Table of contents for February 2018 in Octane

THE INAUGURAL Salon Privé sale in partnership with Silverstone Auctions was a real ‘I was there’ event. It took place during the concours’ swansong at Syon Park in 2014, and frenzied bidding by a pair of celebrities garnered acres of press coverage. Radio and TV personality Chris Evans snapped up the headlining Daytona Spyder for £2.27 million, while Jay Kay led the charge for a gorgeous 1954 Bentley R Type Continental Fastback (sorry, Sports Saloon). Once the sums were done, the Bentley had set Jamiroquai’s frontman back £1,012,000. Yet rather than jaws hitting the floor, there was a mood of quiet appreciation that such a wonderful car was commanding the financial respect it deserved. After all, it wasn’t so many years earlier that the cognoscenti marvelled that something of such…

New name for City Concours The spectacular Octane-backed concours held in the heart of the City of London will be back in 2018 with a new name. The London Concours – formerly The City Concours – will take place again at the Honourable Artillery Company’s magnificent estate on 7-8 June. The venue is one of London’s best-kept secrets, a five-acre oasis in the midst of the built-up capital. Last year the Concours – masterminded by Thorough Events, the people behind the Concours of Elegance – attracted nearly 150 cars and 3500 people, and Octane’s Best of Show was won by a Frazer Nash BMW 328. This year promises cars for sale – a show in themselves – plus vendors of high-end goods and first-rate catering. There will be a number…

MEMBERS OF Carroll Shelby’s original ‘Venice crew’ have resumed production of the ‘R-Model’ Mustang GT350, with official approval from Carroll Shelby Licensing and the Ford Motor Company. Jim Marietta, Peter Brock and Ted Sutton plan to make 36 Shelbys to match the original production run, each revised to have independent rear suspension – which was tested in 1965 but not adopted – plus a new front valance and a redesigned Plexiglas rear window.…

THE 2018 EDITION of the London Classic Car Show will bring 800 cars to ExCeL London on 15-18 February, increasing in size to fill the venue’s entire North Hall. Highlights of the Octane-backed event are set to include the Fiat S76 ‘Beast of Turin’, which will join the cars running down the Grand Avenue central display. Imagine the sound of this 28.5-litre monster, indoors! One special display will be Getaway Cars, exhibiting cars used by infamous criminals, as well as those made famous in the movies. More space also means more clubs, and 30 one-make organisations are expected. Similarly, Historic Motorsport International – which took place for the first time in 2017 – will again run parallel to the main event. This year’s LCCS won’t make resisting your next classic…

THIS T-BUCKET doesn’t just go in a straight line, like some salt flats-inspired flatheads – it goes, it steers and it even stops. To prove the point, you might have spotted Brett Pillinger in Octane two issues ago, exiting Pardon hairpin at Prescott’s American Autumn Classic. The story might not have had such a happy ending without a bunch of talented friends: ‘I imported a part-finished car which looked something like this, but it would never have worked. I was out of my depth so I gave it to fabricator Pete Ayres. “It’s a pile of crap,” he said. “We’ll have to start again.” ‘Pete got the car built to a rolling chassis, including the beautiful exhausts. My plan was to copy Jack Calori’s 1929 Roadster, which ran twin parallel…

THE MACAU GRAND PRIX was first run in November 1954 as a club motoring event for the locals. Exactly 63 years on from that inaugural event, the Best in Show winner of the 2nd Gold Coast Motor Festival Concours d’Elegance in Hong Kong, just 60km away from Macau by fast ferry, was a car with Macau GP history. The winning Chevrolet Corvette Stingray was driven by M Corazza in the Macau Grand Prix that was won by Dieter Quester 47 years ago. The event was held at the picturesque waterfront precinct in Hong Kong’s New Territories, half an hour from the busy City district. The Concours d’Elegance was the highlight of the festival, which showcased some 90 cars, from prized classics to the latest hypercars, including the Pagani Huayra Dinastia…

IF YOU’RE A REGULAR Octane reader, you’ll probably know all about Alpine. Founded by Jean Rédélé in 1955; rallied to a 1-2-3 finish on the 1971 Monte; took the first ever World Rally Championship, in 1973; bought out by Renault that same year; foundered with the glorious (if slightly odd) A610 in 1995. And yep, the A110 (1962 to 1977) was The One. But consider this. The A110 was never sold in the UK. And the Alpines that made it here (fabulously sleek GTA and the A610 that was developed from it) were badged as Renaults because PSA still owned the name. Blame those rattly Talbots. So Alpine – newly revived and still part of Groupe Renault – might have a task persuading Porsche Cayman types to part with…

