Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2017 in Octane

AFTER THE LANDR OVER REBORN from Land Rover Classic comes the prolific restoration operation’s latest project: Range Rover Reborn. As with the Series I Land-Rover, for which there are 50 orders and 12 cars under construction, the Range Rover is an extremely thorough restoration, as authentic as possible and using as many original parts as possible. The first example to be completed, a 1978 three-door in Bahama Gold, was revealed at the Paris Rétromobile show on 8 February (and immediately sold). It represents the Range Rover in its pure and original form, which is where the greatest interest for the model lies. Michael Bishop of Land Rover Classic says the challenges of restoring a Range Rover are quite different from those of an early Land-Rover. ‘An old-school trim shop can…

INGEGNER PAOLO Stanzani was born in Bologna in 1936, graduated in 1961, and was hired by Ferruccio Lamborghini himself on 30 September 1963 to work for the newly formed Lamborghini Automobili. He’d always declared, with a smile, that he was hired simply because Lamborghini wanted a back-up in case something happened to Giampaolo Dallara, and with Dallara he went on to become the technical father of the Miura. In 1967 he was appointed general manager and technical director of Lamborghini, and is also considered the father of the Countach even though the Urraco was his favourite creation, because of its more advanced technical content. In 1974 he quit Lamborghini and set out on his own, building dams for an energy company, then founded Tecnostile, his own consultancy firm,…

FOUR-TIMES CHAMPION Tommi Mäkinen has returned to the World Rally Championship 14 years after his last competitive drive, this time as a team principal rather than a driver. Against all expectations his new team, Toyota Gazoo Racing, finished second overall at the Rallye Monte-Carlo, first time out. We caught up with Mäkinen halfway through the rally, to ask him about the change from driver to manager, and if he misses being out on the stages. ‘No-no-no, it’s a younger guy’s job,’ he said in that once-familiar Finnish accent. ‘I was consulting for them about rallying and finally they ask what I’m thinking about it [running a team]? Finally I say if we go we have to go absolutely flat out. No compromises. ‘I have driven the new car. I have…

THE HISTORIC banked autodrome at Montlhéry, south of Paris, hosts many historic motoring events. Two of 2017’s picks are the Vintage Revival for pre-1940 machinery on 6-7 May, and the third edition of Les Grandes Heures Automobiles, held on 23-24 September. The LGHA is the big one, with cars and motorcycles from the Autodrome’s earliest years through to recent times. LGHA previewed the event at Rétromobile in February with a display of Group B rally cars; last year they were lapping around Montlhéry’s banking right up to 10pm. Similar spectacles are promised this year, supported by many displays from classic car clubs. Themes last year included five Voisins, most notably the 1927 24-hour endurance record-breaker which ran again on the banking for the first time in 89 years. Peugeot brought…

WHEN DOUGAL CAWLEY bought Piglet more than a decade ago, the former owner expressed some surprise that he intended to drive it home to Yorkshire. ‘I’m a member of the Vintage Sports-Car Club, not the vintage-car-and-trailer club,’ spluttered the owner of Longstone Tyres, always in support at VSCC racing events. He adds: ‘There’s nothing better than driving your car to a track, camping, racing and then driving what’s left of it home.’ Piglet, a 1921-chassis GN/Frazer Nash special, was put together by Roger Buxton in the 1980s. The name comes from Roger’s own nickname, apparently bestowed on him by his family after his early years’ eating habits. Roger subsequently sold his creation to Mags Diffey, who reluctantly sold it to Dougal with the understanding she could have one last race…

in association with…

HELD, APPROPRIATELY, on Australia Day, the inaugural Concours d’Elegance took its first baby steps towards international recognition. Along with Pebble Beach, Cavallino Classic, Pinehurst, Greenwich, Arizona, Concours d’Elegance Suisse and the 21 Gun Salute in Delhi, it was run under the auspices of Ed Gilbert’s International Chief Judge Advisory Group (ICJAG). The 20 local team class judges (and myself as chief honorary judge) had undergone a series of training seminars at the hands of not one but three ICJAG judges from Pebble Beach. Chief Judge Nigel Matthews from Vancouver, Canada; FIVA scrutineer and car historian Chris Kramer from Germany; and Master Judge of the Classic Car Club of America, Siegfried Linke from Seattle in the US (who started life as a mechanic in the 1950s), flew in to oversee the…

