Photography by David Gooley
Time Machines for Today
April 2, 2002
They were the matchbox and Corgi toys that you played with as a child. You raced them as Cox and Revell slot cars and glued them together as Testor’s model kits. There were dozens of them—Jaguar C-Types, XKSS roadsters and D-Types with the big fin, Ferrari Testa Rossas with pontoon fenders and low-slung Ford GT40s. By the 1980s, you could see these cars in action once again, sliding and drifting at vintage racing events. You could hear the purpose-built engines, smell the hot oil and wonder what it might be like to drive a legendary road racer.
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A Jaguar C-Type by Lynx offers the sporting essentials. (Click image to enlarge)Decades later, you’re ready to own the car of your boyhood dreams—this time in full scale. Unfortunately, demand for classic road racers has far outstripped supply, so while your neighbor may have a pristine 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder in his garage, he isn’t about to sell it to you or anyone else. And, as there simply aren’t enough of these original cars to go around, the cost can be substantial when they do become available: A Jaguar D-Type with competition history trades for over $1 million, and a Ferrari Testa Rossa or GTO is even more expensive. Counterfeit cars complicate matters further. Without documented provenance, research and due diligence on the part of the buyer, it is possible to spend millions on a Ferrari GTO, not built in Modena, Italy, but “fabricated” in Modena, Ohio.
Faced with the realities of supply and demand, some pragmatic enthusiasts turn to replicas. The catch, however, is that most (such as the ubiquitous Shelby Cobra) ape the appearance of the original without re-creating the total driving experience of a vintage race car. Beneath its skin are modern suspension components or an entire chassis borrowed from a more recent, often unremarkable car. Imagine a fiberglass-bodied Bugatti Type 35 that handles and sounds like a ’64 VW Beetle. The genuine article presents the stark contrast of a hand-formed aluminum body powered by a twin-cam engine with its ripping exhaust note, period-correct manual gearbox, and the tall bias-ply race tires that produce an easy-to-control four-wheel drift as the thin wood steering wheel rim glides between your fingers.
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