Octane的September 2025目录

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I have a recurrent fantasy that I will be re-invited back – as I often once was – to address designers in the car industry. I can picture the scene: a purpose-built secure unit in the posher parts of Warwickshire. As the last guest is ushered in, a guard locks the door. The atmosphere is tense and expectant. I adjust my black polo-neck sweater. I’ll probably begin by saying: ‘If you think being responsible for establishing novel character-lines is a bit of chore, try spending all your career to pensionable age fretting about rear light clusters.’ There is a polite chuckle. But I’ll state my business quickly. And I will say ‘I want to talk about beauty.’ Now there is an uneasy shuffling of bums on seats. My point is that…

‘PHENOMENAL IS THE WORD THAT SUMS HIM UP. A LATERAL THINKER WITH SUCH A CAPACITY TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. SADLY, THERE WOULD BE NO PLACE FOR HIM IN TODAY’S CIRCUMSCRIBED FORMULA 1’JOHN WATSON ‘I’ve known him since 1972 and always found him a thoroughly practical bloke who cuts through all the bullshit and gets to what counts’DICK CROSTHWAITE ’I was a young driver in my mid-20s when the McLaren F1 appeared. I remember wondering what brilliant mind could have created this – and then I met Gordon, who looked like a wacky professor, and it all made sense’JUSTIN BELL ‘I never met Marc Birkigt, the Duesenberg brothers or WO Bentley but having Gordon Murray, who is the embodiment of these three great men, visit me at my garage was…

No matter what the onslaught of incredible stats, it’s the gearknob I remember most. Sure, when the McLaren F1 was launched in 1994 it cost £540,000 (plus taxes) and there was talk of a 6.0-litre V12 that peaked explosively at more than 100bhp per litre, a power output that made possible a Nardo-proven top speed of 231mph (and maybe more), and acceleration along the way of 0-62mph in a shattering 3.2sec (this was 31 years ago, don’t forget). The latter figure was achieved in first gear, so no need to throw the lever and waste precious time or motion in that benchmark sprint. And the lever itself acted for me as a metaphor for the obsessively particulate degree of thought that pervaded every last detail of the F1. The obsessively…

‘I think I learned the words “Mille Miglia” at the same time I learned to speak. My father had long retired, but our whole world still revolved around being Stirling Moss’s family – and this incredible road race is at the heart of it.’ These are the words of Elliot Moss, fêted chef and son of the great Sir Stirling Moss. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and chinos, Elliot looks relaxed as we chat on the eve of our departure from Brescia to Rome. Seventy years ago, Sir Stirling Moss and his lovably idiosyncratic navigator, Denis ‘Jenks’ Jenkinson, made history by becoming only the second non-Italian team to win the Mille Miglia after the German pairing of Rudolf Caracciola and Wilhelm Sebastian in 1931. Not only that, they did so…

JAMES ELLIOTT Editor-in-chief • 1965 Triumph 2.5 PI • 1968 Jensen Interceptor • 1969 Lotus Elan S4 ROBERT COUCHER Founding editor • 1955 Jaguar XK140 GLEN WADDINGTON Associate editor • 1989 BMW 320i Convertible • 1999 Porsche Boxster SANJAY SEETANAH Advertising director • 1981 BMW 323i Top Cabrio • 1998 Aston Martin DB7 Volante • 2007 Mercedes-Benz SLK200 MARK DIXON Contributing editor • 1927 Alvis 12/50 • 1927 Ford Model T pick-up • 1942 Fordson Model N tractor • 1955 Land Rover Series I 107in ROBERT HEFFERON Art editor • 2004 BMW Z4 3.0i DAVID LILLYWHITE Editorial director • 1971 Saab 96 MATTHEW HOWELL Photographer • 1962 VW Beetle 1600 • 1969 VW/Subaru Beetle • 1982 Morgan 4/4 BEN BARRY Contributor • 2007 Mazda RX-8 MASSIMO DELBÒ Contributor • 1967…

THAT PORTAL TO everything that could be delivered to your door – eBay – commissioned a survey, asking motorists which technologies they couldn’t live without. Parking sensors topped the list, followed by USB ports and Bluetooth connectivity. Of course, those have been standard fitment in new cars for a few years, but what if you could fit them in something a little older and more interesting? That something in this case is an E46 BMW 330Ci. Old enough for that slightly rawer, more connected driving experience yet refined and solid enough for daily use. And hence possibly the perfect recipient of some aftermarket tech. Following the survey, eBay put its money where its research had taken it, sourced this rather lovely 330Ci (via its own portal) and applied a search…

£2,622,863 (CHF 2,875,000) 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 Bonhams, Cheserex, Switzerland, 29 June £2,223,144 ($3,007,500) 1991 Porsche 911 DLS by Singer Bring a Trailer, Durham, North Carolina, USA, 6 June £2,150,387 ($2,907,500) 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder Weissach Bring a Trailer, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 3 June £1,317,306 ($1,807,500) 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Bring a Trailer, Newport Beach, California, USA, 27 June £1,306,174 ($1,757,500) 2014 McLaren P1 Bring a Trailer, Newport Beach, California, USA, 20 June £1,014,106 (€1,187,200) 1963 Ferrari 250GT Lusso Artcurial, St Tropez, France, 28 June £655,920 ($900,000) 2021 Ford GT SOMO, Buffalo, New York, USA, 27 June £619,080 ($837,500) 2006 Ford GT Heritage Bring-a-Trailer, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 6 June £600,601 ($813,492) 2024 Porsche 911 GT3 RS Bring-a-Trailer, Montauk, New York, USA, 23 June £521,002 ($707,499) 1959 Porsche 356A Carrera GS…

No-one knows what the folk at Lamborghini were thinking – or inhaling – when they unleashed the LM002 luxury sport utility into a market that didn’t then exist. But it does now, and everyone’s doing it, including Porsche, Bentley, Rolls, Aston… and Lamborghini. As was usual back then, Lamborghini was thinking outside the box, and the crazy 5.2-litre Countach V12-powered 118mph, 8mpg, 6ft-high crew-cab off-roader was a very big box indeed, weighing close to three tonnes. At $120,000 in 1986 (there was no UK list price) it cost considerably more than a Countach LP5000, which came in at around $100,000, or £86,000 in the UK. Derived from an aborted military project, hence the M for Militaria, just over 300 were made, with specs ranging from the ‘utility’, which even in…

I AM ONLY 25 years old and just starting out in my career really, having graduated from university less than a year ago. The direction I am taking is no surprise to anyone given my upbringing, however. I was brought up in Lyon and my mother was an art teacher; wherever we were in the world for whatever reason she would always seek out any art galleries as her priority and take my sister and me around them. From her I inherited and developed my love of art. The other side came from my father, who was a photographer and had a Jaguar E-type and a couple of other old cars when I was growing up, even though he was more into motorbikes and it seemed like we always had…

WAYNE BATTY ‘Milestone Murray-related memories for me include being mesmerised by a Brabham BT52 in 1983, inspired by the tandem-seat Rocket in ’92, and thrilled silly riding shotgun in a 240mph McLaren road car in 2009. But talking with the man himself tops them all.’ Gordon Murray interview: pages 60-65. JONATHAN MANNING ‘Blue skies, the Miami Vice glamour of a Koenig-Specials Ferrari 308, a car that was not so much tuned as completely re-engineered to exploit every ounce of the 308’s potential, and an engine roar to rouse the dead – sometimes the poker game of life deals you a royal flush. ’ Find out more on pages 108-116. RICH PEARCE ‘Want to know what it’s like photographing a Frazer Nash SS racer? Loud… and you’ll come away stinking of methanol!’ Rich’s…

I’ve had a couple of classic ‘British’ motoring experiences in the past two weeks. I’ve always enjoyed British motoring, cars and motorcycles. I particularly enjoy Brough Superior motorcycles because they’re considered to be the first superbikes, especially SS100s for their speed and build quality. And Jaguar cars for the same reason. Back in the 1980s I joined the Brough club. While in Texas in 1988 I met a fellow Brough club member named Daryl, who a few years earlier had purchased a Brough SS680 for $1300, all in pieces in a box. The SS680 looked similar to the SS100. George Brough himself referred to it as the Baby SS100, but it was for those riders who preferred a smaller-capacity machine. It looked exactly like an SS100, only about 10% smaller.…

The US is big. Geographically and in ambition. Vast scale is embedded in the American Dream, from cowboys galloping across the prairies, to iron horses steaming on railway lines to new territories, and city office blocks reaching for the sky. Americans have always gone large and the automobile has been written into this frontiersmanship, from the Joad family leaving Oklahoma’s dustbowl for California in the Great Depression (Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath) to today’s citizens who celebrate the car like no other, driving 13,500 miles per year; we manage 6500. Following on from the horse and steam train, early American automobiles were generally excellent, starting with the Ford Model T of 1908. With its lusty 2.9-litre engine, its chassis was made of superior vanadium alloy, rendering it almost unbreakable over…

Much like a 19-year-old Bob Dylan arriving in New York brimming with talent and potential, Gordon Murray landed in England as a 23-year-old with little more than uncanny ability and burning ambition. It’s a paper-thin parallel for sure, but one that tracks two complete unknowns who both became legends in their respective arenas. Decades later, Dylan is music royalty, while Murray’s impact on road and track has been nothing short of asteroidal. His 60-year design career has delivered, to name just a handful of highlights, five Formula 1 World Championship-winning cars, the epoch-shifting, Le Mans-conquering McLaren F1 supercar, and a bevy of eponymously branded ultimate drivers’ hypercars. The thought of interviewing Professor Gordon Murray CBE is a little daunting, not only because he is a bona fide legend and one…

The Ford GT40 isn’t the world’s most collectable road car, nor is the Ferrari F50. The Ferrari 250 GTO, once the must-have of the planet’s ultra collectors, comes third. The top two places, according to Hagerty’s Collectability Algorithm, belong to the McLaren F1 (in second) and the ultra-rare F1 LM derivative in first. Analysing whether a car is collectable is part art, part science, but the F1 dominates both. It has the right designers, the best performance of its era, an astonishingly successful racing record and the right badge on the nose – but it’s also fundamentally cool. Consider the names of owners over the years and it’s a Who’s Who of the very top motoring collectors: Ralph Lauren, Jon Hunt, Nick Mason, The Sultan of Brunei; when Tom Hartley…

Looking back now, it seems so serendipitous. When Mike Gibbs got in touch to offer his Frazer Nash SS racer for a feature in Octane, he suggested that the nice people at Castle Combe circuit might be helpful in providing a location for some driving shots. Which they were, hugely. But it was only a few days after the photoshoot that Mike recalled Castle Combe having a connection with Frazer Nash that most people will be completely unaware of. In the early 1960s, HJ ‘Aldy’ Aldington, the proprietor of AFN Limited – founded by Archibald Frazer-Nash in 1922, but taken over by Aldy and his two brothers in 1929 – was friends with a lady called Kitty Thomas, who had inherited the freehold of Castle Combe circuit. Like so many…

‘I’ve been battling with a battery drain on my Peugeot 306, which would kill a brand-new 12V battery within 48 hours. I finally traced the problem to a dead internal battery on the factory alarm system’Matthew Hayward ‘My Triumph has been happily blazing around the country through the UK heatwave and still garners a positive response wherever it puts in an appearance’James Elliott ‘The Boxster passed its MoT but it’s now waiting on a new microswitch for the electric hood’s windscreen latch. Currently the windows won’t close when the roof is in place – and there’s a delay in supply’Glen Waddington ‘Just when I think I’m finally ready to test-drive the Beetle-Subaru, something else prevents it. This time it was a dodgy relay; hopefully a new one will mean it…

LAST YEAR Aston Martin gave Ferrari a less-polite version of the Churchillian two-fingered salute by launching its 824bhp Vanquish Coupé a fortnight after Ferrari showcased its 819bhp 12Cilindri, those extra five brake horsepower giving the Vanquish an unbeatable hand in hypercars Top Trumps. Now, Aston has brought out a convertible Volante version, which shares with its Coupé sibling the title of ‘most powerful front-engined production car in the world’. The underpinnings are, not surprisingly, identical to those of the Coupé that we featured in Octane 259: a twin-turbo 5.2-litre V12, rear-wheel drive and a superfast e-diff. Top speed for the Volante is quoted as 214mph, with a 0-60mph scorch of 3.2sec. It’s a hugely dramatic car, the gaping maw of its front grille more aggressive and definitely less subtle than…

SITTING IN RETIRED Wing Commander Gordon Lear’s conservatory, chatting over coffee about his IWC MkXI navigators’ watch (as he recounts a completely unprintable story about the MP Peter Bottomley’s visit to an RAF radar station), I’m reminded of what a privilege it is to write about watches and the people who own them. It’s a rule that the more exceptional their lives or achievements, the more modest and unassuming they are. Lear is far from the silver-spoon Wing Commander caricature. He worked his way up from a scholarship at Gravesend County Grammar School to being a Coastal Command Cat A, VIP-qualified navigator who flew Lord Mountbatten in Northern Ireland, navigated countless air-sea rescue missions, and ranged from the UK to Borneo. The start to his RAF career was typically direct…

THERE’S A BUZZ going around the clubs and car shows that modified classics are all the rage. I recently visited the excellent Classics at the Clubhouse – Aircooled Edition at Sandford Springs in Hampshire and that seemed to reinforce this view: there were VW Baja Beetles, backdated Porsche 911s and slammed split-screen VW campers everywhere, all surrounded by throngs of eager onlookers. Modified, the theory goes, is what drivers of classics now want, but do the numbers back this up? An analysis of hundreds of thousands of online, live and dealer sales of classic and collectable cars tracked by Hagerty over the past three years shows that the number of cars marked as modified is dropping: in 2022, it was one in every 5.3 cars sold; so far in 2025,…

23-26 July Mecum, Harrisburg, USA 27 July Hampson, Oulton Park, UK 30 July H&H Classics, Buxton, UK 30 July – 1 August Mathewsons, online 31 July SWVA, Poole, UK 2 August Classicbid, Nürburgring, Germany Dore & Rees, Bradford on Avon, UK 6 August Brightwells, online 9 August Barons Manor Park Classics, Southampton, UK 13-14 August Broad Arrow Auctions, Monterey, USA 14-16 August Mecum, Monterey, USA 15 August Bonhams, Carmel, USA 15-16 August Gooding & Company, Pebble Beach, USA RM Sotheby’s, Monterey, USA 16 August Cheffins, Harrogate, UK 22-23 August Iconic Auctioneers, Silverstone, UK 24 August Classic Car Auctions, Silverstone, UK 28-30 August Worldwide Auctioneers, Auburn, USA 30-31 August ACA, King’s Lynn, UK Lucky Collector Car Auctions, Tacoma, USA 3-5 September Mathewsons, online 5-6 September Bonhams, Beaulieu, UK Manor Park Classics,…

Zoute Grand Prix Car Week 8-12 October In its own words ‘A five-day high-end car, art and lifestyle festival’. Expect tours and rallies, a top-end concours, a Bonhams auction and (new for 2025) a Broad Arrow sale, all in and around Belgium’s most chic resort, which is only a couple of hours’ drive from Calais. zoutegrandprix.be Oberoi Concours 20-22 February 2026 India’s five-star Oberoi Udaivilas hotel in Udaipur hosts again. The inaugural event took Concours Event of the Year at the 2024 Concours Year Awards and Breakthrough Event of the Year at the International Historic Motoring Awards 2024. Sandra Button, Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance chair, returns as Chief Judge for cars. theoberoiconcours.com Sydney Harbour Concours d’Elegance 27 February – 1 March 2026 The southern hemisphere’s glitziest concours will again take…

This column is being crafted from the comfort of a château in Bordeaux. I am marvelling at the beauty of it all and wondering what my old friend Alain de Cadenet would have made of it. I am on holiday with loved ones, but came out here with a group of Alain’s family and friends for what I guess you might call a memorial. I got to know ‘de Cad’ only relatively late in life, but we became great mates and the stories soon started flowing. Gordon Murray designed Alain’s 1972 Le Mans challenger and he told quite a few stories about him, not least about how hard it was to get paid for his efforts! That was the thing about Alain. Few people did more with less than this…

MSO began life as the customer care division for the F1, but its remit became much wider with the advent of further cars from the MP4-12C onwards. ‘Over the 15 years since, we have become renowned for continuing F1 expertise, plus servicing, restoration and bespoke operations for all McLarens, including the SLR, private commissions and customisation of current production cars,’ says Michael Wrigley, Heritage Manager for McLaren Automotive. The car you see in the pictures was restored by MSO Heritage. It’s chassis 072, one of the last road cars, delivered in May 1998, finished in Jet Black with black Alcantara and orange highlights, but returned to the factory in the October for the full High Downforce Kit. ‘It’s one of only six with that,’ says Michael, ‘the distinction being that…

