Where They Raced by Harry Pallenberg

Met some friends the other day on the edge of night and over a few three fingers of Jack, the subject of ol' racing in Los Angeles became the topic, then one thing lead to the other and I told them about how I had been contacted about a film on just that subject. Here's the plot...back in the day they raced everywhere they could, before population and congestion buried it all.

Eddie Pullen at the wheel.

Talking About Stirling / 1959 U.S. Grand Prix at Riverside

Well, well, whaddaya' know! With a past post on Stirling Moss, fellow blog follower, Marty Goldsmith sent this photo he captured of Sir Stirling back in the day. If you let your mind run, you can hear the rhythmic growl of the engine, the three air sucking Webers, and sense the smell of Castrol taking you to the time and place...

It was the United States Grand Prix for Sports Cars held at Riverside Raceway in 1959, with drivers such as; Phil Hill, Ken Miles, Bob Bondurant, Dan Gurney, Richie Ginther, Scooter Patrick and one lone woman driver, Josie von Neuman wheeling a Ferrari Testa Rosa. The affair was a 200 mile race,  sadly Stirling when out with an engine issue after qualifying 6th on the grid.

Sir Stirling Moss at the wheel of his Aston Martin DBR2 entered by David Brown in the U.S. Grand Prix for Sports Cars at Riverside. Image © Marty Goldsmith.

The U.S. Grand Prix of Sports Cars 1959, Phil Hill won the race driving a Ferrari 250 TR.

Related post: Stirling, Say It's Not True.

To share a comment, click here.

Torrey Pines Road Races / More Lost Car RacingTracks

During the early 50's European car road racing took off here in the states with returning service men wanting to try their hand at the wheel. Also, about this time Army and Navy bases were not needed and became the prefect place to let these cars stretch.

"Camp Callan" was located at the south end of Torrey Pines and accidentally became a hot-bed of racing from 1951 to 1956. The '51 race was scheduled for the fairgrounds at Del Mar when the negotiations broke down and the suggestion was made to use the asphalt streets of the old Army base at Torrey. Torrey Pines road racing was born.

The races were first organized by the San Diego Junior Chamber of Commerce and the California Sports Car Club. In the early years the races were sprint contest consisting of 6 lap events around a 2.7 mile course with names such as; the Del Mar Trophy Race, the La Jolla Trophy Race, the Balboa Trophy Race, the Cabrillo Trophy Race and the Torrey Pines Trophy Race. A little known fact about those early years, 3 lap motorcycle races were also held during the race weekends.

In 1955 the Sports Car Club of America joined in by sanctioning the races under the auspices of the Los Angeles and San Diego Regions of the SCCA along with the San Diego Sports Car Club and the California Sports Car Club. To Torrey's merit, it drew the like of who's-who in U.S. racing, Paul O'Shea, Carroll Shelby, Pete Lovely, John von Neumann, Ken Miles, Phil Hill and Jack McAfee driving Ferrari's, Porsche's, Allard's, Jaguar's and more.

On the final weekend of racing at the Pines it was a swan song for the course, it certainly afforded a pleasure for the drivers and spectators alike to come watch. In spite of the usual threatening fog bank offshore, a taxing six-hour endro race was held Saturday followed by six sprint races Sunday. The underbrush had been bulldozed away eliminating the former fire hazard at previous races and a large number of flags around the course gave it a fittingly festive air, with a spectator count of 35,000 at the end.

Shortly after, the San Diego City Council voted to turn the land into two golf courses and the Torrey Pines Road races sadly came to an end.

Just a note: most of these images are from the camera of fellow blog follower Bob Lampert, thanks Bob.

Classic 50s' program art with an Allard drifting around a Torrey Pine perched on a cliff.

Micro Art / Sports Car Racing Programs ...1950's #2

A second look at micro art.

In this day of push-button high tech computer graphics, and high gloss print material, it's fun to look back to a time when covers of race programs were done with drawings, or B&W photos. Creativity done by X-acto knife in hand, with wax applied and pasted on thin cardboard layout boards. The words, images and colors were carefully cut overlays, photographed and burned into plates for printing. Most were two color, since the use of four color was cost prohibitive for most.

These images are of Sports Car Race programs in the 50's held in California, provided by blog follower Marty Goldsmith. They're simple little works of art depicting action, speed, humor and meant to stimulate spectators imaginations at race tracks that no longer exist.

