Sommaire pour June 2018 de Octane

FOR HOW MANY years have we all been predicting that the last of the great barnfinds must already have been discovered, that there surely can’t be any more out there? Yet still they come, a bit less thick and fast perhaps and with varying degrees of actual discovery, and more moody chassis-number clones among the ranks of the genuine. And yet still they come. Many are actually cars or collections that are known about but kept hidden until the time is right – as was the case with the extraordinary Baillon collection – or an owner who just doesn’t want to sell and is fed up with being bothered. For example, however the papers portrayed the unearthing of Dr Harold Carr’s 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante in a Tyneside garage…

Social climbing Octane is hosting two concours events during major meetings at the fabulous Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb over the summer. The first will be a pre-1985 concours during the Classic Nostalgia weekend on 28-29 July. Eligible cars will be granted a special parking area at Shelsley and winners will be judged by a team from Octane. At Shelsley’s Championship Challenge weekend on 11-12 August, Octane will host a special ‘Youngtimer’ concours for 1980s and 1990s classics and supercars. See www.shelsleywalsh.com. Charity drive The Hope Classic Rally (hopeclassicrally.org) has raised £800,000 for the charity WeSeeHope in only four years, and the exotic convoy ranging from Jaguar XK120 to Ferrari 250GT SWB and Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing sets off from Mercedes-Benz World at Brooklands again on 15-16 June. Enthusiasts donate the use…

A PRICELESS EXHIBITION of seven Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows racing cars from the 1950s is to take place at the Louwman Museum from 7 July to 2 September. The event is a follow-up to a special display of pre-WW2 Silver Arrows that the museum hosted in 2012, and will again have Mercedes-Benz’s co-operation. Of particular interest to local visitors will be the W196 R (above) with which five-time F1 World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio won the 1955 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort just ahead of team-mate Stirling Moss. That race came just a few weeks after another famous outing for the team, when the pair took an historic one-two on the Mille Miglia, and Fangio’s 300SLR from that event (number 658) will also be on show. Often touted as the most…

‘THIS WAS THE car that got me into ’Healeys,’ says Bill Rawles. ‘I bought it as a project, when I was doing general car repairs 25 years ago. But I was spending so much time around racetracks helping customers that I decided to build it into a racer instead.’ His first race, 22 years ago, was at Thruxton. ‘It was a ’Healey Championship race and it was scary: we finished second from last. The car was almost standard – no roof, just an aeroscreen, on Webers but standard gearbox, no LSD. I couldn’t believe how fast Bruce Montgomery hustled past into Church. Two years later, we were all going that fast.’ Two decades of development have made the 1962 BJ7 a front-runner, though Bill admits the car is faster in…

THE 2018 Goodwood Members’ Meeting may officially be the 76th, but in reality it was only the fifth running of the event since its revival. It’s probably safe to assume that when the Duke of Richmond decided to add a third major motoring event to his calendar, he had in mind a spring festival of racing – and in previous years its hallmark has been a host of golden daffodils – so the bitter winter weather that engulfed the 2018 event came as something of a shock. It could have been a disaster had snow settled on the track and forced the racing to be cancelled – it was salted as a precaution, which seemed to prompt some drivers to withdraw – but, apart from huddling from the Beast from…

25-28 April Paris-Amsterdam 2018 A less speedy revival of the 1898 event that was Europe’s first international motor race, with short days in the saddle and plenty of time to explore. thetrial.nl 26-28 April Manx Classic The Isle of Man welcomes a variety of four- and three-wheeled machines for a programme that features a sprint and a pair of hillclimbs. manxmotorracing.com 26-29 April The Flying Scotsman From the start at Brooklands Museum, cars ranging from a 1907 Itala to a 1948 MG TC will wind their way along spectacular and empty roads towards the Balmoral Hotel. endurorally.com 28-29 April Classic Days Magny-Cours Guest of honour this time is Jacky Ickx, but the great racing polymath will, as so often in his career, share the spotlight with Porsche: the marque will…

