Classic & Sports Car September sneak peak

CLASSIC & SPORTS CAR SEPTEMBER2019

GOODWOOD REVIVAL ESSENTIAL 16-PAGE PREVIEW

Britain’s best-selling classic car magazine

September 2019 £5.70

JAGUAR D-TYPE vs ASTON DB3S

JAGUAR D-TYPE VS ASTON DB3S PLUS

Two of the greatest endurance racers go head to head… on the public road!

SLK32 vs Z3M, Rotary power, Buick Riviera, Herald vs Anglia vs A40, Allegro

SLK AMG vs Z3M: WILD ROADSTER SHOOTOUT

BARGAIN GREATS FROM ’59:WHO NEEDS A MINI?

OUR PICK O THE FINES F 1950s SPO T RT RACERS S

ROTARY CLUB: MAZDA COSMO, NSU & CITROËN

8 Classic & Sports Car September 2019

MOTORSPORT IMAGES

THE BIG PICTURE The Aston Martin DB3S didn’t give Jaguar the bloody nose that boss David Brown might have hoped for (p106), but at Le Mans in 1956 it got close to causing an upset. Here the works Aston of Brits Stirling Moss and Peter Collins chases the Ecurie Ecosse D-type of Ninian Sanderson and Ron Flockhart watched by marshals, gendarmes and a scattering of spectators.

The two cars would finish in the same positions, with the Jaguar’s extra 45bhp – and resultant 156.8mph top speed on the Mulsanne to the Aston’s 142.6mph – giving a significant advantage. However, the guile of Moss and Collins meant that the Aston completed just one lap fewer than the Jag, six more than the Ferrari of Olivier Gendebien and Maurice Trintignant in third. AC

September 2019 Classic & Sports Car 9

WON FOR THE ROAD Jaguar D-type and Aston DB3S: hitting the highway in two of the greatest sports-racers ever built WORDS MICK WALSH PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES MANN/MOTORSPORT IMAGES

THREE CAR ROTATION The NSU Ro80, Citroën Birotor and Mazda Cosmo are cars united by one cult concept – and one careful owner WORDS MARTIN BUCKLEY PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN BRADSHAW

GANGSTER’S PARADISE From trendsetter to transport for silver-screen pimps and pushers, the 1971-’73 Buick Riviera is due a renaissance WORDS ALASTAIR CLEMENTS PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN BRADSHAW/BEN SUMMERELL-YOUDE

S

ome cars just end up tainted. The 1963-’65 Buick Riviera is the darling of the American-car scene, and with good reason: its stunning shape, styled by Ned Nickles under legendary General Motors design supremo Bill Mitchell, is arguably the finest to emerge from Detroit since, well… ever. Yet the 1971-’73 model that followed, the last of the truly bespoke Rivieras before the slide into bland GM badge engineering, sits in its shadow. Too radical for buyers when it was new, this once-range-topping ‘Personal Luxury Car’ was swiftly relegated to the back row of the used-car lots.

That bargain-bin image can’t have been helped by its appearances on both the big and small screens. Where the ’65 even has its own critically acclaimed art-house movie dedicated to it, the 1971-’73 is invariably the transport for hoods, pimps and generally unsavoury characters, its fate more often than not the crusher after a violent pursuit with a fiery conclusion.

Its cinematic heyday was the 1990s, when a relic of the early ’70s was the perfect villain’s accessory – cheap to buy, with plenty of gangster chic. Nicolas Cage’s bumbling hitman makes his escape in a ’71 in Red Rock West (1993); Kevin Kline drives another in dysfunctional drama The Ice Storm (1997); Bruce Willis blows up his ’71 in The Last Boy Scout (1991) – with the same car also appearing in Mel Gibson vehicle Lethal Weapon 3; and a ’72 outshines the future Mrs Tom Cruise in 1999’s drug-fuelled Go. There are endless bad-boy cameos, too, but the 1971-’73 Riv achieved redemption, and its most famous role, in Canadian black comedy

Due South, in which detective Raymond ‘Ray’ Vecchio (David Marciano) drives around Chicago in a ’72 that became as famous as the fish-out-of-water Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman Benton Fraser (Paul Gross). Here, as in all of its celluloid appearances, the Buick spends most of its time lurching around on its soggy suspension in car chases, demonstrating the strength of its separate cruciform chassis with all manner of jumps and shunts.

Although 1971 heralded only the third generation of the Riviera as a standalone model (see p131), the name – intended to conjure the glamour of the French and Italian coastline – had been applied to various Buicks for more than two decades. Originating in the GM Styling experimental studio at 40 West Milwaukee, Detroit, it was used to denote a luxurious model with a distinctive ‘hardtop convertible’ style – the sporty look of a drop-top, but with a fixed roof – first appearing on the Roadmaster Riviera Hardtop Coupe at the GM Exhibition in New York in January 1949. The key feature was the elimination of the central pillar to create, so the brochure claimed, ‘swift, greyhound lines that give sportive zip and zest’ – though this wouldn’t be carried over to four-door Riviera bodies until the 1955 model-year Century and Special.

In addition to the pillarless windows, another detail that would become synonymous with the Riviera body style – but one that, ironically, was absent from the original and most famous 1963 version – was the ‘Sweepspear’ chromed side trim, with its distinctive kick over the rear fender. This would make a dramatic return as a signature feature of the 1971-’73 cars, before disappearing never to be seen again.

Eggcrate grille and rubber bumper inserts arrived for 1972; marketing guru Jack Tinker created ‘R’ badge.

Chrome-plated wheels were a $70 extra when new