September 18, 2025 • 30 mins
This episode of The Logbook, supported by the International Motor Racing Research Center, explores the rapid revival of motor sports in Europe following World War II. Presented by Skip McGoun, the discussion delves into the financial and material resources, and motivations behind post-war racing. It contrasts entrepreneurial capitalism in Britain with national capitalism on the European continent, highlighting key figures and organizations in the early Grand Prix scene. The presentation also examines the psychological and cultural factors, such as the lingering wartime intensity and mechanical interest of returning soldiers, that fueled the resurgence of car racing as a means of maintaining the high-adrenaline experiences they had during the war.
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00:00 Post-War Racing Revival 01:18 The State of Europe Post-WWII; Early Post-War Races 03:28 The Constructors: Britain vs. The Continent 05:29 Financial and Material Resources 13:14 The Influence of Nationalism and Sentiment 15:34 Adrenaline and the Need for Speed 18:53 Conclusion, Reflections and Q&A Session 27:48 Closing Remarks and Credits====================
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Break Fix's History of MotorsportsSeries is brought to you in part
by the International Motor RacingResearch Center, as well as the
Society of Automotive Historians,the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
Commerce, and the Argo Singer family,
the best years of our lives,the rebirth of post-war European
Motor Sports by Skip McGowan.
(00:21):
World War II in Europe leftboth victorious and vanquished
countries devastated.
Yet, within weeks of the endof hostilities on September
9th, 1945, an automobile racewas held in Paris's bla Deone.
This presentation addresses thequestions, where did the financial
and material resources for an activepostwar racing program come from?
And perhaps even more importantly,why were they expended in what many
(00:43):
might regard as non-essential orperhaps even frivolous activity?
Skip McGowan is the William h CockEmeritus Professor of Finance at
Bucknell University and was a longtimevisiting professor at universities
in Slovenia and Montenegro.
He has presented and published onthe history and culture of finance,
as well as automobile history andculture, and served as area chair
(01:04):
of the vehicle culture section ofthe Popular Culture Association.
My interest in motor sports reallyhas been what's under the table.
You know, if you read my little bioin the brochure, what did it look
like at the end of World War ii?
Okay, so we had this classic image, andyeah, it maybe looked like that for a few
(01:24):
days, you know, maybe even a few weeksor it looked like that in New York City.
But there are other places wherethings were very, very different.
The end of World War IIlooked like this in Britain.
It looked like that inFrance, Germany, Italy.
But what surprised me was thatwithin weeks of the end of World
(01:44):
War II, there was an automobilerace in the bar de bologna.
So the question I had been askingmyself, maybe it's two questions.
How and why did this happen?
First of all, there's the question,how is we're looking at a place
where there was considerable.
Deprivation.
You know, there were shortages offood, shortages of cash, shortages
(02:06):
of all sorts of materials.
So how did they manage to puttogether a racing program so quickly?
But the other question, ofcourse, is why were these scarce
resources devoted to motor racing?
I mean, because obviously there area lot of other things that could
have been done with them at the time.
To approach this, and I cannotpretend that this is any sort of
(02:28):
scientific approach, but I tooka look early 1950s Grand Prix
racing shortly after World War ii.
Of course, they were racing automobilesthat had existed before the war, but
what I was interested in was whennew vehicles started being built.
So I took a look at all the vehicles thathad raced in the early to mid fifties,
(02:49):
and I came up with a list of thosethat had been designed and built after.
The end of the war, and that hadraced in at least several races over
several years, not just the ones thatmaybe were one and done that showed
up and then disappeared again, butones that hung around for a while.
These were the major players, andthe Hess represent the cash flows.
(03:11):
I'll get back to this a little later,but I wanted to show this down because
what I wanted to focus on here werethe constructors, you know, as kind
of the heart of this whole process.
So who were the people who built thenew vehicles that participated in
this very early Grand Prix racing?
And it turns out there were 10 ofthem, five of them were from Britain,
(03:32):
five of them were from the continent.
The five that were from Britainwere largely constructed by.
Businesses with mechanical interests.
To kind of rephrase that a bit,they were built by gearheads in
overall playing with their own money.
I don't mean this to be pejorative becausehonestly, the more I read about the folks
who did this, the more respect I had forthem and not just respect, I liked them.
(03:55):
These were people I would've liked tohave known, and this is who they were.
We had HWM Cooper, connot Van Wall.
And BRM.
Now, the continent was a little different.
These were businesses that were moreor less corporately connected, and I
would describe them as gearheads insuits playing with someone else's money.
(04:18):
So they didn't wear overalls, they woresuits, they didn't use their own money.
They were using someone else's money.
So we had Gordini Maserati.
Macho Mercedes, and of course Ferrari.
Just a few observationshere to begin with.
The groups illustrate two differentforms of industrial organizations.
(04:40):
The British companies were reallyrepresentative of what you might
call entrepreneurial capitalism.
Really, this applies almost acrossthe board in the industrial structure.
Britain was dealing with individualswho started their own businesses.
Maybe they grew, maybe they didn't, butit was a very individual thing versus
(05:00):
what we saw in the continent, which youmight refer to as national capitalism.
The idea being that there weregroups of related industries.
They were associated withcertain financial arrangements.
They probably had closeconnections with the government.
So we had really smaller organizations,larger organizations, but as I say here,
(05:22):
the motoring industry or the racing in.
Was really representative of somethingthat was much broader phenomenon.
Now, I did use the term gearheads, butthe idea was that regardless of the type
of organization, it all involved someonethat had obvious personal motivations in
racing, talking about money, which waskind of how I entered into this interest.
(05:47):
Was construction really a realbusiness or was it something else?
