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Racing Reborn: The Revival of European Motorsports Post-WWII · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Break 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 Argo Singer family,
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  the best years of our lives, the rebirth of post-war European
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  Motor Sports by Skip McGowan.
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  World War II in Europe left both victorious and vanquished
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  countries devastated.
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  Yet, within weeks of the end of hostilities on September
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  9th, 1945, an automobile race was held in Paris's bla Deone.
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  This presentation addresses the questions, where did the financial
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  and material resources for an active postwar racing program come from?
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  And perhaps even more importantly, why were they expended in what many
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  might regard as non-essential or perhaps even frivolous activity?
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  Skip McGowan is the William h Cock Emeritus Professor of Finance at
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  Bucknell University and was a longtime visiting professor at universities
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  in Slovenia and Montenegro.
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  He has presented and published on 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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  My interest in motor sports really has been what's under the table.
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  You know, if you read my little bio in the brochure, what did it look
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  like at the end of World War ii?
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  Okay, so we had this classic image, and yeah, it maybe looked like that for a few
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  days, you know, maybe even a few weeks or it looked like that in New York City.
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  But there are other places where things were very, very different.
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  The end of World War II looked like this in Britain.
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  It looked like that in France, Germany, Italy.
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  But what surprised me was that within weeks of the end of World
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  War II, there was an automobile race in the bar de bologna.
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  So the question I had been asking myself, maybe it's two questions.
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  How and why did this happen?
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  First of all, there's the question, how is we're looking at a place
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  where there was considerable.
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  Deprivation.
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  You know, there were shortages of food, shortages of cash, shortages
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  of all sorts of materials.
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  So how did they manage to put together a racing program so quickly?
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  But the other question, of course, is why were these scarce
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  resources devoted to motor racing?
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  I mean, because obviously there are a lot of other things that could
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  have been done with them at the time.
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  To approach this, and I cannot pretend that this is any sort of
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  scientific approach, but I took a look early 1950s Grand Prix
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  racing shortly after World War ii.
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  Of course, they were racing automobiles that had existed before the war, but
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  what I was interested in was when new vehicles started being built.
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  So I took a look at all the vehicles that had raced in the early to mid fifties,
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  and I came up with a list of those that had been designed and built after.
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  The end of the war, and that had raced in at least several races over
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  several years, not just the ones that maybe were one and done that showed
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  up and then disappeared again, but ones that hung around for a while.
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  These were the major players, and the Hess represent the cash flows.
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  I'll get back to this a little later, but I wanted to show this down because
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  what I wanted to focus on here were the constructors, you know, as kind
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  of the heart of this whole process.
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  So who were the people who built the new vehicles that participated in
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  this very early Grand Prix racing?
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  And it turns out there were 10 of them, five of them were from Britain,
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  five of them were from the continent.
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  The five that were from Britain were largely constructed by.
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  Businesses with mechanical interests.
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  To kind of rephrase that a bit, they were built by gearheads in
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  overall playing with their own money.
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  I don't mean this to be pejorative because honestly, the more I read about the folks
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  who did this, the more respect I had for them and not just respect, I liked them.
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  These were people I would've liked to have known, and this is who they were.
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  We had HWM Cooper, connot Van Wall.
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  And BRM.
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  Now, the continent was a little different.
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  These were businesses that were more or less corporately connected, and I
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  would describe them as gearheads in suits playing with someone else's money.
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  So they didn't wear overalls, they wore suits, they didn't use their own money.
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  They were using someone else's money.
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  So we had Gordini Maserati.
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  Macho Mercedes, and of course Ferrari.
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  Just a few observations here to begin with.
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  The groups illustrate two different forms of industrial organizations.
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  The British companies were really representative of what you might
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  call entrepreneurial capitalism.
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  Really, this applies almost across the board in the industrial structure.
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  Britain was dealing with individuals who started their own businesses.
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  Maybe they grew, maybe they didn't, but it was a very individual thing versus
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  what we saw in the continent, which you might refer to as national capitalism.
