Spain has given us quite a few idols in motorsport, and many years before the world started following the career of Fernando Alonzo and Carlos Sainz, another Spaniard was already conquering hearts and minds in Formula One, his name was Alfonso de Portago, but the fans affectionately called him “Fon”.
He was a member of the Spanish aristocracy with the noble title of “Marquis”, which stands between Duke and Earl. Just like any other member of the nobility, he had lots of time and money to enjoy the good things in life but racing was his true love.
His career in motorsport was, unfortunately, very short (1953-1957), not allowing him to leave a more profound mark in racing. He could easily be considered the driver with the most exotic name ever, his full name was: Alfonso Antonio Vicente Eduardo Angel Blas Francisco de Boria Cabeza de Vaca y Leighton Carvajal y Are, (Cabeza de Vaca means, literally, Head Cow). To make things easier and assure everyone would be aware of his nobility, he liked to be addressed as Marques de Portago.
The Need for Speed was constantly flowing in his veins. When he was studying to become an aircraft pilot, Fon bet with a friend that he could fly his small airplane under a bridge. He won the bet but the authorities canceled his course and forbid him to ever get his license.
Portago was an athlete, a horse rider, and also a member of the Spanish bobsleigh team that competed in the 1956 Winter Olympics. He wasn’t a snobbish guy, always dressed frugally and according to his friends, whatever he did in life was for love, not for showing off. Fon was married with two kids but that never prevented him to act like a true Latin lover, having many love affairs throughout his life.
From left to right, Manuel Fangio, Peter Collins, Alfonso de Portago, and Luigi Musso. German GP, 1956
Alfonso, during his racing career, was more deeply involved with Ferrari, but it was a complicated relationship. Enzo liked the Marquis more as a customer than as a team member. Even though Fon was invited to be part of the Ferrari Formula-One team for the 1956 season, replacing Luigi Musso, when he could not finish the season.
Alfonso de Portago, borrowing his teammate’s car. Silverstone, 1956.
Fon drove for Ferrari in six races and his best performance was Silverstone. He was in third, behind Fangio and Moss, when he was called back to the pits, and the team manager asked the Marquis to give his car to his teammate Peter Collins. In a situation like that, the two drivers would share the points at the end of the race. Portago complied with the orders, visibly not happy. At lap 80, another Ferrari driver, Eugenio Castelotti, came to the pits and retired from the race after being involved in a minor collision. Fon asked if the car was still drivable and the mechanics answered “barely”. To Portago, that was good enough, he jumped into the battered Ferrari and left the pits like a maniac. (picture above)
The Ferrari died close to the finish line after only 12 laps. Portago removed his goggles, lit a cigarette, and waited until the end of the race. When Manuel Fangio received the checkered flag, the Marquis pushed the crippled Ferrari, crossing the finish line and ending the race in 10th place. That was classic Portago, but Enzo didn’t like the stunt, for him, it was shameful for the brand and unnecessary.
For the 1957 season, the relationship between Fon and Enzo Ferrari continued to be complicated. The Marquis kept writing letters to Maranello, asking for a position as a driver. Enzo, sarcastically, wrote back, sending pictures of the crashes, involving the Spaniard.
Portago finally found his way back to Ferrari when in May 1957, he was called to once again replace Luigi Musso, who had fallen ill and was unable to keep driving. His first assignment was to be part of the team competing in the legendary Mille Miglia. The Scuderia from Maranello had a superb team that year, the Marquis would be driving with Peter Collins, Piero Taruffi, Wolfgang Von Trips, and Olivier Gendebien.
The race was the 24th edition of the Mille Miglia, it was held on May 11-12, 1957. It was also the Round 3 of the World Sports Car Championship season. Ferrari had the strongest team on the field with 15 cars, 5 from the official factory team, and 10 driven by privateers. Portago invited an old friend to be his navigator, the American journalist Edmund Nelson. They would have the privilege to be on board Ferrari’s newest prototype, the 335 S – number 531 (pictured above).
Mille Miglia
Portago (with a white helmet), talks to Peter Collins (with a funny hat), right before the start of the 1957 Mille Miglia. The lady wearing a striped blouse is Peter’s wife, Louise Collins.
The Mille Miglia (thousand miles) was the most traditional and popular competition in the history of Italian motorsport. It took place on public roads and its format was close to the one used in rally, where the drivers race against the clock when driving from one checkpoint to the next.
The competitors are released at one-minute intervals. Slowers cars go first, based on engine displacement, increasing the challenge of the drivers in faster cars. In a time with no internet, no cell phones, and very limited resources in communication, (we are talking about Italy in the 1950s) the organization came up with a very ingenious way to help the race marshals to calculate the time at various checkpoints, the number painted on the cars is related to the driver’s allocated start time. For example, the picture above shows Von Trips, at the wheel of his Ferrari, the number means he started the race at 5:32 am on May 12, Fon was released 1 minute before, his number was 531. The slower cars were released on the evening of May 11.
For that year, the chosen route was a round trip starting in the city of Brescia going to Rome, and back, totaling 992.332 miles, mostly on back roads. The Mille Miglia proved to be a very dangerous race, the roads are narrow, the turns are sharp and the pavement usually is not in prime condition. The slower cars starting at night had to deal with the darkness but usually, the road was free of traffic. The faster cars racing through the day had to deal with traffic, not only from other competitors but also from the locals, who didn’t care much about the orders to keep the roads free. Some Italian drivers dispensed the help of navigators, alleging they were familiar with those roads.
The Machine
A rare 335S survivor was auctioned in 2016, for US$ 36 million.
Maserati was working on a new prototype since 1954, the 450S and the company decided to follow the mantra: “There is no replacement for displacement” with a larger, 4.5 liter V12, rated at 400 hp, seriously outpowering Ferrari at the time.
But the house of Maranello was truly committed to winning the Mille Miglia that year. The team brought to the race a brand-new prototype, the 335 S, also equipped with a larger engine than its predecessors, a 4 liter, V12 engine, fed by 6 Weber carbs, producing around 400hp.
Ferrari was able to build only 4 prototypes in time for the Mille Miglia, which means one of the drivers would be racing with a “regular” production GT car. The team manager chose Oliver Gendebien to receive the less powerful GT Ferrari, based on his experience.
Enzo and Portago, having a little chat before the departure.
Enzo Ferrari was the kind of boss that never missed an opportunity to show disaffection toward the drivers he didn’t like. During a meeting, right before the start of the race, he said to Portago, -” I won’t be surprised to see Oliver (Gendebien) finishing the race ahead of you”. Fon didn’t say a word, he silently accepted the challenge.
The Race
Portago and Nelson, leaving Brescia.
Only Ferrari and Maserati had entered work teams for the 1957 Mille Miglia, The peculiar characteristics of the race had prevented more factory-backed cars on the field. Maserati had big hopes for the new and powerful 450S prototype and brought two to the race, one for the experienced Stirling Moss and one for Jean Behra. But things started to go sour for the team when Behra crashed his car during a pre-race test, leaving Moss to fight the Ferraris all by himself. Maserati’s hopes completely faded away when Moss snapped the brake pedal of his 450S right after the start and was forced to retire.
Portago and Nelson, somewhere in Italy, pleasing the crowd.
With the two Maserati prototypes out of the race, it seemed the competition would be smooth sailing for Ferrari. Portago arrived in Rome in 5th place and among the cheering crowd, he spotted the Mexican actress Linda Christian, with whom he had a love affair. He immediately pulled over to meet her, allowing his Latin lover persona to take over his duties as a race driver. After a little chat and a couple of kisses, the Spanish bon vivant left the city towards Bologna, where his car would receive the necessary repairs.
A beautiful picture of Peter Collins at the wheel of his Ferrari 335 Sport, taken by his navigator, Louis Klemantaski.
Once there, the mechanics found the front suspension was damaged and it would likely break before reaching Brescia. The team manager told Fon that his best option was to retire from the race to prevent an accident. The Marquis obviously ignored the advice, jumped in the car and left, determined to win the race.
Portago and Nelson, at Futa Pass. Mille Miglia, 1957.
Driving hard on his way back, Portago passed Manfredini in Parma and Gendebien em Cremona, proving to Enzo that he wouldn’t let a slower Ferrari cross the finish line in front of him.
At one of the checkpoints, the race marshals told Portago that he was in third, with Taruffi in first and Von Trips in second. The Commendatore Enzo himself had instructed his drivers that, at this point, they should not fight for positions, in order to guarantee an easy 1-2-3 victory for the Scuderia.
If Portago had accepted the instructions, we will never know.
The tragedy
With only 30 km to the finish line, Fon was approaching the small town of Guidizzolo. He was going flat out on a straight, at 220km/h, when one of the front tires exploded. The Spaniard lost control of the car and hit a telephone pole, then it flew over a brook, plowing a few spectators in its way. The destroyed Ferrari bounced back, running over more spectators, and finally stopped upside down, in a ditch on the other side of the road.
Fon and Nelson were catapulted from the car, after hitting the pole, the Spaniard died at the scene and his navigator perished a couple of hours later, at the hospital. Ten spectators also lost their lives, victims of the accident, among them five children.
The Italian government, shocked by the scope of the disaster, banned all motorsport activities on public roads, making the 1957 Mille Miglia the last one in history. Despite the tragedy, Ferrari finished the ill-fated race with a 1-2-3 victory, Piero Taruffi in first, Von Trips in second, and Olivier Gendebien in third.
The official cause of the accident was a blown tire, but everyone knew the team allowed Portago to keep on driving with a damaged suspension, which was the probable culprit for the tire failure. Ferrari and the Belgian tire company Englebert were charged with manslaughter by Italian prosecutors in an investigation that dragged on for four and a half years.
Ferrari exhausted its financial resources fighting in court. The lack of cash brought the company to the negotiation table with Ford, in a deal that we are all familiar with. In the end, both companies were cleared of charges.
The doctors found in Portago’s leather jacket, his passport, and a note saying he was Catholic, and that in the event of any misfortune, a priest should be called.
The Marquis of Portago was seen by many as the perfect example of a playboy. He lived his life to the fullest but didn’t have time to prove himself as a competent race driver. He was passionate about Ferrari and was one of the few who dared to cross the Commendatore. He was 28 years old when he died.
The Marquis of Portago, at the wheel of his Ferrari 750, Monza, Italy – 1954.
The Scottish race driver and automotive journalist Gregor Grant wrote a passionate description of the Marquis of Portago: “a man like Portago appears only once in a generation, and it would probably be more accurate to say only in a lifetime. The fellow does everything fabulously well. Never mind driving, the steeple chasing, the bobsledding, the athletic side of things, never mind being fluent in four languages. He could be the best bridge player in the world if he cared to try, he could certainly be a great soldier, and I suspect he could be a fine writer”.
Portago’s short career didn’t allow him to be more than a footnote in the history of motorsport, but a whole book could be written about his life. I believe the events that led to his tragic death deserved to be told.
Note of the editor: This post was heavily based on a text written by Henrique Mércio and originality published in one of my favorite automotive blogs, Histórias Que Vivemos, maintained by Ruy Amaral Junior, who graciously allowed me to do so.
Since my wife and I moved from Winnipeg, MB to Markham, ON, we immediately fell in love with the back roads of this area. Traveling between small towns, we see farms, woods, and beautiful tree-covered properties, nestled in this idyllic ride through Ontario’s countryside. (top photo courtesy of the Canadian Jewish News)
A Canadair CL-13A Sabre (photo credit Blog TO)
If you are traveling on Elgin Mills Road, between Ninth Line and hwy 48, if the corn fields are not too high, a trained eye will spot something quite unusual, a Cold War-era fighter jet, a beaten-up F-86 Sabre, sitting on a field. Beside it, another classic fighter, a wingless F-104 Starfighter. For a military aviation aficionado like myself, spotting this kind of machinery is like finding a treasure. I immediately started digging for some information about those planes and this is what I found.
From far away, it is kind of hard to tell but the planes are parked on the grounds of Markham Airport, a little facility of 200 acres, tucked away in between corn fields and the forest of the Rouge National Urban Park.
The airport was founded in 1965 by two former Polish air force pilots. It consists of a single 2,013 ft (614 m) runway for small and private aircraft only. Nowadays it is barely operational, it is home to The Royal Canadian Air Cadets Gliding Program and a dozen private small airplanes, but during the peak of its operations, the Markham Aiport housed more than 100 aircraft.
Although the stories of small countryside airports are always interesting, the real character here is a person, Allan Rubin, a Royal Canadian Air Force veteran, passionate about photography and aviation. Allan worked as the caretaker of Markham Airport since 1986.
Rubin joined the RCAF when he was 18 years old and after a brief period serving in Canada, he was transferred to the USA, to fly top-secret, high-altitude reconnaissance missions for NATO and the CIA. He was stationed in the most secretive and mysterious of all the American air bases, Area 51.
The legend of Area 51 was extensively explored by movies and TV series.
As the legend goes, Area 51, a CIA military base in the Mojave Desert, northwest of Las Vegas, is the facility where the American government keeps wreckages of extraterrestrial spacecraft, collected from crash sites all over the USA. Some conspiracists claim the base also houses corpses and even live species of aliens.
The SR-71 Black Bird. In fact, it does look like a sci-fi spacecraft.
But Rubin dismisses all the alien fuss around Area 51. In an interview with the Toronto Star, in 2014, the veteran pilot declared that most of the UFO sightings in the 1950s and 1960s were the result of commercial pilots crossing paths with state-of-the-art, ultra-secret spy planes, like the one pilots flew at Area 51, the SR-71 Black Bird.
The job at the Royal Canadian Air Force was a dream come true, it brought him close to the two passions he had in life, aircraft, and photography, but instead of taking pictures of nature, he was now taking shots of Soviet territory.
Canadair CF-104D Starfighter (Photo credit Toronto Star, 2014)
Rubin was also an avid collector of aeronautical memorabilia. According to the Toronto Star, his office at the Markham Airport was littered with vintage airplane parts, from an old wooden propeller to ejection seats. But it was outside his office that the collection was much more interesting.
Beechcraft Expeditor. (photo credit Ray Barber, 2005)
Rubin soon realized that aircraft parts alone wouldn’t satisfy his passion, he wanted more. So he started to collect whole aircraft.
Canadair CF-116B. (photo credit John Bennett, 2006)
After more than 60 years of collecting aeronautical stuff, he ended up with a great assembly of Cold War-era jet fighters. All those airplanes once belonged to the Royal Canadian Air Force and after they were deemed obsolete and retired, the machines were demilitarized, which means the engines and armament were removed.
Canadair CT-133. (photo credit George Trussell, 2002)
All the aircraft, parts, and memorabilia collected by Rubin were the core of the Canadian Air Land and Sea Museum, a registered charity that he managed, parallel with his duties at the airport.
Photo courtesy of The Ferret, (Flicker)
Allan wasn’t just a caretaker of the Markham Airport, he was more like a general manager, and he had big plans for the facility. During his interview with the Toronto Star, he showed the reporters the blueprints of all the renovations he had in mind, an extended runway, an air traffic control tower, modern hangars, a helipad, and a building for his museum. At the time, construction was well underway, even if the City of Markham never issued him a permit.
Unfortunately, Rubin’s plans never took off. The federal government has plans to build a new international airport in the city of Pickering, to mitigate the struggles of the Toronto Pearson Airport, in serving an ever-growing population. This new airport will be within 5 nautical miles of Markham Airport, which is not allowed by the legislation. In other words, the days of this little facility are numbered.
A shell of a Canadair CF-116, patiently waiting for a new owner. (Photo credit BlogTO 2021)
The pictures you see here were taken between 2002 and 2021, during this time Rubin’s collection steadily decreased. Maybe he was fully aware that his dreams would never come true and started selling his airplanes and parts to collectors.
The two most complete of CF-5s in the collection (pictured above) were sent to Garret Neal Aviation in San Diego, California, in 2017 and were fully restored to flying condition. (Photo courtesy of jetphoto.com)
Allan Rubin, in front of one of his prized possessions, a Canadair CT-133. (photo credit Toronto Star, 2014)
Sadly Rubin passed away on May 18, 2020, at the age of 81. According to people who worked with him, the veteran pilot was a unique man, with a bright mind. For me, it was a pleasure to write about him and his dreams. It is a very interesting little chapter in the history of Markham, the town we chose as our home.
* If you liked this article, you can help with a small token of appreciation. Please visit me “Buy me a Coffee” page. Thank you so much. *
In September 2022 I was delighted when Chris Demaras, the team manager of Demaras Racing, asked me to write an article about the history of the Brazilian Formula Vee.
The Demaras is a family of committed gearheads competing in the Canadian F1200, one of the most exciting and competitive classes in the Canadian Vintage series.
As it often happens, as soon as I started the research, I realized that what I knew about the subject was just the tip of the iceberg. The article was published in a two-part series on demaras.com, check it out:
During the Korean War (1950-1953), Allied pilots had the unpleasant opportunity to face the new Soviet jet fighter, the MIG 15. This new plane was fast, nimble, sturdy, and well-armed. The only thing that prevented the communists to dominate the skies in Korea was another extraordinary fighter, the F-86 Sabre, flown by well-trained American pilots.
The MIG-15 was a wake-up call, and even before the end of the war, most American aircraft companies started the development of a new generation of jet fighters, in an attempt to keep up with the surprisingly advanced Soviet aircraft industry.
Kelly Johnson, talking with USAF pilot Gary Powers, during the trials of the U2 spy plane.
Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, the chief designer of Lockheed Corp., started his research by interviewing Allied pilots coming home from the war. What they wanted for this new airplane was pretty much what every fighter pilot ever wanted: speed, agility, and firepower.
Jonhson was in charge of a very talented team of designers, also called The Skunk Works (the reason for that name might be the subject of another post), the same team responsible for the creation of the legendary P-38 Lightning, one of the most revolutionary fighters of WWII. During the Cold War, they also created the U2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird.
By the 1950s the American aircraft companies were leaning towards multirole jet fighters, consequently, those machines were becoming larger and larger in order to store massive amounts of fuel and ordinance, and also complex radar systems. Johnson and his team chose a different approach for this new fighter, their idea was a simpler and lightweight aircraft, with exceptional performance in speed, altitude, and climbing rate.
