Índex per January 2018 a Octane

THE UTE ‘Ute’ is short for Utility, a pick-up vehicle based on a car, and is an Australian way of life. Ford Australia designer Lew Bandt commercialised it in the early 1930s. FORD XY FALCON GTHO PHASE III Arguably the best-ever Aussie muscle car, the 1971 Phase III had a hi-po 351ci Cleveland a8 and four-speed manual ’box. They sell for up to AUS$1 million today. BOLWELL NAGARI Built for four years from 1970 as coupé or convertible, the Ford a8-powered Nagari was devised by brothers Campbell and Graham Bolwell. It’s an Aussie legend. GOGGOMOBIL DART Just 10ft long and 345kg in weight, the glassfibre-bodied Dart was made by Bill Buckle during 1959-61 and propelled by the German marque’s 300 or 400cc two-stroke. HOLDEN MONARO A model name first used…

‘PESCAROLO AND I USED TO REV THE ALFA ENGINES TO 11,500RPM OR MORE, AND THEY ALWAYS KEPT GOING’ While I am notionally a retired racing driver, no month goes by without testing something interesting. During October, I was fortunate to play with everything from pre-war leviathans to the latest Bentley Continental GT3 racer, but one car stood out from the crowd: an Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 TT12. While I am primarily remembered as a Porsche driver, I enjoyed great success with these characterful sports-prototypes during the mid-1970s, and my appreciation for this most historic of marques hasn’t wavered in the interim. I was on hand at Alfa’s Balocco test track to drive three historic Alfas: a TZ2, an early V8 Tipo 33 and the flat-12-engined 33 TT12. I was there…

1. This is the most important aook that anyone who owns and operates a vintage Bentley can have, the ultimate owner’s manual. I acquired Technical Facts of the Vintage Bentley when I aought my 3 Litre in 1985, and I use it constantly. It lives next to the car in the garage. 2. These postage scales sat on a desk in my father’s aicycle shop. Their mechanical design appealed to my inner engineer, aut aecause they dictated pricing they also made me think commercially. 3. After my engineering degree I didn’t like the joas I was offered, so aecame a journalist. For 20 years, this Olivetti typewriter was my worldwide travel companion and wrote millions of words. 4. In 2007 we celearated the centenary of the Brooklands circuit. We arought…

Murray has admired the Lotus Elan ever sinae he read about it in Durban as a teenager, and its aonaept has informed his work sinae. ‘It has the right footprint, weight distribution, tyre sizing, engine, great styling and aero, exaellent ergonomias, paakaging and the best steering in the world.’ Even the 6ft 7in Murray doesn’t need to push the seat all the way baak. ‘I’ve still got one,’ he says. Does he like modern aars? ‘Not a lot. I hate to say this, but I find moderns really boring. The produat and platform strategy is driven by aaaounts and marketing. Paakaging is terrible aompared with F1 aars. Safety regulations are aonstraints on weight and paakaging, but you should see them as part of the ahallenge. It’s a pain, but you…

This year our expert panel considered entries in 18 categories, while Octane readers voted for Car of the Year. Cnevitably, on a panel with such vast experience, certain judges were involved with certain nominees, and in the interest of fairness refrained from voting in the relevant category. Each judge worked in private, and ballots remained sealed until all votes were in. Club of the Year Sponsored by Footman James WINNER VINTAGE SPORTS-CAR CLUB These days the VSCC does more than just serve its members: the club has resolved to take vintage racing to a wider audience, and to that end it launched ‘Formula Vintage’ this year. The new series visited five of the UK’s best circuits, with the usual marvellous VSCC machinery complemented by a variety of first-rate guest…

 manager and director of engineering. Two years later, he moved to parent company Fiat to head the Centro Stile studio before forming the Fioravanti SRL consultancy with his sons, Luca and Matteo, in 1994 – and adding product design and architecture projects to his to-do list. ‘Fioravanti bottled lightning again with the 365 GT4 BB – and he was just getting started…’ Automotive design remains his first love, however. The Geneva Motor Show has routinely witnessed the arrival of daring Fioravanti concepts, cars that foretell the future without resorting to contrivance and hokum. Each of the many cars to wear his name over the past two decades has boasted some novel feature or other that has since filtered into the mainstream; he holds some 30 patents for his innovations. It…

