Development story

The Rover P6 was a radical new product for its maker – and proof it was trying to move away from the stuffy ‘Auntie’ image that it had been landed […]

One of the most replayed television clips of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, is of her arriving at 10 Downing Street, having triumphed in the May 1979 General Election […]

The Austin Kimberley and Tasman, and their Morris-badged cousins, were an interesting development of the BMC 1800/2200 reserved for the Antipodean markets only. They featured conventional three-box styling and were […]

Keith Adams recounts the Vauxhall Cavalier Mk1 development story – a tale of close ties with Opel in Germany, some interesting UK design tweaks and the beginnings of an impressive […]

The Hillman Avenger was all-new from the ground up, and the first Rootes Group car to be developed under the leadership of Chrysler Europe. An excellent all-rounder, but one which […]

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. […]

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 […]

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. […]