Race and Road

So, you might be  asking yourself, “What happened to my Vintage Racecar? There seems to be another magazine stuck to the back.” Correct you are! This month marks the debut of our new magazine Vintage Roadcar and our new magazine format, where both magazines are bound together back-to-back.
Right from the beginning, let me allay any fears you might have that the Vintage Racecar that you’ve come to know and love for the past 15 years is somehow being compromised, because it is not. As you’ll see, all the same columns and features that you’ve come to expect are still there and will continue to be. Rather, what we’ve done is to give you an entirely new and separate publication—in addition to Vintage Racecar—and all for the same subscription price!
After years of having devoted readers ask us to provide the same in-depth treatment to unique and significant sports and luxury cars that we’ve given to exceptional racecars, we’ve finally decided to take the plunge. From this point forward, you’ll receive a larger magazine each month that encompasses the “ying and yang” of your automotive life—the world of racing history and historic competition on one side and the full gamut of automotive history, concours, auctions and road rallies, on the other. If Vintage Racecar was good, the addition of Vintage Roadcar now makes it even better.
When you “flip over” and join us on the Roadcar side, you’ll see our “Roadcar Profile” of a fascinating slice of postwar history, the Pegaso. Designed and spearheaded by former Alfa Romeo engineer Wifredo Ricart, the Pegaso was a remarkable engineering tour de force made all the more unbelievable by the fact that it was a 100 percent bespoke vehicle made in fascist Spain, at a time when that country had literally no industrial infrastructure or technology to speak of. Pegaso built the 1950s equivalent of a boutique supercar—alongside its bread-and-butter trucks and busses—as a way of training young technicians and engineers, as well as to improve Spain’s international reputation. Considering that Ricart played a key role in the engineering and development of many of Alfa Romeo’s most advanced racing car designs (including the prewar 158 “Alfetta” Grand Prix car), it is perhaps not surprising that Pegaso would try and use competition as a way of building brand image and prestige. Sadly, few racing stories ever have fairy tale endings.
Pegaso’s Z-102B came with either a 2.8-liter or 3.2-liter overhead cam V8 engine that could produce up to 195-hp. Ricart was instrumental in developing twin-stage supercharging on the Alfa Romeo Alfetta, and so by adding supercharging to the Pegaso lineup, he was able to boost that horsepower rating to as much as 350. With almost unrivaled power in the GT category, the Pegaso looked like a potentially front-running contender in international endurance racing.
As early as 1952, two Pegasos coupés (2.8-liter) were entered for the 24 Hours of Le Mans for Fabregas/Iglesias and Palacio/Jover. However, early testing revealed that while top-end speed was remarkable (over 151 mph) the combination of high vehicle weight and drum brakes would make it difficult if not impossible to stop the Pegasos reliably over a 24-hour period. As a result, the team scratched its entry before the race.
For the next year’s race, Pegaso invested in a novel catamaran-style car (See VR Sept. 2011) but the cars were destroyed in a fire prior to the race and the team had to revert to two, blown 2.8-liter roadsters. Despite a lighter roadster variant, braking problems again cropped up, forcing one car to be withdrawn during Thursday practice. Surprisingly, the sister car of Metternich/Jover was showing excellent speed in practice until it was driven off into the banking, just past the Dunlop Bridge, while trying to pass a backmarker. The result was total destruction of the car and another year of DNSs.
While an attempt on the 1953 Carrera Panamericana was planned, the special Touring-bodied “El Panamericano” model could not be finished in time. However, the following year Pegaso did make it to Mexico with a 3.2-liter, supercharged roadster for Joaquin Palacio. Palacio struggled for the first couple of days, as the highly tuned Pegaso did not care for the low octane Mexolina fuel available to the competitors. By the third leg from Puebla to Mexico City, however, the supercharged Pegaso came into its own in the thin air, finishing a surprising third fastest, behind the Ferraris of Phil Hill and Umberto Maglioli. Sadly, Pegaso’s bad racing luck struck on the fourth leg when Palacio was one of four cars to fly off a dangerous curve in the fog. Palacio’s Pegaso slammed into the Borgward of Bechem—killing a soldier trying to aid Bechem—breaking Palacio’s shoulder and burning the Pegaso to the ground!
Due to lack of commitment, development and funding, Pegaso never achieved any semblance of success on the international endurance scene, though they did win numerous hillclimbs (where brakes were less a factor) and set several speed records on Belgium’s famed Jabekke highway.
With outright power and speed to rival any manufacturer of its day, the Pegaso remains one of the great “What ifs” of automotive history. As you’ll see in Vintage Roadcar, a fascinating story of both…Race and Road.