BACK IN 1970, the original Range Rover was launched with a promo film called A Car For All Reasons. Today, there are a lot more reasons to consider when choosing a car – emissions and taxation to name but two – which explains why JLR laid on a back-to-back launch of the Range Rover PHEV (right) and Range Rover Sport SVR (top). First, the PHEV: badged as the P400e, it’s a plug-in hybrid powered by a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder Ingenium petrol engine, while the Sport SVR has a full-fat 5.0-litre, 563bhp V8. We think we can guess which one Octane readers will gravitate towards, even though early orders suggest the PHEV will shortly account for 20% of all Range Rover sales. The PHEV is quick, with performance second only to a…

AS A 32 YEARO LD, I have friends who are preoccupied with the latest shiny offerings from Audi, BMW and Mercedes. But here in Northern Ireland we are steeped in a motor sport heritage that’s the envy of many in the motoring world, and when I was growing up, not too far from Dundrod, I was told of the 1955 Tourist Trophy by my grandfather, who was a spectator. Images of it captivated me as a boy, and in 2015 I finally decided to stop just thinking about historic racing and to actually do something about it. I bought a 1955 Mercedes 220a – chosen because it is eligible for many events in Europe – unseen from Tasmania via the internet. To my huge relief, it arrived safely and in…

THE SANDS OF GLOBAL geopolitics weren’t so much shifting in 1948 as being whipped into a storm, the effects of which we all still feel today. The big regroup saw the state of Israel founded in the Middle East, to the ire of Arab populations in the region, and Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated during his attempts to stop internecine violence as Pakistan separated from India. Meanwhile, apartheid rule began in South Africa. On top of that, in July 1948 the Western Allies sprang into action with the Berlin Airlift after the Soviets blockaded the city to try and drive Brits and Americans out of the divided former German capital. Although they backed down in 1949, some 277,000 planeloads of food, fuel and medicine were flown in over 11…

AUCTIONS AMERICA’S Fort Lauderdale sale has always turned up a few gems, particularly catering for the very traditional American tastes, and this year RM Sotheby’s absorbed the auction into its own line-up. Tightening up the catalogue considerably for the 6-7 April sale, the overall car count dropped by 75 cars in comparison to 2017, but the 335 cars offered resulted in a sales rate of 76%, exceeding $19m, almost $2m up on the previous year. A pairing of Mercedes-Benz 300SLs topped the sales chart, with a very original 1962 Roadster (right) taking the top spot at $1,540,000. The other SL, one of the last 1957 Gullwings, was sold for $1,193,500 with the profits going to the seller’s local YMCA in Jackson, Michigan. Interest in Lamborghini’s LM002 doesn’t seem to be…

FERRARI, MORE THAN any other marque, is defined by its rarity. In February the HAGI F index fell back 5.03% – more than any other individual marque measure, and more than the overall collector-grade market as represented by the HAGI Top. However, in March Ferrari recovered a larger proportion of the previous month’s losses than the other indices (some of which retreated further), gaining 3.69%. While all sectors are down in the first quarter of 2018, Ferrari is down the least – just 1.36%, compared with losses elsewhere of up to 8.32%. As reported last month, year-on-year growth came to an end at the close of February, pretty much across the board, for the first time since the market returned to growth in 2010. One month on, that remains the…

SO DOMINANT in Group A racing, the R32 GT-R earned the name Godzilla by embarrassing the competition in Australian Touring Cars, winning the Spa 24 Hours, and owning the Japanese Touring Car Championship. It was a watershed moment for Nissan, employing cutting-edge technology to combine four-wheel drive and rear-wheel steering (along with other computer-controlled systems) in one of the fastest and most entertaining road cars of its time. Nissan produced more than 40,000 GT-Rs of this generation but, thanks to the car’s huge popularity on the Japanese tuning scene, the chances of finding a standard car are slim today. A few minor modifications could easily see the standard 276bhp (unofficially around 320bhp) rise to over 400bhp, so few have escaped such tweaks. It’s an icon of its era though, and…

