Every story published this month, gathered in one place.
11 stories
01Briggs Cunningham put her in a red Jaguar XK140. Denise McCluggage answered by winning her first race—and gave American motorsport one of its clearest replies to anyone who thought a woman belonged outside the fence.
02Lance Reventlow’s small California team built an all-American Grand Prix car with aircraft thinking, Indianapolis engineering and enough ambition to take on Europe. The stopwatch was less forgiving.
03If you want the current temperature of the collector-car market, here it is: the room is warm, the bar is open, and the serious buyers are still spending money like a government contractor with a deadline. But they are no longer buying every shiny object that rolls across the stage. The market has gotten smarter. Or at least more selective, which is about as close as the collector-car world gets to therapy.
04Ferrari has finally built an electric car. Yes, Ferrari—the company founded on screaming V12s, racing fuel, mechanical violence and Italians waving their hands at one another—has produced something you recharge through a wall socket. It is called the Ferrari Luce, and during Monterey Car Week, someone paid $40 million for the first one. Forty. Million. Dollars.
05Every August, Monterey becomes the center of the collector-car universe. It also becomes a place where a Motel 6 can charge like it has marble bathrooms, a private beach and Frank Sinatra performing in the lobby.
06Getting another generation interested in old cars starts with an invitation and a little patience.
07Paint gets your attention. The records help you decide which questions to ask next.
08A stored classic deserves a careful look before anyone reaches for the starter button.
09Road/Track. Two words, one slash, and eventually one of the most borrowed pieces of punctuation in the automobile business.
10You want to know why Ferrari exists? Two words: wounded pride. Before the red paint, shrieking V12s, racing victories, and owners wearing branded jackets while ordering coffee, there was Enzo Ferrari and a considerable grudge.
11Before William Lyons built Jaguars, he built motorcycle sidecars. That sounds like the opening line to a joke, considering the same man would later give us the XK120, the D-Type, the E-Type, and the XJ6. Yet in 1922, Lyons was working from a modest building in Blackpool, constructing streamlined metal bodies that attached to motorcycles. Even then, his eye for proportion was obvious.
