Heavy Duty Lightweights 1961 Jaguar XKE “Coombs Lightweight” & 1963 Jaguar XKE “Qvale Lightweight” Photo: Pete Austin The year 2011 marks 50...
This is the story of a hero who was more heroic than most. You may not have heard of Archie...
Le Mans champion Roy Salvadori once wrote in a UK magazine, decades ago, about driving his winning Aston Martin DBR1 on the open English road. One could take such liberties there in those green and pleasant days of yore. Pete Lyons “This is a car you’d better have pointed in...
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Aston Martin’s one and only victory at Le Mans. With such a major...
Carroll ShelbyPhoto: Jim Williams In observance of Carroll Shelby’s recent passing, VR is presenting an edited combination of the interviews...
One of a baker’s dozen of American citizens to have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall, Carroll Shelby accomplished the feat 50 years ago this month, driving an Aston Martin DBR1 in company with Roy Salvadori. Shelby had begun racing back in his native Texas shortly after returning...
The International Tourist Trophy was first awarded by the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) in 1905 and continues to be awarded...
1958 BRM P25 Chassis 258 It may come as a surprise to many people that Stirling Moss always regarded the...
Ted Cutting, the man who designed the Aston Martin DBR1 that took Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori to victory at Le Mans over 50 years ago, has died. It is little known, but due to a fact-finding visit to Maserati, initiated by John Wyer, he didn’t see his cars cross...
Ed Leavens’ career in racing could be compared to an iceberg where 9/10ths of the details of his career lie...
I guess the best period in motor racing for me was when I managed to have my first drives in...
February 2018 The Crystal Palace Trophy, Crystal Palace, June 11, 1962. At the start, it’s Roy Salvadori on pole in the Reg Parnell Racing’s Lola 4, with Bruce McLaren’s Cooper 55 alongside and Trevor Taylor, in the works Lotus 24-BRM, on the inside. The eventual winner would be Innes Ireland,...
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Some years ago I was invited to talk “motor sport” at a winter club evening in Bristol and the evening...
It is an extraordinary difficult question to answer, “What is my greatest racecar?” One can consider cars one has won races with, that always leave a nice flavor. What makes the question even more difficult is that most racecars I drove are not entirely comparable with each other, though some...
Peter Bryant, best known in motor racing circles as the creator of the Titanium-chassied Ti22 Can-Am car, died of a...
1967 Brabham BT24-Repco Sometimes all your birthdays and Christmases come at once. Shaking down the BT24 on Australia’s legendary Phillip...
Jack was born on April 2, 1926, and I think it’s appropriate that we all wish him a happy birthday. (I realize you are reading the May edition of Vintage Racecar, but subscribers usually get it in April.) On this occasion, I thought you might be interested in some of...
John Coombs was literally born into the motoring business, as his multi-talented craftsman father was already working with automobiles when...
1957 Aston Martin DBR1 Aston Martin’s relationship with the 24 Hours of Le Mans goes all the way back to...
Wealthy Belgian aristocrat Olivier Gendebien has the unique distinction of being Ferrari’s most successful GT and sports car racer. He won 24 top endurance classics, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans four years out of five, the Targa Florio, 12 Hours of Sebring, and Tour de France Automobile three...
The Guards Trophy Race; Brands Hatch, August 23, 1963. Roger Penske with his John Mecom-entered Zerex Special, which was actually...
Those looking for vintage photographs frequently contact me. During the fifties, my partner, Dick Sherwin, and I published a short-lived...
July 2007 Porsche 917—Zuffenhausen’s Le Mans and Can-Am Champion Introduction by Karl Ludvigsen By now well-known to the readers of this magazine, the development of the Porsche 917, in 1969, marked Porsche’s “coming of age” in the world of international long-distance sports car racing. Over the next two years, the...
John Michael “Mike” Hawthorn won the Formula One World Championship in 1958, and in doing so became the first British...
With the recent passings of Carroll Shelby, Roy Salvadori and Ted Cutting, all key players for Aston Martin’s World Sportscar Championship-winning team of 1959, it seemed reasonable to speak with another racer who worked in that fabled John Wyer-run team, Rex Woodgate. Woodgate is a notoriously detail-oriented mechanic who became...
Tall, handsome, and charming, Roy Salvadori was everything Hollywood ever wanted a racing driver to be. He was a ’50s–’60s...
1959 Cooper T-51 and 1960 Cooper T-53 The two Formula 1 Coopers you see here represent one of the key...
It is an unfortunate fact of life that as we age, so we lose more and more friends to the ravages of time. As I sat in the church at the funeral of John Surtees—listening to the wonderful tributes from his daughters Leonora and Edwina, as well as a most...