People have often expressed surprise that the Indianapolis 500 was included in the World Championship, between 1950 and 1960. For...
For this special Porsche issue it was only right to interview the man who, in real terms, helped to put...
I guess genius rather than hero is the correct way to describe Ferdinand Porsche, whose cars mobilized humanity and provided employment for tens of thousands. Let’s settle for heroic genius, which is what you might call a man whose cars put over 21 million families on the road and have...
Shot by the Gestapo, executed at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, killed on a death march from Sachsenhausen. All of those...
Two months before the end of WWII, an American P-51 Mustang was shot down over Germany. The pilot was Captain...
Fernando Alonso Jim Hall Photo: Keith Booker 1 Nineteen-year-old Vincenzo Lancia, in his first race, drives a Fiat to victory in the 220-km Padua-Vicenza-Bassano-Treviso-Padua race. Also this is the first race for Felice Nazzaro (1900). 2 The first official Formula Ford race is held at Brands Hatch, England (1967). Become...
With no fewer than 32 world championship victories to his credit, Jochen Mass is one of the most successful sports...
May 2009 At the Donington Grand Prix in England on October 22, 1938, Silver Arrows pilot Dick Seaman applies the power to his Mercedes-Benz W154—along with a touch of opposite lock. He would finish 3rd, a lap behind Auto Union’s victorious Tazio Nuvolari and teammate Hermann Lang. Photo courtesy of: ...
A brand-new, purpose-built racing facility on the western edge of the Great Plains, an hour east of Denver, is scheduled...
Mercedes-Benz once again provided the star feature for September’s second running of the Weekend de L’Excellence Automobile de Reims, only...
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...
There were a number of outstanding road-race weekends during the fifties. Phil Hill’s win at the first Pebble Beach comes...
December 2008 La Carrera Panamericana By Johnny Tipler Among the many over-the-road races that spread or rekindled enthusiasm for auto...
I have included a few remembrances about Lance in some previous Vintage Racecar columns, but because he was such a fascinating character, I thought a column explicitly about him would be appropriate in order to wrap up the theme. I wrote what was hopefully an amusing story about a party...
Mercedes-Benz rocked Donington Park with its mighty “Silver Arrow” confrontation with Auto Union in 1937 and 1938. Back then, the...
I stood back watching, as Monterey feted the Fangio marque. Fangio marque? Yes, Juan Manuel Fangio is the only person, to date, to be so honored by the Monterey Historics. A weekend packed with his cars, his victories, and a reenactment, as far as it was possible, of his glorious...
This year’s Monterey Historic Automobile Races marks the 35th running of this classic event. As shown schematically in the Laguna...
On June 7–8, 1958, the Texas Region of the SCCA hosted a weekend of sports car racing 10 miles north...
It may sound corny, but Dick Seaman’s short life really was the stuff of Hollywood movies. He was tall, handsome, Britain’s top racing driver, married to a BMW heiress, needed Adolf Hitler’s personal approval to join the Mercedes-Benz motor racing team, and then poked the Nazis in the eye by...
Over the years, Vintage Racecar has been fortunate to have been able to include the work of talented cutaway artist...
On August 4, 2007, an icon of American racing and my dear friend, John Fitch, turned 90 years old! In this day and age of medical advances plus many of us watching our diets and exercising, 90 is not nearly as unusual as in previous times. John, however has lived...
It took time for me to become enthusiastic about anything German. I have been hit by the blast of a...
Antonio Brivio Mario Andretti 1 A.J. Foyt wins the USAC Championship race on the dirt track at Sacramento, California (1967)....
Opening in 1921, AVUS (Automobil-Verkehrs-und Übungs-Straße) was devised by the AvD as a motorsport venue and test track for the motor industry. This unusually shaped racetrack had two long straights approximately 6 miles long linked at each end by flat, large, radius curves. In 1926, the track hosted the first...
One was born in Shelbyville, Indiana, in 1902 and the other in a cramped workshop in Bologna, northern Italy, 35...
One of the most enjoyable—at least for me—of fifties events was the Pebble Beach Sports Car Road Races. The last...
July 2007 Surtees Choice Dear Editor: Like John Surtees [Greatest Racecars, VR May ’07], I also feel privileged to have raced the Mercedes Benz W-125. Indeed, I have now driven most of the 750 KG formula cars, yet the W-125 stands head and shoulders above the rest. Become a Member...
