Indholdsfortegnelse for Volume 10 i RETROMOTIVE

Nigel Keats is originally from the UK and is into English cars, so at first it may be hard to see where his passion for AMC may have come from. After joining the Navy, and at the age of 19, Nigel purchased his first sports car, a 1966 Sunbeam Alpine. In the UK, at the time, insurance was expensive for under 25s and especially for cars with larger capacity engines, so the 1.5-litre Sunbeam was a logical choice. Nigel enjoyed it for a few years and then sold it to fund a backpacking holiday around the US. He was keen on becoming a pilot and the plan was to attempt this in the US where the costs for this type of training were far less than in the UK. Whilst…

Historic racer and classic collector Aaron Lewis is a driver first and foremost. The business of restoration, he says, can be frustrating. ‘The rebuild is the painful bit, for some people that’s the enjoyment. I’m a driver – I know what I want, and know what I want the end result to be, but I’m not a mechanic. Restoring cars or doing mechanical work to improve cars can be painful. It always takes three times as long and costs four times as much as you think.’ And Aaron points to his newest project – a replica Jaguar XJ13, low and sleek and British Racing Green. ‘This one has cost me far more than it should have to finish, and I’m talking like one hundred grand more. No way on the…

Some classic sports cars are rare, like the Ferrari 288 GTO with just 270 built, or even rarer like the 44 Jaguar XJR-15s of the early ’90s; on the face of it, Duncan’s original 1965 AC Shelby Cobra – being one of 260 ‘427’ models, clearly fits in this rare category as well. However, it is the only factory right-hand-drive 427 in existence, making it instead one of one (1 of 1). There is definitely more to this Shelby Cobra story! Most would know that the AC Shelby Cobra was a successful marrying of the English AC Cars body with Ford V8s and associated running gear by Shelby American. Carroll Shelby originally approached AC Cars in 1961 to discuss the idea of putting a small block Ford V8 into AC’s…

The impact of the Second World War could be felt across the globe. In the automotive sector, many factories were shut down or even destroyed. Quality materials used prior to WWII were in short supply and the day-to-day operations of once thriving companies were struggling across the board. Custom and small coachbuilders like Bertone, Pinin Farina (the company was renamed Pininfarina in 1961, when 68-year-old Battista ‘Pinin’ Pininfarina formally handed the business over to his son Sergio) and Ghia fell the hardest without the manufacturing support from the larger automobile factories, grappling to secure work and meaningful opportunities. However, overseas manufacturers in the United States jumped at the opportunity to work with Italian coachbuilders. Enter Virgil Exner who was the current head of the design department at Chrysler and had…

The Pininfarina Azzurra Spider – née Fiat 124 Sport Spider – is a pretty car of timeless character; deserves decent and timeless drives. And 50 years of marriage warrants proper celebration so Australian couple Michael and Christa Wapler headed to Germany, picked up a low-mileage, very original 1985 Azzurra Spider, drove across the Alps and toured the Italian countryside. Under the Tuscan summer sun and more. ‘We’d always dreamt about driving Italy in an Italian car,’ Michael says. ‘It’s a very beautiful country with very beautiful country roads. Think of Tuscany and its thousands of hills and mountains – exceedingly beautiful and if you can drive an open car there in the summer it’s just a delight.’ Michael and Christa already had a Fiat 124 Spider at home in Adelaide…

Simply put, Runge Cars are vehicle art, individually produced with the oldest skills of hand-forming a metal skin around a performance chassis. What sets Runge Cars apart is that the owner and builder, Chris Runge (pronounced Rungee), designs and then forms the panels with an old school English wheel. His skills might be understandable if he was in his late 60s and taught by a master craftsman…however, he isn’t and wasn’t, instead starting Runge Cars in his early 30s and teaching himself to form panels on a home-built wheel. The story starts with Chris growing up on a family hobby farm in Alexandria, a small rural town about two hours drive North West of Minneapolis. Home-schooled from the fifth grade, his first job at age 12 was yard work at…

A lot of people thought it was crazy, driving across America in a 50-year-old truck. I never quite got the concern. Perhaps it was because I had the luxury of an open-ended timeline, or perhaps I am used to driving old cars that tend to break down. Maybe I was just being optimistic… or naïve. I figured there was not much that couldn’t be fixed on the road. After all, part of the charm of these old 4X4s is that they are simple and easy to work on and there was always the option of getting a tow to the closest mechanic. When something exploded and I lost all power just outside Demming, New Mexico, I did start to wonder what my options would be if the entire engine was…