"Excuse me," said the elderly lady standing next to me outside Buckingham Palace. "Do you know what time she will be appearing?" I glanced at my watch and replied: "Oh, I don't think it will be very long." In those moments, I reflected on how I had come to be standing outside the palace on a glorious, blue-sky July morning in 1988, waiting to be picked up by a black cab... that was going to take me to Sydney, Australia.
I had first come up with the idea some 20 years earlier. I was at Crystal Palace on a sunny Sunday morning in November 1968, somewhat in awe as I witnessed the gathering of cars setting off to do battle in magical-sounding faraway places such as the Grossglockner, the Khyber Pass and Wagga Wagga, as competitors on the London to Sydney Marathon rally.
But then life intervened. A career, marriage, raising a family and emigrating from old South Wales to New South Wales, Australia, meant it wasn't until I was wandering through the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney with a new colleague 18 years later that the notion came up again in conversation. The like-minded - and aptly named - Edward 'Ned' Kelly liked the idea. "Let's do it, John," he said later that afternoon.
And so, outside Buckingham Palace, after two years of planning, it was finally happening. During that preparation we had grown from two to six. Guy Smith was an archetypical, never short-of-a-word London cabbie and Kanelli Tsiros was a Sydney taxi driver - both selected via competitions in their home cities. Award-winning Australian film-maker Mike Dillon would capture our every move, while Charles Norwood, a former London-to-Kathmandu expedition leader, was to be our unflappable mechanic and logistics coordinator, or 'fixer'.
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Denne historien er fra October 2022-utgaven av Classic & Sports Car.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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A Breath of Fresh Air- Alfa Romeo's exotic, V8-powered Montreal was like nothing the marque had made before, but can it compare with a Porsche masterpiece, the 911S 2.4?
The stereotype of the ItaloGermanic automotive rivalry is that the Latin car will be brilliant to drive, but poorly built and ergonomically flawed, while the Teutonic will be the opposite. Yet these 2+2 sports coupés both ran against orthodoxy. In the Montreal, Alfa Romeo created an outlandish-looking two-door more comfortable, more powerful and more refined than anything it had produced for decades. Meanwhile, Porsche continued to refine its back-to-front, austere and increasingly aged 911. Neither took a traditional development path, but both created thrilling and individual cars that have echoed through the decades.
Daring to be diminutive
AMC's Gremlin and Pacer, and Ford's much-derided Pinto, led America's response to the threat of imported European compacts
THE LONG WAY ROUND
There is a great tradition of overland trips by Land-Rover, but the tale of this 70s Aussie epic and the car itself was discovered by chance
Handsome cab
The Phantom V limousine marked the beginning of the end for coachbuilder James Young, but this Rolls-Royce represents the craft at its very best
DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES
Racing for their own F1 teams brought some drivers success and an enduring legacy. For others, it turned into a nightmare
20 30 LITRES CYLINDERS, 400BHP......AND MORE THAN A CENTURY OLD
Thunderous torque, flame-spitting stub-exhausts, white-knuckle thrills - and hopefully no spills - aboard a trio of Edwardian racing titans
ICON.
The three top-selling vehicles in the USA in 2023 were pick-ups, topped by the Ford F-Series. This is the truck that started it all
Blurred Lines
lan 'Del' Lines blended the V8 burble of Triumph's open GT with real practicality in his Stag V8 saloons and estates
Home of the brave
The innovative Silverstone proved a hit with keen amateur drivers. To mark its 75th, Healey's club racer returns to the circuit for which it is named
PLAYING ALL THE ANGLES
Alfa Romeo's wild RZ eschewed the jellymould styling of the period to offer a striking, wedge-shaped take on open-topped performance motoring