Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i Classics World

I can’t pretend to remember the launch of any of our ‘Class of 1975’ cars in any great detail; I was of primary school age at the time and it was some years before Autocar would become a regular read in the back row of double History lessons on a Wednesday afternoon. Each of them does, however, have a place in my memory for various reasons. The XJ-S has long been one of my favourite Jaguars, and out of all the fancy press loan cars and random company projects which have taken up residence on the drive, our 4-litre XJS coupe was one of the few my late mother-in-law requested a trip in. “You were really somebody if you had one of these back in the day,” she remarked, as…

To many enthusiasts of British Motor Corporation and British Leyland cars, the products of their overseas operations are endlessly fascinating. From Australia, there was the Austin Kimberley, the Morris Nomad and the Wolseley 24/80, while from Italy there was the Innocenti Regent. South Africa, meanwhile, made a truly striking interpretation of the ADO16 followed by its interesting replacement you see here. When Ian Creese takes his Austin Apache to shows, people have been known to ask if he created it himself by welding three different BL cars together. It may look like an Austin Allegro front and Triumph 2000 Mk2 rear attached to the hull of an Austin 1300, but the Apache was a very real production car – and a key model for Leyland South Africa. The Nuffield Group…

It’s over 20 years since we last had a full-on British International Motor Show at the NEC, but back in ’75 the event was renamed the Diamond Jubilee Motor Show to recognise the 60th running of the show. The organisers, the SMMT, even increased the budget for the Earls Court venue by £75,000 to a total of £350,000, while reducing the restrictions on display height. Onlookers were alarmed and fascinated in equal measure by the ability to see the underside of the cars displayed at extreme angles, while an unusually enlightened Motor Sport considered the celebratory show’s “drift back toward female flesh,” courtesy mainly of perennial offenders TVR, to be “a bit of a shame”. On a more business-focused note, the press reported that the main topic of discussion among…

Every car enthusiast will feel the need to scratch the sports car itch at some point, but the realities of drop-top ownership can grate if such a car is put into everyday service. Soft-tops may be the lightest and purest way to cover a two-seater’s cabin, but many aren’t designed with refinement in mind, nor practicalities like ease of cleaning and street-parked security. The answer, of course, is a folding metal affair. These more complex systems essentially allow for a more conventional roof-up experience, albeit with added weight and complexity as a trade-off. However, despite that extra metal and moving parts, values seem surprisingly low across the board, especially for some of the less obvious cars featured here. For those on a budget with fun high on the agenda, here…

Ford Escort RS2000 (Mk5/6) (1991–1996) The Mk5 Escort’s poorly received debut is well known. Despite being a clean-sheet design, its 1990 launch was seen as evidence of Ford’s complacency: bland styling, lacklustre handling, cheaper torsion-bar rear suspension than the Mk4, and with continued use of much-criticised CVH engines. Making matters worse, there was no hot version, breaking a 22-year performance Escort tradition. Yet despite the negative press, the Mk5 sold extremely well. It finished second to the Mk3 Fiesta in both 1990 and 1991, and Ford soon responded with improvements, unveiling a much better oval-grilled facelift less than two years later. Before that update arrived, the range was buoyed by the long-awaited return of a performance variant. The previous halo Escort had been the 1.6-litre RS Turbo, but the new…

GOT A STORY TO SHARE? EMAIL IT TO CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK GERRY MCGOVERN REPORTEDLY LEAVES JLR It’s been widely reported that Gerry McGovern – Jaguar Land Rover’s chief creative officer and the architect of Jaguar’s divisive new look and feel – has left the company. The long-serving JLR designer was allegedly told to leave the business with immediate effect. The move comes just a week after new JLR CEO PB Balaji started in his role following Adrian Mardell’s retirement, and brings an end to McGovern’s 21-year career at Land Rover and Jaguar. During this he introduced the Range Rover Evoque and helped shape the reinvention of the Defender, as well as helping to further the Range Rover’s position as the luxury car of choice. Before joining JLR in 2004, McGovern was with…

EMAIL: CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK WORTHY OF ACCLAIM With reference to Simon’s article on the back page of Classics World (December 2025, p145), I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments and did feel for him having to listen to the comments that were made about the Morris Marina after having taken so much trouble with the renovation. However, what really struck home were the comments he had to endure about the Triumph Acclaim. In the early 1980s at the large British Leyland dealership in Salisbury of Henlys, I had recently transferred from the workshop side to the Sales Department. I knew my Triumphs inside out and loved all of them. I had various ones of my own but when the Triumph Acclaim came along, I was invited up to the NEC to attend the…

