Innehållsförteckning för April 2026 från Octane

SELECTING THE 20 greatest Aston Martins is a lot more difficult than you might think. Of course, to the company itself, its greatest car is always the next one; but for us, with more than 110 years of rich history to play with, it’s a bit more complicated. There are the landmark cars, the racing cars, the prototypes, the (rare) commercial successes, the historically important-from-birth chassis, the examples that have become historically important through attrition and, perhaps for Aston Martin more than any other marque, the silver screen stars. And then all of those merits must be blended by measuring (somehow) a bunch of seemingly incompatible immeasurables. It’s Krypton Factor stuff. For example, speaking as a motor racing fan born in 1968, when we started compiling the list I couldn’t…

To take advantage of our special offer and get three issues of Octane for £5, either visit octane-magazine.com/subscribe or call +44 (0)20 3966 6695 BUYING YOUR ISSUE OF OCTANE – NEW AND OLD Print issues Octane is available at the usual branches of UK shops, such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and independents, as well as WH Smith Travel. You can order the latest magazine or a back issue, delivered direct to your door, by visiting octane-magazine.com 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 and digital at octane-magazine.com/subscribe. Order before 13 March to start with issue 275.…

STAR CLASS at the 2026 London Concours is expected to be Porsche Sonderwunsch (‘Special Request’), assembling ten cars from Porsche’s personalisation programme. Having originated in the ’70s, it allows customers to collaborate with Porsche’s design and engineering teams in creating their car. The cars at the Honourable Artillery Company on 9-11 June will be curated and presented by Boxengasse, the 100-acre Porsche-focused ‘campus’ that hosts Megaphonics. Boxengasse CEO Frank Cassidy said: ‘The Sonderwunsch Class represents the ultimate expression of personalisation, and the London Concours is the perfect setting to celebrate these remarkable cars.’ There will be eight other classes at the London Concours (londonconcours.co.uk), including Yellow Dream, Alfa Romeo, Icons Remastered, Hypercars, The Tuners, Wildcards, and American Muscle, ensuring a broad and compelling celebration of automotive design and performance. In…

THERE’S CLEARLY a love for Gordon Murray and his obsession with lightweight and fit-for-purpose cars among Octane writers and readers alike. There has also been a bit of coverage of the first hybrid car available outside Japan, the 1999-2005 Honda Insight, as previously owned by Octane’s Dixon, Metcalfe and Leno, among others. I had a low-mileage silver Insight from 2001 for a few years and stupidly sold it during the 2020 pandemic, since it was sitting outside my office window and not getting much use. It was surprisingly good fun to drive, and was so narrow and light that it could carry surprising speed once it got up and running. It passed into the hands of a trader who I thought wanted it for himself but who instead tried to flip…

‘Beauty,’ said the 18th Century Scottish philosopher David Hume, ‘is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind… and each mind perceives a different beauty.’ That difference in perception is the problem with concours d’élégance: the car declared best of show at one event might fall short at another. The late Yves Carcelle was chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton and the moving spirit behind the Louis Vuitton international network of Concours d’Élégance events. He first conceived the idea of an occasion that would compare the winners of the top concours events – a first-among-equals contest that would determine which was the ‘best of the best’. After Carcelle’s passing in 2014, the ‘Best of the Best’ event was enthusiastically taken up by The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels…

‘Flash Alf’ Martin was a welder, but not just any welder. He was a brilliant welder. He worked for the Rubery Owen Group, which owned British Racing Motors, the BRM Formula 1 team. In its factory at Bourne in Lincolnshire, ‘Flash Alf’ was the man who welded together the multi-tubular chassis frame of the most significant Grand Prix car BRM ever produced – the gorgeous 1962 Type 578, chassis no.1, which became perhaps better-known as ‘Old Faithful’. It earned that nickname during the 1962 season, when it was driven by team leader Graham Hill in all but one of the year’s premier-Formula races. 5781 was not only BRM’s first prototype of its new breed of V8-engined 1½-litre Formula 1 cars, it also ended that season as winner of no fewer…

