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.
Cindy sent in this photo belonging to a friend of hers looking for more information. The caption gives the vital details—“Wagner in 100 HP Darracq making a last turn at Krug’s Corner in the Vanderbilt Cup Race”. Well, that should make it easy enough. Minneola, New York’s Krug Hotel marked the 11th turn of the Vanderbilt Circuit in a few of the races. But which Vanderbilt was it? (I know that the circuit changed frequently so someone more knowledgeable on the Vanderbilt races might be able to pinpoint the year just based on the corner naming)
Louis Wagner competed in the 1905 and 1906 races for the Darracq team. He also had a handful of races in Europe with Darracq: He had class wins in 1903 and 1905 at the Circuit des Ardennes Race and Belgium; placed third among voiturettes at the deadly Paris-Madrid Race; and competed in the 1907 Targa Florio. It was the Targa that finally brought Wagner’s long relationship with Darracq to an end. After working as a mechanic for the maker in his teens and racing them in his twenties, Darracq claimed that the differential failure during the 1907 Targa was Wagner’s fault and he abruptly left the team.
Getting back to the photo though, even though we don’t clearly see the large #10s that adorned the grill of the 1906 car, this looks very like the Darracq that he won the 1906 Vanderbilt with alongside riding mechanician Louis Vivet.
Lotus slides through turn 3 at the 1959 Examiner Grand Prix at Pomona
I’m sure that, like me, you’ve found your time disappearing in the Dave Friedman collection at The Henry Ford Museum’s Flickr archive time hole. I’ll be highlighting some favorite sets from the archive over the next few weeks, and what better place to start than the feather in Pomona’s cap: The 1959 Los Angeles Examiner International Grand Prix.
Formula class at the 1959 Examiner Grand Prix at Pomona
The 150 mile March ’59 event was the largest race ever held at the LA County Fairgrounds circuit and was the first stop on the USAC championship that year. 40,000 spectators saw Ken Miles win the main event in his #50 Porsche 550 with Sam Weiss not far behind in an RSK, both finishing ahead of larger Ferraris, Maseratis, and Chuck Daigh in the Kurtis 500 Buick special.
Race winner Ken Miles at the 1959 Examiner Grand Prix at Pomona
Miles may have won the day with a 35 second margin but it wasn’t exactly a walk away win. Bill Krause blew a tire and spun his Maserati 450S on turn 4 of the 73rd lap of the 75 lap race, letting Ken Miles’ 550 make off with the $15,000 purse. Krause would ultimately limp home in 4th place—an impressive enough feat on its own. The race also might have been very different if Dan Gurney’s Ferrari 375 that he put on pole and led with for the first third of the race hadn’t had a camshaft failure.
More photos from the collection on The Henry Ford’s Flickr.
Even though the Austin-Healey 100 in the foreground is hardly identifiable to the casual observer, it is a vital part of the image. I know that because this was no casual snapshot by a pedestrian on the curb. This is a Julius Shulman photograph, who knows a thing or two about capturing an image of a piece of architecture. The gloved driver (captured here in her own car) is the wife of one of the Mobil station’s architects Whitney Smith or Wayne Williams.
Why did Schulman compose the image in this way? The Healey does help frame the photograph and give it some context while showing it in use. For me though, I immediately notice the design cues of the Austin-Healey; particularly one of my all-time favorite elements of automotive design—a feature that I’m surprised never became more popular in mid-century sportscar design: the folding windscreen. Something magical happens when you fold the Healey’s windscreen from the more upright touring mode to the raked, nearly flat racing angle. It is a sort of “call to arms” that must have been a thrilling ritual for many a Healey driver.
But perhaps that’s part of what Schulman intended with this photo. Pairing a modern piece of automotive design with an equally modern architectural nod to the automobile’s service. It makes me wonder if part of why recent automotive design has started to falter. Maybe there’s an unconsciously necessary balance of design and as the design of gas stations suffer, everything around it must fall to an equal level. After all, when a gas station can look this beautiful doesn’t your car need to follow suit?
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.
How about if I throw in these images from the same race of Geoffrey Ansell and his ERA B-Type getting way too well acquainted with the hay bales on the 23rd lap?
With all the (deserved) talk of the dangers of early motor racing, it always surprises me to see images like this (and this) where, despite the terrors captured in the photograph, the driver was uninjured. Geoffrey walked away from this one nonetheless, thumbing his nose at the odds.
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.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I love when home movies of races make it out of the attic and onto the web.
Here’s a perfect example: 15 minutes of footage from Willow Springs, Torrey Pines, Santa Barbara, Pebble Beach, Chino, Paramount Ranch, Pomona, and Riverside. Throw in some bonus shots of ’64 Sebring and this is a fantastic taste of 10 of the best years in American sports car racing. Hallelujah!
