off.

Do nice things happen to you if you have a 30-98? It seems a very shaky theory, but wherever we and our fellow crews pitch up on this tour, organised to mark the 100th anniversary of the model, we get a notably warm reception.

Perhaps the folks here in Lancashire know what so many people elsewhere don’t: the 30-98 isn’t any old car. It’s the original British performance car, the first to offer not just an incremental increase in speed compared with those that had come before, but a step up to a different league.

As writer John Stanford put it in his 1966 profile of the 30-98: ‘One only has to drive the average large Crossley or Sunbeam of the period […] to realise at once the lead that Vauxhall Motors had achieved and why owners gave pride of place to no-one else on the road.’

The first incarnation of the model was referred to as the E-type. It was a development of Vauxhall’s famous Prince Henry cars, which with their fairly lightweight construction and gutsy 3.0-litre (later 4.0-litre) sidevalve engines had enjoyed success in hillclimbing. In 1913, a car dealer and

keen competitor called Joseph Higginson went to Vauxhall with a request for a more potent Prince Henry, and soon afterwards he returned to collect a 4.5-litre car.

It was a startling success. In the summer of 1913, Higginson and his new E-type were quickest up the hill at Shelsley Walsh, at Aston Clinton, and at Waddington Pike, the Lancashire hill that is the focus of today’s centenary tour. From 1914 the model was available to buy at £900 – making it £320 more expensive than the Prince Henry, and affordable to only a few.

Just a dozen or so examples were completed before the outbreak of World War One, but production resumed in 1919 and the E-type soon cemented its place as the fastest catalogued model from any British manufacturer. Vauxhall always offered a 100mph guarantee if the owner cared to see his chassis fitted with a racing body and exercised at Brooklands, and over 80mph was possible even with the conventional Wensum or Velox touring bodies.

A glance at the car’s specs reveals little; the design, by engineer Laurence Pomeroy, is pretty conventional for the period. The chassis is made in rather a light gauge, permitted by the use of a rolled-steel subframe carrying the engine and gearbox. The subframe is attached to the chassis at three points, keeping vibration down and allowing some flexibility in the side rails. Springing is by four semi-elliptics, retardation via a foot-operated transmission brake plus small, hand-operated drums on the rear wheels.

The E-type engine is a four-cylinder sidevalve unit with a fixed cylinder head and valve caps you can remove to lift and re-seat the valves. Again, it’s standard Edwardian fare but here is a clue to the E-type’s success: the valves are very large and the lift is generous. The valve timing is fairly radical for the era, which gives not only impressive power but also a distinctive, gurgling exhaust note. The crankshaft has five main bearings and an excellent oil supply, allowing it to rev higher than was normal.

Opposite and below Topped up with petrol again, the ‘Thirsty-98’ stretches its legs; a central throttle pedal, a footbrake that’s outof-bounds, and several competing tasks for your right hand mean there’s plenty to think about when driving.

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#60 Vauxhall 30-98

‘Lift the back seats out and remove the lamps and a Fastest Time of the Day was yours for the taking’ It all adds up to around 90bhp at 3000rpm, which may not sound much today, but that figure dwarfs the outputs of the aforementioned Crossleys and Sunbeams and compares well to the 70bhp offered by the twin-cam, 16-valve Bentley 3 Litre of 1921, or the 80bhp from the 7.4-litre Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost.

The 30-98’s success was down to a formula that would become familiar: a powerful, uncomplicated engine in a similarly simple, lightweight chassis. The recipe was refined with the arrival of the overhead-valve engine in 1923 as the OE-type debuted. Port area and valve lift increased further, and maximum revs rose to 3500rpm with 1925’s balanced crankshaft, allowing some 120bhp. To counteract the increased power, front brakes were offered from late-1923.

1926 Vauxhall 30-98 Velox Engine 4224cc four-cylinder, OHV, Zenith 48RA updraught carburettor Power 120bhp @ 3400rpm Transmission Fourspeed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Worm and wheel Suspension Front: beam axle, semi-elliptic leafsprings, lever-arm friction dampers. Rear: live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, lever-arm friction dampers, torque stay from differential case to gearbox crossmember Brakes Rear drums, cable-operated. Contracting-band footbrake on propshaft Weight 1473kg Top speed c85mph

THE 30-98 WE’RE enjoying today is Vauxhall Motors’ own 1926 Velox, so it’s one of the last and most developed of the breed. Should be pretty straightforward to drive, then, surely? Well… let’s just say that those who have their first go in a 30-98 that has been well-warmed are at a distinct advantage. When cold, the gearbox is an unforgiving thing, clean shifts requiring confidence, experience and precision.

I bring none of these to the table, so it’s just as well I’m allowed a little orientation before we set off on the tour.

The air is thick with the fumes of ancient engines as each of the 30-odd cars departs in order of seniority. This leaves many hanging about for a considerable time, yet they all chuff away quite happily; 30-98s don’t overheat, it seems.

When we set off I find the heat-soak has transformed the gearchange, which now slides from cog to cog with only an occasional grumble.

Double-declutching is mandatory, of course, and the gearchange pattern is unusual: first is upper right, second is lower right and then third and fourth are on the left.

Glancing at the gate helps to remind you that the pull from third to fourth is not quite a straight path.

The key feature of the 30-98 mindset is your attitude to braking. The footbrake (right-side pedal; the accelerator is central) is a no-go area except in the case of a last-ditch panic stop. It works a contracting band on the transmission and its stopping power is feeble, yet enough to introduce unwanted strain to this aged driveline. The pedal also operates the front brakes, but I’m encouraged by the car’s keepers to rely solely on the handbrake – that near-vertical lever outside the cabin.

It’s powerful, but it’s still a handbrake. Use it for emergency stops at anything more than 20mph or so, and the emergency remains. Better to choose something soft to hit, or just jump out. Working the handbrake is just one of four tasks for your right arm: you also need it for changing gear, for signalling a change of direction, and for wrestling the steering wheel.

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The steering at low speeds is indeed weighty, so your left arm needs assistance, especially in slow turns of the type that also require a downchange, a signal and an application of the handbrake. If you’re thinking that the 30-98 sounds like a handful (or several hands-full), you’re right. But it’s also tremendous fun.

The engine is the main reason for this – such a fruity, sporting noise is accompanied by prodigious grunt and a very un-Edwardian willingness to rev, more pronounced in this Vintage-era, overhead-valve example. With only two people aboard it’s even better, romping up hills and making short work of straights. The gearing is exceptionally high for a car of this age, but without it you could never make full use of the power.

The other joy you get from a day with a 30-98 is the sheer satisfaction of overcoming the challenge of driving it. Each well-timed downchange is a little victory, each charge up the rev range as you approach a steep hill builds momentum before gravity can take it away. But any sense of having mastered the car evaporates when you are reminded of what took place here, at Waddington Pike, in 1913.

Joseph Higginson took the first 30-98 up the loose, gravelled surface of this little hill road in just 42.2 seconds, ‘in a series of alarming slides’.

Yes, he had a rolling start, and a 1913 picture of the car at another hillclimb appears to show it with studded tyres, but the sportiest and most determined 30-98 pilots in our

group are struggling to crack 50 seconds on today’s smooth tarmac from a standing start. Bear in mind, too, that many of them are driving the newer, overhead-valve cars with an extra 20-25bhp over Higginson’s E-type, and that the cars are filled with high-octane modern petrol. Fast? That first 30-98 must have seemed like a rocket.

AS A FLAGSHIP for Vauxhall, the 30-98 was undeniably an asset, but it wasn’t a money-spinner: between 1913 and 1927, only 587 examples were built. Far greater turnover was generated by the lesser 14/40 and OD 23/60 models, but even sales of these were not sufficient to keep Vauxhall in rude financial health, and General Motors acquired the company in 1925.

Since then the reputation of the 30-98 has only grown.

Something like 200 of the 587 cars made are still around, and many of them are in regular use, whether for weekend outings or longer tours, or in VSCC competition. (The 3098 is one of few Vintage cars versatile and powerful enough to compete in similar trim in circuit racing, hillclimbing and trials events.)

The car’s road-and-track capabilities and game-changing performance make it, in these eyes, the strongest candiate for the title of Britain’s first sports car, even if it was most often built as a tourer with proper back seats. All you had to do was lift those out and remove the lamps, and a Fastest Time of the Day was yours for the taking.

Opposite The 30-98’s original engine was the work of Laurence Pomeroy. He left Vauxhall in 1919 and Charles Evelyn King then brought the four-cylinder unit up to date with an overhead-valve conversion and a new, detachable cylinder head.

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#59 to #51

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1961 Engine 1599cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 111bhp Torque 138lb ft Top speed 124mph 0-60mph 7.0sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2003 Engine 3498cc V6, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 295bhp Torque 260lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-60mph 5.6sec

MARK DIXON

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2011 Engine 1982cc V-twin, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 115bhp Torque 140lb ft Top speed 125mph 0-60mph 4.5sec

Initially launched as the G3 for racing, the G4 was more complicated to build simply because it was intended for the road – and therefore needed a few, shall we say, refinements. Such as a roof. Naturally, being lightweight and nimble, it soon became a success on the track too, and lived on through several iterations of Ford (and Lotus twincam) engines, its handling assured by an ingenious arrangement of independent suspension around an Austin-sourced diff.

So good, they couldn’t kill it: while 500 were built up to 1968, it was revived as the Series IV in 1981, and again as the Dare in the 1990s.

NISSAN 350Z

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G I N E T TA G4

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1933 Engine 1087cc straight-six, supercharged Transmission Four-speed pre-selector, rear-wheel drive Power 120bhp Top speed 110mph 0-60mph 11.0sec

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Hoping to recapture some of the 240Z’s past magic, this coupé (and later convertible) sports car was an affordable rear-wheel-drive hero to many – and it marked a real return to form. Powered by a gutsy 276bhp 3.5-litre V6 from launch, it was upped to 297bhp in 2006 and increased to 309bhp with the muchimproved ‘High Response’ engine from 2007.

The Z has become a bit of a bargain in the last few years, but you need to be wary of cheap or modified cars. Prices for wellmaintained and low-mileage cars offer good value, but add up to 20% for special editions, such as the GT4 edition and later HR variants.

MORGAN 3-WHEELER Morgan went right back to basics with the 3-Wheeler, harking back to its foundation building motorcycle-engined trikes in 1902 that evolved over the next two or three decades into the revered sporting roadsters we remember so fondly.

Only this time, in many respects, the 3-Wheeler was a thoroughly modern motor car. Sure, there’s an S&S V-twin out front, pulsing and banging away, but it transmits power to that single rear wheel via a Mazda MX-5 five-speed gearbox, and the body is glassfibre yet packed with knowing visual references. Truly a visceral experience.

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1989 Engine 2959cc V6, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 207bhp Torque 181lb ft Top speed 152mph 0-60mph 7.0sec

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AUDI AG

MAGIC CAR PICS

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2009 Engine 2480cc five-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Six-speed manual, four-wheel drive Power 335bhp Torque 332lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-60mph 4.5sec

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MG K3 MAGNETTE

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In the 1930s, MG’s model range was broad and confusing: even the new K series comprised three different chassis, four different engines, three gearboxes, five body variations and all built in minute quantities! But the one we remember here is the tiny and heroic K3 Magnette, which featured a Wolseley-based 1086cc overhead-cam six-cylinder engine, supercharged to achieve up to 120bhp.

Only 33 were built in total, attracting such racing greats as Sir Tim Birkin and Whitney Straight. One even finished fourth overall at Le Mans in 1934 – fair to say it was punching well above its weight.

A L FA R O M E O SZ/RZ

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2010 Engine 6208cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Seven-speed semi-automatic, rear-wheel drive Power 563bhp Torque 479lb ft Top speed 197mph 0-60mph 3.9sec

84

First conceived as a design study in 1987, the Sprint Zagato caused such a sensation that, in 1989, Alfa Romeo launched a production version at the Geneva Motor Show.

It was based on a heavily modified version of the rear-drive 75 platform, and featured a composite body. The SZ had the performance (and sound) to back up its looks – admittedly an acquired taste, but the car is a real slice of exotica. What really made the SZ special was its ability to generate 1.1g of cornering force.

In two years 1036 were made, followed by the RZ (Roadster Zagato), produced from 1992 to 1993. Only 284 of those were made.

Many feel that this is the TT Audi should have launched from the start. A turbocharged five-cylinder engine aligned it with the legendary ur-quattros on which Audi’s modern reputation was based 30 years before, and moved the TT well beyond the ‘Golf in a dress’ reputation with which many driving enthusiasts besmirched it.

Sure, handling wasn’t quite so sharp as a Porsche Cayman’s, though the roadster (pictured) ran a Boxster close as a well-made and entertaining soft-top rival.

Whatever. Really it’s all about that warbling soundtrack. And it’s quick, too.

51 MAGIC CAR PICS

AU D I TT RS

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1966 Engine 791cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 70bhp Torque 48lb ft Top speed 97mph 0-60mph 13.6sec

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1951 Engine 2816cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 168bhp Torque 159lb ft Top speed 120mph 0-60mph 8.5sec

MERCEDES-AMG GT SLS It may have been built as recently as 2015 but this is the pinnacle of what we’ll now call old-school Mercedes-AMG: no turbos, no unnecessary electrical tech, just a massive naturally aspirated V8, rear-wheel drive, two seats and two doors – two gullwing doors at that, paying homage to the 300 SL of 1954.

Its 6.2-litre engine pumps out a memorable 563bhp and revs to a monumental 7200rpm – figures that compelled Mercedes to keep it in production for racing well after emissions regs forced a turbo rethink for its road cars.

Fun fact: the SLS is badged ‘6.3’ in honour of the capacity of AMG’s very first V8 engine.

HONDA S800 In true Honda tradition the S800’s party piece was under the bonnet. Only Honda would create a 791cc engine capable of producing 70bhp at 8000rpm, giving the car an impressive top speed of over 100mph.

This performance was not at the cost of fuel economy, which came in at 35mpg.

Available as a coupé or a roadster, the car was loved by many but, with a shade over 10,000 sales worldwide, it was not massively successful. The S800 was the last Honda to wear the S badge until the S2000 in 1999.

Even today, few cars scream at high revs in the manner of the S800: an automotive jewel.

PEGASO Z-102 You’re more likely to have travelled the Spanish costas on a Pegaso bus than to have seen a Pegaso sports car out of captivity.

Only 84 were built in total before ‘production’ ended in 1958, many bodied by the likes of Touring and Saoutchik, yet the Z-102 was an engineering tour de force.

Pegaso employed former Alfa Romeo engineering chief Wifredo Ricart, who came up with a V8 that employed twin gear-driven camshafts for each bank of cylinders. In peak supercharged trim with desmodromic valves it produced 360bhp and briefly made the Pegaso the fastest sports car of its day.

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AMERICAN BEAUTY Most iconic American car of the 1960s?

Mark Dixon makes the case for the jaw-dropping Corvette Sting Ray Photography Sam Chick

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CHE V ROLET CORV ET T E C2 ST ING R AY Arguably the best-looking American car ever. The first-year-only split-window coupe is the ultimate collectors’ Sting Ray, but the later coupe and the convertible are both prettier in our view.

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#50 Chevrolet Corvette C2 Sting Ray

T

he most iconic American car of the 1960s? The Ford Mustang has a credible claim to the title, but as I stand here in the studio where our feature car is being photographed, I’m finding it very hard to argue against the Corvette Sting Ray. The thing is a work of art, and looks for all the world as though it went straight from concept to production without once feeling the dead hands of accountants upon its bulging wings. If you were a car-mad child in 1963, when the Sting Ray was launched, it would have had a massive impact on you. You might even have been inspired to write to General Motors to ask how to become a car designer.

It certainly worked for Ed Welburn, who did just that and rose to become the head of GM design – and, significantly, the highest-ranking African-American to date in the global car industry. Ed is also a really nice guy, only too happy to

pick up the phone when Octane calls. ‘I will absolutely never forget the first time I saw a Sting Ray in person,’ he chuckles.

‘It was a red coupe and I was 12, going on 13. I had ridden my bicycle down to the Chevrolet dealership and was standing there, staring at it, when a passer-by jokingly asked me: “Would you like to take it for a drive?”’

Corvette generations are commonly referred to as C1, C2, C3 etc, right through to today’s C8. The Sting Ray was the first of the C2 series, arriving on the heels of the 195362 original, which had debuted with a pedestrian Chevy straight-six before evolving into a V8-powered rocket ship.

Ed Welburn is a C2 fan, no question.

‘When I think of the C2, I immediately think of the fender shapes, very much inspired by the Italian streamliners of the 1950s. The design is so consistent all the way round – and people often forget how great the interior is, too. The C2 had an influence on every Corvette that came after it, and on other Chevrolet models, too.’

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‘This car is a work of art.

It looks for all the world as though it went straight from concept to production’

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#50 Chevrolet Corvette C2 Sting Ray

1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray Engine 396ci (6.5-litre) V8, pushrod OHV, solid lifters, Holley four-barrel carburettor Power 425bhp (gross) @ 6400rpm Torque 415lb ft @ 4000rpm Transmission Fourspeed close-ratio manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Recirculating ball Suspension Front: double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar. Rear: transverse leaf, halfshafts acting as upper links, lateral lower links, longitudinal control arms, telescopic dampers Brakes Ventilated discs Weight 1525kg Top speed 142mph 0-60mph 5.7sec

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Today, Ed owns a 1957 Corvette and a 1969 Camaro – but has he ever owned a Sting Ray? ‘Don’t bring that up!’ he says in mock frustration. ‘I’ve always loved the C2 and am determined to get one, one day. And it would have to be a coupe. I love the shape of the roofline, with or without the split window.’

Ed joined GM in 1971, when the legendary car designer Bill Mitchell was still in charge. ‘I have a great photo of me, with a huge afro, shaking hands with him when I was a young intern.

We were so far apart, you would have thought there was a moat full of crocodiles between us! But he was my hero.’

While Bill Mitchell is credited for ‘designing’ the C2, the work was actually done by a team that he supervised. (The same sort of thing happened with the Mustang, which was shaped by a small group of designers headed by Ford Division studio boss Joe Oros.) For the C2, the sketches that were developed into the finished design were produced by a very young Peter Brock in 1959 – yes, the same Peter Brock who went on to style the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe in 1963.

The genesis of the C2 was complicated. The original Corvette, hobbled by its six-cylinder engine, was not a strong seller, and even when Chevy brought out a version with a more powerful V8 in 1955, the C1 struggled to compete with Ford’s more luxurious Thunderbird.

The inevitable result was a focus on cost-cutting from top management, which, together with a ban on manufacturersponsored racing by the Automobile Manufacturers’ Association in 1957, temporarily did for Bill Mitchell’s ambition to see a ‘hot’ Corvette go racing – but he was allowed to build a concept provided he didn’t use the Corvette name. This was codenamed XP-87 and it was the first car to use the Sting Ray name, albeit as one word – ‘Stingray’ –rather than two.

‘If the Corvette [racing] programme hadn’t been banned, Bill Mitchell wouldn’t have brought the project down to Advanced Design, where us young interns were,’ Brock explains to me.

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Clockwise from far left Big dials and swooping binnacles characterise the Corvette’s interior; the pop-up lights are electrically powered; 396ci big-block offers a claimed 425bhp.

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#50 Chevrolet Corvette C2 Sting Ray

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‘The theoretical top speed is limited in practice by a disquieting tendency for the car to become airborne’ ‘It was just fortunate timing. Mitchell had been to the Turin motor show and I think was most affected by the Alfa Disco Volante coupé – but all Italian streamliners had that same characteristic of a fairly crisp beltline with four little aerodynamic shapes over each tyre. He took photos, and when he came back he laid them out and said “This is the theme I want to work on.”

‘He turned it over to us in the studio and we sort of competed for it. As it turned out, he selected my work to continue and I became the lead on that project. Larry Shinoda and Tony Lapine eventually took over and finished it up.’

Mitchell was a keen deep-sea fisherman and the Stingray name was his idea, but XP-87 was initially a roadster. ‘We couldn’t afford to build a coupe,’ remembers Brock. So it was serendipity that the car that became the production Sting Ray coupe had a stingray-like spine dividing the roof and (for 1963 only) the rear window.

‘Zora Arkus-Duntov [the Corvette’s lead engineer] went ballistic when he saw the central spine!’ says Brock, chuckling.

‘It ended up as a pissing contest between Zora and Bill, so boss Ed Cole finally said, “OK, we’ll do it for just one year.”’

Criticism from the press and customers about visibility through the split rear screen gave GM the excuse it needed to swap to a one-piece unit for 1964, as shown in these pictures, and that was retained for the rest of C2 production through to 1967. The split-screen Sting Ray was a one-year model, therefore, and consequently it has become one of the most desirable Corvettes ever made.

THE CONCEPT-CAR looks of the C2 are complemented by stupendous performance. The car was offered with a range of V8s, and even the lowest-horsepower versions would blow most European competitors into the weeds.

Today’s owners rarely drive their classics flat-out, of course, and Corvette expert Tom Falconer suggests the base-model 327ci V8, offering a modest 250bhp, is actually the nicest to live with. ‘At normal driving speeds it has more torque than most cars of that era, and the small-block V8 has a nimbleness to its handling that the heavier big-block cannot match. That said, the lower-horsepower versions of the big-block V8 are fantastically impressive because their torque is of Tesla-like proportions.’

Our feature car, owned by industrial design consultant Tim FitzGerald, has the rare big-block 396ci (6.5-litre) V8 option, with a claimed 425bhp. That figure is gross, measured at the flywheel without accessories such as the alternator, and on open headers, so the real output is probably closer to 350bhp.

That’s enough for a 0-60mph time of 5.7sec, but the theoretical

top speed of 140mph-plus is limited in practice by a disquieting tendency for the car to become airborne.

‘C2s are flawed by about 400lb of negative downforce – in other words, lift – at 120mph,’ explains Tom. Drive one really fast and you reach the point where you wonder whether the steering wheel is actually connected to the front wheels.’

At more sensible velocities, though, the Corvette is a delight, as I found out back in 1992. That year I borrowed a 1964 327ci convertible from Tom for a magazine feature in which I drove Britain’s Route 66 – the A66 – from one side of the country to the other over a long weekend. Corny idea, but the car was a revelation. ‘It’s a real pussycat,’ I wrote. ‘The clutch and accelerator are heavy, and the gearshift has a long, clunky movement, but the steering is light and fairly accurate. You could specify high- or low-ratio steering and this car has the latter, but it’s still responsive enough to make fast driving easy.’

I did note later that ‘there’s a slight vagueness which dulls the car’s response as we hit the [dual carriageway’s] bends at a steady 70mph. On the straights, too, it’s best to keep a loose grip on the wheel and let it float a little, so the that car finds its natural course.’ No complaints about the engine, though – and Tom’s previous comments find an echo in my notes of three decades earlier: ‘The V8 has ludicrous amounts of torque. As long as you’ve got 2000rpm on the revcounter, you can simply floor the throttle in fourth and watch the nose rise.’

People are often surprised to hear that the Corvette has transverse leaf rear suspension, but it offers a number of advantages over coil springs (not least, overall height) and the engineers at GM got the best out of it: ‘Even on narrow, twisty lanes, the Corvette performs impressively […] soaking up the bumps with ease,’ I wrote. ‘The ride is comfortable, but still taut enough to make press-on driving a pleasure.’

It’s admittedly not the perfect car for an epic road trip; the cockpit is not very spacious. ‘And it has that early Lotus Elite feel inside over a prolonged distance,’ says Tom. ‘A tendency to drum, particularly if the engine has been tuned’. But every outing in a Sting Ray feels like an event – and there are few cars so exotic-looking that are as easy to own. The C2 benefits from a glassfibre body over a robust steel chassis, and the gardenvariety, small-block car is largely straightforward to work on.

The practicality of the Sting Ray, though, is beside the point.

While we’re in the studio shooting Tim FitzGerald’s car, various members of staff come and go, bringing equipment or cups of tea or helping to position lights. All are entranced by the Corvette. It’s a car that speaks to the average Kia-driver just as powerfully as it does to a petrolhead – and that is the real measure of an icon.

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#49 to #41

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (SE MODEL) Introduced 1989 Engine 1588cc four-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 165bhp Torque 148lb ft Top speed 136mph 0-60mph 6.5sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (WITH TRIUMPH TR2 ENGINE) Introduced 1950 Engine 1991cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 90bhp Torque 120lb ft Top speed 100mph 0-60mph 13.3sec

LOTUS ELAN M100 Proof positive that sports cars can indeed be front-wheel- drive, as Lotus once again led the pack in handling technology.

Almost all the cars in the first batch were turbocharged SE versions, though some 130bhp non-turbo models were sold. All used a long-lived Isuzu 1600 engine that Lotus had helped to design.

Sadly, Lotus lost money on every one of the 3855 Elans sold, so the plug was pulled after just two years. When Bugatti’s Romano Artioli bought Lotus in 1994, another 800 cars were made. Subtly improved and badged S2, these are the more sought-after M100 Elans today.

MORGAN PLUS 4 The Plus 4 came along in 1950 to give Morgan customers a more powerful and slightly larger (by 4in) car, and it remained in production for 19 years, winning a devoted following among Sunday-morning pootlers and racers alike.

The car was initially fitted with a 2.1-litre Standard Vanguard four-cylinder, but from 1954 buyers had the option of the unit from the Triumph TR2, and eventually the Plus 4 would adopt the engines of the TR3 and TR4.