I STILL START EVERY day at 7.30am and finish at four, as I have since I began at Vauxhall. I could always get home to have tea with my kids, although my son’s now 24 and my daughter 22. It’s weird but my first day at the company is still etched in my memory – 3 September 1979 – as is my clocking-in number, 080021. I was 16 and came straight from school. I was car-mad. If you weren’t into football then it was cars, and at school it was always Fordversus-Vauxhall. For some reason they all called me ‘Vauxhall Ted’. To start your engineering apprenticeship you had to pass quite a strenuous aptitude test, which took a whole Saturday morning. Then I had proper training in all the basic…

WELL OVER 1000 Jim Clark fans joined family members and friends of the Borders legend in Duns on 7-8 April. The ceremony to begin a new phase of works to the Jim Clark Memorial Room coincided with the 50th anniversary of Clark’s death in 1968, marked by a service of remembrance at Chirnside Church where he is buried. Before that, Clark’s sister Isobel waved a chequered flag to close the existing Memorial Room and then took a green starter’s flag to begin work on the £1.6-million extension. Clark’s cousin and Family Trustee Doug Niven spoke to the assembled crowd. ‘I was recently over in Paris when Jim was being inducted into the Hall of Fame by Jean Todt,’ he said. ‘Jim was described as the most revered driver in Formula…

LITHUANIAN COLLECTOR Saulius Karosas’s world-class display was the highlight at this year’s Retro Classics. No fewer than 55 cars from the SK Collection were transported to Messe Stuttgart’s recently opened Paul Horn Hall, including a line-up of Russian Gaz models and a handful of Zil Kremlin cars. Many had never been seen in the West before. The wide range of Horchs impressed, too, but it was the collection of Erdmann & Rossi-bodied cars (particularly the blue 1938 Bentley 4½ Litre Coupé Convertible) that stood out as stars. Elsewhere, Porsche’s 70th anniversary celebrations were in full swing, with the 961 Le Mans car and oddly proportioned four-seater 911 prototype taking centre stage. BMW celebrated 40 Years of M1 with a prototype road car and a rare Schnitzer Turbo version among the…

ON ITS FIRST APPEARANCE as the AMV8 Vantage concept at the Detroit Auto Show in 2003, Aston Martin’s Vantage promised to be the car you always promised yourself. There were many iterations, including a couple of updates and a V12 version, so expect the same for this new model. This is indubitably the first of a new age of what might be termed ‘Andy Palmer’s Awfully Big Aston Martin Adventure’. This forceful chief executive, ex of Nissan, has formed a plausible model plan, sought and received finance for it and now is investigating the possibility of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares in the company as its Kuwaiti and Italian owners seek to reduce their exposure. So, by next year your fantasy investment portfolio could include a bit of…

It’s often said that people can remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot, or that Princess Diana had died in a car crash. Mike Bishop, a specialist at Jaguar Land Rover’s Classic Works facility, knows his exact location when he first heard that pre-production Land Rover no R07 had been discovered. ‘I was in a Thai restaurant ordering a take-away when the phone rang. It was [Land Rover historian] James Taylor calling to tell me that after all these years of searching for the very first Land Rovers, R07 had turned up. It was incredible – not least because, just a week earlier, I had watched the last Defender come off the line at Solihull. The other customers in the restaurant…

OUTLAW, HOT ROD, resto-mod, ‘reimagined’, call them what you like, enhanced versions of older cars have been around since the days of the prewar Specials and American street rods. Tweedy types have been stuffing 4½ Litre Bentley engines into 3 Litre chassis for decades and many an Alfa, Cobra, Jaguar and Triumph has been subjected to all sorts of tasty mods. Mustang? Catalogues abound… The marque that’s now receiving the most attention in the modifying game is Porsche, specifically the 911. The whole Outlaw genre began with Porsche 356s because many of the cars were old, rusty, worn-out and underpowered. Porsches have been rodded by the West Coast contingent in the USA since the 1950s; Rod Emory got into the game in the 1980s and is credited with coining the…

