Driving a Ferrari 250 GTO has been one of the high points of my career, as it seems to be for any motoring hack that has had the privilege (associate editor Glen Waddington has also driven one, though he doesn’t like to mention it… at least not more than once an hour).
‘Mine’ was actually a late car (4675 GT) from the Matsuda collection in Japan and it was a big deal at the time – early 2010 – because it was due to be the first to come up for sale at public auction for a very long time. that meant that a value would finally be ‘out there’ to end the speculation over how far prices might have risen. In the end, it sold privately before the RM sale so we had to wait another four years to have our curiosity satisfied, when Bonhams sold 3851 GT for $38,115,000 (£22,843,633 at the time) at the Quail. More recently, John Collins of Talacrest was openly asking £45m for the Bernie Carl car (3387 GT), and they have probably gone up a bit since then.
But the truth is that all these obscene numbers are irrelevant because a GTO transcends such trivialities. It is all about the experience, and few people have had more GTO adventures than Pink Floyd drummer and former Octane columnist Nick Mason, who paid a then world record £37,000 (yes, thousand) for 3757 GT in 1978. This must be the most storied of all GTOs, less for its first life with Jacques Swaters’ Ecurie Francorchamps (although third overall at both Le Mans and in the Tour Auto is not to be sniffed at), but for its life since 1978, whether that be multiple appearances in Historic racing or being loaned to journalist Mel Nichols, who kept it street-parked in London.
To mark the 60th anniversary of this iconic model, Nick has shared his memories and passion with us and in the process reawakened my own recollections of my GTO day in 2010. Truth be told, it was not as glamorous as it looked in the pictures. the shoot by James Lipman took place at Shoeburyness and the weather was so vile that we huddled together for warmth with our chaperone Max Girardo (then of RM), and for the cornering shots my then-colleague Martin Port had to lie in the footwell and hold the door closed. Yet it was still one of the greatest days of my working life. It’s all about the experience.
I’m a subscriber to your magazine following purchasing a copy off the shelf at WH Smith. Have to say, I really like it. Good layout and drops the pretentious typical Jaguar magazine whereby anything not an XJ or made pre-Ford ownership is ‘not a Jaguar’. Your piece comparing the X300 and X308 XJRs was a pleasure to read, informative and is what convinced us to become subscribers to your magazine especially as we own both an X300 and an X308.
So I was excited when our (terminally grumpy) postman dropped the April 2022 issue through the door, highlighting eight affordable classics to use every day, and what should be mentioned? The very lovely X308, with a side dish of Jaguar S-TYPE (owned one and was hideously unreliable but absolutely loved it), lightly garnished with X-TYPE too. This is going to be a cracker I thought. But with an X308 literally dripping in mud from another week’s work travels, and an X300 that is dead in the water thanks to a bad security module. Reading will have to wait until Sunday morning coffee. C’est la vie.
So this morning I delved in to see what’s been written and what comes out on top. And thoroughly loved the writeups. A very honest depiction on all eight but with one glaring mistake, a mistake that appears on the X308 write up and was then carried over to the S-TYPE write up. And that is one of road tax. You say that the Road Fund License is a ‘crippling £600’ for the 2002 made cars on the X308 because of the CO2 rules brought in in 2001. Yes, these rules were brought in and the later 2001-2002 cars are subject to this however (here’s where it gets interesting), cars with a CO2 figureover 225g/km and made before 23rd ofMarch 2006 actually slip into band K whereby they are only subjected to a “minor hobbling” of £360 per year cost, not the full ‘cut off at the knees’ £600. This too applies to the S-TYPE where it’s only the later cars post 2006 that get the full wallop of the £600. Pre-2001 cars are cheaper again being £280 per year, costing the same as an XJ6 Series 3 or XJ-S. Please, please, please can we be aware of glaring mistakes like these especially in articles where we are trying to convince people that these are an everyday option. Also I think they should both gain a star for economy… Go on, you owe it to them. My X308 XJ8 is an everyday miler.
