The Vintage Sports Car Magazine

By Pete Vack

Last week, the Vintage Sports Car Club of America (VSCCA) and VeloceToday sent a 2020 Italian Car Calendar to VeloceToday’s premium subscribers who responded to our free offer, and also included a complimentary copy of the rare VSCCA quarterly magazine called the Vintage Sports Car. We thought it an opportune time to tell our readers a bit about this rare publication and its editor.

The current editor is Jim Donick, who put out his first issue of the Vintage Sports Car in April of 1985. Though generally available only to VSCCA members, Donick told us that you’ll find the magazine in several of the neatest automobile museums in Europe, but he adds, “Usually on the desk of the director or other members of the staff. They don’t distibute it.”
It can also be found on the table in the lobby of the famous Hotel de France, ”…the most iconic motoring hotel in the country and headquarters over the years for many of the best teams contesting the 24 Hours.” It might be less expensive to simply join the club; as we shall see, the magazine is not strictly a ‘club pub’. Donick works at keeping the “mix,” as he calls it, from getting too predictable. There are reports on the Le Mans museum, the now abandoned Grand Prix Circuit at Reims, and stories of individual cars, marques, and racing teams of the past.

Vintage Sports Car is a delight and as eccentric as it is anticipated. First, it’s small, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, a comfortable friend that is held without undue effort. But what is unusual is that all photos are published in black and white. In fact, aside from the cover background, there is no color anywhere in the magazine. Says Donick, “This format was adopted in 1976 and reflected an attempt to raise the quality of the club bulletin to something more akin to the clubs in Europe: the VSC, the Bentley Drivers Club Review, the Bugatti Owners Club Review. I know that I have chosen to make it more an ongoing history of the VSCCA than simply a ‘newsletter,’ hence, it should look and feel like a magazine. As to the lack of color? Initially that was a cost saving. These days it isn’t. BUT, keeping it black and white adds to the traditional sort of “tweedy” flavor so we keep it.”

“After all of these years I rather suspect it has come to reflect me to some extent, and so eccentric and quirky are accurate. Mostly, though, I think of it as ‘traditional.’ I try to keep it from following the current zeitgeist, whatever that happens to be.”

The latest edition…Number Four 2019, is full of the diverse articles that make its arrival so welcome. As with any club publication, the major events are chronicled, and well written reports are provided by Dow Smith on the Spring Sprints and Empire Cup races at the home track of Lime Rock, and the White Mountain Grand Prix in Tamworth, New Hampshire. But in the next pages, we are transported to the Smithsonian Air and Space Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center where the editor takes photos of the U 16 Bugatti aero engine and relates the placard information about the WWI Bugatti marvel. Then, a cutaway of the Triumph Dolomite but not the Triumph you think it might be.

Sadly obituaries are usually present. Donick devotes multiple pages to the recent demise of one of the club’s oldest and most valued members, Jerry Greaves, and he could have devoted the entire issue to Greaves, who was as ‘indispensable’ as anyone might ever be. The Greaves stories are legion, but our favorite is when we asked him if we could change our Alfa Sprint drums to discs, as after all, that was done on the same model, only a few years later. “It would safer” we complained. “Well, drive slower,” replied Greaves, who was dean of the car classification committee. Greaves also knew more about Bandinis (and just about anything else) than anyone we’ve ever met.

Book reviews are often off the beaten path. Here Donick reviews roads before cars; in The Old Road, Hilaire Belloc takes us from Winchester to Canterbury “… with the eyes of an adventurer but the soul of a philosopher… a satisfying read while sitting before a fire over several long winter evenings, and perhaps a decent Armagnac.” Another all too brief classic review covers Ken Purdy’s Kings of the Road.

Occasional poetry: An appropriate poem by Bentley driver Jack Fry, written in 1954, lamenting the new cars with chromium without and plastic within and the shape of a pregnant terrapin. “I’ll go to heaven by Winged ‘B’ most lovingly restored and burble down the Milky Way—untaxed and uninsured..”

And, 2020 Calendar Outtakes: If you liked the 2020 Italian Car Calendar, you’ll like the ones who for one reason or another didn’t make the cut. Like Karl Ludvigsen in his Maserati at Bridgehampton.

Gossip: President Sandy Leith’s daughter gets married, and Donick’s son Michael gets his Allard K3 out of the paint shop. Both, we hope, are carrying the flame to another generation.
Letters: In which Ludvigsen writes to say he received his eagerly awaited 2020 Italian Car calendar only to find no photo of him and his Maserati at Bridgehampton.
Classified: A Moggie three wheeler, a Turner, and a Sprint car are for sale this quarter.

Donick recalled for us a few of his experiences as Editor of the VSC.
“There are so many enthusiasts out there who have a story to share and I’m the guy who gets to help share it. That’s truly cool. I’ve gotten to know some wonderful folks as a result of doing feature stories at Le Mans or Reims, or out in Brittany. Even along the road; a couple of years ago we caught up with a French car club on their annual Easter sojourn and got to know them when they stopped for the always required moment or two to fix a problem in one of the cars. Their president now has a VSCCA badge for the front of his Traction Avant.

“Perhaps my most interesting was editing from Moscow in the Soviet Union when I worked there. This was before the internet, so all of my material came (and went) via a drop box at the American Embassy in Helsinki, then came on to Moscow in the Diplomatic Pouch. I think the calendar that year was mostly Eastern European cars. During that time we attended a FIVA International Rally in Riga. The organizers put us into the second car in the parade. It was the first time since WWII that the traditional flags of Latvia and Riga were displayed in a public parade. It was a very big deal for them. The roads were lined with cheering people, throwing flowers. I was in an open ZIS- that’s a Packard clone – as we entered a collective farm for lunch at a decent rate of knots, one woman with an armful of flowers tossed them all at once. The entire bouquet caught me square in the face. Purple and white flowers blew off both sides of my head.”

We might note here that the VSCCA has members all over the world, and many are too far away from New England to partake in club events. Nevertheless, the Vintage Sports Car serves to bind the members together, and makes the dues worthwhile.