“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.” – John Greenleaf Whittier The Swinging Sixties represented the high-water mark for the British automotive industry. The Jaguar E-Type – introduced in 1961 – was widely considered one of the best sports cars in the world and more affordable…
Last year we asked you to determine the greatest British sports car of all time and after spirited voting the Jaguar E-Type – not unexpectedly – emerged victorious ahead of the Austin-Healey 3000 and Triumph TR6. This time we changed the call of the question: name your favorite British sports car manufactured since the end…
The fact that the high-performance MGB GT V8 shared the same appearance as its more pedestrian siblings was deemed harmful to its position in the marketplace especially as it was difficult to distinguish the more potent car in various advertising efforts. As always with most British manufacturers, cost was an issue but it was deemed…
Sir William Lyons was born in Blackpool in 1901, the namesake of an Irish father and an English mother. A bright boy, he was curious about machinery and good at school work. His family secured for him an engineering apprenticeship at Crossley Motors where he developed an intense interest in the burgeoning automotive industry. In…
When Adrian Mitu was an architecture student in Bucharest, Romania, he would often spend his idle moments lost in thought contemplating vintage and classic cars. After graduation in 2013, he decided to forego his chosen discipline and enter the world of automotive design. A fan of former BMW designer Chris Bangle – the creator of…
There have been a lot of distressing items in the news lately about the future of the automobile as we know it and while we cannot predict with much accuracy what will transpire in the years to come, we are sure that it will be a different world from the one that we have known…
XKs Unlimited | Powered by Moss By Robert Goldman On a sunny day in 1966, unless it was a foggy day, a young Jason Len took a job working for Al Moss. Jason had the British sports car bug, and Moss Motors seemingly offered a chance to get into the hobby. Fast forward to 1973,…
By Harry Newton For several decades (actually since 1955), I have listened to otherwise fair-minded enthusiasts bash the Jaguar XK140 series as a bastardization (my word) of the seminal XK120. I admit my own guilt in this regard. Now, perhaps the perspective of time has at last endowed the XK140 with recognition of its true…
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…
The rare alloy-bodied cat that sired the American sports car By Tom Morr; photography by Scott Dahlquist One of the world’s most stunning sports cars has roots that burrow back to an English piano repair shop. Four decades before he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, William Lyons toiled in his dad’s piano shop. This experience…
