Octane içinde August 2017 için içindekiler tablosu

AS OCTANE GOES to press, JLR Classic celebrates the opening of Classic Works, its brand new headquarters at the group’s spiritual home-town of Coventry. The £7m, 14,000m2 purpose-built facility brings sales, servicing and restoration operations under one roof for the first time, and includes showroom space plus 54 workshop bays for servicing and restoring all Jaguar and Land Rover models out of production for a decade. It also houses the 500-strong JLR Classic vehicle collection. The workshop is organised into strip-down, remanufacturing and assembly zones for the Land Rover Series I, Range Rover Classic and Jaguar E-type Reborn programmes, including an engine shop, and houses the XKSS line. More than 80 specialists are employed, many with decades of experience, and by the end of 2017 there’ll…

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29 June – 2 July Goodwood Festival of Speed There is no shortage of events this year paying tribute to Ferrari, but the daddy of motoring festivals will inevitably do a more spectacular job than most. grrc.goodwood.com 30 June – 2 July Schloss Bensberg Supersports Classics As the name suggests, this year’s event at the impressive Schloss Bensberg is for (road-legal) sports cars only, and is open to cars built between 1945 and 1997. schlossbensbergsupersportsclassics.com schlossbensbergsupersportsclassics.com 30 June – 2 July Monza Historic Back after a break for 2015, this Peter Auto-run meeting will feature a guest appearance by the Formula Juniors of the FIA Lurani Trophy. peterauto.peter.fr 1-2 July The Ellis Journey The De Dion Bouton Club has organised a re-enactment of the first journey made by motor car in…

BMW HAS A long history of special versions of the M3. The original E30 came upgraded as the Ravaglia, Europameister, Evos I and II, and the hallowed Sport Evo, and then there were be-winged GT and GT2 versions of the E36 and the mesmeric E46 M3 CSL too. But, even against such precedent, is four different M4s in three years overkill? We got the original car in 2014, but its flawed character coerced BMW to introduce the honed Competition Package (CP) in early 2016. Later that year we were treated to the super-expensive and highly focused M4 GTS, which remains the halo model even though it is out of production. That leaves a gap to be plugged by this, the M4 CS, which slots between an M4 CP (£3000 more…

You see them sometimes at classic-car gatherings: neat, unadorned coupés with something of the Alfasud Sprint about them in the truncated tail and the upward flip of the rear side windows. But here the four headlights are under a Plexiglass cover, and both the Alfa scudetta and the ovoid dashboard are ultra-minimalist. Meet the Alfa Romeo GT Junior Z, launched in 1969 (long before that Alfasud) as a 1300, growing to a 1600 in 1972. That’s Z for Zagato, with a whiff of the racing TZ in its aura if not its avoirdupois. The Junior Z was built on the shorter wheelbase (88.7in) of the 105-series Spider (the one launched as the Duetto), and as a cosy two-seater it made an exotic alternative to the regular Giuilia Sprint series. Only…

‘GYPSY ROSE’S BODYWORK IS FAR FROM RADICAL; THE TOP HASN’T BEEN CHOPPED OR CHOPPED OFF, AND THE PANELS ARE REAL CHEVY STEEL’ So the song goes: ‘All my friends know the low rider. The low rider is a little higher. The low rider drives a little slower. Low rider is a real goer. Low rider knows every street, yeah. Low rider is the one to meet, yeah.’ These are the lyrics to the hit 1975 record Low Rider, by War, a multi-ethnic funk band formed in Long Beach, California, towards the end of the 1960s. Their album The World Is A Ghetto was a best-selling album of 1973. And one of the band’s most famous songs became the anthem for a culture. Low Riding is fundamentally an Hispanic movement and…

YOU’VE JUST READ how the 7 was conceived and reached its definitive Lotus form. The twin-cam version, though, was an exotic rarity. Most Lotus 7s used pushrod Ford engines, in pre-crossflow 1340cc or five-bearing 1498cc form, then Kent crossflow guise. That’s where the 7 was at, engine-wise, when Colin Chapman let it go. It was already semidetached from the rest of the Lotus range, sitting uneasily with smoother-looking, higher-tech, ‘normal’ Lotuses, and it was built and sold by a separate Lotus Components Ltd division, which also built customer racing cars. Latterly the 7 had become too expensive to build, with all those tubes and aluminium sheet, so in 1970 Lotus Components redesigned it with an enclosed tail end in glassfibre. It had a sculpted, modern look, thought the stylist, and…

