Never underestimate the power of just driving around.

On a brisk fall weekend in 1978, cruising my SoCal neighborhood revealed a 1970 MGB parked curbside, leaves under the tires and grit covering the teal blue paint, top, and windows. The car looked too good for such neglect. Inquiring at the nearest house, I learned that the clutch had “gone out,” an expensive repair. 

Intrigued, I sought permission to examine the car. The odometer read under 50,000 miles, and the tires appeared original. Facing the unwanted clutch expense, the nice lady quickly offered it for $800, and I agreed. After returning with funds, I checked the car’s vitals, including the radiator water, the oil, the brake fluid, and the hydraulic clutch fluid. Shockingly, that small reservoir was dry. No wonder the pedal went to the floor.

Refilling the reservoir restored clutch operation immediately. A jumpstart then got the MG running, and with the convertible top lowered, I was away, cavorting about the neighborhood and, with some guilt, passing by the previous owner’s house.

The virginal MGB was the nicest car I’d yet owned. With 95 horsepower, it wasn’t fast, but it was extremely cute and everything worked, including the clutch, which elevated the roadster to “daily driver” level. This didn’t last. One day on the freeway, a Ford pickup made a desperate multilane sweep toward an offramp, spearing the little MG hard in the driver’s door. The truck’s bumper shoved the metal in just inches from my shoulder, while outside the window, the Ford’s headlight bezel stopped two feet from my head.

On scene, the truck owner accepted responsibility and we exchanged information. But when I presented the repair bill a week later, he recanted, instead claiming I was at fault. And so began my flirtation with litigation. I sued in small claims court, he didn’t appear, and the judge awarded me full damages and court costs. Soon, law enforcement ordered a tow truck to the man’s house to seize the pickup, and the officer later told me with delight how quickly he’d scurried out waving a checkbook.

The wounded MG got a new door, some bodywork, and a paintjob, and the settlement even afforded new tires. It drove faithfully thereafter and gave no reason for disillusionment, save the lack of air conditioning. Hence, when a 1977 Volkswagen Scirocco Champagne Edition with A/C appeared for sale locally, the MGB was also served with papers. As Jim Croce sang, “But isn’t that the way they say it goes?”

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We love driving our vintage cars, but sometimes local law says we can’t, shouldn’t, or are not welcome to do so. It’s frustrating, and the complexity of traffic law makes the situation confusing, even if those layers of legalese were accumulated over a century of incremental change targeted at keeping our roads orderly and our drivers safe.

The laws that govern driving are something that we agree to follow when we apply for and are granted our driving license. So what do we do when we want those laws changed?

The process is not simple or quick, but it is possible. Just a few weeks ago, a committed group of car enthusiasts won a long-awaited victory: The state of Michigan announced that it would alter the driving code as it pertained to the usage of vehicles with authentic or historic registrations (to qualify, a vehicle has to be 26 years or older).

The vehicle code of Michigan was written to restrict the driving of vehicles with these types of registrations to “club activities, exhibitions, tours, parades, and similar uses, including mechanical testing.” The law barred their use for regular transportation but granted a lower annual registration fee. A handful of drivers were issued tickets while at Detroit’s beloved Woodward Dream Cruise because the event did not fall under any of the approved scenarios yet drivers took their vintage rides out regardless of registration. John Russell, along with other members of the Twin Bay British Car Club, thought the situation was absurd, so they began the process of removing the restrictions.

Most states help people like you or I by giving us a roadmap to enact the change we wish to see. For example, Michigan.gov has a four-page explainer of the exact steps needed—in order, no less.

If only it were that simple. I reached out to a few of the people who were behind the recent change in Michigan, and they provided some valuable perspective. “I guess the word I would look for is perseverance,” said Dr. Fred Stoye, who worked closely with John Russell and other members of the Twin Bay British Car Club to march the path laid by the state. “We saw the need for positive change, followed all the legal steps, forged alliances in the legislature, and presented a plan that worked and was voted into law.”

The process was not quick. There were multiple dead ends along the way that put pauses on any progress and sometimes kicked them back to square one. In the end, the group persevered for ten years before they achieved the big victory. One of the tougher steps in the process was getting a lawmaker to pick up their cause. They struggled to find a sponsor who was willing to introduce the bill and to continue advocating for it as the bill stepped through committee review, which can take months to years, depending on a multitude of factors.

Even with a sponsor, and after the bill passed the Michigan House of Representatives, Russell and his compatriots had no time to relax. All the work up to that point could be done from afar, but when the bill entered the Michigan Senate, they were asked to testify at a hearing to explain why the relaxation of driving restrictions was worthwhile. Stoye, Russell, and other team members went to Lansing with a measured approach: “We expressed the need to drive our classic cars to keep them healthy and how there would be no adverse damage to our roads.” Their argument boiled down to the fact the current law was not particularly helping anything—so why did it exist?

Their argument might not apply to every change you or I would like to see regarding restrictions to the use of vintage cars, but the members of the Twin Bay British Car Club set a great example for automotive enthusiasts. What it really takes to change a law is the right group of people, motivated in the right way, who are willing to stick out the process.

If there is a restriction or driving law you think is outdated, superfluous, or otherwise unhelpful to the vintage car hobby: The power is in your hands. People just like you have succeeded in making change. Now it’s your turn.

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The streets where the El Camino SS ground to a stop in 1976 were impossibly steep, an upshot of So-Cal developers wringing max profits from barely buildable hillsides. Although the Chevy was dead in its tracks, at least the owner had safely chocked its tires against the curb beneath a towering, shady oleander. Unfortunately, the pretty Mediterranean shrub is toxic, and as it turned out, so was the battered Chevy.

But the SS 396 badge had me hooked. For $800, the El Camino started, shook and grumbled, and then chuffed on six cylinders to a friend’s house, whose parents, for some reason, tolerated our hulks in the driveway. It was a safe house, if you will, for ambitious youths and their pie-in-the-sky cars. 

I didn’t know what made the El Camino SS 396 special, other than its big 396-cid (402-cid, actually) V-8 could kick ass—but that was good enough for me. The Chevelle-based pickup was Champagne Gold with a white vinyl roof; inside, the Saddle bench seat and thick-pile carpeting smelled dangerously of mildew, PVC, and plasticizers. One quarter panel was dented, and its heavy steel front California black plate, highly prized nowadays, was literally ripped in half.

Bartering a Yamaha Enduro crank seal repair with a Chevron gas station owner got the misfire sorted out. He discovered two reversed plug wires, after which the SS 396 regained full strength. Or maybe it was half strength, because either its worn camshaft or the lifters weren’t opening the valves fully. Lacking a shop manual, I was only as smart as rumor and conjecture allowed, but I’d heard that tightening the rocker nuts could improve matters. It didn’t whatsoever. The valvetrain sure made a mess, though, chattering away and flinging oil across the engine bay.

Despite this, the SS 396 had enough muscle to haul my Suzuki RM250 motocross bike to the track, though it sucked gas ravenously. After discovering the “air booster” shocks, I gleefully inflated them to rake out my ride. Too much, apparently. The jacked-up look lasted one trip before the airbags blew, demoting the ride height to stock.

Moving away to college forced the El Camino’s sale, and seeing a nice one today genuinely makes me wistful. Would I ever freak out to discover a gold ’70 with a torn black plate for sale. After buying it, I would immediately rattle-can that vinyl top black. Naturally, in the safe-house driveway.

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The first full-throttle acceleration—once the oil is warm in the engine and the gearbox has lost its initial stiffness—that’s when you really feel how light the McLaren F1 is. Up to that point, you could be forgiven for questioning the 2500-pound weight. The steering is heavy, there is roll and dive and squat and the squeaking brakes don’t quite stop it on a dime. It isn’t a flighty, darty car with the reactions of a gnat that’s just sipped some espresso. 

But when you crack the titanium pedal on the right, tugging the cable to open wide the dozen individual throttle bodies behind you, then you feel how little mass there really is. Six hundred and twenty-seven of BMW M’s finest horsepowers propel you up the road with the instant insistence of a little Hot Wheels model launched by a catapult.

It’s not just the sudden pressure on your back you remember; the experience is elevated to an almost spiritual level by the accompanying sound. As you’re hurled forward, a ferocious, guttural bark fills your ears and seems to reverberate through your bones to their very marrow. Add in the tip-of-the-arrow feeling engendered by the forward-set central seat and it is a driving experience never to be forgotten.

It’s an experience that hasn’t dimmed with time, either. Despite the McLaren F1 being 30 years old, despite the changes in the motoring landscape, the F1 still feels top-tier in so many aspects. That engine still stacks up. The car’s weight seems all but unachievable these days. The performance figures have been surpassed by others, but not by many, and at 240 mph the F1 remains the fastest naturally aspirated production road car.

If Gordon Murray had decided to leave it at that, to push his drawing board into a corner of his office and just focus on collecting T-shirts, his legacy, his place in motoring history would still have been assured. Had he just stuck to things like the T.25 city car and the TVR project, leaving the higher echelons of performance alone, the same would have been true. But he’s chosen to go back. Now we have the GMA (Gordon Murray Automotive) T.50, a clear successor to the legendary F1.

Seeing the two cars parked next to each other, I’m not sure how to feel. Elated, obviously, and the first thing to do is give my arm a good pinch, just to make sure I’m not dreaming. Getting these two together has been a long time in the planning and it seems slightly surreal that everything has finally fallen into place in stunning Spain.

There is a part of me that is also nervous about the T.50. On the one hand, I’m concerned that it might not be able to reach the highs of the F1. It only has 34 hp more than the F1, not to mention quite a bit less torque: 353 lb-ft up against the McLaren’s 479 lb-ft. The T.50 is, amazingly, lighter. But will 12.5 percent be noticeable? And while modernization of some things will no doubt bring improvements, we all know that modern cars are generally a little less analog, a bit more detached than those that went before. What if this falls a tad flat after the F1?

Then there is the alternative, which is almost equally troubling. You know the point in Cars 3, the bit near the start of the film where Lightning McQueen is suddenly made to look old by the new-age Jackson Storm? Everyone feels sad for McQueen at that point. I don’t want to feel like that about the F1.

In terms of aesthetics, however, I don’t think the F1 needs to worry. The T.50 is curvaceous, with a more flowing, delicate body. The spine that runs from the roof down over the engine is slimmer and the sides are more sculpted—both things Murray wanted to change from the F1. But overall there is still something beguiling about the simpler, more compact McLaren.

Up close, it’s another story. Take the lights, for example, which are a story in microcosm that represents so much of the F1/T.50 tale. There was no money to develop bespoke lights for the McLaren, so the company had to just choose from a catalog. The distinctive, but rather large lamps at the rear could also be found gracing the backside of a Bova coach. Murray describes the headlights as having the performance of glowworms in a jar. 

By contrast, for the T.50, GMA went to British engineering company Wipac and simply said “we have to be better than anyone else.” So, Wipac benchmarked all the current supercars, found the McLaren 720S had the best headlight spread and throw, then designed something that GMA claims is 15 percent better. Regardless of performance, the light units certainly look fabulous—particularly the lenses that look like clumps of globular frogspawn.

This engineering artistry runs throughout the car, seen and unseen. GMA examined every part over the last few years to see if it could be lighter or more attractive, or preferably both. There are some gorgeous details on the F1, but you can sense and see the vastly greater budget that was given over to the T.50. Nowhere is this more evident than when you get inside—an act that is made a fraction less awkward by the removal of the two beams that divide the cockpit of the F1. The switchgear, door handles, haptics, and stunning central tachometer all reek of quality with a simple, technical style.

The starting procedure for a T.50 isn’t the work of a moment. You need to make sure the car is awake with a press of the key. Then you give the small Start/Stop button under the little red cover behind the gear lever a single push to bring the screens to life. Wait for them to cycle through for a few seconds… and then give the button another quick push. This will rouse things behind you, but although there is a decent amount of noise it’s still only the preamble of the starter/generator unit. It’s loud enough to fool anyone in the vicinity unused to the procedure into thinking that the engine has started. Which means they will then jump out of their skin 3.5 seconds later when the V-12 actually flares up with a yelp like a startled race car. I jumped the first time and, much to others’ hilarity, I was still jumping at the end of three days around a T.50.

Like the S70/2 engine in the F1, the T.50’s new, bespoke 3.9-liter V-12 from Cosworth is definitely the lead character in the cast of components in the car. For a start, it is loud. Even at idle and low speed the noise is noticeably greater than in the F1, to the extent that you might question a long journey. However, with its four throttle bodies and modern mapping it is beautifully tractable from low revs, with no histrionics when asked to putter around, so you’d have no qualms about a trip to town. The default GT throttle map also helps temper the initial response of the accelerator pedal, which makes life a little calmer.

Nonetheless, you are immediately aware that this is an engine with almost no inertia. It gains and loses revs with such alacrity that it’s initially hard to contemplate a world in which you’ll ever have enough sensitivity in your right foot to administer the correct blip on a downshift. It’s like graduating from the ability to have a casual kick-around on Friday to suddenly needing the touch of Messi.

Thankfully, there is a rev-match mode that will do the blips for you. While that might seem anathema in an analog car, trust me, it is very welcome while you get acclimatized. Same goes for beautifully judged electronic stability control; you will see the familiar warning light flashing on the left-hand screen as you begin to push harder on the exit of slower corners, but the interventions are so subtle that you just have a feeling of security rather than any sense of frustration. It all lets you build confidence and get your bearings.

The steering is weighty compared to most cars, but the T.50 demands much less muscle than the F1. Any extra effort builds as you head toward full lock, as expected, so that you have a good sense of the grip from the turning tires. Like the F1, there is still a certain softness to the front end with a bit of roll, but once you’re used to the way it loads up you can really lean into it and get confidence from the multi-layered messages it relays.

In short, the T.50 is a car that provides huge amounts of entertainment at moderate speeds. Like the F1, it is an occasion just to be in it. And if you only ever used two-thirds of the available revs, you would still feel like you had access to something amazing.

However, where things really depart from the F1 is when you start to push that bit further. In the McLaren you tread carefully as you drive it harder. The weight transfers with that V-12 behind you become ever more apparent as you push harder and you need to really take care if you find yourself turning while also braking or accelerating. Momentum will build and it might take some space to gather up. I love the challenge and feel of the F1 at speed, the squirm of the tall-sidewall rubber and the almost gravel-spec-rally-car softness of the suspension. It is intimidating and thrilling in equal measure but it’s not a car you play with. Unlike the T.50.

Once you’re dialed in, the GMA machine is one you can grab by the scruff of the neck and drive with commitment and confidence. Where the F1 feels light under acceleration, the T.50 feels light everywhere. Turn off the rev match, set the throttle map to Sport (making it totally linear in its response), dispense with the ESC and you have a car that revels in being taken that step further. The engine weighs a mere 392 pounds (194 less than the F1) and sits so low that you no longer have any issues with weight transfer, so it feels stable where the F1 needs care. Light up the rear tires and, thanks to a simple Salisbury limited-slip differential, it’s predictable, letting you really use the throttle to help you steer.

Then there is the engine: a spine-tingling, screaming symphony that responds as sharply as an electric motor. To be in control of something so wild feels extraordinary. And you really are in control, because three pedals and an H-pattern shifter means you have to think and understand the engine in a way that a paddle shift setup lets you bypass. The gearshift is not smooth and slick, it is tight and positive, but it needs to be like that so that you don’t have to think when everything is happening quickly. 

Ahead of the drive, I wondered if I’d notice the aero from that remarkable fan at the rear. In practice, you only do in that the braking feels wonderfully stable. To be honest I’m glad that it isn’t some aero grip fest in the corners. I’d much rather it was fun, and it is. The T.50 doesn’t just impress, it induces grins from ear to ear that last for hours, even days hence.

So, after driving the two cars back to back, did the T.50 make the F1 seem somehow obsolete? No. While Gordon Murray’s fingerprints are clearly on both cars and there are many similarities, they also have quite different characters. 

For starters, how do you choose between two soundtracks that are so different yet equally spine-tingling? To drive, the F1 feels meatier but also like a supercar you could use as a grand tourer. The T.50 is leaner, more lithe, but also louder and more like a super sports car. Yes, while the F1 was instantly iconic (and still is) simply by virtue of its numbers, but the T.50 really needs to be experienced in order to reveal its utter brilliance. I feel very, very lucky to have done just that.

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Life requires equilibrium. In a perfect world, we all would have an even trade-off of time spent working for someone else and time spent indulging our own personal interests and passions. The scale is rarely so neatly balanced though. So maybe shoot for quality over quantity and indulge yourself with five minutes of peaceful forest noise punctuated by the howl of a Ferrari V-8.

While the Modena Yellow Berlinetta stands out in a big way against the lush green backdrop, it’s the exhaust note that cuts through the serenity more than the bright exterior. The mid-mounted V-8 displaces just 3.5 liters, hence the 35 leading the model name. The final 5 is a reference to the number of valves per cylinder (cinquevalvole), which is uncommon for Ferrari but a perfect way to delineate the key difference between the previous 348 model and the evolved 355 that replaced it.

Looking at the car and hearing it are one thing, but the pièce de résistance is the gated six-speed manual transmission. The rise and and fall of the engine rpm, punctuated with the soft tink-tink of the shifter as the driver goes between second and third gear on a winding forest road, is the dream for many of us. Although we might be stuck at the desk for another couple of hours yet today, this is a perfect five-minute escape to the place we would rather be—even if we might likely never be there.

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In his review of the new Aston Martin Vantage, Henry Catchpole ponders wherefore and how art the 656-hp baby of the range is like a James Bond film. Of course, we are familiar with 007 driving a fine silver slice from Newport Pagnell or Gaydon, but it’s far from the only predictable trope: music, gadgets, villains, M, Q, Moneypenny—all are expected. And so it is with the spec sheet of a Vantage. 

The looks are instantly recognizable—perhaps more so than with the last generation—with classically Aston Martin design cues. And it is stunning. The AMG-sourced four-liter, twin-turbocharged V-8 is up front, as you’d expect, albeit behind the front wheels. Predictably, power goes solely to the rear wheels. It’s a script that is comforting in its familiarity. 

It is also very recognizable if you have perused the particulars of the Aston Martin DB12 that launched in 2023. In fact, save for a couple of seats and a very minor discrepancy in the power figures, they look like nearly identical cars. Even the Michelin Pilot Sport 5S tires are the same size, front and rear. So, one of the big questions for Catchpole was whether the new Vantage would feel markedly different to drive. 

The setting for the test was the countryside near Seville in southern Spain, with the blood red Rio Tinto running through it. We also took a new Vantage—this time decked out in an F1 safety car color scheme—to Circuito Monteblanco for some fast laps. Of course, we seized the opportunity to try out the handling with the new nine-stage traction control turned off, but the day also proved to be a test to see how well the Vantage’s increased cooling capability helped the car cope with temperatures approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit. 

At $191,000, the new Aston Martin Vantage competes with the Porsche 911 Turbo S, the Mercedes AMG GT, the Ferrari Roma, and potentially the Maserati MC20. In other words, it has to stack up. Let us know in the comments whether you think the new Vantage is a Daniel Craig or a George Lazenby.

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Among industrialists, the eclectic Henry J. Kaiser was like a prototype Elon Musk. Born in 1882 to an immigrant shoemaker, the gritty New Yorker helped build Hoover Dam, constructed WWII Liberty ships, founded Kaiser Aluminum, and co-founded the Kaiser Permanente healthcare giant. Postwar, he created the eponymous Henry J economy car (also sold by Sears as an Allstate), the supercharged Manhattan sedan and fiberglass Darrin roadster, and way more.

Broadly unaware of Mr. Kaiser’s successes, attracting me to this early ’54 Special in 1984 was its curious design, easy $1100 price, and audacious “Bambu” interior, which rocked ivory-toned, bamboo-style vinyl throughout. Whoa, how could someone so credible produce a vehicle mirroring a seasick capybara and appointed like a Polynesian tiki hut?

The Kaiser’s mundane 118-hp 226-cid flathead six breathed through a one-barrel carb and drove through a GM Hydramatic. The sedan started easily and ran across LA’s San Fernando Valley, where I’d found it, and to the Pacific Coast Highway without complaint—at least, until the mechanical fuel pump failed. An SOS call (10 cents at a beachside payphone) to a friend, followed by a ride to Pep Boys for an inline electric pump, got the Special going again. Engaged at the time, I pondered how to justify this glaring purchase since the tropical interior, “widow’s peak” grille and windshield, and Safety-Glo fender lights probably wouldn’t cut it. Then it occurred to me: Give it to the future Mrs. as an early wedding present! Oddly, the ploy worked.

Except for exterior paint and a patched floorboard, the Kaiser Special was highly original, even if it wasn’t hugely desirable. A step below the company’s supercharged models, it trundled along in a workmanlike manner, eventually making a 200-mile roundtrip to Los Angeles International Airport to meet my future father-in-law. “This is a fine car,” he said. Within a year, though, the Special was undeniably superfluous to our needs. In those pre-Internet days, limited channels existed for advertising classics locally, so we hit an LA Kaiser club Christmas party to distribute photos. It was like attending a cat show with a kitten in a basket, and then trying to give it away. In a festive mood for the holidays, the club members—all seriously doting Kaiser fans—were completely perplexed. “That looks really nice!” they exclaimed. “Why in the world would you want to sell it?”

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“I see you’ve brought it home,” says possibly the poshest man I’ve ever met. In the clipped tones of the English aristocracy, he goes on to explain that though number 48 Chagford Street has recently been refurbished, the building is outwardly much the same as it was in 1919 when W.O. Bentley began work on the first motor car to bear his name.

Back then, the cobbled Marylebone street was known as New Street Mews, but nonetheless, a blue plaque above the door of number 48 marks the monumental occasion.

Strictly speaking, I haven’t brought this car home at all. First, by the time Bentley built his brand-defining Blower, he had moved the company to Cricklewood in the London suburbs. Second, this Bentley Blower wasn’t built by Bentley.

Instead, it is assembled by The Little Car Company in Bicester. You may know them from their Baby Bugatti II, Ferrari Testa Rossa J and Aston Martin Junior—all sold as official OEM models, but as the naming suggests, significantly smaller in scale. The Bentley Blower Junior is the company’s most ambitious project to date. It’s bigger—at 85 percent of the original—but most notably it is road legal, which is why rather than a private track, I’m here in the heart of London for a drive of the first prototype.

Even in this quiet mews, the Blower Junior quickly attracts attention, with half a dozen people coming out of a nearby office to take a gander, plus our local historian, of course. It’s no wonder, really, since it looks fantastic—an almost exact replica of the Blower Team Car from 1929.

It may only be 3.7 meters (146 inches) long and 1.5 meters (59 inches) wide, but it still has plenty of presence, with that lovely louvered bonnet held down by leather straps, a pair of big spot lamps mounted ahead of the mesh grille, and even what looks like a supercharger mounted right at the front. In profile it’s a pure example of form following function—there are no unnecessary accoutrements, just big cycle wings all round and a spare tire mounted on the left hand side ahead of a Union flag on the single door. Externally mounted on the right is the handbrake, while the tail finishes abruptly with a small trunk in place of the original’s fuel tank.

Underneath is a steel chassis with leaf spring suspension and period-correct friction dampers. The brakes, sat behind the stunning spoked wheels, are modern Brembo discs. In lieu of an ash frame to support the bodywork, The Little Car Company has used carbon fiber, but the impregnated fabric that’s used for the skin is the same as in Bentley’s continuation models, and the hood is hand-formed aluminum. What’s most notably different from the 1929 original is the tandem two-seater layout, the little buckets trimmed in Dark Green Lustrana Hide, just as deployed by Mulliner for the continuation cars.

The turned aluminum dash sits behind a massive rope-bound steering wheel and houses traditional-look instruments and switchgear, albeit repurposed to suit the Junior’s powertrain. Like all the other Little Cars, the Blower is electric, powered by a 15kW (20-hp) motor at the rear that’s supplied by a 10.8 kWh battery pack. Its charge port is hidden, cheekily, within the front-mounted faux supercharger, and fully juiced you can drive for a claimed range of around 60 miles and reach a top speed of 45 mph (although it will be restricted to 25 mph in the U.S.).

Certainly that’s more than enough for what I require in order to follow W.O.’s own London journey. I’m skipping Cricklewood because the factory is long gone, replaced by a drab modern industrial unit. I’m instead heading for Berkeley Square in Mayfair, where Jack Barclay has been selling Bentleys since 1927, making it the oldest dealership in the world.

I use the single step to hop through the narrow door aperture, dropping down into the seat. A wave of an immobilizer, a push of a start button, and the Blower doesn’t so much blow as hum. A smaller lever on the dash selects drive, and with a squeeze of the handbrake and a prod of the right pedal I’m off, with my new chums waving goodbye.

It’s stop-start all the way to Mayfair, but there’s never a dull moment. London’s road users are not known for their affability, but everyone smiles when they see the Blower. I couldn’t count the number of smartphone snaps I now feature in, nor the times someone says “Nice car!”

At Jack Barclay, they’re especially excited to see the Blower, inviting me into the showroom alongside Bentaygas and Continentals. Even the staff in the neighbouring Ferrari franchise come to take a look.

After a few laps of the square, I ascertain that the steering requires several armfuls of lock for even the most gentle curve, and that the suspension certainly doesn’t cosset like a modern Bentley. In other words, this drives like an old car. Which is a compliment.

Acceleration is brisk to the 20 mph central London speed limit and the brakes seem up to the job of avoiding gobsmacked tourists who stop suddenly to fire away with their phones.

Long before social media, word of Bentley’s victory at the 1927 Le Mans 24 Hours reached London by telephone, and The Autocar invited the Bentley Boys to a slap-up dinner at The Savoy hotel on The Strand. Such was the clout of the printed page in those days that the magazine even persuaded the hotel to allow the car inside. Once dismantled and reassembled, the car was the centerpiece of the table at which drivers Dudley Benjafield and Sammy Davis enjoyed an 11-course feast.

It’s another traffic-filled trip to get there, but no less entertaining thanks to the cheer the Blower brings to everyone around it. Arriving at the Savoy, the car is clearly small enough to drive through the doors of the hotel, but I settle for a quick in-and-out drive under their porte-cochere instead. The doormen are completely unfazed.

Perhaps if I’d told them it costs £109,000 ($136,500) they may have raised an eyebrow, but then again probably not, given that a single night in the Royal Suite is £17,500 ($22,000).

Both are, of course, a quite unnecessary indulgence, but the Blower seems somehow less selfish, as it spreads joy wherever you go. It turns gridlock to grin lock. Everybody loves this car and I’m no exception.

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As the summer driving season approaches, Hagerty’s new Road of the Year award is meant to encourage Hagerty Drivers Club members and all automotive enthusiasts to get off the freeways and explore a great road in their own region. Our first annual Road of the Year winner: California’s Highway 33. This epic two-lane road is within easy reach of residents and visitors to the Los Angeles area. If you’d like to make your voice heard and discuss your favorite road, comment below and share the love of driving with fellow enthusiasts.

As important as what you drive and where you are going is how you get there. Because any wheel-driven vehicle cannot function without a surface upon which to exert its motive force, the road is as important to a car as oxygen is to the human body. OK, there are a few exceptions, including the lunar rover, but one characteristic shared by almost all automobiles built between the 1885 Benz Patent-Motorwagen and the 2024 Tesla Cybertruck is that they function to their full potential only on a prepared surface. Unlike the USS Enterprise, cars go best where others have gone before.

There are more than 4 million miles of road in the United States, from the Aleutian Islands to the Florida Keys. We’ve built roads over and under mountains, across sweeping spans of water, through the eastern forests and the western deserts, around nearly every island, and over the southern swamps. Picking one to single out as the best is impossible. The best for what? Since Roman times, roads have been engineered to do one thing and one thing only: link points on a map so that travelers may more easily journey between them.

However, as we all know, roads are capable of so much more. They can provoke delight and terror in equal doses. They can be vaults for our memories and incubators of our dreams. They can pay riches and serve as the best schools from which to get an education. Whether you press an accelerator or twist a grip, something is going to happen to you on a road, and there are a few worth recognizing for the extent to which they stir our spirits as much as get us to where we are going.

In our selection, the first of what we plan to make an annual feature, a few rules were necessarily applied to help winnow down the endless possibilities. First, the road had to be no more than a one-day round trip from a major urban center, the thinking being that anyone should be able to access the route easily as a day excursion and while perhaps visiting this urban center for work or vacation (we may change our mind on this point in future selections). Also, the pavement had to be in good condition. Plus, it had to have some dining amenities, and we leaned toward roads with outlets to other roads, such that they could be run in one direction rather than merely to a turnaround point.

The best roads tend to pass through majestic scenery, and majestic scenery tends to have extreme weather. Thus, always check the conditions before departing. It’s a living landscape in which rivers swell and mountains move, sometimes onto roads, making published routes suddenly impassible. Great roads often don’t have continuous cellphone coverage either, so best to bring some tools and an extra set of points if going in an older car. Hagerty Roadside is good, but they’re not psychic; they can’t find you if you can’t call them.

None of which should deter anyone from venturing out onto this or any other road, the one and only place our cars truly belong. “Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, nor a friend to know me,” wrote the poet Robert Louis Stevenson. “All I ask, the heaven above, and the road below me.”

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California is a fever dream that has been riling up folks since well before it became the 31st state back in 1850. Then, people didn’t worry too much about asking permission for stuff—they just went out and did it. Indeed, when the car came along, the state’s public works barons laid out the first highways that way, spreading maps of the still wild and remote state with its serial mountain ranges and yawning valleys and drawing arbitrary lines between the dots of settlements. Then they went out and slashed and dug and bored and dynamited their way through, confronting a rough and merciless terrain that does not give up its miles easily.

Those early road builders were pitted against a formidable foe: the ancient tectonic forces that lurk beneath California’s roiling landscape. The northbound Pacific Plate and the southbound North American Plate are experiencing a slow-motion crash, scraping against each other like two continent-size semis sideswiping over a double-yellow. The movement at their meeting point, the 750-mile-long San Andreas Fault, happens in famously rattling fits and starts, the bigger jerks making the national news.

The hills and granite peaks shoved skyward by this 30-million-year-old collision are like the wrinkles in a crumpled fender, and they are not easy to go under or around. So, California’s first road builders (as well as its current ones) mostly went over them, contouring their routes to the ridges and folds of this messy landscape and unwittingly creating thousands of apexes and on-camber thrillers for later generations to enjoy.

California State Route 33, about two hours’ drive north of Los Angeles (give or take, depending, as always, on traffic), is a perfect example. It squiggles and wiggles its way from the quaint village of Ojai up and over the Topatopa and Pine Mountains, rising to 5160 feet at the Pine Mountain Summit before plunging thrillingly into a gorge created by the Sespe Creek, eventually spilling out into the broad agricultural and ranching valley of Cuyama. If you don’t feel the need to immediately U-turn and run it backward, there’s an achingly beautiful option just to the east that recrosses the mountains to join up with Interstate 5 and the express route back to LA.

This road has everything: technical challenges, gob-smacking vistas, relatively light traffic, generally hospitable weather, a very tourist-friendly walking town as its jumping-off point, and the option of returning to the same bed in LA from which you arose that morning. And if you prefer to overnight in Ojai and make an early start, we can highly recommend it, with accommodation choices ranging from relatively inexpensive motor lodges such as the Casa Ojai and the Hummingbird Inn to the ultra-ritzy Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. There’s even a NAPA auto parts store and a tire shop in town if needs arise, and a main drag fronted by old Spanish-style colonnades and lined with pleasant eateries and shops.

Just west of town, State Route 33 branches off Ojai’s main drag, or State Route 150, and heads north. Take on fuel here or elsewhere in town before heading out, as you won’t see another petrol pump for a long time. After passing a few subdivisions and bar/restaurant establishments popular in summer with the biker crowd, you’ll enter Los Padres National Forest and civilization will disappear in your mirrors.

The view forward won’t look much different than it did a century ago when state planners envisioned a wagon trail to connect the seaside village of Ventura with the inland valleys of the San Joaquin and Cuyama. In 1891, when the first stakes were planted for the route, the obstacles must have seemed overwhelming as the route climbed inland from the coast. From the village of Nordhoff (which sounded too German after the outbreak of World War I and was changed to Ojai, or “Valley of the Moon” in the native Chumash language), the Topatopas tower like a wall, leering over this serene enclave of orchards and horse farms like the mossy ramparts of an ancient castle. Behind this wall lay a vast wilderness ruled by mountain lions and circling condors that was accessible only via pack mules on old Chumash trails. No doubt this is why it took 45 years for State Route 33 to go from planning to reality.

With the Great Depression on and California flush with a substantial share of a $400 million national road-building fund, the state got serious about completing the route. It spent $1.5 million to construct the Maricopa-Ventura Highway, aka U.S. Route 399, aka California State Route 33, finally completing it in 1935. The road’s most ardent supporters (and its primary economic benefactors) were the ranchers of the Cuyama Valley, and they threw an epic barbecue to which 25,000 came to feast on some 67 cattle slaughtered and roasted for the occasion.

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As the condor flies, it’s a mere 36 miles from Ojai to the T-junction with State Route 166 at Cuyama, but as the ’66 Mustang rolls, it’s about twice that distance, meaning you’re in for a lot of twists and turns over the next hour and a half. A series of tunnels bored and blasted through granite spurs welcomes you to Wheeler Gorge and the start of the rough country. One day in 1888, Wheeler Blumberg discovered the hot springs that burble from the rock here when he shot a buck that rolled down and parboiled itself in the warm waters. It’s believed the inhabitants of the nearby Chumash settlement may have cursed the invaders of their private spa, because after founding a successful resort in the canyon, Wheeler went mad, shooting 15 holes in the walls of his hotel before he was captured by a posse. He died in 1907 screaming in a padded cell. Successive owners of the resort have struggled through floods, falling trees, and repeated fires with limited success. After sitting abandoned for years, its latest incarnation is as a yoga retreat.

From Wheeler’s place, the road begins its climb up the long, spectacular valley, hugging the canyon walls and tracing each fold in the earth with lovely constant-radius corners that feed into short chutes that lead to more corners. A circular gravel turnoff 15 miles up from Ojai affords an excellent picnic spot with a stunning view out to the distant Pacific Ocean. Many a car-magazine spread, including photos from our five-generations-of-Corvette feature story back in 2020, has been shot here.

The unusually stormy winter of 2022 may have proved that the Chumash curse still has legs; parts of State Route 33 disappeared under rock slides or simply slid down the mountain, and the road was completely closed for almost a year. Last December, Caltrans, the state highway agency, finally reopened it with five one-way sections controlled by traffic signals. Work with heavy machinery was evidently in progress when we photographed this story, and it’s hoped that the one-way sections will be gone by the time you read this.

Near the top of the Topatopas, the Rose Valley Campground offers tenting and RV options for the hardy. And for the truly adventurous, a foot trail and primitive camping network spreads from here into the vast Sespe Wilderness. This whole untamed area shows that much of California, even with its 39 million people, crowded cities, and astronomical housing costs, remains in many places empty and undeveloped, even this close to Los Angeles.

A descent down into Sespe Canyon leads across some bridges and through the gorge cut by the Sespe Creek, which the road tracks with now gentler and faster curves. Another climb hauls you up to a sign announcing the 5160-foot Pine Mountain Summit, after which it’s all downhill from here. Big-sky views at the turnouts supply grand vistas over the mottled green and brown hills and sandy valleys that form the arid landscape, the single road sluicing through it the only real evidence of human hands.

Eventually the writhing road comes to the U.S. Forest Service Ozena Fire Station, and the option to short-circuit the loop back to Interstate 5 by hanging a right on Lockwood Valley Road. However, this narrow, sparsely trafficked ribbon can be in even worse shape due to ever-present sand in the corners and tire-slashing rock falls. And you may have to wade through Reyes Creek, as it tends to spill over the road during wetter months.

Continue north on State Route 33 through the widening valley and past the pistachio farms and new-age meditation centers and you’ll run into State Route 166. Hang a left and run the few miles into New Cuyama to a restored 1950s roadhouse and inn called the Cuyama Buckhorn for some of its locally famous barbecue. Be aware: Though the bar serves food until 8:30 Monday to Wednesday, the restaurant is closed on these days, as are many hospitality businesses up here owing to the utter lack of traffic on weekdays.

Tanks refueled, you can either return to Ojai or keep going via our optional route back to Interstate 5. If you choose the latter, continue heading east on 166, past the State Route 33 junction you just came from (166 and 33 actually merge here, 33 eventually turning north, at times merging with other roads to finally terminate near Stockton, east of the Bay Area). Just a few miles on, hook a right turn at Hudson Ranch Road. This rural byway romps through empty meadows and shoots along high ridges, then roller-coasters around the fringes of 8800-foot Mount Pinos. Lofty views of California’s Central Valley to the east are in the offing on clear days, and when you turn around, you’ll see the mountains to the west that you just drove through on State Route 33, now from a new perspective.

The road plunges into a pine forest and passes through the Pine Mountain Club, a cluster of week-end-getaway-type homes (though surely some are year-round residences) centered on a small commercial strip with a general store, some cafes, and a bed and breakfast. If you’re here in winter, carry tire chains and be prepared for icy conditions. The mountainous section of Interstate 5 known as the Grapevine isn’t too far ahead, but even that mighty and vital thorough-fare is subject to closure by the California Highway Patrol during snowstorms, lest the traffic be stalled on the black ice of its steep grades.

There’s no end of adventure on this route, even once you reach the freeway. Which is why we selected California State Route 33 as our 2024 Hagerty Road of the Year. Now it’s time to go find your own best road, and if you can beat this one, tell us all about it. We need some ideas for next year.

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I hadn’t had my ’57 Corvette long before it helped me accumulate a couple of tickets and a one-month license suspension. It was the kind of car that encouraged exuberance, and as a teenager in a car-crazy era, I couldn’t get enough of it.

Naturally, I used that enforced break from driving to modify my ‘Vette. I started by investing summer-job money in a Duntov cam and a set of solid lifters. Next came a manual gearbox. I couldn’t afford to swap in a four-speed, so I settled for a three-speed and paid a mechanic to install it and its clutch mechanism.

Then, once my license was restored and the ‘Vette was ready, a friend and I picked it up from the shop and test drove it out of town. We headed for a long, straight stretch of divided parkway with no houses or traffic where someone had painted 1/4-mile start and finish lines on the eastbound side. We wanted to try a fun run, so approaching that section on the westbound side, just cruising in third, I decided to punch it without downshifting to see how it pulled from low rpm. I was watching the road, not the speedometer, but we were likely up to 90 or so (in a 35-mph zone) before I backed off and braked for the stop at the next intersection.

When we got there, a pair of angry cops were waiting. “Do you know how fast you were going, kid?” one growled angrily. “No, officer,” I grinned, thinking they had merely heard the engine at high rpm and didn’t really have anything on me. I was not about to confess.

“We clocked you at 80,” he snarled. “Let me see your license.” It turned out they had radar hidden halfway down the road (unusual at the time) and were monitoring it from the corner. “Is that as fast as that car will go?” one officer sarcastically enquired while his partner was writing maybe the best ticket of his career. “Yeah … in first gear,” I snarked.

Before this ‘Vette, I had a well-used ’57 MGA, which was cool for school but slow, unreliable, and a little rusty. I lusted for something cooler and quicker and started threatening to trade it for an older Corvette. I even checked out a couple of not-so-cherry ‘54s and ‘55s.

My folks were not wealthy, but my father, a Nebraska farmer’s son, loved cars and was a skilled driver who had wheels as a kid. He believed his sons should, too. His affinity included Corvettes, and on a business trip to Detroit, he found this nice ‘57—a black base car with a detachable hardtop, a 245-horse twin-four-barrel 283-cubic inch V-8 and a Powerglide two-speed automatic. He talked the seller down to $1500 and brought it home. So, as a car-loving high-school senior, I ended up with the only Corvette around. Truly bad-ass!

Not only did the Corvette encourage my assertive driving habits, it also brought out my creativity, serving as a blank canvas that my teenage car-crazy self couldn’t help but personalize. When the inevitable big ticket that came after my 80-mph test run earned me a second license suspension, this time for three long months, I decided I would use the time off to customize my ‘Vette.

Growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I had always had a thing for customized cars. I lusted over the best ones in magazines and built plastic car models with every cool modification I could manage. Why not apply that (questionable) skill to my own set of wheels? In those days, it was just a used sports car, not yet a coveted collectible.

I started by painting white racing stripes nose-to-tail. Then I removed every other tooth from the grille and blacked out its horizontal bar, leaving half as many teeth floating twice as far apart in the oval opening. I thought that was a good look for a toothy C1 Corvette (and still do). I also pulled off both front and rear license-plate brackets and the rear-fender chrome trim and added twin antennas, custom (’68 Olds wagon) taillamp lenses, and triple (’64 Pontiac Tempest) chrome strips in the coves. I also installed short lake pipes with removable caps, which tended to drag on driveway ramps and break off every week or two.

We didn’t have an abundance of aftermarket alloy wheels way back then, but we did have hubcaps. I tried chrome “moon” discs for a while, then switched to spun aluminum “racing” discs. Tire choices were limited to black- or whitewall bias-ply, and I didn’t have money for new ones anyway. The ho-hum, half-tread set of whitewalls that came on it would have to do.

I two-toned the orangey-red dash and seats, the latter with white upholstery paint, then paid a body shop to Bondo chrome exhaust tips into the rear fenders. Finally, I painted the inside of the trunk white and sweet-talked my visiting artist cousin into painting a cartoon skunk in there because we had christened my newly striped and customized ‘Vette “Li’l Stinkie.”

The doors and dash did look better painted white, but it wasn’t long before the paint on the seats began to crack and look awful, so I bought a set of seat covers to hide them. And the tightly restrained exhausts soon vibrated through the Bondo. Otherwise, I thought it looked pretty good. And it got a new white convertible top, which our family cat walked all over leaving indelible paw prints on it the first night it was home. I love animals but never liked that cat.

Because it still had the numerically low axle ratio that came with the Powerglide automatic, it was incredibly long-legged, good for 65 mph in first, over 100 in second and I don’t know what in third. I pushed it to 100 a couple times where I thought it was safe but had the good sense never to exceed that speed.

I even took it to the local drags one Sunday and won a trophy. It was a bit of a dog off the line, but while the other cars with their numerically high gear ratios were already in fourth halfway down the strip, Li’l Stinkie and I were cruising by in second gear just before the finish. Hilarious!

It also nearly killed me more than once. It suddenly slid sideways on a wet curvy four-lane during Friday rush-hour traffic on my way home from my summer construction job. I caught the slide and avoided getting battered, but that was a scary lesson for a teenager.

Scarier still was a near disaster on the night of my senior prom. After dropping girlfriend Marty home, I stupidly decided to try a late-night run on that makeshift drag strip. Well into second gear, a large dog suddenly appeared in my headlamps trotting down the middle of the road. I jammed on the brakes and swerved to miss it, which sent me into a series of left-right-left tank slappers.

Very fortunately, I knew enough even at 17 to understand that getting off the brakes would help me regain control, so I did and somehow avoided both the dog and the high curbs that likely would have flipped me into the puckerbrush on either side of the road. Whew!!! I was probably wearing the Sears seatbelt I had bought and installed but had no roll bar to keep the car off my head if it went belly up. Another very scary lesson—one I wouldn’t forget.

When it came time for college, my ‘Vette had to go because my dad needed the money. But my customization had badly damaged its value. “Your son pretty much ruined that car,” one dealer told him. Another who specialized in used Corvettes finally bought it for $1,200, as I recall. Years later, I encountered that guy working as a salesman at a different dealership and asked whether he remembered Li’l Stinkie. “Hell, boy,” he said, “I lost my ass on that car!”

Looking back, modifying that future classic was a major collector Corvette sacrilege, but this was an era before phrases like “matching numbers” and “period-correct” had much significance. In the moment, Li’l Stinkie embodied my car-crazy tastes, and I don’t think I’d change a thing.

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The moment I open the driver’s door, there’s a “striking” clue that I am dealing with no ordinary Volvo 240. Positioned next to the seat is what at first appears to be a second handbrake lever. On closer inspection, however it turns out to be a hefty baton—mounted for easy access in case of carjack or kidnap attempt.

The car’s original keeper was justifiably paranoid. As CEO of Volvo in 1988 Pehr Gustaf Gyllenhammar had every reason to be concerned for his safety. Not only was Gyllenhammar Sweden’s most high-profile industrialist, he was poised to become leader of the Liberal People’s Party, perhaps even Prime Minister.

Mind you, Swedish politics was a dangerous game in the Eighties. Just two years earlier PM Olof Palme was assassinated outside a Stockholm cinema. No wonder Gyllenhammar chose to carry some protection.

There’s more to this car’s arsenal. Under the hood is a turbocharged 2.5-liter 16-valve engine that you won’t find in any other 240. Its 240 hp gave Gyllenhammer a fighting chance to outrun any assailants, while uprated suspension would help him carve through corners if necessary.

“You’ll like it. It’s like an E30 M3,” suggests Hans Hedberg, curator of Volvo’s heritage collection, as he hands over the keys.

Volvos of this era are best known for their solidity, although in 1985 “The Flying Brick” did win the European and the German Touring Car Championships. He may be on to something.

Hedburg, a former automotive editor, sets off rather swiftly in a C30 and I give chase in the 240, still somewhat skeptical about this bold claim. Mostly that’s because I’m a little distracted by the plush interior, with its gray velour seats and matching scatter cushions for the rear bench, the walnut trim that extends to the dash and carphone, and the Sony stereo that’s in addition to the standard Volvo radio cassette and connected to a CD changer in the trunk. I imagine Gyllenhammer blasting out Roxette’s Dressed for Success as he took his daily drive to the factory. Or maybe not.

The rocking soundtrack for my drive comes purely from the powertrain. There’s a pleasingly deep bass from the exhaust; then, as the revs rise, a higher pitch emanates from the intake and a whoosh of turbo boost fills your ears.

The turbo requires at least 2500 rpm to spin up. From there, you simply rev the engine out to its 6000-rpm redline before grabbing the next gear. Do this, and the 240 really does shift cleanly. The four-speed (plus electric overdrive) manual transmission has a long throw but is pretty accurate. When working your way down the gearbox, the pedals are spaced close enough for a bit of heel-toeing.

In hot pursuit of Hedburg, who leads me through some entertainingly twisty country roads, I become rather taken with this special 240’s handling. The suspension allows for roll without being too stiff, still able to soak up bumps and imperfections in the asphalt. The steering is accurate and offers fair feedback but is just a tad slow, meaning inputs are a little larger than I initially expect.

So not quite an M3, but the boss’s 240 is still far more agile and entertaining than I’d ever have imagined from looking at it. Gyllenhammar kept the look very low-key, with pale gray paintwork and tasteful aluminum wheels but no badging or bodywork bulges to indicate its performance. In fact, the only external clue that this isn’t a bog-standard 240 is that the exhaust has a small cross welded inside to avoid any banana-in-the-tailpipe attacks.

Alas, Gyllenhammar’s time as Volvo’s boss proved controversial. While he oversaw the brand’s significant expansion, his failure to deliver a merger with Renault led to his departure in 1993. At least he could make a quick getaway.

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It came from Hawaii. God only knows how the ’81 DeLorean got there, but its VIN appeared on a list of cars reserved for company use, so maybe some executive needed it for work retreats with his “niece.” Anyway, the sharklike DMC-12 later surfaced on a used-car lot, where a university professor bought it. He loved it and retained it until the early 2000s.

Upon delivery in California, it had covered just 15,200 miles but had suffered from decades in a warm, humid environment. As expected, the stainless body was nearly faultless, but the painted steel wishbone frame—actually, everything underneath—was corroded.

The fuel system rejected all repair efforts. Its legions of mysterious lines, filters, cannisters and hoses ran from here to eternity, like a tangle of snakes in an Indiana Jones dungeon. And the gas tank? It smelled like the La Brea Tar Pits. But the good old Bosch Jetronic mechanical fuel injection still worked, and the blasted car ran!

Friends joked about my DMC-12 ownership. But why? Lotus engineering carried prestige, as did John DeLorean, father of the muscle car. Truthfully, though, the DeLorean was all sizzle, no steak, as it wed highly provocative styling to a flaccid Franco-Swede V-6 mounted way astern. This was a deal breaker for “real” car guys, as were the subsequent scandals, bankruptcy, and a certain movie that reduced DeLorean’s masterwork to a PG-rated temporal comedy.

However, the public thought otherwise. I’ve owned a lot of cars, but I’ve never owned one that garnered so many waves, smiles, and inquiries. Lonely or feeling blue? Buy a DeLorean and drive it around; the reactions are euphoric, and you’ll instantly make new friends.

Knowing this, a friend and I planned a grand entrance at a pretentious local restaurant, where valets ensure red-carpet style arrivals seen by all. Our goal was for the mulish DeLorean to deny some prancing horse a parking spot. It all went wrong. Just 500 yards from our target, the DMC-12 started kicking and bucking, reducing progress to a crawl. Its fuel-starvation gremlin had returned.

Still dressed to impress, we U-turned and limped back up the mountain whence we’d come. It was a long, quiet drive, punctuated by the hiccupping engine. We finally struggled up my street at 5 mph, and the DeLorean was served its papers shortly afterward. The buyer arrived in an ex-Las Vegas limo full of partiers and called AAA to haul the DeLorean away.

It had found the right home.

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When the phone rang one fine autumn day in 2012, the caller seemed a little desperate—a local motorcycle shop owner looking for a savior. Fortunately, it was nothing personal; the salvation needed was for a crusty 1955 Matchless G80 CS that he’d found. Shoved into the back of a local garage in 1966, it had been dismissed by its owner in favor of a new Yamaha two-stroke. After that, his Brit-bike days were done.

Frankly, the ensuing 46 years proved unkind to the London-built 500cc single, as its owner hadn’t noticed—or had, but ignored—a leaky roof, which turned the space into a breeder for rust and corrosion. And once he and his wife finally passed away, the dear Matchless was nearly beyond saving. But not quite. While family heaved the remnants of dad’s motorcycling life into a dumpster, I adopted the old dear and, with friends’ help, pledged to bring it around.

Like a geode—craggy on the outside and gleaming on the inside—the Matchless surprised us all. The carburetor and fuel tank proved spotless, and the dry sump’s remaining oil drained out clean. Servicing the magneto, checking the valve lash, replacing fork and engine oil, and adding new drive chains got the G80 ready to run. And run it did, after some fussing with ignition timing and throttle settings—and several mighty heaves on the kickstart lever.

Stripped for scrambling and flouting an open pipe and universal tires, the G80 was—in period vernacular—a “desert sled,” a term that was likely both affectionate and punitive. Having trouble with a boorish DMV? In ‘66, registering the big thumper was easy; its only road equipment was a brake light, powered by a 6-volt lantern battery clamped to a frame tube. Who cares if the tags expired the same year the Camaro debuted? After our shop time, the Matchless ran down the road like a colt again, frolicking and bucking and full of life.

What to do with it now is perplexing. Neither a good dirt bike nor street bike by modern standards, it’s also too precious a time warp to restore. “Too few left in such condition” is my excuse for not touching it cosmetically. And so, the star-crossed Matchless sits once more, nearly 60 years after first being parked. For now, it’s in the back of a garage again. Thankfully, though, the roof doesn’t leak.

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

David Zenlea’s story about whether we are in the waning days of affordable sports cars that go very fast reminded me of a recent driving adventure in which I drove a car that goes very slow.

The car: a 1903 Knox made in Springfield, Massachusetts. Top speed: about 26 mph if I gunned it and was going downhill. With a tailwind. The occasion: the 2023 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, the oldest car rally in the world, dating back to 1896.

I participated in this glorious slow-motion tradition for the first time in 2007, but my steed—a borrowed 1904 Rambler—wasn’t up to the task of chugging 54 miles from Hyde Park in central London to the coastal town of Brighton. Instead, to my great disappointment, it broke down outside Westminster Abbey. Twelve years later, I completed the journey aboard the Knox. We finished again last November, along with hundreds of other Veteran cars, some of which have completed the Run 60 or 70 times. Think about that. Vehicles over 120 years old still driving on public roads—albeit early on a Sunday morning. These were among the first cars ever built, and yet all these decades later, they haven’t lost their ability to transport both our bodies and our souls, mine included. It’s an amazing experience, and it gives me hope for the next century of motoring fun.

Which brings me back to David’s splendid think-and-drive piece, which tests out five fantastic new sports cars—with, key point, manual gearboxes—that you can buy right now for $50,000 or under: the Acura Integra Type S, the Mazda Miata, the Subaru BRZ, the Toyota GR Corolla, and the recently refreshed Mustang. I’m sure you’ll agree that these are all inspiring machines in an era when many cars barely get our attention. I would love to drive all of them on a twisty road like the ones our editors found in southeast Ohio, and I bet you would, too.

That alone tells me that we aren’t in the end times of affordable sports cars at all. To the contrary, I think it’s proof that we are living in—and have been for some time now—a golden age of motoring performance. I’m quite serious. I’ve been a sports car fanatic since I can remember, and I can’t think of a time when there were more sports cars—foreign and domestic—with today’s combination of drivability, dependability, affordability, and raw power. Can you?

There are those who will say, “Yes, but it’s all going to end soon!” Car people are the best people in the world, but we do like to worry. The concern, of course, is that EVs will ruin everything. But what if they change nothing? Or very little? Porsche has already said it will keep producing gas-powered 911s for as long as it can. They get it. Others do, too, I suspect. I personally know many of the executives running our car companies, and I can tell you they bleed high-octane fuel and are committed to serving enthusiasts.

Maybe there will come a day when no one makes gas-powered sports cars anymore, but even so, that doesn’t mean the fun is over. I’ve driven some of the best EVs out there, and they are truly a blast. The torque alone wins you over. They add to the sports car world, not detract from it, in my view. The more, the merrier. EVs will be an ever-increasing part of the mix, but it’s not a zero-sum game. The sports car market is likely going to be a hybrid environment—a mix of electric and gasoline engines—for the foreseeable future. Let’s also not forget that the millions of cool, fast internal-combustion cars that are already out there aren’t going to disappear overnight. Like my Knox, a lot of them will be on the road and in our garages for a long time to come.

Love endures. So do great cars.

I would love to hear what you think. Please be sure to leave a comment below.

***

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As a budding gearhead, the transition from cars of the college years to those of the career years was instant and profound, as a steady paycheck enabled moving from cheap castoffs to cars costing thousands. In 1979, good employment thus netted me a nearly new Volkswagen Scirocco. After a coworker praised his ’76 model, based on the Rabbit but sporting a rakish Giugiaro body design, I joined the club with this mint, low-mileage 1977 Champagne Edition, which I’d found nearby for $4700.

Compared to the $300 Triumph TR6 it replaced, the 1.5-liter fuel-injected Scirocco seemed like a Mercedes-Benz 300SL. The doors closed tightly, the sound insulation excelled, and the Platinum Metallic paint and interior materials were faultless. I had never owned a car with such stellar and fit and finish. And that tartan upholstery? Well, it reminded me of Jackie Stewart’s F1 helmet. I had arrived.

Some surprises eventually emerged, including that one door had previously been VW Lime Green. Annoyed, I called the seller, who confessed that the original had been stolen while the car was being serviced. (Aside: Who steals a door?) When I finally decided that the MacPherson struts were inadequate, I replaced them with Konis. The swap took all day and resulted in perceptibly different front and rear dynamics best described as “sketchy.”

No sooner had I gotten the Scirocco “dialed in,” however, than a move from California to Florida for grad school dictated change. The VW obliged, with a U-Haul box on its roof, a bicycle riding the tailgate, and my stereo, electric typewriter, slide rule, scuba gear, Igloo cooler, and current girlfriend all squeezed inside. The whole rig totally gave off a Grapes of Wrath vibe.

That Igloo came in handy, it turns out, as the air conditioning faltered in Texas, in August, making for one sweaty ride. But it wasn’t enough. The last straw for my passenger was camping in Texarkana, Arkansas, and witnessing an armadillo scamper past the tent at night, as cicadas sang loudly in the stifling heat. Adding to the sadness of the “See ya!” that soon followed was that I was now once again confined to a student’s budget, so the Volkswagen didn’t get the love it deserved. I eventually sold it, lazy A/C and all, plus a suspect alternator and a sticking odometer.

In 2018, I contested an SCCA autocross at California Speedway in a 2004 Mini Cooper S. Another entrant had a race-prepared first-gen Scirocco. When I told him I’d owned a sweet Champagne Edition for a time, he really lit up. “Are you kidding me?” he exclaimed. “Those are so rare!”

Another one bought right but sold too soon…

***

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Wolves howl in the forest while on the hunt. So do car guys when they sense they may make a killing. That could explain why, during the run-up of classic Corvette values in the early 2000s, my friend Scott Young and I bought this 1964 convertible sight unseen. Reportedly built by a Milwaukee enthusiast in 1968, the “Executioner” competed at the strip and in regional International Show Car Association (ISCA) shows. Ultimately, however, the radical customizing turned a low-mileage 300-hp, four-speed Sting Ray into a nearly unsaleable oddity. We just didn’t know it yet.

Popular in the early 1960s, straight-axle drag conversions meant surgically altering the frame, and so began the journey of this genial Daytona Blue roadster into a medieval menace. Sawed off and discarded was the independent front suspension—a real value loss. In showboat tradition, chromed parts included the requisite tubular axle, steering box, and control arms. Revealing the brightwork were 12-spoke American Racing spindle-mount mags. Chrome likewise found the traction bars, the rear transverse spring, the driveshafts and control arms, the wheelie bars, and the push-bar (fashioned like an executioner’s axe).

Over the stock Daytona Blue, Milwaukee painter Butch Brinza applied a candy blue finish, which used fish scales to create a shimmery pop. The Corvette’s original blue vinyl interior ceded to diamond-tufted navy seats, floormats, door panels, and hardtop, which also sported a ventilated Plexiglas backlight. Still more chrome graced the rollbar, fire bottle, and butterfly steering wheel. All in for the win!

The once-mellow 327 had been stroked to 370 cubic inches and wore a chromed side-by-side manifold topped by dual quads and chromed scoops. Early in our stewardship, it vehemently resisted starting; something was afoul with cam and/or ignition timing. You’d swat the pedal and turn the key, and the engine would backfire dramatically. The predicament broke three starter motors, and once, a flame-front bigger than Krakatoa nearly torched the ceiling. Ultimately, a visiting friend requested a 9/16-inch wrench and reset the distributor. Thereafter, the Executioner started fine.

Driving that thing anywhere was another matter. Every couple of miles, the engine surged and stopped, then mulishly refused to restart. Looking back, I suspect the root was a clogged fuel line or filter, a tired pump, a plugged gas-cap vent, or some similarly easy issue. But when you don’t have a clue, you’re clueless. Ultimately, after nursing the Executioner to 20,458 miles, we tapped out. Naturally, selling that car was equally difficult. “We were the only ones who didn’t make money on a Corvette!” Scott joked. Yep, we were those guys.

No wonder—our execution was fatally flawed.

***

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It was dark, with little traffic on my way home from a date when I dozed, briefly, at the wheel. I opened my eyes to see the two-lane road sweeping right and the double-yellow centerline flowing left-to-right under my MGA’s dim headlight beams. I jammed on the brakes, steered right and felt the car’s skinny rear tires lose grip as its back end headed left. Whoa!

I quickly steered back left to catch the slide, and the rear end snapped back right. Damn! This, I later learned, was what racers call a “tank slapper” as the car’s tail whipped one way, then the other. Then I realized that I was still hard on the brakes, and backing off that pressure enabled me to regain control. Whew—a near-disastrous lesson in car control at the tender age of 16!

I had just recently acquired my driver’s license yet was hardly inexperienced. My expert-driver father had let me steer his car as a little kid sitting on his lap and had taught and trained me in safe driving most of my life. Then, from ages 14 to 16, I survived two years on a motor scooter as my all-season daily driver, and I learned a life-saving lot about defensive driving, operating in traffic, and dealing with slippery conditions as the scooter’s brake cables often froze and left me essentially brakeless in Cleveland’s nasty winter weather.

At age 15, with no legal license, I had stolen my mom’s ’57 Ford convertible nearly every Friday night, when my folks were away in a bowling league, and I had somehow gotten away with driving that cool car all over the place in all kinds of conditions without incident. I never got caught, and my folks never knew, since they would have punished me severely for that foolishly risky habit. So, when my car-guy dad surprised me with a well-used 1957 MGA roadster for Christmas three weeks before my 16^th birthday, I could not have been more thrilled.

To be honest, my very first car was not actually that MGA. Instead, my dad had bought a goofy Lloyd 600, a tiny 23-hp German microcar, at a local import dealership, and it was to be my Christmas and 16^th birthday present. But very thankfully, I never saw that little POS. The auto gods were smiling down on me the day he picked it up, because it clanked to a smoky halt just a few feet out of the lot. More than a little pissed, he then harassed the dealer into a friendly price on the MGA and stored it at a friend’s house awaiting the big Christmas morning presentation.

But my introduction to that red, wire-wheeled beauty was traumatic. Before hitting the sack on Christmas Eve, I noticed our garage full of white smoke. I rolled up the door to see the MGA with its hood up, my mom standing in shock, and my father frantically searching for the battery. We finally found two separate six-volt batteries behind the seats, but the electrical system was well cooked by the time we got them unhooked. “Merry Christmas,” grimaced my frustrated dad.

Once repaired and functional (I’d love to have seen my 6’ 4” dad’s second angry confrontation with that dealer), that MGA could not have been a much cooler set of high-school wheels. Thanks to years of hard work and Dad’s good job, we were comfortably middle class but far from wealthy. Some of my classmates were, but some had no wheels at all; a couple drove restored Ford Model As (pretty cool), but no one else had a sexy “poor man’s Jaguar” British roadster.

It was a little rusty (which didn’t show much thanks to its red paint); its first-gear’s synchro was history so was hard to engage without grinding a bit; its infamous Lucas electrics went missing in the rain from time to time—which required removing and hand-drying its distributor cap and a few other parts; and its cable-operated door latches were weak. But all that seemed well worth the trouble to a good-student, bad-athlete, car-loving, marginally likeable 16-year-old.

I did almost lose girlfriend Betsy out the passenger door when it flew open while I spun a quick U-turn after picking her up. Good thing she grabbed the windshield pillar to avoid meeting the street! She eventually forgave me, and the MGA, and enjoyed riding in it. Except when I wouldn’t stop to erect its top after it started raining. That was a clumsy, 15–20-minute operation, so I figured we’d get wetter while stopped to put it up than we would just driving in the rain. And the faster I drove, the more the rain swept over the windshield, and our heads.

I also vividly remember some snow-related adventures in that car. On the very first night I had my license, I drove over to Betsy’s house and offered her a ride. After a serious conversation with her dad, he agreed to let her go with me despite a fairly heavy snowfall going on. Thinking back, had she been my daughter, I probably would have said, “No way.”

And even though I was already a fairly experienced driver when I got my license (much more than my dad knew…), he signed me up for driving lessons to get a break on insurance, which was pricey even then for teen drivers. It was snowing hard on the day of my second lesson, and the instructor climbed in and let me take him for a ride. Which I did … way out of town and back, in increasingly heavy snow. I was a ridiculously over-confident driver even then so gave him what must have been a hair-raising ride sliding around sideways on slippery roads. I thought he might be impressed by my car-control skill. But as I recall, he just sat there, probably terrified, and didn’t say anything at all.

That turned out to be my last lesson, so maybe the instructor refused to ride with me again and told his colleagues to avoid me as well. My dad never confirmed whether he got the insurance break after I failed to complete those lessons, but I’m guessing he probably didn’t.

Another snow-related incident started out as grins but ended scary. A friend and I were having fun driving around with both side window panels out and our door pockets full of snowballs. We were pitching them out at passing cars as we drove and managed to hit a few. Then one driver we hit came after us. I led him on a lively chase through snow-covered suburban back roads and alleys, but he hung right with us. When we finally drove into a blocked alley and had to stop, he and a bigger guy jumped out and caught us. They threatened to kick the crap out of us but just yelled, lectured us, and let us go. But not before tossing my car key into a snowbank. We scraped around in the snow for a while, found the key and headed home, one good scare wiser.

