I’ve written a million words on Jaguar. 120,000 in each edition of The Jaguar File, three or four re-writes and up-dates of its digital equivalent, road tests and features over sixty years. So, a Jaguar expert? Maybe not. Driving an F-type last weekend I had to admit I have to look up my own books for things. More a Jaguar student than a know-all.
Read MoreTurnberry before Trump
The President likes golf. I like cars. He liked golf so much he bought the Club at Turnberry rather like Auric Goldfinger “bought” Royal St George’s where he played James Bond. I liked Turnberry not so much for golf as family outings and car things. I watched my first motor race there on what had been the runways of a hundred year old airfield. I saw the V16 BRM win, so rare an event that not long after it the BRM Trust put the team up for sale.
Read MoreVerdict on Clarkson
I agree with Jeremy Clarkson. He was in the North of Scotland last week. “Absolutely eyes-on-stalks beautiful. I drove along the coast road north of Ullapool, and never have I gone so slowly. Sometimes the views were so spectacular, I coasted to a halt and never even noticed. The sky was the colour of a Norwegian model’s eyes. Tendrils of cloud spilt over snow-capped mountains before being whipped into nothing by the wind.”
Read MoreBarry Lyndon: And the History of MG cars
Alfred Edgar Frederick Higgs could always tell a good story. A motoring writer in the 1930s he affected a pseudonym, Barré Lyndon after the eponymous hero of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Maybe Barry was not imposing enough so he changed y to e acute and fitted Thackeray’s plot about breaking into the aristocracy in books Combat (1933) and Circuit Dust (1934). They brought MG into motoring aristocracy by slightly embellishing the myths and legends of motor racing, elevating it beyond anything so prosaic as a car. Circuit Dust savoured MG success in the 1934 Mille Miglia with a respectful caption and a picture of the team’s reception by Signor Mussolini. Now there is a new account of MG in MG Classics for the digital age, out today.
Read MoreRolls-Riva: New eco-fuel for yachts.
Rolls-Royce has been planning another venture into luxury yachts. Last time it got into a deal with Riva, bought by its then-owner Vickers for £9.1 million but it didn’t survive the 1998 change in proprietorship. Then last November Rolls-Royce announced the 62metre Crystal Blue with hybrid propulsion using LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) and battery power. This is planned to have a composite or aluminium hull and Rolls-Royce’s hybrid LNG/battery SAVe-CUBE system. This has twin 16V4000 MTU M65-N generator sets working in parallel with a battery bank providing 1MWh of genset-free power in port. Two light-weight carbon Azipull thrusters provide a maximum service speed of 20 knots.
Read MoreFerrari Testa Rossa: Not quite the Paragon
Before the time of Michael Schumacher whose car is at the Design Museum until April 18. and just as the 1990 classic car price boom was waning I gave a Ferrari Testarossa a mixed review. It was exciting enough but suffered I thought from a higher centre of gravity compared with other Ferraris. Its engine was big and wide, making it difficult to accommodate low down in the frame. By the last decade of the 20th century there was no need for cars with top speeds getting on for 200mph to feel “difficult” or slightly dangerous. You could get just as much speed and acceleration from the likes of a Honda NSX without any need of macho airs or acting like a grand prix driver of the 1950s.
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