The team came up with a simple yet revolutionary design, a long, circular fuselage with a tiny 7-foot wing, sharp as the blade of a knife. The wings are so small that could hold neither the landing gear nor the fuel tanks.
The prototype’s first flight happened on March 04, 1954, and with the green light from the US Air Force, production began in 1958. Lockheed called it F-104 Starfighter.
It didn’t take long for the USAF to realize the airplane wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. The 2000 km range was too short, even with the addition of two external fuel tanks mounted on the tip of the wings. The payload was also not great, 4000 lbs of bombs under the wings. The fuel tanks could be replaced by two Sidewinder missiles, increasing its offensive capabilities, but hurting the plane’s range.
The highlight of the Starfighter was its performance. Powered by a single General Electric J79 turbojet engine, producing a max thrust of 14800 lbs, the F-104 was the first production aircraft to sustain speeds above MACH 2 and an operational ceiling above 60,000 ft. Lockheed promised a fast fighter and they delivered.
The first version of the GE engine proved unreliable and underpowered. Kelly’s team was sure the F-104 could do better if equipped with the right engine. GE developed a larger J79 turbojet, able to generate 18000 lbs of thrust during afterburning, considerably improving the plane’s already superb performance.
The F-104 was also the first USAF equipped with the legendary 20mm Vulcan M61 Gatling cannon, giving the plane some serious punch, even if it carries enough ammunition for only 7 secs of continuous firing.
The unforgiving machine
The design of the F-104 is the result of thousands of hours of research and development by Lockheed. Those small, thin wings, mounted further towards the rear of the plane are a key element for its stability at high speed and also a smooth operation at low altitude. But the team compromised so much to get it done.
The diminutive wings are the culprit for the plane’s large turn radius, which can be very awkward (to say the least) during dog fights. The wing’s reduced lift is also the cause of another unwanted characteristic, the dangerously high landing speed.
The Starfighter also has a vicious pitch-up behavior: once it reaches an angle of attack of 15 degrees, the aircraft pushes itself to quickly increase the angle to 60 degrees following lateral and directional oscillation. The production version was equipped with an electromechanical device able to warn the pilot and even correct the airplane from dangerous angles of attack. But fighter pilots are a very proud bunch indeed, they don’t appreciate an airplane that corrects itself, and most of the F-104 drivers just turned off the device during their missions.
Since Lockheed tried to keep the fighter as light as possible a more complex avionics system was avoided, making the first versions of the Starfighter a plane for optimum weather operations.
The pilots soon realized that the F-104 was an unforgiving machine and the United States Air Force pushed it to more secondary roles. But the Starfighter’s few qualities would make the plane fit for a role that it wasn’t meant for.
Nuclear bomber
A Luftwaffe F-104 armed with the B61 Silver Bullet atomic bomb.
The first generation of western nuclear strike bombers was designed to fly as high and as fast as possible. Pilots and engineers alike concluded that was the best approach to avoid the Soviet fighters and the anti-aircraft missiles, but on May 01, 1960, a U2 American spy plane was shot down while flying a photo-reconnaissance mission deep inside Soviet territory. The aircraft was struck by a surface-to-air missile while flying at 70,000 ft. This tragic event showed that the high-altitude nuclear bombers were no longer safe during a possible mission over Soviet territory.
The Western air forces drastically changed the tactics of aerial nuclear strikes. They thought a small and very fast aircraft, flying at low altitudes would have a good chance to fool the Soviet radar system. The Starfighter’s characteristics of high speed and smooth flying behavior at low altitude made it a pretty good candidate for the role. Those qualities would also become a strong selling point later on.
The Vietnam War
A pilot poses for a picture in his F-104. Da Nang, Vietnam, 1965.
The F-104’s baptism of fire occurred during the Vietnam War (1964-1972) when the USAF employed almost every single aircraft in its arsenal. The Starfighter flew more than 4,000 combat missions, mostly as an escort for the EC-121 Constellation Airborne Early Warning System, operating off the Coast of North Vietnam.
The Deal of the Century.
By the early-1960s, many NATO allied nations were in dire need to replace their aging first-generation jet fighters and Lockheed saw it as a wonderful opportunity to dump the production of the Starfighter. The F-104 was the chosen fighter to equip many air forces around the globe in what was called the deal of the century.
In total, the Starfighter was either sold to or produced under license in 14 different countries. The biggest customer was West Germany, between 1962 and the mid-1970s, the Luftwaffe (German air force) and Marineflieger (German navy) purchased 916 units.
What the Germans needed was a multirole, all-weather fighter, and Lockheed had to adapt the F-104 as best as they could. Two extra fuel tanks were added under the wings and much more complex avionics as well, making the plane 2000 pounds heavier. The company called this version, F-104G (G for Germany). You don’t need to be an engineer to figure out that the extra weight made the flying dynamics of the F-104 even more challenging for the pilots. Some top brass in the Luftwaffe deemed the Starfighter unfit for the job long before the first units were delivered but their complaints fell on deaf ears.
The deal between the Americans and the Germans is covered in shady schemes and politics. There are pieces of evidence that Lockheed even bribed some German officials to keep them quiet. The same methods were applied during the selling of the Starfighter to other countries as well.
The F-104G proved to be a deadly challenge for the pilots, during the first four years of operations, the Luftwaffe crashed 61 Starfighters and 31 pilots lost their lives.
Gen. Wernher Panitzki, the Luftwaffe Commander at the time, was one of the most vociferous opponents of the F-104. He was forced to resign when he said that the deal was politically motivated. His successor, the World War II ace, Lt. Gen. Johannes Steinhoff, immediately grounded all the F-104Gs, until new ejection seats were installed.
The fighter became known among the pilots and ground crew as “The Widow Maker”. The Germans in collaboration with Lockheed tried very hard to minimize the fighter’s problems, but even though the horrible rate of crashes continued. Around 15 Starfighters crashed every year between 1968 and 1980 when it was finally replaced by the F-16 Fighting Falcon. In the end, 292 of the 916 F-104G were destroyed, and 115 pilots died in the accidents.
Canada
Canada was another important NATO country that chose to equip its fighter squadrons with the F-104, but instead of purchasing the plane, they decided to produce it under license.
A total of 200 single-seat aircraft were built by Canadair (now Bombardier) in Montreal. Another 38 dual-seat aircraft were built by Lockheed Aircraft in Palmdale, California. The Canadians renamed the fighter CF-104. Canadair also built spare parts for the German Starfighters.
This CF-104 Starfighter served with No. 439 Sabre Tooth Squadron in Europe. The distinctive yellow and black stripes recreate the squadron’s entry at NATO “Tiger Meet”. Many countries took part in this competition, represented by squadrons that had the Tiger as their emblem. The aircraft now belongs to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, Mount Hope, Ontario.
The Starfighter entered service in the Royal Canadian Air Force in March 1962, primarily as a supersonic interceptor, but also used for low-level strike and reconnaissance. The CF-104 played an important role in Canada’s commitment to supporting NATO operations in Europe from 1967 to 1971. The airplane was also retrofitted to carry nuclear weapons.
In 24 years of service in the RCAF, 37 pilots lost their lives while flying the Starfighter, involved in 113 crashes. According to official documents, only four fatal accidents were due to aircraft system failures.
Italy
An Italian pilot is just about the leave her F-104 after a celebratory last mission, in 2003.
The last country to retire the Starfighter was Italy, the Aeronautica Militare operated the F-104 for 40 years until it was replaced by the Eurofighter Typhoon, in 2004. Just like Canada, the Italians built their own Starfighter. In 1969, Aeritalia began producing the F-104S, also known as the Super Starfighter, the most battle capable of all the variants. A total of 214 F-104S left the Aeritalia assembly line, most of them for the Italian air force and some for the Turks.
The Italians know how to throw a party, and the Aeronautica Militare organized quite a few events to celebrate the retirement of their old warrior.
The F-104 in the picture above was painted in bright Ducatti red and received the #999 to participate in a very interesting drag race, against (you guessed it), a Ducati 999. The same bike that won the 2004 Superbike World Championship.
The race consisted of two passes, first a 400 meters match and then a 1000 meters. To make things fair for the jet fighter the vehicles launched in a rolling start. At first, the duel seemed unfair but it proved to be well balanced, the Ducatti won the 400 meters race and the Starfighter scored the 1 km match.
The prancing horse painted on the plane’s rudder is the emblem of the ITAF 9° Stormo (the equivalent of 9th Fighter Wing), in southern Italy. Does it look familiar? You bet. There is a strong connection between the Ferrari logo and Italian military aviation. *
Conclusion
There are a handful of surviving Starfighters flying in the hands of civilians. You can go for a ride in one of them if you have deep pockets and the courage for it. If you are a licensed pilot you can enroll in training to become an F-104 pilot.
“If it looks good, it flies good”, this is a well know aviation adage, and more often than not, it holds true, but certainly the Starfighter is an exception. The F-104’s sleek, futuristic design is nothing short of gorgeous, but the plane lacks some essential qualities to be considered a good fighter.
But if the F-104 is that bad, why did so many countries choose it? Besides the USA, West Germany, Canada, and Italy, another 10 air forces adopted it as their main fighter. They are: Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Taiwan, Japan, and Pakistan.
A Pakistani Starfighter, during a patrol mission.
Some sources forget that the F-104 was sold to the Pakistani air force. It played such an important role during the India-Pakistan war in 1965 and 1971. Flight Lieutenant Aftab Alam Kham is credited to achieve one of the first Starfighter victories in combat when he shot down an Indian Dassault Mystere on September 06, 1965.
Awwww… The Italians are so emotional.
The pilots who flew the Starfighter had mixed feelings about it, they either love or hate the machine. The F-104 was a huge sales success but we will never know about all the shady methods used by Lockheed and the US Government to push those sales.
Besides all the controversies, the F-104 is one of the most emblematic jet fighters from the Cold War era. Lockheed called it: “A missile with a man in it“, and when you see one up close, you will definitely agree with the nickname.
A final thought
I wanted to close this post with a video, showing the F-104 in action. During my search, I came across a short video that shows a scene from the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, and I think it is perfect, but since it involves one of my favorite movies of all time and one of my childhood heroes, I need to put this video in context.
Among all the different versions of the Starfighter, perhaps the most mind-blowing one is the NF-104. This plane is nothing more than a regular F-104 retrofitted with a rocket engine, installed right above the exhaust of the main turbojet engine. This extra power was meant to take the aircraft up to 140000 feet high, in other words, up to the edge of the stratosphere. Up there the air is so thin that the aerodynamic controls are useless, instead, the pilot should “control” the beast using hydrogen peroxide nozzles installed on the tips of the wings and the nose cone. Well, if the 104 was complicated to fly under normal circumstances, let alone flying it at the border of space, so why the big guys came up with this idea? The NF-104 was created as an affordable platform for astronaut training. Getting the plane ready wasn’t much of a challenge, but finding a pilot to take it for a spin would be a different story. One guy jumped at the opportunity to ride the little monster for the first time, this guy was Chuck Yeager (pictured above), the same pilot who, in 1947 broke the speed of the sound the first time. Yeager flew the NF three times, around 100,000 feet and the missions were smooth sailing, everything was fine. On December 10, 1963, he went to break the record and pushed the aircraft above 108,000 feet, but at this time, things got out of hand, and he lost control of the plane. Miraculously he bailed out and survived the accident. The whole misadventure is depicted in detail in the book The Right Stuff and, of course, the film of the same name. I highly recommend both.
The scene was shot using a regular F-104, but that is OK, you will get the idea.
What makes a man get inside an analog machine with tiny wings and an insane amount of power and fly it to the edge of space? It is the fundamental quest to go over the limits? What those guys did back then, at the beginning of the space program in the early 1960s can be considered the pinnacle of human audacity.
* Note of the editor: -Here is the origin of the Ferrari’s logo, told by Enzo himself, The horse was painted on the fuselage of the aircraft of Francesco Baracca – a heroic Italian WWI fighter pilot. “In 1923 I met count Enrico Baracca, the hero’s father, and then his mother, countess Paulina, who said to me one day, ‘Ferrari, put my son’s prancing horse on your cars. It will bring you good luck. The horse was and still is, black, and I added the canary yellow background which is the color of Modena. (Enzo Ferrari’s birthplace).
* If you liked this article, youcan help with a small token of appreciation. Please visit my “Buy me a Coffee” page. Thank you so much. *
Many years ago, I had the chance to ride a beaten-up 1995 Yamaha V-Max, I didn’t have the guts to go full throttle, but even at half of it, the front wheel insisted on not touching the pavement in first and second gear, and by the time when I shifted to third, the speedo was showing me 160 km/h. For me, that was it, that was my “need for speed” on a motorcycle. When I jumped off the bike, my hands were shaken and my heart was racing like crazy.
That is why it is kinda complicated for me to wrap my head around the idea of closing the quarter mile on a drag strip in less than 5 secs, and well above 400 km/h… in two wheels. That is absolutely insane, but it is true. Let me tell you all about it.
From September 8 through 11, 2022, the iconic Santa Pod Raceway in Northamptonshire, England, hosted the FIM Euro Finals drag racing. Any weekend at the drag strip is exciting, but when you see the world “finals” on the title of the event, be prepared for a whole lot more.
The Euro Finals is a mega event, featuring more than 250 race teams from all over Europe and a bunch of different attractions to entertain all the gear heads. But this weekend was even more special, the people who were there had the privilege to witness a new world record.
On Saturday, the 10th, the legendary French rider Eric “Rocketman” Teboul set a new personal record when he achieved a staggering quarter-mile time of 5.066 seconds, racing at 263.52 mph (424.09 km/h), riding his rocket-powered motorcycle. It was an incredible achievement, but for him, it wasn’t enough. He knew he could go faster.
On the next day, Teboul was back again at the starting line, with one goal in mind, to bring his time below 5 secs. The crowd that packed the stands waited in absolute silence while the Rocketman was getting ready for launching. When the green light flashed, he went down the strip like a missile on two wheels.
When Eric Teboul crossed the finish line, a new world record had been created. He became the world’s fastest motorcycle rider on the quarter mile, clocking 4.976 seconds, at an unreal speed of 290.51 miles per hour (464.81 km/h).
Eric promised his fans he would retire after this weekend but we all know how hard it is for a daredevil to hang his helmet. But one thing is for sure, if he is really quitting the drag strip, he is doing it like a king.
Usually, people involved with drag racing have mixed feelings about a vehicle that is not powered by something with pistons going up and down inside an engine block. Jet cars are a good example since they are mostly for “showing” rather than “going”, but Teboul’s bike is a totally different kind of beast. While jet cars are powered by aircraft engines, that bike is powered by a rocket engine, burning a mix of hydrogen peroxide fuel.
In the background you can see the “Rocketman”, taking care of his fans.
The best ideas are the simple ones and that is the case with this bike. Eric’s machine is gorgeous, with a frame made of chrome-moly tubes, partially covered with fiberglass, intentionally showing the rocket engine.
While jet engines have to suck air, compress it, mix with fuel, and then burn it to produce thrust, rocket engines burn a mix of fuel and oxidizer inside the combustion chamber, generating thrust when the hot gases leave the chamber through a nozzle (or nozzles). The power a rocket engine produces is instantaneous, making it a perfect choice for the drag strip. There is no connection between the engine and the wheels.
It is such a shame that the gear heads in North America don’t know much about the Hot Rod and drag racing scene in Europe. I must confess that it was only when I started to follow the blog Butterflies to Dragsters, that I got more informed about it.
Do yourself a favor and check it out, it is an amazing British photo blog about, you guessed it, butterflies and dragsters. Check out some cool pics about the Euro Finals 2022:
It’s summertime in North America and for the gearheads all over Canada and USA, that means race season, car meetings, and air shows.
Classic car meeting at the “Spanish Square”, happens every Saturday afternoon. (Curitiba)
But down south things are a little different, take my home country, Brazil, for example; in some cities close to the equator, it is summertime year-round, but if go deeper south, wintertime can get chilly, but not enough to stop the car related activities.
This meeting happens every Sunday morning at “Largo da Ordem”, located in the historic downtown Curitiba.
The racing season never stops, and the classic car meetings also run through the whole year. In my hometown, there are a few weekly meetings and the weather must be really cold and damp for the organization to call it off.
We also have some unique annual events like “Aguas de Lindóia”, the biggest classic car show in South America. Between 2008 and 2015, I had the privilege to work as a parts advisor for two of the most prestigious restoration/speed shops in the country. The job required traveling around the country to attend such events.
2012 Curitiba Motor Show
The Hot Rod paradise.
Of all the events I attended during that time, the most exciting was the “Motor Show”, which was born in my hometown, Curitiba. It was created with one main idea, instead of the traditional display of static cars, this event should be dynamic, with the cars taking the pavement of the local race track.
The average 1980s/90s cars can be an interesting platform for gearheads with a limited budget.
The event was also designed to bring together many different groups of enthusiasts, classic cars, Hot Rods, modern cars, bikes, drift, low riders, you name it, but the strongest one was always the Hot Rod community.
It became a meter of pride to drive your machine to the event and some rodders came as far as Cordoba, in Argentina, which is 2000 km away.
The highlight of the event is the Hot Rod Parade when the cars takeover the race track for a few laps. There is a pace car in front of the bunch in order to keep things safe, but some smartasses purposefully delay hitting the track, creating a gap where they can drop the hammer.
The first Motor Show happened on August 11th and 12th, 2012, that year I was working for Powertech and the boss decided to bring a few of his hot rods, like this 1936 Ford convertible, powered by a 302 small block Ford. I had the pleasure to drive the car for a couple of laps around the track.
This 1929 Ford Rat Rod was also from Powertech and yes, that is me at the wheel.
Yes, the parade is a lot of fun, but do you know what is even better?
Drag racing!!!! The organizers put together a “1/8 mile challenge” for all hot rods and muscle cars.
The guy in the orange 69 is my ex-boss. He jumped ahead of his opponent at the start but his car was no match for this red 68, powered by a 400hp stroker 347.
