Octane March 2019의 목차

AS I WRITE THIS, night has already descended on London. At 4.30pm. It was not even a case of blue skies turning black, but grey skies gradually working their way through the spectrum of greys until they got to Very Darkest Grey. We have not seen the sun today. Yet on my screen is everything that would make the world right just at the moment. It is a picture of the Lichtman 300 SL Gullwing arrowing across Arizona under unfeasibly cloud-free skies. A highly desirable car blasting along incredible roads through majestic scenery, bathed in sunlight. For me – especially at this depressing time of year – this is the entire classic car dream wrapped up in a single image. Being lived to the full. Properly. Better even than the…

A ramshAckle BelgiAn garage has yielded a million-pound treasure trove of three fabulous Bugattis that have been stashed away for more than half a century. The cars were the property of Dutch sculptor August Thomassen, who kept them because of their stunning form rather than to drive. Thomassen so worshipped Bugatti that he cast a bronze of Ettore, now on display at the Cité de l’Automobile in Molsheim. The star of the discovery is a Graber-bodied 1937 Bugatti Type 57 Cabriolet. Estimated to be worth between €400,000 and €600,000, chassis 57500 is one of just nine Type 57s given bodies by the Swiss coachbuilder and it still has all the unique features and details that hallmark it as a Graber build. Thomassen bought it in 1960 and it was little…

AN AMERICAN MOTOR museum is to shut and its entire 160-car collection will be auctioned off for charity in the spring. The cars in the Tupelo Automobile Museum Collection cover automotive history from the 1890s right through to the 1990s. The Mississippi facility was established by businessman Frank K Spain to showcase the collection he had built up since the mid-70s. Sadly, he died just four years after the museum opened in 2002. Spain made his money in telecommunications and media, and later by servicing microwave ovens. His several stand-out American cars include a 1948 Tucker reputed to be one of the original Indy test cars, and a 1929 Duesenberg Model J Sedan. Also represented are prestigious European marques such as Bentley, Lagonda, Hispano-Suiza and Talbot-Lago, and museum staples including…

30 January – 6 February Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique Crews set out from cities across Europe to gather in the French department of Drôme, where the real fun begins. Over five days competitors will tackle regularity sections and 1000m-plus peaks as they slither towards Monaco’s Port Hercule. acm.mc 1-3 February Bremen Classic Motor Show Drawing 45,000 visitors and 650 exhibitors, this year’s Bremen show will host classic estate cars and American motorcycles. classicmotorshow.de 6-10 February Rétromobile Citroën takes centre stage in Paris as the marque celebrates its centenary, so expect a party atmosphere along with the customarily outstanding assortment of classic cars and mountains of automobilia. retromobile.com 9 February Concours in the Hills Fountain Hills, Arizona, is best known for a giant fountain that shoots water 170m into the air, but…

‘I suppose the passion for cars came from the fact that my dad had a TR3A in the garage ever since I can remember. It was up on bricks, covered in sheets and boxes… I was fascinated by the shape of this thing lurking underneath all that debris. I just like mechanical things, it’s always been in my nature.’ The passion for classic cars never went away even as Guy’s career skyrocketed. Coldplay’s success has allowed him to feed the obsession. ‘I started collecting seven or eight years ago,’ he explains. ‘I got an urge to get back into it. so I bought a couple of e-types, pulled them apart at my workshop at home and a big frenzy of e-type activity followed. I ended up with about a dozen…

At the beginning of this century, the car world was very different from how it had been 40 years earlier. There were fewer manufacturers; many had been lost forever, while others were incorporated into bigger companies. Racing cars had become totally different from road-legal cars, while a bigger, richer market allowed even ‘exclusive’ manufacturers to sell their models by the thousand instead of in mere dozens. Maserati represents these changes in a Modena-based microcosm. It wasn’t always in Modena, though. The company was founded in Bologna in 1914 by technical genius and gifted racer Alfieri Maserati, partnered by his brothers. It began as a mechanics’ shop working on Isotta-Fraschinis, and it soon developed, rather successfully, into a sort of racing department for Diatto. It was not until 1926 that Maserati…

