While I’m aware that driving £10million cars is part of my job at Octane, I’m usually quite relieved to hand them back. And if I’m not then driving home in my 1989 BMW3 20i Convertible E30 (precious tome, if not quite so valuable), I may well be in our ten-year-old family Skoda Yeti.
It should have been so different for Lotus. Given the clear pent-up demand for small convertible sports cars in 1989, its ahead-of-the-curve Elan M100 should have cleaned up and finally provided the company with the kind of volume-seller that it could only have dreamed of during Colin Chapman’s luxury-GT era
Recession, war and punitive emissions legislation rarely make for decent sports cars. But ironically that’s precisely what happened in the Nineties. Car-wise, the Eighties came to an end some time between August 1990 and September 1992.
In 2001, Jaguar’s Special Vehicle Operations revealed a pair of XKR 4.0 prototypes to show the potential future direction for the company and the car. With 400bhp, a manual gearbox and stiffened suspension, the XKR-R was a very different animal to the production model. Two decades later, we give one of these special cars a rare outing at Lincolnshire’s Blyton Park
It is safe to say the latest generation of fast Volkswagen Golf has not been accorded the rapturous reception its creators may have hoped for and, given the breed’s recent past, expected too.
This 930 Outlaw started life as a Special Wishes Turbo, and has since enjoyed a further programme of unique customisation away from the Porsche factory…
Subtle on the outside but with a hidden sporty streak underneath, the E21 320iS is an extremely rare addition to the 3 Series roster, and this Canadian example is as clean as they come.
You can keep your rare Ferraris and Lamborghinis because if you really fancy a true one-off machine, you need an original owner with imagination and a little bit of help from BMW Individual.
German cars dominate Rob Castilla’s classic car CV. Time, then, to put him in a timewarp Lamborghini Countach 5000S to find out exactly where his automotive loyalties lie.
This blue oyster is almost a blank canvas, certainly in terms of its future competition career. Set up and freshly fettled for present-day historic rallying, it could also be flipped for the Peter Auto 2.0L Cup...
