The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts
Bandini 750 Sport Internazionale, Mille Miglia 2017. Photo by Hugues Vanhoolandt. For more, see below!
In this Etceterini Corner, part 1 of 6, Hugues Vanhoolandt shows you eight images of the small ones, taken over a period of many years. In addition, in each of the six Etceterini Corners, we will focus on one marque in a bit of detail after the Gallery. Scroll down to see today’s feature about Bandini.
The Guidobaldi in 2015. Photo by Graham Gauld.
Story by Graham Gauld
Some years ago, in the Mougins Automobile Museum which, until its closure, was close to where I live in the South of France, I saw the chassis and engine of a racing car that I could not believe.
The owner of the museum and the car was Adrien Maeght*, a member of the Maeght family, who were prosperous frame makers catering to the art world in Paris. Adrien is also a keen car collector and he opened his museum right beside the main autoroute leading to Cannes and Nice.
1907 Berliet D Course of Patrice Coutant at the Elegance evening.
From the Archives, September, 2010
Story and Photos by Ian Wilson
The first motor race around the streets of Angouleme, les Circuits des Remparts, with racers like Jean-Pierre Wimille, Maurice Trintignant and Raymond Sommer taking part, was held in 1939 in this charming piece of French countryside. [Read more…] about Angouleme Celebrates Alfa Romeo
My first win in an Alfa Romeo, co-driving the resurrected “totaled” ’74 Alfa Spider a Midwestern Council Enduro with my friend Mike, who also worked at Mellow Motors.
By Burt Levy
Craig Morningstar was a big, Viking-looking guy with a great sense of humor, a huge love for Italian cars and motorcycles and a massive taste for fun. And he needed that sense of humor because it was his job to visit Alfa dealerships, make nice with the dealership principals and staff and smooth the ruffled feathers of sometimes—no, make that more than sometimes—indignant recent Alfa purchasers who had encountered difficulties, real or imagined, that the dealership couldn’t seem to satisfy. [Read more…] about Burt Levy on Selling and Racing Alfa Romeos
Story and photos by Jonathan Sharp
Having sent the Editor the photographs for this piece, he asked me to tell our audience why a Brit who drives an Alfa appreciates Bentleys. An interesting question, and one to which I had never given much thought. The stock answer might be that I am English, and that we are hard-wired to appreciate Bentleys as much as we appreciate the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the Battle of Britain; it is in our DNA. [Read more…] about Let’s hear it for the (Bentley) Boy(s)
S.C.A.R. factory before its destruction in World War I.
Story by Jim Donick
S.C.A.R. (Société de Construction Automobile de Reims) is not exactly a household name amongst motoring enthusiasts. Not even Lord Montague saw fit to mention them in his Lost Causes of Motoring. Yet, for a relatively brief moment in time, much like Brando lamented in On the Waterfront, they “coulda been a contender.” Examples of the marque were raced with some success at the Brooklands Circuit in the UK as well has having taken part in a number of other significant racing events during the period.
The year was 1955 and my father and I had a brilliant idea of how to settle an argument. Being all of eight, I insisted that a Grand Prix car – for instance like the Mercedes W196 Stirling Moss was driving – could get around a 90-degree corner much faster than my wise old father could imagine.
He suggested that we ask the expert, Mr. Moss himself. I don’t recall how he came up with Moss’s address, but we mailed a letter which eventually found its way to the apartment that belonged to Stirling Moss, LTD.in London England. We put the question in general terms, suggesting an average streetcorner at the end of a block without stating the width of the road.
Exuberance personified, Moss three wheels the Vanwall at Melling Crossing, Aintree, 1957 (Gauld Photo)
Story and photos by Graham Gauld
1952. It is remarkably 68 years since I first wrote about and photographed Stirling Moss when I was a trainee journalist with an Edinburgh newspaper. In a remarkable bit of chutzpah, I had talked the Sports Editor into letting me take over the motoring and motor racing correspondents role at the age of 17!
1957, Moss at the Swedish Grand Prix. Photo by Jim Sitz.
Story by Clyde Berryman
The following is a QPRS review of Sir Stirling Moss’ F1 Grand Prix career. Allow me to explain.
As a boardgame enthusiast in my teen years, I conceived the first of several math formula systems to try and rate the performances of real racing drivers and their cars in order to re-create actual historical Grand Prix seasons using the game mechanics of a popular Avalon Hill game called ‘Speed Circuit’ By the mid-1990’s this formula had evolved into the final version which I called the Quality Point Rating System (QPRS) because I sought to distinguish the ‘quality’ of driver performances since they all drove different cars of varying levels of competitiveness. So how does Stirling Moss rate via our QPRS system?
Susie and Stirling Moss, Goodwood 2010.
Story and photos by Jonathan Sharp
“Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?” was an oft-used phrase by British Bobbies when pulling over speeding motorists in the mid-twentieth century. So well-known in fact, that Renault used the line during the 1970s for a Renault 20 television advertisement. If I recall correctly, the scene starts with the Renault stopped on a country road with a Bobby on a bicycle next to the car. The driver’s front window then comes down electrically, and the Bobby looks at the driver in the car whilst saying the immortal line. As the camera pulls away, we see Stirling Moss at the wheel. [Read more…] about Sir Stirling Moss, Mr Goodwood
When the Alfa Museum was open and hoods were up.
Story and photos by Roberto Motta
From the Archives, January 2017
Wander through the many automobile museums of the world (or just follow VeloceToday!) and you will quickly note that they all have one thing in common; the hoods are usually closed and if not, one can’t get close enough to study the mechanicals. This is unfortunate, for unlike today’s plastic-covered engines, many powerplants of the 20th century were hi tech engineering, awesome to look at, art in and of themselves, and designed to be easy to work on. Yet they are so often hidden under the hoods of museum pieces. Not so in Milan however!
