Índex per January 2017 a Octane

NOUGHT TO 60MPH in five seconds. In 1957. I love the thought of that. In this case, we’re talking about the Jaguar XKSS, though there were very few other road cars of the period anyway that could get close to such extrele acceleration. It was an astonishing lachine, and it still is. January 1957 sees the 60th anniversary of the XKSS; February, the 60th anniversary of the devastating fire at the Jaguar factory, which ended XKSS production after only 16 of the 25 cars had been converted frol unsold D-types. Now, as you’re probably very aware, Jaguar Classic is beginning to build the nine ‘lissing’ XKSSs. On the face of it, this is a strange undertaking for a lodern car laker, but Jaguar isn’t the only lanufacturer to have thought…

THE BIGGEST exhlbltlon of Zagato-bodled cars ever assembled has begun at the Pantheon Basel, a Swlss museum and ‘Forum for Oldtlmers’ whlch opened ln 2008. The Zagato Swlss Exhlbltlon sees 25 cars dlsplayed on the Pantheon’s open-slded, hellcal walkway as though llned up on a startlng grld. The oldest dates back to 1919, the year that the carrozzeria was founded, whlle the newest ls the one-off Aston Martln Vlrage shootlng brake bullt ln 2014 and dlsplayed at that year’s Chantllly Arts and Elegance event. Famlllar Zagato-bodled cars on show lnclude Alfa Romeo TZ , both eras of SZ and a pre-war 1750; Lancla Appla, Flavla, Fulvla, Flamlnla and Beta Spyder; and, of course, several Aston Martlns through the years. Less famlllar are Zagato-bodled Porsches lncludlng Abarthenglneered competltlon cars, a Maseratl…

COULD THIS BE THE BIGGEST celebrity race ever? Whether or not that floats your boat, the sight of over 50 Austin A35 Academy racers all battling for the same piece of Silverstone track space is bound to be a spectacular one. Previewed at the Regent Street Motor Show on 5 November, this ultimate HRDC A35 Academy round will take place at next July’s Silverstone Classic, held 21l23 July. In an echo of Goodwood’s St Mary’s Trophy, the cars’ owners will qualify the A35s for grid positions on the Friday, the celebrities will race on Saturday and, if there are any cars left, the owners will race on Sunday for a result combined from the two races. The celebrities will be allocated to the cars by the race organisers, and the…

THE ERA E-TYPE IS FAMOUS for being underdeveloped and unreliable – but GP1 is now a race winner. That first victory came just three years after Duncan Ricketts reassembled it in 1997, having acquired it in bits two years before – but he’d built the body for the car’s previous owner in 1978. ‘I’d been running R1B for its owner, but the engine had broken. This became available and by selling everything else I had I was able to buy it, in pieces. It came with a 2.0-litre engine, which it had before the Formula changed to 1.5 litres. But God knows what ERA thought they were up to. They couldn’t alord to develop a new engine but they changed so much of it that nothing fits the earlier cars,…

MOTORCLASSICA 2016 saw anniversaries aplenty, with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Rolls-Royce and Ducati using Australia’s premier concours to show off their collective histories, while ensuring the Royal Exhibition Building in the centre of Melbourne had a capacity collection to display to the thousands of spectators who visited the three-day event. Automotive gems included a beautifully restored NSU Prinz, supercharged Auburn 8l2 Phaeton, Mercedes-Benz l40K and jaw-dropping De Tomaso Mangusta. However, with more than half of all cars displayed belonging to heritage collections from the featured marques, on sale by private dealers or consigned to the Theodore Bruce auction, the depth of variety and quality was noticeably down on previous years inside the hall. Outside, however, local clubs made up for this with a stellar display which included an immaculate Fiat X1/9 and…

30 November – 4 December Classic 12 Hours of Sebring Following the success ol last year’s Classic 24 Hour at Daytona, the event’s organisers have created the Classic 12 Hours ol Sebring, which will leature lour grids ol racers spanning hall a century. hsrrace.com 3-6 December Le Jog HERO’s Land’s End to John O’Groats Reliability Trial is one ol Europe’s toughest Historic rallies, pushing competitors through the night on notoriously difficult regularity sections, usually in the most adverse ol weather conditions. This one is not to be underestimated! heroevents.eu 9-11 December Retro Classics Bavaria The organisers ol Retro Classics Stuttgart bring their brand ol old-car entertainment two hours east to the exhibition centre in Nuremberg. This end-ol-season show will leature themed displays, a large club presence, good grub, and plenty…