A LOCK-UP in London might lack the romance of a dusty countryside barn when it comes to sourcing your restoration project, but M&A Coachworks, bodyshop collaborator with Porsche Classic Partner Hatfield, wasn’t disappointed in the location. Because corralled inside was a 65,000-mile, 1986-vintage 928 S, an ideal front-engined, rear-transaxle Porsche to enter into the Porsche Classic Restoration Competition 2016. The Crystal Green Metallic V8-powered coupé had been bought new by a Nigerian family as a 21st birthday present for their son, according to M&A’s owner, Dean Dionisiou. ‘How it ended up in the lockup isn’t clear,’ reveals Dean, ‘but when we retrieved it, it was in a sorry state. Most of the interior had been chewed to pieces by rodents, and the bodywork was awful and neglected. The sill panels…

EVEN THE MOST musically myopic can’t have failed to notice the media flurry accompanying the 50th anniversary of ‘the greatest album of all time’ (although some critics have also declared it the worst). Having abandoned live concerts, exhausted and frustrated, The Beatles conceived Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as an alter-ego to extend their musical ambitions. Whereas their first album took 13 hours to record, Sgt Pepper absorbed an intensely creative 700 hours, resulting in a 39min 52sec opus that changed the direction of popular music. It won four Grammy awards in 1968: Best Album, Best Contemporary Album, Best Engineered Album, and Best Album Cover. The sleeve, featuring famous people, was Paul McCartney’s idea – manager Brian Epstein had suggested a plain brown paper wrapper. Overruled, he then recommend…

Rudolf Uhlenhaut J WOLFGANG SCHELLER & THOMAS POLLAK, Dalton Watson, £69, ISBN 978 1 85443 282 7 There are easier tasks, we imagine, than writing the biography of a man who ‘consciously stayed in the background’, but J Wolfgang Scheller and Thomas Pollak have done an admirable job of finally dragging the late Rudolf Uhlenhaut out into the spotlight. Uhlenhaut downplayed his achievements during his lifetime, spouting the ‘team effort’ line often enough that plenty beyond the walls of Mercedes-Benz HQ probably believed it. This book makes the scale of his deception clear: he might not have wanted the public to know it particularly, but Uhlenhaut was an engineer of colossal ability, one of the towering figures in Mercedes history. He is best known for designing the 300 SL, and…

 WE’LL BEGIN IN BRITAIN for a change, and the discovery that not all Aston Martin Lagonda products are turning to gold. Not even the gold ones. ‘LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT HOW THE 24-YEAR-OLD RUBBER BITS, LARGE ROUND ONES ON THE CORNERS INCLUDED, WILL HOLD UP AT SPEED’ Bonhams’ annual Aston Martin Sale at Newport Pagnell changed venue this year, to the Aston Martin paint shop. As far as paint is concerned the cars on offer were in various states of finish, from the near-immaculate to the near-forgotten barn find. The total sale revenue of £5,152,721 came from the 25 out of 43 cars that sold, the most valuable of which was a 1970 Aston Martin DB6 Mark 2 Volante which reached £561,500. The runner-up at £399,100 was a 1961 Aston…

IF IMITATION is the sincerest form of flattery, Mazda’s launch of the MX-5 Miata in 1989 represented a heartfelt homage to the golden era of the affordable British sports car. You could have stuck a Lotus badge on the nose and no-one would have questioned it. What was so remarkable about the efforts of the Japanese/US design and development team was its thoroughness. It might have been sufficient if they’d recreated the charms of the Big Healey, Frogeye Sprite, MGB, Triumph Spitfire and Lotus Elan by using humdrum mainstream components for reliability, and making it front-wheel-drive to save costs. Possibly the public wouldn’t have cared. But the team had a vision of doing the job properly, and fought off the accountants. So the MX-5 (launched as the Miata in the…