The guy wearing cheap sunglasses, in the picture above, is me. I was helping to push this 1934 Ford coupe to the starting line. The car is powered by a blown 340 small block Mopar. Not my car, not my team, but hey, that’s what friends are for.
Making the hot rodders even more at home, “rockabilly” bands played during the day and especially at night, through the weekend.
2013 Edition
For the next year, 2013, I was working for a different company, Studio Phoenix. That year we brought to the event a 1969 Mustang (picture above)
A 1972 Firebird.
And a couple of Harleys.
The weekend was cold and dump, but even though the show attracted 15,000 fans each day.
Once again the drag strip was waiting for the hot rods, for the “1/8 mile Challenge”, but another tournament was organized, with professional racers, called “The King of the Track”.
2014 Edition
For 2014 I was back to Powertech and we brought some of the boss’s favorite toys. The 69 Mustang, a GT40 replica, a barn find 1937 Harley Davidson, and the Hemi-powered top fuel.
The team made this old lady road worthy again in two weeks for the show. It has the left foot clutch and the shifter is operated by the left hand. It is a bitch to ride, I never went further than the second gear.
A friend of mine brought his 1937 Ford rat rod, powered by a V8 Flathead, with Ardum heads. On Saturday afternoon I was hanging with him, drinking a few cold ones (the car’s trunk was packed with beer) when it was announced that the track was open for the parade. He screamed, “Let’s go“. Well, he was visibly wasted but what the hell, we jumped inside the Ford, and off we went. He was going flat out on the straight and when the turn came, he downshifted, slammed the brakes, and obviously, lost control of the car. The Ford slid on the wet pavement but miraculously he brought it back. Have we hit the sandbox sideways we would have flipped his hot rod a couple of times.
2014 was my last Motor Show, in 2015, my wife and I moved to Canada.
In 2021 the Curitiba Race Track hosted the event for the last time. The facility was sold to real state development, a common fate to many race tracks around the world. The video above is a teaser about this last event.
The Motor Show is still going strong, experimenting with different formats and moving from one city to another, but I don’t know if it has the same feeling as the original ones. For me, it became a very good memory, from a time when going to work was actually fun.
If I close my eyes I can still hear the thunder of the V8s and the smell of burnt rubber. Good times indeed.
Note of the editor: None of the pictures above is mine, I stole them from:
Dragster Brasil.com.br – a bunch of gearheads journalists but the one I remember the most is Filipe Sturion, taking pictures of everything and everybody.
Fabiano Guma – One of the most popular gearhead photografer in town.
“Do Not Go Where The Path May Lead, Go Instead Where There Is No Path And Leave A Trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Riding a motorcycle in a desert rally can be tricky, the car racers have the luxury of carrying a navigator along, still, the bikers have to do it all by themselves.
Thierry Sabine
In 1977, the French motorcycle racer Thierry Sabine got lost in the Lybian desert, during the Abidjan-Nice Rally, a region known by the locals as the Ténéré desert. In a desperate attempt to find the route, Sabine lost control of his Yamaha and fell, smashing his compass. After running out of gas, he found himself with no food and just a little water left. After a while, he abandoned his machine and started to walk under the unforgiving sun. The rescue party found him, on the verge of death, after 3 days and 2 nights lost in the desert.
The vehicles, aligned in front of the Eiffel Tower, on December 26, 1978.
For us, the average people, it is hard to understand the minds of the hard-core sports competitors and how they use adversity as an engine to move forward. For Sabine, that near-death experience only increased his fascination for the desert. It inspired him to create a new challenge, aimed at all those who share his love for the majestic beauty of Northern Africa. A new rally that would become the most legendary of them all.
The Frenchman envisioned a competition starting in Paris and stretching for more than 10,000 Km, crossing 6 different countries, France, Algeria, Niger, Mali, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), and finishing in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.
The route would present more than 3,000 km of gruesome off-road challenges: rivers, mud, bushes, rocks, and, of course, the magnificent Sahara desert, in other words, paradise on earth for the adventure seekers.
Thierry Sabine didn’t waste any time making his dream come true, and on Boxing Day, 1978, nothing less than 80 cars, 90 motorcycles, and 12 trucks gathered in front of the Eiffel Tower, for the very first Paris-Dakar Rally. The competition was created with one main goal, to give the amateurs racers equal opportunity to win, but the big corporate guys showed up strong for this first event.
Yamaha was the dominant brand among the bikers, 38 out of the 90 registered motorcycles were the mighty XT 500. One of the biggest Yamaha importers in France, Sonauto, entered a team with 4 riders, fully supported by the factory. The Yamaha-Sonauto Race Team was assisted by all the good stuff money can buy: technicians, lots of spare parts, a Unimog truck, and a Range Rover as support vehicles, and even a Piper Aztec aircraft for any sort of emergency.
Christine Martin, was one of the riders that chose the new Honda XL 250S.
Honda was determined to rain on Yamaha’s parade, and the weapon of choice was the newly released XL 250S, a bike that would become a worldwide success. The company offered massive discounts for entrants who decided to buy the XL and also complimentary support throughout the rally, with technicians, engineers, Unimogs, and even a DC3, a bigger airplane than Yamaha’s. In total, 29 XLs left Paris towards Dakar.
A few other factory-sponsored teams like BMW and Moto Guzzi could be found, but Honda and Yamaha were the strongest. All the other riders were amateurs, with little or no sponsorship at all.
Citroen Dyane, driven by C. Sandron and P. Alberto. Powered by an air-cooled 600cc boxer twin engine.
The amateur spirit, that Sabine wanted so much, was more intense among the car teams. The strongest competitors were Toyota and Range Rover, but a wide array of cars could be seen at the starting line, especially the French brands. A good example is the Citroen Dyane above, driven by C. Sandron and P. Alberto. The little car is powered by an air-cooled, twin cylinder, 600cc engine, although it was the “largest” displacement among the 2CV family, the little Dyane produced a meager 32 HP, with a top speed of 120km/h. The team was racing on a very tight budget but that didn’t prevent them from finishing the rally.
It is quite difficult to find either information or pictures of the trucks that participated in the first Paris-Dakar, but the one car that shows up in every Google search is the Thomson-Oasis red and white Peugeot 404, driven by Mark Andre and Philippe Puyfouhoux. This UTE became very popular around the world, thanks to its roughness and the “bulletproof” powertrain; qualities that are not commonly associated with French cars.
The car you see in the picture above is another proof of the indomitable amateur spirit that permeates the Paris-Dakar: Philippe Hayat, a journalist, Jean-Pierre Domblides, a school teacher, and Daniel Nolan, a technician from Renault Gordini, decided to face the challenge driving a 1927 Renault KZ 11 CV. Obviously, they were not looking for the glories of victory but simply for the intoxicating taste of the adventure.
Among the competitors, there were Seven women: all of them were motorcycles riders: Martine de Cortanze, Pascale Geurie, Martine Rénier, Marido, Christine Martin-Lefort, Marie Ertaud, and Corinne Koppenhague.
“A challenge for those who go.A dream for those who stay behind.” – Thierry Sabine.
On December 26, 1978, the Deputy Mayor of Paris, Monsieur Dehais, waived the green flag on the first Dakar Rally. One hundred seventy-two vehicles tore out of the Place du Trocadero.
The rally was divided into 8 stages, starting in Paris and crossing France down south, towards Africa. At the end of this part, the competitors embarked on a ship, crossing the Mediterranean sea and landing in Algiers. During their journey through Africa, they would face 3,000 km of “specials”, the name Sabine gave to portions of extreme hardcore “off rodding”.
Each day the competitors must have to cover an average of 550 miles, stopping at a base camp for a decent meal and a well-deserved rest. In many cases, the technicians had to work through the night repairing the machines for the next day. For the amateurs, life was a bit harder; with no support crew, drivers and riders served as mechanics as well.
During the third stage, some journalists left the city of Assamaka ahead of the riders, the idea was to position themselves along the stretch to take pictures of the passing competitor. Thanks to their inexperience, they took a wrong turn at a fork of the road, and to make the matter even worse, the first group of riders coming after them just followed the tracks on the sand, completely missing the original path. Thierry Sabine quickly dispatched the support helicopter to intercept the bunch before they got too deep into the desert.
The first casualty
Patrice Dodin
At the very beginning of Stage four, the French rider Patrice Dodin was approaching the starting line with his helmet unbuckled. He tried to fasten it while riding but lost control of his Yamaha and fell. His helmet rolled off and he struck his head on a rock. Since he was still at the base camp, the doctors immediately attended to him, and later on, he was airlifted to Paris but died a few days later in hospital.
Close to the end
Gilles Comte, waiting for help. He would finish the rally in second place.
After the end of the 5th stage, the competitors had a well-deserved day off, with plenty of time to rest and to properly fix their machines. Sabine knew too well this day off was necessary because the last 3 stages (more than 3000 km) of the race would be a real nightmare.
The 7th stage, the path from Bamako to Nioro, was a dreadful challenge for everyone, with holes big enough to swallow a Citroen 2CV and soft sand that could make the whole front wheel of the bikes disappear. Only one rider completed the stage on time: Philippe Vassard on a Honda XL-250S. Sabine decided to use his power and bent the rules by extending the length of the stage, giving more time for other competitors to finish the route.
Every day competitors were dropping off the race, victims of mechanical breakdowns, injuries, and extreme fatigue. The desert was eating engines and transmissions for breakfast and bones for lunch.
The first “King of Dakar“
Cyril Neveu
With only one day left before reaching Dakar, Cyril Neveu was leading the rally when the engine of his Yamaha XT500 blew up. The mechanics were able to replace the unit overnight, securing Neveu’s leading for the next day, and sure enough, he was the first rider to cross the finish line. He won the rally without scoring a single “special” course. In the end, the overall qualifying was the most important factor.
Gilles Comte finished in second overall, confirming the superiority of the Yamaha XT500. (picture above)
Phillipe Vassard, was the third rider to cross the finish line, saving Honda from shame. His bike was the only XL 250S among the top 5.
The Range Rover driven by Alain Génestier, Joseph Terbiaut, and Jean Lemordant, was the first among cars and fourth overall.
Closing the top 5 positions, the brothers Claude and Bernard Marreau, driving a heavily modified Renault 4.
The “First Lady” of the 1979 Paris-Dakar was Marine de Cortanze, she finished 19th overall, riding a Honda XL 250S.
In the end, only 74 vehicles survived the onslaught. They gathered at the shores of Lake Rose, the official “finishing line” of the race, 30 km from Dakar. At that point the competitors forgot the fatigue and together, they celebrated the end of the most challenging rally ever.
Among all those modern, purpose-built machines, there was the valiant 1927 Renault. The team finished 71st overall.
Thierry Sabine’s original idea was a huge success, the Paris-Dakar Rally became an annual event, attracting all sorts of adventure seekers. Even celebrities who had nothing to do with motorsports like Mark Thatcher, the playboy son of then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Mark and his team, the co-driver Anne Charlotte, and the mechanic got lost in the Sahara desert for six days, during the 1982 edition of the Paris-Dakar, until the Algerian army found them, 50 km off the route.
The rally also cast a spell on some famous racing drivers, like the 6 times Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx. He gave Mercedes-Benz its first Paris-Dakar victory in 1983, at the wheel of a 280GE. (picture above).
A deadly competition
On January 14, 1986, Thierry Sabine was flying in a helicopter, during a rescue mission near the city of Timbuktu. He was looking for stranded competitors around that stretch of the desert when the pilot lost control of the aircraft and crashed against the dunes. Sabine lost his life as a victim of the accident. The two pilots and another crew member also died in the crash. The creator of the Paris-Dakar became part of a long and sorrowful list of victims related to the competition.
Any kind of motorsport activity can be dangerous and the competitors are well aware of this, but the Paris-Dakar rally stands on another level entirely. Since its first edition, 76 people have died due to being involved with the rally in one way or another.
So far, a total of 31 competitors perished while racing, 22 were motorcycle riders, 6 car drivers, and 1 truck driver. Two other competitors died victims of local rebel conflict. 45 casualties are considered “noncompetitors”, like journalists, support crew, and spectators.
The competition became extremely controversial and even the Catholic church publicly condemned the race. In 2007, a Vatican newspaper called the rally a bloody, irresponsible, violent, and cynical attempt to impose questionable Western tastes on the developing world. Well, well, look who’s talking.
The most popular rally in the world
The political instability in western Africa made it very difficult for the organizers to keep the original route. Every time a bloody revolution started in one of those countries, the rally had to take a different path. Even though the popularity of the Paris-Dakar kept growing and in 1988, it reached 603 participants.
That was the time when the official factory teams dominated the competition. Among bikes, Yamaha, Honda, and BMW fought fiercely for supremacy, and in the car field, the battle was between Citroen/Peugeot, Mitsubishi, and Porsche. The picture above shows the official Porsche-Rothmans team at a base camp, in 1986. Porsche obliterated the competitors that year with its new all-wheel drive, turbo-powered 959 model, a car that was originally designed to compete in the WRC. Porsche finished with an amazing one-two victory, René Metge/Dominique Lemoyne in first and Jacky Ickx/Claude Brasseur in second. The team had to overcome a serious issue when all three support trucks suffered mechanical breakdowns and were forced to retire from the competition. As an emergency solution, they packed the third ( and the slowest) 959 with the most essential spare parts end sent it to follow the other two cars. The “support” 959, even overloaded with parts, finished the rally in 6th overall.
The official Nissan X Trail, during tests, before the 2002 Dakar edition.
The 2001 edition was the last time the traditional route “Paris-Dakar” was used, from 2002 forward, the organizers would try different European cities as starting points and different routes as well. The name of the competition changed to “Dakar”, even if the city no longer had ties with the rally.
Dakar goes to South America
In 2008, the political instability in Africa forced the organization to cancel the Rally that year. As a replacement event, the first edition of the Dakar Series was held in Hungary and Romania.
For the next year, the organizer decided to abandon the African continent and the rally was transferred to South America. Countries like Argentina, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia have similar terrains to those found in Africa, with a much more stable political scenario. The debut rally in South America was held in Argentina and Volkswagen Tiguan (picture above) was declared the overall winner, claiming a 1-2 finish. That was the first time first a diesel-powered car won the event.
Saudi Arabia
Sam Sunderland, the winner of the motorcycle class in the 2022 Dakar.
South America held the Dakar rally for 10 years but after some countries failed to reach an agreement with ASO (the company that organizes the rally) for the 2020 event, the competition found a new home, in Saudi Arabia. As I write the final lines of this post, the plans for the Dakar rally 2023 are already set. From December 31st to January 15, the competitors will be crossing the country, starting from the beaches of the Red Sea and finishing at the sands of the Arabian Gulf in Dammam.
The real “King of Dakar”
Stéphane Peterhansel, the winner of the 1992 Paris-CapeTown Rally. He became one of the most successful bikers in the history of the rally,
In 1992, for the first time, the rally didn’t finish in Dakar, instead, the new route took the competitor all the way to Cape Town, in South Africa. The picture above shows the winner of the motorcycle class that year, Stéphane Peterhansel.
Peterhansel became the most successful competitor in the history of the rally. The Frenchman has won the competition six times riding motorcycles and eight times at the wheel of a car. He is still very much active, the picture above shows him in 2022 when he was forced to retire from the competition when he hit a rock and destroyed the rear suspension of his Audi e-Tron.
The modern Dakar
Not only the location has significantly changed after more than of Dakar rally, and some new classes were added, like the “Quad” and the “classic” (pictured above), but one thing has remained true, the amateur spirit of the competition. Certainly, the official factory teams will always outshine the independents, but the organization limits the big guys to a 1/4 of the total number of participants.
A VW Beetle, competing in the “Vintage” class. Dakar 2021.
That is how the Dakar was born, relying on the independent adventurers, the kind of people more interested in overcoming the challenges of the desert than in the spotlights of the victory.
If you want to see the amateur competitors in action, take a look at the video above. It shows the highlights of the Classic Dakar 2022.
As part of the Canada Day long weekend, the city of Stouffville, Ontario (50 km from downtown Toronto) promoted the “Rock’n Roll Car Show” with an emphasis on muscle cars and American iron in general.
The event took place at the “Village of Stouffville”, a picturesque historic downtown area, filled with boutique shops, and nice restaurants. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and the place was bustling with people, eager to see a wonderful gathering of classic cars. As the name of the event suggests, the DJ kept playing a very good collection of “oldies but goldies”.
One thing we must learn once and for all: car shows here in Canada are short, this one was from 9 am to 2 pm. We got there at 1 o’clock and some of the cars were already gone.
The cars participating in the show were top-notch, but for those who spent a lifetime going to such events, at some point we realize we have seen it all. At this time, I tried something different, instead of taking the traditional pictures of the whole car, I shot the details that I see I interesting, trying to make the pictures a bit more “artistic”.
I might not have achieved what I was looking for but it was worth the effort.
1957 RancheroThe one which started it all.That tail light is a work of art.Is it the perfect muscle car?The magic of the big blockBlue sky and……the thunder.In the 1980s, Center Line wheels like this were the rule.Fins.SuperchargedSexyLe MansUnderstatement.Kiss my SSSome British Iron.And German, as well.My favorite year.1949 Mercury truck1967 Mustang FastbackNo presentation neededConvertible FairlaneHot Rod OldsThe Elephant in the engine room.
It is easy to understand the mystique around the Muscle Car, it is a simple idea that worked perfectly: install a big, high-performance V8 engine into a median-size car and make it affordable for the average car guy.
Of course, all the “bad-ass attitude” of those cars was exploited to the exhaustion in the movies and songs, helping to perpetuate the legend. Now with the help of the internet, all the fascination won’t fade away any time soon.
Since the Coronavirus is somehow in our rear view mirror, we like to tell that “life is back to normal”, even if we know it is a lie. Recession, climate change, and the danger of nuclear armageddon are just a few reminders that life is far from normal.