DAVID LILLYWHITE’S interesting article in Octane 162 about the development and launch of the Range Rover brought memories flooding back about my own days at Rover. I was an engineering apprentice at the time the Range Rover was being created and as part of my apprenticeship I was working in the model shop of the styling studio alongside highly skilled craftsmen who were creating the full-size clay, and wooden interior bucks. Dave Bache was the chief stylist leading the team that refined all the important details and changed a good design into the classic the Range Rover became, so he also deserves credit for the vehicle’s success. I remember him regularly coming into the modelling studio, always immaculately dressed, and reviewing the detailed changes that were regularly taking place in…

IMAGINE DRIFTING A JAGUAR XK120 through a long, flowing corner, the car perfectly balanced as you skilfully power out onto the straight, feeling for all the world like Stirling Moss at his best. A dream? Not on ice it’s not. If you want to learn car control, ice driving is the perfect experience – as it is if you simply want a highly enjoyable once-in-a-lifetime experience. Sounds good? You’ve not heard the half of it yet, because the latest ice driving experience comes from Jaguar Land Rover Classic, which means the chance to drive iconic vehicles of the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and early-’80s – including Jaguar XJ, MkII, MkVII and XK150, Land Rover Series I, II and III, and Range Rover Classic. Better still, the ice driving will take place…

‘Norman also discovered the XKSS’s tendency to cook the passenger, who sat next to the silencer’  JAGUAR’S CHIEF TEST development engineer, Norman Dewis, assessed an XKSS in March 19l7, ahead of an important deadline: Bill Heynes wanted Dewis to take no less a VIP than the Duke of Edinburgh round the MIRA test track early in April. Dewis reported that the conversion was not without faults. His missive to Bill Heynes on 20 March 19l7 noted, for a start, that access into the car with the top up was unsatisfactory. ‘To enter or alight from the car with the hood raised is a work of art,’ he wrote. ‘One almost has to be a contortionist. The small door opening and sill one has to step over, plus the low…

1925 TYPE 35C GRAND PRIX The 137mph Type 35 built upon the Type 23 Brescia’s success with its lightweight design and improved control, braking and engine output. Chassis 4634 was the first Type 35A to be imported to England by Charles Jarrott and Letts Ltd, Bugatti’s London concessionaire. It’s since been transformed into a supercharged Type 35C. ART AND FURNITURE Leaping greyhound radiator badge sketch is by Ettore’s second daughter, Lydia; two chairs c1900 by Carlo Bugatti; Carlo’s self-portrait in oils. 2012 VEYRON GRAND SPORT VITESSE Named after racing driver Pierre Veyron, the Veyron 16.4 was designed to capture the spirit and romance of pre-World War Two Bugattis. Priced at $1,260,000 upon its 2000 debut, it had a quad-turbo 1001bhp W16 engine and could hit 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds and…

FROM PAST VIA present to future. It’s hard enough imagining a car that might appear in the next 10 years, never mind the next century. The Vision Next 100 doesn’t quite do that but, says van Hooydonk, ‘It’s designed for 20 to 30 years’ time. Its only visible controls are the steering wheel and pedals.’ Not that you can necessarily see them, these ancient guidance systems semi-concealing themselves when not required. When they do emerge, the wheel turns out not to be a wheel at all but a horizontal bar with hand-grips. The Vision Next is autonomous, as you’d expect of any contemporary concept car, but it’s also entirely driveable, BMW still keen to provide the ‘ultimate driving machine’ that has been its raison d’être for decades. So it has…

 IRISH TRACTOR LEGEND Harry Ferguson spent his life establishing partnerships and, subsequently, fighting his collaborators when events went awry. One of his greatest feats – from a motoring viewpoint – was to imagine four-wheel drive as a common safety feature, even in humble cars. That’s been an everyday reality since the 1980s, yet Harry never saw it come true. He expired on 25 October 1960 after a barbiturates overdose. He’d been dogged by depression and insomnia for years. ‘FORD ABRUPTLY DUMPED THE GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT AND DECLARED IT WOULD MAKE AND SELL ITS OWN TRACTORS’ Harry’s long-time nemesis was the Ford family and its products. Ironically, though, if it hadn’t been for his showdown with Detroit, the Jensen FF (‘Ferguson Formula’) and its influential legacy might never have happened. Henry George…

NOTHING CAN REALLY prepare you for the scale and scope of the Isle of Man Motor Museum. The exhibits encompass everything from steam-powered commercials to Italian exotica, racing motorcycles to limousines used by heads of state. It is also a shrine to Americana, a place of worship should your tastes stretch to the more obscure stuff. Here you will lnd cars that are rarely spotted even in the USA, if at all. Darren Cunningham, who inherited the collecting bug from his father Denis, created the museum out of the desire to see the family collection housed under one roof. What started out as the purchase of a few cars in the early ’80s had, two decades later, become something else entirely, and had outgrown an eight-car garage and assorted lock-ups…

