Upper Middle Petrol Head:

1970s Aussie utes don't get much better than this immaculate Valiant - possibly a circa '74 VJ, as best as we can tell - featuring flawless paint, straight, unblemished chrome, and a perfect interior.  The ultra-clean engine bay - home to a straight six-cylinder hemi - is testament to the car's overall condition, being an absolute credit to its owner. The big workhorse appears to be stock, with the only obvious departures from standard being a pair of Cibie Oscar driving lights, some extractors, a set of five-spoke pressed steel wheels - as also fitted to the Charger and possibly the Pacer, too - and what may be after-market cloth inserts on the vinyl front bench seat.  If there's anything else, whatever it might be has been done super-subtly and doesn't detract from the ute's originality one little bit.      Of course, the Valiant load-lugger that leads today's piece wasn't the only vehicle to grace the 2023 Fathers' Day edition of Classics by the B

Our South East Queensland correspondent, PeteR, has ditched Australia for a holiday in equally sunny Lisbon, where he spotted this lovely Fiat Spider.   It looks like it might be a  BS , with the B denoting a second series car and the S standing for Spider (the AS   preceded today's example while the CS was the follow-up model in the same way that the 124 Sport Coupes were designated AC , BC and CC ,   but   with the C standing for coupe). This is only a guess, mind you; the car's wearing 1600 badges which, in Australia at least, was the engine capacity most commonly fitted to  BS and BC 124s. It's also fitted with the much nicer - read not fat, ugly US federally-mandated - bumpers that blighted later versions of the Spider. If you'd like to see a bit more of PeteR's automotive work, here's a link to his 'blog chronicling the transformation of his Alfa 147 into a track day weapon:  https://aureliatheitalianproject.blogspot.com . Should you wish to see a few

  Here was me thinking that I had half a clue about classic cars!  Turns out that the beautiful silver coupe in the centre of the above shot is not a Zagato-bodied Aston Martin, as I'd imagined it to be, but is actually an Abarth 205/A Berlinetta!  Fortunately, Google Lens was able to put me right, with further research and the simplest process of elimination revealing it to be chassis number 102 of just four examples ever built.  The first three - today's plus chassis numbers 101 and 103 - look much the same, whereas chassis number 104, known as the Sport Ghia Coupe (inset, below), differs markedly in its styling ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abarth_205A_Berlinetta , accessed 25 AUG 23) .  The real take-home from all of this is that the Goodwood Festival of Speed - where the opening shot and all the following photos were taken - has boggled my tiny Southern Hemisphere mind through its vastness and the extraordinarily exotic and rare nature of the cars on display.  And I wasn