The Coventry-Eagle Flying-8 was a high-performance motorcycle designed to compete directly with the offerings from Brough-Superior – a company that was building the fastest and most expensive production motorcycles in the world at the time. The similarity in looks between the Coventry-Eagle Flying-8 and the Brough-Superior SS80 and SS100 was no mistake, George Brough and…
All surviving examples of the Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 are special, but this one is more special than most. It was built to a specification laid out by legendary Finnish racing driver Leo Kinnunen, who used it as a personal car while competing in Germany in the Interserie – a popular European motorsport series. The…
The original BMW 3.0 CSL Batmobile is an almost mythological car that has graced countless teenager’s bedrooms walls in poster form, and features prominently in many adult’s automotive bucket lists. The BMW 3.0 CSL Batmobile BMW introduced the 3.0 CSL in 1972 as an homologation special based on the popular 3.0 CS/CSi sporting coupe. The…
The Attila Mark 3 was one of the racing cars built by British garagistes Mark Perry and Val Dare-Bryan of Racing Developments of North London in 1964 and 1965. Dare-Bryan was a former Lotus employee who had worked side-by-side with both Colin Chapman and Frank Costin – and he decided in the mid-1960s to leave…
The Munch Mammoth, or more correctly the “Münch Mammoth”, was a superbike first released in the late 1960s with a 1.2 liter 4-cylinder car engine fitted to a custom frame and capable of up to 104 bhp depending on the model. The Mammoth was released at a time when one of the world’s leading sports…
The Honda CB750 you see here is one of the original prototypes, with the now hugely collectible sandcast engine. It was nicknamed “The Brighton Bike” and its first owner would be none other than the Earl of Denbigh in England. Within the vintage Honda collecting community, this CB750 is well-known and is typically referred to…
The Kellison J-4R was the brainchild of USAF pilot James Kellison, a man known for his exceptional intelligence, his deep love for cars, and his fascination with lightweight composites. In the 1950s the latest and greatest composite was fiberglass, a material that was a precursor to modern composites like carbon fiber, and that offered excellent…
The Facel Vega FV4 Typhoon was introduced in 1958, it was fitted with the most powerful engine ever offered by the French automaker up until that time – a 325 hp “Dual Quad” 354 cubic inch Hemi V8 supplied by Chrysler. Facel The Automaker The name Facel is an abbreviation of Forges et Ateliers de Constructions…
The Connaught L2 was developed by former RAF pilots and engineers in the years just after WWII, the company name was chosen because it was a contraction of Continental Autos – the name of their humble little garage in Surrey. Today Connaught is most often remembered for their single largest racing success – a win…
The Alta Car and Engineering Company was astonishingly far ahead of its time, the company was building supercharged, double overhead cam engines with hemispherical combustion chambers all the way back in the 1920s. The Alta Car and Engineering Company Alta was founded by 27 year old Geoffrey Taylor, who planned to develop, build, and sell…
The Tojeiro-Butterworth AJB is a bit of a historical anomaly, it’s the only one that was ever built, and it’s fitted with the unusual air-cooled, flat-four AJB engine. The intials AJB belong to Archibald James Butterworth, a visionary engineer, inventor, and designer, who was a successful and active racer in England until he suffered a…
The Iso Grifo A3/C was developed by legendary Italian engineer and test driver Giotto Bizzarrini – the same man responsible for the creation of the Ferrari 250 GTO, now one of the most desirable and valuable cars in the world. Sibling Rivalry Many years later Bizzarrini explained his philosophy in developing the Iso Grifo A3/C…
