Paying Attention: When David Bowie died on 10 January 2016 in Manhattan, the world of music (and in particular Rock music), lost not just one of its’ best writers, singers, and performers, but an artist who was innovative in financial ways as well. Bowie was one of the very first rock musicians to realize the long-term value of the intellectual property he was creating, and, working with his financial manager Bill Zysblat and banker David Pullman they created a new financial instrument–a bond–backed by the projected future royalty revenue from his music (in other words a CDO or collateralized debt obligation). Here are two very good articles on the “Bowie Bond” and it’s impact on the world of intellectual property . First, the Financial Times take on the Bowie Bond and then, the BBC’s explanation of Bowie’s financial engineering. Bowie’s mastery of persona development and his adventurous music curiosity may be the things that most will remember him for, but his endless exploration of all things that had to do with his art is fascinating.
John wooden quote
“Talent is god given, be humble. Fame is man given, be grateful. Conceit is self given, be careful.”
The Annotated History of Sebring, Part 3
(Note: the 2016 running of The 12 is over, now, but the series on Sebring’s incredible history continues. Here’s Part 3).
The Plastic Fantastic: How Chaparral Changed Sportscar Racing.
Continuing our look into the cars, companies, drivers, and personalities who have made the 12 Hours of Sebring a legendary race.
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Chaparral changed the status quo at Sebring in 1965.
The Chaparral was the product of the driving/racing team of Jim Hall and Hap Sharp. Jim Hall was a west-Texas oilman and “Hap” Sharp (official name James Sharp, he got his nickname because he was born on New Year’s Day in 1928, i.e. “Happy New Year”), who was also in the oil business. They were ambitious, fearless, well-funded, and innovative.
Sharp and Hall started racing initially using “Chaparral” cars built by the famous racing team of Troutman and Barnes. Troutman & Barnes were builders and designers of good reputation. They had enjoyed great success with front-engine/tube frame race cars. Among their clients was a wealthy young man named Lance Reventlow (Lawrence Graf von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow), for whom they developed the Scarab race cars (There were both race car and F1 designs under the Scarab name plate, but the F1 car campaigned by Reventlow in Europe cars was never successful, coming as it did at the end of the era for front engine Formula cars). Reventlow’s mother was Barbara Hutton, the heir to the Woolworth fortune, who would eventually be wed seven times.
Troutman and Barnes also produced the Mustang 1 prototypes that were used to judge public interest in building a production Mustang. They did two versions, one which was essentially just a show model with little or no mechanicals and another that ran and was used for demos, press exposure, and testing. The Mustang went on to be one of the great hits of the automobile world.
Hall and Sharp teamed up with Troutman and Barnes on the first “Chaparral” design; the original production run was to be five cars and Hall & Sharp’s deal was that they would purchase two of the cars and Troutman and Barnes would sell the other three to clients. The purchase of two cars by Hall and Sharp made the production economically feasible. It was a typically savvy and fair business deal, not unexpected coming from a pair of Texas oil men.
The combination of Hall’s engineering expertise and the craftsmanship of Troutman and Barnes produced a beautiful, brutally effective race car with a big front engine V8 and full independent suspension. Coming after the experience Troutman and Barnes had developed working on the Scarabs, the first Chaparrals were more powerful, had a vastly improved suspension, and better weight distribution (because of the mid-front engine chassis design). Grateful for the contributions of Jim Hall and Hap Sharp, Troutman and Barnes gave them “naming rights” (maybe the first such deal in sports!) and the new race car was called the Chaparral. Soon the pair started building the cars at their own workshop, and to differentiate the next generation of cars, they were called Chaparral 2s.
Jim Hall was both a talented driver and a very good engineer, and for a decade, the Chaparral designs and innovations greatly influenced motorsports. Chaparral’s Hall and Sharp broke new ground in aerodynamics, race car handling, tires, and transmissions (a Chaparral innovation was the use of an automatic transmission for a race car).
A trained engineer, Hall brought a new level of engineering design and testing to race car development. It has long been believed that Chaparral and Hall had significant access to the engineering department at General Motors via “under table” or “backdoor” support. What ever the arrangement, it was brilliant and it worked. The situation was a win-win deal for both parties. For Chaparral, they had the research resources of one of the largest automobile companies in the world; for GM, they could test and try new concepts in competition against the best car companies in the world, but there would be no hit to GM’s reputation if the cars did not win because they were racing under the Chaparral name.