‘It’s so under-rated,’ says Paul Wood, dedicated Rolls-Royce specialist and enthusiast. ‘People think they’re a big clumsy limousine and collectors ignore them. But if you have a collection of Rolls-Royces, you’ve got to have a Phantom V.’ That’s why I’m here in deepest rural Essex, close to Christmas on a day when we got lucky with the weather. It’s cold but crisp under huge East Anglia skies amid the kind of landscape that only just manages to give the gargantuan Phantom any human scale. Within, it’s warm and quiet, cosy in the manner of a Georgian drawing room. And Paul is on hand to convince me of its virtues, having called the Octane office to suggest he should do so. This, to his mind, is one of the finest Rolls-Royces…

WHERE I LIVE, near Milan, there’s an old colloquial expression, Caval tacum? Tacum il gris! – literally meaning ‘Which horse do we hitch to the cart? Let’s hitch up the grey-haired one!’ It dates from the times when horses were used for work, and it means that when you need to do something really important, you pick the oldest member of the team, because he has proved his worth and reliability. My beloved Mercedes S123 240TD is the ‘grey-haired’ workhorse in question and, as I write these words, he’s parked in the garage with a full load, including scaffolding on the roof rack, while our more modern, everyday family station wagons stand empty. The Delbò family is moving house, and, while the 240 and I have coped with a fair…

We’re on the eighth generation now, and even to say that the number hasn’t changed is a little disingenuous. In Porsche code we’ve moved by just one digit, from 991 to 992, yet this is an almost completely new car. It has an all-new, aluminium-intense body, a new interior and a new, eight-speed PDK gearbox. Even the 3.0-litre twin-turbo flat-six has been thoroughly overhauled and shares little more than its basic dimensions with the 991’s, its power jumping 30bhp to 444bhp. Compare that with the 1963 original’s 130bhp 2.0-litre… Given that so much is new and that the body is a few kilos lighter, it’s a surprise that weight is up by 55kg. Why so? Well, the new car’s exhaust has a Gasoline Particulate Filter (GPF) that adds 15kg, the…

Donington Park: the Pioneers JOHN BAILIe, Silver Fox Creative Ltd, £85, ISBN 978 1 5272 2997 6 It is not as if Donington has had a uniquely turbulent life in comparison to other circuits, but somehow its traumas just feel more personal. That is no doubt influenced by the ever-present spectre of the late, great Tom Wheatcroft, a giant of a character whose battle to revive the circuit in the 1970s, and then to bring Formula 1 back to it, is the stuff of Hollywood. Or should be. One dreads to think how this local legend, who created a building empire from scratch before indulging his passion for motor racing, would have reacted to the shenanigans of the past few years, starting with the closure of the circuit and culminating…

By Spark Price £139.95 Material Resincast British Racing Motors may not be the racing marque that you first associate with the word ‘reliability’ but in 1962 its latest Formula 1 car, the P57, came good and Graham Hill’s car not only finished every race but was first in four of the season’s nine GPs. That was enough to make him 1962 World Champion. Hill also won the non-championship Mexican Grand Prix that year, and Spark’s latest ‘kerbside’ model depicts his single-seater as it raced at Mexico City’s Magdalena Mixhuca circuit. While the 1:18-scale Graham Hill looks a little generic facially, his trademark moustache leaves you in no doubt as to the subject’s identity, while the car itself is nicely finished and has a very acceptable level of detail for the…