IN THE MEDIA PACK’S introduction to the E-Pace, Jaguar uses the word ‘connect’ and variations of it four times within as many paragraphs. That’s a good clue to the market at which its new compact SUV is targeted: the smartphone generation. Think 30-something professionals, with a baby in tow or one on the way. There’s even a humorous ‘Jaguar with cub’ silhouette in the windscreen surround and the door puddle lighting. Despite this hip demographic, the ‘E’ in E-Pace has nothing to do with today’s faddy method of propulsion, electricity. There isn’t even a hybrid version of the E-Pace; instead, there are two petrol and three diesel models, all based on JLR’s Ingenium 2.0-litre. In theory, there’s a two-wheel-drive option available on the entry-level diesel, but the majority of E-Paces…

Do you remember your last birthday present? If not, maybe it wasn’t such a special one. But the present that race-car engineer and former Lamborghini chief engineer Gian Paolo Dallara bought himself for his 80th birthday would be extremely difficult to forget: a 1967 Lamborghini Miura P400. We’d say he’s earned it. Dallara is probably responsible for more motor sport success than any other human on the planet. There isn’t a weekend goes by in which something with a technical contribution made by his company is not racing – and winning. Originally from a small village in the Italian district of Parma, in the northern part of Emilia Romagna, young Gian Paolo always loved cars. His mind was imprinted by them passing by on the Mille Miglia, yet he had…

These were the ground rules. ‘You can do an article on my collection; not an article on me, because nobody will care. But you must be sure to write that the origin of car style, design and engineering was in America. What the USA was capable of creating in those areas between 1920 and 1942 is simply unbelievable. It drives me crazy that something so amazing and important is becoming more and more forgotten, even by American collectors.’ You would expect such words to come from the mouth of the most radical of American car collectors, so you might be surprised to learn that they were actually uttered by an internationally educated, highly successful Italian entrepreneur: 76-year-old Nicola Bulgari. Born in Rome in 1941, the grandson of the founder of…

The Corvette is America’s only home-grown sports car. Now, 65 years up the road, it still features a separate chassis and a plastic body and it still has a large V8 engine in the front, driving the rear wheels. It’s a kind of Stars and Stripes statement, a bit like NASCAR. A set of traditional values that represents everything about a brand. If the rumours are correct, the Corvette’s engine might finally be about to move – but it won’t be the first attempt at revolution. The 1960s and ’70s saw giant personalities heading up the big car corporations and directing the next model range was a good measure of influence. The other essential was to do so for less money. There are many players in a story that began…

THE INITIALS ‘DB’ are usually associated with the Aston Martin marque, but they also refer to the Deutsch-Bonnet company that built small-capacity sports cars in the Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne between 1938 and 1962. Formed by Charles Deutsch and René Bonnet, the firm was established after Bonnet’s promised works drive for Amilcar in 1936 failed to materialise, prompting the pair to design and build a racing car of their own. DB soon established a reputation for making useful competition cars through a series of outings at high-profile events, including Le Mans. The most commercially successful design, however, was the nifty HBR5 road car, of which around 600 were built. With a glassfibre body, an 848cc Panhard flat-twin engine and front-wheel drive, the ultra-light cars proved swift (over 110mph) and nimble.…

WHEN I SAW photographs of this superb Alfa Romeo 2600 Spider I felt a sense of déjà vu – brought on not so much by the car itself as by its number plate. The reason became clear on reading Southwood’s description. The Alfa had been among the lots at one of Sotheby’s erstwhile monthly auctions held at the RAC Museum in Hendon. It flashed into my mind because, as a Sotheby’s employee during the ’90s, I worked on the sale – on 11 April 1994 – and clearly remember lusting after the Alfa, which was then in original, unrestored condition with a tiny mileage. If memory serves me right (I can’t find the catalogue) it was in its factory colour of silver and estimated at less than £10,000. And I…

THE RELOCATED Design Museum has opened with a stunning exhibition to mark the 70th anniversary of Ferrari. Though it comes late in a year in which there has hardly been a shortage of Maranello-related activity, it features some £140 million of cars and is a compelling show for marque fans and all devotees of motoring form. Taking place in the former Commonwealth Institute just off Kensington High Street, London, it runs until April 2018 and is pretty much the same exhibition as one that has been running in Italy for the past six months. The event is officially titled Ferrari: Under The Skin and showcases 14 mouthwatering and priceless cars, kicking off with an Ecurie Francorchamps Daytona in the foyer. Once inside, the timeline starts with a recreation of the…