I wasn’t a good enough (self-taught) mechanic to mess with the MGA’s mechanicals, but I did (for some reason) take off easily removable parts under its hood and spray paint them different colors. And one important modification was installing aftermarket seatbelts, since the car had come without belts from the factory. My dad had optional ones in his company car, a 1960 Thunderbird, and trained me to habitually use them—a habit that likely saved my life years later in my first new car, a 1966 Triumph TR4A.

Did I have the belt installed, and was I using it, when I so nearly lost control on that dark night? I honestly don’t recall. But I do remember that the MGA’s floorboard was wood, and that belt probably would have ripped right through it in a violent flip, despite the large washers I used to secure its anchors. Further, the MGA’s windshield frame was flimsy, to say the least. So, belted in or not, that was one of many times in my life when the driving survival gods were smiling on me.

That old MGA was truly cool for school if a bit rusty, slow, and unreliable. After a year with it, I was lusting for something more powerful and threatening to trade it for an older Corvette. I even checked out a couple of not-so-cherry ’54 and ’55 Corvettes. Then my dad (bless his car-loving heart), on a business trip to Detroit, found a nice ’57 Corvette for sale by a couple who needed the money and talked them down to (as I recall) just $1500. It was a black base car with a white convertible top, a detachable hardtop, a 245-hp twin-4-barrel 283 V-8, and a two-speed Powerglide automatic. He brought it home, and we sold the MGA.

That Corvette was even cooler, much faster, and potentially more treacherous. I somehow survived my high-school senior year with it, but that’s a story for another time.

***

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Today, the average price of a home in Brentwood, California, is $2.7 million. Back in 1975, though, a typewriter salesman could afford one. I recall that distinctly, because this one-owner, garage-kept 1950 Cadillac Series 62 sedan was purchased from just such a gentleman, for $350, and he named the price.

After learning about the Caddy, I begged a ride to his Brentwood residence to complete the deal, then drove home and dug into my favorite work—car detailing. The chrome and stainless—lots of it, thanks to GM design honcho Harley Earl’s penchant for brightwork—polished up beautifully, and the 25-year-old lacquer responded nicely to rubbing compound, waxing, and buffing (Turtle Wax all the way!).

The car’s only blemish, besides a cloudy headlight and one door that had been resprayed a slightly incorrect Corinth Blue, was—and I’m not joking—a grease-stained rear seat. Because that’s where the demonstrator typewriters always rode, and over time they left their mark.

Materials in the Fleetwood-designed, two-tone interior were magnificent: wool carpets and upholstery, napped cotton headliner, tasteful chrome dashboard features, an ivory-like steering wheel and levers. After its vacuum tubes warmed up, the Delco radio demonstrated fine reception of classical music, news reports on the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and even disco (barf!).

Modeling Cadillac’s immediate postwar design language, everything about the car registered as calm, elegant, and “old money.” Even the electrics seemed old-world; using six volts, the illumination was categorically serene, from the headlights to the soft interior and instrument lights. Even the starter for the 331-cubic-inch, 160-hp V-8 was unhurried at best. Befitting its pampered life, the Caddy nonetheless started, ran, and drove wonderfully. Smooth-riding on a yawning 126-inch wheelbase, it truly was the “Standard of the World,” as the Cadillac Motor Car Division advertised.

Besides a noisy muffler, only one service issue arose. When the hidden brake master cylinder went dry, the pedal sailed right to the floor while I was approaching a four-way stop. In a panic, I blasted the horn, swung hard right, and, lacking seatbelts, hoped for the best. (I didn’t think of yanking the emergency brake.) Luckily, no harm came of the crisis.

Although the Cadillac didn’t stick around long, a lesson imparted by that near-miss did: On older vehicles that predate various sensors and warning lights, keep tabs on everything. Because, left to their own devices, these cars will neither warn nor save you. En garde!

***

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This is the third and final installment on our trip from Indiana to South Carolina in vintage International Harvester Scouts, en route to the groundbreaking for the new Scout EV plant. Check out Parts one and two by clicking here, and here.

I’ll admit it: It was my fault.

After we made it to our hotel in Asheville, North Carolina—losing the white, much-modified Scout II en route, to a fried ECU—it seemed our four remaining vintage Scouts would have an easy drive down to Blythewood, South Carolina, site of the new $2 billion Scout Motors plant and the groundbreaking we’d attend.

On the way, though, the oldest model in our caravan, the red 1967 Scout 800, pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. Sean Barber, owner of three Scouts and our trip companion, stopped to diagnose the problem.

Turned out to be nothing. I had driven the Scout last and filled it at the gas station. What I didn’t realize was that the Scout had two gas tanks and two fillers, one on each side. I’d filled the tank on the driver’s side but not the one on the passenger side.

So, one of the other two journalists on the trip was driving along until the Scout ran out of gas. Barber flipped the switch to the other tank, which I’d never tapped into on account of not knowing it existed, and the red Scout was back in business. That was our final issue.

Aside from the ECU failure in the Chevrolet-powered white 1975 Scout II, the only real problem we’d encountered in more than 800 miles of driving was a dragging right rear brake on the bronze 1979 Scout II Rallye edition. That Scout II is owned by Navistar and had sat on display for years. “Almost all the springs in the brake were broken,” Barber said, after he pulled the wheel off. He fixed it, and the rig exhibited no more problems besides a slightly balky carburetor during our off-road adventuring.

On to Blythewood.

***

Three of the five vintage Scouts we drove from Fort Wayne, Indiana to the Scout Motors groundbreaking are owned by the aforementioned Sean Barber: The red 1967 Scout 800, the blue 1979 Scout II, and the yellow 1978 Scout II. He owns Anything Scout, which opened in 1993 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Barber and his wife, Heather, bought the company in 2003. In 2005, the company moved to Ames, Iowa.

He speaks fondly of all three Scouts, but it’s obvious he’s the most attached to that patina-laden 1967 Scout 800. “I’ve had it for about 25 years. I found it up in the mountains of Santa Cruz in the 1990s. I paid $500 for it, with the original paint, which it still has. It was not running at the time, so it’s been through several iterations of International engines. But now it’s back to its original configuration.”

That powertrain is a gutsy little 266-cubic-inch V-8, rated at 154 horsepower, mated to a four-speed manual with an unsynchronized first gear. It does not like to start off in second, so you’d best be up on your double-clutching. Otherwise, driving the old Scout was a breeze. The ride was firm but not punishing, and the steering was spot-on. The hood fluttered a bit on the highway; Barber had loaned the Scout to a friend, who had run it into a tree, denting the hood. That dent sort of complimented the gash on the driver’s side of the body, which was there when Barber bought the Scout.

While Anything Scout deals mostly in parts, Barber opened another company, New Legend 4×4, also in Ames, that does Scout restorations and powertrain conversions. There’s the Legend series, which takes “a respectfully restored original body on a modern chassis, integrates the latest technology in engine and drivetrain, provides all-new interior and upholstery, and curates luxury appointments with personality.” They start at $295,000. The Retro series “is built on the original frame and tastefully restored throughout.” They start at $205,000.

You may be wondering: Was Barber shocked that his three vintage Scouts made it all 800-plus miles with zero problems? “I’m happy they all made it,” he said, “but I’m not that surprised.”

Why Scout? “When I was about 24 years old, I’m 50 now, so it has been a while, I drove my first Scout. It was instant love at first drive. I was a muscle-car kid growing up. My wife, Heather, had just bought a brand-new 1993 Jeep Wrangler with the 4.0-liter fuel-injected six-cylinder. It was a great vehicle, but I just didn’t love it. It didn’t connect with me.

“But when I drove a Scout for the first time, a 1978 with a four-speed manual, it really spoke to me. In the next three years, I had four or five of them. Since then, my whole life has been dedicated to Scouts, and their preservation—introducing them to a new generation.”

So what in the Scout world has changed in the past 20 years? “I think the most exciting change is more young people discovering the brand. Young enthusiasts seem to value old things and a connection to the past, whether it’s the aesthetics or the mechanicals.

“With the rise in social media, there has been more connectivity between Scout owners, and I think that’s really good. Event attendance has been steadily growing, and with the introduction of the new Scout, I think more people will connect with the legacy models.”

***

It is no coincidence that the Scout Motors team is leaning into a connection with the past to help validate the new, all-electric Scout. At a media roundtable held on the new plant’s premises, Scott Keogh, president and CEO of Scout Motors, said that embracing the history of the Scout was critical to the new company’s marketing plan.

“You start at the highest level—what was the product, what did it do, what did it stand for? In my opinion, it basically invented the category that became the American market for an SUV. They built a vehicle that was highly capable,” Keogh said. “Honestly, they were ahead of their time.

“We love the very name. It’s a powerful thing. That name would mimic most every SUV. ‘Scout’ means to go first, and be followed by Explorer, and 4Runner, and Discovery, and Blazer, and Trailblazer, and on and on. So this is the godfather, the prototype, and a good place to start.”

There are, Keogh said, hurdles to clear regarding the Scout’s integration into the SUV market. “Hurdle number one is if the Scout community doesn’t see us to be authentic and real, then you’re a poser. And if you’re a poser, it’s not going to work. The dream of any brand is that you start on day one with some momentum and love from the community.

“And once you get that, the next thing is to make sure we build something that is credible. If you have a mismatch between what the brand was anchored in and what you put on the market, that disconnect is going to be smelled out. I feel confident we have something that fits.

“But we also don’t want to be trapped in the ‘70s. It’s not as if we want to create Scout III. This will be the Scout VIII or IX, if you project it out. And why we did it is clear: It’s an American icon, and the time is right.”

The new Scout SUV, and the pickup version which will follow soon after, will be body-on-frame, like a proper truck. “We want to build something that is highly robust, and highly capable,” Keogh said. “Scout came from that, and we want to keep that integrity.”

Of course, image is important: “I think of Scout a little bit like Levi’s. They can be worn in Malibu or a work site, and it’s a cool, iconic American brand,” Keogh said. “We’re not building something to navigate the strip malls of America, we’re building something that can navigate America.” The Scout will have “character and personality, that’s not an optimized jellybean.”

The electric Scout is expected to start around $50,000, before any government subsidies are applied. The plant, we were told, should be able to crank out 200,000 vehicles a year. Battery sourcing has not yet been determined.

The aftermarket possibilities should be huge, and Keogh said he and his staff are working on that. “The opportunities are massive. Some of the stuff we’re designing ourselves, some we’re finding good partners for, but I feel confident we’ll nail that.”

Yes, we were told, you can add lift kits if desired. Personalization, a massive source of income for the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco, will be available at launch. So far, Scout has only released line drawings and a darkened profile shot of what the first production vehicle will look like. The company will unveil the Scout SUV this summer and the Scout pickup soon after. Production is expected to start by the end of 2026, with the Scout slated to go on sale in 2027.

Since Scout is owned by Volkswagen Group, the company faces no need to source financing for an electric start-up, as, say, Rivian and Lucid have had to do. That’s one reason there has been enormous interest in working there, as resumes (we are told) continue to pour in from engineers and designers. For the near term, Scout has sourced its top executives from VW: Keogh was, most recently, president and CEO of Volkswagen of America. Dr. Jan Spies is the head of production for Scout; previously he was head of planning and production technology for Volkswagen AG.

Right now, Scout Motors has 350 employees. At full production it is expected to have 4000. Getting the plant was a big win for the state of South Carolina: It is already a major auto production state, with the world’s largest BMW production facility located in Spartanburg, as well as Volvo and Mercedes-Benz assembly plants. Even before Scout, the automotive industry had an economic impact of $27 billion in the state, with $13.9 billion in capital investments from 2017 to 2023, according to the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

Scout considered 70 different sites for the plant before settling on this one: 1600 acres total, with the plant taking up 1100 acres. The land, just off Interstate 77, and 20 miles north of Columbia, was actually owned by Richland County. The county bought it from the owners, two farming families, and then began shopping it to various industries. South Carolina offered $1.3 billion in incentives to attract the Scout plant.

Finally, it’s no secret that the market for all-electric vehicles is sagging at the moment, and several manufacturers have dialed back their product planning. (Mercedes-Benz, for instance, recently scaled back plans for a global, fully electric lineup by 2030.) I asked Keogh if the company is considering a gasoline-powered version of the Scout, or at least a hybrid. “No,” he said. “We are a startup, which gives us the ability to pivot and move fast, which is a beautiful thing, right? We’re not married to legacy X or legacy Y. But as we look at the world, we think there is enough opportunity for a pure play, and that’s where we are right now.

“But look. We’re not naïve to the press headlines, we’re not naïve to the noise out there, and we’ll react accordingly,” Keogh said. “But I don’t think salvation comes from going back. I’m an optimist on technology, and an optimist on American technology.”

***

And finally, the groundbreaking. It was mostly ceremonial and obvious that the ground was actually broken on the site months ago. The earth had been cleared and leveled, and multiple pieces of construction equipment were working, beep-beeping in the distance as the speeches rolled on. There would be “no shiny shovels,” Keogh told the audience, no officials in suits and hardhats turning dirt.

A single red brick, part of the original International Harvester production facility—our classic Scout caravan brought it from Fort Wayne, Indiana, in a special clear-plastic carrying case—was front and center for the groundbreaking ceremony, inserted into the front of the lectern.

“What we’re doing here, “Keogh said, “is relaunching an American icon, and we’re doing it here in South Carolina. And frankly, we couldn’t be prouder to be doing it here in this beloved place.”

It all sounds good, but the product will ultimately need to do the talking. Scout loyalist Sean Barber hopes the new Scout is everything it’s promised to be. “It’s really cool that Scout Motors values the legacy. I feel like they are really honoring the heritage, honoring the past. They speak loudly to the community and the enthusiasts who have kept the brand alive for the past 40 years.”

***

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In yesterday’s installment, we drove our vintage SUVs from the birthplace of the International Harvester Scout in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Super Scout Specialists in Enon, Ohio. In this article, we go off-roading in Kentucky and head to the night’s stop in North Carolina, en route to the groundbreaking of the new Scout Motors plant in South Carolina. -Ed.

We left Enon on a Monday afternoon in our five vintage International Harvester Scouts, headed south towards our overnight stop in Lexington, Kentucky. We had probably spent too much time at the original, closed-down International Harvester plant in Fort Wayne that morning, and even more at Super Scout Specialists, and we needed to make ground.

That’s difficult when your vehicles can barely top 50 mph. So slow was our entourage that we didn’t pass a vehicle—a struggling old Mitsubishi on Interstate 40—until Tuesday afternoon. We sped by at maybe 55 mph, but we were going downhill. Much of this leg of the trip was spent just trying to stay out of the way and hoping that our Scouts—the oldest from 1967, the newest from 1979—would make it to Tuesday night’s hotel, in Asheville, North Carolina. (One of them did not.)

First, we had to get to Lexington.

I had started the day in the Siam Yellow Scout, a 1978 model with a 345-cubic-inch V-8 and a Borg-Warner T19 four-speed manual transmission. It belonged to Sean Barber, who owns Anything Scout, a parts and restoration shop in Iowa. Barber also owned the red 1967 Scout and the Glacier Blue 1979 model.

The jacked-up white 1975 Chevrolet-powered Scout II restomod is owned by Scout Motors and was built by Riptide 4×4. It had a massaged 6.0-liter V-8 with headers, a General Motors automatic transmission, a four-inch lift, and 33-inch tires. It was very loud, but in a good way.

We took mostly two-lane roads until we reached Interstate 75. From there, it would be a pretty direct trip to Kentucky. The yellow Scout was a pleasure to drive, well-sorted but still original. The long-throw transmission was truckish, which is OK because the T19 is a truck transmission, but easy to drive. With just one paint job in its life, the yellow Scout was everyone’s favorite.

I later transitioned to the 1979 Tamarak Bronze Rallye edition Scout II—the Rallye equipment consisted mostly of big, white Rallye decals and white spoked wheels. This Scout belongs to Navistar, the company that was left when International Harvester went out of business. Volkswagen bought Navistar in 2021 in a deal worth $3.7 billion, which, incidentally, is how it acquired the Scout name and is able to use it for Scout Motors, the startup that will build the electric model at the new plant in South Carolina.

This Scout had been sitting for years, possibly decades, having begun life as a test mule for the IH Scout prototype program in Fort Wayne, and had never been sold. It had the deluxe (plaid) interior, air conditioning, and an AM/FM radio that wouldn’t hold a station. There was a seat belt but no shoulder harness.

The gas gauge didn’t work—didn’t work in any of the Scouts I drove, for that matter—and the speedometer was off by at least 40 mph. There was also a lot of play in the steering, which made staying in one lane a challenge. But the 345-cubic-inch V-8 and Chrysler Torqueflite 727 three-speed automatic transmission seemed to operate in harmony. Everything else that worked, which admittedly wasn’t much, was gravy.

Because of the faulty gas gauges, none of us knew what mileage we were getting, only that it wasn’t very good. We stopped for gas a lot. As we neared Cincinnati, the skies began to darken—it was getting dark anyway—and about the time we crossed into Kentucky it started to rain. Scouts were not known for their windshield wipers, so I held off as long as I could before turning them on. Finally, I had to, and the results were pretty streaky. It was pouring by the time we reached our hotel in Lexington.

***

Tuesday morning was crisp but clear, with last night’s rain completely gone. I got into the Glacier Blue 1979 Scout II, which also had a 345-cubic-inch V-8 and a 727 Torqueflite automatic. It also had a working AM/FM radio, and listening to the stations I was able to pick up, I was seriously missing Sirius/XM satellite radio.

It was time for some off-roading, so we left Lexington and headed southeast for Beattyville, Kentucky. It did not go exactly as planned. We turned right, down a narrow paved road that soon became dirt, and were just getting underway when we came to what looked like a river. It was a small creek when the Scout Motors team mapped out the route, but with last night’s two-inch rainfall, there wasn’t any way we could continue—we had no clue where the trail was under the water. The lifted white restomod Scout dipped in a toe and promptly withdrew it.

We backtracked and tried to go in from a different angle. No luck—that way was rained out, too. The third time was the charm. We headed toward the Daniel Boone National Forest, near McKee, and found a trail that was wet but not flooded. We locked in the Scouts’ front hubs, shifted into four-wheel-drive, and proceeded.

It was there that the Scouts shook off their 40-plus years of obsolescence. No, they didn’t have electronic traction control, automatic descent control, or even antilock brakes, but they had what was needed to get the job done: Good tires, V-8 power, and low-range gearing that would pull out a tree stump.

We made a couple of water crossings, the second one pretty deep, thanks to the rain. All the Scouts took the creek in stride; a newer white Chevrolet Silverado apparently didn’t. The pickup had made it through and another 50 feet up the narrow trail, where it appeared to have died. It sat exactly in the center of the trail, hood up, no one around. We barely had room to drive around the Chevy, but we were feeling pretty smug when we did.

We continued on, eventually reaching a campground with a rustic but unlocked bathroom. After that, the trail ended with a fence and a locked gate; we decided we were hungry and headed to a restaurant. As Robert Frost would say if he were on the trip, we’d have miles to go before we sleep.

***

If Tuesday morning was fun—and it was—the afternoon and evening were all about getting to Asheville, North Carolina, about 238 miles away, according to Mapquest. We headed southwest through the Appalachian Mountains, eventually picking up Interstate 40 in Tennessee, then Interstate 81.

It was a slog on the Interstates—we’d pass 18-wheelers going uphill, and they’d pass us back going down. As it turned dark, it became harder to stay in formation. Were those Scout headlights behind me, or something else?

Well after dark, each set of headlights belonged to something else. The last two Scouts in our caravan—the white, Chevy-powered restomod and the 1967 red Scout—weren’t keeping up. Turned out that one of them had stopped, and the other one stayed behind to help.

Surely, I thought, it was the 57-year-old, red SUV that had broken down—the hilly Interstates had to be tough on it, even though it had a small V-8. But I was wrong. Sean Barber and his wife Heather were in the red Scout, and they stopped when the white one pulled over.

The Scout Motors driver and passenger in the white Scout had slowed when they smelled smoke, and then there was no power. The culprit was a fried electronic control unit. And as good a mechanic as Barber is, without a spare ECU, nobody could fix it. I had not driven it yet, and frankly, I was OK with that: The modern transformation really didn’t speak to me the way the original Scouts did.

They called for a tow truck and waited. Two hours later, it showed up, loaded the Scout, and headed for Charlotte, North Carolina, where Scout Motors stores the restomod Riptide Scout. Towing fee: $1500. Looking at our inventory, it would likely have been voted The Scout Least Likely to Break.

But it did. We would not see the white Scout again.

Tomorrow, join us as we set off to the groundbreaking for the Scout Motors plant in South Carolina.

***

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On the way to lunch at a local Mexican joint, our marketing and business development contact Ethan Siegwart mats the throttle. The unmistakable supercharger whine of a Hellcat engine emanates from under the hood of the Jeep Gladiator he pilots. But unlike a Hellcat Challenger or Charger, which like to shift and squirm under full throttle, the Gladiator just squats and accelerates at a frightening rate.

But wait a minute. Despite the willingness of parent company Stellantis to Hellcatify seemingly everything, it never had the gumption to put the venerable 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 in a Jeep Gladiator or Wrangler.

Enter America’s Most Wanted 4×4. Located in Holly, Michigan, about 30 minutes northwest of Stellantis North American Headquarters, AMW is an outfit that has been converting Jeeps into high-dollar, big-power off-road machines since 2012.

Even before you walk in to the heart of AMW’s operation, you can tell business has been good. The parking lot is filled with Jeeps awaiting delivery to their owners. Inside, the 32,000-square-foot manufacturing facility packed tight with crate engines, suspension components, and and Jeeps in various stages of completion.   

“I dislike the word ‘swap’,” says company founder Jared Petiprin. Indeed, to call the work America’s Most Wanted 4×4 does “a V-8 swap” would be an injustice. Its turnkey Jeeps are about as close to a factory Hellcat Gladiator or Wrangler that you can get. AMW utilizes a plethora of Mopar parts—which includes the crate engines and transmissions—and adds custom-engineered and -manufactured adapters, exhaust systems, and proprietary engine calibration. Stuff that often gets overlooked in an engine conversion, like brackets, tubing kits, and bolts, come from tier 1 and 2 automotive suppliers. Think factory coatings and metallurgy, rather than hardware store specials.

Petiprin’s turnkey mentality comes from a bad experience after installing a lift kit on his 1997 TJ Wrangler. He didn’t understand why he was spending money on the vehicle for it to drive worse, and the lift kit company was unwilling to help solve the drivability problems. Thus, the goal of America’s Most Wanted 4×4 is “to produce an A-to-Z product with 100 percent reliability and accountability,” i.e. deliver a sorted Jeep that you don’t have to futz with.

Which engine AMW installs depends on how much horsepower you want. Packages range from the 505-hp, naturally aspirated 392 Hemi crate to the 1000-hp, supercharged Hellephant. The demo Gladiator Siegwart sped us to lunch in was a 707-horsepower model, which is one of the most popular packages for AMW’s builds.

The engine is only half the package for AMW’s turnkey Jeeps, however. Full-float 8-lug axles with ARB Air Lockers are added front and rear. These beefcake axles (8LUG in AMW parlance), which secure the hub with two bearings rather than the stock axle’s single bearing, are added because these builds run 40-inch tires. That extra rotational mass doesn’t play well with the factory axles on or off road—especially when your Jeep is capable of such high speeds. Eight-piston brake calipers front and rear help keep all of that power in check. For suspension, there are two options: the base long-arm setup that utilizes Falcon shocks, or a more off-road-centric, long-travel setup that uses Fox coilovers.

If this sounds expensive, that’s because it is. Turnkey builds start at $160,000. A fully packaged, 1000-horsepower build with long-travel suspension, accessories, and custom paint have neared $350,000.

If that’s too much dough for your budget, AMW offers engine conversions and suspension packages for older Wranglers, like the TJ (1997–2006), JK(2007–18), and current JL. Prices start at around $30K. These conversions have proven to be more popular than the turnkey models, in fact, with 250–300 of them completed by AMW and its 40 certified installers last year.

“I build Jeeps because nobody will pay me to build Legos,” muses Petiprin. Indeed, the process for building an AMW Jeep is a bit like a putting together a Lego set. Each new Jeep that comes in to the shop is disassembled and the body is removed from the frame. The frame is then fitted with the engine mounts, suspension, axles, and related components. Next, sound deadening is added to the body, and the seats get wrapped in Tuscany leather. The body eventually gets reunited with the chassis, and everything is reassembled and checked over. It’s a bit like an assembly line, and everything is tagged and organized, depending on what part of the process it’s in.

With the help of 52 full-time employees, over 250 hours of labor go into each Jeep. From the time the vehicle pulls in to the time it leaves the shop, 500 different parts are changed or modified.

So, who’s buying these things? The client archetype for AMW is an American owner of a construction company who wants a high-performance 4×4, but might not want to pull up to a job site in a Mercedes G-Wagen. But AMW’s Jeeps have also been sold to far-flung places like China, the UAE, and Australia. Siegwart says the clients skew more toward daily-driving their Jeeps, but also stated that many of AMW’s creations have logged thousands of miles off road. 

And in this context, the AMW makes sense. Why deal with the stigma of a G-Wagen, when you could have a more capable Jeep built with a crazy supercharged engine? Also, you’ll be less afraid to use an AMW Jeep as intended. If you bash a body panel off road, no worries, Jeep parts are cheap and widely available.

Even if you don’t have the money for an AMW Jeep, the world is a little bit brighter with these high-powered off-roaders roaming around.

***

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The International Harvester Scout was ahead of its time. But that time ended in 1980, after 20 years of IH building the Jeep-like vehicle. So, what happened then, to cause the death of the Scout? What’s happening now, to the Scouts that remain? And finally, what will happen in the future, now that Volkswagen has acquired the Scout name, and is building a $2 billion factory to make electric Scouts?

We had the opportunity to visit Fort Wayne, Indiana, the home of the Scout, and to drive five vintage Scouts more than 800 miles to the groundbreaking of the new factory in South Carolina. Following is the first of three stories outlining the past, present, and future of this automotive icon. -Ed.

In January of 2020, Hagerty announced that the International Harvester Scout, model years 1971 through 1980, had been named to our annual Bull Market List of 10 vehicles likely to soon appreciate in value.

From that article: “The Scout is the last of the affordable classic sport-utes. American rivals such as the Ford Bronco and Chevy Blazer have out-appreciated the Scout, but its values are on a steady climb, the result of enthusiasts realizing they can have the same amount of fun and curb appeal for a fraction of the Bronco price. Low buy-in, high ceiling. To steal from a slogan from an old Scout advertisement: ‘There are times you just don’t compromise.’ This could be one of them.”

So where did the Scout go wrong?

The story begins in Fort Wayne, Indiana—since 1923 decidedly an International Harvester company town. IH, best known for farm equipment and heavy-duty vehicles, was formed in 1902 amid the merger of several companies. Five years later, IH built the first “Auto Wagon,” essentially an early pickup truck. In 1916, a truck built by International Harvester became the first vehicle to climb Pikes Peak.

In 1953, IH began building the Travelall, a big four-door sport utility vehicle, decades before that term was coined. It was based on the IH pickup chassis. It was an early competitor for the Chevrolet Suburban and the Jeep Wagoneer, though that model wouldn’t start production until nine years later.

In the late 1950s, IH decided to put a smaller vehicle into production. It wanted to call the small truck the Scout, but a manufacturer of tank-like vehicles used in the frozen tundra had trademarked the name. International Harvester paid the owner $25,000, and on March 1, 1960, the trademark became the property of IH. Nine months later, the first IH Scout rolled off the assembly line.

On October 21, 1980, some 532,673 Scouts later, the final Scout, a Tahitian Red, diesel-powered, four-speed Traveltop, ended the 20-year history of the International Harvester Scout. The plant went silent.

There were multiple reasons why—a slowing economy, a downturn in IH’s core farm equipment sales—but most agree that the final nail in the Scout’s coffin was a brutal six-month United Auto Workers strike that started in November of 1979, reportedly costing the company nearly $600 million. Afterwards, International Harvester tried to sell the Scout division but there were no takers. Had IH hung on for a few more years, the Scout would likely have been swept up in the SUV craze that has yet to abate.

But the Scout was dead. It appears, though, that there may be life after death, and that’s what the rest of this series is about.

***

I flew into Fort Wayne International Airport on a Sunday afternoon in a puddle-jumper jet from Charlotte. Volkswagen Group, now the owner of the Scout name acquired when VW bought Navistar, which is what was left after International Harvester splintered into several companies in 1985, had arranged the trip. VW rounded up five original Scouts, model years 1967 to 1979, and mapped out an ambitious route of more than 800 miles that would take us to a few Scout landmarks and down some muddy trails en route to Blythewood, South Carolina. There, we would join some dignitaries, including the state’s governor, for the groundbreaking of the 1100-acre factory slated to build the future electric-powered Scouts trailblazing the brand’s rebirth.

Three journalists took up this opportunity, and we were joined by a half-dozen employees of Scout Motors, which is what the new company is called. Also making the trip: Sean and Heather Barber, owners of Anything Scout—an Ames, Iowa business catering to Scout owners with parts and custom builds. Sean owned three of the five Scouts we’d be driving. If anything went wrong, he’d help keep us out of trouble.

We left Monday morning, and the first stop was the old IH plant. We departed The Bradley, our hotel for the night in downtown Fort Wayne, and headed southeast toward Meyer Road, once a bustling urban area. When International Harvester was operating at full song, it employed 10,600 people.

Now, a chain-smoking guard for Allied Security appears to be the only one who still works there. He watches the maze of mostly empty red-brick buildings, abandoned since 2012 when what was left of the jobs moved to Chicago. The last International Harvester truck was built there on July 15, 1983. Since the factory opened more than 100 years ago, 1,527,299 trucks were built in Fort Wayne. The plant even had its own test track.

We drove into the rear of the buildings and headed through a maze until we were led down a wide aisle. Suddenly we were flanked by vintage Harvester products. This is the Fort Wayne Truck Works & Industry Museum, and its co-founder, Ryan DuVall, greeted us.

DuVall lived elsewhere when he became a Scout fan. A rusty, passed-down 1974 Scout II that his father drove became DuVall’s first vehicle at age 16. Years later, he acquired another, less-rusty Scout. He moved to Fort Wayne in 1999 and mentioned to his father, via phone, that he was seeing a surprising number of well-kept Scouts on the road.

“’You dummy!’ his father told him. ‘That’s where they were made!’” DuVall had no idea. He began researching the history of IH in Fort Wayne and found the plant where Scouts were built, just across the street from the main complex. It’s another red-brick building, now occupied by American Hydroformers, maker of high-pressure tubing. That building once held engineering offices for Studebaker’s aircraft engine works. Indiana-based Studebaker built some pretty formidable engines, including those powering the World War II B-17 Flying Fortress bomber—four 1200-horsepower, nine-cylinder radial engines per airplane.

In 2018, DuVall wrote a column for The Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne’s newspaper. He expressed surprise that Harvester’s impact on the city isn’t celebrated: “Given their place in history as basically the first SUVs and the fact that they remain very popular among the classic truck and off-road crowd,” DuVall wrote, “I have always been disappointed and kind of puzzled as to why the city hasn’t marked Harvester’s imprint better. The old empty factory is about all there is here. There is no Scout museum and no significant memorial to the company here.”

That’s possibly because bitterness remained over so many lost jobs, and Scout production ended shortly after that devastating UAW strike. Nonetheless, DuVall’s story struck a chord. He was contacted by multiple residents who agreed with his perspective and suggested he was the man who should lead an effort to recognize Harvester’s history. Multiple volunteers offered to help, and the city government, local philanthropists, and businesses financed it. Thus was born the Harvester Homecoming, an annual celebration held on the first weekend in August.

The first Harvester Homecoming was held at the old IH plant on Meyer Road in 2019. “We had 12,000 people, and we stopped counting trucks at 438, at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. And they kept coming all day long,” DuVall recalled. The next step was creating the museum. Navistar, the Volkswagen-owned offshoot of IH, had a collection of vehicles warehoused in Chicago, intending to perhaps open a museum someday. They moved most of them to Fort Wayne, and that’s the collection that surrounded us. It ranges from a 1907 Auto Buggy (which was followed in 1908 by the Auto Wagon, IH’s first truck) to a tractor made to tow an 18-wheeler, powered by a Cummins Signature 600 15-liter diesel.

As appropriate as this place is for the museum, DuVall said the location’s time is unlikely to be permanent. The buildings are now owned by the county, which is trying to build a jail on the property. DuVall said he’d prefer the museum stay, but that the building is 74 years old, high-maintenance, and it costs $10,000 a month to heat in the winter. Plus, “We’ve been presented with an opportunity that may make it not matter.” Translation: A new potential site for the collection.

He made it clear, though, that Harvester Homecoming, an event so potent for IH fans that an owner once drove his Scout from Alaska to attend, will continue. The community has become a family. “That’s the kind of thing this brand does,” he said. “It brings people closer together. Especially the Scouts. You can’t get away from it.”

Before we left, the Scout Motors executives accompanying us were gifted a dark red brick from the original plant, presented by Jim Poiry, who managed the Scout plant, as well as the Fort Wayne Truck Works. His grandfather sold his farm to International Harvester in 1920, and that’s where the Truck Works plant was built prior to its opening in 1923. Apparently, Scout Motors was expecting the brick: The executives placed it gently in a hard plastic carrying case which appeared to be designed to hold exactly one brick, with a clear plastic lid so you could see it inside.

We took turns hauling the brick all the way to Blythewood, South Carolina, where it would slide into a lectern that stood on the stage for the Scout Motors plant groundbreaking ceremony—a lectern built with a brick carrying-case slot in front. It was ceremonial but apparently important that a small piece of the original International Harvester plant take up residence in the new Scout Motors factory. I, owner of two vintage Scouts, was the first to carry the brick; I kind of just sat it on the floor of the passenger side of the old Scout I was driving and forgot about it.

After we left the museum, we drove across the street to American Hydroformers and parked our Scouts in front of a white sliding door at the end of the building. After they were built, all of the Scouts in our care drove out that door.

***

On mostly two-lane country roads, we headed 105 miles southeast towards Enon, Ohio, population 2500. It’s a location well known among those restoring or maintaining International Harvester Scouts, pickups, or Travelalls. Enon is home to Super Scout Specialists, a parts house and restoration shop for vintage IH vehicles that opened in 1990. The outfit has since grown to 46,000 square feet and includes its own museum.

That’s where we met Super Scout Specialist owner John Glancy and freelance author Jim Allen. Together they wrote The International Scout Encyclopedia: The Authorized Guide to IH’s Legendary 4×4, published by Octane Books. The buildings are modest on the outside, but on the inside—and behind the buildings, in what is essentially an IH boneyard of picked-over vehicles—we found a real time capsule.

The museum’s centerpiece is the first production Scout ever made—a little blue and white pickup powered by a four-cylinder engine. Surrounding it are shelves stocked with new, reproduced parts for Scouts, and in the cavernous back room there are original parts in boxes or stacked on racks. We saw a big rack of old hoods, a shelf with dusty instrument panels, and a wall where salvaged grilles were hung.

As old Scouts grow in popularity, the demand for Glancy’s services is growing. Still, “It’s getting tougher, day by day,” he said. “But we’re still here. The interest has increased, but it’s more of a challenge. A lot of our suppliers are wanting us to buy larger quantities than we can afford. If we can’t, they disappear, and we have to go find new suppliers.”

He agreed that Scouts are worth more than ever. “The value has gone up. When our book came out, I knew that would happen. It educated people about all the special models. I really think it helped.”

He was unsure, he said, about any impact the new Scout Motors electric vehicles will have on the old Scouts. “It’s bringing attention to the original models, what they are calling legacy Scouts. But I don’t know if it’s going to do anything for the value, any more than what the new Bronco did for the old Broncos. I will give Scout Motors credit—they seem to be genuinely interested in the history.”

Co-author Allen, who has been writing about four-wheel-drive vehicles for decades, said interest in Scouts has decidedly increased. “I started out as a four-wheel-drive historian. I knew a lot about it, and Scouts were part of that. I had wanted to do a Scout book back in the early ‘90s, but I couldn’t get a publisher interested in it.” Now, the International Scout Encyclopedia has become the bible for enthusiasts.

Value has also risen. “Oh, big time. In the last 10 years, the last five especially, Scouts have just gone berserk. The prices they are getting for Scouts now—here I am, the guy who wrote the book about Scouts, and I can’t afford to buy one. It’s insane what they’re getting for them.”

Hagerty valuation data reflects these reports, but our data experts note that the Scout still lags behind the early Bronco. Making the most progress is the Scout II, which was built from 1971 through the end of the Scout run in 1980, and accounts for four of the five Scouts we were driving. Based on the average Hagerty Price Guide value, all variants of 1961-72 Scouts have increased by 57 percent (from $17,702 to $27,879) in the past five years, while all variants of 1972-80 Scout IIs have increased by 62 percent (from $20,943 to $33,890).

Scout fans, Allen said, tend to fall into one of two categories: “There’s the restoration crowd, and the build-up crowd. And I think the build-up crowd is getting bigger than it used to be,” with seriously lifted vehicles and motor and transmission transplants. “A 302- or a 345-cubic-inch V-8 isn’t good enough, it has to have a Chevrolet LS engine in it. I’m not sure I get it: Why go back to the thrilling days of yesteryear, if you’re not really going back to the thrilling days of yesteryear?”

The restoration crowd “is narrow-focused. Interested in the details. Very much perfectionists in how they deal with their restorations. That’s what keeps John in beans and cornbread, the people who buy parts from him.”

Scout fans “were always the other guy,” Allen said. “There was a time, before the Ford Bronco came out in 1966, that Scout owned a big chunk of the SUV market, though of course they weren’t called SUVs then. But that market segment did exist. That’s what got the Scout going. It was more of a daily driver than the main rival, Jeep. Then, Jeeps were bare-bones in the extreme. The Scout was a step beyond that.”

How will fans of the original Scout take to an electric-powered one? “Most of the old guard has a problem with it,” Allen said. “But they appreciate the fact that the company has a legitimate interest in preserving the history, and they want it represented honestly.”

Tomorrow, we’ll find out how well the original Scouts adapt to interstate travel, on- and off-road.

***

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As the 65-year-old British car glided, powerless, to a halt on a leafy side street in New England, all my codriver Tom said was, “I didn’t expect it to happen this soon.” We had covered just 18 miles.

An hour earlier, we had left the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts. We were on our way to tick off 13 checkpoints in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine—or as many as we could reach on our first day of driving.

But it was barely 9:30 am on Day 1. We had just filled the eight-gallon gas tank of my 1958 Riley One-Point-Five, anticipating a long day of driving. I had pulled out of the gas station, and the car just died. I had coasted into a handy suburban side street, pulled to the curb, popped the hood release, and opened the trunk.

Out came the toolkit—wedged into place with a fleece Hello Kitty blanket. Tom, whose role was riding mechanic as well as codriver, went to work. The battery had charge, the under-hood button turned over the engine, but there were no dash lights at all. So, no ignition.

Hmmmmm.

Tom wriggled under the steering wheel and looked behind the wooden dash. Eureka! “Small flat-blade screwdriver,” he yelled. I handed it to him, and we were back in business 30 seconds later. After 65 years, the wires had just fallen off the back of the ignition switch. Screwed back into their contacts, the car fired right up, and we were back on the road.

First disaster averted—and we didn’t even have to break out the crucial King Dick wrenches (Whitworth, naturally). We only had 1100 miles left to cover. In three days.

Ubiquitous Lemons

Sooner or later, every car nut runs into a Lemons event or sees the photos. Maybe it’s the 24 Hours of LeMons endurance race, aka “crap-can racing,” for cars that cost $500 or less. Two years ago, I stumbled across their Lemons Rally series. Each rally is a three-day weekend event for weird-car drivers to cover hundreds of miles a day through a series of local sites and checkpoints.

As I familiarized myself with the points system, an idea took shape. The Lemons folks deduct points for Japanese cars (reliable) and give points to British and Italian cars (unreliable). The older the car is, the more points it earns.

I had a 65-year-old Riley One-Point-Five I’d bought in college, in 1980, out of a parking lot at the late, lamented Palo Alto All British Car Meet. It lived in California for two decades, served as my daily driver in San Francisco in the 1980s, then came east to join me in the early 2000s. Embarrassingly, it hadn’t done even 1000 miles since then.

What’s a Riley One-Point-Five, you ask? It’s a small sporting sedan from the long-defunct Riley marque, one of the sprawling stable of British Motor Corporation brands (along with MG, Morris, Austin-Healey, and others). Developed in the mid-’50s, the One-Point-Five blended underpinnings from the Morris Minor with a powerful 62-horsepower twin-carb MGA 1489cc engine. The spiffy sedan body retained an upright grille, traditional leather seats, even a wooden dash. When they were new, One-Point-Fives ran the Monte Carlo Rally; today, they still compete in U.K. vintage races.

Hidden Assets

My car was a bit of a mongrel when I got it. Over the years, its replacement MGB 1789-cc engine (with half again as much power, at 98 hp) gained a Datsun 280ZX five-speed gearbox for longer-legged cruising. It has MG Midget front disc brakes and a stronger Datsun 210 rear end, geared for up to 75 mph on highways—in a car less than 13 feet long, which is most often hailed by the public as “cuuute!”

If I could find a team and enter with a British car from the 1950s, we would get hundreds of points just by showing up. That sounded promising. Tom lives in New Hampshire, I live in New York. Our Massachusetts friend Scott would round out the team of Tempting Fate Tours the next day in his grubby but mechanically solid 1969 MGB roadster. (We met Scott, aka TheStylusGuy, through our various Isuzus … but that’s a different story.)

Driving onto the dewy lawn, we scanned the competitors. There was a RHD Mazda Bongo minivan, a JDM import whose occupants loaned tools and gave obscure Japanese candies to anyone who wanted them. A giant, lifted, diesel Ram “bro truck” was unexpected, but so was a surface-rusted ’59 Edsel (“the Dreadsel”). The Big Farmer team of veteran Lemons Ralliers flew in from around the country: They had bought a hugely rusty 1984 Volvo 240 wagon—sight unseen—out of a field, got it running in one day, and entered it. Inevitably, there was a Blues Brothers ex-cop car. Our favorite British compatriot may have been the 1988 Ford “LTD Queen Victoria,” with a Union flag on the roof (made with painter’s tape); it blared “Rule Britannia” on entering every checkpoint.

The Riley wasn’t the oldest car; a gleaming black ’56 Ford sedan, mildly hot-rodded, took that honor. But its New Jersey owners trailered it away at the end, whereas we drove home. Sniff.

Find Checkpoint, Shoot, Post, Repeat

To prove a team had reached a checkpoint, someone had to photograph the car and/or driver at the requisite building, bridge, sign, or store—then post the pic to Instagram with the proper hashtags. Tom and I each got good at jumping out, snapping the pic, and posting it as we roared off to the next destination. Simple and effective.

To be honest, after the first five, the checkpoints all started to blur together. We crossed from Massachusetts into New Hampshire, then into Maine proper, complete with signs saying, “Brake for Moose, It Could Save Your Life.” Okay, then. The amount of Insta posts grew, and after 100 miles or so, we started to relax. At every gas stop, we followed the mantra of those who drive British cars: “Refill oil, check petrol.” Castrol, in bright green cans, was our friend.

We landed at the Cole Land Transportation Museum in Bangor, Maine, just at sunset. (Note to outsiders: It’s pronounced “banger.”) After a tour, we headed for the hotel just as an exhausted Scott arrived after six-plus hours of 4000-rpm driving in a 54-year-old open-top car without overdrive. We shared a quick dinner and a few microbrews, and fell into our beds.

Day 2 was a long and twisting loop that took us from Stephen King’s house to the easternmost point of the United States (Lubec, Maine), past Big Jim the Fisherman to the Million Dollar View Scenic Outlook, and a host of others. We didn’t hit them all—especially those billed as “Ill-Advised” and “REALLY Ill-Advised” checkpoints—but we did enough to feel respectable. Props to Bangor’s Sea Dog Brewing Company for accommodating not only every single weird vehicle but also the raucous crowd speaking fluent Car-Nerd Esoterica.

On Day 3, we started earlier, at 7 a.m.—add oil, check gas—and hit the list harder, knocking off 14 separate checkpoints. Among them were Maine’s State Prison Showroom (Thomaston), the Fat Boy Diner (Brunswick), the Way Way Store (Saco), the Maine Classic Car Museum (Arundel), and Warren’s Lobster House (Kittery). My personal favorite was a fabulous Mid-Century Modern Ford dealership from 1963 in Portland (now a mini-storage site).

At the end of the list, we headed back into Massachusetts to the Paper House (Rockport) and our final destination: the Cape Ann Lanes and Laneside Brewery in Gloucester for the closing party and ceremony. The reunion was raucous, relieved, and involved beer, burgers, bowling, bad language, and lots of heckling. It also included awards.

That’s where we learned our evil plan had actually worked. Jeff Stobbs, the majordomo and organizer along with Eric Rood, put it like this: “Our next one is Organizer’s Choice. They bring a car that shouldn’t perform well in a rally whatsoever. It’s generally too small, it’s generally British, because I like British cars—and they also convinced their friend to like little British cars, so for Organizer’s Choice, it’s Tempting Fate Tours in the 1958 Riley!”

We’d like to thank the Academy … and especially all the little people out there whose cars now sport a fine film of oil from the back of the Riley. Which ran fine, with regular infusions of Castrol.

Fun, Fun, Fun

Tom made it home to New Hampshire in the Riley in an hour or so; Scott took three hours to cover the 130 miles to his home in western Massachusetts, in pouring rain; I was the last to collapse into bed, because I had another two hours to go after that (but in a modern car, so hey).

All next day we texted nonstop about the event, what we’d seen, the people we’d met (all friendly, mostly bonkers), and what fun it had all been.

To our shock, we now seem to be planning for this year’s rally. Our little gang may have a few new tricks up its greasy British-car sleeves. (Stay tuned on that front …) All the checkpoint photos are on the Tempting Fate Tours Instagram, and if you want to see the video version of Fall Fail-iage, watch for new episodes of Tempting Fate Tours on YouTube.

Meanwhile, make a point to drive to your local cars and caffeine event. Or organize a handful of old-car friends and plan a drive (we suggest two hours, you take it from there) on interesting local roads. You’ll find yourself stopping to take photos and BS about the driving along the way. Then you can check out this year’s Lemons Rally schedule.

The point of having old cars is to drive them—and we all know too many people who don’t do it. Not everyone has to do 1100 miles in a 65-year-old car, but with suitable maintenance and a dash of the best British luck … you could.

TL/DR: Drive the damn car! If we did it, you can too.

***

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The post Driving a 65-Year-Old British Car 1100 miles in 3 Days Was the Most Fun I Had All Year appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Though editor-in-chief Larry Webster is still in the throes of his $25K Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 project, we couldn’t resist sharing this piece of someone (other than Cammisa) enjoying the hell out of one. -EW

On the day I was set to drive this 1975 Ferrari Dino 308 GT4, I was late. There was no hot water at my place, and I needed to discuss the issue with my landlord. That I had never before driven a classic Ferrari should not shock you, given the fact I have a landlord.

It’s a friend’s car. He bought it, in part, thanks to me. At the time it belonged to my boss, who walked past my desk with a “maybe I should sell the Ferrari” kind of vibe. I sent my friend a photo of the Dino, freshly detailed. “If I were you,” I texted him, “I’d come talk to my boss about this car. Other people have mentioned interest.” He was there within a half of an hour.

When the deal was done, my friend offered me two cases of any beer I wanted, no matter where it was in the world. I countered: one case, one drive in the Ferrari. He agreed, and today was that day. The cold shower was, in a way, a fitting primer.

When new, Ferrari positioned the Dino 308 GT4 as a Porsche 911 eliminator, joining the ranks of two other mid-engine Italians—the Maserati Merak and the Lamborghini Urraco. None of them did much to slow 911 sales, but the Dino performed marginally better in showrooms than the Merak and Urraco. Still, for a number of reasons the Dino was relegated to a particular status as the forgettable Ferrari. The one styled by Bertone and not Pininfarina. The one at which passersby shouted, “Nice Lotus!” And, as values long reflected, the Dino was known as the one deemed unfit to wear the Ferrari badge. (308 GT4 owner and Hagerty video host Jason Cammisa disputes these points.)

Despite that reputation, the GT4 has recently gained a devoted following. Its Gandini-penned design has aged nicely, but more importantly, the 308 is respected for its mechanical robustness, chassis balance, and driver-focused experience. If you’re a Ferrari enthusiast on a budget—relatively speaking—the company’s first production mid-engine V-8 sports car is a tempting choice.

Between 2019 and 2023, the best 1975 Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 would command just north of $80,000, on average, according to the Hagerty Price Guide. Several recent auctions over the last year or so pushed that figure to an average of $123,000 in July 2023 and $110,000 in January 2024. Most remaining examples are not in concours-quality condition, of course, but even the #3 (Good) condition cars are up 33 percent, to $63,800 from $48,000 in the last twelve months.

Lore suggests that many Dinos were left on dealership lots for months when new, after which they were repainted red to garner more interest. Some, as the stories go, even had Ferrari badges added in place of the Dino ones. It’s easy to imagine such examples were used hard and put away wet, or left to sit and decay for many years. My friend’s car is painted yellow with a brown interior, and it retains the original and highly sought-after magnesium wheels. On the other side of the ledger, it wears a homebrew, hacked-together Flowmaster exhaust. The steering wheel of this particular example is clocked about 20 degrees to the left when the wheels are pointed straight.

Of course, even being responsible for a cheap Ferrari is enough to make me financially wary. With all of that in mind, my friend handed me the keys, made sure I knew where the fire extinguisher was located, and let me set off.

This is a relatively intimidating car in a number of ways. The seating position—with your legs positioned off to the right and your head craned slightly to the left—makes ergonomic sense once you don’t think about it too much. The clutch is heavy enough to warrant a “you gotta be f***ing kidding me” from a first-time user. Taller drivers can practically kiss the top of the driver’s door without flinching a neck muscle. The interior is both charming and surprisingly unremarkable, with a smattering of leather, metal, and unlabeled plastic switches.

I was nervous. But within five minutes, I fell in love.

From the driver’s seat, a few things struck me first. The transmission was less than agreeable until about 15 minutes in when it was properly warmed. The dogleg five-speed transmission is as much fun to use as it is in need of careful operation; I ground into third more than once with the clutch pedal firmly on the floor. Throttle response is immediate, but there were multiple “sweet spots” in the rev range—damn near all the way to redline—where the carburetors felt like they were really singing. Each downshift at speed from fifth to fourth to third rewards the driver with cracks and pops as wasted fuel from the four sizable Webers ignites in the exhaust system.

The 308 GT4’s 3.0-liter V-8 was rated at 240 horsepower in U.S-spec when new, which feels about right. The torque rating, however, I doubt; despite the claimed 195 lb-ft, there is never a sense that so much force is pushing your head back into the beautiful, leather-piped driver’s seat. The engine needs revs to be taken seriously. To me, this V-8 sounds like the greatest four-cylinder you’ve ever heard, even with the homemade exhaust mangle. A bit like an Alfa Romeo of the same vintage. Devoted fans of guttural eight-cylinder noises will be disappointed. Jazz isn’t for everyone.

James, my photographer for the day, appreciated the sound more than I did. I was driving, and the intake barks from the passenger side.

“How are the brakes?” he asked.

“Absolutely fine,” I said, meaning that in a certain sense. The brake pedal is not the most communicative, but it’s consistent, and the box-fresh but vintage-look Pirelli tires effectively scrub speed when called upon. You sit very far forward in the car, which is strange when you notice how much weight and room for occupants there is behind you. Outward visibility is excellent. The car responds eagerly to inputs, feeling both light and sure-footed as it goes down the road. The unfortunate lack of switchbacks offered in Columbus, Ohio, meant I didn’t get to shimmy the car through complicated sections of road like I would have wanted, but I nevertheless could tell it would be a fine tool in that environment. Even one long, twisty highway on-ramp left my passenger and I giggling for minutes. This car has a unique ability to convince me that I am, indeed, Burt Reynolds.

To wit, in my short couple of hours with the car, good ol’ boys in trucks at stoplights, children on bicycles, and mothers pushing strollers hollered at me. I cannot overstate how cool this felt. I find it hilarious that this was, theoretically, the Ferrari you would drive daily. Sure, it’s not that difficult to drive, but considering this as an alternative to a 911 is like switching out Pedialyte for Long Island iced tea. A ’70s 911 is a sweet, balanced experience. By comparison, the 308 GT4 is an overload—a service provided for the spiritual enrichment of the public as much as it is a self-aggrandizing prize.

This is the point of this car as far as I’m concerned. It elicits joy, which is best shared with other people. A passenger seat session with a driver not afraid to rev it out through a few gears is sure to fill the cabin with glee. So infectious is this fun that, as a driver, you won’t even mind the tension in your shoulders from gripping the helm. Nor will you sweat much about the indicator stock falling off in your hand. How lucky you are to be making such a silly voyage, at all!

***

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The post Even an Imperfect Ferrari Dino 308 GT4 Is a Driver’s Delight appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve been enamored with V-8–powered ski and race boats since childhood, and several years ago I spied this one on Craigslist. Loopy over the prospect of finally owning an authentic aquatic hot-rod, but too busy to drive 150 miles to inspect it, I bought it over the phone. I’ve suffered ever since.

Homebuilt in the 1960s from plans (“…a bundle of greased lightning,” the catalog enthused), the 16-footer was intended for small-block V-8s; mine had an early-production Ford 289. There were a few key ingredients to the boat’s performance. For starters, it was lightweight: The hull, constructed of hardwood, marine plywood, and fiberglass reportedly weighed just 550 pounds. It also had a flat bottom, which reduced the hull’s “wetted area” at speed. Finally, there was the rearward engine placement. I couldn’t wait drop into the vintage diamond-tufted seat and drive it. But first…

The boat had issues. It had been stored since 1976 and was incomplete once I got it. Missing were the carburetor and ignition system, and worryingly, the water-cooled aluminum headers, wiring harness, and driveshaft were disconnected. Had the engine been on its way out, or going back in? Its crusty appearance suggested the former. Undeterred, I sourced parts and reassembled the powertrain and electrics, learning much along the way. When the 289 fired up again after 46 years, orange rust and black carbon blasted from its unmuffled exhausts. The V-drive gearbox (shared with rear-engine wheel-standers like the Hurst Hemi Under Glass) rattled ominously, and the vessel morphed in my mind from infatuating to frightening. As I told friends, it seemed like a Cobra engine in a potato chip.

More drama came during “sea trials” at various lakes: Trip 1) The trailer blew a wheel bearing and tire; Trip 2) The water pump impeller disintegrated; Trip 3) The starter motor failed, then a blown head gasket turned the oil into a frothy chocolate shake; Trip 4) Cracked fiberglass caused a transom leak; Trip 5) A cavitation plate tore loose, bending the prop and rudder and turning the boat violently right; and Trip 6) The trailer broke a torsion spring.

Long after acquiring the “flattie,” I still hadn’t enjoyed one good drive. But then, unexpectedly, with every known problem diagnosed and solved, this overpowered underdog suddenly became stone-cold reliable. Now fast and fun, it’s a totally analog driving experience coupled with a mighty wallop of sound—a visceral throwback to the origins of modern speedboating. Hey, why not join the fun and go buy the worst one you can find, likewise sight unseen? I highly recommend it.

Narrator: He does not, in fact, recommend it.

***

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Despite nearly two decades of amateur racing under my belt, setting up a race car’s suspension remains something of a dark art to me. Getting all the variables on my Miata or even the much more limited ones on my kart just right for a given track usually requires describing what the vehicle’s doing to a knowledgeable pro and making incremental changes based on their advice. With the ability to adjust toe, camber, caster, and wedge, it is far too easy to take a chassis in the wrong direction while hunting for a setup that behaves predictably. Finding that perfect combination will yield a better-behaving car at speed and ultimately produces better lap times.

Knowing the complications that come with making chassis adjustments, I was quite intrigued when Lamborghini recently unveiled its Active Wheel Carrier, or AWC for short. It might have nothing to do with karting or SCCA club racing Miatas, but this tech actively adjusts two aspects of rear suspension geometry up to 60 times per second, shaving massive chunks of time from the pace of pros and novices alike. Let’s look at how it works and what it can do for you.

Toe, or the angle of the wheels relative to a straight line running from the front of the car to the back, is the first axis of adjustment. Zero toe is when the wheels are pointed perfectly straight—this positioning makes for the least rolling resistance (and therefore the least amount of tire wear). However, for spirited driving, even tiny changes in toe angle can make a world of difference. Small increments of toe out—where the leading edge of the tires is slightly further apart than the trailing edge—can make the car more eager to change direction (some drivers call this “twitchy”), while toe in, especially at the rear of the car, can help induce stability. AWC’s variable toe enables razor-sharp turn-in and confidence-inspiring stability throughout the corner. It’s also able to use this adjustable toe mechanism to induce minute amounts of rear-wheel steering to help the car feel more nimble, as well.

The second axis that Lambo’s AWC can alter is camber, which is the extent to which the top of the wheel is leaning in (negative camber) or out (positive) relative to horizontal. Optimal camber, like toe, is dependent on what a car’s doing at any given moment. For applying power down a straight, zero camber maximizes the tire’s contact patch. In a corner, negative camber on the outside wheel compensates for the vehicle’s lean and enables ideal grip on side of the car that is loaded up with the most weight.

AWC’s active camber adjustment provides the optimal contact patch at all times. This is most important in cornering, where not only is the outside tire ideally set up for the turn, the one on the inside—which in a traditional setup would have the smallest contact patch in this situation—is now able to employ the full width of the tire and greatly increase mid-corner grip.

The AWC system moniters data from a number of sensors including steering angle, throttle, and g-forces to add or subtract camber and toe independently at both rear corners. The outcome was dramatic—according to the OVERDRIVE YouTube channel, journalists testing the car improved their lap times by 4.8 seconds, and Lamborghini’s own test drivers saw a 2.8-second reduction in lap times when AWC was on.

Of course, there’s a lot of load placed on wheel hubs, especially with the monster power and sticky tire compounds found on today’s Lamborghinis. As a result, it may be some time before this tech reliably finds its way to the streets on supercars or otherwise. I think I’ll keep my racing rides old school, but I am constantly amazed at the technology that makes speed ever more attainable.

***

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Sometime in 1976, after rehabbing a pair of swoopy Thunderbirds, overconfidence overwhelmed my fledgling car skills and good sense, and I fell for this dingy 1951 Pontiac Chieftain Deluxe sedan.

Flamboyant midcentury styling hadn’t yet reached GM’s value division, so despite being billed as “new and beautiful,” in reality, the Chieftain wore milquetoast body forms and a sofa-like broadcloth interior, which in this case smelled like a wet dog.

The owner was quite senior, and a quick calculation suggested she’d been in high school when the Model T debuted, then witnessed World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, Beatlemania, and the moon landings. I sure do wish now that I’d asked her about it all. Anyway, she called the weathered Pontiac “Turtleback,” perhaps in reference to its roofline. No matter—her driving days were over, and a windfall $150 in the cookie jar trumped keeping that tired lump in the driveway any longer than she needed to. And it was a lump. Unlike sister division Cadillac, there was no V-8 under the Pontiac’s long hood. Instead lurked a straight-eight Silver Streak flathead displacing 268 cubic inches and producing 116 horsepower.

Of course, that straight-eight motor didn’t run, nor did the brakes work. Lacking useful prefrontal cortexes, a buddy and I thus concocted a “brilliant” scheme to roll the car to the brink of a steep hill near the seller’s house and then lower it into town using his ’64 Olds and a tow cable as a brake. Then we would push it home. All the plan needed was a useful idiot to steer the car. The process was both stupid and frightening, yet we survived.

Once in safe harbor, we set about resuscitating the Chieftain, starting with a brake fluid flush. The 6-volt starter cranked the engine slower than an ancient butter churn, and once running, the Chieftain would barely crawl to useful speed, whereafter the temperature gauge pegged and steam twirled through the grille. Eventually, I pulled the massive iron head to reveal stuck exhaust valves. Way out of my depth, and unable to comprehend a solution, I fussed and fretted, pried and pounded, twisted and twirled the valves until the springs finally closed them.

The old Turtleback ran better after that, and I took immense satisfaction from my ham-fisted tinkering skills to get it there, but the car remained forever on the brink of overheating. More happily, the tube radio worked, and so did the magnificent illuminated Chief Pontiac hood ornament.

Calling this one a draw, I lived, I learned, and then … I walked away. I sold it for $250, give or take, and put the money into my next project.

***

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The cop who pulled me over was thoroughly pissed. “You could have killed me,” he screamed through my open car window. “You came flying up that hill headed straight at me! I thought you were going to crash right into my door.”

Chasing my pal, Joe, in his white-on-red ’55 Chevy convertible, I had driven, admittedly, in a bit of a hurry up the Mayfield Road hill from Cleveland’s Eastside “Little Italy” neighborhood to where it crested a hill, jogged left, and headed east toward the suburbs. But not so hurried that I was driving dangerously, at least in my opinion. And I hadn’t noticed the cop sitting lights-off in the row of cars always parked along the far side of that street.

I apologized to the officer, explaining that I had driven that hill-topping left-hand jog many times before, that I was totally in control, and I was in no way close to crashing into him or anything else. He calmed down a bit, checked my license and registration, lectured me to slow down, and eventually let me go. Whew!

Meanwhile, Joe was patiently waiting for me a bit farther up the road. It was a little past midnight, and we were on our way from somewhere to somewhere else in our never-ending quest for fun female companionship.

This was the summer of 1966 between my freshman and sophomore years in college, and my car-guy dad (in his second-childhood years) had bought me a well-used, white 1960 Chevy convertible motivated by a 335-hp Tri-Power 348 V-8 as my daily driver. That 348 was about as strong as they came in its day, and that big Chevy was seriously fast, more than capable of getting me into major trouble. I loved my dad, but what was he thinking?

Joe and I were working evening shift six nights a week at Eaton Corp.’s truck-axle plant in Cleveland. The work paid well but used up most of our nights. The good news was that we were free most of each day to work on our cars (and our tans). The bad was that we had just a couple hours, after getting off work at about 11 pm each night, to party.

The 348 was also plagued by more than its share of troubles, and mine spewed copious blue smoke out of its dual exhausts whenever I stood on it hard. So, despite constant temptation, I did that very seldom … except to blow off the occasional stoplight challenger or remind pal Joe how much quicker it was than his sexier small-block V-8 ’55. Enhancing its fun-to-drive factor, my car also pumped all that prodigious power through a four-speed manual gearbox with a floor shifter cobbled up by a previous owner.

That was hardly the only time I got pulled over that summer, but I miraculously got through it without a ticket for speeding or anything else. I drove sanely enough, even in that rocket-ship car, to avoid not just tickets but also dangerous incidents on the road.

I do vividly recall one butt-clenching afternoon when I underestimated the amount of room it would take to pass a line of slower cars on a two-lane highway. When I realized that an oncoming car was closing too quickly, it was too late to brake hard and duck back into line, so I floored it and managed to clear the lead car just in time to swerve back into my lane. I’m sure I scared not only myself but everyone in the surrounding cars—both in oncoming traffic and in the line that I had barely cleared—not to mention the pretty young lady in my passenger seat. She never dated me again, and that might have been why.

As a serious car guy, I could not resist tinkering with that car when not bombing around in it. I once did some amateur hop-up work at a friend’s house and screwed up the ignition timing enough that it wouldn’t start. I ended up having to leave it in his parents’ garage overnight while I studied up on the problem, then went back and fixed it the next day.

But I was not qualified to attack the worsening burnt-oil smoke screen the Chevy belched out every time I accelerated hard. So, when the summer was nearing its close, my dad took it to our local dealer to have them diagnose and repair that problem before I drove it 600 miles down to college in North Carolina.

It seemed okay afterward … until it didn’t. The oil smoke was gone, and it ran well around town. So, I loaded it up and headed for school. In the middle of the night, at highway speed near the town of Front Royal, Virginia, the 348 decided to self-destruct. It apparently lost oil pressure and clanked to a smoky stop by the side of the road. Damn! I spent the rest of that night trying to sleep in the car, then gathered up what I could carry, stuck out my thumb, and hitched the rest of the way down to school.