Moss Corner, or turn 5, at Mosport International Raceway near Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada. Cars approaching from the right, under the bridge at turn 4. The turn is named after racing legend Stirling Moss, who first suggested the double-apex design to make it trickier than the original hairpin configuration. – Picture and info thanks to Richard Wintle.
Undoubtedly, some aspects of life are going back to how they were before, especially for the gearheads. It is summertime and that means the racing season is at full throttle. The legendary Mosport Raceway is busy again, so my wife Estela and I finally got to visit this iconic racing venue.
We went to see the last day of the 2022 VARAC Grand Prix, on Sunday, Jun 19. The Vintage Automobile Racing Association of Canada is the biggest club of its kind in Eastern Canada. The club holds an annual gathering of vintage racing enthusiasts from across Canada and the US, as well as honoring a different manufacturer each year. For 2022 MG was the chosen one.
It was a glorious sunny day, a bit windy though. However, the sound of engines and the smell of burned high octane gas made me feel at home once again. Below are some pictures we took.
Some of the group 7/8 leaving the race track.A Bimmer going back to the pits, after the Class 7 race.A few Formula Vintage cars, ready for action. This category has F-Vee, F-Ford, and F4 cars racing against each other.A 1967 Lotus Cortina.MG was the featured marque this year, and there were enough cars to fill an entire grid with them.A very wicked 914.Volvo is Estela’s favorite brand, she was happy to see a couple at the pits, even if we missed them on the track.Any car looks better in “race trim”. The statement holds true for this 1970 Volvo A142.A few examples of the Formula Vee cars powered by the 1200cc air-cooled VW engine. The black and green #12 car belongs to the Demaras Racing Team. You can check their website: https://demaras.com/No classic car racing event is complete without a 65/66 “Shelby” Mustang.
This race track has a huge heritage, it was inaugurated in 1961 and in 1967 the circuit hosted the first Canadian F1 Grand Prix. Mosport would alternate hosting of the GP with Mont-Tremblant until 1971 when it became the official track for the F-One circus. Mosport would continue to host the race until 1977, after which F1 left permanently for Montreal.
We fell in love with the circuit; it is one of the few “old school” race tracks around the world that hasn’t been altered from its original course. The facility has all the amenities to please the race fans, the grounds are surrounded by nature and always kept clean; if we owned an RV, we could live there. Mosport is truly a world-class circuit.
In 2012, the race track was renamed Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, when the company became a business partner, but race fans still call it “Mosport“.
The space-age, which started at the end of the 1940s and went all the way through the 1960s, was such a wonderful time. Humanity was fascinated with the possibility of “boldly going where no one has gone before“.
Various fields of society have been inspired by space travel, including literature, films, fashion, and so on, but was the industry that took this concept to the farthest.
The need for speed made piston engines obsolete in the aeronautical field and the transition to jet engines made it possible for aircraft to fly faster, higher, and smoother. It was just a matter of time for some engineers to develop the idea of a jet-powered car.
The advantages of the gas turbine over the conventional piston engine are clear: it is a simpler machine, with fewer movable parts, and offers a better power-to-weight ratio. Turbines can also burn pretty much any kind of fuel since it works primarily with compressed air.
Before we move forward, let’s have a little “crash course” on gas turbine engines:
Just like a conventional piston engine, starting a gas-turbine motor it is necessary an external source of power, it can be an electrical motor or pressurized air. The starter will make the shaft spin, “sucking” air through the intake and sending it to the combustion chamber, under pressure. The pressurized air will, naturally, increase temperate, then the fuel will start spraying, creating a flammable mixture inside the chamber (again, just like a conventional engine). In the next step, the spark plugs will ignite the mixture and on its way out, the hot exhaust gas will pass through the blades of the last section of the turbine, forcing it to spin and consequently, creating torque and thrust.
Gloster Meteor
Lured by the so-called advantages of the gas turbine engine, a few automakers around the world started to develop cars powered by this new technology.
The New York-based Carney Associates had designed a compact gas turbine engine for automotive use in early 1946, but it never saw production.
The Jet T1
The British automaker Rover had the honor to build the very first, fully-functional jet car. The company teamed up with the engineer Frank Whittle, one of the creators of the Gloster Meteor, the first Allied fighter jet to see combat during the second world war. Together they created the Rover Jet T1, based on the already existing model P4.
The T1 roadster was presented to the public in March 1950, but only as a prototype. The car was equipped with a centrifugal gas turbine, designed explicitly for automotive purposes, and placed in the mid-engine position. Since the jet engine produces enough power and torque throughout the whole range of RPM, (similar to an electric motor) the T1 wasn’t equipped with a gearbox. The centrifugal jet engine has a peculiar design, where the cold section sits on top of the hot section, making it more compact to fit in an automobile. It also has two separate shafts, the first one would spin at 50,000 pm and the second one at 26,000 rpm, producing 250 HP, enough to push the bulky roadster to a top speed of 150 mph (240 km), breaking the speed record for a jet car in 1952.
Rover was a traditional and austere British automaker and convincing its customers to replace their piston-powered car with completely new and futuristic technology never was an easy task, but the company was committed to seeing the jet car succeed.
In 1956, the new prototype T3 (picture above) was unveiled to the public. The elegant two doors coupe was equipped with some interesting refinements: disc brakes on all four corners, front and rear independent suspension, and all-wheel drive. The performance was close to the predecessor T1 since they were powered by the same jet engine, but the engine was relocated to the rear of the car.
Rover T4
By 1961, Rover revealed the T4, the last prototype of the series. The four doors sedan became the most viable jet-powered vehicle created by the company. The car was equipped with a 140 HP gas turbine, and just like any other sedan, the engine was mounted in the front.
It was able to go from 0 to 60mph (100 kph) in 8 seconds and after so many years of development, Rover came up with a jet engine capable of 20 miles per gallon when burning gasoline, but it could also burn diesel and kerosene as well.
The T4 was comfortable, roomy, and had a modern design, it was the closest Rover ever came to releasing a jet-powered car to the public, but the project never took off.
Thankfully, not everything was lost, the T4 was developed in parallel with the P6, which was, basically, a T4 with a piston engine. The car was a fairly successful product that marked the company’s transition from hand-built cars to more technologically advanced products.
Competition
Even after so many years of development, the Rover jet car failed to hit the assembly line, but the Brits had one more chance to show the world their supremacy in the automotive gas turbine technology.
For the 1962 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the race organizers offered a prize of 250,000 Francs to the first gas turbine car to complete 3,600 Kilometers in 24 hours. That was the chance Rover was waiting for.
The company teamed up with the British Formula One team BRM and together they created the Rover-BRM race prototype, aiming for the 1963 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Graham Hill at the wheel of the Rover-BRM prototype, Le Mans, 1963
The team’s budget was very tight, BRM supplied a refurbished Formula One chassis that was used (and crashed) during the previous F-One season. On top of the chassis Rover fitted an open-cockpit, spider aluminum body. The car was powered by the same T4 jet engine, mid-mounted, producing 150 HP.
The legendary F-One driver Graham Hill and Richie Ginter were the chosen ones to take turns driving the Rover-BRM, here is how Hill describes driving the car: – “You’re sitting in this thing that you might call a motor car and the next minute it sounds as if you’ve got a 707 just behind you, about to suck you up and devour you like an enormous monster”.
The car was granted the # “00”, which means it would compete as an experimental entry, but not to be officially classified. Conventional cars were limited to a 109 liters fuel tank but the organizers allowed the BRM-Rover team to install a much larger 218 liters tank, making up for the excessive fuel consumption. The little prototype could easily go down the Mulsanne Straight at 240kph, leaving most of the 2-liter class car eating dust. At the end of the race, the car had covered 4,165 Km, winning the prize and finishing at 8th place overall, but then again, it was not permitted to be classified.
Motivated by the excellent result, the Rover-BRM geared up for 1964. The team came up with a gorgeous, redesigned new body, and the engine received some important improvements, like the ceramic heat exchangers, that greatly enhanced fuel efficiency. The prototype was considered suitable to compete in the 2-liter class.
Unfortunately, the truck which was transporting the Rover prototype, crashed on its way back from a practice section, seriously damaging the car. The technicians were unable to repair it on time and the team was forced to retire from the competition.
For the 1965 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Rover-BRM team was ready for the challenge. The car was at the peak of its development and two British legends were hired to be behind the wheel, Graham Hill and Jackie Steward.
During the race, the car and the drivers were keeping up with the expectations, always among the top 10 positions but towards the second half of the competition, the jet engine began to overheat. With no time to fix the problem, the mechanics reduced the diameter of the air intake, bringing down the jet pipe temperature but also forcing the car to run at a reduced power level.
The Rover-BRM at the pits. Le Mans, 1965
Regardless of the disadvantage, the team finished the race in 12th position overall and 2nd in the 2-liter class, at an average speed of 159 kph. The team also received the “Motor Magazine Trophy”, for being the first British car to cross the finish line.
The Rover-BRM accomplishment at the 1965 Le Mans was nothing short of amazing, even if it was overshadowed by the first battle of the “Ford vs Ferrari” war.
The 1965 Rover-BRM was fully restored and it is on display at the British Motor Museum, in Warwick, UK.
The race was also the closing chapter of Rover’s involvement with jet engines, the company would now concentrate on the P6 sedan, which became one of its most successful models.
The work done by the Brits was an inspiration for companies like Chrysler, General Motors, and even Toyota to create some interesting prototypes powered by gas turbines. Some of those cars we will see here at TCM.
The passion the Americans feel for the oval race tracks is nothing new, it goes back to the beginning of the last century. The idea of a track where the drivers could go flat out almost throughout the whole course isn’t new, but oddly enough, it started with a very popular sport in the mid-1800s, bicycle racing.
Bicycle racing was quite popular at the time, it was fast, competitive, and convenient for the spectators since the races were held on closed circuits, and they could watch the whole action from the stands. Those race tracks were called Velodromes.
To build a smooth surface for the bikes and the structures for the banked turns, the constructors used the cheapest material they could find in the mid-1800s, wood. Since not only wood was plentiful at the time but also labor, a Velodrome could be erected in a matter of a couple of weeks.
Motorcycle racing
Harry Rembrandt Fowler (1882-1963) the one wearing goggles, and his famous Peugeot-powered Norton. The winner of the first-ever Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT) on May 28, 1907.
Back in the early 1900s, the motorcycle was a fairly new invention, but as soon as the machines became commercially available in the US and Europe, the owners and manufacturers started to organize races. Those events were held on open roads or even on dirt tracks, used for horse racing.
It was only in 1910 that two guys decided to get together and bring motorcycle racing to a professional level. One of them was Jack Prince, a British bicycle racer that came to the USA to promote the sport and to build velodromes, and the other was Frederick Moskovics, a Hungarian born mechanical engineer, who became the manager of the Daimler Racing Team in 1904. Together they came up with a simple plan, to build stronger velodromes that could stand the weight and the speed of motorcycles and even automobiles.
Their first enterprise was the Los Angeles Coliseum Motordrome, located in Playa del Rey, California.
Construction began on January 31, 1910, and it took almost 2 months to be completed. Pine was used for the track surface since it was the most resistant wood against the scorching California sun.
Millions of tiny 2-inch (51 mm) x 4-inch (100 mm) boards were meticulously nailed side by side to form the 1-mile (1,609 km) long by 75 feet (23 meters) circular track. The builders estimated that over 30 tons of nails were used during the construction. When done, the track was coated with a layer of glue mixed with crushed seashells, to improve traction.
The LA Motordrome was a very well thought project, with guard rails, lighting for night racing, and stands to hold 12,000 spectators. The whole circuit was banked from 18 to 25 degrees, but judging by some of the pictures, it seems steeper than that. The outer rim is 25 feet (7.6 m) off the ground, making it impossible to watch the races from the outside. A small railroad was built in the vicinity by the Pacific Electric Railway in order to ferry spectators to and from the race track.
LA Motordrome, 1911. Photo Phill Wassil, AAA Dirt Car Researcher Project.
The LA Motordrome was a smashing success, attracting numerous competitors and large crowds of spectators. It quickly became one of the main race tracks in the country, second to only the Indianapolis Speedway.
But the enterprise came to an abrupt end when, in 1913, the track was partially destroyed by fire and the owners decided not to rebuild it.
The end of the LA Motordrome didn’t mean the end of the wooden race tracks, the achievements of the venue were an inspiration for the entrepreneurs to build more of them.
The board track fever caught on the whole country. From 1920 through 1931, the American Automobile Association sanctioned 123 championships events and 82 of them were held on wooden Motordromes, scattered across the country.
The tracks
Board racing quickly became the favorite motorsport in the USA at the time, it was crazily fast and extremely dangerous. The daredevil riders reached the status of idols and the adoration of the fans just encouraged them to disregard the most basic concepts of safety.
The motordromes were more like a trap than a race track. The seashell coating, used to improve traction, didn’t last long and most of the time the riders had to deal with a very slippery surface. Blown engines were a common problem and they would leave a layer of oil covering parts of the track, making the ridding even more dangerous.
It would take only a couple of months for the exposed pine boards to become brittle and with the constant punishment of cars and bikes travelling at 90 plus miles per hour, splinters of the size of a kitchen knife would fly all over the track. There are even some stories about kids removing a few boards before the start of the race, just enough to stick their heads out to play the chicken game of ducking in the last second before being hit by a car or a bike. The wooden tracks required constant maintenance, but the owners, always looking for more profits, mostly disregarded it.
In an insane pursuit for more speed, the banks were getting higher and higher to the point of reaching 45 degrees, making it impossible to ride a motorcycle below 100 miles per hour.
The machines
1919 Excelsior board racer, 1000cc V-twin
The motorcycles used at the motordromes became known as “board racers”, they were purpose-built machines, conceived with one thing in mind: speed. To achieve maximum performance, lightweight was paramount. The bikes look more like bicycles, with a simple hardtail frame and skinny wheels and tires.
Hydraulic brakes didn’t exist back in the 1910s/1920s; the system was operated by cables and rods, making it heavy, complicated, and unreliable. To solve the problem, the teams came up with a very ingenious idea: to build the bikes with no brakes whatsoever, after all, they were meant to be ridden at full throttle from the beginning to the end of the race. A simpler time indeed.
A close-up of the hand-cranked oil pump, installed on a 1917 V-twin Excelsior.
To make matters even worse, those ancient engines didn’t have an efficient lubrication system and the riders had to manually pump oil every mile or so, during the race.
Following the mantra, “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday“, many North American motorcycle companies had their own race team. The picture above shows Johnny Seymour, one of the official Indian race riders.
The riders
Joe Wolters posing with his brand new Haley Davidson, at the Chicago Speedway Park, 1915.
In the 1920s, a top rider could make 20,000.00 Dollars per year at board racing, (around 280,000.00 Dollars in 2022 money), enough cash to lure young daredevils to risk their lives in the motordromes.
Their racing suit consisted of a leather helmet, goggles, wool sweater, and leather boots and gloves. It is clear that the protective gear didn’t do much to save the riders’ lives when they crashed, and crashes were fairly common during the races.
With skills and luck, some of them dodged death long enough to become heroes. Names like Jim Davis, Otto Walker, and Albert “Shrimp” Burns (pictured above) might’ve faded away after more than a century, but back then, they were idolized by the fans.
The end
By the mid-1910s, the board racing reached its peak. People couldn’t get enough of seeing the competitors racing on the edge of the knife, but the price the riders and the spectators alike were paying to keep the show going on became too high.
In 1912, during a race near Atlantic City, a legendary racer called Eddie Hasha (aka the Texas Cyclone) lost control of his Indian and flew over the guard rail, he died in the crash and the spiralling bike landed into the crowd, killing three young boys and a man, and injuring 10 other spectators.
Another horrible accident happened in Ludlow, Kentucky, on July 30, 1913, the top racer Odin Johnsons crashed while fighting for the first position. He hit a lamp post, which caused the rupture of the fuel tank and exposed electrical wire ignited the spilled gasoline. Johnson and a young boy were pronounced dead at the track; more than 25 others were taken to local hospitals, where six of them died several hours later from their injuries. Two other spectators succumbed three days later. The scale of the tragedy was so enormous that many spectators at the park used their cars as ambulances.
Johnson was only 24 years old when he died. His widow started a campaign to ban board racing altogether and she found strong support among the media. The newspapers began calling the tracks “murderdromes”. But during a time when the news travelled at a much slower pace than today, the ban campaign would take another 10 years and many more casualties to pick up momentum.
Saint Louis Motordrome. 1914. Packed house to watch the modern gladiators.
It was only when the motorcycle companies, local governments, and the entrepreneurs started to question their involvement in such a controversial sport that the board racing began to lose steam and by the 1930s it was already a thing of the past.
Of course, here I focused on the motorcycle side of the motordrome, but the race drives also faced the same danger, even if their cars had brakes.
Jack Prince, the guy who conceived the motordrome, never stopped believing. He kept building more oval (or circular) race tracks but replaced the wood with steel and concrete.
Those tracks morphed into the modern super speedways we all know today. It became part of the American sports as much as baseball and football.
Oval tracks are still dangerous but in a more acceptable way and the “gladiator spirit” of the early racers still lives on among the today’s competitors.
Batman is back on the big screen, this new movie comes 33 years after the American director Tim Burton revived the character with his haunting and stylish version of the Caped Crusader.
This new Batmobile definitely looks like a Mopar muscle-car.
Speaking as a fan, it is always exciting when a new movie pops up but speaking as a gear head, there will always be the expectation about what the Batmobile will look like.
Tim Burton’s movies feature a stylish, armored, rocket car while Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy has a tank-like vehicle; useful, but not particularly charming. But the Batmobile I would like to talk about here is the coolest of them all, the one Batman drove in the 1960s.
The Batman TV show.
The superhero genre had a long journey before becoming mainstream entertainment. The transition from the comics to the big screen wasn’t easy, both Captain Marvel and Batman had their chance in the theatres at the beginning of the 1940s, but thanks to the lack of special effects, those movies were crude and didn’t rightfully portray the superheroes like in the comics.
When The Adventures of Superman aired from 1952 to 1958, it enjoyed a good dose of popularity, as TV sets were becoming more common in the houses of American middle-class families at the time, but it wasn’t until Batman premiered in 1966 that the rest of the world got acquainted with superheroes.
