Table of contents for June 2025 in Octane

FEW CARS DEFINED upmarket British motoring better during my youth than the Aston Martin V8. Introduced when I was four and finally killed off just as I formally became an adult, it was an ever-present symbol of bespoke British brilliance, embodying a sense of cultural and social superiority that had otherwise evaporated along with those rusty UK cars further down the foodchain. To some there was something a bit brassy about the Aston, while others mentally formed the perfect two-car garage with it sitting alongside an R107 Mercedes SL – unhelpfully, the highest praise or the greatest condemnation, depending on your perspective on who might own such a garage. There was certainly something rather louche about the V8 and V8 Vantage, and they were more likely to be seen wallowing…

Espíritu de Montjuïc 21-23 March Peter Auto’s historic racing season kicked off at the 4.7km Barcelona-Catalunya circuit in Montmeló, Spain, in weather the origanisers charitably described as ‘capricious’. The ten grids ranged from 90-minute 2-Litre Cup to Group C, and featured some 300 cars and big-name drivers such as Emmanuel Collard (Ferrari 550 Prodrive) and Jan Magnussen (Lola T70 Mk3B GT). Winners included Oliver Bryant (2.0L Cup), Belgian Emile Breittmayer, who tiptoed through a late shower to win Classic Endurance Racing 1 in a Lola T70 Mk3B, and Emmanuel Brigand (Classic Endurance 2) in his Porsche 935. Porsche 962s dominated Group C, Ralf Kelleners and Ivan Vercoutère winning Race 1 and young Austrian Lukas Halusa taking Race 2. Rally The Globe Generations Rally 27-30 March The event’s fourth running took…

‘APRIL IS THE cruelest month,’ said TS Eliot in The Waste Land, and so it must have appeared to Britain’s luxury carmakers on 2 April, dubbed ‘Liberation Day’ by President Donald Trump. It’s a strange description of an event that sparked fears of global trade meltdown. Britain got off lightly in comparison to other countries, but not its carmakers. While the UK’s whisky distillers, machinery makers, salmon farmers and pharmaceutical firms attracted just 10% import duties on their products and services to North America, carmakers must shoulder 25%. It had been widely telegraphed that classic cars would suffer the same 25% duty hike; it now appears not to be so, though the exact fall-out of Trump’s April axe-wielding has yet to be worked through and there are other ramifications. And…

THE MOST IMPRESSIVE motor museum to open in recent times has launched an astonishing exhibition of Grand Prix and Formula 1 cars. The Nationales Automuseum The Loh Collection opened as recently as July 2023, and – impressively – this is only its third major exhibition since then. Located in the Central German town of Dietzhölztal-Ewersbach, Hesse, the hometown of industrialist and collector Friedhelm Loh, and with over 7500m2 of exhibition space on a former industrial site, the facility displays around 150 vehicles from 1886 to the present day. Many are from Loh’s incredible personal collection. Since it opened, the museum has always had a breathtaking special display, kicking off with ‘100 Years of the 24 Hours of Le Mans – the Myth, the Heroes, the Cars’ and ‘Ferrari – Masterpieces…

WHAT ONE EASILY forgets about Aston Martin in the era of Victor Gauntlett is what a tiny, boutique car company it was. It made four cars a week: 200 cars a year. Today, the company makes 6000 a year but still can’t seem to turn a profit. Plus ça change… My first Gauntlett-era car was a V8 Coupé, a relatively rare manual-transmission car that I bought secondhand from a young salesman called Nicholas Mee at Aston Martin Sales in Sloane Street, London, in 1981. Nick continues to sell Astons at his eponymous dealership in Hertfordshire to this day. ‘Previously owned’ my car may have been but the sole previous owner happened to be a Mr Sydney Norman, who was the most prolific Aston Martin buyer of the time. In 14…

If you’re a certain age, and from the UK, then I probably don’t need to explain why the words ‘Throbbing Purple Monster’ have just lodged themselves into my consciousness. For those who don’t fit that demographic, I should probably explain… Through the 1990s to the mid-2000s, a particularly extreme tuning and car modification scene flourished, much of it fuelled by a magazine called Max Power. It was a cultural phenomenon that thrived on taking mundane hatchbacks (attainable to young car enthusiasts) and putting a unique spin on them with big bodykits, even bigger wheels and and lairy paintwork. While huge power builds were the dream, many avoided the associated insurance premiums by sinking their money instead into sound systems. According to some, the partying that went hand-in-hand with the scene…

