Table of contents for June 2021 in Octane

KING OF PORSCHES? It’s a bold claim, granted, when you look at the Stuttgart marque’s rich road and (especially) track career, but if you work on the basis that the more replicated a car is the more iconic it is, then this roadster is definitely in the top ten of the lot. Sure, like its 550 Spyder rep sibling, fuelled by legions of James Dean wannabes, this one’s popularity is aided somewhat by how easy those replicas are to build onto a cheap and readily available (21.5 million-odd) platform, but there is a little bit more to it than that. Think about what else is a shoo-in for the higher reaches of that desirable replica league table – Cobra, GT40, Jaguar C-type (though that is currently getting a bit more…

30 April – 2 May Greenbrier Concours d’Elegance The Greenbrier Concours, in West Virginia, will have a Hollywood feel this year thanks to the addition of a Movie Cars class, including ECTO-1 from Ghostbusters. greenbrierconcours.com 1-2 May Donington Historic Festival There will be grids for everything from pre-war sports cars to ’70s and ’80s Touring Cars, but unfortunately all the action will happen behind closed doors, with only drivers and essential personnel permitted to attend. doningtonhistoric.com 1-2 May Keels & Wheels Beautiful old cars and boats share a stage at Lakewood Yacht Club in Texas. You’ll come away coveting all sorts of wooden things and a waterfront property. keels-wheels.com 1-8 May Rallye TransMaroc It begins and ends in Marrakesh, but crews will spend most of their time in the desert.…

Stars of London Concours announced A class featuring iconic British car designs is set to be one of the star categories at the London Concours, which takes place at the Honourable Artillery Company in the heart of the City of London on 8-10 June. Now in its fifth year and swapping its traditional two-day format for three, the event will showcase Malcolm Sayer’s Jaguar E-type Series I, Charles Spencer-King’s Range Rover and Ian Cameron’s Rolls-Royce Phantom among others such as Alec Issigonis’s Mini, Gordon Murray’s LCC Rocket, Aston Martin One-77 by Marek Reichman, Morgan Aeromax by Matthew Humphries, Frank Stephenson’s McLaren 12C and Peter Stevens’s Jaguar XJR-15. Other classes include 200mph supercars, a Porsche celebration, the most beautiful Italian Berlinettas of the1960s, and The Youngtimers, the most powerful German saloons…

WHAT BETTER TO WAY to banish the lockdown blues and celebrate a return to near-normal (assuming it doesn’t all go awry) than joining Octane on a track day at Goodwood? And, because of the unique circumstances, at the moment we are simply asking that potential participants register an interest. For anyone unfamiliar with the Octane track day, it is scheduled for 1 September and will feature strictly limited numbers – past days have been for 30 cars – with only 12 cars on track at any one time, so everyone can enjoy this spectacular West Sussex circuit without permanently having to look in their mirrors. There is usually also a very classic-friendly noise limit of 105 decibels. When you are off track you will be looked after, too, with a…

Letter of the month YOUR COVER feature in Octane 215 brought back some very happy memories of my position as ‘head of Lotus Cars’ during the early stage of S1 Elise and Exige production. The Julian Thomson-designed Elise K-series 118 car was in production when I arrived and the Sport 135, VVC 143, Sport 160, Sport 190 and 340R variants were in development by an amazing and talented team. Chris Arnold and Chris Dinnage also led the Lotus Motorsport Elise programme that became the Autobytel one-make series – which took Lotus back to its motorsport roots and gave birth to the Exige S1 road car. I recall the Exige prototype was as hot as hell in the cockpit, to the point of being unbearable! An air conditioning solution was required,…

There was a time, before World War Two, when American car manufacturers were simply leagues ahead of everybody else. The quality, reliability, style and performance of American cars were much better than what was on offer from their European counterparts. And at a time when American production numbers were already measured by the million, in Europe the biggest car manufacturers were still dreaming of numbers in the thousands. This is why, when we look at European car magazines of the period, we see so many American cars featured and offered for sale: most of the market, even in Europe, consisted of American cars. ‘There was no competition,’ says Nicola Bulgari, a leading Italian collector of American cars manufactured from 1930 to 1950 and the current custodian of this Cadillac V-16.…

