Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Classics World

On what would have been Carroll Shelby’s 100th birthday, Goodwood announced that the legendary American driver, car manufacturer and entrepreneur will be celebrated at this year’s Goodwood Revival over the weekend of 8th-10th September. The centenary of Shelby’s birth will be honoured with one of Goodwood’s signature tributes, comprising cars that were not only raced, but also designed and developed by the 1959 Le Mans winner. Running across the weekend, the celebration will include the likes of the MG TC in which Shelby competed for the very first time, in 1952. Shelby’s impact on motor racing can be seen each and every year at the Revival, and 2023 will be no different as an assortment of Cobras – the Anglo-American sports cars for which he is best known – are set…

DO YOU HAVE A PRODUCT OR SERVICE YOU’D LIKE FELLOW CLASSIC CAR ENTHUSIASTS TO KNOW ABOUT? GET IN TOUCH BY EMAILING: CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK Price: £155.99 (pre -facelift)/£239.99 (post-facelift) This LED kit from Better Car Lighting will transform the hopelessly dim lighting in the instruments and warning lights of a Jaguar X JS, and incorporates a number of special features. Firstly, the bulbs will dim normally with all standard car lighting rheostats. Secondly, unlike most LEDs, 'flip - chip' circuitr y means they will work when inser ted either way around. And thirdly they include one rather special warning light bulb that flashes if it comes on, meaning you can decide which warning light you consider most crucial and make sure it is not missed even for a moment. Call 0121 773…

The first Rootes product to use the Alpine name was the 1953-1955 Sunbeam-Talbot 90 -based t wo -seater. However, work on a new sports car began in 1956, and for it the company decided to use the floorpan of the for thcoming Hillman Audax Minx and the 1494 cc engine from the Rapier. Ken Howes devised the svelte body work, and he later recalled: 'It was looked upon as a completely new car that would be a break with the past. It was basically an intuitive design. I wanted a sports car that would be slightly ahead of the competition, one projected into the future.' The specification for this new beast would include exterior door handles and winding windows, as befitting a car aimed at the US export market. The…

PART 8 A problem as frustrating as an engine being difficult to start from cold isn’t particularly easy to fix, especially if, once the engine has finally deigned to start and got warmed up, it will then start again without issue. At that point you must leave it for several hours (or ideally overnight) before you can make the next attempt. This is exactly what has happened with our BGT, which has strung us along for three weeks from start to finish before we could finally fix it. Back in the summer of last year, we thought we’d cured the cold-start issue after routing a 12v feed from the starter motor to the coil. A few months later and the engine was back to its usual tricks of requiring numerous…

When is an Allegro not an Allegro? When it is a Vanden Plas, of course! Although most of us refer to the model as the Vanden Plas Allegro, officially it started out in 1974 as the Vanden Plas 150 0, a replacement for the ADO16 Vanden Plas Princess 130 0 (whose family also included the Austin, Morris and Wolseley 130 0 as well as the Riley Kestrel). Under the bonnet of the new Allegro -based Vanden Plas was an E-series engine of 14 85cc. This had been developed to replace the A and B-series units, and also to spawn a bigger six- c ylinder variant. As things turned out, the A-series soldiered on and the B-series was replaced by both the O -series and the E-series. The E-series had a…

Stars aligned for the Rover 75. When BMW bought Rover in 1994, the British company was planning a model to replace its 800 and 600. This was to be realised cheaply by reskinning the 600, itself a successfully reworked Honda Accord. Designer Richard Woolley – nowadays a very senior figure at Jaguar Land Rover – had established a winning styling direction, which was basically backwards. The new Rover was to stir up everyone’s rose-tinted memor y of a Rover – notably the P5, which bestrode the Queen’s highway between 1958 and 1973. This was the marque’s heyday, and nostalgia had tangible value in the 20th Century’s dying days. BMW backed the new model, to a point way beyond its creators’ wildest dreams. It gave Rover a development budget that would…

The first Gilbern was assembled in 1959, above butcher Giles Smith’s slaughter house at Church Village, near Llantwit Fardre and about ten miles northwest of Cardiff. The idea was originally for a one-off, because Smith wanted to build a glassfibre special. He just happened to mention it during a chance meeting with one Bernard Friese. Friese was a German ex-prisoner of war who, having married a British girl after the Second World War, had elected to stay here. He also happened to have gathered considerable experience with glassfibre, having worked at the factor y that produced the Martin GRP special, a sports coupé which Giles Smith also rather admired. Eventually, after a certain amount of the amber nectar, the pair agreed to build the one-off special together. As the car…

A DEFINITE CUT ABOVE THE REST Another year, another anniversar y and this time it is 50 years since the class of ’73 Wasn’t 50 years ago a great year for choosing your new company c ar? Certainly more exciting than choosing between a Qashqai and a Captur. Back then it probably had to be British, but you’d still choose it just like it was your own. And my choice might not be what you think. I’m talking about something that doesn’t cost a for tune, doesn’t drink fuel, doesn’t rust into first MoT test oblivion, but it’s stylish, goes well, handles nicely and it’s British. So, an Escort then? No. Certainly not a base 60bhp 130 0. The 1300GT four- door is alright at £10 82, but the 1300E…