Reviving the Testarossa name places the new 849 alongside the 12Cilindri at the top of Ferrari’s series-production range. It replaces the SF90 – an ambitious supercar defined by a V8 hybrid powertrain that was both immensely powerful and complex. An evolved version of that system carries over into the 849. Set against even only the most recent historical connotations of the Testarossa badge, applying that name to a V8 hybrid without a single side-strake is provocative to say the least. Within, there’s an immediate sense of incongruity between the Prancing Horse on the steering wheel and the sound the 849 makes when I jab the Engine Start button for the first time with the e-Manettino in its Hybrid setting. Instead of an angry eight-cylinder bark, I’m greeted by a computerised…

Raw results 2025 Nichols N1A Elliott Hughes ‘I WENT A little deep into that corner – ended up in the kitty litter,’ laughs Steve Nichols. I’m sitting in the back seat of a Range Rover Velar, shoulder-to-shoulder with the design maestro behind the legendary McLaren MP4/4 that Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost drove to dominate the 1988 Formula 1 season. Young Australian hotshoe – and Aston Martin F1 simulator driver – Bart Horsten is at the wheel, sighting a lap of southern Spain’s Guadix Circuit. Steve, unusually gregarious for an engineering genius, is along for the craic. His jocularity is in stark contrast to my growing trepidation. Clouds build as we clamber out of the Velar and gather around the 700bhp, sub-900kg, rear-drive creation that bears his name: the Nichols…

WE’VE NEGLECTED our saturation diving readership for too long. Apart from a brief foray into the depths with our now-famous Casioil (an oil-filled £10 Casio F-91W that damn’ nearly survived a proper sat-diving job in 2020), we’ve barely touched on the issues that spending a couple of weeks at 300m down brings for your wristwatch. A Sub or a Fifty Fathoms will give you some decent pub boasting rights, but to have serious bar-diver credibility you need something with a helium escape valve (HEV). Yet you don’t only have to have the watch; for full kudos you have to understand the whys and the hows of helium and diving. The air you’re breathing now (unless you do happen to be reading this in a sat-diving chamber) is, near as spit, 78%…

YOU KNOW THAT something is out of the ordinary when a 250 GTO is sold at auction, but the whole world is talking about something else. The final $38.5m figure paid by collector David Lee for the white GTO did top the sales figures for the month as well as Mecum’s Kissimmee auction, yet still it fell below many people’s expectations. Being the only white GTO to leave the factory shouldn’t have negatively affected the value, but several other factors might have. The big one was the fact that this GTO no longer retains its original engine, and its fairly limited in-period racing history and right-hand-drive configuration might also have served to tame the bidding. All we know is that its new owner got an absolutely great deal. In total…

AS ONE OF the big names associated with building a collection of automobiles, the casino magnate William ‘Bill’ Harrah amassed an incredible variety of one-offs, prototypes and other vehicles that played an important role in the history of the motor car. Some of that collection now resides as the National Motor Museum in Reno, Nevada; as part of a recent $4m renovation programme, a selection of 80 cars will soon be offered for auction by Bonhams. A further 30 will also be consigned from the Minden Automobile Museum. Lots will span the period from the late 1800s to the 1960s, and the catalogue reflects Harrah’s interest in prototypes. Highlights include a supercharged experimental 1936 Cord once owned by EL Cord himself, joined by the fascinating 1960 Fiat Pininfarina ‘Y’ –…

Key: T = tour R = regularity rally C = featuring closed-road or circuit racing L = long-distance (1000 miles or more) 2026 19-23 April California Mille (R,L) Just as the original Mille Miglia inspired today’s regularity rally, the regularity rally inspired this US event, first staged back in 1991. The route for 2026 runs between Palo Alto and dreamy Santa Barbara. californiamille.com 23-26 April Durbuy Rally (R,T) The dinky Belgian city of Durbuy hosts a regularity rally for cars built between 1920 and 1975. There’s a Touring class for those who want to take part but who would prefer not to have to keep one eye on the stopwatch. zoutegrandprix.be 23-26 April The Flying Scotsman (R) Pre-1948 cars rumble through the wild Cairngorms and up to the north-east of Scotland before turning…