WHEN LAMBORGHINI unveiled the Aventador back in 2011, the world of fast cars gasped for a moment in disbelief. Because, at the time, the Aventador, with its cartoonish good looks, its thunderous V12 engine and 210mph top speed, was like no other supercar on Earth. It was also near the technological cutting edge back then, featuring a carbon monocoque chassis with pushrod suspension and four-wheel drive with which to deploy its prodigious power. But since then the atmosphere among the upper echelons of fast cars has thickened somewhat, and dynamically the Aventador has struggled to keep up. Which is why Lamborghini has come up with this car, a dramatically more advanced Aventador known simply as ‘The S’. It costs £277,000 and boasts four-wheel steering and revised electronic suspension. That famous…

SOMEWHERE BACK IN the mists of time, Pete Sampras was winning Wimbledon like a clockwork howitzer. He was untouchably the best in his day, a bit like the Volkswagen Golf GTI – an endless parade of adoration, unstoppably brilliant, the icon of its age. Yet in Pete’s day, the Golf was in the doldrums. The hefty MkIII GTI was dull (who could have thought that the old 2.0-litre 16v engine would be enough to haul around all that extra weight?) but the bland-as-cold-porridge MkIV was, if anything, worse. It didn’t even try to be good. That all changed with the 2005 MkV – a car whose golfball gear-shifter and tartan seats may have been throwbacks to the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s, but whose turbocharged 2.0-litre engine and…

1. Tail spoiler is the result of extensive aerodynamic development that also includes a full undertray with NACA ducts for brake and gearbox cooling. Drag factor is 0.31 and there’s even a degree of downforce at speed. 2. The 2.85-litre flat-six was racebred, dating back to the 935 and developed via Group C, its capacity defined by the handicap system applied to turbocharged cars racing in the 4.0-litre class. Unlike any other 911-based road car before the 996, it features water-cooled cylinder heads, and is constructed from magnesium alloy with titanium conrods and crankshaft. The twin KKK turbochargers work sequentially to reduce lag, the second spooling up from around 4500rpm – the same time as a second set of injectors starts squirting even more fuel into the combustion chambers. 3.…

So far I’ve been lucky. Passers-by are few in Turin’s Piazza San Carlo early on a Sunday morning and, as I field questions slowly, my feeble Italian gets the basics across: very important Ferrari, here from Britain, Italian National Automobile Museum. The descent of an entire jogging club, however, is too much for my limited skills. Fortunately, Clive steps up, pats me on the shoulder, smiles, and points towards the gorgeous Touring-bodied 166MM. ‘È la prima Ferrari di Gianni Agnelli,’ he announces. The joggers are ecstatic. ‘Ah, si, si, the first Ferrari of Gianni Agnelli!’ Clive and I dash off like heroes, V12 music dancing along elegant Baroque facades. ‘Aside from the odd couple of phrases, that’s the only complete sentence I know,’ he says. ‘But when you’re driving this…

‘PRICE Is what you pay, value is what you get.’ Those ten words were at the forefront of my mind when I went hunting for my first collector car in some time. When a Mercedes 190SL can cost $200,000-300,000, a Porsche 914/6 is closer to $100,000 than $50,000, and a Fiat Trasformabile runs you $80,000 or more, it’s hard to discern what constitutes ‘good value’ these days. I had no interest in a something fashionable; I wanted a car with desirable characteristics at a price less than those same attributes would cost elsewhere. The parameters included landmark design, history, performance, rarity, potential capital preservation/ appreciation, among others. Most importantly, it had to be involving to drive – a memorable, lingering experience that couldn’t be found anywhere else. I set the…

ANTHONY LAGO WAS the businessman who acquired the French Talbot marque in June 1935, and kept it going against all odds and financial logic. In the late 1930s, the so-called ‘Lago Talbots’ were among the world’s most desirable sports cars, especially the 1937 T150C SS Goutte d’Eau (Teardrop), a period supercar with its 4.0-litre straight-six, sensational shape and – today – £3m value. One came third at Le Mans in 1938. After the Second World War, Lago made a bold grab for the dwindling market for sporting luxury cars with his Grand Sport, and some glamorous combinations of quality engineering and arresting outer shapes followed. Tenacious doesn’t begin to describe Lago, born in Venice in 1893 as Antonio Franco Lago, although he had plenty of influential connections from the outset,…

PROBABLY EUROPE’S LARGEST private collection, Mahymobiles isn’t well known outside Belgium. Yet housed in an anonymous old mill near Lille is an astonishing collection of classic cars. Most are unrestored and there are reckoned to be around a thousand of them, though many are tucked away from view in the 12 halls of the reserve collection. The original owner, Ghislain Mahy, was born in 1907, a time when the automobile had captured the imagination of the industrial world. He built his first car when he was 17 and then sold it to begin his lifelong career in the motoring industry. He opened the first car rental agency in Belgium and also began selling new cars. Mahy developed his knowledge of mechanics during World War Two, mainly by hands-on experience. He…

