Inhoudsopgave van May 2017 - Octane

FACTORY CERTIFICATION of a classic car’s authenticity, most famously formalised by Ferrari’s Classiche service, is becoming increasingly popular, especially when there’s also a restoration service on offer. Lamborghini announced its PoloStorico facility last year, showcasing the fabulous metallic green Miura SV that starred at the Villa d’Este concours, but PoloStorico is now officially open to customers. It covers Lamborghini models that have been out of production for at least 10 years, it preserves archives and records, and it is currently able to supply 65% of classic Lamborghini parts while claiming to be able to find the rest if required. The Certification of Authenticity service has some famous names behind it and operates through two committees. These are overseen by chairman and CEO, Stefano Domenicali, former boss of Ferrari’s Formula 1…

‘I’M A BIG A SERIES FAN, and we’d always had Minors,’ says Andy Cross of Bluebell, the Minor he’s owned for almost 30 years. ‘Mum had one, dad had a Traveller, my brother Mark had a saloon that he squeezed his drumkit in, and I had a van as I was into karting. So when I wanted to go racing, it seemed the thing to do.’ The Cross brothers found Bluebell in a London lock-up. ‘It’d been racing in the BARC Classic Touring Car Championship for pre-’59 cars for about 15 years, with no success. So we thought we could make it work a bit better and concentrated on making it more reliable.’ That worked, because they won the Championship in 1991 and 1993, when the overall winner was decided…

THE THIRD YEAR for the London Classic Car Show: surely a make-or-break occasion? The organisers went all out to make it the former, taking yet more space at Excel, and introducing the all-new Historic Motorsport International show to run in tandem. The idea was sound, the timing unfortunate, clashing with the established Race Retro event at Stoneleigh, 100-odd miles away. This made for a slightly depleted Historic motor sport contingent at both shows, but the good news is that next year they’ll be a week apart. As for the main event, the London Classic Motor Show can be deemed a success. It builds on the idea of ‘The Grand Avenue’ through the centre of the main hall, along which are demonstrated a huge variety of cars at regular intervals throughout…

DO YOU CHOOSE a new car on the basis of its infotainment system? An increasing number of buyers are, reckons Jaguar Land Rover, which is why it’s bigging-up the technology incorporated in this year’s Range Rovers. Recognising that we all use smartphones these days, the JLR system allows you to mirror your own device to the central touchscreen so you can use your favourite apps: the new Shell fuelling app, which lets you pay from inside the car, looks particularly useful, and music-streaming services such as Spotify are very popular. Neat tricks include being able to start the car remotely to preheat it, or programme the sat-nav in advance. Looking to the future, JLR is planning to put software on the cloud so that the system can be updated for…

‘I’m so glad I didn’t restore it!’ says Jonathan Segal as we receive yet another thumbs-up from an enthusiastic onlooker. ‘It was only after we got a second place at Pebble Beach that I realised how special it is.’ We’re driving the Baillon Collection Maserati, co-star to the headline Ferrari 250 California Spyder, both found in a dilapidated state at a French château in 2014, along with more than 100 other derelict machines. After the mother of all rescue operations, they were offered for sale by Artcurial at the 2015 Rétromobile show, making news around the world – and now, two years on, the car looks pretty much as it did when found but it’s blasting along Californian backroads to the delight of all who see it (as well as…

‘IT IS AN INCREDIBLE TIME CAPSULE – EXACTLY AS WHEN DRIVER GUY TUNMER STEPPED OUT OF IT FOR THE FINAL TIME’ Once in a while, a long-lost racer that has been stashed away like buried treasure comes to light. This Formula 1 Lotus 72, chassis 72-3, is just such a car: until it appeared on Octane’s stand at the Autosport International Show in January, it had not been seen in public since October 1975. It is an incredible time capsule – exactly as it was when South African driver Guy Tunmer stepped out of it for the final time at the Donnybrook circuit in Rhodesia, four decades ago. I have more than a passing interest in this car, having researched it in detail in 2003 for my book Lotus 72:…

