Sommaire pour April 2023 de Octane

THE LAST TIME a Porsche 996 featured on the cover of Octane was the October 2017 issue (172), when it was trumpeted with the headline ‘Bargain 911’. I remember it vividly because it was the issue immediately before I joined the team and was the best-selling in the magazine’s history. No pressure. Well, an awful lot has happened since then and, as Octane approaches its 20th birthday, it sometimes feels like an accomplishment just to have seen the past five years through. Of course, you all know about the pandemic and, while so many families suffered far more real and devastating losses, it hit us hard in myriad ways. You all know about Brexit, too, which from an Octane point of view was utter chaos at first but now seems…

1-4 March Coppa delle Alpi Cars are flagged away from the Mille Miglia Museum in Brescia before heading north into the mountains of Italy, Switzerland and Austria. 1000miglia.it 2-4 March Sydney Harbour Concours d’Elegance Swifts, the famous Gothic Revival mansion in Darling Point, again welcomes some of the finest cars in Australia to its lawns, and hosts a Halcyon Auctions sale. sydneyharbourconcours.com.au 2-5 March The Amelia There will be no fewer than 32 classes at Amelia Island’s concours d’élégance this year, featuring everything from opulent coachbuilt rarities to board track motorcycles. ameliaconcours.org 3-5 March Antwerp Classic Salon The Jaguar E-type and Delage will both be honoured at the Antwerp Expo this time around. antwerpclassicsalon.be 8-12 March Highland Winter Warmer A four-day regularity rally around the Highlands on roads (including the…

ENDURANCE RALLY organiser HEROERA has launched an innovative new scholarship to train and give event experience to aspiring young rally navigators. Announced at the annual HERO-ERA awards at the Royal Automobile Club and set up by HERO-ERA competition director Guy Woodcock with rally organiser Will Rutherford, the Bob Rutherford Historic Rally Scholarship for Young Navigators is named after Will’s father, a historic rallying stalwart who died during the recce for the 2021 Classic Marathon. Designed to help bring young talent into historic motorsport, the scholarship is open to youngsters aged 14-24 and they don’t need any previous motorsport experience to apply. The winner will receive comprehensive training from experts, as well as attending Motorsport UK Academy courses. When the training is complete the scholar will then compete in four rallies…

THE PURCHASE of my much-loved Rolls-Royce came about thanks to the transporter driver we use in Geneva. He used to be a well-connected water ski instructor, and called me one day: ‘Simon, a client of mine wants to sell his Rolls-Royce, I’ve no idea what model but it’s old.’ It didn’t sound like our kind of car, but as it was nearby I went along to look at it. He opened up the garage, in a smart part of town overlooking the lake, and under a cover there was a 1965 Silver Cloud III. It wasn’t the ordinary one: instead it’s what’s often referred to as a Flying Spur, a sporting saloon coachbuilt by Mulliner Park Ward. I discovered that only 53 were built, so requested the chassis records from…

MATTHEW HAYWARD’S excellent article in Octane 237 about Jaguar’s unsung hero of the early 1950s rally scene, PPE 101, deserves a couple of updates. First, to correct a slight error, when Walter Grant-Norton drove PPE 101 out of the showroom at Weybridge Automobiles on 2 March 1951, he was in fact sitting on biscuit-and-tan (not black) seats. The black interior that it sports today was commissioned by Mike Barker in the early 1970s while PPE was on display at the Midland Motor Museum in Bridgnorth. The 40,000 competitive miles Mike and his wife Gina covered in their 38 years of ownership generated such a deep patina in the cockpit that even on detailed inspection it passes as original in appearance. Second, the most exhilarating part of owning a historic car…

There is no more enigmatic company in English coachbuilding than Corsica. Its name conjures images of gnarled artisans bashing away at sheet steel in backstreet Bastia, wearing thick oilskin overalls and with a cigarette (roll-up for authenticity rather than lazy Gitanes cliché) hanging out of the mouth. The coachworks’ back catalogue supports such a vision with a scrapbook that includes some of Europe’s finest pre-war cars. The fact that it was revered enough to be so in-demand at the very top end of the market yet remained wilfully unprolific (and, according to historian Nick Walker, never displayed its wares at major shows) only added to the mystique and the imperative to buy-in. Ironically, the current uber-luxury market mantra of bespoke, self-designed goods handcrafted by an extremely small team of highly…

