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1984 ZAZ 968M Zaporozhets

What better way to celebrate our birthday than with our most valuable photoshoot ever, gathering together 100 years of Britain’s fastest cars?

In the pantheon of motoring endeavour, a sporting vehicle’s maximum speed has arguably held greater sway in manufacturers’ marketing departments than any other performance metric. It may be less relevant now, when even the lowliest city car can comfortably exceed the national speed limit, but for most performance-car makers a high top speed remains a badge of honour – even if experiencing it properly nowadays means a visit to a German autobahn or Australia’s Northern Territory (or your local prison cell, if you’re particularly foolhardy).

The 10 road cars described on the following pages, decade by decade, have been the fastest of their kind officially sold in the UK across the past 100 years. They’re important because their envelope-pushing Vmaxes have been achieved despite all the compromises wrought by having to make a car compliant for everyday use on the public road. Yes, top speed has been their collective stock-in-trade, but in each case it has also meant the cars were safer, stronger, aerodynamically more efficient and stopped/handled with greater aplomb than less ambitious machines. In other words, they are pinnacle cars that improved the breed overall.

That this will be the last time we can put together such a set of cars is poignant, too. It’s unlikely that any production car this decade and beyond will exceed our final entry’s 300mph capability, due to mandated electrification looming ever closer. Which means that this is also a final celebration of the mighty internal-combustion engine, in all its myriad guises, from four to 16 cylinders. It has powered the automotive world for the past 130 years, so it’s only right and proper that we showcase its meteoric rise in power, durability and efficiency before it’s outlawed from new cars completely. So for now, fasten your seatbelts as we accelerate through 200 miles per hour in 100 years.

Thanks to Everyman Racing for the use of its Prestwold test track (everymanracing.co.uk)

KORDA Poles – and 200mph – apart, the Vauxhall 30-98 and Bugatti Chiron bookend our journey. Below: behind the scenes of a memorable dayL/MAX EDLESTON

Ordered new by a Belgian monarch, this sole surviving Vignale-bodied Aston Martin DB2/4 is back on form after decades in the doldrums.

The all too-common plight of the show car and the one-off special is perfectly encapsulated in the rather sad story of chassis number LML/802, a Vignale-bodied Aston Martin DB2/4.

WHEN FELTHAM MET TURIN
Driving the sole surviving Vignale-bodied Aston Martin after an exacting restoration


Custom-built at the behest of 25-year-old King Baudouin of Belgium in the mid-1950s – doubtless at huge expense – it was reduced to the level of a discarded trinket by the beginning of the 1960s. Once the height of Turin chic, LML/802 was already, even then, the product of another era: a rapidly ageing, buxom show queen – too much jewellery, too much make-up – in an age of clean, flat-chested ’60s purity. As the smooth, simple, rounded Italian shapes of the early ’50s evolved to reflect the public fascination with all things erican and ‘jet age’, this Vignale-bodied Aston demonstrates the hall of mirrors that car styling had become. It was just a phase, of course, but one embraced by Alfredo Vignale (and his in-house stylist, Giovanni Michelotti) with more relish than most, which was perhaps one of the reasons why Vignale lost the patronage of Ferrari – in favour of Pinin Farina – in the second half of the ’50s.

Whatever the politics, it was still a time when the er elements of European royalty were powerfully attracted to the coachbuilding workshops of Turin, none more so than Leopold III of Belgium, who, along with his equally enthusiastic consort, Princess Lilian, ordered five one-off coachbuilt Ferraris between 1953 and ’68. Lilian was Baudouin’s stepmother: Princess Astrid of Sweden, his biological mother, had died in a car accident in 1935 when the king crashed his new Packard convertible into a tree on the banks of Lake Lucerne.