Is the Land Rover Discovery a true Octane vehicle? On first thoughts not. And yet you’ll see them everywhere: in classic show car parks, in circuit paddocks, on motorways towing race pods or restoration projects. Most are the Tonka Toy third and fourth generations; earlier variants are often more down-at heel, sporting stickers and CB aerials, though there’s a movement towards restoration of first-generation models, and values are edging up accordingly. Now, to great fanfare, Land Rover has launched the fifth generation. It’s longer but lighter, more aerodynamic but less distinctive, more luxurious but even better off-road. It’s going to be a huge seller – before it had even appeared in a single showroom more than 20,000 had been sold – and its success is absolutely crucial to Land Rover.…

‘DAD WAS BORN IN ITALY, in a small village near Modena, but came over to boarding school in England early in WW2, because my grandmother had a fruit-and-veg business in Covent Garden. The school was run by monks and, because he couldn’t speak English, he talked with them in Latin! ‘He subsequently went into the family business, which allowed him to buy nice cars and go racing. But his early results weren’t exactly stellar. After crashing out of the 1956 Mille Miglia in the Ace – the story goes that during the night he unexpectedly encountered a humped-back bridge, took off and came down in a field – he returned the following year in a Lotus Eleven, which also retired. ‘In the Modena area, Ferrari is not an unusual name…

‘MANY WERE ROLEXES, SOME WERE PATEKS, AND IWC GOT A LOOK-IN: BRANDS THAT MAKE WATCHES TO LAST’ ONE OF THE MORE exotic recent trends in the world of watch collecting has been the rise of the Gulf dial. In Jan Morris’s entertaining travel book Sultan in Oman – an account of her time (before her gender reassignment, when she was James Morris) as an observer of a journey across the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman in 1955 made by the country’s ruler – the country is described as a ‘medieval Islamic state’ but, as one passage reveals, a medieval Islamic state with an acute sense of the status-conferring power of a good wristwatch. ‘I sat down for coffee with a group of friendly and eager tribesmen, and one of them,…

With a marginal gain of 0.52% in February, the HAGI Top has inched to a new high of 346.61. But make no mistake, the buyer is king. Although you won’t have heard it from the market cheerleaders, this has been the case for some time, and is evidenced not least by the continuing subdued trading volumes that have been a feature of the market for more than a year. Moreover, the HAGI Top, in line with all other HAGI marque measures, is now underperforming when compared with average long-term historic annual growth. This was not so at the end of 2015, when several HAGI benchmarks, the Top included, were outperforming historic annual averages. Back then the HAGI Top posted an annual gain of 16.57%. Today, two months into 2017 year-on-year…

WE ALL KNOW Henry Ford offered his original Model T in ‘any colour as long as it’s black’. But most of us have forgotten that when Volvo launched its oddball 262C Coupé in 1978, the car was also available in any colour – as long as it was Mystic Silver Metallic. Some say Henry Ford II was partly to blame for the Swedish marque’s uncharacteristic foray into the world of luxury coupés. That’s because, during a visit to Volvo HQ, he turned up with a fleet of Lincoln Continental MkIVs – which may have inspired the Swedish designers to think they could create something equally unattractive. Whether or not they succeeded is debatable, because there’s something about the 262C that makes it strangely covetable. With its chopped roof sitting 10cm…

‘THE GALLERY IS A NEW THING; MY OWN COLLECTION GOT TOO BIG AND WE COULDN’T HAVE IT FILLING THE WHOLE HOUSE’ I WAS ONE OF the pioneers of motor sport hospitality in the 1970s. My big breakthrough came in 1978, when no-one else was doing it. I approached National Girobank, the bank of the Post Office, for sponsorship and got lucky. They were aiming for a young audience, and banking was boring while motor racing was exciting. So they paid for a season of Formula Ford 1600 racing, but they also asked me to take another car around schools, and I was soon arranging race day tickets and planning days out at race tracks, as well as branding the cars. We’re still doing similar work today, although in many ways…