The Chaparral cars produced by Hall and Sharp were given the numeral 2 followed by a letter of the alphabet, from 2A through 2K. The race car livery was typically white and cars often ran sporting Texas license plates. Chaparral’s were famous for the size and the sound of their big Chevy V8 engines, which gave rise to one of the most famous quotes in racing : when Hap Sharp was asked (in Nassau, for the famous Tourist Trophy sports car race, I believe) if the secret to winning in sports cars was cubic inches, he quickly responded, “No, the secret is cubic money”. It was true then, and it’s still true.
The Chaparral made its race debut at Riverside in 1963; it was auspicious, as Hall took the pole and was a half-mile or so in front when an electrical issue took the car to a DNF. In 1964, Hall won the U.S. Road Racing Championship (7 Wins, 6 Seconds, and 2 Thirds) and again in 1965, with 16 wins in 21 races.
The car that won Sebring was a 2 with an automatic transmission, front spoilers, a 5.4 liter aluminum block Chevy, mounted mid-engine, and a GRP chassis. Ferrari, Porsche, and Ford were gunning for a win at Sebring and the Chaparral faced long odds. The word in the paddock was that the Chaparral’s couldn’t last (there were two entered) but Jim Hall and Hap Sharp had tested at Sebring for a couple of days in February, and they believe the cars could go the distance and compete. The team was the beneficiary of a rule change that would allow large displacement engines (i.e. the Chevy) to run against prototypes from Ferrari, Ford, and Porsche. It was be on display at Sebring last year (2015) driven by Jim Hall II.
When the checkered flag dropped, Hall and Sharp were first in the Chaparral; Miles/McLaren second in a Ford GT40 and Pipper/Maggs third in a 250LM. You can read a full and incredible history about this race at Sports Car Digest, where historian Louis Galanos has produced the definitive piece on the times and the race. Galanos also produced a five part video series on the 1965 Race, which we also feature elsewhere on this site. Both the article and the videos are highly recommended.
The 1965 race was historic in a lot of ways, and while many remember it as a turning point in automobile racing because of the Chaparral win and others will recall that part of the race was contested in a roaring rain storm that created havoc all over the track.
Chaparral continued to evolve and the model line extended up to the Chaparral K which in 1980 won the Indiannapolis 500 and the CART National Championship with driver Johnny Rutherford.
Jim Hall stayed active in racing up through the mid 90s, although not always with cars of his own design. He lives today in California, Colorado and Texas; in Midland, where he and Sharp started out, there is a Chaparral museum (a part of the Petroleum Museum) which has the Chaparral 2, 2D, 2E, 2F, 2J, and 2K on display. I have been told that the private track the two built to test their cars—the infamous “Rattlesnake Raceway”—is still operable.
Hap Sharp, who also ran in some F1 races, retired after the 1965 season. He took up polo and continued to work in the motorsports industry. At the time of his death, Sharp was running a cattle ranch in Argentina. He committed suicide in 1993 at age 65 after being informed that he had a terminal disease.
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Keyless Entry: Why it's easy to steal a car with electronic keys
Paying Attention: Keyless entry for automobiles is not only supposed to be more convenient and safe (you just walk up, the car unlocks, you get in, push the start button, rev up, and drive off) but more security (the codes from the electronic keys are scrambled constantly and there is nothing to duplicate, as with regular mechanical keys). But…just as technology advances for the good, the bad also advance technology. And now, they’ve sorted out how to steal keyless entry cars without breaking a sweat. This story on WIRED’s site spells out the scary details.
And that, folks, is how it goes. The good guys advance. The bad guys take counter-measures. Or, as Newton put it, “for every action that is an equal and opposite reaction”. Think of that opposite reaction when you see your new i8 disappearing down the street.
Keyless Entry: Why it’s easy to steal a car with electronic keys
Paying Attention: Keyless entry for automobiles is not only supposed to be more convenient and safe (you just walk up, the car unlocks, you get in, push the start button, rev up, and drive off) but more security (the codes from the electronic keys are scrambled constantly and there is nothing to duplicate, as with regular mechanical keys). But…just as technology advances for the good, the bad also advance technology. And now, they’ve sorted out how to steal keyless entry cars without breaking a sweat. This story on WIRED’s site spells out the scary details.
And that, folks, is how it goes. The good guys advance. The bad guys take counter-measures. Or, as Newton put it, “for every action that is an equal and opposite reaction”. Think of that opposite reaction when you see your new i8 disappearing down the street.
The Annotated History of Sebring, Part 2
This is the second post in the Annotated History of Sebring Series.
