Octane Magazine

I HAVEN’T DRIVEN the ‘new’ Ford GT. I was due to, but when the tour dates changed I couldn’t, so Mark Dixon got the gig. I was pretty jealous as a result, though as nothing compared with when, at Thruxton, he got to drive a GT40 and three generations

A new concours for 2022, held at the Miami Turnberry resort in Florida, USA. Classic and modern cars will contest a range of classes innovatively themed by design features – so there’s one class dedicated to cars with unusual doors, another for vehic

In what is widely recognised as Britain’s most gruelling endurance rally anyway, the 2021 event turned out to be especially testing, with high winds, hailstones and many other weather challenges to overcome. Only 54 of the 70 Land’s End starters made

THERE CAN BE FEW things more British than driving a Morgan three-wheeler around the historic byways of Kent, the Garden of England. If you find yourself doing so, however, be mindful of the historic potholes: straddling them is no option with that ce

CLASSIC CAR ENTHUSIASTS rode and drove confidently and optimistically into 2022, determined to put behind them two years of severe disruption since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the late cancellation of the UK’s biggest annual New Ye

Shelby American is building a 900bhp Shelby GT500 KR to mark the company’s 60th anniversary. Just 60 ‘King of the Road’ examples will be built, with the first due to be auctioned for charity by Barrett-Jackson. The announcement was made in December a

THIS JAGUAR E-TYPE Fixed Head Coupé was purchased new, in opalescent dark green with black trim, on 24 March 1966 by Don T Hughes of Grosse Point, Michigan. My guys knew I was looking for a 4.2 covered-light fixed-head E-type – but it had to be compl

TICKETS HAVE GONE on sale and more details have been announced for the pioneering new car event set to kick off in London on the Queen’s 96th birthday, 21 April. Taking place over three days at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, Salon Privé London has be

Who’d have imagined that an Austin Seven would be the perfect car in which to learn how to drive a race-spec Ford GT? First time I let the clutch in, gingerly attempting to get Philip Walker’s gorgeous Borrani-wheeled open GT underway down the pit la

The much-missed motoring writer Russell Bulgin supposedly once stated that ‘cars are boring; it’s what you do with them that makes them interesting’. Now, while you’d have to have a heart of granite to find the current Ford GT boring, it’s certainly

It’s amazing that some concours cars go on tour like rock stars. That they can chalk up destinations and list them like the fanciest shops score their outlets: Pebble Beach, London, Lake Como the equivalent of London, Paris, Milan, New York. And all

After six or seven gentle laps letting the oily bits of the M3 racer warm up and warm through, on the back straight I give the throttle a decent squeeze. The rev-counter needle heads past 4000rpm and finally the four-cylinder engine clears its throat

This is not the Porsche that Dean Jeffries is known for. That Porsche, a 550 Spyder on which Jeffries had painted the number 130 and the words ‘Little Bastard’, came to its end about a month later as a rumpled heap along Highway 46 in central Califor

By the time Juan Manuel Fangio began his Grand Prix career, he was already of an age when most of today’s Formula 1 drivers have retired. When he began his first 24-hour race at Le Mans, on 24 June 1950, Il Maestro was celebrating his 39th birthday.

THE LOCALE DOESN’T exactly scream ‘home of fabulous car collection’ but that is rather the point of the exercise, you surmise. Our host, Lincoln Small, then appears and swings open a pair of robust-looking iron gates before beckoning us down the side

THE JAGUAR’S RIDE has been bothering me for a while. The car’s suspension is set on the low side and it’s a design of the 1940s, so it’s very simple, with a solid rear axle. It runs firm gas dampers and new polybushes all round, with a thicker front

IT’S NOT OFTEN you get something for nothing, but the stars aligned for once during the ‘I don’t know what day it is/I’ve eaten too much cheese’ period between Christmas and New Year. London Mayor Sadiq Khan had suspended the Congestion Charge, the w

FIRE WAS THE one ingredient sadly absent from ‘Das Feuer’, the Porsche Club GB event held at the Fire Service College, Moreton-in-Marsh in Gloucestershire, on a bitterly cold Sunday in December. Even a modest brazier on which to warm the hands would

AUSTRALIA HAS produced more than its fair share of great motoring journalists, and one of the greatest is Doug Blain who – like several of his compatriots – came over to the Old Country in the 1960s to show us how it should be done. Doug was the edit