‘It’s been organic in its growth, which is the healthiest way. This year we will formally become a club to more effectively organise activities and promote these cars’ GT AND ENDURANCE RACING was a kaleidoscope of speed and colour in the 1990s, featuring everything from road-car-based GTs to F1-inspired sports prototypes following the demise of the old World Sportscar Championship, whose passing signalled the end of Group C. These cars in turn became redundant in 1999, with the dawn of the new American Le Mans Series (ALMS) and its subsequent European counterpart, the ELMS. But since 2014, an enthusiastic group led by ex-Goodwood Competitions Secretary Jarrah Venables has been giving ’90s machines a new lease of life – and he’s just kicked his plans up a gear with the inclusion…

AROUND 20 YEARS AGO, not long after he started competing, His Royal Highness Prince Joachim of Denmark told me historic racing was a gentleman’s sport. I told him that when the red mist comes down it has been known to become a trifle ungentlemanly. Over tea at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen, I remind him about that conversation. ‘Yes – I’ve experienced it, and not just as the victim. I have felt horns and a tail begin to grow. But to risk other people’s machinery as well as your own… you just have to sort yourself out mentally.’ Prince Joachim has been interested in fast cars and racing since he was a child: ‘Like all kids when they are seven or eight, I wanted to be a policeman, a fireman or…

JIM CLARK REVIVAL 21-23 April Hockenheim, Germany hockenheim-historic.de TARGA TASMANIA 24-29 April Tasmania, Australia targa.com.au TOUR AUTO 24-30 April Paris to Côte d’Azur, France peterauto.peter.fr MANX CLASSIC 27-29 April Isle of Man manxmotorracing.com DONINGTON HISTORIC FESTIVAL 28-30 April Castle Donington, UK doningtonhistoric.com SPA CLASSIC 19-21 May Francorchamps, Belgium peterauto.peter.fr GRAND PRIX DE PAU HISTORIQUE 26-28 May Pau, France grandprixdepau.fr MODENA CENTO ORE CLASSIC 6-11 June Rimini to Modena, Italy modenacentooreclassic.it GRAND PRIX DE L’AGE D’OR 9-11 June Prenois, France peterauto.peter.fr THE SILVERSTONE CLASSIC 28-30 July Silverstone, UK silverstoneclassic.com VINTAGE PRESCOTT 5-6 August Gotherington, UK vscc.co.uk COPENHAGEN HISTORIC GRAND PRIX 5-6 August Copenhagen, Denmark chgp.dk OLDTIMER GRAND PRIX 11-13 August Nürburg, Germany nuerburgring.de BONNEVILLE SPEED WEEK 12-18 August Bonneville Salt Flats, USA scta-bni.org MONTEREY MOTORSPORTS REUNION 17-20 August Monterey, USA mazdaraceway.com…

FERRARI IS NOT JUST celebrating its 70th year. It’s also hoping to entice some of its earlier machinery away from the specialists and back into its dealerships, but some younger mechanics and technicians might be flummoxed at the sight of multiple carburettors, a points ignition system, a ballast resistor or – reckons Ferrari – a manual gearbox. As for one of those without synchromesh, it’s a rare school-leaver indeed who will have encountered a crash-box. Teenagers with an eye on motor mechanics may have grown up with smartphones and computer control, but Ferrari North Europe’s apprenticeship scheme for would-be technicians now includes third-year modules on classic car technology. As well as the componentry mentioned above, they include magnetos, dynamos and mechanical fuel injection, thus covering the whole Ferrari evolutionary story.…

THE DISPLAY IN THE JIM CLARK ROOM in Duns, the small town in Scottish border country where the double Formula 1 World Champion grew up, has long been a point of pilgrimage for those steeped in 1960s motor sport. Now the Jim Clark Trust plans to extend the old stone house to include a proper museum, with more memorabilia and the space to display two of Clark’s racing cars. Sir Jackie Stewart announced the joint initiative by the Trust and Scottish Borders Council at February’s Race Retro show. He asked for enthusiasts to back a £300,000 crowdfunding campaign to reach the project’s £1.6m cost, adding to the £620,000 pledged by the council and £645,000 from the Heritage Lottery fund. The campaign, which will run until 17 April, was announced alongside…

