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A lockdown special from the publishers of The Road Rat Price: Free Issue No.1 April 2020 Stitch or staple

The first four editions of MGM Keir Dullea in 2001: A the world’s Space Odyssey (1968)

most beautiful ry to remember that scene everything in your periphery. in 2001: A Space Odyssey You feel the air escaping car quarterly On Lewis/ when Commander Dave around your mouth, over your Bowman re-enters his cheeks and nose, misting up spaceship, Discovery your vision. The sky-blue are available Humanity/ One, and makes his way to plastic gown is loose over your

Stitch or staple T HAL’s ‘brain’. What you grey-blue theatre scrubs. The exclusively via might not remember is that gown’s sleeves terminate in two Medicine Kubrick shoots much of this thumbholes, so that it doesn’t our webshop From the front line of the from Bowman’s point of view – slip down over your forearms. you’re inside Bowman’s helmet, You’ve taken off your wedding NHS in the UK, the writer looking through his visor. ring and you’re double-gloved. theroadrat.com of ‘Senna’ sends this What you will remember is his You’re wearing blue plastic powerful despatch loud and steady breathing. overshoes. That’s what it sounds like It’s hot inside and all you can Single issues are currently available at the subscriber price of just £10,00 plus postage and behind a plastic visor as you hear is your breathing. shipping, A choice of fabric slip cases and art prints of the Issue 3 ‘Mystic Mac’ cover are Words: Dr Manish Pandey breathe through an FFP3 mask. The bay in front of you has 12 also available. The Road Rat ships in a sturdy cardboard box directly from our UK HQ. ‘Oz GP’ photography: Darren Heath The curve of the Perspex bends beds, only four of which 2 11

Hamilton on the Thursday: “Really, very surprised…” are occupied, right now. They the antibiotics, the iv lines and worry. You try to articulate are all Covid-positive patients. take blood from those whose their love from behind a dense

There are two more in side- veins haven’t collapsed (the paper mask and Perspex visor GROUP LOTUS PLC rooms and one ‘possible’ – phlebotomists are too scared and double gloves, all to the The S4 ‘Sprint’, 126bhp, their swabs being analysed at to come in here) and then background hiss of piped 60mph in 6.6 secs Charing Cross. exchange a few words with oxygen – and your breathing. Andretti attempted to race that my first Elan, a 1970 S4, years later when it was time to The youngest is 62, the oldest them. You’re a stranger now You disrobe, methodically, day DNF’d quickly, while the accessioned soon after moving become graduated and I was 90. Last week, they were all because, of course, they can’t first overshoes, then gown and other Lotus fellas running (in to Boston to attend law school. reminded by the university well – but, now, they are all properly see the eyes and faces gloves in one big ball, dropped last year’s 79) didn’t finish in the A white roadster with knock off that I’d never actually paid that sick. Two of them, terminally. of the blue astronauts tending into the ‘Infectious Waste’ bin. paint. But I bought an adhesive wheels, it was too cool. I loved first semester’s tuition. Oh There is a scoring system them, nor read our lips, nor Then you wash your hands. Lotus-Martini sticker anyway driving it, locally. But it turned those days before widespread to decide the appropriate hear us properly. There is no You emerge, through heavy and proudly stuck it on the seat out the front uprights of its computers, they’d forgotten level of care, based on age, skin-to-skin contact. And you wooden double doors, and take tube of my new bike (a Dawes backbone chassis were rusty, me for quite a while. So I’d ‘performance status’ (what each don’t want to linger any longer off your visor and your mask, Super Galaxy, cycling fans) so until I could effectuate a gotten away with driving an patient could do, before they than you have to because, then wash your hands again. where it’s held up remarkably repair, I tended to float around Elan almost daily for three become ill) and pre-existing honestly, despite all this PPE Your hair is stuck to your head, well. Certainly better than any the highway as the suspension years, putting 20,000 miles on medical conditions. Your soul you are afraid. your scrubs to your body. Lotus I’ve known. subtly shifted a few feet in front it almost free of charge if you is telling you that you should Two patients have mobile You look back through fire- Fast forward 16 years. It is the ahead of me. discount the large amounts of throw the kitchen sink at all of phones – the others don’t. glass at the four patients, each 1980s and after a steady diet A rather larger problem was cash required for repairs. So I them but your crash training, There are no visiting hours. lying alone, their beds spaced of roasted MGAs and MGBs, a that I used my first semester’s had to sell it. But for me it had about this 120-day-old disease, So, you try to deliver a message two metres apart, with one procession of Volvo Amazons, law school tuition to buy been the scam of a lifetime. dictates otherwise. of love or hope from family senior nurse still inside and and a long interlude driving the Lotus and forgot, which No doubt, Colin So, you adjust oxygen, recheck who are beside themselves with you feel sick to your stomach at ‘70s Opel 1900s, I acquire would come to haunt me three Chapman would’ve approved. #RatTales 8 5

