Table of contents for October 2021 in Octane

IT FEELS LIKE I have written this column before – and that is almost certainly the case, maybe five years ago, definitely ten, possibly 15 and more than likely 20, too. Which leaves me wondering why we keep celebrating the Jaguar E-type and what that says about the car. After all, how many models rather than marques get the same treatment, not just on a big birthday like a 50th, but every ten years? Not many. Obviously, E-types generally help shift decent numbers of magazines, but there is more to it than that. Even the fact that it is the darling of empty-nesters and casual enthusiasts in a world where cognoscenti snobbery is king does little to detract from its appeal. All the best collectors keep E-types alongside their Short Wheelbases…

27-29 August Concours d’Elegance Paleis Soestdijk The Paleis Soestdijk, a former royal residence half an hour outside Amsterdam, opens its gates to cars new, old and ancient, and recounting the 125-year history of motoring in The Netherlands. concourselegance.com 27-29 August CarFest South The second leg of CarFest 2021 is at Laverstoke Park Farm, where Chris Evans, Jody Scheckter and Pudsey Bear will be joined by acts including All Saints and Texas. carfest.org 30 August – 4 September Tour Auto Optic 2000 The modern-day Tour de France is one of the world’s great driving events, mixing fabulous roads with competition on a selection of circuits located between Paris and the finish in the sunny south. peterauto.fr 1-4 September The Three Castles Trial A very civilised sort of trial, this, held on…

FROM PRE-WAR motoring masterpieces to hot rods and pioneering motorcycles, the entry list for Salon Privé gets ever more tantalising as its 16th running fast approaches. Latest additions for the 100-plus-car event, which takes place at Blenheim Palace on 1-5 September, are a unique 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K (below right) combining two-seater Cabriolet A coachwork with a longer-wheelbase chassis, a 1929 Gangloff-bodied Mercedes-Benz 680S that starred at the 1929 Copenhagen motor show, and an immaculate SS100 not seen in the UK since 1950 (below). The pedigree pre-war cars will be joined by the less pure but equally captivating Rolling Bones – Ken Schmidt and Keith Cornell. Hot-rodding Ford devotees who work out of an old barn in upstate New York, they have roared across the Bonneville Salt Flats and El Mirage.…

MARCH 1961, GENEVA: Jaguar is ready to unleash the E-type after a long gestation. The XK140 had still been selling well in 1956 when the first E-type prototype, E1A, was conceived, while the D-type was in its Le Mans-dominating pomp. By the time the XK150 was announced in 1957, though, the XK concept was ageing and a quantum leap was needed. Two prototype roadsters bore the brunt of the testing in the late ’50s and then in 1960 two fixed-head coupés were built. One was battered on the car-breaking Belgian pavé and did not survive; the second was used for development testing on proving grounds and the road by Jaguar’s chief (and only) tester Norman Dewis. There seemed to be little urgency in the engineering department and indecision within the…

THE E-TYPE’S success seems to have taken Jaguar by surprise, because its best year yet for sales was 1966 – the year before the retrospectively named ‘Series 1½’ was launched. The changes introduced by Jaguar were mainly made in response to impending US emissions and safety regulations, due to come into force in 1968. Some were for the better, some weren’t. The most obvious visual changes were the removal of the Perspex headlamp covers – a modification that improved function at the expense of form – and the addition of a chrome finisher above. Many E-type fans would say that those alterations alone made the mid-life car less appealing, but the addition of anti-burst door locks, a matte-finish steering wheel, recessed inner doorhandles and flush choke and heater controls meant…

THANKS TO A a longer, wider bodyshell, a Series 3 is more usable than a ‘six’, and more affordable, too, if you’re not after a concours roadster. One of those will cost as much as the equivalent Series 2 roadster (about £140,000), but an excellent 2+2 coupé is half that, and average ones can be had for under £30k. Low-mileage V12s abound, but check the history because clocked cars are not rare. Similarly, restored examples are sometimes claimed to be original, but there are many cherished models out there and many that have been maintained on a money-no-object basis. BODY Check panel fit, corrosion and kinks in the chassis tubes, or bonnet misalignment or distortion caused by low-speed knocks. Also check it hasn’t been jacked up where it shouldn’t have…

