Categories
Audio Classic Sportscar Ferrari

Thanks to the Rescuers

I must admit to giving up a week of my life to Tom Yang’s Ferrari restoration journal. A wonderful story of a sound engineer who undertook the daunting task of restoring a Ferrari 330 America purchased in boxes. We often throw the term “basket case” around when discussing cars that require a huge amount of effort — but when the project literally comes in baskets; well, that’s something else.
Something that should be applauded.
Having brought myself up to date on Tom’s site — and the remarkably victorious restoration of his beautiful, driven, Ferrari 330 — i dug a bit deeper into his site and came upon Tom’s collection of audio conversations with other vintage Ferrari owners telling their own rescue stories. I love stories like this, and even if these were videos, they wouldn’t capture the twinkle in the eyes of these proud rescuers any better than hearing them tell their stories does.
Admiral Phillips\' Ferrari 500 Mondial II
One story stood out in particular, of a very early rescue. Admiral Robert Phillips was a humble Lieutenant in 1960 when a series of happy circumstances brought him in contact with a broken down and neglected Ferrari 500 Mondial racer. In an era when people paid cash for their cars, he took out a loan of most of a years’ salary to purchase the wreck, and slowly brought it back to life on his own. No workshop manual, no reliable parts supplies, no local aluminum body shop.
Give the story a listen: here.
Thanks, Tom, for collecting these stories. And thanks to Admiral Phillips for sharing his with us.
Update: Admiral Phillips showed his restored Mondial at Pebble Beach this year. read more at Tom Yang’s site.

Categories
Video

Road America '56

I’m all sorts of delinquent in putting up some photos from my trip to Elkhart Lake last weekend for the SVRA Vintage GT Challenge weekend. When you have several hundred photos to sift through, it takes a bit of time.. also, i’m lazy.
In the meantime, Paul found this outstanding early 16mm footage of Road America from 1956. Looks like a lot of Turn 5, some Carousel… good stuff all around.

Categories
Classic Sportscar

Absolutely Stunning Ferrari Featured on Hemmings

This month, the Hemmings Motor News blog is featuring Ferrari in their annual Days of Ferrari theme. Today they ran a post about this absolutely magical 1962 250 GT/L.
There is a beauty to purpose built racing machines that is absolutely unparalleled in functional design. Yet somehow, this magnificently gorgeous machine was not conceived as a dual purpose road/race car. How is it possible that Ferrari’s incredible run of beautiful racing machines can get one-upped by its own luxury model, never intended for the track?

Thanks Hemmings, keep them coming.

Update:

the mighty Bring a Trailer just featured this car as part of their coverage of this year’s Monterey Historics. While I agree it’s a stunner, I’m not convinced that it takes the 250 SWB’s crown..

Categories
Classic Sportscar

Oh Pininfarina, What the Hell Happened to You?

Pininfarina has designed some of the best looking bodies to ever roll down the street.

Like this Ferrari 275 GTB.

or this Dino.

Now look at this monstrosity from their design lab this year.

pininfarina_sintes

Seriously? It looks like a shoe.

Categories
Audio Video

More Exciting Racing Sounds of Grand Prix: Monte Carlo

The Exciting Racing Sounds of Grand Prix

If you’ve been following our series on this wonderful album of audio recorded during research for John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix, you know what a joy it is to hear Phil Hill lead us through some of the stops of the ’66 season. This time, it’s Monaco.

We start with 30 seconds or so of the the full grid of 16 drivers revving in preparation for the start of the GP. This could have well been the inspiration for the marvelous opening credits/overture sequence at the start of the film. Then we take a spin around the track with Graham Hill. A thrilling drive indeed.

It’s also interesting to hear Phil describe the technical details of the engine and transmissions of Formula 1 cars, followed by audio of drivers really pushing their engines and transmissions hard in several portions: hard on the brakes through Gasometre Hairpin and head up towards the pits, through the tunnel towards the chicane, and as heard by the spectators. As always, fantastic audio.
Follow along with this track map, pulled from the back of the record jacket.

Monoco Track Map


Read the complete series.

Categories
Lost Track

Monza Banking Saved?

I haven’t been able to confirm this anywhere online – which is surprising given the number of ‘Save the Banking‘ sites and petitions that exist online – but Vintage Racecar Journal reports in their March issue that a deal has been struck between Monza’s ruling body the SIAS and the Monza city council that will guarantee the survival of the Monza banking. According to the article, the deal stipulates that the raised sections of the autodrome must be rebuilt within 5 years; not just preserving them, but restoring the banking to it’s former glory. Will we see race action on the banking again?

I sure hope so.

Categories
Event Video

Waterford Hills Historic Footage

Growing up in the Detroit area, I spent a lot of Saturdays in the stands at Hilltop Turn with a polish sausage watching the races at Waterford Hills Road Racing circuit. In August each year, the track hosts a vintage race in conjunction with the Meadowbrook Coucours dé Elegance down the street in Rochester Hills. And while I’d seen many a vintage car wheeling around the corners at Waterford Hills, I’ve never given much thought to the history of the track itself – that is until a member of their discussion forum, Joe, pointed out that he’d uploaded some old film of the track to youtube.

Details were a bit sparse, just that the old 8mm film can had “1959-1964” written on it. Wonderful stuff.

Head on down to the track for their 50th Anniversary vintage race weekend August 1-3, 2008. If it’s anything like the many race weekends I’ve spent there, it’ll be a wonderful time at a wonderful little track.