#RatTales — the stories behind the stories. Issue 4: The Road Rat Book Club the police, who then seized it. He had to cough up a further £2k to buy it back, “Today they would call it cognitive dissonance and there is probably medication available to deal with such absurd but had to wait until he was done for speeding in it in a 30mph zone a short eclecticism. But at the time, this time being when I was about sixteen, I did not think it odd to be simultaneously while later for a mention in our local newspaper. He was the local vicar.” interested in the Metaphysical Poets and in designing racing-cars. I had as well, subsidiary interests in girls and Robin Swithinbank @Swithinbanking beer. I can’t now recall the edition of John Donne that I favoured, but I will never forget the other literature. There Share your family car stories with the hashtag #MyFathersCar

McQueen’s barking vanity THANKS project, so overwrought with cod philosophy that it forgets to be a film at all. ‘When you’re racing, WE’LL CALL it’s life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.’ YOU. You don’t need to hear this from the hollow of your sofa. Here’s to the crazy ones. How can a subject so redolent Ideas after their time with danger produce such By Paul Horrell ennui? And the descent has barely begun. Jerry Imagine being the Mercedes Bruckheimer’s NASCAR porno technique had been paid, engineer who invented the Days of Thunder twangs the gag Music for and something else was jump wiper on the W124. A reflex, narrative arc flattened visible through the ennui. work of genius, a single wiper by an overwhelming desire to Guitarist William Reid was in whose arm magically extended see its protagonist die horribly. the open a relationship with Mazzy Star so as to reach into the far upper Similar sentiment meets Driven, singer at the corners of the screen, then starring and written by Sylvester time, and it’s her haunting, shortened so it didn’t overlap Stallone. Next-level nadir, a “I’m getting notes of Road Speed, beauty and gauzy vocal – duetting with the A-posts when it reached the film so poor it unites fans of extreme elegance..” the other Reid brother, horizontal. At every up-and- motorsport and those utterly feat. Hope Sandoval – Jim – that gives ‘Sometimes back cycle. It was mesmerising. indifferent to it in steadfast rule that says any wine with Always’ its character. This And never heard of again. Waste contempt. a picture of a car on the label ‘Sometimes Always’ isn’t the American open road of an engineer’s career. To Rush then, Ron Howard’s quick should be best placed at the By Jason Barlow @jasonbarlowuk as depicted by The Eagles, Guess it was a cost thing (the biopic of the Hunt/Lauda back of the cupboard. The Jackson Browne or Tom Petty; W124 sat at the apex of the rivalry. Here’s a film that drinks kitchen cupboard. Not so Peter The Mary Chain were always no, this one shimmers with the Benz cost-no-object era). Or threatens to salvage some Mullin’s ‘Mullin Estate’ wines, enamoured of America’s slightly broken quality that you were later simpler double-pivot dignity for the genre. Proper Peter Mullin’s wines are each inspired by one of the promise, mythical or otherwise. encounter in those one-horse wipers simply OK? character development, elegant and tasteful, of course pre-war French beauties from It’s there in 1985’s debut album towns that frame the Mojave Like Procon Ten. This was convincing action and period By Michael Harvey @mikeyharvey Mullin’s celebrated collection. (I)(I), where you Desert and Death Valley. It’s an Audi invention, launched in detail, diminished only slightly There’s the Syrah/Merlot can hear the pulse of early rock short but fair motors along and 1986, that ran stout wire cables by the sight of Thor in a McLaren blend ‘Rosso’ inspired by a ’n’ roll – the stuff of cars and invites you to throw the roof around the back of the gearbox M23D. Spirits lifted, you It’s a golden rule never to Type 46 Bugatti; the Talbot- girls and escape – through the back on whatever convertible casing, thence via pulleys fixed download Ford vs Ferrari. talk about booze in a car Lago Type 150-CS Syrah and blizzard of nihilistic feedback rental you’re in and marvel at at the front suspension mounts, And minutes later you and ‘magazine’. But given that the Type 57 SC Sangiovese. that briefly made them the most the stars (they are more visible aft to the steering column. In a the cereal bowl are back in bed, nobody is driving right now All new-world grown under notorious band since the Sex right now, wherever you are in heavy shunt, the rearward motion the chaplain’s words ringing and all we have to look forward old-world supervision they are Pistols. By the time they made the world). Alternatively, watch of the powertrain would via hollow in your ears. There to is cooking and drinking, all worth taking seriously. That their fifth album (I)Stoned & the video: it’s a road movie Professor Ferdinand Brainstawm’s may be a global crisis that we figured we could ‘furlough’ you can’t seem to buy them Dethroned(I) in 1994, the debt compressed into two and a half mechanism pull the steering justifies expending 152 of your that rule for the next few weeks anywhere right now is maybe to the Velvet Underground minutes – pool table, cowboy column forward, away from remaining minutes on this and examining the coincidence confirmation of that. Tho’ and Phil Spector’s fabled hats, Lincoln Continental your chest. Shortly afterward, it sickly spume, but we’re not of cars and alcohol. rather frustrating and we’ve ‘wall of sound’ production MkIV and all. dawned on them that airbags were there yet. There’s probably another finished our case. 6 7