Although the HAGI MBCI made a small net gain over the last quarter of 2016, peaking at the end of November, one month into 2017 the index is slightly shy of where it was at the end of September. The December decline of 0.96%, followed by a further fall of 1.47% in January, have together adjusted the medium-term market view. At November’s high of 187.70, the MBCI had returned year-on-year growth of 12.02% with a three-year accumulation of 38.31%. Now, with values back where they were five months ago, year-on-year growth has been reined back to 10.23%, while for the three-year scenario the figure has retreated to 30.78%. Despite the recent more subdued growth, the MBCI remains firmly within a trend-channel dating back to 2014, during which time it has…

‘ROAD RIDING WITHIN THE LEGAL LIMIT IS ALMOST MORE OF A WORRY THAN DAYS SPENT GOING FAST IN THE DESERT’ THE STARTING ORDER was reversed on the final day so, being in the lead, I was scheduled to be the last bike away – which meant I got to lie in until about 4.30am. It’s obviously essential to get as much sleep as possible during the rally, so competitors tend to take a sleeping tablet to ensure a full six hours. It means you’re usually a bit woozy when you wake up, but there’s so much going through your head at the end of each day that, without that tablet, you can lie there for an hour before drifting off – so, over the course of the event, you could…

THE MILLE MIGLIA is a bucket-list event, but there’s no doubt that it retains a certain romance in part because crews are never quite allowed to forget the challenges faced by those who took part between 1927 and 1957. By the standards of the original and deadly 1000-mile race, today’s regularity is a cakewalk, but the press-on programme doesn’t suit everybody. Those in search of a first-class but more laid-back Italian rally experience have found it – in increasing numbers in recent years – in the form of La Leggenda di Bassano, known until 2016 as Le Mitiche Sport a Bassano. Held over three days (22-25 June this year), it boasts a field the equal of any in the world: a maximum of 100 open-top pre-1960 competition cars. The organisers…

SUN, SEA, SAND and a classic air-cooled Volkswagen van. Sometimes the recipe for success can be so simple. Since 2005, Vintage Surfari Wagons has been dropping tourists in at the deep end of SoCal surf culture, sending happy campers off to enjoy the Golden State in one of its rentable VWs – and the man behind the business remains every bit as enthusiastic as he was a decade ago. ‘This is the best job I’ve ever had,’ smiles Bill Staggs, who founded Surfari Wagons with the help of his wife, Diane. I love the vibe, I love the vehicles and I love keeping them alive.’ At the company’s HQ in Costa Mesa, Bill recalls his previous careers: in his 60-odd years he’s been a handyman and a car salesman, and…

‘THE REASONS BEHIND THE SALE ARE A MIX OF FAMILY AND BUSINESS MATTERS’ RUMOURS BEGAN to circulate at the beginning of 2017 about the sale of the Essex-based classic car dealer and restoration specialist JD Classics. So Octane asked its founder, Derek Hood, what the truth behind the stories was. After all, this looks to be the first instance of a classic car specialist being sold to a large investment consortium. ‘I heard the rumours too,’ said Derek. ‘The truth is very simple. In January 2015 I was contacted by representatives of the Charme Capital Partners investment fund, representing Luca di Montezemolo, Ratan Tata and some other investors from the Middle East and Europe. They were looking for information about the classic car business, and I helped them in finding…

WHY THE OBSESSION with Rétromobile, year after year? If you haven’t been, you must wonder at this apparent need to head to chilly Paris every February. And if you sampled it, say, six or seven years ago, you might think ‘yes, it’s good but not worth visiting every year’. Thing is, it’s become a meeting place for the world’s major classic car collectors. The Americans are there. The Brits are there. The Germans are there. And so on. For this reason, the biggest historic car dealers are there too, bringing cars and plush exhibition stands that they just don’t bother with anywhere else, and more and more car manufacturers are bringing their heritage collections – a few years back it was only the French manufacturers who did that. So, this…

10-12 March Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance The winner of the 2016 IHMA prize for Motoring Event of the Year will doubtless put on a first-class show again in 2017, welcoming some of the best cars in the world to sun-soaked Florida. Al Unser Sr has been confirmed as the guest of honour, and special classes will include ‘Movie Cars’, set to feature the likes of the Goldfinger Aston Martin DB5 and Steve McQueen’s Porsche 917K from Le Mans. ameliaconcours.org 16-18 March Three Legs of Man Nowhere are classics given a warmer reception than on the Isle of Man, and in mid-March the motor sport paradise hosts this two-day, three-leg event featuring more than 20 tests and some 15 regularity sections. heroevents.eu 16-19 March Amelia Island Vintage Gran Prix Hot on…

EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE: the Porsche Panamera 4 E-Hybrid is like having your entire meal in one sitting. Starter, main and pudding. Luxury, sports and economy car all in one. As fusions go it’s an interesting prospect, and one that requires the mating of a 2.9-litre V6 biturbo petrol engine to an electric motor, some batteries and a plug. The Panamera 4 E-Hybrid is the Panamera your accountant will like, its 56g/km of CO2 emissions offering sizeable tax advantages, while the quoted 112.9mpg promises serious fuel pump avoidance. The reality will be different, but the 4 E-Hybrid at least offers a useful 31 miles of electric-only range, which will easily cover the majority of commutes. It defaults to that E-Power mode, and will drive at speeds in excess of what’s allowed…

PERSONALISATION. It’s the new buzzword, the achievable ‘bespoke’, the new, classier version of ‘customisation’. Car manufacturers are taking it very seriously, not least Jaguar Land Rover, with its new 20,000m2 Special Vehicle Operations HQ now open for business. What is that business? Low-volume personalisation, from fancy paint to armoured vehicles – and in the middle of this sit a handful of special models, the latest of which is the Range Rover SV Autobiography Dynamic. It’s a bit of a mouthful for what is simply a more driver-orientated version of the existing ultimate-luxury SV Autobiography, which is now available in long-wheelbase form only. The Dynamic utilises the standard wheelbase and top-of-the-range supercharged 5.0-litre V8 together with suspension upgrades, 8mm lower ride height and quicker steering, to sit between the Autobiography and…

A FRIEND pointed out to me the two letters about the red XKSS, chassis XKD 539 [pictured top left], in Octane 165, because I was the young man driving it in your picture. I am also the chap referred to by your first correspondent who worked at the big drop-forging company, Garringtons, at the time the largest in Europe. The Riley mentioned was the Riley MPH works prototype, not the famous Raymond Mays ‘White Riley’. When I first had it, the engine was a rather feeble 1200cc straight-six on a pair of small SUs, which I had bored out to just under two litres and fitted with six Amals. I started racing with it in VSCC events and, while I did drive it on the road, it was not my…

Even these days, 450bhp is a lot of power in a car. Three decades ago, it was the preserve of the fastest cars money could buy. The Porsche 959, for one, as you’ll know if you’ve just read the feature preceding this one. But now, access to hugely fast sports cars is a little more democratic. And if that output of 450bhp is no longer the preserve of the very fastest, it can still make you go quite fast enough. As it always did. It’s not only the power that’s filtered down from the top echelons. So has the tech. In fact, that started to drip through the rest of Porsche’s range not long after the 959 was launched. It’s surely no coincidence that the July 1988 issue of Car…

‘Customers were obliged to put down a $10,000 deposit using their American Express Gold accounts’ A 36-year-old car with only nine miles on its odometer will always be a freakshow. Sure, they pop up occasionally. Sometimes it’s a Vauxhall Chevette, perhaps, that’s been cosseted in the back of a family-owned showroom, the kind of place where sentimentality has got completely out of hand. More likely it’s the first or last example off a production line, such as Jaguar Heritage’s own treasured, nine-mile XJ220 prototype. This DeLorean DMC-12 has itself a little over nine miles displayed within its brittle black facia. It’s a wonder it covered even that distance, really, because not one drop of water, petrol or oil ever coursed through its mechanical veins. Nine miles is quite a lot…

‘Pilfering was rife, and the spares department of one local dealer was rumoured to be stocked with parts lifted from the line’ SHORT OF WAR and wide-scale rioting, there are few circumstances that can trigger the same level of destruction as the business failure of a large industrial complex. All of a sudden a huge enterprise that seemed as permanent as the next row of hills becomes a scene of windswept desolation and, for those that worked there, an unwelcome life-changing event. But because the Longbridge factory died by a thousand cuts, the demise of what was once the largest car plant in Europe has passed almost unnoticed. This, then, is a modest homage to a car factory that for decades was this country’s most important. Longbridge itself is a…

