" It occurred to us here at Influx towers that with the release of the new XJ imminent, that it is time to celebrate the passion for innovation and design in British cars. The XJ did after all, achieve its designation "
Honda RC-166: Hailwood’s Hornet
" If you're a lover of the classic and a have an inbred desire for things mechanical, the Honda RC 166 is a thing of true, timeless beauty. The inline six 250 was winner of 10 out of 10 races in the 1966 World Championships series "
Bertone BAT – Alfa Romeo Concept Cars
" At the beginning of the fifties, Alfa Romeo commissioned Giuseppe 'Nuccio' Bertone to produce concept vehicles focussed on the effects of drag on a vehicle. It was eight years after the war, Italy was starting to reconstruct and it was "
The Eight Principles of the Classic
"There's a lot of misunderstanding about the word 'classic'. And for such a controversial word, petrol heads and general lovers of cars and bikes use the word perhaps more than any other. In a noble attempt to clarify our terms "
Necessary Madness: Confessions of a Reluctant Classicist
"“Ooh – Please take me for a spin around the block, Steve,” squealed Liisa, our friend and host for the evening. Steve had arrived at Liisa and Mark’s house in his classic ’64 Sunbeam Alpine convertible (above) which was only fired "
The Cooling of the Classics
"A TONGUE-TIP TASTE OF CLASSIC BIKING: SAN FRANCISCO STYLE “The thing is with modern bikes, is they’ve got no soul.” Rob, proprietor of the Ace Cafe in San Francisco’s Mission district, presides over one of the hubs of "
Fangio: The Classic Personified
"BEN OLIVER EXAMINES THE LEGEND THAT IS FANGIO My Mum recently found a dog-eared, postcard-sized, black and white photograph. It was of Juan-Manuel Fangio, standing next to one of his fifties Mercedes W196 Grand Prix cars. In the top left, "
Alfaholics: Guilia GTA Reborn
" Alfaholics, run by the Banks family, (Max, (below) his brother Andrew and father Richard), have for the last decade or so been the go-to people if you want to trade, restore or build a classic Alfa. And with race-bred factory "
Influx Social
A Mini Obsession: Two Generations and Counting
" "It all started for me seeing Minis winning Monte Carlo Rallies in the sixties," Malcolm tells me. He goes on "It was the rally success combined with the glamourous people who owned them that captured my imagination." They call him "
C’était un Rendezvous!
"Early on a Sunday morning in the sweltering high summer of 1976, filmmaker Claude Lelouch set out to document Paris in one hair raising, white-knuckle ride through the city. In the process he broke so many laws that after the film "
The Beauty of Yellow
" It's the colour of Scuderia Ferrari, added by Enzo Ferrari - the backdrop of the prancing horse shield and the colour of his beloved hometown of Modena. Despite the wrong-headed notion that any Ferrari that's not finished in Rosso Corsa "
Goodwood 2009
" It’s opening day here at the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2009. No matter how often you come to these verdant Sussex hills, and no matter how part of the annual motorsport circuit the event becomes, it keeps getting better. The "
Gymkhana 2: Ken Block Buster
"There’s been a lot of nonsense written and spoken about the world of extreme sports. Laden with the image of the bugged out adultescents redolent of the marketing campaigns for energy drinks, baggy b-boy denim and the idiotic language "
Citroen GT: Fantasy to become Reality?
" Citroen came to London last week to show off their GT concept which had been designed for the new Grand Turismo ‘street circuit’ featured in Gran Turismo 5 – the new PLAYSTATION 3 driving game. The virtual-turned-reality supercar 'swapped pixels for Piccadilly' as "
Trabant: Communist Chic?
" Now we are all up for purity, simplicity and stripped-down functionality in our cars. We like to drive, after all, rather than sit in a cossetted virtual environment redolent of bubble economies and the ubiquitous pixel. But it's fairly difficult "
Hybrid Landrover On the Way?
" Any regular Influx reader will confirm that we in these offices love Land Rover. In fact, we are midway through an experiment to prove that despite environmental imperatives, practical considerations and spiralling running costs, a Discovery 3 is the most practical "