REMEMBERANCE OF THINGS PAST In Issue One, landscape photographer Julian Calverley visited the Alps. From his personal archive here’s a rattlesnake speedway in Death Valley 10 3

the cruelty of this virus. ‘avoidable’ – and, the best word compromising or prevaricating. 1965. Like many in those Dijon. Pedalling up a dusty As I write this, the UK has of all, ‘unforeseeable’. “I am really very, very Colin faraway days, I found myself track through a grassy field registered 2352 deaths, with So, cast your minds back to surprised that we are here… I particularly intrigued by the that led to the Dijon-Prenois a shocking 544 deaths in the Thursday, March 12th – just think it’s really shocking that camp crime fighting show’s circuit, I heard a loud rumble 24 hours to 5pm on March 20 days ago – but an age away, we are all sitting in this room. Chapman female lead, Emma Peele, coming from behind me. I 31st. Italy has lost 13,155 men, already. As darkness of this There are so many fans here played by Diana Rigg. Rigg pulled over to a stop, and women and children; Spain pandemic began to encircle today and it seems like the rest of drove an Elan roadster in the turned around to see what was 10,003 and the world 48,284. our fragile planet, the F1 the world is reacting, probably a and Me show, the pair of them being to up. And there, emerging from Dharavi, the world’s biggest Circus arrived in Melbourne, little bit late, but we have already Lotus, I would submit, as Sean the haze, came three identical slum, where 700,000 people armed with the latest seen this morning that Trump As part of our #RatTales Connery’s James Bond and his Lotus Turbo Esprits in recently are crammed into 2 square information, bullish that the has shut down the borders with series the author of Issue 1’s DB5 were to Aston Martin, a outmoded John Player Special miles of Mumbai, has just Grand Prix would go ahead Europe… yet Formula One ‘Complicate and add new lease on life at a time of livery, jet black with gold reported its first case… with a normal crowd. continues to go on.” great invention. trim. (Player’s sponsorship One day, there will be A day later, it was cancelled. Sport, like Medicine, is Darkness’ tells his own The more I learned about arrangement with Lotus had inquiries around the world A year from now, that nothing without humanity. Chapman story the Elan and Lotus, the more ended when the cigarette maker about how this happened – how cancellation will be seen as Lewis, like every doctor and Chapman’s monomaniacal pulled out of racing, leaving this was allowed to happen – ‘unforeseeable, at the time’. nurse on the frontline, cast By Jamie Lincoln Kitman @jamiekitman vision of lightweight Lotus free to ink a deal in 1979 but we sort of already know But one person did see. He aside his personal fear and put construction, next-level with Martini.) what they will conclude. The saw exactly to where this might humanity first. s most writers of most steering precision and As the these cosmic dream thousand-page tomes will lead. As ever, he transcended anything can tell you, miraculous road holding machines each went by, one by be littered with words like the sport – but, this time, writing 4000 words spoke to me. Another Corgi one, I could see their drivers ‘tragic’ and ‘unnecessary’ and he went out on a limb, not isn’t easy, no matter Elan, this time a coupe, had through their