Classic Cars

With the chequered flag set to fall on the 2015 motorsport season, Bentley is celebrating a remarkable run of results by bringing together two generations of racer – the Continental GT3 and legendary 4.5 Litre ‘Blower’. The current GT3 and its illustrious forebear from 1929 met at Silverstone in front of the British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC), the motorsport organisation founded in 1928 by Bentley Boy and Le Mans winner, Dudley Benjafield. They may be separated by more than eight decades but the two racing cars share Bentley’s indefatigable passion for innovation, competition and, above all, speed. Bentley Continental GT3 in 2015 – A Season to Remember In just its second year of competition in GT racing, the Bentley motorsports programme has gone from strength to strength in 2015. With teams competing on four continents, the Continental GT3 scored multiple […]

For our Video of the Week this go round we are going to turn to the folks at Hagerty Insurance. They recently produced a guide to the fairly rare, and often maligned, Daimler SP250 “Dart”. Now this car is not maligned due to its build quality, power, handling or other mechanical aspects. No, its main problem seems to be its catfish, only-a-mother-could-love-it looks. The Daimler SP250 Dart was built by the Daimler Company from 1959 to 1964. It was the last car to be launched by Daimler before its parent company, the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), sold it to Jaguar in 1960. The SP250 launched at the 1959 New York Motor Show as the “Daimler Dart”, but Dodge owned the trademark for the “Dart” model name, and Daimler was ordered to change the name under threat of legal action. With […]

Barons is set to become the first UK classic car auction house to feature a lady auctioneer when Helen Gascoigne brings the hammer down on a selection of lots, assisting Barons’ long-standing auctioneer Fabian Hine at the Yuletide Classic Sale at Sandown Park on December 15th. The daughter of Barons director Peter Gascoigne, 33 year-old Helen is a senior lawyer by profession but is adding another string to her bow by combining her love of classic cars and knowledge of the family business to embark on learning the classic car auction trade.  In a year of ‘firsts’ for Barons, which has included the company twice setting its highest-ever price for a car sold at auction, it is only fitting that the season ends with another first, not just for Barons, but for all specialist UK classic car houses; the introduction […]

A two-day Series Land Rover and Defender heritage exhibition will be on display at Bonhams London from 15-16 December ahead of the prestigious charity auction of the Defender 2,000,000. The exhibition will celebrate 67 years of UK production and chart the Defender’s journey to becoming a global automotive icon. Prospective bidders and the general public are invited to preview the Defender 2,000,000 throughout the specially curated exhibition, which celebrates almost seven decades of Land Rover production at the Solihull manufacturing facility in the UK. With a ‘hall of fame’ depicting the Land Rover playing a supporting role to Hollywood heroes such as Steve McQueen and Daniel Craig in his role as James Bond 007 and Sir Winston Churchill and British nobility including Her Majesty The Queen, the exhibition will illustrate the journey of an icon that has travelled the world, […]

The Jaguar Heritage Challenge will return for a second season in 2016 as Jaguar Heritage confirms next year’s race calendar along with the driver award winners from the inaugural 2015 season. The 2016 Jaguar Heritage Challenge will take place over four race weekends between April and August and drivers will have the opportunity to race on renowned circuits in the UK and Germany – plus one more special race date due to be confirmed in the coming weeks.

The famed C-Type Jaguar XKC 011 driven by Sir Stirling Moss at Le Mans, the Goodwood 9 Hours, the Mille Miglia and the British Empire Trophy Race on the Isle of Man will go up for auction next year. In addition to it being a memorable occasion when such an iconic car goes up for auction, this event will likely mark a milestone for prices paid as the car is expected by many estimates to reach the £5,000,000 mark, which is about $7.55 million at today’s exchange rate. After being sold by Jaguar into private hands and club raced, C-Type XKC011 went into the current owner’s family in 1963. It has remained there ever since, over 50 years, and his been maintained in original condition.