The Plus 4 was resurrected twice before Morgan launched the all-new Plus Four (yes, the naming conventions are maddening!) in the spring of 2020.

PAUL HARMER

It is the supercharged variant that people often picture when the think of the Bentley 4½ Litre, but the admittedly charismatic Blower was handicapped by its thirst and by its appetite for plugs, which it ate, according to Bentley racing team manager Nobby Clarke, ‘like a donkey eats hay’.

The unblown 4½ Litre, meanwhile, was a fabulous bit of engineering, making plenty of easy power and, despite its size, handling beautifully. The short-chassis cars are among the best sporting Bentleys ever built, but original factory examples are a bit thin on the ground – just ten were made…

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1967 Engine 1988cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 148bhp Torque 130lb ft Top speed 140mph 0-60mph 8.5sec

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ROVER

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1927 Engine 4398cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 110bhp Top speed 92mph

BENTLEY 4½ LITRE

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (WITH V VC ENGINE) Introduced 1995 Engine 1796cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 143bhp Torque 128lb ft Top speed 126mph 0-60mph 7.0sec

42 JAYSON FONG

JAYSON FONG

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (ATOM 4) Introduced 2000 Engine 1996cc four-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 320bhp Torque 310lb ft Top speed 162mph 0-60mph 2.8sec

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Between its runway-model looks and that memorable cameo in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Love Twice, the 2000GT did wonders for Toyota’s image, even if a mere 337 examples of the car were built.

The car was produced in collaboration with Yamaha, who had approached Toyota – then perceived to be the most conservative of the Japanese manufacturers – after failing to get the project over the line with Nissan. The Yamaha crew was responsible for the car’s engineering, including the jewel-like twin-cam straight-six, but the E-type-inspired shape was penned by Toyota’s Satoru Nosaki.

MG F

47 GUS GREGORY

T O Y O TA 2000GT

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1967 Engine 1995cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 227bhp Torque 152lb ft Top speed 162mph 0-60mph 6.5sec

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The F was the first all-new MG since the demise of the B, and its mid-engined layout showed that Rover Group was serious about building a world-class sports car.

The basic 1.8-litre K-series engine offered 118bhp. The more sophisticated VVC (Variable Valve Control) unit made 143bhp and allowed the F to hit 60mph from a standing start in a handy 7.0sec, while Hydragas suspension gave a comfortable ride to go with the agile handling. The revised TF arrived in 2002 and had slightly more power and conventional suspension, and it remained in production until Rover collapsed in 2005.

‘The Atom isn’t really a car in the traditional manner,’ wrote Octane editor James Elliott after sampling the latest-generation car. ‘It is a sensory experience, the motoring equivalent of Durand-Durand’s Excessive Machine.’

The car was born from a university project, design student Niki Smart and his lecturer, Simon Saunders, attempting to reinvent the Lotus Seven. Saunders eventually managed to will their car into being, with production starting in 2000. The first cars had a Rover 1.8-litre engine, but since the development of the second-generation car, the Atom has generally used screaming Honda powerplants.

41 PAUL HARMER

ARIEL ATOM

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1992 Engine 7990cc V10, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 400bhp Torque 465lb ft Top speed 165mph 0-60mph 4.6sec

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2009 Engine 3456cc V6, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 276bhp Torque 258lb ft Top speed 163mph 0-60mph 4.8sec

A L FA R O M E O 33 STRADALE One of the most impressive cars of the 1960s, and frankly it makes prett y much everything built since then look a bit pedestrian, too.

Based on the Tipo 33 racer, it was powered by a (slightly) detuned racing engine that pumped out 227bhp, giving the 700kg car an exceptionally healthy power-to-weight ratio.

The low, swooping body was designed by Franco Scaglione and the cars were assembled at Carrozzeria Marazzi. The staff there weren’t overburdened with work: just 18 examples were built, which isn’t so surprising when you know that the Stradale was the world’s most expensive production car when new.

DODGE VIPER RT/10 The first-generation Dodge Viper went on sale as the Viper RT/10 at the start of 1992, and was concevied by Bob Lutz in 1988 as a spiritual successor to the AC Cobra.

Lutz, who was then top dog at Chrysler, put his idea to designer Tom Gale, and Gale came up with a concept that went into production almost unchanged. The Viper’s 8.0-litre V10 engine came to life with help from Lamborghini, and the completed car was one of the wildest of the 1990s – no traction control, no ABS, almost no creature comforts, and in the name of saving every possible bit of weight, not even any airbags.

LOTUS EVORA Unveiled at the 2008 British Motor Show, the Evora was the first new standalone Lotus model in 13 years. It had gone from sketch to sign-off in 28 months, and had been created with a budget of just £44m.

If that sounds like a recipe for a car riddled with evidence of compromise and pennypinching, think again. Roger Becker, Russell Carr and the wider Lotus team had pulled off a miracle, delivering a car that offered exciting performance and outstanding comfort. Evo’s John Barker observed that the ride in the Evora was so good it made a rough Welsh road feel as though it had been resurfaced.

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ASTON MARTIN ULSTER Revered for its handling, the Ulster was inspired by the Aston Martin works racers that enjoyed success in the Ulster Tourist Trophy. Twenty-one examples were built, and all of them are believed to survive.

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TIME MACHINE Aston Martin expert Stephen Archer is transported back to 1935 as he drives an extraordinarily original example of the great Ulster Photography Matthew Howell

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#40 Aston Martin Ulster

I

t’s not often that a car leaves you speechless, but none of the adjectives at my disposal – ‘original’, ‘patinated’, ‘characterful’ – will do this one justice. Standing next to it, even Andy Bell, that doyen of pre-war Aston Martins, struggles to put into words just how special this 1935 Ulster is.

The irony is that the car itself is wonderfully eloquent.

Everything you can see and touch speaks to you – of the car’s makers, of its owners, of its adventures going all the way back to 1935. It has been in almost constant use since then but, amazingly, it has never been restored.

When I arrive to drive the car I am flabbergasted not only by its charm and condition, but also by my own ignorance.

I’ve raced against this Ulster for 40 years or more. I really thought I knew it, but I did not. As I pore over the car now, I realise that most restored Ulsters are seriously lacking in detail accuracy. Though to be fair, these cars were so often messed with at some earlier point in their lives, either through choice or necessity, that there wasn’t always much for the restorers to go on.

The completeness of this Ulster is a marvel. The car has passed through many hands in its long life, but yes, owner Chris Hudson assures me, that is the original hood. It has to be said that while this may have been of some practical value (and a hood was required to run at events such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans), it is a rather comical item. A frame is attached to the car and the hood itself is attached with press-studs to the rear, then stretched forward to meet the top of the screen. Unless you were tiny or a contortionist, it would have been best erected with the occupants in place.

Once secured, the whole effect must have been very claustrophobic, the view out frighteningly limited.

The car also has its original carpets. Now, I know of no other Ulster with any carpets, never mind original ones.

They fit in each footwell and one large one wraps around the gearbox and the gear-selector mechanism. As with the hood, they were evidently very well made. The bucket seats are trimmed in the original leather and I can see neither tears nor any sign of decay; clearly this was a good hide.

The original padded leather cockpit linings are in place and indeed have never been removed. Even Aston Martin’s Team cars ran with these, though none of those racers has them today. They are a lovely finishing touch to an interior that, when enclosed by the hood, would feel very cosy. And very warm, thanks to the total lack of insulation between the engine bay and the cockpit. (Even with no hood, the driver is blessed with life-giving engine warmth and mindbending fumes.)

The screen and the separate, removable aero screens are in fine order. Remarkably, the wiper system with its remote

cable drive is still in place and operable, though the motor drive is currently detached.

MOST OF THE car’s history is known, and it has certainly been colourful. Speaking of which, the car’s paint is almost entirely original and is the same shade that was applied to the 1935 Team cars. (The wife of Aston’s ‘Bert’ Bertelli famously suggested Italian racing red after the works team’s ill-starred 1934 season, during which the cars had worn British Racing Green. Results in 1935 proved that the missus always knows best!)

This Ulster is one of seven production cars built with the low radiator of the Team cars (it’s about 3in lower than the usual rad). Though completed in 1935, it wasn’t actually delivered until 25 January 1936; one has to remember that sales of Aston Martins in this period were rarely brisk.

Originally it was registered to a Mr Ogilvy, a garage proprietor from Bradford. He sold the car in June 1936. It seems it was laid up for much of World War Two, and when it came back on the market in April 1944 it had covered just 5000 miles.

In its first 23 years, the car passed through the hands of at least nine owners, a mixture of naval servicemen and businessmen, and yet it suffered no ill effects, no neglect, nor the loss of important accessories. And then, in 1959, it joined the family that is sharing it with me today.

Brothers Reg and Arnold Hill of Preston were successful bakers and businessmen and bought the Ulster for £450.

They were keen drivers, too: Reg had taken part in many national rallies, campaigning Triumphs with some success.

When the brothers sold their business in the late ’50s, it allowed them more time to indulge in their hobbies – and Reg was able to combine work and pleasure when, in the early 1960s, he was brought in to help turn around struggling sports-car manufacturer TVR.

‘AS I PORE OVER THIS CAR, I REALISE THAT MOST RESTORED ASTON ULSTERS ARE SERIOUSLY LACKING IN DETAIL ACCURACY’

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#40 Aston Martin Ulster

1935 Aston Martin Ulster Engine 1495cc four-cylinder, OHC, twin SU carburettors Power 85bhp @ 5250rpm Transmission four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Worm and peg Suspension Front: beam axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, friction dampers.

Rear: live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, friction dampers Brakes Cableoperated drums Weight 1040kg Top speed 102mph 0-60mph 13.8sec

Anyway, the Ulster soon became a well-loved addition, affectionately known in the Hill family as ‘Wheelspin’.

It was used regularly on the road and also in competition in such events as the Barbon Hill Climb in Cumbria. In 1963 it was enjoying a well-earned rest in Reg’s garage when it was spotted by the boyfriend of Reg’s daughter Sue. That boyfriend was Chris Hudson, who knew a bit about cars and also harboured a desire to go racing. He now fixed his sights on owning the Ulster.

Not long after, Chris married Sue Hill, but it wasn’t until 1976 that Reg allowed him to buy the car. ‘It took 13 years and four grandsons before he agreed to sell it me,’ Chris laughs. Since then it has been used almost every year for VSCC and AMOC events: sprints, hillclimbs and races. In 1977, Chris won the prestigious St John Horsfall trophy at Silverstone with the car, and in his hands it has competed in over 200 events with superb reliability.

After a few years the original, heavy, steel ‘helmet’ wings were replaced with Team-car-style aluminium ‘cycle wings’ (the steel items still exist), and this is the only modification ever made to the car, unless you count temporarily removing the headlights.

Inevitably in racing there are mishaps, and in the 1980s the car suffered a bent axle in a crash at Oulton Park. The axle was taken to British Steel in Sheffield where the steel workers warmed it up and straightened it out, and the Ulster was back out on the track again two weeks later.

At Cadwell Park in the early 2000s, one of the three main bearing caps failed, resulting in the exit of two con-rods through the block. The 1935 block remains with the car, but it now has a new one under the bonnet. The rest of the

engine is still the one that was installed in 1935. The only other work done on the car has been to the body frame. The ash and ply structure under the skin of these cars does not like being flexed for 100,000 miles, but it was not until the car was about 70 years old that Chris was forced to renew certain bits of timber in the frame and in the spare wheel cover. None of the aluminium has ever been replaced.

It’s hard to believe how well the Ulster’s mechanical components have weathered the years. Not only has the car never been rebuilt, but the back axle has never been apart and the gearbox has only been dismantled once to change a bearing. Aston Martin was known for making a fine motor car, but I reckon if Bert Bertelli was around to see this car today, even he would be rather surprised at its durability.

In recent years, two of Chris and Sue’s sons, James and Michael, have raced the car with the same passion as their forebears, but the family has come to the difficult decision that the car has to be sold. ‘It’s just become too valuable,’ explains Chris. ‘If it were a £50,000 car, we’d keep it in the family and keep using it.’ I feel especially fortunate, then, to have been offered a drive in the car before it leaves for pastures new.

SLIDING DOWN into the cockpit is the only way to enter without the huge steering wheel blocking your way.

Once you’re in, the car envelops you and all the controls are exactly where they should be. That said, the gearbox gate is back-to-front, with first on the top right. From experience, this takes more adjusting to than the central position of the throttle pedal, a period feature that many first-time Ulster pilots expect to find bothersome.

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Clockwise from bottom left Four-cylinder 1.5-litre overhead-cam engine is a delight in its original specification; some of the wooden frame had to be replaced, but the car’s bodywork is totally original; back-to-front gearbox gate takes some getting used to; original seat leather; dash includes a tiny lamp to illuminate dials.

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#40 Aston Martin Ulster

‘IT HANDLES POOR SURFACES WITH EASE. SCUTTLE-SHAKE IS SPECTACULAR – BUT IT’S ALL PART OF THE CHARACTER OF THE CAR’ Indeed, having the throttle in the centre and the brake on the right, set a little higher, is perfect for heel-and-toeing.

The steering wheel seems very close to you at first, but once you’re on the move you find that its position gives you the leverage required in tight turns.

A long row of switches includes those for the magneto and fuel pumps; once they’re on, the starter button can be pressed and the engine fires instantly, sending gentle vibrations through the whole car. Dip the medium-weight clutch, carefully select first, and you’re away. As crash ’boxes go, this one’s pretty friendly, the gears nicely bedded in (as you’d hope at this point). Changing up through the gears is quite easy, though the dog-leg fourth can’t be hurried.

Coming back down, well-judged double-declutching ensures pleasing and very swift changes.

As you look down the bonnet to the radiator cap, you’re aware that the front wheels and the cycle wings are alive to every ripple in the road. The chassis handles even poor surfaces with ease, but perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise – after all, roads back in 1935 were in the main inferior to today’s. Scuttle-shake is spectacular, but it’s all part of the character of this car.

It feels fast even at 50mph, your every sense stimulated by a bombardment of mechanical feedback and by the

elements. That’s true of any Ulster, though. What makes driving this one a singular experience is the car’s connection with the past – so transporting that you begin to wonder if in climbing into the driver’s seat you haven’t entered some Goodnight Sweetheart-type time portal. The modern cars seem the ones out of place on the road, not the Aston.

Because the engine has never been modified from its original specification, this car is noticeably less powerful than many of the Ulsters around these days, but it’s no worse for that, with ample torque for road driving. It sounds bigger than its four cylinders and 1.5 litres, too.

The brakes are strong after all the cables have tightened up, but until they’ve achieved equal tension via a firm press of the right foot, the car squirms. The steering, too, lacks the precision of a modern system – but relax, let the car do the work, and it will go exactly where you want. While the steering is heavy when parking, it lightens with speed and always sends masses of feedback to your fingertips.

There are no nasty surprises, no matter how hard you push, just lots of reassuring chirps and rumbles, and the occasional mild admonishment when you make a mistake.

This car speaks to you when it’s sitting still, but on the move it becomes even chattier – a proper conversationalist, and one with whom I’d never tire of talking.

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MAGIC CAR PICS

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (MK1 TIGER) Introduced 1964 Engine 4261cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 164bhp Torque 258lb ft Top speed 120mph 0-60mph 8.6sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (WITH AC ENGINE) Introduced 1953 Engine 1991cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 85bhp Torque 110lb ft Top speed 112mph 0-60mph 9.5sec

SAM CHCIK

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1998 Engine 3201cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 316bhp Torque 258lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-62mph 5.1sec

SUNBEAM TIGER Following the example of Caroll Shelby, who had first come up with the idea of stuffing an American V8 under the bonnet of a British sports car to produce the AC Cobra, Rootes fitted a 4.2-litre Ford V8 in the Sunbeam Alpine to produce the Tiger.

Sales took off in the US far more than they did in the UK, where the underdeveloped suspension soon became more evident – but before the Tiger got into its stride the plug was pulled and the car went out of production.

Why? Because Chrysler had taken a controlling stake in Rootes, and its own V8 didn’t fit in the Tiger.

AC ACE Hoping to raise its profile and capitalise on America’s appetite for British sports cars, AC snapped up a very neat car design by John Tojeiro and put it into production as the Ace in 1953. The car’s prett y aluminium body clothed a tubular frame with all-independent suspension that gave excellent handling.

AC didn’t really have an engine worthy of the car, though. The company’s own 2.0-litre straight-six had been in production since the 1920s, and though AC wrung every bit of power out of the design over time, the Ace didn’t quite come alive until it was offered with a 128bhp Bristol engine beginning in 1956.

BMW M COUPÉ Journalist Steve Sutcliffe wisely observed that the reason the M Coupé has such a devoted band of fans today is that modern cars have become predictable. That was absolutely not a criticism that could have been levelled at the oddly shaped M Coupé when it emerged in 1998 as a stiffened-up companion to the Z3 M Roadster.

The first-generation S50 car has an engine that demands to be revved hard; the later and generally more sought-after S54 is more tractable with a wider spread of maximum torque. Fewer S54s were made – just 1112 for all markets – so they’re hard to come by.

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1959 Engine 2953cc V12, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 280bhp Torque 203lb ft Top speed 165mph 0-60mph 6.4sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1982 Engine 2479cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 163bhp Torque 151lb ft Top speed 138mph 0-60mph 8.3sec

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E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S ( E A R LY C A R ) Introduced 1978 Engine 1146cc twin-rotor Wankel, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 105bhp Torque 105lb ft Top speed 117mph 0-62mph 9.5sec

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In the eyes of many the most desirable Ferrari ever built, and, sadly, commensurately expensive; you needn’t start looking for one unless you have four or five milllion quid to spend. The race-spec Competizione cars are twice as expensive.

Just 167 were built in all, and while all were fitted with a 3.0-litre V12, differing states of tune meant that the cars made anywhere from 220bhp to 280bhp. No less an authority than Sir Stirling Moss rated the SWB ‘perhaps the greatest road car of any make. You really could drive it to a race, compete – and win – then drive it home.’

PORSCHE 944

37 MAGIC CAR PICS

FERRARI 250 GT SWB

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (WITH TD ENGINE) Introduced 1953 Engine 1250cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 57bhp Torque 65lb ft Top speed 81mph 0-60mph 18.9sec

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Until the Boxster came along, the 944 was Porsche’s best-selling car ever. It shared the profile of the 924, but its flared ’arches, wider wheels and deeper front valance added visual heft , and the engine – in the front, remember – had enough oomph to ensure that there was no let-down when you got behind the wheel.

The 2.5-litre four-cylinder was effectively half of the 928’s V8. For 1989 the capacity of the engine rose to 2.7 litres, adding low-down power, and eventually turbocharging was implemented, making the 944 not just brisk but legitimately fast. Handling remained superb throughout the model’s life.

This was Mazda’s attempt to make the world take the rotary engine seriously – and given that around half a million Series 1 1 RX-7s were sold, it was a prett y successful one, even if the Wankel’s poor economy meant it would never become a truly mainstream proposition.

The RX-7 makes the most of the engine’s relative lack of mass, offering perfect 50:50 weight distribution. Early examples of the Series 1 are best left to enthusiasts, really; from 1981 the RX-7 was a better car, with an extra 10bhp on tap, rear disc brakes, a spoiler on the back and a more comprehensive package of equipment.

31 DEAN SMITH

M AZDA RX-7 SERIES 1

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1955 Engine 1489cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 68bhp Torque 77lb ft Top speed 98mph 0-60mph 15.6sec

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1936 Engine 2663 straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 104bhp Torque 167lb ft Top speed 95mph 0-62mph 12.8sec

MG TF The final flowering of MG’s pre-war Midget concept was the TF. It was a straightforward development of the TD MkII, and the TF’s most obvious changes from the older car are its raked radiator grille, lowered bonnet line and faired headlamps.

First powered by the TD’s engine, the car later received an XPAG engine of 1466cc, which gave a top speed of around 90mph.

In 1953 the TF just seemed hopelessly oldfashioned to the many who (not unreasonably) wanted new tech from a new car, but all these years on it’s easy to appreciate the TF’s slightly antique charms.

MGA Beautiful, aerodynamic, and representing a giant leap forward for MG, the MGA was introduced in 1955 – yes, just a couple of years separated this car from the pre-war-looking TF mentioned above!

The origins of the MGA design can be found in the streamlined MG TD driven by George Phillips in the 1951 24 Hours of Le Mans. That car’s bodywork had been penned by MG’s Syd Enever, and he recycled the basic form when the MGA was being developed.

The MGA’s original 1.5-litre engine was swapped for a 1 .6-litre unit in May 1959, and Lockheed front disc brakes were added at the same time.

SS JAGUAR 100 Though commonly referred to as the Jaguar SS100 these days, the maker of this rakish pre-war sports car was SS and the model name Jaguar 100. It wasn’t until 1945 that the shareholders of SS changed the company’s name to Jaguar Cars Limited, setting in motion the events that would lead to the creation of the XK120, the E-type and more.

The Jaguar 100 anticipated those iconic cars: styled by SS boss and future Jaguar autocrat William Lyons, it offered fabulous looks and sporting performance at a price other manufacturers couldn’t match, just as the XK120 and the E-type would go on to do.

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DATSUN 240Z This is the car that helped Japanese manufacturers crack the American market. More desirable than its successors, the 260Z and 280Z, which corrupted its sporting character and superb styling.

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CULTURE SHIFT The Datsun 240Z was arguably the first iconic Japanese sports car, but it took some very un-Japanese thinking to bring it to life Words Stephen Bayley Photography Paul Harmer

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#30 Datsun 240Z

J

apanese culture is absolutely stiff with concepts of the superiority of collaborative endeavour over individual expression. There’s nemawashi, which translates as ‘root-binding’ but which is understood to mean ‘consensus building’. Then there’s jishukisei or ‘mutual self-restraint’. It makes perfect sense that in such a culture a fast public train should be preferred to a personal sports car, and that in the name of the greater good road traffic should often be limited to speeds that would sorely test the patience of the average European or American motorist.

And yet out of Japan have come some of the world’s best and most idiosyncratic sports cars. As the Zen saying goes, ‘Whatever is true, the opposite is truer’…

By the late 1960s, the country’s designers had already given the world classics including the high-revving Honda S800, the rotary-engined Mazda Cosmo, and the sensational, Jaguar E-type-inspired Toyota 2000GT. The last of these was the creation of Satoru Nozaki, a fact revealed in Paolo Tumminelli’s fascinating 2014 book Car Design Asia. Toyota had, in its very Japanese way, always refused to attribute the car’s design to any individual.

But the greatest of all Japanese sports cars, in my view, arrived in 1969. This was the Fairlady Z, the latest Datsun to bear the amusingly odd name devised by Nissan/Datsun president Katsuji Kawamata after seeing My Fair Lady on Broadway. In export markets the car was known, of course, as the Datsun 240Z.

Though Nissan’s higher-ups in Japan might have wished it were otherwise, the idea of ‘authorship’ was necessary for the acceptance of Japanese design in the West, and the Datsun 240Z has always been recognised as the brainchild of Yutaka Katayama.

Described in his New York Times obituary in 2015 as ebullient and adventurous, ‘Mr K’ was unlike his timorous and anonymous colleagues. Because of his extrovert personality, Katayama had been banished to California – a sort of gulag as seen from Japan. As the first president of what became Nissan Motor Corporation USA, Katayama faced cultural obstacles and profound market apathy in America but, under his influence, by 1969 the neat little Datsun 510 saloon was selling 60,000 units a year. This success gave him the clout to will his own project into being.

The origins of the 240Z seem to go back to an early-1960s project called A550X, a joint venture with Yamaha. Hired

by Nissan to consult on the project was Albrecht Goertz, designer of the BMW 507 and a man who had learnt the art of self-promotion in the USA from his mentor, the perfumed and pomaded Raymond Loewy.

The A550X project stalled and Yamaha took its engine to Toyota, where it was used in the 2000GT. Goertz, though, stayed on with Nissan for a little while, collaborating with with in-house designer Kazuo Kimura on what would become the Nissan Silvia.

The car was most attractive, but when it was presented at the 1965 New York Auto Show, American critics deemed it

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Left and below Stephen describes the black, moulded interior of the car as ‘Cold War’; while the interior might feel dated now, the exterior styling of the car has aged wonderfully well.

cramped and under-powered, and their reaction convinced Katayama of the need for a real sports car. He encouraged another in-house designer, Yoshihiko Matsuo, to rage against the conservatives at Nissan who had abandoned A550X, and the browbeaten executives eventually granted permission for Matsuo to work on a brave new car that would satisfy Katayama’s wishes.

In a publication titled Fairlady Z Story, Katayama and Matsuo later listed the wider cast of characters involved in creating the 240Z. Goertz hung around long enough that he was able to claim a degree of credit; the argumentative designer’s persistent claims were grudgingly and partially acknowledged by Nissan in 1980.

Katayama was clear that the car should be a coupé, not a roadster. This was pragmatic: impending US legislation would, it was thought, outlaw convertibles. And Katayama liked butch numbers and letters as model designations, not effete names like ‘Fairlady’. It is said that early proposals resembled Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Maserati Ghibli, but the car that went on sale in the United States on 22 October 1969 had a style all of its own.

With its 2.4-litre, 151bhp straight-six the 240Z easily outperformed English rivals and annihilated the sports-car hegemony of MG, Triumph and Austin-Healey in the US. ‘The 240Z was designed to please a demanding taste that is strictly American,’ Katayama said at the New York launch.

