Classics Worldの June 2022 の目次

I like to think that I am a reasonably well-organised and efficient worker. To some extent that must be true, because working on multiple projects and getting this magazine to the printers on time every four weeks (not to mention fitting in a family life) means there is a lot to get through every day and I’ve not missed a deadline yet. There are, however, still efficiency gains to be made. For example, I can be lying under a car struggling with a particular task and know full well that something in the tool chest just a few short steps away could make my job easier, yet I will struggle on with what I have to hand. Somewhere in my head I have loosely calculated that stopping, getting up, fetching…

A team from Bournemouth University and the National Motor Museum will be breathing new life into the legendary Sunbeam 1000hp which broke the 200mph Land Speed Record on 29th March 1927 – the team plans to start it back up again, making it run for the first time in over half a century. Students from the engineering programme started working on various projects with the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in June 2021. The Sunbeam project is led by Dr Adil Saeed and Dr Sarah Palmer-Smith. Dr Saeed said: 'Working on the Sunbeam 1000hp has created many exciting opportunities for our students to take their learning and research and put it into practice. Our work on the Sunbeam started in July 2021 with the core objectives of identifying, measuring, and…

On the 2nd of July this year, the ACE in Motion Tour will depart from Bicester Heritage, organised by HERO-ERA in partnership with the ACE-SMA charity. ACE-SMA is the charitable body concerned with raising awareness and improving the treatment of Spinal Muscular Atrophy here in the UK – ACE stands for Awareness, Cure and Exercise. The charity is aiming to raise £500,000 to help finance a clinical trial, in partnership with Oxford University, that could change the lives of children and families affected by this terrible disease, which is a major genetic cause of infant mortality – the disease is the most common genetic cause of death in children under two. The tour, which is the brainchild of HERO-ERA Chairman Tomas de Vargas Machuca, is a non-competitive event that will…

PICTURES: The original Zephyr-Six with an over-square 2262cc, straight-six engine and its four-cylinder 1.5-litre Consul stablemate made their bow at the 1950 London Motor Show. Ford GB boasted they were Five Star models, and their monocoque bodywork represented a significant change for Dagenham, while the front MacPherson strut suspension was a first on a British car. They certainly looked far more contemporary than their stablemates, the smaller Prefect E493A/Anglia E494A and the larger V8 Pilot, which were all clearly pre-war in origin. As the decade progressed, the Zephyr-Six became a familiar form of transport for middle managers and County Constabularies, with competition victories further enhancing its image. However, while the Zephyr’s cabin was not exactly Spartan, it had a comparatively limited array of standard equipment, especially compared with the Pilot…

PICTURES: STORY TOLD TO SIMON GOLDSWORTHY To borrow a phrase from Monty Python: 'And now for something completely different...' How different Well, this little beastie is a 1953 Micklitsch, and if any one of you recognised it, then take a bow because you must truly be a Grand Master of automotive trivia. After all, just one example was built, and that happened in rural Indiana in the USA. Also, the Micklitsch was only sold for the first time in 2020. Probably the only way you might conceivably have heard of it was if you'd stumbled across the May 1956 issue of Mechanix Illustrated magazine, which is just what current owner Steve Cowdin did. However, before we get to Steve's story, let us explain a bit about the car. If the…

PART 3 Having fitted a set of bushes to the gearbox’s remote linkage last issue, I had another missing bush to replace next as I’d spotted that there was nothing surrounding the steering column where it passed through the bulkhead. This meant that the steering column itself could flex around its top mount. Buying a new bush was easy enough, but then I had to figure out how best to fit it. The TR7 system consists of an upper shaft that goes inside a tubular housing and runs from the steering wheel through the engine bay bulkhead. On the other side of this bulkhead there is a universal joint that fits over splines on the shaft and is secured to it with a pinch bolt. The other end of this…