When you were ten years old, did you have school outings that involved a working WW2 tank? No, me neither. But think how thrilled we would have been to get up-close and personal with something like the Churchill pictured here; to see it move and hear the growl of its 21-litre engine and the clank of its tracks. Who knows what seeds might have been sown by such a formative experience? And that’s exactly the thinking behind The Churchill Trust, a charitable body founded by retired City lawyer Nigel Montgomery. As a boy in the late 1960s, he helped his father restore a vintage Bentley – which is still in the family – and it was his life-long love of engineering and British ingenuity that made him want to get…

A Life in Car Design OLIVER WINTERBOTTOM, Veloce, £37.50, ISBN 978 1 787110 35 9 Readers who are as old as this reviewer may recall the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge, in which the fictional prep-school boy got involved in endless well-intentioned but unfortunate scrapes. In one book, Jennings nearly comes unstuck when a car manufacturer telephones the school, offering to bring round its latest model for a test drive – not realising that Jennings has been sending off for car brochures and ‘accidentally’ forgetting to mention that Linbury Court is a prep school. Oliver Winterbottom had his real-life Jennings moment when Armstrong Siddeley fell for the same trick and sent its latest demonstrator down to Smallwood Manor (boarding school) – ‘The demonstration driver was not pleased to learn he…

1. 1:18 scale 1970 Triumph TR6 By LS Collectibles Price £126.95 Material Resincast It’s always nice to see a large-scale model of a relatively humble sports car, and UK readers will be particularly pleased that Chinese maker LS Collectibles has chosen as its subject a right-hand-drive example – although, peculiarly, it seems to be fitted with US-spec orange front parking light and indicator units. To judge from the black wheel centres, black windscreen surround and lack of seat head restraints, we reckon it’s a 1970 Model Year car. Overall, the model presents very well. It’s beautifully finished in dark green and only when you start to scrutinise the interior closely do you start to see evidence of cost-cutting. The wooden dash and the instruments are represented by a single rather…

ORIGINALLY OWNED BY Mabel Boll, who was crowned ‘Queen of Diamonds’ and ‘Broadway’s most beautiful blonde’ by American gossip columnists, this Duesenberg Model J has enjoyed a history almost as colourful as that of its most notable custodian. The Duesenberg’s chassis was first delivered to France, where apparently it was fitted with a Kellner body; before it was sold, however, that body was swapped for Franay’s Sunroof Berline coachwork and the car was exhibited at the 1930 Paris motor show, resplendent in two-tone paint. It was back in Paris again in 1931, now in a single colour. Meanwhile, Mabel’s progression towards impending Duesenberg ownership was the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. After selling cigars in a bar, she married businessman Robert Scott in 1909, before moving on to her second husband,…

MEMBERS OF THE Vintage Hot Rod Association will descend on Santa Pod Raceway on 28-30 April for a brand new event: the VHRA National Finals. The famous Northamptonshire strip, the home of British drag racing since 1966, will welcome hot rods and customs from across the UK for a weekend of friendly competition and live music. There will be plenty of ‘run what you brung’ action, but the club has confirmed that it is also organising a series of race ladders, with classes to include flatheads and dragsters. A show-and-shine is planned, too, for pre-1964 vehicles. Only VHRA members will have the opportunity to tear (or trundle) down the venue’s iconic quarter-mile, but happily the event is open to all. Racing tickets cost £45 per person when booked in advance,…

AMELIA ISLAND CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE 10-12 March. Amelia Island, USA ameliaconcours.org BRITISH CARS & LIFESTYLE 18-19 March. Rosmalen, the Netherlands britishbest.nl GOODWOOD MEMBERS’ MEETING 18-19 March. Goodwood, UK goodwood.com GREAT OCEAN ROAD TOUR 27 March – 1 April (other dates available) Starts and finishes in Melbourne, Australia classiccartour.com.au THE FLYING SCOTSMAN 31 March – 2 April. Hexham to Auchterarder, UK endurorally.com COPPERSTATE 1000 1-5 April. Scottsdale, USA mensartscouncil.com TECHNO CLASSICA ESSEN 5-9 April. Essen, Germany siha.de GRAN PREMIO TERRE DI CANOSSA 20-23 April. Parma to Reggio Emilia, Italy granpremioterredicanossa.it VALLETTA CONCOURS D’ELEGANCE 23 April. Valletta, Malta vallettaconcoursdelegance.com CALIFORNIA MILLE 23-27 April. San Francisco to Calistoga, USA californiamille.com TOUR AUTO OPTIC 2000 24-30 April. Paris to Biarritz, France peterauto.peter.fr CLASSIC DAYS MAGNY-COURS 27 April – 2 May. Magny-Cours, France classicgt.co.uk DONINGTON HISTORIC…

