Although Jaguar had come close to building a competition version of the F-Type not long after its 2012 debut, apparently working with the Williams F1 team to develop such a model, it never came to fruition. In early 2018 a genuine racer based on the car finally broke cover. But although it was built by Jaguar’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) based in Ryton, having been developed for an independent team, Invictus Games Racing, it wasn’t the works effort many had been hoping for.
Between the late 1950s and the end of aircooling, the German and Dutch police forces ran Porsche fleets of several hundred cars. In 1973, the Belgian Gendarmerie became Porsche’s third police customer. The Gendarmerie operated as a civilian police force under a military command structure. Among its responsibilities was road policing. By 1970, Belgium had a motorway network that not only facilitated traffic flow, but criminal activity as well.
From blown diffusers to front-tyre-warming, toe-angle-adjusting steering columns, both born then banned in the past two decades, Formula One has been defined by relentless rule-bending engineering innovations since its inception. However, the most primal of them all doesn’t even hail from this century; it supersedes carbon fibre as F1’s go-to construction material in the 1980s.
This Buick concept hinted at a future SUV/station wagon offering from GM’s Flint-based division; sadly what was rolled out a few years later had none of the bold vision of the concept…
I make no secret at all of my love of Jaguar’s big saloon cars – especially those of the Eighties and Nineties, which I’ve owned in various guises since I was first able to scrape together the insurance premium in my mid-20s.
In spring 1975 a customer is inspecting the new Porsche 930 that, thanks to its turbocharger, was probably the most sensational car you could buy. And it attracted the rich and famous like no car since Jaguar’s E-Type.
In October 1964, Jim Clark spoke to Small Car magazine – which soon became CAR – about his road driving technique, his opinions on the average motorist, and his Radford Lotus Elan.
It was a car that was literally and figuratively created by accident. Guyson International MD, Jim Thompson, was a keen hillclimb racer. However, for all his apparent skill behind the wheel, even he couldn’t stop his V12 Jaguar E-type from connecting with something immovable one dark and stormy night in 1973.
Continuing our series looking back at the early days of Ferdinand Porsche’s engineering career, we chart the design and development of the Type 166 Schwimmwagen, an amphibious off-roader…
