James Elliott, editor in chief
EDITOR’S WELCOME
WHEN I WAS young (long before I could drive) I became fixated on turning a Mini Clubman Estate into a campervan without altering the exterior bodywork. I was perhaps prompted by the availability of a ’shell stashed behind the garage after my brother had liberated its gearbox for his 1973 Mini 1000, and had loads of carefully worked out, quite professional-looking drawings (some even on tracing paper for added credibility), but sadly I was equipped with neither the will nor the skill even to start turning them into reality.
In the years since, I have learnt that pretty much every serious petrolhead has at some point entertained a comparable dream (or delusion), usually equally unfulfilled. I guess that’s why I was so engrossed in this month’s tale of Tony Hunter creating James Bond’s convertible Bentley based on the scant descriptions in Ian Fleming’s books. How satisfying must it be to sculpt such dreams into reality? The fact that the Bentley would never otherwise have existed probably allows some artistic licence, too, which might be useful.
I am utterly spellbound by projects that bring lost dreams back to life, whether it be Lord Foster’s Dymaxion (above), Gordon Johnston’s Gilbern T11 Prototype, Peter Mullin’s Bugatti Aerolithe, Classic Team Lotus’s Mk1 recreation, the many Jaguar XJ13s or the late Scotty Wilson’s Bugatti 100P aircraft. Mankind’s quest to understand and make real