windscreens. the subject. But some taught me a little about Lotus Enter Mario Andretti. Enter Aassignments are easier than engineering, with its removable Carlos Reuteman. And leading others. And, as topics go, backbone chassis hinting at the the pack had been a pissed off writing about Colin Chapman peril that might accompany looking Colin Chapman. Oh, and the Lotus Elan for The side intrusion incidents. But children, the force was strong. Road Rat was for me less I didn’t care. By the time I Yes, the disastrous Lotus 80 difficult than plenty of others I learned to drive, such sporting could imagine. qualities as the Elan possessed That’s because I’ve been had become my highest thinking about Chapman automotive ideal and attaining more or less ever since I was them, it’s embarrassing to seven years old and the day I admit, my life’s greatest first saw an Elan in the Corgi ambition. Of course youthful Toys catalog I scooped up at finances made thoughts of a department store I’d been ownership a nonsense. dragged to by my mother. A But the want would grow. connection was made in that In the summer of 1979, while febrile young brain between attending a summer language the handsome car and a new course in Paris (Je parle TV show I’d caught wind of, Francais avec un accent grave!) The Avengers, which came I took my bicycle down to see Packing away before the rush to catch a to America from the UK in the French Grand Prix in plane home #MyFathersCar 4 9

“My father was the proud owner of no fewer than three Renault 11s in quick succession, one of which had the was Laurence Pomeroy’s The Racing Car Explained and Costin & Phipps’ digital dash and voice commands. These were usually deployed when my little sister failed to close a door properly, Racing and Sportscar Chassis Design. Because of these two great books for which I suppose I should be grateful. He also once owned a Renault Fuego for eight days, swiftly returning it to I can still disabuse anyone accusing me of being an effete intellectual by a the dealer after it broke down repeatedly - ‘the worst car I’ve ever owned’. Consequent to that, he had an XR3i cab, patient explanation of how one calculates slip angles and piston speed.” which he only learned had been bought stolen after someone put a pickaxe through the roof and he reported it to Stephen Bayley

cheap and widely available. And movies that was that. Remember Saab’s It’s not a great time to recall tittersomely-named Sensonic just how bad racing films are transmission? A poor person’s By Matt Master @harcourtmaster version of Ferrari’s first-gen so- called F1 flappy-paddle lash-up, The TV remote cycles through itself of course a poor person’s news channels, shopping version of a proper DCT. In channels, old soap, new soap, the Saab you actually had to Schumacher had a daytime drama, cartoon work the gearlever yourself passion for Mamma Rossella’s ragu network. In a world temporarily while the car grudgingly, and absent of all motorsport, the ineptly, operated only its clutch. 100g veal mince only thing with four wheels Multiple cleverer transmissions fast food 100g pork mince on the television today is an have since been industrialised Half a slice mortadella, minced ambulance. Time to act. You and that was that for Sensonic. How to cook (what else is 1 slice prosciutto, minced can eat a fifth bowl of cereal, Or BMW’s Active Front

