Tabla de contenidos para February 2022 en Octane

THE FACT THAT this magazine is so full of anniversaries is, I promise, a mere coincidence. Well, our celebration of the evergreen R107 Mercedes wasn’t – that was a carefully executed plan to mark the occasion – but we didn’t even consider the Unimog’s 75th until after the photos had been shot, and Two-Lane Blacktop may be hitting the big 5-0, but we would have been just as likely to run Mike Renaut’s story last year, or next. Of course, if we were so minded, or so desperate, we could probably contrive an anniversary for every story we do. Depending on whether we say this issue is 2021 (when it comes out in the UK) or 2022 (as it says on the cover), it’s 55 years since the Aston DB2/4 tackled…

1 January 2022 Vintage Stony Despite the name, this event in Stony Stratford features heaps of mid-century and modern classics as well as vintage cars and bikes. Vehicles start leaving at 2pm, so don’t roll out of bed too late. vintagestony.co.uk 7-8 January Per Ardua Ad Infinitum South West A 300-mile rally to blow away the cobwebs at the start of the new year, based in Taunton and featuring 15 regularity sections and 17 tests. heroevents.eu 13-16 January Autosport International There’s something for fans of just about every motorsport discipline at Birmingham’s NEC, plus tyre-smoking action on the UK’s largest indoor racetrack. autosportinternational.com 13-16 January Interclassics Maastricht It’s not back on the F1 calendar quite yet, but Zandvoort circuit and its history inspired the Interclassics team to make F1 cars…

BECAUSE I’M 22 I assumed it would be difficult to get insurance for a Mercury Marquis, with it being a massive, left-hand-drive V8, but it turned out to be cheaper than for my Golf. My girlfriend won’t drive it and people sometimes get nervous because it’s so wide, but you can’t drive it like a hooligan anyway – it will get to 70 comfortably, but it’s a smooth cruiser. The car is ridiculously easy to steer – I can do it with my little finger – and the bench seat is so comfortable. Most of the time I drive it around on my own, but when I took it out with five passengers, sparks literally flew. The car was sitting lower because of the weight and so the bracket holding…

GEMBALLA AVALANCHE With powertrain upgrades from RUF, the Avalanche was a 930 Turbo on steroids. It was launched in 1985 with Gemballa’s version of the slantnose front end, a ridiculous rear wing, and Testarossa-style side strakes. Thirteen were built, all different, but equally outrageous and filled to the brim with clever tech. Vanilla Ice famously owned one of the 15 convertible Cyrrus models. GEMBALLA GTR 600 In 2001, this hardcore 996 Turbo-based Gemballa was crowned the fastest road car to lap the Nürburgring. It pushed out 600bhp, all of which drove only the rear wheels – just like the factory GT2 – to a top speed of 211mph. MERCEDES 500 SEC ‘WIDEBODY’ For some reason, the hardly slim SEC proved a popular widebody candidate. Gemballa’s effort was the widest, and…

HE METES OUT his words carefully, as befits a man who was on first-name terms with the greats of the post-war motor industry. Mike Kimberley is a font of anecdotes, some of which are interspersed with requests to speak off the record. Even then, he is at pains to frame each statement. Effortlessly friendly, quick to heap praise where it’s due, and clearly not one to dwell on the negatives, he is a born diplomat. It is little wonder that his time at the sharp end didn’t finish when he reached retirement age. While he may be celebrated as a Lotus man, Kimberley earned his spurs at Jaguar. ‘As a boy, I was moved to a village on the border of Wales and Herefordshire after The Blitz nearly destroyed our…

Owner Mark Morgan’s instructions were to be assertive with the crash ’box’s external gearlever – except that this is an especially significant Frazer Nash Shelsley. Finally, and thankfully, the knack is attained, ending the problem of consistently finding first gear. No easy task. Let’s just put it down to character. If you accept that old cars tell stories, then this Nash must be among the most accomplished of raconteurs. Chassis no. 2149 was delivered on 4 April 1935 to Dudley Folland Esq, who – due to maternal disapproval – had been racing under the nom de volant of ‘Tim D Davies’ at Cambridge University. The son of the Folland Group’s late founder Henry, Folland had bought the Nash (registered CMH 498) to replace the MG Q-type he’d wrecked after a…