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  The idea being that there were groups of related industries.
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  They were associated with certain financial arrangements.
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  They probably had close connections with the government.
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  So we had really smaller organizations, larger organizations, but as I say here,
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  the motoring industry or the racing in.
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  Was really representative of something that was much broader phenomenon.
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  Now, I did use the term gearheads, but the idea was that regardless of the type
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  of organization, it all involved someone that had obvious personal motivations in
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  racing, talking about money, which was kind of how I entered into this interest.
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  Was construction really a real business or was it something else?
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  Now, the more I looked at this, I realized that what went on there,
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  and not surprisingly, because we're talking about the same era, was what
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  we're seeing in these early days of post-war racing seemed to me to resemble
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  the early days of rock and roll.
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  You had garage bands, and in the case of Connot and HRM, these
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  were literally garage bands.
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  They built their cars within their garages.
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  Cooper began as a garage band, but it's kind of like a garage band.
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  They got a recording contract.
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  Okay.
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  So they were able to kind of move upscale from their origins.
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  We also had groups with wealthy parents, so Van Wall.
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  Was an interest of Tony Vanderwell who had made money with thin wall bearings.
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  And in the case of Maserati, lots of details here.
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  This was Ori who had a lot of other industrial interests.
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  Okay.
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  And Maserati was among them.
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  So the racing activities received contributions from these other larger
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  industrial concerns within the group.
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  You had groups with what I might call gullible parents.
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  In other words, someone was willing to.
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  We're able to convince someone else that racing was a good
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  idea from a business standpoint.
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  So supposedly launch of getting involved in racing would help sell launches.
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  This is the one, honestly, with Mercedes that kind of baffles me
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  because it's like, okay, if we race, we're gonna sell Mercedes.
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  And we had an unfortunate person who was abandoned by their parents.
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  Gordini was very closely associated with sim c. But Simcock kind of cut
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  'em loose when the cars deviated too much on the track from the
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  ones that he was trying to sell.
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  You hear little bits and pieces of launch A going bankrupt and all of its.
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  Racing assets being transferred to Ferrari, and you see little bits and
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  pieces suggesting that Fiat was the one that orchestrated this transaction.
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  And I can't help but think that somehow the Italian government was involved.
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  In preserving the presence of the country or some sort of, you know,
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  national Italian product within racing.
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  This was certainly the case prior to World War ii, and I'm not sure that this
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  industrial governmental relationship.
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  It wasn't still in effect after the war.
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  VRM is a little different.
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  Okay.
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  We had this group of really significant British industrialists coming together
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  to produce kind of a British automobile.
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  I've not seen anything that indicated a direct involvement with the government.
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  But at the same time, all of these folks were plugged in, you know, and if it
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  was necessary in some way to have the government kind of grease the skids for
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  this project, I'm sure that they were able to arrange that it could be done.
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  Bottom line is pretty much every one of those vehicles and every one of
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  those constructors was depending upon some sort of handout from someone.
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  The only one of these that I think you might argue as a business
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  would be Cooper, but Cooper.
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  Was probably the only one that actually turned into a success at actually selling
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  a product that someone wanted to pay for.
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  They started out as a garage band, like a lot of the others.
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  So then the question is, aside from these handouts, was there
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  any other money flowing in.
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  To this process that might have turned it into some sort of business.
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  So here's where I get back to this.
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  So we did have two sources of cash flowing in.
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  One was from sponsorships and the other was from the promoters.
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  Even those cash flows are not so easy to understand.
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  First of all, the sponsors had to make money.
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  So you assume that, okay, the sponsors were using this as.
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  Kind of a marketing tool, but it's hard to value marketing.
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  You really can't say that, look, you know, we put this much into
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  sponsoring racing, and we can expect to get this much in sales out of it.
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  You know, I did make a presentation about this last year, and there are lots of
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  intangible benefits that companies believe they can realize from sponsorships.
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  So it would be hard to argue that this is like a strictly business activity.