Goodwood has announced the theme for the 2016 Festival of Speed along with the dates and the subject for the Revival driver tribute. The theme for the 2016 Festival of Speed, which is planned to take place on June 23-26, will be ‘Full Throttle – The Endless Pursuit of Power’, celebrating the most powerful competition cars and motorcycles from the history of motor sport, and the heroic drivers and riders who tamed them. Alongside this central theme, the 2016 Festival of Speed will celebrate the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500, mark 50 years since the inaugural Can-Am Series for ultra-powerful sports prototypes, and pay tribute to James Hunt on the 40th anniversary of his Formula 1 World Championship success with McLaren in 1976.

The Royal Automobile Club has won the 2015 Rally of the Year at the International Historic Motoring Awards for the second consecutive year for the 1000 Mile Trial. The awards ceremony, which took place on 19th November at London’s St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, resembled a ‘Who’s Who’ of historic motoring as famous names from the world of motoring, motor sport and industry gathered together for the events’ fifth annual awards. The Club’s Motoring Committee Chairman, Peter Read, who collected the award, said ‘The 1000 Mile Trial has received many accolades since its relaunch in 2014 we are delighted to have won Rally of the Year 2015 for the second consecutive year, especially against such a high calibre of contenders’.

Leading classic car restorers Classic Motor Cars of Bridgnorth (CMC) have restored a 1936 Squire, one of only seven built, which has now been shortlisted for Restoration of the Year at the prestigious International Historic Motoring Awards 2015. This charismatic, costly and extremely rare British sports car was displayed at the 2011 Retromobile event in Paris in a very sorry state, its upholstery had been providing home to a family of rodents and it had been completely stripped of paint. Peter Neumark, chairman of Classic Motor Cars (CMC), saw its potential and a deal was made for the Squire to undergo a complete rejuvenation at the company’s workshops in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, in the UK.

The all-original and complete set of body panels for the Series 1 Jaguar E-type and selected parts of Series 2 and 3, are now available to order from Jaguar Heritage Parts. In order to provide world-class quality for E-type customers, Jaguar’s skilled technicians and engineers employed state-of-the-art scanning technology to digitally map every inch of an E-type in 3D. Once scanned, the highly detailed scans are transferred to CAD images to create a complete and virtual model of the car to ensure perfect panel alignment. The exact dimensions and shapes of the inner and outer surfaces and recorded to within a fraction of a millimetre. Once the entire car is digitally mapped, Jaguar Heritage is then able to test the quality and accuracy of each panel plus the original tooling used to make it.  Each part is meticulously measured on […]

OK, I will admit it, I love Minis. I love old ones and new ones and large ones and small ones and … well, you get the picture. Something about the A-series engine, the transverse drivetrain, and the squat looks just appeal to me. Yes I drive a Vanden Plas Princess 1100, but in truth, all forms of the ADO16 are just large Minis. Yes, I said it. And I mean it. Anyway, our video this week is titled “Owning A Classic Mini”. Just below the clip you will see the information about the young man who made the video and why. I think it is a wonderful effort and just goes to show the kind of devotion these cars inspire.   Here is a short look into what it’s like to own a Classic Mini. Before I brought the […]

Burlen Ltd, maintainers of the S.U. brand, are happy to announce the release of ‘Skinner’s Union – A History of the Skinner Family and the S.U Company‘, a book which gives a comprehensive history of the S.U. Company and the members of the Skinner family involved. This new book by Mike Harvey comprises over 300 pages with copious photographs, drawings & illustrations (many not previously published). The book focuses on the period from 1908 when the leather bellow carburetter was introduced, through to Carl Skinner’s retirement in 1947 when the S.U. carburetter company became part of the Nuffield Organisation. The book also covers Barbara and Peter Skinner’s hill-climbing and other racing activities and gives details on the skinner specials, as well as the companies contributions during WW2 manufacturing carburetters used on Rolls-Royce Merlin engines for the RAF. This book is available […]