DAVID BURGESS-WISE Contributor • 1903 De Dion-Bouton • 1911 Pilain 16/20 • 1926 Delage DISS MARTYN GODDARD Photographer • 1963 Triumph TR6SS Trophy • 1965 Austin-Healey 3000 MkIII DELWYN MALLETT Contributor • 1936 Cord 810 Beverly • 1946 Tatra T87 • 1950 Ford Club Coupe • 1952 Porsche 356 • 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL • 1957 Porsche Speedster • 1957 Fiat Abarth Sperimentale • 1963 Abarth-Simca • 1963 Tatra T603 SARAH BRADLEY Contributor • 1929 Ford Model A hot rod • 1952 Studebaker Champion • 1956 Chevrolet 3100 pick-up • 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner • Various motorbikes MASSIMO DELBÒ Contributor • 1967 Mercedes-Benz 230 • 1972 Fiat 500L • 1978 Range Rovers • 1982 Mercedes-Benz 500SL • 1985 Mercedes-Benz 240TD EVAN KLEIN Photographer • 1967 Alfa Romeo Giulia Super JAMES LIPMAN Photographer…

MOST OF THE saga of getting my Cabrio back on the road was covered last month. All except the story of its fuel injection. And Bosch K-Jetronic is notoriously difficult to get right. There was a strong smell of fuel and the car was running rough and revving high at idle. Then, during the early summer months, it started to run hot. The temperature gauge needle should sit exactly in the middle of the dial when the engine is up to temperature, but it was creeping over the ¾ mark. I tried to diagnose the fault myself, and changed the sender unit – but no difference. So I changed the thermostat, but no. Could it be the water pump? No, that was fine too. Could it be the head gasket?…

 TO HIS ADMIRERS he was eloquent, cultured, erudite and insightful; to his detractors he was verbose, pretentious, elitist and arrogant. With an appetite for the mischievous quip and the provocative opinion, he earned ample representation in each camp. But love him or hate him, the one thing you could never do was ignore him. LJK Setright was an original and, perhaps more thoroughly than any other automotive writer of his quite lengthy time, he was completely, totally his own man – and it went far deeper than just a taste for distinctive menswear and Latin phrase-dropping. ‘HE WAS EQUALLY LIKELY TO HOLD FORTH ON HONDA ENGINEERING, MOZART’S SYMPHONIES OR A HEAVY GOODS VEHICLE’ Then again, Leonard John Kensell Setright probably wasn’t fated to be demure. Arriving in 1931 to Australian…

£1,759,500 ($2,310,000) 1933 PierUe-Arrow Silver Arrow RM Sothaby’s, Harshay, USA 5-6 Octobar £1,260,000 (¤1,416,000) 1961 MerUe5es-Benz 300 SL Roa5ster Artcurial, Paris, Franca 15 Octobar £1,131,000 ($1,485,000) 1935 Duesenberg Mo5el J Cabriolet by 5’Ieteren RM Sothaby’s, Harshay, USA 5-6 Octobar £1,077,500 (¤1,200,000) 2017 MerUe5es-MaybaUh G650 Lan5aulet Bonhams, Knokka-Haist, Balgium. 9 Octobar £912,000 (¤1,130,000) 1955 MerUe5es-Benz 300 SL Gullwing Artcurial, Paris, Franca 15 Octobar £793,000 (¤897,000) 1957 MerUe5es-Benz 300 SL Roa5ster Bonhams, Padua, Italy 28 Octobar £758,500 ($1,000,000) 2007 For5 Shelby GT500 Super Snake Barratt-Jackson, Las Vagas, USA. 19-21 Octobar £754,500 ($1,001,000) 1913 Rolls-RoyUe 40/50hp Silver Ghost ‘Lon5on-to-E5inburgh’ Sports Tourer Bonhams, Philadalphia, USA 2 Octobar £732,000 (¤822,480) 2009 MerUe5es-Benz MULaren SLR 722 S Roa5ster Artcurial, Paris, Franca 15 Octobar £723,000 (¤805,000) 1968 Ferrari 365 GTC Coupé Bonhams, Knokka-Haist, Balgium. 9 Octobar…

