Author Archives: Warwick

Paddocks of the Past: Riverside 1967

Here’s the first of an ongoing series of archive snapshots of paddock and pit areas from days gone by. There’s so much character and intriguing little details in these photos – they never get tiring!  Today’s is a walk-by snapshot from a 1967 round of the US National Championship Road Races at Riverside International Raceway in California. The TR3’s owner seems to be trying to up the pressure on his MOWOG rivals (The MOWOG acronym for Morris-Wolseley Garages is cast into engine parts and other pieces of BMC/MG cars), and his crew are hoping to keep him focused on the task at hand with a big “Go Faster!” reminder on the dash. Racing was simpler in those days.

TR4A at Riverside

[Image from the Girvan Patterson/AB3 Racing/Formula Photographic Archive]

Anglia design ahead of its time

By Nigel Matthews

Two cars were launched in 1959 that had a profound impact and will be remembered by many in Britain as one of their favourites.

The Mini was one and the other was the Ford Anglia 105E. The Anglia was a design way ahead of its time. The very distinctive rear window, which had a reverse slope, and the overall shape and functional rear fins gave it the appearance of a small, modern American car, not that there was such a thing as a small Ford in the U.S. of 1959.

Ford went out on a limb with colours that had not been seen before in conservative England. These included primrose yellow, light green and some of the Deluxe models were painted in an attractive two-tone combination.

Ford put a lot of thought into the design of the rear window. All too often the rear passengers in small cars had to endure less than perfect comfort due to headroom heights. The reverse-rake rear window solved that problem; the longer roof offered improved headroom and comfort, and it also helped with improved rear visibility in wet weather.

The engine was completely new and quite a departure from the side valve, flat-head of the 100E. The new engine was a high revving, over-head-valve, that produced 39 horsepower at 5,000 r.p.m. The four-speed synchromesh manual transmission was the first of its kind fitted to a production saloon built by Ford’s Dagenham factory.

The Anglia was built in a number of body variations, including a two-door, four-door, wagon, van and pickup. There was a Europe-only model called the Sportsman; this model carried its spare tire on the back, similar to the North American Continental kit.

English built Fords will be one of the celebrated marques at the 2010 All British Field Meet which takes place on May 22nd at Van Dusen Gardens in Vancouver, BC. Come and see if you can find a Ford Anglia on display.

The Personal Touch in Retail

By Dave Hord

I had the unique opportunity to grow up in both the pre-internet days, and the post-internet boom. To folks just a few years older than me, I’m one of those “internet kids” who have always been attached to a computer. But, I’m old enough to appreciate the days when one had to use magazines, the yellow pages and a physical store to go about finding car parts. My younger days were spent reading Dad’s HotVW magazines, planning out the parts I would one day buy for as-yet-unpurchased vee-dub.

Fast-forward about 20 years, and I finally got around to buying a Beetle of my own. As is tradition in my family, I low-balled on a bit of a fixer-upper and soon had it sitting in my driveway. Before purchasing the bug, I had spent a couple of months catching up with some magazines, as well as the now-common practice of surfing the internet forums. When it came to actually buying parts for my car, however, I was fully immersed in the whiz-kid world of internet shopping.

It’s difficult to deny the convenience of shopping online. Catalogs expand and unfold with simply a click of a mouse. Should a description be missing, the manufacturer’s website is right at your fingertips. Still unsure about a particular part? A simple search on an enthusiast forum is likely to tell you everything you need to know. For most dealers you’ll even be told before you order whether the part is in-stock or backordered. I live in a fairly small town, and the closest air-cooled parts specialist is a two-hour drive away.  Can you imagine driving two-hours these days to find out a part wasn’t available or sold before you arrived?

It was at least a year that I was singing the praises of easy internet shopping. I could plan jobs ahead of time, order the parts, and know they’d arrive on Friday for weekend wrenching. I was confident I was getting great pricing deals, and always got exactly what I ordered. The problem with getting exactly what you ordered is perhaps we aren’t actually the best judge of which product we need. I over-spent on expensive items where the cheaper option would have been more then adequate. Vice versa, I broke or wore out cheaper options when I needed the better quality option. Have you ever tried to return an item to an online retailer? It’s not always so easy.