For earlier dates, see page 24. CALIFORNIA MILLE 23-27 April Berkeley to Napa, California, USA californiamille.com THE SCOTTISH MALTS 24-28 April Starts/ends Gleneagles, UK heroevents.eu TERRE DI CANOSSA 27-30 April Based Forte dei Marmi, Italy terredicanossa.canossa.com RALLYE PÈRE-FILLE 28-30 April Based Monte Carlo, Monaco happyfewracing.com CLASSIC DAYS MAGNY-COURS 29-30 April Magny-Cours, France classic-days.fr DONINGTON HISTORIC FESTIVAL 29-30 April Leicestershire, UK doningtonhistoric.com L’ÉCHAPPÉE ARDÉCHOISE 7-10 May Based St-Bonnet-le-Froid, France zaniroli.com VINTAGE SHAMROCK 8-11 May Faithlegg to Castlemartyr, Ireland rallytheglobe.com CAVALLINO CLASSIC MODENA 12-14 May Modena, Italy cavallino.com SPA CLASSIC 12-14 May Francorchamps, Belgium peterauto.fr PAU CLASSIC GRAND PRIX & THE PYRENEES 14-23 May Starts/ends Bilbao, Spain, via France and Andorra sceniccartours.com CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA VILLA D’ESTE 19-21 May Cernobbio, Italy concorsodeleganzavilladeste.com CONCOURS ON SAVILE ROW 24-25 May London, UK concoursonsavilerow.com VALLETTA CONCOURS…

BY THE TIME the USA withdrew from the Vietnam War in 1973, the Ho Chi Minh Trail had been developed into a 16,000km network of hidden roads that reached far into Laos and Cambodia, crossing some of the most difficult terrain in South-East Asia. A North Vietnamese truck, loaded with supplies for Viet Cong fighters, could travel huge distances without being spotted from the air, only emerging from the dense jungle to cross streams – which were made passable by bridges cleverly built just below the surface of the water. The whole thing was a staggering feat of low-tech engineering, as those joining the 2024 Road to Hanoi Marathon will be able to appreciate. Event organiser Rally the Globe has plotted a route through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos that…

THANKS TO BREXIT, mainland Europe no longer feels quite as close as it used to, but in the coming months there will be no shortage of reasons to brave the ‘All other passports’ queue and venture across the Channel. The Le Mans Classic (see page 148) is sure to draw a big crowd of Brits to La Sarthe, but for first-rate historic racing before then you’ll want to head for Belgium and the Spa Classic (12-14 May), or to the Hockenheim Historic (5-7 May) in Germany. There, cars that would headline other events will again play second fiddle to the little F2 machines that contest a race honouring Jim Clark, who died in an accident at the Hockenheimring in 1968. A few days after the Spa Classic, the attention of…

THE SKY IS FALLING! Royal Oak, Daytona and Nautilus values have all dropped 30% from this time last year – whatever will we do? Of course, if you piled in at the top of the market and paid £160,000 for your Nautilus in March last year, you’ll be wincing when you sit down, but for the rest of us, it’s a bit of an academic question. Even the ‘cheapest’ of the three I mentioned – the Daytona – will set you back £25,000. That’s about £2700 less than the average annual wage in the UK. Before tax. Perhaps, though, this is good news. These price drops (I refuse to call them ‘corrections’: watches shouldn’t be treated as an investment class) might just have burned the speculators and flippers enough to…

VINTAGE GENEVIEVE MOVIE POSTER ‘Ambrose seems to think of only two things: that silly old car, and the other thing.’ ‘What other thing? Oh. No, my husband only thinks about the car.’ If there’s a better Sunday-afternoon watch than Genevieve, we’re yet to encounter it. The tale of an illicit race between two London-to-Brighton entrants has lost none of its charm in the 70 years since its release, and there are enough devotees of the film out there that the asking price for this very rare original poster probably isn’t too far-fetched. It’s the only UK quad poster for the film to come onto the open market in decades, and it’s in fabulous condition. £5750. simondwyer.com ‘LONGITUDE’ PEN BY ONOTO That cap top and band are made from bronze recovered…

27 January The list of this car’s previous owners reads like a Who’s Who of wealthy individuals, important collectors, sportsmen and sportswomen. An impressively large motor car, this 1912 Simplex Five-Passenger Torpedo Tourer was bodied by JM Quimbly and Company and first purchased as an engagement gift for Eleonora Randolph Sears by Harold Sterling Vanderbilt. He was the son of sportsman and racer William Kissam Vanderbilt. As for her, as the Bonhams catalogue states, she was ‘born into a wealthy family in 1881 [and] would become one of the finest American sporting figures of the first half of the 20th Century… excelling most notably in international tennis, squash, show-jumping and golf’. Eleonora Randolph Sears was said to be one of the first female motorists in the US, one of the…