She is beautiful. Even from a distance, she makes you stop and stare. The lines, the curves: everything attracts your attention. The closer you get, the better she is: so refined, every detail adding to an almost perfect whole. She is not young, and neither has she lived an easy life: this Second World War veteran, still capable of stealing the show from much younger sisters, turns 85 this year. That’s a respectable age for any object, still more so for a steel-and-wood motor yacht. The 48-tonne, 68ft (21m) Thelas was designed by the celebrated English naval architect Norman Hart and manufactured in the Netherlands at the Amsterdamsche Scheepswerf, an Amsterdam shipyard founded by the Olympic sailor Gerard de Vries Lentsch and which still exists. The boat was named by…

I first saw this car on a visit to Beckenham-based Aston Martin specialists Pugsley & Lewis in late 2019. Tucked away in an outbuilding with a monstrous 7.3-litre V8 Vantage for company, it looked heartbreakingly pretty. Freshly restored, it was the personal property of company co-founder Tim Lewis and, although I was there to talk about Astons (for Octane’s sister magazine, Vantage), we agreed to meet up again. On which occasion it would be the Alfa’s turn. And so we finally meet again, during a lull between Covid waves, on a dull and drizzly day in the Kent market town of Westerham. Not the most propitious circumstances in which to sample a rare and exotic Italian coupé, but the instant the Alfa pulls up at our rendezvous I fall in…

There has always been a correlation between the coastal playgrounds of the rich and cars and motor sport. Even in the earliest days, when cars were only just making the leap from their mere existence mattering to their actual performance counting, it was beside the glistening Mediterranean that the serious stuff happened. Sure, long-distance races were in vogue, but if you wanted concours, glamour and a bit of competition with your fellow nobles in the most sophisticated and powerful behemoths of the day, then you headed straight to the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. When it comes to Belgium, at the other end of the French-speaking world, the equivalent of Nice would be Zoute Knokke-Heist. While Belgium has plenty of significant motoring shrines – Spa or Jabbeke, for example –…

FOR A BRIEF PERIOD in early 2020, it was easy to assume that the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance would just go ahead as planned, partially because of what we then knew about Covid-19 (next to nothing), and partially because of what we knew about the Concours, which had been cancelled precisely once since 1950, and that was in 1960. More than a year later, we are still looking forward to the 70th running of the event that spawned Monterey Car Week, and when it finally comes, on 15 August, our patience should be handsomely rewarded. There will be special classes dedicated to Pininfarina, Iso Rivolta, the Porsche 917, early electric vehicles and Carrera Panamericana cars. Most excitingly, the organisers have arranged to bring together Best of Show winners from the…

RALLY THE GLOBEwas established in 2018 to do exactly that, but the club (it is run as a not-for-profit for the benefit of its members) has inevitably been forced to pump the brakes on a series of events intended to take crews right around the world. All being well, far-flung motoring adventures will begin again in January 2023, when a small convoy of pre-1977 cars will travel a whopping 8500km through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam on the Road to Hanoi Marathon – but the club’s organisers have no intention of merely killing time until then, and recently sprung a most welcome surprise by announcing an addition to their existing slate of UK and European rallies: the Carrera España. The new event will be held between 24 April and 5…

1968 JENSEN INTERCEPTOR JAMES ELLIOTT IN MARCH 2019 I drove my Jensen Interceptor Mk1 to Autostilo (autostilo.co.uk) in Potters Bar and left it there, with an agreement that the car would be made ‘solid and presentable’ for a set fee. For full transparency, that ‘if and when’ payment was at such a low level that this job was never expected to be a priority for them. While the bad news is that it really has been a downtime filler – and they haven’t had much downtime – it is fair to say that one or two other factors have been at play in the past year. Yet, as we pass the second anniversary of the last day I drove my Jensen, I am pretty confident that it is now a…

