News – Page 5 of 60 – Gran Touring Motorsports

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September 17, 2025

There’s an admittedly thin line between collecting and hoarding. Finding balance in the automotive and motorcycle ruins of forgotten Americana – and not becoming the weird old hoarder the neighborhood avoids – is a tightrope walk at best.

Every car guy with oil-stained coveralls knows that guy. The one whose garage looks less like a workspace and more like an archaeological dig through sedimentary layers of American motoring culture. Buried beneath dusty stacks of yellowing Car and Driver back issues and rusty license plate frames lie the fossilized dreams of a nation that once celebrated auto and motorcycle culture.

Jeff Willis on Break/Fix Podcast — Photo courtesy Jeff Willis

I am, regrettably, that guy.

The question that rattles through my car brain: At what point does the acceptable pursuit of “collecting” cross into the realm of “clinical hoarding?” When does the connoisseur become the cautionary tale?

Harvard’s Jenette Restivo – who I assume has never felt the full-body rush of finding an original “Goddess of Speed” Packard hood ornament at an estate sale (I have!) – defines hoarding as the obtaining of “an excessive number of items they don’t need and storing them in disarray.” But what exactly constitutes excess in a culture built upon the beautiful excess of horsepower and chrome? What appears to be disorder to the untrained eye may well be a complex filing system decipherable only to its creator – a kind of automotive Library of Alexandria, albeit one that might require tetanus shots to navigate.

When I think of myself at a great estate or yard sale early in the morning, salivating at the idea of automobilia treasures just leaning over the side of the tables, waiting to be scooped up by my hot little hands, I’m reminded of that Seinfeld scene where George knocks over women and children to escape a building when someone yells “Fire!”

It’s not far off from my own exploits. Just for reference, here’s the scene:

Cut to George sitting in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask on his face.
GEORGE (to the EMTs): It was an inferno in there! An inferno!
ERIC: There he is! That’s him!
ROBIN’S MOTHER: That’s the coward who left us to die!
GEORGE (hoarse): I... was trying to lead the way. We needed a leader!
ROBIN: But you yelled “Get out of my way!”
GEORGE: Because! As the leader... if I die, then all hope is lost! Who would lead? The clown?
FIREMAN: How do you live with yourself?
GEORGE: It’s not easy.

The origin of “petroliana” – that wonderful amalgamation of petroleum and memorabilia -suggests something almost sacred: relics of our petroleum saints. These are the material artifacts of what historian James Flink called “America’s love affair with the automobile,” though perhaps “love affair” understates the relationship. It’s closer to religious conversion, complete with its own iconography: the Shell scallop, the Texaco star, the anthropomorphic Sinclair dinosaur promising prehistoric power in every gallon.

To collect petroliana is to preserve American optimism – to keep alive the faith that once believed the open road led to transcendence. Each dented oil can and faded road map represents a small piece of the great American story: the idea that wheels, whether two or four, equal freedom, and that the next town might hold everything you’ve been searching for.

But there’s a darker side to the equation. A more sinister psychology. The collector – particularly the middle-aged male collector (and yes, we must acknowledge the gendered nature of this pathology) – is often attempting to reconstruct a vanished world. We are archaeologists of our own childhoods, seeking to reassemble the sensory memories of Saturday mornings spent at Dad’s side as he performed weekly automotive rituals: leaning over his 1951 Chevy five-window pickup, checking the oil, topping off the radiator, the satisfying ding-ding of the service bell as the attendant emerged (there’s only one of these stations left in our small town), wiping his hands on perfectly faded 501s, leaving stains that proclaimed allegiance to Valvoline or Quaker State.

The hunt itself becomes a drunken, intoxicating stupor. There’s something primal about the garage sale prowl, the flea market reconnaissance, the delicate dance of feigned disinterest while internally calculating the fair market value of a model Porsche 928 still sealed in its original box. We become nerds of nostalgia, following a nervous system-driven circuit that connects suburban driveways to rural junkyards, united by the shared delusion that somewhere out there lies the Holy Grail: the unrecognized treasure, the widow’s ignorance transformed into our enlightenment.

Yet we must confront an uncomfortable truth: Much of what we collect is, objectively speaking, junk. Mass-produced crap designed for obsolescence, now treated with a carefulness it never had even when it was new. The metal window squeegee was never meant to outlive the winter for which it was purchased, yet here it sits, forty years later, almost completely rusted away, carefully preserved in a climate-controlled display case like a fragment of the True Cross. Indiana Jones would shake his weary head.

The places we hunt reveal our desperation: garage sales where we practice beggary, pick-and-pull graveyards where we scavenge among automotive corpses, Craigslist’s digital Wild West where every transaction teeters between treasure and catastrophe. We haunt thrift stores with the dedication of anthropologists, forever hopeful that some donated box might yield a cache of vintage Porsche promotional materials.

The economics of this obsession follow their own perverse logic. A rusted Porsche 356 emblem commands prices that would make a Sotheby’s art dealer blush, while equally rare artifacts from lesser-appreciated marques gather dust at reasonable prices. A brand’s social status determines value far more than its actual historical significance.

Isn’t it crazy that we hunt and peck for small pieces of American history – preserving the artifacts of industries that built America- while simultaneously contributing to its material excess? We are both historians and hoarders. So the question remains: Is it a hobby, or a probby (problem)?

In the end, maybe it doesn’t matter that much either way. Both represent attempts to find methods to the madness, to create meaning through collecting, to hang on as long as we can to as many things as we can, in hopes of warding off the inevitable ending – including the golden age of American motoring these pieces celebrate. Everything ends. Or does it?

Maybe it’s the feeling that should be the lasting part. The love. Sometimes the “things” feel like members of the family. Which, I believe, is the whole meaning of life: FAMILY.

We gather these small pieces of our collective past not because we are sick, but because we are nostalgic for a time when America’s relationship with the automobile represented possibility rather than problem, liberation rather than limitation. Every dented oil can and faded road map is a small act of rebellion against a present that has forgotten how to dream in horsepower and chrome.

So I say, keep collecting. The future will thank you for preserving the beautiful pieces of our automotive and motocycular past – even if your spouses and storage units suggest otherwise. After all, someone has to be the custodian of the dreams that built America, one garage sale treasure at a time.

Just remember: It’s only hoarding if you can’t find the couch. And if you can’t find the couch, well… maybe it’s time to buy a bigger garage!

Contributing Writer: Jeff Willis

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the following Break/Fix episode to learn more about our featured writer.

Reimagining the Mid-Engine Revolution: A Technical What-If of Beating the Mercedes-Benz W196

History of Motorsports

IMRRC

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September 16, 2025

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Reimagining the Mid-Engine Revolution: A Technical What-If of Beating the Mercedes-Benz W196

In the annals of motorsport history, few machines evoke the engineering prowess and post-war resurgence of Mercedes-Benz like the W196. But what if the trajectory of Formula One had bent differently? What if a coalition of Italian and Austrian engineers had mounted a credible challenge to Stuttgart’s Silver Arrows in the early 1950s – ushering in the mid-engine revolution years ahead of its time?

Continuing where he left off last year, Dr. Karl Heinz-Mertins, a mechanical engineer and mechatronics expert with decades of cross-disciplinary experience, invites us into an alternate history. His speculative analysis, grounded in real-world technical feasibility, imagines a scenario where a fictional Italian conglomerate – Unione Automobili (UA) – emerges as a counterforce to Mercedes-Benz, leveraging mid-engine design, aeronautical principles, and a bold engineering philosophy.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

The Historical Context: Mercedes Reawakens

By 1951, Mercedes-Benz had reemerged from the ashes of WWII, unveiling the luxurious 300 series and signaling a return to racing. Their early foray into motorsport with pre-war Silver Arrows in Argentina proved underwhelming, as two-liter Ferraris outpaced their aging three-liter machines. This embarrassment catalyzed a more methodical approach: the development of the 300SL sports car and, eventually, the W196 Formula One car.

Mercedes’ engineering culture – defined by rigorous subsystem testing, conservative innovation, and component-level optimization – set a high bar. Their evolution strategy favored incremental gains over radical departures, a philosophy that would shape the W196’s front-engine layout and fuel-injected powertrain.

Spotlight

Dr. Karl-Heinz Mertins (“K-H”) holds degrees in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in mechatronics/ag engineering from the Technical University Berlin, Germany. In more than 35 years of engineering and business experience in Europe and the US, he focused on product innovation and new business incubation, applying cross-disciplinary methods with cross-cultural considerations. His work included experimental work on intelligent mobile equipment and wind energy systems in multinational corporations and start-ups. His enthusiasm for F1 goes back to the 1961 season.

Synopsis

This episode of The Logbook, delves into an alternative history of motorsports, exploring how an imaginary Italian automobile group could have rivaled Mercedes-Benz’s W196 in the 1954 Grand Prix season. Led by engineers like Robert Eberan von Eberhorst, the team focuses on a mid-engine layout, leveraging aerodynamics and innovative engineering techniques. The narrative includes a probabilistic SWOT analysis and historical insights on post-WWII automotive development, emphasizing the importance of strategic differentiation to outperform Mercedes. Dr. Karl-Heinz Mertins, with his extensive engineering background, presents both real and hypothetical scenarios, highlighting key technological advancements and the speculative potential of an Italian conglomerate challenging the dominant Silver Arrows.

Follow along using the video version of the Slide Deck from this Presentation

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix’s History of Motorsports Series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.

Crew Chief Eric: How to beat the Mercedes-Benz W 1 96. An alternative history accelerates the Mid-engine Revolution by Carl Heinz Mertons. The new two and a half liter formula of 1954 raised the bar for engineering excellence and cost of entry to the pinnacle of motor racing. With Mercedes-Benz, leaving the shadows of World War II and becoming an accepted participant in motor racing, again, the Grand Prix community had to anticipate a full out effort of a new generation of Silver arrows.

Indeed, new standards were set with a series of W one ninety six variants born out of vast corporate resources supported by components suppliers like Continental Bosch, and so. In this story, the imaginary Italian UNE automobile previously formed of National Legacy Manufacturers [00:01:00] other than Fiat takes on the role of Auto Union Ag of the 1930s as an antagonist of Mercedes-Benz and Promoter of the Midian layout, a probabilistic SWAT analysis reveals what it would take to beat the mighty opponent for s Stuttgart.

This is the start for a motley crew of Australian and Italian engineers led by Robert Ein Hors to create a victorious challenger. The prescribed engine configuration is a compact V six and homage to the launch of brand breaking with Italian traditions. Emphasis is put on chassis development where innovations and tires breaks, and aerodynamics will provide decisive competitive advantages.

Dr. Carl Hinz. Mertons holds degrees in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in mechatronics and engineering from the technical University of Berlin, Germany. In more than 35 years of engineering and business experience in Europe and the us, Carl has focused on product innovation and new business incubation, applying cross-disciplinary methods with cross-cultural considerations.

His work included experimental work on intelligent mobile equipment and wind energy systems in [00:02:00] multinational corporations and startups. His enthusiasm for F1 goes back to the 1961 season.

Karl-Heinz Mertins: Like many people in racing, I’m bending the rules a little bit here, speaking to a society of historians. I will talk a little bit about the real history, but then we are often to an alternative history and give a picture of what could have been instead of what was.

So, uh, the question is how to beat Mercedes-Benz at the time when it wasn’t quite clear. That they would enter the um, 2.5 liter formula one race season in 1954. And so the model designation of W 1 96 wasn’t known yet. So it’s kind of blanked out here in the title. Let me give you a timeline of where this all starts, and then I will talk a little bit about what happened here on the left side before we get to [00:03:00] 51 in 51.

And all this is somewhat relevant to the story that I will tell in, uh, 51 Mercedes got back out of the destruction phase into the reconstruction and started building cars again. But not just any car. They started unveiling the, uh, 300 W 180 6 as an internal code, and it was a challenge to Rolls Royce to Packard, if you want.

So they wanted to really reestablish the company as a provider of luxurious cars and, and set the standard. Shortly thereafter in this presentation happened at the, uh, Frankfurt Automobile Show in April. Shortly thereafter, the board approved that the company should go back to racing and there was a green light given for.

A sports car project. First, the 300 SL to ease into [00:04:00] motor sports again after World War ii. Now, what happened before, other was of course, the World War II and before it ended, there were plans, particularly in the us the Morgenthal plan that foresaw that, uh, Germany should really be brought back to the Middle Ages and should have no.

Industrial capabilities anymore. The facilities that had survived the World War should be dismantled or destroyed, and, uh, it should be an agrarian society that, that would go forward and not be a threat to mankind going forward. Well, that plan, fortunately, didn’t come to pass. Instead, there was of course, an activity, some of that on the table, and some of it was under the table.

There were of course some of the, uh, Mercedes engineers that formed informal networks, and they were thinking about plans of what could they do and how could they survive, and at some [00:05:00] point go back to the former glories again. That happened and that led to things like the Unimark, of course, a utility vehicle, kind of an agricultural tractor, and of course that kind of responded to the Morgan for plan.

Of focusing on agriculture and not on things like racing or luxury cars. That machine, uh, was very successful. It was developed. It was very little means and, uh, with external help and the binger brothers chipped in and there were other. People that had allocations of sheet metal out for milk cans and and so forth.

And they all contributed because at the time, in 45 when the war was lost, Germany was under military rule and the area around Stuttgart was about the American. Administration then, and so material were scars and had to be applied for and to be a good reason as to why you wanted some material and you couldn’t ask for material for race cars, for example.[00:06:00]

Wouldn’t have been a good proposition. Moves on from there. Pretty quickly, the Arkansas plan gets replaced by the Marshall Plan. Money flows into Europe and the reconstruction is pretty fast and furious. So there were some activities already at the beginning of 51. A couple of the, uh, pre-war one 60 fours.

We’re brought to, uh, Argentina to run in one Cyrus at a couple of races. And the idea was, well, we were so successful with those pre-war silver arrows, we could probably just dust them off and use them again in, uh, this new age. It turned out they were not that successful, was the, uh, moving force behind all this.

He had a, a delegation going to Argentina with these cars engineer responsible for those who, how was not in the delegation. So things were probably not perfectly set up, [00:07:00] but those cars, three liter mercedeses were beaten by two liter Ferraris. And it was kind of a shameful event from a Mercedes perspective because the DNA of the company was indeed.

You make the best cars you can make and when you go racing, you go for the win. You’re not settling for second places. They had to rethink the solar operation and scale back a little bit. Go back to building a sports car and focus only once the dust settled and it became clear how Formula One would be organized in the future, that there would be indeed a new one.

A formula that would give preference to naturally aspirated engines, and it would start in 1954. It became clear. Now, that was the new goal for Mercedes, but in the interim, they were working on a race car that they could build out of this luxury car. Kind of a clumsy way to do it, but nevertheless, it turned out to be [00:08:00] quite successful around the same time, at the end of 1951.

Alfa Romeo, who had had two very successful years with the LF Fetas, decided that that wouldn’t be a long term proposition going forward with those cars. They were at the end of their development potential, and you couldn’t increase the uh uh, compression ratios and the supercharger pressures and so on, and you couldn’t deal with the fuel consumption that increased exponentially.

So the abandoned racing. Completely. Now if, if you are a competitor in this Grand Prix racing scene and you think about, well, I have to compete with Mercedes again, they’re not doing things half baked. You have to have the financial strengths. And you have to have the intellectual strength to build a true competitor, a good car that can indeed meet and beat Mercedes-Benz.

It takes something. So here [00:09:00] is where I, we are off into La la land if you want. So during 1952, where could a group come about that would make a challenge for Mercedes, not in France? I think, you know, the CTA arsenal was. Rolling disaster and would not have yielded a real competitor in England. BRM was a, uh, bureaucratic mess, and it wasn’t really going anywhere fast, and it was also too much looking backwards to the 1930s technology wise.

So I could see that scenario in Italy. If you reconstruct something like the ion that had been very successful in Germany and had provided this competitive product to Mercedes in form of the, uh, mid-engine silver arrows that were initially designed by failure net Porsche and. Engineering office and then, uh, Nan Ho in particular [00:10:00] insourced more and more of that activity.

So I suggest something like this, and. Bil should, uh, happen in northern Italy and it would be where, you know, out in Germany was pretty much mandated by the banks that they had to support the capital in Italy, the IRI, the state holding. To which Alpha Romeo already belonged, would be a good vehicle to provide some serious competition to fiat, which totally dominated the uh, Italian auto scene volume wise and value wise, something needed to be done because frankly, I think people with some foresight knew that companies like ER and Alpha Mayo.

By themselves couldn’t survive long term. Hindsight tells us that they didn’t, but we’re back in 1951 ish, two ish. This could have happened. We could have had a conglomerate of different, uh, brands that would cover different segments [00:11:00] in the marketplace. They could even have an, um, a foreign branch in France.

ARD would be a, a good candidate. In those days, you couldn’t trade easily across country boundaries. So Fiat had sim. In France, we would have ARD and uh, we would have a luxury segment where Luncher would play a big role. Ista Fch would also be integrated, the name rights would be acquired, and you would establish the luxury and the top end of the range.

With that brand, there would be an entry also, in terms of a tubial. Vehicles and the scooter, a pretty rugged scooter from is O was available. So we have already the low cost entry brand is O auto vehicle that makes this ISTA and they also made the scooter. So we cover that. And also in addition, goes back to last year’s presentation.

We also have a branch that [00:12:00] deals with ag tractors ’cause that helps. Uh, developed the metso join region in Italy, and that’s, uh, one of the motivators why. IRI will support the sole effort. This sole effort needs also to be joined by Pelli, which has an interest in promoting their tires. And altogether, this could be a competitor or could be the financial resource, intellectual resource to provide a real competitor to Mercedes.

So we have a few individuals here that will constitute the core team. But the head would be Robert Horst, who had ample experience in mid-engine cars at Ion before the war. After the war. He was involved in the Alia 360, which also was designed and outsourced and relocated team of Porsche engineering.

Fer. Porsche was incarcerated at the time in France, but his son and some of the old [00:13:00] team members were working there. I put here Kois as kind of the project manager in place as the right hand of Iran. Horst, who was certainly the intellectual mastermind, but not necessarily involved in all the nitty gritty.

So Nico is, will take care of that. He has, um, experience at the Alfreda program and we bring in. Different generations. I think from my own professional experience, I think it’s always very helpful when you have multiple generations on a team, not just an inbred group, so to speak, of gray beards. You need some of them, but you don’t want to have the.

Whole team of them. So we recruit and those are real people. Of course, as you know, Kalo Kitty and Choto Sini, both are already at Alpha Romeo. It makes sense to rely on them a lot for chassis and for development and test and so on. They’re enthused and they come very importantly [00:14:00] from the University of Pisa.

So they have at least in, in. Case and degree in aeronautical engineering, and we’ll see later on that taking license from or learning from aeronautical designs and skills and technologies makes a lot of sense when you want to build a world beat a race car. On the engine side, we lean more on the ER personnel.

There is of course Francesco Lio, who pretty much developed the V six engine at Luncher. The principles, at least the angle of 60 degrees. It goes back to him. He analyzed the dynamics of various V angles and when you look at the history of Blanche and you know, they experimented with everything from 11 degrees.

Downwards or upwards and 60 degrees is obviously the ideal, but there’s also a solution with 120 degrees later on. Dillo found [00:15:00] that already in the 1940s, so he is obviously a member of the team. Then, uh, the kina is maybe a more practical engine designer who can detail. An engine war, and he has shown that already as, as a long term launcher engineer, I couldn’t get any biographic information on him.

Maybe that’s where some librarians can help me in the future. And then of course, this fellow here. We’ll learn more about him. Jose Mika, who retired in 1950 from the Porsche engineering team. We’ll rehire him as a consultant because he’s a specialist in aerodynamics, and we understand aerodynamics will play a big role if we want to beat Mercedes.

And it’s also important to work very closely with the tire manufacturer. So we want to have somebody. I’m not particular about the name from Pelli, from the tire partner because suspension, layout and design [00:16:00] will have to be very closely coordinated with the tire capabilities. And so you want to have the tire people on your side.

It’s one of the lessons also from the Solar Arrow pre-World War II, where Mercedes worked very closely with Continental and that was very helpful to them. Porsche and uh, ot. We’re not quite as engaged with Continental, and it was to their detriment sometimes. So the first task of this newly formed team was before you start designing anything, you know, go by this ancient wisdom here.

If you know you’re enemy and you know yourself. You need not fear the result of a hundred battles. So find out as much as possible about Mercedes. Where are they going? What can you expect from them? Rather than focusing just on your own thoughts and say, we know best how to build the best race car.

Anticipate what your enemy or your competitor will do, and then not copy them. The goal is not to copy them. You cannot [00:17:00] out Mercedes. Mercedes, you know, if you try. It’s a losing battle. You have to do something. You have to look for unfair quote unquote advantages, and you have to do something different.

For example, mid-engine layout as opposed to what is most likely mercedes’s solution, the front engine. And then as mentioned before, aeronautics holds. A lot of nuggets of wisdom and a lot of technology pieces you want to adopt. So you won’t send out people like Ka Kitty to snoop around what’s going on in aeronautics and at the universities that still teach that there wasn’t too much actual building and designing going on after World War.

’cause of restrictions by the Allied forces. So what can you expect reasonably from Mercedes-Benz? Well, we know the company wanted and did indeed, uh, recover from the ashes. There was a lot of rebuilding going on because Mercedes had a very loyal workforce and a lot of people that had [00:18:00] survived World War II went back to remove some of the rubbles and to secure some of the machinery and repaired and to improve on it.

Uh, it’s pretty obvious that AU and Auer will stay engaged. Auer already in his sixties, you can imagine, tend to relive the old days, the glory days of thirties, and that’s why he pushed for, you know, this early engagement in Buenos iris in 51 because you thought, Hey, we have the goods still here, and why don’t we just refresh a little bit when we.

Uh, had been successful with, I think Rudolph, by his nature, was more interested in a clean sheet design and be more in the times then rather than looking backward. What you know about Mercedes is they are very methodical in their development. They’re not just going from the drawing board quickly to the foundry.

And to the machine shop and then assemble and go to the racetrack. That’s not their way of doing things. [00:19:00] They will work on components, test the components to death, assemble the components to subsystems test again in the lab, the systems and subsystems to death. When that all works out, then they have a car, and then they will also test it first on a lab with a rolling surface.

And before they ever hit the tracks, they will know a lot about the vehicle and its capabilities, and then they will go out to the track finally. And then there’s only small modific. Necessary some tuneups. And this leads to a situation, this is one of my rocking horses here that I like to think about and talk about, and that’s the evolution strategy as it applies to, uh, technical systems and developments.

The speed of progress. You can say it depends on the mutation size. How much do you change you? You start typically with some known platform, state of the art, and if you do very little, there’s [00:20:00] practically no progress. If you move on, you get onto a pretty steep curve of rapid progress. And, and there’s certain window within you can operate.

If you’re too low here with two small steps of improvement, you’re not accomplishing much. If you’re going overboard, you end up here, you end up in a alia situation or in, um, a Monaco TRS comes to mind in a freeboard design of a, uh, grand Prix car, which was basically a, an airplane without wings. You know, the, there was a, uh, a radial engine at the front.

It was. Hanging over the front exel and mass distribution was something like 70% front and 30% rear, which is a recipe for disaster. Of course, you don’t have to be a specialist in engineering to see that. So that was a design that fell somewhere into this part of the, uh, evolution window. Clearly overshot.

