100 BEST CARS

Mini, McLaren, Jaguar and Range Rover are easy leaders in Autocar’s list of Britain’s best-ever 100 cars. I’ve no problem endorsing the first couple of dozen but, notwithstanding Gordon Murray’s ingenious contribution, the Yamaha Motiv.e at 5 looks like lip-service to greenery-yallery. The Jaguar XJ220 also poses a question. It was neither a commercial nor technical success and needed a lot of fettling before it reached reality. Driving it was like looking at the world through a letterbox. The Aston Martins in the list are an odd bunch with no ground-breaking DB2, elegant DBS or Ian Callum DB7. Similarly it’s difficult to include a D-type Jaguar – OK on the Mulsanne straight but a bit of a handful on corners – and leave out the C-type which was more precise and exciting.
McLaren F1 (above): Collected daughter Joanna from school during my road test. She’s older now, still beautiful.
Austin-Healey Sprite. 71st. This was my second one at Turnberry. Wonderfully crisp, precise car.

Lotuses are questionable on grounds of quality and reliability but I’m surprised there is no Elan Plus2S. It was beautifully proportioned. I once did 300 miles in three hours with one. There you are the older I get the faster I was. I would not include any TVR; all I drove were just brute force and ignorance. Blower Bentleys were something of an aberration. I suppose they were glamorous but never won anything like the unsupercharged cars. Derby Bentleys are missing from the list. Surely the Silent Sports Car deserves better. Jensen-Healey – delete. Not well made, hastily modified and really quite dull. Same goes for the Daimler Dart SP250. The Edward Turner engine was ok but Daimler was so strapped for cash it had to cobble up a horrid plastic body that creaked and cracked.
One of my first drives in an E-type; Scottish Motor Show after introduction at Geneva in 1961 (below), with Jaguar apprentice Clive Martin.

No Bristols please. Except for the BMW-based 400 and the beautiful 404 they were heavy and lugubrious. I never went for the mystique so assiduously promoted by writers like the matchless Leonard Setright. Triumph Stag? I thought it was rubbish when I went on the press launch. Hillman Imp? I owned one and when it went it was OK; I drove it to Maranello where I had lunch with Enzo Ferrari, but it was not made very well. Same goes for any Avenger, even the Avenger Tiger. The press launch was on Malta where we couldn’t drive them far enough to grow suspicious of unreliability. The Morgan 3 wheeler or Plus 4 were fine, but the Plus 8 was where Morgan began to lose its way and power outstripped handling. I wouldn’t include a Delorean in any list except perhaps one on how not to develop a sports car. It was terrible. Reliant Scimitar? A definite maybe. Triumph TR5 - not bad until they put a wiggly independent back-end on making it pitch and curtsy. Triumph 1300 absolutely not. And why relegate the MGA to 95th? Shame

Range Rover. Deserves its place. Took this on the press launch by Goonhilly Down, 1970.



Love lists

Hillman Imp. On road test for The Motor with Penny Duckworth by door. Pre-launch picture so badges taped over.

100.Range Rover Evoque 99. Ginetta G40R 98. Vauxhall Astra 97. Marcos TSO 96. Honda Civic 95. MGA 94. Vauxhall Chevette HSR 93. Triumph Dolomite Sprint 92. Allard J2 91. Honda Jazz 90. Sunbeam Tiger 89. Nissan Juke 88. Invicta Black Prince 87. Noble M12 86. Lotus Carlton 85. Caterham Seven 160 84. Caparo T1 83. Rolls-Royce 10 HP 82. Triumph TR5 PI 81. Radical RXC 80. Triumph 1300 79. Daimler SP250 Dart 78. Morgan 4/4 77. Renault Megane RS 225 76. Noble M600 75. Lotus Sunbeam 74. Morgan Plus 8 73. BAC Mono 72. Gordon-Keeble 71. Austin-Healey Sprite 70. MGB GT 69. Bristol Fighter 68. Ford Cortina 1600E 67. Bowler EXR 66. AC Ace 65. Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow 64. Austin FX4 63. Napier-Railton 62. Caterham Supersport 61. Triumph 2000 60. Jaguar F-type 59. Morgan 3-wheeler 58. Reliant Scimitar 57. TVR Sagaris 56. Ford Escort RS2000 55. Bentley Continental GT 54. Ford Capri RS3100 53. Delorean DMC-12 52. Aston Martin V8 51. Ascari KZ1 50. Aston Martin V12 Vantage S 49. Subaru Impreza WRC 48. Hillman Avenger Tiger 47. Triumph Stag 46. Hillman Imp 45. Lister Storm 44. Rover P5B 43. Lotus Evora 42. Rover P6 3500S 41. Nissan Qashqai 40. Ariel Atom 39. Vauxhall Prince Henry 38. Aston Martin One-77 37. Rover 75 36. Jaguar XJ 35. Austin Seven 34. Bristol Blenheim 33. Lotus Cortina 32. Austin-Healey 3000 31. Aston Martin Vanquish 30. Lotus Seven 29. Land Rover 28. Jensen-Healey 27. Lotus Esprit 26. MG Midget 25. McLaren 12C 24. Morris Minor 23. Lotus Elan 22. TVR Speed 12 21. Rover SD1 20. TVR Chimaera 19. BMW Mini 18. Bentley Blower 17. Jaguar XF 16. Ford GT40 15. Rolls-Royce Phantom 14. Lotus Elise 13. Jaguar D-type 12. Ford Sierra RS Cosworth 11. Jensen FF 10. Ford Escort Mexico 9. TVR Griffith 8. Aston Martin DB5 7. Jaguar XJ220 6. McLaren P1 5. Yamaha MOTIV.e 4. Range Rover 3. Jaguar E-type 2. McLaren F1 1. original Mini