Taking me from Plymouth to my work (Kingsbridge, Dartmouth and Newton Abbott) every day, racking up 40,50 even 60 miles a day. Now I may hear some of your readership gasp in horror (at either the audacity to treat an XJ as a workhorse or the fact I am single-handedly killing the planet while funding yet another party at Number 10 just on fuel duty), but it has proved as therapy to me for both the drive to and drive back from a busy day. As someone who has suffered severe bouts of depression, I am definitely of the mindset that sometimes you have to live a little every day to truly live a life. Pulled from a barn in a last minute bid to help a bride get to her wedding after being let down by someone else and our own X300 letting us down (on Father’s Day of all days), it was a dubious start to a relationship but one that’s blossomed into Darcy becoming a full blown member of the Brickell/Walsh household. I’ve also included some pics of her at a car meet recently, because, well, why not.
Anyway, keep up the (mostly) spot onjob of writing for this wonderful marque.
Heart-warming to read the article on Malcolm McKay’s dad’s Jaguar XJ6 (Our Cars), though a touch bittersweet I bet. I too have a 420; the model is only now getting the recognition I think it deserves. Could we get a better look at these as well please? I’ve been mad on all vehicles since I was a child but the personal touch really adds a dimension to a vehicle’s story for me. The Life Cycle features in Classic Cars are fabulous and much anticipated. I look forward to reading about Malcolm’s progress with his parents’ cars. It’s wonderful that they can be kept in use.
In this car everything is amazing except that phone/tablet in the center. I feel it detracts from so much what a Singer Porsche (for me) is about. If I was going touring is this car I'd hope to get lost just to clock up more miles. Its subtle I give you but I'd omit it.
Having owned two GTV 6s for 34 and 25 years (and still have them), I am very pleased to see a test in your February 2022 issue with one that is almost as factory built, especially with the original wheel rims and tyres. I am sure you get a purer drive that is truer to what the car really should be like. Mine are also original, apart from Koni dampers, and both drive superbly. Once you have a good one, they are very addictive cars indeed. My red one is attached.
Just reading the latest issue and your MC20 test to improve my mood prior to a trip to the dentist, I saw that you drove over the Futa Pass which was part of the old Mugello road circuit. I only realised this after researching the close-by town of Fiesole, east of Prato, outside which is the castle of Vincigliata, used as Mussolini's ‘Colditz’.
Regarding your article about the white Ferrari 195 chassis #0113 S, I would like to offer the following updates. 0113 S is not a ‘Sport’. The Ferrari factory build sheets (in my archive) clearly show it is a normal road car ‘Inter’. 0113 S was not completed 11 December 1950 (that is only the date stamped on the steering box) but actually on the 10 January 1951, one month later. 0113 S was not built with three Weber carbs. Here again the factory build sheets confirm that it was born with a single Weber carburetor of the type 36 DCF. The upgrade was done several years later only. The gearbox and rear axle are of the type 166 S. Also, the car was not sold new to Franco Cornacchia but to WI.PU.CO. Srl, a Milanbased trading company. The original bodywork was by Carrozzeria Ghia and quite similar to chassis #0087 S, 0089 S, 0093 S, 0101 S, 0105 S, 0109 S, 0121 S, 0129 S and 0133 S (all 195 Inter Coupé Ghia and sister cars to 0113 S).
The car featured, chassis #0113 S, was modified (C-pillar and rear window) and the front converted in 1957 only prior to the sale on 1 July 1958 to Vernola. This Italian dealer then exported it to California. I have all factory records as well as the period Italian registration documents in my archive. I also have a number of period photos taken in the 1950s. If you look at a photo of the similarly-styled Fiat Ghia, it is easy to compare it with 0113 S.
The car had three owners in USA, with the last one keeping it for 35 years in his home in Florida, where I carefully inspected the car 11 years ago.
I haven’t driven the ‘new’ Ford GT. I was due to, but when the tour dates changed I couldn’t, so Mark Dixon got the gig. I was pretty jealous as a result, though as nothing compared with when, at Thruxton, he got to drive a GT40 and three generations of GT, the last of which I haven’t yet driven, though I was meant to – did I mention?