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For Ferrari, Sebring 1956 represented a terrific opportunity to win the Manufacturer’s Championship they did not win in 1955 and so Ferrari made their first factory team appearance, entering three cars, a pair of 860 Monzas and an 857 Monza. The factory paired Fangio with Eugenio Castellotti in one Ferrari and teamed Luigi Musso, Harry Schell and Olivier Gendebien in another 860; they also placed Alfonso de Portago /Jim Kimberly/Harry Schell/ William Helburn in an 857 Monza. (Gendebien and William Helburn practiced in the Ferrari but did not race according to records of the event.)
Ultimately, tragedy cut a wide swath through the 1956 Ferrari Team.
Castelloti died a year later in 1957 during a testing session in Modena; de Portago , who once flew an airplane under a bridge—on a bet—when he was a teenager and was a renowned international playboy, died in the Mille Miglia the same year. During the race he spotted his girlfriend, Linda Christian, along the course, stopped the car, jumped out to run and kiss her, and then ran back to the car to continue racing. He died in a crash a short time later. Harry Schell died in practice for at an event in Silverstone in 1960 when his car flipped. He was 40. Only Fangio, Kimberly, and Gendebien lived to old age (Gendebien went on win LeMans 4 times and Sebring 3 times. ) Jim Kimberly—an heir to the Kleenex fortune—became famous (or infamous, depending on your moral stance) for his marriage to a 19 year old girl (Jacqueline) when he was 62 years old. Luigi Musso died in 1958 at age 33 racing in the French Grand Prix. Racing in the 50s was a very dangerous and hazardous sport and there was little of the safety engineering that is present today.
Drivers in the event included Stirling Moss, Porfirio Rubirosa (another famous international playboy), Hans Hermann, Huschke von Hanstein (who rose to become head of Porsche’s racing department), Count Wolfgang von Trips, Carroll Shelby, Mike Hawthorne (future F1 Champ), Jean Behra, Tony Brooks, Roy Salvadori, and Peter Collins.
In 1957, Fangio won at Sebring again, this time driving a Maserati 4.5.
Fangio was paired with Jean Behra and Stirling Moss teamed with Harry Schell although he was also listed as a driver in Fangio’s car. Fangio had left Ferrari to drive for Maserati in something of a surprise move; speculation for decades has been that the reason Fangio left was because Enzo Ferrari was mad with Fangio for refusing to leave Florida immediately after the 1956 race. Instead, Fangio stayed in Florida and at the side of his fellow countryman, Carlos Mediteguy (who was listed a driver in Moss’s car) who had suffered a horrific injury in the 1956 race.
Another major event at the 1957 race involved a new car called the “Corvette”. At the 1957 race, both Moss and Fangio were given special test drives in the new Corvette SS P designed by GM wizard Zora Arkus Duntov. Fangio immediately went out and broke the Sebring track record and then broke it again. When Moss got his turn in the car, he broke Fangio’s record—those guys were hyper competitive. There were rumors that GM had been trying to induce both Fangio and Moss to race the Corvette, but the drivers remained committed to Maserati, in part because they were worried about the reliability of a new model in the notoriously difficult 12 Hour race.
Jean Behra was a French driver who raced for Ferrari, Maserati, Gordini and Porsche. His quote about the dangers of racing –“only those who do not move, do not die…but are they not already dead?” turned out to be prescient. Behra had a somewhat difficult personality and was highly flammable. He famously punched Ferrari team manage Romolo Tavoni after an argument in a restaurant following the 1959 French GP. Ferrari immediately dismissed Behra from the team and he died a month later in an accident while driving a Porsche.
Despite widespread rumors that the big Maserati 450S that Fangio and Behra drove would have reliability issues–it did not. When the flag dropped, Fangio won his second 12 Hours of Sebring in a row. In second position: another Maserati, this one driven by Stirling Moss and Harry Schell. Carroll Shelby and Carlos Menditeguy were “listed” as drivers for the No. 20 Maserati, but did not race it. This was a rather common situation in the early days in racing, as factory teams and entrants would list multiple drivers for cars and even have all of them test and practice in the car, but not all of them would drive in the race.
