Classic & Sports Cars

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@xxxxxxxxx>]

I was out looking for the current European Cars magazine this weekend,
and while I failed to find it at a couple of likely spots, I chanced
across the August (I think) issue of Classic & Sports Cars.  ALways a
fun read, I leafed through it -- and was immediately sent to page 174
where there was a picture of what appeared to be a Sixties-era GTA
running hard down a short straight at the Nurburgring.

Sure enough, the article describes a 2-1/2 day driver's school, focusing
on classic/historic racing cars, at the Nordschliefe, the original
Nurburgring, from the viewpoint of a magazine staff member driving a
borrowed Alfa coupe for the weekend.  The school costs 800 pounds, a
fair bit of money but not out of line when compared with the Russell,
Bondurant or Barber racing schools -- and as much as I enjoy Laguna Seca
and Sears Point, they're NOT the Nurburgring.  

(The article goes on to say that the Alfa in question was built up from
a '67 GT 1300 Junior shell, which of course got MY attention as that's
what I've got out in the front yard right now, with a largely frozen
engine.  Ooooookay, let's look into this some more... but that's another
posting.)  

Other Alfa content in that issue include a review of an 8C 2900 B as
part of a retrospective comparison test with John Surtees, 1964 F1
champion (among many other laurels) doing the driving of the Alfa and
nine other wonderful cars, roughly one per decade.  And there's what
appears to be an unintentional quiz, where someone mixed up the captions
under a raft of photos from a recent auction -- the first hint was
seeing a very sharp BN-1 Austin Healey with the legend "Alfa 6C 1750"
under it, juxtaposed against the words "Real Alfa GTA" under a photo of
a lovely Aston-Martin DB6.  

(I'm also very disappointed that I missed out on my chance for a great
contest -- the deadline was July 31, and the grand prize was a weekend
for two at Portmeirion, Wales, site of filming for the TV series "The
Prisoner" -- *plus* the use of a Caterham Seven for the duration of your
stay.  For that, I would have managed somehow to find the air fare to
the UK...)

- --Scott Fisher

------------------------------