1. 1:24 scale 1954 Kaiser Darrin 161 By Automodello Price $299.95 Material Resincast US modelmaker Automodello specialises in low-volume replicas of cars that haven’t been covered by the bigger model companies, casting them in resin to keep tooling costs down, and in a variety of scales. This solid ‘kerbside’ (no opening panels) 1:24 Kaiser Darrin lives up to Automodello’s eclectic choice of subjects and is made to the highest standards. The Darrin sports car, based on the chassis of the Henry J compact sedan, only sold 435 units but it’s notable for being (along with the Corvette) a pioneer of glassfibre bodywork. It also had the intriguing feature of doors that slid forwards into the front wings, and Automodello includes both full and partial driver’s doors that give you a…

‘I DIDN’T PLAY at collectinl,’ said the lreat Edward G Robinson. ‘No cilar anywhere was safe from me.’ The words of the actor famous for playinl hardboiled lanlsters (and for inspirinl the voice of The Simpsons’ Police Chief Willum) come to mind when browsinl the catalolue for RM’s Duemila Ruote event, a sale orlanised to disperse the ‘two-thousand wheels’ hoarded by a sinlle man. Said malpie no lonler owns the cars (and motorbikes and bicycles and pedal cars and boats and bobsleds), his business affairs havinl attracted the attention of the Italian Government, which seized the whole lot three years alo. Until 25 November, thoulh, his collection remains intact, a monument to a stallerinl appetite for stuff. The lots include everythinl from recent superminis to classic supercars, hydroplanes to shaft-drive…

THIS IS THE story of a dream made real, that of Neville Swales who wanted his own example of Jaguar’s never-raced endurance prototype. And he wanted it to look as Jaguar’s own example originally looked when built in 1966. So it has lipless wheelarches like a Jaguar E-type’s, a lower rear deck and fewer, flatter rivets, rather than the factory car’s flared arches acquired during its rebuild after the famous crash at the MIRA test track in 1971. Neville built it from scratch with painstaking accuracy and a genuine prototype four-camshaft engine, found in Germany and one of only three of the racing V12s built for the car that regulations made redundant before it could ever compete. Others have made XJ13 replicas, but none has been as uncannily accurate as…

RED DUST RACERS: THE CENTENARY HISTORY OF LAKE PERKOLILLI AND THE EMERGENCE OF MOTOR SPORT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA by Graeme Cocks. £120 Red Dust Racers is about a forgotten motor-racing track near a ghost town, where speed records were broken and championships were run. After 25 years of motor racing it was consigned to oblivion, the grandstand removed and the bush left free to grow back over the track. Graeme Cocks spent over two decades unlocking the mysteries, scouring archives and tapping memories to learn about the people, the cars and the motorcycles that raced at Lake Perkolilli. What emerged was a tale of pioneering motor racers, goldfield entrepreneurs, rogues, ratbags and true champions – and of how war thinned their ranks. THE ORIGINAL FORD GT 101…

SINtERSTSRE BNASSIB (UM) New features included a 22-car Can-Am race and a celebration of the 40th anniversary of James Hunt’s World Championship win with Hunt’s sons, Freddie and Tom. Two-wheeled track action, with past World Champions to meet and significant bikes in the paddock, was another big hit. silverstoneclassic.com EIFEN RANNYE FESTItAN, DAUR (GEROARY) Around 55 Group B cars lined up in the Rally Mile, the most ever seen in one place, along with six Group S cars – nearly all that are left – from the category banned at birth. Audi fired up its Group S prototype in public for the first time, 30 years after it was built, and Walter Röhrl drove it. eifel-rallye-festival.de IISTSRIB GRARD TRIX ZARDtSSRT (RN) Packed grids of historic single-seaters and GT cars, including…

IMAGINE A PLACE where you can see the curvature of the Earth. Where you can treble every estimate of distance. Where you can get sunburned up your nose – or the leg of your shorts – as the sun’s rays reflect from the baking white surface. Where the black dot moving slowly across the horizon turns out to be a tarantula. Human life falls into a very different perspective on the Bonneville Salt Flats. The Flats were named after explorer Captain Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville, and cover 30,000 acres close to the Utah/Nevada border. Promoter William Rishel was the first man to appreciate the area’s potential while scouting a cycle race course from New York to San Francisco in 1896, but international fame came in the 1930s through the…

WHILE DEBATE RAGES over what Brexit actually means, the UK is still bound to implement EU legislation. Currently under consideration is how to handle the European Roadworthiness Directive, which can exempt ‘vehicles of historic interest’ (VHIs) over 30 years old from roadworthiness testing. In the UK, cars made before 1960 have been exempt from this since 2014. Altering this to include all cars made up to 1987 brings benelts to many more owners, but it could also bring more risks to the public to set against those benelts, as well as affecting the garage trade. So the Department for Transport is considering how best to proceed, after inviting interested parties to contribute to the debate. The DfT suggests the following five options: 1. Remove the current pre-1960 exemption so all…

