Table of contents for January 2025 in Practical Classics

Getting out there with your friends, and doing stuff, is where classic ownership reaches peak enjoyment. So, this issue is dedicated to the massively enjoyable art of classic mutual support. Starting with Team PC going to see our mate Matt Tomkins – not die – at Silverstone. A great day out and a source of pride and hilarity to see our long-limbed chum fold himself into the Austin Seven special he built himself, ready to race… and then see him unfold himself again, at high speed, as he remembered he had forgotten to wear his racing shoes. It was one of the best days – and we are still laughing now. Head to page 24 for the full story. Then there’s James and Steph, who drove around the UK in…

Pallet wrap From circa £5 Various suppliers Sometimes it’s not something shiny and new, but a workshop staple that captures our imagination for this slot – and we wouldn’t be without a roll of humble pallet wrap in the PC workshop. Strong, straightforward and ideal for keeping dust and debris out of everything from engines and gearboxes to axles and collections of spares, it’s also ideal for preventing paint stripper from evaporating, or covering a bench to ensure a perfectly clean surface for detail work. We use it, too, to ensure spare parts don’t suffer from water ingress or condensation when in storage, or to keep the interiors of our load-lugging classics from being decimated by grubby components or oil leaks. So this month let’s take a moment to appreciate…

The Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs (FBHVC) has said that it has approached independent partners for the next National Historic Vehicle Survey, which gauges the economic importance of the hobby and the businesses that it supports. The last survey, carried out in 2020, revealed that Britain’s historic vehicle movement is worth more than £7.2bn a year to the UK economy; the survey’s findings have been used to lobby for legislation supporting classics. FBHVC research director, Huw Davies, said: ‘we do plan to do our next survey in 2025, which means that we’ll be looking at the sector in 2024. ‘The ambition is to appoint a consultant by the end of 2024 and they will be asked to introduce themselves at the next ClubExpo event (Jan 2025) and run through how we will…

An Irish supercar spectacle has raised a total of €308,000 in 2024 for the Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation, bringing the total it has raised for children’s charities to €1,946,432. Founded in Ireland, Cannonball is the largest organised road trip in Europe, with some of the most exotic cars in the world. In September, Cannonball travelled round Ireland attracting over 250,000 spectators, with music, giant screens, live DJs, bands and festivals in host towns and a unique free family day out, featuring 200 supercars. The official charity for Cannonball 2024 was The Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation. Deirdre Walsh, CEO of Jack and Jill said: ‘We are blown away by the funds raised this year, which translates to 16,998 hours of in-home nursing and respite care for 421 families.’…

SUBSCRIBE! ‘Treat the classics enthusiast in your life to six issues for just £19.99!’ Caffeine machine AEROPRESS COFFEE MAKER £54.99 Wave goodbye to mediocre car show coffee with this pocket coffee maker, the AeroPress, which is now available in a diverse selection of colours, from ruby red to royal blue, to suit your classic aesthetic. Made with a shatterproof Tritan™ chamber and plunger for smooth, rich, grit-free coffee every time, the Aeropress offers 3-in-1 brewing, one-of-a-kind flavour and versatility, at home, in the workshop or on the go. It’s compact, durable and lightweight so makes an ideal addition to the formica picnic set. aeropress.co.uk Matt says 'I’ve owned an Aeropress since last Christmas and used it at every car show this year. It’s perfect for the workshop, too.’ Pump it…

We used to run a piece in these pages called Classic Heroes, but space constraints led to it being dropped. However, occasionally someone crops up who deserves some recognition – such as Brian Parkes, who has just become the Standard Motor Club’s Vice President. Fellow committee member David Shadbolt told us: ‘Brian joined the club 40 years ago, having owned Standards since 1958, and he has run our spares operation for many years. Now 90, Brian delivers faulty parts such as starter motors, dynamos, carburettors and wiper motors to specialists, then collects them, packs them up and despatches them. He helps fellow members with technical help, finds rare spares and has an inexhaustible supply of bad puns. He’s an incredible fellow!’ Find out more at standardmotorclub.org.uk.…