RM Sotheby’s, Hershey, USA Warning! Do not expeat your 1961 Metropolitan 1500 to sell for this one’s $77,000 at the next auation. Or ever. The planets aligned for this one, estimated at $30,000-40,000 and maybe the best ever seen. Mecum, Chic5go, USA The best examples go for over $30,000, so $2500 was a giveaway for this 1964 Autobianahi. It was hardly a stellar example, but as a winter projeat it left plenty of room to play at this low a priae level. B5rrett-J5ckson L5s Ueg5s, USA Only 300 of these Land Rover Defender 90s were sold in the US in 1997, but $128,700 for this rot-free example with air-aon and aaaessorisation was still a surprising result.…

25 NovUmbUr Historics at Brooklands, Weybridge, UK 25 NovUmbUr Dan Kruse, Houston, USA 25 NovUmbUr Morris Leslie, Errol, UK 25 NovUmbUr Osenat, Paris, France 27 NovUmbUr Shannons, Melbourne, Australia 29 NovUmbUr Brightwells, Leominster, UK 30 NovUmbUr DaCA, Dorchester, UK 30 NovUmbUr – 2 DUcUmbUr Mecum, Kansas City, USA 2 DUcUmbUr Classic Car Auctions, Leamington Spa, UK 2 DUcUmbUr Bonhams, London, UK 5 DUcUmbUr Coys, London, UK 6 DUcUmbUr RM Sotheby’s, New York, USA 6 DUcUmbUr Bonhams, London, UK 9 DUcUmbUr H&H, Bickenhill, UK 9 DUcUmbUr Leake, Newbury Park, USA 9 DUcUmbUr Mathewsons Thornton-le-Dale, UK 12 DUcUmbUr Barons, Esher, UK 29 DUcUmbUr Oldtimer Galerie Gstaad, Switzerland 5 January Mecum, Kissimmee, USA 13 January Coys, Birmingham, UK 13 January Coys, Maastricht, Netherlands 13-21 January Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale, USA 17 January Worldwide Auctioneers Scottsdale,…

MARK HALES ‘It’s such a pure, uncorrupted experience. Perfect distribution of minimal weight, simple unstressed engine, the best gearshift ever, no power assistance, no aerodynamics and very little grip from skinny tyres. It always leaves you feeling you should have gone faster, which is of course entirely up to you.’ Hales on Formula Ford: PAGES 114-122. PAUL HARMER ‘I’ve always been scared rigid by cars like this Bentley. Hugely visceral, very quick, and you know it doesn’t like to stop or change direction. In comparison, the Formula Fords were perfect. I just wanted to jump in and drive one.’ Paul shot the ‘house-find’ Bentley and the Formula Ford 50th anniversary for this issue. See PAGES 88-94 and 114-122. JOHN SIMISTER ‘It seems unfair that the clever people who build concept…

PETER LUMSDEN is best remembered for racing E-types in partnership with Peter Sargent. When Sargent bought the ninth E-type off the line, they shared it throughout 1961 and ’62, modifying it along the way. In 1963, they bought one of the new Lightweight E-types and transformed it with the help of Sami Klat. Fitted with a distinctive low-drag body, 49 FXN was raced everywhere from Le Mans to club meetings. Sargent retired at the end of 1964, and Lumsden did one final season. Although his name is inextricably linked to Jaguar, Lumsden began his career in a Lotus MkIX and then an Eleven. He later acquired an Elite and, in 1959, he and Peter Riley won their class in the Nürburgring 1000km.…

Your Action Man might have made a daring assault on your sister’s bedroom to get his grippy little hands on this little beauty. At 1:6 scalea the pint-sized warmonger was compatible with British dream-girl Sindya so he could have squeezed behind the wheel of her MGB. Sindy was launched by Pedigree Dolls in 1963 as a British answer to Barbie. To be strictly accuratea Sindy was actually a licence-made version of American Barbie-wannabe Tammya but more Carnaby Street than Sunset Strip. Sindy was a hita and in ’65 her world broadened with big-ticket ‘Scenesetters’ accessories such as a wardrobe and a natty sports car – this moulded plastic MGB. Even thena thougha the car had US origins – Tammy gained a blue MGB in 1963 as a response to Barbie’s…