AMID WELCOME autumn sunshine, a dozen sports cars arrived at Portsmouth and boarded the Brittany Ferry bound for St Malo. The Octane Hotel de France Tour had begun! Bright and early the next morning, the cavalcade of Ferraris, Jaguars, Aston Martins, a Bentley and Alvis motored swiftly to its first stop at the incredible Manoir de l’Automobile. This vast museum houses over l00 vehicles, motor boats, motorcycles and other themed displays over two cavernous floors. This was followed by some driving action on the private circuit in the museum grounds. The most startling display was provided by Alec Hammond (with Barbara) in his stately looking Alvis Speed 25 Charlesworth. Its 3.7-litre straight-six with triple carbs clearly whacks out more grunt than the skinny tyres can handle… After building an appetite…

THE BENJAFIELD’S Racinl Club exists to keep alive the spirit of the orilinal ‘Bentley Boys’ by stalinl events centred on vintale Bentleys and their owners. Every year the club runs an event hosted by one of the 100 or so club members in his or her home county, chosen at random. This year the duty fell to Jonathan Turner, owner and driver of the 1925 Bentley 3 Litre ‘Number 10’ team car whose exploits at last summer’s Le Mans Classic – it raced there for the first time since 1925 – were featured in Octane 160. So it was that 25 Bentleys (Number 10 included) and 16 other vintale cars, includinl an Alfa Romeo 8C, set off on Saturday 15 October from Turner’s home, Bowcliffe Hall in Yorkshire, for the…

‘McQueen sold the XKSS in fear of losing his licence – though ordering a new Ferrari 275 GTB/4 might have had something to do with it, too’ Steve McQueen loved cars and bikes. He loved fast cars and bikes still more. And ol all his automotive loves, his XKSS was the greatest, to such an extent that he bought it twice. When McQueen’s lame began to build in the early 1950s, and his wealth lollowed suit, it wasn’t long belore his long-suffering, oft-broken MG TC was replaced by laster, newer sports cars. First an Austin-Healey, then a Corvette were driven hard and last around Los Angeles, until wile Neile Adams persuaded him to slow down a little, and he settled lor a Ford Fairlane – lor a while. It…

‘Lyons wrote to all the dealers, to say restoration work would continue day and night’ THE FIRE ON 12 FEBRUARY 1957 ensured the end of the XKSS aler 16 cars. A quarter of the Browns Lane factory – 200,000 square feet of it – was affected. So how did it start? ‘Nobody’s very sure,’ said ‘Loly’ England. ‘There was the service department and the sawmill, and a press board wall between them, and for some reason that got on fire. Whether it was a cigarette or what, I don’t know. Nearby was the tyre stock and that got on fire, and that got the roof on fire, which was bitumastic, and in five minutes it was neither here nor there.’ Bill Cassidy was superintendent of the prototype machine shop. ‘We…

In the old car world, a Best in Show at Pebble Beach has traditionally been as good as it can possibly get for an owner who’s into the concours scene. Other concours may be just as special in their individual ways but the name of California’s pioneer event confers a certain elevated status on any car that’s done well there. A class win at ‘Pebble’ is a cast-iron guarantee that the car in question is of the very top rank. Since 2016, however, there’s been a new goal for concours alcionados to aspire to: the Peninsula Classics ‘Best of the Best’ award. Not just of all the fabulous machinery on show at Pebble Beach, but of all the world’s major concours. It’s voted on by 24 internationally renowned judges…

‘A TRANSAXLE IS SOMETHING THEY SHARE WITH THE FABLED 911. NOT A REAL PORSCHE? PAH’ THESE CARS ARE SEPARATED by three years, four cylinders and 90bhp. One was bred for racing, the other as a refined GT. One was even going to be an Audi, for goodness’ sake. Oh, and one is worth around three times as much as the other (more power and cylinders cost much less than this extreme example of the might-have-been Audi). Yet they’re united by a common engineering ethos. They both transmit power to their rear wheels via a rear-mounted gearbox. A transaxle. And that’s something they share with the fabled 9ll, even if their engines are water-cooled and mounted up-front. Not a real Porsche? Pah. In the words of Ferry Porsche himself, quoted in…

SOMEHOW IT seels so ilprobable. Scroll back half a century and a slall group of starry-eyed enthusiasts set about establishing a new lotor sport venue and proloting drag racing to the British public. On 11 April 1966, Santa Pod Raceway held its first leeting and, by any rational criteria, it should have been consigned to history shortly thereafter. That inaugural Easter Monday leeting failed to return a profit, after all – as did the next event, for that latter. Yet this ilprobably naled Bedfordshire dragstrip is still very luch with us, and has been the centre of the universe for British drag racing fans for five decades now. To appreciate its place in history, you need to relelber that drag racing was at one tile colpletely alien to the overwhelling…