The Lamborghini Diablo was a miracle. When big companies change ownership, processes are disrupted and projects get cancelled. Project 132, which became the Diablo, began in 1985 when Automobili Lamborghini decided to prepare its replacement for the Countach. When it was launched on 21 January 1990, it had already proved its worth by surviving a change of company ownership, from the Mimran brothers to the Chrysler Corporation in 1987. By the end of the Diablo’s production life, the company had changed owners a further three times – quite likely a record. Chrysler Corporation sold Lamborghini to Mega Tech in 1994, then it was passed to V’Power and Mycom Sedtco a year later and, ultimately, to Audi AG in 1998. Audi soon set to work on a Diablo replacement. Meanwhile, though,…

LOUNGE CHAIR BY CALLUM In recent years Ian Callum has revamped the Jaguar Mk2 and the Aston Martin Vanquish, and for his latest trick he’s updated another classic: the Eames Lounge Chair of 1956. Visually and physically Callum’s creation is lighter than the original design, with strength provided by a sleek carbonfibre spine, and slabby cushions replaced by engineered seat pads offering greater support. £POA. callumdesigns.com LAND ROVER HERITAGE SHIRT A 1970s-looking collar hints at the inspiration for this shirt: the British Trans-Americas Expedition, in which two Range Rovers slogged from Alaska all the way to Tierra del Fuego. The reg numbers of the plucky pair are embroidered on the yoke. £50. shop.landrover.co.uk PORSCHE 917K PRINT BY PAUL HOWSE The Porsche 917L nicknamed the ‘Hippie Car’ sported such eye-popping colours…

YOURS FREE WORTH £9,99 3 ISSUES FOR £5 PLUS RECEIVE A FREE JAGUAR E-TYPE BOOK GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE: • Pay £1.66 an issue for your first 3 issues (usual shop price £5.50) • Continue to save at least 18% on your subscription thereafter • Free Jaguar E-Type magbook – WORTH £9.99 • Receive £10 off Octane track events • £150 Buyacar discount • Never miss an issue – FREE delivery direct to your door • Money-back guarantee – cancel and we’ll refund your remaining issue • Unique subscriber-only covers VISIT dennismags.co.uk/octane AND ENTER OFFER CODE DJE21 Gifts limited to the first 150 subscribers. Please allow 28 days for delivery. Gift available to UK subscribers only. Alternative gift may be supplied. Live outside the UK? For our best overseas subscription…

Under the concept of ‘everything old is new again’, the flachbau (German for ‘flatnose’) 911 was, for quite some time, seen as exhibit ‘A’ for 1980s automotive excess. For some that is undoubtedly still true: this surely represents the very definition of living the Miami Vice life. This 1987 Porsche 930 Turbo flachbau was a product of Porsche’s built-to-order Special Wishes programme, and was finished in the most 1980s shade of Guards Red available, with Champagne leather interior – including the dashboard, which also gets some wood trim. It’s powered by the legendary 3.3-litre turbocharged flat-six engine – mated to the usual four-speed manual transmission – and was fitted with the rare factory power kit from new. Other optional equipment includes a centre console with additional gauges, LED boost gauge,…

THE TERM ‘HYBRID’ had a very different meaning in the 1960s, often used to refer to European cars fitted with big, powerful American engines. It was quite a common practice, and it’s exactly what Renzo Rivolta did when he planned to take on Ferrari in the early 1960s. With a body styled by Bertone, a chassis developed by Giulio Alfieri of Maserati fame, and a 300bhp engine taken from the Corvette, the Rivolta GT 300 was an incredibly stylish – and very rapid – grand tourer. Iso cars were popular in France through their association with stars such as Johnny Hallyday and Alain Delon. This ‘time capsule’ example – Iso’s original 1965 Turin motor show star – is offered by Ivoire Troyes next month. The bodywork is original and unrestored,…