My father, bless his understanding heart, called a Chevy dealer in Front Royal and had the car towed there, then took a couple of days off work to drive down and take over the situation while I was sitting carless in class. With my okay, he negotiated a deal to trade it for a new ’63 compact Chevy II convertible, then drove that much tamer but more reliable ride down to me at school.

I had had about enough of big-power cars by then, and the six-cylinder, three-on-the-tree, white Chevy II was a pretty decent ride. It served me well for the next two years—not fast, but fun, handling well compared to that big, old ’60 Chevy.

***

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A sunny autumn day in Victoria, B.C., provides the ideal backdrop for open-topped motoring, British style. Crisp leaves crunch under skinny tires and swirl in the wake of this little blue 1967 MG Midget as everyone smiles at its cheery, cheeky face. It seems impossible that anyone could hate this car, with its drawn-by-Richard-Scarry looks and fizzy four-pot engine.

But Dave Hord did. In fact, this pint-sized Brit classic nearly broke his spirit of adventure.

Hord is Hagerty’s Director of Events for Canada and a route master for a large number of driving events. He racks up around 40,000 miles of driving each year, much of that in one of his own modified vintage VW Beetles. He is well used to roadside repairs, scrounging parts, and all the other setbacks a classic car can throw at you on a roadtrip. Even so, the Midget nearly killed him.

Our story begins on Facebook, font of many a bad idea. In October 2022, Andrew Comrie-Picard, a stunt driver, rally racer, adventurer, and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, posted a photo of his Midget and Model T, asking if anyone with an enclosed trailer might be available to ship the former from Los Angeles up to the Seattle area. The Midget had been sold to an old friend in Victoria and it needed to be moved.

“I’ll drive it up,” posted Hord, adding later: “Will probably need to borrow a toque.”

Some of you are doing the math on this, and those of you who own old British machinery are possibly scratching your heads at the audacity of such a plan. October is lovely in southern California, but this is a car with no roof, 65-ish horsepower, and a four-speed gearbox. It’s a solid 1500 miles from Los Angeles to Vancouver Island, and have we mentioned that the car is more than half a century old? And British?

Murphy’s Law, that old adage proclaiming “anything that can go wrong will go wrong” certainly applies to a lot of vintage British cars. Battling such mishaps is part of the charm, however, knowing how to keep them soldiering along, mend-and-make-do. Every British-car tinkerer relishes the hard work that goes into making sure your old Lotus, MG, or Jaguar doesn’t stumble when out for a weekend canter.

Not so charming, however, the Midget’s front suspension collapsing in the first 30 miles. On a run to pickup motocross goggles to ward off hundreds of miles of no-roof blustery driving, Hord found himself calling for a flat-deck tow, without even having started his odyssey properly. Turns out, the Midget’s previous owner had bodged some suspension and it had come apart beneath Hord.

Foreshadowing of future travails. And there were even more hints before that. Andrew Comrie-Picard—whose friends often just call him ACP—and Hord have been friends for 20 years. However, Hord came from an appreciation of Volkswagens, and ACP from a love of Jags and the like. German vintage car enthusiasm and British vintage car enthusiasm do have a brotherly Venn diagram overlap, but each is its own discipline. Hord’s Beetles aren’t always bulletproof, but they are usually meticulously prepared before a journey. He is, after all, a professional route planner. ACP, on the other hand, has more of a rally driver’s approach, a patch-things-together-and-send-it kind of mentality.

Thus, the Midget was fine for driving around town, but it needed quite a bit of work before setting off. Having optimistically flown in on a Thursday, Hord didn’t end up hitting the road until late Saturday—and ended up camping on the side of the road that night.

Next morning, he was up early with plans to hit cars and coffee in Santa Cruz. But wait, what’s that noise? Just 45 minutes into the drive, it was time to spend several hours fiddling with the SU carburetors, which stubbornly resisted proper tuning. Having finally sorted them out, Hord was back on the road and … wait, now what’s that noise?

Oh, no. The generator.

Still, never say die. Hord coasted into San Francisco on his last few electrons, pulled the generator in a parking space, and dropped it off at a repair shop on Monday, October 31. Shout out to Rite-Way Electric on Sixth Street, which had the generator rebuilt and ready to go in just two hours.

Here we must pause to consider some looming deadlines. As a working man, Hord did have a job to get back to. He happened to be in the LA area doing early recce for the Hagerty California Mille, and the expectation was that he would be at his desk on Monday, ready for presentations and meetings on the entire plan for 2023. Which would be stressful enough on its own, let alone when you’re still trying to get an MG bolted back together some 1200 miles from home.

The other, unexpected deadline was the weather. October had been unseasonably warm, perfect for those last fall drives. The change came like a lightswitch, however, with monsoon-level wind and rain and bone-chilling cold. Up ahead, in Washington and in B.C., meteorologists were buzzing about a phenomenon they called an “atmospheric river.” This is not a fun term to learn when you are driving a car that has no roof.

Wrapped up in layers of wool and Gore-Tex, with a garbage bag around his waist for extra protection, Hord bravely soldiered out into the—oh, come on, what’s that noise now?

This time it was a mechanical show-stopper: a stuck valve in the head. With the little MG ostensibly stricken beyond mere roadside repair, Hord rented a U-Haul, hooked the Midget up behind, and kept heading north. Looking back, he said, “I had failed in my mission—but I was thinking, how can I turn that failure into opportunity?”

The U-Haul made time, and the rains eased up. Hord pulled into a parking lot, and there, as though accompanied by a chorus of angels, was the sign that is balm to the soul of many a broken-down vintage motorist: Harbor Freight. Hord bought the tools he needed to pull off the head, he fixed the stuck valve, returned the U-Haul, and then hit the road again. This time, the Midget was purring like a dream.

Hord spent the next day in online meetings in a hotel room, catching up on work while some last-minute importation paperwork came through. The final leg of the journey was tantalizingly close, but his phone kept lighting up with less than ideal weather updates. Rainfall Warning. Flood Watch.

Once more into the breach, Hord faced a three-hour delay at the U.S.-Canada border, then a soaking wet drive all the way to the ferry terminal, where, thanks to a series of mechanical and storm-related delays, he had to endure multiple missed sailings before getting on the last boat out, at 10 p.m. The crossing was incredibly choppy, with crashes and bangs below deck. Hord responded by posting the movie poster for Master and Commander on Facebook.

And at last, home. Hord tucked the Midget beside one of his Beetles and gratefully slunk off to bed. The MG relaxed by vomiting copious amounts of oil all over the shop floor.

But the adventure was not quite at an end. ACP and a couple of friends flew in at the tail end of November for a work party. They pulled the engine, sorted out the leaks, did the clutch, and got the Midget ready for its next driver. It was, of course, raining again, so Hord dug out some garbage bag skirts for the new owners to wear on the wet drive down to Victoria.

The Midget is now owned by Leigh Large, a longtime friend of ACP. In reality, it’s his daughter Ylva’s car; the pair fell in love with it on a trip to LA, when they borrowed the MG to drive around town. You can see why. In fact, this little car is so appealing, somebody stole it while the Larges were visiting Griffith Park. It was later recovered after being abandoned … due to fuel issues. Vintage cars often provide their own anti-theft systems.

Large says that his daughter drives the Midget all the time. Ylva’s still in high-school, and on her learner’s license, and the pair plan to do one of Hord’s local driving events together, maybe next year. One wonders if the sight of the little blue car might give Hord flashbacks.

“Honestly,” he says, weighing his thoughts carefully, “I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t even blink.”

A spirit of adventure. Occasionally bent to the limit, but unbroken.

The post How the Happiest Little Blue Car Nearly Broke the Will of a Professional Adventurer appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Having children doesn’t mean being forever shackled to the steering wheel of a blobbish crossover. Yes, modern cars are undeniably safer than old ones, but a unique automobile has other merits; it can turn even the most mundane errand into a cherished family adventure. In fact, a classic car actually helps create stronger family memories.

As a child, Michael Gideon vividly remembers riding on the vinyl bench seat in his dad’s 1967 Camaro SS. Now, he’s sharing his enthusiasm with his daughter Camila. He swapped out the stock seats in his 1988 Porsche 911 Carrera for a set of Sparco Evo II fixed-backs, which perfectly fit her car seat. “She loves it, but I love it too,” he says. “She’s right next to me; it’s like having my little best friend along for the ride.”

Fellow Porsche enthusiast Neal Lett drives his 4-year-old daughter Lennon to school in his ’67 Porsche 912 equipped with a car seat in front. “She’s slowly learning the fundamentals of a manual transmission. She knows when to shift and what gear number we need to be in,” Neal says. “We get a lot of reactions on the road. Lots of waves, smiles, and thumbs up. We have had many moms roll their windows down and say, that’s the cutest thing I have ever seen.”

These are cars with history, cars with distinct sounds, smells, and vibrations. Every detail adds to the experience: the texture of chrome trim, lightly pitted from decades of adventures; the faint smell of fuel, of oil; the roar of a carbureted engine reverberating through a cabin devoid of sound deadening.

Lane Friedman and her husband Cooper are no strangers to classics, so it’s fitting that when their son Otis was born, they took him right to a Los Angeles car meet in their 1971 BMW 2002. “It was one of his first outings since leaving the hospital! A wave of nostalgia came over me in that car together as a family. We always joke that our son will have his fair share of cars to choose from when he sneaks out one day,” says Lane.

“He talks about the smell of it. He’ll get in and say, ‘Oh, it’s that smell!” says Steve Lowtwait, who regularly takes his son Brody on trips in his Silver Green 1979 Mercedes 300 SD, which has proven especially practical. “We take it to dinner; we’ve taken it snowboarding and fit two boards in the trunk,” says Steve. “The simpler technology, the build quality, the style, the heritage … I like to share that passion with my family.”

Turns out it isn’t just the romance of vintage materials and analog technology that makes the experience special, however. It’s science. Scent is processed by the brain’s olfactory bulb, which has a direct connection to the limbic system—the region in the brain where we process emotion and memory.

In her TEDx talk, olfactive expert Dawn Goldworm says, “When you smell an odor, you automatically link an emotion to it, and the scent and the emotion remain forever linked together, floating in our olfactive memory…. This is why some of our most powerful memories are linked to smell.” Her company, 12.29, integrates scent into brand identity and works with clients like Cadillac. So yes, that sweating gasket, rich carb, and 50-year-old interior are actually imprinting vivid family memories.

Modern cars are designed to be free of stimuli. Smooth, quiet, inoffensive transportation pods complete with multi-zone climate control, active noise cancellation, and brake-by-wire. When we interact with a vintage automobile, however, we are flooded with stimuli—electrical impulses firing through deep synapses that will become indelible memories. Decades later, we can recall them with striking detail.

As parents, we know that the time we get to spend with our children is fleeting. Our kids will move from the car seat to the driver’s seat faster than a modded hot hatch, all while the world passes by through the windows. The memories we create with them, inside a few thousand pounds of rumbling steel and glass, are precious. Our classics do far more than transport us from point A to B, so while the DMV may classify them as automobiles, we know full well that they are, in fact, multi-generational time machines.

The post In the Family Classic, Senses Seed Memories appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Change is afoot. We all feel it. Even if electric vehicles aren’t meeting sales expectations at the moment, it’s not hard to wonder whether it’s closing time for the traditional sports car. At least, for those of us who don’t have millions to throw at one of Gordon Murray’s naturally aspirated, stick-shift hypercars. Fewer than 2 percent of all new cars sold in the United States last year had a manual transmission, and the options dwindle by the day. Many of our favorite cars are straight-up disappearing—a few months back, we bade goodbye to the Chevrolet Camaro with a series of articles—while others remain in name but leave us in spirit. The latest BMW 3 Series, for example, offers no manual transmission except as a $76,000 M3/M4; the Volkswagen GTI currently has three pedals but will not for 2025, and it will likely go all-electric in 2026.

Indeed, as I was readying the new-for-2024 Ford Mustang you see here to participate in the story you’re about to read, I got a text from my father informing me about the purchase of… a 2024 Mustang GT. Although he has owned his share of sports cars over the decades, there seemed to be an urgency this time around. “It could be my last opportunity to buy a new car like this,” he explained.

The desire to seize the present as well as wring the last few drops of driving season carried us to southern Ohio in late autumn in five sports cars you can buy right now, including the Acura Integra Type S, the Mazda Miata, the Subaru BRZ, and the Toyota GR Corolla, as well as the aforementioned Mustang GT. Our aim wasn’t a conventional comparison test, so our qualifications, aside from the need for a clutch pedal, were unapologetically fuzzy.

We wanted cars that could be had for around $50,000 (roughly the average price of a new car in 2023, believe it or not) and that represented some niche of sports car enthusiasm. And rather than a rigid rubric of track and performance testing, we opted for a backroads adventure someone might reasonably do in a factory-warrantied, bank-owned daily driver. Our goal, in essence, was to understand the state of the affordable sports car in 2024. Is this really the end? Or, worse, has the best already come and gone?

The Purebreds

2023 Mazda Miata Grand Touring

One of the things no one tells you about Ohio is that it’s beautiful. South of Columbus, the midwestern monotony of cornfields and industrial sprawl gives way to red-streaked rock, winding waterways, and ribbons of perfect blacktop that dip and careen through a multicolored forest canopy. We set out in the early morning from the town of Athens, home of Ohio University and situated along the Hocking River. Although it was cold enough to frost, I flipped open the top of our Miata to let in the morning mist.

The Miata is the oldest vehicle in this test in more ways than one. It was last redesigned in 2015, an eternity in the auto industry, and differs in no meaningful way from what Mazda introduced in 1989. It also represents our very oldest notion of what an affordable sports car is—a two-seat, rear-drive convertible with an overachieving four-cylinder. In the 1950s, these arrived on our shores as MG TDs, Austin-Healeys, and Triumphs.

If your senses have been dulled by modern performance cars with their rock-hard suspensions, steamroller tires, and Ludicrous settings, you might spend a mile or two wondering what all the fuss is with the Miata, in the same way my 4-year-old daughter was unimpressed by her first real rainbow sighting (“Where are the unicorns?”). This Miata has more power than any of its predecessors, edging out even the turbocharged 2004–2005 MazdaSpeed Miata. But given the massive horsepower inflation of recent years, it doesn’t feel particularly muscle-bound. Even for me, a longtime owner of a first-generation Miata, the initial meeting here is slightly awkward. Steering is relatively light, and the ride is luxury-car supple. Through the first few corners, supposedly this thing’s calling card, I sawed at the wheel, jabbed at the throttle, and was rewarded with a whole lot of body roll and slower corner exits.

Then I settled down, slowed my inputs, and devoted more of my energy to seeing and sensing the road. It clicked. The car stopped fighting me—or, rather, I stopped fighting it—and we started experiencing each corner as a team. With smooth braking and deliberate turn-in, the Miata sets, sticks, and gently pivots. Feed in throttle, let out a small whoop, and prepare for the next one. The Miata isn’t just a good driver’s car but also one that continually teaches you to become a better driver.

This has always been the Miata magic, but that magic has been distilled in the latest edition. Three of the editors on this test, myself included, own first-generation cars, and we all remarked on how this one actually feels better. “It’s every bit as agile as the original but is so much more composed when you go faster,” said editor-in-chief Larry Webster (who technically owns two old Miatas). “It’s light and flickable, graceful. The motor kept its zinginess but has the muscle the first one lacked.” On top of all that, it has become considerably more practical, with an easier-to-stow and quieter top.

Of course, there are still practical limitations. Most of us could not justify a two-seater as a daily driver. “I would wait to get a Miata until later in life; in my 20s, I only want to keep track of one car, and I want something with more trunk space, if not more seats, and a hard roof,” noted associate managing editor Grace Houghton. Taller drivers, Webster included, had to accept being cramped.

These aren’t really criticisms, exactly, in the same way it’s not really criticism to say a hammer isn’t good at drilling holes. We’ve become accustomed to cars that attempt to do a lot of things at varying levels of competency. The Miata is one of the last cars on the road that tries to do one thing well. It is a sports car boiled down to its essence. On the right roads, it’s impossible to imagine wanting anything more.

2023 Subaru BRZ Limited

Unless, maybe, you hop directly into a Subaru BRZ, as I did for a stretch of Ohio State Route 537, a rural roller coaster dotted by the occasional farm and Parks General Store. (“You terrorists?” a local asked before driving off, apparently uninterested in our answer.) The Subaru’s chassis is noticeably and usefully tauter than the Miata’s, to the extent that you can hit the same undulating curves harder, brake slightly later, and jump on the gas a bit more aggressively. The general experience is similar, but there’s more adrenaline here.

If you’ve spent time in the first-generation BRZ and dismissed it—as I had—the second generation deserves fresh consideration. The boxer engine, which was breathless and harsh enough to knock loose a filling in the original, has been smoothed; it revs freely and has been given extra oomph. The gearbox is slicker, if not quite as silky as the Mazda’s, and the steering is nicely weighted and direct. “This is a ‘sweet spot’ car,” said Webster. “Enough power so you can wring it out but not so much that you’re going insanely quick.”

There are still some rough edges. The interior is, as ever, a sea of dark plastics, with a touchscreen that reminded one editor of a “10-year-old Android phone.” The busy exterior styling checks all the sporty boxes—and presumably satisfies the brand marketing departments at both Subaru and Toyota (which badges it the GR86)—but fails to strike much of an emotional chord. “As a design, it’s just not that memorable,” said HDC magazine creative director Todd Kraemer.

Yet none of these flaws meaningfully take away from what was, for only $31,500, the purest handling car in this entire group. “You get what you pay for here—and you’re paying for the chassis,” said Houghton, who named it her top choice. By my reckoning, you’d have to pay $70,000, the base price of a Porsche 718 Cayman, to get a significantly better chassis.

Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise any of us if, someday, enthusiasts shell out big-time money for the BRZ, as they do today for the best handling Japanese coupes of the 1980s and 1990s.

“This is one of those cars we currently take for granted,” noted senior content manager Joe DeMatio, “which, when it’s gone, we will be like, ‘Oh damn, why don’t they make that anymore?’”

The Sport Compact Generation Gap

2023 Toyota GR Corolla

Stopping for lunch in one of the one-street towns around these parts, I spied a teenage boy gesticulating at me. Had I parked in the wrong spot? Run over his dog, perhaps? Only as I got closer did it become clear that I had spotted in the wild what is supposedly the rarest of creatures: a young person who is really into cars. Not just any car, though. He was drawn to the GR Corolla.

If, like me, you happen to be a middle-aged geek, this might seem odd. After all, we are talking about what is recognizably a Toyota Corolla hatchback. Chris Stark, associate editor and our own tame 20-something, attempted to explain the appeal: “Colin McRae ASMR 10 hours.”

Um, what?

“You know, Colin McRae, the Scottish rally driver who is most famous for driving Subarus in the 1990s,” he enthused. “And ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response—a tingling feeling down your spine in reaction to certain sounds. There are a ton of long YouTube videos about it, but basically, this Corolla makes really cool rally car sounds.”

I still don’t quite get all that, but within the first few miles, I appreciated the sheer chutzpah of this Toyota. Beyond the styling—an adolescent fever dream replete with fender flares, scoops, and three exhaust tips—it has the most unsubtle turbocharger I’ve experienced on a new car in at least a decade. How else can a 1.6-liter three-cylinder make 300 horsepower? Each dip into the throttle is rewarded with a RIGHT NOW wallop of boost and neck-snapping thrust. “It’s just so scrappy and energetic,” remarked Webster. “You can’t not flog it.”

When the flogging ensues, you begin to realize there’s a lot more going on here than simply a pile of performance parts. For the uninitiated, “GR” stands for Gazoo Racing, Toyota’s in-house motorsports outfit. It has been particularly active of late in World Rally Championship, winning the manufacturers’ title three years running. Our test car was a limited-build Morizo edition, that being the nickname of company chairman Akio Toyoda. It evinces all kinds of engineering overkill, from a lighter, carbon-fiber roof to extra spot welds (349, to be exact) that add rigidity. It is, in short, the real deal, and it drives like it. “The new hot hatch benchmark,” enthused Webster.

The car hoovered up the gnarliest corners Ohio could throw at it, going faster than the other cars in the group, always whispering for more speed. Unlike many all-wheel-drive wündercars, though, it never gives the impression that computers are doing all the work. Toyota paid attention to the ABCs of driver involvement, starting with a great manual gearbox. “The clutch pedal to shifter relationship is spot on,” observed DeMatio. “You can feel the texture of the pavement through the steering wheel,” added Houghton. The tires, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s, have phenomenal traction but let you know when they’re reaching their limit, rather than braking suddenly. “It was confidence-inspiring on a level unmatched by any car in our group,” concluded Webster.

It was also, without a doubt, the most tiring car in our group, with a bone-rattling ride and a never-ending cacophony of road, engine, and wind noise. “I’m told the Morizo version has a lot of the sound deadening removed—put it back!” groused Kraemer. Even Stark, who spent much of the trip trying to figure out what he could Marie Kondo out of his life in order to afford one, admitted there were moments when it was all too much. “I love this car, but I’m glad I wasn’t the one who drove it back to Michigan,” he said.

2023 Acura Integra Type S

The car most of us preferred to while away the hours in was the Acura Integra Type S. Before going any further, let’s take a moment to appreciate that there is such a thing as a new Integra Type S. The nameplate disappeared in the United States around the turn of the century, and Acura hasn’t offered a small sport compact of any kind in more than 15 years (the outgoing ILX had its merits but never had sporting intentions). Zooming out, there just aren’t many new cars (as opposed to crossovers) of any ilk being added to lineups these days, let alone hatchbacks with stick shifts and 320-hp turbo engines.

That said, for better and for worse, this is not the Integra of millennials’ nostalgic imagination so much as the Integra for millennials as they exist today—30-somethings with respectable jobs to get to and families to haul. The model-year 2000 Acura Integra Type-R, now a darling of the collector car market, was in many respects a tuner special in the spirit of the Corolla GR. The Type S, although essentially a Type-R under its skin (most of the mechanicals come from the Honda Civic Type R), hews closer to the tradition of the Volkswagen GTI: a subtle, refined front-driver.

Most of the time, this felt like a pretty smart balance. “The right car for me,” said DeMatio. “Plenty of power, but also plenty of refinement and an attractive exterior. All the stuff you’d expect from a daily driver—easy-to-use interfaces, excellent outward view, comfortable seats—is here.” Much like in the best GTIs, when you spend enough time in the Integra, you start to wonder why anyone would ever need anything more. Moreover, everyone appreciated the aggressive styling, which is frankly astonishing when you consider how polarizing Acuras have been over the past decade or so.

Driven by itself on these roads, the Integra feels nearly ideal, with no shortage of power or traction and a manual gearbox as good as any Honda has produced (which is to say as good as anyone has produced). In our group of purebreds, however, the trade-offs become clear. The steering wheel tugs noticeably under acceleration and generally lacks a consistent feel. “It’s darty just off center and then overly slow as you turn in further,” complained Webster. “I found myself making numerous little corrections.” The engine is better behaved, producing nary a hint of turbo lag. Yet some of us would have preferred some rowdiness. “Where’s the VTEC, yo?” wondered Stark.

More than any of the other cars on the test, this one seemed haunted by memories of what used to be. It is neither the zippy boy racer of Acura’s past nor the perfectly balanced sports sedan that, not long ago, seemed to be price of entry for every serious luxury brand. “I thought the car might make me sell my E36 1998 M3 four-door,” mused Webster. “Nope.” But our memories can play tricks on us. When we turned our focus to the present, the Integra was the car more editors said they wanted to take home than any other.

The Pony Car Stands Alone

2023 Ford Mustang GT

There are many things that distinguish the Ford Mustang from the other cars in this test. It was the largest, the most powerful, and (as equipped) the most expensive. It wears the oldest nameplate, too—60 years, as of this April. Not for nothing, it’s the only one in our group sold by an American automaker (although it should be noted that the Integra is in fact built right here in Ohio). But the most important distinction, in terms of understanding the Mustang, is that people buy it in meaningful numbers. Ford still sells some 50,000 a year in the United States and boasts that it has been the bestselling sports car in the world 10 years running. The new seventh-generation model is so hot that it’s sitting on dealer lots for an average of just seven days. Like the Rolling Stones, it somehow manages to keep drawing the crowds.

This popularity makes it an exception among affordable sports cars. Yet it is an exception that proves the rule, for the most popular sports car in the world is—at least in the particular context of this group and these tight country roads—not exactly a sports car.

Please don’t misunderstand: The new Mustang is effortlessly fast, and it sounds the business. “Easily the best sounding car here,” enthused Stark. Around town, the 5.0-liter does a convincing impression of an old-time big-displacement engine, but it really sounds best at high rpm, where eight cylinders combine with four fast-spinning overhead cams in a symphonic roar. True to form as the last muscle car standing, it also does, per Webster, “the best burnout of any modern car.”

Despite its size, it had no problem keeping up with the others, even through technical sections where it couldn’t rely on its massive power. If only it felt a little more joyful doing so. “The steering is lifeless, like a racing simulator,” said Webster. Admittedly, that’s a trivial complaint in most driving situations. Charging over a blind crest or dialing downhill into a decreasing radius corner, though, this sensory deprivation can be downright spooky. You have to trust that the tires are somewhere out there and indeed sticking to the pavement. Mind you, the Mustang consistently proves worthy of that trust. “It did what I asked every time and compensated when I made mistakes, so the suspension and brakes were doing their job,” noted Kraemer. “You just didn’t always feel like they’re going to do their job.”

None of this is surprising nor, really, an indictment. The resounding majority of modern performance cars, including the Porsche 911 and pretty much all new BMWs, have grown larger and feel more isolated from the road than their predecessors, presumably because that’s what most of us want. Heck, it’s what most of us wanted most of the time—the Mustang, along with the Integra, was the car editors most desired for the stretches of “normal” roads that connected the technical bits. “I imagine it’s a fine commuter car for someone who’s got to burn 50 or 75 miles of freeway every day,” admitted DeMatio.

What saves the Mustang as a sports car—what has almost always saved it—is that it doesn’t take itself all that seriously. Everyone geeked out over the fact that among the optional gauge configurations in the digital driver’s screen is a tribute to the tach and speedo in a late 1980s Fox body. “All the bells and whistles on the dash are pure fun,” enthused Kraemer. Most were charmed by the return of a handbrake (even though it’s actually connected to the e-brake by electronics, rather than a cable). And everyone loved the way it looked—even those of us (me) who had balked at the initial photos. Using the basic retro styling language that has served this car well since 2005, Ford designers came up with something more expressive and almost cartoonish—in a good way. More than any of the other cars in our group, the Mustang has a personality and a presence. “It reminds me of a Labrador—big, dumb, loud, and eager,” said Stark. It was hard for any of us to be angry with the pup for being out of its element on this drive.

“This thing does all the Mustang stuff—it just might be too soft for what we want to do out here,” concluded Webster. “I’ll reserve judgment until I drive a Dark Horse.”

It turns out the automotive industry, which has by and large converged on the front-drive-based, SUV-like wagon as the Universal Transportation Solution, still produces (at least) five wonderfully different answers to the question, “How can I have fun in a new car for $50,000 or less?”

Those differences make disingenuous any attempt to declare one car the absolute winner. Indeed, the vote was irreparably split. DeMatio and Kraemer preferred the Integra; Stark naturally fell for the Corolla and Webster seemed to be with him, albeit with the caveat that it might be “too stiff and annoying in everyday use;” Houghton picked the BRZ; photographer Cameron Neveu, freed from camera duty long enough to get seat time in each car, lent his support and a huge grin to the Mustang; I’d soonest put a payment down on the Miata.

We tucked in for the night in Marietta, Ohio (population: 13,178), the oldest settlement in the former Northwest Territory. Situated at the meeting point of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, Marietta was long a choice spot for indigenous tribes—as evidenced by large burial mounds—and later became a nexus of shipping, railroad, and oil wealth. In recent decades, though, it has faced economic challenges all too common throughout the Midwest, and many of its stately buildings sit empty or in disrepair. Spend enough time in towns like this, and it’s hard to escape a sense of loss, a nagging sense that we’re closer to the end of something than the beginning.

Perhaps it was the afterglow of the day’s driving, but I chose, on this night, to see it differently. This place is still here. The work of generations—the broad boulevards, the rows of massive trees, and the 18th-century mansions—is still here for us to appreciate on a clear autumn night in the 21st century.

I suggest we choose to take the same view of the affordable sports car, which has, truth be told, been dying for about as long as it has been alive. In the 1950s, the decade many associate with the emergence of the sports car in America, it faced extinction from the proliferation of driving assistance technologies like power steering and automatic shifting. (From 1950 to 1960, manual-transmission take rate in the United States dropped from two-thirds to less than a third.) In the 1970s and ’80s, fuel crunches, safety regulations, and insurance hikes doomed the muscle car and sent British sportscar makers into a tailspin. In the 1990s and early 2000s, sporty coupes were supposed to be supplanted by SUVs.

Now they face the rising threat of electric vehicles. What else is new? That’s not some bromide about how the best is yet to come. But I can say that at this very moment, affordable sports cars are still with us, and people, they are very good. If you’ve dreamed of one, there’s no time like the present. Dad’s right—don’t wait.

***

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Specs: 2023 Mazda Miata Grand Touring

Engine: 2.0-liter I-4
Power: 181 hp @ 7000 rpm
Torque: 151 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm
Weight: 2341 lb
Power to weight: 12.9 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 5.7 seconds
Base price: $29,300
Price as tested: $34,500

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Specs: 2023 Subaru BRZ Limited

Engine: 2.4-liter H-4
Power: 228 hp @ 7000 rpm
Torque: 184 lb-ft @ 3700 rpm
Weight: 2864 lb
Power to weight: 12.6 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 5.4 seconds
Base price: $29,600
Price as tested: $31,500

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Specs: 2023 Toyota GR Corolla

Engine: 1.6-liter I-3
Power: 300 hp @ 6500 rpm
Torque: 295 lb-ft @ 3250 rpm
Weight: 3186 lb
Power to weight: 10.6 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 4.9 seconds
Base price: $37,000
Price as tested: $52,100

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Specs: 2024 Acura Integra Type S

Engine: 2.0-liter I-4
Power: 320 hp @ 6500 rpm
Torque: 310 lb-ft @ 2600 rpm
Weight: 3219 lb
Power to weight: 10.1 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 5.1 seconds
Base price: $52,000
Price as tested: $52,000

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Specs: 2024 Ford Mustang GT

Engine: 5.0-liter V-8
Power: 486 hp @ 7250 rpm
Torque: 418 lb-ft @ 4900 rpm
Weight: 3827 lb
Power to weight: 7.9 lb/hp
0–60 mph: 4.2 seconds
Base price: $45,000
Price as tested: $61,700

***

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When you’re intrigued by the illogical, strange things can happen. And in the fall of 1980, in steamy Miami, they did.

With a work-related relocation to New York coming up, my company had agreed to pay all moving costs, including airfare. Too easy. Instead, some masochistic penchant compelled me to spend my own money on this abandoned hearse and drive that up there instead.

Spied in a weed-choked lot beside an old clapboard house, the S&S-bodied Cadillac looked like Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black” on wheels. I should have walked on by but couldn’t. Instead, I stopped, stared, and approached the car in a trance. I should have been the predator here. Instead, I was prey.

Inside the home, an elderly lawyer explained that he’d taken the car in payment for services rendered to a local removal service and would happily sell it to me for $350. Why fly 1100 miles in a comfy wide-body jet, chatting up flight attendants and sipping Miller High Life, when driving this haunting relic seemed doable?

The commercial-spec 9.00 x 15-inch tires, each sporting knife punctures in their sidewalls courtesy of neighborhood thugs, explained the hearse’s low stance. Thus, testing the car first required laboriously jacking it up and taking the wheelset to a shop for tubes—unsafe, of course, but cheaper than new treads.

Prior to the move, I made a 190-mile trip to Melbourne, Florida, to run the Space Coast Marathon (without training—more masochism) and slept in the rear space the night before the race. Didn’t go well. After cops booted me from a school parking lot, I found a church lot to continue my slumber, my windup clock ticking forebodingly beside my head, like in some Edgar Allen Poe tale. Later, two muscle cars squealed into the lot and inebriated partiers surrounded the hearse. They shrieked to find someone in a sleeping bag inside, and thankfully departed. (They departed; I was not departed…)

A week after the marathon, my roommate and I headed up Interstate 95. Equipped with a 429-cubic-inch V-8, the 3-ton hearse loved a street fight, and we didn’t lose a race until Richmond. A bigger loss, however, took place on the George Washington Bridge, at night, as we headed into Manhattan, when a rear wheel hub separated from the axle and ended our journey there and then.

We arrived at our high-rise apartment behind a tow truck where, indignantly perched on three wheels, the hearse quickly amassed $135 in parking tickets. With costs rising fast, we got the car to a shop to address the wheel, then sold it to a punk band at a loss. Which was actually a win.

***

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In 1873, Christian Schmidt and Heinrich Stoll founded the company that would come to be called NSU. Now, more than 150 years later, many people would tell you that while NSU’s motorcycles were successful, its automotive contributions fell short. Many consider the flagship Ro 80 to be synonymous with engineering failure. However, in 2023, a group of Ro 80 enthusiasts took their cars on an epic journey from Germany to Morocco. In an act of reputational vengeance for Ro 80, all seven cars survived.

First, as a technology-heavy executive sedan, the Ro 80 was something of a departure for NSU. During the early 1960s, NSU was mostly building small, simple, rear-engined cars like the Prinz. The TT version of the Prinz was pretty sprightly (it’s the ancestor of the Audi TT), but NSU was more oriented toward making economy cars.

“NSU wasn’t ready for a car like the Ro 80,” says Axel E. Catton, a journalist who accompanied the Ro 80 owner’s club on their journey into the Sahara. “You can think of it like Volkswagen’s Phaeton.”

In 1964, NSU was the first company to build a production rotary-powered car, the Wankel Spider. It’s a pretty little convertible designed by Bertone, and you can draw a direct line from the Spider to the four-rotor scream of Mazda’s Le Mans–winning 787B endurance racer. NSU was the first to tame the rotary engine, and it later licensed its technology to Hiroshima.

Rotary is what the “Ro” in Ro 80 stands for. Launched in 1967, this sedan was cutting-edge technology, with front-wheel drive, a 113-hp twin-rotary engine, four-wheel disc brakes, fully independent suspension, and rack-and-pinion steering. The gearbox was as revolutionary as the motor, featuring three forward speeds and semi-automatic operation; instead of a foot pedal, moving the gearshift electronically disengaged the clutch.

Perhaps the best part of the car was the design, sketched out in-house by NSU’s own Claus Luthe. Luthe would later work at BMW, creating the E28 5 Series and the E30 3 Series, the latter especially one of the great design triumphs in the German automotive sphere. The Ro 80 thus carries its styling with some authority, and it is both sleek and airy, with a large greenhouse yet an excellent drag coefficient for the time. It was voted Car of the Year by European journalists in 1968.

However, talk to any of the Mazda engineers who were working on rotary engine development in the 1960s, and the Ro 80 had a serious Achilles’ heel. In fact, according to Catton, it had two, as the operation of the gearbox was unfamiliar to most drivers and could be damaged with misuse.

When early Ro 80s began to suffer mechanical issues, there was still the chance to save the car’s reputation. But imagine being a dealership mechanic used to wrenching on a mechanically simple Prinz, and now you had to figure out what was wrong with a car that had no clutch pedal and no pistons. Enough public relations damage was done that in 1969 Volkswagen was able to launch a takeover of NSU, merge it with Auto Union’s just relaunched Audi, and that’s pretty much where most people close the book on the Ro 80’s story.

However, the Ro 80 was not just built for a couple of years and then abandoned. Instead, it was built for an entire decade, almost without any changes apart from cosmetic ones. Like Mazda, NSU soon sorted out the rotary engine’s reliability problems by focusing on the material used for the apex seals, and the cars were now largely as reliable as anything else out there.

“Gunter [the president of Ro 80 Club International] called me up and said, ‘We’re going to Morocco, would you like to come?’ And I said yes, immediately, without any dates or details,” says Catton. “You only get these opportunities once in life.”

Driving any 50-year-old car through the Sahara seems crazy, let alone one that has a reputation for being one of the least reliable cars ever made. The Ro 80 club members are no fools, however—each carefully prepared their cars, packed necessary spares, and came prepared for roadside repairs. And, being German enthusiasts, there was a tremendous amount of technical knowledge spread out among the participants should something go wrong. But, as it turned out, the only car that broke down was a new Moroccan friend’s modern Dacia that was traveling with them for a day trip.

Photos from the trip are wonderfully evocative, the Ro 80s lined up in their ’60s and ’70s colors, palm trees and camels and red sands in the background. The idea was to recreate a trip done in-period by the German magazine hobby, which Catton says was similar to Popular Mechanics. That story was filled with technical details and extended over several issues. The modern club trip spent eight days traipsing around Morocco, from the center of Casablanca to the 7234-foot Tizi n’Tichka pass in the Atlas mountains to the sands of the Sahara itself. The oldest car on the trek was a 1968 model, from the same year that the Hobby article was published.

“Twelve years ago, I wanted a classic car that was different from all the others and which very much represented the slogan ‘Vorsprung durch Technik,’” [Advancement through technology] says Gunter Olsowski. “The progressive shape, the innovative drive concept with the rotary engine, and the myth surrounding the Ro 80 were also decisive factors for me.”

He seems unsurprised by the largely trouble-free expedition. “All of my three Ro 80s have always been very reliable so far. This was also the case on our trip to Morocco. Small things can be repaired immediately. Ride comfort was excellent throughout the entire trip, whether on the highway or on desert tracks.”

“I became a fan of the Ro 80 very much by chance,” says Brigitta Kolland, one of two female Ro 80 owners on the expedition. “The car actually ‘found me’ as I didn’t know this brand before. I now own, drive, and love my car and know more technical details than I ever thought I would.

“The trip to and through Morocco confirmed once again that trusting an ‘old’ car is totally alright. We could also see that with the cars of our fellow travelers—planning is all good and important, but the rest is trust and certainly also luck. My husband and I have already managed a great many trips with the Ro 80.”

Olsowski adds that prices for the Ro 80 are still very affordable, so it’s a classic that is within reach. Further, owners tend to be curious about the technical parts of the car, and there’s no elitism in the club.

“I first learned about the Ro 80 thirty years ago, when I saw one in a book called Lemons: The world’s worst cars,” says Jaime Kopchinski of Classic Workshop, “I thought it looked so cool—I knew I had to have one.”

Kopchinski says he has only ever seen one Ro 80 in person, and it’s the one he found and bought locally a few years ago. However, he also says that thanks to the active German club, parts availability and pricing are surprisingly reasonable, far cheaper in many cases than the classic Mercedes parts he’s continually ordering. For instance, his Ro 80 had long ago been fitted with the market headlamps; the German Ro 80 club had a replacement Euro set available, brand new.

“It’s a surprisingly fast car,” Kopchinski adds. “Not 0 to 60, but 80 miles per hour is nothing to it. It just wants to go quicker than the speed limit.”

Everything you could potentially want in a classic car is present in the Ro 80. It’s rare, but not so valuable that you won’t drive it. It was groundbreaking at the time and boasts a noble design lineage. By all reports, it’s a great long-distance car, with excellent high-speed stability on the highway and solid comfort on some pretty rudimentary roads. Over the trip, the average fuel economy was around 17–18 mpg, with the rotary engine requiring oil top-ups every 600 miles or so.

The Ro 80 Club International did not set out to repair the reputation of their beloved sedans. Rather, it simply set out on a magnificent adventure based on a shared enthusiasm for a special and obviously misunderstood car. The group trusted its Ro 80s, and the cars faithfully brought them into the desert and then back out. What more could you ask of a classic?

***

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In the late, great 1970s, Detroit vans were absolutely “it.” Surf wagons. Yamahaulers. Shag wagons. Call them what you will—and use them as you would—these big boxes on wheels offered everything we young people wanted in the day.

Being partial to Ford, I craved a second-gen Econoline that could haul bikes, boards, and babes, so I put my back into earning one. I pumped gas, worked as a wrench and a parts man at three dealerships, and flipped cars and bikes until I had the 2000 clams needed for a used long-wheelbase 1971 SuperVan. I’d really wanted a 1955–57 Thunderbird, but they were outta sight at $5K. And since I rode dirt bikes a lot, the van made great sense. And so, boy, was I happy.

The Wimbledon White E-100 had slotted chrome-reverse rims, hood pins, primer spots, groovy walnut paneling, and threadbare carpeting atop its 10-foot floor, but I didn’t mind; the 302’s compression was spot-on and the Cruise-O-Matic three-speed shifted great.

There’s a scene in the movie On Any Sunday where Mert Lawwill drives between races with his left foot atop his Econoline’s dash, a reprieve from the skimpy floor area pinched by the wheel arch and engine cover. For me, slogging along L.A.’s 405 freeway proved a breeze this way, bulking up for motocross with a hand-grip strengthener that hung on the turn-signal lever when not in use, and listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on the tape deck. You can relate, right?

Happily, the SuperVan proved super. In three years, hardly any negatives intruded—just a bum ignition coil, one window broken by vandals, and a cracked gas-tank vent hose that gave everyone inside a headache. Overall, though, that workaday Econoline enabled so many fun times that I now sorely want one again. Such emotions clearly drive the classic car hobby. Because when your best life and times conjoin with even a common, low-value vehicle, why, that’s real love.

The romance lasted until full-time employment called; the E-100 then exited for what I’d paid for it, to some guy I met up with in a parking lot. Today, a comparable one might bring $10,000 to $15,000—hardly a win had I kept mine for decades. So, while the Econoline failed at profit-making, that wasn’t the mission. Instead, it was all about living. And for that, the SuperVan was the right plan.

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For a young California surfer, the gleaming walls of New York City were all kinds of wrong. Sure, they beckoned like a sparkling Pacific swell in a graceful sine curve of energy wrapping around a rocky point before jacking up and barreling onshore. But Midtown wasn’t Malibu, and in all fairness, I’d guessed the Big Apple would be a weird trip well before I moved there for work, coincidentally on the same day in December 1980 that John Lennon was shot. The city was fun—for a while. Eventually, though, the relentless traffic and sirens, a harsh business climate, and the seething, sweating masses packing every square foot of subways and sidewalks, elevators and offices blew my fuses. Homeward bound, I wished I was. But how? In the city, just one car merited an escape: a Checker cab.

Ernst the cabbie answered the door of his home in Queens. He invited me inside, where the bouquets of linen doilies, shag carpeting, waxed hardwood, and beef stew intertwined in an invisible olfactory waltz. Shortly, Mrs. Cabbie produced two cups of tea whitened with milk and sweeter than a box of Sugar Smacks. Advertised in a local paper, Ernst’s used-up 1976 Checker Taxicab was $800. It was also as large as a moving van, and, most important, it ran.

While we talked, the Checker sat curbside looking like a beached, sunburned rorqual awaiting rescue. Its enormous front bumper, which could easily double as a Darlington guardrail, was twisted down as if smashed by Cale Yarborough’s 427 Galaxie during his massive ’65 crash there. The precious “medallion,” New York’s operating permit for cabs, had been prised from the hood, and the roof light and taximeter were likewise switched to Ernst’s new ride. “Rates: $1 First 1/9th Mile,” read the chipped door signage. “10¢ Each Additional 1/9th Mile; 10¢ PER 45 SECONDS—TIME NOT IN MOTION.” Huh. As a passenger, NYC to LA penciled out to $2511.36—not including charges for any delays. Owning looked way better than renting.

Inside was purposefully banal decor, including black vinyl bench seats front and rear, shabby rubber floor mats, and a pair of swing-up jump seats. Separating the quarterdeck from steerage, a bully-proof, bulletproof, Life-Guard clear partition spanned the cabin, with a pass-through for cash located below. “For our families’ peace of mind,” promised a 1976 Checker brochure; in 1981, when this tale happened, New York City was rough. Elsewhere were signs of wear and tear, indicating relentless use over the car’s six years of servitude in America’s biggest burg. Ernst added that he had shared it with his son, each driving 12-hour shifts so the car literally had zero downtime.

The Checker Motors Model A-11 Taxicab debuted in 1961 and was built in Kalamazoo, Michigan, until production shuttered in 1982. This one listed for $5274.54 and featured the base 250-cubic-inch GM inline-six engine backed by a robust Turbo-Hydra-Matic 400, all nestled inside a cavernous engine bay and X-braced ladder frame with a breathy 120-inch wheelbase. It was equal parts Sherman tank and stagecoach and built for hard work. Get this: In 1999, the last New York City Checker Taxicab finally retired, a 1978 model with nearly a million miles on the clock from hacking through nearly 4000 miles of city traffic per month continuously for 21 straight years. Insanity.

Who knew how many times my new ride’s odometer had rolled over, but on November 24, 1981, it read 54,170 miles as the cab navigated toward the apartment of a young lass I’d met at an Upper East Side party. She needed a lift to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, and since that was reasonably en route to good surf, I’d offered her the right seat. Paula must’ve had a screw loose to trust what was heading her way on that cool, clear Tuesday. Rattling across Midtown, its suspension juddering and body shell booming whenever the tires slammed a pothole, the bandit cab must have been a sight.

Literally, because I’d stuffed all but one of my possessions inside, right up to the ceiling, while lashed to the roof with trucking bungees was my surfboard. To mess with folks, I lettered “AROUND THE WORLD…BY CAB” on the rear fenders and slapped an “I LOVE WHALES” sticker on the trunklid. I’d unwittingly created a freak show with me as the star, but I really didn’t care; this was the starting line for adventure.

Frankly, it made no sense to leave my highest paying and possibly best career-starting job yet for such a wretched, reckless, and temporary ride. I had been working as senior editor at Adventure Travel magazine, right next to offices for Car and Driver, Flying, Cycle, etc., in the old Ziff-Davis headquarters on Park Avenue. When I reconsider it now, the trip—and, moreover, my about-face to the West Coast—was purely instinctual, driven by youthful myopia, money in the bank, and a congenital disdain for authority. Broadly, Aesop’s “The Wolf and the House Dog” fable called it. In the fable, a fat house dog meets a scrawny wolf and extols his pampered life. Wistful, the hungry wolf nearly signs on, until he spies a worn patch on the dog’s neck where collar and chain attach. “‘What! A chain!’ cried the wolf. And away ran the wolf to the woods.”

Oh, and that last item not packed in the cab? It was my apartment’s telephone, which I discarded on the sidewalk nearby. Don’t call me, New York, I’ll call you.

The old Checker certainly did run well, so I didn’t worry about the powertrain. What troubled me was whether the bulging retreads could withstand nearly 3000 highway miles with the car loaded to capacity, and how it would all work on the open road. Luckily, Paula didn’t mind the creaky, shuffling gait; she even wanted to drive. Trading places in the afternoon, her smooth hands explored the wheel delicately, and her unfreckled complexion was softly backlit by the low sun, which refracted through a garnet ring into dozens of miniature green streaks. We made Cleveland by nightfall.

While hoofing west toward Lake Michigan, like a horse sensing its stable, the cab suddenly—well, OK, figuratively—pulled hard right into Kalamazoo, Michigan, its hometown. It was a gray Wednesday before Thanksgiving, dark and bleak as befitting the Midwest. Six miles off I-94, there stood the dingy water tower and headquarters of Checker Motors Corp., then winding down production of cars. “Checker Motors rises out of the murk like a dinosaur from a swamp forest,” I scrawled in the logbook. “Weeds choke the executives’ parking places, and across the road, multicolored shapes sit, awaiting sale or delivery.” I’d bought the car as a tool, but spontaneously visiting this troubled place was like seeing the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán, the impact point of the asteroid that doomed the Mesozoic era. Within a year, Checker would also be extinct as an automaker, except this time obsolescence was the asteroid. The old triceratops just couldn’t adapt to the times.

Even so, it was a good run for an independently owned specialty automaker. The company began in 1922, when Morris Markin, a Russian immigrant, merged struggling Commonwealth Motors with the Chicago taxi fleet. Postwar, Checker Motors’ forte was building taxis for New York City and, naturally, Chicago. The iconic quad-headlight design we all know launched in 1959 and flourished for over two decades.

An estimated 4000 to 5000 were manufactured annually, including the Marathon model for families, a station wagon, an executive limousine, and two extended “Aerobus” airport limos. A more upscale taxi, if you’ll pardon the term, was the A-11E, which featured a 9-inches-longer wheelbase and rear doors, a standard 350-cubic-inch GM V-8, and optional forward-facing auxiliary seats instead of the side-facing jump seats of this base A-11 model. Today, about 2000 Checker taxis are estimated to have survived.

What had been decent front tires 900 miles ago in New York were flat-out roached when I dropped off Paula and shot down to Chicago to pursue what was left of Route 66. At the time a smarter motorcycle guy than car guy, I didn’t quite know what to make of the tires’ odd wear pattern; mysteriously cupped and bald on the inside. But a Montgomery Ward store had a solution, sort of, and levered on a new G78-15 Runabout Belted and a used Vogue whitewall. Seemed like problem solved.

And then, as Kenneth Grahame wrote in The Wind in the Willows, “Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go.” Answering to nobody and desiring to make the escape from New York more meaningful, I found a hobby shop and bought some Testors model paint, a brush, and thinner. So equipped, I went to work on the Checker’s body sides, painting a globe featuring the Western Hemisphere on the left and another showing Australasia on the right. Intending to further spoof the general populace, I detailed these with lines showing cities where the cab had allegedly been—or would ultimately visit. “I’m such a clever Toad,” remarked Grahame’s protagonist with conceit.

For all my “cunning” at the time, today the artwork seems dumber than the worst cartoon storyline, but my clumsy choices were just beginning. This I was about to learn as I traded heaven for hell at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, where I picked up high school friend Hunter for companionship on the Mother Road. To illustrate that a blind pig doesn’t always know a truffle when it finds one, consider this: Paula had been smart, sweet, agreeable, engaging, fun, pretty, and more. So naturally, I’d traded her in without cause. Forty years to the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, “Hunt” flew to Chicago to join the drive to LA. He’d come at my urgent request. “Old buds on the loose!” I’d enthused. “On Route 66! In a real taxi!” However, since graduating, he had become a grouch, a whiner, and an accomplished hypochondriac. Bluntly, Hunter was a boil on my backside from the moment he in his puffy orange Eddie Bauer parka with his battered American Tourister suitcase climbed into the cab—which, as if in retribution, still carried the last delicious traces of Paula’s perfume.

Despite his experience as a motorcycle desert racer and explorer, Hunter tired of the ride a mere day into our 10-day plan. “John, your cab is so f****** slow,” he complained from the passenger seat, valuables packed around him like gilded offerings in Tutankhamun’s tomb, including: a wrinkled bag containing a half-eat-en Filet-O-Fish; a Sanka coffee can full of prescription meds; and a formerly white handkerchief, now stained with who-knows-what. On the bridge of his nose perched wire-framed prescription glasses, their broken hinges soldered solid at the temples. “And the miles out here—they’re not normal miles, they’re country miles!”

This point, I had to concede. The Checker was acceptable in the city—coarse, clunky, and cumbersome, maybe, but dammit, the thing worked. At highway speeds, the game changed entirely. Sucking hard through its one-barrel downdraft carb, the thrifty overhead-valve six struggled to keep up with only 105 horsepower. The cab’s blocky shape, which excelled at ferrying passengers and luggage in urban environments, meant aero drag and noise—lots of it. The window seals proved nearly useless, letting the wintry, rushing air in like Jack Nicholson splitting the door open with an ax in The Shining and leering, “Heeere’s Johnny!”

Besides the wheezing engine and arctic blast, the cab also wandered all over the road. At 65 mph, it proved almost impossible to steer straight down its lane. Slowly but surely, over mile after grim, resolute mile, a theory emerged: In the slow lane, where thousands of heavily loaded truck tires had compressed the asphalt, these sunken tracks caught the tread and steered the cab in a drunken, meandering weave. Option A was to slow to 50 mph to lessen the weave; Option B was to merge into the flatter fast lane, which would block real drivers in real cars. Neither was attractive, given the nearly 2000 miles left to go.

After two days of battling adverse factors (including a stop for no license plate by the Illinois State Police, who released us after seeing the temporary permit), Hunt and I found ourselves nearing Kansas City. By late afternoon, the road, barren trees, and fallow farmland had melded into a dreary gray-brown mud. But above that, the sunset countered with an atomic blast of red, orange, and yellow that ignited the entire horizon. We were pissed at the situation and at each other and, as card-carrying nitwits, decided cocktails and calories would help. Which is why, I suppose, a bright green sign for Houlihan’s Old Place looked so attractive. Like a couple of punchy moths, we bumbled into the parking lot and flitted inside.

“Who’s a Houlihan’s girl? She could be you!” read a period want ad for hostesses there. Well, Marcy wasn’t a hostess, but she was hilarious, into kitsch, and dug the cab—which, gritty from the road, loomed out there in the gloom, like the antichrist of lighthouses. Somehow, she found her way into our booth, and somehow, a few hours later, we found our way into her apartment. Friendly local, check. Need a place to stay, double check. Largish beverage consumption, checkmate.

Hunt had the better instincts, curling up in a blanket on the dining room floor. But elsewhere—was I still heading to hell or already there? In the middle of the night came a loud crash. Hunt had rolled over in his sleep, knocking down a stack of closet doors leaning against the wall and gaining a huge knot on his head. In the morning, we were both happy to be alive and back in the same cab that had caused such misery the day before. Our headaches were the same, but different.

For Hunter the Adventurer, the damage was done. “I’m through,” he said later in Pratt, Kansas. That required only a quick (ahem) 200-mile detour south to Oklahoma City for him to catch a jet home. But hey, anything for a friend. Outside town, evoking Andrew Wyeth’s famous Christina’s World painting, stood an old farmhouse and barn set back from the two-lane, with a “bathtub” Nash Airflyte 600 in the grass nearby. I turned onto a dirt driveway, bounced past a weathered gate, and approached a farmer working near hewn oak doors. He was pushing 80, meaning that he’d been born around 1900. Emaciated, wearing dirty coveralls and smoking a grubby pipe, he meted out praise for Nash’s aerodynamic entry in the “lower-price field.” “Fifteen-hundred dollars,” he croaked. “Runs, too.” Tempting, but nope. (The same money, invested in Apple stock instead, would be worth $2.4 million now.)

After dispatching Hunter, the Crown Prince Sourpuss, the cab and I wandered up to Tulsa, scouting thrift stores for an imagined $75 Gibson 12-string guitar (no luck) before vectoring toward Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas. By now almost three weeks into this listless sojourn, I began thinking I’d also had nearly enough. My tail hurt from sitting on the bench seat all day, every day. The engine seemed to be losing power and the chassis’ dynamic hijinks were worsening. Indeed, by Clovis, New Mexico, one of the newly replaced tires had already worn to the cords. The local Ward store lacked replacements, but it had a fine mechanic, who immediately put the Checker on the alignment rack and found the settings to be way off. The old cab had driven toe-out most of the way across the country, causing the scary handling and wear. He worked all morning sorting it out and charged a paltry $13. Across town, a Firestone store had the right rubber, and with those mounted, why, the Checker drove almost like new.

Glen Campbell sang “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” in 1967 and probably had fun doing it. I fared worse, because by the time I got to Santa Fe, loneliness had crept inside the Checker and grabbed me by the gut. How needy can you get? So far, I’d enjoyed a cantankerous best friend, encountered several curious cops, chitchatted with gas jocks, clerks, and waitresses, been kicked off Pueblo tribal land, met some women, and forged deep bonds with tire shops in Illinois and New Mexico.

You might guess that was ample company. Nonetheless, in Santa Fe I went looking for one more soul to share the remaining push to the coast. Anyone with a pulse would do. Apparently, in the rush for personal freedom, I’d failed to consider the value of personal relationships. No luck, though I did wander into a dealership selling brand-new DeLoreans, next to which the Checker looked like a Super Chief locomotive beside tins of sardines.

Nearing Flagstaff, Arizona, the reddish tones and sinewy shapes of vaulted sedimentary rock formations, the hardy green junipers, and the clear, powder-blue skies offered a welcome change from the drab midwestern landscape as winter neared. And later, chugging up serpentine State Route 89A past the old mining town of Jerome, the laboring of the taxi—and, by extension, myself—felt heavy. “Above Jerome, a town destined for some cataclysmic event, the elevation is 6000 feet,” I scrawled in the log. “The car is being pursued by a Coors truck, and it is gaining. It’s a slow-motion, dreamlike race. Trying to run, but I can’t. Creeping, crawling, ever so slowly, with a beer truck closing in, the monster behind.” The alone time had germinated an inkling that I was running from something. But really, a Coors truck? That’s pretty poor paranoia.

After summiting at 7023 feet, the taxi began coasting toward Prescott, but even this glide path wasn’t exactly easy. “The left-front brake is surely worn out,” I added. “As I put on the brakes, sintered brake-pad dust flows freely through the Checker interior. I can hear the pad base wearing and tearing into the rotor on hard stops.” More resigned than concerned, I turned the cab onto a wide shoulder to look for smoke, flames—whatever this next drama held. Nothing. Just the utter quiet of the rocky terrain, a light breeze, and a wispy flight of cirrus clouds assembling to the north.

Per the odometer (highly optimistic, possibly to overcharge passengers?), the Checker had covered over 4000 miles since New York. It was tired and, at least emotionally, so was I. Luckily the Sanyo cassette deck installed before the trip still worked. I hit play and absorbed Glenn Frey and Don Henley’s masterpiece: “Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?/Come down from your fences, open the gate.” Alone, cold and vulnerable in the mountain air, the verses woke me up, and I reached in the window and spiked the volume to the 6×9 coaxials buried behind the Life-Guard partition. Within seconds, the end, “You better let somebody love you/Before it’s too late,” had me sobbing. At that moment, I decided to gather up my s***, and commit.

Epilogue

The erstwhile Checker Taxicab soldiered on to Route 66’s terminus in Santa Monica on December 18, 1981. The next morning, I jumped in it to run errands, but the transmission rebelled and the car would barely move. I sold it soon afterward, sharing the repair cost with buyer Eleanore, an artsy LA lady who loved the Big Apple. We remained friends, and three years later, the cab became the getaway car at my wedding; a much cheerier Hunter was the chauffeur. Eleanore enjoyed it for a decade before selling it for $400 to Villa Roma Sausage Company president Ed Lopes, who wanted a fun prize for his company’s annual golf tournament.

Lopes concealed it with a blue cover at the event. “Under the tarp, the cab looked like a Mercedes-Benz!” he said. (For added drama, Lopes hired Shannon Rae, a model and later star of the tribute band Rondstadt Revival, to reveal the taxi to the winner. No lie, the band’s song list includes “Desperado.”) The winning golfer was stunned to find that the cab started and could be driven home. He did so and later gifted it to his son’s high school auto shop class, where, after fixing it up, the school used it to carry the principal and dignitaries to football games.

That’s the last I heard of the Checker, and now three decades later, the trail is truly cold. But if you should ever find it rotting in some SoCal carport, approach with caution: I left my old demons inside.

***

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The electrification of classic cars is a thorny subject. One person’s future-proofing is another’s history-bashing.

For now, nobody is forcing anyone else to abandon internal combustion to keep their old cars on the road. Electrifying a classic is a question of choice, but it does seem that more and more people are making that choice.

In 2023 alone I’ve driven an electrified E-Type, Porsche 911 and MGB, adding to a Land Rover Series IIA, Porsche 356 (and a different 911 and MGB) the year before. My colleagues have tried Minis and Mustangs, too, and here I am again about to silently take to the road in another classic.

Appropriately enough, the builder is named Silent Classics, founded by Jack Kerridge six years ago in Shaftsbury, Dorset. Kerridge grew up working on cars in his father’s shop and spent time at an engineering firm before setting up on his own, initially with restorations, before switching to electrification.

In the workshop are a Bentley S2, a Range Rover Classic, a Jaguar SS saloon, and even a three-wheeled Bond Bug. “We do lots of weird and wonderful cars,” says Kerridge. “But I’m trying to focus on the Fiat 500.”

Having completed ten conversions to date, Silent Classics has developed a drop-in kit that takes a decently skilled mechanic around a week to install. Supply a car and Kerridge’s team will do the work for you for about $43,000, or you can purchase the kit for $30,000.

Plans are in place for a full 500 resto-mod with an updated leather interior, electric windows, central locking, air conditioning, and Apple Car Play/Android Auto, but today the tiny car that awaits me is pretty close to factory condition.

You’d certainly never tell it was electric from the outside without the help of the large logo on the rear window. The charging point is neatly tucked away behind the badge on the front, so it’s really just the lack of a pea-shooter tailpipe that gives the game away.

The update is more obvious from the inside, with a circular digital instrument panel and modern aluminum buttons for the heating and regenerative braking. The clutch pedal is gone, but the standard handbrake and gearshift remain—although it now only moves back and forth to select forward or reverse.

Under the hood sits the main battery pack, while in the rear, where the engine used to be, are the motor, control systems, and some more cells. In total there’s 21 kWh of capacity to drive a 44-kW (60-hp) electric motor. The 500’s original gearbox and differential are retained, but it’s locked into top gear. The whole setup adds around 175 lbs to the car’s weight and distributes most of that over the front axle. Silent Classics fits slightly stiffer springs to compensate, but having more than twice the original 500-cc two-cylinder motor’s power output mitigates the extra mass.

The 500 manages to be minute, yet also strangely spacious inside. It’s the expansive glass, thin pillars, and wide-opening sunroof that make it feel airy, despite the driving position being quite cramped. The wheel arch of this left-hand-drive 1970 model intrudes so much that my left foot has to be squeezed in at an odd angle, while my right leg can’t be extended either. How there was ever room for a clutch pedal here is beyond me. The driving position is a classic Italian, long arms-short-legs arrangement, and certainly not ideal for long distances.

Silent Classics says they’ve managed 120 miles on a full charge in the summer months, so, on a chilly but bright winter’s morning, my 94-mile planned trip might be pushing it.

I’m wrapped up warmly to avoid having to use the heater and have the regenerative braking switched on to claw back as much energy as possible on my planned route through the picturesque New Forest.

There are no seatbelts or side mirrors, so I make a cautious start. In fact, a cautious start has seemingly been built into the drivetrain’s behavior, with about half an inch of travel on the accelerator and quite a hefty amount of torque management before anything happens. The initial pickup isn’t the instantaneous oomph offered by most EVs, but once rolling it rapidly winds up and soon whips on to 50 mph. It takes a little getting used to, but the theory is that it protects the transmission.

My route takes me via Zig-Zag Hill, officially Britain’s Bendiest Road, with its very short sequence of hairpins and it takes a couple of turns to figure out that I need to jump on the accelerator mid-bend in order to get power on the exit. The road surface is cold, damp, and strewn with fallen leaves, and there’s just a little squirm from the rear end when I get the timing just right. Enough to prompt a giggle, but no need for any opposite-lockery.

Despite the extra weight on the front end, the steering is light, even at low speed, and, although a bit vague initially, springs to life once you’ve got the car turned in, delivering the kind of feel you only get from skinny tires and an un-assisted rack (actually, it’s a steering box).

Up and over I go looking down over the Dorset countryside on a rather wonderful undulating stretch of road that gently meanders towards Ringwood and the gateway to the New Forest. Here the trademark miniature ponies wander free and, more than once, I have to test the 500’s brakes. They need a good shove, and the regenerative deceleration isn’t especially strong, but, thankfully, nobody is being sent to the glue factory today.

Overall, it’s a rather lovely drive, and the low 40 mph limit in the forest is never frustrating—as it might be in something bigger and faster.  My destination is the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu where I’m led to believe there are some charging points, but despite several laps of the car parks, I fail to find them.

There’s just under 50 percent left in the battery and 47 miles to go when I begin to retrace my steps. The ups and downs take their toll, though, and by the time I get to Zig Zag Hill again, there’s just nine percent remaining with six miles still to go and I can feel the power gradually being reduced. The steep incline appears to put a bit of pep back in, and I’m cautiously optimistic about getting back.

