More from the Topps World on Wheels bubblegum card collection. This time, Connaught.
From the card’s reverse:
Horsepower: 107 A tiny factory in England, producing only about two cars per week, makes the Connaught. The body is very light and is built for speed. It has cycle fenders, outside exhaust pipes, bucket seats and a good finish. The price of the Connaught is $5,500! the basis for this car is a Lea-Francis engine. Under the cowl is a two and one half gallon gas tank.
We’ve been singing the praises of the aesthetic of Autodromo’s offerings for a while now. They wonderfully marry the sleek sophistication that so appeals to wrist watch aficionados with the purposeful elegance of motorsport. The world of vintage motoring has certainly embraced the endeavor. Some watch snobs though, have been less enthusiastic in throwing their support behind a piece with Quartz movement.
I’m guessing that with their latest release, Autodromo has silenced those naysayers. The limited edition Monoposto is not only marvelously designed and gorgeously detailed—I love the heavily threaded reinforcement on the strap— it is also Autodromo’s first watch with automatic mechanical movement.
Like all of Autodromo’s wristwatches, the references to motorsport are evident but not gaudy. The subtlety of their range is perhaps what I’m most drawn to. There’s no tacky racing graphics here. But those that are in the know will instantly see the sporting references in the design and execution of them.
More information at the Autodromo store and at Automobiliac. Bradley tells me that they can still ship for Christmas if you order today. Get on it!
I love the track at Paramount Ranch. That tunnel is so romantic and deadly, and the location in the Santa Monica Mountains ensured that Hollywood stars and starlets made appearances both mixing it up on course and spectating trackside.
A good example of the program for that first race at Paramount in August 1956 has come available on eBay. The price might drive some away, but what a marvelous reminder of the golden era of the California Sports Car Club. Just take a look at the footage of the race from our earlier post on the Ranch. How could you not want a reminder of this kind of immediate, friendly, competitive-as-hell era in motorsport.
Keep your eye on the auction. Thankfully by pointing you to it, I don’t have to be the one to buy it.
The latest from our series featuring cards from the 1953—1955 Topps issued bubblegum cards, “World on Wheels”. This time it’s Allard: “British Sports Car: Speed-Lined Beauty”.
From the card’s reverse: Horsepower 160
This British sports car weighs less than 2,500 pounds, and can reach a speed of sixty miles an hour in about seven seconds. This is from a standstill. The top speed is about 130 miles per hour. The Allard’s brakes are right out in the open, and are highly efficient. Allard now makes two kinds of cars… one for normal, everyday use, and the other as a competition car.
These artifacts of boyhood obsession with racing are so very valuable. I can’t help but imagine an 8 or 10 year old laying on his bedroom floor obsessing over every detail in this basic line drawing and imagining himself changing gear through a hairpin.
Check out the rest of the the World on Wheels series.
Forget about buying the car, just the brochure for a Toyota 2000GT is a rare and hotly collected item. The thing to remember when you’re walking out of the auto show this winter with arms loaded with brochures is that when you only make 337 examples of a car, you don’t need to print as many brochures for it as Ford needs for the F150. Recently on the Final Gear Forums, GhettoAdam pointed to these images scanned from the brochure. I can’t say it’s quenched my thirst to see the full brochure, but it helps.
The latest from our series featuring cards from the 1953—1955 Topps issued bubblegum cards, “World on Wheels”.
From the card’s reverse:
Alfa Romeo
This famous-make Italian racing car has seen action in almost all the major automobile races in Europe. In one race in Switzerland, an Alfa-Romeo, driven by Nino Faurino, hit a wrecked car… causing his car to run into the crowd, injuring both his legs. The Alfa-Romeo company is considered the greatest builder of Grand Prix racing cars in the world. They make sports cars as well.
I adore the rough-hewn, suggestive painting technique on these posters from the ’53 and ’54 Gran Premio de España motorcycle races. Even better to see the tradition carrying on until at least this 1969 Premio Internaccional poster.
