Author: Harlo

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Automotive Art

The Automotive Art of Nicolas Cancelier

Flipping through Nicolas’ portfolio of a variety of racing imagery is a real treat. There is a wonderful variety here that really impresses, not just variety of subject matter, but of technique. I’ve always been drawn to well-executed watercolor, largely because the required approach just hasn’t clicked with me whenever I’ve picked up the brush.
Control over the amount of liquid; layering the colors to get the right richness and value of tone; creating strong and well defined lines: all of these fundamental techniques have completely been thrown out the window every time I’ve made at an attempt. Usually my own watercolors become a long and intense study of mud puddles. For Nicolas though, he’s somehow able to create the pits at LeMans or the body of Clark’s Lotus from the humble, yet elusive, watercolor palette. Marvelous stuff—and that’s just one of his mediums.

One of his pieces absolutely leaped off the screen at me. The rendering of Jackie Stewart in a BRM is remarkable. The contrast of the shadows and highlights that we’re so used to rendering in one long gradient on a white canvas becomes so much more nuanced and interesting when broken into a 2 pronged approach on a medium value background. Using the paper color to create the base tone of the BRM’s livery is fantastic. We often think of working in black and white, when usually that means black ON white, actually dividing the tones into black AND white produces beautiful results.

You can see more of Nicolas’ work at his site and see the prints at his blog.

Categories
Lost Track Porsche Video

Paramount Ranch Today

Our recent Paramount Ranch video was discussed on the Pelican Parts forum, where one member brought up their recent tour of the Paramount Ranch track as part of the Santa Barbara Region PCA run, which included a partial lap with the Park Rangers. While it is sad to see her current state, I am pleased that the National Park service is sharing the history with visitors.

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Event Porsche

Porsche’s 1939 Berlin-Rome Coupe Visits the States

This might be a good side trip to add on to this year’s Historic Challenge at Road Atlanta. To celebrate Porsche’s 60th year in North America, the Porsche Museum will be exhibiting the 1939 Berlin-Rome Type 64 at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art exhibit The Allure of the Automobile from March 21-June 20. The car is undoubtedly the spiritual ancestor to every Porsche made since and was the first appearance of many of the design hallmarks that would define the cars. The exhibit will also feature the ’53 550 LeMans Coupe.

The 64 was a prototype hand built special assembled in Zuffenhausen immediately before the Porsche family left Germany for Austria during WWII. The car was designed for the Berlin-Rome race, the nimble and lightweight car would be a perfect competitor for a long overland race through the Alps. Three examples were made: one was destroyed in a bombing raid, one was joy-ridden to death by celebrating American soldiers, the only remaining example holds a prized place in the Porsche museum since it was re-acquired by the factory in 1951.

This is indeed a rare opportunity to see this priceless and important machine in the only setting anyone is likely to ever see it again, a museum pedestal.

CarCulture.com has some marvelous photos of the Berlin-Rome car here.

Update: Still looking into an inconsistency on this bit of news, the High Museum exhibit lists the ’39 on display as a replica, Porsche seems to be listing it as the genuine article – waiting on confirmation from Porsche on this.

Categories
Event Lost Track

A Sign of Hope: Crystal Palace Reborn

Maybe our fretting about lost tracks isn’t all for naught, as the long defunct UK racetrack, Crystal Palace, is reopening. After 10 or 20 years (depending on who you ask) of disuse, the track is set to once again host vintage and modern racing cars for the British Bank Holiday in May.

This is fantastic news. That UK motorsport sanctioning bodies and businesses have found the funds to reopen Britain’s first ever purpose-built track (it opened in 1899) gives us hope that crumbling Stateside tracks like Paramount Ranch and Willow Springs can too find backers to bring racing back to these classic locations. Coupled with major track developments (the racetrack country club phenomenon), and redevelopment efforts (the Brainerd update), there’s hope that we might once again be entering a period of growth for all aspects of motorsport, and not just the super-speedway variety. Octane reports that the track will use much of the old course, including the North Tower Crescent and Big Tree Bend.

More information at Crystal Palace’s site and on Octane.

Categories
Ferrari Lost Track Porsche Video

More Unseen 50’s SCCA Footage: Paramount Ranch 1956

More footage from the John McClure archives, this time from the August 56 running of the Paramount Ranch road races. The footage here is nice and close, it seems John staked out the perfect spot for the featured Sunday races.

The under-1500cc consolation and feature races in the first half of the video has some great shots of Richie Ginther absolutely walking away with the feature race in his #211 Porsche 550 Spyder; the aftermath of Rex Huddleston’s crash in his #75 Maserati-powered Lotus; William Binney’s beautiful #359 Doretti; an interesting shot in the pits of someone’s front-engined(!) Porsche 4-cam powered racer (is it a Lotus 11?). Nice to see some Cooper Formula IIIs mixing it up with the road cars and specials in the low displacement race.

