OctaneJuly 2017的目錄

WHEN ASKED why he raced, Sir John Whitmore always explained it as a form of self-expression. It was something he found he could do, and do well. As to why he retired in 1966, when still only in his 20s, he’d say he wanted to distance himself from his aristocratic past and craved a life of self-improvement. There is no doubt that Sir John Whitmore was among the more cerebral drivers to steer a Touring Car on its bump stops. The racing baronet, who died on 28 April following a massive stroke, certainly packed a lot into his 79 years. Born in 1937, he was educated at Eton, Sandhurst and Cirencester Agricultural College, his father having been a decorated solider during the Great War who later became Lord Lieutenant of…

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VALLETTA, THE BEAUTIFUL and ancient capital of Malta, awoke to the sound of 70 vintage and classic cars climbing the steep and narrow streets to the grand square at Hastings Gardens, atop this picturesque Mediterranean island. Bathed in sunshine, islanders and tourists were treated to this gathering of pristine classics competing in the inaugural Valletta Concours d’Elegance. Many of Malta’s finest cars, ranging from the exotic to well-loved family motors, were on parade with the entrants suitably attired in period outfits to match, in an atmosphere of relaxed enthusiasm. Your man Coucher, along with contributor Massimo Delbò, had been invited to join the international panel of independent judges to select the Best in Class winners as well as the Best in Show. The Octane team was charged with judging the…

IT WAS TWO YEARS ago that Porsche’s GT department head Andreas Preuninger sat alongside me in the passenger seat of a 911 R. We mused about the possibility of the R’s six-speed manual transmission being used elsewhere in the 911 range, even threw some hypothetical sales figures back and forth, should such a car be built. It has been, Porsche back-pedalling on its decision with the first-generation 991 GT3 to offer it with two pedals and paddleshifters alone. The new GT3 can be had with those, and a seventh ratio, but now it’s also offered with a tweaked version of the six-speeder that gained so much acclaim in the limited-run 911 R. Preuninger and I figured about a 60:40 split, PDK to manual. It might be more, it might be…

YOU’RE LOOKING AT the very first Ferrari – yes, even though the Auto Avio 815 wears a different name, a different logo, and was built well before the founding of the Ferrari company. When Enzo Ferrari left Alfa Romeo he collected a lot of money – but, in exchange, he had to close down Scuderia Ferrari and sign an agreement not to manufacture a car (for road or track) bearing his name for four years. In the spring of 1940, Enzo Ferrari was ready with a racing car. To get around that agreement, he named the company Auto Avio Costruzioni, based in the ex-Scuderia address of Viale Trento e Trieste in Modena. To play safe, the prancing horse logo it wore was slightly different, with a racing car in front…

‘I HAVE KILLED MY MOTHER!’ Enzo Ferrari’s work with Alfa Romeo in the inter-war years, from 1929 to 1938, is the stuff of motor sport legend. And that made the acrimonious fall-out over future policy with Alfa director Ugo Gobbato and his protégé, the Spanish engineer Wifredo Ricart, and their wish that he should hand back their racing operation, only harder to stomach. Ferrari did not accept defeat lightly. After a four-year non-competition clause had expired, and Ferrari’s wartime work on machine tools was over, the first car that bore his name – the Ferrari 125 – appeared in Raymond Sommer’s hands at the 1948 Italian GP in Turin’s Valentino Park. But it was not until the 1950 inauguration of the Formula 1 World Championship that Ferrari cars began to…

TODAY’S MOTOR SPORT photographers rely on motor drives, snapping dozens of images per opportunity. Klemantaski (1912-2001) was old-school, with just one chance of the perfect action shot. So experience and anticipation were all: ‘I knew enough about racing to know what a car would be doing that critical fraction of a second after I pressed the button,’ he explained in a retrospective of his work by Paul Parker. This fabulous shot of Dan Gurney drifting a 250 TR in Goodwood’s 1959 Tourist Trophy is an example. Gurney initially shared this car with Tony Brooks before Brooks was asked to take over what was orginally the Gendebien/Cabianca car from Phil Hill, and finished third. Gurney finished fifth, delayed by spongy brakes and a burst rear tyre.…

