El Maestro

"We had everything here, everything here inside.
All of our kit was here. Look – inside this women’s hat box was everything:  Goggles, leather gloves, t-shirt, and helmet – all here. You see?”

Juan Manuel Fangio

In the first decade of Formula One racing, before races were filmed or televised, Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio won five World Driver's Championships - a record that stood for 46 years.  In the 1950s drivers wore minimal protective equipment, racing with no harness and often on circuits with no safety features.  In the clip below (from a 1980s documentary film), Fangio is in his sixties driving a Lancia-Ferrari D50 around a "temporarily closed" Monaco street circuit.  The car's fuel tanks were housed in the side fenders (between the front and rear wheels), just in case sliding sideways around a corner wasn't spicy enough in a vintage racing car wearing just a t-shirt and open face helmet.

"When a car goes well, and the engine note is harmonious, the noise makes a form of music; the driver is like a conductor…”

And what a conductor.  I guess that's why he was nicknamed "El Maestro".

Top image taken at the 2014 Goodwood Revival event.

They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To

In a couple of days I return to the UK and am due to pick up my car from my magician of a mechanic who's had it in for its annual MOT (UK vehicle safety and roadworthiness check).  I am due to pick it up but, just the same as every year, I am not entirely confident that it will have passed and that I'll be able to.  When I dropped it off he lowered his voice (to the tone reserved for use by concerned vets who don't want the family pet to overhear that it might not have much time left) and said that my run-of-the-mill mundane silver estate car (which has getting on for 250,000 former sales-rep miles on the clock) has served me well and added, "There's a similar car for sale over the road.  I'm only saying, just in case..."

For as long as I've been able to drive and afford to run a car I've placed a whole heap of other things higher on the list of what to spend my money on than my vehicle (see this former post).  Actually getting to the beach has always been far more important than what I get to the beach in, and thus over the last 12 years or so I have owned a succession of loveable bangers or functional wagons, each with their own stories to tell.  Every year I am still however, without fail, slightly surprised when my car fails its test and needs work doing and money spending on it.  I really shouldn't be.  And, every time that I need to consign an old four-wheeled friend to the scrap-heap and search out a new set of wheels, I always end up spending the bare minimum on another barely functioning motor car.  But one day - one day -  I'll get my act together and hunt down an old car that comes pre-loaded with stories; a vehicle older than I am with a front-end like a smiling face and an interior that smells like an antique shop.  I adore cars with character.  I've no doubt that if I ever manage to do this I will be lumbered with an absolute heap that costs an inordinate amount to fill up with fuel, that I can't drive in the rain, is impossible to source parts for and that I won't be able to transport surfboards in.  But I'll love it all the same because if you're going to spend some time broken down by the side of the road anyway, then you might as well do so with some small degree of style stood next to a beautiful machine.

Vintage Vroom Vroom

During World War Two the RAF used Goodwood, a country house estate on the edge of the South Downs in West Sussex, as the base for a squadron of spitfires.  When the war ended the Earl of March turned the airfield's perimeter road into a motor racing circuit and the first race was held there on September 18th 1948.

Sixty five years on and each September Goodwood hosts the Goodwood Revival, an event celebrating the circuit's motorsport heyday from 1948-1966.   Of the 150,000 people attending I'd estimate that 90% were dressed in genuine mid-century era fashions which, along with the plethora of beautiful vintage racing cars (including the spectacular Ferrari GTO250), motorbikes and historic aeroplanes meant that I shot an awful lot of rolls of film.  Below is a small selection of ten images from the films that I've had developed so far.  Enjoy the time machine:

GT40

Hair and Helmet

Belle and the Biplane

 RAF

Airmen

Noisy Norton

Home Straight Spectators

 Spannering

Green Light for GO! 

 Guests of the Earl of March

2.8 Litres of Muscle

Talk about a photoshoot that's been a long time coming.  This is my friend Dave's Ford Capri; 2.8 litres of fuel injected-fury that his twin brother Mike restored back in the winter of 2008.  I've mentioned Dave and his mean motor on here before (The Car Whisperers), and have been hanging out for over a year now since that last shoot for us to get the thing sideways with the tyres screaming in front of my camera.  The problem was that just after the last shoot that we did, on his way to a classic car show, some moron managed to reverse their camper van along the entire length of the passenger door and rear wing in a pitiful attempt at reverse parking.  The Capri spent the spring and summer having it's near-side panels knocked out and resprayed to restore it to it's former glory, and is now back on the road....and up for sale.  Dave's selling his pride and joy to fund his motorsport project, so a couple of weekends ago I agreed to take some photographs for advertising purposes if we also got to have some fun with the car.  You can't have a massive muscle car with a bulge on the bonnet (to accomodate the huge engine) and which looks like it should be in a 1970's cop-car chase, and not want to wheel-spin away from a standing start.  Every single time.    

We headed up to a nearby disused airfield on a damp Sunday afternoon and opened the Capri up for a few goes along the runway, and Dave pushed the rear-wheel drive Ford hard around a few corners.

Kicking up some spray exiting a fast corner

Dab of oppo' at the end of the runway

I don't think my car's ever seen a chamois leather, but then my car doesn't look like it belongs in a 1970's detective film.

The Capri is for sale on carandclassic and pistonheads, click through to view the adverts if you're in the market for a styling set of wheels.  It's one well looked after car and needs a home as good as the one that it's leaving.

Gettin' All Good And Gatsby

My friend Gideon agreed to paddle out in a top hat and tails with a walking cane clenched in his teeth for part of this photo shoot.  No mean feat, considering he had to surf a traditional heavy single fin without a leash.  

This is Gideon getting all Gatsby, and doing a damn good job of it.  

Images from this series were recently featured in the latest edition of "Kook" surfing newspaper, a brilliant pink publication put together by Dan Crockett for no good reason other than to share and spread some of the special moments from "the other side" of surfing.  You can get a copy here.

The Car Whisperers

Dave, throttling.

Engine block.

Mikey got hold of this old Ford Capri one winter a few years ago. He took it back to his Dad's garage in North Wales and set to work doing it up in order to sell it on. When he pulled back into town the following spring we could all hear him coming, the sound of the throaty 2.8 V6 engine preceeding the view we got of the sleek black machine; reborn.

What an amazing car it had become. Mikey went to put the car up for sale but his twin brother Dave, who is just as much of a rev-head as Mikey, couldn't bear to see it leave the family so ponied up his winter's wages to buy it from his brother. Both of the Jones brothers are crazy car whisperers, able to listen to a crook vehicle and make an instant diagnosis. The Capri has been their labour of love and I spent an evening with Dave in their garage a few weeks ago to get some shots of him spannering on the car, part of a 1950's style greaser set of images that we wanted to produce. This was the first shoot, as Dave prepared the car for a classic car show that weekend. On the way to that show some clown reversed into the side of the Capri in a supermarket car park, stoving in the passenger door and the wing and effectively writing it off in the eyes of the insurance company. Both brothers are now hard at work, spending all of their spare time trying to nurse it back to health and keep their baby on the road. Once they're done, we'll get some images of their machine going sideways in a cloud of tyre smoke up at the old airfield... I for one can't wait to see that thing on the road again.

A workshop wall to envy.

Tight for space; The Viva, Dave and the Capri.

Check Dave's motor racing and Caterham 7 blog out at www.rawkusracing.com.