Table of contents for February 2016 in Octane

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW how to induce fear, and probably a touch of loathing, into the heart of a magazine publisher, there are few better ways than to present him with a cover featuring a beige car of ‘challenging’ appearance. And yet, there’s always been something about Aston Martin’s ‘wedge’ Lagonda that has attracted the car enthusiast, and they’re suddenly becoming really hot property – so I’d like to think this month’s Octane will be another best-seller, beige or not. We love it! Another reason that we chose this month to feature the Lagonda is that we finally got our hands on Aston Martin’s new Lagonda Taraf. To get the two cars together, and drive both, was fascinating; you can read about them starting on page 62 for the…

THE FAMOUS RAC RALLY is back, in the form of an historic event that unites the RAC and the Royal Automobile Club with HERO’s established Rally of the Tests, to recreate the glory days of one of the world’s most important rallies. The new event is set to take place in the UK on 3-6 November 2016. The original RAC Rally ran from 1932 until 1939, returning after the war in 1951 as The RAC Rally of the Tests, attracting huge crowds and top-level teams. In 1960 the organisers included a three-mile forest stage for the first time, and it proved such a success that from 1961 the event became the RAC Rally of the Forests, establishing the template for UK stage rallying for decades to come. That 1961 event…

AS 2016 MARKS the 40th anniversary of what Porsche dubs its ‘transaxle cars’ (the front-engined, water-cooled 924, 928, 944 and 968), so Porsche GB has launched a restoration competition. Star of the event is the 1980 Le Mans Porsche 924 GTP, as driven by Octane’s own Tony Dron and fellow saloon car champ Andy Rouse to 13th overall. The car – the only German factory racer ever to compete wearing a British flag – has been brought out of hiding within Porsche’s Stuttgart museum storage facility, where it has languished since its destructive post-race testing and development career. That means there’s much restoration work to be carried out, not least to the ravaged nose section of the glassfibre front clamshell. With 19 dealers of the 35-strong network taking part in…

Race Retro 26-28 February Stoneleigh Park, UK DUBBED ‘EUROPE’S PREMIER winter show for historic motorsport’, Race Retro will take place again at Stoneleigh Park near Coventry. It will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Damon Hill’s F1 World Championship win, featuring cars from the Williams Heritage collection, which runs models from the team’s past. Some of Hill’s most iconic machines will be taking centre stage, including the 1996 championship-winning FW18, the 1995 race-winning FW17, the 1993 FW15C with which Damon won his first GP, and the FW13B that saw his Williams test driver debut in 1991. Numerous faces will be putting in an appearance to help mark the British racing driver’s illustrious career, including Williams Heritage boss Jonathan Williams and former Williams F1 manager Dickie Stanford. The celebrations will culminate in…

STAR OF THE SHOW at Los Angeles in November was the new Fiat 124 Spider (below). It brings back the name of Italy’s MGB almost half a century after the original was launched – only this time Fiat has turned to the Japanese for help. Yes, the styling is unique to Fiat – check out the twin humps in the bonnet, the faceted surfaces of the bootlid and rear wingtops, and the shoulder-line that kicks up over the rear haunches, all in clear reference to the old 124 – and it’s powered by the company’s own turbocharged 1.4-litre engine too, but the new Spider shares its structure, its windscreen, fabric roof and (somewhat disappointingly) its interior with Mazda’s recently launched – and much-lauded – MX-5. Of more interest is the…

CURIOUS WORD, exige. It’s a verb, with shades of meaning based around notions of needing, requiring, demanding or even begging. Should my psyche exige an Exige? After driving two versions of this, the latest Lotus to be re-cast for its role in Hethel’s latest chapter, under the enthusiastic but realistic guidance of Jean-Marc Gales (who has finally managed to get Lotus not to spend more than it receives), I do feel an exigence coming on. The Exige breed began as a kind of harder-edged, fixed-roof, more potent Elise. Its recent incarnations have housed the Toyota-based, supercharged, 3.5-litre V6 also used, with different tuning, in the larger Evora. It seems a lot of engine for a little car, although today’s Exiges have outgrown their Elise roots. So, inevitably, they have put…