IT WAS INTO Delhi’s vibrant, colourful mix of cultures old and new that I arrived for the 21 Gun Salute Vintage Car Rally and Concours Show. This year the judging team, led by FIVA scrutineer Chris Kramer, included such luminaries as Gordon Murray of McLaren F1 fame; Tour Auto organiser Patrick Peter; Jeremy Jackson Sytner, founder of the Concours of Elegance; Rolls-Royce expert Paul Wood; historic racer James Wood; Adolfo Orsi; and Quirina Louwman, often seen behind the wheel of the 1957-winning Le Mans D-type, XKD 606, which belongs to her father, the Dutch car museum owner Evert Louwman. So there needed to be some rather excellent cars on show to satisfy the judging panel. And we were not to be disappointed by what had been gathered under the shadow…

HAVING BEEN launched way back in 2003, the Bentley Continental GT is due for replacement next year. With close to 60,000 cars sold during those 14 years the heavyweight coupé has been a huge success for Bentley so, rather than let the model fade away with a whimper, Crewe has instead produced the fastest and most powerful version yet. In fact, the new Continental Supersports is the most potent roadgoing Bentley full stop, its twin-turbocharged W12 engine having been wound up to a titanic 700bhp. The Supersports badge was revived in 2009 for a run of 1800 special edition models, but this latest version will be more exclusive still, with only 710 set to be built across coupé and convertible body styles. With a list price of £212,500 the Supersports…

‘BEDAZZLING ROCKET ZIPPER’. It isn’t the catchiest of names. Thankfully I made it up. BRZ really stands for ‘Boxer Rear-drive Zenith’. No? It does. Promise. Anyway, ignore that, because this is possibly the best-value rear-drive coupé currently on sale, boxer engine or not. It comes in one fully loaded trim level, yet manages to undercut the cheapest Toyota GT86 (its badge-engineered twin; see below). And you want the original, don’t you? Especially one that promises this kind of exclusivity. Yep, Subarus are rare in the UK, annual sales hovering around 5000. As well as legendary longevity and owner loyalty, you can blame the USA. It accounts for over half of Subaru’s near-1m annual production figures, so the company isn’t interested in this outpost, which means its mostly endearing and competent…

BUGATTI TYPE 22 BRESCIA On 18 August 1967, diver Ugo Pillon put paid to rumours of a vintage Bugatti in the depths of Lake Maggiore, Switzerland. There it was, 53 metres down, the chain intended to haul it from its temporary hideaway having rotted. In 2009 it was exhumed in aid of a local charity. It’s thought that the car, delivered new to Paris in 1925, was driven to Switzerland by architect Marco Schmuklerski. As he didn’t pay any import duty, the local customs men were soon hot on his trail, and the friends Schmuklerski had left the car with needed rid of the evidence pronto… It remains, conserved in its decayed condition, at the Mullin Automotive Museum. FERRARI 250 GTO Innes Ireland was heartbroken. It was 1982 and the…

‘IT WAS AN incredibly challenging project for our restoration team,’ says Julian Morris, managing director of Elite Motors Bodyshop, the company that, along with Porsche Centre Silverstone, entered this 1977-vintage 924 Martini Edition into the Porsche Classic Restoration Competition 2016. ‘Not just because it was the oldest car in the competition. This was a 23-owner car with what you might call a chequered history. ‘In 1992 it had been written off and over the years had been subject to some extremely poor repairs. It had been exposed to the elements for a long time and bore the scars of poor restoration work, especially to the sills and floor. The team discovered corrosion in places that you simply wouldn’t expect to find rust. As a consequence the 924 turned into a…

GENDARMES ON MOTORCYCLES, that’s what I need. So I tell myself as I snuggle a little deeper into the plush, cosseting seat cushions. A fleet of those tricolore bikes with all the flashing lights, please. And the gendarmes should have the spiffy uniforms with the gold braid, befitting one’s importance to The Republic. Or maybe a chauffeur-slash-bodyguard in mirrored shades, and a briskly efficient stenographer-slash-PA updating my busy schedule while I waft along in smooth, velvety silence, pondering serious responsibilities. Either scenario would suit just fine, actually. Many Citroën loyalists consider the CX series the high-water mark of the marque, a tribute to its engineering courage and brilliance, achieved before the sad decline that ultimately resulted in a Citroën line-up that now offers not a single, solitary wet-suspension set-up, for…