HAVE YOU HEARD of a Britannia? Probably not. It features a weasly little 600cc air-cooled engine driving the back wheels of its bedstead chassis by friction drive from the flywheel, and dates from 1914. They didn’t make very many, but one raced in Longstone Tyres’ Light Car Race at the VSCC Oulton Park meeting. Or how about a 1914 Bedelia? It’s another air-cooled car, belt-driven this time. The passenger sits in front of the driver, tandemfashion. The French used these spindly little cars as stretcher-bearers in World War One, adding a little extra to the dangers of war. A Bedelia raced in the Longstone Light Car Race. You might have heard of a GN, but you will rarely see a standard one with a V-twin aircooled engine driving the back…

‘SORRY; I WON’T BE A SEC…’ If you have a watchie in your life (or you are one), this cry will not be unfamiliar. Usually uttered near charity shops, car boot sales and flea markets, it means the watch-lover in your life is about to disappear in search of horological treasure. It’s often a fruitful search; a slightly scabby but intact Seiko Sports Quartz from the 1980s, an old Oris perhaps. But, as reported by watch expert Jose Pereztroika, who runs the excellent Perezcope.com site, when a young Bosnian lad went watch-hunting in a Sarajevo bazaar he turned up something rather more interesting. Sometimes, while rummaging, you can spot something you don’t recognise but just seems to call out ‘buy me’. This is exactly what happened to our hero –…

BRIONVEGA TOTEM RR231 HI-FI SYSTEM Mario Bellini has designed some extraordinary stuff over the years, from the ergonomic dashboard of the Lancia Trevi to the Milano Convention Centre, a vast building draped in aluminium panels suggesting the form of a comet. His finest work, though, is the Totem, a hi-fi penned for Brionvega in 1971 and which folds together into a stark white cube, looking like something straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This new version of the Totem is more or less faithful to the original, but features Bluetooth connectivity to allow music to be streamed to the system. €16,000. brionvega.it AUTO UNION TYPE C BY PHILLIP DUTTON-WHITE A wonderful likeness of the Auto Union that won the 1936 Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb despite doing its best to…

THE CIRCUIT PAUL RICARD was certainly an emotive location for the RM Sotheby’s auction of the immense 77-car Guikas Collection. Sales totalled €39,532,700, with every car finding a new home. As expected, the 1955 Turin motor show-exhibited Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Competizione was the top-seller of the day, at €6,192,500. Next was a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT Cabriolet Series I by Pinin Farina at €4,420,625, with a 2005 Ferrari 575 GTC rounding off the significant Ferrari sales at €2,648,750. As can happen with a no-reserve auction, there were a few bargains to be had. Even the Le Manswinning 1976 Renault-Alpine A442 looked like great value at €2,648,750 against an estimate of €4-5million. Although the sale primarily comprised competition cars, there were some exceptional road car results. A 1986 Ferrari Testarossa…

Following on from the sublime Ferrari 288 GTO and F40 halo cars, the F50 made its debut at the 1995 Geneva motor show with looks that divided opinion, but powered by an F1-derived V12 engine that ticked all the right boxes: aural nirvana, 512bhp, 0-62mph in 3.8sec, and a claimed 202mph top speed. Chassis 99999 best illustrates the model’s dramatic upward trajectory at auction over the past ten years, after a period that had seen little growth in values since launch. Starting life as the production-spec prototype Ferrari unveiled to the public in Geneva, it went to its first owner, the legendary Jacques Swaters, after its test and show duties came to an end. RM Sotheby’s hammered it away twice. Showing less than 1000 miles, it fetched $742,500 at Arizona…