You want to avoid that. Mercedes was more in this conservative pioneering mode. [00:21:00] Some people have characterized the company as. Conservative pioneers, they’re going for progress. One example would be that we learn in real history later on, you know, they go from carburate to fuel injection and it’s an incremental improvement, but it’s one that’s solid and it brings some progress.

It’s very measurable, but they wouldn’t go completely to a rotary engine or something right off the bat. There will be a tight budget. Don’t expect any state subsidies or payments. Directly or indirectly, because Germany didn’t have much surplus to throw around. They had hardly been able to cover the basics.

But there would be technical inputs, of course, from suppliers that Mercedes had a tradition working with like Porsche Continental and then the fuel supplier. It was important too because the fuel in those days was free. Formula didn’t prescribe commercially available gasoline. You could brew your own mix, [00:22:00] which they certainly did.

And then there was of course the engineering force within the corporation. You could always ring up a colleague or meet over lunch and get some inputs and so on. So there was quite a bit of intellectual property and capability there. Now Mercedes obviously lost the uh, local nemes. Out on Yon, there was no chance that out on Yon would get back racing.

They hardly survived and they were cut into two pieces. One in East Germany and one in West Germany, or one in the Soviet zone. The other one in the American Zone. Uh, so there was no chance for that. So when they did something, it, it would have to have some benefit for their serious production side of the business.

And so it’s very likely, very probable that they would stick to the front engine because all their commercial. Products would be front engine taken a little dive via Edmund MLA in the 1920s. The, um, say this or [00:23:00] the Bens our age var, but that didn’t last very long. And so very unlikely that they would make a jump that would to them look like going.

Potentially, uh, down the drain, they would probably hang onto the swing AXLs or pendulum AXLs because that was also their bread and butter product. Now, one would expect that they would modify this thing a little bit because we know swing AXLs and we’ll get to that in a moment, are not the ca meow for Good Road ho.

So a case in point for all this, looking more toward what they have and what they want to commercialize is the uh, W 1 94 project. This 300 SL first generation, that’s an excellent model to study. If this case for this question that we have in front of us here, you see this? AU on the 300 representative car and very luxurious and expensive and a dream car.

You know, for most Germans, it was totally an Tanium, and yet [00:24:00] it showed, you know, we’re back again and that would be the basis for this sports car that would go race. So they had an engine and they had to live with this engine because unlike Italians, they didn’t jump right into making five different engines.

Very quickly, they stuck with the block and with what they had to work with rather than tooling up very quickly. I’m amazed, and some people have written with amazement and with appreciation that, for example, designed 25 engines in five years, which was nuts for a small company like that. Mercedes had this one engine.

Which was already an overhead camshaft engine. So a good start, but it was heavy, a boat anchor if you want. So it had to be augmented with other designs that were within the realm of possibility. And one was obviously aerodynamics. And that brings me to this image here, because in 1939 when the, uh, Italians, when they thought they were smart in prescribing, [00:25:00] that the uh, grand Prix of Tripoli was for water tourette.

Cars instead of regular concrete cars. They thought, well now our feas will have a good chance to win this race. Mercedes, at that time when they still had the pockets designed, the purpose built W 1 65 and sent to cars to Tripoli and, and ended up one two. But during qualification, they had to learn the better lesson that a four cylinder Maserati with a streamlined.

Body work got the pole position. It was faster than the Mercedes cars. Unexpected in a way because the engine was clearly inferior. So I think they must have gotten a bit of a lesson there that, hey, we have to look at the, uh, drag reduction and, and so on. Also, again, to, um, study subsystems and obviously roof came up with the, uh, space frame.

Concept, a very light frame to offset the high weight of the engine, but it was an unknown quantity and not many people [00:26:00] have had built these types of delicate space frames. So they built a very quick mule car to test this concept early on before they ever went too far down the pike and designed this final 300 sl.

Super light, but they did. And then to reduce the drag coefficient and to reduce the uh, frontal area, they angled or tilted the engine at about 55 degrees from horizontal to simply reduce the hood height and thereby increase there speed. And here you can see Charles Faru and Alfred Auer looking into the engine bay of that final product at the mall.

So continued lessons to be learned from this. First of all, you learn Mercedes. They don’t go full four out and design everything from scratch. On the other hand, they’re willing to stretch the envelope, you know, to design solutions. Again, somewhat dictated of course by the space for want to have a deep [00:27:00] door sill and threshold.

They came up with the first iteration of the. Following doors that just reached down to the lower edge of the window, and you had to kind of wiggle yourself into the driver’s. When it first got to the Elia in 52 with this scar, the, uh, inspectors were a little bit. Leery to accept that as doors and, and so it was a test for the subsequent LA Mall array, and I think they got into the lia was this type of door, quote unquote, later on for lamo.

They changed it to the tall wing doors as we know them today. And that was in reaction to and knowing that they would. Meet less leniency with the French authorities and with the Italian authorities. Of course, in those years we’re talking 1952, they also experimented with something that was a little bit out of the ordinary and a little bit advanced or too advanced for Mercedes.

One could say this [00:28:00] aerodynamic brake system. Some people will argue that was mostly shown during the time trials to confuse irritate competitors. It was never meant to be really used in racing. This was a little flimsy and it was taken down before the race began. But we also learned from this development that Mercedes was willing to accept imperfection.

For example, when you look at the engine compartment, it has no ventilation. There is no way to get the air out in an ordinary or in a very optimized way where you help reduce overall drag. They fix that later on by having some openings, yet the side, but not in this first generation of the, uh, 300 ssl. So that was one, and then they stuck to this somewhat questionable.

Pendulum rear suspension. Nevertheless, they were victorious in LA Mall and then particular at the car Pan Americana, which was quite an achievement for something that was built from bits and pieces [00:29:00] that were originally meant for a luxurious car. Working. On the other hand, what learned from there for the on automobile team is we prefer chassis over engine power battalions.

Typically, were interested in, for Ferrari in particular, the race car was a big engine, very powerful, and the rest was just a means to move forward. Chassis was never really his. Preference in those days, at least in this case, our team will think differently and will work with Pelli closely to introduce the radial tires, which Pelli had developed at that time.

Not for racing, but for passenger car applications. Uh, sports car applications, Chira. Let’s see, 67, and we add on a competition on version of that tire. We’ll use it for our dream car. Yeah, of course. That also means the driving style has to be adapted to that. It’s not totally easy from people [00:30:00] who grew up with cross supplied tires.

They have some difficulties and that will require also very methodical testing. Let’s look at other components that are important. The chassis frame itself is very important ’cause you want to have a very stiff chassis, and the flexibility has to be in the suspension system and not like letter frames or the frame itself was the spring system for most parts.

We have some lessons to learn from Alia, for example, but this Porsche design very strangely has this space frame, but it doesn’t make use of triangulation. You don’t see that any of these, uh, square gaps are broken up with some triangulation. Very strange. I’m not sure. What their motive was ’cause they were not under weight restrictions.

Really, to me that seems like a half-baked solution, knowing the quality of the engineers that were involved. Alpha Romeo with [00:31:00] the feta, particularly when they ran to the end of its usefulness and modified it to the uh, 1 59, which had the rear axle had also. At least some specimens had this additional framework here.

So you see the original letter frame, oval profile here, and then you can see they already made some augmentation added basically, and upper gird and did, uh, the reinforcement between the two girders quite well, but there was only a partial solution because it didn’t have any lateral connection really.

But it was better than nothing. What makes more sense is a true 3D space frame, as you can see in some of the airplanes of the time. That’s where one of our references to aviation comes in the space frame of a Boeing Stamen plane, which was a training plane. For the most part, it gives us a good idea of spatial triangulation of the frame.

Then, [00:32:00] of course, we can even go further. But this is one bridge too far. I would argue for race car designers, you could use the geodesic fuselage of British airplanes were successful in World War II and were very immune against partial destruction. They could take a lot of damage and could still go back to the base.

You see some spinal framework here that is then cla it by aluminum or fabric. Whatever the material of choice was. This is a little bit too much for race car. It’s also not as easily scaled down from the airplane size to the car size, so this is a more likely and more successful solution. This could be foreshadowing of Mono Cox structures, but again, that’s one or two bridges too far for the time.

Keep in mind, race car designers are also people and they work and concern themselves about their daily lives and their continuation of their careers. If they go too [00:33:00] far away, it goes back to that evolution function. If they veer out too far from the known. They risk that they have a big failure, and having a big failure with something that’s a traditional design is tolerable.

You can always say, well, everybody else did something like that. If you risk and stick out your neck too much with something that’s totally unique. And it fails everybody and their brother will say, well, you shouldn’t have done that. Right? Could be a career modifying event, but we’re talking about wheels and suspensions.

Let’s start with wheels. First state of the art were wire wheels, and particularly Bani was one of the favorite suppliers for that, but that was also a fairly flexible wheel, and it needed tuning and adjusting and maintenance. Cooper early on after World War ii. Changed over to cast electron wheels, and part of the reason was that it was easier to get aluminum mag magnesium in England after [00:34:00] World War II than steel still was rationed and a lot of aluminum was found from war efforts and equipment.

So that was one thing. And it was also good for Cooper spare part business. It was a an OEM wheel that couldn’t easily be replaced as something else. But more importantly, in the US Heli, brandand had introduced already and proven the, uh, magnesium cast wheels machined then to fit, and that won the 1952 in the 500, and it became commonplace.

So I’m wondering why people in Europe didn’t look at those. Developments and said, Hmm, there is an advantage here. We save some unsprung weight and we get a more rigid product. That is obviously proven on high speed oils. And then let’s look at suspension systems quickly. ER had already introduced with the first generation of the aurel, a semi trailing [00:35:00] independent rear suspension, uh, which you can see it.

Top view of here would be the a coil spring and the attachment points to the chassis, and it’s the drive shaft the wheel. So this would be a start, we think for. Uh, development for an optimized rear wheel suspension, independent suspension. For a race car, it has its pros and cons as well, but you can play a lot with the different angles and orientations of components.

You can do that in 3D and get some reductions in tow, in and in Canberra. Change with the, uh, spring deflection. So there’s probably something to be found. Now we assume that a Mercedes must stick with the pendulum axles, maybe in this format, but it, it’s the one that gives you the highest roll center, and that’s not very popular really for race cars.

You can really get to the point where you check up the one wheel and it leads to [00:36:00] instabilities. You have pretty steep kember angle changes. It’s not the best thing for a race car, so we assume that it as well modify that you try to make the, uh, pendulum lengths as long as possible. So you could do something that goes underneath, uh, could even to the opposite side, and you could crisscross the links there.

So I would expect they’re putting myself into it. 1952 that it would work on some of this stuff. And what we see here is an interesting car from New Zealand and it dovetails quite well with people that came back from World War ii, had aircraft experience where aircraft mechanics, a couple of folks in New Zealand built their own car.

They had studied and read about the Aon. Mid-engine configuration and they said we can build that too, and we can go to the scrap yard or to the, um, auction places where you can buy cheaply. The surplus [00:37:00] from the army and from the air Force, and that’s what they did. So they built their own interesting car and it had a very low pivot swing axle arrangement, which is shown here in a, in a picture of the renovated or restored version of this car here.

This is, looks almost like it’s over restored, but it’s interesting. You see very long arms of this swing axle. They almost merged to, to a single axis of rotation down here, very low. And they also pilfered some Lio struts from airplanes and used them as spring and damper. Very innovative and very interesting.

Car. Not too much is known about this. RA four vineyard, which worked with a four cylinder standard Vanguard engine, slightly supercharged, and it had 2088. C. So it was a formula Lire car and didn’t qualify for a Grand Prix, but it was pretty much [00:38:00] only raised in New Zealand, but it has been restored in England and it will come to a couple of events in Florida.

One is uh, Moda Miami and the other is Amelia. So you will see if you get there, you will see the sky in real life. And can see more than from these pictures, but an interesting way that tinkerers worked on something that made a lot of sense and they had a lot of fun with it. One of the mechanics was then the driver, and he managed to participate at Lady Wig Ram Trophy runs for several years was modest success.

Brakes of course are important for the race car. What can you do there? Obviously, ventilated drum brakes were the industry standard fin processes were often used to bond strongly and have a low thermal resistance between the iron liners and the aluminum body. With fins, different shapes of fins. [00:39:00] But by 1952, disc brakes became already a possibility for race cars.

And again, that’s a technology that comes from airplanes. Yeah. During World War ii, a lot of airplanes, British American used already a form of. Disc brakes and there were several manufacturers. Dunlop was one of them. Dunlop worked with Jaguar on, on sports cars and growing with BRM and got that to science already.

And then, uh, Tony Derval, who had already started his own activities with the thin wall specials that I want also to have the latest technology in brakes. And he worked with Goodyear and got some disc brake systems there. But we can assume that that technology was off limits for Mercedes. I cannot imagine that any of these companies, particularly Dunlop, that helped Jaguar, would also help Mercedes to beat the snot of Jaguar.

I think that was off limits, and I think Mercedes understood that. And so they were. [00:40:00] Working with these aerodynamic breaks that we saw already, this roof mounted effort. And there’s also a, uh, patent that was issued to Auto Neon in 1941. Fortunately, that image didn’t make it, but it’s a German patent that was issued, and that shows an aerodynamic break, basically a wing that you can flip up with.

Server power from the engine and assist in braking, probably tailored to those records trips that people made on the auto barn, but it could be used in Grand Prix racing as well. There was nothing. That would prohibit that Anyway, that would be one way to get around the, this great embargo that I would think was prevalent.

The other thing is driver position is one thing, particularly with the front engine car, the typical bomber seat, you know where you sit pretty upright, like in an arm chair or the chairs you’re sitting on, the driver. Sits very upright and provides quite [00:41:00] an obstacle to the aerodynamic profile. And fortunately, this picture came across here and that is in, uh, what is called Zenger.

He erased this thing that was. Based on the Volkswagen 64 or Porsche 64 project, got one. You know, he was an Austrian, so he was close to the Austrian Porsche office at the time. So he got one of these, uh, 60 fours, which they were intended for the, uh, Berlin, Rome long distance arrays. That never happened, if I recall that correctly.

So he got that and you have to consider and had a, a pretty severe motorcycle accident. So his right arm was not useful to him and he needed to be able to lean on the steering wheel when he changed gears. So he had a shifter on left hand side. And he leaned forward on the steering wheel to shift gears.

So it was a bit of an aberration. He needed that kind of seating position. But you can see [00:42:00] here it’s unfortunate. It’s, uh, not the optimum solution when you have a rear engine or mid engine. In our case. On the other hand, what we learned from aeronautics, and particularly from glider planes or sail planes, there was a development going on at the, uh, polytechnic in terrain in, uh, 1953 in particular, there was a new Chro d Olo Avela that was founded, and it was kind of an operation in the corner of a lab first.

But the, uh, team there wanted to change the whole composition of sail planes. ’cause in sail planes, they have no engine. Obviously you need to have a very low frontal profile. You need to have very low drag coefficient. And what they introduced was a leaned backwards position of the pilot. It’s almost a position like you find in or found then in the, uh, say the low grand Prix cars, particularly the [00:43:00] monocoque versions, you know, and they could also beef that up with, uh, some scientific investigations.

I have the source given here that there are optimum angles for body parts. And they’re not 90 degrees. And so the upright sitting position is not necessarily the best, particularly if you don’t have to have high steering forces to work with, which was one of the reasons why people set so upright or why NASCAR drivers also hang on close to the steering wheel, at least the past.

But in the case of a front, well of a, um, car with mid-engine, there’s not much load on the front ax. Excellence of the steering effort, it’s much lower. So you can get by with this more relaxed. Leaned back sitting position and it’s now a standard practice of course in sail planes. But in 53 that was something that was, was pretty new, in fact it was unheard of.

And people were wondering, can the pilots do that? And they had some test flights and they felt, Hey, this is great actually. And so, [00:44:00] uh, we sent of course Kalo Kitty around different universities. Naturally he has to go to, to and to Milan and understand what’s going on there. And so he comes across this and the innovator and the young man who wants to make his place in the history comes across this and says, Hey, why don’t we experiment with that and reduce the frontal area of foreign Grand Prix.

And that goes on with, with engines also quickly talking about different engine choices. It seems quite reasonable for the two and a half liter formula, first of all, that it shows the, uh, naturally aspirated one and the, uh, supercharged version that was allowed at 750 cc. The penalty for supercharging was just too high.

So you look at the 2.5 liter engine and you ask yourself, how many cylinders do you really need? You need 16 cylinders or 24 or or four, maybe six is a good compromise. Very likely [00:45:00] because you can see Jaguar was very successful. Was there six cylinders? Mercedes had just proven, uh, with the, uh, 1 94 project that, hey.

We can win the races and championships with six cylinder engines. And of course, they had slammed it at Mercedes, their engine. That was brought to an even more dramatic fact in the Cummins Diesels special of 1952 that participated in the Indy 500, and there was Freddie Cummins desire to prove that diesel engines could be very successful in any application, including race cars.

So you built this special. Car with the Watson chassis, elongated and modified in many ways, but he chose to tilt the engine practically by 90 degrees. So the crankshaft is about here, and this is the cylinder head. Now this was, uh, overhead valve engine, as I understand it was turbocharged and it was, was tilted for minimum front area.

So you could think Mercedes should think [00:46:00] about those lines as well. In our case here for mobility, we say, well, Landa is really our flagship brand and it relies on V six engines to a great extent. Why don’t we also make our racing engine just like, say that D 20 V six lunch here that they had already at a 60 degree cylinder angle.

Makes good sense. It’s a short engine. It allows more space for the reclined driver position. So let’s do that. But maybe we should change the angle as. The Vergilio had proposed you can do that 220 degrees to make a shallower engine. So I put in this image here, which to be honest is not from the time we’re talking about this, uh, a more recent South African aircraft engine, and it’s a 120.

Degree V six cylinder engine, just to show you what the, the form factor would look like. I think that would give a pretty optimal [00:47:00] configuration for a, uh, mid engine configuration that minimizes the frontal area and the, uh, a drag coefficient. That’s it. So we assume that Mercedes will do this and, and use an inline six system, which we can’t know at the time that that was the wrong assumption.

Uh, I can live with that. And fuel injection is almost inevitable. And the, um, question is, can you even go as far as direct injection into the combustion chamber, or do you allow for an indirect injection ahead of the, uh. Inlet valves. Mercedes obviously had some experience in the, uh, DB 601 aircraft engine of World War II with direct injection, and we know that Schonberg, who was the engineer involved, was parked at the time, still at a small company.

Mm-hmm. Called Good Broad until he got through his deification process and then could join Mercedes again. [00:48:00] Very likely that he would push for an adaptation of this kind of injection. On the other hand, Italy had quite a lot to offer in terms of indirect uh, injection. Fellow Avi Fudo had patented the application in in 1937, a solution for.

A very smart electrical injection. Very much like most cars that we drive today have their injection system and no electronics obviously. ’cause that wasn’t invented yet, but the basic makings were already there. And this thing raised in the, uh, Elia of, uh, 1940. There was an alpha Romeo, two and a half liter six C equipped with this type of injection system.

And it ran on a mix of palm oil. I understand. And some other non-conventional fuel component. ’cause that was when Italy was in this archy. Mode and couldn’t import a lot of [00:49:00] mineral oil. And so it was a, a theme that fit into the landscape and it, it demonstrated and also in a gera motorbike, as I understand that the system worked quite well.

It got forgotten for quite some time, but you could see electromagnetic injection valves here, actuated and timed by a distributor system. Very much like your time, the ignition. So it was not a continuous injection. Like say the Hillborn system in the US would’ve been. So that’s basically what we decide, or we leave it to the engineering team.

Do they want to go with a speaker direct injection that they also have at their disposal within for Mayo, or when they go with something like this indirect injection. So then we say our, our special source will be the emphasis on aerodynamics and we want to create downforce. And we saw this picture of the TAD yesterday that was explained to us.

You can see the fellow who was behind it was a, uh, who was behind [00:50:00] the patent that you see figures from here. And you can see that he not only had side wings, but he also had an elevated wing with end caps and all the makings of a modern aerodynamic concept. So we put all this together into a final product and we think we can beat Mercedes.

On a good day, not always, but on a good day.

Thank you, Carl. I think we have some questions.

Don Capps: My thing that strikes me always when you have these discussions, why wasn’t this sort of analysis carried out then? It’s very capable. Everything’s there. Mm-hmm. So why was the contemporary thinking not along these lines? Because it’s, I know it is just retroactively.

Yeah. But all that was available then.

Karl-Heinz Mertins: Yeah. And I limit myself particularly to the availability of technology bits and pieces. [00:51:00] In hindsight, it’s very easy to throw in electronics, for example, which wasn’t available then. But a good answer of that is. I think I mentioned it briefly, people want to survive in their organizations, right?

And for example, if you’re in it, at least in the time when computers first came up, if you specified IBM computers, you were home free. It didn’t matter that they were not as functional performance wise. They may have had bad service whatsoever, but it was IBM. And so if you were issuing the purchase order for IBM computers.

You survived easily, even if things fell by the wayside, if you would’ve specified some more exotic, more powerful computer and it would’ve given you difficulties. Everybody points at you and says, you, why did you do that? You know, how could you do that? So it’s always safer to stay with the incumbent solutions, and it takes [00:52:00] risk.

It takes the right personalities to venture out a little bit. And with this. Evolution window, you have to be really careful not to go too far out and and fail. So I think there’s more incentive for playing it safe than being too daring. And there’s a herd mentality. So if everybody uses Webber Carburetors in rating, why should I do something different?

Right? But if you want to beat the other guy, as I mentioned, you cannot out Mercedes. Mercedes, don’t even try it. You have to do something different and you have to take the risk and to be willing to risk. I think Iran Horst had demonstrated it throughout his career that he was willing to do that. Thank you, Carl.

Thank you.

IMRRC/SAH Promo: This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research [00:53:00] Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motor sports. Spanning Continents, eras, and race series. The Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike. To share stories of race drivers race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls, and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the center, visit www.racing archives.org.

This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records. [00:54:00] Print ephemera and images to safeguard as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.

For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org.

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Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 The Challenge of Beating Mercedes-Benz
03:01 Mercedes-Benz’s Post-War Comeback; The 300 SL and the Marshall Plan
08:59 The Shift to Mid-Engine Layout
12:28 The Italian Engineering Dream Team
18:45 Mercedes-Benz’s Methodical Development
26:43 Lessons from the 300 SL
29:04 Chassis Design, Radial Tires, Space Frame and Aviation Influence
33:26 Innovative Suspension Systems
38:39 Brakes and Aerodynamic Innovations
40:43 Driver Position and Engine Choices
47:20 Fuel Injection and Aerodynamics
50:29 Concluding Thoughts and Acknowledgements

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Enter UNE Automobili: A Fictional Challenger with Real Engineering

Karl’s imagined Unione Automobili draws inspiration from Auto Union’s pre-war mid-engine designs and Italy’s fragmented post-war automotive landscape. The proposed conglomerate includes storied marques like Lancia, Alfa Romeo, and Iso, unified under an Italian-state holding company. The goal: to create a technically superior, mid-engine Formula One car capable of challenging Mercedes on merit.