I have driven a few GT40s before, so the one that intrigues me from our cover story is that troublesome middle child, the difficult second album, that disappointing movie sequel rushed out a bit too quick to try and capitalise on a hit. Not that there was anything rushed about the 2004 GT, which came 40 years after the original, but it was a very different prospect, sharing visual cues with the original but little in tech or ethos. It was born as the XJ-S to the E-type but, when plagued by late deliveries (and being pilloried on the Top Gear TV show) and then tech issues, it threatened to become a laughing stock – Ford’s equivalent of the XJ220. And at $140,000, it didn’t even reach its production target of 4500 units.
Even today the car is something of a quisling, wedged between two Le Mans weapons that did their talking and cemented their reputation on the track, while this soft(ish), wide GT needed two parking spaces in the supermarket if you wanted to get the doors open. I remember that doyen of classic car writers Mathhew Carter having one, which I found impressive yet impractical, an opinion I couldn’t help but share after driving one. Gosh, we are hard to please, aren’t we? And not necessarily right. That 2004-2006 GT seems to be coming into its own at the moment. Just like the ‘pastiche’ BMW Z8 that was equally derided by the visual purity police when new. A new generation hasn’t understood that it is meant to turn its nose up at these cars and is embracing what really are blisteringly quick and technologically fascinating machines, which have been wrongly spurned for years.
Is the Ford GT really a Ferrari-beater? Well, a few were raced – the GT trounced all-comers in the 2008 FIA GT3 European Championship, though it didn’t publicly give Maranello a bloody nose at La Sarthe like its ancestor and descendant – but in the desirability stakes for sure. A GT starts at around £350,000, well over four times the price of Maranello’s slower contemporary rival middie V8, the F430.
‘I’ve driven a few E30 M3s over the years but never got up close with its racing equivalent. BMW Motorsport created the most successful Touring Car of all time from what today seem to be quite simple ingredients; as with the brilliant road car, it’s all in the execution.’ BMW M3, road vs track
A multi-marque group test. It’s certainly not the first time we’ve covered rival brands in the magazine but it has been some time since we last did. When the challenge was presented by our publishing house to go head-to-head with sister titles Jaguar World and 911 & Porsche World to see which brand offers the best sports car, we accepted. See if the G29 BMW Z4 can fend-off the Jaguar F-Type and Porsche Boxster on page 10, and let us know what you think of the piece via the usual channels – we value your feedback.
The E36 M3 celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. Revealed at the Paris Motor Show in 1992, it remained in production for most of the ‘90s, but its legacy lives on three decades later. While it is not a car that we ever ignore in these pages, in fact you could probably call it a ‘bread and butter’ model for BMW Car, the anniversary seemed a good time to re-evaluate what this variant of M3 has to offer for potential purchasers. For this we enlisted the help of top-notch automotive journalist Ben Barry, himself the owner of an E36 M3 3.0-litre coupé for 18-years, and the key holder to an Evo saloon for a period, too. Ben talked to a couple of respected E36 M3 experts and you can read his, and their, thoughts starting on page 18. Rest assured that this will not be the last M car feature of the year, for 2022 also marks the 50th anniversary of BMW M – a milestone that we will be marking on several occasions throughout the coming months.
When motor sport achievement was almost essential for performance car credibility, BMW made it count
A deal done in a hotel bedroom by a cigar-chomping Swiss-American to poach the best motor sport brains from Ford Europe and help BMW steal touring car victory. Sounds like the start of a blockbuster film. It certainly should be, because as BMW motor sport boss Jochen Neerpasch reveals in his interview on this page, the simultaneous birth of the works E9 3.0CSL and BMW’s Motorsport division in 1972 would see the underdog team take on the might of Ford in Europe and then Porsche in America.
Spoiler alert – BMW Motorsport wouldn’t be the underdog for long, especially once the CSL gained its, er, spoilers, along with the sobriquet ‘Batmobile’. At a stroke, BMW’s elegant E9 coupé had mutated from swift and refined tourer to bad boy of the autobahns, though it wasn’t allowed to wear full battledress in native Germany. The spoilers had to be supplied for clandestine dealer fit.