1955 JAGUAR XK140 ROBERT COUCHER THE JAGUAR IS almost done at Twyford Moors in Hampshire, with the improved engine and new clutch now back in the car. Everything has been linked up using new seals and connectors, and you might be able to spot the 30 shiny new copper washers under the 14 new cylinder head nuts that are torqueing down a composite head gasket. The XK engine has been filled with 13 litres (£116, so cheaper than a modest claret) of fresh 15W50 Driven HR mineral oil by Anglo American Oils. I have a bit of a fixation about what oil to use in classic engines, and this elixir is specifically designed for use in Historic racing and road cars. As well as being highly lubricative, it features additives…

1970 CHEVROLET CORVETTE STINGRAY MARK DIXON TRADITION HAS ITthat you can be a fan of either General Motors or Ford, but not both. Having been brought up in a family that drove GM-built Vauxhalls – HC Viva, Chevette, Mk1 Astra – it might seem a little odd that I’ve since crossed over to the dark side. Three of the six vehicles in my Octane Cars fleet are Fords and at the moment I’m using my 1966 Mustang as a daily driver. But when a particularly nice-looking Chevrolet C3 Corvette turned up for sale at a classic car dealership near my house, I couldn’t resist asking if I could have a go. For sale on behalf of a customer, the Corvette is a 1970 Stingray with a 350ci V8 and four-speed…

BACK IN THE 1970s, when smoking was cool and before clipboard-fondling became a lucrative career choice, cigarette companies gave you things if you smoked their products. You could, for example, collect their cigarette cards of famous sportsmen, monarchs and even university colleges. Or you could have a watch. At the time, Heuer was known for scientific timers and stopwatches. When it dipped its toes into wrist chronographs, they usually had specific purposes such as timing motor racing or rallying. But it was this association that Brown & Williamson, which produced Viceroy cigarettes, was eager to harness. Viceroy sales were flat, trailing behind B&W’s other brands and in need of a boost. And Viceroy sponsored a racing team – Parnelli Jones – while Heuer made cool racing chronos. A joint promotion looked…

LEGO PORSCHE 911 TURBO (OR TARGA) There was a time when impact-bumper 911s were kept marvellously cheap thanks to the snotty attitude of Porsche purists, but even in those days we never came across a deal as good as this one: for 120 quid Lego will sell you not only a 930-generation 911Turbo, but also a Targa. Either model can be built from the new 1458-piece Creator set, which is supplied with a neat coffee-table-book-style instruction manual. £119.99. lego.com CHELTENHAM HAMPER BY PICNIC WICKER From plates to salt and pepper pots, Picnic Wicker’s handmade willow hampers contain everything you’ll need for a civilised roadside dining experience this summer. £80 (other baskets from £52) picnicwicker.co.uk SPECIALIZED S-WORKS STUMPJUMPER EVO The Stumpjumper, the world’s first mass-produced mountain bike, gets the mother of…

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The era immediately after World War Two was also the end of America’s ‘coachbuilt era’. As only a handful of bespoke builders survived, for luxury and performance marques the owner-driver era was starting. Finding late-’40s and early-’50s coachbuilt cars is tough, but one such company, JS Inskip, was an automobile distributor as well as a coachbuilder. The company sold Aston Martin, Riley, MG, Bentley and Rolls-Royce cars, and can also be thought of as the successor to Brewster, the famed carriage and coachbuilder that became a part of Rolls-Royce of America. Inskip was located in a former Brewster building for a time; it’s said that many former Brewster employees worked for Inskip. This first of two similar dramatic bodies was commissioned from new by Thomas Manville Jr, heir to a…

IT IS RIGHT to remember that France was the birthplace of motorsport, much of which then took place on public roads. Roads were easily requisitioned for closure and no need was envisaged for a specific closed circuit, as had been built at Brooklands, Indianapolis, Monza and Avus – but then a rapid increase in road traffic in France caused a change of mind. A radiator manufacturer called Alexandre Lamblin took the opportunity to buy a 12,000-acre plot about 20 miles south of Paris and employed thousands of workmen, using precast concrete, to ready the 1.6-mile banked oval for racing in only a matter of months. In October 1924, 50,000 spectators saw a Morgan win the opening race, while the first day of competition also featured Ernest Eldridge’s Fiat Mephistopheles battling…