THE FIRST BIG RECORD of 2019 fell during Mecum’s mammoth 11-day Kissimmee auction on 3-13 January. The one-and-only 1967 Ford Mustang GT500 Super Snake went on to become the most expensive Mustang ever sold at auction – for a second time. At $2,200,000 it doubled its estimate and eclipsed the previous record of $1.3 million set by this same car back in 2013. The car was built by Carroll Shelby, who intended it to be the fastest Mustang of all, and was used to promote a new range of Goodyear Thunderbolt tyres. Fitted with the same high-output 424ci Ford V8 engine as used in 1966’s Le Mans-winning GT40, it drove flat-out on these tyres for 500 miles at an average speed of 142mph. The Mustang was too expensive to put…

IN SOME RESPECTS Porsche is leading the way. In 2017, in the wake of a period of a sustained strong growth, the HAGI P was the first index to post a calendar-year deficit, albeit just 0.18%. That was the first time since index inception in 2008 that any index had filed a yearly deficit. Now, for calendar year 2018, the HAGI P’s annual loss amounts to 6.51%. Ferrari, too, has dipped marginally into negative territory, with a 0.43% yearly fall-back. Yet the HAGI Top overall investment-grade market measure has managed to stay in the black by 1.79%. So what’s wrong with Porsche? Not a lot compared with global equities, which declined 7.46% through 2018. Moreover, in the course of the past ten years the HAGI P has gained 339.7% while…

WE WOULDN’T BE surprised if you hadn’t heard of the 348 Serie Speciale. Despite the limited-run variant representing an interesting turning point in Ferrari’s history, it’s a model that seems to have been forgotten. Just 100 were built for the US market (35 tb coupés, and 65 targa-topped ts versions) and it was a car that succeeded in putting right many of the 348’s small but numerous flaws. Incumbent company president Luca di Montezemolo had big plans to transform Ferrari’s failing road car business, which meant that impractical, unreliable and unprofitable Ferraris were about to become a thing of the past. The real shift came with the launch of the F355, but the Serie Speciale was proof that the old attitudes were changing. When launched in 1989, the 348 was…

You need only read Chrono to learn what makes lovers of Haute Horlogerie, er, tick: ‘manufacture’ (a watchmaker that employs its own in-house movement), ‘complications’ (functions in addition to the simple telling of the time), and automatic movements. Always automatic movements. Never quartz ones. That’s why we love the Seiko 5. An in-house automatic movement, and always a day/date window, too – that’ll be your complication. Since 1963 the 5 (Seiko’s longest-lived sub-brand) has been building a cult following with five key attributes: not only the automatic winding and day/date display, but water and shock resistance too, and an ‘unbreakable’ mainspring. So they’re tough. The difference is the egalitarian pricing. There are few quality automatics this side of £1000, even fewer below £500, but with the 5 you can take…

AS AN ENGINEER and fine watch specialist whose company machines parts to a tolerance of five microns – a tenth of the gauge of a human hair – Giles English has an appreciation of machines that are engineered to last. ‘You love objects because they’re beautiful,’ he says, ‘and, like watches, old cars will go on forever if you service them – and with no depreciation! Depreciation, and the hateful disposable society we live in, is why I don’t like buying new cars.’ English is a long-term Porsche fan. He bought a 1973 911T with his first paycheck, when aged just 21, and he’s loyal, too – he still has that very car and recently drove across America in it. The front-engined V8 GT epiphany was more recent, but goes…

IT’S ALWAYS amusing to read that someone has had exactly the same experience as yourself, so I have been following Massimo Delbò’s progress with his Fiat 500 in Octane Cars with even greater interest than usual. My own Cinquecento is a ’68 500L and was given to me by the lovely Sig Faccio, night porter at Hotel Crimea in Turin, where I used to stay in 1989 (and still do) when I was working for Iveco, whose then Design Centre was in Ulm, as part of Magirus. When I noticed the car was missing from its usual parking spot, having failed its Revisione (after being seen going through some red traffic lights by the Carabinieri, due to poor brakes!), and I enquired, Sig Faccio said I could have it, since…

