Category: Drivers/People
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What’s new pussycat?
Is there anything that hasn’t been written or retold about the Jaguar E-type? From the fabled drive from Coventry to Geneva for the 1961 launch through to Enzo Ferrari proclaiming it the most beautiful car ever designed, this is a car that defined the best of British in those ‘good old days’. Today, you can…
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Meet your heroes
There has long been a hashtag in the automotive world that is #makelanciagreatagain. It appears with startling regularity and is usually accompanied by pictures of their great rallying past. Rally cars have always given us the worlds best drivers and their machines have typically been poster cars for a generation. Walter Rohl with his Audi…
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Door dropping ownership
Quirky cars aren’t always known to be that good. Every now and again, there are cars that do have something that is suitably different, that can polarise opinion and lately, it has been BMW. Although it turns out, this has always been their way. Welcome to the BMW Z1. In a previous life, I was…
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The One
Buying a classic car is sometimes an easy choice. You know what you are looking for, the makeand model but do you get the car you want or the car you deserve? Rob knew he wanted a Lotusand then, Bev came into his life. “I wasn’t specifically looking for an Elite but I knew I…
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The Value of memories
The value of memories ‘It is the one that I have created the most memorable memories with.’Succinctly concluding our conversation, Frank Cassidy has answered a question he has beenasked on many occasions.Frank is a devout Porsche collector. He is not a garage queen investor, but a driver and modifier ofhis cars. The modifications he makes…
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From carpentry to mechanics
The Mechanists Interview and photographs by Jasper Schwering Hi Alex, would you like to introduce yourself? Who are you and what do you do for a living? Hi, I’m Alex(ander) Frisse-Bremann, I’m a trained carpenter and I live in Neumarkt, Bavaria. Since 2012 I’ve been working for NAKATANENGA. Initially I was involved in building their…
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Wife takes a Joyride. Popularises the motorcar – Bertha Benz
Authors note: When the founder of The Mechanists, Hedi Sersoub, tasked me with writing a piece on an influential woman in automotive design and engineering, my mind drew a blank. I had barely heard of such a figure and, yet, it never occurred to me that there might be one. Most, if not all, influential…
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Mini but mighty: The Monte Carlo Winning Mini
Whether you associate it with The Italian Job, Mr Bean or the Swingin’ 60s – the Mini is undoubtedly a British icon. It’s a car that has stayed mostly unchanged for 40 years (much like the Land Rover Defender and its predecessors). For fans of Motorsport the Mini, namely the 33EJB, holds a special place…
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Forward thinking at Prodrive
Making your way through the revolving door and into the laboratory-clean reception area to be greeted by Colin McRae’s 1995 Championship winning Impreza, and an Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3, you can only be in one place; Prodrive’s headquarters in Banbury, Oxfordshire. This team of geniuses, founded by former Aston Martin chairman David Richards CBE,…
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From coachbuilding to everything…
For any automotive enthusiast, the name Pininfarina is no stranger and generally correlates with quality work. He can be considered the godfather of car design because of the brand’s massive worldwide presence and that the name even rings a bell to non-car people. Battista “Pinin” Farina started working in his brother’s body shop since the…
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Next game: Endurance!
The legendary 910 was the first ever endurance race car Porsche developed. The German sports car manufacturer managed to succeed once again with the lightweight 910, the next sequence in the line of 906. During the two years of production, between 1966 and 1968, the car was raced in the World Sportscar Championship and FIA European…
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The Lancer King!
Tommi Mäkinen marked the history of the WRC with his raw talent and 4 consecutive titles at the wheel of 4 different Evo generations. There are definitely some affinities between the Finn and the Japanese Manufacturer for which he won 22 of its 24 total victories between 1994 and 2002. Mäkinen’s started to get noticed…