1968 Alfa Romeo Giulia 1300TI with black steel wheels
Similar to my love for the Momo Prototipo and Jaeger gauges, there is a kinship I feel with BlackSteelies.com. There’s something special about finding a solitary slice of perfection and watching it prove itself in situation after situation. What these items share is an innate ability to improve the aesthetic or performance of any car they’re added to. It’s as true for the Prototipo as it is for simple black steel wheels. Whether on modern Minis or vintage Porsches and BMWs, the desire to throw out unnecessary and frivolous (and oversized) chrome in favor of a more simple solution is a quick route to my heart. Keep at it, gentlemen.
Lancia Aurelia GT with black steel wheelsBMW 2002 with black steel wheels
Anna Maria Peduzzi with her Stanguellini 1100 Sport. 1956.
For International Women’s Day we’ve been posting a series of photos of our favorite women in motorsport on The Chicane’s Tumblr. Click on over an join in.
Maria Teresa de Filippis in MonacoSuzy Dietrich in her Porsche 550
What better time than International Women’s Day to showcase more footage from the Suzy Dietrich archive? This time, the 1958 Sebring Endurance Race. Lots of great footage here from the pits of the competitors arriving. Can you imagine this year’s competitors showing up for the race weekend pulling their racing car on an open trailer behind their Cadillac. More should.
Again, many thanks to Cliff Reuter for snatching these precious film reels from the Suzy Dietrich auction and releasing them into the wild.
It’s always a treat to scroll through Bob Tilton’s posts on Werk Crew. He has a wonderful eye for design and photography and he uses his blog to showcase some of his process both as an artist and as a glimpse behind the scenes of his Porschephile nirvana books and calendars. This post on his photographic retouching process was particularly insightful recently. I know that there are some that decry the use of any retouching; that the photograph should only exist as it was when it left the camera. If you’ve ever shot at a race weekend though, you know that the environment doesn’t always play nicely with your composition. This isn’t a magazine shoot we’re preparing for here, it’s messy. There are parts and tools and trash in the way. There are other racefans and onlookers and gawkers cluttering up the background. Bob’s relatively light touch on the post-processing here is a good example of doing retouching in a tasteful way.
On top of that, the craft of his retouching effort is on full display here. He’s pulling people out of the background and filling in the scene behind, including the proper reflections in the paintwork. He’s cleaning up the garage floor without obvious clone stamping from other sections of the concrete. There is absolute artistry in doing this properly. I’ve seen some bad shops in my day but when done properly this is very arduous, meticulous work and this is an excellent example.
Click on through to the Werk Crew post for the details on the retouching work. Keep at it, Bob. Love your stuff.
I’m sure you’ll all remember in the first act of Star Wars that fate or accident or simple luck finds our hero/farmboy Luke Skywalker and his mentor Obi Wan Kenobi in possession of military secrets that could bring an evil dictatorship to its knees—if they can get those secrets into the right hands. They seek out a smuggler with a high-performance vehicle to help them spirit those secrets under the dictator’s nose. But when our hero first spots this alleged performance vehicle, he finds himself in doubt. This doesn’t look like a fast machine. In fact, it looks like a piece of junk.
Our smuggler, ever confident, replies: “She’ll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.”
She.
They’re always she.
From sailing ships to sportscars, we’ve always imbued these objects with a feminine mystique. I’d argue that when we look at the sports and racing cars of the mid-century that it’s the most literal we’ve made that connection.
Look at the Jaguar D-Type. Those hips! Look at a Ferrari 875S, a Birdcage Maserati, a Porsche 550. Look at a Triumph TR3 or an Alfa-Romeo Tipo 33 Stradale or an Abarth 750 Zagato or Aston-Martin DB3. Look at any of them and you’ll see slippery shapes of sweeping curves subtly transitioning from one gorgeous corner of the car to another. This is not to say that these machines look bulbous or soft. These are purposeful, powerful shapes. And they are decidedly feminine. Marilyn or Bettie or even Audrey poised to leap; to dance; to race.
Something has happened in the past 20 years of sportscar design. There’s nothing elegant about this Lamborghini. It looks cold and mechanical and dangerous. We’ve stopped caring about machines looking beautiful and settled for them looking angry or dangerous… Mean. A Ferrari 250GTO is all of those things as well but there’s a beauty and a warmth and a grace to her lines that contemporary sportscars lack entirely. These sharp angles and hard edges represent an overt masculinization of automotive design and I think it’s a great loss.
I have a hard time imagining anyone calling this Lamborghini “she”. Alas.
Learn Driving in formula or sports cars at world famous Riverside International Raceway. Individual instruction by Carroll Shelby. Send $1.00 for details on beginners and advanced classes. Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving. 10820 So. Norwalk Blvd., Dept. C, Santa Fe Springs, Calif.
That location is now Mooneyes! Thanks for sending this one in, Chris!
Buy Something Different. This is not one of the ordinary “Run of the Mill” Sports Cars, but a car built to give you that little extra. RACE PROVED CHASSIS AND SUSPENSION THAT REALLY HOLDS THE ROAD. The sleek body, with its sound all-weather equipment, is roomy and comfortable, and possesses a generously proportioned luggage boot. The instrument panel is fully equipped including a rev. counter, oil pressure gauge etc., and a heater is available. Save Money. Buy one of these in Kit Form. Additional models are now available with Ford 105E or 109E engine and gearbox as well as the B.M.C. 950 c.c. and Coventry Climax 1220 c.c., together with a full range of extras and speed equipment. Write for full information Turner Sports Cars (Wolverhampton) LTD. Municipal Aerodrome, Fendeford, Wolverhampton Telephone: Fordhouses 3223
Carlo Felice Trossi at the 1934 Nice GPStirling Moss in a Rob Walker Lotus 18 at the 1961 Monaco GP
Why swelter under the hot summer sun when you can have a cool breeze soothing you on a Sunday drive? Carlo Felice Trossi in his Alfa at the 1932 Nice GP and Moss in his Rob Walker Lotus 18 at 1961’s Monaco GP demonstrate.
I think one of the things I like most about historic motorsport is the makeshift facilities. New Zealand didn’t have a purpose-built racing course to host this GP in 1955, but did it stop them? No.
Prince Bira’s 250F Maserati (#1) was perfectly welcome to mix it up on the runways of Ardmore Airport with Lex Davison’s HWM-Jaguar (#77) and Tony Gaze’s Ferrari (#4) just the same. Sure, there’s good reason why 55-gallon drums and haybales don’t serve as today’s racing course construction but there’s a spirit of improvisation that I appreciate.