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Something is not right. Racing cars are meant to be more difficult to drive than road cars; extra power and performance but less harnessed, so trickier to access and control than with the engineering amelioration for the great unwashed. But that’s not the case here, not at all. The German roads we are on, beautifully maintained (of course), are deserted (of course), and undulating between hills and valleys to offer the perfect proving ground for this experimental racer. And this historically important Aston Martin is taking full advantage, scything through the empty countryside like it’s got a bridge to capture. But not at the expense of even one iota of comfort or usability. Remarkable. Equally remarkable is this car’s history, provenance and place in the pantheon of Aston Martin greats.…

Fair to say I’ve always been a Lotus Elise fan. Lightweight, apparently simple yet deceptively, even archly intelligent in concept, it redefined Lotus for its era. It’s incredible to think that the Elise went into production fully three decades ago, as close to the launch of the Europa (Lotus’s first mid-engined road car) as it is to today. But after ten years of development that brought ever more hardcore options such as the track-ready Exige, plus the evolutionary, legislation-led S2 that was enabled via collaboration with GM, Lotus sought the prospect of a broader market beyond minimalist, bare-knuckle sports cars. It needed a car that people who wore suits rather than hairshirts could drive daily. The Elise-based Europa S, developed hastily for Lotus’s Malaysian then-backer Proton, just wasn’t cutting it.…

IT WAS A constant source of bewilderment during press week. Scroll back a few decades or so and Motor Sport magazine was a hive of activity at the best of times, but the last few days before an issue went to press were always intense. It was at this juncture that the fax machine would whirr into life and sheets of raw copy would be spat out, all of which had ‘PTO’ scribbled at their base. None of this made much sense given that the reverse side of each page was obviously blank. It then fell to the office factotum to transcribe everything onto a computation device so that they could be put onto a server and edited. Not that you were ever allowed to edit Bill Boddy’s copy, you…

THE BRITISH ROLE in Ford’s epic GT40 story is often overlooked in the US, but part of this Mk1’s interesting history includes a photo of the car in the Slough factory. It is actually one of 31 Mk1s built in road trim, in an effort to satisfy homologation regulations. Chassis P/1058 was shipped to Dearborn in late 1966 and formed part of Ford’s Promotion and Disposal Program, meaning that it sat in a dealership to attract potential customers. It was sold and thankfully remained in road trim throughout a string of owners, at one point painted white with blue stripes. Correctly restored in the early 2000s, it carries an estimate of $6.5-8million. rmsothebys.com 2001 RUF RGT Broad Arrow, Florida, USA 6-7 Mar, broadarrowauctions.com While RUF might be synonymous with huge…

FERRARI’S ADOPTION OF paddleshift transmission technology helped to reshape the Formula 1 grid, not to mention influencing road-going performance cars and widespread adoption of the technology. This remarkable five-car collection offered by Furlonger brings together two pivotal Grand Prix machines and three landmark road cars, all of which share a common motorsport thread. Most special is the Formula 1 pairing. The one on the left is the second of just two factory-built 1988 Tipo 639 prototypes and the only example in private hands. It served as the test-bed for the semi-automatic gearbox, and was retained by the factory until 1999. Fully driveable, it has appeared at Goodwood and Silverstone in recent years. Next up is the 1989 Ferrari 640 F1 – chassis 110 – which was the first F1 car…

1990s bargains! All the best buys from the era that brought you the Lotus Elise, Renault Clio Williams, Aston DB7, BMW E39 M5, Ferrari 348 and more Plus Dick Protheroe E-type Exclusive drive of the sister car to CUT 7 Ferrari 195 Inter Driving the super-rare early-1950s luxury GT 1959 Edsel Corsair Stephen Bayley picks on the controversial convertible Riccardo Patrese interview Time with the F1 stalwart who kept Senna honest (Contents may be subject to change)…

27 February – 1 March A Novice Trial Based at Hellidon Lakes Hotel in Northamptonshire, this is the ideal introduction to regularities, driving tests and Tulip books. Training sessions are held on the first two days, and the event concludes with a 90-mile rally featuring four special tests. hero-era.com 27 February – 1 March Sydney Harbour Concours Hand-picked classics fight it out for Best of Show honours on Cockatoo Island – a UNESCO World Heritage Site close to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. sydneyharbourconcours.com.au 27 February – 1 March ModaMiami Headlined by a celebration of the Lamborghini Miura, but featuring classes for everything from ‘Cadillac’s Art Deco Machines’ to ‘Cult Classics & Curiosities’. modamiami.com 28 February Los Clásicos de Cuba Held in the heart of Old Havana and showcasing some of…

