For 23 years my brother has come over from Australia for Beaulieu and Goodwood, latterly buying a cheap 2CV on arrival to get him around Europe, then shipping it home and selling for enough profit to pay his air fares. Impressed by his driving it flat-out to the South of France and back, I began looking for a 2CV for myself and soon found a local dealer ad for a 28,000-mile, one-owner, five-year-old example for £2500.
This rare Swede not only looks great but is also a surprising bargain THE MARKET / Buying Guide This Volvo is difficult to pigeonhole. The 480 is not a hatchback in the usual sense, but neither is it a traditional coupé. Although it clearly drew inspiration from the 1800ES, describing it as a shooting brake doesn’t feel quite right, either. Whatever it is, it’s certainly one of the most intriguing cars ever built by the Swedish manufacturer, and one that remains great value today.
The smallest Jaguar makes an affordable and practical if controversial modern classic but it does have its pitfalls. Here’s what you need to know. WORDS PAUL WAGER BUYING X-TYPE THE ESSENTIAL INFOWill this very capable sports saloon ever be any more affordable? Here’s what you need to know. To some extent the best classics are those which are controversial enough to arouse fierce debate and the X-Type is certainly one of them.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — we love it when a former 911 & Porsche World feature car comes to market. More so when it happens to be a former cover star... TRIED & TESTEDThe GT3 driving experience without the GT3 price tag. This is how Charlie Wildridge, boss of Suffolkbased Porsche indie, William Francis, describes the Tiffany Blue 996 you see in our photos.
The 944 was the best-selling Porsche of all time prior to the arrival of the Boxster 986 and Cayenne SUV, meaning there are plenty of examples out there to choose from... Words Dan Furr, Richard Gooding, Martin Morgan Jones Photography Adrian Brannan What to look for when on the hunt Launched in 1969, the 914 proved Porsche didn’t need to survive on a diet of rear-engined metal alone. By 1975, however, the two-seater’s time was up. That same year, the similarly radical 924 was launched.
We’re not exactly looking at a real performance classic this month, but readers have been asking when my promised follow-up to the ID19 would appear. This is deservedly one of the top five most innovative cars ever produced and will remain so, always. Magic carpet ride Citroën DS 20 1962–1973To find the latest New & used cars for sale PACKAGINGStyling was the brainchild of Bertoni and Lefèbvre, and it had an impressively low drag coefficient for the time.
For many British businesses, especially those trading overseas, the fallout from Brexit has been an administrative nightmare. “Trade with customers in the European Union presently accounts for approximately thirty percent of our turnover,” says Karl Chopra, founder of independent Porsche parts and accessories retailer, Design 911. “Previously, we could fulfil orders for clients in mainland Europe within two or three days.
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...
Aerodynamicist and sage Norbert Singer recalls how every new Porsche boss was keen to make their mark as quickly as possible. When the ambitious Ulrich Bez returned to Porsche as head of engineering, changes were expected. And changes there were: Porsche’s limited motorsport budget would henceforth concentrate on F1. From his vantage point at BMW, Ulrich had been impressed by Porsche’s collaboration with McLaren, which had resulted in two manufacturers’ and three drivers’ championships.
Porsche 911 996 → How and why are Porsche Carbon Ceramic Brakes fitted to high-performance 911s so effective?
Unveiled at the 1999 IAA show in Frankfurt, Porsche Carbon Ceramic Brakes – PCCBs for short – first appeared on the 996 model GT2 of 2001. This was the first production sports car to use the technology. Disc brakes may have been patented in 1902, but it took until the middle of that century for production cars to perfect the technology, including Porsche’s development of the ventilated disc brake, first used on the 906-8 Bergspider of 1965 and utilised on the 911S the following year.
Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016. Despite ongoing wrangling, the general consensus is that Brexit is indeed done. What impact has that decision and the many economic changes had on the 911 market? Sales debate“That’s an interesting topic,” says Jonathan Ostroff, sales manager at Hexagon Classics. “Brexit hasn’t affected the UK right-hand drive car values, as they were never very sought after by our EU partners (excepting Eire, Cyprus and Malta),” Jonathan rightly points out.
How General Motors’ performance linchpin was spared the indignity of losing drive to the rear. Since the late 1960s, the pony car had been a mainstay of American car culture, built to a simple formula of driven wheels at the rear and a hearty engine at the front, preferably a V8. Yet, amazingly, during the 1980s both Ford and GM drew up plans to delete the V8s from their pony car mainstays, the Mustang and the Camaro, and make them front-wheel drive.
Mass market electric cars have been with us for about a decade now, and for all of that time, the popular Fully Charged YouTube channel has been on hand to explain to anyone who is interested in the subject what’s going on. The bigger pictureSince 2018, though, Fully Charged has not just been an online presence but a series of live events as well.
Wrong car, wrong time, sums up the troubled history of the glorious Citroën SM. France’s staunch nationalism desired a grande routière to follow the defunct Facel-Vega marque, yet Citroën would have made more profits concentrating on a range of smaller, family cars as an antidote to the rising costs of petrol. The carefree world where you drove from Paris to Saint Tropez before lunch was changing fast.
I was there to witness the Volvo 850 T5-R miracle. A press car appeared in the BBC Pebble Mill car park – where those early-Nineties series of Top Gear were filmed – and Clarkson and I took it for a spin. We ripped through Birmingham, front tyres fighting for grip and out onto the M6, laughing out loud at the amazing, incredible urge. That day we both sensed that this was a seminal moment in Volvo’s history. A break from its sensible heritage with a large helping of Swedish mischief.