Sometimes, when a famous and valuable old racing car has a whole lot of history and the pundits are hinting at such huge values that the zero key seems to be sticking on the keyboard, it’s better to clear the head of all that noise. Then your mind can think back to the car itself, how it looks, how it feels, how it sounds. A different sort of noise. ‘Can you keep the revs down a bit, or maybe not accelerate as hard?’ That’s what James Turner of Sports Purpose, purveyor of high-end historic Porsches to the well-heeled enthusiast, has just asked me. This is because the noise, the wonderful, tuneful, searing howl of a lemming-like flat-four, has moved the needle of the noise meter at Bicester Heritage a touch…

WITH HIS UNRULY mane of white hair and toothy grin, there’s something of the ageing rock star about Rodger Dudding; a combination of Brian May and Roger Daltrey, all rolled into one burly frame. But Rodger has built up a fortune that would put most rock stars’ in the shade. And he’s spent a good portion of it on building up the largest classic car collection in Britain, about 500 vehicles so far. To put that into perspective, the British Motor Museum at Gaydon numbers about 300, and the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu claims around 280. Why so many cars? ‘I’ve always liked cars but I don’t really know why I started collecting them, other than that I like their designs,’ he muses at his HQ in Potters Bar,…

HOW UPSET WOULD you be? One lovely May afternoon you are cruising along, doing no-one any harm, in your Ferrari 275 GTB/4, resplendent in Rosso Rubino. Your pride and joy, paid for over many years by the sweat of your brow. As you slow carefully behind a truck for some traffic lights, the idiot in the white van behind you is texting on his mobile. He fails to notice the red light, and suddenly SCREECH, BANG, CRUNCH! Your most-prized asset has become the red meat in the sandwich. That gorgeous Kamm tail has been shortened by at least six inches and the petrol tank is ruptured, fuel everywhere. The shapely grille, nose and those delicate bumperettes are squashed horribly into the truck in front. Not only a broken radiator and…

Bewilderment. That’s all that hits me after first seeing skijoring in action. Before I visited the last GP Ice Race in February 2020, I was unaware that there was actually a name for the act of being pulled around by a car while wearing a set of skis. It translates as ‘ski driving’, and it’s a practice that traces its roots back to fearless horse-and-dog-pulled Scandinavian farmers trying to get from A to B. Naturally, this developed into a competitive sport, at which point people swapped out the animals for cars and ’bikes. It’s one of the unique things that have quickly put the GP Ice Race on the map as an up-and-coming winter destination. Located on a frozen airfield in Zell am See, deep in the Austrian Alps, the…

FIGURES FROM the Canadian Government show that 679,000 Brits visited the Great White North in 2019, which sounds like a lot until you learn that seven times as many holidayed in the USA that year. Relatively speaking, then, Canada is unexplored by us lot, but Bruno Leunen of Destination Rally is doing his bit to change that with the Maple Road Classic, a 19-day journey beginning on 15 September in Halifax and ending in Montreal. The event is timed to coincide with the arrival of the spectacular autumn colours, when Canada’s trees put on their glad rags, green leaves turning bright yellow, burnt orange and fiery red. Pre-1976 cars (no more than 25 of them) will initially head south from Halifax to the fishing town of Lunenburg, considered by the…

THE EVENTS of recent years have prompted much debate, a lot of it intellectually dishonest, about Britain’s place in the world. But in one narrow sense at least, the country has become a global power – staging concours d’elegance to rival any you might care to mention. The season starts on 8 June this year with the London Concours, first held in 2017 and yet already a fundamental part of the concours scene. As usual, it will take place at the Honourable Artillery Company in the City of London, with around 100 cars on the lawn. In a nod to the 60th birthday of the Jaguar E-type, classes will include ‘Iconic British Designs’ and there will also be displays dedicated to 200mph supercars and Italian berlinettas of the 1960s. A…

IT WAS FORTUNATE for Adolphe Kégresse that, for much of the Romanov rule of Russia from 1613, French was the lingua franca of the court. When Tsar Nicholas II, recently smitten with the automobile bug, decided in 1905 to hire a personal chauffeur with the necessary mechanical expertise to maintain his cars, it was towards France that he looked. Kégresse soon proved his worth and was appointed head of the mechanical department of the Russian imperial garage. As one might imagine, the garage was not an oily rag backstreet affair. The Tsar’s obsession had seen his fleet swell to 21 cars with a driver for each and an annual budget of 126,000 rubles, the equivalent of around a million pounds in today’s money. Kégresse had been born in 1879 in the…