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  Promoters had to not lose money.
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  One of the things that I always found interesting was it looks as
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  if these promoters of these races immediately after World War II were
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  not money making organizations.
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  They were clubs, regions, just.
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  Creating some sort of activity, and I noticed in the presentation it
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  was mentioned that NASCAR kind of stepped in as a business because the
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  aaa, and I forget which the other organization weren't making a go of this.
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  Again, it does not appear that originally this could even be referred to as
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  a business, but at least they could count the cash at the end of the.
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  Okay, so they could say, look, you know, we're providing this service,
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  we're getting this much money in.
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  As a result of doing that, that's almost as close as it came to business.
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  There had to be more going on.
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  Obviously something else was driving this revival of racing
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  right after World War ii.
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  So quickly keep in mind the two questions that I posed up front were how.
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  And why this was happening.
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  So the how, at least in one sense was that we're seeing handouts in various
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  ways to construct these vehicles.
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  You know, we're seeing money coming in from sponsors for something
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  that the sponsors felt they were getting out of it, although I can't
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  help feeling that these almost were handouts from sponsors as well.
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  Yeah, sure.
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  You can kind of sell that and say that this is a marketing
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  expense, we'll put this money in.
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  But basically, and people wanted to go to the races, they wanted to hang
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  out in the pit areas and meet the drivers and those sorts of things.
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  So, you know, hard pressed to consider that business.
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  And a lot of the races were organized as mainly just, you
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  know, kind of public events.
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  You know, the money there is pretty peculiar.
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  There were other advantages that kind of facilitated.
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  Racing right after World War ii.
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  First of all, one was that a lot of the businesses in the war
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  really had made money, so the money kind of came out of the war.
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  Vanderwell, I imagine, made quite a bit of money selling bearings during the war.
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  Another thing was there was a surplus of reasonable pavement.
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  It was not necessary to really spend a whole lot of money
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  constructing facilities.
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  I mean, this could be done on the old aircraft tarmax that, you
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  know, were existing from the war.
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  There was a lot of scrap around.
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  It was interesting to, I mean, I may get this wrong, but you know, Cooper's
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  original chassis, they took the front ends from two old Fiats and cut 'em in
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  half and put them together back to back.
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  But of course, I think what was interesting is the fact that this could
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  be done so inexpensively that they created kind of a market for inexpensive
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  vehicles that other people would purchase.
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  But yeah, there was a lot of stuff flying around that they could work with.
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  And finally, nationalists sentiment was still running high.
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  You know, the Italians were still interested in having
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  a. Italy compete in some way.
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  The British wanted to see Britain compete in some way, so you come out of the war
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  with actually some profits from the war.
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  You come out with some good places to race.
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  You come out with kind of a desire still to compete.
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  But I think there's more, and I think it's a little more subtle.
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  When I read a lot of the, uh, things that are written about this area and
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  about the early post-war racing, a lot of times they say, well, people
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  just wanted to get back to normal.
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  People wanted to get back to doing the sorts of things that
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  they had done before the war.
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  Forget about the war.
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  Get back to normal.
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  Remember, this is racing.
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  This isn't like going bowling like I see on the billboard out there.
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  The question is why racing?
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  We need to consider.
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  The people who wanted to get back to normal weren't the same people
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  that were normal before the war.
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  They came back differently.
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  You know, I chose this image because, you know, there's a suggestion that the
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  original biker gangs after World War II were, you know, were made up gis.
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  So yeah, okay, we wanna get back to normal.
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  But the people who were getting back to normal weren't the same people.
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  How are they different?
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  I don't know how accurate some of these characterizations are.
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  We turned into Gearhead Nation.
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  Everyone in the war to some extent, had to deal with something mechanical.
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  They had to know how to take care of it.
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  They had to know how to repair it.
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  So we had a nation of people that were really mechanically inclined.
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  And mechanically interested and in support of that.
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  Now you can read this quote from Raymond Mays.
