Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Putting the “Sports” in Sports Cars: A Journey Through Time

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Putting the “Sports” in Sports Cars: A Journey Through Time · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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Putting the sports in sports cars by Elton G.
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McGowan.
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Elton Skip McGown is an emeritus professor of finance at Bucknell University and
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a visiting professor at universities in Slovenia and in Montenegro.
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He has presented and published the History and Culture of Finance
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as well as Automobile History and Culture and served as area chair
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of the Vehicle Culture section of the Popular Culture Association.
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He considers the two senses of the word sports.
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Competition and Recreation and their relative roles in the creation of the
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class of vehicles known as sports cars.
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Alright folks, next up is putting the sports in sports cars by
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some guy named Elton McGowan?
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Oh, you mean Skip.
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Skip McGowan.
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Skip McGowan.
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This is not a formal occasion.
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Skip.
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Okay.
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Well, we heard the term sports car at least a few times this morning.
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Of course, that's not so surprising in a venue like this, but it is a term that you
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hear all the time in all sorts of places.
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But the uses don't always seem to be compatible with each other.
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In the 15 years following World War Two, There were a whole series
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of books published on sports cars.
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In the introduction to each of the books, or in the first chapter, they
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would provide a definition of what they considered to be a sports car,
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and then they would go through and list all of the sports cars that had
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been manufactured up until that point.
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Not surprisingly, The definitions differed.
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The lists differed.
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And I have to admit, I've always been kind of intrigued by the question
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of just what is a sports car.
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Now, for me, the car part was not a problem.
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Maybe it should have been, but it wasn't.
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The problem I had was with the sports part.
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Now, what I'd like you guys to do is think.
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The word sports.
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What images do you have, what associations do you have, what connotations do
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you have with that word sports?
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Some are probably obvious.
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One is the notion of competition.
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Sports, competition.
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I think that might be a little too simplistic.
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Because when you think of sports, you also think of just recreation.
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This photo here kind of implies there's a connection between
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recreation that we see here and maybe ultimately some sort of competition.
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But if you think about it, it doesn't necessarily have to go that way.
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You don't necessarily have to start with the competition and
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then move on to the recreation.
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You can start with the recreation and move on to the competition.
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After all, there wouldn't be professional sports of any sort
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if people didn't find the subject enjoyable and had an interest in it.
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There's another connotation or association of sports that might not pop into your
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head immediately, but when I show you the image, it should become clear.
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Sports is a style.
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And I put the term sportswear up there because it's very common.
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What's the connection between sportswear, competition, and recreation?
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I looked at these pictures, which are photos that I got when
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I googled image for sportswear.
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And I had kind of a hard time associating that with competition.
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Now obviously the footwear on at least the two models to the right might have
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something to do with track and field.
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And the model on the right is wearing something produced by Nike, which
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we knew at least initially was designing competitive sportswear.
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Nonetheless, though, even though these associations, the
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competition, the recreation, the style, in some way go together.
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But also in some way can be very different with that sort of introduction.
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Let's move on to something a little more closely related to sports cars.
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I've encountered books in which at least a couple of authors had said in
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the beginning, all cars were sports cars, but what did they mean by that?
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Well, in one sense, they could have meant that all motoring was competition.
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The obvious form of competition was.
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competition with other motorists.
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You know, in fact, I've seen it said that, you know, motor sports developed
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when the first car met the second car.
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But keep in mind, there were other forms of competition.
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Early motorists were certainly competing with bad roads.
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They were competing with bad weather.
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They were definitely competing with bad equipment.
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You could certainly say that early motoring Was all competition in
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one form or another, even if you were out there by yourself, you
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were competing with something.
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However, if you look at it a little differently, you could argue that at
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the time, all motoring was recreation.
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No one would have been doing this if they didn't enjoy it.
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Sure, technically you could look and say, they were competing.
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But you also could say that this was a pleasant recreational activity,
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at least pleasurable in some way.
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Then motoring evolved.
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It evolved in two ways I think that are relevant here.
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One is, automobiles actually became useful.
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People discovered that these weren't anything necessarily frivolous.