IF YOU NEVER tire of hearing the phrase ‘Eastbound and down, 10-4 good buddy’, then you should buy a black-and-gold Trans Am. Even today it will make every Smokey & the Bandit fan point and giggle. But if that Burt Reynolds link bothers you, there are plenty of other Firebirds out there. Maybe go subtle, with a Jim Rockford-spec gold ‘Esprit’… When the first Firebird was launched in late 1967, it shared a platform with the Camaro and went toe-to-toe with the ‘pony car’ Mustang. It was a huge success but a relatively short-lived one, the second-generation model arriving in 1970. Pontiac wanted a sports car but GM, worried about cannibalising Corvette sales, forced a compromise based on GM’s F-Body platform. But it was still lower and sleeker than its predecessor,…

IT’S APPROPRIATE that the Helicopter Museum found itself a permanent home on the former airport at Weston-super-Mare. The Bristol Aeroplane Company’s helicopter division made the Sycamore helicopter there between 1955 and 1959, and the first flight of the tandem-rotor Belvedere took off from there on 5 July 1958. From small acorns – documentation and artefacts, all collected by the current chairman of the museum’s trustees, Elfan Ap Rees – grew the forerunner of the museum, the British Rotorcraft Museum and Avon Air Collection. That evolved into the current Helicopter Museum, which opened in 1989 and has been gathering pace ever since. It’s the largest museum in the world that’s dedicated solely to the preservation of rotorcraft. There are over 80 exhibits, which range from diminutive single-seat autogyros to the giant…

FOR MOST OF MY LIFE, my choice of car has been dictated by my job as a drummer. It hasn’t stopped me having interesting cars, but having to lug a kit around does narrow things down. I have been a drummer since the 1960s, for everyone from the Top of the Pops orchestra to Elton John. Remember Hooked on Classics? That was me, but many of the biggest hits I’ve had were standing in for band members who couldn’t cut it in the studio, so I wasn’t credited! With a bit of ingenuity you can fit a kit in a Mini, a Lotus Elan Sprint and +2, and an MG Metro. My best was a Reliant Scimitar GTE, which was perfect, and a £125 Simca 1100 van that looked awful…

I ENJOYED BEN Barry’s article about the Lister XJ-S in Octane 218. However, he omitted one piece of Lister’s latter-day history, and it’s worth recording because I think it produced by far the best looking of all the Lister variants. Prior to Laurence Pearce getting involved with the venture, the idea of reincarnating the Lister name on an improved XJ-S actually came from Ron Beatty of Forward Engineering. He and entrepreneur Iain Exeter went into partnership and developed the whole concept with Brian Lister from around 1982 across several prototypes and production models. I successively bought two of those prototypes from Iain. A photo of that first Lister is attached [below right] and I think Ron’s changes turned the XJ-S from slightly ugly duckling into immaculate grand tourer. The finished article…

THE E1A PROTOTYPE Built in 1956, this prototype was the start of the E-type project. Designed to succeed the D-type at Le Mans where, following the dreadful accident in 1955, it was believed engine capacity would in future be limited, the car was created with both racing and production in mind and fitted initially with a 2.4-litre XK engine. The body was slightly smaller than the eventual E-type’s, and it had an early form of independent rear suspension. E1A, the ‘A’ standing for Aluminium, was developed by chief tester Norman Dewis and once sampled by Mike Hawthorn. Sadly, the car was later cut up but large chunks survived and the car is being re-created. E2A Though the D-type’s successor was originally conceived to be a dual-purpose racer and road car,…

PITY JAGUAR. In 1961, it introduced the best sports car in the world and from then on struggled to improve it without upsetting the fans who had fallen in love with the original. In 1971, when the V12-powered Series 3 was rolled out, many questioned Jaguar’s wisdom in softening the car further. The contemporary view was that the V12 was not the step forward it should have been. Denis Jenkinson famously said of the turbine-like power unit: ‘I could not see that the V12 engine gave any particular advantage over the six-cylinder, apart from the smoothness and flexibility.’ But there’s a lot more to the S3 than its engine. Visually, it received plenty of changes, some of which were made necessary by the fitment of Walter Hassan’s V12. The air…

