vintage racing

[David McLaughlin]

While working on a car today, I got to thinking about this vintage racing stuff. I've been to a few pleasurable vintage races and loved seeing the old cars "mixing it up" on the track The sights and sounds were wonderful. I had always thought how cool it is to see old cars getting their proper exercise. Granted they weren't taking a lot of risks but running a car at speed is in itself risky.

After working on this latest car, I wonder just how much is taken for granted. The story goes like this... A guy buys a vintage race car for almost $7M. He wants to race but doesn't like the idea of wrecking his big bucks car. The solution it seems is to build (or have built) and exact duplicate and swap the vins at the cost of $1M. This "new" car will be raced as a vintage racer.

IMHO this kind of takes the threat and magic out of vintage racing; don't you think?

[scottmandue]

Loved going to the NARA races on the streets of Palm Springs... don't think there were any $1M cars (there were Ferrari Daytona's, original Cobra's, etc.) but they were NOT afraid to get aggressive... there were a few fender benders.

Sad they don't do that anymore.

[pavulon]

Well, I really like watching vintage iron racing hard at the summer Road America events. I don't really care about a VIN as the majority are running faster than they did back in their respective prime any way. Some of those guys flat SCREAM now. Still cringe when one gets bent up but can't imagine that they would race as hard as they do if they were all authentic.

[TRE Cup]

VARA used to organize the vintage races, in Palm Springs. First at the airport, then later in the convention center area. These were part of a big draw weekend that included a car show, car auctions, fashion show, and more.
Temporary street/ airport circuit events are insanely expensive to produce. When there are lots of other events, elsewhere, competing for the spectating dollars, then the stands are not full, and the promoters lose their shirts. The auctions went away, hence less draw, etc etc, and up in smoke.

Regarding real vs faux copies. Yes, that has happened off and on for a long time. Sometimes the owners drive the fakes harder than their real ones. Sometimes the owners race the real thing faster than anything else. Witness Rob Walton in his Cobra Daytona Coupe at Laguna and elsewhere. When Ferrari was the marque recently at Laguna, you can bet all the GTO's on the track were real. It depends a lot on the event promoter that has to suss out if the entrant's cars are real or not. Sadly with the changing of the guard, some events are seeing a proliferation of fakes (where the owner does not even own a real one) , or "More vintage competitive" than others, with large displacement motors, carbon bodywork, straight cut gear boxes, titanium fasteners, etc etc

Such is the nature of competition. There is always someone trying to be the fastest, even in the genteel sport of vintage racing in America

[Zeke]

So many old race cars of value have been rebuilt once to many times. Seems like some have been rebuilt into 2 cars. Which one has the provenance?

It's not going to get any better.

[TRE Cup]

With values climbing, even some manufacturers are back in the game building continuation racers. Lola T 70 mk 3B is a prime example of a new racer. But to be clear, the old racers were not meant to race forever. They wore out ! Remember how porsche would put an air pressure valve on their tube frames? So they could detect cracks in the chassis. Yeah this on an aluminum frame 917 that was capable of 245 mph on the Mulsanne : Color the drivers insane that piloted these beasts !

Provenance and line of ownership make for the best cars valued at the best prices.

But i don't judge the owners of racing real cars as being any better than others (just have more money and class?) . I see all the competition and appreciate it. Patently obvious fakes need not apply

You will see more cars "discovered" as the years go by. Some will be fabricated from nothing more than a bill of sale, some photographs, and an i.d. tag (already happened many times over)

[DanielDudley]

Sounds a bit like what we do with 911s.

A lot of correct RS replicas out there now. It does not bother me until the lying starts.

[Zeke]

I think a lot of NASCAR stocks have been brought back as driven by "xxx" and the livery applied accordingly. Sure, "xxx" may have driven it or some part of it.

Maybe the point here is that no matter what it really is, it's representative of history and probably pretty tough to drive.

A modern race car built to look like and race with vintage cars is not sportsmanship like. I doubt there are many "sportsmen" left.

[jhynesrockmtn]

I race a vintage formula vee with a group called SOVREN in the PNW. No replicars or copies allowed. This is road racing so the only time we see "stock car" is at our big annual fundraiser and sometimes there will be a group organized to come in as a special class. Last year at the labor day weekend event in Portland it was a group of Formula 5000's that were featured.

I nearly crapped my drawers on my rookie weekend 4 years ago when I found out the red Alfa that I was running side by side with in the rain/sleet/snow/hail in April in Seattle was a 1 of rare racing car from the 40's worth between $3 and $4 million. There are some deep pockets in our club and the whole it's not 10/10ths is bs. Most of the guys are very competitive and running flat out.

[ErVikingo]

Flat Out, that's how I race!

[David McLaughlin]

Well, my boss gets mad at me when I call this thing a kit car. Maybe it's being built just like the original and will even be finished correctly in England but to me it's just a replica like the Countachs and Speedsters I see on the street.

[smokintr6]

We are certainly not the first to question the nature of identity... I'd say that drawing the line at outright fraud is at least a decent start.

(some of) The philosophy of identity:

The problem of the Ship of Theseus is a problem of identity. When does a ship that gradually has its parts replaced cease to be the same ship, and become another one? The problem is sometimes put like this: let’s say we have a ship (the Ship of Theseus) made up of some arbitrary number of planks. One by one the planks are removed and replaced by new planks. Surely after replacing one plank the ship is still the same ship. It hasn’t gone out of existence by the removal of a single plank. But we can say the same thing for the removal of a second plank, and a third. In fact, it seems as if the removal of any individual plank does nothing to change the identity of the ship. This means that the original ship is the same ship at the original ship minus one plank, and the ship minus one plank is the same ship as the ship minus two planks, and so forth, until every plank of the ship has been replaced. But identity being transitive this means that the original ship is the same ship as the ship that results from every plank of the old ship being replaced by a new plank. The problem is further compounded by the fact that we can take the old planks and, as they are removed from the original ship one by one, reassemble the original ship. So we have two ships, side by side, that are, apparently, identical to one another.

[willtel]

I don't mind it them running replicas as long as they sound and look like the originals.

This doesn't look like my idea of a good time!

[John Rogers]

For the years I raced my 914 with HSR-West and a couple of times with VARA, just about anyone that tried to pass off a "repo" as original was caught and generally blackballed! There used to be a lot of confusion about what constitutes "vintage" race cars and one of the bieest topics was where they were raced and by whom and when. For example when I wanted to race my 1973 914-4 with VARA in 1998 they said no because it was NOT a SCCA production class race car. It had been raced all it's life with either POC and/or PCA and had won multiple class championships. So I heard that Ed Swart was starting HSR-West and wanted sports cars and was not real picky so that is where I landed. The fact that my car had a 2.4L engine and used slicks as per POC rules was not a concern as I had the PCA and POC log books which are pretty handy to have. Then Wayne Baker and some others wanted to start the Porsche 2L series and VARA actually said no to that also which surprised me a bunch so that came into HSR-West also.

And so it went and there are many other organizations that really restrict entries to certain cars, years, etc and that is fine, just race with someone else or get a car that fits to where and what you want to do.