Some photos and video from my racing experience with my 1968 ASP Formula Vee MK. III. This orange livery that you see was the result of my earlier 2004 restoration that I wrote about here. The ASP is currently undergoing restoration a second time, taking her back to the glory she deserves.

It was time to do a proper restoration of my old formula vee. It was tired, worn and I was starting to feel like my car was the roach among all the beautifully prepared vees I race with in the VSCDA. The car is a 1968 ASP MK III, originally built by Wayne Purdy, a former Beach FV employee. The ASP was 1 of 6 or so vees Wayne built before moving on to other racing ventures. This car was raced by a gentleman named Robert Samm very successfully in the southwestern United States and Mexico, claiming at least 3 national titles in Mexico in the MKIII.

I acquired the ASP in the winter of 2004 sight unseen. I knew I wanted to go vintage vee racing but admittedly didn’t do as much research as I should have prior to making the purchase. I was taken by the story and esthetics of the little known ASP rather than the proven race worthiness. A more rational man may have sought out a Lynx or a Zink, brands that dominated FV in the late 60s. I discovered the ASP on a racing classifieds website and the price was right… or so I thought. As it turns out it was just further proof that you get what you pay for.

Despite that, I remember feeling just like a kid on Christmas when it arrived by truck that day late in January. With the help of the driver, I rolled it off the truck through the fresh snow into the garage. I was elated. I couldn’t believe I now owned a vintage open-wheeled racecar. I had wanted to race cars like these since I was a kid. At this point I had only been to track days and autocross events in a street car but I had the racing bug and I had it bad.

I contacted the race director at my local track to see if he could put me in touch with any of the vintage vee drivers in the area. As luck would have it, his former neighbor Garret Van Camp was recently back in vintage vee racing, a former SCCA national champion and he lived 20 minutes from me. Garrett won the 1970 FV championship, raced Porsche speedsters and went on to race super vees as the factory driver for Lynx. Eventually he took a long hiatus from racing to raise his family. In 1994 he decided to once again get behind the wheel. He tracked down his original Lynx, restored it back to the configuration he won with in 1970 and he keeps on winning nearly every race he enters… At 74! Truly inspiring.

I called Garrett and that same day after work he met me at my house to have a look at my car. I’ll never forget what he said upon laying his eyes on the ASP. He said “I wish we would’ve met 3 weeks ago… I never would have let you buy this piece of shit”. We joked about the whole car being held together with cabinet fasteners and zip ties. He was right and I knew it but I was still optimistic. He immediately started educating me on the car and made an impossible list of what needed to be done before the driver’s school began in April. And without his help it would have been impossible.

Garrett would stop by once a week to check on my progress. He encouraged me, taught me and provided endless motivation. Besides that he re-engineered and re-fabricated parts to make the car stronger, safer and the car more competitive. All things that at the time were well beyond my knowledge and ability. I had some background in motorcycle restoration but when it came to racecars I was about as green as they come. Garrett would constantly remind me “if it doesn’t make you go faster, don’t waste your time kid”. Come spring, the car was done but it was a tremendous amount of work… especially for a car that was advertised as “race ready”. Garret was my instructor, is still my mentor and a constant source of inspiration. I consider he and his wife Maggie as 2nd parents and lifelong friends. I completed the school that spring and went on to my first race. There are few things in life I’ve experienced that are as satisfying as finishing a race in a car that you’ve built… Except maybe winning—but that came much later.

How is it possible to look at this stunning 1949 De Luca Fiat-Lancia Sport Special and not fall in love? It’s an Italian representation of a hot-rodding zeitgeist that was taking hold worldwide in at the end of the 1940s.

This bare utility is one of the things I so love about early barchettas. The interior could not be more sparse. The exposed backsides of the door skins attest to the lightness that was built into this special for (by?) Senore De Luca, “the wolf of Calabrese” (note the amazing wolf head mascot). I’ve had no luck in finding De Luca’s racing history, but sellers Cristiano Luzzago say the car has period appearances at the Circuito di Posillipo (probably the ’49 running of the GP Napoli though I find no matching car in their entry list) and Grio delle Calabrie.

I adore everything about it—the Stance, the utilitarian design, the minimal embellishment. I have no real reason for this, but the leaf-spring front end is something I’m kind of obsessed with lately. I think it’s something to do with the backyard shed and garage engineered use of the leaf-spring front suspension in everything from the T-Bucket to the Cooper 500s. I just see those leaves poking out where we’re used to seeing A-arms, and my head spins. That’s what this Fiat frame meets Lancia Ardea drivetrain really is when we get down to it: The early Italian version of the later hated Garagistas.

