Table of contents for March 2018 in Octane

WHILE THE OCTANE mantra is to provide something (well, several things) for every enthusiast in each and every edition, it is hard to recall a more diverse issue than this one. And it is equally difficult to pinpoint a more adventurous one. In a lipsmackingly, delectably good sort of way, that is. For a start, Le Jog has long been regarded as the UK’s most gruelling reliability trial. Even in mild weather, HERO’s Land’s End to John O’Groats epic is pretty demanding, but when it snows and the roads are covered with treacherous ice, it is a mammoth test of physical and mental endurance even for the most experienced crews. Naturally, therefore, we sent a total novice on it in a BMW 1602: none other than F1…

Two years afTer Defender production officially ended, Land Rover has announced that it will build up to 150 Defenders with 5.0-litre V8 engines – the fastest accelerating Land Rovers that the company has ever made. Each will be priced from £150,000. The Defenders will not be assembled as brand-new vehicles (the vehicle that appears in JLR’s official press photos was sold new as a 2.2 diesel in 2015). Instead, donors will be sourced as sub-20,000-mile examples built between 2012 and 2016, which will be stripped and completely re-engineered by JLR’s Land Rover Classic division. Both short-wheelbase ‘90’ and long-wheelbase ‘110’ versions will be made. At the heart of each Defender Works V8 will be a 400bhp, 380lb ft naturally aspirated petrol V8, mated to an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission with…

ONE OF THE greatest figures in post-war motor racing has died. The 6ft 4in American may never have won a world championship, but it is difficult to overstate his contribution as driver, team owner, constructor, mentor, friend and more. As the first victor to spray Champagne in celebration – after his 1967 Le Mans win with AJ Foyt in a GT40; pioneer of the Gurney Flap (a slim tab at the trailing edge of a car’s rear wing); and first to wear a full-face helmet, he left an indelible mark on motor sport as well as being immortalised on bumper stickers by Car and Driver’s ‘Dan Gurney for President’ campaign in 1964. At Scottish great Jim Clark’s funeral, his father revealed that the fluid Gurney was the driver that the…

IT’S ONE THING to launch a new motor sport series, but it’s slightly tricky when you don’t have a car. For Martyn Halliday, who’d not owned a trials car for decades after giving up the sport in the ’90s (he currently races a Chevron B15C), the answer was simple: ‘As the Historic Sporting Trials Association got off the ground, I thought I’d better get a car. Luckily I found an original Cannon rolling chassis in need of restoration, though it was pretty good – it needed only two or three new tubes. Ironically, for 20 years I’d had a Cannon chassis hanging on the wall, but sold it a couple of years before… for £700.’ The rest of the componentry was dictated by what was done in period, to keep…

THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY running of InterClassics Maastricht attracted a record 34,447 visitors to the Dutch city, up more than 16% on the previous record. The huge central display commemorated each of the event’s previous 18 themes and showcased everything from the Louwman Museum’s James Bond 1964 Aston Martin DB5 to its 1957 Le Mans-winning Jaguar D-type. The Aston is one of only four fully converted for Goldfinger, with Browning machine guns behind the front indicators, revolving numberplates, and tyre-shredding knives in the nearside rear hub. D-type XKD 606 rounded off Jaguar’s hat-trick of victories at La Sarthe when, entered by Ecurie Ecosse, it was driven to glory by Ron Flockhart and Ivor Bueb. Other favourites included the 1967 Ford Mustang ‘Eleanor’ from the Nicolas Cage remake of the Toby Halicki…

2-4 February Bremen Classic Motor Show Drawing 45,000 visitors and some 650 exhibitors, this is an inclusive affair, with all eras and most marques represented. Special displays this time will include a collection of Isle of Man TT-winning motorcycles. classicmotorshow.de 4-8 February The Winter Trial As ever, the exact route for the Winter Trial is being kept secret until shortly before the off, but we know that crews will visit Germany, Austria and Slovenia. Snow is expected from the start, and those in the Trial class will be tested by two night drives. thewintertrial.nl 7-11 February Rétromobile The halls of the Paris Expo are filled with some of the finest classic cars in the world, but don’t think for a moment that quirky or attainable stuff is excluded. In fact,…