About the time that I was starting to see cracks in the internet masterpiece, I met some gents on the Spring Thaw Adventure. They happened to own the local Vancouver VW specialty parts store, and by the third day we were discussing why I purchased online versus locally. In the end, the best reason I could give them was that purchasing from their store vs. online would mean I’d have to pay for shipping. My online retailer offered free shipping for most of my orders. “We can work that out,” Art suggested “don’t worry about the shipping.” With that, I began to order from their shop.

We’ve all heard stories about how things were “better in the old days”. Well I must admit, my experience with buying parts over the past year has me longing for the ‘old days’ where we used to have to get to know the retailers we worked with.

Art, and his brother Rob, have taken the time to get to know me and my project. When I call with a list of things I need, they’ll often have a suggestion on a particular brand and explain why it suits my project and budget. When it came to shipping a heavy rear-disc conversion kit, Rob simply decided it would be worth taking a Sunday cruise with the family and brought it right to my door. Returns on bits I ordered and didn’t need have been seamless, and at one point they even offered to take a return on some cylinder heads I didn’t even buy from them!

I’m not suggesting every retail shop experience is going to turn out as well as mine has. But when it comes to classic cars, I think you’ll find that getting to know the owner and counterperson at a specialist benefits your projects in more ways than one. I only see Art and Rob at the annual car show and a couple of club events during the year, but our mutual interest in similar classics, combined with a mutual effort to get to know each other has resulted in a great friendship. There’s no reason you can’t develop an equally great relationship with your parts specialist just by simply taking an interest in their projects, and their business. Try doing that with a webpage!

Classic Roads: Col de Turini

Words & Photos by Budd Stanley

Imagine if you will, the chance to drive the Col de Turini. An exciting, once in a lifetime chance yes, but what if you were given a high-powered sports car, and you had the Col all to yourself, free to take rage on the most famous and historical of all World Rally Championship stages? Well, I just happened to be in the region and I thought it would be a shame to come all this way and not tackle the great Col de Turini. The Col is the staple, and often deciding, stage in the Monte Carlo rally.

All the great names in rallying have attacked this particularly sacred strip of tarmac. Paddy Hopkirk, Rauno Aaltonen, Sandro Munari, Timo Makinen, Marku Allen, Ari Vatenen, Tommi Makinen, Colin McRae, and Seb Loeb have all taken stage wins here to win the Monte. It is a stage that separates the men from the boys with several deadly characteristics. With an altitude change of 1200 meters, drivers are usually sent out on slicks with only a few studs punched in around the outside of the tire. That’s because the road at the bottom of the mountain is usually free of ice or snow. However once drivers start to reach the top of the Col, a fresh dusting of the slick stuff is most likely waiting for them. Changing surface conditions is then matched to the roads topographical limitations, as it’s literally carved into a rock face. Sounds like fun, so off I went to experience the Col for myself.

With a new 2009 BMW Z4 sDrive35i turbo as my weapon, I made my way up the D2565 (a particularly spectacular bit of road in itself) leading to the town of La Bollène-Vésubie, and the beginning of the Col. Much like the Eiffel region that is home to the Nurburgring, there is a aura of speed and motorsport excellence in the region. Here, drivers begin to push vehicles limits and put more emphases on the perfect cornering line. Seeing a mid 80’s Fiat Panda cutting a blind corner with the rear tire lifted into the air like an angry terrier becomes a regular sight. The D2565 is a great road, but as soon as you turn off onto the D70, the fact you are on the legendary stage is clear.

The tight and narrow road is absolutely riddled with corners. Rising out of La Bollène-Vésubie and up the rocky cliff gorge, the road is little more than a one lane ledge with a sheer rock wall on the left side, and a bottomless drop off the right side as it charges steep into the mountain. It wasn’t long until I hit the first hairpin complex, a stack of switchbacks that climb the rocky cliff like a ladder, so popular with the camera helicopters. On I drove, with no traffic in sight, rubber scars littering the road surface where S2000 cars have left their braking too late, or spun their wheels leaving the hairpins. The endless onslaught of corners continued on into the beautiful Turini forest that covers the higher altitudes.

