Can-Am Odyssey

[Ted68]

Excellent! Pure motorsport porn there. Thanks for posting this.

[xpensive]

This is porn for you, the forgotten Porsche Challenger; Shadow DN2, 8.1 litre twin-turbo Chevy with a reported 1400 Hp on tap.

http://mecum.com/auctions/lot_detail.cf ... 0810-96567

[strad]

Ok...I ran Can-Am Thunder thru another Divx pass to get it down to 877Mb...1hr48½ min Divx codec..once again I should say that it is free here..http://www.divx.com/
Can-Am Thunder:

The Mighty Machines of the Can-Am Championship. This DVD combines modern action footage along with rare archive footage and almost 100 superb pictures to focus on these mighty machines as they rumble and roar around tracks like Laguna Seca and the Nurburgring. You'll hear form the three Can-Am Champions still with us today: John Surtees, George Follmer & Jackie Oliver, fellow legendary drivers Vic Elford & Hurley Haywood, Designers Jim Hall and Peter Bryant plus the worlds number acknowledged "Number One" Can-Am Guru Pete Lyons.

.Click photo for video

[MadMatt]

I have seen those movies already, most on them on DVD, but I had to say WOW to that list picture. It really summarize what CanAm was really : awesome cars on very unsafe tracks with beautiful scenery behind !

[jdlive]

Must have been great tracks to watch races on as a spectator. We need to get back to more of these Spa-Francorchamps-type, beautifully situated tracks. The clinical surroundings of the new tracks are killing the attractivity for spectators.

Unless of course you are a Redneck and find concrete beautiful

[xpensive]

To my mind, the beauty of Can-Am was not so much the uncertainty of who would win, but the sheer spectacle of free-reign enthusiasm, relatively low-cost possible and not-so-possible contraptions. Until the turbo-panzer came along, it was pretty much a spec-series engine-wise however, with the big-block chevy on top.

Jim Hall's 2J topping the list of all-time innovations of course, sometimes I wish that I was even older than I am;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWzUsW18k3c

And it proved incredibly fast when running, at Riverside in 1970 it was miles ahead of the McLarens.

[strad]

We have had discussions on what the new Formula 1 spec engines will sound like and I will wait to see on that, but I think a large part of Can-Ams appeal was the sound of those big blocks. There is just something about the rumble of a large displacement V8. Formula 5000 had a great bass sound as well. Not downplaying the other aspects at all,,,just noting that the sound was great.

[xpensive]

One of the interesting parts with Can-Am at the time was that Ferrari made a serious effort in 1969 with a 6-liter 612 driven by Chris Amon, not really cutting it however, here;

http://timewastingmachine.tumblr.com/po ... 612-can-am

[strad]

I guess I really should have posted this one first but quite frankly, I forgot I had it.
The Roots of Can-Am 1hr 27 min 50 sec....514 Mb Divx codec

[Sombrero]

Chris Amon and his crew pose for pictures behind the “Bloody Shit-box”.

http://www.motorsportsmarketingresource ... onsin.html

[xpensive]

In 1971 there was also the 712, though raced sporadically, but what an engine!

http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/625/ ... an-Am.html

[DaveKillens]

I'm an admirer of great designers, from Colin Chapman to Barnes Wallis, to Alec Issigonis, to Fabio Taglioni, to Jim Hall.

Jim Hall truly was a great and inventive designer, he was light years ahead of his contemporaries in many areas, especially aerodynamics. His cars, the Chaparralls, were famous for the 1970 2J suction car. Eight years later was it tried in the Brabham BT46B in Formula One, that's how far ahead he was.

But even before that, in 1966, while Formula One cars still had their radiators in the nose and aerodynamics were not truly practiced, Jim Hall came out with the Chaparrall 2E. Jim moved the radiator from the nose to sidepods on either side, a move that became the standard for all race cars to this day.



Along with this "first" was the wing, another "first". It was mounted directly to the rear suspension uprights, and combined with the clutchless transmission, gave the driver the option of changing incidence. Untouched it had incidence, generating downforce and drag. But a pedal where the clutch traditionally resided allowed the driver to flatten it out to drop drag and downforce. This system was linked to the front nose ducting (downforce generating) to close off a flap, which spilled downforce and drag, but more importantly, balancing the car. Truly genius.





Can Am was exciting with the bad boy cars of humungous power, but this fertile breeding ground allowed guys like Jim Hall to pave the way in racing aerodynamics.

[DOA]

I could be wrong but I was under the impression that Jim Hall pioneered the composite race car chassis as well... A truly awesome Engineer in conjunction with the people at Chevrolet at the time.

[donskar]

CanAm was visceral, basic, awesome -- the road course equivalent to top fuelers. And, for a while, "little guys" could take on the factories with a real chance to win occasionally. Has there ever been a series that saw such unbridled variety and creativity -- Ti22, Shadow, Howmet, Hussein, McLaren, Lola, Porsche, Chapparal, Ferrari, BRM, and so many "garageists" dropping Chevies and Fords into the back of Cooper Monacos or home-built specials. Who could ever forget John Surtess hurling the Chapparal "white whale" around Mid-Ohio? Or the mildly modified Ferrari P4s screaming futilely around Elkhart Lake? Those days will never return, but (for me) their memory makes a mockery of the current restrictive state of F1 and its slow slouch toward kit cars.

[Pierce89]

Hey Strad,
I'm getting a 404 when I hit the links