By Spark Price £143.95 each Material Resincast This pair of Porsche models is so nice that we found it hard to choose between them… and so may you. Will it be the red-and-white winner of the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours or the Martini-liveried car that won the following year? The 917K (for kurzheck, or ‘short tail’) debuted in 1970 and the Porsche-backed Salzburg team’s car no.23, driven by Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood, beat the official works team to first place. For 1971, Porsche Salzburg sold its cars and race equipment to Martini, which duly won that year’s event with a magnesium-chassis 917K in the hands of Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko. Externally, the biggest difference between the 1970 and ’71 winners is the twin rear fins on…

BARRETT-JACKSON DOESN’T do small, and its $105million bonanza at WestWorld of Scottsdale on 20-27 March re-affirmed that. The sale of 1054 vehicles was headlined by the 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 Super Snake (above) at $5.5million. CSX 3015 is one of two 427 competition roadsters officially converted to monstrous Super Snake form. A 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 made $2.475m, while $5.8m was raised for good causes through the sale of charity vehicles. Mecum’s Glendale auction was also a big hit, with $42.3m in total sales. A total of 712 of the 829 vehicles offered sold, with a particularly special L88-engined 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe achieving $2.69m. Bonhams held its first Supercars on Sunset auction in Los Angeles, focusing on modern supercars. With few good results and lots of unsold cars, perhaps…

Only 1672 Turbos were produced, all left-hand drive and finished in Polaris (silver) or Chamonix (white). A five-speed gearbox, sunroof and Mahle alloy wheels were among the few options available. Increasing values in recent years saw the best examples trading above £80,000 at auction in 2016 for the first time, with Russo and Steele achieving $115,500 (£83,500) at Monterey in August. The following year Gooding & Company’s concours awardwinning car fetched $143,000 (£103,500) at Pebble Beach, while barely seven months later Gooding marked the high-point in 2018, hammering away a 40,000-miler for a record $192,500 (£139,000). Results have slipped back since; an immaculate turbo from the Youngtimer Collection (pictured) drew £94,875 at the RM Sotheby’s London sale in 2019, although RM recovered some ground at the start of 2021 with…

THE FATE OF Mitsubishi’s struggling UK operation has, sadly, been sealed for some time, and a stark reminder comes in the form of Auto Auction’s sale of the company’s treasured heritage car collection. The new auction house, fronted by racing driver and TV presenter Tiff Needell, is yet another player in the thriving online auction scene. Of the 15 Mitsubishis on offer, and many more private numberplates, there’s no doubt that the 10,000-mile Lancer Evolution VI Tommi Mäkinen Edition is the most evocative. It’s been owned from the beginning of its life by Mitsubishi UK and has been featured in many magazines. It’s even signed by Mäkinen! Many of the cars offered come with unmatched history, including the first Mitsubishi ever registered in the UK – a 1974 Colt Lancer 1.4.…

FOLLOWING ITS EPIC victory with the GT40 at Le Mans in 1966, Ford decided that it would be a good idea to build a very small number of roadgoing 4.7-litre road versions. Known as the MkIII, it would be the ultimate domesticated GT40, with a detuned 306bhp road-spec engine, as well as revised bodywork – with different headlights and a longer tail, adding a small but useful luggage compartment. Hamann Classic Cars is offering XP 130-1, the first prototype version of the MkIII produced by Ford. This car was built on a MkII chassis, and made its first appearance at the 1967 New York Motor Show. It was tested in period by Car and Driver magazine, too. Marketed at a price of $18,500 (which, as Hamann points, out was $4100…

