Through with Glass

Keeping Glass’s Guides for reference was either geeky or clever. You never know when you are going to need the price of a Vauxhall Astra of 1995 or what engines Ford Sierras had. The little fat books were full of information but this month the printed ones stop. Yes of course you can look things up digitally but sometimes you don’t exactly know what you don’t know.

Car dealers have been consulting Glass’s small print, often furtively, for 83 years. Now, instead, they will scan their smartphones Ipads and PCs for the same well-researched material in Glass’s Guide App. They’ve been doing so already since the App was set up in 2014 with four times the number of valuations and easy adjustments for mileages and variables, which used to be in tiresome tables. Now they’re just another click.

I’m not sure the App will ever be as smart as the natural born dealers I knew in my (mercifully) brief time in the Glasgow motor trade. They had an instructive feel for car values, like their ancestors had for horses. I knew one who could calculate in the blink of an eye how many Ford Zodiacs, Morris Minors, Jaguars and Austin Somersets he could trade against a Ferrari 250GT. I watched him do it. He always got it right and made a profit.

Ford Zodiac: I've been at some press launches. This is Silverstone when they still dismantled the stands between grands prix.

William Glass published his first Guide in July 1933. Hanns Schwacke did the same in Germany in the 1950s and the business expanded in the 1960s throughout Europe. There were PC versions when Glass’s acquired Editions Professionelles Glass SARL (EPG) in the 1980s and a private equity group took over Glass’s Information Systems in 1998. It merged to form EurotaxGlass’s AG in Freienbach, Switzerland. In 2006 Candover bought the lot for €480 million and renamed it HM Capital.

William Glass was born in Scotland in 1881and Rupert Pontin, director of valuations describes him as an engineer and believes he would have approved of the App. Glass was, says Pontin, “… a notable inventor who created the portable hydraulic jack, the electric switch-off kettle and the self-filling fountain pen,” Jack, kettle and fountain-pen notwithstanding I am less sure of the assertion that he also invented a mechanism for firing a machine gun through a rotating aircraft propeller. Franz Schneider Raymond Saulnier, Fokker, Scarff-Dibrovski, Sopwith-Kauper, George Constantinesco and even Marc Birkigt of the Hispano-Suiza engined SPADs would be among many to take issue with that. Swiss-born Schneider, who worked with Nieuport published this patent (below) in the German Flugsport in 1914 when Glass was 33.

Triumph TR weekend

Found a car I had quite forgotten and another I had merely overlooked at the TR Register’s convivial International Weekend. I had to look them up The Story of Triumph Sports Cars (Motor Racing Publications 1973) by Graham Robson. The Register’s Honorary President, course commentator at Lincolnshire showground, Robson knows all.

The TR with a wide grille was not one of the 3,331 TR3Bs produced in 1961-1962 for America with 2.0 and 2.2litre engines. They looked much like TR3As. This LNJ 58 was a replica of two prototypes made by Standard-Triumph’s development department on a wide-track TR4 chassis. This meant it had fatter wings and with rack and pinion steering, according to Robson, they turned out better cars than expected. “One, painted and trimmed in black and bearing the obvious nickname ‘Black Beta’ performed and handled like no TR ever before, for it had the 2.2litre engine and a variety of extra touches. Beta was a viable project for some time, particularly as it would involve only minimal tooling expense, and it was suggested that it might continue alongside a newly styled TR4 to give American dealers the best of both worlds.”

Both prototypes, Graham tells me, survive in course of reconstruction. It must have been an exciting time at Standard-Triumph, which was usually strapped for cash but had sold its profitable tractor-making subsidiary, providing cash for new models and a competition programme. That all led to success at Le Mans, the twin-cam “Sabrina” (don’t ask) engine and indirectly to the relationship with Vignale and Giovanni Michelotti.

The result of that, besides the later Triumph Herald’s shape, was the Italia on a TR3A chassis, put into limited production by Vignale between 1959 and 1963. The prototype had a drooping front and concealed headlights but the one shown in the Lincoln concours had the well-proportioned and elegant regular steel coupe body. It was an expensive production and only a few were ever brought to Britain. This Graham Andrews car, intriguingly with Italian registration 43387 (Torino) and British UYS (Glasgow) has the customary crossed flags on the tail. Never sure what they meant, the red cross is the nautical V, which might be Vignale but the blue-and-white S is anybody’s guess.

