Octane March 2024

WHEN IT COMES TO TVR there has always been good insane and bad insane. After such a promising restart, the current farce – reborn company, deposits taken, factory won and lost, no customer cars yet built – is clearly the bad insane. The Cerbera obviously is the good insane. The best. I toyed with the idea of buying a Cerbera myself a few years back when the kids were smaller and entry-level cars were hovering around the £15,000 mark. I can’t remember what put me off, perhaps a moment of clarity, or maybe I showed my wife a picture of the chassis and ran through the extent of the side impact protection our precious little darlings would have in the back. Given the relative values back then, I would probably…

JOHN SIMISTER ‘No V8s are stranger than those of pre-war Lancias, with their bank-spanning cylinder heads and eclectic vee-angles. They were never intended to race, but these two did. To drive both on the same day was close to surreal.’ John drives 1930s Dilambda and Astura racers on pages 98-106. JAROWAN POWER ‘I started my photography career at Lotus, so shooting there feels like coming home, and the beautifully recreated MkI was a pleasure to shoot. For me, the diminutive car embodies the light weight and engineering elegance that has come to represent Lotus.’ Jarowan’s images accompany Mark Dixon’s feature on pages 74-82. ANTONY INGRAM ‘I’ve long been curious about the Silver Seraph, which was the first genuinely new Rolls-Royce in my lifetime. It’s somewhat overshadowed by the Phantom that…

To take advantage of this month’s special offer and get three issues of Octane for £5, either visit octane.co.uk/subscribe or call +44 (0)330 333 9491 and quote code DJAN24 Buying your issue of Octane – new and old PRINT ISSUE Octane is available at the usual branches of UK shops, such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and independents, as well as WH Smith High Street and Travel. You can order the latest magazine or a back issue, delivered direct to your door, by visiting magsdirect.co.uk and searching for ‘Octane’. DIGITAL ISSUES Download the Octane Magazine app on Android or Apple and you will be able to enjoy the new issue. Alternatively you can source the digital edition via either Zinio or Readly. SUBSCRIBE You can find superb offers on print (order…

Le Jog, 2-5 December Thirty years since Le Jog’s first 1993 running by John Brown, people were racking their brains to think of another more destructive to the entry list than the 2023 event. The 1500-mile, 75-hour end-to-end reliability trial had one of the highest attrition rates in its history, with just 27 of the 44 starters making it to the northerly tip of Scotland and only four achieving Gold medals. They were Andy Lane and Iain Tullie in their BMW 2002 Tii, the German crew of Klaus Mueller and Eric Schwab in their Lancia Fulvia Coupé, Thomas Koerner in his BMW 320/4 navigated by Mueller’s regular co-driver Rolf Pellini, and MGB GT-mounted Stewart Christie and Andy Ballantyne. With the ever-evolving difficulty of the event now thought to have peaked,…

25-28 January Cavallino Classic In Palm Beach, Florida, Gilded Age mansion The Breakers hosts a Ferrari-only concours before classics and sports cars of all types mass at Mar-a-Lago resort. cavallino.com 27 January – 23 February Road to Hanoi Marathon Ho Chi Minh City is the starting point for this epic trip for crews in pre-1977 cars. The route winds through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, the schedule allowing for stops at must-see attractions including Halong Bay and Angkor Wat. rallytheglobe.com 28 January VSCC New Year Driving Tests Brooklands welcomes VSCC members and spectators for the Club’s first event of 2024, with the Tony Jones Trophy up for grabs. vscc.co.uk 28 January – 2 February The Winter Trial Starting and finishing in the Polish city of Krakow this time, but venturing…

THE PHRASE ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ now literally applies to Octane. Just before Christmas, Octane, the Historic Motoring Awards and other brand extensions such as the Classic Car Price Guide were acquired in full by Hothouse Media, the company run by Geoff Love and David Lillywhite, two of the founders of Octane. The take-over reunites the original Octane ‘gang of four’, which comprised Geoff, David, Octane founding editor Robert Coucher and current group advertising director Sanjay Seetanah. The move also brings Octane and its associated brands and products under the same roof as multiple award-winning quarterly magazine Magneto, the Concours on Savile Row, The Concours Year Book plus a contract publishing division in charge of a range of other titles. Hothouse Media can now claim…