‘Because of his extrovert personality, Katayama had been banished to California – a sort of gulag as seen from Nissan HQ in Japan’

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#30 Datsun 240Z

1973 Datsun 240Z Engine 2393cc straight-six, OHC, twin Hitachi SU-type carburettors Power 151bhp @ 5600rpm Torque 146lb ft @ 4400rpm Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front and rear: MacPherson struts, lower wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers, antiroll bar Brakes Discs front, drums rear Weight 1044kg Top speed 122mph 0-60mph 8.7sec

It was priced at a modest $3526, and while some found the car’s finish and behaviour a little crude, the 240Z was soon dominating its class in the symbolically important SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) races.

The 240Z is exceptionally distinctive. With its long bonnet and emphatically rearwards cabin, the general arrangement is based on the Jaguar E-type, and the scalloped headlights were inspired by Ferrari – but the whole is unique. It is small but imposing, aggressive yet elegant. It does not look its age.

But get into a 240Z today and it seems rather vintage – narrow and with insubstantial doors. The 240Z’s glazing bars look fragile. You wince to think of the car’s integrity during an impact. Indeed, a stabiliser bar across the opening of the rear hatch suggests that body flex was a problem. The hatch itself closes with an undamped clang, not a modern, moderated thwump. The interior, designed by Sue Chiba, is very Cold War with its hard plastics and irrational scattering of tumbler switches and sliders. The 240Z is often cited as the first modern Japanese sports car, but in many respects it feels like one of the last of the old ones.

Start the engine and there is a fine induction roar. Press the throttle and there is a lot of exciting noise, if not much progress by modern standards. Steering is precise, visibility good. I am not certain I’m feeling the sense of euphoria Katayama mentioned when he described the driving experience, but the 240Z is certainly an entertaining car.

To my eye, the car cannot be separated from the 1970s and its odd visual culture. Its arrival coincided with the rise of disco and reggae, the avocado-coloured bathroom suite, Italian furniture in tangerine plastic. That’s why we chose to photograph the 240Z in the extraordinary Edgcumbe Park estate near Bracknell, completed in 1970 by a developer who had been influenced by Scandinavian domesticity and by the ranch-style houses of California.

The 240Z in which I’m humming through the estate is one of more than half-a-million built, and the success of the model lent Datsun – not previously a desirable marque – a prestige that could not have been achieved by a car like the humble Cherry.

Katayama retired in 1977 at a point when Japan was still a conservative and heirarchical nation. America recognised his achievement with the 240Z, but at home his high profile was interpreted as vainglory and he was initially not fêted.

But as interest in the history of car design grew, Katayama began to emerge as a significant figure. By 1997 Nissan was running TV ads featuring the ebullient Mr K, father of the Z-car and, in his own way, a consensus-builder: as noted in that New York Times obituary, his 240Z completely changed the auto industry’s perception of Japanese cars.

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Clockwise from right The 240Z parked at the Edgcumbe Park estate, where a mix of influences resulted in a development that has been described as ‘the future that time forgot’; typically thoughtul Japanese design in the engine bay, which has inspection flaps and its own handy lamp.

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#29 to #21

MICHAEL BAILIE

26

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (FIXED-HEAD COUPÉ) Introduced 1948 Engine 3442cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 160bhp Torque 195lb ft Top speed 120mph 0-60mph 10.1sec

MARTYN GODDARD

23

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (1 9 9 0 - 1 9 9 2 S P E C I F I C A T I O N ) Introduced 1990 Engine 5727cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rearwheel drive Power 375bhp Torque 370lb ft Top speed 179mph 0-60mph 4.9sec

28

A sweet little roadster that emerged during a particularly fertile period for Japanese car design. Powered by a mid-mounted, 660cc turbocharged three-cylinder engine, the tiny Suzuki was designed to meet Japan’s Kei-car specifications, and thus qualified for low tax and insurance rates in its home market.

Although a niche product, the Cappuccino proved popular in Europe: well over 1000 cars were sold through UK dealers alone between 1993 and 1995. Today, tidy examples remain very much in demand as buyers switch on to the Cappuccino’s low running costs, reliability and excellent build quality.

J A G UA R XK120 The XK120 was the sports car that elevated Jaguar into the big time. It was first seen at the 1948 Earls Court Motor Show as a sort of glorified display case for Jaguar’s all-new, twin-overhead camshaft straight-six – the iconic XK engine that lived well into the 1980s.

The reaction to the car persuaded Jaguar’s William Lyons to put it into production.

It was as fast as its name suggested, with a top speed of 120mph, but was a pleasure to drive slowly, too. The early roadsters were bodied in aluminium and command large sums today, and you’ll also pay a premium for a tuned SE-spec car.

CORVETTE C4 ZR1 In 1984 Chevrolet brought out an all-new, vastly improved Corvette, the C4, which was followed in 1990 by an ultra-high-performance variant: the C4 ZR1.

General Motors had acquired Lotus in 1986 and the British outfit was approached

by GM’s Corvette division to help develop an all-aluminium, quad-cam V8, and to offer its expertise in handling. Lotus obliged; Mercury Marine was contracted to assemble the ‘LT5’ engine, which was too exotic to be put together on a GM line; and around 7000 customers got to enjoy one of the best ’Vettes ever built.

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2018 Engine 3982cc V8, twinturbocharged Transmission Eight-speed semiautomatic, rear-wheel drive Power 503bhp Torque 505lb ft Top speed 195mph 0-60mph 3.6sec

25 PAUL HARMER

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1991 Engine 657cc three-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 63bhp Torque 76lb ft Top speed 85mph 0-62mph 11.3sec

SUZUKI CAPPUCCINO

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (GR IFFI TH 500) Introduced 1991 Engine 4998cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 340bhp Torque 350lb ft Top speed 151mph 0-60mph 4.8sec

22 PAUL HARMER

29

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1953 Engine 1991cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 90bhp Torque 117lb ft Top speed 120mph 0-60mph 11.9sec

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TVR GRIFFITH When the Griffith came along in 1991 it transformed TVR’s image almost overnight.

The design combined one of the purest sports car shapes ever with a spaceframe chassis based on that developed for the Tuscan racecar, and the first run of Griffiths used the Rover V8 in either 240bhp 4.0-litre or 280bhp 4.3-litre form.

Production was halted in 1992 to allow TVR to start building the closely related Chimaera grand tourer – but the Griffith returned the following year with more power, boasting a 340bhp 5.0-litre V8 and badged as the Griffith 500.

TRIUMPH TR2 Did Triumph know what it was starting?

The TR2 practically defined the new wave of British sports cars that came along in the 1950s – quick, basic and strong, and powered by a well-proven engine from a saloon car with an extra carburettor.

Instantly distinguished from the later TR3 by its deeply recessed grille, the TR2 won rallies in its day and will easily pass 100mph; in 1953 the pre-production car pictured here hit almost 125mph on the Jabbeke highway in Belgium. Cars built after October 1954 got shorter doors so you could at last get out next to kerbs!

MATT HOWELL

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1936 Engine 1971cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 79bhp Torque 93lb ft Top speed 93mph 0-62mph 10.5sec

24 ALEX TAPLEY

Replacing the best-selling Aston Martin of all time was a tough gig, but when the AM6generation V8 Vantage came along in 2018, it had the hardware to make its predecessor feel almost tame.

The 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged engine – supplied by Mercedes-AMG – pumped out 503bhp and was generally paired with an eight-speed, semi-automatic gearbox, though a seven-speed manual was an option. The styling wasn’t universally liked (the previous, less exotic-looking V8 Vantage has a big fan club), but as a driver’s car the AM6 was irresistible – rabidly fast and super-alert.

27

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (ST EEL-BODY GT B) Introduced 1977 Engine 2926cc V8, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 240bhp Torque 209lb ft Top speed 145mph 0-60mph 7.3sec

21 MAGIC CAR PICS

ASTON MARTIN V8 VANTAGE (2018)

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (MKI FROGEYE SPRITE) Introduced 1958 Engine 948cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 43bhp Torque 52lb ft Top speed 86mph 0-60mph 20.5sec

BMW 328 The 328 was an absolute menace in 2.0-litre sports-car competition in the years leading up to World War Two. The car announced itself by winning the 1936 Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring, and it went on to enjoy success in major international races including the Mille Miglia, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Coupe des Alpes and the RAC Tourist Trophy.

BMW had started building cars of its own design only in 1932, yet the 328 was perfectly resolved – lightweight, stiff, aerodynamic, and powered by a very tunable straight-six. Many tried to emulate it, but it remained in a league of its own until long after the war.

FERRARI 308 GTB / GTS The gorgeous, Pininfarina-styled 308 GTB was introduced in 1975 with a glassfibre body, but to make the car easier and cheaper to build Ferrari abandoned its experiment with vetroresina in the middle of 1977, and began producing steel-bodied GTBs instead. Later the same year a Targa-top variant, the GTS, became available, too.

Early cars are the most powerful, with the 1980-on Bosch fuel-injection models losing 40bhp to emissions controls. Much of this power was restored two years later with the four-valves-per-cylinder qv models, identified by cooling slats in the bonnet.

AU S T I N - H E A L E Y SPRITE The Sprite was a cheap and cheerful, massproduced sporting convertible that was tremendous fun. The MkI’s entertaining looks (the ‘frogeye’ headlamps were planned to be retractable until it was realised that making them so would put the price up) distracted from the fact that underneath was mainly a blend of Austin A35 and Morris Minor.

When the original was retired in favour of the more conventional-looking MkII in 1961, the Austin-Healey was joined by a badgeengineered MG version, the Midget, which remained in production for several years after the Austin-Healey marque had ceased to exist.

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20

ALPINE A110 BERLINETTE A mélange of Porsche and Lotus that was annoyingly never made available to us Brits. It was a formidable competition car in tuned form, and ran away with the 1973 World Rally Championship.

HOMING MISSILE John Simister meets the classic Alpine A110 Berlinette, and puts the car through its paces on a trip to the factory where it was built Photography Dean Smith

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I

’ve driven the modern A110, which arrived in 2017 to rave reviews, but until now I have never had the opportunity to sample the car that inspired it. The original A110 has long flown under the radar in the UK despite being famous overseas for its exploits in rallying.

In these parts, the Alpine name was already being used by Rootes (later Chrysler UK), and between the difficulties that presented and the fact that the A110 was left-hand drive, the car was never sold here.

A crying shame, I think, as I look over the classic A110 Berlinette now sitting in my driveway and positioned so as not to wake the neighbours when I slink away in the small hours. It’s a bit tweaked over standard, this 1977 car, with around 140bhp instead of the 93bhp normal in the final, 1600 SX version of the breed – and the megaphone tailpipe on the end of the minimal silencer makes sure everyone knows it.

It’s not mine, sad to say. It belongs to Renault UK, which acquired it while the new A110 was under development. The company’s Heritage

people found it in Spain, where it had lived in the collection of a Spanish rally champion and had been used for hillclimbs. That explains the rollcage, the exhaust, the hot camshaft and the pair of Weber 45 DCOEs. ‘We wanted one of the last French-built ones,’ says Steve Gault. ‘It was mechanically sound but we’ve done the paint.’ Indeed they have, and it’s beautiful. They have also replaced the tired, rally-style seats with new ones, fixed directly to the floor to maximise headroom.

A110s were, as Alpine aficionados are keenly aware, made not only in the French town of Dieppe, but also in Spain, Mexico and Bulgaria – all places where Renault had assembly operations. But the Dieppe-built ones are the most prized, and also the lightest although that was never the official intention. We’ll learn more about that later.

So, my nocturnal escape. The Alpine and I are headed for the Channel Tunnel, where I will rendezvous with Octane’s Matthew Hayward, who will have arrived in the brand-spanking-new A110 that he is testing.

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#20 Alpine A110 Berlinette

Once in France we’ll head for Dieppe, taking both cars back to their birthplace and seeing how it has changed since I last visited over a decade ago, when Alpine was building Renaultsport versions of regular Renaults.

Back then the factory had the feel of an outsize tuning shop. The sweet smell of polyester resin hung in the air, as did the spirit of Alpine founder Jean Rédélé, and automation was non-existent.

‘BECAUSE I’M SITTING SO LOW, THE ROAD SEEMS TO RUSH PAST AT A FRANTIC RATE. AT FIRST, 70MPH FEELS LIKE 100’

I PROCEED GENTLY up my road, thankful for the familiar ability of twin-choke sidedraught Webers to carburate cleanly from cold; there are no burps and splutters, no blips and throat-clearings. Out on the nearby bypass, as the engine warms I explore the deeper reaches of the accelerator travel while I acclimatise to the very snug surroundings.

This is a very compact car, low with a narrow cockpit. My left shoulder touches the lightweight door, my arms are angled towards the Berlinette’s centre, my legs even more so, and my shins are almost horizontal, as in a racing car. A hefty transverse hump shapes the floor between the seat and the pedals; below it is the one steel crossmember of the backbone-tube chassis. Side impact protection? Don’t even think about it.

Foot down, the tail squats, the already light steering goes even lighter.

On this damp road the Alpine’s natural thrust is a degree or two either side of straight-ahead, so keeping it true requires concentration. An old Porsche 911 is a paragon of directional plantedness in comparison to this; a lack of steering castor is why the Alpine is so darty, so hair-trigger.

It’s quick, as you’d expect when the eager motor has just 700kg to push. Below 3400rpm it’s a bit flat and surge-prone, but it blares along happily unless a hill intervenes. Above that mark the Webers cackle, the exhaust trumpets, and every bit of throttle travel adds another spurt of energy. The 1647cc engine, first used in gentler form in the Renault 16 TX, has racy hemispherical combustion chambers even though the valves are pushrod-operated. It will happily zip to 7000rpm. Maybe more, but I don’t dare. Given where the engine sits, it’s comforting to know that the block and head, both aluminium, are nice and light.

Two outsize dials, their scales unusually starting at five o’clock, tell me 113km/h (our legal 70mph) equates to 4000rpm in fifth gear. So I hover around there on the dark motorway, enjoying the light spread across the road by the four Cibiés once I’ve worked out the lighting switches: a master switch atop the steering column, and a left stalk for side/dip/ main. The right stalk does the indicators, and another projecting from the dashboard controls the wipers and washers – two speeds, nominally, but you’d need a stopwatch to detect the difference between them.

Behind me are two tiny rear seats. These are the only spaces in the cabin able to accommodate the impedimenta of a journey, because the front boot is almost completely full of spare wheel and plastic fuel tank.

The roof pillars are slim and there’s a lot of glass, so ‘snug’ doesn’t mean ‘claustrophobic’. And because I’m sitting so low, the road seems to rush past at a frantic rate. At first, 70mph feels like 100.

AT THE TUNNEL terminal the two Alpines, parked together, look clearly related, but there’s one glaring difference: scale. The new makes the old appear tiny. Deliciously delicate, too, with its greater glass-tobody ratio, its tapering tail, its flat-topped, flared-out rear arches.

Today’s Renault company was wise not to ape the original too literally, instead giving the new A110 uniformly round arches framing hefty wheels. But look at the 13in wheels of the Berlinette: simple, deep-set dishes of aluminium, fat, squat and fabulous. Why would you want cartwheels with rubber bands when you could have these?

I had expected a lot of rear negative camber. Most hot Berlinettes have it, the result of the Renault 8-based swing-axle rear suspension, the need to keep the centre of gravity low, and a desire to avoid the dreaded tuckunder. The last ones, however, had double-wishbone rear suspension like that of the subsequent A310 (and indeed the new A110). Anticipating the drive to come, I can breathe a sigh of relief.

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Clockwise from far left Plotting a route while in the Channel Tunnel; Simister (right) and Hayward filling up A110s old and new before pushing on to Dieppe and the Alpine factory.

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#20 Alpine A110 Berlinette

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1977 Alpine A110 1600 SX Berlinette (standard specification) Engine 1647cc four-cylinder, OHV, Weber 32 DAR twin-choke downdraught carburettor Power 93bhp @ 6000rpm Torque 94lb ft @ 3000rpm Transmission Five-speed manual transaxle, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front and rear: double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar Brakes Discs Weight 790kg Top speed 121mph 0-60mph 9.5sec

IN FRANCE, OPEN single-carriageway roads have an 80km/h (50mph) limit these days, and nearly everyone sticks to it. The Berlinette feels like a caged beast here, but at least I have plenty of time to refine my gearchange technique. The only spring-resistance is into the fifth/reverse plane, and an accurate, deliberate aim is essential to cancel the vagaries of the loose linkage.

We experience just one glitch en route to Dieppe: a broken alternator feed terminal in the Berlinette briefly kills the electrics. Steve fixes this mostly by feel because the alternator is invisible from the engine bay.

It’s driven from the bulkhead-adjacent end of the camshaft by two-stage belts, and visible through the rear window once a cover is removed in the cabin. ‘Left a bit,’ I suggest, peering through the window and offering directions. ‘Now up… that’s it.’

Next morning we have to pick our way around and through groups of yellow-jacketed protesters, but they seem to like the pair of UK-registered A110s. Affection for Alpine clearly runs deep here. We’re leaving the town in search of sinuous and traffic-free roads so I can get properly get to know the Berlinette, and Matthew his modern A110. Soon we reach a near-deserted road with a strong sense of the forest stage about it.

The Berlinette snorts through the curves, steering garrulous, tail mostly planted on the damp surface except when I dither over a bend’s apex and back off, provoking an admonitory twitch aft.

This is one talkative car. You sense how the tail calls the shots, how the throttle is as much of a guidance system as the steering wheel, how the expected initial understeer never really happens. And because you always know what’s happening, the Berlinette is never scary. I hadn’t expected that. No wonder rally drivers loved it.

WE EVENTUALLY begin winding our way towards the Alpine factory.

I pull into the car park and observe that this new-looking facility is nothing like the one I remember. Inside, too, things have changed.

Modern A110 structures are glued and riveted off-line by robots, then dressed with outer panels by humans. They are sent to Le Havre for a cataphoretic coating, then returned for assembly on a line. The majority of the cars are finished in the traditional Alpine blue, but other colours are creeping in. While today’s Alpine workers buzz around the factory, I take some time to speak with a former employee who remembers what things were like when Jean Rédélé was running the show.

Jean-Pierre Limondin has arrived for our meeting in his own A110 1600 SX, the very last Berlinette built. He bought the car new when he was an Alpine engineer, driving it off the line in 1977. He sold it two years on, to a man who was going to race it until friends said not to on account of its significance, and the A110 then sat inactive for decades until JeanPierre bought it back. ‘I paid more in euros than I had in francs the first time,’ he says ruefully. It wears Alfa Giulia GT tail-lights because Alpine ran out of the usual Renault 8 items just before A110 production ended.

Jean-Pierre joined Alpine two years into production, in December 1963. He was 24, liked Alpines and knocked on the door. His first job was to organise how to build Alpines overseas: ‘Jean Rédélé was trying to develop Mexico, so after a quick probation I went there for six months.

I was still single, but I came back married.’

Clockwise from left There’s little room in the A110 Berlinette, but the driving experience – involving but not taxing – makes it easy to put up with the cramped quarters; parked up at the Alpine factory; Simister interviews JeanPierre Limondin, former Alpine employee and current owner of the very last A110 Berlinette built, chassis 11387.

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#20 Alpine A110 Berlinette

Above When the A110 Berlinette owned by Renault UK was built in 1977, the sun was setting on the model: just 26 further cars were completed, and it wasn’t until 40 years later that the A110 name was used again.

Why, I enquire, was Bulgaria one of the countries chosen for A110 production? ‘Jean Rédélé quickly realised that it was possible to have production outside Dieppe – which couldn’t cope with demand – without investment as long as there was a Renault presence in that place already. He sold the know-how to the company that was building Renaults in Bulgaria. In 1968 the Bulgarian population was very poor and the country needed dollars, so Alpines were made for export. Very few though – no more than 100.’

And the glassfibre thickness thing? ‘The cars were supposed to be the same wherever they were made. But in Dieppe, we made the cars as light as possible because they were wanted for racing.’ It was, it seems, a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

‘Alpine was very small at the beginning. In 1968 Rédélé signed an agreement with Renault’s commercial director, Philippe Lamirault, giving Alpine access to every Renault dealer. The factory was still a workshop, so a new one was built in 1969. Rédélé invested a lot in this factory, and in a new model, the A310, which was more complex. That’s when Renault started to build its stake, which gradually grew to 100%.

‘Rédélé was losing control. Alpine, as I say, had been very small, with a family spirit. The factory rally drivers were all very young when they joined the team, and we knew them all.’

And Rédélé himself, what was he like? ‘He was a charismatic man, with an easy authority. He would never demand, but you would somehow consider yourself obliged to do as he asked. He was approachable yet kept a distance: I would be Jean-Pierre but he was Monsieur Rédélé. He was 15 years older than me, but a handsome man and the girls liked him.

He never missed a chance with them, and lived well.

‘When we were at Le Mans, he insisted that we all stayed in the same hotel and ate at the same restaurant. It was that family spirit. Knowing that Renault had installed good managers, he left Alpine in 1975.’

Jean-Pierre, meanwhile, left Renault in 1999, having spent a number of years with BEREX, the Bureau d’Études et de Récherches Exploratoires (a sort of think tank for Alpine and Renaultsport). Carlos Tavares, who was in charge of Renault during the new A110’s gestation, engaged Jean-Pierre to advise on the car’s esprit, and Jean-Pierre was more than satisfied with the end product. He bought a new A110 himself, in fact, to go along with his Berlinette, and he loves the paddleshift gearbox: ‘So quick, so easy.’

He’s right. That seven-speed, double-clutch transmission is a wonder, so fast and intelligent that it’s hard to bemoan the absence of a manual gearbox from the option list. I was mightily impressed with it when I tested the modern A110 – a car at once savagely faster and more practical than its ancestor. The balance and roadholding are superb, the steering is precise, and the car will accommodate two adults in comfort – and it will take an overnight bag or two as well. But the thrill offered by the new car is of a very millennial kind, and as Matthew and I start our drive back towards the Channel Tunnel, I’m glad to be in the Berlinette.

It doesn’t work for you like the new A110 but instead demands that you work with it. Technically, I suppose, that makes the Berlinette the lesser of the A110s. But, to me, it also makes it the more entertaining of the two. As dusk falls, I turn on the Cibiés again and follow Matthew through an S-bend. In my mind I am Jean Ragnotti, Jean-Claude Andruet, Ove Andersson – Alpine aces, all. I’ve waited decades to drive an A110 Berlinette, and the car hasn’t disappointed one bit.

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‘IN DIEPPE, WE MADE THE CARS AS LIGHT AS POSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY WERE WANTED FOR RACING’

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#19 to #11

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (W10 MODEL) Introduced 1984 Engine 1587cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 122bhp Torque 105lb ft Top speed 116mph 0-60mph 7.7sec

16

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1999 Engine 1997cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 237bhp Torque 153lb ft Top speed 150mph 0-60mph 6.1sec

MAGIC CAR PICS

13

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (BN1 MODEL) Introduced 1953 Engine 2660cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Three-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 90bhp Torque 144lb ft Top speed 103mph 0-60mph 10.3sec

Toyota launched the MR2 in 1984, sending shockwaves across the motor industry; this was the first time a Japanese manufacturer had brought a mid-engined car to market.

It was brilliant, too, with suspension and handling designed with the help of Lotus engineer Roger Becker – and, being a Toyota, it was prett y much bullet-proof as well.

The standard MR2 came with the 1.6-litre, 16-valve engine first seen in the Corolla GT, giving it brisk performance. The supercharged MR2 was never officially sold in Europe, but we did get the removable roof panels and uprated suspension package from that model.

HONDA S2000 Cooked up to mark Honda’s 50th anniversary, and made with some very fine ingredients.

The high-revving VTEC engine was good for 237bhp, making it the most powerful naturally aspirated 2.0-litre four-cylinder ever fitted to a production car. Ferrari’s Francesco Morettini, formerly head of engine projects, cited it as the engine he most admired.

It was mated to a six-speed, close-ratio gearbox that remains among the best ever, and the combination of the two made the S2000 a seriously compelling alternative to the Porsche Boxster.

AU S T I N - H E A L E Y 100 What was originally the Healey 100 became the Austin-Healey 100 overnight when Leonard Lord of BMC encountered it at the 1952 London Motor Show and liked it enough to offer to build it, using the four-cylinder 2660cc engine from the A90 Atlantic.

The USA took the 100 to its heart, and the car was an instant hit there, while a racing programme led to the creation of the 100S. The BN1-series cars had a three-speed gearbox, replaced by a four-speed unit for the BN2 series. Just 640 examples were built of the high-performance M version, with bigger carbs, high-compression pistons and more.

18 GEORGE BAMFORD

T O Y O TA MR2

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1957 Engine 3442cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 250bhp Torque 242lb ft Top speed 149mph 0-60mph 5.2sec

15 GUS GREGORY

TOYOTA

19

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S (SER IE S 1 MODEL) Introduced 1957 Engine 1172cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Three-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 40bhp Torque 58lb ft Top speed 76mph 0-60mph 17.8sec

12

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1966 Engine 1570cc four-cylinder, naturally aspirated Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 110bhp Torque 101lb ft Top speed 102mph 0-60mph 13.2sec

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LOTUS SEVEN A paragon of no-frills motoring fun that lives on today as the Caterham 7. Series 1 cars were initially sold with Ford’s sidevalve engine, with later Series 1s and Series 2s offered with the 948cc BMC A-series unit and its four-speed gearbox. From 1961 the 997cc Anglia engines were also available.