I am sitting eight feet in the air on Runway 33 at Kissimmee airport in Florida. Ahead of me is 12ft or so of aircraft nose – it looks and feels as if I’m atop a very big shark. Except that it’s got wings, and 13ft in front of me is a four-blade propeller turning at 750rpm, about half the engine speed. I’m mesmerised by it, but the growling, blatting and popping of a 27-litre V12 Merlin between it and me brings me back to reality. I crank the canopy closed. I’ve got to man-up now, as I move the throttle to 2300rpm on the toe brakes and take a last look at Ts and Ps (temperatures and pressures). The noise is incredible. Now I release the brakes and push…

A SHORT DRIVE to the Sussex coast from Filching Manor, our previous Place to Go, takes you past a sign that will surprise many. ‘Welcome to Bexhill-on-Sea, Birthplace of British Motor Racing’. We could suppose that the first British motor race took place the first time two automobiles met, as the characters of motoring pioneers must have had a competitive side! However, the story goes that Montague Napier and the Australian SF Edge, both racing drivers, were at dinner with Earl De La Warr and were complaining that testing their cars in England was hopeless, thanks to the police crackdown on the speed limit. The Earl offered them the use of his private cycle test-track at Bexhill (the seafront road) and that’s where it began. On Whitsun, 1902, Bexhill saw…

U-9 GRAND PRIX CAR BY UGEARS Only marginally less sophisticated than the pre-war racers on which it is based, this wooden car clips together from 348 components and features a transmission that allows you to switch the elastic-band-driven U-9 between idle, ‘race ahead’ and reverse. £41.95. ugears.online SGT PEPPER’S JUKEBOX BY SOUND LEISURE This Apple Corps-licensed jukebox has room for 70 seven-inch records, but its Bluetooth connection means it will play more than just your old Beatles singles. £8995. soundleisure.com GREAT SCOT PRINT BY JOHN KETCHELL John Ketchell completed this image of Jim Clark back in 2000 but decided to hang on to the canvas. This year, to mark half a century since the death of the man often hailed as the greatest racing driver of all, 50 prints of…

WHAT MAKES THE 625 TF (for Targa Florio) so appealing is its rarity and its place in history. Not only were just three of them built – two spiders and a coupé – but it was also Maranello’s first attempt at a four-cylinder, closed-wheel sports racer, the engine coming straight out of its Formula 1 car. This one also has some gold-dust sprinkled on it by its past associations. Its outings with Mike Hawthorn and Umberto Maglioli might have been only the first two races of this ex-works 1953 Ferrari 625 TF, but they should not overshadow a fascinating history. This includes being owned, but not raced, by the ‘Pampas Bull’, José Froilán Gonzaléz, and even at one stage having its portholed Vignale form fitted with a Lincoln V12 in…

SMALL, LIGHT sports cars are so rewarding to own, and few can match the Smart Roadster for value. The Roadster – and its Roadster Coupé partner, identified by the glass rear hatchback panel – was launched in 2003, based on an extended version of the City Coupé platform and powered by a slightly enlarged 698cc, 79bhp version of its turbocharged triple, which is rear-mounted and drives through a six-speed semi-auto transmission. In its most basic form it weighs 790kg. Aluminium doors and plastic body panels help with that, as do a simple interior. True, it’s snug inside, but the minimalist trim and low seating position make it an interesting place to sit, and the turbo triple gives a pleasing off-beat thrum. The chassis is very well-balanced, there’s enough power –…

The classic car owner’s greatest friend (after a mobile phone) is surely eBay, the online auction site. Founded in a San Jose bedroom in 1995, its success was so phenomenal that its founder became an instant billionaire when the company was floated just three years later. If you have an old car, eBay is hugely useful for finding parts that years of trawling autojumbles wouldn’t yield. And if you have a real obscurity, like the 1920s Calthorpe tourer owned by this writer a few years ago, the ‘saved search’ function, which emails you when items matching your chosen key words turn up for sale, is an absolute godsend. Often, of course, the result will be something you never knew you needed… such as the (deactivated) WW1 Mills bomb pictured here.…

