Impressive, Jeff! I'd love to have shared that! I was the worst kind of sports car snob back in the mid-'50s. My first was a Triumph TR-3. Changed the plugs (literally!) and raced it on Lake Erie's Pelee Island, Northern Ohio's Race Around the Houses, in Put-in-Bay, in Lake Erie, put on by the Sports Car Club of America branch in Cleveland, Ohio. Then, after moving to California, I owned and messed around with a 1958 Alfa Giulietta Spyder for a while. What a car! I had albums called "Sounds of the Monaco Grand Prix." A 12" LP record, nothing but highly tuned engines from Modena and other exotic places in Europe, making plenty of noise! 'Birdcage' Maseratis & Testa Rossas. What delicious sounds!
I still have several coffee table books on race cars of the European circuits, and history of the greatest race cars. Hans St�ck, a dozen or more top drivers... Fangio and Moss, Surtees, the great Chapman Lotus (Lotii?), Brabham, Cooper, BRM... Gendebien. The list of familiar cars and drivers goes on and on. Who can ever forget Niki Lauda? I grew up with this! What a wonderful time to be a kid who loved race cars... As an almost grown up of 48, I was vacationing in Europe in late May or 1978, and had to miss the Monaco Grand Prix by ONE DAY! I was staying in one of those terraced hotels on the best curves of the race, in full view of the old Casino... Airline tickets paid for by someone else, for another purpose, and I had to be in the air, back to Los Angeles, while the Grand Prix was boiling below me... Not sure I ever DID get over that! I'm still wringing out my latest acquisition, the MX body I got a couple of weeks ago. That may well supplant my MG as the workhorse of the kit... Never DID have an MG car, but do have two MG Pentaxes... Had to get that in, before I get abused for Off Topic stuff... ;^) I'll go offline for any future car-related posts, but thanks for bringing it up. keith whaley Jeff wrote: > > > I'll bet that's true! You need a longer wheelbase (vs. track > > dimensions) to aid stability. > > Still, for 'around town' it seems hard to beat! > > You could not be a Juan Fangio, or a Nuvolari (!) but if you drive > > sanely, it ought to be a ton of fun! > > > > keith whaley > > > > Keith, > You must be an old timer. Noone knows Juan Fangio, except us old timers. > > I had the pleasure to admire one of his F1 cars. A wealthy neighbour of mine > owned one of them and for our pleasure he would take it out for a spin every > now and then. > This was in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the mid sixties. > > Jeff.