In 1958, the Scuderia again took first place in the 12 Hours of Sebring. This time the car was drive by American Phil Hill—who would go on to become the first America F1 champion in 1961 and the British driver Peter Collins. The car they ran was a Ferrari 250 TR58. The Ferrari/Maserati battle was seriously on by 1958 but Maserati was having financial issues which would plague the company for almost forty years (due in no small part to the expense of running big racing programs in both F1 and in Sports Cars)and Ferrari seized the opportunity and went all in, sending three works cars (Hill/Collins; Musso/Gendebien; and Hawthorne/von Trips); another three private entrant Ferraris were also in the race (Fitch/Martin; Ginther/von Neumann; Andrey/Lloyd) Ferrari’s main competition was believed to Aston Martin; Aston sent DBR1s for Stirling Moss/ Tony Brooks and Carroll Shelby/Roy Salvadori. The Astons set the early pace but by the 5th Hour, Hill and Collins—who had planned early on to go easy on the gearbox and brakes in the Ferrari—took the lead and brought the Ferrari Testa Rossa home for the win. Gendebian/Musso took second. Ferrari was now grooved at Sebring and they would begin a historic run at the Florida track .
In interesting note to the 1958 race, a young English designer/builder named Colin Chapman drove his own design, a Lotus Eleven Climax , into 6th by the end of the race. Chapman would evolve into a dominant Formula 1 designer and championship team owner with his Lotus teams.
For the race in 1959, the Scuderia brought an updated 250TR 59, easily one of he most beautiful and Iconic Ferraris of all time. Scuderia Ferrari entered cars for Dan Gurney/Chuck Daigh; Phil Hill/Olivier Gendebien (one of the very best endurance racing teams of all time); and Jean Behra/Cliff Allison but there were also private entrant Ferraris for Pedro Rodriquez/Paul O’Shea; George Reed/Don O’Dell/George Arents/William Sturgis (GT); Rod Carveth/Gerald Geitner/Gaston Andrey (NART) 250TR; Lloyd Casner/Jim Hunt/Dan Collins 500TR (NART), Alfonzo Gomez-Mena/Juan Montalvo/Paul O’Shea (250GT) (Havana Auto Sport Club), a 250 GT California Spyder for Howard Hively/Richie Ginther (Scuderia Ferrari) ; Edwin Martin/Lance Reventlow/William Kimberly in a 250 TR; and Ed Lunken/Augie Pabst/Gaston Andrey/James Johnston in another 250 TR private entry.
When the checkered flag dropped, Ferrari took First and Second places and, in all, five of the first 9 places. Hill and Gendebien, whose Ferrari suffered a differential problem, joined in the Gurney/Daigh effort and were listed as winning drivers.
In a sign of things to come, Porsche 718RSKs took 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Within Ferrari’s group of drivers were some very talented and interesting people. Augie Pabst, one of the heirs to the Pabst Blue Ribbon brewing fortune, went on to become a very accomplished sports car driver and won several championships. He is well remembered for his drives in Harry Heuer’s famous Meister Brau Scarab team.
A scan down the finishing list for 1959 will turn up the names Jim Hall, Hap Sharp, and Carroll Shelby, finishing in position 41 in a Maserati 250S. Hall and Sharp drove the Maserati and in just a few years (1965), they would win Sebring with a car of their own design, the legendary Chaparral; the entrant for Hall and Sharp? Another Texan, Carroll Shelby, who would go on to fame as the founder of COBRA. Shelby won Sebring with a Ford GT40X-1 in 1966 and startled the racing world with the beautiful, aerodynamic, and very competitive Cobra Daytona Coupe, designed by a very young and very brilliant Pete Brock.
Porsche took their first win at Sebring in 1960, with Hans Hermann and endurance specialist Gendebien winning in a Porsche RS-60 entered by Swede Joakim Bonnier.
Another Porsche driven by Bob Holbert/Roy Schechter/Howard Fowler (Fowler practiced in the car but did not drive) finished second. A Ferrari 250 TR was third; Ferraris took 7 out of the top 10 places but two big changes highlighted 1960. Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team (NART) had become the de facto Ferrari factory entrant and Ferrari GT cars, notably the lovely little 250SWB, had started the rise to competitive prominence of GT cars.
Ferrari won again in 1961 with Hill/Gendebien driving a 250 TRI61. The update from previous models included a new space-frame chassis (lighter weight and greater rigidity). SEFAC Automobile Ferrari (the new name for the Ferrari rectory team) entered the Hill/Gendebien Ferrari, along with another one for Carlo Baghetti/”Wild” Willy Mairesse/Richie Ginther/ Wolfgang von Trips. Willy Mairesse earned his nickname the hard way–he had a series of massive crashes but always returned to the track because of his intense love of the sport. One writer asked whether Mairesse was gifted with far more bravery than skill–which may have been true–but he loved the sport and literally lived for the experiences it gave him. When he could no longer race, he took his own life
Chitt’’s NART entered a TR60 for the famous and ridiculously fast young Mexican drivers Ricardo and Pedro Rodriquez and Hap Sharp entered a TR for himself and Ronnie Hisson. These four entries went 1-2-3-4 in The 12. The TRI61 was a beautiful car with a “shark nose” and high “Kamm” effect tail and is generally considered the last of the great front engine Ferrari 12 Cylinder racers.