However, it’s not to be, by the time I reach Shaftsbury the battery is at seven percent and the 500 is limping. I manage to crawl into a supermarket car park where there’s a charger.

“That’s the oldest electric car I’ve ever seen,” remarks one shopper. “I didn’t know they made ‘em electric,” adds another.

At least while I wait for a top-up I’m not short of friendly company.

***

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Flying with pilots from nations allied with the U.S. is always a bit of an adventure. They are highly capable and well-trained, but they do things differently than we Americans. Different doesn’t mean wrong, just different.

Perhaps one obvious difference is the facial hair their male pilots frequently sport. Mustaches are the limit of what we U.S. fighter pilots can grow while remaining within dress and grooming regulations, but even those make wearing an oxygen mask uncomfortable to me (no idea how Robin Olds did it!). I’ve seen foreign pilots’ facial hair ranging from a dainty soul patch to huge, mutton-chop sideburns that join with a goatee and everything in between. I applaud many of our partners’ training and flying skills, but it’s tough to take the mission briefer or leader seriously when he looks like an Elvis Presley impersonator.

In that vein, our family spent about two weeks in Iceland this summer and found that there are some things they do differently. With three kids out of the house, and soon to be four, we thought this was our last chance for a big family vacation—we hadn’t all been to Europe since we moved to South Korea from Germany over a decade ago. We decided that camping our way around Iceland was the trip for us.

As expected, the scenery was incredible. Volcanoes, black sand beaches, and so many waterfalls. Clouds hid the sun the first third of the trip and the wind made for some cold camping, but warm clothes, sleeping bags, and Iceland’s unique campground setup (each typically has kitchen facilities, where guests can cook and eat out of the wind) helped make the trip a success.

We drove more than 2500 kilometers (1500+ miles) during our trip. Sad fact: the highest speed limit anywhere in Iceland is 90 km/hr, or about 55 mph. After we had been in the country about a week, and had driven several hundred miles at 55 mph, a gentleman walked into our campsite and declared in excellent English that he had heard us speaking English and wanted to know where we were from. He was from Keflavik, Iceland, and we had a fun chat with him. Partway through the conversation—after learning his sister lived in the U.S. so I knew he’d experienced driving faster than the dreaded double nickel—I asked him what was up with the terribly low speed limit.

“Well, I’m a police officer,” he began. D’oh.

He proceeded to explain that the curvy, hilly nature of the roads warranted a lower speed limit.

And he told me not to speed.

I told him I wouldn’t—and I didn’t, largely because of all the speed cameras, which the internet rumor mill declares will ticket you even if you’re only 1 km/hr over the limit.

I think the real reason for the slower speed limit is because you spend the entire time staring out at the incredible, changing landscape and not looking at the road!

Unexpectedly, especially for a place where gas prices were in the $8.50-per-gallon range, there were so many awesome cars. I pretty much spent the entire time drooling over all the diesel Land Cruisers and the other extensively modified off-road vehicles. The time we spent in Iceland’s remote Highlands, and specifically in Landmannalaugar, was an off-road enthusiast’s dream. That’s even more the case if you just enjoy vehicles that aren’t found in the United States.

When planning the trip, we spent a lot of time learning about the road system in Iceland. The short summary is that you can drive any rental car on paved roads, but driving one on unpaved roads, known as F Roads, requires specific permission from the rental-car company; naturally, such rentals are more expensive due to the increased wear and tear when driving a vehicle off-road. Carrying full insurance is strongly recommended because of the potential for damage to windshields and body panels from kicked-up lava rock gravel, as well as the risks associated with driving off-road. In any case, F Roads or not, crossing rivers and streams in a rental car is strictly prohibited.

With seven people and 500 pounds of clothes, food, and camping gear, we needed to rent two cars. Since we initially balked at the price of renting two vehicles of Land Cruiser type and size, we only managed to lock in one rental before the prices at every rental agency simultaneously doubled. The higher prices meant that we chose a smaller SUV for the second vehicle. Once we arrived in the country, we were given a Toyota RAV4 and a diesel VW Touareg, both 100 percent stock (no lift kits, oversized tires, etc). The RAV4 carried three people and the clothes bags while the Touareg carried four people and our camping and cooking gear.

We paid for the extra insurance, but the agent stressed that it did not cover damage incurred at river crossings. They implored us not to drive in any water, especially when going into Landmannalaugar, then gave us the keys, and off we went.

Landmannalaugar is the central backcountry location. Situated in Iceland’s highlands in the Fjallabak Nature Preserve, the surprisingly well-appointed campground (flush toilets! hot showers!) is located on a soggy flood plain between a 30-foot-tall wall of the cooled Laugahraun lava field on the west, two smaller rivers to the north (with hot springs perfect for post-hike soaking), a larger river to the east, and the Rainbow Mountains all around. The scenery around the camp was incredible, but the hiking trails emanating from the camp are the real reason to visit.

There are a couple roads into Landmannalaugar, of varying degrees of difficulty. Should you choose to avoid river crossings there’s only one option, and it requires about an hour of driving on F Roads to reach the single campground in the area.

After a volcanic eruption changed our plans somewhat, we arrived at Landmannalaugar late on our second day of camping—or nearly arrived there. Rounding a bend after a long day of driving, we could see the campground in the distance. Strangely, as we continued to round the bend, we saw what seemed to be a parking lot full of cars clearly not co-located with the camp. The parking lot didn’t make sense until we were about 500 yards away: We crested one final rise, only to see two river crossings between us and our destination.

Now, despite all the warnings from the agency, I wasn’t totally opposed to crossing streams with our rental SUVs. However, what lay between us and camp was anything but a small stream. The parking lot was for vehicles whose drivers chose not to cross the rivers. We parked both cars in that lot and chose to investigate the crossings before deciding what to do next.

As we started walking on the well-trodden pedestrian path around and over the rivers, a small SUV arrived at the crossings and stopped. Clearly concerned about the depth, the brave husband/boyfriend/guy friend driving the car volunteered his female companion to investigate. She climbed out of the passenger seat, removed her shoes, rolled her jeans up to her knees, and waded across the cold, snowmelt-fed water. To me, she appeared to be average height, so when I saw the water go above her knees, I was totally out on us doing the crossings; it was just too deep. The couple, however, wasn’t scared.

She got back in the car and they proceeded to drive across, water easily above their bumper, without issue. For me, confident they were going to suck water into the air intake and kill the engine at any moment, it was like watching a slow-motion, single-car crash wherein the driver avoids disaster at the last moment. When they reached the second water crossing—the two rivers were only about 100-feet apart—the driver didn’t have his companion test the waters: I was surprised to see that the water level was higher at the second crossing than at the first, but they just cruised right on through, averting disaster once again.

My wife, in full agreement that we should not drive across the rivers, opined that we’d just have to carry all of our gear the 500 yards into camp. Our kids—being tough adventurers, or realizing that the next closest camping spot was over an hour away—agreed to carry the gear. And so we did, all the while watching vehicles of varying shapes and sizes, including other RAV4s and smaller vehicles with even less ground clearance, ford the streams without issue. The most surprising vehicle I saw parked in camp, having braved the crossings? A Lada.

I felt a bit like a chicken, since so many vehicles shorter than our two had made it across. I couldn’t help but wonder, why not just drive the bigger Touareg over and leave the RAV4 in the parking lot? In the end, we decided the extra walk wasn’t too bad, especially when compared with the risk we would incur by driving across the streams.

We spent the next day hiking nearly seven miles through a steep and incredibly varied landscape. Ancient volcanoes and lava flows, hot springs, and alien landscapes filled our views. Returning to camp, we trekked back to our vehicles to get some clean clothes when we saw it: a RAV4, on its way out from camp, stuck on the rise between the two river crossings. Clearly, it had been disabled relatively recently and was blocking traffic in both directions.

As we approached our cars, I saw two gentlemen watching the proceedings with interest. When I heard them speaking German I joined the conversation (my German is a little rusty but not bad). The story they told was what I expected: The driver was going too fast, as evidenced by the fact that the front license plate had been washed away, and the engine ingested water. Unable to restart the car for obvious reasons, they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

As we gathered our things, a giant ranger truck roared out of camp, drove around the traffic, and stopped alongside the stricken RAV4, whereupon he helped the driver push it to the side of the rise so it wouldn’t block traffic. No sense in trying to fix anything; that engine was toast.

I’m not sure what the couple did, but I would guess that the rangers, having seen this clown act before, called a tow truck. The vehicle was there for hours but was gone when we awoke the following morning. I certainly hope things turned out alright for the couple in the vehicle, but presuming it was a rental they are on the hook for the damage and a very expensive tow. My quick search showed a tow truck from that area is well over $1000 and a new RAV4 in Iceland starts at $47,000 USD; it was a truly expensive mistake for the couple, as I would expect that whatever rental insurance they had would not cover the damage incurred by the river crossing.

On one trip to our vehicles to grab additional food, my youngest daughter and I stopped to talk to the owner of an incredible 6×6 conversion van with massive oversized tires typical of what I saw on many vehicles in and around Landmannalaugar. He said it was custom, clearly, and that he could drive all six wheels; a true 6×6. I wish I had asked him more questions about his transfer case setup; my guess is the rear four wheels all drive together, so he could run the front two, rear four, or all six together. I asked him about the massive tires, because I wasn’t aware of much sand in Iceland, and he said they’re primarily for driving on snow and ice. He lowers the pressure to an incredible 2–3 psi (in disbelief of what I had heard, I asked him again and he repeated the figure), and says he can drive anywhere. He does take it out during the summer but it’s primarily a winter vehicle.

That 6×6 van might have been my favorite vehicle in the entire country, but we saw stretched and jacked-up F-350s, lifted busses, and a variety of military vehicles converted to campers.

We saw Dacia Dusters everywhere, Suzuki Jimnys all decked out for overlanding with rooftop tents that seemed larger than the vehicle, Kias of all types, old-school Land Rovers, a Lada or two, and, while waiting to get on a ferry (and unable to take any pictures at that moment), a dozen-plus classic cars in concours condition. Not to mention the closed car museum in whose parking lot we ate lunch one day. It was awesome.

I’ve had the privilege of flying my fighter jet over more than a dozen countries. While I am always grateful to return to these United States after vacationing or working abroad, I’m confident that interacting with other nations, cultures, and people makes me a better person and broadens my horizons.

But the next time we go to Iceland, I gotta figure out how to rent something cooler than a Touareg or Rav4!

***

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Some stories are too good and too long to tell (or read) in just one installment, so here is the tale of this remarkable car’s three very different phases of life in my hands in three logical segments. Chapter I finds it hustling around a couple of famed European F1 racetracks and touring as far north as Stockholm, Sweden, and even into then-divided Berlin, Germany.

Chapter II sees it taking me faithfully through SCCA driving school and my first semi-successful season of amateur racing, book-ended by two unfortunate crashes, one on the road, the other in its season-ending race. Here below is the third and final chapter. —GW

Somewhere between mountain ranges way west of Denver, at 90 mph, my well-used but until-then reliable Triumph engine spun a bearing. There was no civilization in sight, and not much traffic on that lonely two-lane, two thousand miles away from Navy OCS in Newport, Rhode Island, where I had started my journey, and another thousand from San Diego, California, where I was headed for training.

Thankfully, a local in a pickup eventually stopped to help. He drove me back to the nearest tiny town, which had a mechanic well-versed in domestic iron but unfamiliar with British four-bangers. He got my car towed to his garage and said he could fix it but (obviously) would have to order and wait for parts. Damn! There went another pile of money I didn’t have and much of my leave time before I had to report for duty in San Diego.

I had no choice but to go back to my generous father for another loan—I was still paying off his original, co-signed bank loan to buy the car and still owed him for the body-damage repairs from my previous season-ending Mid-Ohio crash—and to trust that small-town mechanic to get the right parts and rebuild my Triumph’s engine. I found a room and stayed there one night but didn’t like the looks I got from local guys in the nearby restaurant/bar. They probably thought this East Coast–looking stranger was after their women, and they may have been right. The next day, I took a bus back to Denver, where the aunt whom I had just visited agreed to put me up for a few more days.

Navy OCS

If you are among those who have read Chapters I and II of this saga, you know that I picked up the car—a 1966 Triumph TR4A—at its plant in England, toured Europe (and a couple of famous Formula 1 tracks) in it for three weeks, then brought it back home with intent to race it. And you will know how its transition from daily driver to race car was hastened when I dozed at the wheel, spun, and rolled it into a ditch on a ski trip in Northern Ontario. You will also be familiar with its transition back to the road following a racing crash when I got sandwiched between two out-of-control competitors at an SCCA race at Mid-Ohio.

With that damage repaired and my old Chevy tow car sold, I had re-installed the windshield and top and prepped it for the trip east to Newport, Rhode Island, for Navy Officer Candidate School. I couldn’t afford new tires so mounted its two best OE Michelin X radials in front and my two best Dunlop “universal” racing tires in back. Mixing radial with bias-ply tires was not recommended, but the Triumph looked good with bigger tires in back and handled surprisingly well.

The car had spent most of that winter sitting in the parking lot at OCS, often under a coating of snow, but served me well for occasional trips into town on weekend leave. (Years later, famed fellow auto writer Ken Gross told me that he was also at Navy OCS that winter and thought my fat-rear-tired, roll bar–equipped, ex-racer Triumph was easily the “coolest car” in the lot.)

Because my degree was Mechanical Engineering, my orders out of OCS were to report to Engineering Officer Training School in San Diego, California, then to travel back east to a ship based in Mayport, Florida, that would be undergoing “dry dock” reconditioning in Charleston, South Carolina. Not the assignment I had hoped for, but I had no choice. At least, I thought, I would have time enough to tour some interesting country on my way west after stopping by Cleveland and Detroit for farewells to family and friends. Then I would head to southern California with a planned stop in Denver to visit that aunt.

The rest of the trip

I spent the better part of a week staying at my kind aunt’s apartment, with a rental car to get around. When my once-trusty TR4A was finally ready, I hopped a bus from Denver back to pay the man and pick it up. Once back on the road, I took it easy at first to break in the rebuilt engine and gain confidence that it would stay together, which it did. Nice job by that mechanic, as it turned out!

With no more planned stops, I headed west to San Francisco, a city I had always wanted to see, then south down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH, aka CA Highway 1) to Los Angeles, where I had more family to visit, then further south to the San Diego Naval Station.

Spending all that travel time in this sturdy, handsome sports car that had started as a road car, worked hard as a race car, then found itself back on the road—a car that had never let me down until that spun bearing, despite the two wrecks and all the thrashing I had put it through—provided me the opportunity to evaluate it again as a (hopefully) reliable daily driver. Its seats were decent both on the road and on the track. Its three-spoke, wood-rimmed, aluminum steering wheel and full set of gauges looked great and functioned well in its pretty, polished-wood dash. Handling was agile and the ride stiff but tolerable despite the racing shocks I had installed. The Triumph had definitely been the right choice vs. the (SCCA DP-class) competitors I had considered, and it was a car with which I had fallen deeply in love.

San Diego duty

By a happy accident of timing, I reported to San Diego two months before the next training class began so had all that time, living in the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOC), to enjoy the beach and explore the area by day and meet local women at night. It didn’t help that the city was overrun with sailors at the time, but I soon learned that driving across the bridge to the Naval Air Station Officers’ Club on Coronado Island improved my chances, since a fair number of women regularly visited there hoping to meet Navy aviators (hello Top Gun).

Besides some classroom time, my three months of training consisted mostly of going out very early in the morning on a WWII destroyer, learning all about its boilers, its engines, and its electrical, fresh water, fire, and emergency systems, then returning to port late afternoon. It was rigorous and tiring but left me free to party (though not very late) at night. One night on my way back to the base in the Triumph, I stood on the gas in second and shifted up to third—just for fun, and to hear my barely muffled exhaust roar one last time before turning in for the night—and was quickly pulled over by a waiting San Diego cop. I had been drinking (moderately, as always) but easily passed his roadside sobriety test, so he let me go. My only other encounter with San Diego enforcement was a ticket for loud exhaust, which I managed to beat without further muffling.

Back across country

When my training was done, I had to drive all the way back east to report to my ship in Charleston, South Carolina, and chose a southern route through El Paso, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana, another place I had always wanted to see. At the former, I risked a day trip to Juarez, Mexico, and got slightly hit in the rear while creeping in line to get back into the States. Following a brief conversation in his broken English and my marginal Spanish, the apologetic Mexican driver gave me a few bucks to replace the taillamp lens broken by his bump. In New Orleans, I talked a bar band into letting me sing (the Doors’ “Light My Fire”) with them, then embarrassed them and myself with a lousy performance. Thankfully, the rest of that trip was uneventful.

My ship was the USS Luce, DLG (Destroyer Leader Guided Missile) 7—a handsome, complex warship much bigger than a destroyer but smaller than a cruiser. It was in dry dock in Charleston undergoing extensive repair and renovation, and since a lot of that work involved its (fairly new and troublesome at the time) 1200-psi propulsion system, that kept me, as Main Propulsion Assistant to its Engineering Officer, very busy.

I soon decided that I needed a more practical car so ordered a new-for-1968 Chevrolet Nova coupe: V-8, four-speed floor shift, handling suspension. Since it was built—on Chevy’s sporty Camaro platform—at a plant where I had worked for a while, I knew people there who would ensure that mine was built right. Reluctantly, I put my Triumph up for sale. My initial ad in Competition Press showed it in race trim and hyped it as a “beautiful, fast, and dependable D-Production winner,” and my asking price was $2500. Then I cleaned and polished it top to bottom, took more photos of it for local ads, and eventually sold it to a young man who planned to take it racing, just as I had. I wished him well and wiped real tears from my eyes as I watched it disappear into the distance.

A final farewell

After serving for more than a year—including three hard-working, no-fun months of “refresher training” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a job I hated on the Luce—I decided to volunteer for Navy Flight Training. I had always wanted to fly and had done two years of Air Force ROTC at Duke before dropping out. One memorable but scary adventure during that time was a very risky, rushed, emergency trip through a major storm up the East Coast to join the search for the lost nuclear submarine USS Scorpion with two of our four propulsion-dependent boilers down for service. We got the order to join that search the very night we returned from Gitmo, with two-thirds of our officers and crew on shore leave, so we were severely understaffed even after Navy Shore Patrol had rounded up and returned a lot of them.

I passed all the tests and was waiting to be sent to Pensacola, Florida, for flight training when my ship set sail for a six-month deployment in the Middle East. However, when my orders finally came through en route, I was able to gratefully jump ship at Recife, Brazil, and catch a flight back to Florida. Why is this relevant to my then-long-gone Triumph? Because, driving back to my apartment one Friday afternoon after a long day of flight training in Pensacola, I noticed some race cars practicing on a parking-lot course just a block off the main road. One of them looked very familiar.

I stopped, turned around, and drove closer to get a look. Sure enough, there was my once-faithful red Triumph circulating around, looking very fine, in a practice session. When it came in, I found the nice young man to whom I had sold it getting out of the car. When he took off his helmet, he was as surprised to see me there as I was to see him. He was fulfilling his dream of going SCCA racing, just as I had, and was having a great time doing it.

I wished him well and headed home but was unable to come back and watch him race that weekend due to other commitments. And I never got his contact information to follow up. But that last, brief encounter with my much-loved TR4A made me feel very warm inside. And I’m sure that tough little Triumph was delighted to be back in racing trim and competing again.

***

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Tradition means more to some people than to others. Folks in and around the U.S. Taxi industry hoarded the last remaining examples of the P70 long-wheelbase Ford Crown Victoria for good reason, especially in cab-centric places like New York City. But that was over a decade ago. Now, the New York Times reports that only two taxi drivers in the Big Apple remain loyal to the Crown Victoria, and each is skirting the law in doing so. The example owned by Ravinder Sharma currently has over 550,000 miles, and the unit owned by Haroon Abdullah has accumulated a mere 491,000 miles.

Both men kept their Crown Vics in good shape, as the NYT suggests the cars “are shiny and quiet, even if weathered.” Holding firm with Panther Love is easy to do, but it isn’t unique to Messrs. Sharma and Abdullah. Jason Kersten, spokesperson for the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, was interviewed by the NYT, telling them he once used a Crown Vic “as a moving van and loaded everything he owned into the trunk” when he was a college student. (When I was in college, a Detroit cabbie once explained how much more luggage could fit in a Crown Vic vs. in a Chevy Caprice.) Kersten certainly embraces Panther Love, but he suggests that like “the Model Ts, Checkers, and Caprices before them, their final act of safety must be a well-earned retirement.”

The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission doesn’t mess around, either; there’s a mandatory retirement for any car after it has spent seven years as a taxicab. Even the Ford Escape Hybrid is almost impossible to find on NYC’s mean streets. These two Crown Vics could theoretically be shut down right now, as the commission could deactivate their fare meters wirelessly. But their time of reckoning comes instead on December 8, 2023, as both men have their day in court (so to speak) to explain why they’ve avoided the commission’s mandated taxi inspections. Their cabs passed state inspections, and the commission allowed them “given pandemic extensions.” But the situation for these two cabbies looks dire. If (when?) they lose this uphill battle, they could face a $500 fine and have their licenses suspended.

While this is only about two Crown Vics and their drivers, the heart of the NYT‘s story would be completely different had Mother Nature not intervened back in 2012. We’d likely have a few more holdout drivers with keys to their Panther-chassis cabs had one storm’s trajectory merely moved east instead of west.

Hurricane Sandy destroyed the last 200 new examples of the P70 long-wheelbase Crown Victoria as they awaited shipment to Manhattan Ford. It’s clear that Ford dealers in Metro NYC knew back in 2011 that the Panther gravy train was ending, so they bought a huge stash to keep cabbies happy for as long as humanly possible. Abdullah is proof of this: He bought his cab from a Ford dealer in the Bronx after his last Crown Vic was destroyed by Sandy. If only those flooded units survived to become taxis, there’s a chance their owners would be much like Abdullah and Sharma, fighting the good fight for their livelihoods. At the same time, the two drivers are also fighting for the value proposition of body-on-frame Fords.

Perhaps I am exaggerating the plight of these two cabbies and their 4.6-liter sleds. Or perhaps the Crown Victoria isn’t just a great cab, it’s also the last gasp of middle-class existence for cab drivers. We all know the damage inflation has wreaked upon our economy in the last few years, and it’s definitely hurting Abdullah. He told the NYT that he needed a $30,000 down payment to buy a new Toyota Sienna Hybrid but said, “I’m behind on my mortgage, I’m behind on my bills.” He added, “If they don’t allow me to drive this car [the Crown Vic], I won’t make the income I need to buy a new car.” Sharma is in a similar position: The NYT reports he owned four taxi medallions and “lost his savings when the medallion bubble burst in 2014.”

Personal finance and everything it impacts is beyond our scope here at Hagerty Media, but there’s little doubt that the Crown Victoria’s ease of collision repair, its curb-jumping suspension durability, and its low-stress powertrain makes it financially possible to drive harder throughout the day, collecting more fares in the process. Fuel economy is a concern, but Sharma said, “I don’t think about the gas. I’m 64. I raised my children. I just drive.”

You may try to treat another cab like a Crown Vic, but you’re probably gonna regret it. CV axles on front-wheel-drive vehicles aren’t cheap, and I suspect no cabbie is gonna hop a curb to avoid Manhattan traffic jams like their predecessors did in Checkers, Caprices, and the once-ubiquitous Ford Crown Victoria. (I’ve seen it with my own eyes.) Since newer cabs have to be babied to minimize future repair costs, I wonder if these last two Crown Victorias are another vestige of the behaviors and attitudes found in Dirty Old New York City. You know, the time before Manhattan was a tourist trap and Brooklyn was hipster bait. They are fun memories for some, but the future is nothing to fear.

Time stops for nobody, and modern NYC has plenty to offer resident and visitor alike, with space-efficient vans and hybrid-powered taxis offsetting the city’s mass transit systems. I remember the Dirty Old New York City days, when concierges at hotels told you not to leave after sunset. I remember how much smog was in Manhattan’s air during times of peak congestion, and things are better now. So perhaps it’s better for everyone that future congested urban spaces don’t include Ford’s Crown Victoria. No matter what fate the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission hands down to Sharma and Abdullah come December 8, history has been made. And it’s been a great ride.

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Some stories are too good and long to tell (or read) in just one installment, so here is the tale of this remarkable car’s three very different phases of life in my hands in three logical segments. You can find the first below. —GW

It was late and very dark on that chilly September night when I found the entrance to the Nürburgring’s front straight. The new German friends who had welcomed me to the ’Ring and shared their great German beer during (and well beyond) the day’s six-hour race had told me that, for a single deutsche mark, I could drive a lap of the track before it closed. As I recall, that was about 25¢.

As a just-out-of-school, 21-year-old, aspiring racecar driver in his brand-new 1966 Triumph TR4A, how could I resist that temptation? At the end of a long day of race-watching and partying, I was tired but (as far as I could tell) not drunk. Why not enjoy a lap or two of perhaps the world’s most challenging track?

As I waited in my red Triumph, I watched officials collecting money from a couple other cars. However, no one noticed me. I took off without paying. With no race training or experience, just high confidence and dim headlamps, I attacked that slow/fast, up/down, tricky/twisty, super-challenging track as I would any unfamiliar, hilly public two-lane—aggressively enough to explore the car’s agility but leaving margin for error, since I had no idea what to expect over each crest or around the next bend.

Mash the gas, squeeze the brakes, downshift, corner, exit, upshift through long, fast curves, tighter corners, swoopy esses, crest-topping yumps, a couple of tightly banked circles (one was the ‘Ring’s famed “Karussell”), and a long, long, flat-out straight heading back to the pits.

The TR4A had felt nimble and responsive on the road, and it further impressed on the track. With its engine upgraded from the 1965 TR4’s 100 hp to 104 hp and 132 lb-ft of torque, the car was not seriously fast but it accelerated eagerly through its slick four-speed manual. Steering was quick and responsive, the brakes strong and linear with no sign of fade, and its handling surprisingly good thanks partly to a set of Michelin radial tires. I encountered no other traffic and completed that 14.2-mile, 176-turn lap with a huge grin on my face and ready for another. Again, the officials didn’t notice me, and I took off for a second cost-free lap. Whoopee!

I negotiated that one intact as well, then was approached by an official on my return. Uh-oh. He explained in his best English that they were about to close the track but that I could do one more lap for one deutsche mark. I fished the coin out of my pocket, handed it over, and launched down the straight for a third thrilling lap.

It was not entirely incident-free. Sailing down a fast hill, then braking for a left-hander, my foot slipped off the brake. Entering the curve too fast, the Triumph slid sideways into the right-side berm—thankfully not a guardrail or a drop-off. I felt a bump and heard a crunch as it scraped the dirt bank, then steered myself back on course. I was keenly aware that the car had no seat belts, so any crash would likely have pitched me out.

I was the last car out of the gate before officials swung it closed. Then I drove most of the night over the mountains on my way to Holland, where I intended to find and (if possible) drive the Zandvoort track, the site of Formula 1’s Dutch Grands Prix. When I later stopped under a light to check the car for damage, I found just a slight dent and scrape low on its rocker.

I never repaired that minor Nürburgring damage. I saw it as a badge of honor: three thrilling night laps of the ’Ring for the price of one.

Genesis

This big adventure was mostly my father’s fault. A farm kid from Nebraska who had raced hot rods on dirt in his youth, he sometimes took our family to a local quarter-mile asphalt track south of our Cleveland, Ohio, suburb, where we watched some fender-banging “stock” car racing. I instantly fell in love with it and wanted to race as soon as I was old enough and financially able. Much later, after getting my driver’s license at 16, I discovered another, better local track and got a weekend job there selling beer out of a little red wagon. I pulled it around yelling, “Cold beer here!” during breaks in the action, made $1.00 per case ($5.00–7.00 a night), and enjoyed a few myself. (You had to be 18 to legally sell beer in Ohio, but they never checked my ID.)

When my freshman-year college roommate introduced me to sports-car road racing at the (now long-gone) Meadowdale track north of Chicago—which featured a treacherously rough, steeply banked, 180-degree “Monza Wall” curve—that instantly changed my plan. I saw Augie Pabst and other brave shoes compete in thundering SCCA C-Modified (think early Can Am) machines and watched future famous factory driver Bob Tullius win the D-Production class in a Triumph TR4. After that, I studied up on SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) racing and decided that D-Production would make a good starting point once I was out of school. The class seemed fast enough to be fun but relatively safe and, most importantly, the eligible cars were semi-affordable.

In my senior year at Duke in 1965, while plotting which DP car to buy, I talked a dealer into letting me test drive the three most common models competing in that class: Triumph TR4, MGB, and Austin Healey 3000. The six-cylinder Healey had the most power but felt heavy and somewhat clumsy, and its low-slung body was known for dragging off its exhaust system. The MGB was lighter and more agile but a bit down on power. So, partially influenced by that Tullius win I saw at Meadowdale, I settled on the TR4. Its 100-hp 2138-cc four felt strong and torquey, and, crucially, its slightly flared fenders would allow wider tires under SCCA rules.

Heading for the Nürburgring

My dad, bless his kind soul, co-signed a loan for me to buy the Triumph following graduation and arranged for me to pick it up at the UK factory. My plan was to tour Europe in it for three weeks before starting work at Chevrolet Engineering in Warren, Michigan. As I recall, I paid about $2400 for a red U.S.-spec TR4A roadster—the new, updated model with ride-smoothing independent rear suspension based upon that of the Triumph 2000 sedan—with an optional heater and (new at the time) Michelin X radial tires but without available overdrive, wire wheels, radio, or seatbelts. Beyond seeing what I could of Western Europe, one key trip objective was to visit as many Formula 1 tracks as I could find. My dad had no clue that I planned to race the car.

I took delivery at the plant near London on September 1, 1965, and headed to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais, France. It was my first time driving on the left side of the road; I had to constantly remind myself to stay left and drive clockwise around UK roundabouts. Once in France and back on the right side of the road, I aimed for Brussels, Belgium, on my way to Germany’s famed Nürburgring. I didn’t think to visit Le Mans, probably because it was not an F1 track. With very little traveling budget, I stayed in cheap (some free) youth “hostels” wherever I could.

Arriving at the ’Ring on a Sunday morning, I found that a six-hour FIA Group 1 race was about to start. So, I watched the start, which was done Le Mans–style, then settled on a convenient corner to take in the race. It wasn’t long before a group of friendly young Germans invited me to join them and share their excellent beer. After the race, they asked me to stick around for more partying at a local pub. I was planning to head for Amsterdam that night but couldn’t turn that invitation down. I played my guitar and entertained them with American folk songs, then, finally about to depart for the night’s trip, they informed me that I could drive the track for a small fee.

Hello, Woter!

I found Spa in Belgium but couldn’t lap it because it was mostly public roads. Only the pit-lane wall along the main highway revealed it as part of the famous F1 course. I spent a day and night in Amsterdam, a beautiful city with an eye-opening red-light district, where scantily clad women beckoned to passing tourists from apartment windows. I walked through the area and watched with interest but did not partake. The next day, I headed for Zandvoort.

Like the Nürburgring, that Dutch F1 track was open to anyone for a modest fee. Why did European racetracks do that? Probably to generate extra income between races by providing track-driving opportunities to European enthusiasts and, very importantly, because they didn’t have to deal with legal liability and avaricious lawyers as we did even then in the States. If you paid the fee to drive the track in your street or race car, you did so at your own risk. If you crashed your car and maybe injured yourself and/or others, too bad. Not the track officials’ problem. Lots of scary non-race crash videos from the Nürburgring show how often such unfortunate incidents still happen.

It was raining the day I drove Zandvoort. Since it was another challenging track, I was extra careful. My Michelins gave surprisingly good wet traction compared to the cheap bias-ply tires I had rolled on all my driving life. The only scary part was the one other car on course at the time: a very fast formula racer doing serious testing. I had to watch my mirrors constantly and be sure to make room every time he came around—at probably twice my speed.

Nearly six decades later, I don’t recall where I headed from there. But the next thing that happened dramatically changed my memorable tour in the best possible way. I was having a tough time communicating in most places in France, Belgium, and Germany; few people were able or willing to speak English, and my second language was Spanish. Holland was the exception, and I soon learned why. Hoping for some English-speaking conversation and company, I picked up a young hitchhiker who I took to be either British or American. He turned out to be a Dutch medical student named Woter, who was returning home after a summer of mandatory military service on the Mediterranean. He told me that most educated Dutch were quadrilingual—fluent in French, German, and English in addition to their own language.

After some miles of driving and chatting, Woter asked whether he could travel with me for the next two weeks before he was due back in school. He seemed a very likable guy and good company, and his multi-language capability would come in handy. Sure, why not?

Denmark and Sweden

Woter suggested that we drive to Stockholm, Sweden, where he knew a woman friend. With little understanding of how far that really was (nearly 900 miles), I agreed. The good news: the route took us through much of Denmark and its beautiful Copenhagen capital, where I met a lovely college student and spent the night with her in her girls’ dorm room. She insisted that it would be no problem, and it wasn’t. But I was a tad uncomfortable in the shared shower the next morning. The arrangement seemed highly enlightened compared to the conservative values I grew up with in the States. I was liking enlightenment.

The bad news: Sweden, like the UK but unlike the rest of continental Europe, still drove on the left. (It changed to the right side two years later, in September, 1967.) So, I was back on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road, and Woter became a very useful passenger as he leaned out of his right-side window to sight up the road and tell me when it was safe to pass a slower car on a two-lane highway. He even drove a bit when I needed a rest. He said he was an inexperienced driver, which made me nervous, but he did pretty well.

When we finally got to Stockholm, we met Woter’s lady friend and enjoyed a nice dinner with her and her friend, a sweet and lovely young Swede named Lena. But there was no alcohol consumption, due to Sweden’s extremely tough drunk-driving laws, and no hanky panky or overnight stay. The youth hostel down the street would have to do.

On to Berlin

I don’t recall whose idea it was or when we decided to risk it, but we headed next to Berlin, some 700 miles from Stockholm, which in those days was still surrounded by Communist East Germany and divided east/west by a heavily fortified wall. Twenty-four years before Reagan’s command to “Tear down this wall!” would be fulfilled, driving through oppressed East Germany to free West Berlin was a challenge that was definitely not recommended. But we were young and adventurous, and Woter spoke fluent German. What could go wrong? At least we would be back on the right side of the road once out of Sweden.

Well, we took a wrong exit off the autobahn while still in East Germany and immediately encountered uniformed guards with serious weapons. Woter patiently explained our mistake, the guards searched us and the car, then let us turn around and head back to the autobahn.

When we arrived at the border, we had to negotiate double checkpoints, one to exit East Germany, a second to enter West Berlin. At both were multiple long lines with no signs telling us which to stand in first, second, etc., but Woter’s German got us through fairly easily. Then first the East German, then the West Berlin, guards thoroughly searched our Triumph, even using mirrors to check underneath the car for people (or perhaps weapons).

Once safely inside the city, we explored a bit and took a good look at the famous wall that countless East Germans had attempted to cross, most of them quickly shot by guards in the towers that lined it. We did not hear of anyone ever trying to cross in the other direction. Then, after a restless night in a particularly barren youth hostel, we reversed the process, driving back through the double checkpoints and, eventually, out of East Germany.

Time was not our friend. We had just a couple days to get back to Calais, catch a ferry to Dover, and negotiate traffic to the London airport for me to catch my flight home. With just paper maps in various languages (no GPS those days), we faced some 600 miles of mostly two-lane driving, much of it through mountainous areas, to get to Calais. There would be no overnight stay and no time to explore any of England before I had to jump on the plane, and Woter would have to do his share of the driving while I caught brief rolling naps.

We made it … just barely. And I had to trust Woter, my new, inexperienced-driver Dutch friend whom I had known just a couple weeks, to drop me at the airport and get the Triumph (now back on the wrong side of UK roads) to its departure port for shipment to the States. Then he would have to hitchhike back across the Channel and to his school in the Netherlands.

I had his contact information, but if he didn’t deliver the car when and where it needed to be for whatever reason, how could I remotely track him down from back in the States and recover it? I did feel that I could trust him to get that done, but I worried about the car all the way home and for several more days until I got a letter from him and a notice from the shipping company that my now-well-broken-in new Triumph was on its way across the sea. Whew!

To read Chapter II, click here. 

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I often try to reminisce about England in the 1950s and ’60s. Crisp autumn days in the Cotswolds. Narrow village lanes. Classic British motoring. The problem here is that I was born in Canada. In the mid-1990s. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows defines this sort of sentiment: Anemoia (noun): Nostalgia for a time you’ve never known.

I belong to a group of young British motoring enthusiasts, and we know this feeling well.

The postwar period in England ushered in the development of small cars that perfectly paired man and machine. The liberty and optimism of this golden era were complemented by the handsome styling and reassuring handling afforded by Little British Cars (or LBCs)—chief among them, the droptop. The period marked the pinnacle of raw, tactile enjoyment that British auto manufacturing could provide, and starry-eyed enthusiasts have been chasing it ever since.

I purchased my blue 1976 MGB in 2014, when I was 19. It was my first car. Originally a Harvest Gold American-market car that had been imported to Canada, this repainted six-owner MG exemplifies the perseverance of British motoring. Locked at 38,609 miles, the odometer stopped working shortly after I bought the B. It’s a five-digit unit that I’m certain has rolled over once, if not twice. The British Leyland Baltimore Dealer business card I found under the ripped and sun-bleached seat, along with a New York State Parks ticket from 1998, alluded to the car’s history of constant use.

I’ve added another 30,000 miles, taking it from Toronto to Pittsburgh, Watkins Glen to Detroit, and Niagara Falls to northern Ontario. When I moved to Toronto from the sleepy suburbs and brought my MGB along with me, I thought I was surely the only person my age masochistic enough to strap on leather gloves and daily-drive a half-century-old oily death trap on some of the most treacherous highways in North America. As it turned out, I was wrong.

Engaging with the car scene on social media, I connected with an entire group of classic car owners who defy the stereotypes of the British car community. This group of millennials and Gen Zers spans North America, from my home in Toronto all the way to Los Angeles. And they don’t just own these old British cars—they drive the snot out of them. Why are a bunch of teens and twentysomethings suddenly so obsessed with an obscure era of obsolete British relics? I reached out to investigate, and a few of them agreed to meet to chat about it.

I arrived in my MGB and was soon joined by Jason DeFreitas in his MG Midget, Colin Doust in an Austin-Healey Sprite, and Josh Crawford with his Austin Mini. They arrived late, but only because they’d had to procure some oil for a top off. Which was fine, because it gave me time to tinker with my horn, which had stopped working. We are nothing if not immersed in the British car experience.

Unsurprisingly, one of the first topics was the reliability of our cars. Crawford, age 18, has had the most stereotypical experience. “My car has broken down dozens of times,” he said, undeterred. “But every time it breaks down, I end up learning something and am better prepared for when it breaks down next. It doesn’t stop me from going on long-distance trips.”

Jay Leno defined the classic British car zeitgeist in a single sentence when firing up Moss Motor’s experimental MGB on his web series Jay Leno’s Garage: “Oh, wow, it started!” Leno is no stranger to British automobiles, and in an episode last year, he got behind the wheel of one of his favorite cars of all time—an MGA—owned and restored by 24-year-old enthusiast Daniel Harrison. I got in touch with Daniel, who described the reliability of his 1958 MGA as nearly flawless, though he insists that maintaining these aging English contraptions isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. “Sometimes they’re extremely irritating and uncomfortable, and then occasionally you get a little golden nugget of an experience which sucks you right back in again.” Daniel’s YouTube channel “Limit 55” aims to demystify the classic car experience and portray the honest picture of owning and maintaining vintage cars.

Jason DeFreitas shared a similar sentiment on this double-edged-sword regarding his orange MG Midget. “With 65 horsepower and four gears, having your engine scream at 4500 rpm for an hour gets old. It has also taught me every possible way to get oil out of my driveway. But it is a riot to drive, handles like a go-kart, and makes all the right noises.”

It’s no secret that British cars have a famous reputation for their electrical gremlins and oil stains. The consensus among us was that these cars will always need attention— because they’re old, not because they’re British. There will always be surprises and sometimes even dark days, but their agricultural robustness and their simple serviceability have allowed them to stand the test of time. Ultimately, if you take care of these classics, they will take care of you. Having a roadside assistance plan doesn’t hurt, though.

Cars like the MGA and B, the Austin-Healey 100 and 3000, and various Triumphs defined the modern recipe of the nimble, front engine, rear-wheel-drive sports car. Despite their front-drive packaging, you could lump Minis in with them, too. That all of these cars were also affordable endeared them to millions of motorists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Minis, for example, are one of the world’s most popular classic cars. From 1959 to 2000, a mind-boggling 5.3 million were produced, six of which were used in the filming of the Mr. Bean series. MGBs also rank as one of the bestselling classics; from 1962 until 1980, MG produced over half a million of them, and it is estimated that upwards of 15 percent are still on the road today.

In addition to scoring historic victories at Le Mans, Monte Carlo, and the Nürburgring, the MGB was practical, economical, and affordable—the GT version was affectionately dubbed “the poor man’s Aston Martin.” I would put extra emphasis on the “poor” given that having roll-up windows was touted as a groundbreaking feature in sales brochures of the time. Other standard features included an ashtray and steel wheels. But novelty equipment wasn’t what sold these cars. The promise of pure joy sold them.

As demand for these Little British Cars wanes, however, so too does membership in many established classic car clubs. Although Colin, Daniel, and I are part of local and national Triumph and MG clubs, new memberships are still failing to offset the loss of old ones. Reassuringly, however, these cars are re-emerging in new circles. When he isn’t studying engineering, Josh can be found attending a number of local car meets and club events, including one at his university. Jason, meanwhile, runs a popular local car club called Northrides Orangeville. His aim is to create an inclusive group “free from idiots and judgmental a-holes” where his MG Midget can be seen alongside JDM classics and Kei trucks, German autobahn cruisers, and various exotics.

Today, the price of car ownership is skyrocketing. Many new vehicles feel out of reach for young people, and many of the previously sensible classics like Mazda Miatas and Datsun 240s are becoming all but unattainable. But not these Little British Cars. The value trend lines for MGAs and Bs, Midgets, Minis, and Spitfires have generally remained flat over the last decade. That’s great news for the money-strapped youth of the world.

Even better, these cars can be serviced and even rebuilt with the most rudimentary of hand tools. A half-inch wrench and a screwdriver can fix most things, and every single part for these cars is readily available—and largely affordable, though most parts seldom need replacing at all. In fact, the overall simplicity of these LBCs—MGB shock absorbers are based on 100-year-old compact hydraulic lever arms that can be serviced rather than replaced—helps keep more of them on the road. Putting miles on these cars comes easy when maintenance costs are low and fuel consumption is that of a lawnmower.

Even with fuel prices currently at obscene levels, I’m still not dissuaded from driving. My B averages 30 mpg on the highway, and I regularly exceed 6000 miles per year in it. Josh drives his Mini more than 2,400 miles a year; Jason takes his Midget on frequent long journeys; Daniel’s MGA has been across California and back; and Colin is planning a thousand-mile trip to Road America with his Sprite.

And even with their wallet-friendly powertrains, these cars are far from slow and boring, which only furthers their timeless appeal. Although the MGB’s 95 horsepower doesn’t sound like a lot, a properly tuned B-series motor is a highly capable musical instrument with a uniquely throaty howl. Mild upgrades to any of these cars—lightened flywheels, headers, shaved and ported cylinder heads—go a long way toward maximizing performance. Ancient, dependable, and famously fickle twin SU carburetors allow for some of the best throttle response available.

Sure, modern cars offer infinitely more comfort, safety, and even speed than their vintage British counterparts, which never got the memo on noise, vibration, and harshness. But the overwhelming majority of new vehicles today are a beige appeal to the lowest common denominator, each crammed with a tacky assortment of gimmicks which are simultaneously everything and nothing. Amid the landscape of increasingly boring modern cars and increasingly expensive classics, Little British Cars are a gleaming beacon of hope for a truly attainable driving experience. For younger enthusiasts, they present a unique opportunity to get the thrill of a sports car, the charm of a classic, and the price tag of a clapped-out Hyundai. And, as always, you won’t lack for attention: My 47-year-old MG gets looks everywhere I drive. Smiles and happy memories shared from silver-haired gentlemen recalling their youth. Waves from little kids on their bikes telling me to floor it (I usually already am).

“Still One Jump Ahead” read British Leyland’s MG advertisements throughout the 1970s. By the end of the decade, most new British cars were absolutely showing their age; they were outdated and outpaced by the competition, which increasingly came from Japan. Nevertheless, what made these British cars so popular in the past is what will allow them to prosper in the future. Affordability, simplicity, and fun have always been a recipe for success. Among the noise (and, increasingly, the EV hush) of today’s automotive landscape, cheerful LBCs will continue to attract the latest generation of enthusiasts eager to experience the analog freedom of the golden age of motoring. The Little British Car, it would seem, is still one jump ahead.

* * *

“What would you tell other people looking to get into a classic British car?”

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As soon as Chedeen Battick settles into the driving seat, the mellow reggae sounds of Bob Marley begin to emanate from the E-Type’s audio system.

Any notion that this will be a laid back introduction to Helm’s remarkable restomod is put aside the moment we hit a straight bit of road and Battick puts his foot down. Bob’s lyrics are obliterated by the resonant boom of a 300-horsepower 3.8-liter six beneath the hood. Instead of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in accompaniment we have the wail of a straight-through exhaust exiting out a pair of elongated stainless steel trumpets. The rich red and yellow foliage of the autumnal tree tunnel we are screaming through immediately turns into one orange blur.

This, clearly, is not your average E-Type. In fact, it is the realization of Battick’s dream to build his ideal iteration of the world’s most beautiful car.

Battick still remembers the very first time he saw an E-Type and the profound impact it had on him. “I was about 13 and saw one on the street in South London,” he says. “I’d always wanted to be a car designer since I was a little kid and I’d never seen anything like it.”

Born in Jamaica, he recalls being the only 6-year-old spending all his free time sketching cars, and following a move to the U.K. when he was 10, Battick would go on to study art and product design in an effort to fulfill that childhood ambition.

It wasn’t a straightforward route from there, however. Unable to find the job he wanted, Battick began using his art skills in the spray booth and repairing cars in his community. He bought, restored, and sold Mercedes SLs, and then one day he was offered the opportunity to buy an E-Type.

“I couldn’t afford it myself, but I found a buyer who also got me to do the restoration,” he says. That led to the founding of Automo, the Jaguar E-Type specialist shop he still runs today.

Helm Motorcars was built on more than a dozen years of experience with the E-Type, during which time Battick built up a network of specialist trimmers, engine builders, and mechanics. The idea was simple—to build Battick’s perfect E-Type: “A style icon that you’d like to be seen in in 2023, that drives like it’s 2023 as well.”

A passing glance at the exterior wouldn’t alert you to the handmade aluminum hood and doors, beneath flawless paintwork, which help reduce the weight to 2535 pounds. Pay attention and perhaps you’ll note the nickel-finish brightwork. Or you’ll catch the stainless steel wire wheels with their center-lock hubs and how they fill the wheel arches thanks to a lower stance and wider offset. Or you’ll spot the LED bulbs behind those unmistakable headlamp covers. Battick’s goal was never to distract from the original design’s perfect purity—job done.

While the Series 1 E-Type’s exterior design is timeless, Battick had a vision to create a luxurious interior that would only improve with age. Designed in partnership with leather specialist Bill Amberg, every surface is clad in wonderful semi-aniline hide of a quality and thickness that one would normally find in home furnishings. Even the toggle switches are leather-clad, their function gently embossed in the hide beneath. Each of the 20 Helm E-Types will be delivered with a set of Bill Amberg Studio luggage, tailored to match its interior.

“Our cars patinate to each individual,” Battick says.

Beyond the obvious luxury, there’s technology never before seen in an E-Type, from soft-close doors and air conditioning to electric power steering and a multi-speaker stereo with Bluetooth connectivity. Customer cars have also been fitted with parking sensors, a reversing camera, and Apple CarPlay connectivity. Battick drew the line at electric windows, however, wanting to maintain that physical connection between car and driver.

And this really is an E-Type for drivers. There’s new adjustable double-wishbone suspension all around, with uprated torsion bars, plus six-piston front calipers and four-piston rears for the disc brakes, while the steering has a little extra help from a column-mounted electric assist system.

The transmission is a Tremec five-speed manual, although a ZF automatic is also available, while the blueprinted 3.8-liter motor is a work of art, thanks to all-new internals, fuel-injection with Jenvey heritage throttle bodies, Helm’s own airbox, an alloy radiator, and that big-bore exhaust. As a result, output is increased by 15 percent, to 300 hp,

From the passenger seat it certainly feels like more than that, and Battick confidently takes the Helm’s helm through a mix of narrow lanes and more open A roads as we head for a bite at the American-style Mollie’s Motel and Diner near Oxford.

With the Jag brimmed with British Petroleum’s finest and our bellies full of cheeseburger, ribs, and shakes, it’s my turn to take the wheel.

There can be few more evocative views than looking across the sculpted hood of an E-Type. Battick has slightly lowered the seat to make it easier for taller drivers to take in that view unobstructed by the low roof height. I think I’d like it a little lower still, and while I’m at it, I’ll take adjustable pedals so I could heel-and-toe without catching my foot on the inner wheel arch.

The clutch is a little heavy, but the steering is super light as I pull away for the first time. That Tremec gearbox is just a joy to work, with a short and wonderfully mechanical action.

Within a few shifts I’m immediately aware of just how little the Helm squats under acceleration, while hitting the anchors is dive-free, too. The last E-Type I drove had seen its powertrain electrified but the rest of its running gear left standard. It pitched and rolled like an ocean liner in comparison. In fairness, that car was scheduled to live a low-speed life on an exotic island, but the contrast is remarkable. The Helm’s brake pedal is almost race-car firm and the stopping power is prodigious.

The Helm’s lateral body control is just as good as its fore-and-aft management, yet the ride doesn’t suffer untowardly. It’s no magic carpet, but the trade off for the confidence it gives you to exercise the engine to its full potential is worth it.

A lightened flywheel means the motor revs up rapidly, but there’s enough torque to mean you don’t need to redline it to find yourself travelling rather swiftly.

The minor criticisms that I could level have already been addressed for production cars, with this, car zero, having a slightly unnerving, over-sensitive quality to the steering at higher speeds and an exhaust that’s just a little too loud for comfortable cruising. On the topic of noise, the door seals could better subdue the rush of the wind.

Like I said, none of these should trouble any of the 20 lucky individuals who order a Helm, but they’re more noticeable because of the otherwise exceptional build quality. Despite this being a much-abused prototype, which has seen action at Silverstone and other circuits as well as thousands of miles on the road, there are no untoward noises or vibrations of any kind.

Every customer car will go through a near-thousand-mile testing program with Battick to ensure it meets his meticulous standards, while the company is partnering with specialists worldwide to provide aftercare.

Three of the five cars ordered so far are for U.S. customers, and the company’s first roadster is almost ready to ship to Australia. As each car is different there’s no fixed price, but around half a million pounds ($620,000) should cover it.

Now, that’s a lot of money, but there will only ever be 20 Helm E-Types, and they might just be the best the world has ever seen.

***

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I’m behind the wheel of what I consider to be perhaps the most beautiful Ford Mustang ever built, a Bullitt-esque Highland Green 1968. This one packs 710 horsepower under the hood and bites the pavement with Michelin radials mounted on gray Torq Thrust wheels. If I were to be chasing a Dodge Charger, all raised intersections would look like jumps.

Unfortunately, we’re in Orlando, where intersections are mostly flat and thus do not resemble those in San Francisco. There’s no vintage Charger in sight. And we can’t officially call this car a “Bullitt” Mustang, since Tom Scarpello, founder and CEO of Revology Cars, doesn’t have the rights to that name. We’ll just refer to it the way they do in the Revology factory: the Option B build.

There’s no point in asking Scarpello what car his buyers cross-shop the Revology Ford Mustangs with, because the answer is, not much. “Maybe a Porsche 911 GT3 RS,” he says. “And you couldn’t find two more different cars.”

His customers are mostly people who can buy what they want, so even at $300,000, they aren’t giving up much to buy one of Scarpello’s cars.

Of course, such automotive enthusiasts may number in the hundreds, rather than thousands, which is fine with Revology’s head: The company was founded in 2014, and total production is well under 200 so far. There are customers for everything Revology builds.

“Builds” being an important word here: Revology Mustangs are not restomods, which are by definition modernized original vehicles—truly vintage cars with updated brakes, powertrains, suspension, tires and wheels, and maybe air conditioning. More involved projects—the whole-hog extreme being the Porsche 911 “reimaginations” executed by Singer Vehicle Design—extensively modify the exterior and interior, as well.

The 1968 fastback Mustang I am driving shares no parts with an original car, despite the spot-on appearance. It’s new, as in all-new,  from the ground up. That means it drives like a car right off the showroom floor, rather than a 56-year-old antique with every kink ironed out. This fresh-from-the-box element is a central reason why his customers like Revology Mustangs so much—they can be—and often are, a daily driver.

Restomods “are a collection of parts,” Scarpello argues. “They aren’t necessarily an engineered platform. The reality is, it’s asking too much. The guys who build them are talented, but the parts involved may not play well with each other. It’s just not realistic.

“So my idea was to start with one platform, and that’s all we’re going to build. Every car we build will have the same basic architecture. Electrical, powertrain, chassis, everything. And we’ll do different body styles on top of it that make it look different, but each one is essentially the same car. And that’s what we’ve done.”

Scarpello and Revology builds steel-bodied Mustangs from 1966 to 1968, in convertible, 2+2 fastback, and Shelby GT350/GT500 forms, each riding on that same platform.

Scarpello’s 51,000-square-foot facility in an industrial park near the Orlando airport, a former pharmaceutical repackaging facility. It’s is his second real factory; the first was a dark warehouse on the outskirts of town. He’s already looking for more real estate and more employees to add to the 104 already working on site; the current factory isn’t cramped, but it’s getting full.

None of this could have happened unless Scarpello was able to get permission from Ford and Shelby to build these Mustangs. He spent time as an executive at Jaguar, Nissan, and Infiniti, but he also ran Ford’s Special Vehicle Team. SVT, you’ll recall, built the SVT Mustang, Contour, Focus and the second-generation Ford Lightning, and working at that job gave Scarpello an introduction to Ford’s top management. He credits his former boss at Ford for helping secure a license to build these new-old models.

It doesn’t hurt that Ford CEO Jim Farley is a Revology fan, and that two Ford family members—Edsel, and Bill, who bought one for his wife, Lisa—own Revology Mustangs, with a third Ford family member presently planning out his build.

“No one had ever done this before. It’s difficult to get a company like Ford to do anything like this. Big companies operate on inertia, or competitive reaction, like if the other guy across town is doing it. And that wasn’t the case.

“The plan was always to build licensed cars. We never considered ourselves to be a custom shop. Our goal was always to be a manufacturer.”

Compared with most new cars, resale value appears to be plenty high. Revology has four certified previously-owned cars for sale, at an average price of $292,375. The cheapest is a 1966 convertible for $216,000.

The level of detail on these cars is remarkable, and authenticity is respected wherever possible. Scarpello could easily ring up Recaro, for instance, and buy some perfectly fine seats. Instead, his craftsmen design and build each seat for each car.

Otherwise, “We pick the parts that we want, and then we redesign the platform to accommodate them,” Scarpello says.

Example: The high-performance Ford engines Revology uses generate a lot of heat. It would have been simple to survey the aftermarket and gobble up a decent three- or four-core radiator and some cooling fans, but his engineers took the entire Ford factory cooling system associated with the engines and re-engineered the front of the car to make it fit. “We have cars in Arizona, as well as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and we’ve never had a cooling issue,” Scarpello says. “That kind of thing would not be feasible for a restomod builder. Couldn’t do it.”

Revology has 176 cars in 18 countries, Scarpello tells us, and the cars are drivers even outside the U.S. An owner of a Revology 1968 GT Fastback Mustang, Botswana’s Clinton Van Vuuren, entered it in The Cape 1000 this year, a rugged four-day drive starting and finishing in Cape Town, South Africa. In many ways a typical Revology customer, Van Vuuren has a collection of 60 classic vehicles.

There are some celebrity owners too, like comedian and car collector Kevin Hart, who has a black 1965 convertible. “Two of our owners have five of our cars apiece,” Scarpello says, and a third is buying one of all eight models Revology offers. Base price for a 1968 Mustang GT 2+2 fastback Cobra Jet: $291,760.

The car I am driving, build number 184, was pulled directly off the production line before final inspection. Clearly Scarpello had enough confidence in it to put a writer behind the wheel.

Its options range from polished, flush-mounted hood latches ($635) to a Focal K2 sound system ($4895) to full Nappa leather upholstery ($10,475). The leather-wrapped, three-spoke steering wheel (no airbag, not required under the law) is $1290. I would have preferred the wood steering wheel, but that’s my only complaint. The perfectly-applied Highland Green metallic paint (which is not saying it’s a Bullitt) costs $975.

Those charcoal Torq Thrust wheels ($2195) hold fat P275/40ZR17 Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 radials. Carpet is square-weave wool: $3375. Under the hood isn’t the Cobra Jet engine but something better and much more powerful: A Roush-tuned 5.0-liter supercharged V-8 rated at 710 horsepower and 610 lb-ft of torque. Transmission is a close-ratio Tremec T56 six-speed manual, attached to a heavy-duty driveline. A 10-speed automatic is also available; take rate between that and the manual is about 50/50.

Push a button and the engine roars to life, burbling through a Borla exhaust. Snick it into gear—clutch action is firm but not tiringly so—and go: The suspension, with coil springs and control arms up front and a live axle out back, is stiff but adequately compliant. The ride won’t beat you up but it does allow for very flat cornering, on whatever few corners we can find on Florida roads.

The Tremec is typically a smooth-shifting transmission, no different in this application. Blast through second and third gears and the Borla’s exhaust note goes from burble to roar. The very good kind of roar. Power rack and pinion steering is light, and the big 13-inch brakes work as you’d expect for a modern street machine.

Yes, I can see this as a daily driver: All I need is $322,130 to make it happen.

Bottom line: If Detective Frank Bullitt had one of these cars, and we aren’t saying this is a Bullitt Mustang, the chase scene in the movie would have been a whole lot shorter.

***

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It is apparently common for a new owner of a Singer restoration to call the home office with questions. Why, they ask, does their newly delivered pride and joy feel a bit distant, stiff in the knees?

“Just drive it,” Singer people say. As with any new restoration, the Porsche 911s from Rob Dickinson’s shop require break-in. The shell is old but the parts are new, and those parts need mileage to get happy with each other.

The car we tested for this story had a few thousand miles on the clock. It thus carried the standard Singer magic: a Porsche 911 that somehow delivers, in one single car, everything worth loving from the name’s greatest hits. Monster torque? Huge traction but ready willingness to slide? Germanic obsession with finish and a perfect balance between handling precision and comfort, all draped in the looks of an RS 2.7 sketched by Syd Mead? Sign us up.

On a mountain high above western Los Angeles, we were granted a handful of miles with a left-hand-drive 1990 911 in Sport Classic Grey. That car wore all-wheel drive, a 4.0-liter flat-six producing a claimed 390 horsepower, carbon-ceramic brakes, and a six-speed manual.

I’ve tested some 911s reimagined by Singer and poked around dozens more, and the details always delight. With all-wheel-drive cars, Singer replaces the stock 964 front-axle equipment—differential, driveshafts, and so on—with 993-generation Porsche hardware, then adds dozens of other tweaks to help the car respond and work. Combined with the company’s various cosmetic and driveline updates, the result is a piece of jewelry with incredible feel and raucous intake honk. Jewelry you can hammer at a track day or slog through traffic—simply a car, reliable and comfortable, cold air and great seats, designed to be used.

These cars, in this form, are worth every penny Dickinson asks. The catch is how that price draws a specific customer; you have to be quite successful to afford a machine of this value, and success often means a life with little free time. Some owners sell their cars after a year or two and only a smattering of miles. Which means they never see the magic.

Shame. Every Porsche 911 was built to move, after all. Dickinson’s just happen to be far better at it than most.

***

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The door shuts, the key turns, and there’s a whirring of the fuel pump before the starter motor cranks away and the engine catches. There’s an explosion as fuel is compressed and ignited, and the 5.75-liter V-8 settles to a chugga-chug-chug, fumes filling the air and hydrocarbon flecks spitting from the exhausts. It is everything and more you’d hope from a 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1—theatrical, attention-seeking, and a hint of the anti-establishment, ready to melt rubber into the road and race for pink slips.

The Mach 1, however, is being moved to make way for a 1965 Mustang of an altogether different kind. When the key is turned in that car’s dashboard, there’s no explosion of internal combustion and no fumes from exhausts to melt the hairs in your nose and bring tears to your eyes. Instead, you hear the faint whir of electrical systems waking up and running checks. Then you turn the key further, ease down the brake pedal, and nudge the short shift lever from neutral to drive, before leaning into the accelerator.

The imperious hood of the Mustang coupe emerges from the workshop of Alan Mann Racing, and a passing driver of a delivery van appears somewhat perplexed that an American pony car is moving without making a sound—or rocking on its suspension to the beat of a V-8.

It may be equally perplexing to those familiar with Alan Mann Racing (AMR), the British team that ruled the grid during the swinging Sixties. The company was founded in 1964 by Alan Mann, after his success in motor racing impressed Ford so much that the carmaker effectively set him up as its European racing operation. Alan Mann Racing became part of the blue-blood brotherhood, and Fords would capture the most high-profile championships of the era, including the British Saloon Car Championship, the European Touring Car Challenge, and the FIA World GT Championship for Manufacturers. Meanwhile, the drivers behind the wheel were the best of the best: John Whitmore, Jacky Ickx, Bo “Bosse” Ljungfeldt, Graham Hill, Frank Gardner, Jackie Stewart, Richard Attwood, and Bruce McLaren all did battle in AMR cars.

Ford pulled the plug on its “Total Performance” strategy, and in turn its European satellite racing operation, at the end of 1969. Alan Mann switched to aviation, developing Fairoaks Airfield, on the doorstep of his old racing workshop in Surrey, as well as a successful helicopter leasing business. It wasn’t until 2003, and an opportunity to share driving duties at the Goodwood Revival, that Mann got the bug for racing again, reviving Alan Mann Racing for historic motorsport.

Mann died in 2012, which left AMR in the safe hands of his sons, Henry and Tom. Today, the workshop is a handful of miles from the site of the original garage in Byfleet. And the first question for Henry Mann is obvious: Why electrify a Mustang?

“We’d always wanted to do a Mustang restomod,” says Henry, “because we’d done so many rally and race Mustangs, and quite a lot of road cars too, and figured we could do a half-decent job of a restomod Mustang.” In February 2022, Ford contacted Henry and Tom, inviting the brothers to the unveiling of its Ford GT Alan Mann Heritage Edition, a special version of the supercar that paid tribute to AMR’s lightweight 1966 Ford GT experimental race cars. During the event, held at the Chicago Auto Show, Henry was rather taken by a 1978 F-100 pickup “Eluminator” concept that Ford had played around with, dropping out its straight-six engine and fitting the battery-electric powertrain and front and rear electric traction motors from a 2021 Mustang Mach-E GT. “It was really popular, and the lines to ride in it were huge. There was so much interest in it.”

While at the show, Henry met another Henry—another Henry Mann, in fact—who happened to be the first owner of the 2022 Ford GT Alan Mann Heritage Edition. The two concluded that an electrified Mustang with the Alan Mann Racing name attached to it would be a very cool thing indeed.

After more than a year of development, in partnership with Nick Mason, a former vehicle development engineer at Ford who founded EcoClassics in Maldon, Essex, AMR had a prototype up and running.

Henry explains that beneath the surface of this standard looking 1965 Mustang—called the Alan Mann Legacy ePower Mustang—sits an off-the-shelf inverter, motor, and battery management system, all sourced from China, while the two battery boxes were designed in Britain specifically to fit the Mustang. The motor and one battery sit in the engine bay, the other battery is in the boot, giving a 50/50 weight distribution, while power is sent to the back wheels through a Torsen limited-slip differential.