THE CITY OF MODENA is famous worldwide because of the cars manufactured in and around it. That’s a great reason for a visit, but there is more to Modena than mere motoring nirvana. The city, founded by the Romans in 183BC with the Latin name of Mutina, became the capital of the Estensi dukedom. The Modenesi are known for their traditional characteristic of putting great effort into everything they’re involved with, from cars to food, tiles to wine, even vinegar, without compromising the pleasure of living. As a result, the region’s food is considered among the best in Italy. There is even a museum dedicated to salami, the MUSA (Museo Salami) in Castelnuovo Rangoni. In downtown Modena you’ll find the Bottura restaurant, among the five best in the world, although…

 IN 1961, FERRARI seemed a perfect place to work, with an established group of managers and a string of competition successes, including Phil Hill’s Formula 1 World Championship, the Sports Car Championship (four victories in five races with the 250 Testa Rossa and the Dino 246 SP), and the GT Championship. Those eight managers were long-term employees, still young and all talented. Yet, on Tuesday 24 October, at the end of a calm, apparently normal weekly meeting, Enzo Ferrari suddenly fired all of them. ‘We thought the punishment was for the attack on his wife. The mistake was the letter’ They were the heads of his most important departments (in alphabetical order): chief development engineer Giotto Bizzarrini, design boss Carlo Chiti, administration head Ermanno Della Casa, foundry boss Fausto Galasso,…

‘Most famous are the V12s, the archetypal Ferrari engines. It was Enzo’s favourite configuration’ NEARLY ALL FERRARIS have a vee-engine of some sort. Even a flat-12 is, functionally if not visually, really a vee-engine opened right out to a 180º vee-angle. At various points in Ferrari’s history there has been the occasional inline four or six, and even an experimental vertical twin, and in the 1950s the large-capacity fours raced with some success. But, really, Ferrari is all about the vee. Most famous are the V12s, the archetypal Ferrari engines. One powered the first Ferrari, the 125S, and it was Enzo’s favourite configuration. In a mid-1980s company book of technical achievements he wrote about how he ignored everyone’s advice and insisted on 12 cylinders, and how that number has endured…

WHY IS Alfa Romeo’s Duetto referred to as a Spider, but Ferrari’s California written as Spyder? How is the latter even possible, when the Italian alphabet doesn’t contain the letter ‘y’? Spider is an old 19th Century coachbuilding term for a light open carriage, possibly deriving from the way that the accommodation is suspended between large, spindly wheels. The variation ‘Spyder’ may have been preferred in some languages, such as Dutch, because Spider would be read as ‘Speeder’. During Mussolini’s rule of Italy before World War Two, use of the word was frowned upon because it was a foreign import, which did not sit well with fascist ideology. Instead, convertibile, aperta or torpedo sport were more often used – even though torpedo is not an Italian word. However, it sounds…

PRECONCEPTIONS CAN BE difficult to shake. He’s bound to be a prima donna, what with his resumé including nine Le Mans 24 Hours victories, to say nothing of six Sebring 12 Hours gongs. Or a brace of Formula 3 titles for that matter, not forgetting victories in F3000, the German Touring Car Championship and… It would be easier to list the categories of motor sport in which Tom Kristensen has not excelled. This, however, is something else entirely, perhaps his greatest-ever challenge, for he is only hours away from venturing trackside in anger aboard a Rover SD1. But first there is a meeting of minds. It’s the 2017 Goodwood Members’ Meeting and the Dane is already discussing tactics with team insider Neil Godwin-Stubbert. The one-hour Gerry Marshall Trophy thrash later…

‘NO DRIVER HAS YET DEVISED A WAY OF DOING JUSTICE TO SIMULTANEOUS TRANSATLANTIC RACING CAREERS’ JUST THE QUICKEST glance at any of the standard reference works will tell you that Jimmy Murphy was the first of my fellow Americans to win a thoroughbred Olde World Grand Prix – the hallowed French Grand Prix at that – in 1921. Some will also mention his remarkable Indy record, or his US National Championships. Few will say anything at all about how much better off he might have been had he never even left the States. But James Anthony Murphy was a professional racing driver, when such a thing was only freshly possible, and he did what the job required. Born in 1894 to immigrant shopkeeper parents in San Francisco’s Irish ghetto and…

MANY VISITORS TO Glasgow’s arresting transport museum will think back with affection to its old location at Kelvin Hall. Some may even say that they enjoyed the old museum more than the new one, because it was possible to examine the vehicles more closely. But one thing that doesn’t trouble the new Riverside Museum is ghosts. The old one was declared to be one of the most haunted buildings in Scotland. It was used as a mortuary during World War Two, which won’t have helped; fittingly, one of the ghosts is said to be that of a car salesman who took his own life in 1948. A short distance from the old museum, spectacularly located on the site of Pointhouse Shipyard on the Clyde, the Riverside Museum opened in 2011.…

