Autoblog

Video: The 1970 12 Hours of Sebring completely ruled

Alex Nunez — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:24:00 EST

Filed under: Motorsports, Classics, Videos, Porsche, Ferrari

1970 12 Hours of Sebring film - Click above to watch video after the jump

If we had a time machine, we'd set it for 1970 and never look back. And once we landed, bought some new threads and scored one of the amazing cars in production at the time, we'd road trip it to Sebring so we could see that year's 12-hour enduro in person. Why? Because as good as modern sports car racing is, Sebring '70 is special. From the cars and drivers (a who's-who of legends including Mario Andretti, Jo Siffert, Pedro Rodriguez, Dan Gurney, Henri Pescarolo, and yes, Steve McQueen, who co-drove his Porsche 908 with Peter Revson despite having his broken left foot in a cast at the time), to the the overall atmosphere, Sebring, Florida on March 21, 1970 was very much the place to be.

Sadly, there's no time machine to take us back there, but there was a brilliant race documentary made of the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring. Follow the jump to see the story play out in five parts. Unfortunately, the embedded YouTube clips don't include the film's seven-minute intro section. But that's okay, because you can catch that part over at the State Library and Archives of Florida, which has the 22-minute movie posted in its entirety.

So, follow the jump and see the drama unfold as the Gulf-Porsche 917s battle the Ferrari 512S trio led by Andretti while McQueen and Revson try to pull off an unimaginable upset. Forty years after the checkered flag dropped, this is still an absurdly exciting and entertaining race to watch, even if you already know its storybook ending. Need a spotter's guide before you hit play? No worries, just click here. Thank you, 1970, for being so incomprehensibly awesome.

[Source: State Library and Archives of Florida, YouTube]

Continue reading Video: The 1970 12 Hours of Sebring completely ruled

Video: The 1970 12 Hours of Sebring completely ruled originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: Goodwood 2010 - Taking the hill

Zach Bowman — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:58:00 EST

Filed under: Motorsports, Classics, Performance, Ford, Lexus, Lotus, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Ferrari, UK, Racing

Porsche 908/3 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, 2010 - Click above to watch video after the jump

There are plenty of reasons to get excited about the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The annual shindig is a mecca for metal from all over the world - old and new. Motorsports events from across the go-fast spectrum make it onto the schedule and there's even plenty of auto-themed art to keep the masses entertained when they aren't huffing tire smoke. In a word, the event is bliss for anyone with even a passing interest in the automobile.

But the grand daddy of it all has to be the Hill Climb. At 1.16 miles, the course features nine turns, a looming stone wall and enough hay to feed all the cows in Wisconsin for a week. Last year brought out a rash of new high-dollar supercars, including the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG and the Lexus LFA, and as a result, there were plenty of manufacturers on hand to show off their newest hardware. While we were lurking the grounds and looking at all the shiny conveyances, drivers were blasting across the grounds and recording their exploits. We've rounded up 10 of the best videos from the hill and arranged them in no particular order. Sure, some of them are more entertaining than others, but all of them are better than what you're doing at work, right? Hit the jump to get started.

Continue reading Video: Goodwood 2010 - Taking the hill

Video: Goodwood 2010 - Taking the hill originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Happy 80th Birthday, Steve McQueen

Jonny Lieberman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Classics, Etc., Celebrities

Steve "King of Cool" McQueen - Click above for a high-res image gallery

Odds are, your nickname is not "The King of Cool." Of course, odds are that you never ran away from the farm to join the circus, worked as a towel boy in a brothel, jumped ship from the merchant marines in the Dominican Republic, were a lumberjack, joined a street gang or bought your first motorcycle with winnings from motorcycle racing. Nor were you busted down to private seven times while a Marine only to redeem yourself by saving the lives of five men in frosty arctic waters and then being assigned to guard Harry Truman's yacht. Oh, and you're first film role wasn't in a Paul Newman movie. In other words, we know something about Steve McQueen, and you're no Steve McQueen. Sadly, neither are we. For that matter, neither is anyone else. Oh, and today would have been his 80th birthday.

McQueen is most famous for being a Hollywood heartthrob and anti-hero, rising to prominence as a hunky, square-jawed outsider. His first big screen success happened when none other than Frank Sinatra replaced (none other than) Sammy Davis Jr. with McQueen in a film called Never so Few where McQueen's character was required to drive a Jeep at high speeds. Then came one of his most memorable roles as Vin in John Sturges classic western The Magnificent Seven, where he shared the screen with Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn. Then came The Great Escape and the rest, as they say, is history.

Being supremely and ridiculously cool is all well and good, but it's still not enough to get your birthday mentioned on Autoblog. No, you've got to have a pretty strong connection to cars to wind up here. Did we mention Steve McQueen was the car guy's car guy?

Gallery: Steve McQueen

Continue reading Happy 80th Birthday, Steve McQueen

Happy 80th Birthday, Steve McQueen originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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McQueen's LeMans Porsche may fetch $2m at Bonhams

Michael Harley — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:57:00 EST

Filed under: Car Buying, Motorsports, Porsche, Celebrities

One of Steve McQueen's co-stars in the 1971 documentary-style film Le Mans, a Porsche racing car, is up for action this August in Carmel Valley, California. The car is a 1969-1970 Porsche 908/2 Spyder. It features a 3.0-liter air/oil-cooled flat-8 engine rated at 350 hp @ 8500 rpm. While many of today's production cars are making that type of power, with a fiberglass body on a tubular aluminum spaceframe, the Porsche 908/2 tips the scales at just under 1,322 pounds. Power is sent to the rear wheels through a five-speed manual gearbox giving the racer a top speed of 200 mph. This particular vehicle was mounted with two cameras and raced in the French city of Le Mans to create footage for the racing film (the car is said to have competed in the event five times). The classic Porsche sounds like a ton of fun to toss around a track, but the winning bidder may have second thoughts if the car fetches anywhere near its pre-auction estimate of $2 million -- not entirely unlikely as another one of McQueen's cars, a Ferrari Lusso, grabbed $2.31 million at an auction last year.

[Source: Bloomberg]

McQueen's LeMans Porsche may fetch $2m at Bonhams originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 23 May 2008 15:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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