On Writing Academic Motor Sport History

What follows is an opening to very early draft for a presentation at an upcoming conference. Do not quote or cite without permission. Your comments via email are most welcome.

Writing Motorsport History Draft

John Heitmann, University of Dayton

Copyright 2019. Do not cite or quote without permission of the author.

            I speak today with more than a little trepidation. Although I have been reading motor sport history for some time, and have several linear feet of files on the topic, I have written very little. Thinking is hardly doing. Long ago I learned that reading about a topic is not doing history – one only does history when one puts the pen to paper and reconstructs the past. In my classes and in my survey efforts, I have attempted to integrate motorsport with automotive history, but I still have a long way to go. 

But then motorsport history written from academic perspectives also is in its infancy. Indeed, in 2014 David Lucsko asserted that one can count the number of scholarly works on the fingers of two hands. He went on to say that “on balance, you are likely to encounter a greater depth of scholarship on just about any other subject in the history of the twentieth century United States.”[i]

            As Randall Hall has suggested, industrial America may have spawned automobile racing, but racing and speed catalyzed the growth of the automobile industry.[ii]Particularly with the end of road racing, spectators paid to attend a “carnival of speed” where they saw heard, smelled, and felt the experience. Racing reflected a new era of progress that pervaded all of American life. And sacrificially, drivers gave their lives in alarming numbers. 

            Integrative and dynamic themes touching on this complex topic include: technology transfer and nationalism; auto racing as a mass market, yet paradoxically involving craft-made cars; the complex social origins of drivers and fans; regionalism and racing; changes in technology; culture and racing, including literature, poetry, music, and especially film; and finally, ethnicity, race, gender and racing.

While I may equate the difficulties of doing academic motorsports history with academic automotive history, the two fields are not exactly the same. Visually one can represent the two with a dynamic Venn diagram, at times circles substantially overlapping, and at times not. Or perhaps we can say that the two areas are like mirror image twins. Motorsports history can be considered sports history, automotive history or national or international history. Automotive history, however, can hardly be considered a sport, however, beyond its economic competitiveness.  

There are a few things I want to say to the academically-inclined about doing either motor sport or automotive history, or a synthesis. First, despite warnings to the contrary, following this path does not necessarily lead to the end your career. That was an admonition given to me by historian, friend, and author of Auto Mechanics, Kevin Borg, who teaches at James Madison University. But that doesn’t mean that colleagues and others within academe initially may look askance at your work. Conveniently, it is diplomatic to say that one is doing the history of technology, or cultural, business, economic, social or business history. And if one decides to take my route, not only do academics have suspicions about the quality of your work, so too the “buff” historians.

Little has changed since 1936 when G.K. Chesterton wrote “I wonder if anybody has yet written a History of the Motor-Car. I am certain thousands must have written books more or less purporting this; I am also certain that most of them consist of advertisements for particular makes and models.”[iii]To extend Chesterton’s thoughts, in terms of motor sport histories writing rarely is integrative or contextual in merging themes and episodes related to both the sport, the culture, the automotive industries, and main currents in American life. Without getting personal or critical, one can find plenty of biographical material on drivers and their great races; the cars; the tracks; and the accidents and horrific deaths.  It often makes for interesting reading but is an extension of the journalism that first described the person, place, or thing at the time of the event.

 Indeed, a similar malady is pervasive to the writing of all of history. One widespread sin is that of well-worn tales repackaged with little if any critical analysis and a reexamination of the evidence. The story line never changes. Indeed, history, including motor sports history, needs to be saved from itself.  

            Everyone, including myself, is guilty of these sins. New interpretations require inordinate amounts of time, and time is in short supply. And we are constrained by the practices within our particular tribes. The “buff” historians are often easily pigeon-holed by their tight, non-contextual focus, along with the omission of the footnote or reference. Typical work is akin to 19^thcentury natural history, sort of a science of describing engines, suspensions, and chassis.  Further, a critical reader has no idea here the work came from or how the past was reconstructed. 

