"I'm Off..."

Pilote's personal fan favorite: the Competizione Ferrari 458 Italia.  Racing 458's make a glorious shriek at high revs.

(OK, blog readers, no cracking-wise.)

I'm going back to Elkhart Lake for a pro race, my first since the CART glory days.  Only ALMS GT and Road America could get me to spend the big bucks again.  (Well...I did "bucket list" Petit LeMans last fall with my Cuz.)  It's more fun and a lot less expensive to watch and bench race with club members I'm personally acquainted with.  Another reason I haven't been back to Road America for a long time is because I wanted to avoid over-writing my memories of the awesome speed of CART racers there. Nobody is likely to come close to Dario Franchitti's absolute lap record of 144 m.p.h. any time soon. (Reynard-Honda, 1999.)

Anyway.  The charm of ALMS GT's is that they are authentically production-based and there's an "avoidable contact" rule.  In ALMS, rubbin' ain't racin' (mostly).  It's old-timey sports car racing in a modern, medium-tech, wrapper.  I want to watch the GT's one last time before the NASCAR-dominated merger into the United Sports Car Racing series screws up the rules.  (USCR promises to leave the ALMS GT class alone, so the cars will still be legal at LeMans.  I don't believe them.)

Maybe I shouldn't worship at the altar of Road America so devoutly.  There are several world-class courses in North America.  But R.A. still seems to me to be the pinnacle.  There is something about watching a pro driver brake a pro car from top speed and stuff it into Turn 5 hard, then hare up the hill into the blind entry of Turn 6.  In a fast car, the segment from the Carousel to the front straight is one of the most challenging piece of road in the world.  The club racers I know who've driven Road America get a wistful look in their eyes or a "1000-yard stare," depending on their personal experience of the challenge.  Some of them gulp.  I would.  Back in the '80's, Hotshoe drove a couple of fast-ish "track tour" laps in his street Mustang and completely used up the brakes.

I hope to return home with some pix for the blog and some memories to go with my fine ones of CART.

Road America: "four miles of fun," as the promos used to put it.

Scirocco Update

Scirocco en brochette: not the first time a "minor delay" has been encountered in this resurrection.

Well... here's the thing... the rear brake lines were leaking fluid not from cracked flex hoses but from the unions that joined them to the fixed lines.  And because the fuel system parts are already out of the way, and because the car can't be driven without rear brakes, why not fix that problem first?  To refresh readers' memories, getting the Scirocco running started out as "simply" finding and fixing a valve lash problem with the rebuilt cylinder head.  Start it, tune it, test-drive it, sell it.  We have instead a series of sagas of broken Russian Nesting Dolls.  Something like that--a good metaphor escapes me.  But somebody is going to get a classic Scirocco that has been thoroughly "gone through."

"Uh, oh..."  Driver's side rear brake line (flex line at left).

The fix involves new flex lines and U-clips that affix one end of same to the suspension arms.  And flaring the ends of
the hard lines to mate with the fixtures at each end of the flex lines.

Pretty good workmanship, wouldn't you say?  Including a fix for the end of the hard line that was damaged in removal.
 Hotshoe made a"jig" of cement blocks, 4 X 6's, and 4 X 4's to support the (heavy) flaring tool and give him the
leverage and purchase needed to execute the flares with the fixed lines still in the chassis.  Creative guy!  He
went from "I need two guys and six hands" to finishing the job himself in a morning.

  The new clamp that fastens the fixed line that runs along the rear suspension arm out to the caliper (left).  This shot is
of the driver's side of the car, looking forward.  Hotshoe learned a lot doing the driver's side, so the passenger's side
should go quickly.  Then it's back to cleaning out the fuel tank and lines.

Panzerwagens And The King Of Cool Invade France

Panzerwagens in the village square of La Chartre sur-le-Loir, but not to worry: it's only the movie cars from LeMans.
And it's 1970, not 1940.  I wonder of Steve McQueen and one of his world-class "stunt drivers" took the 917's down to
La Charte to sample the food and wine at the Hotel de France recommended by John Wyer?  If so, it must have been
one of the ultimate drives to dinner after a workday: about 20 miles on curvy 2-lanes.

McQueen directing a scene in LeMans.  Aviator sunglasses cannot make you cool (Pilote being Exhibit A), but if you
are already the Essence Of Cool, they complete the picture.  Obviously, green lenses are strongly preferred; red lenses
are barely acceptable.  Mirrored lenses might as well have a different shape and fluorescent plastic frames.  ;-)

Late To The Party

XK-E Lightweight "Tribute:" not as nice as Leno's, but nice.

Fifty-odd years late, Jay Leno's vidoes are turning me into a Jaguar fan:

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/cars/jaguar/1964-jaguar-xke/index.shtml

As a youth in the '60's, I didn't see the XK-E's value for money: slower and more costly than a Corvette Stingray.  In those days I believed that road racing established a sports car's bona fides.  Jaguar's iron block, long stroke, straight six had about reached the end of its development rope.  The 3.8 and 4.2 liter XK-E's, even the Lightweights, were not competitive with 3-liter Ferraris and 5.4 liter Corvettes.

