Too bad they didn’t give points for beauty in the 1938 24 Hours of LeMans. If they did, this Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Coupe would have been undefeated until the mid-sixties. As it was, Raymond Sommer and Clemente Biondetti weren’t able to capitalize on Sommer’s fastest lap when the car lost oil pressure. Even so, stunning.
Ever the designer, it looks like Ralph Lauren organizes his collection by color. Awesome.
More at Vanity Fair.
I actually think this whole approach is quite clever. Why not balance the weight of the driver with the engine and fuel tanks? Although I imagine the handling characteristics must change radically as fuel is burned.
Oh for the days when radical experimentation was encouraged.
Via DesignBoom and The Nostaligia Forum
Ok, maybe I’m being overly generous calling it a “factory”, but I’ve not seen this shot of the Reventlow Automobiles workshop showing a pair of Scarabs under construction. Life magazine photographer Bill Bridges captured this shot in October 1958. Chassis #001 had already been racking up victories since February of that year, but Numbers 002 and 003, although they would have both had their debut races by October, might still have been in development. Is this Scarab #002 and #003 we’re looking at here? What a treat it must have been to be hanging out with the boys that afternoon.
I’m not enough of a trainspotter to be able to identify the individuals in the shot here, let us know in the comments if you have a better eye than I do.
Sure it’s been overshadowed by it’s bigger brother 2002, but the 700 was a tougher competitor than you’d think. Hans Stuck piloted one to victory in the touring car class of the 1960 German Hillclimb Championship. Class victories were also achieved in the 1960 12 hours race at Hockenheim and the 6 hours of Nürburgring. Not bad for car powered by a 698cc Flat-2 (a bored out R67 motorcycle engine).
Flat-2!
Update: Over on The Chicane’s Facebook page, Jean-Jaques pointed us to this photo of Jacky Ickx in a rather inauspicious entry to his hillclimb career, also in a 700. Thanks Jean-Jaques!
Nice little split-window back and forth on So-Sos.
When I posted the Lotus XI sales brochure last week, a commenter reminded me about Peter Egan’s Road & Track article about building a Westfield kit of a Lotus XI and embarking (the next morning!) on a cross country trip to Road America. Reminiscent of the types of stunts that Top Gear would later build an empire on, the article is equal parts dry journal and audacious journey. Thankfully, there’s almost none of the rubes-in-the-country-respond-to-a-racecar-with-dumfounded-confusion, and much more enthusiasm and joy from everyone Peter and his wife encounter.
The article is available online in its entirety at this link. I dare you to get to the end and not want to ring up Westfield to secure one of the (last?) Eleven kits for yourself.
When you leave the electrics out of the picture, this Jaguar E-Type V12 looks like a very enjoyable project.
via
Unless I am mistaken the largest number of comments on any post at The Chicane have come re. the material on the Singer Owners Club hillclimb at Agoura in 1955. I recently dug out my negatives taken at that event and found one the local camera shop had not printed back then as it was blurry–shows my Dad being flagged off on his winning run. Hanging over the not so well deployed snow fence I must have moved my Kodak Brownie which took six shots on a roll of film.
Those who asked about the exact location of the event may be able to align the profile of the hills in the background with the terrain today.
At a recent GoF west (Gathering of the Faithful–pre1955 MG car club meeting) we had a guest speaker who had just rebuilt the engine from Bob Menefee’s much raced TC special of the 50s. He claimed some 125 horses from an unblown XPAG, In period, 85 was the best that could be done, including the factory engines supplied to Ken Miles for R1 and R2 (two engines, not the same one as claimed in Art Evans’ book on Miles). The Menefee car is not going to be vintage raced according to the restorer. It was quite similar to many other T MG specials of the same time, which dominated the ranks of F modified before the Porsche Spyder, with a lightened original chassis, home made alloy body and the original radiator shell preserved. Harold Erb’sTC Spl, seen here, was the longest lived of these, and when a really big blower was put on in 1957, it beat a few Mondial Ferraris.
You will note how similar is the body work to our Magnette special, built at the same time, which I still race. Here it is at The Quail concours two years ago.
John Timanus’ TC Spl was also a look-alike for these two cars. At the 1955 Pebble Beach, ten of the 18 cars in F mod were MG specials, and another was MG powered (Hanford’s Lotus VI, still around) while one was a stock bodied TF. A year later there were only two, along with 10 Porsche 550s! Where are all those MG specials now?
—Mike Jacobsen
Only a few short years after fire ravaged the original Coventry facility, this Jaguar assembly line has shown how quickly the romance of the immediate post-war era gave way to the automation and sterility that sure makes these factory shots less interesting today.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the efficiencies of the line, but there’s something about the old repurposed facilities as a makeshift factory that feels so much more right. The earlier factories we’ve shown felt much more like a group of craftsmen coming together to create something—these look like a bunch of unhappy cogs meaninglessly turning bolts. I’m exaggerating of course, but look at this earlier shot of D-Types being built and tell me which facility you’d rather work in.
via Hemmings.