Myron Vernis has a problem. Oh, he seems normal enough at first blush…terrific career, amazing wife, two wonderful loving daughters....
Several months ago I received an irate email from a VR reader with one simple, albeit piercing, question; “Mark, why...
Italo Piana is a living legend among Italian MotoGP fans. He won the Italian Motorcycle Championship three times, and was part of a team that set 46 world speed records at the Monza oval with a Ducati 100-cc Gran Sport in 1956. Born in Torino, Italy in 1930, Piana raced...
In 1958, former Huntington Park High School friends Larry Kent and Ray Weaver decided to take a shot at the...
Matt Jones is one of the neatest car guys I’ve ever met. His love and enthusiasm for Italian automobiles is...
For as long as he can remember, Mel Jacobs of Houston, Texas has been love-struck by the coach-built Deco cars of France. More specifically, he has had a particular fascination with the cars from Delahaye ever since he read the story of René Dreyfus who won the celebrated “Million Franc...
David Duthu’s appetite for interesting and eclectic cars seems to be boundless. He vintage races a Bugatti Type 35A and...
The early post-war interest in small displacement automobile racing in Europe was fueled by enthusiasm and petrol rationing. Money was...
Terry Bennett says he grew up as both a nerd and a motor-head. It was hardly his fault. His father was a brilliant physician, his mother a concert-grade pianist, and he was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, soon to be the epicenter of sports car racing. Bennett began driving...
Veda and Karl Orr are legendary Hot Rodders. They were among the early racers who took to the dry lakes...
This is the story of four Reuters, blood relatives… but not necessarily to each other. It’s also the story of a father with a mother’s name, a guy with nothing to drive, and a short man who did big things with little cars. Confused? Cliff Reuter is a forty-something-year-old tennis...
Al Hoyt is an American hero. He flew 50 missions in a B-17 bomber during World War II and 100...
The Ferrari 195 Inter was introduced in 1950 as a roadgoing machine to replace the 166. According to Stanley Nowak...
The Pikes Peak Hill Climb is the second-oldest major motor racing event in North America. The inaugural race was held in 1916, and the annual happening now attracts tens-of-thousands of spectators. The winding 12.4-mile course features 156 serpentine turns and starts at an altitude of 9,390 feet. The “race to...
The story of Chet Herbert is pure inspiration. Afflicted with polio at age 20, Herbert spent his life building a...
The lunacy of automotive collecting has no bounds. My personal journey has taken me from Italian coach-builts to vintage racecars...
George Valerio of Lincoln, California, has been hunting cars for as long as he can remember. Yes, it’s the way he earns his living, but it is more of an obsession than a vocation. After a few minutes on the telephone, it’s obvious that Valerio finds great joy in unearthing...
Ever wonder what it must’ve been like way back when during those early shade-tree mechanic days when racers would vanish...
Following the vast destruction of WW II, exciting new sports cars emerged from the rubble, which was just what the...
In my book Vintage American Road Racing Cars, I wrote, “Of all the Kurtis road racing cars, the 500X is shrouded in the most mystery regarding how many cars were constructed. By some accounts as many as 12 were built, but some believe six or even fewer cars were actually...
Vince di Pierro knows what he likes. So much so that four years ago he sank more than $100,000 into...
By 1969 Formula Vee had become the most popular racing class on the planet. The cars were relatively economical to...
Don Blenderman is koo-koo for Kurtis cars. And why not? Frank Kurtis is arguably the greatest American racecar builder of all time. His career spanned four decades, and his cars regularly dominated the competition. The Kurtis midget was the car to have in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and the lovely...
Road racing in America started just after World War II and rapidly grew into a phenomenon. While many of the...
Since the doors opened in 1924, the MG Car Company of Great Britain has been producing interesting and innovative automobiles....
The Merrimack Street Garage of Manchester, New Hampshire, is steeped in tradition. The place has been an automotive landmark for nearly 90 years, and in all that time only one family has owned and operated it…the Saidels. Is it any wonder then that this garage gave birth to some of...
One of my favorite telephone conversations of 2007 was with 1950s Bonneville-racing-legend Denny Larsen. For those of you unfamiliar, Larsen...
The origins of the Packwood Special can be traced to California aerospace engineer Steve Mulholland, who gathered components over a...
There’s always been something magical about the H-Modified cars of the ’50s and early ’60s. These 750-cc (and later 850-cc) weapons were driven with zing and enthusiasm, not grunt and anger. And the very best drove ’em foot to the floor all the way around, not hard on brakes, hard...