The plain fact is that Porsche, in line with most marque sectors and the overall market, is down year to date. But despite the common ground there is difference, too, as always with Porsche. In the year to date the HAGI P Porsche measure has declined 3.3%, and 6.44% from the November peak. However, what stands out immediately is that Porsche continues to head the rankings. For each of the last three calendar years the HAGI P has outperformed all other HAGI indices. This has more than offset the comparatively poorer performance in earlier years, from index inception in 2008 to 2013, when Porsche was outpaced, particularly in the peak growth years when Ferrari surged ahead with monumental compound growth. The end result is that, on the long run from…

I accidentally discovered the joys of the high-performance commercial vehicle in 1986 after buying a tidy-looking Morris Marina van at an auction (writes Simon de Burton) simply because it was ridiculously cheap. It turned out to have been fitted with an MGB engine which, to add to the fun factor, had also been given a ‘fast road’ tune. The lack of weight at the rear end made it lethal in the wet, but it was also hugely entertaining in a straight line. Doubtless this superb Chevrolet El Camino LS5 pick-up offers similar amusement, albeit on a somewhat grander scale. Built in 1970, it’s a top-of-the-range SS (for Super Sport) version featuring ‘custom’ trim and a 454ci, big-block V8 producing 360bhp. Quick getaways from the traffic lights must therefore create quite…

THE QUIRKY Messerschmitt occupies a singular place even within the exotic world of microcars. The Kabinenroller (KR) name literally means ‘Scooter with cabin’. Yet this budget vehicle has long inspired owners. Why? It’s quick off the mark and fun to drive, with direct-acting ‘tiller’ steering connected straight to the track-rod ends. Add 80mpg fuel efficiency and you can see why it exactly captured the mood of a Western Europe emerging from the throes of World War Two. The KR175 came about after former Luftwaffe officer Fritz Fend developed and built around 250 tiny three-wheeler vehicles (intended as invalid carriages) between 1948 and ’51. Called the Victoria, Fend’s design featured a single driven front wheel and two at the rear. But Fend soon adopted the more stable two-front, single-driven-rear theme. Dubbed…

Masters launches new Historic Le Mans series The new Masters Le Mans Legends series is open to all cars eligible to race at the Le Mans 24 Hours between 1995 and 2011, and will be split into three eras of cars – 1995 to 1999, 2000 to 2005 and 2006 to 2011. Each era will then be divided into LMP1, LMP2, GT1 and GT2 categories. The first race will be held at Spa-Francorchamps in September this year, followed by a full race season in 2018. Mille Miglia exhibition Brescia’s Museo Mille Miglia is celebrating the 90th anniversary of the famous endurance road race with an exhibition of original Mille Miglia race cars (pictured above), representing the event’s 1927-1957 glory days before safety concerns killed it off. The exhibition runs until…

MÄKINEN WAS THE wild man of rallying, widely regarded as being the hardest charger of his generation, his wins on bluechip events such as the Monte Carlo having entered into legend. Former BMC and Ford competition chief Stuart Turner rates him as the best driver he ever employed. ‘His 1965 Monte Carlo win was one of the all-time greatest drives,’ he says. ‘He didn’t just come first, he demoralised the competition. He annihilated them in appalling conditions. I first ran Timo on the Monte two years prior to that. I put him in a Big Healey – perhaps the most unsuitable car ever for snow and ice – alongside Christabel Carlisle. They won their class. Timo also took a hat-trick of wins on the RAC in 1973-75 as a works…

THE LISTER KNOBBLY is back again – and this time it’s road-legal. This makes Lister the only manufacturer making original-specification continuation cars that are eligible for IVA type approval and therefore fully legal for registration and road use. Continuation specials built by larger marques are limited to track use only, as they’re unable to qualify for low-volume approval due to the total number of cars they produce. Ten of these road-legal Listers will be built to original specification, except for those alterations needed for the IVA approval. These include a collapsible steering column, roll-over protection, indicators, number plates, padded dashboard, mirrors, ratchet handbrake, push-button switches and even removal of the windscreen. Available powertrains include a 3.8-litre dry-sump Jaguar straight-six with four-speed gearbox, like that fitted to the D-type. The engine…

