Showing posts with label Pike's Peak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pike's Peak. Show all posts

Saturday, October 03, 2026

rare to see a cool vintage photo with a sign like that


the 1959/1961 Devin C with a supercharged Corvair engine was fielded by Andy Granatelli in the 1961 Grand Prix at Riverside


The factory-built Devin C built by Bill Devin and his team in 1959. The cars developed by Devin deserve to be more famous than they are, in period they won 32 SCCA races, the 1956 SCCA H Modified National Championship, and they were six-time Pikes Peak Unlimited Class winners.

Bill Devin who invented the use of a toothed timing belt in an engine, he developed a version of the Deutsch-Bonnet engine with cylinders and heads from a Norton Manx and used timing belts to drive the overhead cams.


The car was tested for the October 1961 issue of Sports Car Graphic magazine before being borrowed by Andy and Vince Granatelli for high-speed supercharger testing at the Bonneville Salt Flats, which was detailed in the January 1962 issue of SCG. The Granatellis also ran the supercharged car at various drag strips, scaring away the competition with a sports-car record 12.44-second quarter-mile run at 109.75 mph.

A few weeks later, with the supercharger removed, the Devin C was entered by its first owner (the well-known dealer Hollywood Sports Cars) at the LA Times-Mirror Grand Prix at Riverside in October 1961. 

Dealership employee Pete Woods battled hall-of-fame racing giants like Stirling Moss, Jim Hall, Dan Gurney, Roger Penske, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Ken Miles, Walt Hansgen, George Follmer, and Augie Pabst during a 10-lap introductory qualifying race, before a seized engine prevented the car from running the main event.

Friday, November 07, 2025

a 68 Road Runner that is destined for Pikes Peak... how do I know? I talked to the owner/driver/pilot/awesome guy, and he's got one hell of a story - and a cooler job. He's on the Pikes Peak tech crew at the start of the race!


Richard and his buddy Ben, both grew up with a 68 383 4 speed Road Runner... how unreal is that? But their dads also both died when these guys were young. Tragic, and just unreal coincidence. Now they have partnered on this Road Runner to race on Pikes Peak next year, June 21, 2026

Ben's father passed away in 2023 three days before he was set to race for the first time at Pikes Peak. 

The first car he built with his dad was a 68 Road Runner and when Richard asked him if he could drive any car in Pikes Peak race, what would be? 

Ben responded "a road runner " 

Since Richard's father also had a Road Runner, things got really interesting. Richard lost his father in the Oklahoma City bombing and had been holding on to his dad’s car ever since. And both of their dad's cars were 68 383 4 speed cars!


That day the idea was born to build it for Pikes Peak. With some amazing help, the Road Runner was built in only 94 days to make SEMA. 

The team at Apex Auto Works absolutely crushed the build.




Richard's hoping to get Isky to sign that decal, it's been on the car forever... I hope he takes the window off the car and finds Isky and gets it autographed! 





I'm loving the wing, and how it attaches! When you figure that adding a wing is going to damage the original body, or the trunk lid, and try to figure out a way to get one on a classic Mopar without damaging anything? Brilliant

Starting with a Nascar chassis, removing 208 pounds of lead ballast in the frame, dropping the body of his dad's 68 Road Runner over that race car chassis, and getting the result that Plymouth was trying for in 1968 - a car ready for racing on the Nascar / Grand National tracks

https://www.facebook.com/ben.ryan.35175633/

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

awwww hell, Ol Smokey, the 1949 Ford I've featured a couple of times, has flown off Pikes Peak, 175 feet down, and rolled 9 times, then came to a stop utterly wrecked and won't be rebuilt. Driver is fine, but the brakes weren't (and had no redundancy system)




during last weekend's Pikes Peak Hill Climb, Smokey had a complete brake failure Birdsall recalled in an Instagram post.


The truck flew about 175 feet down the cliff onto it's roof, and then rolled 8 or 9 times before it came to a stop in a snow drift.




the cage, safety belts, and helmet were perfect. 


Pike's Peak racing 2023 is in the books, and on the video clips



Robin Shute captured his fourth title in five years, driving a 2018 Wolf TSC-FS in 8:40.080 and nudged second-place finisher Romain Dumas, also a four-time champion, by more than seven seconds.

Thursday, May 11, 2023

Lotus by Anstead, Button, and driven by Foust heading up Pike's Peak for the 101st Running June 25, 2023





Radford has been brought back to life, principally, by three men: Former F1 world champion Mr Button, who’ll do the development driving duties, TV presenter and car builder Ant Anstead and designer Mark Stubbs. The 62-2 will cost from around $400k and be offered in three ‘starter’ specs - Classic, Gold Leaf and JPS