Heritage Motor Centre said the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust at Gaydon had gained “designated” status from Arts Council England, confirming its vehicles were of national significance. It shuts for the work from 30 November and will reopen on 13 February. A new £4m Collections Centre, featuring about 250 vehicles, mostly previously unseen, will open on the same day. Heritage Motor Centre, which claims to have “the world’s largest collection of historic British cars,” said visitors would be able to “look under more open bonnets” and enjoy new interactive content including sound and film, following the revamp. The new museum will boast zones telling the cars’ stories in more detail, a new entrance and a new area for education programmes. For more information, check out the official British Motor Museum website.

1961 Jaguar E-Type chassis 860001, the very first right-hand-drive production Fixed Head Coupé restored by Classic Motor Cars Ltd (CMC), has been driven to 146 mph on a German autobahn by British Hill Climb Champion, David Franklin. David was recreating for Octane magazine’s 150th issue one of the most famous road tests ever undertaken, attempting to match the 150 mph a Jaguar E-Type reached on a Belgian motorway in 1961, and he nearly made it! David said: “I saw 146mph and it was still accelerating when I had to back off because of cars and lorries in the distance. When you’re travelling at that speed you have to err on the side of caution. You’re catching other traffic up quite quickly and you have to remember that there’s no ABS, although the brakes felt strong and progressive.It would comfortably have […]

Our video this week is oo a much lesser known but highly desirable car, Alvis. In this case, the specific car being test driven by Super Car Classics is a 1961 Alvis TD21 convertible. Alvis Car and Engineering Company Ltd was a British manufacturing company in Coventry from 1919 to 1967. In addition to automobiles designed for the civilian market, the company also produced racing cars, aircraft engines, armoured cars and other armoured fighting vehicles. Car manufacturing ended after the company became a subsidiary of Rover in 1965, but armoured vehicle manufacture continued. Alvis became part of British Leyland and then in 1982 was sold to United Scientific Holdings, which renamed itself Alvis plc. The Alvis Three Litre TD21 was made between the end of 1958 and October 1963. It was a revised version of the TC 108G, the body […]

94 amazing classic cars spanning 83 years, as well as a host of automobilia and luxury lifestyle items, will be offered this weekend at Silverstone Auctions’ sale at the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show. One of the biggest classic car auctions in the calendar, the two-day sale takes place on the 14th and 15th of November at the NEC, Birmingham. The highlight of the sale has to be a fabulous ‘on the button’ low mileage 1991 Jaguar XJ220, estimated at between £300,000 and £350,000. Chassis no. 220693 was hand built by TWR Jaguar in Oxford in 1991 before being exported to Brunei by special order of the Royal Family. The car remained as part of the world renowned, royal car collection until September 2002 when it returned to the UK.

Advance discounted tickets are now on sale for the 2016 Donington Historic Festival (Saturday April 30th, Sunday May 1st and Monday May 2nd), perfectly timed for those looking to secure the idea Christmas gift for a historic motorsport or motoring fan. Over five very successful years, the Donington Historic Festival has gone from strength to strength, with world-class historic racing for grids from the 1920s to the 1990s supplemented by hugely popular features such as the exhilarating historic rally car and karting demonstrations and special paddock displays and track demos.  For 2016 the race content is building to be the event’s strongest yet, while the track action will also include some very exciting historic F1 car demos – always guaranteed to quicken the heartbeat of motorsport fans!

A rare 1966 Lotus Elan S2 once owned by famous comedian, actor, photographer, singer and all round icon Peter Sellers, will be auctioned at the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show on Saturday 14th November by Silverstone Auctions, estimated at between £45,000 and £50,000. The car was delivered to Peter Sellers’ Haymarket home on 22nd June 1966 and driven by him, with wife Britt Ekland in the passenger seat, until 29th February 1969. ‘SAR 57D’ then went through two other owners before being purchased by the current vendor.