ACROSS 1 The name behind the TT replica of the Thirties (6,4) 8 Abbreviation for engine control units (4) 9 Super Humber models! (6) 10 Young military trainees in old Swift models? (6) 11 This Austin 7 was a real gem! (4) 12 Two-seat coupé versions of the Ferrari 330 (4) 13 Mitsubishi sports coupés released in 1994 (4) 14 _ tail, a feature of the Opel GT (4) 15 Classic Bond threewheelers (4) 17 Hyundai hatchback that arrived in the early Eighties (4) 18 Relative and stablemate of the Isuzu Piazza (6) 20 Lotus base in Norfolk (6) 21 Boxy little Daihatsu that came out in the Nineties (4) 22 Nickname of the Vauxhall Firenza HP (10) DOWN 2 French coupés launched in 1980 (7,6) 3 Six-cylinder Fords unveiled…

HURRY! OFFER ENDS DECEMBER 29 GET MORE OF WHAT YOU LOVE WITH A PRACTICAL CLASSICS SUBSCRIPTION Life is a project, and the project is fun! Practical Classics is the enthusiast’s bible that truly does it all. From inspirational journeys, and adventures to classic buying guides, tales, tech advice and trials from the magazines very own workshop. PRINT+ 6 ISSUES FOR £19.99 Get your first six months of a Practical Classics Print+ Subscription for only £19.99* this festive season. INCLUDES ✓ FREE UK delivery to your door each month ✓ Instant digital access to the latest & previous issues via the PC app ✓ Access to rewards, discounts and prizes ✓ Enjoy the ‘PC Tea Break’ e-newsletter from the Editor every month ✓ Easily control the text size, use audio mode to…

The clock must be wrong. It can’t be 40 years since November 15, 1984, when I took possession of an Austin A55 Cambridge with an extremely special personal connection. This car was first registered in Lancashire as 26 OTC on May 19, 1960, the very day I entered this mortal world, shaking hands with maternity ward staff in a dignified manner. The first owner kept the Cambridge for 24 years, recording expenditure in pencil on those card inserts shirts came wrapped around. The car then passed to the vendor, who committed treason by re-registering the A55 as ABM 418A (grr…) before advertising it in Exchange and Mart. Driving the car from Bedford back home to Sussex I realised I had reached BMC Farina Nirvana. I still have the Cambridge today…

The tired old cliché of red paint being a buyer magnet made another comeback appearance at H&H’s October sale in Cambridgeshire. Two bright red classics produced unexpected results. We’ll start with the genuine factory 1979 Triumph TR8. A US-spec left-hooker that stayed here as a test mule. It was later converted to right-hand drive, fitted with a later 3.9-litre V8 and colour-changed from blue to red when restored from 1988. Plenty of (dare I say) red flags there for serious collectors, who value originality. Taking all that into account, I reckoned £13-14k would take it, but the winning bidder had to pay £15,750. At least the 1988 Volvo 240 GLT had always been red, and it was indeed highly original. Just 92,600 miles had been clocked up by the same family from…

Dad needed a ‘new’ XJ8 as his D old 3.5-litre car had got to the point where it required a lot of remedial work, well beyond its value. This is the first XJ8 that I found on Facebook Marketplace. Only 74,000 miles on the clock, FSH, no faults, no corrosion, full MOT, 4.2-litre V8 – and reduced from £3k to £2k. I tried hard to look for a catch. No catch. I think that this could be the best £2k I have ever spent on a car… even though it was dad’s £2k. He still can’t believe it, bargain! ASKING PRICE £2000 PAID £2000 VERDICT Big car, big tax bill but even bigger smiles. What a bargain – why buy modern?…

Gran Turismo was the ultimate Nineties driving game – a Playstation experience you’ll never forget, if you’re of a certain age. Indeed, for many, as they got older, it influenced their choice of car in the real world. There have been ten incarnations of Gran Turismo in the past quarter century, but the original PS1 version – which took five years to develop – was the one that truly made its mark in a world of chintzy arcade games. GT1 developers even used the soundtrack of the real cars – all recorded at a racing circuit. So here, our task is to choose our favourite cars from the first Gran Turismo. Just 10,000 credits in the game would get you either of the Toyota Supra Turbo MkIII or Mitsubishi 3000 GT.…

