Richard Aucock

2 weeks ago | the-intercooler.com | Richard Aucock

It’s Father’s Day on Sunday – and doesn’t that day become a whole lot more interesting once you’ve become a father yourself? – which seems like a fine opportunity to reflect on the cars my dad drove when I was a boy. (It’s also a good time to remind you that your car-loving dad would no doubt be thrilled to receive a gift subscription to The Intercooler this year. Use coupon code DAD15 at checkout to get 15 per cent off. End of message.)My dad’s cars?

3 weeks ago | the-intercooler.com | Richard Aucock

Your browser does not support the audio element. When I was about 13 I went to spend the weekend with my godfather, who was a very successful businessman and total car obsessive. This would have been around 1979 and he’d just taken delivery of a brand new Porsche 928, gold on the outside, brown Pasha upholstery within if memory serves. So he asked if I’d like to go for a ride.

3 weeks ago | the-intercooler.com | Richard Aucock

It was born, in part, from the twin flames of ego and irritation, both Dr Ferdinand Piëch’s. As Volkswagen’s most visionary and feared boss, Piëch called the Volkswagen Group’s strategic tune, whether it was for the boldly rational or an indulgence bordering on folly. The Phaeton was certainly a product of logic, in the mind of Piëch at least, but would quickly come to be seen as a curious, and very expensive, irrelevance.

3 weeks ago | the-intercooler.com | Richard Aucock

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. After two years of being the proud custodian of a little blue Land Rover fondly known as Blue Tit, the time has come to expand the family and buy another vehicle. Blue Tit has covered a sometimes unwilling but mostly cooperative 40,000 miles with me at the wheel, only occasionally – okay, not that occasionally – leaving both of us steaming at the side of the road.

3 weeks ago | the-intercooler.com | Richard Aucock

We don’t know precisely when, but sometime within the next year, and with a crisp bark from its freshly fired up 1.8-litre engine, the last Alpine A110 will drive off the line at the factory in Dieppe where it has been built since 2017. It is popular today to paint it as a plucky failure, one beloved by motoring journalists who never spend their own money on new cars, but which failed to resonate in remotely the same way with those that do.