RECOGNISE THE NAME? Velar, from the Latin ‘to veil, or hide’, was used on the original late-’60s Range Rover prototypes to disguise their identities. New Velar, though, sits in a Range Rover line-up that the team behind original Velar could never have imagined. Range Rover proper at the top, with Velar between Range Rover Sport and Evoque, plugging a gap that you might not think existed in the first place. But exist it did, in terms of both size and price. In the UK, a typical Evoque customer pays £39,000, while a Range Rover Sport buyer shells out on average £72,000. Land Rover thinks the Velar will typically sell for £61,000 – the starting point will be £44,830 up to £72,630 (and £84,000 for a special first edition). The Velar…

The Col de Turini is regarded as one of the most dangerous roads in the world… …but also one of the most exciting. Although its name sounds Italian, the legendary pass is located in the scenic Alpes-Maritimes region in the south of France, where severe weather can make the 15-mile, 5272ft ascent – with 34 hairpin bends! – extremely treacherous. An ideal rally stage, then. Indeed, the Turini is the most famous rally stage in the world, made so by its part in probably the most famous rally in the world: the Rallye Monte-Carlo. The event first ran in 1911, at the instigation of Prince Albert I of Monaco, to demonstrate the capabilities of the newfangled automobile – and also as a nice little earner for the Principality. Entrants started…

SCROLL DOWN a list of the Bentley Boys, the glam racing heroes of the marque from their glory days in the Roaring Twenties, and with few exceptions it reads just as the legend promises: the rich and powerful, and the playboy sons thereof. Posh industrialists and entrepreneurs, financiers, diamond traders, motor traders, old-money aristos. Until you reach one exception in particular. Hero in 1927 of Bentley’s and, indeed, maybe Britain’s most glorious Le Mans victory ever: Sammy Davis, motoring journalist. Not that Sidney Charles Houghton Davis suffered greatly from underprivilege. Born in London in 1887, he was privately educated at elite Westminster School and, when he rather portentously followed mother’s family into art instead of father’s into commerce, he attended the equally prestigious Slade School of Fine Art. After father…

WHEN FAMILIES DON’T SHARE our insatiable interest in old cars, Bentley Wildfowl and Motor Museum is the perfect answer. The car museum is deeply interesting, but for the non-enthusiast there are a miniature ride-on railway (with steam and electric locomotives), formal gardens and the largest private wildfowl collection in the United Kingdom. The motor museum is housed in a former cowshed, a fine building that makes a bright, airy home for a highly interesting collection of some 50 cars, plus motorcycles and automobilia. The number of cars can vary, as many are on loan, creating constant change. It means, too, that most of the vehicles are roadworthy and enjoy the occasional outing. Probably the first car to catch the eye is the interesting 1902 Hanzer, the product of a French…

1:18 MERCEDES-BENZ RACE CAR TRANSPORTER Not the blue, streamlined 1950s one with the SL engine, but a 1930s LO 2750 truck which carried the Silver Arrows racing cars in their pre-war heyday. The real one did, anyway; this 1:18-scale model by German modelmaker CMC contains 2365 parts and is a fabulous study in intricacy. The W125 racing car is not included… CDN$950. collectorstudio.com HOW TO BUILD A CYCLECAR In motoring’s earliest years, the more marginal motorist aspired to a contraption part-motorcycle, part-car. This 1913 Temple Press book, now reprinted, explains how to make your own, a popular pastime until Herbert Austin invented the Seven and spoilt the party. Time to build another? £13.50. gunnandco.co.uk SCALEXTRIC TIC TAC BMW M3 Today’s Scalextric models are pieces of kinetic art in their own…