IT’S EASY TO see the family resemblance, but despite being a very close relative of the R107 SL – being based on an extended version of the same platform – the C107 SLC was a surprisingly different proposition. Launched in 1972, this long and low coupé offered two full-sized seats in the rear. It’s an elegant thing, and an incredible car to see out on the road. The extra length puts the SLC closer in spirit to an S-Class coupé than an SL, but the full-length sunroof and pillarless windows offer a pretty good alternative to the SL’s soft-top. Unlike the roadster, which lived on until 1989, the SLC was phased out in 1981 – meaning that this blue-green metallic car on offer from The SL Shop was one of…

IF WE’RE LIVING in the era of the SUV today, the 1990s were surely the glory years for the coupé. Pretty much every manufacturer was building swoopy two-doors, and Peugeot – no stranger to applying elegant bodies to its run-of-the-mill models – worked with Pininfarina to build one of the best looking. It was often rumoured that the 406 Coupé was born out of a rejected baby Ferrari proposal, and there’s certainly more than a hint of 456 about it. In reality, though, it was a bespoke design – and one that was developed from start to finish by Pininfarina in Italy. Very little was carried over from the saloon, with no external panels shared, and only the floorpan was common with the four-door. Inside, the rather plain dashboard was…

25-27 March Generations Rally Designed to introduce the young folk to the joys of endurance rallying, this event is open to multi-generation crews in pre-1986 cars. It’s based in the Lake District, but entrants will enjoy the roads of the North Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales, too. rallytheglobe.com 25-27 March Un Homme Une Femme A new event for couples that does away with all competitive elements to allow entrants to enjoy cruising some beautiful routes in the South of France in the company of fellow car enthusiasts. happyfewracing.com 26 March HERO Challenge 1 An action-packed one-day event in the Chester area, aimed at novice regularity rally crews who want to up their game. hero-era.com 26 March Zoute Generations Rally There are both Regularity and Touring classes on this one-day rally…

THE WOULD-BE driver turned his talents to building a Formula 1 dynasty that, despite waning in recent years, had accrued nine constructors’ championships and, in its 1990s pomp, utterly dominated F1. Williams was best remembered for his midas-like partnership with Patrick Head; as well as era-defining wins for Brits Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill, his championship-winning drivers included Alan Jones, Keke Rosberg, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost and Jacques Villeneuve. Frank Williams was born in South Shields during World War Two, his pilot father leaving soon after, so he was raised largely by his grandparents. He was always obsessed with cars and racing, and competed initially – with scant success – in small Austins. Thanks to an introduction to Piers Courage he was soon mixing with British motoring racing’s wealthiest playboys –…

FOLLOWING ON from Andy Palmer’s experience with a Lotus Carlton in last month’s Letters, I was the managing director at Lotus Cars Ltd when the Lotus Carlton was being developed and, as with all test and competitors’ cars, I drove the Carlton too. Late one afternoon, I took a development car the long way home. The recently built Wymondham bypass then had very little traffic and, since it is very smooth and virtually straight, I gave the Lotus Carlton the beans. I’d got it up to 160mph when I passed a small bridge with a police car on it and, as I flashed by, its blues-and-twos lit up. The police followed me onto the A11, but I was out of sight in a short time. When I got to the…

The 26th Monte Carlo Rally in 1956 was typical of the era, when a hefty saloon was as likely to come home first as a speedy lightweight. The results read like amishmash of a backstreet dealer’s forecourt, no theme or rhyme or reason emerging. The first model of which two appeared in the results was a Panhard Dyna Z 850, some distance behind the winning MkVII Jaguar of Ronnie Adams, Derek Johnston and Frank Biggar. The top three was rounded out by a Mercedes 220A and a DKW 898. Most exotic car in the top ten was probably the BMW 502, or maybe the Citroën DS19. While Autosport editor Gregor Grant tackled it in his MG Magnette, the most rarefied car in the rally was a 300SL, yet the drivers’…

THERE’S A SCENE in the early draft of the script for the 1971 movie Two-Lane Blacktop describing the first sighting of The Car. ‘It is a 1955 Chevy two-door, several shades of primer gray, there are wide M&H Racemaster tires… the engine is a 454-cubic-inch high-performance Chevy with aluminum heads… there is a four-speed transmission, Hurst linkage and a Covico steering wheel.’ Such minute attention to detail proves this wasn’t a typical car film and that the vehicles used were more than mere props. Two-Lane Blacktop centres around a car race but isn’t an all-action chase movie. Stark, existential and almost documentary in feel, it’s been called the most European of American road movies and, for many, is the best car film ever made. A world of small-town America where…

