#motorsports

In my previous entry I recounted how I forsook other marques and at the eleventh hour turned my hymnal to 993 while shopping for my first car, but I didn’t elaborate on why I had such an interest in the ass-engined Nazi slot cars in the first place. You might think that I was seduced by how effectively the evolved Beetle enhanced my countenance the first time I caught my reflection against the glass façade of one of Atlanta’s concrete canyons, or how a previous generation of my occupational forebears made a Guards Red “Turbo-look” M491-optioned neunelfer a de rigueur part of “the look” for anyone with more than a modicum of ambition, along with slicked-back hair, Oliver Peoples glasses, and red suspenders, but you’d be mistaken – it goes a bit deeper than that. Despite a litany of transgressions against their most faithful devotees, Porsche ensnared me from an early age.

It’s been a bad week for PSA, but at least they’ve got something to celebrate about. French driver Sebastian Loeb, behind the wheel of a Peugeot 208 T16, broke the record for the fastest time up Pikes Peak, at 8 minutes, 13.878 seconds, beating the old record by 92.286 seconds.

(Reader John Kit, an avid racer of both slot cars and F2000 cars, discusses an important figure it slot car racing – also named Jim Russell)

Most of you are familiar with the Jim Russell of racing school fame, but there was also another man of the same name. The Jim Russell of this tale was a business consultant in Los Angeles in the very early 1960’s. Needing to pass some time one weekend, a friend introduced him to a new hobby of racing scale cars, powered by electric motors, around a track. It was the then new activity to be known as model car racing.

And now a treat for the weekend. An original documentary about the Players 200 race at Mosport in 1962. Jo Bonnier, Masten Gregory and other racing legends all appear. Who doesn’t long for the days when men were men and cigarette companies were the largest sponsor of motor racing events?

If you live in the Greater Toronto Area and hate me despite having never met me in person, I am inviting you to come kick my ass – at karting.

“Drives like a go-kart”. Is there a more time-worn, hackneyed cliche in automotive journalism? Although this phrase is meant to heap praise on a lightweight, nimble vehicle that offers superlative handling, I can’t think of a more damning insult to saddle a modern road car with than to liken it to a proper kart.

It may not be sanctioned by the FIA, but Group B Rallying is back in the UK, as more than 60 entrants have signed up for a competitive rally event taking place this August.

Bill Caswell, of the $500 Rally E30 fame, may not have “ beat $400k rally racers” as Jalopnik’s headline, but the original feature by Sam Smith is definitely one of the “classics” of automotive journalism. Sam’s look at Mr. Caswell and his efforts at rallying now have an equally important corollary – an interview with the man himself, conducted by a journalist who is no stranger to rally racing.

We don’t always cover motorsports here at TTAC, but when we do, we make sure it’s grassroots. Following the Spec Miata, Spec E30 and Spec Focus race series, NASA and Nissan have partnered to create a Spec Z series for the 2003 to 2008 350Z coupes that were so popular earlier in the decade.