Series 2 Sevens are distinguished by their glassfibre nosecones, but they also have a less complex spaceframe and a revised rear axle location. The early cars can feel quite crude, even by general Seven standards, but are undeniably engaging!

A L FA R O M E O SPIDER 1600 More commonly known as the Duetto (a name to which Alfa unfortunately didn’t have the rights), and forever associated with Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. The prett y little Pininfarina-styled roadster appeared in 1966 as the final genuinely new variant on the 105-Series platform, and was marked out by its enclosed headlamps and boat-tail rear end.

Powered by a 1570cc, twin-cam fourcylinder engine, it was a gem to drive with great handling, sharp steering and excellent disc brakes. It wasn’t around for long though: after only 18 months, the 1600 was succeeded by the more potent 1750.

ALPINE

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 2017 Engine 1798cc four-cylinder, turbocharged Transmission Seven-speed semi-automatic, rear-wheel drive Power 252bhp Torque 236lb ft Top speed 155mph 0-60mph 4.5sec

14 ALEX TAPLEY

A barely domesticated, road-car version of the great D-type racer. The car was conceived simply to use up unsold D-type chassis, Jaguar boss William Lyons reasoning that a high-performance Jaguar would go over well in the lucrative US market.

Jaguar took its Le Mans winner, added a passenger door and seat and a slightly bigger windscreen, deleted the rear fin to make room for a luggage rack, and called it a day. The plan was to make 25 cars, but a huge fire at the factory saw to it that only 16 were completed.

Jaguar eventually built nine contination cars to complete the planned production run.

17

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S Introduced 1948 Engine 1971cc straight-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 40bhp Torque 58lb ft Top speed 110mph 0-60mph 8.8sec

11 PORSCHE AG

J A G UA R XKSS

E S SEN T I A L FAC TS A N D F IGU R E S ( 9 8 7. 1 M O D E L ) Introduced 2006 Engine 3387cc flat-six, naturally aspirated Transmission Six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Power 295bhp Torque 251lb ft Top speed 171mph 0-60mph 5.1sec

ALPINE A110 (2017) Performance car of the year at the Historic Motoring Awards in 2018, winner of a host more prizes, and more than worthy of the name previously given to one of the great sports cars of the ’60s and ’70s (see page 84).

Unlike its namesake, the modern A110 is a mid-engined machine, and the location of the 1798cc turbocharged four-cylinder is among the reasons it feels so poised. In a road test for Octane, John Simister wrote: ‘When you turn at speed, the car seems to pivot about you.

The A110 gobbles bends with fantastic grip and efficiency, while riding the bumps with surprising and welcome suppleness.’

FR AZER NASH LE MANS REPLICA At the 1949 24 Hours of Le Mans, Norman Culpan and H.J. Aldington drove their Frazer Nash to a superb 3rd-place finish, soldiering on and on in the face of persistent gearbox trouble. Soon after the race, Frazer Nash customers could buy a facsimile of the car.

The Le Mans Replica was powered by a 1971cc BMW straight-six delivering a healthy 120bhp, and with the lightweight ‘High Speed’ body it was prodigiously quick. Like all Frazer Nashes, the Le Mans Replica was completely handbuilt, with the customer getting the final say on the configuration of the engine and the set-up of the suspension.

PORSCHE CAYMAN S When the Boxster-derived Cayman S arrived, Walter Rörhl, the rally champion and Porsche test driver, boasted that it was more agile than the 911. Attempting to avoid putting a smoking hole in his foot, he added that the 911 had better traction, but the point was made: if you wanted a driving experience to put you in mind of the nimble, lightweight 911s of the 1960s and ’70s, the Cayman S was the car to buy.

Note that today’s Cayman (and Boxster) models are part of Porsche’s 718 range, and are thus powered by a turbocharged flat-four rather than the traditional flat-six.

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MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS Originally the cheapest 356, the bare-bones Speedster is now worth a mint. John Simister discovers why Photography Matthew Howell

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10

PORSCHE 356 Yes, a relative of the humble VW Beetle, but by the time Porsche was done developing the 356, the two cars had far less in common than is often stated – and every iteration of the 356 was great fun to drive.

A

Porsche 356 Speedster. That’s a car made to be hustled along the roads of the California coast, or driven in club races on the eastern side of the US: Sebring, Watkins Glen, Lime Rock. It’s about sunshine, sportiness and sheer driving pleasure.

First to recognise the commercial potential of such a car was Porsche’s US importer, Max Hoffman. He saw a roofless, simplified 356 – a roadster rather than a cabriolet – as the ideal riposte to Britain’s two-seater offerings, and in 1952 a run of 15 356 America Roadsters was built. Then John von Neumann, a West Coast Porsche distributor, proposed a purer idea inspired by the open, lightweight race car he’d made out of an early Gmünd-built 356 coupé.

It would look more like a regular 356, in its bottom half at least – but the stripped-down ‘Speedster’, with its shallow windscreen, would be the cheapest of all 356s and, for a given engine, the fastest.

So far, so very US-centred. But you will no doubt have observed that the Ruby Red 356A Carrera Speedster on these pages is right-hand drive. Which country is hot, drives on the left and would have appreciated the car in the 1950s? You’ve got it: Australia.

Of the 4900 or so Speedsters made between 1954 and 1959, just 152 were fitted with the ultimate, four-camshaft Carrera engine. And of those, a mere three were right-hand drive. All three were sold in Australia, and the first two, built in July 1956 and July 1957, are still there.

The third car, built in September 1957, emigrated to the UK in 2011, which is why you’re seeing it in the leafy Chiltern Hills and not by Bondi Beach.

As I make myself comfortable in the black bucket seat, I can’t help wondering what has happened to our world of classic cars. This little sports car, with a 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine rated at 100bhp, is valued at well over a million pounds. I’ll give you a moment or two and let that sink in.

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#10 Porsche 356

‘The Carrera engine is reverentially described by those in the know as highly strung, temperamental even’ But no Porsche was ever created as an investment opportunity, not even a 911 2.7 RS Carrera. The marque’s designers and engineers would have been horrified at the prospect.

So, while taking good care of my mount for the day, I can’t let that valuation colour my relationship with it. If I let that happen, the Speedster’s purpose is lost.

That purpose is to meld man, machine and roadscape in a moment of windblown pleasure, allowing the driver to briefly leave life’s baggage behind. In this GT-spec car you couldn’t take it with you if you wanted to: most of the space beneath the bonnet is taken up by an 80-litre petrol tank.

THE SEAT IS very low, and the curved top of the windscreen similarly so; no other 356 in which I’ve sat has felt nearly as play-ready as this. The engine chunters over on the starter and thrums into life. The expected metallic, flat-four beat is deeper and harder than usual here, the single fat Sebring tailpipe blaring and firing the odd gunshot. ‘It doesn’t like ambling,’ says custodian Mick Pacey. ‘You need to keep the revs up and keep it moving so it doesn’t foul the plugs.’

The four-cam flat-four has always had a

certain mystique, especially in this primordial form with a roller-bearing crankshaft. (The 1.6-litre and 2.0-litre versions that came later used normal plain bearings and conventional – albeit still dry-sump – lubrication.) Engineer Ernst Fuhrmann’s Carrera unit is reverentially described by those in the know as highly strung, temperamental even, and setting up the right-angle gear drives to its four overhead camshafts requires saintly patience. Did it have to be thus? Don’t ask awkward questions; just enjoy it for what it is.

What I’m expecting, then, is an engine as flat as a pancake at low revs but which erupts into life as the rev-counter needle enters the green-shaded zone at 4000rpm and crackles on to the red zone’s boundary at 6000rpm – beyond which I dare not venture today. There’s a hefty 40mm carburettor barrel for each cylinder, courtesy of a pair of downdraught 40 PII-4s from Solex, so gas speeds at low revs will be low and combustion therefore surely sub-optimal.

But they are lovely carburettors. Each bears a beautiful pair of overlapping trumpets, which are sealed in their own plenum chambers when the engine lid is shut. In this Carrera GTspecific system, air is sucked in through extra

lateral louvres in the lid. It’s not filtered, so don’t expect the piston rings to last long given the dust generated by the rear wheels, which will surely be sucked up, over and into the direction of the intakes.

There should be dyspepsia followed by drama, but actually it doesn’t happen. As long as I don’t feed in too much accelerator too soon, the Speedster’s engine pulls happily and without snatch from under 2000rpm. At 3000rpm it can take full throttle, at 4000rpm it is definitely on a second wind but not explosively so. By 6000rpm it’s had enough, even though peak power doesn’t officially arrive until 6200rpm – yes, in the red zone. No wonder people used to blow these motors up.

Laurence Meredith’s 356 bible, Original Porsche 356, suggests a 110-115mph top speed for a 1.5-litre Speedster and an 8.7-second 0-60mph time. I’m not about to push this one to such extremes, but still I’m having plenty of fun as I move the long, springy gearlever through its approximate gate in search of the shift of least resistance.

This is achieved, for an upshift, by either an inter-gear pause or, faster, an upward doubledeclutch because the synchromesh isn’t strong.

Similarly, a double clutch-prod either side

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of an in-neutral throttle-blip is best for the downshifts if you want to demonstrate the right degree of mechanical sympathy. It’s entertaining, too, and goes with the Speedster’s hands-on character.

This car’s suspension hasn’t been lowered or otherwise tweaked, so it steers, corners and rides as it should on regular rural roads. The steering isn’t the last word in precision but it’s quick, accurate and informative, so the Speedster is as easy to place as its diminutive dimensions suggest it should be. It grips keenly, helped by GT-spec wheels slightly wider than the Rudge knock-ons this car came with originally, and during a day’s spirited cruising through the Chilterns and beyond I never once feel any of the tail-end precariousness typical of an overworked swing-axle.

The Speedster’s low centre of gravity must help here. So must the suspension’s firm control of roll and wallow, impressively achieved without any underlying harshness or choppy encounters with the bumpstops. Whatever the surface, you just point, squirt, hold on and enjoy. And press the brake pedal very hard when you want to stop; even by the more modest standards of an all-drum system, these brakes are light on bite.

I’VE MENTIONED ‘GT’ a couple of times, although this is not the sort of car you’d think of as a grand tourer. An explanation is needed, which I’ll combine with a biography of this particular Speedster, chassis number 83727.

The car was built to GS specification rather than the racier GT spec. Thus it had slightly less torque than a GT (but the same power); bumpers with overriders and an extra nudge bar; all-steel panels; covers for the holes in the body allowing access to the rear torsion bars; and narrower brake drums.

By the mid-1960s, 83727’s fifth owner had repainted it in silver and replaced the original Carrera engine (number P90885, now lost) with a high-output VW motor, because doing that was cheaper than rebulding a four-cam.

Clockwise from top left Fabulously minimalist bucket seats in an equally minimalist cockpit; frontmounted spare wheel shares bootspace with the GT-spec 80-litre fuel tank; gorgeous Derrington steering wheel; note the GT-spec rollbar and engine lid.

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#10 Porsche 356

‘Peak power doesn’t arrive until 6200rpm – yes, that’s in the red zone.

No wonder people used to blow these engines up’

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1957 Porsche 356A Carrera GT Speedster Engine 1498cc rear-mounted air-cooled flat-four, roller-bearing crankshaft, DOHC per bank, dry sump, two Solex 40 PII-4 twin-choke carburettors Power 100bhp @ 6200rpm Torque 91lb ft @ 5200rpm Transmission Four-speed manual transaxle, rear-wheel drive Steering ZF worm and peg Suspension Front: parallel paired trailing links, torsion leaves, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar.

Rear: swing axles, torsion bars, telescopic dampers Brakes Drums Weight 885kg Top speed 115mph 0-60mph 8.7sec

Complete with a melted piston, the four-cam engine went on display at a technical college, at which the owner’s father was the head of the automotive engineering department!

In 1982, seventh owner Trevor Keetly made the GS into a GT. This, of course, meant fitting a suitable Carrera engine, which he found in the USA. It bears the number P90897 and was originally fitted to the fourth factory-built GT Speedster.

Then followed nearly all the other GT mods: plain bumpers, the big fuel tank, wider (5.5in) five-bolt wheels, the Sebring exhaust, a rollover bar, brakes 60mm broad instead of 50mm, and an aerodynamic, Spyder-style exterior mirror. But no GT engine lid just yet…

Also fitted was a popular period accessory: the Derrington wood-rimmed steering wheel from English tuning company VW Derrington.

The engine and gearbox were rebuilt and life was good. And so it continued until the late 1990s, when fourth owner Warwick Miller reacquired the car he’d enjoyed so much threeand-a-half decades earlier.

He kept it until 2007, after which it had one more Australian owner until its departure for UK in 2011. The new owner decided it should

again be Ruby Red, and so began what became a total restoration, including – finally! – the fitment of an aluminium, extra-louvred GT engine lid. The restoration was carried out

by British specialist Sportwagen, with further work by specialist Maxted-Page and Mick Pacey’s own company, Export56.

Such is the standard of the work that the Speedster won three awards at the Salon Privé Porsche 70th Anniversary concours: Best Open-Top Car, Best Engine and the Duke of Marlborough’s Best in Show.

‘Simple though a 356 might look,’ observes Mick, ‘it’s hard to get the body right. You have to start by cutting off the whole front section from the A-pillar forward, and likewise the rear section.’ He explains how it has to be built back up with any new metal as required, replicating the original and outwardly undetectable join across the front ‘clip’ a third of the way back over the wheelarch. And you have to get the panel gaps exactly right because the bonnet’s fit has no adjustment.

‘It was a £140,000 restoration,’ he adds, ‘but any 356 will cost the same money to restore regardless of how valuable it is. Were they this good when they were new? People

say they weren’t, but I was looking at an early Pre-A 356 from California that had covered just 40,000 miles and had never been apart.

Its panel gaps were brilliant. They actually were good when they left the factory. It’s what happens afterwards that’s the problem.’

SPEEDING – NOT illegally, just enjoyably – back to the Speedster’s base, I’m clocking all the ways in which this car is so unlike any other 356 of my experience. It boils down to the Speedster’s simplicity and Spartan-ness, achieved not through cheapness but through the absence of stuff. The dashboard lacks a glovebox and an ashtray, and its instruments are hooded in a racy cowl. There are no side windows, unless you fit the slim sidescreens with their slit-like windows. The seats, leather and corduroy over a wooden frame, are pure racecar. Simple, but so, so cool.

It’s ironic, though, that the 356 body type that once cost the least is now worth the most, but after my experience in the Speedster today I can confirm that in the case of the 356, less really is more. End THANKS TO Export56 (www.export56.com).

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#10 Porsche 356

FROM MODEST BEGINNINGS How Porsche turned a lowly VW engine into a technically brilliant race-winner Words John Simister

A CLASSIC-ERA Porsche flat-four is nothing more than a tuned-up Volkswagen Beetle engine. Say that at a gathering of the Porsche faithful and brace yourself for the onslaught…

So, what is the truth?

In the beginning, the engine was exactly that, with the tuning consisting of twin carburettors and a higher compression ratio.

But then in 1948, a year into production, Porsche designed its own cylinder heads with inclined valves and better breathing. The engine’s capacity was reduced from the Beetle’s 1131cc to 1086cc, too, to suit the under1100cc motorsport class.

From that point, the Porsche flatfour kept on diverging from its origins and followed its own path. In 1951 it grew to 1286cc via new, aluminium cylinder barrels featuring chrome-plated bores in place of castiron ones. A year later buyers had the new option of a 1488cc motor with a longer-stroke crankshaft, and if you wanted to go racing you could have it with a Hirth roller-bearing crankshaft and a racier camshaft. That camshaft was the work of Dr Ernst Fuhrmann, who later made more radical changes to the flat-four’s architecture. A 1290cc version for racing appeared, too.

The Beetle roots were fading, and after November 1954’s thorough re-design of the whole engine range, only the basic layout remained. All the castings were strengthened, and the crankcase consisted of three rather than two pieces: the main part was still split along the crankshaft axis, but an extra section supported a central pedestal for the fan and dynamo instead of that pedestal being part of the right-hand crankcase casting. And so the whole engine was now unique to Porsche.

Engine sizes were then 1286 and 1582cc, with one exception – the one you have just read about in the previous pages. This was

‘After 1954’s thorough re-design,the whole engine was unique to Porsche’ Fuhrmann’s four-camshaft Carrera engine, at 1498cc just 10cc bigger than the earlier 1488cc unit – but with a bore 5mm broader at 85mm and a stroke 8mm shorter at 66mm, it was very oversquare.

This engine, designated 547 and launched in 1955, was an entirely new unit with dry-sump lubrication and, of course, those four overhead

camshafts in place of a Beetle-style single camshaft and pushrods.

The twin-cams-per-bank layout allowed efficient hemispherical combustion chambers, but the new design was fraught with complexity. Horizontal transverse shafts took drive, via bevel gears, from the crankshaft to the bottom (exhaust) camshafts, and thence via vertical shafts and more bevels to the upper (inlet) camshafts. That’s an awful lot of gears to machine and laboriously set up.

But it worked, beautifully.

In 1958 the bore grew to 87.5mm for a 1588cc capacity; the crankshaft changed from roller bearings to plain shells; and the twin distributors, one on each inlet camshaft, gave way to a single crankshaft-driven distributor as in the pushrod engines. Then, in 1962, the engine grew again to 1966cc (92mm bore, 74mm stroke). This iteration, tuned to 180bhp, went on to power the 904 – the racing car that represents the pinnacle of Porsche’s classic flat-four era. And then Porsche had the 911’s flat-six, and the four-cam flat-four’s race was run.

The regular, 1582cc flat-four carried on in the 912 (launched two years after the flat-six 911) until 1969. Porsche’s flat-four story then continued with the mid-engined VW-Porsche 914, the humblest version of which was powered by the 1.7-litre (later 1.8) Volkswagen flat-four that had originally been fitted to the VW 411. A 2.0-litre, longer-stroke, fuelinjected version arrived in 1973, and this was also used in the US-only 912E that was available briefly from 1976.

And that was the end of Porsche’s flat-four line until 2016, when new turbocharged units of 2.0 and 2.5 litres brought improved fuel efficiency – and a sound that was nostalgiainducing to some and plain odd to others – to the Cayman and the Boxster.

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9

FERRARI DINO 246 GT Not badged as a Ferrari by the factory, but as magical a sports car as Enzo & Co ever created. The ‘first draft’, the 206 GT, is a fabulous thing, too, but much rarer, pricier, and, as you’ll read, a little less practical.

DOWNSIZING In the mid-1960s, Ferrari cooked up something unexpected: the Dino GT, a smaller, lighter road car with half the traditional number of cylinders.

It turned out to be one of the company’s greatest achievements Words Andrew Frankel Photography Tim Andrew

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E

ven Ferrari, which in my view has made more beautiful cars than any other manufacturer, very rarely gets everything right. More than half a century has passed since the Dino 206 GT and Dino 246 GT were launched, and they remain the only strictly street Ferraris not to be saddled with a single imperfect angle.

We won’t dwell on whether a Dino is actually a Ferrari or not. It was expedient for Enzo to put some conceptual fresh air between his new baby and his V12 titans, but it was a marketing ruse. Of course the Dinos were Ferraris, and indeed their influence is still seen in the ‘junior’ supercars made in Maranello today.

Our goal for this story, to drive and compare the two unimpeachably pretty Dino GTs, was complicated by the fact that just 153 examples of the 206 were built. Getting hold of one in running order is hard even if you expand your trawl to Europe, where we searched for some time – before finding one under our noses.

When I arrived at Ferrari specialist Barkaways in Kent to see the car, I thought I knew how the 206 differed from the 246 it begat. Aluminium body instead of steel; 2-litre aluminium engine block with steel liners instead of 2.4 litres of cast iron; exposed filler cap; wheel spinners instead of nuts. Turns out I knew almost nothing at all.

Today, when a manufacturer decides that a car needs a mid-life update, the brief is always the same: make it appear as different as you can while changing as little as possible. That’s why light clusters, grilles, bumpers are always being redesigned. They can dramatically alter a car’s appearance, and at a fraction of the cost of retooling for bare-metal changes.

Back in the late 1960s, Ferrari took the exact opposite approach. When the time came to turn 206 into 246, the brief appears to have been: see how much you can change without anyone actually noticing. The differences are so multitudinous that we’ve made a list (see overleaf) so as not to delay us unduly here.

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#9 Ferrari Dino 246 GT

‘The first sign of a Dino road car came in early 1965 and, as ever with Ferrari, behind it lay a racing agenda’

Left and opposite 246 GT engine, a development of the V6 design that brought Ferrari racing success, including in Formula 1; the silver car is the 246 GT, the red one the earlier 206 GT. The models are easy enough to tell apart at a glance – when you know what to look for…

But just for a start, did you know that the cars are completely different sizes and that not a single panel from one could be fitted to the other? The 206 is shorter, particularly in the wheelbase, and lower, too.

Although it was the first road-going Dino, the 206 wasn’t the first car to bear the name of Enzo’s first son, who suffered from muscular dystrophy and died in 1956 aged just 24.

Before his death, Dino and Vittorio Jano had been discussing plans for a new Formula 2 engine, and the unit that resulted was adapted for many racing cars – none more famous than the 246 Dino in which Mike Hawthorn won the 1958 F1 Drivers’ World Championship.

It looked fairly conventional with its four overhead camshafts and heads containing just two valves per cylinder, but could be told apart from other Ferrari V6s of the era by the 65-degree angle between its two banks of cylinders. Apparently this was Jano trying to ensure sufficient space within the vee for decent-sized carburettors, and as a result the crankpins had to be shifted by five degrees to ensure even firing impulses.

The first sign of a Dino road car came in early 1965 and, as ever with Ferrari, behind it all lay a racing agenda. The engine was needed to satisfy another new set of F2 rules – rules that also mandated the engine be based on a production motor. At least 500 units needed to be built for a design to qualify. Ferrari couldn’t manufacture anywhere near that many, but Fiat certainly could, and it agreed to create a sports car called the Fiat Dino and to use the new engine for that. One problem solved. The next was that Porsche was enjoying conspicuous commercial success with a new model called the 911, and Enzo wanted a piece of the action.

He now had a production road-car engine, but he needed a car to wrap around it.

The first concept was produced by Pininfarina in time for the 1965 Paris Motor Show, and bore the hallmarks of the design we love to this day – the voluptuous shape, the flying buttresses, the curved rear screen and the air intakes carved into the doors. The following year, the Dino Berlinetta GT concept shown at the Turin Motor Show captured in all but fine detail the look the Dino was to adopt,

so when the production 206 GT was revealed in Turin in 1967, the biggest change was beneath the skin: the engine had been rotated through 90 degrees and was now mounted transversely behind the driver, like the V12 in the Lamborghini Miura. It made the engine horribly difficult to work on but centralised its mass and, just as importantly, provided space for a surprisingly large boot.

It would be a flight of fancy to say that Dino Ferrari designed the car’s engine, but it does have its origins in the V6 developed by Jano after his conversations with the young man. There’s no mistaking its racing roots, either, thanks to the immensely oversquare dimensions. With an 86mm bore and a stroke of just 57mm, it’s no wonder it required 8000rpm on the dial before it would deliver peak power. Exactly how much power that was remains a matter of dispute: the same engine in the Fiat Dino was claimed to make 160bhp, a stunning output for a 2.0-litre motor back then, but by the time it got into Ferrari’s Dino it had gained an extra 20bhp… at least on paper.

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KEY DIFFERENCES Note that some early 246 GTs share features of the 206 GT. Also, as a point of interest, while no 206 GT or 246 GT left the factory with Ferrari badges, it is not entirely wrong for Dinos to wear them. UK Ferrari importer Maranello Concessionaires often added both a Ferrari logo above the number plate and a Prancing Horse badge to one side.

.

206 GT (as above in red)

246 GT (as above in silver)

Length Width Height Wheelbase Weight Engine Bore x stroke Carburettors Compression ratio Engine power Engine torque Specific output Power to weight ratio Body construction Engine construction

4150mm 1700mm 1115mm 2280mm 1140kg 1987cc 86mm x 57mm 3 x Weber twin-choke DCN14 9.3:1 180bhp at 8000rpm 137lb ft at 6500rpm 90.6bhp per litre 160bhp per ton All aluminium All aluminium

4235mm 1702mm 1143mm 2340mm 1186kg 2418cc 92.5mm x 60mm 3 x Weber twin-choke DCNF 9.0:1 195bhp at 7600rpm 166lb ft at 5500rpm 80.6bhp per litre 167bhp per ton Steel, with aluminium bonnet Cast iron block, aluminium heads

Other differences

Exposed fuel filler Wheel spinners* Six-slat engine cover Pea-shooter exhausts Red line at 8000rpm Full-length glovebox Wooden steering wheel rim Magnesium cam covers Exterior boot lock Floor-mounted ventilation controls Single oil filler Small airbox Numberplate light in bumpers** Door lock in side intake Separate handbrake caliper Reversing lights below bumpers

Concealed fuel filler Wheel nuts (after Series 1) Seven-slat engine cover Standard exhausts Red line at 7800rpm Reduced-width glovebox Leather steering wheel rim Aluminium cam covers Interior boot lock Dash-mounted ventilation controls Twin oil fillers Standard airbox Numberplate light in boot Door lock below side intake Integrated handbrake caliper Reversing lights below numberplate

*also seen in Series 1 246s **also seen in Series 1 and 2 246s

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#9 Ferrari Dino 246 GT

Of course, the problem with small, shortstroke engines is that they lack torque and the 206 could summon no more than 137lb ft of it, way up at 6500rpm, necessitating that power ran to the rear wheels via a five-speed gearbox filled with ratios as short as they were close.