The Ferrari factory team was back in 1963 and they brought heavy weapons: F1 World Champion-to-be John Surtees (7 Time GP Motorcycle Racing World Champion before switching to cars)and Ludovico Scafiotti, who was also an F1 driver and who won the 24 hours of Le Mans that year.
Ferrari entered another 250P for Mairesse/Vaccarella/Bandini and Rodriguez/Hill ran a 330TRI/LM, the last of the long line of front engine Testa Rossa designs from Ferrari, for NART. Houston oilman John Mecom entered a 250 GTO for Penske/Pabst. Two more GTOs were entered: one for Abate/Bordeu and another for Ginther/Ireland (one of the more stylish drivers on the circuit). When the dust settled, Ferrari had dominated again , taking the top 6 places.
For the 1964 race, the factory brought three new prototypes, the 275P for Parkes/Maglioli and Scarfiotti/Vaccarella and a 330P for Surtees/Bandini. All three finished and the team went 1-2-3. Right behind them, however, in 4th, 5th, and 6th positions were three Shelby Cobras—the beautiful, stylish, Daytona Coupe designed by Peter Brock in 4th (Holbert/McDonald); Bondurant/Spencer in 5th in a roadster and Schlesser/Hill in 6th in another Roadster. A changing of the guard was coming, and the future could be found in the stack of Shelby Cobras behind the winning Ferraris.
The Fine Print: All photos in this piece are via Getty Images, which makes possible the use of these historic photos in this blog via embed. We thank Getty Images for sharing and encourage you to investigate their massive archive of photos if you’re producing a site or a blog. Thanks guys.
The Annotated History of Sebring, Part 1
A series of posts on overall winners of the 12 Hours of Sebring since 1950, along with comments and background on people and events of historical interest. This is Part 1 of the series and covers Sebring from 1950 to 1955.
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In the beginning there was an idea and an abandoned airport.
The first race was held on New Year’s Eve, 1950 and was six hours long. The next race was held in 1952 and extended to 12 Hours and the legendary race that is now the 12 Hours of Sebring was born. The concept for the race was “once around the clock” but the unique nature of the track—part airport runways and, initially, part public roads—combined with a rough racing surface and a 12 hour competition over a very demanding track rather quickly turned Sebring into a must-race event for those who had hopes of winning at Le Mans. The thinking then, as now, was that Sebring was a great place to test your car and crew because the tough nature of the track surface and the time of the race provided a very serious shakedown for the 24 Hour race at Le Mans which, while longer, is contested on much smoother pavement.
In 1953 Briggs Cunningham, an American sportsman, took the first of three wins in a row at the 12 Hours of Sebring. Cunningham was a famous and enthusiastic competitor in a variety of sports, but his true loves were sailing and sports car racing. As his hobbies suggest, he was born into a wealthy family. His father was a very successful late 19th Century entrepreneur from Cincinnati, who made fortunes in real estate, railroads, utilities and banking. Along the way, the father invested in and backed a couple of entrepreneurs who had developed a new type of soap. Their names were Proctor and Gamble and the soap would be named “Ivory Soap” . Proctor&Gamble went on to become one of the great American companies of all time ($84.0 billion in sales in 2014; in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, P&G sponsored 140 Athletes) and an early leader in such concepts as branding, brand management, and profit sharing for workers.
