Sommaire pour August 2023 de Classics World

As I am sure you have noticed, we are running a series celebrating Triumph in this, the 100th anniversary year of their first car. Putting this together just brings home to me what a tragedy it is that the marque has been dormant now for nearly 40 years, and currently languishes unloved and forgotten in a BMW store cupboard. When you consider how many superb cars were produced under that name over a 60 year period, surely it deserved a better fate than that? Of course there are other great marques that have come and gone over the years, and even another famous British marque which, like Triumph, is celebrating its centenary this year. This one is still in very rude health, although my reference to it being a British…

The organisers of the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show have revealed that the 2023 show theme will be Perfect Partners. This is to celebrate the many relationships in the classic community, including the show working with headline sponsor Lancaster Insurance for the past ten years. Show Director Lee Masters said: 'The theme is predominantly designed to challenge the car clubs and exhibitors to interpret it in their displays and stands at the show. However, we also wanted to thank and celebrate all the amazing partnerships that are formed in our community.' Whilst the show focuses on its own partnerships, the clubs and exhibitors could choose to take a different direction such as the partnerships between manufacturers like Mercedes and AMG or Fiat and Abarth. There are also design partnerships, drivers and…

The Triumph 2000/2500/2.5 Register once again came to Devon for their National gathering at Whitehill Country Park, Paignton from 12th-18th June. This year they were celebrating 60 years since the Triumph 2000 was launched and 100 years of the Triumph marque. Saturday saw 63 Triumphs descend on the show field with members coming from as far away as Edinburgh and Hamburg. A number of awards were made, including the members' vote for the car they would most like to take home which went to the Furnell family with their beautiful 2500S Estate (pictured). The Register also raised over £500 for local Exeter-based charity, Dream-A-Way, who make dreams come true for Devon’s children and adults with disabilities and life affecting health conditions. For details of the club, check out www. triumph2000register.co.uk…

HERO-ERA's Rally for the Ages attracted an impressive 90 cars to the start line at Bicester Heritage for a 100-mile competitive route of four regularities around Oxfordshire and four tests at Bicester. The purpose was to encourage young people into the sport, and 18 crew members were aged 15 and under, while two were aged just 11 and 55% of the field were new to regularity rallying. They sampled the ‘fuel of the future’ with Coryton advanced Biofuels Sustain brand (see news story on p6), which helped keep emissions to a minimum and powered 70 cars to the finish line. The overall winners were Jon and Jack Harvey (15) in their VW Golf.…

Every company has its financial ups and downs, but in Standard-Triumph's case the swings did seem to be extraordinarily large. At the start of the 1960s they were also very rapid, although the origins of what was a nearterminal decline had already been sown in the 1950s. For this part of the story we will have to return briefly to an even earlier date – 1946 in fact, when Standard started building tractors for Harry Ferguson at Banner Lane in Coventry. This turned out to be a hugely profitable venture for the company. Things started to unravel in 1953 though, when Ferguson decided to sell out to the Canadian tractor firm, Massey-Harris. At this point Standard-Triumph still had a contract to build Ferguson tractors until the end of 1955, but…

PART 6 Over the years, I’ve driven a lot of cars which popular wisdom suggests have very weak brakes. Almost without exception, I have noticed nothing of the sort. A lack of servo assistance might change the feel and drum brakes might fade sooner than discs, but in normal road use they are invariably more than adequate for the job they have been designed to do. That is true for the classics too because although their braking systems may be older and less powerful than the over-servo’d monster discs on many modern cars, most of us owners tend to drive our classics with rather more consideration and mechanical sympathy than people usually lavish on a modern daily driver. All of that does, however, presuppose that those brakes are well adjusted…

It is impossible to overstate the importance of the British Motor Corporation’s ADO16 family to automotive history. When the original Morris 1100 made its bow in 1962, no other car in its class had the same combination of frontwheel-drive, transverse engine and Hydrolastic suspension. The ADO16 immediately made its rivals appear dated, yet its narrative is frequently one of lost opportunities. The origins of the ADO16 date from 1958, when BMC initiated Project XC9002. This front-drive saloon would bridge the gap between the Corporation’s 1.5-litre products and its smaller models. Development took place under the auspices of Alec Issigonis, and by July 1959 the project was known as ADO16. The styling was by Pininfarina, following their work on the 1958 Austin A40 – Issigonis subsequently remarked: ‘I couldn’t get it…