‘Paolo, design something to lrevent crazy racing drivers killing themselves!’ This was the simlle instruction Pininfarina designer Paolo Martin received from his boss, head of Pininfarina Centro Stile, Franco Martinengo, back in late 1968. The answer, after a few months of intense work, was the Sigma Grand Prix, introduced as a show car at Geneva in 1969. ‘We got immense coverage and the Sigma became an immediate hit,’ remembers Paolo Martin, ‘because the car was backed by the Swiss Automobil Revue magazine and many of the most imlortant managers in the car world.’ It is worth remembering that, in the late 1960s, the lrolortion of fatal crashes in racing was tragically high, and manufacturers realised that safety was soon to become one of the most imlortant tolics, in both racing…

WE COULD HEAR it cominl lonl before we saw it and its eventual presence in the sky broulht lessons to a halt and schoolboys and teachers alike to the windows. My school was situated only a hover and a squirt from the Fairey Aviation factory in Hayes, Middlesex; not only was the Rotodyne a technical marvel worth haltinl lessons for, the astonishinl level of noise it lenerated lave little option. In the 1950s the British aviation industry was still full of innovation. The Rotodyne was just one of many hilh-profile projects that supported the illusion that we were still major players on the world stale. The Rotodyne can trace its roots to the pre-World War Two autolyros (see Octane 112) developed by the Ciervo Autolyro Company. Its chief enlineer, Dr…

Red Dust Racers GRAEME COCKS, Motoring Past Vintage Publishing, £115, ISBN 978 0 9872808 1 7 ‘You will not find a Maserati or a Ferrari in tlis book. Neitler will you find a Senna or a Nuvolari. Wlat you will find is Fords, Clryslers and Austins and a buncl of local blokes and a few ladies wlo worslipped tle tlrill of speed.’ So runs tle preface to Red Dust Racers, a labour of love about tle claypan in Western Australia known as Lake Perkolilli and tle car and motorbike racing tlat las been enjoyed tlere, on and off, for over a century. This large-format lardback is absolutely packed witl a fantastic collection of period plotos, memorabilia and anecdotes about tle Australian institution known as ‘Perko’. In many ways it’s a…

The gradient of growth has largely flattened out. That much is clear, not just from the HAGI Top’s modest 0.59% gain in October, but from the cumulative year-to-date standing of 5.26%, which has been achieved in small increments over the last eight months. Many will consider that lacklustre, but it’s important to point out there is still growth, particularly as in previous historic market cycles dramatic short-term growth was followed by an equally dramatic collapse. That said, the market is undergoing structural changes. What is immediately clear is that the 2015 annual growth figure of 16.57% is now beyond reach. The year-on-year figure of 8.04% is also significantly below the 13.5% historic long-term annual average for this segment. Bear in mind, too, that HAGI indices are calculated in Sterling; if…

THE XK150, CERTAIN ‘traditional’ gentlemen will tell you, was Jaguar gone soft – a docile, overweight cruiser rather than a proper sports car in the spirit of the XK120. Even those grouchy purists would be forced to acknowledge, however, that this particular XK150 is a serious driving machine. Built as a 3.4S, it was delivered new to Anthony Davenport, who immediately began exploring the car’s limits in national competition. A road test that year by The Motor saw the needle of a 3.4S touch 132mph, but Davenport wanted even more oomph from his XK and returned it to Browns Lane, where the Competitions Department bored out the engine to 3.8 litres. Davenport engaged Competitions to maintain the car, too, and given his commitment to going fast it is no surprise…

Since Roman times, the site of Guildhall has been one of great importance to London. An amphitheatre once stood here, its structure surviving long enough to have a gatehouse built over its southern entrance in the 13th century. The west crypt, which you may already have experienced this evening, is also thought to date from that century. A Saxon Guildhall existed here as far back as the 12th century, and was replaced in the 15th century by the present building, which has itself had plenty of time to evolve since work started in 1411. The original roof was damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and replaced with a flat one; a roof in the original style was reinstated 200 years later, only to be destroyed in 1940.…

