I’ve been enamored with this movie poster since it popped up on l’Arte el l’Automobile a month ago, but haven’t been sure what to do with it. Certainly we can just appreciate it for what it is, but I wanted to know more. More about the bunch of Italian racing b-movies that never made it to the States. Which of course got me wondering how I was going to see these (probably terrible) films. How could I incorporate them into the ‘car movie night’ parties I’ve been known to throw from time to time?
Search after search yielded nothing, and I have to admit it was getting to me. This review on IMDB should have quelled my desires.
“When I found this movie on DVD in a store, I thought that it might be a B-Movie with a bad story, but good driving-scenes. What a mistake!
1. The story of this botch is not worth mentioning, the performance of the actors is not worth mentioning and there are a couple of cut scenes that are repeated in quick succession that everybody should notice.
2. As a fan of old Grand Prix Racing I thought it would be nice to see some old Formula 1 action, but that hope was disappointed too: The racing-scenes with the actors are on such an unrealistic level that it hurts. It seems to me, that they looked at a couple of 4 year old boys playing with their toys and directly realized it for the movie.”
Is there something wrong with me that I still want to see it anyways?
Then, by pure happenstance, I came across the opening sequence of the film on YouTube today. The synchronicity was too good to pass up.
What precious little information I’ve been able to find is all nicely summarized on the Internet Movie Cars Database.
Monterey and its innumerable automotive events are quickly approaching. I’ve been trying to quell the burning envy I have for those of you attending this year’s races and concours by browsing the auction catalogs for cars I can’t afford. No, I don’t know why I do this to myself either.
This might be a bit ‘newer’ than our typical fare, but there’s something about the Lamborghini Countach that still looks like the future. And if you’re visiting here, chances are very strong that you’ve had a poster of this car on your wall. I did. sadly it was the later 1980’s coke-dealer styled version with weird wheels parked in front of a series of palm trees looking ever so Miami Vice. Now I find that the early LP400 models are where the magic still lives. When you think of the Countach, it is perhaps THE defining symbol of 80s sportscar aesthetic. Looking at this earlier model though, you can see how very 70s the car actually was. This was still reasonably early in the wedge look that would come to define the late-70s automotive styling.
This Countach is marvelous. I love everything about it. I love that it doesn’t have the wings that peppered later models. I love that the front of the wedge is still sharp and not cluttered with the bumperettes of later models. I love that it isn’t red. I love that seeing a Lamborghini Countach today still feels the same way it felt when I was 12 years old. I (still) love that NACA duct behind the door. It is excessive. It is gorgeous.
This example, chassis 1120154, will come available at RM Auctions’ Sports & Classics of Monterey in just a week’s time. I imagine that the hold it still has over me will be the same for a few more well-heeled buyers as well and that it will meet its $350,000 – $400,000 estimate. There have been a lot of tremendous sports cars that have come out in the 33 years since this Countach was assembled, but it would be difficult to think of one that would turn more heads today than this.
More photos are available at this auction lot’s detail page.
Update: Amazingly, this car didn’t meet it’s reserve, bringing in a top bid of $315,000.
I know I’ve said it before, but the recent increase of people digitizing their old 8mm home-movies and uploading them to YouTube continues to be a major source of delight. This time, it’s footage from the 1967 12 Hours race at Sebring. It looks like our cameraman picked a good corner to stakeout, lots of overtaking and a few harrowing spins here.
Mario Andretti and Bruce McLaren brought home the checkers from pole in their Mk IV Ford GT40 by a whopping 12 laps. Their Ford teammates A.J. Foyt and Lloyd Ruby were second; with the Mitter/Patrick Porsche 910 in third.
The program cover artist was pretty insightful when he crafted this cover, it shows 2 GT40s and a 910. Nice call on the podium finish!
Racing photographer Tom Moran has uploaded some scans of photos of Minnesota’s racing past. There are dozens of painfully fantastic shots of the action and cars (and a few bikini-clad spectators) from the heydays of Donnybrooke Raceway (now Brainerd International Speedway). There are a handful of photos from a 1957 SCCA Land O’ Lakes region event that looks to have been an airstrip race. The set also includes a lush green (maybe that’s the Kodachrome) racing afternoon in the mid-60’s.
Yowza!
Minnesota Racing 1966
The Crowd Likes This Alfa
Of course, no Minnesota racing gallery is complete without some ice racing action. The sun sets mighty early up here in the north woods, so these racers aren’t just hitting the ice and trying to keep it from spinning, they’re doing it after dark. Impressive.
70’s Ice Racing
The entire gallery is definitely worth checking out. Thanks for sharing these shots, Tom.
The Lotus Elan was one of the early wave of Lotus’ chassis innovation: the backbone chassis. This ad for the Elan is from 1964, but this platform still looks reasonably modern.
Look how easily this chassis could be adapted to fit any number of one-off or series built fiberglass rebodies. A few years ago, General Motors’ “skateboard chassis” touched on many of the same principles. Alas, it was just a concept.
A major reason for the sad lack of modern racing specials is the unibody chassis. If the tubular frame is indeed a thing of the past, can’t more modern manufacturers consider the backbone chassis as an alternative? We have to work together if we want to preserve the future, not just the past, of racing specials.
We pulled into Elkhart Lake for the 2009 Kohler International Challenge with Brian Redman last Friday night hoping to catch the parade of vintage cars from the track into downtown Elkhart Lake for a small concours d’elegance on the streets of my favorite small town. Parked in front of Siebkens, the crowds and the rain kept us from taking in too much of the rows of gorgeous machines lining both sides of the street. So, as is traditional, we disappeared into the Siebkens bar for a few Spotted Cows. When we finally made our way back into the streets, we caught this procession of the cars making their way back to Road America.