The battery is a 77-kWh unit, able to accept AC and DC charging, and is claimed to give a touring range of up to 220 miles. Using DC rapid charging, Henry Mann says the battery will charge from 20 to 80 per cent in 40 minutes. In muscle car terms, that all translates to an output of 300 hp, and there’s 228 lb-ft of torque as soon as you flex your right foot. For a 1965 Mustang, that’s impressive. It means the car is capable of accelerating from 0 to 60mph in 5.2 seconds, with a top speed of 97 mph.

On the rain-soaked roads around the company’s workshop, the silent Mustang provides a brisk turn of speed up to around 60 mph, in part thanks to impressive traction that comes from AMR’s years of experience building racing Mustangs. The suspension design has been changed to incorporate independent double wishbones with coilovers all around, and from a standstill there’s just the slightest skip from the back wheels as they claw at the road before the Mustang whines away.

That suspension is complemented by rack-and-pinion steering in place of the old worm-and-sector steering box, and together they create a more modern driving experience, where the car rides our lumpy, bumpy British roads better than a Mustang on rear leaf springs; it tracks true and straight and stays flat and planted through twists and turns. Admittedly, the steering is heavy—too heavy for some tastes, perhaps. But the weight when loaded up beyond the straight-ahead gives a feeling of confidence in what the front tires are up to.

As I make a beeline for the historic Old School Café, and a mug of builder’s tea, it’s clear that the car’s acceleration tails off beyond 60 mph, but it gets there briskly enough, and it’s arguably plenty enough for today’s busy roads. What’s not so welcome is a resonance coming from the propshaft, between 40 and 60 mph, something Henry Mann later tells me they’re working to remedy. There’s gentle energy regeneration when you lift from the throttle, and when you stand on the brake pedal, the effort and impressive stopping power of the uprated system (six-piston calipers at the front, four-piston items at the rear) remind me of the Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy racing car I drove a few years back.

There are other modifications, too, which will be welcomed by some. The updated instrument cluster, for example, looks period-correct but displays all the information an EV driver could want. Or the touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Best of all are the modern front seats, complete with integrated seatbelts, which are noteworthy for being so solidly mounted, while proudly displaying the Alan Mann Racing logo, stitched into the headrest. Perhaps the neatest touch of all, however, is the location of the charging port. When I ask Henry Mann where they’ve hidden it, he flips down the front number plate and there it is.

Sipping my tea at Old School Café, I wonder whether AMR team members and drivers may have gathered here, back in the Sixties, after shaking down race cars at the nearby Longcross test track (now used exclusively used for blockbuster filmmaking). I wonder what they might have thought of the ePower Mustang parked out front.

I jump back in the Mustang and drive past the track, and I encounter a large, smooth, open roundabout where it’s possible to explore the limits of grip. The suspension and steering, as well as the new bespoke subframes to carry the battery packs and motor, give the Mustang a robust feel. Old cars of this era should pitch, dive, roll, and heave on their suspension, while the body flexes under load, but there’s none of that in this Mustang, and when the tail does let go, I’m surprised at how high the limit of adhesion is.

At this stage, I can sense some will be shaking their heads at the thought of an electric classic Mustang. After all, the pony car was enjoyed by many as a tire-smoking attention-seeker, not a zero-emissions solution for London’s ever-expanding Ultra Low Emissions Zone. But given there were more than 1.3 million Mustangs made in the first two years of production alone, converting a small number to electric propulsion isn’t going to endanger the species.

Personally, I’d rather my Alan Mann Racing Mustang come with those suspension and brake upgrades, some additional structural bracing, and a rocking V-8 that shakes my neighbrs’ windows every time I start it up. After all, when you take the soundtrack out of an old car, all it serves to do is exaggerate the noise of all the other moving parts and squeaking trim.

I do wonder, however: Does the current approach not endanger the very existence of Alan Mann Racing? After all, if EV retro-fit conversions of classics really catch on across the hobby, might legislators take a dim view of fire-breathing racing cars and noisy, smelly race meetings?

I put that question to Henry. “I think with the rise of synthetic fuels, there’s plenty of argument for keeping these [racing cars] as they are. But I think some people are going to want electric just because of the tailpipe emissions issue, and the quietness and the more civilized behavior in a city, where you’re not belching out unburnt hydrocarbons when idling at the lights. And it’s such a negligible contribution to the overall emissions of the road transport fleet that I hope it [legislation] wouldn’t be changed.”

The thorny issue for potential buyers in Britain is that the extensive changes made during the conversion mean the car could not retain its original registration number. Instead, it would have to be submitted for an Individual Vehicle Approval test, and that would require further changes to the car, which AMR are weighing up “depending on customer demand.”

Interested parties in America, meanwhile, will be able to have the complete conversion carried out by Alan Mann Racing’s U.S. partner, Mann ePower Cars, based in Hatboro, Pennsylvania. The cost will be a minimum of $250,000 (£203,000), says Henry Mann, for a turn-key car. He adds that sum could be lowered if an owner has a donor car in good condition.

So, the retro-fit electrified Mustang is a curious thing on all sorts of levels. It’s not a muscle car as we know it. And it can’t be bought as a turn-key car in the U.K., only the US. And if you had the conversion carried out on your classic Mustang in the U.K., it would lose its original registration, due to the rule-makers at the DVLA. Such is the price of progress, I suppose.

Things used to be a lot simpler, and noisier, in the Sixties.

***

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Younger folks may find this unbelievable, but in the 1970s, cars that are now coveted and revered were often neglected and sometimes even abandoned. Such misfortune befell this 1969 Triumph TR6, left for dead on a scruffy Long Beach dirt lot, where thieves had plundered its seats, bumpers, and hubcaps. Upon sighting it, I thought, “Whoa, that’s nice!”

The DMV identified the lienholder as a local bank, whom I called.

Me: “I found a car you own abandoned and want to buy it.”

Bank: “Where’s the car?”

Me: “Somewhere in Long Beach. Good luck finding it.”

Bank: “The loan is in default. Bring in a cashier’s check for $300 and we’ll release the title to you.”

Me: “That’s a deal.”

And just like that, I was a new TR6 owner! The trunk contained dozens of canceled checks that I trashed, and a 5×7 glossy of a wide-eyed Iggy Pop singing at the Waldorf. “Go out to the funky bar i get hurt—crying inside,” read an inscription. That I kept.

After inflating the tires and checking the oil and coolant, I jumpstarted the TR6 using my roommate’s $150 GTO (a carport find). To my delight, the TR6 ran wonderfully. Driving without a seat was another matter, but a milk crate and couch cushion sufficed for the 65-mile ride home. But talk about scary …

While the car ran great, the master cylinder was fading, and it required much frantic pedal pumping for any brake action. Also, a front A-arm mounting bracket had broken, causing random steering aberrations. Not what you want when perched atop a makeshift seat.

With effort, however, the situation improved. I found seats and bumpers, fixed the brakes, and a welder reattached the suspension mount. After a repaint, the TR6 became a reliable daily driver.

Wheel covers proved elusive, however. Rejecting British Leyland parts pricing, I bought Sears hubcaps reminiscent of early TR6 ones. Except they fit poorly. One clattered away on the Ventura Freeway, and another escaped on winding Mulholland Highway early one morning while I was racing down to Leo Carrillo Beach to surf. I heard ringing as it hit the ground, then watched it scurry across the centerline and onto a dirt shoulder, where it started bouncing. Whirling like a chrome sawblade, it then took a final glorious leap into a steep, wooded canyon.

Naturally, I stopped, but there was no finding it without risking a lifetime dosage of poison oak or worse, tick and rattlesnake bites. I soon returned the remaining hubcaps for a refund.

Sears did alright by me. So did that little TR.

***

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‘Twas Hamlet who inquired most eloquently about being or not being, but car collectors and enthusiasts alike have their own internal debate, one that has been going on for decades. What is real? What isn’t? Should copies (aka fakes, replicas, reproductions, clones, tributes, etc.) even exist? Is a chassis tag enough to qualify a significant car as genuine? What if it’s a rebuilt wreck? What if it’s a copy so exact and accurate that no one can tell it isn’t an in-period factory original?

My opinion on this whole real vs. replica issue: If it’s not the real deal, then why bother? However, I recently got some seat time in a C-Type Continuation from Jaguar Classic, and now I’m having an existential crisis.

Continuation cars are similar to replicas, albeit with a few key differences. Built by the same companies who made the originals, and to identical or near-identical specifications, continuation cars are in a material sense the real deal, just assembled a few decades late. Carmakers like Aston Martin and Bentley have seen values of some of their greatest classics soar, and they understandably seized on the opportunity to meet market demand with their own fresh products. Jaguar Classic got into the continuation game in 2016, recreating the Lightweight E-Type. It quickly moved to the XKSS road car and then the D-Type race car that took Le Mans by storm in the mid-1950s.

The latest to join this prowl of new-old Jags is the C-Type Continuation, one of which was offered to me for the Modena Cento Ore, a 900-kilometer gentleman/gentlewoman racers’ luxury road and track rally through some of the more recognizable bits of northern Italy. Built in 2021, this example was crafted to 1953 specifications. 1953 was the year the C-Type took first, second, fourth, and ninth at Le Mans thanks to a banger of an engine, smooth aerodynamics, and novel disc brakes. Technically this car is still quite new, but driving it through Tuscany easily passed for the best kind of time travel.

The raucous Weber-fed XK engine and non-synchro four-speed gearbox presented the same mechanical engagement felt by Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton when they whizzed down the Mulsanne Straight 70 years ago. The hand-built 3.4-liter straight six—identical to those that left the factory in ’53—never needed high revs thanks to its abundant torque, but it sure felt eager, like it wanted to you to give it the beans and flirt with the redline. The expansive hood out front, Spartan interior with analog gauges, and sounds and smells blasting past completed the experience. The only thing that didn’t feel “classic” about this English race car was the lack of stress over whether it would start. At no point did I say to myself “shame it’s not real,” and I doubt anybody watching it roar through the Umbrian countryside did, either.

Which brings me back to the real vs. not-real dilemma. Well-done C-Type replicas from companies like Lynx or Proteus have, for decades, offered a much more affordable alternative to the originals. The delicious C-Type Continuation from Jaguar Classic, on the other hand, costs about £1.5M ($1.82M). Rarity is an important part of the original’s appeal, of course; you may remember that Jaguar only screwed together 53 original C-Types from 1951–53. The last one to sell at auction brought $5.285M and most of the ones that still exist live on quietly in large collections. Real C-Types, especially ones with serious race history, are so valuable that many find it difficult to justify taking them out and driving them as originally intended. As a result, an exact copy or a very close one—a car that gives the same experience without the risk—can make a lot more sense.

This dilemma is hardly unique to Jaguars, nor is it new. Chuck Beck made his first Porsche 550 Spyder copies over 40 years ago. Various contemporary builders have paid tribute to the late 1960s Yenko Camaro, and folks from Pur Sang in Argentina build a Bugatti Type 35 replica, which, but for six minor details that are different from the 1920 originals, might fool even the keenest of eyes. There are likely more replica Porsche 356 Speedsters on the road than real ones, and certainly more Shelby Cobra replicas than the real thing.

“If we relied on only original owners, we would have three members,” says Norman Jesch, president of the Southern California Cobra Club. “And the guys who really care, those guys with the early cars who used to take issue? I beg your pardon, but they’ve passed away.”

“Any potential controversy comes from owners who for various reasons consider their cars original or try to pass them off as such. But now, with modern technology, there isn’t too much of that. It’s easy enough to confirm with a CSX number if someone’s Cobra is real,” according to Jesch.

In speaking with Jesch and others about this topic, I thought I’d find plenty of people who are dead set against non-authentic cars. In fact, it was nearly impossible, as replicas and continuations appear to have found their place in the hobby.

“Even the Bugatti guys who aren’t in love with Pur Sang replicas don’t have much of an argument. No one’s going to put one of them up for auction, call it real, and devalue the originals,” says Logan Calkins, Director of Events at Hagerty.

Replicas, reproductions, kits, and tributes (Hagerty will insure most of them) keep the original marques, some of which are long gone, out there and relevant. Continuations only further tie in the heritage. They’re touchpoints for young enthusiasts just getting into classic cars and for weekend racers channeling their inner Stirling Moss.

Would I prefer the real thing? Who wouldn’t? But if these cars stir the same emotions on the road and help keep the love of classic cars alive, then where’s the rub? Taking in all the sights, sounds, and smells of the 1950s via a car with a twenty-first century build date, I’m reminded that the true joy is in what a car delivers more so than in what it is.

***

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The whistle began 50 years ago, a high pitch emanating from the engine bay as the crank spun past 2500 rpm. It filtered through the cabin, growing louder, more frantic beyond 3000 rpm, and by then the sound was accompanied by a potency never before found in a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder motor. From 4000 rpm, the rush toward the horizon was, frankly, shocking. The BMW turbocharger had arrived, and with it came a whole new suite of driving sensations.

Not that the concept was new. The principles of forced induction date from 1905, when the Kaiserliche Patentamt— Germany’s Imperial Patent Office—granted Swiss engineer Alfred Büchi patent number 204630 on November 6. And the first turbocharged production car arrived in 1962, when Chevrolet unveiled the Corvair Monza just a few weeks before its sister company, Oldsmobile, presented the Jetfire. Or was it the other way round? That’s a debate for another space.

Even before its May 1973 public debut at the Frankfurt motor show, however, the BMW 2002 Turbo wasn’t entirely fresh out of the box. BMW’s turbocharged performance car had been born years before, in the minds of engineers working for the company’s racing department, who in the winter of 1968 were challenged by head of motor racing and engine development Alexander von Falkenhausen to develop a turbocharged version of the four-cylinder M10 engine.

The new technical approach was needed if BMW was to remain unbeaten in the European Touring Car Challenge. And sure enough, it paid off. The 2002 Turbo carried on from where the 2002 tii left off, ensuring the 1968 championship victory was repeated in 1969, with Austria’s Dieter Quester at the wheel.

But it took Bob Lutz, freshly arrived from Opel in 1971, to see the potential in a road-going 2002 Turbo—and to argue its case with the board. Ironically, despite this and many other achievements (notably establishing BMW M in May 1972) that transformed BMW, it would be the fallout from the 2002 Turbo program that cost Lutz his job.

At the time of its inception, recalled Lutz, writing in Road & Track, “Performance was glorified; no Autobahn speed was considered excessive.” What nobody working on the project could have foreseen was an oil crisis that saw fuel being rationed, energy use monitored, and West Germany banning driving on Sundays. “Alas,” said Lutz, “the 1973 oil crisis intervened, speed limits were imposed, and the media was quick to brand performance cars as irresponsible. BMW took large amounts of heat, and my boss effectively threw me under the bus.”

The oil crisis stopped the new 2002 Turbo in its tracks. Sales totaled 1672, with seven made in 1973, 1477 in ’74, before ending with a further 188 in ’75. By contrast, the 2002 tii, which sold alongside it, notched up 44,484 sales between 1971 and ’75.

Happily, BMW’s fondness for forced induction didn’t wane. The list of turbocharged models in its back catalogue is long—think 1 Series M Coupe, 335i, M5, i8, M2, M4 GTS. Perhaps the ultimate expression of the technology today is the M4 CSL. So what’s changed in the 50 years that separate these two turbo tearaways? As you can imagine, rather a lot.

The big bang theory: Driving the 2002 Turbo

People who aren’t interested in cars are interested in the 2002 Turbo when they set eyes on it. And the petrolheads? They get visibly excited at spotting one of these rare beasts out in the open.

And rare it is. It’s difficult to know with any degree of certainty how many reside in the U.K. Data sourced from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency here suggests it’s no more than 20, while the 02 Register tells me it’s around 40. So yes, when you do spy one in the wild, it’s a very big ‘tick’ in your copy of The Classic Car Spotters’ Guide.

It’s a small car, but not comically so. And the basic three-box proportions, with its generous glasshouse on top and its prominent front end, proved hugely influential for BMW. It “influences everything we do,” BMW Group design chief Adrian van Hooydonk has said of the 2002. You can see why. This is where the fundamentals of BMW’s design as we know it came together: the canted sharknose, the beltline running around the car, the Hofmeister kink.

But the Turbo takes things to a slightly sinister place, and its racing inspiration is obvious: those riveted wheel arch extensions, the deep front air dam, the BMW M motorsport colors, first featured on the ’73 3.0 CSL. The color scheme was the work of BMW designer Wolfgang Seehaus, who brought together BMW’s signature Bavarian blue, red from the company’s proposed motorsport partnership with Texaco, and violet said to be a mix of the two. Combined with the turbo script—which, incidentally, was reversed on the air dam on early cars, causing moral outrage amongst certain corners of the media—it has to be one of the most stylistically successful uses of graphics on a performance car.

Grasp the nearside chrome door handle (all Turbos were left-hand-drive, supposedly, said BMW, because the steering box on right-hand-drive prototypes got too hot), squeeze the button, and a couple of things immediately strike you. The Rentrop bucket seats look as petite and of-the-period as the rest of the 2002 package, and the floor-hinged pedals look like they’ll be awkward but prove nicely arranged in use. With the generous glasshouse, it’s an airy four-seat environment, and the good-size boot (trunk, in North American parlance) makes it a useable classic.

A VDO boost gauge sits next to the clock in a simple pod, adjacent to the instrument cluster, while a red insert, sports steering wheel, and the grip of those Rentrops is all there is to mark out the Turbo from lesser siblings.

With a helping prod of the throttle, the 2-liter, overhead-cam four-cylinder catches, splutters, and then attempts to settle to an idle. I say attempts, as the Kugelfischer mechanical fuel-injected unit of BMW Great Britain’s car hunts around, rising and falling until you intervene and help steady it with another quick prod.

Where the 2002 tii’s engine makes 130 horsepower, at 5800 rpm this one musters 170, with 177 lb-ft of torque available at 4000 rpm (versus 131 lb-ft at 4500 rpm for the tii), courtesy of a KKK (Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch) turbocharger. The M10 four-pot isn’t the smoothest of motors, grumbling away so much you feel it through the soles of your feet, but you stop caring about that once you get underway, boost begins to build, and the car beneath you starts to whistle.

There’s a delicious sense of the slow-burn working up to the big bang as you climb through the rev range. You feel like a child riding on a cup and saucer fairground ride that attendants would spin up to speed. The irony is that the characteristics that make it such a tonic to today’s modern turbocharged cars—which have flat torque curves and boost from little more than idle speeds—are what critics panned back in the day.

The shock is just how quick the Turbo is when that VDO gauge sweeps into the green area. This is a brisk car from 3000 rpm, and by 4000 rpm it squats its tail and surges forward with a rabid turn of speed that is hard to equate with a family saloon of the early ‘70s. BMW quoted a top speed of 131 mph, with the 1080-kg (2381-lb) Turbo accelerating from 0 to 60mph in 6.9 seconds. That feels entirely plausible from the driver’s seat today, though back in ‘74 Autocar recorded 0–60 mph in 7.3 seconds.

At this point I so want to say that the rest of the package can keep up, but, well, it can’t. The worm-and-roller steering is not the most direct, so it’s pleasing to find it is full of feel when loaded up in a bend, but the general sense of unease displayed by the suspension and brakes ultimately dictates how fast you’re prepared to travel by 2002 Turbo—at least, it does in BMW GB’s car, which emerged from restoration in 2016.

Find a smooth, well-sighted corner or two, and you can play around with the car’s balance with confidence, simply because its steering is so communicative under load. But when you don’t have that view of the road ahead, the doubts over the suspension’s ability to cope with patchy, pock-marked roads—especially when they undulate and compress—along with the stopping power of the brakes, mean you treat the Turbo with appropriate respect.

This example features the rare, optional five-speed gearbox, a dogleg that has a loose, languid shift quality. In the dry, the car’s traction with its limited-slip differential is impressive. In the wet? I didn’t get to find out, but contemporary reports would have you believe it could be, er, challenging.

In BMW M, Tony Lewin’s tribute to 50 years of BMW M and its cars, the cause of the car’s turbo lag is attributed to a lack of electronic controls for fueling and boost. “BMW engineers had to specify low (6.9:1) compression pistons to avoid damaging preignition at higher revs when the turbo began to deliver boost. This made the car sluggish at low engine speeds, which encouraged the driver to press the throttle pedal harder to gain speed.” All too often, this was happening as a driver tried to power out of a corner, and the results were often, well, upsetting.

Surging along in third or fourth gear is where the Turbo feels most satisfying. Timing the boost so that you can power away from a bend becomes an art form in itself. Drivers of modern cars are doubtless a little surprised when the cute quinquagenarian powers past them, much like being dropped by a visibly older cyclist.

With a little work down below, I suspect this example of what is arguably BMW’s first M car could be turned into a little belter, one that complements that firecracker of an engine. Regardless, it is a machine that holds considerable significance, not just for BMW but for the wider car industry. It marks a turning point in the evolution of the performance car, where drivers craving a new experience would find stimulation in the form of the turbo rush.

Under pressure: Driving the M4 CSL

It is somewhat ironic that in the five decades since the 2002 Turbo arrived, our roads have gotten more crowded than ever, the surfaces are crumbling to bits, national speed limits seem to be disappearing from many stretches, and speed cameras of varying levels of sophistication are waiting to greet drivers who stray above the legal limit. Yet the BMW M4 CSL is another example of how carmakers choose to ignore all this and build cars that are bigger, heavier, faster, and more expensive than ever.

Still, as car enthusiasts we should be thankful that cars like the M4 CSL are allowed to exist.

Its name, Coupé Sport Leichtbau—Coupé Sport Lightweight—carries forward a badge that first appeared on the 1971 3.0 CSL, the motor racing homologation model that would underpin significant success for the German brand in the European Touring Car Challenge. The badge returned to the road in 2003 with the acclaimed M3 CSL, albeit without any motorsport duties. Then, last spring, the dust sheet was pulled from the new M4 CSL.

It promises to be a rarer sight still than the old timer, because BMW will only build 1000 of them, 100 of which were allocated to the UK, for the sum of £128,820. In the U.S. it’s $140,895. That may sound like a lot of money, but have you seen the price of a good example of a 2002 Turbo, lately? It’s well north of six figures in both the U.K. and U.S. Hagerty Price Guide.

So what progress has been made since the days of the 2002 Turbo? Well, the sheer speed of the CSL is staggering. It is so gut-wrenchingly fast that you’ll be thankful it comes with just the one passenger seat; if there were four seats in the thing, you’d have four people turning the air blue with their language.

The 1625-kg (3582-lb) CSL can lunge down the road with a turn of speed that rivals more exotic supercars. From 2000 rpm its twin-turbo, 3-liter straight-six engine is hauling hard, and from 2500 rpm it is flying. That’s because its 479 lb-ft of torque is all available between 2750 and 5950 rpm, and to be brutally honest, from any point after 2500 rpm the car is so quickly able to exceed any of our speed limits that the best place to stretch its legs is at a circuit—as we did when comparing it with the E46 M3 CSL last year.

The 542 hp quoted power output of the engine has been shown to be conservative, and independent track tests have delivered some frankly astonishing stats for pub bores. No doubt about it, this car is fast—with a loud, expletive F. Car and Driver clocked a 0–60 mph time of 3.3 seconds, which is a hell of a run for a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout. But there’s more to come. Because once those rear tires find traction the M4 CSL gets going like Concorde hitting Mach 2.0. It can reach 100mph in 6.9 seconds, 120 mph flashes by in 9.5 seconds, and 150 mph comes and goes in 15.4.

The fact that its top speed is pegged back by an electronic limiter as the needle sweeps to 191 mph, still with a good few hundred revs to run, indicates this is a 200-mph car. Video reviews filmed on derestricted autobahns in German suggest as much.

Those same independent track tests highlight how the M4 CSL can be a wild ride when driven to its limits. When Hagerty’s own Jason Cammisa tasked racing driver Randy Pobst with setting hot laps in a CSL, a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, and a Chevrolet Corvette Z06, the CSL proved a handful.

That pretty much defines the car’s behavior on the public road. The rear wheels alone have the job of handling one of the most muscular engines in a modern performance car, and it shows: third and fourth gear bursts of acceleration have the back of the car squirming around, and that’s on a dry surface. Find an open, well-sighted corner, disable the traction control and the CSL doesn’t need much encouragement to swing its tail.

Happily, it isn’t as intimidating as it could be, in part because of the effectiveness of the electronic stability control and locking differential. The steering is also a help, offering outstanding precision and just enough feedback to encourage you to explore the car’s abilities rather than fear them.

The six-cylinder engine is no melodic masterpiece, but its reaction time and firepower continually leave the driver in awe, as do the brakes, which are more than up to the task of managing the CSL’s prodigious pace. If only the same could be said of the eight-speed, M Steptronic automatic gearbox; despite the shift patterns being specific to the CSL, it feels a bit second rate compared with the best dual-clutch gearboxes.

As for the rest of the package, a CSL enjoys the same creature comforts an M4 gets, but is that bit louder to live with day to day. Around 15 kilos (33 pounds) of sound insulation material has been binned, there are carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic panels (like the BMW i3 and i8), a titanium exhaust, no rear seats or belts, fixed-back carbon front seats, and lighter wheels with carbon-ceramic brakes. In all, it is 100 kg (220 pounds) lighter than an M4 Competition. Much of this plays out in the way the car sounds and feels just a bit more raw and alert than its sibling.

What’s surprising is how there are similarities in the capabilities of the 2002 Turbo and M4 CSL. Though the whistle is somewhat dulled, as with the 2002 the rush of turbo-propelled performance remains the CSL’s defining feature. And what a rush it is. Once again there is a sense that all that power and torque presents a challenge to the chassis, and the driver, to manage. But some might argue a turbocharged M car that didn’t keep you on your toes would make for a duller drive. The very fact it is pushing at the boundaries, just as the 2002 Turbo did 50 years ago, may make the CSL all the more appealing.

Specs: BMW 2002 Turbo & M4 CSL

Number built: 1672; 1000
Powertrain: 1990cc 4-cylinder turbo, 5-speed manual; 2993cc straight-six twin turbo, 8-speed auto
Power: 168 hp @ 5800 rpm; 543 hp @ 6250 rpm
Torque: 177 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm; 479 lb-ft @ 2750 rpm
0–60mph: 6.9 sec; 3.5 sec
Top speed: 131 mph; 191 mph

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Buying a 2002 Turbo

The 2002 Turbo was built around emerging technology, so it should come as no surprise that they can be temperamental things from time to time, says Barney Halse, the man behind Classic Heroes, a specialist in classic cars of the modern era, who has a wealth of experience with BMWs from the 1970s on.

“The first thing when looking to acquire a 2002 Turbo is to buy the very best you can find. It is always cheaper in the long run to buy the best. You also need to look very carefully at the car’s history; it needs to have an etched-in-stone history file that you can genuinely trace back three decades if not further.”

Halse explains that, in the late 1980s, it was possible to buy a 2002 Turbo for around £4000. “They fell into the wrong hands and had a very, very hard life. They lived outdoors and may have been driven daily, through all weathers and with salt on the roads. Then they would be restored to a standard that represented the value of the car. They were patched, plated, welded up.”

It’s a common theme in the classic car world, one you could have applied to something like an Aston Martin DB5 once upon a time. If a 2002 Turbo has not had a proper, high-end restoration within the last decade, Halse says it will more likely than not require a restoration done to a standard that represents the near-six figure value people are trying to achieve today.

“There was a huge amount of Hanky Panky with Turbos,” he cautions. Rusty cars could have been reshelled using standard 2002 donor shells that mean a car no longer has a prized set of matching numbers. “If you can buy from a long-term owner, or someone like me who has known the car and its history for decades, you can be confident that it is what it’s claimed to be.”

Mechanically, the combination of the Kugelfischer mechanical fuel injection pump and turbocharger is something of a dark art to get running smoothly, says Halse. “Who the hell is going to know about Kugelfischer unless they’ve been working on it for a very, very long. The issue is that when setting up the turbo, if you get the technical data out and follow it like a textbook it won’t run right. It’s a feel thing. You have to fettle it, you have to set up each one slightly differently—the ignition timing, the dwell angle, everything, you’ve set it all up, and you tweak it and get that individual turret turbo running beautifully.”

All Turbos will need an engine rebuild if it hasn’t already been done, says Halse. “There will be smoking, cylinder head problems, turbo studs, exhaust manifold studs—all this and more will likely need attending to.”

To fully restore a 2002 Turbo today would probably cost in the region of £100,000 ($122,000), which is about the same value as a fully restored model on the market, so this is why it pays to know about a car and buy the best you can.

The Turbo is “…ever such an exciting, useable car,” Halse says. “There’s no question a five-speed is slightly easier to drive quickly,” he adds, based on his experience behind the wheel of both. “The five-speed ‘box was a bloody expensive option. But my advice is not to get too bogged down with the spec that you want. Buy it on its history file, guaranteeing that the car has a long chain of owners so that you can trace its originality and life back to the beginning.”

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A plan announced this fall by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to curtail off-road driving near the beloved Jeeper haven of Moab, Utah, has pitted environmentalists against a growing number of recreational trail drivers. It seems like nobody will get exactly what they want, which is perhaps by design.

The plan, announced on September 28 and due to take effect at the end of October, unless a pending court challenge prevents it, closes to motor vehicles 317 miles of unmaintained road and dirt two-track trails in a particularly scenic area northwest of the outdoorsy berg of Moab. Other trails have new restrictions.

The plan was spurred generally by a dramatic increase in off-roading in recent decades and in particular by a 2017 court settlement with the local Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental group. The Wilderness Alliance had sued the BLM to force the federal agency to develop and implement an updated plan for preserving the landscape.

Though the federal plan only addresses about 28 percent of the miles of trail in that particular area, Jeepers and enthusiasts of off-highway vehicles (OHVs) and UTVs (utility-terrain vehicles, or “side-by-sides”) complain that it all but freezes them out of the best parts of this landscape by greatly reducing motorized access to the Green River and some of its tributaries. In these areas, the waterways cut dramatic, thousand-foot-deep canyons that wind through ancient formations of ochre-colored Navajo, Kayenta, and Wingate sandstone.

“There’s no other way to say this. The travel plan is the worst defeat motorized recreation has suffered in decades,” wrote Patrick McKay of Colorado Off-Road Trail Defenders on the group’s Facebook site. “Almost every major trail west of Moab is closed, including Day Canyon Point, Hey Joe Canyon, Mashed Potatoes, Ten Mile Canyon, Hell Roaring Canyon, Mineral Canyon, 7-Up, two of the three overlooks on Deadman Point, and many more.”

The so-called Labyrinth Rims Gemini Bridges Travel Management Area consists of 812 miles of off-road routes spread out like a spider’s web over 300,000 acres of desert and canyon in Utah’s Grand County, which includes Moab. It is only a tiny part of the whopping 42 percent of Utah that is under the administration of the federal Bureau of Land Management, which often finds itself squeezed between conservationists in the state who want to keep the landscape wild and those who wish to recreate in it or exploit it for its commercial potential.

The Labyrinth Rims area has long been used for cattle grazing as well as uranium mining, and it is now spotted with natural gas drilling pads that in recent years have encroached ever closer to the nearby Canyonlands National Park. Meanwhile, Moab has become a thriving tourist hub that caters to visitors of all stripes wanting to engage with a majestic landscape formed over millennia by wind, water, and geologic upheaval. Along its main drag are numerous businesses renting Jeeps and UTVs as well as offering guided off-road tours. In March, tens of thousands of off-roaders converge on the town for the Easter Jeep Safari, an event so important on the Jeeping calendar that Stellantis, which owns the Jeep brand, uses it to debut new designs.

A city of 5000 permanent residents but millions of visitors annually, Moab is unquestionably a victim of its own success. Nestled in the scenic Spanish Valley next to the Colorado River, where it meanders below sheer cliff faces on its way to Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon, it was for decades a dusty backwater that never fully recovered from the bust of the uranium mining rush in the 1950s. At least, until the rock climbers, river rafters, backpackers, and Jeepers discovered it in more recent years.

A massive national ad campaign, along with the arrival of commercial airliner service and a hotel-building spree in the 2010s, resulted in a tsunami of visitors from all over the world. After an initial slowdown early in the 2020 pandemic, tourism rebounded hard, with ensuing traffic jams, sold-out hotels, and overwhelmed eateries.

The nearby Arches National Park was forced to create a reservation system to stanch the long lines that daily formed at its gate, and many of the town’s inhabitants have turned sour on its tourism industry, voting in a city council that has tightened noise and speed restrictions and even moved to kick out an Easter Jeep-like festival that was just for ATVs. The crush in Moab has spurred other Utah towns to revise their master plans to limit tourism. In Bluff, a hundred miles to the south, a popular bumper sticker reads “Don’t Moab my Bluff.”

Having spent years visiting the area and traversing the trails in question, your author can attest to the gobsmacking grandeur of spots like the Hey Joe and Hell Roaring canyons. And as well to the fact that the volume and speed of the vehicle traffic on Moab’s trails has grown exponentially, especially since the pandemic. That has had deeply negative side effects in terms of trail erosion and trash.

In the old days, when relatively few people braved this wilderness in crude and hard-riding 4x4s such as Jeep CJs and Toyota FJ40s, the speeds were necessarily slow and the impact on the landscape was minimal.

Nowadays, the burgeoning off-road, powersports, and overlanding industries are eager to supply enthusiasts with high-horsepower vehicles that have giant indestructible tires, rut-smoothing suspensions, and future-tech camping amenities. Modified Jeeps and purpose-built side-by-sides give legions of visitors the ability to effortlessly cruise Moab’s outback, often moving at 40 or 50 mph at the pointy end of huge dust clouds. In their wake: denuded trails, flattened brush, human waste, and camping fire rings sprinkled with trash.

Though many Jeep clubs work hard to maintain trails and set high standards for land stewardship, they only represent a fraction of Moab visitors, some of whom exhibit no concern for the land whatsoever. The BLM’s job isn’t to keep people out of wild places, exactly, but rather to balance the needs of the land with those of the visitors and residents. The BLM’s trail-closure plan for Moab seems to be making the case that not every spot on Earth, or even in Utah, needs to be accessible by a motorized vehicle. Whether it remains in place is now up to the courts.

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Remember that crappy sports car your buddies told you not to buy? As a young foolish college kid, I didn’t listen.

In 1967, Fiat dispatched its tiny 843-cc, 52-hp coupe and roadster to the U.S., a country with 3.5 million square miles of land and wide, fast roads. What were they thinking? Gas cost 32 cents a gallon, and the average American six-passenger land yacht weighed north of 4000 pounds, meaning a Fiat 850 could just about fit in the trunk. The $1998 Spider version was fetching, though, and promised carefree motoring for the young at heart. Why drive a boring old Bonneville when you could let your hair fly in the breeze?

Just 10 years after being assembled in Turin, this little green Kermit sat forgotten along the Pacific Coast Highway. A wall of apartments fronted the road there, and locating the owner required knocking on doors. My pitch: “Excuse me, is that your Fiat?” Eventually, one resident knew the car and sent me to the right apartment, where I found a dispassionate owner tired of the Fiat’s overheating. For 300 clams, it was mine.

A quick way to I.D. pre-1968 cars is to check for side marker lights. As a ’67, the Spider beautifully lacked them, and further, it sported sleek glass headlight covers, banned by the DOT for ’68 (which helps explain the Jaguar E-Type’s metamorphosis from voluptuous to frumpy that year). Unfortunately, both of the covers were missing—broken by debris or by vandals, I figured. A local Fiat dealer had replacements for under $30. Ten percent of the car’s price seemed exorbitant, but I knew the Spider would look better with them. (Plus, Lamborghini Miuras reportedly used identical covers!)

Thankfully, my California Spider was free of rust. In wetter states, the Fiat’s hollow steel unit-body was defenseless against water and salt moving in and playing their nasty games. Like an old house, an 850’s foundation is crucial.

Even in the 1970s, the Fiat 850 Spider was a risky ride, because surrounding traffic, although way less than today, was dominated by much bigger and faster vehicles. Regardless, I tried to make the Fiat an honest driver. Flushing the cooling system helped forestall overheating, polishing and waxing made the lacquer gleam, and fitting the new headlight covers were like adding fresh-baked biscotti to the Bertone body. Fantastico!

Before long, I genuinely liked that little car. I drove it for a summer in a manner befitting its wonderful purpose and then sold it on. It was just too small for my world.

***

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Like many things, being in a relationship with a classic car can be a double-edged sword. Moments of joy are sometimes interrupted by breakdowns, literally, and the bloom falls off the rose for a bit. Having spent decades nursing marginal machines onto and off of the road, again and again, I have come to accept that the risk is much less than the reward. Nonetheless, we all expose ourselves to mechanical breakdowns when we take our decades-old cars out for a spin.

This exposure led me to be on the receiving end of a call the other Saturday from a friend whose air-cooled Porsche 911 had left him stranded on the side the road. Now, this friend is a very intelligent gentleman, with great optimism about fixing problems, but his familiarity with car repair is only recently emerging. So, we began the dance of a road-side diagnosis by phone, and I guided him as best I could, mimicking my late father’s best bedside manner.

“Describe the symptoms—what happened right before it died?” I implored my friend.

“I was driving along and heard a loud ‘pop’ and then the engine went dead,” said Steve.

Step One in diagnosing a dead car on the side of the road is its behavior right before the incident. Fuel delivery failures generally are less dramatic, with lots of associated wheezing and limping, as dying not with a bang but a whimper. They show up as surging and poor running that quickly gets worse, and then become terminal. Ignition problems, on the other hand, typically start as a misfire that may last for the rest of the trip, or as immediate mortality with little warning.

“How long had you been driving? Was the car warmed up yet? Was there any surging or weakness before the ‘pop’ occurred?” I asked.

“No, it just popped and went dead. I’d been driving for about 20 minutes” he replied. This led me away from a fuel pump failure (sometimes common on cars that sit a lot—the pumps themselves and the associated relays, etc.).

“Are you in a safe spot?” I asked, paraphrasing the first line of most 9-1-1 call operator’s scripts. The good news was that this was a ’71 911 with manual everything, so having the engine lose life does not cause lots of other “maneuverability” problems, and my friend was able to easily coast to a safe spot on a side street.

“I’ve called a tow truck,” Steve said, which could have ended our need for a discussion right then and there, but I don’t often back down from an automotive challenge.

“Let’s try to diagnose it while you’re waiting,” I said, since I presumed that he had nothing better to do at the moment. Captive audiences are the best.

“Sure, I’m game” came the reply. And so we began.

Engines need three things to start: Fuel, spark, and compression created by at least about 60 revs per minute of rotation (whether it is provided by a starter, a roll-start, or the explosion of a gun shell in one cylinder—see Coffman starter—an engine does not care). Compression failures rarely happen to all cylinders at once, so roadside failures of this sort seldom occur. “Does the engine crank over?”

“Yes,” Steve responded. So, the battery has charge and the pistons should be making compression.

“Crank the engine for ten seconds with the throttle wide open,” came my first instruction, invoking my 10-second rule for cranking dead engines; starters get real hot real fast with dead-cranking. “Then stick your nose right up to the tail pipe and tell me if you smell gas.” No spark will mean raw gas will be sent out the exhaust system, unburnt, and will be easy to detect with a good sniffer. No fuel will mean the exhaust smells “dry.” This applies to carbureted and fuel-injected engines alike. The wide open throttle moves the most air to get any unburnt gases to the tailpipe with the least cranking.

I heard the phone being tossed onto the seat, some muffled rustling, and then the sweet sound of an air-cooled six-cylinder being cranked over at brisk rpm, but no combustion. More rustling and Steve came back on the line. “I smell gas at the tailpipe,” he reported. “Is that good?”

“Fuel pump and carbs are working,” I said. “It’s probably your ignition.” We had compression, we had fuel, and the immediate stopping of the engine was confirming where we were going with our diagnosis. The battery was good, so the ignition system should be getting juice as well. Now it was time to look at the hardware that makes and delivers the missing sparks. I instructed him to open his engine lid and look for the ignition distributor.

“What’s it look like?” came the reply. So began a game of Clue using verbal instructions. My buddy was a smart guy. We could do this. Like a movie scene where a surgeon guides a layperson in removing a burst appendix over a phone line, we dug in.

“Look for a black thingy on the engine that has seven black wires coming out of it.”

“Like an octopus?” he asked.

“Yes, an irregular octopus,” I said. “A septopus.”

“Hmm. I think I found it.”

“Six black wires in a circle and one in the middle?”

“Yessir! Now grab the head of the septopus firmly and wiggle it.” Words I had never spoken in my 60 years of language. “Is it loose, or pretty solid?” This was the beginning of finding any problems with the distributor. If wires are not connected or parts are loose, issues arise.

“Solid,” came his reply. So the distributor cap itself was in place and probably not the culprit. I contemplated having him pop off the cap to go deeper into the rotor button and points, which are prone to problems, especially with modern off-shore parts. However, I remembered the golden rule of diagnostics: Look for the simple problems first. So, I kept it simple.

“Find the septopus’s center wire and follow it to a small, black soup can thingy somewhere on the engine,” I said. Losing one cylinder from one bad spark plug wire would have kept him running on five cylinders, but he had a total failure of all cylinders at once, and we had already determined that he had fuel flow, so I suspected it might be the ignition coil.

“I found it, the small soup can thing is on the cooling fan shroud.”

“Is the soup can hot?” I asked—one symptom of a fried coil.

“No, warm but not hot.”

“Press the black wire deeper into the coil. Is it loose? Check the other end as well.” Again, all cylinders dying at once meant that all the sparking was not getting to any of the plugs.

“Both are good.”

I was running out of cards to play but asked the next question with expectation. “There will be two small wires going to either side of the soup can, like an old dry-cell battery. Do you see these?” Luckily Steve is over 40 years old and knows what a dry-cell battery looks like.

“Yes,” he said.
“How do they look? Tug on them to make sure they are connected.”

“One is connected, the other one is loose.”

Bingo! Houston, we found our problem. A previous mechanic or owner had used a crimp connection on the wire’s terminal end, without adding soldering and covering it with heat-shrink tubing. For a mission-critical wire such as this, and one that lives in an open engine bay with moisture and dirt, this was unforgiveable.

“Do you have any tools on you, like pliers?”

“This is the one time I left the house without my toolkit,” Steve said. “I was just going for a 30-minute drive.”

“Well, that’s your problem. You can stuff the wire back into the crimp connector, but it may just wiggle loose again. It needs to be soldered and covered with heat shrink. Maybe the tow truck driver can help you when he arrives.”

And that is just what happened. A simple re-insertion of the wire and a quick crimp with the tow driver’s pliers got my friend back on the road. The tow was not consummated, and a crisis was avoided.

Now my friend is watching YouTube videos on how to solder so he can fix the wire’s end correctly, himself. Welcome to the ‘fix it yourself’ club, Steve. Bask in the accomplishment of reversing a seemingly desperate situation with a little Yankee know-how. But keep that Hagerty Roadside number nearby. It sounds like your fuel pump is whining a little too loudly…

***

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Come to St. Moritz and drive the Gullwing,” offered the guys who look after the classic fleet at Mercedes-Benz. “And as you’ll already be in Italy for the E 450 All-Terrain wagon launch, why don’t you drive from there to Switzerland through the Alps in our W124 300 TD 4Matic wagon?”

It was an invitation too good to refuse, and not just because the 300SL Gullwing is one of my all-time hero cars.  I’ve always regarded the W124-series Mercedes-Benz—built in sedan, wagon, coupe, and cabrio body styles between November 1984 and July 1997—as a touchstone model for the three-pointed star, a car whose brilliant Bauhausian rationality earned it a reputation as the engineers’ E-Class. The W124 was a Mercedes-Benz in which the engineering excellence was baked in but not shown off.

With 30 years gone since I lasted tested one, and I wanted to find out how well that notion had stood the test of time.

Sliding behind the wheel of the 1989 300 TD 4Matic wagon is like catching up with an old friend, instantly familiar and comforting. Behind the yacht-sized steering wheel is the analog dash that even today represents a model of clarity and readability. On the steering column is the single stalk that you can tug, push, flick, or twist actuating low and high beam, the turn signals, and the quirky single windshield that has a cam mechanism to maximize its cleaning area. In the center console sits the shifter for the four-speed automatic, with the wobbly gate that allows you to manually flick between fourth, third, and second gears.

It’s an unusual spec, this car, built in an era when customers were more able to mix and match all manner of options rather than tick the box on a pre-determined package of goodies. The front seats, resplendent in black MB-Tex (the hard-wearing vinyl that was standard issue even on an S-Class back then), must be adjusted manually, yet are fitted with the rare air cushion option, a precursor of today’s pneumatically adjustable seats. Windows wind up or down with manual cranks.

Like many German customers of the time, the 300 TD’s first owner opted to delete the model designation from the tailgate. The five horizontal slats in the right-hand front fender, just ahead of the front wheel, are the only clue to the diesel engine under the hood. The badge on the right-hand side of the tailgate, however, proudly proclaims this is an E-Class wagon fitted with 4Matic all-wheel drive, Mercedes-Benz’s first generation of the now-ubiquitous technology.

All-wheel drive was relatively rare on road cars in the 1980s. Audi’s all-wheel drive Coupe quattro, which introduced the concept to the mainstream 18 years after it had been pioneered by niche British automaker Jensen’s innovative FF, had been launched just five years before the first owner of this W124 wagon picked up his car. The first-generation 4Matic system featured a locking center differential with two clutches that under normal conditions sent 100 percent of torque to the rear wheels. If, based on inputs from the three-channel anti-lock brake system and the steering wheel angle sensor, the system detected a loss of traction, 35 percent or 50 percent of the torque could be sent to the front wheels.

This 1989 W124 wagon was acquired by the Mercedes-Benz Heritage fleet in 2009 and has covered the equivalent of 156,811 miles. That’s barely broken in for an old Mercedes diesel. Still, after the gentle rumble of the modern 2.0-liter four-cylinder diesel in the European-specification E 220 d All-Terrain wagon I’d driven the day before, the clatter of the 300 TD 4Matic’s 3.0-liter straight-six at idle comes as something of a shock. Diesels have become a lot smoother and quieter over the past 40 years.

More power-dense, too. The 300 TD’s turbocharged diesel has 50 percent more capacity than the E 220 d All-Terrain’s engine but makes just 75 percent the power and 62 percent the torque – 145 hp at 4600 rpm and 201 lb-ft at 2400 rpm, compared with 195 hp at 3600 rpm and 324 lb-ft from 1800 rpm.

That, plus the helping hand from the 23-hp, 151-lb-ft electric motor of the mild hybrid system in the All-Terrain, means the 300 TD 4Matic feels decidedly languid in comparison when you press the accelerator pedal. Contemporary road tests suggest the 300 TD 4 Matic would amble from 0 to 60 mph in about 12.7 seconds en route to a top speed of 117 mph. Despite weighing at least 400 pounds more than its ancestor, the E 220 d All-Terrain will hustle to 60 mph in just 7.9 seconds and hit a top speed of 136 mph.

No, the 300 TD 4Matic won’t set your pulse racing as you accelerate away from the lights. But after a few miles behind the wheel, I was reminded why that doesn’t particularly matter. Such is the fundamental excellence of the chassis and the suspension: I could maintain surprising momentum on the Alpine roads, guiding the car through the corners with my fingertips, feeling it work through the compliance in the bushings and the bulbous 195/65 R15 Dunlop tires as the lateral forces increased. Once the wagon took a set, it felt as if almost nothing would kick it off line.

The relative paucity of power and torque was apparent only on the steepest and most serpentine climbs. After a while I figured the optimum moment to flick the shifter back into a lower gear on corner entry, allowing enough time for the four-speed automatic’s hydraulics to process the command and the turbocharger to build boost in response to the growly diesel’s increased crank speed before I needed to go to power. Once more I remembered why driving a classic car is such an involving experience.

The steering weight is heavier than in a modern Benz and has that on-center dead spot that was once so characteristic of post-war cars from Mercedes. As always, though, once you are through the dead spot the steering is quite accurate, and the tight turning circle proves useful in sharp corners. The relative narrowness of the W124—at 68.5in from side to side, it’s slimmer than today’s C-Class—gave me more road to play with when confronted with the occasional oncoming truck and bus, not to mention the seemingly never-ending stream of motorcycles and supercars on the more popular passes.

I made good use of engine braking on the faster downhill stretches, flicking the shifter into third and second gear and leaning on the old diesel’s 22:1 compression ratio as I brushed the brakes through the faster corners. It might be a diesel station wagon, but the 300 TD 4Matic was enjoyable to drive on the faster, more flowing roads, settling into a lovely, comfortable cadence. The sublime multi-link rear axle—its layout originally developed for the 190E compact, the precursor to the C-Class, and still covered by a Mercedes-Benz patent when this car was built—still feels world-class, utterly unfazed by gnarly mid-corner lumps and bumps.

Later, on the autobahn back to Stuttgart after my drive in the Gullwing, the 300 TD 4Matic cruised happily at 100 mph, the old diesel’s clatter a subdued growl at 3600 rpm. Even at that pace, wind and road noise levels were remarkably low. The biggest annoyance was slower traffic pulling out into the lane ahead, especially on uphill sections; lost momentum takes time to recover in this machine.

By the time I had pulled into my hotel in Stuttgart, I’d covered almost 480 miles through some of Europe’s most stunning scenery and on some of its fastest roads. All in a car built when hair metal was a thing, the Apple Macintosh was the coolest home computer on the market, and a teenaged Elon Musk was working at a lumber mill in Saskatchewan. Is the W124 still the engineers’ E-Class? Absolutely. My run in the 300 TD 4Matic proved you can still see and feel the intellectual rigor behind its design and execution.

***

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Since 2016, the nonprofit Drive Toward a Cure has raised more than $1 million to support research and patient care for those suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. As the summer driving season comes to a close, the organization has concluded its fourth annual 75 Days of Summer nationwide fundraising program, which ran from Father’s Day to Labor Day. The program encourages like-minded driving enthusiasts to join the fight against the neurodegenerative disease that affects nearly one million Americans and 10 million people worldwide.

The 75 Days of Summer program evolved during the early days of the global pandemic, as Drive Toward a Cure searched for creative fundraising ideas unbound by lockdowns or social distancing. Hagerty got on board as a sponsor and has remained committed for each successive summer. To date, the program alone has raised nearly $150,000.

Entrants in the 75 Days of Summer compete to drive the most miles and raise the most funds to earn prizes. There are also weekly random drawings that further build momentum and incentivize participation. Grand prizes are awarded to those entrants with the highest combination of dollars raised and miles driven. This year, 20 Formula SAE university teams joined the challenge, and four students were among the Grand Prize winners.

Grand prizes awarded to entrants with the highest combination of dollars raised and miles driven were provided by Radford Racing School, Michelin Tires, Katzkin Leather Interiors, NCM Motorsports Park, XtremeXperience and Grand Prix Originals USA.

“We created an ongoing interactive experience that has become an easy way individuals, clubs, groups, and organizations can partake and feel like they’re supporting a worthy cause,” says Drive Toward a Cure founder Deb Pollack. “We’ve been fortunate to creatively engage so many of our car family members in supporting our efforts nationwide.”

This year’s Grand Prize winners included Caleb Arena, Chassis Lead for Georgia Tech Motorsports, part of the Formula SAE program. He drove 11,533 miles over the summer and won a One-Day Performance Driving Course at Radford Racing School in Phoenix. Second place was Clinton Quan, of Encino, California, who topped his own documented mileage from last year, clocking in at 9095 miles and raising an additional $500 to earn a set of Michelin Tires. And Vivian Chen, a member of Princeton University’s Formula SAE team who spent the summer in Lansing, Michigan, as an electrical engineering intern on the manufacturing team for General Motors, claimed third place by driving more than 6000 miles. She’ll receive a Katzkin Leather Interior transformation. In all, more than $15,000 worth of giveaways were awarded through the program, which is set to return in 2024. Watch this space for details.

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Everyone remembers their first car. This was mine.

In the 1970s, I was mostly a motorcycle guy, but in 1975, a friend told me he’d found a car I needed to buy. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go see it.” On an L.A. side street, neglected beside a stucco house, sat a toothy-grilled ’63 Thunderbird Landau. Last of the “Bullet Birds,” it wore a textured vinyl roof bearing elegant “landau bars” (recalling ancient carriage hinges) on the rear pillars, and inside featured simulated walnut interior trim. Intended for 1960s social climbers, the Ford cost $4548 when new.

A middle-aged man answered the doorbell, and my friend demonstrated how to buy old cars for cheap. “Hello, we’re students,” he said respectfully. “It looks like your Thunderbird has been sitting for a while. We were wondering if it might be for sale.”

“What do those boys want?” a woman’s voice called from elsewhere in the house.

“They want to buy the Thunderbird,” the man said to her over his shoulder.

“Give them the car, Harold,” commanded the woman.

Just like in The Devil Went Down to Georgia, Harold knew that he’d been beat. All that remained was the price. “I just put in a new battery,” he protested, weakly. “It cost $25, so if you’ll give me that you can have the car.” I had $25. He had the pink slip. We traded paper, I walked over to the Thunderbird, climbed in, fired it up with some effort, and drove away. Shockingly, this magnificent, 4354-pound luxury hardtop that Ford advertising had called “a bold thrust into tomorrow,” had depreciated to nothing in just 12 years.

Harold swore the T-Bird had had gone only 25,000 miles, but it ran on seven cylinders and the tailpipes were sooty, making 125,000 miles far more plausible. And that once-elegant vinyl roof? Ripped to smithereens. The Heritage Burgundy paint and chrome were dull as well.

No matter, though. We dove into polishing the brightwork and muscling rubbing compound and Turtle Wax into the paint. After fitting new ignition parts and setting the timing, it ran better.

Installing a new vinyl top, purchased along with a quart of contact cement, was harder. The demanding and exacting process ideally required two people, but I somehow managed it alone on a nearby vacant lot, finishing the T-Bird off beautifully.
Later, as I squired to junior college in my first car, I felt proud, successful even, and on the way up. Ford got the Thunderbird Landau right—even the $25 ones.

How cheap was your first car?

***

 
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Perfection is overrated. It’s the quirks of life that make it interesting.

Which is to say, foibles are fun, eccentricity is exciting, peculiarity precedes personality.

They’re characteristics that the British motor industry, whether by design or ineptitude, has always personified and—we’re delighted to say—still does.

To prove the point we’ve gathered three of the barmiest Brits in production today, on four, three and two wheels. Put sense aside. Park practicality and feast on the flaws of the Caterham Super Seven 600, Morgan Super 3 and Norton Commando 961—our choice of the best of bonkers Britain on four, three, and two wheels.

***

I couldn’t have picked a more appropriate starting point. Portmeirion might just be the most bizarre village in Britain. Nestled on the coast of North Wales, overlooking the Irish Sea, it represents the 50-year-long obsession of architect Clough William-Ellis to build a little bit of Italy in his homeland.

Modeled on the Mediterranean towns clinging to the cliffs of the Italian Riviera, Portmeirion boasts a central piazza, surrounded by grand porticoes and pastel-painted terracotta-topped houses. Construction began in 1926 with a hotel and it wasn’t until 1976 that William-Ellis was done.

In the interim, Portmeirion gained fame for its scene-stealing role in the 1967 TV hit The Prisoner. It was right here that Patrick McGoohan declared, “I am not a number. I am a free man!”

Dubbed “The Village” in the show, Portmeirion featured Mini Mokes flitting around for transportation, with McGoohan’s Lotus Seven featuring in the show’s title sequence. These days it’s electric golf carts that whizz tourists around, but as one of our flock is a Seven, we’re granted access.

Driving through the town’s narrow, cobbled streets is completely surreal. My view from the Morgan’s open cockpit is uninterrupted by such items as a windscreen, windows, or roof. The weather is uncharacteristically warm and, if it wasn’t for the giant Welsh dragon adorning a fluttering flag above, I could easily imagine I’m in Italy. The scent of salt and rhododendrons fills the air as I putter along, accompanied by amusing pops and farts from the Morgan’s exhaust.

The noises it makes are just one small part of the Morgan Super 3’s talent to entertain. The driver and passenger enjoy it, yes, but so does anyone in the car’s orbit. My journey to Wales has been captured by countless smartphones. Every traffic light has been an opportunity for someone to grab a selfie and a soundbite. Typically, that starts with the question “What is it?” so here’s the answer.

The Super 3 is a fresh take on Morgan’s earliest traditions. As far back as 1909 Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan built his first Runabout: a three-wheeled, single-seater designed under Britain’s cyclecar rules. That meant it could be driven on a motorcycle license and avoid the expensive taxes levied on “proper” cars.

Morgan continued to make three-wheelers until the 1950s, finally bringing the concept back in 2011 with a V-twin-powered 3-Wheeler. These Morgans were almost always powered by motorcycle motors, hung ahead of the front axle, but in 2022 the Super 3 introduced a whole new recipe.

The engine, a 1.5-liter Ford three-cylinder, sits under the rounded hood—no parts exposed. Even more significant is that the Super 3 is built around a bonded aluminum tub from the experts at Superform, making it the first Morgan not to feature any wood in its construction.

Over the chassis, aluminum body panels form a delightful steampunk-like shape. Think tin-bath-meets-rocketship-meets-racecar. The 20-inch disc-like front wheels are a work of art in themselves and fitted with bespoke Avon tires. Hidden beneath the rear clamshell, and driven via a Mazda MX-5 Miata five-speed transmission and Kevlar-reinforced rubber belt, is a single 15-inch wheel-and-tire combo.

Accessorized with exoskeleton luggage racks and Cibié rally spotlights, the Super 3 is like nothing else you’ll encounter on the road. Which is what makes it such a crowd-puller.

Some modest acrobatics are needed to step over the side of the cockpit and drop into the driver’s seat, especially if you want to avoid footprints on the fabric. Once ensconced, you slide the pedal box rather than the seat into position, but there seems to be enough adjustment for drivers of all sizes.

The simple dash features a twin-gauge digital center display for speed and engine rpm and not much else. Toggle switches for lights and horn are solidly made, albeit in plastic, where metal might have looked nicer. Nonetheless there’s a really solid (and weatherproof) feel to the interior. Of our trio, overall build quality is highest here.

My view ahead is bisected by a pair of yellow aeroscreens which rather give the impression of wearing bifocals with the wrong prescription. The choice is to hunker down and look through the Perspex where everything is distorted (SUVs get squished into coupes) or sit up straight and look over it. The latter approach requires braving full-force wind in the face. Taller drivers are forced to brave the elements. The rear roll hoops, meanwhile, appear to be mostly decorative seeing as most drivers’ heads will be above them.

For the long motorway stretch of my trip from London to Wales I elect to wear a full-face helmet, but I take it off again as soon as I hit the kind of roads for which the Super 3 was built.

Although there’s little length to it, the Morgan is wide–98.5 inches at the front—and positioning is key to making progress. I find that looking out of the side of the car, at the front wheel, really helps to place it accurately in relation to the center line of the road. Soon, I acclimate to the Morgan’s width and slightly slow steering, which requires big inputs of the large and lovely Moto Lita wheel.

The suspension is firm, and the Super 3 feels a little skittish as I attempt avoiding bumps with both the front wheels and the rear—nearly impossible without weaving all over the road. However, with familiarity comes more confidence and I’m able to explore the car’s cornering capability a bit on roundabouts. Given the skinny front tires, the Morgan has a surprising amount of grip. Push on and there’s a progressive transition to gentle understeer which can be tackled with a choice of more or less throttle. Although the Ford engine produces just 120 horsepower, the Super 3 weighs only 635 kg (1400 pounds) and that single rear wheel will break traction if asked, allowing a little oversteer on exit.

Morgan claims it will accelerate from 0-62 mph in seven seconds but proximity to the ground and exposure to the elements means it feels quicker. The sweet shift of the Miata gearbox rewards dropping a gear to overtake slower cars, whose passengers universally reach for their phones to snap a photo.

I arrive in Wales the night before our Portmeirion rendezvous, but despite the better part of six hours behind the wheel I feel exhilarated rather than worn down. I await the return trip not with dread, but rather anticipation.

***

First there are two other machines to sample, however. We take a short detour to the nearby Black Rock Sands, one of the few beaches in the UK where cars are permitted, to grab more photos, but discover that motorcycles aren’t allowed to be ridden there.

That means my first experience of the Norton Commando 961 is helping to push it into position for the camera—and it’s no lightweight. Despite there being plenty of gaps in the frame, the Commando weighs in at over 500 pounds.

Later, as I swing my leg over at a gas station a few miles from the sands, I’m especially wary of this weight. Actually, I’m apprehensive about riding at all; as it’s been 15 years since I owned a proper bike and a good eight years since I last rode anything. My history on two wheels has been divided between lightweight Japanese 400s and 600s and Italian scooters with a quarter of the Norton’s capacity.

Norton’s history, meanwhile, dates to 1898, when James Landowne Norton founded the firm to supply parts for the fledgling motorcycle industry. In 1902 the company built the first bike to wear its name, the 143-cc Energette.

It was in the 1930s that Norton really made its name, winning no less than 78 out of 92 Grands Prix between 1930 and 1937. In 1967 the company launched the arguably the world’s first superbike—the Commando. Launched as a 750, its 60-horsepower air-cooled parallel-twin propelled it to 115 mph and over the next decade sales were just as fast, with 55,000 Commandos delivered.

There were several attempts in the U.K. and even the U.S. to keep the Commando alive when the Norton factory closed, but it wasn’t until 2008 that the company was revived. In 2020 it was bought by India’s TVS Motor Company and given a new lease on life.

Its 961-cc oil and air-cooled engine was redesigned and, although the classic styling has largely remained, there have been some rather sophisticated updates to the chassis. Attached to the hand-welded steel frame are aerospace-grade aluminum yokes, the forks and shocks are from Öhlins and the brakes are by Brembo. Carbon fiber is used for the mudguards.

Two versions are sold (although not yet in the U.S.): a Café Racer with a low-slung riding position and the more upright, touring-and-town-focused Sport, which we have on hand.

Despite the high quality of componentry, my instant impression is that it’s like riding a classic bike. The engine’s slightly snatchy power delivery makes the Norton feel as if it’s running carbs rather than crank-fired, electronic injection. The gear change is imprecise (and nigh on impossible to find neutral without several stabs), and the suspension is set soft, so that there’s quite alarming dive under braking.

Over the next couple of hours as we explore the wonderful roads of Snowdonia, I begin to adapt to the Commando’s quirks, leaning on the rear brake more than the front and applying throttle progressively. With my attention on smoothness I start to enjoy the bike more, it sounds absolutely epic for one thing, with a glorious mechanical rattle and sonic boom from the exhaust. If loud pipes save lives then the Commando has to be one of the safest ways to travel.

Rolling it into gentle curves becomes a joy and, after the wide Morgan, I’m loving how every road simply opens up when you’re on two wheels. The high riding position gives such great visibility, too.

I never quite get used to low-speed maneuvering, which is doubtless largely down to my years of abstinence, but the Commando does feel top-heavy and its turning circle isn’t what you’d call tight.

It may be the original superbike, but with just 78 horsepower the Commando isn’t especially quick by today’s standards. You could certainly buy a lot more speed for a lot less cash, but that’s not really the point.

***

The same is true of the Caterham Super Seven 600. The entry to the Caterham range musters only 85 horsepower from its 660 cc three-cylinder Suzuki turbo engine and it matters not one jot.

It’s perhaps the most unusual take on the Lotus Seven formula that Caterham cars took on 50 years ago. Over five decades the cars have featured, Ford, Rover, and Vauxhall engines of assorted sizes, but this both the smallest and the only turbocharged engine installed to date.

I owned a Seven for a couple of years, a more track-oriented 1.6-liter car that was originally built as a Caterham Academy racer. As result it was just a bit too stiff on the road, with a tendency to get airborne over even small bumps, and although its Avon tires would grip mightily when up to temperature, in cold or damp conditions the rear wheels would light up at the slightest provocation. It had only a half-roof and no heater, and doing up the four-point harnesses before every drive was a pain.

The Super Seven 600 is a limousine in comparison. Its swooping wings immediately make it look immediately less racy and that’s translated into the driving experience. The ride quality is excellent, compliant without being wallowy, making it far more relaxing to drive.

