Author: Thor Thorson

Thor Thorson is president of Vintage Racing Motors, a Seattle-area collector-car dealer and vintage-racing support operation. He has been actively involved with racing for over 40 years, dealing with racers from Ferraris to Sprites, but is mostly seen driving Elva sports racers. He has been writing the race-car profiles for SCM since 2003.

1923 Mercedes Type 122 Indianapolis Racer

Following the Great War, Daimler began to consider forced induction using a supercharger. Renowned engineer Paul Daimler’s development path was further justified in 1922 when the Automobile Club de France issued new Grand Prix rules for the following season limiting engine capacity to 2 liters. Daimler designed an extraordinary 4-cylinder […]

1936 Delahaye 135 S

Of all the pre-war French racers, few are as well regarded as the Delahaye 135 S. Just 20 of these lightened and shortened speed machines were ever built, each doing battle at the very pinnacle of Grand Prix and sports-car racing. Of that small cohort, the penultimate example — chassis […]

1933 MG Magnette K3 Supercharged

Here we offer this highly significant and important example of the MG K3 breed, the 1,100-cc supercharged cars from Abingdon-on-Thames, which did so much to enhance the prestige of the British motor industry. The K3 offered here spent many years on display in the Fremantle and York Motor Museums, Western […]

1955 Ferrari 410 Sport Spider

Despite Enzo Ferrari’s determination to win the 1955 World Sportscar Championship, very little went to plan that season. The new 118 and 121 LM 6-cylinder models did not pan out as projected, forcing Ferrari to revert to his 4-cylinder cars. And the disaster at Le Mans drew increasing scrutiny from […]

1977 Tyrrell P34

The six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 was a pet project of designer Derek Gardner, who had come up with the idea while he was working on four-wheel-drive systems for Indianapolis cars during the late 1960s. A few years later, and with the majority of the Formula 1 grid using the same Ford-Cosworth […]

1975 Chevron B31

Derek Bennett, a shy, intuitive engineer and vastly underrated driver, was once dubbed Britain’s Enzo Ferrari. Yet his most stunning, world-beating Chevron cars emerged from the gloom of a lofty old brick-built Lancashire cotton mill in Bolton’s Old Chorley Road. Debuted in 1969, the B16 sports racer — arguably the […]

1966 Porsche 906

Although it was a successor to Porsche’s winning 904 GTS race car, the 906 Carrera 6 featured a nearly comprehensive redesign, with development closely supervised by Ferdinand Piëch himself in the factory experimental department. Summarized in a nutshell, the 904 was the ultimate racing variant of the 4-cylinder 356 model, […]

1980 BMW M1 “Procar”

The BMW M1 was launched in 1978 but could not compete in the World Sports Car Championship due to a change in regulations. Therefore, Jochen Neerpasch (director of the BMW Motorsport Department) developed the Procar Championship as a venue for the model to race. There were two editions in 1979 […]

1969 Shelby GT350 “B Production” Racer

This fascinating 1969 Shelby GT350 race car, serial number 480033, began life as a Silver Jade GT500 sold new in Hayward, CA, on August 28, 1969. Shortly after its initial purchase, the car was stolen and damaged. The insurance company, unwilling to repair what it considered an “exotic” car, cashed […]

1927 Amilcar C6

After being discovered behind the Iron Curtain, this Amilcar — along with a second chassis — is understood to have been exported from East Berlin via Switzerland prior to being sold to Morris Frost of Florida, where a restoration was carried out prior to the car being used on the […]