Welcome to the April issue, and as I am sure you have already noticed, we have gone to a new page size. As a general rule, we classic car enthusiasts don’t naturally react well to change – that is one of the reasons we are so drawn to nostalgia – and therefore I do not expect the change will be welcomed with wholehearted enthusiasm. However, I would urge you to withhold judgement and hopefully, before long the only time you will be reminded of the change is when you place the new issue alongside the old ones in your binders. Certainly I can assure you that we’ve not lost any content as a result of the slightly smaller pages, careful tweaking of margins and images have made sure of that.…

With a total of 45 classic Minis and 32 MGB/MGB GTs built, 2022 was a record year for the manufac ture of bodyshells by British Motor Heritage. The year was also notable for producing the first order of an MG Midget body in three years. BMH offers shells for all marks of Midget and its close cousin the Austin-Healey Sprite, the prices for which are £12,210. The recent build was for a pre-1972 MKIII Midget, so featured the earlier-st yle square -shaped rear wheelarches appropriate for that period.…

GOT A STORY TO SHARE? EMAIL IT TO CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK OR POST IT TO CLASSICS MONTHLY NEWSDESK, KELSEY MEDIA, THE GRANARY, DOWNS COURT, YALDING HILL, YALDING ME18 6AL Peugeot showcased six models from its ‘4 series’ line-up at the 2023 Retromobile exhibition in Paris on 1st-5th February, from the 401 to the new 408. The first model of the series was the 401 saloon (1934- 1935) which innovated with its independent front wheels, while the 401 Eclipse of 1935 (pictured top right) was the first production coupécabriolet. The 402 (1938- 1942) grouped the headlights behind the grille to streamline the design and improve aerodynamics, an area which was still in its infancy, while the 403 Cabriolet (1956-1961) was made famous by TV's Lieutenant Columbo and is just one of the many…

Price: £97.62 each  Whenever suspension companies produce a kit for a specific vehicle, the estate version tends to get forgotten. However, that’s not the case with GA Z. The company is now offering dampers to fit the unique suspension of both the regular Ford Sierra Estate (6/1984 on) and the XR 4×4 Estate (1986 on). GAZ fully adjustable GT dampers enable the damping bump and rebound rate to be adjusted to suit the conditions, load and driving style by means of an easily accessible knob on the side of the units. Order as part number GT 7- 4779. For fur ther details and to find a stockist in your area, visit their website at www.gazshocks.com…

EMAIL: CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK FIND US ON FACEBOOK: THE LATEST FEEDS AT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/CLASSICSMONTHLYMAGAZINE FOLLOW OUR UPDATES AT WWW.TWITTER.COM/CLASSICSMAG I don’t usually write to any of the car magazines that I read regularly, but felt compelled to after reading several excellent features over the last two years. Congratulations for maintaining very high standards of journalism and for featuring some of the rarer and more obscure cars in amongst the regular and rather more ubiquitous vehicles. The reason for writing though was one feature that really caught my eye recently on the Borgward Isabella Coupé – and what a fantastic story to accompany it too! I first saw one of these as a ten year old kid and loved the look without knowing anything about them. The next time I saw one was at…

In the February edition I enjoyed Andrew Roberts' feature on the Wolseley, and always marvel at this gentleman's encyclopaedic knowledge of cars as used in film and television and of the stars who drove them. Your feature in the same edition on the Austin A30 highlighted the practicality of this great little vehicle. I wonder if you, or one of your readers, happen to know the location of the B&W archive publicity shot (above) which shows an A30 in what appears to be a typical English market town? The place looks vaguely familiar to me. A work colleague of mine was able to test the impressive strength of the A30's structure when, with four hulking rugby players on board, he managed to roll the car at the top of the…

Kerry: I've always been into cars. My dad was one of those people who was constantly changing his vehicles, so unlike Gar y my background was not purely in Fords – we had Triumph Dolomites, Nissan Bluebirds, Toyotas, Skodas – you name a car and my dad probably had at least one of them at some time or other. But when I passed my test in 1999, the car I wanted was a Ford Fiesta. And it had to be an XR2, it couldn't be just any old model. Gary: We've been together for 27 years, and I think one of the reasons we get on so well is that we are both petrolheads. However, I am a Ford man through and through and I won't have any thing else…

PART 10 Like most projects, our Regal is taking slightly longer to finish than we had hoped. That is not because of any particular problems, but simply because when you are working on a tight timescale, then even the slightest knock off course can have an impact. Still, it’s better to take your time and do everything to the best of your ability rather than rushing at the final hurdle and compromising all your previous hard work. One of the knocks off course in this case had come from our previous Rover P4 project, which – as you can read in my Driver Diary – was taking an inordinate amount of Alan’s time to finish off. With copy deadlines for the Regal looming, we decided to entrust its final…

