The inspiration behind the concepts and designs of Lister cars came from the pre-war Mercedes racing cars that would today...
In the March 2009 VRJ I wrote about Don Blenderman’s Kurtis obsession and his wonderful Sutton-bodied 500KK. What I failed...
Terry Bennett says he grew up as both a nerd and a motor-head. It was hardly his fault. His father was a brilliant physician, his mother a concert-grade pianist, and he was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, soon to be the epicenter of sports car racing. Bennett began driving...
The early post-war interest in small displacement automobile racing in Europe was fueled by enthusiasm and petrol rationing. Money was...
David Duthu’s appetite for interesting and eclectic cars seems to be boundless. He vintage races a Bugatti Type 35A and...
September 2010 A great idea that failed. Jaguar created special streamlined bodywork for its C-Types for the 1952 Le Mans 24 Hours in an effort to increase top speed. Unfortunately, the new shape did not allow sufficient engine cooling and all three entries retired. While they were still running, Tony Rolt...
Le Mans 1957 represented the high water mark for Jaguar’s iconic D-Type. Handicapped by the reduction of engine size to 3-liters...
April 2011 Out of the Shadows By Roger Lane In the late 1960s, by a chance meeting, Roger Lane was...
My motor racing career started with the most basic form of car, a 1952 Ford Anglia E93A, which I towed to stock car meetings at a track near my home in Dublin City, Ireland. I crashed it, bashed it, took it home after the race and fixed it, so I...
“My name is Casey; and I’m a recovering Triumph owner.” Or at least that’s how I’ve felt for a number...
Italo Piana is a living legend among Italian MotoGP fans. He won the Italian Motorcycle Championship three times, and was...
With a dad like Stan Jones it was hardly surprising that Alan became a motor racing nut when he was still a kid. Stan won the 1954 New Zealand International Grand Prix, four 1955 Victorian Trophies at Fisherman’s Bend, Melbourne, became the 1958 Australian Gold Star Champion and won the...
June 2011 The Art of Bugatti Richard Adatto, Christina Japp and Julius Kruta Published by the Mullin Automotive Museum with...
“Their hopes, their dreams, their love; tied to a ribbon of road…and a boy’s unflinching faith…in a girl!” “A story...
Bill Devin was a friend of mine. Even in his eighties he was incredibly sharp, had nearly flawless recall and was good for at least six hours of automotive tale-telling at a moment’s notice. His career manufacturing fiberglass sports cars and bodies ran longer than anyone in history (1954–2000) and...
1956 Lycoming Special The immediate post World War Two years were best described as austere times for many countries, even...
I was involved with the E-Type Jaguar right from its inception, initially as an employee under the wing of Lofty...
“Wow, I could have had an 8V!” Can you imagine if Fiat had hired actor Ronald Reagan in 1952 to promote its brand-new sports car with that mostly familiar slogan? Had Fiat done that, is there any doubt that thousands of units would have been sold? Instead, in 1975 Campbell’s...
During the November 1952 running of Mexico’s fabled Carrera Pan-Americana, the Karl Kling/Hans Klenk Mercedes 300SL makes a pit stop...
Pete Lyons Come with me to Italy, if you’ve got a minute, I want to show you something neat. We’re...
Two Italian gentlemen wedged into a tiny race car, flying atop open roads across glorious countryside, through blistering sun and pounding rain…crowds lining the course dangerously close. From 1927 to 1957 this was the Mille Miglia. Can you possibly imagine a more enjoyable way to spend 20, or so, hours?...
Half a century ago, if your perfectly good sports car were damaged in an accident, you had options. One such...
Formula 3 was a superb training ground for many British drivers in the early 1950s. For this sunny International Daily...
Cliff Reuter and I suffer from codependency. The phone calling and emailing is incessant. I regularly disturb him while he’s giving tennis lessons and he has a particular talent for ringing my cell phone just when I’m beginning to do surgery on the bones. But we share a passion for...
The 1955 24-hour race at Le Mans was set to be an epic contest. Mercedes-Benz had entered the brilliant new...
Austrian born Karl Alberto Abarth did so many things so very well. He was a motorcycle racing champion, multiple land...
The finned Cunningham D-Types of Walt Hansgen and Sherwood Johnston, wait with Duncan Forlong’s AC/Bristol and Curtis Attaway’s XK-120.Photo: Bob Schroeder Over the years Texas has seen its share of oilmen who were actively involved in sports car racing. One of them was Dallas resident Samuel Allen Guiberson, who was...
The author puts his back into steering the Trimax through a left hander at Mallory Park.Photo: Andy Thorpe Was Alvin...
In order to understand the Pegaso story, it’s first necessary to understand the man behind the car and the tumultuous...
“For nearly a half-century, wherever Americans powered their way to automobile glory, whether on the two-and-a-half-mile Speedway at Indianapolis, the short quarter-mile midget tracks or the dusty half-mile fairgrounds where sprint cars plied their fearsome trade, the name Offenhauser long meant the most dominant engine to power a racing car.”...