The Register invited other Triumph and Standard models on Sunday. Triumph shapes have generally aged well although I missed an example of Walter Belgrove’s wonderful “waterfall” grilles on a 1930s Dolomite. His essentially “budget” plain-sided TR2, like so many sports cars of the time owed something to the 1940 Mille Miglia BMW (below). From the Jaguar XK120 on, they all had smooth flowing wings and rounded prows. Belgrove’s achievement was to draw up a shape that could be mass produced with as few double-curvatures in the pressings as possible. It was essentially minimalist yet it worked.

Belgrove did not have a lot to do with the superb “razor-edge” Triumph 1800, later Renown, saloon. That was the work of Mulliner and Frank Callaby. You no sooner look for something in a Robson book that you find something else and in no time you are compelled to read through the whole thing. I discovered that much of the 1947 voluptuous Roadster was also the work of Callaby. There was one at Lincoln. The world’s last production car with a dickey seat.

I was familiar with lots of TR2s. I was even in MGG 29 when Ronnie Abbott had one of his accidents, fortunately without injury to all three of us in it at the time. The TR Register assured me that another I drove remains on its books. This is me in the passenger seat of Heather Fleming’s treasured OGB800.

DRIVING FULL CIRCLE

DRIVING FULL CIRCLE

Mercedes-Benz AMG GT R

They’re reinventing four wheel steering. It’s never really been away. A couple of dozen cars currently have it. Mercedes-Benz, one of its pioneers, is to replace the control arms of the AMG GT R’s rear axle with electro-mechanical actuators, which turn the rear wheels up to 1.5 degrees. Up to 100kph they point the opposite way to the fronts, above that they point the same way.

Freddie Dixon put four wheel steering on a racing car in 1935 and in 1938, when Hitler opened the Berlin Motor Show, Mercedes-Benz had it on the Gelandewagen. (Picture below by Stahlkocher) I reported in the Sunday Times Magazine of 8 December 1985 DRIVING COMES FULL CIRCLE. “Now that four-wheel drive is established, the next big development in car technol­ogy is likely to be four-wheel steering. At last month’s Tokyo Motor Show every major Japanese manufacturer had cars that steered through the back wheels as well as the fronts. Micro-electronics make them speed-sensitive, so the degree of rear-steer is less, say, for chang­ing lanes on a motorway than it is for moving the car sideways into a parking slot. Most of those shown at Tokyo were still at the concept stage, but Nissan has a rear-steer unit actu­ally in production and already offered as an option on Skylines for the Japanese home market. Nissan claims it im­proves the grip of the rear tyres by up to 70 per cent.”

It wasn’t long before Honda was making a Prelude that, “You could drive a long way without noticing the rear-wheel steer­ing. But you would be insen­sitive not to be aware of the taxi-like turning circle and the responsive roll-free cornering.” In The Sunday Times Motoring 6 September 1987 STEERING CLEAR OF THE COMPETITION “The world's first production ear in which all four wheels do the steering will be on view at the Frankfurt motor show which opens on Wednesday and will come onto the UK market next month at a cost of £14,100. Steering an extra set of wheels might sound like a complication we could do without — to be best left per­haps to dumper trucks and combine harvesters. That would be to deny the advan­tages of easier parking and significantly steadier behav­iour on the motorway. The mechanism that achieves it is more ingenious than com­plicated, and relatively in­expensive.

The £3000 difference be­tween the four-wheel steer (4WS) 2.0i-l6 Prelude and the similar EX version is mostly accounted for by the 16-valve (as opposed to 12-valve) en­gine and the more handsome specification. In West Ger­many it only costs an extra £640.

“Selling us something we did not even know we wanted is a singular skill of Japanese marketing. Yet there is a strong technical rationale for augmenting the front wheel steering.

Turning conventional steer­ing does not yank the front of the car immediately sideways. Instead the car yaws, that is to say it tends to lean over while turning, the back wheels following the change of direc­tion a moment later.

“It is this time lag that rear- wheel steering is designed to fill. If the steering wheel is turned more than a third or so, the back wheels deflect in the same direction as the front so the car moves almost bodily sideways. I tried it on a closed-off section of autobahn where a lane-change manoeuvre had been laid out. A con­ventional two-wheel steer car leans towards the outside of the swerve. A four-wheel steerer re­mains flat and level, enhan­cing control, feeling more precise and less fussy. It look a little getting used to. On the first few tries at 80kph I sent cones spinning. A few runs later, the skill was easily mas­tered at more than 100kph by leaving a little more clearance.

“Main road cornering has a similar safe feel. The rear wheels do not steer to the same degree as those at the front, a mere 1.5 degrees. It is sufficient for them to alter course only slightly to achieve the flatter, steadier movement that gives the Prelude a secure stance. The corollary of better cornering is improved manoeuvrability at parking speeds. Setting up the back car into a gap its own length has been an inventor's pipe dream for generations. Honda four-wheel steering is not quite like that.

