Behind the Lens: How Stradale Icons Helped Bring a Classic & Sports Car Feature to Life

Give or take? - a Jaguar E-Type 2+2, a Lotus Elan +2, and a perfect April day in the Ashdown Forest

There are assignments that remind you exactly why you do what you do.

When Martin Buckley — one of the most respected voices in classic car journalism, and a writer whose knowledge of the Italian and British cars of the 1960s and 1970s is genuinely without equal — asked whether Stradale Icons could help facilitate a photoshoot for Classic & Sports Car magazine, the answer was straightforward. Of course we could. The question was simply how to do it properly.

The Brief

Martin's article for the June 2026 edition of Classic & Sports Car examines the +2 models produced by Jaguar and Lotus in the late 1960s and early 1970s — the Jaguar E-Type 2+2 and the Lotus Elan +2. These are cars that occupy a curious position in collector consciousness. Both are derivatives of icons: the E-Type is perhaps the most celebrated British sports car ever made; the Elan defined the lightweight, nimble roadster formula that Lotus had perfected. The +2 versions — longer, slightly heavier, designed to accommodate two rear passengers — are routinely treated as the compromise option, the practical choice for the owner who needed a back seat.

Martin's argument, characteristically well-made, is that this reputation is largely undeserved. The +2 models have a grace and completeness of their own — and in the case of the Elan +2 in particular, a case can be made that the additional body length actually improved the proportions rather than compromised them. It is exactly the kind of considered, unfashionable reassessment that Martin does better than almost anyone writing about cars today.

Finding the Cars

Sourcing the right examples for a feature like this matters enormously. A magazine article of this calibre — written by a journalist of Martin's standing, photographed by John Bradshaw — demands cars that are correct, well-presented and genuinely representative of what the +2 models can be at their best.

Both cars came through the Stradale Icons network — owners who understood the significance of the feature and were generous enough to make their cars available for the day. That generosity is not something we take for granted. When an owner entrusts a significant car to an assignment like this, they are extending a form of trust that we take seriously. Ensuring the day runs smoothly — that the cars are treated with the respect they deserve and returned in exactly the condition they arrived — is as much a part of what Stradale Icons does as anything else.

The Location

A privately owned estate in the heart of the Ashdown Forest, East Sussex, provided the setting for the static photography — and it earned its place in the assignment. The home's grounds offered the kind of backdrop that editorial car photography demands: clean, uncluttered, with a quality of natural light on an April morning that no studio could replicate. Once John Bradshaw had captured the static work, the group headed out into the Forest itself for the on-road cornering and tracking shots that give a feature like this its energy.

I was on hand throughout the day — managing the logistics, making sure the transition between locations ran without friction, and doing the various not-so-glamorous but entirely essential things that keep a shoot like this moving. It was, without qualification, one of the most enjoyable working days Stradale Icons has had of-late.

In Print

The Give or take? feature appears in the June 2026 edition of Classic & Sports Car. With a prominent front-cover feature, the article is accompanied by an advertisement for Stradale Icons in the same edition — meaning our name appears before the magazine's 40,000 specialist readers in the same issue as a feature we helped bring to life. That alignment feels right.

Classic & Sports Car is the title that serious British classic car collectors read. Being associated with its editorial content — particularly a feature written by Martin Buckley — is exactly the kind of credibility that takes years to build. We are grateful to Martin for the introduction to this assignment, and to the owners of both cars for their trust and their generosity on the day.

If you are a car owner, a creative professional, or a production company who has been thinking about what Stradale Icons might be able to do for you — a feature like this is perhaps the clearest possible illustration of how we work and what we value.

Read the full feature in Classic & Sports Car →Classic & Sports Car, June 2026.

Stradale Icons provides collection management, discreet acquisition, media placement and motoring experiences for the owners and custodians of iconic British, Italian and German road cars.