Just like racing log books, this shop coat should be passed on to the new owner each time a Bugatti 35 is sold. Beautiful.
Via Forum Auto.
Category: Racing Ephemera
Categories
Clarity Through Minimalism
I was looking through my Triumph Haynes manual the other day trying to sort out a gearbox issue I’m having and realized that it’s nearly impossible to make sense of the low-contrast photography that accompanies the instructions.
It’s a few things, really: the low quality printing; the poor cropping that makes it difficult to discern what is the relevant item that I’m supposed to be looking at; the lack of quality lighting. It all made me wish that my trusty old copy of John Muir’s How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot was available for every make and model. The illustrations—cartoony as they are—do a much better job of highlighting the relevant information. It’s part of what makes it, in my opinion, the best repair manual ever written.
When I stumbled across this image of an E-Type’s rear end dropped, it prompted the same thought. The Haynes or Chilton version of this image would be full of shadows and low-contrast grays and make the whole thing a jumbled mess to understand. I can’t even read German and I can understand what’s going on here.
Take note, repair manual publishers.
Looking at these catalog images for scale models it’s difficult—and a little bit sad—to imagine the time when illustrators were cheaper than photographers.
Any one of these renderings would make a fantastic t-shirt.
Categories
Making Do Without Photography
In our look at the 1959 Examiner Grand Prix at Pomona, I mentioned that Ken Miles was handed the win when Bill Krause had a puncture and spun on the 73rd lap. Since there was no photo available of the moment, illustrator Stan Mott made sure that the readers of MotoRacing news wouldn’t be left wanting. Consider how unlikely that there would be need of a cartoonist whipping something up as coverage for a contemporary race and you’ll understand why I love this kind of thing so much.
Even better, it’s not even the first time we’ve shown an illustration to convey a moment that would surely been photographed and filmed in HD had the race occurred today.
Model makers have a bit of a reputation for being fastidious about the details.
Ostensibly, this illustration by R. Pawlowicz for Modelarz magazine is meant to simply guide a model-maker in their own reproduction of a ’56—’59 Vanwall GP car like the one Tony Brooks piloted in the 1958 Monaco. But just look at the inset detail illustrations of the De Dion axle, the mirrors, or the scoops and vents. Any one of these could be hung on their own as a piece of art worthy of any garage. The more typical modellers guide of a simple front, top, and rear view is pitifully bare by comparison.
It’s hard to imagine that any model built from this guide could be a greater work of art than this series of illustrations.
I was contacted last week by an antiques dealer in Southern California that acquired these marvelous Southern California road racing posters from the estate of California Sports Car Club racer Noble Bishop. Bishop raced at these events in Crosleys and Triumphs and has kept these mementos in fantastic shape.
A couple of these are posters that I’ve never seen before and they are just heartbreakingly lovely. There’s a stark simplicity in these earlier generations of posters and handbills that is left lacking in most modern racing ephemera. The cheap availability of full color photographic printing is part of the problem. After all, why bother investing the time and creativity in something when we can just print up a photo?
Good design requires constraints: constraints of budget, of technology, of time. The more we strip those constraints away, there more contemporary racing poster design seems to suffer. Even the events that take the time to hire good designers and artists to craft a program or poster usually end up cluttering it with sponsoring logos. Thankfully, these posters lack most of that clutter. They’re fantastic. Unfortunately, they’re a bit out of my price range otherwise I would have bought them already instead of sharing them here with you. Contact the Blue Heron Gallery in Fallbrook, CA for more information.
Categories
Everybody’s Automotive Magazine
It says it all right there under the logo doesn’t it: “Everybody’s Automotive Magazine”.
Looking at this cover from the June 1960 edition of Hot Rod, I believe it. Comet vs. Rambler. Chevys for Indy. VW hop up kits. It’s all in there. Muscle. Racing. Imports.
I suppose on the whole, I appreciate that specific tastes can be catered to in today’s media landscape. But it makes me wonder if automotive enthusiasm has become too compartmentalized… Too isolated.
It’s all too rare a car event where all comers are appreciated as part of a unified whole: lowriders and rat rodders; supercar polishers and vintage chrome collectors; drag racers and import tuners.
When I see this old issue of Hot Rod, part of me is immediately caught up in the frame these fellows are dropping this powerplant into: Marveling that this is all just happening in the back lot and somehow looks as clean as a sterile workshop. But when I see the other feature callouts, it reminds me to step back from the details and the minutia and look at the big picture of people—all kinds of people—just messing about with their cars.
Not a bad way to spend 35￠, eh?
I’m not the only one who thumbs through old brochures and fantasizes that I can still ring up my local importer and order an Abarth, right?
The Fifth Rand Grand Prix at Kyalami foreshadowed the international stage that Kyalami, only a year after its construction, was quickly becoming. This Non-Championship race in the ’62 Formula 1 season drew top talent from the British Formula 1 teams in particular with Jim Clark, Graham Hill, and John Surtees along with American Richie Ginther competing on the grid on a December afternoon. Clark won from pole, with Lotus team mate Trevor Taylor three-tenths of a second behind him.
Thanks again to Andrew Duncan who has been sharing with us scans of his program collection from his boyhood visits to Kyalami. See more of the Duncan Collection here.
The juxtaposition of the modernity of Czech architect Jan Kaplický’s design of the main museum with the restored Ferrari workshop makes for a marvelous set of bookends that describes Ferrari’s progression as a manufacturer. I can’t help but think that Kaplicky’s design (brought to fruition after his death by his protegé Andrea Morgante) considered the power of that; of showcasing the humble industrial-era workshop that was Ferrari’s foundations alongside the bold color and sweeping technological sophistication of the museum building.
On it’s face, I’m not terribly fond of this architectural style, despite it’s echoes of a Ferrari bonnet. But, this splash of hyper-modernism within the more gritty industrial landscape of this section of Modena makes such a powerful architectural statement not as a building, but as a part of the wider geography. It’s just incredible.
Oh, and there are Ferraris in it.
More at Museo Casa Enzo Ferrari