Pete Lyons F1’s 3-liter formula that began in 1966 was hospitable to American constructors. All three U.S. domestic marques that...
Pete Lyons One day during an autowriters’ junket in Europe, we checked into our small country hotel with a good...
Pete Lyons Fair warning: I know very little about my topic, which is Rush, the new movie set in the 1976 F1 season. We’ll see it shortly, and I’m keen to. My wife even intends to buy the DVD. This movie matters to all of us in motorsports. By early...
Pete Lyons Try throwing your arms around all the richness of racing … too immense to embrace, isn’t it? Racecars,...
Pete Lyons Corvette didn’t show well at Le Mans this year, which is unusual, and I suppose in time we’ll...
Pete Lyons Fifty years ago, when people communicated on paper delivered by hand, her brother’s letters from far-off England would be eagerly opened and avidly read by the whole family back in Auckland. Often flowing over half a dozen pages or more, Bruce’s back-slanted penmanship was casual, his phrasing newsy...
Pete Lyons Our reigning World Champion has forced us to think, once again, about sportsmanship in motorsport. Whether or not...
Photo: Pete Lyons / www.petelyons.com Pete Lyons If you have a two-car garage, do you keep two cars in it?...
Pete Lyons There is no great genius without a trace of madness,” declared the Roman philosopher Seneca, and can we have any doubt he was looking ahead 1.9 millennia to designers of Can-Am racecars? The wonderful old Canadian-American Challenge Cup series of 1966 through 1974 is justly famed for many...
Pete Lyons THIS IS OLD news to you, but as I write, we mountain folk are still buzzing about February’s...
Pete Lyons Stirling Moss deliberately steering his Lotus into rain puddles around the Nürburgring—reading about that may have been the first time I ever really thought about racing tires. It was the German Grand Prix of 1961. The 1.5-liter formula had just come in, and the tiny, 4-cylinder Coventry Climax...
Pete Lyons Partway through an evening of kind words, warm recollections and congratulations, the moderator came on the mic and...
Howden Ganley stopped by our vendor booth at the recent Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, where one of the old photos...
Pete Lyons Got paper and pen at hand? Or simple fingers will do: Try coming up with a list of the long-distance sports racing cars you’ve seen or learned of over the years, and that you still hold in reverence. Cunninghams, Jaguars, Ferraris, Fords, Porsches, classic enduro racers that you...
Pete Lyons Any idea what we’re looking at here? Don’t wait for me to tell you, I only have the...
Sixty years ago was when—for me—the world became modern. Many people will laugh at that; some will understand but have...
Pete Lyons You’d need a piece of paper the size of Texas to write down all that should be said about Carroll Shelby, so I’ll fall short here. But I’d like to share a few personal recollections. Years ago, during a supposedly formal banquet at the auto museum in San...
Back in the free-and-easy days when you still could cozy up to naked racecars right out in plain sight, some...
Telling about cannibalizing a pickup truck engine for his racecar, he said, “Any of you would have really enjoyed” that...
Maybe I’ll change my mind by the end of the column, but as I tap out this opening sentence, I feel an itch to go back and be a Formula 1 reporter again. Pete Lyons This happens every spring. The off-season has dragged on too long, stimulation and intrigue have...
Pete Lyons We start the new season with two interesting notes on the subject of pulchritude. Near the end of...
Pete Lyons Something is missing. Look around the race tracks, the city streets, the holiday hotspots … see what isn’t there? Elegant, vivid little cars that used to be all over? Yup. No Alfa Romeos. Become a Member & Get Ad-Free Access To This Article (& About 6,000+ More) Access...
Nearly 10 years ago in this space (“Sleuths Wanted,” February 2002) I asked if anyone could ID a Can-Am car...
That’s a question I found occupying (the few) idle moments of my mind during October’s Porsche Rennsport Reunion IV at...
Pete Lyons Come with me to Italy, if you’ve got a minute, I want to show you something neat. We’re standing along a sun-drenched country road, waiting for old race cars in the Mille Miglia Storica commemorative rally to appear. It’s a scene of joyous beauty, with flowers spangling the...
Its svelte silhouette has been a fixture of our sport for—take a breath—practically half a century. Incredibly, the lines and...
Pete Lyons Have you ever crushed an aluminum can, then found yourself wondering, “Could I straighten it back out, like new?” Of course you couldn’t … unless you’re a metalsmithing sorcerer like those at Classic Motor Cars Ltd. (CMC), one of those fabled restoration shops in the dear old UK,...
