The epitome of automotive elegance and a high point in Alfa Romeo’s fruitful relationship with the Milanese coachbuilder Touring Superleggera, the 6C 2500SS Coupé Villa d’Este from the immediate post-War period is right up there with the most beautiful classic cars of them all.
It’s been 25 years since JJ Lehto, Yannick Dalmas and Masanori Sekiya defied the odds to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright in the Ueno Clinic-sponsored McLaren F1 GTR. It was the first time since Ferrari in 1949 that a manufacturer had won the great French endurance thriller on its maiden outing – that it was able to do so with a road-born GT car and not a purpose-built prototype made the feat even sweeter. Remarkably, F1s finished first, third, fourth, fifth and 13th.
On 9 June 1968 at the notoriously dangerous Spa-Francorchamps circuit, the skilled racer and team owner from New Zealand Bruce McLaren clinched victory in the Belgian Grand Prix, joining an exclusive club of drivers to have won a race in a car bearing their own name. Two years later, almost to the day, the motorsport world was rocked to its core when McLaren tragically died in an accident while testing a Can-Am car at Goodwood.