Sam Dawson has done a remarkable job, bringing together Motorsport’s first CSL racer, an early carburettor-fed road car, a CSL-powered E3 Kombi Motorsport support vehicle and that interview with Neerpasch for our CSL 50th anniversary special celebration. It’s a fine tribute to one of the great hero cars of the Seventies. The CSL is from a time when results on track or rally stage were essential for pretty much any performance car’s credibility. Porsche has never waivered, relentlessly pounding the world’s circuits, occasionally its rally stages and even desert raid events. Bentley, Jaguar and MG struggled to recapture their motor sport glory days and the Fletcher-Ogle GT never even got to test its potential. For this issue, that leaves Lamborghini, a make that for all its braggadocio has largely avoided proving its cars in competition. For the Miura it’s hardly mattered. As our restoration feature makes clear, the design is riddled with flaws, but as the lengths the owner is prepared to go proves to make it right, the halo of race success is far from an essential ingredient.
The rise of BMW Motorsport is the stuff of cinema legend, but true
Thank goodness there are no Jaguar i-Pace-style flourishes in the design of the new Range Rover (as requested by Gavin Green in the December issue). Nor has there been an attempt to make it more friendly. BMW has tried and failed in doing this to the two last editions of the X5.
We owned an original, followed by the second iteration, but were driven away from the brand by the clumsy evolution of the more recent designs. I had never considered a Range Rover but having driven a Sport and Vogue back to back was utterly charmed by the integrity of the latter and purchased a standard car with standard fenestration, wheels and tyres. Unreliability fears have been unfounded and the capability of our ‘holdall’ has been an eye-opener.
Although can I be the only Range Rover fan that doesn’t need the standard-wheelbase version to be longer than the last? This growth may tempt existing owners to hold on to their cars until the Velar reaches similar proportions to the older, full-fat Range Rovers.
I’m not quite sure how the 996’s twenty-fifth anniversary has crept up on us. It only seems like yesterday the model was revealed as the bringer of a new era in Porsche production, not only for the 911, but for all models to wear the Stuttgart crest. And yet, here we are, celebrating a quarter-century of Porsche’s somewhat controversial water-cooled flagship, a model representing the most significant move away from the original 911 concept to date. I’m sure it’s not just me who views the 996 as a modern sports car. For insurers, parts manufacturers and even Porsche itself to label the model as a classic seems perplexing, considering the first water-cooled production 911 continues to exude an image of youth, vitality, excitement and adventure to this day. You only have to look at the Speed Yellow Carrera 4 pictured on this page to see this to be true. I understand calendar-based classification is at play, of course, and I welcome any move to protect Porsche’s legacy models, especially when it serves to generate additional interest in the marque and its bulging back catalogue, but to my mind, the 996 remains fresh. Granted, I’m not talking 992-levels-of-infotainment fresh, but the 996 has aged exceptionally well, with looks and performance as respectable today as they were when the model was first unveiled. This celebratory issue of 911 & Porsche World may have you kicking off 2022 with a look through the classifieds. If so, take a look at our 996 buying guide before parting with your hard-earned cash. I wish you every success with your search and, to all our readers, best wishes for the year ahead.
This letter regards the strange 1971 Giannini Fiat 128 NP S Sport Coupe in Obscurati. My belief is that this car has nothing to do with Adolfo Melchionda, even if chronologically it sat between two true Melchionda creations for Giannini: the Fiat 500- based Sirio 650 of 1969, built by Piero Drogo’s Carrozzeria Sports Cars of Modena, and the 1972 'Trimarano' built on a Fiat 850 platform. All three cars were shown at their respective Turin Motor Shows.
I have had regular contact with the Melchionda family over the years and, even if a lot of his old papers are missing, nothing ever appeared regarding this 1971 128 coupe, nor it is remembered within the family. What's more, Mario Morselli in a contemporary Auto Sprint article attributed the car to Guglielmo de Negris, a designer from Pisa.
Melchionda collaborated with Giannini in great part thanks to the fact that his wife, Giannini's Consigliere Delegato and shareholder Volfango Polverelli's wife were friends since childhood days.
That special experience
Driving a Ferrari 250 GTO has been one of the high points of my career, as it seems to be for any motoring hack that has had the privilege (associate editor Glen Waddington has also driven one, though he doesn’t like to mention it… at least not more than once an hour).