Now, the more I looked at this, Irealized that what went on there,
and not surprisingly, because we'retalking about the same era, was what
we're seeing in these early days ofpost-war racing seemed to me to resemble
the early days of rock and roll.
(06:10):
You had garage bands, and in thecase of Connot and HRM, these
were literally garage bands.
They built their carswithin their garages.
Cooper began as a garage band, butit's kind of like a garage band.
They got a recording contract.
Okay.
So they were able to kind ofmove upscale from their origins.
(06:32):
We also had groups withwealthy parents, so Van Wall.
Was an interest of Tony Vanderwell whohad made money with thin wall bearings.
And in the case of Maserati,lots of details here.
This was Ori who had a lot ofother industrial interests.
Okay.
And Maserati was among them.
(06:54):
So the racing activities receivedcontributions from these other larger
industrial concerns within the group.
You had groups with what Imight call gullible parents.
In other words, someone was willing to.
We're able to convince someoneelse that racing was a good
idea from a business standpoint.
(07:14):
So supposedly launch of getting involvedin racing would help sell launches.
This is the one, honestly, withMercedes that kind of baffles me
because it's like, okay, if werace, we're gonna sell Mercedes.
And we had an unfortunate personwho was abandoned by their parents.
Gordini was very closely associatedwith sim c. But Simcock kind of cut
(07:37):
'em loose when the cars deviatedtoo much on the track from the
ones that he was trying to sell.
You hear little bits and pieces oflaunch A going bankrupt and all of its.
Racing assets being transferred toFerrari, and you see little bits and
pieces suggesting that Fiat was theone that orchestrated this transaction.
(08:02):
And I can't help but think that somehowthe Italian government was involved.
In preserving the presence of thecountry or some sort of, you know,
national Italian product within racing.
This was certainly the case prior toWorld War ii, and I'm not sure that this
industrial governmental relationship.
(08:24):
It wasn't still in effect after the war.
VRM is a little different.
Okay.
We had this group of really significantBritish industrialists coming together
to produce kind of a British automobile.
I've not seen anything that indicated adirect involvement with the government.
(08:45):
But at the same time, all of these folkswere plugged in, you know, and if it
was necessary in some way to have thegovernment kind of grease the skids for
this project, I'm sure that they wereable to arrange that it could be done.
Bottom line is pretty much every oneof those vehicles and every one of
(09:06):
those constructors was depending uponsome sort of handout from someone.
The only one of these that I thinkyou might argue as a business
would be Cooper, but Cooper.
Was probably the only one that actuallyturned into a success at actually selling
a product that someone wanted to pay for.
They started out as a garageband, like a lot of the others.
So then the question is, asidefrom these handouts, was there
(09:29):
any other money flowing in.
To this process that might haveturned it into some sort of business.
So here's where I get back to this.
So we did have two sourcesof cash flowing in.
One was from sponsorships andthe other was from the promoters.
Even those cash flows arenot so easy to understand.
(09:50):
First of all, the sponsorshad to make money.
So you assume that, okay, thesponsors were using this as.
Kind of a marketing tool, butit's hard to value marketing.
You really can't say that, look,you know, we put this much into
sponsoring racing, and we can expectto get this much in sales out of it.
(10:11):
You know, I did make a presentation aboutthis last year, and there are lots of
intangible benefits that companies believethey can realize from sponsorships.
So it would be hard to argue that thisis like a strictly business activity.
Promoters had to not lose money.
(10:31):
One of the things that I alwaysfound interesting was it looks as
if these promoters of these racesimmediately after World War II were
not money making organizations.
They were clubs, regions, just.
Creating some sort of activity, andI noticed in the presentation it
was mentioned that NASCAR kind ofstepped in as a business because the
(10:51):
aaa, and I forget which the otherorganization weren't making a go of this.
Again, it does not appear that originallythis could even be referred to as
a business, but at least they couldcount the cash at the end of the.
Okay, so they could say, look, youknow, we're providing this service,
we're getting this much money in.
As a result of doing that, that'salmost as close as it came to business.
(11:13):
There had to be more going on.
Obviously something else wasdriving this revival of racing
right after World War ii.
So quickly keep in mind the twoquestions that I posed up front were how.
And why this was happening.
So the how, at least in one sense wasthat we're seeing handouts in various
(11:36):
ways to construct these vehicles.
You know, we're seeing money comingin from sponsors for something
that the sponsors felt they weregetting out of it, although I can't
help feeling that these almost werehandouts from sponsors as well.
Yeah, sure.
You can kind of sell that andsay that this is a marketing
expense, we'll put this money in.
But basically, and people wanted togo to the races, they wanted to hang
(12:00):
out in the pit areas and meet thedrivers and those sorts of things.
So, you know, hard pressedto consider that business.
And a lot of the races wereorganized as mainly just, you
know, kind of public events.
You know, the moneythere is pretty peculiar.
There were other advantagesthat kind of facilitated.
Racing right after World War ii.
(12:20):
First of all, one was that alot of the businesses in the war
really had made money, so themoney kind of came out of the war.
Vanderwell, I imagine, made quite a bitof money selling bearings during the war.
Another thing was there was asurplus of reasonable pavement.
It was not necessary to reallyspend a whole lot of money
(12:40):
constructing facilities.
I mean, this could be done onthe old aircraft tarmax that, you
know, were existing from the war.
There was a lot of scrap around.
It was interesting to, I mean, I mayget this wrong, but you know, Cooper's
original chassis, they took the frontends from two old Fiats and cut 'em in
half and put them together back to back.
(13:00):
But of course, I think what wasinteresting is the fact that this could
be done so inexpensively that theycreated kind of a market for inexpensive
vehicles that other people would purchase.