“After the first one-third of a turn of the steering wheel, the rear steering changes direc­tion. Instead of defecting the same way as the fronts, the back wheels counter-steer up to 5.3 degrees, sufficient to diminish the turning circle by a full metre to 9.6 metres. Four-wheel steering is the most radical development for cars since four-wheel drive. If there are disadvantages, they are not apparent so far. Only some 3,000 Preludes will be sold in Britain this year. It is an extremely well- proportioned two-door. 2+2 with a small back seat (despite more space this year), engineered to very high stan­dards. “

Motor Sport reported the Berlin Motor Show in March 1938. GERMANY’S CARS ON PARADE. Herr Hitler opens a show of technical novelties: “Another novelty on the Mercedes stand was the Gelandewagen, or "estate car." This would appeal greatly to British trials enthusiasts, as it has not only four-wheel-drive, but four-wheel-steering as well! Furthermore, the car can be driven either with front steering and rear drive, in the normal fashion, or with front steering and the drive on all four wheels, or with all four wheels both driving and steering. The changes in the various mechanisms may be effected easily from the driver's seat by means of two extra levers. The car, which has a 2-litre 4-cylinder engine, has a 5-speed gearbox, in which bottom gear is in the neighbourhood of 40 to 1. It has a maximum speed of about 53mph. The Gelandewagen, as its name implies, is designed for travelling about over very rough surfaces, as for agricultural or hunting purposes, or for military use. All four wheels are independently sprung, and, as a matter of fact, both front and rear axles are identical, except that one faces forward and the other backward. The steering linkages, the differentials, the means of taking the drive, and the suspension systems are the same in both cases. With the four wheel-steering in use, the Gelandewagen can turn round in a circle of only 7 metres.”

Frederick William Dixon (1892-1956) designed a racing motorcycle with a banking sidecar and was successful on two, three and four wheels, winning two BRDC Gold Stars. At the age of 40 he also invented an all-wheel control system. In1932 he led the Ulster TT for four hours before crashing his self-assembled Riley through a hedge. His engineering became the stuff of legend for racing driver APR Rolt, who encouraged work on four-wheel drive, forming a partnership to exploit it, which later became Harry Ferguson Research when the Belfast tractor millionaire took an interest. By 1945 Dixon’s logical mind had gone beyond merely four-wheel drive and he developed and built an astonishing car on which each wheel was independently sprung, driven, braked and steered.

The front and rear axles pivoted centrally with a pull-rod mechanisms drawing the inner wheels closer and pressing the outer ones apart to follow through a comer. It was ingenious but not, alas, a success. Lacking modern hydraulics the prototype, through its tendency to navigate sideways, quickly earned itself the nickname of The Crab and was soon abandoned.

Ford Focus RS, Bo'ness and Queen Mary

Critical feature of the Ford Focus RS (above) is probably the body shell redesign that stiffens it beautifully. It provides assured handling yet a surprisingly compliant ride. Magazine track testers (as opposed to road testers) were lyrical. Not quite sure what they meant by “barmy and tremendously engaging” but I was astonished to find that on the road it was perfectly civilised, tractable and even comfortable. The tyre-smoking adventurers who seem to inhabit car magazines these days probably had Drive Mode turned to the curious “Drift” setting, giving what Ford calls “controlled oversteer” on corners. That is to say you can, in the old jargon of Jack Brabham in about 1960, “hang the tail out”, a cornering technique that hasn’t been seen in Formula 1 much from that day to this.

I suppose it’s spectacular but in terms of ftds I can’t see it being swifter. More Top Gear than Real World. The Focus’s four wheel drive biases the torque to achieve the effect rather than enhance the driving. Drive Mode backed off to Normal does a perfectly good job thank you with commendable grip enabling 350PS from the 2.3litre turbocharged 4-cylinder to propel you with equanimity You get to 60 in less than 5sec and I’m sure onwards to 165mph if pressed. The RS turns out to be astonishingly refined and even acceptably quiet for a car so fast. You could pay twice the price (£35,125 for the all-bells-and-whistles nitrous blue one I had) for something with a far fancier name than Ford.

You might argue that the Launch Control and Drive Mode stuff confers driving skill to the electronics but it makes going fast a whole lot safer for wistful Jack Brabhams. Superb seats hold you in place; you’re fitted-in to an RS so you are both-all-of-a-piece and in full control. Autocar was right. Five Star and Tremendously Engaging. Maybe “barmy” on track days but with engineering that flatters drivers so they can show off quite securely.

