Development story

Keith Adams There are plenty of cars that have achieved notoriety during their lifetimes – one only has to look at the Boulevard of Broken Dreams that is the British […]

It changed the way we looked at small cars almost overnight, and sent the Designers scurrying back to the drawing boards – the Mini was little short of a major […]

The Clubman was developed through BMC’s desire to expand the Mini concept, without spending too much money. It started out as a hatchback proposal penned by Roy Haynes, and then developed into something rather less useful. […]

In 1974, Leyland’s Italian subsidiary Innocenti introduced a rebodied, three-door hatchback Mini, styled by Bertone. However, within a year of its launch, BLMC went bankrupt, the company was sold to […]

It’s the 60th Anniversary of the Mini’s launch in 1959. A good time, then, for Ian Nicholls to chart the origins and production history of this car in what is […]

The Talbot Samba was another car from PSA which relied on badge engineering to take it to market… However, despite that, it was a reasonable success in its home market […]

The Talbot Sunbeam Lotus was an unexpectedly wonderful collaboration between Coventry and Hethel. With 150bhp, it was quick and exciting proto-hot hatch. […]

The Hillman Imp was the Rootes Group’s great white hope to beat the Mini at its own game. However, as Keith Adams explains, the project was riddled with setbacks and […]

When the Lotus Esprit burst onto the scene in October 1975, it had a similar effect on fans of the marque as that fateful storm had on the gardens of […]

Just 19 months from conception to introduction, the Sunbeam was the result of a crash development programme for Chrysler in order to secure UK government funding. It worked, too… and […]

What the 1980s needed was a new Mini-Marcos, and Harold Dermott was determined to make that happen. The car he produced, the Midas, was a sensation, and Andrew Elphick tells […]

When launched in 1972, the Ford Granada represented a bold move in Ford’s pan-European strategy. It replaced the Zephyr/Zodiac in the UK, and the P7-series in Germany with a new and stylish Anglo-German design. […]

Updated: The story of the Rover 75’s conception, development, and eventual launch in 1998. And how it was scuppered by events – not least the torpedoing it was given by BMW boss, Bernd Pischetsrieder. […]

Replacing the Montego with a new Honda-based executive car was never going to be straightforward. The Rover 600 development story, with significant input from David Morgan, tells how Rover managed […]

The TVR Tasmin arrived in a flurry of hype at the beginning of 1980, but only really bloomed much later in the decade once its Ford engines had been replaced by some very interesting tuned Rover V8 units… […]

The Scimitar started out as a two-door coupe, but soon evolved into something far more innovative. We pull together the brief, but fascinating story of one of Britain’s most underrated […]