Prewar United

In the end of May, I had the good fortune to make my way up to the Wine Country Classic at Sears Point Raceway. This is always a real treat – great weather, a wonderful rolling track nestled in the hills of Northern California’s famed Napa Valley, and of course, a fantastic collection of historic racecars. One of the things that I find especially appealing about this weekend, is that it is one of just a handful of West Coast events that features a large field of prewar era cars. While this is great, and a feast for the senses, it has always amazed me that we don’t see more of these cars racing in the United States, and particularly on the West Coast.

As I’ve mentioned here before, the competition and participation of prewar cars is one of the biggest differences between historic racing here and in Europe. In the U.K., it is not only commonplace to find large prewar fields at most race events, there are many race weekends almost exclusively devoted to these wonderful early racecars. But the thing that is most puzzling about this difference is that the U.S. is, in fact, home to an amazingly large and diverse group of these cars. It’s not that we lack the cars, they just don’t seem to make it to the track with much frequency.