This particular shot was taken at the 1970 race, where local boy Nino Vaccarella is on his way to third place in the big Ferrari 512 prototype.

And who beat him? Two of John Wyer’s nimble Porsche 908’s:

Vaccarella would be back the next year in the much more suitable 3-liter Alfa Romeo T33 and take the title. This was the car with the center-mounted rearview mirror sticking out like the love child of a periscope and a Martian fighting machine from The War of the Worlds:

Not only do you get Porsche 908s, Ford GT40s, and the like wailing through the turns; you also get the race-fevered crowds in their wine-soaked campgrounds, including women in those crazy proto-disco late-60s shades. Thanks, Scroggs!

Part I:

Part II:


Part III:

Once again, the amazing Scroggs has come through with some excellent vintage racing footage, and he's also found this highly interesting article about AMG's early racing efforts for us. That's good news, because I'm off judging the Lamest Day 24 Hours Of LeMons in Ohio at the moment and may not have internet access to provide live coverage; this way you still get to see an improbable race car going for the win in a punishing endurance race:

When you're done reading the descriptions attached to the images below, you can check out many, many more photos of the Conrad Stevenson Restorations shop by clicking this link (provided the Server Hamsters are in a good mood, of course).

One word: Whoa!

If you're a vintage Alfa Romeo racer, you probably know all about Conrad Stevenson Restorations. Conrad is the guy who built this 1939 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 racer, which will be returning to Laguna Seca for the Historics next month. Image source: Concept Carz

Starting with a correct 6C chassis and engine, Conrad handcrafted the body from scratch on an English wheel. All the documentation on the 6C 2500 SS was destroyed during World War 2, so his main reference for the project was the tattered magazine page you see in this photo.

Naturally, the shop- which is a comfortably funky warren of buildings and shacks in a typical Bay Area industrial neighborhood- is packed to the rafters with all manner of Alfa components. Alfa Twin Cams are everywhere!

Most of the shop space was being taken up by customers' race cars (including a pair of mid-50s 1900s), since the clock is ticking for Monterey, but some of Conrad's personal rides were hanging around. How about a lightweight 280-horsepower turbocharged '65 Giulia wagon- which even hardened racers describe as "terrifyingly fast"- as your daily driver?

What self-respecting Alfa guy would use a primered-out Dodge Tradesman as his parts hauler? Not Conrad! Check out the huge cargo area of this mid-50s Romeo 2, a two-stroke front-wheel-drive diesel machine that was used as a San Francisco piano moving truck for most of its life. Conrad also has a '64 Ford Ranchero for those occasions that require a truck that can muster up more than 19 horsepower, yet still require an Italian-grade sense of style.

Here's a future parts hauler: a 1963 Fiat 600 Multipla, a lifelong California car still sporting its original black plates. Conrad mentioned that he's tempted to drop a large motorcycle engine in this little van, but he's already got the "big-block" 800cc Fiat Engine in mid-rebuild now.

Here's the car that gets Conrad instant entry into the not-so-exclusive Project Car Hell Poster Child club: a scratchbuilt, tube-frame, mid-engined, street-legal (in theory) supercar powered by the 2.6 liter DOHC V8 out of an Alfa Romeo Montreal. The transaxle comes from an Audi 5000. Conrad, for all his artistic metalworking genius, is a mechanical engineer by training, so most of his super-technical explanations of roll centers and suspension design went right over my head. The body will be made of hand-formed aluminum, of course, and the concept behind the styling will be, in Conrad's words, "What Italian designers of the 1930s would have built, had they had access to 21st-century materials and knowledge." I'm definitely going to keep a close watch on this project as it progresses (in fact, I've volunteered my not-so-skilled labor for it, in case Conrad needs some duct tape work, Pep Boys hood scoop application, etc.), so stay tuned for updates!
If you need to see photos of the CSR shop, just head over to the big ol' gallery page.

Aston Martin put together a documentary about the race entitled "Final Victory" (learn more at their site, and Scroggzilla has done some more digging to find that driver Carroll Shelby suffered from horrible dysentery the entire time, which (in the words of Scroggz) "must have made him REAL popular with his co-driver, Roy Salvadori. YIKES!" Enjoy.

SCROGGS!! (who, just like Yahoo!, uses exclamation points as part of his name) has found us a treasure trove of vintage European Rally videos on YouTube:

1963 Alpine Rally, Part 1

1963 Alpine Rally, Part 2

1965 Monte Carlo Rally

1968 Rally Of Sweden, Part 1

1968 Rally Of Sweden, Part 2

1971 RAC Rally Of Great Britain, Part 1

1971 RAC Rally Of Great Britain, Part 2

1971 RAC Rally Of Great Britain, Part 3

Sure, you could do both, but after risking a case of Jake Leg from the moonshine selection at the racetrack, even the smoooooth Pine-Sol taste of retsina didn't seem so appealing. We steered our rented Impala straight to the nondescript business park in which the legendary race car builder does its thing.


Thanks to Southern hospitality, the LeMons crew didn't get booted right out of the shop based on our scurvy-looking appearance. Instead, we were invited to poke around and gaze in awe at the machinery, and even the extremely cynical and jaded ex-automotive journalist Jay Lamm was heard to utter "Dang!" How about a replica of the Holman Moody '64 Fairlane Sports Car?


And when it's time to haul some large parts, they've got this '66 Ford flatbed parked out back. They've got a pretty cool mini-museum as well, and now I'm seriously wishing I still had my '68 Cyclone fastback.


