Engine Punk

Here's another Vintage Thing that's happening today - and again in Cornwall. And that's not the designer but his mum and dad. As well as being a family affair, the Toniq R is a road legal track day car built at Trebudannon near Newquay. I’d heard of it from Peter Tuthill’s book Cornwall’s Motor Industry but never seen one until I encountered this one on show at Royal Cornwall. It’s a 21st century interpretation of the classic Lotus Seven. It’s a road legal track day car and comes in two forms. This particular example has a Honda Fireblade engine but there's another demonstrator with a Ford Duratec engine. I understand that the on paper performance is about the same but the driving experience is totally different. On this Fireblade powered example, the engine has been completely rebuilt. The red and green buttons on the steering wheel take care of gearshifts. Red goes down for first and then you frantically press green to keep changing up for the other g...

As soon as I knew the Giles I was intrigued by it This oddity is mentioned in Peter Tuthill's book Cornwall's Motor Industry . As he expected, its publication is flushing out more information on the vehicles featured, many of which are very shadowy creations. This is the only one with which I could help and even then to a very limited extent. Mysterious back in 1984, the Giles 3 wheeler has since gone to ground again It turned up on an old caravan chassis at a "Superdo", a Vintage Things Show, at Penstraze near Truro in 1984, and that's where I took these photos. It was a very intriguing three wheeler with an air-cooled 350cc flat-twin Douglas engine mounted at the front. It must have just been discovered and acquired for preservation. Somebody removed the bonnet and lo! there was a Douglas engine It wasn't a bad job although a little under powered for my tastes. Douglas did some 500s and 600s. There was even a conversion that stretched the...

David Hockney made a fortune out of doing photos like this Hidden away in the steep sided combes of south–western Britain, concealed behind unremarkable facades in market towns and sleepy hamlets, tucked deep down into wooded valleys or crouched against the elements on wind blasted heaths and moors, something is stirring. This is Britain ’s crumple zone against the Atlantic and, against very long odds, Cornwall is still home to an ongoing automotive tradition that has been quietly surviving for over two hundred years. If someone announced that they had written a book on Cornwall ’s motor industry, a very slim volume would probably be the result – not so much a book as a pamphlet. Being able to produce over 150 well illustrated A4 pages initially seems nothing short of remarkable. Having read Cornwall ’s Motor Industry by Peter Tutthill, it’s clear that he has unearthed a wealth of material and some fascinating insights into a surprisingly varied cottage industry. I am also...