It was all kept under control by a limited-slip differential, double unequal-length wishbones at each corner and vented disc brakes.

The issue with the 206 was that it just wasn’t that quick, even for a car peculiarly marketed as ‘almost’ a Ferrari. In theory it would keep up with a standard 2.0-litre 911; I have to say I doubt it. Anyhow, the Porsche was not going to stand still, and Enzo realised that for the Dino to be a real success it needed to be faster on the road and cheaper to build – which is where the 246 GT came in. By enlarging the engine from 1987cc to 2418cc (though maintaining a very high bore/stroke ratio), Ferrari was not only able to up the power to a claimed 195bhp, but also to summon 166lb ft of torque fully 1000rpm lower down the rev-range.

Curiously, the 246 appears to have been only a little heavier than the 206 despite being physically larger, clad almost entirely in steel (the bonnet is aluminium), and fitted with a

cast-iron engine block. Published weights for these cars vary greatly, but the most reliable I’ve seen suggest a 206 tips the scales at a not very sylph-like 1140kg, with the 246 just 46kg heavier. How can that be? I suspect the answer lies mainly in the massive steel spaceframe that, in design if not in precise dimensions, is common to both cars. Enzo’s cars may not have had the greatest quality control, and they weren’t made from the highest-quality steel, but he certainly made them strong.

I TAKE THE silver 246 GT first. While I’ve never sat in a 206, I know its younger sibling well. Ian Barkaway, the founder of Barkaways, has provided an early 1970 model for the test.

It’s standard in every way except for the set of high-compression pistons he encourages owners to fit come rebuild time. ‘Everything else – cams, valves, carbs – is to original spec,’ he says, ‘but the pistons just give it a bit of extra sharpness.’

Ignore the choke and prime the three Weber 40 DCNF carbs with a few pumps of throttle.

Then churn the starter with just the lightest pressure on the pedal and the engine growls into life. The only other V6 I’ve experienced

‘The 246 GT, alive, on its toes, never stops talking to you; only an F40 is more communicative than this’

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that’s as melodic as this was fitted to the original Honda NSX, but the Dino’s voice is richer, more layered, more interesting, if not quite so thrilling near the red line. I’d rather listen to it than any V8 engine Ferrari has made to date, and I prefer it to some of the V12s, too.

The spindly steel gearlever slots away and back, into first. The clutch is ridiculously heavy given how little work it must do, but it takes up the power smoothly and soon we are rolling.

Barkaway has a secret gearbox mod that means you no longer have to avoid second gear when the oil is cold, though I’ve always enjoyed that particular Ferrari ritual.

We cruise at first, because you must take in the sights. I love it all – the rising curve of the wings, the grouping of the eight beautiful Veglia dials and the unimprovable, perforated Momo wheel. Even the stuff I should hate, like the stupidly offset pedals and a driving position that favours long arms but short legs, all seems to add to the character of the car. The 911 achieved cult status as much for the things it did wrong as for those it did right, and the Dino’s charm emanates from the same place.

The temperature needles start to heave themselves off their stops on this cold December day, warmth is percolating through the Koni dampers and I’m struck all over again by something I always forget: compared with modern supercars, a well set-up 246 rides like a limousine. These days so much secondary buzz

is transmitted by tyres with liquorice sidewalls, but in the Dino, on its tall 205/70 VR14 Michelin XWX rubber, it’s all damped out, leaving just pure feedback to reach your fingers.

And because no-one ever thought a Nürburgring lap time relevant in a road car, the Dino is gently suspended on what would be considered comically soft springs today – yet it never feels sloppy.

Time to wind it up a little. Second gear, 3000rpm on the clock and let it go. The great surprise is that it doesn’t feel slow at all. There’s a solid surge right away, the growl becomes a snarl and you start thinking at once about how many revs you’ll give yourself before pulling into third. I can remember as a kid gazing through the side window of a 246 at the tachometer and barely being able to believe that it would rev to 7800rpm. We won’t be going there today, but close enough to feel the car in full flight.

You find yourself wanting to accelerate forever, simply to listen a little longer to that engine under full load. I wonder whether it would be more accurate to describe it as ‘addictively exquisite’ or ‘exquisitely addictive’ and decide on the latter. It is a sound of which no enthusiast could ever tire.

Sooner or later, however, you need to slow and climb back down through the gears. The brake pedal is a little mushy on this car, making heel-and-toeing difficult, but there’s no snatch

in the driveline, and the gearshift, while quite slow and heavy, is deliciously clean. There are corners ahead, and memories of 246 tests past come flooding back. The steering, I know, will weight up almost immediately, become flooded with feel long before the suspension is fully loaded, and guide the nose into the apex with unwavering accuracy. Even by Ferrari standards, the experience of taking a 246 through a set of curves is special. The car, alive, on its toes, ready to change direction with zero notice, never stops talking to you; only an F40 is more communicative than this.

I know what a 246 does on the limit, too: it will choose to understeer a little, but this can be cancelled by the merest lift of the foot or transformed into equally gentle oversteer by the sudden reapplication of power. Unlike the other Ferraris of its era, the Dino is even stronger in the corners than down the straights.

WHAT, THEN, will the lighter, smaller and presumably more nimble 206 be like in comparison? Well, I’ll have to get into the thing first. Unlike the 246, it has a large woodrimmed wheel and, as with all 206s, it’s on the left-hand side of the car. I just manage to thread my legs around it, only to discover I can barely select first gear. Headroom is somewhat tight, too. But I’m in, and not about to be deterred.

I don’t know why, but while I knew it would be slower, I still expected the 206 to offer a

Opposite and right That big, wood-rimmed wheel is easy on the eyes but it does make getting into the little 206 GT an ordeal for taller drivers; interior of the later 246 GT is helpfully roomier.

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#9 Ferrari Dino 246 GT

Needs extending slightly to make the tilt work, please.

‘It’s the finest production road car with fewer than 12 cylinders that Ferrari has ever built’ sharper, more aggressive driving experience.

I’d suppose I’d clocked the 8000rpm redline, seen the four pea-shooter exhausts and imagined the all-alloy engine to be even closer to a race motor. Not so. I wouldn’t say it sounds completely different to the 246, but its voice is smaller, sweeter.

It feels a little odd at first, largely because what you notice are all the differences to the 246 – the still shorter gearing, the lighter steering and, most of all, the lack of power.

Even with the high-compression pistons, while the engine is smooth and uncomplaining at low revs, there’s very little shove.

Things start to happen from 4000rpm (just halfway to the red-line, remember), and while I venture a little higher, I promised the owner I’d not stress his newly rebuilt motor. Were you to wang it around to 8000rpm, I suspect you’d see

a different side to the car. The gears are close enough to keep the engine on the boil and I’d not worry about damaging it at all. Indeed, all the folklore says you’re much more likely to harm a Dino engine – 206 or 246 – by treating it gently and never letting hot, thin oil properly circulate the top of the motor.

It feels a bit more highly strung than the 246, less comfortable and slightly more antiquated to drive despite the fact that the two are separated by just a couple of years. But then Enzo was trying something completely new with the Dino, which wasn’t just his first midengined road car, but also the first of an entirely new kind of Ferrari, so it’s no wonder the learning curve was steep at the start.

The 206, though, is also the purer of the two cars, with its ally body and block, slightly lighter weight, more compact dimensions and

an engine even more keen to scream. If you want the clearest image of Enzo’s vision of a road car worthy of his son’s name, the 206 is the one I’d advise you to drive – if you can ever find one, that is.

Otherwise, the 246 is better in every way – quicker yet more practical, more entertaining yet more comfortable. It’s the finest production road car with fewer than 12 cylinders that Ferrari has ever built. And we’ll go further: to be on board, looking at the view over the bonnet, feeling the steering and hearing that V6 howling its song, is one of the greatest pleasures ever afforded a motoring enthusiast.

THANKS TO Barkaways (barkaways.com); to the owners of the cars; and to Attilio Romano of Bell Sport & Classic (bellsportandclassic.co.uk), where the 246 GT engine was photographed.

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8

M A Z D A M X- 5 A pedestrian performer on paper, sure, but the wonderfully unpretentious MX-5 was engineered to be maximally entertaining on speed-restricted public roads, making it by far the easiest of all sports cars to recommend.

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THE IMITATION GAME The Mazda MX-5 was created in the image of classic 1960s roadsters.

How close did it come to capturing their magic, and is it a classic in its own right?

Words Dan Trent Photography James Lipman

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#8 Mazda MX-5

M

ore than three decades have passed since Mazda unveiled the MX-5 at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show, meaning the car that was conceived as an homage to classic roadsters is now old enough to be called a classic itself – but does it deserve to be? Or is it, as the MX-5’s detractors would have it, just an underpowered, overhyped pastiche, confirming the prejudice that Japanese car manufacturers are better at mimicry than original thought?

To settle the matter, we’ve come to the spiritual home of the MX-5: Mazda’s R&D centre in Irvine, California, about an hour outside Los Angeles. If one of LA’s film producers cared to adapt the MX-5 story into a movie, they’d have plenty of material to work with. A key moment would be the 1979 meeting between then-journalist Bob Hall and Mazda R&D boss Kenichi Yamamoto, at which Hall pitched his idea for a retro roadster with a rough sketch on a chalkboard.

You’d have scenes showing the underdog heroes battling the in-house establishment at a Hiroshima design studio; and culture clashes between the Californian team and their Japanese bosses. There would be an anxiety-provoking sequence in which the lid is nearly blown off the project when some Road & Track road-testers cross paths with a secret prototype. And the movie would, of course, end at the ’89 Chicago Auto Show, with crowds cheering the unveiling of the MX-5.

We’re in danger of getting sidetracked here, so we’ll let the Hollywood guys flesh out the script while we take a look at the MX-5 we’ll be driving today: a first-generation (or NA-series) car with its own story to tell.

Back in ’89, when visitors to the Chicago show walked by the Mazda stand, they saw four examples of the marque’s new baby, known in the US as the Miata. There was an attention-grabbing, yellow ‘Club Racer’ concept with flared arches and a loud exhaust, and then there were three standard, US-market cars – one of which Mazda has kindly made available to us. Yep, we’ve got the keys to one of the most important Mazdas ever built.

Clockwise from above Our feature car is one of those that appeared on the Mazda stand at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show, where the MX-5 was revealed to the world.

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It’s parked in the bowels of the R&D centre, sharing garage space with everything from prototypes (including that lairy yellow Club Racer) to a 787B and a Wankelengined REPU truck. As we look around, we’re joined by Mazda’s US design director, Ken Saward, taking a break from his desk. It turns out he’ll be leaving the company soon, after three decades, to join Singer, but for now he’s still a Mazda man and he’s only too happy to talk MX-5s with us.

‘I started my career at Chrysler in 1987, and in 1989 a couple of designer buddies and I went to the Chicago show.

I saw this,’ he says, pointing at the car we’ll be driving, ‘and fell in love with it. As soon as I got back to Michigan I put a deposit down on one, and I still have that car.

‘At the time, the number-one-selling convertible in the US was the LeBaron and I got a lot of crap for buying a Miata.

There was this kind of domestic arrogance, you know – they thought the LeBaron was it and they would say look how cheap your car is, the door panels are made of cardboard, it’s too small. I said to them, guys, you don’t understand, it’s rear-wheel drive, it’s lightweight, it’s a real sports car!’

Just a year later, in 1990, Saward was temporarily assigned

to Chrysler’s California office, which put him near enough to Mazda’s Irvine base to look up Tom Matano, one of the men who designed the MX-5. The fact that Saward had put his own money down for an MX-5 did him no harm, and Matano soon offered him a job.

Matano and the aforementioned Bob Hall are regularly credited as the visionaries behind the MX-5, but the cast of characters involved in creating the car was a lot larger, and included senior Mazda staff from Hiroshima as well as designers, engineers and project managers from across the US and Europe. What all these people had in common was an appreciation for small, simple, rear-wheel-drive roadsters like those built by British and Italian marques throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

Read up on MX-5 history and you’ll find that Hall learned to drive in an Austin-Healey 100. Designer Mark Jordan (son of GM legend Chuck Jordan) recalls Hall ‘aggressively educating’ him about British roadsters as the pair worked on concept sketches! John Shute, boss of British firm IAD (which built the early test mules for the Irvine team), was an MG fanatic with a collection of over two dozen cars.

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#8 Mazda MX-5

Layout engineer Norman Garrett described the Irvine team as ‘a bunch of hot-rodders who owned 76 different sports cars between them, ranging from Frogeye Sprites to Lamborghini Countachs’. And period photos in the R&D centre include lots of shots of senior engineers razzing about in Fiat Spiders and the like for ‘benchmarking purposes’.

That the team behind the MX-5 was so passionate about sports cars comes as no great surprise. Nor is it surprising that a bunch of petrolheads found one another in Southern California, where you can have the top down year-round, and where informal Sunday morning car meetings bring out everything from Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwings to Chevelle gassers. It’s possible that the MX-5 couldn’t have been dreamt up anywhere else.

THERE’S NO DOUBTING, then, that MX-5 was born of a real love of classic cars. But does it feel like the real thing?

The interior is neatly designed, with carefully integrated retro flourishes. The round vents and dials are old-school without being old-fashioned, the gearlever a handspan away from the wheel, immediately putting you in the right frame of mind – assuming you fit, of course. Those much over 6ft or a healthy fighting weight are going to struggle.

‘People say it’s a girl’s car but it’s really not,’ says Saward.

‘It had this feminine connotation but that’s just because you’d never see big linebackers driving it. They probably wanted to, but they couldn’t fit in.’

American-spec airbag steering wheel aside, the car looks as timeless inside as it does out. But the hard plastics are pure ’90s Japanese, making the interior feel a tad cheap.

But then, the car was cheap, starting at $13,800 in the US. In the UK its £14,000 price tag made it a couple of grand more than the hot-hatch Golf GTI. Remember, though, the investment in engineering that the car represented: the MX-5 employed a dedicated platform while the likes of the GTI were spun-off from mainstream models built in their millions. Mazda achieved that price point with a new design based on its own unitary body at a time when Lotus would charge you several grand more for a front-drive, GRP-onbackbone M100 Elan.

Mazda would like you to believe that members of the MX-5 development team spent all their time on the Pacific Coast Highway and canyon roads, but the reality is that the R&D centre is separated from any picturesque ribbon of tarmac by a monotonous, multi-lane grid with more stoplight-controlled intersections than inspirational twists and turns. There’s not a whole lot of driving pleasure to be had at the wheel of a low-powered roadster when all you’re doing is repetitive quarter-mile squirts between red lights.

Admittedly, the car’s 1.6-litre four-cylinder, borrowed from the Mazda 323, is a delightful engine. It has a zingy character – and the stubby, flickable little shifter is one of several pleasing touchy-feely details informed by the classics that Bob Hall so relished driving. But with a mere 113bhp at its disposal the MX-5 can’t keep pace with even the laziest Yank V8, and when surrounded by pick-ups and SUVs and vans and lorries the Mazda feels scarily small and vulnerable.

From top Talking with Ken Saward at Mazda’s R&D facility; an hour’s drive away, writer Dan finds the sort of winding roads that show the MX-5 at its best.

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1989 Mazda MX-5 / Miata (NA) Engine 1597cc DOHC four-cylinder, fuel injection Power 113bhp @ 6500rpm Torque 99lb ft @ 5500rpm Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion, hydraulically assisted Suspension Front and rear: unequal-length double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers, antiroll bar Brakes Discs Weight 955kg Top speed 121mph 0-62mph 8.8sec

‘SURROUNDED

BY PICK-UPS AND SUVS AND LORRIES, THE MAZDA FEELS SCARILY SMALL AND VULNERABLE’

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#8 Mazda MX-5

‘YOU CAN DRIVE THE MX-5 AS HARD AS IT WILL GO WITHOUT FEELING YOUR LICENCE IS IN PERIL’ Good job the immaculate Mariner Blue paintwork pops so vibrantly in the California sunshine, otherwise you’d worry about being driven over by an absent-minded soccer mom.

The MX-5’s finely honed suspension and steering are patently wasted around here, as they would be in any number of other urban and suburban settings – which makes it all the more impressive that Hall and his team managed to convince Mazda that dynamic perfection was a goal worth pursuing.

When the depressing sprawl finally ends, it does so suddenly, as though you’ve reached the edge of a film set.

Now twisting roads are unfurling into the hills, and here a car in the tradition of classic roadsters makes complete sense. The knuckle-dragging Camaro driver who kicked sand in your face in the stoplight drag races wouldn’t see which way you went out here.

The things that matter now are not bhp ratings and zeroto-60 times, but kerbweight and revs. You need 5500rpm on the dial before you get all your torque, and even then only 99lb ft of it. There was some debate on the development team as to whether they’d go for the torquey, low-down character of the more stoic British roadsters or the revhappy nature of the twin-cam Lotus Elan and various

Italians. Thankfully they went with the latter, and to make any meaningful progress in an MX-5 you’ve got to be greedy with the throttle and happy spending most of your time near the redline.

Gearing is such that the upper reaches of third and fourth are perfect on twisty roads like this. You can honestly say you’re driving the car flat-out, but the balance of the chassis and the quality of the set-up mean you can carry flat-out speed – and some crazy angles of lean – without so much as a chirrup from the skinny 185-section tyres. And while the cornering speeds are high enough to embarrass much more powerful machines, they won’t trouble a cop’s speed gun.

With the best will in the world and the heaviest right foot, the totally legit 50mph that just put a huge grin on your face through the last corner isn’t going to be doubled before the next one. And so you can feel like you’re driving the Mazda as hard as it will go without also feeling antisocial, or as though your licence is in peril. There aren’t many sports cars you can say that of, not from any era.

A classic, then? For the MX-5’s fourth generation, Mazda went back to the beginning, the ND-series car reprising the NA in everything from dimensions to power-to-weight ratio. That tells you all you need to know.

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INSIDE MAN Mazda designer Tsutomu ‘Tom’ Matano recalls the creation of the MX-5 Words Dan Trent

AS YOU’VE READ, the development of the MX-5 was a team effort, but designer Tom Matano played a pivotal role in creating the car.

Recruited by Bob Hall, Matano joined the team in 1983 and provided the creative spark that was needed. He recalls the atmosphere at Mazda’s California R&D centre as the MX-5 or ‘Light Weight Sports’ project took shape.

‘When I joined there were just seven or eight of us in one regular office space,’ he says. ‘There was only one wall large enough to do 1:1 drawings, so I started fixing some paper up using a staple gun and the president walked into our office to find out who was banging the wall behind his desk!’ This wasn’t the only time Matano would be forced to improvise. ‘We got funding for a full-size presentation model,’ he remembers. ‘I had to occupy a conference room for a month because it was the only table big enough for full-size drawings.’

He confirms what we’ve heard from others about the development team: that they were all genuinely sports-car-crazy. ‘Our team lived with small, two-seater convertibles, and we had

car talk in the office every day. We were all frustrated that the cars we wanted were either too expensive or too old to be practical. We wanted the spirit of the 1960s to be an integral part of the LWS and, though it wasn’t based on any one car, we bought a Lotus Elan, a Triumph Spitfire and such to demonstrate that ’60s spirit to headquarters. I even made one designer in our studio commute to the office with the top down for a year!’

For all the team’s enthusiasm, the Light Weight Sports was never even close to being a dead cert. ‘If Mr Kenichi Yamamoto [then the head of R&D, later president of Mazda] hadn’t implemented the concept of kansei engineering [‘emotional engineering’], this car couldn’t have happened,’ reflects Matano.

‘If Bob Hall hadn’t met Mr Yamamoto, this car couldn’t have happened. If I hadn’t met Bob at the LA Auto Expo, I wouldn’t have been called upon by him to join the Mazda studio in Irvine ten years later. If we had waited another year to present the LWS, we’d have missed our opportunity.’ Thankfully the stars aligned.

‘It was Bob and Norman Garrett who did the car’s hardware,’ he continues. ‘I did more on the psychology side. For instance, I decided the diameter of the steering wheel rim should give the same feel as holding the shift knob; that the power should build in a linear way with the movement of the revcounter; that the car should inspire you to pick a more challenging route on the commute and make you want to say goodnight to it before going to bed.

I wanted the car to be one that you might someday restore and pass on to your child.

‘All those things were achieved with the pre-production prototype. Driving it was the proudest moment for me.’

When production began, Matano made sure he was near the front of the line to receive a car.

‘I had a Mariner Blue Miata I paid sticker for in August 1989,’ he laughs. ‘But I had a secret desire to do a leather interior. I was getting grey hair, so I bought a top and leather in light grey and then waited for the right exterior colour to match. A 1996 M-Edition in Starlight Mica blue was perfect. I still drive the car today.’ End

TOM MATANO

Left Tom Matano, known by some as ‘Mr Miata’, in his own car – a Starlight Mica blue 1996 M-edition with custom grey leather and roof.

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LONG TIME NO SEE Robert Coucher first encountered this Alfa Romeo 8C in 2003, when its history was still a matter of debate. More than two decades on, the two meet again…

Photography Amy Shore

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7

A L FA ROM EO 8C 2300 The greatest sports car of the pre-war period – period.

Race-spec 8C 2300s cleaned up at Le Mans and in the Mille Miglia, and the 2300 chassis was the basis for some of the most exquisite coachbuilt road cars you’ll ever see.

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#7 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300

T

he legend of the Alfa Romeo 8C begins with an unexpected knock at the door. In 1923, a young Enzo Ferrari presents himself, unannounced, at the home of Vittorio Jano on Via San Massino in Turin. The two men do not know each other, but Enzo’s employer, Alfa Romeo, is interested in luring Jano, a talented but underappreciated engineer, away from Fiat. Despite the best efforts of Mrs Jano, who tries to shoo the stranger away, Enzo manages to make his pitch, and Jano is eventually persuaded to defect.

Over the next 14 years, Jano develops a string of impressive cars for Alfa Romeo, but none more successful than the 8C: in competition form Jano’s creation wins the 24 Hours of Le Mans four times in a row between 1931 and 1934, and wealthy motoring enthusiasts line up to buy an 8C. Around 188 examples are built, and the chassis are clothed by the leading coachbuilders of the 1930s, including Zagato, Figoni, Touring, Pinin Farina and Castagna. The cars go on to become some of the most coveted classics in the world, hailed by all for their beauty, their technical brilliance, their historical significance.

All this I knew when I bagged my first drive of an 8C, back when I was working at Classic Cars magazine. An alarming number of years have passed since then, but I still remember how light and alive that car felt,

and even now I can hear the operatic sound of its supercharged, twincam straight-eight engine. But more than anything else, I recall how I felt when I climbed out of the driver’s seat: staggered that the Alfa had actually lived up to its enormous reputation.

THAT CAR so impressed me that when we launched Octane in 2003, I was determined to include an 8C in the first issue. I got in touch with motoring author and Alfa expert Simon Moore, and we agreed that he would write a piece on chassis 2111018, an 8C 2300 Zagato Spider with an especially intriguing history.

More on that in just a moment, but fast-forward a couple of decades and I’m on the phone with classic car dealer Lukas Hüni when the conversation turns to Alfas. Lukas makes an irresistble proposal for a feature: a drive in an 8C, in France, in the company of the world’s foremost Alfa 8C restorer, Jim Stokes. And the car Lukas has in mind?

None other than chassis 2111018, back for round two!

The car’s generous owner seems just as excited about the prospect as I am. ‘Robert,’ he says, ‘I want you to drive the 8C hard! Get it hot and don’t worry about the weather conditions – it has survived half a dozen Flying Scotsman rallies, where I wore out the rear tyres each time! The car is tough and fast but watch out for the quick turn-in. Try adjusting the tyre pressures a bit along the way to quell the oversteer. Enjoy it.’

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MOTORSPORT IMAGES

Above Luigi Chinetti (closest to camera) and Raymond Sommer celebrate after winning the 1932 24 Hours of Le Mans in – we believe – the car featured here, 8C 2300 chassis 2111018.

With those words of encouragement ringing in my head, I set off for Portsmouth and the 6.30am ferry, faster than Tazio Nuvolari in a hire car.

THE TANTALISING suggestion in the aforementioned Octane story by Simon Moore was that chassis 2111018 might just be the car driven to victory by Raymond Sommer and Luigi Chinetti at Le Mans in 1932. By the time I commissioned him to write a story for Octane, Simon had already spent a great deal of time researching the stories of the various 8C 2300s for his three-volume work The Legendary 2.3. His assessment in 2003 was that 2111018 likely was the 1932 Le Mans car – but he noted that absolute proof remained elusive.

‘When I first started to look at the cars that Sommer had raced at Le Mans from 1932 to 1935, I thought he’d used the same one each year.

But differences in the bonnet and scuttle indicate that he used different cars each year and transferred certain lightweight parts from one to the next. Since the pre-war records of the Automobile Club de L’Ouest, organiser of the Le Mans 24-Hour race, have been lost,’ Simon continued, ‘it’s uncertain which car Sommer raced when in the 1930s.’

Simon is an indefatigable sleuth, though, and he continued searching for evidence to support his theory, eventually publishing his findings in the 2022 book The 8C Story Continues. ‘It’s virtually certain that this is the 1932 Le Mans winner. The probability has increased to a very high level.’