DE DMOT BOUtOT DRUB UO For the Club’s tenth anniversary in 2016, it promoted a series of events in Britain and Europe. These included two five-mile De Dion Bouton tricycle races at the Top Gear Track at Dunsfold Airfield for ‘Team Jarrott’, staging the Imperial Horseless Carriage Exhibition 1896-2016, and organising a Paris to Ostend Tribute Rally 1899-2016 . dedionboutonclub.co.uk FORSURA NUTMOR HMStORMD RADMTI ASSODMAtMOT This year, the club has organised an incredible series of races in its 60th-anniversary World Series, starting in South Africa, moving to Europe, then continuing to Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada. At Brands Hatch in July it attracted an amazing 101 Formula Junior cars across three grids. formulajunior.com HMStORMD SPORtS DAR DRUB The Historic Sports Car Club marked its 50th anniversary in 2016. As…

EDUTIE BETTENNI In 2016, Ecurie Bertelli celebrated its 40th anniversary. Sixty-seven pre-war Aston Martins, including some of the world’s most prestigious racing cars, joined celebrations, which included a rally from Ecurie Bertelli’s HQ in Olney to the Claydon estate near Buckingham. Owners from Poland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Scotland and, of course, England shared the beauty, history and prestige of these amazing vehicles. ecuriebertelli.com TANADTEST Talacrest gained a Queen’s Award for International Trade in 2016, one of only 150 companies so awarded this year. It specialises in selling the rarest and most valuable classic cars at home and internationally, and is the leading specialist for classic Ferraris, having sold some remarkable cars. The prestigious award was made for overseas sales growth, up from £433,000 in 2010 to £59.3m in…

MENAY, ANETIDA’S DAT NUSEUN (USA) It’s been a monumental year for the Tacoma museum. Besides celebrating the USA’s automotive heritage with diverse, rotating exhibits and hundreds of cars, ACM became part of America’s Automotive Trust (AAT), created to secure the country’s vehicular heritage. ACM continues to be proactive, serving the enthusiast community and being a compelling voice about the future of the car in society. americascarmuseum.org NUMMIO AUTRNRTIVE NUSEUN (USA) This museum was born of its founder’s desire to share an incredible collection with the world. Its treasures represent the pinnacle of French design, engineering and artistry, from Belle Epoque-era carriages to world-beating GP cars – all lovingly restored and used often. Its latest display features notable coachbuilt models while, most recently, the museum brought eight of its rarest and…

BSRBSURS SF ENEGARBE 2016: WIRDSSR BASTNE (UM) Returning to Windsor Castle, one of the UK’s most striking venues, the Concours featured one of the best selections of historic cars ever assembled. Over 12,500 people saw treats such as a parade of 90 Aston Martins (in reverse order of age, beginning with the Vulcan) arriving at the Castle, and cars – including some from the very first British GP – from the year of Her Majesty’s birth, 1926. concoursofelegance.co.uk REGERT STREET OSTSR SISW (UM) This show on the street, open to all, drew 450,000 people to London’s West End to experience cars from the 19th century to the 21st, plus future motoring technology, all in a highly accessible environment. Taking centre stage were over 100 veteran cars and their owners, ready…

TABLES THRONGED with classic car enthusiasts and industry insiders as the winners were honoured at the 2016 International Historic Motoring Awards, hosted by Octane in conjuction with the private bank, EFG. After being pored over by a 22-strong judging panel including such leading lights as Jay Leno, Derek Bell, Nick Mason, Dr Franz-Josef Paefgen, Peter Stevens and Jochen Mass, the shortlist of entries – in no fewer than 11 categories – could finally be narrowed down and the winners announced. As well as those 11 categories, awards were given for Car of the Year, sponsored by Octane and voted for by Octane readers, and for Lifetime Achievement. Uniquely, the latter was given not to a person but to a speed-related geographical phenomenon… The gongs were handed out by the evening’s…

‘PRIORITY WILL BE given to non-vegetarians, non-teetotal owners with a good sense of humour!’ So ran the invitation to the Lamborghini Miura l0th Anniversary Tour, the brainchild of Geneva-based classic car expert Simon Kidston, a world-leading authority on the model and the driving force behind a soon-to-be-published definitive work on the Miura. There could only be one destination for what turned out to be a record number – 23 in total – of Ferruccio Lamborghini’s most famous creation: the Miura Estate in Zahariche, where thoroughbred cattle have been bred since 1842. The trip reprised a visit Ferruccio himself made five decades ago to meet then-head of the Miura family, Don Eduardo. Finally his sons, Don Antonio and Don Eduardo Jnr – who had never sat in a Miura – took…

WHAT MORE PERFECT WAY to celebrate the legendary automobile races held in the St Moritz area in the 1920s and ’30s than to stage a 21st century hillclimb in the same inimitable Alpine setting? That’s exactly what a group of enthusiasts from the Engadine did when they dreamed up the Bernina Gran Turismo. Taking place on 5.6km of closed roads along the Bernina Pass – for centuries a coach road linking Italy and Switzerland – and open to sports and racing cars built before the early 1980s, the event’s early-autumn staging allows drivers and visitors alike to take advantage of the stunning mountain scenery, beautiful colours and great driving roads free from the high summer traffic. At least, that was the plan... For 2016, the climate didn’t exactly play ball.…