Giotto Bizzarrini was a skilled test driver and engineer, and the father of the Ferrari 250 GTO. After he left Ferrari he created the 5300 GT in his own name, and described it as ‘GTO 2.0’. It was built primarily for racing, but the Stradale version makes even a freezing cold day in the Cotswolds feel like a long summer’s evening at Le Mans. He’d been headhunted by Enzo from Alfa Romeo in 1957 and was soon in his element designing, testing and refining experimental sports cars to compete in GT racing around the world. He lived and breathed motorsport and was given total freedom to push the boundaries. ‘Ferrari gave me everything,’ Bizzarrini later said. ‘Mentality, technique… they had given me a great deal of responsibility without any captain…

Bradford used to be all hills and mills. The hills are still there but the mills have long gone, as has Bradford’s contribution to automotive history: Jowett. Jowett’s first car emerged from the company’s tiny premises in 1906, powered by a water-cooled flat-twin engine that would stay in production for 47 years. As cars go, the Jowett was more clog than running shoe, hardly fleet of foot though it had a reputation for being solidly built, reliable and good at hauling a load, particularly around the hills of its native Yorkshire, where, despite the paucity of cylinders, it was undefeated by even the steepest of Pennine inclines. It was not, then, the sort of company you would expect to have produced a race- and rally-winning sports car. Nor to have…

Few AlFA Romeos have met such a positive reception as the Giulia Quadrifoglio. A 503bhp Ferrari-developed 2.9-litre V6 makes it outrageously fast, but it’s the looks, steering and dynamic polish that add up to a fantastic super saloon and a much-needed return to form for the fast Alfa. The Giulia may have proved Alfa Romeo was back in the game but, to be competitive in this day and age, an SUV was needed. Enter the Stelvio, a compact off-roader based on the Giorgio platform and built on the same production line as the range-topping Quadrifoglio. We’re testing one in Scotland and, with roads as spectacular as the wintry views, it’s a good start to the day. The Stelvio is handsome, but the Quadrifoglio turns up the menace with more aggressive…

The maker claimed it was ‘the simplest speed camera in the world’, and for once this was not pure advertising hyperbole. Simple, however, referred to its use rather than to the fascinating mechanism that rendered it so ‘simple’. Uniquely, the three shutter speeds of the camera were gravity controlled. A minimalist ‘Streamlined Moderne’ black Bakelite envelope barely interrupted by a flush wind-on knob, a lever for cocking the shutter and a release button recessed in a comet-shaped crater all belie the ingenious all-metal focal-plane shutter lurking within. On first acquaintance it would be only natural to assume that a Purma, in common with most simple cameras of the day, had only one pre-set speed. On being informed that it actually has three, one is presented with a conundrum because there…

A STUNNING single-owner collection of 140 desirable modern classics has been consigned by RM Sotheby’s, which will spread the lots across four of its key events this year. The collection focuses on the most desirable European and Japanese performance cars from the 1980s to the new millennium. It will initially be split – largely without reserve – between RM’s Paris auction (6 February, 20-plus cars), Amelia Island (9 March, more than 10 cars) and Fort Lauderdale (29-30 March, 20-plus cars). However, the bulk of the collection, which includes over 30 Mercedes-Benz, 27 BMWs, eight Jaguars and seven Ferraris, will be saved for RM’s inaugural auction at the vast Techno Classica Essen sale on 11 April. Highlights of the 80 youngtimers heading there are a low-mileage 2011 Porsche GT3 RS (€150,000-175,000),…

SHORT OF FINDING an original Lancia Stratos or Periscopio Countach in your garage, the Fiat X1/9 is perhaps the purest, most uncorrupted vision of a 1970s Bertone wedge that you can buy. It made the transformation from concept to road car without losing any drama, and that’s this mid-engined sports car’s greatest strength. Following Fiat’s shift to a range of front-wheel-drive cars in the early 1970s, it needed a sports car to sit at the top of its range. Consulting with Bertone from the start, Fiat wanted front-wheel drive, but Nuccio Bertone and Marcello Gandini had other ideas and the concept of Bertone’s ‘baby Miura’ was born. After initial scepticism, the angular shape was signed off by Gianni Agnelli, so an all-new chassis had to be designed, in the process…