SO HERE IT IS, our irregularly published register of the top 100 auction prices ever. For reasons we can no longer remember, we did not perform this exercise last year, and what a mistake that was. Like dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, record auction prices can pile up in a hurry, and the process of updating the list – which includes up-to-the-minute preliminary numbers from the RM Sotheby’s sale in New York on 10 December – was, like doing a big pile of dishes, arduous. Near-enough half of the entries here (49, to be precise) are new, but for all the turnover the list has a familiar look: fully two-thirds of the 100 spots are occupied by Ferraris, and the only non-Ferrari in the top ten is the ex-Juan…

ON OUR WAY BACK from the Alps we call in to see Martin Smith, the Quattro’s designer, who has a house in the Luberon. ‘Nice car,’ says Martin when we draw up. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Can’t think who designed it!’ Martin, originally from Sheffield, retired recently as Director of Design, Ford of Europe and Asia Pacific. He started at Porsche, went to Audi and was only 29 when he designed the Quattro in 1978 – ‘a fortunate junior designer soon elevated to the youngest head of department at Audi’ on the strength of it. ‘My brief from Ferdinand Piëch [Audi’s head of technical development] was to “make it look technical”. To differentiate the Quattro from the 80 Coupé it was based on, I came up with the flared fenders to…

LISTENING to interviews recorded on an iPhone and transcribing them is always my least favourite part of writing an Octane feature, but in this case the talking heads are accompanied by the jolly strains of a jazz band, which makes me sound a little like Inspector Barnaby questioning witnesses at the village fête in Midsomer Murders. The location is much less familiar, however. Since 2012, Jaguar enthusiast Nigel Webb has held a Mk1 Day at his farm that’s open purely to Mk1 owners, and an invitation to attend seemed the ideal opportunity to test Octane’s theory that the Mk1 is not only A Good Thing but quite possibly The Next Big Thing in the classic car world. While it’s unlikely that a Jaguar Mk1 is ever going to trouble the…

THeS eS A ‘RESURRECTeON’, as its owner puts it, of a very special car. And it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday because Josh Sadler, one of the world’s experts on early air-cooled 911s, was too busy to build it all the time he was running Autofarm, the Porsche specialist he founded in 1973. Only handing over the reins of the company released the time to get it all together. The aim was the FiFh Porsche Rennsport Reunion at Monterey in September, with the added frisson of tackling the Daytona banking at night in the HSR Classic 24 Hours in mid-November. ‘We bought it as a badly damaged car in 1979. It was built in 1969 and the factory kept it two years but, never undersealed, it was already rusty.…

AGAINST A BACKDROP of mixed pricing the HAGI e measure of collector-grade eerraris ended November down 0.14%. eollowing October’s decline of 2.97%, this puts the index 3.09% off September’s peak, with YTD growth 11 months in of 10.17%. Not only does it seem highly unlikely that at year end the HAGI e will approach the 17.53% growth achieved in 2014, it’s also highly probable that 2015 will see the index post the lowest augmentation since 2011, when it achieved 10.58%. Through November, while transactions in truly rare high-end models supported the index, some models from the 1950s to 1970s built in numbers greater than 100 showed vulnerability. However, select higher-volume, later-era eerrari models continue to appeal to a new audience across a broad price range. In November trading volumes also…

A GREAT DEAL of ink has been spilled by writers in an attempt to adequately describe the gulf between the Duesenberg Model J and its American-made competition in the late 1920s. We’ll add to that large puddle by offering this anecdote: when John Duval Dodge, the black-sheep son of Dodge co-founder John Francis Dodge, wanted the best car that money could buy in 1929, he opted not for a model made by the family company, nor even for some other piece of Detroit iron, but for a LeBaron-bodied Duesenberg Model J Dual-Cowl Phaeton – this one, in fact. His Indiana-built choice represented a middle finger to the relatives with whom he had a seriously strained relationship, but it was completely defensible: no US marque had a legitimate rival for the…

IT’S A BIT late, really, for us to be writing to Santa (late both in the year and, we’ll acknowledge, in life), but in the name of tradition we have noted down the automotive treats we would most like to find parked next to the tree on the 25th. High up on our wishlist this year is the beautifully purposeful 1954 Austin-Healey 100S in stock at Pendine Historic Cars (based in fact at Bicester Heritage in Oxfordshire – and yes, they’ve since restored that glazed brick wall to perfection). ONX 392 (£POA) is a brilliantly accurate copy of chassis SPL 227B, the modified Austin-Healey 100 with which Donald Healey and his crew set 83 speed endurance records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1954. Most impressively, SPL 227B managed an…