Aldo Leopold, in his Sand County Almanac, characterized “good History” as using the saw, wedge and axe when felling a tree and examining its rings.[iv]  Along similar lines, Carl L. Becker in his 1930 Presidential Address to the American Historical Association deftly depicted that the “buff” or everyman historian  

selects only such facts as may be relevant; and that the relevant facts must be clearly established by the testimony of independent witnesses not self-deceived. He does not know, or need to know, that his personal interest in the performance is a disturbing bias, which will prevent him from learning the whole truth or arriving at ultimate causes. Mr. Everyman does not wish to learn the whole truth or to arrive at ultimate causes. He wishes to pay his coal bill. That is to say, he wishes to adjust himself to a practical situation, and on that low pragmatic level he is a good historian precisely because he is not disinterested: he will solve his problems, if he does solve them, by virtue of his intelligence and not by virtue of his indifference.[v]

Buffs are to be viewed with caution in terms of the evidence they present. Indeed, their evidence is both experiential and usually uncited. Usually their work can not be reconstructed and thus tested. They see the trees but rarely the forest. And their work, often found on coffee tables, can rarely be found in most libraries.

But what about academics who can paint a forest scene, but do not know the differences of tree species?   With a relatively voluminous number of readers, often enthusiast authors consider the need for context and meaning to be nothing more than malarkey. And indeed, context without understanding and appropriate detail is malarkey.Instinctively “buff” historians need the academic historian for legitimacy, but only at arm’s length, for they often wish to pursue “anecdotal” accounts, in a sense glorifying self. “Buff’s” have a ready audience, but academics rarely do. Thus, an academic automotive historian can easily become a person without a country. 

However, academics also need the enthusiasts, and I would argue that their knowledge is absolutely critical to the quality of scholarship. They area a font of knowledge and insights, and incidentally are frequently more fun to be around than historians. They serve also as a check on the truth, particularly on the microscopic level. Many worked on the assembly lines, or in design studios and executive offices. In a business where archives are few and far between and knowledge is often kept close to the vest, they serve as rich sources. In terms of motor sports history, how many of us can claim to have driven in a race, or piloted a race car at speed? How many of us, so comfortable in the library or in our studies, have truly diced with death? 

How did I get into automotive history, with a fledgling  interest in motor sports history, and become this scholar without a country? In 1995, after serving a term as history department chair, and already a track record in the history of science and technology, I began to combine my passion for automobiles with my passions for history and teaching. As I look back, I had found myself. I had tenure and a full professor rank, so now I decided to pursue what I really wanted to learn more about, rather than what might be expected of me. It is a wonderful aspect of having tenure. You end up doing more work rather than less, as it was intended. 

            At the same time and during my sabbatical, I purchased a 1971 Porsche 911 targa. It was in a terrible shade of brown, missing a number of parts, barely running, and generally a mess. I began sorting it out, and looking back it was instrumental as a catalyst in moving me forward in terms of scholarship as well as practical mechanics. Struggling with that car over the years, appropriated named Lazarus since it was subsequently raised from the dead, was transformative in terms of hands and head coming together.

*****

            Thus, came Zen and the Art of doing Automotive history, fast and furiously. When I work on auto history, like on my old Porsche, I work on myself, just as Robert Pirsig argued in his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenanceand Matthew Crawford asserted in his Shop Class as Soul Craft.[vi]  But my activities go beyond self. Teaching was also an important part this passion, as I began to realize that I had something that a number of students, often but not necessarily male engineers wanted to learn more about. My book The Automobile and American Life,flowed out of the classroom during the course of a decade. At times I taught the topic not only as a General Education class capped at 35, but also a senior seminar and in one case as a seminar directed to first year students. Beginning with a focus on business and economic history, I gradually broadened the content to include increasing amounts of cultural history from sources connected with film, music, and literature. Student enthusiasm was very much a part of this evolving content mix. That led to a second edition of The Automobile and American Life, and in between the publication of the monograph Stealing Cars: Technology and Society from the Model T to Gran Torino.In the end and no matter what I work on, I hope to write a holistic reconstructed past and convey it to as broad an audience as possible. Now, I have now backed into motorsport history. 

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For some time, I have been interested in the history of sports cars in the U.S., particularly during the 1950s when sports car sales and SCCA participation took off. It was the result of rising middle-class expectations and ambitions, a new fascination with foreign luxury goods, and a response to the ungainly Detroit “dinosaur in the driveway.” Popular literature included: Ken Purdy’s Kings of the Roadand articles in Argosy, Trueand Playboy; John and Elaine Bond’s efforts  with Road & Track; Don Sanford’s The Red Car; and Tom McCahill’s Mechanix Illustrated articles. In film, movies featuring sports cars spanned from 1950s’ “To Please a Lady” to Elvis’ 1964 “Viva Las Vegas.”[vii]And as a teenager during the mid-1960s I got caught up in it all, as I purchased a 1959 MGA after graduating from high school. 