NOT SEEN IN public for over 20 years, this trio of classic Jaguars has been hidden away in the garage of a life-long marque enthusiast, the late Thomas C Hendricks. To be offered by Bonhams at Amelia Island, they are far from your run-of-the-mill Jaguars. On the left is a Costin-bodied 1959 Lister racing car. This is an original UK car, first campaigned by Ron Brightman with a Chevy V8 and later converted to Jaguar power. Acquired by Hendricks in the UK in the mid-1970s, it was then imported into the USA. It’s estimated at $600,000-800,000. Next up is an incredibly original 1951 XK120, known as ‘LT3’. Built for the 1951 Le Mans, it was taken to the USA by West Coast distributor Charles Hornburg and campaigned in period by…

PERHAPS SURPRISINGLY, I’d no previous experience of the automotive industry before landing the role of CEO for StarterMotor. I’d had a career in music, video and publishing, initially working for one of EMI’s labels – but their gospel and Christian music rather than the likes of Paul McCartney or Justin Bieber. I became a Christian when I was 17, and my faith is still a major part of my life. I’ve been interested in old cars since I was a small child, however. My uncle and aunt ran a British Leyland dealership in the late 1960s and they liked pre-war cars, so I was exposed to lots of them as a very small child. I’ve been friends with Dan Geoghegan, the CEO at Bicester Motion, for decades and a few…

THE BRITISH MOTOR MUSEUM at Gaydon, Warwickshire, could potentially double its exhibition space if ambitious plans attract the necessary funding. In an exclusive interview for Octane, managing director Jeff Coope set out his vision for the museum and its 65-acre site. Its development is likely to take place in five distinct stages, beginning with a 240-bed hotel, for which outline planning permission has already been granted. ‘There are surprisingly few hotels of any size between Stratford-upon-Avon and Banbury,’ explains Coope, ‘and the creation of a new 2000-home village opposite the museum entrance – for which ground has already been broken – and an accompanying technology hub means that accommodation is likely to be in great demand. Alongside the hotel, and the next phase of the museum plan, will be an…

Engines cooled by water, funny headlights, bits shared with Boxsters… it’s easy to underestimate how alien the 996-generation Porsche 911s must’ve seemed to air-cooled diehards when the Carrera debuted in 1997. But this bold new breed of 911 is now getting sucked into the classic world’s gravitational pull, with enthusiasts becoming misty-eyed about the days before PDK transmissions and flappy paddles, when cable throttles, narrow bodies, even those ‘fried-egg’ headlights ruled. For all the criticisms levelled at the 996 both then and now – something reflected in 996 values compared with other generations, on which more in a mo’ – there’s no question that the 996 is an exceptionally significant 911, one that helped Porsche recover from its nadir in 1989. Just how significant? Well, in 1989 Porsche produced only…

One chassis, one engine, but multiple different propositions in the sales brochure. With the Type 57, Jean Bugatti, son of marque founder Ettore, proved not only his engineering genius but also his instinct for marketing. Even more than his perfectionist father, he was an innovator. Unfortunately, his life was tragically cut short in 1939 when he tried to avoid a cyclist while high-speed testing the ‘Tank’, the Type 57 Le Mans racer he had created earlier. Bugatti was already in financial difficulty, and Jean Bugatti’s death would be the final blow for the legendary company. The cars you see here represent his magnum opus. We are at Soestdijk in the Netherlands, previously the Dutch royal palace. It was here that Prince Bernhard lived, one of several car-crazy European royals. Standing…

Tim Harvey is all smiles as he recalls the moment that decided the outcome of the 1992 British Touring Car Championship in his favour. We are at Silverstone, mere metres from where Steve Soper’s BMW connected with the Vauxhall of title aspirant John Cleland at the Luffield right-hander. Their battle spilled over in the biggest way possible, and Cleland’s cry of ‘The man’s an animal!’ as he stomped away from the smouldering wreckage became instant TV gold. Harvey’s impersonation is spot-on. This likable all-rounder segued from racing in BTCC to commentating on it long ago. What tends to be forgotten about the 1992 season is that he was leading Soper and Cleland at the time of their shunt. Oh, and his team had developed a new car from scratch, winning…