FROM AUCTION TO race track in ten minutes: that’s how the headlines went. Actually, it was more like 36 hours, but it’s still a great story. Justin Maeers attended Silverstone Auctions’ competition car sale the night before the 2015 Silverstone Classic, unexpectedly came away the owner of a 1959 Cooper Monaco – and raced it in the Classic on the Saturday. ‘I’d gone along for the free Champagne really, and after lots of that, and against a telephone bidder from Australia, I ended up with the car. I hadn’t intended to race it at that stage, but when Charles Gillett’s Willment went pop in practice, we thought, what about the Cooper?’ A mad dash got it out of the Wing building and into scrutineering before the entry deadline, and Maeers…

FROM ANTONY and Alcyon to Voisin and Villard, the Vintage Revival at France’s historic banked Montlhéry track is a treat for those who appreciate elderly and obscure racing cars. Unlike the Goodwood Revival where the spectators dress for war, at Montlhéry they dress for peace, often from the period before the invention of the automobile – and even in the rain they were all enjoying themselves. Technically the event features no racing, though there are a number of 15-minute performance-related plateaux for pre-war cars. And riding round the banked track with Duncan Pittaway in his V-twin GN, you wouldn’t know it was supposed to be noncompetitive! Featured in Octane 128, the GN is what Duncan describes as ‘a fairly irreverent GN special’, based on a 1921 GN chassis, axles, chain-drive…

AS PART OF its business model, Lamborghini likes ‘specials’. If anything, it’s rival and neighbour Ferrari that has to keep up, and in more ways than one if the new Huracán Performante’s record-smashing 6:52.01 lap of the Nürburgring is anything to go by. Maranello would no doubt argue ‘not’. But, for a little perspective, it’s a time that puts this ‘track focused’ version of the Huracán LP610-4 way out ahead of Porsche’s 918 Spyder, the only hybrid hypercar so far to have posted a Green Hell-for-leather time. Back in 2013, 6:57.00 was considered as hot as it gets and a resounding vindication of petrol/electric tech. Now less so. Unsurprisingly, eyebrows have been raised. But then the Huracán Performante goes somewhat further than previous Lambo specials that have worn a Super…

IT’S BEEN AROUND for a while in Europe, but Mercedes-Benz has now brought its Marco Polo camper to the UK: Stuttgart’s answer to Wolfsburg’s California. It’s based on the long-wheelbase V-class van/ minibus, which lends itself well to the conversion. Prices start from around £53,000, a touch above VW’s, but that buys you car-like cabin ambience and beautifully integrated ‘kitchen’ and ‘wardrobes’, all superbly finished. The 2.1-litre turbodiesel is a calm aural backdrop to proceedings, and 187bhp is plenty to haul 2.4 tonnes, though it’s best to sit back and enjoy the comfortable ride and smooth seven-speed auto. The electrically sliding side door and tailgate make pitching camp easy: wind out the awning and pull a stubby from the fridge. Raising the electric roof gives you room to cook; come…

TOLY ARUTUNOFF’S letter in Octane 166 about the Lola GT that he bought as a Serenissima in the early 1970s raises a fascinating subject, and one that I will try to shed some light on following conversations with Giovanni Volpi in Venice, and a Swiss friend. Toly did indeed buy Lola GT Mk6, chassis #LGT1, which was the Le Mans entry in 1963. When he bought the car, it was stored in Formigine, badged as a Serenissima at the front and with Serenissima logos with the Venetian flag on each side. It was fitted with a Serenissima V8 double overhead-cam engine, #101F1, mated to a red GSD Colotti-Francis T32 gearbox. The car had modified Gullwing doors, was painted a cream-white colour and – as Toly correctly remembered – was missing…

It’s fair to say I’ve been dreaming about this trip for a long time. Planning the route – Milan, Turin, some mountains, northward through France to the cross-Channel ferry – not to mention picturing, in my mind’s eye, that moment when the keys to a 1969 Alfa Giulia saloon are dropped into my hand. The keys to my Alfa Giulia saloon. If you’ve been reading my Octane Cars reports you’ll know I’ve been anticipating this moment – counting down the days! – for more than a year. Just couldn’t wait. But there’s nervousness to deal with too. What if I don’t like the car, or the way it drives? Will it live up to my expectations or will I be disappointed by it? You see, I’d never even driven a…

