Mazda K360 – three wheeled evolution
The Mazda K360 truck may not look very evolutionary at first glance. But look beyond the lack of wheels, and you’ll find a smartly designed tiny truck that offered reliable (and dry!) transportation to the masses. It also influenced the firm’s first mass-selling passenger car playing a massive part in the automotive powerhouse they have […]
Starion
As an increasingly old git I look back on my life with a sense of ‘why did I do that?’ bafflement. These thoughts range from foot-in-mouth social encounters that still make me blush to some of the cars I’ve owned. A skanky Mitsubishi Starion coupe that came my way in the mid-1990s is a prime […]
Five days with a modified GT86…
“There are three Toyota GT86s, but we need a driver for the third to bring it to Japfest at Silverstone. You’ll get the car for five days if you’re up for it?” An intriguing proposition, and given that I’d never before driven a GT86, I jumped at the chance. However, I jumped at it without […]
Honda Z600
My first car cost 5p. It was a 1974 Honda Z600 coupe, which should have been a vibrant orange – the only colour offered – but had been re-sprayed a horrid matt yellow. My dad lived on a River Thames houseboat and the Z, which belonged to a neighbour, had been flooded up to its […]
Teenage dream – Max Cotton
Let’s face facts: no-one can look back at being 13 with pride. Whether it was knuckling down to Year 8 Geography homework, mooning over our latest crush or getting really into a band, pretty much all of us spent that first teenage year doing something we wouldn’t even consider now. Max Cotton is different. Armed […]
Homologation Specials
When standard ‘road-going’ spec isn’t enough… The act of homologating a car is a scarce thing in modern racing. Back in the day though, it was a carmakers way of entering a motorsports series while giving designers and engineers a chance to go above and beyond on the wild factor – all with a pair […]
Driving the last JDM hero: the original Honda NSX
In the mid-noughties, the JDM hero car was pretty much dead. The Toyota Supra was long-gone, and bullet-fast acronyms such as GT-R and LFA had yet to emerge from Nissan and Lexus leaving buyers with a single choice – the original Honda NSX. How does a teenage JDM supercar compare in the modern era? Upon […]
New Toyota Supra
The last time someone won a Grand Prix at the Jarama race track in Madrid, it was Gilles Villeneuve. Ironically, it was a race won at the slowest speed, as Villeneuve — driving the truck-like Ferrari 126C — had to use every ounce of tactical nous to hold up the likes of Jacques Lafite’s Ligier, […]
RX-7 Regularity Rally
Think rotary engine, and it is more than likely the Mazda name that first springs to mind. While several models in its history utilised such engines, it is the RX-7 that enjoys the most famous relationship. The first-generation car made its debut in 1978 and is often referred to as many things, the FB or […]
Mazda RX7 – 40 years
40 years on from its launch and it’s obviously impossible to talk about this superb and great-looking sports car without homing in on its most unique and original feature; the Wankel rotary engine. Designed by a German, Felix Wankel, the rotary engine consists of a triangle-shaped piston spinning, in one direction, within a pinched oval. […]