The Carrera Panamericana is one of the world’s greatest roadgoing adventures. Today it’s held in commemoration of the original event, which ran from 1950 to 1954 and was widely regarded as the most dangerous road race of all. It was revived in 1986, and remains one of the most gruelling historic rallies, typically covering 2000 miles across Mexico in seven days. For the 70th anniversary of Mercedes-Benz’s double victory in 1952, Kurt Richter set his mind on participating in a specially prepared 300SL. Seven decades ago, Karl Kling and Hans Klenk had finished first in a W194 Gullwing, with Hermann Lang and Erwin Grupp second in a similar car. You might have read about that in Octane 232, when associate editor Glen Waddington drove the second-placed W194 Gullwing at Circuit…

THE LE MANS CLASSIC has always been a biennial treat, but organiser Peter Auto (with Automobile Club de l’Ouest, which arranges the 24 Hours) decided that 2023 could not pass without a meeting. So, for the first time (not counting the period of the Covid pandemic), there will be no off-year to endure. The reason for the break with tradition? This year marks the centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The world’s pre-eminent endurance race was first run on 26-27 May 1923, though it was known then as the Grand Prix d’Endurance de 24 Heures, and was an almost entirely French affair. The international contingent consisted of two Belgian cars (a pair of Excelsiors) and, famously, a lone Bentley 3 Litre Sport. That car, entered by John Duff…

THIS YEAR, three UK-based rally operators will lead crews across the USA. Bespoke Rallies has plotted a route from Charleston all the way to Pebble Beach; crews travelling with HERO will drive from Houston up to the Canadian border and then down to San Francisco; and the folk who have signed on with Rally the Globe will motor from Alaska down through Canada and the contiguous US to Mexico. Proper adventures, those, demanding both serious preparation and an understanding family, but a short break in the US can be just as much fun, particularly when timed to coincide with one of the country’s umpteen brilliant motoring events. The daddy of them all, of course, is Monterey Car Week (11-20 August), which will conclude, as always, with the Pebble Beach Concours…

‘I EVEN SPOKE to George Lucas, but we couldn’t agree on a price. So in the end I decided to build my own.’ It’s 1985 and Jeff Beck, guitar legend, is talking to a trio of twenty-something men, including myself, at his Elizabethan home in Wadhurst, East Sussex. This usually shy and relatively reclusive man has welcomed them into his manor house (built in 1591), given them beer, and is now regaling them with tales of hot rods and Chevy V8s. A tour of the grounds follows, including a walk up the hill to his workshop and a Nissen hut containing four 1932 Fords. Closest to the door is the ‘piss-yellow’ five-window coupe he had been talking about so enthusiastically. It was, of course, a replica of the car driven…

SPEEDIES HAVE HARDLY been out of the news since Omega and Swatch teamed up to launch the MoonSwatch (or ‘Swatch X Omega’ if you prefer). There are probably now more variations on the original cal.321-powered Speedmaster that started out in 1957 than on any other watch, and that huge variation is reflected in the price you’ll pay to get one on your wrist. If you’re lucky enough to track down an early pre-Moon Broad Arrow Speedie, that’ll lighten your wallet by £100k-ish. The MkIII, on the other hand, is a rather more practical proposition if you’re buying. It’s rather more interesting, too. The MkIII is all about the movement. Omega christened it the cal.1040, but it was developed with movement maker Lemania (which called its own the cal.1341). Before the…

Remember the name Jack Cottle? No? He was the young lad who gatecrashed a VW ‘silhouette Beetle’ race at Brands Hatch in 2014, driving his girlfriend’s new Polo, and completed a full lap while competitors veered either side of him. He was jailed for eight months as a result, his case not helped by his own ill-conceived rant on social media after his arrest. That’s one of the great joys of this book: it covers many of the more obscure corners of criminality in the racing world as well as the famous examples. Yes, all the stories you’d expect are here – David Blakeley’s murder by Ruth Ellis; Lord Brocket’s chopping-up of rare classic Ferraris as an insurance scam – but there are so many more, all fascinating in their…