The darkest hour of the day is just before dawn. And at this ungodly hour, the neon-lit quietude of Times Square is ruptured by the bark of a race-derived straight-six revving to the limiter and the explosions of unburnt fuel on the overrun, together announcing the arrival of the bright orange BMW M1. This is how Phillip Toledano enjoys his collection, in dawn raids on a deserted New York City. It’s six o’clock on a Sunday morning and we have some of the most famous streets in the world almost to ourselves. Born in London, Toledano is an artist and photographer who has called Manhattan home for over 25 years. When he started his car collection he favoured Italian beauties such as the Ferrari Dino 246 GT, Lancia Flaminia Sport…

YOU HAD TO FEEL for Jochen Neerpasch. Scroll back to the late 1970s and the general manager of BMW Motorsport GmbH had worked tirelessly to see his vision of a racing car enter production. Nevertheless, the squeeze was being put on the former works Porsche driver to get results trackside. This swiftly became a chokehold. The ’78 season had been and gone but it appeared as though the M1 would be out the following year. Then the FIA changed the rules for the Group 4 category of the World Championship for Makes. The plan had been to build 400 road cars, to appease homologation requirements. With the hurdle vaulted, BMW could then compete in the Group 4 class but, more importantly, field a small number of evolutionary Group 5 cars…

I’M REMINDED OF a lion’s nose when the Aurelia emerges. The curve of the bonnet as it jets out from under the panoramic windscreen and into the prow of the grille looks, in profile, like the muzzle of a lioness. In fact the whole car looks like something gorgeous but dangerous, seen fleetingly through dense bush. Those proportions are just heartbreaking, with a fingernail-snapping tension that would be too easy to spoil. An inch more height or squareness in those rear wings and this lovely Lancia’s beauty would evaporate like Ayesha in the flames of the Spirit of Life in Ryder Haggard’s She. Constituent parts are almost a caricature, the screen for example reminiscent of countless craft produced up the road at the factory on Lago d’Iseo by Riva Boats.…

Vintage Bentleys are not the easiest cars to drive. Every one of them seems to have its individual quirks, and even the specialists who work on them day in, day out will admit that the gearboxes can be ‘challenging’ to operate. Which, of course, is all part of their charm. To a point. That’s why leading Bentley specialist Tim Cresswell of VBE Restorations decided to build himself a vintage Bentley that was just a little kinder to the driver on a long run – that’s a long run as in the USA’s Colorado Grand classic rally, or the Peking-Paris. It would be a car that WO himself would recognise in all major respects, but with a number of subtle tweaks to improve the driving experience – among them, a 5.3-litre…

IF NECESSITY IS the mother of automotive invention, then the German Veritas marque is surely the proof. It was established shortly after the end of World War Two by former BMW works motorcycle racer Georg Meier, BMW 328 co-designer Ernst Loof and engineer Lorenz Dietrich. The Allies had banned Germany from making engines over 1000cc, so early Veritas cars used existing pre-war BMW parts. Having built up the chassis and running gear, Loof then fashioned svelte aerodynamic bodywork, often using top-quality materials from scrap wartime aircraft. Bonhams’ Veritas is based on a 1935 BMW 315, but how it originally looked is unknown since its earliest photograph shows an amateurish, locally built, very ‘non-Loof’ two-seater body. It was in the same Dutch ownership from 1964 to 2006, then acquired by Veritas…

Mansell celebrations for London Classic Car Show The star of the London Classic Car Show will be 1992 Formula 1 World Champion Nigel Mansell. The 25th anniversary of the Englishman’s title for Williams will be celebrated at London’s ExCel on 15-18 February with cars, trophies and other memorabilia. Mansell will be on-hand during the show and is also set to be interviewed in the Supaguard Theatre in sister event Historic Motorsport International (one ticket gains entry to both shows). Other features of LCCS include a focus on getaway cars curated by actor Phil Glenister, while the centrepiece will remain the Grand Avenue, which allows visitors to watch cars in action indoors. For details, see wwwthelondonclassiccarshow.co.uk.. Make a date for a Goodwood trackday Goodwood Motor Circuit has released its trackday dates…

