A to Z

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0–60

Manufacturers are falling over them- selves to put supercars on the market. Not those wimpy things restricted to 155 mph,...

1000-miles

At the end of May, I was in Italy following the Mille Miglia Retrospective. There was a time when I...

I can remember exactly where and when I saw my first 300 SL. It was in the small Norfolk town of King’s Lynn in 1955. A crowd had gathered around the car. At the time I had only a vague interest in cars, but I knew about the 300 SL....

500-cc

This year marks the 60th anni-versary of the British 500-cc movement, a category which became the first Formula 3. It...

60 Years of the Upscale Mini

This year is the 60th anniversary of the Morris Mini-Minor and Austin Se7en, and the Goodwood Revival will feature some...

750 MC

Mike Lawrence There was a time, when I was at school, when much of the energy of me and my mate, Dave, went into the design of our Austin Seven Specials. We even sent away to the 750 MC for the regulations. Dave still reckons that Lotus owes us royalties...

A Grumpy Pedant Writes

Spring is in the air and historic sports cars are being fettled for the Mille Miglia, except they’re not. They...

Abarth

Hardly a month goes by without some bygone marque being resurrected. The majority, thank the Lord Harry, sink with barely...

Aero Takes Flight

We are frequently told that Formula One is at the cutting edge of technology, but that has been true only occasionally, most recently with new heights being reached in the thermal efficiency of engines. This is something we cannot see and how it is achieved is something that not all...

Aerodynamics

Mike Lawrence In a recent editorial, Casey Annis bemoaned wind tunnels and the negative effect they have had on racing...

Alfa

BBC TV’s “Top Gear” has several items of faith. One is that electric and hybrid cars are not the solution....

Alfieri’s Due

Mike Lawrence In 1957 Maserati was supreme. Fangio won the F1 Championship and the Maserati 450S came within an ace of winning the WSCC, and then Maserati suddenly withdrew and left the way clear for Ferrari to become the dominant Italian marque. For a moment, Maserati had the laurel within...

Anon

Some fellow petrolheads have been asking what I think about the movie Anonymous, and the thesis that the true author...

Archie

In May, I was invited to a ceremony to unveil a “blue plaque.” Blue plaques in Britan are not quite...

Art

I have just been to an exhibition of motor racing art and, as usual, it was a depressing experience. I saw a painting of the first corner of the 1955 Monaco GP which is a direct copy of a well-known photograph. The difference is that the painting had an outrageous...

Aston

Mike Lawrence There is plenty to celebrate about Aston Martin, not least its survival skills as the automotive Houdini. A...

Aston Martin Motorcycle?

Aston Martin has announced a collaboration with revived motorcycle company, Brough Superior, to make the AMB001, a limited edition track-only...

Autolycan

Sigmund Freud and his disciples have had a lot of fun with Shakespeare’s plays, especially the character of Hamlet. The Oedipus Complex has loomed large, but Oedipus himself did not have a complex…he actually did kill his father and sleep with mother—the scamp. Mike Lawrence My Ph.D. is in Shakespeare...

Automotive Footnotes

Anyone who has studied literature will know about footnotes and the glossary of terms because the language is constantly changing....

Ayrton Senna

As I write this column in late April, the mass media is full of stories about Ayrton Senna. I must...

Bicester

Bicester is a small market town 12 miles north of Oxford. For centuries nothing much remarkable happened, then an estate of small factory units was built to encourage light industry. First March, then Reynard, turned the town into the world capital of customer racing cars. More than 3,000 single-seaters were...

Bill Boddy

Every Brit in motor racing of a certain age blames Bill Boddy and Denis Jenkinson for the fact that we...

Biographies

Early in 1996, I met up with some fellow hacks and someone mentioned that so-and-so was working on Jacques Villeneuve’s...

Birkin & Bentley—The Sequel

Bentley is to make 12 “continuation” examples of the supercharged 4.5-liter Birkin “Blower,” one of those cars whose legend far surpasses its achievement. For a time it could claim to be the world’s fastest car, but it was built for racing and in that context it must be regarded as...

Birth of Lola

One of the most memorable motor races I have ever seen was broadcast from the 1959 Easter Monday Goodwood Meeting...

Bond Goes Racing

Mike Lawrence There is a minor industry in new James Bond novels and if we include Young James Bond and...

Boom Time

When I was young, career advice was rudimentary. On hearing that I was interested in literature, an advisor told me that there was an opening for a printer’s apprentice in Stratford-upon-Avon. Nobody mentioned jobs that paid you millions for being incompetent. A classmate of mine got a job in a...

Branding

Mike Lawrence Here is a problem for future historians and statisticians: Kimi Raikkonen has won Grands Prix for a team...

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Mike Lawrence Recently, the world’s oldest motor sport event came under threat of closure, a threat since lifted, although not...

Bristol

In July 1946, the prototype Bristol 400 first ran and, since then, at least 750 niche car companies have been launched and failed. You look at 750 and think “Mike’s making that up.” I wrote A–Z of Sports Cars, 1945–1990, and when I embarked on the commission I thought there...