If rarity is high on the agenda in your search for a collectable motor, this remarkable Riley should certainly fit the bill. That’s because it’s reckoned to be one of only three survivors from the marque’s first foray into making four-wheeled cars in 1905. Indeed, there is some speculation that this could be Riley’s very first proper car, following Percy Riley’s shift from quadricycle and tricar production. With a 1034cc, rear-mounted V-twin rated at 9hp, the veteran two-seater is thought to have been shipped to New Zealand when new. A 30-year restoration commenced during the 1970s, with the car remaining in NZ until 2009, when it was repatriated to the UK by the vendor in its current ‘outstanding’ condition. Modestly estimated at £47,000-52,000, it’s being sold with an impressive wad…

WHO’D HAVE thought it? Last August, a minimal-miles, hyper-original example of Peugeot’s definitive hot hatchback sold at auction for a whisker under £31,000, bringing an army of hopeful sellers behind it asking hitherto unimaginable prices for unmolested examples. Shortly before that a restored one made £25,000 at another auction. Suddenly the 205 was the hottest of hot properties, leapfrogging the former sector barometer, the Mk1 Golf GTI, into a whole new level of serious-money collectability. It was probably the biggest proportional value-leap per unit of time ever seen with a classic car, and in the aftermath came briefly perhaps the broadest spread of asking prices one model has ever experienced. This is a mass-production hatchback, after all, and to some minds sufficiently modern for unexceptional examples still to languish in…

EDWARDIAN, VINTAGE AND MORE: Vintage Sports-Car Club Far more than a competition club, but the Vintage Sports-Car Club promotes the best Vintage racing – and we mean racing – on the planet, plus hillclimb and trials series. Whatever the Vintage (pre-1931) car, from Austin Seven to aero-engined Edwardian, there’s a place for it. The VSCC hosts 1950s single-seater and sports car races at its meetings, too, as well as the best Vintage hillclimb anywhere, Prescott, on the first weekend in August every year. vscc.co.uk THE MOST BUMS (SORRY!) ON THE MOST SEATS: 750 Motor Club It’s been the backbone of British club racing since ’39, when it was founded to promote the use of the Austin Seven in road and trials event. It currently runs 22 series, from Stock Hatch…

ON 29 MARCH 1927, Sir Henry Segrave and his Sunbeam 1000hp averaged 203.79mph over two opposite runs at Daytona Beach, setting a new Land Speed Record in the process. Now, 90 years later, work has begun to rebuild one of its two 22.5-litre V12 Sunbeam Matabele aero engines. It’s all happening in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, where the Sunbeam has been on display since 1958. Doug Hill, the museum’s manager and chief engineer, is masterminding the scheme. He and his colleagues hope to run the engine, the rear one of the two and currently mounted in a test rig, as a celebration of the 90th anniversary. If they succeed, it will be the engine’s first firing-up since it last ran in 1939. For Hill, this has been a…

McLaren did its best to keep a lid on the new lodestone of its range, the replacement for the 650S. But the lid started to unscrew a few weeks before Geneva, not least with speculation over the name which, on past form, was likely to denote engine power and be followed by an S. So, at Geneva, the world welcomed the McLaren 720S, first in the new generation of McLaren’s so-called Super Series. It’s quite a step forward, too: 10kg lighter than the 650S and generating up to 30 per cent more downforce at the rear, despite less drag overall. It has that extra 70bhp from its twin-turbo engine and also gains 66lb ft of torque, making 566lb ft, thanks to a longer stroke which raises capacity to 4.0 litres.…

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A DECADE AGO the prospect of Alfa Romeo producing a high-riding vehicle would have incensed many. Now it finds itself fashionably late at the SUV party, behind Maserati, Bentley and Porsche. Having seen the success that SUVs have brought to those marques, Alfa is banking on the Stelvio being a runaway hit. On looks alone it could be onto a winner. From that trilobo grille to the sculpted body lines, the Stelvio is brimming with style. Inside, the look is familiar from the Giulia – which means premium German rivals (just) beat it for quality; but gorgeous metal paddleshifters go some way to making up for that, looking great and offering a lovely mechanical feel. The 207bhp 2.2-litre diesel engine is likely to account for most sales across Europe, something…