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You could actually use an automobile to make your life better.
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The automobile enabled you to perform necessary tasks much more
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easily than you ever could before.
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Another change had occurred around the same time that racing cars
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became much more specialized.
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Originally, maybe anyone could get out in their car and compete, but it didn't
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take too long before the competition reached such a high level that racing
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cars were very, very specialized.
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They were very different than the cars that people were using for other purposes.
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What this meant was we had product differentiation.
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So on the left, we had racing cars, which were highly specialized for racing.
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And on the right, we had what at the time were called touring cars.
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Pretty much touring car meant.
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A car you just use for normal, everyday purposes.
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Keeping in mind that the word touring does have some kind of
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recreational connotations to it.
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So you've got racing cars, and you've got touring cars.
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Now obviously this wasn't an either or proposition.
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You know, you didn't have one or the other.
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You had what I'm calling a gap in between the two, which was
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certainly filled by vehicles.
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What was in the gap?
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What I'm calling at one end of the gap might have been a car you could call
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just a little bit less than racing.
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It was competitive in certain forms of competition but at the same time
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it could be driven on the road.
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You could drive the car to the competition, you could compete
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creditably and then when it was over you could drive it back home again.
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And you might even drive the car someplace during the week.
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Okay, so it was a car that was maybe a little bit less than a racing car.
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It kind of fell into that gap.
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On the other hand, you had cars that you could say were maybe
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a little bit more than touring.
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They were practical cars, but at the same time there was
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something special about them.
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There was something fun about them.
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They had a little zip, a little pizzazz.
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Something that kind of stood out from your generic touring car.
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The question though is, how big is this gap?
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What sort of range of vehicles do we find within it?
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Early on, the question I think that you could ask was, could a car that
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I've described as like, a little less than racing, be essentially a car that
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was just a little more than touring.
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Are we talking really about the same vehicle?
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And it turns out, we actually could at the time, before World War I.
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So before World War I, these cars, in this gap between racing and touring,
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were referred to as sporting cars.
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Seriously, I mean, this was the generic term.
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Sporting cars.
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You know, this is not a term that I ever think was formally defined, at
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least nowhere that I could find it.
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But the idea was that a sporting car was a touring car that could easily,
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and notice easily is in quotes, you know, what's easy for one person could
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be nearly impossible for another.
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But these were touring cars that could be easily modified for competition.
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And the images that I've shown there are both W.
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O.
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Bentley.
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Who was the English distributor for DFP on the right, we see him looking
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rather sporty himself in one of the vehicles, but on the left we have
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what I understand is pretty much the same vehicle he was selling in the
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showroom, but modified for him to be very competitive in the tourist trophy
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race pre World War One sporting cars.
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Same car, a little nicer, a little more fun than the regular touring car, but also
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easily modified to be a competitive car.
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What this did was it kind of facilitated marketing.
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Okay, so we have two posters here for the DFP.
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And you can see that the orientation of the poster on the left was
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kind of targeting this sort of racing image of the vehicle.
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Whereas the poster on the right, notice is emphasizing the very practical aspects
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of the car for doctors, officials, veterinarians, business travelers,
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same car, but the same car could be marketed in these two different ways.
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And in fact, you could actually market the car for both at the same time.
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On the left, you have a voiture de sport ou d'agrégement, which
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means sports or leisure car.
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This is high school French, so don't put a whole lot of weight on it, okay?
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Or you have a voiture utilitaire ou de fer, in other words,
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a utility or business car.
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So here we're saying, you know, you got something that's really
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kind of works for everyone.
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And you'll notice on the right, the advertisement for DFP says that the sole
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distributor of the vehicle in Australia is Sporting Cars Property Limited.
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We heard the phrase this morning, race on Sunday, sell on Monday.
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I have to admit, I believe this has serious limitations.
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However, These limitations did not apply at this time, mainly because
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the car that was on the track on Sunday was real close to the car
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that was in the showroom on Monday, or could be made really close to it.
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Early on, when you're looking at a small gap like this, yeah, you could
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race them on Sunday, and that would be excellent marketing for sales on Monday.
