Though built 50 years apart, these two have something in common: both were make-or-break models for Rolls-Royce. We visit the man who owns them, and drive each car to see how the company’s unique qualities persisted across half a century.
Serial Mk1 modifier, Stuart Shellard is back with a bang for his sixth PVW feature. With 1.8T power, Harris trim, air and those gorgeous E30 splits, he’s got the ingredients right once again but haven’t we seen this car somewhere before?
Panel vans are prosaic machines, best-suited for goods deliveries or carting the tools of a trade with a pair of doors and seating up front, window-less cargo area down back. Yet by Australia’s mid-1970s, packs of dollied-up, bright-hued panel vans had become cult cars from Bondi to the Back of Beyond. Ford, Holden and Chrysler all turned their hand to adding sporting pretensions stripes and fancy wheels and engine options to the humble van; a marketing, and styling, exercise to cash in on a young, and mainly male, fad for dressing up work vehicles for weekend leisure. Surfing and sex were the chief leisure activities facilitated by a fancy van out of work hours.
As a young 18 year old my first car was a Mazda 1300. I had the big dream that my next car would be a Ford Falcon XY GT 351. My brother told me I was mad, you will kill yourself and so the search of an alternative ended up with the purchase of an Italian Lancia Beta Coupe. This is where my love of Fiats and Lancia’s came from, sharing a common twin cam motor and very easy to work on while offering enough performance and driving enjoyment.
If the V8 Vantage is the first British supercar, then this 1976 prototype is the origin of the species. We look at the history of the car before driving it ourselves.
If the Formula One circus wasn’t already reeling from the shock of big-haired drivers sporting pork chop sideburns and man-medallions, nothing could prepare them for the arrival of the six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 in 1976
Alan Sweet did such a great job rebuilding this 1976 Pontiac Trans Am that his friend Martin Bishop couldn’t resist buying it. Then when Martin sold it, guess who took it off his hands…? 1976 Pontiac Trans Am.
Estate cars are sensible things for sensible people, right? Well, no-one told Erwin Schuit that – he’s built a barmy orange wagon with an aggressive attitude and a race-car heart
In production for just two years, the Carrera 3.0 is rare, yet it stands as a cornerstone of the 911 dynasty, consolidating the impact-bumper generation and a bulwark for its SC and Carrera 3.2 successors
Mike Brewer’s restored 912 E wheeler dealers star’s passion for Porsche rare retro ride — the car’s the star. Mike Brewer is known to millions as the star of TV’s Wheeler Dealers, but away from filming, he likes nothing more than hitting the road in his restored 1976 Porsche 912 E. What’s more, he thinks you should be considering an example of the four-cylinder 911 lookalike when buying your first Porsche
As our feature on shows, the XJ-S could be turned into more of a sports car, although it wasn’t a natural racing car due to its size and weight. That didn’t stop Bob Tullius and his Group 44 team from campaigning the car in the late Seventies, with considerable success.