A Triumph Vitesse Estate never officially existed. Rather, an unofficial version was created as a joint project between the Standard Triumph showroom at Berkeley Square in Mayfair, London, and the service department run by M A ‘Jock’ Brown, General Manager, London Sales & Service, of Standard Triumph, Western Avenue, Park Royal. The story goes that one day, company boss Lord Stokes was visiting Standard Triumph’s West London facilities and was chatting to Jock Brown when he spotted a Vitesse Estate that was being worked on. “What’s that?” said Stokes. To which Brown responded: “That Sir, is a Vitesse Estate.” “But we don’t make a Vitesse Estate,” said Lord Stokes. Brown explained that following enquiries from several customers, he had managed to convert a standard Vitesse saloon into an estate car…

Reliant is a name that doesn’t typically conjure images of spirited, sporting roadsters. Scimitar aside, the marque has been more readily associated with three-wheeled oddities – and one particularly infamous TV character. But in the early 1980s, Reliant spotted an opportunity. MG and Triumph sports cars had recently been consigned to the past, and with no viable two-seater replacements from the British Leyland stable, there was a gap in the market. Into that void, Reliant launched the SS1 – short for Small Sports One – a compact, minimalist sports car intended as an extension of its Scimitar range. While the Scimitar GTE was a four-seat GT that provided an alternative to the likes of the Ford Capri, the SS1 of 1984 would be a smaller, purer expression of the sporting…

Our ST24’s interior had been stripped out for access during the metalwork stage seen last issue, so it was the perfect opportunity to address the other elephant in the room: 25 years of wear and tear. When new, the ST24 was a genuinely pleasant place to sit. Half-leather Recaro-style seats with heating as standard, white dials, leather steering wheel and just enough aluminium-effect trim to make you feel that bit more special than a rep in a 1.8 LX. Sadly, our Panther Black example had lost most of that sparkle. The headlining was sagging badly, the carpets were very grubby and the seats were showing their age with split stitching and broken electrics. It felt tired and unloved, and that wasn’t the impression we wanted from Ford’s first ‘ST’ car.…

1991 Mercedes C124 ● SWVA, October 30 Sold for: £6000 plus fees Among the many Mercedes entries in SWVA’s sale was this 230CE, a smart example of the desirable C124 coupe that had been with its vendor for 16 years. It came with a great history file to back up its genuine mileage of just 54,657 and sold at the top of its guide. 1991 Volvo S90 ● Anglia Car Auctions, November 1–2 Sold for: £5940 One of the more unusual lots was this 1997 Volvo S90 royal limousine, a Japanese import that was first registered in the UK in April 2017. With a stretched wheelbase and sumptuous grey leather, it attracted plenty of interest and beat its £2500-£3500 guide. 2001 Fiat Seicento ● SWVA, October 30 Sold for: £3650…

Developed in conjunction with Subaru (it was built in the same factory as its BRZ model) the GT86, which broke cover here just over a decade ago, will appeal to those looking for an affordable driver’s car that’s light, indecently quick and very unlikely to go wrong. And the winning recipe’s refreshingly simple; a slinky coupe body cloaks a well-balanced chassis, while a normally-aspirated four-cylinder engine drives the rear wheels via a six-speed manual or auto gearbox with a limited slip rear differential to glue it to the road. While the 197bhp from its 2.0-litre flat-four engine might not seem much, it’s enough to propel the lightweight GT86 (it’s just over 1200kg) from 0-60mph in 7.4 seconds. It wasn’t really about the numbers, though. It was about having fun at…

Shock absorbers (or dampers) aren’t renewed that often. There was a time when changing shock absorbers was part of the service schedule at around 50,000 miles but nowadays we wait for them to fail. Usually, a pair of shocks is renewed due to one or both having a wet patch (fluid leak), something normally noticed during the annual MoT inspection. With 102,000 miles to its name, we thought it best to remove the original Bilstein shock absorbers fitted to our car and replace them with a set of… Bilsteins. Being the Sport Tech 2.0 model, our MX-5 has factory-fitted sports suspension featuring Bilstein shock absorbers and a strut brace assembly over the engine. My local MX-5 specialists (MX5 Restorer) told me that if you order OE parts from Mazda you…