Regarded by many as the perfect definition of a British sports car in terms of looks, configuration of components (front engine, rear-wheel drive with a separate chassis) and performance, the TR6 was the final evolution of the traditional TR range. Introduced at the beginning of 1969 (production began towards the end of 1968), it lasted until 1976 when the TR6 was replaced by the wedgy TR7. Records and sources for the numbers produced vary between 91,000 and 94,000, with the vast majority of those being exported. From the 8000 or so that were made for the UK market, there are around 4000 taxed or SORN’d at present according to howmanyleft. co.uk, which is an incredible survival rate. No doubt it also includes plenty of repatriated LHD imports that may or…

Peugeots from the 1890s – we are really out of our comfort zone here, and so happy to be corrected at any point. We think this is a Type 5, built from 1893-1896, but only in very small numbers (14 in total) as Peugeot's bigger offerings sold better. The Type 5 had a 565cc, 2hp V-twin engine, a Daimler unit built under licence in France by Panhard et Levassor. Peugeot's first car, the Type 1 in 1889, had been a steam-powered tricycle of which four were built, but they had been using Daimler petrol engines since the Type 2 of 1890. They introduced their own engine in the Type 14 of 1897, though. Another milestone came with the Type 36 from 1901 – this was the first Peugeot to have…

Staff at the performance car brand Abarth have used their knowledge of great driving roads to compile a selection of routes based on the excitement factor of driving each one combined with the scenery for drivers and passengers. From there, they analysed the number of images each specific route had been hashtagged on Instagram to rank the top 20. Ireland took the gold and silver spots with two stunning coastal routes – the Wild Atlantic Way was by far the most Instagrammed location with 1,570,313 hashtags recorded, while Ring of Kerry in second place had 222,293 hashtags. Scotland's North Coast 500 (141,529 hashtags) featured third, while England’s Cheddar Gorge and its twisty valley roads came in fourth (84,162 hashtags), and the vast Elan Valley in Wales placed fifth (53,204 hashtags).…

Sunday 24th April saw events all across the country being organised to celebrate the FHBVC's Drive-It Day initiative. One such event was organised by CM contributor Peter Love (helped by some very experienced marshals and friends) –a charity gathering and road run in the tiny village of Bodle Street Green, East Sussex. This saw an impressive turnout of over 250 exhibitors spanning everything that makes up the FBHVC family, from steam vehicles, cars, tractors and light commercials to 4x4s and motorcycles. In the village hall there were model railways for the children (and grown-ups), besides a fine horticultural display including working stationary engines from members of the Weald of Power Club. At 11am some 52 of the 79 tractors went off on a 13-mile road run. There was also a…

Donald Healey had a number of dealings with other manufacturers before the tie-up with BMC that created the Austin-Healey. From 1930-1933 he was a Works driver for Invicta, though still based in his Cornish home of Perranporth. In 1933 he switched allegiance to Riley, and moved up to the Warwick area. That only lasted a few months (though he remained on good terms with the Riley family), because later that year he joined Triumph, first as Experimental Manager and then as Technical Director. When Triumph went into liquidation in 1939, their assets were bought initially by Thomas W Ward Ltd of Sheffield. Ward quickly sold the Coventry factory, and the dormant Triumph marque was eventually bought by the Standard Motor Company in 1944. Meanwhile, Healey spent the war years working…

PART 3 Our Rover 95 had a number of problems related to the gearbox and clutch when we bought it, although we were hopeful they could be cured without major expense, and without having to remove major components and dismantle the gearbox. Our problems were threefold. Firstly, the clutch was biting very low down so that after mashing the clutch pedal into the carpet, there was minimal travel before the clutch started biting.Potentially related to this was the fact that it was almost impossible to engage first or reverse gear without an awful crunch, so much so that I tended to go into first from second and would turn the engine off before selecting reverse. The second problem was less serious, namely that I felt the gear stick should move…