With characteristic straightforwardness, locals call it The Big Stone. It sits, oblong and 5.5m high, amid the heather on the moor outside High Bentham, at the edge of the Forest of Bowland, marking the border between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Suggesting that it was once part of a group, it’s known further afield as The Great Stone of Fourstones. Geologists refer to it as a ‘glacial erratic’, probably a piece of gritstone, transported by a glacier and left behind when the ice retreated thousands of years ago. Meanwhile, them Yorkshire folk reckon that’s nonsense, and that it was dropped by Satan himself on his way to build the Devil’s Bridge in Kirkby Lonsdale. Me? I’d lay odds that a Unimog left it here. This certainly feels like Unimog country. Sure, it’s…

750 Motor Club Formed in 1939 and known as ‘the home of affordable motorsport’. Club-level racing with a host of interesting Championships and series from classic and Historic to modern, sprints to endurance racing. 750mc.co.uk Alfa Romeo Championship Association Modified Class: B McMahon (Winner) Power Trophy: G Osbourne (Class Winner) Twin Spark: R Ford (Class Winner) Birkett Six-Hour Relay Winner: RAF Motorsports – BMW BRITCAR Endurance Championship For nearly 20 years, the Britcar Endurance Championship has been promoting affordable and realistic multi-class endurance racing in the UK, in a format where ‘gentleman’ drivers, hobbyists, professional racers and up-and-coming youngsters can achieve equal success. britcar-endurance.com british-endurance-championship.com Class E1: Dave Scaramanga/Will Powell Class E2: Lucky Khera/Ross Wylie Class E3: Marcus Fothergill/Dave Benett Class E4: Peter Erceg Praga Category Richard Wells/Alex Kapadia –…

At the beginning of the last decade of the 20th Century, there were few major events dedicated to Historic racing cars. The Oldtimer Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, the Grand Prix L’Age d’Or meeting at Montlhéry and Steve Earle’s Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca were already established, but in England, the world centre of Historic race-car preparation and ownership, there was nothing to compare. However, back at Silverstone, the home of British motor racing, British Racing Drivers Club director and former TT winner Stuart Graham was wondering how the circuit could expand its portfolio of events beyond the British Grand Prix, upon which it was heavily reliant. There was wide support for his idea of a Silverstone Historic Festival and he secured the support of successful racer Peter Hannen and,…

IF SHE HADN’T painted a portrait of Eva Perón on her Porsche 356, Jacqueline Evans might barely be remembered in the annals of motor racing. But as the only woman to compete in all five of the gruelling Carrera Panamericana road races, she should be. Jacqueline spent most of her adult life in Mexico, where she was celebrated as an actress, singer, reporter and pioneer of women’s rights. She was a friend of the rich and famous, counting many of Hollywood’s royalty as chums, and had an enduring but long-distance relationship with John Paul Getty, the richest man in the world. Jacqueline was born to Stephen and Maude Evans in Crouch End, North London, on 17 January 1915. The first of five sisters and five brothers, she was baptised Grace…

IT’S BEEN GOOD to see Breitling ditching the bling with watches such as the new-generation Top Time models. But Breitling wasn’t always about shiny things; back in the 1960s and ’70s the Grenchen-based maker was producing some proper, understated, classical chronographs. The original Top Times, intended to be a cheaper way into owning a Breitling, are lovely… and still seriously undervalued. For example, you could snag a ref. 810 Top Time Mk1 with a Venus 178 movement for just over £2100. A Heuer Carrera ref. 2447 from the same period with a similar triple chronograph register dial could set you back three or even four times that. And the B’ling option is certainly not its inferior. There’s plenty of Top Time choice too. If movements are your thing you can…

