In 1965, I enjoyed a working holiday in London. On Friday 18 June that year I took the cheapest tour...
Brausch Niemann had a brief but successful career in motor sport and took part in two world championship Grands Prix,...
Achille Varzi, in the Alfa Romeo 158 “Alfetta”, set the 2nd fastest time for Heat 1 behind the Alfa 158 of Carlo Trossi.Photo: Ed McDonough Collection Motor racing, especially at the Grand Prix level, had reached a frenzied pace before World War II but was brought to a halt in...
The main thing about the 1953 race at Watkins Glen was the question of whether there would be a race...
Karl Kling, Mercedes W196.Photo: courtesy of Chris Bayley Automobilia (www.chrisbayleyautomobilia.co.uk) Lost in the sands of time for nearly 60 years...
The 7th running of the fall races at Watkins Glen, N.Y., was held at the Interim Course, a 4.6-mile, 9-turn circuit on public roads, up the hill from the village, in Dix Township—the second year for that course. People would later call it “the course on the hill.” It was...
1955 was the last year of racing on public roads for Watkins Glen—September 17. It was the 4.6-mile course up...
2007 SAFETY GEAR DEVELOPMENTS Some significant new products for vintage racers seen at the 2007 Performance Racing Industry Show. LEATT-BRACE...
This year’s Monterey Historic Automobile Races marks the 35th running of this classic event. As shown schematically in the Laguna Seca track map to the right, over the course of those 35 years, a wide variety of significant automotive marques have been honored with the distinction of “featured marque.” Interestingly,...
Prior to the Second World War, simply driving a motor car in Europe was almost a noteworthy event, and thus...
Alfa Romeo will be 100 years old on June 24 and its motor sport pedigree almost 99—one of only a handful of companies that can trace their motor racing heritage back to the start of the 20th century. But Alfa’s is a kind of pear-shaped pedigree, in which the Italian...
Alfa Romeo had gone from zero to hero and beyond from the 1911 Targa Florio to the 1936 Mille Miglia....
After one hundred years of providing some of the finest motor racing on the planet, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest(ACO)...
The J. Frank Harrison story Given today’s racing environment with its multi-million-dollar corporate budgets, it can be hard to imagine a time when private individuals paid these expenses. Wealthy enthusiasts such as Lindsey Hopkins (a Florida investment banker), John Edgar (a California industrialist), Joe Lubin (a California tractor parts dealer),...
A GT40 hot on the “Longtail” of a Porsche 906/6 as they leave the Esses. Photo: Roger Dixon During the 1960s...
The late 1960s brought a host of changes to the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans. The wave of “professionalism”...
An image of Reid Railton with his parents depicted the engineer at the time of his decision, supported by Henry Spurrier III, to design and produce an automobile of his own conception. In the midst of Britain’s post-war turmoil engineer Reid Railton was freshly out of a job at the...
Sam Hanks may have been a quiet man who preferred to keep to himself, but at the wheel of a...
Robert Newman examines the men and machines that made the Mille Miglia one of the world’s greatest races. The Mille...
Jochen Rindt (right) and Lotus boss Colin Chapman celebrate the Austrian’s 1970 British Grand Prix victory. Photo: Maureen Magee The poet Robert Browning wrote “how sad and bad and mad it was—but then, how it was sweet.” In today’s world, preserving the past for future generations is something that has a...
Tony Boynton was like many teenage boys whose primary interest in cars was looking forward to the day when he...
Tears streamed down a thousand faces in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris on September 9, 1945. Tears for the...
One of the great things about the growth of historic racing over the past decade is the wide variety of events in which an owner can now participate. In addition to the enormous (and growing!) selection of historic race events, there are now more and more fantastic non-racing events open...
The assembled gladiators, left to right: Alain Mahé, Jean-Francois Piot, Jacques Jauber, Jean Ragnotti, Jean-Louis Marnat, Michele “Biche” Petit, Jean...
Homebuilt or custom-made racecars were not new to America’s racetracks as they had been appearing for decades on dirt ovals,...
The son of a wealthy Tennessee family, Pete Kreis had grown up during the time that European manufacturers dominated automobile racing at the Indianapolis 500. When he broke into big-time racing in 1925, Pete and his American compatriots were eager to demonstrate that cars and drivers from the U.S. could...
More than 80 years ago, two fabulously wealthy young American brothers, accompanied by their butler, flew a primitive plywood-based biplane...
Sixty years ago, an American sportsman built his own cars to tackle the world’s greatest endurance race Many in America...
Whatever the French might say, an American named James Gordon Bennett, Jr. is the great granddaddy of the modern Grand Prix, because it was this irascible millionaire who first came up with the idea of staging an international motor race, with national teams and colors. And the 1903 Gordon Bennett...
