A Particularly Good Issue of Road & Track Magazine

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FullerH

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Nov 25, 1998
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I just received my July issue of Road & Track magazine, to which I have subscribed since 1961. It is a particularly good issue, containing a fascinating roadtest of the Chrysler pototype, the Firepower. This is a showcar, but road capable, made up of a Viper chassis with a 6.1 liter Hemi V-8 engine and a fast-back coupe body. The interior is more classic British, say Aston-Martin, than Viper, and the car looks stunning from its pictures. It apparently could be put into production for just under the price of the Viper, giving Chrysler and Dodge three sports models going up the ladder from the Crossfire in various forms through the Firepower under a different name since Chrysler is not entitled to that name, to the legendary Viper. A friend has one of the originals and it is all that it is reputed to be.

The next article of interest is a dual test of the Mercedes-Benz/McLaren SLR and the Beechcraft Premier I business jet aircraft. Their excuse is, as they put it, "Celebrating carbon fiber on the land and in the air", since the basic frames, if you can call them that, of both craft are of carbon fiber composite, just like my BenchMade 770 Gent's Pocketknife and for the same reason, light weight and durability. The Mecedes/McLaren SLR is one fantastic supercar. I'll leave it at that and the jet is equally impressive.

But the article that impressed me the most was "Le Mans 1955: Three Who Were There" about three American drivers who were present at the Le Mans 24 Hour Race in June, 1955 when a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR ran off course into the crowd and killed, officially, 82 spectators. The unofficial total is more like 100. The three drivers were John Fitch, Phil Walters, and a young Phil Hill. Walters retired from racing as a result of that accident. Fitch, co-driver with Pierre Levegh in the 300 SLR that crashed, went on to a very successful racing career but he also focussed his attention on safety for both spectators and drivers after that day. He is the man who invented the orange plastic barrel filled with sand or water that is used to protect drivers and passengers from the impact with concrete bridge abuttments. That Le Mans drive was Phil Hill's first factory drive with Ferrari and he learned some hard lessons that day that lasted him throughout his career, a career that included being the first American World Champion Formula 1 Driver in 1961 and a three time winner at Le Mans and one of the all-time great endurance race drivers.

All in all, a worthy magazine issue for anyone interested in automobiles.
 
Cars = Gadgets & Gear. ;)
 
FullerH said:
Why was this moved? It was not about cars but about the magazine articles.
Click to expand...
The article is about cars and cars and/or discussion of cars, whether in an article or not, warrants getting moved to G&G.
 
Hugh - When I thumbed through my copy of R&T the other day, I saw the 1955 Le Mans article and immediately though of you. It was a terrific article on the most tragic day in racing history :(, and interesting to see how it affected the lives of those three American drivers.

BTW - I get more car rags than I should - R&T, Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Automobile, GT (Purely Porsche), Mercedes Enthusiast, CAR, and EVO to name a few... :eek:
 
Road & Track is always great. I have been receiving it since 1996 (I was 12) and i love it. My favorite part now is the Side Glances from Peter Egan, and I find myself occasionally going back and reading my old issues. I have kept all of my issues except October 1999, which is lost somewhere.


I do completely agree that this month's issue was an excellent read.
 
Just last week I went through all the old issues I had (back to sometime in 1998) to read all the Salon features over again. There was a great one where they had Mario Andretti drive a fabulously maintained Lotus 79, same car he won the F1 world championship with more than 20 years earlier.
 
Ken, I apologize for the abrupt tone of my query, as I was very tired at the end of the day and in quite some pain with my back out. But I am genuinely puzzled about your decision. I posted a piece about Guy Clark's great album, "Dublin Blues" in which there is a song, "The Randall Knife". It is about his dad'd Randall knife and what it means to him. You permitted that thread to remain in Community, but transferred this thread out. I see no real difference between these threads as to their relationship to the sortsa of general discussions that occur in Community. May I note that, if you look further down in this "Gadgets & Gear Forum, you will find that I did post a purely automotive thread, "The Ultimate Q Car", herein on 5/31/05. I suggest that as evidence that I do understand that threads directly having to do with such things should be in their appropriate fora. But a thread about a magazine would seem to be more appropriately in the same forum as threads about books, films, and cds.

Tell me, would you move a thread about Steve McQueen's film, "Le Mans", about the 24 hour automobile race to Gadgets and Gear because it involves automobiles? Would you move the Ridley Scott film, "The Duellists" to the Sword Discussion Forum because it is about sword fighting? How about moving "Tombstone" to this forum because it involves lots of guns and gunfights? Or would you move "Twelve O'Clock High", the classic WWII film about the B-17 raids over Germany, to this forum because it involves airplanes?
 
Sheesh. Sometimes it's hard to decide which forum a thread fits best, but this one is about as clear as they come. Read "a Viper chassis with a 6.1 liter Hemi V-8 engine and a fast-back coupe body" -- this is a thread about cars. Or maybe it's a thread about a magazine issue about cars but look at the discussion since the first post -- nobody is talking about the grammar used in the issue, the punctuation, the quality of the paper it was printed on -- they're talking about the content of the articles and it's all about cars.

If you want to look over past threads and try to find some that could have been moved to another forum and weren't, well, there's plenty of material to play that game with. Was the thread about a song about a Randall knife more about songs or about singers or about Randall knives? 51% of it on one topic and 49% about the other? Let's get all excited arguing whether that iffy 2% was one way or the other! Let's yell at each other! Let's threaten to kidnap each other's lawn flamingos!
 
Speaking of the Le Mans 24hrs, it's this weekend and also the US Grand Prix. Formula 1 and ALMS, two of my favorites, now all I need this weekend is a WRC race and it will be a perfect racing weekend. On a side note Speed Vision, oops Speed Channels coverage of Le Mans blows now, I loved it when they covered the entire 24 hrs.
 
Cougar, as I tried to say, I am not so much challenging the move as I am confused. I see your point and it makes sense, but try to see mine. I should have started the post with a discussion of the article on Le Mans 1955. That was a terrible accident and it almost ended automobile racing on a world-wide basis. The article recreates the horror and the after-effects very well, especially the part as seen through the eyes of Phil Hill. I would say that it rises to the level of literature, it is certainly more than "just about cars." ANd the most interesting part of the article on the Mercedes-McLaren SLR/Beechcraft Premier I for me was the discussion of how the carbon fiber was used in the construction of both of the creations, not in the automotive or aeronautical aspects.

So, I posted based on what I had interested me in the magazine, tossing in the piece on the Firepower mostly because it interested me from a marketing perspective. I do ap[ologize for the tone of last night's post, but I was confused, tired, and in pain.
 
I'm not going to go into why I move what where. That thread was clearly about cars and it got moved. And let's not be petty when it comes to other threads getting or not getting moved. I've explained to you in the past that I move what I move for a reason. If you still have a problem with that then anything I say won't change a thing about how you feel. This is a dead issue to me as I've already hashed it out with you before.
 
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