In the larger displacement race, there’s some nice shots of the lovely little battle between Eric Hauser, Bill Krause, and Harrison Evans. Each of them took 1st in their classes piloting their #70 Morgensen Special, #27 Jaguar D-Type, and #130 Ferrari Monza 750.

Seeing the track in use really highlights was an absolutely beautiful location Paramount Ranch was, even moreso than when we featured it in our Lost Tracks series.

Categories
Porsche Video

1973 Porsche 2.7 RS Touring at Silverstone

What do you say we take a spin around Silverstone with Porsche Experience driving consultant Gordon Roberston?

Categories
Historic Racing Photos

Don’t Forget to Use Safety Wire on your Knock-Offs.

Actually, It looks like his brake drum is still attached to the wheel. Oops.

Categories
Ferrari Lost Track Porsche Video

More Unseen Racing Film: Torrey Pines 1954

Here’s another Chicane-exclusive film from sportscar fan, San Diego Jr. Chamber of Commerce member (who helped create the Torrey Pines track), and a pretty darn good shot with a film camera, John McClure. This time it’s the track he was most intimately involved in for the November 1954 race. It was our Torrey Pines post in the Lost Tracks series that prompted Mr. McClure to contact me and offer up this brilliant footage.

The film starts with the LeMans syle running start of the 6 Hours endurance race. The race was ultimately won by Lou Brero in a C-Type, with the von Neumann Ferrari 500 Mondial finishing 2nd. The Ferrari is the #39 car that we see quite a lot of in this footage that looks pink in this film – I’m assuming due to the film processing and not the color sensibilities of the car owner.

Jags, MGs, Gullwing Mercedes, and OSCAs feature prominently in the film, along with Porsche 356s, and a few Ferraris. I don’t know what the story was with this tree, but it seems to be magnetic — lots of narrow misses overrunning the turn at what I’m assuming was a high-speed straight. I also like some of the footage of the spectators here. It wasn’t just the drivers that could get away with more than you can today—let’s see what happens when you try and start a small bonfire to keep warm at the corner of any track these days.

Categories
Vintage Racing Advertising

Racing Ads of the Past: Ernie McAfee

Come on down to Ernie McAfee’s for everything you need for the races. Helmets, just like the pros use: $30. Add a visor to that for a sawbuck. Or perhaps you’re in the market for something bigger. Why not test drive the brand new Siata V8. It’s sure to impress the ladies and only $4995. Motor on down to 8363 Sunset, and tell ’em The Chicane sent ya.

(Naturally this location is now a Starbucks.. typical)

Categories
Event

Legends of Riverside is Right Around the Corner

Speaking of Riverside, the 2nd Legends of Riverside event is only just over a month away. This year’s event and gala dinner honors Carroll Shelby. I watched with quite a bit of interest the coverage of last year’s Legends. I thought it interesting to see how a vintage racing event would fare without the benefit of an actual race, or without proximity to Monterrey or some other high-visibility vintage weekend. I do like their film-festival-meets-academic-conference approach—it’s the very kind of thing we do here—and hoped that it would be a success.

Now that they’re following it up with a second event, I think the verdict on the concept is in. I must admit that that a large part of the appeal for me was the film festival. As someone substantially younger than the events and cars that we’re so obsessed with, historic film has been my only full-sensory exposure to the racing of the era. Sure, I’ve read a lot of old racing books, and heaven knows i’ve spent a lot of time looking at photos of old racecars, but the full experience has best been displayed to me through film. Even attending vintage race weekends, which is invaluable and does so much to showcase these incredible machines, doesn’t convey the era in full (I suspect that Goodwood is the exception here). These films have long been our conduit to the races, drivers, and machines as they were; to a time when drivers didn’t think twice about banging the doors of their Gullwing through the turns, or happily risked spinning their GTO or 550 in a tight battle. Few drivers are willing to take these levels of risk today (and I applaud those who are). So I’m glad the film portion of the Legends of Riverside event remains prominent this year; filled with old favorites (LeMans, Winning), and less-seen productions (Sound of Speed, Formula One Comparo).

Of course, the opportunity to meet with legendary drivers is the big draw for the event, and with invited drivers as Dan Gurney, Bob Bondurant, Vic Elford, Jim Hall, Brian Redman, and David Hobbs (I’ve seen Hobbs speak before, and his stories are absolutely hilarious), it’s sure to be a weekend of excellent tales. The ticket price may seem steep, but with all the events, meals, opportunities to mingle with both fellow racecar geeks and drivers, and the donations made to charity by the event, it seems like money well spent to me.

More info and tickets at the Legends of Riverside site.