Threading through town, it felt rather ordinary. The engine note was that of any bread-and-butter Japanese four-pot. Pulling out into open country, there didn’t seem to be a huge amount of grunt – the S2000 felt competent enough, but nothing special. It did have a pleasant cabin and the gearchange was a delight, but given the enthusiasm with which colleagues had greeted Honda’s latest foray into sports cars, I was rather nonplussed. The engine wanted to rev, however. I pulled onto the old A40 and found that I had it to myself. It was a lovely, sunny day and the hood was down. It would have been rude not to give it some beans, so I snicked down a gear and buried the throttle. The magic happened at around 6000rpm,…

When the original Austin-Healey Sprite made its bow on 20th May 1958, it was the world’s first unitary-bodied mass-produced sports car. That original Frogeye was the ideal vehicle for motorists who wished to graduate from a home-built kit car or a secondhand pre-war Austin Seven Nippy. Equally importantly, no similar vehicles were offered by Ford, the Rootes Group, Standard-Triumph or Vauxhall. Triumph did get in on the act soon enough, but the Sprite commenced a 21 year tradition of compact openseaters from Abingdon. It had all begun in 1956 when Leonard Lord, Chairman of the British Motor Corporation, met with Donald Healey to discuss building a lightweight sports car in the spirit of the 1930s MG M-Type Midget. It would use as many BMC components as possible and be accessible…

It’s now been 37 years since I bought my first copy of Viz comic, and I’ve been a loyal reader ever since. It’s the dark humour and tragic inevitability as Eight Ace spends £1.49 on eight cans of cheap ghastly lager despite assorted platitudes. Equally as tragic-yet-amusing is Alfa Romeo. I have forgotten how many ‘New Dawns’ this marque has had, but from memory it was 1987 with the facelifted 75, 1997 with the 156, circa 2007 with the 159 and Brera, quite recently with the lovely Giulia and once more with an ugly Qashqai type SUV thing called the Tonale. Already, this has been nicknamed the Toenail, and to anyone who really loves cars and especially Alfas, this ghastly apparition is about as desirable as the one from your…

This year’s popular London to Brighton Classic Car Run will wave goodbye to current owners GE Classic Motor Events and welcome new owners Pop-Up Car Shows Ltd, as Stephen and Sandra Smith will be retiring after the Classic Car, Kit & Sports Car and Modern Classics Runs being held on Sunday 29th May. They will work with the new owners to ensure a smooth transition, keeping the same high standards and friendly atmosphere of the event. Stephen Smith said: 'Sandra and I have been the custodians of this event for the past 12 years and it’s now time for us to hand over the starting flag to a new team who will continue to grow and develop this and other events for enthusiasts to enjoy. We’d like to thank everyone…

After decades of being off the road and in storage, the very first Bentley T-Series is being brought back to life via a complete wheels-up restoration. So far the 6¼-litre pushrod V8 has been started for the first time in at least 15 years, and the engine and gearbox have proven to be in good condition despite their extended rest. This, the oldest T-Series, completed manufacture on 28th September 1965. Owned by Bentley Motors and destined for trials work around the world, the T-Series was finished in Shell Grey exterior paint that was complemented with a Blue Leather interior. In October 2016 a group of apprentices started the rejuvenation process for T-Series VIN 001, starting with the removal of trim and the reconditioning of the Body-in-White. The work was put…

A stunning collection of 28 exquisite Lalique glass car mascots has been purchased by the National Motor Museum Trust. It has become the first publicly owned collection of Lalique car mascots in the world, and the National Motor Museum is the only museum where visitors can now see such a significant display of Lalique mascots outside of Japan. The collection was previously on loan by its private owner as the glittering centrepiece of the National Motor Museum’s The Luxury of Motoring exhibition. Visitors to Beaulieu can still see the showcase of illuminated mascots, and now generous grants of £83,500 each from Art Fund and National Heritage Memorial Fund, together with £40,00 from Arts Council England/ V&A Purchase Grant Fund and £5000 from a private donor have secured its long-term future…