There aren’t many Aston Martins that don’t make great-looking models, and the DB4 is surely one of the best in terms of styling. Chinese maker Cult doesn’t say which series its replica represents (and the ‘AML 822’ registration is fictitious, so that’s no help) but, from its seven-bar grille and recessed separate tail-lights, it appears to be the Series IV, produced from September 1961 to October 1962. As usual with a Cult production, this is a solid resin model built to a very high quality but also down to a price. That means you get posable front wheels but no other ‘action’ features, and the detail is simplified – particularly the wheels, whose rims are impressively multi-spoked but rather generically styled. No matter: with a DB4, it’s all about the…

FEW AUTOMOBILES that wear Ettore Bugatti’s name can boast a connection to the legendary car maker quite like this stunning 1938 Type 57C Special Coupé. It’s thought that chassis 57335 was built by the factory workers for Le Patron in 1937 as a birthday gift, although official records show that it was built for in-house factory duties. The Bugatti family connection runs deeper still, as the Type 57 was the car that emerging creative force Jean Bugatti, Ettore’s son, really stamped his mark on. Introduced in 1934, it introduced several ‘firsts’ for the company – notably the 3.3-litre DOHC straight-eight engine. The beautiful coachwork seen here was the last of his designs before his death in 1939. This example benefited from developments such as rubber engine mounts and hydraulic Lockheed brakes.…

Jeff O’Neill’s inaugural gathering to celebrate the ‘past and future of motorsports’ attracted 10,000 spectators to the WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in California, while a further 600,000 watched online. More than 250 race cars from all eras were showcased over ten grids – including three Ferrari 250 GTOs and six Porsche 917s – but stars were the ex-Stirling Moss Mercedes 300 SLR, track exhibitions from 1998 and 1999 Formula 1 World Champion Mika Häkkinen in his McLaren MP4/13A, and Le Mans-winning Ford GT LMs. There was also a big emphasis on local wine and cuisine, plus a panel discussion featuring Zak Brown and Jim Farley.…

January Sri Lanka Rally Starting and finishing in Colombo, this 23-day rally is for 4x4s (the entry fee includes vehicle hire), the idea being that entrants can explore Sri Lanka using the road less travelled. bespokerallies.com 15-29 January Sri Lanka Classic A 1600km route takes crews around the island from Waikkal to Colombo, the schedule allowing for stops on the coast and in national parks, meaning there’s a good chance of spotting whales, wild elephants and perhaps leopards, too. destination-rally.com 28 January – 24 February Road to Hanoi Marathon Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, is the starting point for this 8500km epic, which takes crews in pre-1977 cars through Thailand and Laos on the way to Vietnam and the finish in Hanoi. rallytheglobe.com 14-30 June White Nights Rally Named…

US museum goes into hyperdrive The Petersen Automotive Museum in California has launched a new exhibition that will run over the next 18 months in two parts. ‘Hypercars: The Allure of the Extreme’ will showcase up to 30 vehicles, including the Aria FXE concept, Bugatti Veyron 16.4, Caparo T1, Devel Sixteen, Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta, Hennessey Venom F5 (Design Model), Koenigsegg Agera RS Final Edition, Laraki Sahara, McLaren Speedtail, NIO EP9, Delage D12, Pagani Huayra Hermes Edition, RAESR Tachyon Speed and Rimac Concept One. For the purposes of the display, The Petersen is defining a hypercar as ‘a vehicle that exists at the highest echelon of performance, technological advancement, price and rarity’. The exhibit will be in the Bruce Meyer Family Gallery and the museum lobby and split into two parts,…

LATTERLY best known for his driving school, Illinois-born Bondurant was one of the American hotshoes, along with Phil Hill, Shelby, Gurney et al, that invaded Europe in the late 1950s and 1960s. He raced for Shelby, Ferrari and Eagle in a career that spanned various formulae, his greatest success being a class win at Le Mans, driving a Daytona Cobra (with Gurney) in 1964. His first real brush with celebrity driving came in showing James Garner the ropes on John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix, and when he had a monster Can-Am crash at Watkins Glen he decided to turn it into a business, opening his High Performance Drivers’ School in 1968. Other charges have included Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage.…