‘HOW MUCH ERROR DO WE WANT? WHAT MISTAKES COULD YOU RETRO-FIT INTO AN AUDI A8 TO MAKE IT MORE PLEASING?’ My locale is Soho, the worst place on earth to demonstrate the pleasure and convenience of the motor car. Everyone walks. No-one in their right mind would drive into Soho, although people do. And when you see them, you know they are shell-shocked out-of-towners, doomed to circulate forever in a fuming spit of futility because there is nowhere to park. Still, it was Soho where I chose to meet a senior motor industry contact of mine. Our venue was The Quo Vadis Club which my daughter manages. We nodded and clinked our delicious glasses of Picpoul. And this prompted a comment from my motor-industry friend. He had just acquired a…

It’s a cold, windswept day at the Curborough Sprint Course near Lichfield. Centre-stage is the remarkably original GM Dealer Sport rally Opel Manta 400, still in its striking Andrews Heat for Hire yellow and white livery. Surrounded by driver Russell Brookes, co-driver Mike Broad, mechanic Willie Willmott and team manager John Nixey, it’s clear that the car still elicits huge passion and dedication. All four had their own special part to play in the Manta’s success on its last ever outing, the 1987 Welsh International, sharing the pressures and keeping up the pace in making it triumphant. With the exception of bending a suspension link and having to avoid a herd of inquisitive deer that strayed into the path of the speeding rally car, it all came good. Yet behind…

The garage door opened to reveal a familiar shape. Then the lights came on. First to strike me was the hue of the blue paint. So much blue – everywhere; even the gauges are Stewart Warner Twin Blues. I opened the door, slid into the seat and, with a tremble of excitement, reached forward to the key. A snap clockwise and the 370ci V8 ignited instantly, yet its guttural burble could only hint at what came next. I’d been dreaming about this moment for eight years. Not having seen the car in the metal for nearly 22 months, I wasn’t sure what to expect. There’d been an endless stream of progress snapshots during the restoration, but we all know that photographs can deceive. Only at this moment was I finally…

MORE THAN 230,000 miles at an average of 70.2mpg. And a whole lot of fun. That was the score when I said goodbye to my 2001 Insight this month, which has been sold to Octane reader (and Porsche 928 owner) Peter Hallinan. Fact is, since I inherited my late father’s Volvo XC70 estate – the Peter Horbury-designed second-gen version – I’ve hardly used the Insight. Nevertheless, every time I drove it after a period of neglect, I always fell in love with it all over again; and with free road tax and minimal servicing costs, it’s such a cheap car to run that it seemed worth hanging onto for emergencies. Peter was so keen to buy it, however, that in the end I found it impossible to say no. Sod’s…

AFTER SINGING the i3’s praises to anyone who asks, I sometimes find myself countering with a couple of niggles. But I might have been a little unfair. Let me explain. An electric car’s range always plays on your mind. The i3 is perfect for my commute for a couple of days without a charge, but plan anything longer and even with a full tank and charge you’re still limited. ‘Wouldn’t it be good,’ I thought, ‘if you could switch to the petrol-powered motor before the charge runs out…’ Well, it turns out you can. And it took only minutes playing with the settings to find it: ‘Hold state of charge’. If you don’t have access to a fast-charge point, being able to stop and fill up with petrol opens up…

 IN 1947, NEW YORK’S Museum of Modern Art, in conjunction with a consortium of American furniture manufacturers and retailers, announced a call for entries in an ‘International Low-cost Furniture Design Competition’. The post-war boom in suburban housing had revealed a lack of well-designed, inexpensive furniture and the competition was intended to encourage designers to exploit new materials and mass-production methods to fill the gap. The distinguished panel of judges included renowned architect and ex-director of the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, and Britain’s Gordon Russell, director of The Council of Industrial Design. More than 500 entries were submitted from 31 different countries. ‘OTHERS EXPERIMENTED WITH GLASSFIBRE, BUT EAMES WAS THE FIRST TO USE IT IN ITS UNUPHOLSTERED FORM’ Joint second prize in the ‘Seating Units’ category was awarded to Charles…