By the time you read this, I will have turned 60 years old. To me it’s just a number, but the family are making a big deal out of this milestone. That has got me thinking about getting older and the cars that have always been on my wish list, but which I now accept are never going to be more than a dream. I could reel off dozens of cars which fit that particular bill, but the one I’m getting dewy-eyed over right now but which I don’t think will ever grace the Goldsworthy drive is a Skoda Felicia – the pretty little convertible produced from 1959–1964 and not the heavily reworked Favorit that was built from 1994–2001. When I lived in Czechoslovakia (as it still was back then),…

HAZARD WARNING LIGHT KIT £83.98 — bettercarlighting.co.uk Better Car Lighting has upgraded its retrofit hazard warning light kit with flasher relays that work right the way down to 5 volts. This means that whatever bulbs your car has, your hazards will run for twice as long before being defeated by falling battery power – something which could make the difference during a breakdown. It’s easy to fit and is available with various switch options. UNIVERSAL THROTTLE POSITION SENSOR £92.06 — webcon.co.uk Webcon has added a universal throttle position sensor to its range of electronic fuel injection components. Manufactured for Webcon by OEM manufacturer Wabash, it has a conventional three-pin mini timer type connector that’s compatible with all major aftermarket engine management systems. Order as part number ATP200. CLASSICS WORLD BEST…

The Lotus Elan +2, or Type 50 in Lotus speak, was a pivotal car for the company. Aimed at the discerning motorist who wanted a proper Lotus but packaged in a more practical, more family-orientated format, it undoubtedly ticked all of these boxes. Designed and engineered to tap into this different demographic, it was a deliberate step upmarket, one intended to claw back sales being lost to the burgeoning Grand Touring sector. However, don’t fall for the illusion that the wider, longer and, admittedly, heavier +2 was simply a ‘bigger’ version of its rather lovely stablemate, the lithe, lightweight and petite Elan. True, it was rooted in the same design architecture, shared the same powertrain, and was as driver-focused. Perhaps even more so. But with the +2, Lotus had cleverly…

There’s not another car company in the world quite like Morgan. Since 1910, the Worcestershire firm has been doing things its own way – often in complete defiance of accepted business practice in the car industry – and has developed a massive following in the process. Today, the firm is still going strong with a range of idiosyncratic models that blend modern BMW powertrains with lightly modernised 1930s looks. The firm started out with three-wheelers, only moving into four-wheeled cars in 1936 with the 4-4 (later ‘4/4’), the badge signifying four wheels and four cylinders. Using a steel chassis with ash-framed aluminium bodywork, the car was lightweight by the standards of the day and provided impressive performance. A four-seater version of the 4-4 was added in 1937, with a drophead…

British Ford production expanded dramatically in the 1950s, meaning that Dagenham was bursting at the seams. Commercial vehicle production moved out to an ex-aircraft factory at Langley near Slough in 1960, close to London’s Heathrow airport, and it was here that the Transit started its long life. Originally built by Hawker aircraft in the 1930s, Langley became a major production plant for famous World War Two fights such as the Hurricane, Typhoon and Tempest. With demand for all Ford products continuing to grow, Transit assembly was moved to Swaythling in 1972. Langley was eventually hived off to Iveco in 1987 and closed down in 1997. In 2002, Ford stopped producing passenger cars in the UK, leaving the Southampton-made Transit as its only British-made vehicle. In 2009, with the new Ford…

It’s fair to say the global car industry was very different back in 2004. Rover and TVR were still with us, while Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo and Aston Martin were still part of Ford and General Motors still owned Saab and Vauxhall. The American giant also owned Australian marque Holden which came in handy when Vauxhall management here decided the UK line-up needed an image-boosting coupe model to replace the departed Calibra. The idea was simultaneously both brilliant and lunatic: import a dated Holden coupe packing a V8 engine and rear-wheel drive from Australia, slap on some Griffin badges and market it as a Vauxhall. In the early 2000s, the European car makers were already focusing their technology on emissions and efficiency, making an pushrod V8-engined coupe something of a…

The Porsche 911 has survived several pivotal moments over the past 60-plus years. After Porsche brought the model back from near obsolescence in the 1980s, the car underwent two major revisions in its original air-cooled format before a major transition to the water-cooled 996 in 1997. The simple act of adding a radiator and some coolant represented Porsche’s most significant departure from the original 911 concept. Although some enthusiasts objected to the 996’s shared development with the 986 Boxster, the shift was necessary. Porsche needed to modernise its engineering approach to keep pace with rivals and survive more generally as a maker of sports cars. In retrospect, the decision was both timely and successful. The 996 was fast, capable and refined, and set the stage for what followed. Launched in…