The Batman created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939 is a dark and sinister character who moves through the shadows and uses fear as his greatest weapon, but you won’t find any of that in this series., Adam West (Batman) and Burt Ward (Robin), play a silly Dynamic Duo,fighting against even sillier evildoers. The series is campy, comical, and psychedelic.
Damn you, Penguin!!!
This cartoonish series was designed specifically for kids and it worked for me. As a six-year-old boy, I loved it and never missed a single episode.
Besides all the fist fighting, the crazy villains, and the occasional appearance of the Batgirl, what I loved the most was the Batmobile. For me, it was the coolest car I’ve ever seen.
Years after the more badass versions of the Batmobile appeared in movies, the car created for the TV series is still the most iconic.
The First Batmobile
Batman is a superhero with no superpowers, consequently, he needs a lot of gadgets to fight crime, and a decent car is a must.
When he first appeared in the comics, Batman used to drive a regular late 1930s coupe and then a “supercharged” red roadster that looks like a 1939 Graham “Sharknose” model.
Ladies and gentlemen, The Monkees !!!
For the TV show, the producers wanted a more impressive car, and in 1965, the ABC-TV hired Dean Jeffries, a custom car builder with deep roots in the TV/movies industry. One of his most popular creations is the “Monkeemobile” a heavily modified 1966 Pontiac GTO for the TV series “The Monkees” (another favorite of mine).
The 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, customized by Troy Trepanier.
Jeffries worked on the design and initial fabrication for the Batmobile, using a 1959 Cadillac, like the one you see in the picture above (which would be my first choice as well). But as the deadline was looming on the horizon, Jeffries gave the task to the “King of Kustomizers”, Mr. George Barris.
Barris made a name for himself in the California hot rod/custom scene in the 1950s and became legendary in the world of television and motion pictures. He created such iconic cars as The Munster’s Coach (picture above) and KITT from Nightrider.
Barris had a very tight schedule, the ABC studio gave him only 3 weeks to get the Batmobile ready. Fortunately, the perfect car was just sitting on the lot: a decaying Lincoln Futura he bought from Ford a couple of years ago for $ 1,00.
The Lincoln Futura.
The 1950s was an amazing time for industrial design in the USA. The influence of the Space Age was everywhere. American automakers created some of the most impressive concept cars of all time, and one of them was the 1955 Lincoln Futura.
The Lincoln Futura, leaving the Studio Ghia, in Italy.
The concept was created by Ford’s lead designers Bil Schmidt and John Naijar and the Ghia Studio in Turin, Italy, was commissioned to hand-build the all-metal body panels. The Italians were also responsible to fit the body on the chassis (most likely the Continental Mark II platform), painting it in “high tech” Pear white, finishing the assembling of all parts, and shipping the car back to the States, at a final cost of $250,000 (around $2,400,000 in 2022).
The Futura was officially presented to the public on January 8, 1955, at the Chicago Auto Show, but Ford had been already touring the car across the USA for a while before that. The Futura’s styling has all the “sci-fi” inspiration one could expect from a 1950s concept car: double clear-plastic canopy top, exaggerated hooded headlight pods, and long tail fins.
Underneath the futuristic body, you will find a pretty conventional car. The Futura was powered by a 368 Lincoln “Y” block V8, bolted to an automatic transmission.
Becoming a Star
Debbie Reynolds, onboard the red Futura (Life Magazine)
Ford has been known for his good connections with Hollywood and since the Futura was almost a fully functional car, it shouldn’t be hard to put one on the silver screen.
The car became the star of the 1959 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie, “It started With a Kiss”, starring Glenn Ford as a broken Air Force Sargent and Debbie Reynolds as his sassy nightclub showgirl wife, who won the Lincoln in a contest. For the movie, the Futura was repainted in bright red, in an attempt to make the car’s lines more visible to the public.
The year 1959 also marks the peak of the “Tailfins Era” in auto design. In the following years, American cars would become more and more unpretentious. The Lincoln Futura quickly lost its relevance and a few years later, Ford sold the red Futura to George Barris for a single Dollar!
Becoming the Batmobile.
The Lincoln Futura certainly is the kind of car one would expect to see at George Barris’s shop, but with no use for it, the car sat in the parking lot for years. When he received the task to build the Batmobile, the red Lincoln was less than pristine.
Holy procrastination, Batman. The Batmobile should be done by now!!!!!
When 20th Century Fox started recording the episodes, the Batmobile wasn’t there, George Barris took a little bit longer than the planned 3 weeks to get it ready. Bill Cushenberry was responsible for the metal modifications, making it more like a “bat looking” than a “shark looking” car, which was the original idea of the Futura.
When the Batmobile was finally delivered, in October 1965, I bet the Dynamic Duo was pleased. The car was slick and elegant, qualities inherited from the Lincoln Futura, but Barris made it look dark and sinister as well.
The Batmobile was there for the debut episode Hi Diddle Diddle, which aired on January 12, 1966, and yes, it was a success. But besides the ultra-cool body and all the bat-gadgets, there was a 10 years old Ford that had been neglected for a while. As soon as the filming began, some mechanical problems like overheating and leaking fluids started plaguing the car. By mid-season, the original 368 Lincoln engine and transmission were replaced with units removed from a Ford Galaxie.
A rare picture showing Adam West and the Batmobile at the filming set.
George Barris built 4 replicas, in fiberglass, using the Ford Galaxie chassis, stretched in 11 inches. The # 5 was the stunt car, used for jumps and crashing into buildings.
The # 4 was prepared for drag racing, powered by a high-performance Ford 427 “police interceptor” V8. “Wild” Bill Shrewsberry drove the car at Muholland and several other strips across the country. The #4 car had a working flamethrower and working parachutes, it was able to go down the drag strip in 12 sec.
The Dragster Batmobile #4, after the restoration.
In 2014 the #4 went through a complete restoration by the Fiberglass Freaks, the only shop in the world officially licensed by DC Comics to build 1966 Batmobile replicas.
The # 3 was exclusively used as a promo car, while the # 2 was a perfect clone of the main Batmobile and was used as a spare.
Upon realizing that he had created something more than just a custom car, Barris applied for a patent for the Batmobile, opening the door to a new source of revenue: licensing the design to toy companies.
The original Batmobile, at Barret Jackson Auction.
George Barris never sold his Batmobiles to the studio, instead he loaned them. When the series came to an end, in 1968, he sold the replicas to collectors but kept the original one.
Mr. George Barris celebrates the deal.
But the time to part ways with his most iconic creation finally came and on January 19, 2013, the car was taken to Barret-Jackson Collector Car Auction. The Batmobile was pulled into the auction by no other than Mr. Barris himself, to the amazement of hundreds of fans that were there. When the hammer fell, one of the most emblematic pieces of pop culture had changed hands, for the staggering price of US$4.2 million.
Predicting the future
The amount of “Bat paraphernalia” incorporated into the Batmobile is enough to make James Bond jealous. Are you ready for the list? Here we go: nose-mounted aluminum cable cutter blade, Bat Ray projector, an anti-theft device, an Anti-Fire Activator, automatic tire inflation device, detect-a-Scope, Batscope, Bat Eye Switch, Antenna Activator, Police Band Cut-In Switch, mobile Batcomputer, a Batphone, Bat Smoke, and a Bat Photoscope, emergency Bat Turn Lever, which deploys a pair of parachutes, magically allowing the Batmobile to do a quick 180-degree turn.
Among all the silly Bat stuff, there is one item that catches the attention, after almost 60 years of its creation: the mobile Bat computer, constantly connected to the main Bat computer, located in the Bat cave. Whoever came up with this idea, certainly predicted the future, when cars would be equipped with Internet Wi-Fi, keeping the occupants connected to a sort of “Main computer”.
Holy adventure, Batman
The Dynamic Duo met Green Hornet and Kato.
The Batman TV series run for 3 seasons, between 1966 and 1968 and it was a success, not only in the USA but all over the world as well. Celebrities of the 1960s, like Bruce Lee, and Jerry Lewis, gladly accepted the invitation for a cameo appearance in the famous “Bat climb” scenes. Even Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes showed up (another one of my favorite TV shows).
Rumor has it that Frank Sinatra wanted a part in the series, as a villain.
As part of the pop culture in the 1960s, the show lives on in the memories of fans and even in the minds of those born many years after the conclusion of the series. the phrase, “Holy______, Batman”, still can be heard every once in a while.
There were many elements that helped to make the series so beloved among the kids around the world, but the Batmobile played a major role in it. It was the third component of the Dynamic Duo.
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A brief account of this obsolete piece of machinery that refuses to fade away.
Picture above: Roger Dubois, Huracán edition.
At the beginning of the 1969 movie Easy Rider, right before the start of his journey across the USA, the character Wyatt (Peter Fonda) gives one last glance at his wristwatch, removes it from his arm and throws the watch on the ground, symbolizing he was finally free, no longer chained to time.
But unfortunately, the rest of us have no other option but to keep time as the master of our lives. The clocks are everywhere, just to remind us about it: on your coffee maker, on your stove, on your computer’s screen, and especially on your cell phone. Even if we are surrounded by clocks, some of us still insist on wearing a wristwatch, but since they became an obsolete way to keep time, we wear them more like a fashion accessory, and that is precisely how the wristwatch was born.
The idea of a portable clock, that could be strapped around the wrist or at least that could fit inside a pocket it is as old as the creation of the mechanical watch itself, in the 16th century. In the beginning, wristwatches were meant to be some kind of jewelry, designed for the affluent ladies of society. Possibly the most notorious example of this trend is when, in 1571, the Queen of England, Elizabeth I received a wristwatch as a gift from Mr. Robert Dudley.
For the men, the fashion was the pocket watch, but that was about to change.
Towards the end of the 19th century, military officers discovered the benefits of synchronizing, by time, the maneuvers among different platoons on the field and the necessity of having a reliable and sturdy timekeeper. Since a soldier has both hands constantly employed holding his rifle, the pocket watch would just be impractical. As we all know, Necessityis the mother of invention, and soon officers and soldiers alike began adapting straps around their pocket watches to use them as wristwatches.
In the late 1800s, the United Kingdom was the leading country in the still young watchmaker industry. It didn’t take long for a British company to offer a model specially designed for the Royal Army, the Garstin Company of London, presented the “Watch Wristlet”, which was, basically, a pocket watch encased in a leather strap (pictured above).
From 1898 to 1902, the Mappin & Webb company produced the successful “campaign watch” series, widely popular among British officers serving in the colonies around the world. This new product helped to spread the idea that wristwatches could also be worn by a man.
In continental Europe, Girard-Perregaux and other Swiss watchmakers began supplying German naval officers with wristwatches in about 1880.
Conquering the skies
Santos Dumont, circling the Eiffel Tower in one of his hot air balloons, circa early 1900s.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the use of wristwatches among the male population was still strongly linked with the military. In 1904, the Franco-Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont asked his friend, Louis Cartier, to make him a wristwatch that would help him during his flights. Keeping time was of the utmost importance when flying those early steerable hot air balloons, and since Dumont needed to keep both hands on the controls all the time, a pocket watch wasn’t the right choice for the task.
Cartier created a beautiful, square-shaped watch that served the aviator perfectly, it was compact, light, and gorgeous. The Santos Dumont’s Cartier can be considered the first chapter of the love affair between wristwatches and aviation.
Considering that Dumont was, at the time, a public figure in Paris, he helped to make the wristwatch popular among the male Parisians.
To honour the Brazilian aviator, Cartier has a series of watches called “Santos de Cartier”, based on the original watch.
From the trenches to the streets
1914 Omega Field Watch.
During WWI, as the tactics between the artillery and the infantry grew in complexity, the use of the wristwatch became paramount, not only for the officers but for common private as well. The companies began producing watches specially designed for the hardships of war, with luminous dials and impact-resistant glass. From now on, the wristwatch became an integral part of the soldier’s uniform.
For those fortunate enough to survive the war, the wristwatch became part of their civilian lifestyle.
At this point, the watchmaker industry was well established and innovations just kept coming. All the features that make a military watch so sturdy were transferred to the civilian ones.
In 1923, John Harwood created the first successful self-winding system.
A 1943 RAF issued Longines pilot watch.
After WWII, the wristwatch was so popular among the returning combatants that the field watch and aviator watch became separate categories in the horology universe, readily available to civilian customers.
In the 1950s the American watchmakers Elgin and Hamilton developed the first electric-powered wristwatch, in an attempt to solve the most annoying aspect of a mechanical watch, which is the necessity of daily winding. The watches were not very reliable and therefore not a commercial success but it was the first step towards the quartz movement.
Beyond the blue sky
Yuri Gagarin, right before boarding his spaceship.
During the space race, between the 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviets were always one step ahead of the Americans. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first man to fly into space when, on April 12, 1961, he completed one orbit around the Earth, travelling onboard the Vostok 1 capsule. Gagarin insisted to wear a wristwatch during his journey, and the Sturmankie company prepared him a specially built model, designed to withstand the brutal acceleration of the rocket and also the weightless environment he was about to experience. According to him, his watch worked flawlessly during the mission.
Buzz Aldrin, inside the lunar capsule, unintentionally showing his Omega Speedmaster.
One year after the launch of the Apollo program, NASA started looking for a wristwatch to be official timekeeping for the astronauts that would eventually go to the moon. After a series of evaluations, the Omega Speedmaster chronograph was the winner, outperforming brands like Rolex, Longines, and Hamilton.
In 1969, Neil Armstrong had the honour to be the very first man to set foot on the moon, but he was not wearing his watch, it was Buzz Aldrin, who left the lunar module right after, who gave the Speedmaster the privilege to be the first watch to visit the moon.
Racing
Perhaps no other human activity has embraced watches more passionately than motorsports, after all, a race driver must beat the clock before facing the other competitors on the track.
In the 1910s -20s, the Swiss watchmaker Heuer was already the leading company in the production of sports stopwatches. In 1933, Heuer released the dashboard chronograph series Autavia (AUTos + AVIAation), and this equipment quickly became the standard chronograph for all the major rally and race teams.
The actor-turned-race driver Steve McQueen, wearing the iconic Heuer Monaco chronograph, during the making of the 1970 movie “Le Mans”
While co-drivers and crew members loved their dashboard-mounted stopwatches, the drivers always preferred to have theirs integrated with the wristwatch. Through the last years of the 1960s, Heuer, in association with Breitling and Hamilton, developed an engineering marvel, a self-winding watch-chronograph movement, called Chrono Matic. Together, they seized the moment and created iconic models that became the timekeepers of the golden age of motorsports.
The American actor and race driver, Paul Newman, wearing his beloved Rolex Daytona. This very watch became the most expensive Rolex ever sold when in 2017, a collector paid $17.1 million for it.
Other brands like Rolex, Omega, and Longines followed the trend, making race-inspired watches one of the most important segments in the horology world.
Conquering the oceans
A professional diver proudly shows her Bell & Ross BR03-92.
In the underwater activities, the role played by the watch is similar to the role it played in the early stages of aviation. It is more than just keeping time, it is keeping its user alive.
The necessity of a reliable timekeeper for diving came as early as the 17th century. The hard hat divers used to attach common pocketwatches inside the helmet to keep time spent underwater, but obviously, this wasn’t the most practical solution. In the early 20th century, dust/water resistant watches could be custom made for some special customers, usually called Explorer watches, but they were far from being waterproof.
The Rolex Oyster
In 1926, the Swiss watchmaker Rolex presented the Oyster, with a hermetically sealed case, considered to be the first waterproof wristwatch.
On October 7, 1927, the new Rolex was put to a test, the English swimmer Mercedes Gleitze crossed the English Channel with an Oyster hanging around her neck. After 10 hours in the water, the Rolex came out perfectly sealed.
The Oyster became the “father” of all other dive watches that came after since they all share similar concepts, but Omega had the honour to create the first commercially successful dive watch, the Marine, released in 1932 (picture above).
In many cases, the diver’s life depends on the accuracy and reliability of the chosen watch. Since it holds such a responsibility, a dive watch must go under a series of trials before being certified for specific depths.
It is impossible to talk about diving and not talk about one of my childhood heroes, Jacques Cousteau. In 1943, the French oceanographer created the scuba diving suit, opening the doors of underwater exploration to the average adventurer.
During the 1960s and 70s, his TV shows, picturing his incredible adventures around the world, onboard the ship “Calypso”, helped to propel the popularity of scuba diving.
It is fair to say that Cousteau also helped to make dive watches popular. His favourite brand was the Swiss watchmaker Doxa, he loved the watches so much that he even became an “authorized dealer”, selling them through his company, U.S. Divers.
Cousteau started his career as an officer in the French Navy and later he became an inventor, scientist, explorer, and filmmaker. He spent his life showing us the magnificent beauty of the oceans but more importantly, he showed us the fragility of the underwater ecosystems. He died at the age of 87, in 1997, but his legacy lives on through the Cousteau Foundation, a non-profit organization involved in the conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.
The quartz revolution
By the end of the 1950s, the world was experiencing the beginning of the digital revolution, also known as The Third Industrial Revolution. Engineers were creating a whole new array of electronic components that would deeply change the future of the industry in general.
In 1969, Seiko released the Astron, the first quartz watch in the world (picture above). The main difference is: while a mechanical watch relies on a balance wheel, which oscillated at, perhaps, 5 or 6 beats per second, this new Seiko uses a quartz crystal resonator that vibrates 8,192 Hz, which means the new Astron was much more accurate than any mechanical watch.
The embodiment of the cheap and reliable electronic watches of 1980: The Casio digital.
The advantages of the quartz watch go beyond the accuracy, it is lighter and more resistant to impacts, and since it is simpler to build, it is cheaper to buy.
By 1980, the watch market was flooded with hundreds of new electronic models, driving the once-powerful Swiss watchmakers to the brink of extinction. To survive, they had to join forces, adopt the new technology, and rely on something the Japanese quartz watchmakers could never provide: tradition and status.
