2012 Kuwait Concours d’Elegance – day 3 - Motoring Middle East: Car news, Reviews and Buying guidesMotoring Middle East: Car news, Reviews and Buying guides

2012 Kuwait Concours d’Elegance – day 3

February 20, 2012

A visual history of motor racing

By Shahzad Sheikh

This year’s themed exhibit at the Kuwait Concours d’Elegance was a lineup of historical racing cars – amazing to see such beautifully presented cars that once went wheel-to-wheel in the heat of battle at iconic races, driven by legendary drivers.

It’s the Ferrari Breadvan – a named coined by the British press which was less than praiseworthy about this car’s pointed nose, flat roofline and box-like Kammback. But I rather liked it’s brutal elegance and viewed in profile it certainly looks aerodynamic. This car is the Ferrari 250GT Breadvan made in 1962 from a 1961 Ferrari 250 SWB on chassic no 2819GT.

And it’s something of a contentious car: Count Giovanni Volpi had upset Enzo Ferrari, so he wouldn’t sell him a GTO. So instead the Count commissioned engineer Giotti Bizzarrini to build him something even faster to compete against the 1962 250 GTO at the Le Mans 24hrs. Bizzarrini upgraded the SWB to GTO specs then went one better with body specialists Piero Drogo to create this more aerodynamic shape, and moved the engine further back into the centre of the chassis and lowered it, completing the car in just two weeks.

This is a very rare and valuable 1965 Shelby Cobra – it is one of just six 289 Cobra factory team roadters constructed to FIA specs for the 1964-65 US Road Racing Championship (USRRC) series. These cars were known as the ‘cut-down door cars’ due to those bulging rear fenders. This car, CSX 2557 was one of two fitted with dual side pipes on each side. It’s been raced and restored to its original Guardsman Blue with White racing stripes and actually lives in Kuwait now.

This is the race car that shaped modern F1 cars – it’s the first time that a mid-engined car was used to win the World Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship when Jack Brabham pushed the Cooper T51 Conventry-Climax across the finish line. Alongside him Bruce McLaren became the youngest driver to win a Formula 1 race in a sister T51 – a record that stood for nearly 50 years.

Talking of McLaren, here’s the 1966 McLaren M2B, the team’s first Formula 1 car! It was made out of rigid mallite – the stuff they used for aircraft panels, featuring a monocoque and powered by a Ford engine. Raced by Bruce McLaren himself, it was originally meant to be in green and silver, but McLaren made a deal with the producers of the landmark Grand Prix movie. Forming part of the race footage in the film, the car was painted white with a green stripe to represent the fictional Japanese ‘Yamura’ team.

As British Formula 3 champion, the great Ayrton Senna was given a test by the Williams team in this very car on 19 July, 1983. The Saudia-Tag sponsored 1983 Williams FW08C (based on the FW08) after Ground Effect was banned was powered by a Cosworth 3I engine. However it was slower than the bigger Turbo engined rivals and was only effective on slower, twistier circuits achieving two podiums and a win at Monaco with Keke Rosberg. As for Senna he made his debut with debut with Toleman-Hart in 1984, joining Lotus-Renault the following year.

The Bentley EXP Speed 8 marked Bentley’s return to racing after 73 years, debuting in 2001 and winning Le Mans in 2003. designed by Peter Elleray, it was loosely based on the Audi R8C which raced only once. This is the 2003 race winner.

This is the ‘Birdcage’ 1960 Maserati Tipo 61. It was produced from 1959-1960 designed by Giulio Alfieri to compete in SCCA competition. Only 16 cars were made and the ‘Birdcage’ name was because its tubular chassis featured a space-frame structure comprised of approximately 200 small aluminium tubes welded together for rigidity.