But yeah, there was a lot of stuffflying around that they could work with.
And finally, nationalistssentiment was still running high.
You know, the Italians werestill interested in having
(13:22):
a. Italy compete in some way.
The British wanted to see Britain competein some way, so you come out of the war
with actually some profits from the war.
You come out with somegood places to race.
You come out with kind ofa desire still to compete.
But I think there's more, and Ithink it's a little more subtle.
(13:44):
When I read a lot of the, uh, thingsthat are written about this area and
about the early post-war racing, alot of times they say, well, people
just wanted to get back to normal.
People wanted to get back todoing the sorts of things that
they had done before the war.
Forget about the war.
Get back to normal.
Remember, this is racing.
This isn't like going bowling likeI see on the billboard out there.
(14:08):
The question is why racing?
We need to consider.
The people who wanted to get backto normal weren't the same people
that were normal before the war.
They came back differently.
You know, I chose this image because,you know, there's a suggestion that the
original biker gangs after World WarII were, you know, were made up gis.
(14:31):
So yeah, okay, we wannaget back to normal.
But the people who were getting backto normal weren't the same people.
How are they different?
I don't know how accurate someof these characterizations are.
We turned into Gearhead Nation.
Everyone in the war to some extent,had to deal with something mechanical.
They had to know how to take care of it.
They had to know how to repair it.
(14:52):
So we had a nation of people thatwere really mechanically inclined.
And mechanically interestedand in support of that.
Now you can read thisquote from Raymond Mays.
And Raymond Mays was certainly notedfor using hyperbole when it served
his interests, but he anticipatedthis phenomenon when he was
(15:16):
soliciting contributions in order to.
Create BRM.
Okay, so one of, one of the rationaleshe gave was that this would exist.
He saw all of these people comingout of the war with this mechanical
aptitude in the mechanical interest.
Second, people wanted it fast and loud.
(15:38):
I'm not sure that this is anything new,but the war had been fast and loud.
And people wanted to continue withthe fast and loud, and this is the
one I think is maybe the most subtle,but the most significant people came
out of the war as adrenaline addicts.
Life was just never as exciting.
(15:59):
You know, I remember readingabout the settlement of the West.
You know, after the Civil War.
I can't help thinking what it was.
A lot of people came out ofthe war saying, look, running a
general store in Connecticut justdidn't have that thrill anymore.
So I'm gonna go out and dosomething a lot more interesting.
And I happen to run into this in one ofthe emails that I get from the Veterans
(16:21):
Administration, so maybe this wasn't justa post-World War II phenomenon, someone
thinks that there is still such a thingas an adrenaline addiction out there.
So my underlying argument was thatdespite what the literature often
says, people just wanna get backto normal and do normal things.
(16:42):
Racing was not a returnto post-war normal.
It was a continuation ofthe wartime intensity.
It was a way for people to capturethe best years of their lives.
Now, I don't know how many of you haveseen the movie or remember the movie
Dana Andrews before the war had workedat a soda Fountain, comes back from
(17:05):
the war and you know, these three guyswere sharing hop back to the hometown.
Frederick Marsh had been a banker.
I can't remember what HaroldHolland's job had been before the war.
I wanna focus on Dana Andrews.
Okay.
He was working at a sodafountain before the war.
In the war.
Obviously he had been a captain and hewas a bombardier, and I think a beat 24.
(17:31):
Big difference between pre-war,life and life in the Army Air Corps.
So he comes home and it turns out hiswartime marriage essentially fallen apart.
He shows an interest in Frederick March'sdaughter Theresa Wright, which doesn't
exactly make Frederick March too happy.
You know, you, you can kind of picture,this is actually a C, great movie.
(17:54):
You can picture the situation he's in.
Can't go back to doing what he did.
He can't go back to normal.
So what happens in the movie ishe ends up in an aircraft boneyard
where all of the surplus equipmentis being torn apart and scrapped.
So he climbs into a B 24 and he sitsdown in the Bombardier's position.
(18:18):
And you kind of get the parallels there.
The aircraft was post-war surplus, but ina sense he's kind of looking at himself
as post-war surplus as well, and theforeman and the, uh, scrap art comes up
to him as what, what are you doing there?
And is subsequently kind, you know,sympathetic that he's returned to
(18:39):
the best years of his life, whichwas sitting in a plexiglass canopy.
Dropping bombs.
Probably the only person in greaterdanger than he was was the tail gunner,
but it was the best years of his life.
It didn't just happen in a movie.
You can read this closingquotation that really zeroes in
(19:00):
on the motor racing situation.
Okay.
Abe Caee was one of theprincipals in founding HWM.
So you can see that he raced, ofcourse, before the war, raced after
the war, which was probably the closesthe came to what he had done during
the war, which he always regardedas the best years of his life.
(19:23):
So the how of racing.
People who had a personal interestin this in one way or another
we're able to scrape together themoney and the resources to do it.
The key though is why did they do it?
And to me, I think this provides one ofthe best explanations of why they did it.
They just weren't the same peoplethey were during the war and racing
(19:47):
might have been an activity that wasas close to recapturing that emotion
as anything else they could do.
Thanks very much.
Thanks.
That was great.
Do we have any questionsor comments on that?
So I have a, I guess a sort of a, maybea similar analogy to your thesis here
(20:10):
is, uh, a while back I watched PeterJackson's, they shall never grow old.
It's a fabulous World War I documentary.
And I wonder if there's a connectionbetween the lost generation, right?
These men that were just killed in massnumbers and early racing where they almost
became sort of desensitized to death.
You're referring to the post World War I?