Briggs Cunningham went to Yale and after graduation he became very involved in international sports car racing and sailing. At Sebring, he won in 1953 with John Fitch (who would become a very accomplished early advocate for driver safety, in addition to his skills as a driver) and Phil Walters driving a Cunningham C4R/Chrysler to the win. In 1954, Cunningham brought an O.S.C.A. MT4, powered by a tiny 1.5 liter engine to Sebring and won again; his drivers were a very quick Englishman named Stirling Moss (Ken W. Purdy’s biography of Moss, All But My Life is a magnificent and wonderful piece of writing. Purdy himself was a piece of work and one of the very best automotive writers of all time)and American Bill Lloyd. The entry was notable not just for the win and the ability of the drivers, but the fact that the team won with the smallest engine ever to win the 12 Hours of Sebring. In 1955, Cunningham entered a D-Type Jaguar for Englishman Mike Hawthorne (he went on to become the U.K.’s first Formula 1 world champion in 1958 but immediately retired and died, only six months later, in an automobile accident on public roads) and Phil Walters, who won for the second time racing with Cunningham. Cunningham’s three wins at Sebring were done with different drivers and three types of cars, so obviously, his team knew what it was doing in terms of preparation and operations. Cunningham is also notable for the production of his own line of race cars, including the C3 ( a road car), the C2-R, C4-R, and C6-R race cars.
One of Briggs Cunningham’s major innovations in racing was not on the track but in the pits. At the time Cunningham started racing, most race cars in America were transported to the track on a trailer. Cunningham changed the paradigm, by using a tractor trailer rig to carry the car, tools, uniforms, refreshments, etc. Thus, Cunningham upped the status ante by introducing the transporter as another element of the show. He had the money to go first class and so he did, but, importantly, he obviously spent the money in the right places because the cars that he raced (Cunninghams of his own design, along with Jaguars, O.S.C.A.s, Coopers, Maseratis, Ferraris, Porsches, Corvettes, Cadillacs) did very well. Cunningham’s cars raced in a very distinct livery, with two blue stripes (the racing stripe is generally considered a Briggs Cunningham innovation) over a white body, a development of the international colors for American racing of white bodies over blue (chassis) rails. Interestingly, a young driver named Carroll Shelby saw the livery when he raced for Aston Martin at Le Mans, and when he had his own team (Shelby American), he picked up the scheme and reversed it, with white stripes over a blue body.
Cunningham’s impact on sports car racing in America was wide and historic. He bought the first Ferrari sold in America, a 166, from Luigi Chinetti, then the North American distributor. Chinetti would go on to be the force behind the famous North American Racing Team, a defacto Ferrari factory-team. Cunningham was pals with Alfred Momo and also became a Jaguar importer. One of his drivers—the legendary Walt Hansgen—crashed a Cooper Climax T53 at Watkins Glen in 1961 and Cunningham sold the wrecked car to a young driver named Roger Penske. Penske ultimately re-bodied the F1 car with a sports car body, put a tiny little seat in to conform to regulations, named it the Zerex special, and went on to win the USAC Road Racing Championship in 1962. Roger Penske evolved into one of the most important people in the automobile and racing industry.
One of Cunningham’s pals was another Yale graduate named Miles Collier. Collier was also from a wealthy family; his father Barron Collier, at one time owned over 1.2 million acres of land in Florida and was an early supporter and backer of the Boy Scouts of America. Collier raced with Cunningham, driving one of a pair of Cadillacs entered at Le Mans in 1950, with his brother Sam Collier. The car was completely stock and they finished 10th. He was also the American importer of M.G. automobiles. The Collier Brothers, founded the Automobile Racing Club of America (not to be confused with the current organization of the same name) in pre WWII America; that entity eventually evolved into the SCCA.
Cunningham was as good on the water as he was on land, and in 1958 he skippered the American 12 Meter Yacht Columbia, designed by legendary naval architect Olin Stephens, to the win over Britain’s Sceptre in the first America’s Cup series contested in 12 Meter Yachts.
Cunningham collected a very impressive range of automobiles and displayed them in the Cunningham museum in Costa Mesa, California, Eventually, the collection was sold to the son of Miles Collier, who moved the cars to Florida and combined them with his family’s collection at the Collier Automotive Museum. Later, the Collier Automotive Museum transferred the collection to the Revs Institute for Automotive Research (Naples, Florida). Briggs Cunningham died at the age of 96 on July 2, 2003, from complications from Alzheimer’s. We shall not see someone of his style and accomplishments again.
Irish Quote
“Bíonn caora dhubh ar an tréad is gile….”
The Sebring Film Festival: The Seventies
Press Clippings: Sebring Film Festival Part 3. The final video in a three-part series produced by ALMS covers Sebring through the Seventies. During this era, Ferrari won 2 of the first three races (1970 and 1972) but Porsche eventually ended up dominating the decade as Ferrari re-focused its racing resources to F1, winning four titles in the period.
The Fine Print: All rights belong to their respective rights holders. This video sourced through YouTube and was produced by ALMS (IMSA). Thanks for sharing.
Caesar quote
“Beware the ides of March….”