Lately as I reflect on my past I have often wondered how I got on the path of being so keenly interested in sports cars. No one in my family owned a foreign car, let alone a sports car.  We were a working-class Chevy family. When I brought home that MG our family car was a Chevy II. 

Somehow it had to be at the confluence of the popular culture of the day. One possible reason for my passion was the consequence of acquiring at age 12 the Riverside Records LP “Vintage Sports Car in Stereo.” On one side the record featured the sounds of a number of vintage cars I had never heard of before: a Frazer-Nash; Type 51 Bugatti; E.R.A.; P3 Alfa Romero; Alta; V16 Maserati. On the other side a vintage race was narrated by the famous David Scott-Moncrieff. I played that record over and over again, much to the anguish of my parents who thought I had gone over some sort of an adolescent cliff.  But as I have discovered from recent conversations, many others joined me in this obsession with the sounds of exotic motor cars. Today sounds are often a part of cars & coffee and weekly cruise-in events. A Saturday in October is devoted to sounds at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart.[viii]However during 1950s and 1960s (and today if you have the LPs) thunderous but also harmonic engine sounds could be heard in your home as well as on the track and street.

The Riverside Records story is worth telling, for it links 1950s jazz sounds with the concurrent burgeoning interest in sports cars. The Riverside label began in 1952 with the partnership of two Columbia graduates, Bill Grauer, Jr. and Orrin Keepnews. Seeing an opportunity to approach major record firms with a proposal to counter what was then seen as the release of “pirate” recordings of performances dating back to the 1920s and 30s, between 1952 and 1962 Grauer and Keepnews transformed a once-obscure Riverside Records into a major jazz label. Initially Grauer convinced RCA Victor to re-issue 78s from the 1920s and 30s in LP format. However, he then shifted focus to the contemporary music of Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and Cannonball Adderly. Additionally, the partners established themselves by writing a definitive book on the history of jazz in the U.S, published by Crown in 1956 and reissued in 1971. In the midst of this artistic and business success, Grauer, like many upper middle-class men of the day, also became a sports car enthusiast. 

In a 1961 interview in his New York City office that featured a large photo of Bill behind the wheel of a 1937 Mercedes-Benz, he recounted how in “1956, just for fun, we recorded sounds of sports-car races down at Sebring, Florida (I’m a racing nut, you know). We decided to release it and then the roof fell in. It began to sell like crazy.”[ix]Thus this experiment into the commercial recording of sports car sounds It began with RLP 5001 -- "Sounds of Sebring:  The 1956 Florida International Twelve-Hour Grand Prix of Endurance." Grauer recalled "At Sebring, everybody has problems and for the most part all this worry and fuss is just for the fun of it. And because it's for the fun of it, Sebring is a terribly wonderfully exciting spectacle."

The most unusual sound recording's A side began with interviews of drivers, a prelude to the listener experiencing "sounds at rest:" a 3 liter Maserati; 3.5; 3.5 liter Ferrari; a Lotus; and finally a Porsche Spyder. Driver interviews connected us to ghosts from the past: Stirling Moss;Jean Behra and Carlos Medniteguy;Pochirio Rubirosa;Peter Collins;Bill Spear;Juan Manuel Fangio;John Gordon Bennett;Reg Parnell;Marquis de Portago; and finally Luigi Musso.The flip side included hour-by-hour reports of the 12-hour race. Who do you think would care about all of this? But this was not a one-off exercise, for over the next seven years many other vinyl discs of racing sounds and exotic cars would follow, and amuse a generation or two of sports car enthusiasts. A label with a reputation for jazz recording certainly left a legacy for the automotive historian to explore.

            Other releases that followed the “Sounds of Sebring” included the chronicling of the Sebring races between 1957 and 1962. These records not only were a reflection of the burgeoning interest in sports car racing, but they also played a significant role in making it happen. Certainly, the course at Sebring was nothing special.[x]Robert Daley argued “There is much mysterious about the Sebring promotion. In every possible way, the site is ridiculous, the circuit unexciting (the Twelve Hours qualifies as one of the dullest events of the year), and the “success“ of the race inexplicable.”[xi]

An advertisement in the December 1956 Sports Cars Illustratedtouted the “Sounds of Sebring” album this way: 