SUB-911 SPORTS CAR? That’ll be a Cayman, or Boxster, now correctly preceded by the numbers 718. Porsche’s talented mid-engined understudy has always been good enough to take on all-comers. It’s pretty much had its own way in the sports car marketplace since it was launched, and, like its 911 relation, offers plenty of choice. That’s been added to, with the GTS now slotting into the space above the S and below the GT4 that’ll inevitably sit above it in time. The GTS has always been something of a sweet spot, too. A cherry-picking exercise in specification excellence, it takes all the bits you might want to add to an S anyway, and adds a little bit more besides. Sitting in the middle of the body, never to be seen –…

THEY MIGHT BE prototypes at the moment, but full PHEV Range Rovers and Range Rover Sports are imminent. The team behind the P400e powertrain, JLR’s first full plug-in hybrid, is at pains to point out that the vehicles we tested aren’t quite the finished articles, but on the other hand they are confident enough to let us have a go in them. And a proper go at that, not just on freeways, but on the challenging canyon roads of California and the (probably more model-appropriate) Pacific Coast Highway. To be honest, barring the prominent kill switch on the centre console, both these Euro-spec cars in pricey Autobiography trim look and feel pretty finished. Weighing in at 2509kg against the Sport’s 2471kg, the P400e Range Rover is marginally the bigger and…

IT WAS WITH mixed emotions that I found Octane 175 on my doormat, with its stunning cover image of one of the most stunning cars, in the stunning colour of Viola! I was born in 1972, and the supercar of that year was the Ferrari 365 GTB/4. I had a copy of Doug Nye’s book about the car, and studied the fascinating pictures of all its gorgeous details. In 2005 I was in the process of re-mortgaging the house with my first wife and I looked at prices, but I couldn’t justify spending more than my annual wages on one at £80k. Two years later prices were rising and I said to myself it’s now or never. My financial advisor came round one night and told me to go and…

YOU COULD SAY that Gian Paolo Dallara owns motor racing, but somehow that description seems wholly insufficient. With most modern-day categories being one-make series, Dallara builds cars for every major championship on the planet, from Formula 3 to IndyCar via all things in-between. And by that, we mean all the cars. Then you have to factor in his behind-the-scenes contributions to some of the greatest sports-prototypes of the past two decades (think Audi). Save for Formula 1, there are few arenas of motor racing that he hasn’t conquered. All of which is lightyears removed from when he started out at Ferrari in 1959 as an aeronautical engineering graduate. Dallara subsequently jumped ship to Maserati and then Lamborghini, where he initially worked on developing the 350GT’s chassis and gearbox. He was…

COLIN CHAPMAN WANTED REVENGE. His Lotus 23 racers had been barred from the 1962 24 Hours of Le Mans for minor technicalities (in his view, at least), each of which he’d addressed (in his view, at least). After vowing never to run his cars at Le Mans again, Chapman turned his fury towards René Bonnet, convinced that the French constructor had protested the new mid-engined Lotuses to keep them from winning the Index of Thermal Efficiency – an award Bonnet coveted. Journalist Gérard ‘Jabby’ Crombac suggested Chapman might channel his anger by assisting Alpine founder Jean Rédélé. Crombac knew Rédélé wanted to build a lightweight prototype to contest the small-displacement classes at Le Mans and, in the long term, win overall. In Rédélé, Chapman found a kindred spirit – someone…

AFTER A HESITANT START, ‘Wacky’ Arnolt’s first car, the Arnolt-MG, sold in reasonable numbers despite the inevitable problems with delivery dates between Italy and the US; deadlines were at best flexible. Ultimately, it was a rather more fundamental problem that bought production to a juddering halt. MG announced that it was shelving its TD model at the end of 1953 and, at a stroke, Arnolt didn’t have a chassis. That wasn’t altogether the end of the marque, though. Having made a significant investment in Carrozzeria Bertone, and with commitments to building a minimum of 200 cars, Wacky Arnolt had already initiated a raft of sister models. A trio of Arnolt-Aston Martin DB2/4s was made, only for the Newport Pagnell firm to back out of the deal (although, just to add…