FORD REVEALED a ‘Bullitt’ version of its latest Mustang at Detroit, in Highland Green and suitably sparse in its detailing, to mark the 50th anniversary of the film. The launch was special because the new car (with a hefty 475bhp and an aural output to match) was joined on stage by an original 1968 film car that hasn’t been seen for nearly 40 years. Two Mustang GTs were used in Bullitt, one for stunts, the other – known as 559 from the final digits of its chassis number – for everything else. Octane reported last March on the discovery of the battered stunt car in a scrapyard in Mexico. The other, the so-called ‘halo’ car, is the one that finally broke cover at the North American International Motor Show. While…

MORGAN IS JOINING forces with another iconic name from British motoring’s past as part of its project to put its all-electric EV3 into production this year. The Malvern company has formed a technical partnership with Frazer-Nash Energy Systems to bring the new car to fruition. Said to be inspired by the pre-war Aero three-wheeler, classic motorcycles and 1950s automatons, the new electric car will have a range of 120 miles and be the first Morgan to use composite panels. For more sporting driving, the low centre of gravity will add to the Morgan’s handling prowess, while owners will be able to take advantage of the huge sprint pace and torque offered by EVs. The EV3 was sired by the 2012 Plus E concept, but the link-up with Frazer-Nash is said…

THE FIRST SUNDAY Scramble of 2018 swamped Bicester Heritage, with more than 4000 enthusiasts flooding through the gates of the 350-acre ex-RAF base. They were treated to a line-up of more than 1000 classic vehicles and supercars, ranging from Austin Sevens to the latest Ferrari 812 Superfast. New Bicester Heritage specialist Sports Purpose drew huge crowds with a stunning display that included the Leyton House CG901B. The car was produced for the 1990 Formula 1 World Championship and built in nearby Telford Road, Bicester. Meanwhile Alan Jones’ 1979 Williams FW07 Formula 1 performed ear-splitting start-ups with a crowd of onlookers in Historit, the on-site car storage company’s workshop. Plenty of stunning machinery was also brought along by visitors, with some delectable pre-war cars – especially Rileys – and a wealth…

IT MIGHT SEEM that, what with the Carrera and the Carrera S and the GTS and the GT3 and the Turbo (and more), there’s precious little room left in the current 991-generation Porsche 911 line-up to exploit. Yet we’ve got another addition to the canon here, in the form of the 911 Carrera T. Octane readers may recall that, in 1968, the 911 T (standing for Touring) won the Monte Carlo Rally. Well, this is a nod back to that legendary car – but, slightly confusingly, this time around the ‘911 T’ is not a softer, more luxuriously appointed Porsche in a Touring mould; rather, it’s a stripped-out version based on the standard 3.0-litre, 365bhp turbocharged Carrera. Much as, further up the 911 tree, the GTS is a Carrera S…

A race, in open vehicles, in December, does not seem a sensible idea, yet the calendar insists. So we are dressed in multiple layers of attempted Victoriana. I look like an overfed buffoon, but I am not alone. Frankly, I don’t care about visual ridicule because I would not miss this. Something significant is about to happen, and I am to be part of it. Exactly 120 years ago to the day, Britain had its first-ever motor racing meeting. It was on a cement-surfaced oval velodrome, built in the grounds of Sheen House (now gone), near Richmond, Surrey, to satisfy the craze for competitive cycling. Motorised bicycles took part, and so did motorised tricycles: machines able to stand on their own wheels and thus almost be single-seater cars. And now…

