THE BEST... STORIES
THE LAST GALLON SEPTEMBER 2019
A thought from the endlessly creative mind of Mark Walton: if you had the last gallon of fuel on Earth, what vehicle would you put it into, for one last drive? Cue wildly individual choices from six writers – from D-Type Jag to Renault 5, or two VW XL1s (so you could split the gallon and race a mate, see?) – brought to life by inspired art direction from Mal Bailey and photography from Alex Howe. One of CAR’s more imaginative and evocative features.
ENZO FERRARI BARES HIS MIND AND SOUL AUGUST 1977
In 1977, Keith Botsford spent four revealing hours with the car world’s most famous name, yet its least familiar personality. At the time, Enzo Ferrari avoided TV cameras and rarely ventured beyond his oce and test circuit. Yet the intensely private Ferrari spoke to CAR with astonishing frankness. ‘I don’t believe there is such a thing as happiness,’ Ferrari told Botsford, who described him as ‘a profoundly lonely, disabused man to whom death is perhaps the most meaningful event in life,’ and yet also ‘an extraordinary mind… That’s why headstrong, brave and brilliant men have so often given their all for this man, and what his dignity and purity have done for the car.’
WHEN RUSSELL MET AYRTON SEPTEMBER 1990
Extraordinary writer Russell Bulgin and F1 god Ayrton Senna were both gifted at their art. They were mates, too, going back to Bulgin’s early days as an F1 correspondent. In this 1990 CAR interview, that closeness manifests itself in a glimpse into the enigmatic Senna’s intense mentality: ‘You should have no fear. Because if you have fear, you cannot commit yourself. Fear will determine your limits.’ All the more poignant given that both interviewee and interviewer were taken too soon.
FERRARI TO THE SAHARA MAY 1995
Richard Bremner drove a factory-fresh Ferrari F512M from Maranello to Erg Chebbi, the gateway to the Saharan sand dunes. Why? ‘Because it’s there.’
‘We arrived in the dark,’ recalls Colin Goodwin, who drove a support car loaded with unused spares. The boys awoke to find an offroad adventure company had parked its Merc G-Wagens next to the Ferrari. ‘I’ve never forgotten the look on their faces,’ says Goodwin.
CONVOY! FEBRUARY 1977
‘It had the unreal quality of a dream. That strange hyper-cleanliness, that dazzling intensity of colour, that haunting feeling of being suspended in time, and even in motion; sitting there with the speedo reading in excess of 160mph and two more gold Lamborghinis drifting along ahead.’ Thus begins Mel Nichols’ seminal Convoy story, an account of a cross-Europe thrash in three new Lambos (Countach, Urraco, Silhouette), one of CAR’s most celebrated, and influential, drive stories.
‘I’m still reliving this particular trip. I always will be,’ concludes Nichols. Us too, Mel.
WELCOME TO THE NEW DETROIT
JULY 2010
CAR has always been quick to embrace trends, epitomised by bright spark Ben Oliver taking a tour of California’s nascent electric car industry in a Tesla Roadster. Design chief Franz von Holzhausen drove Ben in a prototype of a future EV called the Model S, and talked of how rapidly Tesla acted compared with GM: ‘It’s just Elon and me.’ The trip leaves the writer musing: ‘Could one of these new car makers go supernova, Google-style?’ Maybe, Ben, maybe.