‘The tantalising suggestion was that this might just be the car driven to victory

by Sommer and Chinetti in the 1932 24 Hours of Le Mans’ 121

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#7 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300

This page, clockwise from right Robert and Jim Stokes (sporting the impressive moustache) wait to load the 8C onto the ferry at Portsmouth; across the Channel in France, exploring roads that Raymond Sommer might have driven en route to Le Mans for the 1932 24 Hours.

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1931 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Zagato Spider (specifications for standard car)

Engine 2336cc straight-eight, DOHC, Memini SI 36 carburettor, Roots supercharger Power 155bhp @ 5200rpm Torque 166lb ft @ 3500rpm Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Worm and sector Suspension Front and rear: beam axles (live rear), semielliptic leaf springs, friction dampers Brakes Rod-operated drums Weight 991kg Top speed 110mph 0-60mph 10sec

An important piece of the puzzle was unearthed at the French National Archives: a document, dated 13 October 1931, that was filed to obtain a taxable-horsepower classification for chassis 2111018, which seems to have been the first car of its type to reach Paris. The date is significant because it is just two days after the 1931 Paris Salon, at which 2111018 had presumably been snapped up by Sommer, who wrote the following in his diary.

‘I decided to buy an Alfa Romeo, which appeared to me to be the ideal sports car. It was a two-seater with a blown 2.3 engine, which had been used as the demonstration car at the Paris Salon.

‘At the weighing-in at Le Mans I had a machine that my friend Figoni had helped me to transform. It had streamline wings of which I was inordinately proud. But it was up against the official Alfa Romeo team, composed of the best drivers of the time, well-served by works cars that, having the new Monza engine, were some 15-20mph faster than mine.’

Moore thinks Sommer is exaggerating there, because an aluminiumbodied, short-chassis 8C such as 2111018 is a lot lighter than the longchassis model used by the Alfa works team at Le Mans. Any difference in performance turned out to be irrelevant, anyway. Knowing there was great rivalry between Alfa Romeo’s star drivers, Sommer let them race away at the start of the 1932 24 Hours, correctly anticipating that they might push too hard for their own good. After six hours, he found himself in the lead.

His partner for the race, Luigi Chinetti, was the more experienced driver, but when Chinetti became ill, Sommer was forced to do almost all the work. ‘The last few hours were the worst,’ he wrote. ‘I knew I was leading but, instead of heartening me, this worried me more than I can say. It seemed hardly possible that the car could hold together. But at last, the chequered flag’. Sommer had put in an heroic shift, driving 21 of the 24 hours to win in his non-works, non-Monza 8C Zagato with body mods by Figoni.

The next outing for the car was the Spa 24 Hours, where it led initially before retiring. The 8C then became just another old racing car, and it was eventually sold to Monaco, where it was rebodied with flamboyant coachwork by Brandone in 1934. It was then owned by French collector Serge Pozzoli, who stored it under the banking at Montlhéry circuit, and it wasn’t until much later that another owner – this one English – saw to it that the car was rebodied in the original Zagato style, commissioning coachbuilder Dino Cognolato to carry out the work.

AN ALFA 8C is a car that makes itself known long before it rolls into view. The engine emits a lovely bark that is accompanied by the whine of its valvegear and supercharger and the rip of the straight-through exhaust.

At the crack of dawn at the port I am expecting a covered transporter, but instead I hear that unmistakable sound as chassis 2111018, hood up, appears out of the rainy gloom, Jim Stokes behind the steering wheel.

Our plan is to take the ferry across to Caen to drive some of the French roads the car might have enjoyed in its day on the way to Le Mans.

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#7 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300

‘It now churns out 260bhp and 300lb ft of torque.

No wonder the rear tyres last less than 1000 miles!’

Jim, with bright blue eyes and an impressive RAF-style moustache, is head honcho of the Jim Stokes Workshops Group, which repairs, restores and remanufactures mechanicals for vintage Alfas. He’s recreated engines for more than one third of all the 8Cs built, allowing owners to enjoy their cars without fear of damaging the original straight-eights.

‘These Alfas are beautifully engineered and very well made, but many are still raced and, after decades, mechanical issues do occur,’ he says.

‘Their biggest weakness is conrods going through the side of the block because the little ends can break. We change them to shell bearings but still use white metal for the mains as they work best, if properly set up.

‘The engine is dry-sumped – no need for an additional oil cooler, but we fit an electric radiator cooling fan. We give the cams a little more lift, and we increase the compression ratio a bit, depending on what boost we run on our remade superchargers. Otherwise, we pay attention to the chassis set-up, machine the brake drums and ensure the shoes fit perfectly.

We can upgrade the original diffs as the factory did for the racers, and our

constant-mesh dog gearbox is a good idea, especially with more power.’

As for this particular 8C: ‘It is a superb car and we have known it for over a decade. It came to us with a twisted chassis and was just a bit tired.

So it was stripped down and gone through, then painted and retrimmed.

Sensibly, the original engine and gearbox were removed and put into storage for posterity. We then remanufactured a new engine and gearbox to what you might call our high-performance level,’ says Jim, deadpan.

Chassis 2111018 is the most powerful Alfa 8C to have emerged from the Jim Stokes Workshops. With its straight-eight built to almost 3.0 litres in capacity, the new supercharger turned up to the full 10psi, chassis and brakes optimised and a fresh dog ’box fitted, this 1000kg racer now churns out 260bhp and 300lb ft of torque. No wonder the rear tyres last less than 1000 miles!

WE DISEMBARK and as we motor into northern France I marvel at the way Jim controls the Alfa. Travelling at considerable speed and on greasy

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From far left The Zagato-style Spider body in profile – practically perfect in every way; Jim Stokes enjoying the car that he and his team rebuilt.

roads, he seems totally at ease. And now it’s my turn behind the wheel.

Must admit, I’m unusually nervous. I don’t mind driving with racers because they generally just want you to just spank it hard, no finesse required. But Jim literally handbuilds these cars, so any missed gear or mechanical ineptitude will be horribly embarrassing.

The brown leather seats are upright and comfortable. The thin-rimmed steering wheel is mounted high, and you sit with bent arms. The clutch pedal is firm and short-throw; the throttle has been relocated from its original, central position, and now sits on the right.

Sprouting from the exposed gate is the long, chromed gearlever, shifting via the usual H-pattern. I was expecting heft and resistance but it’s light across the gate and you use your fingertip to select first gear. Add judicious throttle, clutch up, bite, immediate shove, revs rise a bit and – quick! – pull that lever down carefully for second. Snick!

Surely it can’t be that easy! Things are now moving along and again it’s time to grit your teeth and, with an unsteady wrist, twist into third…

Clack. Gear-whine rises, so declutch soonish and ease the lever the long throw back into the quiet top ratio. Suddenly the car is sailing along as if propelled by a wind-filled spinnaker.

The initially sticky steering lightens and the narrow Alfa can be placed with accuracy. Into a corner, the 400mm drum brakes need a firm prod and downshifting requires double-declutching and a blip to speed up the gears, but I find third with a clean click as the chassis darts into the turn

with alacrity. After the apex, the 260bhp on tap (same as a Porsche 964 RS of the ’90s!) has to be deftly applied so as to avoid disappearing into a roadside Calvados orchard. The Roots-style supercharger delivers the grunt instantly but progressively, power building creamily all the way to the high 5000rpm limit.

The best high-performance motor cars, no matter what age, have a tautness that ordinary vehicles just don’t possess. This Alfa reacts instantly to any input. The engine lunges at the smallest squeeze of the throttle; the gearbox is sweet and quick; the chassis is like a wound spring, flexing as it is supposed to, to allow the cart-sprung axles to follow undulations.

Certainly the drum brakes, being old tech, demand that you read the road ahead, but, with a clean line, in every fast corner you experience a remarkable sensation of power overcoming mechanical grip in a controlled flow of lateral thrust.

You have to remain disciplined not to spin-up the rear wheels with all that torque, especially out of corners – but in a straight line, why the heck not? After all, I was ordered to enjoy myself, and who knows how many decades I might have to wait to meet this magnificent old Alfa Romeo for a third time.

THANKS TO Lukas Hüni (lukashuniag.ch); to the owner of the car; to Jim Stokes (jswl.co.uk); and to Simon Moore for his research on the 8C (see his book, ‘The Legendary 2.3’, published by Parkside Publications).

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HERO WORSHIP Racer Dario Franchitti drives the Lotus Elan formerly used by his idol, F1 Champion Jim Clark, and learns to appreciate the car’s clever design Words Mark Dixon and James Page Photography Tom Shaxson and Tim Scott

6

LOTUS ELAN The successor to the Elite (the first production car with a glassfibre monocoque) was a dream to drive. Offers better steering than the McLaren F1, and that’s not us exaggerating for effect – it’s the opinion of the man who created the F1, Gordon Murray.

HARD TO BELIEVE, isn’t it, that the Elan’s looks were not universally admired to begin with. ‘A functional-looking car rather than an aesthetically stimulating one,’ sniffed Car in 1966. The never-knowingly-understated LJK Setright wrote in Motoring Life that ‘it was a little like a centaur – splendid below the waist but rather off-putting above’. This was actually a qualification to his earlier statement that the Elan was ‘aesthetically vile but commercially viable’. (Feel free to insert your own mental shocked-face emoji here.)

The problem was that the Elan was replacing the Elite – a stunningly pretty car that also handled better than anything else you could buy when it was launched in 1957. It featured a glassfibre monocoque and Colin Chapman’s own design of independent suspension, plus disc brakes all round and a lightweight engine that gave 75bhp from just 1216cc.

The shape, penned by City accountant Peter KirwanTaylor and ex-Ford stylist John Frayling, was beautifully clean, but the Elite’s looks were achieved at the expense of practicality for the user, and the monocoque was extremely costly to manufacture – hence Setright’s comment about the Elan’s saving grace being its commercial viability.

According to that Car article, the Elan was intended to be a more civilised but still cheap-to-make, Ford-engined replacement for the Lotus Seven. But then Lotus founder Chapman and his team realised they could simplify the Elite construction process and take their new project upmarket, while retaining the Ford motive power.

That was the real brilliance of the Elan: it offered Elite-like dynamics, but in a package that was easier to live with and, crucially, an awful lot cheaper to produce.

The biggest single difference between Elite and Elan was that the newer car had a much simpler glassfibre body, which fitted like a saddle over a separate steel ‘backbone’ chassis.

Other cost-driven points of difference were that the Elan’s steering rack was a Triumph Spitfire part rather than a bespoke one, and the independent suspension was simplified – particularly at the back, where wide A-frames located the rear wheels. (On the Elite the driveshafts had been used for this job.) There were Rotoflex rubber couplings to accommodate rise-and-fall movement between the chassismounted diff and the driveshafts.

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#6 Lotus Elan

Roger Putnam, who joined Lotus in 1965 and became head of sales and marketing, had a Series 1 Elan and remembers it well. ‘It was a pretty typical Lotus – probably a bit too basic. Colin [Chapman] had this obsession about stripping everything out. Mine was a 1963 car that had been taken back into stock in part-exchange.

‘I was driving it near the factory one day when I hit a patch of black ice and spun off into a field. The car ended up on its roof but I was thrown clear and, amazingly, landed on my feet! Just then Colin came along in his Ford Galaxie. He saw me in the field and shouted: “Is that a company car?”

“No sir,” I shouted back, “It’s my own.” “F*cking good job,” replied Colin, and he drove off!

‘Graham Hill was given an Elan and I remember him ringing me a few days later to tell me in his forthright way just how much he hated its Rotoflex couplings. He couldn’t believe Colin had created a car that was so difficult to drive!’

The two-time F1 World Champion was referring to the way the rubber couplings tended to wind themselves up under power. To quote Car again: ‘Any lack of delicacy in throttle or clutch control will set the car leaping about like a circus bronco, whether from a standing start or on the move.’ But this quirk aside, there was little to criticise in the way the Elan drove. It was no faster than the Elite, and on the track its handling – in standard form – was less tidy than the earlier car’s. But on the road, in the real world, it went round corners in a way that very few other cars could match.

Where the real progress had been made was in the ride quality. The Elite was on the firm side, for the car was really a thinly disguised racer. The Elan was much softer and more comfortable, yet the improvement in ride quality had been achieved with no detriment to roadholding.

As Setright summed up: ‘The Elan handled very nearly as well as the Elite, and gave a softer ride. In fact, with its smaller wheels and more sophisticated interior, the Elan seemed a softer car altogether than the Elite.’

About that ‘more sophisticated interior’… By today’s standards, the cockpit of an early Elan looks almost laughably primitive. There is a wooden dash, but it has all the elegance of a plywood school desk. The Elan’s seats are better than the Elite’s, though, with angled runners that allow short or tall drivers to be equally comfortable, and you get wind-up windows instead of removable side panes.

One of Setright’s fellow journalists had a hand in the development of the Elan. Harry Mundy, then technical editor of the The Autocar, designed the alloy cylinder head for the car’s Ford-based, twin-cam engine. Based on the block of the Cortina Mk1, the four-cylinder was tractable for a sporting engine, having what Autocar described as ‘the pull of a lion from 2000 to 6500rpm in top gear’.

The Elan was originally intended to be sold with a 1498cc engine, and was marketed as the Elan 1500 when it was launched in October 1962, but production took some time to ramp up and just 22 cars were built before the engine was enlarged to 1600cc (or more accurately 1558cc).

‘I REMEMBER GRAHAM HILL RINGING ME TO TELL ME HOW MUCH HE HATED THE CAR’S ROTOFLEX COUPLINGS’

THE CAR PICTURED here is fitted with a 1600 engine, but it was originally powered by the rare smaller unit, for it is the earliest surviving Elan. It’s actually a pre-production development car, and making it even more special is the fact that it was the personal transport of Jim Clark – twice F1 World Champion and one of the most gifted racers ever.

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#6 Lotus Elan

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Clockwise from left No problem getting at the electrics in an early Elan – Lotus didn’t bother to box off the dash, leaving all the wires on display; the engine bay of this development car would originally have held an Elan 1500 engine, as fitted to the first 22 production cars only.

1962 Lotus Elan Engine 1558cc four-cylinder, DOHC, two Weber DCOE carburettors Power 100bhp @ 5700rpm Torque 102lb ft @ 4500rpm Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front: double wishbones, coil springs, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar. Rear: half-shafts with lateral links, coil springs, telescopic dampers Brakes Discs Weight 630kg Top speed 107mph 0-60mph 8.5sec

Few racing drivers are as inextricably linked with a single marque as Clark is with Lotus, and the Carmen Red Elan, registration 997 NUR, represents a period in which their partnership really began to bear fruit. In 1962, Clark won his first Grand Prix, and by the end of the following season he was F1 Champion for the first time. Actually, that’s not quite right: Clark and his Lotus 25 were so dominant in ’63 that he had the title in the bag by the end of the Italian Grand Prix, with three races left to go.

During ’62 and ’63, Colin Chapman gave Clark the use of 997 NUR, and Clark put more than 15,000 miles on the clock, regularly driving the car from the Lotus factory in Cheshunt up to his family home in the Scottish Borders.

It was on the family sheep farm near the village of Chirnside that Clark, wearing his kilt and sporran, was famously photographed with the car. The image was used in a Lotus ad that quoted Clark saying, ‘I drive my Lotus Elan for pleasure – not because I have to.’ Not buying it? Well, Clark liked the car enough to put up with the leaky factory hardtop, which he eventually sealed with tape.

When Clark returned the car to Lotus, it was sold to his old friend and mentor, Ian Scott-Watson, who once used it to transport 12 Blackface lambs to Lanark market. It was during his ownership that the original 1500 engine blew up, and a replacement 1600 unit was installed.

By the late 1990s, the car had somehow ended up in a

scrapyard near Mallory Park, but it was rescued and restored

by Lotus enthusiast Michael Schryver, and the car looks absolutely splendid today as it draws close and pulls up.

At the controls is another famous Scottish racing driver, Dario Franchitti, who won the Indianapolis 500 three times and the IndyCar Series title four times before retiring in 2013. More recently he’s been closely involved with Gordon Murray’s T50 supercar project, but he’s here today in his capacity as a Jim Clark superfan.

‘It was unbelievable that he could win in a Lotus Cortina, and on the same day jump into the F1 car and win in that, then jump into the Lotus 30 and win in that. And then fly over to Indianapolis and win there!

‘But it was more than that,’ Franchitti continues. ‘Anybody who had anything to do with Jim says that he was an absolute gentleman – just such a special character.’

Franchitti has gathered an amazing collection of Clark memorabilia over the years, from flight logs to racesuits, and even scrapbooks given to him by racing enthusiasts who knew that Franchitti would treasure them. When he was invited to demonstrate the 1965 Indy-winning Lotus 38 at the Brickyard, he approached the company that had supplied Clark’s racesuit that year and asked them to make him a perfect replica. He admits that when he won the Indy 500 in 2007, one of his first thoughts was that he’d achieved something that Clark had also done.

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‘THE 26R RACECAR WAS LOVELY, BUT THIS ROAD CAR IS EVEN MORE DELICATE’

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LOTUS CARS

Clockwise from bottom right Dario Franchitti gets acquainted with the Elan that used to be enjoyed by his hero, Jim Clark; taking it for a drive; the famous ad featuring Clark, his Elan, and his kilt.

Unlike his hero, though, Franchitti has never had an Elan, and indeed until today he’d never even driven a standard example. He did try a race-spec 26R, which helped him to understand why Murray is such a fan of the Elan, and why he wanted to match some of its qualities with the T50.

‘Gordon wanted a nice, compliant car, but pin-sharp. He also keeps going on about the Elan’s gearshift, and after driving the 26R I was finally able to say to him, “Yeah – I get it.” The 26R was lovely, but this one’s even more delicate.

And it’s such a special car, with its connection to Jim, that picture of him in his kilt…’

It’s certainly hard to get into 997 NUR without picturing that portrait (originally intended for the cover of Time magazine) and imagining Clark looking out over the bonnet as he sweeps through the Borders. The thought adds an extra dimension to the Elan experience, which is already intoxicating enough – the quick responses, the fruity gurgle from the twin-cam four, the precise gearchange.

That the Elan is so good beggars belief, really. It began life as package of cost-cutting measures, yet ended up being even better to drive than the expensive and innovative car that it replaced. We can argue about whether the Elan is the greatest sports car ever, but it’s certainly the most unique achievement in sports-car manufacturing history.

THANKS TO the team at Fiskens (fiskens.com).

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5

MGB The ubiquity of the MGB has sometimes led to it being underappreciated, but it is a super little sports car to own (in the words of racer Mark Hales, ‘the perfect greasyroundabout opposite-locker’), and it seems to get betterlooking by the year.

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NATIONAL TREASURE David Lillywhite looks back at the development of one of the British motor industry’s greatest hits: the MGB Photography John Colley

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#5 MGB

T

he late Tony Dron, the inimitable racerturned-journalist, wasn’t too proud to talk about his own failings. ‘It was pure jealousy,’ he wrote in an amusing piece for the November 2012 issue of Octane, ‘that made me and my circle of close friends quite rude about MGBs in the 1960s.

‘All too often we saw some posh acquaintance being given one by a wealthy daddy. While we were hell-bent on going motor racing, usually against our fathers’ wishes, those irritating blokes belonged to smart tennis clubs and had girlfriends with names like Fiona and Lavinia. We mocked them, yet we were totally in the wrong: we’d never have admitted it, but those girls were well worth pulling, and an MGB was just the ticket for carrying them off.’

The little MG that Tony secretly wanted to own, and which went on to become one of the world’s most popular sports cars, arrived in 1962 – in time for that year’s British Motor Show. At Earls Court, a cutaway display car was surrounded by crowds of people, all keen to see how MG would replace the MGA.

That model had served MG well, of course, but it was a little cramped and basic, and the styling was rapidly going out of date. It was also a separate-chassis design, not that that had been regarded as a problem by MG; in fact, when planning started for the MGA’s replacement, it was initially accepted that the new car would also feature a separate chassis, simply because that allowed the design of the body to be finalised later in the development process.

Styling proposals were solicited from, among others, Frua. When the Italian coachbuilder presented its work, MG’s higher-ups deemed the body to be excessively heavy, and began to come around to the idea of using a monocoque design. Managing director John Thornley and chief engineer Syd Enever eventually accepted that monocoque construction was the future, and the latter got sketching.

His proposals evolved from something resembling an MGB with an MGA front grille, to the MGB as we know it.

Don Hayter cleaned up Enever’s swooping sketches, and worked with chassis man Roy Brocklehurst to produce a monocoque that would be free of the dreaded scuttle-shake.

Mechanically, the new car was about as straightforward

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ALAMY

Above and left A cutaway of the new MGB GT at the 1965 British Motor Show – a similarly dissected Roadster had been presented in 1962; our feature car, an early MkI Roadster, was completed on 4 February 1963.

as they come: the MGA’s B-series engine enlarged to 1798cc; a four-speed gearbox with synchromesh on the top three gears (the option of an electrically actuated overdrive was added from 1963); a live rear axle suspended on semielliptic leaf springs; and front suspension by coil spring and wishbones, the upper wishbone formed by the lever-arm damper. Front disc brakes, rear drums, and rack-and-pinion steering finished it off.

Although the car turned out to be very conventional, MG did dabble with the idea of a V4 engine and various coilsprung rear ends, including a trailing-arm system and a Porsche-style swing axle. When the development mule used to trial the trailing-arm system wound up upside down in the hands of engineers Brocklehurst and Tony Felmingham, the decision was made to stick to what MG knew: cart springs!

That the car was mechanically unremarkable didn’t bother anybody when it was launched. It was modern-looking, sturdy, and more comfortable than the MGA – softer-sprung and, thanks to the monocoque design, much roomier despite being slightly smaller.

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#5 MGB

The only criticism was directed at the car’s hood, which was fiddly to raise and lower, though it was more effective at keeping out the rain than the MGA’s. Sales started at a reasonable rate, accelerated in the spring of 1963 as the US caught on, and continued to grow…

Back in those early days of the B, MG wasn’t nearly as half-arsed about promoting its cars as it became in the era of British Leyland. The marque began a programme of motorsport activities, MGBs appearing first at the 1963 12 Hours of Sebring and then at major events including the Monte Carlo Rally, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Tour de France.

Meanwhile, John Thornley had decided to extend the appeal of the MGB by introducing a coupé version, the MGB GT. Belgian Abarth dealer Jacques Coune had actually beaten the firm to it, with his glassfibre fastback Coune Berlinette, of which 56 were built in three years.

However, the MGB GT was a better car, and one of the alltime classics in terms of style. It was Pininfarina that turned Roadster into GT, and Sergio Pininfarina regarded the little coupé as one of his finest works.

With its taller windscreen, two-plus-two seating and a hatchback at the rear, the GT was practical as well as pretty.

At 1079kg it was 114kg heavier than the Roadster, and accordingly slower off the mark, but thanks to its more aerodynamic shape it had a higher top speed, able to hit

105mph given a long enough stretch of tarmac. It was introduced in 1965, to very positive reviews.

The GT, like the Roadster, evolved slowly but surely in the years that followed: the MkI ‘pull-handle’ cars (196266), loved for their purity of design, gave way to the MkII cars (1967-71), which offered the convenience of an allsynchro gearbox and a better heater while still featuring the desirable MkI leather seats and polished grille. Towards the end of the life of the MkII, though, cloth/vinyl seats and the ‘black hole’ plastic grille arrived to signal the start of cost-cutting under British Leyland management.

The 1972-81 MkIII started off well, with an improved grille, better ventilation and a padded armrest and storage bin. Then came the excellent MGB GT V8, a rapid cruiser rather than an out-and-out sports car, and a fine replacement for the misunderstood six-cylinder MGC. But US safety regulations were suddenly at the door and refused to go away, and so in late 1974 the MGB ‘gained’ ugly, black polyurethane bumpers and an increase in ride height – changes that have been slated ever since. To reduce costs and weight the front anti-roll bar was deleted, but it returned after a year, for much-improved cornering.

‘There’s still a premium paid for the pull-handle cars,’ says Jeremy Rogers of Surrey Sports & Classics. ‘Most enthusiasts like the purer lines of the 1962-64 cars. I think they look especially good with disc wheels and hubcaps.

Right, from top The 1800 B-series engine was simply a version of the MGA’s 1500/1600 unti with increased bore and stroke; the MGB’s interior was much more comfortable than the MGA’s.

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1963 MGB Roadster Engine 1798cc four-cylinder, OHV, twin SU HS4 carburettors Power 94bhp @ 5400rpm Torque 107lb ft @ 3500rpm Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front: coil springs, lower wishbones, lever-arm dampers, anti-roll bar. Rear: live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, lever-arm dampers Brakes Discs front, drums rear Weight 965kg Top speed 100mph 0-60mph 12.2sec

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#5 MGB

‘PININFARINA STYLED THE MGB GT COUPÉ, AND SERGIO PININFARINA REGARDED IT AS ONE OF HIS FINEST WORKS’

‘Actually, though, the best MGBs can be the 1969 model year, because you get reclining seats, still in leather, and the proper front grille. MkIs and IIs are definitely better built; British Leyland cost-cutting affected the quality of the MkIIIs, although the 1973-74 cars seemed to be built from particularly good steel. I’ve seen them still with good original sills. In contrast, 1975-76 cars just dissolved – the steel was from Russia.’

