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The Online Magazine for Italian and French Classic Car Enthusiasts

Graham Gauld

Graham Gauld on Motor Shows

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The Vignale “Goccia”. Gauld took this photo in 1957, only to find the same car at a motor show in 1999, plus the Fish and the Pinin. Read on!

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

As most of you probably know there was a motor show in Geneva last week, where all the attention appeared to be on supercars with weird and wonderful aerodynamics; it all looked terribly serious. Editor Pete asked me if I was going to attend the show, but had to admit that it has been about twenty years since I attended the big salons of Geneva and Paris..

I knew that Pete will have plenty of photos of the Geneva event from other correspondents so wasn’t too worried. However, Pete’s comments reminded me of an interesting show I attended in 1999. It was organized by the well-known Italian collector Franco Lombardi in his home town of Genoa and I knew I had to be there. I was not disappointed! So to get you into the Motor Show mood let me tell you about three of the cars there. [Read more…] about Graham Gauld on Motor Shows

Jean Behra and the Fatal Insult

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Jean Behra celebrates after winning the Modena Grand Prix 1957 – his penultimate Grand Prix for Maserati.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

Had he lived, the great French driver Jean Behra would have been 96 last month (February). I say, “had he lived” because Behra was a hard, tough racing driver who had started out racing on motorcycles and had survived a number of accidents. He repeated this in his car racing career until that sad day when he was due to race his own Formula car, the Behra Porsche, for the first time in a World Championship Grand Prix.

Behra told me, ‘You are a stupid man!’ and slapped me on the face.

It was not to be, for a few hours earlier he chose to compete in a sports car race on the same high-speed banked Avus track in Germany in a Porsche RSK. He slithered on the banking in the wet and hit a pole at the top of the banking and was killed outright. [Read more…] about Jean Behra and the Fatal Insult

Gauld and the Six Delage Grand Prix Cars

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Retromobile captured five out of the six 1927 Grand Prix Delages for display, an amazing feat.

Story by Graham Gauld
Color images by Hugues Vanhoolandt unless otherwise noted.

Every year tends to mark the anniversary of something significant in the automobile world and 2017 is important for one car in particular, the Delage 15S8. It was one of the most successful Grand Prix cars of all time and it was born ninety years ago this year.

It was fitting that Retromobile in Paris reserved a special area upstairs and in the smaller hall for a remarkable display that featured five of the six original cars built ninety years ago! It was a tremendous feat to gather them all together in one place for the first time thanks to a group of dedicated Delage enthusiasts including my old friend Christophe Pund.

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Gauld at Retro 2017 Take One

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What’s special about this special Lancia?

Story and photos (except as noted) by Graham Gauld

This year Retromobile was bigger than ever with a surprise every ten yards. And that’s why most of what is contained in this early story is a mere fragment of the kind of stuff you can find if you look in all the nooks and crannies. I’ll be writing more about this year’s Retro so just stay tuned to VeloceToday.

I am always on the lookout for cars that remind me of times gone by when they were new and fresh and so it came as a surprise to find a very interesting stand supported by Fiat Group, concessionaires and associated car clubs as they had brought along a number cars that all had stories to tell.

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Gauld at the Osenat/Gombert Junkyard Auction

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The Alfa Montreal bought by Gerard Gombert for junk and now steadily sinking into the undergrowth fetched $13,000 at the Osenat Auction on November 9-11.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

Nothing much happens around this part of the South of France. The hot spots of Nice, Cannes and Monaco lie on the sunny Coast of the French Riviera but here, inland about twenty miles away, village life is about the same as it has always been. But on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week all that changed with one of the oddest auction sales I have ever attended. Here is the story.

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The Alpine A110 in the foreground sold for $15,000 with the blue one behind went for $27,000.

Gerard Gombert was a one-time motor cycle racer and garage owner in Nice. He had some good customers and clients but gave it all up a number of years ago and bought a semi-derelict property right beside the main road from Draguignan and the perfume capital of France, Grasse.

What he bought was fairly dense woodland with a small house that bordered that road. Then compulsion took over and he began to collect things, mainly cars and motorcycles but eventually caravans, trucks and bric-a-brac that nobody else would buy. His property became a junkyard.

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Clark, Goggomobil, Glas and the Dart

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The Goggomobil Dart photographed in 2007 at Classic Adelaide in Australia. It was running on the event but is a promotional car for the Australian insurance company Shannons.

The Goggomobil Dart photographed in 2007 at Classic Adelaide in Australia. It was running on the event but is a promotional car for the Australian insurance company Shannons.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

We all know about racing drivers who started out running the oddest cars in motor sport events, but I think the guy who really takes the biscuit is the legendary Jim Clark, two-time World Grand Prix Champion and the first British winner of the Indianapolis 500.

It was 1956, and the world had never heard of Jim Clark. He was still the farmer’s son running his Sunbeam Talbot Mark III in the odd rally and gymkhana. That year Europe faced the Suez Crisis when Egypt threatened to close the Suez Canal. This would have put Britain in dire straits when it came to delivering oil from the Middle East, so the British went to war. It was short and a political disaster in many ways but it brought in severe fuel rationing in Britain. As a result, many people turned to Germany where they were producing a new breed of Microcars. The BMW Isetta was the most popular with the Heinkel coming next. But who remembers the Goggomobil?

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Graham Gauld: Bosley versus Michelotti

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The Bosley GT, a superb, stylish design that predated cars like the Berlinetta Lusso by a number of years, yet designed in America. Gauld photo.

