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Posted
Oct 22 2008, 01:44 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 11 comment(s)
OK, so perhaps the title of this post is a bit misleading. I was only five years old when Riverside International Raceway closed for good in 1989, but after reading through Frank Sheffield's website about the track, it almost feels like I was there. Frank used to work at the track and he has put together a very thorough site that chronicles the track and its history. Since October is Socal month on Speedhunters, it is the perfect time for a little look back at one of the Southern California's most historic car spots. When I asked Frank if we could use some of his gathered material for this story, he said that in his view every bit of motorsport history should belong to everyone. With that said, let's take a look back at RIR....
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Posted
Oct 10 2008, 02:34 PM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 20 comment(s)
Right now as I write this, Formula D practice and unseeded qualifying is happening over at Irwindale. I want to shoot some photos today, so I'll keep this kinda short, and follow it up later. Rod thought it would be cool for us to do retrospectives on Irwindale in honor of the Formula D Irwindale happening this weekend, but honestly, I've been shooting drifting at Irwindale for so long, I didn't even know where to start. Some of these photos, you may recognize from my hardcover book,...
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Posted
Oct 08 2008, 04:18 AM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 14 comment(s)
Volkswagen UK recently published a press release highlighting the 33 year of Golf GTi history, which makes interesting reading. I thought this could form the basis of our latest Retrospective piece, on the original hot hatch. Golf GTi Mk1 1977-1984. If you are old enough, cast your mind back to 1975! The Giorgetto Giugiaro designed Golf GTi is launched at the 1975 Frankfurt Motor Show with a 1600cc 110PS engine. One of the first ever hot hatches (there had been others such as the Renault 5 Gordini...
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Posted
Oct 07 2008, 12:34 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 5 comment(s)
As part of our look at SoCal this month and in the lead up to the Formula D closer at Irwindale Speedway, we will be taking a look at some of the past drift events held at "The House of Drift". Antonio's collection of Irwindale material spans a lot more years than mine, but I am going to take a look back at the D1GP event weekends from 2006 and 2007. It's a shame that D1 has not held any stateside events this year and we can hope they will return sometime in the future, but for now at least we can nostalgically look back at the events held in the past couple years. OK, so one and two years is not that much time, but both of these events were quite memorable as they gathered all of America and Japan's top drivers as well drivers from countries all around the world......
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Posted
Oct 03 2008, 10:00 AM
by
John Brooks
with 4 comment(s)
It is perhaps one of the most famous endings in Hollywood history, capping one of the greatest films made. With fog swirling around Casablanca's airport, Rick Blaine and Captain Renault consider their options and decide to head for Brazzaville and the Free French..........."Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.". When the flag dropped on 11th October 1998 to mark the end of the race, about ten minutes shy of ten hours into the first running of the Petit Le...
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Posted
Sep 29 2008, 04:30 PM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 7 comment(s)
I think many people have heroes as they grow up. Some may be fictional, some maybe real, some maybe gods....but for me, they always seemed to be race car drivers. Looking back, one of my hero's was Paul Newman. I had a signed poster of him in his Barbour Le Mans Porsche from 1979 on my wall. I wonder what ever happened to that poster? I wasn't very interested in films as a kid, but Butch Cassidy was an exception. As you will have heard, 'PLN' lost his battle with the dreaded Cancer...
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Posted
Sep 15 2008, 11:59 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 17 comment(s)
Please bring the 935," I wrote in my email to the Porsche representative; I very much wanted to see this famous machine up close and personal! "We'll get back to you about that," came the reply. Hmmm, didn't sound like it was going to happen! Several months ago we started to communicate with Porsche about our plans to do a film and photography shoot at their Leipzig driving center in Germany. We had to choose which Porsches we would be making a set of Speedhunters car features...
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Posted
Aug 08 2008, 04:37 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 29 comment(s)
It's time to finish up our look at the top 10 drift cars of all time and reveal our pick for number one. Before we reveal the top car, let's first look at some of our "honorable mentions". These are cars that made people's lists but did not quite make it into the group's top 10. Cars like Kawabata's S15 pictured above are a good example of these cars. Although the car has achieved a lot of success in D1 recently, it coudn't quite match up with the other cars on the list as far as the overall picture is concerned.