IF YOU WERE at the 75th Goodwood Members’ Meeting in March, you might have witnessed the fantastic performance in the Gerry Marshall Trophy race by the ex-Richard Longman Patrick Motorsport Mini Clubman 1275 GT. Against the heavyweights, some with four times as much engine, Nick Swift and Andrew Jordan brought it in fifth after rabidly snapping at the tailpipes of a Rover SD1, two Camaros and an RS2000 for the entire race. A fantastic outing for a historic legend that won the British Saloon Car Championship outright twice, in 1978 and 1979. Except this one’s a replica, magicked out of nowhere by A-series tuning gods Swiftune, whose engines were in the first three cars of the all-Mini St Mary’s Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival in 2009. Nick Swift has…

THE ASTON MARTIN COMMUNITY has never seen a gathering quite like it. April’s Spring Concours of the Aston Martin Owners Club was held not on the usual manicured lawns of some stately pile, but inside the ‘super hangars’ at MoD St Athan in South Wales – soon to become Aston’s second car factory. The day after the Concours, construction teams moved in to begin the conversion. In 18 months’ time, the three giant hangars will house paint shops, trim shops and assembly lines. Aston Martin had formally taken possession of the site earlier in the week, the handover conducted by Secretary of State for Defence Sir Michael Fallon, and AML bosses were keen to throw open the doors to the entire Aston Martin family. The response was outstanding, as hundreds…

26-28 May Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este No other concours can boast a prettier location, and the cars that gather on the shore of Lake Como aren’t half bad, either. Classes will include Playboys’ Toys, for ‘wholly impractical’ road-legal racing cars. concorsodeleganzavilladeste.com 27-28 May Grand Prix de Pau Historique Pau is not especially easy to get to, but visitors in late May will be rewarded with brilliantly varied racing on a fabulous street circuit. grandprixdepau.fr 27-28 May Masters Historic Festival Masters’ flagship event always brings a first-class field to Brands Hatch, and this year’s Festival will also celebrate 50 years of the Cosworth DFV engine. mastershistoricracing.com 27-28 May La Vie en Bleu … ‘incorporating La Vita Rossa’, so visitors can expect to enjoy the sights and sounds of both French and…

THE AUTOMOTIVE WORLD is changing apace. Purists seek solace in classics from turbocharged this and low-emissions that, and it appears BMW has given us another reason to do so by revealing that its sixth-generation M5 will feature four-wheel drive. Heresy? Well, its biggest adversary, the (now four-wheel-drive) Mercedes-AMG E63, hasn’t lost any of its desirability and hooligan tendencies. BMW hasn’t disclosed the output of the M5’s updated 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8, but ‘about 600bhp’ is being whispered. That doesn’t sound like a massive step up from the previous model, but a) no sane person ever called that car underpowered, and b) the new M5 is lighter than before, despite the added hardware. That’s thanks in a tiny part to a carbonfibre roof, but more to do with the new, lighter platform.…

OF ALL THE entries in our A-Z, this one, a review of the quickest roadgoing Ferraris by decade, has caused the most grief. Coming up with a list of eight numbers ought not to be difficult, but cripes it took some doing – and we still couldn’t swear to the absolute accuracy of the below. Ferrari is hardly alone in occasionally massaging the performance figures of its cars, but we have avoided factory claims here as far as possible. The most significant implication is that ‘the world’s first 200mph production car’ is, by our reckoning… not. Road & Track measured the F40 at 196mph; Auto, Motor und Sport managed 199mph; we’ve used the Car and Driver figure, which falls between the two. Unfortunately, in the early years of the marque…

IT’S A LOT of people’s favourite Ferrari, the F40. Treads a fine line between trad and modern. Light, aerodynamic, powerful (of course) and an analogue driving experience even though, in terms of construction and motive force, the F40 was pushing the boat out a bit by Ferrari standards. You see, Ferrari had rarely been a technical trailblazer. Enzo’s cars won races because they lasted the course. His attitude? Trust experience more than experimentation. The race cars were all that mattered; famously, road cars sold only to fund the Scuderia. And although that initial 125 S first raced as far back as 1947, you can take the 250 Testa Rossa and GTO as metaphors for almost everything Ferrari stood for in its first couple of decades: a V12 at the front,…

‘The modified TRC was a stalwart on the anything-goes American road-racing scene’ JOHN VON NEUMANN and Bruce Meyer don’t have much in common. Von Neumann was an Austrian expatriate who became the most prolific sports car importer in Los Angeles during the 1950s. Meyer is a Southern California retailer whose love of hot rods inspired him to become one of America’s most influential car collectors. But they both shared a passion for a stunning silver 1957 Ferrari 625/250 TRC that’s been dubbed ‘the winningest Ferrari ever’. ‘This was von Neumann’s favourite car. He loved it. When he got divorced, he gave up all his cars except this one,’ Meyer says. ‘I think it’s the most beautifully proportioned Ferrari ever, and it makes the most symphonic noises. It’s the essence of…