Cell phone, the fiercest competitor
The affordable “quartz watch” throve in the 1980s and 1990s, but as soon as the cell phone services became more affordable and reliable in early 2000, the necessity of having a timekeeping device strapped around the wrist became redundant, since that little phone people now have in their pockets also shows the time.
With the advent of smartphones, the situation of the wristwatch became pretty dire. The phone has more accurate time, and automatically switches time zones, it has a built-in stopwatch and alarm clock (besides everything else, of course). For the younger generations, it is much more important owning the latest smartphone on the market than an expensive wristwatch.
Surviving the hard times
Jay Leno has an amazing taste for cars and watches, but a questionable fashion sense, like most of the car guys.
The watchmakers are constantly learning how to adapt to survive, if the traditional wristwatch lost its relevance as a timekeeper, the industry has been marketing it as a desirable man’s jewellery. The watch shifted its status from an useful tool to an accessory, something like the final touch of a well-dressed man.
Celebrities are always happy not only to show their watch collections but also to become “brand ambassadors”.
Benedict Cumberbatch is the perfect example, the British actor became involved with the Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre during the recording of the 2016 movie Dr. Strange. Cumberbatch, who is a scuba diver and watch aficionado, gladly accepted the role of the brand ambassador.
The long-established connection between watchmakers and motorsports remains strong. Most of the Formula One teams have partnerships with either traditional or independent watch brands.
In 2021, Ferrari signed a multi-year agreement with Richard Mille, a fairly new Swiss watchmaker, founded in 2001.
Richard Mille is becoming a powerhouse in motorsports, the company has its own racing team, competing in the LMP2 class at the World Endurance Championship.
Conclusion
Tissot Alpine
A whole lot of things that we, the old timers, used to hold dear are losing their importance, not only watches. As I am writing the last lines of this post, on my cell phone, while waiting for for my bus, I totally understand how much the world has changed. The younger generations have different priorities.
The wristwatch represents something nostalgic, a throwback to a simpler time, but for some of us, it is more than that, a good quality mechanical watch is a machine in its purest form, a multitude of gears, pins, and springs, working harmoniously without any help of electronics. Usually encapsulated by a beautifully designed case.
For those with deep pockets, wearing a good watch instead a “smartwatch” is like driving a 1968 Miura instead a Tesla. It not about practicality, it is about style.
The Cold War was a dark period in history when humanity came, for so many times, too close to total annihilation. When this “war” came to an end, in 1991, the danger of a nuclear Armageddon became a thing of the past and now we can, in a more relaxed way, look back at some of the amazing war machines that were created by the Americans and the Soviets during that time.
Some military airplanes were so well designed that even after over 60 years of entering service, they are still on active duty.
One of those planes is the mythological Lockheed U2, this spy plane was born with a very elementary mission, to fly over enemy territory at 70,000 ft (21,300 meters), out of the reach of any fighter jet or anti-aircraft missile at the time.
Lockheed Aircraft Corp. created a jet plane with a very simple design that looks more like a glider, narrow fuselage and 103 ft of wingspan. To save space and weight, the landing gear also looks like the one you will find in gliders, only two sets mounted in tandem, also known as “bicycle” gear.
To take off, a pair of smaller wheels are placed close to the tips of the wings, but as soon as the plane lifts off, those wheels are jettisoned.
The Dragon Lady, coming back from another flight to the edge of space.
The prototype flew in August 1955 and a year later it came into service, the pilots nicknamed it The Dragon Lady.
The U2 is an unforgiving plane to fly, the lack of assisted commands and the bicycle stile landing gear make the landing a very complicated process. The ideal procedure is to bring the plane very close to the ground, around 2 ft (0,60m) and then stall it, safely touching the tarmac. But there is a problem: the pilot can’t precisely know how close to the ground the plane is, and if he stalls the plane at a higher altitude than 2 ft, the landing gear might brake because it has no shock absorbers.
The plane was called the most difficult-to-land machine in the US Air Force inventory. After numerous accidents at the beginning of the active service, the U2 pilots came up with a very interesting solution: a team member would follow the approaching plane in a car, informing the pilot by radio how far off the ground the plane is, and that was how the U2 chase cars were born.
The Country Squire.
Since the Dragon Lady comes down to the runway at 140 Mph, the chasing car must have some muscles. The first choice was the 1956/57 Ford Station Wagons, called Country Squire, as seen in the picture above. The U2 program was highly classified, therefore, finding information about those cars can be a bit frustrating, but an exchange of emails between the retired US Air Force Major Tommy Douglas and the hot rod website The Jalopy Journal shed a light on the subject.
Let’s hear from the man himself:
“I’m retired Major Tommy Douglas from the US Air Force. I’m also a car junkie and have been ever since I can remember. I’m emailing you because I thought you would find my history a little interesting given our shared passions.“
“In 1954, I participated in a car project for the Air Force. Myself and three or four others were given the task of finding and preparing a car to be used as a chase vehicle for the then top-secret U-2 spy plane. The U-2 was a complicated aircraft to land due to its huge wingspan and bicycle landing gear. Pilots don’t necessarily land the U-2. Instead, they fly it to about 2′ off the ground and then stall it. And they do this blindly, so spotters are needed at each wingtip to call altitude.“
“The two cars we procured were to hold these spotters and needed to be capable of speeds of up to 120mph – just under the approach speed of the U-2. They also had to have enough cargo room to hold the detachable pogo gears that go on the wingtips of the aircraft and allow for taxiing.“
“At the time, the best vehicle for the job was a 1956 or ’57 Ford Station Wagon. It was anemic in stock form, but we were hot rod guys and took care of that easy enough.”
The McCoulloch supercharger
“We had two wagons on base. The first was powered by a 312 with a McCulloch supercharger on it. I don’t remember exactly where we sourced that motor, but I think we took it out of a factory Fairlane provided by Ford. It was fast, but the driver’s timing with the U-2 pilot had to be perfect to get the spotter in an ideal position.“
“The second wagon had a supercharged Mercury engine in it. I believe that one came from a NASCAR shop in Florida, but I don’t have any specific memory of it. That car was really fast and gave the driver a little more cushion for error.“
“I don’t recall doing anything to the brakes. We had a really long and wide “landing strip” at the time and the U-2 skidded down this strip for quite a ways, giving us plenty of time to slow down. Worse came to worse, we could just swing out wide and coast to a stop”.
“I do remember lots of “testing” on that runway with those cars. There might have been some shenanigans, but no pictures. The base we used had pretty tight security.”
(The Major’s account is part of the post “Chasing The U2″, published by The Jalopy Journal, April20, 2020.
N.E. – The 312 was the biggest displacement Ford “Y” block in 1956/57. The McCulloch supercharger was part of the Ford performance catalog and could be ordered and installed at any dealership. Since it was considered “OEM” part, the supercharger was allowed to be used in NASCAR.
El Camino.
In the 1960s the Cold War was in full throttle, the U2 spy plane was being operated not only by the Air Force but also by the CIA. As the program saw a spike in the number of missions, the Ford wagons were replaced by a pair of Chevy El Caminos. They were just perfect for the mission, it performs like a muscle car and has a very spacious bed for all the U2 related junk.
Two 1968 El Caminos were ordered, powered by the 396 big-block V8, cranking up 325 hp, more than enough for the mission, but no AC. Some people will tell the cars were SS models, but it might not be the case, the SS came standard with Rally wheels and what we see in the photos looks more like a “plain Jane” big block El Camino.
The cars were painted the Air Force standard blue paint and later on, the roof was painted white in an attempt to divert some of the blazing Arizona sun (the first operational U2 base was Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ), but that alone wasn’t enough to keep the El Camino crew from baking inside the diminutive cabin and an RV style roof AC unit added to them. When the U2 base was transferred to California, in the 1970s, they received a pair of new body style El Camino.
The Mustang
When the time to replace the El Caminos came, in the 1980s, the muscle-car scene was a lot different, the oil crisis of 1973 brought the segment to the brink of extinction.
The Air Force was once again looking for a cheap, high-performance car but the market in the 1980s offered far fewer options than in the 1960s. The answer came in 1985 when they borrowed a Ford Mustang from the California Highway Patrol for some tests. Of course, the car was not your average 5.0 Fox Body, it was an SSP (special service package), with all the good stuff you can find in a police cruiser car.
The Air Force loved it, the Mustang became the U2 chase car for the next decade, and more than 20 units were bought during that time, some of them were sent to bases in Europe and Asia.
This is the only surviving U2 chaser Mustang, a 1988 coupe. The car was bought by a collector and went through a complete restoration process.
The Mustangs were equipped with the legendary 5.0 litres V8 (302 CID) small-block, able to produce between 180 and 225 HP, depending on the year. It was less powerful than the El Camino but it handled a lot better. The lack of room in the Mustang trunk was a problem and the Air Force had to dispatch a pickup truck to get the “pogo” landing gear after each take-off.
Back to General Motors
Even after the end of the Cold War, the U2 operations didn’t stop. As missions advanced into the 1990s, the Mustang was replaced by the fourth-gen Camaro in B4C-specs (police cruiser specs).
During the early 2000s, the Camaros were replaced by Australian sourced Pontiac GTO/G8. For the U2 pilots, those Aussie Ponchos became one of the all-time favourite chase cars.
As the U2 operations became less and less “secret” after the years, videos and photos of the chase cars became abundant on the Internet. As we can see, the fifth and sixth-generation Camaro has been the primary choice for the mission but some Dodge Chargers can also be seen.
The future of the Dragon Lady.
In 2019 the US Air Force came under heavy fire after whistleblowers made public some details about a U2 mission: the team was to be deployed to RAF Mildenhall station, in Suffolk, England, for what seemed to be a routine mission if wasn’t for one little detail: by August 2019, the Air Force was getting ready to airlift two Dodge Charger chasers to Mildenhall Air Base. Assuming the transport would be performed by a C17 Globemaster, that little round trip would have cost the taxpayer the modest amount of US$ 380,000.00.
-“What? Don’t you think the Brits might have fast cars that could perform the chase duty?” -“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy 2 brand new Chargers over there and then simply abandon the cars once the mission was over? – “Since we are burning money, why not buy 2 F-type Jaguars? It would still be cheaper than shipping those damn Chargers!” Well, among the many questions the taxpayers might have, one is very pertinent: Why does the Air Force keep flying this ancient airplane when the satellite technology is so advanced? To its defense, the Air Force says the U2 can be redeployed to different missions faster than satellites can be rearranged.
Since the U2 cockpit is not pressurized, the pilot must wear a “spacesuit”.
As useful as the Dragon Lady still is, the government has been slowly phasing out the program. According to the Air Force, the reason is purely budgetary.
The RQ-4 Global Hawk
It might sound crazy to dress a pilot like an astronaut, shove him inside a cramped cockpit and send the guy on a 10-hour long mission, flying on the edge of space in a 1950s era airplane. The U2 was supposed to be replaced by the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a modern, high altitude surveillance drone, but even being 43 years older than the RQ-4, the U2 still can fly 10,000 ft higher than the drone.
Whatever the future of the Dragon Lady might be, the plane certainly is a very interesting chapter in the history of military aviation. The cars that performed the chasing duty throughout the U2 career represent the birth, the peak, the near death, and the resurrection of the Muscle Car movement.
It is only natural for whoever likes speed and the sound of engines, to have an interest not only in cars but airplanes as well, as a friend of mine used to say: “Why do we like cars so much? Just because it is too expensive to have a jet fighter in the garage“.
A NASA-operated U2, followed by its Charger chase car.
As for the U2 spy plane, it is nothing short of amazing how the program brought together planes and cars, interacting with each other so harmoniously.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the most traditional and prestigious motor race in history. Every year, since 1923, the best race teams and drivers from all over the world go on a pilgrimage to the Circuit de la Sarthe, located in the city of Le Mans, France, for a gruesome 24 hours race, where everything is tested beyond the limits: the skills and physical strength of the drivers, the tactics of the teams, and the speed and reliability of the cars. The event is part of the Triple Crown of Motorsport, with the other two races being the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix.
The Corvette winner of the 1960 Le Mans GT class. This is an accomplishment that deserves a post here at TCM.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans has been, mostly, a European gathering, but we all know how much the Americans love to crash that party. From the Hemi-powered Cunningham roadsters and Corvettes to the smashing victories of the Shelby-Ford cars in the 1960s, the American Iron has been a constant presence in the race, but in 1976, the French crowd saw something a bit different from the land of Uncle Sam.
The 1970s oil crisis.
Before we move forward, let’s take a look at the events that triggered some radical changes in the world of motorsports in the 1970s: At the beginning of 1973, the oil producers countries in the Middle East imposed an embargo against the Western countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur war. As a result, the price of crude oil rose 300%, causing a severe economic depression around the world.
As one can imagine, motorsports started to lose its magic, it makes no sense to see race teams burning thousands of gallons of gas over the weekend when the average citizens couldn’t afford to fuel up their own cars. On top of that, many racing organizations around the world began to impose some restrictions to save fuel, making the sport less appealing. The rising cost of fuel and maintenance forced some privateers and small teams to quit racing altogether.
The Ford Torino driven by David Pearson finished the 24 Hours of Daytona in 16th overall and first in the NASCAR class, in 1976.
At NASCAR, all the races were shortened by 10% in length and the organizers were imposing restrictions on the use of big blocks engines.
Facing a decline in the number of cars on the grid, some race venues started to invite teams from other classes. In the 1976 edition of the 24 hours of Daytona, 8 NASCAR teams competed among the IMSA sports cars.
The negative effects of the oil embargo were more deeply felt in North America but in Europe, life was becoming increasingly hard as well. For the 1975 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the organizers imposed a new rule, no car should be allowed to refuel before completing 20 laps, and the size of the fuel tanks was also restricted. The idea was to force the teams to bring more fuel-efficient cars to the grid. To make matters worse, FIA removed the race from the Sports Car World Championship calendar, and big names like Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, and Matra just dropped from the competition.
The Le Mans organizers had to find a way to fill up those empty spots and by mid-1975, they called NASCAR big boss Bill France Sr. with an interesting idea, an exchange of classes between Le Mans and the 24 hours of Daytona, since Mr. “Big Bill” also owned Daytona Speedway.
A 1969 Ford Torino, blossoming into a NASCAR racer.
The idea was to spice up the race, they didn’t want to bring only the sports cars from IMSA to Le Mans, the invitation was extended to the top three NASCAR finishers at the 1975 24 Hours of Daytona.
This new class was called Grand International and its debut was scheduled for the 1976 edition of Le Mans. The good old boys from NASCAR were amazed, they would be going to race in some fairy tale city, in France, against a bunch of toy cars. They would be not only representing the star and the stripes but also showing to the rest of the world the most traditional and grassroots motor race in North America.
The Teams
The teams that finished Daytona in first and second position were unable to go to Le Mans but the guys who finished in third place, owner/driver Herschel McGriff and his son Doug, accepted the challenge, with a Dodge Charger, sponsored by Olympia Beer. The second team had to be picked, NASCAR chose the privateer Junie Donlavey with a Ford Torino, to be driven by Richard Brooks and Dick Hutcherson.
Le Mans and NASCAR paid for all the teams’ expenses.
The drivers going to France actually had some solid experience outside of the circle-track, Hutcherson was part of the Ford team that beat Ferrari at Le Mans in 1966, he finished third overall that year. The Torino guys also invited the French driver Marcel Mignot, who happened to be a driver instructor at Le Mans.
At the age of 90, Hershel McGriff became the oldest driver to compete in NASCAR when 2018, he participated in a couple of races at Tucson Speedway.
Another outstanding driver was Hershel McGriff, he remembers the reason he went to Le Mans in 1976: I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons they chose our team to go to France, I won the Carrera Panamericana in 1950 when was I only 22 years old, won 14 stock-car events at Riverside (road course) and ran the 24 hours of Daytona. So they knew I was capable on a road course because I wasn’t just a circle-track guy.” Keep in mind that McGriff wasn’t chosen, he qualified for Le Mans.
The Charger
The McGriff/Olympia Beer team chose the third-generation Dodge Charger (1971-74) to race in France; at this point, Dodge had already released the fourth-gen Charger, a dull-looking car that not even the most fanatic Mopar guy can remember, therefore the teams racing Dodge decided to stick with the older model.
The decision to take a Charger to France was a bit odd since Hershel himself was more like a Chevy guy. He qualified for Le Mans driving a Nova (picture above), but the team thought the Charger was aerodynamically sleeker than the Chevy.
The Olympia Charger at the pits, in Le Mans. Note the headlights were protected with tape during the daytime.
The engine that powered the car remains a bit of mystery, some of the information found on websites say it was the 426 Hemi, but according to McGriff it wasn’t, it was a 426 Max Wedge. Just like any other NASCAR stocker, the Charger was equipped with a 4-speed manual transmission.
The Torino
The Ford Torino that went to Le Mans has a very interesting story, the car was completely restored a few years ago by Rhine Enterprise and during the process, the technicians found out the car is a 1969 model that had all the body panels replaced to look like a 1975 model. That was a widely used practice back then; the teams would go to the extreme of morphing a “B” body Mopar into a Ford Torino (and vice-versa) just swapping body panels (and the engine, of course).
Finding information about the engine that equipped the Le Mans Torino can be confusing as well, many sites will tell the car was equipped with a “Boss” 429, but according to Rhine Enterprise, the engine was a 358 small block “Cleveland”. The picture above shows the engine bay after the restoration and as you can see, it is not a “Boss” 429.
At Le Mans
Upon arrival at Le Mans, the two stockers immediately became the stars of the show, the European fans just couldn’t get enough of the cars, they fell in love with the badass attitude and the thunderous sound of the V8s.
According to sportswriter Randy Hallman, the cars and teams were swarmed. “From the moment they arrived in France, the hulking Detroit beasts created a stir, fans flocked around the cars wherever they went. Indeed, they looked as out of place as if they’d been beamed down from some hovering starship–and got almost as much attention.“
According to Hallman, car-owner Donlavey said just prior to the start of the race, “Everywhere we go, and I mean everywhere, there’s a big crowd following us. They took our car and Herschel’s on a parade through downtown Le Mans–right through the main square. It was so crowded, people were pressed against the cars on both sides.”