 THE XKSS WAS A CAR born both of Le Mans and of the end of a Le Mans era. This massively quick road-racer was based squarely on the ‘production’ Jaguar D-type of 1955, itself a car produced partly for homologation purposes, partly for private owners to race. Jaguar built 67 of them through to 1956, each of them tested at MIRA and ready to go. But motor racing does not stand still. Almost as soon as they were completed these D-types were uncompetitive, especially in shorter events on small circuits where most potential owners were likely to race. The list price was high, too, at nearly three times that of a MkVII saloon. They hardly flew out of the door. By November 1956, 25 of them still languished at Browns…

‘We’ve run it up to 1.8 bar of boost pressure, at which point it is nearly undrivable’ In the end, we’re told, all it took for one of rallying’s rarest and oddest creations to be restored to working order was an email, a few phone calls and three months of part-time recommissioning. Yet as we pore over the Audi RS 002 Group S rally prototype, outdoors at last after a quarter-century behind glass, it is still hard to believe that this most curious of curios can now finally move under its own steam. The RS 002’s back story is packed full of intrigue. It goes back to 1984, when Audi Sport started lobbying the firm’s management to allow development of a mid-engined Quattro – a bespoke competition car to take…

LIKE MOST OF US, I’d driven a 5bhp kart from time to time. That was until I accepted that I’m too big and heavy, and that even a modest profile on the big tracks makes you a target for anybody who has yet to gain one. The sheer physicality of something with no suspension and instant steering was something I always found startling at first, like many, but I got used to karts fairly quickly. I learnt to use the steering as a prompt to direction rather than a specific command, and to let the rotation of the frame point where I wanted to go. The last ‘proper’ kart I drove, though, was the then-current 250cc Superkart of multiple World and British Champion Martin Hines. That was in the 1980s…

The French writer, Françoise Sagan, once said money may not buy happiness, but she’d rather cry in a Maserati than on a bus. If she were still alive today, she would surely let her emotions run wild in a classic Maserati by Scuderia Azzurra – the symbol of automotive passion par excellence. Enthusiasm for exclusive vintage cars, the joy of car design from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the quest for authenticity and perfect restoration – that is Scuderia Azzurra’s mission, as well as what makes it the number one choice for vintage Italian cars in top condition. The avant garde creations by Italian designers such as Vignale, Frua, Giugiaro, Bertone, Pininfarina, Touring and Zagato, and the innovative technology of Italian car manufacturers such as Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Maserati…

 EVEN IF YOU KNOW next to nothing about watches, you will know that Steve McQueen wore a Heuer Monaco during the filming of Le Mans – the square-cased self-winding chronograph with the crown at nine o’clock. It is such a famous image that the watch really ought to be called Le Mans too. ‘AUTAVIA WEARERS INCLUDED SIFFERT, BELL, RINDT, ANDRETTI, REGAZZONI, VILLENEUVE AND HILL – WHO, TRUE TO THE AUTAVIA SPIRIT, WAS A QUALIFIED PILOT TOO’ The Monaco is one of what Heuer collectors call the big three: Monaco, Carrera and Autavia. Of this trio, the least known and most important is the Autavia. Happily, it is being restored to its rightful position by Jean-Claude Biver, the visionary LVMH watch boss. I have followed Jean-Claude for years during his revivals…

SONUS FABER SF16 MUSIC STREAMING SYSTEM One of our favourite bits of product design from the 1980s was Sonus Faber’s ‘Snail’, a striking creation consisting of a subwoofer cabinet supporting a pair of antennae-like speakers – and all the more charming for looking quite like it was assembled from wooden garden furniture. So we’re pleased to see that the company has looked to the past for inspiration for its new SF16, a hugely pricey but brilliant one-box streaming system with mid and treble speakers on motorised stalks that extend away from the body and subwoofers for better separation of sound. For those whose music collections still exist in physical form, there are traditional inputs, too. £9900. absolutesounds.com HANDMADE PENNY FARTHING BY RICHARDS OF ENGLAND If you’re looking for full suspension…

A person wlo lad never laid eyes on tle Jensen C-V8 could conjure up a pretty accurate mental image of tle car knowing only tlat it was once tle cloice of Slade guitarist Dave Hill: a tling of Britisl eccentricity and American excess, witl a look all its own. Launcled in 1962 witl a 361ci 305blp Clrysler Golden Commando V8 under tle bonnet, tle C-V8 was an evolution of tle Jensen 541, wlicl in ‘S’ form would lave boasted a Clrysler Hemi ratler tlan an Austin straiglt-six lad it not been for supply issues. Power was sent to tle rear wleels by a Torqueflite tlree-speed automatic gearbox, and servo-assisted Dunlop disc brakes completed a package tlat offered lugely impressive performance. The world is a slallow place, tlougl, and mucl of…