Depending on who you talk to, the last time a steam locomotive travelled at 100mph on a UK mainline was mid-1968. ‘There might have been a few after that,’ says Brian Sharpe, deputy editor of Heritage Railway magazine, ‘when drivers didn’t care, they knew they’d lost their jobs and the engines were headed for the scrapyard, so they just opened them up on the long runs without heed of potential damage.’ There are also dark mutterings about the bonanza early days of steam preservation, when speed checks weren’t quite as thorough. ‘They had no data-loggers,’ says fireman Tony Jones, ‘and a fairly “full” view of what constituted the 60mph speed limit. These days everything is by the book.’ That’s particularly so after a near-miss between a steam locomotive and a…

‘YOU’D POUR REDEX DIRECTLY INTO THE CARB AND RUN FOR COVER AS THE IMMEDIATE VICINITY DISAPPEARED UNDER A DENSE WHITE SMOKESCREEN’ ‘THREE GALLONS AND three shots please’. A common request in petrol stations – the actual number used varied by choice and the depth of your pocket – until self-service replaced your friendly forecourt attendant. In the days when a ‘decoke’ was a frequent necessity and nothing to do with recreational activities or an extended stay at The Priory, many motorists swore by dosing their fuel with an injection of Redex upper cylinder lubricant – one ‘shot’ per gallon, one penny per shot. Concocted in the 1920s by Wayne V Myers, an American chemist living in England, the Redex formula was, like all ‘patent medicines’, a closely guarded secret, and…

‘Can’t see the point of books. It’s all online nowadays.’ That’s something you hear too often from those seeking obscure automotive information. Then a book like this one appears, and the cynics’ case is duly blown to smithereens. We love this type of book, published not to make money but because the author is bursting to spill the story. This tale is about the Alfa Romeo Tubolare Zagato, or TZ, a handsome and successful racing GT from the early 1960s with a lightweight tubular chassis and Alfa’s famous aluminium-block, twin-cam, four-cylinder engine. That the author da Prato, an Americanised Italian most of whose words have nevertheless been translated into English by another, is not a natural structurer of stories is shown by the fact that the TZ isn’t mentioned at…

In the years immediately before and after World War Two, Dinky Toys dominated the British toy market, but the launch of Corgi Toys in 1956 put Dinky firmly on the back foot. While Dinky was still able to sell its toys as quickly as it could make them, Corgi started to introduce more and more innovative designs. The competition hotted up when Corgi moved into TV and film-related merchandise, achieving spectacular sales with its James Bond Aston Martin (1965), Batmobile (1966) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. car (1967). Next on Corgi’s drawing board was Lady Penelope’s FAB 1 Rolls-Royce from Gerry Anderson’s popular puppet series Thunderbirds. But the rival Meccano firm, maker of Dinky, pulled off a surprise move. It was also planning to model FAB 1 and it was…

‘CLOSE EXAMINATION GAVE FEW SIGNS OF MR TRUMP’S PRIOR OWNERSHIP, WITH NARY A SLIVER OF GOLD-PLATED TRIM TO BE FOUND’ WHILE NONE OF us was paying attention, April 2017 produced over $75m-worth of land-based auction sales in the US alone. It was done the hard way, lots of small totals split between bunches of auction companies, which is why there’s no ‘Results from (insert geographic location here)’ headline above. Are we, some people are wondering, seeing the end of land-based auction companies with a physical presence of sales lots? It’s the rise of the internet auction that is sowing these seeds of doubt. Websites such as eBay (obviously), and Bring-a-Trailer, LegendaryFinds and Barnfinds in the US, have eaten into the private treaty, dealer or land-based auction triumvirate that, as recently…

ONCE IN A WHILE, a car crops up at auction which just looks as though it’s going to be ‘right’ – and that seems to be the case with this subtle, thoughtfully developed and sensibly upgraded Jaguar Mk1, which has been dubbed a ‘Brian Lister Tribute’ by the vendor, despite not having any particular Lister connections. Regardless of that, it has clearly been set up for fast road driving and has all the appearances of a car that begs to cover long distances at brisk speeds. Shamelessly non-original, it features a 3.8 litre D-type engine that previously belonged to the celebrated Jaguar racer and dealer, John Coombs, who kept it as a spare for his Ecurie Belge car. Fitted with triple sidedraught Weber carburettors, the dry-sump engine is mated to…

