Last month I wrote about the road race that took place in Palm Springs in 1950. It was the first...
Sports car road racing started after WWII on the East Coast during the late forties. The first wheel-to-wheel event was...
Parnelli is not his real name. Rufus Jones’ middle name is Parnell. His mother named him after a Judge Parnell whom she admired. Jones’ friend, Billy Calder, added the “i” to his middle name to make a name change when Parnelli wanted to race while underage. I remember drivers in...
The original Trans-Am was part and parcel of one of the things that made the Golden Age golden. Many of...
“Revisited” because this is my second column about Ken. My March 2006 column was the first, but in rereading it...
Learning to race on a road course can be daunting. Even though it was almost 50 years ago, I remember it well. I had entered a friend’s MGTD at Palm Springs. Those of us who were novices were lined up on the grid. We were told to follow the course...
In 1953, the very first Corvettes hit Chevrolet Dealers’ show rooms. Hailed by some as the long-awaited American sports car,...
By almost anyone’s measure, one of the things that made the Golden Era golden was the Canadian-American Challenge Cup or...
After WWII, sports cars became more and more popular. As a consequence, road racing took hold in the U.S. For the most part, it was an amateur sport governed by the Sports Car Club of America, but after noticing the large crowds at some SCCA events, the United States Auto...
During the years following WWII, road racing in the U.S. initially developed as an amateur sport, mostly run by the...
Jaguar’s XK120 Roadster was introduced at the London Motor Show in the fall of 1948. A year later, cars began...
A number of those among us stood head and shoulder above all others during the Golden Age of Motorsports. Juan Fangio, Stirling Moss, Carroll Shelby, John Fitch, Dan Gurney and Phil Hill immediately come to mind. Only one from that exhalted group, however, was proposed for President of the United...
During the sixties, Carroll Shelby tried almost anything having to do with cars and racing. A little-known episode was his...
When Japanese cars first came on the scene, although practical, most were somewhat stodgy. In the mid-’60s, however, Toyota decided...
Soon after motor vehicles were invented they were raced. Initially the contests were held on open roads, often from city to city. The very first I have been able to find documented involved two steam-driven tractors chugging between Madison and Green Bay, Wisconsin, on July 16, 1878. The problems of...
The title of my column reads: “The Fabulous Fifties.” The era is one I know something about. During that time,...