LOTS HAPPENED NEAR the beginning of the 20th Century, but it’s thanks to advancements in the design of two particular objects that you’re sitting comfortably with this issue of Octane. No, we’re not talking about pipes and slippers or armchairs and whisky tumblers, but about the photographic camera and the motor car. Machines both, entirely different in make-up and purpose, yet inextricably linked for more than a century. That’s the basic premise behind a captivating exhibition running at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris for the next three months. If you’re interested in cars, pictures of cars, the history of cars and the impact they’ve had on society, then, to use a suitably mechanical term, you’ll be riveted. Co-curated by editor-in-chief of the French magazine AUTOhebdo Philippe Seclier…

ONE OF THE many delights of an English summer is hearing the distinctive growl of a Merlin engine, peering up into the blue sky and instantly recognising the aircraft from its unmistakable elliptical wingshape. Spitfire! Cue a tear welling up in the eye of any chap or chap-ess brought up on a diet of Airfix kits and re-runs of The Battle of Britain on a wet bank holiday. Until recently, the only way to see a Spitfire in flight was to develop a crick in your neck and squint against the light as you struggled to keep track of the distant silhouette. However, thanks to a new operation based at Goodwood Aerodrome – yes, the one that lies within the race circuit, formerly a World War Two fighter base –…

‘I did everything in it. Croft circuit every two weeks during the winter – 350 miles with no heater and snow coming through the floor’ This unassuming little machine is a legend. A giant-killer. A four-wheeled history lesson. And a perfect representation of the life and times of a 1960s race car – though how it survived is as close to a miracle as you’re likely to find in the automotive world. So, a few facts to set the scene: WJB 707 is the most original of the remaining Sebring Sprites (legends, one and all). It’s been driven by Pat Moss and John Sprinzel but mostly by Lotus stalwart Ian Walker. During the 1961 race season it set class records at every circuit where it raced. It was later rallied,…

 A FEW MONTHS AGO, I wrote about my visit to the superb Omega Museum in Biel/ Bienne, the town on the German/French language border in Switzerland where Omega is based. It was a visit that I am unlikely to forget as it was there that I fell in love with a 60-year-old… the Omega Speedmaster. It would be an exaggeration to say that I have thought of little else since, but it has reminded me why I love watches and it has finally dawned on me that, if there were a checklist for collectability, then the Speedmaster would fulfil pretty much all the criteria. ‘A WELL-MAINTAINED EXAMPLE FROM THE 1960S CAN BE WORN AS EASILY AS A MODERN WATCH’ It is a genre-defining classic: with its 3-6-9 subdial configuration, and…

1:48-SCALE MAJOR BARACCA SPAD XIII MODEL BY CORGI Strange as it might sound, no machine has had a greater impact on Ferrari’s visual identity over the years than the SPAD XIII flown by Francesco Baracca during World War One. The prancing horse emblem painted on the side by the revered Italian ace became, of course, the Cavallino Rampante known across the world today. This 1:48-scale model of Baracca’s fighter plane has, fittingly, been introduced by Corgi in the year of Ferrari’s 70th birthday, and is offered in a limited edition of 900 pieces. £54.99. corgi.co.uk SINGER TRACK1 CHRONOGRAPH Every bit as desirable as Singer’s ‘Reimagined’ Porsche 911s, this is the result of a collaboration between Singer founder Rob Dickinson, designer Marco Borraccino and master watchmaker Jean-Marc Wiederrecht. Inside the 43mm…