I KNOW THAT MILTON Keynes still makes some people laugh, but it’s an ideal laboratory. The separation between pedestrians and roads was thought out thoroughly, and it’s a very green, calm place, with a lot of civic pride. It’s where our driverless Pod called the LUTZ [Low-carbon Urban Transport Zone] Pathfinder will be introduced. I’m chief engineer of vehicle projects at RDM Group, so it’s my job to deliver the prototypes on schedule, and after that to build a batch of 40 Pods for a taxi test programme in Milton Keynes, moving along the town’s pavements. We’re working with the Mobile Robotics Group at Oxford University on the interface to the autonomous control system that allows it to remotely move, drive, stop, steer. We have to make sure the vehicle…

LONDON’S PALL MALL is the address of the Royal Automobile Club. It is not the easiest place to get to in your classic car, nor is it easy to park when you do get there. Despite this, very early on a November morning, four classic Jaguars were lined up outside, waiting to leave for Goodwood House, 60 miles away. And with the cars was the fabled Jaguar development driver Norman Dewis OBE, who was at the Club following an audience in his honour the night before. Since 1952, Norman Dewis has been the symbol of Jaguar, where he worked testing new models, racing them, achieving speed records or making legendary journeys, such as from Coventry to Geneva in 1961 at an average of 70mph with the brand new Jaguar E-type…

PORSCHE has also announced a series of new Classic Car Centres, the first of which opened near Arnhem, in the Netherlands. The new centres, which will complement existing Porsche Classic Partners (which act as parts and service specialists within the official Porsche dealer network), will be solely dedicated to the sales, service, restoration and specialist maintenance of older models. There are currently 24 Porsche Classic Partners worldwide, and it’s thought that there will be around 100 operating by 2018. Porsche claims that more than 70% of all the cars it’s ever built are still in use today, and the new Classic Car Centres will be on hand to ensure that these machines are kept in ‘optimum’ condition. Currently around 52,000 parts are available for older Porsche models. Porsche has also…

LA VITA E BELLA must have been the inspiration when Autoworld, in Brussels, came up with its latest winter exposition: Italian Car Passion. In fact, this is Autoworld’s fourth major year-end exhibition dedicated to the bella macchina Italiana of the period from the 1950s to the ’80s. This is a very broad subject, of course, so the museum has dedicated a great deal of space to it. The entire upper exhibition floor is presented as an Italian village scene filled with cars ranging from normal family cars to rare coachbuilt beauties and supercars. It begins with an impressive line-up of special low-volume cars such as a one-off 1952 Siata 8V Bertone that rarely sees the light of day, and the equally unique 1964 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Pininfarina. In a…

1 January BROOKLANDS NEW YEAR’S DAY GATHERING. Weybridge, UK brooklandsmuseum.com 3 January BICESTER HERITAGE SUNDAY BRUNCH SCRAMBLE. Bicester, UK bicesterheritage.co.uk 14-17 January AUTOSPORT INTERNATIONAL. Birmingham NEC, UK autosportinternational.com 14-17 January INTERCLASSICS MAASTRICHT. Maastricht, Netherlands interclassicsmaastricht.nl 20-24 January CAVALLINO CLASSIC. Palm Beach, USA cavallino.com 23-31 January SCOTTSDALE CAR WEEK. Scottsdale, USA arizonaconcours.com 24-29 January THE WINTER TRIAL. Norway and Sweden thewintertrial.nl 27 January – 3 February RALLYE MONTE-CARLO HISTORIQUE. Monte Carlo, Monaco acm.mc 3-7 February RÉTROMOBILE. Paris, France retromobile.com 6-7 February 21 GUN SALUTE VINTAGE CAR RALLY AND CONCOURS. Delhi, India 21gunsaluterally.com 13-14 February GREAT WESTERN AUTOJUMBLE. Shepton Mallet, UK carsandevents.com 1t-21 February LONDON CLASSIC CAR SHOW. London, UK thelondonclassiccarshow.co.uk 20 February POMEROY TROPHY COMPETITION. Silverstone, UK vscc.co.uk 21 February BROOKLANDS WINTER CLASSIC BREAKFAST. Weybridge, UK brooklandsmuseum.com 21-25 February WINTER CHALLENGE.…

