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One make car shows: Dope or wack?
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I went to a car show the other day. There were around three hundred cars there, of all different ages, makes, models, colours and conditions. Admittedly, some of the exhibits didn’t really interest me – in fact most of them were just the kind of thing you can expect to see in any given 21st…
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Closed-road motorsport in Britain? Game On!
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Despite the presence of Ford’s near-legendary Boreham skunkworks – where the fire-breathing RS200 rally car was developed – my part of the UK has never really had much of a claim to motorsport. There are no designated racetracks – though some would suggest that that roads around Basildon qualify – yet thanks to a long-awaited…
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Missed opportunities: The Mercedes A-Cross
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Car manufacturers are positively tripping over themselves to board the SUV bandwagon—even Aston Martin and Rolls Royce are joining the market, having singularly failed to beat it. Inevitably, the popularity of terrain-conquering behemoths has led to the spawning of miniaturised, urbanised sub-species, which inherit the looks of their parents, if not all their ability. These…
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The Carchive: The 1977 Toyota Celica
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The surfaces of the day have been dusted and the floor of time has been vacuumed – but what’s lurking under the ornamental rug of history? Lets lift up a corner and peek into the dusty darkness to see what horrors crawl out. Welcome back to The Carchive. Oh, the Toyota Celica. Beloved of spoilt…
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The Carchive: The 1967 Humber Sceptre
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It’s Tuesday evening where I am, some way beyond our usual appointment with the musty pages of motoring past, so let’s get straight down to business. The Rootes Group is late and relatively unlamented, given its fascinating history and the diverse range of products it churned out. Its constituent brands included Hillman, Singer and Sunbeam,…
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The Carchive: The 1975 Mercedes 280 SE
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It’s nearly midnight on a Friday in the UK, and high time to let the watery moonlight of curiosity illuminate the creased pages of the past, as we once more peer at the forgotten relics of a time long since gone. Last week we spent a bit of time with the late ’70s Honda Accord,…
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The Carchive: 1978 Honda Accord
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There was a time, long before PCP deals put everybody behind the wheel of a fashion-friendly SUV, when people just wanted solid, economical, trouble-free transportation. We took a look at this era last week with the Fiat 126 of 1981, and we’re sticking to the same theme this time around. This time we’re looking at…
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The Carchive: The Fiat 126
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The snow has finally thawed, so we can finally don the wellington boots of curiosity, squelch across the muddy lawn of time and look inside the shed of obscurity in search of something intriguing. Welcome back to The Carchive. Last time, we blew the dust off the Citroen ID 19 and noticed that its French…
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Diecast Delights: Real diecast delights.
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As a child of the ‘eighties, my diecast collection was made up of whatever was available in local shops. I was typically drawn to Matchbox models, they tended to be better resolved, more detailed and, somehow meatier than Corgis of the same size. For whatever reason, I rarely came across a Hotwheels – perhaps it…
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Now is the winter of our incompetence
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The last days of February, and those we’ve seen of March so far, have brought a rare instance of actual weather to the UK. Courtesy of the much-celebrated #BeastFromTheEast, the right-hand coast was the first to receive snow, with the rest of the country being lavishly supplied in the following days. Although Canadians would probably…
