A Car (Wife) by Larry Crane

Within two months Tracy was in charge of the press car fleet and got to drive everything first — the real goal met. She created the term “Road Test Coordinator” a term now used by most car magazines. There are many stories about Tracy’s adventures. The best were her drives in Porsches from Reno, Nevada south across the eastern Sierra desert to the R&T office in Newport Beach. On one such trip she was stopped by the CHP three times and not ticketed. I never asked….

Never boring. We have been sharing the motorhead life for 23 years. Our daughter Taylor is a high school senior and likes guys with cool cars and her sister Tessa is a college sophmore, drives a manual gearbox new beetle, and can’t wait to go vintage racing in a Bugeye Sprite. DNA is a tricky science.

Tracy arrived at the R&T office in her RX7 solo comp car. She was even offered a factory drive in Honda’s new CRX. Once our nuptials were official the RX7 became a ’63 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint with a ’67 GTV twin-Weber engine and 5-speed gearbox. She had been a swimmer and water polo player so competing was natural. Two small windshield stickers and we were quickly recognized as the R&T vintage racing team. Thank goodness my B20 raced in an older class than her Sprint.

One of her first races was at Riverside Raceway. My job was to stand on the top of the turn six wall and take pictures. That wall was about 4 feet tall, made of heavy armor plate and backed by an earthen bank that supported a large grandstand. The esses were fast and turn five was a gentle left onto a steep rise that led into turn six with its two rights taken as a fast sweep with a double apex. The first apex was at the crest of the hill and completely unloaded the tires after which you gathered everything up as you shot toward the iron plate and lined up for the second apex and the long, fast down hill to the turn 7 and 7a complex.

Tracy was hounding a 327 Camaro up through the esses, it could not shake the 1600cc Alfa and they both crested the turn six rise a few feet apart. The crest caught Tracy off guard and her Alfa did a snap spin right in front of me. I was spellbound and watching to see the result. As the Alfa came to a perpendicular stop in the blind corner, Tracy was already in first and quickly leaving black marks from her locked diff as she spun back and headed for the second apex. I ran down to the paddock to meet her after her race finished. She was still wearing her helmet when she started screaming, “DID YOU GET THE PICTURE!!” I didn’t, of course, and have never lived it down.

Once at Laguna Seca Raceway she was tight on a Lotus Elan for several laps (no one explained to Tracy that V-8 Camaros and featherweight Loti were out of the Alfa coupe’s league), as they came over the top of the Corkscrew they closed on a Mercedes-Benz Gullwing. The Lotus dove inside of old turn seven for the pass and Tracy was right on his tail. The Gullwing slammed the door after the Lotus and put Tracy into a bunch of weeds and a drainage ditch full of rocks. The Mercedes exited seven behind the Alfa in a shower of pea gravel.

“Tracy never lifts.” I’ve said that hundreds of times and in dozens of speeches. When the race concluded she rolled into the paddock with an Alfa full of gravel and weeds. I could see the red glow of her face lighting up the inside of her helmet as the car came to a dusty stop.

We had to keep her away from the guy in the Gullwing for the entire weekend. He had no idea how much personal danger he had generated.

Tracy didn’t race after the kids arrived, but she still does the thing that attracted me from the beginning. She makes the most beautiful gear changes I have ever seen made by a woman, going up or down the gearbox with a heel-and-toe dance to bring tears to your eyes.

A devoted fan.