I’ve read some of the stories about Bugatti’s difficulties in reclaiming his factory from the French gov’t after the war. I don’t recall all of the details, but, part of the problem was that even though Bugatti spent most of his life living in France, he was still an Italian citizen. Italy, of course, was allied with…

This is just one of the stories about Bugatti in the the 1950's, when they were struggling to recover from the war. Some American and British Bugatti collectors also discovered a treasure trove of Bugatti parts, including chassis’ that had been hidden behind false walls in the factory attic to keep them from being…

A very minor point.... the autobahn network was built up in the mid-’30's by the Nazis and was, of course, expanded and improved after WWII. You are right about it not being Hitler’s idea. It was largely designed and engineered during the Weimar Republic, but, only a very short stretch was built as “proof of concept”…

My theory about the RS200 prices is just a educated guess. A friend of mine imported a few “left-over” RS200's to the US back in the late 80's and sold them to collectors for “off-road” use. They were very much a single-purpose car and Ford didn’t make a very good road car version. The were noisy and cramped and the…

All of these RS200's are gone... all 200 of them, plus about 20 “Evolution” versions. They come up for sale occasionally and they haven’t appreciated a huge amount over the original price, so if you really want one, they’re out there.

I think the reason it’s worth 20 mill is because they only built one. It was the personal car for Agnelli of Fiat.

I had the same thought... maybe he was having some problem with the shift linkage. It sounded like he had some trouble getting into the right gear sometimes.

The commentators mentioned during yesterday’s race that part of the road used for the track was built on land-fill many years ago and, of course, has settled over time. There may not be a lot they can do to make the track smoother. It will just keep settling.

Probably a pump to pressurize the fuel tank, but could also be a pump to draw oil from an oil tank into the engine sump. Some of those engines used oil at an alarming rate.

No doubt you have the book by Schrader & Wakefield,”BMW:A History. Some great shots of the Dixi. Almost looks like a toy car. Hard to believe people could actually fit inside.

Good catch on that real piece of automotive trivia. I like it. BMW bought a license to build the Austin 7 in Germany and the rest is history, as they say...

From what I’ve read, Cunningham was the first to use the blue stripes. It evolved from the 1920's when America’s international racing colors were a white body with blue frame rails... back when race cars still had exposed frame rails. The two blue stripes represent an abstraction of that color scheme.

A former client of mine is a Dodge Viper owner and an auto insurance agent. He checked into the stats involving other Viper owners. The numbers showed that significant number of owners who crashed their cars had the accident in the first eight hours ownership.

I recall reading an article about McLaren’s first carbon fiber tub built by Hercules. When Ron Dennis and John Barnard first visited the company to discuss the project, Ron Dennis noticed a number of very large buildings that were spaced unusually far apart. When he asked why, he was told that they built rocket…

That 928 looks like the one they built for Ferry Porsche as a birthday present. I think the company built two or three of them just as an experiment.

The design reminds me of some of the concept cars that Bertone would have done. It’s not a bad design, if the year happens to be 1966.

In my original comment about seeing P1027 at the Cunningham Museum, I considered mentioning that the car was owned and restored by Jim Toesning, but thought no one would know who his was. I met Jim Toensing on a few occasions when he was restoring the very first Novi engined Indy car for my good friend Bob Sutherland.…

Uh... I’m pretty sure that’s Jim Clark in a Lotus. Not Dan Gurney in his Eagle.

Good luck finding an RS500 “Cossie” that is an affordable “rust-bucket”. The prices over there have gone through the roof, even for “tired” examples.

Thanks for the info. I thought that might be the case. Of course, it doesn’t preclude the original buyer with an early order from taking delivery of the car (whenever...) and then turning around and selling it for a mark-up, providing there is still that kind of demand when the cars are delivered. We’ll have to wait…