Octane Magazine

By joining and supporting the HCVA, you’re investing to underpin a brighter future for classic motoring in the UK. Driving a classic is the ultimate expression of ‘reuse, repair, recycle’. It’s important to communicate that retaining an already manuf

ONE OF THE GREATEST advances in the classic car world over the past 25 years has been the recognition that conservation and preservation are as important as restoration. When I started in this game, far longer ago than I would like to admit, everythi

To take advantage of this month’s special offer and get three issues of Octane for £5, either visit subscribe.octane-magazine.com or call +44 (0)330 333 9491 and quote code DDEC22 Buying your issue of Octane – new and old Octane is available at the u

A field of 70 pre-’77 cars; an expertly plotted route through the Dolomites and part of Austria; and snow, snow and more snow. winterace.it ‘Relentless action’ on the Isle of Man: crews will tackle 21 tricky regularity sections and 26 special tests o

The UK’s biggest New Year’s Day meet, with more than 1000 classic cars, live music and a barbecue. brooklandsmuseum.com Despite the name, this event in Stony Stratford always attracts mid-century and modern classics as well as vintage cars and bikes.

The Cuban Government has given its blessing to this rally, which will see crews explore the whole country over two- and-a-bit weeks – but note that the authorities require all cars entered to be left-hand drive. bespokerallies.com With New Zealand no

Two Formula 1 World Champions have taken turns behind the wheel of Lotus’s new Evija at the Hethel test track. Emerson Fittipaldi, who drove a Lotus to glory in ’72, has inspired a special edition of the electric hypercar and was on hand for its prem

BMW HAS REVIVED the 3.0 CSL moniker for an anniversary special, based on the M4 and packing the most powerful straight-six that the Munich company has yet offered for sale. Just 50 of the lightweight, rear-wheel-drive, manual two-seaters will be buil

16th – 21st September 2023 My first two tours in 2021 and 2022 were held in Provence, which is one of my favourite places to spend time. But for our 2023 event we have decided to be altogether more adventurous and head into regions of Portugal and Sp

Letter of the month IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when an old pal of mine, a former Austin apprentice like me, called me up and told me that Octane magazine had mentioned a ‘Mr J Pugh, of Sambourne, near Redditch’ as being the first owner of the oldest survivi

They don’t call Lynn Park ‘Mr Cobra’ for nothing. About 50 of them have passed through his hands over the past five decades. At the moment, he houses nine within his sprawling garage in suburban Los Angeles, along with several reproductions and enoug

The claims are bold. Really bold. Top speed of 200mph, 0-60mph in 4.1sec, drag factor of 0.31, 400bhp, 1250kg: even by today’s standards, that’s fast, sleek, powerful and extremely light. The Ascari Ecosse is quite the supercar. The what, I hear you

I’ve driven at Circuito Ascari a couple of times. It’s not a track that crops up in race results; instead, this fabulous 3.4-mile loop in the sun-drenched mountains of southern Spain is a little bit of petrolhead paradise, a ‘race resort’ open to mem

This car shouldn’t exist. When it reached the end of its working life as a test mule for Aston Martin’s nascent V8 engine, it was recorded as being scrapped. Or, as the final hand-written entry in its logbook rather charmingly has it, ‘scraped’. But

‘When someone says “hot rod” to me,’ Bruce Meyer says, ‘a ’32 Ford highboy is what comes to my mind. If you went back and looked at my high school book covers, you’d see ’32 roadsters. Lots of them. I drew them all the time. I read Boy’s Life and Hot

FOR SOME DRIVERS, surviving a near-200mph crash at Le Mans might be something to dwell on. The thought of a Mercedes-Benz CLR taking air at the 1999 24 Hours is certainly one of the first things that springs to mind when you hear the name Peter Dumbr

Italy, 1950. The country was recovering from the Second World War, chasing scarce funds with positive energy and imagination. Though unaware of it, many were building the foundations of what, within ten years, would become the Italian economic boom,

PLEASE CAST YOUR MIND back to the Models page in the July 2021 edition of Octane (number 217, the one with a McLaren F1 and Porsche 911 GT1 and Mercedes CLK GT1 on the cover). Struggling? Well, one of the models featured was a ‘rustic’ French resin h

SUPPORTED BY 1966 FORD MUSTANG 289 IS THERE ANYTHING better than doing a long road trip with a bunch of mates in some old cars? Especially if it’s across the Channel, where the ever-present threat of a breakdown adds an underlying frisson of tension