Finally I had arrived at the top of the Col, a legendary piece of real estate where 35,000 mad and drunken French and Italian fans pummel each other with snowballs and roman candles in anticipation for their competing countrymen to rocket over the Col in a fit of snow spraying glory. There are three Inns here on the Col and the Restaurant des Trois Vallèes, is a particularly good place to grab a bite to eat and a drink, while being surrounded by rally memorabilia.

After some sentimental time on the Col, it was time to head down the D2566 towards Sospel, France. This is where things got interesting. Pulling off the Col and diving down into the forest of the south side, I noticed a sign at the side of the road with the words, “Route Barrière.“ Obviously the road was under construction, but I wasn’t going to let a little sign stop me from exploring this historic route. So on I went.

With the BMW Z4’s turbo now glowing, and the road indeed blocked, I hustled my way back up the stage, the sweet sound of the straight six echoing off both the rock wall and the cliff face on the opposite side of the gorge. Up through the hairpin complex and on to Moulinet. Turn around, and do it all again down hill, the back end of the Z4 breaking loose under the force of braking required to get the car through the tight corners. The rock walls only inches away reflected the light emitted from glowing brake discs. By the time I made it back to the bottom, the brake pedal was almost non-responsive. The concentration and skill needed to navigate a car through this lethal bit of road gave me a new respect for the men who attack this stage in absolute anger. It really does take an exceptional person to not only conquer this road, but to do it in icy conditions on slick tires. This is why Col de Turini is the greatest stage in the WRC.

Lap after lap, I had lost track of time. I cruised back into Moulinet, hoping to find some sort of accommodation, and found the entire town partying in the town square, all 250 souls. Making my way into the square to practice my grade nine level French, I couldn’t even get out a word before I had a glass of champagne and a pastry in my hand. With alcohol in my system and the nature of the road, I would be staying there for the night, whether in the car or a hotel. After asking if there was a hotel open in town, the locals told me not to worry, and my glass was refilled and a fresh pastry supplied. I was given a fully equipped apartment in town by one of the locals and was asked to rejoin for the celebration back in the square. That night I filled myself with champagne and pastries, talked of stories about the rally, and leaped over the massive bonfire burning in the square, as is tradition, making for a truly surreal experience.

The next day I was up a little later than I hoped, for obvious reasons. I walked down to the café for a much-needed espresso, and a chat with the locals I had come to know the night before. And with that it was back into the Z4, and back up the Col, headed to the next great Alp pass on my schedule. But nothing can compare to the experience I received on the Col, a once in a lifetime event.

About The Route:
Places To Stop: The village of Moulinet; famous Inns at the top of the Col; West side hairpin complex; and south side hairpin complex. Total Distance: 22.68 km (stage)
Altitude: 1,607 m
Starting Point: Coordinates 43°98′99″N – 7°32′14″E. We began in the town of La Bollène-Vésubie. Following the D70 east we wound our way to the Col, Following the traditional route south along the D2566 to the stage finish in Sospel, via the village of Moulinet.
Finishing Point: Coordinates 43°52′41″N – 7°26′57″E
Road Type: Hairpin riddled, narrow tarmac rally stage
Warnings: This road requires the absolute in concentration, nearly all corners are blind and everyone is out to best their time. Reflexes must be top level to keep the shiny side up. Serious drop-offs if the stone barriers don’t do their job.

Roman Polanski’s “Weekend of a Champion”

In 1971, film producer Roman Polanski (yes, that Roman Polanski) spent a week with Team Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart at the Monaco GP, and produced a movie titled, “Weekend of a Champion”. Apart from a theatre release and some TV showings, the movie seems to have disappeared into obscurity. The title rarely shows up in any filmography listings for Polanski, and the all-knowing Google has very little about this movie. Thankfully, YouTube has a few segments from the movie but I’m still on the hunt for a full version. Here’s Jackie Stewart – at breakfast in his underwear – explaining to Polanski how to drive at Monaco.