OVER 300 CARS. More than 55,000 artefacts. In excess of 140,000 visitors a year. Attached to the highest-capacity sports venue in the world. Does that sound like a museum that needs fixing? The faint sounds of museum curators falling to the ground in shock or slapping their foreheads in frustration would suggest not. But that was where the revered Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum was at two years ago. And then it was closed for refurbishment. Completely shut, not just restricted in parts or only open at weekends. Nope, it hadn’t been open to the public since November 2023. Not only that, but while it was closed it did the seemingly unthinkable, selling some of its star cars at auction. We’ve been following this from well before the closure, and we’ve…

WHILE OUR kill-joy, anti-car politicians and councillors do their best to render Britain’s towns, cities and villages as car unfriendly as possible, there’s been a blossoming of classic car enjoyment that harks back to the simple days. The days when you’d enjoy the pleasure of taking your classic car for an outing to meet up with others for a relaxed cup of tea or coffee. In the 1990s and 2000s, we used to laugh at the idea of a bunch of anoraks parking up in a field and setting up their deck chairs. Hell no! We wanted to be historic racing, regularity rally driving, grand touring, Gumball Rallying, Beaujolais dashing, enduring the Tour de France or the 1000-mile Migle Miglia. All very fabulous, fabulously expensive and fabulously exhausting! More recently,…

A BRIGHT AND sunny St David’s Day falling on a Saturday persuaded me to bring the Sunbeam out of the motor house for its first run of the year. I’ve given the older car precedence over the 1926 Delage this spring because the cars have to be parked nose to tail in the garage, which was originally built to house the horse and trap of the curate for whom my house was originally built around 1880, and I need to get used to the very different ways of the Sunbeam. It’s an easy starter with full choke on its Claudel-Hobson carburettor and the ignition and throttle levers set at 20 to 4 – full ignition retard and tick-over – on the big nickel dial on the steering wheel. There’s no…

AS THE AGEING DB MkIII sauntered towards retirement, work on the DB4 began as far back as 1954. This is the second of two prototypes, known as DP114/2, and it was underpinned by a tubular chassis and bodywork styled in-house by Frank Feeley. After help stiffening the bodyshell was sought from Touring Superleggera, the project was abandoned in favour of a more substantial platform chassis. This prototype was used by Marjorie Brown, then-wife of the company owner, before eventually ending up in private hands. It has been restored a couple of times, most recently by Aston Martin Works. It retains the original engine and is estimated at £385,000-425,000. rmsothebys.com 1990 Citroën ZX Rallye Raid Broad Arrow, Villa d’Este, Italy 25 May, broadarrowauctions.com This ex-works ZX, chassis C05, was piloted by…

THE IDEA OF wedging a highly tuned, naturally aspirated V10 engine under the bonnet of a four-door saloon might seem slightly silly. Bonkers, even. However, spend any time behind the wheel of an E60 M5 and it quickly feels like the most natural thing in the world. This is a thoroughbred throughand-through, with the M-division’s motorsport breeding shining brightly. From an ownership point of view it was never a car for the faint-hearted, but now it’s approaching the 20-year mark might it be a semi-sensible option? Go in with your eyes open, and it just could be. Launched in 2005, this was BMW’s most extreme M5 to date, powered by the glorious S85 V10 engine. Developing 507bhp at 7750rpm, this F1-inspired naturally aspirated screamer was hooked up to a single-clutch,…

24-26 April Manx Classic On the Isle of Man, roads are closed to allow competition on three hillclimb courses. manxmotorracing.com 24-27 April Anantara Concorso Roma A new concours d’elegance for 2025, held in central Rome and open exclusively to Italian cars. anantaraconcorsoroma.com 25-27 April La Jolla Concours d’Elegance Classes this year include one for ‘Iconic American Hot Rods’. lajollaconcours.com 25-27 April Veterama Hockenheim Germany’s Hockenheimring hosts a giant autojumble that attracts upwards of 2500 traders. veterama.de 25-27 April GP de France Historique At Circuit Paul Ricard, with a special appearance by the R25 that helped Renault win the F1 Constructors’ title 20 years ago. grandprixdefrancehistorique.com 26 April Air/Water Porsches of all eras and types are displayed at the Orange County Fairgrounds in California. air-water.com 26-27 April Classic Car Boot Sale…