In the '70's I had a couple of rides in a Series II roadster owned by a friend, and was not impressed.  It had a lot of weight on the front of a longish wheelbase.  It was unwieldy in rush hour traffic.  (I now realize that the Ferrari 250 GT was just as unwieldy and twice as costly.)

But I can now also see how much fun the XK-E and even the XK-120 are.  Fast, competent, enjoyable road cars.  That's one of the good things about Leno's videos: they give you a feel for the car on real roads (although Jason Len doesn't let Jay take this one out).  And nobody has beat the looks of the
XK-E.  Nor will they in the modern era of crashworthy cars.

Incidentally, I was reassured by Len's comment that he breaks 'em in on organic motor oil, then changes to synthetic.  That's my rule too; its nice to see my instinct confirmed by a pro.

Henry N. Manney III

Henry getting some help finding the footwell (or maybe levering himself out) of an early 1960's Formula car.  

Jay Leno has mentioned once or twice how, as youngsters, we waited with baited breath for the next issue of a car mag to show up.  He does not exaggerate.  It was our lifeline--our only one--to what was going on.  Everything we were anxious to know about was there: timely and thorough road tests, coverage of new models introduced at the motor shows, race reports.  Road & Track even covered SCCA Nationals (which were really regional) before there was such a thing as SCCA pro racing.

Times change.  The internet out-competes car mags for timeliness and breadth of coverage.  The printed page no longer engages many people like video does.  About a year ago, I blogged that I might let my never-lapsed subscription (1959!) to Road & Track expire.  Its technically-oriented, long form journalism has long since gone out of style and out the magazine.  Some recent editorial changes have improved it,  but not enough for this dinosaur's tastes--even though it still has Peter Egan, who's columns and reporting remain the best in the biz.

My regrets over Road & Track's "passing" remind me of its best and funniest writer: Henry N. Manney III.  That was his byline, not "Henry Manney" or "Hank."  He succeeded Bernard Cahier as the magazine's European Editor and race reporter in 1961.  He stopped writing for Road & Track in the late 1960's and no one, before or since, has been as entertaining.  (It's a stellar list, too: Cahier, Rob Walker, and Paul Frere, among others.)  Manney wrote a column, "At Large," which he signed as "Yr. Faithful Svnt."  His writing was prolix and convoluted; his Edwardian Gentleman persona was a hilarious, intentionally anachronistic, put-on.

His most famous line, long-since in the public domain, was that the Jaguar XK-E was "the greatest crumpet-catcher known to man."  (This was in those Boys' Club times when it was presumed that women wouldn't read or care about insulting language in publications like Road & Track.)  My own favorite line was from his report on the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix.  Dan Gurney's silver Porsche eventually finished 5th.  But for much of the race he ran 3rd, punching above his weight, between the Ferraris of Phil Hill and Wolfgang Von Trips.  "Like an anchovy embedded in a pizza," Manney wrote.  A favorite re-usable line was "Practice was the usual shambles," after which Manney would explain the slings and arrows suffered by drivers and teams in setting the starting grid.  (Race car reliability was nowhere near then what it is now.)  His imagery put you as close to an event as you could be without being there.

For those interested in more Manneyisms, here's a link.  (Disclaimer: I share almost no views on matters social, political, and automotive with those expressed in Joe Sherlock's blog aside from his admiration for Manney).

http://www.joesherlock.com/Henry-Manney.html 

Manney in the early 1960's: the Inspector Clouseau Look before Peter Sellers made it iconic.  He walked the walk as
well as talking it: in the late 1960's, he owned a Ferrari GTO after they had become obsolete race cars, when you
could still buy one for the price of a small house.

"It's More Fun To Drive A Slow Car Fast Than A Fast Car Slow"

Well, the Honda Civic Type R maybe isn't that slow of a car...  And I doubt this was Signora Patrese's first rodeo.  Methinks the lady doth protest theatrically, although it's also clear that Riccardo stuffs the car into a couple of corners.  The dialogue reminds me of Luciana and Yossarian in Catch-22.  Slow cars should be driven fast in Italian.  ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIhGJyLR6TI

Purdy Car, Purdy Video

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/rare-ferrari-could-fetch-more-14-million-charity-195415998.html

What a lovely Ferrari!  And what a great statement from the owner about why he continued to drive it: "It's a car--a special car, but a car."  And if the ex-Stirling Moss GTO in Yeoman Credit livery, never actually raced by Moss, can fetch $35 million, why not $14 million for a one-owner 275 GTB/4 NART?

Some anciens may recall that there was once a cottage industry in cutting the tops off "plain old" 250 GT coupes and 275 GTB 2-cams, to turn them into California and 275 Spiders.  Many were flipped (in the real-estate sense of the term, not literally).  A market existed because it was the only way to get a California or 275 Spider, already among the most iconic Ferraris. The practice was decried by purists. And it was an early indicator of rare classic car prices going stratospheric.

Another good reason to not turn a coupe into a Spider was that PininFarina and Scaglietti added internal bracing to their drop-top bodies to make them more rigid.  So if someone offers you a good price on a 250/275 Spider, you might want to check for cowl-shake and general floppiness.  ;-)