I have recently read your article on assessing a project in the Restoration for Novices series (I'm a bit behind on my reading), and I was wondering whether you thought it worth covering what is involved in obtaining documentation such as a V5 and proof of ownership if a vehicle is, say, a barn find or the vehicle has been brought back to the UK. I seem to recall some time ago cases where people had restored or paid for restoration work to be done, only for somebody to appear with a V5 claiming they were the rightful owner. On a lighter note, in the Archive Images article you printed a photograph of a jumping Escort. This brought a smile to my face, because one day when I was a…

Would it surprise you to know that the British car which still holds 36 UK Land Speed Records is a Rover? The Rover 200 Coupé was launched in 1992, designed as a unique derivative of the highly successful Rover 200/400 series. To establish the car’s credentials as a potent and reliable high-performance coupé (codenamed Tomcat), a group of Rover employees working on the about-to-be-launched model established The Tomcat Affair team. Their activities centred on the building of two special cars to break as many official UK Land Speed Records as possible, using the high-speed circuit at the Millbrook Proving Ground. The group also provided all the necessary support services. Around 200 employees were involved including drivers, engineers, technicians, logistics experts and the Longbridge plant fire crew. On 28th/29th August 1992,…

Martyn Morgan-Jones Contributor Martyn has been passionate about classics ever since he joined the Imp Club back in 1981 and has owned around 15 Imps over the years. If money were no object he’d love to own a 1972 Porsche 911S, an Austin-Healey 3000, a Renault 8 Gordini – and another Stiletto! MY FLEET 1969 SUNBEAM STILETTO OWNED SINCE: 1986-1996 and again since 2010 1983 DAVRIAN MK8 OWNED SINCE: 2000 1989 PORSCHE 944 TURBO OWNED SINCE: 2018 2000 JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE OWNED SINCE: 2018 Having sold my daily driver back in the summer, and having been without a replacement for quite some time, I’ve been using the Porsche rain or shine. It has erformed well too, but since acquiring this car I have never been particularly impressed with the gearchange,…

As regular readers will know, we have been running a Ford Cortina Mk3 project in the magazine since the October 2021 issue, and indeed you’ll find the final instalment of this series on pages 54-58 of this month’s magazine. In that final instalment you can read how we needed to replace the windscreen, after the one on the car had started delaminating. Laminated windscreens are formed from two thin sheets of glass with a layer of PVB (polyvinyl butyral) resin glue film sandwiched between them. They are safer than the older toughened glass windscreens because if a laminated screen gets broken, this plastic layer holds the broken pieces of glass in place. That means a laminated screen will crack rather than fall into a million pieces like the older toughened…

PAINT INGREDIENTS Paint is made up of four main classes of ingredients: pigment, resins, solvents and additives. The pigment gives the paint its colour, and can be either natural if it was dug from the ground, or synthetic if it has been artificially created. The all-round performance of a paint is provided by resins though, the component that binds the paint together on the panel. It is the resins that have most to say about how the paint has to be applied, how it dries and how durable the finished result is. Starting with cellulose, this is a thick product which needs plenty of solvent to thin it down far enough for spraying. It is a popular DIY option because it dries in minutes and so limits the risk of…

NSU Motorenwerke AG was founded in Neckarsulm, Germany in 1873.NSU stands for Neckarsulm Strichtmachine Union, which was a consortium of knitting machine manufacturers. The business progressed from knitting machines to bicycles, and then to motorcycles. Before WW2, Ferdinand Porsche was commissioned to develop a small car, which looked remarkably similar to the later VW Beetle but did not proceed beyond the prototype stage. The factory that had been prepared for this was sold to Fiat, who assembled cars there under the name Neckar. Having re-entered the cycle and motorcycle market after WW2, NSU began production of a small car with a rear-mounted, air-cooled, twin-cylinder OHC engine in 1957. It was named Prinz, and had 600cc giving 20bhp. This successful model led to the Prinz 4 of the early 1960s, with…