Why you want one Has Porsche ever dropped a clanger? Clearly not, despite some of the Nineties motoring press expecting the entry-level Boxster to be a cut-price version of its bigger siblings. It was by no means a lesser Porsche – it turned out to be a state-of-the-art best-selling Porsche for the masses; a brilliantly balanced, mid-engined sports car with a characteristically spine-tingling engine note. Along with the usual build quality and that reputation for reliability, the flat-six wail beyond 4000rpm really set it apart from the field. Series production began on the first mainstream Porsche to sport a water-cooled engine somewhere other than the front in mid-1996. Development through its production cycle saw the launch car’s displacement grow from 2.5 litres to 2.7 and then again to 3.2 litres…

After rampant speculation online around the continued ability of classic owners to enjoy their cars without having to pay road tax, the November 2024 budget unveiled by Rachel Reeves was generally harmless. Owners of vehicles over 40 years of age can continue to enjoy their cars without on-road tax costs, with the retention of the rolling tax exemption. It was also a budget which saw no planned changes for modern classic owners in terms of vehicle excise duty, with rates increasing only in line with the retail price index. New petrol and diesel (ICE) vehicles were clobbered, however, with new cars emitting more than 76 g/km seeing their VED rates double in 2025-26, making traditional fuel-powered cars significantly more costly in terms of first year road tax. Classic cars will remain…

Delorean £30 ISBN: 978-0-760384-71-8 Charted here is the fascinating life and career of John Z. DeLorean, from his successful career with General Motors to the founding in 1975 of the DeLorean Motor Company and its 1981 launch of the sports car bearing his name. quarto.com The Cars You Always Promised Yourself £89.95 ISBN: 978-1-8382232-9-8 Packed with fastidious research and beautifully written, here Steve Saxty tells the definitive story of Ford of Europe’s design, engineering and marketing through the most iconic cars of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties as well as those that never saw the light of day. stevesaxty.com Porsche outlaws £40 ISBN: 978-0-760382-63-9 An inside look at the irreverent, rule-breaking subculture of hot rodded, or ‘Outlaw’ Porsches and the enthusiasts and builders behind them. The full story, from its…

Sunrise over The Wing, Silverstone’s modernist centrepiece, which just weeks prior had played host to the British Grand Prix. Fresh from an evening of good humour and grub with my fellow competitors, I awake in my roof tent above the Land Rover and peek out. There, atop the white polished floor of the international pits, is my Austin Seven special. It’s come a long way from the Ruby that I discovered rotting in a shed five years ago. From barn find to racing car, it’s bare aluminium bonnet shimmers in the sun. Today was the day. Today, I would fulfil a childhood fantasy. Today, I would race at Silverstone. Some miles away, the rest of the Practical Classics team strike up their race-bred engines and point headlights towards Northamptonshire. They…

WHY YOU WANT ONE Austin-Healey meant business in its 1959 sales brochure, declaring the new ‘3000’ as a car that would ‘blaze a high-speed trail of popularity along the highways of the world’. The promise turned out to be absolutely true, with this particular 'big' Healey finding homes with folk across the planet who still regard it among the greatest British sports cars ever made. Available as a two-seater or 'occasional' four-seater tourer, the car got a fine range of dual-tone colour schemes. The first big Healey had been around since 1953 in four-cylinder 100/4 form, before morphing into the six-cylinder 100/6 in 1955. That car’s 2639cc engine was bored out to 2912cc in 1959 to become the Austin-Healey 3000. The brawny looking superstar you see here got a new…

Throughout its history, Volvo has thrown the odd curveball amidst all its boxy brilliance. Its glass-rear-hatch tradition began with the 1800ES, the 480 continuing – and the C30 bringing up to date – the ‘is it an estate or a coupe’ debate. The 480 also added a few Volvo firsts of its own, mainly front-wheel drive and pop-up lights. The range topper was, of course, the Turbo, initially utilising a Renault 1.7-litre engine block, shared with the Renault 9 (later upgraded to 2.0-litres). Rumour has it the Turbo’s powerplant and chassis were tinkered with by Porsche and Lotus respectively. Despite the big-name associations however, the 480 Turbo wasn’t a hit. Today, just 24 of these unusual Swedes remain taxed by a small but dedicated bunch of owners.…