A SPECTACULAR 1956 Maserati A6G 2000 Zagato was voted Best of Show by an international jury of motoring experts at the 30th edition of the mammoth Techno-Classica Essen. The car, one of only three factory demonstrators, was on the stand of dealer Axel Schuette along with equally stunning cars from Bentley, Delage and Hispano-Suiza. Another concours award-winner was a wonderfully different 1947 Ghia Alfa Romeo 6C 2300 on the Classic Cars of Holland stand. Sheer numbers make it difficult for any Gullwing Mercedes or 911 to stand out at Essen, but a bright yellow Beutler-bodied Porsche 356 was eyecatching. Only dealer cars are eligible for the concours, a shame when Techno Classica hosts so many wonderful club displays. With more space now dedicated to high-end specialists thanks to the re-purposing…

CHERRY BLOSSOM created the magic background for the second Concorso d’Eleganza di Kyoto, held at the 400-year-old Nijō Castle. Carrozzeria Touring was the celebrated coachbuilder this year, and 16 of the cars built by the famed Milanese officina were on display, including the car that was judged Best in Show, a 1951 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Villa d’Este, one of only 31 believed built and 20 known to survive, which belongs to Italian collector Nicola Livon. ‘The Alfa 6C Villa d’Este is among the most beautiful cars ever built,’ said head judge Antonio Ghini, now the man in charge of the Lamborghini Museum at Sant’Agata Bolognese. His team included car designers Shiro Nakamura (styling chief at Nissan for 18 years) and Louis de Fabribeckers of Carrozzeria Touring. The public…

WHAT DO YOU THINK was the world’s best-selling sports car in 2016? According to Ford, it was the Mustang. How you define a sports car is obviously a moot point, but Ford says it is one, and as such it outsells more obvious contenders such as the 911 and MX-5. As for 2017… well, the figures aren’t out as this magazine goes to press. The current model has proved a surprise hit in Europe and the revised 2018 version tested here is unlikely to disappoint, either. It’s better finished inside and there’s a new ten-speed auto ’box to feed the upgunned 5.0-litre V8’s 444bhp to the tarmac; rather endearingly, the V8 Mustang also features a ‘line lock’ setting to hold the car on the front brakes while you spin up…

IN 1948, THE BRITISH Motor Show finally returned to Earl’s Court in West London after a gap of ten glum years. Here was an automotive cavalcade the like of which would rarely be witnessed again, and a bumper 562,954 visitors queued in the chilly October air to get in. The headline acts, of course, were the impossibly rapid and beautiful Jaguar XK120 and the highly significant, almost-all-new Morris Minor. But virtually every manufacturer’s stand space framed brand new cars. In the dull-but-important category, a veritable galaxy of newcomers for everyday motoring included the Austin A70 Hampshire, Hillman Minx, Morris Oxford, Singer SM1500 and Vauxhall Velox/Wyvern. Many also had their first glimpse of the Jowett Javelin and Standard Vanguard. Jaguar’s MkV and the Lagonda 2.6 represented the latest in British luxury,…

Name a car with a rear-mounted flat-six and lots of racing success. Now try again. The Devin C? No? The ‘world’s most advanced sports car’ boasted the brochure. That’s quite a claim, but you can certainly draw comparison with other sports cars of the era. Porsche? Well, the similarities end with the configuration and rearward placement of the Devin C’s Chevrolet Corvair motor. But a certain Colin Chapman made his name largely around cladding his own chassis with glassfibre bodywork and powering it with off-the-shelf engine and transmission, and he did pretty well for a while. That’s the story here, too. Devin’s light shone brightly if briefly in the 1950s and 1960s, during which time around 125 cars were built, many having left Devin’s California works in kit form. So…