Vanwall #VW7 Built from original parts on a new chassis. Original engine, transmission etc. Currently in “short nose” Monaco configuration.. 1956 Leyland Royal Tiger Vanwall Formula 1 Transporter Supplied to Vandervell Products and used by their Vanwall GP Team. 2 owners since. Recently restored at great expense to an exceptionally high standard. 1958 BRM P25 Formula 1 Driven by Jo Bonnier to BRM’s first Grand Prix victory at the 1959 Dutch GP. Retained by Rubery Owen until 1981. Original magnesium bodywork. A regular winner in historic racing. 1977 McLaren M23 Chassis #012 Arguably the most original of all M23s. A well known car which has been raced and cherished by 2 long term owners. Fitted with a fresh DFV engine. A rare chance to own one of the greatest of…

ANYONE WHO KEEPS a weather eye on the market for Mercedes-Benz 300SL ‘Gullwings’ will know that original, correct and unrestored examples are few and far between, so it’s a rare treat when one appears for sale. It’s rarer still when one is offered by the family of the original owner, so imagine how jaws dropped in the offices of Gooding & Company when a call came in from a potential consignor who not only had such a car, but also a 300SL roadster with the very same credentials. ‘Unmolested’, ‘timewarp,’ ‘preserved,’ ‘unrepeatable’. Yes, all those well-worn descriptions apply here – but in this case they’re to the power of two. In a delightful short film made by Gooding about this brace of remarkable SLs, the owner modestly describes how his…

RATHER AS A DOG reacts to the sight of food he’s not allowed to eat, some cars are just so pretty it’s almost difficult to look at them. Such is the case with this superb and rare Frazer Nash Le Mans Coupé, one of just nine built and the actual example that appeared at the Earl’s Court Motor Show in 1954. Introduced during the previous year, the Le Mans was the first ‘closed’ car to be produced by FN and was, essentially, a Targa Florio model with a roof. That meant a parallel-tube chassis, independent front suspension, rack-and-pinion steering, torsion bars at the back and twin-leading-shoe brakes, all topped with a lovely lightweight aluminium body. With just 760kg to propel, the 140bhp, 2.0-litre Bristol straight-six endowed the Le Mans Coupé…

THE INAUGURAL City Concours at the Honorable Artillery Company headquarters has been hailed a great success, and a date for next year’s event already announced. Despite polling day for the General Election falling on the first day of the two-day concours, attendance was strong, with over 3500 visitors, the majority from the nearby financial houses in the City of London. Many hosted business clients at the concours and at the accompanying lunches in the imposing HAC drill hall. Most visitors expressed amazement not just at the cars but at the HAC’s little-known five-acre lawn hidden away in the heart of the City, which turned out to be the perfect setting for a high-class automotive garden party. Of the 110 cars on show, there were a few obvious hits, and a…

Napier Blue Bird tribute to be demonstrated at Shelsley If you’re intrigued by our feature about Lorne Jacobs’ Napier Blue Bird evocation (above) on pages 158-164, then Shelsley Walsh hillclimb in Worcestershire is the place to be over the weekend of 22-23 July. During Shelsley’s Classic Nostalgia festival, Blue Bird will make several blasts up the hill, watched by Donald Campbell’s daughter Gina and nephew Don Wales. The festival will also feature at least 30 Group A rally cars plus competition from a wide variety of other machinery, and (on the Sunday) a street concours for the first 100 classics to arrive. See www.shelsleywalsh.com for more. One-off 1970s Bentley racer at Bicester Flywheel festival Talking of one-off specials, just one Bentley racing car was sanctioned while the company was owned…

ERIC BROADLEY MBE, the quietly determined genius who founded Lola Cars in a tiny workshop in Bromley, Kent, in 1958, has died aged 88. His company became one of the UK’s most prolific manufacturers of race-winning machinery during four decades, with more than 2000 Lolas produced to compete in almost every category of serious motor racing. Broadley’s machines won the Indianapolis 500 and the Can-Am series, and they dominated Formula 5000 for years. His designs and innovations were very influential; famously it was from a Broadley design – the Mk6 – that Ford’s GT40 emerged. Less obviously, Broadley also had a good business head. Talent is needed to design a winning car, but it is perhaps even harder to create a profitable enterprise in the volatile world of racing car…