The French media affectionately called them Les Deux Monstres or The Two Monsters.
Among many interesting stories about that weekend, there is a rumor that McGriff brought a few cases of Olympia beer disguised as “lubricant”. When asked about it, he neither confirm nor deny: “I think that’s probably true,” he notes with a smile, “Didn’t drink much of it myself, but used to give a lot of it away when they were my sponsor.”
McGriff, jumping out of his Charger.
At the first drivers meeting, the others teams required the “big American cars” should be equipped with side-view mirrors, and they were promptly installed. The two cars were also fitted with tail lights, headlights, windshield wipers, and radio equipment.
The gas problem
The biggest problem faced by the Americans was the low octane French gasoline, they knew the 102 “race gas” couldn’t be found at Le Mans and both teams ordered low compression engines for the race, set up for 92 octanes. Later on, they found out that the gas available there was somewhere around 85/87 octanes. The Olympia team tried to install one extra head gasket to lower even more the compression but it was noticeable the big block Mopar was not enjoying the diet of crappy gasoline. McGriff melted a couple of engines during practice and qualifying.
The Torino was, somehow, doing ok, and even with the gas issue, both cars were among the fastest at the Mulsanne straight, blowing off those tiny Porsches as they stormed down at 300 plus Km/h, only to see them catching up again after a couple of turns.
The NASCAR boys did what they could but it isn’t easy to make those big and heavy cars go through all the corners of Le Mans, McGriff and the Charger qualified 47th out of 55 cars. Hutcherson and the Torino qualified 55th, the very last car on the grid.
The Race
Saturday, June 12, 1976, it was a glorious sunny morning. The NASCAR big boss, Bill France Sr. was there and his son, Bill Jr., had the honor to wave the starting flag. The expectations were high, it was supposed to be the first of many races with cars from IMSA, NASCAR, and the European GT racing together.
Unfortunately, the stokers didn’t live up to the fanfare, the Charger’s engine blew up after 2 laps, being officially the very first car to abandon the race.
The Torino bravely survived for 11 hours when the transmission gave up, and that was the end of the NASCAR presence at Le Mans.
It was very frustrating, no doubt about it, as Hershel McGriff recalls: “We didn’t do a good job of representing the class, and maybe that’s why it didn’t run a second year. If we’d have run the whole race, and finished, maybe it could’ve worked.”
McGriff at the wheel of his “snowplow” Camaro, Le Mans 1982.
Besides the fiasco, both teams enjoyed the experience and the affection of the French fans. NASCAR never returned to Le Mans but McGriff did, he was part of a team that raced two small-block Camaros in 1982. His car had transmission problems but they managed to finish the race, the other Camaro finished 17th overall and second in the GTO IMSA class. Not bad at all.
Note of the editor: You can find some cool videos about Le Mans stockers on YouTube. While the Torino is (allegedly) the actual one that raced in 1976, the Charger is a “tribute car”, built in 2006 by the Frenchman and Mopar maniac Christophe Schwartz. At first, the clone was equipped with a 426 Hemi but in 2010 it received a correct 426 “Wedge” engine. When the Charger is not being raced in some classic car event throughout Europe, it patiently sits still in the Le Mans museum.
Note #2: Olympia beer still exists, the brand has a long history in connection with motorsports, for a while they sponsored the legendary stuntman, Evel Knievel.
“Why do we even bother? He is different from the rest of us. On a separate level” – Jacques Laffite, talking about Gilles Villeneuve.-
A few years ago I was chatting with some friends, we were casually listing a few great Formula One drivers when I said: – Gilles Villeneuve -, while most of the guys nodded their heads agreeing with me, one friend said: I just don’t understand all the fuss about Villeneuve, he didn’t win a single World Championship.
Even if my pal was being superficial in his comment, he wasn’t wrong, Villeneuve achieved only 6 victories during his 6 years in Formula One, with such a mediocre career, why do the fans still remember him as one of the greatest?
Joseph Gilles Henri Villeneuve was born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in the French-Canadian province of Quebec, on January 18, 1950. While most of the Formula-One drivers started their career racing go-karts, Villeneuve’s first love affair with speed was riding snowmobiles.
At the age of 19, he was already a professional racer and in 1974 he won the World Snowmobile Derby. It doesn’t get any more Canadian than that.
The skills he learned racing snowmobiles, set him apart from the other drivers when he decided to try racing cars. This is the kind of machine you have to “dive” the nose inside the turn and power slide the rear. This “drifting” style became his trademark throughout his career.
Villeneuve himself explains this experience:
“Every winter, you would reckon on three or four big spills — and I’m talking about being thrown onto the ice at 100 miles per hour. Those things used to slide a lot, which taught me a great deal about control. And the visibility was terrible! Unless you were leading, you could see nothing, with all the snow blowing about. Good for the reactions — and it stopped me from having any worries about racing in the rain”.
Villeneuve was also involved in drag racing, competing at local tournaments, which is also very unusual among F-One driver wannabes. He modified and raced the very first car he owned, a 1967 Ford Mustang coupe.
The Mustang still belongs to the Villeneuve family but it was abandoned in their backyard for decades.
The last information I have is the car was brought indoors in 2016 for a well-deserved restoration. Gilles was a Mustang guy, he owned quite a few of them.
Towards Formula-One
Villeneuve and his Magnum Formula Ford.
In 1973, with the little money he made racing snowmobiles, Villeneuve bought a second-hand Magnum Formula-Ford and started competing right away at the local Quebec F-Ford championship. He dominated the season, winning 7 out of 10 races, and also clinched “The Rookie of the Year” title.
Formula Atlantic
Villeneuve’s dominance of the season and his aggressive driving style certainly caught the attention of other teams. In 1974, with a little financial help from soft drink company Schweppes, he bought a Formula Atlantic car and started to compete. In the same year he won the World Championship Snowmobile Derby.
Gilles driving his March F-Atlantic, 1975
The Formula Atlantic was, at that time, the most prestigious category in Canadian motorsports. The regulations are similar to the European Formula 3/2 and for that reason, there were plenty of manufacturers supplying the cars, like Brabham, Lotus, March, and Chevron. The machines were powered by 250HP, 1600cc production-based twin-cam engines, mostly Ford-Cosworth, however other engines like Alfa Romeo were also eligible.
The 1975 season was a real challenge, Gilles didn’t have the financial means to hire a mechanic and he performed the maintenance of his car all by himself. He won his first Atlantic race in 1975 at Gimli Motosport Park, racing in heavy rain.
In 1976, Gilles went to Chris Harrison’s Ecurie Canada race team and with the help of factory March engineer Ray Wardell, he dominated the season by winning all but one of the races and taking the US and Canadian titles.
Gilles also won a special F-Atlantic race, held in Trois-Rivières, on September 5, 1976, where he had the chance to compete against some of the top Formula One drivers, like James Hunt and Alan Jones. He not only won the race but set the best lap time of the weekend.
Impressed with Villeneuve’s performance, James Hunt used his influence within McLaren (he won the 1976 World Championship driving for the team) to strongly recommend the Quebecois to be one of their drivers for the 1977 season.
Gilles finished his Formula Atlantic years winning the Canadian championship in 1977, and in the same year, McLaren offered him a position as its third driver. Villeneuve lied about his age, with 27 years he was considered a bit too old for a rookie in F-One, so he told them he was 25.
Formula-One
Villeneuve made his debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix, starting the race in 9th, driving the old McLaren M23, while James Hunt and Jochen Mass drove the newer version, the M26s. He finished the race in the 11th position after being delayed for two laps by a faulty temperature gauge.
Villeneuve at Silverstone, 1977.
Judging by the numbers, it wasn’t a phenomenal debut race but the media and the drivers knew there was something special about Gilles, the Canadian had what it takes to be a future champion.
Right after the British GP, Villeneuve was told by the team manager, Teddy Mayer, that McLaren decided not to renew his contract for 1978, alleging the Canadian could become a bit expensive. They hired Patrick Tambay instead. Gilles still has 7 races remaining before the end of the season and after that, he would be jobless.
Luckily Villeneuve was on the Ferrari’s radar for a while and in August 1977 he flew to Maranello to talk with Enzo Ferrari. The meeting was a success, Enzo pretty much fell in love with Gilles, his diminutive stature and his outspokenness immediately reminded the “Commendatore” of Tazio Nuvolari, a very popular Italian champion from the 1930s. Here is how the big boss Enzo Ferrari describes the meeting:
“When they presented me with this ‘piccolo Canadese’ (little Canadian), this minuscule bundle of nerves, I immediately recognized in him the physique of Nuvolari and said to myself, let’s give him a try.”
Villeneuve at the Canadian GP, 1977
Things were moving fast, Villeneuve signed the contract and for the last two races of 1977 (Canada and Japan), he was already driving the gorgeous Ferrari 312T. (photo above).
For Gilles, it was like a dream come true, as he described: “If someone said to me that you can have three wishes, my first would have been to get into racing, my second to be in Formula 1, my third to drive for Ferrari…”
1978 season.
The first whole season driving for Ferrari was somehow a period of adaptation for Villeneuve, his best results were a third position at the Austrian GP and a memorable first victory at the Canadian GP, which was enough to elevate him to “hero” status in his home country. Some of the die-hard Ferrari fans in Italy asked the team to replace Gilles with a more seasoned driver but Enzo stood by his choice.
1979 season.
The next season proved to be a very competitive one indeed, Mario Andretti and Lotus Team lost the dominance they enjoyed during the previous year but they were still among the favourites. Other strong contenders were Williams, Ligier, Renault, and of course, Ferrari.
During 1979, Gilles Villeneuve consolidated his reputation as a daredevil driver, his “take no prisoners” driving style was making him popular, he would drive any lap like it was his last, even if sometimes it cost him the chance to finish the race.
Villeneuve was one of the pioneers of the “power shift”, he mastered the art of shifting gears while keeping his right foot at full throttle and using the clutch to control the oversteering. Once he wrote a telegram to Enzo Ferrari saying: “Ingegnere, yesterday I tried very hard to break one of the drive axles of the car and I just couldn’t. Congratulations”.
Gilles even used to disable the rev limiter of the car and make the engine spin at 14,000 plus RPM during the power slides. To the mechanics he was a butcher, to the fans he was an artist.
Gilles Villeneuve celebrates victory on the podium with third place Alan Jones. April 08, 1979, Long Beach, United States of America.
1979 was the best season of Villeneuve’s career, he won in South Africa, Long Beach, and Watkins Glenn, and finished in second in France, Austria, and Italy. He collected enough points to end the season in second, behind his teammate Jody Scheckter. Ferrari won the constructor’s world championship, closing a very successful decade for the “Maranello boys”. Ferrari wouldn’t see another driver world title until 1994 when Schumacher started his winning streak.
Here are some of the highlights of the season:
Dutch GP
Villeneuve fiercely battled Alan Jones from the start for P1 and he finally got the lead at lap 10. The Canadian was managing to keep Jones at bay and it seemed he would win the race but on lap 51, just after passing the pits, his left rear tire exploded and he spun the Ferrari. He regained control of the car and just kept going, he drove an entire lap with only two tires touching the pavement, the right front was in the air and the left rear was shredding rubber and sparking with the pavement, halfway through the lap, the rear wheel, still attached to the hub, just fell off the car. When Gilles pulled over at the pits, he tried to convince the mechanics to simply replace the wheel and tire so he could go back and continue the fight for the lead. For this stunt, Villeneuve was equally praised as a warrior that never gives up and criticized as an irresponsible driver who unnecessarily put lives at risk.
French GP
If there is one race that sums up Villeneuve’s career, certainly is the French GP, 1979. During the final 4 laps of the race, Gilles Villeneuve (Ferrari) and Rene Arnoux (Renault), fought one of the most intense battles in the history of Formula-One.
The turbocharged Renault had been plagued with reliability issues since the beginning of the season, but the team was working hard to improve the cars. By the time of the French GP, most of the problems were pretty much fixed and the whole team was focused on winning the race in their home country. Jean Pierre Jabouille made the pole position but Villeneuve jumped in P1 at the start and managed to lead the race until lap 46 when he was passed by Jabouille.
The Renault cars were performing superbly that day, on lap 76 Rene Arnoux passed Villeneuve and the French crowd went wild. That would be the most complete French victory ever: 2 Renaults, driven by two French drivers, riding on French tires (Michelin), and burning French fuel (Elf) were about to finish the French GP in 1-2.
But Villeneuve was willing to rain on the French parade, the Canadian knew he had no chances to fight for the lead, but he was determined to hold his ground on P2. Better than reading about the duel is watching it.
The fight is remembered by the fans as one of the most memorable pieces of racing in Formula One. Villeneuve, who crossed the finish line less than a quarter of a second ahead of Arnoux, later described the occasion as “my best memory of Grand Prix racing”.
The battle didn’t change their friendship.
Italian GP
The Renault cars were fast enough to qualify in the front row, but not fast enough to break away from the Ferraris. Throughout the race, both teams exchanged positions until Arnoux and Jabouille retired with mechanical problems, leaving Scheckter in first and Villeneuve in second.
Scheckter, Villeneuve, and Laffite. Monza 1979
Before the start of the race, the Ferrari’s team manager told Gilles to disregard Scheckter’s status as the #1 driver and fight him for a better position, after all, both drivers had a good chance to win the championship.
From left to right: Jody Scheckter, Clay Regazzoni, and behind the bottle of champagne, Gilles Villeneuve. Monza, 1979.
Villeneuve decided to respect the hierarchy and he didn’t challenge his teammate. Scheckter won the race and the driver’s title, Villeneuve finished the race in second place. That was a smashing victory for the Maranello team, on their home turf, but the race also was the only chance Villeneuve ever had to win an F-One championship.
Watkins Glenn
It was pouring rain during Friday practicing and Gilles was easily outperforming all the other drivers, as Scheckter recollected: “I scared myself rigid that day. I thought I had to be quickest. Then I saw Gilles’s time and — I still don’t really understand how it was possible. Eleven seconds faster!”
When the race started on Sunday, there was a 50% chance of rain, and the pavement was still wet, most of the teams decided to go with grooved tires. Villeneuve jumped in P1s and was leading the race comfortably. As the pavement was getting dry, on lap 25, most of the cars came in for slicks, except the three leaders, Villeneuve, Jones and Arnoux. At this point, Williams instructed Alan Jones to “drop the hammer” and he started to close the gap, taking off two seconds per lap. By lap 31, Jones passed Villeneuve, and kept the pace, opening 3.1 seconds per lap. Ferrari called Gilles to the pits on lap 34 for a fresh set of slicks, when he returned to the track, he was 39.5 seconds behind Jones.
Now it was Jones’s turn for a tire swap, he came to the pits on lap 37. The crew responsible for the right rear wheel was having a hard time removing it off the car and they were a couple of seconds behind the other guys. When the crew chief saw the mechanics that were working on the other 3 rims raising their arms, he ordered the jacks off and Jones stormed off the pits before the right rear wheel had been locked tight. The wheel came off the car even before he reached the track.
With Alan Jones out of the race, Villeneuve easily won it, securing second place in the 1979 driver’s championship.
1980 season
Villeneuve was the favourite to win the championship that year but the engineers at Maranello faced a very complicated situation: for 1980, the “ground effect” cars were allowed back to the grid and most of the teams developed new chassis for the season.
A “ground effect” car requires a big “air venturis” or air tunnels, on both sides of the car, all the way to the rear, and around the engine. For the teams running the narrow Ford-Cosworth V8, it was a relatively simple task to develop new chassis, but for Ferrari, running the extra-wide flat-12 engine, was impossible.
Ferrari was working on a much smaller 1.5 litre, turbocharged engine but it wasn’t ready yet, and the engineers had to deal with whatever they had available.
Gilles Villeneuve at Mont Tremblant Canadian GP. He finished the race in 5th place.
They came up with the T5, a semi-ground effect car with an overall performance way below the competitors. The season was a total disappointment for Ferrari, Gilles finished it in 14th and Scheckter in 19th.
1981 season
1981 was the first year of the Ferrari “flamethrower” turbo engine.
Jody Scheckter retired from professional racing at the end of the 1980 season, he was replaced by Didie Pirroni, a promising French driver, coming from Tyrrel.
Villeneuve was such an easy-going person, always nice with fans and reporters. He became the cool guy that everybody wanted to be around in the paddock. When Pirroni joined the team, Gilles was very welcoming: “(Villeneuve) had a little family at Ferrari but he made me welcome and made me feel at home overnight. He treated me as an equal in every way” – Didier Pirroni –
Gilles Villeneuve on the left and Didier Pirroni
Now Ferrari has two very different drivers, Villeneuve was more talented and faster than Pirroni but he was also too impulsive and sometimes erratic on track, on the other hand, Pirroni was calmer and more consistent.
Once again Ferrari let its drivers down, the new 126C wasn’t exactly new, most of the chassis design was a carryover from the year before. The new 1.5 litre, V6 turbocharged engine was able to produce almost 700 HP, making the car as fast as a rocket on a straight line, but very awkward on turns. This is how Villeneuve described the new Ferrari: “A hopeless fast red Cadillac”. “You put on new tires, and it is OK for four laps,” after that, forget it.”
This new Ferrari was a very difficult car to drive, to say the least, and the sheer talent of Villeneuve alone wouldn’t be enough to bring good results for the team. The Canadian only finished 6 out of 15 races of the season, closing the championship in 7th place; a better position than the previous year but still very disappointing.
Against all odds, Gilles brilliantly won two races in 1981.
Monaco GP
The start of the 1981 Monaco GP. The picture shows the rear wing of the Piquet’s Brabham and Villeneuve in second place.
With too many cars signed up for the race, a pre-qualifying session was implemented to bring the number down to 26 competitors (good times indeed). In an astonishing performance, Villeneuve qualified in second, right behind the future World Champion Nelson Piquet. The Brazilian led the race until lap 53 when he lost control of his Brabham and crashed into a barrier at Tabac. Alan Jones (Williams) took the lead and it seemed unlikely Gilles would be able to challenge him.