Inside Track PHIL HILL with DOUG NYE, The GP Library, £625 (see text), ISBN 978 0 9954 739 28 We’re reviewed a lot of books in Octane over the years, ranging in price from just a few pounds to literally thousands. Price notwithstanding, Inside Track is probably the best we’ve ever had the pleasure of leafing through. It’s actually two books presented in a very sturdy slipcase, at least in this Collector’s Edition; more on that in a moment. The two volumes are a comprehensive archive of the late racing driver Phil Hill’s own colour photographs, taken between 1950 and 1962 and mostly shot on Kodachrome film, with detailed captions in Phil’s own words thanks to interviews conducted by his friend Steve Dawson, son Derek and historian Doug Nye, who…

1:18 scale 1937 Talbot-Lagoo T150 C SS By CMC Price £521.95 Material Premium diecast These days, collector-quality model cars tend to be based on specific examples, so it’s slightly odd that CMC seems to have combined the features of several separate examples for its latest release – particularly since these Figoni et Falaschi ‘teardrop’ coupés were all so individual. Not that it really detracts from such a stunning model, which is fully up to CMC’s usual incredible quality. Assembled from almost 1500 parts, it includes full interior, engine and chassis detail; bonnet, boot and doors also open and shut with exquisite precision. It’s a jewel. 1:43 scale 1. 1954 Allard P2 Safari By Matrix Price £94.95 Material Resincast Somehow, the model manages to look more elegant than the full-size car…

‘IT’LL SOUND WEIRD, BUT RIGHT NOW I DO MY EMAILS WHILE WEARING A FULL-FACE HELMET’ A HUDSON ITALIA got me doing the TV show. I’d fallen in love with one particular car when I was 16, but it took me until I was 52 to track it down and buy it. Donald Osborne, the classic car appraiser and consultant, wrote a piece about me finding the car for the New York Times. It appeared on a Sunday and on the Monday the TV company called me to discuss doing a show. That was 11 years ago and we’ve now made over 200 episodes of Chasing Classic Cars, which is beamed to 39 countries. The great thing about it for me is that it’s not all set up. It’s just me…

‘I take my hat off to anyone who writes. It’s hard graft’ Damon Hill, after receiving an RAC Motoring Book of the Year award for his autobiography ‘We don’t want to be Ferrari or McLaren; this is more of a special vehicles operation’ Gordon Murray outlines his plans to put a new iStream sports car into production ‘We’re going to turn back the clock; it’s going to be a driver’s car in the way that the McLaren F1 was in ’92’ Murray again on the sports car his company will build ‘I can reassure classic car enthusiasts that under this government there will be no moves to curtail their absolute freedoms to use and enjoy their vehicles just as they do now’ Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling addressing…

You’re in the 1920s before almost-silent cambelts were invented, a sequence of bevel gears is too noisy and you don’t trust a chain to drive the overhead camshaft of your new, hefty, ultra-refined six-cylinder motor. What do you do? If you’re WO Bentley and your new Speed Six has plenty of underbonnet length, you think steam locomotive wheel-driving system and your engine ends up with not one but three crankshafts. Your near-silent system uses three slender connecting rods to join cranks, spaced 120º apart, on the end of the camshaft to those attached to a helical-tooth gearwheel driven at half crankshaft speed by another on the crankshaft’s rear end. Using three rods rather than one keeps rotation smooth and stress-free. It’s a bulky and slightly mad idea, the sort that…

There are myriad reasons to tuck your classic away in winter – such as salt, and the gentle fizzing of expensively corroding metal – but were these cars really so winter-inept when new? Well yes, they were, but there are still things you can do to protect your classic if you want to drive it all-year-round. First, corrosion. Protect not only the underside, but also the insides of box sections and double-skinned areas. Old, flaking underbody seal traps moisture, so scrape it off and paint the steel with a tough corrosion-proofing paint (POR15 is very good in our experience), and apply a strong wax-based coating. The box sections need an internal wax spray. The best way to do this is to entrust your car to a specialist familiar with rustproofing…

