1954 Pebble Beach Race Footage - in COLOR!

Oh what a tease!  The Old Motor blog posted a link to five minutes of beautiful color film of the 1954 Pebble Beach race - probably the best racing footage I've ever seen from that era.  You may remember that I wrote a little bit about the this race when I discovered that Crosley/Hmod racing legend Harry Eyerly can be seen in The Fast and the Furious, a Hollywood movie filmed in part at the race.  And Eyerly's 'Porsche Duster' wasn't the only Crosley-powered car on hand: two Crosley/Siatas and several Crosley specials were also entered.  I believe that one of those specials, #122, driven by Doc Young, was powered by a twin cam Crosley engine that Young had built in his home workshop!  I had high hopes of spotting multiple Crosleys, but alas, I didn't spot a single bit of Cincinnati iron in this footage, although there are a couple of unidentifiable small cars that possibly might have had Lloyd Taylor's baby under the bonnet.  Good stuff none the less.

Harry Eyerly: Movie Star

One other thing I did while Liv was out of town: watched a car flick that's been on my 'to see' list for a long time: the original 1955 Fast and the Furious.  Liv is a movie nut, and she'll watch almost anything, but I couldn't ask her to sit through a movie this bad.  If it weren't for the racing scenes (OK, and Dorothy Malone) I probably couldn't have made it through.

Screenwriter Roger Corman lifted the basics of the plot from Hitchcock's 1942 classic, Saboteur: innocent man (John Ireland), accused of murder, escapes and kidnaps a young woman and steals her car.  As they travel together she begins to believe his story.  In this version, the car is a race-ready Jaguar XK120, and the goal is to drive the Jag in a road race that enters Mexico, and then just keep going south.

Whatever.  The plot is pretty thin and the only thing holding the flick together are the scenes with race cars.  I held out for an hour, almost, but not quite falling asleep, when WHAM - I was wide awake!   When  our hero pulls his Jag into the starting lineup, what should be directly behind him, but Harry Eyerly's legendary #54 Crosley special, the Porsche Duster, with  - I'm fairly certain - Harry Eyerly at the wheel!  After the Jag is out of the way, Harry idles up to his space in line and then rolls offscreen.  It's brief (15 seconds, maybe) but it was awesome to see Eyerly's car totally in context.

I hoped that the car would show up again in the racing footage that followed, but it only flashed by once as the cars took off.  I can't be 100% sure it was Eyerly driving, but it sure looks like his helmet, and, why would they have someone else drive it? 

I watched the movie on Netflix instant play, but it's also on HULU and even on You Tube, although the picture quality is lower on You Tube.  If you don't want to sit through the whole thing, Eyerly comes in at almost exactly the one hour mark; in my book, he's the star of this flick.

Speaking of Harry Eyerly...

Another site I check almost every day is Bring a Trailer.  The host profiles interesting cars that he has found available for sale, with a heavy focus on vintage sports cars.

This morning, what should show up on BaT but a vintage Crosley HMod project for sale!  The Unicorn is a 1952 Crosley special, originally built in SF.  I've seen CL postings for this car and tried to contact the owner, but never got a call back.  Probably for the best since I have enough projects (as you may have noticed!)

I'm very jealous that whoever buys this car will have access to all of these gorgeous vintage photos of the car in its heyday... I have almost no provenance for any car that I own.  Of course the first thing I noticed in the photo above (Laguna Seca, 1957) was that the Unicorn is lined up right in front of the Eyerly Special mentioned in the post below.   As cool as the Unicorn is, I'll still bet Eyerly lapped him.