The June 1955 issue of Road & Track didn’t seem special to me, reading it in 2023. Probably because the Jaguar on the cover can only appeal as a collector’s car–a fantastically competent and romantic relic, of course, but not something that excites because it is functionally better than anythng else I’ve ever seen.
Readers in 1955 would have seen it extremely differently of course. It was the kind of car that you could drive to the track and be competitive with (albeit perhaps not against the bonafide racers… but still). And that was important, because in 1955 sports car racing was still for sports cars, and many of the machines were actually just that–cars someone had driven to the track.
This comes to the fore when one reads the Sebring article in the June issue pictured above. Though the cars that dominated the race were mainly bespoke competition cars, a stock XK-140 (like the one on the cover) placed tenth, and quite a few stock cars ran (everything from Mercedes 300 SLs to Renault 4CVs).
They were interesting times indeed, as no one really knew what was going to happen with those categories.
One thing I found interesting is that, other than the cover, the magazine is black and white. Except it isn’t. About half of it is black and white with the remainder being dark green and white and dark brown and white. It’s an interesting contrast, with a few pages in alternate colors, but I have no clue why they might have done it that way. If any of my readers know, I’d love to hear about it! (and don’t worry if you arrive here randomly via a google search a few years from now… I’ll still read your comment).
It was, perhaps, not the best era to be a sports car buff, but that does make it interesting, I guess.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.
Classically Educated 