YOU HAVE TO admire the chutzpah of Rolls-Royce’s PR department. In its never-ending quest to rid the company of a fuddy-duddy, reactionary image, it’s now pitching its founders Sir Henry Royce and CS Rolls as the ‘disruptors’ (horrid word!) of their

THERE’S A REFRESHINGLY analogue nature about this Dacia. It’s an honest-to-goodness family car, SUV in shape, with room for five and a decent 445-litre boot. You can have it with four-wheel drive for a supplement of around £1000, should you wish, tho

GIVE THE PEOPLE what they want. Having just sampled something close to automotive perfection in this GT3, it’s hard to argue with the hardcore GT Porsche buyers who demanded the option of a manual. On paper three pedals will always lose to two, but t

WE ALL LOVE cars and driving for different reasons. While there’s much about electric cars that leaves me a little cold, I can’t help but feel somewhat excited about the next few years. We’re facing the dawn of a new era, with new technology and even

WITH ITS FOUR FACES and five bells, ‘Big Ben’ is the most famous clock in the world, one glimpse instantly saying London, England, and its sonorous chime is familiar to millions at home and abroad. Without its clock tower, the Palace of Westminster (

BORN INTO A wealthy, politically active family in Patterton, Renfrewshire, on 26 July 1909, Margaret Allan attended the famously liberal Hampshire school, Bedales. Her father James hailed from the family that owned the Allan Line shipping company, he

SNAGGING WHAT YOU’RE after, when most of the watches you like were made on the other side of the mid-1970s, is never a simple process. Rather like one of those mid-1980s in-car graphic equalisers, you’re always balancing more of one thing against hav

THE TANGENTE SPORT always seemed to be the Q-watch in the Nomos range. Up against the relaxed Club, the slick Weltzeit world-timer, and even its brother the Bauhausian basic Tangente, it looked – at first sight, anyway – as if there wasn’t a great de

For us lot, the word superleggera immediately brings to mind the cars dressed by Carrozzeria Touring, but for those outside the motoring community it’s just as likely to prompt a mental picture of this famous bit of furniture. Made from 1957 by Cassi

RICHARD HESELTINE, Porter Press International, £45, ISBN 978 1 913089 34 4 Anyone familiar with Richard Heseltine’s writing will know that the subject of this book is not just right up his street but also metaphorically parked in his garage: if it’s

In the best traditions of motorsport, rally team Prodrive liked to swap around distinctive registrations from car to car, and ‘L555 BAT’ appeared on several different Prodrive Imprezas during the 1993, 1994 and 1995 seasons. This incarnation was pilo

LIKE EVERY ASPECT of our lives over the past two years, buying habits have changed considerably due to the pandemic. Although 2020 turned everything upside down, 2021 saw a significant amount of balance restored, with many more of the larger live auc

In the mid-1970s, rising fuel costs caused by the fuel crisis quickly made small cars the star. Increasing insurance costs for anything with sporting intentions put a further nail in the Big Car coffin, meaning that the second-generation Mustang was

PORSCHE’S 550 SPYDER was one of the most successful competition cars to wear the Stuttgart badge, but the 718 RSK – its direct replacement – took the formula to new heights. Upgrades included more aerodynamic bodywork with faired-in headlights and, o

DTM CARS in the 1990s were fantastic, and this Jägermeister-liveried Alfa Romeo 155 V6 TI is a prime example of why they’re still so fondly remembered. Although the Alfa basically looks like a pumped-up 155, DTM rules allowed for considerable deviati

Launched in February 1954 at the International Motor Sports Show in New York, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL ‘Gullwing’ was a development of the Le Mans-winning W194 competition coupé – featuring a lightweight spaceframe chassis and the world’s first produ

THERE WAS A time when buyers paid a premium for Rosso Corsa Ferraris. It’s certainly an iconic combination but, much like Silver Birch Aston Martin DB5s, it can seem somewhat ubiquitous. Today, the rarer colour combinations are often the ones that ar

ZEBRA-PATTERNED seats are a peculiar thing to be remembered for, but it’s one of the reasons the Honda Beat remains so widely adored 31 years after it was launched. Designed within the confines of the tax-beating ‘kei-segment’ city car regulations, t

WE START WORK at 8.30, so I’m usually up around 6.30-7am. I always say good morning to my costumes, walking down the rails and having a little chat. I suppose I’m odd because I talk to them, but then I am a creative and they represent 22 years of my