Bruce winning the 1964 Player’s 200 at Mosport Park in his Cooper-Oldsmobile, aka the Jolly Green Giant, his first V8 sports car and therefore the progenitor of McLaren's Can-Am dynasty. Previously it was Roger Penske’s Climax-powered Zerex Spl., made from a crashed Cooper F1 car. Photo: Pete Lyons / www.petelyons.com
Fast Lines

The Bruce and Jan Show

Avatar photo
Pete Lyons
Pete Lyons

Fifty years ago, when people communicated on paper delivered by hand, her brother’s letters from far-off England would be eagerly opened and avidly read by the whole family back in Auckland.

Often flowing over half a dozen pages or more, Bruce’s back-slanted penmanship was casual, his phrasing newsy and chatty. Sometimes this trained engineer would clarify a point with a sketch: his diagnosis of carburetor trouble on a racing engine, or how a surgeon proposed to implant a “steel ball-ended thing” to repair his hip, damaged by Perthes Disease in his youth.

Tags
Avatar photo
Pete Lyons is an American motorsport journalist, author and photographer. He began reporting North American racing for Autosport, covering Daytona, Sebring, the Indianapolis 500 and Can-Am, then spent four years as Formula One correspondent for Autosport and AutoWeek. He later edited the US monthly Formula, renamed Racecar, before returning to freelance writing. His books include Can-Am, Can-Am Photo History, Riverside International Raceway, Shadow, a biography of Vic Elford, Fast Lines and My Travels on Racer Road. He wrote the Fast Lines column for Vintage Racecar from 2000 to 2014. His awards include two Dean Batchelor Awards, the Ken Purdy Award and a 2011 International Automotive Media Lifetime Achievement Award. In the Sports Car Digest archive: 154 stories, 2000–2014.
Related
Members only$29 / year

Keep going. This is where it gets good.

Sports Car Digest Membership is for people who'd rather spend an hour with one chassis number than skim ten headlines. The rest of this story — and every other one like it — is a few seconds away.

  • 5,000+ members-only stories

    Concours, auctions, race history, driven classics and the full archive.

  • No ads. None.

    The whole site reads like a magazine, on every device.

  • The market, every week

    Auction results and classic-car values from the people who were there.

  • 30% off the shop

    Every Sports Car Digest shirt and piece of merch, all year.

Join Sports Car Digest — Keep Reading

$29 a year. Cancel anytime, no hoops.
Already a member? Sign in

BY CAR PEOPLE, NOT A NAMELESS MEDIA COMPANY. Your membership keeps a small independent team of historians, photojournalists and racing drivers doing this.

Join — Keep Reading $29/yr