It’s generally agreed these days that an MGB, no matter what age, benefits from a few basic tweaks, particularly to sharpen the handling. Polyurethane suspension bushes, uprated front springs and a 3/4in anti-roll bar are essential, and negative-camber front wishbones the next step. Quality lever-arm dampers are usually as good as telescopic-damper conversions, while parabolic rear springs improve the ride quality. A few simple engine mods, including a hotter camshaft, transform the performance.

From there, how far do you want to go? Well over 150bhp is easily achievable, though not necessary. MG didn’t sell over half a million Bs because the car offered racecar-like performance. It was popular the world over because it was an approachable, practical sports car in which you could have fun at sensible speeds – and, of course, because it was pretty enough to help you get a date with girls named Fiona and Lavinia…

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4

LOTUS ELISE ‘Simplify, then add lightness.’

No modern Lotus embodies the philosphy of marque founder Colin Chapman quite like the Elise, and particularly the Series 1 car. Production has now ended, but the influence of the Elise is still felt at Lotus and beyond.

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JUST THE ESSENTIALS John Simister drives an early Lotus Elise and interviews the men responsible for its spare but innovative design Photography Charlie Magee

T

hink. It turns. Think again. It straightens, aligning perfectly with the road ahead. Did I move my hands? I suppose I must have done, but I don’t remember making any effort at all.

It sounds as if I am describing some amazing, newfangled human/car interface involving brainwave sensors and artificial intelligence. Not so. I am in fact describing the sensation of sitting behind the wheel of a car almost 30 years old – an early example of the Series 1 Lotus Elise, a car that I suspect will still feel astonishingly modern to drive another 30 years from now.

The Elise and its innovative construction proved to be more influential than its creators ever dared hope. Also way beyond the far horizon of their expectations was the commercial success of their ultra-light sports car. Until 2021 you could still buy a new Elise (somewhat evolved from the original, obviously) despite the fact that Lotus initially envisioned a production life of just four years and a total of perhaps 3000 cars.

Lotus revealed the Elise at the 1995 Frankfurt Motor Show. Unveiled first was the chassis tub – aluminium extrusions bonded together with rivets where needed, to ensure the joints didn’t peel apart in a big crash. Then the assembled crowd was introduced to the the complete car, though it still wasn’t fully developed at that point.

A white cover, emblazoned with text reading ‘I am Elise’, was whipped off a dark-green car that was occupied, to the surprise of all, by a toddler. The two-and-a-half-year-old girl was Elisa Artioli, granddaughter of the man who owned Lotus at the time: Romano Artioli. Lotuses generally had names beginning with E, and Artioli had seized on this

tradition and named the new model (give or take a vowel) after his ‘big love’, who was born around the time that the car was taking shape. Elisa is now 31 and drives an Elise – S1, of course – of her own. What was it like, hiding under that cover at Frankfurt?

‘I’ve always been told that I wanted to stay in the car,’ she says. ‘My mother was worried and kept asking me if I wanted to get out. Two years later, when we went back to Italy, we got my silver Elise. It was a present to me from my grandfather. It was really weird, having this car standing in the garage all those years. I grew up with her. She was almost like a family member.’

What was it like when you drove the car for the first time?

Any pressure? ‘I was a bit nervous, after all those years waiting for the day. I was shaking. It was an important day of my life, like taking an exam! Then I drove it and I was smiling all the time! Now I try to drive it quite often and get to a lot of Lotus meetings.’

She has also been reunited at Lotus’s factory with the type-approval car, with which she was photographed aged four, and which now belongs to Elise dynamics engineer Dave Minter. We’ll be hearing from Dave a bit later on.

AS I POKE around Robert Lancaster-Gaye’s beautiful, metallic blue Elise, each part calls to mind some chapter in the story of the model’s development.

The car’s styling is the work of Julian Thomson (these days design director at General Motors Advanced Design Europe) and his team. Thomson, like chassis creator and best mate Richard Rackham, was keen for the Elise to have no doors – to be a ‘step-over car’. However, safety legislation

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#4 Lotus Elise

Clockwise from left Lotus chose the 1.8-litre Rover K-series engine to power the Elise; the car’s name was provided by Elisa Artioli, seen here with her own car, and with her grandfather, Romano Artioli, who owned Lotus between 1993 and 1996; an early Series 1 car, distinguished by, among other things, its attractive but slightly fragile wheels.

dictated that the step-over sides of the car would have to be higher than Thomson, Rackham & Co wanted, so reluctantly they incorporated doors. That crucial change broadened the new car’s appeal at a stroke; had it not happened, maybe Lotus’s original plan to build only 3000 Elises would have been realistic.

The decision to mount the engine transversely behind the cabin might have seemed to be all about delivering racecarlike dynamics, but it was at least as much about protecting driver and passenger. It meant more crumple room in the nose, and scope for a separate, crushable structure there that could easily be replaced after an impact. It worked: after the Elise passed the 30mph barrier test, project leader Tony Shute observed that the test car just needed a new bolt-on front section and a front clamshell to be driveable again.

Thomson resisted the lip spoiler at the tail that the aerodynamicists added, but it was vital for stability. The compromise rankled him, although the final shape went down well at launch – even if a few dissenting voices suggested the look of the car was too retro. So, how does Thomson view his creation now?

‘When it came out, that retro phase was at its peak – the Beetle, the Plymouth Prowler – but some of those cars don’t age so well. The Elise has, because the proportions were right. It followed the front-wheel-drive Elan, which was futuristic at the time but has aged far worse.

‘I was really annoyed that the S1 Elise was in production for such a short time, so I bought the last right-hand-drive one, in black. But it wasn’t quite right; I was disappointed so I sold it. Much later I bought a silver Sport 160 and I love it.

All the compromises and battles are gone, and all the things that annoyed me back then are now just quirks.’

Such as? ‘Because the body is hand-laid GRP, we calculated for some shrinkage as it cured. But in the end it didn’t shrink as much as we thought it would, so the early cars looked over-bodied. My 160 has a better stance with its wider wheels. Then there’s the rear end, which looked slightly busy to me, especially as those vents below the taillights are fake. They were originally open but they would have been a dirt trap. And the glass rear screen – it was meant to be open but fumes were sucked back.

‘Maybe the whole look was a bit retro. When the Series 2 came out it looked better, but I think time has been kinder to the S1.’

It certainly looks timeless to me. And I still enjoy the economical detailing – the fact that the two tail-lights and all four indicators use the same lens mould, or that the little headlights are from a Renault 4.

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‘I was a bit nervous, but then I drove it and I was smiling all the time!’ ELISA ARTIOLI

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‘I knew nothing about heating and ventilation, or noise, vibration and harshness, but I knew how to make a car go round corners’ RICHARD RACKHAM

From left There’s precious little in the cabin to distract from the business of driving; Elise is let off the leash at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground in Leicestershire.

Our feature car, being an early Elise, has a number of other interesting features. The wheels are ultra-skeletal (they’re a bit fragile as a result); and the engine cover is aluminium rather than glassfibre, with the luggage cover beneath doubling as a prop when it’s flipped up. The brake discs are metalmatrix composite (MMC), an aluminium/silicon carbide mix designed to last as long as the car. Two problems, according to Dave Minter: they don’t initially work well in the rain, because the pad surfaces absorb water, and the factory that made them pulled the plug early on.

I swing my legs over the high sill (so much easier when the roof panel is off) and I’m ensconced in the snug driver’s seat, angled slightly towards the Elise’s centre line and wondering if the unyielding padding will lead to a numb bum later (it does). In front of me is a stark, horizontal-line dashboard with a matt-textured top and a pair of stepper-motor Stack dials. Beyond is the single windscreen wiper, sourced from the Citroën AX. PSA provided the round switch buttons, too, but the column stalks were donated by Vauxhall, and more specifically the Cavalier.

Under the carpet mats the floor is bare, ribbed aluminium, but only if you get out again and peer into the wheelarches will you see the blue-green CIBA Polymer epoxy that holds the sheets and extrusions together. The glue changed to redorange on later cars whose chassis were built in the UK, rather than in Denmark by Hydro Aluminium.

‘The technology was out-there at the time,’ says Richard Rackham, ‘but now it’s fairly commonplace even at high volumes. The Elise introduced extrusions to the automotive world. Aston Martin uses the technology, and Jaguars are bonded too. Look under a Tesla – it could be a Lotus.

‘But their structures don’t have the same design philosophy of efficiency, light weight and aesthetics. You’d struggle to carry that forward today. Not many cars could get away with being as noisy and as difficult to get into and out of as the Elise was. You need acoustic breaks in the structure, which add weight and don’t look nice.’

So, how did Rackham get involved? ‘I joined Lotus as a hired pen, to get other manufacturers’ cars to handle.

“Handling by Lotus”, we called it. And I worked with the racing Esprit. So I was in a unique position. “Get him to do the design,” said engineering director Roger Becker. I knew nothing about heating and ventilation, or noise, vibration and harshness, but I knew how to make a car go round corners.

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#4 Lotus Elise

1996 Lotus Elise Series 1 Engine 1796cc four-cylinder, DOHC, 16-valve, MEMS engine management Power 118bhp @ 5500rpm Torque 122lb ft @ 3000rpm Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front and rear: double wishbones, coilover telescopic dampers, antiroll bar Brakes Vented discs Weight 723kg Top speed 124mph 0-60mph 5.5sec

‘When the S2 came out it looked better, but time has been kinder to the S1.

The proportions were right’ JULIAN THOMSON ‘We thought we could sell 750 a year. The Elise [as a model] was never meant to last as long as it did. In 2000 we were proposing a full aluminium monococque with selfpiercing rivets, but the programme faltered. We tried again in 2005 and failed again. It was a magic time when we did the Elise. It was a freakish sort of thing.’

Rackham shares another nugget. ‘There’s an Elise we have at Lotus that has done 200,000 miles. Other cars of that era have normally lost a bit of stiffness at that mileage, but we measured it and the Elise has lost none.’ No wonder, then, that Robert’s blue Elise, with only 15,000 miles under its wheels, feels so impressively stiff in its structure. Since the car weighs just 723kg, the fairly modest 118bhp of the MGF-sourced, 1.8-litre, K-series motor goes a long way, and as I charge around Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground I think to myself, ‘I’ve not had this much fun in a car in ages.’

The same thought no doubt went through the head of every person who test-drove a Series 1 Elise in period.

Demand meant that Lotus ended up making 10,619 examples of the S1 Elise (including the 111S and Sport 160 models and a few CKD kits assembled abroad) before starting production of the S2 in order to comply with new European crash regulations.

The secret of the S1’s success seems so obvious with hindsight. ‘It was back to basics,’ says Dave Minter – meaning not that the car was old-fashioned, of course, but that it represented a return to the principles that guided Lotus under Colin Chapman. The founder of the marque, who died in 1982, was positively allergic to any feature that added weight or unnecessary complexity to a car. Chapman would have had great difficulty finding fault with the Elise – the perfect no-frills modern sports car.

THANKS TO Club Lotus (clublotus.co.uk).

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THE START OF SOMETHING BIG Winston Goodfellow drives the first ever AC Cobra, the foundation upon which Shelby American was built Photography Pawel Litwinski and Darin Schnabel

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3

AC COBR A When he shoehorned a Ford V8 into a little AC Ace roadster, Carroll Shelby created one of the most thrilling sports cars ever. The Cobra started out with a 4.3-litre V8 in 1962, but by 1965 it was offered with a truly monstrous 7.0-litre engine making 425bhp.

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Clockwise from left Working on the Cobra prototype in Santa Fe Springs, where Carroll Shelby had a space in Dean Moon’s shop; the car’s V8 engine hasn’t been properly exercised in decades.

O

ur story starts in 1961, when Carroll Shelby was a 38-year-old, down-onhis-luck chicken farmer and former racing driver who happened to have won Le Mans two years earlier with Aston Martin. Back then that claim to fame wouldn’t get you a cup of coffee at the local diner, and Carroll had hardly two nickels to his name.

His financial situation, though, didn’t stop him from dreaming of creating his own car.

He was, ‘the definition of an entrepreneur’ according to his grandson, Aaron Shelby. ‘He simply didn’t fear failure. He used to say, “You drop me naked on a street corner one morning, and by that evening I will have bought a suit and been offered a steak dinner by somebody.”’

‘All the time I was driving,’ Carroll told me back in 2010, referencing in particular his period with Aston Martin, ‘I was trying to see if I could build a car someday. This was

when Colin Chapman and Eric Broadley were getting on, and the cottage industry was starting in England. I thought people didn’t need a lot of capital [to do it].’

Carroll’s home state of Texas was ‘backward as far as sports cars was concerned’, so when a heart condition forced him to retire from racing in 1960, he moved to California, setting up shop in the back of hot-rodder Dean Moon’s facility in Santa Fe Springs. He became the West Coast distributor for Goodyear Tire, started America’s first high-performance driving school, and worked as a consulting editor for Sports Car Graphic magazine – and was still yearning to make a car.

A decade or so before Carroll upped sticks, investment banker Claude M Bristol wrote a best-selling book called The Magic of Believing.

It’s about the power of visualisation – ‘we get what we anticipate’, all that sort of nonsense.

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1962 Shelby Cobra CSX2000 Engine 4262cc Ford V8, OHV, single Holley four-barrel carburettor Power 260bhp @ 6500rpm Torque 269lb ft @ 3600rpm Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Worm and sector Suspension Front: lower wishbones, upper transverse leaf spring, hydraulic dampers. Rear: live axle, lower wishbones, upper transverse leaf spring, hydraulic dampers Brakes Discs, rear inboard Weight 918kg Top speed 152mph 0-60mph 4.1sec

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‘Shelby wanted his new car to debut at the 1962 New York Auto Show’ Carroll could have been the poster child for Bristol’s particular brand of snake oil, for his long-held dream did eventually come true, in the fall of 1961.

John Christy – part-time racer, graduate of Shelby’s driving school, and editor of Sports Car Graphic – saw it happen. In the book Carroll Shelby’s Racing Cobra, he writes that over one of SCG’s regular steak-sandwich-andmartini lunches, the editorial staff discussed two recent press releases. One noted that Ford was starting production of new 221ci and 260ci V8s; while the other stated that Bristol would no longer make the six-cylinder engine used by AC Cars in its Ace roadster.

There was a lightbulb moment. ‘A week later,’ Christy writes, ‘Shelby was in Detroit, en route to England.’ From Ford Carroll would procure a drivetrain, and from AC a car.

AC gave the first ever Cobra the chassis number CSX2000, ‘CSX’ standing for ‘Carroll Shelby Experimental’. The World Registry of Cobras & GT40s states that AC’s men upgraded an Ace frame with thicker main chassis tubes, reinforced suspension, inboard disc brakes, a Salisbury differential and more.

Ford’s 221ci V8 was installed, and Carroll and

AC boss Derek Hurlock tested the car at MIRA. Modifications such as lengthened leaf springs and redesigned A-arms followed, and more testing was done. The powertrain was then removed, and CSX2000 was airfreighted to the USA on 2 February 1962.

According to Shelby company photographer Dave Friedman, once the car arrived at Dean Moon’s shop the team took under eight hours to install a Ford 260ci V8 and a four-speed transmission. John Christy drove the baremetal machine almost as soon as it had been bolted together, and related his experience in Sports Car Graphic.

‘We spent a day playing with the car and can safely say it is one of the most impressive production cars we’ve driven. Its acceleration […] can only be described as explosive and at least equal to that of the hot Corvettes and [Ferrari] Berlinettas we’ve driven.’

Carroll wanted his creation to debut at the 1962 New York Auto Show, and Dean Jeffries, the renowned coachbuilder, was tasked with painting the car’s shiny aluminium body in preparation. After ‘all the dinks and donks’ had been removed from the coachwork, Carroll asked Jeffries what colour he should paint it.

From top left Carroll Shelby at the wheel of CSX2000; the car was kept by Shelby for decades after it had outlived its usefulness, but it was – clearly! – not maintained

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Jeffries: ‘I said, “If you want something bright, let’s do it in yellow.” Shelby didn’t have no money, so I told him not to worry about it, and that I would catch him after New York and see if things worked out.’

To say that things worked out would be an understatement of the first order. In its coverage of the New York show, Road & Track magazine noted: ‘Just this side of reality falls the AC Cobra which, if not stillborn, could take the sports-car world by storm.’ Storm?

Category 5 hurricane was more like it.

As orders opened, Road & Track, Sports Car Graphic and other magazines tested CSX2000, and its performance was astounding. R&T had the yellow Cobra prototype hitting 60mph in 4.2sec, and 100 in 10.8. The quarter-mile was done and dusted in 13.8sec, and top speed was 153mph. ‘Insofar as sheer speed is concerned,’ they declared, ‘the Cobra offers more than almost any sports/touring car in the world.’

As the glowing reviews piled up, Carroll repainted CSX2000 several times to make it appear that production was actually underway; he didn’t have enough room at Dean Moon’s to actually start building cars.

Then Shelby American moved into the exLance Reventlow/Scarab shop in Venice, and Cobra development and production ramped up. CSX2000 was soon put in a corner, no longer needed. Amazingly, though, Carroll never sold it and basically left it untouched, save for a blue paintjob that no-one can recall being applied. ‘I look at all the stuff he chose to get rid of over the years,’ grandson Aaron says, ‘and it’s almost a miracle that he kept the car.’

Clockwise from below CSX2000 was originally painted yellow, as seen on the cover of the September 1962 issue of Road & Track; on the track at Speed Vegas, Aaron Shelby (Carroll’s grandson) rides with writer Winston.

GIVEN ITS SIGNIFICANCE, I had always assumed that CSX2000 couldn’t be bought.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard that it was to be auctioned by RM Sotheby’s at the house’s 2016 Monterey sale. Even more shocking was the news from the folks at RM that I could drive the Cobra – you know, if getting behind the wheel of one of the most important cars ever would be of interest…

Let’s examine some of the ways it changed the course of motoring history. We’ll start with the obvious: without CSX2000, the 260 and 289 Cobras and the Daytona Coupes wouldn’t exist. Nor would their competition record, which includes multiple SCCA and USRRC championship wins, an FIA World Championship title, and records in both NHRA and AHRA drag racing.

And there’s this: in the early 1960s ‘there was no respect for sports cars at all’. That’s Peter Brock, designer of the Cobra Daytona Coupe.

‘Racing back then meant going to Indianapolis.

It wasn’t until the USRRC series came along in ’63, when we competed against GM [and the Corvette], that people realised this is a pretty important thing’.

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At least partial credit to CSX2000, then for changing the whole mentality of the racing community in the US. And don’t forget that, in giving rise to Shelby American, the Cobra prototype also led to the Shelby-Ford alliance that turned the GT40 into a Le Mans winner.

Ford Advanced Vehicles’ sports-racer didn’t finish a single race in 1964, but just two months after Shelby American received two GT40s, the model had wins at Daytona and Sebring to its name. In 1966 and ’67, Shelby GT40s were victorious at Le Mans and elsewhere.

Shelby’s relationship with Ford also resulted in the creation of the Shelby Mustang GT350, a force in SCCA and Trans-Am competition.

I could keep listing the ripple effects from the creation of CSX2000 all day.

SO, WHY IS the car being auctioned? Back in 1983, Carroll set up the Carroll Hall Shelby Trust, and into it he put his trademarks and certain other assets, including CSX2000. The beneficiary of the trust is the Carroll Shelby Foundation, which provides medical assistance to those in need, as well as educational opportunities for young people. Collector cars have risen in value in recent times to the point

that the trustees felt it sensible to put CSX2000 up for sale, along with CSX3178, Carroll’s personal 427 Cobra.

Years before his death in 2012 at the age of 89, Carroll promised Rob Myers of RM Auctions (now RM Sotheby’s) that if CSX2000 was ever to be relinquished, Rob and his team would oversee the sale.

It all makes perfect sense, then, but as I arrive at the Shelby American factory in Las Vegas, I’m still finding it hard to believe that the car is available – and that it is soon to be available to me, however briefly.

A tour of the facility shows that Carroll’s legacy is alive and well, with production of Shelby GTs, Super Snakes and Terlingua Mustangs humming. Afterwards, CSX2000 is transported to the Speed Vegas Raceway, and there I get a chance to pop the bonnet and stare (through decades’ worth of grit) at cool things like the original welds on the headers.

Turning my attention to the interior, I see the door pockets are so far gone that they’ve split down the centre, and the driver’s seat looks like it might have been home to a family of mice. Keeping his old cars in top condition wasn’t a priority for Carroll!

‘The tattered driver’s seat looks like it might have been home to a family of mice, but it fits me like a glove’

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‘I can feel how badly this car wants to run, how it wants me to drop the hammer and clean the plugs out’ Even though the seat is in tatters, it fits me like a glove and is surprisingly supportive. The three-spoke steering wheel is too close to my chest, but the pedals are perfectly placed and there’s a reasonable amount of legroom, considering how intimate the cockpit feels.

I give the key a turn, press the starter button, and CSX2000 hiccoughs and pops into life, blue smoke billowing out from the tailpipes.

Feather the throttle to keep the rough idle alive, and she holds. The steering is arthritic on turn-in, and feels quite vague. The brake pedal requires a good shove to do anything, and you get as much feedback as you would standing on a brick. The speedometer, the tachometer and the water temperature gauge don’t work, but thankfully the car runs without incident despite the fact that it’s well over 30°C out here on the billiard-table-smooth tarmac.

The solid-lifter valvetrain of the V8 makes a great noise, especially in concert with the car’s homemade headers, which produce a din that

sounds like a whisk clattering around in a cocktail shaker. The soft melody of the tappets is the perfect accompaniment. The four-speed gearbox is tight, with a long-ish throw and precise slotting when you shift both up and down the ’box.

While some may find CSX2000’s utterly untouched condition appealing, in a way it’s tragic; the car is dilapidated to the point that its real spirit is being obscured. As I control my speed for the benefit of our photographers, cruising around the track in second gear, I can feel how badly this car wants to run, how it wants me to drop the hammer and clean the plugs out. The sensation of holding back a thoroughbred racehorse is overwhelming, and I mention it later to Shelby test driver Gary Patterson, to make sure it’s not just carbon build-up or my imagination. ‘It’s definitely there,’ he replies. ‘I’ve noticed it too.’

Years ago, Piero Rivolta, son of Iso founder Renzo, recalled a long-running debate between

his employees at Iso, about whether cars had souls. ‘The same workers used the same parts to make the same models on the same assembly line,’ he said. ‘Yet certain cars were much more lively, that much faster and more responsive than others. Many felt that was the car’s soul.’

The way that CSX2000 constantly tugs against the bridle of neglect, that observation rings true. ‘Carroll lived with all his chips on the table, all the time,’ Patterson notes, ‘and that energy is what exists in this car.’

Soon I’ll see the mother of all Cobras go under the hammer in Monterey. I’ll watch as the bidding creeps up beyond $10m, and see the car sold for $13.75m, to Shelby aficionado Greg Miller and his family. And I will think to myself, ‘Please let the car run the way it hasn’t in far too many years, the way Carroll Shelby lived his life: flat-out.’

THANKS TO RM Sotheby’s (rmsothebys.com) and the team at Shelby American (shelby.com).

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26/02/2025 09:34

2

J A G U A R E -T Y P E Jaguar’s greatest creation is probably still the most widely admired car in the world, and while in its final V12-powered form it was more GT than sports car, the earlier E-types were as good to drive as they were easy on the eye.

TAKING IT TO THE MAX In 1961, a standard Jaguar E-type reached 150mph on a Belgian motorway. Can we achieve the same today, on a German autobahn?

Words Mark Dixon Photography Matthew Howell

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#2 Jaguar E-type

W

e’re standing near the end of a rest area on the A1 autobahn south of Cologne, eyes fixed on the traffic appearing from under a bridge in the far distance.

It’s ten past seven in the evening, and the light is fading. The headlights of oncoming cars appear ever brighter as the cars themselves begin to disappear into the gloom.

Almost 30 minutes have elapsed since we waved a metallic blue Jaguar E-type out of the car park and watched it accelerate down the sliproad and onto the autobahn. It should have returned ages ago. These are some of the most stressful minutes that I and photographer Matt can remember.

Just as we’ve taken the decision to retrieve our Discovery support vehicle and go in search of the missing E-type, it purrs into the rest area.

It’s barely come to a halt before Matt and I are waiting at the driver’s door to hear the verdict from its pilot, former British Hill Climb Champion David Franklin. How fast did he go?

THIS MOMENT is the culmination of weeks of planning after someone (guilty as charged) had the harebrained idea of recreating the most famous road test ever: a 1961 article in Autocar that proved a standard roadgoing E-type really could achieve 150mph, as Jaguar was claiming for the car’s launch.

It wasn’t just a journalistic scoop or a key point in Jaguar history – it marked the dawn of a new era in motoring. It showed that a moderately (but not exceptionally) affluent man or woman could buy a roadgoing car that, straight off the showroom floor, would crack 150mph, a speed previously unheard of beyond La Sarthe or the world’s Grand Prix circuits.

Of course, there’s been a suspicion ever since that Jaguar’s road-test car, a left-hand-drive coupé registered 9600 HP, was specially prepared in some way. Most owners, and certainly most journalists, would not expect a production E-type to be capable of more than the mid-to-high 130s.

So perhaps there was a certain karma in the fact that our first choice of car for an attempt at 150mph – the original road test car, 9600 HP, now owned by Jaguar historian Philip Porter – could not be made match-fit in time for our attempt. While the car is in very good condition and Philip was up for the challenge, the demands of running at 150mph are very different from those of running at half that speed, and for safety’s sake we could leave nothing to chance.