(20:32):
Yes.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
Actually, I had studied the history ofBentley and how Bentley got started.
Bentley was building carsfor World War I aviators.
Okay, because they were thepeople from the gentleman
sportsman segment at the time.
He was building cars for them and theywere engaged in as closely as they could
(20:55):
to what they felt during World War I.Although it turned out, of course, a
lot of people ended up putting reallyheavy his Dan bodies on his automobile.
So kind of created like a, like a.Puzzle in terms of what a Bentley
really was, but this was whoBentley was building vehicles for.
It was it.
You're right.
It was the same thing was the racing.
You mentioned nationalism, the desirefor people in England, France, Germany,
(21:20):
to have a car they could take pride in.
So with that in mind, wouldn't thegovernments, even though their resources
were stretched and limited, and especiallywhen you look at your opening pictures
of people in despair, wouldn't thosegovernments wanna fund events that
would give them hope and excitementand a reason to be excited instead
(21:42):
of just living in a pile of rubble?
I don't know enough about the originalsituations in each of those countries,
but I agree with you a lot of.
Research can be done on thedirect and indirect support.
I tend to think at the time, and this isjust off the top of my head, governments
didn't have a lot of resources.
(22:03):
They had run up considerabledebts during the war.
Sure.
It was tough.
It was maybe, I suppose,moral support in a way.
If they could ease up on regulationsor maybe make sure that supplies
one thing, were available forsomething else, whatever they
could do that didn't cost anything.
Even if they could clear the streets to alap race to go through a particular, but I
(22:27):
suspect that this was definitely happeningin Italy and there were only hints.
Of it happening in Britainof a governmental connection?
Well, as and Zo Ferrari said, somuch of this stuff is under the
table and it's really, reallydifficult to find information as
to what really went on from thispolitical and and economic standpoint.
(22:48):
I think it'd be a great opportunity forsomeone in scholarship and people are kind
of, it's just nibbling around the edges.
Anyone else have any questions?
There's a comment from John Summersdovetailing off what you said.
He said, Sterling Moss's successwas in part reverence in Britain is
down to the idea of Britain winningabroad and then taking your mind
(23:09):
off of the reign and the poverty andeverything that was going on at home.
So I guess to your point aboutnationalization and patriotism and
all those things, so he just wantedto throw that out there to be in
concert with what you're saying.
Well that, and I know that theBritish automobile industry after
World War II was highly expertoriented to earn foreign exchange.
You know, the government wasencouraging companies to produce
(23:30):
the automobiles that could be soldin the United States to earn money.
I wanted to ask a question about yourconcept of entrepreneurial capitalism
versus national capitalism, and inparticular, I'm interested, I think, in
how that manifests in the United States.
And if you've thought through the post-wardimensions of construction of special
automobiles in the United States andhow that differs or is similar to the
(23:53):
British perspective, the literature onthat subject is like massive because
it's, this is not just automobiles.
This is.
Pretty much across the board.
A lot of it had to do with the way capitalis allocated in the different areas.
And in Britain and the UnitedStates, companies would raise money,
presumably at arms length fromcapital markets, which is today.
(24:18):
We still see that stock ownershipbeing much more common in the
United States and Britain, whereas.
On the continent, financing generallywent through banks with close
relationships to industrial combines.
Just for one example, in Germany,they're doing everything they can to
try to get people used to the ideaof investing in stocks and having a
(24:42):
better investor connection with thecompanies as opposed to the companies
being connected to the larger banks.
In fact, they designed the stockexchange to make it look exciting.
If you ever get a chance to go toFrankfurt and go to the stock exchange,
well worth the visit all for show,but that's the reason behind it.
This may be related, it's somehowconnected to what you're talking about,
(25:03):
but I had read somewhere along theline that one of the reasons death was
tolerated so much in auto racing was that.
People were looking to replacetheir World War II heroes, which
often were killed in plane crashesand fighter pilots and so forth.
That auto racing becamethat outlet for a hero.
(25:25):
And yes, it was high risk and it oftenincluded death, but it was accepted.
But that.
How those heroes were formed andare made, and it was the vicarious
thrill of imagining that was you.
I'd have to disagree with that.
I don't think anyone goes to thefact to see people fail in, oh, no.
Uhuh.
No, I'm not saying that.
(25:46):
It's just the idea of going to thetrack to feel as if you're the hero.
You're driving fast.
Being on the edge.
Yes.
Yeah, that's that part.
There were so many drivers killed.
Oh no.
I started, no, I completely agree withyou on that, that that was not, the
tolerance was there for period, and I'mnot suggesting that either, but I just
(26:08):
was an interesting concept that I readand I just think, yeah, sometimes still.
Yeah.
Is that possible?
I'm just gonna question your flow chart.
Yeah, all, all of the arrows went,the money went to the drivers
and I don't think that was true.
Pardon?
I said the flow chart that you put up,all of the arrows went to the drivers.
(26:31):
Like they were the ones getting the money.
And I don't think that's true.
The air, no.
The arrow simply means they got something.
Yeah.
Maybe, you know, I've talked to even theones that did survive, they might have
gotten something, although, you know.
That did change over time.
Yeah.
Well, and many times they were, theywere the sources many times as well.
When you go back, even in postWorld War ii, the, the wealthy,
(26:54):
you know, sporting gentlemen werethe sources of some that money.
But anyway, I just was commenting'cause it was like, no, that's not true.
Not a whole lot.
Well, and the other thing I'm just as apersonal experience that when I went to
Bonneville in 2017, I was just reallyamazed at the bottle of Salt Flats.
That, and, and of course this is.