Before we get into the story of this unique, unashamedly over-the-top 1980s supercar, let’s get a few of the clichés out of the way. Greed was good, lunch was for wimps and we shouldn’t forget to mention Crockett and Tubbs. As unfashionable as it quickly became, the ‘1980s excess’ culture provided the fuel for some very interesting couture choices – and the cars that best represented it were to many the ultimate expression of wealth and individuality. Bodykits, wide-arch conversions and big spoilers were often fitted to the most elegant and expensive cars merely to stand out from the crowd. Even so, it’s hard to imagine that anybody could look at a Ferrari Testarossa, and think ‘That could do with being spiced up a bit…’ Yet that’s exactly what USA-based…

At the age of 16 I fell in love. There, sharing the pages of a car magazine with a Ferrari 308 and a Jaguar XJ, was the Mercedes-Benz R107 SL. I dreamed of one for 14 years, before – finally! – buying a 500 SL to celebrate my 30th birthday. Today, 21 years and 100,000km later, she is still with me. And now, here we are, celebrating the R107’s 50th anniversary. It will be quite hard for me to remain neutral as I describe the R107’s story. But what you can’t argue with is that this is the longest-lived Mercedes passenger car ever, in production for a healthy 18 years (only the military-based G-wagen was built for longer), from 1971 to 1989. It’s also the most prolific generation of the…

Like most notable race car builders of the British post-war new wave, Scottish-born Irishman John Crosslé began by building his own because he couldn’t afford to do anything else. And like Chapman, Broadley and the rest, his first efforts were directed at the 1172 formula and the eponymous sidevalve Ford Popular engine. As the 1960s dawned, there were Crosslé Mk2 and Mk3, then the Mk4 of 1961, which catered for the International Formula Junior category in which a home-tuned Anglia 105E engine and VW Beetle gearbox went behind the driver. By then, Crosslé had decided that building race cars was to be his life instead of farming, but if the Irish racing scene was definitely healthy – it had by then hosted more than 20 race circuits of one kind…

‘I wanted a break from working in London and saw an ad in the back of an off-road enthusiast magazine (I had a Land Rover at the time): Frank Atkinson Unimogs, as it was then, needed someone to oversee the workshop. That was in 2001. The company is now in its 39th year. I became knowledgeable about the vehicle, parts interchangeability and so forth, and from 2008 I gradually took over the business.’ Vehicles of all generations are being worked on, belonging to tree surgeons, agricultural fence repairers, estate managers and so on. ‘There’s a camper-bodied Unimog we’re about to send to the US, a double-cab going to Australia, and a personnel carrier for shooting parties on a country estate,’ says Ward. ‘But our biggest single customer is a mining…

HISTORIC RALLYING – the traditional road-based navigational variety – has grown massively over the past two decades. Organisers have responded by offering challenges ranging from a gentle run through the countryside, punctuated by overnight halts at plush hotels, to a hardcore mid-winter test in which sleep and an expert navigator are at a premium. They’ve also realised that removing as many barriers to entry as possible works for everyone. Not having a car, not having an eligible car, or the logistics involved in transporting that car halfway around the world are no longer reasons not to take part. Such is the draw of these events that ‘arrive and drive’ options have sprung up. Widely available in the world of circuit racing, they’re less prevalent in Historic rallying where the logistics…

21-23 JANUARY Taupo Historics New Zealand brucemclarenmotorsportpark.com 27 JANUARY – 2 FEBRUARY Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique acm.mc 11-13 MARCH Phillip Island Classic Australia vhrr.com 1-3 APRIL Mugello Classic Italy peterauto.fr 9-10 APRIL Members’ Meeting Goodwood, UK goodwood.com 25-30 APRIL Tour Auto France/Andorra peterauto.fr 26 APRIL – 1 MAY Targa Tasmania targa.com.au 28-30 APRIL Manx Classic manxmotorracing.com 28 APRIL – 1 MAY The Mitty Road Atlanta, USA hsrrace.com 30 APRIL – 1 MAY Donington Historic Festival UK doningtonhistoric.com 6-8 MAY Hockenheim Historic Germany hockenheim-historic.de 13-15 MAY Grand Prix de Monaco Historique acm.mc 14-15 MAY Pendine Hot Rods UK vhra.co.uk 19-22 MAY Barber Historics Alabama, USA barbermuseum.org 20-22 MAY Spa Classic Belgium peterauto.fr 20-22 MAY Nürburgring Classic Germany nbr-classic.com 3-5 JUNE GP de l’Age d’Or Dijon-Prenois, France peterauto.fr 3-5 JUNE Nostalgia Nationals Santa Pod, UK…