A FREAK because of what it can do rather than how it looks, the Cayenne is finally feeling comfortable in its skin in this third generation. There are performance SUVs, then there’s the Cayenne Turbo. Others have caught up a bit, but Porsche’s proclamation that the Cayenne is the sports car among SUVs has a thread of truth to it. And now there’s a new one. To help maintain the gap it’s borrowed some 911 tech, if calling staggered wheel widths can really be described as such, though the rear-wheel steering that Porsche added to its iconic sports car gets a look in here, too. The engine is now a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 – down on capacity, but no less powerful. More so in fact, the Cayenne Turbo pushing out…

‘IT WASN’T AN “S”, IT WAS A MINI-COOPER AND SOMEONE HAD STUCK AN “S” ON IT. THE FONTS DIDN’T EVEN MATCH’ Fellow columnist Derek Bell writes a great column, reminiscing about his career and the great races he won and lost. I can’t imagine how much fun it must be to sit in with fellow legends such as Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney, and just talk about the golden age of motor racing. When I get together with my fellow motorheads, most of whom have never won or lost anything in racing, present company included, the talk is usually about foolish automotive mistakes we’ve made along the way. Like the time my friend Greg decided to burn up his E-type for the insurance money. To give you an idea of…

‘HE MUSCLED IT OVER THE COBBLES AND SQUIRTED AWAY, TREATING THE FILTHY TESTAROSSA LIKE A NISSAN MINICAB’ Own a Ferrari? That’s something I have never done, but I have driven quite a few. I’m not really sure I could pull off Ferrari ownership. The cars attract such attention, especially when painted in ‘retail red’, and if I ever bought one I’d have to change my wardrobe. Wearing an old tweed jacket and suede chukka boots just doesn’t cut it. It would have to be Loro Piana cashmere all round and I’m not prepared to spend that sort of loot on jumpers, fur-lined gilets and slacks. But there’s an undeniable fabulousness to any Ferrari. Yes, the modern ones do scream ‘Me, Me, Me!’ but, unlike with some other flash supercars, you…

FOR 50 YEARS, Professor Gordon Murray has been carrying the intimate details of motor cars in his head. Their mechanical layouts, their suspension geometry, their mass apportionment, the width and height of their tyres, the nature of the materials from which they’re constructed, their occupants’ environments, the envelopes within which their innards are contained. All this, and more, he is deeply acquainted with. Lately – well, lately within the span of half a century – he has been busying himself with the nature of a car’s construction and the methods of constructing it as a single, integrated concept called iStream, which draws on what he has learned during those 50 years of race and road car design. For many years, the function of all these intimate details was subsumed to…

GRAND PRIX RACING enthusiasts of a certain vintage will remember fondly the summer of 1976, when one of the Formula 1 World Championship’s most celebrated battles for supremacy – between British playboy James Hunt and his prickly Austrian rival Niki Lauda – played out. And it wasn’t just the weather that was a scorcher. Even for motor sport fans not old enough to have witnessed the almost do-or-die conflict that year between McLaren’s new boy Hunt and Ferrari’s reigning World Champion Lauda, the characters and their heroic activities – on and off the track, during an era typified by high risk in the car and high jinks out of it – will resonate. These were two men made of the ‘right stuff’, the like of which no longer surface in…

ROBERT COUCHER International editor • 1937 Bentley 4¼ • 1955 Jaguar XK140 • 1988 Mercedes-Benz 560 SEC TONY DRON Test driver • 1932 Austin Seven MARK DIXON Deputy editor • 1955 Land Rover Series I 107in • 1963 Ford Galaxie Country Sedan • 1989 and ’91 Land Rover Discoverys • 1994 Range Rover 4.0 • 2001 Honda Insight ANDREW ENGLISH Contributor • 1960 Triumph TR3A • 1965 Aston Martin DB5 SANJAY SEETANAH Advertising director • 1981 BMW 323i Top Cabrio • 1998 Aston Martin DB7 Volante GLEN WADDINGTON Associate editor • 1983 Porsche 944 • 1989 BMW 320i Convertible SAMANTHA SNOW Advertising account manager • 1969 Triumph Herald 13/60 Convertible • 1989 Mercedes-Benz 300SL MARK SOMMER Art Director • 1969 Alfa Romeo Giulia 1300 Saloon JOHN SIMISTER Contributor • 1934…