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  And Raymond Mays was certainly noted for using hyperbole when it served
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  his interests, but he anticipated this phenomenon when he was
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  soliciting contributions in order to.
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  Create BRM.
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  Okay, so one of, one of the rationales he gave was that this would exist.
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  He saw all of these people coming out of the war with this mechanical
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  aptitude in the mechanical interest.
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  Second, people wanted it fast and loud.
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  I'm not sure that this is anything new, but the war had been fast and loud.
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  And people wanted to continue with the fast and loud, and this is the
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  one I think is maybe the most subtle, but the most significant people came
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  out of the war as adrenaline addicts.
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  Life was just never as exciting.
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  You know, I remember reading about the settlement of the West.
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  You know, after the Civil War.
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  I can't help thinking what it was.
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  A lot of people came out of the war saying, look, running a
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  general store in Connecticut just didn't have that thrill anymore.
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  So I'm gonna go out and do something a lot more interesting.
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  And I happen to run into this in one of the emails that I get from the Veterans
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  Administration, so maybe this wasn't just a post-World War II phenomenon, someone
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  thinks that there is still such a thing as an adrenaline addiction out there.
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  So my underlying argument was that despite what the literature often
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  says, people just wanna get back to normal and do normal things.
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  Racing was not a return to post-war normal.
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  It was a continuation of the wartime intensity.
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  It was a way for people to capture the best years of their lives.
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  Now, I don't know how many of you have seen the movie or remember the movie
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  Dana Andrews before the war had worked at a soda Fountain, comes back from
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  the war and you know, these three guys were sharing hop back to the hometown.
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  Frederick Marsh had been a banker.
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  I can't remember what Harold Holland's job had been before the war.
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  I wanna focus on Dana Andrews.
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  Okay.
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  He was working at a soda fountain before the war.
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  In the war.
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  Obviously he had been a captain and he was a bombardier, and I think a beat 24.
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  Big difference between pre-war, life and life in the Army Air Corps.
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  So he comes home and it turns out his wartime marriage essentially fallen apart.
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  He shows an interest in Frederick March's daughter Theresa Wright, which doesn't
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  exactly make Frederick March too happy.
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  You know, you, you can kind of picture, this is actually a C, great movie.
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  You can picture the situation he's in.
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  Can't go back to doing what he did.
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  He can't go back to normal.
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  So what happens in the movie is he ends up in an aircraft boneyard
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  where all of the surplus equipment is being torn apart and scrapped.
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  So he climbs into a B 24 and he sits down in the Bombardier's position.
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  And you kind of get the parallels there.
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  The aircraft was post-war surplus, but in a sense he's kind of looking at himself
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  as post-war surplus as well, and the foreman and the, uh, scrap art comes up
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  to him as what, what are you doing there?
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  And is subsequently kind, you know, sympathetic that he's returned to
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  the best years of his life, which was sitting in a plexiglass canopy.
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  Dropping bombs.
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  Probably the only person in greater danger than he was was the tail gunner,
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  but it was the best years of his life.
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  It didn't just happen in a movie.
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  You can read this closing quotation that really zeroes in
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  on the motor racing situation.
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  Okay.
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  Abe Caee was one of the principals in founding HWM.
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  So you can see that he raced, of course, before the war, raced after
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  the war, which was probably the closest he came to what he had done during
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  the war, which he always regarded as the best years of his life.
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  So the how of racing.
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  People who had a personal interest in this in one way or another
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  we're able to scrape together the money and the resources to do it.
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  The key though is why did they do it?
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  And to me, I think this provides one of the best explanations of why they did it.
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  They just weren't the same people they were during the war and racing
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  might have been an activity that was as close to recapturing that emotion
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  as anything else they could do.
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  Thanks very much.
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  Thanks.
• 20:03
  That was great.
• 20:03
  Do we have any questions or comments on that?
• 20:06
  So I have a, I guess a sort of a, maybe a similar analogy to your thesis here
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  is, uh, a while back I watched Peter Jackson's, they shall never grow old.