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World War I shows up.
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What happens after the armistice?
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We know the automobile industry boomed in the 1920s.
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However, the question then is, what sorts of cars would companies build,
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and, at least equally important, how would companies market these cars?
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You know, as we saw before World War I, racing could be used to
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market cars very effectively.
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Could we still do that after World War I?
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One of the problems is that the top tier racing cars were getting
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increasingly different from the cars that were in the showroom.
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What you were seeing on the track was a lot different
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than you would see on Monday.
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Admittedly, they could have the same name.
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So you might imagine that there was some sort of aura or spirit associating them.
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You know, some sort of brand identity.
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This is something that would take time to develop.
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There wouldn't be that really close relationship.
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What happened as a result of this, which I think is fascinating, we saw this
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in the past presentation, you tried to move the racing closer to the other end.
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So the real innovation to me with Le Mans race was the idea that
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the vehicles had to have been produced in certain size batches.
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So what this meant was it was Increasingly likely that the car that
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you saw on the track winning something.
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Obviously there were so many classes you had to win something eventually.
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The cars on the track that were winning something could be pretty close
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to the cars in the showroom again.
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If the company had had to make a certain number of them.
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This worked real well for the race organizers.
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Because it attracted manufacturers and the manufacturers were attracted to
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these races because this was an excellent opportunity to advertise their vehicles.
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Nice strategy.
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The result was that companies responded by producing what
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they were calling sports models.
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You had a broader product line.
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But within that product line, you had a model that was differentiated
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in some way, referred to as a sports model, and that this sports model
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would satisfy the manufacturing requirements to qualify for the racing.
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So, for most of the 1920s, we saw sports models.
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So before World War I, we had sporting cars.
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Through most of the 1920s, we had sports models, and this was
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the reason Amelcar was one that really took full advantage of this.
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German and Italian manufacturers had their own terms.
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Mercedes had Stadtwagen, Turnwagen, and, what we're interested
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in, in German, Sportswagen.
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In Italy, Alfa Romeo had Le Più Famoso Vettura Sportiva del Mondo.
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A German term, and we had an Italian term.
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Sportswagen Vettura Sportiva.
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They began selling their vehicles in England.
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I think these ads are from like around 1928.
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So, if you're going to sell your vehicle in England, you're going to have to
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advertise your vehicle in English.
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So you're going to have to translate the foreign term into English.
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So, sportswagen, not surprisingly, was translated as sports car.
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Vettura sportiva was translated as sports car.
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Alfa Romeo used the same slogan, but in English, the world's finest sports car.
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I believe that this was how sports car first appeared in English, and moved
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into the English language as a term.
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It was picked up by Bentley, and I believe Bentley was one of the
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first to do so, at least one of the first that I was able to find.
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So they picked up the literal translations of the German phrase
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and the Italian phrase, labeled their four and a half liter Bentley
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the British Thoroughbred Sports Car.
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Notice, very clearly emphasizing British, not foreign.
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And emphasizing thoroughbred, in other words, a distinguished heritage.
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Also keep in mind that these were the years that Bentley was winning Le Mans.
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And most of the um, newspaper stories about these wins
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emphasized it was a British car.
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It was only somewhere down in the body of the article that
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you discovered it was a Bentley.
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These were no longer considered sports models.
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This was a standalone vehicle.
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Where did the sports and sports car come from?
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Well, it was a sporting car before World War I.
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It was a sports model during most of the 1920s.
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And at the end of the 1920s, and then on into the 30s and
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beyond, it became a sports car.
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But, what did sport mean?
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And here's where I go back to the first part of the presentation.
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This is the theory that you can decide whether or not you agree with.
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Anything positioned in the gap between racing cars and at least
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what were referred to as touring cars is somehow associated with sport.
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However, if that vehicle is kind of more in the direction of the racing,
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it kind of captures the competitive connotations of the word sport.
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Somewhere in the middle are cars that are sports cars more in the
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recreational sense of the word sport.
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And I would argue that over on the right side, there are cars that could
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legitimately be called sports cars, but in the sense of sport as a style.
