Articles

  • This is the 2017 Goodwood Festival of Speed

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    “Hot oil and thunder, Sound and scent vie to overwhelm Your senses. It’s Goodwood.” An inverted racing car held aloft by sinuous metal tentacles can only mean one thing. It’s that glorious weekend, where the Sussex Downs echo to the sound of vintage motorsport weapons and high-dollar showroom icons alike. The Goodwood Festival of Speed…

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  • The Carchive: The 1978 Mazda 323

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    Think back to a simpler time. A time when the North America was resting between fuel crises, and Japanese imports had really captured the imagination of an increasingly value savvy and reliability-hungry buying public. It was also an era before lifestyle didn’t mean quite what it does now. A look at Mazda’s car range today…

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  • Hooniverse Asks: What now for the rev-counter?

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    I drove my wife’s 306 this weekend, its instrument cluster is poorly photographed above and houses a speedo marked to a wildly ambitious 120 mph, and the biggest analogue clock you ever saw. Despite the lack of a tachometer, I found myself driving it the exact same way as either of my rev-counter equipped cars.…

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  • The Carchive: The Lancia Y10

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    From last week’s look at the Mazda 626, a car that had buyers both sides of the Atlantic abandoning domestic rivals in droves, we turn our attentions to a car that, as far as I know, was never sold Stateside in any official capacity. It was an interesting car, an interesting design and an interesting…

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  • In Search of Involvement: Finding it in blow-up form

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    Always on the quest for new and exciting experiences, my wife and I have just got into wearing neoprene and playing with rubber. With designs on seeing familiar things from a unique and dangerous perspective, we’ve taken up kayaking. I’ve never previously been much involved in watersports – in the kind of aquatic pursuits I…

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  • The Carchive: 1981 Mazda 626 Saloon and Coupe

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    The last couple of visits to The Carchive have taken a look at a few of North Americas most honest cars of the late ’70s. The economy offerings of Ford and Chevy – basic, simply engineered cars designed to work hard so their owners didn’t have to. They weren’t aspirational, but they were the right…

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  • Classified-ad finds: Decidedly non-standard Cortina P100

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    The Ford Cortina P100 pickup is an increasingly forgotten machine. Effectively the front end of a late MkIV (colloquially MkV) Cortina mated with a ladder chassis rear end and a pickup bed, most examples used the famous 2.0-litre ‘Pinto’ engine in single-choke, low compression form, whose low 77bhp tune meant it would run on wood…

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  • Power above absolutely all else: The Vauxhall Monaro VXR500

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    I have always maintained that great joy can be derived from a car with moderate roadholding limits. In a low-strung car, your excess of exuberance is swiftly met by tyre squeal and body roll – the magic is found in finding the limit and staying there. It’s the old maxim of ‘slow car fast’, and…

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  • Driving the Kia Pride: The exhilaration of the past

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    Scientific endeavour has proven that a frog, if slowly heated in a vat of water, won’t notice until it’s too late and he’s boiled alive. I feel that this metaphor also fits for small cars, which may have made vast strides forwards in handling and roadholding prowess, but progress has been very gradual indeed. If…

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  • The Carchive: The '77 Chevrolet Chevette

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    The Carchive has its fair share of spangly, high-buck automobiles accounted for amid its dusty, cobwebbed shelves. But it’s the down-to-earth, blue-collar, working guy’s everyday transport that’s, in so many ways, more interesting. These are the cars that litter the streets one week, and are all gone the next. There’s no mourning, no sadness, just…

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