On This Day

Ettore Bugatti won the 110 mile (175 km) Padua-Vincenza-Thiene-Bassano-Treviso-Padua road race driving a twin-engined tricycle of his own design.

Ettore Bugatti

The first Franklin automobile was produced.It holds the distinction of being the first four-cylinder automobile produced in the United States. Most cars of the time had a single or two-cylinder motor. Continue Reading →

First Model ever produced in 1902 with first Franklin owner, S. G. Averell of New York City

The Locomotive & Machine Company of Montreal Ltd was founded - the firm evolved into Bombardier Inc - a manufacturer of off-road vehicles designed for winter conditions.

Barney Oldfield set a 1-mile speed record of 60.4 mph in the Ford '999' at the Indianapolis Fairgrounds, Indiana, US - the first time th 60 mph had been broken on a closed track.

Henry Ford and driver Barney Oldfield posing with the legendary 999 race car

Louis Chevrolet won the Ira Cobe Trophy, which was possibly his only road course victory. Dubbed the "Vanderbilt of the West" by the press, the trophy was commissioned by Ira Cobe, president of Chicago Automobile Association. This event was more akin to an off-road contest by today's standards. Continue Reading →

The General Motors Export Company was founded to coordinate international sales of GM products. General Motors was originally founded in 1908 by William C. Durant. Continue Reading →

Racer Paolo Zuccarelli (28) was killed along with his riding mechanic, Fanelli, when their Peugeot crashed between Thomery and Tivoli, France during a practice run for the upcoming French Grand Prix at Amiens.

Paolo Zuccarelli

The fifth 24 Hours of Le Mans Grand Prix of Endurance finished. The race is commonly remembered due to the infamous White House crash, which involved all three of the widely tipped Bentley team's entries, and caused the retirement of two of them. The race was eventually won by the third which, although badly damaged, was able to be repaired by drivers Dudley Benjafield and Sammy Davis. Continue Reading →

Le Mans start, 1927.

The 1,000,000th Ford V-8 was produced.

The Packard Twenty-First Series Clipper Six Taxi was introduced.

The world premiere of the much-hyped Tucker Torpedo. Over 3,000 people showed up for lunch, a train tour of the plant, and the unveiling in the main auditorium. The unveiling looked doomed, however, as last-minute problems with the car cropped up. Continue Reading →

Tucker Torpedo - 1948

Louis Rosier, driving a Talbot-Lago T26C won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

1949 Belgian Grand Prix

NASCAR staged its first Grand National event at the Charlotte Fairgrounds; the event marked the birth of NASCAR racing as we know it today. In 1946, race promoter Bill France began promoting an event in Charlotte. As he explained it, "I wanted to run a 100-mile national championship race at the fairgrounds, but [local sports editor] Wilton Garrison said I couldn't call it a national championship race. Continue Reading →

June 19, 1949: First NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race

Jim Roper made history, winning the first race in NASCAR’s Strictly Stock division — now Sprint Cup Series — at 3/4-mile Charlotte Speedway (North Carolina, US). Roper, a horse farmer from Halstead, Kansas, took the checkered flag in second place behind apparent winner Glenn Dunnaway at the end of 200 laps, but Dunnaway’s car was disqualified for having an altered rear suspension. Fonty Flock was second in the final order, with Red Byron — who became the division’s first champion at season’s end — third. Continue Reading →

The first NASCAR Strictly Stock race was held on this 3/4-mile dirt oval on June 19, 1949 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The unofficial attendance was 13,000.

Lester C. Hunt (61), the designer of Wyoming's famous ‘bucking bronco’ license plate in 1936 before serving as that state's Governor 1943-1949 and as a United State Senator 1949-1954, died.

Wyoming ‘bucking bronco’ license plate

Despite a track made slippery by continuous drizzle, the record crowd were treated to some outstanding driving as the masters slid their machines through the sand-dunes at the Dutch Grand Prix held at Zandvoort. The 100-lap race was won by Mercedes driver Juan Manuel Fangio after he started from pole position. His teammate Stirling Moss finished second and Maserati driver Luigi Musso came in third. Continue Reading →

1955 Dutch Grand Prix

Racer Christopher Bristow of London, UK, was killed aged 22 while racing at Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium. Bristow was discovered by Alfred Moss and Ken Gregory, father and manager of Stirling Moss, and owners of the then newly founded squad British Racing Partnership (BRP). Bristow showed great promise in F2 as well as non-championship F1 races and soon rated as a man with a great future. Continue Reading →

Chris Bristow

(19th-20th): Rover’s turbine-powered racing car, developed in conjunction with BRM this took part in the Le Mans 24 Hours with Hill and Jackie Stewart coming in 10th having achieved an average speed of over 100mph for the entire race. Unfortunately the technology was still too advanced and expensive for use in production models, so Rover eventually abandoned further development of turbine technology.

