In case you didn’t already have a tremendous level of respect for home machinists. Just watching him turn that crankshaft is crazy, but then when he shows the valves… my brain melted.
Two cubic centimeters of displacement. 11.3mm cylinder bore. 10mm stroke. Stainless steel, aluminum, and bronze construction. Powered by compressed air.
Ready to drop in to Barbie’s Ferrari.
Keeping goofy “title sponsorship” logos off of program covers and event posters wasn’t a conscious design decision in the 60’s, but it’s one I wish more poster designers would make today.
I have a poster hanging in my house for the 1999 running of the Meadowbrook Historics at the Waterford Hills Road Races. Like the brilliant imagery presented here, it’s beautifully illustrated with bold colors and finely executed imagery of racing cars. Bugatti was the featured marque for the race and the poster features a gorgeously realized Bugatti-blue Type 35.
The color and composition are quite lovely, but then the sponsoring corporation’s logo is slapped across the bottom. “Tech-Sight”, it says, in anachronistically severe quasi-contemporary logotype. It tarnishes the poster with its poor design and placement and late-90’s generically futuristic branding.
I had to look up what the company was to write this post: It’s a subsidiary of defense contractor General Dynamics. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing people want hanging in their automotive art gallery: graphically dated defense contractor logos.
Thankfully, we can always look back at these marvelous American Road Race of Champions program covers to give us the essentials: evocative illustration, uncluttered typography, and the sanctioning body’s logo – if necessary. That’s it. Follow that equation, poster designers.
Gentleman Gentleboy Racer. I’m starting to think that saddle shoes should make a return to motorsport.
via Magnetic Brain
The brothers Maserati at the original workshop in Bologna. I don’t know the exact date here but it was before Alfieri died from liver complications in ’32.
The building has since been demolished. Which makes me a bit sad. It brings to mind the dilapidated Model-T factory in Detroit that I used to pass on my daily commute. We go to endless effort to restore the cars but forget almost entirely about where they came from; the situations that led to their development; the craftsman that breathed life into them.
These images from the media announcement of the 1969 Formula Ford championship and the Dutch National Team’s vehicle debut are quite an interesting case-study in how sporting media drops have changed in the intervening years.
Today’s racing press events are glitzy orchestrated affairs: Dance music pulses as the curtain drops. A sheet is pulled from the waiting car before the unveiled car rotates on a stage bathed in carefully selected spotlights. Smiling media-trained drivers bedecked in sponsorship logos emerge from the side of the stage to shake hands with auto executives amid the popping flashbulbs of a baited motoring press.
These shots are exactly the opposite of that. It is a beautifully spontaneous mess:
“Hey Boss, Nick Brittan is here.”
“Who?”
“Nick Brittan. The director of the International Formula Ford Championship. He’s got the trophy with him. I’ll bring him back.”
“Let’s take a few photos while he’s here.”
“Sure thing, Boss. Should I just park the car in front of those ashtrays by the elevators?”
“Yes. And get him to awkwardly pose on the car like he’s a glamour model while we’re at it.”
“Yes Sir! This is going to be great!”
Who needs racing cams? I got performance heads here! Get your close ratio gearboxes!
Browse the complete catalog and daydream at Mustang Tek.
Break out the dagger brush and your mahl stick and pop open a can of 1-Shot.
Ferrari: Modena Italia presenta: 166 millemiglia. 250 millemiglia.
Love the high-contrast illustration style in this page from a 1953 Ferrari brochure. I’ve looked high and low for a higher resolution image with no luck, so I can’t read the listed specifications. Anyone have any idea what the olympic rings are doing here?
Update:I found another page from a 1955 Ferrari brochure that uses a graphical device similar to the olympic rings and discusses championship wins. Were the interlocking olympic-style rings used more generically to symbolize international competition in the years before the International Olympic Committee cracked down on unauthorized use?
Worth noting that the graphical device used in the ’55 brochure page bears a resemblance to the Auto Union/Audi rings. Curiouser and curiouser.
Anyone familiar with the recent versions of the glass and concrete control towers at Indianapolis Motor Speedway might wonder why they call it “The Pagoda”. After all, they really only has a passing resemblance to the Japanese* architectural style—particularly between ’56 and ’98.
Not so with the pre-1956 versions.
* A few emails have pointed out that the pagoda isn’t strictly a Japanese design. What we think of as the pagoda has its origins in Nepal before migrating through Tibet to China and the rest of Asia. Thanks for the clarification everyone.