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If hot rods had been invented in England, Sidney Herbert Allard would have been their originator. In 1936 he built a successful trials machine from Ford and Bugatti parts. His 1949 National British Hill Climb Championship came in a loud and fearsome special with four rear wheels powered by a war-surplus V8 Steyr tank engine.…

There is no mistaking the lines of an Austin-Healey. Perhaps second only to the seductive curves of the Jaguar E-type, the long flowing lines of the front shroud and powerful haunches of the short rear fenders make this car an icon of the golden decades of sports cars. Remarkable is the fact that the lines…

This “barn discovery” Lotus Elite was first registered on December 14, 1961, according to the duplicate green logbook in its history file. It was owned by Mr. Peter John Gillett of Cobham in 1971 before it was sold to the last owner, Mr. Che Keng Saw, in August 1972. The Lotus was extricated from a…

A direct descendant of the Silver Ghost, the Rolls-Royce Phantom I was launched in May 1925. For the most part, the Phantom I chassis was identical to that of its predecessor. It did offer customers two different wheelbase lengths from which to choose: 143.5 inches or 150.5 inches. The Phantom I’s transmission was also the…

In the early 1950s, Jaguar and MG defined the postwar sports car market. The TR2 was Triumph’s attempt to share in the spoils of that market against competitors like the Austin-Healey 100, a slightly faster car that was aggressively courting performance enthusiasts. There never was a Triumph TR1. The TR2 was developed from the prototype…

The Austin-Healey sports car range is synonymous with a particular era of British sports car production, and is similar to Jaguar in many ways. Both companies built strong, reliable and affordable cars for the North American market, their strongest and safest market, and the cars evolved model by model over the years. The 100 series…

In 1936, only five years after beginning production, SS Cars startled the motoring public with the Jaguar 2.5-liter saloon, the company’s first car to feature overhead valves. The engine was the robust seven-bearing, six-cylinder unit built by Standard, but with a new cylinder head designed by Harry Weslake and Bill Heynes. With 104 bhp, smoothly…

The A was the car which put MG back on the map. It was pretty, it was contemporary, and it was fun. Top speed was 98 mph and 0 to 60 mph took 15.6 seconds, but raw performance figures are not the reason the MGA became the world’s most popular sports car. The A was…

Launched in 1965, the DB6 replaced the DB5 and for the first time the title “Volante” was introduced to denote the convertible model of the Aston Martin motor cars, a tradition continuing to this day. Though recognizably related to its Touring-styled DB4 ancestor, the wheelbase was now longer than before, resulting in an extensive re-style…