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  It's a fabulous World War I documentary.
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  And I wonder if there's a connection between the lost generation, right?
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  These men that were just killed in mass numbers and early racing where they almost
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  became sort of desensitized to death.
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  You're referring to the post World War I?
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  Yes.
• 20:32
  Yeah.
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  Uh, yeah.
• 20:34
  Actually, I had studied the history of Bentley and how Bentley got started.
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  Bentley was building cars for World War I aviators.
• 20:44
  Okay, because they were the people from the gentleman
• 20:46
  sportsman segment at the time.
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  He was building cars for them and they were engaged in as closely as they could
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  to what they felt during World War I. Although it turned out, of course, a
• 20:58
  lot of people ended up putting really heavy his Dan bodies on his automobile.
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  So kind of created like a, like a. Puzzle in terms of what a Bentley
• 21:08
  really was, but this was who Bentley was building vehicles for.
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  It was it.
• 21:12
  You're right.
• 21:12
  It was the same thing was the racing.
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  You mentioned nationalism, the desire for people in England, France, Germany,
• 21:20
  to have a car they could take pride in.
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  So with that in mind, wouldn't the governments, even though their resources
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  were stretched and limited, and especially when you look at your opening pictures
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  of people in despair, wouldn't those governments wanna fund events that
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  would give them hope and excitement and a reason to be excited instead
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  of just living in a pile of rubble?
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  I don't know enough about the original situations in each of those countries,
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  but I agree with you a lot of.
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  Research can be done on the direct and indirect support.
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  I tend to think at the time, and this is just off the top of my head, governments
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  didn't have a lot of resources.
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  They had run up considerable debts during the war.
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  Sure.
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  It was tough.
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  It was maybe, I suppose, moral support in a way.
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  If they could ease up on regulations or maybe make sure that supplies
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  one thing, were available for something else, whatever they
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  could do that didn't cost anything.
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  Even if they could clear the streets to a lap race to go through a particular, but I
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  suspect that this was definitely happening in Italy and there were only hints.
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  Of it happening in Britain of a governmental connection?
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  Well, as and Zo Ferrari said, so much of this stuff is under the
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  table and it's really, really difficult to find information as
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  to what really went on from this political and and economic standpoint.
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  I think it'd be a great opportunity for someone in scholarship and people are kind
• 22:52
  of, it's just nibbling around the edges.
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  Anyone else have any questions?
• 22:56
  There's a comment from John Summers dovetailing off what you said.
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  He said, Sterling Moss's success was in part reverence in Britain is
• 23:05
  down to the idea of Britain winning abroad and then taking your mind
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  off of the reign and the poverty and everything that was going on at home.
• 23:13
  So I guess to your point about nationalization and patriotism and
• 23:16
  all those things, so he just wanted to throw that out there to be in
• 23:19
  concert with what you're saying.
• 23:20
  Well that, and I know that the British automobile industry after
• 23:23
  World War II was highly expert oriented to earn foreign exchange.
• 23:27
  You know, the government was encouraging companies to produce
• 23:30
  the automobiles that could be sold in the United States to earn money.
• 23:35
  I wanted to ask a question about your concept of entrepreneurial capitalism
• 23:38
  versus national capitalism, and in particular, I'm interested, I think, in
• 23:42
  how that manifests in the United States.
• 23:45
  And if you've thought through the post-war dimensions of construction of special
• 23:49
  automobiles in the United States and how that differs or is similar to the
• 23:53
  British perspective, the literature on that subject is like massive because
• 23:58
  it's, this is not just automobiles.
• 23:59
  This is.
• 24:00
  Pretty much across the board.
• 24:02
  A lot of it had to do with the way capital is allocated in the different areas.
• 24:08
  And in Britain and the United States, companies would raise money,
• 24:13
  presumably at arms length from capital markets, which is today.
• 24:18
  We still see that stock ownership being much more common in the
• 24:21
  United States and Britain, whereas.