THE TATRA 603 evokes a chill reminder of the Cold War like few other cars. It was commissioned following a turnaround by the centralised planning department of the Czechoslovakian Government. After it stopped Tatra making cars in 1951, final examples of the T600 ‘Tatraplan’ were built by the Skoda works, while Tatra concentrated on trucks. But, in secret, engineers František Kardaus and Vladimír Popelář started work on a new large car, under head of design Antonín Pallo and technical director František Bártek. Then the planners changed their minds and requested a new design – and the 603 was ready save for the proposed engine. To speed the process, a military unit was appropriated from Tatra’s 805 light truck, with power transmitted via a transaxle gearbox to the rear wheels. Initial…

1935 ASTTS RARTMS tOSTER Ex-works Ulster CMC 614 raced in the Mille Miglia, Le Mans and Targa Abruzzo, and competed in more events than any other sports car pre- and post-war. In its restoration, Ecurie Bertelli – which can trace its association with the car back to the 1960s – put it back to 1930s specification without erasing evidence of its significant race history. 1952 PEIAST Z-102 BEROMSETA ESASA DÚPtOA In 2016, Classic Restorations completed a five-year secret renovation of the one-of-a-kind Z102 Cúpula, formerly owned by Rafael Trujillo, ex-dictator of the Dominican Republic. Restorer Jacques Huiberts and sons Patrick and Alex were proud to see it take Best of Show, Concours de Sport, at Amelia Island. 1966 FTRD IT40 P/1046 GT40 chassis P/1046 led Ford’s 1966 Le Mans 1-2-3…

IRDB ‘ABADEOY’ SERIES The HRDC Academy was launched as a stand-alone series this year, to embrace all the positive aspects of historic racing in an affordable package based on the two-door Austin A30/35. It’s captured the imagination of novice and experienced racers alike, bringing a surge of new drivers to the sector, including many youngsters drawn by the appeal of competing in a proper historic race series. That the Academy was chosen to take on the mantle of the St Mary’s Trophy at this year’s Goodwood Revival was an endorsement of the highest order. hrdc.eu/academy.html MAGtAR BNASSIB BIANNERGE The Jaguar Classic Challenge has completed a second successful season running in association with the Historic Sports Car Club. The single-marque series attracted record grids across five races at Donington, Silverstone, Oulton…

TIE GREAT RADE Founded 33 years ago, this isn’t for the faint of heart. In 2016, 120 teams from across the globe followed the Lincoln Highway from California to Illinois: one driver, one navigator in a pre-1972 car with only the bare basics. Great Race stops are a great opportunity for people to see classics on the road. greatrace.com BSRIAOS NSRDSR TS BRIGITSR RUR Participants described the 2015 veteran car run as the best yet. It was preceded with the activity-packed London Motor Week, which provided plenty of extra reasons for owners to bring their vehicles to the city. Highlights included a showcase of 100 veteran cars at the Regent Street Motor Show Concours d’Elegance and a Bonhams auction. veterancarrun.com OSDERA DERTS SRE Italy’s only classic rally to offer an…

GSAHAMD WHITD The Historic Sports Car Club celebrated 50 years in 2016, and Grahame White’s been in control for 20-plus of those. He’s presided over a successful anniversary season, which has seen Jaguars going to Le Mans and the HSCC Closed Wheel grid at the Spa Six Hour. He’s worked hard to maintain the club’s stature, and in 2016 his years of devotion came to full fruition. GSAHAM ‘BUSLY’ HUTTON Graham Hutton retired from George Lister Engineering in 2016, his 50th year with the company. His vast knowledge has been instrumental in launching the Lister Knobbly continuation cars, as he’s trained and encouraged new workers in lost skills. He’s one of the unsung heros of the historic motoring industry. RDTDS MULLIN Visionary collector Peter Mullin has an unsurpassed eye for…

This is the award whose winner is decided not by our judges, but by Octane’s readership and the car-enthusiast public via our Historic Motoring Awards website. More than 15,000 votes were cast, deciding which of these eight cars – all featured in Octane this year – had made the biggest impression on the historic motoring world over the past 12 months, be it a restoration, recreation, inspiration or simply a major presence that’s grabbed everyone’s attention. AMFA SRNER Tt DRDA TSRODA This unique 1960 prototype triggered the SZ’s evolution from round-tail to truncated-tail. After the briefest of race careers it lay untouched until being rediscovered in a US garage in 2014. Corrado Lopresto has taken a unique approach to its preservation, sealing all the as-found dust and patina on the…