If I said to you the words “historic racing” and “green,” what comes immediately to mind? A British racing green Jaguar? The infield grass at your favorite track? All the money you spent on your last racing engine? Any of these would seem valid to me. But would you have thought about making your historic racecar more environmentally friendly? Yeah, me neither.
On a day-to-day basis, I get deluged with press releases. They come by email in droves, along with offers of low-cost Viagra and offers to help the Mauritanian government with a little cash flow problem that apparently only I can remedy. However, through this tidal wave of junk email, the title of one press release so jumped off the screen at me, I had to stop and go through it, just to assure myself that I wasn’t hallucinating. The title read, “Race Retro asks ‘How Can Historic Motorsport Go Green?’” As I opened the email, I hoped that this missive would somehow revolve around the British national racing colors and not the inevitable encroachment of inane restrictions on historic racing. Sadly, this wasn’t a discourse on paint schemes.
Apparently, the upcoming International Historic Motorsport Show (nee Race Retro) has devoted a portion of one of their exhibition halls this year to the question of converting historic racecars to biofuels. According to organizer Ian Williamson, “The object is to highlight conversion problems for historic and classic race and rally cars and to improve understanding of the fuel and technical issues, so as to pave the way for event organizers, competitors, and motorsport to move forward.”
Being a reasonably environmentally conscious person, I tried to read this release with an open mind, but as I read on I couldn’t help but think that this was a fairly absurd notion. Historic racing is such a submicroscopic dot in the greater environmental picture that I couldn’t see how this would have any tangible effect other than slowly starting us down the slippery slope of governmental regulation and eventual banishment.
Then I read the statement from Williamson that stopped me cold in my tracks: “Historic motorsport needs to be seen to be making an environmental effort. Who knows what innovations the future will bring, but as public pressure and perception are growing, doing nothing is no longer an option.” Well, my friends welcome to the slippery slope!
Is this really what we have come to? Countless industrialized countries can burn millions of tons of dirty coal each year, but are we going to fix this problem by restricting a brace of well-tuned cars that run a handful of times per year? Egregious gross polluters are allowed to buy credits and exemptions to allow them to continue to pollute with wanton abandon, but we are going to start fitting catalytic converters on prewar Alfas? Please!
Believe it or not, I am active in a number of environmental causes and am realistic about the direction that modern cars need to take in future years. Should modern racecars be pushed to start being more environmentally sound? Absolutely. Racing has always been the test bed for automotive advancement. If Formula One or Le Mans cars can race on hydrogen, or regenerative energy systems, it opens the door for viable family cars with the same technology. But seriously, are we really going to retrofit a Bugatti Type 35 with electric drive motors? Who is going to be the first to convert their Ferrari 312T to run on vegetable oil? You may think this sounds ridiculous—and it is—but this is how it starts. Today, it will be a change of fuel, but from there, the restrictions could become more and more onerous.
I believe the core fallacy in all of this is the notion that historic racing needs to be viewed and treated the same as all other forms of racing. We are an active form of historical preservation. For God’s sake, if we won’t let ’60s cars run with ’70s technology for fear of damaging the cars’ historical provenance, why would we even begin to entertain the notion of converting to biofuel or other such environmentally sound technologies? Where does this mentality end? Are we going to strip all the lead paint off Renaissance paintings? Will we pour all the vintage Chateau Latour down the drain because the grapes weren’t organically grown, free trade…in 1947?
I hope time will prove me to be an alarmist, but I fear that this may be just the tip of the iceberg. If so, we need collectively, as a unified voice, to start doing a better job of informing the public at large why it is important to preserve and run these historical vehicles, as they were in period. Otherwise, you may someday see a Maserati Birdcage running on a mixture of solar power and sugar beet extract.
