PRACTICAL CLASSICs - Spring 2019

In the latest issue of Practical Classics...

Spring is coming and for many of us, it’s time to start thinking about what to do with our classics. In the Spring 2019 issue of the mag, we’ve collated fifty top tips to save cash – covering all aspects of your car with detailed advice from our team of enthusiasts and restorers.

Big news of the month comes in the form of the 1959 Standard Ten – once doomed to a Ford scrappage scheme and saved by a group of Scottish enthusiasts and Practical Classics. Well… we’ve driven the car from Dundee to the Practical Classics Classic Car & Restoration Show at the NEC in Birmingham – the first time it has left Scotland since it was built! Find out how we achieved it in our special celebration road trip feature.

As a preview to warmer weather, we’ve flung in a bit of drop-top action for you, in this month’s Practical Classics. We feature two astonishing DIY cabriolets – a Saab 96 V4 and a Ferrari Testarossa. Both home built, both very much the real deal.

There’s a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow buying guide, a £500 Bangernomics challenge and more top tips on how to buy, restore and maintain classic cars of all shapes and sizes.

Buy the latest issue of practical classics here

standard saved epic road trip adventure time!

We can barely believe it. This immaculate little car was just moments away from being crushed yet here we are, about to depart on a 500 mile road trip. There are smiles all-round us outside the Dundee Museum of Transport, where ‘Bluebell’ has been cared for by volunteers since it was liberated from a scrapyard in Thurso in November 2017. It’s time to prove, once and for all, just how utterly outrageous it was for Ford to have condemned the car as part of its scrappage scheme. Having covered a mere 22k in the past six decades, Bluebell had never been outside of the Highlands (let alone Scotland) before it turned up here in Dundee for display. This is the Standard’s first journey to England since it left the Coventry production line in the winter of 1959. It will take us two-days to reach the magazine’s workshop near Stamford, we will be taking the scenic route for Bluebell’s first ever big trip. Find out what happened in the new issue of Practical Classics…

the ferrari ‘ratarossa’

Meet the Ratarossa. And please meet the man who got it through rehab and back on the road, the man who just can't stop buying Ferraris: Scott Chivers. He's the ex-IT consultant who can't resist a bit of subversion, who'll do anything he can to get the right Ferrari as long as it doesn't involve main dealers or the traditional specialists. Right now, he has eight, most of them left-hand drive and US-sourced, seven of them shiny and proper plus the Ratarossa. 'When it arrived,' says Scott, 'I realised that to make it pristine I'd have to replace or refurbish everything. So, I thought I'd just have some fun with it. That's Plan A, which will eventually have the car pristine under the tatty skin using as many correct parts as possible. Plan B was to break it for parts, but I really didn't want to.' So what happened next? Find out in the latest issue!

house of wonders: THE BMC BEAUTIES

Ian and Dawn Kennedy have a exciting house of many wonders – particularly for BMC and British Leyland enthusiasts! The pair run a business refurbishing Hydrolastic and Hydragas displacers and are the saviour of many a car. Their own cars are seriously special. First is the sparkling Tundra Green Landcrab. Ian’s Morris 2200 is one of the last ever made. ‘It is almost on a P-plate,’ he says, beaming. ‘I have had it resprayed and only needed to replace one panel, around the indicators. Sills, wings etc are original.’ Ian grabs a fat folder. ‘He was so meticulous he kept all the history, all the bills magazine reviews etc. He even kept the newspaper advert that prompted him to go and get the car!’ There is much, much more besides. Find out what else is in their garage in the new issue of Practical Classics…