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Aston Martin

Vintage Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin will be on display at London concours

Two icons of British car lore, a 1928 Rolls-Royce and a 1950 Aston Martin, will be on display at a concours event July 21-24 in London. The cars are being shown at Salon Prive, a supercar and concours gathering next week in advance of RM auctions’ sale in October. While the auction could get pricey with competitive bidding, Salon Prive will offer fans of British cars an opportunity to simply soak in these storied rides. The 1928 Rolls-Royce Phantom I “Jarvis Torpedo” wears chassis No. 17EX and is one of just three experimental chassis made by the company at the time. The 1950 Aston Martin DB2 Team Car “VMF 64,” with Mille Miglia and Le Mans credentials, is considered one of the most successful early DB2 sports saloons. The auction will be the first time this car has been on […]

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Corporate Business

MG Rover: Don’t forget the Workers

Whilst the Phoenix Four – via their media spokesperson – engage in an a somewhat unseemly public spat over who was responsible for the collapse of MG Rover four years ago with the loss of 6,300 jobs at Longbridge and several thousand more in the wider economy, we need to remember who really lost out here. I doubt if it was the Phoenix Four, who did rather well out of the whole affair – after all their remuneration, pensions and other benefits ran into the millions. Rather, it is the workers and their families, who deserve some answers as to what went so wrong at MG Rover under Phoenix’s stewardship. Lord Mandelson’s statement earlier this week that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is to investigate the circumstances surrounding the collapse MG Rover back in 2005 did genuinely come as a […]

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Corporate Business

Jaguar poised to shut for the summer

Executives at Jaguar Land Rover, the Midlands carmaker, are drawing up plans for an extended shutdown of its UK plants and a new round of staff layoffs as it struggles to cope with the slump in the world car market. Preparation for the closures comes just days after the company released its new flagship, the latest version of the Jaguar XJ beloved by prime ministers and top British executives.

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Classic Cars

MG Midget is a mechanic’s dream

This story from the San Francisco Chronicle…. Richard Haas is a marketing consultant based in the Peninsula. A Bay Area native, he was brought up in the United States, South America and Europe. I grew up with British motorcycles and cars – BSAs, Triumphs and MGs. My first motorcycle was a 650 side valve BSA with sidecar I bought with an older friend. I remember my Mom’s black MGA fondly, and my first college car was a Sunbeam Alpine. One day in 1996, my future wife and I were driving past a gas station on Camden Avenue in San Jose when we spotted a green MG Midget with a “for sale” sign. We called the guy who had left it there – it was a repo (thanks to too many traffic tickets), and he wanted $1,600 for it. It looked […]

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Corporate Business

Yuman sees similarities between GM and British Leyland

An interesting article from The Yuma Sun …. Stan Gourley is a man who obviously loves cars, particularly his 1970 Triumph TR6. The car sits in his garage, partially restored. “You know,” Gourley said, looking at his jasmine yellow car, “it’s really sad to think that in 20 or 30 years this TR-6 would probably be a Chevrolet Camaro or a Pontiac GTO or an Oldsmobile 442.” Gourley, a man who knows British sports cars, explains that he thinks what happened to the British Leyland Co. back in the ’70s and what is occurring to General Motors now is too similar to be ignored. “They were a giant company that dominated the market for British cars in the ’60s and ’70s, but then they had real labor problems, the government nationalized the companies, then guaranteed billions of dollars in bailout […]

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Corporate Business

Jaguar trying to recapture past glory

Jaguar has emerged from its stuffy, country-club period, the one that saw it essentially remake over and over and over again the original XJ for 41 years. Jaguar now wants to be sexy and modern. Founder Sir William Lyons would most certainly approve. He was never a man to look backwards, to live in yesterday, endlessly reliving the great triumphs of the past. He was a forward-looking, innovative fellow. His cars of the 1950s and into the 1960s were cutting-edge and daring for their time. That’s what Jaguar is trying to recapture. “It’s about making Jaguars that are quintessentially Jaguars,” O’Driscoll said. But this is a nervous business. Jaguar, now part of Tata’s integrated Jaguar Land Rover Group (JLR), is not swimming in dough. Far from it. Tata Motors’ Indian business, which relies mostly on truck sales, made a profit […]

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Classic Cars

Triumph Spitfire for Restoration

Just noticed on Craigslist this morning that there is a 1974 Triumph Spitfire being offered for a good price. I know nothing about this car and have no interest in its sale, so please use the contact info in the ad! The ad says the car is in Charleston, SC, but I have no idea where that phone number goes…. This car is a great fixxer upper. Needs paint and body work has 95% of the parts this is a steal at 800.00 If interested call 1-423-277-9273. Needs some mechanic work. Basically needs to be put together.

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New Cars

MINI’s 50th Anniversary JCW

This year MINI celebrates 50 years of the iconic Mini, and as a part of that celebration MINI is releasing a limited edition of the Cooper Works car, the John Cooper Works World Championship 50, of which only 250 will be produced and made available in Europe. Inspired by John Cooper’s son Mike who was heavily consulted during development, the vehicle will be adorned with the British racing green of days gone by. According to the BMW press release, the car will be powered by a “155 kW/211 hp four-cylinder engine with Twin-Scroll turbocharger and petrol direct injection. The production version of the MINI John Cooper Works World Championship 50 features numerous exterior and interior details reflecting the racing pedigree of the brand.

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People

Peter Wheeler, TVR owner dies at age 65

Peter R. Wheeler, the former owner of the quirky sports-car maker TVR and a maverick of Britain’s car industry, died June 11 in England. He was 65. His death, after a struggle with cancer, was confirmed by Ben Samuelson, a friend of Wheeler’s family and a former TVR employee. In 1981, when Wheeler bought TVR, a maker of fast and relatively inexpensive sports cars with a passionate fan club, the only thing that linked him with TVR was that he drove one. Wheeler, a chemical engineer from Sheffield, England, with no experience in the car industry who had made his money supplying specialized equipment to the North Sea oil industry, started designing and overseeing the production of several car models, including the Tuscan and the Chimaera, which were known for their finely tuned engines and extra-light bodywork. The company then […]

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MINI

New Mini Owner’s Site

MiniMania, the supplier of parts for both classic and new Minis, has launched a new social networking site for Mini owners. MiniOwners aims to be for Mini enthusiasts what FaceBook is to … well, to the rest of the world. According to the site, “MiniOwners.com connects you with other people who share a common love for the Mini! Keep in touch with your Mini friends, and make new ones! MiniOwners.com is an expansion of the Mini Mania’s already popular forum. We’ve added new features to take it to the next level of Social Networking. Amoung the many features of MiniOwners is the ability to create your own profile page, upload images to galleries you create as well as create profiles of your cars! Create a network of friends to share your latest projects with. Post status updates to let your […]