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The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts

Graham Gauld

The Cygnet and its Swansong

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The luxury Microcar, the Aston Martin Cygnet. ( Photo Gauld)

Story by Graham Gauld

It was fifteen years ago, 2011, when for some strange reason, the Aston Martin board decided it would be a good idea for Aston Martin to change the habit of a lifetime by building a super-mini road car: the Aston Martin Cygnet.

One interpretation for this decision was that as Aston Martin were producing the Supercars of that period. As some of their customers might have large yachts on which they could perch a small car built to the luxury standards of the full-size Aston Martins, the marketing concept had a feasible interpretation.

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Gauld Checks Out the Ferrari Estate Car

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The Series II Ferrari 330GT. American design, Italian coachwork. Hugues Vanhoolandt photo.

Story by Graham Gauld

At the risk of a rebuttal, I would say that the terminology “Estate Car” or “Shooting-brake” came from the good old United Kingdom. One can trace this class-conscious terminology applied to a motor car to the early days of horse-drawn travel in the 1880’s when rich landowners needed a bulkier carriage to carry the guns and shooting impedimenta for blasting partridge and grouse out of the sky.

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The Legends of Bob Gerard

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You can’t read one without the other.

An inquisition into one of the funniest and most original racing books ever written

All hell is about to break loose at the Gerard residence. Young Julian is attempting to make up a model grid of the British Grand Prix, circa 1952, with his collection of Dinky Toys. Not having enough red F1 cars to fill the grid, Julian paints a spare Cooper-Bristol in the Italian racing color and pretends it’s a Maserati.

But Uncle Bob, who always refused to drive or race anything other than British cars, seriously objects to Julian’s new color scheme. “Explain to me why it is in red. And not British Racing Green as God intended.”

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Graham Gauld on Nardi

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The mystery BMW Special. Note the two hoods, the front holding the engine and the top one holding the spare wheel.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

From the VeloceToday Archives, March, 2016

Last week I talked about the car that truly stopped the show at Retromobile, the Ferrari 335S, so now I will go from the sublime to the ridiculous.

A tale of two? Nardis

I happened by the stand of Christophe Pund who runs La Galerie Des Damiers and has a habit of digging up remarkable cars that no one has ever heard of. This year he went better and put on show a car he told me he had found as a wreck – and by the time of Retromobile it was little more than that – but did not know exactly what it was. I mention it because some reader in Italy may remember something about it and be able to help out.
Fundamentally it is a two-seater sports car with a lightweight body and powered by a 750cc BMW motorcycle engine mounted in its own compartment at the front of the car. There is a second hood under which is the spare wheel so the driver sits in one of two sketchy seats holding what appears to be a Nardi steering wheel.

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Gauld and the Auburn Douze

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The Auburn Douze, a stylish race car for 1940. ( RRM Sothebys )

Story by Graham Gauld

Not a day goes by without some mention in the newspapers about alternatives to using petrol to drive our cars such as electricity or even hydrogen. So how about one of the older alternatives, LPG, liquid petroleum gas, such as propane. Not only that but let’s take an extreme example of this powering a racing car, around 80 years ago; the Auburn Douze.

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Francisco Giordano’s Great Little Maserati Book

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Story by Graham Gauld

Six years ago Francisco Giordano published a little soft cover booklet on Maserati that opened my eyes to many interesting elements in the history of one of Italy’s most famous companies. Most of the general history of Maserati is well known and it is to his credit that Giordano has dug deeper into the brothers Maserati, who founded the company in the 1920s.

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Gauld and the Mallocks

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The redoubtable Major Mallock with one of his first Ford engined Austin Seven specials from the 1940s.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

The Silverstone Classic, run by the British Racing Drivers Club, is an event for car guys and gals with a huge entry of cars of every shape and style racing on the full Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit.

For me it is a time to meet up with old friends and poke around the various paddocks to see what interesting cars and people I can find.

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Graham Gauld remembers Brian Naylor

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Brian Naylor, centre, and friends in the pit lane for the 1954 RAC TT Race at Dundrod. (Photo Gauld)

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

OK, let’s start with a question. Who was the first British driver to come over and race in the Daytona 500?

Do I hear you say Innes Ireland? Nope, it was not him but a much lesser known but equally characterful driver from Salford, near Manchester, named Brian Naylor. I first met Brian back in 1954 at the RAC Tourist Trophy Race at Dundrod in Ireland. I had managed to get two days leave from the Royal Air Force so took the bus from my base at Dundonald to Dundrod up in the hills behind Belfast. In the pit lane I found this cheerful character chatting up three of the local Belfast girls and so a friendship began; and ended with a telephone call some twenty-seven years later in Bill France’s office at Daytona.

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Gauld: Tec-Mec and other Oddities

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Barrie Baxter lifts a wheel of the Tec-Mec when trying to hold off young Will Nuthall in the ex-Bob Gerard Cooper-Bristol.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

From the Archives, November 2011. This was Graham’s second column for VeloceToday; his latest is featured in this week’s edition as well. Furthermore, last week Jeff Allison’ article elicited some remembrances of the Maserati Tec-Mec. Here Gauld provides another perspective.

I have been humbled by the response to the first column and only hope I can keep you entertained for a few more months. I think one of the problems is that each chance meeting or race meeting provides an opportunity to dig out even more stories to flesh out information we have on some of the odder pieces of motor sport history. They might otherwise disappear when boring old farts like me arrive at the eventual pit stop hopefully in the sky.

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Ferrari 212 Export Berlinetta

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Dr Martin Halusa’s very early Ferrari 212 Export Berlinetta at Monaco in 2018.( Photo (Gauld)

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

On a web site such as VeloceToday our stories tend to paint with a broad brush. It is clear, however, our reports on concours-style events always attract attention because through these events we can observe the changes made over the decades in the actual shape of the car, in other words: styling.

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Ecurie Ecosse Tour, 2025

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Head of Pro-Drive, famed for their World Rally Championship successes with the factory Subarus and later Ferraris in the 1990s, David Richards with his wife Karen and their Aston Martin DB6 Volante.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

It’s May, so for me it is time for the Ecurie Ecosse Tour, held on May 18-22. It originally started in the 1990s when this gathering of friends with nice cars were brought together under the umbrella of Ecurie Ecosse. To everyone’s surprise this small private team won the 1956 Le Mans 24 Hour spectacle with one of their D type Jaguars driven by Scots Ron Flockhart and Ninian Sanderson. Not only that, but this success allowed them to enter two cars for the 1957 and they promptly went out and finished first and second in D type Jaguars and a legend was born.

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