Will passed post World War, but how manyof the people that run and build cars
(27:15):
and run at Bonneville were ex-military?
I mean, they almost all talked about that.
And I mean, it was a real act, you know,an activity that the military was a,
this was a place for them to go racingand, and to use their skills and have
fun and, and camaraderie and all of that.
So it was a culture that reallyattracted, uh, military people.
Mm-hmm.
Just share that actually, a lotof the Bonneville cars were, yeah.
(27:35):
Great analogy.
Anyone else have any other questions?
Thank you, skip.
That was great.
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Society of Automotive Historians,the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
Commerce, and the Argo Singer family,
the best years of our lives,the rebirth of post-war European
Motor Sports by Skip McGowan.
(00:21):
World War II in Europe leftboth victorious and vanquished
countries devastated.
Yet, within weeks of the endof hostilities on September
9th, 1945, an automobile racewas held in Paris's bla Deone.
This presentation addresses thequestions, where did the financial
and material resources for an activepostwar racing program come from?
And perhaps even more importantly,why were they expended in what many
(00:43):
might regard as non-essential orperhaps even frivolous activity?
Skip McGowan is the William h CockEmeritus Professor of Finance at
Bucknell University and was a longtimevisiting professor at universities
in Slovenia and Montenegro.
He has presented and published onthe history and culture of finance,
as well as automobile history andculture, and served as area chair
(01:04):
of the vehicle culture section ofthe Popular Culture Association.
My interest in motor sports reallyhas been what's under the table.
You know, if you read my little bioin the brochure, what did it look
like at the end of World War ii?
Okay, so we had this classic image, andyeah, it maybe looked like that for a few
(01:24):
days, you know, maybe even a few weeksor it looked like that in New York City.
But there are other places wherethings were very, very different.
The end of World War IIlooked like this in Britain.
It looked like that inFrance, Germany, Italy.
But what surprised me was thatwithin weeks of the end of World
(01:44):
War II, there was an automobilerace in the bar de bologna.
So the question I had been askingmyself, maybe it's two questions.
How and why did this happen?
First of all, there's the question,how is we're looking at a place
where there was considerable.
Deprivation.
You know, there were shortages offood, shortages of cash, shortages
(02:06):
of all sorts of materials.
So how did they manage to puttogether a racing program so quickly?
But the other question, ofcourse, is why were these scarce
resources devoted to motor racing?
I mean, because obviously there area lot of other things that could
have been done with them at the time.
To approach this, and I cannotpretend that this is any sort of
(02:28):
scientific approach, but I tooka look early 1950s Grand Prix
racing shortly after World War ii.
Of course, they were racing automobilesthat had existed before the war, but
what I was interested in was whennew vehicles started being built.
So I took a look at all the vehicles thathad raced in the early to mid fifties,
(02:49):
and I came up with a list of thosethat had been designed and built after.
The end of the war, and that hadraced in at least several races over
several years, not just the ones thatmaybe were one and done that showed
up and then disappeared again, butones that hung around for a while.
These were the major players, andthe Hess represent the cash flows.
(03:11):
I'll get back to this a little later,but I wanted to show this down because
what I wanted to focus on here werethe constructors, you know, as kind
of the heart of this whole process.
So who were the people who built thenew vehicles that participated in
this very early Grand Prix racing?
And it turns out there were 10 ofthem, five of them were from Britain,
(03:32):
five of them were from the continent.
The five that were from Britainwere largely constructed by.
Businesses with mechanical interests.
To kind of rephrase that a bit,they were built by gearheads in
overall playing with their own money.
I don't mean this to be pejorative becausehonestly, the more I read about the folks
who did this, the more respect I had forthem and not just respect, I liked them.
(03:55):
These were people I would've liked tohave known, and this is who they were.
We had HWM Cooper, connot Van Wall.
And BRM.
Now, the continent was a little different.
These were businesses that were moreor less corporately connected, and I
would describe them as gearheads insuits playing with someone else's money.
(04:18):
So they didn't wear overalls, they woresuits, they didn't use their own money.
They were using someone else's money.
So we had Gordini Maserati.
Macho Mercedes, and of course Ferrari.
Just a few observationshere to begin with.
The groups illustrate two differentforms of industrial organizations.
(04:40):
The British companies were reallyrepresentative of what you might
call entrepreneurial capitalism.
Really, this applies almost acrossthe board in the industrial structure.
Britain was dealing with individualswho started their own businesses.
Maybe they grew, maybe they didn't, butit was a very individual thing versus
(05:00):
what we saw in the continent, which youmight refer to as national capitalism.
The idea being that there weregroups of related industries.
They were associated withcertain financial arrangements.
They probably had closeconnections with the government.
So we had really smaller organizations,larger organizations, but as I say here,
(05:22):
the motoring industry or the racing in.
Was really representative of somethingthat was much broader phenomenon.
Now, I did use the term gearheads, butthe idea was that regardless of the type
of organization, it all involved someonethat had obvious personal motivations in
racing, talking about money, which waskind of how I entered into this interest.
(05:47):
Was construction really a realbusiness or was it something else?
Now, the more I looked at this, Irealized that what went on there,
and not surprisingly, because we'retalking about the same era, was what
we're seeing in these early days ofpost-war racing seemed to me to resemble
the early days of rock and roll.
(06:10):
You had garage bands, and in thecase of Connot and HRM, these
were literally garage bands.
They built their carswithin their garages.
Cooper began as a garage band, butit's kind of like a garage band.
They got a recording contract.
Okay.
So they were able to kind ofmove upscale from their origins.
(06:32):
We also had groups withwealthy parents, so Van Wall.
Was an interest of Tony Vanderwell whohad made money with thin wall bearings.
