The Can-Am Porsche 917 The Can-Am Race Series, held from 1966 to 1974, helped propel professional sports car racing to...
Vintage Racecar Features
Derek Bell initially made a name for himself, racing in open-wheeled cars including Formula 2 and Formula 1. However, it...
1957 Climax-powered Jomar 1957 Climax-powered Jomar. Photo: Harold Pace You know the story. Start with a svelte English chassis, add an American V-8, clothe it in a lightweight body and go racing. It worked for Carroll Shelby. It worked for Sydney Allard. Worked for a lot of other folks too,...
He was known as “the Silver Fox,” “the Racing Grandfather,” and “Merle the Magician.” These nicknames might indicate a gentlemanly...
Alistair Caldwell joined the McLaren team in their early days as a cleaner and ended up as team manager, winning...
1957 Kurtis Kraft 500G2 The author gets up to speed on the banking of England’s Rockingham Speedway. Photo: Mike Jiggle When Champ Cars made a very rare appearance in Europe a couple of years ago, many of us thought this would be a dream come true for those people who...
Talking with famed Indianapolis chassis builder A. J. Watson, the question arises about the front, twin air inlets—the signature of...
Jim Rathmann’s career in motor racing is marked not only by a hard-fought win in the 1960 Indy 500 but...
1940 BMW 328 MM “Berlin-Rome” Touring Roadster The author puts the 328 MM Roadster through its paces at BMW’s Spartanburg, South Carolina test trackPhoto: Rob Mitchell From its inception in 1916 to 1927, the Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) built a growing business centered around the design and manufacture of water-cooled...
In April 1964, a new Gran Turismo racer 40-inches high rolled out of the Ford Advanced Vehicles factory in Slough,...
Jacques Laffite has enjoyed a reputation for many years as an open and straightforward person, willing to talk seriously about...
1976 Holden Torana L34 A month or so back, Vintage Racecar interviewed Leo Geoghegan, a true icon of Australian motorsport. While Leo may have started his racing career in an early model Holden, he later became a household name from his successes with a series of Lotus open-wheelers. While this...
American sports car racing in the 1950s is perhaps best known for the titanic battles between Italian-built Ferraris and Maseratis...
From 500-cc racing to a works ride with Cooper and later a British Hillclimb Championship, Mike MacDowel has had a...
1963 Scirocco By the time you read this, a superb collection of famous, bizarre, futile and fantastic Grand Prix cars will be gathering for what promises to be a unique and stirring event at Donington Park in the UK. The weekend of May 18–20 is when GPLive brings together the...
The H-Modified class in American road racing was derived from the FIA small-displacement sports racing machines popularized in Italy and...
There isn’t much Karl Kainhofer hasn’t done in over 50 years of involvement in motorsports, from motorcycle racing in Austria...
1991 Toyota Eagle MKIII GTP It’s amazing how one hair-brained idea can change the course of history. Such was the case when Dan Gurney took a call from a travel agent in Long Beach, California, named Chris Pook. Pook wasn’t trying to sell Dan on a trip to the Caribbean;...
Dark clouds begin to gather in my mind every spring as I park my car in Brescia and walk to...
Patriotic Races “It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany of...
Richard Attwood started his racing career in 1960 driving a Triumph TR3, but by 1963 had won the Monaco Formula Junior race and was a fast rising star. Success in Formula Two saw Attwood quickly move up to Formula One, with BRM in 1964, but the following years in F1...
1969 Chevron B8-BMW In my book, 2006 was a good year. Got my pensioner’s bus pass, had two cataract operations,...
The noise! It took my breath away. A BMW M12 4-cylinder or Honda V-6 at around 10,000 rpm. Totally ear-splitting...
In our January 2007 issue, Pete Lyons shared some remarks about the grand old Canadian-American Challenge Cup series made by 14 influential men who were there. Ten drivers—including two Can-Am champions, a couple of designers, a crew chief and a master photojournalist gathered at last year’s Amelia Island Concours for...
1955 Zephyr Special Today, you would describe Eldred De Bracton Norman as a lateral thinker, but during the 1950s, “eccentric”...
Safe Vintage Racing Needn’t Be Vintage No, your 1950 Allard K2 did not come with a roll bar or head...
Prior to the early ’70s, safety issues were given little attention in Formula One and, by association motorsport in general. However, as a result of several horrific accidents and fatalities, one brave driver stepped to the fore to demand better safety measures. That driver was three-time World Champion Jackie Stewart....
1934 Team Talbot 105s When the conversation turns to the great prewar race and rally teams, the big names—Bentley, Maserati,...
Ron Grable did not fit the normal profile of a race driver. Not only did he begin his racing after...
Big Bangers; that’s what the Brits called Can-Am cars, and they were right. Everything about the Canadian-American Challenge Cup series was big—big speed, big breakthroughs, big bucks. Big names, too. At last year’s Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, our own Pete Lyons was asked to co-moderate with Dan Davis, a round-table...