RACETRACKS AREN’T TYPICALLY a natural home for an executive saloon. Yet exceptions can always be made, especially if there’s an M badge on the bootlid. And here we have all six generations of the BMW M5 together at Anglesey Circuit, from the very first (launched in 1985) to the very latest (just gone on sale). And when you have every version of the M5 at your disposal, you discover a set of cars that share a name and a purpose, yet which differ hugely in how they deliver the M5 message. Over six generations and fully 33 years, the M5 has evolved in size, weight, engine configuration, aspiration, transmission and final drive, yet in each case it has set out to be the ultimate performance saloon. It’s time to find…

In 1973, a Porsche 911 RSR won the last Targa Florio to be run as an International race, a round of the World Championship of Makes. The drivers were Gijs van Lennep and Herbert Müller. Now, more than 40 years later, we’re in Sicily to contemplate a battery of past Porsche racers, all past Targa participants, some of them winners, all of them representing the marque’s 11 wins between 1956 and 1973. Van Lennep is eyeing an RSR, not his 1973 winner (although it now has the winner’s colour scheme, its roof pragmatically brush-painted in Martini’s red and blue) but the third-place car of Leo Kinnunen and Claude Haldi. The LEO number plate adds a nice touch of tribute. ‘You are a big hero if you win the Targa,’ muses…

‘THE FRENCH LE MANS CROWD CHEER HIM LIKE A CONQUERING HERO. ALLARD! THEY CHANT. ALLARD! ALLARD! ALLARD! ’ STIRLING MOSS MUST have been decidedly nonplussed. There he was, ripping along the Mulsanne Straight after one of his trademark Olympic-sprinter-style Le Mans starts, the young superstar in a sexy, technowonder C-type, class of the 1953 field and leading the first lap handily. Then along comes this 40-something amateur in a parts-bin tin box, hammered together in his tiny London workshop, and blasts right past. The old guy crosses the line to complete Lap One ahead of Moss, the Jag, the Ferraris, the Alfas, the entire lot, and the French crowd cheer him like a conquering hero, too. Allard! they chant. Allard! Allard! Allard! Then again, it’s doubtful that Moss was terribly…

By 12 Art Price £329.95 Material Resincast First things first: this is a big model. If we were to reproduce the picture at the right size in relation to the 1:43 models below, it wouldn’t fit on the page. It’s nearly 15 inches long, and heavy with it. But check out the price. Not exactly peanuts – but you could pay this, and more, for a 1:43 handbuilt. Now look at the wire wheels. Impressive, aren’t they? And the overall finish is superb: not just the metallic paint, but the interior, which features authentically creased seat facings and super-fine belts. There are no opening panels but that’s no criticism – when a car is as beautiful as the DB4, the shape is all that really matters. Sadly, this version in…

IT’S DARK RED with Cognac MB-Tex vinyl, a hardtop and a new soft top. It has the desirable four-speed manual ’box and Becker Mexico radio. The body was restored ten years ago, the interior was refreshed more recently. It looks to be a solid example and a good driver. So, what is it worth? We’ve seen this phenomenon before, the sudden price spike followed by a settling-down in value, and it’s been happening a lot with the W113 ‘Pagoda’ SLs built from 1963 to 1971. The spike usually happens at a high-profile auction, where lots of potential bidders see it and it takes hold, for a while. Great examples of the SL reliably sold in the $50,000-60,000 range for years, then suddenly they were making over $100,000. One year later,…

OFFERED AT NO reserve and estimated at just $10,000-15,000, the well-weathered Bricklin SV-1 coming up at RM’s everyman Auburn auction is a chance to acquire one of the great what-might-have-beens. While not quite on a par with the Dymaxion or the Tucker, Malcolm Bricklin’s vision of the safety-conscious sports car of the future was an intriguing prospect. Its rapid demise into receivership, after barely a year and 3000 cars, put paid to a car that was influential but not universally loved – especially from an aesthetic point of view. Bricklin, who made his mint importing Subarus into the US, had the idea of using glassfibre to reduce weight, which could then be plumped back up with extra safety equipment. Assembled in Canada with an integral rollcage and side-impact beams, the…