‘Mine’ was actually a late car (4675 GT) from the Matsuda collection in Japan and it was a big deal at the time – early 2010 – because it was due to be the first to come up for sale at public auction for a very long time. that meant that a value would finally be ‘out there’ to end the speculation over how far prices might have risen. In the end, it sold privately before the RM sale so we had to wait another four years to have our curiosity satisfied, when Bonhams sold 3851 GT for $38,115,000 (£22,843,633 at the time) at the Quail. More recently, John Collins of Talacrest was openly asking £45m for the Bernie Carl car (3387 GT), and they have probably gone up a bit since then.
But the truth is that all these obscene numbers are irrelevant because a GTO transcends such trivialities. It is all about the experience, and few people have had more GTO adventures than Pink Floyd drummer and former Octane columnist Nick Mason, who paid a then world record £37,000 (yes, thousand) for 3757 GT in 1978. This must be the most storied of all GTOs, less for its first life with Jacques Swaters’ Ecurie Francorchamps (although third overall at both Le Mans and in the Tour Auto is not to be sniffed at), but for its life since 1978, whether that be multiple appearances in Historic racing or being loaned to journalist Mel Nichols, who kept it street-parked in London.
To mark the 60th anniversary of this iconic model, Nick has shared his memories and passion with us and in the process reawakened my own recollections of my GTO day in 2010. Truth be told, it was not as glamorous as it looked in the pictures. the shoot by James Lipman took place at Shoeburyness and the weather was so vile that we huddled together for warmth with our chaperone Max Girardo (then of RM), and for the cornering shots my then-colleague Martin Port had to lie in the footwell and hold the door closed. Yet it was still one of the greatest days of my working life. It’s all about the experience.
I’m a subscriber to your magazine following purchasing a copy off the shelf at WH Smith. Have to say, I really like it. Good layout and drops the pretentious typical Jaguar magazine whereby anything not an XJ or made pre-Ford ownership is ‘not a Jaguar’. Your piece comparing the X300 and X308 XJRs was a pleasure to read, informative and is what convinced us to become subscribers to your magazine especially as we own both an X300 and an X308.
So I was excited when our (terminally grumpy) postman dropped the April 2022 issue through the door, highlighting eight affordable classics to use every day, and what should be mentioned? The very lovely X308, with a side dish of Jaguar S-TYPE (owned one and was hideously unreliable but absolutely loved it), lightly garnished with X-TYPE too. This is going to be a cracker I thought. But with an X308 literally dripping in mud from another week’s work travels, and an X300 that is dead in the water thanks to a bad security module. Reading will have to wait until Sunday morning coffee. C’est la vie.
So this morning I delved in to see what’s been written and what comes out on top. And thoroughly loved the writeups. A very honest depiction on all eight but with one glaring mistake, a mistake that appears on the X308 write up and was then carried over to the S-TYPE write up. And that is one of road tax. You say that the Road Fund License is a ‘crippling £600’ for the 2002 made cars on the X308 because of the CO2 rules brought in in 2001. Yes, these rules were brought in and the later 2001-2002 cars are subject to this however (here’s where it gets interesting), cars with a CO2 figureover 225g/km and made before 23rd ofMarch 2006 actually slip into band K whereby they are only subjected to a “minor hobbling” of £360 per year cost, not the full ‘cut off at the knees’ £600. This too applies to the S-TYPE where it’s only the later cars post 2006 that get the full wallop of the £600. Pre-2001 cars are cheaper again being £280 per year, costing the same as an XJ6 Series 3 or XJ-S. Please, please, please can we be aware of glaring mistakes like these especially in articles where we are trying to convince people that these are an everyday option. Also I think they should both gain a star for economy… Go on, you owe it to them. My X308 XJ8 is an everyday miler.