Rover-BRM

The first World 600 NASCAR race was held at the 1.5 mi (2.4 km) at Charlotte Motor Speedway, North Carolina (US) designed and built by Bruton Smith and partner and driver Curtis Turner in 1959.

James Ernest Bryan (33) was killed while participating in a dirt track race at Langhorne, Pennsylvania, US when his car flipped on the very first lap. Bryan first got noticed when he finished 2nd at the 1954 Indy 500 despite a broken spring, a broken shock absorber, and a burned left leg due to oil spraying from broken pipe. He won the last four races and the championship that year, followed by titles in 1956 and 1957. Continue Reading →

James Ernest Bryan

BSA sold Daimler to Jaguar Cars for £3.4 million, which continued Daimler's line and added a Daimler variant of its Mark II sports saloon. Jaguar discontinued the six-cylinder Majestic in 1962 and the SP250 in 1964, but Daimler's core product, the old-fashioned, heavy but fast 4. Continue Reading →

Daimler magazine advert early 1960s

Ford GT40's took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd at the 24 Hours at Le Mans - the first time an American car manufacturer won the classic 24-hour race. The win wasn't easy for Ford. It came after years of testing and much money spent to improve engineering efforts. Continue Reading →

Ford GT40s at Le Mans 1966

The 2,000,000th Mini was delivered. Over 1,250,000 of the cars delivered since 1959 were standard Austin and Morris types. Vans were the next most popular variant with 339,985 and the various Cooper models amounted to nearly 115,000 units.

The final British ADO16, a Vanden Plas Princess 1300, left the factory. The ADO16 was replaced by the Austin Allegro and its Vanden Plas 1500 counterpart. By this time, its original rival, the Ford Cortina, had already grown larger, putting ADO16 into the small, rather than medium-sized class.

The Scandinavian Raceway staged the Swedish Grand Prix, which was won by Jacques Laffite driving a Ligier-Matra JS7.

Coluche, aka Michel Colucci (41), French comedian, died when his motorcycle crashed into a truck on a road in the commune of Opio in southeastern France.

Michel Colucci

Britain’s most persistent learner driver, Mrs Git Kaur Randhawa of Hayes, Middlesex finally passed her driving test at the 48th attempt after more than 330 lessons.

Ayrton Senna's third win of the season at the Detroit Grand Prix made it six out of six for McLaren in 1988, on the way to an unprecedented 15 wins and ten 1-2 finishes in 16 races.

Bobby Allison completed in his last race, the Miller High Life 500 in Pocono, Pennsylvania, US and was involved in a near-fatal accident during the first lap.

Files released from the Public Record Office revealed some of the more unusual road safety suggestions made to civil servants by the general public. Among them was the vision of a road-safety system from a Mr Beck of South Shields in County Durham, which would have involved installing a set of giant electromagnets under the road. He suggested that any car trying to drive over his pedestrian crossing while people were on it would be brought to a grinding halt by the powerful magnets, and said that steel skids would need to be attached to vehicles so that they could be stopped by the magnetic ‘ground-tables’.

NASCAR announced that Nextel Communications would become the title sponsor of its top racing series in 2004. Nextel replaced Winston, which had provided sponsorship since 1971.

After 14 Formula One race car drivers withdrew due to safety concerns over the Michelin-made tires on their vehicles, German driver Michael Schumacher won a less-than-satisfying victory at the United States Grand Prix. The race, held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis will go down one of the most controversial Formula One racing events in history. Michelin had determined that the tires they had supplied for the Grand Prix could not withstand the banked turn and asked the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the sanctioning body for Formula One races, for permission to send another batch of tires. Continue Reading →

United States Grand Prix - 2005

The Vatican issued a set of "Ten Commandments" for drivers, telling motorists not to kill, not to drink and drive, and to help fellow travellers in case of accidents.