* Was Duncan Hamilton drunk as a skunk during the running of the 1953 24 Hours of Le Mans, as the tale goes? While we’d like to believe that racing was indeed a more lassez faire endeavor in the Fifties, Le Mans was just as important a motoring event as ever then, and national and corporate reputations were on the line for that race, so the likelihood of Jaguar staking its success on two blokes who’d been up all night drinking may not be all that plausible. Still, as Venn Motor Sport (and Cafe Roadster and Motorpunk) tells the story, it makes for good entertainment.
* Another question to ponder this week: Did turn-of-the-century contrepreneur Edward Joel Pennington at any point ever believe his contraptions were viable automotive inventions, or was he a scammer from the start? Torchinsky lays out the details as well as the case for Henry Ford taking a twisted sort of inspiration from Pennington. Words to live by: “Never underestimate the inspirational power of something truly half-ass.”
* While we’ve long been under a number of half-assumptions about the conceived but never-produced Kaiser-Frazer V-8, Mac’s Motor City Garage this week disabused us of several of those assumptions in relating the most complete history of that V-8 we’ve yet seen.
* Over at Car Build Index, we see a full rundown on the restoration of Porsche 550-001, the first mid-engine Porsche that competed at Nurburgring and in La Carrera Panamericana and nowadays competes on concours fields.
* Finally, speaking of mid-engine specials, the folks behind the fiberglass-bodied flathead V-8-powered Lincoln Zephyr Special are looking for more information about it.
More gadget review in www.mamaktalk.com