MORRIS. IT’S NOT a car make that appears in these pages very often. Yet many readers of ‘a certain age’ will have learnt to drive in a Morris – maybe a Morris Eight, a Minor or a Mini. Those were the days of enjoyable motoring, when every young driver knew how fast his or her car would go because they had done it, even if it was only 73mph. These are the people who will love the Morris Motors Museum, but later generations, too, will be fascinated at the glimpse into the past at this dear old place. Just a few miles from Blenheim, in beautiful Oxfordshire countryside, the Morris Motors Museum shares the goods-yard buildings at the old Hanborough railway station with the Oxford Bus Museum. This bus museum…

DICK SEAMAN PHOTOGRAPH So evocative of the golden-era of GP racing it might as well be a scratch-and-sniff card, this original 8x6in photograph captures Dick Seaman at the wheel of his Maserati V8RI during the 1936 German Grand Prix. Interestingly, the back is marked ‘Please return to C Posthumus’ – the noted motoring writer, Cyril. Since he is no longer with us, somebody else will have to look after the photograph instead. Surely anyone with even the remotest interest in 1930s racing would be glad to add it to their archive. £95. speedsportgallery.co.uk BRITISH CLASSICS T-SHIRT Pembrokeshire-based Two Red Dogs has gathered your favourite four-wheeled Great Britons – Mini, Land Rover, Rolls-Royce et al – on this hand-printed shirt. £18. tworeddogs.co.uk BMW M1 PROCAR BY CARRERA A Procar racer that…

WHAT WILL BE different at the 2018 collector car auctions compared with last year? There could be a few twists, at least in the US, where the sub-$100,000 market is looking very strong with more buyers seeking collector cars. With the US domestic stock market roaring and unemployment down, it could be a golden moment when optimism will rule. Can it last? It’s doubtful, but for now it’s time to sit back and enjoy the ride. The last six weeks of 2017 kept several auction houses busy as they handled nearly $90m in sales. In the target-rich environment that is New York City, RM Sotheby’s held its Icons Sale in conjunction with parent company Sotheby’s, which was holding its ‘A Life of Luxury Sale’ in Manhattan. The headliner was an…

WITH THE DIM light of spring now visible at the end of winter’s dark tunnel, you might feel inspired to buy a run-down classic and spend the next three months getting it up and running for the classic rally season. Or, you head to the Scottish Highlands and buy this ready-to-go Porsche 356B on which someone else has done (or paid for) the hard work. Border Reivers, which must be a contender for the most scenically sited old-car dealership in Britain, previously sold this 356 three years ago. Back then it was in the white livery left over from an earlier restoration carried out during the late 1980s, when it was converted to fast road/rally specification to compete in the Pirelli Classic Marathon and the Historic Monte Carlo Rally. An…

 AN HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT preproduction Land Rover that was found rotting in a Midlands garden in 2015 is to be sympathetically restored by Jaguar Land Rover. It’s one of two vehicles that made the marque’s debut at the Amsterdam motor show in 1948. ‘I HAVE THESE TWO OLD LAND ROVERS SITTING IN MY GARDEN. IF YOU DON’T WANT THEM, THEY’RE GOING DOWN THE TIP!’ Chassis R07 had been thought lost, and was not recorded as a survivor in historian Tony Hutchings’ authoritative 1982 work Land Rover – the Early Years. It came to light when the previous owner contacted a friend and reportedly said: ‘I have these two old Land Rovers sitting in my garden. If you don’t want them, they’re going down the tip!’ Fortunately the friend, who remains anonymous,…

COMPETITIVE MOTOR SPORT is to take place in a UK city centre for the first time in a generation when Motofest Coventry takes over the former heart of the British motor industry on 2-3 June. The Midlands city that once bustled to the manufacture of Jaguar, Alvis, Triumph, Riley, Rover, Standard, Lea-Francis and many more is to stage time-trialling from a range of British Automobile Racing Club championships. The MSA has agreed to grant a licence for the time-trials, which will take place on the free festival’s city-centre sprint circuit, carved out of Coventry’s ring road and developed in association with circuit designers Driven International. The move is possible only since the Motor Sports Association and Auto-Cycle Union were appointed the authorising bodies for closed-road motor sport events in April…