Engineering the Advantage: Chassis, Suspension, and Tires

Unione Automobili’s (UA) strategy hinges on exploiting Mercedes’ likely adherence to front-engine architecture and swing-axle rear suspension. Instead, they opts for:

Mid-engine layout for optimal weight distribution
Radial tires from Pirelli, offering superior grip and reduced rolling resistance
Space-frame chassis inspired by aviation triangulation, enhancing rigidity without weight penalties
Semi-trailing arm rear suspension, allowing fine-tuned camber and toe control

Aerodynamic downforce also takes center stage. Inspired by wartime aircraft and early patents, UA explores elevated wings with endplates and integrated airflow management—decades ahead of their mainstream adoption in F1. Drawing from glider design and sailplane ergonomics, the engineers propose a reclined driver position to reduce frontal area and aerodynamic drag. This innovation, borrowed from the Polytechnic of Turin’s 1953 sailplane experiments, anticipates the low-slung cockpits of future monocoque racers.

While Mercedes likely sticks with a heavy inline-six, UA embraces a compact 60° V6, honoring Lancia’s engineering legacy. The team even considers a 120° V6 layout for reduced engine height and improved packaging. Fuel injection – either direct or indirect – is a given, with Italian patents from the 1930s offering viable solutions.

Strategic Engineering: Know Thy Enemy

Unione Automobili’s approach is not just technical – it’s philosophical. Quoting Sun Tzu, Karl emphasizes in his lecture, the importance of understanding Mercedes’ methods to anticipate and counter them. Rather than mimic Stuttgart’s strengths, UA seeks “unfair advantages” through differentiation, they key being: mid-engine layout, advanced suspension, and aerodynamic innovation.

While this alternative history remains speculative, Karl’s is grounded in real engineering principles and historical context, and he challenges us to think critically about innovation, risk, and the evolution of motorsport technology. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the best way to win isn’t to follow the leader – but to redefine the race.

Photo courtesy Aldo Zana; Society of Automotive Historians (SAH)

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

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Precision, Propaganda, and the Pursuit of Speed: The 1939 Nazi Record Week

History of Motorsports

IMRRC

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September 9, 2025

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Precision, Propaganda, and the Pursuit of Speed: The 1939 Nazi Record Week

In the waning months before World War II, Germany staged one final act of automotive bravado: the 1939 Record Week. This was not merely a motorsports event – it was a meticulously orchestrated display of technological supremacy, national pride, and propaganda. Held on a purpose-built stretch of autobahn near Leipzig, the event showcased the pinnacle of German engineering, with Mercedes-Benz leading the charge in a bid to dominate land speed records.

The 9.4 km stretch of autobahn selected for the 1939 Record Week was no ordinary road. Designed with precision, it featured:

A wide, flat, arrow-straight surface
Gentle curves at each end for acceleration and braking
Overpasses built with single arches to eliminate central pillars – minimizing risk at high speeds
A concrete-paved median to extend usable width

This infrastructure was a deliberate evolution from earlier record attempts on the Frankfurt-Darmstadt autobahn, which had proven perilous due to narrow lanes and obstructive bridge supports.

Aldo Zana, the Italian historian presenting the lecture (featured below), unearthed archival evidence suggesting that two distinct Mercedes record cars were present—one Class D and one Class B. Subtle differences in exhaust placement and bodywork confirmed this, despite Daimler-Benz’s official records omitting the second car. The Class B car, likely a W125/3, had been quietly retired due to engine unreliability.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

With Auto Union absent – still reeling from the loss of Bernd Rosemeyer and internal technical setbacks – Mercedes-Benz stood alone. To avoid the optics of a one-horse race, organizers invited a diesel-powered experimental car and motorcycles to fill the roster. But the spotlight remained on Mercedes.

Key technical highlights:

The W154 Grand Prix car, fitted with a 3.0L M154 engine, was adapted for a standing-start Class D record attempt.
A fully streamlined variant of the 1938 car was also deployed, achieving a flying-start speed of 406 km/h—an unprecedented feat for a 3.0L engine.

Driver Rudolf Caracciola, already a record holder, piloted the W154 to new benchmarks:

1 km: 165.89 km/h
1 mile: 204.02 km/h

These figures represented significant improvements over previous records set by Italian driver Emilio Materassi in 1936.

Spotlight

Aldo Zana is an Italian motor historian and journalist. He started writing articles for motor magazines in the mid-sixties as a freelance editor of Autosprint and Rombo weeklies, developing an inclination towards history and historic cars and races. Since the late Eighties, he has become a regular contributor to Italian and foreign historic car magazines; his recent automotive books include a history of the Sports-Prototype FIA World Championship; the lives and races of Italian drivers; the motor racing scenario of the Fifties; and the story of the forgotten Milano car shows 1901-1947. Zana is a long-time member of SAH and Aisa (Italian Association of Motor Historians), former member of the History and Museum Commission of ASI (Italian National Historic Car and Bike Association) and Ugis, the Italian guild of science journalists.

Synopsis

This episode of The Logbook, our History of Motorsports series, delves into the history of Nazi Germany’s efforts to dominate the realm of motorsports through the ‘Record Week’ events held from 1936 to 1939. Presented by motor historian and journalist Aldo Zana, the script details the strategic integration of high-speed automobile achievements into Nazi propaganda, highlighting key vehicles, records, and drivers of the era. The focus is specifically on the last edition of ‘Record Week’ in 1939, illustrating Germany’s efforts to claim the world land speed record and analyzing the cars and technical challenges faced. Additionally, it reflects on Zana’s extensive career and his contributions to automotive history.

Follow along using the video version of the Slide Deck from this Presentation

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix’s History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.

Crew Chief Eric: The Nazi record walkin for record weeks 1939, the final act of an automobile speed folly. Alana Nazi Germany turned the automobile’s high speed into a propaganda tool for its technical and industrial supremacy with its domestic motor industry having fallen behind the US and France. The political establishment pushed for dominance in Grand Prix racing, launched an automobile for the masses and developed a wide network of motorways.

Connecting racing cars, high speed, and the motorways was the record walk. An annual event launched in 1936 to conquer the highest speeds on a motorway. The last edition in 1939 was a relatively low key event shadowed by the prior year’s sensational Mercedes-Benz speed record, and Bernard Rose Meyer’s death.

[00:01:00] Nevertheless, the propaganda machine aptly broadcast the speeds reached on an arrow straight. Level and wide. 10 kilometer motorway stretched north of leap Zg purposefully built for the record weeks and the conquest of the world. Land speed record by a German driver on a German car, on German soil. After a quick recap of the 1936 through 1938 editions, Aldo discusses cars shown in the 1939 Daimler, Benzs and Haag, as well as clear some mysteries left unsolved through the decades.

This presentation will also cover the records established by Italian and British drivers three months before World War II began. Alana is an Italian motor historian and journalist after a PhD in theoretical physics at the Milan University and at the cern, the European Physics Research Center in Geneva.

He switched to a managerial career in corporate communications while continuing with motor journalism. Zana started writing articles for motor magazines in the mid sixties as a freelance editor of Auto Sprint and Romble Weeklys developing an inclination towards [00:02:00] history and historic cars and races.

Since the late eighties, he has become a regular contributor to Italian and foreign historic car magazines. His recent automotive books include a History of the Sports Prototype, FIA World Championship. The lives and races of Italian drivers, the motor racing scenario of the fifties, and the story of the forgotten Milano car shows from 1901 to 1947.

Aldo is a longtime member of the SAH and the Italian Association of Motor Historians, former member of the History and the Museum Commission of the Italian National Historic Car and Bike Association, and the Italian Guild of Science Journalists. Our next presentation

Kip Zeiter: is a Zoom

Crew Chief Eric: presentation

Kip Zeiter: done by Aldo Zana.

Aldo Zana: Okay, good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m here talking hopefully in, in a understandable English. I apologize for my heavy Italian accent, but I will talk about something relating to Germany, so it will be a bit difficult understand an Italian [00:03:00] speaking about something German. But anyway, I will try to do my best.

I will talk about the record week organized by the Nazi of a governmental state in 1939. In 1939, German racing car and the drivers dominated Grand Prix racing. So the dominant started with Mercedes Band in 1935 by Rose Meyer. The new auto Union star driver won the European Championship 1936. In 1936, the Nazi organization for motor racing launched a special event in order to concur.

The total superiority of the German racing car and promoted ban the highway. The new, so the first record or speed of the record was in 1936 on a flat, and they are they straight section on, on this, uh, ban or highway [00:04:00] between Frankfurt. Airport and there was 25 kilometers, and it was carefully, uh, arranged, organized for having all, all the record for the five kilometer and five miles on this, uh, stretch of ban.

The record was held for three years. You can see from this slide how difficult it was to drive very fast on this motorway because it was a two lane quite more than for the time, but with some grass median and bridges crossing the highway with a central pillar. So that was very dangerous. And in 38 they held a special event only on one day long in 1930.

By Mercedes Benz in order to correct the failure they had in the record, the record week on 1937 [00:05:00] in that, that morning, the cold morning, January 28th, Mercedes, the new W 25, or, I’m not sure because there are. Definite document about the name of the chais of the car. So I think it was 1925 R, but someone written that it was W 1 25, number 11.

So anyway, car driving this Mercedes Benz, which the astonishing speed of 432.69 KPM. That is 268 80 street MPH. In the same morning, the auto union was on the motorway or the highway with, with a special model of from line backhand, they call it. So the, the record car. That was modified in 1937. Rosa Mayer [00:06:00] had a accident and the car destroyed after having lost ground effect, and so it was a beautiful day for Mercedes.

Was a tragic day for the German, uh, motor of fault. After that, we came to the 39 record walk. That was the final end of the record walk. And the site chosen for the record walk was a new stretch of, uh, the auto band under trash between lighting and Berlin. It was a 9.4 kilometer long tri, that’s right. And that’s flat.

And they decided to pay over, in other words, to put concrete on the center of the medial center. So the, the usual truck white or 27 meter that is 88.6 feet. Overpasses, very laboratory build in a single arch [00:07:00] without a central pillar in order to avoid any danger for the the driver. The length of 9.4 kilometer was very strange, but was forced by the presence at one end of an an YVIP, uh, land, and they didn’t want to destroy or two.

Disturb the poor lazy whip. So there were two small gentle bands at the end of, uh, the flat and the strip section in order to have some more space for, uh, breaking and acceleration, but with 1.5 kilometers, slightly less than one mile for breaking was too short. But anyhow, they went there. So, uh, the new record walk was scheduled for October 28th, but the highway was not ready.

So they, they postponed it to February 29 and that was the, the, the record week [00:08:00] of 29. And the only player available was Mercedes Band. Because Alion having lost Rosa Mayor in 1938 and lacking the wisdom of Professor P who left the company at the end, 1937. Alto refused to participate in such, uh, gamble of, uh, no speeds that em to share l.

Only Mercedes were available to avoid the embarrassment of a single player, single category event, and was called at the very last moment with a diesel engine car, which in order to try for a new record, something absolutely unknown until now. Uh, diesel, can you imagine a diesel engine record car was not so fast, like a normal high speed car available on the street.

There was also a BMW Motorbike Fisher Station in order to [00:09:00] conquer the record of liter class. Record decided by Mercedes Band was a standing start, class D like Delta record. So was something completely different from the 38 a period record. And they used, uh, grand card W 1 5 4, number 11, with a special semi lined body.

Already decided for the three Polygram pri. So the engine was a three liter M1 54.1 14. The driver was, Carla was holding the record of the previous year. He was forced to do the same record for a limited speech. So, uh, not car started starting start. You can see the wide of the highway, but Carola chose to run on one [00:10:00] side because it thought that the center line was too difficult to drive because of too many dirt.

So the record was on the kilometer, 1 65 0.89, and on the mile 200 0 4 2 0 4. It was a kind of easy triumph, auer, very happy, welcoming, Chala coming back. The all record was already set in 1936 by, uh, an Italian driver with the German sound in name of full manic, and he did the record on the Luca motorway, uh, near Florence in Italy.

It was an, an easy improvement of one 16.6% on the kilometer, and 23.6% on the mile. And on, uh, February 14th, the final day of the record, car drove again the three liter [00:11:00] car W 1 54 to improve by, uh, 1% your record. Then on February nine, the second day of the record walk, Mercedes used their fully streamline car of 1938, but with three liter engine for the Class D Delta flying star record and car achieve.

On the return run a speed of 400 or six kilometer per hour. So it was an, an astonishing result because first time that a three liter car went beyond 400 kilometers per hour. So you can see the equivalent of kilometers for Israel in miles in MPH doesn’t mean anything. But for European, for German especially, 400 kilometer per hour mean something.

So the press was very keen on the [00:12:00] record. Uh, there are many, many articles about the new record claiming that 400 KPM uh, record. While the pr, uh, department of Mercedes Bank while record by Ann was nearly owned by the people, only the, the officials and the, the record with the 1.9 liter diesel engine 35 BHP was very low.

Nothing. The aerodynamic was very fine and the driver was a company engineer, was a producer of agricultural tractor. Use the record the 96.9 MPH to claim the quality of the engine. Then there is a final act after the record. Okay. On June 2nd, 1938, the final, there were two recommended. One was [00:13:00] Italian Count Ani, and another was an Englishman Goldie Gardner.

And they choose the So Ban to establish the record for small classes. So Goldie Gardner was a very famous British recommend in in his career. He had 1 52 National, international, and overall Records and noted that Go Gardner was limping due to round inflicted by the German force during the grading rate war, but he didn’t care to head again to Germany to satisfy his first for the record.

Noted that in less than two months, UK and Germany will be at war again one day or other. So Gordon Gardner was there and he went with a small engine and 1.1 liter engine for cylinder engine supercharge. Of course the [00:14:00] MG EX 1 35, he went to 3 29 KPH record on the mile. So. Was astonishing speed that was noted that he choose to try to run on the central band.

They other Recomme man was called Jovani. Joi would drove a small 370 CC G motorcycle with a special trainline body that was like an next shell, and he reached 1 72 KPM for the kilometer. He also did the 10 kilometers record and he, he told later that there was difficulty keeping him awake during the, about 20 minutes of driving back and forth on that highway across a flat and fifth refinery.[00:15:00]

So that was it for the 1939 record and for the south section of the highway. But there is a small mystery about the Mercedes car. First of all, in the South, that February 8th, there were two record cards, not only one, not only the Class D record card. But there were two, the photos of both car were mixed up in, in the Daimler Band Archive, and I found these photos, which clearly show two record cars, not only one.

I iLIGHT the exhaust on the car, and this is quite different from the Class DW 1 54 car. There are different small differences, very subtle, but you can note the difference. And on the left you have the old, the W 1 52 [00:16:00] slash three car, so the plus B Bravo cars. On the right you have the Class D Delta car.

So you, you, you notice there whole difference, but there are different, there were two cars, but the problem that Diamond Bank decided to cancel W 1 25 car because with a fellow, because it didn’t work, the engine was very out and refuse it. So in, in Germany, er was not a consider in. Now if you allow me, I will tell you the real story.

So it’s this car. This car, the Mercedes. The 80, 19 39 was the car designed for the absolute land speed record. And at that point, held by the by, by the British. The car was decided by Professor Porsche 13, 19 37 and, uh, the, the [00:17:00] shape of, uh, the body with the long tail in order to have the center of pressure behind the center of gravity, the two winglets at the side, on the, on the center of gravity.

And the engine was supposed to be a IRO engine, Daim Band 6 0 0 1 or 6 0 3, and the car by full 1939 was up completely, but it never run a single centimeter, a single feet. On its own power. You can see on this photo that, uh, the engine is on site, but it was only tried once on a test bed and it was, uh, a disaster.

So they did, they stopped any progress on, on that car. The original, uh, drawing by Porsche was very interesting. That was the first one in 1937. In order to obtain [00:18:00] downfalls, they used to have, uh, a wing, an inverted profile wing under the two real wheels. But the solution was too difficult, so they did opted for the two winglet.

The two winglet on the center of gravity was absolutely useless, but it took 30 years and the formula one 40 years to understand the real reason why the winglet very used it. And the wing above the, the rear wheel were effective. So more or less the, the so straight was billed for this car. Which was absolutely impossible to run on it because it was too short and not the, the car would’ve, the brakes in 1.5 kilometer to stop from 600 kilometer per hour was absolutely impossible.

But anyway, they did it. And they obtain money from the [00:19:00] state for this car and which is still exist while the frame is somewhere in the LER factory of Mercedes. The body displayed in the Mercedes Benz Museum is the last item of the speed section is on the wall after the accident. Looked above the cafeteria.

A very sad end for a car whose existence was raised by heating the heater himself and issued the order to win the land speed record for German. He wanted a German car, a German driver on German soil. This is the reason why the de access was built. It explained the IT 39 record walk was the dress rehearsal for the future long speed record comp.

That’s it, sir. I thank you and we’ll we’ll open to question if any.

Kip Zeiter: Take a few minutes, stretch your legs and we’ll see you in a few minutes. Thank you.[00:20:00]

IMRRC/SAH Promo: This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motor sports spanning continence, eras, and race series. The Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls, and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the center, visit www.racing archives.org.

This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of [00:21:00] automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images. To safeguard as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.

For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org.

We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, [00:22:00] families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional pit stop, minisodes and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators.

Fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, Gumby bears, and monster. So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of this would be possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Nazi Germany’s Speed Propaganda
01:17 Overview of Record Weeks (1936-1938)
03:04 The 1939 Record Week
04:50 Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union Rivalry
06:14 The Final Record Week
15:07 Mysteries and Technical Details
19:46 Conclusion and Q&A; Closing Remarks and Credits

Livestream

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Perhaps the most ambitious project was the never-raced Mercedes-Benz land speed record car, designed by Ferdinand Porsche in 1937. Intended to break the absolute land speed record, it featured:

A long-tail body for aerodynamic stability
Twin winglets near the center of gravity
A proposed Daimler-Benz V12 aero engine (DB 600 series)

Despite its advanced design, the car never ran under its own power. Engine testing was unsuccessful, and the project was shelved. The autobahn stretch built for its attempt proved too short to safely decelerate from projected speeds of 600 km/h.

In June 1939, just weeks before war erupted, British and Italian drivers returned to the autobahn for final record attempts:

Goldie Gardner, a decorated British veteran, achieved 329 km/h in an MG EX135 with a 1.1L supercharged engine.
A 1.9L diesel-powered car producing just 35 bhp – produced a modest top speed of 96.9 mph – however, the aerodynamic design was notable, and the record attempt served as a proof of concept for diesel viability in performance contexts.
Count Giovanni Lurani added diversity to the technical showcase by reaching 172 km/h over 1 km on a streamlined 370cc Guzzi motorcycle, noting the surreal monotony of the flat, industrial landscape.

These records, set in the shadow of impending conflict, marked the end of an era where speed was both a technical pursuit and a political statement.

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

Other episodes you might enjoy

Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History

The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), partnering with the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), presents the annual Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History. The Symposium established itself as a unique and respected scholarly forum and has gained a growing audience of students and enthusiasts. It provides an opportunity for scholars, researchers and writers to present their work related to the history of automotive competition and the cultural impact of motor racing. Papers are presented by faculty members, graduate students and independent researchers.The history of international automotive competition falls within several realms, all of which are welcomed as topics for presentations, including, but not limited to: sports history, cultural studies, public history, political history, the history of technology, sports geography and gender studies, as well as archival studies.

The symposium is named in honor of Michael R. Argetsinger (1944-2015), an award-winning motorsports author and longtime member of the Center's Governing Council. Michael's work on motorsports includes:

Walt Hansgen: His Life and the History of Post-war American Road Racing (2006)
Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed (2009)
Formula One at Watkins Glen: 20 Years of the United States Grand Prix, 1961-1980 (2011)
An American Racer: Bobby Marshman and the Indianapolis 500 (2019)

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Leipert Motorsport Wins in Malaysia!

Motorsports

Gran T

-

September 8, 2025

0

The fifth and final stop of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia before the World Final took Leipert Motorsport, supported by PROFICAR, to the historic Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia. In extremely hot but dry conditions, the team took on the challenge with two cars: the #27 was driven by Ethan Brown as a solo driver in the PRO class, while Brendon Leitch (NZL) and JJ Song (CHN) competed in the PRO-AM classification with the #89. With a strong performance in practice and qualifying, as well as a victory in the second race, the team made a clear statement.

Strong performances in practice and qualifying

Already in free practice, both cars showed a consistently fast pace in Sepang and confidently established themselves in the top 5 at all times.

In the subsequent qualifying session, the #27 car with Ethan Brown (PRO) confirmed its strong form: in Q1, he placed third in his class, but had to start three places further back due to a penalty from the previous race. In Q2, Brown stepped up his game and secured second place in the PRO class with a strong lap.

The #89 car with Brendon Leitch and JJ Song (PRO-AM) also impressed: after finishing seventh in Q1, Leitch secured pole position in the PRO-AM classification in Q2, underlining the duo’s strong starting position.

2025 GR Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia Scholaship Series, Round 5, The Bend, Tailem Bend, South Australia, Australia. 5 Sep, 2025. Photo courtesy Liepert Motorsport, Photo by Lamborghini

Race 1: Comeback after a difficult start

Brown’s #27 (PRO) started the first race from the fifth row, while the #89 with Leitch and Song (PRO-AM) started from the eighth row. Initially, neither car was able to maintain the strong pace they had shown in qualifying and lost a few positions in the early stages.

As the race progressed, Brown showed fighting spirit, worked his way back into the top five in his class and finally crossed the finish line in fifth place in the PRO category. In the #89, Leitch took the wheel in the second half of the race, made up several places and, together with Song, brought the car home in seventh place in the PRO-AM classification.

Race 2: Dominant performance by Leitch and confident victory for Brown

Both Leipert cars started the second race from excellent positions: Brown took his place on the second row in the #27 (PRO), while Leitch and Song (PRO-AM) started from pole position in the #89. Both cars made the most of their starting positions and led the field. In the first half of the race, they built up a comfortable lead of just under 8 seconds over the second-placed cars in each class.

In the second half of the race, Song took the wheel of the #89 and initially defended the lead, while Brown was in third place overall with the #27, which was equivalent to the lead in the PRO class. However, a safety car phase saw the lead melt away. After the restart, Song lost a few positions in the close battle at the front of the field. Brown took full advantage of the situation, took the lead and clinched the first victory as a solo driver for the #27 – a well-deserved triumph after a strong performance at his home race!

Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia, Round 5, Sepang International Curquit, Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia. 7 Sep, 2025; Photo courtesy Liepert Motorsport, Photo by Lamborghini

Up Next, The World Final in Misano!

Managing Directors Marc Poos and Marcel Leipert were satisfied after the race weekend in Malaysia and stated: “The weekend in Sepang was a big challenge for us – the extremely hot conditions demanded a lot from both people and equipment. We are therefore even more delighted that we were able to secure our second victory of the season in the PRO class with Ethan Brown. Leitch and Song also put in another strong performance, even though they were somewhat unlucky to be held back by the safety car phase in the second race. Overall, it was a very positive weekend, which has left us feeling motivated going into the final championship races and the World Final.”

After its successful outing in Sepang, Leipert Motorsport is now looking ahead to the big highlight of the season: the prestigious Lamborghini Super Trofeo World Final will take place in Misano Adriatico, Italy, from 6 to 9 November. The program will initially feature two more Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia races, before teams and drivers from the Asian, European and North American series compete in the actual World Final.

Leipert Motorsport aims to build on its previous performances and fight for top positions in both the classes and the overall standings, with the hope of repeating last year’s title win.

About Liepert Motorsport

Leipert Motorsport was founded in 2002 and became one of Europe’s top GT-Teams in Sprint- and Endurance-Racing. Spreading its GT-Engagement even wider across the continental borders, this step is the logical consequence for the German team after being a front runner and championship winning team in multiple competitions.

