Blogs

The Aintree Phantom

By Michael Kliebenstein How I came to own what was likely the first safety car in Formula 1 Above: The gargantuan Rolls-Royce Phantom I, chassis 84FH, was converted in 1940 for the RAF into a shoo...

Ghost Story

Peter Burn recalls a wonderful little memory from September 1965, just four months after he first joined Autosport. 'Before I even had a company car, I was – rather at the last minute – despatched ...

Porsche 917 meets 963 at Daytona

By Wayne Batty There’s even earlier history here, but the last time Porsche went top-tier endurance racing in both the North American IMSA series and the FIA’s WEC (née World Sportscar Championship...

France in the '70s: Part 2

By Michael Kliebenstein Read part one of France in the '70s A year later, I returned to Dijon, again buying myself a very cheap Citroën Traction Avant 11 Légère to travel around in. I think it was ...

A Bugatti for Christmas

By Wayne Batty At the tender and still impressionable age of 13, Philip Porter received, as a birthday gift from his parents, a veritable tome on Bugatti written by the great expert Hugh Conway. Po...

France in the '70s: Part 1

By Micheal Kliebenstein Of all the amazing places I’ve experienced over the years, my most fond memories are of France in the seventies. Yes, I belong to a generation that grew up with the images o...

Bugatti Baby 2.0

When you are Ettore Bugatti and you need a birthday present for your son who is turning four years old, you don’t pop off to the department store for some die-cast trinket. No sir, you get your fac...

In The Manner Of Voltaire

In 1757, the French writer and playwright ‘Voltaire’, wrote, of poor wronged Admiral John Byng who was executed on board his own ship for supposedly disobeying orders, ‘...in this country, it is fo...

An unexpected Cooper SuperFind

By Michael KliebensteinWhenever I see a very significant race car still sporting its original steering wheel, racing seat and instruments, it always affects me. I feel it especially when I know tha...

Future Classic: Lamborghini Huracán GT3

As I gaze at the chiselled, stealth-like structure of the Huracán GT3 I realise how far my classic-car-informed mind is out of touch with current sports car styling principles.