History

The records held by British cars, with the verified numbers behind each one. The smallest production car ever made, the fastest, the longest-lived and the most expensive at auction.

Britain's best-selling cars ranked by the real production and sales figures, from the Mini's 5.38 million down, with the awkward Ford question answered along the way.

The landmark British motoring firsts on one page, each with a date. The first British car, the first speeding fine, the first motorway, and the first through the sound barrier.

A guide to the old tractor brands you meet at every British rally and in every farmyard memory, who made what, when, and what became of them, from Fordson, Ferguson and Massey Ferguson to David Brown, Nuffield, Leyland and Field Marshall, plus the conversion specialists and the world names alongside them.

The life and cars of Sir Alec Issigonis, the engineer who designed the Morris Minor and the 1959 Mini, pioneered the transverse-engine front-wheel-drive layout, and was knighted for reshaping the small car.

What British Leyland was, the marques it absorbed, the thirty-year industrial arc from the 1968 merger through nationalisation and privatisation to the 1999 BMW breakup, and why it still matters for owners of 1970s and 1980s British classics.

What the "Export or Die" policy actually was, the steel-rationing mechanism that backed it, and why so many of the British classics worth caring about came out of that period.