Low-volume British motor manufacturers have been thrown a lifeline after PM Sir Keir Starmer announced that they would be permitted to continue building new petrol-powered cars after the 2030 deadline set out in the UK’s Zero Emission Vehicle mandate. Starmer specifically referenced Aston Martin and McLaren in the declaration, which means that the new rules should automatically apply to all boutique manufacturers, including Morgan, Caterham and Ginetta. According to the Government, the exemption has been made because the volumes of cars being produced by these companies are not having a significant effect on the overall emissions seen as being caused by the motor industry. The news came as part of a raft of changes to the existing UK pledge to kill off the manufacture of all fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2030,…

REGARDING the possible new Bristol mentioned in Octane 263, I really hope that Mr Wharton’s vision can succeed. I have always liked the brand, since spending many trips in a fellow student’s 400 in the ’60s, and admired the obvious aircraft influences in its exterior design and the BMW-derived engineering in its drivetrain. Later on the marque lost some of its appeal when the body designs became a little staid, even though the huge power of the Chrysler V8 was fun. I once wrote to Anthony Crook about possible design work and he responded with a kindly note saying that he admired our work for the Bentley Continental R but that there were no plans for a new Bristol car at that time in the late 1980s. Images of the…

Aston Martin DBS V8 1969-1972 When the William Towns-designed DBS was launched in 1967, the Tadek Marek V8 – which had unsuccessfully raced at Le Mans that year – was far from production-ready. It would finally appear in 5.3-litre form as the flagship model in 1969, with an unquoted power output (which was somewhere north of 300bhp), with Bosch mechanical fuel injection and alloy wheels. Prices from £50,000 AM V8 / V8 Saloon 1972-1989 The AM V8 went through many changes over the years, but it remained the entry-level Aston Martin all the way through. Launched in April 1972, the V8 was initially powered by the same fuel-injected engine as the DBS V8. This version remained in production for just over a year, but in order to comply with US…

TO CALL THE Aston Martin V8 a muscle car doesn’t do it justice; it’s like calling Muhammad Ali just a boxer. The V8 is a proper British gentleman thug of a car, a brick outhouse dressed in tweed jacket and cravat, equally happy entertaining at a dinner party or scrapping outside with its sleeves rolled up. Developed from William Towns’ elegant DBS, the Aston Martin V8 lived for 18 years before being replaced by the Virage. Over that time, it was almost constantly reformed, generally losing power thanks to emissions regulations that saw a variety of different fuel injection and carburettor variants but gaining refinement as each year passed. The early cars have grunt but feel very much like the 1960s cars they are; from the 1978 October Introduction (‘Oscar…

IT DIDN’T ALWAYS take aftermarket companies to make Renaults wild; the company did a pretty good job itself. And if you think its crazy days are over, then meet the Renault 5 Turbo 3E… aluminium chassis, carbon composite body, 540bhp, 1300lb ft, limited edition, likely to cost £120,000-plus. It pulls on Renault’s turbo heritage: Louis Renault patented the first turbocharger in 1902; the turbocharged Renault A442 entered Le Mans in 1975; the A442B won Le Mans in ’78; the 1977 Renault RS01 was the first Formula 1 car with a turbocharged engine; and the RS10 was the first turbocharged F1 car to win a Grand Prix, in 1979. You get the picture. And clearly it’s inspired by the bonkers 1980 mid-engined 5 Turbo, which entered public consciousness in 1978 as…

With the benefit of hindsight, this was a bad idea. After becoming separated from the photographer’s car, and with hopes fading of being reunited short of applying the handbrake and twirling the tiller, salvation appears. In something of a navigational quandary, and desperate to find somewhere to spin the car around, I find the entrance to a big country pile provides welcome relief. It is only while performing a 27-point turn that the wedding party further down the drive becomes apparent. The bride and groom are having their photographs taken and heads turn in unison. Sorry, nothing to see here! Oh, and good luck! At the point of its fullest fury, this ex-works Lancia Fulvia has the quality of a sonic boom. It will rattle windows three or four miles…

AFTER TWO YEARS of cutting, welding and shaping by the wonderfully patient team at Kent-based Turner Classics, it is finally done. The metal bodyshell of my formerly tired and beatenup 1969 Spider Veloce is once again square and rust-free. But that wasn’t before a final kick in the shins just before Christmas, when I was greeted in the garage on a winter’s night with a resigned smile and the comment: ‘You’ve got a rotten rear end.’ More Sid James than Italo Calvino, I thought, but I suppose it had to be said. After Turner’s craftsmen had diligently worked around the car replacing and restoring sills, struts and floors, the back quarters and rear valance had finally been cut away to reveal… well, frankly, not very much. Some rust, what looked…

