Author Dr.Octane

When I was about 11 I joined the 22nd Leicestershire Boys Brigade; yes, that pint-sized militant wing of the Methodist church that dressed like the Thunderbirds in darker hues of blue. I partly did it because...

We love these little buggers, even though our rally project is still sitting, a little unloved, under a tarp'. Restoring a rotten one, like ours, is hard; but not as hard as writing something about the classic...

In 1978 Bernie Ecclestone’s Brabham F1 team were desperately chasing Lotus’s JPS-liveried ‘wing car’ in the constructor’s championship. Inspired by the radiator set-up on de Havilland’s Mosquito...

The BMC’s Buckboard was meant to be a feisty little attack terrier – a pintsized British alternative to VW’s Kübelwagen, fashioned from Morris and Austin odds ‘n sods, that could be dropped by...

If you've been lucky enough to have an issue of MotorPunk land on your doorstep recently then you'll know we have a bit of a thing about interior design … if there's a whiff of 'mancave' about it. And Joel...

Back in May 2018 we joined the world famous London to Brighton Mini Run, a convoy of Issigonis’s greatest creations that chugs its way 53-miles southwards from Crystal Palace to the balmy coastal assembly...

Just after Christmas I stumbled across an TED Talk by an American fella called Matt Cutts about the 30 Day Challenge, a little motivational trick to overcome that soul-sapping inertia you sometimes get when...

In the 1970s mk1 Minis were having their dinky rear lights cut out, bonkers-wide arches lashed on and their lovely brocade seats glossed with Dulux in botched attempts to make them look more modern. In the 80s...

Jenatzy was a larger-than-life Belgian race car driver at a time when most the Flatland’s turnip-eating peasantry wouldn’t have even seen a motor car. At the turn of the last century these mechanical...