RURAL BEDFORDSHIRE is probably not at the top of many must-visit lists, but the pretty village of Old Warden is home to an event as spectacular as any mentioned in these pages. The hangars at Old Warden Aerodrome house the Shuttleworth Collection, a world-renowned stash of historic aircra that includes more than a few noteworthy vintage and veteran cars, too. All of the planes are maintained in working order, and on various dates between May and October they take to the skies, joined by many visiting aircra . The very last of those dates, 1 October, should be circled in your diary. The season finale is known as Shuttleworth Race Day and features mock air races between all manner of flying machines – and, as of last year, a gathering…

SET TO MARK its 41st birthday on 7-9 July, the International Oldtimer Meeting Baden-Baden is billed by the organisers as an open-air car museum – an apt description, given that last year’s event featured 82 marques and machinery ranging from an 1898 De Dietrich Spider Couvert to a 1963 Ford GT40. As museums go, Baden-Baden is a most attractive one, nestled on the edge of the Black Forest in south-western Germany. The action takes place among the town’s beautifully kept public gardens, including the grounds of the Kurhaus spa complex and casino. The concours is open to pre-1971 cars of all types and, while the Best of Show gong is coveted, it’s very much an event where the taking part matters most; with 120 trophies to distribute among the 350-odd…

‘I’D ALWAYS WANTED to be a photographer,’ says Gerard Brown. ‘I’d been brought up on a diet of picture-led Sunday supplements, and then my father gave me his old camera, a Fujica ST605. Cycling was a passion then – still is – and when I moved to London to study, I got a job in a bike shop and then met a man who had a friend on a cycling mag…’ It’s a long way from there to the work for which Gerard is known now: fabulous images of long-distance rallies from around the world. He paid his dues with many years of car shoots, studio work and sports photography before a chance encounter with the late Philip Young, the godfather of historic rallying, changed the course of his life.…

WE ALL LOVE the Le Mans Classic, but it’s not a continuous endurance race because cars race for just 2hr 9min each in total, over three races. Full endurance races for pre-war cars are rare indeed, and the one planned by Chris Lunn of the Benjafields Racing Club should be a cracker. It’s inspired by the Brooklands 500 races run from 1929 to 1937, initially over 500 miles but reduced to 500km for the final event. Lunn’s version, which has the enthusiastic blessing of the Brooklands Museum, is called the Benjafield 500 Challenge, and the idea is for the winning car to break the 500-mile barrier between the race’s start at 9am on Sunday 15 October and its finish eight hours later. ‘The first Brooklands 500 was held on 12…

CONTINUATION CARS are the big thing of the moment. Now Alvis is to make more of what it used to make. For many years the car part of the Alvis business, acquired by Rover in 1965 and run down by British Leyland in 1967, has been owned and operated by Red Triangle in Kenilworth. It has all the records and assets, and is the centre of the Alvis servicing and restoration universe. Around four years ago Red Triangle revealed a plan to make a continuation series of the 4.3-litre (actually 4387cc) Vanden Plas-bodied tourer, of which 150 examples were sanctioned at an Alvis board meeting in 1938 but just 73 were made before the war intervened. The three cars so far constructed out of the 77 remaining allocated chassis numbers…

FOR MANY YEARS the kick-off to America’s car show season has been March’s Amelia Island Concours in Florida. After less than five years, a new show is close to claiming that slot. The Arizona Concours is held every year at the Biltmore Resort in Phoenix, immediately before Scottsdale auction week. This year the quality and diversity of cars was spectacular. Every year the Concours features an American and European marque, and a designer, and the headlining classes were ‘The Cars of Ettore and Jean Bugatti’, ‘Coachwork by Vignale’, and ‘Lincolns of the Classic Era’. While there were also ubiquitous classes such as two variants of ‘American Classics’ and ‘Postwar European Sports Cars’, my favourite entries came from the ‘Postwar American Racing Cars’. This is where you can find some American…

THREE GOLDEN RULES for attending Techno-Classica Essen 2017 – wear your comfiest shoes, arrive at the Messe Essen, Germany, with at least a couple of days to spare, and have a pre-prepared plan of what you want to see. This event is huge, filling 21 exhibition halls with 1250 exhibitors from more than 30 nations, and encompassing every facet of the classic car world. Chances are you won’t get around to seeing everything. With Techno-Classica, it’s not just the scale of the event that impresses, but also the quality of the offering and the sheer diversity of the cars, products and services on show. Small wonder that last year’s Techno-Classica attracted a record crowd of 201,000 visitors from 41 countries. Little surprise, either, that modern carmakers have discovered the value…