‘A CHAP CAME UP TO TALK TO ME AT A GAS STATION AND I ACCIDENTALLY SQUIRTED PETROL INTO HIS YOUNG DAUGHTER’S EYE’ WHEN I TELL people that I’m inept, they think I’m just being modest. My previous books have involved cycling the route of the 1914 Giro d’Italia on a period bike that I built-up from parts found at a bike jumble, and, most recently, cycling the length of the former Iron Curtain on a crappy East German shopping bike. But with the Model T, I genuinely did not know where to start. On the first morning of my US coast-to-coast drive, I had to Google on my phone about where to put the oil in. I really don’t know what I’m doing. The Model T book, Another Fine Mess,…

Rally Round Africa 1-27 OCTOBER More than 25 crews took part in the four-week Rally Round Africa that started in Dar es Salaam and travelled nearly 7000km through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland and South Africa. Vintage winners were David and Barbara Berks in a 1929 Chrysler 75, while Australians Steve and Ruth Lambert, driving a 1972 BMW 2002 Touring, claimed the honours in the Classic group. INDOCHINA ROAD CLASSIC 30 OCTOBER – 21 NOVEMBER Limited to 25 cars, this epic rally was amusingly described by the organisers – Destination Rally – as ‘90% asphalt, 10% dirt… but good roads’. Over 4700km and 23 days it took in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. AUTOSPORT INTERNATIONAL 10-13 JANUARY New life has been breathed into this event at the NEC, Birmingham, and highlights…

Rotten Yiura in huge Hrench barnfind A dilapidated Lamborghini Miura LP400 is among 81 cars discovered in Tarbes, in the Hautes-Pyrénées region of France. The collection belonged to Henri Ruggieri and was scattered around his overgrown property. It only came to light when local authorities ordered the site to be cleared after his death. Many are everyday fare, but highlights include a Porsche 356 pre-A, Jaguar E-type, Hotchkiss Grégoire prototype, Lancia Flaminia Coupé, and three Oldsmobile Toronados. The collection was due to be sold by Adam Enchères on 20 January, the Miura estimated at €400-600k. Gongs for motoring gurus There was a welcome trio of motoring-related awards in the New Year’s Honours list in the UK. Legendary F1 and road car designer Gordon Murray was made a CBE (Commander of…

BRABHAM HAS ANNOUNCED two huge developments for its BT62 track car that was launched at the Australian High Commission in London last summer to conicide with the 70th anniversary of the ‘Black Jack’ marque. Secretly built and tested in Adelaide, the BT62 is to be powered by a Brabham-badged naturally aspirated 5.4-litre engine that gives it something in the region of 700bhp and, thanks to carbonfibre and Kevlar construction, it weighs in at under a tonne. Brabham has now confirmed that for an extra £150,000 (in Europe; there are no prices for other territories yet) the million-pound track car will be available as a road car and also that it is to race at Le Mans in 2020. Even six months ago, the prospect of either looked a very long…

Bold. Daring. Foolish? Bringing an old competition car back to life after decades of resting isn’t for the faint-hearted. But sometimes the lure can be too powerful to resist, especially with the promise of inspiring roads on which to exercise the result of your endeavours. The vastness of the American West offers plenty of these, sinuous asphalt and the evidence of millions of years of geological drama heading into the far distance under huge skies. So this is the story of a single-family-owned ‘garage find’, of how the spirit of this machine and its former owner has inspired its current custodian, and how it reprises the activities of its ancestors in a rally that, while on the US side of the southern border, also has a strong visual sense of…