A VAST SELECTION of classic and vintage machinery flocked to the French capital for the biannual Traversée. Organiser Vincennes en Anciennes said the 18th running of the event attracted more than 600 cars (including military vehicles and utilities), along with 73 motorcycles, 62 pushbikes (a record), four buses and 18 tractors, all at least 30 years old. The 8am start was in pretty dreadful weather, but it brightened up later in the morning. The range of cars was astonishing, kicking off with a 1919 Rochet-Schneider, while the oldest motorcycle was a 1943 Harley-Davidson WLC and the oldest tractor was a 1948 Allgaier R22. Not surprisingly, French marques were very well represented, including masses of Peugeots and Renaults as well as slightly more rarefied fare from Mathis, De Dion Bouton, Facel…

WHILE CLASSIC gatherings take place across the UK on New Year’s Day, the mass meeting at Brooklands is easily the largest. This year, the displays were greatly enhanced by the completion of the final stage of the museum’s Aircraft Factory & Race Track Revival project. Cars packed the Finishing Straight as well as the Members’ Banking and the Motoring Village and Aircraft Park. Cars on display included David Naylor’s MG L2 Magna Sports, which was a works entry in the 1933 Brooklands 12 Hour Race. Other highlights included a 1937 Autovia Sportsman saloon and a host of American cars such as a 1949 custom Mercury coupe. Upstaging many was a 1937 E27N fire engine that crowds buzzed around all day. The Museum’s Motoring Sheds and recently opened Aircraft Factory and…

IT MIGHT NOT have quite the same ring as ‘Mercedes AMG’ or ‘BMW M Division’ but Toyota’s new high-performance GR brand – which stands for Gazoo Racing, until now Toyota’s in-house racing department – is set to go global from this year. The £26,295 Yaris GRMN here is the first true taste of what’s to come. And a right little nutcase of a hot hatchback it is, too. In this case GRMN is short for ‘Gazoo Racing Meisters Nürburgring’ but in the fullness of time there will be GRs, GR Sports and GRMN Toyotas, each being more potent than the previous, with GRMN being the top dog. In the case of the diminutive Yaris this means a 209bhp 1.8-litre supercharged engine that’s been pinched almost unchanged from the Lotus Elise,…

EVERYTHING IN LIFE was ticking along nicely, except that my fit, active and able father had become unwell with stomach pains. Shortly before Christmas 2017 we received the devastating news that my father has terminal cancer. When you speak with people about this, it is saddening to learn how many other people are similarly affected. But it is also amazing to witness the level of generosity that comes to the fore and that we have all witnessed since. My father was and remains a person very proud of his engineering career, having spent a great deal of time working for a well-known military aerospace organisation. As a diversion he enjoys the Isle of Man TT races and the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power events, and he has often threatened to treat…

LOOK AT THE picture above. It’s of a concept car, the M1 Hommage, and it dates from 2008. Now compare it with the i8 Concept, top right of the facing page, unveiled just three years later. It’s very different, but there are similarities, yes? Same wedge profile, same squashed BMW kidney grilles, same horizontal strip containing front lights – all of which were present in the 1978 original M1. Which itself was derived from the Paul Bracq-designed 1972 Turbo concept. BMW likes its concept cars. Sometimes they’re remarkably close to a forthcoming production model – like the i8 Concept – and sometimes they’re completely off-the-wall. The fun lies in trying to predict which category the latest flight-of-fancy falls into. For example, in 2008 BMW also revealed the Gina roadster concept…

Monaco, Sunday 7 May, 1967. It’s early afternoon and the sun is high, with just a few minutes to go before the start of the Formula 1 Grand Prix. His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III slides into the driving seat, ready for his traditional pre-race lap. To his right sits his wife, Princess Grace, and photos of the two, inside the car, will be seen all over the world next day. Ferruccio Lamborghini is a happy man: this is pure marketing gold for his company, Automobili Lamborghini, barely four years old but already successful. The Lamborghini-badged car on the racetrack is the latest creation of young designer Marcello Gandini, for Carrozzeria Bertone – and it is about to become one of the most renowned show-cars ever built. It’s called the…