And in the case of Maserati,lots of details here.
This was Ori who had a lot ofother industrial interests.
Okay.
And Maserati was among them.
(06:54):
So the racing activities receivedcontributions from these other larger
industrial concerns within the group.
You had groups with what Imight call gullible parents.
In other words, someone was willing to.
We're able to convince someoneelse that racing was a good
idea from a business standpoint.
(07:14):
So supposedly launch of getting involvedin racing would help sell launches.
This is the one, honestly, withMercedes that kind of baffles me
because it's like, okay, if werace, we're gonna sell Mercedes.
And we had an unfortunate personwho was abandoned by their parents.
Gordini was very closely associatedwith sim c. But Simcock kind of cut
(07:37):
'em loose when the cars deviatedtoo much on the track from the
ones that he was trying to sell.
You hear little bits and pieces oflaunch A going bankrupt and all of its.
Racing assets being transferred toFerrari, and you see little bits and
pieces suggesting that Fiat was theone that orchestrated this transaction.
(08:02):
And I can't help but think that somehowthe Italian government was involved.
In preserving the presence of thecountry or some sort of, you know,
national Italian product within racing.
This was certainly the case prior toWorld War ii, and I'm not sure that this
industrial governmental relationship.
(08:24):
It wasn't still in effect after the war.
VRM is a little different.
Okay.
We had this group of really significantBritish industrialists coming together
to produce kind of a British automobile.
I've not seen anything that indicated adirect involvement with the government.
(08:45):
But at the same time, all of these folkswere plugged in, you know, and if it
was necessary in some way to have thegovernment kind of grease the skids for
this project, I'm sure that they wereable to arrange that it could be done.
Bottom line is pretty much every oneof those vehicles and every one of
(09:06):
those constructors was depending uponsome sort of handout from someone.
The only one of these that I thinkyou might argue as a business
would be Cooper, but Cooper.
Was probably the only one that actuallyturned into a success at actually selling
a product that someone wanted to pay for.
They started out as a garageband, like a lot of the others.
So then the question is, asidefrom these handouts, was there
(09:29):
any other money flowing in.
To this process that might haveturned it into some sort of business.
So here's where I get back to this.
So we did have two sourcesof cash flowing in.
One was from sponsorships andthe other was from the promoters.
Even those cash flows arenot so easy to understand.
(09:50):
First of all, the sponsorshad to make money.
So you assume that, okay, thesponsors were using this as.
Kind of a marketing tool, butit's hard to value marketing.
You really can't say that, look,you know, we put this much into
sponsoring racing, and we can expectto get this much in sales out of it.
(10:11):
You know, I did make a presentation aboutthis last year, and there are lots of
intangible benefits that companies believethey can realize from sponsorships.
So it would be hard to argue that thisis like a strictly business activity.
Promoters had to not lose money.
(10:31):
One of the things that I alwaysfound interesting was it looks as
if these promoters of these racesimmediately after World War II were
not money making organizations.
They were clubs, regions, just.
Creating some sort of activity, andI noticed in the presentation it
was mentioned that NASCAR kind ofstepped in as a business because the
(10:51):
aaa, and I forget which the otherorganization weren't making a go of this.
Again, it does not appear that originallythis could even be referred to as
a business, but at least they couldcount the cash at the end of the.
Okay, so they could say, look, youknow, we're providing this service,
we're getting this much money in.
As a result of doing that, that'salmost as close as it came to business.
(11:13):
There had to be more going on.
Obviously something else wasdriving this revival of racing
right after World War ii.
So quickly keep in mind the twoquestions that I posed up front were how.
And why this was happening.
So the how, at least in one sense wasthat we're seeing handouts in various
(11:36):
ways to construct these vehicles.
You know, we're seeing money comingin from sponsors for something
that the sponsors felt they weregetting out of it, although I can't
help feeling that these almost werehandouts from sponsors as well.
Yeah, sure.
You can kind of sell that andsay that this is a marketing
expense, we'll put this money in.
But basically, and people wanted togo to the races, they wanted to hang
(12:00):
out in the pit areas and meet thedrivers and those sorts of things.
So, you know, hard pressedto consider that business.
And a lot of the races wereorganized as mainly just, you
know, kind of public events.
You know, the moneythere is pretty peculiar.
There were other advantagesthat kind of facilitated.
Racing right after World War ii.
(12:20):
First of all, one was that alot of the businesses in the war
really had made money, so themoney kind of came out of the war.
Vanderwell, I imagine, made quite a bitof money selling bearings during the war.
Another thing was there was asurplus of reasonable pavement.
It was not necessary to reallyspend a whole lot of money
(12:40):
constructing facilities.
I mean, this could be done onthe old aircraft tarmax that, you
know, were existing from the war.
There was a lot of scrap around.
It was interesting to, I mean, I mayget this wrong, but you know, Cooper's
original chassis, they took the frontends from two old Fiats and cut 'em in
half and put them together back to back.
(13:00):
But of course, I think what wasinteresting is the fact that this could
be done so inexpensively that theycreated kind of a market for inexpensive
vehicles that other people would purchase.
But yeah, there was a lot of stuffflying around that they could work with.
And finally, nationalistssentiment was still running high.
You know, the Italians werestill interested in having
(13:22):
a. Italy compete in some way.
The British wanted to see Britain competein some way, so you come out of the war
with actually some profits from the war.
You come out with somegood places to race.
You come out with kind ofa desire still to compete.
But I think there's more, and Ithink it's a little more subtle.
(13:44):
When I read a lot of the, uh, thingsthat are written about this area and
about the early post-war racing, alot of times they say, well, people
just wanted to get back to normal.