Even driving a much better car (Williams), Alan Jones lost the P1 to Villeneuve.
Driving like a truly gifted driver, Villeneuve began to close in, and to the amazement of everybody, on lap 72 he passed Jones. Four laps later he received the checkered flag, proving that, sometimes, a bad car wouldn’t be enough to hold him back.
Spanish GP
Villeneuve managed to qualify in 7th place and the strategy for the race was pretty simple: pedal to the metal for as long as the new tires would last.
At the green light, Jacques Laffite, who was the pole-position, staled his Ligier-Matra, while Gilles blasted to the third position at the first corner, and even before the end of the first lap, he was already in P2. That was an amazing start of the race for the Canadian but Alan Jones was taking full advantage of his well-balanced Williams and built a 10 seconds lead over Villeneuve.
But Jones, too eager to secure P1, made a mistake on lap 14 and spun off at the Ascari chicane. Now, Villeneuve was leading the race, with Carlos Reutemann (Williams) in second, John Watson (McLaren) in third place.
Gilles now was desperately trying to keep the lead, he was taking full advantage of the turbo engine to break away from the pack on straights but on turns, they were all over him. The five front runners became a train of cars, nose-to-tail, until the end of the race.
Villeneuve, Laffite, and Watson, pretty darn close!
The drivers behind Gilles kept changing positions and it seems Jacques Laffite would inevitably win the race, for a few times, he pulled his Ligier side-by-side to Villeneuve just to see him slip away as the horsepower kicked in into another straight.
Many consider the 1981 Spanish GP as Villeneuve’s finest victory, even under tremendous pressure, he kept his impetuosity under control and drove like a master. That race was a sign of maturity, he was ready to become a world champion, all he needed was a better car.
Canadian GP
In Canada, that year, the world saw another “classic Villeneuve” stunt: The weather was cold and wet, and throughout the race, there were a lot of minor collisions going on.
Wing? What wing?
Close to the end of the race, Villeneuve clipped the rear of Andretti’s Alfa-Romeo, the front wing of his Ferrari flipped and got stuck right in front of the cockpit, obscuring his vision. Doing the opposite of any sensible driver would do, Gilles carried on, using his peripheral vision and knowledge of the circuit. The track Marshals didn’t black flag Villeneuve, perhaps waiting for him to pull over at the pits, which, obviously didn’t happen. At some point, the damaged part fell off the car and Gilles kept going, without the front wing, in the rain, finishing the race in the third position.
1982, the tragic year.
In this rare picture showing a “naked” 126C2, Gilles patiently waits for the mechanics to give their final touches.
Hopes were high at Ferrari for the next season, the team had hired Harvey Postlethwaite, a very experienced British engineer, he was working on a new chassis since early 1981, and the car was ready for the 1982 season. The new 126C2 had a more reliable turbo-engine and much-improved handling. Harvey made some remarks about the predecessor car, the 126C, and Villeneuve’s performance in 1981:
“That car…had literally one-quarter of the downforce that, say Williams or Brabham had. It had a power advantage over the Cosworths for sure, but it also had massive throttle lag at that time. In terms of sheer ability, I think Gilles was on a different plane to the other drivers. To win those races, the 1981 GPs at Monaco and Jarama — on tight circuits — was quite out of this world. I know how bad that car was.”
: Gilles Villeneuve, at the well of his Ferrari 126C2, with double rear wing. It does look weird. Long Beach, 1982. Copyright: Rainer Schlegelmilch
1982 proved to be a dark year from the beginning, in Brazil, Villeneuve was leading the race when he lost control of the car and spun on lap 30. In the USA, he finished third but was later disqualified because Ferrari equipped the cars with a “double” rear wing, considered as a technical infringement.
There were rumours, at the time, that the once enchanting relationship with Ferrari had begun to deteriorate, thanks to the lack of good results and also to Villeneuve’s unrelenting punishment to the team’s cars. To Enzo, his cars were much more than just machines and Gilles had no finesse driving them.
The Villeneuve-Pirroni feud.
The fast Imola circuit was the perfect environment for the turbo cars, Ferrari and Renault were the favorite teams to win the race. At the start, Rene Arnoux (Renault) jumped into P1, with Villeneuve and Pirroni following. At lap 44, Arnoux retired with a blown engine, leaving the two Ferraris leading the race.
It seemed the Maranello guys had the race in their pockets, the crew manager ordered to hold out “slow” signs from the pit wall, to save fuel. Villeneuve, who was leading the race, understood both drivers should slow down, avoiding any fighting for the lead, but Pironi saw it as an opportunity. On lap 46, completely disregarding the orders, the Frenchman hit the gas and overtook Gilles. The battle for the lead, the very situation the team was trying to avoid, was now at had full throttle, 3 laps later, Villeneuve passed his teammate, taking the P1 once again. They changed position a few more times; as Villeneuve slowed down each time he took the lead, Pironi would overtake him again. Eventually, Pironi won the race and for Villeneuve that was nothing less than betrayal. After the race, still enraged with the situation, he spoke to a reporter:
“I’ve declared war. Absolute war. Finishing second is one thing – I’d have been mad at myself for not being quick enough if he’d beaten me. But finishing second because the bastard steals it…”
Gilles vowed never to speak with Pirroni again. This animosity didn’t make things any better for either one of them and the team as well.
The end of a very short career.
Two weeks later, Villeneuve was blasting through the Zolder circuit, during the last minutes of the qualifying session for the Belgian GP. He had already worn out his second set of super sticky qualifying tires, he knew there was no time to go back to the pits for a fresh set. On his last flying lap, he failed to beat the time of Pironi, but instead of calling it quits and heading back to the pits, Gilles continued to go flat out, after all, it was “total war” against his teammate, and he couldn’t accept this partial defeat.
Halfway through the lap, Villeneuve exited a chicane (that nowadays bears his name) into a fast left-hand turn, as he was leaving it, he saw a much slower car ahead of him, right on the middle of the track. That car was Jochen Mass’s March.
In a split-second decision, Gilles chose to pass the car to the right, but at the same time, Mass veered his March to the same side, hoping to clear the left side of the track for the incoming Ferrari.
Villeneuve rear-ended Mass’s car at 200Km/h, his disintegrating Ferrari flipped over several times, throwing his body in the air and against the fence, on the other side of the track. Watching the terrifying video, it seems like he was shot from a catapult.
Jochen Mass left his car and run as fast as he could in a desperate attempt to do something, Arnoux, and Warwick did the same. They removed the body from the fence and waited for the medical team to arrive, there was nothing else they could do. Pirroni was also there, he grabbed the badly damaged Villeneuve’s helmet and walked back to the pits.
Gilles was taken to the nearby hospital by helicopter, once there, the doctors kept him alive until his wife Joann arrived and authorized the medical team to turn off the life support system.
It was the evening of Saturday, May 8, 1982, Enzo Ferrari told the team to pack the equipment and go back home.
The tragedies didn’t end at Zolder that year, Riccardo Paletti also lost his life in an accident at the start of the Canadian GP and Didier Pirroni survived a horrible crash during the qualifying session for the German GP, but his injuries put an end to his Formula -One career.
The Legend
Villeneuve’s meager numbers never prevented the fans to idolize him, for the Ferrari crowd he is as much a hero as if he had won a world championship.
The three-times world champion Niki Lauda, said during an interview in 2001, that Villeneuve was “the craziest devil I ever came across in Formula-One”. The drivers, at the time, had mixed feelings about the Canadian, some considered him just an inconsequent daredevil but for others, he was a champion in the making.
Villeneuve and Scheckter
Perhaps Jody Scheckter has better words to define Gilles: “I always worked very well with Gilles. We had an honest and open relationship, which was part of our success. There was no bullshit: if he made an adjustment and went quicker, he’d tell me and I would tell him. That’s what kept us in such a good relationship and was part of us winning the championship“. Jody thinks Villeneuve was honest to the point of being naive, perhaps that is the reason Villeneuve was so disappointed with Pirroni. Sheckter also thinks the crazy driver persona was staged: “I don’t think he tried to do things that put him in uncalculated danger. I think from that point of view he was a responsible driver. He always had this image of being crazy, and he wasn’t really. He was only crazy when he wanted to be, it was his image”.
We like to think that hasn’t the tragedy struck that day, Gilles would inevitably become World Champion; driving a Ferrari or any other car.
Gilles, his wife Joann and Jacques, at the Formula Atlantic paddock, 1977..
It was Gilles’s greatest fan, his son Jacques, that carried on the family’s racing legacy. The little kid that so very often accompanied his father at the race tracks, became a very talented and accomplished driver.
He understood that fast laps and crazy stunts don’t win championships, points do. He won the 1995 Indianapolis 500 and the 1995 PPG Indy Car World Series, and in 1997 he became the first (and only to date) Canadian to win the Formula-One driver’s world championship.
Despite his brilliant career, F-One fans just don’t remember Jacques as one of the greatest, like we remember Gilles. Perhaps, for us, fast laps and crazy stunts can be even more important than winning world titles.
Gilles Villeneuve was one of a kind race driver, he can’t be compared with anyone else. His legacy still lives on, the Circuit Notre Dame Island in Montreal, the home of the Canadian Grand Prix, was renamed Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve, right after his death. Generations of drivers have been paying their respects to Canada’s greatest race drive, every time they see the message painted at the starting line: “Salut Gilles“.
On the foggy morning of January 15, 2022, the American carrier USS Kitty Hawk departed from the Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Washington for its last voyage, the destination is a shipbreaking facility in Brownsville, Texas where the emblematic vessel is set to be scrapped.
Photo courtesy US Navy. Seaman Apprentice Sophia H. Brooks
The ship was decommissioned in 2009 and had been on standby ever since, waiting for a possible reactivation that never came. The Kitty Hawk was sold for a penny (literally) to The International Shipbreaking Ltd, the same facility responsible for breaking up three other US carriers: USS Ranger, USS Independence, and USS Constellation.
Like a ghost ship, the Kitty Hawk leaves Bremerton. Photo courtesy US Navy. Seaman Apprentice Sophia H. Brooks
Because of its enormous size, the ship won’t fit in the Panama Canal and it must be towed all the way around South America, in a 16.000 miles journey.
A F4 Phantom lands on USS Kitty Hawk after a mission over Vietnam, in 1966
This is the closing chapter in the history of the last oil-burning American aircraft carrier, the ship saw action in every major conflict that the USA was involved in since the Vietnam war and for this reason, it was affectionately called “The Fighting Kitten” or the “Battle Cat”.
When completed, back in 1959, the Kitty Hawk cost $264 million in 1961 money, equivalent to around $2.5 billion in 2021.
The ship left for its first operational cruise in August 1961, right before things started to go sour in Vietnam. During its 47 years of service, the “Battle Cat” carried a variety of interesting planes, like the F8U Crusader, F4 Phantom, the legendary F14 Tomcat, and even some experiments with the U2 spy plane.
The Kitty Hawk’s bustling deck, during the second invasion of Iraq.
Besides being involved in many wars, the Kitty Hawk was also part of some very interesting events, for example, in 1972, while still serving in Vietnam, racial tensions aboard the ship came to boiling point and became a riot, injuring as many as 60 sailors. The incident led the Navy to implement the UPWARD (Understanding Personal Worth and Racial Dignity) program, intended to raise racial awareness.
But it was in 1984 that the “Fighting Kitten” was involved in a very bizarre and dangerous incident.
An aerial view of the aircraft carrier USS KITTY HAWK (CV-63) and its battle group.
In March 1984, Kitty Hawk was participating in joint naval exercises called “Team-Spirit 84”, with South Korean forces, in the Sea of Japan. Thanks to the extremely volatile situation between North and South Korea, the ship spent around 10 years in the region, as a deterrent against any crazy idea from the “commies“
During the peak of the Cold War, it was a common practice for the Soviet Navy to closely follow NATO ships and when I say “closely”, I really mean it. That was a good way to exercise tactics and maneuvers in a real-world environment and also to force the Americans to show any new weapons.
Things were not different on that occasion, the Soviets sent a few warships, airplanes, and the K-314, the Victor-Class nuclear attack submarine, to follow the Kitty Hawk and its 8 escort ships.
Before we proceed let’s take a look at these two magnificent machines involved in this surreal event.
The Kitty Hawk.
The ship was completed in 1959 and entered service in 1961, it was the first of the so-called “supercarriers”, an evolution of the ” Forrestal-class” carriers that fought in WWII.
The Battle Cat is a massive ship:
Length: 325.8 meters (1,068 ft)
Displacement: 83,300 tons (fully loaded)
Beam (width): 86 meters (282 ft)
Power comes from eight Foster Wheeler boilers, providing steam for the Westinghouse turbines, generating a total of 280,000 HP. All this power is then distributed to four propeller shafts, allowing the ship to sail at a max speed of 33 knots (61 Km/h).
The carrier is capable to transport 85 aircraft, some of them could be armed with nuclear missiles. The ship is manned by a crew of 5,624 officers and seamen.
The K-134
The K-314 belongs to the “Yorsh” family of Soviet subs and code-named “Victor-class” attack submarine by NATO. Its primary mission is to intercept any kind of enemy ship. It is smaller, faster, and more maneuverable than a ballistic missile sub.
It was launched on September 05, 1972.
Length: 94.3 meters (309 ft)
Beam (width): 10 meters (32 ft 10 inc)
Displacement: 4,826 tons
The K-314 was powered by one pressurized water turbine, receiving heat from a VM-4 nuclear reactor core, generating 31,000 HP, enough power to propel the ship to a max speed of 32 knots (60 Km/h) submerged.
The details of the armament are classified but it was armed with torpedoes and nuclear missiles. The ship is manned by a crew of 94 officers and seamen.
The collision.
On March 14, the K-314 spotted the American armada and immediately started the chase. As soon as the captain of the “Battle Cat” got the sub on the sonar, he tried every trick he knew to break away from the Soviet sub. The two commanders kept playing this “cat and mouse” game for a whole week. Many times the Americans knew exactly where the K-314 was but sometimes it would simply disappear. The problem is the Sea of Japan is too shallow for maximum performance of the sonar equipment, and to make matters even worse, the region is constantly busy with the traffic of military and merchant ships, it can be a nightmare for the sonar operators.
At this point, the K-314 was also being chased by a submarine hunter Lockheed P-3 Orion.
In the early hours of March, 21, Captain Vladimir Evseenko lost track of the Americans, mostly due to bad weather. He decided to bring the sub to periscope depth, around 10 meters, to take a peek around but what he saw was probably the scariest thing ever: the Kitty Hawk at 4 maybe 5 kilometres away, steaming down at full speed, approaching the K-314 from the stern. He ordered emergency diving but it was too late, the collision was inevitable. Here is what happened, according to Captain Evseenko:
“The first thought was that the conning tower had been destroyed and the submarine’s body was cut to pieces“. “We checked the periscope and antennas – they were in order. No leaks were reported, and the mechanisms were ok. Then suddenly another strike! On the starboard side! We checked again – everything was in order…. We were trying to figure out what happened. It became clear that an aircraft carrier had rammed us. The second strike hit the propeller. The first one, most likely, bent the stabilator.”
Onboard the Orion plane, the K-314 signal got mixed with the sound of the Kitty Hawk, they thought the sub was going under the carrier when they heard a loud bang and a screeching noise that lasted for long minutes. The crew looked at each other in disbelief.
Onboard the Battle Cat, the collision caught everybody by surprise, here is the story, told by Captain David N. Rogers:
“I was on the bridge at the time of the incident, monitoring one of the two radars. “We felt a sudden shudder, a fairly violent shudder. We immediately launched two helicopters to see if we could render any assistance to them but the Soviet sub appeared to have suffered no extensive damage“.
News of the accident travelled fast, a seaman stormed into the mess room and shouted: “We run over the Ivans” and the whole room erupted in cheers.
This picture shows the damages on the K-314.
Captain Evseenko had no other option but to bring the K-314 to surface and wait for help. After daybreak, the Kitty Hawk sent the choppers again for some precious pictures, after all, it is not every day you have a Soviet sub sitting still right in front of you. There was no sign of radioactive material leaking and the ship was not sinking, but it was not seaworthy. A Soviet cruiser stood at its side, for protection, until the tug boats came and towed the crippled sub away.
The Kitty Hawk didn’t leave the scene unscathed, the collision opened a hole in its hull and a considerable amount of jet fuel poured into the ocean, the ship was making water, but not much and it was able to make it to the base on its own.
Later on, the maintenance crew found a big chunk of the K-314 propeller stuck on the carrier’s hull and the piece was kept as a trophy.
Conclusions.
Miraculously no one got hurt in the accident and there was no radioactive leakage. Both ships were armed with nuclear missiles but it was very unlikely that the collision would detonate the weapons since they need to be armed to pose any danger.
Even if a much bigger catastrophe didn’t materialize that morning, one can’t help but think: how could both captains let this happen? On the American side, there is a reasonable explanation: as dangerous as those exercises were, it was a peacetime operation, they were not shooting at each other and Captain Rogers knew the K-314 was mostly trying to disrupt the operation; in this case, from time to time the Kitty Hawk crew would turn a blind eye (or in this case, a deaf ear) to the annoying sub and just concentrate on the exercise and probably the collision happened during one of those period of time.
On the Soviet side, things were a bit more complicated, Captain Evseenko’s sole mission during the operation was to stalk the Kitty Hawk so, how could he lose contact with an 80.000-ton ship that was no further than 5 Km away?
For some specialists, the commander lied about what happened. The Soviet submarine captains were very reckless during the last years of the Cold War, one of their favorite maneuvers was to emerge, at full speed, right in the middle of an American task force, just to show to the enemy how daring a Soviet captain can be. Probably that was what Evseenko tried to do but he grossly miscalculated the speed and distance of the Battle Cat.
Evseenko was relieved of his sea Captain duties and spent the rest of his career ashore, but he always believed his punishment was too harsh. He sums up: “We didn’t sink, nobody died”.
This is just another story about those crazy years of the Cold War, a time when we lived mostly in peace but at the same time, awfully close to total annihilation.
The Classic Machines 