A 22-year old mechanic and aircraft technician, in 1951 Rolf Wütherich possessed the kinds of skills Ferry Porsche was seeking for his nascent business. Within weeks he was part of a small group developing a new transaxle for Porsche’s own gearbox, a component urgently needed because the stock VW item was failing under the increasing torque of Porsche’s flat fours.
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.
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.
AMC debuted a trio of interesting ‘idea’ cars in 1966 and while none of them saw full-scale production, they inspired certain ideas on future models that went into production in the following years…
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.
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!
