First ever production Range Rover will be restored and sold

Made in 1970

You are looking at the very first production Range Rover which will get the chance of a second life through a major restoration process.

It was manufactured in 1970 and is now in the possession of Andrew Honychurch who bought it back in 2000 together with the original license plate. The restoration process will require some serious bodywork as the car suffered from severe corrosion.

When Andrew bought the car it was missing the original V8 engine as power came from a motor taken from a Rover sedan. However, he was able to find a crate engine (of correct age) and ditch the Rover engine.

After the restoration process will be finished, the car will be sold and Andrew believes its value will increase taking into account it's the first registered Range Rover.

Source: blog.hemmings.com via jalopnik.com

Cooper-von-Wankel, Moonshine’s Rotary Mini

One of the things I feel the most appreciative over about my experiences working for Speedhunters has been the opportunity to travel to Scandinavia a handful of times. In this strange land full of beautiful places and beautiful people I’ve learned to re-evaluate the way I look at the world. In a place where nothing is as it seems, you start to just stop questioning anything and just have a good old-fashioned look.

When I first saw the Moonshine Racing team vehicles, they were still strapped onto one of the official Gatebil.no support trailers. I went right up close and within seconds I released that these cars were pretty bonkers. I didn’t yet know anything about the owners, but after one look at the cars I could tell that whomever built them had likely done so while drinking Moonshine.

The outsides of the cars are all painted a matching primer grey color, with miscellaneous stenciling around the body; some hinting at possible performance upgrades while others were non-sensical and others yet simply lewd.

On this particular Mini Cooper, one of the stencils contained a combination of numbers and letters unmistakable to any petrolhead. It read simply 13B-REW. That’s right sports fans, this Mini is RWD and rotary powered. Now I’ve seen it all.

Speedhunters driver and resident rotary fanatic Mad Mike even stopped on track during our photo session to check out the mini, and the next day the owner offered him some time at the helm. Watching Mike wrangling the grippy-tired-and-ludicrously-short-wheelbased Mini into a drift was comical and incredible in equal parts; a memory I won’t soon forget.

With every Gatebil event we are slowly getting around to unearthing more and more of these builds, but try as we might, there are more being built all the time. It’s pretty mind-boggling at times just how many incredible cars are out there in the world and I often can’t help but wonder what future hotspots will be discovered. South America? Middle East? Africa? The search continues…

Sean Klingelhoefer

BUCEPHALUS BY LOADED GUN CUSTOMS

Bucephalus is one of the more unusual custom motorcycles we’ve had the good fortune to feature here on Silodrome, the bike is staggeringly complex but it can be summed up relatively simply: it’s a state-of-the-art race-bred motorcycle built around a vintage, air-cooled Triumph engine.

The idea of blending new with old is nothing we haven’t seen before of course, but this level of engineering prowess is rarely seen in the world of custom motorcycles, with most builders chopping some parts off, adding some other parts and slapping on a coat of paint. Bucephalus is about as far away from that kind of Craigslist special as it’s possible to get.

I’ll start by explaining the frame, which seems to be the part that people notice first. It’s a monocoque structure that uses the engine as a partial stressed member, the frame was cut from 7075 aircraft-grade aluminium and was designed as a lightweight means of connecting the swing arm to the forks. Rigidity is improved through the use of 5/8ths carbon engine plates and a discreet oil-cooler is installed between the two frame elements at the front, to catch clean airflow.

That flat black swing arm is a bespoke unit made from 4130 lightweight chromium and molybdenum (chromoly), this is bolted to that monoshock rear spring which joins to the aluminium frame at the base of the fuel tank.

Kevin (the builder and owner of Loaded Gun Customs) mentioned that he spent an afternoon chatting with Willie G. Davidson in Sturgis at the Ton Up display, Kevin found that people kept commenting on the thinness of the carbon rods supporting the seat and Willie recommended that he use wider, 1″ carbon rods instead, not because the bike needed them, but just because if people don’t trust the engineering, it’ll cost sales on the showroom floor.

The centrepiece of Bucephalus is that beautiful, air-cooled 1967 Triumph Bonneville parallel twin. A number of performance oriented modifications were made to the engine, including a 10 bolt head conversion, short stroke rods, Nic-a-Sil aluminium cylinders, custom JRC TT exhaust pipes and a pair of fast-breathing K&N air-filter pods.

To ensure that the finished bike would handle as well as it could, Kevin decided to use a pair of X1 Buell forks with advanced, Race Tech internals. The brakes are Beringer (4-pot) up front and Brembo at the rear with the front wheel being a Buell X1 unit.

If you love this bike and have decided that you need to own one I have some good news, Kevin will be building them to order. Frame #1 has been ordered by land speed record chaser Bart Boucher, who’s ordered a slightly modified Bucephalus that’ll be capable of 175mph unfaired and 200+mph with a full aero-fairing.

If you’d like to visit Loaded Gun Customs and submit your order, you can click here.

All images via the talented Erick Runyon.

via SILODROME

Ecurie Ecosse goes under the hammer

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just go out and buy your own vintage racing team? Well, that’s exactly what happened at Bonhams London sale.

 £5.5 million pounds for a pair of Jaguars and just under £1.8m for the transporter to go with them? Sounds like Christmas came early for one lucky US buyer.

The talk of the event was the opportunity presented by Dick Skipworth’s splendid Ecurie Escosse going under the hammer as a whole. This meant that cars like the 1956 Jaguar D-type were available for purchase alongside matching team cars from earlier and later years. A final figure of £2.55million marked the successful sale of this beauty.

Startling prices all ’round were achieved at the sale, which marked the first of Bonhams efforts at their new location. Of course it was to be the aforementioned D-Type and it’s matching C-type (pictured) that would gather the largest sums, with the ’52 C-type changing hands for a cool £2,913,500.

It may never have ducked beneath a chequered flag itself, yet all eyes were on this 1960 Commer TS3 transporter. The price reflected its attention-grabbing presence, with the TS3 being purchased for a whopping £1,793,500, reportedly by the same US-based individual who took home both the C and D-Types. The converted ’60 Commer can actually carry three cars in total, meaning that the new owner has the option to expand his fleet if the urge strikes at a later point.

It wasn’t all bad news for those shopping with less than 7 figures, this gorgeous 1951 Jaguar XK120 tipped £707k.

…as well as the slightly more modern 1959 Tojeiro-Jaguar, which saw £382,300.

Further down the money tree was the 1962/63 Tojeiro EE-Buick at £214k, whilst the 1960 Cooper Monaco (below) saw the gong for around £5k more.

A bit of relative bargain, if you don’t think about it too much!

Whilst it had been predicted that the C and D-type Jaguars would collect larger figures than that which eventuated, there were those from the collection which surprised punters, such as the £62k paid for the team’s tiny 1961 Austin-Healey Sprite.

Of course, it always comes back to the weirdest and most wonderful, with the the 1960 Commer stealing the show. The transporter is desirable and rare enough to have been featured in its own ten-minute television clip. To grasp a full appreciation for how special this rolling piece of history is, take a look at this video:

via motorsportretro