It’s sometimes a world of strange contrasts working on classic car magazines. On the one hand I’ve just been making the arrangements to accompany the Jaguar heritage mechanics on the 2011 Mille Miglia event supporting their priceless XKs and at the same time I’ve been exhuming my Alfa Spider from the garage before taxing it for the summer, a task which involves sorting out the accumulated junk piled on it over the last few months.

I always try and avoid piling stuff on top of the car and as readers will know, a single instance of “I’ll just leave it there for a minute while I get the drill/sockets/jack...” soon turns into a car which has become another storage rack. Although I think I’ve got a way to go before mine gets to the state of the garage featured in this month’s Discoveries where it took two days just to get to the car through the junk.

Meanwhile, a contrast of another more modern kind comes with this month’s twin test and having worked on both VW and Ford enthusiast magazines in the past, I’ve got a fair experience of both the Golf and Escort. Although the subject of the 220 bhp RS Turbo I ran as a project car is probably best left well alone...

Back in the day the Golf was always regarded as the superior offering but today the tables have turned slightly with the Escort offering more character than the rather serious Golf.

The big surprise of course is that there are so very few XR3i’s left on the road today, whereas I can almost guarantee I’ll see a MkII Golf every time I go out.

Both of these would make great contenders for our summer classic buying feature too: as we discovered, a sensible budget of £3000 is still enough to buy a sound, usable classic which should provide at least a summer’s worth of fun before you have to lay a spanner on them. And of course if you disagree with any of our suggestions then feel free to let us know...

Paul Wager, Editor

For all this and much more see the June 2011 issue of Classic Car Mart.

Back issues available here