From Pit Lane to Home Garage: Installing a Lift Like a Pro

Behind the Garage Door

Jeff W

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September 4, 2025

0

From Pit Lane to Home Garage: Installing a Lift Like a Pro

In motorsports, precision and preparation are everything. Whether you’re watching a Formula 1 pit crew execute a flawless tire change in under three seconds or admiring the engineering behind a Le Mans prototype, one thing is clear: the garage is where performance begins.

Choosing the Right Type of Lift

For enthusiasts who live and breathe horsepower, bringing that same spirit into your home garage starts with the right equipment—and nothing transforms a workspace quite like a professional-grade lift. Whether you’re restoring a vintage Ferrari, tuning a track-day Mustang, or simply making room for your daily driver, installing a lift is your first step toward a garage that works as hard as you do.

Photo courtesy Kevin Duffy; photo by Gran Touring Motorsports

So you’ve decided to install a lift in your garage – congrats!

Whether you’re a weekend wrench-turner or planning to store vehicles more efficiently, a lift can be a game-changer. But before you click “buy” and have one shipped to your driveway, there are several key factors to consider. First things first: what kind of lift suits your needs?

Two-post lifts: Great for maintenance and repairs.
Four-post lifts: Ideal for storage and heavier vehicles.
Scissor lifts: Compact and versatile, but with height limitations.

Each type has its pros and cons, so think about how you’ll use it – maintenance, storage, or both.

Space & Height Considerations

If your garage isn’t built yet, aim for 9 to 12 feet wall/eave height, with extra clearance at the ridge. For full-height lifts (typically 70–84 inches), you’ll want enough room to comfortably walk underneath the raised vehicle. Also consider:

Ceiling height
Vehicle height when lifted
Lift dimensions and weight capacity (commonly 6,000–10,000 lbs)

It’s smart to choose your lift first, then build or modify your garage to match its specifications.

Concrete & Structural Requirements

Your lift’s stability depends heavily on the concrete it stands on. Here’s what to keep in mind:

Minimum 3,000 PSI concrete mix
2x2x2 ft pads under lift legs for added strength
Avoid shortcuts—hire a trusted concrete contractor, not someone’s cousin’s friend

In earthquake-prone areas like California, reinforced concrete is even more critical.

Electrical, Air Supply, Safety Features & More!

Check your garage’s electrical draw rating and air supply. You may need to upgrade your system to meet the lift’s requirements. Planning this early can save headaches later.

Safety should be your top priority. Look for:

Telescoping arms for better vehicle stability
Single or dual-point safety release systems
Upgrade options like frame cradle pads, truck adapters, and column extensions

Where to Buy & What Brands to Trust

A great place to start your search is www.eastwood.com. They offer vetted brands like:

Tuxedo
BendPak

These brands are known for solid ratings, reliable lift capacity, and strong safety features. Buying through a reputable third-party vendor also gives you better support for parts and repairs.

Planning Your Garage Build

If you’re still in the planning phase, here’s what you need to know to make that upgrade with the precision of a race engineer.

Check local permits, setbacks, and HOA restrictions
Get quotes from trusted builders, and mention the lift early so they can adjust the concrete specs
Know your local concrete cost per square foot to evaluate bids

Just like a race team doesn’t roll into the paddock without a plan, your garage deserves the same level of forethought and precision. From concrete specs to lift types, every detail you dial in now sets the stage for smoother pit stops, cleaner builds, and safer operations down the line. Whether you’re chasing lap times or restoring legends, a well-equipped garage is your personal paddock—where performance begins and passion lives. With the right planning and research, installing a lift can be a smooth and rewarding upgrade. You’ve got the info—now go make it happen.

Good luck, and happy torquing!

[EDITORS NOTE] Special shoutout to Break/Fix podcast guest Kevin Duffy from 924S944.com for sharing his garage and lift construction pictures with us for this article. Learn more about his story in the following article.

Contributing Writer: Jeff Willis

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the following Break/Fix episode to learn more about our featured writer.

Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe – Nürburgring

Motorsports

Gran T

-

September 2, 2025

0

Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe – Nürburgring

Leipert Motorsport, supported by PROFICAR, competed in front of a home crowd at
the fourth round of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe season at the Nürburgring. In front of numerous fans, the team once again demonstrated strong pace and convincing performances. However, despite promising starting positions, the deserved podium finishes failed to materialize this race weekend.

Contrary to expectations, the free practice sessions and qualifying at the Nürburgring took place in good weather conditions, allowing the pace of the cars to be clearly assessed. Leipert Motorsport performed strongly in qualifying: the #99 (Rytter/Pretorius) was temporarily in pole position, but had its fastest lap disqualified due to track limits and ultimately qualified in 4th and 5th place in the Pro class. Pablo Schumm (#88) placed his car twice in 11th place in the Pro class. The #44 (Thalin/Bergman) secured solid starting positions with 8th and 3rd place. Gerhard Watzinger’s (#70) performance was particularly outstanding, putting his Lamborghini in 2nd and 1st place in the Cup qualifying.

#99 Rytter (DK) / Pretorius (ZAF) – Pro class

Pretorius started Race 1 from P4, but initially fell back to 8th place after a turbulent start in Turn 1. The duo fought their way back to the front, but after a failed restart following a full-course yellow phase and a resulting collision with a competitor, the race was over shortly before the finish, just short of the podium. In the second race, the #99, like most of the field, opted for rain tires. After a strong start, Rytter moved up to P2 and remained consistently at the front of the field until the pit stop. Pretorius continued to set top lap times in the second stint and crossed the finish line in 4th position.

#88 Pablo Schumm (SUI) – Pro class

Schumm put in a strong performance at the start and brought the #88 home in 10th place in Race 1. The second race, however, was unfortunate: halfway through the race, he lost control while braking in the NGK chicane and unfortunately collided with his teammate Watzinger (#70), resulting in both cars retiring early.

#44 Thalin/Bergman (SWE) – Pro class

In the first race, the #44 finished in 8th place in its class. In the second race, Bergman got off to a strong start and was in the top 3 for a long time. However, as the track dried out, the rain tires lost grip, causing the duo to lose positions. Thalin finally brought the Lamborghini home in 9th place.

#70 Gerhard Watzinger (USA) – Lamborghini Cup

After his very strong qualifying performances, Watzinger confirmed his good pace in the race as well. In the first race, he was clearly on course for a podium finish, but unfortunately had to park his car in the gravel after the pit stop because he was unable to continue the race under his own power. In the second race, too, it looked for a long time as if he had a chance of a podium finish or even another race win: after the pit stop, Watzinger was in second place in the Cup class. However, an unfortunate collision with his team-mate brought the race to a premature end – a bitter end to a weekend that had shown so much potential.

The next step: on the way to the World Final

Managing Directors Marc Poos and Marcel Leipert: “We started this weekend very well prepared and, as always, had a strong pace, but were unable to build on our victory in the last race at Spa. It is particularly bitter for Gerhard Watzinger, who was clearly on course for the podium twice and was only two points off the top of the table before the event. Nevertheless, our drivers clearly showed that we can compete at the front, which makes us very confident for the final events in Barcelona and Misano.”

Leipert Motorsport will continue with the next round of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia from 5 to 7 September in Sepang, Malaysia. Just a few weeks later, another highlight awaits with the Super Trofeo Europe in Barcelona (10–12 October), marking the last race weekend before the World Final in Misano.

About Liepert Motorsport

Leipert Motorsport was founded in 2002 and became one of Europe’s top GT-Teams in Sprint- and Endurance-Racing. Spreading its GT-Engagement even wider across the continental borders, this step is the logical consequence for the German team after being a front runner and championship winning team in multiple competitions.

Alfa Romeo’s P2: Speed, Symbolism, and the Birth of Fascist Motorsport

History of Motorsports

IMRRC

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September 2, 2025

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Alfa Romeo’s P2: Speed, Symbolism, and the Birth of Fascist Motorsport

As Italy approached the centennial of the Alfa Romeo P2’s debut, it’s worth revisiting the legacy of a car that was far more than a racing machine. Designed by Vittorio Jano and championed by a young Enzo Ferrari, the P2 wasn’t just fast – it was a political and cultural icon, forged in the crucible of Mussolini’s Italy.

The P2’s rise mirrored a broader industrial and ideological shift. Milan, home to Alfa Romeo, was cast by fascists as youthful and dynamic, in contrast to the staid, liberal Turin of Fiat. Fascist publications like La Vista del Popolo framed Alfa as the audacious future, Fiat as the outdated past. Alfa’s victories on the track became metaphors for Mussolini’s political revolution.

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Alfa’s first major international win came at the 1923 Targa Florio, just months after Mussolini became Prime Minister. Coincidence or not, the regime seized on the moment. When Giuseppe Campari won the 1924 European Grand Prix at Lyon, the announcement interrupted a tense fascist party meeting in Rome. The next day, Italy’s leading newspaper placed the race win alongside political headlines – a symbolic pairing of speed and state.

Designed in record time by Jano and his youthful team, the P2 embodied fascist ideals of discipline, innovation, and velocity. Ferrari, then just 25, recruited the talent and shaped the team’s ethos. The car’s aesthetic echoed Fiat’s 805, but its engine and suspension were refined to deliver superior performance – an act of industrial revenge against Ferrari’s former employer.

Spotlight

Paul Baxa is Professor of History at Ave Maria University in Florida. Parts of his most recent book, Motorsport and Fascism: Living Dangerously have been presented at past Argetsinger Symposia. He was privileged to have presented at the first symposium in 2015.

Synopsis

This episode of The Logbook, our History of Motorsports series, discusses the Alfa Romeo P2, an iconic racing car designed by Vittorio Jano that debuted 100 years ago. The P2 dominated Grand Prix racing during the two-liter formula in the mid-1920s, helping Alfa Romeo win the first World Championship in 1925. The presentation, delivered by Paul Baxa, explores the broader industrial, cultural, and political significance of the P2 beyond its sporting achievements, particularly its role in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. The P2’s victories were used by Mussolini’s regime to symbolize Italy’s industrial revival and national pride, while also influencing motorsport culture and politics during that era. The narrative touches on the car’s design, its impact on Italian motorsports, and the personal stories of key figures like Antonio Ascari and Enzo Ferrari. The Alfa Romeo P2 remained successful in racing through the 1930s and eventually became a symbol of Italy’s motorsport legacy.

Follow along using the video version of the Slide Deck from this Presentation

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix’s History of Motorsports Series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.

Crew Chief Eric: The P two Alpha Fascist Icon by Paul Bax. This year, we’ll mark the hundredth anniversary of the iconic Alpha Romeo’s P two’s debut, designed by legendary Vitor Yano.

The P two went on to dominate Grand Prix racing in the final two years of the two Leader Formula. In 1925, alpha Romeo won the first World Championship, after which the team dually withdrew from the sport. However, privately owned Alpha P Twos continue to participate in racing and win races up until 1930.

The sporting achievements of the Alpha P twos are well known as is the role the car played in establishing Alpha Romeo as Italy’s most famous racing mark. Up until the advent of the Second World War, less known is the broader significance of the P two that went well beyond the [00:01:00] racetrack. Informed by the history of objects developed by cultural historians.

This paper argues that the P two significance was industrial, cultural, and ultimately political. The achievements of the P two and the emergence of the mil based alpha company coincided with the establishment of Mussolini’s dictatorship in Italy. The fascist regime used the successes to celebrate the rise of fascist Italy as an industrial and sporting power.

Moreover, the unique characteristics of the P two came to embody the values promoted by fascism such as speed and dominance, both the design and performance of the car, as well as the men who raced. It came to shape not only Grand Prix racing in the 1920s, but also impacted the role played by the sport in the political and cultural context of fascist Italy.

Paul Baxa is a professor of history at Ave Maria University in Florida. Parts of his most recent book, motor Sport and Fascism Living Dangerously have been presented at past Argen Singer Symposia. He was privileged to have presented at the first symposium in 2015.

Kip Zeiter: Thanks everybody. I’d like to introduce you to our next [00:02:00] speaker, Paul Baxa, who’s going to talk about the P two Alpha fascist icon.

Thank you, Kip.

Paul Baxa: Thank you all. Uh, I wanna thank Don Kas and Bob Barr and Duke Kininger and everyone who make this great event happen. It was my privilege to be at the first one back in 2015 and it’s amazing how this has grown. Thank you for having me. Just, uh, before I get to my presentation, Jim had a, uh, slide showing the program for the 1980 US Grand Prix.

I had the privilege of being at that race back in October of 1980. I came down with my dad. I remember. Bruno Giac in the Alfa Romeo Getting Pole position, and I came from a family of Tizi, but my dad told me that weekend, he said a, you know, a real Italian racing fan knows that Alfa Romeo is really the team to cheer for.

And that leads me actually to today’s presentation. Actually. My dad grew up in fascist Italy, so he may have been influenced by some of the things I might be talking about today. [00:03:00] So on Sunday, August 3rd, 1924, the fascist party of Italy was holding an emergency meeting in the Palazzo Venetia in Rome. It was the height of the Mati crisis, and Mussolini’s government was facing an uncertain future.

The body of the socialist deputy, Giacomo Mati was still missing after he was kidnapped by a group of fascist thugs in June. Although his fate was unknown, the expectation was that Mati had been assassinated and that Mussolini was to blame. At 5:00 PM during a series of tense exchanges and speeches, calling for Mussolini to crack down on his enemies, the radical fascist.

Francesco Junta interrupted the conference to announce that Giuseppe Camp driving a P two Alfa Romeo had just won the European Grand Prix at Leon. The next day, the front page of Italy’s most important national newspaper carried two items, the PNF meeting and the Grand Prix in its report of the party meeting, the article noted Junta’s announcement.

It [00:04:00] was a bright light and an otherwise darkening situation from Mussolini and his government. 10 days after camp stirring victory, Mattel’s body was discovered in a shallow grave north of Rome. As it turned out, Mussolini’s regime not only survived the crisis, but it became the jumping off point for his dismantling of Italian democracy and the establishment of the fascist dictatorship.

In the meantime, the P two alphas would go on to dominate Grand Prix racing during the two liter formula and beyond. To be sure the victories of the Alphas led by the charismatic Antonio Ascotti served as a distraction from the tumultuous events in Italy. They were also used by Mussolini to exalt the New Italy that he and his fascists were in the process of building.

In the pages of Italy’s most Read Illustrated magazine, the lead editorial in the next edition noted how the common man was more interested and excited by the exploits of the Alphas than they were by the sorted events of Roman politics. Victory at Leon [00:05:00] was far more important it seemed than the disappearance of a socialist politician.

The car at the center of this was the P two Alfa Male’s First Grand Prix winning machine. Designed by Vittorio Yano and Record Time. The car was introduced at the Remona Grand Prix in June of 24. Results was an easy victory in the hands of Antonio Ascotti. With it came a new speed record on the circuit’s 10 kilometers straight, clocked at 121 miles per hour.

The car and the company that built it quickly became a symbol of Italy’s rebirth under the sign of fascism. This paper will demonstrate the correlation between the P two, its design and its successes with the rise of Italian fascism in the decisive years between 1924 and 1930. In those years, Mussolini consolidated his dictatorship and promoted sport as one of the regimes greatest achievements.

At the Party Congress in August, Mussolini gave a speech where he declared that it was time [00:06:00] for Italians to live dangerously. Present at that meeting was Roberto Farci, the violent fascist chief of Cremona and leader of the intransigent wing of the party. Faade Naci was also a some time race car driver and promoter of the Remona Grand Prix.

Apart from Mussolini, no one embodied fascist violence and the cult of speed more than Faade. Naci, a man who approved the TIS assassination and called for even more bloodshed. The fact that the P two began its legendary run of successes on his patch of lumber de. Seemed fitting, especially as the Remona Road Course was known for being one of the fastest racetracks in the world.

In his book, objects of Desire, a study of Italian industrial culture in the late 19th and early 20th century, Luca Tini has argued that objects are culture makers mediating devices. And vehicles of meaning. In the 1920s, Kini argues Italian industrial design reached a peak of expressive energy [00:07:00] that was found mostly in the aviation and automobile industries.

Two modern activities exalted by fascism. In addition, thanks to design theorists like Joe Ponti, Italian industrial products became works of art as well as commercial objects. I would add that they also became political objects, vehicles to draw Italians to Mussolini’s dictatorship in the late 1920s, precisely the period that Kini points out as the culmination of Italy’s developing industrial culture and entrance into modernity.

No object expressed this network of relations. I argue more than the P two. The link between the successes of the Alpha Maleo P two and national industrial political revival was even noted by foreign journalists. After a crushing demonstration of dominance in the 1925 European Grand Prix at spa, the Dean of French Motorsport, writers Shao Faru, exclaimed how the Alfa Romeo Squad embodied the Italian National Renaissance.

Those are the words that he used. [00:08:00] Before I came to represent Italy’s political shift, the P two caused a qualitative shift for its company and a major shift in Italian motorsport. Based in Milan, Italy’s emerging industrial and financial capital. Alpha’s victory in the 24 French Grand Prix effectively knocked fiat out of Grand Prix racing for good.

Although, to be fair, I think Fiat was, had already essentially made the decision to leave before that. Fiat had represented racing success for Italy since the early 19 hundreds, and was the country’s leading automobile manufacturer aspiring to become Italy’s Ford. Ali’s company was based in Tarin Milan’s rival for industrial prowess.

Alpha’s victories, therefore not only represented success on the track, but also symbolized Milan’s challenge to the Piedmontese capital. In doing this, alpha was accomplishing an industry what Mussolini’s movement was doing in politics. Like Alpha Fascism was born in Milan, a city that presented itself as a more dynamic and youthful one compared [00:09:00] to the state city of Turin.

A city described by some fascists as filled with sticks in the mud quote. After winning the 1924 Italian Grand Prix, the Fascist magazine, LA Vista del Popolo contrasted the young audacious alpha with the old Fiat end quote. Like the cities, the two companies were often presented in contrasting ways by the fascists.

Turin and Fiat were throwbacks to the old liberal Italy. Well, alpha and Milan were part of the new avant-garde Italy. Fascism’s relationship with Turrin and Fiat was a difficult one. Giovanni Ali, Fiat’s founder was not a fascist, and the company’s labor force was mostly anti-fascist. Alpha, on the other hand, was a smaller, younger company, and its labor force would become home to former black shirts.

Fiat was the past, alpha was the future. Nothing embodied this more than the P two project. Everything about the P two, the men who built and raced it, and the successes on [00:10:00] the track corresponded to Mussolini’s new image for Italy. Up until 1924, Alfa Romeo had limited success on international racetracks.

Its success seemed to coincide with the rise of the regime. Alpha’s first major victory came at the Targa Florio in 1923, international victory. Only a few months after Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy, which of course is. Pure coincidence, but it was something that was commented upon that same year.

The design and engineering department of the Mil outfit was completed with the arrival of Vittorio Yano from Fiat. It was Yano and his team of engineers who put together the P two project in record time. Both the speed of the project and the youthfulness of the team fit in with Fascism’s cultivation of speed and youth.

Both Yano and Luigi Basi, who had also come over from Fiat were in their thirties. Meanwhile, the man most responsible for bringing these men into the alpha fold. Enzo Ferrari was only 25 years old, according to Peter Hall and Luigi Fuzzi [00:11:00] Ferrari was the driving force by an alpha’s assembling of a crack designing team.

Ferrari represented everything that Mussolini’s regime, ext stalled in Italy. He held from the same region as Mussolini and came from a similar modest background. After serving in the First World War, Ferrari had applied for a job at Fiat, but was turned down in later years. He would describe this moment as a turning point in his life as fate would drive him to Milan, where he eventually joined the fledgling Alpha Company.

Ferrari’s story thus resembled the profile of the ideal fascist in some ways, as one who was rejected by the establishment and then turned that frustration into revenge. In Ferrari’s case, the revenge came with knocking Fiat out of racing. The development of the P two was born out of a similar set of frustrations.

Yano was part of the design team that had put together the Fiat 8 0 5 a car that was the class of the field in 1923, but it failed to win the French Grand Prix, which is the most important [00:12:00] international race at the time. Aware of the car’s weaknesses, Yano was not able to rectify them due to his subordinate position within the team.

At Alpha, he would use the P two project to improve on the Fiat. In his time at Fiat, Yano was shackled by the corporate structure of the company and the fact that Fiat emphasized. Its production cars over racing. Alpha, on the other hand, was smaller with an increasing emphasis on high performance sports cars.

At Alpha Yano was able to instill a military-like discipline that suited the type of rhetoric that was being pumped out by Mussolini’s, Italy. He joined the team in September of 23, and the first drawings for the car were completed by mid-October. The following March saw the first engine put on the test bed, and in June, the first example was taken to Monza and tested by Antonio Scottie and Giuseppe Compati just a few days before it won at Cremona.

The speed of the car’s production was helped by the fact that Yano was merely perfecting the Fiat 8 0 5. He had worked [00:13:00] at in Turin, modifications on engine and suspension design helped produce a car that was more powerful and ultimately faster than the 8 0 5 without the reliability issues aesthetically.

The P two was almost a carbon copy of the Fiat, but the modifications to the engine were significant to the point where Yano later claimed that the car was a completely new design. That was his claim. In this case, unintentionally, the P two did resemble Mussolini’s movement. Fascism two was largely derivative, appropriating preexisting ideas and concepts while claiming to create a new Italy.

P two’s successes on the track however, appeared to usher in a revolution while the REM Grand Prix demonstrated the new car’s potential, it was the Grand Prix Leon that consecrated the P two in the eyes of Mussolini’s New Italy. The stage could not have been more appropriate. Beginning in 1923, the governing body of Motorsport anointed one National Grand Prix.

To have the title of European Grand Prix in [00:14:00] 1924 was the turn of the Grand Prix de France, or the Grand Prix de la cf. Strictly speaking, ALS known as the French Grand Prix. Furthermore, the 1924 edition of the Race was a special one since it marked the 10th anniversary of the Epic 1914 race that saw the French and German teams battle on the track only weeks before the outbreak of the First World War.

As a commemoration of that event, the race returned to the Leon Vo circuit, the scene of that historic race in 1914. The event thus served to remember a great race, but also served as a memorial to the war. A fact that fed the fascist regime’s own exaltation of the war experience. The resulting race was nearly as epic as its 1914 predecessor on the Spectacular Road Course.

It wasn’t exactly the same by the way. They cut it in half, so they used half of the original course, but they used the most exciting part on The Spectacular Road Course. Alfa Romeo Fiat, Sunbeam de Lodge, and Bugatti [00:15:00] battled for over seven hours in a race that went back and forth with numerous lead changes with Compati Alpha emerging triumphant.

Giuseppe Camp’s Victory at Leon Made Alfra Romeo a national name and was able albia briefly to serve as a distraction from the mati crisis. As I already mentioned, the car appeared in ads for the company and for Pelli the tire manufacturer. This poster calls the race the Olympiad of engines. The P twos triumphant, Leon encouraged a more bullish attitude on the part of Italy’s representatives at the sporting Commission of the A-I-A-C-R, which is the forerunner of the FIA, taking advantage of a procedural loophole.

The Italian representatives tried to convince the commission to award the title of European Grand Prix in 1925 to Italy and not to Belgium as had been approved by the A-I-A-C-R in its previous general meeting. Claiming that Italy had the stronger racing tradition proven by office victory. At Leon [00:16:00] Arturo Meti, one of the two representatives argued that Italy deserved the race, not Belgium.