For the first time ever: a superb high quality 12 inch long playing record of all the sounds that make up America’s greatest sports car race. Over 60 minutes of interviews with the world’s greatest drivers…Fangio, Moss, Collins, Behra, Hill, Musso, Menditeguy, Bennett, Rubirosa, Portago, Parnell. The sounds of Ferraris, Maseratis, Jags, Aston Martins, Porsche, Corvettes, Lotus, etc. warming up, revving, roaring at speed, coming out of corners flat out. The fabulous Le Mans start, pit activity, the fantastic sounds of Fangio shifting up and down as he makes the five mile circuit, and dozens of other remarkable on the-spot sounds which are so exciting to the driver and spectator alike.[xii]

Other releases that followed the “Sounds of Sebring” included the chronicling of the Sebring races between 1958 and 1962. Additionally, drivers were featured. In 1957 titles included “The Marquis de Portago: The Story of Racing’s Most Colorful Driver – a Memorial Tribute;” “Phil Hill: Around the Racing Circuit with a Great American Driver;” “Carroll Shelby: The Career of a Great American Racing Driver;” and “Stirling Moss: A Portrait of Britain’s Great Racing Driver, Told in his Own Words.”  These recordings then serve as primary source material not only of the races and the engine sounds – distinct of brand and vintage, a sort of original language speaking to us – but also of the best drivers of the day, speaking in their own words. But we can’t neglect the focus on sounds.

The theme here, then is engine noise: exhaust, valve, camshaft.  The variation on the theme are endless. As long as men design and build engines, there'll be enthusiasts trying to make them perform better. When they blow up, they'll simply build engines that won't blow up. The automobile is unique in the history of civilization. It has provided man with effortless transportation -- freed him, as it were, from the bounds of his physical limitations. And to the men who own and run these cars, it is given, more than to most men, to create as well as to savor the magic bouquet of speed.[xiii]

There is one other aspect of the Riverside Records sports car series worth mentioning. Namely the record jackets are often works of art in their own right. Often the work of Bill’s wife, Jane Grauer, the covers are at times stunning representations of cars, engines, wire wheels, race scenes and Bugatti grills ( the grill furnished by Ken Purdy).  

For a short time in 1956 Riverside had competition from another distinguished recording studio, Folkways Records. Folkways released a 12-inch vinyl disk and an accompanying brochure about the Watkins Glen Grand Prix race, with “on one side of the resulting record you go to tech inspection and meet the Grand Prix winner, while on the other side brings you the ear splitting and soul shaking music of the race.”  The Folkways production was the result of Henry Mandler and Robert Strome using state-of-the-art high fidelity equipment, including an Ampex 400 tape recorder, Capps, Electrovoice and Shure microphones, and over 400 feet of power cords and audio cables.[xiv]A second competitor to Riverside proved to be Grand Prix Records of Burbank, California. In 1959 this firm released six 45 RPM disks of the 1957 Le Mans race; Grand Prix of Europe, 1958; Grand Prix of Monaco, 1957; British Empire Trophy Race; British Grand Prix of Silverstone, 1958, RAC British Grand Prix 1955 at Aintree and 1956 at Silverstone; and the 1958 Mercedes at Oulton Park.[xv]Unlike the Riverside and Folkways recordings, however, the later have proved to be far more elusive to collectors.

Today Riverside has the dominant legacy in this odd episode in history.  Sadly, Riverside’s involvement with motorsports history came to an end in 1962. Grauer died unexpectantly, perhaps the result of a suicide, the consequence of his financial mismanagement of company funds and allegedly fraud involving Swiss bank accounts.[xvi]

During more recent times ex-Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and collaborator Mark Hales revisited the theme of sound and race cars with the 1998 publication of Into the Red,a book that included an accompanying CD (Revised and updated as Passion for Speed, 2010)[xvii]. A number of the cars whose sounds were reproduced by Mason and Hales were also featured in the Riverside series. 

Given the technical description of the pains taken to capture exhaust engine and track sounds in 1998, a renewed appreciation of Grauer’s pioneering efforts emerges. Musician Mason has the ear, sensitivity and prose to capture the sounds of cars on the track at Silverstone that Riverside Records had captured at Oulton Park, in Yorkshire some 40 years before.  Mason described the sounds emanating from a 1931 Alfa 8C 2300 (p.30) as