120g tomato purée you can ‘let yourself down’ as Steering on the fugly E60 CARS MERCEDES-BENZ COMMUNICATIONS GLOBAL - AG DAIMLER there to do) like a champion 2 sticks celery, sliced thin my school chaplain used to call 5-series, variable in ratio By Paul Horrell 2 small onions, chopped small it, or you can hit rock bottom according to speed. On the car was supposed to be about. 2 small carrot, sliced thin and watch a racing movie. I drove at its press launch, the ALL THAT The Sports Utility Vehicle A visit to Fiorano is always a Sesame oil Quite why it’s impossible system’s brain kept futzing out, itself had only recently been treat, tho’ not an exceptional to make box office sense of and I’d be left with it locked in coined and was understood to mission for a motoring hack. Meat first: sweat a quarter of motorsport remains a mystery. its native ratio, which turned YOU CAN be little else than a somewhat Back in 2004 one was. There the onions, celery and carrot Documentaries aside, there are out to be far more pleasantly more fashionable 4x4. Utility? was no cavalino rampante to in sesame oil until soft and only six proper racing films, a natural. BMW soon saw sense, LEAVE BE- Coupé? It wouldn’t have made race around Ferrari’s legendary slightly coloured. Then add rogues’ gallery of the passable, and now the same job is done, any sense then and still doesn’t. test track, just a visit to the the meats and brown slightly. peppered with absolute shit. far better, by 4WS. Ignoring the inherent practical circuit’s ‘official’ cafeteria, the Then add 30g of tomato Grand Prix is probably the More from the Merc crazy- HIND deficits of this concept and equally legendary Montana. purée, with a splash of water to highwater mark, a film with cost era: the reversing masts on A ‘great reappraisal’ is coming focusing solely on its aesthetics, The brief was simple, find out loosen. Stir well, and cook low age working in its favour, the 1991 S-Class W140. When says almost everyone. That one has to wonder what the what Michael Schumacher likes and slow for at least four hours. blurring the hokum with in reverse gear, a six-inch rod appeal is. Familiarity may have to eat — and get the recipe. Now with the remaining period charm. Frankenheimer would poke up from the top of may be a good thing say us bred grudging acceptance. ingredients make the tomato gets away with slow motion the corner of each rear wing, By Christopher Butt Yet the fact that rather than Well Michael liked a ragu with sauce. After another long and spilt screen action so the driver could better see wildcats or predatory fish, the fresh egg tagliatelli, if you cook — four hours minimum because, well, it was 1966. where the ruddy great Bundes A few months ago, nobody beastly inspiration for today’s insist own being reductive — — cool and liquidise. Return From here it is a slippery Tank actually ended. Shortly would’ve had any idea what car design happens to be the spaghetti Bolognese. Only this it to a large frying pan with a slope, however. Paul Newman’s afterward, sonar park distance Covid-19 meant - it could’ve obese tortoise remains as is as far from a spag’ Bol as, little oil to reheat. Cook the Winning, a laboured love story sensors became commonplace, stood for a turquoise synthetic baffling as ever. well, Michael’s F2004 was from pasta, drain and stir into the featuring real life wife Joanne and now your stiff-necked food colorant just as well as the Like Covid-19, the SUV coupé the opposition that year. Here tomato sauce in the pan for a Woodward, is neither one thing banker didn’t have to swivel his key to making cold fusion work. will one day become part of goes. It’s in two parts, a meat minute. Divide onto plates. nor the other and all the worse head at all. Two decades ago, we would’ve history books. In the silly car’s sauce and a tomato sauce. Spoon the warmed meat for it. Feel free to add you own, been equally clueless as to case, we will wonder what all You will need. sauce on top. Then there’s Le Mans, Steve under #ProfessorPatPending what on Earth an SUV coupé the fuss was about.