The challenge which caused some friction at the sporting commission’s meeting in the fall of 24, was unsuccessful. However, the Italian delegation did succeed in persuading the sporting commission to create a world championship for manufacturers in 1925. The desire to use Alpha’s triumphs to elevate Italy’s international motorsport.

Prestige mirrored the fascist regime’s, attempts to make Italy into a world power. In 1925, Mussolini turned to the dismantling of the Italian liberal state in the wake of the Mati assassination, an event that should have been his end, but instead marked the beginning of fascist. Italy’s rise to power.

The new secretary of the fascist party was none other than Roberto Farci, the patron of the Cremona Grand Prix. An intransigent fascist who now aim to activate Mussolini’s call for living dangerously. The events on the [00:17:00] racetracks of Europe reflected the radical and violent shift in Italian politics.

1925 was to be the last year of the successful two leader formula and alpha set its sight on dominating the opposition in three races. The European Grand Prix at spa, the French Grand Prix at the new Mulla Auto Drum and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza Alpha’s approach to these races involved a degree of swagger and even arrogance.

They lapped the field at spa prompting jeers from the partisan crowd. After crossing the line, Scotty’s car had a giant Italian flag placed on the hood. Uh, there is a story about this race that I didn’t find any of the contemporary accounts, but it kind of was told later by Motorsport historians that in order to taunt the crowd, the alphas, because they had lapped everybody and I think all the French cars had dropped out.

Actually, and so there was just two alphas kind of circulating in the last part of the race. At one point they made such a lengthy pit stop that they took out a table and laid out a [00:18:00] food spread. Um, it’s a great story. It might be apocryphal though, because I didn’t find it in contemporary counts, and Giovanni kind of Sini was kind of one of the Dean of Motorsport.

Historians later said it wasn’t really like that, it was just simply, you know, they had some panini, you know, sandwiches ready. Pit stops took a bit longer than usual. So it, you know, Scotty and Campti had timed it down a, you know, a sandwich and that’s really all it was. But it’s one of those wonderful stories, but it might be apocryphal.

Whatever, though it still shows a certain degree of swagger, whatever it was, uh, on the part of the Alpha team. The Alphas were also dominating the French Grand Prix until Antonio Ascotti crashed and was killed while leading the race. Prompting the team to withdraw from the race as a final gesture of defiance, the two remaining alphas revved their engines loudly before leaving the race, and that is in a contemporary account.

Uh, so they stopped in the pits and they started revving their engine. Now that was probably a salute to a Scotty, but again, you can’t interpret that as kind of a [00:19:00] defiant gesture. It was, uh, Bri Petty Gu, BLI Petty who gave Alpha the World Championship when he won the Italian Grand Prix in September. No one represented the new order in Grand Prix racing better than Antonio Hasti.

His name became synonymous with the P two and with the Living Dangerously motto promoted by Mussolini and Fad naci. It had given the P two, its verse of Victory at Cremona and one at Manza in 1924 and its SPA in 1925. More than his victories. He came to embody a certain aggressiveness in his driving. He would be the first example of what would later be called the Gati Baldino approach to racing.

That’s a reference to Giuseppe Gati bdi, the guy who helped unify Italy. This Gati Baldino tag is most famously embodied by the likes of Tatio NTI in the 1930s, but as Scotty really was the first to kind of get that reputation. In short, he took risks. Amanza in 1924, his driving prompted a rebuke from the race director who instructed [00:20:00] Alur to slow him down or they would call him in.

This is the telegram that was sent from the race director who was Arturo Meti to the Alur MEO PIP saying, tell us Gotti to slow down. Otherwise we’re gonna call him in. It’s ’cause he was on the banking. He was going too close to the guardrail at the top. His style of driving ultimately proved his undoing while dominating the French Grand Prix.

In 1925, he continuously brushed the apex of a fast left hand turn, coming with an inches of a wooden fence. On lap 22, he came too close, clipping the fence and rolling the car, which led to his death. A Scotty’s death and Moni resulted in an outpouring of grief and a state funeral. In Milan, he became fascist.

Italy’s first racing martyr, and that word was in fact used when his body returned to Italy on a train. A large wreath from Mussolini was placed on the casket across the wreath that was donated by Mussolini were the words repi the intrepid. The funeral [00:21:00] card repeated Mussolini’s epithet with a message that read Antonio Ascotti, the Intrepid one, who sacrificed himself defending with undefeated faith, the colors of the Fatherland and Italian industry, although he had been racing since the 1910s, as Scotty’s memory is indelibly marked with the P two.

Not only did the car symbolize Trium. But it now also created martyrs speed and death in the service of glory. Found echoes in fascist rhetoric. The response to a Scotty’s death and his depiction as a martyr to speed became the response template for the numerous Italian drivers killed in Grand Prix racing over the next decade.

But none of them would be as celebrated as a Scottie, which showed a great deal to the Alpha Romeo P two. And in fact, um, I don’t. Have a hard number in my head, but Italy probably produced more dead race drivers in the late twenties and thirties than any other country, but I, I can’t say that for certainty, but there were a number of Italian drivers who were killed in that period.

Unwilling [00:22:00] to build a new car for the new one and a half liter formula Introduced in 1926 and troubled by financial problems. Alpha withdrew from Grand Prix racing after the 25 season. The legend of the P two continued on though as the car would enjoy an afterlife that kept it winning races until 1930.

Mostly run by the SC Ferrari. In 1928, the A-I-A-C-R introduced the formula Libra Rules, which allowed this car to enter the official Grand Prix races. It was in this era that the legend of the car actually deepened in the late twenties Grand Prix racing entered a period of doldrums. Indicative of this was the fact that there was only one Grand Prix race held in 1928 at Manza.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Italy saved the sport or Grand Prix racing in particular in these years with the P two right at its center at Manza. All the attention of the Italian press, especially the newspapers closely associated with the fascist party, focused on [00:23:00] the P two, driven by Akili Zi.

In 1929, the cars were run by the new Kuia Ferri, where former Alpha personnel like Ferrari and Luigi Bati were reunited with the P twos in 1930. The P twos are driven by Akili, Zi and Tazi nti. Thus launching what was to become the most legendary driver rivalry in Italian motor sports in the 1930s, probably of all time.

One last epic victory came at the Targa Florio in 1930 in the hands of Akili Tazi. By 1930, the P two had been substantially modified. This included the adoption of the flat slanted radiator taken from the Alpha 1,517 50 sports car models. These cars, which brought alpha more glory in the Mil Melia races were directly inspired by the P two.

According to the Alpha Romeo historian Peter Hall, this made Alpha the only mark, which directly transferred Grand Prix technology to sports cars and vice versa. That’s. Peter Hall’s [00:24:00] claim the introduction of the high performance six cylinder sports cars. Also designed by Vito Ano made alpha the most prestigious Italian maker of sports cars into the 1930s in Italy and worldwide, possibly thus establishing itself as the mark most suitable to the fascist era and Mussolini’s regime building a process that was completed by 1929.

As the modified P twos raced into their swansong year of 1930, fascism had completed the dismantling of the liberal state, and sport had become completely fasc size fiat. In the meantime, after an aborted attempt to return to Grand Prix racing in 1927 turns its attention to mass produced utility vehicles.

A turned to the masses that would shape fascist policy in the thirties. As fascist Italy entered the decade of the thirties, alpha Romeo become closely identified with Mussolini. He called Alpha Romeo our best national product, and it was increasingly seen at the wheel of an alpha. Here he is driving, I believe, let’s say 1750 [00:25:00] around the new, um, litorial Autodrome in Rome, which is a purpose built track in Rome, which no longer exists.

It’s now an airport. In 1951 with Italy embroiled in a war that was going from bad to worse. Alfa Romeo’s magazine published a retrospective on the P two written by Rado Filip, one of Italy’s leading Motorsport journalists. This article summed up the importance of the P two for Italy’s national prestige.

The two years of Alpha Domination in 24 and 25 were characterized by Filip as the most spectacular era of Italian genius. Ignoring the fact that the P two was largely based on the Fiat 8 0 5, the retrospective claim that the P two had set a new standard for race car design, calling it authentically avant-garde.

For NY proof of the car’s greatness came in the 28 19 30 period when this older car was beating newer cars. Sometimes. Moreover, NY was confident that the car could even hold its own [00:26:00] against contemporary competition. That would be auto unions and Mercedes. So. Make of that what you will hyperbole aside. A Philipp’s article demonstrated the continued legacy of a car that had elevated Italy to the top of Grand Prix racing in an era when Mussolini’s fascist regime was being constructed in peace time Alfa Mayo contributed to the triumphs of Italy on the track.

In 1941, Alpha’s production was directed to the war effort, and although the Italians are struggling on the battlefield, its access partner was walking all over Europe. For Philippines readers memories of the P two could be harnessed in the hope that Italian technology could once again triumph, while history would demonstrate otherwise.

Thank you.

Kip Zeiter: Thank you Paul. That was fascinating. Anyone have questions? We have a question from the internet for Paul Terry

Crew Chief Eric: Johnson writes, are there any P two alphas currently appearing at vintage and or historic events?

Paul Baxa: Uh, I don’t know if they appear at events, [00:27:00] but I think there are still two in existence. There’s a, an original P two, the first spec of the P two in the Alpha Mayo Museum in re.

And there is one of the later P twos at the um, automobile museum in Torino or Turin, so I know that they exist. I don’t know if they take them out on the track though.

Audience Q&A: I’m just interested in your commentary on the state sponsorship of Alpha Rome or other Italian motor manufacturing and how this episode plays into that.

If it does or if it does not.

Paul Baxa: Yeah, that’s an important question. The fascist regime did not subsidize the racing teams the way the Nazi regime did, but Mussolini did intervene on a few occasions to save the company from bankruptcy. In 1933 though, uh, alpha Mayo was taken over by the, it was bailed out by the IRI, which was the state run bailout institution.

So after 33, it did become a state owned. Team, but it wasn’t racing officially as a works team. Alphas were always raced by the Ferrari. However, [00:28:00] in 1938, they did come back as an official team, alpha corse. So in that sense, yes it was because it was effectively owned by the state at this point. So. I dunno if that answers your

Jim Miller: question, Paul.

It turns out I have something of a follow up question, which is to compare, if not narrowly, regarding finances, the Nazi use of symbolism in racing during this time with the Italians.

Paul Baxa: In, in what sense are they equally

Jim Miller: active, more successful in using, uh, auto racing as a a means of political expression or.

Paul Baxa: Oh yes. Yeah. Uh, absolutely. The Nazi regime, of course, would very much celebrate its victories. Uh, the, the German cards, victories, and, um, Italy did the same for the, um, Motorsport magazines, but even in the national newspapers, there would always be front page coverage when Alpha won a race. So you did have a similar type use of propaganda.

For the races. Absolutely.

Audience Q&A: When Fascist, Italy no longer existed, did Alpha Romeo struggle to shift any kind of negative associations with it, or was it relatively smooth sailing?

Paul Baxa: They [00:29:00] were able, I think, to shift rather easily into the postwar, and that that goes with any sporting hero. Actually under fascism.

Even the great cyclists like Bartley and the soccer teams, they were all able to really easily transition. Uh, Simon Martin, uh, a sports historian, non Italian. Sports history makes this argument. I mean, it shows that the sporting heroes were able to create their own kind of popularity or their own niche in the Italian imagination that transcended fascism.

So perhaps going back to Jim’s earlier question that shows that maybe the regime was not as successful ultimately in making it truly fascist. I have to say though, that the managing director of Alfa Romeos name was Ugo GoTo, and he was, uh, he was appointed by Mussolini. After the state took over the company in 33, he was assassinated by the Italian resistance in 1945.

And so not to be cynical, but I think by getting rid of him, even though he was not, as far as I know, he was not a convinced fascist. In fact, he had an industrial background. He had [00:30:00] worked for Fiat. He had actually designed the lingo Hotel factory in Tur, if you’re familiar with that. But he kind of paid the price, if you will, for Al Alpha Rome’s association with the regime.

So maybe that was enough to make others forget. And keep cheering for Al Romeo. Afterwards. Al Romeo remained a state run company until the 1980s, and then it was taken over by Fiat, if I’m not mistaken.

Crew Chief Eric: Ruby, Joanne Wright. Were there any drivers that felt unhappy about Italy’s fascism back then?

Paul Baxa: Great question.

There is no one that comes to mind. I don’t know of any driver that comes to mind that was either anti-fascist. Or in some way bothered by the regime. Not to say that these guys were fascists necessarily. Antonio Skai, I think, belonged to a local fascist cell in Milan, Gaston, really, Perry, whom I mentioned, he’s the one that won the 25 Italian Grand Prix.

I think he was, he had a, he was known to be a, a fascist, actually politically active. Fascist. As for the others, they were, I, I would argue they were neither fascists or [00:31:00] anti-fascists, as far as I know. Again, we don’t know enough. This is a gap in the research. I think we don’t know enough about a lot of these drivers during the fascist era because they didn’t write much.

Uh, n Vladi did write a couple of articles, had it written for him, I don’t know, but his name was attached to them in some of the sporting magazines where he used some fascist language. Enzo Ferrari actually in the newsletters, would write periodically articles that exalted Mussolini’s regime. But you have to remember too, that after the war, there was a lot of post hoc refashioning or sanitizing of a lot of this, and a lot of drivers, and a lot of people who carried over did not really talk much about that past politically Anyway, so we, we, we don’t know enough on that topic, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a great question.

Kip Zeiter: Thank you, Paul. That was terrific.

Paul Baxa: Thank you. Thank you.

IMRRC/SAH Promo: This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. [00:32:00] Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motor sports spanning continents, eras, and race series. The Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers. Race series and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the center, visit www.racing archives.org.

This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, [00:33:00] print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding.

Of motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future. For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.

And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, [00:34:00] additional pit stop, minisodes and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators.

Fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, Gumby bears, and monster. So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of this would be possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 The Alfa Romeo P2: A Racing Legend
00:53 The P2’s Broader Significance: Fascism and Motorsport
03:00 Historical Context: Italy in the 1920s
04:21 The P2’s Racing Achievements
05:11 Design and Engineering of the P2
06:40 The P2 and Italian Industrial Culture
07:34 The P2’s Impact on Italian Motorsport
22:11 The P2’s Legacy and Continued Influence
26:47 Q&A Session; Closing Remarks and Credits

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The P2’s dominance culminated in 1925, with wins at Spa, Monza, and the new Autodrome de Montlhéry. At Spa, Alfa lapped the field, prompting jeers from the crowd and tales of panini-fueled pit stops that may or may not have involved a full picnic spread. At Monza, Antonio Ascari’s aggressive driving earned rebukes from race officials – and later, a state funeral when he died in a crash at the French Grand Prix.

Ascari became fascist Italy’s first racing martyr. Mussolini’s wreath bore the words “Repose, the Intrepid,” and the funeral card exalted Ascari’s sacrifice for the fatherland and Italian industry. His death set a template for how fascist Italy would memorialize its fallen drivers – speed and death in service of glory.

While Mussolini didn’t subsidize racing like the Nazis did, he did intervene to save Alfa from bankruptcy. In 1933, the company was taken over by the IRI, Italy’s state-run bailout institution. Though Alfa’s cars were raced by Scuderia Ferrari, the brand was effectively state-owned. By 1938, Alfa Corse returned as an official works team.

Both Italy and Germany used motorsport victories as propaganda. Alfa’s wins were front-page news, just like Mercedes and Auto Union’s triumphs in Nazi Germany. Yet Alfa transitioned smoothly into the postwar era, shedding its fascist associations. Sporting heroes like Ascari and Ferrari retained their popularity, and Alfa’s legacy endured.

Alfa Romeo P3 (Tipo B) successor to the P2; photo courtesy Donovan Lara, GarageRiot

Even after Alfa withdrew from Grand Prix racing in 1925, the P2 continued to win under Scuderia Ferrari. Modified versions raced until 1930, including a final victory at the Targa Florio. The car’s design influenced Alfa’s 6C sports cars, which became icons of Italian engineering. Historian Peter Hull noted that Alfa was unique in transferring Grand Prix technology directly to road cars.

By 1930, fascism had reshaped Italy’s political landscape, and Alfa had become Mussolini’s favorite brand. He called it “our best national product” and was often seen behind the wheel of an Alfa. The P2’s legacy was sealed – not just as a race car, but as a symbol of Italy’s industrial ambition and political transformation.

Today, two original P2s survive – one in the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese, and another in the automobile museum in Turin. Whether they still run is uncertain, but their legacy is undeniable. As historian Paul Baxa reminds us, the P2 was more than a machine. It was a cultural object, a political tool, and a vehicle for Italy’s transformation – on and off the track.

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

Other episodes you might enjoy

Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History

The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), partnering with the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), presents the annual Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History. The Symposium established itself as a unique and respected scholarly forum and has gained a growing audience of students and enthusiasts. It provides an opportunity for scholars, researchers and writers to present their work related to the history of automotive competition and the cultural impact of motor racing. Papers are presented by faculty members, graduate students and independent researchers.The history of international automotive competition falls within several realms, all of which are welcomed as topics for presentations, including, but not limited to: sports history, cultural studies, public history, political history, the history of technology, sports geography and gender studies, as well as archival studies.

The symposium is named in honor of Michael R. Argetsinger (1944-2015), an award-winning motorsports author and longtime member of the Center's Governing Council. Michael's work on motorsports includes:

Walt Hansgen: His Life and the History of Post-war American Road Racing (2006)
Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed (2009)
Formula One at Watkins Glen: 20 Years of the United States Grand Prix, 1961-1980 (2011)
An American Racer: Bobby Marshman and the Indianapolis 500 (2019)

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

From Stagnant to Stunning: Why Your Garage Deserves a Motorsports Makeover

Behind the Garage Door

Jeff W

-

August 28, 2025

0

From Stagnant to Stunning: Why Your Garage Deserves a Motorsports Makeover

Remember rotary phones? 8-tracks? Bell bottoms? Your garage probably does -because for many of us, it’s been stuck in a time warp since the day we moved in. But just like a barn-find Ferrari waiting to be restored, your garage holds untapped potential. It’s time to bring it into the modern era and make it worthy of the machines it houses.

Photo courtesy Crew Chief Eric; Gran Touring Motorsports

Why Go Pro?

Motorsports fans are a hands-on bunch. We wrench, we tune, we restore. So when it comes to garage renovation, it’s tempting to say, “I’ve got this.” But designing a garage that’s both functional and visually striking is a niche skill – one that professional garage designers have honed through years of experience. Hiring a pro means:

Efficient use of space (think vertical storage for tools and tires)
Smart layout for movement and accessibility
High-end finishes that match your car’s pedigree
Accountability for design and installation

Whether you want a man cave, a media room, or a showroom for your classic Maserati, a professional designer can help you get there faster – and better.

Design That Reflects You

A great garage isn’t just about budget – it’s about personality. A good designer will ask what makes you tick. Are you a vintage Porsche purist? A Ducati devotee? A Ford GT fanatic? Your garage should reflect that passion.

Consider upgrades like:

Slat walls for tool organization and visual appeal
Epoxy floors with embedded flakes for durability and style
LED lighting to highlight your vehicle’s curves
Custom cabinetry that complements your collection

And don’t overlook flow. Just like a racetrack, your garage should guide movement intuitively. Designers can help you decide whether clockwise or counterclockwise layout suits your habits best – yes, that matters.

DIY Prep Before You Go All-In

Not ready to hire a pro just yet? Here are three upgrades you can tackle yourself:

Garage Door Replacement A new door can offer nearly 100% ROI. Choose between sectional or roll-up styles, and consider remote openers for convenience.
Floor Resurfacing Paint or epoxy can transform your garage’s vibe. DIY kits range from $30 to $1,000, but pro-installed epoxy can hit $3,000+ and its worth it for a showroom finish.
Energy Efficiency Install LED bulbs, insulate walls, and consider a mini-split HVAC system. It’s a game-changer for year-round comfort, especially if you spend hours tuning engines or detailing bodywork.

Case Study: A Garage Worthy of a Porsche

Designer Page Sigband recently transformed a Newport Beach garage into a dual-purpose space: part office, part Porsche shrine. Upgrades included:

LED dimmable can lighting
Custom cabinetry and hardware
Slat walls and velvet curtain accents
Under-counter fridge and freezer
Wall-mounted TV and media setup

The result? A space that celebrates automotive beauty while serving family needs – a true motorsports lifestyle blend.

Final Lap: Your Garage, Your Legacy

Whether you’re showcasing a vintage Ferrari or prepping your track-day Miata, your garage should be more than a parking spot. It’s a reflection of your passion, your personality, and your pursuit of excellence.

Start dreaming. Sketch ideas. Then reach out to a garage design pro. Get a few quotes, ask tough questions, and don’t settle. This is your pit lane – make it legendary.

If you’ve got questions or want advice, drop me a line. I’d love to help you build the garage your machines deserve. Be sure to check out Part-1 of this series for more tips on building your motorsports garage.

Contributing Writer: Jeff Willis

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the following Break/Fix episode to learn more about our featured writer.

From the Pits to the Press: Lessons from Two Legends of Automotive Journalism

Don W

-

August 26, 2025

0

From the Pits to the Press: Lessons from Two Legends of Automotive Journalism

If you dream of turning your passion for cars into a career behind the keyboard, buckle up. In a rare and riveting reunion, Break/Fix Podcast brought together two titans of automotive storytelling – Matt Stone and Preston Lerner – for a conversation that’s part history lesson, part masterclass, and all heart.

Whether you’re a motorsports junkie, a car culture obsessive, or just someone who wants to write about the machines that move us, their stories offer a roadmap for how to build a career in automotive journalism—and why it still matters.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Matt and Preston didn’t just write about cars – they reported, analyzed, and contextualized them. During our chat they emphasized a key distinction: Writers craft compelling narratives. Journalists dig deep, verify facts, and tell stories that matter. Preston, who came from a newspaper background, stressed that knowing cars is just as important as knowing how to write. Matt added that the best journalists blend technical expertise with a unique voice – something AI can’t replicate. “Not every writer is a great journalist, and not every journalist is a great writer. But when both meet in one person, that’s magic” says Matt.

Bio: Matt Stone

Matt Stone has been a professional automotive journalist/photographer since 1990 and has evolved his career from Managing Editor of Motor Trend Magazine and Editor of Motor Trend Classic Magazine to becoming a freelance journalist, author, and broadcaster with numerous titles and credits to his name.

Bio: Preston Lerner

Preston Lerner is a freelance writer who has covered racing for the past four decades. For many years, he was a regular contributor to Automobile Magazine and Road & Track. Lerner is also the author or co-author of six books, most recently Shelby American: The Renegades Who Built the Cars, Won the Races, and Lived the Legend. The material used in “Television Turns Its Gaze on Motorsports” is drawn from his upcoming book, The Deadliest Decade, which examines the safety, commercial and technological developments that transformed racing from 1964 to 1973.

Synopsis

In this special reunion episode of the Break/Fix, hosts Crew Chief Eric and Garage Style Magazine’s Don Weberg bring together pioneering automotive journalists Matt Stone and Preston Lerner. The conversation dives into their notable careers chronicling the highs and lows of car culture—from glossy magazines like MotorTrend and Automobile Magazine to bestselling books like their collaborative work on Paul Newman. They reminisce about iconic moments, exhilarating stories from the road, facing competition, and interacting with automotive industry giants. The episode also explores challenges in automotive journalism in the age of social media and reflects on the powerful role of storytelling in preserving and sharing car culture for future generations.

