Millions of roadside spectators had cheered the 2004 Mille Miglia Storica and its 375 cars and crews from 30 different...
A Bugatti feast is to be savoured on the roads of the Targa Florio, Sicily, where Ettore’s famous cars won...
The legendary Mario Colucci has died at the age of 78. He was the man who converted most of the standard production Fiats and Simcas into Abarths that won over 7,300 races and hillclimbs between 1956 and 1971. Active until the last, Colucci, a self-effacing genius, had recently formed a...
Tears streamed down a thousand faces in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris on September 9, 1945. Tears for the...
They are back, and with a vengeance. Thirty-seven years after Pedro Rodriguez won the 1967 South African Grand Prix in...
No other Grand Prix winner has ever sung Puccini, Verdi and Leoncavallo in public or been able to cook like Chicago’s star chef, Charlie Trotter—no driver except Giuseppe Campari that is. Campari could do all of those things, as well as win classic road races like the Mille Miglia. Talents...
An Argentinean senator slipped into the cockpit of Michael Schumacher’s 2004 Formula One World Championship–winning car at Ferrari’s private Fiorano...
It had to be at least one of the biggest gatherings of Ferraris and Maseratis of all time: 250 racing...
If you want to revel in unadulterated self-indulgence, perhaps you should consider a membership at the Ascari Race Resort. It will cost you a one-off payment of around $195,000 and an annual membership fee of $6,500, but that will open the door to a vintage racecar enthusiast’s paradise on earth....
A shortish, miserable-looking man with a square moustache strutted into the room, his face non-committal, his uniform vaguely operatic. He...
The Mille Miglia Storica becomes more unbelievable as each year passes. To begin with, its patrons now include the President...
You know how it is when a friend dies; you wish you had done more, visited him more, telephoned him more, at least thought of him more? That is how it was with me when Luigi Villoresi, distinguished gentleman and heroic racing driver, died eight years ago. I had known...
One of my favorite motor racing personalities was Piers Courage, a talented young gentleman racer, as well as a member...
Few would argue with the notion that Tazio Nuvolari was one of the five greatest racing drivers of all time;...
He was elusive. Confined to a wheelchair, but more difficult to pin down than most people with the full use of their legs. But I had heard so many good things about this Swiss gentleman that I was determined to find him and invite him to the Monterey vintage car...
The word had gone out, I was told for the thousandth time, but I felt no better. What if the...
Some say Graham Hill was not a natural, but one who had to work hard at his motor racing. I...
Enzo Ferrari doted on Gilles Villeneuve, the only driver the autocratic Italian ever embraced. The diminutive Canadian reminded him of Tazio Nuvolari, another of his favorites, who, like Gilles, would drive his car until it literally fell to bits rather than give up—real racers of tenacious character and a singular...
Carlos Reutemann, 63, winner of 12 Grands Prix—five of them with Ferrari from 1976 to 1978—has been made a Commendatore...
Rallying was a total mystery to me until 1972, when a young man named Sandro Munari achieved the first of...
To mark the change from the V-10 to V-8 engines for 2006 Formula 1 season, an exhibition of famous 8-cylinder cars is to open at Maranello’s Galleria Ferrari just before the start of the F1 championship in March. And they will not all be Ferraris, either. The show will include...
Immediately after the Second World War, Jean-Pierre Wimille, Louis Chiron, Philippe Etancelin, and Raymond Sommer carried France’s colors back into...
In 1905, Europe’s racers must have thought it was going to be a flash in the pan, if that. After...
The amply proportioned Vincenzo Lancia was a double hero, if you will. He was a successful racing driver with over 20 victories to his credit and cars bearing his name won classics like the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, Carrera Panamericana and, as part of the Fiat group, world rally and...
Agility and power. Those were two key demands of the 3,000 and more hairpins, corners and bends that made up...
Juan Manuel Fangio was special. Not only as a racing driver but also as a human being. He was the...
A quiet, mild-mannered man out of the cockpit, Ronnie Peterson was explosive in it. The fastest driver of his generation, he brought his immense instinctive talent to bear on a racecar with spectacular effect. In only his second F1 season, the Swedish baker’s son became runner-up to winner Jackie Stewart...
Shock waves reverberated through the Italian vintage motor racing world at the end of May, after the surprise announcement that...
The vintage motor racing world of northern Italy mobilized itself impressively on June 11 to commemorate Enzo Ferrari’s last victory...
The British are usually all for the underdog and just love a giant killer. Well, they certainly got their money’s worth with the cheeky little Mini Cooper S, 10-ft long, 4-ft 5-ins high and powered by a zesty transverse, 4-cylinder, 1,275-cc engine. This tiny car, which was originally designed to...