Is it simply because they’re Spanish that they’re bringing to mind Picasso’s gestural Bull paintings? Or is there something there—a certain Spanish style.
From 1953—1955 Topps issued a series of bubblegum cards featuring beautifully illustrated motor vehicles of all shapes and sizes: from military tanks, to construction equipment, to scooters, and—yes—sports and racing cars. Over the next few weeks, I’ll feature some favorites from among their sportier cards. When available, I’ll include the text from the back-side of the card; inaccuracies and all. I love the artifacts of mid-century printing techniques: all the halftones and misaligned screens and ink overflows in these cards are exquisite.
This time: a 1947 Cisitalia 202 Spider Nuvolari. Again, text below is from the reverse of the card.
Horsepower: 55 Cylinders: 4 Length: 147.4″ Width: 55.6″ The Cisitalia runabout is an Italian sports car with an ideal design for road racing or fast touring. Many new design ideas were started by this company, including finned rear fenders, and side exhaust ports like the Buick. Good weight distribution, and low center of gravity allow the car to turn at high speeds.
We think of Grand Prix solely as Frankenheimer’s movie. In the basic sense I suppose it was, but I often forget about legendary designer and filmmaker Saul Bass’ hand in the film.
He did the title sequences—which were brilliant—but he also had a hand in the choreographed racing montage sequences as well. They’re handled wonderfully in the film, often as musical interludes that are balletic in parts, raw and evisceral in others. In short, they’re perfect analogues for racing in general. They’re so wonderfully assembled, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they’re the result of months of preparation and storyboarding.
Shooting the races in Grand Prix brought into focus for me the Director-as-Performer mode. Until then I had been directing in the Repertory mode. Small companies, with accumulated experience working together. All in tune with an exploratory point of view. Shifts in concept or staging understood as a process, rather than a certainty.
This all changed when I began directing the races for Grand Prix. The first race was at Spa in Belgium. We had permit problems with the Racing Association. We didn’t know if we could even get on the track. If we did, I would have no advance opportunity to study the track or even to know what part of the track we would have. Suddenly, at the end of one day, we unexpectedly got permission to shoot the next day. I arrived at an assigned section of the track at 8:30am. I saw an unfamiliar terrain, a multilingual crew, a slew of Formula One racing cars and drivers, 1,500 extras, and others—waiting for “the word”. I looked around. What’s my first shot? A race start. I called out my requirements. “Put the cars over there. The No. 1 Camera here. 600mm lens. The crowd…” I had another thought. I started again. “Let’s have the cars further back. No. 2 Camera there. 1000mm lens. Put the 600mm lens…” Pause. I had a better idea. “Here’s what we do…” I stopped. I could see the crew looking at each other and growing restless. My authority eroding. It was a very long day. But, somehow I got through it.
The next day, I arrived on the set. New pieces of track. New terrain. A thousand pairs of eyes zapped in on me. Silence. In a panic, I grabbed my cane. Plunged it into the turf. “OK! No. 1 Camera here. 200mm lens. No. 2 Camera there, 600mm lens. No. 3 Camera in the stands. All cars lined up for a start there. 1,000 extras in the stands. The rest in the woods. And call me when you’re ready!” A beat.
Pandemonium broke loose, and everybody went to work. I hopped into my jeep with my first cameraman, tooled around the curve in the track, stopped where no one could see, and said to myself, “OK. What the hell am I going to do today?” I knew it would take them a little time to get that all sorted out. So I calmed down. Went down the track a bit. Set up some angles and figured out my day’s work… my shot list. My first assistant came running up. They were ready. We drove back to the set. I looked everything over. “Fine. Alright. We’re ready to go.” “Ready?” “Ready.” “Camera ready?” “Camera rolling…speed!” “Action!” VVRRROOOOMMMMM! The cars took off. “Cut. Print. Next shot!” People exchanged glances. “He knows what he wants. We’re in good hands.”
Of course, I never actually used that shot. It was a question of morale… I learned that when you have an army, you may have to ride a white horse.
