The Royal Automobile Club is once again on the hunt for the present-day heroes of Britain’s historic motoring and motorsport worlds. Last year’s double award for restoration went to the 1939 ERA E-Type GP2 (Tip Top Engineering) aimed to bring back to competitive life an important historic racer and the 1927 Bentley 3 Litre with Boat Tail body (Julian … [Read more...]
Book review: Forgotten Rally Photos
Perfectly defining the iconic 1970s epoch of stage and road rallying, this fascinating book provides a wide selection of high-quality images from the lens of professional photographer Peter Smith, matched with some clever investigative captions by former competitor, journalist and author Jonathan Pulleyn, providing background stories that perhaps weren’t … [Read more...]
How a rogue sponsor took Formula One for a ride
Motor racing creates a glamorous aura and attracts some dubious characters. Some that spring to mind include Sidney Miller – one of several aliases – of Southern Organs fame who sponsored anything that moved in national motor racing during the mid-1970’s including a singleton Surtees F1 entry at Silverstone. Then there was charismatic David Thieme of Essex … [Read more...]
Newslines 16 June
Toyota says the all-new Toyota C-HR will make its world debut on 26 June. The premiere event will reveal a sophisticated, compact SUV with edgy design and advanced technologies. Brynmawr annual classic car and bike show will be held in the town centre on Sunday 30 July from 10am. It’s free to enter and will also have spaces for autojumble tables. … [Read more...]
Superbears – The Story of Hesketh Racing
Hesketh Racing famously burst on the scene at exactly the right time during the 1970s, just when the average Britain needed an antidote to depressing daily news telling of Industrial unrest, multifarious EEC collaboration, high prices caused by oil-producers restricting supplies and a potential coal miners’ strike, writes Ken Davies. Formula One too was … [Read more...]
Surviving to drive
Netflix compelling and successful series ‘Drive to Survive’ is rightly credited with breathing new life into Formula One by creating a whole new audience, especially in the USA. But the fly-on-the-wall reality series has also discovered cult heroes among previously unknown paddock personalities, particularly in minnow teams and Gunther Steiner, sometimes … [Read more...]
Weekend roadtest: GWM Funky Cat 1st Edition
The UK’s electric car revolution is becoming a bloody affair. From initially resisting the new technology on cost grounds including writing off established investments in petrol and diesel engine technology and having to develop hybrid or pure electric powertrains, along with making tens of thousands of workers redundant, manufacturers have struggled to … [Read more...]
Memory Lanes Rally Tales
The latest volume of Peter Robinson’s Memory Lanes Rally Tales series has just been released and is possibly his best so far! Providing stories about rallying from the 1960s and 1970s, Peter’s latest A4 size high quality hard back provides 425 pages split into 53 fascinating chapters, each telling its own diverse rally tale and making it convenient for … [Read more...]
Book review: Chris Coburn and DTV
A comprehensive biography of the irrepressible Chris Coburn has just been published and it's an ideal Christmas gift for motorsport fans. Talented, versatile, and multifaceted – driver, entrepreneur, engineer, and skier – Coburn was a prolific mover and shaker in the world of motorsport during the 1960s/70s. He was instrumental in the formation of the … [Read more...]
Welsh author’s F1 classic view
Proving every picture tells a story, Welsh motorsport author Richard Jones has self-published a fascinating book from an idea provided by an evocative painting that captures just a brief snapshot from a hot and sunny May afternoon in the tiny Mediterranean principality of Monaco. In fact, the original Nicholas Watts painting (below) proudly hangs on the … [Read more...]