Here a few more of our honorable mentions....
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Posted
Aug 07 2008, 04:13 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 33 comment(s)
In the previous post we started our top 10 drift cars countdown with a look at numbers 10-6 on the list. Now we will continue with numbers 5-2 before announcing the winner in the final post. If you haven't read our criteria for picking these cars, make sure you check out the first post.
Well, let's jump right back into it with our choice for number 5....
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Posted
Aug 05 2008, 04:30 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 41 comment(s)
As I'm sure you know, during the month of July we spent a lot of time covering different aspects of the drifting world. Even though it's now August, we still have a few special drifting features left, and this is one of them. A few weeks back, we came up with the crazy idea of doing a "Top 10" list of the world's iconic drift cars. When compiling the list we considered criteria like the number of individual victories and championships, longevity in competition, breakthrough achievements, or cars that have have had a major influence on the sport. Of course we also rated the cars based on our personal ideas of what makes a great drift car....
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Posted
Jul 20 2008, 09:47 PM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 4 comment(s)
Following out retrospective piece last week on the BMW M1, we can bring some images of the Anniversary races which were held at the German Grand Prix this weekend. Niki Lauda won race one, after starting on the front row, along side ex-BMWMotorsport Boss, 72 year old Jochen Neerpasch in the Andy Warhol painted 'Art Car'. The small field were made up of owners, original drivers and BMW test driver Christian Klein, who drove the BASF liveried car. Ex F1 driver, and now German TV commentator...
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Posted
Jul 16 2008, 03:57 PM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 10 comment(s)
It is the 30th Anniversary of the BMW M1 supercar this year and BMW are marking the occasion in a number of ways. The BMW M1 'Procar' will return to the track this weekend, when a one-off race takes place at the German Grand Prix, at Hockhenheim. It gives us a great opportunity to go back in time and look at the first M-Power car. The BMW M1 was inspired by the Giorgio Giugiaro designed 'BMW Turbo' concept car from 1972. The original concept was very advanced for its time, so this...
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Posted
Jun 14 2008, 03:00 AM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 2 comment(s)
A comment regarding the lack of Nissan's in our Cars of >> Le Mans - GT2 post made me think back to Nissan at Le Mans in the 80's and 90's. They didn't attain the success of Mazda or Toyota, but Nissan's media site has a great collection of images, which we can now share with fellow Speedhunters! Nissan R85 (above) In 1986 Nissan (NISMO) entered two cars at Le Mans, the first time they had taken part. While one of the cars retired, the No 23 car finished 16th, not bad for...
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Posted
Jun 10 2008, 03:30 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 2 comment(s)
As this weekend's Le Mans is shaping up to be a big battle between Peugeot and Audi, I thought it would be fitting for us to have a quick look back at Peugeot's last victory at La Sarthe....
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Posted
Jun 09 2008, 06:15 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 7 comment(s)
The Tom´s 85C blasts through the Dunlop Curve during 1985 running of the 24 hours of Le Mans. Piloted by Satoru Nakajima, Masanori Sekiya, and Kaoru Hoshino, they would go on to finish 12th, 44 laps behind the winning Joest Porsche....
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Posted
Jun 05 2008, 04:37 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 28 comment(s)
Although I've rapidly become a drifting mega-fan in the past few years, my early roots as an auto-obsessive started out with a fascination for the Le Mans 24H. As the build up to the big event will be kicking off in a few days, I thought I'd share with you a few shots from a private vintage photo archive Speedhunters has recently gotten access to.....
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Posted
May 22 2008, 03:16 PM
by
John Brooks
with 15 comment(s)
Elvis Presley was known by his fans as “The King”, the nickname is also applied in stockcar racing to Richard Petty………so it is clear that you have to be more than a bit special to get this moniker applied to you in your particular field………..well, as most of you are already aware drifting has its own royalty. Keiichi Tsuchiya, “Dori Kin” or “Drift King”, one of the most important figures in the sport of drifting, has made...
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