Last spring I cried from sheer terror on this pass. I just wanted to get down off Red Mountain before a great chunk of the melting snow that was dropping on the road in near-MG-sized snowballs decided it wanted a ride down with us. I’d wanted to take more pictures, I wanted to put the…
On the road with the 2005 California Melee Rally By Jeff Guzaitis Things just didn’t seem to go my way on the 2005 California Melee. After months of reviving a homebuilt special that hadn’t moved under its own power in 40 years, I was rolling onto a narrow shoulder amidst a cloud of steam and…
By John Sprinzel So, what’s this rallying all about? A little while back Denise McCluggage, my journalist and competition driver pal, wrote a very thoughtful article in AutoWeek. She had just visited a world rally championship event in Europe where, back in the ’60s, we had both driven factory Mini Coopers. This had given her…
MG offers the MG ZR EX258 In the last issue of British Motoring, we told you about MG’s return to Le Mans with the MG Lola EX257. MG was also successful in the first scheduled race at Silverstone in the TOCA Tour series, which resulted in 5th and 7th positions. Now MG is eyeing a…
By Paul Richardson The international rallies in Europe in the ’50s were run over some of the most testing routes imaginable, especially the Criterium Des Alpes, commonly known as The Alpine. As its name implies, the rally was essentially contested over the high Alpine passes of central Europe and was generally regarded as the toughest…
By Paul Richardson The first Triumph TR2 was born in January 1953, designed and engineered to thrive in the flourishing American sports car market. The production run totaled 8,636 cars between summer 1953 and fall 1955. Many of these TR2s were shipped to the U.S., where they promptly made Triumph an exciting presence on the…
A gathering of rally racing legends By John Sprinzel From Fishy Beginnings… If you have ever purchased a pair of competition driving gloves, they probably came from John Hopwood’s glove business, and if you have ever eaten fish and chips in the Manchester area, it is pretty certain that Roy Fidler’s company supplied the fish….
As I have been involved with the Sprite’s 40th and Moss’ 50th birthday celebrations, my mind has naturally been busy with memories of Motor Sport of the ’50s. Rallying, Tin-Top production car racing, and Formula One now has a much larger audience than it did in those days, and while the basics of each side of the…
One of the first 40th birthday parties for the Austin-Healey Sprite took place in Tasmania, that large and beautiful island off the southeast coast of Australia. It has long been the home of some of the most devout Sprite enthusiasts in the world, and no less than 14 of them prepared their beloved classics to compete in…
When World War II ended, Dad was 45 years old. He couldn’t drive and decided our family needed a car. Somehow, someone persuaded him that a Jaguar was just the thing for him, and a wonderful black beastie appeared outside our garage-less suburban semi-detached home. To this 14-year-old, the Jaguar SS1 was just magnificent. I think…
