Category: Classic Cars

The Rover 200 is an interesting example of `badge-engineering’. The car started out as the Honda Ballade and evolved during the period when there was a strong relationship between Austin-Rover and Honda. The Triumph Acclaim was another `badge-engineered’ car from this relationship. In the early 1980s the British company did not have the funds to develop a wider range of models to make it more competitive and Honda was looking for a way of entering the British and European markets when the most obvious way was blocked due to a… Read more

The Lancia Stratos, an Italian sports car, was built especially to win motor rallies. It certainly wasn’t a practical car for everyday use – but it certainly could win rallies. It took the International Championship three times before changing parent-company policies sidelined it. Stratos was a very Italian car with many characteristics common to a number of other Italians: its electrics were unreliable, it was difficult to see out of, and its production figures were grossly exaggerated for homologation purposes. At the 1970 Turin Motor Show Bertone displayed a small… Read more

The four-cylinder Sunbeam Alpine had a very attractive open body and sold well right from its initial release by the Rootes Group in 1959. No doubt motivated by the success of the AC Cobra, discussions were held with American Carroll Shelby, who set about to carry out initial engineering to allow the fitting of a V8 engine to the Alpine body. After the initial considerations Rootes’ engineers took over and out came the four-cylinder 1592 cc engine and in its place went a Ford V8 of 4.2 litres. To couple… Read more

After World War I much development took place in motor vehicles and, in particular, in sportscars. Every country was determined to showcase their engineering ability and frequently the racing track was used as the place to do this. The sportscars that emerged in the early twenties began to show substantial reductions in engine size and a far greater reliance on the gearbox to provide reasonable – and in some cases very rapid – acceleration. Prior to 1914 the gearbox was seen purely as a device to get the large-engined cars… Read more

Germany has a history of machinery development, especially in the automotive industry and even in the late nineteenth century it was shown that there would always be a market for products of engineers as skilled as Karl Benz, Gottlieb and Paul Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and August Horch. In 1885 Karl Benz produced the first motorised carriage for use on the road – a tricycle. Four-wheeled cars followed soon after. At about the same time, only 96 km away in another part of southern Germany, another superb engineer, Gottlieb Daimler, was… Read more

The name Errett Lobban Cord is inextricably tied up with American motoring of the 1920s and 1930s. Cord was a Californian car salesman who was also good at selling himself. The Auburn Automobile Company was struggling to survive in 1924 when they came in contact with Cord. Or maybe Cord came in contact with Auburn; nobody seems to know actually how it all came about. Auburn had established a reputation for producing cars which cost less but looked to go faster than their rivals. In some ways they were considered… Read more