Engine Punk

A fine example of the Fiat 126's contribution to motorsport These photos spilled out of an avalanche the other day and the memory of a day during the summer of 1985 came flooding back. While I was a student of Industrial Design Transport at Coventry Lanchester Polytechnic, the UK's motor city held various motorsport events, including autotesting. I was on my industrial placement working for John Mockett the motorcycle designer and during one weekend the sounds of engines having their nuts revved off floated across the city. "I must go to it," I said to my mate Geoff and he, too, responded like some brave Ulysses as if captivated by the sound of the sirens softly singing. We followed the sound to the city centre and found an autotest going on under one of the peirs for the Coventry inner ring road, a ring road notorious for being cited by its designer as an example of how not to design a ring road. In case you didn't know, autotesting involves ragging you...

If you ever doubted that the seventies were not sensational, then you probably weren't there. The first time I ever saw a Nova made a hell of an impression on me - one came into the harbourside car park in Falmouth when I was a student down there and raised its canopy to allow the driver to take his ticket from the barrier machine. No other vehicle had a "door" like this and, even after Lamborghini has popularised the scissor doors among the Max Power brigade, I think the Nova remains unique. Rolling sculpture - I think there's provision for a handle to lift the roof from the outside but electric operation looks really flash. Obviously this owner's confident her system works Of course, I knew it was a Nova - that's the original Nova, not the Vauxhall or Opel variety. they came later and I don't recall the same fuss over the name that Ford and Dutton created when both manufacturers wanted to call their cars Sierra. I'd already poured over num...

Colossus is back together again at last. I just love all that ironmogery on top of the boiler. For the last 18 months, whenever I’ve passed through South Petherwin on my way to Launceston, I’ve noticed a traction engine in a yard and workshop. One day I went slowly enough to see a nameplate on its smokebox door – Colossus . Like any steam engine, it had a certain presence, especially confined within four walls and looking over a gate. At the Great Dorset Steam Fair, I was delighted to come face to smokebox with Colossus and to find out what a remarkable engine it is. Its most striking feature is the tandem cylinders on top of the boiler behind the chimney. Most traction engines have them side by side, which makes for a more compact arrangement. I’d only ever seen tandem cylinders before on a conversion of an old single cylinder Fowler ploughing engine. The idea of souping up some great lumbering leviathan by strapping on another pot and making it more efficient, powerful and ...