Sports Car Digest - The Sports, Racing and Vintage Car Journal
Sports Car Digest focuses on Classic Car Auctions, Concours d’Elegance, Vintage Car Racing, Road Rallies and other historic automotive events.
Hurley Haywood was reunited with his bright yellow 1973 Porsche 911 RSR, car number 59, on the 40th Anniversary of his 12 Hours of Sebring win in 1973. Haywood, with multiple victories at Daytona and Le Mans as well as Sebring, is considered by many to be the world's most successful endurance driver. Throughout this video, produced by Porsche, he discusses the car, what makes Sebring so special, … [Read more...]
Lost and Found After 60 Years - A Truly Italian History By Giuseppe De Angelis Since the birth of the car at the end of the nineteenth century, cars have been a great passion in the De Angelis family. My grandfather and his brothers were founders of the local Automobil Club of Italy in our hometown of Ascoli Piceno. My father Francesco (born in 1923), and his brothers Vito (born in 1920) and … [Read more...]
The 2013 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance marked the first time that a rare pair of the surviving ‘Prinz Heinrich’ Benz cars were displayed in public at the same event. Both Prinz Heinrich Benz models were presented in museum quality. The 21/80 hp 1910 racer came directly from the Mercedes-Benz Museum collection in Stuttgart, Germany, and the other from Bruce McCaw’s private collection … [Read more...]
Fascination with miniature versions of something grand, like an automobile, may seem frivolous, silly even. Items like this, arguably little more than trinkets, serve very little if any practical purpose. While they may be faithful recreations of something larger, they are just that, recreations. By the same token, though, our ceaseless and at times almost obsessive fascination with the larger … [Read more...]
Sixty years after Jaguar's legendary test driver Norman Dewis achieved a world record average flying mile speed of 172.4mph in a modified XK 120, Jaguar returned to Jabbeke, Belgium, on Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 for another sprint test, this time with a new Jaguar F-TYPE V8S and race driver Andy Wallace. Jaguar has a long-standing historical relationship with Jabbeke that began nearly … [Read more...]
This is not a vehicle for the sports car buyer, obviously. The 2013 Chevrolet Equinox LTZ might, however, be a solid extra car for the sports car owner or those needing for utility in their driveway. Like practically all of the crossover SUVs, the Equinox is good at several things and a solid choice for buyers looking for versatility in their driveway. The Equinox is one of the more popular … [Read more...]
By Louis Galanos On February 4th of this year I had to go to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Gainesville, Florida for my annual physical. While there I happened to run into an old Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) friend and we sat in the hospital waiting room swapping stories from the "good old days." I told my friend that since I retired I had been doing a bit of writing about … [Read more...]
Henry Ford II's impassioned drive to bring the company racing glory at Le Mans had a less than stellar beginning, but with four victories at the prestigious 24 hour race and plenty more impressive victories in races around the world, the Ford GT40 has certainly gone into the history books as one of the most significant and successful racing cars of them all. Almost every GT40 to have seen the tack … [Read more...]
In 1964, a 27-year-old Bruce McLaren declared that "Life is measured in achievement, not in years alone." His company, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd, wasn't even a year old. Back then, Bruce’s vision was shared by fewer than half a dozen loyal souls who slogged across the world to race his cars. Today, the McLaren Group employs more than 2,000 people, all of whom still share Bruce’s ideals … [Read more...]
For more than half a century, motor racing has drawn huge crowds in Japan, but for motorsports fans one race stands out – the 1964 Grand Prix meeting at Suzuka. That was the day the Skyline legend began. The participants in that year's GT-II race lined up on the grid, and among them was a team of Prince Motor Company Skyline GTs. They may have looked like little more than lightly modified … [Read more...]
The last few years have seen Cadillac rebranding itself in a big way. Their newer cars have been presented as nifty blends of luxury, premium image, and some sportiness. They have gradually gotten more sophisticated as well, with additional interesting engine options as well as chassis tweaked and improved through punishment at places like the Nurburgring. Therefore, if you haven't been paying … [Read more...]
Report and photos (unless noted) by Jamie Doyle Horsepower is something the vast majority of enthusiasts spend a lot of time thinking about. If possible we want a large dose of it, and are always craving more. We read about it, analyze it, brag about it, even lose sleep over it. But when does a lot of power become too much power? Is too much power even possible? One car that perhaps comes … [Read more...]
By Dennis Gray and Peter Giddings | Photos by Dennis Gray This 1926 Delage Grand Prix 15-S-8, better known as Dick Seaman's "Black Delage", is now garaged in California, having been recently rebuilt to period specifications. As a ten-year-old Grand Prix car the Delage, chassis #4, was driven to victory by Richard "Dick" Seaman in the 1936 Isle of Man race against a number of newer and more … [Read more...]
On May 27, 1934 the German racing cars that were soon to acquire the nickname "Silver Arrow" were entered for their first race, on the Avus racetrack in Berlin. Although neither Auto Union nor Mercedes-Benz won that event, it was not long before these two manufacturers began to dominate international Grand Prix racing, a situation that prevailed until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. … [Read more...]
The current world speed record on a public road was set January 28th, 1938 by Rudolf Caracciola in the Mercedes-Benz W 125 Streamliner. For seventy-five years, the record-breaking 268.9 mph (432.7 kmh) run made on the A5 Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt has stood the test of time (and sanity). Rudolf Caracciola, who at that time was the lead racing driver for Mercedes-Benz, achieved the … [Read more...]