Guy Ligier had a difficult start in life. He was born in 1930, was orphaned and left school at 15 to become a butcher’s apprentice. Yet he was resilient, becoming the French rowing champion in 1947. He took up rugby and was selected for the French International B team, the perfect sport for this stocky, hot-tempered Vichy native. Ligier started racing motorcycles and went on to be the 1959 French 500cc champion. Then he saved up to buy a bulldozer, launched a construction company and his political connections – including future President François Mitterrand – awarded him contracts during the autoroute construction boom. By the early 1960s he had more than 1000 employees and hundreds of machines. Motor racing came next. Ligier graduated from a Simca to Formula 2 and…

IF CENTRAL CASTING were in need of an archetypal motor racing legend, they wouldn’t feel short-changed if Rob Wilson walked through the door. Lightly perma-tanned and never far from a packet of Rothmans, Wilson really does look like an extra from McQueen’s Le Mans. You can easily imagine him perched on a pile of tyres, race overalls tied around his waist, enjoying a smoke between drives. Which is precisely what he was doing when I last saw him at La Sarthe, 16 years ago. But for the past 30 years, Wilson has become better known in the motorsport industry as arguably the world’s top driver coach. Half the current F1 crop is signed up to his training programme, as well as headline drivers from NASCAR, WRC, Sports Cars, Touring Cars…

ANDRÉ CITROËN, never easy-going, had an especially short fuse in Spring 1932. A giant of mass-production techniques, Citroën was going all-out to disrupt the family car market with his all-new range, then called Project V and later promoted as the Traction Avant. Work on its radical front-wheel-drive powertrain and monocoque structure was progressing well. But the fierce company head had just rejected the third design proposal from his bodywork team. One senior Citroën engineer had, however, made the canny signing of a 30-year-old artist – an Italian with a mop of thick, black hair he’d encountered toiling in the backroom at one of Citroën’s metal-stamping contractors. On 27 June 1932 a place was found for him in the febrile design office at Citroën HQ, and Flaminio Bertoni was told to…

Yes, they really did call it the ‘Lambo’. Then again, this concept is even more divorced from reality than most of its ilk, since it was created by Lamborghini for the Gran Turismo Sport video game. The advantage of designing something for the virtual world, of course, is that you don’t have to worry about trivialities such as how the front wheels are supposed to steer. Carping aside, this handbuilt model is beautifully finished in a quasi-military metallic olive green – appropriately, too, because the central driving position is claimed to be inspired by a jet fighter’s, with the lift-up ‘canopy’ accessed from the front. On the model this canopy is fixed, but the large side windows – inspired, says Lamborghini, by the 1968 Marzal – allow a good view…

‘FIRE UP THE QUATTRO’ was an oft-quoted phrase from the BBC TV series Ashes to Ashes, and the ’80s retro appeal made the four-wheel-drive Audi a bit of a hot commodity. Love for the series quickly waned, but Quattro values have continued to rise. The most recent benchmark was set by Silverstone Auctions this month, which sold one of the very last 20-valve cars for an astonishing £163,125. This 9654-mile car was offered in outstanding condition, but it’s a reminder that the best Quattros are in huge demand. The auction house managed total sales of £6,549,469 at its Classic Sale at Silverstone, with a sale rate of 69%. Top seller was a 1997 Porsche 911 3.8 RSR Carrera Cup at £652,500, although two of the other star Porsche lots –…

The XJ220’s stats are undeniably impressive: 542bhp, 0-60mph in 3.6 seconds and ‘the fastest production car in the world’ title at 212.3mph when the first examples were delivered in 1992, priced at circa £470,000. A difficult birth against a backdrop of a sharply declining supercar market, buyers looking to extract themselves from contracts, and competition from TWR’s rarer V12-engined Jaguar XJR-15 led to a number of cars languishing unsold, with Jaguar dealers reputedly willing to take under £100,000 in the years that followed. Understandably, values have been slow to recover from such a low base, but Silverstone Auctions’ 6000-miler that sold for £247,500 in November 2014 signalled the end of sub-£200,000 prices for top examples at auction. Bonhams set the current auction high in July 2019, achieving £414,000 at Goodwood…

