Cunst
I was, as usual, looking at an online auction catalogue when I should have been working. I had employed a time-saving tactic and searched for the terms BENTLEY and ROLLS-ROYCE, but I was surprised when the latter search produced a motorcycle. It was, of course, a Brough Superior.
Sensational on its introduction in 1955 and still extraordinary today, the Citroën DS in any of its forms is a comfortable and fantastically stylish classic. The futuristic looks and the sound if unconventional engineering give it a unique appeal that hasn’t dampened almost 70 years on. The station wagon variant – known variously as Safari (UK and Australia), Break (France) and Wagon (USA) – was added to the range in 1958.
Can you imagine a cartoon like the one on the right appearing in an owner’s handbook today? Amazingly, the stiff-upper-lip marque that was 1940s Rover used this drawing – and many similarly witty illustrations – in its first handbook for the new Land-Rover. That’s one of the joys of the traditional handbook: they were as idiosyncratic as the people who wrote them.
The forgotten hot hatch concept that packed a monster 450bhp 336kW punch FORGOTTEN FAST CARSA manufacturer’s image is important and it is something Volvo has struggled with. On one hand it is a brand renowned for its safety prowess, with endless jokes about the cars and people who buy them. Alternatively, there’s a slightly demented side to the Swedish stalwart that loves to go racing and create spicy road-going performance cars.
Bizzarrini 5300 GT Corsas don’t come up for sale too often. The situation is even rarer in the case of chassis no.0222, which won its class at Le Mans in 1965. Yet you can now buy yourself one of 24 perfect copies of it. Second time luckyThis is ‘Car Zero’, the prototype, the first realisation of the reborn Bizzarrini marque’s 5300GT Corsa Revival.
I put it to you that the Proton Savvy has aged rather well for a budget car launched in 2005. You’ll notice that I’ve chosen images of the postfacelift Savvy for my defence of the Malaysian city car; the 2007 revamp tidied up the tailgate and improved the grille. I’d like to draw your attention to the central exhaust, flared arches, clamshell bonnet, kink along the window line and snazzy yellow dials as reasons to appreciate the Savvy.
As sure as night follows day and cream follows jam*, it was inevitable that the Aston Martin Cygnet would appear in the issue following the Frazer Tickford Metro. Concluding his review of the luxo Metro, Richard Heseltine said: “There is something appealing about a small car with big car luxuries and the Frazer Tickford is both of those things and more. It isn’t as though the idea was lost on Aston Martin Lagonda, either. Think of it as the forerunner of the Cygnet. And then stop thinking.
Democratic motoring is something that Fiat has always done well. Low prices, easy maintenance, practical packaging, logical design – Fiat consistently delivers. But a company in Germany has found a way to make the current-model Fiat 500 even more democratic, by exploiting a local legal loophole that allows it to be driven by 16-year olds and older people who don’t have a modern driving licence.