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Alfa Romeo’s £111,000 8C Competizione was an instant hit at the Paris Motor Show in 2006, and within weeks over 1200 orders had been placed for the run of 500 cars. The £174,000 Spider followed two years later, again limited to 500 examples and powered by the same Ferrari-derived 4.7-litre V8. Bonhams’ Goodwood Festival of Speed sale in 2013 marked the last time a low-mileage coupé was bought for less than £100,000 at auction, when it was hammered away for £90,000. The market had moved on significantly by the time the next example changed hands, RM Sotheby’s achieving $319,000 (£263,000) in June 2016 for its 3300-miler – subsequently resold four years later with negligible additional miles at $270,000 (£222,500). Gooding & Company set the current high in 2019, a two-owner…

IF THE SIGHT of those two hungry air intakes on the ‘nostril’ front grille doesn’t give the game away, a quick peek under the bonnet would confirm that the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Le Mans is an air-chugging monster. Launched in 1999 to celebrate the factory’s 1959 Le Mans 24 Hour victory with the DBR1, this was to be the swansong for the handbuilt Vantage and the final outing for Tadek Marek’s venerable V8. Thanks to a pair of Eaton superchargers, it produced an impressive 550bhp. Of course, that wasn’t enough. For those who wanted more, Works Service offered a post-registration 600bhp and 600lb ft V600 upgrade for an extra £43,000. That was on top of the Le Mans’ standard £189,950 purchase price! As a fitting send-off for the very…

1964 FERRARI 250 GTO Winning tale of the last built of Ferrari’s greatest legend PLUS Blast across the moors in a Porsche 911 racer after its epic restoration Getting a load of Crayford’s hot rod Mercedes 300SEL 6.3 estate Luminary collector Phillip Sarofim Ford Puma, modern-day sports car superstar – and bargain (Contents may be subject to change) Get 3 issues of Octane for just £5! To take advantage of this month’s special offer and get three issues of Octane for £5, either visit octane.co.uk/subscribe or call +44 (0)330 333 9491 and quote code DFEB23 Buying your issue of Octane – new and old PRINT ISSUE Octane is available at the usual branches of UK shops, such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and independents, as well as WH Smith High Street…

Showroom comes back to life Classic car specialist Dylan Miles has revived a building with rich motoring history as his new showroom in Tunbridge Wells. The site on London Road was built in 1909 as G Stevenson Motor Engineers – Kent and Sussex Garages Ltd, as Mr Stevenson was also director of motor dealer Rawsons & Sons, which worked out of a neighbouring site previously occupied by Cadillac distributor Cundell and Dungey. Over the years the dealership was modified to give it a more Art Deco style and passed through several more motor traders, but subsequently fell into distress. When Miles stumbled across it in April 2022 it had shed much of its former glory and was a showroom for outdoor furniture. Having secured the site, Miles spent eight months…

The 450S was Maserati’s endurance racing zenith – and also its Icarus moment. Even the late Sir Stirling Moss responded with a silent scream when I told him that I wanted to drive one. That was 24 years ago, and my memory of his vivid reaction serves as a sobering reminder of its reputation. The 450S was a bit of a beast. Thankfully our location today is not a slimy, leaf-strewn, autumnal Oulton Park but the Apex Motor Club, south of Phoenix in the Arizona desert, an excellent facility with smooth, dry tarmac. There it sits, combining beauty and brawn in its curvaceous Fantuzzi body, the Cibié headlights hungry for the Mulsanne straight. The engine bay is uncluttered, a big lump topped by huge Weber 45IDM velocity stacks. In the…

WHEN CUSTOMERS criticised the brakes on his cars, Ettore Bugatti retorted with the belligerence we allow of genius: ‘I make my cars to go, not stop.’ Nevertheless it seems he took the criticism on board and, perhaps by way of riposte, dispensed with brakes altogether on the Type 75. That got rid of the ‘stop’, so perhaps it’s just as well the Type 75 didn’t have much ‘go’ either: a press-on five-year-old giving it ten-tenths at the helm of a Type 52 electric Bugatti Bébé could leave a Type 75 in its wake. The Type 75 You-You, you see, is an oddity, and not just because it’s a boat (to be strictly correct, Type 75 refers to the single-cylinder engine, while You-You is colloquial French for ‘little boat’). But even…

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. Or a DeLorean. In fact, the only prerequisites are that your vehicle is in a sound condition and fully fuelled, and that you are confident with changing a tyre or two. Because this is Alaska, somewhere you can ‘drive’ several thousand nautical miles without putting a single extra digit on your odometer. Welcome to the Alaska Marine Highway, the only one of the 67 All-American Roads that isn’t on tarmac but instead takes to water on a car ferry. Along 3500 miles of scenic coastline from Washington State to the Aleutian Islands, it provides access to remote communities along the Inside Passage and beyond. To make it onto the list of America’s most scenic by-ways, a road must have ‘one-of-a-kind features that do…