Or at least it would be if it wasn’t for the hilarious sounds emanating from the engine. The boosted motor has just a touch of lag before the whoosh of the turbo brings a burst of forward speed. Lift off to upshift and there’s a bang from the exhaust and the flutter of a wastegate. It’s like the car is beatboxing to the rhythm of your journey.

Meanwhile, the tiny Moto Lita steering wheel is barely bigger than a go kart’s and has a similarly direct connection with the front wheels. Also scaled down are the pedals, which are very tightly-spaced, and the stubby gear lever which must have one of the shortest throws ever installed in an automobile.

The Seven’s 14-inch wheels wear skinny Avon rubber and, despite the dearth of power, it’s easy enough to overwhelm the rears and indulge in bit of opposite-lockery should the mood take you.

It’s really all the Seven you’d need for road driving and is certainly entertaining enough to find oneself spontaneously shouting “I am a free man!”

***

Of course, nothing in life is free. The cost of this quirkiness is not inconsiderable. As one would expect, the Norton Commando 961 is the least expensive, with pricing from around £17,000 ($21,400). Up next is the Caterham which costs £29,999 ($37,800) fully built, or less if you assemble it from a kit (the only option for U.S. customers). Finally there’s the Morgan which starts at around £42,000 ($52,800) but comes in at more than £55,000 ($69,100) as tested.

The Seven is the most usable of the three, with its nods to (relative) comfort and weatherproofing, while the Norton’s old-school ride is engaging, if a little tricky at times. This has been a quest for quirks, however, and on that basis alone the Super 3 is the clear leader. Unnecessary, impractical, yet utterly charming, it is the one I’d pick to live a life full of foibles.

***

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Haters gonna hate the little low-slung Europa.

Agreed, the original 1966 version, with its yawn-worthy 1.5-liter Renault pushrod Frenchie four and Bertha Butt–sized flying buttresses was an odd duck—a fair descriptor given its waterfowl-like beak. But once Lotus added a 1.6-liter Ford twin-cam, alloy wheels, and cutdown buttresses, the homely wallflower grew into a fetching princess. To some, anyway.

Hence my excitement when offered a bright yellow twin-cam 1974 Europa Special back in ’84. My daily driver at the time was a fawny-beige Ford Falcon with its leaky gas tank plugged with bath soap, so the Europa seemed like a gift from heaven. Colin Chapman and Jim Clark had been my gods, and two decades after they triumphed at Indy, I was finally in the Lotus club.

Being a Lotus, the Europa is naturally, er, “inventive.” The central frame is a steel beam that splits into a “Y” in back to accommodate the powertrain, and the fiberglass body—what presents as the car—literally drapes over it. In my case, the engine was the hot “big valve” version driving through a transaxle. Other racy features included twin saddle tanks and hard-earned World Champion Car Constructors badges.

Big surprise, this one had problems. A previous owner had shunted the right front, and whomever executed repairs got it wrong; when viewed head-on, the poor duck’s beak canted up to starboard, like Buddy Hackett cracking a joke.

My idea was basically idiotic; I’d service the Europa and then haul ass around town. Three problems blockaded this thinking:

1) The 126-hp engine ran like a sneezing pony.
2) The brakes worked only sometimes.
3) Despite its dazzling paint, at just 43 inches high, the Europa was dangerously invisible to other motorists.

Chasing the brakes revealed bad seals in the dual master cylinder, and I stumbled through balancing the twin EPA-mandated CV carbs. But challenges persisted. One day, I went grocery shopping. Upon returning to the Lotus, its starter and speedometer were suddenly inoperable. A push-start (easy in a 1570-pound car) got me home. Weeks later, while driving to a business meeting, the distributor drive gear fractured, stranding me again. Shortly thereafter, tired of uninvited problems and financially ill-prepared to have a Lotus shop sort it all out, I sent the Europa packing and resigned myself once again to the Falcon.

Owning the car settled something for me, though: I was clearly no Colin Chapman, and emphatically no Jimmy Clark.

***

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Modernity can be a real party pooper. That 440 Six Pack Charger you had in high school looked badass and would blow the doors off of Johnny Junior Varsity’s Camaro. Time marches on, though. The Charger will always look the business, but it isn’t that great to drive compared to today’s muscle cars, which are faster, handle better, and are more comfortable.

That’s probably why some people spend lots of time, money, and resources to make their classics go, turn, and stop like new cars. Restomods—what these updated classics most commonly go by—and more track-focused pro-touring variants, are big business these days. They accounted for nearly half of revenue at Barrett-Jackson’s Arizona auction last January and included heavily modernized takes on everything from a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette to a 1956 Lincoln Continental.

Blueberry-farmer-turned-high-end-Mopar restorer Rick Katzeff was one of the restomod faithful until he actually built one.  One day a client, for whom Katzeff restored many rare Hemi cars, commissioned a blank-check ’69 Charger build.

“One year, and 3000 hours later, I had created a beautiful pro-touring Charger,” Katzeff explained. “But when I was shaking it out after it was completed, I noticed right away that it had harsh ride—even if I softened up the coilovers.” And the problems didn’t stop there. “The Charger was powerful, but it just broke the wheels loose. So it was tough to get any traction.” Katzeff concluded that “it just wasn’t as comfortable and enjoyable of a driving experience as my 2017 Hellcat Challenger.”

And then a lightbulb went off in his head. Instead of trying to make an old Mopar perform like a new one, why not make a new Mopar look like an old one?

The resulting 807-horsepower creation—dubbed the ExoMod C68 Carbon—is what rolled off Katzeff’s enclosed trailer at our Ann Arbor office on an overcast summer morning. Its moniker is a nod to the car’s fully carbon fiber body.

“Is it alright if I take Maura for a walk?” Katzeff asks, as I’m snapping photos. He and Maura—his Chihuahua traveling companion—don’t quite give off the vibe you’d expect for an outrageous muscle car. Indeed, Katzeff has the politeness of a Midwesterner with a hint of surfer or rock climber. But in a way, the C68 has the same no-fuss attitude.

The C68 Carbon is far from the first attempt to retrofy a modern car. You might recall attempts to convert fifth-generation Camaros into Firebirds, or 2000s Corvettes into an older first- or second-generation model. These retro rebodies live or die on their proportions and execution. Design is subjective, but to my eye, that’s where the C68 really succeeds. Only the modern belt line and door handles give away its present-day origins. The key is the proportions: The modern Challenger rides on the same-length wheelbase as an 1968–70 Mopar B-body. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to make the retro bodywork look right. But that’s not to say the final form came easy.

ExoMod, the company Katzeff builds the C68 under, didn’t have a car designer on the payroll to create a blueprint for the design. So the team took a trial-and-error approach to the looks. With Katzeff’s personal Hellcat. In steel.

“We started by widening the [Charger] tail panel 4 inches, and then we tacked on the quarter panels. The roof skin was next, and we built the car forward from there. My foreman, Scott Gregg, is a metal and welding master. He did a lot of tacking, cutting, stitching, welding, moving, grinding, and retacking to get the shape right.”

After 3000 hours of work, the prototype C68’s body was ready to be 3D-scanned. The files were sent to a Seattle-based firm that does a lot of parts for Boeing in order to create tooling for the production car’s carbon-fiber panels. Note that “production” is a relative term here—it takes a team of six 1500 hours to build one. The conversion involves stripping a stock Challenger Hellcat down to its safety cage, at which point and the carbon fiber is bonded on.

All this work comes at a price. A C68 based on a Redeye edition, like the one in this article, starts at a cool $349K. If you already have a Hellcat Challenger and want it converted, you can knock off around 100 grand from the price tag.

None of this work touches the oily bits; the C68 provides the same shotgunning-a-beer kind of experience as the Hellcat. It does have 400 fewer pounds to haul around, so the C68 will send you to jail faster than the car it’s based on. Wanna blow off the rear tires? Just mash the skinny pedal and listen to the glorious sound of squealing rubber and supercharger whine.  Traction control and steamroller-sized tires (315 section width!) be damned. They can’t keep up with the grunt from the Hellcat 6.2-liter V-8.

On the test drive, there was road work, and the twisty bit of tarmac went down to one lane. The flagger managing traffic lit up when he saw the C68 approach. After I safely passed the workers, the flagger motioned to spin the tires. I obliged, of course, and we both wore the same stupid grin as the C68 broke traction.

But also like its Hellcat underpinnings, the C68 is a perfectly comfortable tourer. Its automatic transmission shifts smoothly, and if you keep your foot off the floorboard, the supercharger whine isn’t too loud.

There’s not much behind the steering wheel that would indicate you’re driving something other than a stock Challenger. The interior, other than the  Italian leather upholstery, remains unchanged. Which might seem contrary to how much was changed on the exterior. And, it must be said that nothing about the Dodge’s interior screams six figures. That said, having all the modern conveniences of a Hellcat is nice, and the team at ExoMod took great pains to make sure everything from the climate control to the infotainment system still works. “We still utilize the backup camera and parking sensors, but they had to be relocated to the carbon-fiber rear bumper and rear diffuser,” Katzeff explains.

Your high school 440 Six Pack will never drive as well as you remember, even if it’s still pretty to look at. But if you have the means and want a car that lives up to how you remember your Charger—one that still looks the part—ExoMod’s C68 Carbon makes a lot of sense. With only 11 sold so far, you’ll likely never see another on the road.

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Lamborghini’s unique breed of supercars has become part of popular culture. Its scissor doors make regular appearances in music videos and social media posts, the Countach earned a spot on the National Historic Vehicle Register, and the Aventador is present in nearly every toy store in the world.

It wasn’t always this way. Before the Miura, which created the template for the modern supercar, the company planted its stake in the gran turismo segment with a pair of coupes called 350 GT and 400 GT, respectively. GTs have since faded from the Lamborghini range, but they played a significant role in shaping the image and the values that characterize the company today.

Muting Ferrari’s chatter

Ferruccio Lamborghini diligently made a name and a fortune for himself by building tractors, but adding “carmaker” to his resume wasn’t as random as it might seem. He notably competed in the 1948 Mille Miglia with a barchetta based on the humble Fiat Topolino. While the little roadster dropped out of the race, Lamborghini didn’t lose his appetite for speed. His success allowed him to own some of the fastest and most expensive cars available in Italy, including models made by Ferrari. It was the Prancing Horse’s reliability-related problems (and, according to many accounts, Enzo Ferrari’s callous attitude towards customers who complained about mechanical issues) that led Lamborghini to start his own company.

Lamborghini founded Lamborghini in 1963, when there was no shortage of small, obscure carmakers looking to capitalize on a growing demand for fast cars on both sides of the Atlantic. His first concept, the 350 GTV, made its debut to the popping of flashbulbs at the 1963 Turin auto show. It remained a one-off, but it spawned a production model called 350 GT that was presented at the 1964 Geneva auto show.

This is where it all started: the first production-bound Lamborghini was born.

Young, passionate engineers like Paolo Stanzani and Giampaolo Dallara helped make the 350 GT a reality. On paper, the coupe featured a relatively conventional layout: it was powered by a front-mounted, 3.5-liter V-12 engine that spun the rear wheels. Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring built around 135 units of the first Lamborghini, which was an impressive figure for a small company peddling its first car.

There was one way to tell whether Lamborghini was on the brink of stardom or if it had experienced a bout of beginner’s luck: launch a second model. Released in 1966, the 400 GT landed as an evolution of its predecessor with a redesigned front end, a more spacious interior, and a larger, 3.9-liter V-12. Orders poured in, and production totaled approximately 273 examples. While that doesn’t exactly sound like a smash hit, three-digit production figures were fairly common in this sector of the Italian automotive industry during the 1960s; Ferrari built roughly 200 examples of the Pininfarina-designed 275 GTS from 1964 to 1966.

Several high-profile individuals purchased a 400 GT, including Paul McCartney, and a handful of examples were exported to overseas markets like Japan. In hindsight, one of the 400 GT’s fiercest competitors came not from Maranello, Modena, or Coventry but from Lamborghini’s headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy. The revolutionary Miura made its debut in 1966 as well and quickly overshadowed the 400 GT; it was arguably the first supercar, and it’s the car that made Lamborghini a household name.

Performance meets elegance

Lamborghini tossed me the keys to one of the last 400 GTs. Built in December 1967 and assigned chassis number 01324, it’s a Swiss-market car finished in Saint Vincent Gray with a tobacco interior, and it was ordered with a handful of options such as a heated rear window. Stepping inside is like discovering a new side of the company: luxury is the main theme in the cabin. There’s soft leather everywhere, a wood-rimmed steering wheel, and wood trim on the top part of the center stack. In the back, there’s a two-person bench seat that I wouldn’t mind having as a couch in my living room. It’s not that Lamborghini no longer dabbles in luxury, everything inside its current cars is nice to touch and look at, but even the Urus SUV feels like it was designed with a focus on performance. Not here; this is first and foremost a luxury car. If you want more proof, pop the hood: the underside of it is covered with square-stitched upholstery.

Reach past the wood shift knob to put the key in the ignition barrel, hear the fuel pump click a couple of times, start the V-12, and the luxurious interior becomes an interesting paradox. While you’re not sitting on a bucket seat and surrounded by a roll cage, the engine sounds like it belongs in a race car. Open the (power-operated!) window to let the sound in, close your eyes, and you may as well be at the 1967 Targa Florio. Luckily, the naturally-aspirated V-12’s roar still echoes through Lamborghini’s headquarters today. It’s a configuration that the company has pledged to keep alive for as long as regulations allow it.

It takes only a couple of miles on the roads that snake through the mountains separating Bologna and Florence to get used to the 400 GT. It’s a relatively smooth and easy car to drive: the steering is fairly light, not overly quick, and precise, the shifter’s throws are short and direct, and the power is always there when you need it. The 3.9-liter V-12 slurps fuel from a constellation of six carburetors to develop 320 horsepower, which was a monumental amount in the late 1960s; in comparison, a 1967 911 S used a 2.0-liter flat-six rated at 180 horsepower. With so much power on tap, and an engine that’s markedly more cheerful when the needle is hovering in the upper part of the tachometer, Lamborghini engineers gave the 400 GT relatively long gears and you’re not constantly shifting up and down to keep moving.

The V-12’s sound gets better as the pace picks up, and it’s accompanied by a subtle whine coming from the five-speed manual gearbox. One of the more fascinating aspects of driving the 400 GT is how effortlessly it keeps up with traffic. In a lot of cars from this era, you feel like you’re going fast even if you’re not. That’s the impression I get after driving, say, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint. Not here; the 400 GT moves with a real sense of urgency, and the brakes are powerful enough to keep the fun in check. While I wasn’t able to test this, Lamborghini tells me the coupe keeps going until its speedometer shows 155 mph. Put another way, you’ll (eventually) beat a BMW i4 in a pedal-to-the-floor race on the autobahn.

Although the mighty V-12 is the 400 GT’s soul, the chassis doesn’t disappoint. This is where the GT genes become dominant: the 400 GT behaves elegantly, even through hairpin turns, thanks to a chassis that strikes a balance between performance and comfort without leaving the realm of sportiness. The ride is never overly firm but body roll is never excessive, either. In this sense, the 400 GT is closer to cars like the current-generation Maserati Gran Turismo, for example, than to the Aventador. It’s happy to go along with whatever you’ve got planned as long as you don’t push it too far toward either extreme. This is part of what sets it apart from the Miura, which leans far more towards the performance side of the scale.

Ripe for revival?

The 400 GT retired in 1968 and passed the torch to the short-lived Islero, which featured a more angular design. That same year, the striking-looking Espada made its debut and remained in production for a decade. It wasn’t directly replaced, and Lamborghini exited the GT segment.

By the beginning of the 1980s, the extravagant Countach had become firmly embedded into the automotive landscape and the market for big, expensive coupes with four seats was coasting in neutral. No one has truly managed to jump-start it since, but Lamborghini hasn’t forgotten about the GT side of its heritage: its first electric model due out before the end of the decade will reportedly take the form of “a 2+2 two-door car.” Despite the future-focused push, the dream of a world-class GT car may soon resurface.

***

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The industry-wide move to batteries and electric motors has been hard on the fuel-guzzling 12-cylinder engine, which has been or is about to be chopped from several automaker catalogs. Mercedes-Benz cut its 6.0-liter twin-turbo V-12 from the lineup in 2020, letting it ride for a few more years in the exclusive Mercedes-Maybach S 680 4Matic, while BMW installed its final 12 in June 2022 (a version soldiers on in Rolls-Royce products). Others, like Ferrari and Lamborghini, are pairing future V-12s with hybrid electric systems to reduce fuel consumption.

Bentley, which has promised to deliver five EV models by 2030, is the next brand to axe its 12, scheduling the end of production for April 2024. Over 20 years, Bentley has moved approximately 100,000 examples of its unusual and long-serving W-12, one of the most produced automotive gasoline 12-cylinders in history. Currently the W-12 commands about a 20 percent price premium over the V-8 and represents 25 percent of U.S. Bentley sales, the other 75 percent being V-8 and V-6 hybrids.

Rather than hold a wake, the brand is celebrating with a special Speed Edition 12, a package which will be available in all four models of Bentley (Continental coupe, convertible GTC, Flying Spur sedan, and Bentayga SUV). The price is yet to be announced, but the W-12 Bentleys start around $264,000 for a Flying Spur and up to $323,000 for a Continental GTC, so figure on some premium over that. There will also be 18 total examples of the $2.1 million Bentley Batur coupe, a Continental highly modified by Bentley’s Mulliner bespoke division and running a 739-hp version of the W-12.

The company let journalists waft around southern California in a bunch of 2023 Bentley Speeds, the trim level that offers the W-12, on a one-day poker outing. On the drive, the engine proved as always to be your silent partner in speed. At idle you can barely hear it and, blindfolded, you would lose a bet on whether the car is actually running. It’s as stable as Grant’s Tomb until you engage drive and glide away.

As with other luxe V-12s that came before it, the W-12 isn’t about all-out acceleration or euphonious roar. In fact, a Bentley with the W-12 doesn’t feel hugely faster than those with the 542-hp twin-turbo V-8s that will replace it at the top of the lineup. It just doesn’t work as hard to make the numbers. The unit supplies a lusciously even torque delivery, the max of 664 lb-ft available from just 1500 rpm, which thrusts the car’s prodigious 5000-plus-pounds forward in ample haste without requiring a frantic, unseemly sprint to redline. Though the engine will do that if you demand it. Having a W-12 is like exercising soft power in politics; the badge alone does most of the job that’s required of it.

The prize for the poker winner was first shot at a one-week press loan of a Speed Edition 12. Sadly, our team came up short with a lowly pair of deuces, so you’ll just have to wait for that review. Meanwhile, we had fun wheeling the other big Bentleys around the California hills, as always enjoying the way they seem to give a middle finger to physics by being both galactically heavy and also nimble enough to hold a bead in a corner at considerable speeds. The steering is insulated and somewhat relaxed but it all seems about right for the target audience, many of whom just want to be pampered in comfort.

Bentley plans a total of 480 Speed Edition 12s, or 120 examples of each model. Special badging, interior appointments, and embroidery celebrate the 12-pots up front. The dash is even inscribed with the engine’s firing order (so that’s one thing you won’t need to look up when it’s time to rebuild it). However, the best reason to buy a Speed Edition 12 may be the 1/7th scale replica of a W-12 engine block that comes with it. Then, perhaps, you will finally understand how this bizarre powerplant works.

Conceived in the latter 1990s, the W engines represent the apogee of late VW Group leader Ferdinand Piëch’s cost-no-object approach to engineering. If you recall your VW history, the company introduced the VR6 engine in 1991 and it was just like a V-6 except that the two banks of three cylinders were squished together, separated only by a super narrow 15-degree V-angle. That allowed VW to use a single cylinder head, which saved weight, cost, and perhaps most importantly, packaging space. A VR6 could easily shoehorn into a Golf-sized engine compartment intended for a four-cylinder.

In the 1990s, pretty much every Volkswagen was small and built around a four-banger, but Piëch had big plans for moving VW upscale as well as acquiring luxury brands such as Lamborghini and Bentley. Coming for the early 21st century: the Phaeton luxury liner and the Touareg SUV, all larger vehicles intended to take VW into BMW and Mercedes territory. And the W engines were part of the strategy.

There was a W-8 (two narrow-angle V-4s joined at the crank) that fit where a V-6 would go. And a W-12 that would easily slide in where a V-8 would go. And eventually a W-16 for VW subsidiary Bugatti that would fit where a V-12 would go. The early 2000s were a crazy time for Volkswagen Group. Both the Phaeton and Touareg would get optional W-12s (the latter not in the U.S.), pushing their prices close to $100,000. Even the humble Passat was offered in the U.S. with a peaky flat-plane-crank W-8 and 4Motion all-wheel-drive—plus an optional six-speed manual! It was glorious madness.

Flash forward 20 years. Piëch has gone to his reward, as have the Phaeton, Touareg, and pretty much all of VW’s delusions of grandeur. Bentley is the final VW outpost for the W engine, and it will be gone next April.

In Bentley’s twin-turbo W-12, which debuted as a 6.0-liter in the 2004 Continental GT, two VR6 engines were essentially laid alongside each other and their connecting rods fitted to a single crankshaft, then splayed out to a 72-degree angle. It’s called a W-12, but the “W” moniker is kind of a misnomer; it doesn’t look like a W when viewed head-on. It looks like a conventional V engine with perhaps beefy cylinder banks. But the W label (it helps to think of it written not as W but as V V, the Vs crossed in the middle) helps distinguish the engine from more conventional V-12s and, well, we’re just used to calling it that.

Open the hood of the Bentley and you’ll see why the W idea is a work of genius. With a block that is barely two feet long and 27 inches wide, the twin-turbo bantam packs 12-cylinder power and smoothness into a shockingly small space. Back in 2004 the engine was rated at 552 horsepower and 479 lb-ft of torque. But subsequent improvements, including a 2015 overhaul for the launch of the Bentayga SUV that brought in direct fuel injection and cylinder deactivation, have raised the power output while reducing emissions. The current Speed editions make 626 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque.

Bentley says the 30 workers currently assembling W-12 engines at its factory in Crewe, England, will be reassigned to work on V-8 and V-6 hybrid powertrains. However, those powertrains are assembled elsewhere and merely prepped for installation at Crewe, meaning the former Merlin engine factory is at a turning point.

The demise of the flagship Mulsanne in 2020, whose body and storied 6.75-liter pushrod V-8 engine were both fabricated at Crewe, meant the Bentley factory was out of the business of making bodies. Now with the W-12 going away, the plant will be out of the engine-making business too, becoming, at least for the foreseeable future, just a final assembly site for bodies and powerplants made elsewhere in the VW empire. So it goes.

***

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Bowie hates trucks. Bowie hates cars. Bowie hates vans, riding mowers, Radio Flyer wagons, canister vacuums—pretty much anything with wheels. He is a willful, nervous little terrier mix, and riding in a vehicle generally turns him into a panting, vibrating mess. Bowie sure does love me, though. And maybe even more than me, he loves his ball. So when I tossed it into my 2003 Nissan Xterra last summer and climbed in after it, against his shaky better judgment, Bowie jumped in, too.

“To Canada!” I yelled.

“What have I done?” Bowie said, panting, vibrating.

There’s something to be said for owning a vehicle you love but don’t care about. You’re not actively interested in getting it scratched, dinged, or dented, while at the same time none of those scars will cause you to lose a moment of sleep. This Xterra is losing paint by the flake. Its dumb plastic is faded—or missing entirely. There are layers of rich compost in its shadiest crevices. There are colonies of moss now, too. Outwardly, my Xterra is fast approaching “hunk of crap” territory, and I am grateful to be the steward to take it there. It sure is a champ, though, and I’m even more grateful for the territory to which it has taken me. Like Canada, for instance.

There are a few ways to get there from my home in Oregon. The five-hour straight shot up I-5 is fast and easy, but I’d recently learned about the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WABDR), a series of interconnected dirt roads that takes you to Canada the slow, hard way. I could think of no better summer adventure than off-roading to a sleepy international border crossing. I just needed an accomplice. Who’s a good boy?

With the Xterra’s trademark rear-hatch first-aid kit fully stocked, some beer and steaks in the cooler, camping and recovery gear packed into the cargo area and onto the roof, off we went, midday on a Tuesday, into the Columbia River Gorge to grab a burger and fries at the Eastwind Drive-In before shuffling across Bridge of the Gods, WABDR’s official starting point.

A small group of adventure motorcyclists established the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route in 2010 when they decided to see if a course could be charted on existing forest roads from Washington’s southern border with Oregon to its northern border with Canada, all while visiting some of the most majestic spots in the Evergreen State. They scouted by plane, then explored it with 4x4s, and finally they completed it on their bikes. The result was a six-stage, 600-mile adventure that absolutely lives up to their mission. It also sparked an effort to create more routes via the nonprofit organization Backcountry Discovery Routes.

“It became clear from the beginning that the BDR stumbled on a magic formula of creating off-pavement routes that make backcountry exploration on public lands inspirational and attainable,” said Inna Thorn, executive director of the group. Today there are routes all across America, including 10 western states, the mid-Atlantic region, and the Northeast, with three more BDRs in the works, including Montana and the Southeast. All of which means that no one is ever very far from easy access to well-managed off-road adventure.

Once over the Columbia, we picked up the Wind River Highway for a short section of blacktop before getting onto the dirt of Forest Road 68, our entry into the depths of the 1.3-million-acre Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We’d be bucking around for the foreseeable future, so I took the opportunity to air down my tires while Bowie played with his ball.

The sky was cloudless and the sun relentless. The makeshift thermometer in the truck read 95. Despite the heat, which would accompany us with an added digit as the trip progressed, I was leery of the Xterra’s air conditioner. It functions—not quite crisply. But it also seemed like a potential trouble spot on my marginally fettled truck. Besides, if there is anything that reassures Bowie that he won’t die at any moment, it is having the windows down—just enough to taste life at speed with his face, but not enough for self-defenestration. He is small-brained and jumpy, and it is a fine line. “We’re gonna get dusty, my friend,” I told him, but I knew he didn’t care. Dirt suits him. Up we went, a long steady climb through Douglas firs and spindly alders, around the southern end of a big 8000-year-old lava bed called, appropriately, the Big Lava Bed.

The first stage would take us to the town of Packwood, 119 miles up the trail, but because of our midday start, there was no way we’d make it in daylight. No matter; the BDR loosely prescribes a section per day, and most folks on the WABDR Facebook page claim it’s a trek of three to six days. I’d set aside a full week. As we plodded along at 14 mph, the twisting road opened to big views over hazy, dense conifer forests. There was 11,240-foot Mount Hood to the south and 12,276-foot Mount Adams to the north, both of them still bright with snow. The slow pace gave me time to whittle off some math in my head (a subject for which I have a dog’s brain), but it got me wondering how anyone could do this trip in three days. And why they would want to.

Now, the first-generation Nissan Xterra is almost nobody’s idea of a classic rig. And by most accounts, they’re still in the flat, “just a used car” arc of their collectible trajectory. They certainly lack the cachet presently attached to Japanese 4x4s like the Toyota Land Cruiser and first-gen 4Runner, the Mitsubishi Montero, and the Isuzu Trooper, to say nothing of XJ Cherokees and even more vintage-y vintage trucks like Series Land Rovers and original Broncos.

But the body-on-frame Xterra was conceived and built with hard-to-reach places in mind, and young, cash-strapped Gen Xers were the intended audience. “We hope these outdoor enthusiasts will think of Xterra as part of their gear,” mused Jed Connelly, Nissan’s vice president and general manager at the time. “Xterra is a vehicle that will help them enjoy their outdoor passions to the fullest and then get them home safely again.”  With its stadium rear seating and matching stepped roofline topped by a handy roof rack, plus that funky bulge in the tailgate to accommodate the first-aid kit, the Xterra could not be mistaken for anything else.

In addition to being everyone’s 15th choice in a fun off-roader, the 2000–2004 Xterra falls down in nearly every practical comparison against its own second-gen sibling, built from 2005 to 2015. Chiefly, they are gutless, cramped, and devoid of amenities and gizmos that indicate status or technological advancement. The 3.3-liter V-6 cranks out 180 horsepower and 202 lb-ft of torque. A 210-hp supercharged version was also offered, but both return about 13 mpg. All the power of a four with all the thirst of an eight. But they are sturdy, nimble, cheap, and reliable, and I had no qualms putting my 194,000-miler to the test in the backcountry.

Darkness settles quickly in the forest, long before the sun does, so that first night, we found ourselves a nice flat spot along Trout Lake Creek to camp. I cooked pasta and meatballs and treated Bowie to some of his favorite gross wet food, and after playing ball, we fell asleep easily in the tent to the steady rush of the creek. A great joy of America’s national forests is that anyone can camp just about anywhere, at any time, no permits or reservations required. It’s up to you to do it right, which at a very basic level means: Tread lightly. Stick to established roads, camp at least 200 feet from water, store your food properly, pack out your trash, pick up after your dog, leave your camp cleaner than you found it, and fully extinguish your campfires.

Day two began early, the forest still cold, and as Bowie paced the front seats, into and out of my lap, every time I petted him, I could feel the starch of fine dust in his hair. Mine felt the same. Soon we reached intermittent snow and the 4350-foot Babyshoe Pass, so named for nearby Babyshoe Falls. The etymology beyond that is unclear, but I appreciated the tongue-in-cheek approach previous travelers of Forest Road 23 had taken by nailing dozens of actual baby shoes to the signpost. Bowie chased his ball before he, too, stopped to appreciate the signpost.

At this point, we hadn’t seen anyone else in the forest, a remarkable bit of solitude that is difficult to appreciate until you stop to appreciate it. I began to give some thought to the minimum requirements for driving the WABDR. Broad accessibility of the forests relies on good roads, and so far, they had been gentle enough to navigate in a Prius. But as the climbs got steeper and the sharp basalt rocks embedded in some of the smaller roads became more menacing, all-wheel drive and good all-terrain tires seemed like the minimum. A little clearance never hurt anybody, either. Subarus, AMC Eagles, Chevy Astro vans, that sort of thing. A short while later, as we shook and rattled along at a cool 9 mph, as if to challenge everything I’d just determined, parked in a small trailhead turnoff was a filthy Acura RSX, miles from nowhere and sitting low on its 16-inch P-metric rubber. “I don’t get it either, Bobo,” I said.

A quick stop for ice and gas in Packwood, population 319, marked the end of the first stage and the start of the second. One of the great things about WABDR is the ready access to food, fuel, and lodging, should you need or want them, at the end of every stage. Paris to Peking it ain’t, but the regular interval of amenities allows for as much or as little self-reliance as you’re willing to tolerate. If you’re out of water, it won’t be long. If you want doughnuts, hey, buy some doughnuts. The sequence of towns—and the highways that connect to them—also means that you don’t have to do WABDR in one go. Do a stage or two one weekend, follow up with a couple more the next month, or the next summer. Such flexibility removes some of the stress and uncertainty that can accompany a backcountry trip.

Still, just as one does not simply walk into Mordor, one does not set off on a drive like this without some level of forethought. The WABDR Facebook group (and WABDR for 4x4s) are fantastic resources for everything you could need, from the best time to go and what to bring to how to prep your vehicle and what sorts of damage you might expect (minimal, with scratches, or “trailstriping,” generally the worst of it). July through September is the ideal time; any earlier and you risk running into deep snow. Any later and you’re headed into dangerously dry woods, which means no open flames and no easy escape routes.

Beyond the “when,” I sorted out the “where” with a combination of paper and digital maps. Washington has tens of thousands of miles of forest roads, and it is easy to get lost if you’re not careful. Butler Motorcycle Maps makes an exceptional companion for all BDRs, with detailed section information, elevation charts, history and local color, plus alternate roads around particularly challenging parts. I brought a Washington Atlas & Gazetteer as a backup, but largely I relied on the Gaia GPS app, to which I downloaded the entire route, complete with points of interest and potential campsites, all populated by those who have come before.

The second stage begins with a 36-mile trip east up U.S. Highway 12. The realities of topography and private land ownership mean that some “tarmac stages” are baked into WABDR—a hundred miles or so overall, though this stretch was one of the longest. I didn’t bother to air up the tires, so we just floated slowly on down the road until the turnoff to Bethel Ridge. By this point, we’d traded the spongy emerald mosses and ferns and the shaggy red cedars of the Gifford Pinchot for the drier Wenatchee National Forest, with its pale greens of sagebrush and tawny grasses towered over by ponderosa pines. All of it framed by giant blue sky and punctuated in every direction by wildflowers at the peak of their blooms. Golden balsamroot and pale pink bitterroot and purple lupine bells—millions of them—lining the two-track for miles on end.

Our slow, methodical jouncing up the steep switchbacks of the ridge lulled Bowie into his calm place and he swayed himself to rest, a hot potato in my lap. Butterflies and the shadows of butterflies were our constant companions. We camped that night on the edge of the ridge—the side of the world, practically—and watched the lights of Yakima twinkle to life before the July supermoon rose massive and bright over everything.

Just before noon the next day, crossing an especially wide-open section of shrubland, we finally encountered fellow travelers. Through the dust plume in my rearview came a fast-moving headlight, and by the time I looked again, it was beside me, a black-clad biker on an orange KTM who showed me his left index finger with great emphasis—ONE MORE! Off he went, and before long, I saw in the mirror his partner, who was just as quickly by me in a rolling dust storm. They were easily tripling my speed, standing upright on the pegs the entire time to absorb the motorcycles as the motorcycles absorbed the terrain. It looked exhausting, punishing. But in that moment, I got it: Experienced riders on big bikes, those are the folks capable of crushing this trek in three days. Certainly not an old cash-strapped Gen Xer and his dog sucking dust in a 20-year-old slug and fumbling across the earth on overburdened leaf springs.

Despite their speed, we encountered Phil Edgerton and Nik Amyx several more times before trip’s end, in that way people on the Gringo Trail just seem to keep running into one another. “Heyyyyy! It’s you again!” There they were later that afternoon, in fact, resting their bodies and snacking in the shade of some pines off of Bear Mountain Road. And an hour after that, when they’d caught and passed us on the miserable slog up Baby Head Hill—no relation to Babyshoe Pass, but so named because of the specific size of the eleventy billion wretched, punishing chunks of volcanic rock that comprise that bit, and all made worse by an absolute lack of shade, by swarms of biting flies, by a sweltering lap dog, by the compression of my spinal cord.

Packwood to Ellensburg. Ellensburg to Cashmere. Cashmere to Chelan. Chelan to Conconully. Day after day, we settled into a bumpy slow dance that saw us crawling up and then down, up and then down, a hundred miles here, a hundred degrees there, never really topping 30 mph and more often working to maintain half that. The route took us past a small logging operation up Nahahum Canyon, where we plowed through dirt so deep and so fine, like sifted flour, that it permeated every crevice everywhere. It took us to the bald granite summit of 5810-foot Chumstick Mountain, with a 360-degree view of the whole of Washington.

On the descent, I found a bag of industrial-looking dehydrated meals—cheesy broccoli rice and creamy potato soup, some chicken thing, and lots of oatmeal, all good until 2048! We treated ourselves to a hotel room in Wenatchee, “Apple Capital of the World,” where Bowie and I had a contest to see whose bathwater was browner (tie). And where the mosquitoes were so wretched that the hotel had printed out a big sign apologizing for them—and please, here’s some bug spray on us.

The gnarliest section of the trip, on section 4, plunges to the deep, glacially carved finger of Lake Chelan. Called “The Jungle,” it was noted on the map as “overgrown but passable.” It’s a precarious path for sure—overgrown indeed, uncomfortably narrow, with death by a thousand tumbles on your right. I pulled the stubby shift lever into 4Lo to stay off the brakes, clutched the wheel to stay on the road, and as we ground our way down, listened happily to the great shrieking wail of thick and heavy trailstripes liberally applied by a tunnel of unruly brush and the lanky dead branches of long-ago burned trees. One of them was even clever enough to open my door as I passed. Up and then down, for hundreds of miles, day after day.

By the morning of our last day, on section 6, when I had essentially forgotten about them, there they were once more, Phil and Nik, rejoining the route on their bikes after camping before the climb up to 6700-foot Lone Frank Pass, the highest point on the WABDR. They squirted away and easily beat us to the finish, the loneliest international border crossing in the world, at Nighthawk. And yet there they were again, one last time, late in the day as I sat in the hot shade of a defunct Chevron station in tiny Oroville, airing up the tires for the long drive home. Up they rode, quite serendipitously in need of an air pump. “Heyyyyy! It’s you again!” I said. Bowie barked furiously at them. He hates motorcycles, too.

Washington was Phil’s second Backcountry Discovery Route, he told me. He’d ridden Colorado in 2020—for his bachelor party, losing one guy to a concussion after just 5 miles. “This one’s tamer,” he said. “Colorado is full of fourteeners, and the rocks are bigger.” He looked quickly at the Xterra’s saggy back end, then added: “You’d need some taller suspension for that one.” Phil’s goal is to do one BDR per year, and he already had his eyes on Wyoming. “Six hundred thousand people in the whole state,” he said. “If you want to get remote, that’s the place to do it.” Then he looked at the Xterra one more time. “Seeing guys in trucks, though, with coolers and beers and steaks, maybe I’ll buy an old Jeep and fix it up, bring the family.”

An old Jeep. An old Xterra. An old Explorer. Whatever. Love it but don’t care about it on a Backcountry Discovery Route near you.

Bring the dog.

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Gear up and go

Anytime you venture into the woods, you need to make sure you can get back out—or that you’re prepared to spend the night in case something goes wrong. In addition to a shovel, a chainsaw, a tow strap, and traction boards for any particularly hairy situations, I brought along the following gadgets, which provided peace of mind or simply made life easier.

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This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

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After nine days of rallying from St. Augustine, Florida, to Colorado Springs, Colorado, The Great Race has announced it’s 2023 winners—and it’s a team that knows what the top of the podium feels like. The father-son duo of Howard and Doug Sharp drove their 1916 Hudson artfully for over 2000 miles to a final score that put them in first place, just 7 seconds ahead of their closest competition.

The Great Race left St Augustine on June 24 and participants followed very specific, but also mildly cryptic directions, that pitted drivers and navigators against the challenge of driving pre-1972 cars thousands of miles consistently and without breakdowns or other issues. Held since the 1980s, the Great Race is occasionally a war of attrition, but this year’s event had nearly all of the regular contenders for the grand championship in close contention up until the last two days of rallying. These days are called “championship days” and often involve more complicated maneuvers for drivers and navigators to negotiate, and they also limit the teams’ ability to dismiss a bad score like during the earlier days of the rally.

The Sharps have become a near dynasty of The Great Race in their red 1916 Hudson. They’ve driven other cars in the past, but they seem to circle back to the Hudson and its dependable and powerful inline-six engine. The two also forgo any real protection from the elements, which is a challenge not all participants are willing to tolerate.

Reports from a few drivers indicate this year’s route was tough for both driver and navigator before mixing in the problems of weather and vehicle temperament. That could explain the tight race that found previous Grand Champions Olivia and Genna Gentry just out of reach of the top step of the podium and unable to repeat their 2021 victory. Car troubles found last year’s winners, Josh Hull and Trevor Stahl, at the most inopportune time and forced them to limp to the finish line on the final day after being unable to finish the course on day eight.

The challenges were big this year, and that’s part of why the Sharps will be taking home a $50,000 check for their efforts. While we weren’t there at each step, we’re comfortable in saying they earned it, considering how close the competition was this year. If you think you have what it takes to compete with these masters of driving and navigation, be sure to sign up on the waiting list for the 2024 Great Race.

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On June 22, the Oregon Senate took the final action to pass House Bill 2426. If you own a classic car in the greater Oregon area, you should be celebrating.

In case you haven’t been keeping track of the 82nd Oregon Legislative Assembly, H.B. 2426 amends a 1951 law (ORS 480.315) that forbids drivers to pump their own fuel by requiring an attendant to pump fuel into the customer’s vehicle.

The prohibition on self-serve fuel has long confused out-of-town drivers, and some locals don’t always abide by it: When expensive-looking vehicles appear at the pump, attendants sometimes ignore the law and let the driver take care of things. If H.B. 2426 becomes law, at least half of the pumps at any given station in Oregon must be self-service.

The push for this change came from a lot of different fronts, including fuel station owners and managers. Some objected, such as Northwest Grocery Association, which stated concerns that allowing self-service would cut jobs for gas-station attendants; but there have long been staffing troubles that left pumps idle and customers waiting. Add in the fact that, according to a 2021 survey, roughly 60 percent of Oregonians were in favor of self-serve pump options, and it is easy to see why H.B. 2426 is headed for the Oregon governor’s desk.

Once passed by the Oregon House, the bill moved relatively quickly through the Senate thanks to bipartisan support: Introduced on January 9 of this year, it was passed on June 22. It’s not the first time legislators have considered such a move: in recent history, Oregon has been making incremental steps towards this near-complete lift of the self-service prohibition. In 2015, 2017, and 2020 bills were passed that enabled limited self-service during night hours, in rural areas, and under emergency situations like heat waves and wildfires.

If signed into law by Oregon governor Tina Kotek, H.B. 2426 will go into effect immediately, leaving New Jersey as the only remaining state to ban self-service gas pumps.

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There are an endless number of ways by which to compare two drivers. The most popular are feats of flat-out speed, competitions that demand the driver be finely attuned to the car’s performance and handling characteristics while pushing their own physical and mental limits. Some people have the risk tolerance for that, but another group of driving enthusiasts figured out how to get all the challenge of racing but at a milder pace—and with way better scenery.

These people founded the Great Race—and yes, I know I just told you that it wasn’t racing. It is a wild driving experience, though, and one that doesn’t require participation to enjoy. As I write, the race is about to leave St. Augustine, Florida, on its way to Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s essentially a traveling car show of over 100 vehicles and teams. Every lunch and dinner stop is a chance for locals to get up close and learn about these cars and the event. If you are even remotely nearby—and here’s the route, complete with addresses and times—the Great Race is well worth your time.

Cars are driven like they were meant to be

The Great Race has rules, like any competition does. The most visible is the age of the vehicles competing: They must be built pre-1972. The less visible rule is that the rally portions of the drive are scored in a way that gives preference to older cars. The relative luxury of a 1960s car might make the drive more enjoyable, but if you want to compete for the potential $50,000 prize, you’ll be wise to lean towards early cars, which come with unique challenges when considering the route and timing of this rally.

The cars that take part in the Great Race range from the relatively mild to the positively wild. Sure, there are ’60s muscle cars with air conditioning and stone-reliable V-8s, but there are also absurd early cars like the 1918 American LeFrance Speedster that sports a massive four-cylinder engine and chain-drive to power the rear wheels.

The challenge is fascinating

Each car is driven by a two-person team: a driver and a navigator. They follow a set of instructions handed to them by the rally master just 30 minutes before they start each day’s drive. The instructions are best described as cryptic, and navigators work quickly to decipher the pages and prepare their drivers for the day’s challenges. The goal is precise and consistent driving. I can tell you from experience that making a 1916 Hudson accelerate and brake at exactly the same rates over thousands of miles is demanding, but following the instructions isn’t that much easier in a 1968 Ford Mustang, as the team of Christian Lauber and Brandon Gregg has found over the last seven years of rallying.

“On the surface, when people first hear about the race, it sounds pretty simple,” says navigator Brandon.”Turn where they tell you to turn, and go the speed that they tell you to go. It’s really not that simple—the rally master assumes that every single motion you do, it’s done instantly. So when you need to slow down to take a turn, you need to be able to account for how much time you lost [getting] there. It turns a Sunday cruise to church into a real competition.”

It’s all about the love of driving

Yes, following the rally instructions and managing a vintage car over 2000 miles of driving is a challenge. At its core, however, the Great Race is a unique way to see parts of the country that a lot of drivers would never touch. The rally master designs the route to avoid highways or interstates and to keep the teams on winding back roads where they can’t see far enough ahead (or behind) to take cues from other rival cars.

The route is one that would never be suggested to a person trying to efficiently get from point A to point B. For Christian, that is the point. “It’s a lot of fun to go around with car people and see a lot of the back roads of this beautiful country that’s been lost because of the rise of GPS!”

A rolling group of people driving roads they have never seen with 200 of their friends makes for interesting conversation every evening, especially when locals ask, “What route did you take to get into town?” Rarely do participants have any idea; they just know the route was fun and pretty. And that’s okay.

They want you to join in

2023’s Great Race starts in St. Augustine, Florida on June 24 and will traverse most of the U.S. over the next nine days. Each lunch and dinner stop is effectively a pop-up car show of over 100 well-traveled vehicles—and you can meet the teams taking on this wild challenge. Take a look at the map above; you won’t regret taking the time to engage with these driving enthusiasts. They just might convince you to get on the waitlist for the 2024 Great Race. You’ve been warned . . .

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“You’re the one who got me into the thing!” my friend hissed at me over mind-numbing Mai Tais at an LA dive. There was some debate over who had led whom astray, but we were actually celebrating, in a way, as we’d just sold a joint-project Cadillac during the 1979 oil crisis. After two years of toiling away on the 1958 Series 62 convertible and selling it for a small profit, we calculated that we’d earned $1.24 per hour on the car. Just enough to get us tipsy on rum. At that moment we hated life, hated each other, and most especially hated the car.

Even so, aboard that 19-foot land yacht we felt like royalty. Opulent throughout, the Cadillac apologized to no one for anything; it rode like a Diazepam dream and extended a middle finger of privilege better than any other car I’d known.

We found it on an LA side street in 1977. Once dazzling but now dented and dingy, it belonged to an elderly car salesman who barely shuffled to the door when we knocked. Clearly, it had been his favorite ride, yet now that he was on final approach, he sold it to us for $350.

That car sure was complex. Four power windows were not enough, for instance, so Cadillac included power vent windows, too. and 10 switches to power them all. Of course, not all of the switches worked. Further, the convertible’s hydraulic cylinders leaked fluid into the trunk, the electric clock worked sporadically, and the Delco Wonder Bar radio was reticent to locate stations.

As college students, we poured ourselves into restoring the Caddy with a Dutchman’s restraint. I sweated through installing an ill-fitting mail-order top and then sprayed the car Wimbledon White—a Ford color I liked—in a neighbor’s yard on a drizzly SoCal summer day. Soup cans may have gotten brazed over holes in the exhaust system, before we visited the barrio to have the torn leather upholstery replaced with bordello-red vinyl.

Then came my Cadillac coup de grace: new carpets. The budget kit included a large box of tacks, necessary to conform the flat material to curved floor pans, and in mere hours, I had the scarlet loop-pile hammered into submission. On the first drive afterwards, the electrical system somehow became quirkier than a smartphone dropped in seawater. Probably because I’d tacked through a wiring harness hiding beneath . . .

Finally, after too many months of frustration, we sold the Caddy to a father-son team for cheap. I’m glad they got it. But what they didn’t get was the cherry 1960s black-and-yellow California dealer plate we found in the trunk: “DLR 1.” At least that Caddy excelled at something.

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Last year, vinyl records had their best year since 1987. Mechanical watches, tube amplifiers, and even film photography also continue to enjoy a resurgence. Analog tech is clearly having a moment. So why should low-tech cars be any different from records, amps, cameras, and watches?

In point of fact, they’re not—post-1990s analog cars are hitting their stride among a certain subset of collectors and enthusiasts. But what makes for an analog car, and why are people coming to appreciate them? Let’s just say that while the cars themselves may be simple, the answers to those questions are anything but.

There seems to be little consensus on what exactly fulfills the analog definition. The most hardcore enthusiasts will not abide any electronic drivers’ aids, like traction control or even ABS, while the more tolerant will accept those but draw the line at electric power steering, which they consider to be the work of the devil. Where enthusiasts do come together, however, is on the tactile delights of a good, old-fashioned, hydraulically assisted steering rack and, of course, the non-negotiable manual transmission.

Similarly, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when analog cars gained the throwback quality that made them cherished outliers rather than the norm. Just as there was nothing novel about the vacuum tubes in a Carver or a McIntosh amplifier from the early 1960s, there was nothing remarkable about a C2 Corvette of the same vintage lacking ABS or traction control. There was, however, most assuredly something damned unusual about the 2005 Lotus Elise not having power steering, or the 2000 Dodge Viper lacking ABS. Those traits contributed to the Elise’s reputation for driving purity and the Viper’s rawness—even when new—and as a result few can quibble with those models being charter members of the late-analog car hall of fame.

Analog car fans can be incredibly geeky, to the point of near-snobbishness. For example, many single out the 1999 Porsche 911 as the last true analog 911—but it can’t be just any 1999 911. Nope, it has to be the Carrera 2, and not the all-wheel drive Carrera 4. Why, might you ask? Although both cars could be ordered without Porsche Stability Management (PSM), only the Carrera 2 came with an old-school cable-actuated throttle, whereas the Carrera 4 had an electronically controlled one. These folks have been known to split a few hairs.

Regardless, they are onto something. The more that digital-age assists make spirited driving easier—and further disconnect us from the task that got us excited about cars in the first place—the more people seem to revel in cars that lack that technology.

Case in point: two track events that I did a few years apart. The more recent of the two was at Road America in a then-new 991-generation Porsche 911 GT2 RS. The suite of driver’s aids on the car made blistering lap times available to mere mortals and superbly managed the car’s 690 hp. Did you get on the gas a little too soon exiting a corner? No problem, the car knew better: It overrode your hamfisted, premature throttle input until the front wheels were pointed straight. The car’s sophisticated electronics always made you feel like a hero, but deep down, you knew where the magic was coming from.

In contrast, years earlier, the Z06 Corvette I drove had far less sophisticated driver’s aids. It was an unrepentant oversteerer, unwilling to mask the mistakes of an unskilled driver. But, when you nailed all the inputs just so and rocketed out of a corner, your ear-to-ear grin came from knowing that little bit of perfection came from you working with the car. And that’s precisely the appeal. Lovers of analog cars want the visceral thrills—they want to take the risks and bask in the rewards.

Alongside renewed appreciation for driving these cars, the market seems to have jumped on the late-analog car bandwagon. Supercars that fit the analog moniker, like the Ferrari F40 and Porsche Carrera GT, are breaking records, but the trends aren’t just limited to the top of the market.

First-year 996-chassis Carrera 2s are now highly sought-after cars that have increased in value by 74 percent over the last five years. Early Dodge Vipers, after years of fairly static pricing, are firmly on the upswing. Values of my personal favorite late-analog car, the pretty and diminutive Lotus Elise, have followed a similar trajectory. Cars that were in the low $30,000 range a few years ago are now in the mid-forties, and likely to climb further. That’s no surprise—as it becomes more obvious that we’ll never see a new sports car with a curb weight under a ton again, people are flocking to the little British sports car. Simplicity doesn’t come cheap, unless it’s the perfect Elise substitute, the very analog Toyota MR2 Spyder. Don’t tell anyone.

At least as it applies to cars, “analog” is always going to be defined differently based on who you ask. But one thing’s for sure: as our automotive world becomes increasingly digital, the last generation of cars that offered a pure mechanical connection to the road will only grow in popularity.

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Back in 1970, in a wooden garage in hippie Topanga Canyon, my buddy John discovered the scattered remains of a metallic blue and silver 1961 Ducati 250 Diana.

Once a pretty Italian sport bike, it was humbly advertised as a $50 “basket case.” John bought it, imagining that it would be a fun project, but he soon felt overwhelmed and offered it to me. Quite literally, everything that could be taken apart was. Referencing diagrams and photos in the manual, 17-year-old me spent months on the project. I also learned new fabrication, electrical, and mechanical skills along the way.

The single overhead camshaft, for instance, is driven by four bevel gears, all individually shimmed, as are the crankshaft and gearbox assemblies. Setting these up took weeks of trial and error, which felt like a lifetime, because I couldn’t wait to ride the thing. Soon after completing the build, I finally did, a night ride in sleepy Malibu, where I lived. Spontaneously—because why not?—I decided to twist the bike’s tail. When the revs soared, the piston broke in half, smashing the valves and necessitating a second rebuild.

One Saturday night shortly after I’d gotten the Diana back together again, a grudge race brewed with a dirt-bike buddy on his box-stock 175cc two-stroke. The contest was up a mile-long, wide-open route at the edge of town, and his run-of-the-mill Japanese bike decisively beat the Ducati. Oh, the humility! Then and there, it began dawning on me that exotics, artistic and esoteric as they were, weren’t necessarily better.

Maybe I had the last laugh, after a fashion. Another friend, Art, was seriously into club racing and offered to haul the Diana and me to Ontario Motor Speedway. Early that Sunday morning I rode to his pad, where we slotted the bike between other racers in the back of his Econoline. After pushing the bike through tech, I donned leather pants, work boots, a borrowed leather jacket, a helmet, and gardening gloves, and I gridded up on the front straight, the machine buzzing and jangling. To my great satisfaction, the Ducati started the race, ran every lap, and finally rushed under the checkers. No clue where I finished, but it was likely way downfield in the 250 Production class. But we finished.

After two years of ownership—what felt like my first real relationship—I sold the Diana to a man named Larry in the San Fernando Valley, as I’d bought Ducati’s new 750 GT and needed to dispatch the little bike. By now, it’s long past long gone. But young love never forgets, so if you’ve seen my Diana around, be sure to write!

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Blue-green pines whizzed past the window. As I straightened the wheel and pointed the Ford toward the next cone, my eyes snapped to the speedometer. On the previous run, I had lost control in the same place and spun at half that speed.

I braced for the same result. This time, though, the left front wheel dug through the slush and mud and grabbed. The little car pirouetted around the cone and began pawing toward the next turn. I aimed for the fourth cone. Then the fifth and sixth—set, sashay, straighten, scramble for traction. I got it right. I kept getting it right. I felt like a hero.

The car was doing maybe 30 mph.

The words “driving school” can conjure images of belting around a paved road course, wrestling some weapons-grade machine like a gladiator fighting a grizzly. Those schools are certainly special, and if that’s your dream, godspeed. But in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, I found something different, something I didn’t expect to love as much as I did: Over three days and a dozen or so hours of seat time at the Team O’Neil Rally School, I probably exceeded 50 mph twice. I repeatedly ran out of skill going half that fast.

But oh, when I got it right. 

Rally racing means driving as fast as you can, on closed public roads, in production-based cars, as a codriver reads pre-written notes on speed and conditions. To teach that, the O’Neil school uses a 583-acre private dreamland three miles from the Vermont border. Founded by five-time American rally champion Tim O’Neil, the school offers one of the country’s premier programs for those who want the car control to go faster, and to be safer and smarter, on a loose surface. Students are provided cars and trained on two large gravel skidpads, in that slalom, and in a maze of unpaved trails and road courses in the surrounding woods. 

Earlier this year, I signed up for an O’Neil hallmark, the three-day rally course. Our small group of students started in front-drive Fiestas, then progressed to all-wheel-drive Subaru Imprezas. From the word go, the instruction walked a line, blending actual stage-rally driving techniques, useful mostly in competition, with real-world car-control exercises aimed at keeping you out of a ditch when the white stuff flies.

Chris Cyr is Team O’Neil’s CEO. “The whole sport of rally,” he told me, is about taking “the conditions, and the road, and the environment that you’ve been given, and becoming a better driver.” That approach is evident in the design of the school’s exercises, and in how they’re run in any weather, but also in more subtle ways. Before we had even set foot in a car, the instructors gathered to announce a mindset: Know the limits of the car, the road, and yourself, they said, then drive to the lesser of the three.

After a short classroom orientation meant to lay out what we’d be working on over the next three days, our small group of students was thrown right in. You just start driving, running skidpad and slalom with an instructor in the right seat, trying and learning different techniques. The point is to understand how rally driving blends heroic-looking slides and adaptation but isn’t as unattainable as it might seem.

Unseasonably warm weather had melted the snow on the school’s upper skidpad the week prior, but a cold snap had caused the wet ground to freeze solid the night before we arrived. The surface started out feeling like a parking lot, but that changed in a hurry.

“Mind the changing surface as the temp climbs here,” an instructor said early on, between exercises. “Your braking points are going to change. The amount of weight transfer you’ll need to get the car to wake up and actually turn will change.” Like clockwork, just as he said, the skidpad and slalom course softened as the sun rose, going from blacktop-adjacent to ankle-deep soup. Grip that had been there on our first few passes was suddenly nowhere to be found. We kept driving anyway. As Cyr had suggested, learning to adapt was the point.

A front-drive Ford Fiesta was never the first vehicle that popped to mind when I thought “rally car.” Before going to O’Neil, that driveline layout was the last I’d have considered when imagining the ideal tool for an unpaved road. Again, though, the Fiestas were a way to learn. These Fiestas, provided to O’Neil through a long-standing partnership with Ford Performance, lacked traction control, antilock brakes, and brake boosters. 

Getting the car to wake up at speed was an exercise in un-learning pavement habits. “We already know that you know how to lift, because that’s everybody’s instinct,” explained Travis Hanson, O’Neil’s chief of operations. “We want you to understand that the brakes are the most important tool in controlling a car.”

In those first few exercises, when the Ford began to push wide through a corner, I would instinctively lift off the throttle. Asking for less speed, I thought, would eventually bring the tires back into a traction window where they’d hook up and pull me around the cone. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Keep that throttle matted,” my instructor said, earnestly. “A locked tire has no directional ability. We use the brakes as our traction control, to manage wheelspin, but we have to keep the front tires churning through a corner if we’re going to get the sort of grip we need to redirect the car. That’s the throttle’s job.”

Keep the throttle pinned . . . on a front-drive car . . . to turn?

Rewiring my brain around the idea took the better part of a day. Nevertheless, the concept eventually began to make sense. Dozens of reps with immediate feedback just locked the process into my head.

Then the white stuff arrived. As can occasionally happen in the mountains in winter, four inches of snow blanketed O’Neil’s compound between the school’s first and second days. Rather than plow the course, we were simply pointed at the first cone in a slalom and instructed to feel it out. (“There are no weather delays in stage rally!” one staffer said, not-unserious.)

There were plenty of hairy moments, but you would never have known it from my instructor’s demeanor. Every coach had patience in spades, calmly explaining what went wrong each time I bungled an exercise. If I wasn’t understanding a concept, they’d try a different approach, allowing me to ask questions or make inferences along the way. 

Their greatest talent wasn’t in being exceptional behind the wheel, though there was plenty of that to go around. Rather, as Cyr explained, being a coach at Team O’Neil means putting relationships first: “Soft skills are the most important variable. Everything else we can train, but how are you as a people person? How do you engage people, and do you enjoy educating?”

Just before lunch on that second day, we had the chance to work on the pendulum turn, known in the rally world as the Scandinavian Flick. Nailing the maneuver requires turning the car away from the corner, loading the inside tires, then timing the traction spike and subsequent weight transfer just right in order to pivot the car back around, for a straight shot through the corner.

The move is easier to show than explain. Ever flipped on a rally highlight video on YouTube and noticed how the race cars seem to float over the surface just before a sharp turn, constantly managing a bit of slip, almost backing into a corner, never quite pointed directly down the road? That’s what they taught us to do.

So much of getting any car to turn is about weight transfer—how each wheel is loaded at a given moment. Turns out, a pendulum means shifting that weight forward enough to unload the rear tires, to let them slide. And that becomes much easier as you add pace, which I certainly did not have enough of in my early attempts. As I tried to harness the Ford’s inertia, it just plowed on straight, refusing to turn, mowing down cones along the way.

Eventually, after some stern instructor encouragement to “GO GO GO FASTER KEEP IT FLAT NO SERIOUSLY FLAT,” I was able to carry enough speed. The Fiesta whipped into the first part of the flick quick enough that, as I lifted off brake and throttle simultaneously, the front wheels dug in and the rear tires flung the car around, aligning us perfectly with the corner’s exit.

Getting the move right had me so buzzing with adrenaline that I tried to skip lunch. (No dice. The instructors knew to keep blood sugar levels high.) But the afternoon promised new magic: It was Subaru time. 

The all-wheel-drive layout now synonymous with rallying is a hallmark of the Japanese brand, and the 2000–07 Impreza used in O’Neil’s school fleet is widely regarded as a perfect starter platform for a real rally car. Before we could belt in, we were briefed on the mechanical differences between the Subarus and the Fiestas: Power-assist brakes were back, and we now had welded center differentials, four driven wheels, and a whole lot more weight to manage.

Here again, the building blocks of O’Neil’s curriculum were intentional. The Subarus cars didn’t turn as readily as the Fiestas, a byproduct not just of the additional driven wheels, but of the extra weight in play. Where throttle was useful help for changing direction in the Fiesta, adding gas while turning in the Impreza would simply pull the car forward, essentially halting your rotation. Braking to manage weight shift became even more important, but those middle inputs—turn, brake, straighten the wheel, release the brake—came in the same sequence we’d been working to learn in the Fords.

Jumping from one vehicle to the other didn’t alter the laws of physics, it simply adjusted what I needed to pay attention to when asking the Subaru to turn.

Every driving school should have a good crescendo on its final day. At Team O’Neil, that meant a full-blown rally stage, one we were told to run with as much pace as we could comfortably muster.

If it had just been a winding dirt road—draped on a mountainside, covered in fresh snow, with trees a few feet away—that would have been enough to ratchet up the pressure. (“Our trees are not, in fact, made of rubber,” explained an instructor. “Please don’t test that.”) But no, the final exercise course went through parking lots and past classroom cabins. At one point, it even featured an off-camber, decreasing-radius corner, with Team O’Neil’s main office building just to the outside.

On the spotting lap, my instructor sat at the wheel and casually pointed out a badly scarred tree on the course’s downhill side. “Do your best not to mess this corner up,” he said, casually. “Was riding with a fella who overcooked this one and we ended up upside-down in that tree. Kinda put a damper on my Christmas Eve.”

(Side note: I would make a terrible rally codriver. I think too much about what could go wrong. At that moment, my stage notes would have read, Trees possible here. Not rubber.)

We swapped seats. I clutched out of first gear in that Fiesta, about run through a course with perhaps 34 separate opportunities for disaster. (Not that I counted or anything.) Over the sound of gravel machine-gunning the Ford’s unibody, I could clearly hear the blood rushing through my ears.

The corners arrived quickly. I had expected a panicked and ham-fisted first lap of that road, but feeling took over. After three straight days of thinking about weight transfer, I knew enough to slow down my inputs and think: Mete out braking force just so here to keep that outside front wheel loaded. Turn in early there, trusting the throttle to churn the wheels. Keep some brake in it to make sure you don’t spin the tires up and lose all traction. Patience . . . turn, then brake, then wait . . . no a little longer . . . more . . . boom, around comes the back end.

The lap culminated with a sprint up a hill to a jump. Not wanting to overstep, I lifted before the crest, the Fiesta going momentarily light but not taking off. Hands shaking with adrenaline, I slowed to a stop and looked over at the instructor.

“You didn’t wanna send that?” he said.

“We’re allowed to?”

“You came all this way to a rally school and you don’t wanna try one of the best parts of rallying?”

Noted. We hopped into a waiting Impreza. I pounded back down the hill for another lap.

As I’d previously discovered, the Subaru gathered a head of steam much quicker than the Ford. Overcooking a corner became a real risk, but again, instinct—which I didn’t have just days earlier—took over. The car came alive, sliding through each corner and chomping the space between them in a way I’ve never experienced on a paved track. I don’t know if we even saw 40 mph. Didn’t check, didn’t care.

This time, as I pointed the nose up the hill marking the course’s end, I didn’t back out. The Impreza sailed over the crest, departing earth and lifting me in the seat, up against the belts. It landed with a soft thud and we coasted to a stop.

For a driving enthusiast, the feeling you get climbing out of a car after making it “work” can’t be beat. Shifting weight on the road, changing traction on command, running an engine up and down a tachometer, inviting the car to dance—that stuff can make you feel like a hero. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of incredible moments at the wheel. It might sound crazy, but none were as exciting as nailing a dirt cone slalom in second gear in a 120-hp hatchback in the New Hampshire woods. A spot in Team O’Neil’s three-day rally course will run you $4800. The school’s flagship offering, a five-day version of the same class, is $7500. I’m not naive: Those aren’t small sums. But the payoffs—a few hero moments of your own plus the skills to reduce your chances of kissing a ditch in winter—are more than worth it.