Taking me from Plymouth to my work (Kingsbridge, Dartmouth and Newton Abbott) every day, racking up 40,50 even 60 miles a day. Now I may hear some of your readership gasp in horror (at either the audacity to treat an XJ as a workhorse or the fact I am single-handedly killing the planet while funding yet another party at Number 10 just on fuel duty), but it has proved as therapy to me for both the drive to and drive back from a busy day. As someone who has suffered severe bouts of depression, I am definitely of the mindset that sometimes you have to live a little every day to truly live a life. Pulled from a barn in a last minute bid to help a bride get to her wedding after being let down by someone else and our own X300 letting us down (on Father’s Day of all days), it was a dubious start to a relationship but one that’s blossomed into Darcy becoming a full blown member of the Brickell/Walsh household. I’ve also included some pics of her at a car meet recently, because, well, why not.
Anyway, keep up the (mostly) spot onjob of writing for this wonderful marque.
Just one more comparison road test between Jag XKE e Type and Astons DB6 — but in Cabrio form
The family XJ6
Heart-warming to read the article on Malcolm McKay’s dad’s Jaguar XJ6 (Our Cars), though a touch bittersweet I bet. I too have a 420; the model is only now getting the recognition I think it deserves. Could we get a better look at these as well please? I’ve been mad on all vehicles since I was a child but the personal touch really adds a dimension to a vehicle’s story for me. The Life Cycle features in Classic Cars are fabulous and much anticipated. I look forward to reading about Malcolm’s progress with his parents’ cars. It’s wonderful that they can be kept in use.
NICE JOB
Very strange radiator position
In this car everything is amazing except that phone/tablet in the center. I feel it detracts from so much what a Singer Porsche (for me) is about. If I was going touring is this car I'd hope to get lost just to clock up more miles. Its subtle I give you but I'd omit it.
Ve cool good grief. You’ve even managed to make the impact bumper look good. Witchcraft. It’s the only explanation.
ORIGINAL IS BEST
Having owned two GTV 6s for 34 and 25 years (and still have them), I am very pleased to see a test in your February 2022 issue with one that is almost as factory built, especially with the original wheel rims and tyres. I am sure you get a purer drive that is truer to what the car really should be like. Mine are also original, apart from Koni dampers, and both drive superbly. Once you have a good one, they are very addictive cars indeed. My red one is attached.
RESISTANCE IS FUTA
Just reading the latest issue and your MC20 test to improve my mood prior to a trip to the dentist, I saw that you drove over the Futa Pass which was part of the old Mugello road circuit. I only realised this after researching the close-by town of Fiesole, east of Prato, outside which is the castle of Vincigliata, used as Mussolini's ‘Colditz’.
GHIA ENIGMA
Regarding your article about the white Ferrari 195 chassis #0113 S, I would like to offer the following updates. 0113 S is not a ‘Sport’. The Ferrari factory build sheets (in my archive) clearly show it is a normal road car ‘Inter’. 0113 S was not completed 11 December 1950 (that is only the date stamped on the steering box) but actually on the 10 January 1951, one month later. 0113 S was not built with three Weber carbs. Here again the factory build sheets confirm that it was born with a single Weber carburetor of the type 36 DCF. The upgrade was done several years later only. The gearbox and rear axle are of the type 166 S. Also, the car was not sold new to Franco Cornacchia but to WI.PU.CO. Srl, a Milanbased trading company. The original bodywork was by Carrozzeria Ghia and quite similar to chassis #0087 S, 0089 S, 0093 S, 0101 S, 0105 S, 0109 S, 0121 S, 0129 S and 0133 S (all 195 Inter Coupé Ghia and sister cars to 0113 S).
The car featured, chassis #0113 S, was modified (C-pillar and rear window) and the front converted in 1957 only prior to the sale on 1 July 1958 to Vernola. This Italian dealer then exported it to California. I have all factory records as well as the period Italian registration documents in my archive. I also have a number of period photos taken in the 1950s. If you look at a photo of the similarly-styled Fiat Ghia, it is easy to compare it with 0113 S.
The car had three owners in USA, with the last one keeping it for 35 years in his home in Florida, where I carefully inspected the car 11 years ago.
Very nice Ford GT comparison road test
I haven’t driven the ‘new’ Ford GT. I was due to, but when the tour dates changed I couldn’t, so Mark Dixon got the gig. I was pretty jealous as a result, though as nothing compared with when, at Thruxton, he got to drive a GT40 and three generations of GT, the last of which I haven’t yet driven, though I was meant to – did I mention?
