AT THE END of the 1980s, the decade of big spenders, the idea of a supercar was moving into a new dimension. The Jaguar XJ220, the McLaren F1 and Bugatti EB110 were in preparation and promised to bring race-car performance to the road. That raised th

DAVID LILLYWHITE I’VE JUST LOOKED up my last Octane Cars instalment; it was in the October 2017 issue, and I was about to leave for what ended up being a year’s stint launching a new website before co-founding Hothouse Media. Now Octane is a part of

FERRARI HAS LAUNCHED an official tour of the Dolomites in the Autumn solely for owners of the 272 examples of the Pininfarina-styled twin-turbo V8-powered 288 GTO. Built for three years from 1984, the model is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2024

SOMETIMES CARS THAT weren’t an instant hit when they were launched, or even those that slightly missed the mark, can make for particularly interesting classics a few decades down the road. Take the fourthgeneration Maserati Quattroporte, for example.

For a company that has been building cars for 96 years, it is amazing how late in the day BMW forged its own identity and direction. Some would argue that it was really born only with the Neue Klasse. They’d be wrong, of course, but between the 328s

ECURIE ECOSSE MIGHT best be known for winning the 1956 and 1957 Le Mans 24 Hours with a D-type – as well as racing in one of the most recognisable blue liveries – but Scotland’s worldbeating privateer racing team had plenty of previous success with r

NICK HENDRIX ONLY A FEW times has Lamborghini taken a no-bull approach to its nomenclature. ‘Sterrato’ translates as ‘dirt road’. Luxury bespoke cars are on the increase, and we all remember the LM-002 fondly, but designing a supercar specifically fo

Handbuilt from 1995 to ’98 as a hardcore homologation special to enable Porsche to compete in the GT2 class of endurance racing: this is the ultimate iteration of the air-cooled line. The best road-going 993 GT2s were a rare sight at auction in the e

FEW PEOPLE can claim to have marked the style of a decade in the way of Marcello Gandini. The ‘wedge shape’ trend of the 1970s was a Marcello Gandini trademark, typified by his Lamborghini Countach. Born in Turin to a musician father who hoped his so

In the autumn of 1925, workers were racing to erect a new arena in the Frederiksberg district of Copenhagen; it was due to open early the next year, with an international car exhibition. As Forum Copenhagen rapidly took shape, lighting manufacturer L

YOU KNOW SOMEONE pretty well after 12 hours in a waiting room together. The scene was Fiorano, Ferrari’s test track in Maranello, the characters were Vern Schuppan and myself and we were working a photoshoot of Vern’s car around a French Ferrari deal

CHRIS TARLING/YELLOWDOG; JEFF BLOXHAM ■

COME WET AND chilly December in the UK, Europe and USA, the classic car scene goes into the workshops for spannering or general winter hibernation. But not in the United Arab Emirates! Boasting cobalt-blue skies, warm and dry weather with temperature

‘The nice thing about this car is that everybody gives you the thumbs up.’ We’re sitting in traffic in Beverly Hills – does anyone need to be told where that is? – and your average buttonedup Brit might expect that a heavily chromed, garishly flamed,

GLEN WADDINGTON IN OCTANE 248 we learned that this is Jay Leno’s favourite 911. ‘At 60mph on a dirt fire-road, power-sliding with the tail hanging out is really more fun than you should be allowed to have,’ he said. Before concluding: ‘Sadly, by the

KYLE FORTUNE, Schiffer Publishing, £59.99, ISBN 978 0 764367 31 1 It’s hard to believe now, when McLaren has become such a firmly established element of the supercar scene, that its automotive division was only established in 2010, following a largel

I WAS ALWAYS going to be a petrolhead. My father Norbert worked for Paul Emery at his Fulham workshops and then joined Paul in the Grand Prix Midget scene, eventually buying and racing an Emery Dastle Mk7. We still have that car, which will get resto

Nearly 80 years on, we still associate Bentley with Crewe, in north-western England. It wasn’t always thus; the hulking Le Mans racers of WO Bentley’s era were Londoners and, following Rolls-Royce’s take-over in 1931, Bentleys were built at the paren

IN AUTOMOTIVE TERMS the Surrey town of Farnham, if thought of at all, is usually associated with Britain’s first Formula 1 World Champion, ‘Farnham Flyer’ Mike Hawthorn. Abbott coachworks may also strike a chord, with its elegant bodies on Lagondas a

MATTHEW HAYWARD SITTING IN SUCH a gloriously old-fashioned, handbuilt cabin, it’s difficult to comprehend that this car was built in 2003. Around six months after this ‘Final Series’ Continental R Mulliner came into the world, the first Continental G