That’s one Smart Roadster out the door (PC, Dec 2024), so with the arrival of Autumn, it’s time to get stuck into the next one! Bought for £500 from a chap in South Yorkshire who’d lost the keys, I figured it wouldn’t take too much to get ‘BRZ’ back on the road (famous last words). Roadsters are being broken for spares and scrapped by the bucketload, so I was hoping that saving another might deter the breakers. I doubt it, but I feel like it’ll be a satisfying feeling to rescue another example of a car I’ve loved since I first clapped eyes on it at the NEC in 2002. When I bought one in 2005, I spent the following nineteen years driving and enjoying it but working for PC…

What amounted to ‘Chapter 3’ in our Honda story (PC, March 2024) went to print under the somewhat optimistic standfirst ‘Ian gets wife Kirsten’s Honda sorted once and for all’, which turned out, unsurprisingly, to have been premature. Despite Tim Bishop’s best endeavours, our Keihin carb still didn’t seem right, so I managed to get another on Japanese eBay, in tired, unserviced condition but described as correct specifically for this car, despite lacking the throttle damper ours has. I was able to get a motorcycle carb rebuild kit, too, with quite a few common components. With Tim at work on the ‘new’ carb we’d started at the front, before finding ourselves working forward from the back, because the filters were full of crud. There was a possibility that the electric…

PAY LESS AND NEVER MISS A COPY! See p50. Estate of the nation Two best mates revive this stunning Triumph 2000 estate George’s paradise Meeting the man in Malta with his dream collection Northern stars We hit the road for an adventure in Northwest England PLUS Essential guides to buying the Fiat X1/9 and Rover 75, a Bangernomics ride to France in a bargain Jaguar XJ, while we meet the mates who restored their Leyland Tiger bus together. PLUS the usual assortment of workshop tips, from driveshaft boots to understanding surface sealants. FEBRUARY ISSUE ON SALE DEC 18 MISSING US ALREADY? Come join the conversation at Practical Classics on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X!…

Practical Classics – it’s more than just the name on the front of this magazine, it’s a state of mind. There’s a great joy to be taken from giving a piece of machinery a new lease of life, whether that’s vehicular or otherwise. Take the broken coffee machine that put me into a caffeine-deprived stupor this month. While others might have sent it away for repair, or even simply replaced it, I delighted in the voyage of discovery that came with stripping the machine to its bare bones, learning how it worked and diagnosing the fault. A replacement pump cost just £30 and within the week it was back up and running again. Then there was my wife’s modern car, which was caught up in another motorist’s RTC and came…

A 24-hour road trip contest, streamed online for the duration of the journey, has bagged £24,000 for charity while earning PC’s team a surprise second place trophy. In the latest venture from mechanic and YouTuber Richard Kitchen, five teams set out to raise funds for Sophie’s Legacy (sophieslegacy.co.uk) a charity that provides assistance to children and families dealing extended stays in hospital. The teams, one including our own James Walshe, Steph Holloway and Freddie Gill, set off from Richard’s workshop in Hampshire in a bid to do the most miles in 24 hours, with challenges along the way. While Team PC – aboard a £500 Citroën – were beaten to the top spot they scored highest in challenges and still managed 871 miles in a trip that took in Wales…

How did your interest in cars and classics start? ‘My interest in classic cars has come from my family. Mainly my grandad, who has guided me and brought me up around the vehicles he has owned, as well as taking me to many shows. One of my favourite vehicles has been in my family for more than 20 years – it’s a 1950 Studebaker fire truck. This has fuelled my passion for classics.’ What classics do you own or want to own? ‘The vehicle that I own is a 1967 Morris Minor, which I daily drive and have owned for nearly two years. The moggy has had a full restoration and it is taken to many shows throughout the year. The classic that I want to own is a 1965…

1967 VAUXHALL VIVA ‘LOTUS’ DELUXE Built between 1966 and 1970, the second generation Viva was bigger than the first and was essentially a new design. It had an enlarged 1159cc engine, although this one has a Lotus Type 907 from a Lotus Elite, which was a development of the Vauxhall slant-four that sat under the bonnet of the Viva HB GT… hence Bob plumping for it. Sometimes, a love of a particular make and model of car comes to you completely by accident and in the case of Bob Meldrum, that’s certainly what happened. Bob is the proud owner of four Vauxhall Viva HB Estates and has owned at least one of the curvaceous classic load luggers since he was 18. It all started for Bob in the late Seventies.…