Thornley Kelham and Guy Berryman are kindred spirits. ‘I need all of the details – even the ones you can’t see – to be done exactly as they were originally,’ explains Berryman. Thornley Kelham has recently enjoyed success and plenty of attention with its Lancia Aurelia ‘Outlaw’, featuring a lowered roofline, a fuel-injected Flaminia engine and other modifications (see Octane 165), but the company’s core work remains in authentic restorations that meet even Guy’s exacting standards. Wayne Kelham takes up the story. ‘With the Bizzarrini project we had a very good starting point,’ he says. ‘It was a largely complete and unmolested car. Details on it were then cross-referenced with various books we had already sourced, to ascertain everything was as it seemed.’ Despite these encouraging signs, the restoration left…

The Bonneville salt flats. We know them best for the Speed Week, when velocity-fuelled constructors and drivers bring mad machines and discover how fast they can go, and for record-breaking runs by anything with wheels and an engine. But what if the engine were human? Yes, Bonneville is where bicycles are propelled at their fastest, too. And in 2018 an extraordinary new speed record was set. ‘Mother-of-three becomes fastest human being on a bike at 183.9mph’. That’s how The Telegraph announced the news that Denise Mueller-Korenek from San Diego had just smashed the World Land Speed Record for riding a bicycle. No human – man or woman – had ever travelled at a higher speed under their own steam on a bike. Mueller-Korenek knew it would be practically impossible to…

EARLY PLUCK HAS given way to self-doubt. Our hero may be 89 years old, but he hasn’t lost his talent for steering a Porsche with the sort of precision you expect of a past master. It’s just that this ‘navigator’ cannot find north even with the aid of a compass and is momentarily confused. Herbert Linge is unfazed. He doesn’t slow down as his notional navigator tries to find his place in the route book. Again. We’re at speed on the Rallye Monte Carlo route in a car that represented the jumping-off point for the 911 in competition. ‘You know, when Peter Falk and I drove here on the Monte in 1965, there wasn’t a lot of pressure on us to do well,’ he says above the thrum of a…

‘A TR IS JUST RIGHT for what you are going to do. They’re tough, quick and reliable,’ said deputy editor Mark Dixon, recounting his experience behind the wheel of the ex-Maurice Gatsonides Triumph TR2 on the Mille Miglia a few years ago. He’s right. To judge from Frederic Reydellet’s 2002 volume Les Triumphs en Competition Tome 2: Liège-Rome-Liège 1954-1961, back in the day there didn’t seem to be a young man or woman with a spanking new TR who didn’t nail on a couple of spotlamps and pit their driving skills against the clock and the unpaved mountain roads of the former Yugoslavia. These cars proved surprisingly successful on endurance rallies. Works cars made their competition debut on the 1954 Mille Miglia, and motor trader Johnny Wallwork won the RAC…

In thIs modern age, sometimes surprises come in the form of a text. ‘Meet me at 2.15 at this address. Don’t tell anyone.’ It’s from Phillip Sarofim, the new owner of the Vivant. That’s the car created in 1965 by Pontiac engineer Herb Adams (see Octane 175), which took Best in Class at Pebble Beach last year for ‘Dream Cars of the 1960s’. The address I’m to meet him at is the Pierre Koenig case-study house number 21, built in 1958. Between 1940 and 1960 architects Charles Eames, Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood and others were awarded projects as affordable homes of the future, and about 20 of these homes still stand today. OK, this is going to be cool. I stuff the Giulia Super full of gear and take off…

Having fixed a couple of irritating niggles on the Alfa and the Abarth ‘Goccia’, I thought I’d kick off 2019 with a touch of Italian brio. First stop was the New Year’s Day meeting at the Phoenix Inn, Hartley Wintney, where the Vintage Sports-Car Club was founded in 1934, in the Abarth. Second, one week later, the first Bicester Heritage Sunday Scramble of the year in the Alfa Romeo SZ. When I bought the Alfa it was fitted with an aftermarket alarm system and immobiliser with a mind of its own. It always allowed me to get in but it might deny me the pleasure of driving away. Mostly, after a spell of key-fob button pressing and key twiddling, it would grant my wish and engage the starter. Or it…

