Biggest-ever issue of C&SC – on-sale 1 March!

By James Elliott

| 29 Feb 2012

A bumper 30th anniversary issue of Classic & Sports Car officially hits the shelves in the UK on 1 March.

Weighing in at a massive 420 pages, it is by far the biggest ever edition of the magazine and the second largest that parent company Haymarket Media has ever produced.

As well as looking back over some of the highlights of the past 30 years – the best motoring art, books, discoveries etc – we take an in-depth look at the ever-changing C&SC fleet and include 16 great feature articles focusing on the best of the best. Even our buyer's guide is for a Bentley 3 Litre!

For our main story we have revisited the year of C&SC's birth: 1982.

We took nine of that year's best performance cars for all needs – two seaters, 2+2s and four-seaters – to our favourite Welsh driving roads to find out what is the best to buy today.

But these exotic performance cars are bound to be really expensive aren’t they? Quite the opposite, they are bargains, ranging from just £2000 to a maximum of £25,000.

Here's a few stats from the cars we tested:

Highest top speed: 149mph (Lotus Esprit Turbo, price now from £8000)

Lowest top speed: 121mph (De Lorean DMC-12, price now from £17,500)

Quickest to 60mph: 5.6 seconds (Lotus Esprit Turbo, price now from £8000)

Slowest to 60mph: 10.2 seconds (De Lorean DMC-12, price now from £17,500)

Most expensive (now): Ferrari 308GTSi QV, from £20,000

Most expensive (new): Bentley Mulsanne Turbo - £61,744

Cheapest (new): BMW M535i - £13,745

Cheapest (now): Jaguar XJ-S, from £1500

Biggest depreciator: Bentley Mulsanne Turbo - £61,744 in 1982, now from just £8000.

Also featured in the mag is a vast array of classic gems, ranging from a Jaguar SS100 Lightweight, to meeting Mr Pagani and driving his Zonda.

Add to that an Alfa Tipo T33 at Zandvoort, the finest Testa Rossa rep imaginable – one with a unique hardtop no less – a 1980s Testarossa trying to cope with modern city traffic, both a Rolls-Royce Phantom II and the stunning Abarth 1500 Biposto in the studio, celebrations of the AC Cobra at 50, Bertone at 100 and the late, great Gilles Villeneuve and there is something for everyone.

Commenting on the anniversary issue, magazine editor Alastair Clements said: "We made it our ambition to offer readers as much fresh content as we could rather than spending too long revisiting past glories, and as a result we have more features – and more feature pages – than ever before, headed by that epic road trip in our favourite performance cars of 1982."

Despite it being nearly twice the size of some editions, the anniversary issue will be sold at the usual price.

In the run up to publishing the special issue, C&SC has posted a number of related videos and free wallpapers for our on-line friends. There are more to come, but in case you missed any of them…

Click on the item you want to see video of our snowy Welsh mountains photoshoot, some of the current Our Classics fleet gathering for a special photo, or the anniversary issue on the printing presses.

Or click on the car name to download the special free wallpapers of Alfa Tipo 33, Ferrari Testa Rossa 'Turismo', Pagani Zonda, Abarth 1500 Biposto, SS100 Lightweight.

James Elliott

James Elliott is a former Editor of Classic & Sports Car