Let’s talk about how you both met?
What was the daily grind like? I’ve been told there’s a difference between “a writer and a journalist”
What were some of the most memorable stories or assignments you’ve worked on together—or separately—that still stand out today?
You’ve worked on some books together … How do your individual styles as writers complement or contrast with one another, and did that shape the outcome of the work? Did you edit each other, or bring in a third party?
Are there any cars or stories you feel are underrated or overlooked in automotive history that deserve more attention?
How has the landscape of automotive journalism changed since you began your careers, and where do you see it heading?
What role do you think print media still plays in an increasingly digital and social media-driven world?
Looking back on your careers, what would you say has been the most rewarding aspect of telling the stories of the automotive world?

Transcript

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The Road to Success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Welcome to a very special reunion episode of Break Fix Podcast, where automotive journalism meets memory lane. Today we’re bringing together two of the industry’s most respected voices, Matt Stone and Preston Lerner for a conversation that’s equal parts insightful, nostalgic, and full throttle fun with decades of experience.

Between them, Matt and Preston have chronicled some of the most iconic moments, machines and personalities and car culture. From glossy magazine pages to bestselling books. Their stories have shaped how we see the automotive world so tune [00:01:00] in as they reflect on their journeys, trade tales from the road, and share what still gets their engines revving today.

Joining us tonight is returning co-host Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine, one of the many personalities on the Motoring Podcast Network. Welcome back, Don.

Don Weberg: Thank you, Eric. How are you this evening?

Crew Chief Eric: I’m good. And with that, let’s welcome Preston and Matt to break fix. Nice to be here. Great to be here, Eric.

Yeah, just

Matt Stone: what he said.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, guys. This episode’s gonna be a little different than our Normal Road to Success. Tell me your life story. You know, were you a petrolhead since you were a kid? This comes to us by way of the I-M-R-R-C because as a lot of our fans know, we do remastering of content from them as part of our history of Motorsports series.

And I came across this wonderful little DVD four gt, how Ford silenced the critics and humbled Ferrari and conquered Lamonts by Preston Lerner. And inside this insightful DVD Preston talks about working with Matt Stone, and I’m like, wait, wait, hold on a second. What a small world we live in, especially the automotive world.

So I wanted to talk about. How did you guys meet? [00:02:00] And let’s just start from there.

Matt Stone: I have one remembrance of meeting press. The first time was at a book signing for his extremely definitive and seminal book about the entire scarab scene, the race cars, the street cars, LANs Rev Low, the whole scarab thing.

Now a lot of you out there will not know what a scarab is other than a a dung beetle, but a fabulous breed of American born and built race cars. That are just fabulous and gorgeous and fast and noisy and all that. Nobody had ever written much truth to power about Revit Low and his effort and the guys who drove for him and where the cars went and blah, blah, blah, and Preston decided here’s a story to be told proper, and he did it.

I have this book. I think, again, if my house was on fire, that would be one of the books that would go out the door with me because it’s so well done on such an interesting story. And it was a book signing, I believe, at the Auto books in Burbank. And he was the guy behind the table with the [00:03:00] pen. And I bought the book.

And I don’t have the pen, but I have the book and I have Preston as my pal.

Crew Chief Eric: So Preston, is that how you remember the story going, or,

Preston Lerner: uh, well, not exactly. Funny thing is, is you never know what you’re gonna have behind you in your bookcase. Only by coincidence. I have Matt’s Irock book over here, right to my left.

It’s just sitting there. I wrote the SC book, and that was really a great experience. It was wonderful to meet all those people from the early Sports Card days of the fifties and then into the Formula One into the sixties. But I remember Matt was, we were both freelancers at the time, and I swear, Matt, you’re pretty sure you wrote an escape road, as I recall what it was called wasn’t the Auto Week would do the one Pagers.

Matt Stone: It was the one page per issue. Classic car section.

Preston Lerner: Yeah. And you did one on the scab as I recall.

Matt Stone: Okay. It’s coming back to me now. Yeah.

Preston Lerner: That’s my recollection of when we met. We talked about the scabs, I believe. Then I don’t even remember doing a book signing at Auto Books for the scab.

Matt Stone: Well, maybe we just met there and I got your book and you signed it for me.

I don’t remember could, but I have very distinct memories of you and I together the first time at Auto Books. Although we’ve met up there many, many, many more times over a lot of other books. But I knew it was [00:04:00] scarab related for sure. So we’re going back a few years yet. Yeah,

Preston Lerner: that’s 91. 90, 91.

Matt Stone: Now, was that 1890 or 91?

Preston Lerner: It was one. Dinosaurs, Rome the Earth, that’s for sure. But okay. Long time ago, but of course I lived in Burbank and Matt at the time was in Glendale, so we were neighbors as well. And we would run into each other periodically at various events.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since we’re on that subject, Preston, why don’t you bring the audience up to speed on a little bit of your cv.

What magazines did you write for as a journalist?

Preston Lerner: So I started as a newspaper reporter in Dallas. I was at the store Telegram, and then the uh, morning news never wrote for the Times Herald started freelancing for various magazines, moved up to California and I was originally doing stuff for Sports Court International and Road and Track Specials, which was, it was a whole division back then.

It was incredible. They would put out 13 issues a year, as I recall. It was as big as the monthly magazine, but eventually I caught on with Automobile Magazine, which was still a going concern at the time. Thanks to Jean. She was then Jean Linde mood, but later Jean Jennings. That’s who I did most of my, uh, car riding for was for automobile.

You know, Matt [00:05:00] actually ended up over at MotorTrend. So at the time we were competitors. Eventually we were under the same corporate ownership, but that was further down the road.

Crew Chief Eric: So what was it like, you know, you knew Matt, you met Matt, now you’re competitors in the world of journalism. What is that like?

So Matt, from your perspective, and maybe tell us a little bit about your journalism fame outside of MotorTrend and how it overlapped with Preston’s, but how did you guys feel as competitors?

Matt Stone: From what I said, I mean it, it was a totally friendly competition. I mean, we all competed for the same exclusive stories and the most juiciest drive or most juiciest interview.

Certainly between Preston and I, only friendly competition. But I would have to say our bosses. Maybe not always because they were competing for the same newsstand buyer and the same magazine dollar and the same advertiser dollars. So it was very competitive. And it was kind of funny because Road and Track and Car and Driver were under the same ownership for a while as was automobile and MotorTrend.

We had in-house competitors and we had down the road competitors. And like I said, person to person, it was more often than not very friendly. If somebody from a competing magazine [00:06:00] called and needed some help, I’d help ’em. And I would like to say that there were few times I made that same call that they helped me, but again, for advertising dollars, newsstand dollars, and you know, those killer cover stories, it was pretty competitive.

Preston Lerner: It was pretty collegial I thought, but I was not on staff. So Matt was on staff and he had to deal with the advertisers and he had to deal with corporate. Um, for me, I just would go out and do stories that were assigned to me or, you know. Or that I pitched in.

Crew Chief Eric: So speaking of Rodent Track, this is the post John Bond period, right?

So this is whole new management. Totally different regime, right?

Preston Lerner: It was a different regime, but it was still, it was Matt Lorenzo was doing it then, and it was, Matt may remember better than not, but I still think it was the same. It was before it was bought by Hearst and when they fired everybody and they moved to To Ann Arbor?

Matt Stone: Yeah, it was, it was Matt De Lorenzo and John Dinkle. Oh, right. Yeah. Ron Sessions was running the specials. That’s the guy that I worked for when you were working for him too. That was a lot of fun.

Preston Lerner: Yeah, that was great.

Matt Stone: Yeah, that was way down the highway from John and Elaine Bond and the much more modern times.

And that company was bought and sold. I don’t know, CBS owned [00:07:00] them and somebody else owned them and then somebody else owned them again and, and then most recently they turned over their editorial and management staff, 48 different directions. Nobody that I really still know there or do any work for.

Preston Lerner: The road track specials, which Ron Sessions ran at.

Andy Bhop was the second in command. Andy was a, is a great guy and they put out 13 one shots a year. So they did two new cars issues and they did two new trucks issues and they did like a sports and GT car issue and, but I do remember like Road and Track had an amazing library back then. They were in, uh, Newport Beach at the time was before they moved in Arbor, they had a librarian which is like incredible, a full-time librarian.

Otis Meyer. Yep. And when I wrote that SC book, they allowed me to use a bunch of their photos free and I was able to just go through their archive, which was incredible. They had just rolls and rolls and rolls of undeveloped film, of just stuff. It was all archived and you could find stuff, but they didn’t print any, the unprinted stuff out for me.

I mean they had all the press kits and everything. It was really incredible. And I mean, I don’t know how they did it putting out between the monthly and this specialist 25 issues a year. Those were the fat days of print [00:08:00] journalism, that’s for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: That brings up a really good question about the daily grind.

As an automotive journalist,

Preston Lerner: my experience was somewhat different ’cause I wasn’t on staff, so I only worked on specific stories that typically. About half of them that I pitched and half of them that were assigned to me and kind of at automobile, I became, for lack of anybody else there, kind of their racing experts.

So when they wanted to do a racing story, I usually did ’em. I didn’t do as many of the press trips for new car launches. I typically didn’t get assigned to those. I did some of them and they were fun, but for me it was, it was kind of a different experience. And I was also freelancing for other magazines, non-car magazines as well.

So. My experience is a little different than someone who would be on staff, although Matt was a freelancer for many years before going on staff, but I guess he would’ve a better perspective kind of from the two different viewpoints.

Matt Stone: You know, generally it was a lot of fun. I mean, there were some fabulous days.

There were a lot of great and good days and a few tough days, but it was a lot of fun because you’re surrounded by working with guys and gals that love cars and love to drive and love to do all that kind of stuff. I was sort of the cultural imperative and history guy, so when it was something to do with history, [00:09:00] cultural imperative, personalities, whatever, that was a lot of in my bucket, and that’s where I got to meet a guy named Don Weiberg.

Uh oh. I am happy to say these 4,000 years later, we are still friends and like I said, some of the days were really fun and some of the days were just long and some were long and fun. One of the things that I so enjoyed is when we would go out on a staff road test, okay, we’re gonna take these four cars and we’re gonna go to New Mexico and shoot a feature and do a a road test.

And we’d sit around every night at dinner and talk about how we felt about driving this car and that car, Hey, the seats on that one as good as this one or whatever. And the dinner conversation was a blast. Everybody came from a different perspective and of course has different physicality and different tastes in how they like to drive front, drive, rear drive, all drive, VH, turbos, whatever

Crew Chief Eric: Matt’s words painted this imaginary picture of what we all see on a top gear special.

Is there any truth to those, you know, behind the scenes when you see like a top gear [00:10:00] special and they’ve gone out and they’ve tested the cars and you see the crews and they’re sitting at dinner. I mean, is it very much like that or is that more dramatized? The life that you led as a journalist,

Don Weberg: Eric, I bring to your table of lesson Met Stone teach me long time ago.

We admit to nothing when the recording devices don’t work. You’ll live in mystery.

Matt Stone: I’ll answer that a little more. What the top gear guys have created is quite amazing, and those guys are all personalities and, and I have respect for them and affection for them. That’s a little spiced up.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay? That

Matt Stone: doesn’t mean it’s lies.

Or untruthful, but it is definitely seasoned for tv. I enjoyed going out on the road trip with the guys and gals. That was a lot of fun, a lot of work, long days, but it was really, to me, one of the sweet spots of doing this kind of work was bonding with a great team, and I had those most years, not every year or all the time, but most years.

Really good teams. We worked hard and we had a blast and we did photo shoots until [00:11:00] dark and plus hopefully put it all together in a good story when we got back. That was very satisfying.

Don Weberg: Eric, now you see why I’ve always spoken kind of highly of Matt Stone, having worked for him, having been his whipping boy.

He was fun to work for. He really was. He was never short of words. He would always had an opinion about something, but he was always really, really good at guiding you when you asked kind of questions, when you had straight up ideas. He had a a really great way of guiding you. And I’ll tell you, I remember a couple of those.

I mean, I never took the New Mexico vacations or anything like that with you guys, boondoggles. Yeah. But I do remember a couple of long road trips where they were stuck with me because they needed a body to drive the vehicle to the location. And a couple of those were with Matt.

Preston Lerner: Yeah, I gotta say, I would only occasionally get called in for some of the campos.

You know, you get four or five cars and needed. Like Don was saying, you needed bodies, you know, even if you weren’t gonna be writing the story, you needed somebody to drive the cars, get ’em from A to B and B2C, and so on. And I found those to be the longest assignments because photography had to be [00:12:00] done either very early or very late.

’cause they wanted the golden light. And really the stories were driven by photography. I mean, because the photographer only had one bite at the apple. So the photographers needed to get what they needed to get and they needed to get it whenever they needed to get it. And even though as a writer, you know, even when you were writing the story, and a lot of times I wasn’t writing the story, you’d think, oh, you spent all this time driving the car and getting dynamic feedback and, and so on and so forth.

And no, you were mostly standing around waiting for the photographer to take interiors and, and do beauty shots. And for the high speeds thing, that would rig the suction cup card of the camera. It was going two miles an hour. It looks like it’s going 180. So I found those to be a little tiresome. To be honest.

They were long days. I like going out on feature stories. I was by myself occasionally. I had a photographer with me and I sort of set my own agenda. That was a lot more pleasant for me.

Don Weberg: I do remember Matt a couple of times watching you work with the other senior editors, including the man in the corner office, and I remember it was always impressive.

They always kinda look to you.

Matt Stone: Something I never understood, by the way.

Don Weberg: Right. You were just playing it. Right. You were just going with it. You know? They want my opinion. I’ll give it [00:13:00] to ’em. I was doing my thing. Yeah, it was always fun working with you. It really was. Except for that time, he slapped me across the face, but I guess I deserved it.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay then. Now that is a Jeremy Clark’s moment.

Matt Stone: We worked hard and learned a lot and went great and marvelous places, and made many, many friends all over this world. I mean.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’ve heard Matt say it a bunch of times before, there’s a difference between a writer and a journalist. So I want you guys to expand upon that for our audience,

Matt Stone: and this is no knock on you, tiktoks and Facebookers and all, well, maybe it’s 40 characters and a crappy photo is not great journalism.

In my humble opinion. It may or may not even be journalism. I mean, I guess if you got the one photo of somebody very, very important, running naked down through Times Square, maybe that’s journalism.

Crew Chief Eric: So when I was a kid, they called those tabloids. I just wanna throw that out there, what you described, right?

Social media and all that. Content

Matt Stone: creator.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, content creators, tabloids.

Matt Stone: But there’s no analysis in that. It’s, it’s a [00:14:00] crappy photo in 40 characters. I never have, nor do I now want anything to do with that scene. I don’t do that stuff. Good luck to those who do. And if you make money good on you, and you have fun and you’re providing good content.

I love that you have to be a content creator. Now, you used to be able to be a writer or a journalist, and now you have to be a content creator.

Preston Lerner: Well, I’m not sure there’s really, uh, a tremendous difference. I mean, I, I kind of came to the game through newspapers. I didn’t come through it as a car lover first, so I think I brought a little bit more of that kind of granular stuff to it.

The thing is, is marginalism was a thing you really needed expertise in cars. More than journalism. I mean, if you weren’t, if you didn’t know cars, you could be a great journalist, but you know, you didn’t know the nitty gritty about how cars worked and how they were supposed to handle and perform. You were kind of worthless, I think.

I think you needed to really have both skills needed to be there.

Matt Stone: I would agree with that. I would say that not every writer is a great journalist, and not every journalist is a great writer, but there are poets. Poets can be fabulous writers. They may not know or understand the [00:15:00] tenets. Journalist. The ideal quinella is when both of them meet in the middle in one individual with a singular writing voice and a singular mind that really understands the job, the topic, the story, and the results, and then really knows how to put it down in writing.

And that guy’s name is Preston Lerner, as far as I’m concerned,

Crew Chief Eric: in the world of automotive journalism, the goat, that’s the greatest of all time. Is that still Brock Yates or is there somebody else that you guys look up to and say? He was one of the greatest automotive writers of all time.

Matt Stone: Brock Yates, the assassin,

Preston Lerner: just finished a manuscript for a book on racing from 64 to 73 pro racing.

And so I. Went through all the literature magazines back in the day, and I gotta say, Yates was unbelievable. He was the most opinionated. If you agree with him, he was the best. If you disagree with him, you’d probably want to kill him. But I think he was probably the most influential journalist I know. He went beyond journalism, you know, cannonball stuff and safety and I mean, he was on TV as a broadcaster.

I never really thought about who would be the goat, but I think he was the biggest name, best known outside of the field. I mean, he wrote novels. [00:16:00] He was really something. I didn’t know him very well, unfortunately. ’cause I never worked for Car And Driver was never back in the Michigan area. I’d say he would be the first one that comes to mind.

Matt Stone: Yeah, and he absolutely had the chops. He had the chops and the receipts. Could I conclusively? Undoubtedly unequivocally name, name him the goat. I’d have to think longer and harder. But with Preston, he was right up there. Right up there. I knew him late in his life. What a fascinating guy to sit and talk with.

Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: What do you, would you say Matt is the key differentiator between a writer and a journalist?

Matt Stone: They, again, can be the same person and can be acting. In a duality, but the tenets of journalism about, you know, corroborating evidence and doing good reporting and all of the stuff that goes with journalism, that’s something not every writer understands.

You know, in terms of attribution, of information, of quoting, of credits, of backup, of second sources, of all the things that make a great journalist may or may not have anything to do with being a great writer. Ideally, you want both

Preston Lerner: using [00:17:00] automobile as a, an example, David E. Davis, PJ O’Rourke, gene, I mean.

They weren’t really journalists. I mean, they weren’t out there interviewing engineers and typically their reporters notebooks, like I was, you know, laying down specs. And that wasn’t their job. I mean, they were there to reflect their larger than life personalities and tell great narratives, and, and they were great writers.

You know, they had stuff that I couldn’t do. I mean, no one was gonna mistake me for David e and, and when you were at a dinner, I mean, David e and Gene would just hold court. Matt too. That’s not what, what I was, but the skills are somewhat different, but they’re not antithetical. I think, like Matt said, if you could do both of ’em, that’s better and better.

Crew Chief Eric: So Preston, would you say then, for writers that are listening to this right now, we’re just gonna use that term to not split hairs. If you’re in the realm of non-fiction, do you think the transition to journalism is a little easier than a straight fiction writer? Or to Matt’s point, a poet or somebody that’s writing prose?

Preston Lerner: I mean, I think it’s pretty straightforward. I mean, if you’re doing a piece where you need to do real reporting, I mean there, there is some experience you need or expertise and, but I think it’s pretty easy to, you know, you ask people questions that you’re, you’re all of a sudden, you’re a journalist, you’re a reporter.

I think you can [00:18:00] learn that on the job. You know, the point is, sometimes I, I feel like when you watch, you know, the influencers, I mean, they’re not asking questions. Their stock and trade is their own opinion. That’s not what a journalist is. A journalist is not out there to give your opinion. You’re out there to get what other people have to say about a subject, sort of pass that information along.

So I think you can certainly do it, but I, a lot of people, they rather talk about their own opinions than they would get somebody else’s opinions. That I find a little off-putting sometimes. But you know, I’m a little bit old school that way.

Crew Chief Eric: And we could probably debate the difference when we bring in historians into this as well.

Or we’re recounting facts and figures just like as journalists would, but it’s in more academic, you know, those kinds of things. But we’ll put a pin in that for now. So, Don, do you wanna weigh in here? As we transition?

Don Weberg: I want to take you boys back to New Mexico and some of those road trips where we grind the hell outta the Audis and wonder if the Mercedes will survive.

What were some of the more memorable stories, the more memorable assignments that you worked on, either together or separately, that still stand out in your head today?

Matt Stone: It’s a great question, Don. I can name a [00:19:00] couple from my own experience and I’m sure press has his too. Something we did at MotorTrend every year was a annual top speed shootout and we would go to a proving ground in Arizona on New Mexico that had a five mile banked oval Indianapolis motor speed bay, but twice the size.

And we would bring a race driver de jour with us to take whatever car that was and ring them out to VM Max. On this five mile track, we had Justin Bell one time, Danica Patrick one time, and one I particularly remember who was the ice? Cool, wonderful professional, Brian Herda. Oh, and we, and we brought big weapons that time.

We had the four gt, the first one, the five four supercharge V eight, and we had a Porsche Carrera gt the V 10. I’m trying to remember at the minute what the third one was, but we had that strata of cars. We’re having a little meeting before, you know, photographers are snapping around a little and the test equipment [00:20:00] guys are rigging up cars.

And so Herta comes to me, he says, top speed, right? I said, yep. He says, you know, it could take me one or two laps to get to that. Take all the time you need. We’re looking for the biggest number you can ring out of this car and stay in one piece. Boy, if he didn’t do it too, Brian was the coolest guy, an extremely competent racing driver.

He got in every car, and I think all three cars, if I remember, cracked 200 that day. And for a street streetcar granted of an exotic, very high, powerful one, that was impressive. And, and we have the pictures and the timing slips to prove it. Danica Patrick also did a very good job for us. She drove extremely professionally and listened to us and gave great feedback of what the car was doing in a corner, banked at whatever angle and mean.

She was a complete pro and did a wonderful job. But those events were wonderful. Sometimes we had three or four cars, sometimes we’d bring 10. Another one I particularly remember, of course, uh, Preston and I have many of the same heroes, but one in particular, [00:21:00] and this was my idea for a story, is, uh, Mario Andretti used to have a winery in Napa.

And there were a whole bunch of great hot convertibles that had just roadsters and spiders that had come out about the same time. The Mercedes SL 55 A-M-G-A-V 12, Aston Martin DB seven, the BMWZ eight. So we thought, you know, let’s just bring those things up to Napa, take pictures and we’ll have Mario drive them, make him the road tester, putting Mario Andretti in a race car and saying, tell us about this race car that’s not new ground to evaluate high performance and exotic cars on the street.

Okay, Mario, we’re out here driving in the backyards of Napa. What are you feeling? And I’m gonna tell you, I’ll never forget that day, the last sign up in my brain when I die. We’ll be thinking about that story and spending two days with him out just driving and talking. I’m pleased to say that he’s still my hero.

He’s become my friend. I’ll never forget that one. Anytime soon. There were others. But I’ve talked [00:22:00] enough. Preston,

Preston Lerner: I’m curious, was that before the Newman book or after the Newman book? Before. Cool. That’s

Matt Stone: great.

Preston Lerner: So back in again, the days when there were really elaborate press trips, Chrysler was doing a deal for, um, the second gen Viper had just come out.

Remember the GTS coop with the blue with the white stripes?

Crew Chief Eric: You mean second generation Daytona Coop. That’s my favorite. Viper. I love that car.

Preston Lerner: Tom Kaki was the, uh, legendary PR guy for Chrysler at the time. Put together this trip where we went with these vipers. We went to the berg ring, we went to spa and we went to Ram, or Reem, or however you pronounce it, in France.

The plan was to go then to drive from France. We were supposed to go to the Arctic Reon and all these vipers would be there at the Arctic Reon. But it was really as incredible. So along for this trip to give like presentations at night where Phil Hill and Jesse Alexander. So it was really cool. I knew Phil Little and Jesse was a friend, and that was great.

At any rate, what happened was the leg of the trip was like three days or something. We were going to the Arctic Dream. I was paired up with Phil for some reason. I don’t know why. I mean, Phil Hill is like a, you know, a hero and I’m mostly asking him questions and he’s talking, you know, I’m asking about various races and this and that.