IT WAS LOVE at first sight. In spring 1990, I needed a new car because my first, a very cheap and very rusty Mercedes W123 200D bought from a farm close to Milan, had been written off after my brother was hit by a Lancia Delta. Thanks to the money from the insurance, topped up by my savings and a gift from my grandma Ester, on 13 June 1990 I become the legal owner of a 1985 240TD. This one. Spotted at the Mercedes dealership in Milan, the 240 had had one owner from new, had covered about 240,000km, and had the desirable air conditioning, sunroof and five-speed gearbox. Geronimo, the family Golden Retriever, was particularly happy, as he suddenly had a lot more space… The 240 and I worked…

LIBERTY’S ANACHRONISTIC halftimbered store on London’s Great Marlborough Street has to be one of the more impressive examples of recycled industrial salvage. It opened in 1924, masquerading as a Tudor mansion and derided by architectural critics, but it’s also much photographed by tourists, of whom many must think it was once a royal abode. The timber framing, lots of the interior woodwork and the floors were repurposed from two 19th Century Royal Navy battleships. The craze for mimicking the timber-framed dwellings of the Tudor period was sweeping the nation, to the despair of social commentators. It therefore seems perverse to have chosen to park a halftimbered building abutting the classical Portland Stone sweep of Regent Street. Originally planned to occupy a Regent Street site, not unsurprisingly it was turned down…

Mason Aspect Integrale The titanium-framed, all-road Aspect was conceived, like all Mason bikes, in a converted barn in West Sussex, but company founder Dom Mason had to look overseas for a framebuilder able to execute the design to his satisfaction. ‘Titanium is a tricky metal to work with, and some of the details required really intricate welds.’ It took more than two years to find a builder – a small outfit in Tuscany – that was up to the task. The end product was almost impossible to fault, but some fusspot customers expressed an aesthetic preference for fully integrated cabling, and now they’ve got it, along with refined chainstays and seatstays, and geometry tweaked to deliver a sportier ride. Frameset only £4000; complete from £6200. masoncycles.cc Hot Wheels Elite 64…

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 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 High Street and 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.co.uk/subscribe. Order before 16 May to start with issue 265. Problems with your subscription? Please email customerservice@octane-magazine.com…

One of the most celebrated careers in motoring is to be honoured at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on 10-13 July, when the work of Professor Gordon Murray CBE is the focus of the Gerry Judah-designed central feature outside Goodwood House. The South African genius behind so many Brabham racers, including the infamous Alfa-engined Fan Car, plus the McLaren F1 and now Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) is to have his creations showcased at the event, including current GMA T.50, T.50s Niki Lauda, T.33 and T.33 Spider, plus a host of other Murray-designed road and race cars. Professor Murray said: ‘For 60 years I have enjoyed the design and engineering challenge of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible – be that in racing or road cars. The supercars that GMA builds…

Aston Martin always called it a saloon. Even when there was another saloon in the company’s range in the form of two flavours of stretched, Lagonda: one a fourdoor version of the shape you see here, the other, later one an outrageous wedge. But to the rest of the world it was a coupé, a muscularly handsome coupé that, in the peak Vantage form portrayed on these pages, became Britain’s quickest car. An entirely home-grown one, too, despite the very transatlantic aural onslaught of its V8 engine. In a way the engine makes the car, even though the car predated the engine. The shape arrived in 1967, from the pen of new recruit William Towns, whose idea for Aston’s nextgeneration machine fired the management’s enthusiasm in a way the alternative…

‘HE WAS A remarkable man, just remarkable,’ sums up former Aston Martin board director Kingsley Riding-Felce about his boss at Aston in the 1980s, Victor Gauntlett. ‘There’s a huge difference between management and leadership, and Victor had leadership. If he stood you on the pavement, told you to close your eyes and then cross the road, you would. He was that kind of a chap.’ It wasn’t just the white-collar staff who felt that way. Long-time Aston engine builder Michael Peach, who worked for the company from 1978 to 2018, puts it more simply. ‘He was lovely. I’ve never known a director like him. He knew everyone’s name in the factory, and he’d come into the engine shop and ask if I had any coffee on the go and then…