People wanted to get back todoing the sorts of things that
they had done before the war.
Forget about the war.
Get back to normal.
Remember, this is racing.
This isn't like going bowling likeI see on the billboard out there.
(14:08):
The question is why racing?
We need to consider.
The people who wanted to get backto normal weren't the same people
that were normal before the war.
They came back differently.
You know, I chose this image because,you know, there's a suggestion that the
original biker gangs after World WarII were, you know, were made up gis.
(14:31):
So yeah, okay, we wannaget back to normal.
But the people who were getting backto normal weren't the same people.
How are they different?
I don't know how accurate someof these characterizations are.
We turned into Gearhead Nation.
Everyone in the war to some extent,had to deal with something mechanical.
They had to know how to take care of it.
They had to know how to repair it.
(14:52):
So we had a nation of people thatwere really mechanically inclined.
And mechanically interestedand in support of that.
Now you can read thisquote from Raymond Mays.
And Raymond Mays was certainly notedfor using hyperbole when it served
his interests, but he anticipatedthis phenomenon when he was
(15:16):
soliciting contributions in order to.
Create BRM.
Okay, so one of, one of the rationaleshe gave was that this would exist.
He saw all of these people comingout of the war with this mechanical
aptitude in the mechanical interest.
Second, people wanted it fast and loud.
(15:38):
I'm not sure that this is anything new,but the war had been fast and loud.
And people wanted to continue withthe fast and loud, and this is the
one I think is maybe the most subtle,but the most significant people came
out of the war as adrenaline addicts.
Life was just never as exciting.
(15:59):
You know, I remember readingabout the settlement of the West.
You know, after the Civil War.
I can't help thinking what it was.
A lot of people came out ofthe war saying, look, running a
general store in Connecticut justdidn't have that thrill anymore.
So I'm gonna go out and dosomething a lot more interesting.
And I happen to run into this in one ofthe emails that I get from the Veterans
(16:21):
Administration, so maybe this wasn't justa post-World War II phenomenon, someone
thinks that there is still such a thingas an adrenaline addiction out there.
So my underlying argument was thatdespite what the literature often
says, people just wanna get backto normal and do normal things.
(16:42):
Racing was not a returnto post-war normal.
It was a continuation ofthe wartime intensity.
It was a way for people to capturethe best years of their lives.
Now, I don't know how many of you haveseen the movie or remember the movie
Dana Andrews before the war had workedat a soda Fountain, comes back from
(17:05):
the war and you know, these three guyswere sharing hop back to the hometown.
Frederick Marsh had been a banker.
I can't remember what HaroldHolland's job had been before the war.
I wanna focus on Dana Andrews.
Okay.
He was working at a sodafountain before the war.
In the war.
Obviously he had been a captain and hewas a bombardier, and I think a beat 24.
(17:31):
Big difference between pre-war,life and life in the Army Air Corps.
So he comes home and it turns out hiswartime marriage essentially fallen apart.
He shows an interest in Frederick March'sdaughter Theresa Wright, which doesn't
exactly make Frederick March too happy.
You know, you, you can kind of picture,this is actually a C, great movie.
(17:54):
You can picture the situation he's in.
Can't go back to doing what he did.
He can't go back to normal.
So what happens in the movie ishe ends up in an aircraft boneyard
where all of the surplus equipmentis being torn apart and scrapped.
So he climbs into a B 24 and he sitsdown in the Bombardier's position.
(18:18):
And you kind of get the parallels there.
The aircraft was post-war surplus, but ina sense he's kind of looking at himself
as post-war surplus as well, and theforeman and the, uh, scrap art comes up
to him as what, what are you doing there?
And is subsequently kind, you know,sympathetic that he's returned to
(18:39):
the best years of his life, whichwas sitting in a plexiglass canopy.
Dropping bombs.
Probably the only person in greaterdanger than he was was the tail gunner,
but it was the best years of his life.
It didn't just happen in a movie.
You can read this closingquotation that really zeroes in
(19:00):
on the motor racing situation.
Okay.
Abe Caee was one of theprincipals in founding HWM.
So you can see that he raced, ofcourse, before the war, raced after
the war, which was probably the closesthe came to what he had done during
the war, which he always regardedas the best years of his life.
(19:23):
So the how of racing.
People who had a personal interestin this in one way or another
we're able to scrape together themoney and the resources to do it.
The key though is why did they do it?
And to me, I think this provides one ofthe best explanations of why they did it.
They just weren't the same peoplethey were during the war and racing
(19:47):
might have been an activity that wasas close to recapturing that emotion
as anything else they could do.
Thanks very much.
Thanks.
That was great.
Do we have any questionsor comments on that?
So I have a, I guess a sort of a, maybea similar analogy to your thesis here
(20:10):
is, uh, a while back I watched PeterJackson's, they shall never grow old.
It's a fabulous World War I documentary.
And I wonder if there's a connectionbetween the lost generation, right?
These men that were just killed in massnumbers and early racing where they almost
became sort of desensitized to death.
You're referring to the post World War I?
(20:32):
Yes.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
Actually, I had studied the history ofBentley and how Bentley got started.
Bentley was building carsfor World War I aviators.
Okay, because they were thepeople from the gentleman
sportsman segment at the time.
He was building cars for them and theywere engaged in as closely as they could
(20:55):
to what they felt during World War I.Although it turned out, of course, a
lot of people ended up putting reallyheavy his Dan bodies on his automobile.
So kind of created like a, like a.Puzzle in terms of what a Bentley
really was, but this was whoBentley was building vehicles for.
It was it.
You're right.
It was the same thing was the racing.
