1967 Brabham BT24-Repco Sometimes all your birthdays and Christmases come at once. Shaking down the BT24 on Australia’s legendary Phillip...
It is an unfortunate fact of life that as we age, so we lose more and more friends to the...
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...
July 2007 Porsche 917—Zuffenhausen’s Le Mans and Can-Am Champion Introduction by Karl Ludvigsen By now well-known to the readers of...
Aston Martin entered the1959 sports car season targeting just a single race, Le Mans, but walked away the deserving winner...
1958 BRM P25 Chassis 258 It may come as a surprise to many people that Stirling Moss always regarded the BRM P25 front-engine car as one of the best cars he has ever driven. “Great car–bad team” was basically his view. More about that later, though it was especially interesting...
Ted Cutting, the man who designed the Aston Martin DBR1 that took Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori to victory at...
The Guards Trophy Race; Brands Hatch, August 23, 1963. Roger Penske with his John Mecom-entered Zerex Special, which was actually...
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...
Some years ago I was invited to talk “motor sport” at a winter club evening in Bristol and the evening...
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Aston Martin’s one and only victory at Le Mans. With such a major...
Aston Martin DBR4/2 In Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, the tragi-comical Mr. Wilkins Micawber, despite his predicament, always had the most impeccable words of guidance and wisdom. In one part he takes his young and inexperienced tenant, Copperfield, aside and counsels him against being dilatory. Micawber says, “My advice is, never...
The International Tourist Trophy was first awarded by the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) in 1905 and continues to be awarded...
I have been quoted as saying that I didn’t much like the Tommy Atkins Cooper-Maserati. Now, I don’t know if...
This is the story of a hero who was more heroic than most. You may not have heard of Archie Scott-Brown, but that shrewd judge of racing driver talent Juan Manuel Fangio, who won the Formula One World Championship five times, called this diminutive Scot phenomenal, and said he showed...
Heavy Duty Lightweights 1961 Jaguar XKE “Coombs Lightweight” & 1963 Jaguar XKE “Qvale Lightweight” Photo: Pete Austin The year 2011 marks 50...
Those looking for vintage photographs frequently contact me. During the fifties, my partner, Dick Sherwin, and I published a short-lived...
Ed Leavens’ career in racing could be compared to an iceberg where 9/10ths of the details of his career lie beneath the surface. He raced from the mid-1950s to around 1962, but he gave it all up for his business of selling cars in London, Ontario, Canada. Here was a...
I guess the best period in motor racing for me was when I managed to have my first drives in...
It is an extraordinary difficult question to answer, “What is my greatest racecar?” One can consider cars one has won...
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,...
Having grown up the son of racer and team owner Reg Parnell, it’s little wonder that Tim Parnell has lived...
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Tall, handsome, and charming, Roy Salvadori was everything Hollywood ever wanted a racing driver to be. He was a ’50s–’60s swashbuckler and would not have looked out of place swinging down from the rigging of a man o’ war, sword in hand, instead of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Fantasy perhaps, but...
Carroll ShelbyPhoto: Jim Williams In observance of Carroll Shelby’s recent passing, VR is presenting an edited combination of the interviews...
1957 Lotus Eleven LM 150Photo: Shifting Focus It was still very early days for the small, but growing firm of Lotus...
During the fifties, Aston Martin produced sports cars with the designation, DB, which, of course, stands for David Brown. In addition to the 2-door hardtops—called saloons by the factory—a series of open sports cars, actually sports racers (later called sports racing cars), were constructed, raced by the factory and sold...
One of a baker’s dozen of American citizens to have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall, Carroll Shelby...
John Coombs was literally born into the motoring business, as his multi-talented craftsman father was already working with automobiles when...
1972 Lola T290-Tecno Here is your first question for 10 points: How many racing car manufacturers have been going nonstop for 50 years? Answer: two. Let me refine the question a bit. How many manufacturers of only racing cars have been going for 50 years and are still in international...