Pumpkin Bimmer

I love this car, its vibe, its history, and its owner.  I'd have done it exactly as he did (color excepted).  "Destroyed the resale value?"  I'd buy it from him in a New York Minute if it were for sale.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A85-YQsm6pY

A Lap Of Spa-Fancorchamps, 1962

Lucien Bianchi was a fine journeyman sports car driver in the 1960's (Wiki him).  Here's a fine in-car video made from an Aston Martin driven by him at touring speed in 1962.  If you listen carefully, you can pick out the names of the corners in his description as he approaches/goes through them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQcaYrbxXMM

"Steve McQueen: The Man & LeMans" (DVD Review)

It was surprising to learn, in the corners of the internet that I frequent, that some people think Grand Prix is the best racing movie ever made.  Others like the biopic Senna.  For me, LeMans is the gold standard.  Not that any feature film about racing makes much of a movie.  I've never held LeMans's   
lack of a plot or character development against it.   The point of the film is the racing footage.  The plot, such as it is, of Grand Prix is laughable.  When I watch LeMans (which I still do every couple of years), I just fast-forward through the non-racing footage.

So I thought a DVD about the making of LeMans would be a fun watch.  It was, one time.  And I'll probably watch it again.  But it's not gripping.  The producers say it includes footage from the film "never before seen."  There's a good reason for that: the best footage is already in the film.  Chad McQueen had a big hand in this project.  It's not so much a documentary about filmmaking as it is a hagiographic  look at his father.

For me, it was painful to look at Steve McQueen.  The "smartest guy in the room" and "I make my own rules" traits that make The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt so engaging are tiresome in a real person.  It is sad, sad, sad, to watch McQueen burn through his own money making LeMans (he was the Executive Producer).  And his friendships.  And his marriage.  Yes, McQueen had "a vision" of what he wanted to do with the film.  It turned out to be monomaniacal.  Or maybe "the loner hero" of my 20's became "just another self-absorbed jerk" in my 70's.

The interviews with Siegfried Rauch and Louise Edind ("Erich Stahler" and "Anna Ritter" in the film) were interesting.  Rauch, who does not care about cars, remembers driving a Ferrari 512 at 180 m.p.h.--with terror.  McQueen demanded even more of his "real" drivers, and himself.  David Piper (who lost his right leg below the knee making LeMans) is mildly interesting, as are the cameo appearances some of the other drivers who made LeMans possible.  McQueen has the respect of some.  But I didn't get the impression that he had the affection of any.

To sum up, McQueen: The Man & LeMans is a kind of ego project about another ego project.  It's a fine thing that McQueen made the film.  The racing footage still holds up, both technically and aesthetically, in this era of high-def lipstick cameras and GoPros.  Cinematically, LeMans was decades ahead of its time.  It's still more enjoyable than most of the racing footage we see, and McQueen nailed the ambience of the LeMans 24 Hour Race.  This DVD is worth a watch every once in a while, especially as a companion/chaser to the film.

My Favorite Killboy Picture Of 2015

Normally, my favorite Killboy shots feature an unusual angle on the car and/or a slight twist on the background that frames it.  But this year, lights parting the gloom of a rain run captured my imagination...

Fine Phil Hill Film

This film is well-worth 20 minutes of your time.  Phil was one of the most thoughtful and introspective drivers of his (or any) time: multi-dimensional, deep.  And the film has the added advantage of him looking back on his career after he retired.

http://petrolicious.com/articles/daily-fix/take-20-minutes-and-watch-phil-hill-conquer-the-world


The film suggests that Phil just rocketed into his Formula 1 drives because he was so good.  This is not true.  Enzo Ferrari considered him "just" a good sports car/endurance race driver.  Phil had to buy a couple of drives in Formula 1 cars in 1958 (in a Maserati, which must have irked Enzo) before he was offered a full-time Grand Prix ride in a Ferrari in 1959.

I was 16 years old in 1961 when Phil won the World Championship.  We road racing snobs on this side of the Atlantic considered it remarkable than an American could beat the best Europeans at their own game.  Others had tried (notably Carroll Shelby and Masten Gregory); only Phil had pulled it off.  He paved the way for other Americans into Formula 1 (notably Dan Gurney and Richie Ginther).  Little did we suspect that Phil would be America's only World Champion for 17 years, when Mario Andretti repeated his feat in 1978.  They remain America's only World Champions, and it has been 37 years since Mario did it.  Several Americans have tried, all have failed.

One-Off (Bertone) Porsche 911

"Undistinguished" of "bland" comes to mind when viewing this Porsche. 

