Ted Lee drew up the MG octagon. He was a 1920s accountant with Morris Garages that was selling spruced up Morris Oxfords. Undergraduates wanted sporty cars but couldn’t always run to £1475 Bugattis or £1975 Bentleys, so Lee’s pale small manager with a limp saw an opportunity. Cecil Kimber was good at selling £140 Morrises until he found that fancy bodywork in bright colours could make that £245.
Read MoreDaniel Sexton Gurney
If you wanted to portray a great American you would create somebody like Dan Gurney. Lean, tall, talented, good-looking, lit with a broad Californian smile he personified all the best of the country. His All-American Racers of Santa Ana, founded with another great, Carroll Shelby, inspired the Anglo-American Eagle that in 1967 won the first victory for an American grand prix car since 1921. American as baseball and apple pie, Dan embraced Britain and its racing car engineering from rural Rye, Sussex next door to Harry Weslake. Britain embraced Dan.
Read MoreRenault Classic Digital
There was nothing modest about Renault’s own description of its new Grand Sport series. In a word, it was hyperaérodynamique. The steeply-raked radiator grille blended into smooth wings with the headlamps faired in between them. The original styling clay buck shows the lamp units set into the front of the wings. This was the first Renault to do away with running boards. A centre pillar on saloon models separated the halves of the flat windscreen, which was raked back to match the lines of the radiator. Spats enclosed the rear wheels. At the front the chromium-plated bumper blade curved down in the centre to provide access for a starting handle.
Read MoreBentley Rotary
Royal Air Force centenary celebrations must include Bentley. Better remembered now for cars than aero engines, at its creation on 1 April 1918 Lieutenant Walter Owen Bentley Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) became Captain WO Bentley RAF among all 50,000 Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) personnel transferred into the new service. A lot of its 2,500 aircraft were equipped with engines for which in 1919 the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors granted WO £8,000 [£156,000].
Read MoreThe Vauxhall Motorcycle
BMW’s R32 motorcycle was a star at the 1923 Paris Salon. Max Friz’s Bayern Kleinmotor became a classic, yet another exhibit just as advanced is almost forgotten. Vauxhall had one also with shaft drive and an in-line 4-cylinder engine, against BMW’s side-valve flat-twin. Friz had already a horizontal 2-cylinder but for 1923 placed it sideways, its cooling fins out in the airstream, creating a motorcycling hallmark.
Read MoreSCOTY Scottish Car of the Year
McConomy, Palmer, Thomsett, Thorpe, Jay, Griffin, Hicks, Acaster, Hancock, Herlihy, Bruce and Clark, perhaps not in that order, are among Jaguar Land Rover people sharing Discovery’s Scottish Car of the Year (SCOTY) title. Sixth from left is Stephen Park of the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers (ASMW) that made the award. It was a good celebration at Dalmahoy, Edinburgh with everybody “cutting a rug” as trendies said fifty years ago, into the wee sma’ oors.
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