IN 1957, the Maserati 450 S Coupé by Zagato, equipped with a closed body by request of Stirling Moss, raced at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. After the race, ‘The Monster’, with 400bhp, was turned into a road car by the factory for its new owner, American enthusiast Byron Staver. Now, almost 60 years on, Zagato Atelier is paying homage. The Mostro (built from carbonfibre, weighing only 1000kg and powered by a 420bhp Maserati V8) is a pure track car yet with road homologation. Only five cars will be built, and they’ve already sold out. From a mechanical point of view, the Mostro has a front/mid-mounted engine and rear transaxle for optimum weight distribution. Its carbonfibre monocell is combined with a full rollcage (it surrounds the cockpit), built from…

HOW DIFFERENT is a Vantage from a Vanquish? A V8 from a V12? A coupé from a Volante? Aston Martin provided the chance to compare 2016 models back-to-back, on a 40-mile Los Angeles street circuit that went from freeway to gnarly mountain roads. It was a rare opportunity to sample the differences between DB9 GT (pic 1), Rapide S (2), V8 Vantage GT (3), Vanquish (4) and V12 Vantage S (5) – to a fascinating degree. Biggest change for 2016 is the range-wide fitment of the AMi II infotainment system and touch-sensitive controls (6), seen before only on the Vanquish. First, the V8 Vantage GT, the rest-of-world equivalent of Europe’s N430 with similar accent colours but added side stripes. It has the same 430bhp flat-plane V8, and six-speed auto or…

‘ALMOST OVERNIGHT, FASHION HAS COME FULL CIRCLE AND THE LAGONDA IS SUDDENLY COOL AGAIN’ THERE’S SOMETHING perversely satisfying in the fact that the Aston Martin Lagonda was styled by a man with a very ordinary name. You might expect to see the name ‘William Towns’ engraved on the dial of an 18th Century longcase clock, perhaps – but Bill Towns as the designer of one of the most avant garde cars the world has ever seen? Cool Britannia, indeed, more than 20 years before the term passed into mainstream usage. We weren’t short of visions of the future back in 1976. At home, children were glued to TV sci-fi shows such as Space: 1999. At school, with fingers often stained with fountain-pen ink, the more fortunate ones tentatively stabbed at…

1 // 1951 PORSCHE 356 SL As we were about to take a picture of the first Porsche to take a class win at Le Mans, an elderly gentleman strolled over for a chat. ‘I’ve travelled about 5000 miles in that car,’ he told us, ‘and been in it when it crashed. Of course, back then it didn’t have a roof…’ Before we could ask him more, he vanished. The car’s owner, Emory Motorsport, later confirmed that the famous Porsche had indeed had its roof sawn off: Emory had had to fabricate a new one. 2 // 959 PARIS-DAKAR RECREATION Backdating old air-cooled Porsche 911s to even older spec is nothing special these days, but reinventing a 1994 964-series Carrera 4 as a 1986 Paris-Dakar rallye-raider demonstrates an enhanced level…

SURELY THE FAMOUS Petersen Automotive Museum always had it all. Location? Yes, on the section of Wilshire Boulevard that’s known as the Miracle Mile. Actually, better than that; on the section of the Miracle Mile that’s known as Museum Row, because on the opposite side of Wilshire begins a line of institutions that include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, the Craft and Folk Art Museum and even the La Brea Tar Pits Museum, where the weirdly sticky ground was found to have preserved Ice Age creatures. And it had the cars, not just those bought by publishing magnates Robert E and Margie Petersen, of Hot Rod magazine fame, amongst many others, but also by the local car collectors – this being just…