YOU HAVE TO AGREE. This is a great-looking little coupé, with its rear-set, fastback profile – which actually turns out to be not a fastback at all when you realise the rear window is near-vertical and bounded by buttresses. Shades of a shorter-tailed Dino, maybe. But it’s more than a coupé. It’s a targa-top, done the modern way so you don’t have to lift the roof panel yourself and stash it somewhere. You just press a toggle switch: up to open the roof, down to close it, illogically. That whole buttress assembly lifts up, the window within and the panel below fold out of the way, the roof panel vanishes (or reappears, as required), the aforementioned bits reassemble themselves. Job done, in 13 seconds. And you can be edging along…

It still looks extraordinary, three decades on. The soap-smooth contours, the distended tail and its plank of a high wing, the swollen sills, the massive (by the standards of their day) wheels… the Porsche 959 snares as many eyeballs in the street now as it would have in 1987. But if you do a bit of research and dig out some statistics, the then-to-now comparisons wouldn’t look quite so good. A top speed of 197mph. Today’s £94,316 911 Carrera GTS is only 4mph short. 0-60mph in 3.6sec? The standard 911 Turbo will hit 62mph in 3.0 seconds dead, and crack 198mph. And at £126,925, the Turbo costs a little less in numerical terms – massively so in real terms – than the £145,000 959 did in 1987. But these comparisons…

WINNER: PORSCHE FANS’ CHOICE WINNER: BODY AND PAINT RESTORATION RUNNER-UP: MECHANICAL RESTORATION SUCH WAS THE collective sense of pride in the restoration of this 1993 Porsche 968 Club Sport that several members of the team from Porsche Centre Leicester and its partner bodyshop Chartwell (Derby) finished off the project for free in their spare time. Those involved wanted the highest-quality job done on this front-engined, rear-drive icon, so when budgetary restraint loomed they carried on regardless. Their diligence and dedication was rewarded with second place overall in the 2016 Classic Porsche Restoration Competition; first place in the Body and Paint Restoration category; runner-up in the Mechanical Restoration class; and they triumphed in the Porsche Fans’ Choice, a public vote. Plus, of course, the team enjoyed a sense of achievement for…

‘He was that rare combination in F1: a racer at heart with the case-hardened soul of the thrusting businessman’ THE NEWS, WHEN it broke late on Monday, 23 January, was hardly unexpected. Nevertheless, when it was revealed that Liberty Media’s acquisition of the second tranche of CVC Capital Partners’ shares in the Formula 1 business had been successful and that Bernie Ecclestone was effectively out the door, it still took some believing. This is, after all, the man who was F1. The ringmaster. A sharp, dry-witted and indomitable racer-cum-businessman who was as tough in life as he was in negotiations. Who lived by the maxim: ‘First you get on, then you get rich, then you get honest’. Who else would have been back at work within weeks of triple-bypass heart…

THIS WAS TONY CROOK’S domain. Beneath the famous showroom that later became Bristol Cars’ head office, away from Kensington High Street’s hustle and bustle, this dusty cellar holds the records, memories and ghosts of the famously, fabulously eccentric carmaker. Not for long though. The showroom is temporarily closed for refurbishment, due to re-open any day now. Bristol’s website reassures visitors that ‘The works will bring the space up to date and will bring it in line with the company’s technological future, whilst keeping as much as possible of the traditional charm and old-school glamour that the space enjoys. Considerable time has been spent with designers to ensure that the facelift will produce a space for buyers and owners alike to enjoy and that will stay true to the principles of…

…comes from some other beginning’s end,’ observed Seneca the Younger (allegedly). The words of the Roman philosopher came to mind as we studied this Cisitalia-Abarth 204A, one of the very last cars produced by Cisitalia before the Turin-based manufacturer collapsed – but the first car registered by the Abarth company. Chassis 04/08 pretty much closed the book on the Tazio Nuvolari story, too, not to mention that of the collaboration between Ferdinand Porsche and Carlo Abarth. It was produced by those two giants of automotive engineering while they were employed by Cisitalia boss Piero Dusio, who in the mid-1950s invested bravely but unwisely in a Formula 1 car, the 360 Grand Prix. The project bankrupted his company, and Carlo Abarth’s severance package included factory machinery and three 204As – chassis…