I have driven a few GT40s before, so the one that intrigues me from our cover story is that troublesome middle child, the difficult second album, that disappointing movie sequel rushed out a bit too quick to try and capitalise on a hit. Not that there was anything rushed about the 2004 GT, which came 40 years after the original, but it was a very different prospect, sharing visual cues with the original but little in tech or ethos. It was born as the XJ-S to the E-type but, when plagued by late deliveries (and being pilloried on the Top Gear TV show) and then tech issues, it threatened to become a laughing stock – Ford’s equivalent of the XJ220. And at $140,000, it didn’t even reach its production target of 4500 units.
Even today the car is something of a quisling, wedged between two Le Mans weapons that did their talking and cemented their reputation on the track, while this soft(ish), wide GT needed two parking spaces in the supermarket if you wanted to get the doors open. I remember that doyen of classic car writers Mathhew Carter having one, which I found impressive yet impractical, an opinion I couldn’t help but share after driving one. Gosh, we are hard to please, aren’t we? And not necessarily right. That 2004-2006 GT seems to be coming into its own at the moment. Just like the ‘pastiche’ BMW Z8 that was equally derided by the visual purity police when new. A new generation hasn’t understood that it is meant to turn its nose up at these cars and is embracing what really are blisteringly quick and technologically fascinating machines, which have been wrongly spurned for years.
Is the Ford GT really a Ferrari-beater? Well, a few were raced – the GT trounced all-comers in the 2008 FIA GT3 European Championship, though it didn’t publicly give Maranello a bloody nose at La Sarthe like its ancestor and descendant – but in the desirability stakes for sure. A GT starts at around £350,000, well over four times the price of Maranello’s slower contemporary rival middie V8, the F430.
‘I’ve driven a few E30 M3s over the years but never got up close with its racing equivalent. BMW Motorsport created the most successful Touring Car of all time from what today seem to be quite simple ingredients; as with the brilliant road car, it’s all in the execution.’ BMW M3, road vs track
A multi-marque group test. It’s certainly not the first time we’ve covered rival brands in the magazine but it has been some time since we last did. When the challenge was presented by our publishing house to go head-to-head with sister titles Jaguar World and 911 & Porsche World to see which brand offers the best sports car, we accepted. See if the G29 BMW Z4 can fend-off the Jaguar F-Type and Porsche Boxster on page 10, and let us know what you think of the piece via the usual channels – we value your feedback.
The E36 M3 celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. Revealed at the Paris Motor Show in 1992, it remained in production for most of the ‘90s, but its legacy lives on three decades later. While it is not a car that we ever ignore in these pages, in fact you could probably call it a ‘bread and butter’ model for BMW Car, the anniversary seemed a good time to re-evaluate what this variant of M3 has to offer for potential purchasers. For this we enlisted the help of top-notch automotive journalist Ben Barry, himself the owner of an E36 M3 3.0-litre coupé for 18-years, and the key holder to an Evo saloon for a period, too. Ben talked to a couple of respected E36 M3 experts and you can read his, and their, thoughts starting on page 18. Rest assured that this will not be the last M car feature of the year, for 2022 also marks the 50th anniversary of BMW M – a milestone that we will be marking on several occasions throughout the coming months.
When motor sport achievement was almost essential for performance car credibility, BMW made it count
A deal done in a hotel bedroom by a cigar-chomping Swiss-American to poach the best motor sport brains from Ford Europe and help BMW steal touring car victory. Sounds like the start of a blockbuster film. It certainly should be, because as BMW motor sport boss Jochen Neerpasch reveals in his interview on this page, the simultaneous birth of the works E9 3.0CSL and BMW’s Motorsport division in 1972 would see the underdog team take on the might of Ford in Europe and then Porsche in America.
Spoiler alert – BMW Motorsport wouldn’t be the underdog for long, especially once the CSL gained its, er, spoilers, along with the sobriquet ‘Batmobile’. At a stroke, BMW’s elegant E9 coupé had mutated from swift and refined tourer to bad boy of the autobahns, though it wasn’t allowed to wear full battledress in native Germany. The spoilers had to be supplied for clandestine dealer fit.