You like the Ford GT40? Holman Moody will build you a brand-new one!

This makes a nice follow-up to the documentary of the 1965 Targa Florio race. Totally different type of racing, of course, but the same sense of golden-age racing action. Thanks to Hellhammer for the tip!

First up is yet another batch of great car photos from Vintage Racer. It's a super-clean 2002tii Touring he shot at one of the many racing events he attends.



Next, we have a much quicker Bavarian. This is a 2002ti Alpina owned by Texas Enzo repairman Matt Groner. Here's what he has to say about his car:

I enjoyed the vintage racing article. Attached are pictures of my 2002ti Alpina that I bought from Germany in 2002. One of the pictures in your article shows one like mine behind the Escort. It's a small world. I bought my son a 95 M3 from the original owner in Arlington, Texas last year. I had vintage raced with him in 2004 and he was in the process of building an Escort to vintage race. Thus, he needed the room and sold me his M3 with original paint. It doesn't have original paint anymore thanks to my some taking it off track a couple times. Live and learn... At least he's doing it on the track and not on the street.

The BARC folks have been going to Sebring since the 1950s, and their site features galleries of photographs from 1955 through 1965. If you like MGs, Porsches, Ferraris, Maseratis, Cobras, the works, be sure to check it out. Thanks to Scroggzilla for the tip!
[BARC]

As we know, you must listen to the Red Army Choir performing the Soviet National Anthem while reading about Racing Heroes Of The Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics. That's the law.


If only the Reds had been allowed to enter a few Pobedas and Volgas in early NASCAR events. Imagine the Cold War drama! Thanks to the many of you who sent in this tip!



[English Russia]

And that Escort is just one of many great British race cars that VR photographed at last summer's B.C. Historics. Lotus, Sunbeam, Austin-Healey, and MG are all represented, and we get a couple of race Volvos as an added bonus! I've been falling behind on my duty to share VR's great racing photographs, so expect more of this sort of thing in the near future.

The folks at Pep's Garage have gathered a great collection of old-time drag racing photographs, including quite a few from Mickey Thompson's legendary Lions Drag Strip. Wheelstanding bathtubs, puking engines, and some head-clutchingly scary setups are here for your viewing enjoyment.
[Pep's Garage, thanks to McLarenF1LM for the tip]

As VR says:

We race a Datsun 510, and the 510 has a great race heritage, but I do like the 356. The only problem is that there's just so many of the damn things!

While we're in a Porsche frame of mind, how about a couple of 935s? Here's VR:

Both of these cars will be at the Historics - the featured marque is Porsche). The white one is owned by Woody Perkins, the yellow by Tom Hedges (who also owns Hedges Winery up here in Washington). If I remember correctly, they both bought them around the same time - roughly 3 years ago. They run them up and down the West Coast.

First, we should all thank Scroggzilla for unearthing these videos of a vintage Castrol documentary for us (and Targa-Florio.net for providing the photograph above). The Targa Florio was an endurance race held in the mountains of Sicily; starting in 1906, it was finally discontinued in 1977 for safety reasons. Yes, even by the insanely loose (and relatively lawsuit-free) standards of European road racing, the Targa Florio was considered too dangerous to continue. We've got the whole lineup of worship-deserving machinery here, including MGs, Austin-Healeys, Alfas, Porsches, and- of course- Ferraris.

The image quality isn't so good; in fact, identifying the cars is much like trying to extract useful information from the Zapruder Film (which was shot using similar hardware). The ASA 24 film means there are some dark parts, and my film-to-video conversion technique (camcorder + projector) doesn't help matters. There's definitely a Corvair, a 356, and a Beetle, and what appears to be a Renault Caravelle. Maybe a Sprite as well? Mostly you just get atmosphere from this; the sense that it's really freakin' cold, with maybe a mournful whistling of grim Scandinavian-style wind through the skeletal trees, punctuated by the roar of engines at rod-throwing revs and the occasional crunch of sheetmetal on snowbanks. You might check out this Land-O-Lakes SCCA history of racing in Minnesota when you're done here.

Yes, you're looking at a total of 34 minutes of vintage rally action below, in a vintage Shell documentary put up on YouTube courtesy of this kind soul. We don't want to spoil things for anyone, but you'll be awed by the parade of race cars that go past the starting line (about 2:20 into the Part 1), and it just gets better from there. The usual Alfa Romeo and Porsche suspects are there, of course, but fans of British and French machinery won't be disappointed. Thanks to Scroggzilla for hipping us to this super-addictive find!

This car belongs to 24 Hours Of LeMons Assistant Perpetrator and Ecurie Ecrappe member Nick Pon, better known around these parts as TheEastBayKid. He's an Oakland guy, but he had some business to attend to in nearby Alameda and I took advantage of the opportunity to shoot his daily-driver/vintage-rallyer 2002 while it was parked here.


It's a good solid car, but BMW restoration fanatics would likely find much to frown about here. The engine is dead stock, except for the air cleaner (1976 model year cars are subject to California's super-strict emissions-equipment laws), but the suspension has some upgrades that wouldn't please the numbers-matching crowd. This is our sixth Alameda DOTS 2002 (after this pretty nice '72, this total beater '72, this '73 2002tii, this automatic-equipped '75, and this work-in-progress '75), and I've got a few more photographed and ready to go. The 2002 is actually one of the most commonplace old cars on Alameda's streets, though not as easy to find as Beetles, Mustangs, or Darts/Valiants.