AT CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA Villa d’Este in Italy, on 27 May, Rolls-Royce unveiled the Phantom VII’s swansong: a unique coachbuilt version, called Sweptail, commissioned by collector Sam Li at a cost reputed to be £10m and taking four years to complete. It made its debut ahead of ‘The Great Eight Phantoms’, a Rolls-Royce exhibition that will gather together the greatest Phantoms from the last 92 years in Mayfair, London. There’s a clue to the theme in the name, as the seventh-gen Rolls Phantom ceased production at the end of 2016. Crowds applauded as Rolls-Royce’s design director Giles Taylor and bespoke designer Alex Innes (who ran the project under Taylor) threw off the Sweptail’s covers. It looks more elegant in the metal than in photographs, and is especially impressive in its detailing…

LAND ROVER OWNERS might love mud more than the average motorist, but no-one was complaining about the bright sunshine that bathed the Dunsfold Collection’s biennial show, held in the grounds of a home for retired sailors – in deepest Surrey. Yes, really. Founded by enthusiast Brian Bashall and now run by his son Philip, the Dunsfold Collection is a treasure trove of unique Land Rovers, including many prototypes and experimental vehicles donated by Land Rover since the late 1960s. The vehicles are scattered over various storage units in the south of England and not normally viewable by the public, so every other year the Collection gathers them together for a fund-raising show, supported by clubs, traders and anyone with a passion for preserving Land Rover history. Fortunately, Jaguar Land Rover…

IT’S 25 YEARS since the first Type R landed, as a special lightweight version of the NSX. The first Civic Type R was introduced in 1997 on the fifth-gen Civic, and this version is the fifth generation of the Type R Civic. Its predecessor was on sale for only 18 months and, with sales of just 2500, it’s the rarest and shortest-lived version of this scorchio-hatch. The all-new structure is much stiffer, glued as well as spot-welded to further increase rigidity. The aero kit – wings, diffusers on the roof and rear valance, and a front splitter guaranteed to split on sleeping policemen – was done before the concept was shown at Paris last autumn, which is why the production car already looks familiar. But it works. This is one…

Are you a devotee of Masterchef? I am no cookery buff but I find the programme fascinating. It’s not the ingredients themselves, although they are often interesting enough, but the way they are blended or juxtaposed to complement each other in unexpected ways. The result can be a dish tastier and more exciting than you would ever expect. An Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT is like that. Here, the ingredients themselves are quite highly refined, if conventional, but taken together they work a magic beyond the individual total of their contributions. So we have a four-cylinder engine (albeit one with block and head made from aluminium), twin overhead camshafts, and a cast aluminium sump with cooling fins. We have a regular gearbox driving a live back axle, but the gearbox…

‘The Graduate was timely product placement for the Duetto, which made its debut at Geneva in March 1966’ The car doesn’t fare well in the movie. It’s used and abused, and finally abandoned when it runs out of gas… but the little red Alfa Romeo Duetto is as well remembered today for its role in The Graduate as its human co-stars. Its fame may endure even longer; whenever Alfa Romeo launches a new sports car, it’s a safe bet that journalists will be searching YouTube for clips of Dustin Hoffman at the wheel of his 1966 Duetto. Even if you haven’t seen the movie in a while, you’ll remember the plot. It centres on the doomed affair between disillusioned college graduate Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) who’s seduced by an older…

It looks out of place amid the crowd it has attracted by the River Rhine in Cologne. This city is where Manfred and Erwin Kremer started tuning and racing Porsches in 1962, winning Le Mans in 1979 with their 911 K3 ‘flatnose’ – the only flatnose 911 ever to score outright victory there, a feat not even the factory could replicate. Kremer became the specialist to beat in that wild turbo era, with its home-developed K1 through to the K4, the latter a 911-shaped aluminium spaceframe brute wielding at least 635bhp and as much as 810bhp. Erwin Kremer’s death in 2006 heralded a difficult period for the racing team, which spiralled down to becoming ‘just another workshop working on old Porsches’. In 2010, Cologne businessman and Kremer enthusiast Eberhard Baunach…

