You may not be a fan of BMW's modern range or indeed the drivers of its flashier products, but back in the ’70s and early ’80s the company enjoyed a very different image. Back then, it was a small player on the UK market, much like a German Alfa Romeo or Saab, its customers buying the cars for their engineering and quality.
The Canary Islands boast a thriving classic car scene, as well as a large and active all-marques club on the isle of Gran Canaria – as Paul Guinness was recently reminded.
We revisit some unlikely records which were broken by car makers in their quest for publicity.
Few classics are more useful than a pick-up, the kind of machine that will turn heads and carry loads in equal measure. Paul Guinness looks at a selection of today’s best-buy models
The last car to be developed by an independent Daimler company, the adventurous Dart ended its life with the name SP250 under Jaguar ownership.
You could consider the Alfasud as a kind of Italian Hillman Imp: a great design pairing sporting appeal with small car practicality but flawed by government interference in manufacturing.
Anyone clued-up on classic cars will be aware of the Datsun/Nissan 240Z, the car which showed the Japanese could create a credible sports car capable of competing with the European makers... but its successor is rather less widely known.
Panther might be better remembered for its more outlandish products such as the six-wheeled Panther Six or Duesenberg-style J72, but what about the Lima?
As European car makers in the early ’90s from MG to Porsche and Mercedes scrambled to come up with a rival to the MX-5, Fiat's Barchetta was perhaps one of the closest contenders.
It's a rare sight even at a classic car meet but the Renault Dauphine was once a staple of every French street scene and reasonably plentiful in Britain...