A new permanent gallery at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu will showcase rarely seen archive photographs from the museum’s collections. The In Focus gallery creates a space that will have temporary exhibitions of photographs, artwork, motoring objects and memorabilia, drawing from the museum’s collection of over 1.7 million items. The first exhibition will be a special selection depicting the famous Le Mans 24 Hours to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first race. The Le Mans photographs depict the stages of the famous endurance race, from the start line sprint through to the chequered flag. Le Mans – The Race of the Century will be on display from 3rd June until 10th September. It will then be followed by The Magic of the Marque – Celebrating 100 Years of…

RADwood UK returns to Bicester Heritage on Saturday 2nd September. RADwood was created to celebrate car lifestyle culture, blending period-correct dress with automotive awesomeness to celebrate cars, trucks and bikes from 1980-1999. Founded in America in 2017, Hagerty took stewardship of RADwood in March 2022. Often referred to as a Goodwood Revival for the 1980s and 1990s, the 2023 RADwood UK will include the Hot Wheels Legends UK live final, with an opportunity for visitors to see the finalists ‘in the metal’, as well as watching the judges select the winner that will be turned into a 1:43 scale diecast model. In addition to the display of RAD-era cars and Hot Wheels entrants, RADwood UK will present a host of in-period entertainment and music and some thoroughly modern food and…

The 2023 Harrington Gathering at Transport Museum Wythall was a positive spectacle of iconic design with coaches representing eight decades of art deco-inspired design on a number of different chassis, plus a very plain yet attractive single deck service bus. From the bonneted era of the early 1930s through dorsal finned luxury into the 1960s Granadiers and Cavaliers (plus a dash of Cavadier to confuse the uninitiated), there was something for everyone. Of course, Harrington was also famous for carrosserie, and its relationships with the Rootes Group and Triumph were illustrated by the Harrington Sunbeam and Triumph products, represented at the Gathering in the shape of a record five Sunbeam Alpines and a Triumph GTR4, all carrying Harrington's sleek coupé bodywork.…

For many years, the MGB could claim to be the world's best-selling sports car. Mazda were to well and truly take that crown with their MX5, a car that in its initial NA guise had the same gently flowing lines as the MG roadster but which was decades away from it dynamically. There was still a front-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive, but there is a delicacy about the Mazda that is lacking in the tough-as-oldboots MG. That is particularly noticeable from behind the wheel, with controls that are light yet precise. This is not meant in any way as a criticism of the venerable old B, merely a reflection on the way that the market had moved on since 1962. Nor is it meant to imply that the Mazda is…

PART 3 We introduced this mini-series when our previous MGB GT project came to a close, largely because we had always intended to show the bodywork repairs to that, but a change of plan saw that stage of the work struck off the project list. A subsequent plan has evolved that could yet see the purple BGT return and go under the knife, but that is likely to be a longer-term undertaking, so this three-part summary on the yellow car is still perfectly timed. And talking of timing, as I explained in part 1, the actual work was carried out some time ago on my own car when I was editing MG Enthusiast magazine, although I have updated the prices. That does explain why Alan Denne seems to have lost…

Winning the COTY award in 1976 was a huge shot in the arm for the new Simca 1307/1308, better known to us Brits as the Chrysler Alpine. Just three years later the Chrysler Horizon beat the Fiat Ritmo (Strada in the UK!) to achieve the same accolade, which might be seen as less of a success, although in that year the Audi 80 was in third place. Without casting aspersions on Chrysler Europe's best efforts of that decade, it is always interesting to look at a list of COTY winners and observe just how many soon ended up in the dustbin of history. As is well known to many, the Chrysler Corporation in the USA were in expansionary mode in the 1960s. Ford and General Motors had long since established…

Our Condition ratings CONDITION 1 Very good cars, well cared for but not concours (for which prices are higher). CONDITION 2 Good condition, with a legitimate MoT and on the road. but still requiring some work. CONDITION 3 Complete, maybe even running and possibly being used, but in need of work, usually major. Might not be able to pass an MoT making road use illegal. IMPORTANT NOTES 1 The Classics Monthly Price Guide is compiled by reference to a wide variety of sources, including clubs, auction results and advertisements, both printed and online. It is impossible for anyone to accurately value a specific vehicle without first examining the car. 2 These listings are intended to provide a useful guide only. Asking prices can vary widely between different examples of the…

MG enthusiasts flocked to the British Motor Museum in Gaydon on Saturday 27th May to celebrate 100 years of the marque. The day was blessed with beautiful weather and a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere, and there cannot have been a single MG model not represented somewhere around the extensive grounds – wandering through the parking areas as well as admiring the 100 cars in the time line and the many that rolled in from the various scenic road runs paid real dividends. There was a flypast by a Spitfire from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, charity rides offered by the Sporting Bears, and more high-adrenalin excitement when the X-15 ZT-T Bonneville record breaker was fired up at intervals throughout the day thanks to sponsorship from Lancaster Insurance, its thunderous roar…

