More at IMCA Slot Racing.
Usually I don’t categorize something under Video AND Audio, but I’m going to make an exception for this ridiculously lovely sounding clip from the Gstaad Classic 2011 rally. Check out Sports Car Digest’s event report and marvelous gallery of Julien Mahiels’ shots from the event.
After last week’s post about vintage sidecar racers, the Ledermanns, @MplsMoto passed along this tasty nugget of BMW R75/5 sidecar runs from Mid-Ohio. How could I not share it?
I always assumed that an open-wheeled racer would be leagues easier to maintain than a closed-wheel car. After all, there’s little or no bodywork to deal with: You can more immediately locate and diagnose a problem, you don’t have to spend additional maintenance hours removing body panels, and you don’t have to distort your arms in impossibly ornate ways to reach around things.
It’s all just there.
This 1975 Datsun 280Z currently available on eBay, though, makes me wonder if it’s all just in the setup. This looks just about as accessible as it can be. I don’t know if it conforms to any particular vintage regulations, but this looks almost as easy to work on as a Formula Ford of the same vintage.
Buy it Now at $45K, bidding is open until Sept. 22.
When you’re born in Brescia it only makes sense that you’ll become a racing driver. I’d say that this pipe may have been Felice Bonetto’s lucky charm, but it’s worth noting that he was disqualified from the 1952 German GP at the Nurburgring—where the above photo was snapped. Maybe he already knew he was disqualified and thought, “The Hell with it, I may as well enjoy a lovely drive around the Eifel Mountains. Now where is my pipe?”.
It would be only a year later that Felice’s drive would be anything but leisurely while leading the 1953 Carrera Panamericana for Lancia. It sounds a bit apocryphal, but Benetto reportedly marked dangerous corners along the route with blue signs. It was at one of these locations—despite this care in marking these corners—that Felice would take a 60mph corner at 125. Bonetto swerved his Lancia D24 into a building and was killed at the scene.
Teammate Fangio went on to win.
More on the Carrera Panamericana Blog.
What do you say chaps? Who’s up for a match of Auto Polo?
This is an interesting moment for Ferrari in this shot. It captures the transition from the era of craftsmen hand-building the early F-cars to the technological sophistication that we think of when we see images of the current factory floor.
More than that though, I’m just glad that the ‘Dino’ moniker no longer seems to have the disregard that it once had. Which is a good thing, because It has to be one of Pininfarina’s most beautiful silhouettes. I know I’ll catch flak for this, but I think I’d rather have the 246 Dino in my garage than the Daytona Coupe it shared the factory floor with.
Stumbling across this photo in the Auto Clasico Flickr stream was particularly good timing because I saw an example of each of these cars this past weekend at Wheels of Italy; which was fun as always, but had an uncharacteristic lack of classic Italian scooters this year.
Forget Griot’s. Forget Garage Style Magazine. Forget the Garage-Mahals. If you’re undertaking a renovation of your garage, you can have no better goal than this photo of the Aston Martin works team prepping the 1.5 Liter Ulster for the 1935 LeMans. You can almost smell it.
Via The Old Motor.
Porsches change. What makes them Porsches doesn’t.
What is it about a decades-old Porsche that makes it so very desirable—even with the $15,000-plus price tag such a car is more likely to command these days?
Horsepower? Top speed?
None of the above.
Its true value lies in the total commitment of two uncompromising men to build cars that would be more than simply a means of getting from one place to another. Cars that would be a joy to drive. Cars like no one else had ever built. Or ever would.
This commitment has been passed on successfully—some might say miraculously—to the uncompromising people who build Porsches today.
The workers on the Zuffenhausen assembly line who, in their off-hours, have been known to grab their friends, point at a passing Porsche and say with genuine pride, “That’s one of mine.”
The quality control technicians—one for every production workers—whose goal is to take the ideal of “zero defects” and make it a daily reality.
And, of course, the engineers at our R&D facility at Weissach.
For them, the pursuit of excellence will never fit comfortably between the hours of 8 and 5. Or within the theoretical vacuum of an air-conditioned office.
For them, theories have value only on the inside of a Porsche, at speed, on the Weissach test track—preferably with one of them behind the wheel.
The results of their labors, and the extent of their success, is reflected in the procession of cars you see below.
From the first recorded Porsche win on July 11, 1948 at Innsbruck to the most recent victory at LeMans, these cars have dominated the racing circuits of a world that loves fast cars.
As they have dominated the highways, turnpikes, interstates, autobahns, city streets and winding back roads of a world that loves to drive them.
Versatile! Drag it! Race it! Swing with it!
Sunbeam Tiger (Powered by Ford)
“Swing with it” coupled with the girlie shot. Hilarious.