After 1945, Leopold III was not very popular in Belgium, where it was felt he had acquiesced to the Nazis a little too readily. In the face of civil unrest he abdicated in favour of his 21-yearold son, Baudouin, in 1951. Once less in the public eye, the former king probably felt more able to indulge in exotic cars. The most famous of these was an all-black roadgoing Ferrari 375 Plus Cabriolet by Pinin Farina, although arguably the most beautiful was the special 330GTC built for the princess in 1968.

Not that the tall, bespectacled Baudouin was exactly immune to the charms of expensive motor cars. He had grown up around his father’s Bugattis (there’s a family snap of him sitting in a Type 52 ‘Baby’) and he is known to have owned a Porsche 550 and various Maseratis, although he was latterly associated with rather more statesmanlike vehicles: a Mercedes 600 Pullman, clap-door Lincoln and a variety of Cadillacs are all attributed to him. The Belgians have always had a strong allegiance to American cars.
Why he chose an Aston Martin – rather than a Ferrari or a Maserati – as the basis for his ‘statement’ car is hard to fathom at a distance of almost 70 years. But it was a legitimate enough choice, given that the Aston name was coming to greater prominence in racing and the DB2/4 was acknowledged to be one of the world’s best and fastest production grand touring cars. The link with Vignale is obvious because the body of his stepmother’s recently delivered Ferrari 250GT coupé had been created at the famous workshops on the Via Cigliano, Turin.
Designed by the prolific Michelotti, it was to be the final Vignale-bodied Ferrari of the 1950s. The princess, accompanied by Formula One World Champion Nino Farina, had even visited the carrozzeria to see it being built. LML/802 was one of a dozen left-hand-drive DB2/4 rolling chassis supplied by the Feltham works to European coachbuilders. Eight of these are attributed to Bertone, but Graber, Touring, mano and Ghia also did one each, which makes 14 special-bodied DB2/4s, by my sums, including the two Vignales – a twin of the Baudouin Vignale DB2/4 was also built, for a French customer, but is now presumed lost. Powered by the latest 140bhp 3-litre engine, LML/802 had the longer of the optional axle ratios. The factory chassis card only notes that the wire wheels are ‘partially chromed’. The body, hand-beaten from aluminium with an ash frame, was six months in the making and the king took delivery in March 1955. Vignale used the car in its advertising, describing the Aston as: ‘A two-seater coupé provided to a high European personality.’ Just a month earlier, Baudouin had acquired a standard 3-litre DB2/4, supplied by Belgian concessionaire Mannes but delivered to the the factory DB2/4 ran ‘CD’ diplomatic plates. While he apparently kept the standard car for decades (the first change of ownership is recorded as being in 1989), the Vignale DB2/4 fell out of favour much more rapidly: it was sold at an indeterminate point in the late 1950s to palace aide TR Mottershead. Nothing much is known of this character, other than the fact that he stored the car in Moselle, France. Here a man called James Toth enters the story. As an American solider working for NATO in Paris, Toth later discovered the Vignale in a back-street garage. Having captured LML/802, he managed to do terminal harm to both its original engine and its replacement in fairly short order, before giving up and selling the non-running DB2/4 to an army captain. Period black-and-white photographs show the Vignale Aston Martin less its front bumper at this point, and in a single-tone colour scheme. America – and the inevitable V8 conversion – beckoned, and from there it was a relatively short trip to the breaker’s yard for LML/802, whose brief moment of fame had long been forgotten. Then, at some point in the early 1990s, the Vignale Aston’s luck began to improve. It was rescued from a scrapyard in Virginia, still fitted with a Pontiac V8 engine and rear axle, by one Roland Wommack. In the middle of the decade, Wommack sold the car to Bob Fountain of the Aston Workshop in Beamish, County Durham. The Italian DB2/4 then languished some more after Fountain’s original idea of selling the car as a project proved tricky: one-offs tend to excite historians, but not paying customers. In the age of the internet the full significance of the Vignale soon dawned, however, and it appeared to Fountain that the only proper thing to do was restore the car with or without a buyer lined up. The good news was that the body and the chassis were remarkably sound, requiring only localised repairs, and most of the important unique brightwork had survived. The bad news was that the interior of the car was largely missing and had to be recreated from period photographs, and this, predictably, was by far the trickiest part of the restoration.

