I was surprised to read in the March issue of this magazine a letter from Bob Krueger on “train racing,”...
Among this year’s anniversaries is that of the Mini Cooper. John Cooper and Alec Issigonis became pals while competing in...
I was going through a pile of papers when I found the order of service for John Cooper’s funeral. I smiled. I have never found it possible to think of Cooper without smiling. Cooper had that effect on people. John was the public face of Cooper Cars, because he attended...
We are frequently told that Formula One is at the cutting edge of technology, but that has been true only...
Most people when launching a new product normally try to come up with a new name to reflect innovation. Then it comes to cars, however, there is a trend to resurrect a name from the past so we have had Allard, Connaught, Osca, Lea-Francis, Jensen, Invicta, Spyker, Ermini and that...
One driver rarely mentioned in the endless pub debate about great drivers is Sir Jack Brabham, yet in many ways...
The Lister Motor Company has made “continuation” examples of the “Knobbly” Lister-Jaguar. An auction house has claimed that a car...
Twenty-five years ago, a company called Amstrad launched an inexpensive word processor. The package was crude, each three-inch disk held only 157K RAM, though on both sides. The operating program had to be loaded every time it was switched on, and you still had to send your copy by post,...
Fifty years is quite a long time, in politics or any other activity. In motor racing, though, 50-year anniversaries seem...
With flashing precision, my memory recaptures exactly the milli-second that motor racing entered my life. It was reading a three-month-old...
Mike Lawrence There has been some debate within these pages about the wood used to make Frank Costin’s Protos F2 cars. The original (wooden) Marcos was said to have been made from “laminated marine ply,” because Frank’s partner, Jem Marsh, felt that window dressing was needed. Frank told me that...
Under most circumstances, I run a mile from making predictions. At an early age, I noticed that all bookmakers lived...
Mike Lawrence Australia has decided to demote FF1600 and install Formula 4 as its national starter series. Formula 4 gives each country the choice of approved chassis and engines, each one limited to 150 bhp, but everyone runs the same kit within the national series. One-spec formulae, I hate ’em....
To write this column I am taking time off from completing my contribution to a book. I need to take...
The BBC recently screened a documentary on the 1955 Le Mans disaster. Pierre Bouillon’s car was launched into the air...
Mike Lawrence At the end of last year, I moved from Chichester to Oxford or, to put it in terms even the most geographically challenged reader will understand, from Goodwood to Silverstone and the heart of the British motor racing industry. Three Formula One engineers live within 50 yards of...
Lotus was the star of the 1957 London Motor Show, which was remarkable since prior to that Lotus only made...
These are days of confusion. As I write this, there are either three days left in the Millennium or, depending...
Some people do; some people don’t. Some people enjoy it; some people don’t. Driving in the rain, that is. Apart from being the title of two wonderful books—the real racing one by John Horsman, (Racing in the Rain) and the other (The Art of Racing in the Rain) “written” by...
Mike Lawrence This year we celebrated the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Within weeks, what had been RAF Westhampnett, now the...
Racecar designers are sometimes accused of copying others’ ideas, but are they really “copy cats,” or is it a case of “great minds think alike?” Something worth examining, albeit there is evidence on both sides of the argument. In any case, if a designer sees that one of his rivals...
Howden Ganley There is an old maxim which says America and Britain are two countries divided by a common language...
There is a section in The Sunday Times called In Gear and it is basically boys’ toys, with cars as the headline, plus pod things, which I do not understand. Every week it features a new supercar, and even then it doesn’t get all of them, supercars are everywhere. England...
Mike Lawrence Patrick Quinn’s feature on the front-wheel-drive Alvis in Vintage Roadcar struck a special chord with me, because his...
This year, Crosslé, Lola, and Mallock will all celebrate their fiftieth anniversaries. The exact date of each birthday is unknown, as it is difficult to pinpoint when a special builder became a constructor. In the interest of historical accuracy, I have discussed the matter with Eric Broadley, John Crosslé, and...
