bbc

BBC has announced that racing driver Sabine Schmitz, YouTube star Chris Harris, F1 pundit Eddie Jordan and motoring journalist Rory Reid will join Chris Evans, Matt LeBlanc and of course, The Stig, when Top Gear returns in May. Eddie Jordan, once ran his own Formula One team with drivers like Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill on the roster. He said: “I have such enormous respect for all my fellow presenters and I politely ask that they go easy on these old bones.”

Contrary to what some people may think or say – the British car manufacturing industry is in pretty good shape. Every 20 seconds, a brand new vehicle rolls off the production line somewhere in Britain. Last year, Britain built more cars than France, and one single plant, Nissan Sunderland, made more cars than the whole of the Italian car industry put together. Meanwhile, seven out of 10 Formula 1 teams are based in Britain, including Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, Lotus, Williams, Force India and Manor (Marussia). And the UK doesn’t just make cars, they also build engines – one in three Fords sold globally in 2014 had their engine built in either Bridgend or Dagenham. Building Cars Live is a new two-part documentary that takes viewers into the fascinating world of the car manufacturing industry, with presenters James May, Kate […]

For our video this week we are going to turn to a more rare, perhaps even esoteric, car but one that is highly desired by most enthusiasts. The Jensen Interceptor is a stylish combination of British sports car design, American muscle car power, and Italian bodywork. So, our Video of the Week (VotW) this go round is another episode of the television show Wheeler Dealers with Mike Brewer and master mechanic Edd China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKdOeeJn2oI The Jensen Interceptor was a sporting GT-class car. Interceptors were hand-built at the Kelvin Way Factory, West Bromwich near Birmingham in England by Jensen Motors between 1966 and 1976. The Interceptor name had been used previously by Jensen for the Jensen Interceptor made between 1950 and 1957 at the Carters Green factory. Jensen had extensively used glass-reinforced plastic for the fabrication of body panels in the […]

Car enthusiast and judge on the hit TV series The Great British Bake Off, Paul Hollywood, is set to race in the Jaguar Heritage Challenge at the Brands Hatch Super Prix on 11th and 12th July 2015. Hollywood will race in a stunning XK120 in the third round of the new and exciting racing series that is composed entirely of pre-1966 Jaguar models. Also lining up on the grid will be former Jaguar works driver and 1988 Le Mans winner, Andy Wallace in a MkI Saloon. Competing alongside Paul as part of the Tester Racing team will be current British Dunlop Endurance Championship leader, Calum Lockie, also piloting an XK120.

It is Spring, a time of rebirth and renewal, and time to revive a venerable classic, the MGB. The Video Of The Week for this first Wednesday in May is from the series “Classic Car Rescue”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWZD3qxZ32s Classic Car Rescue, a series produced by Blink Films, has entrepreneur and car specialist Mario Pacione teaming up with automotive manager and technical engineer Bernie Fineman to restore six iconic cars, including a Jaguar, Porsche, Mini Cooper and Mustang. In each episode, Pacione and Fineman search scrapyards, wastelands and backyards for broken-down rust-buckets with potential. The pair go to work to bring each car back to its former classic car glory. With a deadline and a tight budget, they work tirelessly in order to impress an expert valuer for a glittering price tag at the official presentation. In this episode, the 3rd in […]

For this week’s Video of the Week we are going to go 35 years back. Yes, back all the way to 1969 for some great BBC footage of the British national saloon car championship from Crystal Palace. Above the race, you can hear commentary from Murry walker. As the original poster of this video to YouTube stated, “this is a great video and I wish motorsport was a bit more like this these days and less technical and money orientated.” I can whole-heartedly agree with that. 1969 was the last year of Group 5 in Britain – and the last year of that plastic bomb called the Falcon Sprint. The rules had become a little more strict now – so no FVA engine in Cortinas or Escorts now, in line with the rest of Europe. Class divisions were like 1968 […]

After a brief absence, we return with a new Video of the Week. This week MGBs are on the mind and so our video will be one entitled “The Car’s the Star”. It is a documentary on the famous MG which was produced for basically two decades. http://youtu.be/dsPTvOVB2LU For those who have been living under a rock and aren’t familiar with the MGB, the ‘B’ as it is known is a two-door sports car manufactured and marketed by MG Cars and its successors as a four-cylinder, soft-top roadster (1962-1980) — along with variants including the MGB GT three-door 2+2 coupé (1965-1974), the six-cylinder roadster and coupé MGC (1967-1969), and the eight-cylinder 2+2 coupé, the MGB GT V8 (1973-1976). Replacing the MGA in 1962, production of the MGB and its variants continued by the British Motor Corporation and its successors, British […]

We are starting a new feature this week. We have always put a nice little YouTube video over there in the sidebar for your enjoyment, but a lot of folks either didn’t realize it was there, didn’t realize they could blow it up to a larger size to watch, or just generally ignored it because … well, I don’t know. Maybe they thought it was an advertisement or something. Anyway, from now one we are going to feature the video in a post each time we change it, and this should be every week. Hopefully every Wednesday. Why Wednesday? Because it is a pretty boring day in general and we could all use a little something to brighten it up. Maybe a nice little video about some aspect of the British car fascination will do this. Hopefully it will give […]

The Golden Age of the British Sports Car, exploring the story of mass-produced two-seaters from 1945 to 1961, is showing on BBC Four on October 8 at 9pm. A one-hour documentary film, The Golden Age of the British Sports Car, investigates how British manufacturers hit upon a formula for distinctively small, stylish and quick two-seater sports cars that could be mass produced – and which would go on to take the world by storm. For the complete story,  check out The Telegraph.

There’s an official-looking horizontal line about 3ft off the ground as you enter the new exhibition at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu. The notice alongside says: YOU MUST BE THIS TALL (to be bigger than Richard Hammond). And that sets the tone for the World Of Top Gear section that opened last week, coinciding with the start of a new series of Top Gear today (June 21st). The motoring programme has a huge following in 80 countries but this will be the only place in the world where you can see some of the vehicles that featured in Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May’s best-known stunts. Cars such as the Reliant Robin Space Shuttle, Suzuki Swift that played ice-hockey and Toyota Hilux driven to the North Pole are almost TV stars in their own right and are expected […]