Certain years are etched upon the mind with greater clarity and definition than others, especially when we’re talking car launches. Take 1962 as an example: the Ferrari 250 GTO, the MGB and the Ford Cortina were all released that year, each an icon in its own distinct way. Or how about 1948? That year saw the Citroën 2CV, Jaguar XK120, Morris Minor, Porsche 356, the Bristol 401, even the Tucker 48, all unleashed on an unsuspecting world just beginning to recover from the calamity of war. Next year will mark some incredible 70th anniversaries. But now turn your mind to 1957. Six decades ago. A few remarkable cars, not least the Fiat 500, though the Lotus Elite, Lancia Flaminia, Mercedes 300SL Roadster, Aston DB MkIII and Maserati 3500GT that were…

Three days of touring around beautiful Tuscany in the Italian sunshine are promised. And I’d be taking part in a glorious, ultra-rare Ferrari. Where do I sign? We are entered in the Cavalcade Classiche, along with 69 other Ferraris from all over the world, to celebrate Ferrari’s 70th anniversary. I join my friend Damian in his exquisite, freshly restored 860 Monza, one of only two constructed, and it has a fabulous racing pedigree. The Cavalcade is based at the luxurious Augustus Hotel, which includes the Villa Agnelli, in the picturesque seaside town of Forte dei Marmi, a favourite with Italian gentry. Rosso Corsa of varying hues is the predominant colour, though many of the 70 cars taking part are silver, blue or Giallo Fly. While being checked and issued with…

 FOR MORE THAN 50 years, the line of communication between Maserati and Britain crackled through the razor-sharp mind of ex-pat wheeler-dealer Mario Tozzi-Condivi. ‘MARIO STRUCK A DEAL THAT SAW MASERATI’S V12 DUSTED OFF AND INSTALLED IN A COOPER CHASSIS’ Details of his early life are sketchy. He was born in Rome in 1924 and became a World War Two fighter pilot, surviving unscathed. Towards the end of the war he spent a week marooned in a mountain village with, by chance, one Dr De Minicis of the Automobile Club d’Italia. That led to him meeting Maserati proprietor Adolfo Orsi. Mario then departed for London. With an excellent grasp of English, he chased his fortune as Orsi’s contract man, seeking customers for Maserati’s batteries, horns, spark plugs and machine tools. The…

‘THE MUSEUM of Arts and Trades’ sounds so much friendlier than ‘Science Museum’, but that’s just what this old church in Paris is. And it should certainly be on the bucketlist of anyone who loves gadgets, machinery, aircraft and cars. Created during the French Revolution, in the former Benedictine priory of St-Martindes-Champs, Arts et Métiers holds thousands of objects, from Marie-Antoinette’s automatons to the original model of the Statue of Liberty. When you arrive, you will probably see people standing staring into a glazed section of pavement. They will be looking at Foucault’s Pendulum in the crypt. Built in 1851, its giant swing demonstrates the rotation of Earth and its movement is totally hypnotic. The main museum will leave you full of wonder, but take a breath before entering this…

Beyond its own story, the MBCI reveals a dynamically changing landscape. In May, when all other HAGI indices traded down or were unchanged, the MBCI gained 2.15%. In the year to date, the MBCI is up by 6.86%, while all other indices are in negative territory. Year-on-year, the MBCI has posted an advance of 16.6%, more than doubling the performance of all other indices, and in some cases outperforming other sectors by a factor of four or more. There’s more going on here than a short-term fluctuation. It’s down to the characteristics of the marque and also the composition of the MBCI, which includes younger, cheaper and more numerous models than other HAGI indices. The Mercedes-Benz back catalogue has far greater breadth than those of the purely sporting and exotic…

The first-generation Azure was something of a last hurrah for Bentley prior to its takeover by VW, and it was quite a machine to go out on. Based on strengthened Continental R underpinnings, it weighed a shameless 2600kg, could carry four in the utmost comfort, and remains one of the thirstiest road cars ever produced. When new, a ‘basic’ Azure cost £250,000. That makes the £80,000-90,000 estimate on this one seem reasonable, not only because it appears to be in mint condition but also because it has covered a mere 12,800 miles and is the ninth of 10 Jack Barclay Platinum Edition versions built to mark the celebrated dealer’s 70th anniversary in 2009. It was sold new to a UK-based Saudi prince (of course) who grew tired of it after…