Mark Donohue Bruce McLaren 1 “Big Daddy” Don Garlits becomes the first dragracer to run the 1/4 mile at more...
Jackie Oliver Nigel Mansell 1 Dutch F1 privateer Carol de Beaufort is fatally injured in a crash during practice for the German Grand Prix (1964). 1 Niki Lauda crashes his Ferrari on the second lap of the German Grand Prix and suffers serious burns that nearly kill him. Six weeks...
Several years ago we brought you this fantastic site devoted to photographs of ’50s and ’60s sports car racing, predominantly...
Racing lays down rich strata of history with every passing season, but even though their glory days mostly lie four...
In the Western U.S. during the ’50s, there were a number of road-racing drivers who went on to international success in the following decade. Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, and Dan Gurney come immediately to mind. However, if a single ’50s-era dominating figure had to be chosen, it would be Ken...
Until Sir Jack Brabham won the Times Grand Prix in 1961, the Ken Miles-driven, John Von Neumann-owned Porsche-Cooper was the...
Masten Gregory Bob WollekPhoto: Porsche 2 Jackie Ickx and David Hobbs drive a Gulf Ford GT40 to victory in the...
From gas station owner in 1954 to leading Le Mans in 1967, sports car racer Scooter Patrick enjoyed an amazing career. Perhaps best remembered for his prowess and speed at the wheel of Otto Zipper’s many Porsches in the ’60s, Patrick also enjoyed racing success in a wide variety of...
In April 1964, a new Gran Turismo racer 40-inches high rolled out of the Ford Advanced Vehicles factory in Slough,...
John Von Neumann is an important name in the history of the second half of the twentieth century. A Princeton professor, he was an eminent mathematician and physicist, instrumental in the development of computer science, a participant in the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb and a Nobel laureate....
Southern California has always been a hotbed of car aficionados. The hot rod craze started there and, after WWII, it...
Someone once said that Indy car drivers would be lost if they had to turn right as well as left....
During the early fifties, road racing in the United States took place, for the most part, at airports. While airports have a number of advantages, they lack the interest and drama of actual roads. Without the authority to utilize public highways, venues were hard to come by. As road racing...
Among the 450 entries for this year’s Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races presented by Toyota was an ex–Ken Miles 1960...
Rodger Ward Jim Hurtubise Photo: IMS 1 Jim Clark wins the South African Grand Prix driving a Ford Cosworth-powered Lotus 49 for his 25th GP victory (1968). 2 Walter Sobraske, machinist for Miller, Schofield, Offenhauser, and Meyer & Drake, is born in West Virginia (1901). Become a Member & Get...
One of the most successful relationships in motor sports during the sixties was between Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles. It...
Pete Lyons The little Speedster stared out the dealership’s window like a puppy, its big eyes pleading mournfully: Won’t you...
Paul Newman George Follmer Photo: Pete Luongo 2 First South Africa Grand Prix to be held on the Kyalami track near Johannesburg is won by Pedro Rodriguez at the wheel of a Cooper-Maserati. It’s the first F1 win for Rodriguez and last for Cooper (1967). 3 Sprint car builder and...
In 1953, the Rootes Group in England, which had acquired the Sunbeam Company in 1935, produced a handsome sports car, the...
The title of my column reads: “The Fabulous Fifties.” The era is one I know something about. During that time,...
There was a summer of my life when I often walked back home from an evening ramble in a European city to the outlying village where I had a job in a sawmill. A lengthy stretch of the way was dead straight and lit in the eerie orange of sodium...
During the years following WWII, road racing in the U.S. initially developed as an amateur sport, mostly run by the...
By now everyone should be familiar with YouTube as a source for long-lost films from the old days, and these...
A general homage to artist Wagger’s favorite Cobras, the USRRC 289s, in no particular race or at any particular track, just loud and messy, as they tended to be. And with Ken Miles at the wheel, naturally. Wagger’s message is straight and simple, hopefully leaving the same impact on those...
After WWII, sports cars became more and more popular. As a consequence, road racing took hold in the U.S. For...
By almost anyone’s measure, one of the things that made the Golden Era golden was the Canadian-American Challenge Cup or...