Octane Magazine

The Southern Hemisphere’s largest Historic meeting, held on Phillip Island near Melbourne. Grids are organised by the Victorian Historic Road Racing Register and cater for Touring Cars, single-seaters, sports cars and pre-war machinery, too. vhrr.com

1. You’ll find a logbook in the glovebox of all my cars, noting fuel and oil consumption. For the 2009 North Cape tour in my 1973 Beetle 1303 S it became a Kjørebok [Norwegian for ‘driving record’], with pictures of the pit stops. 2. When I was 12 I

THOSE OF YOU of a certain age will look back on the good old days of Le Mans with a smile. No, not the days when the drivers ran to their cars and erected the hoods before racing off, but the 1960s and beyond, when the shriek of the Matras contrasted

FEW PEOPLE have dominated a sphere of motoring quite as much as this French master of mayhem movie motoring. Just about every significant car sequence or chase is his work, or that of his team. Just a few of the most familar contributions are The Ita

The first class to be announced for the 2021 London Concours is ‘Italian Berlinettas’. The category promises a ‘celebration of the golden era of sports car design from the country that was simply untouchable for creating masterpieces’. It will focus

THE DECISION by a Swedish court to back Jaguar Land Rover’s bid to shut down a C-type builder has thrown the world of replicas into turmoil, with many fearing widespread and long-lasting repercussions. The ruling could spark a global clampdown, not o

I THINK THAT probably rather too many of us can relate to a quick titivation that turns into a four-year restoration, and such is the story of this month’s cover car. Indeed, the fact that it is so relatable shows that it is far from the world’s most

CIRCUMNAVIGATING the M25 at 5am on an overcast Monday morning wasn’t quite the 7000-mile road trip to Everest Base camp that my dad and I had planned. We were marking the 60th birthday of my late grandfather’s MGA Roadster, Frisky – but the pandemic

This has to be the most evocative approach to any classic car showroom in the world. Once you’ve been buzzed through the main gates of Brooklands – the world’s first purpose-built banked motor racing circuit – you turn right, along the time-worn conc

When the needle hits 6000rpm in the M1 Procar, evil crawls back under a rock and begs for its mummy. At close to 7500rpm, the sheer volume of the straight-six’s raspy vibrato tortures your inner ear. But you feel it, this is the sweet spot, this is w

IT’S THE JUNKYARD from heaven. Everything you see here is BMW M1 Procar. Every part is worth thousands of euros. That’s an M1 Procar radiator he’s kicking out of the way. And there’s a turbocharger for the Group 5 version that’s taken on a temporary

Fog. Unreasonable, unseasonable fog. It’s early morning and as I venture along Blakey Ridge I can barely see the edge of the road, let alone the staggering views across this particularly epic stretch within the North York Moors. I have little idea wh

IT’S ONLY TWO YEARS since this 1945 Renault AHS3 was discovered, not in an open field, but at an abandoned scrapyard in Northern France. And it quickly became clear that this was no ordinary derelict truck: it had a special history. It was bought by

LET’S FACE IT, if what you are after is a book or info about cars in movies or on TV, then you are spoilt for choice. In print or online, you can take your pick of everything from glossy coffeetable overviews to squillions of web pages of snatched sc

The house where Tom Peck keeps his old Ferraris is a recreation of a medieval Tuscan villa perched on a verdant hillside and overlooking some of the toniest real estate in Orange County, California. Peck’s 750 Monza, smooth as river stone and lustrou

in association with AS A PRIMARY school kid in 1970s Sheffield, Marek Reichman would race downhill – ‘40mph without brakes!’ – on a soapbox built with his older brother Julian. By 2005, the kid from the northern estate had been shortlisted to lead th

In a corner of Valley Gas Speed Shop sat a charming little Ford Model B, tucked away in the corner. At first glimpse it seemed to share more characteristics with a Bentley or an old Austin, with its knock-off wire wheels, Union flags and maroon paint

THESE TWO Jaguars cause the most debate of all the cars inside my garage… because I can’t decide whether they should stay or be sold. My son Charlie is the blue XJ V12 coupé’s biggest fan but I don’t like the colour, nor its (slightly) scruffy appear

THE LEFT-HAND indicators on my Fiat 500L are not working and a quick check showed that the bulbs are not at fault; hardly a surprise, since the chance that all three of them – front, side and rear – would fail at the same time is quite small. A good