HYUNDAI DESCRIBES its new i30 Fastback as a ‘five-door hot coupé’, and it claims to be the first in its segment. It’s based on the standard hatchback model, extended by a couple of inches and completely reprofiled, the lower roofline and restyled tail adding sophistication to an otherwise pedestrian-looking car. Hmm. So why does it deserve its place in Octane? The Korean company has just launched the £29,995 N version – the second from its recently formed high-performance division – and after our brief and promising drive in a pre-production version of the hatchback N at the end of 2017, it seemed like the right time to revisit it in finished form. Developed at the Nürburgring (hence the ‘N’) under a team led by no less than ex-M Sport boss…

ONE OF THE most unusual car museums anywhere is the Toyota Mega Web in Tokyo. Created on a man-made island in Tokyo Bay, the free attraction is part classic-car museum, part new-car showcase and part theme park, respectively named History Garage, Toyota City Showcase and Ride Studio. Visitors start at the Toyota City Showcase, where new vehicles and technologies are highlighted beneath a soaring ceiling. Pocket-sized concept cars such as the hydrogen-cell FCV Plus and the FV2 personal vehicle offer a glimpse of the future. The latter looks like a locust about to spring forward; it lacks a steering wheel and the driver controls it using lunge-like motions, leaning and shifting body weight to change direction. But while all that Flash Gordon stuff is exciting, classic-car buffs want to revel…

LEGO PORSCHE 911 RSR If we had a direct line to Lego HQ, we’d be on the phone now demanding to know why this new model was not issued in Pink Pig livery, but there’s absolutely nothing else to fault. Between the boxer engine with moving pistons, the independent suspension, working steering and detailed cockpit, it’s as close to a perfect replica of the 991 RSR as it is possible to build from 1580 plastic bricks. £139.99. lego.com ONEPLUS 6T MCLAREN EDITION The first tie-up between OnePlus and McLaren is billed as a ‘salute to speed’, and for once there’s truth behind the marketing speak: underneath the carbonfibre-effect body are a super-fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip and a whopping 10GB of RAM. Thanks to OnePlus’s Warp Charge technology, you’ll get…

YOU’RE ON A QUIZ show and the host asks, ‘What is the car most associated with despots, dictators and tyrants of the 1960s, 1970s and even later?’ The answer has to be the Mercedes-Benz 600, between 1963 and 1981 the company’s most lavishly appointed, and most expensive, car. Just 2677 examples were built, 2198 of which were the short-wheelbase sedan. Their immense size and weight called for a new and more powerful engine, the 6.3-litre M100 V8 with overhead cams and Bosch fuel injection. It generated 300bhp but a sixth of that was needed to power the complex hydraulic system. This 2.5-tonne car could reach over 125mph and do 0-62mph in ten seconds. This RM Sotheby’s example is a 1969 Pullman long-wheelbase limousine with a solid rear roof (fold-down fabric…

THE BONKERS 1971 Bizzarrini 128P prototype is sure to be one of the most talked-about lots at Bonhams’ annual ‘Les Grandes Marques du Monde au Grand Palais’ sale during Rétromobile in February. Having been developed by Giotto Bizzarrini after closing his factory in 1969, the wild glassfibre wannabe racer took its bow at Turin in 1972. It featured a tubular spaceframe chassis with an 87in wheelbase, with power from a transverse 1300cc Fiat ‘four’ fed by a pair of Webers and driving through a Colotti gearbox. Just two were built, this left-hand-drive prototype and a right-hand-drive racer now residing in Italy’s national motor museum in Turin. This car, built up from a body discovered at the factory, sold at Russo & Steele five years ago for $77,000. It will go…