Classic & Sports Car

garage gear

A NEW TAKEON ICONS Automotive artist Tony Upson has teamed up with Yorkshire-based Lazenby Visuals to offer a new range of prints of his pin-up-style paintings. The designs range from 1950s pitlane ‘Castrol Girls’ to Upson’s well-known series of glamorous Gulf (pictured) and Martini model fantasies. The prints are available to order in various sizes, starting from £45. www.lazenbyvisuals.com Do the strut Sealey’s suspension strut support has been designed to work with the firm’s 600TR transmission jack or equivalent, with a minimum base of 560 x 570mm, for support during suspension repairs. Made of steel, it fits over the end of the 30mm ram and the arm locks in place at the base of the strut – it can then be raised or lowered using the jack. At the time of writing, it…

tested this month

NEXTBASE 422GW Nextbase’s latest dashcam, the 422GW, offers a surprisingly high amount of technology for its comparatively modest £103.20 price, including full Amazon Alexa compatibility, an intelligent parking mode that records any bumps when your car is unattended, and ‘Emergency SOS, which contacts the emergency services following a crash where the driver is unresponsive. Most impressive is the superb build quality, complemented by a 2.5in high-definition touchscreen that is a pleasure to use, and crystal-clear 1440px quad HD video. Playback was pin-sharp during our test, easily picking up registration numbers in quick oncoming traffic. The only downside to this otherwise excellent camera is its slightly dated appearance. GM www.nextbase.com ARMOR ALL POLISHING PADS This is a very simple – and cheap – solution to what can be a hand-numbing task. Three pads for £3.49,…

mick walsh

Great stories and old photos are a real lifeline in these strange days. Researching the Bugatti Type 57S story for this issue (p120) and the life of its first owner ‘TASO’ Mathieson set me off on lots of tangents. His vivid recollections of a test drive with William Grover-Williams, the first Monaco Grand Prix winner, Bugatti works ace and WW2 hero, had me pulling out my much-read copy of Joe Saward’s riveting The Grand Prix Saboteurs. Williams would regularly take out potential customers for test drives, as he did in October 1936 with Mathieson. You can just imagine the rapid run back to London, the latest Bugatti coupé blasting past unhurried saloons on the old A3 after a memorable lunch. ‘Williams spoke perfect English with a heavy French accent. His racing…

simon taylor

While Group Captain Clements and his ace crew remotely perform miracles through this crisis to bring you your monthly C&SC, I’m trying to avoid the deluge of advice, on page and screen, about how to make the best of the lockdown. I quail at the thought of tackling Proust or Finnegan’s Wake; nor do I fancy lying on the carpet and being exhorted by a grinning TV gymnast to Lift Those Legs. Instead, deeply frustrated because we can’t enjoy our cars, most of us are in the garage getting stuck into work we always promised ourselves we’d do, and somehow never did. Even technically challenged chaps such as me can remove wire wheels and clean and wax each spoke – a mind-numbing job, but it feels good when you’ve done it. For…

martin buckley

Writing about the Triumph 2.5 PI this month brought back happy memories of going on holiday in the early ’70s to a Worcestershire farm owned by my uncle Les and auntie Dorothy. I virtually lived for these trips. The fun started with a run down the M6 and M5, where there was a chance of catching a glimpse of something exotic hoofing it up the outside lane (it was on one of these outings that I first saw a BMW 2000 CS doing just that) and possibly experiencing the thrill of visiting a service area, still a glitzy semi-novelty in those days. For transport south we progressed through a Moskvitch van and a couple of Rover V8s to finally (I think) a Renault 20TS. The low point was undoubtedly the ignominy of…

letter of the month

Remembering Rileys across the Outback, five decades on The article in the January issue about motorsport in the Australian Outback brought back happy memories of a trip I took with a number of Riley Motor Club of Australia members in 1967. In the 1950s there were several round-Australia car trials, initially sponsored by Redex, which the broader Australian community embraced. The competitors were in standard family sedans, with nearly 200 starters in the first trial. The idea was to circumnavigate the country, covering thousands of miles over some of Australia’s most ‘interesting’ roads, including rough creek crossings. When cars entered a town or city en route, the population would line the streets cheering on the contestants. At the time, my parents and I were part of the crowd. This spirit of adventure captured…