Works Austin-Healey 3000 rally car test. I am the fresh-faced youth.

Jaguar R-Coupe

Richard Bremner was right. In his astute and entertaining Autocar column, THEY WERE THE FUTURE, ONCE, on September 4 2013 he wrote:

Bold R-Coupe had XK150 grille

A dozen years ago, Jaguar was a maker of new old cars for middle-aged men occupying the verdantly gardened mid-century detached homes of Warwickshire. Many worked for Jaguar itself. They drove little and large X-type and XJ throwbacks to the 1968 XJ6, visually troubled S-types or XK8s redolent of E-types but missing the original’s delicacy and drama. Jaguar needed to break from its past, and slowly, sometimes painfully, it has. And no more completely than with today’s boldly original XJ. Yet the car that triggered the big cat’s escape from the formaldehyde world has almost been forgotten.
Jaguar concept cars were once rarer than back-to-back Browns Lane profits and were more likely to be produced by design houses than Coventry. The XK180 and the F-type changed that, their debuts at last century’s end a prelude to a failed attempt at a production F-type. But these two were worryingly retro, despite their voluptuous details.

1998 XK180 with epitome of Jaguar heritage, a long-nosed tailfinned D-type

The 2001 R-Coupe, on the other hand, boldly launched forward. True, it had the Mk2 ‘mouth eating a banana’ grille, its long-bonnet short-tail proportions referenced the XK120 and it carried enough wood and leather to furnish a Regency drawing room. But this was no antique Jaguar.
The R-Coupe’s cabin was as on the money as London’s Met bar and just as desirable to occupy. Rich, smooth-contoured wood swept along the lower reaches of the doors and as deep-walled central console, while crisply-seamed leather sheathed curve-topped bucket seats redolent of an early E-type’s and the dash was packed with a battery of enticingly silvered instruments. More arresting still was a floor surfaced with the same pale blonde Connolly leather that upholstered the seats. This was the Jaguar cabin gone modern, but one still lightly tethered to a past that the company’s managers could just about feel comfortable with.

Crisp, clean, 2000 F-type concept
They also felt eased by the back-catalogued echoes of the R-Coupe’s crisply sculpted contours. The fuselage-like section of its body sides, the voluptuous bunching of the bonnet over its quarter of headlights, the shallow glasshouse and the full-length waistline crease were all to be found on Jaguars past. So was there something really new in this concept? There was. The bold air vents flanking its grille, a dynamic wide-tracked stance, 21-inch alloys, the subtle air vents in the front wings and its confident, untroubled sweeps of surface and form have characterised Jaguars since.
Yet at its 2001 Frankfurt show debut there were plenty who didn’t know quite what to make of the R-Coupe. It was less dramatic than the XK180 and the F-type, it was far from wildly futuristic and many were surprised to see the S-type’s grille. But there’s something about the elegantly contained muscle, its carefully teased proportions and confidently spare jewellery that appealed then and still does now. The R-Coupe made a fine start on a slow-burning revolution - and it’s still playing out today.

Bold, subtle, four headlamp R-Coupe


Richard was right about the 2001 R-Coupe concept being an unsung hero of the Jaguar revolution. What follows is the entry in my Jaguar ebook.

