“It was a very Arkansas design — the front bumper was off, it had Cragar wheels — fat in the back and skinny up front, and the back end was lifted really high via two long air shocks.”
We’re often reading about people who have an ideal car in their mind, and who wait decades until that dream becomes a reality. We meet another beautiful dreamer, Tom Aspinall, and his Detroit-inspired dream from Mother Mopar…
Country crooner Johnny Cash famously sang about a Cadillac created by a worker at the Cadillac factory – One Piece at a Time – as he, errr… took bits of car home over a period of years to create a car… but was it a ’60 or a ’61 or a…?
Safety as a marketing concept for cars? Well, Richard Heseltine reckons we have Ralph Nader to thank for that. This month Richard examines a concept vehicle that was a direct result of the sudden interest in vehicle safety after Nader’s campaigning…
Qashqai: the car that reshaped Britain. The pioneering British-built crossover reborn. Made in Britain, loved by Britons, we take Nissan’s all-new Qashqai to see the people and places that helped it change the automotive world.
Both of these archetypal Eighties executives began their lives well before they went into production, one a joint venture with rivals, the other as a last stand at independence. With the Alfa Romeo 164 and Jaguar XJ40, they're both cars you buy with your heart over your head, one more so than the other.
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
Convertibles add weight and reduce stiffness, though they can be undeniably seductive. But do they make any sense with supercar levels of performance? The McLaren 720S Spider and 911 Turbo S Cabrio 992 should provide the answer.