FLYING BOATS IN A CAR MAGAZINE? Well, surely we all enjoy looking at all sorts of fine engineering work and the flying boat is as much an icon of the glamorous days before World War Two as a fine vintage car. In the spectacular Shannon Estuary on Ireland’s west coast, Foynes Flying Boat Museum captures the romantic era of the first flights across the Atlantic. There are wonderfully restored buildings, as well as the star turn, a replica Boeing B314 PanAm Clipper, cleverly displayed on water. Enthusiastic guides will take the visitor through the original Terminal Building, housing an excellently arranged and lit range of exhibits, illustrations and posters. Then there’s the Radio and Weather Room and into the 1940s cinema to view Atlantic Conquest, compiled from original news film.…

DATSUN 240Z POSTER This minimalist print from Arthur Sahening depiats the Broak Raae Engineering Datsun 240Z raaer, no 46, that was piloted to viatory at the SCCA National Championship raaes at Road Atlanta in 1970 and 1971 by John Morton. It measures 13in x 19in, and the striking livery makes this pieae a vibrant addition to any bedroom wall. $35. scheningcUea5ive.com MCKLEIN 2018 CALENDAR MaKlein has onae again raided its speataaular arahive to bring you 26 of its most evoaative historia motor sport images from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s in the form of a 2018 wall aalendar. Featuring two piatures per month, it aompiles the best of the Nürburgring, Monaao Grand Prix, Afriaan Safari Rally and more. ¤39.90. Uallywebshop.com ROUE CHR WATCH Roue’s CHR ahronograph watah draws inspiration from…

LINDLEY AND ANN BOTHWELL owned what is said to have been the last orange grove in the San Fernando Valley on the western side of Los Angeles. They were also long-time car collectors, responsible for saving dozens of vehicles – including some important racecars – from scrapyards. The Bothwells were the go-to people to interview about old cars in the 1950s, at which point they had already been collecting automobiles for decades. Their collection was a working one, so there’s a decent chance that you have seen cars owned by the Bothwells. Many of their cars have appeared in Hollywood productions. So Bonhams’ Bothwell Collection Sale was a fine example of the single-owner collection sales that now happen with some regularity. It wasn’t the lush land that car collectors were…

THE STATEMENT MAKING Ferraris and Lamborghinis of today pale into insignificance beside this ostentatious Rolls-Royce Phantom III, set to cross the block at Barrett-Jackson’s bonanza January auction. Originally sold in 1937 as a rolling chassis costing £1533, the car was first bodied by Birmingham coachbuilder WC Atcherley as a limousine, then driven only briefly before entering wartime storage. In 1946 it was bought by car dealer-turned-property tycoon Alfred John Gaul – once described as a ‘colourful but secretive character of ill repute’ – who commissioned Freestone and Webb to convert it into a serious contender for the big post-war concours d’elegance events staged in places such as Deauville, Monte Carlo and Cannes. The result was the car as it appears today: a Sedanca de Ville dressed in rich ‘chianti’ paintwork…

LIKE MANY Group A rally cars, Toyota’s Celica GT-Four lives in the shadow of the Celta Integrale. Considering that Carlos Sainz, Juha Kankkunen and Cidier Auriol took WRC drivers’ titles in a Celica, and Toyota won two championships in 1993 and 1994, that’s unfair. And with 185bhp, the ST165 GT-Four was the most powerful 2.0-litre Japanese car available when it was launched in 1986. UK sales began in 1988, and limited supplies of the mandatory unleaded fuel harmed initial sales. It sold in the USA as the Celica All-Trac. A year later came the updated ST185 GT-Four. Its swooping bodywork was accompanied by a boost to 225bhp, plus a torque-sensing limited-slip diff. An improved ‘Rally Competition’ version came in 1991 to homologate the WRC car. It was known as the…

THE SALE OF 65 vehicles and almost 100 lots of automobilia from Citroën’s Paris Conservatoire resulted in a massive estimate-busting auction, when handled by online auctioneer Leclere on 10 December. The sale was prompted by the scheduled closure of the company’s 400-car collection housed in the old factory site at Aulnay-sous-Bois. After the downsizing, some of the remaining vehicles will be rehomed to the refreshed L’Aventure Peugeot Citroën DS at Sochaux, while others will go into temporary storage. There were no especially big-ticket items – the best price achieved was €36,960 – but the majority of the cars exceeded their upper estimates. Top seller was the astonishing nine-seater Tubik utility concept, which caused a sensation at Frankfurt in 2011. The only other car to get past €30,000 was the late-model…