YOUR ARTICLE in Octane 166 on Sir William Lyons’ Jaguar Mk10 brought back memories of a lesson well learned in 1964 when I was a junior salesman for Stratstone in Berkeley Street, London, which was the city’s Daimler distributor and also a Jaguar agent. I was sitting at my open-plan desk next to the showroom window when a somewhat scruffy-looking individual came into the showroom wearing an old Mackintosh. One of the senior salesmen said to me: ‘Wilson, get rid of that chap; he’ll turn other customers away.’ Well, I thought, I can’t just tell him to get out, so I approached him and the conversation went something like this: ‘Good morning Sir, can I help you?’ ‘Yes indeed: I want to buy a Mk10 Jaguar.’ ‘New or Used?’ ‘New.’…

VISITING CUBA to photograph the cars there had long been a dream of mine. I finally saw my now-or-never chance during the early summer of 2014. The whole trip was improvised – I arrived in Cuba on my own, with a plan to head from Viñales to Santiago de Cuba in search of the most important cars hidden on the island, stopping along the way to speak with locals. Spanish is my native language, so it was easy to communicate. I made friends with a family in the outskirts of Havana and spent at least 12 hours every day travelling – usually by almendrone, a battered taxi. Very few Cubans own a private car. Research beforehand was not easy. Other than the more obvious American and Soviet cars, I heard…

Contact seems inevitable. Gérard Larrousse doesn’t lift for anything, least of all a pheasant. His right foot remains buried as our feathered friend runs left and then right and then left again. ‘Oh look, lunch,’ he shouts, straining to be heard over a screaming flat-six. We miss it by millimetres, our hero’s smile never slackening as he asks: ‘How about one more lap?’ Oh, go on, it would be rude not to. Larrousse is in his element. The rally champion turned sports car ace is clearly enjoying himself, having been reunited with the Porsche he last saw on the final day of the 1970 Tour de France Automobile – the same event in which he and wingman Maurice Gélin placed third after an epic drive. This ex-works 911 has covered…

HISTORY IS BUNK, Henry Ford may or may not have said, but history is all-important when you’re talking about competition cars. And that’s why the AC Ace featured here is such a special car. It has continuous history since the day in 1955 that it was bought by a young Italian guy who lived in London and wanted to go racing. It competed in the 1956 Mille Miglia – the only Ace ever to have done a Mille in period – and it’s tackled several of the retrospectives, more than four decades later. That history is a chequered one, however. So, on a bright spring day, we brought some of the key characters involved to Thruxton circuit to help unravel the tale of a true race Ace. STEP FORWARD, Mr…

‘THE HARDEST DRIVING I’VE EVER DONE, A SOLID HOUR UP THE MOUNTAIN AND ANOTHER DOWN. AT NIGHT! IN A FIAT 127!’ WHILE THE LIKES of Rauno Aaltonen are invited by the Automobile Club de Monaco to take part in the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique, you don’t have to be famous to take part. You just need a suitable car. But don’t go thinking eligibility is restricted to 911s, Alpines and works Mini-Coopers. Oh no. If a car competed on the original event then it will be eligible today. And there’s plenty of variety. For instance, the Austin Sheerline entered by William Power and Cyril Pilgrim in 1953. Car number 188. ‘Possibly the world’s most unsuitable rally car – well, except for a Fiat 127,’ says David Power, grandson of William.…

AS THE SECOND WORLD WAR entered its final stages, it was obvious to the Government that the war effort had taken its toll and, if not broken in spirit, Britain was broken financially. Getting the nation back on its feet was a priority and in December 1944 Hugh Dalton, President of the Board of Trade, announced the formation of the Council of Industrial Design (later the Design Council) with the intention of improving the appeal of British-made goods through good design and, importantly, educating a British public notoriously reluctant to embrace that foreign ‘modernism’ business. To add momentum to the project, the following September it was announced that in one year’s time an exhibition entitled ‘Britain Can Make It’ would be held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, conveniently empty…