I’m supposed to be doing [00:23:00] the navigating. Well, I wasn’t paying any attention to the navigating, and I got us totally lost. So we’re supposed to be at the York Triumph at a certain hour and we’re nowhere close to there. We’re lost in the middle of Paris and Phil had this reputation, justifiably for being very high strung.

He was going insane because we were lost in Paris. You know, we were supposed to be at this thing. And I was like, you are Phil Hill. Who cares? You know, we don’t need to be there. We, we’ve got our own Viper, you know, we made to the York Triumph after they’d done the big photo shoot and we missed it. And Phil was peeing the whole time at me, but I got a great story about, it’s why I really didn’t care.

And like I had Phil to myself for like two and a half hours or whatever it was,

Don Weberg: in a Viper GTS.

Preston Lerner: It was cool. And Phil was driving. I was just. Navigating or not navigating it. Again, those are the kind of press trips. I don’t think they do anymore. I mean, it was like a three or four days. And I mean, they didn’t even need to sell the viper to the media.

Everyone in the media loved that car anyway, right? Mm-hmm. But that was, that was a great thrill. I mean, I, there’s so many, when you ask the question, so many pinch me moments that I’ve had mm-hmm. Through this field. I mean, I’m just, I feel lucky to have been able to do what I’ve been able to do, and I never would’ve been able to do it otherwise.

So just have to thank the powers that be for letting me have these opportunities.

Matt Stone: [00:24:00] Preston is a very competent, road racer, good racing driver. But when you ride with Phil Hill, Mario Andretti. Any of those drivers that any of us have ever ridden with, you realize what a crap slow driver you are. I mean, it’s uncanny.

These folks have talents in their fingernails that you can’t dream of. They’re just talking and driving like it’s a taxi rolling through a residential neighborhood at 25 miles an hour, except they’re going 150 or whatever, and they’re looking at you and talking. But they’re also looking there too. It’s I, you know, I don’t know.

They have talents and senses and calibrated ass. That just like normal people don’t have, I call that a speedometer. I like that. I’m gonna order one of those, but it’s just true. I, anytime I’ve ever ridden with a world class racer like that, it just reminds me how slow I am.

Don Weberg: You talked about racing, you talked about meeting Mario Andretti and all those people.

What about meeting auto industry executives? Have you guys spent much time with those [00:25:00] people? Matt, I know you have. I know you got some great stories. Good, bad, indifferent.

Matt Stone: I would say most times good. And I met a lot of them, and I particularly enjoyed the designers. The automotive designers or now the independent ones who designed great cars and went on their own, founded their own company.

I knew Tom Char very, very well. I think Gito Gito, he’s the goat, Giro is the goat of all ever and ever. I mean, just go through his roster of cars and you’ll just go, this came outta one head from one guy’s pencil. What’s with, how did that happen? I really enjoyed hanging and banging with the designers, especially at an auto show.

I used to go walking around with Tom or others and we’d walk up to whatever concept car and they would talk and I would listen and occasionally they’d ask my opinion. I thought, well that was really nice, but they don’t care ’cause I wanna know their opinion. So the designers were terrific. I’ll give you one example of, of two guys coincidentally that worked for [00:26:00] the same company for a while.

They would be Robert. Lutz. Oh, Bob Lutz and Chairman Lido, a AA Coka.

Crew Chief Eric: Mm.

Matt Stone: Those guys as car company executives, they could smell it in the air. They had this nose, whether it was a trend or impending doom or whatever, they could just smelled the car business in the air, and they just had instinct. Now, did they make mistakes?

Of course they did, but they also each achieved great things and saved companies. Those guys were fascinating just to sit and talk with Lotts, and he goes on and on about what’s right and wrong with the car business or this car company. He smelled it in the air or the water, or in the blood or whatever.

And Mr. Iaccoca too, I mean, you know, not every Iaccoca car was great. A whole lot of ’em were successful either as machines or as sales. Most of them were pretty smart guys and gals, some, not all the racing drivers ’cause [00:27:00] of our need for speed and all that. That’s one thing and, and because of course how great they can all drive.

But I enjoyed the designers. The senior most car executives that I could get FaceTime with, Luca Cordero de Montelo, he chairman of Ferrari for a number of years, positively brilliant guy, and has so much heat and so much enthusiasm for the car business. You, you can’t believe it. And he would be the first one to tell you that when he took over all the things that were wrong with Ferrari and then he proceeded to go like a target shooter and fix them one at a time.

Those guys are fascinating. Yeah, of course there’s, there’s guys that tanked and went nowhere and were supposed to be the great saviors of whatever company and did nothing. There were those two, but generally some pretty interesting. And smartphone,

Preston Lerner: I will say. I mean, the ones that I met, they were all impressive and it’s, you know, outsiders can always criticize and say, oh, what a stupid idea.

The solstice or whatever. The Aztec, we can all agree the Aztec, there you go, someone messed up. But I mean, by and large, the [00:28:00] people I met were all really bright. They were really committed. They were real, mostly car people. I mean, I didn’t meet that many who were just bean counters. I’m sure they were there, but it’s just that I think cars is a, it’s a tough business.

It became a lot tougher when you had a lot more foreign competition. Margins are small and it’s a hard way to make a living, and so no one gets a ride all the time. Cut people a lot more slack than some of the critics do.

Matt Stone: I will also say the smartest, perhaps, of all of them that I have ever met and spoken to Roger s Penske, I’ve heard that quite now.

That is one smart dude. He’s too smart to be president, but he’d make a great president. But you know, he runs a global business employing like 70,000 people and you know, race teams that have been there, won that, and again, car dealership groups. As a guy who owns a big car dealership group, he is so influential he can and has convinced various car makers to do or not do something.

Because his brain operates at a different level than mere mortals. [00:29:00] I have nothing but immense respect and affection for Roger Penske as a truly brilliant and nice man who just

Crew Chief Eric: really gets the car business. Was there a story that got away, something still that you wanna write about, someone you wanted to interview?

Preston Lerner: I used to do a lot of stories about young guys before they had really succeeded or also some women, ’cause I also did Danica Patrick just sort of getting started out and I was gonna do something on, uh, Jeff Gordon and he had just moved up to Cup and they were going to do the first Brickyard 400, I believe it was 94.

And I pitched the story to automobile about follow Jeff Gordon. He’s going back to do, uh, indie, which he originally wanted to do Indie as Indy car guy, but you know, ended up being shunted over to to NASCAR because there was no future for Midget and Sprint car drivers in, in, in car. And so I saw this story to automobile and Gene Jennings Green lit the whole thing.

I set everything up and at the last second, David e gave the assignment to offend of his, to just do a general story on first Brick yard four. So I didn’t get to the story and Jeff Gordon won the race. And it was actually, it would’ve been like my greatest story ever. And Jean never forgot I didn’t get that story in.

She treated [00:30:00] me. Uh, she gave me assignments that I shouldn’t have gotten for years after that. Just to say I was sorry for not giving me that. That for me was the story that got away.

Matt Stone: I don’t know that I have any of those tales, that too much that got away. I didn’t, didn’t miss much.

Crew Chief Eric: But I bet you fall victim to the adage, never meet your heroes.

So was there one story that was disappointing that didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, or it sort of broke the glass ceiling for you and you’re like completely disillusioned?

Matt Stone: No, not that I, I met my heroes and never regretted one of them. Everyone that I would’ve put in the hero category that I ultimately met.

I’m glad I did. And they were still my hero when we were done. And many became friends in that sense. No. Major mega disappointments. And I would love Preston’s opinion on this too. When you get in whatever car, and it’s supposed to be something that’s supposed to be pretty good and you want the cars to be good, but you’re disappointed when they’re not.

And that’s happened. I’m not avoiding naming a suspect, but I’m trying to think of a car I would name, but I remember cars that just, it was hyped and noise and you [00:31:00] wanted it to be good and it wasn’t. It just fell flat. And that’s disappointing. But you know, you, you have to write that story and you have to point those things out.

And I always did. Always and why. Yeah, that’s happened a few times. But anyway, press go ahead. How about you Again,

Preston Lerner: I didn’t do as much of the new car stuff somewhere better than those. I mean, I always felt thrilled to get in a Ferrari or get in those. Never disappointed for sure, but to get a little bit jaded.

’cause you got in all the really great cars. So when you were in kind of a standard family sedan, it was hard to work up too much enthusiasm. Back to

Matt Stone: Eric’s point a little, did you ever have that interview that you’re just waiting to kill it with somebody That’s really important, and you sat with that person an hour later and said.

I got nothing.

Preston Lerner: I did have a tape recorder fail on me once. Clearly some guys were better than others and, and Mario was the all time great. Mario was the best racing interview ever. Ever. Yeah. I mean he managed to convey his enthusiasm and he had great stories and I would, maybe not a lot, but certainly a substantial portion of racers were not race fans.

They didn’t succeed on the trek because they knew that N won the German Grand Prix and you know, beat the [00:32:00] Silverados, but they were just fast. Um, sometimes it was disappointing to talk to people who didn’t know the history or didn’t really have a perspective on what was going on. And, you know, some guys were better noters.

Mario was tremendous. The only guy who was really my hero growing up, Emerson Fitted Pol and meeting him after he went Indy for the first time was a thrill. He is the only guy who was autographed I ever got. He was great. Uh, a lot of fun. There were, a lot of them were great. The Hobbes, the Redmonds, they’re all great storytellers and, and it’s always fun to talk to him.

Some not quite so good, especially the younger drivers not as interested in the history of the sport.

Matt Stone: Yeah. The ones who have perspective and are mega talents. Those are pretty well, always good talks, always good stories, always good interview because they bring so much to the table. But you’re right, if they’re just too young and and haven’t really done big things, they have very little institutional memory, not necessarily crazy great successes to talk about yet.

Those can be a little disappointing. But generally, uh, the ones who have perspective and mega talent, they’re gonna give you a good interview.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad Matt, you brought up the cars ’cause that was next on my list. I wanna [00:33:00] share with you guys, just as an aside, and I know it’s gonna ruffle Don’s feathers, fellow journalist, I’m gonna put ’em in that category.

John Davis from Motor Week was on the show many seasons ago and I asked him a similar question, you know, ’cause he reviews cars all the time and he said his favorite car, he got to drive a Ferrari Enzo, much like Preston, right? He’s like, oh, Ferrari, that’s awesome. And so I turned the question around. I said, the car that you were hyped to test drive and to review for the show and was a complete letdown.

And he said the DeLorean. And he also added that he was really excited to buy one and because of the test drive, he didn’t. And he ended up buying a Panera instead, which he’s known for having a Panera for a very, very long time. So there you go.

Don Weberg: Well, on that note, Preston, if you’re not up to speed, I am a DeLorean junkie.

Oh, okay. Have more crap rattling around in his head about DeLorean than anybody has a right to know about. I love the cars. Yes, I know they’re not very quick, but when compared to everything else in 1981, they weren’t too bad. But I do remember going back to Road and [00:34:00] Track when the car came out. Calm Bryant, he wrote, I remember you opened the magazine and there was this double truck and the DeLorean didn’t slide.

I mean, it’s a really exciting looking picture. And I remember at some point in that article he writes that he really wanted to like the DeLorean. I mean, it literally just says, I really wanted to like the de DeLorean. I remember reading that. That always stuck with me and he kind of smooths it out over time.

He does say things about, maybe it’s not as quick as it looks, and maybe it doesn’t do things. We would hope it would, but the DNA is there. You can feel it. You know, this car can be more in its next iterations. I always appreciated that about him, that he didn’t quite slam the car. I’ve gone so far ’cause I have all these magazines from back in the day when the car is new.

And I remember the one particular journalist who will remain nameless for his own health, who wrote a really scathing review of DeLorean way back in 81. Fast forward to, I don’t know, 2000, somewhere [00:35:00] in there when DeLorean popularity was just starting to come around. Younger people were starting to get more interested in them.

And all of a sudden time was the great forgiver time, was making them a good car. And of course, back to the future had a ton to do with that. That same writer wrote an article about DeLorean saying what a great car they were, how wonderful they were, how ahead of their time they were. And I thought to myself in 1981, you tell everybody what a piece of junk this car is.

Now here we are 20 some odd years later and you’ve got the gall to come out and say, oh no, this car was ahead of its time and it’s terrific. So I found the original magazine where he bashed it. I found his little article and I put them together and I wrote a letter to him and I sent it to him and I asked him to please justify what he was trying to say.

Never heard back from him. And then fast forward a couple years later, LA Aldo show, press days, pop up and guess who I run into? And there he is. Yeah, I shook his hand. I said, hi, I am Don Weiberg, how are you? And [00:36:00] he is kind of looking at me like, I know that name. And I said, yeah, I love your review of the DeLorean.

Gave him that deadpan stare. The look. I’ve never seen a face go white so quickly. And I’m just like, oh my God, this is actually a lot of fun. Now mind you, what I was not prepared for? How old was I? 25, 26. Matt. He was like, your age. Okay. So I’m looking at him like, oh, he’s supposed to be my boss or something, and here I am basically telling him off because he doesn’t know anything about cars.

And that was the fact. Over time I’ve learned that that guy actually knew very little about how cars, it was who he knew in the publishing industry that he kept getting these jobs and for some reason he kept getting thrown into the automotive circle. It was really, really weird. For the record, I was not that

Preston Lerner: journalist.

I just want that on the record. I know

Don Weberg: I looked you up. I know of what you wrote about Zaka You Okay. In my book,

Preston Lerner: did that interview you for his book, by

Crew Chief Eric: the way?

Preston Lerner: Yes, he did.

Don Weberg: I go novan.

Crew Chief Eric: So I know I opened Pandora’s [00:37:00] box by bringing this up, but actually we stepped backwards into a really important final point about the day in the life of an automotive journalist, which is the risk you take about what you write and what you publish.

Can you keep track of everything you’ve written over, let’s say a career 20, 30 years? And just like Don’s anecdote, did that guy even remember what he said in 1981? Was he thinking that far, you know, 20 some years ago? So has that ever happened to either of you guys where you’ve had to, you know, recant what you’ve done or gone back or, you know, the letter to the editor was specifically pointed at something that you wrote, and how did you handle that?

Preston Lerner: There’s some things I’ve written that I wish I had written differently. The most embarrassing moment ever was an email I sent, which was not for publication, and it somehow got published. And then I heard from, uh, Leo Levine, the author of the Dustin, the Glory Great Ford Book, which I love. It was one of the great books ever.

And he then wrote a second, the Dustin Glory two, which, or that’s not what it was called, but it was, it picked up the story after 67 and it was not as great as the first book. And that’s what I’d said in my email. To an editor who shall remain nameless. And he published that. And I got a [00:38:00] call immediately from Leo.

What, what? What did you like about the book? And that was, that was bad. But I have to think back for a while to see if there’s anything I wanted to recant. Nothing comes immediately to mind, but I’m sure there was some, I’m sure there are many things I got wrong over the years.

Matt Stone: I can identify offhand something that I would absolutely recant because it was terribly wrong, factually incorrect.

Awful, awful, awful. We’re humans. We make mistakes. You have opinions that other people disagree with. That’s fair game. And there were times when I had to answer those letters, and some of ’em I did answer. I mean, if somebody came to me with a well reasoned objection. I’d be happy to engage them and I did.

If they’re just, you know, out there, pure bashers who know nothing bashing me, the magazine, the story, and your mother and your, you know, all of that, I don’t have time for that, for that ignorant explosion kind of thing. I could care less That person’s an idiot. Or at least acting like one. But if somebody will engage me professionally and courteously with a disagreement, sure, I’ll have that conversation anytime.

Preston Lerner: Sometimes there’s some group think is [00:39:00] inevitable, you get a lot of guys together and something comes up and sometimes some opinions become sort of standard issue, even though they probably shouldn’t. I remember Finity and Alexis came out in 89. A lot of the, the sports car guys liked the Infinity more.

The Q 45 was, you know, a much more dynamically interesting car than the LS 400. And so we thought, oh, this is gonna be the killer car. Well, of course seems like Q 45 ended up being a bit of a disaster and the LS 400 reshaped the entire luxury car industry. So yeah, I’m sure I was guilty there of getting that one wrong.

I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff like that, but I don’t recall ever being confronted like by Don or anybody, anybody like that. So I better

Don Weberg: take note of

Preston Lerner: maybe after they see this episode I’ll be in more trouble.

Don Weberg: Yeah, it’s okay. Preston, I’m doing a little research now on your work and I’m gonna have to call you after this.

I’d like to have a few words.

Preston Lerner: I do wanna know who the journalist was though. Maybe after. We’ll do that when the red light’s off,

Don Weberg: right? For me, I wanted to be an auto journalist. That was what I wanted to do. I, you know, you guys are talking about the racing cars guys as your heroes, the Andrettis, and you know Matt Preston, you guys.

Or my hero, you were the ones that I would [00:40:00] pick up a road and track a MotorTrend car and driver and auto week, any of ’em, and read those stories about the new cars, about the classic cars, and to a young guy raised around cars, but looking to learn his own voice in the auto dom

Crew Chief Eric: Auto sphere.

Don Weberg: Auto sphere.

Very good. Yeah. You guys were the ones who gave me the knowledge to develop my voice. You were the ones who gave me the thought processes as to, gee Don, why is it you started liking Corvette a little better than nine 11? What happened there? Well. Reading about it and you guys putting it into words. So me, I took an internship, I wrote a letter to MotorTrend editor Steve Van Toon, who graciously called me, said, please come to my office.

I’d like to meet with you. Let’s have a conversation about what you’re doing and what you wanna do. The guy was fantastic, absolutely incredible. And that was where I met Matt. That’s where I met everybody else. But that was how you did it. In the old days. You wrote to somebody you wanted to be part of.

You saw them as the authority, you wanted to learn from them. So that’s where I went. Now that being said,

Crew Chief Eric: so we’re gonna [00:41:00] switch gears. Talk about books. We’ve interviewed plenty of authors on this show, and I always kind of ask them, Matt included the journey of 80,000 words. Where do you start blinking cursor on the screen?

It’s a lot different than writing an article or something like that. It’s more serialized to make things more complicated. When you’re writing your own book, it’s your voice, your opinion, your story, your fiction, whatever it is. And you’re working with an editor, but you two have co-authored some books.

How do you come to agreement? How do you write it in such a way that it’s seamless and how does that work with editors? Can you explain the process of co-authoring a book together?

Preston Lerner: The first book we did together, it was Matt’s project. It was a Paul Newman book. Matt had me come in towards the end to help out with some of the racing portion of it, specific ’cause Matt had done a great job with, uh, especially the attainment, the movie winning and the cars.

That was a great chapter on the, uh, the movie cars. And I was doing kind of more sort of the inter nuts and bolts kind of, uh, racing side. We each wrote our own material and then we vetted each other’s material. So it worked out really well. ’cause these days there [00:42:00] are no real editors in the book publishing world.

I mean, there, there’s copy editors. It’s not, you’re getting first edit people giving you good ideas about what to do. So we were fortunately able, we were both writers, we’ve both done some editing, so we’re able to look at each other’s work, I think, and make it better. I think the voices sound pretty. I mean, I, I don’t know, people could tell the difference between what we wrote or not.

I think it was pretty seamless. And so we handed in something that we were happy with, get my perspective on this as well. But I was happy with, anyway, what, what we handed in. So it didn’t really need to be edited and we actually probably didn’t really want it to be edited ’cause we were happy with the product that we submitted.

Crew Chief Eric: Does it get even more complicated though, when we bring self-publishing into the equation? Something like an Amazon where you really have to do your own work. Have you guys ventured down that path at all?

Preston Lerner: I’ve never done that, but I, I also write a. Fiction and first book I sold. The only novel I sold so far, unfortunately.

I mean, there was a New York editor who, he went through the copy page by page and he had thoughts on what needed to be done. You know, all the books I’ve done, I haven’t done as many as Matt, but done seven or eight now. And I mean, there’s really not much input from [00:43:00] the editors at the publishing houses. I mean, they give you, you know, you.

Talk about what you’re gonna do ahead of time and then you pretty much deliver the product and then it is copy edited and proofread.

Don Weberg: What about like fact checking? Is that part of the editing process? Does the publishing house go into that or do they pretty much just trust you to turn in a book that’s ready to go?

Uh, you know, Matt, you just recently wrote the DeLorean book, and how did that go? You turned it in, did they go through it and make sure all the facts are correct? Is there somebody at the publishing house that does that,

Matt Stone: in that particular instance, Don? Yes. The commissioning editor, the guy who I reported to, so to speak, at motor books on this project, he normally could have and would’ve done it himself, but he was very, very, very busy at the time with numerous projects.

He hired a woman to do a, a copy, edit and proof, and she just did marvelous research. She would come up, she said, well, I found this here, and you said this. Are you comfortable that you’re right, or is this guy perhaps right? Or is everybody right? And, and [00:44:00] her attitude and style to President’s Point made it better.

Mm-hmm. Now, you, you, you can get somebody who just, they’re stuck in Wikipedia. I mean, I use Wikipedia, but is it my only source for everything I ever write? No, of course not. That’d be foolish. Mm-hmm. I want that. I want it to be good. I want it to be right and accurate, and that process, as Preston said, makes you better and makes the work better if it’s good.

Crew Chief Eric: Right. If

Matt Stone: it’s somebody who’s just anxious to make a name for themselves and steal your project. That’s very dissatisfying. I think only one time have I ever had that, and it was a project that Preston and I also worked on together. Oh right. That was, you remember who that was? I do, isn’t it? I don’t think is there anymore, is it?

I don’t think so. I think that person who shall remain quite nameless isn’t there. But yeah, when it’s bad, it’s awful. ’cause then you start questioning yourself,

Don Weberg: right?

Matt Stone: And then you got a negotiation with this person of authority. Well, he’s the editor he’s supposed to know. Wait a minute, I did the homework.

I know, and [00:45:00] you get feeling like that sometimes, but if it’s a good collaborative thing, you’re all on the same page, you understand kind of what the book’s gonna be, and you do your homework, it’s fine.

Don Weberg: How do you justify your answers? In other words, in that, in that scenario where that lady walked up to you and said, well, I have this guy here saying A, you said E.

Do you have notes on the situation? How do you say to that person? Well, this is how I came to my conclusion.

Matt Stone: When I’m doing a book project, I have banker’s boxes next to my desk, and I keep every stitch of anything that has to do with that book, whether that’s a screen print, an interview, a magazine article, a book, whatever.

I build my own personal internet by the pound, and it depends on the quality of the source. And in some cases it’s the source period. It’s a direct quote from so-and-so who invented the thing. And I have his SAE paper or his interview right here in front of me. Miss copy editor, or who are you quoting? I keep everything handy until it’s done.

And again, [00:46:00] sometimes there’s a little bit of a negotiation and if you can’t agree, there’s nothing wrong with saying historical sources or authorities do not agree on this issue. Here’s the two viewpoints, and I’ve done that and it sounds like a cop out, but it’s like, wait a minute, I wasn’t sitting there.

Lightning doesn’t strike with the answer. So if their source is credible and honest and was well founded and mine is a good solid direct source, I’ll say, well, here’s two opinions. Here’s from the guy that designed it and here’s from the engineer that built it.

Preston Lerner: Nothing wrong with that. I mean, I love fact checkers.

I wish they had more of ’em. Maybe it’s some publishing houses. They devote more to that. I do know that automobile, I mean they had a part of the copy editing process was fact checking and they were really vigilant. You know, sometimes it was frustrating. You don’t wanna have everything questioned. But I think it was good.

