Tuesday, October 10, 2006

SIX OF THE BEST - 1960s RACING CARS - 1

One of my adolescent passions was Motor Racing, and thankfully today, there are people of my own age, with infinitely more money than me, and equally, infinitely less sense, who still keep the iconic cars of that era in immaculate condition, and then blast them round a race track as if there is no tomorrow. Their argument, to which I totally subscribe, is that the only point in the existence of these beautiful machines, is to drive them flat out around a track as their designers intended. Usually, it is a glorious sight – occasionally it all ends in a lot of tears, but that's not a bad metaphor for an interesting life!

My loyal reader will have noticed already that photographs are a major part of this Blog. So this set of pictures combines the beauty, yes beauty, of the 1960s racing car with a photographer’s eye view of various metal “sculptures” which are part of the visual attraction of these machines. The shapes and form of the various images here are very simple. They reflect visually the Engineer’s desire to design and build something to achieve a simple engineering purpose, with no compromise whatsoever. The result of such a focused, dedicated and pure approach to design, almost always results in something visually very satisfying.

You may, of course think I’ve totally lost the plot by taking a series of pictures of car exhaust pipes and carburettor trumpets. But, to me, they show a simple perfection of purpose which does not occur too often in the engineering world. I have deliberately not done the "anorak" thing and annotated each picture with a detailed description of the car they portray. I'm showing them as mechanical works of art, and their provenance is, to me, unimportant.

And anyway, I like them, and that’s why they’re here!





No comments: