Classic & Sports Car

porsche 917 is still a winner after 50 years

For a few days inside King Henry VIII’s back garden at Hampton Court Palace in London, the world regained a semblance of normality with the Concours of Elegance from 4-6 September. Fewer tickets meant the throngs were reduced, yet the sensational cars on show couldn’t help but draw crowds. It is, after all, not often the 1970 Le Mans winner is in town, the actual 917K that broke Porsche’s duck in the grand race with Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann at the helm (Sport, July). The colours are familiar to all, so often is the 917 painted in the Team Salzburg livery wheeled out of Porsche’s museum whenever required. But to see the very car that crossed the soaking-wet line 50 years ago is such a rare occurrence that it was…

veteran on border force

Ross and Rhonda Guthrie of Coolngatta, Queensland, Australia are De Dion Bouton Club UK members and correspondents for Motorvations, the club’s magazine. When founder Nick Pellett visited last year he realised that running through their garden was the New South Wales/Queensland border, now closed during the pandemic. Locals are issued passes for essential trips, so they’d need one to go to the bottom of their garden! Ross took their 1905 De Dion-Bouton down the hill where he was stopped at the new border. A most unusual border patrol car……

swap shop to workshop

In 1992, John Foley visited a small motor museum near Dinard, France, and was shown a large collection of cars stored in barns by owner Edouard Bittel. He spotted two 5CV Citroëns and enquired if one could be bought; the answer was “non”, but he would consider a swap and was interested in a Messerschmitt three-wheeler. Coincidentally, Foley knew of one for sale on Guernsey for £100, so he did a deal and a week later the Messerschmitt was in France and a 1923 Citroën 5CV Cabriolet Boulogne was on Guernsey. The car was spruced up and given to Foley’s wife for Christmas, but when he decided to restore a derelict farmhouse the cars all went into storage. Recently, the Citroën was exhumed and the restoration has begun.…

choosing to live life in the bubble

When he was younger, Peter Weinzetti of Melbourne, Australia, had a passion for vintage aircraft. Once into adulthood, he felt that a Messerschmitt KR200 would be “the logical wingless warbird solution”, but he initially became a Volkswagen enthusiast. In 2019, he was visiting a local restorer to discuss one of his other projects when the specialist mentioned that he knew of a pair of Messerschmitts that were about to be sold from a deceased estate. Both were from 1958: a KR200 that was complete and looked to be in reasonable order, but with a repair to the Perspex roof dome, and an engineless soft-top KR201, which was originally a cheaper model but is now quite rare. “The KR200 had an original interior with a retrimmed front seat, no serious corrosion and nice…

gallic badge engineering

Delahaye was founded in France in 1895, and today the name is usually associated with high-end coachbuilt cars of the 1930s-’50s. In the late 1920s, Delahaye tried to form a purchasing, production and marketing collaboration with Unic and Chenard et Walcker. Unic left, but Rosengart, Aries and Donnet took its place. The Model 109 was designed and built by Chenard, and sold with either a Delahaye or Chenard badge. Chris Moudy lived in Germany for some years and ventured into France as far as Strasbourg. There he found a Delahaye 109 in the hands of a dealer, who had acquired it from a farm where it had been stored for more than 40 years. Moudy could find out little of its history, but there is a tree painted on the side…

look familiar?

Want to track down a lost love or looking for history on your current classic? Send details and pictures to the p9 address or email your requests to alastair.clements@haymarket.com FINDING KEEPERS David Gordon is keen to contact past owners of DKP 948C, the ’65 MG Midget he has owned for 37 years. Originally British Racing Green, now Tartan Red, it was first owned by RPA Pearman of Kent, then Michael Rapier, John Maynes, Kevin John Salmons and Ronald Edward Wilson, all from Essex. Email davidgordon964@gmail.com DOES LOTUS SURVIVE? Having recently rediscovered a photo he took in Devon in 1972, Peter Cowlan is curious to discover the fate of SRL 2. “I believe it to be the Lotus Six campaigned by Sid Broad in the south-west in the 1950s and ’60s,” says Cowlan. Email cowlan.649@gmail.com MINDING…