I mean, it was rarely a time where Randy Blackwell was there. He went to Car driver. I think he still had car driver, but I mean, rarely he didn’t catch something or at least something that we had to discuss. And I think that’s, that’s really important. You know, to Matt’s point, sometimes the sources don’t agree and sometimes you’ll find sources disagree with the historical, what was [00:47:00] written back in the day.

And you have to sort of make a judgment call about, you know, what’s right or what’s wrong. But, you know, it’s the famous New Yorker article about fact checkers, where one of the stories is, it was about the invention of the, uh, vibrator. The guy who invented it said it was ’cause his wife was frigid and the wife said it was ’cause he was impotent.

And the poor fact checker had to like talk to the two people on asked which, which was it. And I guess they sort of didn’t get that one resolved. But I mean, fact checkers have a tough job. So I, I like to, uh. Help them out as much as I could.

Matt Stone: At the end of the day though, it’s my opinion that great editing makes you better.

If it’s really great work. Somebody who’s not out to be a hero and put their voice into what you wrote, you know, if somebody’s editing without ego and and is just really good on facts and style and the root tenets of journalism and all that kind of stuff, great. Editing makes my work better. I want that.

Don Weberg: Have you guys, either one of you individually or together as a team,

Matt Stone: have

Don Weberg: you ever worked on more than one

book

Matt Stone: at a time? I have. I have done it. It can be tough. You have to be really [00:48:00] smart and hopefully kg and good about, I don’t want to be working on two projects that have the same deadline or on the same schedule.

If I’m finishing up this and I’m just starting to wanna chase something new, that’s okay. I’ll start gathering information, might do some interviews, maybe do a little writing, but I want book A to be well down the river and on its way to the press. Before I get too far into book B, but I had a collision one time and it was hell.

I’ll be honest, it was very difficult for me to make that separation in my head comfortably. I did it, got away with it. It was fine, but it was tough.

Preston Lerner: Yeah, I’ve never done, I mean, I would always do freelance work while I was writing, so sometimes you had to because you had to make a living, you juggle. Yeah.

There’s not a lot of money in car books, especially racing books. I mean, they’re not laborers of love. Exactly. But magazine work just pays so much better that that’s what would pay the bills, and so I had to make sure I was left time to do those assignments and did the books as time permitted, or you know, after dinner or something.

It’s nice to be able to stretch out on a project, you know, instead of doing, you know, a feature story of [00:49:00] 2,003,000 words or 5,000 words is a really long feature story. By modern standards and book you get to write 50, 70, a hundred thousand words. It’s fun to be able to stretch out like that. It’s great to have that opportunity because you can’t do that in a magazine story.

You just just don’t have the space.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, you guys have written so much. You’ve spent your whole careers writing. Are there any stories that you feel. Are underrated or overlooked in automotive history that maybe deserve more attention, a little bit more light shined on them.

Preston Lerner: What’s really good, you mentioned Amazon and self-publishing, which once upon a time had a really terrible reputation.

Vanity Publishing was what it was called and and people look down upon it and what’s happened is, is now because the economics have changed and the software has changed, there’s now the ability to write books on subjects that never would’ve been published because you couldn’t make money writing a book about Lloyd Ruby.

I mean, that would’ve been really borderline. Well, now you can do that. I mean, you can, you know, you can do that with desktop publishing. Makes it possible. So I think a lot of subjects that were too obscure to get through the mainstream media and really get out there in the world because they didn’t pencil out financially, I think now are plausible when you go to auto [00:50:00] books.

This is the bookstore here in Burbank, pretty well known all over the world. I mean, there were just hundreds of books that I would happily buy if I could afford to buy all of ’em about subjects that, you know, they would’ve been an article, a 2000 word article, and now it’s this 80,000 word book on Eddie Sachs.

That would not have been done, you know, a generation ago, or even a decade ago, because no publisher would take that on. How could you possibly make it work? So I, I do think that’s a great thing that’s available now, and I’m, I’m happy to see that.

Matt Stone: Tell you one, Eric, that I would love to see researched and written by a relentless team of Wall Street Journal level investigative reporters.

And I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there’s too much meat on this bones. I’d really love to know, did the big three put Preston Tucker down? Ooh, that would be good. I wanna know for sure. I have a feeling that there’s a lot that people know that hasn’t been said, although a whole lot of ’em are probably dead by now too.

I don’t know. Was Preston Tucker promoter and maybe a, a bit of a huckster and a this, that and the other thing? Yeah, maybe. But boy did he come up with one [00:51:00] outrageously fabulous car. It was right at, you know, the end of the World War and car companies were scrambling for dollars, and I do know that within the halls of certain car makers, they saw that car and went, holy crap.

That I do know. I’ve read interviews to that effect, but nobody has ever said for sure that some faction of the big three put him down or absolutely did not. There’s several books out on Tucker and everybody talks some about it and did the SEC, the securities exchange violations. We’ve got all that, but did somebody just make sure that he didn’t make it?

I’d love to know.

Don Weberg: Okay. Let’s dive right into it. Journalism, how has it changed since you began your careers? Where do you see it going? Join me. I’m Phil Donahue. What do we see from where you’ve been to where you are to where it’s going?

Matt Stone: If I were the smartest guy, I would know that, but I’m not, so I don’t.

Preston, please back me or jack me on this. The whole internet and connectivity [00:52:00] and anti-social media and all that kind of stuff changed it immeasurably and irreparably in a whole lot of ways. That’s where I think the biggest paradigm changes came. Where is it gonna go? I wish I knew that. But there are countries, England particularly, that still seem to be able to turn out these beautiful long form magazines with long form stories and lavish photography and fabulous magazines, and sell ’em for 10 or 12 bucks, which nobody here in America seems to be able to do.

So where’s it gonna go? I don’t know, but that to me was the paradigm shift, the mysterious interwebs. I

Preston Lerner: started getting journalism and I got a journalism degree, got a job. My first job with Don, you’ll appreciate this, was out in Abilene, Texas, about three hours west of Dallas. And at the time that they had not just one, but two daily newspapers, they had an afternoon edition.

In the morning edition. I’d say about half the people who worked there were people like me, the young guys and girls who wanted to go on to bigger jobs, and we wanted to get to the big city. And the other half were gonna stay in Abilene. And they raised a family on it, being a newspaper reporter editor or [00:53:00] working in the back shop.

There was a back shop back then because you actually had to physically put a paper together. You didn’t just do it all on the, on the computer. And, um, you kind of thought that that was gonna be something you do for the rest of your life and you retire. And that was it. And in our lifetime, that just completely disappeared.

I mean, Craigslist destroyed the classified, you know, the internet changed the reading habits. I mean, I’m not saying anything new. We were obviously, but, and clearly that came on to effect the card journalism. Moral as well. I mean, again, when Matt and I started four or five of these, it was more than that.

But I mean, there was a bunch of Alist and Blist magazines that were great magazines that looked like that was something you would do for the rest of your life. You know, they’ve like all disappeared. It’s, it’s a really sad thing. And I don’t know if I would go into drizzling now if I was starting out because it’s, it’s a different field.

I don’t know how you sell yourself. I think Substack is an interesting future, and I do think that’s a way you can make a living. But I think you’re more of a commentator, you’re more of a pundit and you are a reporter. And for people who wanted to be straightforward journalist, I don’t know where you really do that anymore because.

Even we’re out here in la. I mean the LA Times is a shadow of what it used to be, and it’s like the third biggest paper in the country. It’s a very, very sad to watch car journalism, especially because of the internet. And now you have [00:54:00] so many influencers and you know, people doing car reviews so-called where they’re getting a car from, not more manufacturer even, which, I mean, there was always, you know, some sort of questions about, you know, how objective you would be.

I, I think we were objective, but there’s always been, you know, people question it, but if you’re getting a call from manufacturer. People now get ’em just from a car dealer, you know, and you’re doing the review right there. And how honest can you be under those circumstances? Completely different field. And I wish that it were doing better and I wish I could be a little more optimistic, but I’m not that sanguine about the future.

Matt Stone: I’m a little bit in the same boat with Preston. I mean, telling somebody how to learn and train and make a living as an automotive writer, I’m not sure that’s an answerable question from where I sit. It would be a, a short speech or a long boring one. I’m not sure which. One instance I just heard from a public relations person for one of the car companies was telling me that they had an event and they, and they had, I guess some of these folks were on liners and some of ’em were influencers and this and that.

They paired up driver and a ride along to go drive this vehicle wherever, like 30 miles. And I mean, we used to do road [00:55:00] tests a lot longer than 30 miles. Can I get an initial impression in 30 miles? Yeah, probably. But what she told me is this one particular outlet person. Did not have a driver’s license.

So the person he or she was teamed up with in the car drove the car. So this writer, editor, influencer person took the pictures with a phone and all seemed to care about was the technology in the car. If I paired it with my phone, what could I make it do? How good was the audio system, the nav system? All the infotainment and was it smooth?

It didn’t break down. Yeah, it drove, it went good. That’s all he cared about. ’cause that’s from the right seat without knowing how to drive, that’s all he could talk about. So that was a little bit of a, A brain shaker to me,

Don Weberg: definitely shows a different direction. That’s actually really amazing. Let me, let me throw this one out there because one thing I’ve observed over the years, you know, I came as kind of a hybrid when I started interning with Matt.

Yeah. The internet was just starting to get a little bit of traction, just starting to kind of get [00:56:00] going. I was classically trained in all the print journalism, so I was going after that genre. One thing I see now compared to back then, thanks to technology or technology be damned, however you wanna look at it, it’s so much easier for anyone to be an automotive journalist or an influencer, however you want to say it.

The question is the quality. Can you trust this person? What does this person bring to the game? Why are you listening to this person when you’re wanting to know more about the Mazda Miata or the Ferrari 3 0 8 or whatever, and here’s this one person you always go to or these two people you always go to.

You almost have to figure out who’s more trustworthy. I guess where I’m going with this is I wonder if your younger chances are you grew up with this stuff. You know how to run the camera on the phone, you know how to edit. Do you guys think, as you know, as having been there, done that, seeing the future where you were as to where it came, do you think that’d be a good place for a young person to start?

Is just to dive in the pool? If you think you’ve got what it takes to be an automotive journalist, do you make those little [00:57:00] videos? Do you make those commentaries? What advice would you give to somebody who wants to do this? What do you think? I don’t,

Matt Stone: I don’t know Don. ’cause I didn’t come up that way, so I’m not sure exactly.

I think one of the other things which Preston touched on a little earlier is, you know, back not too too many years ago, you know, working at a magazine or a newspaper was the way to make a living. Yeah. Posting to your blog may or may not be Joe Bob’s cool car site without an income stream. You can mechanically do all that, but is it from your grandma’s basement?

Do you make a living? Are you professional at that? I think that’s a bit of the missing link in the equation of your question and, and what does the person wanna accomplish if they wanna make a living? I think it’s a hell of a challenge now. Or do they not need to make a living? I don’t know. This is Blackwater for me and I, I don’t know that I have a credible opinion.

I’m not saying no, or that I don’t know. I’m not saying no, but I’m saying I don’t

Preston Lerner: know, sort of listen to myself speaking. I kind of feel like I’m sort of a parody of the Boomer complaining about everything, and I don’t wanna sound that way. I, it just meant it’s, it’s tough. But I do think, and I actually did have lunch with [00:58:00] somebody, a young guy who was trying to get started and he was making his own videos.

But I still think it’s important somehow to have some sort of journeyman status where you, you’re either an intern or you’re, you start at the bottom or you start at a smaller place where you kind of learn the ropes. It’s sort of hard to get into the business. Fully formed. You know, again, I was, there were small magazines that I started working at where, you know, the pay wasn’t very good and writing for them, and kind of that’s how I learned to do things.

And I was sort of mentored by other people, and I hope that people can still do that. I’m sure that there’s still ways to do that. I guess I like mad. I’m a little bit don’t really know the social media world, and so I don’t really watch any YouTube videos. I don’t know exactly how that works, but I do think somehow you wanna be able to find somebody to help you along so that you’re not on your own.

So you have somebody sort of giving you some tips and helping you make progress if you can do it without somebody’s help or more power to you. It’s just, it seems like a pretty tough road to hoe I, if I were starting out, I would try to find some other people who are doing what I want to be doing and somehow approach them and see if you could get them to help you or something like that.

Matt Stone: A mentor who understands all sides of the coin, you know, I don’t [00:59:00] understand developing these income streams for somebody that needs to do this, earn a living. Is that part of the equation? Probably is. But how does all that get developed? I couldn’t tell somebody. To Preston’s point, if they’re gonna be somebody who’s gonna be tutored, mentored, big brothered, whatever, they really ought to have some grasp of all sides of all facets of the rock.

Because without that, okay, you can operate your video camera and you can say, oh, this is a cool car goes fast. But how does that provide you a living? You’re both talking about

Don Weberg: the new generation, the old generation, how they work together. Here, I’m gonna hit the bull that I’m staring at and I don’t know if you guys see it or not.

Artificial intelligence. You said go find a mentor, go find somebody you look up to. Okay, well I had a trillion of ’em in the autom. Is artificial intelligence, the new mentor, is that where young people can go and type in a question? Dear Mr. Chet, GTP, I want to be an automotive journalist. How do I do it?

Matt Stone: That’s a good question. For certain types of [01:00:00] information, AI can be extremely helpful. As a clearing center is the rounding up stuff. I would say going back a little more to what you said earlier, find and listen to voices that speak to you, and if there’s a way to communicate, Hey, I like your stuff, you know?

Mm-hmm. How do I do what you do? Well, you tell me. Will you share that to me? Not knowing Sounds like it could even be viable. I bet if you ask. GTP how to do that. The answer ain’t gonna make a lot of sense. It might say, oh, you need to go to journalism school and then go to this. And I don’t know,

Don Weberg: I’m looking at Eric’s picture thinking, Eric, can you do this right now?

Real quick, five

Crew Chief Eric: seconds. Yeah. Don brings up a very valid point, you know, coming from the tech world to hear the argument all the time about how artificial intelligence is gonna make all our lives better. It’s the foreshadowing of Skynet. And I wonder though, if writers will be replaced by bots, you know, bots being the chat gpt of the world and you know, all those kinds of things.

So Preston, what’s your thought on this kind of looking at it?

Preston Lerner: I’m really worried about AI and, and the future that I’ll have for writing. I mean, [01:01:00] I think AI can definitely take over a lot of the stuff like, remember you, you know, the new car guides were like a staple of the industry for years and years and years.

They were big money makers. You know, you’d write like 120 words on each model in the GMC lineup, whatever it was. Well, geez, AI can do that in a heartbeat. There’s no reason why it won’t be able to do that. You know, I kind of felt like I was sort of insulated because to do a profile of a race car driver, well, how’s it gonna do it?

You have to interview the guy. I mean, AI can’t do that. I mean, I guess there probably is a way I could do it, but I, I kind of felt a little bit insulated. And also I’m kind of aging out I think, at the right time. But yeah, I do think it’s gonna take a lot of the entry level stuff out. I mean, a lot of the press kit material, which used to be a big deal for the people on the PR side, you know, someone had to write those press kits.

Well, I think the AI can will be able to knock those out in a heartbeat.

Matt Stone: What’s missing from that part of the equation is the voice ua, the perpetual voice. If you ask Chad GTB, what’s it like racing a Camaro in the TransAm series? You ain’t gonna get a piece that sounds like Brock Yates, I promise you. To me, that’s [01:02:00] a great clearinghouse for facts and numbers and wheel bases and all that, but opinion, analysis and voice.

I don’t think we know that yet.

Crew Chief Eric: Preston brings up a really good point about aging out of the industry and Matt, you’ve moved on to being an author now and as you look back over your careers as automotive journalists, what would you say outside of meeting your heroes and driving fantastic cars was the most rewarding aspect about telling stories in the automotive world?

Preston Lerner: I mean, it’s been a great ride, not just since I got to do interesting things and meet interesting people, but because as you say, you gotta tell stories. You got to relate stories to, uh, readers, at least editors. I don’t know if the readers were reading the stories or not. It is still really rewarding to do that.

There are stories that, that are untold or that haven’t been told properly. The ability to sort of set things straight, explain what really happened. I still find that to be a very satisfying experience and I enjoy the ability to talk to guys and women who have sort of maybe gotten their do you know, to tell their story is also something that [01:03:00] I really appreciate the ability to be able to do.

That’s the one good thing about journalism is you do get to. Tell other people’s stories. You’re not, it’s always, not always about you or me. And, uh, I do appreciate the opportunity to do that.

Matt Stone: Yeah, me too. That’s still very satisfying. There’s a compelling kernel of a story and you turn it into a bigger story and it’s a good story and it’s interesting and people read it and like it, and, and they’re informed about it instead of being misinformed.

That’s very satisfying as a basically a storyteller. I find value in that for sure,

Preston Lerner: and I feel bad just ’cause I’m, I always say this, I’m a lot better in print than I am in person, and so I’m not probably articulating this the way I ought to, but like telling a story, I’m in the Delta Wing, which is one of my all time favorite projects.

Even though it was an hideous, ugly car, I remember being able to tell that story. It was a thrill to be able to sort of pass along what went into that project and to sort of tell the backstory to people who maybe didn’t want to hear it and didn’t like the car and didn’t like the people behind it. But that was really an enjoyable experience to be able to.

Watch that car develop and then see it being tested for the first time and going to LA Mile watching it race there and [01:04:00] actually got to drive that car later on myself. You dug. That was really a great, great experience. Um, never in a million years thought I would ever have that opportunity when I got started.

You know, writing stories about city council meetings and school board meetings and stuff like that.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I think we’re all kind of wondering, guy. Both have books under your belt. We all love them. Any new books on the horizon? What’s next for Matt and Preston

Preston Lerner: other than lunch at Bob’s Big Boy? Yeah, we got

Matt Stone: that,

Preston Lerner: but I got a book that’s not gonna be out for, I think till 2027, unfortunately.

But debell Pro Racing from 1964 to 73. Safety is the overarching theme, but it’s also about, this is the era when racing becomes really much more professional thanks to, uh, television and sponsorship and money promotes r and d that creates slick tires, wings and turbocharging and all these things we now take for granted.

I had a lot of fun writing that one. I don’t know if anyone really cares about it, but it’s a subject that’s very dear to my heart.

Matt Stone: I will await my copy ’cause I care and that’s when I first started really, really getting to know and paying attention to racing. Was that era that you just named so Yeah, for sure.

I have one coming out that’s at the [01:05:00] binder right now and will be released in September called The Greatest Icons of the Silver Screen. It’s about great or awful movie cars. Some are great, some are awful. Not only the cars themselves, but how they got cast and costumed in into that movie. But I work with a another guy who’s kind of a cultural, IM Imperativeness guy and he wrote the capsule about the film.

I was the car guy. And we also have interviews with folks that build picture cars and how cars get selected and you know, stuff like that. And you will be happy to know Don Weiberg that the Back to the Future DeLorean Time machine is on cover. Oh, got the cover. I

Don Weberg: love

Matt Stone: it. Yeah, so anyway, that’s one. And I also have been working with the Bachman family.

They of Galpin Motors, Galpin Ford, Galpin, everything else to do their family and company history. The rumor is we’re gonna print it before the end of the year. Very cool. That’s been a wild ride. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Galpin [01:06:00] at all in any way, but very large and influential dealer group out here in Southern California.

Very successful and has, I don’t know, 10 or 11 brands now and dealerships all over the place. And I walked into a conference room. Full of bankers boxes, full of vintage photos going back to the 1940s. That’s where we started. So anyway, uh, Gallin Motors will be out ostensibly early next year. We’re grinding down the final edit right now, and they said, we’ll, we’ll print before the holidays, so that’ll be out next year.

And I have a couple of proposals in development, which I cannot speak about, but Stony done yet, unless nobody buys them,

Crew Chief Eric: whether you’re a longtime reader of their work or just discovering their impact, we hope this conversation sparked your own nostalgia and curiosity. We want to thank you for joining us on this very special reunion episode featuring the legendary voices of automotive journalists, Matt Stone and Preston Lerner.

It’s not every day we get to sit down with two storytellers who [01:07:00] lived and wrote about the highs and horsepower of car culture across some of the best decades from tales behind the wheel, to insights from behind the keyboard. Their shared journey reminds us why cars are so much more than machines, their memories, milestones, and moving histories.

And with that, Matt and Preston, I can’t thank you enough for coming on Break Fix yet again and sharing your stories with us. And I, I look forward to seeing you both next time I’m out in California.

Preston Lerner: Thanks, Don. Thanks, Eric. You, you guys have been great. It’s really, yeah, it’s good fun. Thank you being on here.

Thanks for taking all this time and letting us talk and pontificate at great length,

Matt Stone: but there’s no big boy combo in french fries here in front of us. What next time guys?

Don Weberg: We, we gotta make that happen. We all gotta get together at the Bobs.

Matt Stone: We, we should record one of these at Bob’s. That’d be fun. That’d be

Don Weberg: awesome.

Matt Stone: Keep driving it and keep reading please.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, [01:08:00] be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org.

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So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of this would be [01:09:00] possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00:00 Meet the Guests: Matt Stone and Preston Lerner
00:01:58 The First Meeting: Matt and Preston’s Story
00:04:18 Journalism Journeys: From Newspapers to Magazines
00:05:20 Friendly Competition in Automotive Journalism
00:08:03 The Daily Grind of an Automotive Journalist
00:18:48 Memorable Assignments and Press Trips
00:24:50 Meeting the Legends: Racing Heroes and Industry Executives
00:34:17 Confronting a Critic
00:36:58 The Risks of Automotive Journalism
00:40:58 Co-Authoring Books
00:43:09 Fact-Checking and Editing
00:49:24 The Impact of Self-Publishing
00:51:38 The Evolution of Journalism
00:56:45 Advice for Aspiring Auto Journalists
00:59:36 The Role of AI in Journalism
01:02:08 Reflecting on a Career in Auto Journalism
01:04:12 Upcoming Projects and Final Thoughts

Bonus Content

There's more to this story!

Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Cars are more than machines. They’re memories, milestones, and moving histories. Matt and Preston have spent their lives capturing that magic – and they’re passing the torch to you. So if you’ve ever wondered how to turn your love of cars into a career, start by telling a story. One that only you can tell.

Learn More

The Deadliest Decade (Preston Lerner)

As mentioned on this episode, Preston is working on a new book – The Deadliest Decade (1964-1973) – which will debut in 2026. We are fortune to have samples of his work which were presented as part of the Argetsinger Symposium on Motorsports History.

In this first part (above), Preston talks about the early – and often controversial – efforts of TV to bring automobile racing into American living rooms. In 1961, a segment from the Indianapolis 500 time trials was broadcast as part of ABC’s new Wide World of Sports program. During the next few years, racing coverage was expanded to include Formula 1, Le Mans, NASCAR and even USAC dirt-track races. Television dramatically expanded the reach of the sport, which, in turn, attracted major commercial sponsors. LEARN MORE.

The material used in “Seat Belts Belatedly Come to Formula 1” is also drawn from his upcoming book, which will examine the safety, commercial, and technological developments that transformed racing from 1964-1973.

Both journalists reflected on the thrill of meeting their heroes—and the responsibility of reviewing cars honestly. Matt admitted some cars didn’t live up to the hype, but emphasized the importance of telling the truth, even when it’s unpopular.

Overall, the digital age has changed everything. Print magazines are fading, influencers are rising, and AI is knocking at the door. But Matt and Preston agree: storytelling still matters.