The Land Rover’s outstanding safet ycritical faults have now been fixed in the form of overhauled brakes and a full new set of springs and dampers. The next stage was to turn thoughts towards the drivetrain. Time on the road with the Series IIA had shown that there was clearly nothing fundamentally wrong with its 2.25 -litre petrol engine; it started reliably and crisply whether hot or cold, it ran smoothly and with a level of mechanical refinement entirely in keeping with being a Rover product of the 1950s, pulled the 1.7- ton long-wheelbase Station Wagon along as well as an engine with 70 -something horsepower could be expected to, and (on the flat A-roads of Cambridgeshire at least) could reach and maintain 60mph without needing full throttle and without…

GOT A STORY TO SHARE? EMAIL IT TO CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK OR POST IT TO CLASSICS MONTHLY NEWSDESK, KELSEY MEDIA, THE GRANARY, DOWNS COURT, YALDING HILL, YALDING ME18 6AL Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s personal 1972 Lotus Elan +2 s130/5 has been entered in the Silverstone Auction at Race Retro on February 25th at Stoneleigh Park. Coming with an estimate of £60,000 - £70,000, the ex-Chapman Plus 2 joins a line-up of seven other Lotus Elans from the Piddington Collection to provide bidders with an unprecedented choice. Whilst current market values often don't show it, the Elan Plus 2 was a pivotal car for Lotus when it launched in 1967, representing as it did the marque's first real concerted push towards the upmarket sports car sector it inhabits today. Where the original Elan…

The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu has recently acquired one of the most popular caravans of the 20th Century – aSprite 400 touring caravan. Built in 1971, the caravan will be used by the museum’s Learning Team to enable families to step back in time both at the museum and further afield. With its original four-berth interior intact, it is undeniably 1970s in style with woodeffect Formica cupboards, sleek cupboard catches, a gaspowered twin-burner hotplate and even its bold Sprite issue curtains. The museum plans to restore the caravan’s exterior and return it to its former glory with help from a local community group and kind sponsorship in part by the Caravan and Motorhome Club. The museum’s Learning Manager, Benedick Swann, explained the future plans for the caravan, saying: 'The…

The first time I met Wayne Cherry, he was looking especially pleased. It was 1990 and he had just emerged from the Autocar and Motor awards ceremony at the Savoy Hotel in London where his sleekly elegant Vauxhall Calibra coupé had won the Design of the Year award, one of many prestigious accolades his cars have collected during a respected four-plus decade career in the motor industry. Seizing the opportunity, I steered Wayne into the hotel’s stylish restaurant for afternoon tea and a chat. Born in Indianapolis in 1937, Wayne Kent Cherry is arguably as well known for his design work in Europe as he is in his native North America. 'I’ve spent around 26 absolutely mar vellous years on this side of the Atlantic and over the years I’ve…

PART 2 Last month we introduced our 1998 BMW Z3 project, a car that I’d bought fully expecting to end up stripping for parts, but decided was too good for such a grisly fate. So instead it became a low-budget rescue. The total budget I set aside was just £150 0, but I was star ting to think that we may even come in well under this as the mechanical components, running gear and trim all looked to be good. Despite the sorry state in which it arrived, this had cer tainly been a well-maintained car and not a neglected heap. The usual old Z3 is too often a shed these days with rusty sills, rusty wings, knackered headlight adjusters, rusty brakes pipes, useless handbrake, corroded mirrors, oil leaks ever…

If you want a classic car that has readily available spares, plenty of supportive clubs and specialists and a range of models including a saloon, coupé, estate and convertible, then the Triumph Herald and Vitesse should not be ignored. Manufactured between 1959 and 1971, these stylishlooking classics have the right ingredients to tempt anyone who wants a traditional classic car that’s simple to work on, having as it does a separate body and chassis, rear-wheel drive, a choice of four- or six-cylinder petrol engines and familiar components including coil-sprung independent suspension and (on most models) front disc brakes. In 1959, the Herald was the first model of the two to appear and looked promising from the exterior thanks to its body work designed by Italian stylist Giovanni Michelotti. According to…

Model T This 1911 image shows the factor y floor at Ford's Traf ford Park plant in Manchester. Within months of Ford Motor Company (England) Limited being incorporated on 8th March 1911, Traf ford Park was busy building Ford's 'universal car,' the Model T. As you can see here, this is before the introduc tion in 1914 of the moving assembly line for which Henry Ford was so famous and which allowed Ford cars to be produced ef ficiently and economically. Ford built their Model T from 1908 through to 1927 and sold 15 million of them. It claimed the record for being the world's best-selling car until the VW Beetle wrested that crown from the venerable Ford in 1972, but when you think about how limited car ownership was…

As the Austin A55 Cambridge Mk2 was not the first of the BMC Farina family to be launched, it may seem strange to say that the Wolseley, Riley, MG and Morris versions all copied it, but this was an Austin-dominated design from an Austin-dominated British Motor Corporation. The first to market was the Wolseley 15/60 in December 1958, followed by the Austin Cambridge in January 1959, the MG Magnette MkIII in February, the Morris Oxford Series V in March and the Riley 4/68 in April. The body styling was essentially similar on all versions, but the cars were differentiated by changes to the front and rear with different grilles, sidelights and rear wings. Brightwork to the body sides and alternative two-tone paint schemes gave further distinction, while inside there were…