Monterey Car Week "Nine over Nine..."

One of the projects over the last few months I've been involved with is a new coffee table book coming out, called "Nine over Nine." If you have ever been to Monterey Car Week during August, this will hit home. The background on the book, "Nine over Nine" was nine photographers shooting over nine days last August. I was contacted along with 8 other extraordinarily skilled professional photographers to cover as many of car week events and document them with photos capturing as many classic shots as we could. To be part of this is truly exciting, and to see it come to print is one of the highlights of this past year. It's now in the "kickstarter" mode and I've included a link for that, as well as some images of pages from the book. Be sure to click the link for more info on the book and watch the accompanying video.

Here's the link for the project, "Nine over Nine."

Coronado Speed Festival...A Chamber Day in Coronado

As the cars roared by during the Coronado Speed Fest, there was a click of my camera...caught it! A Chamber of Commerce shot with San Diego's skyline as the backdrop for a race image.

This is a commission shot of the ex-Jerry Kuhn Camaro, now owned by Mike Gagen. The back story of this image, goes like this. It needed to be an afternoon shot to have the sun radiating off the car, as well as the city skyline. The race group would only run once in that time slot, so I needed to find the location on the track to capture both at the perfect time. The camera speed and aperture was set so it would show a clear background, but blurred wheels and blurred foreground to relay a sense of speed.

Mike had the 24" x 36" image professionally framed, and here it is finished.

Peking to Paris 2013 Update #3

Heading into the Gobi Desert things have gotten tough. The sand, very deep in places and there are really are no roads to speak of.  They have been able to manage that, along with the sleeping conditions. However they've had a left front suspension failure. I'll let Stanley tell it in his own words. Read on...



Time for a tow out of the sand.

Getting Nostalgic...

With the first of the year rolling up on us, you know, "Auld Lang Syne,"...I started getting a little nostalgic and wondering what an ol' friend is up to. Do you do that too? For me, I'm speaking about Dick Barbour, one of the blog followers. Dick and I crossed paths back in 1966, just as he was starting his racing career. He went on to have quite some time at road racing, with some very badass guys! Guys such as Brian Redman, Rolf Stommelen, John Fitzpatrick, Paul Newman and more. Not bad! But foremost, on the long list of accomplishments are his team's 3 consecutive overall or class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 12 Hours of Sebring.

Anyway, getting a little nostalgic, here's a shot of him competing in one of his first races in his first race car, a Porsche Roadster, a photo that I don't think he's ever seen. It was taken at San Diego Stadium during an SCCA National race in 1967 running in EP.



Image via blog follower, Steve Grosekemper. Sadly, photographer unknown.

Porsche 944 GTR 003 / Time with...Vic Ofner

With a previous post on the Porsche 944 GTR 003 generating so much interest, here is an interview with the Alan Johnson Motorsports team crew chief, Vic Ofner.

Looking back to 1986-1987, a little background. The Porsche 944 GTR was a made in the USA race car designed to do battle in SCCA club events, IMSA, and Trans-Am. It's probably one of the rarest of Porsche race cars made. Al Holbert, Porsches racing boss in the U.S. at the time, came up with the idea, and Dave Klym of FABCAR designed and built seven cars to represent Porsche's newest model, the 944 Turbo.

Read on to hear what Vic Ofner had this to say...

Vic Ofner with the Alan Johnson Motorsport 944 GTR 003 at a SCCA race held at Carlsbad Raceway, 1987.
 Image © Vic Ofner

Porsche 944 GTR 003 / It's two year racing history...

It was 1985 and the Porsche 962's were battling it out on the IMSA circuit in America. However in SCCA, Porsche only had the aging Speedsters, Roadsters and 914's to hold up it's banner. Enter Al Holbert, the American Porsche racing boss with the idea to run a new car to represent the marque. How about a Porsche 944 GTR Turbo? The factory had no interest, so what to do? Build the new car in the U.S. out of bits and pieces from the Porsche racing parts bin. Fabricator, Dave Klym in Tucker, Georgia was contracted to design and build the project.

The car took shape at first as a wide body fiberglass silhouette 944, the later look was a 944 turbo, all of this built on a square tube frame with coil over suspension. It used 962 bits, a 928 torque tube, a Hewland transaxle and a specially built 944 Turbo engine. McLaren Engines in Michigan did the development work on the engines but Andial in So-Cal took over and bettered them. The independent teams to run the cars were to do the R & D to make them competitive.

Next enter, ex-racer and Porsche Dealer, Alan Johnson in San Diego who stepped to the plate to take on SCCA. A team was put together including, Don Jones, Vic Ofner, Pat Scanlan, myself, and Robbin Herring handling the teams PR. The driver was, three time SCCA National Champion, Tom Brennan from Danville, IL. We were now off to the races.