Used the RS at the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers’ presentation of the Jim Clark Memorial Award to the Bo’ness Hill Climb Revival. Bill Drysdale and Kenny Baird collected the trophy for the committee that re-established the venue as a sort of mini-Goodwood for a series now in its ninth year.

Bo’ness hill-climbs started in 1932 with the West Lothian Motorcycle Club and later the Scottish Sporting Car Club. The first combined car and motorcycle meeting was in June 1934 and the RAC gave it an International License in 1947 for the inaugural British Hill Climb Championship. It was the first motoring competition I ever went to. Aged about 13 I took a bus from Motherwell.

To mark the 60th anniversary of Bo’ness in 2007, enthusiasts drove historic cars on what was left of the course. Bo’ness Hill Climb Revival Ltd, now with over 200 members and a restored track, is a worthy recipient. Stephen Park, president of the ASMW told us, “Bo’ness is the oldest permanent motorsport venue in Scotland and the committee has ensured that classic car enthusiasts can continue to enjoy this special track for years to come.”

The next meeting takes place on 3rd and 4th September.

Drove the RS to the Clyde steamer Queen Mary II (picture from splendid Hart Maclagen & Will Steamers of the Clyde) now berthed in Greenock. It’s a year older than both me and the Bo’ness hill-climb and, a bit like both, has been saved from the breaker’s yard. But, still a bit like both, needs repair and refurbishment. Known as Queen Mary II in my time it acquired the Roman numeral on the launch of Job Number 534 from John Brown’s yard on 27 September 1934 by Her Majesty Queen Mary. Cunard wanted the name for itself and Williamson-Buchanan gallantly altered its 18-month old turbine-powered Clyde steamer on the 10 o’clock service from Bridge Wharf to Dunoon and Rothesay. In due course it relinquished the II when the big Queen Mary retired to be a hotel at Long Beach. Stayed on it for the Long Beach Grand Prix. Booked in at the desk with Rob Walker old-school racing driver and team owner so well-connected the receptionist proffered him a hand-written note: “it’s from Miss Ginger Rogers sir.”

Picture an excited 7 or 8 year old just tall enough to peer over the bulwark of Queen Mary II at wartime shipping anchored by the Tail of the Bank, Queen Elizabeth painted grey as a troopship (above). Queen Mary II was grey then as well but still took us on holiday to Dunoon. It was retired in 1977 and moored by the Thames Embankment in the 1980s as a restaurant, its smooth-running turbines alas removed. One’s in a museum somewhere. What a treat to see it towed back to the Clyde by trustees@tsqueenmary.org.uk, which has launched a £2m restoration programme with patron Robbie Coltrane. Look what a success the dear Waverley has been. It would cost a bit more to have that turbine brought out of the museum but heritage like this is priceless.

Waverley passing Queen Mary II in Greenock's James Watt Dock

Stuart Turner

I have review books, complete with press handouts on my shelves, but this is about one that’s been bought. Somebody gave Ruth the Stuart Turner Haynes Retirement Manual when she stopped work and it’s great. More than a brilliant after-dinner speaker, Stuart is a natural writer. Prose flows fresh and sparkling from his keyboard. Wish mine would. 

In 1961, as Verglas of Motoring News, he navigated heroic Erik Carlsson to victory in the RAC Rally. I watched them pass in a rasping welter of Saab 96 two-stroke crackling exhaust on, as I remember, the Rest-and-Be-Thankful special stage. Stuart went on to be the most successful BMC Competitions Manager with Monte Carlo and Spa-Sofia-Liege rallies to his credit, before joining Castrol as publicity executive in 1967-1969. He ran Ford’s competitions department before taking charge of its Public Affairs. 

It wasn’t his best move. I guess glad-handing motoring journalists was unrewarding except perhaps in salary terms. Now he’s gone back to writing and in his Retirement Manual inserts a “Disclaimer”.

Although I have survived over 20 years of retirement and staggered to my 83rd year with all parts still in working order, and although I have invested in property, spoken at more funerals than I care to count, celebrated a golden wedding, and still help run a charity, and although I have consulted widely for the book, I am not a medical or financial expert, so if, for instance, you are planning self-surgery with a Swiss Army knife or intending to accept the share of the 40 million dollars being offered online by your new friend in Nigeria, well, do please get expert advice first.

Finally, in these health and safety conscious times I would like to stress that no pensioners were harmed during the making of this book.