Just two years after opening, the Great British Car Journey in Derbyshire has been named as one of the top new tourism businesses in the national VisitEngland Awards for Excellence 2023. The annual awards, which celebrate the tourism industry’s brightest stars, were held on Thursday 7th June at a glittering award ceremony hosted by Alex Polizzi at Warner Bros Studio Tour London. Great British Car Journey was one of 48 winners selected from hundreds of tourism businesses across England, including hotels, self-catering accommodation, B&Bs, glamping operators, attractions, restaurants, pubs and museums. Accepting the bronze award for New Tourism Business of the Year, Richard Usher – founder and CEO of Great British Car Journey – said: 'What a phenomenal journey the last two years have been for Great British Car Journey.…

On 9th July the Vintage Sports Car Club will be hosting the Shuttleworth Trophy Race Meeting at Donington. There will be the standard attractions of a VSCC race meeting, and with Donington being one of the country's prettiest race tracks, it is a great opportunity to sit on a grassy knoll with your mates and enjoy a picnic. The day will also feature the Longstone Light Car Race which, when it was last run in 2021, won the RAC Historic Event of the year. This will be the final race of the day, and to give you a flavour of the ethos behind it, prizes – which will be open and half-drunk magnums of Longstone Champagne – will be awarded for the first breakdown and the most catastrophic breakdown. What's…

We all remember our first one – and mine was a cracker. It was love at first sight. Shortly after passing my driving test I acquired a three year old, low mileage, grey Mini Van bought from a private owner. It was my first road legal vehicle. I now had a two-seater like my mates did, but whilst theirs were Triumph Spitfires, MG Midgets and even MGB roadsters, they were all older vehicles with more miles on them, rusty in places, less reliable and without the facility to cart around a big dog and the space to make a few quid by hauling around whatever people wanted moving that would fit in the thing. That was over 50 years ago and despite lifestyle changes, increasing wealth and property relocations, for…

PART 1 The cost of buying a classic car has risen sharply in recent years. That is great news if you already own something special, and particularly so if for any reason you are contemplating selling it. However, don’t forget that although you might cash in at sale time, you will also have to pay more for its replacement. Even classics that were once unloved and cheap have either disappeared from circulation or shot up in value. Where once you used to be able to pick up something interesting for a few hundred quid, now the entry level for anything that qualifies unquestionably as a classic and can be used right away is likely to start at £3000, and even then it will almost certainly still require work and improvement.…

The two-door, fastback Ford Capri had been a roaring success since its launch in 1969, with sales exceeding 1.5 million by the time the Mk3 version was introduced in 1978. The Mk3 introduced wrap-around black bumpers and circular twin headlights with an Aeroflow grille in the middle. Models included the L, GL, S and Ghia, with some features being exclusive to particular ones, such as a spoiler on the S which promised to reduce drag by 12% and claimed to improve fuel consumption by 10%. Mk3 engine sizes initially ranged from the economical 1300 Kent crossflow through the Pinto (1600 and 2000) and on to the 3000 Essex V6. Three years after the Mk3 was launched, the Essex V6 was phased out and replaced by the smaller 2800 Cologne V6,…

The Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum was founded by Richard and Hasell Atwell. They lived in the Calne area their entire lives, starting the collection with the purchase of a 1937 Buick Albermarle which you can still see in a prominent position upon entering the museum. The collection grew, and in 1981 it was all brought together under one roof within the first of the conjoined buildings that form the museum today. In 1989 a charitable Trust was formed, and this soon led to the current method of using volunteers for every task and every role. This method stood the test of time and in 2010, after Richard and Hasell had both died, a Charitable Company was established to operate and maintain the site. It is remarkable to see how the legacy…

BEAULIEU OR BUST Andrew has been to Beaulieu often enough, but only three times to the Autojumble. The first time I went to Beaulieu's Autojumble was in 1986 with a mate – we went in his recently resprayed 1977 Mini Clubman 1100, a low mileage but rusty example that was renovated in the VW Audi bodyshop in which we were both doing apprenticeships. The second time was around 2007 and the stuff looked much the same as it had 21 years before – legions of Haynes manuals, gasket sets and brake drums for a 1937 Blimey-Rudgeworth 16hp Atrocious. What about 2023, though? Well, I went with a friend in his 1962 Morris Minor 1000, fresh from an engine rebuild. The reason for our pilgrimage (apart from parts hunting) was the…