Let’s face it, if this didn’t have the words “Fiat-Lancia” attached to it, you might think it was a garage-built Southern California custom with a Ford V8 under the hood. In many ways, it is. And I love this little street rod for it.

More photos and details on Cristaino Luzzago’s inventory page.

Harvington Motor Co. must have been equally excited and nervous to handle the mechanical restoration of the 1956 Mike Hawthorn D-Type. It always impresses the hell out of me when restoration and race shops routinely tear into a priceless machine (or in this case, valued at about ￡7 Million). That sort of confidence is what separates top-shelf vintage racing technicians from garage tinkerers like me.

More info and progress photos on Harvington’s project page.

Who needs racing cams? I got performance heads here! Get your close ratio gearboxes!

Browse the complete catalog and daydream at Mustang Tek.

Peter found the car in 1973 after several years of modifications. In the time since, he has somehow tracked down the original engine (with the desirable Cisitalia head) and gearbox, and most of the original parts.

After 38 years, it’s easy to imagine this beautiful machine becoming just another basket case, but Peter has gathered enough parts that he’s ready to restore and save this little marvel from the barn. Hopefully this post will serve to keep Peter motivated—not that he needs my help with that, he’s doing that just fine on his own. More importantly though, Peter’s project keep the rest of us hopeful that just because a car has been neglected in the past and hidden away, that doesn’t mean it’s fate is rust and scrap.

Thanks, Peter, for sharing this wonderful project (and keep us posted as she comes together!). Do you have a project that you’d like to share? Let me know.

The trailer for The Quest sure makes the film look worth a watch. I wasn’t familiar with the story of the 1960 LeMans class-winning Briggs Cunningham Corvette and it’s fall into obscurity. But this film’s look at Chip Miller’s discovery, restoration and his dream of returning her to La Sarthe for the 50th anniversary of the John Fitch/Bob Grossman victory is heartbreaking and inspiring. Take a peek.

More at QuestDocumentary.com

Of course, here in the States it’s still possible to find 1930′s Ford bodies at swap meets or a particularly lucky trip to the right sorts of junk yards. But I see technical drawings of Ferrari or Maserati or Fiat racing car frames from the 1940′s and 1950′s and think to myself, “those dudes that make ’32 Ford Frames could just as easily be building this.”

The only thing I can imagine is that the lack of availability of Maserati A6GCS Monofaro bodywork just stops people from making “tributes” or “replicas” or “re-creations” or whatever the nomme d’jour is for these things. Otherwise, I have to think we could have a similar homebuilder community of vintage racing cars as we have for hot-rodders. I’m sure many sporting car purists out there will disagree and think my plea for inaccurate re-creations is tantamount to sacrilege, but I just want to see more of these cars out there, and Siata sure isn’t making more of them. For me, it’s as simple as that.

Just look at these frame diagrams. This doesn’t look any harder (to this admittedly naive novice) than knocking together a frame for a street rod, and yet we almost never see a home-built barchetta. Occasionally we do see exceptionally accurate shop-build re-creations, but it’s specifically the garage builder I think of. Hell, the Maserati brothers were little more than garage builders themselves when they built these things in the first place.

Street rod masters, I humbly suggest considering that your next project be inspired by the Mille Miglia and not the Salt Flats. There are a whole lot of ’32 Fords out there and not so many Gilco-Fiats or Stanguellini Barchetta 1100s.

If you need me I’ll be ducking under my desk while I’m bombarded with emails calling me an idiot for suggesting people reproduce these things.

This eclectic mix of cars from El Meastro’s past, however, reminded me of something vitally important, and something I so love about the era: Variety. Just look at this mix of machines; and this is by no means a complete collection of Fangio’s racers. There’s everything here: from the Grand Prix cars for which he’s most known, to the Carrera Panamericana and Mille Miglia machines, to smaller voiturette racers. Almost more amazing than Fangio’s five Formula 1 World Championships is that while he was winning them, he was also competing in anything else he could find.

Just look at the buzz that gets generated today when Montoya moved to NASCAR, or Raikkonen hit the rally course (or NASCAR, himself). I applaud these drivers for attempting to take on the variety of racing opportunities available to these top-tier drivers. But that excitement wanes when I consider that this is newsworthy at all. Of course Kimi should want to rally! Of course JPM should want to turn left for two hours! These cravings for new races and racing cars still exist in every driver; it’s just a shame that contemporary racing teams seem to frown on these “unnecessary extra-curriculars”.

Not so in Fangio’s day. Thank you Goodwood for reminding us. Thank you Luc for sending along these images so we could all see.

More of Luc’s Goodwood Fangio Tribute and Revival photos at his (gigantic) gallery of racing photos.