Letter From The Editor: Worshiping at the Automotive Altar
April 2, 2002
Obsession has a way of creeping up on us. It can take days or weeks or years, but once it takes hold, nothing else seems to matter. When Moses came down from the mountain with a set of new instructions, he was vexed to discover his cohorts worshiping a golden calf that had captured their attention during his brief absence. Displeased with the breach of faith, Moses meted out swift destruction to the idolaters and their object of affection. So, in a land rich with oil but without the internal combustion engine, the remaining tribe began its four-decade journey on foot to the Promised Land. In this issue, we take a four-decade journey of our own, back to the 1950s and 1960s, when the Promised Land could only be found at Le Mans and Daytona, where great machines from Europe and the United States vied to make history that, today, has become legend.
These cars cast spells as powerful as the most audacious golden calf. Any visitor to a concours can witness a tribe every bit as eager as those ancient Israelites, lasciviously encircling a modern four-wheeled idol. Without doubt, no sect among the automotive religions is as fanatically devout as that of the vintage race car enthusiast. Whether parked at Pebble Beach or at the local dry cleaner, the sight of a Jag D-Type or Porsche Spyder will silence conversation and cause pedestrians to collide. Homeowners will do quick mental arithmetic to calculate equity reserves, and their eyes will glaze over with wistful recollections of how, many years ago, “one got away for next to nothing.”
Some enthusiasts are devoted to just one marque and eschew all others, though most of us are more liberal in our appreciation. Carroll Shelby is said to have remarked that if a guy puts Gila monster meat in his chili, you don’t argue with him, you just don’t eat with him. So it is with cars. The high-revving flat-six that gives goose bumps to a Porsche enthusiast may sound like a coffee can filled with nuts and bolts to the Ferrari fan, and British cars may raise the hackles of no-leak BMW types. Pity those who are so stubbornly chauvinistic that they ultimately miss the enjoyment conferred by such a variety of machines. Most cars that have seen duty on the racetrack merit some interest, even the funny ones that are preserved in populations as endangered as the California condor and have only a narrow coterie of acolytes up in the hills of some small town.
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