Brilliant. Says it all. There are chapters here on making the most of middle years, money, modern technology, health, mobility and much else compiled with style, humour and the dry wit for which Stuart is notable.

Together with Marcus Chambers and Peter Browning Stuart has gone into detail in a 2015 hardback, out now as an ebook by Veloce Publishing, BMC Competitions Department Secrets. This is another publication I highly recommend and another I’ve actually bought. Stuart reveals that, “going to work at the MG factory at Abingdon where the famous octagon featured everywhere, was like a dream. I was 28, and suddenly found myself working with industry legends, including Alec Hounslow who had been a riding mechanic with Nuvolari. And they were going to pay me £1250 a year to do so.” I have quoted from this book, with due acknowledgement, in a forthcoming revision of my MG File.

There is copious detail about MG, Austin-Healey and Mini in racing and rallying, some of which you could only guess at the time, such as why the French organisers were so amazed at the performance of the Minis winning the Monte Carlo Rally. Remember how they made a weak excuse to exclude the Minis of Timo Makinen, Rauno Aaltonen and Paddy Hopkirk from the first three places. How satisfying, as Stuart put it once in Motor Sport, nobody remembers now it was a Citroën that “won”.

Stuart Turner is not only a legend in his own lifetime, he wears his success lightly. If he’d been greedy he could have become President of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, like another famous rally-co-driver Jean Todt, and made $18million. I guess he has done quite well thank you since starting with BMC. By coincidence it was about the same time as I got my dream job on the road test staff of The Motor. And the salary was the same. I expect that although he poses as “not a financial expert” (see above) he has probably now got a bit ahead.

Retirement Manual: Mid-life Onwards Stuart Turner Haynes Publishing, Sparkford, Yeovil, Somerset BA22 7JJ ISBN 978 0 85733 335 8 £12.99. Browning, Peter; Chambers, Marcus; Turner, Stuart. BMC Competitions Department Secrets (Kindle Location 4). Veloce Publishing Ltd.. Kindle Edition. First printed in hardback 2005. First published in ebook 2015 by Veloce Publishing Limited, Veloce House, Parkway Farm Business Park, Middle Farm Way, Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 3AR. Ebook ISBN: 978-1-845845-75-9 Paperback ISBN: 978-1-904788-68-3

Aston Martin DB4GT

The Bertone-bodied Geneva Motor Show Aston Martin DB4GT (above) was sold recently by Bonhams for £3,249,500. The one that put Jackie Stewart on the racetrack to fame probably cost Barry Filer £4,500. Even with its Stewart connections it would be hard pushed to get half as much. Still, not a bad investment if you had the money in 1962. Barry had a couple of other hobby cars, an AC Ace and the original plywood Marcos.

Jackie took the Aston (above) and Marcos to Oulton Park together with the Dumbuck Jaguar E-type FSN1. The task was to see if he was as fast as his brother Jimmy, now retired from racing but well enough regarded by Lofty England to offer a works Jaguar at Le Mans with Mike Hawthorn.

Jackie, Gordon Hunter, Jimmy Pirie and I drove to The Rising Sun at Tarporley in a used Mark IX Jaguar from Dumbuck’s stock. Jimmy drove from Scotland in the E-type with singer Dorothy Paul. Barry and a mechanic brought the Aston and the Marcos on a trailer. It never crossed our minds that we were making motor racing history although it may have crossed Jackie’s. He had been around motor racing long enough to know. He had been to Oulton before and done enough warm-up laps to feel confident. He admired Bob McIntyre from Scotstoun, world championship-class motorcyclist who died at Oulton that August; he had talked about a career driving.

Jackie had been dropped from the British shooting team at the Tokyo Olympics but he was competitive. He knew he could pick up paid drives if he shared Jimmy’s genes. Half a century, three world championships and a distinguished career later we know that he did. Yet he also inherited qualities from their father Bob who was, kind and generous, astute and determined. Jimmy had the first two, Jackie the rest, which was why Jimmy gave up racing under pressure from their mother and Jackie didn’t.

The Bonhams Aston? It was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro when he was only 22 and working for Nuccio Bertone. Giugiaro created his own couture house, Italdesign in 1968 with trend setting designs from the Alfasud to the Volkswagen Golf by way of BMW M1 and Bugatti. The Aston Martin ‘Jet’ Coupé was unique, the last DB4GT built (save six ‘sanction’ Zagatos later) and shown at Geneva in 1961. (Below, Barry Filer with the Aston at Oulton, Jackie in the driving seat. Primitive pits with names of former occupiers, John Surtees, Roy Salvadori)