You mentioned nationalism, the desirefor people in England, France, Germany,
(21:20):
to have a car they could take pride in.
So with that in mind, wouldn't thegovernments, even though their resources
were stretched and limited, and especiallywhen you look at your opening pictures
of people in despair, wouldn't thosegovernments wanna fund events that
would give them hope and excitementand a reason to be excited instead
(21:42):
of just living in a pile of rubble?
I don't know enough about the originalsituations in each of those countries,
but I agree with you a lot of.
Research can be done on thedirect and indirect support.
I tend to think at the time, and this isjust off the top of my head, governments
didn't have a lot of resources.
(22:03):
They had run up considerabledebts during the war.
Sure.
It was tough.
It was maybe, I suppose,moral support in a way.
If they could ease up on regulationsor maybe make sure that supplies
one thing, were available forsomething else, whatever they
could do that didn't cost anything.
Even if they could clear the streets to alap race to go through a particular, but I
(22:27):
suspect that this was definitely happeningin Italy and there were only hints.
Of it happening in Britainof a governmental connection?
Well, as and Zo Ferrari said, somuch of this stuff is under the
table and it's really, reallydifficult to find information as
to what really went on from thispolitical and and economic standpoint.
(22:48):
I think it'd be a great opportunity forsomeone in scholarship and people are kind
of, it's just nibbling around the edges.
Anyone else have any questions?
There's a comment from John Summersdovetailing off what you said.
He said, Sterling Moss's successwas in part reverence in Britain is
down to the idea of Britain winningabroad and then taking your mind
(23:09):
off of the reign and the poverty andeverything that was going on at home.
So I guess to your point aboutnationalization and patriotism and
all those things, so he just wantedto throw that out there to be in
concert with what you're saying.
Well that, and I know that theBritish automobile industry after
World War II was highly expertoriented to earn foreign exchange.
You know, the government wasencouraging companies to produce
(23:30):
the automobiles that could be soldin the United States to earn money.
I wanted to ask a question about yourconcept of entrepreneurial capitalism
versus national capitalism, and inparticular, I'm interested, I think, in
how that manifests in the United States.
And if you've thought through the post-wardimensions of construction of special
automobiles in the United States andhow that differs or is similar to the
(23:53):
British perspective, the literature onthat subject is like massive because
it's, this is not just automobiles.
This is.
Pretty much across the board.
A lot of it had to do with the way capitalis allocated in the different areas.
And in Britain and the UnitedStates, companies would raise money,
presumably at arms length fromcapital markets, which is today.
(24:18):
We still see that stock ownershipbeing much more common in the
United States and Britain, whereas.
On the continent, financing generallywent through banks with close
relationships to industrial combines.
Just for one example, in Germany,they're doing everything they can to
try to get people used to the ideaof investing in stocks and having a
(24:42):
better investor connection with thecompanies as opposed to the companies
being connected to the larger banks.
In fact, they designed the stockexchange to make it look exciting.
If you ever get a chance to go toFrankfurt and go to the stock exchange,
well worth the visit all for show,but that's the reason behind it.
This may be related, it's somehowconnected to what you're talking about,
(25:03):
but I had read somewhere along theline that one of the reasons death was
tolerated so much in auto racing was that.
People were looking to replacetheir World War II heroes, which
often were killed in plane crashesand fighter pilots and so forth.
That auto racing becamethat outlet for a hero.
(25:25):
And yes, it was high risk and it oftenincluded death, but it was accepted.
But that.
How those heroes were formed andare made, and it was the vicarious
thrill of imagining that was you.
I'd have to disagree with that.
I don't think anyone goes to thefact to see people fail in, oh, no.
Uhuh.
No, I'm not saying that.
(25:46):
It's just the idea of going to thetrack to feel as if you're the hero.
You're driving fast.
Being on the edge.
Yes.
Yeah, that's that part.
There were so many drivers killed.
Oh no.
I started, no, I completely agree withyou on that, that that was not, the
tolerance was there for period, and I'mnot suggesting that either, but I just
(26:08):
was an interesting concept that I readand I just think, yeah, sometimes still.
Yeah.
Is that possible?
I'm just gonna question your flow chart.
Yeah, all, all of the arrows went,the money went to the drivers
and I don't think that was true.
Pardon?
I said the flow chart that you put up,all of the arrows went to the drivers.
(26:31):
Like they were the ones getting the money.
And I don't think that's true.
The air, no.
The arrow simply means they got something.
Yeah.
Maybe, you know, I've talked to even theones that did survive, they might have
gotten something, although, you know.
That did change over time.
Yeah.
Well, and many times they were, theywere the sources many times as well.
When you go back, even in postWorld War ii, the, the wealthy,
(26:54):
you know, sporting gentlemen werethe sources of some that money.
But anyway, I just was commenting'cause it was like, no, that's not true.
Not a whole lot.
Well, and the other thing I'm just as apersonal experience that when I went to
Bonneville in 2017, I was just reallyamazed at the bottle of Salt Flats.
That, and, and of course this is.
Will passed post World War, but how manyof the people that run and build cars
(27:15):
and run at Bonneville were ex-military?
I mean, they almost all talked about that.
And I mean, it was a real act, you know,an activity that the military was a,
this was a place for them to go racingand, and to use their skills and have
fun and, and camaraderie and all of that.
So it was a culture that reallyattracted, uh, military people.
Mm-hmm.
Just share that actually, a lotof the Bonneville cars were, yeah.
(27:35):
Great analogy.
Anyone else have any other questions?
Thank you, skip.
That was great.
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Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect,share, and preserve the history
(27:58):
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To learn more about the center,visit www.racing archives.org.
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Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.