SHORTLY AFTER 8.45pm on the evening of Wednesday 17 February 1864, history was made. The nature of naval warfare changed forever when the first successful sinking of an enemy ship by a submarine took place four miles off the coast of the Confederate port of Charleston, South Carolina. By 1863 the American Civil War was not going well for the Confederacy, starved of supplies by Union blockades. Charleston, where the war had kicked off, was suffering particularly badly, with two heavily armed ships sitting outside the harbour. In desperation, the Confederacy offered a bounty of up to $100,000 (around $1.6m today) to anyone who managed to sink a Union warship. Horace Lawson Hunley, a wealthy lawyer, plantation owner and southern patriot, together with skilled engineer James McClintock, had already built…

Deuce! 1932 Ford Hot Rods from the Bruce Meyer Collection KEN GROSS with Bruce Meyer, Alex Xydias and Chip Foose, The Rodder’s Journal, $39.95, ISBN 978 0 578 84320 9 A book doesn’t have to be big and expensive to occupy our Book of the Month slot; this one is neither, but it crams an awful lot of colour and excitement into its 132 pages. Produced by the highly respected Rodder’s Journal, it covers the hot rods owned by legendary Californian collector, all-round nice guy and Peter Pan-lookalike Bruce Meyer, who, unbelievably, has just turned 80. Happy birthday, Bruce! It’s hard to over-estimate the influence that the pioneer hot rodders of the 1940s and ’50s had on US car culture and the automotive industry generally. As Meyer says in his…

Can we have a chat among friends here? Almost everyone is now aware of the sale of the 928 from the film Risky Business at a recent Barrett-Jackson sale. It made an absolutely astounding $1,980,000! Let’s just put that one aside, and acknowledge that the 928, introduced by Porsche as the successor to the 911, did not prove as popular in the new-car marketplace as the company had hoped. By the 1990s, the 928 was often found in the used car equivalent of the bargain rack, and a friend of mine bought his example at a charity sale for $500! That’s pocket change in Porsche circles. Many 928s were sold in the North American market with automatic transmission; in the collector-car arena, the three-pedal cars almost always bring the most.…

NINE CARS make up the single-owner Tenenbaum Collection, but it is the trio of Porsche hypercars up front that stand out as a particular highlight. Showing only 14,000km and recently restored, the Guards Red 1987 Porsche 959 is a prime example of this Group B icon. It’s expected to fetch $1.2m-1.5m. Next up is its spiritual successor, the high-revving V10 Carrera GT from 2005. One of the last of this breed available with a manual gearbox, this well-maintained GT Silver car has covered a mere 5482 miles with its last three owners. Estimated at $1m-1.3m. Finally, Porsche’s hybrid 918 Spyder completes the set. This Liquid Chrome Metal Blue car has 1396 miles on the clock and is estimated at $1.2m-$1.4m. You might also have noticed the Porsche 911 Turbo S…

BEING ON THE WEST COAST, I’m usually up by 5am checking and answering emails. Working closely with The Market in the UK, I have to make sure I get things there by the end of their working day. We’re very lucky because they have an established platform and website. It’s really about how we get the word out in the States, ready for when The Market goes live here on 24 January. I think people here are comfortable buying cars online. During the pandemic, they got used to buying cars sight unseen. I grew up immersed in the car world as my dad was a collector, so I started going to shows when I was young. He was into pre-war cars, mostly American, some European, and I was always involved…