There’s more to Bristol specialists Brabazon Motors than restoration. Dep-O was invited along to test drive one of their modified V8 models.

After all the scrimping and saving, sorting out the ride height and then fitting your new set of wheels, you’d think your shiny sense of accomplishment would last for months – but it doesn’t. And …

My Cool Classic Car celebrates our love affair with the car, from the humble Citroën 2CV to the sleek Mercedes 300SL Roadster, appealing beyong the car enthusiast to the retro style enthusiasts and all those who share a passion for quirky and iconic design.

Formula 1: All the Races: Roger Smith needs to be congratulated for this book. It is a massively impressive piece of research, which must have taken him eons to complete.

Amongst the biggest crime a modern car’s spec sheet can contain is electronic power assisted steering.

There is retro and there is retro… It’s safe to say that if you like every single one of these customised cars, well, you really do need to seek medical attention. Some are fascinating, some make you laugh, some might inspire and some will make you gag.

We’re big fans of Ruppert’s writing, add in a reference to the British Car industry and we’re hooked. The book doesn’t disappoint.

If you’ve got any interest in Minis, you’re going to find this book very hard to resist. The way the Mini was built – with most of the key mechanicals hanging off two sub frames – lent itself to the dreams of the kit car designer, and the vast majority are listed here.

Covering both fact and fantasy, the hand-drawn illustrations in this smashing book have the power to transport you back to a more genuine time – when technology was interesting and the future was something to look forward to.

This book can be a real problem – you pick it up for a quick thumb through and the next thing you know, you’ve lost an hour. Yes, it would be easy to dismiss this as a coffee-table book, but ‘Art of the Hot Rod’ is so much more than that – given its sheer bulk it also represents very good value.

While George Barris has been feted since he started working with his brother Sam, and Roth and Von Dutch have rightly had the coverage they deserve, a celebration of Gene Winfield’s work has been a long time coming.

This book follows the life of BSA’s two-wheeled working class hero, the Bantam – a small, simple commuter motorcycle which thousands of people learnt to ride on. It became the standard GPO ‘telegram bike’ in the Fifties and was a huge success with 100,000 coming off the production lines in just the first four years.