***

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Welcome to Lamborghini Legends, a series of stories to mark the Italian brand’s 60th anniversary. In each installment, our European correspondent gets behind the wheel of one of Sant’Agata’s all-time greats. Here, Berg rekindles a decades-old love affair with the Diablo.

Before I attempt to convince you that the six-liter Diablo is the best Lamborghini ever made, I should come clean. Some 20-odd years ago, when this car was new, I was invited to the Nardo test track in Italy to discuss the Raging Bull’s approach to safety. The conversation took place with me behind the wheel, traveling north of 200 mph.

Thus, the car and I have history. History that may imbue me with a degree of bias.

To this day I have no recollection of any safety talk beyond then-Lamborghini boss Giuseppe Greco advising me, “It’s very windy. We would like you to stay below 240 kph (150 mph).”

Maybe he was serious, or maybe he delivered that message with tongue pressed into cheek. As far as I was concerned, driving a Diablo in such a context was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to top the double-ton. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, no?

The oval circuit at Nardo is 7.8 miles long, gently banked to allow a “hands-off speed” of 152 mph. It is a seemingly never-ending straightaway with four lanes; at Greco-vetted speeds near 150 mph, the Diablo felt like it was barely at a canter.

Here’s what I wrote for Top Gear magazine at the time:

“I floor the accelerator and the Diablo surges forward notching off personal bests all the way. The speedo zips past 300kmh. At 320kmh I have to concentrate harder as the wind is beginning to jostle the car around. At 340 the steering goes momentarily light over a bump and the car steps a foot or two to the right. Then at the 8km mark the wind shifts to behind me and the car stabilises. Foot firmly to the floor the speedo needle continues to creep round. It runs out of places to go at 360kmh – that’s a shade over 220mph in real money. The rev counter is just a few rpm short of the red line. This car will not go any faster.”

The Diablo, then, is responsible for my personal Land Speed Record, and for that alone I will always adore this car.

Dropping myself into the 6.0 again after two decades is an opportunity to rekindle the love affair. It’s already been an extraordinary day that’s seen me take the wheel of the 400 GT, a Miura SV, an Aventador Ultimate, a Huracan Tecnica, a Gallardo, and a Countach; it doesn’t take too long to realize that my old flame, the Diablo, might be the best of them.

When it launched in 1990, the Diablo was almost as hardcore as the Countach it replaced. There was no power steering, for example, and the 5.7-liter V-12 drove the rear wheels without any driver aids. However, by the end of its run, with Audi now at the helm of Lamborghini, the Diablo had metamorphosed into a civilized, yet no-less staggering supercar.

***

The 2001 Diablo VT 6.0 I’m presented with, painted Oro Elios, is the gold standard for this model. It’s one of the very last produced and went straight into Lamborghini’s collection. Giotto Bizzarrini’s blueprint for the V-12 had been tweaked to 5992 cc in capacity and fitted with electronic fuel injection to deliver 550 hp, only now all that rage could be sent to four wheels via a Viscous Traction (VT) all-wheel drive system.

The bodywork was given a makeover by Luc Donckerwolke in 1999, with the original pop-up headlamps replaced by faired-in units and the use of carbon fiber to save weight.

Carbon fiber makes a big splash inside the vehicle, too, where it’s deployed on the instrument panel, center console, and kick plates, along with plenty of dark leather hide. The weave look might seem a little passé to modern eyes, but it was a truly rare material back in its day, so it’s easy to understand why Lamborghini wanted make sure customers noticed.

Audi-sourced switchgear is a notch above what came before it and, based on my experience, this seems to be the first Lamborghini in which ergonomics were a genuine consideration.

It’s easy to find a comfortable driving position, and the visibility is good, making even simple drives a far less daunting proposition than with the Diablo’s predecessors. There’s even power steering, ABS, and electronically adjustable suspension. The VT system normally sends power to the rear wheels, but as soon as any slip is detected, up to 20 percent of torque is transferred to the front wheels.

On the road it feels lighter than its 3600 pounds, with that assisted steering proving nuanced and fast. Direction changes need none of the Herculean effort that the Countach demands, and the brakes are modern-day powerful.

With the high-rev demand of the V-12, which asks 7100 rpm for full power, driving the Diablo requires making good use of that beautiful, gated gearshift. Though it cannot match a Miata for slickness or shift speed, shifting here is immensely satisfying. Each throw rewards the driver with an unparalleled sense of mechanical connection—an initial clunk into first gear followed by a lovely metallic click-clack as you scale up the gears.

My drive is a short but passionate affair, over a mix of fast and flowing, hill-hugging roads and tighter twists and turns. It is nevertheless utterly involving and visceral, without being vexing in any way. The Diablo’s neck-snapping good looks and the glorious acoustics of a naturally aspirated V-12 only add to the list of reasons why this is, in my mind at least, the absolute pinnacle of Lamborghini.

The market may well agree with my assessment. Concours-condition (#1) Diablo VTs of this vintage are up 23.4 percent in the last year alone, and valued by our experts at over $622,000 on average. That means I will never own one, to my deep disappointment. But like any long-lost love, it is the time we spent together I will always treasure.

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In the 1970s, my collector-car aspirations didn’t bother with classified ads or dealerships. Instead I applied hunter-gatherer tactics, or perhaps more humbly, scrounging. Enter a certain 1964 Triumph TR4A, spied in 1978 in an alley in Seal Beach, California, and purchased for $600.

Its maladies included low compression and worn rear wheel-hub splines, creatively shimmed with feeler-gauge blades by the previous owner. Luckily, Los Angeles still had viable wrecking yards, and visiting one in Compton produced a pair of useful hubs for $15. Once installed, the TR4A not only started and ran, it drove.

The Triumph’s original British Racing Green paint sprouted rust where the fenders joined the center body section, so a driveway respray was in order. But when I asked for BRG at the automotive paint store, the clerk mixed up an eye-popping chartreuse. I sprayed one fender this way before a friend interceded. “You do not want a tree-frog green Triumph,” he said. I agreed and forked over $40 for another gallon of the expensive, but correct, stuff.

Scroungers may find vehicles … or vessels … needing rescue at any time. Soon, my buddy found a banana-yellow Hobie 14 catamaran and trailer, which we split for $950. Summer was shaping up, and clearly the newfound Triumph, boat, and I needed adventure. This required building a scrap-metal trailer hitch at Vintage Racing Services, where I worked at the time. Surprisingly, the Triumph towed the lightweight Hobie all right.

Droning along Highway 395 toward Lake Tahoe, all it took was a glance at the mast soaring above the car to confirm that the boat was still attached. Later, in the hot desert, the temperature gauge climbed as the worn engine burned through its oil; I only had to add three quarts over 450 miles to see us through.

After a long day aboard a slow train, old Kingsbury Grade awaited us on the California-Nevada border. Defined by steep inclines and many switchbacks, climbing it in a little old 104-hp car while towing a boat proved a challenge as the blacktop reached 7375 feet. At the summit, the Triumph’s humble tractor mill was so starved for oxygen that it could barely sustain 15 mph. Not to be outdone, the charge light soon illuminated, and the TR stumbled into the Tahoe Basin hot, wheezing, and running on total-loss electrics.

Compared to battling the Triumph through the desert and mountains, sailing the little yellow Hobie on the lake, which Mark Twain called “the fairest picture the whole world affords,” was pure bliss. Except, naturally, one hull leaked terribly.

It’s a wonder no one drowned.

***

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I am no expert, but I’d argue that even after 60 years on the road, you cannot fully appreciate the Mercedes SL “Pagoda” without two essential ingredients.

The first of these is a thin sliver of a handle, chromed and no longer than a Bic ballpoint pen. Easily mislaid, an SL driver loses it at their peril: This is the detachable, locking handle that is applied to the two roof fastenings on the windshield’s header rail.

The other ingredient required to see what all the fuss is about is, well, sunshine. Admittedly, it’s a little more difficult to manipulate than the roof’s locking lever, but today luck is on our side. The clouds have parted and early April showers subsided, and we have a 280 SL at our disposal.

For that we have Sam Bailey to thank. Bailey is the founder of The SL Shop, near Stratford-upon-Avon in England, and the W113-platform 280 SL is his. The 280 is the final evolution of the W113 platform, which began as 230 in ’63 and grew into the 250 in early ’67 before the 280 wrapped things up on the cusp of ’68.

Even among the sea of SLs of every era that surrounds Bailey’s temple to all things SL, the Pagoda—which earned its nickname from the shape of its hardtop roof—somehow manages to stand out and hold your attention. Encountering it is like looking across a crowded room and meeting the gaze of the partner you instinctively know “is the one.”

It’s 60 years since Mercedes’ W113 first drew a crowd, when it made its public debut at the motor show on the shores of Lake Geneva, on March 14, in 230 SL guise. The car and the thinking behind it steered Mercedes in a new direction, with design and engineering that was a marked step change from that which produced the 300 SL and 190 SL that came before. It’s the Pagoda that has best defined the concept and positioning of the SL ever since.

Let’s not get bogged down in product positioning, though. Especially when there is a 280 SL ready and waiting for a driver.

Back to that roof. With the sun shining, and a smattering of photographs captured of the car with the fabric hood raised, it would be rude not to lower it. Once you have been shown the technique to ensure nothing gets trapped or fouled, folding the top is a straightforward exercise that one person can manage quite easily.

It starts with the aforementioned locking handle, which Bailey keeps in the handy stowage tray between the seats. Latch it in turn to each fastening, twist to release, then get out of the car and walk around to other side, where you reach behind the passenger seat, pull a release lever for the rear of the roof, fold up the back—taking care not to crease the plastic window—then pull back and lower the rest of the roof frame, folding carefully as you go. With two people, it’s the work of no more than 30 seconds. With just a driver, there’s a little more to-ing and fro-ing.

It packs away out of sight beneath the rear deck, which fastens securely in place, assuming you followed the procedure correctly and didn’t jam anything along the way.

What was already a handsomely proportioned car is somehow elevated to a whole other level of style. The shallow body appears barely any deeper than the vertical headlight clusters. The shark-nose with that three-pointed star placed confidently on the grille hints at sporting intent without thrusting and gesticulating like a Jaguar E-Type, an impression further helped by Mercedes’ signature bonnet bulge. The boot lid tapers to a lower point than the rear wings, again adding a subtle hint of dynamism to the mix. The Pagoda is at once simple yet supremely confident, and of course, with the roof down the world can better peer at whoever is behind the wheel.

For the countless daytrippers and residents of Stratford-upon-Avon, it is likely to be disappointing that there’s a nobody at the wheel. People don’t just look at a roofless SL Pagoda; they smile, point, nod, or suck in air through their lips—sometimes, somehow, all at once.

In the Pagoda’s day, they may well have spotted a famous figure in the driver’s seat. The W113 was very much a plaything of the rich and famous. It cost nearly twice as much as an E-Type in Britain, because of import tax, and names associated with the car at the time read like a who’s who of Hollywood and rock ’n’ roll royalty. John Lennon, Sophia Loren, George Harrison, Stevie Nicks, and Stirling Moss all enjoyed their stints at the wheel. Moss went so far as to declare, “In all the years I have been driving, I cannot remember ever driving a car that I would have liked to own more.”

It’s certainly a hugely appealing cabin. Here lies a lesson in ergonomic knowhow: The driving position, the placement of the switchgear and Becker Grand Prix radio, the visibility of the VDO dials, the virtually-uninterrupted view in all directions—everything comes together to put you at ease. Try parking one of these in a tight spot, then attempt the same in an E-Type. You’ll quickly come to be thankful for the Germans’ ever-sensible way of doing things.

And as boring as it may sound, that attention to detail extends to making the Pagoda practical. For two, it is spacious, brimming with stowage space. The surprisingly large boot caters for an era when trans-continental travel by car was still the discerning, desirable way to proceed. With the roof down and American Optical sunglasses in place, naturally.

Actually, there’s one more thing you need to do when driving an SL Pagoda—wind down the windows, and rest your elbow on top of the door. Because while the SL held its own during contemporary independent road tests and endurance rallies, and its name (SL stands for Super-Leicht, Super Light) suggested a car of a deeply sporting bent, there is no finer pleasure to be had than sinking into the thing and just relaxing, feeling—no matter how fleeting the moment—your worries leave you behind in the air tumbling behind the car.

The 2778-cc straight-six engine, said to be good for almost 170 hp in its day, has a playful rasp between 1500 and 2000 rpm. Generally speaking, though, the four-speed automatic gearbox likes to shift up at 2500 rpm. Persuading it to kick down and hold a gear to experience the snarl at 4000 rpm takes some doing. When the 280 SL does pick up its heels, it’s pleasing to find that it takes corners in a flat, surefooted fashion, the open diff ultimately spinning away any excess of power over traction. However, such spirited conduct feels out of place behind the wheel of this most stylish of Mercedes.

Today, this is not only a car, but likely for many an achievement—perhaps a reward for selling your business or a car that has been handed down from one generation to the next, with the simple instruction to enjoy it before repeating the exercise for your own children in years to come. Like many Mercs, it also feels ripe for—whisper it, for fear of upsetting fans of preserving originality—conversion to electric propulsion.

The original 190 SL and 300 SL models were conceived thanks to the continual pestering of Max Hoffman, the importer of Mercedes in North America, who convinced Fritz Könecke, the general manager for Mercedes-Benz, that drivers in America expected a sports car from any prestigious brand. He got his way, with the pair of SLs making their world premiere at the International Motor Sports Show in New York, on February 6, 1954.

Nine years later came the SL Pagoda that, arguably, best defined the role that the car had to play. Nearly 50,000 would be made in total, and today a W113 is a sought-after classic car that appeals to enthusiasts and collectors alike, with the best of the 280SL breed valued at nearly $200,000. Naturally, that will be a concours example, and this icon of our times can be found for considerably less. See for yourself by browsing the Hagerty Price Guide.

Whichever end of the W113 market you find appealing, make sure of one thing—that the car comes with that locking handle for the roof. Because no matter what a sales person tells you, they definitely can’t arrange for sunshine.

***

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Via Hagerty UK

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For many of us who truly love getting behind the wheel, learning is not something that ends after your license exam.

What if you want to learn how to extract more performance from your vehicle? Or feel more confident on the road should you need to perform sudden safety maneuvers? Training up will likely require going faster than is allowed on public roads.

It doesn’t matter if you drive a slushbox commuter sedan or a manual-transmission Corvette; all cars are more capable at the hands of someone who studied and practiced to become a better driver. But if you want to become a high-performance driver, how do you improve?

There’s a path to driving advancement, and it starts by attending a High Performance Driving Event (HPDE).

Before we get into the nitty gritty, let’s cover a bit of behavioral science. The Zone of Proximal Development maps out what you are capable of learning, and it applies when you’re behind the wheel. Unless you have hours of track time, you’re guaranteed to feel a range of on-track emotions that will test your limits.

Consider the Learning Zone Model: Odds are that you’ve left the “Learning Zone” after earning your state driver’s license. Now you are likely to enter the “Comfort Zone.” Picture yourself commuting around town. Life is good.

You might want to learn more, though, especially if you’ve upgraded to a more advanced vehicle since your driver’s test. What happens when you push the performance envelope without the requisite training? Welcome to the “Panic Zone,” a place that’s even worse to find yourself on public roads. Regularly experiencing panic on public roads is the wrong way to elevate your driving experience.

HPDE provide a handy, safe environment to traverse the Learning Zone Model, helping drivers of all skill levels. These events are learning opportunities for all, with instructors trained to help you. The National Auto Sport Association (NASA) offers HPDE events across the country, and will likely be your easiest, most affordable on-ramp to a high performance driving school.

The events are usually two-day instructional events that only require NASA membership (by the way, Hagerty Drivers Club members get a complimentary membership for one year), just about any car that passes a state inspection, and a helmet (which can often be borrowed/rented on the track premises). With this in mind, NASA may have the best value for any entry-level enthusiast looking to experience motorsports from behind the wheel.

I recently participated in a NASA HPDE event at Eagles Canyon Raceway outside of Dallas, Texas, where I got the full experience as an entry-level performance driver. This wasn’t my first time on track, but my hope intent was to provide insight to others who might be interested in such an event and want to know what to expect.

Unlike other how-to articles for HPDE instruction, I’ll focus on the Learning Zone Model, as I experienced all three of the aforementioned zones over the race weekend. All three zones manifested themselves distinctly on track, and it’s my goal to prep you for them.

Wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. An HPDE weekend involves plenty of on- and off-track education, starting with classroom instruction about the basics of both your car and track etiquette. Since HPDEs are broken down to allow multiple classes of drivers to participate on the same track, you should attend to the participant schedule. Know where and when you need to be, including the time and location of where you need to get your vehicle inspected. The latter is quite easy, as most of the inspection process can be done online.

One of your first experiences will be in the classroom, and there are no dumb questions. What you learn is either unique to performance driving or seemingly counterintuitive (like when you learned to steer into a skid in driver’s education). One counterintuitive example is the notion that an HPDE is not a race, even if you are on a race track. So be neither nervous nor aggressively hyped for the track experience you’re about to behold. Just be ready to learn. That’s why you’re here.

HPDE classroom instruction even covers the basics of being on a race track, like wearing wristbands and your pit in/out locations. There are on-track personnel doing race specific tasks, but that’s mostly for your safety, and the safety of others. You will be paired up with an instructor, usually a NASA member with a lot of on-track experience and a student-oriented demeanor. Here are a few more items you’ll learn in the classroom:

• Pointbys
• Blend lines
• Never get out of your car unless it’s on fire!
• Colors of Flags
• Basics of taking a corner

Classroom instruction only goes so far. NASA knows this, so you are introduced to the track with your instructor in the passenger seat. I did three of these track runs behind the wheel of a 2023 Toyota GR Supra. The brand-new 382-horsepower coupe was provided by Toyota for the sake of this piece and had admittedly more performance than my limited experience could handle. Well, at least prior to taking the course.

In the paddock, I cinched my helmet, hopped into the GR Supra, and adjusted my seat and mirrors. While my first on-track venture started out fine, I wasn’t prepared for the track, and I was distracted by more-experienced drivers filling up my rear-view mirror. Within minutes I went into the Panic Zone, as I was overwhelmed with the track’s complexity, and everything snowballed from there. I was doing things I don’t even consider on public roads, like tapping on the brakes before a turn, which gave me a false sense of security. I was never in any danger, but my focus on the things that didn’t matter distracted me from learning.

It was quite frustrating. I realized just how quickly I went from the Comfort Zone to the Panic Zone. My instructor calmly explained what I should be doing on the track, but my panicking ensured I couldn’t recover in time. I couldn’t get back to where things were before the snowball of mistakes occurred.

After my first session, we took a long time to chat and debrief. This is where my instructor was absolutely priceless in my growth, as he made the racing lines on the track map turn into memorable actions for my next run. Sure enough, the second run was smoother, and I was able to learn more about the track … and the GR Supra.

Here’s where I make a suggestion for everyone: Whether you have an instructor riding shotgun or you’re driving solo, take a beat and assess what you initially did wrong and make that your initial fix before going out the next time. I was too hard on myself during the first session. I didn’t need to memorize each curve, each apex, and the correlation between some curves and their subsequent partners (like how sometimes the first turn is a throwaway, setting you up for a better line into the next turn). That’s why we have multiple sessions.

I even learned that, while I was fairly smooth, I wasn’t turning the wheel fast enough in some corners to maximize my speed in specific places on the track. That moment was a literal jaw-dropper for me, but luckily the racing helmet masked my shock.

That third and final run of the day was a success. Once I started nailing down the errors I previously made in the corners, my confidence was boosted. The coupe’s insane acceleration and braking was less of a crutch to fast lap times, and more of a willing partner to ramp up my progress. I never got in the Panic Zone. Instead I hit the Learning Zone. And I hit it hard: My instructor was excited at my progress and it was all starting to make sense. His instruction made me faster. Heck, I was even doing full ABS braking in a straight line, something I never had the nerve to do before. Ever!

I paid attention to which corners are throwaways, setting me up for a superb corner exit. I squeezed the throttle and felt a soft pull to the back of the seat. I had cleared a personal hurdle that’s dogged me for decades. I spoke of this progress to NASA Texas’ Director of HPDE, Andy Pettit. The series of thoughts turned into a smattering of questions.

SM: What should someone know before attending an HPDE? 

AP: Probably the most important thing to consider is that you should not modify your car before the event. (This applies more to newer vehicles without significant wear items.)  Just ensure you have fresh fluids (oil, brake, etc.) and fresh tires, as the car is otherwise far more capable than it appears on public roads. Beyond that, just know that NASA HPDE events exists across the country, and that they are for everyone’s benefit. So spread the word!

SM: What should you keep in mind during off-track instruction? 

AP: Since NASA now does a fair bit of instruction on pre-recorded Zoom meetings (available on YouTube) take your time to learn things like flag colors, the vocabulary of the trade (grid, paddock, blend line, etc.) and the layout of the track. You are going to figure out just how different track driving is compared to the street, even compared with emergency maneuvers, so it’s best to get the basics sorted out before you put on your helmet.

SM: How about on-track? 

AP: Please come with an open mind! You will quickly learn that the race track is far different than public streets, and the differences will change your expectations of both the limitations of car and driver.

SM: How do you manage stress with all the potential stressors on track? 

AP: Never forget that NASA HPDEs are designed with safety in mind, and contact between cars is exceptionally rare. Our NASA region has had zero contact between participants in three years, so this is a controlled environment where you focus on driving skill advancement. While you may be on the track with more experienced drivers, you are doing drills with breathing room, so nobody will be messing with you. This is not a race, this is an educational experience!

An educational experience, indeed. I look forward to my next HPDE event. Luckily for me, NASA has an HPDE2 event to help reinforce what I learned on the first date. Stay tuned …

***

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In late-1940s Britain, Rover general manager Spencer Wilks tasked the company’s chief engineer, his brother Maurice, to develop a vehicle that could lift the company from obsolescence. Once a manufacturer of cars for the well-to-do, Rover was in a period of transition. During World War II, its manufacturing facilities had been turned into “shadow factories,” secretly producing important aircraft components. When hostilities ended, the worldwide demand for luxury vehicles was a fraction of what it had been before the war, and Rover needed a new strategy.

The Wilks’ answer was a sensible vehicle aimed at farmers, deliverymen, and light industry. A machine for navigating bombed-out roads, to help get the country back on its feet.

The immediate postwar years were a time of shortages. Most British steel of the era had been diverted for the production of ships and tanks. At the opposite end of the metallurgy spectrum, aluminum had become vastly important, needed for aviation components. Early in the war, Germany had great success in using submarines to slow the volume of transatlantic shipping. As hostilities churned on, however, Allied cargo ships sought safety in numbers, banding together in vast, escorted fleets called convoys. As more and more of those convoys made it to England, large alloy mills in the southern United States were better able to support Britain’s wartime demand. By the time the last bombs had dropped, an aluminum surplus had accumulated, and much of it sat in Rover’s factories.

There was another critical and unexpected surplus: American military Jeeps. Before the war, Britain had the largest mechanized army in the world. But in 1940, a series of military blunders and the disastrous Battle of France destroyed some 60,000 British land vehicles. America and England entered into a lease agreement that saw the former sending more than 80,000 Jeeps across the Atlantic, where many remained after the war.

The Wilks brothers’ first prototype was built atop the box-frame chassis and axles of one such Jeep, with body panels of surplus aviation aluminum. Color choices were limited to airplane-cockpit dark green and two lighter shades of the same color. Near the end of 1947, a fleet of early production models were tooling around the midlands for testing.

By 1948, Rover’s new “Land-Rover” had a name: Series I.

The Series I was originally a stopgap vehicle, meant to inject new life and capital into the staid Rover brand. After the company blew through its surplus of aluminum and drab paint, the thinking went, its factories would triumphantly return to the manufacture of saloon cars.

Except they didn’t. The Series I became a massive hit.

For the next decade, Rover rolled out a series of new features on the model, all intended to make that very utilitarian vehicle more inviting for a human being. Heat, an actual roof, and windshield wipers all became standard. A longer-framed “station wagon” variant was fit for families and commercial use. In 1958, the Land Rover Series II debuted, featuring the breed’s first styling changes—a wheelbase widened for stability begat a new midsection, and hardtops received rounded upper rear windows that would evolve into the leaky “Alpine” windows found on Land Rovers for generations. In 1961, the Series IIA arrived, bringing new engine choices and small cosmetic updates.

If all of the above felt like an unsolicited history lesson, that’s because it was. At least for me.

As a Land Rover enthusiast and current and former owner of numerous pre-2008 Discoverys and Range Rovers, I’m ashamed to say I knew none of this. I could blame my historical apathy on the brand’s confusing nomenclature, which includes an era when Land-Rovers were Rovers but not Land Rovers (the hyphen was fired in 1978), or the convoluted ownership tree of England’s many carmakers, which to this day leaves me unable to distinguish an MG from any other Anglian sports car of the last half-century.

Really, though, it probably has something to do with how, in America, we rarely take the time to consider how our shiny new things came to be. Especially when something old has been made fashionable and new again.

My opportunity, history lesson, and experience came via an invite from Greg Shondel, president and cofounder of Himalaya, a Charleston, South Carolina firm that specializes in the restoration and customization of Land Rover Defenders and Series models. Shondel was eager to introduce Himalaya’s latest completed restomod project, a client-ordered 1967 Series IIA featuring an updated powertrain and modern comforts.

The name rang a bell. I had become somewhat familiar with the brand through Instagram, where a creepily accurate algorithm had presented Himalaya to me via “Reels,” the latest distraction that people my age mindlessly scroll through in bed when we should absolutely be attempting to sleep.

Himalaya was not originally owned by the Shondel brothers—the company began life as a design firm that specialized in restorations and outsourced most physical work. Greg and his brother James eventually acquired the firm as a passion project. The acquisition was prompted after the pair restored a right-hand-drive Defender together and found themselves in the middle of a booming market for vintage SUVs. The parts and supply-chain relationships established during their restoration, they realized, could underpin a business model for building more trucks.

Early on, Greg and James aimed to complete five builds per year, with all restoration work done under one roof by a single team of craftsmen. After a few years, Himalaya’s roof grew significantly larger, the company moving into its current 16,000-square-foot shop. It now turns out around 30 completed trucks annually.

Each client arrives with an outline of what they want, and the Shondels’ entire team comes together to help fill in the blanks. With engine packages including GM’s popular LT/LS V-8s and a variety of diesel (Cummins) options, Himalaya offers a veritable “choose your own adventure” of power, including turbo- and supercharging.

When I arrived, the shop’s house upholsterer was busy putting together a set of custom seats with tweed accent panels and matching leather, while simultaneously working on a solution for a client who had expressed worry that the white leather in her soon-to-be-completed Defender would fall victim to the markers, ketchup, and general child-disgustingness of her six grandchildren. (The solution was a new, marine-grade synthetic with the look and feel of leather but toddler-proof durability.)

One space over on the floor, a Cummins-powered Defender project sat awaiting the completion of its wiring. A quirk of scheduling meant that every Defender build in the facility was incomplete, so my driving experience was unfortunately limited to the restored Series trucks at hand.

Like Rover in the 1940s, Himalaya has its own stockpile of aluminum, albeit in salvage condition. The company’s boneyard is what keeps production moving, a fascinating collection of confidentially unsheltered and multi-generational old Rovers waiting to be brought back to life.

Robert Howard, Himalaya’s head of production, is the company’s direct line for that boneyard and for countless hard-to-find parts. Hailing from the English village of Redditch, Rob came on board after Himalaya merged with his own Land Rover restoration firm, Astwood. Redditch, he said, is a place where “you can’t look left or right without seeing a Land Rover of some type,” and that connection gives Himalaya direct access into Britain’s network of forgotten barns and salvage yards. Rovers affixed with snowplows, ambulances, ex-military vehicles—no truck is off the table, and Rob knows where to find them. After being packed into shipping containers, Rob’s finds eventually make their way across the Atlantic, where they’re meticulously inspected by United States customs officials before being shipped to the low country.

It was a chilly and gray day in Charleston, maybe 50 degrees Fahrenheit, a Midlandesque morning. The remains of an overnight rain dappled the roads. Fittingly, my first drive came in the form of a beautiful and unrestored 1968 Series IIA model that Himalaya considers its “shop truck.” That machine would serve as a stock reference for the recently finished restomod I would drive later.

This was my first time in a Series truck, and my only expectations came from a brief conversation with my own Land Rover mechanic. Do not, he told me, “get too excited.”

The ’68 was classic Series green. Everything had a feel, a smell, a texture. Bodywork imperfections were common—Series trucks were meant as working vehicles from day one, rarely fussed over on the line—and the paint’s smooth topcoat made the flaws seem like features. The doors closed differently each time, and the visibility-impeding, hood-mounted spare tire somehow seemed like an absolute necessity.

Slipping out of the Himalaya garage took a little finesse. The pedals felt loose by design, and the clutch pedal gave only a few inches of engagement. Brakes and steering were all on me, unassisted, and if there was any rain, I’d be at the mercy of an original set of visibly branded Lucas electric windshield wipers. To their credit, they worked pretty well.

Once on the road, the optional hard top, luxurious for its day, did its best to keep out the damp and chilly morning air. A little burning oil, a touch of clutch smell, some rattles—all things you’d expect in a half-century-old truck basically designed to be a tractor. The non-synchronized transmission ruled out imprecise downshifts, and finding the correct gear was a matter of maybe two or three tries.

As an owner of classic cars since I was a teenager, this sensory feedback is something I’ve come to appreciate and really enjoy. This site is no stranger to the subject: you and a vehicle, actively working together to get where you’re going, a partnership that gives no allowance for cell-phone time or troubleshooting Bluetooth. There is absolutely a time and a place for a quiet, comfortable, and computer-assisted conveyance, but with a rig like this, you drive simply because you enjoy it.

A surprisingly small amount of time passed before many of the Rover’s cues felt normal. Braking a little early, putting a little more effort into tighter steering situations, settling into a driver’s seat that initially felt uncomfortably close to oncoming traffic—along with the stereotypically British weather, it was easy to see how saloon-car owners in 1960s England would have found this new driving experience refreshing, challenging, and quite charming.

To me, it was perfect. Sitting high in the driver’s seat, I felt like a tradesman on the way to mend a tractor in the Cotswolds or do some sheep-shearing in Chipping Norton. Granted, this may or may not have been neurologically influenced by the petrol fumes making their way into the interior.

After my baseline drive in the late 1960s, I slipped into the present with what Shondel believes is the future of Himalaya—a modern take on the Series IIA. As with all Himalaya builds, the truck’s design plan was outlined through customer input.

Every angle featured a utilitarian throwback detail from Rover’s early days. Original cone-shaped front turn signals, accurately recreated bumpers, even the retained under-windshield vents, functionally simple and charming, they all suggest that customer familiarity with Series II lore impacted the truck’s final form.

The first suggestion that this IIA was different came in the subtle, sealed-beam LED headlights and teak-lined cargo area. Before its current restoration, the ’68’s body was finished in a limestone shade, a tone kept alive on the new wheels. With a nod to the original Series I engineering strategy, the rig now uses the wider axles from a Defender for stability, while a custom Brembo brake system makes stopping less dramatic. Under the hood is a tightly yet neatly fitted General Motors LS3 V-8 mated to a five-speed manual.

In the interior, a cleverly hidden air-conditioning system supplants Land Rover’s original speed-regulated ventilation, while a Bluetooth audio interface and push-button start are neatly integrated into the dashboard.

The sensations were similar to those of the shop truck, but the feedback was more engineered. The doors closed solidly and consistently but with the same sound. There was subtle engine vibration and gearshift feedback at startup, just without the worrisome rattles and smells. The transmission allowed for confident downshifts, which begat a gravely gurgle—a lovely reminder of the 6.7-liter just on the other side of that hard-to-find aluminum bulkhead.

On the road, Himalaya’s new IIA was comfortable yet still required my full attention for shifting and making good decisions with that LS3. Zipping up onramps into busy Charleston traffic was fun and effortless, and the IIA’s updated suspension had no qualms with a quick lane change prompted by another driver’s cell-phone fixation. It’s easy to imagine a truck like this thriving in a larger city, among tight parking spots, unforgiving curbs, and indifferently maintained metropolitan roads.

Mixed in with a feeling of renewal and modernity were some reminders that no old Land Rover was designed to hold your hand. The side mirrors sat in their original location, far away on the front fenders. Adjustments required a few trips back and forth from the driver’s seat or good communication with a passenger. The center-mounted modern gauges weren’t easy to read at first glance, as the speedometer’s chrome bezel impeded my view of the needle at lower speeds. Safety equipment was best described as historically accurate.

I mentioned my silly mirror gripe to Greg Shondel and his design team. They felt confident the mirrors could be mechanized if requested. If, you know, you’re that kind of person.

At drive’s end, none of my personal grievances trumped the feeling of someone taking photos of a car I was driving while I sat a stoplight, or an excited kid yelling out, “Mommy, look at that cool Jeep!” A reaction, I imagine, shared by kids in 1960s Britain.

One of the things I tried to keep in mind during my drive was how that ’68 was one person’s very specific vision brought to life by many people—the design and functionality choices did not have to line up with the ones I would have made. With interest in restomodding seemingly at an all-time high, the newly popular online slogan “respect all builds” should also include respecting the proper execution of the original concept. Himalaya’s work does just that.

A similarly appointed custom IIA from Himalaya will run you from $175,000 to $225,000. If you’re a purist and prefer the originality of a frame-off stock restoration, $150,000 will get you your own IIA in whichever shade of aircraft green you desire. A modern drivetrain in a long-wheelbase Himalaya 110 wagon will be around $300,000, with the firm’s priciest and most customized truck rolling out of the shop at $400,000. To get the historically accurate IIA experience, ask for a gasoline-scented air freshener.

In a market where a carbureted Ford Bronco from the early 1970s can easily command $230,000 on that website where you have to provide your own trailer, Himalaya’s IIA offers a comparatively priced option; setting aside the obvious Ford-Land Rover differences, much of the appeal here is in the bond-building fun of having intimate control of the design process. Your ideas begin with a vehicle that, for many, has more charm, history, and rarity than any currently trending classic American SUV. On top of that, a Series IIA is a timeless shape almost impossible to ruin.

It remains to be seen if Land Rover’s recent success with its new throwback Defender—and how car enthusiasts tend to obsess over past designs—will embolden JLR to consider a Series-truck revival. If I were an enthusiast with the means and desire to procure a restored or restomodded Series II, though, I’d absolutely pull the trigger now, while the supply chain for aluminum Rovers is strong.

***

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Ross Bentley is a professional driving coach, sports car racer, and author of the bestselling Speed Secrets book series. He will join us each Monday to explain and dissect aspects of high-performance driving. Sharpen those pencils, take a seat, and speak up in the comments below. Class is in session.

As a kid, I loved merry-go-rounds. You know, the ones where you run and push, run and push, run and push, then jump on, hang off the outside, and feel the g-loads rushing your blood and internal organs to one side of your body? Those were especially fun if my brother came with me to the playground. He provided extra power.

He also called them “barf machines.”

I hated it when the merry-go-round began to slow, losing its momentum. Slowing meant two things. First, the g-load dissipated—a terrible thing for a g-load junkie. Second, I had to jump off and push again; at that point, my brother had no energy whatsoever.

Cars are the same. I hate it when they lose momentum.

Imagine whizzing through a 90-degree right-hander on a race track in a Miata, the ultimate “momentum car.” Right at the point in the corner where you’re at the minimum speed—that moment right after easing your foot off the brake pedal, and before you’ve begun to squeeze on the throttle—your 138-horsepower rocket is at 49 mph.

On the next lap, as you enter the corner, you begin easing your foot off the brake pedal just a little bit slower. You hang on the brakes a touch longer, slowing your Miata to 47 mph.

This instance is a bit like when my merry-go-round slowed to the point where I could jump off it without being thrown into the swings. (We hated those swing kids, didn’t we?) Because of your over-braking, your Miata loses momentum.

Ahh, but that’s okay if you’re just two mph slower, right?

You can put the hammer down a little harder. In fact, you try to press the gas pedal down and through the floor. Still, your speed down the following straightaway is not what it once was. Your lack of momentum hurts your cornering speed and your speed down the straight. The loss of momentum in a car like a Miata can result in a drastic loss of top-end speed on the next straight. In fact, it might take another lap or two of pushing the merry-go-round to get it back up to speed.

Now, imagine driving a C8 Z06 Corvette through that exact same corner. And let’s say your minimum speed (what we call “min speed”) at the same spot in the corner is 47 mph, just like the over-slowed Miata.

With 670 horsepower under your right foot, you’re using a sledgehammer rather than a kid’s toy hammer. In a near-instant, your internal organs are heading into the back of the seat, and you’re rocketing down the next straightaway.

That’s the difference between a momentum car and what we can refer to as a “point-and-shoot” car. With a momentum car, being fast is all about maintaining speed. With a point-and-shoot Z06, for example, being fast is all about regaining speed.

Different drivers have different driving styles, too, with some being more momentum-type drivers, and others using a point-and-shoot style. If you fall into the latter category, your min speed is not as important as how early you can get to full throttle when exiting out of corners; the goal is to regain speed by using the engine’s torque and horsepower to reaccelerate the car. If you’re a momentum driver, on the other hand, your goal is to slow your car as little as possible, to maintain its speed, because it has comparatively little torque and horsepower.

For momentum driving, the line through corners uses as large a radius as possible. This is important to unlocking maximum momentum. The smaller the radius we drive, the slower we have to go, so we try to flip that around to keep our momentum up.

With a point-and-shoot style, the driver tends to brake later, driving deeper into the corner before turning comparatively sharper (using tighter, smaller radius) to get the car pointed in the direction of the next straightaway as early as possible. They can then take advantage of their car’s acceleration capabilities.

In thinking about the difference between momentum and point-and-shoot cars, the Miatas of the track world have more cornering power than they do acceleration power. Point-and-shoot cars are the opposite. Think of an early Cobra, with tons of engine power but relatively less cornering ability.

Contrary to what I said about the Z06, I believe all cars, no matter how much acceleration ability they have, can be momentum cars. Think about it: Whether you’re driving a Miata or a Corvette, you would much rather begin accelerating out of a corner from 49 mph than 47. (Sure, if you started from 47 mph in both cars, it would be easier to make up for over-slowing in the Vette.)

Your min speed is not a one-sided factor to consider and manage when you’re driving: What matter is not just what your speed is, but where in the corner you hit it, and how much time you spend at it. We drivers are making these complex calculations and comparisons in our minds while traveling the length of a football field in about the time it takes to say, “length of a football field.”

Oh, and when someone asks a question about favorite track-driving cars, don’t be surprised if the most common answer is “Miata.”

Why? Because it’s a momentum car, and when you learn to carry momentum through corners, you’ll be faster in any other car you ever drive. It’s the ultimate training tool. Did you over-slow the car? Was your radius too tight? Get it right and you’ll have oodles of momentum.

The feeling of your blood and internal organs being pushed to the other side of your body, like on that merry-go-round, is what makes track driving so much fun. Cue the barf machine.

***

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Via Imola

The post Racing 101 #1: Ross Bentley on momentum appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This column is part of a series from “Josh Arakes,” a senior U.S. military pilot who has obtained permission to share some of his life with Hagerty. Josh’s writing orbits the intersection of cars, the rigors of military aviation, and how we all think and work under pressure. Enjoy! —Ed.

Years ago, I was stationed with a fellow fighter pilot. One I didn’t know well, though I had heard only good things. We were in separate squadrons and he was a couple ranks above me, so we never really talked.

Late one Friday afternoon, that individual was leading a flight of jets home after being off-station at an exercise for a week or two. The pilots had done all the appropriate flight planning. They knew the weather was good enough to make the trip, but it wasn’t what we call CAVU (clear and visibility unrestricted).

After hours of flying cross-country, that flight was less than an hour from arriving back at home station when Air Traffic Control (ATC) called to warn of worsening conditions. Lacking a weather radar, that lead pilot opted not to divert to another airfield, a choice that would have let him avoid the line of storms between the jets’ current position and their home field. He instead relied on ATC to help avoid the worst of the weather.

ATC did the best they could, but the jets still flew through some gnarly conditions. Not until they landed at home did they realize that his decision to push through had resulted in damage to the aircraft. It wasn’t a lot, but no jet in the formation got away unscathed.

In military flying, when a pilot is at-fault for damaging—or in the worst case, destroying—an aircraft, can have a variety of outcomes. The severity of the punishment depends on a number of factors, none of which are important here. I can’t discuss the details, but the ensuing investigation essentially determined the pilot had suffered from a temporary condition that clouded his judgment.

The condition? Get-home-itis.

***

My wife and I recently took two of our kids, both of them high-school age, on separate weekend trips. She and our youngest flew out of state to visit friends. Our second youngest and I drove to a closer state to spend time with family.

Our 550-mile drive out took about eight hours and 15 minutes and was pleasant. After an awesome weekend of fun, laughter, and good food—not to mention this game we play where we hide Twinkies all around their house for people to randomly find in the weeks and months to follow—it was time to return home. (For the record, that family group does the same Twinkie thing when they come to our house.)

There are two primary ways to drive between the town where my family is now stationed and the home of the extended family my daughter and I visited. Both routes are almost entirely on the interstate, but one is 55 miles longer.

All else being equal, the obvious choice would involve taking the route shorter in both distance and time. However, that route is more southern, and it has guaranteed traffic issues which, absent an oh-dark-thirty departure, routinely add around 90 minutes to the drive. In short, the longer northern route frequently makes the most sense but is prone to nastier weather, so care must be taken.

To that end, I had been tracking a storm all weekend. The system was moving into the area of our northern drive and set to drop less than an inch of snow the day before we left for home. As we went to sleep that night, I was confident in my choice—we would use the longer southern route. The next morning, we woke shortly before 6:00 and were out the door in about 20 minutes. I felt no need to check the weather again.

Not until we’d been on the road for around 45 minutes did I ask my phone to map the drive, to get an idea of our ETA. I was surprised when it kept directing me to turn around and take the southern route. Confident the algorithm would soon realize it was no longer actually shorter to go south, I ignored the software’s repeated pleadings, scoffing at its “recalculating” beeps.

Later, after more than an hour on the road, the phone continued to think south was the way to go. Growing annoyed, I restarted the maps application and reentered my home address, convinced the silicon would figure itself out. Crazily enough, it again insisted we turn around.

I zoomed out and saw the reason. About two hours ahead, the freeway was closed.

I was now faced with a conundrum: Use my phone while driving, to figure out if the freeway was actually closed—and if so, why and for how long? Should I pull over and repeat the aforementioned search while not driving? Wake my sleeping teenager and ask her to figure out what was going on, or call / text my wife or another family member for help investigating?

Let’s be honest—waking the teenager was clearly the worst option. However, my weather monitoring had left me certain that the road had been closed for an accident, not snow, and was thus unlikely to remain closed for an inordinate amount of time. With some two hours between us and the closure, I opted to continue driving, then reach out to family once it wasn’t so early in the morning.

An hour later, I texted with my brother-in-law. He confirmed the freeway was in fact closed, and that it would remain so for the rest of the day. I had already mapped out a smaller highway that would take us to the southern route. As far as he could tell, he said, all other roads were open.

We pressed on happily, another hour passing before we reached the closure, exited the freeway, and pulled into a parking lot.

I got out my phone again and did some quick searching. Sadly, all roads to the southern freeway were now also closed. I had apparently done a good job of monitoring the weather along our originally planned route, but its more uninhabited northern stretches had gotten hammered with snow.

We had two choices: drive nearly all the way back to the house of our relatives in order to transition to the southern route, or head even farther north. Neither option was great. We’d already been on the road for three hours, and retracing to the southern route would mean another 12 at the wheel. Heading north meant only 9.5 more hours of driving, but the state’s Department of Transportation website warned of black ice there, plus heavy winds and blowing snow.

Opting to eat a warm turd sandwich instead of a cold turd sandwich, we turned north; even with black ice, I reasoned, the extreme northerly route had to be faster than essentially returning to where we started. We’d driven three hours yet were effectively only 27 miles closer to home.

Knowing what was ahead, we searched local stores for tire chains but failed to find any that fit my 2016 Mazda 6. Should I have purchased them earlier? Maybe, but I don’t need chains for that car; I have other vehicles, with chains, that I take to snowy places.

My weather monitoring had convinced me chains wouldn’t be needed on this trip, thus our choice to take the Mazda, our most fuel-efficient vehicle. Fortunately, I’m not a total idiot, so we had plenty of food, water, blankets, and a camp stove in case we needed hot chocolate. With empty bladders and full water bottles, we climbed back into the car, determined to push through.

It was Sunday. Waiting a day for roads to clear wasn’t a great option—my daughter had school the next morning, and I had to go to work.

What was that condition again? Oh, yeah: get-home-itis.

***

Our travel north began ominously. We pulled onto the shoulder of a narrow, two-lane highway to let an ambulance pass, then ended up pseudo-ambulance chasing for nearly ten miles until it finally turned off onto another road. The pavement was in good shape until then, but the DOT’s website had warned of black ice ten miles up the road, and reality didn’t disappoint. Ditches were filled with cars, trucks, and trailers that had slid off or jackknifed.

Fortunately, the road improved after a few miles, letting us go faster than a crawl. In addition to the ice, the blowing snow, and the single-digit temperatures, I was concerned about my lack of familiarity with the area—worried that, because I hadn’t verified the conditions of every road on our modified route, we’d encounter another closed highway.

I did find it encouraging that there were so many semis headed both directions. (My Hollywood-inspired vision of truckers involves them telling each other if the road ahead is closed. Though, as we’ve previously established, I’m no trucker). My phone mapping app also showed the roads as open.

All of that anecdotal evidence convinced me to keep going until conditions were either totally unsafe (as opposed to our current, mostly unsafe situation) or until the roads were closed.

Hours later, our winding, back-road route finally rejoined an open interstate. We had bypassed the worst of the storm, and the freeway was in excellent shape, so I set the cruise control and pointed for home. Unlike the previous hours, driving no longer required my full attention. My daughter was immersed in a book, and I was listening to a podcast, as we came upon a truck towing a trailer.

Imagine my surprise when a big dip in the road launched an eight-foot piece of four-by-four lumber out of that trailer. We were in the right lane–I wasn’t quite close enough to change lanes and initiate the pass (and you all know how I feel about that). As I started braking, I realized the board’s trajectory would take it into the left lane and then the center median. When it landed in the median, it quickly came to a stop in a cloud of dirt.

I downshifted, floored it, and made a quick pass. As I did, I looked over the rest of the trailer’s load—it appeared to be well secured, so I opted to not get the driver’s attention.

Twelve hours and fifteen minutes after we departed, we pulled into our driveway, no worse for wear save muscle stiffness (we had stopped the car only twice) and an excessive consumption of junky road-trip food.

***

The aforementioned mishap pilot briefed all aircrew at our base as to what happened, allowing us to learn from his mistakes. Unlike him, my case of get-home-itis wasn’t severe enough to produce injury or accident. Regardless, my flight training has instilled in me a need to learn from everything, even if nothing “bad” happens; a fortunate outcome doesn’t mean that you didn’t make a stupid decision.

I’ve made that same drive since. Two of our kids also made it while on spring break from college. I am now much more diligent about checking weather and DOT websites, and, to my wife’s chagrin, I even had the kids head home one day early once, so they could beat marginal weather.

Fighter pilots talk of working to fill up the “clue bag” before the “luck bag” runs empty. One of the ways to fill the clue bag is by learning from experience, whether someone else’s or your own.

There will likely never be a way to gain full immunity from get-home-itis, but a full clue bag makes for an excellent inoculation!

***

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Most digital content is about quick consumption, but we believe there’s a place for deeper stories and careful exploration. So pour your beverage of choice and join us for another Great Read. –Ed.

A sullen and largely drunk crowd greeted drivers Jim Richards and Mark Skaife as they mounted the podium at the 1992 Tooheys 1000 in Bathurst, Australia. Hours earlier, Denny Hulme, the 1967 Formula 1 world champion, had suffered a heart attack and the New Zealander died at the wheel of his BMW M3. Then, an epic downpour cut short the 1000-kilometer enduro near the end as cars careened into the walls and each other. Richards’ and Skaife’s leading Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R was one of the crash victims, slotting local favorite Dick Johnson into an apparent win in a Ford.

A Skyline had trounced the locally made Fords and Holdens the year before, so fans were primed to celebrate the return of Aussie pride. Instead, because the Nissan was so far ahead at the red flag, the officials declared it the winner. Boos thundered and beer cans flew. “I thought Australian race fans had a lot more to go than this—this is bloody disgraceful,” Richards snarled from the podium. “You’re a pack of arseholes!”

As with so many automakers going back to Henry Ford and his “999” oval-track racer of 1902, Nissan had set out to build an engineering marvel to win races and to heap glory upon its name. Calling fans “arseholes” probably wasn’t in the brief. But power often provokes more fear and resentment than awe. And, for a brief moment exemplified by the Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R, Japan seemed to have all the guns.

“From the front, it’s all puffed guards, fat paws and squinting eyes,” marveled Australian motoring writer Ewen Page for Wheels magazine in 1991. “It is, as some would say, one tuff muther.” That’s because the GT-R had been created to rule what was then the dominant form of international stock-body racing, the FIA Group A class, and it looked the part. “When it rolled onto the tarmac for the first time at a racing meeting,” reported the magazine Sports Car International at the time, “fear met imagination with a combustive swirl in the mind of a mechanic, who remarked coolly, ‘There it sits—Godzilla.’”

Australians get the credit for the Godzilla nickname, allegedly hated by Nissan’s management. It was apt in so many ways, though. The mythical film creature was supposedly a lizard or dinosaur altered by atomic radiation. The Skyline, too, was a freak of science, an undistinguished Japanese recast of a Chevy Monte Carlo that disappeared into the same lab that built the Bionic Man. Unlike most lizards, which have eyes on the sides of their heads, Godzilla’s peepers face forward, the better with which to see both adversaries and the future. Godzilla, the car, looked over the horizon with its multitude of computer-controlled performance widgets with jazzy acronyms like ATTESA ETS, Super HICAS, and RB26DETT.

(For a crash course in Skyline-speak, click here.)

And, like Godzilla, the GT-R did its stomping and fire-belching mostly at home. It was a product of Japan’s supercharged ’80s tech culture and, ultimately, a prisoner there, never officially exported to any market except for the few that dribbled out to Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. It won every Group A Japanese Touring Car race, all 29 events, from 1990 to 1993, and won the Bathurst 1000 twice before Australia banned it from its preeminent race. However, in most places outside of Japan, it is an orphan and a curiosity, a stranger wandering in strange lands. Which, of course, makes it incredibly sexy and desirable, especially to the millions in Gen X, Y, and Z who grew up piloting GT-Rs in gaming simulators.

Hagerty added the R32 Nismo Edition pictured here to its collection a few years ago because it is 100 percent a youth car, an object of fixation by multitudes who often couldn’t give a wet slap about a Duesenberg, a Shelby Cobra, or other traditional lust magnets.

“You’ll be at a cars and coffee event, and a dad will pull up in a brand-new Ferrari with his kid, and the kid will jump out and be like, ‘Hey it’s a Skyline,’ and he doesn’t care about the Ferrari.”

So said Sean Morris, who runs Toprank Importers in Cypress, California, a shop that specializes in importing, certifying, and selling older Skyline GT-Rs. A number of his customers recently were older collectors who snapped up a GT-R not because they craved one, but just to have one car in a collection of blue-chip classics that their kids are excited about, Morris said. “For guys used to paying a lot more for stuff, $50K, $60K for a car is nothing.”

To see if a real R32 GT-R really was all that—as well as to belatedly celebrate the car’s 30th anniversary—we shipped the Hagerty collection’s gunmetal gray ’92 R32 Nismo out to California. We trucked it all the way from Michigan so it could roam mountain roads that echo the coiling ribbons in Japan’s Gunma prefecture, where the country’s touge driving and drift scene was born. And we sent it to cruise a few cars and coffees to gauge reactions among a jaded lot that is so not easily impressed, accustomed as they are to being flaunted at by L.A.’s legions of climbers, wannabes, and arriviste.

We started by aiming the Skyline up L.A.’s own skyline drive, called Angeles Crest or, on road maps, California State Highway 2. Since the pandemic, a group of hairpin hounds and responsibility avoiders have been meeting informally on Friday mornings in the parking lot of a roadhouse called Newcomb’s Ranch, about 30 boisterous miles up. Somewhere along the line, this utterly unplanned gathering acquired the name Good Vibes Breakfast Club, no doubt because everyone needed some good vibes in the depths of pandemic isolation. Despite the name, there’s no breakfast—Newcomb’s closed in March 2020 and has been put up for sale. The windows remain dark and the diner’s mediocre chili is now desperately missed by the knee-draggers and gear jockeys who have made the place a destination for years (though on Fridays somebody usually brings enough doughnuts to go around).

The R32 feels custom-tailored and 3D-printed for underground events like Good Vibes. The flog through the canyons asks everything from the car, from its twin-turbo 2.6-liter inline-six to its all-wheel drive to its electronic rear differential to its four-wheel steering. And the Hagerty R32 answered, with a planted, stable security despite rolling on ancient moaning tires in desperate need of replacement. Once you work up the nerve from the right seat and with the shifter in your inexperienced left hand to tackle corners at sweat-breaking speeds, the GT-R knuckles down and gets to work, eating the asphalt under command of direct if insulated steering and progressive, fade-free brakes. This is no Japanese Monte Carlo.

Once we arrived at Newcomb’s, the GT-R handily polished off its second duty of the day: making us look cool. A crowd dressed in fashionable skinny jeans and waxed canvas jackets gravitated toward it like iron filings around a magnet. The exotic Skyline seems small and delicate next to the bulk of Good Vibes’ turnout, which is late-model Porsches and BMWs inflated to modern, five-star-crash-rated pudginess.

“Even in LA’s unique car market, where even the rarest cars become oversaturated quickly, I still do a double-take when I see an R32—I just can’t help it.” So said Leo Mayorquin, an L.A. car-scene regular who routinely posts extensive photo galleries of meets under his social media handle, CNC Pics. “It’s the old story: Race on Sunday, sell on Monday—then sell again 30 years later to young and old because history remembers how dominant you were.”

The name “Project 901,” as it was called within Nissan when it all began late in 1984, supposedly had a very simple meaning. It signified “1990s, project number one.” Or it meant, “1990s, in which Nissan will be number one.” People who claim to be experts disagree. Either way, “it started from humble beginnings,” said Morris, who inherited his interest in Japanese automobile arcana from his father, who ran a thriving business exporting Chevy Astro vans and other American cars to Japan. “Take a regular sedan and go racing with it. To a point, it’s an underdog kind of story, the underdog punching above its weight and doing well. It was a lot of car for the time.”

The task of fulfilling Nissan’s ambition to catch and even overtake Honda and Toyota in technology was handed to Naganori Ito, a protégé of the original Skyline chief engineer, Shinichiro Sakurai, who had become ill and could no longer work on the project. Going back to the 1960s, “The Skyline was Mr. Sakurai’s car and I thought it would end with Mr. Sakurai,” Ito said years later in an interview translated from Japanese. “That is what I thought, so I never wanted to take over. Once Mr. Sakurai fell ill, however, someone had to.”

As an engineer with Prince Motors, which merged with Nissan in 1966, Sakurai had been present at the rebirth of the Japanese auto industry as something other than the builders of postwar utilitarian mules. Prince itself was a descendant of the Nakajima Aircraft Company, which had built fighters and bombers during the war, so from the frumpy Prince Skyline in its early days down to the R32, the DNA is laced with the best of Japanese vanguard engineering.

Eager to grow its domestic industry quickly, Japan blatantly got out the tracing paper. The first Prince Skyline in 1957 looked like a ’56 Plymouth that had shrunk in the wash, down to little chrome tailfins tacked to the rear haunches. As the ’60s dawned, the country looked increasingly to Europe in design with the hiring of Italian stylists such as Giugiaro, Pininfarina, and Bertone, as well as in engineering, with the embrace of smaller, higher-revving engines, overhead cams, and sidedraft carburetors. Sakurai’s time at Prince and then Nissan was heavily influenced by the worldwide craze for motor racing. The freshly completed Suzuka Circuit hosted the first Japanese Grand Prix for sports cars in 1963. Sakurai entered the following year with a Skyline sedan into which he had squeezed a six-cylinder in place of the stock 1500-cc four, and the seed was planted for the Skyline epoch.

As it was merging with Nissan, Prince introduced the Skyline 2000GT which took its cue from the Pontiac GTO by offering the company’s largest engine at the time, a 1990-cc overhead-cam inline-six from the bigger Gloria, in the more compact Skyline body. The third-gen C10 “Hakosuka” and fourth-gen C110 “Kenmeri” Skylines of 1968 and 1972, respectively, especially the 160-hp GT-R versions, are as rare today as they are hugely collectible as the earliest GT-Rs. Some have gaveled at auctions for over $200,000. Yet, even greater things were to come.

“We thought about what was expected of a Skyline,” recalled Ito of his earliest planning sessions on the R32. “Historically, there were many Skylines along the way. We faced different situations. Some wanted the rear seats to be more spacious—the dealer would say that it was not as spacious as the [Toyota] Mark II and they were troubled by it, so we would make the car bigger. Then someone would say that it was bigger and heavier now and did not run as well. Turn it back into a Skyline, they would say.”

When Ito took over, Skyline sales were down and Japan had just yielded to international pressure to revalue its currency, causing prices to soar overseas and sales to drop. Thus, development money was tight and export sales were off the table as the new car was expected to be way too expensive for pay-by-the-pound America. Even so, Ito wanted to hit it out of the park with a Skyline that would stun everyone.

“We wanted to surpass the highest-performing cars of Europe. In order to do so, we were going to make the vehicle smaller and give it the most up-to-date body,” said Ito. Racing would be back on the agenda, which meant more power and a better chassis to deliver it. Which led Ito and his team to consider driving all four wheels.

“A normal four-wheel drive has the problem of understeering, I knew that,” said Ito. “Also, there was no record of a car with a four-wheel drive performing well on the circuit. The Porsche 959 was a four-wheel drive, but it was not doing well. Rally cars need to be four-wheel drive, but for circuit races, there just was no record of a vehicle with a four-wheel drive having done well.”

Another problem: Racing regulations restricted Nissan’s choice of tires. Out of the box, the R32 GT-R came with 225/50R-16 Bridgestone Potenza R71s, or less than 9 inches of tread at each corner of the 3400-pound car—roughly the same size tires as Honda fit to its 2010 Accord sedans. To get around the problem of the car’s small feet, Nissan needed to draft the front axle for duty, but without destroying the car’s handling. The solution was computers.

ATTESA ETS is a ridiculously long but very Japanese acronym that stands for “Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All Terrain,” referring to its all-wheel-drive system, and “Electronic Torque Split” the name of the car’s rear differential, a sort of robotic Posi-Traction. The short brief is that the GT-R is rear-drive with the ability to vary torque left to right as needed, until the computer senses the need for torque up front. It deduces that from the readings of three electronic accelerometers, which are basically wired-up pendulums that swing back and forth as the car accelerates, brakes, and builds lateral g-forces in corners. A hydraulic pump above the front differential provides pressure to squeeze a wet-clutch pack at the back of the transmission that diverts torque to a prop shaft going forward.

Deciding exactly when you want the front axle to come alive is the black art of all-wheel-drive tuning. Too much and you make understeer, or the tendency of a car to plow straight ahead even though the wheel is turned. Not a racer’s friend. Nissan thus tuned the system to engage the front axle only for straight-line stability and wet-weather traction.

To further reduce understeer, the R32 runs a hydraulically operated rear-steering system called Super HICAS, or High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering, which at speed toes the rear tires a few degrees in phase with the fronts for sharper steering response. At slow speeds, it turns the rears in the opposite direction of the fronts for a tighter turn radius, a welcome feature in Japan’s densely packed cities. However, many R32 GT-R owners strip off the HICAS system, says Morris, because its extra hydraulic fittings and ball joints don’t age well, and they don’t like the somewhat rubbery feeling of the rear end doing its own thing in corners. We did not find that to be the case (though we wouldn’t swear on a stack of Bibles that the system was actually working on our GT-R).

A small gauge on the GT-R’s dash tells you how much torque the front axle is receiving. Most of the time it remained at a disappointing zero, even when we were doing our best impersonation of the late Ken Block—which, granted, isn’t very good. Morris explained that Nissan understood that you actually want less torque up front when trying to turn, because torque just causes the wheels to go straight. If we could get the GT-R on a wet or snowy surface—no easy feat in sun-drenched L.A.—or look down during hard accelerations, we would see the needle twitching, though the R32’s now-ancient system operates with a certain on-off quality.

Ito explained that ATTESA was only in the R&D phase at Nissan when he decided to grab it for the production R32. The developers worried that the untested system wouldn’t hold up to customer pummeling, so they resisted using it. “If things did not work out, all the departments were afraid that they would be blamed and they tried to avoid going forward. But I said, ‘Let’s give it a try,’ and I would take responsibility if things did not go well,” he recalled. “Whenever you try something new, you need resolve.” The compromise was to tune the system so that it only sent modest torque forward and operated only when necessary, to prolong its durability. As Nissan became more comfortable with ATTESA, successive R33, R34, and the U.S.-bound R35 generations of the GT-R became more sophisticated.

In contrast, the iron-block RB26DETT inline-six engine (the D stands for dual overhead camshafts, the E for electronic fuel injection, and the TT for twin turbo) is way overbuilt, with hefty crank journals and piston oil squirters for cooling. And way oversquare in true racing fashion, its 86-millimeter bore dwarfing its 73.7-millimeter stroke, meaning the torque is kind of thin until about 3000 rpm. Once the lightweight ceramic turbine wheels spin up—each compressor feeds three cylinders a max of 8 to 9 psi through a lovely array of individual throttle bodies—it’s a gripping ride to the 8000-rpm redline as the ultra-smooth inline-six whooshes out a turbine-like whine. The Japanese have been in love with the inline-six since the 1940s, and we love them for it.

Let’s not overstate it, however. Magazines at the time pinned the 60-mph sprint for a stock R32 at about 5.5 seconds. On the mountain roads, the R32 feels quick, but a new four-cylinder rental Mustang would spank it in the quarter-mile. Hey, things are supposed to be better after 30 years. Back in the day, Japanese automakers held themselves to a voluntary power limit of 280 PS, or 276 horsepower. So that’s what a stock GT-R makes—as far as you know. Most experts agree that R32 GT-Rs rolled out of the plant with around 300 horses, and tuners have since doubled that figure without major surgery to the engine. But monster R32 builds aside, the GT-R isn’t about drag-strip times, it’s about balance. It’s a crouched bushido warrior rolling on the balls of his feet, and those guys are plenty dangerous if not particularly beefy.

Nissan provided plenty of fodder for future Skyline nerds to chew over, spinning out low-volume variants of the R32 with subtle differences such as the Nismo (no ABS), N1 and N1 V-spec (different turbos, wheels, brakes, and body kit), of which there were versions 1 and 2 (wider tires). For the roughly $100,000 you would pay for the car pictured on these pages, which is a 1992 Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 Nismo purchased in Florida a few years ago, you can buy all manner of machines built in the intervening three decades that will kick its ass six ways from Sunday. They will have modern safety gear and be serviceable with parts available at your local dealership, and they will be easy to register and smog (Toprank charges $10,000 to California-certify a GT-R).

But they will not be Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

***

This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

***

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It’s barely six degrees Fahrenheit at the summit of the Julier Pass. Visibility is zero, a full-blown whiteout. The edges of the road are practically invisible with the blizzard sending horizontal sheets across the windscreen. Snow ceaselessly accumulates onto the asphalt.

I’m the first person outside of the factory to be allowed behind the wheel of this updated 2023 Plus Four, and I briefly wonder whether perhaps we’re both a little too far out of our comfort zones. It may well be the most extreme test the roadster has ever been through. At the very least I suspect it is a situation in which precious few owners of Morgan’s latest Plus Four will find themselves.

