Innehållsförteckning för Volume 17 från RETROMOTIVE

The original M3, based on BMW’s handsome E30 Three Series, arrived with flair and fanfare at the 1985 Frankfurt Auto Show. Here was a well-revised, well-sorted E30 built as a homologation special to challenge the likes of the Cosworth-engined Mercedes-Benz 190E on the racetracks of Europe. While sharing its main components with the road-going Three Series, as per Group A regulations, the M3 was lighter and stiffer and quicker. Front and rear windscreens were bonded to the body with the C pillar and rear screen also re-angled plus the fibreglass bootlid was lifted a tad for better aerodynamics. There were also plastic front and rear bumpers, side skirts, rear apron and deck spoiler _ only the bonnet, roof and sunroof were shared with the standard E30 coupe. Wider wheel arches…

Welcome to the 90’s — where you could buy a Tamagotchi, supersize your McDonald’s fries, google the worth of your collectible Beanie Baby, pick up a Nirvana CD, and still make it home just in time to watch Friends on NBC. For petrolheads especially, the decade was nothing short of legendary. For many, regardless of age, the era of the bedroom poster car feels strangely nostalgic, and for good reason. It’s almost as if the print shops couldn’t keep up. One after another the posters rolled off the press, the colors smeared by the eager hands of enthusiasts looking to improve their interior design skills through the implementation of some period correct couture. Still warm, they captured the visages of machines worthy of nothing but the Silver Screen: the Porsche…

The great melting pot—America. A country whose rich diversity is reflected equally in its car culture, imbued for generations with the international tastes of its enthusiasts. While the nation’s love of American muscle is unmistakably loud and proud, it also embraces and celebrates the gamut of everything weird and wacky from the motoring world. A Saturday morning jaunt down to your local Cars and Coffee stateside would reward you with glimpses of exotics straight from the Amalfi coast, right-hand drive street racers from Tokyo, Bavarian station wagons prepped for the Green Hell, dune-ready Baja Bugs, and deluxe coupes untouched since the Roaring 20’s. Captivated by a homemade kit car, it would take you minutes to realize you hadn’t even made it down one row. Stock, modified, hand-built, popular, rare, expensive,…

The V12 engine has long been a Ferrari signature tune, stretching back to the lightweight 125 S roadster of 1947, the first car to wear the famed marque’s badge. Designed in the main by engineer Gioachino Colombo, the 125’s short-stroke 1.5 litre engine produced some 118 horsepower in competition and was followed at the Turin show a year later by the first of the Ferrari 166s _ a roadster dubbed the barchetta plus a Berlinetta, or coupe. The 166 MMs (for Mille Miglia) became the 138-horsepower V12 weapon for long distance racing before the slightly longer, more powerful 195 arrived as a Sport or Inter version in 1950 _ the S tuned for racing and the latter more the gentlemans’ tourer and arguably the original Ferrari road car. By now…

Panel vans are prosaic machines, best-suited for goods deliveries or carting the tools of a trade with a pair of doors and seating up front, window-less cargo area down back. Yet by Australia’s mid-1970s, packs of dollied-up, bright-hued panel vans had become cult cars from Bondi to the Back of Beyond. Ford, Holden and Chrysler all turned their hand to adding sporting pretensions _ stripes and fancy wheels and engine options _ to the humble van; a marketing, and styling, exercise to cash in on a young, and mainly male, fad for dressing up work vehicles for weekend leisure. Surfing and sex were the chief leisure activities facilitated by a fancy van out of work hours. Among these so-called ‘Sin Bins’ was the Ford Sundowner, the Chrysler Drifter and Holden’s…

As a young 18-year-old my first car was a Mazda 1300. I had the big dream that my next car would be a Ford Falcon XY GT 351. My brother told me I was mad, you will kill yourself and so the search of an alternative ended up with the purchase of an Italian Lancia Beta Coupe. This is where my love of Fiats and Lancia’s came from, sharing a common twin cam motor and very easy to work on while offering enough performance and driving enjoyment. The next phase of my Italian love affair came after returning from the local pub one night, we sat down like most Fridays after drinks and started watching the 1977 Castrol Rally. The opening scene in night darkness as the next car is…

Low and lithe, this very special Porsche roadster is a one-off piece of automotive art _ with a poignant tale to tell. Created from a banged-up Porsche 356 coupe and designed by Colorado’s Al Lager, the car now lives in Sonoma County, California. It was bought by Garrett Loube who sent it straight to San Diego for a re-trim of the spartan cockpit. But Garrett died in early 2021. Before he had a chance to drive his bespoke silver machine. Garrett, says his friend Michael Streichsbier, loved gorgeous-looking things. “This car certainly fit the bill. Garrett was originally a graphic designer hence his appreciation of beautiful form and shapes.” The roadster was created by Porsche 356 guru Al Lager, from a car with a rear end too smashed to rebuild…

Cute and cuddly, the Goggomobil <ok> Dart is one of the rarest of roadsters. Looks like it could have been, should have been, a prototype character for a Pixar movie about lightweight sportscars roaming the great Outback. For this was an Australian-designed car, part of a small family of antipodean Goggomobils built through the late 1950s and into the 1960s in an auto venture by wily Sydney car dealer Bill Buckle who’d quit his engineering apprenticeship and taken over his late father’s Buckle Motors in 1947, selling the likes of Borgwards, Citroens and Triumphs. On a European sojourn in the early 1950s _ when and where he became friends with Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn _ Bill’s eye was taken by the AC Ace on display at the 1952 Earls…