Pebble Beach Road Races Program, the last year held at Pebble Beach. Some of the drivers running, Phil Hill in a Ferrari, Walt Hansgen in a Corvette, and Ernie McAfee in a Ferrari and OSCA.

Speaking of the Riverside Grand Prix ...

In the post on the United States Grand Prix of 1960 held at Riverside Raceway, Marty spoke about several of the race cars being driven to the track for the race and Bob saw one that he remarked about in the comments. However, for a lot of us, life was to young to remember such things. If you think about it, Riverside Raceway was basically a new track, and had no garages in their paddock area as of yet. Check out the following images. Can you imagine driving today's Formula one cars on the street?


John Surtees makes a pass between two Fords and a Chevy driving his F1 Lotus-Climax up University Avenue heading towards the raceway for the 1960 U.S. Grand Prix. Incidentally, he did not finish the race because of an accident. 



Here Maurice Trintignant, on Highway I-15 heading south coming out of Riverside on his way to the track in a Cooper-Maserati. Maurice finished 15th in the race.

Micro Art / Sports Car Racing Programs ... 1950's

In this day of push-button high tech computer graphics, and high gloss print material, it's fun to look back to a time when covers of race programs were done with drawings, or B&W photos. Creativity done by X-acto knife in hand, then waxed and pasted on thin cardboard layout boards. The words, images and colors were carefully cut overlays, photographed and burned into plates for printing. Most were two color, since the use of four color was cost prohibitive.

These images are of Sports Car Race programs in the 50's held in California, provided by blog follower Marty Goldsmith. They're simple little works of art depicting humor and speed, at race tracks that no long exist.

Some of those competing in the 4th Santa Barbara Road Races were Ken Miles in his MG Special, James Dean in his Porsche Speedster, and Jack McAfee in his Porsche 550 Spyder.

Some running at the 6th Torrey Pines Road Races were Lance Reventlow in a MB 300SL, Kjell Qvale in a Lancia Spyder, and Ernie McAfee in a Ferrari Monza.

Competing at the 1st Grand Central Sports Car Races were, John von Neuman in a Porsche 550 Spyder, Pete Lovely in a Porsche Cooper, and Richie Ginther in a Ferrari Mondial.

The 9th Palm Springs Road Races had Ignacio Lozano in a D type Jaguar, E. Forbes-Robinson in an MGA, and Dan Gurney in a Triumph TR-2.

And lastly, some of those competing at the 5th Santa Barbara Road Races were Bob Bondurant in a Morgan+4, Chuck Daigh in a Troutman-Barnes Special, and Ken Miles in a Porsche 550 Spyder.

As you can read, this was a "Who's Who" of racing.

Related Post: Micro Art #2

To share a comment, click here.

Ramona Drags ...Some Rare Images

Got these images from my Facebook buddie, Jon Guilmet. Jon has built, restored and raced more cars than most, and he had these saved from the years he was running at Ranoma. Very cool and rare images of the programs.

This was San Diego's first drag strip to have grandstands and even had a plywood timing tower.

Back in the day, many of San Diego's Car Dealers sponsored race cars, here's a shot of the McCune Plymouth.

I remember the "Shannon" Plymouth well. It was a beautiful orange-red color with the flat white VHT headers poking out - intimidating all comers. However Dick Boynton had the class record there at 120.07 mph in his "Ramrod" Hemi.

San Diego was a hotbed of racing, this strip was called "San Diego Raceway," it was an effort to keep the kids from racing on the streets and put them onto a track. Check out more on that at this post.

Related post: The Accident

To comment, this is the button.

Del Mar Road Races

Del Mar is not only the site for Horse Racing and the IMSA races in the early nineties, but also early 60's sports car races with the SCCA. These races were held in the large parking area just west of Jimmy Durante Blvd. It was a 1.9 mile road circuit run clockwise with the boundaries laid out with cones and hay bales. One of the Pacific Coast Championship races was held there in 1962. Early TV star Steve McQueen even put his Porsche Speedster away to run a faster Cooper Junior at this event.

An image of the program cover for the fall 1964 event. This was the 6th running of this event and I believe the last.