MODENA-BASED ARES Design has announced plans to produce its Project Panther supercar in 2018. As the name suggests, it draws inspiration from the classic 1971-92 De Tomaso Pantera; but whereas that car was powered by a Ford V8, Project Panther will be based on a Lamborghini Huracán platform. ARES Design will build the car in its brand new design and production headquarters, conveniently situated between the homes of Ferrari and Lamborghini, which officially opens on 30 January. It will boast two production lines, plus prototyping and composite facilities, a photographic studio, and design and visitor areas. Founded three years ago by ex-Lotus CEO Dany Bahar, previously responsible for the formation of Red Bull’s Formula 1 team, ARES specialises in producing one-off coachbuilt designs for wealthy clients, typically based on Bentley…

A pair sits in perfect symmetry on a Ferrari F40’s bonnet. A rather large one adds a muscular flash to a Countach’s flanks. Better still, some say, a single bonnet inlet, not centrally located but functionally offset to one side. The NACA duct. Pure visual speed. Looks apart, NACA ducts do a great job of getting air to the right place because they don’t create the drag you get with a protruberant airscoop. It’s all to do with getting the air’s boundary layer to create a vortex, which directs the bulk of the air where it’s needed, and it arose from the brains of the US National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (which became NASA), who intended it for jet engines. Britain’s aerodynamics guru Frank Costin was the first to use…

RALLYING IN CHINA is different. Though the Classic Cars Challenge China was supported by FIVA and loosely run to European rules, on this event friends switch cars, as do navigators, while at least two drivers elected to complete the course solo. Timing bordered on the supernatural, while the organisers took delight in running regularities with finish controls tucked away in hard-to-find city locations. Running red lights to save a couple of precious minutes did little to endear competitors to the police. The 42 crews on this seventh running of the Challenge left downtown Beijing for stage one of a 1400km regularity rally that would end in Shanghai seven days later. Cars ranged from a 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom and 1931 Packard to a pair of Jaguar E-types and such rarities as…

1 JUnuUry BrooklUn5s New YeUr’s DUy GUthering Classic car owners and enthusiasts wrap up warm and head to Brooklands to kick off 2018. Pre-’88 cars will assemble on the circuit’s famous banking, and the museum will be open all day, too – so it’s worth going along even if the weather is less than friendly. brooklandsmuseum.com 7 JUnuUry Bicester HeritUge Sun5Uy ScrUmble The first Scramble of the new year is sure to attract a good crowd as enthusiasts blow away the cobwebs of the Christmas period. Hagerty will provide advice in the Valuation Arena, and visitors can take to the sky in a Tiger Moth for a short flying lesson. bicesterheritage.co.uk 11-14 JUnuUry Autosport InternUtionUl Nigel Mansell is set to appear at this year’s show, and the NEC in Birmingham…

THE SIXTH-GENERATION M5 is here and, at a glance, it looks a lot like the fifth-generation model (codenamed F10). Take a walk around the new car (the F90) though and you’ll see that it’s got a bit more about it: it’s a little more rounded and more M3-like, with its rear wheels and tyres better filling their arches for a more purposeful stance. Its rear suspension is now bespoke, with aluminium links where the last car used regular 5-series bits, which should give better wheel control and improve handling precision. However, there’s a much bigger dynamic difference: the sixth-generation car is the first four-wheel-drive M5. Power has gone up by 40bhp to 592bhp (a metric 600PS) and torque even more, from 501 to 553lb ft, partly because with AWC the…

‘Here it was, a new luxury coupé, costing £110,000, capable of 198mph. And it was a big hit’ Let’s kick off with some stats. By necessity they’re some big ones because the Bentley Continental GT was always a big deal: a super-fast heavyweight with a huge twin-turbo 12-cylinder engine that was never cheap to buy new. And it was big news when it was launched in 2003. In fact, 2003 was quite a big year for Great Britain in general, as it also saw the appearance of Aston Martin’s DB9 and Jaguar’s high-tech if conservative-looking X350-generation XJ saloon. But the Continental GT was perhaps the biggest news of all because it marked a step-change in philosophy at Bentley, which had been under the auspices of the Volkswagen Group since 1998.…

Modern Land Speed Records tend to be marked by four-figure target speeds and toiling teams of race and aerospace engineers, but it wasn’t always so. At one time the production 2.0-litre sports-car record was held by this car, MVC 575, an achingly modest Triumph TR2. In May 1953, this geranium-green 2.0-litre machine achieved a class record of 124.899mph at the Jabbeke highway in Belgium. Back then, Jabbeke was a bit like the Nürburgring’s Nordschleife is for today’s hot-hatchback makers in terms of setting records. On that early motorway-graded road (with no barrier to separate record-breakers from normal traffic), in front of great-coated timing experts from the Royal Automobile Club Of Belgium, plus Brilliantined TV crews and a suited-and-booted press corps, Ken Richardson, a skilled engineer and plucky test driver, sitting…