Chatting to director Ed Horsman-Mitchell, it is clear that ADO is a company built on passion, and made up of passionate experts. ‘We restore mainly BMC classic cars, and our main background is in Minis,’ he says. The company is based in Halifax at the Moquette Basin (yes, where the bus seat material came from) and, as with all the best restorers, the order books are bulging. ‘We offer a full range of services from trim, to paint, to servicing to full restorations. Paul (Fish) and I cut our teeth on Minis, but we do a wide range of BMC and BL products. We love the cars, we use them, we drive them ourselves… we just love working on them.’ Steph Holloway is part of the team and loves the…

Inspired by the famous works Alpine Rally Healey from the early Sixties, Trevor Gammage’s car produces around 25 per cent more power than the original works models, made famous by Pat Moss and Rauno Aaltonen. Trevor’s mission was to replicate the works cars. ‘In those days, they’d throw the car together for a single rally, then tear it apart and rebuild it for the next event. I wanted to create a car engineered to last’. Trevor’s starting point was an Austin-Healey 3000 MkIII BJ8. Originally sold in the USA in left-hand drive format, his car was something of a wreck with banana-shaped body and lots of rust, so Trevor had to replace all the rusty steel. In the conversion to right hand drive, the pedal box was the most difficult…

I’ve owned plenty of BMWs over the years – and driven dozens more – and can therefore say, perhaps with some authority, that the Munich firm’s output reached a zenith in the Nineties. I even love the slightly spurned 3 Series (E36) – my mum had one in the Nineties. The sweet spot for me however, at 6ft 2in, has always been the larger 5 Series. I’ve had a few E34s – one a very late (1996) 525i Touring auto – but it was the successive generation that I really fell for. It all started when I ran a few E39s for a now sadly defunct BMW magazine, sowing the seed. I bought my own 528i a few years later and loved every drive of my commute in it, only…

The hard-top Boxster – which broke cover in 2005 – was perhaps an inevitable development within the budget Porsche line-up. Lucky customers got their hands on the new Cayman coupe the following year, with the S topping the range. Its 3.4-litre 291bhp flat-six engine enabled it to hit 60mph in just 5.1 seconds and top 170mph. That performance, together with better weight distribution, allegedly allowed prominent Porsche pilot Walter Röhrl to lap the Nürburgring in a Carrera-beating eight minutes and 11 seconds (four seconds faster than he managed in a base 911). The Cayman’s taught handling, stiff chassis and strong performance made the entry-level 911 seem almost lacking. Porsche soon closed that performance loophole, but it nevertheless benefited from the Cayman’s image as a giant killer. The best first-generation Caymans…

Can’t deny it, I’m really glad to be swanning around in a Rover 75 in time for that fateful anniversary… 20 years since the demise of the UK’s last independent volume car manufacturer. The car is a 1.8 Connoisseur SE manual with a black leather interior. It has 104,000 miles on its incredibly beautiful clock and will soon need an MOT. But that’s not a problem because it has been enthusiast owned and maintained by its last two custodians and there is a thick file of documentation. It’s slow. A non turbo 75 with. K-Series needs careful management on the road, but performance is not the point. Road manners are excellent and handling superb, plus it’s serenely comfortable with an interior that, even post ‘Project Drive’, still delivers a Baby…

When is a car actually ‘finished’? Is it when you can drive it on the road? That first MOT? Or when the collection of parts in the shed dwindle to just those last curiously specifi-clooking washers? I ‘finished’ the restoration of my first car, the now-supercharged Morris Minor two-door saloon, midway through 2020. I mean, that’s when I drove it for the first time, tentatively up and down the adjacent farm track. But plans for an epic road trip were scuppered by a virus, with travel restricted to the bare minimum and the weekly food shop seeming an inappropriately unnecessary contact risk should I break down on a test drive and require assistance or recovery. As the world found a new normal, I used the car a little more, and…