Sam Dawson has done a remarkable job, bringing together Motorsport’s first CSL racer, an early carburettor-fed road car, a CSL-powered E3 Kombi Motorsport support vehicle and that interview with Neerpasch for our CSL 50th anniversary special celebration. It’s a fine tribute to one of the great hero cars of the Seventies. The CSL is from a time when results on track or rally stage were essential for pretty much any performance car’s credibility. Porsche has never waivered, relentlessly pounding the world’s circuits, occasionally its rally stages and even desert raid events. Bentley, Jaguar and MG struggled to recapture their motor sport glory days and the Fletcher-Ogle GT never even got to test its potential. For this issue, that leaves Lamborghini, a make that for all its braggadocio has largely avoided proving its cars in competition. For the Miura it’s hardly mattered. As our restoration feature makes clear, the design is riddled with flaws, but as the lengths the owner is prepared to go proves to make it right, the halo of race success is far from an essential ingredient.
The rise of BMW Motorsport is the stuff of cinema legend, but true
Roll on Velar Mk5
Thank goodness there are no Jaguar i-Pace-style flourishes in the design of the new Range Rover (as requested by Gavin Green in the December issue). Nor has there been an attempt to make it more friendly. BMW has tried and failed in doing this to the two last editions of the X5.
We owned an original, followed by the second iteration, but were driven away from the brand by the clumsy evolution of the more recent designs. I had never considered a Range Rover but having driven a Sport and Vogue back to back was utterly charmed by the integrity of the latter and purchased a standard car with standard fenestration, wheels and tyres. Unreliability fears have been unfounded and the capability of our ‘holdall’ has been an eye-opener.
Although can I be the only Range Rover fan that doesn’t need the standard-wheelbase version to be longer than the last? This growth may tempt existing owners to hold on to their cars until the Velar reaches similar proportions to the older, full-fat Range Rovers.
So many things the Range Rover could have been
I’m not quite sure how the 996’s twenty-fifth anniversary has crept up on us. It only seems like yesterday the model was revealed as the bringer of a new era in Porsche production, not only for the 911, but for all models to wear the Stuttgart crest. And yet, here we are, celebrating a quarter-century of Porsche’s somewhat controversial water-cooled flagship, a model representing the most significant move away from the original 911 concept to date. I’m sure it’s not just me who views the 996 as a modern sports car. For insurers, parts manufacturers and even Porsche itself to label the model as a classic seems perplexing, considering the first water-cooled production 911 continues to exude an image of youth, vitality, excitement and adventure to this day. You only have to look at the Speed Yellow Carrera 4 pictured on this page to see this to be true. I understand calendar-based classification is at play, of course, and I welcome any move to protect Porsche’s legacy models, especially when it serves to generate additional interest in the marque and its bulging back catalogue, but to my mind, the 996 remains fresh. Granted, I’m not talking 992-levels-of-infotainment fresh, but the 996 has aged exceptionally well, with looks and performance as respectable today as they were when the model was first unveiled. This celebratory issue of 911 & Porsche World may have you kicking off 2022 with a look through the classifieds. If so, take a look at our 996 buying guide before parting with your hard-earned cash. I wish you every success with your search and, to all our readers, best wishes for the year ahead.
JUST GIANNINI
This letter regards the strange 1971 Giannini Fiat 128 NP S Sport Coupe in Obscurati. My belief is that this car has nothing to do with Adolfo Melchionda, even if chronologically it sat between two true Melchionda creations for Giannini: the Fiat 500- based Sirio 650 of 1969, built by Piero Drogo’s Carrozzeria Sports Cars of Modena, and the 1972 'Trimarano' built on a Fiat 850 platform. All three cars were shown at their respective Turin Motor Shows.
I have had regular contact with the Melchionda family over the years and, even if a lot of his old papers are missing, nothing ever appeared regarding this 1971 128 coupe, nor it is remembered within the family. What's more, Mario Morselli in a contemporary Auto Sprint article attributed the car to Guglielmo de Negris, a designer from Pisa.
Melchionda collaborated with Giannini in great part thanks to the fact that his wife, Giannini's Consigliere Delegato and shareholder Volfango Polverelli's wife were friends since childhood days.