I’ve identified as many of the machines as I could in this video. It really says something when there’s just too many GT40s and Cobras to accurately identify which one belongs with which driver. Ah, Elkhart.
Paul wrote in to tell us of his first outing in his recently acquired McNamara Sebring Formula Vee. The car finished the race, he passed a few fellow racers. All in all a successful first outing.
But I’ll let Paul tell you the story:
I finally finished my vee a few weeks ago and took it up to BIR for my first vintage race weekend. Considering all that we had done to the car, things went pretty well. Since I am 6’1″, we moved the pedals and heelstop 1.5 inches forward. We fit new 6pt belts and mountings into the car. I added vintage legal oil cooler and charging system and all new brakes and brake lines in addition to giving the whole car a good cleaning. I fit in the car really well and had no troubles with driving the car. Previous to arriving at the track, I hadn’t actually driven the car since completing all of the work on it.
I was dinged for a few things in tech, but nothing the would prohibit me from running – a few rod ends holding the z-bar that are possibly worn, the steering wheel pin was deemed a bit outdated (go figure) and my car also lacks a working integrated fire system which the VSCR doesn’t require. The car was however deemed safe enough to run the weekend.
We ran two practices and a race on Saturday and a practice and race on Sunday. The VSCR is relatively small, so everyone runs in one run group. That means that I was out there with one other monoposto, lots of MGs, an Austin Healey, a TVR, a bmw powered elva, a Jabro, a 356, a few old vw gtis, a 914 and 3 or so big block Corvettes – which were really the only things from this weekend that I found to be frightening.The track was wet for the first two practices and I actually turned faster lap times than 4 or 5 cars. This was particularly noteworthy because of a big problem that became apparent on my first practice lap – The car wouldn’t shift into third gear at speed. Apparently in my thorough cleaning of the car I had cleaned away the gunk that was keeping the shifter linkages tight. As a result, I ran all of my laps in fourth. At BIR you really want to run about a third of the track in 4th and the rest in 3rd. It was probably all right in the rain laps since the lack of power was an added advantage coming out of corners.
For the first race they started me at the back of the pack since they didn’t want me causing any problems with my errant shifter in the middle of the field during the start. I was able to pass the 4 or 5 cars that I outpaced during practice despite my shifting problems.Sunday was more of the same except that they started me in the middle of the pack for the race. The start was quite an experience, since it’s on the fastest, scariest part of the track (through two and into three). I’ve never gone through two side by side with another car before.
Overall, it was a successful first weekend, we made it to the track and back home, the car ran well and we didn’t have any incidents. Now I just have to take care of my next car to-do list before going to Road America in September. So much for ‘finishing’ the car.
As part of the lead-up to the 60th anniversary of Formula 1, Martin Brundle has taken a few of the sports more iconic racing machines for a spin. This segment features a favorite of mine, The Lotus 49.
There’s been quite a bit written lately about Phoenix-based Rizk Automotive’s recent release of images of their reproduction of the Aston Martin DBR2 using modern technology. In the time since, I’ve been considering how I feel about it.
My first impulse was to praise Rizk for a job well done. It is, after all, quite beautiful. With the available V8 or V12 power plant it’s sure to have plenty of power. Modern suspension almost certainly means it will handle like a dream. It’s lovely, and I’d be happy to drive one. I don’t have a problem with reproductions and replicas as road cars either (whether they should be allowed to compete at vintage events is another story). Besides, I already spread some love around in the same way for the recent proposed re-creation of the Gullwing Mercedes using modern technology and methods. But the more I think about it, the more conflicted I become.
The Aston Martin DBR2, like the Gullwing Mercedes, is a tremendously beautiful car. And these interpretations certainly evoke them. Ok, maybe it all starts to fall apart a bit on the interior. The photos of the odd overlapping angles, thoughtless typeface choices, and visible carbon fiber make the whole endeavor feel anachronistic. In re-reading Rizk’s promotional materials for their sendup of the DBR2, I stumbled across something that made it all click into place for me.
It all starts when they describe and evangelize the laborious process of 3D scanning the body lines of the DBR2. This process is expensive, but important to get the body lines of the DBR2 exactly right. 3D scanning technology is also helpful to reproduction houses in that they don’t have to convince the owner of of one of these priceless machines to go through the messy process of having a mold pulled from their car.
Ok. So they’ve got this perfect 3D model of the Aston Martin DBR2 body. The next part should be easy, right? Find a panel-beater or die-maker or mold-maker and prepare for production. But that’s not what Rizk did.
“Once the 3D model of the original was fully built on the computer, we spent almost a full year completely redesigning every curve and intersection. We enhanced the original front fender curves to add greater fullness. The car’s dimensions were increased in length and width, the door size was resized for proportionality, and finally the entire body was engineered to adapt to a space efficient and immensely stiff monocoque chassis.”
Wait. What? You went through the expensive and laborious process of 3D scanning of a Aston Martin DBR2 and then you just arbitrarily change everything? Was your goal suddenly to make a car that ‘kinda looks like a DBR2’?
Then it hit me of course. Look at this photo of an actual DBR2 being put through it’s paces. The wheel is practically joined to the driver’s rib cage. Most well-heeled car buyers wouldn’t actually want to drive an exact reproduction of a DBR2. The giant steering wheel would be much too close for buyers used to the more horizontal driving position of modern sports cars; or any modern car for that matter. Then again, it doesn’t look like they extended the driver’s seating area much, if it all. Now I’m right back where I started from: confused about the whole thing.
On the whole, I guess I would say I’m glad that these iconic machines are influencing builders of actual cars intended for sale. After all, I’d rather see Rizk’s near-DBR2 pass me on the freeway than just another BMW or Audi.