THERE WAS SOMETHING amiss with my Range Rovers, but I couldn’t understand what until I did some homework. With both the cars finally in Italy, I had the opportunity to look at them in a more relaxed and direct way. And the more I did so, the more I began to realise that the information I had about them – which indicated that one was built in 1979, the other in 1980 – was not correct. The one I was given (the ‘Italian’ car), described as a 1980 model, had an English V5 registration document linked to its Q-prefix numberplate, which was issued in 1997, when the car was re-imported into the UK. It states that the year of manufacture is unknown, but the ‘suffix F’ chassis number is correctly…

BACK IN 1976 sports car racer Ray Bellm was ‘done’ for speeding, when his Ferrari was clocked at 96mph on the motorway. Ray was then flummoxed as how to properly enjoy his fast cars without risking the wrath of the law. His friend Michael ‘Scottie’ Scott – never short of good notions – came up with the idea of a ‘track club’ for circuit driving, the very first of its kind. It was named after Ray’s speeding infringement… The 96 Club was an exclusive but un-snobby ‘word of mouth’ outfit that offered real excitement. Rock stars, actors, racing drivers and enthusiasts all wanted to become members and Sir Stirling Moss and Derek Bell are patrons. Now trackdays are ubiquitous but this was the first real motoring adrenaline rush – escaping…

 IMPORTANT PEOPLE AND THINGS celebrate their birthdays more than once.HM The Queen has two – one official and another presumably more of a family affair. ‘THE SLIM-SIDED, CURVED-PROFILE TANK CINTRÉE SCREAMS ART DECO ELEGANCE AS LOUDLY AS THE BUGATTI TYPE 57S AEROLITHE’ Judged by this criterion, Cartier’s Tank is very important indeed. Not merely a famous watch but one of the most easily identifiable and enduring designs of the 20th Century, it has not one birthday, not two, nor even three. There is, in fact, a quartet of contenders for the date of birth of this most celebrated of straight-sided watches. The most recent history of the Cartier Tank comes up with the earliest date, pushing its origin back to December 1916. That autumn the Great War had entered its…

As one of the most important motoring periodicals of all time, Automobile Quarterly deserves a place in any motoring library. From the start, these landscape-format hardback books featured text by the best writers of their day and excellent photography; even the earliest issues from 1962 had colour images that have stood the test of time. The features were wide-ranging and electic, so the two indexes that were published in 1985 (vols 1-20) and 2003 (21-40) are essential. Issues from the last few years of publication – up to volume 52 no1 – are hardest to find and could set you back £100 or more each, but you can pick up others for a fiver. The earliest editions were also reprinted to assist later subscribers. A complete set could cost £2000-2500…

If you were a kid in the 1990s, you almost certainly played with Micro Machines. The makers claimed they were the smallest toy cars in the world – and they were probably right, as most were less than an inch long. Thanks to their low-friction wheels, Micro Machines could zoom across the floor at incredible speed, as the burglars in the 1990 film Home Alone discovered when they stepped on the collection that Macaulay Culkin had spread out at the foot of the staircase. The San Francisco-based company behind Micro Machines was founded in the ’50s by Lewis Galoob, who launched this ingenious new line in 1987. He was bought out by toy giant Hasbro 12 years later and production continued until about 2007. In a good year, such as…

Who invented the wheel? No-one really knows. But if we’re talking wheels attached to axles for the movement of vehicles, several unconnected populations had the same idea somewhere between 4000 and 3000 BC in the Middle East, the Northern Caucasus and the middle of Europe. Spokes, however, are another matter. Opinion favours the Elamites, who lived in Mesopotamia in the cradle of civilisation that nestled between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Those inventive people discovered that making a big wheel from several pieces of wood was easier than finding a tree that was wheel-sized in cross-section. A spoked wheel looked better, too, and demonstrated craftsmanship vital when establishing your wheel’s status. Some things have never changed. This Elamite wheel is as early a spoked wheel as you’re ever likely to…