Two. It takes two. And that’s in heels.
Here, enjoy a couple more shots from very early 356 production at the Porsche factory… Really it was still more of the Porsche workshop at the time.
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Porsche 917s Are Tiny: Part 2
Yet again, I’m flabbergasted by how small this giant of a racing machine is. Its reputation, its power, its mystique all manage to make it something enormous in my mind. When we see it next to a car we know, however, it’s true diminutive stature reveals itself. It just seems so impossible to me that it’s really this small; particularly when it’s the wearing the livery of the Hans Herrmann/Richard Attwood 1970 LeMans winning example as shown here in the Porsche Museum’s workshop.
flthd31’s 1932 Frame Rails in process 
WelderSeries’ Model A Frame in process
Whenever I find myself wandering open-jawed through the marvelous build threads over at the H.A.M.B. I wonder to myself what might happen if some of these incredibly talented fabricators drew more inspiration from the sports car. This is particularly true when I see something like flthd31’s remarkable thread about his scratch-built ’32 Ford frame rails from plate steel or WelderSeries’s photo essay on building a Model A frame from steel tubing.
Of course, here in the States it’s still possible to find 1930’s Ford bodies at swap meets or a particularly lucky trip to the right sorts of junk yards. But I see technical drawings of Ferrari or Maserati or Fiat racing car frames from the 1940’s and 1950’s and think to myself, “those dudes that make ’32 Ford Frames could just as easily be building this.”
The only thing I can imagine is that the lack of availability of Maserati A6GCS Monofaro bodywork just stops people from making “tributes” or “replicas” or “re-creations” or whatever the nomme d’jour is for these things. Otherwise, I have to think we could have a similar homebuilder community of vintage racing cars as we have for hot-rodders. I’m sure many sporting car purists out there will disagree and think my plea for inaccurate re-creations is tantamount to sacrilege, but I just want to see more of these cars out there, and Siata sure isn’t making more of them. For me, it’s as simple as that.
Just look at these frame diagrams. This doesn’t look any harder (to this admittedly naive novice) than knocking together a frame for a street rod, and yet we almost never see a home-built barchetta. Occasionally we do see exceptionally accurate shop-build re-creations, but it’s specifically the garage builder I think of. Hell, the Maserati brothers were little more than garage builders themselves when they built these things in the first place.
Gilco 750 Sport frame 
Gilco-Zagato 205 Frame
Street rod masters, I humbly suggest considering that your next project be inspired by the Mille Miglia and not the Salt Flats. There are a whole lot of ’32 Fords out there and not so many Gilco-Fiats or Stanguellini Barchetta 1100s.
If you need me I’ll be ducking under my desk while I’m bombarded with emails calling me an idiot for suggesting people reproduce these things.
Like our last look at the racing community of El Salvador, this footage from the Santa Ana races just stopped me in my tracks. We often see photographs of races with little barrier between the on-track action and the off-track spectators but this footage really demonstrates how very precarious the situation really was. It must have been incredibly nerve racking as a driver (particularly during the LeMans style starts shown here). It must have been spectacularly thrilling as a spectator, with those “lucky” few in the front rows equally stepping closer to the action and pushing back against the crowds behind that threatened to nudge you onto the track. The adrenaline must really have been coursing through the veins of these race fans.
Again, many thanks to George Kehler for providing this footage, shot by Dr. Carlos Alvarez when he was just a young teenager. Keep a sharp eye peeled for Pedro Rodriguez in the red green #24 Austin-Healey 100M (he DNFed with ignition problems). Ricardo was also in the race in an OSCA. The day was won by Mauricio Miranda in the #42 Jaguar D-type with 2nd going to Manfredo Schmid in the Mercedes-Benz.
Keep on digging those film cans out of the attics, people. We’d love to share them with readers.
I love this so much!
Not only did Del point out his #85FP MGA that ran in the F-Production race in the photos that William Goldman shot of the 1958 Put In Bay Road Races (that’s him with the front-row view of the crash into someone’s front tree), he sweetened the deal by sending along his photos from the event. Thanks, Del!
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Factories at Work: The Ferrari Foundry
I’ve sat on this photo for a while now. Partially because I couldn’t identify when this was at Ferrari. If I was a better sportscar trainspotter, I could probably identify the era of this photograph based on the parts in the background. Hell, I’m sure some Ferrari Chat members can identify the technicians in this image. So it’s just been sitting on my hard drive. Were these guys casting 166MM engine cases? or 375 F1 transmission housings?
I don’t know. But this image kept being something I wanted to share, because despite how little I do know about this photo, there’s one thing I’m sure of: It wasn’t that long ago that there wasn’t much difference between a World Championship team and a bunch of SoCal hot rodders.
I’ve been searching high and low for the artist of this piece. Anyone know who did it?Motor racing of every flavor has a rich tradition of inspiring artists but there seems to be something in particular about cycle racing that leads artists towards beautiful narratives.
Perhaps it’s simply because a motorcyclist’s body is exposed: Think of a cycle racer aggressively leaning into a turn, shoulders set, head leading the body, the tension between action and balance. It immediately evokes a mood, an attitude; the form just lends itself to storytelling. Even if we’re not trying to tell a story, the orientation conjures one in our minds.
Automotive artists may feel compelled to exaggerate the driving position of the pilot to help convey that mood. But with the cycle racer, the motorcyclist is so much a part of the form of the racing machine that the artist can naturally, or even unintentionally, combine them.
Either way, there’s so much absolute brilliance in these comic-like ligne claire illustrations that it both makes me want to hit the track and pick up the brush.
See the enormous collection of art pieces, advertising, and illustration in BullitMcQueen’s Flickr set.
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Cobras at Sebring, 1965
Another in a long—and hopefully growing—list of examples of digging some slides (or photos, or film cans) out of the attic and getting them online. Rockhouse66 has added some slides that his father shot at the 1965 Sebring Endurance race to the Shelby American Automobile Club forums.
From their box seats over the pits they had an excellent vantage point to capture the details of some of the racers as they entered the pits. SAAC members have already pointed out the unconventional battery location and the brake duct wings. It’s little details like these that can often only be captured from these unconventional angles, which often means that these spectator shots can be “better” than the professional on-track images that were published at the time. Love it.
More on the SAAC Forums and on Rockhouse66’s Photobucket.
Over on the Angola Off Road forums, commenter Kadypress has been uploading his collection of photos and news clippings from several of the Grande Prémios de Angola of the early-mid 60s. It’s fantastic to see the Ferrari LMs and Porsche 904s and the occasional older machine on the streets of Luanda with the palm fronds whipping in a stiff coastal wind. These tropical settings make these amazing machines seem all the more exotic.
Grande Prémio de Angola 1964 Grid 
Willy Mairesse’s winning Ferrari 250 LM 
Willy Mairesse won the day completing 100 laps of the Circuito da Fortaleza street circuit in the Equipe National Belge Ferrari 250LM in 2 hours 31 minutes. Gerhard Koch took the GT class in his own privateer Porsche 904.
Click on over to the discussion thread for more.