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,...
Just how far will a fanatical collector go to capture the racecar of his obsessions? Would he carry a satchel stuffed with large sums of cash to meet a stranger in a dubious location? Or would he crawl across a filthy garage floor bare-chested over broken glass to get to...
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...
Then Was Juan Manuel Fangio the greatest racecar driver of all time? He was World Champion five times (1951, 1954 to 1957) and his career winning percentage of 46.2-percent in Formula One is better than anyone else by a sizeable margin (Alberto Ascari, 39.4; Jim Clark, 34.3; Michael Schumacher, 29.6;...
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...
Then I have a friend living in the Sunshine State with a spectacular collection of historic racing cars from the 1950s. For years I’ve been needling him about letting me write an article about one of his wonderful machines, but he has been steadfast in his resistance. Last week he...
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...
Then. In 1991, Harold Pace stormed out of his home-based shop and proclaimed to his adoring wife, Shelley, at the top of his lungs, that he would never ever restore another car. On that day he had just completed a seven-year restoration stint on a 1960 Bocar XP-5 and he...
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...
Italo Piana is a living legend among Italian MotoGP fans. He won the Italian Motorcycle Championship three times, and was part of a team that set 46 world speed records at the Monza oval with a Ducati 100-cc Gran Sport in 1956. Born in Torino, Italy in 1930, Piana raced...
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...
It takes all kinds of digging to unearth a Hidden Treasure. Sometimes you even have to bring a shovel. Chip Starr is no stranger to automotive archeology. He grew up in St. Helens, a quaint little suburb of Portland, Oregon, surrounded by astonishing car-finds. His parents owned an auto parts...
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...
The car collector world is full of automotive puzzles and owners and pundits with “theories”. Some theories arise out of ignorance. Others are motivated by potential financial gain. And some are simply the result of unadulterated hubris. This month’s Hidden Treasure is a mystery car whose identity remains uncertain at...
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...
This is the story of four Reuters, blood relatives… but not necessarily to each other. It’s also the story of a father with a mother’s name, a guy with nothing to drive, and a short man who did big things with little cars. Confused? Cliff Reuter is a forty-something-year-old tennis...
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...
David Duthu’s appetite for interesting and eclectic cars seems to be boundless. He vintage races a Bugatti Type 35A and a Talbot Lago T-26C. He also owns Chet Herbert’s 1953 Beast IV Bonneville Streamliner, a Porsche 356 Art Car, a series III Lotus Super 7, a 1958 300SL Roadster and...
The story of Chet Herbert is pure inspiration. Afflicted with polio at age 20, Herbert spent his life building a...
There I was, on Los Angeles’ Imperial Highway, helplessly hanging on in the passenger seat. No grab bar, no seatbelt,...
Then Adults dream of regaining their youth. Children yearn to do grown-up things. This is the nature of our existence. As the location of the fountain of youth remains enigmatic, we are all on an inescapable collision course with wrinkly, stiff and forgetful. On the other hand, children have always...