At first, the noise from this gleaming mass of metal is a disappointment. Folklore still says eight straight cylinders make a noise like ripping fabric, but not this Alfa. It’s more of a boom than a rip. Push in the ignition key to switch on the electrics and illuminate the a starter button. The electric motor whirrs the eight pistons past compression with barely a stutter and the Alfa gently comes alive, moaning and chuffing as a thousand pieces of metal bump and grind before bathing themselves in a fresh coating of lubricant. And then, as you wait to warm the oil, there’s more to be had by listening carefully, just as with any good piece of music. You can hear the boom become the bass, and now there’s a gentle wail from the supercharger, which swells as you rev up, disappears when you lift off. Just beneath that there’s another, more musical warble from the exhaust. Not the demented pigeon noise of a modern five-cylinder Audi, but a more orchestrated, subtler kind of rhythm, like a string bass shimmering in the background. If that little chrome-rimmed rev counter with its flickering needle were to fail, it would be the rhythm which would say how fast the engine was turning. Otherwise the hum of eight straight cylinders is so seamlessly subtle that you could hardly tell.[xviii]

Music is often made by instruments – technologies not that dissimilar from machines including internal combustion engines. Those musical instruments or machines reflect the work of human beings who very creatively made artifacts of power and awe and those players or drivers that blow their stuff in unique ways.

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[i]David N. Lucsko, “American Motorsports: The Checkered Literature on the Checkered Flag,”

[ii]From Hall, Carnival of Speed, 246.

[iii]G. K Chesterton, “The Hollow Horn,” G. K.’s Weekly, 24 (October 1, 1936): 57.

[iv]Curt Meine (ed.),  Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation(New York, 2013). p. 16.

[v]Carl L. Becker, “Everyman his own Historian,”Annual address of the president of the American Historical Association, delivered at Minneapolis, December 29, 1931. American Historical Rev iew, 37(1932), 221–36.

[vi]Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance(New York, 1974); and Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work(New York, 2009).

[vii]There are too many films to list! Among those I am exploring are “To Please a Lady,” (1950); “The Bad and the Beautiful,” (1952): “The Caddy,” (1953); “The Racers,” (1955); “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955); “Drive a Crooked Road,” (1955); “The Fast and Furious,” (1955) Hot Rod Galahads,” (1955); “Hot Rod Girl,” (1956); “She Devil,” (1957); “On the Beach,” (1959); Viva Las Vegas,” (1964).

[viii]On sound and automobiles, see Karin Bijsterveld, Eefje Cleophas, Stefan Krebs and Gijs Mom, Sound and Safe: A History of Listening Behind the Wheel.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Stefan Krebs, “’Sobbing, Whining, Rumbling’: Listening to Automobiles as Social Practice,” The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, 80-101. See also Michael Bull, “Automobility and the Power of Sound,” Theory, Culture & Society, 21(4/5), 243-259; Mimi Sheller, “Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car,” Ibid., 221-242.[viii]Sound and Safe, p.6; R. Murray Schafer, Our Sonic Environment and the Soundscape. The Tuning of the World(Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1977, 1994).

[ix]On Grauer and Riverside Records, see “Sound Business,” Newsweek, 58 (September 4, 1961), 63; “Bill Grauer Jr. Obituary,” New York Times, December 17, 1963, 39; John S. Wilson, “Greats of Classic Jazz Ignite a Reissue,” New York Times, January 18, 1987, H25; Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, A Pictorial History of Jazz: People and Places from New Orleans to Modern Jazz(New York: Crown Publishers, 1956).

[x]On the history of Sebring, see Alec Ulmann, The Sebring Story (Philadelphia:Chilton,1969); On the use of WWII air field runways during the 1950s, see Jeremy R. Kinney, “Racing on Runways: The Strategic Air Command and Sports Car Racing in the 1950s,” ICON,19 (2013), 193-215.

[xi]Daley, Cars at Speed, p.264. 

[xii]Sports Cars Illustrated(Here after SCI), October, 1956, 64. Other ads include SCI,January 1957, 47; SCI, May 1957, 55; SCI, June 1957, 11; SCIAugust, 1957, 3; SCI, September, 1958, 3; SCI, March 1959, 3. For a review of the Riverside LP “The Fastest 500,” Riverside RLP 5513, see Road & Track, 13(March 1963), 12.

[xiii]From the dust jacket of Riverside Records RLP 5002 [1957?].

[xiv]Folkways FX 6140, “Sounds of the International Sports Car Grand Prix of Watkins Glen, NY,” p.5 of accompanying brochure.

[xv]“You Are There! With Grand Prix Sound Story Records,” SCI, June 1959, 71.

[xvi]Conversation with former Riverside producer and then sales manager Robert Richer, September 12, 2019. 

[xvii]Nick Mason and Mark Hales, Into the Red: Twenty-One Classic Cars that Shaped a Century of Motor Sport (London: Virgin Books, 1998), p.30.