My race car has a great history - all the way back to 1961. But it started
vintage racing in 1995. Prior to that it street raced, posed, enabled
benchracing, and endurance raced (after almost 5 years of continuous, round
the clock effort, it finally finished second to the large tree that it was
valiantly trying to pass. In a post race interview, it said "The GILL/EVANS
car was runnin' great today, but the tree just flat outgrew us. I though we
had something for them at the end, but when Spring came, they just had a
growth spurt and we couldn't hold them. We were always good in Summer, but
every Fall, they started losing leaves and the track got slick, and we just
couldn't run into the corners like we wanted to" ).
I think that classes for true racing cars should insist that the cars were
raced (for example, Formula cars, Can AM, and Trans-AM) but that production
type cars allow so many of us to get into the sport that it would be silly
to insist on race history for them. I'd bet that in eastern Canada, where I
live, that no more than 200-300 production cars total were ever raced prior
to 1962 - our cut off date, and finding one would be a miracle. As you can
see from the story above, I rescued my Midget from under a tree, and I
expect that many people have done the same.
Brian Evans (who likes to talk to his cars, and wouldn't be surprised if one
starts talking back)
At 11:29 PM 16/07/97 -0400, you wrote:
>One of the advantages of requiring a period race history would be to bring
>forth a stream of great creativity. That quality is already highly prized in
>collector car sales circles, where the most mundane cars suddenly aquire
>magical histories and famous (if dubious) ancestry. If you think tech has
>their hands full catching cheater engines, try researching the family tree on
>every car in the club :>(.
>Harold "Must have a history, it's a race car." Pace
>
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