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With the introduction of the Michelotti styled Triumph 2000 of 1963, a new kind of executive car was born. A luxurious 2 liter, six cylinder, four door saloon with compact dimensions and youthful diver appeal, it clashed head on with Rover 2000, a technically more sophisticated car than the Triumph. However, the Rover was bereft [...]

By the beginning of the saloons, Triumph’s enduring TR 3 needed a facelift if the needed sales and interest were to be maintained. Triumph decided on a European look and went shopping for Italian styling. They ended up hiring Michelotti to re-skin the car in a more shapely body that also had to be both [...]

Under new ownership of Arthur and Martin Lilley, TVR, sportscar builders of Blackpool, Lancashirem became a more professtional company. The 1967 Vixen, son of the earlier Grantura, was one of the first products of this new approach. Outwardly the entry level TVR looked much like its predecessor with the usual ‘sausage bonnet’ front end. A [...]

TVR began building fiberglass sports cars with tubular chassis frames in the 1950s, and they sold most of them as kits to be built at home. The first cars had four cylinder engines but, in the 1960s, TVR offered the Griffith with Ford V8 power and the Tuscan V6, the first of a long line [...]

Launched in 1964, the Vanden Plas 4- liter R was the only fruit of a liaison between Rolls Royce and the British Motor Corporation (BMC). It was a high specification, wood and leather luxury saloon based on the 3- liter A110 Westminster shell, but using a 4- liter Rolls Royce straight six engine. Externally, it [...]

Other TVRs had looked good and performed strongly but the Cerbera was different. For the first time here was a TVR with its own bespoke engine. This was in the form of a 4.2 liter V8 packing a 350bhp punch, the promise of 185mph and scorching acceleration. Best of all, this came for the price [...]

The motoring press’s disappointment when it first saw the boxy lines of the Mk 2 Golf was turned into delight when General Motors launched the new Astra a year later, in 1984. Here was a car that looked like it was fit for 1980s, with a low, rounded nose, rising window line and high tail. [...]

To open motoring magazine of the late 1980s was to be confronted by an extraordinary number of super high performance road cars. The most extreme road car based super car was the Lotus Carlton, which was launched in a blizzard of bad publicity. The company had to suffer police chiefs in the UK sounding off [...]

The exotic Italian looks of the VW Karmann Ghia hid annoyingly uncharismatic VW Beetle power, but for some that very deceit has always been part of the cars charm, and the looks of Karmann Ghia are more than enough to make you forgive it almost anything, even its reliance on Beetle power. Designed by Ghia [...]

In the early Volkswagen desperately needed to replace the venerable Beetle. A lot of people especially in the motoring press though that the company might fail to meet the challenge. It didn’t replace the old stalwart with a car that was destined for amazing success. The MK 1 golf was an utterly conventional interpretation of [...]