‘MOSTLY IT WAS JUST DULL,’ wrote Bill Bryson when describing an English summer in his book The Lost Continent. ‘It was like living inside Tupperware.’ True enough, the arrival of summertime in this country doesn’t exactly guarantee the arrival of fine weather, but our summer does reliably bring with it some of the best motoring events in the world. Racing fans everywhere will already have circled the dates 8, 9 and 10 September on the calendar, for it is then that Goodwood Revival will celebrate its 25th anniversary – and the 75th anniversary of Goodwood Circuit, too. The grids for 2023 have yet to be revealed, but the organisers have announced that the event will honour the late Carroll Shelby, meaning you can expect the Revival, so often described as…

AT 11.23 and 55 seconds local time on Wednesday 12 August 1953, the Greek island of Kefalonia was struck by a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake that raised the island out of the Ionian Sea by 60cm. Virtually every building was flattened, 600 people died and 93,000 were made homeless. Accommodation became a top priority and international aid soon arrived, including a unique contribution from Britain in the form of knockdown metal-framed prefabricated dwellings constructed from Dexion. Originally designed as modular racking, within a few weeks it had been reconfigured to make the frame of a simple house. Enough Dexion was donated to construct 20 houses and a 12-bed hospital. It would be easy to dismiss Dexion as merely steel L-channel with holes but the staggered slots were so spaced that,…

By Automodello Price $249.95 Material Resincast If ever a car epitomised America’s optimistic view of a post-war future, it was the ’54 Skylark. Powered by a 200bhp V8, and equipped with power everything – seats, windows, steering, radio antenna and, of course, the convertible roof – plus Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels, it was hugely expensive for a Buick. Just 836 were made and offered in a variety of garish ‘ice cream’ colours, including Lido Green, as here. Automodello’s beautifully finished model can also be had in Matador Red or Arctic White for a 50-buck premium (see automodello.com for distributors outside the USA) and comes with a separate raised soft-top that can be clipped in place of the detachable furled moulding pictured above. With some very fine detail – note the ‘gunsight’…

THE RÉTROMOBILE sales have always provided a pretty good barometer for the state of the market. Artcurial’s star car, a clean and original Ferrari 250LM – although with no period racing history – failed to find a new home as bidding stalled at €20million. The top spot in its €35.5m, three-day auction instead went to the €5,706,000 1951 Ferrari 340 America Barchetta Touring (above). This one did have extensive racing history, and some great stories behind it too. Another major highlight of Artcurial’s sale was the ‘garage-find’ 1975 Lamborghini Countach LP400, which found a buyer for €953,600. No Paris auction would be complete without a few Facel Vegas, and Alain Ragault’s 12-strong collection was sold in its entirety, with a 1962 HK II achieving €202,640. RM Sotheby’s sold the most…

NOT ONLY ARE all 31 of the Ferrari 250 MM racing cars built beautiful, but each also has its own fascinating story to tell. This glorious two-tone example is 0274 MM, one of 12 bodied by Vignale in the later Series 2 style and one of three with staggered seating and a long-range 150-litre fuel tank. It will be offered by Gooding at its Amelia Island auction. Ordered by Florentine racing driver Piero Scotti, it made its competition debut in the Giro di Sicilia piloted by Scotti and co-driver Giulio Contini. Although this acted as a useful shakedown for its next appearances in the Mille Miglia and Targa Florio during 1953, it would ultimately fail to finish in either of the races. As time went on, however, the results improved,…

WITH ONLY 410 built during a remarkably long run from 1972 to 1989, the De Tomaso Longchamp was always a niche proposition. This often overlooked four-seater GT might have been the Pantera’s slightly more sensible sibling, and a slightly less pretty twin to the Maserati Kyalami, but it’s an effortlessly cool Italian exotic that remains a real connoisseur’s choice. In effect, this was a coupé version of the four-door Deauville that was launched two years earlier, in 1970. It was underpinned by a shortened version of the same ladder-frame chassis – developed by Giampaolo Dallara – featuring independent double-wishbone suspension and in-board vented disc brakes. The body was styled by Tom Tjaarda at Ghia – it borrowed headlights from the Ford Granada – and it was propelled by a 330bhp…