Motoring
Do you need cranking?
Alan Judd
One who clearly doesn't need cranking is Simon Draper, proprietor of the Palawan Press and publisher thereby of rare, expen- sive books about rare, expensive cars (he has also done an exotic and beautiful book about rare pheasants, from one of which the Press takes its name). In 1970, aged 20, he came to London from South Africa and fell into retailing, then into records, with his cousin, a chap called Branson. Simon was chairman of the Virgin Music Group when he and Richard sold out to EMI in 1992. He could have continued in business and become ever richer, ever busier, with little time for anything else in life, but chose instead to live his interests — art, books, historic motor racing, rare birds. There is a time for all these, the preacher would have said, and Simon Draper made sure of it.
Gratifyingly, five of the seven books pub- lished by Palawan are about cars, with Aston Martin in pole position. Like the cars, the books don't come cheap — £300 to £900, depending on edition — but they are beautifully done and historically impor- tant. It's safe to say, for example, that noth- ing comparable to the two volumes on the DB3S has been, or will be, published. As With The Atlas of Rare Pheasants £795-2,500), you probably wouldn't want it unless you were an enthusiast, and if you Were an enthusiast you couldn't not want it. And there's more to come.
The Aston Martin DB4 Zagato was one of those cars that makes many people hold their breath and encourages a lucky few to let go of their wallets. Designed by Ercole Spada it achieved immediate fame for its Shark's mouth grille, its aggressive good looks and blistering power. It has never lost that appeal; buying one now will take you well into seven figures but you can at least be sure that, so long as any cars are col- lectable, this will be one of them. As a racer, it bore some famous names and had significant successes but it never had quite the racing development to knock Ferrari off their perch. It remains the most inspir- ing and desirable of all contenders, a desir- ability heightened because only 20 were built, and each one different.
The histories of the 19 surviving cars fea- ture largely in Palawan's forthcoming book on the Zagato, all generously illustrated and thoroughly researched, written by Stephen Archer and Simon Harries. The standard editidn will be £395, the Special £595, while the Zagato Edition, intended really for the 19 owners and perhaps a few aspirants from that distinguished body, the Aston Martin Owners Club, is too expen- sive to be mentioned in the modest pages of The Spectator. If you can't afford the real thing, this book is probably the nearest you will get to it and it seems likely to become almost as exclusive and sought after as the great shark itself. But it won't have an exhaust note and you can't race it, as Simon Draper does his Zagato, so would- be owners and drivers will have to continue their pursuit of fulfilment.
They could do a lot worse than consider Bristol. More distinguished even than Aston Martin, wholly British, their finan- cial future now apparently secure, a respectable racing history whenever they deigned to enter, a tradition of powerful, well-engineered tourers in bodies some- times beautiful, usually elegant, always dis- creet, older Bristols are a bargain compared with DB Astons. Whereas the closest I've come to owning one of the late David Brown's famous beauties was posses- sion of two of his 1950s tractors, I have twice come within coin-flicking distance of buying a Bristol. We usually regret the fol- lies we never achieved more than those we did and it pains me still to recall how my nervous fingers just failed to prize open my wallet. One day, though, I'll have one. One day, too — not so far off, I trust — Palawan intend to publish a history of the Bristol. If I haven't got one of the cars by then, this will be the only possible substi- tute. If I have it will, of course, be an essen- tial accessory.
What would the preacher have made of this craving for material things, this vanity? Well, he was in his wisdom a pretty hedo- nistic old pragmatist who believed that for `Grandad, tell me again about being a beatnik' a man to rejoice in his works is one of God's greatest gifts. Make your passion your work, he might have said, and enjoy it.
Palawan Press is at 11 Royal Crescent Mews, London W11 4SY, tel: 0171-371 3060; fax 0171-371 4080; e-mail:publish@paiawanpress.demon.co.uk
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