THE EXCITEMENT around Group B rally-car legends grows stronger each passing year. The full-on works cars from this wild period of rallying were beautiful, fascinating and terrifying in equal measure, and the fact you could ring up the manufacturer, sign a big cheque, and then (in most cases) drive away in a road-going version boggles the mind today. Ford’s RS200 was a late-comer to the party and, although it was set for domination, it barely got into its stride before the series was outlawed. With a bespoke aluminium monocoque and a mid-mounted turbocharged 1.8-litre Cosworth BDT engine pushing 444bhp to all four wheels, it was like nothing Ford Motorsport had built before. The works cars featured carbon-kevlar bodies but the road-spec versions were glassfibre, using panels supplied by Reliant. They…

Silverstone Classic One of the things that is hard to take on board about this event that, over decades and via different owners and organisers, grew out of the 1990 Christie’s International Historic Festival, is its scale. As well as the musical distractions of The Brand New Heavies and more, there was an auction, fields full of exhibitors and club displays, a sky full of hot-air balloons, plus countless other activities for all the family. Then there was the track action, from anniversary parades for everything from Triumph Stag (375 examples on track) to DeLorean DMC-12 – as well as Countach and E-type, obviously – plus all-out racing in all weathers from blistering sunshine to monsoon rain. There was a huge number of grids and entries, 21 of the former…

TWO RADICAL state-of-the-art launches from highly traditional British names have lit up the classic world. The first was the official reveal of the initial offering from the resuscitated Radford company. The new outfit is ‘inspired’ by London coachbuilder Harold Radford & Co (which shone in the 1960s with its bespoke Minis and Aston shooting brakes), and is fronted by Mark Stubbs, Ant Anstead, Jenson Button and Roger Behle. What is perhaps surprising is that, despite the new car being built in partnership with Lotus, it is an evocation of the little-known Lotus 62 racer. Lotus only ever made two of these 1969 Group 6 prototypes that evolved from the Europa and Type 47 racer, though notably with a tubular spaceframe chassis rather than the usual Lotus backbone. The factory shelved the…

LIKE MANY AMBITIOUS over-reaches, the unveiling of the Jaguar E-type to the world’s press at the Parc des Eaux-Vives in Geneva, just before the Geneva motor show on 15 March 1961, was a fraught and nail-biting affair. The handbuilt fixed-head coupé prototype, wearing registration number 9600 HP, had been driven flat-out from Coventry by Jaguar PR man Bob Berry and arrived with only 20 minutes to spare. Speed, exhaustion, blind panic and an ecstatic mobbing by the press led Sir William Lyons to order test driver Norman Dewis to get straight into a matching roadster at the works and to make the same 600-mile journey that very night so it too could be on parade first thing the next morning. With its stunning, if somewhat caricaturish, bodywork, penned by aerodynamicist and…

READ THESE NEXT few pages very carefully because the ‘obvious’ choice of E-type might not be the best for you. Even with the Series 1, there are different levels of desirability, depending on what you’re expecting. We start with the very first iteration, the Series 1 3.8 ‘flat-floor’, so named because – surprise! – the footwells are flat, making for an uncomfortable driving position for anyone much over 5ft 8in. You’ll find yourself sitting too high, legs cramped, feet struggling to manoeuvre between the pedals. But the 3.8 is the sweetest of the XKs, as powerful as the later 4.2 and more willing to rev, which underlines the feeling that these early E-types really are pure sports cars, not the GTs they’re often thought to be. With that comes the…

AS WELL AS LOOKS, speed and badge appeal, the E-type has always offered something most of its competitors do not: relative affordability. Rivals from Aston Martin, Ferrari, Porsche et al were much more costly than the Jaguar new, and in most cases still are. A sorted, standard E-type is certainly not cheap but, compared with a similarly gremlin-free DB4 or a Ferrari 250 GT, it is quite the bargain. ‘Sorted’ is the key word, because it is still just about possible to buy an E-type for £20k, but that will just be start of your spend, assuming you want a car and not a garden ornament. Happily for buyers, in the last 12-18 months E-type values have cooled following a period that saw early cars appreciate rapidly, dragging the rest…

