Race

If you want to have the meanest, baddest, highest-horsepower stallion allowed in the Ferrari Historic paddock, here it is The F40 was a simple machine that, like the greatest Ferraris of the past, relied upon its engine for its performance. Suspension and layout were conventional, and there were no serious attempts to employ cutting-edge technology.…

The buzz at the auction was that this car was unusual and desirable in being completely ready to run with the F1 Clienti. The buyer bought it for that purpose Ferrari entered 1990 with a dream driver lineup. Nigel Mansell was in his second season with the Scuderia and Alain Prost was making his debut…

Even if another road racer comes along claiming to be the Flower Power car, this one wears the right chassis and registration numbers {vsig}2009-7_2346{/vsig} Formula Ford was introduced in Great Britain in 1967 as a new form of poor man’s motor racing. Written into its regulations was the requirement for commercially built FFs to be…

If you’re racing a 911 and it’s feeling twitchy in a high-speed turn, just hang in there, it will be okay. Above all, do NOT lift {vsig}2009-6_2335{/vsig} While the Porsche 911 has amassed an unmatched record of racing successes, its entry into road racing was not initially championed by Zuffenhausen. With the exception of the…

It was a glorious combination of beauty, speed, sound, and comfort, a proper object of Gallic pride, and almost (but not quite) the equal of Porsche’s 908 {vsig}2009-5_2325{/vsig} Only three Matra 650s were built. After a successful racing career, one is kept in the Matra museum at Romorantin, while the second belongs to a racing…

It’s shiny and extreme, weird, overdone, and in-your-face in a manner that puts a grin on you just walking around it {vsig}2009-4_2315{/vsig} Sydney Allard’s famous one-off hillclimb car, the 1947 Steyr-Allard, is the best known of all his vehicles. Allard competed in the British Hillclimb Championship with this car for five years, finishing 3rd in…

Though beautiful, the 6-cylinder, 121 LMs were overpowered, under-braked, evil-handling, notoriously unreliable, and historically unsuccessful {vsig}2009-3_2302{/vsig} This magnificent sports prototype Ferrari was the fifth and last of the select batch of 6-cylinder big-engined projectiles that provided the absolute spearhead of the factory Ferrari’s endurance racing campaign for 1955. These gorgeously aggressive and exquisitely proportioned cars…

Cars that were once wild girlfriends have become trophy wives, with all the cattiness that accompanies competitive collecting {vsig}2009-2_2283{/vsig} By 1962, it was becoming clear that the 250 GTO was no longer competitive, and something completely new was required. So starting in 1961, Ferrari began experimenting with a rear-engine design. A series of V6 and…

Going, turning, sticking, and stopping were evident and well in hand, but keeping the Jaguar in one piece proved to be more difficult than anticipated   R alph Broad’s racing team had excelled in touring car competition since the early 1960s, running Ford Anglias, Mini Coopers, and Triumph Dolomites. Leyland subsequently contracted his Broadspeed team…

If you want to do any serious competition, you’ll need a 2-liter, 4-cam four, and that’s a $100,000 project {vsig}2008-12_2265{/vsig} Having axed its expensive Formula One program at the end of 1962, Porsche turned once more to sports car racing as a means of improving and marketing its road cars. The Type 356-based Abarth-Carreras had…