Cars

A walk on the wild side

If you’re unfamiliar with the EB112, you might assume a Photoshop fantasist had killed an hour or two by crudely merging a Veyron and a Porsche Panamera. But it’s a reality – a rather ugly one, perhaps, but one that predates both by more than a decade.

The ungainly beast you’re looking at was built by the Lancia Works Department in 1964, for Marco Crosina and Fernando Frescobaldi to drive at that year’s Targa Florio. It’s just as a prototype should look: crude and functional – bodged, even – but that’s what makes it so charming, and indicative of the purpose it served back in the day.

After two decades working in his family’s business selling high-end cars – the last nine years of which he’s spent focusing on classics – Tom Hartley Junior decided to go solo 18 months ago, setting up his own eponymous company. Since then, he’s traded cars with mind-boggling values and, through this success, the business has expanded rapidly and will soon relocate into a new, purpose-built showroom. Ahead of the move, we spent an afternoon with Tom and his rather impressive group of cars…

2011 Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0

1974 ‘Ferrari’ 246 GTS Dino

Smoke and mirrors

Dual purpose