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What is a sports car?
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Your call.
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Thank you very much.
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Thank you, Skip.
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Any questions?
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Where would the post World War II hot rod movement fit into this, if at all?
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Model A Fords, modification of cars that be considered sports cars or not?
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First of all, I mean, people can use the term what they want.
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I'm thinking more of this term in terms of manufacturing and marketing.
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As opposed to really creating independent vehicles like that.
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But cars that were deliberately created, not maybe for the personal use so much.
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as for the intent to make money by selling them.
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Underline your one definition of sports cars.
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When I was growing up in the 50s, sports cars were often defined as a car that you
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could use both as racing and on the road.
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And that was a defining idea.
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The other thing I remember quite well is that when the Sunbeam Alpine
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came out, it had roll up windows.
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And hence, was not a sports car.
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Yeah, that's true.
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You know, a lot of the definitions that you really do see are, I would
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call them kind of purist definitions.
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And they can get really technical, you know, it has to not have this, it has
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to have this, it doesn't have this.
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With this, what I'm trying to look at is the word sport more
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encompassing, you know, and to address.
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other uses of the word sports car.
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Lots of folks would not consider those sports cars.
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But I think in a broader sense of the word sport.
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Yeah, they are.
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Is it fair to say that Detroit rarely use the term?
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And if so, why?
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I don't know if that's true, because I know a lot of the Detroit cars are being
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referred to as sports cars in retrospect.
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What I would have to do is look and see exactly how they referred
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to them in contemporary terms.
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That's what was interesting about doing this is so many cars from before World
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War I and during the 1920s were referred to as sports cars in these books that
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were published after World War ii.
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But if you actually go back and look at the advertisements, look at the road
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tests in magazines, The word sports car, I could only find it used once in
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1925 in relation to an Aston Martin.
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It really wasn't until the late 1920s that sports car actually showed up.
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And even then, it was a slow transition.
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It appears as if some magazine publishers were adopting the
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term earlier on than others.
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So, you know, it's not like it happened all of a sudden, it
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happened over a period of time.
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And then, eventually, when you came to the SS, that was advertised as a
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sports car from the very beginning.
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Let me ask you about three cars.
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A Jordan Roadster, a Mustang, and a Thunderbird.
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Which of those would you call sports cars?
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Depends on what you call sports.
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Again, I'd have to look back at the time.
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I think you can call those sports cars...
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Kind of in a recreational or a stylistic sense.
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They probably wouldn't fit the more restrictive definitions that
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drift over to the left of that.
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I don't see a problem with calling them sports cars.
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Because sports is a very, very encompassing term.
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I mean, some of them came to extremes.
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It was like the Packard Caribbean was called a sports car.
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Can you give a contemporary example of each of those categories of racing a gap?
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A sports car and a touring car.
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How contemporary?
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Today.
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Oh gosh.
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Indy, could you say a BMW M4 is a touring and a red BMW or the
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M4s that they race at the moment.
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That's the racing part.
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And then, depending upon whether you order the M4 competition or the M4 non
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competition, whether you order the normal or series that has soft suspension and,
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uh, So that one BMW 3 Series can fit.
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My argument here is, I'm hypothesizing, I might be wrong, a current, say, BMW
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M4 or 4 Series, in its small, Gas motor automatic transmission mode it sits
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near a touring car But when in the form when it's prepared to race it in
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the German touring car championship or something It's the pure racing car.
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So with that one car the BMW m4, for example, I believe that that Fits
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in the gap, you know, the current fiat convertible, I would say maybe
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fits kind of in the middle, but, you know, maybe the about the version
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kind of move, which actually is sitting in a lot downtown here.
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I didn't even know they could import them.
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Okay, where do you put the early hot rods?
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You'll cut down 32 Ford's for about the West Coast in the late
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40s in the sports car picture.
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Yeah, that was.
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They were also recreational vehicles.
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That was similar to the first question, but you know, with this, what I've tried
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to do is really focus on the automobiles that were manufactured for sale to the
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public as opposed to something like that.
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All right, thank you, Skip.
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Thank you.
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