HOT HATCHES have always been a particular French speciality, but Renault has enjoyed an almost unbroken chain of greatest hits. Any ‘Top 10’ list will most likely feature at least half-a-dozen Renaults, and somewhere near the top of that list will be the feisty Renaultsport 172 and 182 versions of the Mk2 Clio. Although Renault was a pioneer of forced induction in the 1980s with the 5 GT Turbo, the hot Mk1 Clio 16v and even hotter Williams signalled a change of ethos. Gutsy multi-valve engines were the name of the game, and the ‘Va Va Voom’ Mk2 Clio would pick up where the ‘Nicole and Papa’ Mk1 Williams left off. Like its predecessor, the 172 (pictured above) was developed and built by Renaultsport in Dieppe. Launched at the beginning…

Australia is go go go! The 2021 Phillip Island Classic went ahead under Victoria State Government Covid-19 regulations on 5-7 March with the 350 entries restricted to four pit crew apiece and performing in front of just 1000 spectators a day. However, given that Victoria had imposed a five-day lockdown just weeks before the event at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, it was a miracle it happened at all and organiser the Victorian Historic Racing Register (VHRR) did an amazing job. Aussie legends racing across many classes included seven-time Bathurst 1000 winner Jim Richards, two-time winner John Bowe and Australian Touring Car Championship runner-up Murray Carter. One of the highlights was two Porsche 962s cutting laps around the circuit, while driver of the meeting and winner of the Sir…

THE CHALLENGE of ‘Net Zero by 2050’, coupled with the Government’s announcement that the sale of petrol and diesel cars will cease in 2030, is a serious concern for classic and historic vehicle enthusiasts. Everyone is quite rightly asking what fuels may be available in the future and whether their classic vehicles will run on them. The DfT has recently published a public consultation Targeting Net Zero – Next Steps for the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation. This document proposes a faster and higher ambition on the contribution of sustainable low-carbon fuels by increasing biofuel blending and ways of supporting a more diverse range of fuels in transport for the longer term, especially to support the uptake of renewable hydrogen and recycled carbon fuels (RCFs) – which turn household rubbish into…

OF MORE THAN 30 older cars I’ve owned, three have been replicas, starting with a brace of Cobras – including a toolroom 427 sideoiler – before I bought this XK120 C. If I had to pinpoint my golden period of motoring, it would be the early ’50s. For a brief time the competition scene was deliciously uncommercial, and for me the C-type encapsulates that era perfectly. My car started life in summer 1955 as a home-market XK140 and was rebuilt to Competition specification by Proteus in 1983. It’s now been a C-type longer than it was a 140, so perhaps the best way to describe it is as a Jaguar ‘Special’. That said, the DNA is period-intact and any patina you see is entirely genuine, which is important to me.…

In its day, Lotus’s Type 72 was probably the most advanced car on the grid, and it remains one of the most remarkable cars in F1 history. Its ground-breaking design – carried out by Lotus founder Colin Chapman with Maurice Philippe – features inboard brakes, side-mounted radiators and an overhead air intake. Its distinctive outline resembles a wedge on wheels and had been inspired by the earlier Lotus 56 gas turbine car, while its layout was taken from the experimental four-wheel-drive Lotus 63 and featured the stressed-engine structure type of the Lotus 49. It was years ahead of its rivals, and fully 12mph faster than the Type 49 when powered by the same Cosworth DFV engine. Of course, such an innovative package took more looking after than any other contemporary…

OLD CARS, EH? When they don’t work properly, it’s all part of the character. After all, car manufacturers didn’t really have a clue back then, and neither did their customers, who just accepted their lot. So when an old car doesn’t work quite faultlessly today, you just chuckle knowingly. You expected nothing better. Well, maybe we should expect better. The old-cars-are-innately-hopeless mindset is defeatist – and it’s wrong. Old cars, if to correct specification and correctly maintained, can be far better than their detractors assume. Sometimes, back in their day, they were put through extraordinary feats of endurance and came through fighting. Feats such as the so-called Classic Trials organised by the Motor-Cycling Club since the start of the previous century, tackled by cars as much as motorcycles as the…

Scotland isn’t so much a country that you drive through, it’s largely driven over. There are that many hills, Munros, mountains and peaks, that your first question when choosing a car for any kind of road trip north of the border should simply be: ‘Will it get me there?’ Scottish driving, and on this particular adventure, Scottish driving in the winter, needs something reliable, sturdy, practical. Like a good pair of walking boots, rather than shiny dress shoes. For us there was only one car that could tick all those boxes for our January jaunt around Scotland’s North Coast 500, and that was a Land Rover Defender. Scotland’s answer to Route 66, as the North Coast 500 is commonly referred to, is nothing like the iconic American highway. It’s not…

