Opinion

Forgive us this diversion, but whisper it… other car brands do exist. Hell, there are even other Porsche models out there, and there’s every chance you’ll have one, or at least have experienced them at some point. While we’re not going to stray too far from our favourite brand here, this month’s trawl of the classifieds has seen us take a bit of a tangent because we’ve been looking at Audi RS2s. It’s unlikely you’re unaware of the RS2, but here’s a recap – just in case.

Russia has deservedly been at the receiving end of some genuinely awful press over the last few months. However, if there’s one thing we should definitely stop blaming Russia for, it’s the Alfasud’s now legendary proclivity for terminal rust.

This is the end, beautiful friend…” so said Jim Morrison and The Doors all the way back in 1967. The song – The End – was, of course, part of the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now and while I’m not quite as unhinged as many of the film’s characters become I am deeply saddened that after 28-years BMW Car will be closing its pages for the very last time.

A photograph can tell a thousand stories, and this can be especially true at auction. Want to complain about that scratch you didn’t know was there? “Sorry Sir, it was clearly in the image on the internet...

The 993’s historical journey is well known. Peter Falk, the famed Porsche engineer, produced a Lastenheft in the late 1980s that found the incoming 993 would have to achieve new levels of agility and responsiveness – not to mention refinement – and so the new 911 was born with its multi-link rear axle and six-speed transmission, among other improvements.

Maybe it’s my age, or perhaps it’s simply that I’ve been out in the sun for too long this summer but I have a severe hankering for a convertible. Normally I’d go for the most practical option which would see me behind the wheel of a 3 Series cabrio and having had a quick look at the classifieds it looks like there are some real bargains out there if you’re not to fussy about which generation you go for and which engine you’ve got under the bonnet.

There are always creative people in a car company who want to try and do things that are off the radar, possibly off the wall but certainly off the product plan. And I think that’s always been the case at Jaguar. When I started there in 1978, the styling department worked out of a building called Experimental (which was where the X in the XK name originated from). In the early Fifties this changed into the Competition Shop which two decades later became the studio.

It’s not going to be a universally popular opinion, but I’m afraid I love a bit of banger racing. Indeed, I probably have it to thank for my love of old cars. Back when I was a kid, in the mid 1980s, a Sunday afternoon out at High Edge Raceway in Buxton was a rare and intoxicating treat.

There’s an interloper currently in my garage. But it’s not a neighbour’s cat or the chest freezer my wife has wanted in there for some time but rather an Aston Martin. As the new editor of Aston Martin Driver, I’ve been given the keys to Kelsey Publishing’s DB7 3.2 and since it’s parked next to my 2000 Jaguar XK8 4.0 X100, I can’t help but compare the two.

You may have noticed a bit of a theme with this series. It usually celebrates a car that was once good, great or merely interesting but which tended to hang around a bit too long, by which point customers become interested in something newer and shinier. That’s not the case with the just-axed Ford Focus ST. Recently departed performance title MOTOR gave the hot Ford hatch a runner-up position at this year’s Sports Car of the Year award.

A very warm welcome to the first of CAR’s three special 60th anniversary issues. Yep, the world’s best (and most modest) car magazine pre-dates the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon (1969), Porsche’s first overall Le Mans win (1970) and the arrival into this world of one Elon Reeve Musk (1971).

Not only did former engineering director Bob Knight have the reputation for being very clever but also a chain smoker and someone who worked all hours, all of which I experienced first-hand. When I joined Jaguar in the late-Seventies not only was he the managing director of the company but on the basis of how Jaguar’s founder Sir William Lyons had always operated, he’d also taken charge of what he called styling despite having no experience.

Commissioned to photograph an Audi TT for another magazine, Paul compares the four-seat coupe with his own Similar to how Liverpool Football Club and my son’s under 16 team do roughly the same thing while also being totally different, the same could be said of the Jaguar XK8 and first generation of Audi TT. Although both are four-seat coupes, one is a big, purposeful and V8-engined GT and the other smaller with much of its DNA sourced from elsewhere.

The Bora was Maserati’s first ever midengined road car; the MC20 is its latest; but in between there have been several others. Maserati’s answer to the Ferrari Dino was a ‘baby’ version of the Bora whose mid-mounted engine was downgraded to a 2965cc V6 borrowed from the Citroën SM.  In its top-spec ‘SS’ guise, the Merak boasted 220hp, a top speed of 153mph and 0-60mph in 7.0 seconds.

It’s now 20 years since a new Ford made its debut in UK showrooms, but Sam Skelton isn’t about to break out the party hats. Iwant to start this column by apologising to everyone who has ever seen or experienced a Ford Fusion. It wasn’t my fault; I just think you are owed one, and nobody else is offering. It’s 20 years since this meretricious motor first crept into showrooms, and alarmingly only half that since its overdue demise.