Friday, October 26, 2012

Drivin' Swift as the Wind...

It was a Saturday, late October evening. "Date Night" with a trip to Fosters Freeze, all that was needed was to pick her up in my new ride. She'll be impressed, I thought. A three window with a Merc flathead, a healthy cam, three Strombergs, chrome nutted and shaved Navarro heads, just the right stance with big and littles connected to a dropped front axle and a quick change rear.


I was running a little late down the long stretch of cracked asphalt in the tule's. "Not much out here except a few black and whites grazing next to the barbed wire fence," I thought. "There's a shortcut coming up on the right...I never took it, but I think I know where it will dump me out - only a few short of my dates house." Streaking along towards the turn in my primered 33', I noticed a buzzard perched on one of the old gray, splintered fence posts. His glare somewhat unnerving as I flashed by. Feathers ruffled to life in the jitter of my rear view mirror, as the wind from my ride hit him. I chuckled to myself, "I don't like those nasty birds anyway." I tapped the brake pedal to wink my teardrop blue dots at him, and smiled once more. Yeah...I was feeling pretty cool!



Sunday, October 21, 2012

Petit Le Mans 2012 / Through Jackie's Lens...

The Petit is an endurance sports car race held at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia. The same track that the SCCA Runoffs were held for years. It's called "Petit" which is french for little and covers a maximum of 1,000 miles or a maximum of 10 hours versus 24 hours in the French Classic.
 
The race was founded by Don Panoz back in 1998 as part of the IMSA season and run in October just like now. This weekend besides the overall race, teams of two or three drivers per car compete for class victories in four different classes of cars, two for Le Mans prototypes and two for grand touring cars. One big plus for the Class winning teams...they receive an automatic invitation to the following years 24 Hours of Le Mans, not bad.
 
All this jabbering brings me to the point of this post. Jackie Buys, a fellow photographer is a pro with the camera, and has taken some badass awesome photos. Check the first shot out and then I'll tell you more about Jackie.

The #67 911GT3 RSR of Anthony Pons, Raymond Nerac, and Nicolas Armindo.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

L.A. Auto Show 2012 / Not Your Ol' Mans Auto Show...

Sometimes something gets under your skin, and you just need to put down that "monkey-wrench," clean up a little, and head to an auto show. As the first major North American auto show of the season, the 2012 LA Auto Show will host some of the industry's most important new vehicle debuts; Porsche, Corvette, BMW, plus others and set the tone for the rest of the year. The dates are November 30, 2012 to December 9, 2012 for the public. But, what makes it different?

Back in the day, what about flipping over a phonograph record while taking a corner in your 1956 Dodge Custom Royal? Chrysler offered retracting in-dash record players advertised as "Highway Hi-Fi!" as an option available in 1955 to 1960 sedans (including Chrysler, Dodge, Imperial and Plymouth brands). But there was a catch—several, actually. The player had to be small, so a 45-rpm record would seem apt, but 45s played through a song in just a few minutes. So Chrysler worked with Columbia to create slow-playing 16-2/3-rpm records. Then there were the little problems of flipping a record while driving, the fact that the player's needle jumped unless the road was baby-butt smooth, and that ugly issue of what would happen to your date's face in the event of a crash on the way to Bob's Big Boy.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

The Urban Outlaw Film Release / Magnus Walker's Dream.....

It was gonna' happen, The Urban Outlaw hits the street after numerous film festivals...It's Magnus Walker's documentary film, and it takes us along riding shotgun in a first class seat.

My buddy Magnus set out on this adventure to do a film about Porsche through his eyes.  That he did in a creative, introspective, and arty kinda way. It could be one of the best commercials for Porsche, ever done, but done in a non-corporate world. Magnus along with his wife live in a renovated old warehouse in downtown LA before it became fashionable, and is not more than arms length away from the cars in his Porsche collection, most '64 to '72 long hood 911s. In a word, a hotrodder is the best way to describe his passion towards his cars.

He's been busy since the release of the trailer with interviews with TopGear, Autoweek, and others with about 50,000 views in the first 24 hours. And he's started a blog to document his cars with creative photos. The short film was submitted and shown at numerous film festivals, such as Sundance, Austin, London, Montreal and more. It was produced and directed by, Tamir Moscovici.

The Urban Outlaw hits the road. Image © Urban Outlaw and Tamir Moscovici.
Click here to see the film, then click on it to start, check it out, it's badass!

To share a comment, click here. And don't forget to pass the post on to a friend.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Not a London Taxi in Sight... / San Diego British Car Day

Chrome plated rally-style wire headlight stone-guards, blankets and picnic baskets, tasteful leather interiors meant to indulge and captivate, all in a day at the show called "San Diego British Car Day."

The beauty of a British ride...is a sense of adventure, antics and romance that comes into play messing about in these cars. Sure, not all have knock offs and shiny walnut veneered dashes, most are clad in vinyl holding the Smiths, buy still rather handsome. And the naysayers may point to the four or six bangers sucking though SU's as not lighting the beltways on fire, but one can only imagine a little heel-and-toe on the pedals as you peer through the windscreen over the front wings rounding a corner.

The '53 Sunbean Alpine MK1 of Dannie and Craig McLaughlin was stunning.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Porsche to Support Vintage Racers...

The other day, fellow blog follower, David Loynd emailed, "Have you seen this?" Well, as a sometimes vintage racer, I have often thought, "When is Porsche gonna' get involved with vintage racing?" The motorsport is getting larger by the hour, and it now seems to be on their radar, as much of their target market and sports car enthusiasts want to return to the days of viewing the cars they grew up watching.

Thanks, David for emailing. Read on, it's interesting to see where Porsche is heading.

Coronado Speed Festival with a Porsche 910 driven by Reg Howell.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Maker of Tires... Robert Newton

Robert Newton along with his wife, Joyce started their racing tire company called Hoosier Tires in an old horse barn in South Bend in 1957. Bob had started racing stock cars on weekends at tracks in the Midwest. Back then they were running on regular street tires and Bob had lost some races because the tires were coming apart. Bob and his wife got the idea to start recapping street tires with softer rubber, which gave them more grip which meant more speed and lasted longer. The company grew from that small beginning to the largest race tire company in America.

Just a night at the track with Bob and Joyce Newton. Image via Hoosier Tires.