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Old May 30th 05, 07:49 PM
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Not all Americans are hillbilly jackoffs. A lot of them are, but some
of us are intelligent people who have a moderately good idea of what
the rest of the world is like. American road racing, if not as big as
NASCAR or other sports entertainment, has a long proud history, we have
nothing to be ashamed of really.

But we've never had quite an Enzo Ferrari. We had Miller, Kurtis,
Cunningham, Shelby, the Chapparal guy, several others, they had
Maserati, Bugatti (Italian born but geographically and in every other
way French), Talbot, Uhlenhaut, Chapman, and a bigger bunch of others.

Anyway, Ford racing mgmt DID say they wanted the cars across the line
one-two-three. Miles did sandbag, and the rest is face-saving. It was
the difference between beating the opponent and destroying him. It made
Ford, to quote Rich Taylor (the definitive book may be his 'Modern
Classics') "the overdog", and they were hated. It cost them a lot of
business in England and Germany where Ford was big. And Americans
were-the hick contingent-oblivious or -the bright ones-equally ****ed.

And to sauce the goose, by the early seventies, the Ferraris DID have
the displacement and the light weight to terrorize punks at the
stoplight. Whether it was worth the wear on the clutch and CV joints
was another matter-but by the Daytona they could and did.

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