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Sports CarsSports Car Pictures
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Lord Price is a big sports car fan so his collection of sports car pictures is impressive. These sports car posters and adverts evoke memories of summer days, country lanes with the hood down and the wind in your hair.
Of course the archetypal sports car is British, through and through. Perhaps not a glamorous high performer (rather like the post-war country itself) but functional and with a degree of charm unparalleled. MG has to be the most famous (in Britain, anyway, even if it's now owned by Nanjing Automobile of China) and we have adverts for the MGA and the Magnette and a 1937 piece extolling MG coachwork. Austin Healey had distinctive style, the Triumph Spitfire was affordable (if damp when it rained) and even staid brands like Hillman and Singer made sporting models. Morgan still produce their idiosyncratic wood-framed, hand-built cars - and have a waiting list any manufacture would be proud of (just don't mention it to John Harvey-Jones). The exception on performance has to be Jaguar (and its Daimler sibling). The XK120 and XK150 have lost none of their ability to impress. The British motor car industry, like its motorcycle industry, is another example of sad decline and missed opportunity. Cars like the MGB and Triumph Spitfire, if properly developed, could have maintained the British sports car's reputation and success, but lack of vision and investment, coupled with awful industrial relations led to yet another failure. Foreign manufacturers spotted a market opportunity and went for it. The best example is probably Mazda with its MX-5 - as British as a sports car could look, but with good handling, reliability, comfort and a hood that doesn't leak. And Lord Price's interest? He has a penchant for mid-engined cars. One of his early drives was a Fiat X1/9 that sadly went to the great crusher in the sky and his current motor is a 1986 Toyota MR2 - pity about the body damage though. And be warned - sports cars can be dangerous. Just ask the ghost of Isadora Duncan - in 1927 her long and flowing scarf became wrapped round one of the wheels of the open-topped car in which she was a passenger. It was traveling at speed and she was pulled out of the car and died at the scene. Her ashes are at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
