Classic Car Mart Magazine Classic Car Mart August 2013 Edizione posteriore

I’ve been exercising my enthusiasm
for old machinery in a different
direction this month... specifically a
two-wheeled one. After accepting a
challenge from a group of friends,
I retrieved my 10-speed ’80s racing bike
from its decade-long storage and resolved
to complete a 40-mile charity ride on it.
Amazingly, my younger self must have
looked after the old steel-framed Peugeot
pretty well, since what I expected to be a
weekend of stripping and greasing turned
out to be no more than a quick wipe-over
with an oily rag and off we went.
“They don’t make them like this any
more,” I thought, swiftly followed by
second thoughts as the limited range of the
10-speed set-up made itself felt up the first
of the many inclines on the hilly Cotswold
route. The bike is probably the two-wheeled
equivalent to the MkII GTI in that it really
gives nothing away to a brand new machine
worth many times more yet the newer car
just does everything so much better and
makes life that little bit easier. Yet somehow
even the smartest carbon-framed, brightly
graphiced weapon lacks the elegance of
the slender-tubed steel frame. Suffice to
say I was pretty happy with my ‘barn find’...
not as happy as I would have been
if it had been an E-Type roadster
but chuffed nonetheless, especially
when it completed the full 40
miles without anything breaking.
Of course now I’m faced with a
dilemma familiar to countless car
restorers in that I’m torn as to
whether to retain it in its utterly
original condition or upgrade it
with modern lightweight rims,
modern gearing, carbon fibre
bits... the list goes on.
There’s a similar theme running
through this month’s Mercedes SL feature:
the R107 is the classic SL everyone loves
but once you’ve driven its successor the
R129 you realise it’s the better car in every
respect on purely technical grounds yet
somehow the older car has the timeless
elegance and classic charm.
Elsewhere, the reverse is true with this
month’s Aston and Jaguar comparison.