By Wiley Davis The glowing transparency sitting on the light table said it all. Two boots, cut off at the ankles by the top of the frame. Underneath them, the bonnet of a 1962 Lotus Elite, white with orange and blue stripes. The owner of those boots, Mike Ostrov, had what I would call a…
By Robert Goldman “You’re doing what? In a Mini? It’ll never make it out of the foothills, much less up the Alps!” they all said. Shortly before my 40th birthday, the AARP sent me a membership card. It wasn’t a real one, but a cleverly disguised “invitation to join.” I never really thought of 40…
Things get hot at an MG rally By John Lane It was a heated anniversary at the MG Car Club’s 50th annual Rally Glenwood Springs. This year’s event was cut short by a freak wildfire that consumed more than 11,500 acres and caused $4.5 million in damages. The event began on Friday with a guided…
Lotus changes the nature of exotic supercars By Wiley Davis The business card that Mike Ostrov hands to me is a focused peek into his personality. He presents it upside down, revealing a backside stamped with the words “Club Elite” just below an outline of a Lotus Elite profiled in red ink. Out of curiosity…
By Peter Calabrese Robert Frost once wrote, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by…” So it is with me and my MG Midget. While the purists among you Spridget owners may be content to drive the curvy back roads of the countryside in your stock Midgets or Sprites,…
By John Sprinzel During my visit to Sugar Lake, Minnesota, for the Austin-Healey Club Conclave, it was a real delight to see a virtual armada of beautiful wooden-hulled Healey Speedboats at the meet. An even greater thrill was for fellow guest Bob Olthoff and I to be taken for a spin in John May’s immaculate…
Jaguar’s XK series wakes the post-war world America’s love affair with the automobile is so well documented, it has become more than just a cliché—it has moved comfortably into the banal land of things that are taken for granted. Consumers are spoiled brats of industry to an extent, wanting to see a new car model…
By Paul Richardson Touring the warmer climes of Europe while avoiding the English winter is full of surprises. When we arrived in the Marbella area on the southeastern coast of Spain, the nicest surprise was to cast an eye over a beautiful 1954 long-door Triumph TR2. Francois Van Hoof, a Belgian who now lives in…
Did this car run Le Mans? Amidst the stables and green rolling hills of Rancho Santa Fe, California, in a garage filled with legendary race cars, brutes from NASCAR’s steep banks, lies a small terror of the race track. A legend at Willow Springs, it’s something of a historical question mark. The 1965 Triumph Spitfire…
By Paul Richardson It was at the 1997 Vintage Triumph Register convention in Fort Worth, Texas, that I first saw the 1935 Triumph Gloria Southern Cross owned by my old friend Duncan Wood. Duncan, an Englishman working in Texas, bought the car in London in 1996. The Gloria has had only five owners, all of…
