Is this a sports car or just a Beetle in a tuxedo? It’s odd, but no other car in this group – not even the Golf GTI – has quite such a weight of expectation hanging over it quite like the Karmann-Ghia. Given that the Beetle on which it’s based was a Ferdinand Porsche design, and the 356 was created using much of the same thinking and raw materials. Even the Karmann-Ghia’s suspension layout with torsion bars front and rear is similar. Is this sporty coupé and roadster take on the Beetle a decent substitute for a real Porsche? If so, £6k for an average one never looked so cheap.
The Silken Touch Thirty-five years after this very XJR-9 scored Jaguar’s first Le Mans win since the D-type days, we relive the memories – then drive it on track.
Lotus lover Sam Hunt adores his Series 1 Elise, but would he like the range-topping Esprit V8 more? With the keys to one of the last Hethel wedges ever made, he’s about to find out.
Following years of speculation surrounding its identity, this recently restored 964 has been confirmed by former Porsche factory engineer and legendary works racing driver, Jürgen Barth, as being one of two surviving N/GT prototypes assembled under his watch back in 1990…
With its twin supercharged 5.3-litre V8 resulting in huge performance, yet still having the kind of luxurious interior Aston was now renowned for, the Vantage was the quintessential British supercar of the Nineties. Thirty years after its debut, we explore its history and later development before taking one of these refined brutes for a drive.
The 296 is ferociously fast and fiendishly clever but Enright asks if the supercar still has a place in today’s world. Ferrari’s incredible 296 GTB offers an opportunity to consider how far the supercar has come and whether the genre still retains its Lustre.
This former 911 Turbo press car has been given a new lease of life following two years spent in the workshops of Porsche indie, Mike Champion Engineering. We head to Oxfordshire and get behind the wheel...
It’s likely that among the cars we have here, for those of a certain age at least one bounces off the page, rebounds off memories of teenage bedroom walls and slams straight into your affections. Hands down, for me it’s the Cossie. Not for me Porsches, Ferraris or Lambos. For many others it was the same – why? Because this was a Ford Sierra – a car that, albeit initially unloved, swiftly became as much a staple of British life as Woolworths and Bullseye. Only this Sierra had a turbocharged fourpot and a rear wing seemingly large enough to perch Concorde on. Oh, and with some relatively minor modifications, could be tuned to 350bhp and beyond, blowing automotive exotica into the weeds.
The Audi Quattro was by no means the first four-wheel-drive road car, but prior to this they were exotic curiosities or (slightly) sanitised off-roaders. The UR-quattro was something different. Previously, the performance car was largely defined by an even number of cylinders, usually naturally aspirated and rear-driven. The Audi Quattro stripped all that away with a warbling five-pot and a turbocharged surge that brought white-knuckle wastegate-whistle adrenalin to a relatively mass-market executive coupé – one that looks like it’s been pounding the weights in the gym. The sheer brutality of designer Martin Smith’s vision is still staggering. Remember – the Quattro was launched when the condom-beaked MGB was still on sale.
This is not an Eighties car, I can hear the naysayers proclaim – and yes, the elegant E24 first edged its (shark)nose into public consciousness halfway through the Seventies. However, it’s here because it was the halo car for BMW’s Eighties ascent into the upper echelons of desirability. We have to strip back years of 2 Series Active Tourers and ratty 320Ds to uncover the BMW of old. The badge was a status symbol – king of the keyfobs at yuppie dinner parties. All the prestige of a Jaguar or high-spec Rover without the whiff of old-school England, and much sportier than a Mercedes-Benz. The BMW was engineered of the right stuff – its sharp, crisp lines a foil to British notions of luxury and prestige still predicated on more chrome, wood and leather than an MP’s secret cellar. BMWs were properly expensive too – sift through the price list of the era and the difference between a E24 635CSi Highline like the one seen here and the top-of-the-tree M635CSi E24 could swallow a semi-detached home in the Midlands. So E30 3 Series aside, Eighties BMWs were always a fairly rare sight; nowadays every third car seems to wear an ever-more gopping kidney grille.
The Eighties has never been more popular – take a look Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, which topped charts in eight countries 37 years after its release. Netflix’s Stranger Things TV series has thrust the Eighties aesthetic straight into the mainstream, with a younger audience warming to the fashions, music – and, of course, the cars.
Keys on the table – I grew up hating the Testarossa. It seemed to exemplify everything I detested about the Eighties. Four-wheeled cocaine for the personality deficient; a Ferrari for whom saying they owned a Ferrari was more important than driving one; (questionable) style over substance – the opposite to a tuned Cossie. However, much as you need to be of a certain age to appreciate certain things – oysters, whisky, Pink Floyd – your first proper experience of a Testarossa will blow away any preconceptions. It’s sheer theatre – yes, there’s no getting away from its hedgerowtroubling width, but it’s also low, very red and festooned with the era-defining accoutrements we simply don’t get now. Pop-up headlamps, side strakes, antennae-like mirrors? Pass me the pastel shirt and loafers.
The Ford GT40 earned its place in motoring history via Le Mans success, but not all were destined for competition. Today we see how this rare road car copes with the realities of street life in 2023.
