Phil Hill remains America's only native-born Formula One world champion. He was also a trained mechanic with a lifelong fondness for the design and function of fine machinery, from racing engines to toy music boxes to the cameras he used to capture the great photos.
Get past the slightly stuffy promo qualities of the clip and Hill's preference for an elegant and sophisticated Leica rangefinder camera makes perfect sense, especially given the more awkward options available at the time. More importantly to us, Hill used that camera and untold quantities of Kodachrome while existing literally at the center of a fabled age of auto racing, from the mid-Fifties to the mid-Sixties, documenting people and places and cars now revered by the faithful.
The book Hill's son Derek mentions towards the end of the clip, done with Steve Dawson and Doug Nye, is due next year. Combine its likely contents with the sensory stimulation of a good vintage race weekend like the one at Monza shown, and it will probably be as close as we ever get to a time machine.