While I'm something of a Porsche freak, I didn't know about this car until reading about it last week in Karl Ludvigsen's excellent Porsche: Excellence Was Expected.  I was most definitely around in 1966, and paying attention, especially to Porsche, when it was built.  If Road & Track published a picture, it sank from my memory without a trace.

The Bertone Porsche 911 Roadster was commissioned by Johnny von Neumann, the Porsche distributor for Southern California.  One can imagine him trying to sell 911 coupes without air-conditioning in L.A. in 1965.  Open Porsches had been available for over a decade, and the Targa was in development for 1967 availability.  But von Neumann failed to ask about Porsche's plans for a convertible 911 or, if he did, Porsche deflected him.

von Neumann was also well-connected in the Ferrari community, including Maranello.  He chose Bertone of Turin to do the open car (which was created from a coupe von Neumann had shipped from Los Angeles).  One imagines von Neumann hoped to sell some roadsters individually, or maybe have Bertone do a very limited production run.  Either would have involved a considerable price premium over the 911, which itself was expensive compared to the previous 356.

Bertone turned the car around quickly and put it on his stand at the Turin auto show.  One source says that Giorgetto Giugiaro penned this car when he worked for Bertone, before he went on to considerable fame in his own right.   Another source is silent on the individual(s) involved in creating the car.  Within a year, the Targa made whatever plans von Neumann and Bertone had moot.  von Neumann sold it in Los Angeles (one suspects at a considerable loss), where it remained in obscurity through several decades and only a couple of owners.

Going back 50-odd years, as the 356 and recent Cabrios have shown, it is very hard to do an open Porsche without giving
it a bustle-butt.  The 356 Speedster and the 911 Targa were somewhat, but not entirely, immune from this.

Above and below: Bertone went with concealed headlights.  The slats were for signaling ("flash to pass") when the
headlights were not in use.  The picture below (headlights in On mode) was taken when the car was introduced at
the Turin Auto Show.  This Corvette Stingray-like front end works fine for me on a C 2 Corvette.  Not at all on a
Porsche.  Butzi Porsche himself observed that a sloping front end between prominent headlights is "the face of
a Porsche," which was why he retained/developed that look when he did the 911.

Above: this angle illustrates the very low cowl line chosen by Bertone, which forced the relocation of the
instruments to a "center stack" between the seats.

Below: the car repainted and wearing cast alloy Porsche 914-6 wheels in the 1990's.  It is believed to
still exist in the hands of an unknown private owner.  Randy Leffingwell photo.

Swing And A Miss (The New Fiat 124 Sport Spider)

Above and below: To give it it's due, the car's best angle, and a cockpit that contains very little to complain about.  But
then the MX-5's cockpit has been acknowledged as a great place for decades.

I've been eagerly awaiting this car since the teaser show car version morphed from an Alfa Romeo into a Fiat.  Production cars rarely look as good as show cars done to hype interest and get feedback.  But Alfa and Fiat have been turning out some good-looking cars lately.  And the original PininFarina-designed 124 Sport Spider was such a benchmark car that (one would think) Fiat would take great care with its namesake.

What we got instead is a reskinned Miata.  This is surprising but not amazing, and a disappointment.  Fiat wants (and needs) to leverage its ownership of Chrysler into market penetration for its imports.  Mazda knows the American market well, and needs cash.  But the new car is an MX-5 rolling chassis with a Fiat engine and tranny.  It's not a joint venture on a shared basic internal architecture that will be taken in two different directions, amounting to two different cars.

It's hard to know who the targeted buyers are.  The new 124 Sport Spider isn't a hard-core sports car, but then, neither was the classic one.  It had an undeserved reputation--as has the Miata--as a girly car.  Presumably the Fiat will priced well north of the entry-level MX-5 on which it is based ($25K) but not way above what a "loaded" MX-5 goes for (slightly north of $30K).  And probably less than a (as yet nonexistent) fast, hard-core, MazdaSpeed Edition of the MX-5 (a bit under $35K?).  So why not just buy the new MX-5 that's to your taste?

Maybe because you don't get that "Italian flair?"  But that's exactly where the new 124 Sport fails.  At least for me.

Above and below: my Bill Of Particulars against the 124 Sport Spider: a stubby, chopped off, profile, a rear fender crease
line extending into the door, which is intended to echo the classic line in the same location, but which instead makes the
car look fat.  A front end that's too busy and dis-integrated (and another effort to "paste" detail elements of the sharp-
edged classic onto a rounded MX-5 shape).  Even the "power bulges" on the classic's hood (not clearly visible in
any of these pix) just make the new car look overly busy, with no unifying theme.

Above: the clean, partly creased, partly rounded lines of the classic 124 Sport Spider.
Below: when the concept car was an Alfa Romeo, headed in the right direction.

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