Sam Dawson · Articles

The Aston Martin Rapide Jet 2+2 could have given Bertone a new lease of life. Instead, it was the last car the great Italian design house ever created. Ten years on, we drive it.

Alfa Romeo’s Arna is considered to be the worst car ever to wear the badge, but does it deserve its bad reputation? We drive a restored survivor to find out.

Dripping with carbon fibre and re-engineered for almost four times its factory horsepower, Tom Parker’s RS3-swapped Golf R is a luxurious daily driver with hypercar-baiting potential.

By the turn of the new Millennium, the Golf GTI had bloated into a very different beast indeed. After the Corrado was killed off in 1995, everfaster yet lardier Golfs took its place. Some sported five- or even six-cylinder engines, but their weight, luxury and price left them a far cry from the 840kg 1.6-litre flyweight that dropped jaws back in 1975.

By the late Eighties, performance-car magazines regularly persisted with rumours that Porsche was collaborating with VW with the intention of building a front-wheel-drive coupé. In reality, covert photographers had snapped the Herbert Schäfer-penned VW Corrado on test. It didn’t actually contain any Porsche parts, but it did mark a corporate sea-change. Given VW’s engineering origins there had always been moments of co-operation between the two companies, and as the Audi-engined Porsche 924 was dropped from Porsche showrooms in 1985, a gap opened up for a sub-Porsche über-VW coupé, something more sparkling than the dated Scirocco. Something a generation of yuppies weaned on Golf GTIs might move up to instead of the ubiquitous BMW E30 3 Series.

Clambering aboard this split-window Type 2 Camper – and you really do have to climb up into it, it’s surprisingly high off the ground – the thing that surprises me most is how far removed from the Beetle it is. I know it’s built on that car’s floorplan and shares its engine and gearbox. But it’s testament to the ingenuity of VW’s platform engineering that the thing it reminds me most of is not a car, but the 201 bus to Stamford.

Is this a sports car or just a Beetle in a tuxedo? It’s odd, but no other car in this group – not even the Golf GTI – has quite such a weight of expectation hanging over it quite like the Karmann-Ghia. Given that the Beetle on which it’s based was a Ferdinand Porsche design, and the 356 was created using much of the same thinking and raw materials. Even the Karmann-Ghia’s suspension layout with torsion bars front and rear is similar. Is this sporty coupé and roadster take on the Beetle a decent substitute for a real Porsche? If so, £6k for an average one never looked so cheap.

The Silken Touch Thirty-five years after this very XJR-9 scored Jaguar’s first Le Mans win since the D-type days, we relive the memories – then drive it on track.

In 1983, Porsche 956s performed the unprecedented feat of winning every single round of the World Sports Car Championship. Forty years on, drivers and engineers recall the dawn of a Group C titan.

Dig beneath the clean lines of Jack Fanning’s Mk5 GTI and you’ll find a show-and-go car more thoroughly put together than you might first expect…

Once misunderstood, the Mercedes-Benz ‘Pagoda’ SL W113 went on to create and define an entirely new kind of car. Join us on a drive through its natural playground of nocturnal Mayfair as the icon turns 60.

Classic Cars reader Simon Biggs is a connoisseur of classic luxury saloons, so how will he find the pure early Citroën DS19 – and at 6ft 6in, will he fit in it?

Back in the UK after more than half a century undercover, this Lagonda V12 Rapide once belonged to a top British spy. But as we discover, it may have inspired fictional escapades too.

Watercooler moment 25 years ago, the Porsche 996 attempted to replace the iconic 33-year-old 911. We drive the bargain Carrera 2, ultra-reliable Turbo and collector-grade homologation GT3RS to see whether they make great classic buys today.

It was the vehicle that experts said was impossible to replace, and critics casted doubt as to whether it would sell, questioning who would actually buy it.