GT is a seemingly innocuous term. Bolted to the back of Morris Marinas, MGBs and Ford Cortinas with gay abandon, it felt like every other car on the road was a GT of some sort. But to any schoolboy worth his pack of Top Trumps, a GT meant a big engine, two doors, and the sort of car that could whisk you down to the South of France in the same sort of time it would take for a Morris Marina to start in the depths of winter. The cars we’ve chosen here epitomised the breed – from British bulldogs to Continental chic, so here are our favourite cars for the ultimate grand tour.
JENSEN INTERCEPTOR
You can’t build a list of the greatest grand tourers of the 1970s without putting the Jensen Interceptor right at the top. Launched in 1966 and discontinued initially in 1976, the Interceptor is Britain’s Avanti – the grand tourer that simply refuses to die. It was launched as a replacement for the CV8, but also with one eye on the newly emerged Gordon-Keeble GK1 as a competitor. It followed a set formula for European GTs championed by Gordon Keeble, European chassis, pretty Italianate body, American V8 engine – in this case a 6.3 litre unit sourced from Chrysler, though in later cars this would jump to 7.2 litres. While available as a manual, most used the three speed Torqueflite automatic, and most were loaded to the gunwales with