You can see the pit area and the track layout as well as spectator parking around the outside of the parking lot in this image.
This Santee Race Car leading a Lotus was built in Santee. Two and a half cars were built, one is owned by one of our blog followers. Image via, Tams Old Race Car Site at.
The first lap of the Big Bore Mod. Race with Corvettes, Healeys, RSKs and some small bore Lotus cars. Pictured is Bob Harris in his rear-engined Campbell Special leading Dave Mac Donald in a Corvette. Image via, Bill Marsh and Toby Palmieri.
Jack Sutherland in his Triumph TR leads a Lotus Elite.
This was the Small Bore Race with MG's and Austin Healey Sprites. Image via, Bill Marsh and Toby Palmieri.
Ronnie Bucknum in a Big Healey leads the Porsche Roadster of Ed Barber and the Speedster of Alan Johnson. Alan would eventually go on the open a Porsche/Audi dealership in San Diego. Image via, Bill Marsh and Toby Palmieri.
George Follmer nerfed Dave Jordon out of the lead, but would later spin and turn the lead back over to Jordon. You can see the battle scares on the doors of both cars. Image via, Bill Marsh and Toby Palmieri.

The Del Mar races ran in '62, '63, and '64. The SCCA would next go to San Diego Stadium, Holtville, and Carlsbad Raceway to put on local events.

To share a comment, click here.

Hour Glass Field...Racing's Past

The real romance of the sports car was cemented after WWII when American service men took home memories of the British soft-tops. Real race tracks were far and few to be seen...so old airports and some street circuits were being used. Hour Glass Field was one of these venues to be put into action.

In 1956 the Navy made the airfield available to the San Diego Junior Chamber of Commerce and the San Diego Region Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) for automobile racing. In 1957 a 1.8 mile track was laid out and the California Sports Car Club and San Diego Region SCCA staged races there for three years until late 1959 as part of the regional road racing circuit. Steve McQueen driving his black Porsche Speedster was just one of the many famous race car drivers that saw action at the track. Ken Miles was another, driving a Porsche 550 Spyder.

The track ran parallel to and within a hundred yards of old Highway 395, now called Interstate 15.

Some of the British cars line up for a photo opp.

Jack McAfee driving a 550A won in the small bore 25 lap race in 1959.

Car number 217, a Berkeley, leads an MG through one of the corners.

The field was also used for motorcycle racing and unauthorized drag racing. In early August of 1960, after three bystanders were injured during a drag race, the Navy shut down the airfield to racing. This led to an organized mass protest and a riot the night of August 20 and 21 in San Diego that the San Diego Union dubbed the "Drag Strip Riot" and socialists call one of the first major youth riots of the 1960s. Remember, in a previous post, San Diego's first drag strip, Paradise Mesa had been shut down in 1959.

In 1967, the Miramar campus of the San Diego Community College was built on the site of the airfield. The Porsche Club of America, San Diego Region ran a few autocross events on what was left of the track in 1976 and 1977.

To share a comment, link to the post at: http://www.johnstraub.blogspot.com/

San Diego's First Drag Strip...Paradise Mesa

Paradise Mesa Drag Strip was really the old Sweetwater Airfield used during World War II for aircraft landing practice. It was located east of National City.

There are many stories of how the cars would line up with 8 cars & race. The fastest 4 would turn around & race back followed by the slower 4. Eventually this would continue until 4 were going one way & 4 were coming the other way. If everyone observed 'the imaginary center line' there wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, accidents did happened. Later, after the strip became recognized, they would run two cars at a time.
The guys that were serious about racing (the club called "The Bean Bandits", Monique's mom was a member of the club) grew tired of being chased off by the police, so they organized to get use of the field and with the beginnings of the NHRA to help, events were held on weekends from 1951-59. Even so, the police would try to run the street racers off the strip or catch them, but their under-powered police cars were no match. So San Diego had it's first drag strip.

It's said there was a family that owned the huge chunk of land east of National City. They lived in a Spanish mansion at the west end of Paradise Valley Road. Every 5 to 10 years, they would sell off sections of land to developers or they would lease large areas to cattle owners. There is a DVD which described drag racing at the (Sweetwater) Paradise Mesa airfield: One of the interviews talks about how they had to get permission from 'the woman that owned the land' in order to have sanctioned racing. They also had to pay her an annual fee of a dollar.

The little "Dragster" looking car was one of the "Bean Bandits" early dragsters.

Sweetwater was still listed among active airfields in the Aerodromes table on the 1955 San Diego Sectional Aeronautical Chart. It described the field as having a single 3,000' bituminous runway, and included the remark, "Auto racing on field. Closed to flying on weekends." The Sweetwater Airport was evidently closed at some point between 1955-58.

