Classic Car Buyer

Three men in a Mk1 Yaris. No, it’s not the makings of a low-budget clown car routine, but instead how my journey as a classic car writer would begin. I’d signed the contracts, said my hellos, and was ready to embark on my dream career. There was just

Yorkshire-based automotive venue The Motorist will be hosting its first Italian car event on Saturday, March 26. With space for 1000 vehicles on site, Absolute Italia will be open to owners of all types of Italian cars, from humble Fiats through to h

With Ford having a track record of reusing model names from its past, the trademarking of five of its previously successful monikers – Capri, Cortina, Escort, Granada and Orion – has increased speculation of a comeback for at least one of them, likel

A group of enthusiasts with a following on Twitter held a meet on Sunday, March 6 at Gilks Garage Café (gilksgaragecafe.com) in Warwickshire. And as the #WeirdCarTwitter hashtag suggests, there was an eclectic selection of classics in attendance. The

Just 10 months after the business held its first sale, classic car auctions are now coming thick and fast for WB & Sons. The next takes place on March 26, and as we’ve come to expect from the Newcastle firm, there will be plenty of variety among what

Charterhouse returned to the hustle and bustle of the Haynes Motor Museum in Somerset on March 3 for its first classic car sale of the year. Over 50 lots were put under the hammer, with a fascinating mixture of prewar vehicles, projects, quirky class

As alien as it may seem nowadays, the Mini was never designed to be sporty. Creator Alec Issigonis intended it as a simple and utilitarian people’s car, but John Cooper – boss of his eponymous F1 team – had other ideas. The two men were already good

The genesis of this entire feature was, in fact, an offhand comment from yours truly during an auction preview last year asking why the Kallista wasn’t more successful. And despite the abuse from colleagues, I maintain that it’s a perfectly valid que

If you can’t join them, beat them seems to have been the thinking at Renault during the era that produced the Avantime and Vel Satis. And yes, after so many attempts at creating a big French saloon to rival the German favourites only to fail dismally

While Jaguar’s biggest news of 1961 was the launch of the E-Type, let’s not forget the company’s other major debut that year: the MkX, the flagship saloon that should have done particularly well in the USA thanks to its relatively gargantuan proporti

Although the new-for-1969 Ford Capri is retrospectively referred to as the Mk1, it wasn’t the first car to carry the illustrious Capri moniker. In fact, that honour went to the Ford Consul Capri of 1961, a two-door coupe based around the Consul Class

No matter how competent it was considered at launch, few would have claimed that the Austin Maestro of 1983 was in any way exciting. It didn’t need to be; as an Escort-rivalling family hatchback, hback, it just had to be good at its job. But this was

The Best Small Car in the World? That was the question posed as a headline in the December 1973 issue of Motor Sport when it tested the Alfasud Ti. Several hundred superlatives later, that question was answered in the affirmative – nay, the ecstatic.

Never was a car more cruelly served by bad timing than the second Lotus Elan. Development began in earnest in 1985, at a time that the sports car market was essentially dead. There hadn’t been a truly modern sports car in many years and if anyone cou

The zenith of Maxi designer Alex Issigonis’s genius was undoubtedly the Mini, with its transverse-engined, front-wheel drive layout and innovative packaging revolutionising the small car blueprint. For the Mini, he enjoyed an autonomy over the design

Long before the Boxster took the crown, the front-engined ‘transaxle’ cars were the affordable Porsche champions and offer a great ’80s flavour for someone wanting a more classic experience. The choice of models is split into two very different cars:

For the Rootes Group, the mission statement was clear. By the mid-1950s, small-engined compact cars were lucrative business but the company didn’t produce anything of the sort. Wanting a slice of the pie, Lord Rootes commissioned his engineering team

Think of ‘Rolls-Royce’ and you think of a marque that is the pinnacle of motoring so far as luxury, quality and engineering are concerned. But nothing can be entirely without peer or rival, even Rolls-Royce – the car of royalty. What about the car th

Contact: The Real Car Company Coed y Parc, Bethesda, Gwynedd LL57 4YS Tel: 01248 602649 www.realcar.co.uk The second post-war model to emerge from Crewe, Bentley’s R-type was a car of substantial opulence, featuring swooping arches and an imposing gr

The main problem with leaving the 2CV unused over winter is getting it going again – the fuel either drains out of the pump and line or evaporating out of the carb, requiring a lot of cranking before the fuel pump can pull petrol from the tank, throu

Frank Sinatra may have had too few regrets to mention but, having cleared out my collection of automotive ephemera, I now have some nostalgic twinges that definitely travel in the direction of regrets. What sparked this was a WhatsApp picture of six