The American vintage auto racing organization SVRA [Sportscar Vintage Racing Association] is known for its slogan; “Some People Collect Art, We Race It.” These seven words profoundly describe the essence of a great racecar — a car so superbly purposed for its type and time of racing that car racing enthusiasts the world over know and revere the car at a glance, no matter the era of its creation.
Such cars that fall into this special category of immortality are also in almost all cases visual masterworks. Their contours, their front-to-rear lines, their physiques in the paddock, their bearing at speed on the racetrack. They were conceived from the minds of brilliant structural designers, aerodynamicists, engine designers and their inspired colleagues expressly for the purpose of motor racing at the top ranks of their intended realms and time periods. Their celebrated successes are permanently etched throughout the annals of racing and in the minds of all those who experienced and witnessed them in their halcyon days.
Thankfully, many of these cars remain with us today.
International Small-Bore Production Racecars
Porsche 356 Coupe – When a young Ferry Porsche saw his first model Type 356 prototype sports car completed in June 1948, he could scarcely have imagined it becoming a world class racing sports car. But that it did, and much much more throughout Europe, North America, Latin America and other continents.
American Big-Bore Production Racecars
Ford Shelby GT-350 Mustang – “What’s the distance from the office to the shop,” boomed an impatient Carroll Shelby to his employee Phil Remington, “I gotta come up with a name for this thing.” “About three hundred fifty feet,” Remington retorted. “That’s it,” Shelby confirmed, “it’ll be called the ‘Shelby GT-350 Ford Mustang’.”
American Formula Racecars
1975 Jorgensen Gurney Eagle F5000 755 – At the green flag for the Formula 5000 main event at the 2014 Brickyard Invitational vintage racing event, driver Paul Wilson in his March F5000 car lurched to an early lead, with Tom Malloy hot on his tail. Malloy was driving one of his favorite cars at a favorite track of his, the INDY Grand Prix course.
European Formula Racecars
Brabham BT-18 Formula B – A mid-1960s creation of the renowned Australian racecar builder and international Formula 1 driving champion, Jack Brabham, the BT-18 was originally classified in Europe as a Formula 2 car – and soon after in the USA as a Formula B car.
American Sports Racing Cars
AAR Toyota Eagle MK lll GPT – In a modern motorsports world of media reporters persistently touting the “never-to-be-matched-again” exploits of “the great racecars” and “the famed racing drivers” – one competition car and its small team of designers, builders, mechanics and drivers – is rarely mentioned.
European Sports Racing Cars
Kremer Porsche 962-C Leyton House – To an auto racing enthusiast, gazing and touching a Porsche 962-C close-up and “in the flesh” is a pinnacle experience, stealing one’s breath and jumbling normal vocabulary. Tongue-tied would be an understated way of commun-
icating the monumental gravity that pulses from this iconic car.