According to auto racing historian Bret Kepner, the Sweetwater runway was used as a commercial drag strip until 1959.

Related posts: More on Paradise

To share a comment, link to the post at: http://www.johnstraub.blogspot.com/

Tijuana Road Races

Some years ago my buddies and I would spend a day in Tijuana (A.K.A...."TJ") waiting for their cars to get the full "Tuck 'n Roll" treatment. Back then, you could get the works from carpet to headliner, for a 100 bucks. Nothing like a freshly-stitched interior. Then we would head to a place called the "Long Bar" to down a few beers. What's this got to do with racing in TJ, nothing, except this was all happening about the same time...1966.

As far as I can tell, the Tijuana Road Races started in that year and continued until 1972.They were put on by the "Tijuana Auto Sport Club." The track was located about five miles from downtown Tijuana at a subdivision called Playa de Tijuana that skirts along the beach in the shadow of the bullring. It was a 1.2 mile course that ran along the upper street where the pit and paddock were, down to the lower street and along the beach with a few bails of hay as safety barriers. Safety was not a high priority for these races as spectators would sit on the barriers and try to kick the cars as they would come by or run across the track between some of the racing cars. Most of the entries for these races came from nearby San Diego. They usually had three races for each event-one for Modifieds and Sedans; a fifteen minute race, one for Production under three liters; a twenty five minute race, and one for Formula cars; also a twenty five minute race. Qualifying positions were on your honor, timed by one of your crew members.

Program from 1968...the third running of the races. Image via Frank Sheffield

The track came as close to the border as you could get. Image via Frank Sheffield

A LeMans start...check out the driving suits. Image via Frank Sheffield

Another start from the other side of the track. Image via Frank Shellield

A "Speedster" and "Triumph TR2" chasing an "MGB" going into turn 5. Photo by Vern Jaques, via Frank Sheffield

A "Sprite" and "MGA" cresting the hill coming up from the beach in turn 4. Photo by Vern Jaques, via Frank Sheffield

Action coming down the hill to the beach in turn 2. Image via Frank Sheffield

An "Elva Courier" exiting turn 2 and onto the straight along the beach...
notice the "Federally" corner workers. Image via Sports Car Graphic 

In 1970 the Road Races moved from the beach location to the old Tijuana Airport where they finally died two years later.

Paramount Ranch Road Races

The Paramount Ranch Road Races were held on a 2 mile course that operated for two years, 1956 and 1957. This was an old movie set located near Agoura in the Santa Monica Mountains. It was a narrow and twisting course with ups and downs...perfect for Porsche!

Some of the cars running "back in the day" were; Porsche Speedsters, 550's, Triumphs, Corvettes, Mercedes Gullwings, Alfas, Jaguars, MG's, and of course Ferrari's...they all raced there. Some of the drivers that saw action there were; Ken Miles, Dan Gurney, Richie Ginther, John Von Neuman and Bob Bondurant.


These photos were taken at turn 5 by Marty Goldsmith. Marty is one of our blog followers and worked all 5 of the events held at Paramount as a scrutineer. Marty reports that he still has the Canon eye-level 35mm camera and that it's great for race photography, owing to the interchangeable Albada finders and the trigger advance mechanism.

Jack Nethercutt #102, Harry Handford #227 in a OSCA and Bill Scott #97 in a MG. The Mobilegas marker was still standing at this point.

Frank Monise #44 in a Lotus, Ken Miles #50 in the Von Neuman 550 Spyder, and Jack McAfee #57 in the Sugarman 550 Spyder. Notice Miles and McAfee with the perfect line.
Cliff Hensley, has catapulted his car into the spectator area on top of the hill. Notice the turn 5 marker on the pole.
John Lyon, rolled the MG up the hill and then settled back down on the wheels.
A "cardboard" helmet belonging to John Lyon, typical of the time. Also note that most of the cars did not have roll bars.

A Fun Event Planned
Grand Prix and Orange Coast Regions are planning a "Paramount Ranch Picnic Tour" on April 25. Marty, who organized this tour will give those attending a walking tour around the course, trying to identify some of its outstanding features including an underpass/tunnel as well as a history lesson about the track and sports car racing as it was at that time. If you have questions about the event or would like to RSVP to participate, please contact, Marty Goldsmith at: Captmarty@verizon.net

You can also call him at: (562)494-6350 (H), or (562)537-6793 (C)