Peter Falk: 33 Years of Porsche PETER FALK with WILFRIED MÜLLER, McKlein, €69.90, ISBN 978 3 927458 87 1 A straightforward title, and an equally unassuming subtitle: Rennsport and Development. People, Cars, Stories. Fair enough. I mean, who is Peter Falk? His reputation is overshadowed by those of such lauded Porsche engineers as Helmuth ‘959’ Bott and Ferdinand ‘917’ Piëch. As Falk himself says: ‘Piëch had plenty of experience in using his elbows and had no compunction in going for anyone who stood in the way of his ideas.’ Which perhaps explains why we’ve all heard of Piëch and less so of Falk. Yet this lesser-known Porsche man enjoyed a stellar career leading from the back. He wasn’t one for the limelight, as this rather fabulous book reveals. The ‘people,…

1. 1:18 scale 1965 Le Mans Iso Bizzarrini By Spark Price £134.95 Material Resincast If you think you’ve seen the full-size car in Octane before, you’re right: Robert Coucher track-tested it at Goodwood in issue 138, before it was shipped to new owner, uber-enthusiast and all-round good guy Bruce Meyer in California. The model, like the restored car, depicts its moment of glory when it came first in class and ninth overall at Le Mans in 1965. We hear that Bruce has also purchased several of the models and we’re sure he won’t be disappointed: it’s a beautiful piece, and very reasonably priced by virtue of it being a ‘kerbside’ miniature (no opening panels). Even so, you still get a fully detailed cockpit as well as all the myriad excrescences…

 THE MARKET FOR classic cars has evolved so rapidly that, if you weren’t paying attention, you have been left behind. The concept of the collector car now appears to encompass cars built as recently as last week. ‘ARE THE OWNERS OF HIGH-DOLLAR CARS RELUCTANT TO BRING THEM TO AUCTION IN THE ERA OF BREXIT AND AMERICA FIRST?’ This is not just the ‘instant collectables’ produced by some manufacturers as limited-edition series. Many of these are the seriously rapid and often seriously good-looking production vehicles that at least some segment of the market seems to feel are destined for continuing greatness. Without editorialising too much, and recognising that we now live in a time when some truly great cars are available as new, it makes sense. The term ‘collector car’ is…

THE NEW BREED of ‘super-luxury’ SUVs such as Bentley’s Bentayga, the forthcoming Cullinan from Rolls-Royce, and Lamborghini’s impending Urus are high on the automotive agenda at the moment. But none of the new arrivals seems quite so interesting as the latter marque’s LM002, as manufactured in 1985. At a time when the choice of four-wheel-drive vehicles more-or-less boiled down to Land Rovers, Jeeps, Toyota Land Cruisers and the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen, the wild and wacky LM002 was radical to say the very least. Born from the thinking behind a one-off military prototype called the Cheetah, it combined the 444bhp V12 engine of the Lamborghini Countach with Humvee looks and a premium interior. Pirelli was commissioned to create the special tyres required to cope with the LM002’s weight and speed (despite its…

FORMULA FORD 1600, which served as a springboard for some of the biggest names in Formula 1, turns 50 this year, and it is hard to believe that it is not celebrating a bigger birthday still. Looking back, the idea seems blindingly obvious: a category contested by machines that looked and felt like real racing cars, but which were inexpensive to run and simple to operate. The men responsible were John Webb, the boss at Brands Hatch, and Geoff Clarke. proprietor of Motor Racing Stables, the school based at Brands. The Formula 3s and Formula Juniors that were the entry-level mounts of the early-to-mid 1960s were smaller versions of Grand Prix cars, fitted with highly strung 1000cc Ford Anglia engines developed by the likes of Cosworth and costing £3000 –…

IF FURTHER EVIDENCE were needed that good things sometimes come in very small pacakges, the historic street circuit at Angoulême is it. Just 0.8 miles in length, the course through the walled city in southwestern France nonetheless packs in three hairpins, a pair of 90-degree corners and a high-speed straight – one that makes the first of those hairpins, named ‘Marronnier’ after its chestnut tree, a seriously tricky proposition Racing at the Circuit des Remparts began in 1939, but was suspended during World War Two and resumed in 1947. In spite of the very short course, the initial event hosted only Grand Prix cars and attracted stars such as Maurice Trintignant, Jean-Pierre Wimille, Roger Loyer and the great Raymond Sommer, who won the inaugural, 54-lap race in an Alfa Romeo…