Mired in Good Stories

I was working today on a story about Canepa Design, a Scotts Valley, California company that among other things restores historic racing sports cars. Though Jeannie and I have covered sports car racing for many years, I have never been very interested in historic racing. It is, after all, not real racing, but a weekend endeavor of the very wealthy serving little purpose beyond their own entertainment.

In writing about Canepa Design, and about Bruce Canepa, who we met at Laguna Seca Raceway earlier this summer, it’s become clear to me that there are many levels on which this abstruse activity might be understood. One I shouldn’t have missed is the stories. Not just because I write, but because these stories are histories, not just of mechanical objects, but of people, undertakings, success, and failure. After all, my first college major was history, and my avocational interests have never strayed far from that. That may or may not have contributed to the fact I have three children with degrees in history, but it can’t have hurt, can it? Anyway, this assignment for The Last Turn Clubhouse took me deeply into many of those stories, those bits of history. In fact, one of the problems I’m having with this article is cutting off the research. We saw scores of cars in Scotts Valley, and heard many stories. My notes and Jeannie’s photos keep sending me to the web or to my own book shelf and friend Janos Wimpffen’s monumental history, Time and Two Seats – Five Decades of Long Distance Racing.

Here’s Roger Penske conspiring to improve the brakes on the AMC Javelin – by “borrowing” them from Porsche’s 917. Bill France, who had a plan to win Le Mans – with a stock car. There’s the quintessential Southern California Ford “flathead” powered hot rod that set land speed records at Bonneville salt flats. How special federal legislation “sprung” Porsche’s famous 959 super car.

So, for tonight, I’m mired in research, little of it necessary for the article I’ll finish tomorrow. That’s if I can resist the urge to look up still more information on a Trust 962, or on John Paul’s Greenwood GT Supervette.