• 24:24
  On the continent, financing generally went through banks with close
• 24:30
  relationships to industrial combines.
• 24:33
  Just for one example, in Germany, they're doing everything they can to
• 24:36
  try to get people used to the idea of investing in stocks and having a
• 24:42
  better investor connection with the companies as opposed to the companies
• 24:46
  being connected to the larger banks.
• 24:48
  In fact, they designed the stock exchange to make it look exciting.
• 24:52
  If you ever get a chance to go to Frankfurt and go to the stock exchange,
• 24:56
  well worth the visit all for show, but that's the reason behind it.
• 25:00
  This may be related, it's somehow connected to what you're talking about,
• 25:03
  but I had read somewhere along the line that one of the reasons death was
• 25:08
  tolerated so much in auto racing was that.
• 25:11
  People were looking to replace their World War II heroes, which
• 25:16
  often were killed in plane crashes and fighter pilots and so forth.
• 25:21
  That auto racing became that outlet for a hero.
• 25:25
  And yes, it was high risk and it often included death, but it was accepted.
• 25:29
  But that.
• 25:31
  How those heroes were formed and are made, and it was the vicarious
• 25:37
  thrill of imagining that was you.
• 25:40
  I'd have to disagree with that.
• 25:41
  I don't think anyone goes to the fact to see people fail in, oh, no.
• 25:44
  Uhuh.
• 25:45
  No, I'm not saying that.
• 25:46
  It's just the idea of going to the track to feel as if you're the hero.
• 25:51
  You're driving fast.
• 25:52
  Being on the edge.
• 25:53
  Yes.
• 25:54
  Yeah, that's that part.
• 25:55
  There were so many drivers killed.
• 25:57
  Oh no.
• 25:57
  I started, no, I completely agree with you on that, that that was not, the
• 26:02
  tolerance was there for period, and I'm not suggesting that either, but I just
• 26:08
  was an interesting concept that I read and I just think, yeah, sometimes still.
• 26:15
  Yeah.
• 26:15
  Is that possible?
• 26:18
  I'm just gonna question your flow chart.
• 26:20
  Yeah, all, all of the arrows went, the money went to the drivers
• 26:23
  and I don't think that was true.
• 26:24
  Pardon?
• 26:25
  I said the flow chart that you put up, all of the arrows went to the drivers.
• 26:31
  Like they were the ones getting the money.
• 26:33
  And I don't think that's true.
• 26:34
  The air, no.
• 26:36
  The arrow simply means they got something.
• 26:38
  Yeah.
• 26:39
  Maybe, you know, I've talked to even the ones that did survive, they might have
• 26:43
  gotten something, although, you know.
• 26:45
  That did change over time.
• 26:47
  Yeah.
• 26:47
  Well, and many times they were, they were the sources many times as well.
• 26:50
  When you go back, even in post World War ii, the, the wealthy,
• 26:54
  you know, sporting gentlemen were the sources of some that money.
• 26:56
  But anyway, I just was commenting 'cause it was like, no, that's not true.
• 26:59
  Not a whole lot.
• 27:00
  Well, and the other thing I'm just as a personal experience that when I went to
• 27:03
  Bonneville in 2017, I was just really amazed at the bottle of Salt Flats.
• 27:08
  That, and, and of course this is.
• 27:10
  Will passed post World War, but how many of the people that run and build cars
• 27:15
  and run at Bonneville were ex-military?
• 27:17
  I mean, they almost all talked about that.
• 27:19
  And I mean, it was a real act, you know, an activity that the military was a,
• 27:23
  this was a place for them to go racing and, and to use their skills and have
• 27:26
  fun and, and camaraderie and all of that.
• 27:28
  So it was a culture that really attracted, uh, military people.
• 27:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:31
  Just share that actually, a lot of the Bonneville cars were, yeah.
• 27:35
  Great analogy.
• 27:36
  Anyone else have any other questions?
• 27:39
  Thank you, skip.
• 27:40
  That was great.
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