I AN COOLING’S The Complete Guide To Jaguar Collectibles is a standard-setter in analysing automobilia for a single marque. Published back in 1998, the lavishly illustrated book testifies to a Jag passion born in his 1950s schooldays. He says his bedroom walls were plastered with pictures and cuttings on the company’s epic racing achievements. ‘My mother was appalled but my heart was in those cars. That really was Jaguar’s legend-making era.’ For Ian, the book was an adjunct to his reputation as a leading dealer in the stuff of Jaguar. Since its publication, he’s developed a unique on-line ‘distant auction’ (www.jaguarautomobilia.com) that’s crammed with nothing but Jaguar books, brochures, models, mascots and anything else he or his customers care to enter. Once registered, up to 200 bidders table competing offers…

1:18 BY SPARK Aston Marttn DBR1 PRICE £128.95 MATERIAL Resincast QUALITY VALUE THE HIGH POINT of Aston Martin’s motor sport history was when Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori won the 1959 Le Mans 24 Hours in chassis DBR1/2 – a victory that was all the sweeter a er the retirement of the works cars in the 1957 and ’58 events. Not surprisingly, therefore, Spark has chosen to model the winning car. It’s a ‘kerbside model’, so no opening panels or engine detail: it’s something to display rather than fiddle with. There is, however, plenty to gaze at in the exposed cockpit, including part of the spaceframe, some very fine wiring and a superbly legible set of instruments. A particularly nice touch is the way that the panel gaps have been…

Don’t be taken in by this pastoral scene – even if it does include a stickered-up Lancia Fulvia in the middle-distance. The self-proclaimed ‘toughest rally in Europe’ started in darkness as 70mph winds battered competitors, then ran the length of the British mainland over some of the gnarliest and tiniest, not to say wettest, roads in the country. At least the crews finished in sunshine, something hardly guaranteed for Scotland in December.…

LÉDENON CIRCUIT lies near the city of N›mes, on France’s south coast, about 80 miles by road north-west of Marseille, a journey that will take you past the spectacular Camargue National Park with its massive complement of seabirds and wildlife. The track opened in 1973 and has since become an essential feature in France’s racing calendar as well as with its trackday fraternity. It is still run by the family that founded it, operating for around 300 days each year. Yet when I mention it to friends and colleagues, most affect a blank look. It’s well-known in France but not elsewhere. I’ve raced there a couple of times – in the VdeV historic endurance series – and it remains one of the toughest learning challenges I have experienced. Like many…

THERE’S PREJUDICE against the polite Pagoda, and that’s good because it puts the wrong people off and keeps prices attainable… for the time being. This Mercedes was instrumental in changing perceptions of what a sports car could and should be, a profound, civilising influence on an industry that had previously directed all of its energy towards building the sort of medieval, masochistic machinery that underpins fragile notions of manliness. I haven’t a clue what that means either; mainly I wanted to avoid the word ‘hairdresser’ in the opening paragraph of a piece about a car that has suffered the jibes of stringback-gloved diehards since its launch in 1963. The styling of the two-seater 230SL was the work of Paul Bracq, the influential and forward-thinking French automotive designer. The keynote is…

A CORNER OF THE VAST Mirafiori plant in Turin is now dedicated to the restoration and maintenance of classic Abarths – from the 595 and 695 to 124 Spider and 131 Rally. The workshop is part of the wider Abarth Classiche initiative, which will include an Abarth Register – under the auspices of which official participation in events and competitions is planned – and also a certification programme. The certification programme is intended to recognise all those cars that have had official Abarth mechanical upgrades, as many cars have been converted in the years since Carlo Abarth founded his tuning business in 1949. Abarth made kits available that boosted power for such cars as the Fiat 500 and 600 – only today it is believed that many have been faked.…

MERCEDESB ENZ Classic is offering the chance to buy manufacturer-approved classics. The company’s heritage operation, based at the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart, has set up the ‘All Time Stars’ programme to take the risk out of buying a classic Mercedes-Benz. Each car is put through a 160-point inspection by Mercedes, which promises to ‘extend the brand’s extensive quality commitment’. Three different levels of car will be offered. At the top of the scale is the Premium Edition, which gets you a car in the best possible condition, with minimal mileage and restored to perfection by Mercedes-Benz Classic. The Collector’s Edition cars are similarly well-presented, although the mileages may be a little higher, with some of the car’s original patina showing through. The third level, Driver’s Edition, will offer slightly more…