 I LEARNED TO DRIVE when I was 12, in a farmer’s field. My grandpa on my mother’s side taught me; he’s a racer too, like my dad. I come from a family of racers. ‘MY DAD WAS NOT KEEN ON THE IDEA OF ME BECOMING A RACER. HE WANTED ME TO HAVE A NORMAL LIFE’ Growing up in Winnipeg, which is in the Canadian province of Manitoba, I was surrounded by dirt-track ovals and that’s where I learned to race. When I was little, I begged and begged my dad to let me take up karting, and eventually he gave in and I started in karts when I was ten. I moved up to mini-sprints when I was 16, and from there to full-size sprint cars when I was 21.…

AT 09.30 HOURS on 11 May 2017, the millionth Porsche 911 – a Carrera S, specially finished in Irish Green, with gold badging – drove off the end of the production line at the Zuffenhausen factory. That’s 52 years, seven months and 27 days since the first customer production 911 did the same thing on 14 September 1964, a year after the prototype 901 had been revealed at the Frankfurt show. On the one hand, that’s a lot of 911s. On the other, why did it take so long? That depends on whether you view the 911 as a specialist sports car with enough appeal to make a lot of people want one, or a mass-produced car with expensive components tailored to expensive tastes. The answer, of course, is a…

THE STAR CARS have been announced for the new City Concours at the Honourable Artillery Company in the heart of the City of London on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 June. They include the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato ‘2 VEV’, which raced at Le Mans in 1961 and was driven by Jim Clark in the 1962 Goodwood TT. This will be part of the Built for Speed class, which includes D-type, Bizzarrini, Ferrari 458 GTE and Porsche 911 GT3 RS. The biggest display, however, will be the Evolution of the Supercar, starting with the Gullwing and going through the greats – over 20 of them, including Ferraris 288 GTO and LaFerrari – to the Aston Martin Vulcan. Other classes include Pioneering Spirit, packed with pre-war cars that have competed…

GREYSTONE MANSION played a part in a real-life murder-suicide back in 1929 and has been used as a filming location for countless productions. It has now hosted seven annual concours d’élégance events too, this year’s honouring the 100th anniversary of Lincoln Motors and the 70th of Ferrari. Although there was a threat of rain, unusual for Southern California at this time of year, the show field was full. When the dust settled after judging, the two big winners were Stan Lucas with his 1929 Lincoln Aero-Phaeton taking Best of Show, Concours d’Elegance. Fittingly, the winner of Best of Show, Concours de Sport, was the 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial displayed by A&A Premier Classics. The oldest car at the show, the 1911 Mercedes-Benz 50hp Victoria owned by Gerhard and Adrienne Schnuerer,…

AT VALLELUNGA circuit, McLaren Job One – the first ever MP4-12C – sits at the head of a row of new 720S McLarens. In many ways it looks closer to an F1 than it does to the 720S that has grown from it. Yet there’s 19 years between F1 and first MP4-12C, just six between that first MP4-12C and the 720S. So McLaren Automotive has grown and grown. The 10,000-car landmark was passed in November last year, and 2017 alone looks likely to see 4000 cars produced. The latest of those is the £218,000 720S, the second generation in the ‘Super Series’ line, replacing the 650S. The 720S doesn’t look so different, but 91% of its components are new (rear reflectors and reversing lamps are the same as the 650S’s,…

ALBERT BIERMANN was perfectly content with his life as the boss at BMW’s M Division. And who in this game wouldn’t be? But then one day he met the chairman of Hyundai, Chung Mong-koo, who offered the 59-year-old German a rather enticing pay offer to go and work for him in Korea, specifically to mastermind Hyundai’s top-secret new N-car project. That was early in 2015, since when Hyundai’s i30 N has occupied much of his time. It goes on sale next year in the UK and is a surprisingly hardcore, front-drive hot hatch that’s powered by a 290bhp 2.0-litre turbocharged engine. It has a six-speed manual gearbox, electronic dampers and an electronic diff. And it’ll hit 60mph in around six seconds flat. Think RenaultSport Megane Trophy with some Mk1 Focus…