No Jaguar – no car ever – quite matched the E-type. UK stamp immortalised.


Jaguar celebrated the centenary of Sir William Lyons’ birth on September 4 2001, and a week later showed a concept car at the Frankfurt Motor Show illustrating how Jaguar design might develop. The Frankfurt car was never going to be a production reality, it was scarcely even a running prototype yet several of its features emerged later. Built in six months, it had no engine and only rudimentary S-type suspension and was not based on any current or proposed Jaguar, but had been “constructed round a realistic 4-seater package and a V8 powertrain.” Its flights of fancy included F1-style paddle-shift gear changing, headlamp beams that followed the steering, electronic door releases and voice-controlled telematics. A challenge to Jaguar designers, it reflected the company’s aim to shift from a niche manufacturer to a major player in the premium car sector. “It represented a long term vision rather than anything we will see tomorrow,” according to managing director Jonathan Browning. Its styling included a front grille reminiscent of the XK150, and it was the first project to be completed following Ian Callum’s appointment as design director in 1999. He created a 15-strong Advanced Design Studio under Julian Thomson that took the lead in creating the R-Coupe, which was only revealed once it did not figure anywhere in Jaguar’s plans.

2000 F-type had wrap-round window Pewter paintwork, badges of solid silver and a silver-plated grille surround served to emphasise that it was strictly a one-off exercise of the sort that manufacturers prepare as a matter of course, ready to develop into production realities if required. Critical acclaim was not immediate. Automobile Year was disappointed in some respects although: “The overall concept achieved just what Jaguar needed, elegant and distinctive design, exclusive styling with beautiful proportions such as Jaguar always had in the past. Ian Callum has a knack of understanding exclusive design, as he did with Aston Martin.” Jaguar historian Paul Skilleter saw it as: “An enlarged futuristic XJ-S… a generous 2+2 … a lot bigger, 6.35cm (2.5in) longer than an XJ-S, wider by a massive 60.96cm (24in), and 8.89cm (3.5in) taller. Some said they could not have identified the car as a Jaguar if it had not been badged, but they were in a minority. … an endorsement that the R-Coupe is the bold step Ian Callum is convinced is necessary.” And so it proved. It certainly repositioned Jaguar, took it into new territory, and ensured partiality towards retro styling was by no means obsessive
INTRODUCTION September 2001. BODY Coupe; 2-doors, 4-seats. ENGINE V8-cylinders. TRANSMISSION rear wheel drive CHASSIS steel monocoque with subframes; independent suspension by coil springs and unequal length wishbones; anti roll bars; telescopic dampers; hydraulic servo ventilated disc brakes; alloy wheels
DIMENSIONS wheelbase 290.83cm (114.5in); length 492.76cm (194in); width 186.69cm (73.5in); height 134.62cm (53in). EQUIPMENT Ebony macassar wood veneer interior, blonde Connolly hide on seats, deep brown saddle hide elsewhere.

Pale blonde Connolly leather R-Coupe

Classic book

Guild of Motoring Writers on a front line? A handful of founders in 1944 maybe but not many. Road tests can be written under fire from unhappy PRs, readers throw brickbats, but it’s a relatively safe business so long as you choose carefully who to drive with on press launches. Yet Mike Brewer was actually shot at doing an illuminating series on army vehicles in Afghanistan. Bouncy and enthusiastic, his publicist describes Brewer as TVs best-known car dealing expert, and now he has produced a book on buying and selling modern classic cars.

Brewer presents Discovery channel’s Wheeler Dealer series, which has been running for nine years and is shown all over the world. It illustrates what interest there is in classic cars and Brewer’s book is a useful primer. It covers buying, owning, selling, auctions and basics like giving a car a deep clean. “It never ceases to amaze me how little effort people make when it comes to tidying up their cars,” Brewer says. Quite right. I learned it long ago during a brief spell in the rough and tumble of the Glasgow motor trade. “If it’s looking a bit grimy get the engine steam cleaned, and don’t forget the painted areas like the inner wings.” Every motoring writer should have a spell selling cars. What makes people buy can be revealing, and it’s hardly ever understeer or oversteer or how many seconds it takes to 60.

Brewer’s experience in the trade was more successful than mine. See his Tales from the Trade. There is cogent advice on starter classics. He recommends Mark 1 Ford Escort and Vauxhall Viva HB - plenty of variants and spares are cheap. I was less convinced about his advocacy of the Triumph Spitfire although he does recommend later ones after 1974.