Richard Bosley and Giovanni Michelotti: A styling dichotomy.

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The 1957 Vignale-bodied Triumph TR3 parked in a Modena street, built as a styling exercise by Michelotti to help persuade Triumph to hire him as a consultant: it worked. Gauld photo.

By Graham Gauld

A couple of stories this month which bring up the matter of style and coachbuilding. (see last week’s Michelotti Corvette article) If you read the two stories you could be forgiven for thinking the photos showing the first car described was designed in Italy and the second in the United States.

But it was the other way around.

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Gauld at Maranello and Monaco

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Howden Ganley welcomes Piero Ferrari as an honorary member of the Grand Prix Drivers Club in the Cavallino Restaurant opposite the original factory gates. John Surtees is in the foreground.

Howden Ganley welcomes Piero Ferrari as an honorary member of the Grand Prix Drivers Club in the Cavallino Restaurant opposite the original factory gates. John Surtees is in the foreground.

By Graham Gauld

In some ways I always dread the month of May as I usually have something going on, not only every weekend but in four different countries! As a result this is written in haste before heading off for Scotland and the Ecurie Ecosse Tour.

Ten days ago it all started with the Annual General Meeting of the Grand Prix Drivers Club which this year was held in Maranello on the invitation of Ferrari, and resulted in a good turnout of members including not only what we would call normal Ferrari drivers but including one World Champion, John Surtees. Piero Ferrari, vice-President of Ferrari was made an Honorary Member of the Club by Club President Howden Ganley and was seated beside John Surtees. [Read more…] about Gauld at Maranello and Monaco

Graham Gauld “I Knew Them When”…Nardi

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The mystery BMW Special. Note the two hoods, the front holding the engine and the top one holding the spare wheel.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

Last week I talked about the car that truly stopped the show at Retromobile, the Ferrari 335S, so now I will go from the sublime to the ridiculous.

A tale of two? Nardis

I happened by the stand of Christophe Pund who runs La Galerie Des Damiers and has a habit of digging up remarkable cars that no one has ever heard of. This year he went better and put on show a car he told me he had found as a wreck – and by the time of Retromobile it was little more than that – but did not know exactly what it was. I mention it because some reader in Italy may remember something about it and be able to help out.
Fundamentally it is a two-seater sports car with a lightweight body and powered by a 750cc BMW motorcycle engine mounted in its own compartment at the front of the car. There is a second hood under which is the spare wheel so the driver sits in one of two sketchy seats holding what appears to be a Nardi steering wheel. [Read more…] about Graham Gauld “I Knew Them When”…Nardi

Gauld Drives a Rare Aravis Bugatti

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By Graham Gauld

I lost a good friend a few years ago, when the 20th Earl of Moray, from one of Scotland’s older noble families, died at the age of 83. Though born in Africa he lived for most of his life at the family’s Scottish estates in Perthshire and Moray. So why am I talking about this man? Well, back in the 1970s when he was still Lord Doune, Douglas John Moray Stuart decided to collect motor cars that fascinated him. The first was a little Citroen but then he went on a buying spree which culminated not only in him building the Doune Motor Museum but creating the Doune Hill Climb in his grounds which even today hosts a round of the British Hill Climb Championship.

Many years ago Douglas asked me to help him trace the history of his cars and I may well come back to the stories behind some of them in a future column. When I heard of his death I was reminded of the fact that he was the first person to let me drive a Bugatti.

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Farewell, Maria Teresa de Filippis

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Maria-Teresa de Filippis and her fellow Maserati driver Luigi Villoresi at a GPDC event.

Maria-Teresa de Filippis and her fellow Maserati driver Luigi Villoresi enjoy themselves at a GPDC event.

By Graham Gauld

*Photographs provided by the collection of Maria-Teresa de Filippis

Farewell Maria-Teresa
After being involved with automobile racing for over sixty years one often feels inured to the passing of older drivers who you saw in action many years ago. However, Saturday last week was particularly difficult day as I was told the sad news that Maria-Teresa de Filippis had died. Theo Huschek, Maria-Teresa’s husband of fifty years, gave me the news.

The actual announcement came not as a surprise. Maria-Teresa had been suffering from a debilitating illness for a few years, but up until about a year ago you would never have known it. Just two months ago she celebrated her 89th birthday which was an achievement in itself, but her health went downhill sharply in the past weeks.

Maria-Teresa de Filippis started racing in Italy in 1948 after her brothers joked with her about becoming a racing driver. She entered her Fiat 500 Topolino in a hill climb and immediately won her class. She felt this would happen. She told me that a year before she had visited a fortune teller who told her that she would win a motor race and so it came to pass.

Maria-Teresa photographed at the Targa Vesuvio in 1949 with her Camen-Fiat.

Maria-Teresa photographed at the Targa Vesuvio in 1949 with her Camen-Fiat.

[Read more…] about Farewell, Maria Teresa de Filippis

Graham Gauld Remembers Griff Borgeson

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By Graham Gauld

I think if you do not have someone to look up to and respect, there is no incentive to improve. When it came to motoring journalism there were a handful of people I respected and one of the first to become a hero was American writer and historian Griffith Borgeson.

When I bought my first motor racing book in 1951, it was one of the soft cover booklets produced by Fawcett in the U.S.A. It was about Hot Rods and written by Griffith Borgeson and Eugene Jaderquist. Perhaps it was his depth of knowledge or his command of English that turned my head, but I was a fan for many years and eventually met him here in the South of France.

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