You guys ever see this great 40 min film of the 1965 Targa Florio?

[yale]

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYI4P...e_gdata_player

What's the story with the weird Posche?

Yale

[Kris Clewell]

I hadnt seen this, thanks for sharing.

[erick72pors]

Just watched the entire 40 mins. Just amazing. This is real racing. Doesn't get any better. Man I wished I could have lived in this era. These days will never come back

[Kris Clewell]

Just watched the entire 40 mins. Just amazing. This is real racing. Doesn't get any better. Man I wished I could have lived in this era. These days will never come back

I agree, its too bad. They cant. Things got too fast. Too dangerous. People started to freak out I think... I mean driving a 917 full out on public roads? Thats nuts. I think real racing stopped when they stopped having to shift cars for themselves. I wish I could nostalgize about this stuff, but I wasn't even alive. I'll just continue to live vicariously through the experiences of others.

[Jim Garfield]

What's the story with the weird Posche?

Yale

That's Piech's Kangaroo. It was an attempt to make a spyder as light as possible, and was built using the 904 frame and drivetrain. Probably the ugliest race car Porsche ever built. Thankfully they had a short run, used mainly as hill climb cars, and the dunebuggy look didn't influence the cars that came after.

Thanks for posting the TF link - great to watch.

[Scotty B]

I agree, its too bad. They cant. Things got too fast. Too dangerous. People started to freak out I think....

I disagree somewhat. Yes the cars got blisteringly fast, but IMHO what killed this type of racing is the lawsuits got even faster. The legal b.s. and red tape one would have to go through today to even be HEARD about the idea of doing something like this would be unbelieveable. In a day and age where you can ( so famously now ) sue over coffee being hot, sit trackside at a car race and sue 20 different companies when a chunck of rubber bounces off your forehead, this is why we can't have hill climbs, closed road races etc. Not to mention the outrage of the townfolk would have when they couldn't get to Starbucks and Target on a saturday morning becuse some ozone depleteing cars are making a bunch of noise.

Thiso kind of racing could still happen by people like us, but we don't have the money or power to close a whole town down, pay the lawyers to draw up contracts, pay off the local officials, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It sucks, everyone has to have their handout



On a side note. There is a video somwhere out there I thik it was called "thunder on the mountain". A friend of mine had a copy on VHS a while ago and it got lost. THAT was an awesome film too. I've tried to find it a couple times to no avail. Maybe I'm not remembering the name correctly

[mrgreenjeans]

Not to mention the outrage of the townfolk would have when they couldn't get to Starbucks and Target on a saturday morning becuse some ozone depleteing cars are making a bunch of noise.
This kind of racing could still happen by people like us, but we don't have the money or power to close a whole town down, pay the lawyers to draw up contracts, pay off the local officials, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It sucks, everyone has to have their handout

Scotty B




Agreed.

The only ones to get away with this are the cities promoting Running Marathons or Bike Racing. Starbucks and various other stores love those.......

We had an agreement with the local SCCA and a shopping mall to run a Sunday closed course Autocross before the stores opened at noon.
Who shows up as we were running the event ? The mall's lackey / security officer / indignant who had not been properly informed by his own General Manager and he went ballistic, harrassed everyone, threatened to call Police, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Of course, he couldn't reach his GM as he was out waterskiing behind his Cigarette Boat, so it turned into a sanctified mess , even after documentations were shown to the clown as to the legitimacy of our run.

Last time that got held there....... but while it ran we had a GREAT turnout of folks who stopped by to watch.

still not a fan of patronizing that mall

[CurtEgerer]

Nice find on the video! This in-car from 1973 was on the 'suggested videos' list alongside it. 908/3 practice lap with the roads still open to traffic Looks like they did some major road repair between the 66 video and 73. Those roads were rough in 66!

<iframe width="800" height="600" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7Albnb3xQdo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Scotty B]

Our local cars and coffe group recently got kicked out of a local mall lot. We had permission form the owners ot hold out meeting there, under the condition that we kept our hoods closed ??? For the month we held there, everytime the security dope would come cruising through on his golf cart telling people they needed to close their hoods. I guess they thought that at 8:00 a.m. on a saturdy 50+ fully restored hot rods sports and classics with hoods up looked too much like a scrap yard.

The Starbucks in the mall actually was on our side and raised holy hell with the owners since every saturday our group and visitors alone made their profit quota FOR THE WHOLE WEEK within the 3-4 hours we were there. We are now flipping between 2 locations on either side of town. Both of which are more than happy to have us and the attention we bring there. I too have not been to that mall since our " incident "

[Nine17]

I'm going to do my best not to flame here, but I do think that the demise of open-road racing has little to do with lawyers and much to do with governments finally learning respect for the lives of the citizenry -- especially as our world becomes a more crowded place.

I loved the Targa -- never got to go, but I've owned a VHS copy of Mountain Legend for 20+ years. I've chatted with Elford and Redman about what it was like to drive there. I've even sat behind the wheel of a 908/3. Exciting stuff.

Cars were much slower when open-road races like the Targa Florio, the Mille Miglia, and even Le Mans were conceived. Look at film of the Bentley Boys tip-toeing around La Sarthe in their lorries. Then look at film of the 1955 Le Mans disaster, in which Pierre Levegh's Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR launched off Lance Macklin's Austin Healey after Macklin had to swerve to avoid Mike Hawthorn's red-mist pit maneuver. Nearly 100 spectators were killed, many decapitated by the front suspension scything through the packed main spectator enclosure. They were just out for a day of fun in the sun -- they hardly were assuming the same risks as Hawthorn and Levegh. Then it happened again in 1957 when Fon de Portago's Ferrari blew a tire and took out 10 spectators -- 5 of them children -- on the Mille Miglia.

Think that it couldn't happen again? In 1978 I was sitting in the grass with a pretty girl at what was then Turn 7 at Laguna (today's Turn 9) when the throttle of George Follmer's Prophet Can-Am car stuck and poor George aviated 100 feet up the hillside, over the spectator enclosure. Fortunately it was a practice day, because the flying Prophet would have decapitated half a dozen race fans who would have lined the fence at that spot on race day. Follmer assumed the risks inherent in getting in that racing car -- but it's not fair to put bystanders at risk.

The population of California was 5 million in 1950; 19 million in 1970; nearly 40 million today. Sadly, it's simply become too crowded to safely race on the open road without creating disproportionate danger to spectators. Dead is dead, whether your heirs file a wrongful death suit or not.

-- David