VeloceToday.com

The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts

Automobile Art and the Detroit Industry Murals

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By Wallace Wyss

One of the greatest car paintings ever made is not, as one would expect, a single portrait of a single car. No, it’s a mural. And it isn’t just one mural on one wall, it goes on and on in room after room. And as you will see, it is powerful, evocative and controversial.

Commissioned in 1932 by Museum Director William Valentiner, the murals, collectively known as Detroit Industry, cover all four walls of the Garden Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, and number 27 in all. Bankrolling it was Henry Ford’s son, Edsel B. Ford, then president of the Ford Motor Company, who was trying in every way to escape the grinding pressure imposed by being the son of the most famous industrial leader in the world. [Read more…] about Automobile Art and the Detroit Industry Murals

In the Beginning… There Were Sportscars

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Sean Smith, 1 1/2 years old, with his father’s Porsche 356.

Story and photos by J. Frederick Smith and Sean Smith

The Editor and I were going over ideas for stories to do; at the moment it’s not all that easy, with this COVID craziness going on. Pete floated the idea of digging into my archives and talk about a favorite car or event.

That gave me the idea of doing my automotive ancestry and what brought me to this point in my life.

I will start out with a disclaimer: there are no French or Italian cars in my past. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any in my future. So accept my apologies from the beginning and grant me your patience while I climb through the branches of my vehicular tree.

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Rita’s Ghia Cadillac

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From the Archives, September 2013

By Wallace Wyss

This is a story of unrequited love all the way around. It occurred in the early ‘50s. Think film noir, mood lighting, moonlight on the Riviera, that sort of thing.

First, (and good casting for this story I might add) as the female lead was Rita Hayworth, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, to a Spanish Flamenco dancer father and Ziegfeld girl mother. She was reportedly an under-age dancer at a Tijuana club when she was discovered by Fox Studios.

She became one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Her one-glove strip tease in the movie Gilda put her on the map. Rita was a top movie star and a popular pinup girl during the forties. Her second husband was famed director Orson Wells, who she married in 1943. Her career bloomed during that time, but she lived on the edge, by having a fling around 1948. Not with some ordinary Joe, mind you, but with an Ismaili prince, Aly Kahn.

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Chuck Daigh, West Coast Whiz Kid

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Chuck Daigh, voted ‘Fastest U.S. race driver of 1960” by Road & Track, always considered himself a mechanic first and foremost, but invitations to race were welcome. (Bob D’Olivo)

Story by Willem Oosthoek

In the annals of motor racing history, the name Chuck Daigh will always be linked to that of the Scarab, the first U.S. built sportsracer to beat the best that Europe had to offer. Multi-talented, Daigh excelled as a race driver, an engine builder and all-round chief mechanic. In fact, he saw himself more as a race mechanic than a driver. In a 2000 interview Chuck mentioned: “I always got a lot more thrill out of working on a car, putting it together and seeing it work. I used to get bored sometimes during a race. I’d much rather chase somebody, but I would get in front and just fiddle around.”

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Etceterini Corner Number One

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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.

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The Fantastic Racecar of Francois Guidobaldi

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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.

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Angouleme Celebrates Alfa Romeo

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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

Burt Levy on Selling and Racing Alfa Romeos

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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

Let’s hear it for the (Bentley) Boy(s)

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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.

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In the Way of the War

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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.

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Sir Stirling Moss, A Man of Letters

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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.

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