WHEN COVID-19 pitched up last year and made itself at home, all rally organisers were presented with the same problems, but none responded in quite the same way as HERO, which has faced down the pandemic with optimism and invention. Scheduled events were run where possible, and compensation for those that had to be cancelled came in the form of December’s Per Ardua Ad Infinitum (‘Through Endless Adversity’), a swiftly organised, one-day blast based at Bicester Heritage. The drudgery of the national lockdown, meanwhile, was eased by a series of tricky tabletop plotting challenges – tasters that will serve rallyists well when HERO resumes normal activities in May. The first ‘real’ event on the 2021 calendar is A Novice Trial (21-23 May), also based at Bicester Heritage and providing the…

IN 2011, FOLLOWING a competition that attracted 100 million votes from around the world, the Amazon Rainforest was declared one of the New Seven Wonders of the natural world, to the surprise of everyone who assumed it must surely belong to the original club. Its immensity is difficult to grasp; it stretches across nine countries, and in Brazil alone, despite having been slashed by 20% since 1970, the forest measures 3,290,125km². The area of the UK is 242,495km². Spare a thought, then, for the folks at Bespoke Rallies, who had to choose a ‘mere’ 6834km route for next October’s Great Amazon Adventure. They settled on a loop that will take 15 lucky crews (accommodation is scarce in some areas) from Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, through Guyana, Brazil and French Guiana,…

1937 STUDEBAKER DICTATOR COUPE DELWYN MALLETT BACK IN Octane 200, I wrote that uneven firing on my ‘rat rod’ Studebaker’s straight-six had left me scratching my head about the cause. The car was street legal other than in the lighting department, so figured I’d replace the time-ravaged wiring and get indicators fitted (a waved arm has little significance to today’s road users!), then give it a run to see if the firing problem cleared itself. If only things were so easy! The Stude was transported by trailer to Roy Pitter’s Rods and Restorations emporium in Four Marks, Hampshire, for the rewire. Roy had already fitted a new loom into my ‘Shoebox’ Ford, so I knew he’d get the job done quickly as the Stude has far less to wire. A week…

Book of the month If ever a car model could be considered to have had a charmed life, it is surely the McLaren F1 GTR. First, because neither chief engineer Gordon Murray nor company boss Ron Dennis initially wanted the F1 to be used for racing in any form; and second, because the realisation that superseded GTR race cars could be made very usable on the road with comparatively little effort transformed their values. By the end of the 1990s, the F1 GTR was no longer a front-runner in International competition and prices had dipped accordingly but, when Nick Mason bought chassis 10R and had it converted for road use, the floodgates were opened and a GTR is now worth more than a standard road car as a result. The…

SQUIRRELLED AWAY in a private Southern California collection since the mid-1960s, this 1955 Ferrari 250 GT Europa is thought to be one of the most original and best-preserved examples left anywhere in the world. As the first of the roadgoing Ferrari 250 models, the Europa wears coachwork by Pinin Farina. Built in October 1955, chassis 0413GT was delivered to its first owner – thought to be Dr Enrico Wax, the official Italian distributor for Johnnie Walker whisky and Moët & Chandon Champagne – painted in Grigio Metallizzato with orange leather. Unique features include a set of special instruments as well as an unusual and very simple taillight arrangement. There isn’t a huge amount of information about the car’s early history, but it’s thought that it was exported to the USA…

HAVING MY PHOTOGRAPHS published in Octane really was the start of my career. I graduated from university in the summer of 2013 with a degree in Design Craft, specialising in silver-smithing and metal-smithing, but I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do for a living. I liked photography, but I never imagined I’d be able to do it as a career. Then, in the August, I took some pictures of a Ferrari P4 replica that a friend of my father was building in his shed. I had no idea what to do with them so I sent them ‘on spec’ to Octane’s then-art director, Mark Sommer. He was very encouraging and they duly appeared as a feature in issue 132. I’m about to turn 30 and I’ve been…