David Duthu’s appetite for interesting and eclectic cars seems to be boundless. He vintage races a Bugatti Type 35A and...
The story of Chet Herbert is pure inspiration. Afflicted with polio at age 20, Herbert spent his life building a...
There I was, on Los Angeles’ Imperial Highway, helplessly hanging on in the passenger seat. No grab bar, no seatbelt, just my feet burrowing into the floorboards. The scent of tires melting away under the strain of a 70 mph four-wheel drift was intoxicating, and the fact that the combined...
Then Adults dream of regaining their youth. Children yearn to do grown-up things. This is the nature of our existence....
Then. In a tiny village of 100 houses in the province of Luxembourg, Belgium, lives a man grinning from ear...
Racer Hurdles Crowd and Lives.” This was the Sunday, August 31, 1952 headline story in the Buffalo Courier Express. The racer was 29-year-old Richard Thierry, the car was a Porsche 356, and the word “hurdles” hardly began to describe what really happened. Grand Island is nested away in the northwest...
For as long as he can remember, James Peacock of Long Beach, California, has been afflicted with a palate for...
Then. Etceterini.com is the place to be if you’re obsessed with small displacement Italian wizardry of the 1950s. If it’s...
Then. By his own admission, Geoff Hacker specializes in finding cars that no one is looking for. It’s actually an interesting collecting strategy that virtually guarantees no competition. One of Hacker’s recent acquisitions is a post-war Singer racer. Now how many amazing post-war racing cars from Singer Motors of England...
Much like the animal it was named for, the precise origin of the Unicorn H-Modified sports racer remains a mystery....
What was Jud Phillips thinking? This has been the question that’s tormented Bill Fester for nearly a decade. Fester, from...
“Their hopes, their dreams, their love; tied to a ribbon of road…and a boy’s unflinching faith…in a girl!” “A story of fast cars…reckless women…and sudden danger …and a guy who loved all three!” Become a Member & Get Ad-Free Access To This Article (& About 6,000+ More) Access to the...
Then. I’ve been hiding something from you. I’m not proud of it, and it’s been going on for way too...
Then. Who wants to be Tony Curtis in the 1950s? That man had cars and women, fast and smokin’, in...
In the March 2009 VRJ I wrote about Don Blenderman’s Kurtis obsession and his wonderful Sutton-bodied 500KK. What I failed to mention was his lengthy quest to capture an example of Frank’s most prolific sports racer, the legendary 500S. The Kurtis 500S is a masterpiece in function and design. Introduced...
1953 Leson Simca Special Progress is not always a good thing. In the early 1950s, if you wanted to go...
This month’s awesome Hidden Treasure was discovered in 1995, sitting behind a house in Glendale, Arizona. How awesome? You tell...
There is no hidden racecar in this story, but there are four treasures, one mechanical and three human. I love this one. The mechanical treasure of this month’s installment is the 1953 Siata 208S (#BS520). Painted in a lovely shade of white, BS520 was the E-Production Class Winner at the...
The photo caption on page 31 of the November 1953 issue of Road & Track read: “A strange assortment of...
“For nearly a half-century, wherever Americans powered their way to automobile glory, whether on the two-and-a-half-mile Speedway at Indianapolis, the...
How many of you would journey 500 miles across country to race a freshly built car whose engine had never even been fired? That’s exactly what California-based James Kamboor did in 1954, and the lack of preparation didn’t seem to slow him down one bit. Become a Member & Get...
Then After back-to-back wins at the Indianapolis 500 in 1953 and 1954, Bill Vukovich returned for the ’55 race with...
Terry Bennett says he grew up as both a nerd and a motor-head. It was hardly his fault. His father...
One of the wildest racecar designs of the 1950s was penned by Mario Boano, for Carlo Abarth, in 1954. From the moment it was launched in 1955, the 207A Spyder had an unmistakable presence. Abarth built the 207A on a steel box frame based on a Fiat 1100 Model 103...
“Wow, I could have had an 8V!” Can you imagine if Fiat had hired actor Ronald Reagan in 1952 to...
Don Blenderman is koo-koo for Kurtis cars. And why not? Frank Kurtis is arguably the greatest American racecar builder of...
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...
In my book Vintage American Road Racing Cars, I wrote, “Of all the Kurtis road racing cars, the 500X is...
It happened again! Just like Phil (Bill Murray) in Groundhog Day, I go to sleep every night hoping that things...
Few cars have had more racing success and are more legendary than the Porsche 550 Spyder. From the model’s first competitive outing (at the time it was known simply as Type 550) in May of 1953, Porsche immediately knew it had a winner. In a torrential rainstorm, Helmut Gloeckler piloted...