In the '70s and '80s, freelancers got a chance to drive some great race cars. For the March '71 issue, Karl Ludvigsen pushed the 502-cubic-inch Chevy-powered March 707 Can-Am car to 170 mph on Riverside's backstraight. He also gave its brakes a workout, as his lap time was some 30 seconds slower than regular driver Chris Amon. Jose Rosinksi, in what may be the only thing he ever did for the magazine, wrote of his drive in the six-wheel Tyrrell P34 Formula One car for the Aug. '77 issue. Senior Editor William Jeanes drove a Chevy Monte Carlo NASCAR Winston Cup car at Charlotte for the Sept. '81 issue. Contributing Editor Burge Hulett described his drive in a 1000-horsepower '73 Porsche 917-30 Can-Am car for the March '82 issue. Trust me, freelancers would have to arm-wrestle me for such juicy assignments today.
The first article labeled "track test" appeared in Oct. '76, but no editors drove George Follmer's Porsche Turbo Carrera RSR, and no conventional performance data accompanied the article.
Associate Editor Peter Frey co-drove Herb Adams' Pontiac "Fire-Am" in the '79 24 Hours of Daytona. Frey said. "The Fire-Am concept is that of a street car modified sufficiently to make it a safe, reliable, competitive, racing car." I put a similar Adams creation, an '97 SLP Camaro Z28 SS prototype, on the pole for the '96 Longest Day of Nelson 24-hour street stock race and led the first hour and a half, and described it in an Oct. '96 "Performance Trends" piece.
Race car tests became more frequent when Ron Grable, a highly accomplished professional race driver, joined the staff as Engineering Editor in 1981. His first article was a test of a Mazda RX-7 IMSA GTU car for the Nov. '81 issue. Race cars that Grable tested for the magazine included a pair of Le Mans-winning Porsches, a Lola-Mazda IMSA GTP car that ran on BFGoodrich DOT-spec radials, Rod Millen's Mazda RX-7 PRO Rally car, a Spice-Pontiac GTP car, and the Junior Johnson/Darrell Waltrip NASCAR Grand National (now Winston Cup) car. Grable also went to Talladega to run the Ramhoc Pontiac Cup car regularly driven by Neil Bonnett only to discover the team had brought a short-track car not capable of full speed. (Was this a communication error or a ploy to keep us from going too fast? You decide.)
Despite the fact that my racing resume pales in comparison to Grable's, I convinced International Race of Champions boss Jay Signore to let me run Talladega in one of his full-race-spec Firebirds: "After warming the oil, I locked the throttle to the floor and left it there until I was ready to pull into the pits," I reported in the Sept. '96 issue. "My right calf muscle was sore for two days." My average: 182.7 mph. (Note to Jay: I didn't crash that car, but Jeff Gordon did.)
In a previous life, I was involved in one of Grable's early race car tests from the other side of the fence. As a then-PR flack for the Sports Car Club of America, I sold Grable on the idea of testing a Pontiac Trans Am prepared by Gordy Oftedahl and driven by Bob Raub in SCCA's CRC Chemicals Trans-Am Championship. Race car tests don't change much over the years: "The car's ignition system overwhelmed our onboard test computer, and we were unable to get the hard numbers we wanted," wrote Grable in the Aug. '82 issue.
For most of the last 20 years, Motor Trend has had a race driver or two on its masthead. In the March '87 issue Feature Editor Rick Titus tested five SCCA Escort Endurance Championship racers and then went on to win an '87 class championship in a Saleen Mustang. Road Test Editor Michael Brockman, whose long list of successes in IMSA racing includes a class win in the '95 24 Hours of Daytona, put his road racing experience to full use testing a pair of World SportsCars, a Spice-Lexus for the March '95 issue and a Ferrari 333SP for the Jan. '96 issue.
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