1986, our original team with the Porsche 944 GTR at Carlsbad Raceway.
L.to R. Vic Ofner, myself, Pat Scanlan and Don Jones.
Image © "Along For The Ride"

Shelby Cobra / Carroll Shelby Right Place...Right Time

A full moon was lookin' at me through the window last night while hanging out in the garage sipping a cool one. I took note of one of my favorite posters pinned to the wall. If there was a Genie in a bottle, I would be cruising in one of these.

The story of Texan Carroll Shelby is not new, he was at the right time...right place. He entered the world of manufacturing and selling after his doctor told him he only had a month to live. This happened after he had climbed to the top of Sports Car racing from the days of a chicken rancher after a stint behind the wheel of a MG TC, winning his first two races in 1952 and moving on to other cars. This all stopped in 1960 when his doctors told him his competitive driving days were over.

About the same time, Lee Iacocca became V. P. at Ford and wanted to have an impact on the juvenile performance market. He put in motion the development of a small V-8 for those performance oriented consumers, and in 1962 Ford was finishing that lightweight 221 cubic inch engine. Shelby, who knew some people at Ford, got his hands on an engine and stuffed it into a small British car called an AC ACE. The engine grew from 221 to 260, then a 289, and finally a fire breathing 427 with a different block. The resulting car was named Cobra, and first introduced in 1962 at the New York Auto Show. It was to be sold to the public in limited numbers and raced by privateers and a Shelby Team.

However, it was not a cake walk. The first car was built by a bunch of  'Hot Rodders' at Dean Moon's shop in Santa Fe Springs to attract financing, and painted a different color each time it was shown to the public to make it look as though there were several cars. Orders started coming in and then manufacturing moved to a shop in Venice, California. They quickly out grew that shop by 1965 when they started to add the Ford Mustang into the mix calling it a GT 350. The next move was to two hangers on Imperial Highway next to L.A.X.

With Shelby still smiling on what he envisioned, the Cobra was the right car at the right time and the rest is history.

Carroll Shelby with his new 289 cars, one for the road other for the track.

Type: 944 GTR Turbo

David and his GTR at the Museum

This could be one of the rarest of the rare, a 944 GTR.

The 944 GTR is the only Porsche race car with it's roots in the US. Al Holbert contracted with Dave Klym of Fabcar to build seven tube frame chassis based on the 944 ...featuring the 2.5L turbo engine. Al Hobert wanted to race the 944 in the US to boost the 944 performance image. Hence, the 944 GTR was born. The GTRs drew parts from Porsche's extensive racing parts bin incorporating parts from the 928, 935, and 956 models. They also included a Hewland racing gearbox.

In 1986 there were two prominent professional sports car road racing series, IMSA and SCCA Trans -Am, and the SCCA Club racing series(the San Diego based Alan Johnson team ran one of the GTRs in the SCCA Club series competing in GT1 and making it to the National Runoffs at Road Atlanta two years in a row). The Tran-Am series was wildly popular in the mid to late 60's and early 70's when the American manufacturers went head to head with Mustangs, Camaros, AMXs, etc. By the latter part of the 80's the Trans-Am series featured turbo silhouette(looked like street cars when viewed from the side, but pure race car under the skin) racers.

This GTR was owned by Bruce Jenner, not of the Olympics fame and it's crew chief was Max Crawford. Elliot Forbes-Robinson was the driver competing in the Trans-Am Series. The 944 GTR(according to Elliot) was faster then the 935s but was underfunded and under developed, and never reached it's full potential. Al Holbert got pulled off to the Porsche Indy car effort and died in a tragic private plane crash shortly thereafter. However this car did go on to have quite a successful history.

Recently the San Diego Automotive Museum featured a Porsche Race Car Display, this was one of the historic cars invited to participate. It is now owned by David Loynd. He bought the GTR in November of '99 from Jacques Rivard. Rivard has restored quite a few race cars, including the Bob Akin Coca Cola 935. David originally joined PCA in 1990 and started racing a 944 turbo in PCA, POC as well as HSR West. David also ran "Tribute to LeMans" several times winning his class twice and enlisted Steve Livelsberger as a co-driver in several enduros. With the GTR he has raced at Portland and several times with HSR. He says, "To be honest, I never really drove the car very hard, despite two second place finishes. And, I never turned the boost over 1.5 bar, but clearly the engine will take a lot more. I was clocked at 162 at WSIR, the GTR is faster than I am."

He now has the car for sale and is looking for a good home for it. He keeps trying to twist my arm because I know how cool these cars are and boy is it temping.