I love how a lot of skid marks heading off the side of the corner are JUST before the guardrail. The Groendyke/Hot Rod Garage crew are recuperating in BIG-STYLE.
A local repair / restoration shop in Scottsdale that specializes in Jaguars prepared a '58 or '59 Jag Mk I saloon (4 door sedan) for this race. I wonder how well they've done? I'm kind of a goof for Jags, owning a '60 Mk I and a '69 E-Type Coupe.
Pink Floyd took 3 Proteous built 53 jag replicas down in 1991, they did make a good video of the race.
Oh, the humanity. Dead man's curve on hill 1, crazy folks with deep pockets 0. Kidding aside, sure glad the cars were built well and there were no serious injuries. This image reminds me a lot of the old B&W films of stock cars racing on the beach at Daytona, where car after car rolls into an evergrowing pile of wrecked racers in the ditch. Then I guess they slowed down a tad. As much as I like the idea of road racing vintage cars (rally cars, GT cars, moonshiners, police interceptors, whatever ya got), sure wish they'd slow these cars down somehow. I'd also really like to see more threads on cars under construction, history, etc. BEFORE the dammed race starts. Makes you wonder, if this wreck never happened, would we even have known about this year's race until it was over? Gary
"slow these cars down"??? how slow and at what point does it just become a cruise? You mandate anything that restricts WOT driving and you may as well just go around and around with bleachers and beer. This is one of the last vestiges and venues of all-out, balls-to-the-wall racing. Trying to civilize it would ruin it. If you want controlled speeds, perhaps you'd be happier at several of the circuit racing events for vintage race cars. The drivers are aggressive, and are having fun, but nobody wants to wreck any one to three milliion dollar examples of rolling art, so they maintain some semblance of track decorum. dj
Some things are easier than you think... just designate particularly poor sections of road (with a history of crashes, poor vis, no guard rails with big drop-offs, falling rock, etc.) in the route guide for a timed run and set up checkpoints. So what if you miss a power slide or two out of the entire race distance? Gary
The chassis on the studebaker was able to be repaired and a lot of time was spent cosmetically for driving visiability and to keep the car street legal. The car finished 12th overall on day 5 and first for turismo production. http://www.lacarrerapanamericana.com.mx/
If you are one of those who didn't open up the link that Fur Biscuit posted on page 2 http://funksterwtf.blogspot.com/2012/10/2012-la-carrera-panamericana-day-3-wtf.html open it and actually read how those five cars got down in the bottom of the gulley. That is a story in it's self. One of my fellow trade school student's dad raced in the race in either a Mercury or Lincoln in the 50's and showed the class some home movies and photos one day at school in the mid 60's I can't remember the kid's or his dad's name but he's the one who ran my right ring finger though a fan pulley and belt screwing around one day. I've still got the screwed up fingernail from that. Their last name started with C.
The race dosen't always run the same roads every year. The Veracruz start seems to collect up a few cars every time they start there. The first time I did it they started in Tuxtla and there were 13 cars crashed in the first 30 miles. My navigator said, "come on, come on, cars are passing you", finally I said just wait-- you'll see. We came around a corner and there was a Studebaker on its side, I ran over the guys luggage strewn across the road. The race isn't going to be won in the first 30 miles. A good strategy would be to take it easy the first 3 or 4 days and then get on it after the front runners have blown up or crashed.
Let me throw in a couple more, Stroppe, McGriff, Thompson .... I cant look at a early fifties lincoln-mercury without remembering the impact the Pan-Am had on racing.
John Fitch, Briggs Cunningham, Bill France,Karl kiekhafer......I can't look at any old 50's car with out seeing it as a road racer.
Touche to that........It's kinda like traditional hot rods, a passion and a disease, and an easy way to spend that "extra" money.....Cheers
BUT... they got it knocked back into shape and kept racing. Gawd damn, drive your race car off a cliff into a pile of other cars, pull it back up the cliff, beat it back into some kind of shape, and keep racing! Gentlemen, that is inspiration, determination and DRIVE. -Brad
From what I've heard about the owner of the stude, he'll have it back as good as new in a couple of weeks.
Carson is running mummert engine, he once emailed me about building him one but stuck with Johns (don't blame him) I would love to see my name on the side of that car.
These guys bought this car from me a couple of years ago, and then corrected my poor workmanship and bad design and then added driving ability. some of the guys down there could afford any kind of race car, they chose American iron. The majority of the cars used to be a lot more home built, homespun, contraptionish, basically a stock 50's car with a cage and maybe a modern v8, it's evolved a lot.
The Jalopy Journal