THIS SPECTACULAR shot of a flame burn-out won the Best Drag Racing Photograph of the Year at the recent British Drag Racing Hall of Fame Awards, having been selected for the shortlist by Octanemagazine staff. Designer Robert Hefferon and editor David Lillywhite judged more than 85 entries from 18 photographers to selected the best ten, which were then handed to Nick Mason for final selection. The winning photograph, of flame-engulfed drag racer Bob Hawkins, was taken by Jeni Long. Second prize went to Julian Hunt for his photograph of a Willys Coupe burning out at Santa Pod, and third to Callum Pudge, for another photo from Santa Pod. He caught the amazing sight of Steve Woollatt’s Top Fuel drag bike carrying a passenger on his wheelie bars, the freak result…

THIS, THE SIXTH running of the event after previous editions in Tunisia, Argentina, Morocco and Tuscany, saw a return to the stages of Catalonia – which were to be used by the World Rally Championship just a few days later. It was organised by Dakar legend Jean-Claude Morellet. Whether your preferred mount was a 1953 Citroën 2CV (which 2CV collector Jean-Pierre Lenfant had balanced on its side for emergency servicing in the parking lot of the very chic hotel where the rally was staying) or a modern 911 called into action at the last minute, you could not fail to be impressed by the roads, vistas and the camaraderie of the crews. Each day saw impromptu regularity coaching among the co-pilots before the start, and genuine joy among the teams…

SUPERCAR STEREOTYPES just don’t apply in 2015. Ferrari has long abandoned open-gate manual gearboxes, the Porsche 911 Turbo is breathtakingly capable but not at all scary, newcomer McLaren has thrown off its restrained understatement and slightly clinical approach for a much more intense, involving new philosophy, and even Lamborghini doesn’t really stick to the script. Of course they still look wild and sound like the apocalypse but gone is the threat of unpredictable handling and patchy quality; some suggest that they’ve become a little too, well, German. I don’t subscribe to that view but understand why some people mourn the Lamborghini of old. Perhaps they have swung too far in the other direction from those early, wonderfully chaotic cars… The ‘baby’ of the range is the Huracán LP610-4 and it’s…

MODESTY IS NOT on the menu at the restaurant otherwise known as Bentayga – because, if Bentley is to be believed, then its newest creation isn’t merely the fastest SUV in the world but also the most luxurious and the most exclusive as well. And the fact that it is based unashamedly on the underpinnings of the next Porsche Cayenne means it is pretty sophisticated beneath the skin, too. But then you’d have every right to expect nothing less than something very special indeed in return for handing over £160,200 before so much as a single option has been specified. In the flesh, the Bentayga looks an awful lot better than it does in photographs, which is good news. Even so, externally it is unlikely to win many beauty prizes,…

I must thank Octane and especially Andrew Roberts for the article ‘The Return of the Fast Lady’ published in issue 151. This was of great interest to me, as my late grandfather Jack Silk was Stanley Baxter’s driving double throughout the film. I remember with great fondness him telling me about the production of the film; having his hair dyed to match Stanley’s hue; how the Bentley was a beast to drive; and how James Robertson Justice was a complete professional and ‘very handy behind the wheel, too’. The golf course scene was apparently very challenging as bits started to fall off the cars, with the R-Type Continental particularly suffering from the abuse! A great picture to work on, and a joy to work with second unit (action unit) director…

COVENTRY on a wet Tuesday night in winter; hardly the most glamorous location in which to photograph a £700,000 luxury car. A chill wind whips discarded chip wrappers along the pavement, and the occasional band of well-lubricated students stumbles by on the way back from the pub. Then comes a surprise. ‘Is that the new Lagonda?’ asks one of the students, slightly less inebriated than his mates. It’s an unexpected question, given that this car is one of only two in the UK and hardly familiar even to well-informed petrolheads. Turns out that our questioner is a student on Coventry University’s famous automotive design degree course and he can’t believe what he’s stumbled across while on a night out with his mates. Full marks to him for recognising it; the…

AFTER ALL THESE years it just seems right to sit on the rich red leather, look past the big black steering wheel and out across that impossibly long bonnet and see fresh, green, French countryside flowing past once again. On the way to someplace interesting and exciting, someplace worth driving to, and driving there with great style and a certain dash. That’s what the people had in mind who first built 25 EX, and that’s certainly what the remarkable owner had in mind when he made the car into one of the most striking and dramatic Rolls-Royces ever to grace the road. And it was, after all, the French countryside that changed the way Rolls-Royce approached motor-car design. From its earliest days, the company had road-tested in France; besides the…

