Welcome to the 90’s — where you could buy a Tamagotchi, supersize your McDonald’s fries, google the worth of your collectible Beanie Baby, pick up a Nirvana CD, and still make it home just in time to watch Friends on NBC. For petrolheads especially, the decade was nothing short of legendary.
The Queen’s Daimler. Driving Her Majesty's first ever state car. This Daimler limousine was HM Queen Elizabeth Il’s first State car — back when she was still a princess. Glen Waddington tells a royal tale.
Outside: raw carbon panels, track-oriented gooseneck’ wing, front splitter, massive gold- painted wheels. Inside: roll-cage, five-point harness, Race-Tex dash covering — plus a rev-counter redlined at 9000rpm. And our playground involves not a track but the sinuous B-roads that snake across the North Pennines in County Durham. Gulp.
Panel vans are prosaic machines, best-suited for goods deliveries or carting the tools of a trade with a pair of doors and seating up front, window-less cargo area down back. Yet by Australia’s mid-1970s, packs of dollied-up, bright-hued panel vans had become cult cars from Bondi to the Back of Beyond. Ford, Holden and Chrysler all turned their hand to adding sporting pretensions stripes and fancy wheels and engine options to the humble van; a marketing, and styling, exercise to cash in on a young, and mainly male, fad for dressing up work vehicles for weekend leisure. Surfing and sex were the chief leisure activities facilitated by a fancy van out of work hours.
When we first clapped eyes on Nick Ponterio’s incredible Mk2, we had no idea it was the same car that graced these pages almost a decade before, albeit in a very different guise.
Ever wondered how special a totally original, unrestored Shelby Cobra would feel? This guy should know: as well as the ‘Dirtbag’, he’s owned 50 of them. Preston Lerner finds out more.
Porsche believes that e-fuel will keep the internal combustion engine alive in an electrified future. Steve Sutcliffe travels to Chile to find out how.
From its brand-new post-war home in Crewe, Bentley redefined itself with the prescient MkVI sports saloon. Glen Waddington drives the desirable HJ Mulliner six-light version.