I WAS MOVED by David Lillywhite’s tale of his difficult decision to sell his Citroën SM in last month’s Octane Cars. I agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment that selling it now, with jobs left needing to be done, should not be considered failure. All that he has learnt, all that he achieved, should put paid to any assertion that he has not made the best of the opportunity. I was especially touched by the story of his friend Andrew Brodie (above, on left), and his sad passing in August last year. It got me thinking that there seem to be so many interesting characters connected with old cars. One of the joys I have had since owning my own – rather lowlier – classic, a 1962 Rover P4 named ‘Wilbur’,…

 FOR MOST OF the 1950s, Ferrari’s road car production consisted of small-series runs, production of which often didn’t reach double figures. The Maranello firm was a boutique enterprise, patronised by royalty, playboys and movie stars. If you wanted a one-off, then no problem. Ferrari typically sold cars as rolling chassis to be clothed by an outside carrozzeria. ‘The Maranello firm was a boutique enterprise, patronised by royalty, playboys and movie stars. If you wanted a one-off, no problem’ During the firm’s embryonic years, this tended to be Alfredo Vignale’s eponymous concern. The son of a car painter, and the fifth of seven brothers, Vignale took his first tentative steps into coachbuilding in 1924 on starting his apprenticeship with Ferrero & Morandi of Turin. He was 11 years old. Six years…

GETTING CLOSE TO most manufacturer test tracks is nigh-on impossible, but Pista di Fiorano is different. If you make the pilgrimage to Maranello then a spot of opportunist spectating at the track should be on the ‘to do’ list, along with a visit to the Museo di Ferrari and the Ferrari Store. It’s a test track in a semi-urban setting, a few hundred metres from the factory, and just off the main road up from the factory you can stand at the chainlink fence and see all sorts of Ferraris being pounded around, even F1 cars. Built in 1972, it’s a fraction shy of 3km long and was designed to offer a variety of corners and scenarios that would winkle out issues with road and track cars alike. For instance,…

THERE WILL BE no shortage of Ferrari 70th anniversary celebrations this year; as we write, there’s a cavalcade of iconic Ferraris taking place in Maranello, and similar events will be happening across the world throughout 2017. But with the rich vein of Los Angeles Ferrari collecting to tap into, it’s inevitable that the Petersen Automotive Museum’s ‘Seeing Red’ display would be able to showpiece some of the greatest-ever Ferraris, from one of the very first – the 125 S – right through to the ultimate performance model, LaFerrari. The display opened officially on 27 April, in a ceremony that included a tribute to American Grand Prix racer Phil Hill, hosted by his son Derek. It’s in the Petersen Museum’s Bruce Meyer Family Gallery, Bruce being founding chairman of the Petersen’s…

1954 FERRARI BY A WHISKER Three new Jaguar D-types took on Ferrari’s three-car entry, but the challenge faded to just one car each. The rain-soaked 375 Plus of Froilán González and Maurice Trintignant beat the Hamilton/Rolt Jaguar to win by just 3min. 1958 RED CAR, RED HEAD This was an easier win, in another mostly wet race, for the 250 Testa Rossa of Phil Hill (pictured here) and Olivier Gendebien, which beat the Whitehead brothers’ Aston Martin DB3S by 12 laps. No other Ferrari finished. 1960 THE SCUDERIA DOMINATES Ferrari took six of the top seven slots, the third-placed Aston DBR1 of Clark/ Salvadori the only interloper. Paul Frère and Olivier Gendebien won in a 250 TR, beating the similar car of André Pilette/Ricardo Rodríguez by four laps. 1962 GENDEBIEN…

IS THERE A MORE EVOCATIVE, sexier acronym in the world of sports cars? Gran Turismo Omologato. Go on, roll it around on your tongue. Even better if you can make it sound properly Italian. Three Ferraris have worn the badge: the original 250 (39 built, 1962-64), the 288 (272 built, 1984-87) and the 599 (er, 599 built, 2010-12). Of course, to many there’s only one kind of GTO: the first of them, currently the record-holder for a price achieved at auction, probably the greatest sports car ever built. No wonder, then, that Ferrari has since recoined the name a couple of times. In the 288’s case, at least, it was a genuine effort to homologate a turbocharged competition car out of the baby 308. As for the 599, cynics might…

