The best of Bonhams’ upcoming auction, each bearing a British touch
What we have here are four examples of British brilliance. Yes, it may seem a little self-aggrandising, but these are truly impressive bits of kit. And each bears the fruit of British labours, so forgive us our pride, just this once.
You’ll notice that it’s a pretty eclectic collection, but each car from this rather dissonant group is available at Bonhams’ Goodwood auction on March 19. So, which would you take home, if you could?
Welcome to the most iconic Subaru of all time – a combination of perfect provenance and serious performance. Plus, y’know, it looks cool.
The 22B was created when Subaru was on peak form. Fresh off the back of three consecutive manufacturer titles in the World Rally Championship, the 22B was a celebration of their achievements and also the road-going version of their 1998 rally car.
Subaru’s success from 1995 to 1997 was due, in part, to its unique turbo boxer engine and all-wheel-drive, but also thanks to the herculean efforts of Colin McRae, Carlos Sainz and Prodrive.
The 22B started its limited production run in 1998, and was an immediate success thanks to the overwhelming demand stirred up by this very car.
It has travelled, if you can believe it, just 51 kilometres. That’s less than 32 miles. It’s been hermetically sealed in a private collection for the past 20 years, clearly not doing much.
So, the lesson here is that no one has been enjoying the strengthened drivetrain, Bilstein-Eibach suspension, hand-built 2.2-litre engine with an official 276bhp (but likely closer to 300) or the thrills of its gigantic, laggy turbocharger.
So, can someone please go and buy it, then drive it the way it was intended to be driven?
Yes, that’s an exceptionally large sum for a Ford Escort. But these are the times we live in, folks. You can blame Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, speculators or whomever you choose, but the facts remain – if you want a desirable car with real racing history, you’ll need more coin than you keep in that bowl on the dresser.
And this one’s an exceptionally rare piece of kit – an original Alan Mann Racing Escort, prepped by Len Bailey (of Ford GT40 fame) and raced in the British Saloon Car Championship (the forerunner to the BTCC). At the hands of Jackie Oliver, it even beat the championship-winning Australian, Frank Gardner, at Brands Hatch – despite the fact that it was actually a ‘spare car’. Clearly, it was prepped just as well.
Since then, it’s been used as a test mule for all-alloy Cosworth engines, before being relocated to Guyana and then Trinidad. Finally, it returned to Blighty for a full restoration to its original 1968 Group 5 spec and a race-winning turn at Goodwood with Alan Mann’s son Henry at the wheel.
As it stands, it has a modern interpretation of the original, Cosworth FVA engine, built from scratch by Geoff Richardson and capable of 240bhp, which is exceptional stuff from a naturally aspirated 1.6-litre inline four.
There’s also a modern multilink rear end, combined with Ohlins coiliovers, as well as an FIA-spec roll cage, harness and fuel cell, so it’s definitely still ready to race. All up, it weighs just 878kg – resulting in a pretty tidy power-to-weight ratio of 273bhp per ton – more than enough to reenact a few David vs Goliath struggles out at Oulton Park, no?
Ever heard the phrase ‘nothing exceeds like excess’? It was used, with considerable venom, by an exceptionally waif-thin Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface.
It referred to a very specific plot thread in the movie (which we won’t spoil, in case you haven’t seen it) but it was also a comment on the exceedingly excessive zeitgeist of the early 1980s. By which we mean that the early ’80s were a time when too much was never enough – something frequently alluded to in Brian de Palma’s 1983 masterpiece.
But who needs allusions when you could park a testament to excess in your own driveway? Like Scarface, this XJS hails from 1983. And, like the film’s central character, it’s brutish, thuggish and entirely uncultured.
The gentlemanly, grandfather-spec XJS still resides under the bulges, flares and NACA ducts of the Lister, but its character certainly doesn’t. With its 5.3-litre V12 puffed out to six litres and capable of 482bhp, the Lister XJS is perhaps England’s first and only V12 muscle car.
This particular brute started life as a regular XJS, before it was severely revamped by Lister Cars of Surrey in 1990. If you needed an analogy for this process, it’d be like walking out of Repton and straight into a Borstal. The results are going to be dramatic.
By now, you’re probably thinking that it’s still a 1980s Jag XJS under all of that muscle, with all the attendant repair bills and headaches. And you’re not wrong there. However, it’s apparently had a thorough going-over at great expense, including the fuelling, braking and electrical systems.
The upshot is that less than the price of a Golf GTI, you can get a working, limited-run, V12-powered Jaguar with nearly 500bhp and just over 20,000 miles on the clock. Who needs sensibility, right?
This is the second Lola T70 ever built, and it certainly wasn’t destined to be a garage queen. Back in the 1960s, Lola built race chassis for Le Mans, as well as Formula 1 and 2. While success was fleeting in the upper echelons of motorsport, the talent of Eric Broadley was such that Ford enlisted him to build the Ford GT40 and beat those pesky Italians at Le Mans.
After Broadley used the basis of his Lola Mk6 design to help create the all-conquering GT40, he returned to Lola and built the T70 – one of the most recognisable classic race cars of all time.
Much like the Mk6 and and GT40, the T70 was made to house the big, powerful American V8s that had proved to be a winning formula. Names like John Surtees, Roger Penske and David Hobbs have all been associated with the T70 – the latter actually driving this very car at Goodwood, Brands Hatch and at Mosport in the US.
The ‘SL70/2’ remained in the US until 2001, when it returned to England for a full rebuild and race prep. The current engine, a Chevrolet V8, was built by Simon Hadfield’s motorsports outfit, which has already proved to be competitive in races in Macau, France and England.
We’re all for vintage race cars getting out and doing what they were built for, rather than languishing out of the public eye in a climate-controlled garage. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing it at classic race days for years to come.
US Top Gear fans, your new series is nearly here. Watch the trailer right now
It's all very well having a Ferrari, McLaren or Lambo. But they're still earthbound and therefore inferior.....
Why would you spend upwards of £75k on an old Mini? Let TG be your guide
What do you think?
This service is provided by Disqus and is subject to their privacy policy and terms of use. Please read Top Gear’s code of conduct (link below) before posting.