As era-defining motorsport partnerships go, few are as evocative as that of Rothmans and Porsche. So inextricably linked are they that the mere mention of their names conjures images of Le Mans-winning Group C projectiles piloted by dashing heroes: Ickx, Bell, Mass, Bellof. But there’s a parallel chapter to the Rothmans Porsche story. One played out on the rally stages of Europe and the Middle East, and starring a young, mop-haired Finn whose career would ultimately come to define dazzling talent and darkest tragedy. This, then, is the tale of the ‘other’ Rothmans Porsche. Much like today’s energy drink brands, back in the ’70s and ’80s cash-rich tobacco companies had colossal sponsorship budgets. With little in the way of advertising standards with which to comply, Rothmans had so much budget…

In the wake of the Great War, the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression, Britain’s economy had taken a battering. Even modest cars were scarce and tended to be utilitarian out of necessity. A decent privately owned open tourer was a luxury affordable by very few; for most it was the bus, and a good night out was a slow, warm pint at the local, accompanied by a harsh Woodbine or three. As is so often the case, things were faring slightly better in and around London. The growing population buoyed up the Home Counties and the South-East, with nearly half of the new factories built in the mid-1930s being located within Greater London. Suburban house-building was burgeoning, and mass production brought such goodies as radios and electric kettles to…

INVENTED BY A Canadian and intended as a better fountain pen, the original stylograph was at best a limited success. Then, 50 years after its invention, a German exploited its unrivalled ability to draw fine lines of a consistent width and thereby turned it into the quintessential professional technical pen of the 20th Century. Scribes had laboured through history to create a pen that didn’t require constant dipping. There have been reports of writing instruments containing ink reservoirs that date back to ancient Egypt, and it has been claimed that Leonardo da Vinci invented a fountain pen of sorts. Nevertheless, despite man’s best efforts, quill pens reigned for over a millennium until the advent of the mass-produced disposable steel nib in the 1820s. What we would today recognise as a…

Joseph Figoni Volume One: Alfa Romeo PETER M LARSEN & BEN ERICKSON, Moteurs!, £195, ISBN 978 8 797288 20 7 It sometimes feels a little perverse to award Book of the Month status to a pricey, limited-edition work that relatively few people can afford. You have to really want a book like this to justify spending the thick end of 200 quid on it. However, it would be even more perverse to exclude such a book on the grounds of elitism. This hefty hardback is, literally, a work of art and as such fully deserves its equally hefty price tag. What’s more, it is pretty much guaranteed only to go up in value rather than down, which may be a useful bargaining chip on the domestic front. What we have…

IF BRIGHTLY COLOURED endurance racing cars are your thing, then it’s difficult to imagine a more compelling collection than this. The photograph represents less than a third of the 75 race and road cars to be offered at no reserve from the personal collection of Jean Guikas (of GTC) by RM Sotheby’s. It’s a collection that spans many eras, but endurance racers – specifically those with Le Mans 24 Hours pedigree – feature prominently. A prime example is the 1981 Ferrari 512 BB/LM, which features one-off bodywork fitted by the race team Bellancauto. This car raced at Le Mans in 1981 and 1984, and is estimated at €2,250,000-3,000,000. Another Ferrari with big expectations is the 1955 250 GT Berlinetta Competizione. This was displayed at the 1955 Turin motor show and was…

I GREW UP surrounded by cars. My uncle was an automotive writer and, having been born and raised in Saudi Arabia, I drove my dad’s GMC truck on the sand as soon as I could reach the pedals. My father bought me a Volkswagen Beetle at 17, thinking it would be a safer option than the MG Midget I’d wanted; it didn’t take me long to tune the Beetle and take it drag racing. I suppose a career involving cars always seemed likely, especially after I realised I couldn’t be a pilot because I needed glasses. I’m an early riser and I always have been. I wake up, have a cigarette and a coffee outside, and begin to mentally unpack my day. At 7am each morning I comb through our…