‘EXCUSE ME, but your car is on fire!’ squeaked the young woman in the café. I glanced out of the window and reassured her that the clouds emanating from the front of the Model T were in fact steam rather than smoke, and that this was quite normal beh

‘FOR WANT OF A PEG’, as the old saying doesn’t go, but it was a missing footrest (peg) that caused my lovely, rebuilt Moto Guzzi V7 Sport to be holed up for most of last summer. And what a summer it was – perfect motorcycling conditions when lockdown

IT’S JUST OVER a year since I drove the outgoing Volvo V60 Polestar (see Octane 200). It was powered by a supercharged and turbocharged 2.0-litre four with 362bhp, and rode on a set of extremely pricy, bespoke Ohlins dampers that could be adjusted –

A COUPLE OF months ago I stated that the latest Bentley Continental GT is the best roadgoing Bentley there has ever been. Having just spent a snowy weekend with the new Flying Spur V8 – which, thankfully, has all-wheel drive and came shod with all-se

FAME LANDED ON 24-year-old Charles Elwood Yeager with a bang. Specifically, it arrived at 45,000ft above the Mojave Desert on 14 October 1947 when, in extreme pain from broken ribs sustained two days earlier, he squeezed into the Bell X-1 – an orange

DAVID WHEELER, Porter Press International, £90, ISBN 978 1 913089 20 7 Remember that old Enzo Ferrari adage, that he built road cars only in order to fund his racing activities? Well, this is the car those racers owe the greatest debt to. Ferrari bui

We’ve lived with the BMW 3.0 CSL for almost 50 years now, but time has done nothing to blunt the visual impact of the car in full aero get-up. This 38cm-long sculpture from Jonny Ambrose captures the lines of the ‘Batmobile’ in aluminium, Perspex and

The word ‘supercar’ is widely considered to be a 1960s coinage that was inspired by the Lamborghini Miura, but it’s hard to argue that it couldn’t be applied to the Delahaye 135MS, bodied by Figoni et Falaschi. ‘MS’ signified a triple-Solex, 3.6-litr

PLUS RECEIVE A FREE AUTOGLYM BODY WORK WASH & PROTECTKIT • Get your first 3 issues of Octane for JUST £5• FREE Autoglym Bodywork Wash & Protect Complete Kit Including 500ml Pure Shampoo, 500ml Rapid Aqua Wax, 1 x Sponge & 2 x Microfibre Cloths• FREE

RETROMOBILE MIGHT have been postponed until later in the year, but Artcurial went ahead and held its February auction anyway. With bids taken in the room, online and by phone, highlight of the sale was the legendary 1972 Matra MS 670, as featured in

The 300 Sc, and the earlier 300S, are cars that have a well-earned reputation for being expensive to bring back to life. They were basically entirely hand-built when new, available as a coupé, a cabriolet or roadster, and a total of just 200 were mad

The combination of beautiful looks, a Yamaha-developed inline six-cylinder engine and low build numbers have helped to make this Japanese classic hugely appealing. The principal auction activity is centred in the US, although the market accounted for

THE AMELIA ISLAND concours has been delayed, which has also pushed this year’s auctions further into 2021. Among Bonhams’ early offerings will be this intriguing one-off 1935 Godsal Sports Tourer, which took a ‘Best in Class’ award at Amelia Island i

MOST OF THE 276 Swallow Dorettis built were destined for a life in the USA. Making use of Triumph TR2 running gear, the Doretti was built on a bespoke box-section chassis, clothed in an Italian sports car-inspired body. Longer and wider than a TR2, i

COMPUTERVISION may have been responsible for some innovative and groundbreaking CAD/CAM systems, but to most of us it’s a name we associate with Metros. Although it’s the Group B monster 6R4 that immediately spings to mind, it was a livery also share

THE IDEA OF a micro-sports car almost seems at odds with the modern automotive world. It’s a niche that Japan has always embraced thanks to restrictive kei-car regulations and, while few ever escaped onto the international market, Suzuki’s Cappuccino

BOOK WRITERS don’t have to get up early. Nothing to do with the amount of absinthe we drink, but I’m a night owl – reading, researching or listening to music until the early hours – and my wife has to rouse my lifeless corpse using strong tea and dar