Nobody likes a show-off, a truth of which Alfred Vanderbilt II seemed to be aware when he spurned his 21st birthday present of a brand-new Rolls-Royce in 1933. ‘Too ostentatious’, apparently, and he swiftly acquired instead… a brand-new Packard Twelve Convertible Victoria. When you’re the heir to two fortunes (the Vanderbilt family was once the wealthiest in America, and Alfred’s mother was born to the inventor of the cure-all Bromo-Seltzer), you only stoop so low, evidently. His car of choice was a beauty, and caught the eye of Bradford Blake Jr, who bought it from the Vanderbilt’s stud farm in Maryland in 1941. Petrol rationing meant the V12-powered Packard initially saw little use in his ownership, but he kept it until his death in 2012. At that point it remained…

WHILE TOYOTA had been building light 4x4s since 1951, it wasn’t until 1954 that the Land Cruiser brand arrived. Toyota’s technical director Hanji Umehara wanted a name that would convey off-road ability but sound dignified; important to a Japanese company. The range of vehicles made under the Land Cruiser name is bewildering. Toyota attempted to cover all requirements of a light utility vehicle by making a wide range of variants rather than a few highly adaptable models, which was Land Rover’s approach. The definitive ‘classic’ Land Cruiser is the short-wheelbase J40, otherwise known as the 40-Series. Built in Japan between 1960 and 1984, it lived on as a Brazilian-manufactured model until 2001. While its predecessor, the J20, looked quite similar externally, the J40 had improvements in every area, with more…

ON A PREVIOUS VISIT to California, I came across a faded postcard of famed landscape photographer Ansel Adams taking a picture from the custom roof platform on his Pontiac woody. I’m not placing myself in the master’s league, but for this assignment I was heading towards the same locations where Adams made so many great photographs during the 20th Century. In 1946 Adams had been commissioned to produce a photomural for the US Department of the Interior, for which he set off on a road trip around the national parks of the southwestern USA. His new station wagon was loaded with photo equipment and provisions for camping in the wilderness. Our journey to mark the 70th anniversary of his required a vehicle capable of covering up to 1000 tough miles,…

EVENT ORGANISERS ARE are given to hyperbole, but when the folks behind the Mongol Rally describe it as ‘the greatest motoring adventure in the world’, they’re not exaggerating. ‘No backup. No support. No set route.’ And as if an overland journey from the UK to Mongolia needed to be made any more difficult, The Adventurists insist that crews take part in a car with an engine of 1.0-litre or less. The punk approach to long-distance rallying extends to advice about pre-planning your route: ‘Find out what’s there when you arrive.’ An interesting suggestion when the trip to Ulaanbaatar and on to Ulan Ude in Siberia is likely to involve at least a month on the road, crossing some seriously inhospitable terrain. Rather anarchic it might all sound, but the Mongol…

FROM 1953 TO 1971, the eight-kilometre Ollon-Villars hillclimb course in Switzerland was considered a highlight of the European Hillclimb Championship, attracting famous drivers as talented as Jim Clark, François Cevert, Jo Siffert, Innes Ireland, Hans Herrmann and Jack Brabham. Regrettably, it then fell into disuse as a competition venue for almost three decades until in 1998 it hosted a revival event. Despite its success, the local authorities were not particularly helpful when it came to permitting subsequent events, with the result that the Ollon-Villars Historic Hillclimb has been held only sporadically since – in 2001, 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2013. You should go this year, while you still can. It’s an easy journey from the UK, with Geneva airport just a 90-minute rental car drive from Ollon-Villars, and, because the…

YOU HAVE PROBABLY heard of the Copperstate 1000, the Arizona-based classic car rally held each April. But you might not know that the event was created to raise funds for the Phoenix Art Museum – or that for the past two years the Men’s Arts Council, a non-profit organisation that supports the Museum, has been running a gnarlier sister event… The Copperstate Overland is a four-day off-road adventure for just 20 pre-1979 4x4s. (Significant vehicles made after that date are admitted at the discretion of the organisers.) This year’s edition will be held on 14-18 October and, while the precise route is yet to be confirmed, last year’s gives the curious a good indication of what to expect. The assembled convoy of classic 4x4s travelled between 120 and 140 miles…

THE CRUISIN’ THE COAST FESTIVAL, held along a 40-mile stretch of the Mississippi Gulf coast near to New Orleans, is the hot rodders’ version of Monterey Week in California. Don’t assume that means you’ll be charged an arm and a leg to attend, though; registration for 2017 costs just $60. This is a ‘by the people, for the people’ gathering and, in 2016, the year of the event’s 20th anniversary, almost 8000 hot rods showed up to enjoy displays, swap-meets, an auction, live music, parties, street food and, of course, cruisin’ in the sunshine of the Deep South. Because the Cruisin’ the Coast festival has no formal structure, participants can attend as many or as few events as they fancy and, with practically every community along the route hosting some…