Sporting classics? MGA yes, Delorean definitely not – terrible car – a dishonest pastiche. Favourite modern classics? VW Beetle – OK. Ford Capri ? Maybe. Lotus Elan? Yes. Jaguar E-type, yes certainly although not the lugubrious V12. And Morgan? OK but probably not the Plus 8, which I always thought over-powered for the frail frame. As for the Citroën DS; well to say the complicated suspension and hydraulics aren’t for the faint-hearted is an understatement. I’d go for something more bullet-proof - an MGB maybe with a Heritage bodyshell – to fend off the Taliban.

Mike Brewer’s The Wheeler Dealer Know How! £16.99 ISBN 978-1-845844-89-9 everything you need to know about buying, preparing and selling collectable cars. www.veloce.co.uk.
Top: Jaguar E-type. Ford Capri II. My sturdy MGB. Bottom - I tested military vehicles in my Gunner days. 8 (Alma) Field Battery Royal Artillery Daimler Ferret armoured car, like they used to build in what became the Jaguar factory in Browns Lane. That’s me in the turret.

Motor racing history.

Charterhall 1958. Researching revisions to Dove Publishing’s book on Jim Clark, I came across the race programme with his Border Reivers’ entry in the Aston Martin DBR1 (pictured below). It’s at number 14. At number 16 is the Ecurie Ecosse Cooper Monaco and at 27 Barry Filer’s Marcos GT, both to be driven by a mysterious A.N.Other. This was an unsubtle subterfuge for Jackie Stewart to conceal the early stages of his motor racing career. Apprehensive following the injuries Jackie’s brother, Jimmy, sustained at Le Mans in 1954 driving a works Aston Martin their mother forbade racing. Jimmy also inverted a D-type Jaguar at the Nürburgring but his talent was so outstanding that Lofty England wanted him to co-drive with Mike Hawthorn at Le Mans in 1955. In deference to his nervous mother Jimmy turned it down. He would probably have been every bit as good as Jackie, although in retrospect it might have been just as well not to drive at Le Mans in 1955. It was the Hawthorn-Macklin misunderstanding that set off the chain of event that led to the worst accident ever in motor racing. Pictured by me at the hairpin before the Charterhall straight, Jimmy Stewart on left, Graham Birrell also racing at Charterhall, Gordon Hunter Glasgow motor trade entrepreneur, and Jackie in a trendy hat.

Historical anomaly

Speculation again over Jaguar reviving Daimler. Cars UK says the Chinese prefer something three-boxier than the XJ. Mandarins apparently like to sit in the back and the XJ rear is too cosy. Makes sense. Jaguar acquired Daimler in 1951 on being forbidden to extend its old factory at Foleshill, leased Browns Lane a wartime shadow factory still making Ferret armoured cars, so the move occupied most of 1951. This is me on the turret of 8 (Alma) Field Battery Royal Artillery's Ferret some time ago.

Daimler was an historical anomaly. Set up in England in 1893 by FR Simms to develop designs by Gottlieb Daimler, its Coventry Radford factory made Panhards based on Daimler’s patents, so British and German Daimler companies had little in common except Gottlieb Daimler as a director until 1898. After the Prince of Wales bought one in 1900, British-made Daimlers remained the choice of royals for the best part of half a century, despite the smokiness of Knight sleeve-valve engines. The Knight licence and overreaching itself financially were Daimler’s downfall and in 1910 it had to be rescued by Birmingham Small Arms (BSA), among whose directors was F Dudley Docker. One of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s sponsors (an upturned lifeboat named after him housed the expedition’s survivors), Docker’s interests ranged from firearms and motorcycles to railway rolling stock.

Daimlers of the 1930s were staid and not very fast but easy to drive, thanks to Wilson pre-selector gearboxes. Post-1945 the Conquest Century gave a good account of itself in saloon car races, a tribute to chassis engineering rather than power. The royal connection foundered following BSA chairman Dudley’s son Sir Bernard’s behaviour, and the gaudiness of Lady Docker’s limousines (Golden Zabra below) at Earls Court Motor Shows of the 1950s. The last straw was plastic-bodied SP250 sports cars of the 1960s, with a V8 designed by Edward Turner of Triumph motorcycles. He nearly developed an association with William Lyons in 1942, but the cars were not very good and renounced after the Jaguar takeover. Only the V8 engine survived.