SOMEWHERE ALONG the way, this car came to be known as EE101. That’s wrong, but it’s a minor point in the history of one very important car that has been rescued and restored to perfection by its latest owner. What we have here is the very first Lister-Jaguar ‘Knobbly’, the same car that has been seen so many times in that famous photograph with its creator, Brian Lister, posed alongside the River Cam in Cambridge. Built for the 1958 season, with Brian’s cunning interpretation of the regulations for windscreen height in sports car racing, the ‘Knobbly’ soon proved to be the car to have if you wanted to win. One thing we know for sure is that, while it was being built, it was intended for the Ecurie Ecosse team,…

SO WE ARE here in the Hautes-Alpes, and running up the col ahead of us is a snaking treat of a road. It flicks and flows as it climbs between the trees and rockfaces. It invites all the pace our car has. It challenges me to try to find a straight line through the curves. But it won’t take long to learn that no, that’s not possible and, as the speed builds, the Quattro’s steering wheel will be arcing left-right-left-right in a constant flurry. We’ve been here before, photographer Martyn Goddard and I, in another Audi Quattro. We came 33 years ago, when the Quattro was motoring’s darling, the four-wheel-drive wonder rewriting the high-performance rulebook. We’d belted down from London in an early left-hand-drive test car with the grand notion…

FROM THE NEXT issue, the editors of Octane have decided that no longer will naked cars be shown in the magazine. We will, of course, maintain our exemplary editorial standards but, in future, the featured cars will be photographed while draped tastefully in fitted covers. We have reached the conclusion that the display of so much perfectly formed and seductively glossy metal is having a deleterious effect on those amongst us who don’t have a spare million or two to fulfil their dreams. OK, don’t panic, it’s only a joke! But the recent announcement by the publishers of Playboy magazine that it will no longer carry photographs of naked women is, in its own way, even more startling. After 62 fantasy-feeding years, the gatefolded pulchritudinous perfection of the Playmate of…

Poter tithout glory Racing the big-twin Cooper TERRY WRIGHT, Loose Fillings Sydney, £55, ISBN 978 0 9943661 0 8 THE SUB-LINE on the front cover says ‘Racing the Big-Twin Cooper’ but this is so much more than that. It’s better described in the blurb on the back: ‘This book is a new look at the early history of the modern racing car… through the history of world record motorcycles, hillclimb and sprint specials and dirt-track speedway cars.’ And actually, it’s a bit more than that too, because in exploring the development of the first Cooper racing cars, and their predecessors in Great Britain and the USA, author Terry Wright also examines the conditions in which the populaces of the two countries were living before and aer World War Two. All…

WE ARE FREQUENTLY grateful that we do not work at a daily newspaper – all ‘Hold the front page!’ and grim reality – but particularly so tonight, as we juggle our print deadline and a steady stream of coverage-worthy results from the final RM Sotheby’s auction of the year, in New York. The list of consignments, including everything from Janis Joplin’s pyschedelic Porsche 356SC Cabriolet to the ex-Fangio 1956 Ferrari 290 MM chassis 0626, is as interesting as any we’ve seen this year, and it was no surprise to learn that the preview more accurately described as a six-day exhibition – attracted thousands of visitors to Sotheby’s Manhattan HQ. The 290 MM, always likely to steal the show come auction night, duly marched to the expected $28 million ($28,050,000, to…

‘SO WHAT ARE you going to do with it?’ This always seems an extremely odd question to ask of somebody who has just bought a car but, where ultra-valuable and historically significant machines are concerned, the answer is rarely the obvious one. For every heavyweight classic that is driven o en and enthusiastically, there are many more hidden away behind triple-locked doors, run up with sad, responsible regularity but never really used as intended. That, thankfully, was not the fate of the cars of Frenchman Pierre Bardinon. In his 81 years, the collector extraordinaire owned an example of just about every important Ferrari from the marque’s first three decades (and many more besides), and he smoked the tyres of them all. His estate was at one point home to over…