Instead, we were offered an equally early and significant coupé, chassis 860001, which is in fact the very first right-hand-drive production FHC. Owned by the founder of Bridgnorth-based Classic Motor Cars Ltd, Peter Neumark, it was restored by the company in the early 2000s to original factory specification with nothing added, nothing altered and nothing taken away. As a representative of a ‘new’ 1961 E-type it could not be bettered, and Peter – who believes that cars are to be used, not hidden away in garages – was just as keen as we were to find out what it could do.

NEXT QUESTION: where could we take an E-type up to 150mph – and, just as importantly, back down again – in safety? A public road test in the UK was clearly out of the question. But finding a suitable test track was next to impossible, too. It’s true that there are a few places used for highspeed testing in this country – often former Cold War airfields such as Bruntingthorpe in the Midlands, where the long runways built for V-bombers are adequate for stretching modern performance cars. We knew, however, that the E-type would need a run-up measured in miles rather than yards to achieve its absolute top speed, and then a considerable distance to brake to a halt again. Even the longest runway we could find in the UK wouldn’t be long enough.

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1961 Jaguar E-type Series 1 FHC Engine 3781cc straight-six, DOHC, triple SU HD8 carburettors Power 265bhp @ 5500rpm Torque 260lb ft @ 4000rpm Transmission Four-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front: Double wishbones, torsion bars, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar. Rear: fixed-length driveshafts, radius arms, lower transverse links, paired coil springs and telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar Brakes Discs Weight 1232kg Top Speed 150mph 0-60mph 6.8sec

Above Driver David Franklin checks the car as it is unloaded. Every precaution has been taken to ensure this will be a safe road test, including the fitment of brand-new competition road tyres.

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#2 Jaguar E-type

‘The one thing we’ve not been able to take precautions against is the weather…’

Another option was to drive the banked circuit at the old Motor Industry Research Association’s testing grounds in Warwickshire, owned since July of 2015 by the Japanese company Horiba. No-one liked the idea of trying to hold an E-type steady at 150mph on the banking, however, and it would introduce an element of tyre scrub that would affect the top speed. Since our 150mph target was already an ambitious one, that was a crucial factor.

The more we thought about it, the more it seemed there was only one solution. In 1961, Autocar had driven 9600 HP to Belgium for its highspeed test. All these years later, we would have to take the E-type to Germany, the last country in Europe to retain stretches of motorway without speed limits.

Even in Germany, however, these fast-as-you-like ribbons of tarmac are becoming increasingly rare and we’d have to pick our autobahn carefully.

Fellow journo Henry Catchpole suggested that a stretch of the A1 south of Cologne might be suitable: ‘It doesn’t really go anywhere, so it’s relatively quiet,’ he assured us. Decision made: the A1 it would be.

A FEW WEEKS later, photographer Matt, driver David and I are cruising through Germany in a Discovery SDV6, kindly provided as our support vehicle by Jaguar Land Rover. It’s the perfect back-up car: comfortable, roomy and economical, and with enough grunt to tow the E-type out of trouble should it develop any mechanical problems.

Not that we’re expecting it to. The team at CMC have been through it with a fine-tooth comb, fitting new wheels and tyres and checking every mechanical element. They’ve even dyno-tested the engine on a rolling road – a measure that proved its worth when it was discovered the fuel pump wasn’t coping at really high revs. A higher-capacity pump has duly been installed. It’s intriguing to note that power at the flywheel has been calculated at 213.9bhp at 5000rpm, which equates to a theoretical 130.4mph. As the graph at the end of this story shows, the figures are what you’d expect of a carefully built but standard 3.8-litre road-spec engine, proving that this is no hot rod.

The one thing we’ve not been able to take precautions against is the weather. It’s been deteriorating since we crossed the Channel, and by the time we reach our German guesthouse in a village just off the A1, a persistent rain is falling. Although it’s not yet 6pm, the light is already failing. We’ve allowed ourselves a maximum of a day-and-a-half to do the photoshoot and get the timed runs, but the plan is to wrap everything up tomorrow if possible, with the option of a final early-morning run the following day if the weather doesn’t improve tonight. Fingers crossed.

FORTUNATELY the rain has stopped when we stumble downstairs to breakfast at 8am the following day. Good intentions of starting early with a high-speed run were shelved when we worked out that it would make more sense to get pictures in the bag first, just in case the engine does happen to go bang. Plus, we need to check the car over carefully before attempting any heroics.

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Clockwise from above Front grille bar and bumper overriders have been removed in the name of aerodynamics; Mark rigs up a GPS speedometer; filling up with 100-octane Shell V-Power Racing fuel.

Chris, the trucker who has brought the E-type over from the UK, has already unloaded it by the time we’re ready for action. Finished in its original colour of Opalescent Dark Blue, the car is gorgeous. Just as with 9600 HP in 1961, the front grille bar and bumper overriders have been removed for ultimate aerodynamic efficiency, and like 9600 HP this very early fixed-head has no external mirrors. It’s also one of only four righthand-drive coupés made with carriage-type external locks on each side of the bonnet, which have to be worked with a T-handled key just like the ones I remember from old British Railways carriages in my youth.

‘I bought 1 VHP from Philip Porter in October 1998 for a quid!’ says Peter Neumark, when I call him for a bit of background on the car. ‘The deal was that he would sell it to me for a pound if I restored his other early E-type, 9600 HP, free of charge.

‘Chassis 860001 was built on 10 July 1961 and despatched on 26 August to Henlys in London as a demonstrator, which makes you wonder how many famous backsides sat in it during the first few weeks. We restored it to factory condition in the early 2000s and I use it a lot. I’ve driven it in France and on the Scottish Malts tour, for example.’

As a result, the car has picked up the odd paintwork chip here and there, something that we find oddly reassuring as we contemplate it in the soft German daylight. This car is clearly no trailer queen. David is particularly pleased to see that the E-type has been fitted with Avon CR6 ZZ tyres, which he rates highly.

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Clockwise from right David passes 146mph; annoyingly, traffic would prevent him from winding up the brilliantly prepared E-type much further.

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‘As a passenger, you are hyper-aware of the fragility of the metal eggshell around you’ ‘They were developed by Avon for events like Tour Auto as a roadgoing competition tyre and they’re brilliant, very well suited to the car. The size here is a 205/70 x 15, which is slightly wider and taller than the original spec, and fills the arch out nicely without looking too modern.’

CMC has set the pressures at 31psi all round and I wonder whether we shouldn’t increase them for high-speed running, to avoid any chance of overheating and to minimise rolling resistance; back in ’61, the Autocar chaps settled on 35psi front and 40psi rear for their Dunlop R5 racing tyres. David, however, is happy to leave the Avons as they are. He points out that the autobahn is not the smoothest and that he won’t be travelling at very high speed for any length of time, so he’d rather have the benefit of a little more sidewall compliance and a slightly larger contact patch.

Since it will be David sitting in the hot seat and not me, I’m more than happy to defer to his judgement.

THE NEXT FEW hours are spent shooting pictures and checking the accuracy of the Jaguar’s speedometer against the GPS-based app on my iPhone. To our surprise, at speeds up to about 100mph the big Smiths dial matches my digital read-out exactly.

I’m glad I won’t be riding shotgun when David goes all-out, however.

As a passenger, you are hyper-aware of the fragility of the metal eggshell around you. Despite the E-type’s famously compliant suspension, every bump in the road seems intent on throwing the car off-line – even though it probably doesn’t feel nearly so nervous to the man behind the wheel.

Or perhaps it does, only it doesn’t show. David has been competing in motorsport since 1965 and has been a champion in disciplines ranging from HSCC Historic GTs (with a McLaren M6B) to hillclimbs and sprints (with an F3 Ensign and an F2 March). He professes himself happy with the E-type. ‘It rides very well, and the engine seems notably smoother above 3500rpm. There’s a slight resonance from somewhere at about 100mph, but it goes away again above that.’

Cruising at 100-110mph, David’s hands resting easy at the quarter-tothree position, the roar of slipstream and tyres on tarmac drown out the straight-six’s refined exhaust note. It’s another reminder that this is a Grand Tourer and not a balls-out racer like a C- or D-type.

IF THE JAGUAR is near perfect, that’s not so true of the autobahn. At its southern end, it reverts to a single-carriageway road, with an exit sliproad and an overhead return to the other side. That’s good, because it will make repeated runs easy to achieve. On the other hand, the autobahn is narrower than we expected – only two lanes rather than three – and the first few clicks are speed-limited to 100km/h. Then, suddenly, it bursts onto a long, sweeping viaduct and becomes de-restricted, as the lanes widen. It’s here that David will finally be able to open the taps and give the car its head – assuming the road is clear.

And this, unfortunately, is the problem. The traffic on this autobahn seems unrelenting. It’s never nose-to-tail but it’s not nearly as quiet as we’d expected it would be. We have to hope that the road will get less busy in early evening; the sun has come out during the day and it means we’ll have the benefit of daylight until relatively late.

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#2 Jaguar E-type

THANKS TO Peter Neumark and CMC (classic-motor-cars.co.uk), to Racelogic for the loan of the VBox (vboxautomotive.co.uk), and to Jaguar Land Rover for the Discovery support vehicle (landrover.co.uk).

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THE VIEW of the autobahn is obscured by dense foliage, planted to reduce the noise of passing traffic. So our awareness of what’s happening beyond the rest area is governed more by our ears than our eyes, and we can hear that the traffic is constant. We remember that David may have decided to travel north a few junctions in his search for a clear run. We also realise, with a sense of foreboding, that neither of us has a mobile phone: Matt’s is being used to trigger the time-lapse on his camera; mine is displaying the E-type’s speed just above David’s sight-line. If David has a problem, he’ll be on his own.

After 20 minutes, David pulls back into the rest area and confirms that, while the autobahn is busier than he would like, the car is running well.

He hasn’t got beyond 136mph yet but he’s going out for another attempt.

He points the E-type towards the exit once more.

Another 20 minutes pass. Then 25. Still no E-type. Matt and I fidget nervously and try not to catch the eye of curious Eastern European lorry drivers, who have begun to park up their huge rigs ahead of the coming night. Thirty minutes. Dusk is falling and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the outline of each oncoming car on the opposite carriageway. Simultaneously, Matt and I decide that one of us needs to retrieve the Discovery and go in search of David. I’m halfway to the vehicle when I hear a yell and turn to see Matt waving furiously: the E-type is heading back!

A few minutes later, David is explaining how he got on. ‘I managed three runs. The second was the fastest; the first was only 136-138 or so.

They were all spoiled by traffic, however. When you’re travelling at that speed you have to err on the side of caution. You’re catching other traffic quite quickly and you have to remember that there’s no ABS, although

the brakes felt strong and progressive. There are also no aerodynamic aids; the car starts getting quite light above 110mph and the steering becomes “power assisted”, so you have to maintain a delicate touch.

But the engine seemed to get smoother the higher it was revving. It was still pulling at 5000-5500rpm; I think I saw 146mph and it was still accelerating when I had to back off.’

That’s good enough for us. We may not have quite hit that 150mph target but we’ve come damn close, and we know the car had more to give.

Racelogic confirms later that the VBox recorded a maximum velocity of 146.49mph, and Peter Neumark is delighted: ‘I thought it would do well to get to 135, maybe 138mph, so I’m gobsmacked. Well done, David!’

The man himself is typically laid-back about the whole experience.

‘The car felt absolutely super. It would comfortably have reached 150mph.

Of that, I have absolutely no doubt.’

0

At 6pm we decide it’s now or never. Matt starts rigging up his digital SLR in the E-type’s luggage area, while I get to grips with a VBox datalogging system that will give us an accurate record of the car’s speed, acceleration and much more. As back-up, I’ve gaffer-taped my iPhone with its GPS speedometer over the VBox’s video display, itself taped to the underside of the sun visor. All a bit Heath Robinson but it will do the job. The VBox’s GPS measuring is a lot more precise than the iPhone’s and it will also record high-definition video, providing a useful alternative to the time-lapse photos taken on Matt’s SLR. A last-minute check of tyres and fluid levels, and it’s time to go.

Looking cool as a cucumber, David smoothly feeds in the power and breezes out of the rest area. All we can do now is wait.

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1

P OR SCHE 911 Was there ever any doubt?

The 911 has now been around for over 60 years, and though we prefer the early air-cooled cars, every single iteration of the design has something to recommend it. No other car – of any type – has evolved so successfully with the times.

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THE RIGHT STUFF Matthew Hayward travels to Stuttgart to drive the definitive air-cooled Porsche 911: the Carrera RS 2.7 Photography Porsche

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#1 Porsche 911

‘E

verybody was laughing at this 911 on the test track. They said there’s no way it can be faster with that strange thing on the rear… but it turned out well.’ Tilman Brodbeck, father of Porsche’s ‘ducktail’ spoiler, had his work cut out when he was instructed to ‘fix’ the 911’s on-track behaviour, but the young engineer used his understanding of aeroplane technology and aerodynamics to do just that. And his experiments in the wind tunnel gave rise to an icon: the 911 Carrera RS 2.7.

The mere mention of the letters ‘RS’ (for Rennsport, or ‘racing’) is enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up if you’re a Porsche fan. The RS badge represents the marque’s pursuit of on-track perfection, and as I write this it is almost 50 years to the day since it was introduced, at the 1972 Paris Motor Show, with the unveiling of the 911 Carrera RS 2.7 – a car that was also the first to wear the ‘Carrera’ name.

This was a homologation special, pure and simple, designed from the outset with race teams and privateers in mind. Yet while the car impressed on-track in Group 3 and Group 4 competition, it became coveted by driving enthusiasts the world over on account of its road manners and, as its reputation grew, RS 2.7 values rocketed. If you want to buy an excellent example of the Touring-spec coupé today, you’ll not get much change from half a million pounds, and a Lightweight might set you back twice as much.

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TODAY I’M GOING to find out first-hand what all the fuss is about.

I’m just outside Stuttgart at the site of Porsche’s ‘secret bunker’, which holds the majority of the company’s car collection when it’s not on show at the nearby Porsche Museum, and I’m sitting behind the wheel of an absolutely perfect yellow RS 2.7 Touring.

The occasional pop and crackle from the exhaust on the overrun is the main giveaway of this 911’s thoroughbred, track-focused nature.

Under the engine cover sits a 2.7-litre version of the air-cooled flat-six found in the 911 2.4S, the car upon which the RS was initially based. The 2.4-litre unit hadn’t been intended to accommodate a hike in capacity, and state-of-the-art, low-friction, Nikasil-coated cylinder walls were used to ensure the engine remained robust in use after being bored out.

I drive a few miles around some of the more populated towns and villages in the area, and the inevitable speed restrictions, narrow roads and occasional queues reveal the Touring’s approachable character. The engine, good for 207bhp, is civilised and tractable at low speed thanks to fuel injection. The steering is light. And although it takes a little patience to work out where all the gears are in the somewhat vague gate (standard for a 911 of this age), the shift itself is satisfying. Aside from the typically offset driving position, the car is surprisingly comfortable, too. In an M472 Touring-spec RS, the interior is almost the same as you’d find in a 2.4S, with big, comfortable seats and all the standard items.

THERE’LL BE MORE driving later. In the meantime, aerodynamicist Brodbeck has a tale to tell about that tail. Having joined Porsche as a body engineer, he found that his background in aeroplane technology and aerodynamics came in useful when the company was refining the 911. ‘There was a problem with the early car. It was very light at the front end, and in the beginning we put lead into the front bumper to make it a little heavier. After one year of research and testing and trying, we were in the wind tunnel at Stuttgart University, where we came to this special shape for the front bumper.’

Fitting Brodbeck’s new valance to the 911 2.4S resulted in a significant reduction in front-end lift, transforming the car’s high-speed stability. He continues: ‘Ferdinand Piëch wanted to put this into production as soon as possible, because it also helped the Cd value.

The problem was, the purchasing department said it would take at least two years to create the tools and dies for a steel part at the time. Piëch had the idea of glassfibre. But what would happen if you hit the kerb and it cost a lot of money to replace? Piëch was happy because that would help to sell more spare parts!’

Brodbeck had solved one of the biggest problems of the early 911, and was subsequently called into the office of Helmuth Bott, head of R&D at Porsche. ‘I was still very young [just 26 years old], and if you are called by him you immediately assume that there’s something wrong! He explained to me and my boss that we have a big problem. The customers who are racing with the 911 are having big trouble with BMWs and the six-cylinder Ford Capris on track. They are faster in the curves than our customers. It is simply not possible. He told us both: “You have to do something. I don’t know what we have to do, anything, but not a new car.

Something people can change on their own cars.” So we left the office to think of ideas.’

Clockwise from left Touring-spec RS 2.7 on the road close to Porsche HQ in Stuttgart; the unveiling of the model at the 1972 Paris Motor Show; the famous ‘ducktail’ spoiler, developed in the wind tunnel; the RS gradually took over racing duties from the 917; the total number of RS 2.7s built was 1580.

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#1 Porsche 911

1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 ‘Touring’ Engine 2687cc flat-six, OHC per bank, Bosch fuel injection Power 207bhp @ 6300rpm Torque 188lb ft @ 5100rpm Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front: MacPherson struts, torsion bars, anti-roll bar. Rear: trailing arms, torsion bars, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar Brakes Vented discs Weight 1075kg Top speed 149mph 0-62mph 6.3sec

Brodbeck found a spark of inspiration in the most unlikely place. ‘I had a Fiat 850 coupé when I first started driving. I loved this small car, which was rear-engined just like a 911. Two years later, I bought the newer version with five more horsepower. I was astonished, as it was really a lot faster than the old one – and the only thing I had in my mind as an engineer was that it could not just be the extra five horsepower.

‘The first 850 had a smooth rear end, and the new model had a curvature on the engine lid with a kind of little tear-off edge. I asked my friends at the wind tunnel for models, in Darmstadt, where I’d started my career, if they thought this had something to do with aerodynamics, and they said “No, it’s just styling.” In truth, nobody knew at that time.’

With the little Fiat on his mind, Brodbeck suggested that it might be possible to solve Bott’s problem by modifying the engine lid of the 911 2.4S ‘We knew there were vortices forming behind the roof somewhere, and we tried to form smoother streams with some kind of tear-off edge.

‘We worked in the wind tunnel using different panels made of welding wire. We spent two-and-a-half days doing only that, and the thing was complete. The outcome was a kind of spoiler, although it was not perfectly styled. It wasn’t the first time we had had something like this, but there was no such thing in the production cars before that.’

The results were very encouraging. ‘Lift was reduced dramatically at the rear of the car. We returned to Weissach with the data, and Mr Bott saw the potential. Test driver Günther Steckkönig was instructed to drive the car on the test track in Weissach, with and without the spoiler.’ As Brodbeck expected, the car was much quicker with the spoiler, which soon acquired its ‘ducktail’ nickname.

Perhaps surprisingly, considering how iconic the spoiler became, this first draft attracted more than a few puzzled looks from Brodbeck’s colleagues. And although Brodbeck had proven its effectiveness, there was still much work to be done. ‘As a young engineer, I had to address the styling studio. I told them how long and how high; they just had to make it stylish.’ Then there was the issue of making it road-legal. ‘There were a lot of discussions because they said it’s too dangerous, posing a risk to motorcyclists. Porsche and the regulator came to an understanding.

We lowered the edge a little bit, and told them it was only for 500 cars.

No-one asked later about the number of cars sold.’

BACK OUT IN the yellow Touring coupé, the traffic disperses and the roads open up, but we’re not even close to the velocity required to take advantage of Brodbeck’s spoiler. At these speeds, the RS 2.7 experience is all about the rest of the package.

The RS boasted a new staggered wheel-and-tyre set-up, with 185/70 VR15s up front and much wider 205/60 VR15s at the rear, to transmit far more power and torque to the road. The rear wheelarches were accordingly made wider, giving the car its distinctive, muscular look.

The 2.7-litre flat-six isn’t short on low-end grunt, but really starts to wake up as the revs pass 4000rpm. Although it redlines at over 7000rpm, peak power arrives at 6300prm and, with torque peaking at a tad over 5000, it feels unfair to stretch far beyond 6500rpm. Yet it’s when exploring the upper reaches of the engine that you notice just how sharp the throttle is, and blipping it on downshifts is an absolute joy.

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Clockwise from above The Touring has some of the creature comforts of the 911 2.4S; the more hardcore Lightweight; Brodbeck explains the aerodynamics of the ducktail spoiler.

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#1 Porsche 911

1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 ‘Lightweight’ Engine 2687cc flat-six, OHC per bank, Bosch fuel injection Power 207bhp @ 6300rpm Torque 188lb ft @ 5100rpm Transmission Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive Steering Rack and pinion Suspension Front: MacPherson struts, torsion bars, anti-roll bar.

Rear: trailing arms, torsion bars, telescopic dampers, anti-roll bar Brakes Vented discs Weight 960kg Top speed 152mph 0-62mph 5.8sec

That quick response is a real asset when you start trying to make sense of the car’s handling. The typically light 911 front end requires careful management through the corners, but you can use the super-sharp throttle to your advantage, influencing the attitude of the RS with measured inputs. All the time the rim of the steering wheel is keeping you well-apprised of the situation. It feels like it’s working with you rather than constantly fighting you, which helps you to build trust in the chassis.

THERE IS, as alluded to earlier, an even more focused (and valuable) version of the RS 2.7, and it wouldn’t do to leave here without sampling it, and so I’m handed the keys to an example of the rare M471 Lightweight.

These days, the idea of a lightweight version of a performance car is not unusual – but in the case of the RS, the stripped-out version was actually the one originally imagined by the manufacturer.

When fitted with the optional Sport seats, as here, the car weighs just 960kg. That’s fully 115kg less than the Touring. These days, Porsche will charge you more money for the various option packages that reduce weight, but in 1973 the Lightweight was the cheaper of the two RS 2.7s.

It was listed at DM34,700, or around £6000, while the Touring cost DM36,500. Of the 1580 RS 2.7s built, 1308 were Tourings, and just 200 were roadgoing Lightweights. (The remainder of production is accounted for by 17 ‘RSH’ homologation cars and the 55 competition-spec RSRs.) From a few feet away the Touring and the Lightweight look much the same, but as I edge closer to the Lightweight I begin to notice the differences. Most obvious is the chrome trim missing from the bottom of the sill. Unlatch the door and you immediately feel that it’s made from thin-gauge steel, which is complemented by thinner-than-standard glass.

In place of the comfortable Touring seats are a simple pair of buckets, and as I slide into the cockpit I’m surprised at just how pared-back it feels in here. There’s a big, round blanking panel in place of the standard car’s clock, and only the driver is afforded the luxury of a sun-visor. There’s no radio, of course, and not even a glovebox lid. Doorcards are far more basic than in the Touring, with a simple fabric pull to let yourself out again.

You do still get carpets, but what little sound insulation was present in the Touring is missing here.

From top left The flat-six engine in the Lightweight is identical to the one in the Touring, only it has 115kg less mass to shift thanks to some extreme weightsaving measures.

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#1 Porsche 911

‘When the RS was launched, Porsche’s marketing material described it as the car that could do everything – from commuting in traffic to weekend racing – without complaining’ Pull away in the Lightweight and you notice the inevitable extra road noise, but more striking is the sound coming from behind. Mechanically there are no differences between the Touring and the Lightweight, but that chatty engine is certainly more audible here. Pops and bangs from the exhaust, too, penetrate the cabin.

It won’t be particularly apparent to me today, but the Lightweight is certainly the faster car when pushed to the limit: period test figures from Auto Motor und Sport have the Lightweight accelerating from rest to 62mph in 5.8sec, with the Touring taking half a second longer. And there’s no denying that on the track the difference in performance between the two cars would be night and day.

On the road, where you tend to feel the difference most is in the ride.

The suspension settings are unchanged here, but sitting in a lighter car on less forgiving seats, you get an even more detailed picture of the road and the way the car is interacting with it. Pushing on into a series of quicker bends, I observe that turn-in is improved and that there’s a even a little more feedback in the steering – but we’re talking here about the kinds of differences you’d only notice jumping from one RS 2.7 to the other.

I GET TO experience the Touring again on the way back to base. Caught in traffic, I have a few moments to consider both cars, and it sinks in that the yellow Touring has left the bigger impression. As a collectors’ piece, the rarer Lightweight ticks all the boxes, but leaving monetary value out of the equation, it’s the Touring that I’d want in my garage.

When the RS was launched, Porsche’s marketing material described it as the car that could do everything – from commuting in traffic to weekend racing – without complaining. It’s that lack of complaining that I find most appealing and surprising. Despite being driven hard for several hours on a very warm day, neither this yellow Touring nor the white Lightweight has even broken a sweat.

It’s incredible to think that, if Porsche’s sales team had had its way, the world might have been deprived of the RS 2.7. In the final stages of development, work on the car was almost stopped in its tracks. Brodbeck laughs: ‘We knew we had to sell 500 of these cars to get it homologated, but when it was presented to the sales team it wasn’t looking good. When the head of the sales force was asked how many he thought they could sell, he answered “Ten at most.”’ How glad I am that he was wrong.

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T H E

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ICONS 30 YEARS APART

1973 PORSCHE 911 2.4S UK RHD. Original factory spec and matching numbers. Great history and just lovely.

2003 BMW M5 One of the best, finished in Le Mans Blue with a beige nappa BMW Individual interior. V8 engine and 6-speed manual gearbox. 30,700 miles from new with three owners and a complete history. Immaculate throughout.

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