Hill with a Peugeot in a R&T ad. Now listen to the recording below.
Below, we give our readers a chance to hear a rare 33 1/3 rpm recording, sent to us on a plasticized square piece of cardboard which measures seven by seven inches. For the record, it is simplistic, it is advertising, and it is not particularly well executed, even for the late 1950s. But it offers us a unique insight into what was then a new world for Americans, that of sports car racing and strange foreign cars with even stranger names. Despite being scripted, it says something about Phil Hill we may not have been able to ascertain elsewhere. Most telling, even though it is obviously a bought and paid for commercial, it is honest, as honest as Phil Hill always was.
Click on record to listen to Phil Hill.
Note that there is a 20 second
pause at the start.
This rare audio record came our way via Serge Dermanian, a retired Ferrari restorer living in Nice, France. Shortly after publishing an excellent article by Philippe H. Defechereux, which used an ad in which Phil Hill was photographed with a Peugeot 403, we received an email from Dermanian who mentioned that he had a record to go along with the ad. He added that he would be glad to send it along. We hooked up our stereo phonograph, carefully played the ancient audio device for pickup to a digital recorder, and finally converted it to the digitized format for use on a computer.
In addition, on this old, scratchy record, we hear Road & Track Editor John R. Bond, almost a lone voice in the wilderness, who used the magazine’s power and platform to beg Detroit to build cars with good handling, quality, common sense and good gas mileage. There is a message here, then, and now.
Our thanks to Serge Dermanian for finding and sending along this rare recording of the late Phil Hill. Note that there is a 20 second pause before the actual voices are heard, so have patience.