2022 Lada 4x4 Legend VAZ 2121

Wide-body BMW 850Ci E31 5.4 V12

Not content with creating a 200mph record-breaking SM, one Californian built a matching rig to tow it, too. This is its remarkable story.

Full boost hits and the 1995 Porsche 911GT sends the full impact of 0.9 bar to the rear wheels, and the rear wheels alone. The 285-section rear tyres squirm, threatening to swerve the distorted, riveted wheel arches across the road, and all I can do is keep my right foot pressed hard down. The 993 GT2 – as it’s more commonly but less accurately known – has a reputation. Mixing the twin-turbocharged engine from a contemporary 911 Turbo with the thin glass and skeletal interior of a 911 Carrera RS, while equipping the driver with nothing more than ABS and power-assisted steering to fight their corner, the 430bhp GT is The Widowmaker.

Highly specified example from factory, marketed as the “Big Brother” to the iconic GTO
Registration: HFX226E
Chassis: 252697X133293
Odometer: 38,000
Transmission: Automatic
MOT: July 2022

Fitted with a number of options from factory, including; Tinted glass, Air conditioning, Powered steering and brakes, Deluxe Tilt steering wheel, Visor vanity mirror, Cruise control and Deluxe wheel discs
Finished in menacing Black with original specification Red upholstery
Equipped with Chrome alloys
6200cc V8 engine producing 290hp
Replaced with 4 port carburettors
Benefits from gearbox service and anti-roll bar links in 2018
Supplied with the original Pontiac owner protection plan and new vehicle warranty booklet, previous certificate of title documents, Shipping documents and an array of invoices and previous MOT certificates
Former Stars and Stripes show winner

Jaguar began developing a replacement in 1953 for its C-type, the model that had helped cement the Coventry firm's international reputation for racing prowess with wins at Le Mans in 1951 and 1953. Under the direction of company founder William Lyons and chief engineer William Heynes, a state-of- the-art sports racing car began to form with an exciting shape that the world had never seen.


Using the latest advances in aircraft technology as inspiration, the D-type featured a high-strength alloy monocoque chassis, with load-bearing external panels and tubular subframes fore and aft. This fresh and innovative way to construct an automobile represented a radical departure from conventional automotive design; most automobile manufacturers did not implement similar technology until decades later. In addition to its revolutionary chassis, the D-type benefited from numerous other aviation-inspired features, including Dunlop disc brakes, a deformable fuel bladder, and dry sump lubrication.

1956 Wartburg 311 Saloon ceased production in 1965, when it was rebodied as the boxy 353, after 258,928 examples had been built. Interestingly, 20 percent of that production was exported to markets beyond the Iron Curtain – even, courageously, to the carmnist-hatin’ US

2002 BMW 745i E65

1988 Ferrari Testarossa GTR by Gemballa - the Testarossa was Ferrari’s ultimate 1980s supercar. Gemballa took it a stage further… How Gemballa turned an iconic Ferrari into the ultimate expression of 1980s excess

​1966 Ferrari 365 California

When magazines discuss significant Porsches, they ’11 rightly mention the value of a 2.7 RS, perhaps the 959s influence on future 911s, or the Cayenne SUV’s contribution to Stuttgart’s industry-leading profitability, the Boxster not so much, but a few miles through the wilds of the Pennines tells you that this mid-engined sports car remains a dynamic benchmark, never mind its importance to Porsche’s modern-day renaissance, as conversations with period Porsche management will attest.

With its dazzling purple bodywork, M3 wide-body kit, period Schnitzers, and an M50 swap on ITBs under the bonnet, this stunning E30 Cab serves up everything you could possibly want from a classic 3 Series build