1926 DELAGE DISS MORNINGS DON’T GET much stranger than today’s. As I sat down at my desk, I became aware that the alien head of a baby ostrich was staring at me through the window. Turns out that it had escaped from neighbour Jodie’s rescue farm, whe

2001 AUDI TT I’VE ALWAYS WONDERED if the caveman that invented the wheel ever imagined we’d all be sitting in endless traffic jams. The romanticism of the journey is quickly dispelled by the sound of bass-driven rap music from the car next to me. I m

2007 AUDI R8 I’D HAD THE R8 about a month when a neighbour sauntered over and asked if I had won the lottery. Sitting on his drive at the time was a new Renault Zoe with a list price that would comfortably see him into an R8. Not as nice as this one,

2021 FORD MUSTANG MACH 1 FOR SOME YEARS now, Ford has claimed that the Mustang is the world’s best-selling sports car, a description that must irritate folk in Zuffenhausen – but then, Porsche describes its Cayenne as a ‘sports car for the whole fami

I DROPPED INTO my local watch dealer last week. One of his customers had managed the feat of getting to the top of the Rolex waiting list and was picking up his new Submariner. After he’d had the bracelet sized, he put the watch in a travel pouch and

2022 HEALEY BY CATON NOT ALL RESTOMODS are created equal. Some take a classic car and simply add a few mod cons; others go further, making wholesale changes to the engine, suspension and even the bodywork. Engineering firm Envisage has developed the

BORN IN LANCASHIRE, raised in Hollywood, now a citizen of the world: from its creation in the 1930s as a ‘posh’ man’s golfing jacket, the Harrington, as it is now universally known, has become a ubiquitous element of male fashion spanning all social

‘WAKEY WAKA-A-A-Y!’ Delivered at full pelt in a cockney accent by bandleader Billy Cotton, for more than two decades this was the opening cry that announced the most popular show on British radio, and later on television. Cotton led an eventful life:

The technical specs for Cake’s latest electric scrambler neglect to mention a smiles-per-mile figure, but we’d wager there are few motorcycles available today that are more fun to ride. It’s superficially similar to its predecessors, but the Bukk is

TAKE A QUICK LOOK at a Rolex 1016 Explorer and it seems about as basic as a watch can get. A plain, unfussy, stainless steel 36mm case (remember when 40mm used to be thought of as ‘large’?), no crown guards and thin, tapering lugs. Then the face: ori

www.hortonsbooks.co.uk Book of the month Everything about this book is big. Huge. From its weight (26kg for the five volumes in their slipcase) to the full title, which is A Quiet Greatness: Japan’s Most Astonishing Automobiles for the Collector and

British company Oxford Diecast has offered 1:18 models alongside its long-established 1:43 range for some time now, but the KR200 bubble car is the first to be sold under Oxford’s own name, the others being from Chinese maker Welly and marketed as su

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25 November Film actor Clark Gable was a well-known car collector, who owned Duesenbergs – including a JN and one of the two famed SSJs – as well as a Packard Eight Convertible Victoria, a Mercedes 300SC and a 300SL Gullwing. This Jaguar is one of th

WHO DOESN’T LOVE to see an SD1 Touring Car being driven flat-out? Not to mention hearing its epic soundtrack. While it might not have the ultimate appearance of the full-on TWR racers that followed, this Patrick Motorsport SD1 has been a welcome sigh

RM SOTHEBY’S HAS posted some phenomenal results at its first Munich auction – perhaps not surprisingly, many top lots came from a privately owned BMW museum. Top seller from the Bavarian Legends Collection was a 1958 507 Roadster at €1,917,500 (above

IT MIGHT HAVE been a great Touring Car racer, as well as a great autobahn cruiser, yet it was the small but memorable part in the 1980s film Innerspace that first opened my eyes to the E24. The perfect choice for the film’s menacing villain, this big

WHILE MANY OF the most expensive and significant historic vehicles live a pampered existence today, the most interesting are the ones with stories to tell. This 1936 Bugatti 57 Atalante – an early highlight of Artcurial’s Rétromobile sale – has a ver

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I’VE ALWAYS BEEN passionate about research and, now that I’m retired, I spend my days tracking down the history of classic vehicles for owners all over the world. In theory it’s a part-time hobby but I have a to-do list as long as my arm, and the rea