Last time I met Hannu Mikkola was in the Southern Hemisphere, and here we are again. Kenya this time, rather than Patagonia (see Octane 122) and fewer flights to get here, though the one from Nairobi in a tiny Cessna isn’t one I’ll forget in a hurry. Still, when you’re invited to share a car with a legend such as Hannu, crossing the globe is no big deal. Rally drivers get around. Always have. Even retired ones. He takes the front seat next to young Curtis the pilot, who is courteous and polite. Turns out Mikkola’s a slightly nervous passenger, somewhat wary of certain fixtures and fittings that might not have passed scrutineering in his game. I can’t afford to be a nervous passenger, either now or later, so I…

ON 15 SEPTEMBER 1885 a giant pachyderm, transported from the Sudan to fame in England and then sold to America as the star attraction in the Barnum & Bailey circus, was struck and killed by a locomotive. Such was the renown of this magnificent elephant that his name entered the language, becoming 80 years later the user-friendly sobriquet for the world’s largest passenger aeroplane: Jumbo. By the time you read this, and after almost half a century of service, the Boeing 747 will have been retired from America’s passenger fleets. Other world airlines will soon follow. Freight (and the US president on Air Force One) will however continue to travel by Jumbo for the foreseeable future. As the 1960s unrolled, America and Russia were racing into space and aiming towards…

Ford GT40 The Autobiography of 1075 RAY HUTTON, Porter Press International, £60, ISBN 978 1 907085 68 0 For someone like this reviewer, born in the 1950s, race-car-obsessed in the 1960s and having a Ford-driving father, the Ford GT40 is the coolest and most wonderful racing car ever. It achieved this status by what it was, why it existed, what it did and who drove it. And the greatest of all GT40s was 1075, the GT40 that won Le Mans not once but twice. This is the GT40 whose Gulf Oil colour scheme is aped by many a replica. It is the car in which Jacky Ickx played mind games with Hans Herrmann at Le Mans in 1969, obliging the Porsche 908 to pass him on the last lap by…

BUT FOR A marginal 0.59% dip in December, the HAGI Porsche Index would have ended 2017 with 14 consecutive years of growth. That may seem like headline news, but the fact that it didn’t means little, for while the HAGI P declined over 2017 by a mere 0.18%, growth in other segments was equally minimal, with the HAGI Top overall market measure gaining 1.66% over the year, and the HAGI Ferrari index adding just 2.45%. The last time the HAGI P posted an annual loss was back in 2003, and prior to that in 1993. As for the HAGI Top, 2017 was the slowest growth year since 1999, when it last posted a deficit. The real story behind these numbers is that the investment-grade collector-car market has enjoyed a remarkable…

NOW AND THEN a car turns up that triggers mental images of the remarkable situations it must have been involved in through the decades. This 1937 Horch 853 Sport Cabriolet is just such a vehicle. In its day the height of sporting luxury, the Horch was originally owned by a man called Aksel Holm, the German consul based in the Norwegian coastal town of Alesund. Holm is recorded as using the car to travel around the area and for the occasional foray to Oslo, 650km away – but he had still clocked up only 10,000km in it by 1940, when Norway surrendered to the Germans. Holm held on to the Horch for two more years before it was requisitioned for use at the Trondheim air base which, as a Focke-Wulf…

WHEN IT COMES to muscle cars, one naturally thinks of the good ol’ US of A. However, the GM-owned Australian domestic marque Holden had quietly been making its own brand of big-engined beauts since the late 1960s. It wasn’t until the third-generation Monaro that examples reached the UK, though badged under GM’s UK brand, Vauxhall. And now Holden no longer builds cars in Australia, those muscle cars are a thing of the past. At first sight, the Vauxhall Monaro seemed an odd beast – a large, nondescript coupé with no presence or inherent credibility in the UK. However, under the bonnet was a 333bhp, 5.7-litre version of GM’s LS1 V8, coupled to an admittedly agricultural but capable transmission. That first Monaro, designated the CV8, was a sensation. It was a…