Frank Raymond Wilton “Lofty” England was not head and shoulders above many other men just because he was 6 ft...
Vintage and historic racing—at least as we enjoy it today in the United States—has been around since the 1970s. That’s...
Manufacturers are falling over them- selves to put supercars on the market. Not those wimpy things restricted to 155 mph, but full-blooded vehicles which you can only drive hard on some German autobahnen and in downtown Naples. I was once driving a 1954 Swallow Doretti at 60 mph on a...
At the end of May, I was in Italy following the Mille Miglia Retrospective. There was a time when I...
Can you imagine two cars chained together, nose to nose, engines thundering on the infield of the 1930 Indianapolis 500?...
Bruce Bromme Sr. was born in 1917, and shortly thereafter was thrust into the world of racing. His father, Louis Bromme, was a highly skilled mechanic who worked for Fred Duesenberg during the board track era. By age seven Bruce was a regular at Legion Ascot Speedway and the...
Just how far will a fanatical collector go to capture the racecar of his obsessions? Would he carry a satchel...
At last count there are more than 1,200 billionaires walking the Earth. This means that regardless of wealth, there aren’t...
The lunacy of automotive collecting has no bounds. My personal journey has taken me from Italian coach-builts to vintage racecars to French Panhard and Deutsch Bonnet and, most recently, hot rods. And all along the way I’ve been collecting literature in psychopathic quantities; if my house caught fire, you could...
Then Was Juan Manuel Fangio the greatest racecar driver of all time? He was World Champion five times (1951, 1954...
For as long as he can remember, Mel Jacobs of Houston, Texas has been love-struck by the coach-built Deco cars...
Matt Jones is one of the neatest car guys I’ve ever met. His love and enthusiasm for Italian automobiles is palpably contagious, and he’s fluent in the language. So, it was natural that Jones launched Re-Originals in 1991, a company that provides both new-old-stock and remanufactured parts from original suppliers...
Then I have a friend living in the Sunshine State with a spectacular collection of historic racing cars from the...
Imagine buying an exotic 1950s Italian sports car only to learn upon delivery that it isn’t the car you paid...
The world is full of confusing racecar stories. This is one of them. I read with great interest, Jonathan Stein’s recent article in Vintage Roadcar, “Going Supersonic” (December 2017) about the winding history of the 1949 Fageol Supersonic and how shortly following its world debut at the Indy 500 it...
Then. In 1991, Harold Pace stormed out of his home-based shop and proclaimed to his adoring wife, Shelley, at the...
Then. Nardi of Torino, Italy, did not manufacture only steering wheels. They also built wonderful automobiles for use on both...
In almost all parts of the world street racing is illegal. It’s unsanctioned, unregulated, and often extremely dangerous for participants and bystanders. Although street racing in the United States may have been most widespread in the early post-war period, the activity dates back to the dawn of the automobile and...
Italo Piana is a living legend among Italian MotoGP fans. He won the Italian Motorcycle Championship three times, and was...
The early post-war interest in small displacement automobile racing in Europe was fueled by enthusiasm and petrol rationing. Money was...
Two Italian gentlemen wedged into a tiny race car, flying atop open roads across glorious countryside, through blistering sun and pounding rain…crowds lining the course dangerously close. From 1927 to 1957 this was the Mille Miglia. Can you possibly imagine a more enjoyable way to spend 20, or so, hours?...
It takes all kinds of digging to unearth a Hidden Treasure. Sometimes you even have to bring a shovel. Chip...
Then. Southern California is home to a seemingly endless supply of astounding cars hiding in garages, warehouses and barns. For...
Would you consider equipping your sports car with an aftermarket supercharger then drive it across country from New York to race at Sebring? That’s precisely what John Bentley and Paul O’Shea did with Bentley’s 1950 Simca 8 Sport Cabriolet (#888673). The year was 1950 and the first-ever race at Sebring...
The car collector world is full of automotive puzzles and owners and pundits with “theories”. Some theories arise out of...
On July 12, 2009, thousands of onlookers witnessed as a 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster was plucked from Lake...
This month’s Hidden Treasure comes to us courtesy of Gertrude Schmedley of Pascagoula, Mississippi. Schmedley found me via the internet and I quickly surmised from her initial email that she shares nothing in common with the usual Vintage Racecar crowd that I hear from. First, she’s never actually seen a...
This is the story of four Reuters, blood relatives… but not necessarily to each other. It’s also the story of...
The Ferrari 195 Inter was introduced in 1950 as a roadgoing machine to replace the 166. According to Stanley Nowak...
The euphoria associated with the end of WWII greatly contributed to the sudden global popularity of sports car racing. Large and small manufacturers, as well as one-man garages, swung to action creating racing machinery of all types. The most successful and well known were from Italy, Germany, England and the...
