In 1959, Buick introduced the Invicta line of full-size sedans, as an evolution of the Buick Century married to a...
I want to be Rich Plavetich. Is he cool? Check. Does he have a wonderful and beautiful wife who also...
If you don’t know the Furlows of Dallas, Texas, you’ve definitely been hanging with the wrong vintage racing crowd. Father John (age 79) and son John Jr. (age 58) have been racing sports cars since 1959 and 1977, respectively, and although Sr. gave up racing a couple of years back,...
1959 Costin-Lister BHL133 When speaking to Brian Lister, some years ago, I asked him about the secret of his success....
I should have known better. I stood next to the 1959 Kellison J-4R as the owner clambered in through the...
I must have called the guy dozens of times, year after year for more than a decade. It was about a racecar hiding in his garage that few people knew about. It was historic, beautiful, powerful, and definitely worth obsessing over. Trouble was the guy wasn’t a seller. Despite the...
January, 1959. At this time, the German 1½ litre Borgward Isabella Coupé was in growing demand, reaching nearly 100mph with...
Lawrence Bond was a stubborn man who often as not was unwilling to compromise on his ideas. He was an...
Here is Maria Teresa de Filippis at the Gasometer turn, at the end of the main straight along the harbor, during practice for the 1959 Monaco GP. She was trying to qualify the Behra-Porsche, an F2 car built from 550RS components with a chassis constructed in Modena. It was one...
Beginning Friday, Aug. 9, LeMay —America’s Car Museum (ACM) will recount the six-decade evolution of the Chevrolet Corvette, a sports...
After World War II, many of the world’s auto manufacturers returned to car production embracing many of the technologies and...
When the world got back to normal life, after World War II, there was so much pent up demand for fun, that postwar sales of sports cars skyrocketed. And perhaps nowhere was that demand more acutely felt than in the United States where affordable sports cars and convertibles where in...
Austrian born Karl Alberto Abarth did so many things so very well. He was a motorcycle racing champion, multiple land...
I was involved with the E-Type Jaguar right from its inception, initially as an employee under the wing of Lofty...
“My name is Casey; and I’m a recovering Triumph owner.” Or at least that’s how I’ve felt for a number of years. They say you can’t change where you come from, and I suppose that adage is as true in cars as it is in life. My first “collector” car...
April 2011 Out of the Shadows By Roger Lane In the late 1960s, by a chance meeting, Roger Lane was...
Road racing in America started just after World War II and rapidly grew into a phenomenon. While many of the cars competing on American asphalt were expensive jobs built in Europe, a great number of enthusiasts disappeared into the garage to build their own road racing specials. They bent tubes,...
VR contributor Mark Brinker went to Bonneville’s August Speed Week, with his sights on breaking the Grand Touring Sports Car...
There’s always been something magical about the H-Modified cars of the ’50s and early ’60s. These 750-cc (and later 850-cc)...
1959 OSCA | 1960 Lotus 18 | 1963 Brabham BT6 Regular readers of VR will know that we have a fondness for Formula Junior. We have covered some important ground with this significant racing formula, and gotten to grips with Elva, Lotus, Stanguellini, Volpini, Autosud and more. As 2008 marks 50 years...
There are few things that car guys love more than the story of a fabulous automotive find…the wilder, the better....
Chris Wickersham is a Devin expert who has restored nearly ten Devin-bodied cars including seven of the original Devin SS...
Opening in 1921, AVUS (Automobil-Verkehrs-und Übungs-Straße) was devised by the AvD as a motorsport venue and test track for the motor industry. This unusually shaped racetrack had two long straights approximately 6 miles long linked at each end by flat, large, radius curves. In 1926, the track hosted the first...
Bruce Leslie McLaren won the first-ever Grand Prix of the United States in 1959, but really established his life’s legacy...
Talking with famed Indianapolis chassis builder A. J. Watson, the question arises about the front, twin air inlets—the signature of...
Following the steep rise known as the Montee du Beau Rivage, the Virage de Massenet is a relatively quick and tricky left-hander sweeping into Casino Square at Monaco. The scene here depicts Ferrari teammates Tony Brooks and Phil Hill during practice for the 1959 Monaco Grand Prix where they would...
January 2007 Sunshine, Speed and a Surprise: The 1959 Grand Prix of the United States By Joel Finn In “Sunshine,...
1959 Cooper T-51 and 1960 Cooper T-53 The two Formula 1 Coopers you see here represent one of the key...
1959 Old Yeller Mk II As with so many of the great racecars and specials of the ’50s, the success and genesis of the famed Old Yellers rests with a single talented individual, Max Balchowsky—or more properly, Max and his wife Ina. Max Balchowsky was born on January 15, 1924...