In the early 1980s, a designer sought a calling card. With backing from The Observer newspaper, this unique glass-topped BMW 635CSi E24 show-car was the result.
Due to the global economic downturn of the early Nineties, Jaguar and its racing partner, TWR, had already pulled out of the World Sportscar Championship at the end of the 1991 season and then the American IMSA series the following year. But with the team contemplating a return to the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1993, three V12-powered XJR 12Ds were entered into the Daytona 24 Hours in late January as a way of gathering race experience with the cars.
Despite Ian Appleyard dominating the Alpine Rally throughout the early Fifties with his cream XK120, registration NUB120, since the Monte Carlo Rally’s rules at the time demanded cars over 1ó litres had to be four-seaters, it meant he had to ditch the sports car in favour of a MkVII instead. For his first Monte in 1952, Appleyard ordered a brand new example, registered PWN 7, but due to poor weather he, together with his co-driver wife, Pat (who was also the daughter of chairman of Sir William Lyons) finished a lowly 53rd. He would use the car again for that year’s Tulip Rally in April when he came home a strong second.
The Mustang II might be considered to be an anaemic pig-faced wretch of a car by some, but it’s amazing what a bit of aftermarket tweaking can achieve, especially if you’re aiming to inject some performance into it!
Even in dirty, pale-yellow primer and shorn of wings, bonnet, grille and glass, you can admire the elegant lines of this sports saloon. The low roofline, the elliptical slot of a rear window and the hint of a gracefully long bonnet implied by the distance between the front door and front axle suggest a car whose lines would have been a cut above those of most cars on the roads back in 1936.
Electric cars may be all the rage at the moment, but the American car industry had a fair few attempts at presenting its vision of how an electric car would look in the Sixties. Richard Heseltine looks at AMC’s offering, the Amitron…
Eagle-eyed readers may remember the innocuous-looking Diamante from our May 2020 Innovators piece on the first production car to feature cruise control: the 1958 Chrysler Imperial. While it may have been relegated to footnote status in that particular article, the Diamante is an innovator thanks to its special place in automotive history as the first production car to offer a form of adaptive cruise control.
Richard Heseltine discovers GM’s flirtation with electric during the Sixties with what was already a ground-breaking car in engineering terms; however, even back then the limited battery technology hobbled the project…