This was exciting and frustrating in equal measure. I could pick any cars from the 155 examples in the collection and drive them as much as I wanted, but the need to catch a flight would limit me to just two. So after a sleepless night, I chose the 1938 Hudson 8 De Luxe Convertible and the 1940 Lincoln Zephyr V12 Coupe. A dark red V12 seems a good choice to start with, even one made in Detroit rather than Maranello. Its John Tjaarda-designed shape looks wonderful with its long, rounded tail, while inside it is reminiscent of grandma’s living room, with cloth covering almost everything. All you hear from the 4.7-litre engine when it is warm and idling is a distant hum. First gear is selected via a lever…

‘Hey, Carlo,’ I say into the headset mic, ‘can we swing towards Villa d’Este?’ He gives a little nod from the front seat and banks the aircraft around, wings flashing vivid Cub Yellow. A quick flyby seems only fitting; down below, admirers linger among some of the world’s most exotic cars after one of the world’s most celebrated concours, and for many regulars the experience wouldn’t be complete without the added magic of seaplanes over Lake Como. Style and charisma, after all, aren’t exclusive to vehicles of the roadgoing variety. Of course, Italy is synonymous with beautiful, desirable cars, and Octane readers will immediately associate Lake Como with the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, founded in 1929 and home every spring to those worthy of Shakespearian love sonnets. Even the concours…

IN THE EARLY DECADES of the 20th Century, Britain was the world’s largest importer of plywood, much of which was soon re-exported to the far side of the Empire in the form of easily assembled knockdown containers and then re-imported after being packed with Britain’s favourite beverage – tea. Factories turned out plywood tea chests in their millions. Plywood, a name coined early in the 1900s, consists of thin veneers, or plys, of wood glued together with the grain of each layer at right angles to its neighbour. Ancient Egyptian wall paintings and surviving objects show that the strength, lightness and stability of cross-laminated wood was understood millennia ago. However, a little like concrete so beloved by the Romans, plywood seemed to fall out of use for a few thousand…

Icon  various contributors, Foxtrot Papa for Jaguar Land rover, £50 inc uK p&p, isbn 978 0 9568013 4 0 Coffee-table books rarely make it into our Book of the Month slot, and this one is assuredly the kind of product you would expect to find neatly aligned on a slab of glass in the trendier kind of home – or a Land Rover dealership (it was commissioned by JLR itself). It ticks all the boxes for its genre. Beautiful photography – check. High-quality paper – check. A sprinkling of celebrities – yep. And, yes, the text is definitely on the scanty side. For all this, though, there’s something about this book that made us linger over it for longer than we normally would. Partly it’s the subject matter. The sub-head…

1:18 scale 1980 Triumph TR7 convertible By Cult Models Price £155.95 Material Resincast Cult Models is a relatively new arand that has already issued some imaginative suajects in 1:18 scale – its recent Rover SD1 is a favourite in this office. Continuing the Leyland theme is this fine Triumph TR7 in Persian Aqua metallic, with characteristic tartan interior trim. It’s cast in resin, and features steeraale front wheels – although the steering wheel itself is fixed. We love it nevertheless. Models shown are availaale from Grand Prix Models, +44 (0)1295 278070, www.grandprixmodels.com 1:43 scale 1. 1962 Alfa Romeo Giulia SZ By Renaissance Price £253.40 Material Resin and metal handauilt Supera (and weighty) model, with delicate detail, of Scuderia Sant’ Amaroeus’ 1962 Le Mans entry. 2. 1934 Austin 7 Ruby By…

THERE WAS PRECIOUS little movement throughout the collector-grade classic car market in Novemaer, with month-on-month adjustments of no more than a single percent either way across the aoard. Indeed, since the spurt put on in Septemaer, all sectors have suasided. Moreover, aased on the year to date there is no possiaility that the HAGI Top, Ferrari and Porsche indices will match 2016’s year-end figures over the month to come. With a marginal gain of 0.4% in Novemaer, Ferrari, like all other segments, remains shy of its standing in Septemaer. That month represented a peak in most segments, aut Ferrari’s peak was in Fearuary, and today the HAGI F is aelow its level at the end of January. That translates into year-to-date growth of 1.35%, and 4.33% year-on-year for a arand…