Daimler independent production ended in 1968, lingering as Daimler versions of Jaguar saloons until the 1990s. Only the splendid DS420 limousine, based on a stretched Mark X remained, styled like the Docker Daimlers and a 1950s Empress Hooper. (Saloon below)

Browns Lane was given over to making Jaguars, the Radford factory survived until the 1990s but now both are gone and Jaguar is at another ex-wartime shadow factory, Castle Bromwich. Set up alongside an aerodrome by Morris Motors’ Nuffield Group in 1936 it made Spitfires and Lancasters. Control was quickly passed to Vickers-Armstrong and after the war it was taken over by Fisher and Ludlow, bombed-out of its own factory in Coventry. As Pressed Steel Fisher it became part of British Leyland, making bodies for Jaguar, which took it over completely in 1977. The aluminium XK is made there and it wouldn’t take much to make it a bit more upright, with a crinkly grille and a woody interior to match anything coming out of Stuttgart. The Chinese like their Deutsches Daimlers, so there is every reason to suppose they would take with equal enthusiasm to latter-day Dockery Daimlers.

Skoda Octavia

You can’t get away from class. We were a Wolseley family. The Vanden Plas Princess and the Armstrong Siddeley came later. We slipped downmarket with the Austin Sixteen in which I passed my driving test, but that was bought in 1948 or so, when cars were hard to come by. It was replaced by a Wolseley Six-Eighty. Not a notable success; its single ohc was unhappy with teenage over-revving but it looked classy with an upright radiator and wood facia. Wasn’t up to next-door’s Rover 14 maybe, but it was better than Austins, which were, by and large, bought by people who believed the Dependable slogan and were NQOC. Austins weren’t stylish but they were well made. Father was in steel and his metallurgist chums said Longbridge was fussy about the steel it was buying for gearboxes. He found that convincing.

Austin, Armstrong Siddeley, Vanden Plas and Wolseley; all, alas, gone. Yet class distinctions in cars remain. When I was road testing it helped make up your mind about cars once you had identified likely buyers - easy with BMWs. People who bought BMWs buyers got other BMW owners (like me) a bad name. Racy and aggressive they demanded cars that were fast and handled well. BMW buyers were fusspots so you set the road-holding bar higher for BMWs.

Ford buyers – difficult to avoid stereotyping. They were always cost-conscious high-mileage reps. Jaguar buyers went for style, refinement and prestige. They are no longer the same as the Jaguar buyers of our Wolseley years – Jaguars then were much too, well flashy really, like Uncle Bob, who had had Vauxhalls and then a black Jaguar with huge headlights and too much, so my mother thought, voluptuous curves and showy chrome.

Hyundai and Kia buyers now are connoisseurs of the long-distance warranty and born-again Austin buyers, looking for good metallurgy and unpretentious quality, buy Skodas. Dependable, regular, no nonsense solid worth, Skoda’s styling is derivative but the customers want it like that. Nothing radical; good proportions are more important than pretendy avant garde.

Skodas look modest just like Austins looked modest. They were styled by the unlikely Dick Burzi. Born in Buenos Aires, Ricardo Burzi joined Lancia in the 1920s. “Styling” was only beginning and he augmented his income drawing cartoons for newspapers, only to get into trouble for drawing some of the emerging Duce, Benito Mussolini. You couldn’t do that in Italy and Burzi had to flee.

Fortunately Vincenzo Lancia chanced to meet Herbert Austin on a liner, recommended him, and so the Italian-Argentinian joined Longbridge in 1929. His reponse to challenges proved variable. He was partly responsible for the splendid 1940s Sheerline and Princess, based on chief executive Leonard Lord’s Bentley, but he made 1945 Austins look like 1930s Chevrolets. His big solo effort, under instructions from Lord, was the ill-starred Austin A90 Atlantic.

Skoda (Octavia press launch above - my BMW behind) has avoided such flights of fancy. It knows its place, unlike the flagship VW Passat, which has got longer and sleeker. The cards in the Skoda pack have been shuffled, taking the Octavia a bit up-market and making it bigger, to accommodate the Rapid in a lower slot. Octavia is on VW’s MQB platform along with the Audi A3, Seat León and Mark 7 Golf and is temptingly priced at around £20,000, unless you specify lots of bells and whistles. It rides, handles and drives well. It isn’t fast, 11.5sec to 60mph, it is quite economical at about 45mpg without being super-frugal and qualifies as thoroughly worthy. Not faint praise for those old solid sensible dependable Austin customers.