As our feature on shows, the XJ-S could be turned into more of a sports car, although it wasn’t a natural racing car due to its size and weight. That didn’t stop Bob Tullius and his Group 44 team from campaigning the car in the late Seventies, with considerable success.
We take a trip to Brooklands to meet the man whose rare Bentley Corniche is almost certainly the finest survivor of its kind – a machine restored to an exemplary standard but still used for long-distance adventures.
Frazer Nash-BMW may be a mouthful but the 319/55 proves small can be beautiful. We drive the 55bhp 1937 sports car that introduced a German juggernaut to the British market, setting off an improbable chain reaction.
Due to its aerodynamic magnesium body, lightweight tubular chassis and Jaguar’s powerful 3.4-litre XK engine, ever since its introduction in 1957, the Lister ‘Knobbly’ (so called due to the tall front wheelarches flanking its low nose) had quickly become the car to beat in international sports car racing. One of the other main reasons for the car’s success was Lister’s works driver, the Scot Archie Scott Brown. Despite having a badly deformed hand and severe mobility problems with his legs, he was still an immensely talented and courageous driver.
We drive the unique 1953 Aston Martin DB2/4 development car that wowed Aston boss David Brown and F1 racer Peter Collins with a high-performance engine and prototypical fixed-head coachwork.
As supercharged grand tourers, not only are the Aston Martin DB7 and Jaguar XKR similar in concept but, due to their joint Ford parentage, they share much below the surface. The pair even arrived around the same time, too. We get an early example of each side-by-side to look at these similarities as well as their many differences.
