What Classic Car
The story of British classic cars: their makers, designers, owners’ clubs and museums, all in one free guide.
- 132car manufacturers
- 43designers and coachbuilders
- 57owners' clubs
- 18museums
What you will find here
What Classic Car brings together the history of British car makers with the people, places and clubs that keep their cars on the road.
British car makers
Histories of more than 130 manufacturers, from household names to one-model wonders: when and where each was built, the cars they made, photographs and sources.
Designers and coachbuilders
The designers, engineers, coachbuilders and studios behind the cars, from Alec Issigonis and William Lyons to Vanden Plas and Pininfarina.
Clubs and museums
Find an owners’ club for your car and museums to visit. Every manufacturer’s page lists the clubs and museums connected with it.
Where they were built
Every manufacturer is placed on the map by its factory town, and each town links on to then-and-now photographs on GhostViewer.
Recently added car makers
Railton
After Invicta, Noel Macklin founded Railton at Cobham in 1933, fitting British coachwork to powerful American Hudson Terraplane chassis. Named after land-speed-record engineer Reid Railton, the cars were…
Invicta
Noel Macklin founded Invicta at Cobham, Surrey, in 1925 with backing from Oliver Lyle of Tate & Lyle, building fast, well-made sporting cars such as the 4½ Litre…
Lister
Brian Lister began building racing cars at his family's Cambridge engineering works in 1954, and his Jaguar-engined "Knobbly" became one of the most successful sports-racing cars of the…
Trident
Trident grew out of an abandoned TVR project: Bill Last bought the rights to a Fissore-built design shown at Geneva in 1965 and built the Trident Clipper and…
Peel
Cyril Cannell's Peel Engineering, based in the town of Peel on the Isle of Man, built the P50, listed by Guinness as the world's smallest production car, and…
Radical
Amateur racers Mick Hyde and Phil Abbott founded Radical in Peterborough in 1997 to build affordable, lightweight sports-racing cars. Its SR3 has sold over 1,000 examples, and a…
See where Britain's cars were built
One pin for every factory town. Click a pin to see the manufacturers built there, with links to their histories and to the town on GhostViewer.
Orange numbers show how many marques were built in a town; dark circles group nearby towns, so zoom in to open them. Click a pin for the details.
The people behind the cars
Designers, engineers, coachbuilders and studios, with their careers, notable designs and the places they worked.
Clubs, museums and specialists
Find an owners’ club for your car, a museum to visit, or a specialist for parts, servicing and restoration across the UK.
Run a club, a museum or a specialist business?
Add it to the directory so classic car owners can find you, and so it appears on the pages of the marques you cover.
About What Classic Car
What Classic Car is an independent guide to British classic cars. Each page is researched from published sources, which are listed on the page, and the photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and our own collection. Read more about the site.