Somehow Waterford Hills just keeps hanging on, despite the urban sprawl that has seen McMansions sprouting up around this once rural track. Thankfully they’re continuing to win the fight to shut down more and more small tracks around the country and keep us from featuring Waterford Hills in our “Lost Tracks” series. Got a favorite small-scale track you’d like us to feature, share it in the comments.

Categories
Lost Track

Lost Track: Brynfan Tyddn

Following up on our last classic track piece on the Bridgehampton road circuit, let’s look at another track featured in the Last Open Road series of books. The Brynfan Tyddn road course saw action from 1952-56. “Brynfan Tyddn” is Welsh for “Large Farm on the Hilltop”, and consisted of a winding road around T. Nowell Wood’s 690 acre lake house estate. The race was an offshoot of a long running hillclimb event, the “Giant’s Despair”.
The running gag about the course in the book is how dangerous and tight the course is, despite it’s 3.5 mile track length. Looking at photos from the era, it’s not hard to see why. The road surface looked like crumbling asphalt barely a lane and a half wide, and looks more like a golf-cart track than a racing circuit – even in the days of back country racing of the early ’50s. Despite these shortcomings, the track drew huge numbers of fans and some interesting racers and cars. Carrol Shelby won this race in 1956 driving a Ferrari 500 Testa Rossa in what would be the last race for the course due to a track fatality.

But the 2.5 liter Ferrari’s win seems to have been an exception at Brynfan Tyddn as the course was historically dominated by smaller displacement racers: Keifts, Porsches, MGs, Siatas, and OSCAs. In fact, in the earliest years of the race, cars were limited to 1900cc engines. Perhaps maintaining the lower displacement rules would have kept the ’56 race safer and would have seen many more years circling Mr. Wood’s property.

Like the bulk of the road courses of the ’50s, the roads are still there, here’s a link to a Google map of the roads that made up the course, along with an approximate location of the start finish line. If you head out there, send me a photo.

Further Reading:

Also worth checking out is this scan of a 1952 Road & Track report from that summer’s outing.
You can buy prints of Carrol Shelby’s race and a brace of MGs from Wheels on Walls. Lots of great racing prints available there to cover your garage with.
Finally, here’s a lovely history of the races, complete with several records and other race results.

Categories
Classic Sportscar For Sale Porsche

Everyone has a favorite.

And this is mine. The Porsche 550 Spyder is the slipperiest little roadster I could ever want. One has recently come available – now i only need $1.6million. donations?

This particular example was piloted by American Zora Arkus-Duntov and Frenchman Auguste Veuillet to a class win in the infamous ’55 24 Hours of LeMans. For that race, this Spyder chassis #550-0048 averaged over 137kph fitted with a 1100cc motor. Smaller than the typical 1500cc 4-cam. This particular year’s 1100cc class was fairly heavily contested, with Coventry-Climax entries from Kieft, Lotus, and Cooper.
550-0048 also went on to take an overall win at the Swedish Grand Prix with Richard von Frankenberg at the wheel. An astonishing win, besting much more powerful cars including a Mercedes 300SL, Jags, and Maseratis. You can see why these early racing models earned Porsche the “Giant Killer” moniker.

Later, the car was campaigned in the ’56 Mille Miglia and was road tested by Road & Track. For these, it’s engine was upgraded to the 4-cam 1500cc. The car then fell out of the public eye, reappearing now on Kidston’s site. The Kidston listing for this car says she is supplied with 2 engines – is it both the LeMans class winning 1100 and the magnificent 4-cam?

This photo shows 550-0048 bearing racing number 49 in the wet conditions of the ’55 Le Mans. Could you ever want anything more beautiful for your garage?
Be sure to check out the informational pdf at Kidston for complete details on this example, including many more period photos of 550-0048 in action here.

Thanks to Octane for posting about this marvelous car.
Update: 550-0048 sold at Coys’ Légende et Passion auction in Monté Carlo on the 10th of May for an astounding £708,338. Congratulations to her new caretaker and I hope you get her on the track some time.

Categories
Lost Track

Lost Track: The Bridge

In the first of what I hope to make a long series here on the Chicane, let’s take a look at the sadly defunct track at Bridgehampton.

I’ve recently been plowing through the marvelous Last Open Road series of books by B.S. Levy. The series follows a young small-town auto mechanic as he throws himself headlong into the burgeoning sportscar racing scene of the early 1950s. We get to see through Buddy’s eyes the first race he attends at the street course in Bridgehampton, New York.

Bridgehampton hosted auto races on its streets since 1915. Following a fatal crash at Watkin’s Glen in 1952, the state of New York put a quick end to street racing on state highways. A group of enthusiasts, however, came together in 1953 and purchased a 550 acre plot of land that would ultimately house the 13 turn, 2.85 mile course.
A parcel of land that is now a golf course.

Here’s a Google maps screen grab of the current golf course with the track map laid over it; they’ve actually preserved a few turns and part of the main straight. Here are some photos of the site as it exists today. Follow that link to see some shots of the main straight, the blind 1st turn, and the Chevron bridge over the track. At least they didn’t make the whole thing a damn putting green.

Photos of the track in it’s heyday abound online, here are just a few:

Alfa discussion forum member Lowmileage collected a few in this thread.
Here’s a set on fotki. (lots of Can-Am era shots here).
Here’s pbraun’s set on Flickr.
On the bright side, there was some effort to maintain the track as late as 1999, as this New York Times article points out. It’s a good read for a quick introduction to the track and some of the legal wrangling that happens when people move to a neighborhood that has a long-established race track and then decide that race tracks are too loud.