DROGO 250GT ‘BREADVAN’ Built in only 14 days at the premises of Modenese coachbuilders Neri & Bonacini, and sponsored by Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurati, this Giotto Bizzarrini design was based on the 1961 Paris 1000km class-winning 250 GT SWB. It first appeared on track in May 1962 and has latterly become a weapons-grade Historic racing star. 330GT 2+2 ‘NAVARRO SPECIAL’ Angular to the point of being serrated, this one-off began life as a 1966 330 GT 2+2, but its second owner, Italian nightclub owner Norbert Navarro, wanted something that bit more outré. Piero Drogo restyled the car, the signature feature being fins that stretched from the roof to the cropped tail. Nice. PANTHER-FELBER FF When is a Ferrari not a Ferrari? When it’s a Panther! This 330 GTC-based 125…

WHEN YOU SEE it up close and personal for the very first time, what mesmerises you about the new Ford GT is how long and low it is to the ground. And just how achingly beautiful it is, full stop. Its proportions are similar to those of the original GT40, yes, but the whole thing has been scaled up by a good 15% in every direction this time. And the curves of the original have been replaced by much sharper, more obviously defined edges that add technical sophistication, as well as a deeper sense of menace. The overall effect is absolutely stunning. You look at this car, and you just smile. Arguably, though, it’s what lies beneath the GT’s new carbonfibre skin that is most impressive of all, because Ford…

‘This Austin-Healey 100 came with a visual kick that Donald Healey exploited to the full’ You’d have wanted to carry an umbrella to the first day of the 40th London Motor show on 19 October 1955. The exceptionally hot summer that followed the big freeze of 1954/1955 broke on that very day. Temperatures plummeted and more than 27mm of rain fell on London, so Earls Court visitors would have been in danger of a bath as they walked along, humming snatches of that year’s hot release, Rock Around The Clock from Bill Haley and His Comets. More than half-a-million visitors came to the ten-day-long motor show, keen to see the all-new Jaguar 2.4-litre saloon, as well as the UK debuts of the MGA, Triumph TR3 and Citroën DS19, the…

‘THE VELLUM-COLOURED DIAL OF THIS TIMEPIECE BEARS THE WORDS SPECIAL POUR BUGATTI ’ EVEN IF YOU DON’T KNOW much about Ettore Bugatti, you’re probably aware that he had a real gift for the putdown, observing that his friend Mr Bentley was not so much a car maker as a builder of extremely fast lorries. His point – of course – was that Bentley’s cars were paradigms of solidity and mechanical robustness, cars that could be depended upon, not necessarily the fastest or most beautiful things on four wheels, but solid, British, and proud of it. If I cast my mind back to the book about the Bentley Boys that I wrote in the noughties, it was thanks to these qualities, and some sterling work at the wheel by the likes…

1:18-SCALE FERRARI 250 GTO MODEL BY AMALGAM The greatest compliment that we can pay to Amalgam’s staggeringly detailed 1:8-scale replicas is that we have never quibbled with the substantial sticker price, but it will please our bank manager greatly that the company has launched a collection of similarly beautiful but (comparatively) more affordable 1:18-scale models, the first of which is this, the Ferrari 250 GTO driven to a class win and second overall by Pierre Noblet and Jean Guichet at the 1962 24 Hours of Le Mans. £465. amalgamcollection.com BROOKLANDS ‘TOTALISATOR’ ONE-ARMED BANDIT This vintage slot machine offers as a substitute for the excitement of racing at the world’s first purpose-built circuit the thrill of losing all your loose change. Operated by a single pull-down lever, it features a traditional…

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 all Grand Prix cars. No stories and ready to race. 1974 Shadow DN3A #3A Tom Pryce / Brian Redman Rebuilt for 2016 Monaco GP Historique and in excellent condition.. 1974 Matra MS670 #05 V12 Rebuilt by ourselves and presented in “C” spec with short tail high wing configuration and Hewland gearbox. All Le Mans spec parts available including Porsche gearbox and long tail body if required. 3rd Le Mans 1974 and more recently outright wins in CER and Silverstone Classic 2016. 1969 Matra MS650 #01 V12 Extensive…

SHORT OF THE necessary to buy a Dino 246 GT? Maybe this Moretti Sportiva isn’t quite as pretty, but it should be less temperamental than a Dino since it’s based on a Fiat 850 Coupé chassis and engine. The Moretti marque, which went bust in 1989, was founded in 1925 as a motorcycle manufacturer and branched-out first into the production of microcars, then, during World War Two, electric cars and trucks. In the late 1950s, Moretti moved on to building a range of mass-produced Fiat-based models, from convertibles to estate cars – and when that ceased to be economically viable, it streamlined its operation to focus on building ‘specials’ in low volume, again based on Fiat underpinnings but with bespoke options such as one-off paintwork, Borrani wire wheels, electric windows,…