Every time I attend a classic car show, I see all the amazing racing cars, sports cars and convertibles and can’t help but think how much sexier the car-scape used to be. Only I’m wrong, of course: 90, 70, even 50 years ago, the car market was smaller than today’s, but those racing cars, sports cars and convertibles formed an even smaller proportion of it. What we see today is not how the market share was back then, more a survival of the fittest: cars preserved or rescued because of their beauty or sporting ability, rather than surviving through sheer volume. It may even be that these cars led a more pampered life than the more utilitarian saloons that suffered such attrition, hence their unusually high proportion in concours and…

Everyone loves a barn-find. Whether or not the vehicle was actually found in a barn rather than a lock-up or domestic garage doesn’t matter; there’s something uniquely intriguing about seeing a car that has literally not turned a wheel – or received the slightest bit of love and attention – for decades. When Octane took the bold decision to feature the derelict 1961 Ferrari 250 California Spider from the Baillon Collection on the cover of issue 140, it turned out to be one of our best-sellers, and ‘barn-finds’ are regular attractions at car shows and auctions. The news that a 1957 AC Aceca had just been unearthed in a garage after being off the road since 1969 would be exciting enough, therefore – but what makes this an even more…

I’VE BEEN BUSY tinkering since getting my car back from the bodyshop after the insurance work and wheel refurb. And what better way to say I miss you (and to combat the workshop dust and spray drift) than with a clay bar and wax and a good hood clean – while being careful not to touch the new areas of paint until they harden fully. On the mechanical front, I’d been carrying a can of WD-40 with me to extinguish a noisy idler bearing, and it had been doing the job for a few months, but I also found the time to swap that out and fit a new serpentine belt. Stupidly, when I replaced my CCV system, I’d not seated the dipstick O-ring correctly and pinched it, resulting in…

NOT MANY CARS scream instant classic quite like the GR Yaris. For me it evokes memories of the ‘glory years’ of Group A rallying, and the legendary road cars that movement sprouted. Perhaps most obvious is the permanent four-wheel drive system with a controllable torque split, handled via a large rotary knob in the centre console. The extremely visible front-mounted intercooler looks like it came straight off a Mitsubish Evo TME, and there’s even a button on the dash for an intercooler water spray. Above all this, though, is the inherent sense of purpose that permeates the whole car. I already had great admiration for the GR Yaris before getting behind the wheel. How so? Thanks simply to Toyota’s willingness to produce such a car! As a quick refresher, its…

IT MIGHT NOT have been an especially quiet month in the world of international politics, or the financial markets – you can read more about tariffs elsewhere – but there has been quite a lull in big, blockbuster international sales following on from Amelia Isalnd in March. Closer to home, results from the Classic Car Auctions by Iconic Auctioneers sale made for interesting viewing, with a £2.5million total and an 85% sale rate. Those are solid numbers, but dive deeper into the results and a total of eight world record auction prices show that some aspects of the market remain in rude health. Five of those records came under the banner of ’80s hot hatches. First up was a 1989 Ford Escort RS Turbo, a 5673-mile car that achieved £50,625.…

QUITE A FEW cars have earned the ‘widowmaker’ moniker over the years, but the original Porsche 930 is perhaps most legendary: they’re incredible machines, but must be given due respect. Singer’s Classic Turbo takes inspiration from the 930’s style, but offers a unique modern experience. Like all of the company’s restomods, it’s actually based on the more modern 964 platform. This Dirty Oak Green example was the first of the series – known as the The Sun Valley Commission – and comes with a very high level of specification. At its heart is a 510bhp twin-turbo 3.8 flat-six Mezger engine. Singer has gone to serious extremes with the brakes, offering a carbon ceramic set-up with Brembo calipers and discs shared with the Bugatti Chiron. The suspension is completely bespoke to…

AS YOU MIGHT have gleaned from our Spotters’ Guide (page 60), it can be difficult to keep track of the many different versions of the V8 range, but there’s something special about this one. Towards the end of the production run, Aston Martin developed a new electronic Weber Marelli sequential fuel injection system, replacing the carburettor set-up. As well as being cleaner, and smoother in power delivery, it featured low-profile intake manifolds that allowed a lower, sleeker bonnet – which is what was fitted to the mechanically fuel-injected DBS V8 and very early V8 Saloons. While there’s no such thing as the perfect spec, this must come close – especially in non-Vantage V8 Volante terms. The exterior is Cumberland Grey, just like Bond’s Volante early on in The Living Daylights.…