Retro

Citroën’s iconic 2CV embodies French chic. It is a triumph of minimalist design with a large dose of practicality, packaged to make the most of the least.

We catch up with a remarkably original Series 3 E-Type in that rarely seen ’70s hue of Heather.

One of the most engaging things about many Rolls-Royces is their story – the ups and downs of a long and interesting life. This rare Swedish-bodied 1921 Silver Ghost is no exception, with a tale that takes in Stockholm, Switzerland and now Scotland.

This Jaguar XK120 was raced in the 1952 International Race of Champions at Silverstone by Prince Bira and after a life in the USA the recently restored car has returned to the UK.

There’s cool, and then there’s driving Steve McQueen’s dune buggy on a California beach cool. Mark Dixon does his best to live up to the legend.

Patination state. A ‘weathered’ 1960s Italian hybrid GT might not be most people’s choice as an everyday family classic, but engineer Peter Fareham is not most people.

Rolls-Royce’s Phantom II defined luxury car supremacy in the early 1930s. Richard Heseltine drives a special Weymann-bodied example that escaped a premature death.

«At a time when everyone fantasized about seeing a car fly over the earth, the most innovative of French manufacturers created the DS, a prototype halfway between a flying saucer and a car, but available for purchase on the market. Well, do you know what? Some even saw it fly… in the movies.

After the distinctively cheeky character and idiosyncratic mechanicals of the rear-engined aircooled Volkwagens, getting into the firmly-bolstered plaid-clad drivers’ seat of this Golf GTI MkI feels like a total culture shock. Everything is angular, futuristic, hinting at computerised systems and digital precision, created in the same kind of ultra-rational post-oil-crisis idiom that produced things like the Porsche 928 and W126 Mercedes-Benz S-class. Only in-house stylist Herbert Schäfer’s contribution, the gearknob – Schäfer was a keen golfer – hints at any notion of fun. And yet in the Eighties, the Golf GTI would define driving excitement.

It just means ‘People’s Car’, and yet Volkswagen signifies so much more. There’s no shortage of rivals with reliable, cheap utilitarianism at their core, but few have managed to unite counter-culture hippies and surfers with City yuppies and boy racers within their embrace. There’s every chance your first car was a battered Golf – the same thing Prince Michael of Kent uses as a runabout. To investigate this curiously classless appeal, we have gathered six VW icons. There’s the Beetle that began it all, and the Camper that kick-started the ownership cult. The Karmann-Ghia made a glamorous push upmarket, a theme that hit its zenith with the Corrado VR6. And then there’s the Golf GTI, the car that defined the hot hatch. We’ve also included a Lupo GTI, which proved that there was virtue in going back to basics after years of growth. So which will convert us to the cult of VW, and how do you buy your way in? Time to take the wheel and find out.

Clambering aboard this split-window Type 2 Camper – and you really do have to climb up into it, it’s surprisingly high off the ground – the thing that surprises me most is how far removed from the Beetle it is. I know it’s built on that car’s floorplan and shares its engine and gearbox. But it’s testament to the ingenuity of VW’s platform engineering that the thing it reminds me most of is not a car, but the 201 bus to Stamford.

To aid development of the Tadek Marek-designed V8, Aston Martin produced a one-off DB5/DB6 hybrid in early 1966 that was powered by the new unit. Despite being a well-used prototype, the car survived and we’ve driven it.

Instigated by David Brown himself but hand-built by a London-based coachbuilder, Harold Radford, the DB5 Shooting Brake was aimed at Aston Martin owners who enjoyed outdoor pursuits and therefore needed more interior room. Just 12 were produced and we’ve tracked one down.

With a price of 30,000 Deutsche Mark, the BMW 503 was extremely expensive even for affluent customers at the time. Unlike the 507, the 503 was offered as both a convertible and a coupe. Under the long hood, it had a V8 engine producing 140 horsepower, which was later upgraded to the 150 horsepower engine from the 507. The 503 remains a rarity to this day but has always lived in the shadow of the legendary 507. And both V8 models nearly bankrupted BMW.

Purely by chance, one man became obsessed with record-breaker Goldie Gardner. Then his MG TC came up for sale...