The Lancia Stratos Stradale is quite easily one of the most famous cars of the last century. The first Lancia Stratos HF prototype was shown at the 1971 Turin Motor Show with the design being clearly based on the captivating Stratos Zero concept car from the previous year’s show.
It isn’t widely known that Gilles Villeneuve started his motorsport career racing snowmobiles in his native Quebec. It’s hard to imagine a racing series further removed from Formula 1 than this but somehow he took his talent from these humble beginnings to win the US and Canadian Formula Atlantic championships in 1976.
The 1959 Troy Roadster is a one off, road legal race car designed and built by Wally Troy in 1959. Wally was the first Jaguar dealer licensed in Illinois but his real passion was racing and his great dream was to design and build a road legal race car that could rub shoulders with the Formula 1 cars of the era.
The Buick Wildcat II was a pretty revolutionary design for Buick, it featured a 220hp V8 and a full fibreglass body, sadly it never saw a production run but I can imagine it giving the 1950’s Corvettes a run for their money.
The Jensen Interceptor is on the top 10 list of exotic cars I could potentially own, my other top 10 list features cars like the Ferrari 250 GTO, the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato and the Jaguar XKSS but unless I get really good at hot-wiring, they probably aren’t that realistic.
It saddens me that I can’t think of a single modern actor who possesses the same gasoline powered spirit of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen or James Dean. Not even one.
Steve McQueen was lent an AC Cobra in 1963 by Carroll Shelby himself, it’s fairly clear he had a great time in the British/American Ferrari killer although I am surprised to see there’s still tread on the tires.
The AC 428 Coupé or “AC Frua” is a singularly multicultural motorcar, the frame was built in England, the body in Italy and the V8 in America. AC Cars, most famous for the British/American Cobra, decided in 1965 to use the new, strengthened frame from the Cobra to build a GT car capable of competing with Ferrari, Maserati and Aston Martin.
Pikes Peak represents the ragged edge of motorsport, guys slide their cars around gravel corners at 100+mph with nothing but a cliff on one side and a wall on the other.
The Jaguar XK120 was a revelation when it was first shown in 1948, the “120” in the name refers to it’s top speed of 120 mph which was the fastest top speed of any production car in the world at the time.
So an old friend of mine had a Mrs who treated him like her personal mechanic, this was more work than you might expect as she was the kind of lady who only changed up a gear when the engine was revving so high it was on the verge of creating a tear in space/time, she also liked to smush the brake pedal at the last possible moment, often creating so many forward-Gs that items in the back seat would end up embedded in the glove compartment.
The Volvo P1800 is one of those classic cars that very nearly never existed, Volvo had contracted Karmann to build the beautiful coupé however before full production began Karmann received an ultimatum from VW clearly stating that if they built the P1800 for Volvo, VW would cancel all contracts with them.