It takes a certain confidence to challenge genius. Francesco del Giocondo, aka Mr Mona Lisa, may have been sublimely wealthy, but there’s no record of him asking Leonardo da Vinci to level up the horizons of his wife’s portrait. Pope Julius II did not urge Michelangelo to hurry up with his painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and nor are there any royal edits in the margins of Shakespeare’s plays. All of which leaves Emperor Joseph II, ruler of territories that stretched from the Netherlands to Hungary, as something of an outlier. He famously had the audacity to criticise Mozart for writing ‘too many notes’ in an operatic masterpiece. Then there’s German publishing magnate, Willy König, who had the temerity to think that Ferraris fresh from the production line were…

IN MORE THAN 20 years of writing for Octane, one of the cars I remember most covetously was not a Ferrari, a Lamborghini or even a Jaguar (although a D-type is a good contender). No, it was a comparatively humble ‘step-front’ Alfa Romeo 1600 GT Veloce, a beautifully original car in understated battleship grey, which I drove to Geneva for a feature in issue 31. The car was owned by Philip Kantor, then Bonhams’ man in Europe and now with Broad Arrow, who kept it in the UK, which is why it wore a Brighton ‘CD’ registration – something Philip appreciated since Continental police assumed it was a diplomatic plate and he was therefore immune from parking tickets! It was such a lovely thing that it inspired me to buy…

HE WAS A MASTER of expediency, a designer who could garnish parts bin cast-offs with a little styling magic and create a new model in no time at all. Richard Arthur ‘Dick’ Teague knew how to make a little go a long way, but then he had plenty of practice. This urbane designer was one of the USA’s premier automotive stylists for more than half a century, but he spent most of that time on the backfoot. Forever trudging forwards, perennially fighting his corner, he was responsible for many a miracle, this being the man who made AMC products hip. That he achieved such an improbable feat is all the more remarkable given his start in life. Born in Los Angeles on Boxing Day 1923, Teague seemed to be persistently…

IT’S A MEASURE of how influential the MkXI has been that you can see its DNA all the way from 1946 in the modern MkXX. Probably the definitive navigator’s watch – when navigators actually needed a mechanical chronometer – any XI will have seen military service. That means they’ve usually had the dial-swap mentioned above. Find one without a ‘T’ on the face and you have a rarity: an original radium dial. Find one with a ‘12’ at the top of the dial and you have a unicorn: one of the first issued watches. Prices range from about £5000-plus for a tritium dial to ‘good luck finding one’ for a radium one.…

THINK OF A classic Lamborghini and you’re probably picturing a Miura or a Countach, but for Polo Storico, the company’s heritage operation, one model is on its books more than any other: the Diablo. Just under 3000 examples were produced from the first, unveiled in Monte Carlo in January 1990, to the final Oro Elios VT SE 6.0 coupé finished by the Sant’Agata Bolognese factory in 2001. On its release the Diablo had huge boots to fill. Lamborghini first wowed the world with the Miura in 1966, then broke the mould with the 1974 Countach; but after significant financial woes and various owners, its assets were bought by French brothers Patrick and Jean Claude Mimran in 1981. In 1985 they initiated the project to find a Countach replacement and, when…

HOW’S BUSINESS? While certain sectors of the market are softening, others remain remarkably strong. Over the past 12 months we’ve been fortunate to handle the sale of some truly fantastic cars, and business has been very good. What’s the secret of your success? It’s a combination of knowledge, passion, transparency, and working with clients who share a deep appreciation for cars. Have there been demographic changes? Undoubtedly. We’ve definitely seen a generational shift, with younger collectors gravitating towards the ‘poster cars’ of their youth. This trend has driven extraordinary demand – and rising values – for cars from the 1990s and 2000s, and modern hypercars. Are pre-war cars doomed? Absolutely not! You need only to drive one to understand the magic. There’s also a thriving calendar of pre-war events, and…

WHAT TO PAY It’s surprisingly difficult to find good 99 Turbos in the UK, although mainland Europe can prove more fruitful. As a guide, expect to pay around £4000 for a half-decent project car today. A tidy 99 Turbo will range from £9000 to £13,000; exceptional examples, however, are in demand and could be worth £20,000 and upwards. It’s a similar story in the USA, although with slightly healthier numbers of cars it’s considerably easier to track one down. You can still find decent running examples for under $10,000 but some of the nicest have sold for upwards of $40,000 on Bring-a-Trailer. LOOK OUT FOR Corrosion is a huge concern with the 99, and key areas to check include the wheelarches – front and rear, inner and outer – as…