High performance: when Britain ruled the roads

';A band of stubborn pioneers rose from the embers of Britain's cities after World War Two and created the finest automobiles the world had ever seen ...High Performance tells the exhilarating tale of their journey down the fast lane.'Ben Collins, bestselling author of The Man In The White Suit and How To Drive';A wonderful glimpse backstage at the flamboyant mavericks and crazies who populated the British motor industry in the 60s.'Alexei Sayle In January 1964 a team of tiny red and white Mini Coopers stunned the world by winning the legendaryMonte Carlo Rally.

It was a stellar year for British cars thatculminated inGoldfingerbreakingbox office records andmakingJames Bond's Aston Martin DB5 the world's most famous sportscar.By the sixties, on road, track and silver screentheBrits were the ones to beat, winning championships and capturing hearts.

Stirling Moss, Jim Clark and Paddy Hopkirk were household nameswho drove the sexiest and most innovative cars.

Designers like John Cooper, and Colin ChapmanofLotus, dismissed as mere ';garagisti' by Enzo Ferrari, blew the doors off Formula Oneand grabbed all the prizes, while Alex Issigonis won a knighthood for his revolutionary Mini.

The E Type Jaguar was feted as the world's sexiest car and Land Rover the most durable.But before the Second World War only one British car had triumphed in a Grand Prix; Britain's car builders werefiercely risk-averse.So what changed?

To find out, Peter Grimsdale has gone in search of a generation of rebel creative spirits who emerged from railway arches and Nissen hutsto tear upthe rulebook with their revolutionary machines.Like theserial fugitives from thePOW camps, they thrived on adversity, improvisation andsheerobstinate determination.Blazing the trail for them was William Lyons, whose heart-stoppingly glamorous and uncompromising Jaguarspropelled a bruised andbankruptnation out of the shadows of war, winning the fans in Hollywood and beating ';those bloody red cars' at Le Mans.High PerformancecelebratesBritain's automotive golden age and the mavericks who sketched them on the back of envelopes and garage floors, who fettled, bolted and welded them together and hammered the competition in the showroom, on the road and on the track fuelled by contempt for convention.