AS THE START of the 2026 season looms, it is already shaping up to be a watershed year for classic car events, with a raft of new concours, regime changes and venue swaps. The biggest new UK event will be the Wilton Concours des Légendes at Lord Pembroke’s Wiltshire stately home on 19-21 June. The event is rapidly gathering momentum, with tickets being sold and a trio of major manufacturers signed up. The concours also has an auction partner in Dore & Rees, which will hold three sales over the long weekend: Fine Motor Cars, Automobilia, and Watches & Jewellery. Nick Wells, MD of Dore & Rees Motoring, said: ‘We are delighted to be part of the story-led concours at Wilton House. As well as the auctions, we’ll be offering advice…

‘Coal Scuttle’ The very first Aston Martin, built in 1914, just months before the start of the First World War. Development of the car slowed for obvious reasons, yet that didn’t stop Lionel Martin driving it to Wiltshire from his London base to obtain a registration with the letters ‘AM’ in 1915. ‘Coal Scuttle’, named for the rudimentary appearance of its body, took part in the first available competitive event in 1919 (the London to Edinburgh Trial) and served as a team race and trials car throughout the early 1920s. It was sold in 1925 for £50, and its whereabouts have been a mystery ever since. ‘Green Pea’ Partly financed by Brooklands racer Count Louis Zborowski, the Bamford and Martin team built two new twin-cam 1.5-litre race cars in 1922,…

MICHAEL TURNER, WHO died last year on 1 December, aged 91, was a towering figure in motorsport and aviation art. He spent his early years in Harrow and was obsessed with all things aeronautical, extending that fascination to cars and motorsport after a 1947 family holiday to the Isle of Man, where he saw his first motor race, the British Empire Trophy. After art college and National Service with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Michael was taken on as an illustrator by a London advertising agency. Already an enthusiastic motorist, his first car was an Austin Seven special, followed by an MG F-Type Magna and, in 1955, an SS100 Jaguar, a car so good he bought it twice (see Octane 250 for the full story). When Michael first bought…

IN THE LATE 1960s, my dad (Don Webb) was the assistant bodyshop manager at Autobody Repairs, the bodyshop for the Ford dealer in Chichester, D Rowe & Company. One day in 1968 a maroon Morris Mini-Minor De Luxe came in as a total loss. Dad bought the salvage and set about sorting the mechanicals, while workmates dealt with welding and painting. He sold the car three years later, just before I was born, and sadly there is no sign it survived. Dad shared his slide collection with me when I was a teenager and among them were images of his Mini rebuild, which inspired my lifetime interest in Minis. My first car was a three-year-old Mini 30, before the offer of a company car led to its sale. After this,…

Porsche 911 Cup sim racing wheel by VPG Drivers competing in the 2026 Porsche Supercup will have spent recent weeks getting to grips with the new 911 Cup car, touted by Porsche as ‘a scalpel for the track’, and it turns out that we ordinary folk can get behind the wheel, too, sort of: VPG, with help from Porsche, has created a perfect replica of the car’s steering wheel for sim racing use. Produced in the same facility as the real thing, it’s crafted largely from carbonfibre and weighs just 1030g, making it the lightest high-end sim racing wheel on the market. From £1199 plus VAT. vpgsim.co.uk Team Fiat retro cycling jersey by Prendas A fun throwback to 1977, when the great Eddy Merckx turned to Fiat to sponsor his…

A TRADITIONAL MERCEDES-BENZ makes its driver feel special. The combination of light yet positive steering, effortless power and a deliberately slow automatic gearbox means you arrive at your destination more relaxed than when you set off. The R129 is a prime example. Sporting it isn’t, but there’s real depth to the driving experience. This generation of SL dates from MB’s peak era for over-engineering, and offers serious value for money today. Launched in 1988, this ultra-modern Bruno Sacco-designed convertible moved the game on hugely from the ageing ‘Bobby Ewing’ R107. Based on a shortened W124 platform and underpinned by multi-link rear suspension, it looked sharp and featured a whole host of cutting-edge safety and comfort features – notably a roll-over protection bar. Three engines were offered from launch: two 3.0-litre…