This is, after all, a machine meant for pleasure drives and holidays. For meandering English country lanes, pausing for a pint and a ploughman’s lunch, or perhaps an ice cream by the coast. At an elevation of 7500 feet, the ice isn’t in a cone. It’s everywhere.

It’s the fifth and final Swiss high alpine pass that I’ve driven in as many days. Once I’m out of the mountains it will be a long haul across the autoroutes and routes nationale of neighboring France to the U.K., back home. But before we come to the end of this 2000-mile test drive, let’s go back to the beginning.

Scaling new heights

In what has been the biggest shake-up in the boutique British sports car maker’s 110-year history, Morgan redesigned its four-wheel sports cars from the ground up in 2019. The process breathed new life into the Plus Four and replaced the long-running Plus 8 with the Plus Six. Morgan’s stalwart, steel ladder-frame chassis was retired in favor of a superformed aluminum structure dubbed “CX.”

The benefits of the CX chassis are extensive. Instead of having to measure, cut and fit Morgan’s trademark ash wood frame and aluminum body panels to each one individually, the company can now produce identical chassis and pre-cut frames with incredible accuracy. The process streamlined production and created a significantly stiffer structure—all while maintaining Morgan’s hand-built traditions.

Morgan has always relied on external engine suppliers, including Ford, Fiat, Rover, Coventry Climax, and others. Continuing a relationship that began in the early 2000s with the V-8-powered Aero 8, Morgan turned to BMW for the Plus Four and Plus Six engines. The former uses a 2.0-liter, 255-hp turbocharged four-cylinder, while the latter uses a 335-hp 3.0-liter turbo straight-six. With BMW power came more sophisticated engine management, automatic transmissions, and even a digital dashboard.

For 2023 those engines remain unchanged, but the power now comes with even better control. Suspension dampers and bushings have been finessed. There are AP Racing brakes, new calibrations for the automatic gearbox and, for the first time ever in a Morgan, electronic stability control and dual airbags. These significant updates mean that the Plus Four will meet U.S. federal regulations (under the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act) and join the Super 3 in America before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the interior has been enhanced with a wider choice of fabrics, a single-piece aluminum dash, wonderful wooden marquetry for the center console, and a Sennheiser audio system which uses the uses the chassis structure to resonate bass.

These changes, on paper, should make the modern Morgan quite the grand tourer. That’s exactly what I plan to put to the test.

Road-trip ready

My destination is the Swiss town St. Moritz, home of The ICE, a gathering of some of the world’s most exotic classic cars on a frozen lake. The Plus Four may be a new car, but Morgan hasn’t much changed its styling in 80 years. I reckon it will fit in.

Storage space has never been a priority for Morgan. There’s room behind the seats for a couple of soft bags and a box of snow chains, but everything else will have to go in waterproof duffels strapped to the Plus Four’s chrome rear carrier.

One area where technology has noticeably progressed: paint. The Volcano Orange finish looks sensational. I’m a sucker for bright colors, and the first time I set eyes on the Plus Four I adore how the orange accentuates the cars’ classic curves.

The run down to Folkestone through a still-sleeping London is easy and remarkably efficient, the ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic gearbox maintaining an engine speed that’s barely above idle for most of the journey. At the 70-mph motorway speed limit wind noise isn’t too bad, but one issue rears its head that will plague the entire trip: winter chill seeps through the door seals. Naturally, it only gets worse as the temperature drops. Despite the heated seats and cranking heater, the next five days will be spent either too hot, too cold, or, somehow, both at the same time.

The car is a pre-production model, and Morgan assures me that customer cars won’t suffer in this way. But the new Sennheiser audio system isn’t quite behaving, either. In order to get it to pair with a phone via Bluetooth, the unit needs a complete reset only achievable by disconnecting and reconnecting the battery. Again, Morgan says, a pre-production glitch.

The French connection

I meet photographer Barry Hayden near the Channel Tunnel to France. We play a short game of packing Tetris, filling the meager available space with luggage, photo equipment, and other road trip odds and ends. “It could be worse,” says Barry. “You could have got a Super 3.”

Soon enough we pass through the Chunnel and under the sea that separates Britain and its nearest European neighbor. We reach France and waste no time, motoring south at 80 mph.

The extra 10 mph that France permits on its autoroutes brings a rush of wind noise into the cabin, despite the closed soft top. Dialing up the volume on the stereo, with the bass vibrating through the bulkhead, just about overpowers the drone but reduces in-car communication between Barry and me to hand gestures. Sennheiser’s Calmo noise-cancellation system would be a welcome addition (and may come later, says Morgan).

The run down to Lucerne is forgettable—around 500 miles whisking us past Reims, Metz, and Strasbourg. This is not the most picturesque part of France, being largely flat, and the grey winter sky is doing nothing to enhance the aesthetics. Fortunately, the cabin of the Plus Four is surprisingly comfortable. The seats are excellent and even after four hours or so behind the wheel Barry and I experience no back twinge or muscle ache.

Toll booths prove a challenge in a car this low and uncommonly shaped. It takes a few runs to accurately assess where the front corner of the car is, but by the time we reach the Swiss border we’ve just about perfected the teamwork required to collect or pay for a ticket without the passenger having to unbuckle and stretch out.

Despite the sustained high speed, we’re covering around 250 miles on a tank of fuel and averaging around 33 mpg.

Into the Alps

We overnight at a cheap pub/hotel on the banks of Lake Lucerne, slightly bemused by its English football theme, and the next morning make an early start for a day in the mountains. It’s still dark as we make our way out of the city through a series of tunnels, one of which is so long that the sun has actually risen by the time we reach the exit.

Soon we’re climbing up and over the Brünig Pass, which as far as alpine views does not quite reflect the spectacle it appears to be on the map. One section looks like a toddler’s scribble on paper, and is indeed a delightfully dizzying series of hairpins, but rises to only 3000 feet or so. Staying below the treeline means views aren’t of the Swiss postcard variety I’d hoped for. We drop down to lake level, running parallel with the frosty blue waters of Brienzersee and Thunersee before cutting due south for our approach to Alps.

Driving in Switzerland during the winter takes a little pre-planning, as many of the country’s most famous mountain passes are closed for the season. The handy AlpenPasse website will tell which are open at any time. Right now the Grimsel Pass I had been hoping to take is … unpassable.

The alpine anticipation is building as we head toward the base of the Bermese Alps. Abruptly, in the village of Kandersteg, the road simply stops. In its place is the rickety Lötcschberg tunnel railway that takes us through the belly of the mountain. It’s only a 15-minute ride, at the price of 27 Swiss Francs, but it takes place in pitch darkness; the only illumination comes from my fellow travelers’ cell phones which, as a testament to Swiss efficiency, retain a strong 5G signal throughout.

Emerging into the light, we unload and immediately begin to ascend. The road is sufficiently twisty to begin experimenting the Plus Four’s various engine and transmission modes. Nudge the slightly incongruous BMW shifter over to Sport and gears can be selected manually by pushing and pulling the lever or using the steering column-mounted paddles. Keeping both hands on wheel seems prudent as the curves come thick and fast, so it’s paddles for me here and, although the shifts are rapid I do feel the lack of a physical connection. The paddles themselves would certainly feel nicer in aluminum instead of plastic, and if they had just a bit more movement the whole shifting experience would be elevated.

We’re the ones rising rapidly, as we discover ourselves quickly getting above the trees and into proper snow for the first time. The beginning of the Simplon Pass is marked by the grand Hotel Külm-Bellevue, which majestically overlooks the route. It’s also home to one of the most strikingly designed public toilet buildings I’ve ever seen.

Mountain madness

It’s here that we drop our roadster’s roof for the first time. It’s not quite a Miata mechanism, as you need to release a couple of external poppers before unlatching it and carefully folding the fabric as you stow the top behind the front seats, but with practice it only takes a minute or so.

“Brace yourself,” I warn Barry, but we soon find that with hat and gloves in place and heat on full it does not really feel much colder than with the roof up. It helps that by now the sun has burned through the clouds, and we’re also some 6000 feet closer to it. The cozy, slightly claustrophobic feeling of the Plus Four’s cabin is replaced with a wonderfully open sensation: that elemental connection with the environment that makes driving a roadster so invigorating.

The road, too, is exciting, with plenty of fast third or fourth gear corners and more than a handful of hairpins thrown in. By the time we reach the end of it we’ve crossed into Italy, passing through a seemingly unmanned border crossing.

Over the next few hours we follow the valley and battle through poorly-surfaced Piedmontese autostrada, diving in and out of tunnel after tunnel, with local drivers seemingly glued to our rear bumper. It’s a relief to escape and get back onto less busy roads, skirting the glamour of Lake Como and heading north again to Chiavenna and the mountains.

At the border the Swiss guards stop us, check our papers, and then seem to get bored. They send us on our way to the simply marvelous Maloja Pass. In the space of just a couple of miles the pass climbs over 2600 feet in a spectacular sequence of switchbacks.

The Plus Four doesn’t have the best turning circle, but there’s another, altogether more entertaining way to steer it: on the throttle. I press the Sport Plus switch, disengage the ESC, and find I can adjust the attitude of the car with a lift to tighten my line or stab the throttle to slide the rear a little. Shifting rapidly back and forth between second and third gears, the Morgan reveals its previously-hidden hooligan side, with pops, crackles and bangs from the exhaust and a screech of the Avon winter tires singing through every corner. It’s the sort of behavior one might expect of a Caterham 7 more than a mature Morgan, and it’s wonderful. While Barry flies his drone overhead I make repeated and progressively swifter and noisier runs up and down. Oh how I must suffer for the photographer’s art.

The pass spits us out just a few miles from St. Moritz where The ICE concours is taking place over the next two days and, as we pass through the town, we get a sense of the kind of clientele it attracts. We see an Aston Martin DBX 707, a Lamborghini Urus, numerous 911s, even a Ferrari 296. We attract just as much, if not more attention, from the sea of camera phones.

Staying in St. Moritz is way beyond our budget, and our hotel in Poschiavo just happens to be over the Bernina Pass. It’s getting dark by the time we reach it and the clouds have also rolled in. Visibility is near zero, so Barry is calling out upcoming curves like a proper rally co-driver from what he can see on Google Maps. Behind me all I can see is a blaze of headlights and, at the merest sign of a straight, a scrappy VW Passat powers past. For a couple of corners I try to keep up, but there’s no beating local knowledge.

Over the next two days we travel back and forth to St. Moritz, and I get to know the road pretty well amid ever-changing conditions. There’s fog, snow, sunshine, and showers sometimes all within the space of the same trip. It’s a brilliant road, a good 30 minutes of full-concentration driving through tight hairpins and speedy sweepers, never knowing exactly how much grip will be available on any of them. As such, the ESC stays on and, without being aggressively intrusive, it adds a welcome layer of safety. In the one instance we switch it off on an open, snowy section it elicits a lurid third-gear slide, proving just how effective the system is. “Please don’t do that again,” quips Barry.

Old Mog, new tricks

Before I set out I wasn’t quite sure how I’d take to a modern Morgan. Could it really offer a 21st century sports car experience with such old-school styling, and would that combination actually be appealing anyway? Would it be up to such an extreme cold-weather task on harrowing mountain passes?

Yes, yes, and yes. The Plus Four is both capable and entertaining beyond expectation. It wouldn’t be a match for a modern Porsche Boxster in objective terms, but it edges much closer than one would think given the vintage aesthetics.

In the media tent at The ICE I hear people talking about the “crazy Brits” who drove all the way in a Morgan mid-winter. I turn my head and have one more look at the orange Plus Four cooling its heels on the snow. Somehow it all seems perfectly sane.

Specs: 2023 Morgan Plus Four

• Price: £70,195 (U.S. price TBD)
• Powertrain: 2.0-liter turbo I-4; eight-speed automatic (six-speed manual available)
• Output: 255 hp @ 5500 rpm, 295 lb-ft @ 1000–4300 rpm
• Layout: Rear-wheel-drive, two-seat roadster
• Suspension: Double wishbone front/rear
• Weight (dry): 2224 lbs
• 0–62 mph: 4.7 seconds
• Top speed: 149 mph

***

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If you find yourself standing on the banks of Goodwood circuit this year, cast your mind back to 1952, the year this Mille Miglia sports racing car emerged from the Isleworth, Middlesex factory of Frazer Nash, to be delivered in July to a Mr A. S. Orr of Manchester.

The war might have been behind Britain and the rest of the world, but its lingering effects hung over us like the winter smog that plagued London. Rationing of confectionary, sugar and meat was still enforced—and the national staple of tea wouldn’t be freely available until October that year.

Still, there was always the rise of television to lift the spirits. Except, in February that year, the first TV detector vans (actually, they used Hillman Minx and Morris Oxford cars to begin with) hit the streets, promising to crack down on all those watching the box without paying a license fee.

Cheer, then, was still in short supply. But the British Automobile Racing Club (BARC) reckoned it had just the thing. The body that was and remains responsible for running Goodwood motor sport events had overseen the successful development of Goodwood circuit, which drew crowds from far and wide, and now it wanted to take things a step (and many laps) further with the introduction of a long-distance race. Not any old endurance event, but one that would see sports cars race in both daylight and the darkness of night, starting at three o’ clock in the afternoon and running up until the stroke of midnight.

The Goodwood Nine Hours Race was born, and even if it was short lived, with the final event taking place in 1955, it was a welcome, high-octane distraction for its duration.

After the first owner sold the Mille Miglia back to AFN (Archie Frazer Nash, the company that built and sold Frazer Nash cars) it was snapped up by John Charles Broadhead—Jack to his friends—in June 1953. Broadhead made a good living through scrap machinery, owned a garage in Bollington, Macclesfield, and enjoyed spending the fruits of his labors on some rather special motor cars, including an ex-works Jaguar D-Type.

Doubtless he was attracted to the Mille Miglia because Frazer Nash had made a name for itself in motor racing. Stirling Moss, Roy Salvadori and Mike Hawthorn had all cut their teeth driving Frazer Nash cars, and the marque won its class at the Le Mans 24 hour race and even took the third step on the podium, in 1949, with the aptly named High Speed model. Never one to miss a sales opportunity, the name of subsequent High Speed cars was changed to Le Mans Replica. And in much the same way, the Mille Miglia had been called ‘Fast Tourer’ up until the point the company put in a good showing at the 1950 1000-mile road race and renamed it. (In ’51, Franco Cortese drove a Le Mans Replica to victory on the Targa Florio—the only British car to win the event.)

As was often the way then, Broadhead entered the Mille Miglia for some of the most high-profile motor sport events the British season had to offer. He gave it over to an experienced pair of hands, Peter Reece and Gilbert Tyrer, for driving duties including (70 years ago this year) at the 1953 Goodwood Nine Hour race. The finisher’s commemorative plate, now nicely tarnished with age, is still with the car. The ’53 London Rally would follow, with the next year seeing the car compete at the RAC Rally, British Empire Trophy at Oulton Park, Prescott, and the Silverstone Sports Car Race.

The Frazer Nash Mille Miglia is rare, with just 11 examples built between 1949 and 1953. Two of those were the wide-bodied variant—this car being one of them, with more cockpit space. Compared to the Le Mans Replica, the Mille Miglia was a more sophisticated, streamlined design that featured full-width bodywork and a hood, while the intention of the wide-body versions was to make it suitable for touring. (The modern notion of building a road car that you can take to a race track or campaign at a hill climb course is, as it turns out, nothing new.)

At £3307 for chassis number 166, the Mille Miglia was expensive, about £1500 more than a Jaguar XK120, so whichever gentleman was buying it with the intention of partaking in some spirited driving would have needed deep pockets.

It was a deeply attractive car, though, and in its favor, the Mille Miglia had a beauty that was more than skin deep. It earned a reputation as the kind of well-sorted car that drivers loved to hustle up to and beyond the limit. Competition results backed this up.

The light, aluminum bodywork cloaks a tubular-frame chassis that was evolved subtly from the Le Mans Replica to allow for the lower bodywork, there are drum brakes, a four-speed gearbox (with synchromesh on all but first gear), transverse leaf-sprung front suspension and a torsion bar-sprung rear axle. Originally, all Mille Miglias featured a 2.0-liter six-cylinder engine known as the FNS1, which was derived from a BMW unit but designed specifically for Frazer Nash. Utilizing triple-Solex carburetors, it boasted 125 bhp and 123 lb-ft of torque, in a car reported to weigh around 860 kg (1896 pounds).

Within the history file are all manner of fascinating invoices, race reports and literature of the period, and one that catches the eye is dated 8 February, 1954. The car was submitted to The Bristol Aeroplane Company for extensive work to remove, strip, and clean the carbs, the piston crowns and valves, in amongst many other jobs and upgrades, and the bill came to a heady £184— enough to buy a perfectly acceptable family car at the time.

However, the original engine is recorded as having been fitted to a Bristol in the early ‘60s, and in its place sits a period-correct Bristol 100D straight-six. Pendine, the company selling the Mille Miglia on behalf of its current owner, reports that the current engine number of 100D 716 correlates to an AC Ace Bristol, chassis BE 369, that competed in the 1958 RAC Rally. It points out that both car and engine took part in the event, four years apart.

Some noteworthy collectors have owned chassis 166 during its time, including the former car dealer and touring car racer Frank Sytner, who was custodian from 1985 to 1987. Sytner was responsible for having the original paint changed from Bristol Maroon to the racing green it now wears.

And now it’s my turn to get a feel for this rare machine.

Getting in and out is surprisingly easy, and the dished seats envelop you more than expected. The layout is all a racing driver could hope for; legroom is perfect, the pedals, seat, and steering wheel are straight-set. You’d happily wear the Smiths speedo on your wrist, so appealing is its authentic mechanical look, while everywhere you look this car wears its patina with pride—from the well-lived alloy and Bakelite steering wheel to the fingered pull switches and turned alloy pressed into the leather-wrapped dashboard frame.

From cold and with just a touch of throttle and push of the starter button, the straight-six Bristol engine fires without protest and quickly settles to a steady idle. It has a distinctive, heavy rasp that you’d expect of the configuration. And that roller-ball throttle pedal has a response that will be alien to anyone who has only driven modern cars.

Given the Frazer Nash’s pedigree, rarity, and value, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, if not at least conscious of my responsibilities, while at the wheel of the Mille Miglia. Yet it’s reassuring to find that the clutch pedal has just the right weighting and plenty of feel. The gearbox has a delightfully short but positive throw, like a Honda S2000, and the engine has impeccable manners whatever the revs. It is a car that feels on your side.

Trundling around Bicester Heritage at low speeds shows me that the Mille Miglia is entirely manageable and easy to get on with. Out on the road and beyond the confines of the site, it really comes alive beyond 3000 rpm, with its redline of 5500 rpm comparatively high for an engine of its time.

It is rare that you jump into a car and immediately feel at home, sensing an innate rightness to everything it does. This seems to be one of those rare cars. The pliancy of the suspension, response of the steering and feeling of the front and rear axles working in harmony encourages you to press more, but … well, that will have to wait for another day. Perhaps one where speed limits and other motorists aren’t present. If only the track at Bicester Heritage had been available for a hot lap or two.

The cost of the Mille Miglia and rise of more competitive racing machines from Cooper and Lotus probably spelled doom for the model’s life; the owner of Archie Frazer Nash believed the future lay in importing and selling Porsches, rather than designing, engineering, and marketing its own cars.

It goes without saying that owning a storied car like this should help those with a burning desire to attend retrospective events such as the Mille Miglia, or those wanting to scratch the racing itch and get on the grid at Goodwood or Rolex Reunion. This is a machine that rubbed wheelarches and spinners with Aston Martin DB3s, Jaguar C-Types and Austin-Healey 100s, and could— should—do so again.

And that prompts the inevitable question: how much? Pendine gives a figure of £695,000 ($835,700). When you weigh that against the aforementioned ‘gentleman racers,’ the C-Type and DB3S, which broadly speaking can be valued between £4 to £7 million ($4.8M-$8.4M), the lesser-known Mille Miglia has an appeal all of its own. And we’re first to acknowledge that the history of these racers plays a significant role in their timeless allure.

Rest assured, just as the crowds were appreciative of this racer doing its thing on track back in the day, so they will be 70 years later.

With thanks to Pendine. To enquire about the Frazer Nash Mille Miglia click this link visit the website or call on 01869357126.

***

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Sometimes you have to know when not to be a road tester. When you should leave your mental checklist at the door and just be a car enthusiast. You need to remember that as important as objectivity is, occasionally the subjective can be enough. It’s ok for heart to rule head. The SLR HDK is a case in point.

When the standard Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren was launched in 2003, after the debut of the Vision SLR concept car in 1999, there was a lot of head scratching among the press. For a start, there were conceptual hurdles to overcome, because with McLaren and, more specifically, Gordon Murray involved everyone had expectations about how this might follow in the lightweight tire tracks of the F1 supercar. As a result, a 1600-kg (3527-pound) car with a supercharged engine and power assistance for almost everything came as something of a shock. The SLR was not the rival for Porsche’s Carrera GT for which I think most were hoping.

Even if you were able to look past this, the way that the car drove was … interesting. The brakes, for example, appeared to have no progression at all and the chassis felt like the front and rear were speaking different languages. Not great when you’re trying to deploy 617 bhp and 575 lb-ft through the rear wheels, and thread a near-two-meter wide car along a road.

Aesthetically it was a striking machine, but the proportions meant that junctions could be tricky, to say the least. Never has the phrase “nosing out into traffic” been more appropriate. And although the exterior had a wild theatricality to it, the interior was a curiously humdrum hodgepodge of Mercedes parts bin switchgear. It was like a penthouse furnished with Ikea Billy bookcases.

As a road tester given a few hours with an SLR at its launch, I can see how it was probably not much more than a three-star car. So, why is it looked upon with so much affection by owners today? Enough affection for a dozen of them to get on board with McLaren Special Operations for a crazy project like the HDK (and you can be sure that most, if not all of the owners will be adding the new kit to an existing SLR in their collection).

The HDK, which stands for High Downforce Kit, is effectively an evolution of the SLR performed by the team at McLaren Special Operations. With input from those SLR owners, it sets out to pay homage to the 722 GT, a prototype SLR racing car that never raced. We’ll come to the various changes in a moment, but what you should know is the package costs a not inconsiderable £280,000—about $346,000, or as much as an SLR—which tells you a lot about where owners of SLRs find themselves in life, and how they treasure the supercar enough to continue to refine it almost two decades on.

After a few days and many hundreds of miles driving an SLR HDK, I get it. This is a car that is very easy to love when you accept what it isn’t and enjoy what it is. For a start, there is the soundtrack. The glorious V-8 gargle has always been a highlight of the SLR thanks to its crazy side-exit exhausts that vent somewhere near the soles of your feet and gently vibrate your legs’ marrow from bottom to top. This is particularly the case in the HDK, which swaps two exhaust tips per side for big single, slashed pipes. The standard car’s huge silencers that weigh 15 kg (33 pounds) each have also been replaced by lighter, freer-breathing items. Add in a dash of supercharger whine every time you crack the throttle and you have a fabulously characterful aural recipe.

Some 20 years on, the interior has aged surprisingly well, too. With the new carbon transmission tunnel and the full carbon rear deck behind the seats, MSO has added a welcome amount of freshness to the overall ambience. Reclined in the fixed-back seats—trimmed, in this car, with some mustard corduroy that looks freshly culled from the scene of a pheasant shoot—it’s easy to find a decent driving position as well. And that starter button hidden under a flip-up cover on the gear selector never gets old.

Speaking of which, the gearbox is a less obvious source of delight. You can try to use the paddles on the back of the steering wheel but you’ll give up quickly, leaving the HDK’s jaunty shift lights permanently unlit. The five-speed automatic is just so slow to respond that it’s not worth the trouble. Better to leave it to juggle ratios itself and rely on the huge reserves of torque to dig you out of any holes.

But despite this, the gearbox is, curiously, crucial to the SLR’s appeal. Its very aloofness makes the car feel relatively undemanding and therefore surprisingly usable. With just two pedals and no paddles to worry about, there isn’t too much to concentrate on. The proportions of the proboscis require some thought and the brakes (despite the best efforts of MSO) still need care, but otherwise it’s quite stress-free.

So, you have the drama of a supercar but less of the angst. And as a car in a collection, I can absolutely see why owners might grab the keys to their SLR on a more regular basis than other, five-star supercars. Still interesting, still some thought required, still raises a smile, but not so much pressure. The value probably isn’t even too concerning for most of the people that own one. Even if you’ve spent £280,000 on a conversion, I suspect most would probably rather leave an HDK on the street than a Porsche Carrera GT.

Not that this HDK version wouldn’t attract attention. In Dinoco blue, with hand-painted numbers (each one is really quite different when you start looking) it definitely has even more of the Instagram wow factor than the standard car. And yes that is gold leaf—hand-turned with a piece of velvet to get the machined look.

The HDK letters first appeared on a handful of McLaren F1s. This SLR doesn’t actually have a huge amount of downforce by modern standards, but if you open the boot, you’ll see that the rear wing isn’t just for show because the struts go all the way through to the chassis, providing potentially the most over-engineered curry hooks along the way.

The main reason for the wing, however, is aesthetics because this HDK has been produced to pay tribute to an SLR called the 722 GT—a prototype race car that never raced. It was designed under Gordon Murray’s watchful eye and took all sorts of bits left over from ’97 F1 GTR race cars. Its purpose was to convince suits in Stuttgart that the SLR should go racing, which worked, although the race series came much later and the cars (built by RML) were never quite as spectacular as the original.

So the HDK is an homage. An exacting one at that, with a huge amount of meticulous work done by MSO to cut carbon and then graft on more, so that it looks as though it was always thus. To my eyes, the end result improves on the original SLR shape. The extra 60 mm of width give a more muscular stance, but the new sills somehow reduce the visual weight of the car at the same time.

Power is up by an insignificant 10 bhp, thanks purely to the better breathing through the exhausts,  and torque remains the same, but it doesn’t exactly feel like more is required. The suspension takes all the tricks that MSO learned with earlier special editions but also adds some compromise. For example, although it is three seconds faster around the McLaren test track, it could have been four seconds faster, but that would have involved softening the ride and reducing some of the race car feel. And given that this is a car that is fundamentally about character, not competition, concessions were made in the final spec of the KW dampers to keep it feeling more like a race-track refugee.

But although it is firmer and flatter and a little more raucous than the original SLR, it also rounds off the edges just enough to retain that crucial sense of being a Super GT. It tramlines and it feels very connected to the road, but I found I could easily do hours at a time behind the wheel, draining the twin fuel tanks. When you find a good piece of road, the HDK won’t reward like the best drivers cars, but you’ll certainly find it holds your attention. MSO has tamed some of the handling, but push hard and you’ll find that the SLR HDK can intimidate with the best. Those brakes still require real thought, too, and the rear reacts with … but there I go being all road-testery again.

All you really need to know is that the HDK is a supercar that makes you smile, from the moment you see it to the moment the bombastic exhaust note dies away. As someone described it to me, it’s like a daft family Labrador. Not likely to win any agility or obedience prizes, but deeply lovable.

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It was early. Not up-before-the-sun-early. Early because it was the morning after an 18-hour travel day and three hours of sleep, and all the clocks were five hours behind the ones at home. You wake up like that, you start to think time might not be a flat circle. Still, Meg and I had a long day ahead, double-digit hours to watch a dream come to life, so I was wide awake.

A job in car media can occasionally send you to far-flung corners of the globe. You end up in some exotic machine in some location that’s as much a part of the story as the vehicle you’re wheeling. Sometimes, however, you get a simpler brief:

“Go out there and bring the car back,” your boss says.

For the past three months, Tom Cotter—Hagerty’s Barn Find Hunter—had been trekking the country in a Ford Bronco and an Airstream Basecamp 16X camper trailer, gathering material for a book. Fairbanks, Alaska, was the end of that road for him, but the Bronco and Basecamp were on loan from their makers. They had to get to Seattle, to be returned to Ford and Airstream.

Thus, an invitation: from Alaska to the lower 48, by way of the famous Alcan Highway, in a reborn American icon, towing an enduring one.

I raised my hand in seconds.

My haste had reason. Several years ago, at another job, I had a chance to run that same route in reverse, Seattle to Fairbanks, in a Jeep. Meg and I are married now, but we had just begun dating. We talked whenever I could find a cell signal, which wasn’t often. In the miles between, I dwelled on the privilege of a trip like this, imagining the same experience with her, vowing to make it happen one day.

As we fueled up the Bronco that first morning, my hands shook. “Prepare to have your brain melted,” I told Meg.

Just fifteen hours later, all the build-up—months of anticipation and hours of talking Meg’s ear off, telling her what we would see—seemed for nothing. I felt like I had failed.

***

Western Canada is not small. Google Maps says that it takes at least 39 hours of wheel time to cover the 2100-plus miles from Fairbanks to Seattle. Because Meg and I have jobs and need to ration vacation time, we decided to knock the whole thing off in just four days. As we rumbled out of town, we passed Fairbanks’s Eielson Air Force Base just in time to see a squadron of F-22 Raptors thunder up for the morning’s training session. I let out a nerdy giggle: Just a few years after first seeing this gorgeous land, back again with someone I love? I couldn’t believe the luck.

Watching Alaska’s beauty wash over Meg was better than I’d imagined. Phones were out at first, because capturing the scenery can seem like a good idea for the first few minutes. After a while, though, her phone was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she just stood there, by the side of the road, silent, staring at things like Mount Denali—the tallest mountain in North America—as if the scale of the place had shorted out her brain. Blessed with clear skies and bright sun, each roadside pause gave its own dose of magic. The trip’s time constraints momentarily fell from my mind. We stopped nine times before lunch.

Still, chasing that magic came at a cost. A quick map check at noon revealed we were nearly two hours behind schedule. In Alaska, time matters more than you’d think. Safe and smart resting points are few and far between, and falling short of a planned stop can leave you at the mercy of raw nature, cold and hungry at best or bear food at worst.

A strange feeling hit the pit of my stomach. A flicker of anxiety? I swallowed it.

The feeling snowballed that afternoon. Summer rains had washed out large stretches of the road, and while the freshly repaired highway was still passable, the going was slow. The Airstream went airborne on more than one occasion, over surfaces that would have made a suspension engineer blush. One such instance ripped off the trailer’s septic drain pipe, a problem I wouldn’t discover until two days later.

Have you ever known that you’re headed to a bad place mentally, and wanted to fight it, but you get there anyway? Leaving Alaska and entering the Canadian Yukon, we got held up in border traffic for almost an hour. In the miles that followed, I did my best to make up time, but the unforgiving roads bent our pace back to a crawl. At one point, an overly enthusiastic semi heading the other direction flung a rock into the Bronco’s windshield, spidering the glass at eye level.

My eyes flitted back and forth from the windshield’s fractured view to the map. The damage wasn’t serious, but it would still have to be documented, explained to Ford, and paid for. As the day ticked on, the occasional pang of nerves gave way to a landslide of illogical panic.

I knew that our borrowed Ford was still fundamentally fine, that no one had gotten hurt. The world wasn’t going to end if we got to Seattle a little late. But frustration mounted. First at our ever-climbing ETA, then at myself, for having the gall to believe I could simply plow on in a land like this, over this much distance. Suburban-born journalist thinks a cheery demeanor and some timely oohs and aahs will turn thousands of miles across the Canadian wilderness into a blast down I-75? Who were you kidding?

Meanwhile, in the passenger seat, Meg had opened a map and was idly reciting strange town names. She cued up a new album on the stereo and rolled down the window, occasionally calling out pretty views, content. I went silent, no longer enthralled by endless woods and rivers.

As the Yukon passed by, the road improved, and we finally picked up the pace. I’d hoped for dinner alongside a meandering river, or at a pull-off under some snow-capped mountain. Instead, with the light fading fast and hours still to go, we made do with hurried burgers in a gas station. It was well after midnight before we finally rolled into the RV park in Whitehorse, where we had planned to camp for the night.

A day that had begun with jubilation closed with flared temper. Bedded down in the Airstream, I tried to claw back a few hours of sleep, but guilt came in waves. Rather than looking forward to what was still to come, I found myself dreading it: I had convinced someone to come with me to one of the most beautiful places on earth, then ruined the trip.

The second day had always been planned to hold fewer miles. As we got on the road, the weather seemed to change every half hour—rain here to rinse the road grime, sun there to re-spackle truck and trailer with a fresh coat of pulverized bugs. I became reluctant to stop for anything noncritical, determined to not make the same mistake twice.

Despite my best efforts, Meg seemed keenly aware of my disappointment. The hubris from the end of our first day showed up again. Dead-set on progress, I began vetoing detours to watch moose, or to stare at a rushing river. We made maybe five stops all day, her insistence winning me over each time.

The funny thing was, each of those pauses brought the joy that escaped me in the Bronco. But also more guilt, as I mentally tallied all the potential stops we’d blown past since the last one.

That night’s resting place was Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park, a few hours south of the border between the Yukon and British Columbia. We reached it with daylight to spare, settling into a campsite next to the park’s namesake water. Gray clouds swallowed the surrounding peaks as we got a fire going and made food.

Years back, when I had first recounted to Meg my first trip through these lands, I had hung the whole story on a loose set of images seared into my brain. I endlessly retold that story to any friend or family member who would hold still long enough, but time had whittled the memories down to fragments of a moment: 30 seconds of this song as I rounded a bend, the way the light hit a peak, the beer I drank sitting on the hood after climbing those foothills.

At that Kinaskan campsite, for the first time on the whole trip, the moment matched the memory. Exhausted, I waved a hand at the water, then the fire, then Meg. “This is what I’ve been hoping for the whole time,” I admitted.

She shrugged, knowing my ego was bruised. “Maybe specifics aren’t the point here?” Later, as I drifted off to sleep, her words blew around my head like sawdust.

***

I did my best, the next day, to reframe how I looked at things. We made decent pace and passed the trip’s halfway point. That night, south of Prince George, British Columbia, at the gates of the Stone Creek RV Park, we were met by a shirtless bald man in Chicago Bears pajama pants. His handlebar mustache wiggled as he spoke.

“You guys are late,” he said, gruffly.

Some amalgamation of excuses flopped out of my mouth.

“No, you’re a week late,” he said.

The moment lasted seconds but felt like an hour. My stomach fell through my shoes. I’d promised this glimmering adventure, the cracks were showing, and some guy in Bears jammies had finally delivered the kill shot.

I braced for an argument, sure that I’d made the correct reservation over the phone. Instead, the man just shrugged. A bear paw of a hand extended.

“Eh, just details. Those aren’t important. Welcome! I’m Rick. Let’s get you set up.”

Our hours at Stone Creek were some of the best of the trip. We parked the camper a few feet from an ancient willow tree on the banks of a wide and gentle river, in front of a staggering view of the sunset. Rick had left a dinky old golf bag nearby. He challenged me to clear the river with a driver: “Ten bucks for every shot that makes it. You get three shots.”

Before I could mutter something about being a terminally afflicted golf nut, he thrust an old and dented club into my hands. I made back our $30 reservation fee in less than five minutes. As the fire burned low, we chopped it up with our new pal and a few of his regulars, grateful that first impressions are only that.

The next morning, Rick’s two Great Pyrenees rescue dogs greeted us as we stepped out of the trailer. Breakfast was a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, two of the dozens we ate that week. I felt better. We fired up the Bronco and headed out.

Heading south from Prince George on route 97 will land you on Canada Highway 1 in a few hours. From there, you can zip southwest toward the border and be in the U.S. by dusk. Or you can hang a right a few miles before the 97-1 interchange, onto Highway 99, chasing peaks and valleys west towards Whistler and Squamish.

Rick had warned me that 99 was “just a goat path” in places. When a man who hunts mountain lions for sport says a route is no joke, you listen. He was right: Sixteen-percent grades and tight switchbacks were draped over cliffs, and we were towing a trailer. Our GPS suggested the detour would cost two hours; it ended up being more like four, but what we saw was worth 20. Greens and blues and whites and yellows were shotgunned onto the land with varied intensity everywhere you looked. As we climbed, dazzling sunlight danced across the rippling waters of rivers, then streams, then ponds. Wildflowers hugged the edges of lakes, bordering them in neon glow.

“Great time for a removable roof!” Meg joked.

I laughed, actually relaxed. “Just wait till we hit the Sea-to-Sky highway.”

In a shocking turn of events, I misjudged the amount of time we would need for dinner. We ate but got back on the road later than planned, just in time for the Bronco to hit the meat of one of western B.C.’s most beautiful roads in the dark. The sun had gone low enough to turn the mountains into dark, featureless blobs.

I started to lament even more of my awful timing, but at the last second, something told my overactive brain to shut up. North of Vancouver, as we crawled through traffic along the shore, Meg went quiet, gazing into the deep orange sky. Boat lights twinkled across the water, the optical illusion seeming to bend the horizon, as if the Ford sat on the edge of the world.

“You’ll have to trust me,” I sighed, shaking my head. “This place is truly something in the light.”

“It’s quite something right now,” Meg said, softly.

Her words seemed to hang in the cabin. The acoustic guitar of some singer-songwriter tinkled softly through the speakers. The American border was just a few miles away. The trip was almost over.

As those last few Canadian road signs dashed past, I thought about the last few days. Even as I tried to rebuild the memories, to turn the trip into something good, the disappointment lingered. There were no colossal mistakes, just a series of missteps stacked on each other, like waves heading to shore.

Those delays, I realized, had bothered me far more than they had bothered Meg. I suddenly felt very stupid and petty.

“This was all supposed to be . . . better,” I said. “I wanted to show you more of it without a car window in the way. I’m sorry.”

I kept my eyes on the road but somehow knew she had turned to look at me.

“You might be the only person,” she said, “who would feel the need to apologize for what we just did.” The words came out half shock, half kind disbelief.

It’s never what you see or how much time you make. There were moments on that trip where I was probably the only person on the entire Alcan Highway to be annoyed by everything he saw. In a truly humbling part of the world, I was dumb and mad at everything for no good reason, and she knew.

Of course she did. Not that it mattered where we were. Walmart on a Wednesday with my wife is better than the Alps on Christmas with anyone else. It’s why I felt so lucky to make this trip with her in the first place, and why I spent days chasing an unreal perfect moment at the expense of imperfect real ones.

You travel with the people you care about because the place is never the point. And because they forgive you.

“Oh look,” she said, pointing at the nav screen. A smile. “Our ETA went up again.”

The post What a Ford Bronco and a lion hunter taught me about the perfect road trip appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Matthew Anderson is an American engineer who relocated to Germany a few years ago for work. In his spare time, with reckless abandon, he pursues a baffling obsession with unexceptional Eastern Bloc cars. We don’t ask him too many follow-up questions. –EW

In Part 3 of this series, covering the European adventures of me/wife/dog/weird-Fiat-based-camper-van, I shared a photo. In the foreground, Luka looks for a place to relieve himself in the shadow of our Hobby 600 Wohnmobil. In the background, a jagged limestone peak. Not pictured; me repeatedly punching myself in the head for damaging the camper before the first tank of diesel was gone.

Let’s go back a couple of months, shall we? A friend of mine, Marcus, had informed me that the Fiat Ducato van (on which the Hobby 600 is based) boasts a low floor and, hence, relatively low center of gravity. This means lithe handling, for a van, earning it a sporting reputation within the 1980s camper crowd.

Marcus was in my head as we carved up the San Bernardino pass in the Swiss Alps. We were in a hurry. Another friend of mine was getting married the next day and we needed to make it to Chianti in time for the welcome party.

The rhythm of the pass was like Climb Dance but underwater. As each apex came nearer, I fed on the throttle earlier and earlier to gain a leg up on the 2.5-liter turbodiesel’s boost lag. With elevation grew my trust of the camper’s dimensions, which let me push to apex earlier and bring the big side slabs of aluminum ever closer to rocks and guard rails.

Dog and lady were neither impressed nor amused. I would stop after this next one … promise! I cranked the wheel hard right and buried my foot, plastic cutlery clanging in our cabinet. The apex passed under the right-side body overhang. The engine boosted up and the bus started to track out to the left edge of the lane. CRUNCH … DRAGGGGG … CRACK!

Uh oh.

My wife and I locked eyes. Lukas looked concerned, too. I pulled off to the side of the road. What greeted me underneath the camper made me sick to my stomach. The leveling jack, which normally hangs down 2-3 inches, was stuck through the subfloor. I walked around and got some fresh air. My only real option was to pile back in the camper and press on.

Our first overnight stop, at a quaint farm overlooking Italy’s Lake Como, allowed further investigation. I asked the farm owner if she happened to have a torch and a vise … but senza fortuna (no luck). She made up for it with a plate of home-cured meats and cheeses. As long as there was no water ingress and the leveling function somewhat worked, I’d have to punt this fix to another day. In the meantime it meant strategically parking to minimize use of that gimpy leg.

That worked for the next four weeks. Now fast forward to the small beach town of Torre de Benagalbón near Málaga, Spain. I’d been keeping one eye open for a metal fab shop or friendly-looking garage, and one popped out of nowhere on our way back to camp from paddle boarding. I sat down at our folding picnic table for a cram session of relevant Spanish vocabulary before riding my bike back down the hill.

Here goes nada, en español:

Matt Anderson: Good day.

Young Metalworker: Hello.

MA: Yes, hello. I have broken my cat (emphæsis on the wrong syllæble) in Switzerland. The cat on my camper. (He lifts it). I have bent him (shows a couple of photos on phone). Can you fix him by cutting him or making him hot with an acetylene surprise?

YM: … Ok, we can fix it. No problem. When you remove it, put it in this pile (gestures a pile of broken gate latches, ladders, and makings of a grill). When do you leave?

MA: Today is Monday. I must drive Thursday. I can install him on “miracles” … sorry, I mean, “Wednesday.”

YM: That is possible, yes.

MA: OK! I apologize for my bad Spanish. Bye.

YM: Relax. Bye.

Well, that was only a little awkward! I scrambled back up the hill and had the jack removed in minutes. Back on the folding Chinese clown bike I went, coasting into the shop entrance in my still-dripping swimsuit. I chucked the leveler on the pile.

On Tuesday, I rode by and noticed my part on the “When We Get Around To It” mound had not yet been gotten around to. I freaked out a little bit and tried to find the young metal worker. I sheepishly called out “…hhhola?” An old fella popped out from behind a big machine, so I was relieved to find someone yet peeved that I’d have to, once again, try to communicate as a toddler does to a full-grown adult.

MA: Good day. I was here in the past. Monday. I have the bent cat over there. The boy said he fixes it by miracles … I mean Wednesday. Maybe you are family with it?

Old Metalworker: … I don’t know about it. Let’s look.

Me: Oh, good. Can you cut him and make a soldier on it? Or make it red and move it?

Old metalworker: I think we can try something a little simpler. Just give me a few minutes to find the right tools.

Me: Super good! Thank you!

I was stunned by this man’s approachability, absolutely friendly demeanor, and willingness to attempt the repair right away. He quickly fixed the jack in a hydraulic vise, wandered every corner of the dirt-floored shop, and returned with a 4-inch box section. Slipping it over the leveler like a Harbor Freight racing jack handle on an unsuspecting 3/8 drive ratchet, he returned it to its original form in one fluid motion. Damn.

I ask what I owe. “Nada,” he says. I won’t stand for that, so I slip him a 10-Euro note and depart with my standard string of gracias-es and apologies for the quality of my Spanish.

I pedaled my garbage bike up the hill, past the fig trees, olive groves, vacation residences, and into the tiny expat-run campground. Channeling the dopamine and adrenaline from my successful interaction and repair, I sealed the floor and bolted the piece back in place while the cooking coals for dinner heated up.

Another crisis, another solution. I think I’ve learned my lesson though when it comes to fast driving and slow repairs. Slow driving and speedy repairs are smarter.

This marks the end of the Space Van series and our adventures with it in Europe, but fear not! The Hobby came home with me to the Carolinas, which means the saga continues. Thanks for reading!

The post How to quit worrying, ditch your job, and ramble Europe in a ’90s spacevan: Part 5 (finale) appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The bright red paint catches the eye and the chrome gas-tank panels shimmer. You swing a leg over the low and firm bench seat. You tap the starter button. It fires almost instantly.

It’s a Honda, after all. The engine settles into a deep putter. It’s a CB77 Super Hawk.

The 305-cc Super Hawk was Honda’s “sportbike” of the 1960s. Along with the CL77 Scrambler and CA77 Dream, the CB77 was a major part of how the company planned to own the American motorcycle market. It’s hard to imagine today, but in the mid-1950s, the Japanese motorcycle industry was barely a blip on the map. England dominated the garages of everyday riders, that country’s bikemakers offering everything from entry-level, 150-cc singles to sporting twins of 650 or 1000 cc.

In 1953, BSA was the world’s largest producer of motorcycles. American manufacturers defined the large-bore touring market with their 1200-cc Harley Panheads and Indian Chiefs, but Indian went bankrupt that same year. And in 1959, a company born only ten years earlier—founded to produce bicycle engines, of all things—became the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world.

Honda Motor Company Limited was founded in 1948. In 1959, it opened American Honda Motor Company, its U.S. arm, in Los Angeles. The goal was not to to make limited models, or to chase horsepower wars, or to develop a cult following. Honda engineered and built motorcycles that were clean, efficient, and meant for ordinary people. One of those bikes, the Super Cub, brought inexpensive motorcycling to the masses and sealed Honda’s success. But the firm’s 305-cc twins marked the beginning of the end of the British motorcycle industry.

In 1959 Honda released a 305-cc motorcycle first known as the C76 Dream. The Dream was a revelation, a reliable and quick machine at an affordable price, yet it offered technology, like an electric starter, that wasn’t a consideration for British bikes. (The Triumph Bonneville wouldn’t get an electric start until 1980, three years before its maker went bankrupt.) In 1960, the C76 became the CA77 (known outside America as the C77). Honda introduced the CB77 Super Hawk, the sportbike of the range, in 1961. Nineteen sixty-five brought the CL77 Scrambler.

Those three models represent different experiences, and liking one doesn’t mean you’ll like the other. They all share the same parallel-twin of around 28 hp. One might not expect a 305-cc Honda to make much of a noise, but the engine has its own throaty sound that surprises many. The CA77 Dream is the “touring” model in the lineup, with its relatively upright riding position and medium-width bars, and it feels right puttering around back roads. The CL77 Scrambler is by far the loudest, with the most British-like vibrations, especially since the removable muffler is now missing on many examples. The handlebars are wide and make you want to stand up on the pegs and let the bike flow between your legs.

Lastly, there’s the Super Hawk. The narrow bars give fast steering inputs. The riding position is only slightly forward, but these bikes are all small beasts, and they can be cramped for many. That twin arguably provides a perfect blend of sound, between noise from gearing, from the engine’s top end, and from the ignition system. The valves and timing chain aren’t the quietest, especially after 60 years of use, but each cylinder fires with a solid thump. The 180-degree crankshaft gives the engine a distinct note while revving smoothly to 9000 rpm.

All that noise just confirms everything is working in harmony.

The 305s are an example of classic Honda engineering: They just work, and they work well. Fit and finish is near-perfect, and great thought was put into the little details that make the bike easy to service. Lest we forget, this is a Honda, so parts are plentiful and affordable, and the bike will require little unplanned service. (I am actually English myself and own just as many British bikes as Hondas, so none of this is personal. British and Italian bikes just have an aura about them that says, Will it start today?)

Plentiful and affordable also describes the bikes themselves. These Hondas represent strong value—you can still buy a nice example of any 305 for under $5000. Some believe the relatively low displacement makes these bikes too small or impractical for modern roads, but in reality, most classic motorcycles rarely see more than 55 mph. Rather, they are used around town for ice-cream and coffee runs and for slower back roads. In that light, the 305s are a dream, no pun intended.

Wide availability coupled with that perceived low usability has traditionally held values back. The CA77 Dream has historically carried the lowest value and the CL77 Scrambler the highest, with the CB77 Super Hawk slotting in the middle. That pattern has recently been shifting, however, with all models rising sporadically. The CL77 has lagged slightly in this new market, possibly because it lacks the chrome and bright paint that might appeal more to online impulse buyers looking for garage candy.

1965 Honda CB77 Super Hawk #3 value: $5,400

1965 Honda CA77 Dream #3 value: $4,800

1965 Honda CL77 Scrambler #3 value: $4,800

These bikes were seen as worthless for the longest time—many owners simply chucked them in the corner of the garage rather than sell for pennies. The rise in values has led many of those examples to reappear on the market, and barn-find hunters, restorers, and flippers seem to continually find them. If you’d prefer a project, you’ll have no problem sourcing a 305 in rougher shape. Honda made around 250,000 of these twins and the engines last forever, so the market always holds plenty of suitable starting points.

Don’t be afraid of a bike that has been sitting, either. I’ve pulled more than ten 305s out of long-term storage, the bikes covered in an inch of dust. All but one required only a carb clean, a battery, and fresh gas to get running.

So here we have a relatively affordable 1960s bike that is reliable and trustworthy, that’s able to keep up in 50-mph traffic, that has plentiful parts availability, and that provides the unique riding experience only found with a small Honda twin. It’s hard to find another classic motorcycle that provides such joy for so little money.

Five grand for a sculpture you can take to coffee with your buddies? Why not? After all, friends and riding are what motorcycling is all about.

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The post Why Honda’s early twins are some of today’s best buys appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Across the digital world, most published content is designed for quick consumption. Still, deeper stories have a place—to share the depth of an experience, explore a corner of history, or ponder a question that truly engages the goopy mass between your ears.

Pour your beverage of choice and join us now for a story from our Great Reads project. Let us know what you think in the comments or by email: tips@hagerty.com

Things got weird. Or perhaps they started weird, and in some kind of dollhouse Stockholm madness, I simply could not tell the difference.

I was in the American South, for 800 miles and five days, in a 14-horse German three-wheeler the size of a hat.

A microcar.

There were chickens.

Last spring, I had dinner with Tennessee’s Jeff Lane. Jeff founded a car museum in Nashville. He is both a friend and a generally swell human. As I levered my nose into a bucket of gin and tonic, he mentioned a looming vacation. A week on the beautiful Natchez Trace Parkway, he said. A group of microcar owners was trekking the road’s length, Nashville to Natchez, Mississippi, for fun. Then they were doing that same drive in reverse.

In the postwar austerity of 1950s Europe, money was thin on the ground. Industry churned out bare-bones transport, small cars powered by repurposed motorbike engines. Most were quirky, loud, slow, and hot. Fast examples might crest 60 mph; others would not top 35 without falling off a cliff.

To know anything about microcars is to know that whipping one through modern traffic is like gunning a lawn tractor down the freeway while listening to a wood chipper eat forks.

Do not ask why, Diary, but I begged Jeff: Let me go with.

He took a swig of his drink. I could loan you a car, he said. Then he smiled the smile of a man who knows something you don’t.

***

We began in June, on a Monday, at The Lane Motor Museum.

The cast rolled in from all corners. Nine cars in total. Jeff and his partner, Christine O’Neill, arrived in their 1969 Fiat 500L. Florida’s Patty Schwarze, a retired pancake-house proprietor, brought her 1960 BMW 600. I met Gene Burshtein, a commercial realtor from Brooklyn, New York, as he unloaded his 1958 Vespa 400 from the bed of his Ram pickup. The difference in scale made the Vespa appear to be wearing the Ram like a boot.

“It fit,” Gene said, pleased.

Wayne Saunders, a retired car dealer from Oklahoma: 1970 Subaru Sambar pickup. Bob and Jennifer Lancaster, electrical contractors, North Carolina: 1973 Fiat 500. Herb de la Porte, a retired paramedic, Ohio: a 1973 Bond Bug three-wheeler. Herb’s wife, Sheila, brought a 1958 BMW Isetta. Larry Newberry, from Tennessee, once ran a microcar restoration shop with 12 employees; the 1958 Vespa he towed to Nashville is one of the 47 (!) Vespas he has restored.

Jeff Lane loaned me his 1956 Heinkel Kabine. This 14-horse road nugget, two front wheels and one rear, was the slowest machine in our caravan. Every car had teacup pistons. The Vespas, being two-stroke, drank oil with their fuel. The drivers had little in common save obvious joy at being temporarily outside anything like real life.

Not every machine present, Jeff noted, was a microcar in the traditional sense. The 750-cc Bond and the BMW 600, he said, eclipsed the unofficial 500-cc class displacement cap; the Fiats, he told me, were at that limit but too “normal.” Too fast and comfortable, apparently.

I asked if this dichotomy was important. Jeff shrugged—they were all funky and small, he said, so who cares?

The Bond Bug had a doorless fiberglass body, a solid rear axle, and a roof-windshield assembly that tilted up for easy ingress. That last part would have made more sense if the car had been designed with doors. “It’s super weird,” Herb said.

“The Sixties were a great time for drugs,” I said, squinting like Columbo.

“Let’s face it,” Herb said, brightening, “a fantastic time for drugs! All these cars came out of drugs! They’re all bright colors!” Then he started the Bug and revved it wildly in neutral, as if to emphasize something about drugs or fantastic times or, as the man said, Who Cares?

The ensuing week would bring mechanical failures large and small. Significant quantities of alcohol would be consumed in hotel lobbies. Every person I would meet would be a delight. At a Mississippi gas station, for reasons that felt important at the time, I would buy multiple rubber novelty chickens. Corny jokes would fly fast and loose, mostly regarding the strange thrill of long-distance travel powered by shot-glass pistons.

But that was later. In the meat of a Tennessee summer, in humidity thick enough to taste, our caravan clattered and ring-a-dinged out of Nashville. Five miles later, while baking next to the Heinkel’s barely insulated drivetrain, behind the car’s refrigerator-style door, behind windows that did not roll down, I was already slap-happy, drenched in sweat and deaf.

Probably heat stroke, I thought.

Spoiler: It wasn’t.

***

Who decides a transport machine must look like this?

Airplane engineers, apparently. Still, you get the sense even they weren’t convinced.

The Heinkel Fleugzeugwerke (“aircraft works”) found success building mail planes in the 1920s, then bombers for the Luftwaffe. Reparations after World War II made further airplane construction illegal, so the company turned instead to affordable scooters and microcars, to help postwar Germans get back on the road.

Some 6000 Kabines were sold from 1956 to 1958. Their buyers took home a machine not unlike a BMW Isetta, if an Isetta were 200 pounds lighter and shaped more like a mutant carp. Each ten-inch front wheel wore a hydraulic drum brake and independent suspension. The single rear drive wheel rode in an alloy swing arm that also carried a one-cylinder, 175-cc Heinkel scooter engine and a sequentially shifted four-speed gearbox.

Before we left town, Jeff Lane gave me a shakedown ride around the block.

“The ignition switch,” he offered, “is weird.”

“I never would have guessed,” I said.

Pushing the Heinkel’s key into its dash lock powered the car’s electrics; pushing it down from there engaged the starter. The engine idled with a pleasant little wocka-wocka, like a chainsaw at the bottom of a pool. The white plastic shift knob, no larger than a nickel, sat at driver’s left. Ignore the gearbox and its bag of false neutrals, the Heinkel would lose speed at full throttle on level ground. Sometimes it did that anyway.

The brakes were mostly useful for ensuring the car did not roll around in the wind at stoplights, which is not a joke. Opening the folding roof allowed in a modicum of air but also the blazing sun. Top speed varied with humidity and tire pressure, but opening the roof and the two triangular vent windows might drop VMax by 5 mph.

During that shakedown drive, as the Heinkel fought to hold 30 mph on a hill—Third gear! No, we’re slowing, back to fourth!—Jeff told me about driving this very car in a 1200-mile rally across Italy.

“We climbed a mountain,” he said. “First gear, wide open, for an hour.” Pause for emphasis. “An hour.”

What he didn’t mention: Later, they had to go down that mountain.

Gravity can move a Heinkel Kabine more quickly than the car’s engine. Over a week of travel, the pattern held: A feeling of immense freedom as you crested a hill and shifted to neutral. Rampant acceleration. Then some reminder of the existence of physics—a corner, a bump—followed by a sense of light concern welling up from the base of your spine and a genuine curiosity as to why you were, at that moment, on three ten-inch wheels, in a 100-inch-long German Barcalounger, trusting your life to a pair of brake drums comically ineffective and yet still capable of lifting the rear wheel.

Somewhere in the terrifying bliss of this descent, you would achieve the speed limit. A rate of travel you had lusted after while climbing the hill, except you were wrong.

“We see these cyclists pedaling up the mountain,” Lane said, “and we’re barely catching them. We finally pass, and then they suck in behind the Heinkel for a draft.”

This hopped-up-on-goofballs Rascal scooter went . . . 1200 miles?

“Stuff always breaks. Two hundred miles a day may not seem like a lot, but you might spend three hours by the side of the road. You end the day and—”

“It’s a lot?” I said.

“A lot.”

But he was smiling, see, when he said it.

***

Toward the end of the trip, at a lunch stop, we sat and talked. Around a long wooden table, over gallons of iced tea, the owners answered my questions:

Why microcars?

Herb de la Porte (Bond Bug): [Shrugs] I just like weird stuff?

Jennifer Lancaster (Fiat 500): I fell in love with a little blue Isetta. They multiplied!

Gene Burshtein (Vespa 400): Because I don’t need to compensate. [Group laughs]

Larry Newberry (Vespa 400): I couldn’t afford a whole car. [Group laughs]

No one owns just one micro. Patty has 15 of them. Why?

Patty Schwarze (BMW 600): They don’t stay running? [Group laughs]

Why travel long-distance in a scooter with a hat on it?

Patty: It is an amazing conduit, a wonderful way to meet people. People say that about all unusual cars, but here, you don’t get any of the jealousy or aggression. People are just happy to see you.

Sheila de la Porte (BMW Isetta): We want people to enjoy them—“I’ve only seen that on TV.” Now you can sit in it!

Patty: At car shows, we’re next to a muscle car, nobody looks at the muscle car. “How many people can you fit in there? Where’s the wind-up key?”

Gene: “Did you drive that here?” No, I put it in my pocket.

***

The Natchez Trace Parkway is managed by the National Park Service. Manicured pull-offs and tidy wooden signposts border a limited-access two-lane built along the path of an old Native American trail. The road covers 444 miles end to end, from rolling hills in the north to flat low country in the south. Dwarfed by a canopy of trees and passing motorcycles, our little caravan went end to end to end, Nashville-Natchez-Nashville, like a wagon train of Smurfs.

On the second afternoon, the group played musical chairs, swapping seats for giggles. I was told to try other cars. Who says no?

1958 BMW Isetta (300 cc): The Heinkel but more normal, with a smoother engine. Louder but slightly more stable at speed. (Isettas have two rear wheels, albeit in the middle of the car.)

1960 BMW 600 (600 cc): Like a stretched Isetta but more grown-up—four-wheel independent suspension, real torque, a back seat for two adults, a comfy interior. A small shipping container that wants to be your friend.

1973 Bond Bug (750 cc): Lightly menacing but oddly stable at speed. Also wonderfully fast. Seventy miles per hour was, to paraphrase The Hunt for Red October, possible, but not recommended.

1970 Subaru Sambar (360 cc): A chipper little groundskeeper’s truck with tissue-paper trim and a smooth two-stroke twin behind the rear wheels. Imagine a VW Transporter shrunk in the wash. My head touched the headliner and my knees hit the dash, which is nice, because I am five-foot-ten and I never get to say those words and if this life is not about novel experience then why leave home?

*

Commonality was limited. Build quality varied from “BIFL household appliance” to “hardware-store discount bin.” Chiefly, you could have sussed each car’s nationality with closed eyes. Chalk it up to the intersection of tiny footprint and hyper-low build cost: The more compromises an engineer must make, the more those compromises say about the engineer. And a microcar is compromise on the hoof.

Patty Schwarze, the BMW 600 owner: “You can tell from the owner’s manuals.” The French ones, she said, didn’t give much information, laissez-faire. (“I had a Panhard where every wire in the harness was brown.”) Predictably, Patty continued, the Italian books delivered only vague shrugs of detail, and the German ones were precise about everything.

“It’s in the Messerschmitt manual,” she said. “If the engine overheats and seizes, you’re supposed to stop and have a cigarette while it cools. That’s actually in the book.”

We left Nashville on a Monday and made Natchez on Tuesday night. Wednesday was reserved for rest, so I worked from my hotel room. At lunch, I borrowed Jeff’s Fiat 500 to run an errand. After nearly 500 miles in the Heinkel, the Fiat felt like a rocket, complex and fast. It had a hot-rodded drivetrain transplanted from a Fiat 126 and made perhaps 25 hp.

At a stoplight in downtown Natchez, a middle-aged man in an older Nissan Altima rolled down his window and scowled.

“What is that?”

I smiled. “It’s a Fiat!”

“Is that a car?”

“Definitely,” I said.

Silence.

“I . . . promise?”

“It actually runs?” he said.

“I can prove it.”

“Yes?”

The light turned green. The scowling continued. “Have a good day!” he yelled, driving off.

A weird moment. Not as weird as our stop in Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, where Patty jumped in her car on a few minutes’ notice after hearing about an Elvis convention downtown, hauling off with me and our photographer, Dave Burnett, to find an Elvis impersonator. (Patty had made a bet with someone else in the group, and she wanted to win.)

But still: pretty weird.

***

Eight hundred miles is a lot of miles. Whole counties were spent pondering only Heinkel engine thrash. And microcars in general.

Origins vary with manufacturer, but the class was essentially born in the Fifties. By the late Sixties, micros were all but extinct, killed off by more practical small cars like the Austin Mini. Machines like the Subaru and Bond carried on due to quirks of their homelands that kept production sensible.

In retrospect, these cars could not have existed much sooner or remained viable much later. By the middle of the last century, wartime pressure had greatly evolved the art of rapid mass-production, improving both its speed and the quality of its results. Microcars were also designed in our last great period of unfenced automotive innovation, just prior to the onset of significant government regulation. The result was a set of quick-and-dirty engineering solutions at a time when an inordinate amount of drivers were happy to take whatever they could get.

Yes, those solutions were often remarkably unsafe and abnormal. Yes, they often came with goofy doors, or bubble canopies, or the cornering stability of a barstool.

Still, what is normal? Take the Heinkel’s “weird” ignition switch—odd, but only next to tradition. And what makes turning a key more logical than pushing it, anyway?

It makes you wonder how many of our storied old engineering conventions are the best answer to a given problem, and how many only seem that way because they’re familiar.

In postwar Europe, micros were a necessity. In this country, during a period of relative prosperity, the cars were simply a reminder that Japan has nothing like a Nebraska interstate, and that no one in Germany has to trudge across 50 miles of snowy plains to reach the nearest grocery. For Americans, that reality made the cars seem like toys. They were mounted on poles outside junkyards and restaurants when just a few years old, carried into buildings as practical jokes, made butt of punchline and experiment.

In Nashville, Larry Newberry, the Vespa expert, talked about buying a 1962 Berkeley three-wheeler some time back. When he got the car home, he said, he saw that someone had screwed grease fittings into the engine’s pistons.

His face wrinkled up. “There’s nothing to grease there! Why would you do that?”

No sense of humor, maybe?

At a Mississippi gas stop, someone asked Sheila de la Porte how fast her Isetta could go—maybe 40 mph? Forty-five?

Game, she took the bait.

“I can go,” she sniffed, “as fast as I want.”

The group burst into laughter.

After a while, flogging the Heinkel—taking and demanding its punishment—became an odd thrill, a kind of neon reminder that we are all alive by sheer chance and could at any point be not. Everything from stop signs to train crossings required a kind of ascetic, think-about-it, walk-on-coals work.

Sheila’s husband, Herb, had alluded to it: Travel with these cars is a drug. And as with any drug, what you get out of a trip has a lot to do with what you put in.

***

At least once a day, somewhere on the road, some bystander or gas-station customer asked me “if you can still get parts for that.” I had no idea, but I knew who to ask, and so I did, at that lunch stop. Some micros are relatively easy to keep in spares, the group told me; others are not.

Relatively is the key word there—because microcar repair is microcar repair, normal goes out the window.

Patty Schwarze: The Messerschmitt club does this brilliant thing—you have to be a member in order to buy parts. It helps keep them alive. Still, everybody here will tell you, they’ve ordered a reproduction part you couldn’t use if your life depended on it, because it just doesn’t fit. Subarus are horrible because nobody kept parts. They were worthless.